Altruistic Endowment

[Trusk'our he/him]

As I've thought about the ways to obtain Breaths, I got to thinking, what if there was a culture of Nalthians who believed in always giving up their Breath?

What if they all chose to give their Breath to those in need, either to help recover from injuries, to sow or harvest crops with Awakened tools, to build structures, to channel the Iridescent Tones, or on rare occasion to make a skilled Lifeless? Then, when done with what they needed, they'd pass it along.

Over time, you'd get a surplus of Breath as each old generation passed away, leaving the new generation with extra Breath. Keep the cycle going, giving Breath freely amongst a large population, and you'd eventually get many millions of Breaths to be used when necessary.

I get that this requires a large mindset change for most people (which wouldn't really happen) but I wonder if this is the kind of Intent that Edgli would like most, creating a kind of utopia built upon the ideal of Endowment itself. 

[king of nowhere]

i don't think there has ever been such a culture, because it would require a lot of trust.

however, i'd think that many people would choose to pass their breath to some relative when close to death. some families could gather a small fortune like that

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

I've thought about similar ideas in the past, though with less altruistic concepts. 

I think this would be a natural outflow of the lower economic classes honestly, though perhaps more in the rural areas. You'd have the elders passing their breaths on as they reached certain ages or neared their deaths, which would/could eventually yield a trove of breaths that someone would have access to. The issue is they become an all or nothing proposition unless you're willing to learn Awakening. 

[Returned he/him]

That's sort of what Hallandren culture was, minus the breadth. The Returned ruled, sustained by Breaths from the population and spending their own Divine Breath to heal when they thought it appropriate, but they also stockpiled Breaths (as was the case for Susebron). I'd think the big issue would be that there isn't an easy way to decide what's necessary that everyone will agree on, and one objector would break the whole system because they can't be forced to pass their accumulated Breaths on. The "reservoirs" might also get haughty, since they'd be able to do all kinds of magical Awakenings while everyone else is just a drab.

In another thread I wondered about something like this idea, and my conclusion was (tentatively) that Edgli is not interested in that kind of common-good orientation around her magic.

[Duxredux he/him]

Month and a half late to the party, but I think I can think of a system that might get the result you're hoping for, though it's not really fueled by altruism. It's pretty obvious that the biggest issue with passing the entirety of the power around to whomever asks for it is that once one person decides they don't want to give it up, they are in the best possible position to keep it while the rest of the community has lost the ability to Awaken to the point that they could not easily get the Breaths back. It takes overpowering and holding someone in a specialized cell for potentially months of torture to reliably extract the power. To use a Stormlight Archive example,

Spoiler

The concept of passing the power around is not too different from asking a community to hand Shardblade and Plate around and simply trust that no one will just slaughter those around them and run off with them. The thing is, this does happen, though to a lesser extent. If I recall, some kingdoms don't have specific bearers, but view the Shards as held by the crown. I think some cities were dug out with Shardblades. Even in Alethkar, anyone can ask to use the king's Blade within a duel. Presumably the reason this works is because the main government has sufficient power to apprehend and extract the power it has loaned out. 

I was thinking about it, and I could see Siri and Susebron setting up a rental/borrow system that allowed citizens to draw from Peacegiver's Treasure with either a contract or collateral held should they try to break their agreement. Maybe not directly through Susebron himself, but perhaps through an intermediary. Considering they successfully captured Vahr while he was trying to lead a rebellion at the Fourth Heightening, it seems safe to say Hallendren has the resources to allow people to borrow a couple hundred or even maybe a thousands Breaths and make sure they gave them back at the end of the designated period. Susebron's Breaths basically could be the collateral for the entire Hallendren economy except you can really put your money to work. Sure this involves the entire community trusting someone elevated to God King, but Hallendren already did the hard part there. So long as Susebron doesn't loan out too much at a time it should be safe enough, maybe making sure he doesn't fall beneath a certain percentage of the total Breaths within Hallendren to make sure no one in the city could gather the rest outside of his control to try to make another Nightblood. Really though, I would guess most random citizens wouldn't need more than the Third Heightening, though perhaps special consideration and restrictions could be in place for anything higher. I don't really have to explain the consequences for a breach of contract when borrowing the government's Breath either, it's pretty obvious.

Prior to its destruction, a lot of the manual labor you're looking for could potentially have been drawn from the army of 40,000 Lifeless rather than just leaving them to stand in the dark. We know Command phrases can be temporary, limited in scope of orders, and expire a specific timeframe, so it should be relatively simple to program the Lifeless to obey the borrower until the contract expires and then checking back in for inspection. With the provision that they could be recalled at a moments notice, they could definitely be utilized for large scale building projects or planting seasons.

At the core, the idea is that if the government is the consolidation and direction of power, then hopefully you can trust your government. None of these are perfect, and a system of checks and balances would need to be divised if there came a God King that did not intend to be as just as Susebron, but this might work for quite some time for Hallendren.

Edited March 4, 2025 by Duxredux