Magic Systems

Roshar's arts divide into a handful of named systems. Fabrial science is the practical one, building devices around cut gemstones that hold Stormlight and spend it to produce heat, light, warning, or motion. Surgebinding is the older power, the one the Knights Radiant were said to wield, drawn from the same Surges that fabrials imitate. Voidbinding sits opposite it in the scholarly charts, described in ten levels much as Surgebinding is and understood by almost nobody. The Old Magic is separate again, sought from the Nightwatcher by those willing to travel west and ask her for a boon, and it works by rewriting something in the person rather than by any gemstone at all.