hwiles

So...with the retcon that Era 1 atium was actually atium alloyed with electrum, I'm confused about why malatium does not seem to confer any consciousness-expanding properties. Era 1 "atium" gives one the power to comprehend impossible volumes of information about the future, but malatium just...doesn't seem to offer any additional insight into the past than if the power of gold was simply inverted. Has there been any word on whether this will get revised or explained? The uses of malatium are short-lived enough that they could probably get away with saying it does expand the mind and just glossed passed it on screen, but that feels like a really sloppy explanation. Anyone have ideas or references?

This is the literal kindest and coolest response back to my post as is possible. Elend is my favorite character, I just also am hyper aware of how annoying other people can think him to be for...reasons that can be self evident if or when needed...totally agree with you.

Things like this is why I always tell people to read secret history before Era 2. Blend was a bit of an annoying know it all, but he's the only mortal to see what he saw, and it's good to understand how he did what he did and why it worked perfectly.

To the first question: yes, absolutely, Szeth holds a bond to a true artificially intelligent spren who is not bound by the normal constraints of governing oaths and possesses the apparently unique ability to kill souls. To the second: mhm. It works exactly like the nahel bond except that nightbloods parameters are artificially min-maxed, so basically anyone could pick him up and bond him if they aren't a literal deviant criminal. It's just a quirk of his engineering, honestly the story would cast szeth in a better light if that wasn't true... To the third: yes...nightblood can absolutely kill spren by accident and any intelligent spren would think twice before bonding szeth unfortunately. That does, however, mean that any spren that DOES choose to bond him is automatically going to be extra super hardcore and unwavering about it though!

Lol. No yeah, I think that would've worked just as suggested and, unfortunately, yes, that would've made Kaladin a holy knight of the Windbreakers I'd gladly take that curse in exchange for the boon of two spren at the same time though!

One thing that is important to recall is that, even in Era 2, Scadrial's government has begun maintaining lists of the names of those individuals known to possess access to the metallic arts. This will evolve into watch lists and databases of known relatives and connections unfortunately. Much like how world governments IRL keep track of people's academic credentials. If you've ever submitted an idea for a new type of weapon in any world real or fictional, you are, unfortunately, being monitored. I still question if steel needs to be nerfed on a magic-system level. A steel ferring can be persistence hunted just as easily as a gazelle by any government or police department that wants them brought in badly enough to risk human lives over the matter, which they almost always do for literally all deviants and criminals. So...I would suggest that this is going to an extremely soft nerfing, in the sense that it will be with soft controls, like labeling offenders as armed and dangerous menaces to society and harassing their friends and family with investigators (not even Inquisitors! Lol) until they are isolated and forced to run out of charge.

Haha, exactly! They'll just have to break their soul incurably in two places at once to give both spren room to grow and invest!

This makes a lot of intuitive sense. Seems like a double-Radiant would need to be a pretty damaged individual with more heart than head in order to wind up with a pair of extremely understanding spren both feeding their power simultaneously. Still though...it seems to me that swearing six mid-range oaths to two spren might still be easier than swearing all five to one in some cases.

Tie between truthwatcher and windrunner, but I prefer to just say windrunner because I look like Szeth irl.

From what I've seen, true skybreakers almost never pick themselves. Edit: also switched to skybreakers. Also super psyched about the next release. Greatly enjoyed the post, just didn't have a whole lot to add beyond validation.

Okay, so imagine a protoradiant was simply hellbent on bonding two spren. I would think it would be conceptually easiest for a Skybreaker initiate to wrap their head around simply because they have the nature, order, and quantity of oaths explicitly explained to them upfront, meaning they would be well positioned to intuitively understand other Order's oaths. So my question is: what would be the best way to go about doing it? Would it be easier to progress through oath number 5 then loop back around and start at number 1 with a new order? Or would progressing through the first 2 or 3 oaths in parallel with eachother with two non-fully-aware baby-spren be fundamentally more achievable? What orders would pair well with eachother and allow the spren to get along well enough to not tear their radiants mind apart with contradictions and competing priorities?? Asking for a friend...

No no, eugenics works in fiction exactly the same way it works in real life, people just generally seem to hate the concept of coerced breeding programs aimed at power consolidation... As a theoretical alternative, it has been suggested that it might be possible for parents to establish adequate Connection with Harmony to allow them to produce a Mistborn or Feruchemist without being one themselves; this would be sort of like a way of hacking around needing Lerasium, but it certainly hasn't been confirmed as a possibility at this point.

Thinking on this more, it occurs to me that explosives and bendalloy bubbles are a natural pairing for a mistborn who can also steel push. Imagine lighting sticks of dynamite in the safety of a speed bubble then either launching them out or dropping them on the ground and duralumin-steel pushing oneself up in the air to set a speedy trap.

I'm strongly inclined to agree; I'm thinking that northern scadrial is where we'll see the next mistborn if one ever pops up and, if they go rogue, they would probably not have access to hacked metalminds, medallions, or hemalurgic spikes that they don't make for themselves (think unabomber vibes...) On that note, a person with iron, steel, tin, and Pewter would be ridiculously maneuverable in an urban environment at night. If they were also predisposed to flinging dynamite and cackling like a madman, they would be like if superman and the joker were polymerized together. An aluminum garrote would be an obvious weapon of choice for a stealthy serial mistborn, and couldn't be used against them very effectively if the tables turned. Their access to emotional allomancy will make them charming, but they'll probably be solitary by necessity; It's a small detail, but I would infer that they'll probably need to maintain a fake identity and be able to have some rudimentary access to disguising themself quickly (probably not to the extent Wayne does, but at least enough to keep different groups from sharing information on them effectively). This should be going down 80's style, so Kevlar and/or lightweight body armor should be available. I wonder what they'll spend the hours on when they're not hunting people though...

My intuition would be that any special hardware that a mistborn serial killer (if that story still happens) would carry would probably be dedicated to leveraging the utility of having multiple powers. The ideas discussed here so far are fun and interesting, but they primarily would work just as well for a misting as a mistborn, which means that they could be used reciprocally, and...in my opinion, that would be the opposite of how a serial killer would choose to operate. They would WANT to be as exotic and difficult to emulate and counter as possible I'd suspect. Like...Imagine a safe cracker flaring tin while using a stethoscope to crack a lock in a bank vault that continuously plays loud elevator music to induce sensory overload in tineyes, and their only being able to do it because they're also flaring Pewter. Imagine freezing time in a narrow ring around oneself in close quarters combat by using bendalloy and cadmium bubbles simultaneously and then slowly and methodically lining up point blank shots on your targets while any incoming shots taken are range are hopelessly deflected! How about using electrum and duralumin in a casino to figure out which table or machine you should use to win a jackpot!!! Regardless of the fine details though, I think we can all agree than any smart mistborn serial killer will wear an aluminum foil hat because they aren't crazy.

Ooohhh, nice catch. No idea, but a lot of folks are looking forward to seeing if Kaladin picks up the Shard of Honor. On the flipside, a lot of people suspect he's going to die though, so we'll just have to see!

Oooohhh, okay now this is a fun one. I would expect that any change in how one is perceived by, and connected to, flora and fauna as a result of tapping/storing Connection would very seriously depend on their personal Identity. What I mean is, if one were a butcher, or sociopath who kills squirrels in their spare time, or just a really nasty mean-spirited person, tapping Connection would probably drive any animals around them into a rage or cause them to flee because of the natural aversion to such a metaphysically horrible person connecting themselves into their lives. It would be like if a known serial killer walked up to you on the street and offered you a small gift and a free lunch while soaked in the blood of a new victim; you would likely not instantly become their new best good friend or have your pants charmed off. You would probably feel very powerfully connected to them in the absolute worst possible way short of having their knife in your own stomach. On the flipside though, pacifists, veterinarians, and animal trainers might probably enjoy the exact opposite benefits of such an augmentation of Connection. Would it amount to the level of being able to talk to them and be understood? No. Tapping Connection does not increase the size and complexity of the speech center of the brains of sapients around oneself, so I can't possibly imagine it would do so for sentients. Might it allow one to approach strange wild animals without their being startled or gesture to them and have them approach out of curiosity or natural affection/affinity? Totally yeah! (Think Snow White vibes) I think we're going to find that tapping Connection is far more bi-directional than has been implied on screen thus far.

I definitely agree that there shall be a market for converting forms of investiture into Breath due to its utility in daily life, however, I'm still skeptical that the ultra wealthy will have much interest in converting to the more exotic forms (such as most metalminds other than copper, gold, and bronze) except for development of personal armies of super powered individuals dedicated to protecting their patrons. And while many folks will attempt to prevent the accumulation of access to multiple independent systems and powers...it's very difficult to stop a true worldhopper who knows what they're doing. To call them slippery is a ghoulish understatement; Hoid and Kelsier don't seem to be threatened by much other than nightblood and direct personal attacks by Shards at this point...and even then, they're just too fast to catch thus far.

Honestly, I question and doubt whether we shall ever see true attribute hemalurgy on screen except in the form of random mysterious monsters produced in small volumes just because of how violent, dangerous, and powerful it could be if utilized to its maximum extent possible. Imagine if a society invaded, conquered, and spiked a neighboring country. They could walk away with hundreds of thousands of new super geniuses and superheroes after a relatively brief conflict if they knew what they were doing based on what little has been revealed of the system's governing constraints. Era 4 scadrians camping over a primitive society could abduct and harvest souls at will to turn themselves into gods...if the cosmere gets that dark it might start to bleed its existing fanbase. Just an opinion; if you're right I suspect that group and its practices will simply have to be contained to prevent cosmere-wide war. Or maybe that's exactly what they'll spark...

I actually disagree with this. If a spren, who is the embodiment of a concept, volunteered to be changed by Honor, the influx of investiture would still be his normal blue, not a corrupting red. If Honor unmade an Unmade into a ReMade, then...yes, I would think he would burn them with red investiture and also probably kill himself in the process though. Does that make sense? "Unwanted," "unwelcome," and "uninvited," are different things and they don't all need to be present at once to cause extreme nuance and subtle problems.

I think they have a good reciprocal balance mechanism baked in actually, recall: coinshots are one of the most common mistings, and steelrunners are among the rarest ferrings. Without getting into an inappropriate level of detail, I would opine that this kind of extreme divergence implies that "natural" steel compounders should be essentially non-existent, or so rare that, yes, each one would essentially be an unstoppable god-emperor unto themselves and may Adonalsium have mercy on us all. Once you control for natural compounding, things get much cleaner. In order for a steel runner with the awareness and connections (little c) to become a world hopper to achieve God status without natural compounding, they would need to hit the 5th heightening with Breath (they age and kill themselves like crazy metabolizing at 1000x speed!!!) And probably make best friends with either an Elantrian with loose morals or the wielder of Ishi's honorblade in order to get access to "free" recharged steelminds. Human beings are persistence hunters. A steel runner, ironically, cannot outrun the people the harm or wrong unless they are also a natural coinshot (there have been some changes ((clarifications?)) to hemalurgy that imply that a steel spike might not be enough in most cases) because they have to get their charge from another living body or else have a way to directly convert raw investiture into essentially any arbitrary form of investiture, which is...already fully recognized and understood to, itself, be a Godlike and totally broken power (Elantrians and Unchained Bondsmiths).

I would argue that Honor would probably have an excruciatingly difficult time committing any act of corruption due to the aspect of the process which requires that one forcibly alter another against their express will by insertion of technically uninvited investiture...I suspect the holder might Splinter themselves if they even tried. Recall: the Heralds were volunteers. Cultivation though? Yeah, she knows how to corrupt and could probably make herself do it if the benefits were aligned properly for her and the recipient/patient/subject...I still firmly believe it would be fundamentally more difficult for her to corrupt anyone for any reason relative to the effort and focus required by Shards like Odium, who needs no justification prior to an act of corruption to satisfy his intent, and Ruin, who only needs to know that he is causing harm to justify a change to satisfy his Intent...Enter, Super-Inquisitors...

Pretty sure this is exactly correct, yeah; also consistent with why they consider the stones of Uirthiru safe to walk on without committing sacrilege.

I would like to think that Elantrians should be able to write scripts for recharging metalminds using the Dor. Just make friends with an Elantrian

I know it's traditional in the west to have the responsible artist sign your cards if you want that sort of thing done, however... Perception is my favorite stat because it's all about taking in information and being present. And...I just drew a one-of-a-kind one. So...I'm thinking about trying to get the folks I've learned the most from to add a quick scribble to it (fair is fair right?) Absolutely not for sale.