Price of Breaths

[11thorderknight]

This is sort of an aside, but I'm a nerd so I think about these minor worldbuilding issues. Anyway....

 

How much do you guys think a single Breath would cost? (in today's US dollars, keeping in mind that the value of money is inherently different in a medieval society).

 

We know that a poor person selling their single Breath can get a large amount of money, and it sounds like most poor people in Hallandren sell their Breath eventually. But it can't be an enormous fortune, because then there wouldn't be enough money to buy all the Breaths that people are willing to sell. We also know that Lemex was able to buy at least 600 Breaths in a few years using the Idrian king's money, which was probably a good bit but unlikely to have been enormous, since Idris is relatively poor.

 

I'm going with a rough value of $5,000. What do you guys think?

[Oudeis]

Jewels's one Breath fed her family of eight people for "almost a year". 49 Breaths to reach the first Heightening is listed as "enough money to feed a peasant family for fifty years". I'm not sure if there are other mentions in the book of how much a Breath is worth.

[Tempus]

This sounds fun, let's try a few different measurements. Gonna use my home country, sorry. Easier for me, and the currency exchange is close to 1:1 anyway.

 

 

• Food to feed a family of eight for a year, basic groceries only, no alcohol, one Breath: 5,572$ CDN

 

• Average health care costs in Canada, normalized by average life expectancy extensions by cost over ten years, divided by fifty (1st Heightening gives a decade to lifespan): 630$ CDN per Breath

 

• Cost to develop near perfect pitch and pitch recognition, according to Royal Conservatory of Music, divided by 200, adjusted by above calculation: 792$ CDN per Breath

 

 

So... somewhere between 600$ and 5000$ seems about correct, for the effects. Supply and demand would futz with that, though. The Biochromatic Bank could build up quite a large store of Breath over the years. I'd expect that most countries would soon have rules regulating the gifting of Breath for dying individuals, but overall demand should vastly outstrip supply (population tends to grow, meaning more people are born than die, generally), and so I'd expect prices to be much higher than their expected effects above.

[Lightsworn Panda]

Putting this in modern day terms, I'll calculate it.

 

According to the UK National Office for Statistics, an average family spends around 489 pounds per week (as per 2012). This means they spend around 25,428 pounds a year (if they don't have holidays and are really conservative). Double that to accost for Jewel's large family and you'll get 50,856 pounds (I'm interpreting "feeding a family" as in providing clothing, water, etc., not just food). In the American dollar, that;s $87,187.53. 

 

If we're talking about actually feeding a family, then according to Gallup, an average American family spends about $151 per week on food (although Forbes claims it's $181). For Jewel's family, that'd be a max of $15,704 (if they're really excessive).

 

So, in modern day terms, that's around $10,000. Quite a lot for a Breath. That also means Susebron has... $500,000,000 worth of Breaths! (Faints)

[11thorderknight]

Those calculations sound like a good place to start, but the thing we have to remember is, Jewels's family were poor and Hallandren is a pre-industrial society. So the comparison to what the average American or British or Canadian family spends on food isn't really that valid. A better comparison might be to somewhere like India or China, where there is a much higher level of wealth inequality, with poor people living on very little.

 

The other thing to consider is that there's likely to be a culture of passing on one's Breath before dying. So, in a large family, especially with shorter life expectancies, it might be safe to assume that for every adult or older child that dies, the family would get a Breath that they could sell. This might lower the price. Also keep in mind that Jewels sold her breath as a child, to feed a Returned - this probably added to the value of her Breath.

 

Just some interesting things to think about.

[Oudeis]

Ancillary topic, my apologies to the OP if I'm stepping on toes, I don't feel like this really warrants a new thread.

 

How exactly does one MAKE money as an Awakener? What jobs are there in a pre-industrial society that someone with Awakening could do to earn as much money as Breaths cost?

 

An obvious one is, anyone of the Third Heightening can get paid to turn poems into the Artisan's Script to be presented to the Gods. When Lightsong sees petitions for the first time, he comments that one of them must've been a peasant who paid for a basic transliteration, so it can't bring in all that much money, though perhaps exorbitant prices could be charged for the fancier version where the colored patterns are turned into pictures. Though really, that's only worth it if the Awakener is also an excellent artist, independently.

 

What else? You could Awaken small objects to perform simple tasks... but what tasks are so simple and repetitive, yet worth being paid for? I can't, off the top of my head, think of anything. I open this to group discussion.

[11thorderknight]

There's two pretty obvious answers. The first is, most Awakeners are independently wealthy. They'd have to be, by definition, in order to have enough Breath to learn to Awaken things in the first place. The second answer is that they'd Awaken Lifeless, then sell them for more than the cost of the Breath that it took to Awaken them. If you think about it, not everyone who has a single Breath, or even many Breaths, would have the skill to create Lifeless, especially using the one-Breath Command. And it's a much harder thing to learn, because you can't reuse Breaths for practice - when you make a Lifeless, that Breath is lost for good, and if you're bad at visualizing your Commands and spend a lot of Breaths, you've just made yourself a lot poorer. So, I could see a talented Awakener who can consistently make good on the one-Breath Command getting wealthy pretty quickly by selling Lifeless.

 

I got the strong impression that most people in Hallandren who had Breath were simply wealthy people who used it as a combination of storing money, showing off, and enhancing their life/health/vigor. They weren't necessarily people who were skilled at doing Awakening. Someone like Lemex, or Vivenna herself, at the beginning. Vasher would be the other end of the spectrum - someone with relatively little Breath, but a lot of skill and knowledge who could accomplish a great deal with it.

 

But yeah, working in Lifeless production is probably where the big bucks for Awakeners were at.

[PorridgeBrick]

I imagine artists and musicians would benefit heavily from perfect pitch/color sight. So many artists will have a good amount of breaths, since those without can't really compete.

[Mistdork]

I hear economics. Oh good, this should be quite fun!

 

Anyway, first I want to address the issue of Jewels. There's one big difference with what Jewels did, there are two major differences between what Jewels did and what the average person selling their Breaths does:

 

First, Jewels was a child when she gave up her Breath. Her Breath was therefore healthier, better, and stronger than an adult's, it was strictly of better quality because it was more vibrant due to her young age. This means that her Breath was worth more than an adult's, and so, selling her Breath brought her family more income.

 

Secondly, Jewels sold her Breath to the God King. She was able to do this because she was a child (they mainly fed him more vibrant Breaths from children) and therefore her Breath was worth more to the gods. When determining the price tag, we have to take into account that she was one of the few children that had this "opportunity". Most children in Hallandren don't give up their Breath to the gods or the God King, meaning that her family was able to earn more in the exchange.

 

So, my point is that while Jewels family was able to afford the cost of food for a year (not the cost of living, necessarily), this doesn't mean that anyone selling their Breath on the street could do so. I also think that some of it is hyperbole, especially the bit about feeding a peasant family for 50 years. I'm not saying that Breath are not worth a lot of money (they obvious are), but I think that using Jewels as a way to calculate the worth of a Breath skews their worth a little bit...

 

It would be better, I think, to say that the average Breath (not one sold to the God King) is worth about the price it takes to feed a peasant family of four for a day. This is more people than the average modern family buying their basket of goods, so that must be taken into account. Secondly, their diet would rarely (if ever) include meats and other things we buy today, meaning that the price of a basket of (nutritious) food of a modern day family and that of a poor "medieval" family living in Hallandren  are hardly comparable. It might be better to compare the basket of food that a poor family living in China or a third-world country buys than someone living in Canada, the U.S., or any nation we live in. If say, you earn about $2 a day and (manage) to live off that in a third world country...or say that in Hallandren you earn about $5 (since the country is wealthier) when you have work, than the price of Breath should be anywhere from $550 to $1900 (1) (arguably more if your child gives theirs to the gods)...or the amount to feed a peasant family. The worth depends on how well the economy is doing and other factors, but I think that a more conservative estimate based on PPP in low income countries is probably a more accurate estimate. 

 

(1) For other countries that's about £290 to £1100 (GBP); $530 to $2020 (CAD); or €367 to €1396 (Euro). If you want to see this in another currency, just ask...

 

(2) For the math, I simply based the amount earn per-day on a 365-day year and multiplied it by $2 and $5, then subtracted $50 or $100 for other expenses. This is a really bad equation, but I didn't want to do a more detailed estimate since I don't have enough information on their economics...and naturally, I need to sleep.

[Oudeis]

I also think that some of it is hyperbole, especially the bit about feeding a peasant family for 50 years.

 

Interesting math. I like how you brain works. I'm personally more interested in comparative economics; trying to decide how much a Breath would be worth on Earth is a fun thought experiment, but I find myself wondering more how much it costs in relation to the things in T'Telir. How many Breaths could you buy for the amount of capital you'd need to start your own business? How many Breaths is a dye plantation worth? A herd of sheep? How many poems would someone of the Third Heightening have to translate to recoup the cost of 600 Breaths?

 

Lastly... the specific quote about the First Heightening (50 Breaths) costing as much as feeding a peasant family for 50 years... it did come directly from Vasher. I'm hesitant to discount his expertise in the field of BioChroma, and as a being who literally must consume one Breath a week in order to live, I wouldn't be surprised if he does know for sure the current value of one. Recall the trick he used to kill Arsteel, and how it was he manner he planned to use on Denth. Not to mention, he might have to draw his Breath-eating sword. He could, at any moment, find himself having sacrificed all of his Breath in order to survive, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a couple of deaddrops around the city, each with enough money to buy a single Breath, and another week of life.

 

I'm not certain I buy the feasibility of making and selling Lifeless for profit. You need the body, you need the ichoralcohol, and at any moment an accident (or some vandalism) could cost you a TON of money. I'm not sure that you can really charge so much more than the Breath itself costs for a Lifeless that the margins really make it a viable market, nor do I think there's actually as much demand as you think. As is pointed out with Clod, Lifeless are relatively rare in the city.

 

Ideally, you'd have several of them work dye fields or other menial, repetitive tasks that they can do 24/7 without sleep or food, yet don't actually require any intelligence or training on the part of the Lifeless. It's still a big financial investment on the part of both yourself and your buyer. I'm not certain that realistically plantation bosses would pick it over cheap labor like Idrians.

 

And as for artists being unable to "compete" without the Second Heightening... that's pretty rare, actually. It's a little like saying that subway performers can't exist because we've got Lady Gaga. If everyone had the option of a live performance by Yo yo ma for their commute, they would take it, but he isn't everywhere so we give a dollar to the guy near the escalators with a guitar. Performers en masse aren't going to stop performing just because they aren't the best, any more than that happens in the real world.

 

Not to mention, as we see when Parlin and Vivenna visit the Court of the Gods for the first time, anyone in the audience not of the Second Heightening themselves can't even tell the difference. Having perfect pitch is useful, but once your instrument is tuned or once the first note is sung, all you need is relative pitch, which is way more common. If two singers are singing next to each other in a chorus, and one has perfect pitch and the other simply has relative pitch, they will each sing literally the exact same notes all song long, and no one, not even someone with perfect pitch, could tell which of them was which. I'm sure there would be some rich people who insist on 3rd Heightened Art for their house, just as I'm sure there's a thriving industry of people selling knock-offs at inflated prices, knowing full-well that their patrons can't tell the difference.

[11thorderknight]

Interesting math. I like how you brain works. I'm personally more interested in comparative economics; trying to decide how much a Breath would be worth on Earth is a fun thought experiment, but I find myself wondering more how much it costs in relation to the things in T'Telir. How many Breaths could you buy for the amount of capital you'd need to start your own business? How many Breaths is a dye plantation worth? A herd of sheep? How many poems would someone of the Third Heightening have to translate to recoup the cost of 600 Breaths?

 

Lastly... the specific quote about the First Heightening (50 Breaths) costing as much as feeding a peasant family for 50 years... it did come directly from Vasher. I'm hesitant to discount his expertise in the field of BioChroma, and as a being who literally must consume one Breath a week in order to live, I wouldn't be surprised if he does know for sure the current value of one. Recall the trick he used to kill Arsteel, and how it was he manner he planned to use on Denth. Not to mention, he might have to draw his Breath-eating sword. He could, at any moment, find himself having sacrificed all of his Breath in order to survive, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a couple of deaddrops around the city, each with enough money to buy a single Breath, and another week of life.

 

I'm not certain I buy the feasibility of making and selling Lifeless for profit. You need the body, you need the ichoralcohol, and at any moment an accident (or some vandalism) could cost you a TON of money. I'm not sure that you can really charge so much more than the Breath itself costs for a Lifeless that the margins really make it a viable market, nor do I think there's actually as much demand as you think. As is pointed out with Clod, Lifeless are relatively rare in the city.

 

Ideally, you'd have several of them work dye fields or other menial, repetitive tasks that they can do 24/7 without sleep or food, yet don't actually require any intelligence or training on the part of the Lifeless. It's still a big financial investment on the part of both yourself and your buyer. I'm not certain that realistically plantation bosses would pick it over cheap labor like Idrians.

 

And as for artists being unable to "compete" without the Second Heightening... that's pretty rare, actually. It's a little like saying that subway performers can't exist because we've got Lady Gaga. If everyone had the option of a live performance by Yo yo ma for their commute, they would take it, but he isn't everywhere so we give a dollar to the guy near the escalators with a guitar. Performers en masse aren't going to stop performing just because they aren't the best, any more than that happens in the real world.

 

Not to mention, as we see when Parlin and Vivenna visit the Court of the Gods for the first time, anyone in the audience not of the Second Heightening themselves can't even tell the difference. Having perfect pitch is useful, but once your instrument is tuned or once the first note is sung, all you need is relative pitch, which is way more common. If two singers are singing next to each other in a chorus, and one has perfect pitch and the other simply has relative pitch, they will each sing literally the exact same notes all song long, and no one, not even someone with perfect pitch, could tell which of them was which. I'm sure there would be some rich people who insist on 3rd Heightened Art for their house, just as I'm sure there's a thriving industry of people selling knock-offs at inflated prices, knowing full-well that their patrons can't tell the difference.

 

This is something that I can't get behind. What would rich people pay for servants that will never quit, never need time off, day or night; always be available to work; don't need to eat, sleep, or pee; and can do any mindless, repetitive task without getting bored, or angry, or careless? A lot. What will they pay for guards that cannot be bribed or otherwise betray you; will never get careless; and don't care about any danger to themselves? A lot.

 

Remember, the cost of food, clothing and shelter, as well as time lost to sleep and regular life, all add up pretty quickly. So for menial work, like plantations, warehouse work, etc, a lot of people would prefer lifeless over hiring workers. If the cost of a single Breath is somewhere between 1 and 5 thousand bucks, and you (for example) double that (to pay for a dead body, ichor alcohol, Awakener's fee, etc) you still get a perfectly loyal, zero maintenance worker that can go 24 hours a day, for about 10 thousand. This is half the cost of a real person, and the lifeless will do twice the work because they don't need rest. It's a no-brainer from an economic standpoint.

[Moogle]

Remember, the cost of food, clothing and shelter, as well as time lost to sleep and regular life, all add up pretty quickly. So for menial work, like plantations, warehouse work, etc, a lot of people would prefer lifeless over hiring workers. If the cost of a single Breath is somewhere between 1 and 5 thousand bucks, and you (for example) double that (to pay for a dead body, ichor alcohol, Awakener's fee, etc) you still get a perfectly loyal, zero maintenance worker that can go 24 hours a day, for about 10 thousand. This is half the cost of a real person, and the lifeless will do twice the work because they don't need rest. It's a no-brainer from an economic standpoint.

 

This is a very good argument for Breaths costing more than $10000. The demand for Lifeless should be extremely high, which should raise the price of Breath in turn. I guess we could estimate the cost of Breath by looking at the prices of slaves in old times and then increase it by 50%. That's still incredibly inaccurate, though. Estimating the cost of Breath is hard.

[Swimmingly]

Not to mention religious and personal reasons - being a Drab carries a stigma, and the Lifeless Command is not exactly common knowledge. Toss in the fact that your social status rises pretty much based on the number of Breaths you have, and you drive up the cost of Breath even further. Once you get to things like Awakened swords or Lifeless armies, which all cost upwards of a thousand Breath and remove that much from the market permanently without providing much non-military market stimulus (labour or social status), well, it's hard to estimate to say the least.

[11thorderknight]

This is a very good argument for Breaths costing more than $10000. The demand for Lifeless should be extremely high, which should raise the price of Breath in turn. 

 

Actually, it's not, because there's a very important step between collecting enough Breath and getting a Lifeless, and that's the Awakening process. I'm going on the assumption (which I think is a very safe one) that most people who have Breath don't really know how to use it that well, and they certainly don't know how to Awaken Lifeless with a single Breath. And as I said, there's few people who would try to experiment, since that kind of experimentation has a permanent cost. So, you have a relatively small group of professional Awakeners who would likely produce the majority of Lifeless in Hallandren. They would sell these for money, and would in turn use some of that money to buy Breath. So there's really two related but separate markets here - the market for Lifeless, and the market for Breath. 

 

We don't know what the market for Lifeless would be like in terms of supply and demand. It would depend on the supply of able Awakeners to create them. If there were more Awakeners able to produce Lifeless than the market could absorb, the margins would be relatively low, as Awakeners competed to sell their product. Therefore, there would be a pretty close correlation between the demand for Lifeless and the price of Breath. If, however, Awakeners of sufficient skill were in short supply and were therefore a limiting factor in Lifeless production, we would expect the margins to be fairly high, in which case, there would not be much correlation between the price of Breath and the price of Lifeless. In other words, the degree of correlation would depend greatly on whether it was a buyer's or a seller's market.

 

The market for Breath, on the other hand, would almost surely be entirely demand driven, because the unfortunate reality is that there are always poor people (especially in a medieval/pre-industrial society) who would be willing to sell their Breath. The supply, therefore, would be fairly constant, and the limiting factor would the the availability of excess wealth for the more fortunate to spend on Breath. I would imagine that the price of Breath would fluctuate a good bit with the state of the economy, since it is ultimately a luxury good for the upper classes to consume.

[Moogle]

Actually, it's not, because there's a very important step between collecting enough Breath and getting a Lifeless, and that's the Awakening process. I'm going on the assumption (which I think is a very safe one) that most people who have Breath don't really know how to use it that well, and they certainly don't know how to Awaken Lifeless with a single Breath. And as I said, there's few people who would try to experiment, since that kind of experimentation has a permanent cost. So, you have a relatively small group of professional Awakeners who would likely produce the majority of Lifeless in Hallandren. They would sell these for money, and would in turn use some of that money to buy Breath. So there's really two related but separate markets here - the market for Lifeless, and the market for Breath.

 

I disagree somewhat. Every Lifeless takes up a Breath, reducing the supply, which means the two markets are inextricably linked. There is two separate markets, but what there is going to be a huge correlation between the two.

 

It also takes only one Command to create a Lifeless, and it doesn't seem particularly difficult. You just need a corpse, an Awakener to spend five seconds on it, and someone else to bother with ichor and the maintenance of the Lifeless. The only way the cost to hire an Awakener will be high is if they keep the Commands for Lifeless secret, and every single nation had Lifeless at one point so it seems that's definitely not the case.

 

As for the relatively small amount of Awakeners, I doubt the number of Awakeners who can use their powers is small. Vivenna learned to Awaken decently in an afternoon. People with lots of Breath are rich, and certainly can afford the tutoring.

[Swimmingly]

I thought Vivenna's Royal Locks granted her an instinct for Awakening, due to the fragment of a Divine Breath in her?

[11thorderknight]

I thought Vivenna's Royal Locks granted her an instinct for Awakening, due to the fragment of a Divine Breath in her?

 

This. It was a relatively subtle point, but Vasher most definitely commented on it as being at least a partial explanation for why Vivenna picked up Awakening so quickly. The first time she ever Awakened anything was when she Commanded the ropes he used to tie her up to "untie", and her point-of-view showed that she didnt' get it to work until she thought of it the same way as controlling her hair. And we know from Siri that Vivenna has always been extremely good at controlling her hair. So, the speed at which she learned is far from typical.

 

As for the one-breath Command, it might be easy for Vasher, but again, he's not typical. It might be that it takes an Awakener years to get good enough to be able to pull that off consistently, and in the meantime, they have to spend a lot of breath on making Lifeless that are substantially more expensive. We know from Vasher that it can take up to "several hundred" Breaths to Awaken a Lifeless, depending on the Commands used. 

 

I do agree that the Breath market and the Lifeless market are inextricably linked, I just think the Awakening process is an important intermediary that can and will influence them and keep them distinct. I also think that the supply of Breath is relatively constant and relatively unlimited - as I said, there are always poor people in need of money. So ultimately, it's going to be a demand-driven market.

[Moogle]

This. It was a relatively subtle point, but Vasher most definitely commented on it as being at least a partial explanation for why Vivenna picked up Awakening so quickly. The first time she ever Awakened anything was when she Commanded the ropes he used to tie her up to "untie", and her point-of-view showed that she didnt' get it to work until she thought of it the same way as controlling her hair. And we know from Siri that Vivenna has always been extremely good at controlling her hair. So, the speed at which she learned is far from typical.

 

Ah, thank you for the correction! I never noticed that. It's very interesting. I wonder what the typical rate of learning is, then?

 

 

As for the one-breath Command, it might be easy for Vasher, but again, he's not typical. It might be that it takes an Awakener years to get good enough to be able to pull that off consistently, and in the meantime, they have to spend a lot of breath on making Lifeless that are substantially more expensive. We know from Vasher that it can take up to "several hundred" Breaths to Awaken a Lifeless, depending on the Commands used. 

 

Actually, this was only for the old old versions of Lifeless, like hundreds of years old Lifeless. While they were experimenting with the best way to create them, it costed tons of Breath. Eventually the one-Breath Lifeless-creating Command was discovered and that is now the one in wide use. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) Of course, there's always the chance of an Awakener having issues learning this Command, and creating a bunch of non-working Lifeless, but that should be a one-time cost (Maybe? If the Command doesn't work, maybe you can get your Breath back from the corpse?), and then you've got an extremely long-lived Awakener who should have no issues providing Lifeless-creation services for all time.

 

I really feel like the Awakening component to Lifeless is minimal, and should not serve as much of a barrier between the Lifeless and Breath markets. (I wonder what the going price of hiring and Awakener to create a Lifeless is? 1% of the cost of a Breath, perhaps? Probably less, or else every Awakener would be rich pretty quickly.)

 

I do agree that the Breath market and the Lifeless market are inextricably linked, I just think the Awakening process is an important intermediary that can and will influence them and keep them distinct. I also think that the supply of Breath is relatively constant and relatively unlimited - as I said, there are always poor people in need of money. So ultimately, it's going to be a demand-driven market.

 

I don't disagree necessarily, but there is definitely a cultural stigma against being a Drab. Or is that just in Idris? Denth and Jewels seemed fairly fine with the idea of being a Drab, but they were not normal in any sense of the word.

 

 

Other things that come to mind in regards to Breath:

• Awakeners die filled with Breath relatively often, which lowers the amount of available Breath. (Though, how many?)
• The Returned are constantly eating Breath (though this is relatively meaningless, as it's only like a thousand Breath every year and... how big is the population of Hallandren again?).
• Lifeless are constantly being created (and destroyed, which in turns makes you want more).
• Hospitals will want a lot of Breath to heal sick people.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Moogle

[Swimmingly]

Remember, Breath in itself is a social symbol. It's a goal to be achieved in itself, especially considering the effective immortality that can be achieved with enough of it.

[king of nowhere]

Well, it is stated in plenty of places that a single breath will feed a poor family for a year, so, considering that in a preindustrial society people lived with much less money than today, but also that families were bigger, I'd pin the value of a breath as somewhere between 5000 and 10000 current day dollars, at purchasing power parity.

exact price fluctuates with how desperate is the guy trying to sell it, but it can't cost much less or it wouldn't be worth selling. and it can't cost much more, or many poor people would immediately sell their. Those mechanisms should keep the price stabilized.

On that account, lifeless servants/laborers should be pretty convenient, but probably there are reasons they are not. maybe they require plenty of maintenance - I mean, every time a lifeless scratches their finger, they need to be sewed or they start leaking alcohol. they don't heal wounds by themselves, so all the little wear and tear would add up, and a lifeless devoted to hard labor would need to be replaced fairly often, making a living worker a better option. Possibly is that. being employed in the army is therefore a perfect job for lifeless, as the army don't really need to get used that often - generally, the threat of using it is more effective, but it don't wear down the lifeless. And ironically, while it is more difficult to repair a lifeless from small cuts and bruises, it's relatively easy to fix war wounds.

Ancillary topic, my apologies to the OP if I'm stepping on toes, I don't feel like this really warrants a new thread.

 

How exactly does one MAKE money as an Awakener? What jobs are there in a pre-industrial society that someone with Awakening could do to earn as much money as Breaths cost?

 

What else? You could Awaken small objects to perform simple tasks... but what tasks are so simple and repetitive, yet worth being paid for? I can't, off the top of my head, think of anything. I open this to group discussion.

Awaken something to make a water pump work.

Or a mill.

[Swimmingly]

Awaken a carved human arm to crank a gearwork engine powering your car.

[Oudeis]

Awaken something to make a water pump work.

Or a mill.

 

How many Breaths does that take? How much would someone really pay for something like that? I guess if there were an apartment building or something with enough people that a water pump would be worth running constantly, and enough people could all contribute to the cost, it might be worth having, but considering that leaving something Awakened too long uses up the Breath (there's WoB on that somewhere I will attempt to find) you'd have to be making the equivalent of thousands of dollars every increment that the object wastes a Breath. All for something that can be done with a simple windmill, or a waterwheel in a stream.

[king of nowhere]

How many Breaths does that take? How much would someone really pay for something like that? I guess if there were an apartment building or something with enough people that a water pump would be worth running constantly, and enough people could all contribute to the cost, it might be worth having, but considering that leaving something Awakened too long uses up the Breath (there's WoB on that somewhere I will attempt to find) you'd have to be making the equivalent of thousands of dollars every increment that the object wastes a Breath. All for something that can be done with a simple windmill, or a waterwheel in a stream.

ah, the breath get spent eventually? then i agree, there's not much practical you can do with those. maybe use animated clothes to work in dangerous environment, but the cost is a limitation. i was hoping i could get limitless and free water supply for a big city forever with my awakened water pump...

[Moogle]

but considering that leaving something Awakened too long uses up the Breath (there's WoB on that somewhere I will attempt to find) you'd have to be making the equivalent of thousands of dollars every increment that the object wastes a Breath

 

If you could provide that WoB, I'd appreciate it. I've never heard of this before, and if it's true it is very important for figuring out Investiture dissipation.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Moogle

[Oudeis]

If you could provide that WoB, I'd appreciate it. I've never heard of this before, and if it's true it is very important for figuring out Investiture dissipation.

 

With many thanks to the intercostal Kurkistan, without whom I'd prolly never find the links to half the rust I'm sure I've read.

 

Source

Edited July 10, 2014 by Outis