Beyond Awakening

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

There is more you can do with breaths than just using them to awaken non-sentient objects.

In Warbreaker, we see Vasher help a girl forget a traumatizing experience somehow, using breath. Probably by teaching her how to store memories in breath since, furthermore, in Rhythm of War we see that Wit does just this uses his breath as a storage system for memories. But one of the most fundamental aspects of breath is that they can be given to someone else. So what happens if you give a breath that holds some of your memories to someone else? To me, it would make sense that they now have access to those memories. Probably, it would require the right Intent to let them- maybe you need to modify the Command a little bit. " My life to yours, my Breath become yours. See what I have seen" or something. But I simply refuse to believe that if you can store your memories in Breath, and share Breath, that you can't allow other people to access those memories. (And possibly you could even make some kind of projector that can be Awakened to display memories in the Breaths it has, given the right Command, but that's extra speculative and probably we won't see anything like that for a while).

We don't know exactly how how storing memories in Breath works, so maybe I'm completely off-base here, but I'd like to speculate further- why does it have to stop with memories? If you can store memories, could you store other things in breath? Strength? Speed? This sounds a lot like feruchemy and in many ways it is, so it's possible Brandon might not have made it work this way simply to keep the systems separate. But what we know of the memory thing does sound a lot like use of copperminds, so I also wouldn't be surprised if there were other similarities. Now, even if you can use breath to store strength, I doubt you can use it to give yourself super strength like you can with feruchemy. There's not multiplacativeness. You can store 10% of your strength in a breath, which means you'll be at 90% strength until you retrieve it and you're back up at 100%. You wouldn't be able to ever be at 110% strength like you can with feruchemy. But what you could do with Breath is to share that extra 10% of your strength with someone else. If you allow someone who's already at 100% strength to access your 10%, they could be at 110%. But that means you'll be stuck at 90% strength unless and until that person gives it back to you.

I just think it would make sense if Endowment's magic system allows you to endow others with your own attributes, and this theory seems to be consistent with what we know so far.

[EmulatonStromenkiin]

this sounds like it could happen

[HSuperLee]

What we've really been discovering as more and more about the mechanics of investiture are revealed is that all magic systems seem to have a lot of the same fundamental properties when you start getting into a detailed level of scientific analysis, and thus you can "hack" the systems in various ways to make them resemble other systems. So I wouldn't be surprised if what you're saying is possible. Though the innately transferable nature of breath would make it interesting in that you could theoretically transfer more than just memory. Let's say you're a parent on your deathbed who has decided to transfer your breath to your child before you die. You could choose to pass everything onto them. Your strength, memory, remaining lifespan, maybe even things like your fortune or other spiritual qualities. While its true that as a dying person you might not have a lot of physical ability to transfer, every little bit would make a difference, and the spiritual and mental traits would likely be undiminished and nearly double the recipient's abilities.

Edited June 3, 2022 by HSuperLee

[Treamayne]

Unless, of course, that while breath itself is unkeyed/unsealed the traits being added to one or more breaths may still be keyed and sealed. It may be that traits can only be passed to Awakened ojects (and possibly Lifeless) who, by their nature, should share the Awakener's signature.

Not disagreeing, just adding considerations for discussion. 

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Unless, of course, that while breath itself is unkeyed/unsealed the traits being added to one or more breaths may still be keyed and sealed. It may be that traits can only be passed to Awakened ojects (and possibly Lifeless) who, by their nature, should share the Awakener's signature.

I think that's prooobably unlikely, just given the way Breath works, since it's not exactly "unkeyed" but rather, it's keyed into the identity of whoever it's given to (this is why only you can retrieve your breaths from something you awaken, unless you do actually blank your identity beforehand somehow). So I would think that things stored in the breath would be too. Or at least, it's a very simple matter to make it so that they are, as simple as using the right command.

2 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

You could choose to pass everything onto them.

I'd imagine there's a limit to how much can be stored in a single breath (just like there is with metalminds and spikes), but if you have enough breaths then probably, yeah!

Edited June 3, 2022 by Stormtide_Leviathan

[Dr. Joe]

This seems to touch on some of the finer points of how Identity works.  I agree that BioChroma seems to have some unique properties in this regard.  Does a Breath "remember" its person of origin?  If I give my Breath to someone else, and then they give it back, is there any difference in how it would function?

I could see something inherent to the mechanics of BioChroma "re-keying" a Breath whenever it's passed to another living being, allowing the recipient to use it without the normal Identity-related restrictions.  Similarly, it wouldn't surprise me if attributes stored in a Breath were only accessible to the one who originally stored them, even if the Breath itself could be used for all standard BioChromatic purposes without being affected by the stored attributes.  This would get pretty messy, if one stored in a Breath, gave it away to someone who already held one or more other Breaths, and then needed it back.  Unless storing something in a Breath assigns it some kind of Investiture meta-tag, it might become virtually impossible to track where that specific Breath ends up.

I would LOVE to see some kind of infographic showing the relative Investiture capacities for various vessels.  A metalmind of X% purity [metal], a sphere of [gemstone] [X% cut perfection], [quantity] of Taldain sand, one Breath, etc.

[Trusk'our]

On 6/3/2022 at 0:16 AM, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

There is more you can do with breaths than just using them to awaken non-sentient objects.

In Warbreaker, we see Vasher help a girl forget a traumatizing experience somehow, using breath. Probably by teaching her how to store memories in breath since, furthermore, in Rhythm of War we see that Wit does just this uses his breath as a storage system for memories. But one of the most fundamental aspects of breath is that they can be given to someone else. So what happens if you give a breath that holds some of your memories to someone else? To me, it would make sense that they now have access to those memories. Probably, it would require the right Intent to let them- maybe you need to modify the Command a little bit. " My life to yours, my Breath become yours. See what I have seen" or something. But I simply refuse to believe that if you can store your memories in Breath, and share Breath, that you can't allow other people to access those memories. (And possibly you could even make some kind of projector that can be Awakened to display memories in the Breaths it has, given the right Command, but that's extra speculative and probably we won't see anything like that for a while).

We don't know exactly how how storing memories in Breath works, so maybe I'm completely off-base here, but I'd like to speculate further- why does it have to stop with memories? If you can store memories, could you store other things in breath? Strength? Speed? This sounds a lot like feruchemy and in many ways it is, so it's possible Brandon might not have made it work this way simply to keep the systems separate. But what we know of the memory thing does sound a lot like use of copperminds, so I also wouldn't be surprised if there were other similarities. Now, even if you can use breath to store strength, I doubt you can use it to give yourself super strength like you can with feruchemy. There's not multiplacativeness. You can store 10% of your strength in a breath, which means you'll be at 90% strength until you retrieve it and you're back up at 100%. You wouldn't be able to ever be at 110% strength like you can with feruchemy. But what you could do with Breath is to share that extra 10% of your strength with someone else. If you allow someone who's already at 100% strength to access your 10%, they could be at 110%. But that means you'll be stuck at 90% strength unless and until that person gives it back to you.

I just think it would make sense if Endowment's magic system allows you to endow others with your own attributes, and this theory seems to be consistent with what we know so far.

This is an insanely cool theory. It would be like having Kandra Blessings for humans, but without the need of the spikes or the physical warping. I also see it having merit in its likelihood, due to the versatility of Awakening.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

The real question is how supersaturating yourself using Fuerochemistry, durilium/necrosil, etc, interacts with the breath storing.

[teknopathetic]

Another huge thing is being the child of a returned and things like the Royal Locks. Is this difficult to do, or could people start creating a lot of magical inherited abilities? 

Edited January 18, 2023 by teknopathetic