Extesian

@Djarskublar I like the OP and I like the things you've added since. I've unfortunately been working on my own ideas of the realmatics and my head's all in that so it's taking me time to go through this thread in detail coz I also like and agree with a number of things others have added. (And I am sorry about having put up my own thread after you did this one). I basically theorized that Awakening is about creating or altering a spiritweb, with the Command being like a program (or like an Aon that represents a line of programming); and that Heightenings are the result of being more closely connected to your spiritual self. With that model I agree with a number of things you covered, especially about some of the fundamentals. I'll try to get back to this and give some more useful input, but there's some good stuff there.

The one who connects answered beautifully, I'll just add a couple of things in my item head-canon. 1. My belief of how the cognitive realm influences magic that doesn't have an intent component is that it's almost always a limitation. With healing (with the exception of Returned, which I covered my beliefs for in a recent post, your cognitive aspect will limit the healing. The body uses investiture to try to match the soul, but if the cognitive aspect has something that does not match the soul, that won't be healed (eg Kaladin's glyphs). It's probably the case that if you have an incredibly strong cognitive side you may be able to alter your own soul/force your body to match it, as the Returned can (see Vasher suppressing his Divine Breath by simply believing he is not a god). But I think generally it's a limitation. I don't believe realmatically that you can believe something and thereby change the fundamental effect the magic has. That can only be done where intent us the focus, like for Awakening and sandmastery. But there are other limitations, such as Szeth taking ten heartbeats to summon the honorblade when it should be instant, because he wrongly believes it's necessary. That will limit it, but you can't do the opposite, call a dead Shardblade instantly just by believing it's possible. 7. Just on the point if Breath being universally transferable and usable, like hemalurgy, this seems to be mainly because it is of Endowment Because you get the magic by it being gifted to you, it's designed to stick and it attaches to your Identity. And because it's end-neutral, it isn't limited by needing to draw Investiture from am external source, you use your own stored investiture, so it's completely portable.

Gavin is one of my favorite characters in all of fantasy @maxal so I'm glad you like him. I always love the arrogant, quick-to-smile heroes, he's a less cynical Kelsier.

I did edit it after replying to your comment I did have creation of a new soul there but you made me realize I should spell out the implications better for type 4s, so thanks again Calderis! Either way my theory did ramble a lot, if I get the energy sometime I'll try to make it more readable.

Thanks @Calderis, yeah that's exactly what I think, if that wasn't clear from the OP I'll need to make it clearer. That's why I think it's all about altering or creating a new soul. Lifeless don't need much because they have effectively a soul (leave aside speculation about hire degraded) and an Identity, and all that's needed is to alter (reprogram) it to follow your orders. Awakening a cloth needs a lot because of the lack of existing soul/identity, but not as much as Nightblood, because you're not creating a full new soul, just one with enough independence (programming) to perform the function you need. A sentient object though, I think you literally need to construct a new soul that has the cognitive abilities of a 'natural' soul. It's the issue around creating artificial intelligence in real life. Basically, yes, my argument is that sentient Awakening means you have to program artificial intelligence using Investiture to create a brand new spiritweb (a lot to make one comparable to a human's soul) plus a complex program using only a single Command and your own will behind it.

Yeah I'm on the side of Awakening not causing savants except under extreme circumstances. Awakening uses intent as the focus, I think all it is is that Vasher has extraordinary cognitive control, I mean the guy can suppress his DivineBreath by choosing to believe he's not a god. I think people with savant-like control of Awakening simply are masters of the cognitive realm, rather than able to use investiture more effectively because their spiritweb has been changed by over-use of investiture.

I agree @Kersplattle, i understand that for narrative reasons that couldn't be the time everyone realizes Kaladin is a ninja-wizard but I always thought that strained credibility, far more than even him single handedly fighting a Parshendi army (where you could argue people didn't really see him properly). I actually think it's the least plausible part of the books so far, even though there are explanations for it.

I love this idea in terms of lateral thinking, but I wonder if it would work Cosmerically. I think the reason it takes less Breath to Awaken an object, or part of an object, that was once living is because it has Identity. We know that with a Lifeless, it doesn’t take much Breath (only one with the right Command) because the corpse was once living, but I think (maybe it’s confirmed) that is because there is still a sense of Identity attached to that corpse. Well, at least to the spiritweb of the corpse (as we’ve been told that spiritwebs hang around in the Spiritual Realm after death). The flip side of that is you can’t then withdraw that Breath because it attaches to that Identity. On the other hand, Awakening a piece of cloth takes a lot of Breath, because it is further away from having been alive, but you can withdraw the Breath because (I think) the cloth has insufficient Identity for the Breath to attach to it. If the question is how small a component of a previously living thing was once ‘alive’, I believe the determinant is whether there is still any Identity attached to the thing, which I think is based on the remaining spiritweb of that thing. With everyone’s best friend, Stick, Stick remembered being a stick, being a part of a living thing. But if you took a single cell of Stick, would that still apply? If you extracted a single molecule, would it still apply? I have my doubts that such a small component would regard itself as part of the greater living thing, that it would share that sense of Identity. That molecules of iron that were once inside the blood of a living thing would regard themselves as that living thing, or a part of it. But I know nothing that would say there’s no way it would work. So I like it anyway J (I do also share the concerns about steel vs iron – once you actually alloy the pieces of iron, that must seriously affect its Identity. And the alternative I guess is having a more brittle, rusty sword – though if it’s that invested that may not matter)

This is quite an interesting point Calderis. Firstly, that certainly sounds right. Vasher describes Breath as sticking because it (and my wording is from memory) looks for pathways of life. There may be truth in that, but we know from this WoB (also copied at the bottom) that it’s really about the Intent of Endowment, the fact that the magic is designed to be given, and that makes it stick. But there’s more to it than that when it comes to Awakening. Firstly, as has been observed, it takes more Breath to Awaken long-dead organic material than, say, a corpse (animal or human). But secondly, Identity is important here. You can’t take your Breath back from a Lifeless because the Lifeless has sufficient Identity for the Breath to be coded to them. Whereas awakening a piece of cloth, that cloth does not have sufficient Identity, which means it takes more Breath, but you can get the Breath back as it remains ‘yours’. So I wonder how these things come into play using Stormlight to Awaken. I feel you must be right about the Stormlight dissipating from the host. But what happens if you make a Lifeless with Stormlight? Is it like a Surgebinder sucking in Stormlight where, as soon as the Lifeless breathes, they will lose it all? Is it a slower recycling? And what of Identity? If you encode Stormlight to an Identity, such as with a Lifeless, will the Stormlight dissipate more slowly than if you give it to a piece of cloth? And with a piece of cloth, where you could normally call back your Breath, how long would you have to get it back? Would it all disappear in several seconds? Would it be slowly, incrementally used up? I agree that Stormlight/Breath are not likely to be equivalent investiture, and it would take a lot of Stormlight to Awaken. And personally I don’t believe it’s possible to literally convert investiture to a different ‘type’, only to let one ‘type’ fuel the investiture needs of another system. Of course at least with Stormlight you can collect massive amounts of it very regularly.

@Calderis is the bit about Kaladin's spectacular arrivals at the Oaths based on a WoB, previous Shard discussion or just your head-canon? I've always wondered about that and there's a WoB saying there's a good reason, but I'd never heard that point. It's an excellent one and tied in with the Lift comparison very well.

In terms of operating for the betterment of the site, I mean more in a self-competitive way. Especially for new people the system is designed to start with rapid rank rises which encourages people to try to post useful things because they see the next rank so close. Once people have been involved long enough to not care about that side of it it adds the entertainment value of having cool and pretty unknown ranks. And ridiculous ones like Scadrian Waffle Cook. Basically it promotes involvement and knowledge, and sharing that with people. I know I used to get excited about each rise I had and that encouraged me to learn more and share ideas, and I became far more Cosmere-knowledgeable than when I just read the site. Add to that the social side of the site that encourages people to support each other (of course, they would anyway for the right reasons, but 'earning' upvotes probably encourages that). But there's no question the whole rep/rank system uses classic addiction techniques (whether inadvertently or deliberately) to get people involved, and that's a good thing for us all. The actual ranks themselves - well, they're a masterpiece that I never stop getting something out of even though I'm far too cool to care about silly Internet points

Here though not so new. But it's from Reddit, Pagerunner's compilation, so feels new to me as well.

Thanks for the input as always @Calderis. As often, you picked up something I'd missed, (and I'm sure more will be picked up) - that of spiritual ageing. That's a fairly poor oversight of mine But you're completely right, simply having the physical perfectly in tune with the spiritual isn't enough as we know that the spiritual knows its true age by the Connections it's formed over time. So you must be right, if I'm at all on the right track, that it must do something additional to the spiritweb rather than just enable the constant adjustment to match them (and I agree with the thing of it strengthening internal 'connections' between a person's aspects in the three realms, that was what I was trying to say but didn't do very eloquently). That constant adjustment will prevent illness and normal ageing (ageing where the cells basically replicate and mistakes creep in - I'm no biologist) but it doesn't get around the Connections issue. So perhaps you're right, perhaps it's some kind of stasis. Perhaps the mechanics are different, that Atium compounding for age only affects the physical realm and the spiritweb isn't being fooled the whole time which leads to a mismatch, but maybe the Fifth Heightening/Divine Breath actually acts on all three realms (or the relevant two) effectively and prevents there being a mismatch at all. I'll try to come up with something more elegant, probably along the lines of what you've suggested, once I've seen other comments.

They're still one of my favorite things about this site. They give something to aim for, something to learn and something to complain about, which is pretty much the three hooks of any competitive addiction.

I've just put a theory up here that covers off some different thoughts I had on the realmatics of Breath and Awakening. Basically I've speculated (and it is speculative) that having Breath better anchors your physical to spiritual aspect (and cognitive to an extent) and Awakening uses Commands as a method of reprogramming a soul (or creating a new one with the program of your choice). It may be wrong, but it gives some possible answers to some of your questions @King Cole.

We know a bit about Nalthian magic, but not a lot about the realmatics of it. Some outstanding questions remain, such as the status of divine Breath (is it qualitatively different from normal Breath and functions realmatically in a different way, or is it basically a large packet of investiture in one Breath and only quantitatively different), the Cosmere-status of a Drab, the nature of Commands, the differences between the types of Awakened Objects, the nature of Heightenings, and the way in which Breath both gives you access to the magic system and is the investiture fuel to use the magic system. I wanted to try to refine this more, but there's a fair few topics at the moment on Breath so I thought it's a good time to post it. Theory Breath specifically (or at least far more than other forms of investiture) cements the connection between your Physical, Cognitive and Spiritual selves. Awakening is the use of Breath to create or alter a Spiritweb, and a Command is basically programming that spiritweb. Ideas I will explore these two ideas separately, even though they link, as I think that some of the unknowns around Nalthis are easier to answer if these two aspects of Breath are thought of as separate. (The following is a very coarse summary of other magic systems, but I don't want to get too fussy about these, this isn't supposed to be a realmatic lesson about different magic systems, it's just to explain Nalthis using analogies from systems we're all more familiar with). On Scadrial, genetics give access to magic, metals provide access to the fuel (straight from Preservation), the type of metal governs the effect. On Roshar, a Nahel-bond spren gives access, Stormlight is the fuel (generally - I'm leaving out something like the Honorblades here), the type of spren governs the effect. On Nalthis, Breath both provides access to Awakening and is the fuel, but intent (your own will) governs the effect. But of course it does something else - simply holding Breath gives the Heightenings, which (in stages) increase your awareness of things like color, audio tones, and life (/investiture), through to making your body immune from disease and ageing. In some ways though, once you're the Fifth Heightening (which matches what you get from a single Divine Breath) the Heightenings after that are more about your ability to Awaken effectively than they are about you changing. Breath So what about Breaths create the Heightenings (up to the fifth), which both make you a more 'perfect' person to others (and objectively) and enhance your perception of others? I think it simply that Breath anchors your physical self to the other Realms more effectively than any other system. Let's take the extremes. Someone at the fifth heightening does not age and is immune to disease (though not injury). We know that healing in the Cosmere generally takes the form of investiture 'repairing' your physical body to match your spiritweb, as filtered by your Cognitive perception of yourself. So I believe the simple reason that someone at the Fifth Heightening is immortal in those ways is because their aspects on the three Realms are perfectly matched with each other, and holding that investiture allows those 'anchors' to stay in place. In other systems, it is necessary to actually use investiture to heal, at which point the investiture returns to the system. With Breath, we already know it’s not leaky (that is the nature of the Endowment intent), it sticks well, so I believe that once you reach the fifth heightening there is no need to consume investiture to heal, your physical body will simply always match your spiritual self. I feel it also explains why holding Breath increases your biochromatic aura, your physical self is perfectly matched to your spiritual self, so people can literally see the vibrance of your soul in a way they can’t with a less invested person, or a drab – because their flesh is just flesh, it’s not effectively glowing with the investiture their spiritual aspect has, because the soul is not closely enough connected to the body. This is how I fit Divine Breath and Returned into this. I do not believe a Divine Breath is just the equivalent of 2000 normal ones, but nor is it a totally different system. I think a Divine Breath is basically a packet of investiture that is specifically designed to do one thing – cement a person’s self in all three realms. The reason giving it to someone else will heal them completely, but not add to their breaths, is that it is not normal Breath, it is something solely designed to staple the three Realms together – when you use that on a normal person, their body suddenly matches their soul, which means they instantly heal. But because it is not normal Breath, they can’t actually hold it as Breath, it’s a one-off adjustment to match the body to the soul. It works differently with a Returned but I’ll cover that in the Awakening part. A Drab is the opposite end of the spectrum, a Nalthian with no Breath. A Nalthian with Breath is more invested than a normal Cosmere-human. A Drab is less invested. A Drab cannot become a Returned. A Drab have ‘something’ missing from them compared to a normal human in the Cosmere. I believe that Nalthian humans naturally have a less stable connection between their aspects on the three Realms (perhaps Nalthis has the Realms further ‘apart’, as Roshar has them closer together), and the Breath each person is born with is a way of Endowment fixing that, but stapling people’s aspects to each other better. A Drab can’t return because of that loose connection – once they die, they progress to the Beyond instantaneously, there is no delay keeping them in the Cognitive Realm, and no time for Endowment to do the Returned thing. Moral of the story – holding Breath makes a more perfect connection between your physical, cognitive and spiritual selves. Awakening I believe Awakening is the act of transferring Breath into something in order to create a soul or alter a soul, but is fundamentally the ability to edit or program a spirit web (imagine AonDor acting directly on the spiritual realm – a Command is basically a program governed by intent rather than form). Let me demonstrate using the four kinds of biochromatic entities. Type 1 – Returned – A Returned is a dead person who has had their soul stapled to their dead body with a Divine Breath. What has happened? (this is speculation but on good grounds) The person dies, Endowment steps in while they’re making the transition to the Beyond, through the cognitive realm, infuses their soul with investiture and staples it to their corpse, and reanimates their body (wiping their memories). I believe what happens is that Endowment uses a Divine Breath to make a copy of their soul (as is the nature with Cognitive Shadows), reprograms that soul with whatever their Command is (probably something that lies relatively dormant and gives free will until it compels the Returned to heal) and reattaches the ‘new’ soul to the old body. The only reason that a Returned needs a new Breath each week is because their body was dead, and Breath does not stick well to dead organic material. But effectively, Endowment takes an old soul, creates a new one and reprograms it, and attaches it to a corpse. Type 2 – Lifeless – A Lifeless “had their soul leave, but then they’ve had a replacement stuck in, in the form of Breath”. All that happens with a Lifeless is that the Awakener uses Breath to create a new soul and attaches that new soul to a dead body. With a Returned, a huge amount of investiture (in the form of a Divine Breath) is needed because you’re replicating an entire soul of a fully sapient person. With a Lifeless all you are doing is creating a very very simple soul. The Command you give governs that soul. It’s no different at all to creating a computer program, but in this case the Command is the programming. There are definitely some realmatic implications to doing this in a body that was once alive (going into Clod’s situation is beyond the scope here) but fundamentally your just creating a new soul with a very simple programming code. But this is also why you can’t withdraw Breath from a Lifeless, their soul is now made of that Breath, but it’s a real soul, if a simple one. The investiture has become something with an identity. This is also why a special Command was needed for one-Breath Lifeless – the Command is simply the program, and if that is exact enough you don’t need extra investiture to hold everything together, all you need is the new soul (which takes one Breath). Type 3 – your run of the mill awakened objects (eg a rope) – With something ilke awakening a rope, or a straw man, I believe that what you’re doing is the same principle. You are using Breath (a lot of it) to create a soul for the rope, and your Command (intent) to program that soul). Because this new soul does not resemble in any way the physical aspect of the awakened object, massive amounts of Breath are needed to anchor the physical to the spiritual, and the anchor never really takes which is why you can withdraw the Breath whenever needed. The object is not integrated enough in the three realms to develop an identity. It’s a hack, like soulstamping, that uses investiture to make something real that shouldn’t be. Type 4 – Nightblood – I wont’ even attempt to explain Nightbloood properly because there is clearly more going on, I still suspect investiture from another Shard. But basically we’re talking about creating a new soul with a Command that seems simple but, in programming terms, is incredibly complicated, and you’re trying to staple it to a physical thing that both does not resemble that soul (requiring a lot of investiture to make the hack hold) and is made of a material that was never alive to begin with. advanced commands I simply regard as a subset odd Awakening as I've described it. The Command to forget, for example, has nothing too crazy about it, it is just an Awakener reprogramming a soul to not include those memories. There could be more to the advanced commands but if Awakening is just soul programming there need not be more. Cognitive Realm A final note, on the Cognitive Realm. Obviously Nalthis is incredibly important cognitively, with intent playing a role of focus in the magic system. I didn’t want to explain the implications every step, but basically Breath staples all three realms together, including cognitive, which means people with Breath can have significantly more influence in the Cognitive Realm, as demonstrated by the ability for a Command with Intent to basically do all these things, and as is indicated by the ability of Returned, and the Royals, to change their appearance. Vasher can suppress his Divine Breath simply by refusing to believe, temporarily, that he is a god. It takes huge willpower, but he can. The Royal Family has hair that changes based on how they view themselves Cognitively. This is just a manifestation of stapling their aspects together more strongly, as Breath is constantly restoring their physical self to match their soul, but as with all healing this is done through the filter of the cognitive realm. So that’s it, this post is far too long already, and I haven’t even included quotes or WoBs which is most unlike me. I may try, but most of this stuff is already-known facts or complete speculation. I’m interested in ideas, but for once much more on the realmatic fundamentals here than the details. I think it's my most speculative realmatic theory, but hopefully it has some ideas worth exploring. But the core of this is: the innate investiture of Breath is uniquely effective at stapling your physical, cognitive and spiritual aspects together; and Awakening is a magic system that is based on programming spiritwebs. Cheers edit - I just want to explicitly acknowledge that others have been doing posts on some of this and I don't want to hijack those, particularly @Djarskublar who posted one in the middle of me developing this. In the end though I felt mine was getting technical enough that it would be too hard to explain it through comments on other posts. And because it's highly speculative I'm of course happy to have pointed out anything fundamental I've missed that dashes this theory to pieces

Great post @Andy92, I've been a bit obsessed with that painting for a while, and as I did know the WoB about one painting being from a person we know, I've always wanted to figure out who (and possibly if it's a different painting). Just knowing if they're Nalthian or a worldhopper would reveal a lot. What I hadn't seen was the annotation. That adds a really interesting realmatic side I hadn't thought through.

No I'm very happy with it going in this direction. My post actually started out with a theory that Origin is in the Aimia region, and Highstorms start there and go round the world, which is why people think they start in the East. I thought the weird behavior of the area, its significance, the seemingly highly invested nature of the Aimians, all add up to that and I was hoping this interlude would help prove that. It raised my suspicions but there are problems with the theory, which is why I didn't propose it here (other than as one option). But the Wandersail story must be significant so I'm happy with discussion of it.

Woah @Pagerunner you just drew my attention to TWG, which I've heard of before but didn't really know. I don't know how broad or useful it is but seems like it'll have great historical WoBs and be of historical Brandon interest. Cheers! Oh and good analysis, it's been a while since I read Liar but I'd forgotten a couple of those points.

It's (the worst"

Not that I know of Sunbird It doesn't affect anything but it's a nice little shout-out to the Cosmere fans.

Yep all investiture. The problem is Nightblood also eats any investiture. And a cute little larkin ain't gonna win am eating-each-other competition against one of the most invested things in the Cosmere

Agreed. I think I'm sold on the most likely thing being that they're both older and Taravangian was wrong about when the Rattles started. Unless we hear evidence that the Thrill is relatively recent I think that's my new head-canon.

Thanks Djarskublar, you're completely right about unsealed metal minds, I didn't think of that at all. And yep I'm inclined to agree with the implications, that person would probably become a savant. I guess the point is that yeah that's a use of an end-neutral system that would cause it but that person is effectively getting the power from another source. Not in the true sense but that person doesn't have to balance their tapping worth storing. My mistake was saying flat out that you can't do it with an end-neutral system, so I definitely accept that qualification. For awakening, I agree with your threshold point and my view is basically what you and Calderis have said. There just isn't sufficient constant flow of investiture unless it's the extreme. With hemalurgy I certainly don't question the consequences to the soul and that it could have savantish implications. Just that it doesn't have to necessarily. It's more about new channels than expanding existing or new ones. But of course it could result in a similar effect. Above all with this I don't think savant is a near term and isn't a true threshold thing. It's a spectrum and one that is about the overuse of investiture in a way that changes your soul to let you access more, but basically makes your soul kind of dependent on it. That can be done in many ways. But systems that let you directly draw on a large source of investiture at high rates are the most likely to cause a savant.

It's a reference to the extra epilogue in 10th anniversary Elantris edition, where Hoid (spoiler)