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So far Syl is my favorite cosmere character (not just SA). I hope she stays as intriguing through the rest of her appearances. Taravangian is second best in WoK.

I'm not sure what missing evidence Peter is referring to from the book (I'll keep thinking), but an additional consideration that has yet to be mentioned is the presence of Ashyn and Braize, both habitable, in the same system. That adds some constraints to the planetary orbits and distances. ...Hm, for some reason I have been imagining Ashyn as the inner planet of the three, followed by Roshar then Braize, but I realize that I have no basis for that. Do we have any information suggesting their relative positions?

You can also check this thread where people have posted similar charts. This other thread also has a chart focusing on suspected/confirmed surgebinders of each order.

I've been admiring these images around the site, but I didn't realize they were all so new. Incredible job! I particularly like the burnt wood Bridge 4 glyph. As far as the warbreaker ones go, I think these top two are your best so far. The color blend is nice, but I also like that it looks like a small breath, rather than yelling or singing in some of the others. In general I like the breath ones better than the glowing aura, just because that is closer to the way most Awakeners use magic, but those glowy-feet ones totally work for the over-powered characters like Susebron, Vasher, etc.

I like the filled-in version, though it wouldn't hurt to have a just-lines one. This will be printed along with my orders/heralds cheat sheet.

I agree that Rock's ability stems from a greater sensitivity to the cognitive realm, but I don't think he can touch spren. Rock's ability is uncommon, but seems to be easily recognized (and named) among his people. Wyndle's protestations about what should be possible suggest that Lift's abilities are in a different class. Though the (probably heritable) Horneater ability to see spren may well have come from Cultivation, I get the impression so far that the Nightwatcher's boon/curse system applies to a single individual and would not go on to become an inherited trait. (That could be a serious problem if Dalinar's descendents started forgetting their wives all the time )

Thanks for the patient explanations, Moogle. I can follow your reasoning better now and you make a good case. I still don't agree, but I suspect we'll learn a lot more about fabrial construction and limits and limits in WoR and we'll all have more information to draw from. Regarding the "everyone's got them" idea, I'm having trouble deciding what I think about Awakened objects. As skaa points out, it requires a certain degree of investiture on the part of the person doing the Awakening. Lifeless may actually come closer to the fabrial/NFIT idea, since once they've been made anyone, even drabs, can order them around. But I'm having trouble coming up with a true NFIT system for Nalthis, since any transfer of investiture appears to initiate from an individual holding that investiture--i.e. you have to use your own Breath to do anything. Unless there is some way to power things with color alone (possibly straight from the tears of Edgli) and bypass Breath entirely, we may not be able to satisfy skaa's NFIT definition. (To be fair though, this seems to be a special case due to the intent of Endowment, rather than a difficulty of the theory.)

But what about the forgers and bloodsealers in Emperor's Soul? They seem to arrive at their skill sets via study alone. I'm not sure where the Dakhor monks fit. To me the dimensions of those octagons are different. The copped corner of the emerald seems shorter than the corresponding edge of the pain fabrial, and the whole emerald looks narrower. The trapped spren don't look similar enough to me to argue that both are the same type. The sketches of untrapped flamespren are also different from what you see in the emerald, suggesting to me that there is some distortion in seeing through the gem or that the spren is constrained in size/shape by the gem. I would think any sketch of a spren-in-a-gem would be too lacking in detail for positive identification of the spren. You could well be right. (To clarify, I was arguing for the 1-2 polestones per spren version, not 1-2 spren per polestone.) In my version yes, heliodor can do all sorts of things with all sorts of spren, within the augmenting/diminishing category. But it still has a "special type" effect limited to detection-at-a-distance (with probable variations on that theme). To use the ruby example, they have multiple augmenting/diminishing abilities (pain relief, heating, etc) and the single "special type" effect of conjoining (span reed style). The way things are categorized in the Ars Arcanum made me think of an incomplete allomantic table. I bet if we figure out enough of the shape behind it we can fill in the blanks.

First, the main point. I Just reread the Ars Arcanum. Here are the categories of fabrials as described there: Altering Fabrials--Includes both Augmenters and Diminishers, both of which can use any of the 10 polestones Pairing Fabrials--includes Conjoiners (ruby) and Reversers (amethyst) Warning Fabrials (heliodor) My conclusions: The basic fabrial type (and hence first to be discovered) is augmenting and diminishing. Each of the examples on that page of Navani's notebook fits into one of these categories. Whether a given augmenter's cognate diminisher requires the same gemstone, its opposite, or another stone entirely is not clear. However, I don't agree that the emerald with the trapped flamespren looks like the gem in the pain knife--they appear quite different to me. I am leaning towards all painrials requiring ruby (one spren, one polestone), but I could accept ruby or amethyst (one spren, two possible polestones). The only thing that keeps me from completely dismissing the third idea (one spren, any polestone) is Navani's comment about "There must be thousands of possible combinations." Beyond this basic type, each polestone also has a unique fabrial effect, but only 3 out of 10 have been rediscovered in modern Roshar. Ruby and amethyst have opposite effects, though both move things at a distance. Heliodor provides proximity alerts, and I presume that emerald provides some form of the opposite (cloaking, camouflage, etc.) I think it is noteworthy that the pairing fabrials are based on amethyst and ruby. Amethyst corresponds to Kalak's order, which has access to the transportation surge, while ruby corresponds to the Dustbringers who could access the division surge. Since these fabrials work by dividing the gemstone in half and then moving the two halves in concert, that seems entirely appropriate. How heliodor's proximity effect derives from a surface tension/growth pairing, or else an atmospheric pressure/illumination pairing, is not immediately obvious to me. I could shoehorn it, but I'm guessing there is more to discover. Second, an important distinction that I hadn't noticed before. In Navani's notebook the components of the pain knife are helpfully labeled. The labeled "Fabrial" consists of only the cut gem in a wire mounting. The rest appears to be alterable hardware. Also, some tangents that I'm curious about: The fabrial is made for easy removal so it can be infused. Question: Does the fabrial itself have to be left out in a highstorm or can it be fed stormlight from infused spheres? The phrasing at the top was interesting: "The cut and type of the gem determines what kind of spren are attracted to it and can be imprisoned in it." I may be reading too much into this, but it sounds like these aren't simple glue traps; the imprisoning part of the process may be more active on the part of the artifabrian than just setting out the gem to attract a spren into it. Third and finally, an aside about spren: Huh, I guess I didn't follow your thought process entirely. I hadn't thought of the spren themselves as being affected that way. I assumed that Syl could ignore gravity because she wasn't actually a physical presence. It's hard for her to affect physical things at all, and I just imagined her ghosting wherever she wished. That didn't seem to be special of Syl, but rather an attribute of all spren. I hadn't paid attention to Wyndle behaving differently, though now that you bring it up I can see that he doesn't seem to be able to flit about the way Syl does. Maybe Syl is moving more like an air current given her windspren inheritance? I don't know.

Lots of things to like here. I think you are definitely on to something with the fabrial-like applications of the various magic systems. That all sounds very accurate and simple. Consider me fully convinced on that point. Spren as Forms: I'm slightly more skeptical about this, but the more I think about it the more convinced I get. The idea that spren are "bundles of forms" and the fabrial does the job of both invoking and modifying the effect makes a lot of sense, especially in your flamespren example. However, with regard to surgebinders, I think Nahel spren are a different class. With all of Jasnah's talk about "spren politics" and how Syl says natural laws are more like "an agreement between friends," my belief is that surgebinders have access to leverage on certain classes of spren via the influence of their bonded Nahel spren. An Honorspren's mix does not include gravity and pressure, but it does have friends among the gravity and pressure spren and therefore access to those forms. Part of the reason this makes sense to me is because when Kaladin uses a full lashing to stick rocks to the wall, it is not Syl that holds the stones in place--instead there are other tiny spren there. This seems like a case of delegation or subcontracting, where the currency is stormlight (investiture). Fabrial Shape and Construction: I love your idea of soulcasters looking like the corresponding surge glyph. I can see that working for the oathgates and other fabrials too. I looked up the description of Regrowth, but all it says is "fine metal framework." (Hmm, that could give more significance to the transient glowing glyphs that appear on the old KR shardplate in Dalinar's visions. More "forms" brought into play dynamically by the spren.) I think that there may be more to it that simply copying the glyphs. We still don't know what the so-called "Voidbinding" chart actually is, but it is clear that the glyphs there are stylized permutations of the ones in the surgebinding chart. That means that tweaking the shape should be one way to give you a related-but-different effect. Even if the gems are less interchangeable than in the old-style fabrials, I don't think that the metal housing is dispensable in new ones. In the actual development/discovery of a new fabrial, it is probably not trivial to prune out the non-essential baggage from the design process to find the minimum components necessary. You probably get something that works and stick with it even if that includes some extraneous artifacts. I'll have to go back and review the quotes about fabrials from that section and the Ars Arcanum and think about the effect of gem-type. My suspicion is that gemstone has more influence on the type of spren attracted (or the subform accessed), while the augmenting/reducing effect would result from the design of the whole thing including the metal shape. About gem types for soulcasting: Brandon has said that the requirement of specific gems is particular to soulcasting. I suspect that this is because the soulcaster (human or fabrial) provides the form for "transformation" surge, but the target object needs additional complex instruction on what to change into. That ancillary information (not sure if this qualifies as a "form" by your definitions) is provided by the gem filtering the stormlight. Compare this to a basic lashing, for example, where the "gravitation" surge effect is provided via the form (spren), and the ancillary instruction (direction of the new "down") is simple enough that it can be provided by the intent of the surgebinder. Soulcasting is simply too versatile to be adequately directed by user intent alone. (Alternatively expressed: the process of transformation is complex enough that the object being soulcast takes intrinsic cues from the gemstone that can't be overruled by user intent.)

Obviously we still know very little about the personalities or background of the 16 people who took up the shards back in the day. They did know each other (and Hoid), and I think it's curious that some planets ended up with multiple shards while others just have one. My speculation here is that shardholders who had some particular relationship with one other went on to found worlds together. The most supported instance is Honor+Cultivation being romantically involved and working together on Roshar. But what got me thinking about this was remembering that Odium is also based in Greater Roshar, on Braise. If you suppose that the Purelake religion actually references the local shards, Nu Ralik (Honor) has a younger, spiteful brother (Odium). Perhaps Rayse chose a planet near Tanavast because they were in fact brothers? Using the list from the coppermind, we have: Roshar - Honor/Tanavast, Cultivation/?? Braise - Odium/Rayse Ashyn (Silence Divine) - ??/?? Scadrial - Ruin/Ati, Preservation/Leras Nalthis - Endowment/?? Sel - Devotion/Aona, Dominion/Skye Taldain (White Sand) - ??/Bavadin There are other shardworlds (e.g. Shadows for Silence, Dragonsteel), but we don't know anything about those shards. My interpretation then is that Rayse, Tanavast, Cultivation, and whoever ended up on Ashyn went to Greater Roshar together because of their close (family?) relationships. Ati and Leras were good friends when they first came to Scadrial. Aona and Skye worked closely together on Sel because they knew each other well beforehand. On the other hand, Endowment was more of a loner and had no strong ties to any of the other Shardholders. Presumably the same is true of Bavadin, although not knowing anything about White Sand I don't have any evidence for or against another shard being present on Taldain. What do you think? Is there more that we can infer based on the pairings (or lack of teamwork) seen here?

Thanks, Peter and Moogle, for the cultural explanations. Re: the possibility of multiple, sequential soulcasting, we know that is possible. Jasnah did the blood-->blood soulcasting multiple times on Shallan to get rid of the poison. There is no reason that a transformative soulcast (e.g. wood-->stone) would have a one-time use limit when identity soulcasting (e.g. blood-->blood) does not. (In fact, without the example in the text, I would have speculated that identity soulcasting was impossible).

As was pointed out, the verb here is interesting. My first assumption is that this is a new glyphs-in-stone, counting down towards the end of our 62 days. Renarin could very legitimately be glyph literate. But maybe the 38 and the 62 day countdowns don't line up--that would smack of prophecy more than a simple deadline, giving us instead of a sequence of events.

Great thoughts, Alice, and good comments so far through the thread. A few thoughts: Regarding the "changed as we fought them" quote: listeners require a highstorm to change forms, but in it appears from the Eshonai interlude that stormform listeners can control or even summon a storm. The obvious plan is to summon a highstorm during a battle, then direct it to do less damage to your own force. Aside from the devastation of the storm, this could also have the effect of changing the listener soldiers right before their eyes (e.g. from warform to stormform, or vice versa). I was going to argue against the "Formbinding chart" idea, but the more I think about it the more I like it. Eshonai says the old songs speak of hundreds of forms, though now they only know five. Hundreds is a lot more than ten, enough to seem more than simple exaggeration. So i doubt that there are only 10 forms, but there may be 10 specific ones that correspond to the chart. As has been suggested before, the glyphs on that chart seem to be stylized to look like animals. That could be a metaphorical reference to the types of things the forms can do or the physical resemblance of the forms. The main argument that keeps me from really being on board with this is that Surgebinding for humans and Formbinding for listeners leaves out both Aimian races. Unless their as-yet-unknown magic system no longer matters since they are practically extinct, I find it unlikely that the humans and listeners would uniquely get a chart.

Let me first say I don't have any strong opinion/prediction. Still, #5 (spren) seems the least likely out of those options. We don't know the mechanics for the whole spren-trapping thing yet, but my understanding is that nothing physical can capture a spren except for specially cut gemstones. It wouldn't do much good to put spren that can move through walls and seep up through the ground inside of your strongbox. If the spren is actually bound there into a gem, it is much more like a fabrial and can't leave to frighten Shallan, certainly not in any "possession" sort of way. We're really good at personifying. Something inanimate could certainly be seen as a monster by an 11-year old. Especially if said 11-year old picked it up and "it" did something terrible (like kill people) while she was holding it.

Thanks, Moogle. And great connection to the memory removal scene! I would not have seen that relationship on my own, but it really could fit together that way. In general, an end-negative magic system is "worse" because it is about removing and losing things rather than gaining power, but as you point out there are certain situations where that is exactly what is desired. So theoretically if Hemalurgic acupuncture is possible, we could rethink an application of that magic system as primarily removal of something you want gone, with that trait potentially recycled as an added bonus (rather than theft in order to get something). In most cases removing part of your spiritweb/identity is not a good idea, but some potential situations where it might be: Traumatic events (e.g. the memory removal above, or severe PTSD like Dunny) Disabling emotions Controlling investiture by Odium (shoot voidbringers with a hemalurgic needle-gun to turn them good again ) The level of skill and ethical consideration would need to be extremely high to make this a useful tool and not a lobotomy. And obviously, greed being what it is, it would be very hard to guard against abuses of the system towards a Final Empire style usage. Still, I think there would be potential. (All of this being contingent on a rather wishful thought experiment.)

So I hope this isn't seen as necro-ing. I just came up with a theory almost identical to the OP, and did a search to make sure it was original before posting. Turns out, someone already thought of it. I'm posting both as an independent corroboration of the thought process, and also to add my own thoughts, since my interpretation is a little different. Essentially, it makes sense to me that Feruchemical gold is able to knit together pieces of the spiritweb that have been disconnected but left in place. In the case of a shardwound, I think Feruchemical gold would be healing the connection, not regrowing a removed piece. In a hemalurgic application, that means that the torn edges of spiritweb can grow back together, making the spiking survivable, but that stolen traits would not be regrown. Yes, the amount of health involved is substantial, so your average ferring may be hard pressed to heal themselves after spiking, but a twinborn compounder like Miles could do it without blinking. (Someone who casually blows himself up with dynamite just to untie a few knots probably has some health to spare.) This is, of course, assuming that the necessary gold abilities are left in place. Importantly, we know that hemalurgy does not just steal the allomancy and feruchemy. Koloss are made through stealing strength or life force (I don't recall the word specifically). Though I am becoming a bit more skeptical of this application, I had initially thought that this theory would allow for sustainable hemalurgy. It seems possible to me that life force and strength, as things that are universal and needed daily, may be regenerable naturally, in the same way that your body makes more blood all the time as needed. If you don't die it is just a matter of time to fully recover from severe blood loss. (By way of extending the analogy, losing allomancy would be more like losing a kidney--also survivable in the right circumstances, but you don't grow a new kidney.) So, if this part is true (and I admit it is the weakest point in the reasoning) then you could get an unlimited number of koloss-type spikes from a double gold twin born. This is particularly useful if the hemalurgy-powers-south-scadrial-tech theories are right. I do like Darnam's thoughts on surgery through history. In particular, this idea: It made me think of hemalurgic acupuncture. Maybe that will be a thing.

My guess is the kickoff for the WoR version of the Steelhunt.

The rules link is nicely prominent now. I noticed it yesterday and thought "Was that there before?" I did not know about the help articles, either. Those probably would have helped me find some features faster. I am one of the many de-lurked by the Shardhunt, and I have to say that the process of doing the Shardhunt was a really great introduction to the various site features and abilities. I probably would not have explored several of those areas without being prompted, and it was much more fun than an orientation email. Obviously it can't be a mandatory initiation, but is there a way to emphasize the Shardhunt for members joining 17S in the future? When the steelhunt is essentially over, maybe the code on the final page could be replaced by other incentives, and the welcome email or post could point them to the start of that. Just brainstorming: As far as incentives, maybe we could ask Team Brandon for an exclusive piece of content (pre-release chapter, concept art by Isaac, etc.) once every 6-12 months. Not enough to be burdensome but regularly enough to always have something new and exciting. The goal here is not so much to get stuff as to have a reward for our new and existing forum members.

Gotcha. Just another example of digging too deep for clues (a common problem on these forums) And don't worry about English errors--they in no way imply "dumb". I think the worldwide representation on 17S is one of the real strengths of the community. Props to you and to everyone who has the guts to do this in a second language. (I definitely wouldn't try to use my Spanish or Japanese to post to a fan site.)

I can't seem to get the videos to play. Any suggestions on how to use that site?

So, now I'm curious. There is another forum user (Natans) who routinely types Syl as "Sly." I had thought it was a misspelling, but what if it's a language variation in WoK translations? I'm pretty sure Natans is a Portuguese speaker. @EvilKetchupCow, was "Sly" intentional or a typo?

I disagree. I don't think listener sounds passive or like "the subject of an action." They are listening to the rhythms of the world, to which they align their words, thoughts, actions, and possibly even form. These rhythms are inaudible to or ignored by other races. To me the name evokes a sense of harmony with nature and knowledge of the essence of things, similar to the ethos found in many Native American cultures. I've listened to some readings before, and this reminded me--I love Brandon's writing, but I'm glad I get to read it myself. His inflection and sentence emphasis is always completely different from my own. That kind of thing bothers my ear a lot more than the varying name pronunciations being discussed in this thread.

Welcome, Defiant! The main reason I don't agree with the captured-alive scenario is that there are not many cells that will hold up to a shardblade. There are ways around this (e.g. round-the-clock guard by two people in plate, or a specially designed cell that will collapse if cut, or maybe just immobilize his hands in a way that he couldn't grasp the blade if he ever did summon it), and maybe the Alethi have had occasion to think of such methods. Still, they don't seem the type to go in for non-lethal force, so I doubt restraining a shardbearer comes up very often.

I think it's simplest to assume Shen is dullform when he arrives at bridge 4, and therefore a listener spy. For those who think he was in slaveform but discovered another form on his own, I suggest looking for descriptions of Shen's appearance or behavior and trying to find a shift after a highstorm. If such evidence exists, I would be much more willing to believe he is not a spy.