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Sorry for not posting the last couple of days; I had some minor burnout but I'm feeling better now. For the longest time I've really liked the potential magical boosts that come from Hemalurgic human attributes, such as the ones the Kandra get, but I wasn't a real fan of the physical transformation that had to come with it. That was the unacceptable drawback unless you were a Kandra, and I have spent a number of my Hemalurgy theories discussing how to bypass it. I'm now thinking that there may be a better way to look at the situation. Let's take a look at Koloss for a minute; they have enormous strength, increased speed (Sazed comments on this when he encounters them the first time in WoA), they somehow have an incredible immune system (otherwise they'd die very quickly from not having a proper skin to keep out pathogens), and they can subsist off of most biological matter (even ash and dirt apparently). There are a number of weaknesses too, which has always kept me from admiring them too much, but if one were to find a way to make such a major transformation a temporary ability that could be turned on or off at will, being a Koloss would be much nicer. Additionally, nobody says you couldn't potentially find a way to make more "minor" physical alterations that let you retain most of your humanity but still get a few nice physical/psychological and magical perks- you'd just have to really know what you were doing (i.e., A-Atium, enhanced A-electrum, F-chromium, Hemalurgic Heightenings, Hemalurgic Connection shenanigans, etc.). In any case, the post is meant to delve deeper into the ideas of using Hemalurgic attributes to physically change someone in beneficial ways (with a magical boost added on top, as attributes seem to do that too from what I can tell). I be focusing on relatively minor changes that are meant to retain most of the Hemalurgist's humanity but still give them a powerful boost in certain areas as opposed to a full-blown change to your fundamental self, such as becoming a Koloss. I will post my own ideas, but I'd sure love it if others wanted to do so as well H-iron. We've seen from Koloss that this spike can increase muscle mass, alter growth hormones, increase the oxygenation of blood (Koloss blood is unusually bright, likely indicating there is a higher level of oxygen), increase speed (possibly the magical side of the Blessing of Potency, but present nonetheless), alteration/augmentation of the digestive tract (Koloss can eat just about any biological matter), and a high tolerance for pathogens. I would think that any of these abilities would be on the table for H-iron (possibly others, though these fit the bill for this attribute more), with more that haven't been used yet. So, if done properly, I bet you could alter your base musculature, such as taking steroids but without as many consequences potentially. You might be able to affect your metabolism so as to be able to eat things other humans couldn't or to sustain the microbiome necessary for Aviar worms. Speaking of steroids, it would be interesting to see if you could create a "super-adrenaline" rush with the right alteration/magical boost from H-iron, allowing for bursts of crazy strength, speed, ferocity, and focus (maybe not compared to Hemalurgically augmented Pewterarms, but it could be an Investiture cheap alternative). You could also increase bone density and shape, similar to the Dakhor monks (the magical aspect of the attribute may help boost it to more supernatural levels as well, though getting on the same footing as a real Dakhor would require high levels of Investiture). I bet you could alter your biology in such a way as to become more resistant to/immune to exhaustion via physical exertion. This one may take some extra work, but there are muscles in your body that don't get tired from extensive use (such as the heart) and can keep functioning. H-tin. This one is another interesting attribute (@Koloss17, here's one you may get excited over ). The alterations made to the bearer of tin spikes are almost certainly going to be tied directly to the sensory organs, which makes them a little more intuitive than most of the others. The most interesting aspect of H-tin over Allomantic or Feruchemical tin is that it doesn't just give you a boost to your senses, it can give you new ones as well. You could give yourself the nose of a bloodhound and track the world by scents. You could alter you vision to have better night vision, or perhaps to see colors regular humans can't (such as ultraviolet or infrared light. X-rays I'm not sure about, as you'd probably need a source of light that gives them off to utilize it). You could make yourself able to use the hairs on your body to feel the world around you like a spiker does, able to feel the movement of individual atoms. You could have echolocation, electrical detection, or the ability to sense magnetic fields (built in GPS). H-copper. This one is a bit trickier, as it delves deeper into the mind and brain than the rest of the body I'd think. First off, increasing certain forms of intelligence feels like the obvious go to, such as increasing one's kinesthetic intelligence and gaining a better ability to learn to fight or learn to read other's fighting styles, increasing one's linguistic-verbal intelligence to read, write, and speak better, increasing logical-mathematical intelligence to boost general problem-solving skills etc. There are simply too many possibilities for me to list here with how long the rest of this post is going to be (though others are more than welcome to accept the challenge ) The magical portion of the spike already provides a boost to memory (TenSoon is proof of that), but I wonder if there could be a shifting in the Cognitive Aspect via copper that could make it more effective, granting an additional mnemonic ability similar to Radiant Lightweaver's Resonance. Perhaps you could alter other functions of the brain as well, such as mimicking a dolphin's ability to unihemisphericly sleep (one side of their brain sleeping at a time to always retain a semblance of consciousness). H-zinc. This one's possibilities are probably similar to H-copper in that it effects the brain and how the body functions with it, but I'm honestly stumped as to how to utilize it effectively (except maybe for increasing certain forms of intelligence that copper doesn't. Some form of emotional intelligence maybe?). The others. Hemalurgic chromium, duralumin, and nicrosil all are pretty nifty (probably), but @alder24 and I have discussed it before and I'm really not certain that they would cause serious transformations, as the attributes they deal with don't interact with the body or mind directly- for example, Awakeners can have much more Investiture than other humans, but don't have any serious physical alterations made to them. Their magical aspects are plenty interesting though, but I've already made posts regarding what they possibly do before (Spiritual Hemalurgy's Hypothetical Possibilities).

Apologies if this has been posted already and I didn't find it, or if this is so obvious it doesn't warrant its own post. I was talking to a friend who recently read Warbreaker, and I had this thought when we talked about the potential that Awakening had that is still underused. And while the obvious one is Type Four (Five) Invested Entities, I think RoW showed us a glimpse of another potential application of Breath: Storing Attributes What we saw at the end of RoW in the Meeting between Hoid and TOdium was Hoid losing memories that he had stored in Breaths. In Breaths, or As Breaths. So, who's to say that that's only possible with Memories? You probably see where I'm going with this. (And why I think it might have been posted already) Feruchemy and Awakening are both End-Neutral systems. And while their applications are different, they both are End-neutral because of the closed loops they utilize. In Awakening, you give your breath to something or someone, which endows them with the powers associated with it. They can utilize your breath, no more than what you've given. In Feruchemy, you store attributes in your metalminds. Specific Metals allow for the storage of specific attributes. You can later get these attributes back, no more than what you've given. Now, Feruchemy uses the kinds of metals as keys. Depending on what metal you (can) use, you store different attributes. From how I understand it, Feruchemists use their innate investiture, which is somehow imprinted with the attributes. Attributes in form of Investiture, to be used later. Now, we've seen Hoid do this with Breath. Storing Memories in a different form of Investiture. Of course, Hoid had a lot of time to practice and figure things out, but I think this is an angle of BioChromatic Breath that we might see more of in the future. Storing Attributes and giving these to others. We've seen something similar with Unkeyed Metalminds, where I could store wakefulness, strength, speed etc. and give it to you to tap. For Breath, the difficulty is just figuring out how to store attributes in Breath. I don't know if you need to be a Feruchemist too for that, if you need a specific command or whatever. But once you figure that out, it could be as simple as My life to yours, my Strength become yours. My life to yours, my Memories to yours. My life to yours, my Health to yours. etc. etc. What do you think? Is this possible? How difficult would it be? Does it make sense to expect more of this in the future or will just Worldhoppers like Hoid be able to figure it out?

I was reading this other thread about the strength of Shardplate, then it dawned on me, the real topic here. Can Shardplate fly? Dalinar's vision showed a healing Radiant order in flight. I think focusing on strength is useful and entertaining but in the end pointless. Brandon Sanderson will make a character just as strong as the needs of his narrative. Investiture is malleable with resonances and differing Knights being near one another and when you add Investiture from other worlds, anything is possible, just not likely for the plot, but possible sure. I'm sure most of his WoBs are answered with that in mind. Possible, just not likely. What I really want, nay, need to know is if KR Shardplate can FLY! Any KR, likely with the needs of the novel and the acts of the Archive, every Knight will need to fly. I'm almost sure of it, but maybe we won't see it until most Radiants are on oath 5 and in Book 6 after the big in-world time break. I can't wait to read Lift's book when she is 23 or 24 but still believes herself 10. It will be hilarious. Can someone ask this when he is on tour? Will advanced oathed Knights Radiant have flying Shardplate? Not the Gravitation surge Windrunners use to make gravity change, well maybe so, not sure about specifics. I can just imagine it. Several squadrons of Shardplated knights in airborn combat formation, extra long Shardspears in hand battling the Fused. That will surely change established tactics with a 3 Dimensional battlefield.

(Note: This post mentions Surges that were revealed by Brandon in interviews, and are not found in the Way of Kings. These will be in a Spoiler tag, just in case you don't want to know them yet.) One thing I've noticed for a long time is that each Essence has two Divine Attributes associated with it, just as each Order of Knights Radiant has access to two Surges. I've always felt that these two things, the Attributes and the Surges, can be connected somehow, but at the same time it had always felt impossible. For one thing, there are twenty Attributes and only ten Surges. Also, each Essence has a Primary Attribute and a Secondary Attribute, but there is no apparent indication that the Orders have a primary Surge and a secondary Surge. I've decided to take on the impossible task of connecting the Attributes and the Surges. Allow me to describe my little adventure in minute detail. First of all, I realized that if I could somehow connect the Primary Attribute of an Essence with the Secondary Attribute of the previous Essence, and do it for all the Essences, I would cut the number of Attributes in half. There'd be ten Attributes, which might then be correlated to the ten Surges. If a Surge correlates to an Essence's Primary Attribute, it would suggest that Orders have a Primary Surge. Here is my attempt: Zephyr 1 & Sinew 2: Protecting and Guiding -> Boundary A protector keeps boundaries from being breached. A guide indicates where boundaries are. Vapor 1 & Zephyr 2: Just and Leading -> Law Being just means upholding the law. Being a leader means your word is law. Spark 1 & Vapor 2: Brave and Confident -> Choice A brave man acts fearlessly on his choices. A confident man doesn't doubt his choices. Lucentia 1 & Spark 2: Loving and Obedient -> Affinity You have an affinity with what you care about. You have an affinity to what you follow. Pulp 1 & Lucentia 2: Learned and Healing -> Improvement Learning improves knowledge. Healing improves health. Blood 1 & Pulp 2: Creative and Giving -> Openness You cannot be called creative until you express your new ideas. You cannot be called giving until you share your property. Tallow 1 & Blood 2: Wise and Honest -> Truth Wisdom is the understanding of truth. Honesty is the expression of truth. Foil 1 & Tallow 2: Resolute and Careful -> Direction A resolute person never changes the direction of he has set for himself. A careful person keeps track of the direction he is going. Talus 1 & Foil 2: Dependable and Builder -> Trust People trust that a person known for dependability will perform his task. People trust that a known builder will create structures that last. Sinew 1 & Talus 2: Pious and Resourceful -> Contentment A pious person humbly accepts whatever his religious vocation may be. A resourceful person can work with whatever limited resources he has. How did I do? Feel free to make suggestions or corrections. Anyway, given that I now had ten Divine Attributes instead of twenty, the next step was to try and connect them to the Surges, but here I encountered another setback: it didn't make much sense. How does Boundary become Pressure? How does Truth become Transformation? It was apparent that I was still missing something. Running out of ideas, I decided to arrange my ten Attributes into the Double Eye pattern, with Boundary on the top right, Openness on the bottom left, etc., connecting each of them as the Orders themselves are connected in the Knights Radiant Chart. Then I looked for patterns in the connections. Vertical Pairs: Boundary<->Affinity Improvement<->Contentment Trust<->Openness Diagonal Pairs: Boundary<->Openness Law<->Truth Choice<->Direction Affinity<->Trust I noticed that the three vertical pairs have a cause and effect relationship. Being inside a boundary naturally gives you affinity to it and everything else inside it. Achieving improvement in a desired area naturally leads to contentment. Trusting people naturally leads to opening up to them. On the other hand, the diagonal pairs have more of a balancing relationship to them (e.g. boundaries balance openness, etc.). What's interesting is that Improvement causes Contentment as well as balances it, because it's possible to be content with low improvement, or never being content with any improvement, both scenarios being sub-optimal. This makes the Improvement<->Contentment pair the fifth balancing pair as well as the second cause-and-effect pair, which sort of makes it stand out (which is cool because it's at the center of the chart, after all). Anyway, I started thinking about the importance of balancing each Attribute, like how people should open up their boundaries and let others in sometimes to keep from going crazy, and I was about to drift off further into philosophical territory, when I realized something: Letting something through a boundary sounds very much like the concept of pressure release. I had just discovered how to derive the ten Surges. The five balancing pairs were the key. I realized that if you think about how each pair is balanced, especially in the context of the Rosharian environment, then with just a bit of creativity you will end up with the Surges. For those who only know about the Pressure, Gravitation, and Transformation Surges and who do not want to get spoiled, please don't click this: Edit: Added an actual Double Eye of the Almighty diagram of my ten Attributes. Edit: Replaced Stability with Direction, as suggested by beef man. Edit: Revised the section on Surges in light of the new Ars Arcanum Surges list and new WoB about the Order positions (I got my Surge prediction wrong, but the idea is close enough for the theory to still be valid). Also, replaced Motion with Choice since that made things less convoluted.