Awakened Object vs Shardblade

[CtrlAltDepressed]

This thread got me thinking about the interaction between shardblades and awakened objects. 

 

We know that shardblades cut the soul and not living flesh, and we know that breath create an artificial soul for the object. 

 

If a shardblade cuts a piece of awakened cloth, what happens? I can forsee a LOT of possibilities, some more likely than others. For the sake of argument the cloth was awakened with 1 breath. 

 

• cloth is not cut, just like a person, and the breath connection is severed
  • breath is recoverable because shardblades dont destroy investiture
  • breath is not recoverable because the connection to the awakener has been severed (breath without permission?)
• cloth is cut into two pieces with half a breath in each
  • follows the command just as two pieces
  • breaks command because identity of cloth is now different
• cloths 'soul' is cut, so half of the cloth cant act on the command, but the breath stays and it tries its best to complete the command

 

What do you all think? Given the scene we have from vasher using awakening when training kaladin, I think its possible to see this interaction, and potentially even likely. 

 

 

 

Edited April 3 by CtrlAltDepressed

[Experience]

I'd guess it depends on the amount of breaths? 

Like I'm sure it wouldn't just cut through nightblood (I can't remember if we've had a nightblood vs shardblade interaction yet or not), 

And I imagine like a cloak that is used to protect someone would probably just get slashed through? Idk though. I guess it really depends on what constitutes a soul, and if a certain amount of investiture can actually mimic a soul.

[CtrlAltDepressed]

9 minutes ago, Experience said:

Like I'm sure it wouldn't just cut through nightblood (I can't remember if we've had a nightblood vs shardblade interaction yet or not), 

That is why i specified 1 breath for the cloth because OB spoilers:

Spoiler

Nightblood chips an Honorblade

 

[listerfeend]

11 minutes ago, Experience said:

Like I'm sure it wouldn't just cut through nightblood (I can't remember if we've had a nightblood vs shardblade interaction yet or not), 

We've had a Nightblood on Honorblade interaction, and that caused a chip in the Honorblade, but this is more specifically related to "normal" awakened objects. Nightblood is a beast on its own. (I've had HOURS AND HOURS of discussions about Nightblood with @CtrlAltDepressed)

I think this gets even more interesting with Lifeless though. A once living body, reanimated with Investiture. Would a Shardblade cut it, or would it pass through severing Spirt Web connections? Because, I'm assuming the Spirit Web still exists. Brandon has said it is a quantifiable and measurable thing in the Cosmere, which indicates to me that it is a part of the body.

And, if a Shardblade would pass through a Lifeless, I suspect that it would pass through a cloth or rope in the same way, severing the Spirit Web connections of that item... 

[Experience]

Okay. Interesting. 

This makes me wonder if a spiritweb is broken enough, would a shardblade just cut like a normal blade and not sever the soul because the soul is already so broken? 

Like koloss or inquisitors kinda thing? I imagine it would still function as normal, as they still have the soul however broken it may be.

But back to breath.

I mean in the culture of the Idris they say that the breath is the person's soul, so technically it should sever the breath? But say you could have half a breath in an awakened object, would that not be enough for the blade or does it not matter how much 'soul' there is.

Wait. So if you have awakened rope that ties up a radiant... Then they try to cut the rope but the first time it effectively breaks the awakening but not the rope... I feel like that would be an interesting interaction. 

I wonder if identity matters at all as well. Like if the awakened object sees itself as being 'alive' if that means it has a soul?

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

2 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

This thread got me thinking about the interaction between shardblades and awakened objects. 

 

We know that shardblades cut the soul and not living flesh, and we know that breath create an artificial soul for the object. 

 

If a shardblade cuts a piece of awakened cloth, what happens? I can forsee a LOT of possibilities, some more likely than others. For the sake of argument the cloth was awakened with 1 breath. 

 

• cloth is not cut, just like a person, and the breath connection is severed
  • breath is recoverable because shardblades dont destroy investiture
  • breath is not recoverable because the connection to the awakener has been severed (breath without permission?)
• cloth is cut into two pieces with half a breath in each
  • follows the command just as two pieces
  • breaks command because identity of cloth is now different
• cloths 'soul' is cut, so half of the cloth cant act on the command, but the breath stays and it tries its best to complete the command

 

What do you all think? Given the scene we have from vasher using awakening when training kaladin, I think its possible to see this interaction, and potentially even likely. 

 

 

 

Well the specification of 1 breath makes this difficult to say. 

I don't know that there is any command that allows cloth to do anything with a single breath only. 

We see Zahel use awakening to fight Kaladin and Kaladin does use Syl to cut the cloths. He says they are still wriggling around on the floor post cut. 

So certainly not all of the breath is lost. 

I imagine that you would lose some of the breath with each strike.  Similarly to metalminds being able to withstand an amount of hits before being destroyed as well. 

How much?  I don't know that we will ever get the numbers.  But Brandon suggests that they are... however, he writes all of the action scenes before calculating the amount of stormlight or breaths or metals that are needed to make them suspenseful. 

[CtrlAltDepressed]

2 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

We see Zahel use awakening to fight Kaladin and Kaladin does use Syl to cut the cloths. He says they are still wriggling around on the floor post cut. 

Is this wriggling a death throe or the cloth trying to continue its command? I don't remember this quote exactly....

 

4 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Well the specification of 1 breath makes this difficult to say. 

We could say 10 breaths and its split into 5 / 5 or 4.5 / 4.5. I just picked 1 because its easy, not that it would actually only have 1 breath. 

 

5 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I imagine that you would lose some of the breath with each strike.  Similarly to metalminds being able to withstand an amount of hits before being destroyed as well. 

Does that mean Kaladin lost part of his soul when his arm was cut by a blade? I was under the impression shardblades just cut the soul, they dont actually excise any of it.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

If a shardblade cuts a piece of awakened cloth, what happens? I can forsee a LOT of possibilities, some more likely than others. For the sake of argument the cloth was awakened with 1 breath. 

 

• cloth is not cut, just like a person, and the breath connection is severed
  • breath is recoverable because shardblades dont destroy investiture
  • breath is not recoverable because the connection to the awakener has been severed (breath without permission?)
• cloth is cut into two pieces with half a breath in each
  • follows the command just as two pieces
  • breaks command because identity of cloth is now different
• cloths 'soul' is cut, so half of the cloth cant act on the command, but the breath stays and it tries its best to complete the command

 

What do you all think? Given the scene we have from vasher using awakening when training kaladin, I think its possible to see this interaction, and potentially even likely. 

Of course it depends on how much it is invested. An Awakened cloth is still a non-living object, even if it's invested, it would primarily act like a dead piece of rock (which also has a soul and is cut by a Shardblade). So a cloth Awakened with only 1 Breath would not resist a Shardblade and would be cut into 2 pieces, with its Breath being cut into 2 recoverable halves. But I think some tiny bit of investiture would be lost as well, because of the way in which a Shardblade cuts non-living objects - it vaporizes some matter into investiture to allow a blade to pass through. A piece of Breath attached to that vaporizes part of matter would be lost, as that loss is how the Breath is cut into two parts. Something even more invested can resist it or even block it like a Shardplate/Half-Shard, taking a few hits before it breaks.

We saw Kaladin cut Vasher's Awakened sheets, they are cut and they still try to move after being cut. RoW ch 15:

Quote

A face and figure formed in a nearby sheet, puffing toward Kaladin as if someone were walking through on the other side. He struck immediately, driving his sword through the sheet. It ripped—the point was still sharp enough for that—but didn’t strike anyone beyond.
Syl momentarily became sharp—changing before he could ask—as he swiped to cut the sheet in two. It writhed in the wind, severed down the center.
[...]
Zahel stood and dropped the knife with a clang. Kaladin recovered it, sitting up, and glanced at the fallen sheets. They lay on the ground—normal cloths, occasionally shifting in the breeze. In fact, another man might have dismissed their motions as a trick of the wind.
But Kaladin knew the wind. That had not been the wind.
“You can’t join the ardents,” Zahel said to him, kneeling and touching one of the cloths with his finger, then lifting it and pinning it onto the drying line. He did the same for the others, each in turn.

 

Spoiler

Questioner

How would an Awakened with Breath piece of cloth react if it got hit with a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

A Shardblade would probably be able to cut it, but it depends on how much Breath we're talking about.

Questioner

So if it had enough, it might be able to block it

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 7, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Shardblades cut organic and inorganic matter differently. How would they interact with an animated construct like an Awakened straw man? What about a Lifeless?

Brandon Sanderson

So I walk kind of a fine line here. Something that's animated as a construct, like an Awakened straw man, is likely going to block the Shardblade to some extent, as powerful Investiture would. A Lifeless is probably just gonna act like it was a living being.

San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020 (July 23, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

The Blade does, by necessity of my understanding of the relevant physics, need to be able to vaporize a tiny bit of matter into Investiture while cutting, in order to create space for the Blade to continue to slide through. This is related to why it doesn't cut things with souls.

[...]

General Reddit 2022 (March 19, 2022)

 

1 hour ago, listerfeend said:

I think this gets even more interesting with Lifeless though. A once living body, reanimated with Investiture. Would a Shardblade cut it, or would it pass through severing Spirt Web connections? Because, I'm assuming the Spirit Web still exists. Brandon has said it is a quantifiable and measurable thing in the Cosmere, which indicates to me that it is a part of the body.

Lifeless would act like a living being, a Shardblade would cut its Breath, not the body - 2nd WoB. The difference probably is that Lifeless is almost alive compared to a type 3 entity like Awakened ropes. They are more self-aware than people think.

 

10 minutes ago, Experience said:

Okay. Interesting. 

This makes me wonder if a spiritweb is broken enough, would a shardblade just cut like a normal blade and not sever the soul because the soul is already so broken? 

Like koloss or inquisitors kinda thing? I imagine it would still function as normal, as they still have the soul however broken it may be.

Actually they are both invested with more investiture from spikes, so they would resist Shardblade a tiny bit more than a normal person. I think broken spiritweb wouldn't matter for a Shardblade - spikes held it together. A broken soul with no spikes might be a tiny bit easier to cut - if investiture is lost when cracks appear. But at those levels there would be no difference.

[Quantus]

23 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Of course it depends on how much it is invested. An Awakened cloth is still a non-living object, even if it's invested, it would primarily act like a dead piece of rock (which also has a soul and is cut by a Shardblade). So a cloth Awakened with only 1 Breath would not resist a Shardblade and would be cut into 2 pieces, with its Breath being cut into 2 recoverable halves. But I think some tiny bit of investiture would be lost as well, because of the way in which a Shardblade cuts non-living objects - it vaporizes some matter into investiture to allow a blade to pass through. A piece of Breath attached to that vaporizes part of matter would be lost, as that loss is how the Breath is cut into two parts. Something even more invested can resist it or even block it like a Shardplate/Half-Shard, taking a few hits before it breaks.

We saw Kaladin cut Vasher's Awakened sheets, they are cut and they still try to move after being cut. RoW ch 15:

 

  Hide contents

Questioner

How would an Awakened with Breath piece of cloth react if it got hit with a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

A Shardblade would probably be able to cut it, but it depends on how much Breath we're talking about.

Questioner

So if it had enough, it might be able to block it

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 7, 2018)

 

  Hide contents

Questioner

Shardblades cut organic and inorganic matter differently. How would they interact with an animated construct like an Awakened straw man? What about a Lifeless?

Brandon Sanderson

So I walk kind of a fine line here. Something that's animated as a construct, like an Awakened straw man, is likely going to block the Shardblade to some extent, as powerful Investiture would. A Lifeless is probably just gonna act like it was a living being.

San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020 (July 23, 2020)

 

  Hide contents

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

The Blade does, by necessity of my understanding of the relevant physics, need to be able to vaporize a tiny bit of matter into Investiture while cutting, in order to create space for the Blade to continue to slide through. This is related to why it doesn't cut things with souls.

[...]

General Reddit 2022 (March 19, 2022)

 

Lifeless would act like a living being, a Shardblade would cut its Breath, not the body - 2nd WoB. The difference probably is that Lifeless is almost alive compared to a type 3 entity like Awakened ropes. They are more self-aware than people think.

 

Actually they are both invested with more investiture from spikes, so they would resist Shardblade a tiny bit more than a normal person. I think broken spiritweb wouldn't matter for a Shardblade - spikes held it together. A broken soul with no spikes might be a tiny bit easier to cut - if investiture is lost when cracks appear. But at those levels there would be no difference.

You know how Lifeless used to take something like 50 breaths to be made until they discovered a new Command that only took one?  I've always suspected that the former method was animating the corpse on a physical level (basic organic matter with magic puppet strings) whereas the latter was an innovation to replace the animating Spiritwebon a Spiritual Level.  If that's true, I suspect a Shardbalde would have treated the former type as an Object while the latter/modern type would be a living being as in the WOB.  

[CtrlAltDepressed]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

A face and figure formed in a nearby sheet, puffing toward Kaladin as if someone were walking through on the other side. He struck immediately, driving his sword through the sheet. It ripped—the point was still sharp enough for that—but didn’t strike anyone beyond.
Syl momentarily became sharp—changing before he could ask—as he swiped to cut the sheet in two. It writhed in the wind, severed down the center.
[...]
Zahel stood and dropped the knife with a clang. Kaladin recovered it, sitting up, and glanced at the fallen sheets. They lay on the ground—normal cloths, occasionally shifting in the breeze. In fact, another man might have dismissed their motions as a trick of the wind.

Thank you for finding the quote!

 

Now that I see the text again, I'm not sure this is conclusive on what is happening here. It seems like what this could be saying is that the motions before he cut it COULD be dismissed as the wind (but not to Kaladin), and that the shifting in the breeze was actual shifting in the breeze. This is indicated by the fact that anyone else would believe the entire thing was the wind. A piece of cloth that vaguely resembled a person came at him, was quickly cut in two, and then was shifting in the breeze. This doesn't seem to indicate to me that the cloth was still wriggling after being cut. I think, especially because he notes how weird the first part is, that the cloth is not moving on its own after he cuts it.

 

Having been on Roshar in the past and having been there a good bit now already, I think its safe to assume Vasher knows what would happen to his breath when a shardblade cuts the cloth. Since Vasher is on Roshar for the free investiture it seems unlikely that he would waste any amount of breath for this interaction with Kaladin (assuming that cutting it degrades or removes part of the breath).

 

I think there might be a power gap here if the cloth is still trying to enact its command. Does that mean that, with the right type of cloth, Vasher's awakened cloth 'soldiers' basically just become two smaller 'soldiers' when cut? Its kind of like a hydra, growing more heads the more you cut.

 

I'm still not sold either way.

 

Since you mentioned that shardblades have to vaporize SOME material to do what they do, it occurred to me that healing shardblade wounds as a Radiant might not be an infinitely repeatable process. What I mean is the stormlight can repair your soul, but that part that was vaporized cant be regained. I dont know how many times it would take but I think you could degrade someones soul a LOT doing this. I imagine it would happen pretty quickly, actually.

[Experience]

Unless the healing is literally replacing the part of the soul that was killed.

[CtrlAltDepressed]

30 minutes ago, Experience said:

Unless the healing is literally replacing the part of the soul that was killed.

Then could a Radiant heal the holes in their spiritweb from hemalurgic spikes? I feel like stormlight healing and feruchemical gold healing are the same basic healing mechanism, which I don't think heals hemalurgic holes. There is probably a wob on the matter

[therunner]

7 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

Then could a Radiant heal the holes in their spiritweb from hemalurgic spikes? I feel like stormlight healing and feruchemical gold healing are the same basic healing mechanism, which I don't think heals hemalurgic holes. There is probably a wob on the matter

Yes to both.
F-Gold can heal spiritual damage, and so can Stormlight healing, and there is indeed WoB on the matter

Quote

Kurkistan

Could Miles heal back his Allomancy if it was spiked out of him?

Brandon Sanderson

No, he could not. He would no longer be an Allomancer. Also, he'd probably be dead.

Kurkistan

Thanks!

I'd thought maybe he could just do some super-tapping from his existing Health in his goldminds (since he'd still have his Feruchemy)...

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I see what you're asking. Using Feruchemy to heal the removed portion of soul. That's actually plausible, not so different from healing other kinds of soul-wounds. If he survived, then yes, this actually might work. (That's why I get for reading the questions so quickly.)

Goodreads: Ask the Author Q&A (Aug. 13, 2014)

 

[alder24]

11 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

Now that I see the text again, I'm not sure this is conclusive on what is happening here. It seems like what this could be saying is that the motions before he cut it COULD be dismissed as the wind (but not to Kaladin), and that the shifting in the breeze was actual shifting in the breeze. This is indicated by the fact that anyone else would believe the entire thing was the wind. A piece of cloth that vaguely resembled a person came at him, was quickly cut in two, and then was shifting in the breeze. This doesn't seem to indicate to me that the cloth was still wriggling after being cut. I think, especially because he notes how weird the first part is, that the cloth is not moving on its own after he cuts it.

That means that after they finished fighting, Kaladin looked at cut and used sheets and saw them moving and shifting a bit. He thought that other people can dismiss that movement as the wind, but he knows the wind, he knows it's not it. It was the cut sheets themselves that were moving, not the wind. 

11 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

Having been on Roshar in the past and having been there a good bit now already, I think its safe to assume Vasher knows what would happen to his breath when a shardblade cuts the cloth. Since Vasher is on Roshar for the free investiture it seems unlikely that he would waste any amount of breath for this interaction with Kaladin (assuming that cutting it degrades or removes part of the breath).

Agreed. He recovers them after all. He knows he's not at risk of losing any significant amount of Breaths, otherwise he would have not fought Kaladin with Awakening. 

11 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

I think there might be a power gap here if the cloth is still trying to enact its command. Does that mean that, with the right type of cloth, Vasher's awakened cloth 'soldiers' basically just become two smaller 'soldiers' when cut? Its kind of like a hydra, growing more heads the more you cut.

The key-word here is "trying." Sure they try, but they can't as the material is so damaged that it can't function as per its Command anymore. The more out of shape the material is, the more damaged it is, the worse it functions. A rope cut in half will still try to fulfill its Command quite well, but Awakened clothes won't work anymore if cut in half as the entire shape of it is broken. They might try, but they won't work well. The same thing happened in Warbreaker ch 56:

Quote

Denth reacted immediately, cutting the rope out of the air with his dagger. The pieces of it twisted and wriggled, but weren’t long enough to grab anything

 

Spoiler

little_wilson

Mi'chelle is wanting to know for a fanfic she's wanting to write if when you cut/break an object that has been Awakened if the object then "dies", or if the pieces will try to carry out the command. Also, either way, can the breaths be recovered from it?

Brandon Sanderson

The object does not die, and will try to continue its purpose. The level of damage will determine just how well it can continue. The Breaths are recoverable. (Though there could be some loss of Breaths, depending on how the item is destroyed.) There's a scene near the end where Vasher Awakens some clothing, then it gets cut down and he recovers the Breath.

Barnes and Noble Book Club Q&A (July 8, 2009)

 

11 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

Since you mentioned that shardblades have to vaporize SOME material to do what they do, it occurred to me that healing shardblade wounds as a Radiant might not be an infinitely repeatable process. What I mean is the stormlight can repair your soul, but that part that was vaporized cant be regained. I dont know how many times it would take but I think you could degrade someones soul a LOT doing this. I imagine it would happen pretty quickly, actually.

But that's what the healing does, it fixes your soul, it reconnects cut off pieces with your soul. It creates a patch on your soul out of investiture. That may have some consequences, but in normal cases it's negligible. With healing flesh wounds it's even more obvious - investiture is used to recreate your body, even an entire arm can grow back. It doesn't matter what's lost, healing can restore that. 

Spoiler

Kurkistan

So you've said that healing is like the Spiritual wants to heal and then it filters through the Cognitive, but how's that work with healing wounds to the soul like Hemalurgy or Shardblades? What do you refer to to heal the soul at that point?

Brandon Sanderson

You need to make a patch on the soul with Investiture.

Kurkistan

So how's the Investiture know where to go, what to look like?

Brandon Sanderson

Well your soul is an ideal. So if you can get it up there, there are ways to do-- to recreate that with um... See I'm getting into stuff for later books.

Argent

No, that's okay.

Kurkistan

So when Hemalurgy rips something off the soul, is that the ideal soul or some sub-soul?

Brandon Sanderson

That is off of your soul, and it can be healed; but what it's going to be doing is creating a patch of new soul. So it will not be your original soul. Does that make sense?

Kurkistan

Okay, that- well, not completely, but I think that's your intention.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Bystander

If you do that, is that like Frankenstein's monster, or is it like a graft that's absorb--

Brandon Sanderson

Less horrifying- Less horrifying than Frankenstein's monster, but it is a graft that is like-- It is not your original soul.

Bystander

Yeah, but in modern medicine stuff like that is absorbed-

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, in this you will always have a scar on your soul that something else has patched over.

Kurkistan

So Kaladin shouldn't just keep getting his arm chopped?

Brandon Sanderson

*ignoring/not-hearing Kurkistan just now* But that is what happens with most forms of Investiture in the first place.

Firefight Chicago signing (Feb. 20, 2015)

 

 

[Duxredux]

12 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

I think there might be a power gap here if the cloth is still trying to enact its command. Does that mean that, with the right type of cloth, Vasher's awakened cloth 'soldiers' basically just become two smaller 'soldiers' when cut? Its kind of like a hydra, growing more heads the more you cut.

32 minutes ago, alder24 said:

The key-word here is "trying." Sure they try, but they can't as the material is so damaged that it can't function as per its Command anymore. The more out of shape the material is, the more damaged it is, the worse it functions. A rope cut in half will still try to fulfill its Command quite well, but Awakened clothes won't work anymore if cut in half as the entire shape of it is broken. They might try, but they won't work well. The same thing happened in Warbreaker ch 56:

Nice WoBs. I may be unnecessarily reiterating, but I think a distinction here comes down to the visualization component of the Awakening and less breaking the shape (though that's part of it). Visualize a rope tying up a person, and the same basic function can be done with variable lengths of rope but will fail if too short. Visualize a person sword fighting and Command a shirt and pair of pants, and it will try to fight within that format. The Awakened object acts according to its original Command and doesn't allow for change outside of anything pre-built into the Command, so if it got bisected at the waist, you'll have a pair of pants doing sword fighting footwork and a shirt operating as if it still has legs for positioning. Bisect it vertically, and you'll have two halves that likely will try to uselessly act as if it was a contiguous whole - i.e. pants trying to walk normally instead of hop. I think theoretically you could Command a shirt and pair of pants to fight together and if they got separated to change the fighting style to fit a lone shirt and a lone pair of pants, but that will greatly increase the complexity of the visualization and Command and the additional Command verbiage would be useless for all failure modes except horizontal bisection. Visualizing a fighting style for every possible failure mode for a shirt and pants and getting the Command to match sounds practicably impossible - particularly when Awakening them on the fly as Vasher did.

Now one scenario that I'm curious about is when Azure has the Reachers pull out bales of cloth and cut them into the shape of men to fight incoming Fused. What do people think would happen if you had an n-layer stack of cloth cut into a gingerbread man cookie cutter shape, stitched together at the perimeter, Awakened it to fight - and then removed the perimeter stitching so you have n Awakened flat person-shaped soldiers? Would that use more or less Breath than if you were to try to Awaken a single soldier using one layer at a time? I'm not looking at material strength yet, that's flexible, I'm looking at how the Command and Breath operates if you were to repeatedly slice a single Awakened object into thin layers - but they all had the same basic shape and the visualization was suited for that format. Per the Law of Comparability, the amount of Breath used to Awaken something isn't necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened. Vasher's analogy is that it's not like filling a glass with water, it's more like pounding a door down - and once its open it will serve the same function. 

[CtrlAltDepressed]

35 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

I'm looking at how the Command and Breath operates if you were to repeatedly slice a single Awakened object into thin layers

per the wobs provided, I think this would work. it would be a lot of setup but it seems totally plausible to me. 

 

Taking this to the extreme, if you simply tied 10 ropes together at the ends, awaken them as one rope, and visualize unwrapping themselves as part of the command, you could have 10 awakened objects for the cost of one (even if you unwrap them yourself). Or, to an even more extreme, if you had a cloth like silk with extremely strong single strands, could you have it split itself into its individual strands and have hundreds of individual objects? I think the only limiter there is the command and with someone like Vasher I dont think that would be an issue. 

 

example: 'split into equal parts and grab things'

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Nice WoBs. I may be unnecessarily reiterating, but I think a distinction here comes down to the visualization component of the Awakening and less breaking the shape (though that's part of it). Visualize a rope tying up a person, and the same basic function can be done with variable lengths of rope but will fail if too short. Visualize a person sword fighting and Command a shirt and pair of pants, and it will try to fight within that format. The Awakened object acts according to its original Command and doesn't allow for change outside of anything pre-built into the Command, so if it got bisected at the waist, you'll have a pair of pants doing sword fighting footwork and a shirt operating as if it still has legs for positioning. Bisect it vertically, and you'll have two halves that likely will try to uselessly act as if it was a contiguous whole - i.e. pants trying to walk normally instead of hop. I think theoretically you could Command a shirt and pair of pants to fight together and if they got separated to change the fighting style to fit a lone shirt and a lone pair of pants, but that will greatly increase the complexity of the visualization and Command and the additional Command verbiage would be useless for all failure modes except horizontal bisection. Visualizing a fighting style for every possible failure mode for a shirt and pants and getting the Command to match sounds practicably impossible - particularly when Awakening them on the fly as Vasher did.

Now one scenario that I'm curious about is when Azure has the Reachers pull out bales of cloth and cut them into the shape of men to fight incoming Fused. What do people think would happen if you had an n-layer stack of cloth cut into a gingerbread man cookie cutter shape, stitched together at the perimeter, Awakened it to fight - and then removed the perimeter stitching so you have n Awakened flat person-shaped soldiers? Would that use more or less Breath than if you were to try to Awaken a single soldier using one layer at a time? I'm not looking at material strength yet, that's flexible, I'm looking at how the Command and Breath operates if you were to repeatedly slice a single Awakened object into thin layers - but they all had the same basic shape and the visualization was suited for that format. Per the Law of Comparability, the amount of Breath used to Awaken something isn't necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened. Vasher's analogy is that it's not like filling a glass with water, it's more like pounding a door down - and once its open it will serve the same function. 

So perhaps the most terrifying item to loadout with would be a needle and thread tucked into the pocket of your awakened clothing with the command to stitch them back together when cut.  Even as your enemies are cutting down your awakened army the flanking, repaired cloth soldiers would eventually be put back together. Like a really slow version of F gold for your awakened constructs haha. 

26 minutes ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

per the wobs provided, I think this would work. it would be a lot of setup but it seems totally plausible to me. 

 

Taking this to the extreme, if you simply tied 10 ropes together at the ends, awaken them as one rope, and visualize unwrapping themselves as part of the command, you could have 10 awakened objects for the cost of one (even if you unwrap them yourself). Or, to an even more extreme, if you had a cloth like silk with extremely strong single strands, could you have it split itself into its individual strands and have hundreds of individual objects? I think the only limiter there is the command and with someone like Vasher I dont think that would be an issue. 

 

example: 'split into equal parts and grab things'

On a more serious note... I think that more than even trying ropes together is to unwrap a bit of them!  

If the rope is 3 smaller lengths spliced or wrapped together and you tied some sort of stopping point for them to unravel about a foot or so up your length of rope you could include in your visualization them unwrapping themselves and using those lengths as 3 long finger to even further ensnare your enemies. If you get those dexterous enough your awakened rope could end up doing serious work for you... wrap up a heavy rock and turn themselves into loaded monkey fists or be delicate enough to handle precision jobs with longer fingers... you could even work this command and fashion your length of rope with multiple tiers of fingers... each finger can split into fingers etc. A large piece of rope might be able to open itself into small enough strands to become a lock picking tool as well.  

The potential for one rope to be able to carry in all the groceries, act as a key and open up the door to your home all at once... 

Honestly... awakened constructs could be the most hideous looking scraps of randomness ever and still be the most functional. Who needs robots when you could braid and wrap thick ropes into a rough human shape with the ability to transform and unravel their arms and hands to do whatever you need.