Greetings, oh my people, fellow fans of the Cosmere! Welcome back to the next installment of Stormlight Archive review! This week, we’ll take a good hard look at what we know about fabrials, those wonders of modern technology that attempt to make life easier for the… well, probably not the average Rosharan, just yet, but not for Navani’s lack of trying. We’ll look at what they can do, and then what little we know of how they’re made.
Warning: This series will contain spoilers for all of The Stormlight Archive published so far, and will occasionally draw on Words of Brandon for supporting information. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers for other series, or to mark them if they really need to be included. I make no promises about the comment section; however, I’d request that if you want to include spoilers in a comment, please try to white-text them or at least tag them as spoilers so people can skip your comment.
With that said, let’s get going. What do we know about fabrials, anyway?
A solid basis for the mechanics comes from Khriss’s Ars Arcanum, where she explains five groups of fabrials. I’ll use that as a starting point, but there’s much, much more to dig out, especially since there are some fabrials that appear to be outside the list she addresses. So we’ll start off with what we know of the mechanics of fabrial science as it currently exists on Roshar, look at the ones that don’t fit these categories, and then move into how fabrials are created.
The Mechanical Function of Fabrials
Khriss names three larger groupings of Fabrials, explaining how they work in general, so we’ll start with those.
Altering Fabrials
These are the fabrials that either enhance or diminish some particular effect, be it physical, emotional, or sensational.
Navani’s “pain knife” would be an example of what Khriss refers to as Augmenters. The blades of the knife itself would presumably cause injury, which (I assume) would be augmented by the fabrial to produce crippling pain. Her notes imply that it could be used to cause pain without piercing the skin, though, so… maybe just creating pain? Khriss uses the Vedan “half-shard” shields as another example, in which the durability of the metal is enhanced by the fabrial. The grandbows, or “Shardbows,” which require the enhanced strength of Shardplate to draw, are probably the same; the fabrial strengthens the structure so that the metal doesn’t warp under the strain. I assume that the heater, cooler, and hotplate fabrials, fairly common by the time we reach Oathbringer, are also a form of augmenters… but they make me wonder if “augmenter” is a misnomer, since they seem to generate rather than merely augment the heat or the cold. Maybe we’ll learn more about this later.
Buy the Book
Rhythm of War
The painrial Navani demonstrates on Adolin (The Way of Kings, chapter 60) would be an example of the Diminisher version of altering fabrials; in this case, it diminishes the pain of a pulled muscle without numbing his hand at all. At that time, she mentions hoping to make it useful on the battlefield, as well as in surgeries, and there are later indications that she succeeded.
As we see in Oathbringer, she also made the kind of improvements on it that allow her to include a very small painrial with her wrist-clock bracers. One fascinating note, though: Navani seems to have figured out how to make one fabrial perform both functions: it’s supposed to be a painrial to diminish pain, but she also designed it to generate pain, as she so elegantly demonstrates when captured by Sadeas soldiers in Thaylen City. (And we know she designed it that way, because she mentions testing it on herself.) So… does the mechanism involve two different gemstones in one device, or does she “reverse the polarity” and make the same gemstone have two opposite effects?
Pairing Fabrials
The next type of fabrials also have two aspects. These are fabrials created by splitting a single gemstone and using one half to affect the other. Everything we’ve seen so far involves physical movement of the gemstones, and there seems to be a distance effect—the greater the distance, the less reliable the connection under strain.
The spanreeds we see throughout the series are a good example of the Conjoiner type: when you move one half, the other half moves in exactly the same direction. In spanreeds, when you write with one of a pair, the other one reproduces your exact motions and writes the same thing, wherever it is. Since these are small and light, the distance effect seems to be minimal, and more a matter of delay than strain.
The opposite type is called a Reverser and, as you might guess, mimics the action in reverse. We first observe this in Words of Radiance chapter 35, where Navani is testing her archery tower design. The split gemstones are placed in two different platforms—one mounted up on a parapet, the other on the ground. When the fabrial is activated, pulling the upper platform down causes the lower one to rise. Navani seems to have great plans for this idea, but we only see it in the testing stages here. She does note that distance and strain are significant issues for something this large, but she hopes that they can be used reliably on the Shattered Plains, with the relatively near proximity of warcamp to battle. As far as I can recall, we never got to see them used. There is some indication that the lifts in Urithiru may use something of the same technology, with counterweights connected to the ifts by fabrials rather than physical means.
Warning Fabrials
The only one I know for sure fits in this category is the one we saw in The Way of Kings, Interlude 4, which Rysn set up for her babsk, Vstim; she was able to filter out the people in their camp, and then set it to give warning if anyone else approached. Help me out, here: have we seen this effect anywhere else? I couldn’t find anything.
Attractor Fabrials
This is a new style that first appears in Words of Radiance, and (as you might guess from the name) are fabrials that attract a specific substance. (For reasons unknown, Khriss doesn’t seem aware of these. However, WoB says that our favorite author just forgot to update the Ars Arcanum to include them. If you want to go breaking the fourth wall and stuff.) We see one in action, when Shallan first visits the Ghostbloods warcamp lair in Chapter 43; she sees a fabrial that collects the smoke from the hearth. Later (Chapter 67) Navani mentions the idea of using that same type of fabrial, except with water instead of smoke, to build a pump mechanism. Much later, then, we see that if she hasn’t got a pump going yet, she has built a highly effective dehumidifier—so effective that it draws the humidity of the Weeping from the air in a partially enclosed pavilion, allowing Dalinar’s archers to use bows during the Battle of Narak.
Implicit in the concept of Attractors is the existence of Repellor fabrials. While we haven’t seen any of these (that I can think of, anyway), another WoB confirms their existence.
Other Modern Fabrials
There are a small handful of other fabrials that I’m not sure where to place. Clocks, ceiling fans, floodlights, and stabilizers are all mentioned, and I’m not sure what makes them… tick, as it were. At the time of Kaladin’s childhood, clocks are known but not terribly common; his father has the only one in Hearthstone, and no one but Lirin cares about timing that accurate anyway. The rarity is probably a combination of wealth and the availability of fabrial technology; while it’s clear that great strides are being made in fabrial technology, it’s probably only readily available to those with the money (mostly up dahn and upper nahn) and the access (cities more than rural areas). In any case, we see a lot more clocks around when we get to the later books. But I have no idea how they work, or how they could fit into any of the above categories. Likewise, what drives a ceiling fan? How does a floodlight work that’s different from a mere lantern? And what kind of fabrial behavior allows you to stabilize an ocean-going ship‽
There’s also a fabrial specifically for draining part of the Stormlight from a gem—apparently used by Hatham to make sure his jewelry has just the right subdued glow. Oh, and let’s not forget Navani’s emotion-reading bracelet design in The Way of Kings—maybe that’s a sort of Warning Fabrial, since it reads the emotions of people nearby? Or maybe it’s a modified Attractor, lighting up when a specific emotion triggers it? I don’t know.
Ancient Fabrials
Then there are the magnificent fabrials of the ancients, handed down for generations upon generations, and only barely understood. These are the things that, at best, modern Rosharans are able to use; they have no idea how to recreate them nor adapt their technology. Soulcasters are the obvious and familiar one, of course; while the artifabrians are sometimes able to repair a broken one, they have no idea how they are made. The Regrowth fabrial appears in several of Dalinar’s visions, and Nale apparently has a working one in his possession, which he uses on Szeth. Finally, there are the Oathgates, which are apparently controlled by some kind of intelligent (and huge) spren, and… Urithiru. We don’t really know this last, I guess, but when Renarin theorizes that the whole tower, with its crystal veins and multi-gemstone-pillar heart, is a whole collection of fabrials that make one great City fabrial, I believe he’s right. It just makes so much sense to me.
And that’s the best I can do at categorizing all the fabrials identified in the books so far. Did I miss any?
The Art of the Artifabrian
It’s all well and good to know what fabrials do, but how are they made? We’ve been learning in bits and pieces as we go along, so lets just summarize it here, shall we? One quick note: In the engineering terminology, the gemstone itself is actually the fabrial, and the rest of the apparatus it powers is the machine, but common usage dubs the whole thing “fabrial.” I’m using the latter sense, and specifying the gemstone when the it needs to be distinguished from the mechanism.
Fabrication
According to modern Rosharan technology, in order to create a fabrial, the first thing you have to do is trap a spren. ::gulp:: So far as we know, all of the modern fabrials make use of the plentiful types of non-sapient spren. These are the spren of physical phenomena (heatspren, coldspren, gravityspren, etc.) and of emotions or sensations (painspren, angerspren, joyspren, anticipationspren, etc.)
Trapping spren seems to involve two primary requirements. One, you need a gemstone with the color and cut most appealing to the particular kind of spren you want to attract.. For example, the heatspren used in the heater fabrials apparently prefer rubies, and they probably all use a specific cut. Two, you also need something the spren loves—basically, you need the thing that draws it to the Physical Realm in the first place. Using the same example, one would assume you provide a source of heat near or around the gemstone, I guess? When you combine these two things, along with patience and perseverance, you trap a spren in a gemstone.
Once you have the trapped spren, the mechanism uses metal—much like electricity—to transmit the desired effects. Many of the fabrials are described with “wire cages” for the gemstones, for example, and most of Navani’s creations seem to be metal, sometimes set in leather like the clock/painrial bracers she and Dalinar wear.
As with all cool things on Roshar, they’re powered by Stormlight. One of Navani’s designs specifically shows a cover which can be removed in order to recharge the gemstone, but most don’t say anything. It makes me wonder: do people have to take their fabrials out in highstorms to recharge them? Do they remove the gemstones from the mechanisms and take those out in the highstorm? Do they have some way to use a gemstone without a trapped spren to infuse a gemstone with a spren, sort of a battery effect? Maybe that thing of Hatham’s can be used more generically to transfer Stormlight from one gemstone to another? As an engineer myself, these are practical questions I have, and as near as I can tell, they haven’t yet been answered. (Correct me if I missed it!)
Moral Questions
This whole process raises a number of thorny moral questions for the reader. Is it okay to trap spren? Are they slaves once they’re harnessed in a fabrial? Are these kinds of non-sapient spren, the ones that merely follow the emotion, sensation, or physical object which attracts them—are they really any different than, say, the fish trapped in your fishtank? Is some level of intelligence required in order for “slave” to have any meaning? I have, tentatively, come down on the side that says this is morally not much different than using a wind turbine or solar panel to generate electricity. At worst, it might compare with using horses or oxen to pull a wagon or a plow (okay, a century ago, but whatever). That is, of course, based on the assumption that these truly are non-sapient spren, aware only of the thing that attracts them, and that this is the only kind of spren the artifabrians can capture.
What About the Ancient Fabrials?
That seems to be a generally valid assumption for modern technology, so I’m okay with it until I learn differently. It does, however, raise other questions. These modern fabrials mostly mimic things that could, albeit with more difficulty, be done by strictly mechanical means. What about the ancient fabrials? What kind of spren did they trap to make a Soulcaster, or a Regrowth fabrial? Or an Oathgate? Or a city-tower? Or are those on a different level completely?
Some few answers seem logical. Dalinar saw Regrowth fabrials used in some of his visions during Desolations. Given that they were mostly being used by Knights Radiant, I cannot believe that they deceptively trapped the same kinds of sapient spren who could bond to form new Radiants, but… then what? Word of Brandon says that, like Soulcasters, fabrials could be made to replicate all of the Surges used by the Heralds and the Radiants. What spren powered those?
Or is there something different going on with them? We saw Dalinar use this knowledge of fabrial construction to pull in Nergaoul and imprison him in the perfect ruby called the King’s Drop, so … there’s that: Spren, even great spren, can be sucked into a gemstone. On the other hand, we know that they habitually replace the gemstones in the Soulcaster fabrials if they crack, as well as actually repairing the devices when they’re damaged. (Navani explains in a message to Jasnah that Soulcasters need to have their gem housings realigned “more often than you’d think.”) No big deal… until you realize that, if they can replace the gemstones with impunity, there are clearly no spren trapped in the gemstones. And if they can repair the metal parts as well… well, where would the spren be?
If the ancient fabrials don’t use trapped spren, what are they and how do they work? This seems to be a highly significant difference between the ancient fabrials and the modern ones, and it sure would be nice to know what it means. As usual, there is still a lot we don’t know about the subject of this week’s study. It seems to be the story of my life.
Well, that one was a little shorter and more manageable. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the research! Next week at this time, we’ll take a little different tack: Drew McCaffrey will bring you up to date on The State of the Cosmere. Sort of a … Cosmere 201 seminar, which we can all use, from one of the masters of Cosmerology. The following week, I’ll be back along with Megan Kanne to take a good hard look at the secret societies functioning on Roshar. In the meantime, Comments Ahoy!
Alice is a Sanderson Beta-Reader, mega-fan, and occasional theory-crafter. She takes great pride in the moment at Emerald City Comic Con 2018 when, in conversation about some disputed fan interpretation of a scene, Sanderson said, “You’re right. Just tell them I said, ‘Alice is always right.’” She is also an administrator of two Facebook fan groups: The Stormlight Archive (spoilers allowed for Stormlight books only; everything else has to be spoiler-tagged) and the Storm Cellar (Sanderson fans loosely centered around the Tor rereads, spoilers for all Sanderson books allowed).
Thanks so much for the review!! I know almost nothing about fabrials, it was very helpful. I’d never even thought about the fact that soulcasters would probably have had trapped spren; I I wonder if that’s the reason radiants and non-radiants experience soulcasting differently. Unless there’s some other hidden gem that hasn’t been hinted at, maybe a tiny perfect gem of some kind that a spren is trapped in, but since Shallan had both her soulcaster and Jasnah’s at different times she’d probably have noticed that. But when non-radiants use soulcasters (object), isn’t it true that they can mostly only do one or two things? And the soulcaster (person) becomes subject to the changes they enact on other things as well, which was very viscerally illustrated by a smoke-soulcaster in one of the interlude chapters. These people eventually get used up and die, turning into the thing they once made. Radiants don’t seem to experience that, or else Jasnah is hiding a lot of things.
And how DO they charge the gems? Most people charge their spheres by leaving them out somewhere secure, even the wealthy, so if there was some established method of transferring stormlight from sphere to sphere the banks would probably be doing that for them instead, with some reserve of large gems whose only purpose is as a stormlight reserve (like Lirin’s gem reserve which served as a light source). Correct me if I’m wrong but with one big exception I don’t think we’ve ever seen a radiant transfer stormlight into a gem either – and arguably even Dalinar didn’t do that, he charged them with the same mechanism that the Highstorm does. So they’d have to leave them out for the storm somehow, right?
As far as trapping spren, do you think there’s a connection to how the Listeners change form by letting spren into their gemhearts? (I am understanding that correctly right?) In fact Venli discovered Stormform after trapping an associated spren. It seemed like after her own transformation she was able to essentially mass-produce gems with trapped Storm spren, so it must not be terribly difficult to entice a spren into a gem, it may be that all you have to do is cut the right gem to the right shape and they’ll just hang out there full-time by their own choice. So maybe instead of a cage, it’s more like a birdhouse. You create the space and it’s just nice for the spren and it’s there by choice, you just have to expose the gem to the circumstances that would attract those spren so that one will notice it and take up residence. Then you’re able to use its presence to manipulate the surrounding material world.
OR it could somehow be connected to the interesting properties we’ve seen in spren, like how once you’ve measured it it will hold that metric (apparently indefinitely). Maybe you get some spren, label them somehow so you can track them, then once one is in the gem you choose you check the box that says “in the gem” and then the spren is like “yep that’s me I’m the one in the gem” and it just stays there because someone happened to make a note of that. Safe to say there’s a lot we still don’t know.
If gemstones can capture powerful spen such as the unmade, what would happen if the Stormfather was captured? Would the highstorms ceace to exist? If that’s the case, that would certainly be a huge blow to the Knights Radiant, cutting off their supply of stormlight. Maybe we’ll see the fused attempt to accomplish this in some later book.
Re: Warning Fabrials, I think we’ve seen them in one other place: > In Secret History, the artifact that the IRE were using to detect Threnodian interlopers (conveniently missing our favorite Scadrian interloper) is described as a gemstone in a cage of wire.< Of course, the person looking at it didn’t know what they were seeing at the time.
Did we see Reversers in use in the same section as the de-humidifier attractors at the battle of Narak? WoR, chapter 82.
Or was that simple non-magical engineering?
I had assumed it was fabrials, but re-reading the passage just now I’m not as certain as I once was.
Alice. Well articulated summary. I was surprised, however, that you did not discuss the apparent effects on those who consistently use Soulcasters. As oafgeek @1 noted, “the soulcaster (person) becomes subject to the changes they enact on other things as well, which was very viscerally illustrated by a smoke-soulcaster in one of the interlude chapters. These people eventually get used up and die, turning into the thing they once made.”
While it is apparent that the Soulcaster’s phyiscal form gets used up and they die, does that have an effect on their soul? Do they remain as a ghost or can they move on to the Spiritual Realm like others who die? I also would like an explanation as to how using the Soulcaster constantly over time causes the user to be used up? How does that work? Would somebody who only uses a Soulcaster once have a tiny bit of them used up; but not enough to have any noticeable effect on his/her body? Or does repeated use create some time of connection (in the same way that the Nahel bond creates a connection between KR and spren)? Perhaps it is this connection, that only once it us open and active, begins the “draining process.” I am guessing that most, if not all, my questions are RAFO. Oh well. Hopefully we will get answers to these questions in the next 2 books (rather than have to wait for books 6-10 or no answers at all).
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
For modern fabrials, I don’t think the fact that the gems are replaced means the spren aren’t in there – perhaps there’s a way to transfer the spren. Or you replace with a gem that already has a new spren of the same type trapped inside and, throw the old gem and spren away?
For ancient fabrials, I do think there are high spren inside, but I don’t think they are trapped. I think they agree to it. If you’ve read the unpublished Aether of Night, there is a type of high Aedin that bond and make a Copate. Essentially turn themselves into a lamppost or a taxi but become essentially immortal. Raeth muses about why someone might choose this kind of life. I think a trapped high spren would be kind of like that – although it seems from our tour of the cognitive realm that they can still interact with spren and other folks in the cognitive realm.
Also, any theories on how modern fabrials work has got to also explain why the users gradually turn into the things they soulcast! Is that specific to soulcasting and why??
The transformation of the soulcaster ardent might be similar to the forms of the parsh. The soulcaster (person) bonds with the spren of the soulcaster (object) and transforms. The gems in the soulcaster are like an external version of the gemhearts that the native fauna seems to need to bond with spren. Fabrials are like artificial versions of native creatures that use gems to bond with spren and gain new abilities. If it is a symbiosis, what do the spren powering fabrials gain? With diminishers they might “eat” what they absorb, but the opposite should cost them energy.
A pain fabrial that can absorb and cause pain might work like a battery that stores pain and later releases it again.
@@.-@ I too believe they used the reversers at Narak. They push the rocks into the chasm, the paired gems lift the canvas into the air. Seems pretty clear to me. They don’t mention setting up frames and pulleys at any time. Also, the big blue light that got lifted up to signal the start of the battle was probably a form of reverser as well.
@1 Shallen pushed storm light into the oath gate gems right at the end of WoR. She says something about not really understanding what she was doing.
Also in Oathbrringer one of the ardents mentions infusing some of the devices but they still can’t figure out what the devices do. We don’t actually see it happen, but there’s obviously a way to do it not requiring a radiant.
@@@@@ 1 oafgeek
Actually, Shallan had to recharge the gemstones in the Narak Oathgate at the end of WoR. She was calling for everyone to give her whatever stormlight they had so she could power the platform.
EDIT: Thanks, @@@@@8! That’ll teach me to refresh before posting lol
Thanks for that! So radiants can do it, and presumably there’s also a fabrial that can do it. If you can infuse a gem with stormlight, and you can power a fabrial with that gem, and use that fabrial to transfer stormlight to or from other gems… how long until Navani invents a transistor circuit? Navani: “Look at this Dalinar, this device can calculate both addition and subtraction!” Dalinar: “So can Renarin.” Kaladin: “True but not Adolin. Zing!”
All I’m saying is that if Taravangian had really been that smart he would have designed a supercomputer instead of a house-of-cards world domination plot. You want humanity to survive? Give them tools, that’s what Taln was offering when he first came back from Damnation and as a herald I think he’s got a good bit of experience helping humanity survive. But nooo, gotta dominate the whole planet myself, that’s the only way the world really gets saved. Sure, sure, gotcha buddy. You’re not evil, you’re just looking out for humanity. Sure.
So excited for the secret societies!!! Bring em on!
Wasn’t Shallan’s father using the stone fabrial? He wasn’t shown as being stone like. Or did he have special fabrial users we just weren’t aware of?
Really enjoying these, so thank you for doing them. I am not sure you have all these planed out yet, however any chance on having one covering the topic of Stormlight? Would be interested to hear more in depth knowledge about this stuff.
Thanks again for the great content.
@goddessimho, Lin Davar wasn’t personally operating the fabrial, he was just the owner.
@5 – The Spiritual Realm is not the afterlife, though that’s a common misconception. The Spiritual Realm is a realm of pure energy/Investiture. It is the source of all the magic systems in the Cosmere.
Oh, I can’t wait for the secret societies one :) Soooo many secrets!
I have to admit, a lot of the fabrial stuff just makes me glaze over a little…I’m basically okay with knowing what they are or how they work. To me the most interesting aspect of them is the possibile implications for what it can tell us about spren. But man there is so much detail/worldbuilding going on here :)
@10 oafgeek
Adolin, “chop busted fellow adult, chop busted.” Renarin, “you know Kaladin, when you toss that dice, you are now creating 6 different timelines.” Kaladin, “There are no other timelines Abed, I mean Kaladin!” ;)
First off, I feel really stupid… I thought I’d posted this last week, and here it still sits in draft form. Ugh. But late or not, here it is.
oafgeek @1 – Oh. My. Stars. And. Storms. I completely forgot to address the effects of the Soulcaster fabrials on their users!! I really, really need to fix that. Totally my bad; I was focused on the mechanics and forgot about the effects. That’s really a pity, because it’s a fascinating effect, and you have to wonder why that would happen. Rife for speculation, isn’t it?
About infusing gemstones… We haven’t been told if there’s a way to do it “normally,” other than leaving them out in the highstorm. The Radiants can do it, as mentioned by several already. But fabrials, including some pretty large fabrials, have been in place well before that. Plus there’s that proliferation of heater-fabrials in Urithiru during Oathbringer, and no indication that their few Radiants are running around re-infusing everyone’s radiators when they run low, so on a bet there’s a way to do it, and we just haven’t been shown yet.
There are pretty strong indications that the way the listeners take their forms is indeed similar to trapping spren in gemstones, though Eshonai thinks of it as very different. She hates the idea of trapping the spren in stones to “guarantee” getting the right form when she goes into the storm, and thinks:
The right way was to go into the highstorm with the proper attitude, singing the proper song to attract the proper spren. You bonded it in the fury of the raging storm and were reborn with a new body. People had been doing this from the arrival of the first winds.
From one perspective, you can see that it’s different, and it very much fits the birdhouse analogy; the spren presumably does not think of bonding with a listener (or singer) as being “trapped” at all, much less enslaved. (Assuming they can think, anyway.) I don’t know that we can say the spren would feel much different about a gemstone than they do about a gemheart. But we can’t say the opposite, either.
stormtrooper375 @2 – I don’t believe the Stormfather causes the storms any more than flamespren cause fires. He’s the personification of the force, but if he were captured the storms would still happen. IMO.
Landis963 @3 – Well… it’s certainly an analogous device, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily a fabrial. Removing a spren from Roshar’s vicinity, even in Shadesmar, is problematic.
Jeremy @@.-@ – on careful review, I think it was both mechanical and magical engineering at play with the archer pavilions. The first thing we see is Dalinar noting that the rocks were attached to ropes (which is partly why I didn’t make the connection), and then later he notes the lack of supporting poles making the archers nervous. So clearly the tarps are held up by the fabrials. But I’m also betting that the other half of the fabrials, the part attached to the rocks, are very carefully attached to ten-foot ropes. For one thing, they want their fabrials to be retrievable, but more than that, if they just dropped the counterweight all the way to the bottom of the chasm, the tarps would go flying an equal distance up and would be no use at all.
So yes, I missed the reversers at work, but Dalinar’s observation was correct – the rocks were attached to ropes. It’s just that the ropes weren’t attached to the tarps. (Also, it never says, but I have to assume they ended up abandoning those fabrials after all, rather than trying to retrieve them and pack them up when they were escaping.)
Andrew @5 – As noted above, I just completely forgot to address the Soulcaster fabrial’s effect on the user. I don’t even have any good theories for why it happens. I wish I did.
Nicola @6 – I suppose it’s possible that the heater fabrials (for example) have removable trapped-spren gemstones, and they have enough of those to swap them out for recharging, but … it doesn’t make much sense to me. Then again, I’m now kind of attached to that idea that they have a way to recharge that Brandon hasn’t bothered to tell us about yet!
I’ve had the same thought about the ancient fabrials, though I hadn’t made the connection to Aether. (It’s been MUCH too long since I read that!). I’m just not sure what would be in it for the spren; they’re already immortal.
birgit @7 – It’s as good an explanation as any. I recall formulating a question for Brandon, which I never got to ask, something about whether the Soulcaster fabrials were akin to Shardplate, which is still sort of alive and assumed to be made from “cousin spren,” or like Shardblades, trapped in the form they held at the moment their bond was broken, or something else entirely. As far as we know right now, and of those three possibilities exist, right? But the idea that the Soulcaster fabrial is more of a go-between gemheart is pretty cool, and not something I’d thought of.
goddessimho @12 – I think the Davar steward, Luesh, was the one actually using the Soulcaster, but we don’t know because no one has seen it used. It’s kind of implied, since the fabrial belonged to the Ghostbloods – and so did Luesh – that Lin Davar didn’t necessarily know how to use it. Being who he was, I can readily believe he insisted on carrying it himself and allowing Luesh to use it when he wanted to “find” new wealth. But there’s also the possibility that he was learning to use it himself. We just don’t know, and probably never will, because Lin & Luesh are both dead.
Tyler @13 – I’m always open to more topics, and will keep going with the series as long as it takes to cover stuff… or until RoW comes out, anyway. (After that, part of me is going to want to go edit all of these to reflect the things we learn there!) I’ll have to think about the Stormlight idea; I’m not entirely sure what I could say about it. I might figure out a way to address the magic system as a whole, just to collect it all in one post, and that would definitely address the topics of Stormlight, as well as (what little we know of ) Voidlight.
One other thing I forgot to mention and had intended to include: the Shin for some reason don’t use fabrials – or at least they won’t buy them from traders. Vstim notes that “they find them worthless. Or unholy. Or too holy to use.” On a guess, the origin would be something to do with the spren and the current attitude primarily tradition, but there’s just so much we don’t know – about spren, about fabrials, and about the Shin!
If spren can’t leave Roshar, what happens to Hoid’s spren when he goes elsewhere? If Jasnah can’t visit other worlds that limits the usefulness of the travelling Surge.
@birgit:
There’s a WoB that it is possible to get a spren off Roshar, but not easy, and you have to figure out the trick in order to do it. I wonder if Hoid knows that, or if he may have temporarily trapped himself there.
I interpret “off Roshar” as more “leave the Rosharan system,” which includes Braize and Ashyn. And yes, it’s a limit. Does Brandon create unlimited magic systems?
On ancient fabrials, maybe more of them have a model similar to the Oathgates and what we saw in Oathbringer. There, it seemed less that the spren were trapped so much as connected to the gate. It could be that the Radiants made bargains with some spren to grant their powers to non Radiant users in exchange for stormlight (and possibly, the users’ essences in the case of soulcasters).
I’m about a month late to this party, but I have a theory. I think that the Soulcasters and Regrowers don’t use spren at all, and instead they access the surge directly, much in the way that the ancient Surgebinders did before destroying their planet and escaping to Roshar, where they discovered the Nahel bond which uses the spren to temper or filter the effect of the surges. Thus, someone using a Soulcaster is tapping into the raw power of the Surge of Transformation, and can’t help but be transformed themselves.
The process of using a soulcaster has been described in the books:
To me it seems to describe how the soulcaster acts as a medium, that allows the user to connect to a commanding and powerful spren in shadesmar. Probably very similar to the spren of the Oathgates. I would go so far as to say that the spren of the Oathgates are spren that controls the surge of Transportation, just like the spren connected to by a soulcaster controls the surge of transformation. If that makes sense.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/259/#e8742 :: Soulcaster does not feed on user body, the reason for smoke is savantism
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/332/#e9533 :: B.S. comments on Kaza interlude in Oathbringer