PinkPlasma

i chose furechemy, because not only could you potentialy take the energy from your metalminds and do commands with it, you could likely do the reverse, taking breaths and converting them into energy for any number of metalminds. furechemy is the most useful ability for day to day life right next to awakening, to have both would be a luxury too good for me to pass up.

So, I just watched(listened to?) the SP4 shardcast, and the discussion has me thinking about cosmere space travel, and how it will work. first off, its hard for me to imagine that any merchant, military, or travel in general, would opt for the danger of the voids of space, lightyears of travel, over what takes a few months to walk in shadesmar. but then that got me thinking about what shadesmar really is. As far as I understand it, shadesmar is a reflection of the collective cognitive view of the world, sort of inverted or abstracted in some ways. right now, the common knowledge of the regular people of the cosmere, not our min charcters but the normal citzens, doesn't entirely understand space and planets as a concepts yet. and, I think notably, we haven't seen shadesmar in any of the storys where they do. the general concept is that if you walk far enough in a direction, you'll get to a location. oceans are also a concept, a barrier to that physical travel, and their raw concept is also included in pretty much every place in shadesmar we have seen. so, I guess what I'm asking, is do we think it's possible, that once the majority of the cosmere understands space travel, that shadesmar will start to reflect that in its physical reflection of the world? and while i think, even if this did occur, the "space" in shadesmar wouldn't reflect the same distance as the physical world, it would explain why they would need to start using space travel instead of some elsecalling connection perpindicularty shenanigens. and i know that its hard to get between realms, but its also really hard to travel between solar systems. even with any kind of time dilation bullcrap they could pull, shadesmar, in the way it is right now, would be to convenient a avenue to not explore, and attempt to find easy ways to travel to and from the physical plane in any location. my second question is, propulsion. we have seen a few spaceships now, but we really don't know how they work, because the pov's we see them from are for the most part from a distance. do we expect several types of space travel, for each culture, or one type of fuel, some sort of pure raw investiture? I could see some sort of engine based of steel pushing or iron pulling labor to generate energy, or them doing some electromagnet propulision, and on the rosharan side, I'm sure there re some conection or elsecalling, maybe even fabrial stuff that they base everything off of, because i can't imagine lashings work efficiently when there's no gravity to redirect. elantris side (can't remember the planet name) will almost certainly go the raw investiture route, and awakening can really do some crazy things so i can imagine them being self sufficient. I kinda wanna steer clear of space fight discussion because... that is just a whole other beast entirely, but im really curious to hear other poeples thoughts on this cus i don't hear it talked about often

i was so confused until i realized it was because of the dampining during the invasion. ToT I was like "teft summoned a shardblade tons of times, what are they talking about?"

i think this is a bit of an unfair comparison frustration. of course a 4th ideal radiant is more powerful than a mistborn. i mean 5th ideal bondsmiths are more powerfull than fullborn to put some perspective on the table. like. fullborns are nuts. they are so many powerscales above a mistborn it's not even funny. but we've generally as a community decided that a group of 5th ideal radiants could probably win against a fullborn, if they played it right and had near infinite investiture. most comprable to a mistborn is probably a 3rd ideal radiant. the only real flaw that a radiant has, is how it uses investiture. but even this is a pretty small flaw, and hard to exploit without some serious risk. the only other flaw is how long it takes them to reach potential. a recruit mistborn, is infinitly more useful than a recruit radiant. all a recruit radiant is essentially the same as A pewter and F gold(with some obvious differences but functionally similar enough) that is, most definitly. net enough to win against an equally trained mistborn. they will have the advantage in reach, damage, durability, and speed. a radiant who has gotten to a point where they have plate has some serious experience on the table, and those are pretty few and far between. not only that, but there is a limited number of how many radiants the world can have. there are only so many spren. allomancy doesn't have this problem, it can have as many mistborns as harmony wants. so yes, the radiant is more powerfull in a one on one when both are at their prime, but the effort and difficulty for a radiant to get to their prime is much much harder than some consistent night time training, and a bit of natural skill. difficult enough that in the whole series, we have seen a total of 2 radiants get close to the prime capability. the feasibility of a mistborn makes up for its downfalls when you consider how hard it is to get a hold of a radiant capable of beating them. send a team of mistborn to roshar to take out all the world leaders? nothing the radiants could do about it before it was too late I guarantee you. an army of soldiers where every 10 are mistborn, vs all the radiants? i mean we haven't even delved into the teamwork potential of mistborn here, thats almost frightening to think about, espicially if we assume that only half of those would be as skilled as kelsier in his prime. and im fairly confident many were more skilled than kelsier in mistborn history, not to mention alll mistborn we've seen were working on half potential. the fact that it's even a debate over weather a mistborn is better than a full radiant makes me frightened for scadrial at war, especially when mistborns aren't the best it can offer. so yes, I agree that 1 on 1, radiants are just definitively better, I think that's probably good, because if they weren't scadrial would by far be the most powerfull planet in the cosmere.

i agree with most of the things you've said, ya'll have for the most part convinced me that aluminum would stop invested healing. but i don't think the examples you gave here really prove the light theory wrong. the first example, was kind of my point. there is no way that nightblood would ever do this, so it at least proves aluminum isn't all powerfull and investiture nullifying. with forgery vs EA, i think target of the "light" (investiture) is important here. say two people have a flashlight, trying to light up something they can't see. both of them are in a room, with a window with a curtian drawn over it. one of them is trying to light up a tree outside (EA on a person) but the curtain stops them (aluminum in the way). the other person is in the same room, trying to light up their book (forgery on an object nearby aluminum). the curtian didn't stop the second person because it wasn't in the way. they were both around the same level of flashlights (around same investiture level) but the curtain (aluminum) didn't stop the second person because it wasn't blocking their target, even though it was nearby. I think the issue here is that you all assume that alluminum projects some sort of dynamic investure stopping feild that stops some things but not others and does this sometimes. ima be frank, sometimes the simpler awnser is just the right one, and i think thats how it is here.

fair enough, I can't really argue with that, considering aluminum con stop ridculous amount of investure on contact.

i will concede that even if they fully healed over, having chunks of metal in your brain will still probably kill you. my best guess is the investiture would keep you going for a while depending where in your brain the metal is, but once it runs out you'd be done

to top this off, he can still telepathically comunicate even when completely sheathed.

i think its like the brightness of a light bulb right? if you completely cover the lightbulb, no light comes out. so no matter how strong the light is, none escapes. nightblood is like a floodlight, but its still completely covered. however when its even slightly uncovered, its light shines pretty damn bright. when even slightly unsheathed, nightblood can make almost anyone go on a murderous rampage if they get hold of him. but thats because the "Light bulb" is really really bright. other things with less allomancy, might be more properly covered by less aluminum though, without even having to cover the direct source. so while yea, nightblood is completely capured while completely coated in aluminum, i don't think a tiny peice of aluminum will completely keep a pretty large and important body part from healing at all when discussing something as invested as a bag of sphere's worth of stormlight, or compounded gold. it'll stop it a little sure, but i doubt it will stop completely. with that logic, if i wear an aluminum headband Nightblood will turn into a normal steel sword if it gets too close to my head.

i do want to point out that the strength of the investiture probably matters, and while i don't have any confirmation of it, i'm gonna assume EA has less strength than compounded healing or stormlight

healing around the aluminum is a little different than unhealable. the hole might be able to partaily close up in front of the bullet if it went deep enough in, or if it went clean through it wouldn't have trouble healing at all. however the idea of aluminum bullets that shatter once inside could be super deadly as well

can wounds from aluminum not be healed? I would've thought they'd bring that up with Wayne if it were the case

someone forgot about miles hundredlives. dude took a shotgun to the face if i remeber. and we know for a fact that most surgebinders have healing on par if not above that scale. we also have legends of rashek going from a skeleton to fully healed in seconds, so i seriously don't see how you kill these people with anything other than magic shenanigans or a shardblade. we have a scene where kaladin gets his spine repeatedly severed, and continued to heal just fine, so loss of the brain shouldn't be any different.

would it not work correctly if it passed completely through the body? this kind of soul staple/tearing in quick succsession could seriously storm someone up. the deforming is a serious issue though, they might use something more like a harpoon gun in this situation?

we know that there are many throughout the body though yes? I think a gunslinger could, while maybe not with every shot, shoot someone in the bind point on the shoulder, or through the eye, or even in the back, which are spots we know inquisitors all had spikes, so unless donor and recipient spots are different, which i will accept as a fairly real possiblity, i can't imagine its as immpossible as you're making it seem. just checked the coppermind, and it mentioned that there were somewhere between 200 and 300 different bind points in the body, if a person were to be knowledgeable of even a fraction of these and intend to shoot them, I can't imagine it would take an expert long to hit one. just checked again and i got the recipient and donor mixed up i'm sorry. i do still find it diificult too belive that there are only bind points in the heart however. is there a wob on this maybe?

i think it is important to point out that very few surgebinders have shardplate, in fact most never get shardplate. so while, yes, shardplate will stop this, it wasn't exactly my target victim. second to this, does it actually need to hit a bind point? I know that we need to hit a bind point for the spike to be useful to the recipient, but if our goal is only to tear of peices off the soul, do we need to be as precise? can we hit close enough to the bind point that we are still ripping a hole in the soul, but not useful beyond that? as for regular metal armour, i think getting them to do this puts them in enough weakness that we won't need our creative solution anymore, we just need to call a local coinshot and lurcher, unless of course the person is rich, and has a full suit of aluminum armour. which is very heavy, and hard to run away in. there's a reason peoples stopped wearing it in the real world, it becomes more of a hindrance when people have things like guns

I just read this WOB, and it got my brain churning. is there a potential for us to be seeing gunslingers with the express intent to shoot peoples invested abilites right out of their soul in combat? we know that being spiked is already seriously damaging to a person, and i just can't stop thinking about how utterly devastating this could be in combat. and if this is the case, i could see it being a pretty efective method against some of our top teir invested type peoples (Higher oath surgebinders, Compounders, Fullborns) while i doubt it would be enough on its own, if combined with other abilities, even if they could heal their soul, I can't imagine it would be immediate. it would certainly make characters on these power scales far more vulnerable. Do yall think this stuff is popping up in era 3? or 4?

alr lets say the same size as the one that attacked luthadel

alright I like fights. you like fights. so lets talk abt some cool fights. cus we all know we want to. 1 koloas army vs shallan, jasnah, and kaladin (in their current forms) each with a lot of stormlight but still a limited amount, and no refills. who wins?

I had honestly forgetten about the shardplate, that coupled with the pewter and stormlight + gold compounding, this really is a terrifying combination of powers

Right... well I will say not many things could be a fair fight here. im gonna leave nightblood out for now because he's a massive wildcard, just as dangerous to the weilder as he is to the opponent. im also not going to consider atium in this. its probably not out of the question that he could use stormlight as fuel for other abilities, so I'm gonna go on the assumption he can, which essentialy gives him a massive supply of investiture, but only one pool, if he chooses to use it as such. but he'll still probably hold onto some metals, at least for feurochemy. so he has metals but also can probably fuel his powers with stormlight in an emergency. he is going to be ridiculously powerful, a fullborn with living plate and a living shardblade, and who knows, maybe he can use fuerochemy to increase his connection to his spren, or any number of weird wild tricks. it's not entirely out of the question that his allomancy and fuerochemy will interact with lashings and the spren bonds in ways we can't predict. so we can safely say that they will be ridiculously powerful, and their biggest play will be that devastating combo of increadible speed, flight, and the fact the division or a shardblade can end someone in seconds. so who can outplay that, at a minimum? 1.) An unchained bondsmith. we already know these are the absolute powerhouses of the cosmere, with abilities so great that we only have legends. they can teleport entire planets worths of a population, and very potentialy are the reason they had to teleport in the first place. they can steal the bonds with spren, and probably the bonds with shards too. they can change things about. we know they can manipulate all 3 realms and mess with peoples spiritwebs, which is unfortunately where all our lord rulers powers are housed. so the bondsmith can essentialy wave away his benifits leaving him the equivalent to a drab. so they still wipe the floor with them. 2.) An elantrian. we already know that aons can basically do anything, so as long as they have the time to write them and the knowledge to understand, they have infinite potential. the limitations are obviously, how much time do they have, and how much knowledge do the posses, so there isn't really much to talk about here. with enough time and knowledge they win, simple as that. 3.) Hoid. he's been playing the Collect em all game way longer than the lord ruler has. definitive win. those are the definitive wins, not really a real fight, after this are potential contenders 1.) A kandra bonded to a spren, 5th ideal. the near imortality coupled with the ridicuolus healing capabilites give them a lot of potential. problem is, that they have hemolurgy, and I believe we all know the glaring weakness hemolurgy has against alomancy, but there ar likely ways to prevent this. even without that, division would be particularly effective against a kandra, as would a shardblade. but a kandra can pull some funky things with their bodies, and im not sure if there is a limit on how much mass they can have. they could potentially absorb a thunderclast with enough mass and biological knowledge to pull it off. so, again very dependent on the conditions, but an interesting fight to be sure. 2.) an unmade. any one of them would be a serious contender in a to-the-death combat. it is a mammoth task to kill an unmade, most likely needing the lord ruer to travel to the cognitive realm where they seem to exist more and leech them out of existence. which is a huge amount of investiture, and takes a good deal of time to drain, where our skybreaker lord ruler is particularly vulnerable. i can genuinely see this one going either way 3.) susebron, or anyone with similar levels of breath, provided that they can awaken enough things that our lord ruler won't simply burn them all to dust with division and that they have several packs of high color-saturated crayons as well of course. if they can manage to hold the fullborn still and create a sort of protective bubble of stuff to protect from lashings and steel pushes and pulls, they can just stab him with living spears of wood until he dies. but its difficult to pull off, and one mess-up would mean death. you can't heal yourself with breaths, a very glaring issue in this fight that can make it turn around VERY quickly. A single blow from the lord ruler could end them thats all i really had the time to think of, but im sure theres a few other options

right. so. the bondsmith wins seven ways from Sunday. honestly im not sure why you hindered the fullborn there's not much he can do. im like very confident we have a wob that flat-out says an unchained bondsmith would wipe the floor with a fullborn. like its not even funny. the bondsmith can just, steal the fullborns connection to their powers. or severe their connection to preservation so they have no power supply. or make an army of fullborns. The only counter i can see is the fullborn attempting to use hemolurgy to steal the bondsmiths powers before they can do the same. which would be INCREDIBLY difficult. and im not even sure if thqt would work, it would be a huge gamble. bondsmiths are like binding shards and stuff. its a totally different power scale. if the fullborn had an infinite supply of atium i think they would still lose. im genuinly struggling to think of any way the fullborn can gain an advantage here and the only ones i can think of are maybe, they can move quicker than the bondsmith can react, but the bondsmith can just alter their connection to time or something and be faster. the problem is we don't know the limits of a bondsmith, and a fullborn has some pretty clear limits, its the whole jist of their magic system. i think the only thing that could counter a bondsmith is a team of highly skilled and cosmere aware elantrians.

i would also like to point out that just because aluminum doesn't give a shadow, doesn't mean it would block shadows from other things

but thats not like part of what the fight is yk? its not a radiant with a suit of aluminum that somehow melds to their shardplate pefectly vs a fullborn, its just radiant vs fullborn with the things needed for their abilities. like if the radiant can have a suit of aluminum why can't we give the fullborn one? that'll solve their shardblade problem.

oh sorry i missed that ty for explaining but yea, if the radiant can't hit them it doesn't matter how much power they have, that's kinda the whole point of atium. that, coupled with even just regular speed instead of compounding, would make them untouchable. you'd have to checkmate them reckoners style, wich is really hard to do when the only thing you have that they can't recover from is a shardblade. and every second you don't have them in checkmate, the more they are gonna be hitting you. beating them is going to be near impossible for anyone in those circumstances