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All other forms of know Investiture are either end-postive, end-neutral or end-negative. So would BioChromatic Breath be end-postive, end-neutral, or end-negative?

I am re-reading Warbreaker, and the very first scene shows us Vasher giving Vahr a rather abysmal choice. Give me your magic breath and I'll kill you, or let the torturers have more fun and let them have your magic breath. Why no third option? Did it not occur to Vahr to try to persuade Vasher to help him escape in return for the breaths? I can come up with a few arguments either way, just curious to see how yuns feel about it.

So last year I had some thoughts on Azure's blade, and like with my Thaidakar theory this one also deserves an Update post-Row, only the update will be a correction, not just an extension. Prepare for some rambling: The theory: Azure's Blade was awakened using Valor's investiture. 1. The Nightblood book will feature Vasher and Vivenna visiting Valor's shardworld during their travels. 2. Either Vasher or Vivenna who learnt from him (Or Ysteel) will there awaken a new blade and use Valor's investiture to do it. See my old theory on my thoughts on the mechanics of this, but this prediction/theory is less about Investiture mechanics and more about, uh, themes and story. So, why do I think Azure's Blade is Valor-fueled: - We've seen the major shardworlds and magic systems already. I don't have the relevant WoB on hand, but I remember that that's the status. The only "major" magic system planned to maybe be introduced still would be Aethers, we've seen the other big ones already. We've had Valor namedropped in RoW, so I doubt it will be a shard that gets its own Novel to show off the world. What better place than the Established-characters-go-worldhopping-novel to introduce us to those kinds of worlds? - Azure's whole story in Oathbringer is so Heroic. The way her men talk about her, the way she defends this seemingly hopeless situation on a planet she isn't from and doesn't even really seem to plan to stay on. You could argue "yeah, duh, it's a fantasy novel, there's always Heroism there" and you'd be right, but I think this isn't just a coincidence. - I think the key to understanding why Azure's blade is so different from Nightblood is that it was created with another shards investiture in it. I'm a big fan of grouping shards not into "good" and "bad". In this case, I think the distinction we need to be looking for is "involved" and "distant/apathetic", if that makes sense. What I mean by that is that Endowment, for example, gives you your breath and the rest is up to you, which is in line with her role/intent. On the other hand, the Knight's Radiant have a lot of checks and balances included in their magic system + their oaths, which line up with Honor. I believe we see a hint of Valor's character in Azure's blade: Does that remind anyone else of Mjölnir? The weapon investigating the wielder, pssibly checking to see if you are "worthy". - We don't see the signature black smoke or any of the symptoms both Vasher and Szeth displayed when Nightblood fed on their Investiture when Azure used her blade. The black smoke seems to be because is Nightblood is filled over-the-brim with Investiture, but the other symptoms are It eating Investiture. Azure's blade didn't display that. I think this is due to two factors: 1. a different command, more refined and well-crafted than Nightblood's. 2. some kind of inherent difference, that leaves less to the Blade itself. The Blade's sentience seems to be more rudimentary than Nightbloods, whose sentience might stem in part from the character of the Investiture it was awakened with: Endowment. Nightblood is already the result of using one magic system to create an hommage to another, Awakening to imitate a Shardblade. Whose to say we can't go one degree further, Awakening with Valor's investiture to imitate a Shardblade. The combination of a more refined command plus the nature of Valor's investiture result in a blade a lot less volatile. We've seen Azure preparing to Awaken in Oathbringer. Nonetheless, the Vivenna we see in Oathbringer is a lot more confident and valorant (pun intended) than the Vivenna at the end of Warbreaker. I doubt we'll get a whole novel dedicated to Valors world, so I think we might expect to see it feature in Nightblood (book), with Vivenna learning some more things there and maybe gaining access to the resident magic system too, which might have a lot to do with/result in her motivation to a ) find Vasher and b ) help in Kholinar. What do you think? Crackpot theory or reasonable expectation?

Prologue: How I got to this idea. Skip to Part 1 if you just want the speculations. Maybe you've read my post about Hacking Feruchemy and fueling it with the Investiture from other Key-based Magic Systems than Allomancy, namely AonDor. That got me thinking. Compounding, reduced to the Investitural workings, is: Powering End-Neutral Magic Release with another type of Investiture, an End-Positive one. Now, I've already speculated about the possibility of replacing Allomancy with AonDor as the End-Positive System, but what about the other half. And what other End-Neutral Magic do we know? Source: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Investiture#End-positive_Investiture BioChromatic Breath Like Feruchemy, BioChromatic Breath is End-neutral. No power is gained or lost, and both use the users Innate Investiture to do something rather than getting their fuel from elsewhere. However, that means that they are limited to using only the Innate Investiture. I'm not sure if we can count Returned as End-neutral, a) since they're not a magic system and b ) since they're part of BioChromatic Breath as a system. However, they have to use up one Breath per Nalthian week to stay alive. That said, we have confirmation that this only requires the amount of Investiture that is One (1) Breath rather than specifically a breath, as seen with Vasher/Zahel. Source: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Returned Fueling Awakening with Stormlight Returned can be categorized as Type I BioChromatic Entities. Sadly, we don't know if Vasher uses some kind of Conversion method, or if he is just able to consume Investiture in any form in the physical world to fuel his Awakening (aka his life). I write "in any form in the physical world" to make a distinction between something like the Dor or Preservation's Investiture and Stormlight or Breath. The former only enter the physical realm by activation and instantly take the form of whatever their key directs, while the other two are Investiture that is present without performing magic, sometimes even able to be stored in non-human carriers (see the broams on Roshar). Where am I going with this? If one Type of Awakening can be fueled by other Investiture, maybe others can too. Stormlight is basically endless, or alteast its a refilling ressource. On something like Scadrial or Taldain, Vasher would have a very hard time getting Investiture to stay alive. (He'd have to become a Metalborn to access Preservation's Investiture, for example), so Roshar is a good choice. Now, finally, what I'm trying to get at: I speculate that, with some methods that we don't yet know of or without, an Awakener holding Stormlight could use one or more Breaths in conjunction with their Stormlight to Awaken with a lot more power than they have Breaths. Imagine sticking a Hose into a Water container. The water won't flow upwards by itself, but if you suck on the hose until water flows out of the top, you can stop sucking and it will flow by itself for a while because the stream is established. (Yes, that's a very basic breakdown of how physics work, shhh.) That's basically how I imagine Awakening with more Investiture could work. I assume you'd need atleast one Breath to perform this. The Breath would act as a kind of spearhead, enabling you to perform the Awakening / speak your command. Only afterwards would you pull Investiture from the Broams around you (/ The Stormlight inside you / your connection to Preservation that is open because you were burning a metal at the time of speaking your command / etc etc etc) to fuel enough Investiture into the object to perform the Awakening. First Question to the readers: Do you think I'm onto something? Do you think this could work? Actual Theory This one I'm throwing out there to present a theory of what this could enable. Lifeless are already super cheap breathwise, so Type III or IV Entities are what you might use this for. So here's my theory: I think Azure's blade might was made with not just Breath. It's similar to Nightblood, but "weaker" and probably with a different command. Azure hasn't made a name for herself on Roshar long before the siege of Kholinar so maybe it wasn't exactly Stormlight that was used to awaken her blade, but I assume we might see another (shard)world in the Nightblood novel. Whether it were the Scholars of Silverlight, experimenting to see what the least amount of Investiture needed to Awaken a Type IV BioChromatic Entity was, or users of a Magic System we haven't even seen yet - maybe Aether - I think Azure's Blade is more than just a Nightblood 2.0 with a better command and less Breath, but represents a new step in BioChromatic Scholarship: Entities that aren't only BioChromatic. And who knows... Maybe Vasher is stockpiling insane amounts of Stormlight somewhere to use them for a massive Awakening somewhere/sometime in the future. Maybe he wants to Return someone (Shashara?) with it, or something like that. Anyway, would love to hear others thoughts on this.

What would giving Breath to spren result in? Breath is supposed to be more in the Physical than the Spiritual due to the nature of Endowment / to facilitate their transfer. Would the adaptability of Breath to different sDNA cause it to become more Cognitive in nature? Or would it make it easier for the spren to push into the Physical Realm and retain their coherence there? I assume that the rules of Awakening should still remain the same for them and they would still gain Heightenings if they acquire more Breaths, but would doing so change what kind of spren they are if they have more of Endowment's Investiture or would Endowment's nature mean her Investiture wouldn't change the inherent nature of the spren? If the spren was a Nahel Bond capable spren, would this count as Corruption assuming their nature does change? Would they still grant the same Surges? Could they grant the benefits of the Heightenings to their Bondmate? Seeing as the Nahel Bond is a melding of the Spiritwebs, to some degree, would transferring Breaths be easier between Bondmates or could a Bondmate use one another's Breath at the Fifth Ideal?

Shardblades are sprens that "died" after their... wielders?... companions broke their oath. Now, biochromatic breath can awaken anything which had been alive bot no longer is (ignore for now the steel awakening). I get that "sprens never really die", as Syl said, but would that state allow an awakener to invest them with breath? I think that they may not come "back" to life (I love this universe complexity, but technicalities are getting annoying), but maybe they would answer to some specific commands? Like the radiant's spren shapeshifting? (Kinda like "adopt the form of a pole axe" and then it changes). Thoughts?

I have a question (admittedly kind of stupid) about how a Koloss's unique life cycle would be effected by Nathlis's magic system. 1. Heightenings increase a person's life span and health. A Koloss grow larger the older it gets until its health gives out. Would a Koloss with a high enough Heightening continue to grow until it hit the "square-cube law" or would magic override that? 2. If a Koloss happened to be selected by Empowerment to be Returbed, would it Koloss size, Returned size, or bigger than both?

So I created an account just so I could pose this questions to everyone. Be warned, Oathbringer spoilers here! ---- We now have scenes from Oathbringer (as well as WoB) demonstrating the use of one type of investiture to fuel a different off world sub-type of magic (ex. Szeth using stormlight to fuel Nightblood rather than breath). Now that Hoid is Knight Radiant in addition to a fully powered lerasium mistborn what sort of effect would stormlight have fueling allomancy? We see Kaladain receive a renewing supply of energy flying at the front of the everstorm and Szeth able to unleash the full effects of Nightblood without having to utilize biochromatic breath. Would stormlight act as a "metal supply" for Hoid? And if so, would it also potentially fuel him with an "atium reserve", possibly even a renewing one if he was near the everstorm? Conversely what sort of effect would metal vials have fueling surgebinding?