Cheating Breaths

[Lego Mistborn]

So, you know how it's impossible to give away only a fraction of your breaths. Well I think I've found an easy loophole.

First step is to give the breath you want to keep to a piece of cloth or something lying around. Then you gify your remaining breath to whomever. Lastly go and reclaim the breath from the cloth. Boom, partial breath transfer complete.

An alternative is to put the breath you want to give away into a cloth, and then give it to whomever.

What doth you think?

[Wandering Shade]

That totally works! If you want to give away just 1 Breath, you can Awaken an object using just one Breath, store the rest into a different object, get the one you want to give away back, and then give it away. Then you can take back the Breaths you stored and boom. Minus 1 Breath. Your method is much faster, but it gives most of the Breaths to someone else.

You're not the first to think of this. If you read the Warbreaker Annotations, Brandon goes over this method and talks about the fact that Vivenna could have done this to get rid of her Breaths and that Denth knew about this method.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Wandering Shade
wrong sister lol

[Lego Mistborn]

I did read the annotations, guess I missed that bit.

[Treamayne]

Good catch if you didn't see it in the annotations.

10 hours ago, Wandering Shade said:

You're not the first to think of this. If you read the Warbreaker Annotations, Brandon goes over this method and talks about the fact that Siri could have done this to get rid of her Breaths and that Denth knew about this method.

Did you mean Vivenna?

10 hours ago, Ta'veren Kaladin said:

I did read the annotations, guess I missed that bit.

Annotation to Chapter 37

Quote

 

Vivenna Hides Her Breath in a Shawl

This has been possible from the beginning, and if Denth had truly been on her side, he would have admitted that there’s a way she could get rid of her Breaths. What she would need to do is Awaken something with a one-Breath Command. There are some. They don’t do much, but you can Awaken a very tiny scrap of cloth tied into the shape of a person with a very simple Command. That takes one Breath.

Next, you put the rest of your Breath into another object. Then you get that one Breath back and go hunting for a Drab to give it to. Then you take the rest of your Breath back from the object. From there, you can repeat the process if you want to. Vivenna could get rid of the Breaths one by one.

Of course, Denth didn’t want that to happen. He was coveting those Breaths. What he said was intended to sound like an innocent mistake. Many people unfamiliar with Awakening would make that mistake, so if Vivenna learned the truth later, he wouldn’t look suspicious.

 

Annotation to Chapter 58

Quote

The answer is simple, in many ways, but I’m not sure if I have the groundwork for it properly laid in the book. (Which is why I hesitated in explaining it.) Remember when Denth said that Awakening was all or nothing? Well, he lied. (I think you’ve figured this out now.) A very skilled Awakener can give away only part of their Breath. It depends on their Command visualizations. So Vasher needs to always give away everything except for that one Returned Breath that keeps him alive. As long as he has that one Breath (which he’s learned to suppress and hide), he can stay alive

 

[Wandering Shade]

8 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Did you mean Vivenna?

I did, thank you.