how hard can it be to remove some manacles?

[king of nowhere]

i have a hard time accepting that an object so small can be made virtually undestructible. surely there are ways to remove it. which won't involve the power source of a capital ship.

 

just for start, you could chop off starling's arms. i'm pretty sure she would regenerate them, but the manacles will come off. sure, cutting off a dragon's arms can't be easy, she showed herself to be impervious to gunfire. on the plus side, it means you have more freedom in doing extreme things to starling, without worrying of accidentally hurting her too much. i'm thinking shardblades, industrial lasers, holding explosive in her hands, getting her hands crushed under a big spaceship, or burned by the exhaust... even in our investiture-less, pre-space age civilization, we have the tools to cut through mountains. i can't believe a thin band of silver, or a couple of arms, can resist that much.

i'll leave out nuclear bombs because, while I would bet they can vaporize the manacles, i don't think there's a way to not kill starling in the process.

edgedancers could make starling slippery enough to get out of the manacles with minor scrapings. elsecallers, if very skilled, may be able to teleport her while leaving the manacles behind.

but i keep thinking brute force would be more practical, and technology is more suited for that. a silver or aluminium file may be able to abrade the manacles in a way that would not be restored. extreme heat may do the trick, or it may melt starling's arms, which would achieve the same goal. 

i just can't believe those manacles are so utterly indestructible as they are presented.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

I feel like your underestimating Dragon Magic. It's not clear on what, precisely, it is or how it works. But the Dragons have been shown to do some pretty interesting stuff, like make a Vault housing a Dawnshard that was unbreakable until the Scadrians invented the Intensifier.

They are ancient beings, some of them even predate Adonalsium's death. Chances are, they have some of the best understanding and ways of manipulating Investiture in the entire Cosmere, with WOB putting some of them on a similar level to Hoid and the Aethers and only a league or two beneath the Shards.

But let's go down the list.

13 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

just for start, you could chop off starling's arms. i'm pretty sure she would regenerate them, but the manacles will come off. sure, cutting off a dragon's arms can't be easy, she showed herself to be impervious to gunfire. on the plus side, it means you have more freedom in doing extreme things to starling, without worrying of accidentally hurting her too much. i'm thinking shardblades, industrial lasers, holding explosive in her hands, getting her hands crushed under a big spaceship, or burned by the exhaust... even in our investiture-less, pre-space age civilization, we have the tools to cut through mountains. i can't believe a thin band of silver, or a couple of arms, can resist that much.

First of all, I highly doubt these manacles are just regular old silver from the ground. They are Invested, likely to a very high extent to suppress a Dragon's powers. They could easily be as unbreakable as a Shardblade, and the only thing we've seen even chip one of those is Nightblood.

So regular scientific ways of destroying them probably won't work. As for cutting off Starling's arms, going on the Shardblade analogy, who's to say the Manacles can't just instantly reappear on Starling's body in another form, like around her legs, or her neck. They were made by a race that can shapeshift after all, so maybe they have Magitech that can also shapeshift like they can, we don't know but there is precedent for that type of thing in the Cosmere.

13 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

edgedancers could make starling slippery enough to get out of the manacles with minor scrapings. elsecallers, if very skilled, may be able to teleport her while leaving the manacles behind.

Edgedancers, like ost Surgebinders, have difficulties using their powers directly on highly invested things, like Shardblades.

Edit: That could also mean using their powers directly on highly invested beings like Dragons, because they can't directly use their powers on someone wearing Shardplate, only on things around them like the floor. So Abrasion probably couldn't be used to Slick either Starling or the Manacles. And maybe they'd just teleport back on or just resist being pulled off and no to friction?

As for Elsecallers, we've never seen anyone do anything like that with no indication they can do so. The Fused who use Transportation can do something like that when they teleport, but even then only themselves.

And who's to say that the Manacles aren't Connected to her very spirit and can just instantly reappear if that even did happen?

13 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

but i keep thinking brute force would be more practical, and technology is more suited for that. a silver or aluminium file may be able to abrade the manacles in a way that would not be restored. extreme heat may do the trick, or it may melt starling's arms, which would achieve the same goal. 

i just can't believe those manacles are so utterly indestructible as they are presented.

Aluminum and silver can't cut through a Shardblade, TLM showed that Invested materials like Godmetals have insanely high melting points, and I highly doubt that the Dragons who made these things wouldn't think of something as simple as lopping off an arm, that would likely be the first thing they would think off in creating these.

We may not know a whole lot about how Dragon's use Investiture, but I refuse to believe that they are anything less than just as good if not even better than the Ire when it comes to understanding Investiture, just due to the fact that their people have been around since the very beginning.

Edited August 30, 2025 by JustQuestin2004

[Nitpicking]

The manacles are semi-sapient. Presumably any attempt to remove them would be actively resisted. Not that they can't be overpowered (they were) but it isn't easy.

I mean, presumably with enough Dor a Forger could just make the manacles' history change so they were always designed to deactivate after X number of days, so they just open and fall off. "Enough Dor" would be probably in the tens of thousands of Breath Equivalent Units, of course.

[king of nowhere]

20 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

The manacles are semi-sapient. Presumably any attempt to remove them would be actively resisted. Not that they can't be overpowered (they were) but it isn't easy.

I mean, presumably with enough Dor a Forger could just make the manacles' history change so they were always designed to deactivate after X number of days, so they just open and fall off. "Enough Dor" would be probably in the tens of thousands of Breath Equivalent Units, of course.

yes, you do indeed need a lot of brute force.
i was just wondering what kind of brute force it would actually take, and if a custom-made machine is really the only way. if there could be ways involving a bit less of brute force. since an industrial tech has plenty of ways to generate brute force

Edited September 1, 2025 by king of nowhere

[NameIess]

I wonder what would happen if Star cut her arms off. It would probably be difficult, but would it require her to fully overpower the manacles? Or would her arms just grow back with manacles?

[iceblade44 he/him]

4 hours ago, NameIess said:

I wonder what would happen if Star cut her arms off. It would probably be difficult, but would it require her to fully overpower the manacles? Or would her arms just grow back with manacles?

I think if she tried her manacles defenses would activate and put her into comasleep. That is the most likely scenario 

[BinarySecond]

I also think the manacles would prevent the arms from being injured.

Anything strong enough to break through the protection is strong enough to break the manacles I suspect.

[king of nowhere]

14 hours ago, iceblade44 said:

I think if she tried her manacles defenses would activate and put her into comasleep. That is the most likely scenario 

that could be easily circumvented by someone else cutting her arms. 

one intriguing possibility is that her arms would regenerate with the manacles on, as they are somehow linked to her spiritweb just like that.

i wonder, since they are heavily invested, what kind of effect would be achieved by the right kind of anti-investuiture

[iceblade44 he/him]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

that could be easily circumvented by someone else cutting her arms. 

one intriguing possibility is that her arms would regenerate with the manacles on, as they are somehow linked to her spiritweb just like that.

i wonder, since they are heavily invested, what kind of effect would be achieved by the right kind of anti-investuiture

The manacles detect all harm not just what she does. I'm saying the amount of damage you need to do to try to cut a dragon's arms would likely trup the manacles. Remember she appears human but her durability is still dragon

[Qianweilian He/him]

On 8/29/2025 at 3:14 PM, king of nowhere said:

an object so small can be made virtually undestructible

I mean, the only time we've seen a shardblade even chipped was when it got hit with Nightblood. If they have a similar durability, it makes sense why Starling couldn't remove them.

[Nitpicking]

On 9/2/2025 at 5:20 PM, Qianweilian said:

I mean, the only time we've seen a shardblade even chipped was when it got hit with Nightblood. If they have a similar durability, it makes sense why Starling couldn't remove them.

So, you're saying that the way to free Starling would be to swing Nightblood at the manacles? [evil smile]

Might be a question for Brandon, actually. Could Nightblood cut dragonsteel? Could a regular Shardblade? Could a Mistborn burn a piece of dragonsteel, and what would happen?

Yeah, yeah, RAFO.

Edited September 4, 2025 by Nitpicking

[Qianweilian He/him]

2 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

So, you're saying that the way to free Starling would be to swing Nightblood at the manacles?

The question however, is if/when it cuts through the manacles, what happens to Starling (who is wearing said manacles)?

[NameIess]

56 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

The question however, is if/when it cuts through the manacles, what happens to Starling (who is wearing said manacles)?

Probably depends on Nightblood. Considering his development in KoWt, he might be able to selectively destroy just the manacles by the time of this book.

[Kadollan]

I was already wondering after I finished the book : why she didn't just ask the anti Investiture snake entity to just graze the manacle or something

[Nitpicking]

I mean, the short (and meta) answer is that she needs to have them on so Brandon can have them removed dramatically in a Space Age story.

[Dancer]

This is what I don't get. The Dragons are said to be indestructible and that the manacles have this magical ability to sense attacks coming, but an ant was able to bite her. I small ant was able to pierce her skin which is meant to be indestructible. If an ant can pierce her skin I see no reason that a good old fashion axe can't just chop off her arm to get rid of the manacles.  

[king of nowhere]

7 hours ago, Dancer said:

This is what I don't get. The Dragons are said to be indestructible and that the manacles have this magical ability to sense attacks coming, but an ant was able to bite her. I small ant was able to pierce her skin which is meant to be indestructible. If an ant can pierce her skin I see no reason that a good old fashion axe can't just chop off her arm to get rid of the manacles.  

that's a small inconsistency, yes. we saw starling shrug off bullets that tore holes through a tyrannosaurus expy, a wasp should just have broken her stinger. even if her poison is strong enough to affect starling, it shouldn't have pierced the skin.

 

that said, since those bullets had no effect, an old fashioned axe isn't either. but there are endless possibilities, because there is no such thing as indestructibility. maybe a cannon would work. maybe an industrial grade laser. maybe a shardblade. use enough power, and you will overcome those protections. which, actually, is what was happening in the book

[Nitpicking]

17 hours ago, Dancer said:

This is what I don't get. The Dragons are said to be indestructible and that the manacles have this magical ability to sense attacks coming, but an ant was able to bite her. I small ant was able to pierce her skin which is meant to be indestructible. If an ant can pierce her skin I see no reason that a good old fashion axe can't just chop off her arm to get rid of the manacles.  

IIRC the ant wasn't real. It was a Cognitive (Spiritual?) construct.

Edited October 28, 2025 by Nitpicking

[Shadeshadow227]

On 10/27/2025 at 2:32 AM, Dancer said:

This is what I don't get. The Dragons are said to be indestructible and that the manacles have this magical ability to sense attacks coming, but an ant was able to bite her. I small ant was able to pierce her skin which is meant to be indestructible. If an ant can pierce her skin I see no reason that a good old fashion axe can't just chop off her arm to get rid of the manacles.  

To be fair, the ant wasn't a real ant, it was a cognitive construct, and Patji's wildlife is incredibly deadly. I wouldn't put it past them to just have some topical venom that soaks into the skin incredibly fast or something, tbh.

The fact that deathant venom even does anything to a dragon is absolutely terrifying. She just got bit once and it had an effect, if they'd swarmed her she was most likely stormed. Patji don't play around, clearly.

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

On 10/27/2025 at 4:32 AM, Dancer said:

This is what I don't get. The Dragons are said to be indestructible and that the manacles have this magical ability to sense attacks coming, but an ant was able to bite her. I small ant was able to pierce her skin which is meant to be indestructible. If an ant can pierce her skin I see no reason that a good old fashion axe can't just chop off her arm to get rid of the manacles.  

The ant was highly, highly invested (based on Starlings comments on the ant after the bite)

On 8/29/2025 at 4:14 PM, king of nowhere said:

i have a hard time accepting that an object so small can be made virtually undestructible. surely there are ways to remove it. which won't involve the power source of a capital ship.

 

just for start, you could chop off starling's arms. i'm pretty sure she would regenerate them, but the manacles will come off. sure, cutting off a dragon's arms can't be easy, she showed herself to be impervious to gunfire. on the plus side, it means you have more freedom in doing extreme things to starling, without worrying of accidentally hurting her too much. i'm thinking shardblades, industrial lasers, holding explosive in her hands, getting her hands crushed under a big spaceship, or burned by the exhaust... even in our investiture-less, pre-space age civilization, we have the tools to cut through mountains. i can't believe a thin band of silver, or a couple of arms, can resist that much.

i'll leave out nuclear bombs because, while I would bet they can vaporize the manacles, i don't think there's a way to not kill starling in the process.

edgedancers could make starling slippery enough to get out of the manacles with minor scrapings. elsecallers, if very skilled, may be able to teleport her while leaving the manacles behind.

but i keep thinking brute force would be more practical, and technology is more suited for that. a silver or aluminium file may be able to abrade the manacles in a way that would not be restored. extreme heat may do the trick, or it may melt starling's arms, which would achieve the same goal. 

i just can't believe those manacles are so utterly indestructible as they are presented.

(edit: if I sound callous, know it all, or snobby, I WANT YOU SLAP ME ACROSS THE FACE BECUZL I AM NOT ANY OF THESE THINGS. … …)
 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but these manacles are Dragonsteel, right?

I think it would be very difficult to trick the manacles into being removed.

Besides brute force overpowering their mechanism, there’s essentially no way to break Dragonsteel.

Dragonsteel Prime spoilers:

Spoiler

I believe that in the book, the metal takes liquid form in the Shattered Planes (Dragonsteel version), and then will turn into a solid shape in response to a cognitive command. And then after that, its pretty much invincible.

Which is saying something, because they not only had dawnshards, but they also had Microkinesis - the MoI that has the capacity to split atoms.

Not that these abilities were used in or prior to the story to destroy things, but Dragonsteel is associated with pretty hard hitting MoIs - manifesting alongside (not just dragons) Sho Del, whose bone somehow allows access SR communication from any virtual distance. (In WaT, Hoid uses one to communicate with Frost’s sister, and even in IotE, he communicates with Starling, presumably from across the cosmere.) Microkinesis, which could split atoms, create lightweavings, and grow plants depending on the person. Presumably, however, this will be changed to be all the base MoI - including things like Elsecalling.

Dragonsteel and associated MoIs will be changed from the novel

All this to say that dragonsteel without any added mechanism is scaaary. Really. Scary. It’s to the point that some people thought it was a GMetal for a time.

With the combined knowledge of all dragons (possible because of dragon magic…), they devised a way to make it as impenetrable as possible. They’d definitely have put in a way to offset the cutting of the arms.

Edited November 9, 2025 by Sherma Main