Gilphon

Excellent episode, guys. Y'all came up with a bunch of really interesting and new to me ideas. Like the entire concept of Internal Awakening is a very plausible theory. Though... you came up with plausible examples of physical and cognitive Internal Awakening. So the raises the question of what Spiritual Internal Awakening would be.

Not so. Nohadon has to be pre-Radiant, since the Knights based their ideals and philosophies off of his writings. And he of course walked to Urithiru, so the city had to have been build before he wrote his book. And indeed, we have a Ketek in the WoK epigraphs referring to the city as 'the birthplace of Radiants': But, of course, he wasn't pre-Surgebinding, since Nohadon himself was a surgebinder, and the city can't be pre-surgebinder because you need a Shardblade to access it. But that's kind of a distinction that matters when we're talking timelines. And when we're talking Urithiru. It's thought of today as the stronghold of the Radiants, but it pre-dates any form of Radiant organization and thus certainly wasn't built by the Radiants. It's also worth noting that they are reference to Urithiru not being built by mortal hands: And then of course there's the line that says that they asked for it to be placed in the mountains: So whoever decided to build the city had to convince some third party to actually make the thing. Which would fit if it was created by Honor or The Sibling or some powerful entity like that. Which also makes sense because it's the more advanced piece of architecture we've seen on Roshar; far beyond the Dawncities. So whatever was done to make it, it wasn't something repeatable.

The disconnect I think you guys are running into here is that 'asexual' doesn't mean 'incapable of reproduction'. It's vaguely possible that Brandon was using the word that way, but given the way he talks about Herdazians and Horneaters being more likely to be asexual, I don't think he was. So those two WoBs don't actually contradict each other. But I think Asmodeus' original point stands; their instincts are calibrated in a way that means that without the Highstorms, they probably wouldn't reproduce frequently enough to maintain the race.

That doesn't seem particularly odd to me. Lots of siblings are different ages. There's a distinction I think you're missing here. Chicken Liberty isn't saying the chart is wrong, he's saying that people tend to read too much into it. Like- I find that idea of looking at the connections by associating the soulcasting properties to be pretty persuasive. That works well enough that it's probably intentional. And it's kind of the only explanation we need for why the chart looks the way it does? Well, that and associating each order with the ones it shares a surge with, and putting the male heralds on top and the female heralds on bottom. That's a lot of accurate information being represented there; we don't need to go looking for anything more. Trying to pull stuff like how much Honour vs. Cultivation there is any given order out of it. I also feel like pointing out that the chart is not all editions of the books- as someone who read WoK and WoR in paperback, I had no idea the charts even existed until I went online- so I don't think we should except them to a unique source for anything particularly important.

[Rhythm of war excerpt spoiler]

I don't know if can say with certainty that the Sibling does predate Surgebinding. Like we know that the Nightwatcher was created post-shattering, so it's not like they're fundamental beings that have always existed or anything like that. Perhaps... and I'm just spitballing here, and haven't thought this through in any level of detail- the Sibling was created when the Knights Radiant and the Oaths were established? Like they were created for the purpose of managing the Oath system? Or, wait, no, Urithiru was created before then, so that can't quite be what happened. Maybe they were created to run Urithiru, and then their power was expanded to include the Oaths once the Radiants were established?

I would argue that you're trying to introduce too much specificity. Like the point, from a writerly point of view, is that the Cosmere-wide principles are very broad and flexible so that Brandon can define the planet-specific rules to be basically anything he wants without breaking the Cosmere as a whole. So, like, if we're not talking about something that's well-established to be a Cosmere-wide thing, like the Three Realms or the Spiritual Attributes or Perspection and Intent, I would advise proceeding with caution and assuming it only applies to the one magic system unless you have strong evidence to the contrary.

Yeah. He based them on the idea of the fundamental forces, but isn't sure whether or not Transportation fits our definition of a fundamental force. That's not exactly full on support of the point you're making. And here's another WoB: Which tells us that the list of surges is at least partially based on how Rosharan scholars perceive things as working, rather than how they objectively work. And that other planets don't necessarily have the same list of surges, so that list shouldn't be considered a Cosmere-wide phenomenon. Like he's kind of being vague and hedging his bets in both the WoBs we've quoted. But he's definitely not saying that every magical effect everywhere can be understood through the framework of the surges. And in my opinion, it's a really bad and unhelpful framework with which to look at any magic system that isn't surgebinding or voidbinding.

Well, no, illumination is also part of electromagnetism. I was just giving an example. Like really the addition of Investiture probably means that the Cosmere does have more than four fundamental forces, but it's still gonna have the four from the real world, and most of the non-graviton surges are part of electromagnetism, and the surges don't cover strong and weak molecular force. (Cohesion and Tension are described in ways that invoke them, but don't actually behave anything like them) So not all of the surges are fundamental, and there are fundamental forces that aren't covered by the surges, therefore the surges are not fundamental forces.

He's a flashback character from the back five, though. Like this isn't going to be his book

It's a bit of a different situation, that- he started bonding Dalinar before he bonded that blade, and demanded that Dalinar drop that sword as soon as he swore the first oath. And Dalinar has never had a sword with as much self-awareness as Maya. And, really, I think that if Adolin becoming a Radiant by bonding a spren that's not Maya, it would be an extremely narrative strange choice.

I mean, Khriss disagrees with Rosharan scholars about the idea of surges being fundamental forces in the Ars Arcanum. I tend to think that's she the most reliable in-world source on cosmere-wide magical mechanics that we have. But- broadly speaking, they just aren't fundamental forces. Like the laws of physics from our world still largely apply in the cosmere- it should be possible to, for example, unify Adhesion and Abrasion into electromagnetism in the same way it is in the real world.

Mhm. Lopen's also a Radiant is his own right now. And Skar and Drehy might've gotten there as well. But Teft in particular has said his Third Oath, putting him on equal footing with Kaladin.

I mean. I think it's safe to bet on Navani eventually becoming a Radiant of some kind. Like we've seen that the spren tend to give a closer look to people in the immediate social circle of existing Radiants. And all things concerned that's probably more true for Dalinar than it is for most Radiants. And no non-Radiant is closer to Dalinar than Navani is. 'Cept maybe Adolin, but I don't think any other spren are gonna try to bond him while he has Maya. Like, if she doesn't become a Radiant, I feel like we'd be forced to conclude that there's something about her in particular that discourages the spren from trying. I do hope that if she is the main character, then it's about her becoming a Willshaper. But I'd still prefer it if the main character was Rlain. So that the book's main focus be on the Listeners, both in the flashbacks and present day. I really don't see any other viewpoint characters with clear links to the flashbacks; y'know?

Now, I mean, the biggest hole I see in this theory is that Allomancy is supposed to be entirely of Perservation- so increasing the number of Allomancers wouldn't bleed off the excess Ruin power. But that's not actually a crucial part of the theory and it's a plot point that I never liked anyway. And under this theory, both Allomancy and Feruchemy would be now using a combination of Preservation and Ruin; both magic systems are now of Harmony. Which I like a lot better.

Well, no. Or alternatively, yes, that's the entire point. Like, what's going on with Rosharan currency is that certain gems are prized more than others because some are more useful to Soulcasters than others. I'm confident we're on the same page so far. Now the first important way that differs from the gold standard on earth is that usefulness to Soulcasters isn't related to the rarity of said gems- except indirectly, in a supply and demand sort of way. But I think the disconnect here is that you're assuming that the value of a gem is precisely the value of the goods that a soulcaster can create with said gem. But if you actually look at the numbers, you'll find that that doesn't actually makes any sense. Like, you have to make yourself believe that smoke is exactly ten times more valuable than glass, gram for gram. And that oil and smoke have exactly the same per gram value. And a whole lot of convolutions like that. So that's probably not what they're doing. They almost certainly just assigned a fixed value to each gem based on a simplified and generalized version of those transactions. Out of convenience, like you said. But as soon as you do that, the currency is no longer defined entirely by soulcasting. The gems have the value they do just because that's what the state says they are. And once that's in place, if they, say, discover a new use for soulcasting glass that makes that process desirable, they're not gonna just immediately say 'welp, I guess we have to re-jig our entire currency system'. They're gonna keep using diamonds as the lowest denomination- have them continue to count as one of tenth the value of ruby- just because that's what they consider normal. In this way, the system gradually gets de-coupled from soulcasting entirely. Some gems are more valuable to a soulcaster than they are as currency, and others are less valuable. And since this system is centuries old, that process is probably well underway. But that's actually all somewhat besides the point. Because when we're talking about a use for Rubies that's neither soulcasting nor currency- which were are in this case- what's most important isn't their value as currency or the usefulness of soulcasting. It's the rarity. Because the people who own the ruby sources are gonna be the ones who can make spanreeds the cheapest, so they're gonna be the ones who dictate the market price for the Fabrials. So the price is gonna is based on how difficult it is for those people to get rubies, not how much it costs your average person to go out and buy a ruby broam.

Again- no it's not. As you know, the relative value of the gems is based on the Soulcasting properties. Which is not their rarity. And the rarity is what's relevant in this context. And nor was that how it worked on earth during the gold standard; except very early on before were formalized. But once the system actually got started, we had silver and copper being given fixed exchange rates relative to gold. Which were only loosely connected to their relative scarcities. That's the stage Roshar's at right now. The specifics of exactly how the spheres are being made isn't really relevant to what I'm trying to get at. The point is that somebody, somewhere is making ruby spheres, and doing so via a process that costs them less than 400 marks each, and therefore somebody out there has a source of rubies- and therefore spanreeds- that's cheaper than just buying currency. Although I do need to say that I feel like they must at least be farming the animal that grows diamonds. Like I don't see any other way that diamonds could possibly be ubiquitous enough that they could be used as the equivalent of pennies. So spheres can't all be made from stuff like that. That's just straight up not what intrinsic value means. That's market value. Like, if the Soulcaster had an immediate, pressing need to make some fire, they'd be willing to pay more, but if they just had a vague idea that they might need some fire in the future but didn't currently have a lot of money on them, the amount they'd be willing to pay goes down. The intrinsic value refers to the idea that a ruby broam is worth exactly 200 chips in all circumstances. Which is an idea they have at the moment because they're treating it as a currency rather than a commodity. Like the relative value of the gems is based on the Soulcastings properties, but the idea of trying to put a precise, immutable number on the value of that process is insane. Which is why they don't do that; they've just sorted the gems into a generalized ranking and assigned the numbers that make sense for their currency to those rankings. Ehh. Soul casting things into smoke or air seems like it'd more useful under most circumstances. Especially with fire being more volatile on Roshar than it is on Earth. Like, to be clear, I'm not saying making fire would be useless. It's just not so vitally useful that their society would collapse if they didn't scramble for every ruby they could get. Which is makes sense; that's why rubies are in the middle tier of value, alongside smokestone and zircon.

It kinda seems like Soulcasters aren't common enough outside of Alethkar to be able to prevent famine. Like we had that scene with Evi's brother (whose name escapes me) where they had to explain to him that Soulcasters made sieges pointless, implying that that's not the way things work in Iri.

No, see, that's not how the value of money quite works. Like, one $100 bill is worth 100 $1 bills, but that doesn't mean that the ink and paper used to make a $100 bill is 100 times harder to get a hold of. And, if for some reason, all kinds of ink became a resource that's useful enough that passing it around as currency stops making sense, we wouldn't bother to price various kinds of ink based on what kind of bill they could've been used to make. To be concrete, it has to cost less than 400 marks to get a new ruby, because otherwise the currency is inherently unstable; the country would lose capital every time they have to make a new sphere. It likely costs significantly less than 400 marks- Indeed, we don't even know that rubies are harder to come by than diamonds, which have to possible to gather at ~1 mark each, for the same reasons. So once the culture lets go of the idea of the of rubies have a set intrinsic value, you could have some enterprising merchant selling spanreed pairs for, say, 50 marks each- which is probably still quite a bit more than it would cost him to acquire the rubies, but basically affordable as one-time purchase for most people- and therefore capture this huge market that's been priced out by people trying to sell them at 400. Like, they don't have any particularly pressing need to Soulcast things into fire, so they're probably not scrambling for every ruby they can get their hands on or hunting whatever animal grows them to extinction. They're probably just gathering the number of rubies they need to make their currency work.

Maybe. There's debate about whether or not Taravangian was being honest, and if Taravangian understands the distinction between Radiant spren and lesser spren, and if he understands the process of making Half-Shards as fully as he thinks he does, and indeed, if that's even what Taravangian meant to say. It's kind of a whole thing. Kind of a debate I don't particular want to get into. Let's just say that it's possible that Half-Shards use Radiant Spren, but we don't know for sure, okay?

Well, I mean, realistically, this is an unreasonably rosy picture of what Roshar's immediate future will look like, given how bad past desolations have been and how totally ill-prepared they were for this one. But that's kind of orthogonal to your point. So let's move forward with the assuming that they not only survive the war, but somehow avoid taking any significant economic or infrastructural damage. Well, @earthexile is right that they're probably about to start valuing gems more for their utility than as symbolic currency, so the current value of a ruby might not end up holding forever. And once the idea of Rubies having a set intrinsic value dies... well, then the actual cost of a Spanreed depends on a bunch factors we don't know- it would on how costly it is to actually mine/excavate/collect rubies. Though I've always gotten the impression that Gemstones are more common on Roshar than they are on Earth, so they'd almost certainly be quite a bit cheaper than a real world ruby. But also, the state of the world you describe is fundamentally a transitionary one- a transitionary state that might last decades or longer, true, but a transitionary one none the less. Because the Fabrials they're making aren't going anywhere. The top of Rosharan social order isn't gonna just hoard them all forever; eventually they're gonna start selling off redundant ones. Although at that point, the question of what kind of spren goes into a Spanreed rears its ugly head. It feels possible that that might end up being a limiting factor in how many spanreeds can be produced.

On the contrary- according to what Navani sees in Urithiru, the ancient Fabrials were considerably more primitive than modern ones. Like the standard narrative was that the ancients were super advanced, but that's mostly based on their misunderstandings of Blades and Plate. Soulcasters, meanwhile, are mostly from Aimia, and it feels to me like the details of their construction were as mysterious then as they are now. The Regrowth Fabrial in Nale's back pocket is probably a similar story. Really, my feeling is that Fabrials are their big ace-in-the-hole they could use to overcome the Experience advantage the Fused have over them. Like they've probably fought and killed dozens of Kaladins and Shallans and Jasnahs in the past. But stuff like the Painrial? They probably still have no idea that's even a thing. And I betcha that millennia old ghosts who've fought basically a same war dozens of times over are gonna find it difficult to adapt to changing times.

I don't know if all fused would be unable to use Plate; the Gravitation ones probably couldn't, but I don't think it's gonna interfere with every Surge; Renarin was able to use Progression just fine while in Plate. But there's also the issue or whether a Shardblade bond sticks to the body or the soul- So a Fused might have to go and collect their blade every time they die. Which would make the weapons less desirable from their perspective. But the nevertheless- a large number of Plate and Blades just kind of existing in the world- not being tied to the life of a particular Radiant- is probably an entirely new opportunity for the Fused- those things were probably the near-exclusive property of the Radiants in previous Desolations. I have to imagine the temptation to try and use them now that they finally have a chance to is great.

I don't even think the Surges are fundamental forces of Roshar- the Ars Arcanum says that the surges were thought of as the powersets of the Radiants before people started thinking of them as fundamental forces, and lots of Fabrials have effects that can't be mapped onto any particular surge without a lot of handwaving. Like there's a in-world idea that they the fundamental forces, and that's the real world inspiration for them, but the in-world scholars are incorrect; the surges are no more fundamental than the Allomantic or Aonic powers are.

I feel like Rlain makes the most sense- It should to be somebody whose is story is complemented by the Eshonai/Venli flashbacks- ideally somebody whose story is intertwined with theirs. Rlain fits that bill nicely. Navani and Adolin are the main other candidates, though.