Costs of Awakening

[DocHoliday he/him]

Alright I like the ideas Capn' Kurk. They match up with my own if I understand that post correctly. I also agree that there is a minimum baseline of Breath for complex Awakening. I was trying to illustrate that an unskilled Awakener will use more Breath than the absolute minimum by having to impart/infuse more energy (Breath) into motivating that cognition.

 

Hmm. The color draining portion of that Thread got me thinking though, why does the 9th b Heightening cause  white color draining?

[Kurkistan he/him]

I do apologize for the length. I did warn you . If you really want to have fun, though, just keep reading up to my 30-post battle with Nepene.

 

Okay then. I can see unskilled Awakeners being less efficient, but I would like to note that I wouldn't be shocked beyond words if that's not the case; if a Command either works and takes X Breath based on its target/Command or it doesn't.

 

You mean draining all the color out of objects, and thus leaving them white?--which is the 10th Heightening, btw.

 

I did not put enough analysis into the effects of the various Heightenings back in the day when I wrote that thread up. Nepene gave us an idea of "intuition" to explain Instinctive Awakening, and I've since considered that Forms might come into it somehow, but it's altogether a bit muddled on my end. It seems, though, that many of the effects of the Heightenings, particularly the higher ones, deal with your interactions with the rest of the world. Sure you get some health and agelessness to begin with, but everything else deals with perceiving or magically interacting with the outside world.

 

Breaths might have an effect of super-charging the depth and breadth of Spiritual connections between their holders and other objects. This is all absurdly vague and unhelpful, and needs deeper analysis, but you could start off talking about an Awakener of the Tenth Heightening might be a deeper connection to an object by which to siphon off its color, just like they gain the ability to understand the "harmonics" of different colors and sounds at lower levels.

Edited July 15, 2013 by Kurkistan

[DocHoliday he/him]

I did not put enough analysis into the effects of the various Heightenings back in the day when I wrote that thread up. Nepene gave us an idea of "intuition" to explain Instinctive Awakening, and I've since considered that Forms might come into it somehow, but it's altogether a bit muddled on my end. It seems, though, that many of the effects of the Heightenings, particularly the higher ones, deal with your interactions with the rest of the world. Sure you get some health and agelessness to begin with, but everything else deals with perceiving or magically interacting with the outside world.

Iagree that the Heightenings, particularly at the latter levels, seem to empower Awakeners. Which is why the 10th (ty for the correction) strikes me as very odd. Unless it's for recycling/redyeing purposes, and even then really?,  this seems extremely out of place for the (theoretically) most powerful Heightening.

[Kurkistan he/him]

I'm not sure what the problem is. Awakeners of the Tenth Heightening are able to fully utilize the color of various objects when they Awaken. This allows them to get more bang for their buck: while a normal Awakener can't use a gray scarf to Awaken, one of the Tenth Heightening can. It's an unadulterated benefit.

[DocHoliday he/him]

Maybe so. Ehhh it is so. But I'm biased against something solved so easily by a clowns string of scarves, but costs 10,000+ breaths.

[Kurkistan he/him]

It's simply one of many effects, and doesn't "cost" the Breaths used to get to the Tenth Heightening. I imagine that all Awakeners utilize a tad more of the color of objects as they gain more Breath, and the Tenth Heightening is just where it plateaus at its maximum value, like with perfect pitch or health.

[DocHoliday he/him]

True, but Awakening (except Lifeless) in general doesn't 'cost' any Breath. Perhaps what I should have said is attaining in place of cost.

 

It's simply one of many effects, and doesn't "cost" the Breaths used to get to the Tenth Heightening. I imagine that all Awakeners utilize a tad more of the color of objects as they gain more Breath, and the Tenth Heightening is just where it plateaus at its maximum value, like with perfect pitch or health.

 I gotta disagree here. That essentially means that there is no 10th Heightening, as there is no measurable effects besides the color disolvment. As we see individual's Breath increase, they have noticeably increased ability to note color differentiation, and auditory cues. This plateaus at the (3rd/4th?) Heightening with Perfect Pitch. This is an  ability. Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't see how sucking more color up has any benefit. Using grey and black for Awakening is another matter entirely.

[Kurkistan he/him]

The Tenth Heightening (as I linked to in my first post about this) is not limited to just color-drain: it also gives you "(Color Distortion), a Awakener gains the natural and intrinsic ability to bend light around white objects, creating colors from them as if from a prism." and "the ability to give commands mentally (Mental Command)" as well as the "Perfect Invocation" that we've been talking about, "draw[ing] more color from the objects they use to fuel their art. This leaves objects drained to white, rather than grey".

 

The naming convention even fits: Perfect Pitch, Color Recognition, and Invocation. So it's likely a case of plateauing gradual gains in how much color you can drain off.

 

The drain of color in Awakening is not (just) a random side-effect. It's necessary for it to happen at all. An Awakener without any color to draw upon cannot Awaken anything, no matter how many Breaths they have. The more color you can draw from any given object before it becomes unusable to you, then, the better off you are.

 

As an aside, you don't need to be at the Tenth to use black: Vasher does it quite easily, leaving behind gray patches. It seems, then, that it's the white/gray side of the scale that's normally unusable.

[DocHoliday he/him]

Ahhh, I had thought prismatic light to be 9th Heightening. I'm going off memory as I don't have the book in front of me anymore, so I apologize for misinformation. Still I see an inconsistency, Susebron' s Awakening turned his place white, and left some area black. White is unsuitable for Awakening, so it's not as if there's more color left over for Awakening. Really I see Metal Command as the 10th Heightening and the rest is awe factor.

[Pechvarry]

I don't believe color bleeds closer to white with each breath all the way to the tenth heightening. I'm without reference, but I think the book mentions there being an exact shade of gray resultant from all (normal) awakenings.

Doc, I think you just want the tenth heightening to have some uber benefit. It may end up being a pretty small gain, compared to others.

I wonder if there's a neat interaction between the prism effect and lightweaving...

Edited July 17, 2013 by Pechvarry

[11thorderknight]

There seems to be a pretty HUGE plot inconsistency related to the Tenth Heightening. Namely, if it allows Mental Commands, then what's the point of cutting out the God-King's tongue? If he has Mental Command, he would still be able to Awaken.

 

???

[Kurkistan he/him]

I really wish people would click on links more often  . For the third time, here is the Coppermind page on Awakening. Under the Tenth Heightening section it says: "A third ability granted is the ability to give commands mentally (Mental Command), although this is said to be difficult to learn. This is the ability that allowed the God Kings of Hallandren to pass on their breaths after their tongues were removed."

Edited July 17, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Pechvarry]

To be fair, you do post something like 20,000 word posts.  

Edited July 17, 2013 by Pechvarry

[Kurkistan he/him]

You do that one two three times, and no one ever lets you forget it. 

[happyman he/him]

Mental commands sounds pretty cool, actually.

 

By the way, knowing Brandon, the Tenth Heightening probably does have some abilities beyond those listed.  The description in Warbreaker is "in-world," and it's not like a lot of people have had chances to experiment with it.

[DocHoliday he/him]

I did want it to be Über, Mental Command  is Über. The drain to white just seemed lame to me for something that only like 5 people in the world have ever managed. Neat, but not Über. I don't have Warbreaker in front of me anymore so Kurkistan's post cleared that up for me.

[Isomere]

The ability to make things go pure white is a symptom of a greater power to my eyes. It implies complete control over color, and I'm certain Brandon will not disappoint us with his in-book extrapolations of what that could allow. 

[DocHoliday he/him]

The ability to make things go pure white is a symptom of a greater power to my eyes. It implies complete control over color, and I'm certain Brandon will not disappoint us with his in-book extrapolations of what that could allow. 

Which would be what? There's 1 Shard, 1 firm of Investiture. Color is fuel for that Investiture. White is useless for that Investiture. I repeat that Mental Command is the ' real' 10th Heightening and the rest is just shock and awe.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Draining to white is also important because the 10th Heightening also grants Color Distortion, where an Awakener can "bend light around white objects, creating colors from them as if from a prism."

 

Anyways, I don't see why a heightening should be defined by just one ability as the "real" heightening, most of the heightenings are marked by more than one ability.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Doc, just to be clear, you are aware that Susebron doesn't go around draining color every time he sneezes, right? It's just when he uses things for Awakening.

[Shardlet he/him]

Which would be what? There's 1 Shard, 1 firm of Investiture. Color is fuel for that Investiture. White is useless for that Investiture. I repeat that Mental Command is the ' real' 10th Heightening and the rest is just shock and awe.

 

I would expect that the ability to drain to white would result in a greater amount of fuel for the investiture than a drain to grey.  Thus, 10th heightening awakenings would be more potent than other awakenings.  Also, as has been put forth previously, I would expect that a 10th heightening awakener could produce some degree of awakening using an object that has been previously drained to grey by another awakener.  Thus giving the 10th heightening awakener more ammunition as it were.

[happyman he/him]

I would expect that the ability to drain to white would result in a greater amount of fuel for the investiture than a drain to grey.  Thus, 10th heightening awakenings would be more potent than other awakenings.  Also, as has been put forth previously, I would expect that a 10th heightening awakener could produce some degree of awakening using an object that has been previously drained to grey by another awakener.  Thus giving the 10th heightening awakener more ammunition as it were.

 

I think this is the real extra power of a 10th heightening Awakener.  In any fight or contest where everything else is equal, the Awakener who can drain things to white rather than gray would be able to continue awakening well after the other Awakener has run out of "fuel."  They would also probably run through their "ammunition" more slowly.  Put more succinctly, a 10th heightening Awakener would be able to Awaken more things with 100 colored rags than any of the lower heightenings would.  It sounds like a big advantage to me.

[DocHoliday he/him]

Draining to white is also important because the 10th Heightening also grants Color Distortion, where an Awakener can "bend light around white objects, creating colors from them as if from a prism."

 

Anyways, I don't see why a heightening should be defined by just one ability as the "real" heightening, most of the heightenings are marked by more than one ability.

I'm just stating what would make an Awakener more 'potent', hence my "shock and awe". BioChroma in general makes colors more vibrant, the prism effect more like a status symbol than useful.

 

Doc, just to be clear, you are aware that Susebron doesn't go around draining color every time he sneezes, right? It's just when he uses things for Awakening.

We only see  one use of Awakening from Susebron, but what's the relevance Kurk? All I'm trying to say is that there's no real relevance to draining color to white, unless Susebron is capable of using that grey color lower Awakeners leave; and that is a possibility. We just don't have the evidence.

 

I would expect that the ability to drain to white would result in a greater amount of fuel for the investiture than a drain to grey.  Thus, 10th heightening awakenings would be more potent than other awakenings.  Also, as has been put forth previously, I would expect that a 10th heightening awakener could produce some degree of awakening using an object that has been previously drained to grey by another awakener.  Thus giving the 10th heightening awakener more ammunition as it were.

Now I like this idea about fueling Investiture better.  It makes sense that a greater drain of pigmentation would provide a higher fuel to Awakening ratio, but again we just don't have enough evidence to support this conjecture. I need to see some more action from Susebron before I can get behind it.

[Pechvarry]

I think the text mentions it being more efficient; pulling more fuel out of an object before needing more.

[DocHoliday he/him]

"Awakeners of the Tenth Heightening (Perfect Invocation) can draw more color from the objects they use to fuel their art. This leaves objects drained to white, rather than grey" (emphasis mine)

 

I read this as it drains more color out of the object, not more fuel or of the object.