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If a native of Sel or another Shardworld traveled to Nalthis, would they be a drab?
No, they would not be a drab. But, no one would be able to take their Breath.
If such a person died on Nalthis, could they Return?
No, they cannot Return.
If such a person received breath, could they use BioChroma?
Yes
If you were to try and Awaken a dead Shardblade with Awakening, like you can with a metal sword, would that be possible, or what would happen?
That would probably not work. Not probably. That would just not work.
Can a Shardblade-killed body be turned into a Lifeless?
Can a Shardblade-killed body be turned into a Lifeless. Yeees, it can be re-Invested. Yes.
Are there any side-effects to doing so?
Uhhh, there would be side-effects. I won't tell you what they are. They would be minor, minor, mostly inconsequential side-effects.
Stone is hard to Awaken partially cause it's never been alive. On Roshar, there are tons of stone Soulcast corpses. Would these be easier? Has Vasher thought of this?
Yes, I would say that he has. And yes, they would be easier.
Could a Seeker who was properly trained and experienced detect AonDor or Awakening? Similarly, does a Coppercloud block an Awakener's life sense?
A Seeker could sense somebody else using magic not native Scadrial. RAFO on the Coppercloud blocking similar magic.
Of all the magic systems, would Awakeners most quickly be able to utilize acquiring a Dawnshard?
RAFO!
In the Stormlight Archive series, we have not yet seen Vasher or Vivenna Awakening.
You have seen Vivenna Awaken stuff, technically. She is Awakening part of her... what's she doing, she's got her cloak out and stuff. You see <very> glimpses of it in the [third] book, so you technically have seen her. You've also seen Hoid Awakening in the epilogue. So yes, you can Awaken on Roshar, it's just been really subtle so far.
So, does the Investiture just feed off of the...
You can make a Returned feed off of Stormlight very easily. You can't use Stormlight to power Awakening very easily, but if you still have those Breaths, you can use them and reclaim them.
Could a skilled Awakener Awaken a gemheart?
Yes, but you got to remember, some of these things like metal and gemstones and things do not Awaken well, how about that... Technically yes, it may not do the thing that you want it to do.
But it'll do a thing?
It'll do a thing.
Awakeners are useless in space. Awakened objects can't propel themselves where there is no air and can't produce air or food from nothing. Elantrians have another problem. Their power is very flexible, but tied to a location; they can't take it with themselves when they travel. Or, at least, they can't do it in a way explained well enough to extrapolate.
Actually I wonder about this. There is one scene where Vivenna Awakens Tonk Fah's cloak to attack Denth, and it drags Tonk Fah across the room. How? I mean, in theory, sure, we can speculate that it might have moved in a series of sweeps and jerks like swimming to force his momentum, perhaps it grabbed his legs, maybe it pushed off against the wall, maybe it even made a big scoop and sailed there on wind resistance... but the paragraph makes it seem possible that the cloak was somehow able to simply will itself along, strongly enough to drag Tonk Fah behind.
It does seem out of keeping with what Awakening is and can do, so I tend to think that at most it's just a typo (should I page u/PeterAhlstrom? I think they're working on a re-release and looking for continuity errors) but, if this is how it works, then once you're in space, Commanding a handkerchief to "go to Scadrial" might be enough to generate propulsion.
There's no error in that scene, and it also doesn't directly contradict Steenan's statement.
If you Awaken an object, then give your Breath away, can you reclaim the Breath of that object?
Yes. (It allows for splitting up of Breaths among those who have more experience.)
Could an Awakened toupee be commanded to act like real hair?
...Totally! Absolutely, yes!
Would it be convincing?
Would it be convincing? Yeah, I think that it would be. It depends.
It depends on the number of Breaths?
Yeah, it depends on factors, but I totally think that could be very convincing. Yes, yes, yes.
Could it also be given enough Breath to Command "Protect me?"
Yes, it could. That would be really weird. But yes.
In Awakening, can you with some mental gymnastics, view yourself as both the donor and recipient of Breaths? Is this how Vasher hides his Divine Breath (and consequently nature), by tucking it inside of himself rather than an external object? Theoretically, can you Awaken yourself, and with the right Commands enhance/extend yourself Cognitively, like how burning atium comes with Cognitive enhancements to process the raw information?
This is a theory worth exploring. You're not quite there, but you are on to something.
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.
If a coppercloud was near an Awakener, would they dampen the effect of the colors being deepened around them?
I haven't thought about that. Yes. That one is a tenuous yes, though, I would have to think about it.
Can you Awaken in total darkness; no light whatsoever?
This is possible.
Do people in the cosmere, besides Nalthis, have Breaths?
No. To elaborate a little more, that's not to say they don't have a life force, because they do. But if someone not from Nalthis were to suddenly gain the ability to become an Awakener, they could not use what they have to Awaken something. That's not to say that they can't receive Breaths though.
Could you train your pet parrot to Awaken things, if it learned to say the necessary Commands?
Afraid not. Intention is important.
Is the creation of skaze end-negative?
So, you're not quite using the term right.
The terms "end-negative" and "end-positive" refer to a specific system--in most cases, we're talking about the individual(s) using the magic. Do you draw more magic out, or is it powered by your own native Investiture?
Awakening is what we call end-neutral, despite the fact that (obviously) the Breaths came from someone else in the first place. That's not the point in contention here--do the same number of Breaths (the same amount of Investiture) continue to exist in the system as you're manipulating the magic.
In something like AonDor, you are drawing out much more power than you put in--end-positive. That power is put to work doing something, such as healing a body, or creating a blast of power.
The skaze, like the seons, were created when a Shard was Splintered. The terminology doesn't quite work there, at least not in the way that scholars in the cosmere would use it.
The question from the physicist in this thread about where Investiture goes, and what it means for a Shard to have access to certain amounts of power, is related to all of this. I'm hoping to be able to find some time to craft a response there, as there are some fundamental understandings of the magic that are relevant to the discussion that I should point out.
Are Surgebinding and Awakening related?
All of the magic systems are related, and these two do share some defining fundamentals.
So, in Warbreaker, Awakened items have to emulate humans. Why is that?
It's a matter of perception on the people using the magic. And there are ramifications on the fact that the Shards themselves were all once humanoid.
Would it be an advantage to have dandruff as an Awakener?
Yes.
Is that a regretful yes?
Yeah, I mean, it's not a very big advantage, but I suppose. Being able to easily, yeah, sure? I don't think it's an appreciable advantage.
If an Awakener were to use a gemstone as a color source, will that affect its Soulcasting properties?
Yes.
If someone created another Awakened sword, just like Nightblood, with the same process, and then brought it to fight Nightblood the same way, would they destroy each other?
RAFO!
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
How many Awakening Commands are there? Is there a finite number, a finite but large number or infinite? Can you Awaken with sign language?
Yes, you can Awaken with sign language. I would say that there are an infinite number, would be my guess. It's either finite but very, very large or infinite. But they're gonna fall into groups as things tend to do in the Cosmere, I would say.
Can you awaken a Shardblade?
Can you Awaken a Shardblade? A Shardblade would already be defined as Awakened, by the magic systems.
And what about the Plate?
Plate would already be defined as probably too heavily Invested to Awaken because it already is.
Could a Feruchemist manipulate their identity such that they could make a metalmind that anyone could tap?
Ah... RAFO.
Okay; could they manipulate their identity such that they could pull Breaths out of something that somebody else Awakened?
Ah... ahahah, Awakened, oh yeah... That one's going to be harder, but you're thinking along-- You're thinking with portals. *smiles* Do you know what that means.
Yes, I know what it means--
You're starting to think with portals.
I'm thinking with portals, okay, thank you.
Yes. In other words you're wrapping your head around the way that the magic system is working, so.
That's so excellent.
Can one give the Command, “divide and do thing X”, for Awakening? How many Breaths would it take to do something like a straw mannequin, how small could you get the pieces, how would you retrieve the Breath?
I’m afraid I would have to pull out my notes. I mean I wrote that book a few- 2006, and so we’re nine years away from me writing that magic system. I, I have it all in the notes, but I can’t off the top of my head rattle it off for you. People use Awakening so infrequently now in the cosmere, it’s just on the one planet with the occasional worldhopper, that I just go to my notes and get it out when I need it.
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.
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.
In Awakening an object when you give it the sort of Command like, go get the keys, or something. How does that object perceive the world around it? Since it doesn't have standard human senses, how does it see? How does it touch?
It is not--
Repeat the question.
Oh… go ahead.
The question was, how do Awakened objects actually perceive the world.
…The closest correlation you have to this is how Inquisitors see.
Okay, following up on that say, someone who has-- say someone with bronze who-- a bronze Misting managed to somehow get access to Breath and Awaken would he then be able to tell that object "Hey I sense this Allomancer over there, can you find it".
That is not outside the realm of possibility.
Denth Tells Vivenna to Use Her Breaths
Don't forget that Vivenna has a huge wealth of Breath. To most people, anything over one or two Breaths is a huge wealth—and Vivenna has enough to reach the Third Heightening. She's fully capable of Awakening objects, and while she's not as powerful as Vasher in Breath right now, she could learn quite quickly. (The more Breath you hold, the easier it is for you to learn how to use it.)
Do specific colors have an impact on Awakening in Warbreaker?
Not usually, you just need a certain amount to Awaken. But there can be more due to various reasons connected to the cosmere. It is connected to the significance of eye color on Roshar.
What would happen if an Awakener drew color from an emerald and then a Soulcaster tried to Soulcast with it?
That's an excellent question. The color of the gemstone is working as a sort of key to help the Soulcaster and to facilitate this. There are Soulcasters that could do it if it's been drained, but for most of them it's just not gonna work. They're gonna view that too much like a diamond or even quartz and it's just gonna fiddle with the process to the point that it won't work. There are some people who could do it anyway.
With Soulcasting, we know what can be Soulcast based on the color of the gem. Does-- When Awakening, say you have emerald, green, Pulp. If you were Awakening straw or some other form of plant matter, if you used a source of green for the color, would it be, say, more efficient than using red?
So I haven't built that into the magic system yet. Part of me feels like I should have. But I did not. I want color to be relevant to each of the cosmere magics. It's kind of an essential part of it, and it's part of where we stray more into the magical sense. Like, in my books we treat magic scientifically but they're still magic. And it was a thing when I was building Stormlight, I'm like, "So the difference between these two gemstones is a matter of a slight impurity and chemically they are 99% the same thing. Am I actually going to have them do different things or not?" And my judgement call was yes, because I want color to be relevant in the cosmere. But by that point, when I was really getting that magic system to work, I had already written Warbreaker. And I had known that I wanted color to start being a big part. I'd already written Mistborn where I worked in color in different ways
But I didn't work that into the Warbreaker magic. I felt like it already had enough restrictions. I would say my worry about the Warbreaker magic is the color feels tacked on. Like, the magic could work without it, narratively, so why is it there? And that's the question I asked myself while I was building; that's the question I continue to ask myself when I continue to work on-- for that magic system, to make sure it works for me. But my instincts say adding restrictions like that, particularly when they weren't covered in the first book, feels like the wrong way to go. It'd be like retconning the magic. It's something I considered.
I noticed in a lot of your cosmere books, like for example Elantris or Mistborn, they have something to do with some sort of subject matter or school or something. For example the Steelpush and Ironpulling in Mistborn is based on physics.
Yes.
If you push too hard it's based on...
Vector physics, yes.
And then like Warbreaker is just like math, adding Breaths together. Did you intend that?
Not necessarily. I read a lot and I like science and I like philosophy and I like and things like this. And those spark most of my ideas. So yes in a term but I'm not like "Let's do this subject".
I would say Warbreaker, the big part of Warbreaker is the idea of sympathetic magic. Which is the idea that like affects like, which is a very common type of magic throughout all cultures on the planet, on our planet. When people believe in magic they believe in sympathetic magic. A voodoo doll is sympathetic magic. And that's where the idea came from.
So in Elantris, which is different and then--
Yeah that's basically fantasy programming, is where that one came from.
And then there is The Stormlight Archive, which basically violates all the laws of physics by just saying everything comes from spren.
Well no they still have arguments on that, are spren attracted to these things or do they cause them.
Yeah that's kind of weird...
Stormlight Archive was based on the fundamental forces, if you want go read on physics google fundamental forces.
Vivenna Escapes
One of my big worries about the Vivenna sections is that she'll come off as too weak as a character. That's a particular danger once we reach these late middle sections, where it's revealed how much she's been manipulated. Remember that when you're reading the Vivenna sections, if she comes off weak compared to Siri, consider their relative circumstances.
Vivenna is put through a lot more in this book than Siri is. Why? Well, I felt that as a character, she had a lot more room to grow. In order to do that, however, she needed to have everything knocked out from underneath her. That happens primarily in this chapter and the next few.
But she is not helpless. Even while she's numbed by the capture and betrayals, she manages to effect not one, but two escapes. She handles herself very well, finally overcoming her problems with Awakening and managing to get her Breath to work for her. (And remember that the more Breath one has, the easier it is to learn to get Commands to work right. That will be important later in the book. . . .)
What would happen if you Allomantically burned an Awakened piece of metal?
RAFO.
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.
Could you Awaken a Shardblade?
Uhhhhhh yes but it would reeeeeaaaalllllllyyyyy hard. Theoretically possible.
Say an awakener wanted to cheat in a card game and strolled in with an awakened hat, which is promply placed on a hat rack behind their opponent.
Assuming the awakener knows the rules of the game, would a command like "be as my eyes and signal when I should fold" let the hat tip someone off, or would they need a more general command like "be as my eyes and signal a flush"?
This is hard because the skill of the Awakener is a factor, as are other elements that aren't entirely understood. For sake of discussion, I'd say the second one is a whole lot more reasonable.
If a listener were to Awaken something, would they imitate the listener or a human?
They would imitate the listener.
And would that change based off of their form?
It could slightly change based off their form. More likely it's just gonna about their culture and the way the person sees the world, but the way that the listener sees the world is changed based on their form, so yeah, it'll have an effect.
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.
*inaudible* [I asked if it would be possible to recall Breaths from an object that you had not placed there if the Awakener who did place them there had no Identity at the time.]
So, this is a very detailed, specific question, if you didn't hear it. It's dealing with the idea of Investiture and Identity, and things like this. If you can unkey the magic with Identity, for almost any case, it's going to make it much easier for other people to use. That's gonna be a blanket statement through the cosmere. If you can blank your Identity, it's at least gonna be able to be used by someone else with a blank Identity. Sometimes it's keyed, so the blank will not work with somebody who is themselves keyed. But if you can blank and they can blank, you can almost always guarantee the magic will be able to be used.
My friends would like to know if you can Awaken liquids?
This is almost impossible.
Almost impossible?
Almost impossible, but not fully impossible, but basically impossible. Particularly if you're talking about just a liquid, not in a container, anything like that. Technically, you can kind of Awaken a dead animal, which will have some liquid in it and stuff. But if you just want to Awaken like--
A bowl of water?
A bowl of water, almost impossible.
