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.

Yeah the placement *could* be weird, but it could not be. "Intent" being a combo of mental and spiritual seems possible to me. Absolutely there's not strong evidence for it; that's entirely true. Like I said, it's a largely baseless theory. But I don't think there's strong evidence against it either. Without more specific, well, Intent, I imagine storing Intent could default to storing and tapping "general Intent to do stuff". Which would give the depressed/manic thing. That's what I meant when I said that without more advanced knowledge storing Intent would probably look a lot like storing determination. Determination *is* just a specific kind of intent (little i purposeful. the word not the Fundamental Concept). That is probably true, but hemalurgy comes with a lot of moral implications. Even if you can get around the "requires killing people" thing, you still have to stab the person and warp their soul to be able to do that. If you just wanted something like "a bracelet that temporarily depowers someone by forcing them to store their powers", an Intent medallion would be farrrrr better for that than a solution using hemalurgy. And yes, you could use chromium, but that's a one time thing rather than a persistent thing. You'd have to make sure they can't reswallow metals afterwards, and it's even harder to stop feruchemy with that, whereas Intent medallions could definitely stop feruchemy. So I definitely think there would be strong benefits to this being true, if it is.

Storing "determination" seems like it's of fairly minimal utility. It's not *nothing*, and certainly I could use it myself to help with adhd, but still I struggle to imagine it ever being particularly relevant to stories. It seems like a very odd choice for brandon to make then. I propose that "determination" is a misunderstanding of what it does. I think it's more likely "Intent". Intent is fundamental to how the cosmere works- just sticking to what we see in mistborn, you need the right intent to burn metals, to tap and store metals, and it's very important for hemalurgy. Most of the cosmere fundamentals can be manipulated by feruchemy, so it's weird that Intent can't- unless of course it can. The weirder feruchemy powers that tie in directly with cosmere fundamentals are not well understood at the moment; there is a lot unknown both in world and to us about them, so it wouldn't be at all odd for the metal doing so to be misunderstood. And I think that, without combining it with more advanced knowledge of how investiture works, trying to manipulate Intent would look a lot like "determination". So what are the implications of being able to tap and store intent? Well, probably a lot. Certainly more than I can think of here. But for a start, there's a lot about Hemalurgy that requires the right mindset- the right intent. Being able to make medallions that share that mindset could be very useful. Same with specific tricks of allomancy and feruchemy. For example, the ability to detect feruchemy with allomantic bronze is rare and difficult, but perhaps you could make a medallion that shares that ability with seekers- or pair it with a medallion that can make you a seeker. Most importantly though, it might allow you to make someone *forcibly* tap or store a metalmind. This would be *huge*, especially with the advent of unsealed metalminds. [Minor non-plot spoilers for the Sunlit Man] If you can use electrum to make metalminds that forcibly make people tap and store attributes, you could probably force people to store the intent of burning metals or tapping/storing other metalminds, and create a device that stops people from using their powers. So what do you think of the theory? And (sticking only to mistborn stuff and not greater cosmere), what could be other uses for the ability to store and tap intent? EDIT: Oooh, what if you could combine a few Intent medallions to make someone forcibly tap Intent to tell the truth? Or forcibly store Intent to do harm? A device like one of those would be really cool.

It's well established that Aux can only turn into shapes made of one singular piece, but a chain is made of many interconnected pieces and nomad turns aux into one on multiple occasions. How does this work?

I'm guessing it's a corruption of the person's own investiture, same as why Forgery gets the red investiture of corruption

If your soul warps like that, growing around the power, and then suddenly has the power removed, I think there's a strong chance you just die, honestly.

My assumption for a bit has been that Nightblood's black smoke color is because the command "destroy evil" combined with the unprecedented amount of investiture aligns it with ruin, and black is ruins color. I hadn't noticed what @drunkenbotanist pointed out about fused turning to black smoke when killed with antivoidlight (do we see this with phendora too?), and that furthers that idea. The nightmare machine definitely seems like it's doing the same thing as nightblood, that the shroud is the same as the smoke, whatever that is, so if it is actually ruinous, that's interesting, since the machine *wasn't* meant to destroy. But it certainly did, i suppose

Yes and no. Think of compounding. An electrum misting can burn feruchemically charged electrum for a different effect. (Yes, in existing instances of this, the person has also been a ferring of that metal, which you might say is the reason they can do this, but I'm not sure that's true. Vin's experiment burning one of Sazed's metalminds indicates this- she felt the power, it wasn't just a normal effect, she just wasn't able to access it because of identity issues.) Adding investiture to a metal can change the effect, but doesn't change who can burn it. Godmetals are just solid investiture. Alloying a godmetal with electrum is probably, imo, like adding investiture to electrum by storing in it, just on a larger scale. So anyone who can burn electrum can burn the alloy. Godmetals can be burned by anyone afterall, and it would make sense that adding electrum means it can be burned by people who can burn electrum, rather than needing a whole new set of mistings. It would make way more sense if the "atium" mistings were really just electrum mistings, and i don't think anything in the text invalidates that possibility

not necessarily. invested metals are harder to affect than non-invested metals, including by leeching. If someone has normal metals and metalminds in their bodies, the normal metals will leech away first. Wax is an iron ferring, who i believe was explicitly stated in this book to have some metalminds implanted under his skin to make sure he always has access to them. If you can burn a metalmind for its normal allomantic attribute, and I would think you could, then he could have burned just a fraction of a metalmind that would have survived the leeching.

The Atium retcon offers a possible alternative explanation but also raises new questions. Since we know the atium used was actually nalatium, an atium-electrum alloy, and that "atium mistings" were actually electrum mistings, we can assume the same is true of feruchemy since they're working with the same alloy, which would mean the spikes granting F!Atium are actually granting F!Electrum. Now what does F!Electrum store? Determination. Huh. This is where the new questions come in, cause why the heck would Ruin want inquisitors that can store and tap determination? If they tap a whole bunch, that might be enough to resist him for a little bit. Maybe he wants them constantly *tapping* determination so they'd be less able to resist him, but that just seems like far too risky a play since they could still tap the metalmind the moment the control slips a little. So basically, Ruin might not have cared about having inquisitors with F!(nal)atium, he might have wanted inquisitors with F!electrum, but really neither one makes much sense

Maybe eventually, after they ruled out the possibility of creating lerasium, but they were highly interested in making a new mistborn and I doubt they'd even discover the explosive reaction if they weren't trying to make it