If Hoid acquires all forms of investiture...

[zeppomarks]

Then what? It seems unlikely that he would be powerful enough to challenge a Shard. And he doesn't seem super interested in taking active measures against Shards yet.

The only thing I can think of is that he's trying to reunite the power of Adonalsium and only those who took a Shard during the Shattering or someone who's invested in that Shard can hold a Shard. Like, Vin was able to take Preservation because she was an Allomancer and thereby is of Preservation and Sazed could hold both Ruin and Preservation because he's a Feruchemist which is of both. Granted, there's also the obvious benefit that each person just so happened to be around at the time. I don't know, two incidences does not a pattern make.

Whatever, I'm not curious about that as much as what people think Hoid's end game might be.

[Yata]

Actually you don't have to that Shard's Investiture. You need ONLY a great Connection to the Shard.

Vin may Ascend to become Preservation because her being was deeply Connected with Preservation...but not because she was a Mistborn, his mind and all was about to protect.

Sazed in the same way became connected enough to Ruin only in the HoA during his darkest moments as faithless.

As an example from Secret History:

Spoiler

- The Ire's orb improves grately someone connection to Preservation, this give to everyone the change to pick up Preservation (and the ord itself isn't made of Preservation's Investiture.

- Kelsier (who has as Allomancer an above the average Connection to Preservation) was uncapable of pick up Preservation because it's not connected enough, but probably He will be able to pick up Ruin (He was deeply connected with Ruin).

Notice also that Hoid is made by the same template of the original Vessels (yolen's beings) ...If they are capable of pick up the Shards. Hoid will capable also (if it's only a matter of kind of Investiture.

[zeppomarks]

@Yata Ah, ok. I seriously need to read M:SH. The amount of times folks have brought up stuff in that one here, I'm obviously missing some very big pieces of this puzzle. I'm waiting for Arcanum Unbound though. Any thoughts on what Hoid is planning?

[taveren]

i asked brandon if you could take investiture from every shard and become your own shard and he said rafo because it was to close to something someone was trying to do

 

[Yata]

3 hours ago, taveren said:

i asked brandon if you could take investiture from every shard and become your own shard and he said rafo because it was to close to something someone was trying to do

 

I think the amount of Investiture someone may take from Shards is too low also combined to made you Ascend. (for example the amount of Susebron's Breath are a meaningless amount of investiture compared to a Shard's one).

Also if for hypotesis Hoid (or someone) take so much Investiture from every Shard. I doubt He/She may ascend with it. But He/She with the right knowledge may merge those investiture to restore some Pre-Shattering Investiture...The implications of something like that are unknown, maybe someone who read some unpublished material may know more

[Argel]

What if gaining access to the magic system was a way to establish or strengthen a connection to the shard(s) powering said magic system? 

[Yata]

3 hours ago, Argel said:

What if gaining access to the magic system was a way to establish or strengthen a connection to the shard(s) powering said magic system? 

Probably at least a bit you are connected with a Shard if he/she fuel a magic you have. But I think it's more easy to develop Connections to a Shard with mundane way (as Sazed did for example)

Using the "shortcut" of becoming a mage may be actually less efficient (we see a tons of misting and mistborn but they are not probably compatible with Preservation) and harder:

You want to be more connected with the Shard X---->You try to became a magic user of the Y system fueled by X--->To became a Y user you need to be Connected to X (loophole)

[Argel]

I was thinking there are some intents Hoid may have a very hard time relating to, hence magic would offer an alternative way to create a connection to those. But as you point out, that connection may not be strong enough to make it worthwhile. 

Here's a thought -- that Aon power booster on Sel -- could that boost other magic systems as well?

[Yata]

8 hours ago, Argel said:

Here's a thought -- that Aon power booster on Sel -- could that boost other magic systems as well?

Actually I don't know...But probably no, Sel is peculiar in this. the power on Sel is somewhere and may be pressed to have a region with an above the average level of Investiture.
In the standard case the power can't "pressed" because it hasn't a location... But it's all speculation

(Of course I am talking of power that come from external, the world with internal power have no chance of doing this at all)

Edited August 25, 2016 by Yata

[taveren]

how much power is needed to ascend isn't known but if he gets an above average amount form every shard he would be 16 times more powerful than any character, not even counting whatever investiture he had before he started collecting it from shardworlds . he could very well ascend with just that but even if he didn't he wouldn't so insignificant compared to a shard anymore and would give him a number of options

Edited August 25, 2016 by taveren

[The One Who Connects]

7 minutes ago, taveren said:

how much power is needed to ascend isn't known but if he gets an above average amount form every shard he would be 16 times more powerful than any character not counting whatever investiture he had before he started collecting it from shardworlds . he could very well ascend with just that but even if he didn't he wouldn't so insignificant compared to a shard anymore and would give him a number of options

Well, we know 2 ways to ascend as preservation

1. Vin: take in all of the mists (preservation's power in gas form)
2. WoB: use enough Lerasium to become a savant (preservation's power in solid form)

I don't know for sure, because we cannot accurately compare shard power in different forms yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if Hoid has enough power split between the 16's systems to surpass the Sliver status, just not of any specific Shard like TLR did with the Well

Edited August 25, 2016 by The One Who Connects
WoB Link

[Djarskublar]

You may not fully understand how much investiture a shard represents. Think about Nalthis. Every person there has a Breath, and some (Returned) have really big Breaths worth around 2000 normal ones a piece. All that investiture is a drop in the bucket to what Endowment has. Getting the investiture of 16 systems would be roughly equivalent to getting 16-20 Breaths. You would be incredibly powerful, but not terribly highly invested. Susebron has tens of thousands of breaths and still has nothing on Endowment.

[Spoolofwhool]

12 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Well, we know 2 ways to ascend as preservation

1. Vin: take in all of the mists (preservation's power in gas form)
2. WoB: use enough Lerasium to become a savant (preservation's power in solid form)

I don't know for sure, because we cannot accurately compare shard power in different forms yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if Hoid has enough power split between the 16's systems to surpass the Sliver status, just not of any specific Shard like TLR did with the Well

3. Tap the Well of Ascension. It's a limited ascension because you're touching a limited pool of Preservation's power, but it does count as enough for ascension.

[Djarskublar]

15 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

3. Tap the Well of Ascension. It's a limited ascension because you're touching a limited pool of Preservation's power, but it does count as enough for ascension.

Ehhh... You haven't technically ascended here. You have the expanded conscious, and lotsa power, but the power isn't flowing back to you, and you don't keep the power you have. You are just grabbing a significant portion of the Shard's power, not the Shard itself. Because of the sheer power you are holding, you get the side effects to your conscious.

[Spoolofwhool]

6 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

Ehhh... You haven't technically ascended here. You have the expanded conscious, and lotsa power, but the power isn't flowing back to you, and you don't keep the power you have. You are just grabbing a significant portion of the Shard's power, not the Shard itself. Because of the sheer power you are holding, you get the side effects to your conscious.

WoB that he was ascended.

[Djarskublar]

Except... Leras still held Preservation. At this point it is just quibbling over what ascension is. Is it just being on the same investiture playing field as Shards? Or is it becoming the actual Vessel of a Shard? I say the latter, and you are free to disagree. Ascention was merely a convenient word for Brandon then. It's easier than saying, 'when he grabbed the power of the Well and... etc.'

[Ari]

On 24/08/2016 at 7:46 PM, zeppomarks said:

@Yata Ah, ok. I seriously need to read M:SH. The amount of times folks have brought up stuff in that one here, I'm obviously missing some very big pieces of this puzzle. I'm waiting for Arcanum Unbound though. Any thoughts on what Hoid is planning?

Yeah M:SH was like, amazing for Cosmere Theories.

 

6 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

Except... Leras still held Preservation. At this point it is just quibbling over what ascension is. Is it just being on the same investiture playing field as Shards? Or is it becoming the actual Vessel of a Shard? I say the latter, and you are free to disagree. Ascention was merely a convenient word for Brandon then. It's easier than saying, 'when he grabbed the power of the Well and... etc.'

Brandon regards it as being substantially similar to holding a shard, and has noted there are permanent effects to having held so much of the power at one time. Check through the Mistborn annotations for more detailed info, I'm pretty sure this is one of those pieces of extra context you don't need to go WoB-trawling for. Brandon refers to the Lord Ruler as a Sliver, and at numerous points he has defined this as holding a significant fraction of the power of a shard on a temporary basis:

Quote

Elantrians are not slivers. Mistborn trilogy spoiler warnings follow! The Lord Ruler was indeed a Sliver. So was Vin. For the rest, I would say probably not.

What defines an actual Sliver of Adonalsium is not as clear-cut as you might think. It's a term that in-universe people who study this have applied to various existences and states. Every single person on the world of Scadrial has a bit of Leras in them—a bit of the power of Preservation. Every single person has a bit of Ati in them. There's a certain threshold where these scholars would call you a Sliver of Adonalsium. But I would say that any regular Misting is probably not a Sliver. A full Lerasium Mistborn is getting closer, but people who have held one of the powers are what would probably be termed a Sliver by the definitions. If you hold all the power that makes you a Shard, but the Lord Ruler held a little bit of it and then let it go. From then on they referred to that change in him—the residue, what was left—as a Sliver. When he held it he became the Shard for a short time, and Vin was a Shard for a short time. After Vin gave up the power, what Kelsier is at the end of the trilogy—that's a Sliver of Adonalsium.

You can find the source quote on Theoryland.

edit: Sorry, I left out the thing I meant to note most clearly- that Brandon still uses the term Ascension in his annotations, and talks about how there was real significance to that event beyond the practical things noted in the book, and that not all of the mysticism that it's treated with in the book is entirely due to the religion. He really was temporarily a God. A slightly smaller one than a Shard, sure, and very temporary, but whether you term it an ascension or not, it's a significant event.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Ari

[The One Who Connects]

@Spoolofwhool @Djarskublar I was aware of the Well method, I just didn't consider it a "full ascension"
I did however, mention that Hoid may reach the investiture threshold for Sliver status like TLR did with the Well. The fact that it would not be from just one shard made me hesitant to count it as a partial ascension. Make sense to y'all? Or have I missed the point again?

[Argel]

Based on what Brandon said, if having power from all 16, that could imply Hoid would temporarily be holding [the shard of] Adonalsium, and then become a sliver of Adonalsium? That's interesting. Even if not, I wonder if he could attain sliver status with a combination of what he has? Is he hoping to become a sliver of D&D? Or even pick the remnants of those up to form a new shard?

Edited August 27, 2016 by Argel

[taveren]

being a mistborn doesn't = one breath. and he is already of the second Heightening at least

[Ari]

On 27/08/2016 at 3:44 AM, Argel said:

Based on what Brandon said, if having power from all 16, that could imply Hoid would temporarily be holding [the shard of] Adonalsium, and then become a sliver of Adonalsium? That's interesting. Even if not, I wonder if he could attain sliver status with a combination of what he has? Is he hoping to become a sliver of D&D? Or even pick the remnants of those up to form a new shard?

Brandon implies that being a Sliver is a step on a continuum from being someone like a Drab, with no investiture at all, to someone with innate investiture, to those who are actually Initiated into a magic system, to those with more potent or complicated powers, (ie. a Knight Radiant, who has two surges, or a Lerasium Mistborn, who is closer to being a Sliver) to Slivers/Splinters, (which can each vary in power and could be above or below each other on the spectrum, depending) to Shards themselves, to hybrid Shards like Harmony.

Hoid might not even need much more investiture to be considered a permanent Sliver, if he's used the lerasium nugget somehow to gain allomantic and maybe also feruchemical powers in addition to the yolish variant of Lightweaving we know he has from the Liar preview, and he has implied he has perfect pitch, which likely means he holds a fair amount of breaths, too. Remember you're a Sliver of Adonalsium even if you become a Sliver purely by holding Preservation's powers that banked up over millenia in his Perpendicularity, so it doesn't matter how many Shards you sample so much as what your total level of investiture is, and has it "stretched your soul" sufficiently that people like Khriss who study this stuff would deem you a Sliver.

[Djarskublar]

And by the same token, being mistborn, even Lerasium level, is nowhere near being Susebron. And he is orders of magnitude away from being Endowment.

WoB I think people have  quoted above is that using Lerasium to become a savant would cause you to Ascend. The amount of Lerasium necessary to do that is larger than the entire Atium deposit in HoA. It by definition has to be. It was a significant portion of the power of Ruin because it was all he needed to get the edge over Preservation. Hoid's one bead isn't really gonna do much for his innate investiture. At best he will do as I guess and use it to rewrite himself into an Elantrian. Even if he aquires all the forms of Investiture available to him (ie some are incompatible like Elantrian + Dakhor) he still won't have sheer volume of Investiture. He will be unimaginably powerful, but that is beside the point. I can see him eventually reaching Sliver status by going back to Nalthis and buying more breath, but that is really the only way I see it happening.

Look at this like a stereotypical physicist would. Your scale of drab<person<small mage<big mage<Sliver is really 1<1<1<1<100.

Say that a normal Manifestation is worth ten breaths of Investiture (a generous estimate if you ask me). And say a stronger Manifestation is worth 20 (remember those are using external investiture as a power source, so they really aren't that much if any more invested than other magic users). To qualify as a Sliver of Endowment you need a Returned breath that is worth around 2000 normal breaths. If he manages to collect 90-180 magic systems (assuming he has 200 breaths) then he would qualify as a Sliver. Math. Yeah it'd be cool if he became a Sliver of Mr A, but it isn't gonna be easy. Or likely.

[Spoolofwhool]

15 minutes ago, Ari said:

Brandon implies that being a Sliver is a step on a continuum from being someone like a Drab, with no investiture at all, to someone with innate investiture, to those who are actually Initiated into a magic system, to those with more potent or complicated powers, (ie. a Knight Radiant, who has two surges, or a Lerasium Mistborn, who is closer to being a Sliver) to Slivers/Splinters, (which can each vary in power and could be above or below each other on the spectrum, depending) to Shards themselves, to hybrid Shards like Harmony.

Few corrections. Drabs have innate investiture, just less. Inhabitants of Nalthis have a bit of their innate investiture converted to breath. In fact, someone who has survived the process of charging a hemalurgical without healing their spiritual has less innate investiture. I'm not sure about having the ability to manipulate a manifestation of investiture meaning you have increased investiture. Their spiritweb is more different, but they wouldn't have more investiture unless perhaps if they had hemalurgic spikes, unless they were holding onto something like breath, or are in the process of channeling investiture from an external source. I may be willing to concede they have a very slight bit more, but I don't think the difference between a mistborn and a regular Scadrian is that different. Slivers do have more than a regular human, but far less than a splinter since they only have a slight residue of the power . 

16 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

Say that a normal Manifestation is worth ten breaths of Investiture (a generous estimate if you ask me). And say a stronger Manifestation is worth 20 (remember those are using external investiture as a power source, so they really aren't that much if any more invested than other magic users). To qualify as a Sliver of Endowment you need a Returned breath that is worth around 2000 normal breaths. If he manages to collect 90-180 magic systems (assuming he has 200 breaths) then he would qualify as a Sliver. Math. Yeah it'd be cool if he became a Sliver of Mr A, but it isn't gonna be easy. Or likely.

Don't forget that a sliver is someone who has gained a significant portion of power, and then released it. He would need to release the breath. Also, I'm not sure that a divine breath is enough power to create a change necessary to be a sliver. A portion of power being a splinter has no bearing on its amount, it just means it is self-aware. For instance, spren and seons are splinters, but I doubt they have a significant portion of power. 

[Yata]

Actually an Allomancer isn't more invested than a normal people. He has not more Investiture than someone else (of Scadrial of course), the extra Spirit-Web who allow him to perform Allomancy is something meaningless and in line with any other mundane Spirit Web an Human may have.

This of course is true while the Allomancer isn't burning metals...When he burns them, he tapps Preservation's Power and become High Invested...This is true for a Misting, Mistborn and Lerasium Mistborn.

Now my interpretation: To become an Sliver with Allomancy, you need the ability to tap from Preservation's over a certain threeshold at once. The power in Allomancy doesn't stay within the user. It merely pass through him...and to reach the Sliver status, you have to have other a certain Investiture's level at once.

Probably a Feruchemist may reach the same goal with a lot (but a really lot) of Stored Attributes to tap at once. I imagine this would need a Feruchemists' comunity who store no stop for ages and then a single one who tap this Feruchemical treasure at once.

PS: In the books we see someone tap an godlike amount of Feruchemical Charge and they didn't became Slivers (probably) therefore the Investiture's treeshold is probably beyond Human's immagination.

PPS: Susebron's Breath is something between 65000-80000 Breath and from I am quite confident He became an Endowment's Sliver but I have just little proofs. He is probably the most Invested being we saw among the mortal one.

[Ari]

2 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Few corrections. Drabs have innate investiture, just less. Inhabitants of Nalthis have a bit of their innate investiture converted to breath. In fact, someone who has survived the process of charging a hemalurgical without healing their spiritual has less innate investiture. I'm not sure about having the ability to manipulate a manifestation of investiture meaning you have increased investiture. Their spiritweb is more different, but they wouldn't have more investiture unless perhaps if they had hemalurgic spikes, unless they were holding onto something like breath, or are in the process of channeling investiture from an external source. I may be willing to concede they have a very slight bit more, but I don't think the difference between a mistborn and a regular Scadrian is that different. Slivers do have more than a regular human, but far less than a splinter since they only have a slight residue of the power . 

Don't forget that a sliver is someone who has gained a significant portion of power, and then released it. He would need to release the breath. Also, I'm not sure that a divine breath is enough power to create a change necessary to be a sliver. A portion of power being a splinter has no bearing on its amount, it just means it is self-aware. For instance, spren and seons are splinters, but I doubt they have a significant portion of power. 

You're technically right in that you need investiture to even be alive in the Cosmere, effectively, but I'm pretty sure Drabs don't have anything beyond that.

Go back and read my first post on the thread in regards to having access to a magic system getting you closer to being a Sliver. Brandon compares Mistings with Mistborn.

As to how a Splinter can have more Investiture than a Sliver, compare TLR post-ascension to the Stormfather. TLR is a Sliver, but I'd say he's significantly less invested than the Stormfather is. Likewise, you could compare a Seon to Vin before she released the power at the Well, and you'd get the opposite result, so it's kinda iffy where on that scale each of those show up because they cover a wide range of states.

And yes, Hoid would have to lose some of his power for the residual effect to be present and for him to be considered a Sliver at that point. (the easiest way would be to spend the Breath in a way that's non-recoverable, but I suppose there might be other ways too) What I was saying is that he might have close to enough power for that already, we really don't know where the goalposts are or how to measure with the information we've got.

Quote

Actually an Allomancer isn't more invested than a normal people. He has not more Investiture than someone else (of Scadrial of course), the extra Spirit-Web who allow him to perform Allomancy is something meaningless and in line with any other mundane Spirit Web an Human may have.

Please read the WoB I quoted earlier that directly contradicts what you're claiming. A Mistborn is more invested than a Misting, and a Misting is more invested than an innate human.

Edited August 28, 2016 by Ari