What is an Ascension?

[cometaryorbit]

Something I was just wondering about, re-reading "The Well of Ascension".

Rashek, using the Well, was able to do things outside his existing power-set of Feruchemy or his new Allomancy, like moving the planet, turning people into mistwraiths, and re-designing plants to handle ash.

This is called an Ascension, but it seems that Rashek didn't truly hold Preservation - Mistborn: Secret History seems to make it clear that (even though mindless/dying) Leras still held the Shard up until the moment he actually finally died.

So what is an Ascension, and why did Rashek get the "arbitrary, godlike" full-Shard-type powers, whereas Vin burning the mists or Elend being fed power by Vin (also drawing "directly" on Preservation's power) get extra power and the ability to use Allomancy without actual metal, but are still limited to the specific powers?

On Roshar, it seems that the Heralds could pull Investiture straight from Honor, similar to Vin's Mist-burning, but they were known for their specific powers (that the Radiant Orders were based on).

Is it just a matter of an Investiture threshold? Below, say, 1% of a Shard you are limited to specific powers but above that number you get arbitrary, godlike powers?

[Argent he/him]

39 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Is it just a matter of an Investiture threshold?

More or less.

The working definition we've been using has a person hold most of the power of a Shard. Usually that would involve becoming the Vessel for that Shard, but obviously there are exceptions, it's not exactly an everyday occurrence. The Well, for example, was set up by Preservation with the purpose of allowing somebody to wield most of the Shard's power and accomplish great feats (because once you go that power level, you aren't really bound by the standard rules of magic, you just do magic; Allomancy, after all, is just the near-infinite capabilities of Preservation, channeled through a set of very specific lenses to produce very specific effects, but Preservation is not bound by these rules). Elend's final moments are very different because what Vin is doing is simply fueling his Allomancy - the lenses are still there, she is just pumping Investiture through them. The Heralds, as we understand them, are in a similar position, though they have extra stuff going on. Dalinar is the only other example of weird Ascension we've seen, and that also appears to be a result of several factors playing together - his bond with the Stormfather, and thus Tanavast and Honor, being the most notable one. I find it likely that he could have accomplished fantastical things (and, in a way, he did when he opened or summoned a Perpendicularity), but maybe the fact that Honor was Splintered prevented him from doing truly Shard-like stuff. The difference between his Ascension and the ones facilitated by the Well is further enhanced by the design behind the Well.

 

[cometaryorbit]

37 minutes ago, Argent said:

More or less.The working definition we've been using has a person hold most of the power of a Shard. Usually that would involve becoming the Vessel for that Shard, but obviously there are exceptions, it's not exactly an everyday occurrence. The Well, for example, was set up by Preservation with the purpose of allowing somebody to wield most of the Shard's power and accomplish great feats

Maybe I'm just being obtuse/dumb, but I feel like there are two slightly different ideas here. Was the Well only able to grant "arbitrary" powers because Preservation specifically designed it to do that, or would that huge quantity of Investiture from any source have the same effect?

For example, if (hypothetically) someone had a giant Unsealed Nicrosilmind containing the same amount of Investiture that the Well did, would tapping it give you the same powers? If someone was able to gather Breath adding up to, say, 90% of Endowment's total Investiture...

The especially odd bit, IMO, is that at the end of Hero of Ages when Vin Mist-burns while fighting the Inquisitors, she has the regular Allomantic powers supercharged until she actually "dissolves" physically and becomes the actual Shard Preservation. But it seems like the Well doesn't do the body-dissolving bit... but I thought the fixed effects of the magic system were due to the Spiritual DNA/Investiture-physical body interaction...

[Argent he/him]

I think there are several things going on. Anyone with access the the majority of a Shard's power should be able to Ascend and transcend regular rules of magic. The thing with Vin is, she doesn't draw on the mists all at once - they stream into her from all over the world (or at least the Final Empire). They are also not all of Preservation's power - I think Vin fully drawing on them is more like a jump start for her Ascension than the actual Ascension. And so for a period of time she uses them as simply a source of power, then they become too much (maybe she could've Ascended a little earlier, but she was a bit preoccupied at the time, without much time to figure out what exactly she could do with all this power), she vaporizes, and gains access to the entire Shard's Investiture. 

And on top of all this, the Well's purpose is to give you a brief control over a lot of Preservation's power, so whoever is in there can renew Ruin's prison. 

[cometaryorbit]

OK - that all makes sense.

Hmmm, I wonder what would happen if someone got a significant part of a Shard's power while that Shard was still "fully awake and alive" (not half-dead like Leras in Era 1)? The Well didn't exist in that form before the imprisonment of Ruin (Preservation probably had a Perpendicularity, but not the "power for renewing Ruin's prison every thousand years" thing), but, say someone amassed millions or billions of Breaths, or Nightblood absorbed most of a Shard's worth of Investiture eventually through killing things... Can a Shard be "stolen" from its Vessel?

[Eternal Khol he/him]

On 6/24/2019 at 5:25 PM, cometaryorbit said:

OK - that all makes sense.

Hmmm, I wonder what would happen if someone got a significant part of a Shard's power while that Shard was still "fully awake and alive" (not half-dead like Leras in Era 1)? The Well didn't exist in that form before the imprisonment of Ruin (Preservation probably had a Perpendicularity, but not the "power for renewing Ruin's prison every thousand years" thing), but, say someone amassed millions or billions of Breaths, or Nightblood absorbed most of a Shard's worth of Investiture eventually through killing things... Can a Shard be "stolen" from its Vessel?

Ascending and being a Vessel is just having the most Connection to that Shard. So if your were smart enough and found a way, then yes, anything is possible. 

It's just not plausible

Edited January 11, 2020 by Eternal Khol