Side-stepping pregnancy

[Honorless]

Would it be possible to use Investiture to side-step pregnancy? I mean, Investiture can create life: not just Cognitive Entities like spren but also humans. That's how Preservation and Ruin did it on Scadrial. No boinking required (sorry, Comatose). Surely human beings are less Invested than spren? Surely it wouldn't take as much Investiture as Awakening Nightblood. If a Lifeless can be Awakened with a single Breath and a Drab have a little less spark than ordinary Cosmere folk then human beings probably aren't too Invested. We're impeding some Invested Arts but not that much. Assembling the body would require a bit more Investiture but it should be possible. Maybe the Nightwatcher has given people babies to people as Boons. Some Shard somewhere has to have thought "well, this is messy, here's something better!" and added something like this to their Invested Art "There you go girl, no 9 months of labour! There you go gay couples, your own baby!"

I know there'll be social consequences from this but I don't think it'll be bad things unlike all those speculative sci-fi books. I don't think this would devalue women (also seriously, feminism? You of all people should not be saying that! People's worth isn't determined by their reproductive worth. In primeval nature, sure, but now? Def not, that's the whole point of development. Though there is something to be said about the whole process of motherhood being the part of their identity for a lot of women)

So, is this plausible? Do you think we might see something like this in the Cosmere?

Edited June 14, 2021 by Honorless

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Would it be possible to use Investiture to side-step pregnancy?

I suppose you could use the Surge of Progresssion. Shortening it to half an hour should have the same effect, though you may see an odd mental development, removing all prenatal learning.

[Quantus]

It's realmically possible because the Scadrian Shards did it (but it sort of sounds like it took both to pull it off?).  For the most part I think a mortal could theoretically pull off most of the pieces of it, given similar examples we know of.  I thought I recalled a WOB is that Investment is generally a straight scale of sentience before magic effects start to emerge, but cant find it right now, so pulling off bug might be easier than a Human, which is likely easier than a Dragon (or Crab :P).  

The most difficult part, or at least the part with no good example I can think of, is creating a natively Physical Realm Entity whole.  You can Soulcast something that is already there, and can probably Split them off in a number of ways, but there is not true Conjuration yet, outside of Godmetals. Spren are the closest example, but they still need something to Anchor them to the Physical Realm.  So I think you will need some level of Seed material in the Physical Realm, or else be a Shard and capable of making a Cheeseburger from Sunlight via E=mc^2.

So you either create the Meat Machinery via Soulcasting, Dor Reality Programming, etc, Dump so much Investiture into it that it gains sustained Life and Sapience, similar to a  Nightblood-style Type-IV entities (Id recommend a very straightforward and uninflected "Live" as it's Command). Or else you Create a Cognitive Intelligence (maybe like the spren themselves do) and then staple it onto a living Body).  For the latter we know Hemalurgy works for that sort of thing, and can rework the Body to match the Spirit (by the Koloss example) so it might mold and settle to the spirit's form without a lot of fallout.

It will be somehow easier to create life in pre-existing ways than to invent all-new Lifeforms (see below re. "Natural Pathways").  

 

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DrogaKrolow

Sentient machines, artificial intelligence. Would they be able to use Investiture? Or not? How would that work?

Brandon Sanderson

So, define "use Investiture". Like, there's a lot of different ways to quote-unquote use Investiture.

DrogaKrolow

OK, I don't mean the medallions but like if I go and peek into the Spiritual Realm and I look at the machine, do I see Investiture inside it? The Connections to the Shards and so on?

Brandon Sanderson

Chances are good that you will. But I have to add a big asterisk to that, it's gonna depend on so many factors. But consciousness in the cosmere is directly tied to Investiture. And creating a machine in many ways cosmerelogically is not that different from creating a child.

DrogaKrolow

Okay... Interesting.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I'll just leave it there.

DrogaKrolow.pl interview (March 17, 2017)

 

 

 

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Questioner

From what I understand, Ruin and Preservation create the world together, and they created humanity as copies of the original humankind. So how did they give Allomancy to Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So the magic systems are kind of built into the setting and the world. And there are certain natural pathways that exist, in the same way there are certain natural pathways for them to create life. Which is my explanation for why life is so similar on all the different planets, is that they're following natural pathways, and these magics are kind of the same way. For instance, Lightweaving predates the Shattering of Adonalsium. A lot of these other things are suggestive of magics that existed before that were built around Adonalsium. They weren't 100% created by the Shards, but they also do have the Shards' influence on them.

Skyward San Diego signing (Nov. 7, 2018)

 

 

[Honorless]

Ooh! Thanks, @Quantus!

[danex]

4 hours ago, Honorless said:

That's how Preservation and Ruin did it on Scadrial. No boinking required

Do we know that no, erm, “boinking” was involved? I think there was a recent WoB where Brandon implied that it kinda actually was. 

[Oversleep]

Though there is the question of Spiritual DNA.

Brandon indeed said that there are good chances I'd see Connections to Shards etc but that's really a broad term. It'd have been a good followup.

The thing is, if you just dump enough Investiture into a Soulcasted human body... It might go sentient but I wouldn't call it human. Investiture will probably latch on the surroundings, create Connections to what's around. That's not how it works with humans.

Like, kinda like FMA. Sure, you gather all the things that make up a human body and get something for a soul, but what you end up with... Might not be human.

I think the best way would be to do that with Breaths, as they naturally are human-like (all the Awakenings are tied to human form and take on the shapes too).

----

And BTW creating a human body from scratch is... Way, way too complicated. Probably need something of Shardic-level competence.

You might thing "let's just get some human cells and just use Progression" but... Well, cancer is also human cells, you know? It's all very complicated.

[Dancer]

On 6/15/2021 at 5:07 AM, Dannex said:

Do we know that no, erm, “boinking” was involved? I think there was a recent WoB where Brandon implied that it kinda actually was. 

Brandon simply says that he considers that all the people of Scadrial to be the children of both Ruin and Preservation since they both created them. Whether you consider that they they "boinked" to make is up to you. Brandon neither confirms nor denies. He says this on the recent spoiler stream at 1:52:30 if you want to check it out. Considering Harmony was able to create life on Scadrial without "boinking" himself I don't think they did. But they're shards. Maybe mixing their Investiture together is their form of "boinking."  

Edited June 16, 2021 by Dancer

[Frustration]

all this talk of "boinking" makes me feel like I'm watching Oversimlified.

I feel it's possible, but the amount of investiture required is far too much for it to ever be practicle for anyone other than shards