The mechanics of Breath and Awakening

[+Extesian]

We know a bit about Nalthian magic, but not a lot about the realmatics of it. Some outstanding questions remain, such as the status of divine Breath (is it qualitatively different from normal Breath and functions realmatically in a different way, or is it basically a large packet of investiture in one Breath and only quantitatively different), the Cosmere-status of a Drab, the nature of Commands, the differences between the types of Awakened Objects, the nature of Heightenings, and the way in which Breath both gives you access to the magic system and is the investiture fuel to use the magic system. I wanted to try to refine this more, but there's a fair few topics at the moment on Breath so I thought it's a good time to post it. 

Theory

Breath specifically (or at least far more than other forms of investiture) cements the connection between your Physical, Cognitive and Spiritual selves.

Awakening is the use of Breath to create or alter a Spiritweb, and a Command is basically programming that spiritweb.

Ideas

I will explore these two ideas separately, even though they link, as I think that some of the unknowns around Nalthis are easier to answer if these two aspects of Breath are thought of as separate. (The following is a very coarse summary of other magic systems, but I don't want to get too fussy about these, this isn't supposed to be a realmatic lesson about different magic systems, it's just to explain Nalthis using analogies from systems we're all more familiar with).

On Scadrial, genetics give access to magic, metals provide access to the fuel (straight from Preservation), the type of metal governs the effect. On Roshar, a Nahel-bond spren gives access, Stormlight is the fuel (generally - I'm leaving out something like the Honorblades here), the type of spren governs the effect. On Nalthis, Breath both provides access to Awakening and is the fuel, but intent (your own will) governs the effect. But of course it does something else - simply holding Breath gives the Heightenings, which (in stages) increase your awareness of things like color, audio tones, and life (/investiture), through to making your body immune from disease and ageing. In some ways though, once you're the Fifth Heightening (which matches what you get from a single Divine Breath) the Heightenings after that are more about your ability to Awaken effectively than they are about you changing.

Breath

So what about Breaths create the Heightenings (up to the fifth), which both make you a more 'perfect' person to others (and objectively) and enhance your perception of others? I think it simply that Breath anchors your physical self to the other Realms more effectively than any other system. Let's take the extremes. Someone at the fifth heightening does not age and is immune to disease (though not injury). We know that healing in the Cosmere generally takes the form of investiture 'repairing' your physical body to match your spiritweb, as filtered by your Cognitive perception of yourself. So I believe the simple reason that someone at the Fifth Heightening is immortal in those ways is because their aspects on the three Realms are perfectly matched with each other, and holding that investiture allows those 'anchors' to stay in place. In other systems, it is necessary to actually use investiture to heal, at which point the investiture returns to the system. With Breath, we already know it’s not leaky (that is the nature of the Endowment intent), it sticks well, so I believe that once you reach the fifth heightening there is no need to consume investiture to heal, your physical body will simply always match your spiritual self. I feel it also explains why holding Breath increases your biochromatic aura, your physical self is perfectly matched to your spiritual self, so people can literally see the vibrance of your soul in a way they can’t with a less invested person, or a drab – because their flesh is just flesh, it’s not effectively glowing with the investiture their spiritual aspect has, because the soul is not closely enough connected to the body.  

This is how I fit Divine Breath and Returned into this. I do not believe a Divine Breath is just the equivalent of 2000 normal ones, but nor is it a totally different system. I think a Divine Breath is basically a packet of investiture that is specifically designed to do one thing – cement a person’s self in all three realms. The reason giving it to someone else will heal them completely, but not add to their breaths, is that it is not normal Breath, it is something solely designed to staple the three Realms together – when you use that on a normal person, their body suddenly matches their soul, which means they instantly heal. But because it is not normal Breath, they can’t actually hold it as Breath, it’s a one-off adjustment to match the body to the soul. It works differently with a Returned but I’ll cover that in the Awakening part.

A Drab is the opposite end of the spectrum, a Nalthian with no Breath. A Nalthian with Breath is more invested than a normal Cosmere-human. A Drab is less invested. A Drab cannot become a Returned. A Drab have ‘something’ missing from them compared to a normal human in the Cosmere. I believe that Nalthian humans naturally have a less stable connection between their aspects on the three Realms (perhaps Nalthis has the Realms further ‘apart’, as Roshar has them closer together), and the Breath each person is born with is a way of Endowment fixing that, but stapling people’s aspects to each other better. A Drab can’t return because of that loose connection – once they die, they progress to the Beyond instantaneously, there is no delay keeping them in the Cognitive Realm, and no time for Endowment to do the Returned thing.

Moral of the story – holding Breath makes a more perfect connection between your physical, cognitive and spiritual selves.

Awakening

I believe Awakening is the act of transferring Breath into something in order to create a soul or alter a soul, but is fundamentally the ability to edit or program a spirit web (imagine AonDor acting directly on the spiritual realm – a Command is basically a program governed by intent rather than form). Let me demonstrate using the four kinds of biochromatic entities.

Type 1 – Returned – A Returned is a dead person who has had their soul stapled to their dead body with a Divine Breath. What has happened? (this is speculation but on good grounds) The person dies, Endowment steps in while they’re making the transition to the Beyond, through the cognitive realm, infuses their soul with investiture and staples it to their corpse, and reanimates their body (wiping their memories). I believe what happens is that Endowment uses a Divine Breath to make a copy of their soul (as is the nature with Cognitive Shadows), reprograms that soul with whatever their Command is (probably something that lies relatively dormant and gives free will until it compels the Returned to heal) and reattaches the ‘new’ soul to the old body. The only reason that a Returned needs a new Breath each week is because their body was dead, and Breath does not stick well to dead organic material. But effectively, Endowment takes an old soul, creates a new one and reprograms it, and attaches it to a corpse.

Type 2 – Lifeless – A Lifeless “had their soul leave, but then they’ve had a replacement stuck in, in the form of Breath”. All that happens with a Lifeless is that the Awakener uses Breath to create a new soul and attaches that new soul to a dead body. With a Returned, a huge amount of investiture (in the form of a Divine Breath) is needed because you’re replicating an entire soul of a fully sapient person. With a Lifeless all you are doing is creating a very very simple soul. The Command you give governs that soul. It’s no different at all to creating a computer program, but in this case the Command is the programming. There are definitely some realmatic implications to doing this in a body that was once alive (going into Clod’s situation is beyond the scope here) but fundamentally your just creating a new soul with a very simple programming code. But this is also why you can’t withdraw Breath from a Lifeless, their soul is now made of that Breath, but it’s a real soul, if a simple one. The investiture has become something with an identity. This is also why a special Command was needed for one-Breath Lifeless – the Command is simply the program, and if that is exact enough you don’t need extra investiture to hold everything together, all you need is the new soul (which takes one Breath).

Type 3 – your run of the mill awakened objects (eg a rope) – With something ilke awakening a rope, or a straw man, I believe that what you’re doing is the same principle. You are using Breath (a lot of it) to create a soul for the rope, and your Command (intent) to program that soul). Because this new soul does not resemble in any way the physical aspect of the awakened object, massive amounts of Breath are needed to anchor the physical to the spiritual, and the anchor never really takes which is why you can withdraw the Breath whenever needed. The object is not integrated enough in the three realms to develop an identity. It’s a hack, like soulstamping, that uses investiture to make something real that shouldn’t be.

Type 4 – Nightblood – I wont’ even attempt to explain Nightbloood properly because there is clearly more going on, I still suspect investiture from another Shard. But basically we’re talking about creating a new soul with a Command that seems simple but, in programming terms, is incredibly complicated, and you’re trying to staple it to a physical thing that both does not resemble that soul (requiring a lot of investiture to make the hack hold) and is made of a material that was never alive to begin with.

advanced commands I simply regard as a subset odd Awakening as I've described it. The Command to forget, for example, has nothing too crazy about it, it is just an Awakener reprogramming a soul to not include those memories. There could be more to the advanced commands but if Awakening is just soul programming there need not be more.

Cognitive Realm

A final note, on the Cognitive Realm. Obviously Nalthis is incredibly important cognitively, with intent playing a role of focus in the magic system. I didn’t want to explain the implications every step, but basically Breath staples all three realms together, including cognitive, which means people with Breath can have significantly more influence in the Cognitive Realm, as demonstrated by the ability for a Command with Intent to basically do all these things, and as is indicated by the ability of Returned, and the Royals, to change their appearance. Vasher can suppress his Divine Breath simply by refusing to believe, temporarily, that he is a god. It takes huge willpower, but he can. The Royal Family has hair that changes based on how they view themselves Cognitively. This is just a manifestation of stapling their aspects together more strongly, as Breath is constantly restoring their physical self to match their soul, but as with all healing this is done through the filter of the cognitive realm.

So that’s it, this post is far too long already, and I haven’t even included quotes or WoBs which is most unlike me. I may try, but most of this stuff is already-known facts or complete speculation. I’m interested in ideas, but for once much more on the realmatic fundamentals here than the details. I think it's my most speculative realmatic theory, but hopefully it has some ideas worth exploring.

But the core of this is: the innate investiture of Breath is uniquely effective at stapling your physical, cognitive and spiritual aspects together; and Awakening is a magic system that is based on programming spiritwebs.

Cheers

edit - I just want to explicitly acknowledge that others have been doing posts on some of this and I don't want to hijack those, particularly @Djarskublar who posted one in the middle of me developing this. In the end though I felt mine was getting technical enough that it would be too hard to explain it through comments on other posts. And because it's highly speculative I'm of course happy to have pointed out anything fundamental I've missed that dashes this theory to pieces

Edited May 29, 2017 by Extesian

[Calderis]

For the most part I like it. The few places I don't fully agree have either been covered in other threads (Divine Breath), or I haven't fully formed the thought to try and discuss it (specifically the 5th heightening).

Beyond that, as usual have an upvote, for both effort, and for something I mostly agree with. 

Edit: @Extesian So on the fifth Heightening. I agree with your premise that breath draws the aspects closer, but I don't think it's a matter of distance per se, I think that the Spirit Web framework is reinforced and enhanced, and so the... Internal connections if you will, between the three aspects are stronger/wider. This allows for the passive investiture to hold the physical in a "stasis" with the spiritual, bypassing the Cognitive filter somewhat. This prevents the minor changes caused by age and illness that cumulatively create the deterioration of the body that you see in both cases, and it isn't ever actively used to heal, which would need to consume the investiture.

I say it also enhances because it creates that stasis not only in the physical but in the spiritual aspect as well. If it didn't aging would continue. We know this due to both TLR and miles. Miles healed to the best possible health for his age due to the spiritual realm knowing how old he was. TLR had an increasing need of atium for the same reason. If the Spirit is not locked to the age at which the fifth heightening is achieved, then aging would continue and death would eventually come by natural means.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Calderis

[+Extesian]

Thanks for the input as always @Calderis. As often, you picked up something I'd missed, (and I'm sure more will be picked up) - that of spiritual ageing. That's a fairly poor oversight of mine  But you're completely right, simply having the physical perfectly in tune with the spiritual isn't enough as we know that the spiritual knows its true age by the Connections it's formed over time. So you must be right, if I'm at all on the right track, that it must do something additional to the spiritweb rather than just enable the constant adjustment to match them (and I agree with the thing of it strengthening internal  'connections' between a person's aspects in the three realms, that was what I was trying to say but didn't do very eloquently). That constant adjustment will prevent illness and normal ageing (ageing where the cells basically replicate and mistakes creep in - I'm no biologist) but it doesn't get around the Connections issue. So perhaps you're right, perhaps it's some kind of stasis. Perhaps the mechanics are different, that Atium compounding for age only affects the physical realm and the spiritweb isn't being fooled the whole time which leads to a mismatch, but maybe the Fifth Heightening/Divine Breath actually acts on all three realms (or the relevant two) effectively and prevents there being a mismatch at all. I'll try to come up with something more elegant, probably along the lines of what you've suggested, once I've seen other comments.

[Calderis]

(this thought started in another thread so if some of it seems out of place I apologize.) 

To continue your line of thinking on lifeless and objects and the implications of why breath sticks being based on identity... Do you think it's possible that it takes so much breath to make a sentient awakened object, not just because of the materials used, but because you have to build the spiritual framework of sentience? Your giving an item with a weak enough sense of identity that you could draw the breath back a mind and identity of it's own.

We've talked about how Breath expands/enhances/reinforces the spiritweb. I think that for an awakened object to become a thinking, sentient being, you literally have to pour enough breath in to create the base framework of the spiritweb. That way the object can have its own identity and form it's own connections, and not be subject only to the connections imposed on it like a... Well, inanimate object. 

[+Extesian]

Thanks @Calderis, yeah that's exactly what I think, if that wasn't clear from the OP I'll need to make it clearer. That's why I think it's all about altering or creating a new soul. Lifeless don't need much because they have effectively a soul (leave aside speculation about hire degraded) and an Identity, and all that's needed is to alter (reprogram) it to follow your orders. Awakening a cloth needs a lot because of the lack of existing soul/identity, but not as much as Nightblood, because you're not creating a full new soul, just one with enough independence (programming) to perform the function you need. A sentient object though, I think you literally need to construct a new soul that has the cognitive abilities of a 'natural' soul. It's the issue around creating artificial intelligence in real life. 

Basically, yes, my argument is that sentient Awakening means you have to program artificial intelligence using Investiture to create a brand new spiritweb (a lot to make one comparable to a human's soul) plus a complex program using only a single Command and your own will behind it. 

[Calderis]

Going back and rereading that is exactly what you say. I just didn't catch it apparently. You say create a new soul, and that entails everything I listed, I just failed to think through what all that meant. 

[+Extesian]

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

Going back and rereading that is exactly what you say. I just didn't catch it apparently. You say create a new soul, and that entails everything I listed, I just failed to think through what all that meant. 

I did edit it after replying to your comment I did have creation of a new soul there but you made me realize I should spell out the implications better for type 4s, so thanks again Calderis!

Either way my theory did ramble a lot, if I get the energy sometime I'll try to make it more readable. 

[Djarskublar]

Ehhh... something feels off with your thoughts though. I think that when you die, your soul is no longer connected to your body, so when you make a lifeless, it would either have to reconnect the two, or mimic a new one. So I don't think it is whether the item itself has an ID or not, it's more what kind of ID is granted it when you awaken it. Is it your ID, or a new one you can't access.

[The One Who Connects]

16 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

so when you make a lifeless, it would either have to reconnect the two, or mimic a new one.

You happen to be correct here. The question involves lifeless, so the response should count as inclusive to that aspect of awakening

Quote

[–]Phantine 5 points 1 year ago* 

Would a lifeless Koloss still be super strong?

I have a player who wants to make one and use it as a mecha suit.

Also, which term do you prefer: Kolifeless or Lifeloss?

[–]mistborn[S] 14 points 1 year ago 

If you were doing this in some sort of RPG setting, this is totally something (as GM) I'd let you do--because it's interesting and different and I like to play loose and free with letting the players do interesting things.

However, in the actual realm of cosmere metaphysics, this isn't going to work the way your player wants it to. You see, what is happening to create a koloss is a human soul is taken, sliced up, and sutured back together--with the spikes being the "stitches" that holds it all together. That's a problem, since the various forms of investiture don't play very well together. In Awakening, you're basically giving something a counterfeit soul. (But without the skill or knowledge of something like an Essence Mark.)

This means that in investing the corpse of the koloss, you have troubles. It's going to want to snap back to the original human shape and strength. If you COULD overcome this, then yes, it would be stronger. I'd go with Lifeloss myself.

Bold added. How would you guys interpret this?

[+Extesian]

@The One Who Connects I'd never seen that WoB, thanks! That's interesting, it reinforces the core idea that Awakening is creating a new soul, though you're right that it sounds like with a Lifeless, it's not altering the old one at all, it's just creating a new one. I'm comfortable with that. I guess the reason that it doesn't take much Breath them isn't about an existing identity you're tapping into, it's just the idea that creating a new soul is much easier for matter that was alive and is still in human form. I guess the soul 'attaches' more easily and am identity is more easily created. 

The main reason I added in the ability to alter souls, not just create them, was largely to account for Advanced Commands. Though maybe even they are like soulstamps and the whole thing us explainable just with creating new souls.