Totally pure Investiture

[MGershone]

From what we learned about different kinds of Light in RoW, it seems like all Investiture is somehow connected to one Shard or another. But in one of the scenes with  Navani and Raboniel, Navani puts Light in a vacuum tube. That means it was totally isolated from all tones or other Shardic influences (if there's a different type). So what is the status of that Light? It's completely pure Investiture, so something probably changes.

Any theories?

[Bri-Y]

I don’t think it works that way. The light in the tube was voidlight, just a voidlight that was isolated from the constant tones of Roshar, and more specifically, Odium’s tone. Navani likens it to polarity, where it can either have a regular state or the anti state.

If you subjected that light to Honor’s or Cultivation’s tone, I believe it would do nothing to it, just as using a tuning fork using Honor’s tone to draw out stormlight from a gem would do nothing to voidlight in a gem.

[Serack]

This WoB I came across yesterday may inform your thoughts on this:

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focoma

Is there a quantum of Investiture? Just as how the photon (the quantum of light) is the force carrier particle of electromagnetism, is there a force carrier particle for Investiture, and do you have a name for it? (My follow up question would involve string theory, but I'll leave that one for later.)

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there is a quantum of Investiture, though it acts very oddly in the cosmere.

True Investiture is a purely Spiritual Realm thing. In the cosmere, there are two alternate planes of existence, with their own specific laws. Some of them, as you've undoubtedly notice, behave similar to ideas in String Theory.

/r/books AMA 2015 (May 24, 2015)

 

[Honorless]

Well, this:

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Questioner

I asked if there was there a pure form of Investiture that is not tied to any Shard, and you said that my question had some false premises. Can you elaborate on what I had wrong there?

Brandon Sanderson

The false premise, the main one, is that other Investiture is not pure. Investiture, by its definition, comes from a certain place. That's like saying, "Is there water that doesn't have hydrogen in it? Is there pure water without hydrogen? Can you take the hydrogen out, and make purer water?" That's the problem there. This idea that Investiture is impure because it's tied to a Shard is a false premise. That is pure Investiture.

Questioner

Is there Investiture that is not related to any Shard, then?

Brandon Sanderson

There can't be, because the Shards were what the original... it's like saying, "I've got four pieces of a cookie. Are there any pieces that didn't come from the original cookie." You just said, "There's four pieces of this cookie." What you really wanna be saying is, "Is there non-Adonalsium-origin power like Investiture in the cosmere?" Is that what you're getting at? Or are you getting at, "Is there one of the Shards that is not held by a sapient entity?" Like, you could be asking so many questions from these things that I don't know how to answer what you're looking for. So, think about those, and ask me some of those questions next time.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

But pure Investiture does exist, it's possible to transform other Investiture into it:

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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)

so what happened with Navani and the Voidlight in vacuum tube is similar to the process mentioned above but not the same thing. She did not change the Voidlight into any other form of Investiture, she isolated it from Odium's Rhythms. Here's Raboniel's theory on Lights and Rhythms:

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“I have heard,” Raboniel said, “that the Lights respond to sound because it is reminiscent of the voice of the Shards commanding them to obey.”

and here's Navani's thoughts on the same:

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Voice of Lights. Voice for Lights. If I speak for the Lights, then I must express their desires. If Light is Investiture, and all Investiture is deity, and deity has Intent, then Light must have Intent.

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“Voidlight and Stormlight,” Navani said. “The voices of gods.” Or perhaps something older than that. The reason the beings called gods spoke the way they did.

So Navani likely isolated a Shard's Investiture from it.

[Guest Parallax]

So someone needs to ask the following question from Brandon:

If

• Cookie = Adonalsium's investiture,
• Pieces of said cookie = investiture of various shards

then:

• IV dextrose = ??

[basement_boi]

The investiture is still Connected to the Shard in the vacuum: it’s literally a piece of the Shard. The pure tones are a physical sound, and sound moves through matter, it can’t move through a vacuum. Anti-investiture isn’t changed so that it doesn’t belong to the original Shard, it is just applied with a different tone.