Talendas
Could Sigzil leech away Investiture from a Mistborn burning metals if he touched them?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO
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Could Sigzil leech away Investiture from a Mistborn burning metals if he touched them?
RAFO
If you used Hemalurgic bendalloy in a fabrial, could you theoretically steal any kind of Investiture, even dormant Breaths?
Theoretically, there's a way to accomplish what you want to do, but I'm not gonna give you the details now, but yes, theoretically, there's a way to do that. You're hitting on the right idea.
Is there a limit to the amount of Investiture that Nightblood can hold.
Yes. Yep, there is.
Its interesting that his most popular female characters all seem to have mental health issues.
Hmm, I’m not aware of Jasnah being on the spectrum. Her trauma is something different, though we may not find out until we get her flashbacks.
All of the Knights Radiant (basically, all of the Cosmere’s Investiture users) have some kind of trauma.
Quick question on aluminum. Why does it affect other forms of Investiture?
When I was building the cosmere, I just had to build certain themes into it, and metal was one of those. And the metals have kind of a Spiritual integrity, and Spiritual component, that if I can get into Dragonsteel explaining why, you'll get your kind of origins.
And that's why, in Warbreaker, metals are different with Awakening, and stuff.
And even in Roshar, the cages that you're building for fabrials, once you start to figure out how those metals affect it, you'll be like, "Oh wait, that makes sense!" And these are just across the cosmere.
And if you want an in-world answer, it has to do with stuff in Dragonsteel. But really, the answer is, I was building this and I'm like, "I just want this to be a theme. So I'm just going to give this Spiritual component to metals." So it works in Mistborn, and it works all across everything.
Do Returned have a bond with their divine Breath that would give them powers on Roshar? Or are they different to seons?
They are Highly Invested beings, but the Investiture is not sapient.
You once said Nightblood can do some really freaky things when he is fully consuming Investiture, have we seen Nightblood do that yet?
That is a RAFO. But you will find out...
Let's say a Bloodsealer got his hands on a Dakhor monk's bones. Could it still access the Dor? Or you know, whatever they use. Could they even be reanimated - and if so, could they still be useful?
That's a really good question. So the bones are a conduit, much like Allomantic metal is. Allomantic metals are pretty easy to affect Investitures. I would say getting a-hold of a Dakhor monk's bones, likely, would work. Likely, they're not going to resist too much. But, I'm going to say harder to access the magic than you'd think, but easier than with regular bones.
So I'm going to give you a yes.
Let's talk about the Torment for a second. Hoid would not call what has happened to him a Torment. Hoid, by holding a Dawnshard, was made permanently unable to cause physical harm to other beings. Eating meat makes him nauseous (if he is somehow able to eat it, and a lot of the times he just can't). That is because of the nature of the Dawnshard that he held actively warping and changing his spirit. He would not name it this. Nomad has named what has happened to him, a Torment. This is not a term that you can universally apply as a magical aspect of something. This is Sigzil saying "this terrible thing happened to me". And indeed what is happening to Sigzil is on a level beyond what happened to Hoid. So therefore perhaps other arcanists would say, "Yes, these are an aspect of holding a Dawnshard and Torment is the right way", but that word is loaded. That word has meaning, and someone is naming it this. You are not gonna run into a large set of people- there are only four Dawnshards- and you're not gonna run into a large set of people that have held one, so there may be no consensus even in-world to what these are called, and if they are Torment or blessings or what they are. Holding a Dawnshard will warp your soul. It's so much Investiture, it is so powerful, that you cannot hold one even briefly without it having a permanent effect upon you.
We know aluminum affects mental magic and emotional magic. Would it affect the hole in your soul that’s created by Hemalurgy? If you had an aluminum spike, would that make it easier, less easy, or no difference for Ruin to take control of you?
Aluminum resists Investiture generally, even when it’s not Invested itself.
(Brandon hems and haws a little so Ironeyes clarifies the question) Would an aluminum spike make it harder for a Soother to take control of you?
An aluminum spike would have no effect on a Soother’s ability. They wouldn’t see it there.
Did you make aluminum resistant to Allomancy so that you could do the tinfoil hats?
No, but once I did, I was like that’s a cool idea. I made aluminum resistant to it because I wanted something to be magically inert in the Cosmere. It was a happy accident.
Is Investiture with its deep, inherent connection to sounds/tones/rhythms inspired by a sort of magical version of string theory and its idea of vibrating strings making up everything?
Yes. I would say yes. A direct inspiration. (In my own goofy way, as I tend to do.)
What would happen if you stuck Nightblood into the shroud?
Nightblood would feed upon the Investiture as he is wont to do.
Why do Szeth and Kaladin not suck all the stormlight out of the gems that power shardplate when they fight people wearing plate, thus rendering the plate useless? Is there something different about the gems that power plate that would make this impossible?
So, in the magic of Stormlight (and across several of my books) there's are some underlying principles. One is that the power of the magic (which we call investiture) is difficult to manipulate when it is claimed by someone, or something, else.
You can imagine that magic in the process of being used, like the energy powering plate, works like a kind of negative charge to your own magic. Trying to lash someone in Plate will be very difficult, as the stormlight in the plate is going to resist your attempts to push through it and get at the person. Likewise, that power in the plate is actively being used--draining it is difficult.
If you can rip off a piece of the plate, disconnecting it from the system, then you can get at those gemstones and drain them much more easily. But tucked away inside, they're both shielded and being actively used by the armor. They would be virtually impossible to drain.
Can Vasher draw Breath from a highstorm?
I will answer that eventually... You know what, yes he can. Not Breath though, he can draw Investiture the way he needs it.
Would it be possible to break a Shardblade?
If one breaks, what happens to the spren? Could this somehow kill the spren/Nahel bond?
Can it be reforged?
What happens to the Investiture stored inside of the sword?
Could a living spren regenerate the lost part?
What could cause this breaking?
RAFO
In reading about Adonalsium and Odium, I get the sense that it's more related to lerasium and atium than it is to, like, Preservation or Ruin. Because, sometimes it seems like we're identifying... Odium and Adonalsium as beings instead of, like, the body of--
Yeah, it is a little confusing by design. The question is, like, telling the difference between the Vessel who is holding the power, the intent of that power, and the physical manifestations of that power as Investiture or as whatever, these things are confusing. And I did this on purpose. I like that blurring between them. One of the things I did when I was designing the magic for the cosmere, was-- you guys know this very easily from looking at the books, I love the ideas of quantum theory, string theory, all this stuff. And even, just looking at quantum mechanics as we understand them right now. And the further you get into the details, the more the rules that you built, everything you understand upon, become blurry. And we live in this world where certain scientific principles, like-- I was sitting at a writing group, talking to my friend who's a mathematician, and I'm like, "I really like math 'cause it is objective. One plus one equals two." And he's like, "Well, the further you get in math, the less that actually is true, and the more 'One plus one equals two' is a philosophical statement, not an actual objective truth." And we talked about the nature of, the further you dig into things--
So, I tried to build the cosmere magic-- For instance, how the Bands of Mourning work. We are getting away from Step 1, which is, "Metals push or pull." We can get that. Into Step 2, where we are building complex machines out of the interactions between the magic. And we will then get to Step 3, where it's like, we can explain the principles, but you need to be a computer engineer to understand exactly how the computer is working. And I wanted to be able to build to get to that point. With the philosophy of, "What is the power, what is the individual, what is the intent," and things like that, we're kind of going that direction, in a philosophical direction. What does it mean? What are the answers?
Humans like things to be divided and put in boxes, but in nature, these boxes are usually arbitrary, of our distinction. So, I like that aspect of our interaction with the real world. So, the answer to your question is, this is not a question for me, this is a question for philosophers. Where does the intent stop, and the being begin? And what does it mean to have a body? Is the body of the original person that has taken up the Shard, the Vessel, when that drops out when they die, is that their real body? Or is that just the power pushing out something that it absorbed and recreating it, and dropping a copy of it? What is that? What's going on there? What's it mean? How much can a Vessel influence their intent? This is all a question for philosophers, that I'm going to explore in the books, but it's not the sort of thing that you're like--
Does one plus one equal two? The answer is, one plus one equals two according to this proof that we believe explains the universe, but is a little fuzzier than you think it is.
If a person who could use Stormlight went to the world of Mistborn, would they still have the same strength? Would the distance from the god depend on it?
The only one that the distance matters is Elantris because of the power being trapped in the Cognitive Realm makes distance important. The thing is, you would need to get Stormlight.
Or like Mistborn, they would have the same type of strength?
It's a lot easier for Allomancers to move between planets than the others just because it's harder to get stormlight because it runs out. It's harder to get the sand unless you can find some kinetic investiture to recharge it. I would say the easiest to travel is Mistborn. Sandmaster is probably second easiest, then it gets a little hard from there. I guess, it depends, you can just carry the Breath with you. That works just fine. Getting new Breath, though... There's a lot of different variables going on there.
What role will the chasmfiends play?
So there's a bunch of different roles for the chasmfiends that are all minor but-- For instance, I don't think anyone's made this connection, thunderclasts have chasmfiend-- it's part of the in-world inspiration for thunderclasts. And really chasmfiends exist in part to show off the symbiotic relationship between certain spren and certain creatures on Roshar. So when people who read the first book who know a little about physics can be like "Uhh, Mr. Sanderson" and I'm like "Well, look at these things that are flowing around this thing when it dies." It's an introduction of gemhearts and things like this. And the ability of certain creatures on Roshar to hold Investiture permanently, as Szeth says, rather than it seeping away like it does to humans.
I think that in the Spiritual realm a person's spiritweb sort of manifests as a collection of "nodes" which are the Forms of their body/mind/subconscious, and these nodes are connected by "lines" which are interactions between the pure Forms. These lines are what actually make up the person's character, how the body is "supposed" to be (barring accidents/disease, basically what magical healing attempts to restore the body to), as well as what interactions with investiture the person can use (what magic systems they have access to)
Am I completely off base here or should I keep thinking about this?
This is a good line to be thinking along.
Can a Tineye see through the gaseous Investiture of other Shards? If so can they see through a Lightweaver's illusions?
This is possible but it's not going to be a native power.
Can Shards be spiked?
Like, a Shard of Adonalisum? This is just not gonna work really well. It's a little like saying, "can I give a piercing to a whale?" Like... okay, but it's not gonna do anything, it's gonna fall off. And the moment they notice it, it becomes irrelevant. It's the most technical of yeses, but it's just basically worthless to try it. Because, again, you're gonna have to find a physical form of a Shard to do that, so what are you doing. Is it some avatar that they've made that'll just evaporate when they're done with it? What does it even mean to spike a Shard? Are you talking about somehow getting access to their Vessel, which has been completely transformed into Investiture at this point, so how do you spike that? There's all sorts of asterisks to this answer, but a technical yes; I'm sure you could find a way to do it.
If Red investiture = co-opted by another Shard, what about the Thrill?
Kind of.
Okay, A larkin and an aviar. Could you tell us how they're related - are they a bit similar? Other than that they both fly.
I would not call them terribly similar. A larkin is a specific type of creature that feeds off of Investiture. And there are some other things like that in the Cosmere. But aviar don't do that. Aviar have a symbiosis with an Invested entity. Aviar are more like, they're kind of weird because they fulfill both the role of a spren, but also the person that's bonding the spren. They're an intermediary.
Okay. And larkins don't have feathers, right?
Larkins do not have feathers. They look like little... They look like wasps.
Like wasps? That little?
No, not that size, but that's the look of them. They're in the picture in the front of Way of Kings, the magic map. If we have Way of Kings here... We can grab it for you. If you go to my website for the art for Way of Kings, look up "Way of Kings art archive" on my website. It's not the cover, it's on the magic, the double eye symbol of the Knights Radiant in the inside cover flap. There's a pair of larkin there.
If a person stores a lot of Investiture, could they resist a Shardblade?
This is theoretically possible.
Are there any different effects on a larkin depending on what kind of Investiture it eats?
Yes, but they are not enormous.
It was mentioned that there are 16 gods in your Cosmere.
Depends on your definition of god.
Shards. Are the ten orders of the Knight Radiants related to specific gods? Because Honor, child of Honor-Kaladin
So all the magic on Roshar, all the surgebinding on Roshar, is going to have its roots in Honor and Cultivation. Um... There is some Odium influence too, but that’s mostly voidbinding, which is the map in the back of the first book.
I was wondering how much-
But, but even the powers, it’s, it’s really this sort of thing. What’s going in Stormlight is that people are accessing fundamental forces of creation and laws of the universe. They’re accessing them through the filter of Cultivation and Honor. So, that’s not to say, on another world you couldn’t have someone influence gravity. Honor doesn’t belong to gravity. But bonds, and how to deal with bonds, and things like this, is an Honor thing. So the way Honor accesses gravity is, you make a bond between yourself and either a thing or a direction or things like that and you go. So it’s filtered through Honor’s visual, and some of the magics lean more Honor and some them lean more Cultivation, as you can obviously see, in the way that they take place.
The question kind of rooted because, Wyndle in the short story is always saying that he’s a cultivationspren, he doesn’t like [...]. I kind of got the idea that each order had a different Shard.
That is a good thing to think, but that is not how it is. Some of them self-identify more in certain ways. Syl is an honorspren, that’s what they call a honorspren, they self-identify as the closest to Honor. Is that true? Well, I don’t know. For instance, you might talk to different spren, who are like, no, highspren are like “We’re the ones most like Honor. We are the ones that keep oaths the best. Those honorspren will let their people break their oaths if they think it’s for a good cause. That’s not Honor-like.” There would be disagreement.
Are you saying that the spren’s view of themself influences how they work?
Oh yeah, and humans’ view of them because spren are pieces of Investiture who have gained sapience, or sentience for the smaller spren, through human perception of those forces. For instance, whether or not Kaladin is keeping an oath is up to what Syl and Kaladin think is keeping that oath. It is not related to capital-T Truth, what is actually keeping the oath. Two windrunners can disagree on whether an oath has been kept or not.
*translated* In Feruchemy, if someone's existence is being in--stored in it, is it as a whole?
It is little pieces of Investiture filtered through their mind and their soul. *waiting for translator* You could say it's a little piece of them, but it's not the whole them.
I had a question about Odium's intent for going after Ambition. Obviously, with Devotion and Dominion teaming up, he didn't want a twosome over there. Are we ever gonna learn more about the background on Threnody? 'Cause Khriss implies that there was always Investiture there, before the clash. So I'm looking for a little bit of information about the Evil before the Admiral's background story.
Before the clash, the Evil was not the Evil. It is the clash that warped it. And Secret Project Five has a splintered piece of Ambition as a plot point. Some of these books... All that stuff I said about not having to know multiple magic systems? That goes out the window for things like Secret Project Five. Those are books that are about that. You will find out some more there; it's gonna take me a long time to get to what actually happened with Ambition, why, and things like that. Know that Odium was not expecting it to be as hard as it was and ended up severely wounded in that clash.
Who can consume more Investiture, Nightblood or Chiri-Chiri?
Nightblood. Chiri-Chiri would get full a lot faster.
When someone dies on Nalthis, their Breaths: go away with the soul, or remain in the corpse?
Breaths return to Endowment.
Together with the soul? Or remain in the corpse?
The soul--
Passes away?
Yes, unless it turns into a Cognitive Shadow. Then, the soul goes into the Beyond. And so the actual essence of the soul, the Investiture of it, does return to Endowment.
Would it be possible to Awaken a microbe, like a bacterium?
Probably not. I could imagine that happening. Awaken is the wrong term for it. I would say "No, because Awaken is the wrong term for it." But Investiture could potentially create something weird out of that.
How and when is the type of Misting you become determined? Can you tell what type of Misting you are before you Snap?
It's determined at birth. The cosmere by combining 3 aspects of self. Your physical self, mental self, and spiritual self. The spiritual self is tied to the Investiture of the world that you come from. When an Allomancer snaps, a piece of their soul is broken and some of that power leaks into them, giving them their abilities.
I'm supposed to ask how Odium and Honor's Investiture could be so similar.
Odium and Honor, like a lot of the Shards, can be considered to have a similar theme. But that is very common among the Shards, in my opinion.
Can any invested person "skip" to other planets if they have enough investiture and the knowledge to do so? If not, is this ability specific to Nomad?
What's happening with Nomad is fairly individual to him, though based on Cosmere logical principles.
Then we also talked about, theorized about unkeyed metalminds - that is Identity-less ones that anybody can that has the power can tap.
Yeah.
We also were wondering is it like, we compared it to cryptography and encryption, stuff like that. Is it just that like, your Identity is sort of this unique encryption key.
And you need a key to you getting it. That's a valid line of theorizing. It is not exactly but it's close enough to be a good model.
And would an unkeyed metalmind theoretically be capable of storing a little more than a keyed one.
Oh, because of yeah.
Because it has to... Is it inherent to the Investiture or is it like an extra bit?
I'll RAFO that, mostly because I haven't considered that yet.
So like as far as distance traveled in Shadesmar. So when Kelsier is in Shadesmar, he meets the Ire, who are presumably Elantrians. How far did he travel? Is that still within Scadrial's realm of the Cognitive Realm?
Yeah, that's within-- By the time he meets them he has slipped right to the edge of the Cognitive Realm on Scadrial and into, kind of, the darkness between planets.
Okay.
He's close enough that he can get there. But he's kind of suffused with Scadrian Investiture then, to a point that it would be harder--you saw in there--for him to get further. I would say that he's like... He has entered space between planets, but he's not out of the solar system.
Okay, so he's still in the Scadrian system, just not--just edging a bit there.
Yeah, yep. That's what I'd say if I had to actually point him in that <a map>. It gets really fuzzy though, because it wouldn't be too much longer before he enters another solar system. Like, he would pass lightyears in steps as he starts getting further, if that makes any sense.
That makes sense, because, I mean, with worldhopping in general it's like... You can only... I mean it's... I don't know how the time dilation works per se, but...
It's not-- there's not much time dilation. What you've got going on is... Things that people aren't around to think about, things without minds or any sort of life, don't manifest on Shadesmar very much at all. And so the space between planets gets really small, unless there's another planet out there with thinking beings or at least some sort of life on it. Like even lower lifeforms, you'll get something manifesting on Shadesmar. But yeah
Okay. So the Cognitive Realm, in Shadesmar... It's kind of the... Any kind of sentient or cognitive life-- that's what is building Shadesmar? So like anything where there's blackness... is like... condensed or--
Yes, yes. Particularly if no one's thinking about it. If people are thinking about it - like, for instance, an island in the ocean that was scoured of all life and even bacteria would still manifest in Shadesmar on that planet because people are aware of it and things like this. But one on the other side of the planet, that no one ever knew about it, probably wouldn't.
So that same island, if people just stopped thinking about it or like stopped being aware of its presence, would it...
It could slowly vanish, yes. And so-- But that's more of a thought experiment. You're never gonna have a planet that that happens to, you know cause-- but thought experiment wise, yes, that would eventually kind of get consumed by Shadesmar and vanish. The same thing would happen to a planet that you strip the atmosphere from--all the bacteria and life dies on it--you know, slowly going to vanish. But a moon will still manifest because people are thinking about it. It'll just not-- it won't-- it'll be hokey, it'll be weird--the moon will be. Like you might find a little patch that represents the moon. Something like that.
That's interesting.
You're not gonna find the full landscape of the moon until people start visiting it. And it's gonna grow on Shadesmar.
There's this scene where there was a nightmare, and Painter didn't have a paintbrush, and he just reached out to the side and a paintbrush appeared, and there was a flash of light. I need details, 'cause that seems so much like a Shardblade!
This is also working under the exact same mechanics, so yes, Investiture that he is Connected to is indeed being manifest as something physical.
Bronze has always been my favorite allomantic metal. Could a Seeker learn to sense familiar pulses? Could Marsh, for example, have felt the bronzepulses of pewter, and been able to tell the difference between some Thug he'd never met and his friend Ham? Or is pewter is pewter is pewter?
If he recognized something about the burning, it would have to be in the personal way someone was burning the metal. However, Bronze is capable of sensing other types of investiture. Expand from that as you wish.
Could a Threnody Shade survive on another world?
Theoretically, yes. But they are highly Invested, and leaving a world where you're highly Invested behind when you have that Investiture is difficult, as Kelsier discovered, and as most spren discover.
Is the way to unlock Feruchemy to have the same amount of ruin and preservation investiture (or at least a quite balance in them) ? If the answer is Yes, could a Scadrial Human unlock it by ingest tiny piece of Atium ?
RAFO.
Other than his home planet, what's Hoid's favorite planet in the cosmere?
He probably would pick Scadrial. Hoid likes his creature comforts. Scadrial is the nicest place to live right now. Now there are other places that are easier to get Investiture, which is very nice, but if you actually want to go to a restaurant, your options are limited. They've got some on Nalthis, but you want to get a nice restaurant, go to Scadrial. You want a car service, Scadrial. And if he sits around long enough, he'll have instant noodles.
When I think of Brandon and MtG, I wonder, if the 5 kinds of mana, were suddenly replaced by investiture from the 16 shards, how would that affect the game? Upsides? Downsides?
I don't know if this would even be mechanically possible--MTG is balanced around those five poles. It would probably make things a whole lot more complicated, and might be better matched to a game with a lot of flexible factions.
Was Szeth's resurrection done with Rosharan Investiture or that from Nalthis?
RAFO.
A friend of mine wanted me to ask: Was the cataclysm that rocked Ashyn and forced its inhabitants into the flying cities Investiture-based, and if it was was it Shardic in nature?
The same cataclysm that the-- did you finish [Oathbringer]?
Yes.
The same cataclysm that they were fleeing, that they caused, is the one that forced people into the skies...
The Dor: Is it gaseous Investiture or is it something else completely?
Oh that's a great question. People have not been asking enough about the Dor.
And if it is gaseous—or not gaseous—is it plasma?
*Long pause*
You got it. *said definitively*
It's super sup-- not plasm-- yeah, it's super-dense to the point that's it's liquefied and dense-- does that make sense? So it's plasma, basically. It's its own weird thing, so yeah. What you can write is that it's its own weird thing that's kind of plasma-like.
The mushrooms on Threnody... What's up with them? They were described as glowing in a similar way to the rat skulls if I recall correctly? Is this some form of Investiture or am I reading into 1 line too much?
RAFO.
If an Elantrian were to get a hold of Nightblood and draw it, how would Nightblood react to that-- What kind of power would be unleashed?
So Nightblood needs kinetic Investiture to feed upon. The Elantrian would have to be able to get a conduit to the Dor to feed Nightblood or Nightblood would just eat their soul.
So if they used AonDor to fuel Nightblood--
There are some types of AonDor that would work, and there are others that would not.
And would Nightblood just keep going until either the Aon was--
He would dissolve the Aon as he drew the power from it.
So it wouldn't just empty the Dor?
No, it would not empty the Dor.
Approximately how much Breath would it take to invest a regular object enough to that a Shardblade couldn't cut it?
I would have to look at the notes. One of the things we're doing right now is, we're unifying the actual unit of investiture. So, I'm not going to answer that until I have that codified, but it is one of the projects we're working on right now. I'll have some answers for you more...we'll just get a unit of measurement that we can use, probably based on that.
God-King versus God-King. Susebron versus Rashek, who comes out on top?
Rashek, probably.
By a lot or a little?
Well, here's the thing. I think Susebron is at the disadvantage in almost every situation.
Okay. How so?
Rashek has been alive longer. Rashek knows what he's doing. Rashek has martial training. Rashek has killed a lot of people, Susebron never has. Fewer scruples. His magic is way more combat-oriented. He can get out of range a lot easier. He has power emotional Allomancy, which Susebron would *inaudible*.
Granted, he's got so much investiture, he may be able to shrug that off. But still, I would put Rashek at the advantage.
Can Breath be used to power Surgebinding?
They are very similar Investitures, and most of the magics can be powered with the other magics if you are capable of making that happen.
What would happen to the Breath?
The Breath would be consumed in the same way that Stormlight is. A renewing resource, much like atium is.