[Edgedancer Spoilers] The Order of Edgedancers' Resonance

[WeiryWriter]

So near the beginning of Chapter 6 of Edgedancer Lift has a conversation with a street urchin in a pretty thick dialect. Afterwards she has the following conversation with Wyndle about ti:

Quote

“Mistress,” Wyndle said, “that was the strangest conversation I’ve ever heard, and I once grew an entire garden for some keenspren.”

“Seemed normal to me. Just a kid on the street.”

“But the way you talked!” Wyndle said.

“What way?”

“With all those odd words and terms. How did you know what to say?”

“It just felt right,” Lift said. “Words is words. Anyway, she said that we could get food at the Tashi’s Light Orphanage. Same as the other one we talked to.”

What if an enhanced ability to communicate is the Resonance (i.e. Order Perk/passive ability) associated with combining Abrasion and Progression?

[Argent]

Is Resonance now the official term? It picks on something in the back of my head, but I can't quite put my finger it...

[WeiryWriter]

6 minutes ago, Argent said:

Is Resonance now the official term? It picks on something in the back of my head, but I can't quite put my finger it...

Not 100% final canon but it's Brandon's current term for it.

[dvoraen]

On 11/22/2016 at 11:49 AM, WeiryWriter said:

So near the beginning of Chapter 6 of Edgedancer Lift has a conversation with a street urchin in a pretty thick dialect. Afterwards she has the following conversation with Wyndle about ti:

What if an enhanced ability to communicate is the Resonance (i.e. Order Perk/passive ability) associated with combining Abrasion and Progression?

That does make sense.  In a literal manner of speaking: "growing the words to say" or "speaking without friction", to put it another way.

It also directly corroborates the epigraph about Edgedancers being articulate.

[skaa]

I dunno... The theory sounds cool and all, but wasing the slanging of the... Oh fud, I can't speak High Imperial. What I'm trying to say is that maybe this is just Brandon's latest quirky street slang. Lift's exactly the type of character who'd know this kind of stuff, I reckon.

Edit: Resonance is an awesome term for those extra abilities!

Edited November 24, 2016 by skaa

[DSC01]

I thought it was pretty clear that she'd never heard that particular brand of very bizarre slang before. Lift's general irreverence is a humorous contrast to the Edgedancers' stated reputation for eloquence, but when you think about it, this kind of ability would lend itself to eloquence just as easily as to immediately slipping into an unfamiliar slang dialect. I would say that this theory is almost certainly correct.

[skaa]

On 11/25/2016 at 0:01 AM, DSC01 said:

I thought it was pretty clear that she'd never heard that particular brand of very bizarre slang before.

Well, maybe. My misgivings was due to Lift's well-known tendency to mess with Wyndle relentlessly. But now that I think of it further, if this was really a magical ability to immediately understand the workings of a language/dialect/slang, it would very much fit her latest Oath to "listen".

Edited November 27, 2016 by Ookla the Insipid

[Releaser]

On 11/22/2016 at 11:49 AM, WeiryWriter said:

So near the beginning of Chapter 6 of Edgedancer Lift has a conversation with a street urchin in a pretty thick dialect. Afterwards she has the following conversation with Wyndle about ti:

What if an enhanced ability to communicate is the Resonance (i.e. Order Perk/passive ability) associated with combining Abrasion and Progression?

It felt like the feruchemical ability of Connection we see in the Mistborn books.  I like the idea that her Resonance is an ability we have somewhat seen other places in the cosmere. Similar to how various forms of lightweaving are seen throughout the cosmere. Maybe the Resonance is more of a passive ability like Connection, Fortune, Wakefulness, or something similar. 

[Djarskublar]

28 minutes ago, Releaser said:

It felt like the feruchemical ability of Connection we see in the Mistborn books.  I like the idea that her Resonance is an ability we have somewhat seen other places in the cosmere. Similar to how various forms of lightweaving are seen throughout the cosmere. Maybe the Resonance is more of a passive ability like Connection, Fortune, Wakefulness, or something similar. 

2nded it seems very much like Connection. That was my first thought there. She could maybe communicate with Worldhoppers on her own turf, or on a planet neither of them have been to before.

[WeiryWriter]

Yeah I would definitely say it sounds a lot like Connection, or at least the auto-magic translator part of Connection. That was part of my thought process for this, but it looks like I forgot to add that to my original post. Oops...

But I think it would be interesting if all the Resonances are a cross between a mundane ability turned up to 11 and a truly magical ability. So the Edgedancers' enhanced communicative abilites touch upon Connection, and the Lightweavers' mnemonic abilities could be related to Feruchemical Memory.

[physicskid]

I also noticed that Lift had an unusual ability to blend in with local cultures (seriously her talking with wayne about accents is my new head cannon). I have an alternative hypothesis. If lift is partly in the cognitive realm then maybe she has a blank connection and can speak local languages because she is in the cognitive realm that the language is built in?

[DSC01]

Not that that doesn't make sense, but Lift's condition (in relation to her partially inhabiting the Cognitive Realm) is unique, and it seems to me like this ability is probably the Resonance that all Edgedancers share (I don't know if Resonances are uniform within an Order/all people possessing the same two powers, but my current thinking on it is that it varies a bit in expression within the individual but remains mostly consistent). Granted, my evidence for that is highly circumstantial, but it just seems to fit so well. In WoR, it seems like such a clever little joke that the first Edgedancer we see is an uncouth street kid, when the historical Order had such a reputation for eloquence. However, with the evidence in Edgedancer, everything changes. If Lift applied this ability to the highfalutin types that she has so little time for, wouldn't they think she was an exceptionally eloquent young woman? No doubt they would. Of course historians and the like thought the Edgedancers were eloquent and refined. They valued those things, the highborn sources they talked to valued those things, and any encounter they had with an Edgedancer or heard about from an associate would be characterized by the like. Meanwhile, the Edgedancers were probably trading dirty jokes with the stable hands as soon as they were out of earshot. 

[skaa]

On 11/26/2016 at 11:52 AM, DSC01 said:

...In WoR, it seems like such a clever little joke that the first Edgedancer we see is an uncouth street kid, when the historical Order had such a reputation for eloquence. However, with the evidence in Edgedancer, everything changes. If Lift applied this ability to the highfalutin types that she has so little time for, wouldn't they think she was an exceptionally eloquent young woman? No doubt they would. Of course historians and the like thought the Edgedancers were eloquent and refined. They valued those things, the highborn sources they talked to valued those things, and any encounter they had with an Edgedancer or heard about from an associate would be characterized by the like. Meanwhile, the Edgedancers were probably trading dirty jokes with the stable hands as soon as they were out of earshot. 

That imagery is just so awesome that I have no choice but to give in. Consider me converted to @Ookla the Indefinite's theory.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Ookla the Insipid

[physicskid]

without seeing another edge dancer we don't really know if the ability is common to them or unique to Lift. Maybe someone should ask? 

[DSC01]

It may get a RAFO because he doesn't want us to know too much about Resonances yet (which is not to say that we shouldn't try). I'm still pretty sold on that being the case, though. It might be somewhat different for Lift--indeed, my suspicion about how Resonances work is that they're all the same general ability, but it's a little different for every individual--but the evidence seems pretty compelling to me.

Granted, there is only a single line about the historical Edgedancers being very eloquent, but it seems like Lift also has that in her. During her final confrontation with Nalan, her speech patterns change in a very interesting way.

In the orphanage she shouts, "Darkness! The one they call Nin, or Nale! Nakku, the Judge! I'm here. It's me! The one you tried--and failed--to kill in Azir!" Then when she forces him to confront the Everstorm and the parshmen becoming Voidbringers she says, "I heard what you said, Darkness! You were trying to prevent the Desolation. Look behind you! Deny what you're seeing!" That is not how Lift usually talks. She hasn't suddenly become a master orator, but she is much more articulate than usual.

And that really squares with the Edgedancer vows. Remembering the forgotten and listening to the ignored doesn't really go hand-in-hand with eloquence, necessarily. It does, however, match up pretty precisely with the ability to always speak to someone in their own personal language. There's something special about talking to someone who uses the same words that you do and always puts things in a way that really resonates with you. I'd be really surprised if it turned out that Edgedancers don't all have some version of this ability.

[Kanrei]

4 hours ago, DSC01 said:

There's something special about talking to someone who uses the same words that you do and always puts things in a way that really resonates with you. I'd be really surprised if it turned out that Edgedancers don't all have some version of this ability.

I think this might be best description of ability.

As addition, Sanderson said that for example Lightweaver had mnemonic abilites but wording suggested not all of them or not all the same like Shallan has.

So Edgedancers Resonance might not be ability to use languages per se but ability to connect with other people. Speech is only one of many ways you can connect with someone.

When I think about it now, Lift changes not only her talking, its way he holds herself too. Different when he talks with street urchin and different, more regal when she talk to Darkness.
Even when she annoy scribes, she is doing it more from position of power which they can understand and relate to, and not in mean hurtful way.

[Jaconis]

On 11/25/2016 at 9:15 PM, Ookla the Indefinite said:

Yeah I would definitely say it sounds a lot like Connection, or at least the auto-magic translator part of Connection. That was part of my thought process for this, but it looks like I forgot to add that to my original post. Oops...

But I think it would be interesting if all the Resonances are a cross between a mundane ability turned up to 11 and a truly magical ability. So the Edgedancers' enhanced communicative abilites touch upon Connection, and the Lightweavers' mnemonic abilities could be related to Feruchemical Memory.

Mind. Blown. 

I've been thinking about this, and what Kaladin's and Jasnah's resonance may be, and what exactly they would translate to in a Realmatic sense. 

For Kaladin, I believe it's been said that he has something to do with his ability to lead? To have such orderly ranks among the order? I can't look now, so please correct me if I'm wrong, or point to the WoB if you can. With gravitation and adhesion, I can see that he makes people Gravitate to him, and then are intensely loyal to him? Maybe I'm pulling at straws here. Regardless, I can't find any sort of magic that would help this. Maybe identity or connection again?

For Jasnah, I believe I've seen a WoB saying that she has an unnaturally good sense of direction. For this, I have even less of an idea of its cause from a magic perspective. 

Thoughts?

[WeiryWriter]

Well we do have WoB that the Windrunner Resonance is "Strength of Squires". We just don't know what that means exactly. As for the Edgedancer Resonance, I'm definitely in the camp of it being enhanced geolocative abilities. I don't really have a good idea on an associated magical ability that they could be potentially tapping into though, which is why I didn't include them in my prior post.

That said we are reasonably sure the Skybreaker Resonance has to do with dividing the guilty from the innocent, which could very easily tie into the effect of Aon Kii (which causes those who are guilty to feel pain).

[Argent]

19 minutes ago, Jaconis said:

For Jasnah, I believe I've seen a WoB saying that she has an unnaturally good sense of direction. For this, I have even less of an idea of its cause from a magic perspective. 

I am pretty sure you are misremembering (unless you are thinking of a WoB I haven't seen). Are you thinking of this?

Quote

• 60

  ARGENT

  Shallan has this awesome Memory thing going on, Jasnah has this geolocation thing, Kaladin is a really good fighter - are those just their traits, or is there something supernatural going on?

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  There is something supernatural about those. Each Order... Well, how about this. If you look at scholars' interpretations, there are some scholars who think that these things are not supernatural, and some who think that they are. But, if you look, many Lightweavers had powerful mnemonic abilities.

  ARGENT

  So it's definitely tied to the Orders?

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  It's tied to the Orders. Now, I am not going to say that you've got them all 100% correct, but each Order, there are things that come with Order, things that do not add up from simple the "you get this power plus this power," there is something else going on. And I would say that for Windrunners, watch the number of squires and the power of the squires... these are abnormal for the Windrunners.

  ARGENT

  And each Order's squires are somehow different from the other Orders'?

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  Yeeeaaaa... some Orders do not have them.

  ARGENT

  But some have more?

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  Yea.

The reason I use Jasnah and geolocation as an example is because it was a popular theory at the time. Note that Brandon says I didn't necessarily have all of them right. We now know that my Kaladin example was definitely wrong, but that doesn't mean that the others were right.

So, unless you are thinking of a different WoB (and I can't think of another one that brings the topic of Elsecallers and their Resonance), we don't know if geolocation is it.

[Jaconis]

That was it! Thanks. So Elsecaller's isn't confirmed, and that's the one we don't have much basis for anyway. 

I still think the strength and number of squires makes sense for the Windrunner powers in the same way Connection makes sense for an Edgedancer, though I can make no other connection to it. 

The only other order I have any thoughts on are Truthwatchers. This assumes that Renarin is indeed one, but I can see how some form of foretelling exists for them. The progression of the world/surroundings/people is illuminated. We even have examples of this in other magics, like burning Atium, or for a non-god metal, burning Electrum. 

[Argent]

I think it is unwise to try to deduce an Order's Resonance(s) by trying to mechanically combine the Surges available to them. You need to do a lot of mental gymnastics to arrive at the Windrunners' "strength of squires" by starting with "Adhesion" and "Gravitation." I believe there has to be some connection between the Surges and the Resonance(s), but I doubt it's an obvious or even a direct one. 

Of course, my attempts to stomp out crackpot theorycrafting hasn't had any actual effect in the past, so who am I to speak...

[DSC01]

The foretelling thing is what I thought from the beginning with Renarin and Truthwatchers in general; although, after reading WoBs about something being odd about Renarin's spren, I do wonder.

With such a strong tradition of seeing the future being evil on Roshar, there must be something a little fishy here. Honor himself (or his Cognitive Shadow, anyway) said that he is very bad at seeing the future, and Cultivation is better at it, so it seems like some Radiants could have some foretelling ability. In all likelihood, this is an area in which Odium excels, and that's the reason for the tradition.

Being that we know that foretelling the future is something that all Shards can do to some degree and that other magic systems do have ways to see something of the future without having any link to Odium, we can safely say that the Rosharan belief in it being evil is off-base to some extent. I have a half-baked hypothesis that voidspren have corresponding forms among radiantspren (i.e. there are 10 Orders of Voidbringers, just like there are 10 Orders of Radiants, and they run parallel to each other in some way, even if it's not something as literal as "______form" is the evil version of an Edgedancer), and that Glys may actually be a voidspren that defected and is close enough to a Truthwatcher spren that he is able to give basically the same Surges to Renarin, with some possible small differences.

EDIT: I'm kind of getting offtrack from what this thread is even about, but I just wanted to mention that idea because in talking about Radiants' Resonances in general, the example we have in Renarin is suspect, and that's just an idea I had.

Edited November 28, 2016 by DSC01

[Jaconis]

47 minutes ago, Argent said:

I think it is unwise to try to deduce an Order's Resonance(s) by trying to mechanically combine the Surges available to them. You need to do a lot of mental gymnastics to arrive at the Windrunners' "strength of squires" by starting with "Adhesion" and "Gravitation." I believe there has to be some connection between the Surges and the Resonance(s), but I doubt it's an obvious or even a direct one. 

Of course, my attempts to stomp out crackpot theorycrafting hasn't had any actual effect in the past, so who am I to speak...

Oh I completely agree, and I'm not suggesting we use this method to come up with the Resonance for the Orders of which we have little to no knowledge. This is more just my internal rationalization for the resonance abilities we do know. 

It likely has zero basis for how they actually function. In particular, I can come up with no figurative interpretation of Lightweaver surges that get to Memory. As this is the one we know the best from WoB and the books, I think this pretty well and truly squashes this method of interpretation.

That said, the conversation Shallan and Pattern have after she convinces the deserters to help the caravan seems to me that there is some figurative component to the powers, which is what got me thinking of them this way to begin with. The full quote:

Quote

"They listened," Pattern said, buzzing from beside her. "You changed them."

"I can't believe it worked," Shallan Said.

"Ah...You are good with lies,"

"No, I mean, that was a figure of speech. It seems impossible that they'd actually listen to me. Hardened criminals."

"You are lies and truth," Pattern said softly. "They transform."

"What does that mean?" It was hard to sketch with only the light of Salas to see by, but she did her best.

"You spoke of one Surge, earlier," Pattern said. "Lightweaving, the power of light. But you have something else. The power of transformation."

"Soulcasting?" Shallan said. "I didn't Soulcast anyone."

"Mmmm. And yet, you transformed them. And yet. Mmmm."

---

Emphasis mine. Again, this doesn't have anything to do with her Resonance ability, but certainly suggests there are more to the Surges than meets the eye.

EDIT: And now that I am home and can look at your signature, I see you already started a thread on this very subject. I'll read that and continue the discussion there to not derail this anymore than I already have.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Jaconis

[djammmer]

4 hours ago, Jaconis said:

"Soulcasting?" Shallan said. "I didn't Soulcast anyone."

"Mmmm. And yet, you transformed them. And yet. Mmmm."

That Shallan quote is amazing!   I love that I can read Sanderson, and then come here and get something like this pointed out; that completely changes my paradigm - and makes me want to read the whole thing again.

And the fact that Pattern (who is quite excelled at recognizing patterns) sees a pattern between what Shallan can do explicitly with her powers... and what she does implicitly with people (w/o her powers)... (lies & transformation)... And pattern sees that as the "same pattern".   She "soulcast people".    Count me as an initiate of this theory.  I love it!

[maxal]

6 hours ago, DSC01 said:

The foretelling thing is what I thought from the beginning with Renarin and Truthwatchers in general; although, after reading WoBs about something being odd about Renarin's spren, I do wonder.

With such a strong tradition of seeing the future being evil on Roshar, there must be something a little fishy here. Honor himself (or his Cognitive Shadow, anyway) said that he is very bad at seeing the future, and Cultivation is better at it, so it seems like some Radiants could have some foretelling ability. In all likelihood, this is an area in which Odium excels, and that's the reason for the tradition.

Being that we know that foretelling the future is something that all Shards can do to some degree and that other magic systems do have ways to see something of the future without having any link to Odium, we can safely say that the Rosharan belief in it being evil is off-base to some extent. I have a half-baked hypothesis that voidspren have corresponding forms among radiantspren (i.e. there are 10 Orders of Voidbringers, just like there are 10 Orders of Radiants, and they run parallel to each other in some way, even if it's not something as literal as "______form" is the evil version of an Edgedancer), and that Glys may actually be a voidspren that defected and is close enough to a Truthwatcher spren that he is able to give basically the same Surges to Renarin, with some possible small differences.

EDIT: I'm kind of getting offtrack from what this thread is even about, but I just wanted to mention that idea because in talking about Radiants' Resonances in general, the example we have in Renarin is suspect, and that's just an idea I had.

And to think I had merely thought Renarin had the ability to tell if someone is lying....