The best Invested unit

[The White Drake]

Presume that you have access to the entirety of the Cosmere and it's magics, as of the time of the second Era of Mistborn, and want to build the best troop(s) for a military possible. Take all factors into account, including the difficultly of creating each unit. What combinations of the magics do you select for your ideal force? What is the basis behind your selection?

[Frustration]

I thought that I'd just load up on Radiants I won't lie. But I found something better.

I could maybe do Heralds, depending on if I can get Wind or another ancient spren to sit there and let me make more.

 

Elantrians. Given how in the future they crack the ability to use their magic anywhere, they are simply better than just about anyone else. Only Bondsmiths or Heralds could stand a chance.

And if I really wanted to, I'd upscale Elantris to cover all of Arelon. That boost of power would be insane.

I detailed here:

How each of them could be equipped just for standard life to be near invulnerable. Making dedicated armor and weapons, and I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with that.

 

The number of Elantrians is only limited by the city size, but even the current Elantris can support tens of thousands. With the boosted size I should easily get into the millions, and I can invite anyone I want to join my army.

 

With the exception of Dawnshards or Perpendicularities, I don't know how you beat that.

Edited Tuesday at 12:39 PM by Frustration

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

I like the idea of Singer Radiants. Warform grants powers akin to Pewter, Soulcasting can let the army move much faster, and Gravitation lets you get the drop on someone, maybe even mimic Calvary charges.

And that doesn’t even account for Shards. Blades and Plate make the average soldier into a shock trooper, capable of orders of magnitude more casualties.

About Retribution, if he’s helping this army, that opens the door for forms of power, daily Warlight, and Fused.

[The White Drake]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

Elantrians. Given how in the future they crack the ability to use their magic anywhere, they are simply better than just about anyone else. Only Bondsmiths or Heralds could stand a chance.

And if I really wanted to, I'd upscale Elantris to cover all of Arelon. That boost of power would be insane.

I detailed here:

How each of them could be equipped just for standard life to be near invulnerable. Making dedicated armor and weapons, and I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with that.

 

The number of Elantrians is only limited by the city size, but even the current Elantris can support tens of thousands. With the boosted size I should easily get into the millions, and I can invite anyone I want to join my army.

 

With the exception of Dawnshards or Perpendicularities, I don't know how you beat that.

They're so location-limited though. Nigh unbeatable, but you couldn't send them anywhere else.

5 hours ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

About Retribution, if he’s helping this army, that opens the door for forms of power, daily Warlight, and Fused.

Any form of Investiture from anywhere is on the table, including forms of power, Fused, and the usual ways of obtaining Light.

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

1 hour ago, The White Drake said:

Any form of Investiture from anywhere is on the table, including forms of power, Fused, and the usual ways of obtaining Light.

Sweet! Stormforms and Direforms are objectively better soldiers plus are straight up terrifying. Fused are also very skilled, and can make for effective disruptive forces as we saw in RoW (I’m looking at you Pursuer).

Beyond Elantrians on their home turf, I feel confident in this army’s capabilities.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, The White Drake said:

They're so location-limited though. Nigh unbeatable, but you couldn't send them anywhere else.

Shai and Riina both cracked the ability to take their powers anywhere, so that's not an issue.

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

12 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Shai and Riina both cracked the ability to take their powers anywhere, so that's not an issue.

But is that by Mistborn era 2? And Shai’s forgery seems to be unaffected by location, but Sel is kinda weird so I don’t know if Forgery is different.

[Frustration]

5 minutes ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

But is that by Mistborn era 2? And Shai’s forgery seems to be unaffected by location, but Sel is kinda weird so I don’t know if Forgery is different.

Forgery is location dependent just like Aons, the symbols are even shaped like Mai-pon.

However after Shai turns herself into an Elantrian, she draws Elendel Basin, and her glow stabilizes and she uses Aons.

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

34 minutes ago, Frustration said:

However after Shai turns herself into an Elantrian, she draws Elendel Basin, and her glow stabilizes and she uses Aons.

I should go reread that scene. That seems important to the greater Cosmere.

[BinarySecond]

9 hours ago, Frustration said:

Forgery is location dependent just like Aons, the symbols are even shaped like Mai-pon.

However after Shai turns herself into an Elantrian, she draws Elendel Basin, and her glow stabilizes and she uses Aons.

"Turn on your location to access additional features"

[The White Drake]

On 6/30/2026 at 5:19 PM, Frustration said:

Shai and Riina both cracked the ability to take their powers anywhere, so that's not an issue.

Anywhere but on Sel, you need to manually carry a massive amount of Investiture. Doesn't seem practical if you want to supply an army.

[Frustration]

7 hours ago, The White Drake said:

Anywhere but on Sel, you need to manually carry a massive amount of Investiture. Doesn't seem practical if you want to supply an army.

Shai's glow stabilized after she had used her bottle of dor.

[The White Drake]

Yes… and? My point is you need that supply of portable Dor, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.

[Frustration]

41 minutes ago, The White Drake said:

Yes… and? My point is you need that supply of portable Dor, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.

I need one jar per location I visit.

One.

That's not hard, after that I'm all set.

Edited Thursday at 07:47 PM by Frustration

[The White Drake]

We observe in Mistborn: Secret History that Elantrians need a constant supply of it, like water, just to maintain themselves. Furthermore, it's not an infinite resource- it gets expended. Every Aon drawn will require some. The more you want to stack Aons on your soldiers, the fewer of those soldiers you'll be able to field.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

6 hours ago, The White Drake said:

We observe in Mistborn: Secret History that Elantrians need a constant supply of it, like water, just to maintain themselves. Furthermore, it's not an infinite resource- it gets expended. Every Aon drawn will require some. The more you want to stack Aons on your soldiers, the fewer of those soldiers you'll be able to field.

Maybe there's a way to generate a near-limitless supply of Investiture wherever you go? If we're allowed to make an army with access to all of the Cosmere, then I think this is actually really easy.

Firstly: Need some Compounders, doesn't matter what kind, either naturally born or through a few more esoteric ways like Essence Marks, they don't need to last long just long enough to get this started.

Secondly: Have the Compounders start compounding, then after they completely fill a few massive metalminds to the absolute brim, have them tap those metalminds and have them jabbed with raysium, which will absorb their Investiture and put it into a Polestone.

Thirdly: Use the same method that the Ghostbloods use the Blank the Investiture in the Polestone from Preservation's Light (Mistlight?) into a bunch of Unkeyed Investiture.

Then you're done. The Compounders generate a nearly endless amount of Keyed Investiture, you just have to extract that Investiture with Raysium, then do what the Ghostbloods did to Unkey Stormlight and do it to the Preservation Investiture (Mistlight?). Now you have a functionally limitless supply of Unkeyed Investiture to power the rest of your Invested Army. Just need an endless supply of their metal, but if you have a Soulcaster, then that solves itself, they can just turn anything into the required metal.

You can even expand on this method using Forgery to start turning other people into temporary Compounders as well, the Essence Marks don't need to last forever or even a whole day, just long enough to let the Temporary Compounders start Compounding, so that generated Investiture can then be turned into even more Unkeyed Investiture.

[NameIess]

8 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Maybe there's a way to generate a near-limitless supply of Investiture wherever you go? If we're allowed to make an army with access to all of the Cosmere, then I think this is actually really easy.

Firstly: Need some Compounders, doesn't matter what kind, either naturally born or through a few more esoteric ways like Essence Marks, they don't need to last long just long enough to get this started.

Secondly: Have the Compounders start compounding, then after they completely fill a few massive metalminds to the absolute brim, have them tap those metalminds and have them jabbed with raysium, which will absorb their Investiture and put it into a Polestone.

Thirdly: Use the same method that the Ghostbloods use the Blank the Investiture in the Polestone from Preservation's Light (Mistlight?) into a bunch of Unkeyed Investiture.

Then you're done. The Compounders generate a nearly endless amount of Keyed Investiture, you just have to extract that Investiture with Raysium, then do what the Ghostbloods did to Unkey Stormlight and do it to the Preservation Investiture (Mistlight?). Now you have a functionally limitless supply of Unkeyed Investiture to power the rest of your Invested Army. Just need an endless supply of their metal, but if you have a Soulcaster, then that solves itself, they can just turn anything into the required metal.

You can even expand on this method using Forgery to start turning other people into temporary Compounders as well, the Essence Marks don't need to last forever or even a whole day, just long enough to let the Temporary Compounders start Compounding, so that generated Investiture can then be turned into even more Unkeyed Investiture.

Do the Ghostbloods have a method to unkey Stormlight? Even if they do, it seems like it would be more difficult with Feruchemically compounded Investiture, since it's not only keyed to Preservation, but also to the kind of thing it's supposed to do (healing, weight, heat, etc.).

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

5 hours ago, NameIess said:

Do the Ghostbloods have a method to unkey Stormlight? Even if they do, it seems like it would be more difficult with Feruchemically compounded Investiture, since it's not only keyed to Preservation, but also to the kind of thing it's supposed to do (healing, weight, heat, etc.).

The Ghostbloods themselves say they can do so when Shallan is spying on them in WaT, it's why some of their members are weirded out by Mraize and Iyatil's insistence on acquiring Ba-Ado-Mishram, since that doesn't help with their main goal.

As for the other half, Feruchemy still uses Investiture just like Radiants do with Stormlight, when you tap a ridiculously high amount, like with the Bands of Mourning, your body starts leaking mist in a similar way to how Radiants leak Stormlight.

Raysium extracts Kinetic Investiture, power that is being used, and can be used on all forms of Light known, from all three Rosharan Shards. Even extracting it and collecting it from Radiants. Plus, Leechers are able to drain a Feruchemist, so long as they are actively Tapping their metalminds, so in my mind there should be no reason that Raysium can't extract a new kind of Light from Feruchemists and Allomancers, since it's all just Investiture in the end.

Edited 21 hours ago by JustQuestin2004

[Frustration]

14 hours ago, The White Drake said:

We observe in Mistborn: Secret History that Elantrians need a constant supply of it, like water, just to maintain themselves. Furthermore, it's not an infinite resource- it gets expended. Every Aon drawn will require some. The more you want to stack Aons on your soldiers, the fewer of those soldiers you'll be able to field.

You do remember that SH is over 300 years before TLM?

Shai starts to lose her glow, like the IRE did, but she draws an aon and her glow comes back. After that she is still able to use aons, despite having used all of the Dor to make her stamp.

 

Edited 19 hours ago by Frustration

[The White Drake]

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

You do remember that SH is over 300 years before TLM?

Shai starts to lose her glow, like the IRE did, but she draws an aon and her glow comes back. After that she is still able to use aons, despite having used all of the Dor to make her stamp.

Yes. Can you connect that to the discussion?

She absorbed the Dor, that doesn't mean it was all expended in just the stamp. The fundamental laws of the Cosmere tell us power doesn't come from nowhere. You can't use more Investiture than you have. On Sel, the Aons are powered by all the Investiture in the Cognitive Realm. Do you mean to propose that, by use of a single jar of Dor, an Elantrian can spam an unlimited amount of Aons forever?

11 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Maybe there's a way to generate a near-limitless supply of Investiture wherever you go? If we're allowed to make an army with access to all of the Cosmere, then I think this is actually really easy.

Firstly: Need some Compounders, doesn't matter what kind, either naturally born or through a few more esoteric ways like Essence Marks, they don't need to last long just long enough to get this started.

Secondly: Have the Compounders start compounding, then after they completely fill a few massive metalminds to the absolute brim, have them tap those metalminds and have them jabbed with raysium, which will absorb their Investiture and put it into a Polestone.

Thirdly: Use the same method that the Ghostbloods use the Blank the Investiture in the Polestone from Preservation's Light (Mistlight?) into a bunch of Unkeyed Investiture.

Then you're done. The Compounders generate a nearly endless amount of Keyed Investiture, you just have to extract that Investiture with Raysium, then do what the Ghostbloods did to Unkey Stormlight and do it to the Preservation Investiture (Mistlight?). Now you have a functionally limitless supply of Unkeyed Investiture to power the rest of your Invested Army. Just need an endless supply of their metal, but if you have a Soulcaster, then that solves itself, they can just turn anything into the required metal.

You can even expand on this method using Forgery to start turning other people into temporary Compounders as well, the Essence Marks don't need to last forever or even a whole day, just long enough to let the Temporary Compounders start Compounding, so that generated Investiture can then be turned into even more Unkeyed Investiture.

Good point, but I get the feeling it won't be so easy. After all, the Ghostbloods had access to everything you describe, and still took pains to get Light and purified Dor. Even in the future, unkeyed Light is valuable. Just like with getting compounding via hemalurgy, making an Investiture generator is likely to be harder than it at first appears.

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, The White Drake said:

Yes. Can you connect that to the discussion?

She absorbed the Dor, that doesn't mean it was all expended in just the stamp. The fundamental laws of the Cosmere tell us power doesn't come from nowhere. You can't use more Investiture than you have. On Sel, the Aons are powered by all the Investiture in the Cognitive Realm. Do you mean to propose that, by use of a single jar of Dor, an Elantrian can spam an unlimited amount of Aons forever?

No, rather that they are able to connect themselves to Sel and draw power from there regardless of their location.

[The White Drake]

That seems a stretch, given the highly locational nature of all Sel magic, and seeing as how the Investiture is in the Cognitive, where distance does matter, as opposed to the Spiritual where it does not. If they could link in such a way, they'd have no need to drink Dor away from Sel, and Secret History also shows us they have a power cord for their base in the Cognitive near Scadrial, leading off presumably towards Sel. What makes you think such is the case?