11thorderknight

I'm still convinced that Plate is a Radiant's ultimate manifestation of surgebinding ability (stormlight held perfectly). My theory on the Stormfather's comment is twofold: first of all, Dalinar will be a Knight with no Shards because he won't get a Blade and can't get manifest Plate. Actually, that would probably have been the case regardless of what spren he bonded, since none of the orders seem to get a Blade after just the Second Ideal. My second theory is that the Stormfather isn't really Dalinar's spren. He says "these Words are Accepted" but he also says that after Kaladin's Third Ideal. He also says that he won't allow himself to be bound, and that Dalinar will not have a Blade, but doesn't necessarily say anything about being bonded to him. I think there's some Brandon misdirection going on here.

I think that's part of the point of SA - there are many different ways of being honorable, and some of them aren't that compatible. We know for sure that honorspren and cryptics don't get along. Windrunners, Edgedancers and Bondsmiths probably personify the individualistic theory of honor (i.e. you would never sacrifice an innocent person for the greater good) while Elsecallers and Skybreakers would lean toward the bigger picture.

No, they don't. Which is why I find the Breath concept so refreshing. You're right about the Returned though, they certainly fit the usual pattern.

This seems to be a generally accepted opinion, and it may well be true, but I missed the memo on where that information comes from. Could someone enlighten me?

Good point on Denth. But regardless, my point in trusting his information to Vivenna is that he's playing the long game with her, and everything else he tells her seems to be true, or at least generally believed to be true. I doubt he'd tell her something that would be contradicted by anyone she happened to meet on the street, for instance - that wouldn't help his credibility with her. I find the Breath concept really cool for a magic system because it's so contrary to the standard "some people are just born special" concept that pervades fantasy. Even on other Shardworlds, like Scadrial, or Sel, or even Roshar. On Nalthis though, anyone can become a "magician", but not everyone can, because essentially, society has to choose who gets the "tools". And Hallandren being capitalistic, they swap the "tools" around for money. Very 'Murican of them :-)

Just to be further nitpicky, there's a difference between immortality and agelessness. TLR, Elantrians, Vasher, anyone else with 2000 Breaths, etc. might be ageless, but they can be killed relatively easily. A Shard, on the other hand, seems to require another Shard to do them in. We don't know where Hoid sits on the spectrum, but I would guess he's much closer to agelessness than true immortality.

So the major questions about Feast Night are: 1) why exactly did the Parshendi decide to kill Gavilar (yes yes, it was because of bringing back their gods, but what exactly did that entail?) an 2) why did Gavilar want to do that, and how was he going to do it? I think Gavilar for book 5 is a no-brainer. We know that book 4 is supposed to be Eshonai, and it doesn't really fit for the prologue to be her PoV in her own Flashback book. So, I'm leaning toward Eshonai for the prologue in book 3. For book 4, I'm guessing Navani or Amaram.

I'm very curious to see whether Brandon expands on what exactly it means to be Drab in the grand scheme of things. It's basically stated in the book that it's an extremely subtle difference, one that most people can't even notice. If Denth was telling Vivenna the truth (and he probably was - he was much more of a "long-con" kind of guy that a habitual liar) it wasn't uncommon for people to sell their breath and then buy back another one, often many times. You'd think that if there was a noticeable difference, people would have picked up on it. That being said, the very name does suggest that a difference does, in fact, exist. Perhaps it's so subtle that it takes the First Heightening to see it?

For all we know, the Southlanders on Scadrial do exactly that! Remember, in regular Scadrial hemalurgy is an extremely secret art known to almost nobody and associated with a homicidal cult and an evil deity. Whereas on Nalthis, the transfer of breath from person to person is the very foundation of the magic system. You're right in that Brandon doesn't address it explicitly in the book, but one of the really cool things about fantasy as a genre, and that distinguishes good fantasy from mediocre, is how an imaginary change (people being able to give each other pieces of their soul) changes the dynamic of society. And really, if you think about it...it becomes hard to imagine that people wouldn't pass down their Breaths. (unless you're Idrian and believe the whole thing is evil, but it's hinted that even that belief is a recent phenomenon).

Well, that is sort of what I'm proposing. The Awakener's cut might not be astronomical, but I'm sure it's a very nice chunk of change. And I still maintain that only a subset of people with a lot of Breath are sufficiently skilled and trained to be able to consistently produce Lifeless with a single Breath. They probably have their own guild, too, to make sure the price stays high enough to keep them happy.

My theory is that splitting an Awakened object only splits its physical form, not its cognitive or spiritual form. Think about it: to Awaken something is to tell a regular object that "you are now THIS, and behave like THIS, and all this extra Investiture that I'm putting into you is going to make it so!". That Awakened object now has a much stronger cognitive and spiritual presence than it did a moment ago, and there's no reason to think that this extra Investiture is damaged by a physical change. Especially since we're told several times by Vasher that an objects physical form has almost no bearing on what it is capable of doing once Awakened. Practically speaking, I think that an Awakened object that's cut in half will try to behave as if it weren't cut (which is what the rope did). This may or may not be functionally useful, depending on the exact object and what it's been Commanded to do. Either way, I think the Breath is not damaged and not split, and the Awakener can reclaim the entire Breath by touching any part of the original object. This may start to break down after a period of time, but in an acute setting, I'm pretty sure this should be accurate.

1%? No way. If it was easy, then everyone would use their personal Breath for a lifeless and it would be a zombie apocalypse. As I said, I'm sure there is a significant learning process; it's not just about knowing the exact words of the Command. As with all other Awakening, it likely requires skill in forming your Intent, and since you can't really practice that much because of the whole permanent-cost-thing, Awakeners who want to get better at making Lifeless would have to "cross-train" by practicing regular, Type III Awakening. And as we know, those Awakenings, while having no permanent cost, do require a pretty significant working reserve of Breath. Besides, as pointed out earlier, every Awakener IS rich, by definition, since they have a lot of Breath. And rich people generally don't devote their time to piecework that yields a 1% return. I suppose you could have a case of an Awakener falling on hard times, or a second or third child that was taught Awakening but never inherited the Breath, but if they were at a level where they could make Lifeless efficiently, that's how they'd rebuild their fortune. In fact, maybe it's exactly these down-on-their-luck Awakeners that make most of the commercially available Lifeless. Some other notes: We aren't really told this, but I would guess that in a society like Hallandren, dying with your Breath would be extremely taboo. It's a form of wealth, after all, and people would tend to pass it on to their heirs once it became clear they were dying. I'm sure the religion specifically encourages this. Look at the length the priests went to in order to get Vahr's Breath from him. Sure, it was worth a lot of money, but for the government of a rich nation it would have been a drop in the bucket. I'm sure it was religiously motivated more than anything else. My point is, it would be quite rare in Hallandren for Breath to be lost to death, except in an accident. So there's some generational accumulation over time. It doesn't look like Awakeners, aside from maybe making and managing Lifeless, do any real work with their Breath. They might use it for their own benefit ("house, fix yourself!") but they're not out there digging ditches using Awakened shovels. Again, the whole I'm-already-rich-why-should-I-work thing.

This. It was a relatively subtle point, but Vasher most definitely commented on it as being at least a partial explanation for why Vivenna picked up Awakening so quickly. The first time she ever Awakened anything was when she Commanded the ropes he used to tie her up to "untie", and her point-of-view showed that she didnt' get it to work until she thought of it the same way as controlling her hair. And we know from Siri that Vivenna has always been extremely good at controlling her hair. So, the speed at which she learned is far from typical. As for the one-breath Command, it might be easy for Vasher, but again, he's not typical. It might be that it takes an Awakener years to get good enough to be able to pull that off consistently, and in the meantime, they have to spend a lot of breath on making Lifeless that are substantially more expensive. We know from Vasher that it can take up to "several hundred" Breaths to Awaken a Lifeless, depending on the Commands used. I do agree that the Breath market and the Lifeless market are inextricably linked, I just think the Awakening process is an important intermediary that can and will influence them and keep them distinct. I also think that the supply of Breath is relatively constant and relatively unlimited - as I said, there are always poor people in need of money. So ultimately, it's going to be a demand-driven market.

In Mistborn, it's heavily implied that a push/pull affects the center of gravity of the metal object. If the object is large, however, I can definitely see a very skilled allomancer being able to slight move the "allomantic center" of the object away from its physical center. This would explain how Kelsier could make a metal bar spin, and how Zane could balance himself on a single coin rather than needing a tripod. I bet this is something that takes a great degree of skill, but can be done. It probably will be more common among "modern" coinshots/lurchers, since there will be more large metal objects to practice on and more time to practice.

Actually, it's not, because there's a very important step between collecting enough Breath and getting a Lifeless, and that's the Awakening process. I'm going on the assumption (which I think is a very safe one) that most people who have Breath don't really know how to use it that well, and they certainly don't know how to Awaken Lifeless with a single Breath. And as I said, there's few people who would try to experiment, since that kind of experimentation has a permanent cost. So, you have a relatively small group of professional Awakeners who would likely produce the majority of Lifeless in Hallandren. They would sell these for money, and would in turn use some of that money to buy Breath. So there's really two related but separate markets here - the market for Lifeless, and the market for Breath. We don't know what the market for Lifeless would be like in terms of supply and demand. It would depend on the supply of able Awakeners to create them. If there were more Awakeners able to produce Lifeless than the market could absorb, the margins would be relatively low, as Awakeners competed to sell their product. Therefore, there would be a pretty close correlation between the demand for Lifeless and the price of Breath. If, however, Awakeners of sufficient skill were in short supply and were therefore a limiting factor in Lifeless production, we would expect the margins to be fairly high, in which case, there would not be much correlation between the price of Breath and the price of Lifeless. In other words, the degree of correlation would depend greatly on whether it was a buyer's or a seller's market. The market for Breath, on the other hand, would almost surely be entirely demand driven, because the unfortunate reality is that there are always poor people (especially in a medieval/pre-industrial society) who would be willing to sell their Breath. The supply, therefore, would be fairly constant, and the limiting factor would the the availability of excess wealth for the more fortunate to spend on Breath. I would imagine that the price of Breath would fluctuate a good bit with the state of the economy, since it is ultimately a luxury good for the upper classes to consume.

I'm siding with King of Nowhere on this one. Yes, in hindsight, "destroy evil" has its faults. and I understand Outis' argument for why it didn't make much sense as a Command in the first place. Here's the thing - Vasher and Shashara were experimenting with things that they knew were dangerous. They'd never done this before, and they didn't know how broadly an object would interpret it's Command. At the same time, they wanted to press the boundaries and go beyond routine Awakening that used temporary, specific Commands. So, they needed a Command that would provide a continual purpose to the object, but were careful to not use one that could easily turn bad. Also, the object in question was a sword, which is inherently an instrument of destruction. So, in light of all this, "destroy evil" is a pretty reasonable choice.

This is something that I can't get behind. What would rich people pay for servants that will never quit, never need time off, day or night; always be available to work; don't need to eat, sleep, or pee; and can do any mindless, repetitive task without getting bored, or angry, or careless? A lot. What will they pay for guards that cannot be bribed or otherwise betray you; will never get careless; and don't care about any danger to themselves? A lot. Remember, the cost of food, clothing and shelter, as well as time lost to sleep and regular life, all add up pretty quickly. So for menial work, like plantations, warehouse work, etc, a lot of people would prefer lifeless over hiring workers. If the cost of a single Breath is somewhere between 1 and 5 thousand bucks, and you (for example) double that (to pay for a dead body, ichor alcohol, Awakener's fee, etc) you still get a perfectly loyal, zero maintenance worker that can go 24 hours a day, for about 10 thousand. This is half the cost of a real person, and the lifeless will do twice the work because they don't need rest. It's a no-brainer from an economic standpoint.

I think the first step is to decide why you think your idea is good. what is it about it that makes it interesting? how does it change the society of which it's a part? second step is to think about how the users' life is changed by magic, and just as importantly, how is it NOT changed. meaning, does it make these people all-powerful wizards who can do whatever they want and are totally independent of anyone, or are they more like a professional, who sells his services to others? or are they shunned, and have to hide their abilities? third step is, how does the magic make things interesting? what sorts of questions/issues does it highlight? once you get these major questions resolved, you'll find that the nitty-gritty of the details falls into place pretty quickly. PM me if you want to run your idea by me or want any other advice.

There's two pretty obvious answers. The first is, most Awakeners are independently wealthy. They'd have to be, by definition, in order to have enough Breath to learn to Awaken things in the first place. The second answer is that they'd Awaken Lifeless, then sell them for more than the cost of the Breath that it took to Awaken them. If you think about it, not everyone who has a single Breath, or even many Breaths, would have the skill to create Lifeless, especially using the one-Breath Command. And it's a much harder thing to learn, because you can't reuse Breaths for practice - when you make a Lifeless, that Breath is lost for good, and if you're bad at visualizing your Commands and spend a lot of Breaths, you've just made yourself a lot poorer. So, I could see a talented Awakener who can consistently make good on the one-Breath Command getting wealthy pretty quickly by selling Lifeless. I got the strong impression that most people in Hallandren who had Breath were simply wealthy people who used it as a combination of storing money, showing off, and enhancing their life/health/vigor. They weren't necessarily people who were skilled at doing Awakening. Someone like Lemex, or Vivenna herself, at the beginning. Vasher would be the other end of the spectrum - someone with relatively little Breath, but a lot of skill and knowledge who could accomplish a great deal with it. But yeah, working in Lifeless production is probably where the big bucks for Awakeners were at.

Those calculations sound like a good place to start, but the thing we have to remember is, Jewels's family were poor and Hallandren is a pre-industrial society. So the comparison to what the average American or British or Canadian family spends on food isn't really that valid. A better comparison might be to somewhere like India or China, where there is a much higher level of wealth inequality, with poor people living on very little. The other thing to consider is that there's likely to be a culture of passing on one's Breath before dying. So, in a large family, especially with shorter life expectancies, it might be safe to assume that for every adult or older child that dies, the family would get a Breath that they could sell. This might lower the price. Also keep in mind that Jewels sold her breath as a child, to feed a Returned - this probably added to the value of her Breath. Just some interesting things to think about.

This is sort of an aside, but I'm a nerd so I think about these minor worldbuilding issues. Anyway.... How much do you guys think a single Breath would cost? (in today's US dollars, keeping in mind that the value of money is inherently different in a medieval society). We know that a poor person selling their single Breath can get a large amount of money, and it sounds like most poor people in Hallandren sell their Breath eventually. But it can't be an enormous fortune, because then there wouldn't be enough money to buy all the Breaths that people are willing to sell. We also know that Lemex was able to buy at least 600 Breaths in a few years using the Idrian king's money, which was probably a good bit but unlikely to have been enormous, since Idris is relatively poor. I'm going with a rough value of $5,000. What do you guys think?

It's an interesting theory. Problem is, Alloy of Law has a lot of info about Twinborns, and if this was possible, then it would be hard to believe that it wasn't known about and used. Some types of Twinborns would actually be more useful allomantically then feruchemically; for instance, a super-strong rioter or soother. I tend to this that feruchemical augmentation of allomancy involves nicrosil in some way. either by storing the effect of a burned metal, or storing the ability to burn the metal. or maybe its even more versatile than that - maybe any stored investiture can be used to "boost" any other investiture that person is able to generate. so, you could store weight, or calories, and use that to fuel a soothing, for instance.

It definitely sounds like Sazed did something to the population to do away with Mistborn (other than Spook, who was the last). Either that, or the fact that most of them died during the last days of the Final Empire was enough to do away with new ones. Also, we know that genetic mixing of the Terris population with the general gene pool drastically altered the expression of feruchemy by allowing the existence of Ferrings; it stands to reason that it could similarly have had an effect on the expression of allomancy by making it impossible, or much less likely, for at individual to be Mistborn. Maybe everyone who would have been Mistborn without Terris heritage is now Twinborn instead. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Keepers (full feruchemists) still exist. I think there was word of Brandon on it, and the Ars Arcanum certainly implies it when it talks about the properties of the spiritual metals. I do think though, that it's probably just as rare as it was during the Final Empire, since it would require a person to be pure Terris, which is pretty rare in the modern era. I suspect the Terris population still keep the existence of Keepers a secret from the world at large.

That's a good point about the "Darkness was awesome too" bit; he sure seems to be surgebinding there.

The universal simply accepts any of the ten stones, and will produce the essence those stones represent. Jasnah happens to keep hers loaded with diamond smokestone and ruby, but those are not specifically necessary. Shallan once makes a point of buying the matching stones for her broken/fake Soulcaster. Jasnah simply keeps those three stones in hers because those are the three things she Soulcasts most often (at least publicly). The other reason the stones are each associated with a Soulcasting property in the Ars Arcanum is probably because Soulcasters are the only fabrials left from the Silver Epoch, and therefore the Essence relationship of each stone is seen as being tied to Soulcasting, rather than to fabrial effects in general. Remember, it's an in-world document.