Energy/power from non-end-positive Investiture

[cometaryorbit]

Inspired by discussions on these threads: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/109284-perfect-gemstones/ https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/109181-air-travel-on-roshar/, I've been thinking about how much power (in the sense of physical energy over time) can be drawn from Investiture (especially in cases where it isn't end-positive - new Investiture isn't being drawn in - but the Investiture is just "sitting there" powering something, like Stormlight in a light source or Breath in a Lifeless or Hemalurgic spikes in a person or creature).

While these are all extremely rough order-of-magnitude estimates, I think there's some that can be at least roughly quantified. (I have no idea how to quantify using Iron Feruchemy to power a perpetual motion machine.)

Stormlight as a light source

While Surgebinding might be end-positive, using Stormlight in spheres/gems for illumination seems end-neutral (ish: it's not exactly a 'magic system'). As pointed out on the Perfect Gemstones thread, while generally the Stormlight leaks out of the gemstone, it isn't really being "used up" or converted to energy. The loss of Stormlight is just leakage due to flaws in the gemstone - since perfect gems don't lose Stormlight but still glow.

A mark glows 'almost as bright as a candle' and a broam 'with the light of several candles'. As Stormlight lighting doesn't emit heat, unlike actual candles which output most of their energy as heat, this is much less than 1 watt per broam of Stormlight.

Awakening

Awakening is end-neutral, but Breath can provide physical energy: Lifeless and Awakened objects don't need to eat to expend energy. Vasher's Law of Comparability states that " The amount of Breath required to Awaken something isn't necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened", so there's not going to be a simple "1 Breath = x watts" equivalence.

But the most Breath-efficient Awakening is a Lifeless, since it's the nearest to a human form. Lifeless don't really seem superhumanly strong, so probably roughly equivalent to a human... approximate human power output is a few hundred watts, so roughly a few hundred watts for 1 Breath.

The open question here is non-human Lifeless. Vasher can awaken a squirrel Lifeless for 1 Breath, but it is much smaller and weaker than a human. Would Awakening a horse or elephant Lifeless still cost 1 Breath?

Hemalurgy

Hemalurgy is actually end-negative, but it still apparently can provide physical energy. Koloss don't need to eat normal food, and yet they're far stronger than a normal human. The Kandra Blessing of Potency, which is basically the same thing as koloss spikes, gives extra strength to each muscle

Quote

He moved them through muscles and ligaments - dissolving several organs, then re-forming them with the spikes piercing them.

Immediately, he felt power wash through him. His body became stronger. It was more than the simple adding of muscles - he could do that by re-forming his body. No, this gave each muscle an extra innate strength, making them work much better, much more powerfully, than they would have otherwise.

The Blessing of Potency.

[...]

It more than doubled the power and endurance of each muscle. He couldn't regulate or change the level of that added strength - this was not Feruchemy or Allomancy, but something different. Hemalurgy

"More than doubled" - probably each spike adds somewhat less than one human-equivalent strength (due to Hemalurgic decay), so for a human-size kandra, the strength is between 2x and 3x normal.

So by that principle a koloss's baseline strength (for a human sized 'new' koloss) is probably something on the order of 4x normal human (if there was no hemalurgic decay, it would probably be 5x).

So by that principle, each Hemalurgic iron spike would provide somewhat less than the few hundred watts I suggested for a Breath powering a Lifeless.

But koloss continue to grow, and if they don't need to eat actual nourishing food, the Hemalurgic strength is presumably providing more power for a larger koloss. And if the kandra Blessing of Potency strengthens "each muscle", a kandra in a larger body (like TenSoon's horse form) is presumably getting more out of it. There's going to be a size limit (we're told in WOB kandra can't get to chasmfiend size) but even at horse size a Blessing of Potency is going to be providing more than a horsepower - maybe a kilowatt or so for 2 spikes? Which is pretty good, as Hemalurgic spikes don't hold much Investiture. However, while the Blessing of Potency increases endurance, it doesn't give true tirelessness like Lifeless have.

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

None of these are the investiture itself powering anything (well, I guess I don't really know about hemalurgey, but I imagine it's the same way) breath is most prominent I think, as it's used as an example often enough for this situation. I like the concept though. I'd suggest trying to quantify surgebinding, because there is a more visible input/output relation. I know Brandon says he wants to measure how much energy one breath is specifically, but that's hard to do as, other than with returned, breath is never consumed, so it's always "producing" infinite energy(this is because it conduits power from the SR to perform actions).

I love the effort, I just disagree with some details of your process, as all you can quantity is a rate, which I don't think is what you're going for.

Alright, my last thoughts, the best plan would be to find out how many calories Lift needs to convert to one broam. I feel like this will be the best starting place, as it's a direct conversion between energy and Stormlight.

[Wandering Shade]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

Stormlight as a light source

While Surgebinding might be end-positive, using Stormlight in spheres/gems for illumination seems end-neutral (ish: it's not exactly a 'magic system'). As pointed out on the Perfect Gemstones thread, while generally the Stormlight leaks out of the gemstone, it isn't really being "used up" or converted to energy. The loss of Stormlight is just leakage due to flaws in the gemstone - since perfect gems don't lose Stormlight but still glow.

A mark glows 'almost as bright as a candle' and a broam 'with the light of several candles'. As Stormlight lighting doesn't emit heat, unlike actual candles which output most of their energy as heat, this is much less than 1 watt per broam of Stormlight.

That's a good number to have, but its also not exactly helpful. It doesn't tell us how much energy is really in a broam at all, just how much energy that stormlight is producing as light.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Wandering Shade
Correcting myself, was being stupid.

[cometaryorbit]

9 hours ago, Ta'veren Kaladin said:

I'd suggest trying to quantify surgebinding, because there is a more visible input/output relation.

I'd like to do that too - as well as Allomancy - but that's a bit different, because...

9 hours ago, Ta'veren Kaladin said:

I just disagree with some details of your process, as all you can quantity is a rate, which I don't think is what you're going for.

... a rate (power = energy over time) is exactly what I'm going for. A kandra is going to get more total energy out of its Blessing of Potency than a koloss will out of its spikes, since a kandra lives a thousand+ years vs 20 years for a koloss. But that doesn't tell us anything useful about the spikes themselves.

A perfect gemstone really could, in theory, glow forever... in a sense potentially infinite energy (if the cosmere were to last forever), but certainly not infinite power.

So I think power (or rate) is the useful parameter for these uses of Investiture, where the Investiture is just acting as a kind of energy source / link to the Spiritual but not actively being moved around (Breath in a Lifeless vs. Breath actively being transferred; Stormlight in a gemstone vs. Stormlight in a Lashing).