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BLUF: I propose that Malwish Medallions and Metalborn Tech is based on living investiture, like fabrials and invested objects. In another thread, I saw this WOB posted. This got me thinking....... in Rhythm of War, we learned that Soulcasters are actually spren (and technically, all fabrials are different ways of putting spren to work). Metal Jewelry that grants people powers......... What if the Malwish Medallions are just another form invested life. Either invested objects that have gained, if not sentience, enough life and identity to give their users power, or metal (being a form of investiture) that has gained enough investiture and sentience to actually have life and identity.

A continuation of this discussion but for mistborn. One side has a metalborn population (with a elite class class of mistborn and ferochemy) Harmonium tec, medallions, and one fullborn The other has post ww1 tec Location post harmony scadrel.

One side has end of ww2 level of technology (including atom bomb) The other has ancient and modern fabrils, a full order of knights Randiance, both god metals and anti investure weapons, Who wins? Location roshar

So awakening can be used to make computers, any clue how this is done?

Okay, so I had this idea after reading RoW. It's a little out there, but I was thinking it might be a way for invested people on Roshar to travel off world. Thanks to Navani's experiments, we know that stormlight and voidlight are connected to the tones of Honor and Odium, respectfully. Almost certainly the same of lifelight and Cultivation. I wonder if it's possible to transmit that in some way long distance, like a radio. Now, I don't that radios don't actually transmit the sound itself. The sound is encoded into radio waves that can be received and translated back into sound on the other side. Maybe if two gemstones were conjoined like span reeds, then a constant source of stormlight could be transmitted. Or maybe gemstones cut in a certain way could receive the tone sent out by a large gemstone transmitter or something, like car radios receiving a signal from a radio tower. Such a thing would need to be limited, only so much stormlight could flow through at a time, but a constant stream of stormlight could maybe act as an anchor to Roshar. Kind of an out there theory, like I said, but it could be a way to get stormlight, and possibly radiants, off of Roshar.

Time for me to add another topic onto the discussion table. Okay, me always had this question and could not find an answer anywhere, so here it is... why don't we see more guns? It's always bugged me that we don't see world hoppers having a gun with them, especially after we see Khriss carrying one in Mistborn: Secret History. That shows that guns have been around since Mistborn Era 1, and that world hoppers do carry them around when traveling to other worlds. So why don't we see Mraize or Hoid carrying them? Hoid might be powerful enough that he doesn't need one, but Mraize? He is a worldhopper and could have easily gone to Scadrial and took a gun with him. Now, obviously, there are possible explanations, First one is maybe it against the Cosmere laws, as seen in Sixth Dusk, and they can't bring them and accidentally leave them for the populace. problem with that is one, sixth dusk tasks place centuries in the future and may not apply to Mistborn and SA. Next explanation is that gun is inconvenient to carry because once you run out of ammunition, the gun is useless and you can't really make ammunition for yourself out of thin air (unless you're an Elsecaller or Lightweaver). But a gun is still pretty worth it for emergency and then I'd ask why Khriss brought hers. And lastly, it might be the Ire, Ghostbloods, or Seventh Shard that keeps worldhopper from doing it. Mraixe certainly seems to be keeping track of that on Roshar. What do you guys think?

With the RoW chapters hinting at the capabilities of Logicspren Fabrials, and the knowledge that Hoid wants Instant Noodles to be a thing, I wanted to ask your opinions about the following: By the time of larger crossovers, whether that will happen in the Space Age or earlier, what do you think will be the planets main strengths and weaknesses? Not purely magical, but also technological. Scientific. What do you think might different planets have developed earlier than others, and why? What would say Sel bring to the table that Roshar doesn't have? A few thoughts from me, correct me on whatever I'm wrong with. What are the most technologically advanced societies we know of so far? - Scadrial, especially Southern Scadrial. They've already got flying vehicles, and Feruchemical devices can open up a lot of possibilities, and guns are a thing too. However, one of the real gamebreakers that Scadrian society has, is Canned Food. A huge gamechanger for feeding people. It probably won't be long until they have refrigeration, whether by conventional means or using feruchemical heat saving. - Taldain, or rather, Darkside. They also have guns, and as far as I know White Sand is one of the earliest stories, so by the time of Era 3 and 4 who knows what they have developed? Seeing how Magic is not a thing on Darkside during White Sand, I think they might get the closest to technological development how we know it on Earth. And even if we take Sand Mastery into account, I can't imagine nearly as many applications for it as with Feruchemy or Fabrials. - The Ones Above. Who are they? Nalthis, Scadrial, Taldain? They're definitely advanced. Was that a Fabrial they were using? And what about the others? - What might Nalthis come up with? Nightblood is 99% going to be a major component of the crossover stories, so there might be more coming from where he is from. Shardblade 3.0 might be the first of more... somethings. If you can create a sentient sword that is that destructive, lets pick up Dalinars thought of "why are there no Shardhammers? or tools? why just swords?" Or will Endowments Endgame focus more on certain Returned giving up their Divine Breath in key moments to do specific things? Also possible. Or maybe the existance of Breath will push Nalthian society somewhere totally else that I'm not thinking of. - Roshar. Fabrials. Computers? Flying ships? Long range communication. Easiest access to Shadesmar we've seen so far. Soulcasters (see what I said about Canned Food.). - Sel. Cosmere aware people will probably be interested in developing spacetravel, much more so than people from Roshar with their easy access to the cognitive realm. We already saw the Ire, but afaik we have very little knowledge of any exceptional scientific progress there. - Threnody. The Ire considered it a possibility that "the forces of Threnody" would join the game. Were they thinking of the people there, the shades... or the Evil? Nazh used a Shadegun... weaponised shades maybe? Or maybe my wild theory that Kelsier will try (and succeed?) to reforge Ambition, and that's Threnodies largest contribution to the Cosmere Endgame? - First (and second and third and fourth) of the Sun, Ashyn, Braize? I'm very exited to hear thoughts from others on what you think all of these planets might come up with by the time crossovers happen more and more, and where you think scientific development might go on planets that arent Scadrial or Roshar.

So I read that skyward was originally meant to be Cosmere and it made me wonder , what about the non shardic planets ? Khriss says they can't be visited due to lack of perpendicularities and I guess they don't have any magic systems either. But they would be free of the chaos and conflicts shards bring. SEL, Scadrial, Threnody, Ashyn, braize and roshar have been ravaged by it. The worlds under autonomy or her avatars suffer from isolationism , I guess. Nalthis is the only Shardworld that hasn't seen major conflicts and even it is quite backward for some reason. We don't know enough about Yolen to speculate. So now the normal worlds , Hmm , they have had 10,000 yrs of peace ( by peace I mean lack of Shardic conflicts , not no normal wars ) and many have good climes . The Drominad system alone has 3 of them. There are dozens more. I believe not all of them are claimed by autonomy's avatars or the unknown Shards. So could one of the non Shardic worlds , develop space travel before or at the same time as the shard worlds. They could rely on normal technologies like ours instead of investivure based ones. It might even be an advantage. Like they could have nukes , lasers , nanites , chemical and biological weapons and stuff . At first they might depend completely on normal tech , then after contact with the shardworlds they could integrate investiture based tech into their conventional ones . The shardworlds might neglect to do that since they might think thier tech is superior to conventional ones and make a surprised Pikachu face when they are subjected to nuclear bombardment from orbit. Hell maybe they could even create strains of lethal disease resistant to investivure based healing after they learn about Realistic theory. Hmmmmm something to think of. But I guess without FTL , they won't go too far. Unless they steal or buy or reverse engineer Scadrial tech. There are dozens more. I wonder if any one of them could eventually rival a shardworld. Whatchu think ?

So we know that humans nearly succeeded in overrunning the Galaxy three times but were always defeated or atleast beaten to a tie. Now we know the delvers were behind the defeat in the second war. But what happened in the third and the first ?? I'm willing to believe delvers first arose during the first war and ended it. But the third war ??? It seems unlikely that humans would carry out the same mistakes and cuna doesn't mention any major delver attacks . Compared to the Superiority ,Humans also seemingly have vastly superior technology ( see the irony ) Mbot is atleast 3 centuries old and he's still far more advanced than the aliens. Sure the outlawing of AI probably stunted alien tech. But it still doesn't explain why the aliens have such inferior holographic tech , Even After three centuries and even when holographic programming is a popular profession among the aliens as spensa learns from morriamur and the kitsen. The technological disparity is also focused on in Defending Elysium. And the delvers hate all life so I don't see why humanity would have suffered worse than the aliens. Even if they had , the technological disparity would have bridged the gap. It's also mentioned that they almost won in the third war as well , but in the end they lost so soundly as to be made into pets or being forced into preserves. How ??? I have one theory. I think it's cause humans lacked political unity. When FTL travel was opened to humans. I think it wasn't one pan global political organization which took to space but rather different nations which did. The aliens with thier suppression of dissidents were able to gain political unity , but humanity didn't and remained divided. I guess they split up even more as human colonies on other planets declared thier Independence and tried to start thier own colonies. Maybe during the human wars , they weren't just fighting the aliens but each other as well. The divisions could be based on race , original earth nationality , culture , language, religion ( or lack of it ), different political ideologies, different policies regarding delvers or due to interbreeding with other species. ( We have some clues that this might be what happened with the UrDail ) So what do you think ?

So one thing I've been thinking about recently is whether it would be possible to refine cadmium and bendalloy using Final Empire levels of technology. Chromium wouldn't be possible-- apparently it requires an electric arc furnace to extract pure chromium from the ore-- which means nicrosil would also be impossible. But cadmium is usually found as a byproduct of zinc refining, which the FE obviously must have had. And bendalloy (Wood's metal in our world) is an alloy of cadmium and several very common metals: lead, tin and bismuth. Bismuth was known as early as the late-1600s, leading me to believe that the slightly-more-advanced-than-expected metallurgy of the FE could have known about and refined it. Knowledge of these metals would almost certainly be suppressed by TLR and the Steel Ministry, and the fear of heavy metal poisoning through recklessly experimenting with different percentages would have discouraged anyone but an extremely eccentric (and wealthy) Mistborn with an absolute ton of aluminum from messing with it. But I think it might have at least been possible to produce back then. Am I missing something?

When the Lopen is visiting the wounded soldier in Chapter 121, he shows him how to open a bottle of beer one handed. I didn't think twice about this the first time though, but on my reread: why would Roshar have metal bottlecaps? How long has that been a thing for us?

Hi guys! I'm really curious about the mobiles that everyone uses. It seems like a phone, only more sturdier and with more features. Anyone have any theories as to what it really is? I know it has some kind of screen and that it could attach to your arm or shoulder, but what else do we know about them?

My apologies if this has been asked and answered before, but how is there such a drastic difference on how fast technology advances on different shardworlds? Scadrial, for example, has seen leaps and bounds in technology since the fall of the final empire- whereas Roshar is roughly medieval in both its technology and social structure?

So, we know that ettmetal/harmonium can be used to replicate Allomantic abilities (engines using Steelpushing to move turbines, primer cube/grenade Wax and co charged with Allomantic steel, Allomantic cadmium and Allomantic bendalloy). While all those abilities are external Allomantic and we don't know how would internal work (for example, how would tin work with allomantic grenade?), perhaps they could be used also with feruchemy. Thus, we could make machines which could use Allomancy and Feruchemy (and perhaps Hemalurgy) since sentient machines would have a soul. Now, let's leave all the "hey, Metallic Arts golems/Terminators etc" and focus on other uses. How could we use the fact that machines could use Allomancy and Feruchemy? My first idea is computers using Feruchemical copper to store data. I think it could be faster than traditional methods. What else we could do with such technology?

I'm trying to put together a couple pieces about how much Harmony has been involved in Wayne's life and the demons that haunt him. Here are the pieces I'm fitting together at the moment: 1: Wayne killed the parents of a child many years ago. Wayne turns himself in to Wax following this and is unable to touch guns again afterwards without shaking. Initially I thought this may have been to build an aversion to guns, but I'm looking at it in light of the compassion Wayne now has for the child. 2: Wayne visits the child on a monthly basis to give her money, but also to reinforce the guilt he feels over the parents death. Wayne or Harmony don't want that pain to dissipate. Though it seems clear that Wayne is able to deal with the pain, it still hurts him. 3: Wayne meets the daughter of a scientist at the party when Wayne was impersonating another scientist who destroyed the woman's father's life. This resonated with Wayne and sparked an emotional connection between him and the woman since she reminds him of the daughter of the parents he killed. 4: At the end of the book, Wayne intends to invest in the daughter's research, which will push science forward. 5: Harmony has expressed an intent to have society progress technologically faster than it currently is. This feels to fall perfectly in line with that goal. 6: Harmony has already stated (through MeLaan) that He puts the pain where it can be handled (referring to Wax, but this feels like a general rule). No one of these steps feels particularly like Harmony is involved with Wayne and yet when looking at the whole picture, it seems likely to me that Harmony decided that the guilt of creating an orphan and never being able to make up for it was a pain Wayne could bear and he uses this to cause Wayne to invest in technological advancement with the money that he never spent from Alloy of Law. If someone would like to fill in the gaps with the direct quotes that these ideas are pulling from, or challenge the theory, I'd love to hear it.

To be very honest, at the first moments I encountered with hemalurgy in the mistborn trilogy I didn't really like it, basically due to its gruesome nature, its inefficiency, and its primitiveness. To me, there are 3 main problems with hemalurgy: Law of Hemalurgic Decay (Look it up if you have no idea what it is) Contact with moving blood (Killing most ex-Allomancers/Feruchemists while it is not really necessary) Large, clunky spikes that not only changes one's physiology, but also created a weakness that is lethal to receivers of hemalurgic spikes These are the reasons why I think that the first generation of hemalurgy very inefficient, and made me thinking. Could we use needles instead of spikes? Feruchemy actually needs bigger pieces of metal to store more investiture; however, I do not think that it's the case for hemalurgy. The spike only contains a fragment of stolen Spiritweb, and is ripped out and embedded in the recipient, thus stapling the ability directly into their sDNA(from coppermind wiki). In fact, Spook only had the tip of a broken sword, but still works perfectly. It (kinda) proves that all it takes is a piece of metal of that kind. Furthermore, with better forging(the metal-shaping skill in real life not the one on Sel) or even nano-tech, we can totally make needle so thin and so small that when it passes through the giver of alomancy it won't do much harm; and as it will pierce through the body, we can just aim for a micro-vein, and fulfil the moving-blood requirement. At this stage, problem 2 is solved.(I know it solves problem 3 as well but I will discuss it in the following paragraphs.) Remember problem 1? I want 99.9999999999999999999% of original power kept, so we have to do it fast. How? Isn't it apparent? Iron/Steel+ Duralumin. Or Nicrosil, if all our mistborns are gone, which is sad. However, it's kinda imprecise. And hemalurgy requires certain precision. I want almost all of investiture and put in the best position of spiritual web and gives out the best outcome. So we can use kinda needle gun propelled by air or magnetism, but that's not what I have in mind. We can have a kind of double deck "bed" which is actually a hemalurgic-transference operation device. The giver lay on the upper deck, the recipient lay on the lower deck. At the top, we have a needle ejection unit that is powerful yet precise in power, that it is strong enough to pierce through the giver but weak enough to stay within the recipient, and will adjust with different givers' and recipients' body thickness and density. Then, at the side, some sort of scan that shows the exact position of organs(hearts, ribs, which are crucial for hemalurgy) and veins that it should pass through to cause minimal effect, which I'm sure we probably have that now in our real world(OR A SHARDLESS WORLD LOL). Basically, that's that. Maybe with some computer to adjust and monitor things, but doesn't make much of a difference. Problem 1: Solved Problem 2: Solved Problem 3: Solved (As the "spikes" now are small and deep within one's body, it shouldn't alter much of one's physiology, and it would be harder to extract them. I suppose now you guys are drooling for this. Hell, the whole process is so fast and efficient, it might just be like taking a flu shot. And poor allomancers who can't afford much metal to burn can just sell their allomancy to richer ones. "Sir, please lay here" the nurse said "And sir, please lay here" *The two of them lay on separate vertical decks "Sir, you are giver your Pewter Allomancy to the gentleman below, correct?" "Yes ma'am" "And you are receiving Pewter Allomancy?" "Yep, please shoot" "Now please lay on the decks calmly and have minimal movements." [Psssst] "Alright, the procedure is done." the nurse re-enters the room. "Give me some pewter" "Oh I still have a vial, take it" "Thanks" [gulps] "Ohhhh it feels awesome" "Just keep check on your reserve" "Thanks again..." [The recipient holds a dented door-knob he tears out from the door] "Opps." He turns to the giver "I'll wire the remaining payments to your account tomorrow" "It's a pleasure doing business with you" "Likewise" Like that. Hemalurgy extra: Remember that needle gun? Or pushing the needles with duralumin? It would be a non lethal way to take away someone's allomancy during a fight, or as a punishment. Just sayin' P.S. I'm not 100% sure about using the word investiture, cause you know guys, its definition is still quite vague, but I apologize in advance if I cause any confusion. Just infer the meaning by yourselves. P.P.S. And let's hope that Harmony won't be a dick and storm with those people

So the world I'm creating has an elemental magic system that is fairly typical. In a nutshell, the magic is an innate, hereditary power giving the user the ability to perceive, manipulate, create, or destroy one of the world's eight major elements: Fire, Earth, Life, Water, Air, Spirit, Light, and Dark. At a glance it resembles a cross between elemental bending in Avatar and channelling in the Wheel of Time. (I might make a post discussing the system in detail at some point, but for now it's only relevant that it exists.) But I really liked the idea of a scientific or mechanical way to access magic that we see in Roshar's fabrials, and that is hinted to exist in southern Scadrial. So I started thinking about how something like that would work in my world, and this is what I came up with. The basic premise is in utilizing elemental energy stored in gemstones (which obviously must glow when they are charged) by imbuing the energy into geometric symbols which have (more or less arbitrary) spiritual connections to the different effects the energy can produce. Now, don't look at me like that. Sanderson isn't the first author to use gemstones as magic batteries. The magic system I'm developing here is not a blatant rip-off of fabrials. It only looks that way. I'm interested in what kinds of technology you, my friends, can come up with using this system. Airships? Railguns? Laundry machines? You tell me. Now, in more detail: there's a strong connection between light or colour and the elemental energy that makes up this world. The spiritual character of different substances causes this energy to take on different elemental colours. Here's an overview of the different colour associations. - Red: Hot gases and incandescent material undergoing combustion - Orange: Metal, molten earth, charcoal - Yellow: Minerals, salts, ceramics, soil - Yellow-Green: Wood, hair, silk - Green: Organic matter - Green-Cyan: Oils, fats - Cyan: Water, ice - Azure: Heavy gases and vapours, steam - Blue: Light atmospheric gases - Violet: Rational mental phenomena - Magenta: Vital psychological phenomena - Rose: Emotional phenomena - White: Visible light, elemental colour Once elemental energy acquires colour, it is restricted to interact with the associated substances. Ambient elemental energy pervades the world and takes on colour according to nearby substances. Importantly, the substances within living beings are protected from interaction with elemental energy by a natural magic associated with all life. Okay. So there's natural magic on this world which causes any transparent material, upon intense illumination by sunlight, to form into a reservoir for elemental energy. Further illumination causes the material to charge with elemental energy, with an elemental colour identical or at least similar to the colour of the material. Deformation of the material ruins its ability to store energy, so you need rigid, high-strength materials to create good reservoirs. Hence, gemstones. When a reservoir material is charged, it glows with the appropriate colour. Certain arcane symbols can unlock the power of elemental energy, expending it to produce different effects. These symbols are all built upon a circle and are referred to as activation circles. (You may be feeling an FMA vibe right now. As an aside, I'm thinking the basic elements of the symbols will be circular arcs inscribed in the main circle, rather than straight lines.) When a high density of elemental energy, such as that stored in a reservoir, is brought near such a symbol, the energy begins to flow through the activation circle, expending it and releasing its power. (Electrical analogy: the reservoirs are capacitors and the activation circles are resistors.) The symbols are discovered by experimentation or from ancient texts in reference to the innate elemental magic system. It is pretty difficult to discover new symbols. Modifiers can further specify the behaviour of the activation circles in some ways. Activation circles can be constructed from anything - they can be built from a material or carved into one, drawn on a surface with ink or chalk or whatever you like, formed from a shadow or a projection - as long as the symbol is there, there is some amount of elemental energy that will cause it to function. However, the circles function better if they are constructed from a material associated with the element, allowing the energy to flow through them easily. They function even better if they are made from specially prepared conduit materials, which are near-perfect conductors of elemental energy. (One of the kinds of activation circles can transform a material into a conduit for a certain colour of elemental energy; it so happens that this works especially well for copper, silver, and gold.) So one could build elemental energy activation devices to access the various effects for the different colours of elemental energy. For simplicity I'm going to call devices, activation circles that are constructed from conduits and powered by reservoir gemstones, fabrials. This is just for fun and I'm not planning on publishing any time soon, so I can change the name later, haha. Here is the list of the different possible activation circles: Perception - the circle stretches the energy within it into a perception field that extends throughout the vicinity of the circle. The more energy placed within the circle, the greater the range. When elemental material is detected, some of the energy is pulled back into the circle. This will either cause the reservoir to light up, or it can be siphoned away by a conduit to power another circle. Modifiers can focus the perception field in a certain direction, or create a strongly focused perception field within the circle (which has some uses later on). Attraction or Repulsion - the circle generates a force field, anchored on some elemental material at the center of the circle, that acts on similar elemental material in the vicinity of the circle. The reaction force on the anchor is equal, opposite, and collinear with the force on the outside material. Modifiers can focus the force field in a certain direction, or anchor the force field to the reservoir material within the circle rather than an elemental material. Energy is only expended when an actual force is being generated. The circle can be tuned to target a specific material by coupling it with an inside-focused perception circle containing a sample of the target material. Heating or Cooling - the circle expends energy to add or remove heat to elemental material within the circle. Bend Light - the analogous activation to Attraction or Repulsion for fabrials utilizing Light (white) energy, it can bend light towards or away from the circle. Creation or Destruction - the circle converts elemental energy into elemental material, or vice versa. This is extremely energy-costly, as there is a high activation cost on top of the large amounts of energy that go into making physical material. (Though you still gain energy from destruction, there is a net loss in converting from material -> energy -> back to material.) Creation circles can be coupled with an inside-focused perception field to duplicate the sample material, otherwise they create the most representative material for energy of the given colour. Modifiers can help to constrain the structure of the created material. Possibly, creation and destruction circles could be combined into a single transmutation circle that transforms the material while mostly keeping its shape. (Such transmutations have to stay in the same element, however.) Colouration - the circle expends energy to change the elemental colour of material within the circle. This is used to create conduit materials; it can also be used to protect material from interaction with elemental energy by supressing its elemental colour entirely. There may be activation circles for interacting with living beings, related to the elements Life and Spirit, but by necessity they would be incredibly complex. I may need to come up with a secondary process for generating these interactions, maybe by somehow capturing the essence of a natural process and replicating it. I'd like to see fabrials that can do healing or emotional manipulation. Alright. I believe that was sufficiently long. How does it look?