Kurkistan

@Moogle I'm feeling a sense of deja vu and feel as if we may have even discussed this before... To what degree do you consider this deep "ownership" to be necessary? Because I would hardly say that the Breath you put in a rope belongs to that rope as deeply as it belongs to you—since you can retrieve it—but it's still quite clearly doing some power-demanding stuff. It would seem both clumsy and unfeasible for the Breath's power to have to be "recycled" through the Awakener, I think, so that draws us to the conclusion that stuff/people can be endowed with self-replenishing Investiture sources at least somewhat casually. Regarding the aura, I would like to clarify that: we are both operating under the understanding that there is no independently-visible "aura" around Awakeners, right? It manifests as an effect on the colors of nearby objects, nto just as a shimmery wave of colorfulness around the Awakener's body. P.S. Yeah, I have a complicated relationship with that WoB. On the one hand it's really cool/unique on its own, and gives us a nice insight into something we hadn't really known about before (though, on reflection, we probably could have extrapolated something like it from the Intent-warping effects of full Shards), but also dented my ego because Divine Healing had historically been one of my canonical examples of Forms. The scales are very nearly balanced between the value of novel knowledge and my ego, then.

You're rather misreading the example, I think. Brandon likens the power itself to water. The water moves around and causes something to happen, but is not lost. The power flows and creates magical effects, but is not lost. There is no need to draw energy from elsewhere, then, and so in no way am I suggesting that the energy is pulled from elsewhere. There's no need for Endowment to add the energy to the process (at least not directly: everyone gets their first Breath from somewhere) if it's already there, then: if the Breaths themselves are already this "water" that can non-entropically cause magical effects.

This all feels oddly familiar... If you'd really like to go at it again, you never did reply to my last post on the topic. (though that might have just been because of how hard we were derailing the topic...) -To summarize, I'd say that the energy comes from the Breath itself, namely that it's just in the same "water through a turbine but nothing is lost" (paraphrase) MISTBORN SPOILERS

Yup.

@Moogle Mightn't you want to shift this to Cosmere Theories, rather than Stormlight?

There are "passionspren", for what it's worth.

Well I suppose it's theoretically possible that Brandon's own term for it (i.e. manifestations) is more accurate... EDIT: To be clear, "instantiation" is not how Brandon himself put it. He said "manifestation".

Technically cognitive instantiations of human abstract concepts, I'd say. EDIT: Eh, fine, be all non-precise and use the wrong term Brandon.

Linking Things in Theoryland: A Step-By-Step Guide: 1. Run a search. -If you used Google, you might either be directed to a search-results page or to a specific interview. If you find yourself linked directly to an interview, skip this and the next step. 2. Click on the hyperlink right under "INTERVIEW: <month>, <year>" of the question/answer you would like to link to. -This will take you to the page for the specific interview that contains that question. At this point you'll have a "live" link that will always point to, at the very least, the interview that contains the WoB you wanted to link to. 3. Find the question that drew your interest (CTRL+F tends to be helpful). 4. Note the number in the black box to the left of the question (1, 2, 3...). 5. In the address bar, append "#<number>" to the URL. -The ultimate format, then, shoudl be: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=<id of interview>#<number of question> 6. Copy the altered URL and paste it where you wanted to cite it. You have now linked to a specific interview in Theoryland. So the ultimate URL of the WoB Outis was referring to is: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=985#5

Not to double post, but better than making a new thread... The Philly Q&A is quite thoroughly incomplete. It cuts off at about the 1:20 mark out of 3:35 so far as I can tell. -As a side note, there's really no need for my own questions to have their very own classification.

We have this from Brandon: Source: That's the basis of it so far as I can tell. Brandon also neglected to correct a questioner who assumed this structure: Source:

Well that's just too good to pass up, but sadly Rubix beat me to the punch (more than once).

As you yourself said just recently, this isn't really the place, but I'll just say again that I think there's quite a bit more sophistication to it than "think a thing and it happens." Yeahuh.

Why you're right, we need some better way of gauging this mysterious "plausibility"... -Meat of the thing is right here if you want to skip a few thousand words of theory. --EDIT: To summarize a bit, "people" don't decide if Forgeries are plausible, people do. P.S. I'm still not letting you make "arcanum" a thing.

Nope. Source:

*Nods solemnly*

@Weiry Ooh, that's a new WoB for me. We also have a more general WoB that confirms that any non-Scadrian metal can still do the trick: so there's no loophole of soulcast metals being special or anything. Source:

It's rather hard to hunt it down, but we actually do have a Word of Brandon that burned metals "return" somehow. Source: (paraphrase)

And so crisis averted! Drinks all 'round!

I'll just step in a moment and prompt you guys to double-check that each knows what the other means when you say "sentient". It can grow rather unfortunate if the two parties mean different things. So if Twenty is merely claiming that the ship is "able to perceive or feel things" at some level, then it would seem to me that s/he has a leg to stand on. -Though it's an interesting question whether inanimate objects in the cosmere meet even this far-lower bar, or are just procedural responses... *ahem* If s/he's claiming that the ship is fully intelligent (the more common use of the word "sentient" and the one Outis seems to be using here), then that might be a different story.

Ah, I suppose I read the OP too fast, then. My apologies.

@Outis While I agree with you that I find "spren-banishing" specifically rather unlikely as a consequence of Nightblood hitting a Shardblade, I can't say that I much buy your interpretation of the mists quote. I find it a deeply unnatural reading of that WoB to say that we aren't meant to walk away thinking that Nightblood is theoretically capable of consuming the mists if they didn't "retreat", at it were.

Your knowledge is correct, to the best of my knowledge.

Yeah, Brandon was feeling clever that day.

@Green Hoodie Recall that Nightblood's "thing" is consuming investiture, up to and including trying to eat the mists on Scadrial. I'm not so sure that a pseudo-corporeal entity that seems to not live in areas without high Investiture (see: Shinovar) would do well if it came into contact with him.