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The secret to commands


Koloss17

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I was wondering: what are the rules in which commands work? There are simple commands and not so simple commands. How would you know if a command you give would work? 

I thought at first that the reason some things don’t work is because they are abstract ideas, but “protect me” is one of the simplest out there.

maybe it has to do with how clear the message is? Protect me is very clear; if someone attacks me, stop them from harming me. But then again, what counts as harming?

 

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20 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

I thought at first that the reason some things don’t work is because they are abstract ideas, but “protect me” is one of the simplest out there.

Is it?  What are you being protected from?  Would that count being protected from yourself?  What about emotional harm?  Should your protect me clothing try and keep you from visiting your least favorite aunt on her birthday?

22 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

I was wondering: what are the rules in which commands work? There are simple commands and not so simple commands. How would you know if a command you give would work? 

You need enough breath and you need to be able to clearly visualize what you mean when you say the words.  I personally think in the future someone will develop a mental discipline that makes awakening easier.

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1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

I was wondering: what are the rules in which commands work? There are simple commands and not so simple commands. How would you know if a command you give would work?

As mentioned, you need enough Breath and a very clear mental image of what you want the Awakening to do, plus the right words spoken in your native language. A lot of trial and error resulted in the discovery of new Commands and the Five Scholars were instrumental there. It helps that at the Sixth Heightening you gain an instinctive understanding of basic Commands and it becomes easier to learn new ones. The annotations for Warbreaker even mention that it's almost required to be at that Heightening to discover really complex ones.

The best thing about BioChroma is that as long as you're trying to create a Type-II Entity (ie, most Awakening) you can afford to make mistakes because all that happens if you mess up is that the Breath gets stuck in the object and you have to retrieve it, like we see with Vivenna when she's experimenting, only she didn't know the retrieval Command at first so she couldn't recover her Breath immediately.

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I don’t know if this is what you mean but intent and expectations are important in cosmere magic. 

Questioner

 Why can Stormlight heal Lopen's arm, but can't heal Kaladin's scars?

Brandon Sanderson

Because *photo pause* a lot of the healing in the Cosmere works on principles of expectation and how you envision yourself. 

Questioner

So Kaladin has accepted the scars.

Brandon Sanderson

Kaladin has accepted the scars, and Lopen never accepted the one arm. It's a good question, it's one I am hoping people will ask. [...] It's one of these ties when I built the magic systems that I wanted certain threads to run through them, so when I eventually have them being used in the same books, that there will be consistency among them, that so they won't feel like everything's just thrown together. So, for instance, the intention and expectation, for instance, in Warbreaker-- What you want to have happened influences what does happen, the expectation, the way you are thinking about things. Very important for most of the Cosmere magics.

Also tangentially related I think Vasher came to the point that he actually could mentally command without speaking. With at least some of the commands.

Edited by TrдVψLшR 0115
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Probably for the same reason that you need to drawn Aons in the exact correct shape (or design soulstamps properly, or make the right motions in ChayShan) in order for them to function: It's a function of how the magic works and it is that way because it's what the realmatic interactions of Endowment and Nalthis allow for.

In a Doylist sense, it's a limitation on the magic so you need to know the correct Command (unless you're at such a high Heightening that you can fudge the basic ones) and you can't simply create any Command you want.

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On 1/18/2020 at 8:05 AM, Koloss17 said:

So why doesn’t untie me work, but untie does?

Untie is easy to visualize.  You are just reverting a rope to its original shape.  Untie me is more difficult in that case your focus is primarily on yourself wanting to get free not the rope and you are not thinking as much about what the rope should be doing as how you yourself want to be.  This is my interpretation anyway.

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