Stormtide_Leviathan

This isn't the point of this thread so I'm hoping this doesn't derail it into moash discourse, but if he gets a redemption arc I could see becoming a dustbringer being one of the ways that arc goes.

Anything area of effect is going to be a good counter to steelrunning, since it doesn't rely on someone's reaction time it's just everpresent. And areas of effect seem like they're gonna become more common as ettmetal becomes more present. You could have area of effect leeching, for example that would be a great way to cut off steelrunners.

Spoilers mistborn + Shadows or Tress

That reminds me, do we know anything of what that spike did? Like, it had powers in it right? Or was it more of a linchpin type deal in the person marasi took it from

He likely will be able to eventually but doesn't currently know how.

What makes cryptics natural? They're "liespren", that seems very on the emotional side of things to me

I wouldn't be surprised if Ruin's rise eliminated a lot of the more powerful allomancer's including mistborn. Both passively, since they're gonna be more likely to end up in harms way if they're doing combat plus Ruin might have even been hunting down allomancers. Alternatively, it also might be that, the same way that the intermixing with feruchemical genes made eliminated misrborns in the same way it eliminated full feruchemists. (which sounds odd since mistings already occured naturally, but genetics can be weird even without getting magic involved). I agree that time alone isn't a good enough explanatory factor but there's a number of hings that could be going on. As for spook though, as @Duxredux says, he absolutely did have kids and lots of them lol

Harmonium isn't an alloy of atium and preservation, oddly. It's its own unique godmetal, because harmony is his own unique shard not just two that happen to be held by the same person. It's a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts situation

Hemalurgy, like a lot of things in the cosmere, requires Intent. Just stabbing someone isn't enough to make a Spike, you have to mean it. Which from everything we've seen basically means you have to already know hemalurgy is possible. You have to read about it like Wax, or see it done like the Inquisitors, or learn it from divine power like Kelsier and the Lord Ruler. There's wiggle room for experimentation, but that experimentation is "what happens if i spike someone with this metal", you still have to know about it initially. Even in Spook's case, when he got spiked with pewter by a random soldier, the Intent came from Ruin manipulating the soldier to do what Ruin wanted, and Ruin of course knew. It's the equivalent of me, knowing about hemalurgy, hiring an assassin and giving them very specific instructions about how to kill; even if they don't know personally, there's still Intent involved. So does that mean that, even though hemalurgy works everywhere across the cosmere, someone can never learn about it independently, only if they see it or read about it or are told about it? If some mad scientist artifabrian on Roshar, who knew nothing of hemalurgy, went "hmm. animals like chulls and chasmfiends, and people like singers, they have gemhearts in them." and did horrific unethical experiments turning living beings and people into fabrials, could their experiments trying to push and pull on the spren inside gemhearts with metals produce hemalurgy even if they were never told about it? (Especially if Raysium gets involved to forcibly transfer the spren, but that makes things even more complicated so let's stick to more simple metals.)

I agree with your overall conclusion that Kelsier being a godspike of some kind is much less likely than him being stapled to a mistwraith, unless both are tru. But I don't think the fact that this is a bit unlike the usual Nahel bond necessarily rules it out. Using a manifested spren as a spike, if it's even possible, would be *weird* and surely would do weird stuff unlike the usual Nahel bond we see. (And the two bodies isn't a dealbreaker either. Kelsier's cognitive aspect is separated from his physical body, so physically manifesting as metal shouldn't have an effect on it. The other thing is... we kinda *have* seen something like this. Not necessarily exactly this, with the hemalurgic aspect, but this sounds a lot like the fused who also take over a body and overwrite it with their own sense of self. And clearly there's *some* kind of bond between them and the host singer; I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was some kind of parasitic Nahel bond (which sounds to me like exactly what I'd expect to get from spiking someone with a manifested spren/cognitive shadow)

Yeah I think this is true. (Or close to. Im more of the opinion that it's ruin investiture in the spike because hemalurgy is of ruin. So even if trellium was used to spike, say, a sandmaster I think it would still get red spots. Any godmetal used as a spike- other than atium, harmonium if you somehow could, and mayyybe lerasium at least post-harmony- would develop red spots).

Godmetals exist because when investiture manifests as a physical object, it does so as metal. So my completely unfounded guess is basically that dragons are so super-highly invested relative to their physical form that that investiture manifests itself as metal. Each dragon would have a slightly different variant of dragonsteel, unique to their own individual spiritweb. (Like how it's been said that shardblades of different spren types are slightly different alloys of tanavastium and koravellium)

I was thinking the other day about how scadrial seems like a really good setting for a murder mystery, which got me thinking about a sherlock holmes character and what powers would be fun. I think there's a lot of good options. In terms of allomancy I could see zinc/brass, tin, or bronze. In terms of feruchemy, Zinc, copper, or tin. Maybe a zinc compounder could be fun, with a brain working a million miles an hour and able to manipulate people into revealing things. (Also yes, Wax is a detective character but he's very combat focused which isn't really the archetype im going for)

Kelsier exists as one notable ghost, but I think it would be neat if ghosts were a more significant part of scadrial. They make good sense as a manifestation of investiture by preservation. They're literally someone's soul preserved after death. They make even more sense as a manifestation of investure by Harmony- they're preserved souls born out of death, out of ruin. Thematically, I just think they'd be a great fit. And they'd add a bit more of a mystical element to a world whose magic we're generally encouraged to approach in a scientific way. Ultimately, I don't have particular story reasons to want them to be a more prevalent thing, I just think it would be neat if preservation and/or later harmony chose to preserve certain people after their death. But even though it's not the main reason I want them, there *are* interesting story possibilities. We know that cognitive shadows are similar to spren, and can potentially form bonds. While it likely wouldn't, and shouldn't, work exactly like knights radiant that still opens up interesting possibilities if the ghosts can become shardblade like objects or grant allomantic/feruchemic abilities somehow.

This appears to be a metalmind that takes medalliontech a step by making tapping the metalmind obligatory. It's not just that you *can* tap the metalmind, you have to. Normally, tapping a metalmind requires intent, which is why when Wax had the memory coin he couldn't even tap it until he knew what it was. So this is weird! Do we have any speculation as to how this might be done? Is it even a metalmind like I think? I have thoughts that it might involve F!Electrum, but that's obviously highly speculative so I'm curious if anyone has other thoughts.