Lets make a Perpendicularity

[Djarskublar]

I had a thought a moment ago that is frankly worth the money it would cost (in world). A perpendicularity occurs when you have a LARGE amount of investiture 'pooled' together (pun intended). In a single phrase: buy enough Breath to make a perpendicularity. Better yet, hack it to make the Breath over time.

Now how much Breath it would take... that's a lot of money. And drabs. That is beside the point though. This would be totally worth it to the Silverlight folks. Since it is a person that is a perpendicularity at this point (assuming they don't Ascend on accident...), they can worldhop anywhere. Even if they have to go to some other Perpendicularity to get into the Cognitive Realm, once there, they can go to, say, Threnody. Once there, there is a Perpendicularity there, and other people can pop into the physical there. There are inhabited worlds without a Perpendicularity, and this would make them accessible to the worldhopping population, particularly Silverlight.

[Djarskublar]

I am legitimately surprised nobody has yelled at me yet for being crazy again with this idea... Silly AU coming out and stealing all the discussion.

I thought about this some more, and I decided on something with this. The first is that the level of power you have to have for a perpendicularity to form would be approximately enough to Ascend to the relevant Shard, so it may not even be possible with the workaround I came up with. The other main thing is that you would have to get multiple different Investiture flavors to prevent Ascension (they are like ice cream, after all).

The above point would be influenced by one thing though, what are the requirements to cause a perpendicularity, and then what conditions must be met to keep it? I at first just assumed that it just required massive power concentrated in one spot, but that isn't necessarily all. For the moment, lacking evidence to the contrary, I will work under the assumption that you just have to collect a level of power that rivals the power in the Well. This brings me to the other point, what makes the perpendicularity stay? After Vin releases the power, then presumably it's not there any more (duh, but worth pointing out). There is still probably a fair bit of power Welled up (heehee puns), but there shouldn't be enough left to create a perpendicularity. Presumably the Well still functioned as a perpendicularity, though, so what made it still work? Is it cemented as one by the perceptions of those who know about it i.e. Shards and worldhoppers? If so, that is not a large population, though I suppose Shards count for a lot. Or is it like a Sliver, and once the place has been imbued with that sheer magnitude of Investiture, it will always be a perpendicularity. This idea sounds like it is more likely to me, but that presents a problem-- we can't make mobile perpendicularities nearly as easily, if at all.

I guess I need to present my idea on how a perpendicularity is formed. My guess is that you have some object of sufficient size that you overfill with Investiture. This directly relates to the concept of a metalmind having a maximum capacity. My bet is that if you have an object (think a large boulder or... a pool *gasp*) that you fill as full as it can get with Investiture, and then more, the motion of that Investiture exploding off the object that simply can't hold any more causes a rip in the Realms as the Investiture shifts from the Physical to the Cognitive and finally makes it home to the Spiritual Realm. This seems a lot like the mind and soul expansion Slivers experience.

This leads me to how to make a mobile perpendicularity. The short answer is-- you probably can't, unless you can transport a 'place,' if my stated mechanism is correct. On the other hand, you can manufacture them fairly easily if you are willing to work with multiple powers. Probably the easiest way is to fill a massive metalmind by blanking out several compounder's Identity and filling it really fast, then using a very large Aon (or equivalent, maybe an awakening) to provide a sudden burst of power that would rip through the Realms. The advantage to this method is that once you get around Dor access issues, a massive block of metal that is totally full of Investiture wouldn't be that hard to get places... relatively speaking. This means that you can just take this block anywhere you want a perpendicularity and then use the right Aon on it, and move on to the next spot. Of course, this assumes the block isn't annihilated when you do this, but that could go either way. Regardless, this would be totally worth it. It is a one time investment at least per perpendicularity, and maybe period, and it gets around any incidental issues with the perpendicularity you would have to use otherwise.

Not having to deal with 'morbid and rare' perpendicularities would be nice. Same with the one on First of the Sun. The problem that immediately comes to mind though is those 'morbid and rare' ones, which sound temporary, and maybe counter my mechanic proposal, same with the Pits being destroyed, though maybe that didn't destroy the perpendicularity, it just made it so the exit was into dirt, and therefor would kill you like a bad D&D teleport. If they are temporary, or at least require some constant Investiture flow to prevent the Realms from repairing themselves, this would require the block to be full and left on site with the Aon going constantly. That sounds... unsafe. Oh well, that is the price that must be paid for easy access to worlds that don't have native perpendicularities before FTL is invented.

This ended up being extremely long... Oh well, at least it was fun to think about.

[emailanimal]

To save you from talking exclusively to yourself (-: ....

 

I tend to agree with your doubts more than with your original theory.  While it may be possible to pool Investiture into a specific proto-perpendicularity in batches, it is still A LOT of Breath. Imagine the army of Kalad's Phantoms, each with Susebron-level Breath.  Now, take a serious multiplier to that.  So it simply may be prohibitively expensive for Silverlight.

Also, assuming that Silverlight is a singular entity is a bit dangerous. My guess is that it is full of politics and people who quarrel with each other all the time. 

[Djarskublar]

6 hours ago, emailanimal said:

To save you from talking exclusively to yourself (-: ....

 

I tend to agree with your doubts more than with your original theory.  While it may be possible to pool Investiture into a specific proto-perpendicularity in batches, it is still A LOT of Breath. Imagine the army of Kalad's Phantoms, each with Susebron-level Breath.  Now, take a serious multiplier to that.  So it simply may be prohibitively expensive for Silverlight.

Also, assuming that Silverlight is a singular entity is a bit dangerous. My guess is that it is full of politics and people who quarrel with each other all the time. 

*bows deeply* thank you for saving me.

I think you are overestimating how much Breath would be required. To the point, I think that, even though Brandon hasn't specifically told us how much a Breath is compared to other Investitures, we can make at least one relevant point. Lets assume for a moment that if you gathered up a large portion of the spren, you would have enough Investiture to be the equivalent of that required to create a perpendicularlity. That is a highly reasonable assumption, but I don't particularly want to fully explain it. I can if needed but it is implied by other things I am saying.

Honor was Splintered after the Recreance. Before the Recreance, there were maybe a couple thousand sentient spren, give or take, based on Dalinar's visions. Sentient spren are now more common than they were before according to one of the spren (Syl?), so say there are more like 5-10 thousand now. There should also be a lot more non-sentient spren, but they should be less Invested because they aren't sapient. To make this easy for myself math-wise, I will assume 10k spren, and that if I gathered them all together, it is enough Investiture.

Nightblood is the most Invested object in the cosmere. It is powerful enough to be dangerous even to Shardblades. This suggests, but doesn't ascertain, that Nightblood is probably at least as Invested, and probably closer to twice as Invested so that it can get past the Investiture interference that would occur. So, again for easy math, assume a Shardblade is worth around 500 Breaths, or half Nightblood.

That multiplies out to around 5,000,000 Breaths. It is a lot, certainly, but with the agelessness you get with the fifth Heightening, you can spend time aquring all that Breath. You just need Silverlight Inc. to do well on Nalthis and funnel all the excess profits into slowly accumulating Breaths. Silverlight Inc. would of course be a restaurant chain XD. It's only 100 times what Susebron has, and if you aren't giving all these Breaths to a Returned so they aren't being consumed, you can get a lot of Breaths pretty quickly. It would take a few hundred years, max.

I agree with your point on Silverlight still being like any other place with people with conflicting ideas, needs, and goals, but this should be feasible even if you only have a few dedicated individuals with agelessness.

And all that assumes you are using Breath. If you use compounding like my second post suggested, it's practically free! Also, you can use nicrobursting on people burning metalminds for compounding, so it can go really quickly.

[emailanimal]

23 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

To the point, I think that, even though Brandon hasn't specifically told us how much a Breath is compared to other Investitures

Sounds like a question to Brandon then, ain't it? (-:

In trying to approximate the amount of Investiture required to be tied to a Shardpool, we are probably missing some bit of information.  What do we know?

 a. Shardpools contain enough of Investiture to Ascend, or to perform some powerful actions (think Aona's pool). This is our lower bound. The amount is massive.

b. Shardpool pool of Investiture (in the presence of a living Shard) does not constitute a significant drain on the Shard's powers. That is, a Shard retains control over a vast chunk of the Investiture not tied to a pool. In the presence of a dead Shard we see the "vast chunk" as available for tapping through other means. This is our lower bound.

So, the questions become: what percentage of Shard's Investiture is sufficient to make up a pool? (1%, 0.1%, 0.01%), and how much total Investiture a Shard tied to planet controls.

 

[Samaldin]

19 minutes ago, emailanimal said:

 a. Shardpools contain enough of Investiture to Ascend, or to perform some powerful actions (think Aona's pool). This is our lower bound. The amount is massive.

I politely disagree with you there. I think the real lower bound we have would be (not sure if this needs to be spoilered, it´s a theory for which i´m not sure we have a WoB but AU gave an answer)

Spoiler

patjis eye (SotD) und what happens there (basicly investing worms, which in turn give birds the ability to acess Investiture if i understood right)

doesn´t seem as powerfull as Aonas pool

 

Also Silverlight could be a perpendiculary just by its nature. I´m guessing it isn´t uncommon for worldhoppers to be highly Invested, so if many of them come together, some kind of "weak" perpendicualry could form.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Samaldin

[emailanimal]

39 minutes ago, Samaldin said:

I think the real lower bound we have would be (not sure if this needs to be spoilered, it´s a theory for which i´m not sure we have a WoB but AU gave an answer)

 What is in your hidden comments does not have the be THE ONLY power possessed by that particular pool.  Also, remember 

Spoiler

No Shard on the world.  This may have effect on the power...

Neither do we know if there is a perpendicularity there.

 

But then, you both may be right - an UnSharded pool of Investiture does not have to have the full Ascending power to be a Perpendicularity.

 

In fact, it might work like the Breath system does (and how building one's homestead is gamified in a lot of computer games):

 

* At X units of Investiture you get a pool

* At 5*X units of Investiture we install a perpendicularity in it.

* At 10*X units of Investiture the pool TALKS TO YOU.

* At 50* X units of Investiture you can Ascend

* At 100*X units of Investiture: .... instant noodles!!!

 

Edited December 1, 2016 by emailanimal

[Djarskublar]

6 minutes ago, emailanimal said:

 What is in your hidden comments does not have the be THE ONLY power possessed by that particular pool.  Also, remember 

  Reveal hidden contents

No Shard on the world.  This may have effect on the power...

Neither do we know if there is a perpendicularity there.

 

But then, you both may be right - an UnSharded pool of Investiture does not have to have the full Ascending power to be a Perpendicularity.

Yeah. Brandon has RAFOed questions about whether that pool is a perpendicularlity. It is pretty much guaranteed based on some stuff in one of the AU essays, though. We know there is one on the planet, we just don't know if that is the location for absolute certain.

And it doesn't matter if there are other powers granted by that pool. It's not about the powers. It's about the sheer level of Investiture that is present. Preservation wouldn't have any less Investiture, and it's pool would be entirely unaffected if the only Allomancers were coinshots.

Also, Brandon has directly stated that he doesn't want to pin down how much Investiture a Breath is relative to other things just yet.

In the end, I don't think it really matters if it is practical to create perpendicularities, the important thing is if it's Realmatically possible.

[emailanimal]

22 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

In the end, I don't think it really matters if it is practical to create perpendicularities, the important thing is if it's Realmatically possible

Brandon's answer, I suspect, will be something to the tune of "possible but extremely difficult, so do not invest in those Perpindicularities'R'Us shares just yet".

 

We may also be missing one more thing in this discussion. Shardpools allow for a lot of Investiture in one place because there is something in the underlying relationship of the Shard with the planet that anchors the Investiture there.  But just because you are the proud owner of 5000000 Breaths does not mean that if you release them into a specially prepared hole you dug in the middle of nowhere, those Breaths will turn to liquid and remain concentrated in a pool. You may need some sort of an "anchor", and it is not clear that one can just get it.  Of course if you are Invested to the point of Ascendency, you may be in position to do that - we know that Rashek manipulated the locations of the pools.

Edited December 1, 2016 by emailanimal

[Djarskublar]

You don't want to just dump them in a hole. How inelegant, galactic serfs! Like I said, imbue them in a block of iron that's like 10 ft cubed. Fill it with feruchemical mass first by using medallions or Hemalurgy so you can get several people filling it without any identity. Even if they have to sit there for a month compounding it, it would fill eventually. Nicrobursting could also accelerate the process greatly.

Once it is full, attempt awakening or etch Aons into it beforehand that you then activate. The Aon activation will overfill the iron and do something. My bet is that it will cause a perpendicularity to form, if there is enough Investiture involved.

 

Besides that method, I bet you could create small ones with more hackery, but less Investiture. You would make something crazy, like an Elsecalling fabrial with nicrosil compounding to fuel it that is managed by either a spren or a sentient awakened object. Basically, something super wierd, but that utilizes the Elsecalling surge to transport you in and out of the CR.

[DrakeMarshall]

1 hour ago, Djarskublar said:

Besides that method, I bet you could create small ones with more hackery, but less Investiture. You would make something crazy, like an Elsecalling fabrial with nicrosil compounding to fuel it that is managed by either a spren or a sentient awakened object. Basically, something super wierd, but that utilizes the Elsecalling surge to transport you in and out of the CR.

I don't think that would be a "real" perpendicularity. But the effects would... Likely be very similar.

Honestly, an elsecaller nicrosil compounder could do some pretty crazy things with the cognitive realm I bet. Provided they have access to enough stormlight to fuel their enhanced elsecalling... They could likely teleport people to other planets with ease.

[Eldergod3]

On 12/1/2016 at 1:05 PM, emailanimal said:

Brandon's answer, I suspect, will be something to the tune of "possible but extremely difficult, so do not invest in those Perpindicularities'R'Us shares just yet".

 

We may also be missing one more thing in this discussion. Shardpools allow for a lot of Investiture in one place because there is something in the underlying relationship of the Shard with the planet that anchors the Investiture there.  But just because you are the proud owner of 5000000 Breaths does not mean that if you release them into a specially prepared hole you dug in the middle of nowhere, those Breaths will turn to liquid and remain concentrated in a pool. You may need some sort of an "anchor", and it is not clear that one can just get it.  Of course if you are Invested to the point of Ascendency, you may be in position to do that - we know that Rashek manipulated the locations of the pools.

I thought Rashek just altered the lands around the pools? He flattened the terris mountains and created mountains to the north to trick people.

[The One Who Connects]

26 minutes ago, Eldergod3 said:

I thought Rashek just altered the lands around the pools?

He shifted the entire crust of the planet and the Well along with it to be at a more stable latitude. Took the magnetic north pole too, unintentionally.

Quote

What Rashek decided to do (and he had to make split-second decisions in the brief time he held the power) was to shift the crust of the whole planet so that the Well was at a latitude that would have more standard seasonal variation, and to re-create the Terris mountains in the new North (to maintain the rumors that the Well was located there). He worried that the new location of Luthadel would be too hot due to the latitude, but it turned out that moving the Well created an unexpected effect. The planet’s magnetic pole followed the Well as he relocated it—and the ash from the ashmounts was slightly ferromagnetic.

[RShara]

Pssst, probably shouldn't necro a 1.5 yr old thread