Jump to content

Rambling about Investiture


callumke

Recommended Posts

So I have been thinking about Investiture since the AoL Ars Arcanum, and have come to several conclusions. But these are just speculation, so I would like to see what you guys think.

Investiture is the power of creation

Investiture is the power of creation that Brandon has mentioned with regards to Aon Dor and Allomancy. He said that both of these are conduits for the power of creation. And we know that both of these are end-positive, and so the power that end positive magic gains is from the power of creation. And we think that a manifestation of Investiture if synonymous with magic, and thus the power of creation is Investiture.

Investiture powers Shards

We know Nicrosil stores Investiture, and that it might be possible to store the Mists or the Well of Ascension in Nicrosilminds (from the RPG). Thus, the power of a Shard is Investiture.

Investiture is general

Again from the RPG, it says that a Soulbearer Ferring could gain Investiture from Duralumin and Nicrosil Allomancy. This suggests that Investiture is general across the Metallic Arts, and as we have seen the same power source powers Aon Dor and Allomancy, and so Investiture is general.

Theory: Shards are manifestations of Investiture that do not require foci

This is less formed, but it is my guess that Shards draw on Investiture to do all that they do. They are a more pure force of magic than those humans use (excluding Ati, Leras, Sazed etc. obviously.) Thus they have direct access to Investiture, and can allow humans access to that same power through manifestations of investiture that require foci. This just seems to follow from the above three conclusions. So instead of foci, do they have Intents?

The classification system in tAoL Ars Arcanum

So I am going define the classifications given as follows

End-positive: Draws on external Investiture.

End-neutral: Transfers Investiture

End-negative: Investiture is lost.

Evaluating magic on Nalthis

Awakening seems obviously to be end-neutral, since no Breaths are lost. We see Nightblood consuming Breaths, and as such Nightblood is end-negative.

But this implies that the act of receiving a Breath, which so far as we know is the same as being born, is an end-positive Investiture. Which seems odd. But if we assume that Breaths are Invested by Endowment upon birth, then this ceases being a problem, since we have said above that a Shard has direct access to Investiture.

Evaluating magic on Roshar

This seems least clear. Surgebinding seems to gain power, and so is end-positive. Except it does not draw directly on Investiture, as Brandon described for Allomancy and Aon Dor, but instead draws on Stormlight. So perhaps the act of infusing gems with Stormlight is an end-positive act of Investiture, and Surgebinding is end-negative. But I am not sure.

Wow, that seems much shorter than I had imagined now it is typed out. Anyone got thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I can very much see this being the case.

In my opinion we should just keep and eye on Investiture in case it decides to move, then pounce on it and interrogate.

But if your theory is the case, then Soulbearer Ferrings are SO over powered. The ability to store the result of an end-positive cycle indefinably? Infinite power!

But what if they are just that. A Soulbearer Ferring. Nothing else. Where does the investiture come from? Surely not, say, an enemy Allomancer. Because I mean, that takes overpowered to a new level.

Not only could they completely immobilize any enemy attack using a Metallic Art, or any use of an Art full stop, during active storage, and then tap it at a later date to gain additional parts of a Shard inside of themselves? This is like Iron. Its Feruchemical active storage 'negative affect' actually outweighs the benefit of later tapping it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't expect much of anything from normal Soulbearer Ferrings, but I really hope a Double Nicrosil Twinborn can do something cool with Compounding. 100-1000000 years worth of stored Investiture tapped all at once? Certainly sounds like it should do something extraordinary. If the next trilogy features a Nicrosil Misting as we've been told, he/she would only be one Hemalurgically-charged spike or Sazed intervention from being a Nicrosil Ferring as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was thinking about the Soulbearer ferring issue. The RPG has no way of storing in a nicrosilmind; only transferring. Perhaps a Soulbearer ferring is quite useless, like an Aluminium gnat, but I doubt it. I reckon a nicrosil ferring has other abilities, but they are very interesting and so Brandon hasn't told us what it is.

Or we might find out when the tAoL RPG expansion comes out, since that will deal with Ferrings. Perhaps in this they will only gain power from Nicroburst mistings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

There's a really interesting tweet that Brandon made yesterday, involving investiture. Here's the link and info:

@BrandSanderson quick question to help me settle a debate. Could allomancy effect a shard plate/blade?

@SwiftxJustice No. Investiture interferes with most magics.

At the moment I'm running on about 2 hours of sleep, so I can't make heads or tails of it. Hopefully the rest of you have some thoughts about what this might mean. This seems to imply that Shardplate/blades are invested objects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having given some thought to Investiture and what we've seen of it, I find it unlikely that Investiture itself is a universal force; I think it's more likely to simply be the power of a Shard. I'm fairly sure that Brandon has said that Allomancy and AonDor draw from similar sources rather than the same one, although I don't have a quote on hand to confirm that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My thought was that nicrosil ferrings can only store and use investiture from sources they have access to, so no draining an enemy of their powers.

I also think that the only other investiture for vanilla nicrosil ferrings to access would be their own human attributes tied to their spark of preservation. Meaning that they spend some time being subhuman in some way and be superhuman later. I unfortunatly forget what all the Human attributes are, but they're connected to Kandra 'blessings' .

A twinborn or double nicrosil ferring should be able to drain the effect of their allomancy into their nicrosilmind, and enhance their allomancy later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not as if any other Feruchemist can steal their attributes from other people, so it would be utterly bizarre if a Nicrosil Ferring could. That's what Hemalurgy is for, after all.

The Human attributes we've seen in Hemalurgy are Strength, Senses, Mental Fortitude, and Emotional Fortitude. There are probably more that we don't know about yet, too. I highly doubt that storing Investiture could affect all these things. That sounds really overpowered. Seriously, that would be almost as broken as Atium. Most likely Investiture just increases Allomantic strength.

As to compounding Investiture, yes, it would probably give an Allomancer effectively unlimited power while burning a metal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Human attributes we've seen in Hemalurgy are Strength, Senses, Mental Fortitude, and Emotional Fortitude. There are probably more that we don't know about yet, too. I highly doubt that storing Investiture could affect all these things. That sounds really overpowered. Seriously, that would be almost as broken as Atium. Most likely Investiture just increases Allomantic strength.

But what about Soulbearers without allomancy? It was pointed out to me that no ferring with a title like 'Soulbearer' could possibly be compared to an allomantic gnat.

Brandon tends to focus on Limitations when designing his magic systems (Sanderson's Second Law) so I don't think storing some of your "spark of preservation" , your connection to the shard that grants sentience is as easy as you think.

I get the impression that the 'spark of preservation' has less investiture in it than in allomantic or feruchemic strength, so the rate they could store investiture is limited. There's a cost too; if a soulbearer ferring is storing power from that spark, he becomes like a Kandra without their blessing. Non-sentient.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the Nicrosil ferring, I think all they'd be able to do would be store investiture, and later become better at allomancy, if they stored enough they could probably briefly become an allomancer, or a complete feruchemist, but it would be effectively useless unless you could compound and achieve that for a long period of time (assuming it takes a lot of investiture to go from ferring to feruchemist etc).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy_Bookclub/comments/oji9u/the_alloy_of_law_qa_with_brandon_sanderson/c3huhis

I finally found a place to ask my question about a Double Nicrosil Twinborn, but it got RAFOed.

Technically a double post, but I think I can delete the old one. Just came across this quote again, and thought that it was worth reposting here. I bolded the most applicable bit.

ZAS678

Also, would the Elantrians and the Lerasium-mistings be considered Slivers? Or is just the Lord Ruler and Vin Slivers(Via the Well)? Or do you need more power to be considered a Sliver?

BRANDON SANDERSON (GOODREADS)

Elantrians are not slivers. Mistborn trilogy spoiler warnings follow! The Lord Ruler was indeed Sliver. So was Vin. For the rest, I would say probably not.

What defines an actual Sliver of Adonalsium is not as clear-cut as you might think. It's a term that in—universe people who study this have applied to various existences and states. Every single person on the world of Scadrial has a bit of Leras in them—a bit of the power of Preservation. Every single person has a bit of Ati in them. There's a certain threshold where these scholars would call you a Sliver of Adonalsium. But I would say that any regular Misting is probably not a Sliver. A full Lerasium Mistborn is getting closer, but people who have held one of the powers are what would probably be termed a Sliver by the definitions. If you hold all the power that makes you a Shard, but the Lord Ruler held a little bit of it and then let it go. From then on they referred to that change in him—the residue, what was left—as a Sliver. When he held it he became the Shard for a short time, and Vin was a Shard for a short time. After Vin gave up the power, what Kelsier is at the end of the trilogy—that's a Sliver of Adonalsium.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...