Kurkistan

It isn't necessarily impossible, I just don't really see a need for it. Though it pains me to say it, I suppose it wouldn't break the world for the tiniest smidgen of Identity to leak through. Quite. Harsh, but true to an extent. It all just seems so very messy under your model, as I understand it, with things where they oughtn't to be and little rhyme or reason for it all. If you want, I would encourage you to start another thread laying out your own version of my theory in more detail (and all in one place). Feel free to quote the stuff of mine that you agree with and whatnot. I think I may have written that part before I pulled the quote, actually. Oops. Okay then. I still disagree with your initial point about aspects of Breaths being "available for storage" but being wiped by Endowment, for the reasons we've discussed. I'll accept some (exceptionally tiny) smidgen of (non-wiped) Identity, though. Because, if a tiny sliver of soul can bring a corpse to 90% sentience all by itself, it should negatively impact those who lose it (and benefit those who gain it), which isn't the case, as we've discussed. I agree, to an extent. Still don't see the need for spiritual memory, though. It actually won't be "transferring" in TES: it will be Forging, creating a new soul out of whole clothe. Quite a different process under any interpretation. Now that's both harsh and unfair. "Emotional memory" is your idea to explain foreign Breaths being less effective and/or desirous than the one you were born with, as you may recall: "If my idea about Endowment wiping souls clean when they are transferred is right say, it might well take people with a new soul a while to train them to function properly emotionally." That has nothing to do with Brandon saying that Breaths "did their best to interpret" and "decided" things. I argue that he may have meant that a separate Cognitive aspect was bundled in at the moment of Awakening or that he might have been vastly over-simplyfying because Awakening was not the focus of that annotation. I may be wrong in that interpretation and my entire theory may fall because of it, but I did not by any means ignore any evidence. I've gone out of my way to bring facts and reason to this discussion, even those which could do my case more harm than good, and have engaged with every quote and argument that you have brought to bear. I do not appreciate being accused of ignoring evidence, and did not do so in this case. As far as that quote proving emotional memory, are we still discussing the same thing at this point (20 posts later)? I'm talking about the likelyhood of negative side-effects from losing your "native" soul, specifically your idea of "emotional memory." An idea which is unnecessary, overly-complicated, and, once-again, baseless. Why oh why do you still support it? I acknowledge the possibility of very slight Identity contained within Breaths (although it might not be a sure thing). That gives a smidgen of support to keeping your original Breath. Take it and run, but I simply don't see a future for emotional memory. Chat with a robotics engineer for two minutes about how easy acting like fingers is and then get back to me, I'll wait: *Three hours later* Was that fun? Did s/he laugh or yell? It's always a toss up with those guys . On a more serious note, those are all fairly complex commands, and complexity has little to do with wisdom or linguistics. Our computers are performing more tasks in the time that you take to blink than you could do in an hour. Yet they are not sentient. "Protect me" involves recognizing threats and moving appropriately to intercept them, all from a moving vantage point surrounded by multiple (also moving) bodies possessing varying, unknown levels of skill, hostility, and danger. "Cause chaos" could encompass remaining visible and frightening, being unpredictable, attacking people, making scary noises, and much more, and all of this while evading capture. Yes yes, all of this could be spread to the "instinct" sub-category if you just stretch your mind out a bit, but I still maintain that it's unnecessary and harmful to Realmatic definitions of the three realms. Also, "instinct" sounds much more like a process for evaluating and reacting to the world than one for propelling something through it, so I'm not sure that it really should fall under the Spiritual category. Also, consider that Nightblood (not Nightbringer) does actually consider the wisdom of an action. He's an odd duck, so it may not generalize, but his thought processes, while problematic under my theory because he's unique in having such a complete Cognitive aspect, are still explainable for me. Under an "instincts-based" theory of Awakening, however, you're even worse off then I am. Side Note: It's occurred to me that the afterlife looks altogether less grim if we just say that both the Cognitive and Spiritual aspects live on after death. Why ought the Cognitive to die while the Spiritual lives, after all? This does raise issues for my theory about the Lifeless, although perhaps normal Breaths could pull back partial Cogntive aspects like Divine Breaths pull back the whole thing, if that's how it all works.

Quite unsettling.

Once again, Syl is an exceptionally abnormal example. The vast majority of spren are not capable of forming Nahel (misspelled it before) bonds. If the non-bonded version of Syl does retain memory, and if that is normal for all spren (a big if there), then I'm fine with spren having exceptionally limited Cognitive aspects. That doesn't mean that they are purely Spiritual beings who have Spiritual memory. Dead people chatting with Endowment and Returning isn't necessarily just Breaths, as I have already said. It could be hijacking the Cognitive aspect, or working with a people's entire souls, including but not limited to their Breaths. I fear to give this to you, since it can be interpreted several ways, but I just found this quote from Brandon: "Ghero6 () In Vahr's case, did collecting Breath from other rebel-minded people strengthen his determination and resolve? Brandon Sanderson () It would have had an influence on him, but you would need the numbers of Breaths that he had for any effect to manifest. It's basically a non-issue in the current book, but it could be an issue in some of the things that will happen in the next book." Brandon could be pulling a sneaky sneaky there with Determination as an attribute (ala Feruchemy), or some ludicrously minute amount of Identity could leak through. Another piece of grist for your evil mill: "Zas678 [our very own] Can a Drab Return? Brandon Sanderson A Drab can not Return as the Returned are known, and there are things about the Drab that are not completely understood. But a Drab without a Breath, it’s going to be very hard. Drabs do not Return. Good question, by the way. No one has ever asked me that before." Reasonably, it could be that, since Breaths are linked to Endowment, they are how Endowment keeps an eye on and reels in possible Return-ers. Or you could take this and run with it. Either way. We know that Breaths aren't full souls because Brandon has said that they aren't, because they lack identity, and because Drabs aren't dead husks. I already spoke to the "quote that shook [my] mind." To reiterate, it's either not exactly what Brandon meant, since he was focusing on something else, or my theory is simply dead in the water because Breaths figuring things out all on their lonesome is impossibly far beyond the bounds of what they ought ever be able to accomplish under my theory, for the reasons that we've spent a score of posts discussing. If Breaths don't "bring along" something, then they don't store it. It's as simple as that. This is not a matter of debate, really. Breaths are part of people's souls, as Brandon himself has said. He did not, in any way, shape or form, suggest that Breaths store "some essence of a criminal" whenever they are in the "proper" person yet, for some reason, do not store this essence when they are anywhere else. Then, once again, why aren't Drabs dumber? I think we're both suffering from "incomprehensible analogy syndrome" here. What I meant was that, since giving up a Breath means the Breath-giver loses whatever Endowment wipes off of it, and the Breath-receiver doesn't gain anything from the now-wiped attribute, why should Breaths ever have these always-destroyed attributes, especially if it only ever harms the Breath-giver? What did you mean? Even after her Les Mis experience, during the final sequence, if I recall correctly, Vivienne basically goes from flush to drab to flush to drab to semi-flush without reporting any ill-effects. Yes yes, we can't be sure. But we have no reason in-text to think that this "emotional memory" exists, and a lot of places where it could have been demonstrated but wasn't. Ah, I see what you mean now. Still, I don't think so. Instinct doesn't really account for the ability to carry out complex commands; and remember that I'm still trying to obviate the need for Breaths to do Cognitive-y things, so I would prefer not expanding the theory to include that, at least at this point.

We aren't sure that spren are Spiritual beings, actually. Also, the only "first hand" account we have from a spren was from Syl, an honorspren, specifically one capable of forming a Nahal bond and becoming sentient. Not exactly the most representative sample. Spren needn't have true memory or decision making, then, more likely simply reacting to stimuli like automatons. I also need to put some thought into the nature of spren (so Hemalurgy, spren, what else is on the agenda?), but my intuition at first blush is that they may be a visible of Realmatic interactions, made tangible by the ludicrous amount of Spiritual energy being tossed about by highstorms (recall that there are no spren in Shinovar). Still needs a more in-depth analysis by someone who's read the book and recent theories more closely, though. I don't see why we should believe that Breaths have any capability to store this kind of information (memory, identity, etc.). They don't bring it over and we know that Breaths are not full souls, so why ought they to have the capacity to store an entire personality? Thank you. Yes, that's something worth taking a look at. And remember, not necessarily empathy as in "oh how I love the world," more so intuition. Well you're a cheerful one. Probably not, although I'll have to call an "the author wouldn't do that" to back it up. And Breaths don't, so there's my point proven... Okay then. Perhaps. But still, "90% sentient." I'll actually disagree here, since he had very large input and had to tell them how the metals would work. I still agree that it's on shaky ground, canonically speaking, because of what "memory" might mean and because Brandon could even have agreed to let them change the rules a bit for the purposes of the game (like the changes to Feruchemy). Why bother wiping some aspects off of a Breath (and still denying them to its original owner) when you can just exclude those aspects in the first place? It's like selling a 13-piece set of plates, but then saying "oh, you were only supposed to get 12" and then smashing one of them. I agree that it's circumstantial evidence, but that doesn't mean we should simply ignore it, especially when there's little reason to think that anything else is the case. Also, there's simply no need for it to work that way, and Awakeners seem fine and dandy going between Breath-states at a fairly quick pace, never having problems when the Breaths they get back are "emotionally scrubbed." But not anywhere near as present in the Physical realm. Thus the "shadow." How does it explain Breaths animating things?

People to avoid in dark alleys: Voidus *Unknown* EDIT: Added a few honorary members: 3. king of nowhere 4. Kadrok (Second offense) 5. Swimmingly

*Fist pump* Nice to win one against you every once in a while, thank you. You, sir (or madame), just earned a cookie in the form of a rep. You just solved the problem of instinctive Awakening in one fell swoop which makes perfect sense within the existing magic system and its known affects. You'll have to forgive me if I sipmly gut your existing narrative in order to extract what I want from it. I still don't like your insistence on using the word "soul" when we know that there is a difference between a complete soul and a Breath, but oh well. If you don't mind, I'll just peel off all the stuff about Breaths having short term memory and the ability to cogitate. What I'll take and run to the bank with, though, is Breaths providing increased "emotional intelligence" to their holders. We know that Mab was less capable of courtesan-ery as a Drab, and I've already posited that Breaths could increase/decrease Connection. What if the nature of this effect on Connection (although it might not be so narrow as the Feruchemical affect), is that Breaths affect intuition about Spiritual matters, both in interactions with other people and, more importantly, in the communication of Commands during Awakening: just as you said. So "emotional intelligence," in this case, is non-introspective intuition, the ability to understand and influence aspects of the Spiritual realm on an instinctive level. This perfectly accounts for the both the general ease with which the higher Heightenings can Awaken and even non-verbal Awakening: Whereas the low-level Awakener with few Breaths has to work at it to form and communicate their Command, a high-Breath Awakener gains a natural understanding of how to shape and communicate Commands as a function of the number of Breaths they hold (although not scaling linearly, it seems), to the point where they have such a thorough intuitive ability to communicate their desires that their Commands are mere exercises of will. While I hold that Susebron could conceivably have just learned to read as any bright person would have, it could also be the case that he has a "natural" intuitive connection with Siri, enabling him to understand the unspoken nuances that she was trying to teach him, and respond perfectly to even the most subtle things she was trying to say. Spren could just as easily have exceptionally weak Cognitive aspects that, as you noted, need to be boosted by association with sentient beings. Once again, there is no need to staple an ability to cogitate onto the Spiritual realm. As far as the afterlife goes, we have almost no information about how it works. It could be that souls generate new Cognitive aspects once the body dies, or copy over the old one, or something else entirely. There's literally a few lines about it in total, with no real discussion or relevance in the rest of the text, so it's hard to tell. It does merit further discussion, though. Slaves aren't inside of your body and/or acting completely independently of your ability to enforce your will for extended periods (in their own human bodies, in some cases). But MtmtMF needn't be a large part of any theory, hopefully. If we follow my paring down of your theory of "emotional intelligence" to exclude memory and cognition, then no line need actually be drawn. Not the Cosmology, simply how one magic system works within it. Should Breaths house both Spiritual and Cognitive aspects, or merely Spiritual aspects with the Cognitive provided by the Awakener? Either would work for a magic system, but both have implications. Eh again. This sounds reasonable enough, but Lifeless's Breaths are bound pretty darn tightly, since they can never be retrieved. This also raises the question of how primarily Cognitive beings with only shadows in the Physical realm can exist, if Cognition is simply a side-effect of Spiritual-Physical interaction. Yeah. It may be that the whole "part of Preservation" thing that spikes are supposed to steal plays into this. Once again, hemalurgy needs its own discussion here. That's still up in the air. The rule with the RPG right now is that it's semi-canonical: you probably ought to heed it, since Brandon was involved in its creation, but it's possible that they messed with the magic system for gamey purposes, so you can't be sure. A frustrating middle-ground, to be sure. Potato potato, really. Same basic process, just changing where it takes place for the user. Maybe (very very maybe) an Inquisitor could be counted as this, but we don't know enough about how much of the actual soul is stolen with hemalurgy. My point exactly. It's not definite evidence by any means, but you would think it'd be mentioned at some point. New evidence, should have looked earlier: "How unique are individual Breaths? Would collecting 100 Breaths from criminals and scumbags affect your personality in any way? Or collecting 100 Breaths from generous, charitable people?? BRANDON SANDERSON () I intended them to not be terribly individual. Breaths do bring some things along with them, but for the most part I wanted them to be a step removed from that." The "some things" can encompass a lot of what we've been arguing about, but Brandon says there that Breaths are not "terribly individual." That excludes memory and identity, certainly. The things they bring could be: Determination, Spiritual energy, a bit of a health boost, a Connection, color perception (which is just a quirk of the magic system to make it unique, as far as I can tell), and possibly your idea of "emotional intelligence." None of those are "terribly individual" and all can be seen fairly directly in the books or the annotations. I already acknowledged differentiation in strength. That still needn't be associated with individuality, intelligence, or Identity. See the Brandon quote I pulled above. It is when we can reasonably expect that evidence to be there. If you tell me there is a dragon terrorizing the English countryside, and I don't find any mention of it in the papers, then it's still pretty compelling evidence that there probably isn't actually a dragon. This case isn't quite as strong, but it still is pretty strong. I think we're fairly safe in extrapolating here. A human mind is bigger than a squirrel's mind is bigger than a fruit fly's is bigger than a rock's. Shadow implies ephemerality and Brandon was referring to a very specific entity when he said "shadowed," not to the entire Cosmere. Humans are tangible, soulful, thinking beings, and I would be extremely surprised if they are not strongly present in all three realms. If I was going to go about describing an entity which was primarily Physical but "shadowed" in the Cognitive realm, I would describe a fly or a rock. Since a human mind is necessarily more complex than either of those examples, you probably want a word stronger than "shadow." -Fin Okay then, unless I'm wrong we've knocked down individuality being strongly retained in Breaths and come up with a new, intuition-based explanation for instinctive Awakening. Once again, thank you for your thoughts. That intuition idea is simply perfect. Now to address hemalurgy and be home in time for dinner, unless you have some serious complaints remaining on those issues which I think we've settled.

Touche. Then again, she was still herself, just a less Determined, more irritable version of herself, and she was only happy about it for religious reasons. No Drab who gave their Breath up for money is portrayed positively.

I doubt Brandon particularly cares. If I recall, he was going to base Legion off of a real disease, then decided just to invent a new one for his own evil purposes. No need for a Universe-spanning order to it all.

No, it isn't.

Not too solid if I can't maintain a clear Cognitive/Spiritual division. Jewels (I got the name wrong the first time) was not a Returned. Just an ordinary human Drab. Checked the annotations and everything. I think it just about has to only be the disease, since Brandon outlined the negative effects of Drabness and stupidity wasn't one of them. Also, we have the fact that Jewels was a sharp enough Drab. As for "indirect" Cognitive effects: No. If it was a physical disease, it was a Physical effect and came indirectly from the decreased health which we already know about from Breaths, which health could quite reasonably be linked entirely to a Spiritual stat of elan vital. Another Drab quote, Annotation on ch. 43: "Most Drabs struggle with depression, and the fact that they're almost always sick doesn't help either." -Yet another failure to mentioned decreased intelligence. More Drab stuff: -Mab (cook in Idris) was the madame that Brandon was talking about, and she seems fine now, from what we see. Ch 41 Annotation: "It's common for someone who suddenly becomes a Drab to get sick almost immediately. For a time, [Vivienne's] immune system was magically enhanced and warded, in a way, to keep her from becoming ill. With that removed suddenly, sickness can strike. She hasn't built up immunities to the sicknesses going around, and by becoming a Drab, her immune system suddenly works far worse than that of other people. These things combined made her come down with something pretty nasty the very day she put away her Breath. This would have killed her, eventually, if she hadn't done something about it. She would have grown so dizzy and confused that she wouldn't have even been able to walk." -So it was just the disease. Nice to agree on something. The Emperor was a baby when he Returned, so had a lifetime to learn and could just be a naturally intelligent person. Considering that he had thousands of Breaths, I think we'd see a smidgen more of an effect if it was just the Breaths feeding his intelligence. "Willingly" is a very charitable term. No one was afraid that the Breaths from the rebel that Vasher got his initial stock from were going to be tainted by resistance, what with the torture and coercion and all. "Magical things to make the magic function" is, to repeat myself, exactly the kind of ambiguity that this theory is trying to clarify, so I would prefer not to rely upon it for explanations. "Part and parcel" to excluding accidental Awakening because it would simply be silly to set off magic systems accidentally, especially since it fundamentally requires an effort of will to Awaken something in the first place (the "Visualization" step). Only getting some of the benefits of your imprisoned "souls" is arbitrary because it doesn't break down upon any reasonable lines. -Is it only the physical benefit, health? No, it's also perception of colors and increased "life sense." -Is it only the positive benefits? No, because others sensing your life sense is a danger to you? --Fair enough, only the generally positive ones (the danger is really just a side-effect), then? No, because I would sure like the intelligence of a score of souls at more disposal. It breaks down to a strange division that seems to be artificially constructed. Even if it were just the "positive" benefits and you hand-wave the lack of boosted intelligence away, that is arbitrary in and of itself. It may be more convenient for "the author" to brush away inconveniences like scores of souls driving you mad, but why wouldn't Brandon have just separated cognition and identity from Breaths in the first place, resulting in the actual system we have without any contrivance? Once again, our task here is to explain it now and then crow our triumph in half a decade when we're proven right. That quote about Lifeless being 90% sentient is mildly devastating to Drabs giving their intelligence and identity when they give their Breaths. Do you have a response? Good point. Sorry, I wrote that last bit in a bit of a rush, had to get to class. I agree, that's most likely what happens: "Physical" attributes are probably just boosted in the Spiritual realm. The issue arises with memories and intelligence. I'll give how those might work some thought. That still begs the question of what the point of the Cognitive realm is, if it's only a storehouse for when the Spiritual runs out of space. Why not just extend the reach of the Spiritual, then? Yeah. Brandon is not ineffable (I think...). As a human being, his thought processes are theoretically deducible, and he has stated that there is a rational order underlying the Cosmere. As for the changes to how Awakening works, that seems basically the same as now. Instead of Visualizations providing the nitty-gritty mechanism for how Awakened objects should behave, Brandon simply had it externalized to a more explicit, line-by-line system in the past. Basically the same operation, though. Not sure what you mean by "multiple souls gathered together." I think I'd prefer to be Drab than to have someone else's imprisoned soul knocking about and messing with my mind, thank you very much. Since there appears to be no way to tell which Breath you're going to be using in Awakening (we never had a "Vivienne made sure to hold onto her own personal Breath" scene), I'm sure that those who buy and sell Breaths in bulk, those who professionally Awaken Lifeless, and others with high "Breath handling" lives have dumped the "wrong" soul in at one point or another. To reiterate, we never see even the slightest mention or bit of concern as to which Breath is being used in Awakening. Vivienne, the "Reluctant Awakener" Idrian, never asks or thinks about it. She shares out her Breaths evenly with Vasher at the end, once again without any mention of keeping hold of the "proper" one. Denth & Co., though untrustworthy were quite definite about Breaths being interchangeable, and we get enough "aha, they lied!" moments that "Breaths aren't interchangeable" could easily have been slipped in. The weight of evidence lies in the absence of mention. The only thing that could make me more sure is if Vasher or another trustworthy Awakener just said it outright. Looking through the text, I may have exaggerated. Sorry. The only explicit mention of the "one-Breath Command" is pg 462, Vasher's Awakening lecture. Brandon also only says one Breath in the "sticky" quote about Lifeless. I think "shadow" is too weak a word for a sentient mind. There's a fair amount of theories as to what that quote might mean, but if we take Aons and Spren as primary examples, both are essentially incorporeal, with just about zero presence in the Physical realm besides being able to see them. I would hope that intelligent beings are a bit more than the equivalent of incorporeal in the Cognitive realm. Or both together. Or he didn't actually "talk," per say, but simply sussed out their feelings. Hard to say, really.

The problem arises because additional Spiritual power really shouldn't boost your ability to give clear, useful Cognitive commands. Perhaps if more Breaths are actually used for instinctive Awakening (used less efficiently to power a leaky Cognitive directive) then we could resolve the issue, but it appears that the same number of Breaths is used regardless, with only the ease of the Command changing. I agree that it could all be a mental process, but the question is why holding extra (Spiritual) Breaths makes that process easier. Ugh. I may need to step away from this for a bit, perhaps re-think how I'm approaching awakening or even, *shudder* accept that other people may be right while I am wrong. No, I think I'll keep being stubborn on this. Vivienne was sick, in shock, starving, scared, and had just lost a ridiculous wealth of feel-goody Breath. I think that accounts for a little mind fuzziness. Jewel seems focused enough, also. I've seen very similar POV's from other books with characters who are in the process of starving to death on the streets of an uncaring city, which are written with remarkable similarity. I don't think we're actually disagreeing here. Okay then, corpses have Spiritual aspects which more closely resemble living beings than those of rocks. I'll buy it. What I don't buy is these Spiritual aspects having much of anything to do with the Spiritual aspects of the body's original owner. Clod would be Arsteel-like, then, because of some influence of Arsteel lingering on, not because his body has a separate soul of its own that, when "reawkened" happens to resemble Arsteel. Why would they be pacified and obedient? The soul of a terrified child or moral enemy isn't just going to toddle along without a fight, I would think. Also, Cognitive benefits would be quite nice, if they're just sitting around for the taking. Why shouldn't the Awakener be able to tap all of the positive attributes these Breaths presumably contain? As for not accidentally Awakening things, Awakening is quite clearly a conscious effort of will triggered by a clear intent, not an evil genie waiting on your every word. As you say, that's part and parcel of the magic system, which is distinct from simply grabbing essentially arbitrary attributes from imprisoned souls while leaving the rest untouched. Either don't have any access to the benefits of Breaths or access all of them: Those two options make sense, but a middle ground does not. We also have from the Interview Database that Lifeless are "90% of a sentient being." If one Breath and one Breath alone can give you 90% intelligence, why aren't Drabs drooling idiots from giving up that much? Hemalurgy can also steal Intelligence and Memories (Copper spikes, RPG pg 321): "Copper spikes store intelligence and memory. They’re very rarely used on humans due to the terrible dementia and frequent insanity produced as shards of a stored soul shred a recipient’s mind." This may be another spike in the coffin of my theory, come to think of it, because Hemalurgy works primarily on the sDNA of it's targets, but it could also be the case that it's simple overlap, grabbing both from the Cognitive and the Spiritual, since we also see spikes stealing purely Physical attributes. Please tell me what the purpose of the Cognitive realm is if intelligence is stored in the soul. As for the TES, it will almost certainly help out a lot, but I would vastly prefer to have something solid down in black and white so that we can do objective comparisons instead of twisting the theory around to account for the facts without a worry for internal consistency. It would be a very good sign if my theory could predict the nature of Forging ahead of time, which is one of my goals if I manage to stay afloat as regards to Awakening. That's exactly of the problem of assuming an ineffable divine being tweaking a magic system that is supposed to make sense under some as-yet-undiscovered unifying theory. I agree, it's an absence of evidence problem and thus not definitive. Still, with no solid evidence either way, I would think that something would have been mentioned about horrible side-effects of having "foreign" Breaths. All of the negative aspects of holding Breaths are portrayed as a result of the harm you cause someone else by taking their soul, not the harm that holding that soul causes you--if I recall correctly. The book talked about the 1-Breath Lifeless command and then showed us multiple species with 1-Breath Lifeless. It wasn't the "1-Breath but only if it's human or a relatively small animal" Lifeless command." Agree to disagree on the implications, I suppose. As I posited, a corpse's Cognitive aspect may hang around for a bit after death, open to tampering by Awakening or Shardic interference. So Endowment would just tinker with the Cognitive a bit and then shove a super-charged soul back into the body. Cognition does have independent existence, as evidenced by the very existence of a Cognitive realm, and the existence of beings which exist primarily within it (thread). As for the Sazed scene, I don't have my book on me, but he essentially just said that Elend/Vin didn't particularly want to go back to their bodies, so the bodies weren't alive.

We can't know until the next book, true, but we can continue to eliminate those theories which are simply inconsistent and/or contradict existing evidence. Much like you're hard at work at for my theory. *Spoilers* If by "spirit" you mean an incorporeal human soul, there are none in the other books besides Kelsier as temp-Preservation. We have Seons and Skaze in Elantris, which are almost certainly Splinters of Aona an Skai's Shards, and are fully sentient. We have spren in the WoK, which are basically comprised like venn diagrams of Honor and Cultivation, and seem to lack sentience unless they have a Nahal bond. Too early to tell about them, really. Perhaps. I wouldn't necessarily say that people have fully developed Cognitive aspects, though, since we see Feruchemists with Zincminds cogitating objectively better than normal while tapping, so there is no necessity for an upper limit. Also, recall that everything has a fully developed Cognitive aspect, for what it is. That rock over there is just as developed as it needs to be. Perhaps sentient being get special rules, but then again perhaps not. As you said, one for discussion.

Colors! I had forgotten about instinctive Awakening all together somehow. I quite eagerly await your solution, since I don't see one at the moment. Yeah, forgot that too. Okay, Breaths impart some small ability to heal. Already got that. Still no proof of a Cognitive effect there. Already caught that first one, thank you anyway, though: I don't really see the need for multiple manifestations of each realm in a single individual. You're a person. Congrats, you've got a Spiritual, a Physical, and a Cognitive aspect. I seriously doubt that "bodies" have souls all their own, independent of that of their "wearer," as it were. A corpse does indeed have a Spiritual aspect (as well as the other two), but only as crude matter. We saw from Sazed fixing Elend and Vin's bodies--repairing them perfectly but still needing to put their souls back in to accomplish anything--that the soul is all you get. Yes, it's possible that a benevolent god is tweaking the magic system (which, as you so strongly agree, works by eating peoples' souls, so maybe not too benevolent) to tone down negative effects. I can't say that that wouldn't happen, but there's little point in discussing a magic system where Shards are tweaking away every inconsistency. You get the health boost, you get pretty pretty colors and life sense, you get everything else, but for some reason you don't hear the screams of sorrow from the scores of souls that you're the warden of? We also know from Hemalurgy that holding onto someone else's soul is bad for you, so why shouldn't it happen in BioChroma? I'm kind of actively battling against a literal interpretation of that quote, since it destroys my theory from the get go; it's also nonsensical to boot, since it throws the Cognitive realm under the bus and, once again, doesn't account for Awakeners not being geniuses. Once again, Auster (who we're not positive is Endowment) ought to keep his/her dirty hands out of my theorizing and/or build a more consistent system of effects for Awakeners and Drabs. I feel that replacement souls being sub-par would have been discussed, particularly by the Idrians, for example: "They just grab any old soul and call it their own, twisting people into strangers!" That story would have been helpful, I agree. Eh. Double eh. I feel that you're reaching here. What if Vasher had Awakened a dog? A horse? The implication in the book is that all corpses can be Awakened as Lifeless, not just humans and exceptionally small animals. You might be right, but I would be quite surprised if you were, at least personally. Endowment could just use his/her GODLIKE POWERS to throw in a little fun and games in a Returned's Cognitive aspects. No need to hijack the soul to get at memory.

Interesting. Once again, I hadn't remembered that quote. You're just a living archive, aren't you? You actually miss-paraphrase a bit there. As Brandon says, "There is something left of Arsteel within Clod. The Breaths that Vasher gave [Arsteel] when he killed him do have an affect on [Clod being more self-aware than most Lifeless]." Not "Clod is more sentient because he has extra breaths:" Arsteel, specifically, is hanging on by a thread there, not just general "sentience" that could come from any old Breath. Besides Arsteel just still being there, there is also the strong implication that Clod has a singular and cohesive (if weak) personality of Arsteel--and Arsteel in particular--still knocking about in there. Not the personalities of the hundred or so "souls" that Vasher poured into him at the time of his death. I would hazard that Arsteel dying while in the process of receiving Breaths, specifically during the "ecstasy" stage which enabled Vasher to kill Arsteel, is probably more important than just that Arsteel had a lot of Breaths on him when he died. It could alternatively be that that transitional phase somehow burned a stronger sense of identity onto the body or otherwise boosted Arsteel's Cognitive aspect. It may even have boosted his Spiritual aspect a bit so that he could stick around long enough to still be there after being Awakened. Really, this quote actually casts doubt on Breaths being individual, intelligent souls. If that were the case, then Arsteel should have been overwhelmed and destroyed even more so than usual by the presence of all of these extraneous Breaths, not preserved by them. If Breaths are manifestations of Spiritual energy, though, the energy that enables other magical effects to occur, such as, say, boosting the longevity of the Cognitive aspect of a specific individual upon his death... (I like ellipses today, for some reason).

We know breaths have physical manifestations, like their increase in life span and disease resistace as you said. They can repair physical damage on lifeless to some degree. They can return to them some level of cognition- Clod can fight extremely well. The Physical improvements due to increased Breaths can be quite reasonably seen as a side-effect of an excess or deficit of a small subset of Spiritual energy: Breaths themselves, while they might cause Physical affects, are certainly not Physical entities, given their weightlessness and how just about everything that they cause is indirect, acting through other, Physical agents. Cognition is, basically by definition, within the Cognitive realm, so I don't think that falls under Physical manifestations. Also, to my knowledge, Lifeless do not heal. Besides this, I don't see any merit in or reason to discuss to what degree Breaths are Physical, at least at this point in time, since the current crisis is their seeming ability to reason. Conventionally, souls are supposed to take your entire being to the afterlife to live with god or any spirits. It's perfectly reasonable that they would have spiritual and cognitive aspects. But that's just the question, really. I think we're having a misunderstanding on the Realmatic nature of the Cosmer. If we were having a straight metaphysical debate where I said, "What if people could give up 'Breaths' that could then be used to animate human-shaped organic material, and..." and so on, all in what is otherwise assumed to be the real world, then saying "this 'Breath' of yours is most certainly people's souls!" would be quite reasonable. However, Warbreaker takes place in a universe which we know to be made up of three distinct, but interwoven realms, the Physical, the Cognitive, and the Spiritual. This is basically cheating on my part, philosophically speaking, since I'm doing the equivalent of saying, "oh wait, but Apollo told me the other night in a dream that..." and then expecting you to roll with it. Either way, though, you can't just claim everything for the soul and leave the Cognitive realm barren. As I've postulated, and as Brandon says, Breaths are part of people's souls, but by no means the entire thing or even a large part. There also stands the problem that, if Breaths were people's entire souls--or a significant portion of them, at least--with a near-complete sense of identity and/or cognition, we would see far greater harms to Drabs and far greater benefits to Awakeners (while holding Breaths) then we do in the book. Drabs aren't dumb, identity-less drones (Brandon quite clearly outlines the negative effects of Drab-hood) and Awakeners aren't super-geniuses with a score of warring personalities driving them mad. This analysis cross-applies to your alternative conception of Breaths as AI's and/or being equivalent to very domesticated spirits. They simply aren't whole enough to be anything so sophisticated on their own. The "advanced AI receiving instructions" part of Awakening can just as easily come from the Cognitive aspect of the Awakener. I would like to see some further analysis from you as to how Breaths, if they're only "part of your soul", can be intelligent enough to actively interpret complex instructions whilst, paradoxically, displaying no sign of intelligence, individuality, or identity when held by an Awakener. There is also the fact that, as far as testimony goes (although it is from Denth & Co.), people who give up the Breath they were born with and then buy another later don't report any ill-effects with the "wrong soul;" the same applies to Awakeners who pour out and take back Breaths willy-nilly without any concern as to which one is truly "theirs." P.S. Nice use of TvTropes. And so many hours were wasted... If they cogitate then they presumably would be confused when they were told to animate something that wasn't human shaped because they were used to manifesting human shaped things. I'll accept that one, actually. While I disagree about Breaths getting "confused," it makes sense that, if Breaths were sentient human minds, you would need more of them to operate a more alien object, as well, perhaps, as the energy-spillage problem I've already brought up. This does raise the very troubling question of of why it only takes one breath to animate a very alien dead squirrel (pg 209), though. Shouldn't that be more confusing than a human body, and thus require at least 2 or 3 Breaths? -End Rebuttal Looking back, this is all rather combative. Sorry about that . You rattled me with that first annotation quote, and I'm trying to get back on solid ground. It's nice to have a good challenge to the theory. Well-wishers are quite nice, but a good foe is the best thing for tempering a theory. You've made a solid impression in your first few posts on this forum, I can say.

Awakened objects being somewhat sentient makes a certain amount of sense, although I'm still battling you on the other thread as to the origin of that sentience (Cognitive aspects ftw!). I'm fairly sure that the number of Breaths actually doesn't vary at all for Awakening specific objects. "Hold things" and "hold when thrown" both require the same number of Breaths for a piece of rope, to my knowledge. Would you mind using your comprehensive knowledge of Warbreaker to double check that?

Thanks for pulling this over from your thread: it's nice not to be theorizing at myself sometimes . I did ask people to try and find evidence to go against my theory, so I suppose I deserve this. Here's some brief thoughts on how I might be able to resolve this, but I've gotta' go right now so it all might be a bit rough; Honestly, my only response to this is to hope that Brandon was just being a bit coy and/or simplistic about how Awakening works. If my theory--at least as far as Awakening goes--is not to fall down in tatters, then Breath’s simply cannot be thinking entities in and of themselves. They cannot run around “doing their best to interpret” or “deciding” anything. If Breaths can reason, then they are either not purely Spiritual entities or purely Spiritual entities can reason. Purely Spiritual entities cannot reason simply because that would leave absolutely nothing for the Cognitive realm to do, and we know that the Cognitive realm exists (thanks, Word of God). So reasoning Breaths of this type must be of some mixed variety. Purely Physical objects cannot be reasoning for the same reason as why Spiritual cannot, so this leaves Breaths with some form of Cognitive aspect mixed with Spiritual (or Cognitive but not Spiritual, which I doubt both because of my previous analysis as to why the Spiritual realm provides power and because of how “souly” Breaths are). That doesn’t make sense either, though, because we don’t see people with more/less Breaths become more or less intelligent. Therefore, Breaths don’t actually add or take away from the Cognitive aspects of those who use them. Despite this, a well-Awakened Lifeless is more adaptable than a poorly Awakened one. A 200 Breath rope will “hold things” just as well as a 100 Breath man-shaped cloak. The same number of Breaths go into an object regardless of the complexity of the Command (I’m fairly sure on that one). None of this makes any sense in a world where Breaths cogitate. An alternative which comes to mind (and I am a bit biased at this point, so I’ll need a third party to judge whether or not it holds water) is that Awakening bundles the Cognitive aspect of the Command directly into the Breaths as an aggregate at the moment of Awakening; transferring the Spiritual and Cognitive modifications onto the target as a single package, instead of separately. This Cognitive aspect, once again, is copied from the Awakener, not actually taking anything away and so working in a positive-sum manner so far as Cognitive resources go. This would also demand that this Cognitive/Spiritual meshing be revoked when the Breaths are reclaimed. Another alternative was that Brandon simply misspoke (miswrote?) and/or didn’t want to get into the details. The focus of that passage was about Nightblood’s “evil sense” and explaining how exactly Nightblood defined such a subjective notion as “evil,” not in plumbing the depths of Awakening. It’s vaguely possible that Brandon might have meant that Breaths bundle Cognitive aspects during Awakening, or might have meant what he said--that Breaths are themselves reasoning entities (which still makes very little sense)--or he might have meant something completely different that I can’t even begin to grasp.

Well scratch my back with a hacksaw. I hadn't remembered that annotation. That doesn't look to good, now does it? Would you mind re-posting the relevant section on the thread so that I can try to respond to it all in one place and also not double-post? As for a chapter from Clod the Lifeless's perspective, what exactly that chapter will be like remains to be seen. It could be as simple as an "animal perspective" take on things or as far as "help, I'm trapped in the body of a corpse without any free will!"

A decent attempt to outline BioChroma, and those are some interesting questions that I think we would all like to see answered in the next book (however far away it is). We are actually running in parallel a bit here, at least with the idea of Awakening as endowing objects with an intent. I hadn't noticed your thread (sorry, I tend not to visit the Warbreaker section much), but I also generated a theory of Awakening which posits Breaths as providing the motive force to act on an Awakener's intent. It's a bit of a frighteningly long read and the overarching theory (which is also long) has Cosmere-wide spoilers embedded in it, so you won't be hurting my feelings if you just ignore me. Also, Hoid wanting to restore Adonalsium is just a theory, not something we "know." Welcome to the forums, by the way.

A good rule of thumb as to whether something is or is not unethical is if you'd want it done to yourself, barring coercion of some kind. Golden rule and all. There is the question of people volunteering/being paid to be spikified. But that also smells a bit wrong. Would you want part of your soul ripped away, either killing you or deeply damaging you on some fundamental level up to the point where you're not even the same person? What about if it was the only way to feed your family through the winter? That's the point where we step into coercion territory, where your "choice" to be spikified would be a leonine contract. As far as deathbed spikes and brain dead coma patients go, that is a different matter where you might be able to ethically employ Hemalurgy. Although, in the case of coma patients, you might as well go the whole nine yards, if they're not recovering anyway and your ripping half of their soul out.

Don't mind me, just being awesome and helpful.

Not to overstep, Joe, but if the answer is "yes," then he probably can't see that question, at least on his own box. I would humbly suggest that you just send him an email.

I just had an image of what's essentially a post-apocalypse where everyone but Brandon is inside their own Cadmium bubble. He wakes up one morning, walks out his door, and sees the entire world frozen in place. Kind of a horror-scape, actually, especially if he wasn't free to enter and leave other peoples' bubbles.

No, no you can't. . . *gets haunted look in eye* If the bubbles are anchored on the ship, then the ship will actually be traveling at the same speed that it was before, since all sped-up movement is relative to the anchor point of the bubble, which will be the ship and which will be traveling at 0 m/s as far as the bubble is concerned. If the bubble is not anchored at the ship, then any ship traveling at any even mildly significant speed will be in and out of the bubble in the twinkle of an eye, hardly worth the effort. Give me a 100 Km bubble anchored to a point traveling significantly more slowly than the ship and I will give you miracles, but until then you're out of luck.