The Reason there are no Awakening Savants.

[Calderis he/him]

Thank you @Extesian for sharing this WoB

Quote

Questioner: With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths when they get to the other planets?

Brandon: So, spikes rip off pieces of the soul, and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul.  You could maybe get a divine Breath, but I haven’t really decided on regular Breaths, they’re kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm, which is not something the spikes are dealing with.  Divine Breath potentially, because that’s like something that’s actually melding on to your soul

It made me have a sudden epiphany concerning Awakening and Savants. 

Savantism happens through overuse of investiture, by widening the cracks in the soul that allow the investiture to flow into the physical realm through the practitioner. 

Breath exists primarily in the physical realm, which means there is little spiritual involvement. The breath accumulates within the body, enhancing the senses and creating new ones, increasing health and longevity, and enhancing the Awakening ability of the person who holds them.

This explains why, despite the massive amount of investiture involved in the upper heightenings, there is no real change to the spiritweb of the user. 

[+Extesian he/him]

Nice work @Calderis. Yeah that WoB is utterly intriguing, but I hadn't thought of that implication. I was already reasonably comfortable with the realmatic and circumstantial reasons why you wouldn't have Awakening savants but you're right, that does add an element of certainty. I hadn't fully thought out the implications of Breath being 'physical' before. And of coursethat WoB generally shows there is a qualitative difference with Divine Breath, it's not just one large packet of Breath. 

Btw the link is this one

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r4u4t0SH_O-uEkaMwE9Iqjbrzem2e9xXRjFLvGWd7HI/mobilebasic

It's at the 12 minute mark, Shadows of Self London signing Oct 9, 2005

Edited June 21, 2017 by Extesian

[Calderis he/him]

28 minutes ago, Extesian said:

And of coursethat WoB generally shows there is a qualitative difference with Divine Breath, it's not just one large packet of Breath. 

Yeah. If the divine breath "melds" with the soul, I think that supports our conversation from the other day, about "giving up" their Divine Breath potentially taking their soul with it. 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Calderis

[Oversleep]

Reminder we have conflicting WoBs on spiking Breaths.

Anyway, savanthood is something that happens with end-positive Investiture which does need cracks in Spiritweb to form a pathway for Investiture to pour into user; savanthood is where that flow of Investiture deteriorates more of the soul, making the cracks bigger.

So it would mean that there is no savanthood for Feruchemists or Awakeners. Which would make the Twinborn Resonance all the more interesting.

[Crucible of Shards he/him]

I think that with Breaths, the closest thing to savantism is the enhancement to skill and learning, and ease of access to new abilities that holding more Breaths endows. Of course this is not a perfect analogy at all, since there aren't really any inherent drawbacks with holding large amount of Breath, but there are a few similarities, including increased capacity and abilities with the magic on a sliding scale. Thoughts?

[Calderis he/him]

7 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Reminder we have conflicting WoBs on spiking Breaths.

Anyway, savanthood is something that happens with end-positive Investiture which does need cracks in Spiritweb to form a pathway for Investiture to pour into user; savanthood is where that flow of Investiture deteriorates more of the soul, making the cracks bigger.

So it would mean that there is no savanthood for Feruchemists or Awakeners. Which would make the Twinborn Resonance all the more interesting.

I agree with what you say in principle, but in practice I don't think the end-positive/end-neutral argument really holds up.

In Feruchemy for example, a normal feruchemist storing and tapping should never be able to reach savant status purely because of the limits imposed by storing. Once medallions and unkeyed metalminds are added into the mix though, the limits of storing are greatly reduced. It would still be difficult to use it enough to effect a spiritual change, but far more feasible than when limited by your own stores. 

For breath... Yes it's an end neutral system, so no more can go out than is introduced into the system via birthrate... But for the individual user, the amount of Breath involved in the upper Heightenings is huge. That amount of investiture, if it were integrated into the spiritweb, should be enough to turn them to a Cognitive Shadow. When they die, the breath is left behind in the body to disperse though. I argue that if it weren't primarily manifesting in the physical realm, the Heightenings would create Savants. Even though held Breath is a passive form of investiture, continually holding such massive amounts of investiture should arguably have a greater effect than a system in which the investiture is only present during active use. 

9 minutes ago, Crucible of Shards said:

I think that with Breaths, the closest thing to savantism is the enhancement to skill and learning, and ease of access to new abilities that holding more Breaths endows. Of course this is not a perfect analogy at all, since there aren't really any inherent drawbacks with holding large amount of Breath, but there are a few similarities, including increased capacity and abilities with the magic on a sliding scale. Thoughts?

I think the advantages are inherent to holding large stores or investiture. When a vessel takes up a Shard, their mind is expanded to understand the use of the power. I think this is just the same effect on a much smaller scale. 

[teknopathetic he/him]

There is a WOB saying that there are other forms of investiture on Nathalis: I for one think that Vasher's mind-wiping powers (used on that beaten/raped girl) are not something awakening gives you. Those abilities, or abilities like them, might be savantable. 

Edited June 21, 2017 by teknopathetic

[Calderis he/him]

5 minutes ago, teknopathetic said:

There is a WOB saying that there are other forms of investiture on Nathalis:

Wait, what? 

[teknopathetic he/him]

25 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Wait, what? 

I read this WOB about two weeks ago and I will try to find it after my lunch, but Brandon mentioned that the planet does have other forms of investiture besides awakening/breath (but that could be something very minor like how the Tears function or something like that).

Though this does stand to reason: awakening/the returned are a very new phenomenon. Vasher says that people only started using this system a few centuries ago. It seems like Endowment, or something else, only started letting Awakening start fairly recently in the planet's history. Who knows what Blue Finger's people used for magic 1000 years ago, or what the other continents had/have access too.  It would be odd if there were no "old magics" before the arrival of the colonial fleets on the shores of this jungle continent. 

My personal thought is that Endowment recently decided to invest heavily in her planet in order to fight/prepare for a fight against Odium/Trell.  She may have encouraged the five scholars to start thinking of ways to be battle ready as a planet. Her magic system also seems especially built to be used as an off-world ability. Breath also functions very well in other warlike ways; it might allow her people to "continue the fight" in the cognitive realm (expanded souls) with the added benefit that vaccinating her people with breath might be a way to resist something like The Trill (Nathalie people are resistant to sickness etc). Breath also isn't transferable via hemalurgy [wob], so she won't be susceptible to agents of Trell and the like. 

Just a guess, but Endowment has seen quite a few shards go down; I can't imagine she'd just sit around knowing that Honor and Cultivation and possibly Harmony are nearing the end of their war. 

 

Other Possible branches of magic we've seen are:

•  Memory Wiping/Trauma Healing
•  Fortune Telling through observing painting (though this has been described as an ability having a lot of breath will let you do,  but that does not prove there aren't other ways of accessing this skill)
• The Tears and their colour enhancing abilities. We still do not know how/why colour is used when awakening. Seems reasonable colour can be used to other effects. 
• Worldhopping (somehow)
• Scholarship (being endowed with the ability to discover things. Seems odd NO ONE discovered anything, and then 5 returned suddenly finding everything ever about awakening, world hopping, and the likes (though the Scholars did meet people from Silverlight [WOB]) 
• Shapeshifting (used with divine breath, but still perhaps possible via other means)

Edited June 21, 2017 by teknopathetic

[The One Who Connects he/him]

3 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

I for one think that Vasher's mind-wiping powers (used on that beaten/raped girl) are not something awakening gives you.

If it uses Breath(Vasher says the he "knows the commands" to Denth later in the book) then it should be a part of Awakening. That's how I think, at least.

3 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Worldhopping (somehow)

Endowment's Perpendicularity. We know it exists, we know the Tears of Edgli are somehow related, and the Tears only grow in Hallandren. It wouldn't surprise me if her Perpendicularity is somewhere in the Hallandren area, perhaps an underground aquifer below where the Tears grow.

3 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Shapeshifting (used with divine breath, but still perhaps possible via other means)

Per the Annotations, Vivienna can stoke the fragment of a Divine Breath she has per her Returned heritage to do much of that form-altering, so I think its safe to say that it's a quality of Divine Breath rather than it's own magic system(unless you count Divine Breath as a magic system, which I could potentially see)

3 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Scholarship (being endowed with the ability to discover things. Seems odd NO ONE discovered anything, and then 5 returned suddenly finding everything ever about awakening, world hopping, and the likes (though the Scholars did meet people from Silverlight [WOB]) 

Returned see the future and Return with a purpose. Is it possible that they remember something that they saw which piqued the curiosity of one of them? We also don't know what type of people they were before Returning, an inquisitive mind can do tremendous things with the authority of Godhood. If Shashara was an explorer/liked nature, she could have stumbled onto the Perpendicularity. Also, the only WoB I could find is that they are known to Silverlight, it doesn't actually say that they met with people from there.

3 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Breath also isn't transferable via Hemalurgy [wob], so she won't be susceptible to agents of Trell and the like. 

As stated, we have contradictory entries on whether it is, so this isn't as surefire of a safety as you think.

4 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

I read this WOB about two weeks ago and I will try to find it after my lunch, but Brandon mentioned that the planet does have other forms of investiture besides awakening/breath (but that could be something very minor like how the Tears function or something like that).

Please do, I would love to read it.

4 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

The Tears and their color enhancing abilities. We still do not know how/why color is used when awakening. Seems reasonable color can be used to other effects. 

Given their relation the Endowment and/or her Perpendicularity, it's been speculated that they are like a God Metal of sorts. I don't know if I can say i support it, but it's another explanation.

4 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Fortune Telling through observing painting (though this has been described as an ability having a lot of breath will let you do,  but that does not prove there aren't other ways of accessing this skill)

Brandon says that Lightsong can see that because of how much breath he has and because he's a Returned, so I feel like this is also attributable to Divine Breath.

Quote

Beyond that, art is a magical thing in the world of Warbreaker. When an artist creates a work of art, part of the artist's soul ends up in the artwork. Someone who has many breaths and who's Returned like Lightsong has the inherent ability to see into the art and perceive that. So Lightsong can interpret correctly an abstract piece, based on what the artist is trying to convey, in a way that a normal person couldn't.

[Spoolofwhool]

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Please do, I would love to read it.

Maybe this?

Quote

Q: Is there any other magic types on the Warbreaker world?

B: So...There are different manipulations and manifestations of Breath. They’re gonna be much closer than the Selish magic systems and things like that. So, the deviation is much smaller, but it does manifest in slightly different ways.

Q: Have we seen any?

B: Uhhh, RAFO!

[Source] [Signing Line - 51:24]

 

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Maybe this?

 

Ah. So there are other ways to manipulate Breath than Awakening. That is super interesting.

It still relying on Breath should still be bound by similar restrictions, and should still gain the heightenings. I wonder if the upper Heightenings truly increase your ability to Awaken, or would grant instinctive use of whatever system your familiar with.

I think my OP still applies since they still use breath.

[+hwiles He/Him]

15 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Reminder we have conflicting WoBs on spiking Breaths.

Anyway, savanthood is something that happens with end-positive Investiture which does need cracks in Spiritweb to form a pathway for Investiture to pour into user; savanthood is where that flow of Investiture deteriorates more of the soul, making the cracks bigger.

So it would mean that there is no savanthood for Feruchemists or Awakeners. Which would make the Twinborn Resonance all the more interesting.

Last I heard on the subject, Miles was speculated, and maybe even confirmed, to be a bloodmaker savant (albeit, he was only able to get that way through his compounding).  By tapping gold constantly, he reached a point where he literally couldn't feel pain anymore, IE: his spiritual aspect and physiology had become warped by a constant influx of Investiture.  Miles gets stabbed, shot, and blown up without even flinching, whereas Wayne leaves little doubt that he feels incredible agony when those things happen to him, even when he heals really rapidly.

I get that compounding is something of a special case, and Miles was hacking the magic system, but...I still feel like he was a savant in an end-neutral system (he just cheated to get access to extra Investiture he shouldn't have had access too).  Do you not count this as savantism, or is it just too specialized a scenario to generally be considered?  Honestly curious about your thoughts, as you seem well-versed in the subject.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

4 minutes ago, hwiles said:

By tapping gold constantly, he reached a point where he literally couldn't feel pain anymore

I'll be honest and say that I didn't really see that as a Savanthood perk because that's something people on earth can do. Endure pain for long enough and it stops bothering you.

I'm not sure where exactly I heard this, but we can always hear our own heartbeat, and over time we have simply learned to ignore it.

[Calderis he/him]

@hwiles I agree. From a physiological viewpoint, the inability to feel pain is a huge drawback. Pain serves a very real and needed purpose in the body. It also has psychological impacts. The inability to feel pain is going to make you unable to relate to those who do. Hurting people would become very easy, as the ability to grasp what the other person is experiencing would fade over time. 

It took spook roughly a year to reach the point he did in HoA, constantly flaring. Miles had spent enough time burning gold that he was almost definitely at that point (assuming of course that it's possible).

To draw another parallel to Spook, I think Miles natural ability to heal was most likely gone. Spook, when not burning tin, had drastically muted senses. He came to rely on tin to function. I think that if Miles had stopped burning gold, he would have sickened very quickly, as his body probably relied on gold to heal itself.

4 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

I'll be honest and say that I didn't really see that as a Savanthood perk because that's something people on earth can do. Endure pain for long enough and it stops bothering you.

I'm not sure where exactly I heard this, but we can always hear our own heartbeat, and over time we have simply learned to ignore it.

I think there's a difference between learning to endure pain, and not feeling it. I think Miles was doing the latter. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Just now, Calderis said:

learning to endure pain, and not feeling it

Fair enough, but I think I can still make it work. As he gets further and further towards enduring pain, the pain sense portion of his nervous system has gradually faded away because he doesn't see it as a part of him anymore.

The man blows up dynamite in his hands, so he should have a lot of hearing damage too, but he sees hearing as something he does, while ignoring pain. So one of those gets healed while the other doesn't.

[Calderis he/him]

1 minute ago, The One Who Connects said:

Fair enough, but I think I can still make it work. As he gets further and further towards enduring pain, the pain sense portion of his nervous system has gradually faded away because he doesn't see it as a part of him anymore.

The man blows up dynamite in his hands, so he should have a lot of hearing damage too, but he sees hearing as something he does, while ignoring pain. So one of those gets healed while the other doesn't.

But healing comes from a spiritual ideal. Cognitive filtration should only be able to limit healing to not healing things that should be fixed. It shouldn't be able to remove things that should be there unless the spiritual template has been changed. If those portions of his nervous system have actually been removed, I think that fits with the spiritual damage of Savantism. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

Cognitive filtration should only be able to limit healing to not healing things that should be fixed. It shouldn't be able to remove things that should be there unless the spiritual template has been changed.

If you can prevent it from removing things via cognitive will, I wouldn't be surprised if you could prevent if from fixing something that should be fixed.
For instance, Lopen's arm. If he didn't see that arm as still there, would it grow back anyway?

[+Extesian he/him]

I'll just note that compounding isn't an end - neutral system. It's end-positive but your spiritweb hijacks the output from an end-neutral system. But the point is that you're not accessing healing from an end-neutral flow, ie your own internal investiture. You're accessing investiture from an external source.

[+hwiles He/Him]

I mean...regardless, he suffered a physiological change due to his overuse of Investiture in an end-neutral magic system.  Whether that change was beneficial, intentional, a result of spiritual perception, it still implies that his spiritweb and physical manifestation were warped by tapping gold.

He was probably only physically able to tap gold enough to warp himself because he could compound, but that's somewhat beside the point, as my original question was whether he still counts as a savant, and everything that's been said seems to reinforce that, yes, he does.  @The One Who Connects Do you think Miles isn't a bloodmaker savant?  I'm having trouble reconciling realmatically if what he did counts.  I feel like a solid argument could be made for him actually being a specialized instance of an Auger-savant.

[Calderis he/him]

2 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

If you can prevent it from removing things via cognitive will, I wouldn't be surprised if you could prevent if from fixing something that should be fixed.
For instance, Lopen's arm. If he didn't see that arm as still there, would it grow back anyway?

Physically removing the arm would not have removed it from the spiritual template. If he'd accepted the loss of the arm as a part of himself, a Cognitive block would have kept the arm from being regrow. 

In my example though, a Cognitive change would not have altered Miles spiritual template to remove something that should have been there. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 minute ago, hwiles said:

Do you think Miles isn't a bloodmaker savant?  I'm having trouble reconciling realmatically if what he did counts.

I was merely stating my opinion that I didn't see his extra high pain tolerance as a sign of Savanthood. His ability to heal with reckless abandon lets him go far beyond what people on earth do to endure and lose feeling of pain, but I still thought it was a non-magical thing. Don't get me wrong, if anyone in Era 2 became a Savant, it'd probably be Miles, I just didn't think we had enough proof.

3 minutes ago, Calderis said:

In my example though, a Cognitive change would not have altered Miles spiritual template to remove something that should have been there.

What specifically was your example?, so that I don't misinterpret a mix of your prior posts.

I just feel that the loss of a sense can be enough for a cognitive block to form. If his eyesight started wearing down and he needed glasses, his eyesight wouldn't heal if he accepted the weakened sight and glasses, right? If he accepts his ability to feel pain going down, then I see no reason why it would still heal.

[Calderis he/him]

I worded that poorly, my "example" was your wording of the nervous system losing its pain receptors. 

14 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

I just feel that the loss of a sense can be enough for a cognitive block to form. If his eyesight started wearing down and he needed glasses, his eyesight wouldn't heal if he accepted the weakened sight and glasses, right? If he accepts his ability to feel pain going down, then I see no reason why it would still heal.

My issue here is that a Cognitive block should only be able to stop healing from occurring. If Miles healed away his pain receptors, that wouldn't be stopping something from healing, that would be changing the spiritual template to heal something that was never meant to be healed. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

5 minutes ago, Calderis said:

My issue here is that a Cognitive block should only be able to stop healing from occurring. If Miles healed away his pain receptors, that wouldn't be stopping something from healing, that would be changing the spiritual template to heal something that was never meant to be healed. 

He's likely blown off a lot of skin and possibly muscle with his dynamite antics. I would put it as preventing those pain receptors from growing back when he regrows the nerves and skin. That way, he is preventing something from being healed, and my arm example isn't as bad of a connection as I thought it was.

---

I know it feels like I'm going back and forth, but the loss of those receptors via physical damage will lead to the loss of that sense, so my examples tie together

Edited June 22, 2017 by The One Who Connects

[Calderis he/him]

5 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

He's likely blown off a lot of skin and possibly muscle with his dynamite antics. I would put it as preventing those pain receptors from growing back when he regrows the nerves and skin. That way, he is preventing something from being healed, and my arm example isn't as bad of a connection as I thought it was.

I see the problem in my thinking now. I'd never considered a Cognitive block keeping nerves from healing. A limb yes, but only the nerves? No. What you say does make sense and my failure to grasp it is kind of embarrassing.