Awakening

[Zkirby]

Hello! I've never posted to these forums before, but I've had a question burning in in me for some time now. This question may have spoilers to a few of Sanderson's books, so be warned. I've been a longtime reader of Brandon Sanderson, and reread his books often. This past readthrough I jumped straight from Stormlight Archive to Warbreaker. When I got to the part where awakening was being explained in depth and describing how Nightblood was forged, my question arose. Could an awakener on Roshar bring a suit of shardplate to sentience? In theory it should require less breaths than Nightblood, because: 1 - It is in the shape of a human, and 2 - It was made from things that were once "alive". With the proper command the awakened plate should become essentially a cosmere robot/droid that can resist shardblades and self heal with enough investiture. I could also be late to the party and this is something that has been discussed before, but It's something I really want to know. Would love to hear others thoughts.

[alder24]

36 minutes ago, Zkirby said:

Hello! I've never posted to these forums before, but I've had a question burning in in me for some time now. This question may have spoilers to a few of Sanderson's books, so be warned. I've been a longtime reader of Brandon Sanderson, and reread his books often. This past readthrough I jumped straight from Stormlight Archive to Warbreaker. When I got to the part where awakening was being explained in depth and describing how Nightblood was forged, my question arose. Could an awakener on Roshar bring a suit of shardplate to sentience? In theory it should require less breaths than Nightblood, because: 1 - It is in the shape of a human, and 2 - It was made from things that were once "alive". With the proper command the awakened plate should become essentially a cosmere robot/droid that can resist shardblades and self heal with enough investiture. I could also be late to the party and this is something that has been discussed before, but It's something I really want to know. Would love to hear others thoughts.

Hello, welcome to the Shard. Check out Sharder FAQ for some useful tips  

That's a very good question. Unfortunately the answer is no. Breaths and Shardplates are essentially made out of the same thing - Investiture. Investiture is a magical energy that can be manifested in many different ways and is even making up the souls of people. Breaths and Stormlight are gaseous Investiture, Shardblades and Shardplates are Investiture in the solid form (it's called a god metal), even spren are made out of pure investiture (that's why they turn into god metals, they are very highly invested). Because of that the system would already consider a Shardplate to be Awakened. That's why it would be impossible to Awaken it. 

The basic rule in Cosmere is that investiture resists investiture - the more something is invested, the more it will resist being invested by something else. People like Radiants or Awakeners are more invested than average people and some magics will have trouble affecting them (like Soulcasting for example). This is also the reason why a Shardplate or a Shardblade stops Shardblade cuts - because they are highly invested and that stops it. This means that something that is highly invested can resist or even stop a Shardblade cut - you can Awaken something with lots of Breaths and it would be able to stop a Shardblade. 

Here are some WoBs for you about this (Words of Brandon):

Spoiler

Questioner

Can you awaken a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

Can you Awaken a Shardblade? A Shardblade would already be defined as Awakened, by the magic systems.

Questioner

And what about the Plate?

Brandon Sanderson

Plate would already be defined as probably too heavily Invested to Awaken because it already is.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

So is it possible to Awaken a Shardblade? That's the question-- that's my question for you.

Brandon Sanderson

Um... With the magic system of Awakening, you mean?

Questioner

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

So, all forms of Investiture strongly resist other forms of Investiture.

Questioner

Makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

*brief interruption* Nightblood is essentially an Awakened... Trying to do that.

Questioner

'Cause he shows up in Words of Radiance, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So, it-- let's just say it'd be very, very hard. Because it's like saying, "Can-- I want to turn on a lightbulb that's been turned on." Yes, you can... maybe... I don't know what that even means. It's already Invested. It's already Awakened.

Calamity release party (Feb. 16, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

If you were to try and Awaken a dead Shardblade with Awakening, like you can with a metal sword, would that be possible, or what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

That would probably not work. Not probably. That would just not work.

Orem signing (Dec. 21, 2017)

 

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)

 

[Dunkum he/him]

Probably not. Maybe the God-king could, but even that I wouldn't count on. Shardplate is already highly invested, nearly as much so as shardblades. pushing more investiture into that, in the form of Breaths for awakening, is going to be extremely hard. Sort of like how steelpushing on metalminds or hemalurgic spikes is harder than pushing on non-invested metal, except a few orders of magnitude worse than that.

[CtrlAltDepressed]

So, this is actually going to be very very difficult to do. 

 

Investiture resists investiture, and shardplate is literal physical investiture. For living plate, this is going to be impossible because it is already alive. 

 

For dead plate, you would need an insane amount of investiture to overcome the resistance of the material. Perhaps Susebron with his 50,000+ breaths could do this, but honestly I doubt that. 

[Zkirby]

That clears it up, thanks! It's a shame though. I was so hoping for a weird invested robot following hoid around as a personal assistant/bodyguard. l

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Zkirby said:

That clears it up, thanks! It's a shame though. I was so hoping for a weird invested robot following hoid around as a personal assistant/bodyguard. l

I mean, even if you couldn't Awaken a set of Shardplate, you could probably still Awaken a regular suit of armor to mimic Shardplate's abilities and make it sapient in the process. 

[Dunkum he/him]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I mean, even if you couldn't Awaken a set of Shardplate, you could probably still Awaken a regular suit of armor to mimic Shardplate's abilities and make it sapient in the process. 

that's a good point, actually. Nightblood can block shardblades, so presumably if you awakened a suit of armor to sapience it would be able to as well.