Nepene

I'm not sure. Two things are required for you to be an elantrian. Have an Aonic ancestor. I'm not sure if you can change your ancestors with forging. It's not that plausible and it's not necessarily possible to change your parents with a forging as it would be implausible. Have the Shaod chose you. The Shaod is quite possibly the manifestation of Devotion, a shard, even if splintered. Powerfully invested beings like shards are very very resistant to magical attempts to influence them. Being splintered it may be easier to fool. It may be possible to trick the Shaod into choosing you. A forging might not hold indefinitely as it would be implausible, but it may well hold long enough to fool it into giving you magic. You could forge yourself into a very devoted person, get the power, and keep it even when you reverted. What with odium killing the shards the hashcheck of the magic systems should be easier to trick.

Brandon Sanderson Here's a summary of the important things he said. There are six forms for Pashendi. Warrior form, lithe form, mating form, dull form, worker form, base form. These are generated by bonding with spren which causes them to have a soul, have some sort of hive song mind, and a new physical form. To put it another way, they have spiritual changes (soul), cognitive changes (perceive themselves differently) and physical changes (a new form). There are hundreds of other forms which can be generated by bonding with various spren. They can transform from form to form. They are seeking some new forms to help survive. The shattered planes that the Pashendi and the humans fight over are the ruins of an ancient city. Some have theorized that the Dawnsingers were Pashendi. What are these Dawnsingers you may ask? "They were healers, They were kindly Spren sent to care for humans once we were forced out of the tranquil halls." "Kind of like the opposite of Voidbringers" "You could say that." A brief diversion- what is honor? Based on this, honor can be defined on as a code of conduct among equals which you face shame for if you fail to adhere to. Honor is a massive theme in the series and so understanding this is important. At the end of the book Dalinar, seeing the bridgemen as his equals, gives away a priceless piece of wealth to save them showing his great honor. If the Pashendi can transform into whatever form is necessary that seems like the sort of thing honor would value- a group of people stratified into equals by magic with a shared cognitive component and a limited form of hive mind. They could be servants which Honor made to help humans survive in the new land after they were forced out of the tranquil halls. Need a soldier? Turn them into a warform. Need some builders? Turn them into a builder spren. They can transform into whatever you need. This would also match with what Cultivation might value, cultivating the humans that remained. If, as some believe Pashendi are the void bringers perhaps Odium infected them with some of his own spren, transforming them into evil beings. http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Midnight_Essence The Pashendi are currently seeking new spren forms, as noted above. Perhaps Odium will offer them some new powerful combat forms that can destroy the humans. They will accept, thinking they will still have control after accepting Odium's gift. Odium will then control them and make them do evil things. This sort of ploy has precedent in Cosmere history. Ruin in the mistborn trilogy gave people the evil magic system of hemalurgy which transforms humans into powerful monster forms such as kandra and koloss. It also gives him some degree of control over whoever uses his magics. I would guess that Odium did something similar with some form of spren and Pashendi, transforming the healers into murderers and making them their opposite. I would also guess that there's a reasonable chance that just as Marsh briefly broke free of Ruin's control to save the day, some Pashendi is going to break free of Odium's control to save the day.

1. Szeth mentions that Lashings don't work with shardplate (on?). Is there any way to get around this (As in, lashing with shardplate on, or lashing people with shardplate on), and, if so, does it have anything to do with the Knights Radiant and/or their ideals? I imagine that if you had a lot of power in your body the shardblades would be about as effective as normal steel is on humans- extremely effective but not instantly fatal. The shields probably are aided by this and are insanely tough due to the special Ars. 1 unit of magic may be 10% effective at blocking other magics. 1 unit of magic spent specifically to strengthen things may be 50% effective at blocking other magics because all of its spirit is going into resisting things, hence why other fabrials are less or ineffective. It may be that the special runes are inherently better at the resistance Brandon spoke of. Or 1 unit of magic may always have the same resistance, but in a stable container (which is hardened) the spirit is less likely to leak out or break. Being sliced to pieces is likely bad for the magic. The durability of the rune would matter.

Yes, so you should post your archers around the walls of whatever room you are in so that when Szeth invades they are already in position. Have several groups of men around to engage him. He will presumably do whatever he does to those men and the archers can meanwhile pincussion him. There is an obvious way that Szeth will be stopped. The new king's guard is made of excellent spearmen and an unskilled windrunner, the old bridge 4 team. I imagine they will stop Szeth by counteracting his lashings to some degree with their windrunner and using their long spears to hold him off- he can come at them from any angle, they are an impenetrable sphere of spears. The author seems to like the theme of discipline versus individual skill- the hordes of skilled but isolated Pashendi versus the disciplined hosts of soldiers so the battle will probably be another one like that. So he likely will be defeated. We just have to find a way to disable his lashings somehow or overcome them without a windrunner. He can defeat enemies with shields easily enough- his lashings are good. Discipline and tricks are both needed to disable him.

Objects falling or in flight. He can fly out. But he'll be blinded and his skin will be burning and it'll be rather hard to fight. Depends on how fast he escapes. Reverse lashing may or may not work. Quicklime has been made since Egyptian times. It's very common and easy to produce. You just burn limestone. We known shelled organisms are common, and shells are what produces limestone so it should be easy to get.

People who can fly, while hard to see, are not invisible. People don't know much about his abilities, so while yes they will die, the king doesn't have to say it like that. If he's reasonably charismatic he can use careful messaging. Friendly fire, while annoying, is a reality of war that soldiers are used to. Given the 100% casulty rate of swordsmen who charge up against Szech even if I knew everything I'd still prefer risking the friendly fire. Some brave men could likely be found. A crossbow would be better, but if enough brave men cannot be found to die as cannon fodder for their king the sling would work too. Slings are deadly if you hit an enemy in the head, and are very capable of shattering bones. The stones also often break up, leaving fragments of themselves in the body. It would take Szeth a lot of stormlight and a lot of time to heal any injuries. In the meanwhile, other slingers would be hitting him and swordsmen and spearmen would be stabbing him. I know that quicklime was historically used as a sling weapon. You could throw it and it would produce a corrosive cloud of blinding mist. That might work well. Two seconds is a lifetime in a battle. Time enough for someone to stab him. This shardbearer I presume would be wearing shardarmor, so the ranged fire would be nothing more than annoying plinks on their armor. It would be rather more deadly to Szeth. If you're really concerned about the lives of your men for some reason and care if they get pincushioned while the assassin dies, you could have them wielding long spears. That would give them enough range to annoy and stab Szeth while giving archers some freedom to fire at him. The shield was hit by over a hundred arrows and while a person is thicker than a shield, a person isn't as tough as a shield, also crossbow bolts are armor piercing especially at almost point blank range. Some arrows would likely go through. The soldiers are not especially valuable, there's thousands of them around, if three or so men are lost no one will cry except their families. Maybe their families can get sent a medal for their men dying for their country. If he lashes himself to the ceiling he can't reverse lash anything since he is away from the floor where all the stuff is. The second volley of archers can fire and kill him. If he avoids and goes down to slaughter the archers around the room people have many more chances to kill him. The archers aren't clustered into a group as they want to hit him from multiple angles, so he has to go all the way around the room killing them. He has to fight perfect continuously, they just have to get lucky once. And all this time more soldiers can be called in and more chances to get lucky can be made. Assuming the shardbearer has shardarmor, the shield would bounce off. He had to lash a massive stone to kill the shard armor guy. They are insanely tough. If he tries that in a large group of soldiers (who would know what the soldiers were doing) he's going to face hundreds of enemies, more than he can deal with likely. If all those men are defending their king 24/7 then there's not much he can do but try to kill them all. Under my plan, he isn't especially given an option other than to murder lots of innocents. Indeed, if they did that he would likely kill them. I am assuming that these archers do not have mook chivalry. They are waiting with the king 24/7 along with the sword/ pikers and so they shall attack him while he is cutting through the swordsmen, not after. I am also assuming they are fairly accurate so they will not miss much. Also, he will not be in the middle of a crowd. He tends to attack a large group front on and either lash them to the ceiling or destroy them with his shardblade, so he will be at the front of a group of vanishing corpses. There will be lots of space for enemies to attack him if they so chose.

It's hard to sneak when twenty eyes are seeking you out. This is not worse than bridgemen. You would be paid extremely well, and have hope that you could kill him before he killed any of you. If the archers were fairly skilled casulties among your troops should be minimal. Besides, you could just use slings which will only break bones or cause concussions if they miss, with a couple crossbow troops for him in the open. If he's holding two people at once and lashing something else he is going to be very vulnerable to attack by soldiers with swords and shardsword bearers and won't be nearly as agile. He used his agility to take out the shardbearers, along with lots of binding. You can spin up whatever scenario you wish, but the fact remains, the more he defends against ranged the more vulnerable he is to melee attacks. Combined assaults will make it very hard for him to do enough. Let's say he does that. He grabs two soldiers and reverse lashes them to block arrows. He survives, though several arrows go through and stab into him, injuring him (as happened with the shield in the battle scene). Meanwhile a shardblade wielder comes at him and swings his sword through the body to kill him as a second set of arrows come at him. What can he do against that many enemies? If Szeth asks about the arrangements of the enemy he is vulnerable to being caught. His masters often do not give him enough information. Plus, if he just assumes these men are more enemies to cut down he's not going to be that afraid. He'll bring oodles of stormlight to kill them all, but he'll still be surprised by the attack formation. He may be able to gleam some details (not all) but he won't be able to pick up all the surprises.

His master asks him to make it public often enough, and if he sneaks in my 20 early warning scouts will show their utility. Shouldn't be that hard, the soldiers seem fairly happy to die for their lord. They can have shields and metal armor if they wish to protect them. If he has one reverse lashing on each side, how is he going to defend against the melee troops? He has to be touching the lashing to do it. That means no sword fighting. Can you even reverse leash two objects at once? And I question if he can lash the ground- you need to form a bubble around the object and the earth is rather large to form a bubble around. Under my plan, he is welcome to lash rocks or shields, he'd still die to swords. He wouldn't necessarily know about my 60 soldiers, I'd try to keep it as quiet as possible. If he skulked around asking questions he'd be easy enough to kill with overwhelming numbers.

I think this is where the misinterpretation comes from. I am saying you should be more calous. Deliberately fire ranged weapons at him while your melee fighters are engaging him. You may hit your own troops, but if Szech dies the king lives. He should be in a melee and at range and have his defences saturated with attacks. If he wants to do that he's welcome to, but if he slips up once. Indeed, I suggested he should reverse lash someone. Although if enemies are ranged attacking him from enough directions it won't matter. ( ) \ / ) ( ##---------> Sazed- Reverse lashed enemy <----------## ) ( / \ ( ) Sad, the forum dislikes my ascii art. You can see it if you quote the text anyway. If he reverse lashes someone that will just make the arrow fly into his heart faster if his foe is behind him. I doubt a bunch of archers will seem more suicidal than attacking three men with shardblades. So by logic, if the men never leave him Szech can never attack. I wonder if you could use women and children to attack him. His code of honor may forbid killing them. Edit. Beehives. While there is some history of their use in battle, it's relatively easy for these magical beings to avoid them- a windrunner could reverse lash something and then fly away, a shard blade user would be vulnerable to it, but it would be hard to accurately hit the visor of a shard plate user.You may well hurt your troops more than you'd hurt the enemy. Now you don't just have a towering armored killing machine, you have a towering armored killing machine covered in bees.

Yeah, you'd face the same issue that they faced in real life, the short range. Plus they might be able to lash the liquid or gas or solid you were burning up. A reverse lashing requires you to constantly touch an object. This anchors you in one place, reducing your agility, and removes one hand from the fight. While you are reverse lashing you are vulnerable to melee attacks and are no longer agile. If he used a shield, a few crossbow bolts in that shield would sharply increase its weight and reduce his agility. Szeth is very perceptive, but he's shown no godlike ability to be aware of all things at once. Surgebinding doesn't increase perception. Because he is not perfect against large groups he used lots of magic to slow them down and weaken them. He would be hard pressed to reverse lash something and slash through a warrior simultaneously. Suppose a group of ten warriors charges at him. He full lashes them to the ground and begins making pate of them. If he's dicing them up with his shard blade it'd be quite hard for him to reverse lash anything so ranged troops fill him with a couple of bolts. Using his supernatural agility he grabs a man and reverse lashes him, absorbing all the firepower. Meanwhile, one of the remaining soldiers stabs him with a sword. He doesn't carry a shield as we have seen, and if he choses to reverse lash a door or something then melee attackers can stab him. Running would be a very out of character move, he loves overwhelming odds as he is suicidal. He wants someone to put him out of his misery. He can always hope he will be fast and deadly enough to kill everyone. Also, the delusional king had thousands of men dancing to his paranoia, didn't he? My plans would only require two hundred or so (20 archers, melee warriors, and messengers, eight hour shifts.) Much less paranoid than a bad king. It'd probably cost less to keep up than a single shardplate. I agree he has to go inside, hence the messengers to warn of an attack. Szeth dead is the point of my scenario. The hope is that before the king runs out of men Szeth will die. Szeth has never just superman'd to an enemy, he kills everyone in his way first.

I thought about fire, but I doubt their metallurgy is good enough to make a flamethrower or an effective greek oil variant. They're quite complex. My strategy was devised for Szeth, but is perfectly adaptible to other windrunners. They generally have to get close to an enemy to engage, so give them some troops to kill (some perhaps with bags of glass) while your group of archers or slingers or crossbowmen spread out. Then hit him from behind with irregular hits. Overwhelm his capacity to adapt, ambush him, surprise him. This should be doable with far less troops than simply zerging them. You could feasibly do it with just five or six men if they were well trained, or one skilled sniper in the chaos of battle. Say, three men attack him. Meanwhile, a short distance away, a pair of crossbowmen are taking aim. He kills a pair of the men in a single swipe or mushes them to the ground with a touch, the crossbowmen fire. He is impaled by a pair of bolts, the third soldier then ganks him. Very hard for him to counter since his magic takes time to do. Or if he avoids the soldiers and lashes horizontally, the crowssbowmen could hit him while he was in flight if they were skilled enough. Surprises are the best way to defeat a Windrunner. Lots and lots of surprises, so many that their overwhelming powers can't come into play. Szeth is honorbound to kill who he is ordered to kill, honor does not retreat. Hence the defense plan. He assassinates kings, kings can afford to have multiple guards at all times of day. Obviously if you are not very rich you are screwed and you will definitely die. Windrunners are op. Fun magic system. The target will presumably have people to protect him from Szeth flying at him, may have their own shardplate. If he flies away you can double the guard and prepare better. You understand his powers better and can be better prepared.

I agree that against shard plates and shard blades crossbows and siege weapons are the most effective counter- we saw the effectiveness of some sort of heavy rock the parshendi used in the final battle and if they had deployed enough to kill a shardplate in a single volley they would have won. Soulcasting could be used to massively boost production of these weapons. With regards to countering Sazed, the main issue with him is his extreme agility and gravity bending abilities. His biggest weakness is a lack of shardplate- with no shard plate he can't survive any major blows. There is an obvious counter which would allow you to much more effectively wound and kill him. Go outside. Have a good relay system to warn of his coming and when he attacks go outside where there is no ceiling or wall. Have an emergency escape option at all times which allows you to quickly flee in multiple directions to the outside. You could even have a panic room specially built to flee to which made it harder for him to use his abilities. Have a group of crossbow or bow or sling troops close by the important target at all times and have them spread out to take potshots at Sazed. Sazed is fast, but if he is being attacked at range from multiple directions and having to fight shard holders or sword fighters he's likely to make errors. Every time he makes an error he'll become more vulnerable to more errors, before his healing kicks in. Build trap walls. Put some sort of wallpaper on the walls and put broken glass shards behind that paper in the throne room. If he goes to the walls then he'll break through and slice up his legs. Have men with bags of broken glass attack him. If he slashes at them momentum will carry the broken glass towards his body, if they have freedom to attack they can throw a lot of broken glass at him. Every injury will make fighting harder.

http://www.livescience.com/62-walking-water-insect-secret-revealed.html You can stand on water with just water tension but it's rather hard to walk. Too easy for your legs to sink in. Insects that walk on water have special superhydrophobic legs that trap air bubbles. These stop you getting wet and make floating easily.

We had a lot of disagreements, but they were mostly based on four concepts which we hadn't defined sufficiently at the start of the debate, or sought information out on. It was frustrating for both of us because we had our mental webs span and our ideas in our head we didn't talk about. Your main counters were based on four things. 1. Drabs don't lose any function when they lose their breaths. 2. A definition of instincts that precludes motor skills. 3. Me believing that a lot of instinct carries over. 4. The functions awakened objects do aren't instincts, so they must be imagination. I provided direct quotes that refuted all four of your points. Drabs have fuzzier minds after they lose a breath, not just after a week of being ill. Brandon defines instincts widely and regularly uses and references the difference between knowing what you are doing and instinctively doing something. He describes walking as instinct, a complex motor action, implying he thinks habits are instinct. I provided quotes saying you treat a breath like a part of your body, implying you give it the unconscious instincts. I provided a direct quote from Vivenne where she tried to imagine awakening an object, failed, and did it unconsiously. So, in summary, Brandon came down from the sky and it's more likely he supports me than you. I wouldn't be that hopeful for your theory to make better predictions than mine. Drabs probably will be less intelligent, breaths will probably be somewhat sentient and intelligent, they will be limited by instincts not imagination, and Arsteel's emotions and instincts will be stored in his fifty breaths. I shall.

We do see a drab with a fuzzy mind, Brandon directly says so. Since it was in the first edition I went looking again. It was rather paradoxical that a breath had no cognition to me. Lifeless got cognition upon receiving a breath. That strongly implied, to me, that breaths were giving them cognition. You convinced me that the evidence I saw of breaths sharpening or dulling minds was just illness, that we should have seen more note made of the issue if it happened. I believed you. But given in the first edition Brandon directly said that less breaths meant a foggy mind I think it's quite likely that they do have some cognition. If a goblet can have cognition, a breath can too probably. Her stomach growled. She was learning to ignore it. Just as the people ignored her. She didn’t feel like she was a true beggar or child of the street, not after just one week. But she was learning to imitate them, and her mind felt so fuzzy lately. Ever since she’d gotten rid of her Breath. http://brandonsanderson.com/library/94/Warbreaker-Chapter-Thirty-Nine Instinctive Awakening: All persons of the Sixth Heightening and above immediately understand and can use basic Awakening Commands without training or practice. More difficult Commands are easier for them to master and to discover. The Commands themselves were simple to say, but providing the right mental impulse was difficult. It was like learning to control a second body. Vivenna was quick. Yes, she had a lot of Breath. That made it easier, but true Instinctive Awakening—the ability to Awaken objects without training or practice—was a gift granted only by the Sixth Heightening. That was one step beyond even what Returned had, with their single deific Breath. Vivenna was far from that stage. She learned faster than she should have, even if he knew she was frustrated by how often she got things wrong. I know that awakening isn't a biological behaviour, but Brandon uses the word instinct for something you learn. He likes the word instinct, so I am copying his use. He explains what it means, an ability you can use without training or practise. None of that sounds instinctual. Let's assume I accept your cricism and all of my things are unsupportable and out of bounds. You note that this goblet has a memory of its past, waits for an input of how it should change, actively draws her magic in, and turns to pure blood when she doesn't give clear orders. When you don't give a breath clear orders it just hangs around in a shirt. The goblet mangaged to work out something new to do based. That is not instinct, or determinism. Plus, how many goblets have you know that instinctively turn to blood in your hands? That seems like a creative decision, not an instinct. It's not unbelievable, I'm fine with them having that. A rope has a cognitive aspect therefore you can transfer your cognitive aspect to it? That logic doesn't follow. Besides which, I doubt a rope's cognitive aspect is that good at grabbing or being a muscle. We are both fighting. You feel I am wrong and see so clearly you are right and so are shocked that I disagree and are fighting me really hard. We don't have enough evidence for this, but I feel that my evidence is stronger. It is a fact that we have, to my knowledge, no evidence anywhere of cognition being something you can embed in an object. I did make a number of suggestions of how it could work. Changing a theory to fit the evidence isn't a mark of a poor theory. In the field of developmental psychology there is indeed a great deal of debate about the difference between innate biological instincts and habits you learn and repeat in a similar manner. For example, if you take birds and tie up their wings, when you release them at the time most birds fly they can also fly- the motions of flying are a biological ability they have. A baby cannot control its bladder when born. They can control it a year later. Is that an example of a learned behaviour, or an example of their biological organs gaining the ability with growth? It's a complex debate. A man, just like his father, does well in finances. Is that because his father taught him the habit of how to be a good businessman, or because he has an instinct for understanding people and numbers? For most casual people though, habit and instinct are intermixed. I wouldn't be able to tell you whether grabbing, tensing, or picking things up were habits or instincts, but most people would happily call either instincts. “Well then, if I must,” she said, tossing her head and commanding her hair become a deep auburn red. It flushed midtoss, flaring from yellow to red like ink bleeding into a pool of clear water. Then she made it grow. The ability was more instinctive than conscious—like flexing a muscle. I didn’t have to learn to speak again when I Returned, he thought. I didn’t have to learn to walk again, or read again, or anything like that. Only my personal memory was lost. But not all of it, apparently. Is flexing a muscle instinctive? Is walking, reading? It may be a learned habit. I don't think Brandon cares much. I'll also note, the fact that when his breath returned from Endowment he kept his instincts is intriguing. Let me just drop this quote in here. He nodded. “You have to form the Command in your head, not just speak it. The Breath you give up, it’s part of your life. Your soul, you Idrians would say. When you Awaken something, it becomes part of you. If you’re good— and practiced—the things you Awaken will do what you expect of them. They’re part of you. They understand, just like your hands understand what you want them to do.” It suggests that the breaths know what to in the same way your hands know what to do. That hints they inherit your body's habits or instincts, not another person's. We don't see any awakeners or drab(bar returned) do any complex tasks that require learning new instincts, the only Drab we see trying to learn a new skill (begging) sucks at it. That's one theory. We know Brandon said that not much identity crosses over, so we know that theory is false. Whatever remains of the Drab's soul retains most of their skills. Why does it violate the narrative of Drabs losing out if they lose their spare capacity? How do you know your soul doesn't know how to extend or retract your body or how to defend yourself in the form of a cloak? The wiki article doesn't address whether any of the actions breaths do are instinct or habit. From what we've seen of how commands work, the breaths animate the material as though it were a body (with veins and muscles) and then extend or contract that muscle. Empathy+normal gripping instincts for the first two. Fight for me as if you were me, his sword fighting instincts. That level of intelligence and skill though suggests sentience in the breaths. Likewise with the straw people that he thanks after tasks. I see emotions as the realm of the spiritual realm, so I am happy with learned physical behaviour being in there. She opened her eyes, focusing on her bonds. She pictured them untying again, but somehow that felt wrong. She was like a child, sitting and staring at a leaf, trying to make it move just by concentrating on it. That wasn’t the way her newfound senses worked. They were part of her. So, instead of concentrating, she relaxed, letting her unconscious mind do the work. A little like she did when she changed the color of her hair. She tried imagining it, that doesn't work. I don't have any special need for instincts to be in one realm or the other, I simply like to have evidence for my claims. You are growing weary that i disagree with you, yes. Yes, and I disliked you being cruel to me by taunting me. I don't think it's productive in debates. I must agree that if the person's cognition was making the decision, it's fair to just say it was happening inside Nightblood? As Brandon defines instincts (walking for example) they all take place within your volition. I've seen drunk people ignore pain more and ignore hunger and miss themselves when they try to catch themselves. Ah, I agree with you, that implies the sword has cognition. Well, we obviously had different definitions of sentience. I was using it in terms of awareness. Feelings, senses, that sort of stuff. A non sentient thing would be dull minded and not feel anything. So sentience means being able to make choices? He may also mean perception. I assumed it meant awareness of your surroundings. Sentience could require multiple realms easily enough.

Indeed, but we are mostly in agreement so we're pretty close to resolving it all. I think the most important reliability thing is that they are written by the same author. It may have been tweaked, but the author found it perfectly plausible that less breaths would leave someone feeling fuzzy. The author, at one point, thought that was perfectly fair and plausible given his understanding of the world. Divine breaths may be tweaking the physical stat because souls are connected to the physical stat. We are just trying to predict the future. I am as happy to agree as disagree with you. As much as you might dislike it, Vivienne being fuzzy while is likely to be due to the breaths- Brandon showing us the negative effects of a loss of breaths. It's not evidence against it. I'd put it at fifty fifty. It would mean the drab/lifeless/awakener thing made more sense, if there was some small degree of cognition in the breaths. Your system has less data- Brandon never clearly defines spiritual and cognitive and physical. You can't make a reasoned system without data. Okay, I suppose this is as good a place as any to actually explain myself as regards to my dislike of instincts as you have them, namely in the Spiritual realm: The Reach of the Cognitive Realm (and why instincts are in there): The goblet sees she has a problem (she wants him to change) remembers the past (it's always been a goblet) explains its past with no emotion (always been the same- perhaps giving a reason to change) and says what it will do to solve her problem. It asks her for spirit (warmth I presume means spirit energy) to change. Fits the definition of cognition clearly. It pays attention to its surroundings, understands and produces language, solves problems, and makes reasoned decisions based on the data. It is different from awakened objects. They don't pay attention to their surroundings, responding only to a single stimuli. They don't understand or produce language. They don't solve problems (an intelligent human can use them to solve problems though) and they make snap judgements based on simple ideas and stimuli. The example of cognition you provided that a goblet made was nothing like an instinct. It considered a problem, considered its history, sought out a creative solution, and requested spiritual energy. An instinct is a fixed respose to a stimuli. No creativity, no thoughts of history, no requests for support from companions (though you can have the instinct to call for help), no deviation due to the complexities of a problem. Not in a single instinct, at least. Why, by the beard of Zeus, do I insist on this instinct being stored in the breath? Because all the evidence points to that. That is another possible explanation I hadn't thought of, yes. Vivienne wouldn't necessarily see a small object moving between them. I guess. Breaths may have direct control over full memories too. You're digging at me? Ugh. I'm not really an expert on how large the soul is and how large or small its spare capacity is. You might or might not see some mental effect on Drabs and Awakeners- he hinted in edition 1 that you do. He could do that easily enough. This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, the Breaths infused in him did their best to interpret their Command. What they decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn't want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly. Let me reword it. This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, returned lady did her best to visualize what evil was. What she decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn't want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly. His cooking was instinctual- he had no idea what he was doing or why, just that he had to do it. Likewise with the fighting. He couldn't teach people because he didn't understand his moves. http://brandonsanderson.com/library/123/Warbreaker-Prime-Mythwalker-Chapter-Seven Devin reached for the flower, deciding he might as well follow the ‘recipe’ Den had given him. However, he paused. I should cook the meat first, he thought. But, how did he know that? He moved uncertainly at first, but gained more confidence as he worked. He started to boil the meat in a small pot, and started cooking the vegetables in a separate one. He knew almost instinctually which spices to add to which pot, even though he didn’t even know what half of them were. I need cleanwater, Devin realized. The stew wouldn’t taste half as good without something to dull the taste of the salt. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the men were in the habit of collecting rain. Or, if they did collect it, the probably drank it immediately. From five. http://brandonsanderson.com/library/121/Warbreaker-Prime-Mythwalker-Chapter-Five Yet, he understood what he was doing. He knew how to prepare for each combination of attacks. He knew how to watch and wait for an opening. He knew when his chance came and, almost without thinking, he knew how to sink his sword straight into the unarmored spot under the Guard's arm. Drugging him or making him tired would impair him. If you stuck a knife in him that would also impair his instincts (which he noted when a person tried to sneakily knife him). What's your point? I am not saying that instincts and spirituality is independent of your physical form. We know cognition and spiritual power are both dependent on your physical form. Your life flutters if you're dying physically, your mind gets fuzzy if you are ill physically. And there his skill is arbitrarily raised by direct magical intervention boosting his instincts. I agree. And it's easy to have a good immune system unless you don't eat right or are immune system impaired, it's easy to be strong as long as you have leverage. It's all easy because people are in the right situation, not because it simply is so. Your theory is not established since we don't know that it does have a stunted cognitive aspect. I was hoping you'd point out some time when Nightblood solved a problem creatively, or correctly used its memory to predict the future, or made a decision based on multiple sensory inputs, or some major marker of partial cognition or do something to prove your theory. 1. We don't see any evidence of cognition in breaths. 2. I was guessing that while the breaths are wandering about a person's body they pick up what it's like to grab from the soul in your hands. If from my first theory they are blank when endowed to another they might pick up the nature of being alive when they're in a new person. Under your theory, the breaths directly take a cognitive aspect from the person which controls their form- your thoughts make them want to form muscles and grab. Under one theory they are limited by what you can do, in another they are limited by your imagination. You can learn new instincts and so presumably have spare capacity. Under my theory of how breaths are made, some or all of that spare capacity is is in breaths. Whatever is not being used. Or all of your breath might know what it feels like to grab. Drabs feel that loss. Yes, I agree. Can you provide some clear quote from Brandon that sentience, the ability to have subjective experiences, means something must be cognitive? If that's true that blows your theory out of the water. The breath's main effect is sentience (they enhance your subjective experience of colours) so it seems quite clear that breaths are made of sentience. The drab issue is fair. My theory requires no cognition. But if less breaths means a fuzzier mind (and it did in first edition) then they may have some cognitive aspect. They may have some mind sharing, though likely not as strong or perfect due to having less breaths. I'm trying to understand what you're saying. Under the theory which you accepted, more breaths meant more emotional or spiritual strength and more ability to communicate with or command breaths. An awakener with more experience can command them better. The god emperor was able to make a cloth hold a particular thing, the knife at the end. Vasher was only able to make a rope curl around an object he threw them at. I am not saying that all awakened objects have a perfect set of all instincts which they follow accurately at all times. I agree that fingers shouldn't need lots of breaths to be fingers, but he didn't ask them to just be fingers. He asked them to monitor his fingers and copy his movements I presume. They had to sense his actions and amplify them in a certain way. I have done that. I have copied other hands. But I wouldn't say it's a common action of mine, or one I have a good instinct for. There are also many possible interpretations of upon call, become my fingers and grip. Grip what, his hand, his arm, the enemy, the ground? Become fingers, cut off the hand and replace fingers, copy your movements exactly, copy in an exaggerated fashion? I understand your theory, that breaths are a power source and a cognitive aspect is the guider, with the efficiency of actions depending on how efficiently the cognitive aspect can work, with less good aspects causing power leakage. I disagree. Indeed, if we can find more sources as you did.

yes it is. Just skip anything you feel is repeated or too long. Indeed it may have been altered, but having some new information that doesn't directly contradict something adds some degree of evidence to it being true. Yeah, unless I said explicitly it was in the first version my quotes were from the final version. The author said that bodies remembered being alive so they were easier to animate. I hardly think it's a stretch to say that breaths remember being alive so they animate bodies easier- a reason for it seeking patterns of life. We know that divine breaths can increase muscle size say. That implies that breaths interact with physical strength. It could be a quirk of divine magic, or you may well have to eat your shoes. Nightblood senses using people's senses, not their own- it may well be that awakened objects do the same. We are trying to explain how breaths work so I thought it was relevent. It may have been crossed out because he wanted to show not tell. The illness may have just been another factor. With this direct quote that aspect is more likely to be true. We shall see. You're taking the cognitive stuff from other books. It's just as reasonable to take the metal magic aspects to interpret it. Brandon Sanderson likely thinks in those terms. We have to think like him. Ctrl f and breath is really helpful with the entire book. Yes, that was what I meant. Giving a fixed response to a stimuli is instinct. You tap someone, they jerk away. Denth stood for a long moment, foot on Vasher’s arm, sword lowered. Then, finally, he shook his head. “No. I don’t deserve that. Neither of us do. Goodbye, Vasher.” He said that too. With the all that, I'd presume you can endow another with your memory, since Denth doesn't wish it on Vasher (as they are bad memories). The girl probably endowed Vasher with her emotional memories (hence the flicker), implying memories are within breaths. While she might cognitively remember what happened the experience would have no emotional impact on her so she wouldn't have to cry at night. Yeah, a voluntary self done process like endowment. It's likely that the endowment magic is similar to most endowment magic where breath is endowed on another. Neither side knew much about how breaths work. Both were wrong in various ways. And it may be that I or you is closer to the truth- breaths might have more identity than one would think, or less. Be closer or further frorm souls. We can't say for sure, though my suggestion, it only takes what is not needed, probably works. It can make a human twitch easily. It has enough force. A lot of energy is clearly required to imitate muscles and skin and such. Awakened objects are installed with a single instinct or command, as we have seen. They are incomplete. Your interpretation would probably be phrased by him in a different manner- if it was the person's cognitive aspect he would have likely said that the person's personal meaning of what is evil is instilled in the sword and that the lady who created it didn't understand evil. In the novel which formed the basis of Warbreaker(you can read it from the warbreaker portal in deleted scenes) a boy was the heir to a dynasty. This dynasty had the magical ability of skill. They could quickly pick up any skill with little effort. The entire dynasty got killed and the boy got all of it. Without the slightest act of will he could pick up any skill or ability. He could fight better than a skilled and magically strong prince, cook better than a master chef, climb a wall better than the best climber. With no mental strain he can just turn on advanced muscle memory. Skill is just another stat in many books and games. And most things you do with your body require no conscious intervention. You can walk without thinking, grab without thinking. You said he sounded more like a psychopathic man child than a being of instinct. A psychopathtic man child would, presumably, be a being of emotion as children don't think clearly about things but I can't really challenge you saying Nighty is not a being of instinct and emotion if you offer no argument. It's fairly narrow, and was what I had in mind before as it's the definition. Occam's razor requires explaining everything that happens. Since the breaths do make decisions, some explanation for how they make decisions is necessary. It's not unwarranted and unnecessary if it's required to explain all observations. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22I+made+a+choice+on+instinct&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=ZjV&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22I+decided+on+instinct%22&oq=%22I+decided+on+instinct%22&gs_l=serp.3...6445.11924.2.13477.25.23.2.0.0.3.167.2690.4j19.23.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.kdsppYrIFKo&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=460fa893879c26b0&biw=1519&bih=634 Yes, people often decide based on instincts. If you fall, you don't have time to think about what would be the best course of action considering all the possible factors. You grab something close by to slow your fall or put your hands out in front of you. Just as a rope grabs when thrown. It's fairly easy to judge whether someone is evil too, based on surface judgements and stereotypes. These decisions do not involve processing much information, just seeings stuff, accessing how you feel about things and repeating a set of actions. The handless thing would be hard to do. You'd need fifty or so handless people to give you their breaths. Would be interesting to see though. People do remember phantom hands though- it'd be better to cut baby's hands off at birth and take their breaths later in life to be scientific. It may also be that breaths take some or all of their instincts from the person using breaths. Could a handless person make a hand command? The drab presumably retains their instincts, remaining functional, but might well not be as good at learning new ones. It would be hard to distinguish this from their depression which causes a lack of motivation. If breaths could do anything you could think of then they would be able to easily solve problems for you. By making them limited to simple commands you force people to think of how to do crazy things with simple commands. He is increasing creativity with his limitation. Instincts involve no planning, at most snap judgements based on a simple sensory input, and need no thought. Thinking involves long term plans, considering many complex factors in depth, and a strong understanding of indirect causation. It doesn't compromise the existence of the cognitive realm, and even if breaths were fully sentient cognitive beings I don't see how that would compromise the cognitive realm, any more than humans being sentient compromises the cognitive realm. I do not know where you get your ideas of what I believe. These are soul fragments (broken and incomplete) animating pieces of rope which are nothing like what they are used to. I doubt they have perfect access to people's minds or find it that easy to carry out orders. That they can do anything at all is impressive. I am calling them a bundle of instinct, not a fully capable being. I agreed with you that they had no thought. That level of thought requires cognition. Besides which, on a hot day there are many things you could hold. You might need to grab enemies during a fight on hot days too. Intellect is honed over millenia too. And they probably have a partial instinct, being soul fragments. I am unsure what you're saying. Breaths are stupid, and instinct is intelligent and cognitive functions are stupid, so it's more likely they are animated by a cognitive function? Surely cognition is by definition smart. It is how your brain processes information to make decisions. Instincts are often stupid, being a repetitive response to a stimuli. If I accept all your arguments about breath, that it is wasteful and suboptimal, then surely that would sugggest it was based off something that was unable to process information, not something that could? Tis only possible with more information though.

I'm going through version 1 of the book for anything interesting that he removed. I've found a few things. I'm gonna post the best things here. "“Lower me,” he Commanded. The large tapestry—woven from wool threads—sucked hundreds of Breaths from him. It hadn’t the form of a man, and it was massive in size, but Vasher now had enough Breath to spend in such extravagant Awakenings. The tapestry twisted, a thing alive, and formed a hand, which picked Vasher up. As always, the Awakening tried to imitate the form of a human—looking closely at the twistings and undulations of the fabric, Vasher could see outlines of muscles and even veins. There was no need for them; the Breath animated the fabric, and no muscles were necessary for it to move." The breath remembers what muscles and veins felt like. Remember how that metal magic could steal strength? sDNA and muscles may be partially in the soul. "Dramatic, Nightblood noted. The sunset? Vasher asked. Yes. You can’t see it, he said to the sword. But I can feel you seeing it. Crimson. Like blood in the air." Awakened objects cannot see directly, but can sense and use the sight of humans. From first edition. She carried the rope tucked into the dress’s pocket pouch, hidden behind a fold of cloth on the side. She’d grown so accustomed to having a certain amount of Breath that missing a fraction, even the small bit contained in the rope, felt wrong. And from 1st edition, crossed out. As if her mind were slightly dulled and foggy. Also from 1st edition, crossed out. "Lightsong shrugged. “Anyway, my servants broke this one for me. The stronger and more skilled the Awakener who created the Lifeless, the more difficult it is to break it.”" I'd guess that some emotional fortitude is passed on from the awakener, along with their cognition boosting intelligence. “Hold that branch,” she Commanded. Again, Breath left her. More of it this time. Her trousers drained of color, and the rope end twisted, wrapping around the branch. The rest of it remained still. So the amount of breath used varies from command to command. When Vasher is explaining lifeless "Why are Lifeless so dull-minded, while Returned fully sentient?” Was in 1st edition "why can't lifeless remember their past." I guess he thought that was too revealing. Lifeless lack memory. "His Command incorporated making the rope respond to taps of his finger along its length. " Awakened objects can remember commands. "“That man saw and did terrible things,” Denth said. “I’ve tried, Vasher. I’ve tried going back. But the darkness. . .it’s inside. I can’t escape it. My laughter has an edge to it. I can’t forget.” “I can make you,” Vasher said. “I know the Commands.” Denth froze. “I promise,” Vasher said. “I will take it all from you, if you wish.”" Breath magic can take away memories, presumably giving it to another person. I have little desire to contest you further on this. We shall see. I am trying to use the word breath more- you'll remember in the book the princess' kingdom called them souls, and I adapted that till you showed me they were part of a soul, not all of it. Drabs likely retain most of their function because endowment seperated the soul as such to leave them functional. We've been told the number of souls you need isn't proportional to the ease of a task. It's proportional to how close to a human the thing is. Ok, I shall hold you to that. You shall eat your shoes if a soul is removed. I remember one story where the thief of the book was trapped in a prison and had to alter the souls of every stone in a wall to break it down- i could imagine that she may have to swap souls in and out of stones or people. Use her forging talent on things other than the emperor's soul. I am tired too. Emotional memory would be memory of how it felt to do things, and your impressions of things. For example, you like a person, you move your arm, you dislike being cut. Well, there's no evidence for or against your theory, so I can't really contest it. Why is pumping up the immune system stat different from pumping up the muscle skill stat? And you could go talk to an immunologist and ask them how easy it was to boost an immune system. Ask them if its simple. Go talk to someone who designs eye prosthetics and ask them how easy it is to boost someone's senses. If you believe that moving fingers isn't simple because a roboticist would disagree, I don't see how you can say boosting someone's immune system is different. You do react to disease, your body secretes chemical compounds and raises its temperature and produces immune cells. He does, but you don't present any quotes or references from him so I can't really contest what you're saying in any way. You could simplify everything down to instincts, but you wouldn't be following the definition of the world. From wiki. Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior. The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus. That is indeed what all awakened objects do. They carry out a fixed action pattern with a short sequence of actions without variation in response to some stimuli. Grabbing onto things is an instinct most have. Anyone who's picked up something has it. You don't need to think about how to curl your fingers or adapt to minor variations in the environment. The awakener says when the breaths carry out those instincts. http://brandonsanderson.com/article/100/Sandersons-Second-Law Sanderson's Second Law can be written very simply. It goes like this: Limitations > Powers He loves limitations. Do you know the author well? And the vast majority of the descriptions of awakenings involve some simple action- muscles pulsating, a hand grabbing or waving. He makes the magic system, adds lots of limitations, and then tries to carry out what he has to do. I, like the author, think limitations make a story more interesting. Hold what things? Hold themselves? Make a cup to hold water? Hold a key to open a door? Hold back someone from a fight? there's a lot of possibilities as to what hold things could mean. The existence of almost purely cognitive beings is another confusing thing which could have a number of possible implications. Our issue is how does cognition arise in the physical plane? There may be other ways for it to arise in the cognitive realm, but it is an important issue how it arises in the physical planes. Say hypothetically, cognition arises on the physical plane when spiritual energy meets a divine spark. That doesn't prove that that is the only way for cognitive beings to arise on the cognitive plane.

Under my model, just as a piece of cloth remembers being alive a soul remembers being alive and can do things like stretch their fingers and strangle people. How is that messy? Good to agree. It's probably a pretty large chunk of the soul, given the large effect. If the breaths are doing the command independently rather than being directly commanded by a cognitive aspect then they need to remember those commands. They also presumably have senses to monitor the environment. Forging will probably involve transferring a soul into a body, or removing a soul from a body. That was a possible consequence. It was clearly not that great an idea, but you found awesome sources which suggested that it does exist in certain situations and will be important for the next book. My idea of emotional memory was to explain multiple observations that suggested that such memory existed. It's possible a cognitive aspect was bundled in, but I can't see anything he could have been simplifying it from. I haven't expressed any support of negative side effects from losing your native soul since you gave a source which said the effect was small. Emotional memory, on the other hand, has substantially more evidence. You have been very good with accepting the implications of what is said. What he said in that annotation clearly has some implications- the breaths have some sort of ability to make choices. You've had some trouble with that single implication. Ok, I agree that moving fingers is not a simple task, any more than curing diseases is, or seeing colours in more complexity. It's simple though cognitively. Your body takes care of it for you. It requires no sentience or cognition. Yes, I know. Both of those are covered by flight or fight adrenal instincts. If spiritual means propelling you through the world and cognitive means reacting to it, then breaths, which enhance your senses, allow you to react better to diseases, and give you a sensation of when you are being watched are clearly cognitive aspects. http://brandonsanderson.com/library/106/Warbreaker-Chapter-Fifty-One Notice that almost every sentence nightblood makes involves a sensation or an order or a location. Go there, do this, i feel that. The sort of things that your emotions and senses tell you. There's a person, go there, he feels bad, flimsy justification, kill him. "We should kill him, Nightblood continued. Come on. We should do it. We really should do it. “Why do you care?” Vasher whispered. “You don’t know him.” He’s evil, Nightblood said." That is nightblood's wisdom. We should do something because that person is bad. It's not a cognitive wisdom, it's an instinct wisdom. "That man down there, Nightblood said. The god in the palace. He holds the power to start this war. You don’t want this war to start. That’s why he’s evil. “Why does that make him evil?” Because he will do what you don’t want him to. “We don’t know that for certain,” Vasher said. “Plus, who is to say that my judgment is best?” It is, Nightblood said. Let’s go. Let’s kill him. You told me war is bad. He will start a war. He’s evil. Let’s kill him. Let’s kill him." That person there, he is powerful in a way you don't want, war is bad, so he should die. Emotional instincts. Nightblood is explaining the sort of instant emotional judgement you make when you're pulsing with adrenaline. Perhaps. It depends on what cognitive aspects require to exist. With, why ought the cognitive die, it may be that cognitive functions are dependent on there being a physical.

Retaining long term memory is likely a cognitive aspect. I was more talking about some sort of less effective spiritual memory. I don't think we have any major disagreements here, if you agree spiritual memory is possible. It's clear (thanks to you hard work on the internet) he is saying identity slips through and it will be a major issue in the next book. Small, but important. Since we want to make predictions about the next book understanding what he means is very important. Another piece of grist for your evil mill: "Zas678 [our very own] Ah, ok. I guess Endowment is similar to Hemalurgy, if less agonizing, ripping a fragment of a person's soul away, and that bit has divine magic embedded in it. Since your theory is based on assuming he didn't mean what he said, it doesn't have much predictive power. Personally I will just adapt your theory with a slight tweak. You did just quote Brandon saying that some part of the breath crosses over and it'll be important in the next book. And he has said that not much crosses, implying some does. Why should drabs be dumb? I am assuming all the cognitive aspect is retained. I was unaware that breaths were a part of the soul, not the whole soul. So I thought them having it all was part of the cosmology, and was wrong about that. Still, my idea may hold some merit. It may be that endowment chops off any part of the soul that is necessary for functioning- active spiritual memory, identity etc (though not perfectly). That identity part stays with the person, thus making drabs more functional than one might predict. Endowment may have considered this a kindness. The drab would have everything they needed to live, and would be able to give to the person they trusted. She did have a lot of breaths. Any weaknesses in them would be covered. With the emperor's soul we will be dealing with a single emperor soul, so any issues in transferring a single soul should be covered. We do have one, but as you said you are ignoring it as it hurts your theory. They don't carry out complex cognitive commands- they do things like act as fingers, protect people, strange people, cause chaos. All things that require no thought, just instinct. They never do anything cognitive like writing out a message, or mathematics, or considering the wisdom of actions. I wonder, does Nightbringer ever cognate?

She had been bonded to a KR in the old days, when the Bond broke, she lost sentience to the low level of normal spren. She says that before the Bond she was only able to remember things for some minutes. So there was something left. Which brings me to the conclusion that she has a cognitive aspect on her own. I've seen a few people note that she had some memory for several minutes when she had no bond. I can't confirm it without the book. I agree that they react to stimuli like automatons, and suspect that instinct is how they do that. Breaths, which go to the afterlife, can remember visions. In the quote that shook your mind about nightbringer, breaths could remember and interpret a command, carrying it out to their best ability. How do we know breaths aren't full souls? I am not saying they have the capacity to store an entire personality, I am simply stating what we know about them. With Brandon Sanderson's quote say, he suggested that they do store some of the essence of a criminal, it's just not brought along for some reason. It may well not take much soul to be 90% sentient. The people in the cosmere are all humans, so unless he changes the nature of humans they should all have basically the same nature. It's like selling a person to someone and then realizing they aren't supposed to have arms and then cutting off their arms rather than only giving them a torso, head, and legs. I am assuming he changes his magic systems rather than his humans. The awakeners have oodles of breaths mostly so any weaknesses in the breaths would be less because they have so many. In the sequel the author said he wants to go back to basics with less soul usage so they can be more skillful. Then these issues with souls may become more prominent. Anyway, we really don't have enough evidence to say exactly what would happen. It's worth looking out for any evidence confirming or denying this theory though with the emperor's soul. Breaths have instinct to carry out orders and memory to remember orders.

Thank you, I am happy to admit when you are right. Thank you, I'm happy for you to run with this and accept your delicious cookie. With me saying breaths have memory and some ability to think those would be spiritual memories and spiritual decision making abilities- humans do have emotional memories and do make decisions based on emotions often. Spren, spiritual beings, also seem to have some memory so they can interpret the world. This is very different from long term cognitive memory or reasoned decision making. This will probably have implications for magical swords and Arsteel. The breaths he got may have absorbed some of his spiritual memory somewhat before he died, being blank. They could serve as backup hard drives. Since Jewels is in love she probably won't mind if she can get him back emotionally, even if he's a tad retarded due to losing his cognitive aspect. Otherwise I agree with your wise words on connections. That all sounds good and many predictions can be made from it. That's a good idea, and would fit in with what we know. It would be interesting to see in the book if people with more breaths had better empathy. Or it could be that they float about in the void, slowly forgetting everything they know and becoming blank messes of emotion. They are in the body of the empire, and regularly cause issues when they rebel. In general, his magic systems work by taking some aspect of the world (colours, metals, honor etc) and powering it with souls or shards or something. If breaths were substantially different from what people have inside them (souls) in other worlds it would be a large change in the cosmology. Souls in the other world hold only spiritual aspects and I am not contesting that. Indeed, but lifeless breaths take on many extra functions- they provide immunity to disease, power muscles, stop hunger. Lifeless breaths may not be bound in the right areas since they have other functions. Without Brandon directly creating it it's not that reliable a guide on his thought processes. Anyone could have written that bit. Hmmm. He says breaths do bring some things along with them, implying that breaths are impacted by your personality but these things aren't brought along. It may well be that endowment's magic wipes breaths clean during the transfer to make the magic system work better. And he says, for the most part so it's not complete. If you tell me there is a dragon terrorizing the English countryside, I would ask you which papers you were reading, the muggle ones or the wizarding ones. The strength of evidence depends on the totality of evidence. The quote clearly does say most aspects aren't brought along, but does imply many aspects are kept but just not brought along. 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. 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. These cognitive entities may be as complex as a human mind. Or more so. I mostly agree, though some mention of instinct (a spiritual trait) and emotional memory (also a spiritual trait) is also good for a complete theory. It explains how breaths animate things.

You are right, I made an error. I agree, I was wrong about it affecting cognition upon rereading, and forgot Jewels wasn't one of the five scholars. When he met Siri he quickly picked up writing. Super fast learning. Based on what you said I have another theory. You are saying that souls have no cognition, correct? And cognition is imposed on souls to make them work? Then why does adding more breaths to a person make them a more powerful awakener? I think souls may have an instinctual emotional life. They probably have some amount of emotional memory and can make decisions but are much less smart than a person- they have little if any cognition. Based on the magic metals and sprens I think this understanding of them is reasonable. Adding more souls gives you a stronger emotional signal which makes it easier for the souls you use to understand what you want. It makes visualisation more simple. Objects with almost sentient behavior like nightblood in Warbreaker share important links with the Spren from tWoK. If you understand the spren you will understand a lot about the connection between the books.-BS https://sites.google.com/site/brandonothology/QA-by-book/warbreaker Our breaths can remember events poorly (as returned do) can make decisions (how to carry out the formation of the magic sword) and more spiritual energy makes them more obedient. So i would predict that Spren would also be instinctual enough to make decisions, have some degree of memory, and a stronger spirit would make them more magical. They should not have cognition. Syl (http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Sylphrena an honorspren) was instinctual and had memory (if short term) and didn't have cognition without a body. She said she only had short term memory too apparantly of several minutes before meeting a person. Maybe if souls are away from a body for long they start to forget? They're easy to overwrite so if they go with a new person they're quickly dominated by them. I'd imagine surgebinding is similar to endowment as our shards use similar magics. I'd hope that whoever is maintaining the afterlife has some way to keep souls functional for more than a few minutes. Otherwise Sazed may have failed to get the souls to come back because they had forgotten everything. Humans have used slave labour tainted by resistance for most of human history. It's not an issue. Magical things make the magic function is going to have to be part of any explanation. Endowment draws some lines. I think the emotional thing would explain where the author drew the line well enough. They have instincts and some memories and lots of emotional sensitivity and spiritual energy. The books are all connected. I doubt he's going to change cosmology for one book's ease. It may be that when spiritual energy meets physical matter in the right configuration cognition is generated (cognition is the bridging realm after all) and drabs have just enough spiritual energy to maintain cognition. Lifeless do too, but the souls aren't properly bound in such a way as to make them functional. Yeah. I think it's clear spiritual power can do all sorts of weird stuff. Wiki says copper steals mental fortitude. RPGs aren't reliable. Do we have a hard confirmation from the book that mental fortitude means stealing intellect? I agree. Well, if commands were based on long speeches I imagine it would be more dependent on cognition than feeling it out. Does anyone in any other book gather multiple souls into themselves? http://brandonsanderson.com/library/114/Warbreaker-Epilogue She said nothing of that; she just walked on, her life sense letting her feel the jungle around them. They’d recovered Vasher’s cloak, shirt, and trousers—the ones that Denth had originally taken from him. There had been enough Breath in those to split between the two of them and get them each to the Second Heightening. It wasn’t as much as she was used to, but it was a fair bit better than nothing. Vasher was sharing his breaths with her, surely. And he had his divine breath. We really do not get enough people talking about breaths to clearly say what happens if you have a different breath in you. De http://www.brandonsanderson.com/library/115/warbreaker-Ars-Arcanum Breaths aren't interchangable, they vary in strength. Note Three: The numbers given in the table above are only estimates, as very little is known about the upper Heightenings. Indeed, even for the lower levels, fewer or more Breaths may be required to achieve a given Heightening, depending on circumstances and the strength of the Breath. Do you remember when Lightsong takes a child's breath to feed him? Brandon mentions somewhere that the people chose to give him a child rather than an old person because a child's breath is stronger and would make him feel better. He could survive on either (or even on his divine breath) but children's breaths were better. Can't find that quote sadly. Denth was lying about them being interchangable. He lied about a lot of things. We know breaths aren't interchangable. Some are stronger than others. An absence of evidence isn't a weight of evidence. Yeah. So the rat thing seems ok. We really have zero knowledge on the size of a human mind, so I am going to stick with Brandon's word, Shadow.

It is sad being wrong, but it's awesome knowing that you have a fairly solid theory Jewel had a breath, she was a returned and never experienced being an actual Drab. She had a divine breath too so she had a very strong breath, if hidden. Could be the disease, could be the breath. It isn't clear which. If we assume you are right, we can say at least that a breath prevents you from getting diseases which make your mind fuzzy, and so affects cognition indirectly. I agree somewhat. I'd guess that the body's spiritual aspects have overlapping and and similar aspects to that of the soul. Well, they may be able to tap these benefits to some degree. The emperor was surprisingly intelligent and fast at learning for some random guy they found in the countryside. But I'd assume that the fact that everyone gives their soul away willingly means less resistance, and everyone has a fragment of endowment (just as others had a fragment of preservation in them) in them that does magical things to make the magic be functional. I don't particularly see why one thing is arbitrary and one thing is part and parcel of the magic system. One benefit of the magic system could be that that you can unconsciously access the soul magic of the souls. It happens to not be a benefit. It would be awesome if you could become stronger than an elephant, but you can't. I do not know. I don't know why giving someone a breath makes them 90% of sentient being from 0% (giving them memory, cognition, and life) and why taking it away doesn't make them 10% of a sentient being. We don't see drabs or lifeless explained sadly. It will likely be explained in the sequel Do spikes actually rob physical attributes, i.e. if you stick them in someone their muscles grow smaller? If they just rob strength it could be that strength is in your sDNA. The soul has a shadow in the cognitive realm that supplies it with intellect. I don't really know how the realms work but that's my guess. I wish you the best in that. It's best to have a variety of theories at the ready though. Some of our theories will hopefully be invalidated by TES and we'll be closer to the truth. We know there is an ineffable divine being tweaking a magic system to make sense. Brandon mentiones that originally to awaken things you had to give a long speech and commands but that broke up the combat scenes by being long so he tweaked it and added in the visualisation. Unless we have some other time in the books when multiple souls were gathered together we don't know what they'd do or whether magic can control them. There might not be horrible side effects from having foreign breaths. It is a breath after all. It's better than nothing. But in general, the only people we see with more than one breath still have their original breath as they are super rich. They buy new ones and keep their first. I'd imagine there aren't many who lack their own soul and have someone else's. Where did it say this? But do we have any evidence that cognition has an independent existence in humans? It may just be that various physical or spiritual things have a shadow in the cognitive realm. That would suggest he talked to their souls, or their cognition aspect if that is independent.

http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation/419/Warbreaker-Chapter-Forty-One One of the ways I decided to make Vivenna�s sections here work better was by enhancing the fuzziness of her mind. By giving her this sense of numbness, I hope to indicate that something is not right with her. http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation/400/Warbreaker-Chapter-Twenty-Two-Part-2 Vivenna is right about what happens to a person when they lose their Breath. It is a part of your soul, and without one, you are more prone to depression, you get sick much more easily, and you�re generally more irritable. You have a fuzzy mind, making it harder to cogitate and remember things, and you are irritable, also making it hard to make decisions and remember stuff. From chapter 41 Vivenna stood, staring at him. Not because she thought she could get him to change his mind. But because she just had trouble making her mind understand. It was her last chance for food this day. One bit wouldn’t buy anything more than a mouthful elsewhere, but here—last time—it had allowed her to eat until she was full. That had been a week ago. How long had she been on the streets now? She didn’t know. She turned, dully, and pulled her shawl tight. It was dusk. She should go beg some more. She couldn’t. Not after losing that bit. She felt shaken, as if her most valuable possession had been stolen. No. No. She still had that. She pulled the shawl close. Why was it important? She had trouble remembering. She had trouble making her mind understand and had a poor memory, both signs of poor cognition, due to her being a drab. The author states that a body remembers being alive so it's easier to animate. Once living materials are easier to use as they remember being alive. You've covered those quotations often enough. I suspect, as crude matter, that is because the matter of their body have souls that can remember being alive. It's a popular enough device in fiction, everything having souls, and given how common Spren were in his other world something that may well be part of Brandon's cosmology. I can't prove it but it's a theory that stands a reasonable chance of being right. I agree that true souls are generally necessary for people to function. I am not saying that the body soul thing can independently animate a person even after they lose their breath- it couldn't with Sazen. But it probably makes it easier to cast magic on corpses and may well make drabs more functional. This god is trying to stop a war by sending back visions with returned. He probably working towards good. Just with a shard that uses a rather evil magic system. The shards have independent powers that allow them to have various magical effects. You get the health boost, you get the pretty pretty colors and life sense, you don't get the souls fighting for control of your body, you don't get your limbs accidently interpretting commands and becoming independent. This is not a shard tweaking away every incosistency, this is just how magic happens to work in this world. Somehow the souls are clearly pacified and obedient. What ill side effects do you get from Hemalurgy? I know it works by ripping fragments of people's souls out, so it should be different in some manners. The wide range of powers they can steal suggest souls have a lot of properties. From wiki, hemalurgy can steal these powers. Strength, communication with shards, emotions, and senses. It may well be that souls only have emotional intelligence, not intellectual intelligence, given that you can't steal intellect. The cognitive realm can remain and you can account for Awakeners not being geniuses. The world is just rather more complex than you'd first imagine. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/book/The-Emperors-Soul I found this book. The thief in it supposedly copies the emperor's soul. This might give us some of the properties of a person's soul in Cosmere. It comes out in December supposedly. We can see our theories confirmed or denied. I doubt Endowment cares too much about our beliefs. It just is, and we have to interpret what it does. We didn't see them discuss people with lots of souls at all. We didn't see much of what the Idrians said. Then the author would have consulted his notes on magic and made a decision about how many souls it took. I am not reaching- I trust the author has a good grasp on how many souls things take to do. Other corpses that you awaken as lifeless may well take more breaths. The rat seems perfectly reasonable given that the number of breaths needed is dependent on how lifelike the material is and how big it is. Indeed, but where do these cognitive powers come from? Lightsong is dead, and his body lacks any cognition. As far as I am not aware there's any hint in the books that cognition has independent existence. Cognition is presumably based on the body and or soul. I would think it's more likely that Endowment is doing something similar to what Sazed did, restoring the body and returning the soul- could you explain that scene in more detail? Can Sazed talk to souls? Does he just force them into bodies?