king of nowhere Posted January 22, 2015 Report Share Posted January 22, 2015 (edited) EDIT: this argument can touch the subject of nalthians worldhopper in other series. stuff about them should be kept under spoiler. breath does not just give awakening and heightenings, but also the ccapability to feel the presence of others around you. That last power is seldom spoken about, and is commonly accepted by nalthians to be about feeling people. yet drabs are not felt with this power, and people with more breaths are felt more. brandon said that a drab is less than a regular person from another planet, implying the one breath every nalthian has is not something others don'tt have, it's something that everyone has and that they can give away. it strongly implies that it is their innate investiture to me. therefore I believe what they call "life sense" is actually a capability to sense the presence of investiture in living beings. dead beings are much more difficult to feell and require a high heightening instead. I don't have that many proofs because life sense is not spoken about much and is mostly taken for granted, but it makes sense given how the cosmere works, and is certainly supported by the available information. So, what does that imply? - an awakener would be able to feel someone from another planet because of their innate investiture. they would register as having one breath per their innate investiture. maybe one of the new feruchemical powers, the one that stores investiture, can mask that by storing one's innate investiture in a metalmind. - an awakener is capable of recognizing someone using magics even if it is not apparent to the senses, like an allomancer burning tin or shallan using an illusion; in particular someone holding stormlight would shine like a beacon to an awakener - as it is possible, with the right knowledge, to use one magical system to fuel another, any worldhopper can learn that trick and feel investiture around him. the more investiture they hold, the more they can feel in others. that last point give us - if they are a cooperative group, most members of the 17th shard should have a life sense - hoid, with the incredible amount of investiture he has, should be able to walk around the warcamps and tell you exactly how many people are in there and what they are doing. anyway, he is impossible to startle. and he can probably reach the 10th heightening even without 50k breaths, by virtue of the other investiture he has. Edited January 23, 2015 by king of nowhere 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan Posted January 22, 2015 Report Share Posted January 22, 2015 (edited) Many (including myself) have been assuming at least some kind of "investiture sense" nature for life-sense since WoR Spoilers: WoR, in fact. Vasher detecting Syl seems to answer the question rather definitively. Also, you might want to do something in the OP to call out the various Spoilers in it. Also, you are right that non-Nalthians are not drab. Edited January 22, 2015 by Kurkistan 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king of nowhere Posted January 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 WoR spoiler Actually, I don't think vasher detecting syl proves it. if washer had detected that kaladin was holding stormlight in the training ground, it would have pretty much proved it. but syl is a spren and a cognitive entity, and other explanations for him detecting her can exist. Also, I didn't put spoilers in the title because I avoided mentioning anything specific about other books. what a nalthian worldhopper can do on roshar doesn't tell whether there is such a worldhopper or not, much less identify him. Well, except that we are using wor spoilers, so it is clear that at least a nalthian worldhopper is in the book, but it still doesn't say much. But I put an edit since you thought I should Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) A fair point that we're not sure on Syl, but I think we can both agree that, at the very least, Vasher detecting Syl tells us that "life" sense detects a bit more than just "life". On a general note I think spoilers/posting in the cosmere boards are appropriate for any cross-world discussion—as any discussion of "investiture" almost inevitably will be—but that aside your OP also did contain a few spoilers. To call out two, you mentioned -Shallan using an illusion: "WHAT!?!?!? Shallan has magic powers!!??!? And one of them is illusions!!??!" -New Feruchemical powers: "There's more than ten metals?!?!?!" Edited January 23, 2015 by Kurkistan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoidhunter Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 You know...I've always felt that the whole spoilers thing is a little unnecessary. I know...I know...not everyone has read all of the books...but...if you are really concerned about having little bits of plot spoiled for you...you probably shouldn't be on the author's fan site. Besides...how many times have you decided to read a book because a friend has told you a lot about it...and it sounds good. Personally...I think that having a bit of extra info on a story can help you understand and appreciate the plot better. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blaze1616 Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 I agree with Kurkistan on this one in that I think Vasher's WoR POV section leaves little room for arguments. As for spoilers, I joined without having read WoR at the time, and the spoiler tags proved immensly benificial. Brandon always says he does not want to make readers feel forced to read all of his books, so why should we? As his official fan site we should follow his ideologies when it comes to his books (...does that make us a pseudo religion?). Plus, with some of his older work becoming harder to find (my local book store's last copy of Elantris disappeared back in July), it is very possible we will begin to get plenty of users who have not read all his work, but still want to participate. I think the best course of action is to simply follow each individual thread's rules. Cosmere Theories very rarely requires spoilers (only when a new book comes out), and each of the series sections only requires spoilers for information of other series (with the exception of new releases again). Thanks to the spoilers tags, the only WoR info that got spoiled for me was Vasher's appearance and Adolin killing Sadeas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 You know...I've always felt that the whole spoilers thing is a little unnecessary. I know...I know...not everyone has read all of the books...but...if you are really concerned about having little bits of plot spoiled for you...you probably shouldn't be on the author's fan site. Besides...how many times have you decided to read a book because a friend has told you a lot about it...and it sounds good. Personally...I think that having a bit of extra info on a story can help you understand and appreciate the plot better. This is a good argument for why it's reasonable for any given person not to mind spoilers, but not really an argument for why no one should be allowed to not have to deal with spoilers. If you put things in the tags then all you spoiler hounds out there can simply click the "Show" button and start appreciating the plot better, while others can choose to abstain. No tags means no choice for people who'd prefer not to be spoiled, and so leaves them with the binary of either risking being spoiled just by entering a thread or just not reading the thread at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AerionBFII Posted January 26, 2015 Report Share Posted January 26, 2015 Im not sure what to think of Syl she always seemed to me to be sentient Investiture in my opinion. Life sense always struck me as one of the most useful side effects of the Breath magic system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts