"My life to yours; my breath become yours."
Hi Internet, I'm Steve. Welcome to RAFO.
Awakening! The system on Nalthis that uses Investiture from Endowment and color in
order to give life to nonliving things, most often fabric or other textiles.
Awakening is one of the few end neutral magic systems in the Cosmere: whatever I
use to awaken something, most of the time I can get it right back when I'm done, so
there's no net change. The investiture used for Awakening is a little different
than that used for other magics. The Shard Endowment is resident on
Nalthis an,d matching her Intent, every person born there is endowed with a bit
of extra investiture called BioChromatic Breath - the color of life. This
Breath can be given away, leaving you with a little less investiture than an
average human in the Cosmere, or collected and used to Awaken. Anyone in
the Cosmere can learn to Awaken; all it requires is Breath - the investiture, color -
the key, and a command - the intent. The Breath is easy enough; everyone born on
Nalthis, or at least native Nalthian has one and if people are willing you
can get more. Color is even easier: it's everywhere.
Awakening causes the color of something you're touching to bleach to gray. The
color itself is consumed in order to allow the transfer of Breath.
You can't pull color from a living thing and white and gray won't work, but
everything else is fair game. Richer or deeper colors can make
Awakening easier, perhaps related to the amount of light energy those pigments
are able to absorb, but even if the source of color isn't very big or bright,
if you've got enough Breath, you'll be fine. There are other tricks to make
Awakening easier, like putting a piece of yourself into the thing you're Awakening,
but that are not always necessary. Then comes the command, which must be said
clearly, in your native language, and with the right visualization. These are
usually simple instructions with concrete ideas behind them and therefore
easy to visualize: "grab things;" "untie;" "feed me that grape." It's possible to use more
complicated or more abstract commands: "become as my fingers and grip that which
I must;" "fight for me as if you were me;" "go down to Taco Bell and get me a number 10
with chicken instead of beef and a large watermelon freeze;" but those will
naturally have more complicated visualizations and usually require more
Breath. That's where the Intent really comes into play. You could train a parrot
to say command phrases but because there's no intent behind it nothing
would happen. Without the proper visualization, the words are meaningless.
This makes Awakening a little different than most other systems, whose intent is
manifest in the act of trying to use the magic. If your visualization - your intent -
is not clear enough with Awakening, it won't work.
Honestly this is actually a really good thing. Imagine if Awakening were as
simple as saying certain words and sucking up a color. If the power to use
this magic system was still Breath, you could be tricked into giving away part
of your soul just by looking at the wrong teleprompter.
"I'm Ron Burgandy?"
The more difficult use of Intent means it's impossible to steal Breath. The command -
"my life to yours; my breath become yours" - must be said willingly.
Likewise when trying to Awaken, if the mental picture of what you want the
object to do isn't clear enough, you'll transfer breath to it but it won't be
able to do anything. The amount of Breath used will vary depending on what you're
Awakening as well. The law of BioChromatic Parallelism states: "the closer
a host is to a living shape and form, the easier it is to Awaken." So objects that
are in a human or animal shape will require less Breath than simple blocks
or squares, possibly because of the perception of the user.
Likewise things that were once alive are easier to waken than that which has
never been alive; so wood or fabrics made from natural fibers will take
significantly less Breath than stone or metal. BioChroma, being the color of life,
naturally seeks the patterns of life and so will more willingly flow into that
with which it's familiar. What would that mean about plastics? In relation to this,
the BioChromatic Law of Comparability says that "the amount of Breath required
to Awaken something isn't necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened," so
even though it's possible to Awaken a square piece of cloth, it will require
much more Breath than fabric cut into the shape of a person. And the strength
and function of the two would be relatively the same. There are four
different types of BioChromatic entities that are technically Awakened. The only
naturally occurring type is Type 1: spontaneous sentient BioChromatic
manifestations in a deceased host, or the Returned. These are people who, after death,
are Endowed with a single super-powered Breath that brings them back to life and
makes them tall pretty and amnesiac. This Divine Breath immediately bumps them up
to the Fifth Heightening, which usually requires about 2,000 normal Breaths.
Returned have the ability, like all Nalthians, to give up their
Divine Breath, which when received by a normal human can cure virtually any
disease, heal wounds, even regrow body parts.
However, because that one Breath is what's keeping them alive, giving it away
kills the Returned. Returned are supernaturally strong and fast, and it
seems their bodies - modeled after their own subconscious view of perfection or
self - feed off investiture. Gorging or starving a Returned won't affect their
weight, and exercise or lack thereof won't make them stronger or weaker. However
because they only have the one Breath, if they don't consume an additional Breath
within eight days, they will die. Again. Type II BioChromatic entities are
mindless manifestations in a deceased host, commonly known as the Lifeless.
While the Returned have one Breath that's two thousand Breaths strong,
Lifeless only have the small portion of investiture that normal Nalthians can
give away, making them even less invested than drabs - those who have given away
their breath. These are awakened corpses, not fully alive, that can follow and
interpret commands given by an Awakener. They're not like zombies, even though
they're basically undead. No eating of people here. In fact, Returned are kind of
more analogous to zombies because they have to consume a part of a human in
order to keep living. In fact, in other areas of Nalthis, Returned are thought of
almost like vampires. Like the Returned, Lifeless don't need
to eat or exercise. Once Awakened, they will continue to function for years if
well taken care of - damaged muscles replaced, cuts sown - and particularly if
their blood is replaced with a substance called a ichor-alcohol. The discovery of
ichor-alcohol, as well as certain specific commands, allowed Lifeless to be
created with just one Breath rather than the previous fifty, effectively doubling
the size of armies and making dead bodies a more valuable resource. However
corpses tend to be sticky.
No, not juicy, though I suppose that's true too.
"No, don't like that."
The Breath used to awaken a Lifeless get stuck and can't be
retrieved by the Awakener. This is related to the nature of Breath becoming
keyed to the holders identity. However because Lifeless still have their own
brain, they are able to interpret more complex orders and can even be given new
commands without the infusion of more Breath. The most common type of Awakened
object is Type 3: a BioChromatic manifestation in an organic host far
removed from being alive. The most frequent use we've seen is the Awakening
of cloth, which due to the life-giving and life seeking nature of Breath, or at
least the practitioner's perception of it, mimics
the structures of muscles and body parts. These usually require more breath than a
corpse to Awaken, often over a hundred, but that Breath is retrievable so you
can get back whatever you put in. Like Lifeless, an Awakened object will
continue to try and fulfill its command regardless of damage, though if it's
destroyed, the invested Breath may be lost. We've only ever seen one Type 4
object: a sentient BioChromatic manifestation in an inorganic host. The
original command given to this type of object becomes its own Intent, and
influences the development of its personality. Inorganic material like
metal or stone - or seriously what about plastic? - requires a huge amount of Breath
to Awaken and can't even be done by anyone with less than twenty thousand.
That's because the more Breath you have, the more perks you get. These are
referred to as the Ten Heightenings. Around 50 Breaths gets you the 1st
Heightening, which grants you the ability to recognize Breath auras given off by
other people. This is where most people who are rich enough will stop, as it also
gives resistance to most diseases and will extend your life by a decade or so.
200 Breaths - the Second Heightening - gives you perfect pitch.
Oooh! Yeah.
600 Breaths, the Third, gives perfect color recognition. That's
red. That's blue. That's... puce. The Fourth Heightening, at a
thousand Breaths, allows you to perfectly sense the presence of others around you.
Like when you can feel someone watching you and you know you're alone in your
house. Except for real. The Fifth Heightening is where it gets good: you
become functionally immortal. Your body is at its maximum resistance to age,
illness, and disease, and all for the paltry cost of two thousand souls. The
Sixth Heightening, through sheer raw oomph of 3,500 Breaths, allows you to
Awaken things without the necessary training. You can understand and use
basic commands instinctively, as well as learn more difficult things more easily.
Five thousand Breaths takes you to the Seventh Heightening, which is pretty
stinking rare considering how many people it would take, and allows you to
see the Breath auras of objects, so you can tell if something has been Awakened
or had Breath stored in it. The handful of people who've reached the Eighth
Heightening, which requires around 10,000 Breaths, are able to instinctively break
or override commands given to Awakened objects, including Lifeless. Helpful if
there's a zombie squirrel rampaging around in your palace.
The Nightblood Heightening...
The Ninth Heightening comes with a double bonus,
which is good because it's double the amount of the Breath of the Eighth, but
with that much breath you can Awaken things on the wrong side of the Law of
BioChromatic Parallelism: never alive and not shaped like anything that was,
like stone or steel. It takes a freak ton of Breath and commands worth killing for,
but you've got twenty thousand so it's whatever. That amount of Breath also lets
you Awaken objects you're not even touching.
"I hear and I obey."
There's only one person - kinda - known to have reached the Tenth Heightening:
the God King of Hallandren. With fifty thousand Breaths, light within their aura bends and splits
into prismatic colors; the use of color as a fuel for Awakening becomes perfect,
draining completely to white instead of gray. With this much investiture, spoken
commands can become obsolete and users can learn, with difficulty, to Awaken with
just a mental command. There may be even more abilities granted by the Tenth
Heightening, but it's a really small sample size so... Fifty thousand breaths is
a huge amount of concentrated investiture, but even with smaller
amounts some strange things can happen. Breath is investiture given by Edgli or
Endowment in addition to the innate investiture of the human soul, but some
of that innate investiture must get pulled along when Breath is given away,
or else Breathless Nalthians wouldn't be Drab; they'd just be normal.
This portion of innate investiture must carry with that aspect of the
personality of its original host. Which means that Breath itself has its own
Intent, that would be too small to affect anything on its own. If you have a
lot of Breath, these micro-intents would basically cancel each other out and just
function as general investiture. However, if the Breath is collected from a
population of like-minded people, the concentrated intent lingering in the
accumulated souls can actually influence the host, similar to how the personality
of a Shard holder is influenced by the intent of their Shard. We've seen this
happen to one person: Vahr - the prisoner in the prologue of Warbreaker. He collected
his Breath - at least a thousand as he was at the Fourth Heightening - from others
who wanted to overthrow the Hallandren government, so his resolve was
strengthened from all their concentrated breath. Brandon has said that this could
be an issue in some things that happen in the next book, when we hopefully get
it. Speaking of the next book, still tentatively called Nightblood, we may
actually get a Lifeless as a viewpoint character, implying they're not nearly
oblivious as everyone thinks. We get hints of this in Warbreaker - Clod
ain't that much of a clod - but a Lifeless chapter being more than just
"uuuuuugggghhhh" for 16 pages is honestly a surprise.
We've also seen evidence of Awakening powers that affect
more than just inanimate objects or dead bodies. At the very end of Warbreaker - so
if you haven't finished, skip to here -
Vasher claims that he knows commands
that can erase people's memories, and we actually see this in use with the
kidnapped girl they rescue. Vasher has her repeat a phrase and her
BioChromatic aura flickered, after which she seemed to have no memory of her trauma.
Given that it's possible to Invest Breath within yourself to be separate
from yourself - as evidenced by Vasher being able to hide his Returned nature -
there must be a way to use your own Breath to heal bits of your spiritweb,
which is kind of nutty to think about. Because of the events in war breaker
we're able to get a better understanding of some things that are happening in the
Cosmere as a whole. My next video will be an attempt to build a timeline for the
Cosmere so hit subscribe to be sure you see it. We're almost done with this
Investiture Analysis series, but if you've missed any you can check them out
here. If you want more Warbreaker, Brandon has a chapter-by-chapter
annotation on his website, linked below, so you can Read And Find Out.