Mixed/ Corrupted Investiture.

[Shatterer]

So, we know from ROW that investiture of different shards can be combined. We have also seen that somehow a shard can 'corrupt' another's investiture.So there are at least two ways of combining different investiture.

1. Combining it through some mechanics of tone and rhythm.
2. Corrupting existing investiture through some unknown mechanics.

The corrupted investiture always has RED color associated with it irrespective of the one corrupting it as seen in Stormlight and Mistborn era 2. So it is safe to say that the mechanics of corruption is same through out the cosmere. 

Can anyone put some theory as to how to get corrupted investiture by manipulating tone and rhythm?  

[AFdooda]

I'm no Cosmere expert but I had always thought that the point was that corrupted investiture was totally different to that created from tones.

'Combined' Investiture is that which has achieved a level of harmony (not the guy from Mistborn  ). The aspects of the Investitures have been brought together peacefully.

'Corrupted' Investiture is that which has been forcefully assimilated into another aspect. In the case of the Stormlight Archive Odium forcefully takes over the Investiture of Honor and Cultivation while forcefully infiltrating and attacking Roshar from his prison on Braize.

I'll leave the forum people to analyse my outlook!

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Shatterer said:

So, we know from ROW that investiture of different shards can be combined. We have also seen that somehow a shard can 'corrupt' another's investiture.So there are at least two ways of combining different investiture.

1. Combining it through some mechanics of tone and rhythm.
2. Corrupting existing investiture through some unknown mechanics.

The corrupted investiture always has RED color associated with it irrespective of the one corrupting it as seen in Stormlight and Mistborn era 2. So it is safe to say that the mechanics of corruption is same through out the cosmere. 

Can anyone put some theory as to how to get corrupted investiture by manipulating tone and rhythm?  

Wild guess, normally combining investiture makes their rhythms work in harmony, corruption might just slam two rhythms together which would make them disharmonious.

Or corruption involves only one investiture, it doesn't mix investiture at all, instead you manipulate the existing investiture to shift its rhythm towards other rhythm - e.g. shifting rhythm of Honor towards Odium's rhythm, which would not change investiture of Honor into Odium's, but it will change it enough for Odium to be able to influence it.

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 4/17/2023 at 8:20 AM, AFdooda said:

I'm no Cosmere expert but I had always thought that the point was that corrupted investiture was totally different to that created from tones.

'Combined' Investiture is that which has achieved a level of harmony (not the guy from Mistborn  ). The aspects of the Investitures have been brought together peacefully.

'Corrupted' Investiture is that which has been forcefully assimilated into another aspect. In the case of the Stormlight Archive Odium forcefully takes over the Investiture of Honor and Cultivation while forcefully infiltrating and attacking Roshar from his prison on Braize.

I'll leave the forum people to analyse my outlook!

I'd say you're on the right track.

We don't know a whole lot about corrupted Investiture at this point, but it would have to be different that harmonizing two Tones, as we've seen that doing such creates a new Intent (and color) all together.

[Treamayne]

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On 4/17/2023 at 3:18 AM, Shatterer said:

The corrupted investiture always has RED color associated with it irrespective of the one corrupting it as seen in Stormlight and Mistborn era 2. So it is safe to say that the mechanics of corruption is same through out the Cosmere. 

No. It's not the method of corruption that matters. Color is important to Realmatics, but not always in the same way (e.g. Color in Warbreaker is not quite the same as how Radiant Orders each have a different color glow based on their order's aligned Gem). As far as Colors in Investiture, the color is based on the intent of the Shard with whom the Investiture is aligned (Ref: Mistborn Era 1). Investiture that shows Red simply means that it has been changed in some why from it's original intent/alignment. We've already seen different methods of corruption result in the same Red Investiture signature (Spoilers for Emperor's Soul, Mistborn Era 1) WoB:

Spoiler

 

Quote

 

Roger

As I understand it, red is a sign of corruption in the cosmere. I just reread The Emperor's Soul, and it mentioned wisps of red smoke when Shai tests the Soulstamps. Does this mean she is corrupting Gaotona's soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is what that means. Corruption doesn't have to have the negative connotation, right? Basically, it means an outside influence is changing the Spiritual nature of the soul. And, yeah, that's exactly what is happening right there. Now, I would call that a pretty good thing, but... like, all of those things, where she is playing with someone's soul, and changing it, and changing their past, and things like this. This is, by cosmere definition, corrupting someone's soul. That's expressly what it is.

 

Quote

Questioner

So, we know in Mistborn there is this running... you can say, motif about Ruin being associated with the color black and Preservation with the color white, we see a lot of very subtle and a lot of very unsubtle...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yes.

Questioner

Is such a motif present in any other books? I think I see it in Stormlight.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, in Stormlight you can see it. So, Ruin is a red-gold... not Ruin, Odium. Odium is a red-gold. Honor is a blue-white and Cultivation is green, obviously. So, those motifs stay, when you... when you see a red or a gold, it's a reddish gold sort of thing, either of those colors, it's going to be Odium.

Questioner

Even when we something we might suspect to be outside influence in other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

Not necessarily, because red can also mean corrupted Investiture in the Cosmere. So, I would call Odium's real color gold, because you're going to see red when Odium is corrupting other things, so...

Questioner

It's not necessarily on Roshar.

Brandon Sanderson

It's not necessarily Odium. So, you're asking for the invading force on Mistborn, it doesn't necessarily mean Odium because it's red. So red just kind of means corruption. I've talked about that before, so. Not necessarily, not definitive, yeah.

So, as you can see, a Soulstamp leaks Red (corrupted) investiture because the soul is fighting the changes (corruption). Fused show Red eyes because Odium is corrupting their inherent investiture.

So, it's not the mechanics of the change/corruption so much as when any source of investiture (Spiritweb, Raw Investiture, Fabrial, etc) that has been changed displays the property of turning Red (regardless of method or mechanic used to invoke the corruption).

[Nogo]

On 4/17/2023 at 2:18 AM, Shatterer said:

So, we know from ROW that investiture of different shards can be combined. We have also seen that somehow a shard can 'corrupt' another's investiture.So there are at least two ways of combining different investiture.

1. Combining it through some mechanics of tone and rhythm.
2. Corrupting existing investiture through some unknown mechanics.

The corrupted investiture always has RED color associated with it irrespective of the one corrupting it as seen in Stormlight and Mistborn era 2. So it is safe to say that the mechanics of corruption is same through out the cosmere. 

Can anyone put some theory as to how to get corrupted investiture by manipulating tone and rhythm?  

Nice topic dude.  I am not the one for answers, just hairbrained theories that get pew-pew-pew'ed.  

My only say in this is... that on Roshar, Red "corrupted" spren are seen as Odiums but, only (i guess??) kind of? as they are corrupted by the midnight mother.  But then we have red eyes, red spren, etc etc.  On Roshar Odium seems synonymous with corruption.   Sometimes it all makes my head hurt.  But in a good freaking way.

(kind of like posting in this forum.... most of my words are underlined in red... they must be corrupted.   *sigh*)

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

On 4/17/2023 at 8:22 AM, alder24 said:

Wild guess, normally combining investiture makes their rhythms work in harmony, corruption might just slam two rhythms together which would make them disharmonious.

You say this, and it makes me wonder..what does that say about Harmony?

Spoiler

Could Sazed, in a way, be corrupting himself? Might that be a part of what's going on with him?

 

[Nogo]

2 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

You say this, and it makes me wonder..what does that say about Harmony?

  Hide contents

Could Sazed, in a way, be corrupting himself? Might that be a part of what's going on with him?

 

That's a good question.  Tho I believe that Preservation and Ruin have been referred to as black black and white which might mean they are actual opposites (as opposed to Stormlight and Voidlight and associated rhythms) which could come together like two puzzle pieces... or the Sin and Sin^-1 waves (my inner nerd is showing right there, sorry) basically canceling each other out.  And that kind of seems to be how Sazed presents himself in Era2.  Hmmmmm.   Or it's creating corruption.  Or both.  

Also, the smashing of two rhythms together may very well create discordance... which is one of my favorite words.  And would be a kickass name for a shard imo. 

[AFdooda]

On 28/04/2023 at 11:27 PM, Nogo said:

That's a good question.  Tho I believe that Preservation and Ruin have been referred to as black black and white which might mean they are actual opposites (as opposed to Stormlight and Voidlight and associated rhythms) which could come together like two puzzle pieces... or the Sin and Sin^-1 waves (my inner nerd is showing right there, sorry) basically canceling each other out.  And that kind of seems to be how Sazed presents himself in Era2.  Hmmmmm.   Or it's creating corruption.  Or both.  

Also, the smashing of two rhythms together may very well create discordance... which is one of my favorite words.  And would be a kickass name for a shard imo. 

This raises the question of whether Harmony is really so harmonious...

We know from Stormlight that tones can be used to combine Investitures of different Shards in a peaceful manner.

I would assume then that Harmony has also peacefully combined Ruin and Preservation.

Scadrial is suffering from corrupted Investiture problems though so I suppose that could be a result of Harmony if things aren't nearly so harmonious.

Minor Spoiler:

Spoiler

But I thought that was Autonomy encroaching on Scadrial.

 

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, AFdooda said:

Spoiler

I would assume then that Harmony has also peacefully combined Ruin and Preservation.

 

Mistborn Spoilers:

Spoiler

I think that is actually what is "wrong" with Harmony - the fact that he has not combined the Shards. We are very distinctly told (often) that "Harmony" holds "two shards, Ruin and Preservation" I posted my "theory" (with WoBs and a HoA extract) here. But the fact that he holds two shards, not one combined Shard of Harmony (likely due to intent) is the problem (IMO).

 

[alder24]

On 18.05.2023 at 10:10 AM, AFdooda said:

Spoiler

 

This raises the question of whether Harmony is really so harmonious...

We know from Stormlight that tones can be used to combine Investitures of different Shards in a peaceful manner.

I would assume then that Harmony has also peacefully combined Ruin and Preservation.

Scadrial is suffering from corrupted Investiture problems though so I suppose that could be a result of Harmony if things aren't nearly so harmonious.

Minor Spoiler:

  Reveal hidden contents

But I thought that was Autonomy encroaching on Scadrial.

 

 

There are WoBs on that, Mistborn spoilers:

Spoiler

Questioner

Is there a significance between Harmony and Discord being musical terms? And would they be considered different Investiture tones? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. So what's going on here is that... it is significant, I chose those two terms very specifically. Not gonna tell you a lot about Discord or things like that, but the idea is that idea of Harmony is in... the sounds are in harmony, they are working together. In Discord they are not. I wouldn't call them Investiture tones, more the way the two tones are responding to each other.

JordanCon 2021 (July 17, 2021)

 

Spoiler

slontzeasstwink

Can more than two pure tones reach harmony? And, extending on that, does Harmony the Shard have a pure tone for itself, or is it a mix of Preservation and Ruin?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Excellent question, sorry to dodge that one.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 3 (Dec. 16, 2021)

 

Edited May 19, 2023 by alder24

[AFdooda]

@Treamayne and @alder24 's WoBs show fairly clearly that Harmony is a RAFO. We can speculate about how two Shards interact in that way but there's not much more we can say. I do think it is apparent that Harmony is not using tones to combine the Shards, perhaps the tones are not enough to combine two whole Shards into 'one'.

I assume that tones could be used to combine the Investiture of Ruin and Preservation in the same way as in Stormlight. Presumably this will be expanded upon in Stormlight 5 and perhaps the limitations of tones will be revealed. Afterall, there must be limitations otherwise the war on Roshar would be somewhat invalidated by an ultimate tone that could end all the problems between the Shards there.

[Duxredux he/him]

On 5/19/2023 at 1:42 AM, AFdooda said:

@Treamayne and @alder24 's WoBs show fairly clearly that Harmony is a RAFO. We can speculate about how two Shards interact in that way but there's not much more we can say. I do think it is apparent that Harmony is not using tones to combine the Shards, perhaps the tones are not enough to combine two whole Shards into 'one'.

I assume that tones could be used to combine the Investiture of Ruin and Preservation in the same way as in Stormlight. Presumably this will be expanded upon in Stormlight 5 and perhaps the limitations of tones will be revealed. Afterall, there must be limitations otherwise the war on Roshar would be somewhat invalidated by an ultimate tone that could end all the problems between the Shards there.

It's possible that this method of combining Investiture with tones may only work with investiture in a gaseous state. I'm not sure how you would even go about using Navani's methodology with solid Investiture either for Anti-tones or combined tones.  That may be the limiting factor you're looking for.

As a side note, one thought I had is that the glow of red Investiture could be the soul of the corrupted object trying to resist or revert back to it's natural state, even if that resistance is futile or unintentional. This could be a person, an object, a spren, or even a world. I'm trying to think of cases when the red of corruption shows up, but I can only think of that red as it affects something else, so far never raw Investiture turning red. It may also explain some things that probably ought to be considered corruption but do not have red coloration:

Spoiler

There's a WoB or annotation that states that the black smoke that pours off of Nightblood are actually corrupted Breaths, yet it's black not red. Perhaps Nightblood has consumed them so thoroughly that they barely qualify as Breaths or maybe they aren't Breaths at all anymore, just Investiture as it has been consumed.

I'd normally think of Hemalurgy as a form of corruption, except perhaps it tricks the body and Spiritweb that it actually belongs embedded in the soul. Alternately, the soul can't resist the spike because rejecting the spike may result in death.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure why Soulstamps count as corruption and smoke red but bonding a Windrunner to the planet doesn't.

Does anyone have any alternative ideas that cover other forms of corruption that are not red?

Also, this thread has expanded to other worlds and may best fit in the general cosmere board.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 5/18/2023 at 3:25 AM, Treamayne said:

Mistborn Spoilers:

  Hide contents

I think that is actually what is "wrong" with Harmony - the fact that he has not combined the Shards. We are very distinctly told (often) that "Harmony" holds "two shards, Ruin and Preservation" I posted my "theory" (with WoBs and a HoA extract) here. But the fact that he holds two shards, not one combined Shard of Harmony (likely due to intent) is the problem (IMO).

 

On 5/18/2023 at 5:42 AM, alder24 said:

There are WoBs on that, Mistborn spoilers:

  Hide contents

Questioner

Is there a significance between Harmony and Discord being musical terms? And would they be considered different Investiture tones? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. So what's going on here is that... it is significant, I chose those two terms very specifically. Not gonna tell you a lot about Discord or things like that, but the idea is that idea of Harmony is in... the sounds are in harmony, they are working together. In Discord they are not. I wouldn't call them Investiture tones, more the way the two tones are responding to each other.

JordanCon 2021 (July 17, 2021)

 

  Hide contents

slontzeasstwink

Can more than two pure tones reach harmony? And, extending on that, does Harmony the Shard have a pure tone for itself, or is it a mix of Preservation and Ruin?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Excellent question, sorry to dodge that one.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 3 (Dec. 16, 2021)

 

On 5/19/2023 at 0:42 AM, AFdooda said:

@Treamayne and @alder24 's WoBs show fairly clearly that Harmony is a RAFO. We can speculate about how two Shards interact in that way but there's not much more we can say. I do think it is apparent that Harmony is not using tones to combine the Shards, perhaps the tones are not enough to combine two whole Shards into 'one'.

I assume that tones could be used to combine the Investiture of Ruin and Preservation in the same way as in Stormlight. Presumably this will be expanded upon in Stormlight 5 and perhaps the limitations of tones will be revealed. Afterall, there must be limitations otherwise the war on Roshar would be somewhat invalidated by an ultimate tone that could end all the problems between the Shards there.

Spoiler

As much as I like the idea he hasn't combined them, wouldn't Harmonium then act like solid war/tower light if that were the case? Which would be an alloy of the individual solids. Harmonium acts as one piece of investiture more than war/tower light. We also know that Creation is a stable combanation, which makes me think he's combined them partially but not completely - Harmonium is actually an alloy of Lerasium, Atium, and "Creationium," but because of the presence of "Creationium" there is a magical force resisting the seperation.