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Vasher Heightenings


Darth Revan

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Just finished up Warbreaker (had a lot of fun reading it). There was a lot about the magic system that was left unexplained, which I feel was intentional on Brandon's part and I completely understand. However, I was a little bit confused about how Vasher, a Returned, is ever at heightenings below the fifth, when he himself says that all Returned start at the fifth heightening by virtue of their single divine breaths. For example, in the epilogue, he and Vivenna are said to both be at the Second Heightening. Any help would be appreciated!

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1 minute ago, Darth Revan said:

However, I was a little bit confused about how Vasher, a Returned, is ever at heightenings below the fifth, when he himself says that all Returned start at the fifth heightening by virtue of their single divine breaths.

He can suppress his Divine Breath.

Quote

Denth’s Speed

Yes, Denth is inhumanly fast. He’s a Returned, after all, and has all of the physical enhancements that come with that. Even when he’s chosen not to manifest most of them, he’s still got an edge, just like Vasher does.

How do they hide that they’re Returned? Well, it comes down to mastery of their ability to change their appearance. They can’t shape-shift entirely; they can just alter some things about their appearance. They can change their weight, their hair color, and things like that at will. Vasher doesn’t do this often, but Denth has been known to use it as a disguise. The problem, after you do this once and someone realizes it, your nature becomes very suspect.

They have learned to suppress their divine Breath. This allows them to hide, but they must be careful never to give away all of their Breath. Denth has been a Drab before—he’s not completely lying—but never for longer than a few days. And his divine Breath is always there, suppressed. So he doesn’t know what it’s like to be a true Drab, which is why in this chapter he says he doesn’t think it changes you that much. He’s never felt it.

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What's happening here is that Returned are given what is called a Divine Breath. When they die, Endowment (the Shard on Nalthis, where Warbreaker takes place) gives them a choice whether they wish to Return or not. If they do, then Endowment "staples" their soul back into their body, using the Divine Breath (this is still mostly a theory here on the Shard, but it isn't a very popular theory). Returned need more Breaths (or any Investiture, really) to feed their Divine Breath or else they die. But what thy can do is suppress the Divine Breath, which is why Vasher didn't look like a Returned for most of the book. And Returned, just like normal people, can gather more than one Breath at a time. When they have a large amount and are supressing their Divine Breath, it appears as if they have heightening lower than the fifth heightening. Of course, each week, one of these Breaths is consumed by their Divine Breath in order to keep them alive.

Hope that helps, and welcome to the Shard!

EDIT: Ninja'd by @The One Who Connects

He did a much better job, plus he cited WoBs.

Edited by StrikerEZ
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3 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

He did a much better job, plus he cited WoBs.

Your answer is good too. I just provided the answer to the question, you provided more detail into the situation involving that answer.

As for the WoB, the annotations are something that I have a penchant for remembering

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2 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Your answer is good too. I just provided the answer to the question, you provided more detail into the situation involving that answer.

As for the WoB, the annotations are something that I have a penchant for remembering

Yeah, I guess. I can never remember the WoBs for anything. I just remember random tidbits, and ask for someone like you, Calderis, or Extesian to find them for me. :P

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3 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Maybe that's why we remember them :)

Because you don't like remembering random tidbits, so you just remember the whole WoB? Or because you get asked to find them so often, so you just learn to memorize them?

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

I find this funny. More often than not it's one of those two, or @Oversleep, who find them for me. 

Oh...I could've sworn you're one of the people who finds the WoBs. I remember now, you're the guy who does all the cool theorizing and stuff lol.

Also, sorry for hijacking your thread @Darth Revan

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4 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Oh...I could've sworn you're one of the people who finds the WoBs. I remember now, you're the guy who does all the cool theorizing and stuff lol.

I think I'm the guy who everyone attributes too much to. Either that or the guy with a depressingly low opinion of himself. 

Edited by Calderis
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4 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I think I'm the guy who everyone attributes to much too. Either that or the guy with a depressingly low opinion of himself. 

I'm gonna go ahead and say the latter, because you're a pretty good theorist, from what I've seen. I could never do all the crazy stuff you and @Pagerunner do. And some others, but you're just the first ones that pop in my head.

I think I'm pretty good at explaining how what we know works and grasping the hard facts well. I'm just not good at theorizing. I do com up with my own crazy theories sometimes, though I usually keep them to myself.

EDIT: Also, it's "too much to" lol

Yay for gramma police!

Edited by StrikerEZ
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Just now, StrikerEZ said:

Because you don't like remembering random tidbits, so you just remember the whole WoB? Or because you get asked to find them so often, so you just learn to memorize them?

Little of both, where you start to associate this random tidbit with "Annotation" and that random tidbit with "Theoryland" or "Reddit WoB."

22 minutes ago, Darth Revan said:

For example, in the epilogue, he and Vivienna are said to both be at the Second Heightening. Any help would be appreciated!

I suppose I should actually explain how that works. As Striker said, Returned can have normal breath on them too. When not suppressing their Divine Breath, they are automatically at the 5th Height. and any extra breath starts working towards the 6th. When suppressing, it's as though that Divine Breath isn't there, or is like "half a breath," so what little normal breath they have on them starts from the beginning like any normal person. So when Vasher is at the 2nd Height like Vivienna is, they both have around 200+ normal breath on them.

If a Returned suppresses their Divine Breath, they could gauge how many normal breath they have on them by seeing which Heightening they are at, which is what Vasher seemed to do at the end there. He's got a similar aura to Vivienna, and hers is about 2nd Height, so he must also be at 2nd Height.

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1 minute ago, The One Who Connects said:

Little of both, where you start to associate this random tidbit with "Annotation" and that random tidbit with "Theoryland" or "Reddit WoB."

Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. I just haven't read enough WoBs or annotations to reach that point yet.

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The mechanics of suppressing divine breath are interesting. Here are another couple of hints 

Quote

Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to — he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life.

Quote

And yes, the scraggly miscreant is how Vasher sees himself. Not noble and Returned, which is part of how he suppresses his divine Breath.
 

And on finding WoBs, I seldom remember it exactly but usually once I've seen one, or particularly needed to find one, i remember the  source. It gets easier once you do it a lot :)

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1 minute ago, Calderis said:

Yeah. I'm getting better at it, and part of that is remembering particular wordings to aid searches.

Here's the rundown. Pagerunner's database is great, Theoryland only does exact word, and the search function on the forums is both better and worse than Theoryland.

Pagerunner's Database:

  • search "word", get anything with "word" in it, word, words, wording, etc..
  • you can set various filters(contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, etc..)
  • supports "ctrl+f" search within a search functionality

Theoryland:

  • they have to be separate searches for "word," "words," and "wording."
  • Tags doesn't count in the word search results, so you'd have to search specifically for the tag "word" too, since some entries have tags but not the specific word(those vague Allomancy entries for example)
  • Absolutely no idea how they organize your search results, its not alphabetical, its not chronological, its not even alpha by event name
  • supports "ctrl+f" search within a search functionality

17thShard Search Engine:

  • words separated by a "+" are a phrase: so it searches for "word+of+Brandon" specifically, and adds "relevant" results that don't contain any of it sometimes.
  • Separate by a space to find the specific words: "word of Brandon" will find entries containing "word," "of," and/or "Brandon."
  • Near as I can tell, there is absolutely no difference between "contain any of my search terms" and "contain all of my search terms," it seems defaulted to any, with preference to the first term you write: "word of Brandon" will give you results with any of them, but the most "relevant" ones will be those will 2+ of them, then those with "word" specifically, then "of," then "Brandon."
  • You can search specific subforums and other areas, you can search for stuff in content titles only or title and body, and you can search within a specific timeframe for date created and/or last updated
  • You can search by author(specific member on here) but you can only have one author specified at a time, you can search by tags(some people don't put tags when making topics, some have weird tags, not recommended)

And that's all there is to it.

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Excellent all around, ladies and gentlemen. 

But now I am curious... We know that Vasher on Nalthis was suppressing the Divine Breath. 

But what about Zahel on Roshar? I suppose he must be or he would look more Returned. Is there a particular reason he would suppress it, besides just fitting in? 

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5 minutes ago, ZenBossanova said:

But what about Zahel on Roshar? I suppose he must be or he would look more Returned. Is there a particular reason he would suppress it, besides just fitting in? 

From the Epilogue Annotations that Extesian quoted above: And yes, the scraggly miscreant is how Vasher sees himself. Not noble and Returned, which is part of how he suppresses his divine Breath.

I think he has reason enough right there: personal self-image.

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6 minutes ago, ZenBossanova said:

But what about Zahel on Roshar? I suppose he must be or he would look more Returned. Is there a particular reason he would suppress it, besides just fitting in? 

Blending in, and as @Extesian's WoBs point out, not thinking of himself as a God tends to help. 

He's "suppressed" his divine breath for long enough, I don't think it takes effort. I think appearing as a "Returned" would take effort. 

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20 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Blending in, and as @Extesian's WoBs point out, not thinking of himself as a God tends to help. 

He's "suppressed" his divine breath for long enough, I don't think it takes effort. I think appearing as a "Returned" would take effort. 

I think the effort at suppressing is almost subconscious but effort is required

Quote

Notice how he grows in size here when he isn’t paying attention. That’s his Returned nature beginning to manifest, much like Vivenna’s hair reacts to her emotions, because of the moment of great passion from him during the fight.
 

(From the annotations)

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Just now, Extesian said:

I think the effort at suppressing is almost subconscious but effort is required

(From the annotations)

Ah, I'd forgotten that. You are totally correct. 

So it's like a method actor who's totally lived in character for years and years, but can still drop character a bit in times of high stress. Got it. 

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Wow, I play board games with my friends for a few hours and suddenly I have a whole bunch of replies; thanks all around. Suppressing the Divine Breath makes sense to me and everything else kind of falls into place around that. But the craziest thing that came out of this for me was ZenBossanova's comment about Zahel, which led to me Googling Zahel only to find out that he is Vasher. That's crazy! They are definitely the same character now that I think about it, but I never would have made that connection. Plus it gives me a whole new perspective about the interconnectedness of the Cosmere. I really need to get caught up on everything.

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1 minute ago, Darth Revan said:

Wow, I play board games with my friends for a few hours and suddenly I have a whole bunch of replies; thanks all around. Suppressing the Divine Breath makes sense to me and everything else kind of falls into place around that. But the craziest thing that came out of this for me was ZenBossanova's comment about Zahel, which led to me Googling Zahel only to find out that he is Vasher. That's crazy! They are definitely the same character now that I think about it, but I never would have made that connection. Plus it gives me a whole new perspective about the interconnectedness of the Cosmere. I really need to get caught up on everything.

Yeah, it really is cool when stuff like that just kind of clicks into place. The Cosmere is a lot bigger than it seems at first glance in the books. Sadly, I didn't get to experience realizing that Vasher and Zahel were the same person, because I saw that before I read Stormlight, but it was cool noticing the fact that they're the same.

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Now how likely is it that I can open up Words of Radiance and find, for example, some paragraph where Kaladin notices the ground around Zahel being slightly off-color? Or is the connection between Zahel and Vasher only supported outside of the text?

Edited by Darth Revan
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13 minutes ago, Darth Revan said:

Now how likely is it that I can open up Words of Radiance and find some paragraph where Kaladin notices the ground around Zahel being slightly off-color? Or is the connection between Zahel and Vasher only supported outside of the text?

Because we're in the Warbreaker forum I'm just going to spoiler this whole post for SA stuff. 

Spoiler

I'm guessing that there's something going on here because Vasher probably still has breath but there's no mention of a color aura. 

My first reaction would be to say that he's storing excess Breath in some inanimate object, but Wit says that isn't likely. 

When Kaladin is in the prison cell, Wit mentions tuning his instrument is easier with perfect pitch, and he also lacks an aura.

So my only real guess is that the aura is either something that is there, but non-Nalthians aren't attuned to enough to notice, or there is some interaction between the Breath itself and Nalthis that means the aura is not present on other worlds. 

Edit: @Darth Revan I love the KOTOR reference. 

Edited by Calderis
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To respond to @Calderis spoiler

Spoiler

My first thought was that the aura doesn't show off Nalthis but I can't find anything to support it. My head Canon was that Nalthis itself represents investiture saturation as heightened color. But that may just be a theory I never found enough evidence for to post 

The alternative of course is that he has his normal Breaths in another object. Or that he's simply run out of all but his Divine Breath.

 

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