8bitBob

Hey 17th shard. I took a long step away from the Cosmere while waiting for new books and have recently come back. While poking around, I saw some bits of info that contradicted some of the older theories on Iron. Here's my question: is it still assumed that, via a clever application of Iron storing and steel pushing off an object, then tapping Iron and Ironpulling, that one could effectively fly by reusing their anchor? I had a series of mildly interesting posts planned based on this concept ages ago, so I was wondering if this idea still held up.

Absence of something isn't proof of another thing. There are infinite explanations for why tapping the Nicrosil wasn't described, up to and including Sanderson just not bothering to write it in. By all means, discuss your theory and reasons, but treating it as fact and using it as proof that medallions don't consume Investiture stores isn't right.

@Calderis Your theory that Medallions do not require tapping is contradicted by Wax. Wax is just theorizing and Allik could either not know enough to tell he's wrong or is misleading him, but the in universe assumption is that medallions still require tapping to function. At the very least, no one jumps in and says, "Actually, you know what, I don't think I'm tapping the Nicrosil, Wax. That's weird." Maybe there's something going on to make tapping the Nicrosil automatic, or maybe Sanderson just didn't describe it, but I've not seen anything that convinces me that the stores of Nicrosil aren't drained. The idea that the lack of description for tapping Nicrosil implies something more is interesting, but by no means does it guarantee there's more going on there, or that using medallions doesn't still somehow drain the Nicrosil stores. Personally, I'd be pretty surprised if they weren't drained, but we can't really say for sure until Lost Metal.

Theoretically yes. There are some WoBs that imply this leaves scarring even after healing. What that does we have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in reduced strength for the trait being spiked out. For nearly all of the WoBs related to this topic, see my huge Hemalurgy post exploring this very idea here.

While this was originally the case, the religion seems to have evolved to revere Iron Eyes over time. From Alloy of Law:

Can't recall the fourth, but there's definitely Sliverists, who worship Iron Eyes.

Long story short: we don't know, but something would probably happen. Short story way longer, see my giant post on the subject here. I know you said you're fine with spoilers, but it gets pretty spoilery. You've been warned. It gets a bit speculative, but it also goes over what we know on the subject.

It's not really that anomalous. Technically, many traits are "end negative" under that logic. For instance, if you store strength while in peak physical condition and then tap it while you're a frail husk after surviving disease, you're going to get much less out of it because you need to tap so much more strength to make up for your weakness.

We must go deeper! What happens when you duralumin + nicrosil a mistborn who's burning duralumin + nicrosil at another mistborn, etc... In all seriousness, I imagine you could achieve the same thing with multiple nicrosil mistings touching a single target. I also imagine that they would explode.

In my opinion, Stormlight is a superior story in almost every way. The characters, world, plot and fantasy elements just feel much more fleshed out and interesting. If I was to recommend something by Sanderson to another reader, it would almost always be Stormlight. That being said, I find Mistborn occupies my thoughts far more than Stormlight. We know just enough about the magic systems to reasonably speculate and consider the implications of, yet not enough to make it boring or uninteresting to learn more about. Meanwhile, when shown something in Stormlight, our best speculation usually devolves into "lol i dunno, maybe some Spren and Stormlight or something make it work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" As time goes on, I expect things will reverse somewhat. We'll learn enough about Fabrials and Surges to nerd out as engineers, and Scadrial will advance far enough past its homogeneous roots to really feel like a fleshed out planet, with a really interesting setting for stories and diverse characters for us to appreciate as readers.

This is a common but incorrect belief. WoB: Compounding correctly means you never have to actively store again if you don't want to. You just burn a small reserve to fill up a larger reserve. When that's running low, you fill a new small reserve and burn that. Even if you run out, you can just store for one minute, burn it for ten minutes of storing, repeat ad infinitum.

I'm basically working under the assumption that such things can be worked around. WoB says that the more spherically perfect you can cut a gem, the better it holds Stormlight. With more refined cutting techniques, it's possible that this could get them through the Weeping alone. Aside from that, there's the possibility that surrounding gems with aluminum will reduce or prevent leakage. Brandon gave a big ol' RAFO and compliment when asked about this, if I remember correctly. But yeah, this would be an issue if not solved otherwise.

Yep, that's the basic idea. There's a lot of possibilities for this sort of thing though. I think the best Rosharan example would be something like a temporary city wide Storm Roof. Obviously it would be impossible to build a roof over an entire city if it's not pressurized, so you'd do something like a ring of interlocking cloth tarps that unfurl before a Highstorm. You use Tension to give the cloth rigidity, Gravitation to reduce it's weight, a series of support points holding it up with their own Gravitation surge to help against impacts, Abrasion on the cloth top reduce the friction to near nothing, vastly reducing force generated by the winds, etc etc. Suddenly you've turned mundane cloth into a sturdy defense against the storm, and now your city can remain productive during such time. Add in a series of drainage and filtration pipes for run off and you've got your city's water problems solved. Seeing as it's only active during a Highstorm, finding the Investiture isn't exactly going to be difficult. Obviously I am making a lot of assumptions here, but this should illustrate the potential usefulness of Active Support for construction. There could possibly be a line of sight issue for molds. Just speculating as to why they haven't done this, because you're right, it would be more efficient. The issue is that curing diseases, illnesses and traumatic injuries is insanely difficult, which means it's hard to research. The fact that we can do it at all is kind of amazing. One just needs to look at the difficulty of training doctors to see this. Even in universe, Kaladin's father was always treated with distrust for meddling with the insides of others. In our world, there were often complete bans on studying cadavers at all, labeling it necromancy and a sin, so there's always been a taboo around this sort of thing. Certainly Roshar could and should study anatomy and illnesses, and some certainly would in private, but I can't imagine it would be mainstream. On the one hand, you can wave magic at people and cure 99% of all problems, on the other, you can desecrate corpses, hack people up and deliberately get animals sick so that maybe in a couple hundred years you can stop accidentally killing people with bad science. Even assuming extreme urbanization doesn't kill rural communities even harder than it did on earth, transportation is still going to be insanely easy in a Fabrial run society. Why would you invest in training and paying an on call doctor instead of pooling town resources for a Progression Fabrial, or for an Elsecalling hookup to a major city for all kinds of emergencies, which can double as the way you treat the sick and injured? If there's no impetus to learn medicine and biology to stop people from dying, then there's no strong push to pursue this science. As the space industry has shown us, things don't just automatically progress because they should. I can legitimately picture Rosharan's landing on other planets while having no idea what a virus or DNA is.

This post will be less "Here's a modern device they could make with Fabrials" and more my musings on how Fabrials will change how Roshar develops due to their advantages. Personally, I think that, without outside intervention, it will be a very long time before Roshar develops something akin to Electronics. Roshar has so much Investiture flying around with so many ways to utilize it that the need to do complex, repeated math work probably isn't that high. Just take a look at what drove us to develop the earliest functional and useful computers: Artillery trajectory calculations Code breaking Gravitation and Abrasion makes projectile calculations a joke. You can even extrapolate this to space travel and see how rocket science is not exactly going to be a difficult field on Roshar. Pattern has already shown us his ability to code break absurdly fast. I wouldn't be surprised if niche math problems such as this were simply handled by Spren. Humans aren't going it alone on Roshar, after all. Even just things like basic transportation become a non issue when you can treat the problem like a high school physics question. "Apply force, ignore all resistances, profit." Long distance transportation will probably be handled by Elsecalling. For this reason, I think Roshar will remain fairly weak in technologies we consider High Science, like data processing, advanced mathematics and Biology, while having much more advanced Material Science, Chemistry and have an incredibly high standard of living. There's many analogues for this sort of thing. Leaving aside Soulcasting super materials like carbon nanotubes, Tension, Cohesion and Gravitation all represent one of Roshar's main advantages for construction: Active Support. There's plenty of youtube videos around if you want to see what that looks like in the real world, but Roshar makes it look easy. Navani's Archer tower is a good example of this, but makes it seem fantastical, while the reality is fairly mundane. Rather than build with materials designed to hold the entire weight of the construction, you constantly input energy in such a way that it lessens the burden, which allows you to build well past the limitations of the material. This sounds wasteful, but any modern construction has associated maintenance costs. Soulcasting is the norm now, but I imagine Progression is much more efficient for mass producing food. With vast farmland being much less important for food production, food can be easily produced at a local level, cutting down the need for transportation and preservation. Once Roshar discovers Chemistry and gains a Cognitive understanding of the periodic table, things will get pretty silly. They'll be able to Soulcast incredibly pure samples of substances and compounds in large quantities that are energy or material intensive for us to produce. This in turn will allow them to cheaply explore more complex compounds and processes. As for material production, who knows how things like Cohesion work? At the very least, Roshar should be able to mass produce synthetic diamonds of impressive size. Things like this will go a long way to solving the problem of Stormlight capture on a massive scale. They'll also be able to produce incredibly accurate glass work via Soulcasting, which will make the production of microscopes and telescopes easier, furthering scientific endeavors. Obviously the absurdity of Stormlight for medical purposes needs no explanation. It's honestly so absurd that I think it will stunt all related fields on Roshar. Similarly, Industry won't need to be as large of a thing. While you would probably have things like automated looms and paper production and the like, you won't need massive quantities of coal or oil to power them. The main question mark here for me is the matter of mass producing steel. How much will Roshar need vs how much can they Soulcast reasonably? Personally, I think Roshar is going to be building with stone for a very long time. Who knows? Maybe instead of Sky Scrapers and housing suburbs, Rosharan cities will be dominated by apartment buildings of modest size. It's not like they have grass lawns to covet or anything. Efficient use of space, water filtration and easy food production could mean that Roshar has much denser settlements than we're used to, vastly cutting down steel requirements due to less need of personal transportation and infrastructure. Most importantly, due to not having any need for toxic fuels such as coal or oil, industrial production can be done right next to residential areas without negatively affecting the community. Speaking of infrastructure, Roshar has it easy here too due to waste removal, which is one of the most important factors in quality the of life in urban areas. We've already seen what this looks like, with the refuse being collected and Soulcast into a less toxic form. I imagine waste collection would be a small scale affair, with local blocks collecting into one area and being cleaned out periodically. No sense making vast, city spanning systems when you don't need to process it or send it downstream. All in all, I think Rosharan life would be pretty different, but no less comfortable. Instead of watching TV, Rosharan's would go see a Lightweaving play. Instead of requiring vast global telecommunication systems allowing instantaneous video conferencing, VIP Rosharan's Elsecall on sight and handle the problem in person. Information is less easily available, but by no means at medieval levels or anything. Above books, but below internet levels. I imagine the cities would feel a lot more "human," with service and production jobs not disappearing due to automation and robotics. Who knows? Due to all the concentration of production and resources, maybe city states and Mercantilism don't disappear? I imagine that visitors to such a city would initially see it as less advanced and quaint, if incredibly clean, only to then be blown away while watching citizens casually flying around, maintaining perfect health and probably exploring their solar system with unprecedented ease. Now if only Roshar could stop getting attacked by an angry God and actually get around to any of this...

It could make it easier, yeah. Even if this works though, it's actually still possible that it wouldn't help with medallion creation. Long story short, it's possible having Soulbearer Investiture tapped won't help you store Trueself Investiture. This is theorized because, according to WoB, when storing in Nicrosil, you store each ability individually, not "Mistborn-ness" or anything like that. Under this logic, when you tap the Trueself Soulbearer Investiture, you're just granted the ability to store Trueself Soulbearer Investiture, not simply any power you have access to. This would require the use of Hemalurgy for medallion creation without a Feruchemist. Honestly though, the more I've read on the topic (and I've probably read every related WoB) the more I'm convinced we just don't know enough to make well informed theories on the matter. We'll probably just have to wait until the next book and have Brandon tell us how it's done. edit: Derp. Mixed up ferring names.

It is theorized by VenDell in BoM that you could tap keyed metalminds if you have no Identity when doing so. Basically, the idea is that Identity can be subverted either way. So yes, you would not be creating unkeyed metalminds, but that's not what's happening here.

The idea is that you have a Soulbearer store in a Nicrosilmind and then give it to a Trueself. The Trueself dumps their Identity into an Aluminum metalmind and then attempts to tap the Nicrosilmind. If Nicrosilminds are special, maybe this could work, etc.

The idea here is that Identity still plays a role. It would require both a Soulbearer and Trueself to attempt, which lowers the pool of testing candidates considerably, as these are supposed to be some of the rarest metalborn on Scadrial. At the very least, that seems unlikely to happen accidentally.

Some people have theorized that Ettmetal is involved, but it's just speculation at this point. Brandon is being pretty tight lipped about this, as I imagine the next Mistborn will deal heavily in this sort of thing, so we haven't learned much more since BoM. He did mention that it "involves" Duralumin (Connection) which is why I mentioned it, but he also said that involved can mean a lot of things. For instance, it could be that Connection is required when creating a medallion with multiple people involved, but may not be needed if you could make it yourself. Etc, etc.

Okay, this is a massive necro, but I just had a bit of a late night epiphany that I am amazed I had not considered, which I feel is interesting enough to reopen discussion: Chromium + Duralumin = Instant Investiture Leech Obviously this is only relevant if Chromium can indeed leech other forms of Investiture, but this is a pretty big deal. A big concern I had for the viability of Chromium against Knights is the fact that the greater levels of Investiture could be so much larger that this wouldn't be a threat. Duralumin alleviates these concerns. With this, the idea that a Mistborn could drain your Plate's Stormlight and leave you helplessly trapped inside (not to mention drain the Knight inside) becomes a real concern. Suddenly close quarter combat becomes a much less one sided affair, though obviously the Knight has a reach advantage with their weapon.

WoB confirms Spook to be a reduced power Mistborn: As for the question itself, others have mentioned that it may indeed be possible for a Fullborn to be born naturally if the genes aren't as diluted. That being said, I think there's actually a better explanation. BoM tells us that, when he Ascended, Sazed was granted full knowledge of Allomancy and Feruchemy, and suspects that the Lord Ruler was granted the same: A long standing mystery of the Lord Ruler's motivations has always been, why did he choose Allomancy over Feruchemy? Wanting only one makes perfect sense if it can birth Fullborn, but why did he choose this new power when doing so cost the lives of all of his closest friends and the complete subjugation and oppression of his people? I think VenDell is cluing us in on what Rashek was really afraid of: the full potential of a Feruchemist with access to every metal. Mistborn are dangerous, but their power is their's alone. So far as we know, there is no way for a Mistborn to empower someone else without the use of Hemalurgy or passing it on to their descendants. Additionally, it is much more dangerous for Mistborn to attempt to experiment with new metal types, as testing a new metal makes them violently sick or worse. This is not the case for Feruchemy. Metals can be tested simply by trying to store in them with no ill consequences. Once Aluminum is discovered, Feruchemists can empower each other by sharing metalmind reserves. Once Duralumin and Nicrosil are discovered, it's possible that medallions could be made. Suddenly anyone can be Dominant, which is not something Rashek was interested in at all. Even if there was a Fullborn to challenge him, I think Rashek could swing the conflict in his favor via Hemalurgy somehow. I think what he really feared was the societal effects of a system that could potentially empower the masses one day.

I don't feel that this is a very strong argument. I see my organs as mine and a part of me, but when I die there's a strong chance that they'll be harvested and given to another person. That is to say, my organs are a part of my self and Identity, but that doesn't mean only I can make use of them. Personally, I think it's probably possible that a spike could become a part of your Identity due to what we learn in BoM and Soulcasting. Stick, being the boss that it is, is entirely made of non living material, yet it has an Identity. Before he fell off a tree, I'm sure the tree saw Stick as part of its Identity. Similarly, we know that Southerner airships can use Iron Feruchemy to alter their weight. I imagine the limits of what weight is altered largely has to do with Identity, as that makes the most sense. So the walls, floors, frame and everything that is the ship has its weight reduced, while the cargo and passengers do not. But the ship is just interchangeable parts. Ships like that would often go through repairs, swapping planks and ropes and such constantly. But it incorporates these pieces as a part of its Identity and is still the same ship. It is a literal Ship of Theseus. I imagine this sort of thing is more difficult for people, as we have a much clearer Cognitive impression of what is Us, but it should theoretically be possible.

Theoretically, you can use very small metalminds (a couple hundred grams at most) instantly tap it all when it fills and then continue dumping weight afterwards. You'll be incredibly heavy for the briefest of moments, but you shouldn't lose much height to it due to the small window of time in which the force was applied. To go further, we know that Feruchemy granted by Hemalurgy is "leaky" in that you lose some attribute as you store. If you spiked yourself to be an incredibly weak Iron Ferring, you could still dump all your weight in an Ironmind, but you wold have to tap the weight less often because you fill it slower. Theoretically, this could also be achieved by medallions.

I'm confused. Why do people think Szeth is bonded to Nightblood? Because it talks to him? As I understand it, Nightblood needs to bond to read minds, not speak to people. If Nightblood was reading Szeth's mind, he would have no need to vocalize his responses, as was shown with Vasher at times. Additionally, Szeth is confirmed to not know Nightblood's name, which doesn't sound very bonded to me.

So I read this on the first day you posted it, but it's been a while since I was in a Physics class, so it's taken me two days figure out why I disagree with your analysis. TL;DR: I believe that Steelpushing strictly operates based on forces, which are a function of the strength with which the Allomancer is pushing, distance between the objects and mass of the target. My disagreement is most related to Model 4, which posits the idea that Newton's Third Law is not obeyed, and that the the Allomancer only moves if the "effective mass" of the target is greater than the Allomancer. For starters, we can mostly discount this idea due to this line from Kelsier: This shows us that Newton's Third Law is indeed being obeyed, even for objects not fixed in place. It's also explaining a very important concept that I don't believe any of your models take into account, which is why they don't make sense: inertial mass. In essence, your models fail to account for the fact that smaller masses are less resistant to a change in motion. To explain this concept for the layman, I will describe four similar situations, where you push your arms forward with equal force, but encounter different objects. 1. You push your arms out against nothing but empty air You're still generating a force, but the tiny mass of air means that you're experiencing effectively zero normal force on your hands, the only force being the feeling of wind on your hands if you push fast enough. 2. You push your arms out while holding a basketball While generating the exact same force, your hands are going to experience far more normal force than the previous situation. This is because the greater mass of the basketball more effectively resists a change in motion. This is what generates the normal force. It won't be enough to overcome friction and push you back, but your sensitive hands will feel it. 3. You push your arms out against another person about your size. Not only are your hands going to experience more normal force, if you fail to brace yourself when pushing, you will also be thrown back. The force you generate by pushing and the normal force your hands experience will be about the same, and you'll both both be moved. 4. You push your arms out against a wall, which you cannot move at all. All of the force you generate is directed back at you and you are thrown back. You feel foolish. If you keep the concept of inertial mass in mind, then all three of your described situations make perfect sense. 1. Vin pushes a coin As the coin flies through the air, its small inertial mass means Vin experiences very little push back, which her body barely registers and compensates for like it does with all small forces. Once it hits the wall, the coin's inertial mass is combined with the house, which Vin has no chance of moving, so she is thrown back by same force that she was always generating. To use the wall pushing metaphor, this would be the equivalent of pushing a basketball, but halfway through your push you hit a wall and are thrown back violently (assuming you pushed hard enough.) 2. Wax pins a book Bit different here, but still makes sense. Wax is generating force, but it's a small force, so the friction of the table against the floor and Wax's chair prevent anything from moving. Pretty easy to replicate just by pushing on something you place on the wall. 3. Coinshot slows their descent There's two things at work here, but I'll finish my previous explanation first. As the Coinshot is pushing on the coin in flight, his body is experience a very small normal force which is technically slowing his fall, but it's negligible. It's only when the coin hits the ground and gains far greater effective inertial mass that the Coinshot actually begins to slow his descent. So, why doesn't his descent immediately stop once he generates enough force? Because it's important to remember that there's no rigid bodies involved, just pure force. Consider a rocket. When attempting a retrograde burn to descend from orbit, it has to generate a force long enough to undo the Work it did to get up there. Similarly, the Coinshot has to undue the Work that gravity has done before he flies in the opposite direction. The easiest way to see this phenomenon is by dropping magnets on each other in a tube. If the poles are matched, and thus generate a repulsive force, then the falling magnet will briefly overcome the force generated before bobbing back up and eventually settling at a constant height where the force of gravity is equal to the force of repulsion. And with that, all of the situations are reconciled under a model dictated by force. Alright, but if that's the case, then why can't Coinshots launch super fast coins that create sonic booms? In preparation for this post, I searched for every instance of the word coin in The Final Empire and analyzed the situation. I am also a crazy person. What's interesting is that I did not encounter a single situation wherein Kelsier or Vin did any sort of flaring when using coins as projectiles, which means they were never trying to push them as hard as they possibly could. This makes sense, if you think about it context of a Coinshot fight. You'd naturally not want to push as hard as you could, because if someone else pushes on it while anchored, then all of your force is going to send you flying. The harder you push, the less time you'll have to react, and the worse things will go for you. This says something that I don't think has really been discussed, but is important: Allomancers do not always push as hard as they can. In fact, that's rarely what they do, or find it impressive. The best Allomancers have always been lauded for their subtly and control. Know what's not subtle? A sonic boom produced from a coin flying needlessly fast. As a group of sneaky assassins, I can easily picture one of the first lessons as a Coinshot being about not pushing too hard and making a bunch of needless noise and putting yourself at risk. That is to say, I think Coinshots could make a sonic boom, but try not to because it's gratuitous overkill. Honestly, it's not even that hard to make one with small objects, as bullwhips show. That being said, there's another thing I noticed in my searching: coins are way worse anchors than we give them credit. In most situations, they were used to do things like jump roof to roof, or jump from the street to the top of small dwellings and go from there. In situations where anything was described as large or far, like a keep wall or something, they looked for larger metal sources to use. In addition, they never used coins to carry someone while Steelpushing, which I think is telling. On her first training night, Kelsier hands Vin a "large ingot" of metal to clear a thirty meter wall. Unfortunately, we have no idea how this compares to a clip. Just in circulation today, a coin can weigh anything from 2.5 grams (American penny) to 34 grams (Mexico's 100 peso coin), while an ingot can weigh anything from a couple of pounds to over forty, depending on the use. Personally, I'm guessing it's 5-10lbs, but that's just it, a guess. Even if it was just five pounds though, that would make it weigh nine hundred times more than the American penny, which I'm guessing makes it a substantially better anchor. What I'm saying is that the mass of the target metal probably has significantly more effect on its effective pushing power than we give it credit, and that the requirement of more mass for more force over a distance naturally limits the velocity that an Allomancer can impart on a coin, and doesn't need any special rule governing force vs speed to make sense. Once the coin gets a substantial distance or goes supersonic, the drag force is quickly going to equal the force that the Coinshot is capable of pushing with. I still think they could break the sound barrier, which isn't that hard, but I don't think they're going to be hitting Mach 8 any time soon. Well, without Duralumin, that is. But that's cheating. Stop cheating, cheater.