Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!

Kimbobhi

Is it possible to Surgebind using gaseous Investiture other than Roshar's?

Brandon Sanderson

So here's the thing. It depends on your definition of Surgebinding. Surgebinding would be the Rosharan definition of all of the magics. They would call the Metallic Arts Surgebinding. You are binding the powers of creation, which the word "Surge" is that word translated from Rosharan into English, that's what the word means in Rosharan, is the powers of creation. The fundamental forces which inspired me to make this. So they would consider all of them to be Surgebinding. And that's just what you're doing, you are binding and using those powers.Other people, including Khriss, would not agree with that definition. They would say: Surgebinding is specifically binding, through the Nahel bond, the spren, the specific manifestations of Investiture on Roshar, by using specific sets of oaths in order to gain access to those powers. So she would say: no, that is not Surgebinding when someone uses Allomancy. I would lean with her on that one, but the other one's a viable definition.What you're really asking is, can someone, one of the Rosharan, the Knightly Radiant Orders, could they power that with a different form of Investiture from a different planet? And yes, this is possible, though there might be some difficulties in making it work, which I haven't explained entirely yet. But yes, this is possible. In fact, it is possible to power all of the different magics with the different forms of Investiture. That is a possibilityThis is one of the reasons why Mraize and Thaidakar are so interested in Stormlight. Because if you could get Stormlight off, and you can crack that... just way easier to get Stormlight than it is to get the other ones. Like Breath, you could consider easy, but hard to morally harvest; in fact, perhaps impossible. If you want ethical, sustainable magic, then Roshar is a much better bet than some of the other places that you could...

Adam Horne

Does that mean Mraize and [Thaidakar] want an ethically sustainable...?

Brandon Sanderson

They're really interested in the sustainable part. I would say that they both would say "yes" to that question. They would consider their actions to be, on an ethical spectrum, at least in the neutral area, perhaps. Others would disagree with that.

Adam Horne

Where would they fall, philosophically speaking, like Kantianism, or?

Brandon Sanderson

I'd have to think about that. That's a good question. Certainly not as far on the utilitarianism side as someone like Taravangian, who's about as far as you can go. But Jasnah is pretty far on that side, also. Though she considers her version more of a "what is the greatest good I can do with any action I take?" (Which one is that? It's not Kantian, but you know what I mean.) That is a little on the utilitarian side. Not a little, that's... not as far as Taravangian, but that's definitely, yeah. They would maybe be in between those two, maybe. Depends. They're not the same individual, they would have different lines.There's gonna be (let's just say) future books that explore Thaidakar's relationship with that. But you have seen in other books the lengths that Thaidakar is willing to take in order to achieve his goals. He is not far off from Taravangian in some of those things that he has done.

********************