How to get Breaths fast?

[Trusk'our]

                Okay, hypothetical situation here: a powerful entity threatens to obliterate you if you don’t somehow get them ten thousand bio-chromatic breaths. You are on the planet Nalthis, and you reliably have one year to obtain them by any means necessary, but it’s possible you could extend this time by showing promising results to the entity. You don’t start off with any special resources; you are just a normal person (don’t ask why this powerful entity is asking you, of all people to do this, it’s probably just a really dumb creature with way too much power). How do you get these breaths?

[HSuperLee]

Ten-thousand is a lot, to say the least. And the best option I can think of is absurdly risky, and not easy to pull off without time and resource for experimentation. But, it is theoretically possible that you could form a hemalurgic spike (getting the metal might be difficult, but if you can contact world hoppers it might be possible) and then sneak into the court of the gods and steal the divine breath from one of the Returned. Once you have that, the biggest thing you want to do is lay low for a bit until the panic of a god being murdered calms down. But once it does, you use your divine breath to impersonate a Returned and enter the court of the gods as a foreign Returned looking for sanctuary and breath for sustenance. You now have a salary of one breath a week that you will not consume, not being a cognitive shadow but only a fake Returned, which you can use to build up a stash over time. It doesn't get you all 10,000 very fast, but it at least ensures a regular income of new breaths.

 

Relevant WoB:

Quote

Questioner

Could one, using a Hemalurgic spike, acquire a Divine Breath from one of the Returned?

Brandon Sanderson

...This should be possible.

The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson (Oct. 25, 2018)

Edit: I just saw you made another post where you suggest exactly this. Disregard my post in that case.

Edited November 16, 2021 by HSuperLee

[Trusk'our]

2 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

Ten-thousand is a lot, to say the least. And the best option I can think of is absurdly risky, and not easy to pull off without time and resource for experimentation. But, it is theoretically possible that you could form a hemalurgic spike (getting the metal might be difficult, but if you can contact world hoppers it might be possible) and then sneak into the court of the gods and steal the divine breath from one of the Returned. Once you have that, the biggest thing you want to do is lay low for a bit until the panic of a god being murdered calms down. But once it does, you use your divine breath to impersonate a Returned and enter the court of the gods as a foreign Returned looking for sanctuary and breath for sustenance. You now have a salary of one breath a week that you will not consume, not being a cognitive shadow but only a fake Returned, which you can use to build up a stash over time. It doesn't get you all 10,000 very fast, but it at least ensures a regular income of new breaths.

 

Relevant WoB:

Edit: I just saw you made another post where you suggest exactly this. Disregard my post in that case.

Great minds do think alike, after all.

[+robardin]

I would think the answer is obvious.

You want 10,000 Breaths as soon as possible? There happens to be such a living being already on Nalthis with such a stash: Susebron, the God-King.

OK, he doesn't know the "secret Command / Intent" needed for one God King to pass Peacegiver's Treasure to the next one without killing himself; that's something the priests only teach the GK right before it's necessary to make the transfer. And even if he did know how to do it, why would he give it to YOU?

But that's the classic heist setup. You have one year to somehow fake yourself (or a proxy) as the next God-King, get someone to teach him the Command, tell him it's time, and waltz off-planet before anybody's the wiser.

I suspect Kelsier could plot something out. Too bad he was killed by the Lord Ruler, though. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Let's get the ball rolling: the hand-off of the Treasure happens either when the GK has a natural born child (not sure how often that's happened), or an infant Returned is found and brought to the Court of Gods (the usual "sign" - every what, 50-100 years or so?). Seems like the latter would be easier to fake - not that it's easy, but certainly easier than getting Siri to (apparently) get pregnant with, and then to deliver, your intended Breath mule. Which mule needs to either be yourself, or one that is 100% going to then pass that Breath on to you.

So who or what to use as a simulated infant Returned? Someone really small of form with a Lightweaving illusion slapped on? A Feruchemist (or medallion-enabled Feruchemist) with a really massive atiummind who can keep filling it to stay at infancy while around the GK?

And then, using a Scadrian "Excisor", store the Breath in an object in an Identity-free way.

O Sovereign Where Art Thou?

Edited November 22, 2021 by robardin

[+Harrycrapper]

On 11/15/2021 at 5:53 PM, HSuperLee said:

Ten-thousand is a lot, to say the least. And the best option I can think of is absurdly risky, and not easy to pull off without time and resource for experimentation. But, it is theoretically possible that you could form a hemalurgic spike (getting the metal might be difficult, but if you can contact world hoppers it might be possible) and then sneak into the court of the gods and steal the divine breath from one of the Returned. Once you have that, the biggest thing you want to do is lay low for a bit until the panic of a god being murdered calms down. But once it does, you use your divine breath to impersonate a Returned and enter the court of the gods as a foreign Returned looking for sanctuary and breath for sustenance. You now have a salary of one breath a week that you will not consume, not being a cognitive shadow but only a fake Returned, which you can use to build up a stash over time. It doesn't get you all 10,000 very fast, but it at least ensures a regular income of new breaths.

 

Relevant WoB:

Edit: I just saw you made another post where you suggest exactly this. Disregard my post in that case.

This actually won't work. Hemalurgy doesn't steal the exact amount of Investiture that the person being spiked carries. So, a Hemalurgically stolen Divine Breath won't give someone the 5th Heightening and would also likely appear off to other people with aura recognition. However, if you get real good at killing Returned, you could just keep spiking the Divine Breaths out of them and sell the spikes for large quantities of ordinary Breaths. This is all assuming Endowment doesn't take issue with someone killing the people she specifically chooses to Return. 

[HSuperLee]

3 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

This actually won't work. Hemalurgy doesn't steal the exact amount of Investiture that the person being spiked carries. So, a Hemalurgically stolen Divine Breath won't give someone the 5th Heightening and would also likely appear off to other people with aura recognition. However, if you get real good at killing Returned, you could just keep spiking the Divine Breaths out of them and sell the spikes for large quantities of ordinary Breaths. This is all assuming Endowment doesn't take issue with someone killing the people she specifically chooses to Return. 

I'm going to push back on this not necessarily because I think you're wrong, but more on the principle of the thing. We don't know that one divine breath is the invested equivalent of 2,000 breaths (in part because there's variations as to exactly how invested each breath is). For all we know, they might be closer to or even exceeding the investiture of 3,000 breaths, as all we know is they don't reach the sixth heightening. For that reason it is highly possible that the hemalurgic decay, especially if you manage to get it going directly from body to body like Inquisitors do, wouldn't be enough to lose the fifth heightening.

[Olmund]

Unless the "powerful entity" is Endowment, a lot of the suggestions here sound like surefire ways to enrage her (which would be bad, since she's one of the only shards who can smite people on Nalthis with impunity). I'd say the regular old breath trade is the way to go, though given the fact that you're a "normal person" that is a difficult task indeed. Assuming you're fully Cosmere-aware and can start wherever you'd like (which isn't really "normal," but others are assuming that you'd have all sorts of knowledge about hemalurgic bind points and such so...yeah), you would probably want to choose a location that would allow you to ingratiate yourself with a world-hopping organization (Silverlight, 17th Shard, or Ghostbloods).

The Ghostbloods' questionable ethics would probably make it easiest to gain the materials necessary to buy breaths on Nalthis (if they can be taken off-world, Southern Scadrian medallions would probably do the trick, and Ghostbloods have a solid connection there), though you'd first need to join their ranks -- which, for a "normal person" would most likely end in failure (if the recruiter is someone like Kelsier) or death (if the recruiter is someone like Mraize) in 99.99% of cases.

17th shard doesn't have a ton of breaths at their disposal (WoB confirms they slow their aging via another method, iirc), so perhaps Silverlight would be your best bet -- they likely have a fair number of breaths for research purposes, and could be willing to send you on a mission to retrieve more. Assuming you're fully Cosmere-aware, you'd probably have an easier time gaining entry to Silverlight than most "normal" people -- in fact, if you did have knowledge on hemalurgic bind points and such (as some people are assuming), they'd probably be thrilled to have you.

[StanLemon]

Assuming you are free to world hop, and you are aware of Scadrial's magic system. Head there, find a Nicrosil Compounder.

[Trusk'our]

I actually had an idea recently (go figure, thought it would never happen); what if you could get ahold of some breaths, then give those breaths to someone else who was deathly sick, allowing them to heal from that sickness, but in return, they'd have to return them to you, plus their own breath once they'd been healed. It might not exactly be "fast", and you would have to be careful not to allow anyone to con you permanently out of your breath, but it might work.