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[OB] Hypothetical match-up: Szeth gains access to all 10 surges. Can he kill the Lord ruler?


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The Lord ruler has access to his full power and all metals including atium. Szeth has access to a large amount of stormlight, plus access to all of the surges granted by swallowing yelig-nar. Like the fused, he has access to large amounts of voidlight provided by ba-ado-mishram. He has nightblood, and let's assume that he also gets ahold of a set of shardplate. He has had time to master all of his surges.

Given this unlikely, but very possible scenario in which szeth acquires yelig-nar and shardplate, I honestly think that Szeth stands a fair chance against TLR. From stormlight/voidlight he has healing nearly on the level of gold compounding, and the benefits of pewter, plus the boost of the shardplate on top of that. TLR will have to hit him repeatedly to break his shardplate and even do damage. He can counteract the atium with lightweaving to produce an effect similar to what happened when 2 allomancers burning atium face off. This could also serve to make it difficult for TLR to tell where szeth actually is. He can transport himself into the cognitive realm if he needs to avoid an attack by TLR, and could probably reappear behind/next to him. He can soulcast, potentially even soulcasting the air around TLR to stone or something like that which would probably cause TLR to expend a lot of his power to escape either through compounding pewter or tapping weight. And of course if he actually manages to touch TLR, he can harm him in a variety of ways, such as burning him to a crisp with division (though he can probably heal from this a few times at least), lashing him into space (WoB has confirmed this is possible, let's see how long his gold can keep him alive in 1° Kelvin temperatures), or of course just scratching him with nightblood. I highly doubt gold compounding could heal him from that. He can manipulate the matter surrounding him, etc through surges like a bondsmith or a stonewarden. His flight makes him more mobile than TLR.

The main thing I see TLR has going for him in this matchup is his feruchemical speed, not sure how szeth could counteract that, but it would still take TLR  quite a few hits to harm him. He could potentially soothe/riot him, but szeth had shown that he can fight effectively while in great emotional distress (weeping as he easily slaughters soldiers and shardbearers).

Edited by Subdivisions
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Welcome to the Shard!

Lightweaving isn't a good atium counter. The only reason it was so effective in fooling people at the end of Oathbringer is that they were so pumped up on the Thrill that they didn't care that they were fighting illusions. TLR has multiple means of determining what is real and what isn't. He can throw out a spray of coins and notice that they don't react properly, he can use A-Zinc and Brass and notice that they don't actually have minds or he can use A-Bronze to sense Investiture. Szeth will definitely 'feel' different from anything else. The lack of mind also means that the illusions lack the full set of Connection that 'real' things have. Brandon has mentioned that various forms of future-sight including atium involve reading the Connection between things, so.the illusions probably do not create atium shadows at all. And with no atium counter, it becomes very hard to beat TLR because no matter how fast or powerful you are, he's going to know what you do before you do it and react faster than you can counter due to the combination of that and F-Steel.

Shardplate doesn't really help much because as we see from Amaram's example, the crystal growths that Yelig-nar likes to create in his hosts tends to damage the Plate if not destroy it. And we know that it's possible to damage Plate with a Lashing-assisted kick, while TLR has pewter compounding. Any defensive advantage it would provide would be temporary and once it's gone, you have the small disadvantage of the video game-esque weak point that is the gemstone that practically yells 'shoot me!'... and an opponent whose magic system specializes in throwing small bits of metal very very fast. Might take a few of them to crack the stone but he could keep the pressure up pretty easily.

In addition, getting in close may leave TLR open to being attacked but it also puts Szeth in Leeching range. Combine that with duralumin and Szeth is likely to lose something important very quickly. All it would take would be disrupting his connection to Yelig-nar for a couple of seconds, given that the transformation appears to remove all of your internal organs. Even if that's outside the scope of A-Chromium, being deprived of Stormlight/Voidlight for a few seconds would take away most of Szeth's power until it could be replenished.

Also, I don't think you've quite taken iinto account the massive weakness in this whole scenario: Nightblood. One of two things is likely to happen here, neither good for Szeth. Either Nightblood decides that the possessed Szeth is now Evil and makes him turn the sword on himself (a very quick Game Over and Szeth doesn't even need to draw the sword for this to happen) or Szeth is able to draw the Nightblood who spends a short time being very happy about the massive amount of Investiture he's got to feed on, then kills Szeth when the Investiture runs out. Brandon was actually asked about someone being supercharged by a Shard using Nightblood and he said that they'd still be consumed eventually.

Szeth's best chance in this scenario would be for a blitz attack with a sheathed Nightblood (assuming the sword doesn't make him commit suicide) and to hope that his massive array of powers allows him to land a lucky hit before Rashek has the opportunity to figure out all of his capabilities. Very difficult with atium in play but not completely impossible.

All that said, this is a closer match than most, kudos for coming up with a creative idea for how to get close to Rashek's level.

Edited by Weltall
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The Lord Ruler can compound steel for superspeed and pewter for superstrength. Those two abilities alone make it a pretty one sided fight, unless Szeth has access to unlimited stormlight. Even then, peter mentioned that completely crushing a radiant's head will negate their healing and result in death. So LR for the win (Fullborn are op).

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@hoiditthroughthegrapevine and I (with help from @The One Who Connects) actually had a very... let's say spirited.. discussion on this. You can find it on the "Fullborn v Surgebinders" link in my signature.

He came up with some over the top, crazily creative attack vectors for the Surgebinder to use (we used a Dysian Amian with all 10 Honorblades), but there was always a counter for the Fullborn. Especially once you start factoring in the Era 2 Metals. Fullborn is just wayyyy too powerful

F-Zinc is probably the most underrated power in the Cosmere

 

Spoilers of OB and Era 2 Mistborn

Edited by Storms!
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On 3/14/2018 at 7:47 AM, Weltall said:

Lightweaving isn't a good atium counter. The only reason it was so effective in fooling people at the end of Oathbringer is that they were so pumped up on the Thrill that they didn't care that they were fighting illusions. TLR has multiple means of determining what is real and what isn't. He can throw out a spray of coins and notice that they don't react properly, he can use A-Zinc and Brass and notice that they don't actually have minds or he can use A-Bronze to sense Investiture. Szeth will definitely 'feel' different from anything else. The lack of mind also means that the illusions lack the full set of Connection that 'real' things have. Brandon has mentioned that various forms of future-sight including atium involve reading the Connection between things, so.the illusions probably do not create atium shadows at all. And with no atium counter, it becomes very hard to beat TLR because no matter how fast or powerful you are, he's going to know what you do before you do it and react faster than you can counter due to the combination of that and F-Steel.

I was under the impression that lightweaving would be used to simulate multiple fake atium shadows - e.g. covering oneself with multiple illusions of oneself all acting/attacking in distinct ways so that the true atium shadow is not discernible (obviously this requires some knowledge of what an atium shadow looks like). In theory a skilled Lightweaver could probably also create illusions with their own fake atium shadows, further devaluing the use of atium. Whether or not the illusions generate their own atium shadows naturally should be largely irrelevant - adding another image to a roiling mass of bodies doesn't seem particularly viable. Obviously this is significantly beyond, say, Shallan's current level of proficiency.

While I am not convinced any of the surges, blade or plate make up for steel compounding, I'm fairly sure that lightweaving should have the potential to fully negate atium in a combat scenario given sufficient stormlight. And at the end of the day, while fairly heavily favoured towards the Lord Ruler, it still probably only takes one lucky hit with Nighblood to end this fight.

Edited by Kk-
grammar
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@Kk-

I believe you miss something, first of all without be a Seer yourself...you can't know where your Atium Shadow will be and fake it out will be really hard, then you can't know how an Atium Shadow looks and therefore you will unable to replicate the look of one of those.

Lastly also if the Atium shows you the Shadows...It's mainly a visual help, it seems to me that a Seer could fight burning Atium also without see the target. So confusing sight isn't really useful.

Probably you could do it with someone using gold or electrum as those metals don't carry with them the enhanced Mind to process the temporal informations

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@Kk- yeah, this was exactly what I was thinking. And as far as steel compounding goes, it's true there's no way I can think of to match the agility of a steel compounder since they seem to defy the laws of physics in that regard, but a radiant with all surges could probably reach flying speeds that would make a steel compounder pale in comparison - since abrasion can basically negate friction, air resistance wouldn't be an issue while using lashings, so terminal velocity goes out the window. Basically infinite acceleration Say Szeth uses 5 lashings and abrasion, assuming roshar's gravity is 70% of Earth's, he can accelerate constantly at a rate of ~34 m/s² and sustain this using relatively small amounts of stormlight. Kinda scary. If he flew a few thousand meters away from tlr and then accelerated toward him, potentially he could be going fast enough that it would be impossible to dodge even with compounded speed and atium. Just hold nightblood out to the side and he's done for.

And @Yata we've seen that shallan could give some substance to her illusions, meaning that they'd probably produce atium shadows themselves. Szeth could just create a bunch of illusions of himself and have them pretend to attack tlr as well and he'd have to deal with a bunch of illusions all producing atium shadows. And since it's been hinted that lightweavers can control other forms of wave as well as light, if szeth knows what allomantic pulses are like, he could produce the effect in his illusions, so TLR effectively wouldn't be able to tell which the real one is. Also, a skilled lightweaver could probably make him/herself basically invisible through mimicking his surroundings, so there's that.

 

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43 minutes ago, Subdivisions said:

since abrasion can basically negate friction, air resistance wouldn't be an issue while using lashings, so terminal velocity goes out the window.

Terminal velocity would still occur as air resistance includes the force of having to physically push the particles out of the way. While abrasion could be used to remove friction, drag force due to pushing the particles out of the way would still occur, eventually thresholding your speed. It would have the benefit though that you wouldn't need to expend stormlight on healing yourself from the air friction.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Subdivisions said:

And since it's been hinted that lightweavers can control other forms of wave as well as light, if szeth knows what allomantic pulses are like, he could produce the effect in his illusions, so TLR effectively wouldn't be able to tell which the real one is. Also, a skilled lightweaver could probably make him/herself basically invisible through mimicking his surroundings, so there's that.

Brandon has described the pulses as 'ripples in the fabric of creation' based on the power being used. Even if you assume that Szeth can somehow 'fake' the pulses (bearing in mind that he has no way of knowing what they feel like and this probably would require direct manipulation of the Spiritual Realm, which is well beyond Lightweaving) the simple act of using Investiture to create the fake pulses would itself create a distinct pulse that would instantly identify him as the real target.

4 hours ago, Kk- said:

I was under the impression that lightweaving would be used to simulate multiple fake atium shadows - e.g. covering oneself with multiple illusions of oneself all acting/attacking in distinct ways so that the true atium shadow is not discernible (obviously this requires some knowledge of what an atium shadow looks like). In theory a skilled Lightweaver could probably also create illusions with their own fake atium shadows, further devaluing the use of atium. Whether or not the illusions generate their own atium shadows naturally should be largely irrelevant - adding another image to a roiling mass of bodies doesn't seem particularly viable. Obviously this is significantly beyond, say, Shallan's current level of proficiency.

Atium shadows have a very distinctive appearance and Szeth (or any Ligthweaver) would have no way of knowing how to create the right effect ,short of being able to burn atium to experience it for themselves or having access to an unsealed coppermind with a memory from soneone who saw the shadows. I suppose a really detailed description from another atium-burner might be enough, but even if the could get the visual effect right they would have to expend a lot of effort making the illusions appear to be taking place the proper span of time 'ahead' of the present, or Rashek would notice that they aren't synching up properly. Bear in mind that atium expands your mind and your reaction times so this is the sort of thing you expect him to notice. Also I'll repeat that A-Bronze detects Kinetic Investiture rather than just allomancy, so the illusions will definitely feel different from Szeth, making it effectively possible to see through them regardless of whether they look like atium shadows or even generate atium shadows.

We also have WoB that 'steelsight' and A-Gold are usable by blind people and the first one even implies that atium can impart its effect on someone who can't actually see with their eyes, which pretty much does an end-run around Lightweaving since it's a visual form of illusion-magic rather than planting fake images directly in the mind. If you don't need to look at the illusions and can still get the benefits of atium, the illusions can't really fool you.

Edited by Weltall
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Duralumin+Soothing+Rioting= Temporarily stunned

F-Steel puts TLR right behind Szeth

Compounded Pewter pops his head like a grape, Shardplate and all (Stormlight won't heal that)

No Atium needed.

You're going to have to do a lot more than negate Atium to have any chance whatsoever against a Fullborn

Edited by Storms!
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I have always been of the opinion that atium is pretty much uncounterable anyway. Szeths flight speed wouldnt matter, the atium shadow would still give TLR the same amount of time to react as if he was moving slowly.

Atium plus F-steel, compounded pewter and f-gold makes for an TLR that can 1 hit KO Zseth before he can even react. 

I dont think we've seen anyone yet who could beat a fullborn.

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The greatest weakness of a fullborn like the Lord Ruler is he will eventually run out of metals. In order to cause this to happen I would suggest a series of long range attacks or attacks that cause widespread devastation. We saw in edgedancer that abrasion alone can create gale force winds, so If you have Szeth increase his speed with gravitation you might be able to have widespread destruction that the Lord Ruler would have to defend himself from. If I remember correctly the parshendi either implied or stated outright that it was the knights radiant who created the shattered plains. Also Szeth hovers in the air and drops aluminum spikes from one thousand feet up making it hard for the Lord Ruler to return fire.

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4 hours ago, ghajan monk said:

The greatest weakness of a fullborn like the Lord Ruler is he will eventually run out of metals. In order to cause this to happen I would suggest a series of long range attacks or attacks that cause widespread devastation. We saw in edgedancer that abrasion alone can create gale force winds, so If you have Szeth increase his speed with gravitation you might be able to have widespread destruction that the Lord Ruler would have to defend himself from. If I remember correctly the parshendi either implied or stated outright that it was the knights radiant who created the shattered plains. Also Szeth hovers in the air and drops aluminum spikes from one thousand feet up making it hard for the Lord Ruler to return fire.

The greatest weakness of surgebinding is that they run out of stormlight. Lack of fuel for the powers is not a weakness that just belongs to TLR. Additionally, I would say that the need for metals for allomancy is a far lesser weakness than the need for stormlight for surgebinding, because even when unused, stormlight will leak away, while metals can sit near indefinitely. 

Do you have a quote for abrasion creating gale force winds? It's not ringing any bells for me.

It wasn't implied that strongly that KRs made the Shattered Plane. It's been considered that they did, as part of what pushed them to the Recreance because of that devastation coupled with Honor speaking of powers destroying Ashyn.

Dropping aluminum spikes wouldn't really do anything, he can just step out of the way, or steelrun if need be. Also, that's operating under the assumption that Szeth would just randomly have a bunch of aluminum spikes, something which there would be no logical reason for him to have or think to use. Dropping Nightblood would be more effective here.                

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Guest Breaker

I think the real problem here is about speed. The Lord Ruler’s feruchemical zinc and steel give him nigh-unlimited time to plan, infinite potential to reposition, and the ability to hit with superpewter too fast to counter. Further, superduralumin plus supersteel probably gives the lord ruler enough power to push /very/ strong even through the inherent investiture on shardplate. And that’s sort of good-game all on its own. 

 

Szeth’s only real shot is Nightblood, which can counter virtually any defense by destroying on all three realms. If he’s truly a master of all the surges, perhaps exploiting some unknown power of division or teleport-striking using Elsecalling and Nightblood swings might make it /possible/, but a fullborn compounder just can’t be taken by surprise. Superatium, superelectrum, compounded zinc and steel, superpewter, maybe some tin. 

 

You just can’t counter 1000 years to practice and learn to abuse the ultimate reaction time. Plus, the lord ruler had an expanded mind from the Well, two unknown hemalurgic spikes in his Atium bracers (something we really should ask more about), and, according to Brandon, knew a number of things no one else knows. 

Unless you’re a Shard, or mid-Ascension, the Lord Ruler might as well actually be God. 

Compounded Feruchemical Zinc and Steel are just OP.

Just my two cents.

Edited by Breaker
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19 hours ago, Jace21 said:

I dont think we've seen anyone yet who could beat a fullborn.

I know this post is about Szeth, but do we know enough about Dakhor (or others of the more vague magic sydtems) to be able to make that kind of generalization?

It seems to me that with enough bodies to sacrifice, someone like Dilaf could have had any number of counters to TLR's abilities built in to his bones.

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7 minutes ago, Grishhammer said:

I know this post is about Szeth, but do we know enough about Dakhor (or others of the more vague magic sydtems) to be able to make that kind of generalization?

No we dont. But from what we have seen of other magic systems, nothing indicates they could beat a fullborn. Said magic system would have to give you godly reaction speed, a way to counter atium, to negate compounded f-gold and make you essentially invulnerable and able survive the super pewter punch.

To the best of my knowledge no other system seen even hints that it could do that. 10-surge, Nigbtblood wielding Szeth is about as close as we are able to get I think but I still think TLR would stomp him.

One issue I think is that TLR in this scenario has access to 2 (or 3) magic systems, whereas aside from Nightblood, Szeth has 1 (if we count surgebinding as 1, no 10)

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@Spoolofwhool

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Do you have a quote for abrasion creating gale force winds? It's not ringing any bells for me.

I probably misspoke when I said gale force winds, but what I was referring to is from chapter 1 of edgedancer: 

The air she pushed against when moving was holding her back. Lift hissed, then coated her entire self in power. 

she sliced through the wind, turning sideways as she skidded down the side of the hill. Air slid off her, as if it couldn't find her. Even the sunlight seemed to melt off her skin. She was between places, here but not. No air, no ground. Just pure motion, so fast she reached grass before it had time to pull away. It flowed around her , it's touch brushed aside by her power. 

her skin started to glow, tendrils of smoky light rising from her. She laughed, reaching the bottom of the small hill. There she leaped some boulders. 

and ran face-first into another tree.

The bubble of power around her popped. The tree toppled over - and for good measure, the two next to it decided to fall as well.  

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

It wasn't implied that strongly that KRs made the Shattered Plane. It's been considered that they did, as part of what pushed them to the Recreance because of that devastation coupled with Honor speaking of powers destroying Ashyn.

from Words of Radiance:

they blame our people

for the loss of that land.

The city that once covered it

 did range the eastern strand.

The power made known in the tomes of our clan

our gods were not who shattered these plains.

-from  Listener Song of Wars, 55th stanza

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Dropping aluminum spikes wouldn't really do anything, he can just step out of the way, or steelrun if need be. Also, that's operating under the assumption that Szeth would just randomly have a bunch of aluminum spikes, something which there would be no logical reason for him to have or think to use. Dropping Nightblood would be more effective here.                

I concede the point  here, the idea of aluminum spikes is somewhat random.

Edited by ghajan monk
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15 hours ago, ghajan monk said:

@Spoolofwhool

The air she pushed against when moving was holding her back. Lift hissed, then coated her entire self in power. 

she sliced through the wind, turning sideways as she skidded down the side of the hill. Air slid off her, as if it couldn't find her. Even the sunlight seemed to melt off her skin. She was between places, here but not. No air, no ground. Just pure motion, so fast she reached grass before it had time to pull away. It flowed around her , it's touch brushed aside by her power. 

Thanks, this confirms my theory about abrasion negating air resistance/terminal velocity when combined with gravitation.

Also, I'd forgotten about the part in TWoK when Szeth lashes a "massive" stone block 20 times with stormlight to spare. Since he's now an actual 4th ideal radiant and much more efficient with stormlight, I'm assuming he could lash himself even more times than this by now, which combined with abrasion means that he could reach absolutely ridiculous levels of speed in a short time and then maintain them with relatively little additional use of stormlight.

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On 3/18/2018 at 0:30 AM, ghajan monk said:

The bubble of power around her popped. The tree toppled over - and for good measure, the two next to it decided to fall as well.

That isn't Lift creating extreme forces with Abrasion. that's Roshar trees lying down if force is applied as a defense against highstorms.

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On 3/17/2018 at 5:30 PM, ghajan monk said:

@Spoolofwhool

I probably misspoke when I said gale force winds, but what I was referring to is from chapter 1 of edgedancer: 

The air she pushed against when moving was holding her back. Lift hissed, then coated her entire self in power. 

she sliced through the wind, turning sideways as she skidded down the side of the hill. Air slid off her, as if it couldn't find her. Even the sunlight seemed to melt off her skin. She was between places, here but not. No air, no ground. Just pure motion, so fast she reached grass before it had time to pull away. It flowed around her , it's touch brushed aside by her power. 

her skin started to glow, tendrils of smoky light rising from her. She laughed, reaching the bottom of the small hill. There she leaped some boulders. 

and ran face-first into another tree.

The bubble of power around her popped. The tree toppled over - and for good measure, the two next to it decided to fall as well. 

That's not from any kind of a wind.  That's from her impact with the tree.  She hit it so hard, it did it's fall-down-defense thing.  And the impact was hard enough that the trees next to it followed along.

 

She might have been moving extremely fast, but she didn't affect the speed of the air

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