The Big 4 ShardWar, RoW edition

[Bigmikey357]

At the request of @LewsTherinTelescope and because the Roshar v Scadrial debate is getting a bit stale, I wanted to try and etch out what it would look like with more combatants. There are issues with this line of speculation but we could try and power through them anyway.  The Big 4 are of course Roshar,  Scadrial,  Sel and Nalthis.

The obvious bottleneck is in information, and that heavily skews thinking.  We have 2 Eras of Scadrial's history and 4 epic Doorstoppers of lore from Roshar.  Although we've only seen half of each planet we can be relatively confident of their current abilities,  likely motivation and future prospects. Based on what we've seen on page it'd be hard not to pick one of those 2 pillars to be the ultimate Victor in any Cosmere-wide conflict. 

Of the other 2 pillars much less is certain but the clues left in WoB's, breadcrumbs left in our premiere novels and some deep diving of the 3 texts we have at our disposal leave tantalizing possibilities.  There is evidence that Sel has already solved some of the issues we know about from their local conditions as well as Roshar's little problem.  Elantris predates our current Cosmere timeliness by at least 7000 years and they don't look like a culture prone to stagnation.  Nalthis is even more of a mystery  as we don't even know what other things we can do with Endowment.  But from what we can infer, Nalthis would be the only pillar with a singular purpose since they only have to contend with 1 Shard's will. Add to that, they can bring to bear more magic users than the other 3 combined and can imbue weapons of power and you may have a thorny problem ruffling Edgli's feathers.  So who wins and why?

[mathiau]

Not that it change your actual point, but Elantris happen less than a millennia before TFE

Quote

Zas

Elantris. Where does it fit in the timeline in reference to Hero of Ages? Since that's what most other things are referenced to.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. Elantris is far earlier.

Zas

Like thousands? Or like hundreds?

Brandon Sanderson

It's quite... It's not thousands.

Orem signing (Sept. 22, 2012)

[LeftImBorn]

40 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Not that it change your actual point, but Elantris happen less than a millennia before TFE

Technically, this WOB justsays that it's not thousands. So, it could be over a Millenia before TFE-just not two millennia.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

I feel like Sel and Scadrial are likely to get into a fight (or at least have increased tensions), considering Kel and the Ire probably don't like each other, and Kel leads a.) a massive worldhopper org, and b.) a religion on each continent, as well as c.) being a very important and admired figure in both places even for those who don't ascribe religious significance to him. And I'd guess the Ghostbloods are not the type to have decreased these tensions.

Roshar's got trade with Sel and Nalthis currently, so they might be more reluctant to war, but that's by no means a guarantee there won't be issues, especially if Roshar works out making perfect gems at some point and no longer needs to rely so much on the Ire tech.

Scadrial and Roshar will I'm guessing not get along well, since Harmony's currently trying to build an alliance to take out Odium at the same time the Rosharans are having giant blazing thematic neon signs about Odium being just a normal part of things now.

Nalthis... I'm not sure, tbh. Though, Brandon doesn't seem to consider them one of the pillars anyway. Awakening's definitely useful, but up against the other three, I think they'd end up having to throw their support behind one rather than go on their own.

 

I think that Sel would end up winning due to being very very hard to invade, so the others beat the crap out of each other and Sel finishes off the survivor.

 

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

Not that it change your actual point, but Elantris happen less than a millennia before TFE

They might mean Elantris the city?

[Bigmikey357]

I thought I saw a conflicting timeliness where the events of Elantris happen a couple thousand years prior to the Final Desolation but I could be mistaken.  Even so, if the Iri and the Stormlight bank in Lasting Integrity are anything to go by, they've solved their location based restrictions at least somewhat. Enough to power an invasion of another Cosmere world? Maybe not now but I  ain't willing to discount anything until I get Elantris Era 2.

I really think we're all going to regret underestimating Nalthis one day. Their Shardic advantage should not be taken lightly.  They might get smoked 1 on 1 against any of the other 3 but if everyone there is a magic user they could drown the other powers with sheer numbers.

[Kingsdaughter613]

9 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

At the request of @LewsTherinTelescope and because the Roshar v Scadrial debate is getting a bit stale, I wanted to try and etch out what it would look like with more combatants. There are issues with this line of speculation but we could try and power through them anyway.  The Big 4 are of course Roshar,  Scadrial,  Sel and Nalthis.

The obvious bottleneck is in information, and that heavily skews thinking.  We have 2 Eras of Scadrial's history and 4 epic Doorstoppers of lore from Roshar.  Although we've only seen half of each planet we can be relatively confident of their current abilities,  likely motivation and future prospects. Based on what we've seen on page it'd be hard not to pick one of those 2 pillars to be the ultimate Victor in any Cosmere-wide conflict. 

Of the other 2 pillars much less is certain but the clues left in WoB's, breadcrumbs left in our premiere novels and some deep diving of the 3 texts we have at our disposal leave tantalizing possibilities.  There is evidence that Sel has already solved some of the issues we know about from their local conditions as well as Roshar's little problem.  Elantris predates our current Cosmere timeliness by at least 7000 years and they don't look like a culture prone to stagnation.  Nalthis is even more of a mystery  as we don't even know what other things we can do with Endowment.  But from what we can infer, Nalthis would be the only pillar with a singular purpose since they only have to contend with 1 Shard's will. Add to that, they can bring to bear more magic users than the other 3 combined and can imbue weapons of power and you may have a thorny problem ruffling Edgli's feathers.  So who wins and why?

Actually, the big 4 are: Sel, Scadrial, Roshar and TALDAIN. Those are the ones Brandon planned for MB Era 4.

[Frustration]

13 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Actually, the big 4 are: Sel, Scadrial, Roshar and TALDAIN. Those are the ones Brandon planned for MB Era 4.

Depends on how big the Aether world ends up being.

 

Assuming Nightblood isn't unique let's be real, there is only one way this goes down.

[Bejarden]

15 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Depends on how big the Aether world ends up being.

 

Assuming Nightblood isn't unique let's be real, there is only one way this goes down.

Who? 
 

[Frustration]

Just now, Bejardin1250 said:

Who? 
 

Nightblood you know Sword-Nimi

[Bejarden]

3 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Nightblood you know Sword-Nimi

No I mean who wins 

[Frustration]

Just now, Bejardin1250 said:

No I mean who wins 

You have a world capable of making Nightblood a weapon capable of killing a vessel, obviously they win.

[Bejarden]

That tech would became available to everyone very quick if they tried to mass produce it.

there’s nothing original about Nightblood except that he’s consumed an insane amount of investiture 

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

That tech would became available to everyone very quick if they tried to mass produce it.

there’s nothing original about Nightblood except that he’s consumed an insane amount of investiture 

It has only been made with breaths so far so I don't see how others would recreate it.

[Bejarden]

Offworlders can get breaths

[Frustration]

28 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Offworlders can get breaths

Only by getting them from Nalthians.

That's like saying Offworlders can get spren, yes but it's incredibly difficult and depends on the enemy agreeing.

[Aspiring Writer]

I would like to point out that except for Scadrial and Roshar, we don't know who the other sides will be alliancing themselves to. They could be their own independent side, or be a part of the two superpowers.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Depends on how big the Aether world ends up being.

Iirc, he's said the magic system will end up being more important than the planet will be, most likely.

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Assuming Nightblood isn't unique let's be real, there is only one way this goes down.

Which seems like a big assumption, since almost everything in-world and out points towards Nightblood not being a normal outcome.

[therunner]

3 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Which seems like a big assumption, since almost everything in-world and out points towards Nightblood not being a normal outcome.

It does seem Nightblood is something more than usual, first because of how the other invested sword acts (although that might also be caused by different Command) and second because of this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e10871) which implies that Endowment took a bit more direct hand than usual in Awakening of Nightblood.

So below will be my analysis (presumably limited one, so please feel free to correct/supplement me). I will stick to the planets we know off, so I will ignore Aether planet and Taldain, and I will also assume no direct Shardic influence.

Nalthis

So, I think Nalthis will not be a major player for three reasons:

1. Their invested art is geared mostly towards manufacture, not combat. Even Kalad's Phantoms would easily fall to Radiants, especially to those with Soulcasting (only the bones are invested, not the stone), though they would fare better against Scadrians. Also per WoB above Nightblood seems to be a special occurrence in some sense.
2. They have no healing capabilities outside of using up Divine Breath, which greatly limits them compared to all three of Roshar/Scadrial/Sel.
3. All great feats of Awakening (i.e. awakening stone/metal, not requiring touch to awaken) requires at least 20 000 breaths for the Awakener and hundreds to thousands of Breaths for the material being awakened. That is quite a lot of people you would leave essentially handicapped to create one weapon.

The point 3 above could be partially circumvented if they created a culture were you give up your Breath before dying, and they you could start building up a stockpile of Breaths, however Returned (and possibly more strongly awakened weapons like Nightblood) will be eating up that stockpile a bit.

In addition they are also limited by presence of color for active act of Awakening, again limiting them as their surrounding could be manipulated by their opponents. (Now I am imaging Awakener carrying color dust bombs with him to make sure there is always color around when they need it )

Generally I think that Nalthis would excel in more a support role, Awakening could be used to quickly set up automated factories that could be relatively quickly reconfigured as needed, and they could mass produce invested weapons for more those who are more survivable in combat (so Elantrians/Radiants/F-gold wielders). Lifesense would also be useful for sentries, however Copperclouds interfere with it so it can be circumvented.

Sel

So here we have quite a lot of systems, but we have mostly seen AonDor, Dakhor and Forgery. I will ignore Dakhor, as it seems to quite inefficient as it requiring blood sacrifice for anything, which makes it quite inferior compared to power and flexibility of AonDor.

Forgery I think would be best suited for support, such as healing, quickly fixing up damage (or at least mitigating it) and maybe also in some more covert combat to remove invested abilities (Forging someone to break bond with spren, maybe forging mistborn into misting at least temporarily?).

AonDor however I think would be the main weapon of Sel, as AonDor is in effect a programming (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/124/#e1824) and you can prepare macros (shorthands for pre-prepared commands) and if you know what you are doing you can do pretty much anything (teleportation, healing, lasers, they even had tool they were pretty convinced would let them take up a Shard without any prior Connection). Seemingly this makes them incredible power house, however there are three main downsides

1. Elantrians get weaker away from Elantris. This one is solvable (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/394/#e12895), but it still provides opponents with a good weak spot to use against them, and possibly is greater issue for magical artifacts they would make.
2. They are fueled from Cognitive Realm, not Spiritual one. This is probably their greatest issue, as they need to pipe their investiture where they want to be active, and this supply line is going to be a big weakspot of theirs. IF they got their hands on some other investiture they might be able to use it (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/367/#e11772) but it does not sound easy to do.
3. There is upper limit to number of Elantrians there can be at one tim and the selection process is seemingly random. This means they cannot choose good warriors or scholars for Elantrians, unlike Roshar where Bonds are at least a bit meritocratic and Scadrial where medallions/Hemalurgy can used to give powers to people you want.

In summary, Sel with prep time is terrifying, however I think they will end up with a limited sphere of influence due to Dor being in Cognitive making it difficult for them to operate at larger distances from Sel. Now if they could figure out a way to on-demand teleport Dor through Spiritual realm to where they need it to, that would change the situation drastically.

Scadrial

Scadrial has some of the greatest strengths in flexibility (medallions, hemalurgy), but also some great weaknesses compared to other planets. I will go through the strengths and some weakpoints in those strenghts.

1. Hemalurgy, this is one of the most powerful (and horrifying) tools in Cosmere, if it is in spiritweb people can steal it. However since it only requires Intent, it is a tool that could easily be used by other planets as well, all it would take is a bunch of well placed spies and Hemalurgy is available to everyone. For purpuse of creating an army on Scadrial it is also limited by the fact that Scadrial has the smallest population of major Shardworlds. Finally using more than 3 spikes opens up a person to Shardic influence (and possibly to sufficiently strong Connection attack as well), limiting the number of usable spikes.
2. Medallions are more flexible, but seemingly less powerful cousins of hemalurgy/feruchemy. Outside of special artifacts (BoM) they seem to be limited to 3 powers at most, but they can be easily passed to others, so useful for armed forces.
3. At least some Compounders will be interesting, combat wise steeltwin is very hard to land a hit on, and goldtwin nearly unkillable. Supplemented with well chosen medallions/spikes (I would go with A-pewter or A-chromium and then either twin gold, twin steel based on what is missing), you would have someone who is very hard to hit, can heal greatly and is stronger and more dexterous to boot. The issue is that compounding still takes time, so sufficient pressure on Scadrial could end up with even compounders depleted, and they need a supply of pure metal/precise alloys which can be sabotaged.
4. They are also starting to experiment with fabrials, however so far it seems that they can only directly replicate allomantic/feruchemical powers and nothing else, which again greatly limits them. I think this is something they will never fully overcome, and that is why Scadrial will develop along similar lines to real world science, albeit with some supplement of mechanic metallic arts. The most useful among these would be cadmium grenades and leecher cubes, cadmiun for immobilizing enemy and leecher cubes for quickly removing kinetic investiture (this might be especially good counter against Elantrians).

For weaknesses I think Scadrial has three main ones

1. They have no good access to Cognitive Realm, only Shardpool(s). This prohibits any large scale off-world travel until such time they develop FTL spaceships.
2. They have the smallest population, so in protracted war they would lose simply due to attrition
3. Their magic has weakened compared to heights of Lerasium mistborn and even Era 1. This is something they could try to overcome by selective breeding, but it would still be limiting factor, unless they somehow get their hands on a bunch of Lerasium (which is no longer produced, https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69/#e6231).

So Scadrial has some of the most flexible tools (Hemalurgy) but they can be used by anyone. They can make some of the hardest to kill magic users(Twin steel with Twin gold medallion or vice versa), but they would have trouble in having a lot of them (without resorting to spike factories they would be limited to low thousands, and with them it would heavily depend on how long it takes to heal spike would to soul), and they cannot get them off-world en masse until relatively late.

However they also have advantage in having basic long range combat option available to 1/32 of their magic users. Their greatest advantage is that they do not have any centralized power/tool on which their magic would rest, unlike Sel and Roshar. Also If they will be able to breed back mistborn and full feruchemists in large numbers, this would make them definitely stronger, but against most opponent twinsteel+twingold+pewter with proper weapons should be enough so presence of mistborn/full feruchmists would not skew things that much in my opinion.

Roshar

Roshar has some great strength and in my opinion one/two great weakpoints. Strengths are well known

1. Shardplate, which provides unparalleled physical protection (so far at least).
2. Sharblade, which provides is the second/third strongest melee weapon in Cosmere (after Nightblood and possibly Honorblades).
3. Healing on par (or slighly weaker) than compounded Gold available to any magic user.
4. Very flexible fabrial system. It is definitely not as versatile and strong as AonDor magical artifacts, but is definately much more flexible and stronger than mechanical metallic arts.

However all their strength (with exception of Shardblades, and possibly living plate) hinge on their fuel, so Stormlight/Voidlight/Lifelight and combinations of there of. Without it, they have no healing, no fabrials and their magic users cannot use it. There are only 5-6 known sources of light, 3 Bondsmits, 1 bondsmith Honorblade, Highstorm and direct petition to Odium via Song of Prayer. They are heavily reliant on these sources not being disrupted, and so far they have very few perfect gems to store light for later need (altought aluminum plated gems might also work for long term storage).

The above creates a large weakspot for Rosharan forces, not as great as the one of Sel with their piping issues, but definitely a weak point. In addition, they are tied to Roshar though their spren, but since this seems to be mainly Connection issue and they have Unchained Bondsmiths, this seems like resolvable issue.

One big trump card Roshar has are suppresor fabrials, which could deny magic usage to anyone who is not Fused or Radiant. It is likely that creating them would require some observation of enemy first, but after they would attune them they would be a devastating tool against other planets, until they learned to either replicate them or somehow neutralize them (if possible).

Voidbinging is a big unknown so far, as are greater applications of more than half the surges as we have seen mostly Abrasion, Gravitation, Illumination and Transformation, with relatively little of the others.

Also while Roshar has population comparable to Sel, spren seem much less numerous making Radiants relatively rare. We will probably never see army of Radiants that is hundreds of thousands strong, so for most of their army they would have to rely on Warform parshendi (or other forms) supplemented by humans equipped with fabrials. Radiants would be probably more along the lines of special forces and heavy troops.

 

Now, who would win? Hard to say, as Elend said with three sides it is no longer a fight but politics, and we have three main sides and in addition at least 1 quite strong support player. Any victory would heavily depend on alliances me thinks.

Edited April 25, 2021 by therunner
spelling

[mathiau]

14 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I feel like Sel and Scadrial are likely to get into a fight (or at least have increased tensions), considering Kel and the Ire probably don't like each other, and Kel leads a.) a massive worldhopper org, and b.) a religion on each continent, as well as c.) being a very important and admired figure in both places even for those who don't ascribe religious significance to him. And I'd guess the Ghostbloods are not the type to have decreased these tensions.

The Ire is only one faction, and not even one that important to Sel, I doubt Kel scaring them in order to save the world would have that much negative impact on Scadrial's relations with the Rose Empire or even Raoden's Elantris

Quote

They might mean Elantris the city?

That wouldn't make sense to his point about geotechnical growth

14 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

I thought I saw a conflicting timeliness where the events of Elantris happen a couple thousand years prior to the Final Desolation but I could be mistaken.  Even so, if the Iri and the Stormlight bank in Lasting Integrity are anything to go by, they've solved their location based restrictions at least somewhat. Enough to power an invasion of another Cosmere world? Maybe not now but I  ain't willing to discount anything until I get Elantris Era 2.

Buying F-duralumin medallions to the SoScads is considered on the harder end of the way to solve the issue so yes, these are probably the norm and not exceptions.

(Did you mean the Ire instead of the Iri?)

Quote

I really think we're all going to regret underestimating Nalthis one day. Their Shardic advantage should not be taken lightly.  They might get smoked 1 on 1 against any of the other 3 but if everyone there is a magic user they could drown the other powers with sheer numbers.

Yeah, we better not underestimate the goddes version of "it's dangerous to go alone, take this!"

Also we have no idea how anti-breaths works and if you can give less than a breath to other people, you might be able to give 1000th of a Breath and 1000th of an Anti-Breath to someone, which would most likely kill them.

8 hours ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Offworlders can get breaths

Type 4 Awakened entities require the 9th heightening, Nightblod himself might require a Dawnshard.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Nalthis

So, I think Nalthis will not be a major player for three reasons:

1. Their invested art is geared mostly towards manufacture, not combat. Even Kalad's Phantoms would easily fall to Radiants, especially to those with Soulcasting (only the bones are invested, not the stone), though they would fare better against Scadrians. Also per WoB above Nightblood seems to be a special occurrence in some sense.
2. They have no healing capabilities outside of using up Divine Breath, which greatly limits them compared to all three of Roshar/Scadrial/Sel.
3. All great feats of Awakening (i.e. awakening stone/metal, not requiring touch to awaken) requires at least 20 000 breaths for the Awakener and hundreds to thousands of Breaths for the material being awakened. That is quite a lot of people you would leave essentially handicapped to create one weapon.

2. Divne Breaths can be stored in nicrosilminds and can therefore be compounded (we don't know if normal breaths can)

Quote

(Now I am imaging Awakener carrying color dust bombs with him to make sure there is always color around when they need it )

Skybreakers were learning how to fight Awakeners comfirmed

Quote

Sel

So here we have quite a lot of systems, but we have mostly seen AonDor, Dakhor and Forgery. I will ignore Dakhor, as it seems to quite inefficient as it requiring blood sacrifice for anything, which makes it quite inferior compared to power and flexibility of AonDor.

It kind of doesn't

Quote

Questioner

Can someone be sacrificed for both Hemalurgy and the magics of Dakhor simultaneously?

Brandon Sanderson

So this is going to require the soul being ripped apart, so it depends on what pieces of the soul are left and how easily you can capture them. That's a theoretical possible-- possibility... Know that most of the horrors of Dakhor are twisting a soul not stealing a soul.

Firefight Chicago signing (Feb. 20, 2015)

Quote

Forgery I think would be best suited for support, such as healing, quickly fixing up damage (or at least mitigating it) and maybe also in some more covert combat to remove invested abilities (Forging someone to break bond with spren, maybe forging mistborn into misting at least temporarily?).

Wouldn't last long enough to matter

Quote

1. They are fueled from Cognitive Realm, not Spiritual one. This is probably their greatest issue, as they need to pipe their investiture where they want to be active, and this supply line is going to be a big weakspot of theirs. IF they got their hands on some other investiture they might be able to use it (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/367/#e11772) but it does not sound easy to do.
2. There is upper limit to number of Elantrians there can be at one tim and the selection process is seemingly random. This means they cannot choose good warriors or scholars for Elantrians, unlike Roshar where Bonds are at least a bit meritocratic and Scadrial where medallions/Hemalurgy can used to give powers to people you want.

1. Just have someone pick up the Dor

2. There is ?

Quote

Hemalurgy, this is one of the most powerful (and horrifying) tools in Cosmere, if it is in spiritweb people can steal it. However since it only requires Intent, it is a tool that could easily be used by other planets as well, all it would take is a bunch of well placed spies and Hemalurgy is available to everyone. For purpuse of creating an army on Scadrial it is also limited by the fact that Scadrial has the smallest population of major Shardworlds. Finally using more than 3 spikes opens up a person to Shardic influence (and possibly to sufficiently strong Connection attack as well), limiting the number of usable spikes.

There are very broken interactions between Heamlurgy and C-gold

Quote

Volratho

If someone was tapping gold, would spiking a separate ability out of them kill them? Or would it work at all?

Brandon Sanderson

It is possible to spike someone without killing them. But they'd never be the same. It would be worse than being a drab.

#SandersonChat Twitter Q&A with Audible.com (Feb. 4, 2016)

Quote

Kurkistan

Could Miles heal back his Allomancy if it was spiked out of him?

Brandon Sanderson

No, he could not. He would no longer be an Allomancer. Also, he'd probably be dead.

Kurkistan

Thanks!

I'd thought maybe he could just do some super-tapping from his existing Health in his goldminds (since he'd still have his Feruchemy)...

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I see what you're asking. Using Feruchemy to heal the removed portion of soul. That's actually plausible, not so different from healing other kinds of soul-wounds. If he survived, then yes, this actually might work. (That's why I get for reading the questions so quickly.)

Goodreads: Ask the Author Q&A (Aug. 13, 2014)

Quote

Their magic has weakened compared to heights of Lerasium mistborn and even Era 1. This is something they could try to overcome by selective breeding, but it would still be limiting factor, unless they somehow get their hands on a bunch of Lerasium (which is no longer produced, https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69/#e6231).

Irelevant

Quote

BlackYeti

Because you've talked about alloying the god metals with other ones-- I was wondering whether you would be able to melt them down as you would with normal metals.

Brandon Sanderson

If you could distill the god metal: you could distill it out of the mist, that's theoretically possible.

Manchester signing (Aug. 6, 2014)

Quote

Stormlightning

If Hoid was to get his hands on "bavadinium," could he alloy it with lerasium and get Sand Mastery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 6, 2018)

Quote

Roshar

1. Healing on par (or slighly weaker) than compounded Gold available to any magic user.

C-Gold alows you to survive taking a pullet in the heart, gold savantism alows to survive being decapitated. Truthwatchers and Edgedancers self healing might be almost as strong as C-Gold but definitely not as much as gold savantism.

Though don't forget Roshar has two Dawnshards.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, therunner said:

Now, who would win? Hard to say, as Elend said with three sides it is no longer a fight but politics, and we have three main sides and in addition at least 1 quite strong support player. Any victory would heavily depend on alliances me thinks.

Good analysis but a few things to note

1. BAM is also a source of light

and

2. Dakor can be made wiht the ability to destroy other magics.

 

If we're talking about era 4 matchups I think it would be important to consider SotD 2, and esspecially

Spoiler

The Shardgun

Which hints at a Roshar-Threnody deal

Edited April 25, 2021 by Frustration

[therunner]

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

2. Divne Breaths can be stored in nicrosilminds and can therefore be compounded (we don't know if normal breaths can)

Huh that is odd (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/5/#e3236). Elsewhere Divine Breath is explicitly likened to Honorblades, i.e. it is actually a sliver of Endowment (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/10/#e6539), and you cannot even transfer it like normal Breath (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/362/#e11165), so it is surprising to me you could store it without dying. And I do not think you could compound it anyway, because you would be trying to recreate entire sliver of Endowment, which is a bit problematic if you have access to only Preservation investiture.

Per this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/31/#e1710)

Quote

Djarskublar

So, say you have a gold/gold Twinborn and they worldhop to Roshar and they study the magic and do the whole Khriss and Nazh thing for a while so they know a lot about the magic, but they've also left themselves a lot of options with what they can do. So then they manage to pull up a gold shadow of them having actually become a Surgebinder and then kind of meld themselves with that shadow a bunch, could they change their Cognitive Identity enough so that they could, like, tap a lot of gold and grow the spren and actually be a Surgebinder?

Brandon Sanderson

Unfortunately, no. It's a good question, but no. That won't work for a couple of reasons. One of which is, simply creating Investiture is not something that can happen, right?

Djarskublar

They are a gold Twinborn, so they can tap a lot of gold...

Brandon Sanderson

They can tap a whole bunch, that's true, they can do that, but simply having it is not gonna create a spren because the spren is from a different god, right, a different Shard.

This WoB quite clearly states that using one shard investiture to create a splinter of another shard (as spren are splinters) is not possible, hence compounding Divine breath would most likely not work at all. Plus we do not actually know what compounding Nicrosil does.

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

It kind of doesn't

 

Dakhor explicitly does require blood sacrifices to create at least some effects (possibly all of them), teleportation requires it (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/133/#e2206), as does Aon immunity (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/31/#e1742). If to access the more powerful abilities you need to keep killing people, your strategy is not sustainable. So AonDor is superior choice in this regard.

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

Wouldn't last long enough to matter

That depends on how precisely using your innate abilities works. Burning forged metals breaks the forging, but if trying to access power that should be there would do the same is unknown. If not changing mistborn to misting, than changing a kind of misting should be relatively easy for Forging (provided they knew enough to write down proper stamp).

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

1. Just have someone pick up the Dor

I would assume it is not as easy as this comment would imply. Ire had orb that would allow them to take up Preservation, why did they not simply pick up Dor? It was closer after all. Considering how much trouble Raoden had with Dor (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/133/#e2154) when he started using it more, I think almost anyone trying to take up Dor would be killed before the process could complete.

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

2. There is ?

Yes, there is some upper limit on number of Elantrians (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/173/#e8617).

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

There are very broken interactions between Heamlurgy and C-gold

Broken, but to unlock them you need to

1. Learn how to do hemalurgy without killing the subject first (no one can do this at the moment, even Sazed after ascending assumes that death is actually necessary).
2. Have incredibly large stores of health on hand (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406/#e14304), so that would require time to prepare such stores.
3. Maybe be F-gold savant, as Brandon in WoB mentiones 'turning someone like Miles' into spike factory.

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

Irelevant

Allomancy getting weaker is not irrelevant.

For starters distilling mists now would either give you Harmonium (which does not make people into allomancers, in fact ordinary people could not ingest it due to its reactivity), and if there are two kinds of mists and you can distill them separately they would still not give you Atium or Lerasium, simply because neither Leras nor Ati are Vessels anymore (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69/#e6242). This WoB suggest that (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/373/#e12055) any new Preservation-metal would no longer be Lerasium. And this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/374/#e12145) shows that from mists you would get something different. Also Scadrial has very little means to manipulate investiture directly, prohibiting their research in this area.

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

C-Gold alows you to survive taking a pullet in the heart, gold savantism alows to survive being decapitated. Truthwatchers and Edgedancers self healing might be almost as strong as C-Gold but definitely not as much as gold savantism.

So, C-gold differs from F-gold only in magnitude of stores involved, and stormlight can heal the same kind of things as F-gold (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6336) with only minor difference per WoB. Stormlight could easily heal bullet to the heart, considering it healed arrow through brain, per WoB it can heal almost anything (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116/#e4788). Decapitation might still be healable for Radiant if they had a lot of investiture in their head, or were near perpendicularity (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e3535) as it works like F-gold, and is mostly limited by stores.

2 hours ago, mathiau said:

Though don't forget Roshar has two Dawnshards.

I was very hard trying to forget that, because even the one confirmed Dawnshard would be 'I win' button for Roshar in hands of Bondsmith. If desctruction of Ashyn was possible only with Dawnshard (which is not actually confirmed, it might have simply been unrestricted surgebinding) than Roshar is the only side with literal planet killing weaponry.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Good analysis but a few things to note

1. BAM is also a source of light

and

2. Dakor can be made wiht the ability to destroy other magics.

Thank you.

Good point on BAM, I completly forgot about her. That makes 7 sources of *light Roshar is relying upon.

Good point on Dakhor, however we have only seen them disrupt Aons in the making, not functioning ones no? Though if it works by disrupting Connection, than it would be a very useful tool, maybe even worth those 50 sacrifices. I would note that AonDor could replicate that, even if not as well (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/166/#e3014).

Edited April 25, 2021 by therunner

[Bejarden]

On the nightblood thing.

1: Nalthis is very undeveloped and someone with a gun can very easily take out someone with something like Nightblood by themselves and then take the blade.

2: I assume that Azures blade is a more general nightblood so it’s not that strong. It can be stolen very easily and is practically a OP Shardblade which Roshar has plenty of less powerful ones so that won’t be a huge problem.

3: the amount of breaths and skill it would take to mass produce Nightblood will deplete all the rest of the Breaths on Nalthis There just aren’t enough of Endowments investiture 

[Frustration]

53 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

On the nightblood thing.

1: Nalthis is very undeveloped and someone with a gun can very easily take out someone with something like Nightblood by themselves and then take the blade.

Was very undeveloped in one area almost two hundred years ago. And what about when they make Nightblood like guns?

54 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

2: I assume that Azures blade is a more general nightblood so it’s not that strong. It can be stolen very easily and is practically a OP Shardblade which Roshar has plenty of less powerful ones so that won’t be a huge problem.

Astriks doesn't obliterate anything it comes into contact with.

56 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

3: the amount of breaths and skill it would take to mass produce Nightblood will deplete all the rest of the Breaths on Nalthis There just aren’t enough of Endowments investiture 

The breaths will build up in the population as has been said before, and saying there isn't enough of Endorsement's investiture is like saying there isn't enough of 1/16 of the universe.