Brandon Sanderson

You know, I wonder if there are any others collecting powers from different worlds.

I mean, obviously people like Mraize and Hoid have a much stronger motive.

But I mean, there's got to be some scholars or something that have never fought a day in their lives who go around trying to pick up magics for the study of Investiture.

Although of those Breath seems to be by far the easiest to gather.

I wonder if that's just a general thing in some of the worldhopper organisations. Where everyone somewhat important has a smallish stockpile of Breath.

It's probably a better investment than going to the doctor.

Khriss probably has a couple.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Unrelated, but which edition of Oathbringer did everyone in this thread get?

I personally got the Orion paperback.

But after seeing some pictures of people posting their collection of the three Tor Hardbacks I kind of wish I'd purchased that instead.

Kindle.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Kindle!

They almost certainly are. All Shardblades are made of Tanavastium — Or rather, partly Tanavastium in many cases. I expect there's some component of Cultivation's body in most shardblades, because many are some mix of both Shards — so it makes sense that the Honourblades, being the originals made by Honour and being physically more or less the same, would be too?

At any rate, I'm pretty sure that your assumption about highstorms being liquid Honour isn't correct? It's just rain and crem. And crem, while a little mysterious, is certainly not the body of a Shard. If it were, it'd be a lot more potent, and I seriously doubt that it would just turn into the ordinary rock which coats the entire continent.

Then that leaves us with 2/3rds of a Shard missing.

Also, how does one shave of a piece of Shardblade for a Mistborn to eat?

And would a piece of Nightblood act the same as a Godmetal, giving a Mistborn a new power if they burn it?

A realization. If Mraize really has a nugget of Atium in his collection...there is currently the possibly last Atium Misting on Roshar?🙄

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Wait, where did it say that?!?!?!?!? There was no indication of Atium anywhere?!?!?!?

I am theorizing Since I figure a bead of it would be the sort of things to find in the sort of collection Mraize has of all things.

I was just pointing out that *if* thats true, Demoux is also currently running around on Roshar.

edited 24th Nov '17 4:26:43 AM by 3of4

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If that was the case I wonder what he would do with said bead if he found it.

Would he bring it back to Sazed or the 17th Shard?

*If* it exists and *if* Demoux got his hands on it, the best option would be to use it, I'd say. Not sure having some of Ruins godmetal flying around is a good thing.

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In the continuing adventures of "Guts hasn't finished Oathbringer but he can't help himself from visiting this thread":

I am reading at a snail's pace since I have to squeeze reading between work and exams but here are some thoughts on where I am so far:

Oh cool, is Azure supposed to be the Vorin version of a trans character? Azure identifies and presents as male and requests that his men use male pronouns, wich is obviously problematic in a culture like the Alethi. Really looking forward to reading more about him. I also find it kind of funny that Kaladin seems to be the one making all of the social faux pas when it comes to dealing with the queer characters. First he insults the gay member of Bridge Four (was it Drehy?) and now he can't keep himself from calling Azure "she".

Elhokar keeps dropping hints that he is slowly discovering his Radiance. First he sees Cryptics in his dream, then he demonstrates above average skill in drawing maps, then he recognizes Pattern's....pattern in Shallan's clothing. Or maybe Sanderson is just trolling us and he is going to die before the end of the book. In general, Elhokar is one of those characters that I most want to see succeed. He's really won me over with his genuine desire to be better and to recognize his failings. I guess that this new persona he has created for himself that is more thoughtful and careful is another manifestation of his potential Lightweaving: he didn't like the man he was so he literally crafted another personality for himself. He seems to be going about it in a more healthy way than Shallan however.

Shallan's slow descent into madness is genuinely becoming upsetting to read. I am at the chapter where she first joins the Cult of Moments in their revel atop of the Oathgate. The entire chapter leading up to that was all about her struggling to even remember that she is not actually Veil or Brightness Radiant. Some pretty creepy stuff.

Allright, that's it for me. Off to read some more.

edited 24th Nov '17 6:31:32 AM by GutstheBerserker

Azure: That would be cool, but no. It's the other way around; Alethi gender roles make her men uncomfortable taking orders from a woman (and worried she'll get in trouble), so they pretend she's male. Kaladin is better about it because of Syl and the female Knights. There's a point later where Azure explains that she doesn't really care either way, and thinks it's kinda funny how the men are struggling to find ways to excuse her.

EDIT: Also, Kaladin didn't insult Drehy, Sig did, and even that was just because Sig thought Drehy needed to fill out the proper paperwork. Kaladin insulted Lyn, assuming that a woman would be happy to be a scribe when she wanted to be a warrior.

edited 24th Nov '17 7:32:02 AM by Discar

Alethi seem to not care about sexuality but very much about Gender roles.

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Kal suggested that Drehy was femme enough to empathize with Renarin hanging around scribes, instead of too manly to smooch a woman. It was in chapter 55.

edited 24th Nov '17 8:24:15 AM by rikalous

aw cmon leave the spoilers in the other thread

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

My bad. I accidently posted my Oathbringer thoughts here instead of in the other thread. I moved it there afterwards, so yeah let's move the discussion there.

I don't think that each Shard having a solid, liquid, and gaseous component of their physical form is a standard thing, that just happens to be how it was done on Scadrial. Hell, I'm not even sure that each Shard having a set physical, mental, and spiritual form is a standard thing — it seems more likely to me that they can shift that sort of thing around to a large degree.

Even then, how interchangeable the idea of "a Shard" and "Investiture" are is up in the air as well. Stormlight is most certainly a form of Investiture, but is it also the physical aspect of Honor, like how the mist on Scadrial was both a form of Investiture and part of the physical form of Preservation? Or is it something different, like atium, which was part of the physical form of Ruin but was not a form of Investiture (atium was useless to anyone who wasn't already Invested in the form of being a user of one of the metallic arts).

And honestly, even the concept of Investiture and "being Invested" gets weird. On Scadrial, Allomancers are born invested, but then don't seem to require additional Investiture after that (the metals they burn are just normal metals, not themselves Invested), while feruchemists are born with the ability, but have to Invest their metalminds before they can draw on that power (are feruchemists inherently Invested like allomancers are? I'm not clear on that). There doesn't seem to be any "free" Investiture on Scadrial for people to use — it's all either wrapped up in allomancers, metalminds, or hemalurgic spikes.

Meanwhile, on Roshar, Investiture just sort of freely floats around in the form of stormlight, and works basically like Mana — Surgebinders use stormlight to fuel their powers, and when they run out of stormlight they can't Surgebind until they get more. While allomancers are themselves permanently Invested and don't require any outside Investiture, Surgebinders are the opposite — they're not Invested but do require an external source of Investiture.

Nalthis is sort of like Roshar in that un-Invested people can gather Investiture (in this case, Breath) and use it for magic (Awakening things), but also sort of like Sel in that this process requires an un-Invested "catalyst" (color, as opposed to allomancy's metals). Nalthis also has personal investment in the form of both the Returned (with their "divine Breath") and Lifeless (which only take one Breath, but whose Breath can't be taken back, unlike normal Awakenings). Of course, even those work different from each other, with Returned consuming Breath in order to sustain themselves, while Lifeless will exist indefinitely on a single Breath.

Then you get Sel, which I'm honestly not sure how any of it works. Elantrians seem to be both personally Invested and use external Investiture (as directed by the Aons they draw) for their magic, while the Dakhor monks seem to be Invested "artificially" as part of a ritual process but don't need an external source once that's complete. Forgery's connection to Investiture is completely unclear to me — it's implied that anyone can learn the skill if they take the time to study the art, but there's also no external power source mentioned that I'm aware of, so Forgery seems to be possible without personal or external Investment, which is just strange.

tldr, Investiture is weird. Sometimes using magic requires being Invested, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes using magic consumes Investiture, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a non-Invested catalyst is required, sometimes it isn't. There seems to be no real pattern there that I can figure out. And how this all connects to Shards (consuming lerasium causes a person to be Invested, but consuming atium doesn't — stormlight is a form of Investiture, but may or may not also be part of the physical form of Honor) is similarly murky.

edited 26th Nov '17 1:09:17 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Being invested means you had Investiture flow through you. Allomancers aren´t invested by birth, they just have the ability to chanel Preservations/Harmonys Investiture through them by birth. Every shard-based magic system so far has followed more or less the same general rules, in that you need 3 parts for it to work: 1. Investiture (normaly provided by a shard) 2. a catalyst of some sort (metals, geometrical forms, commands, bonds, etc) 3. Intent (you have to know what you want to acomplish. This part can also sometimes be substituted by an external source, for example Ruin can provide the Intent for hemalurgy.) Using any magic-system will cause you to get Invested, the only exception i could think of would be Soulstamps, because i´m unsure if the Investiture flows directly through the Stamp or if it goes through the Stamper.

Now to go deeper into what being Invested actually means. When Investiture flows through you it has to go through cracks in your spirit-web, these cracks can be built-in (Nahltis humans) or require an external source (pre-harmony Scadrial or Roshar). The Investiture widens and fills these cracks, but it also retains some of its original characteristic. When a certain threshold is reached your spritual-self (and with it your physical self) will try to match the Investiture, the effects of this we can see in Savants on Scadrial and on "older" soulcasters on Roshar.

I find this whole thing pretty consistent. It´s complex but if you go deeper you see the rules. Although i would still like to know why the heck Aluminium is an Investiture-blocker...

That's not true. We're explicitly told that everyone on Scadrial (and possibly all intelligent life in the Cosmere) is at least a little Invested. Putting that extra bit of Investiture in humanity is why Preservation was left weaker than Ruin, and it's why allomancy has trouble affecting pieces of metal inside a person's body, because that person's innate Investiture is blocking the outside force. And in Secret History we see that, because Kelsier was a Mistborn, he has more Investiture in him than a normal person, allowing his Cognitive self to keep itself together longer than normal ghosts.

Scadrial magic systems actually seem fairly unique in that the ability to use magic is something you can be born with, rather than requiring an outside source like Breaths, stormlight, or the Dor.

I want to say it's mentioned somewhere that "everything has a baseline level of Investiture" is true of the entire Cosmere rather than just Scadrial, but I'm not 100% on that. It would also seem to be contradicted by certain details. For example, it's difficult to steelpush or ironpull on metal inside someone's body, or on hemalurgic spikes, which is explained by both people and spikes being Invested. However, on Roshar, you can Lash people no problem — but not shardplate, which is Invested. Does that mean that Rosharians aren't Invested? Have we ever seen a Lashing (or other type of Surgebinding) work when applied to an infused gem? (Most spheres might not actually count, since you can presumably affect the glass even if you can't affect the stormlight-infused stone directly.)

But yeah, it's definitely said that allomancers have more Investiture than non-allomancers, the same way that a Returned's divine Breath is more powerful than a regular person's natural Breath. But their Investiture isn't temporarily held, like a Surgebinder, it's part of them, inseparable and unchangeable (except via shenanigans like hemalurgy and lerasium).

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The Lashing question is answered in Mistborn, where they make it explicit that RAW POWER can allow you to overcome innate Investiture. Presumably, Lashing is enough to overcome a normal pwerson's investiture but not a Shardplate, which is basically MADE OF INVESTITURE by virtue of being grown by feeding Stormlight to whatever spren make it up. Though this might be a function of Lashings themselves. As I understand it, at least the Gravitational lashings work by messing with you Connection to the planet vis-a-vis gravity. The Investiture is working on the Connection, which Feruchemy shows us is perfectly easy for Investiture to do. Maybe the reason Lashing doesn't work on Shardplate is because you're basically trying to Lash a SPREN, and so far, we haven't seen anyone actually try to do that. There's also a conspicuous absence of people using Lashings on Shardblades, which are also made of spren-stuff.

Which begs the question, can a Steelpusher more easily push metals in the body on a non-Scadrial individual because their baselne Investiture is lower than the resistance they'd normally be up against?

Yeah. The whole power things makes sense to me.

It's always seemed like that comparatively Roshar's magic systems are very high Investiture compared to Scadrial's.

You know, come to think of it, would enough Breath make you immune to Lashings?

edited 26th Nov '17 4:21:52 PM by 32ndfreeze