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fletchershair

Now that Nightblood is on Roshar, can it use Stormlight the same way is would use Breaths?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll just tell you "yes." I was gonna RAFO that, but I think everyone's figured that out by now.

fletchershair

A friend wants to know exactly how you can go between types of Investiture. You've said that you can before.

Brandon Sanderson

It just depends on the Investiture. Some are much easier to use than others. Like, running Aons with other Investiture, very hard. Just the nature of the magic makes it very hard. But, Nightblood? He'll feed on whatever he can get. So, it's really easy to fuel Nightblood.

KChan

Does Feruchemy have anything to do with that? Converting into Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Not gonna say.

Questioner

What does Investiture look like in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

It can depend upon the Investiture and the part of the Cognitive Realm.

NotarySojac

If you store one type of Investiture in a nicrosilmind, for example, if you store Stormlight, could you retrieve it as another type?

Brandon Sanderson

It's possible. It's not quite as simple as you might think.

Questioner

So when you use an Allomancy metal--I know you had mentioned it once time, like *inaudible*... My question was, when that happens, is the metal like actually gone, or like conservation of...

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's becoming Investiture. Yeah, so... Investiture, energy, and matter are the same thing in the first category of *inaudible*.

Argent (paraphrased)

Feruchemy is the "balance" between Ruin and Preservation. Would any combination of Shards create a "balance" magic, so to speak, or are only certain Shards compatible?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Feruchemy ended up being a balance system, because of how polar Ruin and Preservation were. Any world with at least two Shards will result in a similar phenomenon. 

Argent (paraphrased)

Like Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Like Roshar. There is something like that going on there.

Questioner

Is Stormlight an infinite resource or a finite one?

Brandon Sanderson

Stormlight is a renewing resource.

Questioner

If an Allomancer found themselves on Nalthis or Roshar, would they be able to use chromium on someone using Stormlight or Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

I am staying away from answering too many questions like that until I start having it happen. But do know that the magics interact... some ways they interact very naturally, some ways, they don’t. One way I’ve released is, you could use bronze on most forms of Investiture to find it. So you can extrapolate that some of these things would work. But not necessarily all. All of them could be made to work.

ajrula

A being with a lot of Investiture worldhops, then dies. What happens to the Investiture that was part of them?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, it returns to the Spiritual Realm, where all places are one, and where you were is irrelevant.

Argent

Investiture in the Cosmere when used goes to the Spiritual Realm, except in one place. What determines which Realm Investiture returns to when it's being used? 

Brandon Sanderson

Too many factors for me to actually say right here, Evgeni, so I'm gonna RAFO this one. There are lots of reasons that it could go in different ways and different places. 

Billy Todd

How many of those reasons are rule of cool? 

Brandon Sanderson

Rule of Cool is definitely a reason. I think he's trying to get at why on Sel things are weird, and I have not explained why things are weird on Sel yet. 

Tellingdwar

Regarding the classification of magics as end-positive/neutral/negative, is it correct that:

End-positive Investiture requires extreme emotional, physical, or cognitive distress to manifest. For example, snapping into an Allomancer or the process of becoming a Surgebinder.

End-neutral Investiture is inherent: gained by heredity, Connection with a particular region, or through mechanical means.

End-negative Investiture requires sacrifice. For example, Hemalurgy or Dakhor teleportation.

Brandon Sanderson

I'm not ready to answer this--though you should know that connection with a particular region is happening on Sel for reasons unrelated to this line of inquiry.

Questioner

Does Nightblood have a favorite flavor or type of Investiture? In addition, does different Investiture taste different?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes it would, but the thing is, when Nightblood is eating Investiture, he is generally not in a mental state to really pay attention to that. He's not what you would call a connoisseur, he is a glutton. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but kind of making a distinction there. Because of that, if you asked him, he wouldn't even really be able to remember. Because that time when he's really drinking it in, he is not himself, so to speak. But it would taste different to him, if he were able to pay attention and to eloquently speak about those experiences.

Lhyonnaes (paraphrased)

Alright, thanks. Last question for me tonight - so, when a Hemalurgic spike steals something, then it's storing Investiture in it, yeah? So could you - could you do something with that Investiture? Like... say I'm on Nalthis, and just theoretically, I use a Hemalurgic spike to steal a lot of Breath - can I use that Investiture to Awaken something? Could I Awaken the spike?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That... you'd need a lot of Investiture to Awaken a spike.

Lhyonnaes (paraphrased)

Because it's already charged up with something else?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yeah.

Questioner

So assuming you have mentioned that it is technically possible to be able to use one magic system on another planet from a different one...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Is it possible to fuel that... Like, say could you fuel Awakening using Stormlight, or do you have to bring Breaths?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could!

Questioner

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. Now it's-- there are tricks to making it happen on each world. Some are easier than others, but yes you can.

Questioner

So could that allow a loophole to maybe... convert from one form of power to another? Or like from Stormlight to Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. In fact, that's part of why Vasher--

Questioner

Vasher. I wondered that.

Brandon Sanderson

--is on Roshar, is because it's a lot easier to get Stormlight than Breath.

Questioner

Do you have-- Or have you determined an equivalency between how much Breath it takes to make a certain gem's worth of Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

I have recently assigned Peter to this task, and he is feeling overwhelmed by it. It was actually during the writing of Oathbringer where I finally said, "Yeah we need to standardize this, so start working on it." So it was like, "Oh great". Which means he has to read through all the books for references and start figuring it all out. And we're going to need like an equivalent of a jewel or something like this, right? *gestures to a sphere that a fan made* And we've been putting it off because it sounds like an awful lot of work. 

So the answer is no, we don't have it yet. It's something I've known for years we're going to need. And on this book, I just started saying, "All right.  I'm going to have them do all the stuff they need to do. And then you're going to tell me how many spheres they need to start with." Right? Like, I write the book, and then we retrofit how many spheres they needed to have how much Stormlight, so that we could be consistent with that.

But we haven't done across magic systems calculations, yet.

Questioner

Is Investiture universal? By that I mean, if an Allomancer got Stormlight somehow could they use that to fuel Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

That is always possible, so yes.  But in some case it requires some quote-unquote hacking, like an AC vs a DC current or we've got a 120 Volt and they've got 240. Does that make sense? It might require-- I guess hacking is the wrong term, adapters.

Questioner

I know that there's three sorts of forms that magic presents itself in, the liquid and the solid and air. What would Breath be?

Brandon Sanderson

Breath is definitely like mist, it is in the form of the air.

Questioner

And is Stormlight the same?

Brandon Sanderson

Stormlight is the same.

Skaiiwalker (paraphrased)

Do Axies's and Jasnah's reversed shadows have a common source?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Skaiiwalker (paraphrased)

Does it have anything to do with its draw towards Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

*After a pause* It has more to do with Shadesmar than Investiture.

mail-mi

Does a more Investiture-poor world make it so its magics are easier to use off-world? Because, you said that Scadrial is really Investiture-poor, and it can be used easily off-world, but Roshar is very Investiture-rich, and how can you get Stormlight off of Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Um, I would say that there is a correlation.

mail-mi

There is a correlation?

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm.

Argent

We know that you can't Lash people in Shardplate, but can you Lash the person inside the Plate? If they had their helm off, for example. At that point Plate should be just dead weight, right? 

Brandon Sanderson

There's a bit of an interference envelope. Wearing plate, the person has this big ball of investiture around them, and so pushing any through it--even by touching a person without a helm--is going to be tough. Easier than with the helm on though, I suppose.

Investiture acts (roughly) like a saturated solution in these cases. Sticking more power into something like a Feruchemical storage or a hyper-invested object like Plate is increasingly hard. The other part is that Investiture tends to interfere with other Investiture, unless there's a familiar resonance. (This is part of what philosophers call Identity.) Slapping your hand through a sand master's stream of sand will cause interference, and make them start to drop. It's not that the sand is supporting them, it's that the investiture holding them up gets scrambled for a moment because of your own investiture.

Investiture pushed toward someone inside a hyper-invested (supersaturated) system like a person in Shardplate is going to get hard push-back.

This is similar to the reason that it's harder to Push on invested coins. Depends on how invested they are, in that case. It's generally not as hard as doing something like Lashing a person in plate. (This is more about the interference than the saturation of investiture.) But the two principles are what I use to guide the physics in these areas.

quietandproud

Can we take that as a hint that the Investiture in the Plates and the Investiture that the Surge of [Adhesion] uses come from different Shards? Or do they interfere because they "belong" to different spren?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, I should have realized this one would bring out the follow up questions. Let's leave it at what I posted for now. This is a deep, deep rabbit hole, and I do need to try to get some more writing done tonight. So...RAFO. (Sorry.)

Questioner

This is about certain people from Nalthis... living on Roshar and how they are living on Roshar. Could they also do that on Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

Scadrial would be a lot harder because getting the Investiture out of things on Scadrial is tough, there are ways you could do it but it would be much more difficult.

Questioner

Does that have to do with the Investiture being more directed?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's more the genetic component is a big part of it. The directed component-- In Roshar its just flowing around all over the place. For instance, if he could get to a Shardpool he could feed off that, but then he's at the Shardpool and that's kind of dangerous and things. Roshar is really the easiest place in the cosmere for him to consistently get this sort of stuff. Taldain would not be bad either, that's the White Sand world but it is inaccessible currently in the cosmere

Questioner

i have an 'all the shards' question. Is how they obtain the Shards the first time affect what kind of magic their investiture effects?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO.

wiresegal

In OB, you explained that the Singers have four sexes. I was wondering... Can the Singers have genders other than those four, like humans? Even as simple as just not going with male, female, or malen/femalen. Could a transgender Singer use their ability to shift forms to change their biological reality? And, finally, could a Spren be non-binary, if it wasn't personified in a typical male/female way?

Brandon Sanderson

In the cosmere as a whole, a person's perception of themselves has a lot of power over both their Spiritual and Physical forms. It is possible, with Investiture, to change their biology to match Cognitive perceptions--and while this could be easier for some races (like the Singers) it's not outside plausibility for any race.

There are non-binary spren, actually--and you should be meeting one important one quite soon in the books.

The_Carpathian

Can aluminum be used to take liquid from a Shardpool, and will it stay Invested?

Brandon Sanderson

That would work.

Will of D (paraphrased)

We've seen Stormlight act like a wave in Rhythm of War. Does it also have particle-like properties like real light, and if so will we get to see an experiment that proves that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, it does act like a particle too. No, I don't have plans to show an experiment like that. 

Overlord Jebus

So you've previously described gemhearts as Investiture leaking into the Physical Realm in a similar kind of process to atium. Now atium had a way of-- the Investiture used in the creation of it-- of returning back to the kind of background pool of Investiture on Scadrial. Is there a way of the Investiture used in the creation of gemhearts to return to the Roshar Investiture pool?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Overlord Jebus

There is? Have we had any hints of it at all?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Does the dead body of a Shard pull at time and space, thus causing time to pass slower in that place of the cosmere, almost like a black hole?

Brandon Sanderson

It could go either way in the Cosmere, depending. But the answer is yes. A large amount, like a deific amount of Investiture will... any amount of Investiture will cause a bit of time dilation, but the amount you're getting from even a Shardpool is not enough to be noticeable. I mean, it is, you can notice it even on our planet if you take a jet that goes fast enough, so it is noticeable but not relevantly noticeable. We're talking about a slippage of a day or so in a year even off of a Shardpool (don't canonize me on that one, I don't have the actual numbers). But that's what we're talking about. There are are chunks of Investiture of deific nature that can cause amounts of time dilation that would be virtually impossible in our universe, without you becoming one with a black hole. There's a story I want to tell, and I don't know if I'll ever get around to telling it, about an entire society that rises and falls in several seconds of time dilation to everyone else. I want to be able to tell stories like that, and you couldn't do that in our universe, but that's part of the reason we have the Cosmere!

Questioner

You've mentioned in the last couple of afterwords that you get interesting results when you mix types of Investiture.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Twinborn and Surgebinders on Roshar. Can you mix a form of magic with a source of Investiture? Can say Vasher use Stormlight in place of Breaths or would that require tampering via Hemalurgy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of them require tampering. Some of them are a little bit easier than others. It depends on really what you mean. For instance, white sand can be charged in the presence of any Investiture right? It's just-- But that's not really using the magic, it's just charging it with other Investiture. But, you know, it would be very easy, for instance, if you can get yourself Invested-- Like, for instance, it'd be very easy to use Breaths to fuel Windrunning right? Because the oath and the bond and things like that are going to make it pretty easy. However fueling Allomancy with something else is going to be a lot harder. So it really depends on the magic. It's the sort of thing that there will be lots of science in the books dedicated to making happen in the future and you will find some of the processes these work easier than other ones.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Can Investiture be used to go faster than the speed of light?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, in many different ways, some much easier than others.

Questioner

For [Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell], did that take place in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

It does. It's on a planet called Threnody. There is no Shard on that planet, however. So you can see the magic is very different in that the magic is something you interact with, not something you perform. Because there isn't a Shard there. But yeah, it is in the cosmere.

Questioner

Has stormwater tasted metallic always?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Even pre-Shattering?

Brandon Sanderson

Even pre-Shattering it would get a metallic taste, that's the crem. So. That is an indication of Investiture and things. But it was there-- it was in place first, before.

James Clifford

Science question!

Brandon Sanderson

Ohh science. Is it real science, or fake science?

Adam Horne

It is Brandon science.

Brandon Sanderson

Fake science!

James Clifford

With the discovery of anti-Investiture in Rhythm of War, would the correct form of anti-Investiture be usable to clear up the mess in the Sel Cognitive Realm. If so, would this completely destroy a splintered Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

*laughs, coughs, and is otherwise stunned* That would not be a good idea. So why would that not be a good idea? So no, this would not clear up the problem. The problem that's going on in the Cognitive Realm in Sel is that a bunch of Investiture that should be in the Spiritual Realm has been packed into the Cognitive Realm instead, through a very weird circumstance of events. If you were to introduce a bunch of anti-Investiture of the right type there, you would just generate an explosion that would be a very bad thing. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, Investiture can't be either, so it's actually changing forms. It's going from Investiture into energy! Which you know, does not leave the system. So the investiture would eventually make its way back around, you can't destroy anything in the Cosmere, just like you can't destroy anything in our universe. But you can make it change forms. And so, what's going on there is just this hope by a certain individual that what has happened there will prevent the power from becoming self-aware.

It's basically Odium being like "alright I just murdered you people, I don't wanna have to come back and do it again". So he's trying to figure out a way to make this happen. As it currently stands (again, these things can change when I write future books), it was partially happenstance that he took advantage of rather than something that he was able to set up very intentionally from the beginning, but he was definitely a part.

Questioner

So my question is this: So, Investiture is a different [type?] of existence separate from matter and energy, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

So, does entropy apply to Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes... It does, with some caveats, but yes. It works a little differently, but it does apply. You should be able to apply all three laws of thermodynamics with... accounting for a third state of matter, energy.

clyguy

If someone breaks a sword and makes an Investiture into both sides of the sword and then re-melds it, will it become one Investiture, will it be destroyed--

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on the process that you use for re-melding it.

clyguy

But it is possible to have any of the outcomes?

Brandon Sanderson

It is possible to go both directions.

Questioner

If Nightblood uses Breath, and Szeth has Nightblood, how would it use-- would it feed off of Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

It can feed off of Stormlight, but Szeth can't draw in Stormlight right now.

[...]

So Szeth better not draw that sword, for a while at least.

Zantis

Let's say Lift received two Hemalurgic spikes: one for Allomantic bendalloy and one for Feruchemical bendalloy. Then she eats a bunch of pancakes, stores the nutrition in a piece of bendalloy, burns it to compound nutrition. Can that nutrition be turned into Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.  Yeah, but remember she didn't have to be-- so basically what that-- Is just a really complicated way for her to turn Allomantic Investiture-- so that it can allocate Allomantic Investiture into Stormlight. That would be a complex method of doing that. Just transferring one type of Investiture into another. It's just basically drawing from Ruin and she is then turning it into Stormlight-ish? It's a complicated thing, but that's basically what happens, just really crazy.

Zantis

Okay, so-- but it is the same sort of thing, right? *hesitant nod from Brandon* And--

Brandon Sanderson

I hope that eventually in the cosmere they will find easier ways than that.

Questioner

If someone were to create a human shape, with full articulations, made out of the four Feruchemical Spiritual metals and copper and do like a full dump into them, would it be able to-- I mean, Investiture attains sapience on its own. And then with-- If those were mixed with the memories in the copper would it be able to effectively become an android of the person who created it?

Brandon Sanderson

So we got a couple of issues you have to overcome in creating this. Number one, the memories are not going to attune to the Investiture itself, they're going to be attuned to you. The Investiture as it attains sapience is gonna create its own Identity, which is then going to be a mismatch for those memories. So you would have to find a way to get those memories to work for that creation.

Questioner

It wouldn't tie with the Identity that was stored in the aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it would not... The other thing you were getting at there though, is that just Investing it alone, you would have to leave it alone for a long time, naturally, for it to start developing anything. And so we're looking at thousands of years, probably. There are ways to speed that process along, but just doing that and leaving it, it's gonna take a while.

trevorade

Vasher has shown us that he can substitue his need for Breath with another investiture (presumably Stormlight). To what extent is investiture interchangeable between magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson

Very interchangeable, but not always simple to apply.

Questioner

With Awakening, given that you know the correct command word, could you potentially give anything to the other person, using Awakening?

Brandon Sanderson

Using Awakening, it has to be related to the fundamental aspects of Investiture.

Bystander

Which are…?

Questioner

How would we find what those are?

Brandon Sanderson

…How would you find what those are? Spend a lot of time researching the cosmere, have some conversations with Khriss, and come up with some theories! …There's a bunch of them written in the books and indicated, so yes.

Moshe Awestriker

The Investiture on Scadrial is genetic. If someone was born from two different Mistborns on a different planet could they be Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

When magic Invested in an object-- Does the Investiture act like electrons when it reacts with the matter?

Brandon Sanderson

Not quite, but I could see that metaphor working to explain it. But it's not quite there. The Investiture kind of-- If you had a piece of Invested material from the cosmere here, you would not be able to measure the Investiture in any way. It occupies a space that doesn't exist in our universe, if that makes sense. But in the cosmere you could measure it scientifically with an instrument that wouldn't do anything here, like trying to measure a dimension that we can't perceive, something like that. The electron metaphor is a decent one, but it's not exactly how I'm imagining it.

Chaos (paraphrased)

This one is a personal favor... See, for metals that have Feruchemy, this verb is "charge". A metal is Feruchemically charged. But, you've been using the term "charge" for Hemalurgic metals, too, which I think is confusing. Before Hero of Ages I called Hemalurgic metals "Imbued" metals. I humbly petition to have that be the official term, because it's just confusing otherwise.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Seventeenth Shard members use the term of Invest for all of those type of things. However, what they use in world is different on each world. For example Way of Kings [Roshar] is infuse.

karsen (paraphrased)

What is the difference between innate investiture and kinetic investiture?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Kinetic investiture is energy/power that is being actively (currently) used. Innate investiture is when a person is a conduit to/from the Spiritual realm.

Dunkelheit

Khriss mentions in the Ars Arcanum that her research suggests another set of abilities more esoteric than the [Voidbindings]. You have said before that the only magic we haven't really seen is Voidbinding, but you have also said that no one has used Cultivation magic on-screen (not counting boons and curses). Is this other set of esoteric abilities Cultivation's magic, and is it called Lifebinding?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! What a great question! What an excellent question.

Remember that when I originally conceived The Stormlight Archive, I was thinking of thirty magic systems. And I decided that that was instead three groups of ten, and I wasn't going to call it thirty magic systems. And indeed, that's even vague, because are fabrials their own magic system? What is going on? But anyway, who knows. RAFO!

Chris White

Could a sentient Invested object take up a Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

Highly unlikely, probably impossible--but impossibility is hard to judge.

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.

1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.

2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.

PrinceofMagnets

What is Cosmere sentience? By this I mean what does it require and what does it entail?

Brandon Sanderson

In the cosmere, most things are sentient on some level. Basically, anything with even the smallest amount of investiture. (Which is all matter, and most cognitive creations.) Sapience is something different, of course.

SwiftxJustice

Quick question to help me settle a debate. Could Allomancy affect a Shardplate/blade?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Investiture interferes with most magics.

eridius

Wait, are Mistborn and Stormlight Archive somehow connected?

Brandon Sanderson

Multiple people from Mistborn appeared in The Way of Kings.

Stuart Eliason

Are the strange refractive properties of Invested Light related to the backwards shadows in the Cognitive Realm and Axies the Collector?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes!

Questioner

In the cosmere we've seen Investiture manifest in different ways all across the systems. So I was wondering, when it comes to the powers of Dalinar, is it possible for that power to open a Perpendicularity anywhere, say on Scadrial or any different planet? In a different way, where you could potentially combine all the Realms, open the doors for the Realms.

Brandon Sanderson

Let me say this very carefully. I'm being recorded now... Any time where you gather the right amount of Investiture in the right way, you are going to have kind of a version of a cosmere singularity, right? Which is where you are pulling the different Realms together into a kind of-- you are piercing between them with a large amount of Investiture. So what's happening with Dalinar is both the bug and the feature at the same time. But it is not necessarily the only way. And once things are kind of, once the Spiritual Realm is being involved, time and space don't mean anything anymore on the Spiritual Realm. That's your answer.

Omin

Could one combine all of the Rhythms—Honor plus Odium plus Cultivation? Would the result be the ultimate Light?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.