The unseen powers of the Ghostbllods

[+Oltux72]

They know of Southern Scadrial, which has used mechanical Metallic Arts for centuries at the time of SA. Conclusion: The Ghostbloods have medaillions. Was that how Mraize beat Lift? Any more occasions during which Ghostbloods showed capabilities that are very hard to explain? How Iyatil got out of the asylum maybe?

[Benkinsky]

Iyatil managed to escape and was very sure of it. I assume there's some Steelrunning involved there.

[NameIess]

7 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

They know of Southern Scadrial, which has used mechanical Metallic Arts for centuries at the time of SA. Conclusion: The Ghostbloods have medaillions. Was that how Mraize beat Lift? Any more occasions during which Ghostbloods showed capabilities that are very hard to explain? How Iyatil got out of the asylum maybe?

I doubt it. If they knew how to get investiture off-world, they wouldn't be hunting ba-ado-mishram in order to figure out how to transport it off-world.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Nameless

[Honorless]

9 minutes ago, Nameless said:

I doubt it. If they knew how to get investiture off-world, they wouldn't be hunting ba-ado-mishram in order to figure out how to transport it off-world.

That's the advantage of the metallic arts, you only need the metal as fuel, and that acts as the key to allow you to access Harmony's Investiture

[NameIess]

5 minutes ago, Honorless said:

That's the advantage of the metallic arts, you only need the metal as fuel, and that acts as the key to allow you to access Harmony's Investiture

I doubt they can transport feruchemical medallions off of Scadrial, so they would have to make the medallions on Roshar.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Nameless

[Brgst13]

This raises a few questions:

1. How do they know what Mishram can do if she has been imprisoned since before the Catacendre?

2. Are they pursuing 2 separate goals (one of transporting Investiture off-world and one of getting Kelsier off-world) or are these aspects of the same goal?

3. Would you be able to fill an unkeyed medallion with Stormlight?

4. If not, how would Mraize fill one, as he does not seem to be Scadrian?

[HSuperLee]

16 minutes ago, Nameless said:

I doubt they can transport feruchemical medallions off of Scadrial, so they would have to make the medallions on Roshar.

I don't see why they couldn't bring medallions with them. A medallion is really just a metalmind, and metalminds fill with investiture specifically Connected to a person, not a planet. If anything, medallions would be easier to take off-world, because they've already been stripped of Identity, meaning they shouldn't have any Connection to Scadrial to begin with.

Edited September 26, 2021 by HSuperLee

[NameIess]

42 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

I don't see why they couldn't bring medallions with them. A medallion is really just a metalmind, and metalminds fill with investiture specifically Connected to a person, not a planet. If anything, medallions would be easier to take off-world, because they've already been stripped of Identity, meaning they shouldn't have any Connection to Scadrial to begin with.

Well, the people have connection to the planet. Maybe medallions would work, but I'm not sure that it would be as simple as carrying it offworld.

[Karger]

32 minutes ago, Nameless said:

Well, the people have connection to the planet. Maybe medallions would work, but I'm not sure that it would be as simple as carrying it offworld.

People can usually get offworld without issue though.

[NameIess]

Just now, Karger said:

People can usually get offworld without issue though.

people don't have the level of investiture that medallions do. If medallions worked so easily, why would the ghostbloods care about stormlight when they could just get infinite investiture from compounding?

[Karger]

Just now, Nameless said:

people don't have the level of investiture that medallions do. If medallions worked so easily, why would the ghostbloods care about stormlight when they could just get infinite investiture from compounding?

Axindweth makes use of feruchmey while offworld.  It is possible she was using a medalion but either way nothing we know of stops you from making a medalion while still off world since all of the metalic arts clearly work.  Apparently some issue is seen with compounding(I personally think the GBs are trying to avoid getting Harmony's attention).

[NameIess]

Just now, Karger said:

Axindweth makes use of feruchmey while offworld.  It is possible she was using a medalion but either way nothing we know of stops you from making a medalion while still off world since all of the metalic arts clearly work.  Apparently some issue is seen with compounding(I personally think the GBs are trying to avoid getting Harmony's attention).

I'm not saying that feruchemy doesn't work offworld or that you can't make medallions offworld, all I'm saying that it is more difficult to bring medallions offworld than just carrying them off.

[Karger]

3 minutes ago, Nameless said:

I'm not saying that feruchemy doesn't work offworld or that you can't make medallions offworld, all I'm saying that it is more difficult to bring medallions offworld than just carrying them off.

That might be true or it might not be.  Either way nothing seems to stop you from just assembling them on site.  If the GBs wanted them on Roshar they could just bring in their dedicated medallion team.

[NameIess]

1 minute ago, Karger said:

That might be true or it might not be.  Either way nothing seems to stop you from just assembling them on site.  If the GBs wanted them on Roshar they could just bring in their dedicated medallion team.

Well, if you'd look at my first post on this thread, I mentioned that the Ghostbloods could make them on Roshar, so yes, I agree.

[Karger]

Just now, Nameless said:

Well, if you'd look at my first post on this thread, I mentioned that the Ghostbloods could make them on Roshar, so yes, I agree.

You mean your second.  Sorry I missed that.  I don't think we have enough information to say one way or another on medallions because we don't even know what they are.  However the very fact that you can make them on any world demonstrates that they are not "world spesific" making me lean toward you can just move them.

[HSuperLee]

We definitely don't know all the limitations of the medallions due to not knowing how they're made. The fact Southern Scadrial has people around whose job is to fill heat medallions suggests they can't just compound brass, which seems like an easy solution. It might be that making compounding medallions requires a compounder in the first place. We know there's some weird interference in the medallions operation that prevents you from using more than one at a time, and that each one can only have two powers, so for all we know, compounding medallions just don't exist.

That aside, there's also a substantial difference between being able to freely move stormlight around and moving the metallic arts around. For one, the quantity and renewability of stormlight is kind of insane. Only compounding would be able to compete with it (and that would be with many compounders working together) and as I just said, we've not seen compounding medallions to even be sure they exists outside of the Bands of Mourning. Further, stormlight is in a far more useful form than invested metalminds. It seems even in-world people are still trying to figure out investiture conversion. The existence of fabrials and gemstones able to hold stormlight makes it almost constructed for trade and industry in a way that medallions, while still useful, just can't compete with. Let's even say that there is a medallion trade the ghostbloods are benefiting from, that doesn't mean they would automatically ignore the potentials of stormlight.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 9/26/2021 at 1:28 PM, Nameless said:

people don't have the level of investiture that medallions do.

Eh, we know that Brandon considers even Mistborn to be barely Invested. A medallion to grant someone a single power is probably actually pretty low on the scale.

On 9/26/2021 at 1:28 PM, Nameless said:

people don't have the level of investiture that medallions do. If medallions worked so easily, why would the ghostbloods care about stormlight when they could just get infinite investiture from compounding?

Stormlight has a few major benefits over metalminds as a fuel:

1. When you Compound, the power is limited to a very specific form and you can't really do anything else with it, you just get a lot of the attribute. We don't even know how one would be able to extract the Investiture from a metalmind besides by tapping it, let alone put it into a usable generic form. The Lights, on the other hand, seem close to pure already, and so it's probably easier to hack them into fueling other magic systems.
2. Acquiring a massive amount of Stormlight is easy, you just need to leave some gems out in the highstorm. Compounding requires a specific person, and for that person to have an incredibly rare powerset (or to kill people to give them such a powerset), and for them to manually burn and store over and over. And if that person dies or gets injured or trapped or just isn't nearby, you're screwed until you can get another.
   1. Also, the Ire have tech that can hold massive amounts of Stormlight, so that makes transporting it much easier than even the gems, using existing technology.
3. There's multiple types of Light from multiple different sources, but they seem to resemble each other enough that working out how to hack one into things is probably relatively easily adaptable to the others, if one source somehow becomes unavailable (and considering the power level of said sources, one being damaged in the first case is incredibly unlikely outside very extreme circumstances). And the pure-seeming form of Light means it might even be adaptable to other types of Investiture if you can learn how to refine them, meaning Stormlight is a very good tool to experiment with to work out things that would be necessary for other types of Investiture anyway.

Edited October 9, 2021 by LewsTherinTelescope

[StanLemon]

I think the simplest way answer to why the Ghostbloods would be trying to get Stormlight offworld is that it's the easiest accessible universal power source available. Medallions at the end of the day are limited to the specific powers that they provide, but from what we've seen it looks like Stormlight can be used to power just about anything. 

[Tglassy]

I don't think it's hard for invested PEOPLE to get off world.  Just look at Hoid.  And he's seen doing Allomancy and Awakening on Roshar.  There should be no problem taking a metalmind and walking through the Cognitive Realm with it.  It's like carrying the investiture, specifically keyed to an individual, in a suitcase.  

 

The problem with Stormlight is that it runs out.  You can put it in a gemstone and carry it, but that's horribly inefficient, and it only renews in one place: Roshar.  Sure, you could get yourself a Perfect Gemstone and then you could carry it forever...until you used it for something.  Then you'd need to go back to Roshar to refill.  If you could somehow refill Stormlight anywhere, then you could do all kinds of crazy things.  

 

I think the reason they're trying to get Kel offworld is because he's stuck on Scadrial, because of his Connection to Preservation.  He's way too invested with Preservation's power because of his time in the pool.  He just can't go that far away from Preservation's Center of power.  

 

Now, if they could figure out how to renew Stormlight elsewhere, then they'd probably need to be able to create a Connection to its source that can be transported anywhere.  If they could do that, then they could do the same for Scadrial, creating a kind of portable Connection device that would, potentially, allow Kel to go wherever he wanted.  

[Frustration]

51 minutes ago, Tglassy said:

The problem with Stormlight is that it runs out.  You can put it in a gemstone and carry it, but that's horribly inefficient, and it only renews in one place: Roshar.  Sure, you could get yourself a Perfect Gemstone and then you could carry it forever...until you used

Whenever Rosharan investiture aproaches the edge of it's system in the CR it grows heavy, to the point it can't be moved beyond a certain point.

[+Oltux72]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Whenever Rosharan investiture aproaches the edge of it's system in the CR it grows heavy, to the point it can't be moved beyond a certain point.

But not every Investiture. Somebody got Nightblood, the Returned and Seons through the CR. There clearly is an unknown factor, presumably Identity and/or Connection.

[Frustration]

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

But not every Investiture. Somebody got Nightblood, the Returned and Seons through the CR. There clearly is an unknown factor, presumably Identity and/or Connection.

we have some evidence that Returned have to take extra steps to worldhop, but yes, Roshar is largely unique in this.