Honorless

A statue would have the general shape but not the underlying skeletal and muscular structure that Kalad's Phantoms or corpses Soulcast to stone would have. Investiture can still make them move just fine. We've seen people Awaken things that then just proceeded to mimic human motion without human structure, of course those things were stuff like straw or cloth, but stone would move just fine too, it would just need a few seams, that's how the T'Telir statues moved:

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DylanHuebner

I was wondering how the animation of the lifeless statues worked, in regard to the use of Susebron's Breath. If they were lifeless, then vasher wouldn't have been able to take his Breath back out of them, nor would susebron have needed such a great deal of breath to revive them—he just would have needed a password. But if they were simply Awakened, no password would have been necessary to animate the statues, just Breath and Command.

It seems like the statues could be neither lifeless nor awakened. Are they unique, because of the use of bone, or am I missing something? The only other explanation I could think of was that they were lifeless, but Susebron's breath wasn't used to activate the statues, he simply had it passed down from vasher, in addition to the statues. If that's the case(and then I've simply been confusing myself with unnecessary, convoluted logic), why was it necessary to keep the breath safe for all these years?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow, there are a lot of questions in there. If you follow the drafts, I think you can see the evolution of what became of the Lifeless army. Originally I had planned for the statues to simply have been placed there so that you could Awaken them—just in my original concepts, before I started the writing—and then that became the army.

I eventually decided that didn't work for various reasons. Number one, as I developed the magic system, Awakening stone doesn't work very well. You've got to have limberness, you've got to have motion to something for it to actually be stronger. So a soldier made out of cloth would be more useful to you than a soldier made out of stone, if you were just Awakening something. At that point, as I was developing this, I went back to the drawing board and said okay, I need to leave him a whole group of really cool Lifeless as the army. But that had problems in that the ichor would not have stayed good long enough. Plus they already had a pretty big Lifeless army, so what was special about this one? Remember, I'm revising concepts like this as the book is going along. You can see where in the story I could see what needed to be there. So I went back to the drawing board again.

I think the original draft of WARBREAKER you can download off my website has them just as statues, though at the time when I was writing that I already knew it would need to change. I was just sticking to my outline because I needed to have the whole thing complete on the page before I could work with it. A lot of times that's how I do things as a writer—I get the rough draft down, and then I begin to sculpt.

I eventually developed essentially what you've just outlined in the first part, before you started worrying if you were too convoluted. I said, well, what if there's a hybrid? What happens if you Awaken bones? Can you create something? The reason that you can't draw the Breath back from a Lifeless is because the Breath clings to it. If the Lifeless were sentient enough, it could give up its own Breath, but you can't take it, just like you can't take a Breath from a person by force. You have to get them to give it up willingly. So it sticks to the Lifeless. A Lifeless is, let's say, 90% of a sentient being. The Breath doesn't manifest in them, because they aren't alive, yet they're almost there. A stone statue brought to life would be way down on the bottom rung.

Is there something in between? That's the advancement I had Vasher discover—what if we build something out of bone, but then encase it in stone to make it strong, and build it in ways that the bone is held together by the force of the Breaths? That's really what you're getting at there, that you need a lot of Breath, a lot of power, to hold all that stone together. There are seams at the joints. What the Breath is doing is clinging there like magical sinew, and it's holding all of that together.

Vasher left the Phantoms Invested with enough Breath to hold them together but not to move. You needed another big, substantial influx of Breath in order to actually make them have motion, to bring them enough strength to move and that sort of thing. So it's kind of a hybrid.

Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A (Jan. 18, 2010)

It being in a human shape would make it easier to Awaken, but less so than a Soulcast corpse since it would have no memory of being alive. So, it would take more Breaths, no idea how much though

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Questioner

So the lighteyes that get Soulcast into stone, can they be Awakened?

Brandon Sanderson

*pause* So… Yes, but their soul is gone. When they get Soulcast into stone it is only the corpse, so yes they could.

Questioner

Would it be a lifeless or a-- Would it be like Awakening something inorganic or would them once being alive help?

Brandon Sanderson

The fact that they were once alive will help. There's a Spiritual Connection that still exists on the Spiritual Realm and that is going to help. But you're not going to get the person back. The fact that it is the exact form of a person is going to be really helpful. It would be a lot easier to Awaken that than it would be to Awaken other stone.

I think it's because Identity is designated by Connections, that's why it's called a Spiritweb, all the Connections you have make up and define your Identity. (This is not confirmed, just a theory)

A full Mistborn with access to all the metals is strong but the Knights Radiant are far too tanky with their Shardplates and Stormlight healing, and then their's also their one-hit Shardblades. On top of all that their Surges. I won't say it's a guarantee, it isn't. Electrum, in particular, is a powerful advantage. The other temporal metals aren't as helpful in this situation. Chromium, I'm not sure if it would work, but if it does, then that gives them a leg up. But Knights Radiant have the advantage in this match-up.

A Feruchemist... it would depend on their gold, steel, pewter and iron reserves. But again, the Knights Radiant have the advantage.

I wonder if there's anything cultivation-y you could learn to do with Investiture. I mean "cultivation" as in Xianxia, not the Shard Cultivation. Passive effects like the Heightenings can't be all that simply having a lot of Investiture gives you, right? Invested Arts that you can simply learn and use any Investiture for, no need for any Connections, nothing external with inherent properties like metals needed. Maybe something like the Tzai blows?

Just throwing this out there: maybe the "Cognitive Anomaly" is Painter's world? And Yumi lives on some other part of Nalthis that has a different manifestation of Investiture?... okay, yeah, that seems kinda unlikely, the sun is different, it's much hotter, there are spren like things

Iron, tin, copper, zinc, chromium, duralumin and possibly nicrosil can steal stuff from regular humans, trying to use steel would probably just be a waste. Beyond that, we don't know enough about Hemalurgy.

Invested objects resist foreign Investiture, an already Invested spike likely wouldn't be able to hold a Hemalurgic charge, that doesn't just mean it wouldn't be able to hold a charge, it wouldn't be able to steal it in the first place: that req Investiture too, and as mentioned before, anything that is already Invested would resist being Invested any further. So you'd "just" be stabbing people with an Invested object.

I think disorientation should be possible, they can probably bring more attention to pre existing wounds or ailments but I don't think they can just create sensation of pain from nothing

I disagree with Treamayne on this one. Dakhor abilities twist the soul (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/3/#e48) Hemalurgy rips and steals pieces of the Spiritweb. I think a spike is likely to steal the Dakhor bone twists and the abilities those twists granted, not just the ability to use Dakhor.

The twisted bones are Dakhor, if you steal Dakhor abilities, it will twist your bones, that's how it grants its abilities. I think it should be possible to just steal the ability itself without the bone twisting: the power isn't inherent to the bone twists but coded by bone twists, but that would take more skill, and/or possibly more than Hemalurgy.

Also, both the magics support strange mutations of the body just fine (Inquisitors have railroad spikes going through their eye sockets, and more running along their spine).

Hell yeah!

Raysium might be able to transfer Investiture from metalminds with the correct Tone. I don't think simply transferring the Investiture into a sphere is going to allow a Feruchemist to inhale it, I think that is more likely to make it inaccessible.

Damn, a Brandon Avengers book... I want it

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Male this time, with a ragged beard and wild hair. A beggar stolen off the street, Suit guessed. Of course, the softly glowing red eyes were another sign.

I would say, stolen body

In Suit's case, given that they used an explosive, (also assuming that they did not just use that phrase like  "serving god in heaven"), they're definitely not just stealing his body, I'm assuming they plan to induct his Cognitive aspect, possibly make him like them but not necessarily.

Hmm... Allomancers draw Investiture from Preservation / Harmony directly via metals, not from the Mists, at least, not typically. You'll have to give them the ability somehow.

Maybe a better idea for mechanical Allomancy?

Also, stealing multiple attributes from the same person might not be possible

Regardless, creating a patchwork Spiritweb from multiple pieces might not result in anything... stable

Forgery + Hemalurgy sounds like a much more viable option.

Roshar seems close to having "seven gods in every grain of rice", I believe Hesina said something along that Japanese saying to Kaladin at one point too. Not everything is/has a spren but there does seem to be a more developed cognitive aspect to things on Roshar. And it does seem likely that the free Investiture from the Highstorms is responsible for this.

Something to keep in mind though, the people we've seen in Roshar who talked to the Cognitive aspects of things also had access to Surges that interacted with the Cognitive side of objects in some manner. Shallan talking to objects is part of her powers, required for Soulcasting. Similarly Venli talking to stones is part of her Stoneshaping ability. Kelsier didn't really have any ability to interact with the Cognitive aspects of things.

Given that Shardic Intent is a thing... maybe Adonalsium's mind (and thus, his Cognitive aspect) itself was shattered into pieces alongside his power? 

4 hours ago, Elf said:

why does this weird ass bot keep haunting the website? is it from india, since it uses hindi and names indian locations? 

also, i know nothing about bots or computers, so i dont understand. why cant it be banned or something?

Spam bots just keep coming. They can and are banned, but more just keep popping up. Just report them. Go to the spam post, hit the report button (that's the grey flag icon near the top of the post), tell the mods this is a spammer.

As we see with Lopen and Venli, there's an intelligent component to swearing Ideals, the Stormfather (and before him, Honor) and Cultivation accept or reject the words. They might be able to sense and interfere with any munchkinry.

Hmm... a Scadrian has some extra Preservation, but many human populations in the Cosmere predate the Shattering so they might not have any significant flavouring from their local Shard(s). I don't think this matters much though? They store attributes, and which Shard's Intent supplies the Investiture probably wouldn't matter, if they manage to somehow get access to the Shard's Investiture to power their Feruchemy.

As for storing Investiture in a Nicrosilmind, I think Feruchemists can store other Shards' Investiture, probably era 4 stuff, no Realmatic reasons for why I believe that, I just think it's more likely storytelling-wise.

Uh... or maybe it will be a case of fate worse than death, and you basically turn into a spectre that can't interact with anything?  There's also the idea that the term "Spiritweb" comes from the web of Connections of someone's life. So, unraveling your soul doesn't sound like a great idea. Some method of hiding Connections and creating false Connections might be safer for hiding, assuming they exist (given that Hoid can hide from the Shards, there's probably something, some method that can accomplish this)

1 hour ago, Onironte said:

There is the lerasium (Preservation), the atium (Ruin), the "sazedium" (Harmony):
Does the metal of Adonalsium exist?

Adonalsium's Godmetal is suspected to be Dragonsteel

(you can check out the Dragonsteel Prime chapters that are available on Brandon's site for a bit more detail, but there's not much)

Right, continuing with the pretense that this is a polite discussion...

One sided crush, sure, but there's enough representational problems going on here without adding more fuel to the fire

21 hours ago, Nazh said:

Hi. I have a severe case of Brandofandonitis, unfortunately.

So do we, there is no cure, only more drugs... welcome to the drug den /jk

It should. Brandon certainly seems to be going for that. As for what that means for Sel... accelerated technological development, I should think... but Taldain and Scadrial are ahead of them apparently.

Though that's not the only interesting thing about Sel's unique situation with its Cognitive Realm

When people die, their mind appears on the Cognitive Realm. We see this with Kelsier, with Eshonai, with Wax (don't be alarmed, remember Bands of Mourning). So what does the Investiture plasma mean for the Selish?

An even shorter afterlife? Or... Apparently Investiture can allow these Cognitive aspects of people to turn into Cognitive Shadows... Well, there's a lot of Investiture in Sel's Cognitive. And there are legends of the Svrakiss, the dead whose spirits got rejected by Jaddeth

Lots of interesting stuff on Sel