A Question About Awakening

[Fullborn IRL]

Do the fumes from a burning Awakened object count as breath?

[Treamayne]

32 minutes ago, Fullborn IRL said:

Do the fumes from a burning Awakened object count as breath?

Doubtful. Breath is not a gas, it's a form of Investiture*. As we see in Ch 56, damage to an awakened object does not release breath:

Spoiler

Tonk Fah was dozing in the corner. Denth, holding a bloody knife, looked up immediately as she landed. The look of utter shock on his face was, in itself, almost worth everything she’d been through. She tossed the rope at him, threw the other at Tonk Fah, then dashed into the room.

Denth reacted immediately, cutting the rope out of the air with his dagger. The pieces of it twisted and wriggled, but weren’t long enough to grab anything. The one she threw at Tonk Fah, however, hit. He cried out, waking as it wrapped around his face and neck.

Also, this Word of Brandon says:

Spoiler

little_wilson

Mi'chelle is wanting to know for a fanfic she's wanting to write if when you cut/break an object that has been Awakened if the object then "dies", or if the pieces will try to carry out the command. Also, either way, can the breaths be recovered from it?

Brandon Sanderson

The object does not die, and will try to continue its purpose. The level of damage will determine just how well it can continue. The Breaths are recoverable. (Though there could be some loss of Breaths, depending on how the item is destroyed.) There's a scene near the end where Vasher Awakens some clothing, then it gets cut down and he recovers the Breath.

So, it would seem that either:

• The damage is not enough to destroy the object, so the breath remains there and can be recovered

or

• The object is destroyed and (some or all) breaths are lost

Also, breaths are keyed to Identity, so even if they were released they would only be recoverable by the person that awakened the object , except Lifeless where the breath keys to the Lifeless' Identity and would not be recoverable by anyone if the Lifeless were destroyed.

*Note: In the Cosmere, rather than just matter and energy, investiture is a third form that is separate and distinct. So Investiture can be converted into matter or energy (and vice versa); but even if some forms of Investiture appear gaseous, they is not a gas (and not even a state of matter until something acts upon it with Intent to convert the investiture into matter).

Edited July 13, 2022 by Treamayne
Formatting

[Quantus he/him]

10 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Doubtful. Breath is not a gas, it's a form of Investiture*. 

It's both.  Breath, Stormlight, and the Mist are all examples of manifest Investiture in Gaseous Form, as compared to the Solid Godmetals or Shardpool juice.  

Per WOB if an object invested with Breaths is completely destroyed (eaten for example) the Breath is destroyed and returns to Endowment in the Spiritual Realm.

[Treamayne]

8 minutes ago, Quantus said:

It's both.  Breath, Stormlight, and the Mist are all examples of manifest Investiture in Gaseous Form, as compared to the Solid Godmetals or Shardpool juice.  

Per WOB if an object invested with Breaths is completely destroyed (eaten for example) the Breath is destroyed and returns to Endowment in the Spiritual Realm.

Gaseous investiture, yes. Gaseous matter, not necessarily. After all, if it was a gaseous matter, then when Vivenna waved her hands through it (trying to ward off the Breaths when Lemmex bequethed them) then eddies would have appeared in the gas. That didn't happen; which implies it may be a gas but doen't mean that the gaseous investiture state is also a state of matter (as opposed to the Mists, which are gaseous investiture as a state of matter).

Edited July 13, 2022 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Quantus he/him]

1 minute ago, Treamayne said:

Gaseous investiture, yes. Gaseous matter, not necessarily. After all, if it was a gaseous matter, then when Vivenna waved her hands through it (trying to ward off the Breaths when Lemmex bequethed them) then eddies would have appeared in the gas. That didn't happen; which implies it may be a gas but doen't mean that the gaseous investiture state is also a state of matter (as opposed to the Mists, which are gaseous investiture as a state of matter).

It didn't do that because it's Magic gas that was being moved by Intent and doesnt necessarily follow all the same laws of fluid and/or thermodynamics as a mundane gas would. And because it was in the process of converting from a Manifest matter state to an Invested matter state. In the physical Realm Investiture can exists in one of 4 states: it can be Invested in an existing Object/person and per OWB occupies the wibbly-wobbly quantum space between particles, or it can fully manifest itself as one of the three forms of Physical Matter.  

[Treamayne]

On 7/13/2022 at 8:51 AM, Quantus said:

It didn't do that because it's Magic gas that was being moved by Intent and doesnt necessarily follow all the same laws of fluid and/or thermodynamics as a mundane gas would. And because it was in the process of converting from a Manifest matter state to an Invested matter state. In the physical Realm Investiture can exists in one of 4 states: it can be Invested in an existing Object/person and per OWB occupies the wibbly-wobbly quantum space between particles, or it can fully manifest itself as one of the three forms of Physical Matter.  

Right, but Investiture in the physical realm can also manifest as energy (like the Light in White Sands, or the Dor as Plasma) or as itself. Just because it shares some properties with matter (and matter's three states), doesn't mean it is matter. Of course it can be in the form of matter, but it doesn't have to be in the form of matter. 

Maybe somebody at a signing or AMA can ask if Gaseous Breath would be affected by wind conditions or a fan? That would give us more data points with which to draw conclusions. 

WoBs

Spoiler

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Questioner

So my question is this: So, Investiture is a different [type?] of existence separate from matter and energy, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

So, does entropy apply to Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes... It does, with some caveats, but yes. It works a little differently, but it does apply. You should be able to apply all three laws of thermodynamics with... accounting for a third state of matter, energy.

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Questioner

So, kind of a support question... The nature of Investiture and metals, is it just solid Investiture that's metal or is all Investiture some kind of state of metal?

Brandon Sanderson

So this gets back into your idea of metal. Do they all represent metal? Well, I'm fascinated by states of matter, if you can't tell, and I'm fascinated by groupings on the periodic table in our world. I am fascinated by how certain things share... properties with one another but not other properties. When I was building the cosmere, I loved this idea of this pure Investiture, this solid state Investiture which looks like metal, but its not a metal that would be on our periodic table, and none of them are, but they share some properties with metals. You look at it and you're like "That's a metal!" But is it? Well it wouldn't go on the periodic table in our world. It's its own thing. 

So yes and no. 

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BlackYeti

Can I ask you about the body of a Shard in the Physical Realm? About the different states of matter. What determines the state of matter that they are in? Because I've been reading the bits very carefully, and I haven't noticed much in terms of temperature difference.

Brandon Sanderson

The idea for me working on this was that they transcend-- They permeate everything, right? They permeate all life on all the Realms. And that there are manifestations of them that leak out, and it's kind of like they make-- they appear there in the various states but-- When you say that you've got the gas, you've got the liquid, you've got the solid: but you've also got inside of you, and inside of that plant, and like-- they're everywhere. And so what determines it? In my head it's just like when some of that power permeates, some of it distills, just like water. There's some water in the air, there's some that freezes: that's temperature. But it's not always temperature whether it's in the air, or whether it's falling. Imagine a Spiritual version of humidity, that is influenced by what's happening on the Spiritual Realm and the Cognitive, and that's what you'll get.

Spoiler

Blaze1616

The Dor: Is it gaseous Investiture or is it something else completely?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh that's a great question. People have not been asking enough about the Dor.

Blaze1616

And if it is gaseous—or not gaseous—is it plasma?

Brandon Sanderson

*Long pause*

You got it. *said definitively*

It's super sup-- not plasm-- yeah, it's super-dense to the point that's it's liquefied and dense-- does that make sense? So it's plasma, basically. It's its own weird thing, so yeah. What you can write is that it's its own weird thing that's kind of plasma-like.

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Questioner

If that's the case, what would happen if you were to push Investiture into the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

It generally manifests either as a solid, liquid, or gas

 

My point is we really don't know what gaseous properties Breath has when manifested on the PR (and which properties it does not have). We may both be right, and we may both be wrong. But thanks for the discussion.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Treamayne
Formatting/SPAG

[cometaryorbit]

Exactly what regular-matter properties physically manifested Investiture has ... we still don't really know. Liquid/solid/gas forms of the same Investiture are distinctly different things, yet (Mistborn)

Spoiler

Atium can be alloyed with Era 1 (no better than early 19th century ish) metallurgical techniques, so it must be meltable, right? But would molten atium have different properties than the liquid in Ruin's Perpendicularity?