Breaths and the Soul

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

How do Breaths attach themselves to a person? Do they just latch on wherever they find space on their Spiritual Aspect, or do they latch onto a specific part of the Soul? Or do they eschew the Spiritual Aspect entirely and attach themselves to the Physical Aspect? I ask because I want to find out this:

Will damage to the body get rid of Breaths?

Say someone has a thousand Breaths, putting them at exactly the Fourth Heightening. If I were to cut off their arms and legs, would they lose Breaths? My first instinct is to say that it would not, since Breaths are part of the soul, but then again, they are more grounded in the PR than other forms of Investiture. If that doesn't get rid of Breaths, what if I cut someone's arms and legs with a Shardblade? That's severing several chunks of the soul off. Would that get rid of some of the Breaths? You may or may not be able to steal Breaths from someone by using H-Nicrosil. If I was to stab you with a Shardblade in that bind point, would that excise the Breaths? Will all three? Will neither?

Some WoBs:

Spoiler

Questioner

With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths, when they get to the other planets?

Brandon Sanderson

So spikes rip off pieces of the soul and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul. You could maybe get a divine Breath but I haven't really decided on regular Breaths, they're kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm which is not a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

Shadows of Self London UK signing (Oct. 19, 2015)

This one implies that Breaths are more in the PR than SR, and so Hemalurgy wouldn't be able to steal them. This makes it sound like cutting off limbs would affect the number of Breaths, since you're losing chunks of what the Breaths are anchored to.

Quote

Pagerunner

The Hemalurgy table, you wrote down "atium steals any power, lerasium is all abilities, nicrosil is Investiture"; what's the difference between those three?

Hemalurgic atium, lerasium, and nicrosil. What's powers, abilities, and Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

People are Invested in ways that do not give them active powers. So for instance, everyone on Nalthis is Invested. Everyone in the cosmere is, really. You want to steal their Investiture, but they don't have a power. You're still ripping off a piece of their soul. So there is a distinction between the actual Investiture that's in a human being and a specific power that they have.

So that distinction is pretty easy. You can also, with Hemalurgy, steal specific things. You can steal just general Investiture. You can steal, if you want--this is where the kandra Blessings come from. You can instead steal specific things that are not like stealing Allomancy. Stealing, for instance, someone's mental acuity.

Pagerunner

So abilities is like the half that's all the strength, speed, all that kind of stuff? Those are abilities, versus the Metallic Arts are all powers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Pagerunner

Then Investiture, is that offworld magics?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, it's the raw power.

Pagerunner

Nicrosil is their soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. A piece of their soul, essentially.

Pagerunner

So how would you go about stealing an offworld power?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to depend. A Breath, you would steal with nicrosil. It's general Investiture, is what you would probably going call that. You could forcibly remove someone's Breath from them. The ability to be a Sand Master you would steal with the power ability.

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

This one says, if implicitly, that Breaths can be stolen through Hemalurgy, so this one is in favor of removing Breaths via Shardweapon, either by ripping chunks of the soul off or by excising them by stabbing you at the appropriate bind point.

Thoughts?

Edited August 5, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

3 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

How do Breaths attach themselves to a person? Do they just latch on wherever they find space on their Spiritual Aspect, or do they latch onto a specific part of the Soul? Or do they eschew the Spiritual Aspect entirely and attach themselves to the Physical Aspect? I ask because I want to find out this:

Will damage to the body get rid of Breaths?

Say someone has a thousand Breaths, putting them at exactly the Fourth Heightening. If I were to cut off their arms and legs, would they lose Breaths? My first instinct is to say that it would not, since Breaths are part of the soul, but then again, they are more grounded in the PR than other forms of Investiture. If that doesn't get rid of Breaths, what if I cut someone's arms and legs with a Shardblade? That's severing several chunks of the soul off. Would that get rid of some of the Breaths? You may or may not be able to steal Breaths from someone by using H-Nicrosil. If I was to stab you with a Shardblade in that bind point, would that excise the Breaths? Will all three? Will neither?

Some WoBs:

  Hide contents

Questioner

With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths, when they get to the other planets?

Brandon Sanderson

So spikes rip off pieces of the soul and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul. You could maybe get a divine Breath but I haven't really decided on regular Breaths, they're kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm which is not a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

Shadows of Self London UK signing (Oct. 19, 2015)

This one implies that Breaths are more in the PR than SR, and so Hemalurgy wouldn't be able to steal them. This makes it sound like cutting off limbs would affect the number of Breaths, since you're losing chunks of what the Breaths are anchored to.

This one says, if implicitly, that Breaths can be stolen through Hemalurgy, so this one is in favor of removing Breaths via Shardweapon, either by ripping chunks of the soul off or by excising them by stabbing you at the appropriate bind point.

Thoughts?

After reading those I have more questions about medallions than I do breaths to be honest.  Specifically in nicrosil and atium spikes.  We are led to believe that nicrosil stores investiture and that means it stores the ability to use power X Y or Z.  However nicrosil doesn't steal powers that is for other spikes.  But in both cases Nicrosil uses Investiture as its term to describe what it is doing.  What does this mean for nicrosil compounding?  Endless breath?  Endless divine breath?  

Could you awaken with divine breath if you had compounded a few thousand? (You would assume that is a few million normal breaths worth of investiture yeah?  

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

8 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

After reading those I have more questions about medallions than I do breaths to be honest.  Specifically in nicrosil and atium spikes.  We are led to believe that nicrosil stores investiture and that means it stores the ability to use power X Y or Z.  However nicrosil doesn't steal powers that is for other spikes.  But in both cases Nicrosil uses Investiture as its term to describe what it is doing.  What does this mean for nicrosil compounding?  Endless breath?  Endless divine breath?  

Could you awaken with divine breath if you had compounded a few thousand? (You would assume that is a few million normal breaths worth of investiture yeah?  

Nicrosilminds in Feruchemy, Nicrosil Medallions, and H-Nicrosil are different from one another. So far as we can tell, F-Nicrosil can store innate Investiture only, so you could store something like Breaths into it, but probably not Stormlight (Unless you hack it). You can do some weird things with this where you eventually end up with an ability in the Nicrosilmind, but F-Nicrosil wasn't made to store powers specifically, so the result, Medallions, are restrictive. For example, you can only store weight in an Iron Medallion, but not tap it, and you can only tap heat from a Brass Medallion, but not store it. WoB says you could also make Medallions for other powers like Sand Mastery or Surgebinding with F-Nicrosil, but the fact that you can create power-giving Medallions using F-Nicrosil at all is more of a bug than a feature. Storing innate Investiture is not the same as storing "X Y and Z" abilities, even if you can eventually achieve one with the other.

Think of it like how you can use metal lines to see, where that wasn't the intended purpose of the power at all, and most people who have access to it don't use it for that or don't even know that it's possible, but it definitely works for that purpose and is even better than regular sight in some cases. Get a little bit more advanced, and you can isolate Steelsight from A-Steel/Iron altogether and get it on its own, like what Kelsier is doing. It's a novel and abstract use of the power in a way you wouldn't expect, but one that totally works.

In the same way, most Soulbearers don't know it's possible to use their powers in such a way, and the layman would only be using it to make themselves more or less Invested by shoving basically their soul in and out of a Nicrosilmind. But by doing very specific things, they could create Medallions.

H-Nicrosil is different in this regard. I think your confusion comes from the fact that F-Nicrosil can, in storing Investiture, eventually, store the ability to use powers. The thing is, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy are different from one another, and what a metal Feruchemically stores vs what it Hemalurgically steals has nothing to do with one another. F-Iron stores weight, H-Iron steals strength. F-Electrum stores determination, H-Electrum steals Enhancement Allomancy. F-Nicrosil stores innate Investiture, H-Nicrosil steals general Investiture. Innate Investiture is Investiture to do with your soul, and general Investiture is all Investiture that isn't doing something specific. Breaths are both Innate and general, because they latch onto your soul and become part of it, and at the same time do nothing but sit around until someone Awakens something.

Hemalurgic Nicrosil doesn't adhere to the parameters of Feruchemical Nicrosil because it isn't Feruchemy. Its function is to steal general Investiture, which it does. The bits of your soul that give you powers don't fall under "General Investiture", so it can't steal them. But it can steal Breaths, because they are just general Investiture, because the power you gain access to through them comes not from the Breaths themselves but by your application of them. H-Atium, meanwhile, steals the bits of your soul that specifically give you powers. This won't include things like Breaths, because that's just general Investiture and doesn't give you any powers.

Now, once you store Breaths (or a Divine Breath) into a Nicrosilmind, you can indeed Compound it. But remember, Compounding makes use of Preservation's Investiture. By compounding Breaths, you're just tacking Preservation's Investiture onto the Breaths and making each of them worth more Investiture, but you'd still have only the same amount of Breaths, which won't help you with Awakening at all (I have a feeling that you couldn't even use these Frankenstein's Monster Breaths to Awaken in the first placed, but I can't put my finger on why). You could use this to achieve higher Heightenings, but you won't get any benefit from it in regards to Awakening, if it doesn't just sacrifice your ability to Awaken altogether in the first place.

The same goes for a Divine Breath, but those can't be used to Awaken at all, so if you want to achieve more Heightenings, Compounding this one would be best. And no, you can't use a Divine Breath to Awaken, that's not how they work, irrespective of how big of a one you have.

Hope that clears things up.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Nicrosilminds in Feruchemy, Nicrosil Medallions, and H-Nicrosil are different from one another. So far as we can tell, F-Nicrosil can store innate Investiture only, so you could store something like Breaths into it, but probably not Stormlight (Unless you hack it). You can do some weird things with this where you eventually end up with an ability in the Nicrosilmind, but F-Nicrosil wasn't made to store powers specifically, so the result, Medallions, are restrictive. For example, you can only store weight in an Iron Medallion, but not tap it, and you can only tap heat from a Brass Medallion, but not store it. WoB says you could also make Medallions for other powers like Sand Mastery or Surgebinding with F-Nicrosil, but the fact that you can create power-giving Medallions using F-Nicrosil at all is more of a bug than a feature. Storing innate Investiture is not the same as storing "X Y and Z" abilities, even if you can eventually achieve one with the other.

Think of it like how you can use metal lines to see, where that wasn't the intended purpose of the power at all, and most people who have access to it don't use it for that or don't even know that it's possible, but it definitely works for that purpose and is even better than regular sight in some cases. Get a little bit more advanced, and you can isolate Steelsight from A-Steel/Iron altogether and get it on its own, like what Kelsier is doing. It's a novel and abstract use of the power in a way you wouldn't expect, but one that totally works.

In the same way, most Soulbearers don't know it's possible to use their powers in such a way, and the layman would only be using it to make themselves more or less Invested by shoving basically their soul in and out of a Nicrosilmind. But by doing very specific things, they could create Medallions.

H-Nicrosil is different in this regard. I think your confusion comes from the fact that F-Nicrosil can, in storing Investiture, eventually, store the ability to use powers. The thing is, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy are different from one another, and what a metal Feruchemically stores vs what it Hemalurgically steals has nothing to do with one another. F-Iron stores weight, H-Iron steals strength. F-Electrum stores determination, H-Electrum steals Enhancement Allomancy. F-Nicrosil stores innate Investiture, H-Nicrosil steals general Investiture. Innate Investiture is Investiture to do with your soul, and general Investiture is all Investiture that isn't doing something specific. Breaths are both Innate and general, because they latch onto your soul and become part of it, and at the same time do nothing but sit around until someone Awakens something.

Hemalurgic Nicrosil doesn't adhere to the parameters of Feruchemical Nicrosil because it isn't Feruchemy. Its function is to steal general Investiture, which it does. The bits of your soul that give you powers don't fall under "General Investiture", so it can't steal them. But it can steal Breaths, because they are just general Investiture, because the power you gain access to through them comes not from the Breaths themselves but by your application of them. H-Atium, meanwhile, steals the bits of your soul that specifically give you powers. This won't include things like Breaths, because that's just general Investiture and doesn't give you any powers.

Now, once you store Breaths (or a Divine Breath) into a Nicrosilmind, you can indeed Compound it. But remember, Compounding makes use of Preservation's Investiture. By compounding Breaths, you're just tacking Preservation's Investiture onto the Breaths and making each of them worth more Investiture, but you'd still have only the same amount of Breaths, which won't help you with Awakening at all (I have a feeling that you couldn't even use these Frankenstein's Monster Breaths to Awaken in the first placed, but I can't put my finger on why). You could use this to achieve higher Heightenings, but you won't get any benefit from it in regards to Awakening, if it doesn't just sacrifice your ability to Awaken altogether in the first place.

The same goes for a Divine Breath, but those can't be used to Awaken at all, so if you want to achieve more Heightenings, Compounding this one would be best. And no, you can't use a Divine Breath to Awaken, that's not how they work, irrespective of how big of a one you have.

Hope that clears things up.

Compounded divine breath up to the 10th heightening equivalent and then having a few hundred or even a couple thousand normal breaths besides that could grant the ranged and silent awakening perks?  Even if you only had a few hundred breaths to work with, maintaining the 10th heightening could be wicked powerful and beneficial to a person with even a small handful of breaths.  

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

11 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Compounded divine breath up to the 10th heightening equivalent and then having a few hundred or even a couple thousand normal breaths besides that could grant the ranged and silent awakening perks?  Even if you only had a few hundred breaths to work with, maintaining the 10th heightening could be wicked powerful and beneficial to a person with even a small handful of breaths.  

You could Compound your way up to as many Heightenings as you want starting with just a single Breath, that isn't the problem. If these amalgamated Breaths can't Awaken, you'd need to have a whole other trove of Breaths, and the first ten Heightenings don't help at all with being more efficient with use of Breath, so you'd still need to acquire some hundreds of regular Breaths to be an effiective Awakener. Plus Heightenings to that degree would be incredibly obvious and tempting for literally everyone to try their hand at stealing them, so you'd need to go around with them almost always in your Nicrosilminds or Invested in your clothes. Whenever you wish to Awaken to your highest degree, you'd have to reveal what you are, and immediately become a target.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[alder24]

13 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

How do Breaths attach themselves to a person? Do they just latch on wherever they find space on their Spiritual Aspect, or do they latch onto a specific part of the Soul? Or do they eschew the Spiritual Aspect entirely and attach themselves to the Physical Aspect? I ask because I want to find out this:

Will damage to the body get rid of Breaths?

Say someone has a thousand Breaths, putting them at exactly the Fourth Heightening. If I were to cut off their arms and legs, would they lose Breaths? My first instinct is to say that it would not, since Breaths are part of the soul, but then again, they are more grounded in the PR than other forms of Investiture. If that doesn't get rid of Breaths, what if I cut someone's arms and legs with a Shardblade? That's severing several chunks of the soul off. Would that get rid of some of the Breaths? You may or may not be able to steal Breaths from someone by using H-Nicrosil. If I was to stab you with a Shardblade in that bind point, would that excise the Breaths? Will all three? Will neither?

Some WoBs:

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths, when they get to the other planets?

Brandon Sanderson

So spikes rip off pieces of the soul and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul. You could maybe get a divine Breath but I haven't really decided on regular Breaths, they're kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm which is not a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

Shadows of Self London UK signing (Oct. 19, 2015)

This one implies that Breaths are more in the PR than SR, and so Hemalurgy wouldn't be able to steal them. This makes it sound like cutting off limbs would affect the number of Breaths, since you're losing chunks of what the Breaths are anchored to.

This one says, if implicitly, that Breaths can be stolen through Hemalurgy, so this one is in favor of removing Breaths via Shardweapon, either by ripping chunks of the soul off or by excising them by stabbing you at the appropriate bind point.

Thoughts?

Really hard to say. I think it can work both ways. However Breaths despite being more in Physical Realm are still innate investiture, attached to a soul. That makes me lean in direction that they aren't reduced by physical cuts but Shardblades can do that somehow.

10 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

After reading those I have more questions about medallions than I do breaths to be honest.  Specifically in nicrosil and atium spikes.  We are led to believe that nicrosil stores investiture and that means it stores the ability to use power X Y or Z.  However nicrosil doesn't steal powers that is for other spikes.  But in both cases Nicrosil uses Investiture as its term to describe what it is doing.  What does this mean for nicrosil compounding?  Endless breath?  Endless divine breath?  

Could you awaken with divine breath if you had compounded a few thousand? (You would assume that is a few million normal breaths worth of investiture yeah?  

Nicrosil in Feruchemy works differently than Nicrosil in Hemalurgy. F-nicrosil stores the ability to use invested arts (this includes Divine Breath but Breaths are not confirmed yet). We don't know what compounding F-nicrosil does. It likely makes it stronger, as compounding Allomancy might make you stronger (in TFE TLR steel push got weaker after Vin removed his metalminds, could he have nicrosil in them and was compounding Allomancy?), and not have two Allomantic powers of the same metal (which doesn't even make sense). If that's the case compounding Divine Breath would most likely make it bigger. You can't Awaken with Divine Breath, they are turned into kinetic investiture once they leave your body, they can't be used for Awakening. 

Spoiler

Extesian

Can you give away a Divine Breath to another human? If so would they have the same powers as a Returned or would they just 'store' it like an inanimate object that Breath is stored in when not Awakened? Does a human require a 'crack' in their spirit web to receive a divine Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

So, a Divine Breath-- you're kind of going along the wrong direction on that line of reasoning. Divine Breaths cannot be transferred. When they are used they immediately become kinetic Investiture and are activated. This manifests normally as healing the person, both body, mind, and soul, but you can't give it up, transfer it in the same way you can regular Breaths.

Skype Q&A (Oct. 8, 2018)

 

Spoiler

kingbirdy (paraphrased)

Could Feruchemical nicrosil be used to store other Invested abilities, such as a Returned Breath or the abilities of the Knights Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, that's possible.

DragonCon 2016 (Sept. 4, 2016)

 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

26 minutes ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

You could Compound your way up to as many Heightenings as you want starting with just a single Breath, that isn't the problem. If these amalgamated Breaths can't Awaken, you'd need to have a whole other trove of Breaths, and the first ten Heightenings don't help at all with being more efficient with use of Breath, so you'd still need to acquire some hundreds of regular Breaths to be an effiective Awakener. Plus Heightenings to that degree would be incredibly obvious and tempting for literally everyone to try their hand at stealing them, so you'd need to go around with them almost always in your Nicrosilminds or Invested in your clothes. Whenever you wish to Awaken to your highest degree, you'd have to reveal what you are, and immediately become a target.

If you are up for a bit of hemalurgy anyways... why not steal some copper allomancy?  I don't know if your coppercloud will entirely hide the 10th heightening but I think it would certainly cut the aura back a bunch and make it less noticeable. 

This also makes me wonder if this stored innate investiture could be used by an aetherbound like a jar of dor was?  Only in this case it would be fueled and keyed entirely by that aetherbound. 

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

1 minute ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

If you are up for a bit of hemalurgy anyways... why not steal some copper allomancy?  I don't know if your coppercloud will entirely hide the 10th heightening but I think it would certainly cut the aura back a bunch and make it less noticeable. 

This also makes me wonder if this stored innate investiture could be used by an aetherbound like a jar of dor was?  Only in this case it would be fueled and keyed entirely by that aetherbound. 

There's no evidence that A-Copper interacts at all with the color aura. The only confirmed interaction of A-Copper with Heightenings is that it blocks Life Sense. I don't think it would work like that.

I don't think an Aetherbound could use innate Investiture to fuel their Aether. It would be keyed and connected to them, it would be inaccessible to the Aether.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

If you are up for a bit of hemalurgy anyways... why not steal some copper allomancy?  I don't know if your coppercloud will entirely hide the 10th heightening but I think it would certainly cut the aura back a bunch and make it less noticeable. 

You don't need that. You can suppress regular Breaths and their aura just like you can suppress a Divine Breath.

Spoiler

Mark

It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn't Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others?

Brandon Sanderson

The "You must give up all of your Breath, not some" line was mostly perpetuated by Denth, who is saying it to Vivenna to stop her from giving away her Breath to all the people she passes. It is a lie. Now, it's a lie that's commonly accepted by a lot of people. But it's still a lie—as we find out midway through the book, you can stick some of your Breath in an object and bring it to life, and then recover that Breath. So it's very easy to give some of your Breath to someone if you know the logical steps to take. Invest most of it into an object, give what you have to someone else, then pull back what you Invested. So it's flat-out proven in the novel that what Denth is telling her is wrong. Now, he could dance around that lie by pretending to be the ignorant mercenary—he's just perpetuating a falsehood that many people believe. But it is a lie. In fact, a lot of the things people believe about BioChromatic Breath isn't true.

One of the things I was trying with this book was to take a few steps back from MISTBORN, where so much was understood. I feel that the approach I took in MISTBORN is right for that book, and yet people have so much superstition regarding all sorts of science. I worry sometimes that there isn't enough superstition in my books, regarding magic as science. What people believed and what people knew and what people understood was so varied and confused throughout most of history, that I worry that I lack realism in that. Vasher brings up at several points in the book that they don't know a whole lot and that people perpetuate a lot of myths and stories and lies.

Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to—he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life

Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A (Jan. 18, 2010)

 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

25 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You don't need that. You can suppress regular Breaths and their aura just like you can suppress a Divine Breath.

  Hide contents

Mark

It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn't Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others?

Brandon Sanderson

The "You must give up all of your Breath, not some" line was mostly perpetuated by Denth, who is saying it to Vivenna to stop her from giving away her Breath to all the people she passes. It is a lie. Now, it's a lie that's commonly accepted by a lot of people. But it's still a lie—as we find out midway through the book, you can stick some of your Breath in an object and bring it to life, and then recover that Breath. So it's very easy to give some of your Breath to someone if you know the logical steps to take. Invest most of it into an object, give what you have to someone else, then pull back what you Invested. So it's flat-out proven in the novel that what Denth is telling her is wrong. Now, he could dance around that lie by pretending to be the ignorant mercenary—he's just perpetuating a falsehood that many people believe. But it is a lie. In fact, a lot of the things people believe about BioChromatic Breath isn't true.

One of the things I was trying with this book was to take a few steps back from MISTBORN, where so much was understood. I feel that the approach I took in MISTBORN is right for that book, and yet people have so much superstition regarding all sorts of science. I worry sometimes that there isn't enough superstition in my books, regarding magic as science. What people believed and what people knew and what people understood was so varied and confused throughout most of history, that I worry that I lack realism in that. Vasher brings up at several points in the book that they don't know a whole lot and that people perpetuate a lot of myths and stories and lies.

Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to—he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life

Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A (Jan. 18, 2010)

 

When you suppress the breaths aren't you losing out on all of their benefits the same way you would in storing them inside of a metalmind?  

Can you suppress the aura and keep the agelessness?  

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

48 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You don't need that. You can suppress regular Breaths and their aura just like you can suppress a Divine Breath.

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Mark

It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn't Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others?

Brandon Sanderson

The "You must give up all of your Breath, not some" line was mostly perpetuated by Denth, who is saying it to Vivenna to stop her from giving away her Breath to all the people she passes. It is a lie. Now, it's a lie that's commonly accepted by a lot of people. But it's still a lie—as we find out midway through the book, you can stick some of your Breath in an object and bring it to life, and then recover that Breath. So it's very easy to give some of your Breath to someone if you know the logical steps to take. Invest most of it into an object, give what you have to someone else, then pull back what you Invested. So it's flat-out proven in the novel that what Denth is telling her is wrong. Now, he could dance around that lie by pretending to be the ignorant mercenary—he's just perpetuating a falsehood that many people believe. But it is a lie. In fact, a lot of the things people believe about BioChromatic Breath isn't true.

One of the things I was trying with this book was to take a few steps back from MISTBORN, where so much was understood. I feel that the approach I took in MISTBORN is right for that book, and yet people have so much superstition regarding all sorts of science. I worry sometimes that there isn't enough superstition in my books, regarding magic as science. What people believed and what people knew and what people understood was so varied and confused throughout most of history, that I worry that I lack realism in that. Vasher brings up at several points in the book that they don't know a whole lot and that people perpetuate a lot of myths and stories and lies.

Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to—he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life

Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A (Jan. 18, 2010)

 

I don't think that's saying that Breaths can be suppressed, just that you can separate them from the Divine Breath to make sure you don't kill yourself Awakening.

[alder24]

On 6.08.2023 at 3:34 PM, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

When you suppress the breaths aren't you losing out on all of their benefits the same way you would in storing them inside of a metalmind?  

Can you suppress the aura and keep the agelessness?  

That's what suppressing a Divine Breath does.

23 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

I don't think that's saying that Breaths can be suppressed, just that you can separate them from the Divine Breath to make sure you don't kill yourself Awakening.

I'm pretty sure you can, and WoB is talking about that. It said "you can split other Breaths too and give just part of them without giving them all". If you can invest a Divine Breath deep within yourself, you can do it with regular Breaths too.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

 

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I'm pretty sure you can, and WoB is talking about that. It said "you can split other Breaths too and give just part of them without giving them all". If you can invest a Divine Breath deep within yourself, you can do it with regular Breaths too.

I don't think one follows from the other, the two work inherently differently. The bit about splitting Breaths isn't relevant to whether or not you can suppress them.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

 

I don't think one follows from the other, the two work inherently differently. The bit about splitting Breaths isn't relevant to whether or not you can suppress them.

You could be right on this. 

I have thought about how to split the breaths.  The best way I came up with was to invest items with them and keep those items on you.

I guess you don't necessarily have to awaken an item to put the breath in it either, which is interesting.  The idea of titrating the amount of breath you put into an item past the initial awakening is interesting.  

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

That's what suppressing a Divine Breath does.

I'm pretty sure you can, and WoB is talking about that. It said "you can split other Breaths too and give just part of them without giving them all". If you can invest a Divine Breath deep within yourself, you can do it with regular Breaths too.

That is my point.  If you can retain the agelessness from the divine breath while suppressed then in my mind it should work the other way around if suppressing regular breath is possible. 

If suppressing the divine breath simply loses all benefit and the agelessness is from the whole cognitive shadow aspect that is a bit different.  

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

1 minute ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

You could be right on this. 

I have thought about how to split the breaths.  The best way I came up with was to invest items with them and keep those items on you

You could put all of them in a single item without it being that obvious. There is also the matter of if Compounded Breaths can be given away at all.

1 minute ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I guess you don't necessarily have to awaken an item to put the breath in it either, which is interesting.  The idea of titrating the amount of breath you put into an item past the initial awakening is interesting.

That wouldn't really do anything, per the Law of Comparibility:

Quote

"That, however, leads us to another law--the Law of Comparability.  It states that the amount of Breath required to Awaken something isn’t necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened.  A piece of cloth cut into a square and a piece of cloth cut into the shape of a person will take very different amounts of Breath to Awaken, but will be essentially the same once they have been Invested."

“The explanation for this is simple.  Some people think of Awakening as pouring water into a cup.  You pour until the cup is filled, and then the object comes to life.  This is a false analogy.  Instead, think of Awakening as beating down a door.  You pound and pound, and some doors are easier to open than others, but once they’re open, they do about the same thing.”

 

25 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

That is my point.  If you can retain the agelessness from the divine breath while suppressed then in my mind it should work the other way around if suppressing regular breath is possible. 

If suppressing the divine breath simply loses all benefit and the agelessness is from the whole cognitive shadow aspect that is a bit different.  

we see from Vasher that you lose the Heightenings when you suppress the Divine Breath, I dont see why that shouldn’t include agelessness too

[alder24]

20 minutes ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

we see from Vasher that you lose the Heightenings when you suppress the Divine Breath, I dont see why that shouldn’t include agelessness too

Because he has been living for more than 300 years and isn't old or dead? And not everything is suppressed:

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Notice how he grows in size here when he isn't paying attention. That's his Returned nature beginning to manifest, much like Vivenna's hair reacts to her emotions, because of the moment of great passion from him during the fight.

In this chapter, we also get the first hints that children and animals like Vasher. That's another hint about his nature—though a very, very subtle one, since I haven't talked about how animals and children all like Returned. They can sense the divine Breath within him, and it comforts them.

Warbreaker Annotations (April 9, 2011)

 

Spoiler

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)

 

Spoiler

quantumshenanigans

We know that Returned generally can't be inebriated, but Vasher has learned to suppress some of his outwardly Returned-ish aspects. When we see Zahel with a bottle of wine in Stormlight, is it actually having an effect on him, or is he just doing it for the vibes?

Brandon Sanderson

He can get a little drunk. Maybe not as much as he would want to.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

13 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Because he has been living for more than 300 years and isn't old or dead?

He's a Cognitive Shadow.

13 minutes ago, alder24 said:

And not everything is suppressed:

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Brandon Sanderson

Notice how he grows in size here when he isn't paying attention. That's his Returned nature beginning to manifest, much like Vivenna's hair reacts to her emotions, because of the moment of great passion from him during the fight.

In this chapter, we also get the first hints that children and animals like Vasher. That's another hint about his nature—though a very, very subtle one, since I haven't talked about how animals and children all like Returned. They can sense the divine Breath within him, and it comforts them.

Warbreaker Annotations (April 9, 2011)

 

  Hide contents

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)

 

  Hide contents

quantumshenanigans

We know that Returned generally can't be inebriated, but Vasher has learned to suppress some of his outwardly Returned-ish aspects. When we see Zahel with a bottle of wine in Stormlight, is it actually having an effect on him, or is he just doing it for the vibes?

Brandon Sanderson

He can get a little drunk. Maybe not as much as he would want to.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

True, but those are relatively minor things that peek out despite being suppressed because there's only so much you can do with that much Investiture while it's still inside you.