TheFoxQR

More along the lines of, what does it mean to be honorable? It could be interpreted to mean that you abide by external rules, no matter what. Some of those rules are cultural, some you make by yourself. Once Honor made an Oath, it doesn't seem like the kind of intent to break it. And so, if Honor was, at that time, being heavily influenced by his intent, then yes. To him it would seem that abiding by his Oaths is the only path forward, regardless of circumstance.

I think you're overestimating Adonalsium's involvement in the magic Systems. For e.g., Lightweaving existed on Yolen. Modern Lightweaving follows those pathways. Similarly, it's just easy to build life around water, than say liquid methane. That's a natural pathway + Shards have seen it so they're more aware of how that works. The Vessels are that form of life, so that form of life is just more natural to them. Similarly, there were certain things that were modeled after other things the Shards had seen before. For e.g. Humans on Scadrial. It seems safe to presume that their spiritwebs were also modeled after Yolish human spiritwebs. And the nature and structure of those spiritwebs may mean it is just easier to make a power work a certain way. For e.g. I could go to the best University in the world to learn physics. I could understand and learn about all the known properties of metals, and electricity. I could learn and see how electricians have used those properties of materials to wire houses. I could learn what physics makes a motor work, and how that drives a fan, and I could learn how a fan provides wind. Ditto for different kinds of lights and lighting rigs and systems. Those things were built the way they were because of the natural laws of the world and the universe. Then, when I build my own house and I'm designing wiring for it, I would naturally utilise that same knowledge. It is upto me to decide what kind of fan I will use, what heating or cooling solutions are better fits for me, what lights I would like in what room (depending on the size of the room and colors of all the things in it). It is me who will decide what switch turns the fan on vs what switch controls power to the lights. It is upto me to decide what that switch will even look like. It is upto me to decide what kind of backup power solution I use. Sure, I didn't do 100% of the work. I didn't discover every single property of each material I'm using, nor did I invent the concept of a wire, or rubber shielding for safety. But the wiring solution I make for my house is mine. Adonalsium built certain magic systems on Yolen. The vessels knew how they work because they lived in a world with them and they flipping ascended there. They can use that knowledge to do things on their own. Examples of this would be everything on Scadrial. Similarly, Roshar was desgined by Adonalsium. Sure, let's say he designed surges, and used patchwork investiture to make Roshar's ecology work a certain way. Because of this, certain Surges can work better together than others. All I'm saying is that the specific Surge pairs in the Herald-KR system are of Honor's (and potentially also Cultivation's) choosing. The strength of their resonances is on those two shards.

We also know that the Fused each only have one Surge. I don't remember if it said Orders or not, but it's implied that there are 9 single surge orders, implying one Surge is missing. At this point, I'm pretty sure the Herald/KR version was built keeping resonances in mind, whereas Odium just straight up gave them Surges. It's like... the Herald/KR system was built knowing there'd be a natural outgrowth from wielding two powers, and there was active consideration on what effects that would have on Rosharran society going forward - thus the Surge-pairs. Odium doesn't care about any of that - his people are already committed to him, and they're probably not changing much because of their Cognitive Shadow nature.

A Lightsaber fabriel. There is even an equivalent to Khyber Crystals - the gems. The Surge of Illumination should theoretically be able to make lasers. Since Radiants can summon their spren in any shape they want, and since gemstones can stick to Shardblades and be summoned-unsummoned with them, this could also be achieved by Knight orders with access Illumination.

So Dalinar's extremely strong bond with his Ryshadium might be a spiritual echo of his eventual Bondsmith-ness. There is a WoB on something similar happening with Kaladin:

I... don't think I'm with you there. Why would a Bondsmith affect a horse?

The literal shard of growth and evolution is on residence in Roshar. I doubt anything else is needed. I'm with @Invocation on the assisted or boosted evolution idea - but I don't think a Bondsmith was needed. Not for this. This seems like it's just something that happened because of the Nature of Roshar's ecosystem.

Ah, but here the known facts of Rosharran history come to the rescue. If the Surge-pairs are inherent to Roshar by Adonalsium's design, as you say, and not by Honor's design as I say, shouldn't everything but the Humans show them? Humans weren't around when Adonalsium made Roshar, and they wouldn't be around for millenia after. Wouldn't something else more native to Roshar display the same surge pairs better? Thinking about this in Scadrial terms, then for example take steel. There is nothing inherent to all steel in the Cosmere that makes it give the power to push on metal or to store and retrieve weight. It only does these when combined with an Allomancer or Feruchemist spiritweb respectively. It is only in the context of a compatible Allomancer or Feruchemist spiritweb that steel can be exchanged and translated to give those powers. And Allomancer and Feruchemist spiritwebs were designed by Preservation, and there was a whole snapping process which was later modified by Harmony which... for lack of a better word "prepares" your spiritweb to be capable of doing those things. Now the whole trick to the Allomancy and Feruchemy spiritwebs was that there were 16 metals, and that was Preservation giving hints to certain people. So when Brandon answers "The pairs are natural to Roshar in the same way as metals on Scadrial" then I have questions. What specific parallel is he drawing? Also to be clear, I do believe that there is something inherent to Roshar that makes certain Surge-pairs more viable than others. I think it is the spren spiritwebs that give them context. Whether this is Adonalsium or Honor, I don't know. What I also think is that there is some deeper meaning or intent behind why those specific surge pairs are more important over others.

Scadrial is an entirely artificially constructed planet - made by Preservation and Ruin post-Shattering. Nothing on it came from Adonalsium, that was all Preservation and Ruin. This includes almost everything on Scadrial, including Humankind. And most importantly, it includes the magic systems. I do think that if Honor wanted to, he could have made an Honorblade that grants all 10 Surges. This is exactly what Yelig-nar does. He grants all 10 Surges. Now there are limitations in place - namely giving all 10 surges at once would probably make individual surges so stormlight-inefficient, that they would be practically useless. Like there seems to be limited place in the soul, after which it just gets too bloated. After much consideration, I do think the Surge Pairs Honor chose were arbitrary, but meaningful in the sense that he (Honor) chose pairs that would have maximum possible effect in a certain direction. For example, Windrunners have greater strength of Squires. This is because they have the surge pair of Adhesion-Gravitation. Gravitation allows lots of people to form connections to them easily (people naturally gravitate to them), adhesion makes those connections stronger (it bonds people together). Similarly, the Surgepairs may have been chosen for their mutual effects, rather than a natural outgrowth of the planet.

You know what, I've had a couple of days to let this gestate, and I'm not sure that quote is in any way conclusive. Think about it - Brandon's answer is decidedly odd. He says the pairs are as natural as the metals on Scadrial. But nothing on Scadrial is "natural". Everything is constructed. If Brandon's talking about how there is a decided metal-power combination, well then that entire framework was created by Preservation. It was Leras who decided what metals to use, and what powers they will give. Another way of interpreting it could be simply to say that the Surge Pairs co-relate to metal-alloy push-pull pairs. But even then, it was Preservation that decided on those things. That constructed structure was sort of the point of the whole system there. So in essence, Brandon basically seems to be saying that Honor or Adonalsium decided and created things for those Surge Pairs to mean something. They are arbitrary to the Shard, and potentially allude to something, but they are not a naturally occurring property of the planet.

Hmm. Okay, these seem to point heavily towards there being more to Lift. One day. One Magnificent day, I will truly connect all the dots in the right way.

I don't think this hints at a completely different, new framework. This and other WoBs like this are more oriented towards the idea that there is a Cultivation equivalent to Stormlight, and a way to access it.

Can you give me a WoB, or a reference or allusion to this of some sort?

And the metal does disappear in the process. There is an exchange. You exchange metal for investiture, which is power shaped by the structure of the metal. While I know the specifics, I just didn't think it was important to get into them here. So I gave a simplified explanation. The reason I think Cultivation is involved is because while there is bonding, it's not the Honor-like bonding associated with Oaths. It's like, there is bonding because Honor and Cultivation's power pervades the world, and so there are elements of them used everywhere, but some are just passive rather than active. The Singer forms also don't give Surges. They seem more about change and specialisation - which seems more like Cultivation than Honor. It's like you can switch between evolutionary paths. And that voluntary ability to "switch" is what makes me lean toward Cultivation, who seems all about embracing change and growth. It seems more Cultivation than Honor, who doesn't seem like the type to allow making temporary Oaths. And as I said, that is the weakest claim I make, based more on hunches and feels rather than solid proof. It's sort of an assumption I'm making. This I mostly agree with. Even if Adonalsium didn't make everything exactly as it is now, it probably put the seeds for everything to eventually develop the way it did.

EDIT: This topic was previously titled Shardic Associations of Rosharran Magic. I just changed the title, not the content. If you were fairly familiar with the idea before, you don't really need to read again. I'm making this post as a culmination (and will probably the last) of several posts and discussions I've been making recently, trying to understand and collate all the known facts about Roshar's magic into one coherent model. In this post, I'm trying to look at Rosharran Magic from a slightly different perspective - the idea of Shardic associations for all known Magic on Roshar. First, let's take a look at another multi-shard world whose magic system we understand reasonably well - Scadrial. On Scadrial, we have two Shards, Preservation and Ruin. Preservation's magic system is Allomancy, and Ruin's system is Hemalurgy. Access to Allomancy is genetic - it involves generating power by burning metals, which can be considered as some sort of Cosmic bargain. You give metal, and you get Preservation's (shaped) power in return. Hemalurgy involves "charging" (or filling) a piece of metal by "spiking" someone with it, taking something from them (specifically a part of their spiritweb), and then "discharging" said metal into a new recipient by "spiking" them. This charge is something that is internal in both the donor and the recipient, you take some internal component (partial spiritweb structure) of the donor and give it to the recipient. Moreover the "charge" of a spike decays over time. Lastly, the interaction of these two creates Feruchemy. It shares charging and discharging pieces of metal external to you with Hemalurgy. This charge comes from things internal to you (redirected flow of investiture from your spiritweb), which is also shared with Hemalurgy, but they differ in the nature of the type of internal aspect they both affect (the difference between extracting some of your own blood, perfectly preserving it for a while, and then putting it back inside you vs forcefully cutting out your kidney with a kitchen knife and giving it someone else, or putting it somewhere else in your own body). It shares gene-based access with Allomancy. It also shares the bargaining aspect, except here the bargaining is distinctly temporal in nature. You are essentially "preserving" what you store to be retrieved at a later time. Most of the spectacle seems to have to do with rates of storage and retrieval. Moreover, the "charge" of the metal doesn't decay over time, and is perfectly preserved. The idea being each Shard has it's own system - something which acts as an expression of their intent. When two Shards invest in close proximity to each other, then a natural outgrowth emerges which combines the characteristic elements of both of its root systems. Thus, Feruchemy can be modeled as an interaction between both Allomancy and Hemalurgy, and thus it bears characteristics influenced and flavoured by both. Now, on Roshar, we have three Shards. By what we see on Scadrial, we should be able to say that each Shard would have one mono-shardic expression of intent - atleast one system that is uniquely theirs. But also by that logic, the interactions between them should create atleast three di-shardic systems - one for each Shard-pair. And one tri-shardic system - something that combines aspects of all three shards. The problem with that assumption however, is that Adonalsium made Greater Roshar pre-shattering, whereas Preservation and Ruin built Scadrial post-shattering. As a result of this, investiture from bith Honor and Cultivation seems to be much better meld together, as they were both focused by a single will, rather than two seperate wills. This is my best guess for associated divisions: Let me explain. The core, deeper system at play along all of the Greater Roshar Solar System is the idea of Surgebinding. I'm proposing that the Surges were originally set up by Adonalsium when he created that solar system - each surge being an abstraction of whatever fundamental force it represents. The Surge of Gravitation, for example, is not gravity but an abstraction of the concept of gravity as a fundamental force of Realmatic Physics, the Surge of Tension is not just surface tension, but an abstraction of the idea of Tension as an actual fundamental force. Think of this as object oriented programming, as opposed to Elantrian/Selish functional programming. The idea of "binding" these forces then, is to connect to these Surges and channel them to modify the rules/behaviour of the corresponding fundamental forces. Syl says this best I think, that gravity is just an agreement for things to behave a certain way. The Surge of Gravitation simply encompasses an interface to this exchange; under a Surge, the fundamental behaviour of everything that Surge represents is clay. Perhaps this is why Adonalsium made 10 Gas Giants in the Rosharan System - maybe they are blanket focii that define the Surges, like how Elantris was focusing the Dor around it, but more complicated and Spiritual rather than Cognitive. The only requirement I think this should have is that there has to be a cognitive component for an agreement to be made - and I believe this is playing into the basics of Realmatic Theory in the sense of the Spiritual representing what something is vs the Cognitive representing how it is perceived. The Surge is a spiritual ideal, and attaching (or binding) a cognitive component to it can allow you to change/modify it's manifestation in the physical. Then, in the creation of Roshar the planet, investiture most closely associated with God's own Honor was used to create lynchpin agreements between the fundamental forces to behave in very specific ways - these are what will be used to make Roshar the planet - having no plate tectonics - function uniquely. For e.g. the physics that drive the Crem-cycle, the forces that make Highstorms, etc. God's own urge to Cultivate allowed life to flourish on this planet in both the Physical and Cognitive Realms. In the physical, we have all the different kinds of flora and fauna. In the Cognitive, Cultivation's investiture will pervade and infuse the Honor-affiliated pieces of investiture used to cognitively bind the Surges, and allow them grow sentient and to create their own ecology. These will eventually be called the spren - and they all have varying levels of sentience. Some spren are as sentient as humans, and have their own culture and society, whereas others (the vast majority) are much more basic/feral and display only rudimentary sentience - feeding on cognitive concepts. The spren are, then, cognitive entities connected to spiritual Surges. Because of this nature of theirs, life on both realms develops a certain level of inter-realm symbiosis, where fauna based in the physical will cognitively attract spren in order to utilise and beneficially channel their ability to affect the physical. The epitome of this phenomena will manifest in the Singers - they have 2 base genders (male and female), each of which can further be divided into two types (mating and non-mating) for a total of four. The Singers are almost composite souls, where a significant portion of their spiritwebs is detachable and exchangeable - this portion will be filled in by the spren they bond to. Once a bond is complete, the Form's Physical and Cognitive makeup will change to reflect the full new combined spiritweb of the Singer and their spren. Sometime after this, the Shattering happens. We can safely say that the investiture used to bind natural forces and encourage growth and evolution of life got associated with Honor and Cultivation respectively, and Odium came later. All known magic however, anything that I detail after this works on this framework - the idea that the Surges can each be bound and shaped by bits of investiture with right spiritual connections and cognitive makeup. This capability to create/facilitate these is not relegated or limited to any one Shard or planet in the Solar system, however how this is manifest will be flavored by each Shard and will be different on each planet. First, let's look at the mono-shardic associations: Honor's mono-shardic system is the flavor of Surgebinding granted to the Heralds. Specifically this requires some Oath as means of access - for the Heralds, it was the Oathpact. It works by specific extensions and infusions into their souls, making them Cognitive Shadows. Because of this special nature of theirs, the Heralds' ability to bind surges is equivalent to a spren's ability to do so, and their specific abilities were probably modeled after existing complex spren surge-pair abilites on Roshar. A part of this infusion is external and can be condensed and passed on in the physical as powerful multi-realm swords - Honorblades. Each Herald got one surge-pair, and presumably their direct connection with Honor allowed them to pull in Stormlight from him without the need for a perpendicularity. Note that there is no concept of progression here - while the infusion was wilfully given and accepted, it was still an immediate change. There was no gradual adapting process, they were directly made into the Heralds. In the ecology of Roshar, the Highstorms seem to be carrying his perpendicularity - and seem to dispense his investiture. Consequently, the Stormfather as the spren of the Highstorm, is associated with Honor. Cultivation seems to be all about progressive change and growth. This reflects in her way of accessing surgebinding - through natural growth and temporarily attracting and bonding spren. We can safely say that her hand was in assisting/boosting along the growth and evolution of all life on the planet in both the Physical (flaura and fauna) and the Cognitive (spren sapience and capabilities) post-shattering. I think it was her influence that assisted life on Roshar to develop chemistry that allows their bodies to organically bind and channel Surges. To accomplish this, a spren is needed. All spren - by nature - are spiritually connected to atleast one Surge, and because of their Cognitive nature, can change how the fundamental forces associated with those Surges manifest in the physical. Cultivation assists fauna in evolving Cognitive thought-patterns that some of the barely sentient spren would be attracted to and could feed on. These spren could also have been cultivated with this purpose. She also allows fauna to develop certain chemistry in their body that accumulates and condenses investiture into structures that can form connections to these spren and act as investiture batteries - the Gemhearts. The bodies of fauna on Roshar also evolved to grow around this gemheart (from bone?) in very specific ways structurally. These physical structural patterns around their gemhearts prod their connected or "trapped" or "bonded" spren into channeling its Surges to create beneficial effects in the physical. For example, the Chasmfiends trap Spren which can channel Gravitation, and the organic structure of their bodies around their gemheart prods these spren to channel it to create an effect equivalent to a partial lashing upwards - reducing their weight and allowing them to grow much bigger than they otherwise should be. Later, this same system will be studied and emulated artificially. This will be called the art of making Fabriels. Odium seems to co-opt other systems, and seems to hate investing in a world permanently, even though he has been forced to invest more and more in Greater Roshar just to break free. On Roshar the planet, the Unmade are splinters of Odium. This means that the effects associated with them are also of Odium - this includes Nergaul's Thrill, Moelach's Death Rattles, Sja-anat's enlightenings, Re-shephir's midnight creatures, and so on. There isn't a mono-shardic system from him other than the Unmade, and I think this is because he didn't create one - he only ever corrupted existing systems and people to get his way. His mono-shardic system is probably how he is able to consistently crack and worm into everything; it is the entire host of the Fused spren, including ones that run thunderclasts, the spren that were used to possess Amaram's men, etc. The primary difference between Honor's infusion based access to Surgebinding and Cultivation's Fabriel based access is where the cognitive thought to channel the Surge comes from. For Honor, the Surgebinder in question can use their own minds and connections to their spren to spontaneously create new agreements and channel those forces. In Cultivation's system, the "thought" is artificially induced in the spren, by the use of physical constructs and properties. Both Systems need a constant flow of investiture to function to cover this disconnect between what should be vs what it is being "twisted" to do - a characteristic they share with Soulstamping. Now let's look at Dishardic influences: Honor + Cultivation: Practically everything on Roshar has investiture associated with these two, because of the fact that most of Roshar was created by Adonalsium pre-shattering with invsestiture that got assigned to these two post-shattering. The Knights Radiant. These work on the same principles that drive Herald-like surgebinding, but with a hint of Cultivation to it. Namely, they have both the Oath based initiation and dependence on Spren to surgebind. Unlike the Heraldic system, where the Oath was one big doozy, the Knight Radiant progresses through several Oaths, each more binding and progressively more powerful. This system also reflects cognitively attracting and bonding spren, similar to how Singers and other fauna find and bond spren. However this bond is permanent, and it seems it can't be safely broken unlike the ones formed by Singers and/or other fauna. Whether the Herald's honorblades were modified versions of those spren that had achieved higher degrees of sapience or if the radiant spren were raised/cultivated from their less sapient brethren in response to Honor's designs, I don't know. I suspect it is more of the former and a bit of the latter, where certain spren with ability to manipulate certain surge-pairs were already present on Roshar (and were probably the most developed, or highest in shadesmar hierarchy), and these were used as a basis by Honor for the Honorblades. Over the years, these spren were then affected and grew in response to the perception of the Heralds and their "qualities". In this case, Shardblades came along because of certain people trying to replicate Honorblades by taking Honor's framework and applying it backwards (or just... sideways?) to these spren. The other thing of importance here is the Oaths themselves. I suspect that as all spren on Roshar are attracted to (and are practically manifestations of or evolved in response to the personification of) some cognitive concept, so are the Radiantspren. The idea here is that... take firespren for example, which are attracted to fire. But a fire isn't seen as particularly sentient, so a firespren would also never really develop much sentience. Same thing applies to other Forcespren and Emotionspren (like Awespren, Angerspren, etc.). One step up would be Sensationspren, like Painspren, Alespren, etc. - which represent a mix of emotion and forces, or represent emotion in response to forces - a more complex, combinational concept. And lastly, the most complex of the spren would be what we call Radiantspren - which are attracted to the the most complex qualities that arise from consciousness - these are also what their respective Order is attributed with. For example, Honorspren like Syl might be attracted to the people displaying what might be perceived as leadership or protective qualities. Similarly, Highspren might be attracted to someone displaying confidence, or someone being just. Thus the debate between those two of who should truly be called Honorspren, as depending on your perspective, both those quality-pairs can be considered the most Honorable. These will also affect and inform the kind of Oaths each Order will require, and I suspect Ishar - in imposing order - just directed these extremely wide ideal possibilities to a much smaller and focused set, one that would be most beneficial to the role they were to play and in the conditions they were to play it in. Also, there was this whole Ashyn thing which nobody wanted a repeat case of. Except maybe Odium, he pretty much wants Roshar gone at this point, if only to get his invested investiture back. Maybe there is also a correlation between the number of surges a spren can affect vs the complexity of the concept they represent. So Forcespren and Emotionspren will only have access to one surge, but Sensationspren will have two surges - one representing their emotional side and one representing their forceful side? Ditto for Radiantspren (for whom I'm tentatively coining the term Idealspren, since they can't have been the Radiantspren before the Knights Radiant were created) which I guess are cousins to Sensationspren? Singers and their ability to change Forms. I'm leaning towards these being heavily of Cultivation, but Honor would be a part this too, as it is his perpendicularity that seems to have been set up to facilitate this pre-shattering. In the Cosmere, the Spiritual Realm is what contains the "blueprints" or base ideals for... everything. Singers souls, or spiritwebs, seem to be incomplete by themselves, and are very cognitively limited by design. They seem to have been designed to be complete in tandem with or when bonded to specific spren (remember, spren are cognitively "heavy") that may have also been designed with this purpose. When a singer bonds one of these spren, the result is a complete, composite spiritweb, which then manifests outward into a specific Singer Form. As a cognitive being, the spren also contributes to/influences the cognitive capabilities of said Singer. This explains why Singers need to be in a perpendicularity to change forms - their bodies are essentially dissolved and remade each time they change form and this potentially requires access to a place where they can survive in this period of transition. Not to mention the copious amounts of investiture that might be needed. This also explains why they need to have a particular mindset - as cognitive beings, spren could only really react to thought patterns. Some of these Forms may be granting access to surgebinding capabilities, but Cultivation and Honor may have forbidden the Dawnsingers from taking up those Forms for some reason. Honor + Odium: The Everstorm seems to be built on the same blueprint as that of the Honor affiliated Highstorms, but co-opted by Odium. This is why it is described as something old, but also something new. And lastly, the tri-shardic influences: Honor + Cultivation+ Odium: Regals and "Forms of Power": These utilise the same base magic pathways as Singer Forms, but in this case the Forms are called the "Forms of Power" (propaganda?), and the spren required to access these are of Odium. Since all spren are on an Honor-Cultivation spectrum, these would probably be on an Honor-Cultivation-Odium spectrum. These have also been known to grant Surgebinding capabilites, and in the future, possibly also could be expanded in scope to cover Voidbinding as well. The Fused which inhabit Singer Bodies: Now these are perhaps the most interesting. I've been debating if these should fall under Cultivation + Odium or here, and I think there is more/better evidence for these to be here than there. So, Odium makes certain singers into Cognitive Shadows at some point before the desolations. These Singers, as Cognitive Shadows, are closer in nature to Spren than actual living Singers. Now these Cognitive Shadows need to be attached to a physical body before they can affect much in the physical. To do so, they seem to be piggy-backing on the core nature of Singer Forms - but an extremely violent and corrupted hack of that framework. Living Singers bond Spren. These Cognitive Shadows can play the same role as the spren, and be bonded to by a living Singer. Except as former living beings, their spiritwebs are much more extensive. Moreover, despite being Odium infused to have more of an individual cognitive component than unbonded regular Singers, their spiritwebs have certain overlap with normal Singer spiritwebs. So they seem to be aggressively overwriting or burning out certain connections in the base Singer spiritwebs to keep their own spiritwebs primarily, and to assert their personalities in the physical, and keep them after that body dies. Voidbinding. The only known example we have of somebody using this is Renarin Kholin. His spren, Glys was "enlightened" by Sja-anat, and has red visuals attached to it - a sign of corrupted or co-opted investiture in the Cosmere. Normal Radiantspren are on an Honor-Cultivation spectrum, so Glys could be on an Honor-Cultivation-Odium spectrum. It is mentioned in text that Odium (referred to as the Void) is bound by the powers of Honor and Cultivation. Moreover, Odium never truly invested in Roshar so this is only emerging now, with Sja-anat having only recently learned to "Enlighten" Radiantspren. I suspect this was foreshadowed by the obsession with symmetry that certain Human Cultures have on Roshar, combined with the fact that the Surgebinding chart was on the front cover of the Way of Kings vs the Voidbinding chart being in the Back cover. The idea that a re-emerging system from the past is in temporal mirror-symmetry with a newly emerging system of the future. This may be hinting at the resolution of the entire arc of Stormlight Archives. Renarin could be the first Voidbinder, and even he seems to be between a true Voidbinder and a Knight Radiant.

YES! This is my pet theory too, except I also include Azure in the group. Everything that those three do seems to low key help the newly budding Knights Radiant.

This is interesting. In a discussion with @Scion of the Mists in another post, they quoted the Stormfather implying that the Fused gained access to Surges at some point after their original creation. So maybe the Fused have nine orders and only one Surge each because that's more natural to Braize?

Yeah... that's pretty clear then. The Fused (gained/were given) access to Surges after Honor created the Heralds.

This is one thing that I'm oscillating on. When you say Surgebinding and Voidbinding, then isn't the "-binding" supposed to represent Honor, who is the one focused on bonds? So, in both those systems, you're "bonding" spren. Different spren in both cases, but you're bonding spren. Yet the Regals exist. And so do the Fused. I talk about this in my edit from yesterday: The idea that instead of a bond between you and your spren, the spren asks utter commitment from you, and you progress when they allow you to commit even more. I think you can see hints of something like this in the voidspren we have seen onstage in OB. So this is one of those things that, while I don't personally like, still fits established facts better. We know the Heralds were created in response to the Fused (yes I know technically they went to Honor, but this statement still stands in that light - their creation came after the creation of the Fused, and as a reaction to it). So in other words we know this is definitely the sequence: Fused-> Heralds -> Knights Radiant Now the Fused have 9 single surge orders that use Odium's investiture to Surgebind. Yet, they came before both the Heralds - where Honor created Surgebinding by making Honorblades and the Knights Radiant - which copy Honor's original framework. So either the Fused were given Surgebinding after their creation (which I doubt), or Honor copied and built on Odium's framework for the Fused. It makes sense that the Heralds and Fused are both the same kind of cognitive shadow, built on similar mechanics. Except the Heralds have more power because they were created by Honor to fight a enemy superior in number and so were given a distinct edge. It sort of follows the paradigm of war, where, if the enemy has a weapon that can do x, you build a weapon that can do x better and also do y. You don't downgrade your weapon in response. If the Fused were given Surgebinding after the creation of the Heralds, why do they have only one surge each? Wouldn't Odium have copied the entire two surge framework? If you're changing the nature of your troops mid-war, wouldn't you give them an edge over their enemy? So it makes more sense that after centuries and millenia of fighting and getting tortured by the Fused, when Ishar got the chance to establish order among the Surgebinders following in the Heralds' footsteps, he created the Oaths of the Knights Radiant to perfectly reflect their enemy.

I somehow internalised these WoBs, and yes, I seem to be wrong on that count: The more I think about it, the more this feels wrong. I agree - I'm not sure I like the idea of Odium making spren on Ashyn. Again, I agree. In fact, even my original posts agree on this count - Knights Radiant were Surgebinders with a formal moral code and organisational structure. On this, I don't know. It makes sense to me both ways - thinking Odium directly recruited dying Singers that had already joined his cause works, it also works if some of the Fused were parts of cult-like ritual sacrifice in Odium's name (although probably no). On the otherhand, Odium didn't design all his spren now, some had to have been existing prior to the creation of the Oathpact, some potentially before the Fused. In this case, what I say is the first ideal for a Fused might be - in line with the theme of being symmetric with Honor's system - be the last ideal for a Regal, where the Spren and they fully merge on death to become a Fused. In this case, the beginning of the Knights Radiant progression was designed to be purposefully symmetric with the end of Odium's surgebinding progression used by the Fused/Regals? The Eila Stele could have not mentioned it if it was written before the Singers switched to Odium. Similarly, the Stormfather mentions his memory isn't trustworthy, and it seems to be atleast partly discovery based. He also conveniently doesn't mention things he feels are not important. So, his recounting is unreliable in it's completeness, even if it is reliable in it's truthfulness.

So I want to point out two things that here, one which agrees with you and one which is questionably against you. The first is that I do factor in this possibility, when I say: The second is an excerpt from Oathbringer: So... yeah. Tell me what you think.

No, the Surges seem to be universal in the same sense that the Metallic Arts and Awakening are universal - so long as you have the means to access your magic system and fuel to power it, you can use all three anywhere in the Cosmere. The only non-universal systems we know of are based on the Dor - and even then only because of the nature of the Dor, which can be potentially worked around (The Ire come to mind). In Awakening for example, all you need is Breadths and practice/knowledge. For the Metallic Arts, you need the right genes - and this means you need the right heritage or lineage (or access to Lerasium). If you can have those things, you can burn any iron in the Cosmere to ironpull. Similarly arguments for Hemalurgy, except that doesn't even have exclusively specific requirements. It exists everywhere, the requirements aren't exclusive, yet we haven't seen it on every planet (or any planet, at that). Even the knife at the end of OB isn't true Hemalurgy, its only working on the same principles as Hemalurgy. There are also parallels to Wax's feruchemical weight storing and the Surge of Gravitation channelled by the arrowhead spren - they both seem to work on similar principles, but aren't the same thing. I'm not sure I agree with this - the example you give, bonding to Sharblades is something that can feasibly happen by accident. In that, people were trying adornment, except it also did something else. Accidental discoveries are like that - you're trying to do x, and you discover y just happened along the way. But making super armor on the otherhand seems like a different thing, and seems like it has to have intent behind it. There are complex behaviours with Shardplate, and complex requirements to getting access to it too. You could be right in this, it could be accident, but I don't think something that complex and different can be just accident - that has to have been by design.

I'm pretty sure we can accept these statements as facts: The Surges are extremely wide fundamental phenomena existing in the Cosmere. This is to say that the Surge of Gravitation encapsulates the entirety of the fundamental force of Gravity. On Roshar, the spren interact with these extremely wide surges in specific ways to create extremely specific effects. For e.g. the arrowhead spren that are around the Chasmfiend reduce their weight. This is a very specific interaction with the Surge of Gravitation. My personal suspicion is that when Adonalsium built the Greater Roshar system, he defined these ten Surges through the 10 outer Gas Giants, which are extremely vast complicated blanket focii that, when interfaced with, allow the manipulation of the fundamental forces of Realmatic physics. These focii are what we call the Surges. Then, when building Roshar the planet, Adonalsium used bits of investiture to bind these 10 surges in specific ways to make the planet work like he wanted. In software terms, the 10 Gas Giants are extremely complicated and powerful APIs that allow for the manipulation of their corresponding force in every way imaginable. Then, when making Roshar work, Adonalsium could create simplified calls to this API and get what he wanted done much more efficiently. This explains why the spren are cognitive focused. This weird analogy aside, I strongly suspect that Ashyn had different means to access the same Surges, and that if you wanted to, you could theoretically interact with a surge from anywhere in the Cosmere. My question is simply this - what was the system used before? Yes, but what is true, if not this? The very existence of the KR spren, and that they could be officially founded as an order begs questions - who built the framework for it, and how? Understand this - it is heavily implied by the Stormfather that Honor did create the kind of Surgebinding we know with the Honorblades. This part is easy. We know that certain people tried to duplicate what Honor did with the Honorblades and we got the Shardblades. We are also told that Ishar founded the Knights Radiant, and that at the time he literally went about and gave every surgebinder an ultimatum - join the Knights Radiant, accept the order imposed by that organisation, or die. So which was it? Okay, technically this is not an inconsistency. But then who made the KR spren? There is definitely an intent in their existence - otherwise why is there exactly one type of spren corresponding to each kind of Honorblade, and why do they grant the exact same combination of surges? I'm pretty sure we'll both agree on the fact that it is only the Honorspren that can grant the Windrunner surges - that it is something inherent in their spiritwebs which allows access to the Surges of Adhesion and Gravitation. If so, how did that association come about? Not any spren can just decide to grant those two surges, somehow Honorspren came into existence with that specific ability. And then how did we go from there to Shardplate? We have specific WoB on this: No, no we don't. We have no clue who created the framework for Shardplates and Shardblades. We know Honor created Honorblades, and maybe the KR spren or Ishar created the Shardblades in trying to copy them. But Shardplate has no precedent - somebody came up with that concept and integrated it practically perfectly with the KR Oath progression. We still don't have absolute confirmation on what creates Shardplate, even if we do have pretty good theories. And even if we did, we don't know how somebody invented them, and we definitely don't know who. According to the legends, it was Ishar.

The Stormfather mentions that Jezrein’s powers simply were, and weren’t named until Ishar founded the Knights Radiant. Only then did we get the Windrunner powers, even if they were modelled after Jezrein’s Honorblade. The same goes for every order. Similarly, Honor seems to have created the dual surge framework when he gave the Honorblades to the Heralds. Yet, the Eila Stele mentions that Humans destroyed Ashyn with Surgebinding, ancient powers of Spren and Surges. How are both of these possible? One more inconsistency is that Brandon has mentioned in a WoB that he hasn’t yet decided on the exact mechanism for the Human Exodus. They could have directly teleported over, Oathgate travel style, or they could have walked over in the Cognitive. The fact that the details are not so important that they had to be set beforehand I think is pretty strong evidence for the use of the Surge of Transportation, as it covers both those possibilities. Another thing that adds weirdness here is the fact that the kind of Surgebinding that humans discovered on their own, and presumably the kind that later got molded into Knight Radiant orders by Ishar, was unexpected to the Heralds. Even though most of them were alive at the time of the Exodus, when Humans used Surgebinding to destroy Ashyn. So what Surgebinding was used before? One possibility is the Dawnshards - these are rumored to have been used to destroy the Tranquiline Halls. Maybe the surgebinding used on Ashyn was only through the Dawnshards, but if so, then the Dawnshards don’t fit the naming scheme. Dawn- seems to be associated to the time when Humans first came to Roshar, and were switching to Honor. The era of a new Dawn, new access to the white bright openly honest stormlight of Honor, after Odium’s pitch black deceptive void. We have Dawncities, Dawnsingers, Dawnchant. Why would Dawnshards be different? The term “Dawnsingers” seem to be referring to those singers which came to a refugee humanity’s aid on Honor’s (or Cultivation’s) behest when they first came to Roshar. They helped found the Dawncities. Theirs was the language of the Dawnchant - a language referred to as a chant, implied to have a rhythmic component to it. Then why are the Dawnshards the odd one out? Shouldn’t these be the Shards of the Dawnsingers, or at least something related to that era? If they are, then they can’t have also been present on Ashyn, unless the switch happened on Ashyn, before the migration. Even then… no. Another interpretation is that when they say “Of spren and Surges”, they mean that the Surges are the powers of the Spren. As in, to the writer’s perspective, the surges are an attribute not independent of the idea of spren, which makes sense considering the ecology they lived in, and the composite soul, “Forms” based physiology of the Singers. Even if the powers humans had used were just Surges, independent of Spren, to a Singer, they may look like Spren powers. Maybe the original Surgebinding was granted by the Micro-organism based magic system of Ashyn. If so, how does Odium fit in? Another weird thing is that it is said that the Shardblade and Shardplate concept was given to the Radiants by the Heralds. If so, what was Surgebinding like before the Shardblade and plate came into the picture? I thought the kind of Surgebinding that was discovered by the Humans, and which came off as unexpected to Heralds, only came forth by the spren trying to copy what Honor did with the Honorblades. If so, wouldn’t Shardblades be a part of that copying? Are there two components to this? Maybe the spren only learnt to bond rudimentarily enough to grant surges, but Ishar then took that and made it work more like the Honorblades? And also brought in the Shardplates? Another curious thing is that Surgebinding and Souldcasting were two different magic systems in Nohadon’s mind. Even though Soulcasting is just an applied Surge of Transformation. Also, Uruthiru already exists by Nohadon’s time. So we can safely say that this Uruthiru has not yet been made the seat of the Knights Radiant, that will happen much later down the line. The Knights Radiant can’t even be in the picture here, if Soulcasting and Surgebinding are perceived as two distinct systems. This perception into two distinct systems works if at this point in time the Surgebinding in question was not of the Knight Radiant variety, and each “Surgebinder” got only one of 10 surges. In this case, the variety of Surgebinder that only got the Surge of Transformation could look feasibly different from other Surgebinders, and these could be called Soulcasters, and not Surgebinders. If it is of the Knights Radiant variety, then it would be apparent that it’s just another Surge, because the people who could do it could also do another Surge, and then it would take active effort to think that those two kinds of Surgebinders can do something other than Surgebinding and only one Surge, while the other orders get two Surges. Also the spren could have explained that. The fact that the Way of Kings was used as a foundational text for the Knights Radiant corroborates that the Knights Radiant were not formed by Nohadon’s time, I guess. Yet another possible explanation is that when the Spren first started emulating Honorblades, their version of the bond was so rudimentary that it only granted the first Surge each order starts with. Possibly this is why each order has the first Oath in common. First Oath Radiants are what all Surgebinders in Nohadon’s era were like. Maybe the spren could also do Shardblades. In this explanation, Ishar came later and upgraded their capability to bond, implementing 4 further Oaths for each Order, teaching them how to grant the other corresponding Surge that Honorblades gave them, and otherwise properly founding both the system of magic and the organisational structure of the Knights Radiant. This is where he gave them Shardplate, and also the second surge. What do others think of these? Are there other theories out there? What am I missing in this… “rant”? Edit: When I say inconsistencies, I'm not critiquing Sanderson's worldbuilding or writing - I'm saying there's conflicting information in world, and maybe we can try and figure out what the actual history could possibly be like by looking at these... "disconnects"

This and certain other conclusions I've drawn recently makes me suspicious of the accuracy what we think will happen in these books. SA is Sanderson's Magnum Opus, I'm pretty sure the story is going places we aren't even suspecting yet. I'm pretty sure that's where the Tower in the Kholin crest comes from. In fact, it might be a remnant of an older crest, which the Kholins either appropriated or that's just their lineage.