Awakening, Unconventional Commands and the Hypothetical Consumption of Breath:

[Aonar]

[Warning: This is a little long, and not as well cited or clearly organized as I'd like it to be. Its about 1000 words long, so each of the major sections is getting it's own spoiler. If you don't feel like reading a short (but rambling) essay, feel free to skip down to the tl;dr section below. I happen to be writing this at 2:00 AM, so when I say rambling and poorly organized, I mean it.]

 

What is an Acceptable Command?

 

I’m going to start this off with a question. Do we have any criteria by which to judge an “acceptable” Command?

 

I’ve been wondering this for a while, personally, and I haven’t been able to find much about it. All Commands we see, (or hear of) in the book deal with motion (standard Awakened objects/Lifeless) or cognition (Lifeless/Nightblood-class objects/Returned/Heightenings/whatever weird Command wipes memory). This strikes me as a little strange. I mean, it seems completely arbitrary. Breaths seem to be able to do two things; provide energy, and affect cognition/the Cognitive Realm in various ways. The question is: What limits these interactions? Why can’t an Awakener tell cloth to combust, or stone to shatter? These things are still both just energy, simply expressed in different ways. Why should Breaths be limited to providing mechanical energy?

 

The most obvious reason is that doing these things would render the Breath unrecoverable. However, we do know that Breath can be consumed in certain circumstances. Returned do it, as do Type IVs. I would also speculate that whatever Command removes memory involves Breath being consumed. It seems to me that BioChromatic expressions* which cause change** are the ones which consume Breath.

 

 

Why Breath Behaves the Way it Does:

 

The reason for this, I believe, relates to the differing effects of Breath upon sapient and non-sapient entities. In inanimate objects, Breath must be given purpose when it is bestowed upon an object. This Breath then carries out its purpose, and, where it can, reshapes its host to a humanoid form.

 

In sapient entities, Breath seems to be purposeless. It is given, and left undirected. However, while in this dormant state, the Breath is still acting. Its purpose (or intent, if you prefer) seems to be shaped by the Cognitive Aspect of its host. Reduced aging, increased health, lifesense, all related to an expanding and reinforcing of the Cognitive Aspect. By all appearances, Breath seems to be a primarily Cognitive Investiture,*** and holding it forces your Physical and Cognitive Aspects into line with each other. (Similar to how Stormlight forces the Physical and Spiritual Aspects into line.****)

 

Note here, that the Breath seems to be superimposing a human Cognitive Aspect upon non-human objects. The Breath itself appears to hold a definite Cognitive Aspect, and this generates many of the effects we see. Its peculiar “stickiness,” the passive effects of the Heightenings, and the fact that it likes to mimic life wherever possible.

 

 

Change Verses Augmentation, and the Cognitive Aspect of Breath:

 

Now, back to the question at hand. What decides whether or not a Command can be used? It seems to me that the visualization for Commands is in some way limited by what it can do with a human Cognitive Aspect. Inhabiting mammalian corpses, animating the inanimate, bestowing sentience, removing memories, healing. All things that would make sense for a human Cognitive Aspect to do (with a touch of Endowment’s Investiture, of course).

 

On to the next logical question. Is there any way to work around this? As a primarily Cognitive Investiture (as defined by Chaos) Awakening should be innately flexible. So, I would like to draw attention to the last two things we know of that Awakening can do. Removing memories, and healing. While they do fit under the framework I’ve laid out, they’re a bit of an anomaly. Why should Breath be able to remove memories, or heal, and how does it do so? These are some of BioChroma’s few uses that really input a permanent change in an object (excluding the colour that is used as fuel). The changes which occur in all known BioChromatic constructs are reversible with the transfer of Breath. (With the partial exception of Returned. While giving away their Breath does kill them, they still retain their augmented forms, and seem to hold on to more of their Cognitive Aspect when dead than your average Joe.) We know that Returned healings are permanent, and memory wipes strike me like they would be somewhere along the same vein.

 

As I speculated above, it seems that the consumption of Breath is related to a permanent, powerful change, as opposed to simple augmentation. I think with the right visualization, with the right Commands, it might be possible to derive more expansive and powerful effects from Awakening.

 

 

Tl;dr: Basically, there should be undiscovered Commands that have more varied and powerful effects in exchange for the consumption of Breath. The primary reason that they have not been discovered is that they are non-intuitive, and require more difficult visualization, as Breaths appear to be somehow tied to human Cognitive/Spiritual Aspects. There also might be an alternate framework for Awakening mechanics in there somewhere.

 

Now, I know my logic is a little sketchy in places, and I ramble on for a bit that I likely could have explained far more concisely and tied in for better, but other than that, what do you think? Any ways I could make this clearer and flesh it out better?

 

 

Footnotes:

*I’ll be using this as a blanket term for both Awakened constructs and uses of Breath that do not fall under the purview of Awakening’s traditional definition.
**Change being defined here as an expansion or reduction of previous capacities, outside of what could be explained by the mere addition of energy, or holding, but not consuming, Breath. Lifeless fit this categorization, as the pieces are still there and largely in working order, the Breath merely provides impetus for action.
***http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/9502-realmatic-attributes-a-classification-of-magics/?p=144843 Chaos did a good job here of classifying Investitures Realmatically based on the methods of use, and the logical extension of his ideas is that Investitures effects are also shaped at least partially by their designation.
****http://www.17thshard.com/news/events/giant-transcription-of-slcc-audio-r201

Edited December 24, 2014 by Aonar Faileas

[Mistdork]

This sounds familiar, nah, weird that I kind of was just thinking about this, though.
 
Since it's a bit late for me as well, I'm going to just ask a question (I've read your whole theory), do the unconventional commands fit into the Intent of the Shard? Since the Intent is to Endow with deity (or more broadly, just to Endow with a 'gift'), then these commands don't look as unconventional. Just thought I would point it out, though, I'll respond more to your post later...

Edited December 24, 2014 by Nymp

[Kurkistan]

@Aonar

 

As someone who's done it a bit too much myself in the past, I'll just say that over-spoiler-blocking a post is a bit unnecessary and hinders ease of use by a fair margin. I think it'd be fine if you got rid of the spoiler tags and just kept the headings.

 

Regarding the actual content, there might be one or two issues I see.

 

First of all, the Breath being rendered unrecoverable likely isn't the only reason (if, in fact, there is a reason and it's not the case that we simply haven't seen somebody use a "destructive Command" yet) why you might not be able to issue "destructive Commands". "Depending on how the object is destroyed", Breath can be recovered from damaged/destroyed objects. Myself I'd wager that you could get all the Breath back if you cut a cloth in half but only half of it back if you then burned one half of the cloth to ash.

 

I'll also have to disagree with this strong Cognitivity you associate with Breath. As Nymp linked to, the Heightenings are a function of becoming more like Endowment, rather than some more fuzzy "reinforcing your Cognitive aspect". And if we really are to draw a parallel between the ideals that spren represent and the more internalized ideals that Breath seek to enforce, then it seems that's where we get more Spiritual.

 

On that note, I may just have to write up a little theory expanding on this new Spirituality of healing...

 

@Nymp

 

We've generally found that the Intent of the shard is almost always found in how one acquires the magic, rather than having much to do with its use. So I wouldn't be quite so eager to analyze Commands based on how "Endowy" they are. Then again, Awakening could potentially be a special case if you want to interpret all Awakening as an act of acquiring/giving away the magic.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Aonar]

Sorry about the two week delay there. :/ With family business and the like over the holidays, I’ve really had no time for the Shard. Anyways:
 

@Aonar

As someone who's done it a bit too much myself in the past, I'll just say that over-spoiler-blocking a post is a bit unnecessary and hinders ease of use by a fair margin. I think it'd be fine if you got rid of the spoiler tags and just kept the headings.

Yeah, you're probably right there. The whole thing looked a lot longer when I was writing it out.
 

Regarding the actual content, there might be one or two issues I see.

First of all, the Breath being rendered unrecoverable likely isn't the only reason (if, in fact, there is a reason and it's not the case that we simply haven't seen somebody use a "destructive Command" yet) why you might not be able to issue "destructive Commands". "Depending on how the object is destroyed", Breath can be recovered from damaged/destroyed objects. Myself I'd wager that you could get all the Breath back if you cut a cloth in half but only half of it back if you then burned one half of the cloth to ash.

I'll also have to disagree with this strong Cognitivity you associate with Breath. As Nymp linked to, the Heightenings are a function of becoming more like Endowment, rather than some more fuzzy "reinforcing your Cognitive aspect". And if we really are to draw a parallel between the ideals that spren represent and the more internalized ideals that Breath seek to enforce, then it seems that's where we get more Spiritual.

On that note, I may just have to write up a little theory expanding on this new Spirituality of healing...

It might well be possible that we just haven't seen someone use a destructive Command, but somehow this seems wrong to me. I forgot about that quote, although I do believe my other reasoning still holds merit. (Although I obviously need to better explain myself.)

On to your second bit. Becoming closer to divinity, more like Endowment. This is fine. Even though we really have no clue what exactly this means, it works, and the various effects of Breath likely do relate to this. (The actual wording of the quote seems to be more vague than you're suggesting, though. In fact, to me, Brandon’s phrasing, “the idea of being Endowed by deity,” sounds more Cognitive than Spiritual.)

However, there looks to be more to it. To quote Warbreaker: (Pg. 58-59)

The tapestry twisted, a thing alive, and formed a hand, which picked Vasher up. As always, the Awakening tried to imitate the form of a human; looking closely at the twistings and undulations of the fabric, Vasher could see outlines of muscles and even veins. There was no need for them; the Breath animated the fabric, and no muscles were necessary for it to move.

As we can see here, Breaths seem to innately endow some Aspect of humanity upon what it Invests. (I maintain that Cognitive makes the most sense, I'll try to explain it better below.) You could argue that this is the same thing as being Endowed by deity, but why should that force the object into a form that is recognizable as human? Notably, it mimics muscles and bones in the way it moves, pretending to require them. This is the greatest real evidence that destructive Commands will not take the same form as the ones we see normally. For some reason, Breath seems to need to use elements of the human form in its action, and humans have a tendency not to tear themselves apart or spontaneously combust. (Although the second is apparently disputed. )

We don't know how much Breath is constrained by this, but it is clearly involved somehow in how they function.

I’d propose that Breath is primarily Cognitive rather than Spiritual, simply because it seems to me that Spiritual Aspects define what something is while Cognitive Aspects define what something should be. To elaborate: Things that affect the Spiritual Realm seem to have decidedly permanent effects. Wounds do not reopen due to a lack of Stormlight. Savants do not lose their increased powers when they stop burning metals. Soulcasted stone does not change back into air when the Soulcaster leaves. The Cognitive Realm has rather temporary effects. Forgeries revert back to their original state unless renewed. Atium Ferrings return to their original age when they stop tapping. Returned die when they lose their Divine Breath/run out of Breath to consume.

The reason the effects of Breath seem to have more permanence than other Cognitively based effects, is that Breath is rarely consumed. Breath remains within it host, giving an illusion of lasting change, while in reality, it is dependent upon the Breath it holds. The only problems with this are Divine Breath healing, and memory-changing. However, (getting back to my original theory here) I would propose that these effects consume Breath, and use this consumed Investiture to enact a Spiritual change, rather than a Cognitive one. (Looking back over what I wrote in the OP, I realize I somehow managed to never really explain this.)

 

Once it's no longer the wee hours of the morning, and I've gotten some proper rest, I'll try to rework the OP and add some of the clarifications from this post.

 

Any thoughts, now that I've explained myself a little better?
 

[Kurkistan]

It might well be possible that we just haven't seen someone use a destructive Command, but somehow this seems wrong to me. I forgot about that quote, although I do believe my other reasoning still holds merit. (Although I obviously need to better explain myself.)

On to your second bit. Becoming closer to divinity, more like Endowment. This is fine. Even though we really have no clue what exactly this means, it works, and the various effects of Breath likely do relate to this. (The actual wording of the quote seems to be more vague than you're suggesting, though. In fact, to me, Brandon’s phrasing, “the idea of being Endowed by deity,” sounds more Cognitive than Spiritual.)

I've never much been in favor of this "someone said 'idea'! COGNITIVE!!!!" sentiment. The Cognitive seems just so much more... transient than that.

 

Myself I'd argue that concepts and ideas, most especially of the more abstract kind, are most probably Spiritual.

 

Ideals and ideas and the like seem like just the kind of thing that are Spiritual, so far as I can see. And Brandon seemed pretty fine with likening the idea of Endowment contained within Breath to the ideals that spren represent: the moment I said it was like the ideals spren are based upon but "within the Breath" Brandon was jumping to say "yes" an inordinate amount of times.

 

However, there looks to be more to it. To quote Warbreaker: (Pg. 58-59)

<snip>

As we can see here, Breaths seem to innately endow some Aspect of humanity upon what it Invests. (I maintain that Cognitive makes the most sense, I'll try to explain it better below.) You could argue that this is the same thing as being Endowed by deity, but why should that force the object into a form that is recognizable as human? Notably, it mimics muscles and bones in the way it moves, pretending to require them. This is the greatest real evidence that destructive Commands will not take the same form as the ones we see normally. For some reason, Breath seems to need to use elements of the human form in its action, and humans have a tendency not to tear themselves apart or spontaneously combust. (Although the second is apparently disputed. )

We don't know how much Breath is constrained by this, but it is clearly involved somehow in how they function.

I'll note for one that we have even enough odds that Endowment was originally human, though I've not read Dragonsteel and so can't testify to how humanoid the 3 races on Yolen were.

 

Either way, though, I would say that if Divine Breath healing is anything to go by we already have reason to believe that even Divine Breath incorporate specifically human ideas into them already.

 

--

 

Another option I might suggest is that individual Breath from people have taken on some of their characteristics/identity or the like, so enforcing the "human-ness" of Awakened stuff.

 

I'll leave the topic for now, though.

 

I’d propose that Breath is primarily Cognitive rather than Spiritual, simply because it seems to me that Spiritual Aspects define what something is while Cognitive Aspects define what something should be. To elaborate: Things that affect the Spiritual Realm seem to have decidedly permanent effects. Wounds do not reopen due to a lack of Stormlight. Savants do not lose their increased powers when they stop burning metals. Soulcasted stone does not change back into air when the Soulcaster leaves. The Cognitive Realm has rather temporary effects. Forgeries revert back to their original state unless renewed. Atium Ferrings return to their original age when they stop tapping. Returned die when they lose their Divine Breath/run out of Breath to consume.

 

...I am somewhat confused. Your first set of three examples are a bit odd.

 

For the first, I'm not sure what that really has to do with the Cognitive vs. Spiritual discussion, as the wound healing and staying healed seems a Physical thing.

 

For the second, Savants do lose their powers when they stop burning metals. They remain Physically (and Spiritually, I believe, but I don't have a WoB on hand) distorted from the effects of savanthood, but Spook without tin was blind as a bat. What point are you attempting to make here, though?

 

I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the third.

 

-

 

For the rest, you still seem off. Forgery is all about affecting "the soul" and has been recently confirmed as the single most Spiritual magic we've yet seen.

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the other two examples.

 

---

 

In general, also, this idea of the Cognitive as "as it should be" and the Spiritual as "as it is" sounds like an inversion of what we've been given to understand the hierarchy is. This from Shai in TES:

 

All things exist in three Realms, Gaotona. Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual. The Physical is what we feel, what is before us. The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself. The Spiritual Realm contains an object’s soul— its essence— as well as the ways it is connected to the things and people around it.

 

The Spiritual sounds the more enduring of the two by this picture, and thus the one more likely to end up a tad disconnected from recently-changed reality.

 

Now of course this raises questions of how the Cognitive can go about healing the Spiritual, especially in light of that SLCC WoB on healing, but in fact I did get around to posting that new thread I mentioned in my last reply...

 

I am still a bit confused by what you mean by this "is" versus "should be", though, so I may just be misreading you and spouting nonsense at this juncture.

 

-----

 

The reason the effects of Breath seem to have more permanence than other Cognitively based effects, is that Breath is rarely consumed. Breath remains within it host, giving an illusion of lasting change, while in reality, it is dependent upon the Breath it holds. The only problems with this are Divine Breath healing, and memory-changing. However, (getting back to my original theory here) I would propose that these effects consume Breath, and use this consumed Investiture to enact a Spiritual change, rather than a Cognitive one. (Looking back over what I wrote in the OP, I realize I somehow managed to never really explain this.)

 

Once it's no longer the wee hours of the morning, and I've gotten some proper rest, I'll try to rework the OP and add some of the clarifications from this post.

 

Any thoughts, now that I've explained myself a little better?

 

So you see my problem here is that I'm not sure we're on the same page with this idea of "Cognitively based effects".

Edited January 4, 2015 by Kurkistan

[Aonar]

...Forgery is primarily Spiritual? My mind is too blown to try and come up with a cohesive response at the moment. That seriously makes no sense to me. I always assumed that it was the conflict between it's physical state and Spiritual Aspect that generated the whole "plausibility" mechanic, and the actual physical change was due to a more Cognitive interaction. Unless we start assuming that a Spiritual Apsect includes not only what something is, but also everything something was, could have been, and could be, then it seems downright contradictory to how it's described in TES... This definitely needs some more thought. (Unless there's already been a thread about this? I don't check the theory boards often enough anymore to really be up-to-date.)

 

However, back on topic for the moment. Yeah, the healing one was kinda a non-sequitur, and with Savants I did mean that they retained their Savantism when not burning, and their Savantism had effects on them even when not burning metals. With the third, I basically meant that Soulcastings don't wear out like Forgeries. If you Soulcast poison out of someone's blood, it stays that way, where if you Forge someone into having not been poisoned the Seal has be renewed constantly.

 

With Returned, I was trying to imply a parallel between renewing Forgeries and the Returned feeding on Breath. The change, (in this case from being dead to being alive) requires a constant infusion of Investiture to sustain itself. I would expect that a change on a Spiritual level to result in a more permanent bond between body and soul. Before the weirdness with Forgeries being Spiritual came up, I would have posited that this requirement was driven by the same "plausibility" mechanism that limits Forging. I.E., the Spiritual Aspect tells the rest of the Returned that it should be dead, while the Cognitive Aspect stubbornly maintains that it's alive, and requires x amount of Investiture every so often to override the Spiritual. 

 

Atium Ferrings were just conjecture, (and bad conjecture at that; now that it's a more reasonable time, even I'm not really sure what I was trying to imply here) and seeing how my whole argument might be built off a faulty premise, it's probably best ignoring for now.

 

"Is," and "should be," were oversimplifications. The Spiritual Aspect is an Ideal state, but it's also a record of all the connections between oneself, others and the environment, and these connections influence the Ideal state. While Lopen's Ideal state has two arms, it isn't a seven foot tall minor deity, because that isn't what Lopen is. However, Lopen might think of himself as one. (Where the should be comes in. Returned think of themselves and are thought of as being perfect and divine, and so should be, even if they aren't really.)

 

I think we're close to being on the same page; (although that quote about Forgery being Spiritual is really messing with me) I'm just doing a terrible job explaining myself. (It probably doesn't help that both times I've tried so far it's been two in the morning. )

[Kurkistan]

Re: Forgery

 

It seems that the plausibility-checking is outsourced to some degree. Myself I'm not averse to Spiritual aspects including all of an object's history, at the least. That gives the universe enough of a starting point to start doing some accurate checking on "points of divergence", I would think.

 

If you want a theory on how all of this works and have a half hour to burn reading through some of the most shamefully (and needlessly) dense and unnecessarily technical theorizing of my career, you could look at my theory.

 

-

 

Regarding the permanence of Resealing, I don't think we actually have any evidence that points to the seals used for permanent Resealing needing to be reapplied after their initial use. The way Brandon talks about permanent vs. temporary Resealing seems to indicate that only the temporary kind—the kind that goes against that Cognitive aspect—needs this reapplication.

 

---

 

Regarding Returned and their "idealness", myself I might argue that they just have some more expansive bounds to work in than Lopen does. While Lopen is limited by his Spiritual aspect and (I would argue) a general "yo you're just a human and you don't get to be spontaneously 7 feet tall from a little 'healing'", Returned get to plug into the same kinds of broader Spiritual ideals that spren do, and so might have some more room to maneuver when it comes to their bodies complying with Cognitive perceptions.

-This all on top of Divine Breath seeming to provide general body-morphing abilities, which may more may not be related to this particular discussion.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Kurkistan