Direct Commands and Azure's Blade

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

So as I understand it, the way awakening works is that you use breath to fill an object with investiture and give it extremely limited sentience (as investiture does), and then that object will act out whatever command you made it to do. But the investiture is the key here of course. The object is just the physical medium that gives Breath the ability to act on the world. So is that medium actually necessary? I don't think it is. We've seen that investiture can manifest in the physical realm as metals- shardblades and shardplates and ancient fabrials, atium, lerasium. So why not breath as well? I propose that you can command the breath directly to "manifest as metal", and it would do so in the form of Edglium, endowment's godmetal.

Furthermore, I propose that this is how Azure's sword was made. "Manifest as metal and be as my blade". We know that originally, nightblood was an attempt to recreate a rosharan shardblade using Breath. This was done by taking a normal steel sword and loading it chock full of breath, and giving it a command. "Destroy Evil". But this isn't how shardblades are made. They're made by getting a spren to manifest in the physical realm as metal. And so, if you're trying to recreate one using Breath, then I would probably try getting breath to manifest as metal. If Azure's sword is a second attempt at this same experiment (which certainly isn't confirmed, but we at least know that the sword is "somewhat related" to nightblood).

 

So what do you all think? Can you command breath directly, and manifest it as metal? What else interesting could you do with that? And what do you think of my theory on Azure's sword

[+mdross81 he/him]

Sounds fairly plausible. That is unless Edgli has imposed some kind of limitation on Breaths that prevents them manifesting in the physical.

Maybe, in line with Endowment’s Intent, the magic only works if you endow or give the Breath to something/someone else?

[Brgst13]

I have to disagree.  The Command is given to the object receiving the Breath not the Breath itself.  

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

1 hour ago, mdross81 said:

Maybe, in line with Endowment’s Intent, the magic only works if you endow or give the Breath to something/someone else?

Shardic intent has more to do with how the magic is accessed than what it does. ie, in this case, you get breaths by having someone give them to you. Or for knights radiant, you have to make oaths (honor) and grow as a person (cultivation). So while it's probably possible that Edgli purposely changed the magic to prevent this somehow, I don't think that would be a natural part of it. And I don't see any reason why Edgli would want to prevent that, though again it is possible.

[alder24]

It seems very plausible, I like that idea but how do you command Breaths only, and can they exist without that object/medium? The command is always given to an object which is powered by Breaths sticking to it's soul. When soul dies, Breaths are lost with it. Is it still Awakening if there is no physical object involved? 

We've never seen them doing something like that, just hanging out in the air, but that doesn't means they can't, just that nobody tried it before. Azure's Blade is definitely lv 4 awakened object, so how many Breaths would you need to give them sentience without medium? How do you separate Breaths from object? There are many problems with it, but it's kind of make sense.

[+mdross81 he/him]

Here’s a WoB that’s maybe-kinda relevant to this discussion.

Quote

Questioner

With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths, when they get to the other planets?

Brandon Sanderson

So spikes rip off pieces of the soul and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul. You could maybe get a divine Breath but I haven't really decided on regular Breaths, they're kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm which is not a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

Shadows of Self London UK signing (Oct. 19, 2015)

So, a couple of things here. One, regular Biochromatic Breaths (as opposed to Divine Breaths) that are not being used to Awaken are already in the physical realm, just in gaseous form. So the spren comparison - where Investiture is pulled from the cognitive into the physical and becomes a Shardblade (or fork or whatever) - is not quite the same thing.

Making @Stormtide_Leviathan’s idea work, then, is more akin to transformation. You would be commanding a Breath (I guess via other Breaths and a color source for fuel) to change from gaseous to solid. Might run into the old problem of Investiture resisting Investiture there.

Two, it’s interesting how Brandon describes the interaction between Breaths and a soul during Awakening. Sounds like when Breath is used to Awaken it remains in the physical realm but reaches through to the spiritual (and the cognitive I would think), to the soul of the object. That could be another problem with the theory. Does a Breath have a soul that can be reached in this way?

Edit: found another WoB

Quote

Questioner

My friends would like to know if you can Awaken liquids?

Brandon Sanderson

This is almost impossible.

Questioner

Almost impossible?

Brandon Sanderson

Almost impossible, but not fully impossible, but basically impossible. Particularly if you're talking about just a liquid, not in a container, anything like that. Technically, you can kind of Awaken a dead animal, which will have some liquid in it and stuff. But if you just want to Awaken like--

Questioner

A bowl of water?

Brandon Sanderson

A bowl of water, almost impossible.

Prague Signing (Oct. 26, 2019)

So it’s functionally nearly impossible to Awaken liquid. Seems like there would be similar problems with a gas. 

Edited May 2, 2022 by mdross81
Found another WoB

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

This is a cool idea... that breath could actually be that the God metal is simply in a gaseous state at room temp... if you could freeze breath how cold might it need to be before it manifests as a solid?   

[Returned]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

This is a cool idea... that breath could actually be that the God metal is simply in a gaseous state at room temp... if you could freeze breath how cold might it need to be before it manifests as a solid?   

I'm not sure it would necessarily work that way, given the magic involved, but it could. The closest example I can think of is Preservation's power: we see it as a mist, liquid, and solid under the same (or at least similar) conditions at the Well of Ascension. Certainly the solid Lerasium and liquid power were in the same environment at the same time.

But on the other hand, we see that the Preservation's mist may have been influenced by heat and sunlight: it was suspected to evaporate indoors (though this might have been an assumption based on ordinary mists), and Rashek moved the whole planet closer to the sun in an effort to burn the mists away (but this was during his earliest moments with the power, when he was least knowledgeable and experienced, so he may also have been working with incorrect or incomplete knowledge).

So maybe Breath could have different physical forms depending on real conditions like temperature and pressure, but my gut instinct is that even if it can be affected that way by circumstance, the circumstances need to be more than just physical.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

 

On 5/2/2022 at 11:45 AM, mdross81 said:

So, a couple of things here. One, regular Biochromatic Breaths (as opposed to Divine Breaths) that are not being used to Awaken are already in the physical realm, just in gaseous form. So the spren comparison - where Investiture is pulled from the cognitive into the physical and becomes a Shardblade (or fork or whatever) - is not quite the same thing.

Making @Stormtide_Leviathan’s idea work, then, is more akin to transformation. You would be commanding a Breath (I guess via other Breaths and a color source for fuel) to change from gaseous to solid. Might run into the old problem of Investiture resisting Investiture there.

You're right that Breaths are actually already physical, that's my bad. So it would be, as you say, more akin to transformation than manifesting something non-physical. However, I don't think that really changes much of my overall point.

I don't think that in order to command a breath and make it change, you'd need a second breath. (So I don't think the resistance would be an issue there). Cause my point was that, the way awakening works, you're already commanding breaths without needing a second one. My assumption is that the way awakening works is that you command your breaths to do something, using the object as the medium by which they act on the world. So if you command a rope to "hold things", you're actually commanding the Breaths to "hold things" by way of the rope. Breaths are the thing you have control of here. I'm assuming that a breath is just a bundle of investiture that acts out your will. And normally, in order for that to do anything physically useful, you have to make it go into a physical object. Cause if there's no physical object, there's no way for it to act on the physical world. But what I'm saying is that there's another way- rather than having the bundle of investiture under your control possess a physical object you can have it become a physical object. (Or, since apparently breaths are already physical, a more useful form of physical object, like changing the state of matter). You wouldn't need to use a breath to awaken another breath, because the awakening is necessary to allow you to control an object by filling it with breaths you already control. But if you control them, then maybe you can do something other than just awaken with them, like have them turn themselves into metal. Does that make sense?

(Now I admit, some or all of those assumptions may not be entirely accurate. We don't really have enough evidence to say for certain one way or another. And if not, then this whole thing may not be possible. And if not, then yes maybe using breaths to awaken other breaths would be another possible way of going about this. But as you mention, that has a lot of issues with it, like the bowl-of-water issue and the investiture-resists-investiture issue. But we have seen there are other things you can do with breath than just awaken, like memory stuff, so I do think this is possible personally)

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

My assumption is that the way awakening works is that you command your breaths to do something, using the object as the medium by which they act on the world. 

I might be wrong but I imagine that Awakening works similar to Soulcasting - you command the obcjet's mind to do stuff and give it Breaths to extend that mind to the point it can understand and do it using Breaths as energy source. 

But your explanation also works - we can command Breaths alone, memory Command like you point out.

Returned are just bunch of investiture commanded to do stuff. Or body commanded to do stuff with immense power of investiture. Both can be true. 

But does it matter? Like @mdross81 said you could be able to command Breaths alone to change state to solid - similar to commanding Breaths to alter memory. 

Edited May 5, 2022 by alder24

[+mdross81 he/him]

8 hours ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

I don't think that in order to command a breath and make it change, you'd need a second breath. (So I don't think the resistance would be an issue there). Cause my point was that, the way awakening works, you're already commanding breaths without needing a second one. My assumption is that the way awakening works is that you command your breaths to do something, using the object as the medium by which they act on the world. So if you command a rope to "hold things", you're actually commanding the Breaths to "hold things" by way of the rope. Breaths are the thing you have control of here. I'm assuming that a breath is just a bundle of investiture that acts out your will. And normally, in order for that to do anything physically useful, you have to make it go into a physical object. Cause if there's no physical object, there's no way for it to act on the physical world. But what I'm saying is that there's another way- rather than having the bundle of investiture under your control possess a physical object you can have it become a physical object. (Or, since apparently breaths are already physical, a more useful form of physical object, like changing the state of matter). You wouldn't need to use a breath to awaken another breath, because the awakening is necessary to allow you to control an object by filling it with breaths you already control. But if you control them, then maybe you can do something other than just awaken with them, like have them turn themselves into metal. Does that make sense?

It’s for sure a cool theory, and one I’d like to see Brandon asked about. I’d imagine you could avoid a RAFO if the question were focused on the underlying mechanics. Something like “Is a Biochromatic host always required for Awakening? Or can you Command the Breath itself without an object to serve as the host? If a host is required can other Breath(s) serve as the host?”

I hadn’t thought much about this before your post, but having done so now my take on Awakening is slightly different than yours. I don’t know that it’s accurate to say you are Commanding the Breath instead of the host. To me it’s more like the Breath forms a temporary bond with the soul of the host, and that bond gives the host the capacity to be Commanded. The Command is given to the object as modified by the Breath. But that’s just my sense. Your idea would open the door to some really cool possibilities though if it’s correct. 

[EmulatonStromenkiin he/him]

5 minutes ago, mdross81 said:

It’s for sure a cool theory, and one I’d like to see Brandon asked about. I’d imagine you could avoid a RAFO if the question were focused on the underlying mechanics. Something like “Is a Biochromatic host always required for Awakening? Or can you Command the Breath itself without an object to serve as the host? If a host is required can other Breath(s) serve as the host?”

I hadn’t thought much about this before your post, but having done so now my take on Awakening is slightly different than yours. I don’t know that it’s accurate to say you are Commanding the Breath instead of the host. To me it’s more like the Breath forms a temporary bond with the soul of the host, and that bond gives the host the capacity to be Commanded. The Command is given to the object as modified by the Breath. But that’s just my sense. Your idea would open the door to some really cool possibilities though if it’s correct. 

regardless, the breath is not used up, on nonliving biochroma entities

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

13 hours ago, EmulatonStromenkiin said:

the breath is not used up, on nonliving biochroma entities

Even with lifeless, it's not "used up" per se, it still exists, it's just not accessible to you anymore. It's basically like you're giving that breath to the lifeless, and its close enough to a human that now its the lifeless's breath instead of yours, so you can't retrieve it

[Rune he/him]

18 hours ago, alder24 said:

I might be wrong but I imagine that Awakening works similar to Soulcasting - you command the obcjet's mind to do stuff and give it Breaths to extend that mind to the point it can understand and do it using Breaths as energy source. 

But your explanation also works - we can command Breaths alone, memory Command like you point out.

Returned are just bunch of investiture commanded to do stuff. Or body commanded to do stuff with immense power of investiture. Both can be true.

Returned can’t be just a large amount of investiture as, yes investiture can become sentient, but Returned come back with the talents, skills, and some memories of who they were before so there is some connection with the original persons spirit, mind, and body to be able to retain the full aspect that they do, so they cannot just be investiture just commanded to do stuff-a personality, skill, and talent cannot simply be from a command, i.e. a person isn’t the result of a command.  It’s a good idea but I don’t think that that’s how investiture really works and interacts with existing persons.

[EmulatonStromenkiin he/him]

7 hours ago, Rune said:

Returned can’t be just a large amount of investiture as, yes investiture can become sentient, but Returned come back with the talents, skills, and some memories of who they were before so there is some connection with the original persons spirit, mind, and body to be able to retain the full aspect that they do, so they cannot just be investiture just commanded to do stuff-a personality, skill, and talent cannot simply be from a command, i.e. a person isn’t the result of a command.  It’s a good idea but I don’t think that that’s how investiture really works and interacts with existing persons.

I'm pretty sure Returned are sentient investiture in a Lifeless form, as lifeless also retain skills from previous lives. The loss of memories could be due to the sentient form having trouble accessing the physical place where the previous memories were stored in the body.

[alder24]

16 hours ago, Rune said:

Returned can’t be just a large amount of investiture as, yes investiture can become sentient, but Returned come back with the talents, skills, and some memories of who they were before so there is some connection with the original persons spirit, mind, and body to be able to retain the full aspect that they do, so they cannot just be investiture just commanded to do stuff-a personality, skill, and talent cannot simply be from a command, i.e. a person isn’t the result of a command.  It’s a good idea but I don’t think that that’s how investiture really works and interacts with existing persons.

Returned is the copy of person's soul made out of investiture and sticked up back to it's original body, commanded to do stuff, for example heal someone. All these skills and knowledge come from original soul and are copied, or they come from the body itself and are used by the new soul - they definitely don't come from command.

My point was depending on how you view Awakening, it can be either body commanded to do stuff or Breaths commanded to do it via body - both explanations are also working with Returned and even with storing memories in Breaths or altering your own memory. But only one is true . If it's the first option then Breaths can't be commanded to become metal sword, there needs to be physical sword as a medium, if it's the latter, somehow you can command them to manifest as a sword without needing one. 

 

Commanding Breaths directly to manifest as sword are one way of making Azure's sword, the other way is of course using better command then "destroy evil". Something not that abstract and active, something already familiar to a sword and maybe even more controllable. Something like "be my companion and bring death to my enemies at my will" could probably resulted in much sane, and safer sword, or even get rid of "be companion" which is abstract and replace it with "be sword" or "be sentient sword".

Personally I also believe that Nightblood was awaken with more than simple "destroy evil", and there was some advance command giving sentience before that - very similar to how creating lifeless is. 

Quote

“Awaken to my Breath,” he [Vasher] Commanded, “serve my needs, live at my Command and my word. Fallen Rope.”

That new command may be nesesery to create type 4 entities. Something like "Awaken to my Breath, gain sentience and fullfil your Command". Commending to "destroy evil" as a complete command with visualisation of gaining sentience as a sword, what evil is, and what destroying it means may be just a bit too much to visualize at once. 

Edited May 6, 2022 by alder24