What are the Breaths?

[Xiahida]

What are these and how can they grant Hoid immortality?

[alder24]

Did you read Warbreaker?

[Quantus]

On the Planet Nalthis, where Endowment lives, people are born with a single Breath.  While they have it they have more Investiture than the average person, but if they give it away they have a lot less than a normal person (ie.  a drab). A person can (voluntarily) give their Breath away to another person.  The more Breaths a person gets (hundreds or thousands) the more magic abilities they get, called Heightenings, and the perk at 5000 is that you stop aging. 

They can also be used in an active magic system called Awakening, that will Awaken things like dolls or corpses to behave as if they are alive, but that takes both varying numbers of Breaths and also a lot of skill.  

[Elder]

Quantus gave you an excellent definition of breaths.  That said, I’m not certain they’re necessarily the source of Hoid’s immortality,  he has no lack of tricks up his sleeve.

[Voidmaker]

Hoid's immortality is definitely caused by something else. Breaths do extend lifespan, but he does not have nearly enough to reach anything close to immortality via Breaths.

[Quantus]

His immortality predates the shattering and is the result of him being a (former) Dawnshard.  He was already past a natural lifespan by the time they all got together to axe BigA.   

 

Quote

 

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid was a Dawnshard at some point in the deep past, and the reason he (even still) cannot physically harm people, or even eat meat, is related to the changes this made to his spirit. (Consider this the same fundamental principle as savanthood.) The few of you who have read Dragonsteel know that him being a Dawnshard was also the source of his immortality in that book, though the terms were different back then. (The word Dawnshard was never mentioned, for example--though the primary story of Dragonsteel (which is no longer canon) was about several people who unwittingly become Dawnshards.)

And a preemptive RAFO to all questions on this point.

Dawnshard Annotations (Nov. 6, 2020)

 

 

[Treamayne]

Here is the WoB on immortality in the Cosmere: (slight Cosmere spoilers for all series)

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)

Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)

Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)

Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)

Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)

Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)

Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow.

 

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

 

[Chaos]

Hi, you meant to put this in the Cosmere Discussion forum. I have moved it there.