Voting for Godhood

[Trusk'our he/him]

Another possibility for a Nalthian system of collecting Breath: what if a culture existed that believed in voting for their god to their position? Everyone gives their Breath to a single person, who is then supposed to use that power to reign over the people as a deity, blessing them in return for the people's devotion- though the type of devotion is something voted on too.

Funnily, if everyone giving up their Breath felt entitled to getting attention and help from their created god, the Investiture would pressure the person holding it to actually do that instead of just conveniently using it for themselves.

It would probably still be an easy system to abuse, given that all Investiture goes to one person and even with the helpful urging of the people's Breath it would be relatively easy to steal/use only for personal gain, but it would certainly be interesting in that you would have a very, very powerful Awakener to perform government functions.

Makes me wonder, what kind mindset would that give people, if you believed you could shape deity itself to your will? It's a foreign thought process to me, as my own beliefs don't align with that, but it would be very interesting to explore in a story, I think.

[Quantus he/him]

I think at that point they'd just be an empowered Leader/Ruler/Figurehead and not inspire the sort of devotion or be quite as elevated as Godhood in the eyes of the population. At best the position and/or Breath Horde itself might get that sort of reverence, but not so much the vessel that is voted into it; not a God but maybe closer to a Pope figure or even a person that everyone turned into a (temporary) prophet/oracle.  

[Duxredux he/him]

Closest thing we've seen to voting into power via Breath is Vahr, and we saw how the enemy state responded - capture, torture, and extract the Breaths. Directly elevating your leaders in this way is risky for a host of reasons, as noted, least of which is the leader abandoning responsibility and running off to enjoy the rest of their extended life in wealth. Unlike other elected positions where they are empowered by the people voting and pledging that they will obey and trust the directives of the leader, Breaths are very hard to extract if the leader is impeached. Doing so for your own country ultimately results in a huge net-loss while there is a huge gain for a foreign power to attempt an abduction. There are also only a handful of things that absolutely require an upper Heightening Awakener to achieve when dozens or hundreds of lower Heightening officials can basically do the same function for the vast majority of tasks at much lower risk. Capturing hundreds of First or Second Heightening officials is a lot harder to get away with due to the division of power. Awakening metal and Command breaking is really the main benefit, and Hallendren figured out the second and had good reason to discourage the first, considering Vasher is the one who setup the system.

From a certain perspective, the Hallendren Court of Gods features a small weekly "vote" for the Returned to remain in power by feeding them Breath. There's actually a fair bit of security logic to the arrangement. The Returned are kept at a single Breath above death which removes many incentives to abduct them - you can't get standard Breath, you only get a healing, and if you want the healing, you have to pay a Breath for each week of attempting to extract the Divine Breath. Even abducting the God-King leaves you with a mute that has no knowledge of how to transfer their Breaths, and you need very specialized secret information only available to those who already know the principles of 10th Heightening mental Commands to get at the Breaths. Basically you had to already be or know a God-King to get a God-King's Breaths. Extracting Susebron's Breath never seemed to be a consideration for Bluefinger's cabal.

Really though, it's not that different from voting in a Commander-in-Chief that leads a gigantic military as seen in the U.S. presidential election. A tremendous bestowal of power and resources is at the disposal of such an official in exchange for promises for what they will do once in power. As a nod to Quantus, there often is great respect for both the office and those elevated to such an office, but I don't think it would be viewed as deific. Well... if you did have an elected official view it that way, it raises some red flags.