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Dumb Cosmere Questions That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread (Spoilers All)


NattyBo

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Just like the title said, I think we could use a thread for random questions that don’t really fit in another thread. I’ll get us started:

Did Rashek actually survive burning and beheading and if so, how? Burning is easier to imagine, but how exactly would a feruchemist and allomancer survive beheading? Was Rashek just exaggerating his own powers as the Lord Ruler? 
 

Just read this part of the end of The Final Empire and it’s driving me nuts.

Edited by NattyBo
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2 minutes ago, NattyBo said:

Did Rashek actually survive burning and beheading and if so, how? Burning is easier to imagine, but how exactly would a feruchemist and allomancer survive beheading? Was Rashek just exaggerating his own powers as the Lord Ruler? 

Probably, we know Hoid did, and Gold compounding is op, probably just grew a new head.

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Arabas

The question is about the Lord Ruler's death.  He is basically killed because Vin was able to remove his Feruchemy storage bracelets thus depriving him of his stored youth and strength correct?  Once he didn't have access to these she could simply kill him like a normal man.Now on page 627 about the 3rd paragraph down the Lord Ruler states " I've survived burning and beheadings.  I've been stabbed and sliced, crushed and dismembered." (I also think this is also reference somewhere else in the book that I could not locate)If all it took to drain the Lord Ruler of his power was to remove access to his Feruchemy items wouldn't he have died if he was dismembered?  Remove the storage devices from the trunk of the body and he would die?

Peter Ahlstrom

I asked Brandon about this once, and I'm pretty sure he said the beheading survival part was a lie/exaggeration. I'd have to go back and check my notes.

The Lord Ruler would have reason to want people to believe he had survived beheadings and being burned to ash.

TWG Posts (April 9, 2008)
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Well, the question isn't really did he, but could he (now). So I think that this works similar to the explosion that Miles detonated worked out. Or the burning that TLR went through. If your physical attachment to the metals is gone (your arm with the goldmind gets blown off), then can you still heal. If the metals in your stomach are no longer in your stomach because it got burned away, can you heal? 

Questions aside, if you are healing (flaring / Duralumin) when your head gets chopped off, then I think that you could survive. 

(back to questions)

My main question is that: In era 3, could a gold compounder be stopped by a nuclear bomb? (the initial explosion, not the radiation poisoning) 

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37 minutes ago, GoWibble said:

My main question is that: In era 3, could a gold compounder be stopped by a nuclear bomb? (the initial explosion, not the radiation poisoning) 

By my understanding the fireball vaporizes everything, so no metal, no bone, no healing.

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11 minutes ago, Frustration said:

By my understanding the fireball vaporizes everything, so no metal, no bone, no healing.

Right. The only way that I can think around that is that the cognitive aspect still sees the spiritual relation to the metalmind and is able to heal from nothing

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2 minutes ago, Elsecaller_17.5 said:

I'd imagine he'd heal from the head,  and I doubt he had gold earrings sufficient to regrow everything vital.

He would heal from the body probably since that's how Hoid healed after his beheading, he was surprised by that too

Quote

Pinpoint (paraphrased)

If Hoid got beheaded, would his body grow a new head?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Pinpoint (paraphrased)

What if Hoid got cut by a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Shardblade cuts the soul and what Hoid does heals the soul.

Words of Radiance release party (March 3, 2014)

 

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One popular misconception is that being burned (at the stake or something) is enough to completely incinerate a body. Most times, I think a bonfire would char off the skin and fat and some of the muscle, but most bones and the densest muscles would remain. Modern incinerators are hundreds of degrees hotter than any bonfire could get, and there's still quite a bit of bone left over, that has to be ground to dust (it's not actually ashes).

So assuming that the Lord Rule had metalminds touching any of this still, he would be able to tap the gold and heal himself.

Or just continually tap the metal so he doesn't start actually burning in the first place. That would count as surviving being burned.

He could also have metalminds implanted in various places on his body, not just in his stomach and the like.

 

I'd say that a nuke would probably do it if he was in the "vaporize everything" zone.

Edited by RShara
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12 hours ago, NattyBo said:

 

Did Rashek actually survive burning and beheading and if so, how? Burning is easier to imagine, but how exactly would a feruchemist and allomancer survive beheading? Was Rashek just exaggerating his own powers as the Lord Ruler? 

Miles Hundredlives was able to survuve point-blank shot into head, he was also able survive dynamity blowing up in his hand into face. Gold Compounding is simply just that crazy powerfull.

Nuke will probably do the thing, but I have other question.

Can we Gold-Compunder kill Terminator-alike? THrow him into blast furnace? Theoreticly, heat should melt his metalminds...

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9 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

Miles Hundredlives was able to survuve point-blank shot into head, he was also able survive dynamity blowing up in his hand into face. Gold Compounding is simply just that crazy powerfull.

Nuke will probably do the thing, but I have other question.

Can we Gold-Compunder kill Terminator-alike? THrow him into blast furnace? Theoreticly, heat should melt his metalminds...

Even melted, the investiture in them would still be accessible. So as long as he's still touching them, he would still heal.

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The thing I'm curious about is what would happen is if you had a charged up gold metalmind on your arm and then your arm was cutoff. Would the entire body grow back from the arm? Or would the body grow back the arm, because the metalmind is touching part of the body, even if they're separated. Idk? FYI Sanderson has confirmed that cutting off a gold feruchemists head kills them, even if they compound.  

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7 hours ago, I Am A Fish said:

The thing I'm curious about is what would happen is if you had a charged up gold metalmind on your arm and then your arm was cutoff. Would the entire body grow back from the arm? Or would the body grow back the arm, because the metalmind is touching part of the body, even if they're separated. Idk? FYI Sanderson has confirmed that cutting off a gold feruchemists head kills them, even if they compound.  

Hmm, normally your body would grow back from the largest intact piece corresponding to largest piece of your Spiritweb, and I think it would be the same case here: what matters is that a part of you is Connected to your Metalmind 

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Just now, Honorless said:

Hmm, normally your body would grow back from the largest intact piece corresponding to largest piece of your Spiritweb, and I think it would be the same case here: what matters is that a part of you is Connected to your Metalmind 

Yeah it's just an interesting question.

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On 8/3/2020 at 6:09 PM, Eternal Khol said:

Arabas

The question is about the Lord Ruler's death.  He is basically killed because Vin was able to remove his Feruchemy storage bracelets thus depriving him of his stored youth and strength correct?  Once he didn't have access to these she could simply kill him like a normal man.Now on page 627 about the 3rd paragraph down the Lord Ruler states " I've survived burning and beheadings.  I've been stabbed and sliced, crushed and dismembered." (I also think this is also reference somewhere else in the book that I could not locate)If all it took to drain the Lord Ruler of his power was to remove access to his Feruchemy items wouldn't he have died if he was dismembered?  Remove the storage devices from the trunk of the body and he would die?

Peter Ahlstrom

I asked Brandon about this once, and I'm pretty sure he said the beheading survival part was a lie/exaggeration. I'd have to go back and check my notes.

The Lord Ruler would have reason to want people to believe he had survived beheadings and being burned to ash.

TWG Posts (April 9, 2008)

Huh. Yet I recall reading other WoBs about how decapitation could be survived with a large enough goldmind (and a quick enough tapping of it)...

This is about F-gold healing specifically, the answer to which frames it (tapping a goldmind) as being a typical "spiritual template" based cosmere healing magic,

 

Quote

 

Logic_Nuke

Could decapitation kill a Gold Compounder? With a guillotine, for example?

Brandon Sanderson

Most forms of extreme cosmere healing don't care much what is done to the physical body, as the person's spiritual template is in power at the time.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 6, 2015)

 

And then separately, in a question about Hoid and his "cosmere healing magic",

 

Quote

 

Pinpoint (paraphrased)

If Hoid got beheaded, would his body grow a new head?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Pinpoint (paraphrased)

What if Hoid got cut by a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Shardblade cuts the soul and what Hoid does heals the soul.

Words of Radiance release party (March 3, 2014)

 

 

So I think it is plausible that TLR could and would have survived beheadings, provided he was prepared for it and was not wearing his goldmind on his head.

Personally, I like picturing him pulling a "Gawain and the Green Knight" type of stunt on some of the kings of Scadrial that he convinced to join his side.

 

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Got another relevant WoB from over on Discord, courtesy of Calderis

Quote

Soronir
About Miles from Alloy of Law and his regenerative powers. If he was bisected down the middle and the halves were separated immediately before the healing process could begin, would the two halves each regrow into a whole Miles?

Brandon Sanderson
Good question. In all of the Cosmere's Shard-based magics, the greater portion of a bisected body regrows the lesser portion. If it were done EXACTLY halfway, the soul wold jump to one or the other randomly and that would regrow.
Amusingly, this first came up in 1999, six years before I got published. (I see someone else already mentioned the situation where I had to consider it.)

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/186/#e4128

 

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