commands My theory for what commands and intents are, and the connection between them

[officiallyaninja]

So, I've been reading up on Intent and commands and have been trying to make sense of what they are, and what exactly the difference is between then. and I've come up with a bit of a theory.  

basically, commands are molds for investiture, and intents are more subtle ways of affecting of investiture interacts with the world, after it has been molded by a command.  

my basic premise is that for investiture to do anything it must be first molded by a command. investiture, on it's own (without a command) cannot do anything. I don't mean just for awakenings, but for ALL forms of magic, from allomancy to surgebinding. the intent can then modify how that investiture is used exactly. in a very loose analogy, you could think of commands as being a sort of hardware, and that intents are sort of software. where the software is far easier to modify than the hardware, and the software helps dictate how the hardware works. I also believe that commands do not require a sapience/sentience/intelligence, but intents do.

i feel like this is best illustrated with a few examples.

ROSHAR

consider soulcasting. (according to my theory) all soulcasting involves a single command. but the various types of soulcasting are just manifestations of different intents. so soulcasting a material to metal or smoke both involve the same command, but with different intents. 

now consider soulcaster fabrials, all soulcaster fabrials have the same command, and the reason different gemstones perform different kinds of soulcasting is due to the intents of the spren inside the gemstone. that's why soulcasters that use fabrials cannot soulcast things into whatever material they require, because the humans wielding the soulcasters do not directly manipulate investiture, so they cannot will their intent into the investiture. 

or consider lashings, I would say that windrunners (and all other orders) each have 2 commands at their disposal, one related to each power they have. so windrunners have a command for gravitation and one for adhesion. so when Kaladin lashes himself, the lashing itself is a command, but the direction he lashes to is dependent on his intent.

 

SCADRIAL

allomancy is quite interesting, because I believe that none of it uses intent in any form

consider iron, when ingested allows people to pull metal towards them. and that's it. because no misting is ever directly manipulating investiture, they are not able to control it according to their intents, so they can only use the commands associated with a metal, giving them far less flexibility.

in hemalurgy, there is some aspect of intent in terms of actually taking the powers. you dont really choose what powers you get, that's all based on the hemalurgic command associated with the metal. so intent only affects whether or not you are actually taking a power or just stabbing someone. whereas the command is what effects what power/attribute is stolen.

NALTHIS

the way commands work in Nalthis is that to simply create a command requires visualization. and the more complex the command the more complicated the visualization. now i think there is a visualization involved in both the command and the intent. and the same command given with different intents will do different things, but the command is far more important than the intent.

like say the command "fetch keys", depending on the intent given it will fetch keys it will perhaps fetch keys in different ways, but to an extent. if you say, want to awaken an object to get on a ship to a different continent, infiltrate a bank, get the keys to their vault and then swim all the way back to you, that's gonna take a lot more than just intent

Edited November 17, 2020 by officiallyaninja

[+Krox]

This is quite neat!

How would it work on First of the Sun?

Edited November 17, 2020 by Krox

[officiallyaninja]

31 minutes ago, Krox said:

This is quite neat!

How would it work on First of the Sun?

i know enough about how exactly the magic of the aviars works to be able to say, but i think that depending on the individual's aviar's intent, their powers will manifest in slightly different ways. and it's also possible that aviars themselves do not have enough sapience to be able to actually influence their intent in any meaningful way. because all the aviar powers (from what we've seen) only manifest in certain specific ways.

[+Krox]

11 minutes ago, officiallyaninja said:

i know enough about how exactly the magic of the aviars works to be able to say, but i think that depending on the individual's aviar's intent, their powers will manifest in slightly different ways. and it's also possible that aviars themselves do not have enough sapience to be able to actually influence their intent in any meaningful way. because all the aviar powers (from what we've seen) only manifest in certain specific ways.

We do know very little, and it's a little while since I read it - what would the commands be? "Show future" perhaps, and the birds Intent to help their owners survive?

[officiallyaninja]

1 minute ago, Krox said:

We do know very little, and it's a little while since I read it - what would the commands be? "Show future" perhaps, and the birds Intent to help their owners survive?

i dont think the commands need to be specific words. even in awakenings, once you have enough breath verbalizing commands stops being necessary. It's possible that the command is just "show future" but it could have something more to it, like it could be "show danger"