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Shardcast: Surges and Surgebinding


Chaos
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This week we need no rails. We're going to talk about Surges and Surgebinding, and we sure go in the deep end here! Rhythm of War spoilers on this, for sure. We also talk about a lot of Herald stuff, and it's probably relevant!

We have Eric (Chaos), David (Windrunner), Evgeni (Argent), and Ben (Overlord Jebus)!

00:00 Intro and Show-and-tell 
4:55 What is Surgebinding? Do Fused Surgebind?
18:24 Reading from RoW Ch 31
23:12 The Fused as Surgebinders
31:04 The Surges and Honor Binding The Surges
40:30 What's the deal with Honor's Truest Surge?
48:47 Ishar Bound What Now?
59:30 Honor Restricting Surges
1:22:13 Nale Talking to Dalinar
1:31:05 Honorblades
1:35:17 Crack Theories and Tangents
1:46:45 Preservation's Allomancy Tinkering
1:53:15 Voidbinding I guess
1:59:44 Cultivation
2:09:16 Final Thoughts
2:14:27 Who's That Cosmere Character 
2:26:03 Outro

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Here’s a dumb thought about voidbinding. Brandon said it had been explored some in the past but not fully. Could that be a thing Ishar was doing on Ashyn.

Odium is the one who tempted Ishar into experimenting with the surges. He didn’t have a spren or an honorblade.  I know there is disease based magic in the not quite canon ashyn story, but there is room for voidbinding.

SOMEONE had to be doing it per that WoB. If it’s not the Fused, the Unmade, the Singers, the Radiants, the Heralds after they became Heralds, who is left, the Sleepless?

Seems like no one was doing it ... on Roshar.

Edited by Child of Hodor

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Could voidbinding be what the Regals do? And when they say they haven’t explored it much that mean they haven’t figured out everything it can do yet?

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Here's the thing about Honor's truest surge. Remember that the Stormfather said that Dalinar's powers wouldn't work. So I more view it as the fact that it's Honor's truest surge AND the fact that Kaladin's spren is an HONORSPREN. Which is of Honor. Retroactively, you can look at the same thing for Lift. Her surge of Progression works because it's Cultivation's truest surge AND because her spren is a CULTIVATIONSPREN, which is of Cultivation. And that both of them are invested enough to stay awake in the tower.

This can really cause a reassessment of the surgebinding magic system. Instead of 10 or 9 plus 1, it's 8 plus 2 (2 meaning Honor and Cultivation), which is more in line with the basic allomancy system. Then imagine if voidbinding is really 8 plus 1 (1 meaning odium) and it will turn out that the Rosharan magic system in closely aligned to the rest of the cosmere. This most likely won't be actualized in the canon and currently has some holes in the theory, but it seems like something Brandon might pull and it seems like it may have some truth in it.

Edited by HoidvsVoid

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22 hours ago, HoidvsVoid said:

 

This can really cause a reassessment of the surgebinding magic system. Instead of 10 or 9 plus 1, it's 8 plus 2 (2 meaning Honor and Cultivation), which is more in line with the basic allomancy system. Then imagine if voidbinding is really 8 plus 1 (1 meaning odium) and it will turn out that the Rosharan magic system in closely aligned to the rest of the cosmere. This most likely won't be actualized in the canon and currently has some holes in the theory, but it seems like something Brandon might pull and it seems like it may have some truth in it.

The only thing is 10 seems to have been made the important number for Roshar by Adonalsium since he made the system and the 10 gas giants. 

Why would the Fused get 9, including progression if it’s Cultivation’s truest surge? 

The Honorblades were made by Honor alone from Honor’s “soul” yet they grant all 10 surges. 

Some of the other 8 surges align with other Shards not in residence in the system yet the surge is still usable. Division causes things to burn, crumble to dust or decay. This seems like Ruin’s truest Surge, but it can be accessed through H&C&O.

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Honorblade

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/33/#e2745

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/324/#e9283

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1 hour ago, Child of Hodor said:

The only thing is 10 seems to have been made the important number for Roshar by Adonalsium since he made the system and the 10 gas giants. 

Why would the Fused get 9, including progression if it’s Cultivation’s truest surge? 

The Honorblades were made by Honor alone from Honor’s “soul” yet they grant all 10 surges. 

Some of the other 8 surges align with other Shards not in residence in the system yet the surge is still usable. Division causes things to burn, crumble to dust or decay. This seems like Ruin’s truest Surge, but it can be accessed through H&C&O.

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Honorblade

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/33/#e2745

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/324/#e9283

All great points that i can't answer convincingly. Like I said, there are a few holes in the theory. I only brought it up because 9 doesn't sound like a number of power and Brandon loves using those. There is definitely more to the surgebinding power system that we don't know yet.

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teknopathetic

Posted (edited)

It is possible Roshar was created by Ado with Cultivation in mind as a primary purpose. Then the lovebird Shard Couple head over there and Honor has to sort of stick himself into the system kind of like Honour is a step-dad. 

Edited by teknopathetic

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Why is nobody talking about the Singers being "forbidden to use the Surges", while also apparently stoneshaping entire cities?

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33 minutes ago, Jorr said:

Why is nobody talking about the Singers being "forbidden to use the Surges", while also apparently stoneshaping entire cities?

Maybe it’s different if they’re getting the spren to do it? Kind of like getting the lifespren to bring light to the plants is sort of a regrowth power, just done by spren and only encouraged by humans/singers?

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I'm in the process of listening to the part where it's talking about Honor having bound the surges. I don't know if this will be seen, but I wanted to point out that towards the end when it's talking about Ishar being a bondsmith unchained. I think when it says that Honor bound the surges, he's effectively taken the surges which existed prior to the shattering of Adonalsium and made it so that in order to be accessible, people would have to swear oaths so that people wouldn't be able to use the surges unchained anymore. Fairly straightforward with how dangerous we see unchained surgebinding. Then in order to use the surges, people have to be held to an ideal so they won't be misusing the surges. Maybe this has been talked to death, but I wanted to throw it out there.

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On 2/8/2021 at 8:15 AM, Nebelskind said:

Maybe it’s different if they’re getting the spren to do it? Kind of like getting the lifespren to bring light to the plants is sort of a regrowth power, just done by spren and only encouraged by humans/singers?

Okay but I don't remember spren being involved. Just the songs and the stones. Question is, these sound like the Surges, as clearly axial connection is manipulated, but is it SurgeBINDING...?

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1 hour ago, Jorr said:

Okay but I don't remember spren being involved. Just the songs and the stones. Question is, these sound like the Surges, as clearly axial connection is manipulated, but is it SurgeBINDING...?

Spren would be involved by inhabiting the Singer gemhearts. But, to your point, they aren't doing it through the Nahel bond We don't even know when Honor became aware of the Nahel bond, because he too was surprised by the Knights Radiant. "I was surprised when these orders arrived. I did not teach my Heralds this." RoW Ch. 4

They are manipulating surges, but are they doing the binding part? Not if that means doing it through a Nahel bond. 

There are other questions.

"Honor bound the surges" Does the "binding" in surgebinding refer to what Honor did to the Surges or to the Nahel bond?  Does any magical manipulation of the surges on Roshar post-"Honor bound the surges" count as surgebinding? 

Are the Heralds Surgebinding? Yes. The Heralds relationship with Honor / Honorblades was mimicked by Spren resulting in surgebinders and the radiants. The Heralds aren't doing it through a spren, nor are they using their own Cognitive Shadow investiture to do it like The Fused. They can't do it without the Honorblades.

Which era of Singers created these cities? Non-radiant spren and Singers pre-date the Shattering. There is a time pre-Shattering and presumably a little bit post-Shattering where the Singers could have been manipulating surges before Honor showed up and forbid it. 

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Roshar#Pre-Desolation_Roshar

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/31/#e1723

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1 hour ago, Child of Hodor said:

Spren would be involved by inhabiting the Singer gemhearts. But, to your point, they aren't doing it through the Nahel bond We don't even know when Honor became aware of the Nahel bond, because he too was surprised by the Knights Radiant. "I was surprised when these orders arrived. I did not teach my Heralds this." RoW Ch. 4

They are manipulating surges, but are they doing the binding part? Not if that means doing it through a Nahel bond. 

There are other questions.

"Honor bound the surges" Does the "binding" in surgebinding refer to what Honor did to the Surges or to the Nahel bond?  Does any magical manipulation of the surges on Roshar post-"Honor bound the surges" count as surgebinding? 

Are the Heralds Surgebinding? Yes. The Heralds relationship with Honor / Honorblades was mimicked by Spren resulting in surgebinders and the radiants. The Heralds aren't doing it through a spren, nor are they using their own Cognitive Shadow investiture to do it like The Fused. They can't do it without the Honorblades.

Which era of Singers created these cities? Non-radiant spren and Singers pre-date the Shattering. There is a time pre-Shattering and presumably a little bit post-Shattering where the Singers could have been manipulating surges before Honor showed up and forbid it. 

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Roshar#Pre-Desolation_Roshar

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/31/#e1723

Out of curiosity, is it called the Nahel (one word) bond or Nah’el bond? I only really do the audiobooks as my circumstance permits. When I heard about El at the end of RoW, I wondered if the original Nahel bond was between a spren named Nah and the singer El. All Nahel bonds could be formed after this manner. Just a thought I had, but I don’t know how deep to look into this rabbit hole. Someone could probably tell me why that’s not the case based on a lingual analysis.

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Great episode and as usual more questions were raised :)   Would have been good maybe to name all surges and remind us what we know about what they do . And what we know about the effects of the combinations of 2 surges as we see in the Radiants. 

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Okay, quick theory about voidbinding inspired from this episode.

What if voidbinding arises from an interaction between Honor’s investiture binding Odium and Odium’s investiture. People with a connection to both Honor and Odium can Voidbind by highjacking that connection and channeling Odium’s investiture through Honor’s connection to him. You are literally binding the void to your will.

Even if that’s not true, I really think Voidbinding needs both Honor and Odium connection to work. Thus the “Void” (Odium) and “binding” (Honor). This is why there are ten levels of Voidbinding, not nine.
This lines up with possible Voidbinders we know of. The corrupted KR have both Honor and Oduim investiture. Additionally, this could be why Renarin has normal regrowth. The surge is too close to Cultivation for it to work for Voidbinding. Maybe a corrupted Windrunner would have two void surges.

Lastly, this also makes sense that Voidbinding originated from the Unmade, according to some sources. If at least some of the Unmade were Bondsmith level spren of Honor before being Unmade, they are now a combination of those two shards.

Also, random thing that I just realized could be nothing or could be a major plot twist later on. Adhesion is supposedly “Honor’s truest surge,” but it’s also the “surge of pressure in a vacuum.” Odium is the Void. Void as in a completely empty space. A vacuum. Syl even says he “sucks in emotion.” Like pressure in a vacuum. I could see adhesion being a surge of Odium.

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Quick question that may or may not be stupid :P 

You were saying how there is decently strong evidence for Ishar not sustaining whatever abilities he had access to. Would that also answer your question about if Kelsier retains his Mistborn abilities, or are the two situations not similar enough?

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On the differences between how Radiants and Fused Surgebind: my impression is that a Radiant in theory could do everything the Fused can, and vice-versa. But the 'internal' versions that the Fused use seem to be have a much lower Voidlight cost for them, so it's not necessarily a good idea for a Radiant to imitate that, and the Fused generally try to avoid the external versions in combat because energy efficiency is their main advantage over Radiants. 

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