Endowment’s almighty magic system (Dawnshard spoilers)

[Koloss17]

BEWARE! THERE WILL BE ALL OF THE LORE SPOILERS FOR DAWNSHARD AHEAD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I only put this post here instead of the dawnshard board because there is a bit of things relating to RoW, and I’m not supposed to put spoilers for RoW in the dawnshard forum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

So. Endowment. Let’s break down the magic system. We have heightenings and the whole breath thing. The hightenings come from breaths being grafted onto your spiderweb, as seen in dawnshard. They are very color-oriented. They make colors pop. This is very useful to know given that color is a fundamental part of shards. We have their light or color, and the anti-light, and color. This doesn’t seems to be a specifically Roshar thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can have anti-Ruin light and so on. So perfect color recognition helps in that respect. 
 

it also helps with perfect pitch. That allows you to make the anti-light in the first place much more easily.

so basically, the heightenings are very useful for creating anti-investiture. 
 

Endowment has created a magic system to specifically allow for this type of thing, with the breaths sticking to your spiderweb, and whatnot.
 

now there are commands. These are based off of Intent and Command, which we learn in Dawnshard is the fundamental part of all of magic in the Cosmere. In other worlds, it is more veiled. The command is symbols in Sel and the molecular composition in Scadrial. But in Nalthis, it is just verbal, which is the most fundamental form there is. 
 

The third part is investing objects. This makes them harder to tamper with and make much more powerful objects, such as Nightblood. 
 

The final part is the divine breaths, which is all about stapling the cognitive shadow to the physical realm. This is seen in many other systems, but this is given so freely by Endowment, and she made it part of the magic system as well.
 

Nalthis’ magic system seems to be made off of the fundamental building blocks of the cosmere. It is built to allow gateways to all parts of the Cosmere’s magic, within easy and straightforward access. This is quite surprising and quite dangerous. What is Endowment doing? She has plots that involves all of the raw power of the Cosmere within easy access. Why is she doing this? And what does it mean? This is a thing that seems very deliberate on Endowment’s part. I’m quite worried how dangerous she might become later on.

 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Koloss17

[Shob the Voidbringer]

i'm legitimately terrified by this. nothing else to say

[Mage_914]

Good point on the use of perfect pitch. Thats actually kind of terrifying to think that at only the second heightening you effectively become a walking antimatter factory. The power level of awakening just went up a lot.

Awakeners always have investiture on hand and they can infuse it into effectively any object fairly freely, being able to do everything from animate corpses to creating shardblades to altering memories. I'd guess that an Awakener with the right knowledge could grab a pebble off the ground, sing a few words over it at the right pitch and then make it explode like a hand grenade.

[Elegy]

On 9.1.2021 at 5:13 AM, Koloss17 said:

What is Endowment doing? She has plots that involves all of the raw power of the Cosmere within easy access. Why is she doing this? And what does it mean?

I don't think she's doing much:

Quote

Questioner

What is Endowment’s long term plan?  Like just even in general, is she just like “Keep Nalthis safe” like Sazed is or is she like, does she have a plan for...

Brandon Sanderson

Nooo, um...

Questioner

You don’t have to tell me but like, does she have a plan that involves the cosmere...

Brandon Sanderson

Not really.

Questioner

...or is it just to stay on...

Brandon Sanderson

She’s more focused on her thing.

Calamity Philadelphia signing (Feb. 20, 2016)

Also, keep in mind that Shards don't actively create or design their magic systems, they are natural outgrowths of a Shard Investing on a planet.

That said, I think these are very interesting observations nonetheless! I'm sure this will be important for Space Age Cosmere.

[Honorless]

I think Endowment, or Edgli rather, was one of the Vessels who Shattered Adonalsium because they thought it was necessary. The reason why her magic is so... primal, might be because, like Frost, she believes in a plan of Adonalsium. That might also explain why she's so hostile towards Shards who broke the compact, as it's a view shared by Frost as well that Shards should not settle on the same planet together.

So the magic took form from essential elements of Command, based on the patterns of life, drawn by her Shard's Intent.

[Serack]

 

On 1/10/2021 at 7:29 AM, Elegy said:

Also, keep in mind that Shards don't actively create or design their magic systems, they are natural outgrowths of a Shard Investing on a planet.

That said, I think these are very interesting observations nonetheless! I'm sure this will be important for Space Age Cosmere.

I think that may be generally true, but in Secret History, Leras told Kelsier that he deliberately crafted Alomancy to have 16 metals as a sign to humanity that Ati couldn't change.  

Edited January 11, 2021 by Serack

[Leuthie]

Breaths are actually large amounts of Investiture. Pool a lot of them together and you have huge amounts of Investiture. Heightenings aren't part of Nalthis' magic system, they are a Cosmere wide result of holding a lot of Investiture.

Spoiler

Rysn gaining significant Heightening when she becomes a Dawnshard is a direct example of this.

Elanthians are similarly Invested and have similar increases in sensory experience.

Every magic system has Commands and Intents. They just express them differently. AonDor expresses Command by drawing Aons, with Intent being pulled from your Cognitive state. Radiants and Allomancers are directly connected to the source of Investiture, so Command and Intent are expressed internally. Nalthis' magic system is more external and obvious, but the primary mechanics are the same. In all cases, the magic user provides Command, Intent and Investiture to make something happen. Nalthis just makes the whole process more explicit.

[KSub]

As others have mentioned Endowment didn't really design her magic system. I think the fact that it is so easily accessible is just due to the fact that she is the Endowment shard. Her intent is to endow power.

One interesting thing is that holding a lot of stormlight is suggested to be dangerous but holding a lot of breaths is perfectly fine and maintainable.

Edited January 11, 2021 by KSub

[Leuthie]

16 minutes ago, KSub said:

As others have mentioned Endowment didn't really design her magic system. I think the fact that it is so easily accessible is just due to the fact that she is the Endowment shard. Her intent is to endow power.

One interesting thing is that holding a lot of stormlight is suggested to be dangerous but holding a lot of breaths is perfectly fine and maintainable.

Think of Breaths like portable coffee mugs full of steaming hot coffee. Breaths are designed to be held and transported around. They also refill automatically when you use up the coffee. And you can hand off the mugs to other people. And instead of being inconvenient and heavy, carrying 2000 mugs of coffee around makes you not age. Or something.

Think of Stormlight like coffee being held in colanders. The colanders are filled by a huge storm that rains coffee and fills them as it goes by. Then, when you want coffee, you have to take some from the colanders and hold it in your mouth until you're ready to drink it. And the coffee's hot. And you keep swallowing a little and spitting some out all the time.

The metaphor kind of breaks down, but yeah.

[KSub]

5 minutes ago, Leuthie said:

Think of Breaths like portable coffee mugs full of steaming hot coffee. Breaths are designed to be held and transported around. They also refill automatically when you use up the coffee. And you can hand off the mugs to other people. And instead of being inconvenient and heavy, carrying 2000 mugs of coffee around makes you not age. Or something.

Think of Stormlight like coffee being held in colanders. The colanders are filled by a huge storm that rains coffee and fills them as it goes by. Then, when you want coffee, you have to take some from the colanders and hold it in your mouth until you're ready to drink it. And the coffee's hot. And you keep swallowing a little and spitting some out all the time.

The metaphor kind of breaks down, but yeah.

You are my everything.

I get what your saying, but I don't know that you could have made a worse metaphor and still got your point across.

[Lunu’anaki]

1 hour ago, KSub said:

As others have mentioned Endowment didn't really design her magic system. I think the fact that it is so easily accessible is just due to the fact that she is the Endowment shard. Her intent is to endow power.

On 1/10/2021 at 7:29 AM, Elegy said:

Also, keep in mind that Shards don't actively create or design their magic systems, they are natural outgrowths of a Shard Investing on a planet.

Why do you say this? We have no reason to believe that Shards don't directly create their magic systems, but multiple examples from Mistborn of shards purposefully doing so... unless I'm missing something?

 

On 1/10/2021 at 6:51 AM, Mage_914 said:

I'd guess that an Awakener with the right knowledge could grab a pebble off the ground, sing a few words over it at the right pitch and then make it explode like a hand grenade.

It's not that simple. A key part of the process for Navani was putting the investiture into a vacuum. We also arn't certain that the tones are tied to all forms of investiture or just the Lights.

[Koloss17]

2 hours ago, KSub said:

As others have mentioned Endowment didn't really design her magic system. I think the fact that it is so easily accessible is just due to the fact that she is the Endowment shard. Her intent is to endow power.

One interesting thing is that holding a lot of stormlight is suggested to be dangerous but holding a lot of breaths is perfectly fine and maintainable.

Don’t want to be petty, but I did address that.

Quote

The hightenings come from breaths being grafted onto your spiderweb, as seen in dawnshard

 

[KSub]

39 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

Don’t want to be petty, but I did address that.

I'm not sure what you have a problem with.  Your quote says the heightenings come from breaths. I said that holding investiture in breaths is fine but stormlight is supposedly dangerous. 

I was trying to imply that holding enough stormlight to reach a heightening is somehow problematic which would make it difficult to reach the higher levels. A dawnshard is something wholly different. Obviously it's a lot of investiture but I wouldn't call it stormlight.

[mathiau]

1 hour ago, Lunu’anaki said:

Why do you say this? We have no reason to believe that Shards don't directly create their magic systems, but multiple examples from Mistborn of shards purposefully doing so... unless I'm missing something?

I remember reading wobs saying this but I can't find them. At least they don't create the balanced magic systems like Feruchemy (by the way, he confirmed they happened every time there was two shards on the same world, have we asked him whether Rlain is a voidbinder or a warbinder? his spren is blue instead of red if I recall correctly) and Saze couldn't remove hemalurgy. On the other hand, Lera did alter what type of misting could happen, and it's almost impossible Saze didn't create ferrings and Edgil didn't voluntarily give Nathians breaths

Edited January 12, 2021 by mathiau

[Leuthie]

 

58 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

Don’t want to be petty, but I did address that.

 

To be fair, you didn't address it. You gave a tidbit of information that could help.

Using Breaths isn't directly using Investiture. The Investiture of Breaths never leaves the Spiritual (as described by you, the "spiderweb"). You "Endow" your Breath to another object (or person) and provide a Command and Intent. The work is done in the Spiritual and the results are seen in the Physical.

Stormlight is free Investiture (free as in free software, not free beer). You have to have some Connection to something that allows it to be stored (spren, in the case of Radiants; big swords, in the case of Heralds). I don't believe the holding of free Investiture is innately dangerous. Stormlight leaks, and leaks even more the more you're holding. Pressure release valve is always open, one could say. However, control with large amounts of Investiture is probably much harder than control with small amounts. So holding a huge amount of Stormlight and pushing on someone may cause that someone to explode if you don't know what you're doing. That's dangerous.

With Breath, you have nicely packaged and controlled amounts of Investiture to accomplish tasks.

8 minutes ago, mathiau said:

I remember reading wobs saying this but I can't find them. At least they don't create the balanced magic systems like Feruchemy (by the way, he confirmed they happened every time there was two shards on the same world, have we asked him whether Rlain is a voidbinder or a warbinder? his spren is blue instead of red if I recall correctly) and Saze couldn't remove hemalurgy. On the other hand, Lera did alter what type of misting could happen, and it's almost impossible Saze didn't create ferrings and Edgil didn't volontarily give Nathians breaths

Shards can nudge the magic systems (change the effects of metals, create specific spren to bond with, limit the availability and extent of abilities, etc.) but the shape of the magic systems themselves are dictated by the worlds themselves, not the Shards. Hence why Voidbinding and Fused look exactly like hacked versions of surgebinding and Radiants/Heralds, respectively.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Leuthie

[KSub]

Good points Leuthie! This was the quote from Syl that I was thinking of:

"This sword gave the assassin power to use lashings, but it also fed upon his Stormlight. A person who uses this will need far, far more Light than you will. Dangerous levels of it." 

[StanLemon]

I've personally viewed Breaths as sort of an artificial Spark of Life. The animating force of Investiture. For me this explains why only one is necessary for Lifeless.

 

In regards to Shards not creating the magic system

Kaimipono

Allomancy is fueled by Preservation's body? How exactly does that work? And how does that interact with Atium—it's fueled by both gods' bodies?

Brandon Sanderson

The powers of Ruin and Preservation are Shards of Adonalsium, pieces of the power of creation itself. Allomancy, Hemalurgy, Feruchemy are manifestations of this power in mortal form, the ability to touch the powers of creation and use them. These metallic powers are how people's physical forms interpret the use of the Shard, though it's not the only possible way they could be interpreted or used. It's what the genetics and Realmatic interactions of Scadrial allow for, and has to do with the Spiritual, the Cognitive, and the Physical Realms.

Condensed 'essence' of these godly powers can act as super-fuel for Allomancy, Feruchemy, or really any of the powers. The form of that super fuel is important. In liquid form it's most potent, in gas form it's able to fuel Allomancy as if working as a metal. In physical form it is rigid and does one specific thing. In the case of atium, it allows sight into the future. In the case of concentrated Preservation, it gives one a permanent connection to the mists and the powers of creation. (I.e., it makes them an Allomancer.)

So when a person is burning metals, they aren't using Preservation's body as a fuel so to speak—though they are tapping into the powers of creation just slightly. When Vin burns the mists, however, she'd doing just that—using the essence of Preservation, the Shard of Adonalsium itself—to fuel Allomancy. Doing this, however, rips 'troughs' through her body. It's like forcing far too much pressure through a very small, fragile hose. That much power eventually vaporizes the corporeal host, which is acting as the block and forcing the power into a single type of conduit (Allomancy) and frees it to be more expansive.

Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

[IndigoAjah]

On 09/01/2021 at 4:13 AM, Koloss17 said:

BEWARE! THERE WILL BE ALL OF THE LORE SPOILERS FOR DAWNSHARD AHEAD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I only put this post here instead of the dawnshard board because there is a bit of things relating to RoW, and I’m not supposed to put spoilers for RoW in the dawnshard forum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

So. Endowment. Let’s break down the magic system. We have heightenings and the whole breath thing. The hightenings come from breaths being grafted onto your spiderweb, as seen in dawnshard. They are very color-oriented. They make colors pop. This is very useful to know given that color is a fundamental part of shards. We have their light or color, and the anti-light, and color. This doesn’t seems to be a specifically Roshar thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can have anti-Ruin light and so on. So perfect color recognition helps in that respect. 
 

it also helps with perfect pitch. That allows you to make the anti-light in the first place much more easily.

so basically, the heightenings are very useful for creating anti-investiture. 
 

Endowment has created a magic system to specifically allow for this type of thing, with the breaths sticking to your spiderweb, and whatnot.
 

now there are commands. These are based off of Intent and Command, which we learn in Dawnshard is the fundamental part of all of magic in the Cosmere. In other worlds, it is more veiled. The command is symbols in Sel and the molecular composition in Scadrial. But in Nalthis, it is just verbal, which is the most fundamental form there is. 
 

The third part is investing objects. This makes them harder to tamper with and make much more powerful objects, such as Nightblood. 
 

The final part is the divine breaths, which is all about stapling the cognitive shadow to the physical realm. This is seen in many other systems, but this is given so freely by Endowment, and she made it part of the magic system as well.
 

Nalthis’ magic system seems to be made off of the fundamental building blocks of the cosmere. It is built to allow gateways to all parts of the Cosmere’s magic, within easy and straightforward access. This is quite surprising and quite dangerous. What is Endowment doing? She has plots that involves all of the raw power of the Cosmere within easy access. Why is she doing this? And what does it mean? This is a thing that seems very deliberate on Endowment’s part. I’m quite worried how dangerous she might become later on.

 

I think there's a good chance she did this to allow for the creation of Nightblood itself, no?

 

Also, could a Shard (maybe Autonomy is doing this?) start up on multiple systems until they ended up with the perfect magic system? 

[mathiau]

37 minutes ago, IndigoAjah said:

I think there's a good chance she did this to allow for the creation of Nightblood itself, no?

 

Also, could a Shard (maybe Autonomy is doing this?) start up on multiple systems until they ended up with the perfect magic system? 

I think Brandon RAFO'd whether a shard going to another planet would create a new magic system, it seems impossible it wouldn't though

[IndigoAjah]

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

I think Brandon RAFO'd whether a shard going to another planet would create a new magic system, it seems impossible it wouldn't though

I think we already know?

 

Autonomy is responsible for at least 2 separate magic systems on 2 different solar systems, no?

[stonewalker16]

On 1/10/2021 at 6:51 AM, Mage_914 said:

Good point on the use of perfect pitch. Thats actually kind of terrifying to think that at only the second heightening you effectively become a walking antimatter factory. The power level of awakening just went up a lot.

Awakeners always have investiture on hand and they can infuse it into effectively any object fairly freely, being able to do everything from animate corpses to creating shardblades to altering memories. I'd guess that an Awakener with the right knowledge could grab a pebble off the ground, sing a few words over it at the right pitch and then make it explode like a hand grenade.

I don't think they'd be able to do this. Navani was able to do it because she already had access to voidlight to create antivoidlight, so it is possible that the investiture still has connection to the Shard it is attached to even when it is turned into anti-investiture. So for an Awakener to create anti-investiture, they'd probably have to use up some of their breath to make it. That is, if it were that simple to make it (Navani had to suspend the investiture in a vacuum to change it). But with those principles, no Awakener would make anti-Breath that way because doing so would probably kill them when it reacts with the person's remaining Breath.

2 hours ago, IndigoAjah said:

I think there's a good chance she did this to allow for the creation of Nightblood itself, no?

I actually think Nightblood was made the way he was as a weapon against the Shards while Ruin was still alive and here's why:

Ruin should have been slightly more powerful than Preservation, even without the Atium, because Preservation didn't have his "body" either, and Preservation had still used more of his remaining power to create Humanity. Because of this, Ruin should have been more powerful, but why wasn't he? Because he wants everything to change. Including Shards

It's been suggested that Harmony helped create Nightblood, but I just don't see it happening because A: Sazed doesn't know enough and B: Sazed would have known if someone was taking his investiture, but back to what I was saying earlier. 

So Ruin creates a weapon specifically designed to take in investiture, something that (because of Rhythm of War) we see can kill the Vessel of a Shard. 

Now, you may be asking why Ruin would do that if he was stuck on Scadrial, but the whole point of Book 3 was that he thought he wouldnt be. While the Vessels were dead, he could have easily splintered the power, or just used Nightblood to rekill the Vessel

[Leuthie]

32 minutes ago, stonewalker16 said:

I don't think they'd be able to do this. Navani was able to do it because she already had access to voidlight to create antivoidlight, so it is possible that the investiture still has connection to the Shard it is attached to even when it is turned into anti-investiture. So for an Awakener to create anti-investiture, they'd probably have to use up some of their breath to make it. That is, if it were that simple to make it (Navani had to suspend the investiture in a vacuum to change it). But with those principles, no Awakener would make anti-Breath that way because doing so would probably kill them when it reacts with the person's remaining Breath.

I actually think Nightblood was made the way he was as a weapon against the Shards while Ruin was still alive and here's why:

Ruin should have been slightly more powerful than Preservation, even without the Atium, because Preservation didn't have his "body" either, and Preservation had still used more of his remaining power to create Humanity. Because of this, Ruin should have been more powerful, but why wasn't he? Because he wants everything to change. Including Shards

It's been suggested that Harmony helped create Nightblood, but I just don't see it happening because A: Sazed doesn't know enough and B: Sazed would have known if someone was taking his investiture, but back to what I was saying earlier. 

So Ruin creates a weapon specifically designed to take in investiture, something that (because of Rhythm of War) we see can kill the Vessel of a Shard. 

Now, you may be asking why Ruin would do that if he was stuck on Scadrial, but the whole point of Book 3 was that he thought he wouldnt be. While the Vessels were dead, he could have easily splintered the power, or just used Nightblood to rekill the Vessel

There's a good possibility that Ruin's Intent can be found in Nightblood and in everything Nightblood destroys. I don't think Ruin (Ati) had a hand in creating Nightblood. Ruin was locked in the Well of Ascension for centuries and was let out for like a decade with most of his power locked in tiny beads hidden around Scadrial. And his attention was a bit consumed with his own planet at the time. Then he died.

Not a whole lot of time to help out with the creation of Nightblood.

[Koloss17]

52 minutes ago, Leuthie said:

There's a good possibility that Ruin's Intent can be found in Nightblood and in everything Nightblood destroys. I don't think Ruin (Ati) had a hand in creating Nightblood. Ruin was locked in the Well of Ascension for centuries and was let out for like a decade with most of his power locked in tiny beads hidden around Scadrial. And his attention was a bit consumed with his own planet at the time. Then he died.

Not a whole lot of time to help out with the creation of Nightblood.

It seems that Ruin’s investiture was used in the making of nightblood:

Quote

Walin

Does Nightblood contain any of Ruin's Investiture? Like, not atium, but...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, technically; and I'm not wiggling around that, because technically, location in the Cosmere and who belongs to what gets really weird, right? Because Ruin's Investiture is everywhere--but I'm not talking that way. I'm talking the way you actually mean it. 

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

It’s a vague quote, but I’m pretty sure it’s confirmation.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Koloss17

[Jorr]

It's mentioned above but I would second that we shouldnt extrapolate Rosharan shenanigans to the Cosmere. Roshar is a planet whose fauna is historically and evolutionary related to sound and rhythm. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the effects of these sounds and rhythms on the LOCAL kind of investiture can be replicated to any other planet and investiture. Bottomline: perfect pitch people are not going to create anti-investiture across the cosmere.

[mathiau]

2 hours ago, IndigoAjah said:

I think we already know?

 

Autonomy is responsible for at least 2 separate magic systems on 2 different solar systems, no?

Patji isn't responsible for the magic on 1st of the dawn, nor it's perpendicularity. Everything was there when he came