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Scadrian vs. Rosharan magic post RoW


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4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Allomancy is powered by Preservation not the mists.

Yes, I understand that. However, what is Preservation's power? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Preservation made their power manifest through the mists; Vin can draw on them for strength, they caused people to allomantically snap, and they appear to leak out of Marasi and Wax when they use the Bands of Mourning, all of which to me suggests that they are Preservation's investiture pulled from the spiritual realm from the physical, kind of like how the Highstorms, or even Honor's Purpendicularity, is the manifestation of Honor's Investiture. This Investiture makes up part of their atmosphere, and people who have an affinity for that Investiture can use it in Allomancy.

I could be entirely wrong, but all the other forms of investiture seem to have limits on them (Highstorm on Roshar, Endowment has to choose your spirit to Return on Nalthis, Birds have to eat a worm on 1st of the Sun or whichever world, Autonomy's power available based on the sunlight, etc) and so I feel it would be rather powerful if, from absolutely anywhere in the entirety of the giganticness of the Cosmere, Preservation would give you magical powers just 'cos you ate something shiny.

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4 minutes ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

Yes, I understand that. However, what is Preservation's power? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Preservation made their power manifest through the mists; Vin can draw on them for strength, they caused people to allomantically snap, and they appear to leak out of Marasi and Wax when they use the Bands of Mourning, all of which to me suggests that they are Preservation's investiture pulled from the spiritual realm from the physical, kind of like how the Highstorms, or even Honor's Purpendicularity, is the manifestation of Honor's Investiture. This Investiture makes up part of their atmosphere, and people who have an affinity for that Investiture can use it in Allomancy.

I could be entirely wrong, but all the other forms of investiture seem to have limits on them (Highstorm on Roshar, Endowment has to choose your spirit to Return on Nalthis, Birds have to eat a worm on 1st of the Sun or whichever world, Autonomy's power available based on the sunlight, etc) and so I feel it would be rather powerful if, from absolutely anywhere in the entirety of the giganticness of the Cosmere, Preservation would give you magical powers just 'cos you ate something shiny.

They key difference is that metalborn are powered directly from the spiritual realm, whereas Radiants need to breathe in Stormlight which is already in physical (and is currently bound to Rosharan system). This means that so long as the metalborn has proper metal they can use their powers anywhere, since spiritual realm lacks time and space.

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1 hour ago, therunner said:

They key difference is that metalborn are powered directly from the spiritual realm, whereas Radiants need to breathe in Stormlight which is already in physical (and is currently bound to Rosharan system). This means that so long as the metalborn has proper metal they can use their powers anywhere, since spiritual realm lacks time and space.

Okay, fine I'll give up my theory, since Brandon himself straight up contradicted my theory in a WoB.

I should really do some better research and less brainstorming :P 

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On 2021-05-31 at 10:46 PM, therunner said:

Ah, I see, personally I read it differently then.

I guess to me Venli case precisely proves that you cannot cheat it easily, as you need another Shardic investiture to step in, even if you then use it to fuel same ability. So I would also expect any regal radiant to do what Venli did, but only because they can also use Voidlight, not because they can bypass suppresor. Usage of Honor's investiture is still blocked, but they have access to different fuel.

Since allomancy is directly fueled from Spiritual, it would be very easy to disrupt like this, because another Shardic investiture has no way to enter the equation (unless hemalurgy or maybe F-nicrosil mind and some trickery).

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to agree actually.

I think I've been thinking that you can bypass because of the muddied connection, but I think what I'm arguing boils down to "you can still burn merals" and that you're saying "even so, the power wouldn't do anything." (Please correct me if I'm wrong) 

And I'm definitely inclined to agree with that, just the same as people could still draw in stormlight, but it'd just sit there, you might be able to burn all the, say, pewter you want, but even if the power gets to you it won't do its thing. I could also believe that someone who's just an allomancer might even be blocked from burning at all.

On 2021-05-31 at 10:46 PM, therunner said:

The reverse lashing thing is interesting, but if I remember correctly it was only Kaladin who exhibited that, and he was close to 4th Oath so closer to Honor? I would expect that lerasium mistborn, or something similarly strongly (or maybe more strongly) connected to Preservation might power through suppresor and use at least diminished versions of their abilities. In twinborn, if Feruchemy can work only with Ruin, I would expect Feruchemy to work and resonance as well, but allomancy to not work anymore.

I feel like this is a bit of an unfair point, because as far as I remember Kaladin is the only one we see try it, so it's hard to draw conclusions from that singular data point. My read is that any windrunner could have used the ability were they awake, because the suppressor doesn't affect adhesion (my take on this is that it can't manipulate adhesion because it functions via adhesion, this would incidentally make a hypothetical reverse suppressor, or enhancer, not enhance itself into a feedback loop) and the reverse lashing is a hybrid ability born of both windrunner surges, though it would presumably be harder the lower their oath.

Hmm, in the same sense as the reverse lashing I could see feruchemy being diminished in some way under the influence of a Preservation suppressor, possibly something like there being an automatic loss of power on storing/tapping, having to make an effort to store/tap or being limited in how quickly they could store/tap.

On 2021-05-31 at 10:46 PM, therunner said:

As far as I know, we don't know :D You get something like 10 times as much back, but what exactly that means is difficult to say. I personally conceptualize it as ability*hours, so kg*hours for Iron, or (m/s)*hour for Steel, or something like Newton*hours for Pewter.

Since in the books they always just comment on size of the store, not on its 'quality' I think it should work like this: storing 50% for 5 hours should get you the same store as storing 10% for 25 hours. So for example, if I stored 50% of strength for 5 hours, I would have something like (dont quote me on these numbers) 5000 Newton*hours, and that is what would get multiplied by 10, for 50000 Netwon*hours.

Since per this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/153/#e2803) loss when tapping does not depend on storing speed, this would then agree with your reasoning on diminishing returns. The diminishing returns would appear when you stretch the physical aspect too far from its spiritual ideal in a sense. It also resolves the issue with what multiplies when compounding, making it moot point.

Fair point on the quality of the store and I really like the idea that the reason why compounding eventually becomes unfeasable is because you get too far from the spiritual aspect.

I'm well aware of the WoB, I've been keeping up with the thread on my own time. :)

In fact, I thought that maybe asking about what happens when you burn a metalmind would help resolve the, er, disagreement over said WoB. The way I see it, going back to my example of 50%, 5 hours, is that 500%, 5 hours and 50%, 50 hours are quantitatively equal, but qualitatively unequal. If we assume that the store increases in "volume," that is time, rather than quality, then it makes perfect sense that you introduce a loss when using the store in a short amount of time, in a way that assuming the reverse doesn't imply. Though this also makes sense with your attribute×time model, which I wouldn't be suprised if it were true or close to true. I think the only time feruchemy is actually talked about qualitatively in any official capacity is when Brandon is trying to explain it, and the way he talks about the specific cases might have thrown off our understanding.

 

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9 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I think I've been thinking that you can bypass because of the muddied connection, but I think what I'm arguing boils down to "you can still burn merals" and that you're saying "even so, the power wouldn't do anything." (Please correct me if I'm wrong) 

And I'm definitely inclined to agree with that, just the same as people could still draw in stormlight, but it'd just sit there, you might be able to burn all the, say, pewter you want, but even if the power gets to you it won't do its thing. I could also believe that someone who's just an allomancer might even be blocked from burning at all.

I think that is good summary of my position, although it might be the other option (i.e. they might be blocked from burning at all).

10 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I feel like this is a bit of an unfair point, because as far as I remember Kaladin is the only one we see try it, so it's hard to draw conclusions from that singular data point. My read is that any windrunner could have used the ability were they awake, because the suppressor doesn't affect adhesion (my take on this is that it can't manipulate adhesion because it functions via adhesion, this would incidentally make a hypothetical reverse suppressor, or enhancer, not enhance itself into a feedback loop) and the reverse lashing is a hybrid ability born of both windrunner surges, though it would presumably be harder the lower their oath.

Good point. I thought that Teft couldn't surgebind even after being awakened, but based on his comment in Chapter 91 (pg. 1000) he can use Adhesion as well, so I remembered wrong. So potentially other Windrunners could surgebind too, when awoken. I still think it might require them to be at least 3rd Oath, so that the spren is sufficiently tied to physical, but there no longer seems to be any good evidence for that.

Although the fact that Surgebinding (even Adhesion) gets harder the more tower is corrupted (again Chapter 91, pg. 1000) suggest that the suppresors do work in degrees somewhat, and also maybe points against Adhesion being completely unaffected.

Then there is the case of Progression and Lift, but Lift is a very weird case, so hard to draw conclusions from her.

24 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Hmm, in the same sense as the reverse lashing I could see feruchemy being diminished in some way under the influence of a Preservation suppressor, possibly something like there being an automatic loss of power on storing/tapping, having to make an effort to store/tap or being limited in how quickly they could store/tap.

I could see it making it harder, so that you get less than you should. In fact since even Adhesion seems harder to do under suppresion and uses up more than usual, it sounds like a very natural way for feruchemy to be affected like that.

26 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Fair point on the quality of the store and I really like the idea that the reason why compounding eventually becomes unfeasable is because you get too far from the spiritual aspect.

Yeah, I feel like there should be some limits even to compounding (even if ridiculously high), and this is the only one at least tangentially supported (as it affected F-atium, https://wob.coppermind.net/events/131/#e3926)

29 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I'm well aware of the WoB, I've been keeping up with the thread on my own time. :)

I did not mean to imply you are not, I just like to quote some things for completeness. :) And in case you would disagree with its meaning/applicability, at least I would know where we differ.

32 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

In fact, I thought that maybe asking about what happens when you burn a metalmind would help resolve the, er, disagreement over said WoB. The way I see it, going back to my example of 50%, 5 hours, is that 500%, 5 hours and 50%, 50 hours are quantitatively equal, but qualitatively unequal. If we assume that the store increases in "volume," that is time, rather than quality, then it makes perfect sense that you introduce a loss when using the store in a short amount of time, in a way that assuming the reverse doesn't imply. Though this also makes sense with your attribute×time model, which I wouldn't be suprised if it were true or close to true. I think the only time feruchemy is actually talked about qualitatively in any official capacity is when Brandon is trying to explain it, and the way he talks about the specific cases might have thrown off our understanding.

Yeah, as far as I know in the books no one ever talks about storing qualitatively, only in terms of quantity. At least in Era 1 (I did not get to Era 2 in my re-read yet), Sazed never considers stores different because he was storing at different speed, slower storing is just treated as creating the stores slower, not as if they were 'worse' (i.e. would incur greater penalty when tapping fast).

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On 5/29/2021 at 4:51 PM, therunner said:

Yes, they animate the stone, not the soil. The fact that some soil might remain stuck on the stone does not mean they animate the soil as well, they don't animate the fungus or the moss.

Souls of Thunderclasts are described as roughly the size of buildings (Oathbringer, chapter 115), so you would need a box at least building size. Net or cage would be insufficient, as they could simply pass through the gaps.

The yes/no scenarios were @The Technovore 's not mine.

Also that does not answer my question. On the last page you said that I am wrong about Fullborn defeating Radiant, and that it would be a toss up, literally saying this:

So again, how is it that Fullborn vs Radiant is a toss up, but some twinborn can defeat Radiant of any order? Since Fullborn is all twinborn rolled up into one, they should be at least as strong as the most powerful twinborn, no?

Since I don't have a hard copy of Oathbringer I cannot confirm or dispute your statement of how large the Singer soul to make a Thunderclast would be, but I don't remember any description of the size of that soul so I am skeptical.

Sorry I misquoted.

A fullborn who acts like TLR focused almost entirely on only a few of their abilities would have a challenge fighting a Radiant because they use many of the same abilities. A Twinborn compounder would have more mastery of the few things they can do. There was a lot that TLR didn't even seem to use that he had the potential to do. I suspect that most Fullborn would work on mostly a few abilities while neglecting others.

On 5/31/2021 at 5:42 AM, Inquisitor #5 said:

@BenduLuke

The way I see it there's allomantic strength, which is inborn and, barring hemalurgy, shardic intervention, lerasium and nicrosil feruchemy, unchangable, burning pewter always gives the same person the same amount of extra oumph for instance, defined by their allomantic strength.

For steelpushes and ironpulls this would define how hard you can push/pull, that is how much force you can exert allomantically, as well as how much resistance you can overcome and how fine things you can sense/affect.

Then steelpushes and ironpulls are further influenced by physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, this is where mass (or effective mass, in the case of iron feruchemy) plays into strength. Vin is noted as being stronger than Kelsier, but is still warned against engaging in pushing matches, because she'll most likely be out-weighed by her opponent, and as such she'll be flung around.

So in short, mass makes your push stronger by having more, well, mass behind your push, without changing your allomantic strength in the process. You can't affect anything that didn't show up with steel lines before tapping weight after tapping.

 

I really feel that you'd be better served by trying to explain why you think a given example is extreme or overstated rather than deliberately pulling out such examples yourself.

I also wish to say that broadly I agree with you re: the discussion of the supressor a page or two back, given that the Urithiru supressor got messed up by fairly minor things (Lift's lifelight, Venli's... regal-ness[?]) and I personally think that, as a bondsmith fabrial, it messes with connection, so unless they manage a broad-spectrum one it might be hard to make a supressor that reliably gets all the metallic arts (eg. allomancy supressor might get bypassed by hemalurgy or medallion.)

 

I'm also going to keep (infrequently as it may be) championing that, assuming the rapid dissemination of medallions, Scadrial has a higher average troop quality, because they have the potential to make every soldier eg. a pewterarm/bloodmaker, or whatever combination you desire, keeping in mind that medallions seem to be common enough in the south that everyone has one, otherwise they couldn't go outside.

Given enough compounders (and with the medallions those are more plentiful) Scadrial might also have the advantage in field medicine, just strap a bloodmaker medallion to someone and hand them an unkeyed goldmind, and have the ability to alleviate some supply line problems with the same approach using bendalloy.

@The Technovore (I think, sorry if I pinged the wrong person)

Small pedantry, there's no need to give Roshar crossbows, they already have them, as can be seen in the Thaylen gemstone reserve, Rysn shoots a Fused with a crossbow.

 

And finally, a small point on air superiority, a Scadrian invasion of Roshar can, as I understand it, basically not at all make use of their airforce, for two reasons.

1, their airships rely on being lighter than air, which I'm sure would make them play nice with the highstorm.

2, their airships rely on ettmetal, which explodes when wet, so unless it's in highstorm-proof containers it won't survive the first storm.

 

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Steel/Iron Allomantic power is affected both by the persons innate ability and their mass or momentum. The faster a coinshot is moving the more powerful his push will be and likewise the more weight a lucher has the more shear power they can bring to bear which is why those two twin compounders have such a potentially high power output. Roughly your metal pushes and pulls are 10x your mass and all of your momentum can be added to any push.

Because Radiants have been shown to be able to be killed by the Regals aluminum weapons that indicates a significant limit to healing. Because a shardhelmet (Kaladin) has been shown to be demolished by his just above average strength and drained his Stormlight in the process the durability of Shardplate may also be being overestimated. Because even when Kal is flying as fast as possible he is not affected detrimentally by either air resistance or friction Radiant speed is also being overestimated. Using stormlight also leads to reckless behavior potentially putting a Radiant in extremely dangerous situation that they may not be able to handle. Lashing more massive objects devour more massive amounts of Stormlight. Only a few orders of Radiants are combat focused and none have much ranged ability at this time so their ability to close is also being overestimated. Even Rosharan fabrials and their production are being overestimated since most have very limited range, or effect and none can replicate Radiant surges at this time (that will eventually come).

Scadrian Airships may be able to go over any highstorm. I am sure the containers are waterproofed because they operate on Scadrial in weather conditions. Also the small ships seem to need weightlessness, but the larger ships may not be nearly as dependent on that since that didn't seem to be a problem when Suit was trying to escape on one.

On 5/31/2021 at 8:29 AM, therunner said:

I would push back a bit at this, the situations in RoW where suppresors don't work are not minor things, but only things where another Shard is involved:

  1. Lift is not using stormlight like every other Radiant, but lifelight (Cultivation's investiture). So if suppresors are keyed to Honor's investiture, this won't be blocked (and she still has issues with one of her surges despite this).
  2. While Venli can breathe in stormlight, she cannot use it to actually power Surges, she needs to use Voidlight instead, so Odium's investiture. (RoW chapter 67)

So from this it seems that single suppresor can block use of investiture of a given shard. For allomancy it should depend on how exactly it is fueled,

  1. Non-hemalurgic allomancy is fueled by Preservation, hence Preservation suppresor should be enough.
  2. Feruchemy seemingly involves both Preservation and Ruin to facilitate tapping/storing (as Ruin can interfere with coppermind memories in transit), and so might require two suppresors to fully stop.
  3. Hemalurgically granted abilites are fueled/powered by Ruin (I think), so you would need Ruin suppresor.
  4. Medallions use seemingly 'just' unsealed nicrosil-minds, so they should be fueled as non-hemalurgic power. (as it trick souls to think it has power it does not)

So to stop or hinder most metalborn, I think you require just Preservation-keyed suppresor. In fact since Harmony has only one naturally occuring godmetal (as far as we know), it hints that Harmony might have only one associated kind of investiture at this point, so Harmony-suppresor might stop all metallic arts.

Lyft's cultivation surge that of healing was working, but the other surge of abrasion which is probably an honor surge was not. The Sibling being of both Honor and Cultivation when she was being corrupted was potentially causing problems for both incrimentally only allowing Voidlight surges while blocking the other 2.

Allomancy is potentially different enough from Rosharan investiture that it might actually require multiple suppressors to counter all the abilities. at the very least probably 3 or as many as 257 (16 allomancy x 16 Feruchemy). One to block Ruin's imitation of powers of Preservation. It would likely be hard to suppress both aspects of Harmony's power since what suppresses one side magnifies the other.

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23 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

A fullborn who acts like TLR focused almost entirely on only a few of their abilities would have a challenge fighting a Radiant because they use many of the same abilities. A Twinborn compounder would have more mastery of the few things they can do. There was a lot that TLR didn't even seem to use that he had the potential to do. I suspect that most Fullborn would work on mostly a few abilities while neglecting others.

TLR should not be used as an example, and when forced to become more rounded by threats that can actually hurt them they will far and away outpace any twinborn.

No Twinborn can do anything combat oriented better than a radiant could, but a Fullborn can match them and not just one specific type but all of them.

26 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Steel/Iron Allomantic power is affected both by the persons innate ability and their mass or momentum. The faster a coinshot is moving the more powerful his push will be and likewise the more weight a lucher has the more shear power they can bring to bear which is why those two twin compounders have such a potentially high power output. Roughly your metal pushes and pulls are 10x your mass and all of your momentum can be added to any push.

Moving faster isn't going to get you the results youi want, when in motion the human body shifts, and it shifts more at higher speeds, and you will lose the fine control you want.

Weight affecting pushes is in dispute,

Spoiler

Chris King

A lot of people wanted clarification on weight in regards to Pushing and Pulling, whether or not it has a direct correlation to the power or if it's just something people say because generally someone heavier is going to Push--

Brandon Sanderson

Right, right. It's more-- I mean, the whole-- If you really dig down into it, and I've talked about this before, the whole mass, weight, Push, and Pull thing gets a little tricky when--particularly when you throw Feruchemy into the mix-- Are we changing mass? Or are we changing what the power of the earth pulling upon you is, and things like this. Generally understand that most people who are talking about this are not speaking in scientific terms and they are speaking in colloquialisms.

Chris King interview (Sept. 24, 2013)

 

30 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Because Radiants have been shown to be able to be killed by the Regals aluminum weapons that indicates a significant limit to healing. 

Aluminum works against Scadrial to, their compounders can't heal from it.

34 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Because a shardhelmet (Kaladin) has been shown to be demolished by his just above average strength and drained his Stormlight in the process the durability of Shardplate may also be being overestimated.

Are you refering to the shardhemet he used as a shield against shardblades?

34 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Because even when Kal is flying as fast as possible he is not affected detrimentally by either air resistance or friction Radiant speed is also being overestimated. so their ability to close is also being overestimated.

Human terminal velocity is about 120 mph, that is equivalent to a single lashing, all without taking plate into account.

One Lashing puts them at over 120 mph (200kmph)  add in multiple lashings and plate and they can be from a safe zone to blade range in seconds.

44 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Using stormlight also leads to reckless behavior potentially putting a Radiant in extremely dangerous situation that they may not be able to handle.

And Oaths compell them to aid thier comrads

45 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Even Rosharan fabrials and their production are being overestimated since most have very limited range, or effect and none can replicate Radiant surges at this time (that will eventually come).

So why does Scadrial get the time to build a large standing army, heavy artillery develop knowledge of hemalurgy, but Roshar can't do a little R&D?

48 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Scadrian Airships may be able to go over any highstorm. I am sure the containers are waterproofed because they operate on Scadrial in weather conditions. Also the small ships seem to need weightlessness, but the larger ships may not be nearly as dependent on that since that didn't seem to be a problem when Suit was trying to escape on one.

But during that time, they will be isolated and alone, a time which Radiants can operate, they are dead either way.

50 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Lyft's cultivation surge that of healing was working, but the other surge of abrasion which is probably an honor surge was not. The Sibling being of both Honor and Cultivation when she was being corrupted was potentially causing problems for both incrimentally only allowing Voidlight surges while blocking the other 2.

*Lift

*Progression

I'm not sure what you are saying for that last part.

51 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Allomancy is potentially different enough from Rosharan investiture that it might actually require multiple suppressors to counter all the abilities. at the very least probably 3 or as many as 257 (16 allomancy x 16 Feruchemy). One to block Ruin's imitation of powers of Preservation. It would likely be hard to suppress both aspects of Harmony's power since what suppresses one side magnifies the other.

Harmony is a single Shard so there is a case for one

Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy are different systems so there is a case for three

There are ten surges but all but Adhesion where blocked(Lift being wierd aside) so there is no case for more than three.

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8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Since I don't have a hard copy of Oathbringer I cannot confirm or dispute your statement of how large the Singer soul to make a Thunderclast would be, but I don't remember any description of the size of that soul so I am skeptical.

All right here is the direct transcription, other who have access may confirm:

Quote

...area around her was filled with ghostly spren.
Those are the spirits of the dead, she realized. Fused who haven't yet chosen a body. Most were twisted to the point that she barely recognized them as singers. Two were roughly the size of buildings.

Oathbringer, Chapter 115, pg. 1088

and later on

Quote

Venli got to watch the thunderclasts awaken.
Amond the waiting spirits were two larger masses of energy-souls so warped, so mangled, they didn't seem singer at all. One crawled into the stone ground, somehow inhabiting it like a spren taking residence in a gemheart. The stone became its form.

Oathbringer, Chapter 115, pg. 1090

So yes, the thunderclast souls are building sized.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

A fullborn who acts like TLR focused almost entirely on only a few of their abilities would have a challenge fighting a Radiant because they use many of the same abilities. A Twinborn compounder would have more mastery of the few things they can do. There was a lot that TLR didn't even seem to use that he had the potential to do. I suspect that most Fullborn would work on mostly a few abilities while neglecting others.

All the fullborn needs to do is compound F-steel, F-gold and have a lot of chromium on hand, for example. They don't need great mastery when they can brute force nearly anything.
And if they happen to focus on the abilities that would make them danger to Radiant, they are far more dangerous than any twinborn.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Because Radiants have been shown to be able to be killed by the Regals aluminum weapons that indicates a significant limit to healing.

Just as even twin-gold would be killed by aluminum weapons, and anyone on Scadrial without F-gold is still easier to kill. Per Brandon they can heal literally nearly anything (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116/#e4788) and it is effectively the same as gold-healing (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6336).

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

 Because a shardhelmet (Kaladin) has been shown to be demolished by his just above average strength and drained his Stormlight in the process the durability of Shardplate may also be being overestimated.

That helmet was not keyed to him and was dead (with unknown effects), also drained stormlight to reshape itself, and was used to deflect multiple blows (at least 4) from Shardblades wielded by someone in plate. So no, it was not demolished just by above average strength, it was demolished by Shardblades wielded by Shardplated people. (WoR, Ch. 57)

Jasnah goes to battle in fully functioning plate, and the only time it gets damaged (on a helmet by coincidence) its from a Fused (Magnified One, progression) who jumped and slammed both of axe-shaped hands on her head. (RoW, Ch. 64) And that only cracked it, and was seemingly fixed nearly immediately, and it did not drain too much of her stormlight to do so.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Because even when Kal is flying as fast as possible he is not affected detrimentally by either air resistance or friction Radiant speed is also being overestimated.

As Frustration said, terminal velocity is ~200 km/h under earth gravity (and that is going belly-first), ~300 km/h when going head-first. We have v_t = sqrt(2*m*g/(\rho * A * C_d)) (m = mass of falling object, rho = density of air, A = area of falling object, C_d = drag coefficient), so:

  1. Under Rosharan gravity that would be ~170 km/h (belly-first) and ~250 km/h (head-first), since v_t ~ sqrt(g)
  2. If you also include the fact that Radiant in plate is roughly 4x as heavy as Radiant without, the speed doubles, so ~340 km/h belly first and 500km/h head-first, since v_t ~ sqrt(m).
  3. If the Radiant lashes themselves 4 times and not once, the speed doubles again, so ~680km/h belly-first and ~1000km/h head first, since v_t ~ sqrt(g).

Even if they would be moving only 500km/h, they would cover 1 km in 7.2 seconds, since effective range of most Scadrian weapons is around ~500 meters at best, they would cover that in 3 seconds (if they had time to attain maximum velocity, which would be about ~5 seconds under 4 lashings). If they were starting from a stop, they would cover 500 meters in ~6.5 seconds under 4 lashings.

That is speed of Radiant with gravity that takes into account air resistance and friction. They might want to wear goggles or helmet though to protect their eyes.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

 Using stormlight also leads to reckless behavior potentially putting a Radiant in extremely dangerous situation that they may not be able to handle.

It is described as urging them to move, when were they behaving recklessly? And most Radiants are handling that feeling just fine, like marching in formation even when full of stormlight or not using their abilities lest they reveal themselves.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Lashing more massive objects devour more massive amounts of Stormlight.

But 100 kg objects can be Lashed for minutes on relatively small (chip-sized) amount of Stormlight, so enough for combat applications. So I would not call it massive, but yes they do require more stormlight.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

 Only a few orders of Radiants are combat focused and none have much ranged ability at this time so their ability to close is also being overestimated.

Windrunners and Skybreakers can attack from distance (lash object in direction of enemy), as can Lightweavers and Elsecallers (soulcast). That is 4 out of 10. When they discover lasers (or just that concentrated enough light can set things on fire) you could add Truthwatchers to the list for every other Order having at least one ranged ability.

I would argue that all order except Bondsmiths are combat focused, as they all get weapon and armor and they all get healing. Some are more support focused (Truthwatchers, Willshapers) but all can use their Surges in combat even if only to distract an enemy so that they can stab them. Even the 'non-combat' focused Radiants are much more useful in battle than non-combat metalborn (A-aluminum, A-gold, F-cadmiun, F-bendalloy for example).

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Even Rosharan fabrials and their production are being overestimated since most have very limited range, or effect and none can replicate Radiant surges at this time (that will eventually come).

Conjoiners have nearly unlimited range (enough to get across the continent) and free standing suppresors seem to have field at least building sized.
They have also started to systematically research fabrials and pool together their knowledge only in the last year, and still managed to create a device that crudely mimics lashing. With 10-15 more years we are bound to see some interesting stuff.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Scadrian Airships may be able to go over any highstorm. I am sure the containers are waterproofed because they operate on Scadrial in weather conditions. Also the small ships seem to need weightlessness, but the larger ships may not be nearly as dependent on that since that didn't seem to be a problem when Suit was trying to escape on one.

Being above the Highstorm would be probably the only thing that would save them, the ship is made to be lighter than air so strong wind would move it easily. While the containers are designed to operate in Scadrial weather, Highstorm is something else (sustained winds of ~600 km/h at least).
All the SoScad ships we have seen require F-iron device, even the one Suit uses to escape. When he gets on the ship one of his minions tells him they are currently priming the weight-changing device and that it is the last step in preparation, quote:

Quote

Fed is down below, priming the weight-changing machinery with her Feruchemy, to lighten the ship. That should be the last step.

BoM, Ch. 29, pg. 401-402

 

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Lyft's cultivation surge that of healing was working, but the other surge of abrasion which is probably an honor surge was not. The Sibling being of both Honor and Cultivation when she was being corrupted was potentially causing problems for both incrimentally only allowing Voidlight surges while blocking the other 2.

Lift is also modified by Cultivation and is using Lifelight, and she still could use only one of her surges. By contrast Venli could her Radiant surges without an issue if she was powering it with Voidlight. And those suppresors were not fully converted yet, so were not working at full capacity.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Allomancy is potentially different enough from Rosharan investiture that it might actually require multiple suppressors to counter all the abilities. at the very least probably 3 or as many as 257 (16 allomancy x 16 Feruchemy). One to block Ruin's imitation of powers of Preservation. It would likely be hard to suppress both aspects of Harmony's power since what suppresses one side magnifies the other.

Metallic arts are from either one or two shards (Harmony/ Preservation and Ruin) so you need to block investiture of either one shard or two (if it is still sufficiently separate). And suppresor could block all the surges barring Adhesion (the one even Fused very worried about) and Progression (but  seemingly only in Lift, who has touched by Cultivation), all Surges are very distinct abilities and yet they are all blocked, why would the metallic arts be different?

There is never any talk about suppresor boosting another abilities, nor is there any evidence for that.
 

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12 hours ago, therunner said:

All right here is the direct transcription, other who have access may confirm:

Thanks for that. I still wonder if that is how they appear in the cognative or if that is their actual appearance in the Physical. Many Spren also seem to be of variable sizes and seem to change sizes so even if it is their appearance in the physical they could potentially be squished into a more manageable size.

12 hours ago, therunner said:

All the fullborn needs to do is compound F-steel, F-gold and have a lot of chromium on hand, for example. They don't need great mastery when they can brute force nearly anything.
And if they happen to focus on the abilities that would make them danger to Radiant, they are far more dangerous than any twinborn

For some reason the only Fullborn we actually know of didn't use anywhere near his full potential and even in his use it seemed more of a brute force approach where someone like Wax had major skill in his abilities due I presume to the amount of focus and practice he had in them. Yes if a Fullborn could master or nearly so all of his abilities there would be few anywhere that could challenge him, and he could produce more Fullborn's through new Bands.

12 hours ago, therunner said:

Just as even twin-gold would be killed by aluminum weapons, and anyone on Scadrial without F-gold is still easier to kill. Per Brandon they can heal literally nearly anything (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116/#e4788) and it is effectively the same as gold-healing (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6336).

I have been trying to make the point throughout that Aluminum is the general counter investiture of the Cosmere. Not to be confused with Anti-Investiture. Scadrial is near the point where it can mass produce it.

@Frustration Scadrial has the industrial infrastructure to begin to mass produce weapons and such where Roshar doesn't.

13 hours ago, therunner said:

That helmet was not keyed to him and was dead (with unknown effects), also drained stormlight to reshape itself, and was used to deflect multiple blows (at least 4) from Shardblades wielded by someone in plate. So no, it was not demolished just by above average strength, it was demolished by Shardblades wielded by Shardplated people. (WoR, Ch. 57)

Jasnah goes to battle in fully functioning plate, and the only time it gets damaged (on a helmet by coincidence) its from a Fused (Magnified One, progression) who jumped and slammed both of axe-shaped hands on her head. (RoW, Ch. 64) And that only cracked it, and was seemingly fixed nearly immediately, and it did not drain too much of her stormlight to do so.

It was still his just above average strength that was used to bash the helmet. His enhanced agility and speed limited the direct hits he took. Do you really think that he could have stopped a direct hit on the helmet by someone with shardplate enhanced strength?

We don't know how hard those hands were or how comparatively strong the magnified one was since we have nothing to compare it to except its affect on her shard helmet and so long as she had stormlight the helmet would heal just like the one Kal used. Still her shardhelmet was damaged by hardened skin, muscle, and bone which might indicate it isn't as durable as we might think.

13 hours ago, therunner said:

Windrunners and Skybreakers can attack from distance (lash object in direction of enemy), as can Lightweavers and Elsecallers (soulcast). That is 4 out of 10. When they discover lasers (or just that concentrated enough light can set things on fire) you could add Truthwatchers to the list for every other Order having at least one ranged ability.

I would argue that all order except Bondsmiths are combat focused, as they all get weapon and armor and they all get healing. Some are more support focused (Truthwatchers, Willshapers) but all can use their Surges in combat even if only to distract an enemy so that they can stab them. Even the 'non-combat' focused Radiants are much more useful in battle than non-combat metalborn (A-aluminum, A-gold, F-cadmiun, F-bendalloy for example).

From what I remember we only have one example of a Windrunner (Kal) using lashes to throw rocks and it was on a beach in an area about the size of a football field or 2 or somewhere there abouts. Not thousands of meters. He still missed often and drained stormlight very fast and didn't need to dodge super sonic projectiles while he was doing it.

Windrunners are relatively fast and maneuverable compared to their usual opponents, but that doesn't mean they are absolutely fast or maneuverable.

Alright A-Gold I don't see much use for it in battle, but even it could tip the scales at times. The other 3 I see very distinct potential advantages to. A-Aluminum has the potential to be immune to all investiture based attacks even shardblades. Gaspers could attack from ambush in any number of situations. Subsumers could persist without supplies for extended periods of time enabling coordinated surprise attacks from almost anywhere. They would need to eat and drink less than a camel while on mission so would need no supply lines. There are ways to take advantage of almost every metalborn ability in combat if you think it through. After saying that I could probably see ways to use virtually every Rosharan Surge in combat as well if I felt like giving it some thought, but I will leave that to you and the majority who want to promote Roshar.

13 hours ago, therunner said:

Conjoiners have nearly unlimited range (enough to get across the continent) and free standing suppresors seem to have field at least building sized.
They have also started to systematically research fabrials and pool together their knowledge only in the last year, and still managed to create a device that crudely mimics lashing. With 10-15 more years we are bound to see some interesting stuff.

Yeah conjoiners have range, but they don't do much. That fabrial doesn't really mimic lashings and has huge problems for the user. Building size affects when battlefields can be 100's to 1,000's of meters or even many Km's. Even bridge four is muscle powered so very limited in its movement even if it floats on air. We are not 10 to 15 years in the future so we don't know what significant advances if any might take place. For all we know in 10 days most of the population on Roshar will be dead or enslaved even the Spren and they may be operating at near stone age level again with almost no remaining Radiant or Fused.

13 hours ago, therunner said:

Being above the Highstorm would be probably the only thing that would save them, the ship is made to be lighter than air so strong wind would move it easily. While the containers are designed to operate in Scadrial weather, Highstorm is something else (sustained winds of ~600 km/h at least).
All the SoScad ships we have seen require F-iron device, even the one Suit uses to escape. When he gets on the ship one of his minions tells him they are currently priming the weight-changing device and that it is the last step in preparation, quote:

Your quote is great but it is about the lifeboat not their main ships.

Everyone of those Scadrian airships carries extremely high explosives that could be used to great effect by coinshots and firearms against Rosharan enemies especially near a Highstorm. Every one of those high explosives penetration into a Rosharan would cause catastrophic damage even to a Radiant. They might even be enough to irreparably damage shardplate with a near miss or impact.

13 hours ago, therunner said:

Lift is also modified by Cultivation and is using Lifelight, and she still could use only one of her surges. By contrast Venli could her Radiant surges without an issue if she was powering it with Voidlight. And those suppresors were not fully converted yet, so were not working at full capacity.

by corrupting the Sybling it could have affected Lifelight fueled surges as well since it was being corrupted with voidlight.

13 hours ago, therunner said:

Metallic arts are from either one or two shards (Harmony/ Preservation and Ruin) so you need to block investiture of either one shard or two (if it is still sufficiently separate). And suppresor could block all the surges barring Adhesion (the one even Fused very worried about) and Progression (but  seemingly only in Lift, who has touched by Cultivation), all Surges are very distinct abilities and yet they are all blocked, why would the metallic arts be different?

There is never any talk about suppresor boosting another abilities, nor is there any evidence for that.

I'll address you second statement first. Ruin and Preservation are opposites so what blocks one likely amplifies the other. Unlike Honor and Odium which are not opposites so can be independently affected. As such anything that can block both at once would nullify itself or explode. Remember Vin literally anihilated herself and Ati when she attacked Ruin. Harmony needs to keep it separate and balanced at all times and perhaps that is why his Godmetal (ettmetal) is so volatile. What Harmony does is comparable to the magic system of Recluse where magic is either based in order or chaos and when forced together in combat creates major explosions. Most magic users there use either one or the other and a few walk a fine line between them and also usually lean toward one or the other. The idea that a Preservation suppressor would amplify Ruin abilities comes from wave theory since Ruin and Preservation rhythms would have destructive interference thus a preservation suppressor would likely have constructive interference on Ruin Rhythms.

Oh since you like Brandon's books you might check out the Saga of Recluse series by L. E. Modesitt jr. One warning the order he wrote the series in is not the Chronological order of the Books. He jumps around in history of over 1,000 years of his world. That is a quirk he has in most of his series. He has been on the writing scene since the 70's. Try him book order first then chronological order because the later books get better.

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50 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

For some reason the only Fullborn we actually know of didn't use anywhere near his full potential and even in his use it seemed more of a brute force approach where someone like Wax had major skill in his abilities due I presume to the amount of focus and practice he had in them. Yes if a Fullborn could master or nearly so all of his abilities there would be few anywhere that could challenge him, and he could produce more Fullborn's through new Bands.

Because nothing could touch him, remember the fight with Vin? he didn't even need to try and he was untouchable, if it wasn't for plot armor and Deus Ex Machina Vin would have died.

54 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

I have been trying to make the point throughout that Aluminum is the general counter investiture of the Cosmere. Not to be confused with Anti-Investiture. Scadrial is near the point where it can mass produce it.

@Frustration Scadrial has the industrial infrastructure to begin to mass produce weapons and such where Roshar doesn't.

Roshar is already able to mass produce it, several years before AoL

55 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

It was still his just above average strength that was used to bash the helmet. His enhanced agility and speed limited the direct hits he took. Do you really think that he could have stopped a direct hit on the helmet by someone with shardplate enhanced strength?

Plate shatters at roughly two hit from a blade, using plate doesn't seem to matter.

57 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

We don't know how hard those hands were or how comparatively strong the magnified one was since we have nothing to compare it to except its affect on her shard helmet and so long as she had stormlight the helmet would heal just like the one Kal used. Still her shardhelmet was damaged by hardened skin, muscle, and bone which might indicate it isn't as durable as we might think.

Considering Stormform can jump twenty plus feet I don't think it's unreasonable to say tey have greatly enhanced strength.

58 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Windrunners are relatively fast and maneuverable compared to their usual opponents, but that doesn't mean they are absolutely fast or maneuverable.

Infinate speed is of course impossible, but high hundreds or even low thousands are not off the table.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Alright A-Gold I don't see much use for it in battle, but even it could tip the scales at times. The other 3 I see very distinct potential advantages to. A-Aluminum has the potential to be immune to all investiture based attacks even shardblades. Gaspers could attack from ambush in any number of situations. Subsumers could persist without supplies for extended periods of time enabling coordinated surprise attacks from almost anywhere. They would need to eat and drink less than a camel while on mission so would need no supply lines. There are ways to take advantage of almost every metalborn ability in combat if you think it through. After saying that I could probably see ways to use virtually every Rosharan Surge in combat as well if I felt like giving it some thought, but I will leave that to you and the majority who want to promote Roshar.

Roshar is more than familiar with groups or even armies with no supply lines,

And we already have a use for every surge.

and F-Cadmium is forced, the slightly less noise you would make by breathing is far too small to be a massive benefit,

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Yeah conjoiners have range, but they don't do much. That fabrial doesn't really mimic lashings and has huge problems for the user. Building size affects when battlefields can be 100's to 1,000's of meters or even many Km's. Even bridge four is muscle powered so very limited in its movement even if it floats on air. We are not 10 to 15 years in the future so we don't know what significant advances if any might take place. For all we know in 10 days most of the population on Roshar will be dead or enslaved even the Spren and they may be operating at near stone age level again with almost no remaining Radiant or Fused.

Roshar will make it out almost unscathed, simpy because Brandon isn't willing to sacrafice the world, and arc 2 is only like fifteen years later.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Your quote is great but it is about the lifeboat not their main ships.

Actually it is, that's the part where  Suit is taking off in the same ship that they use to go to Elendel and the southerners take to go home.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Everyone of those Scadrian airships carries extremely high explosives that could be used to great effect by coinshots and firearms against Rosharan enemies especially near a Highstorm. Every one of those high explosives penetration into a Rosharan would cause catastrophic damage even to a Radiant. They might even be enough to irreparably damage shardplate with a near miss or impact.

Increadibly exspencive explosives.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

by corrupting the Sybling it could have affected Lifelight fueled surges as well since it was being corrupted with voidlight.

Conjecture

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

I'll address you second statement first. Ruin and Preservation are opposites so what blocks one likely amplifies the other. Unlike Honor and Odium which are not opposites so can be independently affected. As such anything that can block both at once would nullify itself or explode. Remember Vin literally anihilated herself and Ati when she attacked Ruin. Harmony needs to keep it separate and balanced at all times and perhaps that is why his Godmetal (ettmetal) is so volatile. What Harmony does is comparable to the magic system of Recluse where magic is either based in order or chaos and when forced together in combat creates major explosions. Most magic users there use either one or the other and a few walk a fine line between them and also usually lean toward one or the other. The idea that a Preservation suppressor would amplify Ruin abilities comes from wave theory since Ruin and Preservation rhythms would have destructive interference thus a preservation suppressor would likely have constructive interference on Ruin Rhythms.

Oh since you like Brandon's books you might check out the Saga of Recluse series by L. E. Modesitt jr. One warning the order he wrote the series in is not the Chronological order of the Books. He jumps around in history of over 1,000 years of his world. That is a quirk he has in most of his series. He has been on the writing scene since the 70's. Try him book order first then chronological order because the later books get better.

I find no evidence that Preservation and Ruin were each others anti-tone I would be more than happy if you could provide it as it would make my life a ot easier, but the closest we have is that they repel each other, wich was not an inherient thing but something that developed due to them being close together.

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4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Scadrial has the industrial infrastructure to begin to mass produce weapons and such where Roshar doesn't.

So, everyone seems to be assuming Roshar will need to slowly build up it's industrial enterprises to get to the point where they can mass produce weapons and aluminium and such, and so won't have access to guns, artillery etc; but I think you have looked right passed one of the biggest features of Roshar's magic, Soulcasters. (and don't worry, I have done research this time :P)

So, one of the Ten essences is metal (number eight, to be exact). This means that, once the Rosharans get a hold of a gun, they just need to;

  • get one of their smart artifabrian / inventors to look at it and figure its workings
  • make a few molds that can be filled with water
  • Then blam, soulcast the water into metal, making all the necessary parts for a gun.
  • For more complicated things that can't be done with water, carving out wood can work just as well, albeit a bit slower.

And, according to the Coppermind, 'Items may be able to be Soulcast into aluminum.[8]'. Huh, whaddya know, a very efficient way to produce a counter to investiture that isn't reliant on rare natural resources and huge amounts of manpower!

Honestly, I think Soulcasting deserves way more attention than it gets, because to me it seems like the perfect way to produce goods on a large scale. (Unless I'm wrong lol)

And, considering how fast Bridge Four was developed (less than a year), I think it's safe to assume that the Rosharan technology level would skyrocket if a war against a more advanced force put pressure on it to do so.

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1 hour ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

So, everyone seems to be assuming Roshar will need to slowly build up it's industrial enterprises to get to the point where they can mass produce weapons and aluminium and such, and so won't have access to guns, artillery etc; but I think you have looked right passed one of the biggest features of Roshar's magic, Soulcasters. (and don't worry, I have done research this time :P)

So, one of the Ten essences is metal (number eight, to be exact). This means that, once the Rosharans get a hold of a gun, they just need to;

  • get one of their smart artifabrian / inventors to look at it and figure its workings
  • make a few molds that can be filled with water
  • Then blam, soulcast the water into metal, making all the necessary parts for a gun.
  • For more complicated things that can't be done with water, carving out wood can work just as well, albeit a bit slower.

And, according to the Coppermind, 'Items may be able to be Soulcast into aluminum.[8]'. Huh, whaddya know, a very efficient way to produce a counter to investiture that isn't reliant on rare natural resources and huge amounts of manpower!

Honestly, I think Soulcasting deserves way more attention than it gets, because to me it seems like the perfect way to produce goods on a large scale. (Unless I'm wrong lol)

And, considering how fast Bridge Four was developed (less than a year), I think it's safe to assume that the Rosharan technology level would skyrocket if a war against a more advanced force put pressure on it to do so.

Soulcasting can crack gems, but this is circumvented by Elsecallers and Lightweavers. Alternatively, all singers and greatshells produce gems in their gemhearts. United Roshar means plenty of generous gemheart donors (when singers die of natural causes) and 5 to 7 years gives them time to set up effective greatshell farms/ranches. So, even gems aren't an issue for them. Food, metal, unlimited aluminum, should they discover gunpowder they can soulcast plenty of valuable explosives, shelters and cover can be made easily via soulcasting or stoneshaping. They have the ability to move any amount of troops anywhere they like with perfect terrain control and NO supply lines.

Honestly, Scadrial would need to either get a WMD "Cold War" scenario or a Guerrilla warfare "Iraq War" scenario going as fast as possible, because with Roshar's ability to command the battlefield, they would dominate any war scenario using tactics from Sun Tzu to WWII. 

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Just now, The Technovore said:

Honestly, Scadrial would need to either get a WMD "Cold War" scenario or a Guerrilla warfare "Iraq War" scenario going as fast as possible, because with Roshar's ability to command the battlefield, they would dominate any war scenario using tactics from Sun Tzu to WWII. 

Exactly.

Another thing I don't think anyone has mentioned (although I only kinda skim read) is the effectiveness that the squires grant Rosharan armies; enough 3rd-level Windrunners could turn an army of regular soldiers into buffed-up soldiers who are practically 1st oath Windrunners themselves. This means that they can breathe Stormlight and get all the benefits associated with that (healing, agility, strenght) as well as use the surges, which puts them at a significant advantage to the general population of Scadrial, who for the most part are just people. The medallions can act as a power distribution for the Scadrians, but they take time to make and require people to devote time to making them rather than training or fighting the war, and can easily be removed or even captured by the enemy, and they run out.

I think what this fight boils down to is this: Scadrial has the potential for some immensely powerful individuals; I don't think that anyone disputes that a fullborn who is practiced with their abilities is top of the power ladder, but Roshar has the higher average power level per capita and they have experience with warfare that is just unparalleled by any other group in the Cosmere (there is a reason Odium wants them for his personal army, after all) and so they win in any standard war, unless Brandon writes that it happens otherwise.

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10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Thanks for that. I still wonder if that is how they appear in the cognative or if that is their actual appearance in the Physical. Many Spren also seem to be of variable sizes and seem to change sizes so even if it is their appearance in the physical they could potentially be squished into a more manageable size.

Those building sized shapes were their form in physical. Earlier in the chapter Kaladin and Shallan encounter the Fused along with Thrill in the cognitive near Oathgate in Thaylen City, and those Fused than vanish into the physical. This is mirrored in the Venli parts, where she sees them appear in the physical. At least that is how I read it, the other option is that the Thunderclasts went directly from Cognitive into stone, which would make trapping them even more problematic.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

For some reason the only Fullborn we actually know of didn't use anywhere near his full potential and even in his use it seemed more of a brute force approach where someone like Wax had major skill in his abilities due I presume to the amount of focus and practice he had in them. Yes if a Fullborn could master or nearly so all of his abilities there would be few anywhere that could challenge him, and he could produce more Fullborn's through new Bands.

Because he was a bit insane, and was winning. He had no reason to try harder, he had Vin and Marsh on the ropes. The only reason he died is that he had Achilles heal in the form of his atium minds, and the fact that Vin somehow breathed in Mists (something that no else ever did based on what we know).

If your normal pushes are so strong you can push on metals in other people's bodies, you don't have much need for skill. The only one who pushed/pulled on metal inside a person was Vin when she was fueled by Mists, no else did anything like that.

I guess my point is that while Twinborn can be more skilled with their powers than Fullborn, Fullborn is so far beyond them in raw power that it does not matter.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

It was still his just above average strength that was used to bash the helmet. His enhanced agility and speed limited the direct hits he took. Do you really think that he could have stopped a direct hit on the helmet by someone with shardplate enhanced strength?

Good point, however it was still hits from Shardblade, and those are repeatedly shown to shatter sections in just two blows (even from people not in plate).

And also the helmet was still not destroyed, it was heavily cracked and leaking stormlight, but not shattered.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

We don't know how hard those hands were or how comparatively strong the magnified one was since we have nothing to compare it to except its affect on her shard helmet and so long as she had stormlight the helmet would heal just like the one Kal used. Still her shardhelmet was damaged by hardened skin, muscle, and bone which might indicate it isn't as durable as we might think.

Yes, but in that same battle Jasnah gets hit multiple times, and this is the only time her plate cracks even a bit. Also I would assume that Fused that can grow parts of their bodies on demand would also grow muscles. Even basic Warform is 2-3 times as strong as human, Stormform is stronger, and Fused are still considered to be stronger.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

 

From what I remember we only have one example of a Windrunner (Kal) using lashes to throw rocks and it was on a beach in an area about the size of a football field or 2 or somewhere there abouts. Not thousands of meters. He still missed often and drained stormlight very fast and didn't need to dodge super sonic projectiles while he was doing it.

 

I honestly don't remember such a thing with Kal, when was it?

We have seen Szeth Lash Dalinar straight up in the air, and he did fly high enough to not be seen so conservatively maybe 80 meters. This alone gives Windrunners range of around ~120 meters if firing projectiles that weight around ~80-100 kg. If the amount of light needed to lash heavy objects scales linearly with mass, than you could use same amount of stormlight to lash 1kg stone and fire it with maximum range of ~9.5-12 km.

Admittedly it would not be very precise, at least not until they would learn how to use reverse lashings to create guided projectiles (or to use attractors for similar effect). (I need to re-read RoW to find reference to this).

 

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Windrunners are relatively fast and maneuverable compared to their usual opponents, but that doesn't mean they are absolutely fast or maneuverable.

At this point Windrunners are the fastest and most maneuverable people in the air, the only ones who are comparable are Heavenly Ones, who beat them in maneuverability but lose in speed.

They also have access to Adhesion, Surge of Pressure and Vacuum. If this surge can be used in the way this name implies, they could lessen the air density around themselves, reaching even higher speeds (at a cost of maneuverability).

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Alright A-Gold I don't see much use for it in battle, but even it could tip the scales at times. The other 3 I see very distinct potential advantages to. A-Aluminum has the potential to be immune to all investiture based attacks even shardblades. Gaspers could attack from ambush in any number of situations. Subsumers could persist without supplies for extended periods of time enabling coordinated surprise attacks from almost anywhere. They would need to eat and drink less than a camel while on mission so would need no supply lines. There are ways to take advantage of almost every metalborn ability in combat if you think it through. After saying that I could probably see ways to use virtually every Rosharan Surge in combat as well if I felt like giving it some thought, but I will leave that to you and the majority who want to promote Roshar.

How could A-Gold tip scales?

A-Aluminum is immune only to direct investiture attacks, lashed stone still kills them, as does regular sword, plated punch, Shardblade in form of crushing weapon (hammer, flail, club), or being set on fire (or eventually lasers). And they are immune only so long as they are burning aluminum, currently the most expansive metal on Scadrial.

Gaspers, are regular people that don't need to breathe (if they have large enough stores, which would most likely require some Compounders to maintain), they are not invisible.

Subsumers would not need supply lines for food and water, but still need them for everything else, i.e. bullets, explosives, medical material etc. And again, they would need Compounders to maintain their stores. Again, they are just regular people who don't need to eat or drink if they have enough stores in metalmind, this gives them a small indirect advantage over regular people, but not much else. And again, they are not invisible, anyone with life sense, or a bunch of spren, or someone in cognitive can find them.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Yeah conjoiners have range, but they don't do much. That fabrial doesn't really mimic lashings and has huge problems for the user. Building size affects when battlefields can be 100's to 1,000's of meters or even many Km's. Even bridge four is muscle powered so very limited in its movement even if it floats on air.

Conjoiners make Bridge Four possible, that is much in my book. They also allow communication that cannot be intercepted, and to direct movements over large distances.
The glove fabrial was close enough that Leshwi was at first confused how he does it, when suppresors are active. It is crude, but it does allow flight-like movement in arbitrary direction.

Building sized is enough when you just need it to negate opponent magical abilities, like ettmetal grenades and machinery, Rioting/Soothing or those pesky Steelrunners. And you can use multiple of them.

Bridge Four is quite slow currently, but is also the first ever build and was build less then a year after it was proved you can use fabrials to create floating platforms.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

 We are not 10 to 15 years in the future so we don't know what significant advances if any might take place. For all we know in 10 days most of the population on Roshar will be dead or enslaved even the Spren and they may be operating at near stone age level again with almost no remaining Radiant or Fused.

And Scadrial does not have anti-air cannons, or flak, or mass production of medallions (and we don't know if that will even be possible) or aluminum or military equipment, or trained armies. For all we know NoScad and SoScad will go to war, and SoScad will bomb NoScad back to the stone age, and so deprive Scadrial of most of metalborn (and large part of its already small population).

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Your quote is great but it is about the lifeboat not their main ships.

It is the about the main ship, the one Suit and Wax have their stand-off on, the one that supposedly carries the bomb.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Everyone of those Scadrian airships carries extremely high explosives that could be used to great effect by coinshots and firearms against Rosharan enemies especially near a Highstorm. Every one of those high explosives penetration into a Rosharan would cause catastrophic damage even to a Radiant. They might even be enough to irreparably damage shardplate with a near miss or impact.

Explosives made of godmetal, metal that is most likely even more rare than aluminum. And Radiant like F-gold can heal nearly anything if they have enough stormlight to do so.

Shardplate can be repaired so long as any piece of any size remains and you feed it stormlight, and that is deadplate.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

by corrupting the Sybling it could have affected Lifelight fueled surges as well since it was being corrupted with voidlight.

Possibly, if we had more than one person we could say more. And there is still the case of Venli, who is using her Radiant Surge without an issue, she just needs to fuel it with Voidlight, not Stormlight.

10 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

I'll address you second statement first. Ruin and Preservation are opposites so what blocks one likely amplifies the other. Unlike Honor and Odium which are not opposites so can be independently affected. As such anything that can block both at once would nullify itself or explode. Remember Vin literally anihilated herself and Ati when she attacked Ruin. Harmony needs to keep it separate and balanced at all times and perhaps that is why his Godmetal (ettmetal) is so volatile. The idea that a Preservation suppressor would amplify Ruin abilities comes from wave theory since Ruin and Preservation rhythms would have destructive interference thus a preservation suppressor would likely have constructive interference on Ruin Rhythms.

Good points, but I don't fully agree. While I do think that Ruin and Preservation are very close to one anothers opposites in some sense, I don't think that makes them necessarily anti-investiture to one another. Remember that they created Scadrial together wholesale, including the souls of all creatures there. If their investiture always destroyed each other on contact, that would be very difficult if not outright impossible to do.

There is the fact that mists are repelled by Hemalurgy, but someone with spike would be repellent to spren as well, so it might be more general effect.  The repelling can also be explained in that they have opposite 'charges/Intents', if Coulomb equation had minus sign in front of it, different charges would repel and yet electron would not be anti-particle of proton.

The amplification also relies on suppresor to work along the lines of Rhythms, but anti-Tone has very different effect on investiture from that of suppresor. Voidlight was actively repelled away from anti-Tone, but all the Stormlight in the Tower is still there, and is never described as pushing/pulling somewhere even after suppresors were tuned to Radiants.

6 hours ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

So, everyone seems to be assuming Roshar will need to slowly build up it's industrial enterprises to get to the point where they can mass produce weapons and aluminium and such, and so won't have access to guns, artillery etc; but I think you have looked right passed one of the biggest features of Roshar's magic, Soulcasters. (and don't worry, I have done research this time :P)

So, one of the Ten essences is metal (number eight, to be exact). This means that, once the Rosharans get a hold of a gun, they just need to;

  • get one of their smart artifabrian / inventors to look at it and figure its workings
  • make a few molds that can be filled with water
  • Then blam, soulcast the water into metal, making all the necessary parts for a gun.
  • For more complicated things that can't be done with water, carving out wood can work just as well, albeit a bit slower.

And, according to the Coppermind, 'Items may be able to be Soulcast into aluminum.[8]'. Huh, whaddya know, a very efficient way to produce a counter to investiture that isn't reliant on rare natural resources and huge amounts of manpower!

Honestly, I think Soulcasting deserves way more attention than it gets, because to me it seems like the perfect way to produce goods on a large scale. (Unless I'm wrong lol)

And, considering how fast Bridge Four was developed (less than a year), I think it's safe to assume that the Rosharan technology level would skyrocket if a war against a more advanced force put pressure on it to do so.

I quite like the idea of using water to fill the molds, that is very cheap and efficient way to properly fill them.

To build on this, I think even more complicated things can be created by your method as follows

  1. Create object out of wood, clay, or something else.
  2. Soulcast air around it (and inside it) into a mold.
  3. Soulcast the original object into air
  4. Cut the mold in half with shardblade (or some tool that cuts sufficiently finely), Ta-da, reusable mold for the more difficult object.

If the object had a hole in the middle not connected to outside, this method would still not work, but with others it might help to need to create complicated object only once.

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12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Steel/Iron Allomantic power is affected both by the persons innate ability and their mass or momentum. The faster a coinshot is moving the more powerful his push will be and likewise the more weight a lucher has the more shear power they can bring to bear which is why those two twin compounders have such a potentially high power output.

I don't dispute that iron feruchemy affects the total strength of your push/pull, to do that would be to wilfully ignore the evidence of the books.

I have an analogy for you, imagine allomantic strength as your ability to gain purchase or grip and the strength of your push/pull as muscular strength. In this analogy the more invested something is, the slipperier it is, and no matter how strong you are, you can't move something against which you can gain no purchase.

So while total strength increases your ability to grip remains the same, and so you have nowhere to apply said massive strength. See also in Alloy of Law when Wax throws a push against some metal, only to discover that it's allomantically inert, he's able to push, but it does no good because he can't gain purchase.

I'll leave the momentum + pushes to people better at physics than I.

12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Roughly your metal pushes and pulls are 10x your mass and all of your momentum can be added to any push.

Do you have a source for this? I can't recall ever getting concrete numbers on pushes and pulls.

12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Because Radiants have been shown to be able to be killed by the Regals aluminum weapons that indicates a significant limit to healing.

Aluminium inhibits magical healing from any magic system. Though I'm willing to agree that possibly radiant healing has been overstated a little. The surefire way to kill anyone with significant magical healing seems to be to mulch the head/brain entirely, but it's far from the only way (of note is that, according to Brandon, Rashek lied about surviving decapitation, had he been properly decapitated it'd have killed him, presumably making the guillotine an effective method to kill invested individuals), going off what Nale says in Edgedancer, a shardblade through the spine kills a first oath radiant (and possibly second oath, I'm not sure if he thinks Lift is second or third at the time) because he notes that Lift had progressed to the point where he'd need to keep her impaled until she ran out of light to be sure, judging by how Elhokar dies keeping any vital spot wounded until the relevant investiture runs dry will also kill someone who's using invested healing and if the Defeated One wasn't such a huge idiot he could probably have killed Kaladin by just jamming his carapace spike in and keeping the wound open so that Kal's spinal cord couldn't heal. Then again, I think anything that gets a third or above oath radiant gets anyone, even Miles 'the sensible response to being tied up is blowing yourself up' Dagouter, though in his case you might get bored keeping him stabbed after a while.

On that note, I think the relevant ways of supernatural healing (pewter not included because it's completely outcompeted when the other ways are known to regrow limbs) end up, from worst to best: bloodmaker, the lowest rung, beaten by radiant healing for burst healing, might win a protracted heal-off but lacks ease of powering; radiant healing, beats a standard bloodmaker for ease of use if nothing else, stormlight just naturally happens every week or so, might be fairly fuel inefficient but fuel is incredibly plentiful; gold compounder, the gold standard (heh) of cosmere healing, incrrdible burst healing, incredible lasting power, power source stays when not in use, unlike stormlight which eventually evaporates.

In general I think that guns will have a hard time dealing with invested healing in the same way that guns have a hard time dealing with vampires in popular culture, bullet holes in most of the soft bits won't really slow them down and with the wounds resealing quickly, things like blood loss and internal bleeding won't come into play. Once incendiary ammunition, explosive rounds and flamethrowers enter the equation then we might be talking.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Because a shardhelmet (Kaladin) has been shown to be demolished by his just above average strength and drained his Stormlight in the process the durability of Shardplate may also be being overestimated.

Is this from when Kaladin intervened in Adolin's duel? Because the way I remember that is that the helmet was crisscrossed with cracks from being hit by shardblades several times and to people familiar with plate it looked like a miracle that it still held together. From your phrasing it seems you are talking about an instance where Kaladin destroys a helmet however, please remind me of when that happens, I don't recall this from any of the instances when Kaladin fights a shardbearer, but I haven't read WoK/WoR in a while.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Using stormlight also leads to reckless behavior potentially putting a Radiant in extremely dangerous situation that they may not be able to handle.

Could the same not be said of metalborn with combat powers? It's easy to overestimate yourself, especially if you know/think you're better than average.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Because even when Kal is flying as fast as possible he is not affected detrimentally by either air resistance or friction Radiant speed is also being overestimated.

As I've already said, physics is not my strong suit, so I'll leave that to others.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Lashing more massive objects devour more massive amounts of Stormlight.

A fist sized rock is plenty dangerous at speed, you don't have to be sending boulders flying, also, Szeth using the Honorblade lashes a piece of rock large enough to stand on on his way to Gavilar, so a third/fourth oath radiant could probably act like artillery fairly easily, given the greater efficiency of radiants.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Only a few orders of Radiants are combat focused and none have much ranged ability at this time so their ability to close is also being overestimated.

I'd say that 9 of the orders are combat focussed, on account of their armour piercing instant death swords and powered armour, even if they are differently suited to different roles in an army.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Even Rosharan fabrials and their production are being overestimated since most have very limited range, or effect and none can replicate Radiant surges at this time (that will eventually come).

I will agree that at present there seems to be no large scale fabrial manufactoring, it's still an artisanal craft. I'm curious about what you mean by limited range or effect, compared to what? The Urithiru suppressor covers the entirity of the tower and a bit beyond and spanreeds work a continent apart, oh, and Vstim's alerter presumably has range exceeding effective line of sight, otherwise it feels like an unwise investment.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Scadrian Airships may be able to go over any highstorm. I am sure the containers are waterproofed because they operate on Scadrial in weather conditions. Also the small ships seem to need weightlessness, but the larger ships may not be nearly as dependent on that since that didn't seem to be a problem when Suit was trying to escape on one.

If they're above the highstorm they're not much use as air support and might be vulnerable to attack from radiants.

Waterproof for Scadrian weather isn't necessarily highstorm proof.

I believe the small craft needed the crew to be storing weight, but was fine otherwise, but the large ship required priming with iron feruchemy, implying it needs to be lighter.

On 2021-06-02 at 9:48 PM, therunner said:

I did not mean to imply you are not, I just like to quote some things for completeness. :) And in case you would disagree with its meaning/applicability, at least I would know where we differ.

Ah, I hope I didn't come across as having taken offense then, tone on the internet and all that.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

Allomancy is potentially different enough from Rosharan investiture that it might actually require multiple suppressors to counter all the abilities. at the very least probably 3 or as many as 257 (16 allomancy x 16 Feruchemy).

I fail to see why this would be the case, as by the same token you'd need three suppressors to block a normal windrunner, one per lashing. I don't doubt that you could make single ability suppressors, though I think that it's simpler to make a blanket counter-Preservation device that making a counter-Preservation-as-filtered-through-gold device.

On 2021-06-03 at 0:39 AM, BenduLuke said:

It would likely be hard to suppress both aspects of Harmony's power since what suppresses one side magnifies the other.

I'm not sure I follow, to me this reads like someone saying that because you turned down the heat on your tap the cold water got more cold, if you follow.

On 2021-06-02 at 9:48 PM, therunner said:

lthough the fact that Surgebinding (even Adhesion) gets harder the more tower is corrupted (again Chapter 91, pg. 1000) suggest that the suppresors do work in degrees somewhat, and also maybe points against Adhesion being completely unaffected.

Hmm, fair point. I suppose it's hard to say what comes from the suppressor affecting stormlight, what comes from the suppressor affecting the bond and what comes from the suppressor affecting the surgebinding at this stage.

Though I do want to raise the point that suppressors do not seem to have been deployed en masse historically, if they were the fused would presumably have reverse engineered them far earlier, implying that they are hard to manufacture, that the ancients just didn't know how or that they felt they had some other reason not to make them.

 

¤_¤

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49 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

(of note is that, according to Brandon, Rashek lied about surviving decapitation, had he been properly decapitated it'd have killed him, presumably making the guillotine an effective method to kill invested individuals

Do you have a source for this?

Because here is him saying the opposite:

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)
49 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

A fist sized rock is plenty dangerous at speed, you don't have to be sending boulders flying, also, Szeth using the Honorblade lashes a piece of rock large enough to stand on on his way to Gavilar, so a third/fourth oath radiant could probably act like artillery fairly easily, given the greater efficiency of radiants.

Only if they improve accuracy. Shooting small rocks at a moving target at subsonic speeds is dangerous, but aiming at things with your hands won't be easy. 

49 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I believe the small craft needed the crew to be storing weight, but was fine otherwise, but the large ship required priming with iron feruchemy, implying it needs to be lighter.

21 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Your quote is great but it is about the lifeboat not their main ships.

Smaller ships needed the crew to decrease their weight with F-iron, and larger ships need to have their own weight reduced. This makes sense because their methods of propulsion are quite basic.

21 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Windrunners are relatively fast and maneuverable compared to their usual opponents, but that doesn't mean they are absolutely fast or maneuverable.

Windrunners and fighter planes powered by Gravitation would be tough to deal with, even with our tech. Their ability to completely reverse their direction without losing much momentum makes them significantly more difficult to track,

16 hours ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

Then blam, soulcast the water into metal, making all the necessary parts for a gun.

That would be great if firearms could be made reliable from any blend of steel. Gunsmiths and engineers spent decades refining materials used in the creation of firearms.

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21 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

Do you have a source for this?

I could have sworn it was in the Mistborn annotations, but the best I can find is this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/291/#e11199

17 hours ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

Then blam, soulcast the water into metal, making all the necessary parts for a gun.

 

25 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

That would be great if firearms could be made reliable from any blend of steel. Gunsmiths and engineers spent decades refining materials used in the creation of firearms.

It'd also help if soulcasting preserved volume instead of mass, but as we see both with Jasnah's stone into smoke in Kharbrant (smoke billows out) and the soulcasting of air into rock, I think, on the Shattered Plains (air rushes in), mass seems to be what's preserved.

Air into metal could still work, especially for simpler things, mimicking real life cast bronze cannons, for instance.

31 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

Only if they improve accuracy. Shooting small rocks at a moving target at subsonic speeds is dangerous, but aiming at things with your hands won't be easy. 

I'm not sure how much more accuracy they'd need, just make a rock fall at multiple gravities in a straight line towards a known enemy position/the enemy line, a lot of physics will happen to anyone unfortunate/stubborn enough to not relocate. A stone from a sling can kill, so I expect this to be perfectly lethal.

 

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3 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Though I do want to raise the point that suppressors do not seem to have been deployed en masse historically, if they were the fused would presumably have reverse engineered them far earlier, implying that they are hard to manufacture, that the ancients just didn't know how or that they felt they had some other reason not to make them.

Raboniel's was the first non-Sibling one, but it seems to be pretty easy to replicate

2 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

Do you have a source for this?

Because here is him saying the opposite:

here

Spoiler

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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3 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Ah, I hope I didn't come across as having taken offense then, tone on the internet and all that.

I wanted to err on the side of caution, precisely because of that reasoning. I would rather be a bit overcareful, then to accidentally offend. :)

3 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Hmm, fair point. I suppose it's hard to say what comes from the suppressor affecting stormlight, what comes from the suppressor affecting the bond and what comes from the suppressor affecting the surgebinding at this stage.

Though I do want to raise the point that suppressors do not seem to have been deployed en masse historically, if they were the fused would presumably have reverse engineered them far earlier, implying that they are hard to manufacture, that the ancients just didn't know how or that they felt they had some other reason not to make them.

Agreed, as we know very little of mechanics behind suppresors it is difficult to speculate on more than 'other magic systems can be suppresed also'.

On historical use, I was under the impression that the one of Raboniel (used at the beggining of book) was relatively recent invention (i.e. sometime between Last Desolation and Final Desolation). Knights Radiant had access sooner, but those were of Siblind, so they might not have fully understood how to make them.

2 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

That would be great if firearms could be made reliable from any blend of steel. Gunsmiths and engineers spent decades refining materials used in the creation of firearms.

Good point, though they at least can experiment faster with different blends of steel. Soulcaster trained in metallurgy (or at least a bit knowledgeable) should be able to produce different kinds of steel with some practice. But it would take some time before they could reliably produce it.

2 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

It'd also help if soulcasting preserved volume instead of mass, but as we see both with Jasnah's stone into smoke in Kharbrant (smoke billows out) and the soulcasting of air into rock, I think, on the Shattered Plains (air rushes in), mass seems to be what's preserved.

Also a good point :/ I keep forgetting this detail of soulcasting. That does make using casts and water bit less practical.

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4 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

It'd also help if soulcasting preserved volume instead of mass

This is a little weird, there are definitely some cases in which this applies, like the ones you mentioned, but others that this seems to have been ignored, ie. Soulcasting Gavilar into stone; using the power of the internet, your average stone has more than twice as much mass per cubic centimetre than the human body, yet the soulcasting is a perfect 1:1. Brandon himself agrees that something funny is up;

Quote

Sorana (paraphrased)

Is Soulcasting volume- or mass-preserving?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's mass-preserving, but there are some strange things going on and that's why we don't get as much explosions as we should. You can see a bit of what is going on when Jasnah Soulcasts air, there are some little reactions, but not as strong as you ought to get.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

So maybe it would work just fine? Maybe there may be slight imperfections, but anyways, the idea of soulcasting weapons is still viable, even if said water method doesn't work.

5 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

That would be great if firearms could be made reliable from any blend of steel. Gunsmiths and engineers spent decades refining materials used in the creation of firearms

Regarding the alloys of gunmetal, soulcasting seems very instinctive when dealing directly with one of the ten essences, and I think it would be safe to say that with a reference they could crack the right alloy fairly quickly. I mean, if Jasnah can managed to soulcast blood that is perfectly suitable for Shallan to use in a short amount of time with no reference to healthy blood, I think copying a metal's percentage composition shouldn't be too hard.

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5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Raboniel's was the first non-Sibling one, but it seems to be pretty easy to replicate

here

  Hide contents

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)

 

Well, it seems like the other one was from 2015 and from Brandon himself, and this one was from 2008 with Peter going "hem, haw, not quite sure but..." So it seems like we can say the first is more accurate to current canon and lore. I seem to remember another WoB talking about a Gold Compounder dealing with bisection and Brandon was all "The one with more mass would be the 'new body' that reheals" which is pretty insane,

Also Kaladin survived being stabbed in the spine and suffering extreme nerve damage. Since decapitation is so effective precisely because it severs the brain and spine from the body, and mechanically what Lezian (I think) tried to do is the same thing, we can say that Cosmere healing is pretty CRAZY, and if Stormlight and F-Gold are essentially the same power, then Radiants win in the healing department since all Radiants have ample access to it, while F-Gold users are far and few in-between, and without compounding the power comes at a dear price.

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8 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I could have sworn it was in the Mistborn annotations, but the best I can find is this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/291/#e11199

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

here

  Reveal hidden contents

Yeah, I think 2008 is close to a point where a WoB should be considered questionable. After reading Wax's final battle with Miles, beheading doesn't seem much of a reach.

8 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

It'd also help if soulcasting preserved volume instead of mass, but as we see both with Jasnah's stone into smoke in Kharbrant (smoke billows out) and the soulcasting of air into rock, I think, on the Shattered Plains (air rushes in), mass seems to be what's preserved.

6 hours ago, therunner said:

Also a good point :/ I keep forgetting this detail of soulcasting. That does make using casts and water bit less practical.

I'm sure you can account for it because modern plastic molds have to account for expansion/condensation of material. You'd just have to spend some time filing and/or grinding the part.

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