[OB] Hoid's Interference

[KhanBoltNo4503]

Hoid has shown time and time again that it's possible to get more than one form of investiture without using hemalurgy. This must mean that he has some way to remove the interference between investiture and the connection some investiture has to its planet, such as how it is harder, or even impossible, for a surgebinder to leave Roshar (can't find the WoB though). But I will dismiss this as a fairly simple task for worldhoppers, as otherwise we wouldn't see any worldhoppers with abilities off planet.

However, at the end of Oathbringer, Hoid is shown to have acquired the attention of a spren, specifically a Cryptic. We know he leaves Roshar, as we see him as Wax's driver in era 2 of mistborn, which takes place during the 15 year gap between SA 5 & 6. We also know that Hoid has Breath, from a hint in either TWoK or WoR (can't remember though), and more directly when he Awakens the child's doll in Oathbringer. As shown here, https://wob.coppermind.net/events/3-firefight-chicago-signing/#e69, a person with Breath would take much more effort to bond a spren, but with all the other investiture Hoid has, I would like to know what possibly allows him to do this.

My only idea would be due to the fact that he's Yolish, and that the Yolish have a sort of anti-interference built into them, though this is not based off anything.

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

41 minutes ago, KhanBoltNo4503 said:

As shown here, https://wob.coppermind.net/events/3-firefight-chicago-signing/#e69, a person with Breath would take much more effort to bond a spren [...]

 

Um, with that WoB, you have to realize that the level with which Returned are invested is very different from the level with which an average Awakener is invested. You have to get to the 5th or 6th heightening through normal breath gain to be quite that invested.

On the other hand, Hoid isn't a Returned, and I don't think he has quite that many breaths. Plus, unlike Returned, if he needed to he could always store his wealth of Breaths into an object, form the bond, then take the breaths back.

4 hours ago, KhanBoltNo4503 said:

[...] but with all the other investiture Hoid has, I would like to know what possibly allows him to do this.

 

So, he has Yolish Lightweaving, which we don't understand, and thus can't theorize off of. He has Allomancy, and we also suspect that he might have some medallion-style metalminds. However, with the exception of the Lerasium investing into his body to make him an Allomancer, none of this is going to permeate him with large amounts of investiture. You have to realize that with the exception of Awakening and Surgebinding, the investiture used in the magic isn't stored in the user's body, but in the SR. So, other than the breaths (which I've addressed above) and the Lerasuim (which shouldn't be enough to be a concern) there isn't anything that we know of that would interfere with a bond. Though I suspect that you might have interesting results if you are holding both breaths and stormlight. The breaths might limit how much stormlight you can hold, depending on how much investiture a body can hold.

[Lelouch Vi Britannia]

To clarify, it was WoR in which Hoid mentions he has perfect pitch. But anyway... Hoid has to have a decent amount of investiture even before Oathbringer because of that. Perfect pitch is second heightening, which means >200 Breaths, which are investiture in themselves. Otherwise, we're not really sure how most magic forms function off world. Well, actually, that's not strictly true. Most investiture-using-methods aren't based off location. The exception of this is of course Sel, where the magic is entirely dependent on location owing to the Shattered bits of Dominion and Devotion (I think that's what they were) being trapped in the cognitive realm rather than the spiritual realm, where there are physical locations like in the physical realm. That's all very confusing, so what about Allomancy? The only person we've seen off their original world with allomancy is Hoid himself, and I think he used it in WoR in one of Shallan's flashbacks. So that works, presumably because allomancy relies on metals to channel Investiture, and thusly... overcomes the location barrier? I dunno. Awakening obviously works off-world, we saw that. The only reason Surgebinding works at all is because of spren bonds from Honor/Cultivation, so as long as your spren traveled with you that would work. Sand Mastery wouldn't work because of other worlds' lack of investiturily charged sand. And finally, hemalurgy... is weird and I forget how it works. There're actually some interesting ways to combine powers if you, although this currently only applies to one person. For example, lashing oneself to/towards someone and tapping furuchemical weight would be very effective, especially considering how Kaladin managed to crack shardplate WITHOUT using feruchemy (that looks like the right spelling...). Compounding is already overpowered. You could... ooh, what if you could awaken metal stuff with feruchemical attributes stored in it? Would it give the awakened object those traits? Or burn awakened metal, which presumably would give you the allomantic equivalent of the breaths stored in the metal, of the type that the type usually gives? For that matter, what is Nightblood technically made of? More research is required.

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

57 minutes ago, LewsTherinTalamon said:

Perfect pitch is second heightening, which means >200 Breaths

Having 200 breaths doesn't seem like a lot, Realmatically.

58 minutes ago, LewsTherinTalamon said:

That's all very confusing

We are actually starting to get more and more understanding of how Sel works. I have my theories.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTalamon said:

so what about Allomancy? The only person we've seen off their original world with allomancy is Hoid himself, and I think he used it in WoR in one of Shallan's flashbacks. So that works, presumably because allomancy relies on metals to channel Investiture, and thusly... overcomes the location barrier?

 

Hoid and Demoux, who is an Atium misting, but still an Allomancer. And Brandon has confirmed that we've seen Hoid use Allomancy. As for Allomancy working off-world: the Metals are what we call a Focus. Burning the metal allows you to channel investiture from the Spiritual Realm. And so, since the SR doesn't care about location, Allomancy would work anywhere. There isn't a location barrier at all.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTalamon said:

The only reason Surgebinding works at all is because of spren bonds from Honor/Cultivation, so as long as your spren traveled with you that would work.

Well, to me one of the biggest problems has to do with fueling Surgebinders with Stormlight. The larger gems only hold Stormlight up to a month, and so any Surgebinder would need to jerry-rig some way to use other investiture for Surgebinding, so have his gems refilled on Roshar pretty regularly.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTalamon said:

And finally, hemalurgy... is weird and I forget how it works.

Hemalurgy is the magic system that is most portable. More so than Awakening even. Anyone with a metal spike who is aware of Hemalurgy can use it. And it works by ripping part of someone's spirit-web by ramming it into their heart, then using that part of the spiritweb and attaching it to someone else's spiritweb.

[The One Who Connects]

On 11/23/2017 at 10:27 AM, KhanBoltNo4503 said:

such as how it is harder, or even impossible, for a surgebinder to leave Roshar (can't find the WoB though).

The difficulty is getting the Spren off of Roshar. The Surgebinder can leave just as easily as any person who enters the CR and wanders somewhere else.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

So taking a Cognitive entity off-world is hard. So, Surgebinding, if you can find out how to make it happen, remember, the Investiture is keyed to Connection. This is why Ke-- Oh, sorry, spoilers! When a certain somebody *laughter* had trouble getting off Scadrial, because he basically was a spren by that point so--*laughter* ...So, yeah Surgebinding would work off planet, but you'd have to get the spren off-planet first. That's hard to do. Cosmere-wide it's not hard hard but it is-- You'd have to know some stuff. You could learn how.

---

On 11/23/2017 at 7:16 PM, LewsTherinTalamon said:

Hoid has to have a decent amount of investiture even before Oathbringer because of that. Perfect pitch is second heightening, which means >200 Breaths

The Tenth Heightening(Susebron) is ~50,000+ Breath. Comparatively, I wouldn't call 1/250 of that as "a decent amount."

[Lelouch Vi Britannia]

14 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

The difficulty is getting the Spren off of Roshar. The Surgebinder can leave just as easily as any person who enters the CR and wanders somewhere else.

---

The Tenth Heightening(Susebron) is ~50,000+ Breath. Comparatively, I wouldn't call 1/250 of that as "a decent amount."

True. A lot more than normal, then. 

Edited November 25, 2017 by LewsTherinTalamon

[Lelouch Vi Britannia]

On 11/23/2017 at 9:25 PM, Brightlord Maelstrom said:

Having 200 breaths doesn't seem like a lot, Realmatically.

We are actually starting to get more and more understanding of how Sel works. I have my theories.

Hoid and Demoux, who is an Atium misting, but still an Allomancer. And Brandon has confirmed that we've seen Hoid use Allomancy. As for Allomancy working off-world: the Metals are what we call a Focus. Burning the metal allows you to channel investiture from the Spiritual Realm. And so, since the SR doesn't care about location, Allomancy would work anywhere. There isn't a location barrier at all.

Well, to me one of the biggest problems has to do with fueling Surgebinders with Stormlight. The larger gems only hold Stormlight up to a month, and so any Surgebinder would need to jerry-rig some way to use other investiture for Surgebinding, so have his gems refilled on Roshar pretty regularly.

Hemalurgy is the magic system that is most portable. More so than Awakening even. Anyone with a metal spike who is aware of Hemalurgy can use it. And it works by ripping part of someone's spirit-web by ramming it into their heart, then using that part of the spiritweb and attaching it to someone else's spiritweb.

Ah! Thanks, I was wondering about a lot of that. Hemalurgy doesn't actually use investiture at all, apparently.

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

32 minutes ago, LewsTherinTalamon said:

Ah! Thanks, I was wondering about a lot of that. Hemalurgy doesn't actually use investiture at all, apparently.

Well, not exactly. See, when you are storing that part of the spirit-web, it is actually investiture being stored in the Spike. Not sure how it works, but the limitations with pulling and pushing on invested metal apply to Hemalurgic spikes as well as Feruchemic Metalminds, so we can assume that the spike contains investiture.

But yea, it doesn't so much expend investiture (like burning metal, or using the surges) as stealing it and tranfering it elsewhere.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Brightlord Maelstrom

[teknopathetic]

Hold put his breath in a doll before bonding the Spren, didn't he? 

[Podman]

Yeah. He did. I read it as him making it easier to bond the spren. 

Edited November 26, 2017 by podman36

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

On 11/25/2017 at 4:50 PM, teknopathetic said:

Hold put his breath in a doll before bonding the Spren, didn't he? 

Wow, hadn't caught that. Not sure why he didn't put it in an object he was planning on holding on to, like a jacket or something. But then, breath might interfere not only with creating the bond but surgebinding as well, in which case Hoid might have decided to give up Awakening altogether to become a Surgebinder.

Though that still begs the question: Did he put all of his breath in the doll? Or does he have some left?

[teknopathetic]

14 minutes ago, Brightlord Maelstrom said:

Wow, hadn't caught that. Not sure why he didn't put it in an object he was planning on holding on to, like a jacket or something. But then, breath might interfere not only with creating the bond but surgebinding as well, in which case Hoid might have decided to give up Awakening altogether to become a Surgebinder.

Though that still begs the question: Did he put all of his breath in the doll? Or does he have some left?

He likely put all of his breath in the doll as the investiture may have made it harder for Hoid to bond the Cryptic. Likely breath fills similar cracks that the Nahel bond fills. As for the Doll, he knows the girl will take care of it. He seems to trust that family for whatever reason.