Awakened Hemalurgic Spike

[Wandering Investor]

Another awakened hemalurgic spike question.

If you spiked the breath out of someone, so the spike is now charged with breaths, could it self-awaken? We'll say 2000ish breaths were spiked.

I know you can awaken something with no command and the breath will just sit there. But what if you have a pile of breaths sitting there, with no awakening having occurred in the first place? Because an awakening without a command could be interpreted by the breaths as specifically 'do nothing'. Would breaths spiked out without any awakening or command lack the default of 'do nothing' and be able to gain sentience by themselves? As the investiture breaths come from seem more inclined to life than any other. 

[RShara she/her]

It would be hard to spike out Breaths because Breaths aren't part of the soul in the same way that most other investiture is.

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Questioner

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

Brandon Sanderson

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 a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

source

 

[+Ark1002]

yeah, don't know if you can spike out breath that way... but you can spike the feruchemical ability to store breath 

[RShara she/her]

Anyone can store Breath.

[Weltall]

4 hours ago, Ark1002 said:

yeah, don't know if you can spike out breath that way... but you can spike the feruchemical ability to store breath 

Breath does not have an associated feruchemical 'ability' because it's from a completely different magic system. Anyone can receive Breath and use it because it keys itself to your Identity. It's how you can give Breath away or receive it from others and it's how someone not from Nalthis like Hoid can have Breath. What you may be thinking of is stealing Identity via hemalurgy which could in theory allow you to retrieve Breaths from an Awakened object. Brandon has implied that if you could manipulate your Identity properly something like this could be possible but that would be difficult to do.

He also discussed it in the context of a feruchemist messing with their Identity (and this was before Bands of Mourning gave us some ideas of how F-Aluminum works in practice) as opposed to a hemalurgist. Normally someone can access another person's powers via hemalurgy because they're stealling the ability to use those powers, which rips away the right bit of Identity as part of it. Whether you could spike enough Identity out of an Awakener to have their Breaths recognize you as their owner (as opposed to 'a stranger with a bit of their owner's Identity Frankenstein's Monster'd onto them') is another matter. And even if all of that could be done properly, you'd still need the spiked person to have Awakened objects and not retrieved the Breaths to get any possible benefit out of this.

Edited June 26, 2018 by Weltall

[Quantus he/him]

Ill admit Ive wondered how Cadmium might interact with Breathes or Stormlight that are som directly tied to the act of breathing, if that would be enough Intent to do something.

Separately, there is strong evidence you could meddle and/or store with Breaths via Nicrosil, though I have to wonder if it's redundant with Breaths that basically Like to be stored in objects.

[+Ark1002]

That actually isn't accurate. As I previously stated, there is a feruchemical ability to store breath.

[+Ark1002]

I meant 'breath' literally. Bwa ha ha!!!