Gilphon

What? No, because copper is a very common and useful material with a really recognizable colour, and so Navani would easily recognize it, even if she's not used to thinking of it in the context of Fabrials. And we do not that the Fabrial is not aluminium, because Navani mentioned using that in the construction of The Fourth Bridge and therefore definitely knows what it looks like.

Most directly, Navani mentioned using it in the construction of The Fourth Bridge. Some technobabble about isolating axial motion, if I recall correctly. Less directly, in OB we saw that Soulcasting in an aluminium lined-room makes it undetectable from the outside.

We know that Rosharans know what copper is, since Shallan and Kaladin recognized it on the spren ship in OB. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they know what it does in Fabrials, but it does mean that Navani would almost certainly recognize it. That she didn't implies that it's either a Godmetal or one of the more exotic Allomantic ones, like chromium or electrum or something. As I said in the chapter discussion thread, I really wish Navani had mentioned what colour the unknown metal is, because that would really help us narrow down the options.

I would not think that the spren have any formal social status within human society. They certainly don't have any legal standing. If Kaladin died, I imagine the holdings of House Stormblessed would go to Lirin. And his status as leader of the Windrunners- and therefore the rogue Honorspren- would most likely go to Teft.

Except that in Feruchemy and Hemalurgy, Tin acts pretty similarly to how it does in Allomancy. Fabrial Tin is the odd man out here. That it's the reverse of Pewter does means that's not completely out of left field, but it implies that fabrial metals are following their own set of rules distinct from those of the other metallic arts. Unless there's something I'm missing.

Copper might just be what she's going to cover next.

Well. I have some crow to eat, on the Tin front. Unless we can figure out a way to justify claiming that 'enhancing your senses' and 'diminishing expressions of a spren's attributes' are the same effect, I'm gonna have to admit that it's a fourth metallic art, not an application of Allomancy. Though I think it bares mentioning that I still stand by Iron and Steel making Attractors and Repulsers. I feel like that's a thing they can do in addition to this 'reversing the polarity' techno-babble.

I'll be brutally honest: as of this chapter, I'm officially sick of Kaladin's moping. Like I'm now hoping that we're done with him for the rest of part 1, just so he has time to get into a better headspace offscreen. Hmm. Tin making diminishers. That's a major point in favour of the 'fourth metallic art' point of view, since it would take real finagling to interpret that as the same effect as Allomantic Tin. And I think we're mean to infer, from the way she brought up the painrial, that Iron and Steel are used to switch between the Pewter and Tin effects, but I don't see why that's necessary; surely you could just move out Tin wires and move in Pewter ones. I really wish Navani had phrased that in a less techno-babble way; what the heck does 'reversing the polarity' mean here? We had discussion here a few weeks ago about whether or not it was wise of Kaladin to play by the Heavenly Ones' rules. Here we see Dalinar weighing in on that, saying that it's bad for moral if the Windrunners appear to be treating it as a game, and questioning Kaladin's objectivity on the subject. Also, Kaladin says there are more Heavenly Ones than Windrunners. There are a lot of Windrunners. And thus there are a really large number of Heavenly Ones. Which says bad things for the state of the war as a whole; there are gonna be a lot of battles where the Radiants are just unable to respond to the Fused effectively because of sheer numbers.

I mean, sure, but if you're not a Seeker you wouldn't notice anything happening. Which is what I feel like would happen with our hypothetical attractor.

I don't have my books handy at the moment, so I'll have to ask you to remind me: Did Shallan's unsuccessful attempt at Soulcasting Stick still consume Stormlight? Because I think that gives us our answer either way; either it's possible for Stormlight to be spent on something that has no visible effect, or a failed 'pull' doesn't take stormlight. My intuition says that it would be quite similar to what happens if a Lurcher burns Steel without there being any metal around: The Stormlight would consumed (albeit at a slower rate), but nothing would happen.

Honestly, these kinds of questions are the point where my intuition fails me and I have to go 'we'll have to wait until somebody in-universe tries it and tells us what happens'. Like, do Rosharans consider static electricity to be close enough to lightning that a Lightningspren could affect both? Maybe, maybe not! I would consider one to be a scaled-down version of the other, so if it was going off of my cognition, that would work; but I don't know if Rosharan scholars have made that connection, or if that perception has affected that general populace enough to make the two cognitively close. Although I will say that pulling lightning from a cloud without a storm strikes me as something that would require the Fabrial to have a longer range than your average attractor seems to.

So I had thought it would be clear, but apparently it wasn't. Let me clarify, then. This bit, specially: Is my entire point. This is perception-based stuff that (not coincidentally, from Brandon's perspective) happens to resemble the pop culture version of quantum physics, but isn't actually quantum physics. One of the reasons that's true is because doing it like that allows Brandon to hand-wave away anything that doesn't match how quantum physics are supposed to work in the real world, so he can write it without a physics degree. Therefore, it should not be taken as a sign that particle physics matter more than perception for spren. It is, in fact, doing the opposite; it's showing that Brandon fully intends to use perception to paper over any physics-based plot holes with how the magic works. It's showing that for spren, perception matters more than physics. Which means that using a Lightningspren to pull random electrons out of the air in order to create lightning isn't going to work if you don't know that electrons exist. However, using Lightningspren augmenter-generated lightning to power an electronic machine probably would work, assuming you could figure out a way to make that design safe, because what's generated is gonna be close enough to lightning that Rosharan scholars can't tell the difference, and if you enough of concept of electricity advanced enough to think of building a device like that, it's probably close enough to function identically for the machine.

Everybody knows that fire gives off heat, so the ideas of heat and fire are gonna be closely linked. Possibly there isn't even a Heatspren that's different enough from a Flamespren for people to notice a difference. And, no, that's not what the WoB says. First he says that he got the idea of the scene from quantum physics, and then he moves on to talking in more general terms about he likes his magic system to interact with real world physics rather than ignore them outright. And, well Here's a WoB where he talking about that scene being a perception-based 'fantastical quantum physics' rather than real quantum physics: And here's another one where he admits that he's going for with a 'pop culture version' of quantum physics than the real thing. More like the idea of quantum physics than how it actually works in the real world:

What makes you say that? A fractal isn't exactly a hard concept to arrive at, and Roshar's society isn't particularly primitive. Like, they've developed a theory of particle physics. A fairly rudimentary one by our standards, but one advanced enough that you'd need fairly complicated mathematics to makes senses of it. Like, they clearly have a concept of fundamental forces, and have scientists working on figuring out how they interact. Once you start asking questions like 'how does gravity interact with friction', the kind of math that Pattern represents is right around the corner. As for that WoB- well, first of all, that scene is not how actual quantum physics works. It's a scene designed to invoke the idea of quantum physics in the reader's mind, and get them thinking about this kind of thing in the context real world physics- and, indeed, it is in fact a nod to the fact that quantum physics is a thing that exists in Cosmere- but quantum physics is not why that flamespren lost the ability to change its length. To apply all this to the specific example that sparked this- if you used a Lightningspren augmenter to create lightning, said lightning would probably be made of electrons, or something very similar to electrons. But a lightningspren is made of the idea of lightning, not the idea of electrons, and so a lightningspren attractor wouldn't be able to pull in electrons. For the same reasons that a Diamondspren attractor would only be able to pull in diamonds, not graphite or coal or exhaled breath, even though all of those things are made of Carbon.

Well, yes, technically, but the way objects see themselves is defined by the way people think about them over time. Like the temple Dalinar repaired saw itself as a beautiful work of art because of the way people had admired it over the centuries. And, no, that's the opposite of what the flamespren scene was showing. It was saying that once you obverse how long a flamespren is; once you decide in your head that this particular flamespren is this long, then that flamespren is defined as being that long and can no longer change length. The point of the scene was to show just how defined by perception they are.

I really don't think the realmatics are gonna work out that way. Like, spren are defined by perception. Surely a culture that hasn't discovered elections is not going to mentally define lightning as 'a bunch of electrons in a single place', and therefore that's not how a lightningspren-powered attractor would work. You'd need to skip far enough down the road for there to be an Electricityspren rather than a Lightningspren for stuff like that to be feasible.

I don't think an attractor is gonna get you the kind of weapon you want here, unless you happen to already be in middle of a thunderstorm. Like it won't create lightning, just pull in any that happens to be nearby. So really what you want is an Augmenter to create lightning and a repulser to shoot it. But, I mean, all of this sounds ridiculously unsafe to me. Using an attractor means getting hit by lightning and hoping it all flows into the gem instead of killing you. Using an augmenter means creating a lightning bolt and hoping you can shoot it faster than it would take to kill you. And the repulser would have to be rigged to hit a precise target instead of just diffusing it into the general area, which sounds like a lot of dangerous trial and error. But @Realmatic Shadow is here bringing up a much more practical idea. Though really I don't know how much they need electricity; stormlight is almost as good or better for most the immediate applications of electricity, and cleverly applied heatrials gets you a lot more.

I mean, in fact what you're doing there is switching around the 'metal' and 'spren' components of a Fabrial. Which, yeah, could make some weird stuff happen, but... well, imagine if you somehow converted Brass into a spren. A Soothspren, let's say. That could probably interact with other spren in a way that's not totally unlike the effect of a brass cage on a fabrial. And if we follow that back the other way, we'd get a fabrial that, for example, would magically produce the natural result of pain and honor coming into contact. So, like I said, weird stuff But you could also just put an Honorspren and Painspren together without bothering to make a Fabrial out of it, and probably get mostly the same thing. Except, of course, for whatever difference the gem makes.

Iron and Steel make attractors and repulsers. We know that because of the attractor that was called out as being made of steel in Shadesmar. Which are both a different thing than conjoiners and reversers and a better fit for how iron and steel act in Allomancy.

The main reason I find it hard to buy that Tin is used for diminishers is that Tin the most consistent metal in the metallic arts; it's the only one the does more or less the same thing in Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. It's always been about manipulating your ability to perceive the physical world, and I really wouldn't expect Fabrials to break that trend. Also: we really don't have any good candidates for a metal that makes conjoiners and reversers, do we? I keep thinking about Gold and Electrum for that role, but I really can't justify that with anything stronger than 'well, it's a pair that they could reasonably have discovered that hasn't been confirmed to be something else!'

They didn't seem especially shocked by the concept of Azure being from another world, and Azure can't possibly be the first Worldhopper to be less than subtle about the whole thing; stories about other habitable worlds being out there somewhere must've leaked into their folklore at some point. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they'd leap to the conclusion that the places the Ghostbloods are looking at are other worlds, but the idea isn't a foreign concept to them or anything. And, anyway, given Ialai's comment about Gavilar seeing entire worlds, she probably had some idea of what those places were, and so there are probably some hints that'll push the characters in the right direction in there. Huh. I wonder if Ialai's notes are gonna be a set of epigraphs.

Although that doesn't mean that they know what gold does, mind you. It's also theoretically possible that they don't know what tin and copper do, but I'm not gonna put any money on that.

Because she's talked about going into Shadesmar and talking to spren there.

I mean. The same way anyone else would. Sneaking it in at some point.

Somebody on the Tor.com thread raised the possibility of it being one of the Heralds. Which does kind of fit. The implication that the speaker believes herself to be a better authority on spren welfare than the Honorspren; the extreme but not entirely illogical viewpoint, the hypocrisy of using a fabrial to denounce fabrials, the secrecy...