Mixed Investiture

[BenduLuke]

I ran across a closed discussion on Mistborn vs Radiant from a few years ago yesterday and it got me thinking how a conflict between the two might resolve and in who's favor. In it they were comparing a Vin with a Kaladin both having ample means of investiture which in cosmere practicality would have to happen during a high storm with mist though that wasn't stated.

So how would a contest shake out between a Skadrian and a Rosharan given that there is every possibility that if Odium wins the contest of champions Rosharan's could be sent out into the Cosmere to conquer or bring order. Radiants seem to operate like twinborns with 2 surges and a hybrid surge or compounding, but they are limited to 10 specific combinations where Scadrian twinborns have an Alamantic investiture and a Feruchemical Investiture combining to 256 different investitures including 16 that compound while the other the other 240 create an enhanced composite effect of the 2 investitures. That doesn't include the 2 God metals one of which would create a full Mistborn with a feruchemical compounding.

For this discussion limit it to Twinborn vs Radient and the possibility of cross investiture such as a spren bonded Scadrian or hemolurgically enhanced Rosharan or some plausible Rosharan misting without Lerasium. Atium legal but only as a misting or fering though that might only be available on Scadrial in the mist since Harmony doesn't produce it anymore.

To start with could an aluminum compound Twinborn be the ultimate immune to direct investiture attack Maybe even to the point that a shard blade doesn't sever the spirit but instead becomes a conduit to drain the Radiant's storm/void light? An aluminum gnat actively burning acting as a sink to any overt lashing like soul casting, gravity, adhesion, etc... Also with any hand held aluminum piercing weapon of any kind they might be able to drain the storm light from shard plate or sword and the radiant.

The other thought I had was that windrunners could fire projectiles using reverse lashings on low mass objects in hand turning them into guided missiles at their opponents. Those dun spheres, chips, pebbles, would then make dangerous projectiles with multiple reverse lashes that would almost never miss their target. Or imagine a Rioter who bonded a cryptic or Soother who bonded a High Spren. Any Scadrian Twinborn who bonded a spren might be able to use storm/void light to invest their metal mind. I could see a Tin compounder bonded to any Spren having the physical skills to take full advantage of the awareness given by their Tin.

It also seems to me that it would be easier for a Twinborn to bond a Spren than a Rosharan to develop metal arts giving Scadrian's an advantage in the long run in the contest and perhaps over other forms of investiture in the Cosmere.

My guess is that upon initial contact the advantage goes to the Rosharan's, but in the long run the advantage goes to the Scadrian's. (I hope my spelling is ok since I listen to the books not actually read them so I spell them phonetically.)

Edited December 3, 2020 by BenduLuke
spell correction

[Honorless]

Oh no, you may have just reignited the Roshar vs Scadrial debate... 

[BenduLuke]

Yeah but mine has more limits. And I am open to other forms of investiture just not as conversant with them. Besides with RoW we do have more details on Roshar.

Edited December 3, 2020 by BenduLuke

[NameIess]

On first contact, assuming the Scadrians don't have medallions that give them all infinite f-steel, the Rosharan Radiants will win. The disadvantage of Radiants is that they cannot leave Roshar easily. A drawn-out war depends on how willing Scadrial is to use hemalurgy to create super-soldiers, the willingness of spren to betray the Rosharans, and how the Rosharans can deal with higher gravity and decreased gravity. 

[BenduLuke]

21 hours ago, Ookla the Unnamable said:

On first contact, assuming the Scadrians don't have medallions that give them all infinite f-steel, the Rosharan Radiants will win. The disadvantage of Radiants is that they cannot leave Roshar easily. A drawn-out war depends on how willing Scadrial is to use hemalurgy to create super-soldiers, the willingness of spren to betray the Rosharans, and how the Rosharans can deal with higher gravity and decreased gravity. 

yeah I agree Rosharan's would have an initial advantage, but in the long run I suspect Scadrian's might have the advantage since it seems more likely that a Scadrian might bond a spren than a Rosharan might snap. Consider Wax adding else caller to his abilities. He could soul cast Aluminum capped metal projectiles and perhaps even add soul casting to his steel bubble with the attendant physical abilities of a Radiant.

I still wonder if storm/void light might be able to charge a metal mind? If so Wayne would seem like a Gold Compounder and Wax would be the immovable object at will putting serious power behind his projectiles. Just a thought.

The flip side could also be that Burning metal might provide a replacement for stormlight just like Chromatic breath is, meaning that a Kaladin who snapped if that is possible might be able to fuel his windrunner abilities by burning most alamantic metals. Still it seems more likely that a spren would bond a Scadrian than a Rosharan would Snap, but with Hemalurgy a Rosharan might be able to burn and or fill metal.

On windrunners I can imagine Kaladin burning Tin for awareness and tap Zinc for mental quickness to react fast enough to use his lashings pushing and pulling small objects near him sent at him like Vin pushes and pulls coins. He already has the physical speed he just needs the reaction speed and awareness to touch coins pushed or pulled at him.

[Raven Wilder]

The big deciding factor, as I see it, is that Twinborns' only powers are the two metals they're able to use, while Radiants get other powers in addition to their two Surges. At a bare minimum, every Surgebinder has the ability to rapidly heal from major injuries; while it's limited by the amount of stormlight they have access to, for the period of a brief fight any one of them is as difficult to kill or disable as Miles Hundredlives. And I don't think anyone but a Mistborn or full Feruchemist would even have a chance against a Fourth Ideal Radiant with Blade and Plate.

Now, you do have a point about it being theoretically easier for an Allomancer/Feruchemist to become a Radiant than vice-versa. Then again, who knows what's possible with the Bondsmiths' nebulous power over Connection.

[BenduLuke]

On 12/4/2020 at 8:35 PM, Raven Wilder said:

The big deciding factor, as I see it, is that Twinborns' only powers are the two metals they're able to use, while Radiants get other powers in addition to their two Surges. At a bare minimum, every Surgebinder has the ability to rapidly heal from major injuries; while it's limited by the amount of stormlight they have access to, for the period of a brief fight any one of them is as difficult to kill or disable as Miles Hundredlives. And I don't think anyone but a Mistborn or full Feruchemist would even have a chance against a Fourth Ideal Radiant with Blade and Plate.

Now, you do have a point about it being theoretically easier for an Allomancer/Feruchemist to become a Radiant than vice-versa. Then again, who knows what's possible with the Bondsmiths' nebulous power over Connection.

Some alamancers, feruchemist, and hemalurgists also have power over connection. A full mistborn or feruchemist certainly would, with the right metal.

[StanLemon]

The Radiants have two major limiting factors in comparison with Allomancers to keep in mind. They burn through their Investiture significantly faster than Allomancers, even a Pewterarm can last several times longer, and secondly how many oaths they have said. Based on what we've seen in the books, getting to the Third Ideal is fairly common but there does seem to be difficulty for Radiants to get the Fourth. In terms of raw combat power they are stronger though. 

On 12/3/2020 at 2:15 PM, BenduLuke said:

The other thought I had was that windrunners could fire projectiles using reverse lashings on low mass objects in hand turning them into guided missiles at their opponents. Those dun spheres, chips, pebbles, would then make dangerous projectiles with multiple reverse lashes that would almost never miss their target.

This might not be possible for Windrunners as every case of a Reverse Lashing we've seen is centered on a point the Windrunner has touched and infused with Stormlight. Though they could use Lashings to launch them like a Coinshot launches metal.

[BenduLuke]

11 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

The Radiants have two major limiting factors in comparison with Allomancers to keep in mind. They burn through their Investiture significantly faster than Allomancers, even a Pewterarm can last several times longer, and secondly how many oaths they have said. Based on what we've seen in the books, getting to the Third Ideal is fairly common but there does seem to be difficulty for Radiants to get the Fourth. In terms of raw combat power they are stronger though. 

This might not be possible for Windrunners as every case of a Reverse Lashing we've seen is centered on a point the Windrunner has touched and infused with Stormlight. Though they could use Lashings to launch them like a Coinshot launches metal.

Every time reverse lashings have been used, the point was on an object with significant mass. I presume if the point was on a pebble in the windrunners hand it would fly toward what it was reverse lashed to. The limit to this might be that you can't reverse lash the pebble to an invested person.

There also appears to be a significant drop off between 2nd and 3rd ideals. Skybreaker until they reach 3rd ideal also lack the surge of division in addition to the shardblade. So 3rd ideal is itself a big step.

[BenduLuke]

While reading WoR Hoid implied that eventually the surges could produce attacks of mass destruction like nuclear bombs.

A mixed investiture that would be capable of this would be a Duralumin nat which bonds an Ash Spren, thus becoming a Duralumin Dustbringer. That combination could unleash devastating division attacks like a nuclear blast cone, massive caustic wave, or aging zone which would only be limited by the amount of available stormlight and duralumin.

Skybreaker Duralumin combination could do much the same thing with the added ability to launch a division infused duralumin enhanced item miles away like a balistic bio-nuclear-chemical missile.

One person weapon of mass destruction.

[MGershone]

Although this isn't directly about a Radiant v. a Mistborn/Allomancer/Feruchemist, it's related. Wht would happen if you took Hemalurgically invested metal and used it to make a fabrial cage? Could you build a Fabrial that would do Allomantic stuff, but powered by Stormlight (or vice versa)?

My bet is that you could make some weird effects with that, like making a pewter cage that's been Invested via Hemalurgy to make a super, super powerful fabrial of some kind.

 

[BenduLuke]

7 hours ago, MGershone said:

Although this isn't directly about a Radiant v. a Mistborn/Allomancer/Feruchemist, it's related. Wht would happen if you took Hemalurgically invested metal and used it to make a fabrial cage? Could you build a Fabrial that would do Allomantic stuff, but powered by Stormlight (or vice versa)?

My bet is that you could make some weird effects with that, like making a pewter cage that's been Invested via Hemalurgy to make a super, super powerful fabrial of some kind.

 

I would bet that you could use Stormlight since it seems to be a generic investiture power source not dependant on an individuals particualar innate abilities. I suspect that and allomancer could use it to fuel their specific abilities and feruchemists could use it to fill their metal minds with investiture. I see no reason why you couldn't make a fabrial out of Hemalugic metal powered by stormlight to produce the specific Allomantic or Feruchemic effects granted by the Hemalurgy.

Great statement it is on topic.

[BenduLuke]

Perhaps I should expand this topic a bit. 

How might you convert the fuels from different planets to work for other world investiture.

For example how might a metalborn use Stormlight, sand, or breaths?

I think a metalborn would need to realize that Stormlight could fuel their abilities, see how Radiant's absorb it for use from spheres or storms, and finally practice until they make it work like Kaladin did. Perhaps their first attempts might be to try and eat the spheres then burn them. That probably wouldn't work as expected, but they might accidentally suck in the stormlight from the sphere inside them. Maybe a metalborn could burn sand though? Certainly if it had trace metals.

[StanLemon]

Completely hypothetical, but I wonder if Chromium could be used to harness Stormlight. We get an in character perspective of what it's like to use Allomantic Chromium in one of the the broadsheets and it's described as taking the power and releasing it to some place else (ie the Spiritual Realm). I wonder if instead of releasing it, a Leecher or Mistborn could channel it into themselves 

[BenduLuke]

On 1/29/2021 at 10:16 AM, StanLemon said:

Completely hypothetical, but I wonder if Chromium could be used to harness Stormlight. We get an in character perspective of what it's like to use Allomantic Chromium in one of the the broadsheets and it's described as taking the power and releasing it to some place else (ie the Spiritual Realm). I wonder if instead of releasing it, a Leecher or Mistborn could channel it into themselves 

A soulbearer probably could (Nicrosil-F) and so could a subsumer possibly (Bendalloy-F). H-Atium and H-Nicrosil too.

[MGershone]

So does this mean that when the soldiers in OB talk about eating spheres to get Radiant abilities, they might actually be onto something? providing they are somehow from Scadrial?

The only major problem I can see is that metal is made of investiture, so even though Allomancers eat it they burn it away. A gem full of Stormlight, on the other hand, is only containing investiture, which means they'd still have a gem sitting in their stomach - probably not so healthy.

[Frustration]

22 minutes ago, MGershone said:

So does this mean that when the soldiers in OB talk about eating spheres to get Radiant abilities, they might actually be onto something? providing they are somehow from Scadrial?

The only major problem I can see is that metal is made of investiture, so even though Allomancers eat it they burn it away. A gem full of Stormlight, on the other hand, is only containing investiture, which means they'd still have a gem sitting in their stomach - probably not so healthy.

Metal is only made of investiture the same way all matter including gemstones are.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Frustration