Can a shards intent be separated from its investiture?

[Darkeye Venev]

Shards intent

Shards have a core emotion/feeling, or intent, and that affects different things they can do. But, what if that intent was separated from them or their investiture? Certainly this would confuse, disorient, and even harm the vessel mentally, but also make them vulnerable to attack. Pretend for now there is a bundle of pencils with a pen in the middle, held together by a rubber band. The rubber band is the intent, the investiture the pencils, and the vessel the pen. Removing it would scatter the pencils, making it easy to manipulate or break the pen. But let’s also imagine that the whole bundle is in a box, 1ft by 1 by 1. If the rubber band is removed, then the pencils scatter but stay in moderate control of the vessel. Now the question is, is this possible?

 

what I am meaning is that you take away the intent, but with a little bit of investiture atttached so then it becomes a cognitive being, and the shard is now intentless.

 

In reply to spinning sky, I would say that if you somehow canceled out them just right, you could get a a neutral wave. You can do the same with sound, why not investiture, and if investiture, why not intent.

Edited November 8, 2022 by Darkeye Venev
Avoiding double posting

[+Kolten]

When you say separated do you mean can "neutral" investiture be created that is not associated with any shard? Or something else? I am not really following your pencil/pen example. I think the intent is an intrinsic property of the investiture, not something imposed upon it. 

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

I think you mean essentially creating a Shard that's unbound by any singular Intent, while still being clumped together enough for the Vessel to have UNLIMITED COSMIC POWER!

I think that this might be the hardest possible thing you could do in the Cosmere that is still technically possible, like playing Elden Ring blindfolded with a steering wheel or something.

[HSuperLee]

This question seems to be something like asking if the Sun's heat can be separated from its light. The Sun's light is its heat, in that it is that heat interacting with the materials that carry it and generating light as a biproduct. Yeah, you can transform investiture from one form to another, but just because both electrons and positions exist doesn't mean there's a such thing as a neutral electron (at least to my knowledge. I'm admittedly not a physicist.)

[City of Sauronicon]

What about the experiment that Navani did in Book four that involved investiture a vacuum? Can anyone please apply the thought behind that to this? 

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

1 hour ago, City of Sauronicon said:

What about the experiment that Navani did in Book four that involved investiture a vacuum? Can anyone please apply the thought behind that to this? 

It showed that it's possible to invert Investiture to create Anti-Investiture, if this also inverted the Investiture's Intent then it might open the door to creating truly Neutral Investiture, unbound and untainted by any Shard's Intent.  Then you'd just have to apply this to an entire Shard, then Connect yourself to it and then you're now a Shard with all the power without any of the downsides.

Of course this is all purely speculative, with the difficulty of this endeavor likely requiring the coordinated assistance of multiple experienced Shards and a genius that makes Navani look like a pre-school toddler.

[bmcclure7]

On 9/24/2022 at 5:21 AM, City of Sauronicon said:

What about the experiment that Navani did in Book four that involved investiture a vacuum? Can anyone please apply the thought behind that to this? 

Doing this on a scale of a shard probably isn't feasible for everyone other then maybe another shard. 

[+Kolten]

My guess would be that if you want to make unbiased investiture with no intent, you need to merge all 16 types back together. I do wonder what you could do once you accomplish that.

 

Also it is possible that the investiture that comes with the dawnshard that rysn receives has no intent, since it predates the shattering 

[Milk]

5 hours ago, Kolten said:

My guess would be that if you want to make unbiased investiture with no intent, you need to merge all 16 types back together. I do wonder what you could do once you accomplish that.

 

Also it is possible that the investiture that comes with the dawnshard that rysn receives has no intent, since it predates the shattering 

Arguably, pre-Shattering Investiture could still have Intent. Spren created by Adonalsium were largely of Cultivation, for example, although Cultivation wasn't separate from Ado until the Shattering.

Besides, the Investiture of/from the Dawnshard would match its Intent (in Rysn's case, Change), no?

[SpinningSky he/him]

I subscribe to the line of thought that Intent is intrinsic in what the Shard is. To be clear, this is all veeery foggy, just having fun making weird theories

To me the better example would be gravity (our universe gravity), can you have a force of gravity which does not "want" to pull? does even it want to? would it be gravity if it didn't?

for a more practical in-cosmere example, the most powerful artifact we know of is Nightblood, and the thing is basically only intent, I belive your ability to hold investiture is directly related to your intent. Allomancers have no proper intent, and thus handle directly no investiture, except for Vin, and her intent was very much aligned with Preservation's.

 

As for how to make it, I also find it difficult to understand.
Combine Preservation and Ruin, you get Harmony, combine all of them, you get Adonalsium, which I expect to be all intents, rather than none.

I also don't see how mixing anti-investiture and investiture might help with neutral intent, wouldn't you just get, no investiture? that's how waves would do it, I might be missing something if that wasn't the case in RoW.

 

Thinking about this, what if the Shard's Vessel was divided from its identity? 
The shard would be contained in a vessel not shattering, but also more focused on its natural intent than any shard before, much like Nightblood actually. That's also a scary thought, raw power, would it even be tied to the rules vessels have?

 

[ArchangelCaesar]

I think I know what you're asking, but I'm not sure it is feasible. 
I think it is possible to separate the Intent from the Investiture, based on random hints Brandon has thrown out, specifically this WoB, which hints that Vasher can indeed do it.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/379/#e12667

I think it involves completely removing the intent from the investiture, purifying it, so that the intent no longer exists. So imagine if the rubber band in your analogy dissolves once it is not attached to the pencils or pen. 

I don't think it is feasible to completely remove intent from a Shard, because there is likely some sort of magical filtering process involved, possibly through an individuals soul or Spiritweb. And shoving *massive* amounts of Investiture through anything can't be healthy, especially if it's your Spiritweb. 

Also, every Shard has (essentially) infinite power/Investiture, as I think we can imply from this WoB
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8702

 

On 9/16/2022 at 2:20 PM, Darkeye Venev said:

what I am meaning is that you take away the intent, but with a little bit of investiture attached so then it becomes a cognitive being, and the shard is now Intentless.

Specifically addressing how you worded this: No, I don't think this will be possible because you can't take the entire rubber band away with only one pencil attached. It would be more like taking one pencil out at a time until only one pencil is left. Even then, that one pencil will still represent an infinite amount of Investiture that the pen could or could not be aware of. 

I think it *could* be possible to trick the finite mind of a Vessel into thinking they're completely cut off from their intent, but I'm more speaking out of my rear end here.

If you want more weird Shard stuff that is tangentially related to your question, a WoB that really illustrates the muddiness of these waters is this one:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/315/#e9385

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 9/24/2022 at 5:21 AM, City of Sauronicon said:

What about the experiment that Navani did in Book four that involved investiture a vacuum? Can anyone please apply the thought behind that to this? 

It wasn't actually unkeyed, just dampened.

Quote

Blackflame Omega

Does “Light” in a vacuum become unkeyed until exposed to a vibration upon leaving, and what happens if that vibration isn't actually a pure tone?

Brandon Sanderson

It can be overridden and things like that. You can unkey that vibration and then kind of separate it. Whether it's even fully unkeyed, to be perfectly honest, I can't even say. Like, you are dampening it, and then overriding it with something else.

This is kind of outside the world, they wouldn't be able to measure it—but I don't even think it's completely unkeyed, like Navani thinks it is, before she rekeys it. The mental component on her part is pretty important to what's happening.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 (June 3, 2021)

 

46 minutes ago, ArchangelCaesar said:

I think it is possible to separate the Intent from the Investiture, based on random hints Brandon has thrown out, specifically this WoB, which hints that Vasher can indeed do it.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/379/#e12667

We know Vasher has not figured out how to Awaken using Stormlight, so I don't think he's managed to convert it to Breath. Far as we know, it's just that Returned can be powered by Stormlight (the WoB you linked compares it to Nightblood, so they may be working on similar mechanics).