Warbreaker questions...

[Tariniel he/him]

I've just finished another reread of Warbreaker, and (as usual) it left me with a couple of questions I hadn't noticed before.

1. Do we know how exactly Lifeless are broken? It seems that it is easier for the God King because of his sheer amount of Investiture... Why? I doubt they would use an Awakener of the Eighth Heightening every time they want to break a Lifeless' command phrase. Also, Lightsong mentioned somewhere that it involves torture, to which Blushweaver noted the fact that Lifeless don't feel pain... I'm confused.   (I have seen it theorized that it involves the command Vasher used to make Nanrovah's daughter forget, but how would the logistics work?)
2. Why is grey considered the absence of color? We know the God King can pull color even from a grey object (making it bone white), but why is grey considered a lack of color in the first place?

3. Quote

   “Become as my leg and give it strength!” he Commanded, drawing color from the blood on his chest... 

   Vasher barreled toward them, colorless translucent blood dropping from his skin as he drew his Breath back from the rope.

   Why does his blood become translucent? Shouldn't it become grey?

[Eki]

1. We don't really know, no. I don't think I've heard any theories either, but I'm sure they exist. The sequel will probably give more information about this, since it seems to deal more with the lifeless.

2. White is the complete lack of color for the purposes of Awakening, but normal Awakeners can't draw that much - they can only make stuff gray. This is just how the magic works. Color can be seen as additive, where if you change the color by changing the frequencies of light being sent out (like a computer screen), and subtractive, where you change the color by making the surface absorb a different set of frequencies. Awakening is the second kind - you remove the surface's ability to absorb certain frequencies.

3. I think Vasher sees "colorless" as gray, being an Awakener. So I think it was gray. I'm not sure why it would be translucent as well though. Maybe as fewer photons are absorbed, more of them are likely to go through, instead of just being reflected?

[Spoolofwhool]

1. It probably does require Command Breaking of the Eighth Heightening. My opinion is that the memory tampering Vasher did with breath was related to Command Breaking.

2. Eki explained it well enough.

3. Color in blood is from the red blood cells. If he pulls the color from that, it would be mainly see through, since plasma is mostly composed of water, if I remember biology correctly. The grey probably doesn't make as much of an impact as red with regards to blood so it looks translucent. 

Edited October 13, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[The One Who Connects he/him]

I personally don't see Lightsong's priests being able to just go to someone of the 8th Heightening to break Lifeless for a couple reasons.

1. How rare people past the 5th Heightening are. A non Returned is gonna have to pay a very hefty fortune over the years to amass that much Breath.
2. Heightening 8. This would make him a fair but shinier than the Returned, and I doubt someone who paid out enough to get there is going to be willingly bound working for the Returned.
3. The Coppermind claims that the only known people to reach the 8th Heightening are Vasher, Shashara and the God Kings.

Perhaps it works the same way prevention of aging works. Each Heightening makes it easier, but it plateaus out at the 5th(age) and the 8th(command breaking)

It would fit with what we know of other abilities, since even a 1st Heightening person gains better discernment of color, while perfect color recognition is 3rd.

Edit: Now that I reread, the Eighth Heightening grants the ability to instinctively break commands of awakened objects.

Edited October 14, 2016 by The One Who Connects

[The Sovereign]

16 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

3. Color in blood is from the red blood cells. If he pulls the color from that, it would be mainly see through, since plasma is mostly composed of water, if I remember biology correctly. The grey probably doesn't make as much of an impact as red with regards to blood so it looks translucent. 

I'm sure this is part of it, but I would guess there is actually more going on here. As we know from Stormlight; Blood is one of the 10 essences in Soulcasting. I expect that all 10 essences would have interesting things happening while interacting with Investiture.

[Spoolofwhool]

7 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Edit: Now that I reread, the Eighth Heightening grants the ability to instinctively break commands of awakened objects.

Ah, good point. Then yes, I guess you don't need to be Eighth Heightening to break commands, it's just a lot easier if you are. Chances are that the knowledge of command breaking originate from someone of Eighth Heightening, but yeah, they probably don't have one on staff for the priests. 

2 minutes ago, Iron Eyes said:

I'm sure this is part of it, but I would guess there is actually more going on here. As we know from Stormlight; Blood is one of the 10 essences in Soulcasting. I expect that all 10 essences would have interesting things happening while interacting with Investiture.

Possibly, except that the interaction of colour isn't an investiture-significant part of awakening. As such, I don't think pulling colour from blood would have any special interactions, assuming the the properties of essences with regards to the Soulcasting are related to other manifestations of investiture. 

Edited October 14, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Eki]

3 hours ago, Iron Eyes said:

I'm sure this is part of it, but I would guess there is actually more going on here. As we know from Stormlight; Blood is one of the 10 essences in Soulcasting. I expect that all 10 essences would have interesting things happening while interacting with Investiture.

I dunno. Wood and stone are both Essences, and they don't have any odd interaction with color draining.

[The Sovereign]

15 minutes ago, Eki said:

I dunno. Wood and stone are both Essences, and they don't have any odd interaction with color draining.

A fair point, I didn't give that one enough thought.

[Eki]

13 hours ago, Iron Eyes said:

A fair point, I didn't give that one enough thought.

Blood does seem to have interesting properties in other ways though (like with hemalurgy), so I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong. It just probably doesn't have much to do with it being an Essence.