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Fused Spears


Karger

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We recently got this intriguing passage.

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Leshwi’s spear was lined with a silvery metal that resisted Shardblade cuts. More importantly, it was set with a gemstone at its base. If the weapon struck Kaladin, that gemstone would suck away Kaladin’s Stormlight and render him unable to heal—a potentially deadly tool against a Radiant, even one infused by Dalinar’s perpendicularity.

Conjecture implies that this silvery metal is aluminum.  However the other property of the spear, stormlight draining, implies that some sort of fabrail is at work here.  This is a conundrum as aluminum would prevent any fabrail from working.

Somebody suggested to me that maybe the spears just have sides coated with this but I don't think that works.  Kaladin and his Windrunners would have long since grown proficient at severing the spearhead and leaving the fused with an aluminum stick.  This leads me to the belief that the aluminum is actually part of the fabrail and that has certain implications for how it works. 

We know that aluminum resists all forms of investiture.  I am fairly confident that Kaladin will never manage to lash an ingot of aluminum.  We see various uses for this property in many shardworlds(particularly on scadrail).  The question that has bugged me for a while is why?  How is it that aluminum does this.  I think I have an answer.

Think of kinetic investiture like electrical charge.  Things that are already invested are much harder to effect with investiture.  Kaladin actually notes something like this in this very chapter when thinking about lashing his Sylspear.

Quote

Well, she couldn’t be infused with Stormlight. Trying to push it into her was like trying to fill an already brimming cup with more water.

Similarly you can't really overcharge a battery(without a lot of power and then it tends to blow up) and if you break a circuit it stops working as electrons don't want to be concentrated in too small an area.

Taking the similarity one stop further what if aluminum is a conductor of investiture?  This would explain how they manage to drain stormlight out of a radiant.  Connect a gemstone to some aluminum and the stone will pull the investiture out of the radiant and into the stone.  Cut the stone right to make sure it leaks easily and you can expend most of radian'ts power into the air.  This would also explain scadrail spoilers.

Spoiler

how the aluminum helmets block soothing.  A wave of investiture is emitted from the soothers and hits the helmet which conducts the power around you the same way you are protected from a lightning strike by staying inside your car.   It would also explain how thugs fall to aluminum bullets.  The power they try and put into their bodies escapes.

People who are good at undergraduate physics and everyone else please correct my mistakes.:D

Edited by Karger
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But then, according to your theory there would be a limit on the amount of investiture a single piece of aluminium would be able to take away, would there not be? We have never seen that happen. Besides, what about aluminum feruchemy? How does that fit this theory?

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5 minutes ago, Gderu said:

But then, according to your theory there would be a limit on the amount of investiture a single piece of aluminium would be able to take away, would there not be?

Kind of.  It might be more accurate to say that the rate at which they could take it away is limited.  I wonder if you could short out aluminum somehow.

6 minutes ago, Gderu said:

Besides, what about aluminum feruchemy? How does that fit this theory?

I think there should be a way to drain a metalmind using aluminum.  You just have to ground it somehow.   Even a good conductor like copper can hold a charge.

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36 minutes ago, Karger said:

Conjecture implies that this silvery metal is aluminum.  However the other property of the spear, stormlight draining, implies that some sort of fabrail is at work here.  This is a conundrum as aluminum would prevent any fabrail from working.

You’re making an assumption here, that aluminum prevents any fabrial from working. This isn’t me trying to propose that there’s some theoretical fabrial that can bypass aluminum’s effects, but rather that you’re presuming that merely that being surrounded by (not even that here, it’s more of an open ended tube) aluminum automatically shuts off all fabrial effects. We know for a fact that that is not true with Azure’s soulcaster working inside an aluminum lined room that simultaneously stops spanreeds from working:

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“How?” Kaladin asked. “Why didn’t the screamers come for you?” Azure pointed at the sides of the room, and for the first time Kaladin noticed the walls were covered in reflective metal plates. He frowned and rested his fingers against one, and found it cool to the touch. This wasn’t steel, was it? “Soon after the strangeness at the palace began,” Azure said, “a man pulled a chull cart up to the front of our barrack. He had these sheets of metal in the back. He was … an odd fellow. I’ve had interactions with him before.” “Angular features?” Kaladin guessed. “Quick with an insult. Silly and straight, somehow all at once?” “You know him, I see,” Azure said. “He warned us to only Soulcast inside a room lined with this metal. So far as we can tell, it prevents the screamers from sensing us. Unfortunately, it also blocks spanreeds from contacting the outside.

(Oathbringer, pg. 785-786 on my mobile kindle app)

38 minutes ago, Karger said:

Somebody suggested to me that maybe the spears just have sides coated with this but I don't think that works.  Kaladin and his Windrunners would have long since grown proficient at severing the spearhead and leaving the fused with an aluminum stick.  This leads me to the belief that the aluminum is actually part of the fabrail and that has certain implications for how it works. 

We know that aluminum resists all forms of investiture.  I am fairly confident that Kaladin will never manage to lash an ingot of aluminum.  We see various uses for this property in many shardworlds(particularly on scadrail).  The question that has bugged me for a while is why?  How is it that aluminum does this.  I think I have an answer.

Think of kinetic investiture like electrical charge.  Things that are already invested are much harder to effect with investiture.  Kaladin actually notes something like this in this very chapter when thinking about lashing his Sylspear.

Quote

Well, she couldn’t be infused with Stormlight. Trying to push it into her was like trying to fill an already brimming cup with more water.

Similarly you can't really overcharge a battery(without a lot of power and then it tends to blow up) and if you break a circuit it stops working as electrons don't want to be concentrated in too small an area.

Taking the similarity one stop further what if aluminum is a conductor of investiture?  This would explain how they manage to drain stormlight out of a radiant.  Connect a gemstone to some aluminum and the stone will pull the investiture out of the radiant and into the stone.  Cut the stone right to make sure it leaks easily and you can expend most of radian'ts power into the air.  This would also explain scadrail spoilers.

  Reveal hidden contents

how the aluminum helmets block soothing.  A wave of investiture is emitted from the soothers and hits the helmet which conducts the power around you the same way you are protected from a lightning strike by staying inside your car.   It would also explain how thugs fall to aluminum bullets.  The power they try and put into their bodies escapes.

People who are good at undergraduate physics and everyone else please correct my mistakes.:D

We also have pretty explicit confirmation from Brandon that that is not how aluminum works:

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Argent

On Nalthis, can aluminum prevent somebody from Returning? So if you kill somebody with aluminum and leave the weapon in them?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think that's going to be enough. I think that…

Argent

Different way then?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there are totally ways. I don’t think that that’s going to be enough. There's a difference between being inert and blocking Investiture, and actually sucking out Investiture. If you stuck Nightblood inside of a corpse; there are certain things… if you had a larkin or whatever sitting there that ingests the Investiture as it was coming in, that would prevent [Returning]. I think with aluminum you would just have somebody that comes alive with a wound, so maybe... But I think it would just heal around [the aluminum] and you'd just have a spike in you, kind of like Hemalurgy—but not like Hemalurgy. It's inert, but you know what I mean.

Argent

Which suggests you can't actually Awaken aluminum.

Brandon Sanderson

No. It's not going to hold a charge.

Kurkistan

I assume you can't Forge it, either.

Brandon Sanderson

No. In fact the unForgable metal-

Argent

Ralkalest?

Brandon Sanderson

There's an unForgeable metal mentioned. 

Kurkistan

Could we call it aluminum if we wanted to?

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that aluminum through most cultures was considered a mythological metal, and when people could actually find some, they considered it more valuable than gold, in our culture. So just sayin'...

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

Wouldn’t suck all the power out like a Larkin and he makes the difference clear between being inert and blocking investiture like aluminum, and sucking investiture out.

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2 minutes ago, MyrmidonOfAchilles said:

We know for a fact that that is not true with Azure’s soulcaster working inside an aluminum lined room that simultaneously stops spanreeds from working:

You cannot soulcast on aluminum.  You can soulcast while surrounded by aluminum but not through it or on it.

4 minutes ago, MyrmidonOfAchilles said:

Wouldn’t suck all the power out like a Larkin and he makes the difference clear between being inert and blocking investiture like aluminum, and sucking investiture out.

I don't claim is sucks out unless you "ground" it.  Just that it conducts.  That is not the same thing.

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Just now, Karger said:

You cannot soulcast on aluminum.  You can soulcast while surrounded by aluminum but not through it or on it.

I think we’re having a fundamentally different understanding of what is being described by Kal. I understand it as “surrounded by aluminum” When I read the lines, what I believe it is trying to say is that it is a fabrial spear with attachments of aluminum plating to protect that spear from being lopped in half.

4 minutes ago, Karger said:

I don't claim is sucks out unless you "ground" it.  Just that it conducts.  That is not the same thing.

There’s a metric boatload of WoBs and in book statements that refer to it exactly opposite- a nonconductive substance.

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I imagined it as a normal spear that had aluminium lines running up and down the length and on the opposite end of the spearhead was installed the Light sucking gem stone.  I didn't think they were related.  But now that I think about it....If I was a Fused and had a gemstone or fabrial like that.  I'd just throw it at an unsuspecting Windrunner.  Kinda like a grenade, or the game the Skybreakers played.  One hit, BAM, he's now a Windfaller Radiant.  So maybe they are connected somehow.  I'm sure we'll learn more. I can't wait.

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15 minutes ago, MyrmidonOfAchilles said:

When I read the lines, what I believe it is trying to say is that it is a fabrial spear with attachments of aluminum plating to protect that spear from being lopped in half.

Even if that was the case you could still easily lop of the tip.

16 minutes ago, MyrmidonOfAchilles said:

There’s a metric boatload of WoBs and in book statements that refer to it exactly opposite- a nonconductive substance.

27 minutes ago, MyrmidonOfAchilles said:

Brandon Sanderson

No. It's not going to hold a charge.

Sounds conductive to me.

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16 minutes ago, Karger said:
34 minutes ago, MyrmidonOfAchilles said:

When I read the lines, what I believe it is trying to say is that it is a fabrial spear with attachments of aluminum plating to protect that spear from being lopped in half.

Even if that was the case you could still easily lop of the tip.

I could have sworn there's a WoB that says that aluminum only protects against the Cognitive aspect of a Shardblade and the interaction would be down to regular force, so if you could use a steel blade to cut a spear in half then a Shardblade could do it (just not like butter). Maybe the aluminum isn't protection but rather feeding the fabrial that draws investiture. So using a living spren to cut it would hurt them in some way, and that's the reasoning why they don't lop off the tip?

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15 minutes ago, GudThymes said:

o if you could use a steel blade to cut a spear in half then a Shardblade could do it (just not like butter).

We saw that people don't usually swing shardblades too hard.  Dalinar managed to catch one in his hands.  This should be good for a few blocks. 

16 minutes ago, GudThymes said:

Maybe the aluminum isn't protection but rather feeding the fabrial that draws investiture

Could you elaborate?

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12 minutes ago, Karger said:

We saw that people don't usually swing shardblades too hard.  Dalinar managed to catch one in his hands.  This should be good for a few blocks.

I think what you're referring to is what they called the "last clap" and I believe that the physics of that could be done regardless of the downward force. But I'll concede some of my point.

12 minutes ago, Karger said:
30 minutes ago, GudThymes said:

Maybe the aluminum isn't protection but rather feeding the fabrial that draws investiture

Could you elaborate?

Right so we know that aluminum doesn't "hold a charge" so to speak, which would mean that the "current" (investiture) would run across it (if we accept some underlying assumptions about how aluminum works). I'm not versed enough in fabrial mechanics but my theory is basically that the fabrial isn't just what's at the base of the spear, the spear itself is the fabrial. The aluminum creates a circuit between the gem at the base and the source of investiture it's feeding off of. 

 

Just re-read the original post and I think I agree with you except for the nuance that the aluminum isn't connected to any gemstone, but rather it is part of the fabrial. It would be a fabrial that mimics a larkin.

Edited by GudThymes
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Something's definitely strange about that fabrial. Most fabrials are powered by stormlight and need it to operate—even the ones that mimic surges (healing and soulcasting). I think that the epigraphs to these chapters are supposed to be a big hint:
(Heads up: some time in the middle of writing this post I went from planning to brush a bit with physics to full on way too much thermodynamics talk. This was not what I expected to be writing today. Have fun. Also, I've learned physics but am far from an expert so please, PLEASE correct me if I get anything wrong)

Chapter 4 epigraph:

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To draw Stormlight out of a gemstone, I use the Arnist Method. Several large empty gemstones are brought close to the infused one while the spren is inspecting it. Stormlight is slowly absorbed from a small gemstone by a very large gemstone of the same type—and several together can draw the Light out quickly. The method’s limitation is, of course, the fact that you need not merely acquire one gemstone for your fabrial, but several larger ones to withdraw the Stormlight.

Other methods must exist, as proven by the extremely large gemstone fabrials created by the Vriztl Guild out of Thaylenah. If Her Majesty would please repeat my request to the guild, this secret is of vital importance to the war effort.

Chapter 5 epigraph:

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If the Stormlight in a gemstone is withdrawn quickly enough, a nearby spren can be sucked into the gemstone. This is caused by a similar effect to a pressure differential, created by the sudden withdrawal of Stormlight, though the science of the two phenomena are not identical.

Both of these epigraphs tell us something that we haven't known before: that gemstones "want" investure. However, I think speaking in those terms is similar to how we describe chemical/physical processes "wanting" to happen in thermodynamics. One of the core laws of thermodynamics is seeking a a lower energy (or more stable) state, and I feel like something similar is happening here. From here on, I'm going to talk as if investure has "low energy" and "high energy" states, but I'm doing so for sake of analogy. Investure is energy in the cosmere, and we don't quite know the Laws of Investure Thermodynamics or anything. I'm just conjecturing that those laws provide states which the investure tends to move towards ("low energy") and states which the investure tends to avoid ("high energy"). 

Stormlight held within a small gemstone has an analogous behavior to being in a higher energy state compared to when it is held in a large gemstone. This would explain the Arnist method, where stormlight is drawn from smaller gems into larger ones. In turn, being infused in a gem is more stable than being infused in another object (such as through a lashing) or a human, since these things lose stormlight more quickly than gems. Since stormlight likes to "evaporate" on its own, even from a gemstone, being free seems to be the absolute minimum of energy in this system. All stormlight will eventually reach this state.

(Note: I'm only speaking about stormlight here, since not all investure behaves the same. Breaths held by a human seem to be in an energy minima, for example. And some of my recent theories involve voidlight behaving differently/not escaping like stormlight does)

One last thing I want to include in my description is "activation energy" of sorts. This is needed to explain why stormlight escapes more quickly in a "higher energy state." Stormlight doesn't immediately leave gemstones the same way that a pot of water brought to 100ºC doesn't immediately become steam. Some of the water is energetic enough to evaporate, and some isn't, so this process takes time. (Extra note: if you're confused now by why I'm talking about water spontaneously undergoing a process that requires more energy, this is because I haven't talked about entropy. Basically, behavior towards "lower energy" is actually behavior towards a uniformity of energy distribution. Hot stuff cools down until everything in the system is the same temperature. The colder stuff around it accepted that heat because the universe as a whole now has a more even energy distribution, or higher entropy. Fundamentally, this happens because of mathematical probability. Thank you for coming to today's surprise physics mini-lesson. Assume from now on that some of the stuff I call "lower energy" includes processes which increase "energy" in some ways, but still happen on their own because of how it changes the wider system.)

Anyway, here's my breakdown of the "thermodynamics" of stormlight:

  • Contained within Honor's perpendicularity: very, very high energy. Literally bursting to get out of there and invest anything it can.
  • Contained within an object that isn't a gemstone: the second-highest energy state. A large amount of the stormlight has enough "energy" to escape, so the objects leaks quickly.
  • Contained within a Radiant: lower energy than inanimate objects. Of course, there is a variance here depending on how many oaths the Radiant has sworn.
  • Contained in a gemstone: pretty low energy. Stormlight escapes slowly. Larger gemstones --> lower energy. Here is where we also need to talk activation energy again: the "activation energy" needed for stormlight to escape a gemstone is higher than that needed to move to a larger gemstone. The speed at which something occurs is dependent on how high activation energy is, while the long-term result is more dependent than how "low energy" a state is. Thus, stormlight can transfer to a larger gemstone more quickly than it evaporates. In the end, it will evaporate anyway, but for the meantime it moves to a larger gemstone. A large gemstone serves as a local minimum of energy, where activation energy is high enough to prevent rapid leakage.
    • But how do spren get trapped? My proposal is that, while stormlight is leaving a gemstone, the "activation energy" for the spren enter that gem is lowered. Being in a gemstone is lower energy state for these spren than being free, so once the "activation energy" to enter the gemstone is lowered, this happens spontaneously.
    • Extra extra note: here I describe spren as having a different behavior than stormlight. Common spren might not be made of the same investure as stormlight, since some have been around since before the Shattering of Adonalsium. Maybe the reason why surge fabrials like Soulcasters don't contain trapped Radiant spren is because these spren, having Honor's investure, behave like stormlight and can't be trapped in the same manner

You're probably wondering now why I wrote all this, so let me get back to the point: aluminum. In the model I just wrote out, investure held in aluminum would be at the absolute top of the list. It behaves as if it's already immensely invested, even more so than Nightblood, to the point where you can't cram investure in.

And also, now we can think about how that fabrial works. I've already said that an infused gemstone is a lower energy state than an infused Radiant. According to this model, all you need to do is lower the "activation energy" and provide a means for the stormlight to move (a catalyst!). Maybe the gemstone is constantly having stormlight removed from it? Or maybe voidlight, which seems to "draw in light" rather than escaping, can somehow lower this "activation energy." Alternatively, the aluminum is somehow essential to all this.

Or maybe I've overthought this whole situation and should throw this post in the garbage bin. There's plenty here which could be totally wrong.

Edited by Lightspine
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27 minutes ago, Lightspine said:

But how do spren get trapped? My proposal is that, while stormlight is leaving a gemstone, the "activation energy" for the spren enter that gem is lowered. Being in a gemstone is lower energy state for these spren than being free, so once the "activation energy" to enter the gemstone is lowered, this happens spontaneously.

Excellent deduction.  Like fresh paint on a blue wall!  The other possibility is that the spren makes the choice to move toward where the energy is escaping from.  We know that windspren follow the highstorm.  The crew members on the Honorspren ship also became more active around the highstorm.  Basically spren might chase what looks like a food source.

30 minutes ago, Lightspine said:

And also, now we can think about how that fabrial works. I've already said that an infused gemstone is a lower energy state than an infused Radiant. According to this model, all you need to do is lower the "activation energy" and provide a means for the stormlight to move (a catalyst!). Maybe the gemstone is constantly having stormlight removed from it? Or maybe voidlight, which seems to "draw in light" rather than escaping, can somehow lower this "activation energy." Alternatively, the aluminum is somehow essential to all this.

If that were true why would the rest of the spear be necessary?  Just throw the gemstone fabrail at the person with a sling.

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1 hour ago, Karger said:

If that were true why would the rest of the spear be necessary?  Just throw the gemstone fabrail at the person with a sling.

A very good point that I didn't think about. I don't think we even know for sure  if the weapon needs to cut the Radiant or just make contact with them.

Maybe it's because the Radiant will be able to recharge immediately once contact with the fabrial is lost, so it's better to use it in a close-up fight where you can actually press your advantage. If you hit them from afar, they might be recharged by the time you reach them.

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2 minutes ago, Lightspine said:

Maybe it's because the Radiant will be able to recharge immediately once contact with the fabrial is lost, so it's better to use it in a close-up fight where you can actually press your advantage. If you hit them from afar, they might be recharged by the time you reach them.

You would still not need to attach the gemstone to a spear though.  Just wear it on your belt.

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5 minutes ago, Karger said:

You would still not need to attach the gemstone to a spear though.  Just wear it on your belt.

Ah, you're saying my theory should allow for stormlight drainage from a distance? The way Arnist method does say that the larger gemstones merely need to be "brought close" to the smaller one, which I think implies they don't need physical contact. If it can be done from a distance, the distance isn't that large though. However, that still doesn't explain the spear. I completely see why you feel like the aluminum is needed as a "conductor" of investure.

My theory has plenty of holes in it. It did a good job of explaining stormlight transfer between gemstones, but some processes that we see—like when Radiants breath light in from gems, or when they infuse other objects—don't quite follow it. That said, maybe it's because these are "active" processes which somehow need "energy input" to happen.

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6 hours ago, GudThymes said:

Right so we know that aluminum doesn't "hold a charge" so to speak, which would mean that the "current" (investiture) would run across it (if we accept some underlying assumptions about how aluminum works).

Nightbloods sheath is Aluminum and contains his power when fully sheathed. But when He’s drawn(even only partly) the sheath itself also becomes a weapon

so i think that statement is true
 

when he’s completely sheathed, theres is no charge, but when partly drawn,  a charge is running through the sheath itself so it also acts as a weapon.

Edited by Eternal Khol
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8 hours ago, Karger said:

Conjecture implies that this silvery metal is aluminum.

In theory it could be Raysium. That sounds implausible though. The question is why Kaladin does not identify it as aluminium remains though. Surely the Radiants have captured such a spear.

8 hours ago, Karger said:

  However the other property of the spear, stormlight draining, implies that some sort of fabrail is at work here.  This is a conundrum as aluminum would prevent any fabrail from working.

Well, no. Only if fully enclosed. Which the device isn't or Kaladin would not see the gem. And the text says "lined" not made of.

8 hours ago, Karger said:

Somebody suggested to me that maybe the spears just have sides coated with this but I don't think that works.  Kaladin and his Windrunners would have long since grown proficient at severing the spearhead and leaving the fused with an aluminum stick.

The head needs to have a coating, too.

8 hours ago, Karger said:

We know that aluminum resists all forms of investiture.

(Scadrial)

Spoiler

Unfortunately, no. You can make a hemalurgic spike out of it

 

8 hours ago, Karger said:

I am fairly confident that Kaladin will never manage to lash an ingot of aluminum.  We see various uses for this property in many shardworlds(particularly on scadrail).  The question that has bugged me for a while is why?  How is it that aluminum does this.  I think I have an answer.

Think of kinetic investiture like electrical charge.  Things that are already invested are much harder to effect with investiture.  Kaladin actually notes something like this in this very chapter when thinking about lashing his Sylspear.

Well, they do not block all Investiture. Dalinar's visions showed Gravitation and Abrasion used through Plate. That is through the user's Plate. The lashee had to dismiss his helmet.

 

7 hours ago, Lidolas said:

I imagined it as a normal spear that had aluminium lines running up and down the length and on the opposite end of the spearhead was installed the Light sucking gem stone.  I didn't think they were related.  But now that I think about it....If I was a Fused and had a gemstone or fabrial like that.  I'd just throw it at an unsuspecting Windrunner.  Kinda like a grenade, or the game the Skybreakers played.  One hit, BAM, he's now a Windfaller Radiant.  So maybe they are connected somehow.  I'm sure we'll learn more. I can't wait.

I am sure they did that a few times and that was a sad day for Bridge Four. And then they developed counters.

 

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9 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

(Scadrial)

I was simplifying.  Also those don't hold charges.

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, they do not block all Investiture. Dalinar's visions showed Gravitation and Abrasion used through Plate. That is through the user's Plate. The lashee had to dismiss his helmet.

The source for those is all the same.  The mechanic is different.

11 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

I am sure they did that a few times and that was a sad day for Bridge Four. And then they developed counters.

What counter?  How does putting a gemstone at the back edge of your spear do anything if all you need is proximity?  Kaladin states that the draining only happens on contact.

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10 hours ago, Karger said:

If that were true why would the rest of the spear be necessary?  Just throw the gemstone fabrail at the person with a sling.

I very like @Lightspine theory! Especially energy-levels on Investiture.

We know normaly Radiant Body can leak stormlight, but it cannot be drain by standard Gemstones. More so, Radiant can at will lower his energy, and absorb Stormlight. So normaly, Gem-granade cant work. Small Gem need much, much greater difference of energy levels that is normaly possible. But I think this Fabrial (Like @GudThymes I think whole spear is Fabrial) is using other properties of Stormlight - it can behave similar to fluids.

So I think this fabrial has construction similar to syringe. More specificly, Gem is a syringe and aluminum spear is a needle. Basicly, spear need to pierce throu Radiant skin, because wound leak Stormlight more than Skin, and also is directed into the wound for Heal - like fluid under pressure. So in wound Stormlight is closer to "free" state, than normal is in Radiants body. And next functions aluminum spear are:

1. Concentrate sucking power of gemstone on very small area, so effective energy difference is much larger than normal is.

2. Channel Stormlight into Gemstone.

3. Prevent Radiant from taking Light back.

4. Stop healing, so more Stormlight will be directed into wound, effectivly making this energy difference even larger.

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10 hours ago, Karger said:

I was simplifying.  Also those don't hold charges.

If that were true the Fused would simply kill with aluminium weapons.

(Scadrial)

Spoiler

The hemalurgic table makes no difference between the spikes from aluminium and any other metal.

 

10 hours ago, Karger said:

What counter?  How does putting a gemstone at the back edge of your spear do anything if all you need is proximity?  Kaladin states that the draining only happens on contact.

Shields and armor most likely Flying in such a way that they are hard to hit with a thrown missile. Simple distance and reliance on ranged weapons. Tactically those spears merely return a Windrunner to normal.

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2 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

(Scadrial)

It very clearly does.

3 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Simple distance and reliance on ranged weapons. Tactically those spears merely return a Windrunner to normal.

I think from context that the spears have been demonstrated as necessary.

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Could the Fused spears be lined with Nicrosil? My first thought when the Fused spears started stealing stormlight was that they were lined with aluminum.  But, aluminum is a known metal and Kaladin or Navani would have most likely recognized it by now.  They could be made out of the same metal that killed Jezrien, but that metal was yellow, not silver.  Nicrosil on the other hand, steals investiture when used as a hemalurgic spike. Obviously hemalurgy is insanely complex and normally requires being stabbed through the heart, but what if these spears are using a very simple/crude application of hemalurgy to steal stormlight?  Brandon has already introduced the Warbreaker crossover mechanics, why not Mistborn?

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2 hours ago, Solomonster said:

Obviously hemalurgy is insanely complex and normally requires being stabbed through the heart, but what if these spears are using a very simple/crude application of hemalurgy to steal stormlight?  Brandon has already introduced the Warbreaker crossover mechanics, why not Mistborn?

Interesting but how would nicrosil block a shardblade hit?

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