Do Highly Invested Spiritwebs Naturally Develop Powers?

[Trusk'our he/him]

If someone who didn’t already have any invested powers, such as Allomancy, were to have a large amount of innate investiture added to their Spiritweb (Awakeners don’t count by the way; their power doesn’t add to the actual Spiritweb, it sits primarily in the physical realm), would invested powers begin to develop, or would the extra investiture need to be deliberately "shaped" in order for powers to manifest?

[Treamayne]

On 1/30/2022 at 7:09 PM, Trusk'our said:

If someone who didn’t already have any invested powers, such as Allomancy, were to have a large amount of innate investiture added to their Spiritweb (Awakeners don’t count by the way; their power doesn’t add to the actual Spiritweb, it sits primarily in the physical realm), would invested powers begin to develop, or would the extra investiture need to be deliberately "shaped" in order for powers to manifest?

I think this question makes a possible false assumption. I don't think investiture is a "part" of the spiritweb; aspects of the spiritweb are what determine what and how investiture is accessed. Spiritweb Words of Brandon and Coppermind. That said, dumping a large amount of investiture would probably have passive Heightening-like effects (Dawnshard Spoiler):

Spoiler

Such as Rysn experiencing Perfect Pitch/Color Perception since the events on Aimia

But I don't think random changes to access Shardic Expressions of Investiture will form; since evidence thus far shows that:

- Cracks in the spiritweb would need to exist

- Some connection to one or more forms of SEI would also need to be present to determine the method of investiture expression.

[Rune he/him]

On 4/27/2022 at 0:01 PM, Treamayne said:

I think this question makes a possible false assumption. I don't think investiture is a "part" of the spiritweb; aspects of the spiritweb are what determine what and how investiture is accessed.

Yes investiture is not a part of a spiritweb but is accessed by the exploitation of the cracks that form in one.  Those cracks then need a conduit to access the investiture and harness it (like oaths for Surgebinders).  There is also mention of “Old Magic” that predates the Shattering and this could be a result of natural processes through nature that allow a person to use investiture.

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Rune said:

There is also mention of “Old Magic” that predates the Shattering and this could be a result of natural processes through nature that allow a person to use investiture.

Did you mean "Predates the Recreance" or "Predates the Last Desolation?" We know the "Old Magic" comes from Cultivation's Avatar Nightwatcher - which means it could not predate the Shattering.

Speaking of Old Magic, I wonder if the Curse is required to make the cracks the Boon can fill in order o invest the supplicant. Roshrans always say "One boon and One curse" but maybe it's more correct to say "One Curse to provide One Boon."

Unless you are referencing some other old magic - since there were forms of investiture that do predate the shattering.

[Rune he/him]

12 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Did you mean "Predates the Recreance" or "Predates the Last Desolation?" We know the "Old Magic" comes from Cultivation's Avatar Nightwatcher - which means it could not predate the Shattering.

Speaking of Old Magic, I wonder if the Curse is required to make the cracks the Boon can fill in order o invest the supplicant. Roshrans always say "One boon and One curse" but maybe it's more correct to say "One Curse to provide One Boon."

Unless you are referencing some other old magic - since there were forms of investiture that do predate the shattering.

Yes, sorry that was my mistake, I forgot that the Old Magic is of Cultivation and only on Roshar but I was thinking of it more as the magic of the Yolens when Adonalsium was whole.

[Treamayne]

AFAIK, that's just called Yolish Magic

[Trusk'our he/him]

 

On 4/27/2022 at 3:01 PM, Treamayne said:

I think this question makes a possible false assumption. I don't think investiture is a "part" of the spiritweb; aspects of the spiritweb are what determine what and how investiture is accessed. Spiritweb Words of Brandon and Coppermind. That said, dumping a large amount of investiture would probably have passive Heightening-like effects (Dawnshard Spoiler):

  Reveal hidden contents

Such as Rysn experiencing Perfect Pitch/Color Perception since the events on Aimia

 

 

On 5/5/2022 at 10:54 PM, Rune said:

Yes investiture is not a part of a spiritweb but is accessed by the exploitation of the cracks that form in one.  Those cracks then need a conduit to access the investiture and harness it (like oaths for Surgebinders).  There is also mention of “Old Magic” that predates the Shattering and this could be a result of natural processes through nature that allow a person to use investiture.

But it says in the Coppermind "The Spiritweb is the network of Connections and Investiture which make up the soul of a creature, place, or object." 

So wouldn't that mean that Investiture is a part of the Spiritweb? Plus, there's also the Spark of Life and Innate Investiture which are part of the Spiritweb, as stated in the Coppermind. 

Guess I'm just a little confused about your statements is all.

 

[Treamayne]

31 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

But it says in the Coppermind "The Spiritweb is the network of Connections and Investiture which make up the soul of a creature, place, or object." 

So wouldn't that mean that Investiture is a part of the Spiritweb? Plus, there's also the Spark of Life and Innate Investiture which are part of the Spiritweb, as stated in the Coppermind. 

Guess I'm just a little confused about your statements is all.

Well, it is a bit confusing, especially since there hasn't been a whole lot released about Spiritwebs or how they work. This is my (likely flawed) understanding:

• The Spiritual Realm is made up of Investiture and energy (kind of how the Physical Realm is "made up" of matter and energy.
  • So, in the item you quoted "Connections and Investiture" is because the SR is made that way
• "Innate Investiture" is a quality, not a quantity
  • e.g. Vin had Innate Allomantic Investiture.
  • Which is why I was confused in my first reply - AFAIK you can't heap "innate investiture" you can invest an object/person on in the Cognitive or Physical realm and , as they become heavily invested, their spiritweb will expand (as the Identity changes to confirm the level of investiture)

  • Quote

    Spiritwebs lack any tangible shape or size, with their borders defined by their Identity.

     

• It would depend on the magic system. As you mentioned, Awakening Breaths are primarily in the physical, but so is Stormlight.

Ultimately, if your question was "would adding unkeyed/unaligned investiture to the Spiritweb form into capacity for random Invested arts" then I would say no. Any capacity that developed would be shaped by Identity and Connection, and most invested arts require something else (Metallic Arts - genetic, Surges - Nahel Bond, etc.) that would not be covered by just a quantity of investiture.

My first answer included the only known "abilities" that are based solely on how "invested" something is - rather than in which realm or how the investiture was added.

[Honorless he/him]

There are benefits to having higher amounts of innate Investiture: generally better health

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Luke Beartline

Along the lines of BioChromatic Breath being akin to a person's soul, how would a Shardblade react to someone who does not have any Breath, would it cut them like an inanimate object?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Remember, one of the things with Breath is I consider Breath to be a part of someone's soul, but it is the extra part that the Cosmere has that non-Cosmere doesn't have. I don't know how far I want to lean into this, but there is definitely a part of me that thinks that Drabs, people who have given up their breath on Nalthis, are just like people from our world. That's what they are, that if we went to the Cosmere we would all be Drabs. Even on planets that aren't Nalthis, where you can't take part of that and give it away and things like that, people are invested. They are invested generally more than here.

Why do I do this? There's a couple reasons. One, it's really convenient for some narrative reasons. A lot of books I'm writing are these kind of action-adventure stories, and can human beings actually take the punishment that is delivered, let's say to Adolin in the end of Oathbringer? *noncommital negative sounds* He doesn't come off well from that, but could a human being really take that? I go back and forth. Humans are capable of some pretty incredible feats, particularly with adrenaline driving them, but my kind of blanket answer is everyone in the Cosmere has got a bit more Investiture; everyone's got something like Breath. Nalthians have something kind of extra special because they can use it in different ways, but everybody's got something like that.

It's leading to the fact that for instance, I highlighted this in the books, this part is canon: There are things about Rosharans that make it so that a lot of diseases have trouble getting a foothold. You do not have the bubonic plague on Roshar. You could maybe say this is because they are not living in close enough proximity to mammals for diseases to hop species as happens on our planet, which is a pretty valid point. Things that affect a horse or a cow (a lot of different diseases from cows come to us), things that affect a cow are much more likely to be able to affect a human than something that affects a chull being able to affect a human. Totally valid, but I also think that there is something more going on here.

This allows me to do fantasy stories where... In Warbreaker we don't have to be worrying about the next outbreak of smallpox, which legitimately they probably would have to be worrying about. It means that, while this is kind of a trope that people, trope is the wrong term, but that people in the past did not have as bad as teeth as we assume that we do because they did not eat the levels of sugars and starches that we do. Investiture also in the Cosmere means that you're not going to... Dalinar probably would not have a full set of teeth, even without being punched in the face and stuff, if he were a human from Earth. But on Roshar he's got just a little bit extra vitality, a little bit extra something, just like everyone on the planet, that is making him a little tougher and making him a little more disease resistant and some of these things. It makes the stories more fun for me to tell and also gives us some suspension of disbelief on some of these things. You do not have to worry about smallpox outbreaks on most planets. You do have to worry about catching the curse of the Elantrian disease and being thrown into a prison city, but smallpox, not as big of a deal.

Adam

Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about that too much anymore.

Brandon Sanderson

No, but I'm saying you could have to worry about things like that. Magical diseases, totally on the board, but the big plague they're dealing with in Roshar is the common cold that got brought across by some of the members of Seventeenth Shard, and that's going to die out pretty quickly. They will get over it and their immune system is... The common cold has come over multiple times before for reasons like that, colds just from another planet. Roshar, they've got three Shards. Basically if you want something like this to happen you go to a planet that's not quite as highly Invested where they might have a few more diseases, you pick one up, you bring it, and it spreads a little bit but then it dies off. That sort of thing happens a lot in the Cosmere. You do not have to worry about during the space age that people are going to be bringing lots of diseases across planets.

YouTube Livestream 32 (June 3, 2021)

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Brandon Sanderson

Vivenna at the Safe House

Vivenna is right about what happens to a person when they lose their Breath. It is a part of your soul, and without one, you are more prone to depression, you get sick much more easily, and you're generally more irritable.

I included this mention here because I'm betting that most people who read the book side with Denth and assume he's right when he talks about these things. But don't be too judgmental about the Idrians—yes, they're biased, but the Hallandren are too in a lot of ways. It's not as simple as one side always being right and the other wrong. In this case, the Idrian teachings are correct, and most Hallandren are looking for justifications when they say that giving up one's Breath isn't all that damaging to them.

Warbreaker Annotations (Oct. 26, 2010)

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Brandon Sanderson

Denth's Speed

Yes, Denth is inhumanly fast. He's a Returned, after all, and has all of the physical enhancements that come with that. Even when he's chosen not to manifest most of them, he's still got an edge, just like Vasher does.

How do they hide that they're Returned? Well, it comes down to mastery of their ability to change their appearance. They can't shape-shift entirely; they can just alter some things about their appearance. They can change their weight, their hair color, and things like that at will. Vasher doesn't do this often, but Denth has been known to use it as a disguise. The problem, after you do this once and someone realizes it, your nature becomes very suspect.

They have learned to suppress their divine Breath. This allows them to hide, but they must be careful never to give away all of their Breath. Denth has been a Drab before—he's not completely lying—but never for longer than a few days. And his divine Breath is always there, suppressed. So he doesn't know what it's like to be a true Drab, which is why in this chapter he says he doesn't think it changes you that much. He's never felt it.

Warbreaker Annotations (Oct. 26, 2010)

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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-One

Vivenna, Sick and Disoriented, Gets Turned Away by the Restaurant Keeper

One of the ways I decided to make Vivenna's sections here work better was by enhancing the fuzziness of her mind. By giving her this sense of numbness, I hope to indicate that something is not right with her.

It's common for someone who suddenly becomes a Drab to get sick almost immediately. For a time, her immune system was magically enhanced and warded, in a way, to keep her from becoming ill. With that removed suddenly, sickness can strike. She hasn't built up immunities to the sicknesses going around, and by becoming a Drab, her immune system suddenly works far worse than that of other people.

These things combined made her come down with something pretty nasty the very day she put away her Breath. This would have killed her, eventually, if she hadn't done something about it. She would have grown so dizzy and confused that she wouldn't have even been able to walk.

By sending men to find her, Denth saved her life.

Anyway, I feel that these scenes work much better now. We can look at Vivenna's time on the streets in the same surreal sense that she does. They happened in the past, in a strange dream state. In that way, they can seem much longer than just two chapters and a couple of weeks.

Warbreaker Annotations (Feb. 7, 2011)

It is also possible that Heightening like effects occur from truly high concentrations of Investiture within a being.

[Duxredux he/him]

Well... how much Investiture are we talking? Ascension and Slivers are a thing right? Based on what Fuzz said, taking the power at the Well of Ascension expands the soul, allowing them to persist as a Cognitive Shadow. So... whatever "expanding the soul" means, it's a thing. We just haven't seen a Sliver on screen long enough in the Physical Realm to know what other changes there would be. It also depends on what you count as an invested power.

Cram enough Investiture into anything and something will happen. Beyond that I have no idea, there's too many variables based on the vector of investment, type of Investiture, etc.