Magic Systems: Net Energy

[Puck]

So, my general approach to the underlying system of magic is breaking what we know down to their base parts. One of the recurring 'atoms' is the net energy (as described by Brandon in his Mistborn annotations).

In my brainstorming and cataloging, I wanted to touch base and see if you thought I'm off in my existing categorizations:

    Mistborn     Way of Kings Warbreaker Elantris

Net + Allomancy  Surgebinding                           AonDor

Net 0 Feruchemy Soulcasting   Awakening   ShinDor

Net -    Hemalurgy                                                     FjorDor

:Let the arguing commence!

I'll begin the stone throwing by saying that we really don't know enough about Soulcasting to classify it on this table. But I did anyway 

[Cuaiir]

I might also toss Returned into Net + and whatever Nightblood is into Net -, because of their natures. As far as we know, there's no way for Nightblood's thousand Breaths to come out and be reused, and Returned are granted one single huge Breath that seems to come out of nowhere.

Maybe my logic is screwy, but it seems to make sense.

[Silus - Shard of Flame]

But Nightblood and the Returned are both part of Awakening, just different aspects.  So maybe they balance each other out?

[CrazyRioter]

also the Returned eat Breath to survive......

[Zas678]

I don't think that that is the right chart, though I think you're on the right track (I actually had a similar chart up at the end of HoA).

I think it might be energy from self, energy from others, and energy from Shard/Adonalsium.

So Feruchemy/Clayshan would be self energy, Dahkor/Hemalurgy/Awakening (Nightblood and normal), and Allomancers/Elantrians/Returned would be Shard/Adonalsium energy.

I guess if you really wanted to, you could pretend the world is a closed system, which would make your chart more accurate.

And I think that Surgebinding and Soulcasting are Shard Energy. They are both powered by Stormlight which seems an awful lot like the Mists from Mistborn.

[SOM1else]

The chart is right from what I can tell, feruchemy/clayshan are both power from the user, no power is gained or lost so it is Net 0, Hemalurgy is right to be a loss of energy because the longer that the spike is out of someone it loses power and not all the powers can be taken, allomancy is Net 1 because the power is not taken from the user. Also Returning, Awakining and what ever nightblood is are three separate aspects of BioChroma and can havwe different energy values, remember the shards used to be one single something, just cause sazed became ruin/preservation combined doesn't mean allomancy quit giving power and hemalurgy kept losing power

I don't think all shard energy is +1 because ruin doesn't have any power he can give his power has to be taken from others, Saze says in HoA that power has an extraordinarily high cost to him which makes me wonder if he is the only shard that doesn't have free energy or if there are others.

[CrazyRioter]

Nightblood is an Awakened object, albeit an extremely powerful one, created by Vasher and his wife, who Vasher then ended up killing.

[lordofsoup]

but that does not mean that he is not alive. If 1000 breaths were used to create him, he might have a full soul.

[Andrew the Great]

I tend to disagree with that statement, as it implies that Breaths are in fact pieces of souls. The fact that people are capable of living normal lives without Breaths makes me think that this is not the case, though your opinion on what exactly constitutes a soul will definitely affect your view of this.

I think of it like this. The people each have a soul, without which they will die. They also each have a Breath, which I believe to be a tiny fragment of Endowment, which heightens their sentience. Without it, they become less aware of people around them, less aware of colors and the world around them, but they don't die.

Nightblood has sentience because he's been given enough Breaths to heighten his natural sentience, which is virtually nothing. However, since Nightblood can't actually be killed, so far as we know, he can't really be construed as being alive. Also going along with this is the fact that Nightblood doesn't seem able to change himself - No matter what he may think, his fundamental nature is to destroy evil, whatever that may mean. I would also say that this is argument against him being truly alive.

Interesting to note, however, is that humans on Scadrial are just the same thing, in a way. They weren't sentient until Preservation sacrificed part of himself to make them so. Apparently Preservation's gift of sentience was less of experimenting and more actual knowledge than Vasher's was, though, based on the results.

[leinton]

Brandon has said that Breaths are part of your soul. It's in one of the annotations, I forget which chapter. Drabs are much worse off than people with a breath, they get sick easier and tend to be very irritable.

[Zas678]

I tend to go with leiton on this one. I think that people who live on Nalthis (the Warbreaker world), naturally see as much color and light as we do. What they have, that we don't have, because of Endowment, is that they can give some of it away. They don't start out with anything extra. They just can give what they have.

If Endowment had to give pieces of his intelligence/power to every single person so that they had a breath, I don't think that he would have nearly enough power/enrgy/whatever to cause Returned.

[happyman]

I tend to go with leiton on this one. I think that people who live on Nalthis (the Warbreaker world), naturally see as much color and light as we do. What they have, that we don't have, because of Endowment, is that they can give some of it away. They don't start out with anything extra. They just can give what they have.

If Endowment had to give pieces of his intelligence/power to every single person so that they had a breath, I don't think that he would have nearly enough power/enrgy/whatever to cause Returned.

That first paragraph makes sense. After all, the Shard is Endowment, which means the ability to give. Giving part of yourself seems like a very natural extension of that function.

On the other hand, Shard's are big. I mean, very big. Preservation gave a bit of himself to every human on the planet to make them sentient, and it still left him and Ruin almost perfectly balanced. The imbalance would eventually allow Ruin to destroy the world, but I get the feeling that the time-scale involved is very long, with billions of humans being created in the meantime. I see no reason why Endowment couldn't give of himself to every person on Nalthis, and still produce returned, and still be powerful enough to do whatever it is Shard's do after creating humanity.

[Puck]

I see no reason why Endowment couldn't give of himself to every person on Nalthis, and still produce returned, and still be powerful enough to do whatever it is Shard's do after creating humanity.

Especially with the Returned using up breaths and Return-ing (see what I did there?) them to Endowment (I know that's an unconfirmed theory, but still).