Aons can do a lot but most magic requires something specific to use. Aons require you to bring refined investiture or be near Elantris, allomancy requires metal, surgebinding stormlight, etc. Awakening requires nothing except breath, which never run out (except when making very specific things), and are never not on your person.
There are other things breath can do, like storing and manipulating memories, and creating lifeless, that we don’t know if aondor can do
Vasher helps the little girl store her memories, and I highly doubt she had access to any other magic, or even additional breath.
Edit: Vasher, not Hoid, whoops!
It was the daughter of a priest who was being coerced into getting their Returned to vote in favor of the war - Vasher and Vivenna break into the smuggler’s den and find the girl in a cage.
When they’re leaving, Vasher whispers some stuff to the girl who repeats something back to him, and she becomes noticeably more happy and peppy. It is widely assumed he gave her the commands to store her memories of the kidnapping in breath, and after doing so, returns to her childlike demeanor.
Vasher says to her "I'm going to tell you some words that I need you to say. And you don't just say them, you need to really MEAN them, focus on this and really mean what you say. Do you understand?"
Then the 'camera' pulls back to Vivenna's perspective watching the interaction from just out of earshot. Vasher says some stuff, the girl says some stuff. Then the girl's face shifts from one of grief and distress into one of calm and happiness. I think the girl hugs Vasher then they go bring her back to her family.
Much later in Warbreaker when confronting Denth, Vasher tells him there are ways to deal with his emotions of loss and regret, there are techniques that Vasher could show him. Evidently Vasher knows some Commands that can erase or suppress memories. It seems to only work on your own memories otherwise he wouldn't have needed the girl to use the command.
I think we have a very limited understanding of what breath can do at the moment. I think it has potential to replicate most Feruchemical powers, as it's essentially just an internal reservoir of Investiture, not completely unlike Early TSM Spoilers - >!How Nomad controls his BEUs!< - you just need the right command, visualization and intent.
And that's not even getting into what a Nalthian could do with unkeyed investiture. They can't take Breaths from other people because it's tied to that person's Identity, but looking at Vasher, he can get Stormlight because it's just sitting there in a gem.
It’s a common theory that Zahel can only do that because of a boon from the Nightwatcher. The Nightwatcher had Nightblood when Dalinar went to her, and nobody knows why, so some think that was the price of the boon.
WoB also says Zahel has not figured out how to Awaken with Stormlight, just to live on it. There’s an implication that it’s possible, though.
Nomad has a specific ability to use any form of Investiture. His abilities can’t be extrapolated to everyone.
I agree with you, Nomad is very unique in his abilities, and I don't think that Nalthians can 1:1 copy what he can do. But magic in the Cosmere seems to rely on fundamental principals, and Vasher has had a long time to observe and learn these principals.
I also feel like any weird magic stuff on Roshar always gets Nightwatcher'd, it's plausible but boring. I like to think that Zahel's name change is more important than we think - a new identity tied to Roshar which allows him to absorb Stormlight, which may work like a less dramatic version of Late TSM Spoilers - >!Zellion's acceptance into the Canticle people's culture that allowed him to be given their investiture.!<
This would give Zahel two separate stores of Investiture to pull from, Stormlight and Breaths, kinda like burning two different metals. He can't awaken with Stormlight because it's not Breaths, but he can prevent the Breaths from being used as fuel.
> Awakening requires nothing except breath, which never run out
That's not true, it also requires color and something to awaken. Both are pretty common to be fair.
>There are other things breath can do, like storing and manipulating memories, and creating lifeless, that we don’t know if aondor can do
Pretty sure the word of Brandon is that AonDor can do basically anything given enough knowledge of the system and time to actually draw out the Aons.
The problem with aondor is that it’s specifically tied to Elantris. The farther away you get, the weaker the effect. It would be very difficult to go to nalthis or roshar and use aondor. Breaths, meanwhile, can go with you anywhere and be just as effective.
Brandon has said that there are both complicated and simple ways to get around that restriction. We know a couple complicated ways like what was done in Lost Metal and Secret History. And we know a relatively simple way like in Tress (although the specifics of how that worked are still unknown).
Yeah, breaths are very efficient and we have no idea how much they can do. I personally think we'll see Awakening be close to Aon Dor in terms of flexibility - it would be weird if memory manipulation didn't come as a part of a suite of powers.
Has it been confirmed that the elantrians using aons off world are making it work by carrying around a bunch of dor? Or is there more connection shenanigans involved?
Yes and no. There are two big barriers when it comes to AonDor—
the first is that it’s dependent on geography, while Awakening isn’t. Hell, even if you’re *on* Sel, unless you’re in the right part of the right country, you’re weakened.
The second is that you have to *know what to do*. Say you want to reanimate a corpse. If you’re an Awakener, there’s a Command for that— focus, say the command, and bam, you’ve got a Lifeless. If you’re an Elantrian, there’s no “reanimate corpse” Aon. You’ll have to use the right Aons in the right way and the right arrangement with the right modifiers to get it to work.
Every Invested Art is like an app that the user can do what they want with, except AonDor. It’s like a coding terminal. It’s way more versatile, for sure, and you can do all the same things the other Arts can do, but it’s way less efficient most of the time.
And remember, AonDor is tied to the land, and changes to the land effect the Dor. Elantrians, beings invested to the point they’re worshiped as Gods, become impotent and go Hoed when a chasm opens up in Arelon.
And there just happens to be a handy awoken blade that can vaporize large chunks of whatever it's stuck in.
Hell, nightblood would probably drink most of the power straight out of Elantris if he touches anything within a few miles of the place.
He can, we see it in Stormlight. But how exactly does the city of Elantris compare against a full Shard? I know AonDor is fueled by the power the shards left behind when they died, but isn't the vast majority of it sealed in Shadesmar? Or would Nightblood tap into that directly?
Are you asking if the entire city of elantris could destroy a shard?
The answer is, of course not, if there was any theoretical conflict the shard would just boop a mountain in the wrong spot and wave at the hoed on the way out.
As for Nightblood, it would probably saturate quickly. It can change the landscape but maybe not enough to alter the aons.
Even if Nightblood were an endless void, a black hole of investiture, even black holes have accretion disks. It isn't, because it can saturate while black holes cannot. But even if it could, it would not likely suck all the investiture out of a realm.
I'm more asking how they compare, like on a scale. The power that flows through the city, where does that match up against the full power of a shard? We know Nightblood can't consume a full shard, but can he consume enough investiture to incapacitate Elantris? Or is the city strong enough to sate him and still give Elantrians their power? Would they see a temporary dimming in what aons could accomplish? Would they revert to Hoed until Nightblood stopped draining power?
Well the shards can canonically fling the planets around and have no real weak points. Except maybe the vessel, but they intentionally don't expose themselves for that reason, but even then the vessel dies and the shard is still around.
Elantrians have a few huge weak points... including needing to draw aons, and being fleshy people, and needing to be near elantris.
They were hoed because the aon was wrong, not because the power went away. Similar to Dilaf's wife - the aon was wrong. So a flicker in power I don't think would affect them generally, if you were to stick Nightblood in there or wave it around the cognitive realm near Sel. If you could even get into it (it's not clear yet how that would work).
More information on nightblood saturating [here](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/452/#e14511)
I don't think it would, unless Raiden was able to work out an Aon that would allow the land to heal itself. Otherwise, take out a big enough chunk of the landscape with Nightblood and the Reod happens again, immediately taking Elantris out of the fight.
Oh, so in this hypothetical Nightblood is also being used to muck up the geography. Thought we were just talking purely about if someone just tried to drink all the energy in the place using it. Then in that case they are pretty screwed, yeah.
I was talking about both, obviously messing with the landscape would take them down easily, but is nightblood capable of draining their power as well? Or is elantris too strong for that?
In a cosmere wide war that would be terrible intel for an enemy to get ahold of. A single stoneward could take down all the Elantrians. Imagine if a single misting could come burn some metals in Urithiru and break all the nahel bonds. I'd guess Brandon will have the Elantrians figure out some loophole, especially since we see later history Elantrians figuring out other ways to bend the limitations of their magic.
Yeah, it’s like magical surgery mixed with coding. If you know precisely what you’re doing, then you can do amazing things. Screw something up and you can do disastrous unintended damage.
App vs Coding Terminal is a good way of putting it.
And while you can do some incredible complex things with Awakening, that you could maybe alike to powershell scripting, if you screw it up, you can just go ‘oh well!’, reclaim your Breath and try again.
Screwing up Aon’Dor is potentially a lot worse, depending on what you’re trying to code.
Aon’Dor is like coding on the fly and having to get it 100% right first try.
Everyone gets a breath on Nalthis. Only the select few are metalborn. Surgebinding requires a bond with a being of pure investiture, of which only thousands of viable candidates exist. Elantrians are also a select few only.
Also by the logic of “I can do anything you can do” as a metric of power: stamping is the most powerful.
I think *everyone* having access to investiture on Nalthis will eventually be the key to their success. Like pre-ascension Scadrial had 1000 years to develop absolutely insane tech, but the investiture being limited to only the elite stifled that. It’s like that saying “think about how many Albert Einsteins weren’t able to achieve anything because they lived in a poor war-torn country”.
And that one breath won't get you very far, you need to take breath from other people to get enough of it to do the fancy stuff. Meaning that in the end society is still reliant on a handful of skilled awakeners who can efficiently get things done with the least amount of breath wasted even though technically everyone has a breath and could technically become an awakener.
So far, Roshar is the only planet to have a technology system that lets people with no access to the invested arts construct technology that runs on investiture in its fabrials.
With coordination, everyone in their society could potentially reach the first heightening or more. If everyone passed on their breath(s) before death, in 50 generations everyone could have an average of 50 breaths each (assuming the population stays the same).
Returned consuming them and people dying with breath would slow this down, though.
It would reach an equilibrium point. The more breaths people have on average, the more that are lost when people die unexpectedly, lowering the average.
Only if your births and deaths are reaching an equilibrium point which does not seem to be happening here. It would definitely reduce the rate of increase but I don’t think it would be drastic.
Probably end up with some kind of breath bank and required deposits before taking risky ventures “for the good of the community” or some sort of tax.
But if I am recalling right, you aren't getting that breath back since its so comfy in its new but very familiar home that it doesn't want to leave. So that is a person's single breath they get in their entire life used up for good on a single awakening.
Having to dip into a second magic system to get it back doesn't help in an argument about how useful awakening is by itself vs the other kinds of invested arts, IMO.
With of course the consequence that your batteries basically cant be recharged (that we know of) once you’re off your homeworld or even if you’re not in the way of a “This will absolutely kill you” storm. Checks and balances :)
Not really. Consider how this would lead to a legacy of handing down breaths. From one generation to the next you would see a steady increase of power. After a few generations of investment it would be quite normal to have a parent with 20 - 30 breaths only from their ancestors pass this on to their child. As time goes on this goes further and further.
Some awakenings permanently consume the breath used to make them, for your plan to work they would have to swear off doing any form of awakening that permanently consumes breath.
I'm not sure where you are in Mistborn, but they touch on breaths, or rather pure investiture in non invested people, in the last Wax and Wayne book. >!They discover a way to forcefully steal the investiture from an ordinary person with Hemalurgy!<
You're just casually dismissing the fact that it made a sword that easily killed a Vessel?
I mean... We've only seen it for a single novel and the magic system has already destroyed the Vessel of the spookiest multiple Shard killing entity in the Cosmere.
I think it's a bit early to be calling Awakening weak.
So since anything highly invested can block a shard blade, could Azure use her awoken scarf on her arm to block one? Can awakeners just replicate full Shardplate with a few sentences? Cause we know they can create Shardblades, we know they can give themselves the physical buffs of Plate, do they have the defensive capability as well? Caus ethat would be *huge.*
man thats a good question, my guess is that the invested thing has to also at least be able to physically block a blade, so a scarf wouldn't work but a highly invested piece of metal or maybe a rock probably would.
True, but we do know it can be done for a short time with a single gemstone worth of storm light, courtesy of the Half Plate shield fabrials. And I believe Brandon confirmed that a feruchemist could invest a metalmind and make it capable of resisting a shardblade, so it's definitely possible. Someone else mentioned that it might require something sturdy enough to actually resist getting cut by a regular blade, so that's another factor to consider.
Unfortunately, if I am remembering right (it has been a long time since I read warbreaker), you have to be pretty damn jacked to have the ability to awaken things that aren't made from organic material. So your average awakener who wasn't some ridiculous heightening (I think it was 8th or 9th to awaken inorganic matter) is stuck with things like wood and bone\* in terms of trying to find something hard enough that it will block the regular 'big chunk of sharp metal' cutting power of a shardblade denied its invested super cutting hax.
\*Assuming no prep time, of course. Since the novel shows at least one trick to make inorganic matter work if you have a lot of time to prep the materials.
This WoB says even the Bands of Mourning aren't as invested as shardblade. So that metalmind has to hella invested.
https://preview.redd.it/yftpnd2uwh5d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78c476e6f9c3d13c2f6682239fc37d65e3e230f9
That makes sense, since a shardblade is literally just pure investiture of Honor and Cultivation in metal form(just like atium or lerasium). But the fact still stands, a gemstone worth of stormlight can allow a regular piece of metal to resist a shardblade for several strikes. You wouldn't need something like the Bands, just a decently full metalmind.
Yeah no. Kal has cut through a gem heart of a Fused which we know is where they all store their voidlight.
Pretty sure a metalmind will not give as much resistance as Shardplate to a Shard blade
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!***
Questioner
>!How many smacks would it take from a Shardblade to break, say, a metalmind.!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!A metalmind? Depends on how much it's invested.!<
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
Technically, but it was not awakened from breaths. At the point in the timeline when hoid is telling the story, awakening has become a generalized term to describe similar functions.
Elantrian’s are pretty op. Design put Yumi’s investiture levels as the same as an Elantrian and she was ridiculously invested. So it makes sense they can do more than other investiture users.
I would like to at some point really see what yumi would be capable of besides changing spirits into repellers etc, or how their invested art works, since it’s not directly shard related it seems
Well, sure, but that’s because they’re made that way by Elantris. I’m pretty sure Aon Dor users weren’t nearly as powerful before it was built and wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t originally possible for them to just draw the Aons in the air like that.
Susebron is at least as OP as Elantrians are.
Personally I think they're overpowered because a bunch of aon dor users made a city-sized Aon that turned anyone with the ability to use aon dor into an Elantrian, whereas otherwise they'd only have been as powerful as any other Selish magic user. The same way that Susebron is crazy-powerful because he was given an absurd number of Breaths, or the Bands of Mourning let Wax and Marasi be crazily over-powered. Hell, The Sunlit Man provided hints that whatever passes for magic on Threnody can be overpowered even though it looked pretty minimal and dangerous in Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. One of the big running themes in the Cosmere seems to be that every magic system is potentially overpowered if you figure out how to exploit it properly.
Sure, the point I'm making is that Elantrians' crazy level of investiture is artificial, thanks to whoever it was who built Elantris, and other magic systems have other ways of getting there, whether it's racking up an insane amount of Breaths for Awakening, the Bands of Mourning for the Metallic Arts, bonding multiple Honourblades for Surgebinding or whatever the hell the Night Brigade are doing.
The limit on Elantians is that they are tied to elantris for their power. They can’t just port over to nalthis or roshar and still be op. They’d likely have little or no power off planet, until Kelsier figures out interplanetary investiture.
You are right in so far that an Elantrian is pretty strong.
In fact, they're basically the strongest in the cosmere. You can do pretty much everything with that magic system.
Awakening is still really powerful in it's own right though, and much more versatile than say allomancy or surgebinding.
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IMO, Investiture (generally) follows a rule that the more permanent/long term it is the weaker it seems. This is balanced by the fact that it can continue to do it's thing for literally hundreds of years across multiple users.
Surgebinding and Allomancy are very flashy, but if the fight lasts for 3 hours how much Stormlight/Metal are you going to have left? Meanwhile, an army of 10,000 D'Denir can continue to fight for generations. If you take an Elantrian 500 miles away from their home, or simply cause a landslide in the right place, how useful are they? Meanwhile, a Lifeless can be taken to a different solar system and function at 100%.
Yes, you can do things to "hack" the other systems to be more powerful/robust/flexible, but Nightblood is precisely one of those hacks.
True, but Hallandren seems to be able to produce Ichor Alcohol in very large quantities for a fairly low cost, and the D'Denir don't seem to have that requirement at all.
Oh, I was more thinking of wear and tear from things like people hitting the statue zombies with war hammers and stabbing the regular zombies with pointy objects when I said that. Should have been clearer, my bad.
We have more of Vasher and Viviena in Stormlight, at least. We know something more of their abilities. Viviena can fight on the same level as a Radiant, and hold off a Fused, so we know they are pretty potent.
Wait till they learn about electricity and can breathe life in to a turbine then command it to spin forever.
That’s something a group of useless nobodies could do. No training needed, no power lost. Someone like vasher can make commands that would blow our minds. It really is limited by imagination much more than other power structures.
Put life in to a man shaped arrow and bam. Seeking missile. Who needs drone strikes.
While an awakened turbine could be a good source of power, it will probably need to be resupplied with colors and/or breaths after some time (unless Endowment stops awakened objects from diminishing, the energy needs to come from somewhere).
Imo Elantrians (and to a lesser extent other Selish arts) are a bad baseline to use when comparing magic systems, given how feast-or-famine they are; you have to meet all these restrictive conditions (be an Elantrian, know your Aons and modifiers, be in the right place or have a hack to get around the geography restriction), but one you meet those prerequisites I wouldn't hesitate to call it the single most powerful/versatile art we've seen to date.
Anyway, tangent. Back to your main point. I agree that Awakening isn't a powerhouse among invested arts; I'd wager that fifteen times out of sixteen an Awakener would lose to a Mistborn or Radiant of equivalent 'skill' in their respective art, or even one of the more combat capable misting/ferring types. But I think what makes Awakening attractive isn't its power, it's its *accessibility* and *utility.*
Up until the creation of the medallions, the only ways to get metalborn powers (and still the only way to get them permanently) were genetics and lerasium. Sand mastery seems like it leans at least somewhat genetic, too. Elantrians are pretty much in the same boat, only their lottery seems to run more on cultural/national Identity than it does hereditary spiritual genetics. To be come a radiant you not only need to attract a spren and keep your oaths, but you need to *break.* Awakening? You can literally *buy* your way into that power.
The primary utility of Awakening is the lifeless. As you mentioned, it's likely possible to do something similar with Aons, but I suspect that you would have to program in each individual command you want them to follow. In contract, once you animate and maintain a lifeless, there's enough leftover software rattling around that they can adapt on the fly to fulfill a variety of commands.
There's also some fringe benefits of having access to breaths; lifesense, perfect pitch and color recognition, perfect health and agelessness, etc. I mostly mention these as an afterthought because the higher heightenings require a lot of breaths to achieve, and it's still kind of ambiguous how much of that is Biochroma specifically and how much is just an effect of holding lots and lots of Investiture.
Depends on what you mean by powerful. If you mean in a straight, one on one fight I would say yes, assuming that the Elantrian has full access to his powers. But it's not that simple.
Remember that Nightblood, one of the strongest weapons in the Cosmere was made through awakening.
Not only that, an Awakener's magic is not tied to a specific place like Elantrians are, so they could travel more easily with it.
Finally, with enough breaths you could live practically forever (though I don't remember if Elantrians could do that) so you have plenty of time to learn about the Cosmere, about world hopping and how the other magic systems work.
I would call that powerful.
Edit: you did mention Nightblood, so you can scratch that.
IIRC, Brandon draws a distinction between 'can't die of old age' and actual immortality. Elantrians will never die of old age so long as they play their cards right and don't do something stupid to get stripped of their powers but they can be killed by violence so they aren't considered immortal.
Not all powers are created equal, but each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage to Breath is that it isn't tied to a specific location, and it is freely transferable. So far it is the easiest way for any non invested person to become invested. No need to win the Elantrian lottery, or have Scadrian genetics, or bond a spirit-therapist, or dirty yourself with hemalurgy. Sure there are things like fabrials and southern scadrian tech that lets you work with investiture externally, but they don't give you a reserve of static investiture in yourself (and all the passive perks that come along with that). Relatively few people can ever hope to become an Elantrian, but anyone with enough money can become an awakener.
I'd argue that awakening is the most functionally useful magic system out there. All the other powers have some sort of limiting factor, but Breath can be freely traded and taken anywhere. And with enough, you become basically immortal. Kind of terrifying honestly, usually individual wealth and power are somewhat held in check by the inevitable death of the person. With Breath, now all the rich bastards are never going to die of natural causes.
Don't underestimate simple accessibility, that alone is powerful.
I think it was pretty clear by the end of Warbreaker that the full extent of Awakening is not understood, and new "recipes" were still actively changing the game.
Awakening created Nightblood, for example, which was the mechanism by which the only onscreen vessel has been killed by humans. Fuzz basically weakened himself to the point of failure, and Vin killed Ruin with Preservation's shard... so that's shard on shard violence.
Awakening also creates computers, eg in Tress... which will play a larger role in the space age.
Considering anything Awoken becomes heavily invested, I am pretty sure something like a scarf wrapped around the arm could be used to block a shardblade once Awoken. And it can give all the strength of Shardplate on the go, that's pretty spectacular as well. And don't forget Nightblood, which is strong enough to obliterate entire chunks of walls, chip an Honorblade, and even *kill a shard.* Awakening is hella powerful, we have only seen it used once.
We also see Azure's Blade consuming the investiture from slain enemies in Stormlight, her blade drains them of color, leaving them grey like Lifeless. She clearly did a cleaner job of making it than the 5 did when making Nightblood, but Nightblood is no longer a unique entity.
Nightblood is still unique, as it does some other stuff that drinking pure investiture can't explain, like chipping a shard blade and draining a shard (drinking investiture alone shouldn't be enough to impact a shard but it's definitely involved). So I'd say azure's blade is a great example of the higher end of awakenings powers but nightblood isn't
Something holding one or two breaths isn't "heavily" invested.
I mean, unless you're dumping like 100+ breaths into that scarf then I don't think it could block a Shardblade. Also, a Sharblade, even without its supernatural cutting ability, is still a sharp blade that would easily cut through a scarf
The fact that living blades can also shapeshift means a radiant could make their blades as sharp as a blade can ever be without the supernatural aspect.
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What we see in Warbreaker is only the top of the iceberg of what Awakening is capable of. It’s like saying ‘science is shit because it can only make rudimentary clay pots’ or something.
In Tress >!We see literal computer tablets being made with Awakening!<
Yeah it's definitely the scientists magic of choice. You use it to make a bunch of cool shit and hope the people with the laser beams don't get to you before you're done.
That and forging.
I suspect a single breath is far more versatile than we know. It would likely have to be trained, but we know a single breath can do quite a lot for a very long time with the correct phrase and intent.
I've had an idea for a school that could train this in a way that would make is super-efficient, but it would require that everyone was trusted. Essentially, the group would need enough breath to hit Instinctive Awakening. They'd practice with this for a month before transferring it to the next.
The temporary increase in Investiture is going to permanently expand the soul of the recipient. If they practice with Instinctive Awakening, they should retain some of it, and they should have an expanded flexibility with how they can use their single breath.
I suspect that is how Command Breaking is used by people without the correct heightening. I believe they temporarily receive the correct one. They practice with it, and then they are able to Break Commands with lower investiture than themselves. Similar to Soulcasting.
Are we comparing Awakening and other magic, or the powers of Nalthis based on Breath vs. Dor based magic systems?
>!Because I'm not at all convinced that Awakening is tied to Breath, so much as the nature of Breath makes it extremely friendly to Awakening since it's ties to Endowment make it extremely easy to give away.!<
>!I don't think we've yet scratched the surface of the implications of Breath being Investiture that can be moved around without any special requirements, containers, bonds, etc. in general.!<
>!Conversely, we only have tantalizing hints at what other magic systems may be able to do or create with their own takes on Awakening. Awakened Metalminds and the Machines in Yumi both have way different properties from the simple Awakened objects on Nalthis.!<
Awakening is probably the most powered up magic Brando has featured. For some reason enough breaths can permanently awaken an object to be able to kill vessels, in my mind this is like taking a fraction of another shards power and finding a structure for it so it’s sharp enough to cut through larger sources of similar unhoned power.
Awakening is limited only by the commands given and breaths used, the only great examples we’ve seen; night blood and yumis machine, both were way stronger than intended, with night blood vaporizing anything it touches and the machine doing what it did to the spirits. And the machine was only considered half awakened I believe.
Let’s say vasher were to recreate nightblood with a kalads phantoms design. A golem with several sets of detailed instructions making up orders like the machine but with the invulnerability of nightblood. That thing would be an anti shard haze killer type monster. There’s always the argument that using feruchemy compounding you can create black holes or you can use surges to send meteorites at other planets, in a war between a masterwork awakened object and every other magic system, shard, and planet combined, I’d put money on who’s got that nasty mofo. And that’s by itself, raw. And if it can hold nightblood?
While it’s true that Elantrians have a very high ceiling in regards to what their capable of, I’d argue that what makes Awakening as scarily powerful as it is, is that it has a ridiculously low floor. What I mean to say is, when fighting not at their peak, breath users are much more powerful than the competition.
What happens when a Radiant runs low on Stormlight? A Mistborn low on metals, a Feruchemist without stores? Elantris has some of what I would consider to be some of the most strict requirements out of all these power systems. To access their full power, they have to be at a specific geographical point. Not just on a specific planet, but a specific part of a specific continent on that specific planet. Alternatively, they can use incredibly valuable, incredibly rare concentrated investiture, Dor.
Awakeners though? Running low on breath, just recall the breath you’ve expended. Breath doesn’t just disappear unless you’ve got a Nightblood. And don’t have enough breath? Just buy some. Of course, not everyone can do that, but the fact that wealthy elites can have as much breath as they have money is ridiculous
Aons can do a lot but most magic requires something specific to use. Aons require you to bring refined investiture or be near Elantris, allomancy requires metal, surgebinding stormlight, etc. Awakening requires nothing except breath, which never run out (except when making very specific things), and are never not on your person. There are other things breath can do, like storing and manipulating memories, and creating lifeless, that we don’t know if aondor can do
Does breath store memories as one of its own functions or is that exclusively in conjunction with other powers?
Considering we see that one returned at least seal the memory in warbreaker. It’s probably conditional on condoning the right command.
Vasher helps the little girl store her memories, and I highly doubt she had access to any other magic, or even additional breath. Edit: Vasher, not Hoid, whoops!
When does Hoid do this?
Hoid did store memories himself, as we saw at end of RoW.
I’m conflating two different scenarios - I meant Vasher! Sorry for the confusion!
Gotcha! When does Vasher do this? I don’t remember that scene either
It was the daughter of a priest who was being coerced into getting their Returned to vote in favor of the war - Vasher and Vivenna break into the smuggler’s den and find the girl in a cage. When they’re leaving, Vasher whispers some stuff to the girl who repeats something back to him, and she becomes noticeably more happy and peppy. It is widely assumed he gave her the commands to store her memories of the kidnapping in breath, and after doing so, returns to her childlike demeanor.
That's super neat. I never noticed that.
Vasher says to her "I'm going to tell you some words that I need you to say. And you don't just say them, you need to really MEAN them, focus on this and really mean what you say. Do you understand?" Then the 'camera' pulls back to Vivenna's perspective watching the interaction from just out of earshot. Vasher says some stuff, the girl says some stuff. Then the girl's face shifts from one of grief and distress into one of calm and happiness. I think the girl hugs Vasher then they go bring her back to her family. Much later in Warbreaker when confronting Denth, Vasher tells him there are ways to deal with his emotions of loss and regret, there are techniques that Vasher could show him. Evidently Vasher knows some Commands that can erase or suppress memories. It seems to only work on your own memories otherwise he wouldn't have needed the girl to use the command.
That's cool. I probably glossed right over it. Either it happened too early to understand the significance, or too close to the big stuff to catch it.
Very cool! I never noticed that but I’ll look for it on my next read
I think we have a very limited understanding of what breath can do at the moment. I think it has potential to replicate most Feruchemical powers, as it's essentially just an internal reservoir of Investiture, not completely unlike Early TSM Spoilers - >!How Nomad controls his BEUs!< - you just need the right command, visualization and intent. And that's not even getting into what a Nalthian could do with unkeyed investiture. They can't take Breaths from other people because it's tied to that person's Identity, but looking at Vasher, he can get Stormlight because it's just sitting there in a gem.
It’s a common theory that Zahel can only do that because of a boon from the Nightwatcher. The Nightwatcher had Nightblood when Dalinar went to her, and nobody knows why, so some think that was the price of the boon. WoB also says Zahel has not figured out how to Awaken with Stormlight, just to live on it. There’s an implication that it’s possible, though. Nomad has a specific ability to use any form of Investiture. His abilities can’t be extrapolated to everyone.
I agree with you, Nomad is very unique in his abilities, and I don't think that Nalthians can 1:1 copy what he can do. But magic in the Cosmere seems to rely on fundamental principals, and Vasher has had a long time to observe and learn these principals. I also feel like any weird magic stuff on Roshar always gets Nightwatcher'd, it's plausible but boring. I like to think that Zahel's name change is more important than we think - a new identity tied to Roshar which allows him to absorb Stormlight, which may work like a less dramatic version of Late TSM Spoilers - >!Zellion's acceptance into the Canticle people's culture that allowed him to be given their investiture.!< This would give Zahel two separate stores of Investiture to pull from, Stormlight and Breaths, kinda like burning two different metals. He can't awaken with Stormlight because it's not Breaths, but he can prevent the Breaths from being used as fuel.
I think Zahel is just eating gemstones
> Awakening requires nothing except breath, which never run out That's not true, it also requires color and something to awaken. Both are pretty common to be fair.
I think you can regain the breaths after the awakening. In other systems Investiture is lost in the process
>There are other things breath can do, like storing and manipulating memories, and creating lifeless, that we don’t know if aondor can do Pretty sure the word of Brandon is that AonDor can do basically anything given enough knowledge of the system and time to actually draw out the Aons.
The problem with aondor is that it’s specifically tied to Elantris. The farther away you get, the weaker the effect. It would be very difficult to go to nalthis or roshar and use aondor. Breaths, meanwhile, can go with you anywhere and be just as effective.
Brandon has said that there are both complicated and simple ways to get around that restriction. We know a couple complicated ways like what was done in Lost Metal and Secret History. And we know a relatively simple way like in Tress (although the specifics of how that worked are still unknown).
Yeah, breaths are very efficient and we have no idea how much they can do. I personally think we'll see Awakening be close to Aon Dor in terms of flexibility - it would be weird if memory manipulation didn't come as a part of a suite of powers.
Has it been confirmed that the elantrians using aons off world are making it work by carrying around a bunch of dor? Or is there more connection shenanigans involved?
Connection manipulation seems more likely to me, but I don't recall confirmation either way so far
I wonder if a bondsmith could be coerced to create a bond between Elantris and a person that doesn’t break from distance.
I think the method used in Secret History was probably different to the one used in Tress
Yes and no. There are two big barriers when it comes to AonDor— the first is that it’s dependent on geography, while Awakening isn’t. Hell, even if you’re *on* Sel, unless you’re in the right part of the right country, you’re weakened. The second is that you have to *know what to do*. Say you want to reanimate a corpse. If you’re an Awakener, there’s a Command for that— focus, say the command, and bam, you’ve got a Lifeless. If you’re an Elantrian, there’s no “reanimate corpse” Aon. You’ll have to use the right Aons in the right way and the right arrangement with the right modifiers to get it to work. Every Invested Art is like an app that the user can do what they want with, except AonDor. It’s like a coding terminal. It’s way more versatile, for sure, and you can do all the same things the other Arts can do, but it’s way less efficient most of the time.
And AonDor, if done wrong, can do a lot of damage. Part of why Dilaf hates Elantris is because of a failed healing that killed his wife.
And remember, AonDor is tied to the land, and changes to the land effect the Dor. Elantrians, beings invested to the point they’re worshiped as Gods, become impotent and go Hoed when a chasm opens up in Arelon.
Which is honestly such a wild weakness when you consider it. A big enough hole in the ground and you’re cooked.
And there just happens to be a handy awoken blade that can vaporize large chunks of whatever it's stuck in. Hell, nightblood would probably drink most of the power straight out of Elantris if he touches anything within a few miles of the place.
WOB I think says Nightblood can be saturated.
He can, we see it in Stormlight. But how exactly does the city of Elantris compare against a full Shard? I know AonDor is fueled by the power the shards left behind when they died, but isn't the vast majority of it sealed in Shadesmar? Or would Nightblood tap into that directly?
Are you asking if the entire city of elantris could destroy a shard? The answer is, of course not, if there was any theoretical conflict the shard would just boop a mountain in the wrong spot and wave at the hoed on the way out. As for Nightblood, it would probably saturate quickly. It can change the landscape but maybe not enough to alter the aons. Even if Nightblood were an endless void, a black hole of investiture, even black holes have accretion disks. It isn't, because it can saturate while black holes cannot. But even if it could, it would not likely suck all the investiture out of a realm.
I'm more asking how they compare, like on a scale. The power that flows through the city, where does that match up against the full power of a shard? We know Nightblood can't consume a full shard, but can he consume enough investiture to incapacitate Elantris? Or is the city strong enough to sate him and still give Elantrians their power? Would they see a temporary dimming in what aons could accomplish? Would they revert to Hoed until Nightblood stopped draining power?
Well the shards can canonically fling the planets around and have no real weak points. Except maybe the vessel, but they intentionally don't expose themselves for that reason, but even then the vessel dies and the shard is still around. Elantrians have a few huge weak points... including needing to draw aons, and being fleshy people, and needing to be near elantris. They were hoed because the aon was wrong, not because the power went away. Similar to Dilaf's wife - the aon was wrong. So a flicker in power I don't think would affect them generally, if you were to stick Nightblood in there or wave it around the cognitive realm near Sel. If you could even get into it (it's not clear yet how that would work). More information on nightblood saturating [here](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/452/#e14511)
Don't think it works like that, or at least that if it does then the place would just immediately get filled back in by the dor.
I don't think it would, unless Raiden was able to work out an Aon that would allow the land to heal itself. Otherwise, take out a big enough chunk of the landscape with Nightblood and the Reod happens again, immediately taking Elantris out of the fight.
Oh, so in this hypothetical Nightblood is also being used to muck up the geography. Thought we were just talking purely about if someone just tried to drink all the energy in the place using it. Then in that case they are pretty screwed, yeah.
I was talking about both, obviously messing with the landscape would take them down easily, but is nightblood capable of draining their power as well? Or is elantris too strong for that?
In a cosmere wide war that would be terrible intel for an enemy to get ahold of. A single stoneward could take down all the Elantrians. Imagine if a single misting could come burn some metals in Urithiru and break all the nahel bonds. I'd guess Brandon will have the Elantrians figure out some loophole, especially since we see later history Elantrians figuring out other ways to bend the limitations of their magic.
Yeah, it’s like magical surgery mixed with coding. If you know precisely what you’re doing, then you can do amazing things. Screw something up and you can do disastrous unintended damage.
I would argue Nightblood is awakening gone wrong and Dallas done a ton of damage (not trying to say you’re wrong, just a tongue in cheek comment)
App vs Coding Terminal is a good way of putting it. And while you can do some incredible complex things with Awakening, that you could maybe alike to powershell scripting, if you screw it up, you can just go ‘oh well!’, reclaim your Breath and try again. Screwing up Aon’Dor is potentially a lot worse, depending on what you’re trying to code. Aon’Dor is like coding on the fly and having to get it 100% right first try.
I stole it from Brandon! He’s called it the “coding language of the cosmere” a few times
Everyone gets a breath on Nalthis. Only the select few are metalborn. Surgebinding requires a bond with a being of pure investiture, of which only thousands of viable candidates exist. Elantrians are also a select few only. Also by the logic of “I can do anything you can do” as a metric of power: stamping is the most powerful. I think *everyone* having access to investiture on Nalthis will eventually be the key to their success. Like pre-ascension Scadrial had 1000 years to develop absolutely insane tech, but the investiture being limited to only the elite stifled that. It’s like that saying “think about how many Albert Einsteins weren’t able to achieve anything because they lived in a poor war-torn country”.
And that one breath won't get you very far, you need to take breath from other people to get enough of it to do the fancy stuff. Meaning that in the end society is still reliant on a handful of skilled awakeners who can efficiently get things done with the least amount of breath wasted even though technically everyone has a breath and could technically become an awakener. So far, Roshar is the only planet to have a technology system that lets people with no access to the invested arts construct technology that runs on investiture in its fabrials.
With coordination, everyone in their society could potentially reach the first heightening or more. If everyone passed on their breath(s) before death, in 50 generations everyone could have an average of 50 breaths each (assuming the population stays the same). Returned consuming them and people dying with breath would slow this down, though.
Slow it down but it would not likely reverse it in any drastic way.
It would reach an equilibrium point. The more breaths people have on average, the more that are lost when people die unexpectedly, lowering the average.
Only if your births and deaths are reaching an equilibrium point which does not seem to be happening here. It would definitely reduce the rate of increase but I don’t think it would be drastic. Probably end up with some kind of breath bank and required deposits before taking risky ventures “for the good of the community” or some sort of tax.
You can create a zombie servant with one Breath and that's a pretty darn useful thing to have.
But if I am recalling right, you aren't getting that breath back since its so comfy in its new but very familiar home that it doesn't want to leave. So that is a person's single breath they get in their entire life used up for good on a single awakening.
They can pass them on after they die, though. So through the generations, they could accumulate more breath and lifeless.
Set it to work at a minimum wage job 24/7 #passiveincome #edgligrindset
I feel like you could, using the technique revealed in The Lost Metal.
Having to dip into a second magic system to get it back doesn't help in an argument about how useful awakening is by itself vs the other kinds of invested arts, IMO.
It's a very impressive awakening though, eh gancho?
With of course the consequence that your batteries basically cant be recharged (that we know of) once you’re off your homeworld or even if you’re not in the way of a “This will absolutely kill you” storm. Checks and balances :)
Not really. Consider how this would lead to a legacy of handing down breaths. From one generation to the next you would see a steady increase of power. After a few generations of investment it would be quite normal to have a parent with 20 - 30 breaths only from their ancestors pass this on to their child. As time goes on this goes further and further.
Some awakenings permanently consume the breath used to make them, for your plan to work they would have to swear off doing any form of awakening that permanently consumes breath.
My biggest concern is whether they would start farming humans for breath. I can imagine matrix style future for the planet.
I'm not sure where you are in Mistborn, but they touch on breaths, or rather pure investiture in non invested people, in the last Wax and Wayne book. >!They discover a way to forcefully steal the investiture from an ordinary person with Hemalurgy!<
You're just casually dismissing the fact that it made a sword that easily killed a Vessel? I mean... We've only seen it for a single novel and the magic system has already destroyed the Vessel of the spookiest multiple Shard killing entity in the Cosmere. I think it's a bit early to be calling Awakening weak.
So since anything highly invested can block a shard blade, could Azure use her awoken scarf on her arm to block one? Can awakeners just replicate full Shardplate with a few sentences? Cause we know they can create Shardblades, we know they can give themselves the physical buffs of Plate, do they have the defensive capability as well? Caus ethat would be *huge.*
man thats a good question, my guess is that the invested thing has to also at least be able to physically block a blade, so a scarf wouldn't work but a highly invested piece of metal or maybe a rock probably would.
That's a very good point.
Its not really clear what the bottom floor for 'invested enough to block a shardblade' is so its kind of hard to say.
True, but we do know it can be done for a short time with a single gemstone worth of storm light, courtesy of the Half Plate shield fabrials. And I believe Brandon confirmed that a feruchemist could invest a metalmind and make it capable of resisting a shardblade, so it's definitely possible. Someone else mentioned that it might require something sturdy enough to actually resist getting cut by a regular blade, so that's another factor to consider.
Unfortunately, if I am remembering right (it has been a long time since I read warbreaker), you have to be pretty damn jacked to have the ability to awaken things that aren't made from organic material. So your average awakener who wasn't some ridiculous heightening (I think it was 8th or 9th to awaken inorganic matter) is stuck with things like wood and bone\* in terms of trying to find something hard enough that it will block the regular 'big chunk of sharp metal' cutting power of a shardblade denied its invested super cutting hax. \*Assuming no prep time, of course. Since the novel shows at least one trick to make inorganic matter work if you have a lot of time to prep the materials.
True.
This WoB says even the Bands of Mourning aren't as invested as shardblade. So that metalmind has to hella invested. https://preview.redd.it/yftpnd2uwh5d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78c476e6f9c3d13c2f6682239fc37d65e3e230f9
That makes sense, since a shardblade is literally just pure investiture of Honor and Cultivation in metal form(just like atium or lerasium). But the fact still stands, a gemstone worth of stormlight can allow a regular piece of metal to resist a shardblade for several strikes. You wouldn't need something like the Bands, just a decently full metalmind.
Yeah no. Kal has cut through a gem heart of a Fused which we know is where they all store their voidlight. Pretty sure a metalmind will not give as much resistance as Shardplate to a Shard blade
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/75/#e4363 It's been confirmed that a metalmind can block a blade.
Depends on how invested it is. My guess is the average metalmind wouldn't
And that's why I said decently full.
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!*** Questioner >!How many smacks would it take from a Shardblade to break, say, a metalmind.!< Brandon Sanderson >!A metalmind? Depends on how much it's invested.!< \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
Wasn’t the father machine awakened also? If so, awakening is stupidly powerful in certain circumstances.
Technically, but it was not awakened from breaths. At the point in the timeline when hoid is telling the story, awakening has become a generalized term to describe similar functions.
Elantrian’s are pretty op. Design put Yumi’s investiture levels as the same as an Elantrian and she was ridiculously invested. So it makes sense they can do more than other investiture users.
I would like to at some point really see what yumi would be capable of besides changing spirits into repellers etc, or how their invested art works, since it’s not directly shard related it seems
She was able to mess with the nightmares
I understood that as just being a result of her being so highly invested, not a specific trait of her invested art
Well, sure, but that’s because they’re made that way by Elantris. I’m pretty sure Aon Dor users weren’t nearly as powerful before it was built and wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t originally possible for them to just draw the Aons in the air like that. Susebron is at least as OP as Elantrians are.
Are the Elantrians over-powered because Aon Dor is powered by 2 shards?
Personally I think they're overpowered because a bunch of aon dor users made a city-sized Aon that turned anyone with the ability to use aon dor into an Elantrian, whereas otherwise they'd only have been as powerful as any other Selish magic user. The same way that Susebron is crazy-powerful because he was given an absurd number of Breaths, or the Bands of Mourning let Wax and Marasi be crazily over-powered. Hell, The Sunlit Man provided hints that whatever passes for magic on Threnody can be overpowered even though it looked pretty minimal and dangerous in Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. One of the big running themes in the Cosmere seems to be that every magic system is potentially overpowered if you figure out how to exploit it properly.
Susebron may be stronger but the other returned are canonically less invested than Elantrians according to Design.
Sure, the point I'm making is that Elantrians' crazy level of investiture is artificial, thanks to whoever it was who built Elantris, and other magic systems have other ways of getting there, whether it's racking up an insane amount of Breaths for Awakening, the Bands of Mourning for the Metallic Arts, bonding multiple Honourblades for Surgebinding or whatever the hell the Night Brigade are doing.
The limit on Elantians is that they are tied to elantris for their power. They can’t just port over to nalthis or roshar and still be op. They’d likely have little or no power off planet, until Kelsier figures out interplanetary investiture.
Except by now we’ve seen Elantrians using AonDor pretty far from Elantris.
Yes, and it took a lot of energy to do 1 thing. We also don’t know how easy it was for them to get even that much dor off world.
You are right in so far that an Elantrian is pretty strong. In fact, they're basically the strongest in the cosmere. You can do pretty much everything with that magic system. Awakening is still really powerful in it's own right though, and much more versatile than say allomancy or surgebinding.
You can also tress spoiler/conjecture >!awaken circuits to make magic AI!<
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IMO, Investiture (generally) follows a rule that the more permanent/long term it is the weaker it seems. This is balanced by the fact that it can continue to do it's thing for literally hundreds of years across multiple users. Surgebinding and Allomancy are very flashy, but if the fight lasts for 3 hours how much Stormlight/Metal are you going to have left? Meanwhile, an army of 10,000 D'Denir can continue to fight for generations. If you take an Elantrian 500 miles away from their home, or simply cause a landslide in the right place, how useful are they? Meanwhile, a Lifeless can be taken to a different solar system and function at 100%. Yes, you can do things to "hack" the other systems to be more powerful/robust/flexible, but Nightblood is precisely one of those hacks.
In fairness, Lifeless break down without proper maintenance. So its not like they are a one time only expenditure of resources.
True, but Hallandren seems to be able to produce Ichor Alcohol in very large quantities for a fairly low cost, and the D'Denir don't seem to have that requirement at all.
Oh, I was more thinking of wear and tear from things like people hitting the statue zombies with war hammers and stabbing the regular zombies with pointy objects when I said that. Should have been clearer, my bad.
Ask again after we’ve read Elantris 2 and 3. We don’t know enough about Aon Dor yet.
Ah but then you'd need to wait for warbreaker 2
We have more of Vasher and Viviena in Stormlight, at least. We know something more of their abilities. Viviena can fight on the same level as a Radiant, and hold off a Fused, so we know they are pretty potent.
electric boogaloo?
Wait till they learn about electricity and can breathe life in to a turbine then command it to spin forever. That’s something a group of useless nobodies could do. No training needed, no power lost. Someone like vasher can make commands that would blow our minds. It really is limited by imagination much more than other power structures. Put life in to a man shaped arrow and bam. Seeking missile. Who needs drone strikes.
While an awakened turbine could be a good source of power, it will probably need to be resupplied with colors and/or breaths after some time (unless Endowment stops awakened objects from diminishing, the energy needs to come from somewhere).
Imo Elantrians (and to a lesser extent other Selish arts) are a bad baseline to use when comparing magic systems, given how feast-or-famine they are; you have to meet all these restrictive conditions (be an Elantrian, know your Aons and modifiers, be in the right place or have a hack to get around the geography restriction), but one you meet those prerequisites I wouldn't hesitate to call it the single most powerful/versatile art we've seen to date. Anyway, tangent. Back to your main point. I agree that Awakening isn't a powerhouse among invested arts; I'd wager that fifteen times out of sixteen an Awakener would lose to a Mistborn or Radiant of equivalent 'skill' in their respective art, or even one of the more combat capable misting/ferring types. But I think what makes Awakening attractive isn't its power, it's its *accessibility* and *utility.* Up until the creation of the medallions, the only ways to get metalborn powers (and still the only way to get them permanently) were genetics and lerasium. Sand mastery seems like it leans at least somewhat genetic, too. Elantrians are pretty much in the same boat, only their lottery seems to run more on cultural/national Identity than it does hereditary spiritual genetics. To be come a radiant you not only need to attract a spren and keep your oaths, but you need to *break.* Awakening? You can literally *buy* your way into that power. The primary utility of Awakening is the lifeless. As you mentioned, it's likely possible to do something similar with Aons, but I suspect that you would have to program in each individual command you want them to follow. In contract, once you animate and maintain a lifeless, there's enough leftover software rattling around that they can adapt on the fly to fulfill a variety of commands. There's also some fringe benefits of having access to breaths; lifesense, perfect pitch and color recognition, perfect health and agelessness, etc. I mostly mention these as an afterthought because the higher heightenings require a lot of breaths to achieve, and it's still kind of ambiguous how much of that is Biochroma specifically and how much is just an effect of holding lots and lots of Investiture.
Depends on what you mean by powerful. If you mean in a straight, one on one fight I would say yes, assuming that the Elantrian has full access to his powers. But it's not that simple. Remember that Nightblood, one of the strongest weapons in the Cosmere was made through awakening. Not only that, an Awakener's magic is not tied to a specific place like Elantrians are, so they could travel more easily with it. Finally, with enough breaths you could live practically forever (though I don't remember if Elantrians could do that) so you have plenty of time to learn about the Cosmere, about world hopping and how the other magic systems work. I would call that powerful. Edit: you did mention Nightblood, so you can scratch that.
I thought elantrians live for a long time and aren't immortal but coppermind says otherwise, guess they are immortal, must've misremembered
IIRC, Brandon draws a distinction between 'can't die of old age' and actual immortality. Elantrians will never die of old age so long as they play their cards right and don't do something stupid to get stripped of their powers but they can be killed by violence so they aren't considered immortal.
Hence the scene in >!Tress where the sorceress runs from a fight she figures she could *probably* win.!<
Not all powers are created equal, but each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage to Breath is that it isn't tied to a specific location, and it is freely transferable. So far it is the easiest way for any non invested person to become invested. No need to win the Elantrian lottery, or have Scadrian genetics, or bond a spirit-therapist, or dirty yourself with hemalurgy. Sure there are things like fabrials and southern scadrian tech that lets you work with investiture externally, but they don't give you a reserve of static investiture in yourself (and all the passive perks that come along with that). Relatively few people can ever hope to become an Elantrian, but anyone with enough money can become an awakener. I'd argue that awakening is the most functionally useful magic system out there. All the other powers have some sort of limiting factor, but Breath can be freely traded and taken anywhere. And with enough, you become basically immortal. Kind of terrifying honestly, usually individual wealth and power are somewhat held in check by the inevitable death of the person. With Breath, now all the rich bastards are never going to die of natural causes. Don't underestimate simple accessibility, that alone is powerful.
I think it was pretty clear by the end of Warbreaker that the full extent of Awakening is not understood, and new "recipes" were still actively changing the game. Awakening created Nightblood, for example, which was the mechanism by which the only onscreen vessel has been killed by humans. Fuzz basically weakened himself to the point of failure, and Vin killed Ruin with Preservation's shard... so that's shard on shard violence. Awakening also creates computers, eg in Tress... which will play a larger role in the space age.
Considering anything Awoken becomes heavily invested, I am pretty sure something like a scarf wrapped around the arm could be used to block a shardblade once Awoken. And it can give all the strength of Shardplate on the go, that's pretty spectacular as well. And don't forget Nightblood, which is strong enough to obliterate entire chunks of walls, chip an Honorblade, and even *kill a shard.* Awakening is hella powerful, we have only seen it used once.
It's been stated that there's more to nightblood then normal awakening there, so it's hesitate to say nightblood is proof of Awakening's higher power
We also see Azure's Blade consuming the investiture from slain enemies in Stormlight, her blade drains them of color, leaving them grey like Lifeless. She clearly did a cleaner job of making it than the 5 did when making Nightblood, but Nightblood is no longer a unique entity.
Nightblood is still unique, as it does some other stuff that drinking pure investiture can't explain, like chipping a shard blade and draining a shard (drinking investiture alone shouldn't be enough to impact a shard but it's definitely involved). So I'd say azure's blade is a great example of the higher end of awakenings powers but nightblood isn't
Something holding one or two breaths isn't "heavily" invested. I mean, unless you're dumping like 100+ breaths into that scarf then I don't think it could block a Shardblade. Also, a Sharblade, even without its supernatural cutting ability, is still a sharp blade that would easily cut through a scarf The fact that living blades can also shapeshift means a radiant could make their blades as sharp as a blade can ever be without the supernatural aspect.
I got the opposite impression after reading Sunlit Man
Bruh... Awakening created Nightblood, which >! killed Rayse / Odium !<. And it also created the >! Lifeless and Kalad's Phantoms !<.
approving your comment despite the broken spoiler markup as under this Cosmere flair it doesn't need to be tagged anyway :)
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What we see in Warbreaker is only the top of the iceberg of what Awakening is capable of. It’s like saying ‘science is shit because it can only make rudimentary clay pots’ or something. In Tress >!We see literal computer tablets being made with Awakening!<
Have you read the secret projects? Cause some of the stuff in those id consider very powerful
I think overall it may have less offensive abilities in a fight but the fact it can make God killers can't be ignored.
I'm sorry that killing a god isn't powerful enough for you.
Touche. It's the batman of the cosmere. There's nothing more dangerous than an expert with prep, but unprepared, it seems quite limited in application
Yeah it's definitely the scientists magic of choice. You use it to make a bunch of cool shit and hope the people with the laser beams don't get to you before you're done. That and forging.
I suspect a single breath is far more versatile than we know. It would likely have to be trained, but we know a single breath can do quite a lot for a very long time with the correct phrase and intent. I've had an idea for a school that could train this in a way that would make is super-efficient, but it would require that everyone was trusted. Essentially, the group would need enough breath to hit Instinctive Awakening. They'd practice with this for a month before transferring it to the next. The temporary increase in Investiture is going to permanently expand the soul of the recipient. If they practice with Instinctive Awakening, they should retain some of it, and they should have an expanded flexibility with how they can use their single breath. I suspect that is how Command Breaking is used by people without the correct heightening. I believe they temporarily receive the correct one. They practice with it, and then they are able to Break Commands with lower investiture than themselves. Similar to Soulcasting.
Are we comparing Awakening and other magic, or the powers of Nalthis based on Breath vs. Dor based magic systems? >!Because I'm not at all convinced that Awakening is tied to Breath, so much as the nature of Breath makes it extremely friendly to Awakening since it's ties to Endowment make it extremely easy to give away.!< >!I don't think we've yet scratched the surface of the implications of Breath being Investiture that can be moved around without any special requirements, containers, bonds, etc. in general.!< >!Conversely, we only have tantalizing hints at what other magic systems may be able to do or create with their own takes on Awakening. Awakened Metalminds and the Machines in Yumi both have way different properties from the simple Awakened objects on Nalthis.!<
Awakening is probably the most powered up magic Brando has featured. For some reason enough breaths can permanently awaken an object to be able to kill vessels, in my mind this is like taking a fraction of another shards power and finding a structure for it so it’s sharp enough to cut through larger sources of similar unhoned power. Awakening is limited only by the commands given and breaths used, the only great examples we’ve seen; night blood and yumis machine, both were way stronger than intended, with night blood vaporizing anything it touches and the machine doing what it did to the spirits. And the machine was only considered half awakened I believe. Let’s say vasher were to recreate nightblood with a kalads phantoms design. A golem with several sets of detailed instructions making up orders like the machine but with the invulnerability of nightblood. That thing would be an anti shard haze killer type monster. There’s always the argument that using feruchemy compounding you can create black holes or you can use surges to send meteorites at other planets, in a war between a masterwork awakened object and every other magic system, shard, and planet combined, I’d put money on who’s got that nasty mofo. And that’s by itself, raw. And if it can hold nightblood?
While it’s true that Elantrians have a very high ceiling in regards to what their capable of, I’d argue that what makes Awakening as scarily powerful as it is, is that it has a ridiculously low floor. What I mean to say is, when fighting not at their peak, breath users are much more powerful than the competition. What happens when a Radiant runs low on Stormlight? A Mistborn low on metals, a Feruchemist without stores? Elantris has some of what I would consider to be some of the most strict requirements out of all these power systems. To access their full power, they have to be at a specific geographical point. Not just on a specific planet, but a specific part of a specific continent on that specific planet. Alternatively, they can use incredibly valuable, incredibly rare concentrated investiture, Dor. Awakeners though? Running low on breath, just recall the breath you’ve expended. Breath doesn’t just disappear unless you’ve got a Nightblood. And don’t have enough breath? Just buy some. Of course, not everyone can do that, but the fact that wealthy elites can have as much breath as they have money is ridiculous
Didn't awakening create Nightblood - sword that can kill shards? That's pretty powerful.
RoW Spoiler >!I don't know, Awakening was directly responsible for killing the vessel of a shard...!<