Argent
Is normal Awakening and BioChroma an end-neutral system?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. Yes. Meaning, you don't lose Breath in the [process].
Found 236 entries in 0.665 seconds.
Is normal Awakening and BioChroma an end-neutral system?
Yeah. Yes. Meaning, you don't lose Breath in the [process].
Why is Breath not consumed in Awakening, unlike most all other uses of Investiture?
Not all Investitures are "used up." Much like energy, it isn't typically created or destroyed, just changes for. With Breath, in what it's used for, it is just more easily and readily recovered than in other forms.
Alright, was Awakening used on Nalthis before Vo Returned?
Ummmm… RAFO!
I saw a quote that said that there were two people who knew how to awaken metal. Is that still true?
Read and find out.
Is it hypothetically possible to Awaken an object using a divine Breath?
Yes.
Vivenna's Thoughts on Being a Drab
A lot of what happened to Vivenna—how she saw the world and how she acted—was influenced by being a Drab. As I've said before, the Hallandren aren't right when they say losing your Breath does nothing to you. Most Drabs struggle with depression, and the fact that they're almost always sick doesn't help either.
And so, Vivenna's time on the streets was artificially made more dreary and terrible than it truly was. Being a Drab, being sick, the shock of being betrayed—these things combined to give you the person you saw in the previous two chapters. It's a way to cut a corner. I wanted Vivenna to feel like she'd been on the streets for months, but for it only to have been a few weeks.
She is able to make her hair change colors again. This is a representation of the fact that she has started to pull out of the nightmare. She's slightly in control of her world again, and the roughest time for her has passed. There's also a clue in that hair, one that Vasher mentions. Because of it, and her heritage, and something very mysterious in the past, every member of the royal line has a fraction of a divine Returned Breath in them. That makes it much easier for them to learn to Awaken than a normal person.
What would happen if you burned an Awakened metal?
I'll RAFO that for now. It's very, very rare in the cosmere. Something interesting would happen. We'll RAFO that.
On Nalthis, can aluminum prevent somebody from Returning? So if you kill somebody with aluminum and leave the weapon in them?
I don't think that's going to be enough. I think that…
Different way then?
Yeah there are totally ways. I don’t think that that’s going to be enough. There's a difference between being inert and blocking Investiture, and actually sucking out Investiture. If you stuck Nightblood inside of a corpse; there are certain things… if you had a larkin or whatever sitting there that ingests the Investiture as it was coming in, that would prevent [Returning]. I think with aluminum you would just have somebody that comes alive with a wound, so maybe... But I think it would just heal around [the aluminum] and you'd just have a spike in you, kind of like Hemalurgy—but not like Hemalurgy. It's inert, but you know what I mean.
Which suggests you can't actually Awaken aluminum.
No. It's not going to hold a charge.
I assume you can't Forge it, either.
No. In fact the unForgable metal-
Ralkalest?
There's an unForgeable metal mentioned.
Could we call it aluminum if we wanted to?
Let's just say that aluminum through most cultures was considered a mythological metal, and when people could actually find some, they considered it more valuable than gold, in our culture. So just sayin'...
With Nightblood. Was the sheath part of its construction when he was Awakened? Or was that kinda afterward?
The sheath is not part of its construction. Good question.
So... when the intent was placed on it, was the sheath there?
So-- The sheath was not relevant to that. The sheath was not part of the original Awakening, and it's not part of the intent or anything like that. I'm not saying it wasn't there ready for it, but it is not part of the sword. In the same way.
So, at some point we'll figure out why it learned to stop once its in the sheath?
Yes, kind of. It's a function of the sheath.
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...
Yes.
Is it possible to fuel that... Like, say could you fuel Awakening using Stormlight, or do you have to bring Breaths?
Yes, you could!
Okay.
Excellent question. Now it's-- there are tricks to making it happen on each world. Some are easier than others, but yes you can.
So could that allow a loophole to maybe... convert from one form of power to another? Or like from Stormlight to Breath?
Yes. In fact, that's part of why Vasher--
Vasher. I wondered that.
--is on Roshar, is because it's a lot easier to get Stormlight than Breath.
So is that the same thing with Commands, are there like ideals that are Commands?
This is more of a-- For you to interface with the magic, you need to be able to comprehend it. And so forming a Command-- The same thing happens in Elantris, you know they don't accidentally draw runes, right? The intention is part of interfacing with the magic. So it's like your mind reaching into the Spiritual Realm and you have to like conceive something.
It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn't Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others?
The "You must give up all of your Breath, not some" line was mostly perpetuated by Denth, who is saying it to Vivenna to stop her from giving away her Breath to all the people she passes. It is a lie. Now, it's a lie that's commonly accepted by a lot of people. But it's still a lie—as we find out midway through the book, you can stick some of your Breath in an object and bring it to life, and then recover that Breath. So it's very easy to give some of your Breath to someone if you know the logical steps to take. Invest most of it into an object, give what you have to someone else, then pull back what you Invested. So it's flat-out proven in the novel that what Denth is telling her is wrong. Now, he could dance around that lie by pretending to be the ignorant mercenary—he's just perpetuating a falsehood that many people believe. But it is a lie. In fact, a lot of the things people believe about BioChromatic Breath isn't true.
One of the things I was trying with this book was to take a few steps back from MISTBORN, where so much was understood. I feel that the approach I took in MISTBORN is right for that book, and yet people have so much superstition regarding all sorts of science. I worry sometimes that there isn't enough superstition in my books, regarding magic as science. What people believed and what people knew and what people understood was so varied and confused throughout most of history, that I worry that I lack realism in that. Vasher brings up at several points in the book that they don't know a whole lot and that people perpetuate a lot of myths and stories and lies.
Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to—he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life
Can two different people invest an item with Breath (either to use the sum of the investiture or just theirs, or as a way to tell that something contains Breath if it doesn't work)?
The question is tricky to answer, because it's partially a yes, and partially a no. So I'll RAFO for now.
The magic system from Elantris has a lot of drawing things, and the system from Warbreaker has a lot of colors. Would you be able to combine that, if you did a rune with colors?
This is possible, yes. It's an interesting combination, it would work in interesting ways.
Would all the different powers, or magic. Would they all work on the other--
Almost all of them will. AonDor, and the ones from Sel, are very hard to get to work elsewhere, because of certain things, but others are much easier. For instance, if you can get Breaths to another world, you can just use them, you don't need to do anything special.
How could Vasher become Drab, since he would have to give up his Big Breath to do so?
The Divine Breath can be hid. Essentially, you have to view yourself NOT as a god at all, using a very specific bit of mental gymnastics. As a Returned, your body changes based on how you see yourself. (This, by the way, is an indication that Lightsong was more pleased with himself than he ever let on.)
You don't lose your Divine Breath, but it does go into hiding, making you look like a normal person. But you're still Returned, and are consuming a Breath at one a week. If you give away your other Breaths, you retain this hidden one, but your body will still consume its own spirit if left to do so. So you still need a Breath a week to survive, and will die the week you don't get one.
I left this as an intentional place to explore the magic in the sequel, which I had planned to be writing (and posting on my website) by the time Warbreaker was out in stores. The WoT has diverted me, and so I feel bad, since this ends up being a confusing question that a number of readers have had. The hints toward how this is working are very difficult to find. (The biggest one is probably in the opening, where Vasher thinks about how he could reach the Fifth Heightening instantly, if he wanted to.)
How does one erase/alter memories using Breath?
RAFO.
at the end of warbreaker you said that they split up their breaths, how if they can only do all at once?
I talk about this in the annotations. But Denth was lying to Vivenna at that point.
You can split up breaths. You put some in an object first.
You're also famous for your magic systems, do you start with the effect you want to achieve or the mechanic you want to use?
It depends on each magic system, they're all different. Sometimes there's just a really interesting-- Mistborn's a good example of this. I built Mistborn because I wanted a different power for each thieving crew member and I had in the back of my mind a few cool powers to use, but others I just developed. I'd be like, alright, we need something for the fast-talker. So therefore you get the thieving-crew and the classic thieving-crew elements, and I wanted something to improve every one of them. So while I had the Pushing and Pulling already, because that was really interesting and I'd been working it out in my head, I didn't have all these powers set out for the team, so I developed those.
In other cases it's just, you know The Stormlight Archive started with the fundamental forces in physics and extrapolating outwards from them until I had ten fundamental forces because I wanted to do fantastical fundamental forces. So that one started in physics.
The magic for Warbreaker started because my editor called me, true story, and said "ah, after Mistborn and Elantris you've done some very dreary settings, very nice but very dreary, let's do something with more color in it". More color it is!
Would he also be able to have powers from Warbreaker without using Breaths?
Yes that is-- It is possible to power the magics with one another. Breaths are one of the-- it's-- yeah, let's just say that.
I will confess that over the course of my study I learned that we're nearing the 10th Anniversary edition, and that [Brandon] has asked [Peter] to go over the book, take Brandon's notes, and make sure there is a consistent system behind the scenes. Humbly, I do hope that perhaps by at least locating the times in the book when Breath-count is mentioned, I have saved Peter a bit of busy work, if nothing else.
Yeah, a more precise system of how many breaths it takes to do X (and the exchange rate, so to speak, with other magic systems) is something on the list to do for Warbreaker 10th anniversary. I have the resources now, with more assistants behind the scenes, to get more precise on this sort of thing than I've done before.
Why does giving your Breath to another person not require color? Every other Command does.
I thought I answered this in the book. You use your own color. :)
Biochromatic Breath. The reason that it avoids Snapping, is that because it's so heavily in the Physical Realm, or is there something more to that?
Something more.
Can Breath be taken or withdrawn from a sentient object that's not a person?
I will RAFO that.
How would a tongueless God King give up his Breaths?
It involves the God King having a child. (Yes, it's possible.) I talk a little more about this in the annotations, but don't want to give too much away here.
Backup plan is to have a Returned heal him, like actually ended up happening.
In Warbreaker how did you come up with the idea of using colors for magic?
You know it's the goofiest story. A lot of them have really awesome stories and this one is just goofy. In this one I had written Elantris and written Mistborn and they are both kind of dark and my editor said to me, I kid you not, "Your next book needs some color to it" and I said "Oh I'll do a color-based magic system then". And that's where it came from.
What would happen if somebody used the color from a Stormlight-infused gem to create a BioChromatic entity?
So I just had this question actually and what we came up with was that would leave behind something that is like a cloudy quartz and is going to make it work not as well for holding Stormlight. That's our answer right now, I'm going to talk to my scientists and see what they think because draining the color from something doesn't just leave it white, or clear, it kind of ruins it, it's gray-ish, it's dun. It clouds. So I think it would ruin things for Stormlight.
So, if a Type 4 BioChromatic entity like Nightblood was created with a different Command, would it still draw in or feed off of somebody's Breath when they drew it?
It is possible to create one that wouldn't. But it is a dangerous thing to do.
where do you get your inspiration to create new worlds & characters?
Inspiriation comes from all over. Often things I see. Color magic in WRBRKR came from watching b/w movies.
The mist in mistborn came from driving through a foggy night at 70mph..
Sazed came from a Buddhist monk I met in Korea.
Sarene came from a friend, Annie, who complained that she was too tall and too smart for men to want to date.
If you want more, send me an email and ask for my “Ideas” essay. @PeterAhlstrom will send it to you.
In Warbreaker: the magic system is really visual, and when heightened people are around, the colours get really saturated and I was wondering about blind people or colour blind people. How can they percieve the effects of Investiture?
Their minds would interpret it in a way that works for them. Their brain would come up with some way to interpret the sensory they're getting. And so the colour blind... The colours are still going to saturate, but saturate in a way that they can tell. Not being colour blind it is really hard for me to describe. But I read about it, and at least that's the rule I have for myself in the head. For an actual blind person this is going to be a magic system that's harder to use. Just having a disability, unfortunatly. But it also gives perfect pitch, and I think that partially their auditory senses would compensate to a degree, but it's going to be a harder magic system to use. I'm sure they could find a way to work around it.
I do have a question, while listening to New Spring today, I realized that a channeler using the One Power sees and hears much more vividly, similar to people invested with breaths from Nalthis. Was the magic of Nalthis partially inspired by the One Power?
Yes, that was an inspiration from the WoT. I always wanted to take that concept RJ had used and see if I could make it a fundamental and quantifiable part of a magic system.
At the end, Wit, with the little girl and the doll and bring the doll to life, it reminded me of Warbreaker.
Yeah, he was using Breath for that. He was using Breath he had gotten from somewhere, I'll say, but it was actually the other world's magic system. Vivenna was using them, too, in Oathbringer. When you see her fighting with her cloak. That's an actual fighting style people would do; her cloak's doing some extra stuff.
Do Mental Commands require words, just not speaken out loud? Or does the wordless thought suffice?
Mental Commands do not always require verbalization, but many think it is, as they've never been able to do it otherwise.
Is the Hoed from Elantris similar to the state of [dead] Shardblades? If so is it possible to awaken a Shardblade if the bearer speaks the oaths of the Knights Radiant?
The status is... I would say not as similar as you're probably thinking, but it does have a similarity in that two bacteria causing a disease are both caused by a bacteria, so there is a similarity there.
I can imagine a sequence where a Shardblade would be reawakened, but I think it would be very difficult.
It's not the same that they're in the middle of a transition, like in Elantris.
Oh, okay. So you have to actually... it'd be harder.
It'd be harder, yeah. It's not the same, they're not in the middle of a transition. They have had something ripped from them, and it's very painful and it's left them mostly mindless.
So they have to have that something added back?
Yeah. So what you've got going on: the spren gain-- the bond lets them have sentience in the physical plane, like they can think and all these things, and when that was ripped away from them-- imagine... (this is a very bad metaphor, it's the first one coming to my head though): imagine you had wetware, you had a head-jack or something like that, and someone just ripped it out of your head.
*stunned/horrified*
Oh.
Instead of surgically operating it out. Like that's what's happened, a piece of their soul's been ripped off.
All the physical manifestations--solid physical manifestations we've seen of Investiture has been metallic. It's been atium, lerasium, Shardblades. Is that just a coincidence?
No, it's intentional.
It's intentional so we're not going to see Investiture wood or Investiture plastic?
Right, I mean technically, like, what do you call the aethers? Those are not metal. But I do it as metal intentionally.
They could be a metal with very low boiling point.
*sarcastically* Yes, the vine ones are--
Well we've had liquid, we've had gas, the solids all seem to be metallic, so.
That is intentional, it's just one of those little laws of the cosmere, that's not meant to mean anything
Since both the mists and Stormlight are very similar in many ways, are there gaseous, liquid, and solid states of Stormlight?
That's a RAFO, but you know that there is a gas and a liquid.
The gas is just the stuff in the storms, right?
Isn’t there the lake?
The lake is liquid. So you know there’s two of the three already. So just sayin'...
VenDell, the kandra from the Wax & Wayne era. So, at the start of the book, coat is brown. End of the book, a light tan. Is he doing something specifically himself to change the color?
Uh, yeah.
Is it what I think it is?
What do you think it is?
It appears to be some sort of, kind of, almost Awakening?
No. More mundane than that.
Adolin is hit by Parshendi lightning, and then his Plate reacts and starts blocking out the light from the rest of the lightning strikes. Is he awakening his Shardplate as well as his Blade?
So Shardplate didn't have as much of a problem as the Blades did, so if someone else were wearing that they could have had the same effect.
So it's more just a function of the Shardplate, really.
Yeah, but I mean the Shardplate needs to be a little more aware-- You know. It didn't have as much of an effect on Shardplate as the Blades.
That being the Recreance?
The Recreance, yeah.
Are Returned the same person-- like is a Returned the same person they were before they were alive or-- 'Cause it says in the book that it is a Shard that Awakens the body so is it the consciousness-- Well not the Shard--
It is the same soul.
The same soul.
Yeah.
I was wondering if it was the consciousness of the Splinter.
Yeah.
Nightblood, being a sentient object, could he give away his Breath?
Ah, Nightblood...could not give away his Breath. It's a good question. It's because that Breath is making him...like something weird has happened to him where the metal is Invested almost to a Hemalurgic or Feruchemical way, right? Like it's no longer just an object with a bunch of Breath. It's become permeating the whole thing. So it's more like the soul of a person, the part of the Breath they can't give away. Like when you give away your Breath, you retain some of your Investiture, you can't give that part away. It's the same thing.
Cuz I imagine it would be kind of like a Lifeless where that Breath is probably stuck so close that it would not be removable by an Awakener at least.?
Yeah, Yep. It's stuck in there, yep. I mean there are ways to get the Investiture out, but it's not the simple "We give it away" thing. Yeah, he can't just give it away.
<inaudible> corrupted or?
Yes, that is part of it, that is part of what that means.
Can you store Breath in metal without the [Ninth] Heightening? Just put it there without Awakening, just to hide the Breath.
Can you hide Breath in-- Yes you can hide Breath in things.
Metal in particular, without the [Ninth] Heightening could you put it into metal. Without the purpose of Awakening it, just storing it there.
Oh without the [Ninth] Heightening-- I would say yes you could.
When Hoid is playing for Kaladin, has he Awakened some part of himself to help him play?
No, he's not Awakened anything to help him play.
Did he use Allomancy?
RAFO.
Could a typical Awakener give Breaths to Nightblood?
Yes.
Could it use those Breaths to Awaken?
No.
I recently read Patrick Rothfuss’ the Name of the Wind; there’s Sympathy <inaudible> Awakening. Is there a link <inaudible> to the Awakening <inaudible>
We actually were writing at the same time. We both were interested in the same things… No, no, he wrote his first, but I haven’t read it until I’ve written Warbreaker, but his was first. We were both interested in the same concepts… I think it’s a really great magic system. <inaudible> I wrote Warbreaker in 2006.
Oh, because I checked the release date, and yours was 2009 and his was 2007.
Yup, but I wrote in 2006 on my honeymoon, actually. But yeah, it was after I read that, his magic is really cool, I like it, it is a good job, I like how it’s hard magic and a soft magic.
So Elend, at the end of Mistborn [Era 1], is going around finding Allomancers the mist had Snapped. How come he didn't find any other Mistborn? Or did he and we just didn't know about it?
What you have to remember is the mists were looking for a way specifically to deliver information to him, that "I am alive and doing something" but they were also kind of crazy. And so the idea was to make him notice the number 16 so that he would know that there was a plan and that something was prepared for him. Does that make sense?
Why didn't the mist throw in some Mistborn in that sixteen too?
Then you would have 17. Or you would have like-- It was the number that was important to what the mists were doing. Plus it is much harder to make someone who wasn't originally-- Like remember what's going on is these are people it is Snapping intentionally who did not-- Like it's Investing them so-- It's either awakening a very little remnant in them or taking people who had-- They wouldn't have been able to be Mistings, if the mists hadn't intervened. Making someone a Mistborn takes way more power.
If you built a computer and you programmed it to view the world in a certain way, would that affect the world, like, Cognitive aspect?
Not unless the computer starts to become self-aware.
What if it was an Awakened computer?
If the computer were becoming self-aware, then it would act like any other sapient entity.
Can you slatrify sand into other liquids?
*thinks a moment* I admit that slatrification is one aspect of Sand Mastery I'm the least fond of, because it doesn't mesh well with the rest of Cosmere magic. The comicbook writers are working with my original script, with very minor changes, but if we ever release White Sand in print - which we might do - I might end up changing it. So - I won't answer that, because I'm not yet sure if slatifying into water is possible. *laughs* You can think of the comic as sort of in-universe story about those characters, then.
About slatrification, he said that if he ever writes the novel, he'll make slatrification an in-world legend.
You've said that Investiture tends to develop sapience on its own. Is this a function of the amount of Investiture alone (i.e. any pile of Investiture large enough will develop sapience eventually), or does the process require extra effort (e.g. a Command from an Awakener, an action by a Shard, etc.)?
Under the right circumstances, a pile of investiture will eventually become self-aware. But there is no specific timing. The more investiture clumped together, the more likely--and the closer to human-level intelligence it is likely to obtain.
Of course, if you leave matter alone long enough (on a galactic scale) it will eventually end up becoming sapient too. So this isn't that different. (Well, okay, it is.)
Are humans already sapient and intelligent because their Spiritual DNA tell their innate investiture what connections to make or what weird soul pattern to go into.
Let's RAFO that for now.
Is death in the Cosmere a two-stage process? It seems to me like (under normal circumstances) the body dies first, sending the mind fully in the Cognitive Realm; the soul, presumably, remains in the Spiritual for the entire process. I am a little unclear on what happens after that though - what is it that passes into the Beyond, just the mind? Does the soul / spiritual aspect / Spiritweb just kind of... break down in the Spiritual Realm, turn into free iInvestiture?
Yes. It's a two stage process, and most of what you said is correct. The odd thing is, though, that the Spiritweb doesn't completely break down (just like your body doesn't immediately break down.) Even after a long time, there's a record of that Spiritweb in the Spiritual Realm.
Wait wait wait. If there is a "corpse" of Spiritweb (so to speak) and actual, physical corpse is also there... Could it be still viable for Hemalurgy? Could it be still viable for Hemalurgy if you really know what you're doing and have some useful powers (manipulating Connection comes to mind)?
Could you patch the remnants of the Spiritweb and staple it to the body and end up with some zombie-zombie Lifeless? You'd still need to give it a mind but I figure Awakening is just doing that?
RAFO.