Zeetzi's Invested Art?

[Atlas333]

Was reviewing Isles of Emberdark, and something stood out to me. Multiple times Zeetzi seems to connect to the ship systems via electricity.
 

Quote

ZeetZi studied the instruments on his dash. One hand was on half of his lodestar, which he’d plugged into the slot on the dash for it. The other, however, hovered over the built-in Scadrian control panel, and little lines of electricity—like tiny lightning bolts—connected his fingers to the panel, letting him use those native controls, which were written in the brutal, pointed, northern Scadrian script.

At first I thought the electricity was just descriptive flair, but Zeetzi does this multiple times throughout the book, and as far as I could tell, no one else does this. 

This leads to my question, is this Invention's invested art? A way for invention's people to naturally interface with machines would be very on brand.

But how exactly might this work? I wonder how this ability might be useful pre-space age. Could it be used to interface with fabrials (as an example?)

[Moirne she/her]

It’s late, so forgive me if this makes no sense, but I wonder if it’s almost a push and pull situation with electricity/electrons rather than metal? So he can manipulate the circuitry without necessarily needing to understand the interface.

Edited July 22, 2025 by Moirne

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 7/19/2025 at 4:49 AM, Atlas333 said:

But how exactly might this work? I wonder how this ability might be useful pre-space age. Could it be used to interface with fabrials (as an example?)

The same way controlling lightning is valuable to Regals I'd presume.

[TheoreticalMagic]

I'm wondering if his homeworld is the planet Brandon talked about developing a long time ago, where lightning sparks up from the ground and is sort of an ambient Investiture. At the very least, the way Starling thinks of Zeetzi's homeworld - describing it as a place of cities made up of constantly moving parts - has me convinced more than ever that Canticle (the planet of Sunlit Man) was one of Invention's previous Shardworlds or a place he either created or had a big influence on, as there are very clear technological parallels IMO. And if that's true, then I picture Zeetzi's homeworld having an Invested Art that operates similar to Canticle....except where on that planet, Investiture is absorbed via sunlight and stored in batteries, on Zeetzi's homeworld maybe it's atmospheric static/electricity that's Invested and the "feathers" of Zeetzi's people are an evolutionary adaptation that has something to do with their bodies being kind of biological batteries for absorbing and storing ambient electricity and then manipulating it in various ways. I think it would be interesting if the evolutionary adaptation was specifically meant to take advantage of the INVESTED lightning/electricity on a specific Shardworld, and use it for an Invested Art....but then as a complete side-effect, it would also effectively make Zeetzi's people able to interact with or manipulate normal/unInvested electricity as well. Like a non-magical/physiological superpower that derived from making use of Invested electricity and ironically could end up being just as useful (if not more) even without Investiture present.

[Elegy he/him]

11 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

I'm wondering if his homeworld is the planet Brandon talked about developing a long time ago, where lightning sparks up from the ground and is sort of an ambient Investiture.

That was also my initial reaction. Interestingly, that was the original world for Dark One before it was pulled out of the Cosmere:

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Rebecca Lovatt

The electricity-based one, is that relating at all to the novella you just put out [Perfect State]?

Brandon Sanderson

No. The electricity one is Dark One. The original idea for the setting for that book is how Nikola Tesla wanted to provide wireless energy to the world, and the experiments he did. I want to have a planet where that is just the natural state of the world. The ground there has an electric current you can harvest; you can set down a lantern on the ground and it will glow, drawing a current up through it into the air or down from the air into the ground. I haven't decided which way it's going to go yet.

Along with that I want to have interesting ecological features. Big toad monsters shoot out a taser tongue, they use spittle that somehow conducts electricity back and forth. Stuff like this. I want to have electricity be my fun theme. The problem with that again is that is very science-based. When I make a big change to the world, like that you can draw an electric current from the ground, then I have to try and figure out the science of how that works.

Rebecca Lovatt

Yeah, especially because you have bodies of water. That seems like it would be fun. You'd suddenly become 10 times more scared of rain.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, if it rains, lightning is going to happen constantly. So how do we deal with this? I'm tempted to make it not rain, -but then making it not rain is yet another big change, so where do we go there? So that one's got lots of extrapolation to do, but I have some friends who are much better at these physics questions then I am. So I'm going to them, and they are pointing me in the right direction.

Arched Doorway Interview (Sept. 4, 2015)

I haven't read Dark One, now I wonder if that story would have made sense in an Invention world.