Lifeless IFF Friend/Foe Identification?

[Duxredux he/him]

I was thinking and realized that large scale combat related to Lifeless may be far more complicated than the books suggest and I'm not sure how it has been or will be addressed. In essence, how does a Lifeless correctly identify who is a valid target when fighting? According to Vasher, we have a case of someone, probably Denth, slipping a couple of Lifeless that had their Commands broken into a group of regular Lifeless patrollers to make sure a conflict escalated to violence. Notably the regular patrollers did not identify the Lifeless with broken Commands, nor did they attack those Lifeless once they became violent, which you might have expected from Lifeless assigned peacekeeping duties. How does that even work, were the broken Lifeless order to temporarily obey with the same group they were slipped in with, or what? At the end Susebron sends Kalad's Phantoms to intercept and destroy the Hallendren army of Lifeless. We never see these orders being given, but there seems to me to be a non-trivial complexity in getting this right. We also see this going a bit oddly when Clod protects Vivenna, even though odds are Jewels would not have Commanded him to do so specifically.

There may be some advantages to being able to give your orders to the army en masse and perhaps there is some degree of identifying how to work together when the whole group is given orders simultaneously, but it probably isn't as simple as the group sharing the same core security phrase as typically the army is divided between 4 Returned. Correctly identifying friend or foe, particularly in a chaotic battlefield seems really important for wars involving tens of thousands of soldiers. Is it at all related to how Nightblood, who isn't good at discerning what is Evil Connects to his wielder and utilizes their judgment? How does that work when the army is far away from the person originally giving the orders?

In essence, what do people think are the rules that would govern ordering Lifeless into battle and correctly identifying the enemy?

[Quantus he/him]

I'd assume they use the same method as non-Lifeless combatants to determine friend from foe: Uniforms.

[Treamayne]

8 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

we have a case of someone, probably Denth,

<snip>

Notably the regular patrollers did not identify the Lifeless with broken Commands, nor did they attack those Lifeless once they became violent

Not Denth

This was explained in the Annotations (Ch 31A):

Spoiler

The watch captain is making a play for a promotion and favor, and is looking to score a major victory to look very good in front of the Returned. He got a tip that three of the most important slumlords—whom he’s been afraid to attack up until now, fearing to commit his guards to action—will be meeting together. He doesn’t even know about Vivenna.

But he did authorize his Lifeless (the city guard has a stock of about fifty that can be used at their discretion) to use deadly force. The Commands weren’t quite specific enough, unfortunately.

Beyond that, Bluefingers has managed—by sneaking through the tunnels that Vasher discovered—to get his forces to Command Break some of the Lifeless in the compound, then insert hidden Commands into them alongside their existing ones. In this case, he wanted the Idrians to see the Lifeless and the city watch cause a slaughter among their people. So he seeded some of the Lifeless with Commands to attack and kill if they were shown aggression by Idrians.

He didn’t know when the slaughter would happen; he doesn’t have enough control over events in order to do that. His little Lifeless bombs just happened to go off here, when the Idrians started to resist. Since the regular soldiers—and even the Lifeless not under Bluefingers’s Commands—overreacted once blood began to be shed, everything went crazy from there.

Denth wasn’t in on this plan, and Bluefingers never told him that he was behind it. 

So, the watch captain didn't order his Lifeless to attack the violent ones because he also authorized lethal force - the "Broken" Lifeless just had a much shorter "trigger" and once that was set off - all of the Lifeless became violent. 

8 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Correctly identifying friend or foe, particularly in a chaotic battlefield seems really important for wars involving tens of thousands of soldiers.

Well, keep in mind that, unlike type 3 entities, Lifeless can not only interpret orders, but they have layers of Commands allowing different types of orders:

Spoiler

Warbreak Ch 41:

Quote

Awakening was different from creating a Lifeless—Lifeless had brains and could interpret Commands and requests. 

Ch 47:

Quote

He would leave the Lifeless with their basic instructions to obey the servants when they asked the creatures to exercise or go to the infirmary. He’d give them a lesser Command that could be used to move them about and make them march to specific locations, as when they had been placed in ranks outside the city to greet Siri, and another to make them go with members of the city guard to provide extra muscle.

Yet there would only be one person with ultimate command of them. One person who could make them go to war. 

 

Well, Lifeless interpretation of Commands is at least partially dependant on how they were made Lifeless to begin with (moreso than the orders they are given on the battlefield, at least); so, presumably, the Lifeless Soldiers are made by Hallendren's best Awakeners.  (Ch 21A)

Spoiler

The better your imagining of the Command when you make it (not the orders you give it, but the one when you give it the Breath), the more intelligent and capable of following orders the Lifeless is. Later in the book, for instance, people are surprised at how good this little squirrel is at doing what it is told.

My current theory is that (Elantris Spoilers):

Spoiler

Layers of Lifeless Commands are, like AonDor, approximating a computer programming language. Multiple levels of "If Then Else" orders (and qualifiers like not, or) that all overlap to create the basic mobility and function of the Lifeless. We already see they have basic orders to follow instructions from the servants in the Lifeless Compound if ordered to exercise or report to the maintenance area. We see that the lesser Command Lightsong used for mobility allows Priests to issue orders for movement outside the lifeless compound, or support the City Watch (presumably limited in how they should be used in that regard). 

9 minutes ago, Quantus said:

I'd assume they use the same method as non-Lifeless combatants to determine friend from foe: Uniforms.

That is certainly part of it, but war is not always engaged with unifomed soldiers. Since Bluefinger's Broken Lifeless could interpret "Idrian" as a valid target, there are likely layers of orders on what makes a target valid or invalid. 

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

I was thinking and realized that large scale combat related to Lifeless may be far more complicated than the books suggest and I'm not sure how it has been or will be addressed. In essence, how does a Lifeless correctly identify who is a valid target when fighting?

In the same way regular soldiers of historical periods did that - by colors, uniforms, banners, symbols and formations. Lifeless fight in strict formations, not 1 on 1 combats. It's easy to dictate them a series of Commands which just say which units they are meant to attack, and which units they mustn't attack. Visualization would play a massive role - just simply saying "attack enemies of Hallandren" or even just "attack" (on the actual battlefield) when you imagine how those enemy troops would look like, what uniforms, colors and banners they would have, is enough for Lifeless. Lifeless can be given more than 1 Command, you can easily "program" them not to attack friendly troops and when a war starts you give them new Commands specifying who is their enemy now. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

According to Vasher, we have a case of someone, probably Denth, slipping a couple of Lifeless that had their Commands broken into a group of regular Lifeless patrollers to make sure a conflict escalated to violence. Notably the regular patrollers did not identify the Lifeless with broken Commands, nor did they attack those Lifeless once they became violent, which you might have expected from Lifeless assigned peacekeeping duties. How does that even work, were the broken Lifeless order to temporarily obey with the same group they were slipped in with, or what?

They were both members in uniforms of the city watch, thus they were Commanded to consider themselves as allies - those Lifeless had no problem going against Clud-Lifeless.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

The City Guard Attacks

Some of you may be wondering whose plot led to this attack by the city guard on the meeting.

Well, it's complicated. The city watch—worried about the upswing in crime and the political tension lately—has grown more aggressive. They know that someone snuck into the palace of Mercystar herself, threatening one of their goddesses. The watch captain is making a play for a promotion and favor, and is looking to score a major victory to look very good in front of the Returned. He got a tip that three of the most important slumlords—whom he's been afraid to attack up until now, fearing to commit his guards to action—will be meeting together. He doesn't even know about Vivenna.

But he did authorize his Lifeless (the city guard has a stock of about fifty that can be used at their discretion) to use deadly force. The Commands weren't quite specific enough, unfortunately.

Beyond that, Bluefingers has managed—by sneaking through the tunnels that Vasher discovered—to get his forces to Command Break some of the Lifeless in the compound, then insert hidden Commands into them alongside their existing ones. In this case, he wanted the Idrians to see the Lifeless and the city watch cause a slaughter among their people. So he seeded some of the Lifeless with Commands to attack and kill if they were shown aggression by Idrians.

He didn't know when the slaughter would happen; he doesn't have enough control over events in order to do that. His little Lifeless bombs just happened to go off here, when the Idrians started to resist. Since the regular soldiers—and even the Lifeless not under Bluefingers's Commands—overreacted once blood began to be shed, everything went crazy from there.

Denth wasn't in on this plan, and Bluefingers never told him that he was behind it. In the end, the whole battle turned into a major embarrassment for the city guard, though they did capture one of the slumlords. He was held until after the events of the book, then eventually released.

Warbreaker Annotations (Dec. 2, 2010)

The unspecify use of the deadly force probably means that if Lifeless are attacked, they can fight back and even kill in self-defense. But with no fighting there would be no problems - if Bluefingers didn't Command Break a few of those Lifeless, ordering them to just kill. ch 31

Quote

“What’s going on?” she asked, heart thumping.
“Raid,” Tonk Fah said. “Shouldn’t be too dangerous, unless . . .”
Blades sounded, metal clashing against metal, and the screams grew more desperate. Vivenna glanced backward. The men from the slumlords’ groups, feeling trapped, had engaged the Lifeless. Vivenna felt a sense of horror, watching the terrible, grey- faced men wade among the swords and daggers, ignoring wounds. The creatures pulled out their weapons and began to attack. Men yelled and screamed, falling, bloody.
Denth moved to defend the mouth of Vivenna’s alleyway. She didn’t know where Jewels had gone.
“Kalad’s Phantoms!” Tonk Fah cursed, pushing her ahead of him as they retreated. “Those fools decided to resist. Now we’re in trouble.”
[...]
The Lifeless looked as if they were stone, their expressions eerily grim in the waning light. Tonk Fah glanced backward, obviously decided that Denth wasn’t going to be arriving anytime soon, then resignedly held his hands up and dropped his sword. “I can’t take five on my own, Princess,” he whispered. “Not Lifeless. We’ll have to let them arrest us.”
Vivenna slowly held her hands up as well.
The Lifeless pulled out their weapons.
“Uh . . .” Tonk Fah said. “We surrender?”
The creatures charged.

There is a general knowledge (at least in more the "upper class" of criminal underground that Denth and Tonk Fah are part of) that if you surrender and don't resist, you won't be in trouble. Starting a fight is a bad idea, because they will respond with their swords. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

At the end Susebron sends Kalad's Phantoms to intercept and destroy the Hallendren army of Lifeless. We never see these orders being given, but there seems to me to be a non-trivial complexity in getting this right.

Visualization and Intent are the most important component of Awakening. Your Command might be simple, but proper visualization will give it more meaning. He could just say "attack the Lifeless army" and his mind would provide a specific set of objectives that would determine which army to attack and where they are. Or something more specific, like "go towards Idris and destroy all Lifeless that are a part of the rogue army of Hallandren". ch 21

Quote

“Fallen Rope,” he said to the creature, its grey eyes looking up at him. The security phrase pronounced, Vasher could now imprint the creature with an order, much as he did when performing a standard Awakening. “Make noise. Run around. Bite people who are not me. Fallen Rope.”
The squirrel hopped up to its feet then scampered down the hallway, heading for the open doorway the fleeing servants had disappeared into. Vasher stood and began to run again, hoping that this distraction would earn him time. Indeed, a few moments later he heard cries coming from the doorway

Vasher's squirrel didn’t run out of the building, or where he came from, it ran precisely to the room where servants who saw him fled. He didn't include that in his verbal Command, but intent and visualization probably did that, thus the squirrel ran after the fleeing servants. Those people were the ones that needed to be distracted, not maids in the other wing of the palace.

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

We also see this going a bit oddly when Clod protects Vivenna, even though odds are Jewels would not have Commanded him to do so specifically.

Probably some general Command about protecting the group plus increased self-awareness that Clod shows. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

How does that work when the army is far away from the person originally giving the orders?

That doesn't happen. Not just 4 Returned have Commands, there is a whole selection of priests, servants and probably military officers that would be given Commands giving them lesser control over a group of Lifeless. The army would be divided into units, platoons, companies etc. Just like a normal army is. Lifeless aren't meant to be without leadership. ch 55:

Quote

"I think your people will do better in this war than everyone says, especially if the Lifeless march without leadership. Your people will ambush them, making sure this is not an easy war for either side.”

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by alder24