Magics and combinations

[Merrickz]

Hey,

So I have no idea if this has been talked about before or if the idea is new, but I recently started thinking about investiture and the way it works.

So I was wondering if all power in the Cosmere comes from one main source "investiture" and each magic system is basically a "lens" which you use to channel investiture into different forms e.g. different metals cause different powers in Mistborn and the Aons and their modifiers change the way AonDor acts. Therefore is it possible to combine multiple "lens"/Magic Systems to create new powers not necessarily connected to the original system where combinations of magic systems create new different magic systems.

Anyway, it was just a thought and I think it would be an interesting thing to see especially with Hoid collecting different types of investitures, he could have weird unexplainable powers caused by mixing investitures.

 

[cloudjumper]

Yeah, you can mix investitures. It's definitely possible, and there's a couple WoBs out there somewhere. 

[Merrickz]

If you could find any links to the WoBs that'd be really great.

[Calderis]

While I can't say that I think it's impossible, I do think that without a Shard to invest in a world and create a magic system your not going to just create new powers. 

There are a lot of different WoBs about the possibilities of hacking the magic so that one investiture type can fuel another, the only real example of which we have is Compounding. Which only really hints at the difficulty involved as the only successful hack we've seen involves two magic systems that share metal as a focus, and the Investiture being co-opted from Allomancy is being used in a system that is still influenced by Preservation.

I think the only instances we've seen of a foreign magic system being used visibly on any world is done by Hoid. Even then  the ones that we know how he does it are using the original fuel (metal flakes in his drink). 

From a storytelling perspective also, I doubt we'll ever see it, even if it is possible. Brandon's magic systems are intentionally structured so that we as the readers can grasp and understand what the magic is capable of. To mix systems and create "new" powers means that their either a hack that exists within the system, and are still subject to the rules laid out... Or there would need to be an entirely new rule set to explain how the new powers were created. The complexity involved in outlining the rules for creating new powers would be... Just nuts. The only other option I could see would be Brandon creating new powers and not explaining the underlying mechanism for their creation, which would undermine all of his work towards the magic structure of the Cosmere as a whole.

Edited June 10, 2017 by Calderis

[Fallen Rope]

As above, Feruchemy compounding is the only mixing of two powers that we have seen. If we extrapolate from this then it seems that drawing a foreign power through a lens causes the power to match the lens. I’d guess if you somehow managed to put only a few breaths into some metal so that it doesn’t turn sentient, burning it would then cause Preservation's power to be turned into more breaths, the breaths could be a bit strange though.

Feruchemy is already linked to Allomancy though, so I’m unsure if such a thing could be done between two different systems.

We know some mixing is going on with Vasher, he is using stormlight to fuel his divine breath, maybe when he absorbs stormlight it increases his heightening, he might even be able to do awakening that leaks with it. Will we get to see Vasher using stormlight, well Nightblood has become an important element so there may be a strong crossover in the next few books.

[Calderis]

12 minutes ago, Fallen Rope said:

We know some mixing is going on with Vasher, he is using stormlight to fuel his divine breath, maybe when he absorbs stormlight it increases his heightening, he might even be able to do awakening that leaks with it. Will we get to see Vasher using stormlight, well Nightblood has become an important element so there may be a strong crossover in the next few books.

I strongly doubt Vasher will figure out how to Awaken via Stormlight in SA. Mainly, again, for storytelling reasons.

Brandon wants all of his stories to be self contained works. So while the Cosmere as a whole influences, and is influenced by, the other stories, I doubt he's going to introduce Awakening and require all the explanations of it for readers unfamiliar with Warbreaker. He's already pushing that boundary have Vasher and Nightblood in the story, and if he hadn't conceived them as SA characters and written Warbreaker as a backstory for them, I don't think it would have gone this far. 

[+hwiles]

2 hours ago, Fallen Rope said:

As above, Feruchemy compounding is the only mixing of two powers that we have seen. If we extrapolate from this then it seems that drawing a foreign power through a lens causes the power to match the lens. I’d guess if you somehow managed to put only a few breaths into some metal so that it doesn’t turn sentient, burning it would then cause Preservation's power to be turned into more breaths, the breaths could be a bit strange though.

Feruchemy is already linked to Allomancy though, so I’m unsure if such a thing could be done between two different systems.

We know some mixing is going on with Vasher, he is using stormlight to fuel his divine breath, maybe when he absorbs stormlight it increases his heightening, he might even be able to do awakening that leaks with it. Will we get to see Vasher using stormlight, well Nightblood has become an important element so there may be a strong crossover in the next few books.

A couple clarifying remarks:

1. Per WoB, Vasher doesn't know how to use stormlight to fuel awakening and hasn't actually been confirmed to be able to draw in stormlight (he might just be swallowing infused gems to fuel his Divine Breath or poking his head outside briefly once every couple highstorms).  For all we know, simply be irradiated with stormlight might satisfy his Investiture vampirism.
2. It's theoretically possible to use stormlight to fuel awakening, but this would require finding a way to either convert stormlight into Breath, or trick the underlying physics of awakening into thinking stormlight was Breath.  In either case, the awakened object wouldn't leak stormlight.  Just like when Miles compounded gold, he didn't still see gold shadows; the feruchemical health he produced and stored was identical to what he could have stored normally, albeit in much greater quantities.
3. WoB has it that any magic system can fuel any other, at least in theory.  In practice, something bizarre, such as fueling Surgebinding with Forgery, might be so prohibitively difficult, location dependent, and/or complicated as to be completely impractical.

That said, combining powers to create new powers should totally be possible.  It's speculated that only radiants of Jasnah's order will be able to soulcast at a distance (IE: she may be able to combine her powers to soulcast with a touch and her ability to "teleport" across distances to allow her to soulcast across distances.  Again, this is speculative, we won't know for sure until we see Shallan explore soulcasting more.

Combining magic systems in order to create powers that are so new and unique in function that their underlying physics and mechanisms appear, at least at a glance, to be fundamentally different from the individual systems is also possible:  See medallions in Mistborn era 2, and, again, this is speculative, but possibly the old magic and voidbinding.

[The One Who Connects]

2 hours ago, hwiles said:

In either case, the awakened object wouldn't leak Stormlight.

I'm skeptical of this just because the leaking is a physical property of Stormlight. Unless you actually convert the Stormlight into Breath, the Stormlight should probably still leak because that's what it does. I don't feel like that would change just because the Stormlight is in a rope as opposed to a gem

With the Miles example: one power(F-Gold) overwrites the other power(A-Gold). Awakening with Breath changes the fuel, which I think is different enough that it may not have the same overwrite effect.

As a side question, following your example: using Breath for Basic Lashings means it would run out very fast, something Breath does not normally do. This would mean that you consider how long the fuel lasts as a property of the magic system, rather than a property of the fuel. Am I correct in this assumption?

[+hwiles]

58 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

I'm skeptical of this just because the leaking is a physical property of Stormlight. Unless you actually convert the Stormlight into Breath, the Stormlight should probably still leak because that's what it does. I don't feel like that would change just because the Stormlight is in a rope as opposed to a gem

With the Miles example: one power(F-Gold) overwrites the other power(A-Gold). Awakening with Breath changes the fuel, which I think is different enough that it may not have the same overwrite effect.

As a side question, following your example: using Breath for Basic Lashings means it would run out very fast, something Breath does not normally do. This would mean that you consider how long the fuel lasts as a property of the magic system, rather than a property of the fuel. Am I correct in this assumption?

Breath and Stormlight are both Investiture, however, they have different properties and characteristics that make them not directly interchangeable.  Awakening, as a magic system, draws Investiture out of the practitioner in the form of Breath(s), in order to bind an object (or in extremely advanced cases we've only seen performed by Vasher...a living being...) with a magical command.

Fueling Awakening with stormlight should be like trying to fuel your car with crude oil; the substance is literally quite similar to what you need (Breath for awakening/Gasoline for a car), but still completely incompatible without refinement.  That said, on a fundamental level, stormlight is very similar to Breath, meaning it should be possible to treat, refine, or otherwise manipulate it in such a way as to make it compatible with Awakening.  However, once the stormlight has been processed in such a way as to make it compatible with Awakening, I would posit that it would probably be functionally identical, and literally indistinguishable, from any other ordinary Breath.  When Miles burns gold allomantically to fill a goldmind, the stored health is completely indistinguishable from ordinary health stored in a goldmind.  The type of fuel used doesn't change the output.  However, the type of fuel used does have to exactly match the type of fuel required; in Miles' case, this is Investiture "shaped" like gold.

I'm not sure I understand your last question, but perhaps I can clarify my meaning anyway; my belief is that how much surgebinding you could accomplish with a Breath would depend on how much Investiture the Breath is composed of.  If, for example, one Breath were worth the stormlight held in approx. 20 emerald broams, then assuming you could convert that Breath to stormlight with 100% efficiency, you could perform 20 emerald broams worth of surgebinding.  I also believe that you couldn't simply use your stored Breath to directly fuel surgebinding; similarly, a tineye with an honorblade couldn't simply burn tin and fuel their surges, they would have to find a way to convert their tin allomancy Investiture into Stormlight first.