Stormlight != Investiture, Invested Oaths, also "Surgebinding" type Zero

[Bramble Thorn]

Stolen from another post I just made...

 

Lift's spren says its native home is on the cognitive plane. Also Lift can create stormlight from food because the Nightwatcher made her exist partially on the cognitive plane. Incidentely this means Stormlight likely DOES NOT equal investiture, unless you argue that the energy stored in fat cells on the physical realm is investiture. It is either a power source from the cognitive, and bled into the physical that can power the investiture (i.e. surge bindings) and/or it it a metaphysic key, The same way the metal mistborn' burn to use allomancy is not investiture or a power source.

...

 

It seems to me stormlight is not actually investiture at all. The ability to utilize it on the physical plane may be something investiture can grant, but stormlight itself is just good old fashioned make-Redbull-look-like-decaffeinated-tea energy,

 

There seems to be a problem of here lately of calling everything investiture, when it is not. The way it seems to me is first, there is the Shards, then there are Slivers, then Investment and invested objects, then phenomena caused by a Shards/Slivers interaction with everything else.

 

Way back Brandon mentioned how all his magic was either end positive, neutral, or negative, with only the end positive result needing power added from the shard itself. Everyone seems to have been assuming that surgebinding was a end positive result, with the stormlight the equivalent of the mists of preservation, where you were drawing in the power of creation to surgebind.

 

With Lift "Metabolizing" food (and her own body fat, it seems) into stormlight, this seems not to be the case. Now, storm light could still be a key metal on Scradrial that opens a gate to the power of creation, instead of powering it itself, it seems to have a power of its own, unrelated to the surges. Which makes me think that for most people, surgebinging is a net neutral, using the stormlight energy only, just like using it to give endurance/speed up healing/etc.

 

In fact, I wonder if the base Nahel-bond has any investment with a shard necessary at all. Consider this (totally not really) hypothetical situation. Someone has a Lerasium bead. Solidified Preservation Investiture. Black Gold. Texas Tea. They were not created by Preservation/Ruin and have NO residual Preservation investment in them at all, however minute. They swallow the bead and burn it. The preservation invested in the bead is used up, but will regenerate at the Well of Ascension over the course of a millennium. The new mistborn, does he necessarily have any Preservation invested in him, or just a (really strong) link with the power of creation Preservation holds, caused by his interaction with Preservation changing his SDNA?

 

I am mentioning this because someone had mentioned Odium temporarily increasing his investiture during desolations to power voidbinding. This was debunked for other reasons, but no one called out this part of the theory as problematic. But personally, I do not see Odiums system as being powered by Odiums slice of the power of creation. I see that as being hoisted off on either the user, or victims of the user. Ala "Send someone to the great beyond, get an info dump from the great beyond." Just Saying.

 

I think the Knights Radiant DID have actual investment from honor, and that is why they were so powerful, and why Kaladin is more powerful than Szeth. Or more specifically, I think the RADIANT OATHS were invested with The power of Honor (either by Tanavast himself, or Natahan via the Dawn Shards)

 

Because things seem to be happening on more than one plane, and with all these things pointing to the cognitive as important, I see cognitive objects as valid targets for investiture as physical ones. Also, The Radiant oaths still have power after the splintering of Honor, a problem of they were being invested on an individual basis. Plus, as V said, "Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."

By investing the idea and not the person, there may be insulation against that investment being corrupted. If a invested person gets twisted, you get something like the heralds. But if a KR goes against a particular oath, he can do longer draw on the investment in that oath, but it is there waiting to be sworn by, by the next person to really believe in it...

 

Thoughts?

[Satsuoni]

Direct WoB says:

 

Q: What is Stormlight?

A: I don't want to answer this, but I'll just say "Investiture."

Hence, we call it Investiture.

 

The way it seems to me is first, there is the Shards, then there are Slivers, then Investment and invested objects, then phenomena caused by a Shards/Slivers interaction with everything else.

There are Shards, Slivers, Splinters and Invested objects/people/effects (overlapping). One of the reasons it is used so often is because a lot of Cosmere runs on Investiture one way or another (I am not saying that we use it correctly, since we are still not sure what it is, exactly).

 

Known instances of Investiture include Scadrian souls and Allomantic power, Nalthis Breaths, Stormlight, etc, just offhand.

Edit: Maybe more "Spiritwebs" than souls. Regardless, the part that makes people sentient and gives access to Allomancy is Investiture (never investment)

Edited December 7, 2013 by Satsuoni

[Gloom]

I'll agree that it's more complicated than Brandon said. It is investiture, actually it has to be investiture because people use it to invest objects, but it isn't just investiture, and may be useless as investiture without being used in conjunction with other types of investiture like the bond, or gemstones. I think were trying to separate everything and analyze it individually when in reality, the magic is interdependent. The bond is just someone talking to themselves without stormlight, stormlight is just a pretty light without the bond or gemstones. Gemstones are just rocks without stormlight.

 

Edit: Gemstones are not investiture, but can be invested with stormlight via highstorm. A gemstone with stormlight is invested in the most basic sense in that it has stormlight trapped within it.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Gloom

[11thorderknight]

I think the term Investiture can be used to refer to multiple related but distinct phenomena. For instance, we've  seen it refer to pure spiritual energy, such as stormlight or stored feruchemical/allomantic attributes. We've also seen it refer to the process of using the power of creation (in Alloy of Law ars arcanum, we are told that allomantic metal burning doesn't fuel allomancy directly, but rather "sets up an Investiture and keeps it running"). We've also seen the verb "to Invest" used to mean "to create magic effects". So, my reading of it is that Investiture is a general term referring to extra spiritual energy that has been added to an object or person.

 

I REALLY like OP's idea that the Radiant Oaths, as a concept, are Invested. It would explain why the Words themselves are important, and why there is a difference between pre-Nohadon surgebinders and Radiants. 

[Gaussian]

If I remember properly, the Heralds in the prelude mentioned that there were knight's radiant at that time, and under the assumption that Nohadon lived after that time period (which I am pretty sure is true), then Nohadon did not invent the Radiant's oaths.  Perhaps he helped reorganize the knights radiant, but I think they have been around a lot longer than he was (hence his journey to Urithiru).

[11thorderknight]

If I remember properly, the Heralds in the prelude mentioned that there were knight's radiant at that time, and under the assumption that Nohadon lived after that time period (which I am pretty sure is true), then Nohadon did not invent the Radiant's oaths.  Perhaps he helped reorganize the knights radiant, but I think they have been around a lot longer than he was (hence his journey to Urithiru).

 

I'm pretty sure your assumption is incorrect. The Heralds kept coming back for every desolation to warn mankind to prepare and to lead them. At some point, in the aftermath of a desolation, Nohadon did some thinking and some writing (and likely some Dawnsharding) and founded the 10 orders. This made humanity strong enough, and gave them enough institutional memory, to withstand the desolations better than before. At some point thereafter, the Heralds called it quits, saying that the Radiants should be enough. For some reason that is currently unknown to us, but likely related to the Heralds quitting, that desolation was also the last one, up until the present time.

[marianmi]

You mustn't see as Lift transforming food into stormlight/investiture. She is not "transforming" food into stormlight, no more than you are "transforming" money in a Big Mac

Rather, she is gaining stormlight and "paying" for it with food/fat cells. Or better yet like the metal in Mistborn - is not investiture, but a key to investing.

 

PS: I hate McDonalds.

Edited December 8, 2013 by marianmi

[Windrunner]

I strongly disagree with you on that, marianmi. The word "metabolize" is used, which definitely implies that she is somehow converting the food directly into Stormlight, rather than performing some sort of trade.

[marianmi]

I hardly think the exact process is revealed/understood directly in the first chapter we read about it, or that Wyndle knows exactly what is going on.

Also, I think that the "power of creation" is "something" that "exists", and when it's "consumed" it "returns" to/in a different "state" of existence.

Since I don't believe food is/contains the "power of creation", I don't think Lift is "creating" stormlight or "transforming" food into stormlight.

Edited December 8, 2013 by marianmi

[Windrunner]

Wyndle is definitely the most informed person about the investitures of Roshar that we've seen so far, so I'd trust his opinion until we hear anything otherwise. This comes down to a fundamental disagreement we've had elsewhere, if I'm remembering correctly. So that I don't put words in your mouth, how would you define the power of creation?

[marianmi]

Just like shadesmar is a realm containing... beads ..., ... spanning across all worlds, I see the power of creation as something ... in the spiritual realmn, ... spanning all worlds...

So, I guess I see the power of creation as something somewhat similar to the beads from shadesmar, but in the spiritual realm. This is not to say it does not manifest itself in other realms as well, but I'm saying that the "natural" state is in the spiritual.

Also, like I said, I think of it as something that exists, and can cross realms, change states, but follows a "conservation" rule - it is constant, cannot be increased, cannot be decreased. It has a "cycle", bits of it traverses realms (e.g. when magic is done), and eventually those bits "return" to the "natural/neutral" state (in the spiritual).

More to the point here, it cannot be "created". Investiture is not "created", is "awarded". Not even shards "create" investiture, they basically are an aspect of investiture. And they are not infinite - so basically you can "starve" or "weaken" a shard by "trapping" enough investiture in a certain "form" - and not allowing it to "return" to the "natural state". Otherwise, Preservation could not have "weaken ruin".

We know investing "weaken" a shard (can be gathered from WoBs) ... so this means shards can't "create" investiture / or have access to infinite investiture. Then how can you think Lift can create some? She would be more powerful than a shard lol

[Windrunner]

Well, losing power like a Splinter weakens a Shard. But doing something like powering Allomancy, or Stormlight presumably, doesn't weaken a Shard because that power goes right back into it. And food is made of organics, which from our understanding (in at least Ruin and Preservation's case) were created through Shardic power, so she's probably just converting it back to what it initially was. Also, what Brandon's said about the Power of Creation seems to contradict your theory, in my opinion.
 

ZAS
So Power of Creation. Is the Power of Creation this thing of power that powers Allomancy and powers the Aons, or is the Power of Creation just what each shard has?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I would say [the power] each shard has. Is more the definition.

[marianmi]

Windrunner, on 09 Dec 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

Well, losing power like a Splinter weakens a Shard. But doing something like powering Allomancy, or Stormlight presumably, doesn't weaken a Shard because that power goes right back into it. And food is made of organics, which from our understanding (in at least Ruin and Preservation's case) were created through Shardic power, so she's probably just converting it back to what it initially was.

 

 

The difference vs. Allomancy is that the power comes from spiritual, is used, and then gets back there...

Whereas stormlight is something in the physical already... it's already "in a state". And when it's in a gem, I would say that it's "trapped", until "released" back in the spiritual when surgebinding. Then comes the Highstorm, when the power sweeps through physical, being trapped again in gems. And the cycle continues.

 

As a side, this results in an interesting question: if stormlight is Honor's, and gems are his body, what happens when you have his body fully in the physical (by killing all gem-heart creatures and making all that into gems), and you fill them all with stormlight? this means that the shard is beyond any recovery? both his body and power trapped? ...

 

Now, splinters is just an insane amount of investiture + powerful intent (+ maybe some other things too), powerful enough to get some kind of sentience. Example: Nightblood. Investiture = Breath, Nightblood = insane amount of Breath + intent to kill evil. I would say, using more Breaths => more complicated intent was possible => Nightblood would have been "smarter", or "more discerning". 

 

The idea is that lesser investiture DOES weaken the shard => but it's only a drop. Insignificant. Plus, the investiture used to do magic comes back immediately (usually). A splinter will weaken the shard in a more significant way, and investiture does not come back immediately. I would see it maybe possible for a shard to get back a "voluntary" splinter. I don't know if this has been discussed though, and I don't have enough information about this.

 

EDIT: Why do you say all organics are created though shardic power? I thought it was just humans...

Edited December 9, 2013 by marianmi

[marianmi]

edit: somehow this got double posted.

How do you define the power of creation?

Edited December 9, 2013 by marianmi

[Aether]

As a side, this results in an interesting question: if stormlight is Honor's, and gems are his body, what happens when you have his body fully in the physical (by killing all gem-heart creatures and making all that into gems), and you fill them all with stormlight? this means that the shard is beyond any recovery? both his body and power trapped? ...

WoB state that there will be natural consequences of drastically reducing the Chasm-fiend population. If your assumptions that Gemhearts are the condensed body of Honour, then presumably there might be a built up pressure in the Spiritual and Cognitive realms, which could potentially break through in much the same way that the Chasm is thought to have been created on Sel.

[marianmi]

WoB state that there will be natural consequences of drastically reducing the Chasm-fiend population. If your assumptions that Gemhearts are the condensed body of Honour, then presumably there might be a built up pressure in the Spiritual and Cognitive realms, which could potentially break through in much the same way that the Chasm is thought to have been created on Sel.

 

Yes, and I was saying that the build-up is stormlight, and that gets trapped in the gems in physical, so it might not get to a critical point to actually be a build-up, and that might be Odium's plan Anyway, this is very far-fetched

[Oudeis]

Wyndle is definitely the most informed person about the investitures of Roshar that we've seen so far, so I'd trust his opinion until we hear anything otherwise.

 

I agree with you, with one caveat... Wyndle didn't sound entirely sure. If all he said was, "you can metabolize food directly into Stormlight," I'd agree, but look at the whole paragraph.

 

“Somehow, you are partly in the Cognitive realm,” Wyndle said, coiling beside her and raising a twisting mesh of vines that could make a face. “It is the only way we can imagine this being possible. You can touch spren. And you can metabolize food directly into Stormlight.”

 

He seems very certain in the first sentence, but the second already retracts, "this is the only explanation we can think of." I think you're right; Wyndle's best guess is the best guess there is, and I personally subscribe to it; I plan to believe that she's metabolizing food directly into Stormlight until a better source comes along. That said, even Wyndle admits this is somewhat outside of his wheelhouse.

 

 

Now, splinters is just an insane amount of investiture + powerful intent (+ maybe some other things too), powerful enough to get some kind of sentience. Example: Nightblood. Investiture = Breath, Nightblood = insane amount of Breath + intent to kill evil. I would say, using more Breaths => more complicated intent was possible => Nightblood would have been "smarter", or "more discerning". 

 

 

I'm not sure I agree. We've got WoB somewhere, I think from the annotations, that the problem with Nightblood isn't that he didn't have enough Breaths (although honestly, considering how many a Heightening takes, a thousand's not that much). It's what Vasher said in the book; Nightblood is crafted of metal. A sword has no ability to distinguish good and bad. If I need new batteries for my flashlight, it doesn't matter how much wood you give me for a fire, it will never be the kind of power I need to turn on my flashlight. "Sentience" isn't the same thing as "Human", and Nightblood, even if he somehow Ascended, would remain utterly alien from human experience. Evil is simply a concept he does not have the hardware to understand.

[marianmi]

I'm not sure I agree. We've got WoB somewhere, I think from the annotations, that the problem with Nightblood isn't that he didn't have enough Breaths (although honestly, considering how many a Heightening takes, a thousand's not that much). It's what Vasher said in the book; Nightblood is crafted of metal. A sword has no ability to distinguish good and bad. If I need new batteries for my flashlight, it doesn't matter how much wood you give me for a fire, it will never be the kind of power I need to turn on my flashlight. "Sentience" isn't the same thing as "Human", and Nightblood, even if he somehow Ascended, would remain utterly alien from human experience. Evil is simply a concept he does not have the hardware to understand.

 

I don't disagree with you - I just wanted to say more Breaths + better visualization = more complicated command - I think that's how it works for Awakening in general. That being said, you see the shards better than Nightblood at understanding their intent? Cunning, and all the plans they made that we've seen - they got their "wits" from the human part - it was Vin that decided to sacrifice, it was (very probably) Leras that made the plan to trap Ruin, etc... Try disregarding the human component, and you'll see a mass of power + a powerful intent noone smarter than Nightblood.

Btw, would you say that by being a wooden sword (organic), Nightblood would have understood better what "evil" means?

 

About Wyndle - let's not forget he's a young spren too... I would tend not to put too much value on what he himself says he does not understand/he's not sure about

Edited December 9, 2013 by marianmi

[Oudeis]

Btw, would you say that by being a wooden sword (organic), Nightblood would have understood better what "evil" means?

 

 

Probably not... that's my opinion. There might be some differences, but good and evil require moral choices, which require... well, choices. He'd have to have been made out of something capable of making a decision before he could really understand the concept of being given the option between good and evil. Trees can't make decisions (citation needed).

[Meg]

@ Marianmi

I'd like to respond to a few points you made.

At first: Especially if an opinion isn't founded in the books or in WoBs (and “proven” by a quote), it seems strange to me to read things like “you mustn't ...” and similar.

 

You mustn't see as Lift transforming food into stormlight/investiture. She is not "transforming" food into stormlight, no more than you are "transforming" money in a Big Mac

I'm fairly sure the ability Lift got from the Nightwatcher is exactly this: transforming (though that might not be the best word) food – and if no food is available her the energy reserves her body holds – into Stormlight.

As for Wyndle and his apparent knowledge I'm with Windrunner.

 

Just like shadesmar is a realm containing... beads ..., ... spanning across all worlds, I see the power of creation as something ... in the spiritual realmn, ... spanning all worlds...

Shadesmar is the term used on Roshar for the Cognitive Realm.

source

 

Q: Do the Spiritual and Physical Realms have names, like Shadesmar is the Cognitive Realm?

A: Kind of, but not really. Shadesmar is just a rough translation of "Cognitive Realm" in the language of whoever first found out about it. Other people, planets, and worlds wouldn't call it Shadesmar - they would call it whatever their words for "Cognitive Realm" are. This applies to the Physical and Spiritual as well.

Not even shards "create" investiture, they basically are an aspect of investiture.

I don't agree with this interpretation, for example because of this WoB:

source

Chaos

Is there a Cosmere-specific term you use to describe, say, a Shard's power inside someone? For example, people on Scadrial had little bits of Preservation in them that made them sentient (and, with enough Preservation, Allomancy). This obviously doesn't make these people Slivers or Splinters, so I was just wondering if you had a word for it.

Brandon Sanderson

In my own terms, I refer to all of this as types of investiture. The degree, and effects, can be very different - but those people are invested. I term this Innate Investiture, and it is similar to what happens with people on Nalthis. That is also innate.

I understand this that Shards don't create Investiture, they are the source of any Investiture.

I believe that “the Power of Creation“ is the Power of Adonalsium himself. When Adonalsium was shattered the Power of Creation was split up but all power, all Investiture finally comes from Adonalsium.

 

And when (Stormlight i)s in a gem, I would say that it's "trapped", until "released" back in the spiritual when surgebinding.

Gems don't hold Stormlight for an unlimited time (see the necessity of charging gems in every highstorm; gems run out of Stormlight in about one Rosharan week).

So spending Stormlight for Surgebinding isn't the only way to use up Stormlight. And it's not necessary to Surgebind in any way to return Stormlight back to the world/cosmere.

 

Example: Nightblood. Investiture = Breath, Nightblood = insane amount of Breath + intent to kill evil.

I'm not sure if I understand you right here: Did you want to say that Nightblood is a Splinter? Nightblood isn't a Splinter.

IIRC the Breath invested in Nightblood wasn't Divine Breath (if so, Shashara would have died). Breath is Investiture, but Divine Breaths are Splinters of Endowment. Splinters, I think, hold much more Investiture than the Innate Investiture is that people on Nalthis or Scadrial possess.

So it might be a question for BS: “Is the amount of Investiture invested in Nightblood equal to the Investiture of one Divine Breath (or less or more)?”

 

That being said, you see the shards better than Nightblood at understanding their intent?

There is no way of comparing Nightblood and the Shards. Nightblood is a humanmade thing that was given enough Investiture that it gained kind of a “sentience” though his “mind” is very “simple”:

He’s evil, Nightblood said.

Vasher snorted. “You don’t even know what that is.”

(…)

She’d learned to forge the Breath of a thousand people into a piece of steel, Awaken it to sentience, and give it a Command. That single Command took on immense power, providing a foundation for the personality of the object Awakened.

With Nightblood, she and Vasher had spent much time in thought, then finally chosen a simple, yet elegant, Command. “Destroy evil.”

Warbreaker Chapter Fifty-One

So Shashara did Awaken Nightblood “to sentience”.

Back to the Shards and their Intents. I'd say: The Shards of Adonalsium are the Intents. Not the people holding a Shard of Adonalsium, the Shards (the 16 facets of Adonalsium that now live separated, so to speak) themselves are parts of the Power of Creation with different Intents.

And so they have no sentience/conscience if not hold by people, they just “are”.

I hope this is understandable.

[marianmi]

Thanks for a good post, Meg.

 

1) I agree that "mustn't" was not a good word. I am not a native English speaker Nevertheless, I stand by what I said: Lift is not creating stormlight. Investiture is not created. Think about it - is just like having someone in Nhaltis creating Breaths. 

 

2) Wyndle - he doesn't even recovered all his memories

 

3) I know Shadesmar is the Cognitive - I was saying that, in my opinion, the power of creation is something "inhabiting" the Spiritual, similar how the glass beads "inhabit" the Cognitive. I tend to use "quotes" and /alternatives/ when I can't find words to express properly what I mean.

 

4) 

 

I understand this that Shards don't create Investiture, they are the source of any Investiture.

I believe that “the Power of Creation“ is the Power of Adonalsium himself. When Adonalsium was shattered the Power of Creation was split up but all power, all Investiture finally comes from Adonalsium.

 

Maybe I abused the word "Shard". Let me try and explain better what I wanted to say: Shardholders can't create investiture. Shards cannot become more powerful than they were initially.

 

Let's say the power of adonalsium = power of creation = 1600 Power Units (PU). It split into 16 shards, each shard has 100PU.

Endowment "converts" (some of) its power into Breaths. Let's say 100PU = 1 million Breaths. He starts investing. Let's say you have 100k humans => 100k breaths lost on them, 900k remaining. Let's say he creates a Returned, with 1 Divine Breath = 1 PU (or about 10k Breaths). Still has 890k Breaths remaning, or the equivalent of 89 returned, or 8.9PU. Makes sense?

Humans create Nightblood with 1k Breaths. Is Nightblood a splinter? I don't think we have a proper definition for splinter, except for "lots of investiture + sentience". Is Nightblood a splinter? Well, there are some difficult questions here:

 

a) what is "lots of investiture"? Is a human with 10k Breath (equivalent to a returned) a splinter? He's got sentience + Lots of investiture. I think not.

does "lots of investiture" required for splinter = the point where sentience comes from investiture? - if yes, then it's easy to argue that Shards (w/o the shardholder) have sentience. And that Nightblood is a splinter. But i think not. Plus, Return's "sentience" I don't think it comes from investiture.

c) are splinters only things created by a shard? Then Nightblood is not a splinter, but is something similar created by humans.

 

d) questions for Darnam above: if  it does not matter metal or wood or organics in general, and the amount of investiture does not matter, what matters? Would you say seons are much smarter than Nightblood? Why? 

 

Coming back to the matter at hand: The idea is that with 100PU you can create 100 Returned. Then Endowment can't even create a human. It's power is all invested.

 

Now, on Roshar, stormlight is investiture. Let's say it's Honor's. He also has 100PU. That's equivalent to 100kg of stormlight. He invested the equivalent of 1kg in each Herald => 90kg left. He invested the equivalent in 200 grams in each blade, and 100 grams in each plate. And so on. Now, how can Lift CREATE investiture? That's why I said what I said: Shards cannot create investiture. You said they are the source. Yes, I agree, partially: it's the source in the sense that it's the one "distributing" it. It's the source of it just like the supermarket is the source of bread. But the supermarket does not create bread out of thin air. That source has limited amount. Yes, the amount is not lost - the stormlight comes back to the source. But also, that source cannot have 101PU. It's got 100. Lift creating 1kg of stormlight will not make the total stormlight in all the realms equal to 101PU. She just gets it from somewhere else. From the source, if you want. If Cultivation has the ability to create investiture, or make people create investiture, then where do we go for here? Odium would never be able to defeat Cultivation, she can just grow and create splinters of 100PU each - she could duplicate herself to infinity.

 

 

And regarding your last statement: I don't think Shards just "are". For example, I think a Shard, left by itself, is looking for a host (holder). Wants to he held. To have an intent - to BE an intent (I agree with you that they ARE the intents) - means that they are driven, and have some basic sentience. I am not talking about conscience, or even sentience as in human sentience, but I believe a Shard is AWARE in some sense. Otherwise, they would not be able to corrupt the holder. Or they would change him in an instant. 

[Oudeis]

 

d) questions for Darnam above: if  it does not matter metal or wood or organics in general, and the amount of investiture does not matter, what matters? Would you say seons are much smarter than Nightblood? Why?

 

First, I totally understand what you're saying with your PUs and all, I just happen not to agree. It's possible you're right, but I can't think of any in-world evidence to support your theory. If you can provide evidence, or if any evidence appears in future books, I will change my mind and agree with you.

 

Now to answer your question. Let me tackle the second half first, as it is slightly easier.

 

Are Seons smarter than Nightblood? My truthful answer is yes, but I fear it's misleading. I'm not sure raw "intelligence" is exactly what I'm talking about. If a metal lectern were Awakened and Commanded to Become Wise, I think it could become very smart, very much smarter than any Seon. It would still be alien, and it would still have about as bizarre a grasp of the human concept of "Wisdom" as Nightblood does of Evil.

 

I don't think Nightblood is alien for being dumb (though I do think he's an adorable little puppy and thick as a brick sandwich, bless his heart). I think he's alien for being divorced from human experience.

 

You raise a good point; why aren't Seons? Why do they seem to be people made up of glowy floating-ness?

 

First, something I want to point out: as you surmised, I think more is going on here than simple "amount of power". One factor I think matters is "building up" versus "breaking down". A Shard is Adonalsium, broken down. A Splinter is a Shard, broken down. Something like Nightblood is a bunch of scraps of Investiture, built up. Even if you took 500,000 Breaths to Awaken something like Nightblood, even if it was ridiculously more powerful than some Splinters, I don't think it'd be the same thing. I'm not sure why exactly, but it seems that snapping off a piece of something larger fundamentally gives you a different outcome than joining together a lot of little things.

 

So that's one big part. Seons are Splinters of Devotion after Aona died, and I think that's why they act human. Aona was once mortal before she took up Devotion, and the Splinters of what she held remember that and act accordingly. Individual Breaths were once part of people, true, but no Breath is "big" enough to remember enough of the person to make that mean anything. It's like trying to build a person's DNA when you've got 10K chromosomes; dumping them all into a blender and hitting "mix" isn't going to provide you with one cohesive DNA strand.

 

So I guess that's most of what I'm trying to say. Nightblood was never human, has no experience as a human, can never get any experience as a human, and the scraps of Breath sacrificed to make him can't carry any real humanity with them. If the dictionary were shredded into millions of pieces and ten thousand were chosen and stuffed into a bag... there is, in theory, a way to go through and piece them back together, see if you have any pieces that belong side-by-side and paste them together, but Shashara didn't do that, she just stuffed them into a sack. However, if War and Peace were torn to scraps, while no piece would be the full book, you'd at least get a few full sentence fragments. There'd be a touch of sense there, at least enough to understand what books and words and sentences are supposed to be. And that's what Seons are.

[askthepaperclip]

Marianmi, I think you are getting caught up on the word "creating" regarding investiture. This is understandable if English is not your native language. I think you are trying to say that Lift is "converting" food into stormlight, rather than "creating" stormlight from food. Does that help?

I think it is also possible that the term "stormlight" is confusing things. After a big meal, presumably Lift doesn't visibly glow as others holding a lot of stormlight do. I think she is converting food into whatever power stormlight holds/grants, rather than into stormlight itself, but the term "stormlight" is being used because that is the best in world descriptor.

[Meg]

I'll respond to aksthepaperclip's post at the beginning because he mentions something that is important.

 

Marianmi, I think you are getting caught up on the word "creating" regarding investiture. This is understandable if English is not your native language. I think you are trying to say that Lift is "converting" food into stormlight, rather than "creating" stormlight from food. Does that help?

I think it is also possible that the term "stormlight" is confusing things. After a big meal, presumably Lift doesn't visibly glow as others holding a lot of stormlight do. I think she is converting food into whatever power stormlight holds/grants, rather than into stormlight itself, but the term "stormlight" is being used because that is the best in world descriptor.

At first: Thanks "Converting" is just the word that didn't come to my mind and converting is -- as I understand it -- exactly what she does.

As for the second paragraph: I, too, don't think Lift begins to glow after eating. Food/body fat is the resource that she taps into if she needs Stormlight. And: I think she's yet doing it not fully wittingly.

 

Thanks for a good post, Meg.

 

1) I agree that "mustn't" was not a good word. I am not a native English speaker Nevertheless, I stand by what I said: Lift is not creating stormlight. Investiture is not created. Think about it - is just like having someone in Nhaltis creating Breaths.

I'm not a native English speaker, too (as could be seen in my profile).

@Creating Stormlight, see above.

 

2) Wyndle - he doesn't even recovered all his memories

Perhaps I should use another wording: As far as I'm concerned at the moment Wyndle is the one with the most knowledge about the three Realms with regard to Roshar, Stormlight and Surgebinding, even though he might remember more.

There's Ym, too, who seems more cosmere aware than the Rosharans we got to know yet, but I'm kind of sure his knowledge can't compete with Wyndle's. But that's a gut feeling.

I hope you forgive me skipping the theoretical part. In short: I don't think that the amount of power existing in the cosmere is absolutely "fixed". But, again, that's a gut feeling.

 

And regarding your last statement: I don't think Shards just "are". For example, I think a Shard, left by itself, is looking for a host (holder). Wants to he held. To have an intent - to BE an intent (I agree with you that they ARE the intents) - means that they are driven, and have some basic sentience. I am not talking about conscience, or even sentience as in human sentience, but I believe a Shard is AWARE in some sense. Otherwise, they would not be able to corrupt the holder. Or they would change him in an instant.

I think we will not come to a consensus. Why? Because of the ambiguity of the terms used.

@Darnam: I don't know if this is a key point for your explanation but I think it's important to distinguish that the Aons inside the Seons are the Splinters of Devotion, not the Seons themselves.

But I can agree with your last part that explains why Splinters gain sentience and Nightblood doesn't (Nightblood is not a Splinter, even if it was made from all of the Breaths available on Nalthis; I don't think that bulking up Investiture (here: Breaths) can result in a Splinter).

[Oudeis]

@Darnam: I don't know if this is a key point for your explanation but I think it's important to distinguish that the Aons inside the Seons are the Splinters of Devotion, not the Seons themselves.

But I can agree with your last part that explains why Splinters gain sentience and Nightblood doesn't (Nightblood is not a Splinter, even if it was made from all of the Breaths available on Nalthis; I don't think that bulking up Investiture (here: Breaths) can result in a Splinter).

 

Ah-ha, yes, I was inexact. I do wonder (and this might well affect what happens), what (if anything) were Seons before they got the Splinters inside of them? What would happen if the Splinter were removed? More to the heart-wrenching point, does Ashe need to die for Devotion to be reformed? omigod i'm gonna cry...