Hmmm lies Posted November 8, 2023 Report Share Posted November 8, 2023 The divine Breath of a Returned seems to be very weird. When it is given away, it heals the person instantly, and yet the person doesn't instantly hit the Fifth Heightening. Is all the Investiture used up in the healing? Could it really take 2000 Breaths worth of Investiture just to heal a tongue. Or does Endowment make it so that the Investiture is returned to her after the healing. I also wonder if a Returned with 2000 normal Breaths could survive without the divine Breath. Any WoB or theories on any of this? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Treamayne Posted November 8, 2023 Report Share Posted November 8, 2023 Welsome to the Forums. I see from your introductory post that you have read all of the books so far, but I will still spoil tag some things just in case you have not yet read things like the Warbreaker Annotations (which are free on Brandon's website, but also included in the Warbreaker eBook) or for others that may be reading this post. Also, by Spoiler policy, since this thread is in the Warbreaker section, anything from another series needs to be tagged appropriately. 6 minutes ago, Hmmm lies said: The divine Breath of a Returned seems to be very weird. When it is given away, it heals the person instantly, and yet the person doesn't instantly hit the Fifth Heightening. Is all the Investiture used up in the healing? Could it really take 2000 Breaths worth of Investiture just to heal a tongue. Or does Endowment make it so that the Investiture is returned to her after the healing. I also wonder if a Returned with 2000 normal Breaths could survive without the divine Breath. Any WoB or theories on any of this? Are you familiar with Splinters? (Stormlight and Elantris Spoilers) Spoiler Seons and Spren are both Sapient splinters - but the Divine breath of a Returned is not, actually, 2000 breaths but rather a Splinter of Endowment granted to the person who has chosen to Return. WoBs: Spoiler Quote Gordon The paintings (I think there were at least two, right?) that remind Lightsong of his dreams and the Manywar etc. Is the Artist someone we know? If not, will we eventually meet him/her in a later book? Does the artist hope to affect Lightsong this way, or is it just some guy giving abstract art to his God? Jared Is the artist that painted those paintings Hoid? Brandon Sanderson Hoid did not make the paintings. The goal of those paintings—and this is spoilery, by the way—the paintings are actually what the text implies that they are. They are abstract paintings which Lightsong, having a touch of the divine, is able to see and read into things that aren't necessarily there. Beyond that, art is a magical thing in the world of WARBREAKER. When an artist creates a work of art, part of the artist's soul ends up in the artwork. Someone who has many breaths and who's Returned like Lightsong has the inherent ability to see into the art and perceive that. So Lightsong can interpret correctly an abstract piece, based on what the artist is trying to convey, in a way that a normal person couldn't. I was not trying to make the artists anyone specifically important. In the case of those paintings, they are wonderful artists—I think they are two separate artists, if I'm thinking of the two paintings that you're indicating. As Lightsong has a splinter of divine nature inside him, he is able to interpret the paintings—to foresee, using them, and to see into the soul of the person who made them. Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A (Jan. 18, 2010) Quote Trae Cooper On Nalthis is the-- We know that Endowment makes Splinters to create divine Breaths to bring Returned. Brandon Sanderson Mmhmm. Trae Cooper The process with which those Returns are chosen, is that deliberate from Endowment or is there a process that was put into place to select? Brandon Sanderson Yes. JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016) There is currently no known way that a Returned can "survive" without the Divine Breath that allows their Cognitive Shadow to have a body in the Physical Realm. We do not yet know if they could transition to becoming a CR Shadow - like a certain Scadrian from Secret history - without the Divine Breath. It's not that it takes 2000 breaths to heal a tongue - the Divine breath is one breath - singular - and using it is all or nothing. Also, healing with Awakening is not something that one can do for themselves as the nature of the Shard is about giving. WoB: Spoiler vandar10 Could someone with enough Breaths use part of them to heal himself without the help of a Returned?? Could the God King have healed himself without Lightsong with enough knowledge? Brandon Sanderson The nature of the Warbreaker magic is tied to the shard of Endowment, which is about giving. There are, therefore, things you cannot do for yourself. RobotAztec For healing can Big Breaths heal only one person at a time or can you heal a bunch of people at once?(as long as they are not yourself)? Brandon Sanderson Legends say you can heal many. /r/books AMA 2015 (June 8, 2015) When a Divine breath is used to heal somebody, it has an effect then returns to its source. the healed person does not "gain" the Divine Breath. From the Annotations: Spoiler Brandon Sanderson Chapter Twelve Lightsong Hears Petitions The concept of petitions—and the gods being able to heal someone one time—grew out of my desire to have something about them that was miraculous. Something obvious, something more than just an ability to make vague prophecies. Their Breath auras are amazing, true, but an Awakener with a lot of Breath can replicate that. I took the idea of being able to die in order to heal from an idea discarded from Elantris. If you look at the deleted scenes (Caution: Spoilers for the ending of Elantris), you can read about how there was originally a subplot to the story where the Seons (the floating balls of light) could expend the Aon at their center and create a miraculous event one time. However, doing so would kill them. I eventually ended up not using this plot structure in the final draft, and so I cut all references to this ability from the book. I felt that it was too contrived in that novel. I've always thought it was interesting conceptually, however, so I developed it into this book as an aspect of Returned that makes them different. They can create one miracle—and in this world, that one miracle has to be a healing. They can expend their divine Breath to heal someone. Warbreaker Annotations (Sept. 9, 2010) Hope that helps. And if you are not familair with using the Coppermind and Arcanum to find information, here are some tips and tricks that may also help: Spoiler Using Coppermind and Arcanum: Go to the Coppermind, you can search a term in the upper right. On the top-right of the page (below the search bar) you will see a circle icon that denotes how "complete" the information is (e.g. solid green means it has all known information, split white/blck means unanswered questions, etc.) Like any wiki, links to other pages appear the first time they are referenced While reading you will find notes ([1]) that take you to the references at the bottom of the page. From there, if the reference is a WoB the link will redirect you to the Arcanum post. One useful technique (at least on PC) is to click the [1] note to go to the references section, open the reference link in a new tab, then use the browser back button to immediately return to where you were reading. On the Arcanum, you can read all of the WoBs from a specific event by clicking: Discover > Events, then select an event. When looking at a Word of Brandon (WoB - or Peter/Isaac) in the Arcanum, you can: Click on the event name to read all WoBs from that event Click on a tag at the bottom to make a search of all entries with that tag - such as Divine Breath The top right of the WoB has a "Copy" button, to easily copy the WoB contents to add to a forum post spoiler tag (please use soiler tags to keep posts visually short and let new people avoid spoilers if they desire) Also, on the Arcanum, you can search for keywords using the search bar in the upper left While searching a tag, the advanced search will be at the top of the page, so you can keyword search within a specific tag (example: Searching "Healing" in the #Awakening tag) In any keyword or tag search the default view will be "accuracy" Refine searches with Boolean (+/& for "and" to combine terms - e. g. Diving&Breath&Healing ) Note this method is unfiltered and will return more results than the tag and keyword search above But they can be combined, by filtering a keyword and using a boolean search inside that tag. You can be set that to "Oldest First" (avoiding spoilers) or "Newest first" (for recent additions) using the drop-down box For the Arcanum, learn more at Help and Navigation Hope that helps 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alder24 Posted November 8, 2023 Report Share Posted November 8, 2023 47 minutes ago, Hmmm lies said: The divine Breath of a Returned seems to be very weird. When it is given away, it heals the person instantly, and yet the person doesn't instantly hit the Fifth Heightening. Is all the Investiture used up in the healing? Could it really take 2000 Breaths worth of Investiture just to heal a tongue. Or does Endowment make it so that the Investiture is returned to her after the healing. I also wonder if a Returned with 2000 normal Breaths could survive without the divine Breath. Any WoB or theories on any of this? A Divine Breath is one, super powerful Breath, not 2000 Breaths, it can't be transferred, it's turned into kinetic investiture, used for healing and returns to Endowment. You can't give it away. However this is one of the most powerful forms of healing in Cosmere, you can heal a lot with a Divine Breath. And you can do different things than healing, which we don't know yet. The God King didn't just get his tongue healed, he's never spoke before, he's never learn to talk - Lightsong's Divine Breath not only give him back his tongue, but also change his Cognitive and Spiritual aspect so he could speak like he had never lose his tongue in the first place. That's a little more complicated. And no, a Divine Breath is what makes Returned Returned. You can't have Returned without a Divine Breath, even if you give him 2000 Breaths. A Divine Breath seems to be the very thing that pins Returned soul into his body. Without it he dies. 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 Questioner When you transfer divine Breath, is it possible to have it result in something other than healing? Brandon Sanderson Lots of things are possible. Let's just say that that is not something people know how to do, and they have tried to do something else. Skyward Chicago signing (Nov. 16, 2018) Spoiler Questioner Given Sanderson's Laws about limitations... Brandon Sanderson Yes. Questioner What would you say are any spiritual, cognitive, and or physical limitations to a Returned's healing ability? Brandon Sanderson That they can do it once. Questioner That they can do it once, and that's it? Brandon Sanderson Yeah, right? The Returned get one heal and then they die. That's a pretty big limitation. Like you have to choose really well. However, what they can heal is bounded by cosmere limitations on healing, but it is a supercharged version. Questioner Okay. Could you define more cosmere limitations on healing? Brandon Sanderson Cosmere limitations on healing can be affected by your own perception. Questioner Okay. Cognitive stuff. Brandon Sanderson Cognitive stuff. And so there's a part of that, and... But that's really-- cognitive interferes. And if your spirit is gone? Right? Cosmere healing, you know, if your spirit is passed on you just get a dead body even though you've healed it. Questioner So potentially Vasher, having a much greater cosmere knowledge than others could potentially have a much greater usage of that healing than regular-- Brandon Sanderson Well the healing-- What I mean by that is yourself. You impose limits. So the person being healed can impose some limits on the healing working. It doesn't happen as often as I'm making it sound. SA spoilers: Spoiler But, you know-- why Kaladin's scars have not healed, right? So Kaladin being hit by a Returned would still not heal his scars. He's got a major hangup about those scars. Footnote: The questioner seems to have been asking about cosmere healing in general for Returned, but Brandon focused on their ability to give up their Divine Breath to heal somebody else. Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016) Spoiler Kurkistan Are flamespren, are they all doing their own thing, or is there some Ideal of "Fire" sitting in the Spiritual Realm that they're all based on? Brandon Sanderson Each spren is based on the Ideal of Fire. Kurkistan And is that sitting in the Spiritual Realm? Brandon Sanderson Yes, we're using sort of a Platonic Ideal, and that concept is in force, so *sounds hesitant* "yes", but [spren] are manifestations of it. Kurkistan So these Ideals in the Spiritual Realm: Divine Breath, does that heal by accessing some Ideal of Human Health: so a guy who had never had a tongue and doesn't know how to speak all the sudden has a tongue and can speak? Brandon Sanderson You are... *LONG pause* You are, um, on the right track. Kurkistan Okay. Brandon Sanderson Because the Breath is... eh. How can I explain this? You are, yeah... So... So each Breath is a shade of deity, right? Kurkistan Yeah. Brandon Sanderson And each Breath incorporates into it this sort of idea of being endowed by the deity Endowment, correct? Kurkistan Yes. Brandon Sanderson And so each Breath you hold brings you one step closer to becoming like that, and so what you're saying is... is "yes", kind of true, yes. Kurkistan But it's like within the Breath, not sitting off by itself- Brandon Sanderson Yes, yes yes exactly. Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014) Spoiler Questioner *inaudible* Brandon Sanderson Yeah the Divine Breath is a gift of Investiture directly to the...basically they are being given a large Splinter of Endowment. Questioner But is it the size? Brandon Sanderson The size is important, to make that happen, yeah. Questioner To make it happen? Brandon Sanderson To make it happen, yeah. To make them come back and to do the things but...there is obviously some leakage there when they basically taking a Cognitive Sh...they have to create a Cognitive Shadow of the spirit, right. Which requires some work, and then to push that back into the body and get it to stick requires some work as well. SA spoilers: Spoiler You'll see that with Szeth it isn't sticking very well. Questioner *inaudible* Brandon Sanderson Yeah Szeth is not a Cognitive Shadow, he actually got stuck back in but the soul is not sticking very well to the body Questioner *inaudible* Brandon Sanderson That's what she's saying. Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hmmm lies Posted November 8, 2023 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2023 (edited) I thought kinetic Investiture might be the answer to the receiver not getting Fifth Heightening. But then why can only the divine Breath let the Returned live. I suppose it could be that this specific splinter of Endowment is what is gluing the Cognitive Shadow to the body, but then that raises the question of if other forms of Investiture could do it. In fact, we see something like that for a certain Scadrian from Secret History. I wonder if a Bondsmith or someone else who can manipulate Connection could Connect a CS to a body with other forms of Investiture (Oh and no worries, I have read the annotations) Edited November 8, 2023 by Hmmm lies 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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