To Kill a Herald

[therunner he/him]

3 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

I... I don't know if that is true? One question I have about the kind of speed they all can tap is what other attributes are they able to access? They have Youth for sure, and Speed. I feel like they might have something in the genre of Pewter-like Strength. Is a Pewterarm or, worse, Pewter ferring unable to bend bars?

That is a very good point. 

Nale casually thrown and completely shattered Shardplate with one hand, which is far beyond any human level strength (physically likely stronger than Plate itself).
Taln and his rampage is another evidence of their beyond human strength, as he crushes gemhearts and Fused skulls in his bare hands.

So their strength is more in domain of Duralumin+Pewter, quite a bit beyond just Pewter.

I think we have a bit of a problem in that we tend to think about Heralds as SuperRadiants, but they are more akin to Feruchemist with unlimited stores + Radiant powers + resurrective immortality on top. 

Which changes the relevant calculus of defeating them quite a bit.

14 hours ago, alder24 said:

That’s probably one of the hardest tasks Kelsier could give outside of killing Hoid or a Shard. Heralds are op but they regularly died during Desolation so you can definitely get them despite their Surgebinding, skills, speed and Atium-like powers. 

While they died regularly during Desolations, at least one always survived until the end of Desolation, even before they started showing the powers related to Roshar itself. 

I mean, in the first few Desolations it was Heralds + uninvested humans vs Fused + Regals + Singers, and they still won.

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You definitely need to surprise attack them as a direct frontal confrontation gives them an advantage. Sneaking into their camp with a team of assassins will be a challenge. The best thing to start the fight with is to use nicrosil enhanced emotional Allomancy specifically targeting emotions related to their madness. They may be highly invested, but their minds are broken beyond repair, providing plenty of cracks in their soul for the emotional Allomancy of that strength to stun them for a few precious moments. Then use F-steel to close the distance and strike fast. There are only a few options I can think of that would permanently neutralize a Herald:

Taln is as broken as it gets, and yet still slaughters Fused like there is no tomorrow. 
If other Heralds have even just a tenth of Taln's skill, this plan would fail, because that strike team would get slaughtered no matter how much you whammy the Herald.

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Hemalurgy - this might provide the easiest way to kill them while they are stunned. Use A-electrum or A-Atium to aid with spike placement (WoB) and then spike out their Connection to the Oathpact. With this the Connection will be fully gone, not just severely weakened like it was after Aharietiam and because the spike will most likely go through their heart, they will also die and won’t be reborn. You can also use an aluminum spike to remove all of their powers, but that won’t stop them from being reborn. Spiking out their Connection to Honor would also do the job (per Vasher's words in RoW ch 15, it's this Connection that sustains them as CS),

I don't think this is feasible. 

With Hemalurgy knowledge is king but, Ghostbloods have no way of knowing how to spike out Connection to Oathpact. Duralumin spikes both Connection and Identity, and we know you can spike out many types of Connection (to land, to spren, to other people etc.), each of these will likely require different bind point. 

Ghostbloods cannot really experiment on Heralds to figure out where to place the spike, so ultimately, they cannot spike out the Connection to Oathpact. 

Additionally, Heralds souls are heavily warped:

• All but Taln have souls warped by conflict on Ashyn so much that they don't age.
• Taln had soul warped during his attempt to kill Cultivation
• Kaladin is the sole exception, though with being Son of Tanavast, maybe not.

and warped souls means that bind points would function differently than on human

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Questioner

If Mraize took an atium spike and put it through Hoid's chest and then into himself, would he gain different abilities because of Hoid's altered spiritweb?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, he probably would. That's really terrifying to think about.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

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Btw, Elantrian Shai is programmed to grant you a wish after awakening, so if you ask her and explain how dire is your need to kill a Herald, she would assist you, which would be a huuuuuge help. She could probably do it alone given enough preparation and tools. After all, Elantrians can replicate everything that all other invested arts are capable of, including Bondsmithing (WoB) - she might be able to just remove Herald’s Connection to the Oathpact and Honor, suppress their powers and just kill them. 

Enough preparation is the key bottleneck.
Since even millennia old Elantrians aren't monsters with Bondsmithing + Feruchemy like abilities etc, likely it is much more difficult to replicate the effects of other Invested arts. 

Unraveling the Oathpact as someone who is not party to it would likely be very difficult.

Elantrians are (theoretically) super powerful. But practically, we don't really see that, in Era 1 they are afraid of Shades, when based on how people talk about Elantrians, they should be eating them for breakfast.
 

[Frustration]

9 minutes ago, therunner said:

Elantrians are (theoretically) super powerful. But practically, we don't really see that, in Era 1 they are afraid of Shades, when based on how people talk about Elantrians, they should be eating them for breakfast.

Not necessarily shades themselves.

They hear about shades and say that the: "Forces of Threnody" are getting involved.

Considering the Night Brigade and that even Sigil thinks of them as an overwhelming force that doesn't seem too much of a stretch to me for them o be worried.

[therunner he/him]

3 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Not necessarily shades themselves.

They hear about shades and say that the: "Forces of Threnody" are getting involved.

Considering the Night Brigade and that even Sigil thinks of them as an overwhelming force that doesn't seem too much of a stretch to me for them o be worried.

True, but Night Brigade is powerful because they control Shades, and back in Era 1 they wouldn't have spaceships.

If Elantrians were as powerful as people talk of them (i.e. 6 months prep time to permanently kill Herald), they wouldn't have reason to be afraid of them.

Edited January 18 by therunner

[Frustration]

21 minutes ago, therunner said:

True, but Night Brigade is powerful because they control Shades, and back in Era 1 they wouldn't have spaceships.

If Elantrians were as powerful as people talk of them (i.e. 6 months prep time to permanently kill Herald), they wouldn't have reason to be afraid of them.

Control of shades is just what we know about them. Considering what Sigil went through with the desolations and that he considers the Night Brigade more dangerous...

I think there's a lot we don't know about them.

Edited January 18 by Frustration

[therunner he/him]

18 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Control of shades is just what we know about them. Considering what Sigil went through with the desolations and that he considers the Night Brigade more dangerous...

I think there's a lot we don't onow about them.

True, but that is also Night Brigade by Era 4, this is centuries earlier. They weren't always this dangerous.
And again Heralds are on level beyond that, since they fought Desolations basically alone for first few. 

Ire in Secret History talk about  forces of Threnody wishing to join the main stage, impliying Threnodities aren't a relevent power yet.

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Well, well,” the ancient creature said. “My foresight does not seem so foolish now, does it, Captain? The powers of Threnody wish to join the main stage. Engage the device.”

And the device they have to deal with Cognitive Shadows does nothing to Kelsier, who is Cognitive Shadow

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Engage the device.” Kelsier had an immediate sinking feeling. Whatever that device did, he suspected it would not go well for him. He turned to bolt down the corridor, making for one of the windows.  
...
Kelsier felt nothing.
...
"Perhaps there was someone, but the guard was wrong about it being a Cognitive Shadow. Have the guards be on alert, and leave the device on just in case.

And finally, Ire have forces on border of Threnody, which implies they are not overwhelmingly more powerful

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“I do not doubt your foresight, ancient one,” the guard captain continued. “But I do trust my forces on the Threnodite border. There are no shadows here.”

They see Shades/Threnodies as a problem, they guard against them, but they don't seem able to defeat them. In conclusion, Elantrians, even with centuries of experience, have difficulty dealing just with Shades.

So again, I don't think Elantrians can whip up something to perma-kill Herald in 6 months, I don't think they could even with few years. 

Edited January 18 by therunner

[Myst He/Him]

Okay, so, in this case, because we have no idea which herald, we have to assume the worst, i.e. Taln, but coherent. In this case, it’s a matter of somehow getting around the supernatural reflexes. Taln has caught darts, while not even being aware of what was happening. Nale has shown that Heralds can move at supernatural speeds. Therefore, he could keep up with either a steel runner, or a slider. As for sheer power, he single-handedly took down so many fused. So going by numbers we literally cannot. A Herald using the full extent of their powers can easily escape or defeat anything we throw at them by drawing on Roshar. We literally cannot beat a Herald at full strength, we’d have to convince the herald to let us kill them. And so, since the prompt says they have a goal, that’s not likely. Which means force, something that cannot happen on Roshar without extensive casualties and investiture.

Therefore, the only way I see to kill a herald, without throwing a desolations worth of force at them, is to not fight them on Roshar. Kalak was unable to escape Felt, despite still being in Roshar’s shadesmar, which suggests that their powers rely on being in the physical realm on Roshar. Much like Sel. Nale would’ve been beaten by Kaladin if he hadn’t had those powers. As such, it is possible, while finding a person able to kill Taln in a fight of pure skill would be hard, it’s a lot easier to throw bodies at him here rather than on Roshar. In other words, it’s up to how many resources our Ghostblood has access to, and if they have any people with even a fraction of Kaladin’s fighting prowess, and whether they can get them to throw themselves against Taln.

[Qianweilian He/him]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

You make a solid argument, my only question is who does the torturing then?

Honestly, no one. While they might try, there's nothing to torture and Retribution is in hiding.

[alder24]

8 hours ago, therunner said:

Taln is as broken as it gets, and yet still slaughters Fused like there is no tomorrow. 
If other Heralds have even just a tenth of Taln's skill, this plan would fail, because that strike team would get slaughtered no matter how much you whammy the Herald.

That's why you need to stun them with emotional Allomancy first and immediately kill them. Heralds are op and you can't win a fight against them normally, unless you throw at them dozens or hundreds of metalborns and overwhelm them - but that won't kill them permanently so they will be reborn. 

8 hours ago, therunner said:

I don't think this is feasible. 

With Hemalurgy knowledge is king but, Ghostbloods have no way of knowing how to spike out Connection to Oathpact. Duralumin spikes both Connection and Identity, and we know you can spike out many types of Connection (to land, to spren, to other people etc.), each of these will likely require different bind point. 

Ghostbloods cannot really experiment on Heralds to figure out where to place the spike, so ultimately, they cannot spike out the Connection to Oathpact. 

The key here is using future sight and fortune to aid with spiking, burn Atium or electrum together with duralumin and maybe even tap F-chromium on top of that for more fortune. With you being literally dragged into the Spiritual Realm, you will place the spike in the right place and will steal the right thing. You're sidestepping the knowledge by drowning yourself in fortune.

[Qianweilian He/him]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

The key here is using future sight and fortune to aid with spiking, burn Atium or electrum together with duralumin and maybe even tap F-chromium on top of that for more fortune.

Shai might be able to make a stamp to make you a hemalurgy expert as well, and know where to place the Oathpact spike. It would probably only last a couple of seconds, but that would be long enough.

[therunner he/him]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's why you need to stun them with emotional Allomancy first and immediately kill them. Heralds are op and you can't win a fight against them normally, unless you throw at them dozens or hundreds of metalborns and overwhelm them - but that won't kill them permanently so they will be reborn. 

Taln states on the other hand shows that even when completely insensate, they can still kill hundreds of Invested opponents.

Emotional allomancy is not guaranteed to stun them.

And if the Herald is either Kaladin or Nale, this option won't work at all.

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

The key here is using future sight and fortune to aid with spiking, burn Atium or electrum together with duralumin and maybe even tap F-chromium on top of that for more fortune. With you being literally dragged into the Spiritual Realm, you will place the spike in the right place and will steal the right thing. You're sidestepping the knowledge by drowning yourself in fortune.

Hmm, maybe? 
Elend though was frozen for a second in place as well when doing this, so it is a gamble if Herald won't kill you in that moment. 

50 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

Shai might be able to make a stamp to make you a hemalurgy expert as well, and know where to place the Oathpact spike. It would probably only last a couple of seconds, but that would be long enough.

Stamp has to be plausible. 

The only way you can know how to properly place hemalurgy on Heralds, is to experiment on Heralds.

[Qianweilian He/him]

4 minutes ago, therunner said:

Stamp has to be plausible. 

The only way you can know how to properly place hemalurgy on Heralds, is to experiment on Heralds.

I mean, Shai turned herself into an Elantrian, something that would require her to have a completely different birthplace and parentage. Spiking out the Oathpact would probably be similar to spiking out connection to Honor, something much more "reasonable" to have done. I think it's plausible and would go the distance if combined with duralumin atium.

[Myst He/Him]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's why you need to stun them with emotional Allomancy first and immediately kill them. Heralds are op and you can't win a fight against them normally, unless you throw at them dozens or hundreds of metalborns and overwhelm them - but that won't kill them permanently so they will be reborn. 

The key here is using future sight and fortune to aid with spiking, burn Atium or electrum together with duralumin and maybe even tap F-chromium on top of that for more fortune. With you being literally dragged into the Spiritual Realm, you will place the spike in the right place and will steal the right thing. You're sidestepping the knowledge by drowning yourself in fortune.

That’s fine and all, but Taln moved fast enough to create a vacuum behind him from where he was. It doesn’t matter if you can see his next moves, or know exactly what he’ll do, if you can’t react to it in time. 

You’ll know where to place the spike, but your hand is slower than a snail when compared to him. Atium does give an enhanced mental ability to process the information, but that doesn’t help you move faster.

In the case of a slider or steel runner, the slider would have to be right next to him, and the bubble would therefore envelop them both. As for steel runners, the amount of speed needed to run faster than air is astronomical. Plus you’d have to maintain that speed for long periods of time. And that would just be to be keep up with him, you’d have to go three of four times that. The only way to get this amount of speed would be through steel compounding. But, that’s still a ridiculous amount of speed, and you actually run into the problem of whether you can carry the steel minds it would take to store that much speed 

[Qianweilian He/him]

I agree, I don't think this is possible with any sort of fight unless we were to get stuff in the range of permanent elantrianness or fullborn powers, in which case it becomes, if not easy, simpler.

[Duxredux he/him]

Step one. Identify the Heralds' respawn points on Braise and Roshar and Intentionally install heavily reinforced iron maidens with aluminum spikes at those precise locations (thank you Gehn (Riven)). Compounded or Purified Dor fueled Fortune may be necessary for placement. Don't scrimp on budget. If necessary, wait until the Herald is en route before moving them into their final position.

Step two. Rig a Harmonium-Trellium bomb on the Cognitive Realm side of Scadrial's Perpendicularity and detonate it when the strike team arrives (Maxim 20, The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries). Kudos if intelligence can find a location with less risk of collateral damage, particularly if the Herald has the Surge of Transportation but don't count on it. Step 1 is where the Fortune must be spent. However the Perpendicularity is a highly logical place for the strike team to try to capture and would be where I would place it without any other information.

Step 3. Find out if you won. If the Herald(s) somehow survive and are still trapped, transport them for further containment or elimination. If Nightblood or Anti-Light are unavailable and removing Connection is the best bet, don't bother with standard spikes. Use a spike with a diameter larger than the Herald along with an industrial grade press and strip all available Connection from their Spiritweb.

Edited January 19 by Duxredux

[alder24]

18 hours ago, therunner said:

Taln states on the other hand shows that even when completely insensate, they can still kill hundreds of Invested opponents.

Emotional allomancy is not guaranteed to stun them.

And if the Herald is either Kaladin or Nale, this option won't work at all.

He was not insensate, that's why he killed them all as they made the mistake and came for the broken, which woke him up. He was consumed by madness but not stunned in a way emotional Allomancy does it. Because of their madness, Heralds are more susceptible to emotional Allomancy than others - Nale including. Kaladin is too fresh of a Herald, wasn't tortured for thousands of years, wasn't affected by his status of a CS, so he didn't developed cracks in his soul like other Heralds (but he still have them as we all know how much emotional baggage he has) and due to his high level of investiture and lack of cracks, he might be immune to emotional Allomancy, unless extreme levels of powers are used. 

19 hours ago, therunner said:

Hmm, maybe? 
Elend though was frozen for a second in place as well when doing this, so it is a gamble if Herald won't kill you in that moment. 

Honestly, if you can't stun a Heralds, you either need another Herald to strike them down, or use some crazy complicated plan to hit them at all, which most likely wouldn't work anyway. Maybe a steelrunner compounder with lots of speed would be able to hit them faster than they can react, but you need the same amount of attribute Marasi used in BoM just to match their top speed so you would need even more to do it. 

Heralds are the best fighters in Cosmere and their skills are so fine tuned for fighting that no other can rival them. Trying to fight them is just a bad idea. Kaladin showed in his fight with Nale that the way to defeat them is to provide them with a therapy session, therefore the best course of action is to send professional therapists that would persuade that Herald to stop their invasion and bring them back from madness (with F-duralumin so they can form Connection with them which would help with making them trust you). Trying to find a way to help their soul and mind heal a little bit would also yield better results than trying to fight them although this would be probably harder then just killing them as nobody really knows how to do that. Starting with gifting them unsealed copperminds is a good idea, they can store their memories and that would stabilize their sanity, but what to do next is impossible to tell.

 

16 hours ago, Mistfallen Soldier said:

That’s fine and all, but Taln moved fast enough to create a vacuum behind him from where he was. It doesn’t matter if you can see his next moves, or know exactly what he’ll do, if you can’t react to it in time. 

You're not using future sight to predict his moves, you're using it to automatically place a spike that would remove his Connection to Oathpact/Honor. With that amount of fortune, you would see all you need to see, like Eland did at the end of HoA. But to do that you need to stun them first so they can't react for that one single second it would take you to do that, without that you won't be able to spike them.

16 hours ago, Mistfallen Soldier said:

In the case of a slider or steel runner, the slider would have to be right next to him, and the bubble would therefore envelop them both. As for steel runners, the amount of speed needed to run faster than air is astronomical. Plus you’d have to maintain that speed for long periods of time. And that would just be to be keep up with him, you’d have to go three of four times that. The only way to get this amount of speed would be through steel compounding. But, that’s still a ridiculous amount of speed, and you actually run into the problem of whether you can carry the steel minds it would take to store that much speed 

Speed bubbles can be shaped at will and anchored to a Slider if you are a Savant. Ghostbloods have enough cash from selling aluminum that they can buy enough bendalloy to feed it to their Slider everyday and make them into a Savant.

Marasi did that with just what the Bands had stored. You would definitely need compounding to get that much speed, more than what the Bands had, but that wouldn't require a much larger metalmind considering that the Bands consisted of 16 metalminds merged together.

[Frustration]

On 1/18/2026 at 1:00 AM, Mistfallen Soldier said:

Okay, so, in this case, because we have no idea which herald, we have to assume the worst, i.e. Taln, but coherent. In this case, it’s a matter of somehow getting around the supernatural reflexes. Taln has caught darts, while not even being aware of what was happening. Nale has shown that Heralds can move at supernatural speeds. Therefore, he could keep up with either a steel runner, or a slider. As for sheer power, he single-handedly took down so many fused. So going by numbers we literally cannot. A Herald using the full extent of their powers can easily escape or defeat anything we throw at them by drawing on Roshar. We literally cannot beat a Herald at full strength, we’d have to convince the herald to let us kill them. And so, since the prompt says they have a goal, that’s not likely. Which means force, something that cannot happen on Roshar without extensive casualties and investiture.

Therefore, the only way I see to kill a herald, without throwing a desolations worth of force at them, is to not fight them on Roshar. Kalak was unable to escape Felt, despite still being in Roshar’s shadesmar, which suggests that their powers rely on being in the physical realm on Roshar. Much like Sel. Nale would’ve been beaten by Kaladin if he hadn’t had those powers. As such, it is possible, while finding a person able to kill Taln in a fight of pure skill would be hard, it’s a lot easier to throw bodies at him here rather than on Roshar. In other words, it’s up to how many resources our Ghostblood has access to, and if they have any people with even a fraction of Kaladin’s fighting prowess, and whether they can get them to throw themselves against Taln.

Kalak also had no Stormlight and no Honorblade. Had he possessed either he could have escaped easily, and we have no idea how many breaths Felt used awakening the curtains.

6 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Step 3. Find out if you won. If the Herald(s) somehow survive and are still trapped, transport them for further containment or elimination. If Nightblood or Anti-Light are unavailable and removing Connection is the best bet, don't bother with standard spikes. Use a spike with a diameter larger than the Herald along with an industrial grade press and strip all available Connection from their Spiritweb.

I don't think that spikes larger than their bodies would work, based on how important Intent and bindpoints are, now you could possibly use the Aluminum Maiden(TM Frustration, all rights reserved), and try spiking all known bindpoints at once, that could work.

[therunner he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

He was not insensate, that's why he killed them all as they made the mistake and came for the broken, which woke him up. He was consumed by madness but not stunned in a way emotional Allomancy does it. Because of their madness,

Taln is insensenate and still reacts to possibly dangerous stimuli.  He catches the dart in WoR, the rampage in WaT. 

In all of those, Taln is mentally out of it like no one we have seen, and he still reacts.

So assuming Herald will react to emotional Allomancy like regular humans and be completely immobilized is an assumption.

Hell, in mortal danger quite likely regular human would also react to outside stimuli, they aren't literally stunned just overwhelmed by strong emotions, And Rioting/Soothing can be overcome by stronger native emotions.

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Heralds are more susceptible to emotional Allomancy than others - Nale including. Kaladin is too fresh of a Herald, wasn't tortured for thousands of years, wasn't affected by his status of a CS, so he didn't developed cracks in his soul like other Heralds (but he still have them as we all know how much emotional baggage he has) and due to his high level of investiture and lack of cracks, he might be immune to emotional Allomancy, unless extreme levels of powers are used. 

Nale and Kaladin are immune because of Shardplate, emotional Allomancy cannot penetrate it.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Speed bubbles can be shaped at will and anchored to a Slider if you are a Savant. Ghostbloods have enough cash from selling aluminum that they can buy enough bendalloy to feed it to their Slider everyday and make them into a Savant.

But can they do that in 6 months? Because that is the timelimit.

Plus shaping of the bubble won't help, because you cannot interact with objects outside of the bubble, Herald included.

 

 

Also, regarding all the suggested uses of massive amounts of Fortune. 
Why didn't Ghostbloods use that to obtain information on the Set? In TLM the Set were literally days from taking over the Basin, and yet Ghostbloods had to recruit Marasi to be able to find them and strike at them.

So using Fortune to divine various information might not be so easy (see also Renarin and his visions) as we pretend it is.

Edited January 19 by therunner

[Immortal Platypus]

21 hours ago, therunner said:

Taln states on the other hand shows that even when completely insensate, they can still kill hundreds of Invested opponents.

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Taln is insensenate and still reacts to possibly dangerous stimuli.  He catches the dart in WoR, the rampage in WaT. 

In all of those, Taln is mentally out of it like no one we have seen, and he still reacts.

Taln wasn't completely insensate at that point, as shown by the halting of his mantra. He would've been disoriented and out of place, but not insensate. The dart in WoR I don't remember, but you're probably right about that.

11 minutes ago, therunner said:

So assuming Herald will react to emotional Allomancy like regular humans and be completely immobilized is an assumption.

Hell, in mortal danger quite likely regular human would also react to outside stimuli, they aren't literally stunned just overwhelmed by strong emotions, And Rioting/Soothing can be overcome by stronger native emotions.

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Emotional allomancy is not guaranteed to stun them.

The bolded line in what I quoted from you is directly contradicted by Brandon who says that Duralumin+Zinc/Brass would be stunning, at least for a normal person. You're right that it is an assumption, but I think it's a logical conclusion, and certainly one that the Ghostbloods would make. It seems like it would have at least the same effect on a Herald who have many more cracks in their psyche. 

Spoiler

dwhitlo1

I was re-reading through Vin's fight with Zane, and I think that her method of killing him might be more complicated than necessary. Here is the strategy I would use to fight a mistborn with atium (assuming I have no atium myself or electrum). First I would use a duralumin enhanced soothing to deaden everything except complacency. I would at the same time use a duralumin enhanced riot to spike their sense of complacency. I would then go for the jugular with a duralumin enhanced pewter slash. I think this strategy has a good chance of victory since atium does not show what is going on inside of you, only what you will physically do. Therefore, your enemy will not see the emotional allomancy coming which gives you a few seconds to work with as he is stunned. By the way, if you do not think complacency is a riotable emotion replace it with love. What do you think? Does my strategy have a chance of success?

Brandon Sanderson

I like this strategy. Thinking outside the proverbial box. I think it has a good chance of succeeding, depending. Remember, emotional Allomancy is NOT mind control. And a duralumin-fueled blast of emotion is going to draw a lot of attention to itself, but will still be stunning. So yes, I'd say this is a valid method of taking on someone with atium.

/r/books AMA 2015 (March 16, 2015)

(bold added by me)

 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

You're not using future sight to predict his moves, you're using it to automatically place a spike that would remove his Connection to Oathpact/Honor. With that amount of fortune, you would see all you need to see, like Eland did at the end of HoA. But to do that you need to stun them first so they can't react for that one single second it would take you to do that, without that you won't be able to spike them.

for the record, if he isn't totally stunned, this almost certainly won't work. The Zane vs Vin fight is an example of this, and this WOB practically confirms it in my mind.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Vin Kills Zane despite his Atium

The other thing I had to foreshadow, then make work in this chapter, was the way to kill someone who was burning atium. This is also something I stole from Mistborn Prime, and I'm afraid that it worked better there.

The thing is, I just haven't spent enough of the plot with Vin working on this problem. Killing an atium-burner was a major plotting conflict in Mistborn Prime, which was a much shorter book, without so much going on. In this book, we have many, many different plotlines and secrets interweaving. And so there wasn't a whole lot of time for Vin to worry about how to survive without atium.

According to the laws of Allomancy, this is very in-line with how atium works. Only someone burning atium can change the future–but they can change it accidentally by showing someone else what to do.

The Well of Ascension Annotations (Oct. 13, 2008)

(bold added by me)

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

I don't think that spikes larger than their bodies would work, based on how important Intent and bindpoints are, now you could possibly use the Aluminum Maiden(TM Frustration, all rights reserved), and try spiking all known bindpoints at once, that could work.

personally, I think that if the Heralds are constantly being reborn into the aluminum maiden, no matter how thick it is, their Duralumin+Pewter level strength would be enough to break out eventually, probably even fairly quickly. 

Edited January 19 by Immortal Platypus

[Qianweilian He/him]

4 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

Brandon who says that Duralumin+Zinc/Brass would be stunning, at least for a normal person.

I just remembered, if their strength comes from a specific power like pewter, than you could destroy it with an aluminum spike. It really depends on where exactly they get their titanic strength, but it's worth a shot.

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Pagerunner

The Hemalurgy table, you wrote down "atium steals any power, lerasium is all abilities, nicrosil is Investiture"; what's the difference between those three?

Hemalurgic atium, lerasium, and nicrosil. What's powers, abilities, and Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

People are Invested in ways that do not give them active powers. So for instance, everyone on Nalthis is Invested. Everyone in the cosmere is, really. You want to steal their Investiture, but they don't have a power. You're still ripping off a piece of their soul. So there is a distinction between the actual Investiture that's in a human being and a specific power that they have.

So that distinction is pretty easy. You can also, with Hemalurgy, steal specific things. You can steal just general Investiture. You can steal, if you want--this is where the kandra Blessings come from. You can instead steal specific things that are not like stealing Allomancy. Stealing, for instance, someone's mental acuity.

Pagerunner

So abilities is like the half that's all the strength, speed, all that kind of stuff? Those are abilities, versus the Metallic Arts are all powers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Pagerunner

Then Investiture, is that offworld magics?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, it's the raw power.

Pagerunner

Nicrosil is their soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. A piece of their soul, essentially.

Pagerunner

So how would you go about stealing an offworld power?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to depend. A Breath, you would steal with nicrosil. It's general Investiture, is what you would probably going call that. You could forcibly remove someone's Breath from them. The ability to be a Sand Master you would steal with the power ability.

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

 

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Immortal Platypus said:

personally, I think that if the Heralds are constantly being reborn into the aluminum maiden, no matter how thick it is, their Duralumin+Pewter level strength would be enough to break out eventually, probably even fairly quickly. 

Looking at this again I actually think it won't work, just like how you can't summon a shardblade in ana aluminum room, the Heralds wouldn't be born there.

[Immortal Platypus]

Just now, Frustration said:

Looking at this again I actually think it won't work, just like how you can't summon a shardblade in ana aluminum room, the Heralds wouldn't be born there.

hmm. do you think it would stop them from being reborn, or just change where they're reborn. 

side note, do we know if they have a consistent spot they're reborn every time?

[therunner he/him]

1 hour ago, Immortal Platypus said:

Taln wasn't completely insensate at that point, as shown by the halting of his mantra. He would've been disoriented and out of place, but not insensate. The dart in WoR I don't remember, but you're probably right about that.

The halting of his mantra is him snapping out of his insensate state as a reaction to outside stimulus. 

He is muttering his mantra, Fused orders to kill everyone, and Taln reacts to that and stops muttering.

1 hour ago, Immortal Platypus said:

The bolded line in what I quoted from you is directly contradicted by Brandon who says that Duralumin+Zinc/Brass would be stunning, at least for a normal person.

I meant that they won't be literally paralyzed by the duralaumin emotion blast.

Stun grenades are designed to stun, that doesn't mean their victim cannot try to fight back anyway.

And as Taln shows, at least some Heralds can defended themselves purely reactively.

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You're right that it is an assumption, but I think it's a logical conclusion, and certainly one that the Ghostbloods would make. It seems like it would have at least the same effect on a Herald who have many more cracks in their psyche. 

Conversely you could think that someone who has experienced torture for decades/centuries will have different thresholds for what is 'stunning'.

And per this WoB holding a lot of Breaths (i.e. being Invested) would mean allomancy will have less of an effect

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Questioner

Would a person holding a large amount of Breaths be less influenced by emotional Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. That's book-signing canon on that one, if you understand that phrase.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

Even just on 3rd Oath, Kaladin was Invested enough to count as some Heightening (without any Stormlight in him), and Heralds are at least Returned level in their Investiture. 

So based on that, Heralds will be more difficult to influence with emotional Allomancy.

[Frustration]

37 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

hmm. do you think it would stop them from being reborn, or just change where they're reborn. 

side note, do we know if they have a consistent spot they're reborn every time?

I think they would just move.

As for having a fixed location, not the faintest idea.

[therunner he/him]

39 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

hmm. do you think it would stop them from being reborn, or just change where they're reborn. 

side note, do we know if they have a consistent spot they're reborn every time?

After thinking on it for few minutes, while we don't know for certain, I think we can be pretty sure they don't get reborn in the same spot every time. 

• If they got reborn on Braize in the same spot, Fused would simply put sentries/traps there and capture them immediately. But we know that Heralds spend some time hiding and evading Fused after being killed.
  • So on Braize the spot where they get there likely shifts
• If on Roshar they got reborn in some fixed spot, I think either humans or Fused would again mark this.

So on Braize I think we can be certain it is not a fixed location, on Roshar I would also lean towards it not being the same.

[Qianweilian He/him]

We know that you can "store" Aons for later use, so maybe we could get Elantrian Shai to make some sort of immobilizing sheet of Aons, or possibly a stamp to replicate the same.