So standard Honor drived surgebinders have 10 order acessing the 10 surges. But there are 9 bands of fused, acessing only 9 of the surges. The Fused do not seem to count Adhesion as a 'real' surge, being purely of Honor. Indeed, Stormfather later insinuates the same thing, calling Ahesion "Honors purest surge".

The thing is, it is stated repeatedly in the differing versions of the Ars Arcanum that Voidbinding has 10 levels. Leaving aside the issue of weather the Fused, the Regals, the Radiants with corrupted/enlightened spren, or maybe even something else yet unseen, are the 'true' Voidbinders, this raises an issue. How can you have 10 orders/levels (I will get to that one in another post), with only nine surges?

Put on your aluminum-foil hats, people, this is going to be a deep rabbit-hole.

My theory is that Voidbinders do not have acess to Adhesion. They have a yet unseen (?) eleventh surge. In much the same way that Adhesion is the 'purest surge' of Honor. The nine surges used by the Fused are, for what of a better word, 'native' surges. They are inherit properties of the Rosharan system's physics, possibly predating the Shard's arrival, while Adhesion was introduced by Honor- Maybe this was a deliberate action on his part, for some reason, but more likely IMHO it was just a passive effect of his powers seeping into the system. Because Roshar is trishardic, I predict that Odium and Cultivation will, in the same way, have an eleventh and twelfth surge associated with them.

This 'Surge no. 11' will be called 'Odiums purest surge'.

What will this be? Well, Adhesion is both a literal physical force, but is also metaphorically tied to the concept of Honor- as in binding things togeather- and to the under-the-hood mechanics of the Nahel bond- Binding spren and humans togeather. Odium's surge will likely be similar. Since Odium's intent is not hatred exactly, but rather Passion, intense emotions of any kind, perhaps this surge is similar to Allomantically Rioting? Perhaps the Thrill generated by the Unmade is a specialised accplication of this surge? We do not have much to go on, but the possibilities are intriguing.

And now we get to the wierest part of all of this: Cultivation and her mysterious magic system.

The Ars ARcanums note that there should be three major magic systems. Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and... the other one. It notes that this may be the Old Magic, but suspects that it may be 'something else entirely'. The latter certainly makes sense. The Old Magic has virtually nothing in common with either Surgebinding or Voidbinding. From what we have seen,(Not counting Lift, because of course she would throw a wrench into this) it does not consume light, does not have anything to do with any of the known Surges, and its effects are entirely are entirely passive in nature.

I would assume that Cultivations system would have a 'ten-surge, ten-order' structure like the other two. In this hypothetical system, what woudl be Cultivation's 'god surge'? Well, the existing surge of Progression seems like it woudl be a dead ringer for Cultivation's surge, but it appears to be one of the Native Nine. So the other options?

Progression heals things, and makes things grow, but does not appear to fundamentally alter them- the healing is tied to self image, and the plant-growth aspect follows the plants pre-writen DNA. Cultivation's pure surge, I guess, would be broadly similar to Progesssion, but in a way that does fundamentally alter the subject. Maybe not just healing, but reshaping it, like genetic engineering or something adjacent. Or maybe it is growth at a price.

Bingo.

Those who get Boons through the Old Magic are not 'users' of the Cultivation surgebinding family- they are people who have had its unique tenth surge used on them. Those who use the Surge of Evolution, as I will call it, can fundamentally alter something. Maybe the boon-and-price being a package deal is an inherit property of the surge, or maybe it is simply the Nightwatcher being mean. But a Cultivation-binder of the proper order would, using Lifelight, re-make something to be more to their desire. Maybe this is restricted to living things, maybe it is not. Maybe it is restricted to the Physical attributes, or maybe it allows alteration across all three Realms. Who knows. We will not know until at least book 5, or more likely 5 will fully explain Voidbinding and the Cultivation system will wait until Arc 2. Since lift is purportedly going to be a more major character, this would work perfectly.

Thoughts?