Recycling investiture / Ecosystems?

[Penumbra]

I have a question regarding the Cosmere's investiture "ecosystem". I'm thinking of how Stormlight seems to follow a system where stormlight will leak or be used up and then come back through the highstorms, much like rain and the cycle of water. Is there something similar with Breath or other investiture sources in the Cosmere? When a person with Breath (maybe just one, or even several thousand) dies, does the Breath return to Endowment to be given to new people who are born, or collected somehow? If I remember correctly, Breath that doesn't get given away is sort of "wasted", but since investiture most often seems to be a relative constant in the Cosmere I'm guessing it doesn't just disappear. Is there any system of investiture that does not follow a "recycling" system like this in the Cosmere? Or have I totally misunderstood something? 

Apologies if this has been explained or speculated before and I missed it, I'm a little bit unsure about what is okay to ask and not here (I tried searching for it but didn't find anything that seemed to explain it?)

[Landis963]

Only Hemalurgy and Nightblood explicitly remove usable Investiture from the system.  Otherwise it returns to the source, be it a Shard (as with Allomancy) or a practitioner (as with Feruchemy).  

[Penumbra]

22 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

Only Hemalurgy and Nightblood explicitly remove usable Investiture from the system.  Otherwise it returns to the source, be it a Shard (as with Allomancy) or a practitioner (as with Feruchemy).  

Thank you for the answer! I didn't know Nightblood actually removed Investiture. What do we know of how these sources "soak up" the investiture? Stormlight and metals are natural resources and work mostly just as such I guess. I'm assuming in Nalthis the Breaths would go to Endowments domain somehow if not redistributed or collected by living people? Does that mean there is  a set amount of Breaths that can be "handed" out on Nalthis?

[Landis963]

Well, one would assume, but 1) Endowment has the power to spare (note that the power it takes to Return someone is roughly the amount of power it takes to provide 5000 babies with a single Breath) and 2) those Breaths naturally decay over time (as the express purpose of feeding Lightsong and co. Breaths of children is because they're stronger than those of adults).  So not only is there a steady stream of Investiture returning to Endowment from every living person, there's also one booster-shot a week from every Returned still alive.  

Edited August 20, 2017 by Landis963

[Calderis]

4 hours ago, Landis963 said:

Only Hemalurgy and Nightblood explicitly remove usable Investiture from the system.  Otherwise it returns to the source, be it a Shard (as with Allomancy) or a practitioner (as with Feruchemy).  

Nothing can "remove" investiture from the system. Investiture is a third state in the Cosmere, like matter and energy. It can't be destroyed. 

Nightblood is the only thing we know of that can do something like what you're saying and it's not actual removal, but a corruption that changes the investiture to a form that's inaccessible. It still exists though. 

Hemalurgy on the other hand does nothing of the sort. The decay that happens within a spike returns into the system. Hemalurgy is a magical outgrowth of entropy, which is itself a part of the system. The only long term effects of Hemalurgy are the weakening of the genetic traits that grant access to the magic. The traits stolen are either not passed on (as the person they were taken from most likely dead, and even if alive lost the trait), or they are passed on through the new bearer in a weakened state (but we've been told that hemalurgically granted traits pass on with weird and unknown complications.) 

[Landis963]

On 8/20/2017 at 2:02 PM, Calderis said:

Nothing can "remove" investiture from the system. Investiture is a third state in the Cosmere, like matter and energy. It can't be destroyed. 

Nightblood is the only thing we know of that can do something like what you're saying and it's not actual removal, but a corruption that changes the investiture to a form that's inaccessible. It still exists though. 

Hemalurgy on the other hand does nothing of the sort. The decay that happens within a spike returns into the system. Hemalurgy is a magical outgrowth of entropy, which is itself a part of the system. The only long term effects of Hemalurgy are the weakening of the genetic traits that grant access to the magic. The traits stolen are either not passed on (as the person they were taken from most likely dead, and even if alive lost the trait), or they are passed on through the new bearer in a weakened state (but we've been told that hemalurgically granted traits pass on with weird and unknown complications.) 

This is both entirely correct, and the reason I specified "usable Investiture."  (I did assume that any Hemalurgy-induced Investiture loss would give the lost power to Ruin and not Preservation, but there's no evidence for that)

[Calderis]

1 minute ago, Landis963 said:

This is both entirely correct, and the reason I specified "usable Investiture."  (I did assume that any Hemalurgy-induced Investiture loss would give the lost power to Ruin and not Preservation, but there's no evidence for that)

Ah, I didn't note the word "usable" 

Sorry for the needless rant. 

[Penumbra]

8 hours ago, Calderis said:

Ah, I didn't note the word "usable" 

Sorry for the needless rant. 

Not needless at all, it taught me some stuff that I didn't know/wasn't sure about about investiture and hemalurgy :b Thank you both for the good answers!