Scadrian vs. Rosharan magic post RoW

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, ScadrianTank said:

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.

You would be surprised the amount of WoB's from that time are still acurate and in use.

[Inquisitor #5]

On 2021-06-04 at 10:52 PM, therunner said:

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.

Exactly, so I feel like maybe something is up there. I don't think it reasonable that either side in the historical desolations had a significant edge, tech- and knowledge-wise, if the fused had significantly more advanced practical knowledge of realmatics/arcana/magi-science, engineering and technology then the desolations should have been even more devastating, if team Honor had the same advantages then the desolations should have been far less devastating. It's of course possible that the fused being able to aggregate knowledge over time eventually tips the scales, even if the desolations hadn't been getting more frequent. I suppose that I just feel like if they could easily have whipped up a suppressor, the historical radiants would have, because being able to shut down your enemies' magic is a huge advantage and based on the fact that Raboniel apparently reverse engineered it based on getting a look at it once it feels like it can't be too complicated, so the ancients must have had a reason not to replicate them. To be fair, such reason might be along the lines of what's said about the bondsmith spren, the whole "wanting more than three is seditious" and, if it's a bondsmith fabrial, then it might be seen as infringing on something holy, rather than a mundane reason like "we don't know how" or "we've not found the right kind of spren."

 

On 2021-06-05 at 2:04 AM, a Faceless Immortal said:

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.

Huh, would you look at that.

Yeah, soulcasting is weird, it's possible that either mass is retained and we end up with a low density or hollow end product or that extra energy is pulled from or shunted into the spiritual in cases where this would be an issue. Possibly we only run into mass/volume incongruencies if we also try to change the phase of matter?

I do agree that it's still generally viable, especially with lower tech firearms, like the cast bronze cannons I've already mentioned, which might also be more suited to use in the Rosharan atmosphere, because they're essentially a bronze urn with a hole here to set fire to the charge and a hole there for projectiles to come out of once you light said charge, so there aren't a lot of parts that can fail. On that note, shardplate also makes for the possibility of making these things man-portable, which I'm sure everyone on the recieving end would think is grand. 

 

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[Frustration]

48 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Exactly, so I feel like maybe something is up there. I don't think it reasonable that either side in the historical desolations had a significant edge, tech- and knowledge-wise, if the fused had significantly more advanced practical knowledge of realmatics/arcana/magi-science, engineering and technology then the desolations should have been even more devastating, if team Honor had the same advantages then the desolations should have been far less devastating. It's of course possible that the fused being able to aggregate knowledge over time eventually tips the scales, even if the desolations hadn't been getting more frequent. I suppose that I just feel like if they could easily have whipped up a suppressor, the historical radiants would have, because being able to shut down your enemies' magic is a huge advantage and based on the fact that Raboniel apparently reverse engineered it based on getting a look at it once it feels like it can't be too complicated, so the ancients must have had a reason not to replicate them. To be fair, such reason might be along the lines of what's said about the bondsmith spren, the whole "wanting more than three is seditious" and, if it's a bondsmith fabrial, then it might be seen as infringing on something holy, rather than a mundane reason like "we don't know how" or "we've not found the right kind of spren."

Raboniel didn't know you could put spren in gemstones until after the false desolation, so without that she couldn't make it(at least I think) and so that was all she needed.

[Inquisitor #5]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Raboniel didn't know you could put spren in gemstones until after the false desolation, so without that she couldn't make it(at least I think) and so that was all she needed.

Oh, I thought this was the old style of fabrial, spren manifesting as devices. If it's a modern fabrial the fact that its design mirrors the Sibling's suppressor is really strange, imo. Then arranging metal into three gem housings should be halfway to a soulcaster.

 

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[Frustration]

1 minute ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Oh, I thought this was the old style of fabrial, spren manifesting as devices. If it's a modern fabrial the fact that its design mirrors the Sibling's suppressor is really strange, imo. Then arranging metal into three gem housings should be halfway to a soulcaster.

 

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a lot of the Siblings fabrial's were almost identicle to modern ones, like heating or gathering moisture, the only problem they had was powering them.

[Inquisitor #5]

3 minutes ago, Frustration said:

a lot of the Siblings fabrial's were almost identicle to modern ones, like heating or gathering moisture, the only problem they had was powering them.

I assume that to be identical in function, not design, personally.

Quote

She'd been able to piece together many of the tower's mechanics. Though they were—like Soulcasters—created by somehow trapping spren in Shadesmar. Their functions, however, were similar to the ones designed by modern artifabrians.

Quote

She had no idea what to make of the thing. A collection of four garnets? No spren appeared to be trapped in any of them.

-Rhythm of War, chapter 9

Quote

"We inspected the suppression fabrial in Shadesmar, as you asked," Rushu said. "Your theory is correct, it manifests a spren in Shadesmar as Soulcasters do. But on this side, there is no sign of that spren in the gemstones."

-Rhythm of War, chapter 19

This would indicate that the field suppressor is an old style fabrial, which makes the spren-in-gem discovery seem irrelevant.

 

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[BenduLuke]

On 6/4/2021 at 1:31 AM, therunner said:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

 

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).

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Likely building size fair enough. As many Spren can represent in multiple sizes not conclusive and they might be able to be forced into a more manipulable size. If that is their static size you could use less material with much larger gaps.

I wasn't directly refering to his trying harder though that is simptomatic of his mastery of his abilities over the years. The lack of effort he used in his fight with Vin was indicative of his attitude to only do the very minimum with his abilities since virtually no one could challenge him. In other words I suspect with that much potential power comes a degree of motivation to do more than the minimum necessary in general. Where someone with less ability because they need to try harder could eventually reach a point where their own skill and ability outstrips the one with greater potential. (something I have seen over and over in real life.)

Wax was doing feats similar to Vin's mist powered pushes and some she never imagined because of his skill and innate ability to increase his power.

Deflected hits from shardblades and hits against shardplate at near normal strength levels that caused the damage which implies to me that the durability proposed by many of you is at least somewhat overrated. We never saw Kal when he blocked a hit thrown across the room or break his arm by shard enhanced strength. I do grant that so long as there is stormlight the plate will mend, but that doesn't mean it was impenetrable only that it might just heal over any holes.

Singers all have greater strength than humans, and Fused greater still, but we have no baseline for measure of any of their absolute strength. Our measurements are all relative, and Roshar has been said to have lower gravity which implies less absolute strength in general of all the inhabitants.

Kal when he was fighting Amram on the beach was lashing rocks at him. Some were pretty big and he was going through massive amounts of stormlight to do it and evade his several opponents.

Upon consideration and further reading it was Kal's skill that enabled him to reverse lash the Defeated's head alone to the ground and was only possible because he stuck him off the ground. Reverse lashings seem to require something being drawn to what the windrunner is touching and if that attracted thing is on the ground (why the defeated was lashed to a wall above the ground) could cause it to fail more often than not. The connection to the ground interferes with reverse lashings.

We really don't know how fast Windrunners are moving since their motion is always relative to their opponents. Certainly it hasn't been show as so fast that wind resistance, directions changes or friction become a problem.

A-Gold can give insights into an opponent.

A-Aluminum neutralizes the Radiants most effective weapon, potentially injuring the Spren the weapon is made of at the same time, and providing an attack of opportunity that is potentially lethal to the Radiant due to the shock of their blades ineffectiveness. All of this after being under fire for a period of time by potentially heavy weapons. There is also, though potentially remote, that being near the aluminum savant might do to stromlight what it does to metal. Also an aluminum misting might be able to be turned into a fullborn by hemalugy without the detrimental spirit holes over time.

Subsumers have the advantage of mobility which can enable precision strikes anywhere.

Gaspers can attack from unexpected locations or under unexpected conditions. Rivers, poison clouds, underwater, extreme altitudes and so on.

Scadrial does have timers, cannons, explosives, and machine guns, so they have all they need to have flack and anti-air weaponry. You can also be the southern continent has anti-air weaponry since they have bonified air ships. not just muscle powered (probably soon to be fixed) floating platforms.

Ettemetal explosives are potential city destroying ordinance. Building size is not a problem.

Preservation provides structure and stability, while Ruin provides energy and change. Both are required for life. It is the balance between the opposites, decay wrapped in stability and energy wrapped in structure, that allows for change and growth without complete chaos. You may notice that cultivation operates in much the same balance as does the old magic. Harmony doesn't combine Ruin and Preservation, he balances them destruction vs construction and chaos vs order. They are literally opposites in balance on Scadrial.

Rosharans might get the idea of firearms from Scadrial, but I think they would approach it differently. I think theirs would be designed more around Repulsor fabrials not chemically propelled projectiles. Imagine the variety of projectiles they could use.

On 6/4/2021 at 10:53 AM, Inquisitor #5 said:

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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I haven't seen any evidence of greater power creating greater slipperiness in allomancy. On the contrary is seems to impart greater control.

I found a WoB about momentum with regard to steelpushes.

Questioner

Everybody talks about steel-steel twinborns. A big topic of discussion. What I'm thinking about, I haven't seen anybody ask, what happens when somebody who's tapping speed, does a steelpush, does the steelpush react in realtime or accelerated time? And the object-- is it like a railgun?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm surprised that no one's asked me that before. This gets really dangerous really fast... It's RAFO territory, but you are thinking along the right lines.

Oathbringer San Francisco signing (Nov. 15, 2017)

The momentum of your motion does seem to be translated into the momentum of the push.

The 10x seems to be a generally accepted value and I remember reading it somewhere, but could find it.

I think I follow your objection. Guns are viewed as making small holes so may not create massive injury, but that is not necessarily the case. Hollow points make a small entry wound but massive internal damage. So do explosive rounds. Some of Ranette's Hazekiller rounds are designed to stop Kolos and Thugs in their tracks so have massive impacts. Given this and the Scadrian metalugy there are many combinations of firearms that could be devastating even to Radiants of almost any oath and by nature from a distance negating Radiant's greatest advantages at this point. Any that include even a small amount of aluminum could play havoc not just with healing but many other surges as well gravity being one. Even vampires react poorly to silver and garlic coated bullets.

It seems to me that the mechanics of Radiants and metalborn are fundamentally different. In order to suppress a Radiant you need to block the conversion of stormlight into a surge and that can be by using a counter tone like void tone, but to block a metal born you may need to block the key tone of the ability since all Scadirans are innately invested though most only latently so.

 

On 6/4/2021 at 0:02 PM, ScadrianTank said:

Do you have a source for this?

Because here is him saying the opposite:

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. 

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.

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,

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.

I don't recall any windrunners actually reversing direction? Kal caught his father and had to slow so as not to hurt him so it seems inertia is an issue with lashings. Windrunners do seem relatively fast compared to their opponents but not so fast that wind resistance or friction seem to cause an issue nor do they seem to change direction so drastically that inertia becomes an issue. Moving targets are harder to hit but with enough high speed projectiles that becomes a moot point.

From what I have seen so far Fabrials and manufacturing techniques do not lend themselves to mass production, but the Industrial processes of Scadrial do and seem to be in place already to do that.

The shear versatility and combinations of powers in my opinion offers a great counter to the shear brute force of Rosharan surges and the difference in the level of technology between the two creates a substantial advantage when paired with magic to Scadiral.

Scadrial's magic also offers a substantial advantage in rapidly developing technology more quickly and deploying it more generally.

Yes one on one in most cases if the Radiant can get close they will likely win in a battle with a metalborn, but only if they close the distance otherwise they will more often lose even to the least powerful metalborn. Even a simple Coppercloud could get within an alerter fabrials defense to surprise and eliminate a Radiant from a distance.

Brute strength such as Roshar has is only so useful against versatility, skill, technology and cunning with some potential applied force such as Scadrial has.

[Inquisitor #5]

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

I haven't seen any evidence of greater power creating greater slipperiness in allomancy. On the contrary is seems to impart greater control.

That's not at all what I was saying though, I'm saying that you can be as strong as you like but it won't help you lift a frictionless object. In this case shardplate/blades are "frictionless" unless your allomancy is extremely strong, regardless of how strong your push is, just as you could theoretically have a push powerful enough to affect orbital paths but you still couldn't move a gram of aluminium.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

A-Gold can give insights into an opponent.

A-gold lets you see a vision of who you might have become, had you made different choices, and generally seems rather distracting, I fail to see how it gives insights into other people.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

We really don't know how fast Windrunners are moving since their motion is always relative to their opponents.

We can calculate average speeds from known times and distances, other assumptions should follow from physics, calculate how fast they'd move under X Rosharan gravities.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

A-Aluminum neutralizes the Radiants most effective weapon, potentially injuring the Spren the weapon is made of at the same time, and providing an attack of opportunity that is potentially lethal to the Radiant due to the shock of their blades ineffectiveness. All of this after being under fire for a period of time by potentially heavy weapons. There is also, though potentially remote, that being near the aluminum savant might do to stromlight what it does to metal. Also an aluminum misting might be able to be turned into a fullborn by hemalugy without the detrimental spirit holes over time.

Aluminium burns near enough instantaneously, so they'd need crack timing, assuming that it'd even work, which I personally doubt.

Fun fact, even a regular blunted sword swung by a human not in power armour can tear flesh and break bone, so even if the blade just acted like a blunt slab of metal someone hit by it could still be in trouble.

A savant is not known to do anything to metal, to my knowledge.

I seriously doubt that aluminium feruchemy is the path to safe hemalurgy, in fact I doubt there is such a path.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Hollow points make a small entry wound but massive internal damage.

Fair enough.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Some of Ranette's Hazekiller rounds are designed to stop Kolos and Thugs in their tracks so have massive impacts.

Also fair.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Any that include even a small amount of aluminum could play havoc not just with healing but many other surges as well gravity being one.

Aluminium makes healing not take, fair, it needs to stay in the wound though.

I think you'd need a significant mass of lead before it starts messing with lashings, like, fill a windrunner up with so much that there's a significant pull from all this non-magical stuff towards the ground. If a single aluminium bullet would be enough to disrupt a lashing it should be enough to disrupt a metalborn.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

It seems to me that the mechanics of Radiants and metalborn are fundamentally different. In order to suppress a Radiant you need to block the conversion of stormlight into a surge and that can be by using a counter tone like void tone, but to block a metal born you may need to block the key tone of the ability since all Scadirans are innately invested though most only latently so.

I read the mechanics as fundamentally similar, investiture in, power out. So if you prevent the investiture from ever translating into power, you don't need to care about blocking the power.

I've already said that I think the suppressors work off connection, so I don't think anti-tones are required for any of this.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Scadrial's magic also offers a substantial advantage in rapidly developing technology more quickly and deploying it more generally.

How so, is the planet that mostly runs on earth-analogue science really at a magical integration and tech dev advantage when compared to magi-tech planet?

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

From what I have seen so far Fabrials and manufacturing techniques do not lend themselves to mass production, but the Industrial processes of Scadrial do and seem to be in place already to do that.

That seems like a fair assesment at the moment, we'll habe to see how fabrial science/engineering develops.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Brute strength such as Roshar has is only so useful against versatility, skill, technology and cunning with some potential applied force such as Scadrial has.

Funny thing is, you can be skilled, versatile and cunning with surgebinding too.

 

¤_¤

Edited June 10, 2021 by Inquisitor #5
Spelling

[BenduLuke]

53 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

That's not at all what I was saying though, I'm saying that you can be as strong as you like but it won't help you lift a frictionless object. In this case shardplate/blades are "frictionless" unless your allomancy is extremely strong, regardless of how strong your push is, just as you could theoretically have a push powerful enough to affect orbital paths but you still couldn't move a gram of aluminium.

A-gold lets you see a vision of who you might have become, had you made different choices, and generally seems rather distracting, I fail to see how it gives insights into other people.

We can calculate average speeds from known times and distances, other assumptions should follow from physics, calculate how fast they'd move under X Rosharan gravities.

Aluminium burns near enough instantaneously, so they'd need crack timing, assuming that it'd even work, which I personally doubt.

Fun fact, even a regular blunted sword swung by a human not in power armour can tear flesh and break bone, so even if the blade just acted like a blunt slab of metal someone hit by it could still be in trouble.

A savant is not known to do anything to metal, to my knowledge.

I seriously doubt that aluminium feruchemy is the path to safe hemalurgy, in fact I doubt there is such a path.

Fair enough.

Also fair.

Aluminium makes healing not take, fair, it needs to stay in the wound though.

I think you'd need a significant mass of lead before it starts messing with lashings, like, fill a windrunner up with so much that there's a significant pull from all this non-magical stuff towards the ground. If a single aluminium bullet would be enough to disrupt a lashing it should be enough to disrupt a metalborn.

I read the mechanics as fundamentally similar, investiture in, power out. So if you prevent the investiture from ever translating into power, you don't need to care about blocking the power.

I've already said that I think the suppressors work off connection, so I don't think anti-tones are required for any of this.

How so, is the planet that mostly runs on earth-analogue science really at a magical integration and tech dev advantage when compared to magi-tech planet?

That seems like a fair assesment at the moment, we'll habe to see how fabrial science/engineering develops.

Funny thing is, you can be skilled, versatile and cunning with surgebinding too.

 

¤_¤

yes you are right pushing any invested thing is a matter of force or perhaps skill. someone like Wax might not be able to push a shardblade in general but might be precise enough to push the tip with enough force to divert it.

Your right I got gold mixed with Malatium, but a better self understanding might lead to more personal options and unpredictability.

That's just it in the battles they don't give distances to enable calculations only general relative positions and motion. Even travel between places is generic without exact distances or precise travel times. again they are relatively fast vs regular conveyance.

Aluminum does seem to burn fast and near instantly removes other metals, but because of that it also doesn't take much to clear metals so it burning fast may be due to the minimal amount that is used not its actual burning speed.

Suppressors seem to work through connection interference which is why lower oaths went to sleep and surges became more difficult. Anti investiture would be destructive not suppressing. So far anti-investiture is only confirmed with Roshar's investiture fuel.

Yes surgebinding can have some degree of limited versatility, skill, and cunning. Any Radiant can have 2 defined surges and their resonance based on the spren and can use those with a degree of versatility, skill, and cunning. Their fabrials cannot replicate Radiant surges to create other interactions yet since that is a lost art. Metalborn can have any number of combinations and their resonances to create a much greater degree of versatility, skill, and cunning to work with, and their medalions do replicate metalborn abilities. That means a single metalborn without damage could have 5 metalborn powers to combine at once and interact with each other. Standard medalions can hold 3 powers at a time and if given to a twin born that means 5 interacting powers potential for each individual metalborn. It was the variety of power combinations and interactions I was referring to when I said Scadrians have greater versatility. I wasn't refering to the versatile use of a limited set of powers evident in Radiants.

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Likely building size fair enough. As many Spren can represent in multiple sizes not conclusive and they might be able to be forced into a more manipulable size. If that is their static size you could use less material with much larger gaps.

first off please separate the paragraphs/sentences you are replying to it makes it much easier to read

second off no one aside from the spren can determine thier size.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

I wasn't directly refering to his trying harder though that is simptomatic of his mastery of his abilities over the years. The lack of effort he used in his fight with Vin was indicative of his attitude to only do the very minimum with his abilities since virtually no one could challenge him. In other words I suspect with that much potential power comes a degree of motivation to do more than the minimum necessary in general. Where someone with less ability because they need to try harder could eventually reach a point where their own skill and ability outstrips the one with greater potential. (something I have seen over and over in real life.)

That doesn't mean anything, true a coinshot might have more fine control, but the healing and speed Fullborn get is more important than those few degrees of skill

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Wax was doing feats similar to Vin's mist powered pushes and some she never imagined because of his skill and innate ability to increase his power.

He only even came close to Vin's mist powered pushes when using the bands

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Deflected hits from shardblades and hits against shardplate at near normal strength levels that caused the damage which implies to me that the durability proposed by many of you is at least somewhat overrated. We never saw Kal when he blocked a hit thrown across the room or break his arm by shard enhanced strength. I do grant that so long as there is stormlight the plate will mend, but that doesn't mean it was impenetrable only that it might just heal over any holes.

2-3 bullets is a lot, plate's breaking to blades is likely similar to Atium being pushable, there is so much investiture in one spot the rules start to break down.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

We really don't know how fast Windrunners are moving since their motion is always relative to their opponents. Certainly it hasn't been show as so fast that wind resistance, directions changes or friction become a problem.

Changing direction won't ever be a problem for them, because of the way lashings work to them hey seem to always be moving in a single direction, as gravity switches which way it pulls them, but it switches for all of them at once.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

A-Aluminum neutralizes the Radiants most effective weapon, potentially injuring the Spren the weapon is made of at the same time, and providing an attack of opportunity that is potentially lethal to the Radiant due to the shock of their blades ineffectiveness. All of this after being under fire for a period of time by potentially heavy weapons. There is also, though potentially remote, that being near the aluminum savant might do to stromlight what it does to metal. Also an aluminum misting might be able to be turned into a fullborn by hemalugy without the detrimental spirit holes over time.

A-aluminum might neutralize thier most effective weapon, that is not confirmed, and even if it does,  single plated puch kills them and it doesn't matter.

And A-aluminum doesn't effect metal outside the body, why would it effect sotrmlight?

Or heal soul wounds for that matter.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Subsumers have the advantage of mobility which can enable precision strikes anywhere.

Soulcasters do the same so Roshar already is used to this, and using the CR they won't be surprised as thier souls will give them away.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Gaspers can attack from unexpected locations or under unexpected conditions. Rivers, poison clouds, underwater, extreme altitudes and so on.

I don't think we have to orry about chemical warefare anytime soon, and again CR, thier souls will reveal them.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

It seems to me that the mechanics of Radiants and metalborn are fundamentally different. In order to suppress a Radiant you need to block the conversion of stormlight into a surge and that can be by using a counter tone like void tone, but to block a metal born you may need to block the key tone of the ability since all Scadirans are innately invested though most only latently so.

Everyone in the Cosmere is inatly invested, Roshar probably more so than Scadrians, so that doesn't work, bronze can tell what surge is being used, so there is no reason for them to be different one suppressor, at least one art.

4 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

I don't recall any windrunners actually reversing direction? Kal caught his father and had to slow so as not to hurt him so it seems inertia is an issue with lashings. Windrunners do seem relatively fast compared to their opponents but not so fast that wind resistance or friction seem to cause an issue nor do they seem to change direction so drastically that inertia becomes an issue. Moving targets are harder to hit but with enough high speed projectiles that becomes a moot point.

if Kal had lashed Lirin up he would have continued to accelerate until he reached terminal velocity, without ever slowing. Changing direction doesn't affect them.

5 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

The shear versatility and combinations of powers in my opinion offers a great counter to the shear brute force of Rosharan surges and the difference in the level of technology between the two creates a substantial advantage when paired with magic to Scadiral.

please stop repeating this, we have gone over how soulcasters are capable of mass production.

5 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Scadrial's magic also offers a substantial advantage in rapidly developing technology more quickly and deploying it more generally.

How?

5 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Yes one on one in most cases if the Radiant can get close they will likely win in a battle with a metalborn, but only if they close the distance otherwise they will more often lose even to the least powerful metalborn. Even a simple Coppercloud could get within an alerter fabrials defense to surprise and eliminate a Radiant from a distance.

And a single Bondsmith and Elsecaller could go around and soulcast everyone on Scadrial into stone killing them all, your point?

5 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Brute strength such as Roshar has is only so useful against versatility, skill, technology and cunning with some potential applied force such as Scadrial has.

We've gone over technology, but why does Scadrial get cunning and skill that Roshar doesn't?

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

yes you are right pushing any invested thing is a matter of force or perhaps skill. someone like Wax might not be able to push a shardblade in general but might be precise enough to push the tip with enough force to divert it.

Pushing on a part of something is harder, so doing it on a shardblade would be harder than pushing on all of it, which is already out of his league.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

So far anti-investiture is only confirmed with Roshar's investiture fuel.

anti-investiure is quite obviously a Cosmere wide interaction.

[therunner]

I will address only points others did not, or to add some point.

11 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Wax was doing feats similar to Vin's mist powered pushes and some she never imagined because of his skill and innate ability to increase his power.

Wax never even approached what Vin was doing.

Vin: 1) Pushed on trace metals 2) Pushed on metal inside peoples bodies (including very full metalminds) 3) Pushed on hemalurgic spikes 4) Flattened a giant castle just by trace metals in stone

Wax: 1) destroyed one wooden building, but pushing on nails holding the building together. And since he was above the building, the metal items needed to support his increased weight. He did nothing else that would be comparable, and in fact cannot do those other things (he does not even see trace metals, if he could push on metalminds impaled in hands, he would do so against Miles, in BoM he never pushes on spikes (but I am not there in my re-read yet))

EDIT: One last point, Wax was unable to realize that Bands were not aluminum, and those are even less invested than Shardblades. If nearly full metalminds is too Invested for him to push on, Shardblades are completely out of his reach.

11 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Singers all have greater strength than humans, and Fused greater still, but we have no baseline for measure of any of their absolute strength. Our measurements are all relative, and Roshar has been said to have lower gravity which implies less absolute strength in general of all the inhabitants.

Oh, we do have a baseline. Rosharan gravity is ~0.7 that of Scadrial, and since humans did not evolve there but only adapted it would stand to reason they would be at worst roughly 0.7 times weaker than usual. Then again, there are bridge crews that support bridge that weight ~2000 kg (in Rosharan gravity) at minimum for hours on end and can be lifted by 25 men, giving them strength comparable to normal human (lifting 80 kg overhead).

So for worst case scenario, If we assume that warform is 2-3 times as strong as Rosharan human, that gives it 2*0.7 = 1.4 / 3*0.7 = 2.1 strength of Scadrian human, potentially nearly that of someone burning pewter. Again even Regals are stronger, and Fused stronger still. The one that hit Jasnah was of Progression so could grow his muscles as he desired, and he knew what plate can withstand so he had no reason to hold back. Conservatively he was as strong as ~4 Scadrian humans, and he was hitting her with both hands.

But if Rosharan humans are closer in strength to Scadrial ones, as the bridge crews suggest, then the Fused hitting Jasnah could have been as strong as ~5-6 people.

11 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Kal when he was fighting Amram on the beach was lashing rocks at him. Some were pretty big and he was going through massive amounts of stormlight to do it and evade his several opponents.

I re-read that section, Kal lashed exactly two stones and neither at Amaram. He lashed (multiple lashings) one at one Fused to stop it from going after Dalinar, and another to spook Amaram's horse to carry away Shardbow. In neither case does he comment on it consuming a lot of stormlight, in fact he does not comment on it at all he just does it.

In that fight he fought Amaram (with plate, 2 Shardblades, and Yelig-Nar so learning to use all surges), couple of Fused with Gravitation (2-3) and a couple of Fused with Progression (6-7), and he had to split his attention between Amaram and protecting himself and Dalinar. He mostly used up his light to heal his wounds, because Kal sustained the following injuries

1. Broken both ankles.
2. Broken shoulder.
3. Some internal injuries from being hit and flung with a club.
4. Stabbed into stomach.
5. Grabbed by a foot and slammed into ground (2x).
6. Again hit by clubs at least two more times, causing internal injuries.
7. Stomped on (by Fused with Progression), shattering multiple ribs and causing most likely massive internal injuries.

After all this (and with Fused carrying away spheres) he runs out of Stormlight, but is still healed well enough that his injuries are no longer life-threatening. Even Bloodmaker would use up at least 1 month of health to survive this (Wayne used up 2 weeks to heal two bullet wounds and having his back burned).

11 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Ettemetal explosives are potential city destroying ordinance. Building size is not a problem.

That is only ever mentioned by Mr. Suit, while talking with Wax who holds Bands, and trying to get him to stand down. He had every reason to overstate what the explosives could do. Considering that ship was only meant to destroy relatively single temple, it does not make much sense they would carry this level of ordinance. Also, when previously in Mr. Suit's head he was mostly thinking about the airships themselves, not about how impressive the weapons are (this is admittedly not that strong an evidence, but you would think he would also think about city destroying weapon when thinking about how will warfare change).

7 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

That's just it in the battles they don't give distances to enable calculations only general relative positions and motion. Even travel between places is generic without exact distances or precise travel times. again they are relatively fast vs regular conveyance.

But we can calculate how much speed they can get up, and how long it will take them, very easily. And it is a couple of seconds to move at hundreds of km per hour under few lashings.

We also now that Kal went from Shattered Plains to within a few days of walk from Hearthstone under half a day, and that distance is ~1800 km (since we know roughly the size of the continent), giving speed ~150 km/h of sustained lashing.

7 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Suppressors seem to work through connection interference which is why lower oaths went to sleep and surges became more difficult. Anti investiture would be destructive not suppressing. So far anti-investiture is only confirmed with Roshar's investiture fuel.

All Shards have related anti-investiture.

In the latest youtube Livestream someone asked what would happen if you introduced proper anti-investiture into Sel's cognitive, and per Brandon that would be a bad idea. In fact he himself used the words 'anti-investiture of right type', so clearly Investiture of other Shards also has anti-investiture. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/467/#e14713)

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by therunner
one additional point

[Inquisitor #5]

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

yes you are right pushing any invested thing is a matter of force or perhaps skill. someone like Wax might not be able to push a shardblade in general but might be precise enough to push the tip with enough force to divert it.

 

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

Pushing on a part of something is harder, so doing it on a shardblade would be harder than pushing on all of it, which is already out of his league.

I'm inclined to agree with Frustration here.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

EDIT: One last point, Wax was unable to realize that Bands were not aluminum, and those are even less invested than Shardblades. If nearly full metalminds is too Invested for him to push on, Shardblades are completely out of his reach.

And this sort of seals the deal, does it not? If the BoM, which, per WoB, don't have enough investiture to be a shardblade can't be affected/sensed by allomancy then it stands to reason that shardblades can't either, so pushing on them, in whole or in part, is essentially out of the question.

It might be possible with the Bands and Vin could probably have done it while she was ascending, but I wouldn't be suprised if even Rashek at baseline super-mistborn (no nicrosil shenanigans, just baseline strength) couldn't sense a blade, let alone affect it.

11 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Your right I got gold mixed with Malatium, but a better self understanding might lead to more personal options and unpredictability.

I'd rate that a maybe, I could also see an augur becoming indecisive from their understanding that every choice would close off so many paths and I don't know if they'd be that much more self-aware than a particularly introspective person.

11 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Aluminum does seem to burn fast and near instantly removes other metals, but because of that it also doesn't take much to clear metals so it burning fast may be due to the minimal amount that is used not its actual burning speed.

But you're also left with no more aluminium reserves after burning it. Either it burns incredibly rapidly, it wipes itself when burned, ot both and I see no reason to doubt its given rate of burn. So I'm willing to grant that you could burn away a lashing applied to you, or a single "jolt" from a painrial (though you'd still get hit by every "jolt" except that one if you remain within its influence) as these are foreign investiture imposed on you, but I'm not willing to grant that you could continually burn aluminium to be investiture immune, as I have no reason to believe that it doesn't burn away practically instantly.

12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Suppressors seem to work through connection interference which is why lower oaths went to sleep and surges became more difficult.

Ah, then I've misunderstood you, I thought you had interpreted the suppressors to use tones.

12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Anti investiture would be destructive not suppressing. So far anti-investiture is only confirmed with Roshar's investiture fuel.

If I may be very pedantic, by this logic we've actually only seen anti-voidlight and anti-stormlight and we can't infer anti-life-, war- or towerlight. To me it seems clear that any investiture manifesting in the same way (gaseous) could be flipped to anti-x with the right tools and knowledge.

Now, we don't know of any way to store, say, Preservation's mist, but that is to me the only hurdle, we know a method that works to flip it once you can do that.

12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Their fabrials cannot replicate Radiant surges to create other interactions yet since that is a lost art.

I don't see why they need to be able yo do that, we see fabrials all the time that can do things that seem outside the skillset of any radiant and we can easily infer functions that we haven't seen.

For instance the battlefield dehumidifier (water attractor) used in WoR, where Navani worries that they might have tuned it wrongly and that it might suck the blood out of their soldiers, we've never seen this happen, but we know it's a real possibility and you could deliberately make a blood attractor to, say, drop on an enemy position like a bomb.

I frankly think that a Rosharan industrial revolution is possible on the backs of pairing fabrials and waterwheels and a bit of engineering, heatrials and soulcasting could see them have bona fide steam turbines, with the ability to turn stormlight into mechanical work.

12 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Metalborn can have any number of combinations and their resonances to create a much greater degree of versatility, skill, and cunning to work with, and their medalions do replicate metalborn abilities. That means a single metalborn without damage could have 5 metalborn powers to combine at once and interact with each other. Standard medalions can hold 3 powers at a time and if given to a twin born that means 5 interacting powers potential for each individual metalborn.

Yes, there are far more possible combinations of metalborn, but they are also not reliable powersets, every windrunner gets the same powerset, reliably, but not every metalborn gets a power that's useful in a fight, let alone two, or two that interact in such a way that one of them becomes incredibly useful.

I'd also be cautious of claiming five powers for a twinborn, as Allik has only seen one medallion in his life that does three, IIRC, and he talks about the ones that do two as absolutely wonderful devices, though they're obviously common enough to outfit an entire airship crew and they have at least one that does another power combination as well. So personally I'm sticking to two per medallion, as that seems to be, if not common, then at least not rare.

This is not to say that having a reliable powerset is inherently better than every possible twinborn + medallion interaction, but the static powersets of the radiants might still beat most ability combinations possible for metalborn and radiants are far more common than any given twinborn, even the known possible number of bondsmiths matches the number of known crashers, ever.

Sure, a twin gold, twin steel is incredibly dangerous, but you need one of two very rare combinations to start with, and such a person would still need to eat and sleep and might be vulnerable to adhesion (glued to the floor) and abrasion (sliiiiiiide), as well as more traditional things like caltrops and they'd presumably not be immune to pain, unlike Miles, because they've not been doing the infinite healing for forever.

I'm also not sure if you'd get resonances off medallions, but I know there's a rough threashold where you stop getting them because you have too many powers.

13 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

It was the variety of power combinations and interactions I was referring to when I said Scadrians have greater versatility. I wasn't refering to the versatile use of a limited set of powers evident in Radiants.

Ah, I misunderstood then.

 

¤_¤

[ScadrianTank]

18 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

For instance the battlefield dehumidifier (water attractor) used in WoR, where Navani worries that they might have tuned it wrongly and that it might suck the blood out of their soldiers, we've never seen this happen, but we know it's a real possibility and you could deliberately make a blood attractor to, say, drop on an enemy position like a bomb.

Identity and perception shenanigans might prevent that from ever happening with this design of fabrial. As spanreeds take into account "frame of reference" because of how the spren perceives its surroundings, water attractor might only work with liquid in the air and pools, lakes, rivers, and so on that are in its reach. 

Now, because blood is one of the essences, you might be able to create a blood-sucking fabrial bomb, but you would have to use a lot more Stormlight to push through the resistance of a human body. Like an Allomancer has to be more powerful to push on metals inside a body.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

It might be possible with the Bands and Vin could probably have done it while she was ascending, but I wouldn't be suprised if even Rashek at baseline super-mistborn (no nicrosil shenanigans, just baseline strength) couldn't sense a blade, let alone affect it.

It's likely given some of Brandon's comments that TLR actually used the well to make himself super powerful instead of nicrocil/lerasium.

33 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

Identity and perception shenanigans might prevent that from ever happening with this design of fabrial. As spanreeds take into account "frame of reference" because of how the spren perceives its surroundings, water attractor might only work with liquid in the air and pools, lakes, rivers, and so on that are in its reach. 

Now, because blood is one of the essences, you might be able to create a blood-sucking fabrial bomb, but you would have to use a lot more Stormlight to push through the resistance of a human body. Like an Allomancer has to be more powerful to push on metals inside a body.

blood and water are the same essence

[ScadrianTank]

17 minutes ago, Frustration said:

blood and water are the same essence

I mean, sure. That doesn't necessarily mean that an attractor with a rainspren in a garnet would attract the same substances as an alespren or acidspren. 

[therunner]

2 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

If I may be very pedantic, by this logic we've actually only seen anti-voidlight and anti-stormlight and we can't infer anti-life-, war- or towerlight. To me it seems clear that any investiture manifesting in the same way (gaseous) could be flipped to anti-x with the right tools and knowledge.

Now, we don't know of any way to store, say, Preservation's mist, but that is to me the only hurdle, we know a method that works to flip it once you can do that.

 

Per very brand new information (last livestream on youtube), capturing mists into gemstones is theoretically possible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A67G4ObX7CM&t=6600s). Since clearly no has yet noticed it, it is most likely not as easy as on Roshar (i.e. leave them lying around and they will fill) but maybe if you pressurized the mist and put the gemstone nearby maybe?

 

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, ScadrianTank said:

I mean, sure. That doesn't necessarily mean that an attractor with a rainspren in a garnet would attract the same substances as an alespren or acidspren. 

Too much expression strength and it likely won't matter.

[Inquisitor #5]

3 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

Identity and perception shenanigans might prevent that from ever happening with this design of fabrial.

I feel like Navani wouldn't be worried if it wasn't a known possiblity, possibly something that happened on a small scale while these were being developed, but not extensive enough to be life-threatening, just a kink to iron out.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Per very brand new information (last livestream on youtube), capturing mists into gemstones is theoretically possible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A67G4ObX7CM&t=6600s). Since clearly no has yet noticed it, it is most likely not as easy as on Roshar (i.e. leave them lying around and they will fill) but maybe if you pressurized the mist and put the gemstone nearby maybe?

Ohh, I've not picked up a lot of the information from there yet, many thanks.

 

¤_¤

[BenduLuke]

13 hours ago, therunner said:

EDIT: One last point, Wax was unable to realize that Bands were not aluminum, and those are even less invested than Shardblades. If nearly full metalminds is too Invested for him to push on, Shardblades are completely out of his reach.

Oh, we do have a baseline. Rosharan gravity is ~0.7 that of Scadrial, and since humans did not evolve there but only adapted it would stand to reason they would be at worst roughly 0.7 times weaker than usual. Then again, there are bridge crews that support bridge that weight ~2000 kg (in Rosharan gravity) at minimum for hours on end and can be lifted by 25 men, giving them strength comparable to normal human (lifting 80 kg overhead).

So for worst case scenario, If we assume that warform is 2-3 times as strong as Rosharan human, that gives it 2*0.7 = 1.4 / 3*0.7 = 2.1 strength of Scadrian human, potentially nearly that of someone burning pewter. Again even Regals are stronger, and Fused stronger still. The one that hit Jasnah was of Progression so could grow his muscles as he desired, and he knew what plate can withstand so he had no reason to hold back. Conservatively he was as strong as ~4 Scadrian humans, and he was hitting her with both hands.

But if Rosharan humans are closer in strength to Scadrial ones, as the bridge crews suggest, then the Fused hitting Jasnah could have been as strong as ~5-6 people.

But we can calculate how much speed they can get up, and how long it will take them, very easily. And it is a couple of seconds to move at hundreds of km per hour under few lashings.

We also now that Kal went from Shattered Plains to within a few days of walk from Hearthstone under half a day, and that distance is ~1800 km (since we know roughly the size of the continent), giving speed ~150 km/h of sustained lashing.

All Shards have related anti-investiture.

In the latest youtube Livestream someone asked what would happen if you introduced proper anti-investiture into Sel's cognitive, and per Brandon that would be a bad idea. In fact he himself used the words 'anti-investiture of right type', so clearly Investiture of other Shards also has anti-investiture. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/467/#e14713)

 

After Wax realized they were invested then he sensed the metal. that seems to be a trait of open metalminds.

You quote a lot of numbers and seem to make a lot of assumptions to get those numbers. That is something that needs reference. I have been taking your numbers on faith up until now, but I don't remember any concrete references to any of them. I did find a spread sheet of distances but even the travel time is general. 1/2 a day could be on earth 12 hours, or 6 hours or could be something completely different based on Roshar days. Even those values could be off by several hours either Earth or Roshar. If you estimate is close to right that's maybe 90 mph. I am also not sure he flew from the shattered plains, I think it might have been Eurithiru that he flew from which is about half the distance.

Yes there is probably an anti Preservation or Ruin investiture but it is not evident now and might require other methods to discover than Anti-light which is evident now.

7 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

If I may be very pedantic, by this logic we've actually only seen anti-voidlight and anti-stormlight and we can't infer anti-life-, war- or towerlight. To me it seems clear that any investiture manifesting in the same way (gaseous) could be flipped to anti-x with the right tools and knowledge.

Now, we don't know of any way to store, say, Preservation's mist, but that is to me the only hurdle, we know a method that works to flip it once you can do that.

Since warlight and towerlight are derivative of void, life, and stormlight then it is just a matter of finding their right frequency/rhythm combination since light is wave based. Mist doen't manafest as wave based like light does so would likely need some other method to determine its anti. Even so that would be anti-preservation, and not anti-ruin. Preservations power is stored in Lerasium so make anti-lerasium some how that would certainly be anti-Preservation. Ruin's power is stored in atium so again produce anti-atium somehow. Doesn't that sound like anti-matter. that could have consequences beyond anti-investiture. 

7 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I frankly think that a Rosharan industrial revolution is possible on the backs of pairing fabrials and waterwheels and a bit of engineering, heatrials and soulcasting could see them have bona fide steam turbines, with the ability to turn stormlight into mechanical work.

I don't dispute that will happen eventually but we are not there yet on Roshar and we are there on Scadrial or at least in the early stages of it.

7 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Sure, a twin gold, twin steel is incredibly dangerous, but you need one of two very rare combinations to start with, and such a person would still need to eat and sleep and might be vulnerable to adhesion (glued to the floor) and abrasion (sliiiiiiide), as well as more traditional things like caltrops and they'd presumably not be immune to pain, unlike Miles, because they've not been doing the infinite healing for forever.

I'm also not sure if you'd get resonances off medallions, but I know there's a rough threashold where you stop getting them because you have too many powers.

Do you when you could have one of both powers to create a twin compounder with one medallion? The Threshold is about 4 or 5 powers just like 4 to 6 notes is the limit to produce resonance on a piano. That is why Mistborn, Feruchemists, and Fullborn don't get Resonances. Spirit damage might be why Hemalugists don't get them.

I do have a couple of other reasons why I think Scadrial has an advantage when a conflict occurs. Brandon has stated on multiple occasions that Allomancy is his favorite Cosmere magic so I imagine he will probably give it the edge himself. One other thing unique to metal arts is that it is the only Cosmere magic system with positive feedback loops leading to near infinite power for one individual through compounding. It also has the most synergistic combinations and their resonances of any other Cosmere magic system. Finally Their powers can be unlocked (snapped) and used anywhere in the Cosmere without modification or hacks, and Scadrians could gain most other types of investiture, but it is almost impossibe for others to gain metal arts themselves without the aid of fabrials(medallions) or hemalugy (this scadrian magic can be used to get any magic for a spiritual price).

[Inquisitor #5]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

It's likely given some of Brandon's comments that TLR actually used the well to make himself super powerful instead of nicrocil/lerasium.

Oh, I just meant that Rashek at his base level of super-mistborn is unlikely to be able to sense or affect a blade, I only included the bit on nicrosil to make clear that I wasn't allowing for f-nicrosil shenanigans, as that could potentially affect the outcome (compounded super-mistborn and all.)

8 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

After Wax realized they were invested then he sensed the metal. that seems to be a trait of open metalminds.

Do you have a quote on that, I don't recall that being the case, only that he initially mistakes the Bands for aluminium and, IIRC, he finds them allomantically after his confrontayuon with Suit and at that point they're almost completely drained.

14 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

You quote a lot of numbers and seem to make a lot of assumptions to get those numbers. That is something that needs reference. I have been taking your numbers on faith up until now, but I don't remember any concrete references to any of them.

We know the rough size of Roshar, we know the mass (and thus gravity) of Roshar, we know the length of the day on Roshar, both in Roshar-hours and Earth-hours, the only thing that is unclear is English not having a clear division between a full day (day + night) and day (daytime), my first language for instance has two separate words for these concepts, allowing you to make the distinction far less ambiguously.

In any case we can work backwards from known numbers to see how far is reasonable to move under how many lashings in what time.

22 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Mist doen't manafest as wave based like light does so would likely need some other method to determine its anti.

I mean, the Rosharan lights aren't waveforms either, as is explicitly stated when Navani's experimenting with them.

Seeing as the pulsing of the Well has been confirmed as a Pure Tone of Scadrial I'd hazard that the mists would also respond to the correct sound.

And seeing as it was apparently confirmed that you could stick mist in a gem, it really seems to be the same kind of thing.

26 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Even so that would be anti-preservation, and not anti-ruin.

Yes?

I've never claimed that not to be the case.

29 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Preservations power is stored in Lerasium so make anti-lerasium some how that would certainly be anti-Preservation. Ruin's power is stored in atium so again produce anti-atium somehow.

I agree that these are made of the Shards' powers but not that those are stored in those metals.

Shardblades are made from (presumably) the Ettmetal equivalent for Honor and Cultivation, the Honorblades are presumably made from "Tanavastium," and Raysium, Odium's godmetal, is something the fused are granted access to, and yet the *lights also exist, just as the beads of lerasium and the mists coexisted.

In any case you could theoretically distill lerasium out of the mists, which I'd say is a good indicator that these things are the same stuff, ie Preservation (also, Kelsier literally tells us that these are the same thing in Secret History, if I recall.)

The equivalent to anti-light would be anti-mist, we've yet to see evidence of anti-godmetals, though they should theoretocally exists.

39 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

I don't dispute that will happen eventually but we are not there yet on Roshar and we are there on Scadrial or at least in the early stages of it.

Ah, yeah, I don't mean to bring that into serious discussion here, as I don't think it likely within the parameters of the argument, I just wished to push back against the idea that fabrials are somehow lacking because they don't know how to make surge-fabrials yet.

41 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Do you when you could have one of both powers to create a twin compounder with one medallion?

Sorry, that question is a bit unclear to me, could you please clarify?

45 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

I do have a couple of other reasons why I think Scadrial has an advantage when a conflict occurs. Brandon has stated on multiple occasions that Allomancy is his favorite Cosmere magic so I imagine he will probably give it the edge himself.

Brandon still has to work within the rules he's established. Also, I don't think that arguing that something will probably happen in the future is productive when there is no way of knowing what, if anything, will happen, as we can only work with data we have.

51 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

One other thing unique to metal arts is that it is the only Cosmere magic system with positive feedback loops leading to near infinite power for one individual through compounding.

Have we actually seen what all the magic systems in the cosmere are capable of?

The metallic arts are three magic systems and compounding is literally the effect of magic system cross-contamination, in isolation none of the metallic arts allow for infinite loops.

I'll grant that they are highly synergistic though.

 

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[therunner]

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

After Wax realized they were invested then he sensed the metal. that seems to be a trait of open metalminds.

He only realized they were invested when he was holding them and using them, then he felt the charge inside. He still could not push or pull them, and he had to check other parts of the statue manually for charge, because he could not distinguish it from aluminum.

Also even with Bands he does not seem to be able to push on spikes, as he only comments on the coin his uncle is hiding in his mouth, not on his spikes. But that is conjecture. EDIT: And the conjecture is wrong, as @Inquisitor #5 shows below.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

You quote a lot of numbers and seem to make a lot of assumptions to get those numbers. That is something that needs reference. I have been taking your numbers on faith up until now, but I don't remember any concrete references to any of them. I did find a spread sheet of distances but even the travel time is general. 1/2 a day could be on earth 12 hours, or 6 hours or could be something completely different based on Roshar days. Even those values could be off by several hours either Earth or Roshar. If you estimate is close to right that's maybe 90 mph. I am also not sure he flew from the shattered plains, I think it might have been Eurithiru that he flew from which is about half the distance.

For the speeds I make very little assumptions.

1. Gravitational acceleration on Roshar is known from Arcanum Unbounded (being 0.7 of Cosmere Standard, with Scadrial being 1 Cosmere standard and ~10 m/s^2).
2. The size is estimated from the map of Roshar and distance given in the book and WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/39/#e409). The estimation is done here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/745ucn/twok_finally_the_dimensions_of_the_roshar/). Since that calculation assumes the same main distances as those given in WoB and in books I think it can be considered fairly accurate.

But if we want to stick to books and WoBs,  Kal himself says he traveled over a thousand miles in half a day, 1000 miles ~ 1600 km (Oathbringer, Chapter 5). And per WoB Rosharan day is only 20 hours (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/314/#e8928). So Kaladin averaged ~160 km/h at least, probably a bit over that. EDIT: And that is assuming that Kal meant literally half-of-day, not half of waking hours, which is what people generally mean by that (as far as I am aware). In that case he would be moving at ~260 km/h (assuming Rosharan sleep for 8 hours).

In the previous post I overestimated the distance a bit, but I also overestimated the length of day and those two luckily cancelled out.

Also Kal did travel from Shattered plains, he says so in the same chapter.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Yes there is probably an anti Preservation or Ruin investiture but it is not evident now and might require other methods to discover than Anti-light which is evident now.

True, I merely pushed back on your assertation that anti-investiture is confirmed only for Roshar.

However considering the fact that Mists can be trapped in Gemstones ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A67G4ObX7CM&t=6600s ), and Preservation does have Pure Tone (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/408/#e14586), so I would expect that making of anti-mists could proceed along similar lines.

Edited June 12, 2021 by therunner
one note, spelling

[Inquisitor #5]

8 minutes ago, therunner said:

Also even with Bands he does not seem to be able to push on spikes, as he only comments on the coin his uncle is hiding in his mouth, not on his spikes. But that is conjecture.

Quote

She was using the reserves with startling quickness. She slowed her speed, and for some reason the people beside her jumped, holding their ears. She cocked her head, then PUSHED.

The Push flung the guards a good fifty feet. That left her facing Suit and Telsin, who regarded her with horrified expressions. They were glowing energy to her, but she recognized them. They had spikes inside of them.

Convenient. Those spikes resisted Pushes, but not enough to bother Marasi now. She lifted a hand and flung both of them away by the very metals they'd used to pierce themselves.

-Bands of Mourning, ch. 28

So affecting metals inside someone seems to be a distinct possibility with the Bands, though seeing as Marasi notes how quickly the stores are used up a few seconds or so after she starts tapping you probably couldn't sustain that level of power for long.

 

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[therunner]

2 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

-Bands of Mourning, ch. 28

So affecting metals inside someone seems to be a distinct possibility with the Bands, though seeing as Marasi notes how quickly the stores are used up a few seconds or so after she starts tapping you probably couldn't sustain that level of power for long.

 

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Ah, thank you for correcting me. I was only looking through parts with Wax and bands, I forgot to check parts with Marasi.

[ScadrianTank]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

So affecting metals inside someone seems to be a distinct possibility with the Bands, though seeing as Marasi notes how quickly the stores are used up a few seconds or so after she starts tapping you probably couldn't sustain that level of power for long.

The book seems to imply that the increase in Allomantic power will run out. I speculated a bit on why that is the case in a different topic, but as it stands, Scadrians don't have a way to create medallions with Bands level strength without it running out.

Quote

His resources were diminishing. Not merely the metals inside of him, but the reserves stored inside the Bands. Stores that changed his level of Investiture.

However, I think that in the scene you quoted, Marasi primarily meant Feruchemichal attributes other than nicrosil. Wax later notes that she tapped out nearly all body speed when she went supersonic.

Quote

His speed of body was nearly tapped out – Marasi must have used that in getting to him – so yes, Suit would have time, though would he actually do it?

 

[Inquisitor #5]

23 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

However, I think that in the scene you quoted, Marasi primarily meant Feruchemichal attributes other than nicrosil. Wax later notes that she tapped out nearly all body speed when she went supersonic.

That is a fair assesment, if only the characters could take care to use precise language in tense situations.

That is to say, to me that reads as multiple stores being depleted quickly (though not at a uniform rate, I imagine that she uses up very little feruchemical strength for instance, on account of how there's no mention of her ending up somewhere between body-builder and Hulk and she obviously uses speed at an incredible rate at first) rather than the level of a single store, why say stores if talking about a singular? I'm fully prepared to conceed that this might just be a point where English is Like That(TM) and that it's a nuance that's passed me by as a second language speaker.

In any case, I'd imagine that tapping enough nicrosil to overcome both the invested metal resistance (charged spikes) and the natural investiture barrier (said spikes stuck in people) would end up with a fairly high tap rate, not to mention that she has a "my god, it's full of stars"-moment because she can see that it's all just energy coalesced.

37 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I speculated a bit on why that is the case in a different topic, but as it stands, Scadrians don't have a way to create medallions with Bands level strength without it running out.

Oh, I completely agree, the mechanics of the Bands and the mechanics of the medallions seem to not quite be the same in any case, what with medallions apparently not running out of f-nicrosil. As far as we know the Bands are a one of a kind object that most people don't have the know-how, let alone ability, to replicate, and unlike the medallions the Bands can run dry and if you wish to pull Rashek level shenanigans they'll run dry quickly.

I'd say they're a great asset in a hypothetical confrontation, but one that has to be deployed very carefully.

 

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