Anti-Investiture Weapons

[Part of the One]

I've been lurking around here a while, but with all the juicy stuff that came with RoW felt like I finally had to make a post and contribute. I had some thoughts about the potential to seriously weaponize anti-investiture that could have devestaconsequences for both Roshar and the greater Cosmere.

I understand that by the end, El is already testing a spren-killing weapon, but that's not what I wanted to talk about here. Rather, this is about the possibility of intentionally making bombs like the one that Navani's scholars accidentally set off.

This fairly explosive reaction that was enough to turn a couple of people to chunks was set off by a small gemstone's worth of anti-Voidlight. How much bigger could an explosion exponentially be using something like a gemheart, or even a perfect gem? If a Fused could sneak into the vault in Lasting Integrity where they store the Stormlight, would they be able to make an explosion capable of leveling the fortress itself? I'm not sure that it could permanently damage the spren in the CR, but at the very least it would destroy their reserves of light. 

I can imagine in the future making bombs out of two gemstones, one infused with storm/void/lifelight, and the other with it's opposite, with a trigger switch of Raysium that could be flipped to connect the 2 and set off the detonation with a remote fabrial. For that matter, what would happen if you blew up a conjoined ruby? Would it's opposite detonate as well? That takes this from more of a suicide bomb Fused potential to being able to assassinate someone from the other end of a spanreed, which has some terrifying consequences. 

Other horrifying ideas: could you infuse anti-Towerlight into the Sibling and detonate the mountainside of Urithiru like an atomic bomb? Could you have an anti-Stormlight sphere that could blow up a Bondsmith trying to open a perpendicularity?

It also raises the question of analogous anti-Investiture for other shards, and how that would work. Let me know what you think!

 

[CogitoErgoArclo]

Freaking awesome idea. 
 

To riff on it a bit: could Rosharans contain the explosion to create a “nuclear” reactor and power anything from cities to Spacecraft?

Edited December 5, 2020 by CogitoErgoArclo

[Part of the One]

Another concept: could the Iri use one their globes full of anti-Selish investiture to try to make the CR there less dangerous? And if they screwed up and blew it up instead...

Though I doubt they'd be able gather enough anti-Investiture to make a dent in the problem there, they could still make a spectacular CR explosion

[Dawnshard]

3 hours ago, CogitoErgoArclo said:

Freaking awesome idea. 
 

To riff on it a bit: could Rosharans contain the explosion to create a “nuclear reactor” and power anything from cities to Spacecraft?

It would be an anti-matter reactor and that would be even more powerful reactor. 

Also can you make the Anti-light into a metal? then you could make anti-investiture swords. It seems as if the various lights can be refined into a metal. Man Allomancy got so much more freaking powerful because if warlight is made into a metal that opens another 16 metals to combine it with, add ever shard, every shard combo, add multiple shard combos. Damn that so many metals. 16 shard metals. 16 normal metals you can combine = 256 metals. di-shard metals 256. so 65,536. then 3 combinations. storm thats like 16 to the 16th. 

PS. I suck at math don't hate me.

[Brgst13]

I don't think you would get a new godmetal for Warlight unless Honor and Odium combined or agreed to work together to create Waring.  However, Towerlight is interesting.  The Sibling is of both Honor and Cultivation, and has manifested itself in the Physical Realm as Urithiru.  Many of the fabrics seem to be set in metal.  While it is possible these are all regular metals, is there a chance some of it is Towerium?

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

5 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

The Sibling is of both Honor and Cultivation, and has manifested itself in the Physical Realm as Urithiru.  Many of the fabrics seem to be set in metal.  While it is possible these are all regular metals, is there a chance some of it is Towerium?

There's a wob that talks about how all shardblades (and presumably ancient fabrials, now) are made wita mix of tanavastium and korravarium, since spren come from both

[JustOneMoreQuesiton]

It struck me as lightly implied, by both Hoid (when one person can kill tens of thousands) and a few other things, that this is exactly what happened "pre roshar".

I'm reminded of an outer limits episode (1995) version where a student discovers the "trick" to cold fusion, and a major point of the episode is that its SO easy that basically anyone could make these things, and how insanely dangerous that would be.

Feels like the kind of ground Sanderson might love to tread, as his stories are quickly getting to the point where messing around with the primal forces of the universe not only grants insane power (and is getting closer to nuclear levels of destruction), but unlike the real world is centered on an individual (Nuclear fission for example isn't that hard to cause.....if you can get enough of the right kind of uranium, which is much harder).  It seems that with enough knowledge and power seeking you can wind up with beings that can easily destroy entire nations in the blink of an eye, and how does a society handle that?

My guess is that somehow that power escalation, and the danger it poses, is what led to the abandoning of the oaths by the radiants as well.  A point where you've suddenly got all these 5th ideals running around able to nuke a city and the pure chaos and destruction that would cause, and I suspect its why navani is going to wind up even more dangerous because you don't even need oaths or spren.  Just a decent amount of knowledge and some difficult to make, but not impossible, tools. 

Its extra interesting because on some level Hoid must be aware of this.  I've seen topics on these forums about Mistborn railguns and the like, and it begs two questions.

1. Just how powerful is Hoid or those like him should he let loose?  He is clearly aware that the level of power we've seen demonstrated in these books is childsplay compared to what it could do, let alone combined with other stuff.

2. Just how much more dangerous is it to let a society get some % of that power WITHOUT millennia of world-hopping as a gate to it?

Edited December 6, 2020 by JustOneMoreQuesiton

[ScadrianTank]

On 05.12.2020 at 7:35 AM, Dawnshard said:

It would be an anti-matter reactor and that would be even more powerful reactor. 

Also can you make the Anti-light into a metal? then you could make anti-investiture swords. It seems as if the various lights can be refined into a metal. Man Allomancy got so much more freaking powerful because if warlight is made into a metal that opens another 16 metals to combine it with, add ever shard, every shard combo, add multiple shard combos. Damn that so many metals. 16 shard metals. 16 normal metals you can combine = 256 metals. di-shard metals 256. so 65,536. then 3 combinations. storm thats like 16 to the 16th. 

PS. I suck at math don't hate me.

That is assuming all these metals have useful effects and not something like gold or aluminum.

[Aiken Frost]

Heh, I woke up today after finishing RoW yesterday thinking exactly this.

Imagine a shardbow firing an arrow equipped with two gems, those carrying -Light and its Anti-Light, set in a way to crush into each other on impact. Voila, you have tactical nukes on Roshar.

The idea came from a similar concept in D&D.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Aiken Frost