Pick Three Essences

[Oudeis he/him]

I realize this is a huge stretch on my part, but I got the impression from the first book that Jasnah specializes in three of the Essences; crystal, fire, and smoke. She sorta implies that she's not good with blood, and we only really see her use the other three. And Shallan only ever successfully Soulcasts into the same Essence. Blood and water, for some reason, are the same essence.

 

I'm not here to debate whether or not this is true; for the purposes of this question, I ask you to accept the hypothetical possibility that anyone with the Transformation Surge tends to be best at three specific essences.

 

If you were an Elsecaller, and let's assume you get to pick your three, which three Essences would you want as your hotkeys?

 

Starting off, I'll pick.

 

Fire. It has some utility when I want to begin an actual fire, and like Air, it's excellent for simply getting rid of things. Balancing the usefulness of being able to make fire, against the occasions that air is better for making something be gone, I think fire will end up being more utile.

 

Metal. If you get really good at it, metals have a wide range of physical properties you can take advantage of. Also, we know that you can Soulcast metals that will work for allomancy, so apart from being able to provide ammo and anchors for a Coinshot, you can even fuel any Allomancer friend of yours (if you get REALLY good enough to Soulcast the alloys properly). Also, if you're opposing an Allomancer, just make aluminum and some of its alloys and use those as weapons. ... Heh, actually, imagine if you were fighting a mistborn, managed to sneakily Soulcast one of his vials into flakes of aluminum, and when he drank it he automatically burned it and accidentally cleared out all of his own reserves.

 

I think I've settle on "Meat or flesh" for my final Essence. See below if you'd like to read the stream-of-consciousness that led to this conclusion. I'm less sold on this one than I am on Fire and Metal.

 

Lastly... hrm. Prolly either plant, or blood. I'm thinking, if I'm trapped on an island somewhere, I'd like to be able to provide sustenance to myself. With metal and fire, I can make a crude device to purify water, so assuming I have access to even bad water it might make more sense to be able to make food out of sand. But, I think I won't trust that I can really purify water as well as I think I can, and seriously if I have all this utility, I'm just gonna assume that I can somehow manage to escape and get to a place with food before I starve, but you can dehydrate far faster. And, as Jasnah showed us, there's some healing utility in being able to Soulcast blood. Unless there might be even MORE healing ability in being able to heal wounds by Soulcasting flesh... which also works as a food source. The other thought, if I've got access to Stormlight, that likely means Highstorms are happening, and with Metal to make rainbarrels, good water should not be difficult to acquire. For food and possibly healing, I think I'm gonna say "meat and flesh".

 

[Savanorn he/him]

Fire, fire and MOAR FIRE. 

 

There is no situation in which the ability to turn things into fire is not heroically useful. 

 

Lost in the snow, dying of hypothermia? Fire.

Jungle expedition goes bad? Fire. 

Falling into volcano? Fire. 

Ex starts seeing other girls? Fire. 

 

But seriously, 

 

Metal/oil/fire seems a good mix to me. 

Edited October 17, 2014 by Savanorn

[kaellok he/him]

Fire, fire and MOAR FIRE. 

 

There is no situation in which the ability to turn things into fire is not heroically useful. 

 

^