Powers Granted by Heightenings

[marles]

I recently had a second read through of Warbreaker and had some questions about powers granted via heightening.

1. The First Heightening is said to grant instinctive aura recognition. Does this mean that somebody that has not reached the first heightening could possibly be trained to recognize different breath auras?

2. It is mentioned several times throughout the story that life sense cannot detect nearby drabs. Do we know if life sense can only detect stored breath or can it detect other internally stored investiture (stormlight, etc.) as well? Simlarly, the Seventh Heightening grants the ability of recognition of breath investment in objects. Do we know if this is breath recognition only or if other investitures can be detected?

3. The Third Heightening grants perfect color recognition. However, at one point in the story Suseberon describes how he sees the world to Siri (something along the lines of everything and all colors being incredibly beautiful, etc). No other character in the story seems to have any similar thought at any point. Is it possible that Suseberon has so much breath that he is able to see (or at least partially) into the Cognitive Realm?

4. To take number 3 a bit further, would it be possible for an individual to acquire so much breath that they could travel into the Cognitive Realm similar to an Elsecaller (or otherwise become a sort of small perpendicularity)?

Edited January 5, 2018 by marles

[Yata]

1) The Heightening's powers aren't discrete. They simply rappresent the point where that ability reaches the peak. Everyone with a Breath will have aura recognition but this skill becomes complete when you have 50 Breath.

2) The Life Sense could detect Innate Investiture (The Investiture in Soul) not the Kinetic one (Stormlight) but it could sense Innate Investiture regardless of the Source. Breath is a bit weird because it acts sometimes as Innate and sometimes as Kinetic (when it is into an object). You may notice how Lifesense doesn't detect Breath stored in objects and we know for....others stories that Life Sense is able to sense other Shardworld's Investiture if it's Innate.

3) Susebron is so Invested that his senses began to see the Matrix beyond the Physical Realm...He honestly sees the world in a more Realmatic Sense (also if he doesn't know Realmati stuff). This would happen to everyone regardless of the kind of Investiture if he is really really Invested.

4) In theory yeah, but it's hard to state how this would work. One of the way to craft a Perpendicularity is to stock a lot of Investiture in a single location

Edited January 6, 2018 by Yata

[Weltall]

I imagine that if you managed to get enough Breath in one location somehow, you could become a permanent and mobile Perpendicularity simply by virtue of having so much Investiture in the same place. Though we're likely talking 'enough Investiture to qualify as a Sliver' given what we've seen of people interacting with Perpendicularities in other works. And the experience would probably be storming weird.

[The One Who Connects]

23 hours ago, marles said:

1. The First Heightening is said to grant instinctive aura recognition. Does this mean that somebody that has not reached the first heightening could possibly be trained to recognize different breath auras?

See, Aura Recognition is an.. interesting name to give the power because the Biochromatic Auras of the Returned, and especially Susebron, are visible for anyone to see. Near the end of the book, Susebron's aura starts to affect the room before he's even entered it(the door's still shut too). Even a color-blind fellow should be able to see that.

What the Heightening grants is the ability to judge about how much breath the bearer has based on their aura. So.. in essence, you are correct. Anyone with a good eye and enough practice can learn to recognize auras, and the 1st Height lets you bypass the "practice" requirement.

23 hours ago, marles said:

2. Do we know if this is breath recognition only or if other investitures can be detected?

What do you think?

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

I am staying away from answering too many questions like that until I start having it happen. But do know that the magics interact... some ways they interact very naturally, some ways, they don’t. So you can extrapolate that some of these things would work. But not necessarily all. All of them could be made to work.

---

3. Yata is correct. It has to do with his high levels of Investiture. Also, Susebron is neither the first nor last person to see across multiple realms in Brandon's works. Several have even had screen-time while they were doing this(not that all of them know what they were doing).

4. I'm not sure you could do this with Breath, but this is the concepts most of the Perpendicularities(Shardpools) work under.