Argent

A lot of the work for this is going to be done on airports and in airplanes - times when he can't really work on bigger things. We are not getting this instead of something else, we are getting this in addition to everything else. If Brandon wasn't working on this, he'd be working on some other short novella - or sleeping, I suppose. I am sorry you don't like Sixth of the Dusk, but this seems like a bit of a strong reaction to something we don't even know much about.

I am satisfied with explaining Voidbinding as different expressions of the same fundamental forces as the ones that govern Surgebinding. Allomancy and Feruchemy have some overlap as well - Allomantic pewter, for example, shares some properties with Feruchemical gold and iron. There is an argument to be made that since Allomancy and Feruchemy at least share a Shard (kind of), there should have more similarities between them than between Surge- and Voidbinding... but I don't think it's a strong enough argument. @Calderis, I actually thought I had made the same focus connection in my write-up, but it looks like I went with the bonds idea instead. Surges might be a better candidate, though I've never liked the idea of foci in the Invested Arts; they were never defined well enough.

That's a fine selection of authors you've got there - even if you are slacking on Oathbringer

This seems like a reasonable foundation. I am hesitant to apply this absolutely and categorically, just because of how many Shards we don't know anything about, and because how this plays with Shards like Harmony, but I think it certainly fits for Preservation, Ruin, and Honor; Endowment, for example, is a little weird. It may end up that your model works for a specific - if dominant - type of initiation, or that it is somehow involved in the acquisition of the magic past the initiation (e.g. everyone on Nalthis gets a Breath and can Awaken, but you need an act of endowment to accomplish the more spectacular things Awakening can accomplish). I don't know if I agree with this suggestion. I've long held the belief that the Radiant spren are "uplifted" pre-Shattering spren, but which Shard did this uplifting has always been unclear to me; my assumption had been that both were involved, to different extents in different spren. This could play into the mechanics of how exactly these spren imitated the Honorblades. I don't know if the early honorspren were naturally all about leadership and protection. What seems plausible to me is that in the act of granting Surgebinding to men, they sought to imitate their matching Herald; i.e. the honorspren, for whatever reason, decided that they would do what Jezrien did, and so started looking for people who exemplified the attributes Jezrien was known for: protection and leadership. This could've led to a cultural shift among the honorspren as a population, where they would decide that such attributes are desired not only in their potential Surgebinders, but in themselves as well. The "natural pairing" business I leave to Honor, or perhaps something greater about the rules of the Cosmere as a whole. I think I like this. The passage from the in-world Words of Radiance is not enough to make me fully espouse the theory, but this is a reasonable way to explain this oddity. Ico's device is, I believe, not a traditional fabrial. He brings up the concept of manifesting souls as he operates it in front of Kaladin, which leads me to believe it has more to do with that. My interpretation of that exchange is more along the lines of Ico going "some of your kind can manifest souls directly. If you were one of them, I could just give you this Cognitive Aspect of a really cold block ice and you could just manifest that for as much water as you need; but since you can't, we need to use this device that's a pale imitation of this process, and wait a long time for water." I think this has less to do with Surges and more with natural properties of the Cognitive Realm - similar to Kelsier manifesting himself some fire, only weaker and more mechanical. I think I see the imprisonment of spren in modern fabrials are just another kind of bond - closer to what the singers do, but parasitic rather than symbiotic. A ball & chain is still a bond. Ancient fabrials, Oathgates specifically, use a less harmful version of that, since the spren do appear to be bound to the gems of the fabrial (otherwise why would Odium believe they can rebuild the Thaylen City Oathgate as long as they have the gems?). I don't think @Calderis is saying what you think is saying. My comment - which I think he supports here - is about how Cultivation is involved in Surgebinding simply because some Radiant spren have some of her Investiture in them; not because Cultivation has explicitly responsible for their transformation. Kind of the same way as saying that glass is involved in driving because it is a component of cars. Yeah, I think we agree here. Khriss uses the phrase "Invested Arts" in the context of the Scadrian ones in her Ars Arcanum of... Era 2, if I recall correctly. I've grown to like the term better than "magic system" - in part because it's an in-world term, and in part because, as you say, it implies an artist. I am curious about this WoB though. It sounds like something that makes sense, but I don't remember it stated outright. If you could find that for me? This is interesting, because I think it kind of fits well with my model about Voidbinders - who are explicitly not Fused. If Moash is anything to go off of - and I didn't touch on this, but I think he is very close to what I think the original Ashynite Voidbinders were, only he hasn't quite taken the step that grants him access to the actual power, so he is using an Honorblade Surgebinding in the meantime, - then it is precisely the act of severing his Connections to... let's say his Passion, that makes it possible for Odium to come in and fill that with his power (only he hasn't done that second half yet; perhaps that's what Leshwi is referring to when she tells Moash "You have given him your pain. He will return it, human, when you need it."). This being said, neither dis-Connect makes complete sense to me, Realmatically speaking. Probably because I don't understand Connection as fully as I need to, for something like that to make sense. Connection to land and people I understand. Connection to Shards... kind of. Connection to natural forces? Less so. Connection to emotions? Not in the slightest bit, though I'd be curious to find out whether that's related to the Rhythms in some significant way...

Hello, and welcome!

Always go full pedantic here!

Not everything needs to tie back to one number. Preservation went out of his way to emphasize the 16-ness in Allomancy because he was trying to send a message. Last we heard, this is correct.

I've never liked the fiveness some people ascribe to Nalthis, but maybe there is something to it...

It is a truly marvelous world Welcome!

Let's try to adhere to the rules. Barring exceptional circumstances, necroing an old thread should always be avoided.

It has to be some weird interaction with his Honorblade. The Windrunner Dalinar sees in the Starfalls vision wears Plate while being Lashed; it's the other Radiant, the one who doesn't have Gravitation, who had to dismiss her Plate in order to be Lashed.

That's how I like to work. @Wyndlerunner, I would need to reread the exact wording of that WoB - I know which one you are thinking of, but I don't have it handy right now. Off the top of my head, I'd say that this "lifelight" as I've seen it called (a term I am fond of) is either just a bit of Cultivation's Investiture that permeates the Valley (either as as "leak" from her presence there, or to facilitate the incredible plant growth we see there), or something that gives crem some of its nourishing properties.

Maybe it was a proto-version of the First Ideal that made the original form of Surgebinding not be just about a spren bond, but also about an oath and about honor. The exact wording would've been codified later by Nohadon, but the Intent behind it could've been there since the inception of the system.

Hey, maybe we can spend a little less time chatting between ourselves in these intro threads and a little more talking with the actual new person?

Well, I don't know if I agree with your friends methods, but I appreciate the sentiment. Welcome

I wouldn't say that they don't leak, I don't think there's getting around that. Very efficient, sure, but not perfect. I mean, even the Fused can't hold Light indefinitely, what Szeth believes is not quite true, but I'd wager humans are still worse. Amaram was a post-1 AM addition to this What I meant to say is that I think the effects he produces during his duel with Kaladin would match those of a Voidbinder, even though the way he's acquired access to those powers wouldn't. Rereading the scene, however, it doesn't look like his powers are measurable different from those of a Surgebinder, so Amaram would probably need to go in the same bucket as the Fused. It might work even better this way, actually. It would make bonds a cornerstone of all Rosharan magic, maybe even a focus. If we follow the Scadrian model here a little bit, a specific set of metals permeate all of the Metallic Arts, so a spren bond could serve a similar function here. It's a little different, because it's not the same kind of spren bond for all the magic systems, but there's a bit of parallel. Where the key to accessing Preservation's power is the desire to preserve and persevere (and win the generic lottery), they key to accessing Honor's is your... overall character, kind of; how honorable you are, where "honorable" has a very flexible meaning (and also winning the spren lottery; I am sure plenty of people are honorable but never become Surgebinders because the spren weren't looking in their direction). But maybe there was some kind of early Oath before the whole system of the Immortal Words was established, and it served a purpose similar to that of the Snapping. You know, the more I think about that, the less convinced I am that there is a distinction. Yes, on the surface there definitely is, but during the Battle of Thaylen Fields Odium commands Kai-garnis (indirectly) to "destroy the device and recover its gemstones. We can rebuild it as long as the spren aren’t compromised." So there is very much a gem-spren thing going on in at least some of the ancient fabrials. Obviously, there are differences with the modern ones, but I think what we are looking at is the modern ones imitating something the ancient ones were doing, but going it about it in a different way. Neither is better, necessarily, because while the fabrials of old could produce very spectacular and powerful effects, it appears that there weren't many of them - not in number, and not in types. I assume that was because the early artifabrians were trying to reproduce the effects of Surgebinders, and so were limited in the kinds of spren they were targeting. In other words, I don't think non-Surge-based fabrials were even a thing they had thought about. And so, in a way, it was the Recreance and the overall lessening of the spectacular magic available in the world that gave scientists the opportunity to explore whether anything could be done with lesser spren. The qualitative difference is a separate issue altogether. I don't question that the ancient fabrials appear to interface with their spren differently from modern one, and I myself have argued that they seem closer to a symbiotic relationship than an enslavement; but that could be due to the qualitative differences between the spren themselves (e.g. maybe you can't trap an Oathgate spren in a gem, or maybe you need the spren to be more free in order to perform the miracles you want it to perform). Either way, I think the fabrials magic system is wide enough to encompass both. Well, yeah. Surges are forces, and no Surgebinder or Voidbinder or fabrial is going to grant you full control over the entire force, that's the domain of Shards. But you'll get different powers, different effects, when you access the Surge differently. Oh, was the quote "the greater power of the oaths"? That's what I thought I was quoting, must've misremembered it; yes, this is exactly what I was referring to. I don't know if there is there was an immediate danger to Surgebinders with this ability, but infinite Investiture just sounds like a recipe for disaster, given the incredible things Surgebinders can do. Also, if I am correct about Voidbinding, Voidbinders would've had access to infinite Investiture at will too - which makes the destruction of Ashyn a little less surprising to me. In a way you've got a bunch of weapons of mass destruction, walking around, ready to go off; it would've taken one global conflict to plunge this world into a total annihilation. I think an Honorblade needs to be summoned to give you access to Surges and Stormlight. And I don't recall Lift describing the Blade he has out as particularly intricate, which suggests to me that he's been using his Sprenblade instead. Of course, he could be Investing from gems offscreen, but he could also not need gems.

Ah, it's been a while, hasn't it? Argent roaming these boards, crafting theories that are less theories and more "here's how I think things work." It's been gnawing on me that I don't get to do proper theory work outside of brief (but brilliant) ideas on Shardcast, so when I got excited about a conversation happening on the Discord server I decided to put my thoughts in a more structured format. Those of you who don't even know who I am, hello! I am a machine that consumes Cosmere content from one end and produces memes and theories from the other. Hope you find some food for thought. Highlights Roshar has some native magic that's not a proper Invested Art. Although it has three (or thirty) magic systems now, this number was different in the past. Surgebinding could be either of Honor or Honor and Cultivation both, it doesn't actually matter much. The Old Magic is Cultivation's, but it doesn't quite count as an Invested Art. It's more... primal than that. Renarin is a Surgebinder, but Glys's unique composition of Investiture means he can do things more commonly associated with Voidbinding; if he is considered a Voidbinder, he is not a traditional one. Neither the Regals nor the Fused are Voidbinders. Some of the Ashynites were, however. Call 1-800-COSMERE in the next 30 minutes and get a bonus mini-theory about "the greater power of the Surges." Explanation Alright, let's dig in. The Early Days Roshar, even before the arrival of Honor and Cultivation (and therefore Odium) had some serious interplay between the inhabitants of its Realms. Flora and fauna alike could (likely) interact with ambient Investiture, as evident by the nourishing properties of Stormlight (though back then it wasn't quite the same) and the ability of some animals to form symbiotic bonds with spren; the Dawnsingers were, of course, the most spectacular of these, given their ability to form even deeper bonds with spren. A recent Stuttgart WoB compared - and I am both paraphrasing and extrapolating here - the singers' ability to change forms to evolution, only it's kind of Realmic evolution; the symbiotic spren bond introduces foreign Investiture in their Spiritwebs, and the changes in their Spiritual DNA manifest as changes in both their Physical and Cognitive aspects. In other words, singer shapes are the result of natural process. More on that later. Two Shards Cue the arrival of Honor and Cultivation. Normally, I would expect three Invested Arts from a dishardic world, but this does not appear to be the case here. The way Brandon counts them, there are three magic systems on Roshar now - Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and fabrials, with the Old Magic being "kind of its own weird thing." Take Voidbinding away, because it most likely wasn't present this early in Roshar's history, and we are left with... probably two. Now, that's actually not terribly important. There is a few ways you could dissect the original magics of Roshar, but I think what's significant and undeniable is that Surgebinding is related to Honor. Cultivation may or may have been directly involved. The Old Magic is related to Cultivation, and it may or may not be an actual Invested Art. Fabrials can be either a natural extension of Roshar's own native magic, or they can be a formal magic system crafted by both Honor and Cultivation. You could even make the claim that fabrials are of Cultivation specifically, while Surgebinding is solely of Honor. I personally find the association between Honor and Surgebinding particularly compelling. If we define the core of Surgebinding as the act of binding Surges by way of a spren (Nahel) bond, it fits very well with Honor's intent being at least partially about bonds and oaths. Note that this doesn't conflict with the fact that Surgebinders can bond with spren of Cultivation; the kind of spren you bond with doesn't matter, what does matter is the oath and the (partial) merging of Spiritwebs between person and spren. Also note that the complete absence of Surgebinders until sometime after the creation of the Honorblades is not an issue either; the magic system can exist without anyone making use of it. It took some time for humans and spren to figure out how to access it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't there. If this doesn't sit well with you, however, you can take the route of Honor not establishing Surgebinding until after the Honorblades were created. Again, it doesn't actually matter, as this theory is mostly concerned with the mechanics behind the different magic systems. This leaves fabrials. I am not thrilled about treating them as a dedicated magic system, because I've been thinking about them as a mechanical way of emulating natural processes - the binding of a spren inside a gem, something we already established is just a property of Rosharan life. Fortunately, there is some room for revision to this idea that still makes things mostly work out. Yes, what fabrials do is very similar to what the singers do, but where their symbiosis leads to Realmic evolution, fabrials lead to... effects. Effects that are, in some ways, similar to Surges - which makes sense, the Surges are kind of like fundamental forces, so everything will be related to them - but also different from them; no Surge, as we understand it, can selectively draw water from the air, or produce heat, or take someone's pain away. So perhaps it is in these... almost surgical divisions of the Surges that we find room for a standalone magic system. Something that still involves a bond, a thing of Honor (even if modern ones are more about trapping spren than bonding with them), but also requires a (mechanical, apparently) cultivation of the spren's nature, a way to take this seed of elemental power and direct it, refine it, grow it into something specific. Odium is about to crash this party, so let's recap quickly. Surgebinding is of Honor because it's all about an oath-based bond with a spren. If you like to throw Cultivation inside Surgebinding too, you could say that it is not only about the bond, but also about nurturing and growing it. Fabrials probably use a bit of both, but in the context of expanding upon what Roshar's own native magic had already provided. The Effect of Odium Odium, being the unsavory individual that he is, throws a wrench in all of this, of course. I believe that if he was truly Invested in Roshar he would spawn not only his own Invested Art, its interaction with the already existing magic systems would lead to even more magic systems. This, however, does not appear to be the case. Nothing related to him seems fundamentally different enough from what's already there to warrant being called its own system. Instead, what he appears to do is corrupting existing Invested Arts. Very similar to how Trell can show up and build on top of Hemalurgy by introducing his own metal to the mix, I believe that Odium can manipulate Surgebinding (and maybe fabrials; it's not clear whether voidspren fabrials would've been possibly without his will) but not in ways that are too dramatically different from what was already there. Let's go over some places where Odium's presence is undeniable, and see why most of them don't count as independent magic systems. The Regals The Regals - singers who have assumed forms of power - seem no different from regular singers as far as mechanics go. They appear to form the exact same kind of bond they form naturally, only this time it's with a voidspren. Remember how we established that singer forms are just how life on Roshar works? That's why I don't think this is related to any of the Invested Arts, merely a new result of Roshar's Realmic evolution - and Odium hooking into an existing system. The elephant in this room are obviously the powers the Regals get - futuresight (nightform), lightning (stormform), possibly stealth/invisibility (smokeform), but I think this can all be explained by the exact natures of the voidspren involved and by the amount of Investiture they bring to the table. Creationspren - required for artform - don't appear particularly sapient, which I interpret to mean that they are not particularly heavy on Investiture, so there is only so much they can do when it comes to the transformation. The voidspren associated with the forms of power could be both more self-aware and more Invested, which could lead to a more profound effect in the resulting form. The Fused The Fused are... problematic. On one hand, they are kind of like spren, so we could expect something similar to what happens with the Regals, only a much greater scale. On the other, however, they are not simple spren, and don't so much form a bond with their hosts as take over. I would say though, that the mechanics behind their physical transformation are similar to the ones behind every singer transformation - the Fused's Spiritweb fuses with that of the singer, but in a much more invasive way; the physical form of the host retains some of its characteristics (as seen when Venli mistakenly addresses Hariel as Demid), but the Cognitive Aspect is probably completely replaced by the Fused's. I think it's important to point this out because it allows for the Fused to gain access to powers and abilities a singer wouldn't ordinarily be able to, regardless of the type of spren they bond. After all, we are dealing with a Spiritweb that's now much more deeply suffused with Odium's power, so there is a lot of room for unique features. What about their powers though? We know they have access to Voidlight - as do the Regals, for that matter. This is no surprise, as both have a non-insignificant amount of Odium's Investiture in their Spiritwebs, which likely means they are also Connected to him. The same way an Allomancer can tap into Preservation's Investiture because of that (extra) bit of his Investiture in their soul, both the Regals and the Fused can tap into Odium's. It is interesting that Surgebinders are limited by their need to carry around a supply of Stormlight (or be inside one) when their Nahel bond should've suffused their Spiritwebs with enough of Honor's (or Honor's and Cultivation's, if you prefer that) Investiture to allow them direct access - after all, the voidspren involved with the Regals must surely be far less Invested than something like an honorspren, and that bond is enough to let them tap into Odium. I have two solutions to this. One, Stormlight appears to have been designed to have a cyclic nature - it flows through the ecosystem, it leaks a lot (unlike Breath). So tapping into this natural cycle and accessing it as a part of it seems fitting. But two - and this is the spicy one - what if simply none of the Surgebinders we've seen so far have progressed far enough to "unlock" this? The strength of the Nahel bond grows with each Oath, the Spiritwebs of Radiant and spren merging more and more; what if "the greater power of the Surges" is the ability to Invest directly from the Spiritual Realm, like the Honorblades do? The Nahel bond was modeled after them, after all. It isn't real evidence for this, but Nale - who is the only person we know has sworn the Fifth Ideal - never Invests from gems or spheres, even when his Honorblade is dismissed. But that's a different theory. Let's go back to the Fused and their powers. So they can use Voidlight, but what they use it for is something very similar to Surgebinding. We see Fused "fly" like the Windrunners do, we see them glide exactly like the Edgedancers, and we see them don illusions - just like Lightweavers. We also see some who grow and shape their carapace at a rapid pace - which could be a Stonewardy thing. They probably aren't binding Surges, per se, as there is no oath here, but I think this could be Odium's "corruption" of Surgebinding, much like the Regals are his "corruption" of the singer's native magical ability to form bonds with spren. Surgebinding still exists in its original form, but Odium is building on top of it - recall the trellium example from earlier. Renarin Ah, Renarin. What a conundrum you are. I have long been a proponent of the idea that Renarin gets one Surgebinding power and one Voidbinding power, and I think I finally have the framework to explain why. First, I have to accept that his claim to be a Truthwatcher is truthful, or at least an honest one. He appears to wield Progression pretty much exactly like we'd expect a Truthwatcher or an Edgedancer to do. His only other power leads to a very visual form of futuresight - he sees the future. Materializing visuals sounds like the domain of Illumination, and the fact that they are of the future (combined with the fact that Glys is corrupted) suggests Odium to me. Progression and Illumination, great, Truthwatcher*. And the reason it works like this is because Glys - regardless of whether he is a corrupted Truthwatcher spren or not - has a Nahel bond with Renarin, their Spiritwebs are partially merged. Glys, however, introduces some of Odium's Investiture in Renarin's soul, resulting in someone who has a bond with not only the Surges, but Odium as well. The empty pit that sucks in emotion. The void. Someone... bonded with the Void. A Binder of Void? A Voidbounded? I am sure we'll see a term for that at some point... Regardless, what Renarin does is pretty unique and is most definitely not Voidbinding - not entirely, at least. More on that later. The Original Voidbringers Not much to talk about here, but it's worth pointing out that Odium was considered - by the Dawnsingers - to be the human god whom they brought with them from Ashyn, and that it was the powers of the Surges that led to the destruction of Ashyn. The humans there probably had a way of accessing the Surges, not through Honor or Cultivation, but through Odium instead. And upon arriving to Roshar they either abandoned or lost this ability. This would've been Odium's magic system, not the hacks and extensions to the ones native to Roshar. I'd argue that this is... Voidbinding Okay, but what is Voidbinding? If it's not what the Regals do, and it's not what the Fused do, and if what Renarin does is a related to but not exactly it, then what is it? Well, if Surgebinding - the binding of Surges - is about forming a bond (through Honor and oaths) with a spren, a manifestation of the natural forces of the world, a manifestation of the Surges... Then wouldn't Voidbinding be the binding of the Void? Forming a bond with Odium? Maybe there are oaths involved (though they are kind of Honor's thing, so maybe not), maybe it's something that fits either literally or figuratively with the idea of giving up your Passion, giving it to Odium. Instead of Investiture shoring up cracks in your Spiritweb, you damage your own soul, or you give up parts of your soul, and invite Odium in, but what you give up is not gone, it forms a connection (Connection?) with Odium, a conduit for his power. And in return you gain access to the Surges, but not in the same way a Surgebinder would - the forces are the same, but the effects are different. This is what the Voidbinding chart shows! Odium's number may be nine, but there are ten levels of Voidbinding - each "major glyph" in the chart represents a Voidbinding Level (akin to the Surgebinding Orders), and each "minor glyph" represents one of the Surges; only, recall, the powers granted by Odium are different, so their glyphs are twisted versions of their "holy" counterparts. This, I posit, is also exactly what Amaram was doing when he was merging with Yelig-nar. The Old Magic Obviously, very little is known about the Old Magic. Most of what we know about it comes from second and third hand reports in the books, as well as a few WoBs that don't explain the magic as much as they confirm some things it can do. Khriss calls it a "cousin" to Voidbinding, however, and Brandon appears to have confirmed that it is "related" to the disease-based magic of Ashyn while also predating spren bonds. Assuming you are with me on what I think Voidbinding is, we can make some educated-adjacent guesses about the Old Magic itself. The combination of "older than spren bonds" and "related to the Ashynite disease magic" is very interesting, since one of these is very old and the other one appears to be a newer development. One way the two are obviously similar is the concept of tradeoffs - Ashynite diseases make you sick, but also give you power; the Old Magic curses you, but also grants you a boon. Combine this with Voidbinding also being related to the Old Magic (cousins), and you end up with three magic systems that are all somehow related to each other. Here's one way they could satisfy this: The way the Old Magic seems to work is through specific and direct alterations to people's Realmatic Aspects - not too dissimilar from Hemalurgy, actually, only maybe broader. Voidbinding, as I've presented it, involves an injection of Odium's Investiture into a person's Spiritweb - which, on the surface, is closer to Surgebinding (and may, in fact, be), but is also kind of similar to the Old Magic in the way a Shard pretty much directly changes you. Contrast this with Surgebinding, where most of what happens is a result of a gradual change in both Surgebinder and spren; no direct Shardic involvement after the initial setup of the Invested Art. So how are the Ashynite diseases related to all this? They too sounds like a direct injection of Investiture - you contract the disease, it modifies your Spiritweb to grant you powers, and once it's gone, so are the powers. It's obviously not a Shardic-level interaction, but I've always thought that it was the absence of Odium that allowed for these diseases to evolve in the way that they did - similar to the parasitic worms associated with the Aviar's powers. Both would've been Shardless worlds, but with more than just a smidgen of ambient Investiture floating around, allowing for wonky magical phenomena. Kind of like Roshar before Honor and Cultivation, actually. Summary & Conclusion I think this covers all of the notable magics of Roshar. Obviously some things are missing - I haven't talked about how exactly it is that the greatshells' bond with the mandras allows them ignore some of their crushing weight, for example, or about why certain pairs of Surges are considered inherently "natural pairings" - but all the ones I can think of are either minor or far too mysterious to address in this monster of a post (~3200 words so far, if you are curious. And to think that 1000-words essays sounded scary in high school...). My Intent was to look at all of the significant magic systems of Roshar and break them down like an arcanist might, look at their realmatic components, understand how they work and why they work this way - and see if I can apply this breakdown to the systems we know less about. Like any proper theory, its strength is measured by how convincing it appears to its readers and by its ability to make verifiable predictions about the future. We won't know how right or wrong I am about things like Voidbinding or the Fifth Ideal until at least the next book, but I can at least invite you all in to read, think, and comment. Cheers!

@Mraize, I've merged all your consecutive replies into one. Please don't multi-post like that in the future. @Cyfedia, welcome to the forums! It's awesome that you got to meet Brandon - he travels quite a bit, but non-US signings are still not exactly frequent, so it looks like you lucked out, and that's great! I hope you like it here, but if you prefer a snappier less structured to talk with people, we also have a Discord server you could hop into. Cheers!

Welcome, then! We are flattered you chose to join this place The subforums dedicated to the different series are mostly calm between releases but feel free to make your way to the Stormlight one and see what's been happening. We also had a couple of signings in Germany, so the Events forum is bound to have some juicy stuff in those respective threads. Hope you like it here.

Makes me think of Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades

Both of these look really cool!

@LerasiumMistborn, @Invocation, @Calderis: I am putting a stop to this conversation about Dalinar, effective immediately. If you can reel it back to the original subject of the thread (without making meta-commentary), please do so. If you disagree with my judgment call, you can talk to me in private, but I don't want this thread further derailed with replies to this post.

Hey, welcome! I can't speak much about translation (plus, every language will handle things differently; I imagine, as a rule, most versions will preserve as many of Brandon's made-up words as they can), but I can say a few words about your other questions. So, you are slightly off here. Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy are - as you correctly understand - three distinct magic systems (or Invested Arts, as they are sometimes called in-world). The reason there are three of them is because that's (apparently) what would happen when you get two Shards together - each will create its own Invested Art, and a third one will come into existence just from the interaction of the other two (or of the Shards, I am not clear on that). Sel, however is... weird. As we understand it, everything we see there is just different manifestations of the same magic system; a system that involves visualizing elements of the landscape in order to access the power. But you are right, the fact that there were two Shards there should mean that there are three magic systems (unless they did things differently) - so maybe we've only seen the different manifestations of one of them, and don't know anything about the other two. Or maybe, with Devotion and Dominion now essentially one, the Dor, there is essentially a single magic system on the entire planet, and it's just a matter of how it manifests in the different places. It's definitely something worth asking about.

I do like the more metaphorical interpretation - Kaladin specifically is the spiritual successor of Tanavast, with his views on honor. It is interesting that Dalinar doesn't qualify in the same way though...

Man, some international signings are just nuts when it comes to WoBs! You guys knocked it out of the park with this one. Excellent job on all the questions, and fantastic work at taking all these notes.