Phantom Monstrosity

Anyway, since it's confirmed that Breath + Mistwraith = Something Awesome, anyone want to help me hash out something suitably awesome? Let's start with the name. Breathwraith has a certain appeal to it, but it's a little ... simple? I'm considering Chromdra/Chromadra as well, but that seems a bit cheesy. Hmm... Biokandra? Nah. Any ideas? Since it'd be boring if it didn't (and, as previously established, this is 'something awesome'), let's say that Breath does the same 'bypassing the cognitive blockage' thing that hemalurgy does, and results in something sapient. I'm not sure what would be the most interesting way to handled this; I like the idea of having a Command that the newly-formed mind kind of congeals around. Not nearly as rigid as nightblood's, but something that's a defining aspect of who the new entity starts off as. It takes two blessings to make a kandra, and one Breath to make a lifeless, which is really the only data we have to go with creation costs. Let's arbitrarily make the cost two Breath, assuming some sort of rough equivalency between the charge in a kandra spike and a Breath. (It's RAFO territory at the moment). Anyway, appearance. I like the idea of a transparent human with bones made of constantly shifting auroras of color. Any other cool/awesome designs? Also, I suppose that a kandra could gain Breath as well, which would be kinda weird. With two separate effects forcing it to be more humanlike, I could see it becoming mode-locked and losing shapeshifting ability altogether... maybe regaining the racial feruchemical ability. Maybe having constantly shifting eye and hair color or something. Any suggestions?

Three different alphabets.

And there are *bad* generalizations of integration as well. Like, you can take the first or second integral, that makes sense. But taking the (i/2)th integral... that's messed up.

You should probably start with the more basic stuff. Like, "everything has a cognitive aspect".

I believe the symbol on Kredick Shaw is the symbol for north, but don't quote me on that.

There's also a couple of symbols on brandonsanderson.com which aren't explained yet. I mean, you'd THINK that they were just there to look cool, but... Here's the art (from isaac stewart's website) And here are the extra ones from the site Note that Isaac also has the symbols from WoA and HoA up on sheets as well. Those are the versions of the symbols progressively further into the past - the oldest ones are supposed to look like mists, and were from pre-ascension scandrial.

Something Awful puts up a paywall for a week or two every few months. That's the whole post

According to Soru on the Something Awful Forums

It's been previously mentioned in some Q&A that people who aren't from Nalthis can receive Breaths, but even if they get a supply they can't Awaken with them. Weirdly enough, the Command to transfer Breath doesn't cause any color draining. That, at least to me, indicates that it isn't a 'real' Awakening, since it doesn't need any fuel. This is a bit of a hair-splitting, I admit. Allowing Scandrialians (Scandrities?) (Scanners?) to rip off a miniBreath when assisted by an Awakener is a tiny bit contrived, I admit. It struck me as patently unfair to make him need to track down Hoid to get an extra one, so... game rules. Particularly when he accidentally a lifeless. A whole lifeless. Being able to lose Breath permanently and not gain any additional would suck. Still, once you have it established that it's possible to do, the other effects kind of fall out naturally. It's already established that spiritual damage causes people to snap (that's what the mists do). I figure getting a chunk of your soul ripped off is more damaging than what the mists do, so would snap even more deeply hidden abilities - instead of going down to 30%, it'll go down into the 10-20% range. I figure Preservation *could* snap everyone is he really wanted to, but sending a message was the important bit, so he self-limited to 16%. Ruin can lean on anyone who's mentally or spiritually damaged, as far as I understand. Also, I figure that if drabs are less resistant to, well, just about everything else, they'd also be less resistant to meddling by shards. They'd also be more susceptible to soothing and rioting. Plus, it's far more interesting. Particularly when the first breath drain accidentally gave a skaa criminal soothing powers. Stellan tracked him down, forced him to give up his breath, and left him for dead (since he convulsed, went limp, and vanished from lifesense). Dealing with the aftermath was fairly amusing. Well, for me :)/>.

Okay, so back from the signing. Got six books signed woo! woo! "Putting Breath into a Mistwraith? Yeah, that could definitely work." Note: he paused for a few moments, and seemed like the idea hadn't occurred to him before. It's called the Stormlight Archive as sort of a pun. It's because the intention was to name each book after an in-universe text. The editors keep trying to make him change it, apparently because they never like his titles. :P/> Asked it. His response was "I don't think I've revealed that yet". So, RAFO. You can't awaken living plants - but he agreed with on the other part, so I *think* that confirms that plants and animals can get Breath auras. "Everything has a cognitive aspect." Also, here's my drawing of Elantris, and where Brandon put the chasm in. He did give a disclaimer that it's been ten years, so he can't be 100% certain he's getting it perfect. Red lines are where my initial pencil was, black is Brandon's marker (detailing the mountains, ocean, et cetera). He says a lot of fans put the chasm in the wrong place, further up.

We actually know who Hoid stole the name from - it's in one of the unpublished novels.

Not sure if this is the proper forum exactly, but it doesn't really fit anywhere else. Anyway, I'm currently running a RP for a friend doing a blind run through Mistborn. Basically, dumped in with no prior knowledge about the setting, since what's the fun of having a world with a ton of secrets if you already know them, eh? And, since he's the type of guy who always picks 'other' when presented with options, he's wound up playing an Awakener. Current time in game has advanced, and it's about a month or so is left before the Lord Ruler's death OTL. It doesn't seem like enough divergences have been kicked off to prevent it from happening. It's currently the day before the Last Ball happens, if that helps. Long story short, the player character (Acolyte Obligator Stellan) has been fumbling through an investigation of one of the noble murders committed by our friendly neighrborhood Survivor, and desperately trying to hide or get a handle on his newly discovered Biochromatic Breath. Now, I've already established a lot of the magic system interactions already for this game, but I figured it would be nice to get some help fleshing out things further. Anyway, current things I've decided upon: - While nobody native to Scandriel has a 'real' Breath, they've still got a bit of soul or spiritweb or whatever that acts similarly. Thus, they show up on lifesense. - Canonically, nobody on Scandriel can Awaken, even if they got Breath transferred to them. I'm leaning on Sanderson's exact wording here, and ruling that passing a Breath from person to person doesn't really count as 'awakening' - it doesn't drain color canonically, so there's a bit of a distinction there already. - While they don't have a real Breath, you can leverage the little bit of Ruin inside the guy and rip a chunk of his soul off. The miniBreath produced is about a tenth the size of a normal Breath, and can be used normally... if ineffectively. - The trauma caused by the soul-splitting process is always enough to snap someone; unlike the mists, which were hardcoded to snap a fixed percent of the population, this just drags out all the allomantic power someone is naturally endowed with. And leaves them in a temporary coma. - Any drabs produced this way are more susceptible to Ruin. Not like, spike-level, but it's easier to slant their decisions. -Mistwraiths don't show up to lifesense, due to the same blockage between the cognitive any physical realm that keeps them nonsapient. Kandra, on the other hand, show up normally. -Having a Breath reserve is enough to provide some passive resistance against soothing/rioting, much like a coppercloud. A full Divine Breath is equivalent to modern copper mistings. -Nothing that's got any Investiture can be used as color fuel for Awakening - the only real standout here is the black volcanic ash, though metalminds and spikes would count as well. I'm toying with the idea that the traces of Ruin in the ash can be used to steal a bigger chunk to use as a miniBreath (with corresponding greater , but not sure on that bit. That said, there's still some interactions that I haven't come up with a good reason for. I'm going to the signing tonight, and I figure I might as well ask questions relevant to it. So far I'm planning on asking Brandon about what happens when you stick a Breath into a mistwraith at the signing. It seems like it could turn out being cool. I can probably ask another as well... what do you guys think would be relevant? I'm tempted to make it 'can you hemalurge by using a wooden stake full of Breath', but I sure somebody on here has a more interesting one.

Wow, that means my estimate is right in the middle of the given range. That's cool. Thanks for asking him.

Adding anything else to the Wheel of Time would make it into the Unicycle of Time. And that's just silly.

Yeah, but it's running off a battery of a thousand Breath or so. I just don't really see each breath representing a significant enough fraction of endowment to be called a 'splinter'.

Nightblood is 'orders of magnitude more magical' than a shardblade is. That kinda puts the kibosh to any theory that gives them a ton of invested power.

It isn't that hard to keep allomancers on alert. They actually did that in canon. Heck, there was more than one tineye in the thieving crew. Spook was just the best of them - there were, IIRC, two or three others that never got any screentime.

Well, they could contain a KFCspren. Or maybe there's some method where you use a sample of what you're trying to make...

Your power estimate is off, I think. Remember that awakened object never tire, so you shouldn't base it off of the amount of food an average person eats in a normal day. If you're going to base off of human stats, at least pick something active. Bicycle racers burn (at least) a thousand kcal per hour, which is over ten times the power you're using. Although zombies on bicycles is an amusing thought, I seriously doubt that it's the best method of power generation. There are doubtless turbine designs that could dramatically increase the efficiency - even if you don't abandon human form.

Because generally more force is more useful, as these people are involved in active combat.

There's a huge difference between 'has a useless magical trait' and 'has no magical trait at all'

Wax and... whatshername... the Gunsmith gal could both pull and push at limited enough strengths to operate machinery.

Ah, but here's a question for you. Is an alloy OF atium the same as a different metal alloyed WITH atium. There could quite easily be a difference between 'atium with a little copper' and 'copper with a little atium'.

But it doesn't even have super forgery powers. It's *useful* for forgery, but heck, I've got a ball of 'precious metal clay'. It's freely moldable and'll turn into a solid silver model once I stick it in my furnace.

"The Element" is just an art nouveau name for fancy skin moisturizer.