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Ah. In that case, I shall remove the pain knife from Part II. Thanks for asking Isaac, by the way.

Direction does indeed sound better than Stability. It sounds more philosophical, whereas stability (in reference to transporting things) sounds a bit more sciencey. I've always thought that Brandon's inspiration for the Essences was Greek Philosophy (Aristotle and Co.), so that works. Steadfast(ness?) sounds more like Careful/Resolute than Brave/Confident. Besides, you can be brave without being steadfast (e.g. if you are brave but gullible). Okay, I misunderstood your suggestion, sorry. Still, Steadfastness doesn't sound quite right. I still think Aristotle's definition of motion should be considered here because Truth is actuality, and Motion (making the potential actual) is also actuality, so in the context of actuality truth and (philosophical) motion are synonyms. Also, Laws direct Motion, so it all fits. Well, there are spiritual laws, right? Gravity is a spiritual law on Roshar, after all.

I don't think it would be ethical to intentionally cause painspren to appear just so it can be captured for Artifabrian purposes because that would require causing pain to someone first (unless being pinched is enough to attract painspren). I think they looked for an alternative and found that flamespren can work just as well (perhaps with modifications in the cut of the gemstone).

From the WoK Ars Arcanum: It's possible that the heliodor focus is just the upper-middle gemstone in the emotion bracelet, I guess. But then, the illustration states that all ten gemstones in the bracelet are fabrials (as opposed to simple gemstones), so I'm assuming that they are all Alerter focuses, meaning they are all heliodors.

(Is double-posting considered excusable if it's my own thread and I'm adding a wall of text that doesn't belong in my last post? If not, apologies to the mods.) Part III: Warning Fabrials I have delayed writing about the final category of fabrial, the Warning Fabrials, because of my own doubts about the nature of the heliodors in Alerters. According to my theory, they are either Growth-pushing fabrials or Tension-pulling fabrials. Unfortunately, the details of the Tension Surge has not yet been revealed. And even more unfortunately, being able to detect things using the Growth Surge doesn't really make any sense to me. Anyway, I'm writing this because I now believe that the Tension Surge grants sensing ability. My reasoning can be found in my thread about Attributes and Surges. That thread also tries to show more thoroughly that there is such a thing as a Primary Surge (which is essential to my fabrial theory), so please check that out. Since heliodor is the gemstone associated with Tension, it is attracted to the Tension Surge, "pulling" it towards itself, causing it to glow. I believe that alerter heliodors were cut specifically to prevent altering effects so all you see is the glow without any sensation-diminishing effect. Lastly, I invite you guys to look at the emotion bracelet diagram. Emotion bracelets are alerters, so we can assume that those ten gemstones are heliodors. Notice how they are arranged in the familiar Double Eye pattern, and how for each emotion, there is a contrary emotion paired with it on the opposite side of the board, just like how gemstones are paired (and how the Attributes are paired). It seems that the pairing of opposites is a common theme in Essence-based Investiture.

And her description of taking a Memory of a person: Both quotes from Chapter 7 Anything Reasonable Interesting. I believed for some time now that Shallan's Memory ability is just an aspect of her Illumination Surgebinding ability, but the second quote makes it sound like Shallan's Memory is a hybrid of Illumination and Growth, which is weird because Shallan should not have access to Growth. Also... Tension?! damnation, and I thought I already had it all worked out with this Surgebinding thing...

Well, Aristotle defines motion as the actualization of a potentiality, i.e. making something that is possible into something that is true. Do you think that sounds close enough to Truth? I admit that I did have trouble with that attribute. I initially named it Action, but I couldn't seem to connect action with division. When I came up with Stability for Careful/Resolute, I decided that Motion made the most sense. Anyway, you're probably right that horizontal symmetry is also important. It wasn't something I considered when I did this. Fortunately my model turned out to be horizontally symmetrical as well.

Thanks! Alright, this isn't the best-looking Double Eye of the Almighty diagram, but here you go! Another thing I noticed is that Boundary and Openness are the paired Attributes that contradict each other the most, which is interesting given that the honorspren of Windrunners and the Cryptics of Lightweavers seem to have some sort of rivalry going on. Edit: Here's an updated one.

Thanks! I was going to delve into the Voids as well (I believe they are the result of an imbalance in the five balancing Attribute pairs), but my brain is complaining that it needs some sleep, the whiny little bugger.

(Note: This post mentions Surges that were revealed by Brandon in interviews, and are not found in the Way of Kings. These will be in a Spoiler tag, just in case you don't want to know them yet.) One thing I've noticed for a long time is that each Essence has two Divine Attributes associated with it, just as each Order of Knights Radiant has access to two Surges. I've always felt that these two things, the Attributes and the Surges, can be connected somehow, but at the same time it had always felt impossible. For one thing, there are twenty Attributes and only ten Surges. Also, each Essence has a Primary Attribute and a Secondary Attribute, but there is no apparent indication that the Orders have a primary Surge and a secondary Surge. I've decided to take on the impossible task of connecting the Attributes and the Surges. Allow me to describe my little adventure in minute detail. First of all, I realized that if I could somehow connect the Primary Attribute of an Essence with the Secondary Attribute of the previous Essence, and do it for all the Essences, I would cut the number of Attributes in half. There'd be ten Attributes, which might then be correlated to the ten Surges. If a Surge correlates to an Essence's Primary Attribute, it would suggest that Orders have a Primary Surge. Here is my attempt: Zephyr 1 & Sinew 2: Protecting and Guiding -> Boundary A protector keeps boundaries from being breached. A guide indicates where boundaries are. Vapor 1 & Zephyr 2: Just and Leading -> Law Being just means upholding the law. Being a leader means your word is law. Spark 1 & Vapor 2: Brave and Confident -> Choice A brave man acts fearlessly on his choices. A confident man doesn't doubt his choices. Lucentia 1 & Spark 2: Loving and Obedient -> Affinity You have an affinity with what you care about. You have an affinity to what you follow. Pulp 1 & Lucentia 2: Learned and Healing -> Improvement Learning improves knowledge. Healing improves health. Blood 1 & Pulp 2: Creative and Giving -> Openness You cannot be called creative until you express your new ideas. You cannot be called giving until you share your property. Tallow 1 & Blood 2: Wise and Honest -> Truth Wisdom is the understanding of truth. Honesty is the expression of truth. Foil 1 & Tallow 2: Resolute and Careful -> Direction A resolute person never changes the direction of he has set for himself. A careful person keeps track of the direction he is going. Talus 1 & Foil 2: Dependable and Builder -> Trust People trust that a person known for dependability will perform his task. People trust that a known builder will create structures that last. Sinew 1 & Talus 2: Pious and Resourceful -> Contentment A pious person humbly accepts whatever his religious vocation may be. A resourceful person can work with whatever limited resources he has. How did I do? Feel free to make suggestions or corrections. Anyway, given that I now had ten Divine Attributes instead of twenty, the next step was to try and connect them to the Surges, but here I encountered another setback: it didn't make much sense. How does Boundary become Pressure? How does Truth become Transformation? It was apparent that I was still missing something. Running out of ideas, I decided to arrange my ten Attributes into the Double Eye pattern, with Boundary on the top right, Openness on the bottom left, etc., connecting each of them as the Orders themselves are connected in the Knights Radiant Chart. Then I looked for patterns in the connections. Vertical Pairs: Boundary<->Affinity Improvement<->Contentment Trust<->Openness Diagonal Pairs: Boundary<->Openness Law<->Truth Choice<->Direction Affinity<->Trust I noticed that the three vertical pairs have a cause and effect relationship. Being inside a boundary naturally gives you affinity to it and everything else inside it. Achieving improvement in a desired area naturally leads to contentment. Trusting people naturally leads to opening up to them. On the other hand, the diagonal pairs have more of a balancing relationship to them (e.g. boundaries balance openness, etc.). What's interesting is that Improvement causes Contentment as well as balances it, because it's possible to be content with low improvement, or never being content with any improvement, both scenarios being sub-optimal. This makes the Improvement<->Contentment pair the fifth balancing pair as well as the second cause-and-effect pair, which sort of makes it stand out (which is cool because it's at the center of the chart, after all). Anyway, I started thinking about the importance of balancing each Attribute, like how people should open up their boundaries and let others in sometimes to keep from going crazy, and I was about to drift off further into philosophical territory, when I realized something: Letting something through a boundary sounds very much like the concept of pressure release. I had just discovered how to derive the ten Surges. The five balancing pairs were the key. I realized that if you think about how each pair is balanced, especially in the context of the Rosharian environment, then with just a bit of creativity you will end up with the Surges. For those who only know about the Pressure, Gravitation, and Transformation Surges and who do not want to get spoiled, please don't click this: Edit: Added an actual Double Eye of the Almighty diagram of my ten Attributes. Edit: Replaced Stability with Direction, as suggested by beef man. Edit: Revised the section on Surges in light of the new Ars Arcanum Surges list and new WoB about the Order positions (I got my Surge prediction wrong, but the idea is close enough for the theory to still be valid). Also, replaced Motion with Choice since that made things less convoluted.

Yes, you're right that it does put a limit to the meta magic system. The thing is, Brandon already said that there are ten main Shardworlds. I do admit that I don't know how my theory fits those planets outside the main ten. Will Brandon reuse Essences for those? Will they have a mixture of Essences? Or something completely different? I don't know.

In Moogle's recent thread about Focuses, I mentioned how I remember Brandon saying in a past interview that Shardworlds had a certain influence on how Investiture manifests on them. I couldn't recall at the time where I read that WoB, but after an hour of wading through every single mention of "planet", "world", and "Shardworld" in Theoryland's Sanderson interview archive, I finally found one piece of evidence that I wasn't just hallucinating: (Edit: I finally found a good WoB for this! Now, back to the theory. ) So it seems that both the Shardworld and the Shards have some say in what goes on Investiture-wise. Now, we know that Shards have a particular Intent through which they can shape their Investiture (e.g. Ruin prefers Investiture that ruins things). But how about Shardworlds? Do they have an Intent as well? For example, did the soul of Scadrial simply decide on a whim that any Shard that Invests in it shall have to deal with metals? Or is metal-based Investiture somehow integral to the nature of Scadrial? The idea of Scadrial being inherently associated with metal-based Investiture first popped into my mind several weeks ago while I was staring intently at the table of Essences for something like the hundredth time (don't judge!). I looked at the Essence of Foil, and my mind went straight to Scadrial. Well, I highly doubt Sanderson would make Kalak and his Knights use Scadrian Metallic Arts (though I certainly wouldn't complain if he did! ), but it still got me searching for patterns relating Shardworlds and Essences. Here are some other coincidences I noticed: The Essence of Vapor has the Body Focus of Exhalation. This reminds me of BioChromatic Breath on Nalthis. The act of speaking requires exhalation, which makes spoken Commands exhalation-based. Vapor also has "Just" as its Primary Divine Attribute, which I assume pertains to Skybreakers' devotion to man-made laws, which is basically what Commands are all about. Then there is the importance of the color black both to Nalthian Investiture (as the best color for Awakening) and to Vapor symbolism (as the color of smoke and smokestone). Also, we see in WoR that Nalan (the Herald of the Skybreakers and of Vapor) has somehow gotten hold of a certain BioChromatic Entity that he claims is a suitable tool for Skybreakers. The Essence of Talus pertains to rock and stone, which I believe can be interpreted as simply the solid landmass of a planet. Selish Investiture requires some sort of connection with a region of land, the shape of which is used in all the Form-based abilities there. Talus' Body Focus is Bone, and there are at least two bone-based Investitures on Sel. The Essence of Blood is associated with the Order of Lightweavers. There is another planet where one particular manifestation of Investiture is also called Lightweaving: Yolen. So basically my theory is that each Shardworld has an affinity to a particular Essence, and this affinity affects how Investiture manifests on that Shardworld no matter which Shard or Shards occupy it. Ten Shardworlds, ten Essences. I've proposed Essences for Scadrial, Nalthis, Sel, even Yolen. Now you might be wondering: What about Roshar? I intentionally left that Shardworld from the list above because it is by far the trickiest to analyze. The problem is that all ten Essences are involved in Rosharan Investiture. Heck, I even posted a theory once about how the ten Essences themselves are the focus on Roshar. How can that be if a Shardworld only has affinity to one Essence? In order to solve this puzzle, I had to figure out what all Rosharan Investiture have in common. I had to ignore distractions caused by Honor, Cultivation, and Odium's Intents, delve into more abstract Realmatics, and discover what Roshar the Shardworld really is all about. And when I tried to do that, the first thing that came to mind was one word: spren. We know now that spren already existed on Roshar even before the Shattering, so they must be the key to finding Roshar's Essence. And what are spren, again? Jasnah says spren are "fragments of the Cognitive Realm that gained sentience." And what is the Cognitive Realm? Shai from Emperor's Soul defines it as "how an object is viewed and how it views itself." In other words, the Cognitive Realm is where perceptions exist. Just as the Spiritual Realm is where abstract concepts originate, the Cognitive Realm is how those abstractions receive Identity by being sensed, both by themselves and by others. The Ten Essences, on their own, are just abstract concepts. In order for them to gain Identity in the Cognitive Realm, they need to be actualized into things that are more concrete and perceivable, like gemstones, or the Body Focuses, or the Soulcasting properties, or even the different types of spren. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed apparent that all types of Roshar Investiture deal with making the ten Essences perceivable in all sorts of ways. Imagine Roshar's soul as a glass prism for Investiture. Light (Investiture) hits it on one side, and a rainbow of colors (the Essences) appears on the other side. As it turns out, there is one Essence associated with glass prisms and perception. It is the Essence representing the glass Identity beads of Rosharian Shadesmar, as well as its obsidian land. It is the Essence with a Body Focus that can perceive things (the eyes). It is the Essence whose Latin definition pertains to being viewable. It is, I believe, the Essence of Roshar: the Essence of Lucentia. Interesting developments: (2014-04-09) I found a possible origin for the table of Essences, and it supports the Shardworld-Essence theory. (2015-12-04) Yata posted a WoB that seems to contradict the theory. (2016-02-29) After Mistborn:Secret History, I've decided to significantly revise my thoughts on the matter and create what is technically a brand new theory .

Yeah, Soulstamping is probably Sel's version of Normal-Friendly Investiture Technology or NFIT (another wordy term of mine that refers to Investiture Technology that mundane people can create, like fabrials and Allomantech). If the fandom does decide to use "fabrial" as a pan-Cosmere term, then I propose that it should only refer to NFITs.

It could be that you need access to a certain Surge to activate glyphs. Perhaps it's the still-unnamed Surge.

Great post, Moogle! If you've seen my latest reply to your questions on my own fabrial theory (which was actually two weeks ago; I need to work on Part III of that...), then you already know my rudimentary thoughts on how I think fabrials are made, and why I think Navani's special kind of painrial does what it does. As for calling the Investiture Technology in other Shardworlds "fabrials", I don't know about that. I think it's cool that all Shardworlds have Investiture-related technology. There is one big difference between fabrials and, say, Awakened objects or even Aon-carved objects, though. It is that the Artifabrian does not have to be Invested herself in order to create fabrials. You have to be an Elantrian to create working Aons and you need to have Breath to Awaken objects. But an Artifabrian, from what we've seen so far, can be any normal human as long as he is on Roshar. Now, I'm pretty sure that Southern Scadrians have found a way to harness metals' Allomantic potential without having special Investiture themselves. I guess that kind of technology ("Allomantech") can be considered similar to fabrials. But to call Allomantech devices fabrials? I think we're better off just using the general term "Investiture technology" or similar.

As I understand it, only Tanavast and Cultivation's holder went to Roshar together. Rayse did not arrive there until later on, and probably because Honor and Cultivation were next on his Shards To Shatter List, not because of his close relationship with them. I don't think we have any word yet on Ashyn's Shard.

There is WoB that each Shardworld can influence how the Investiture of a Shard (or multiple Shards) will manifest on it, including the Focus. That probably answers Moogle's question about why each Sharworld has its own Focus. As to where that WoB can be found, I'm still looking. Too bad Phantom Monstrosity the Quotemeister doesn't visit the forums anymore. Edit: As to Shards being blinded by certain things, do we have other examples for this? The only instance I remember is metal on Scadrial. How about on other planets?

This ain't plot related either, and it's also a bit silly, but I just realized that because of the weaker gravity, chickens could fly on Roshar. And I mean really fly, not just the short distance wing-enhanced jumping thing they do on Earth:

They are immune for the same reason that other people standing on the ground are immune: The normal use of Reverse Lashing is not strong enough to counteract Roshar's gravitational pull on objects that are on the surface, which is why only projectiles are affected in the few cases we've seen Reverse Lashing. Creating a black hole, though, (or even making something have a strong enough gravitational pull) will definitely mean it will pull harder than the planet. The Surgebinder's fingers won't stand a chance, at which point he will be forced to stop the Lashing to save his life.

Maybe. Still, a person would normally say "another monster was inside" or "a different monster was inside" instead of repeatedly using "a monster" for two different things. If you get a call from your secretary, saying "Someone sent you a present, Mr. Gloom," and then she calls back a few minutes later to say, "There's a present for you, Mr. Gloom," you'd assume she was referring to the same present. If it turned out that two people sent you separate presents, that would be odd. You'd wonder why your secretary didn't make that clear earlier. I know that young kids don't have a full grasp of their own language yet, but my 11-year old self already knew to use variations when talking about two different instances of the same type. That's why I (and presumably Atastor) suspect that Shallan was somehow equating herself with whatever was in that box.

Ah, yes, I was searching my e-book for all instances of Soulcasting earlier today when I found Kaladin's musings about the air-to-stone Soulcast barracks. That still doesn't answer any of the questions I posed earlier, though. Are they targeting individual air molecules? If not, how could one region of open air have a single Identity? It's still a mystery that I hope will be clarified in WoR. Apparently there are two types of Soulcasting. There's one where you just change an object's composition based on the Essence/s you invoke, without changing the shape of the object (unless if you turn it into a liquid or a gas, obviously). This is by far the most common kind of Soulcasting that we've seen. Then there's another type where the user gets to actually shape the product, but only in limited ways. This second type (used in, for example, air-to-building Soulcasting) has to involve more than just touching the target and tapping a gemstone (as Kabsal described to Shallan). There has to be an additional shape-choosing step, unless if the resulting shape is somehow indicated by the cut of the Soulcaster gemstone. It would be cool to actually see an ardent (or even our Lightweaver and Elsecaller protagonists) perform this kind of Soulcasting. What's interesting is that shape doesn't seem to be the only limitation of Soulcasting air to something else. Kaladin notes how bridgemen had to collect large rocks to be Soulcast into food. Why would they need to do that if they could just Soulcast air into food? In this case shape shouldn't be an issue: they could just make simple box-shaped things (tofu? ) and people wouldn't complain (other that perhaps to say that the things still taste bland). But they don't. I had the notion that the wall Jasnah turned to smoke stopped having its own Cognitive Identity the moment it dispersed in the air. My understanding is that something needs to have a distinct Identity in order to even exist as an Identity bead in Shadesmar, but I may be wrong. As for forcing a region of air to have a more well-defined Identity, I wonder how ardents do that. I don't think Soulcasting can actually make objects move (Jasnah does it with the statue in the WoR prologue, but I'm sure that has to do more with the Transportation Surge than Transformation). I guess they could use some other fabrial, or something.

I bet it's a ring my precious.

I think it's pretty clear from the chapter that it was young Shallan, not a Shardblade, who was at that moment being held by her father. I suppose it's possible to interpret it as her father being the "monster", but the very first sentence of the chapter says "Shallan was to blame". I guess by the time of her trip to Kharbranth, she might have blocked that memory from her mind (as some kids do with traumatic experiences). I don't think Shardblades can be kept in a box. Nor can they glow (except maybe if an infused Surgebinder is holding one). I think some kind of fabrial weapon is still more likely to be the cause of that bright glow, though I guess the strongbox could also hold a bunch of infused gemstones in addition to the "monster"... As for Shallan accidentally Lightweaving at age 11, I say it's possible. I mean, "Pattern" has known her for quite a while, seeing as his first memory is being with her as she apparently had a traumatic experience (she gets those a lot, it seems) in her father's garden. I'd be willing to bet that Pattern (whether consciously or unconsciously) had something to do with her ability to capture photographs with her mind, which she has apparently been doing for a long time. Edit: I should've submitted my post sooner.

Maybe NPAM is a mirror fabrial with a deadly function (perhaps related to Lightweaving?), and young Shallan accidentally killed those people while looking at her own reflection in that mirror. In a child's mind, her reflection could be seen as the same exact "monster" that she herself thinks she is.

Assuming that the black hole will be formed via Reverse Lashing, there will have to be physical contact between the target and the Surgebinder (I think this was established in the WoK prologue). So the pinpoint sized black hole will have to be on the target's skin, and the Surgebinder will likely have to sacrifice one or more fingers just to kill the target with that black hole.