Powering fabrial with Breath

[+Krox]

So, fabrial are powered by stormlight which is a form of investiture and Breath is also a form of investiture. Could a fabrial be powered by Breath? If so, how much would it need? How long can a single Breath sustain a fabrial?

Bah, this question may have gotten too big now and should be in another part of the forum - but whatever!

[Karger]

A fabrial is a device that uses investiture.

Quote

FirstSelector

So, do you have a name, like an in-world name for a large magical construction, like the things that picks Elantrians?

Brandon Sanderson

That was why I invented the term "fabrial." It will become widespread eventually, as the term for meaning, kind of, magic-type devices in the cosmere. That's not what you call it right now, but you can start calling them all fabrials.

FirstSelector

But what about something that isn't, like-- I always imagined that Aona left, like, a device, a magical device running--

Brandon Sanderson

I will have to RAFO that.

Oathbringer San Francisco signing (Nov. 15, 2017)

Breath is a kind of investiture.  In point of fact you actually can turn breath into stormlight. 

Quote

Questioner

So assuming you have mentioned that it is technically possible to be able to use one magic system on another planet from a different one...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Is it possible to fuel that... Like, say could you fuel Awakening using Stormlight, or do you have to bring Breaths?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could!

Questioner

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. Now it's-- there are tricks to making it happen on each world. Some are easier than others, but yes you can.

Questioner

So could that allow a loophole to maybe... convert from one form of power to another? Or like from Stormlight to Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. In fact, that's part of why Vasher--

Questioner

Vasher. I wondered that.

Brandon Sanderson

--is on Roshar, is because it's a lot easier to get Stormlight than Breath.

Calamity release party (Feb. 16, 2016)

So in summary yeah you could do it.  It is just generally easier to use stormlight as opposed to breath(at least when on roshar) because of availability.

[Honorless]

Yeah, you can use other Investitures to power fabrials. In fact, you can even replace the spren with other Cognitive entities like Seons

Quote

Questioner

Could someone use a [seon] or skaze to build a fabrial and what would that do?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on how you define fabrial. If you define fabrial as trapping a sapient Splinter in a gemstone--I guess they don't all have to be sapient--they can all--flamespren and stuff like that--so if you define it as capturing a spren in a gemstone, could you capture a seon in a gemstone, and I would say, yes. The fabrial--what it will do is going to depend on a whole lot of factors--how you build fabrials even sometimes have to do with... Some of the fabrials don't care as much what the Splinter piece is. Obviously a heating fabrial or something like that does. Other ones, it's not as related.

So I would say what the power of the Aon in the seon is, would influence what kind of fabrial you could make from it. Good question, excellent question, I've never been asked it before.

DragonCon 2019 (Aug. 29, 2019)

 

[+Krox]

I guess I'll have to be better at googling/trawling the WoB..!

8 hours ago, Karger said:

A fabrial is a device that uses investiture.

Breath is a kind of investiture.  In point of fact you actually can turn breath into stormlight. 

So in summary yeah you could do it.  It is just generally easier to use stormlight as opposed to breath(at least when on roshar) because of availability.

I wonder if Brandon actually meant converting from one form to the other, we know that Vasher feeds on Investiture as a Returned but I don't think that necessarily means he is turning into Breath. Question still stands on the amounts though, but I guess we don't know much about the different "sizes" of Investiture? How many marks of Stormlight equals one Breath and so on...

 

2 hours ago, Honorless said:

Yeah, you can use other Investitures to power fabrials. In fact, you can even replace the spren with other Cognitive entities like Seons

 

Trapping Seons seems like a mighty evil ting to do! Also, what gemstones would that require?!

 

[Honorless]

9 minutes ago, Krox said:

Trapping Seons seems like a mighty evil ting to do!

Agreed!

*Looks at Hrathen*

9 minutes ago, Krox said:

Also, what gemstones would that require?!

We don't know yet

We have hints in the era 2 broadsheets (specifically the Bands of Mourning) that one can also trap & use Shades!

[Karger]

31 minutes ago, Krox said:

I wonder if Brandon actually meant converting from one form to the other, we know that Vasher feeds on Investiture as a Returned but I don't think that necessarily means he is turning into Breath. Question still stands on the amounts though, but I guess we don't know much about the different "sizes" of Investiture? How many marks of Stormlight equals one Breath and so on...

Returned are complicated.  It basically takes power to leave the CS attached to their bodies.  We do not know the exact ratio of marks to stormlight.  Brandon has Peter working that out. However it absolutely is possible to convert(how do you think Vasher survives on Roshar).

[+Krox]

58 minutes ago, Karger said:

Returned are complicated.  It basically takes power to leave the CS attached to their bodies.  We do not know the exact ratio of marks to stormlight.  Brandon has Peter working that out. However it absolutely is possible to convert(how do you think Vasher survives on Roshar).

 

 

Cool, I'm curious about the conversion rates.

I always thought Vasher had found a way of drawing in stormlight or Commanding a sphere to give up its stormlight.. But you do have a point!

[Honorless]

7 minutes ago, Krox said:

I always thought Vasher had found a way of drawing in stormlight or Commanding a sphere to give up its stormlight.. But you do have a point!

Yeah, Vasher most likely converts Stormlight. Nightblood, on the other hand, does not discriminate. He consumes all Investiture equally.

[Elegy]

1 hour ago, Krox said:

I wonder if Brandon actually meant converting from one form to the other, we know that Vasher feeds on Investiture as a Returned but I don't think that necessarily means he is turning into Breath.

This WOB makes it sound like he just feeds on Stormlight without converting:

Quote

Questioner

Since Vasher is now Zahel to Roshar, is he still immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

As long as he has Breath or Investiture to consume, then yes.

Questioner

Can he consume Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

He can consume Stormlight.

Questioner

Does Zahel gain abilities from the Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

Converting would be possible, but it's hard to figure out:

Quote

Ilkhan2016

Breath and Stormlight are both forms of Investiture. AFAIK you can power any of the magic systems from any form of Investiture. Zahel is on Roshar, I believe, primarily due to how easy Investiture (Stormlight) is to come across.

AFAIK the form of Investiture doesn't change anything about the abilities. For example, Szeth was sucked out of Stormlight when he drew Nightblood; and Azure used Stormlight to Awaken in Shadesmar.

/u/mistborn is that right?

Brandon Sanderson

A lot of this depends on the Investiture and the magic in question. Azure was legit using Breaths, for example--ones she'd brought with her. But Szeth was able to feed Stormlight to Nightblood, much as Vasher uses Stormlight to keep himself alive.

To Awaken with Stormlight, the easiest thing to do would be to first change Stormlight into Breaths--something that Azure doesn't know how to do. (Admittedly, Hoid doesn't either, so it's not like it's a simple thing to achieve.) You could also theoretically use some magical (or mechanical) means to power your Awakening with a different form of Investiture.

Extesian

This is very interesting. Is it possible then in the Cosmere for the 'intent' (spin or however described) of Investiture to be changed? And I mean within reasonable limits (not the powers of six shards or any of that). Can a Shard effectively grow in power in a place (e.g. toward an avatar) through another Shard's Investiture being changed (not just corrupted)? Or is it just making one type ('intent' - you should canonize a word for this :D) of Investiture mimic the properties of another?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the ways of accomplishing what you're talking about would involve either 1) fooling/overwriting your spiritual makeup somehow. (This is what Hemalurgy does, for example.) 2) Refining the power somehow into a more pure form.

But there are a lot of variables. The way magic from Nalthis works, for example, the system is just looking for any available Investiture to power itself--and so basically anything will do, regardless of the source. This includes consuming your own soul, in some cases...

You'll see terminology coming along eventually that facilitates talking about all of this. I'm not yet decided on some of it.

Celestial_Blu3

How many Breaths does [Azure] have by her final appearance in OB?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO, I'm afraid.

General Reddit 2019 (April 25, 2019)

---

2 hours ago, Krox said:

Question still stands on the amounts though, but I guess we don't know much about the different "sizes" of Investiture? How many marks of Stormlight equals one Breath and so on...

Last time he was asked, Brandon hadn't figured out the answer himself:

Quote

Questioner

Do you have-- Or have you determined an equivalency between how much Breath it takes to make a certain gem's worth of Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

I have recently assigned Peter to this task, and he is feeling overwhelmed by it. It was actually during the writing of Oathbringer where I finally said, "Yeah we need to standardize this, so start working on it." So it was like, "Oh great". Which means he has to read through all the books for references and start figuring it all out. And we're going to need like an equivalent of a jewel or something like this, right? *gestures to a sphere that a fan made* And we've been putting it off because it sounds like an awful lot of work. 

So the answer is no, we don't have it yet. It's something I've known for years we're going to need. And on this book, I just started saying, "All right.  I'm going to have them do all the stuff they need to do. And then you're going to tell me how many spheres they need to start with." Right? Like, I write the book, and then we retrofit how many spheres they needed to have how much Stormlight, so that we could be consistent with that.

But we haven't done across magic systems calculations, yet.

Salt Lake City signing (Dec. 16, 2017)

But that was 2017. We will eventually get official numbers, I hope, but that might still take a lot of time...

Oh, and welcome to the Shard! 

[+Krox]

I guess one could convert any kind of investiture into another in a way similar to E = MC^2, so conversion would be possible. I think that is inferred with the quote on mechanical means of powering the Awakening with another source of Investiture, meaning a conversion fabrial is technically possible..?

Thanks for the good answers though, one really got to admire the entire connectedness of the Cosmere..!

[Honorless]

Yeah, all of these WoBs seem to confirm:

https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=Vasher%2BStormlight

I have to have read them all quite a few times, I think I got turned around by the Breath & Awakening (does having Breaths automatically give you access to Awakening or just the Heightenings), and Nightblood discussions on the Shard .

Edited July 15, 2020 by Honorless

[+Krox]

I guess we got kind of side-tracked! I'll see if I'll find any other posts to discuss Vasher in..!

I think out conclusion is that you could power a spren-fabrial with Breath if you know how