Which power would you choose?

[Gloom he/him]

I don't need anything fancy, I'd be happy to settle for the power of Hoid.

[Darkarma he/him]

I don't need anything fancy, I'd be happy to settle for the power of Hoid.

We'll stick that on the poll as soon as we can quantify Hoid... which is a bit of a tall order given what little we know of him.

[jag519 he/him]

Actually, the power of hoid, as a joke actually adds a good one.

Though it isn't a specific power b/c we don't know which magic he uses for it, and people with different magic systems could do it, straight up nothing else but world hopping. 

Just being able to go to the other worlds might be pretty nice, especially if all of a sudden people on this world got the other powers they asked for in this thread :-p

 

But considering AonDor is pretty much closest to Gandolf type magic thats "I want to do this, with the right spell I did this" I feel like it is kind of the best as it is right now. If we learn more about it and understand its limitations more, maybe not, but since it is the least nailed down, probably that.  I'd say anything Soulcasting could do you could probably do with AonDor. 

 

As stated above, if you could be an elantrian here, and it works, that's probably the best.  

[Swimmingly he/him]

Feruchemy, definetly. I can afford to be stupid, slow, unlucky, light, sleepy, hungry, hypoxic, thirsty, antisocial, depressed, blind, deaf, sick, weak, cold, (insert all other relevant sensations here) and have a weak sense of identity every few weeks if it will let me generally badass my way around the rest of the time.

[Oudeis he/him]

A few important questions before you can answer. In systems like allomancy or surgebinding which require a depletable energy source, do we have access to that? Do we have it in the world it's from, or do we have it on earth? Are there other people with powers? Are we assuming that everyone on this thread all live on one commune on earth and we're living with a bunch of other Invested people?

 

I'm starting to get very interested and excited in the possibilities of bronze and copper, so I'm changing my answer to Allomancy.

[Swimmingly he/him]

A few important questions before you can answer. In systems like allomancy or surgebinding which require a depletable energy source, do we have access to that? Do we have it in the world it's from, or do we have it on earth? Are there other people with powers? Are we assuming that everyone on this thread all live on one commune on earth and we're living with a bunch of other Invested people?

 

I'm starting to get very interested and excited in the possibilities of bronze and copper, so I'm changing my answer to Allomancy.

I find it kind of strange that the ability to specifically control copper was never discovered by a thousand + years of people like Clubs, with entire teams of apprentice Smokers working under them. I can understand why they wouldn't have the alloys, due to cost and law, but still, unless this control of copper requires interactions we haven't seen yet, it seems kind of dubious.

[Oudeis he/him]

I find it kind of strange that the ability to specifically control copper was never discovered by a thousand + years of people like Clubs,

 

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED THAT QUESTION.

 

So. There are two groups of people who might have learned how Copper/Bronze work. Skaa mistings, and the Nobility/Ministry. They are best taken one-by-one.

 

Although first, one blanket reason. The far broader applications of copper/bronze are only truly realized cross-cosmere. With only Allomancy to deal with, they can never be used to their full potential, so they are by definition stunted. Hence one of my questions; being a Mistborn is really most useful if there's a world where I'll frequently run into Awakeners or Surgebinders or Forgers. Almost no Smoker on Scadrial is aware that any form of Investiture beyond Allomancy exists, so how could the practice.

 

The Nobility and Ministry are easier. The Lord Ruler deliberately stunted advancement. Beyond his keeping the secrets of aluminum, duralumin and electrum secret, he did the same with all mundane technology for a millenium, so we know he can. Mr. Sanderson has said that bronze could, theoretically, detect feruchemy; Rashek's greatest fear is anyone learning he is a feruchemist. As Spook expounds upon, paired metals are very, very related. If people learned you could do more with Copper, it would be a short step towards them at least suspecting you could do much more with bronze.

 

In short, The Lord Ruler has the proven capacity to restrain technological and allomantic advancement, and he has a very good reason to do so with copper and bronze. So that's why the Nobility and Ministry have never figured it out.

 

The Skaa are a bit trickier. Any skaa Misting lives his life in constant and fully justified fear of being killed by the Ministry. Any rational Misting will only use his powers when he absolutely must, and if he's going to practice, he'll do so under a coppercloud. Any irrational misting who decides to give it a go without a cloud will very rapidly be found and killed. It took Marsh six months to learn the patterns of metals; presumably in a world where the ministry has Seekers everywhere looking for Mistings, in six months of practice most Mistings would be found and killed. So, skaa Seekers, who by definition can't practice under a coppercloud, would logically be the least-trained Misting there is.

 

So here we have a slightly opposite issue from the Nobility. Now, because no one knows Bronze can do anything interesting, no one thinks that Copper can do anything interesting, either. Here's where we get a bit into my personal theory. A Seeker can feel the pulses from various allomantic powers. I think for copper to actually be effective, you have to send out your own copperpulses, and they have to complement specific patterns. A Smoker, with access to only his metal, can never feel a bronzepulse, and so has no idea what pulse to send out. Even if a Smoker were to figure out, hey, this buzzing in my chest I feel when I burn? I can modulate it! The odds of him stumbling across the exact pulse necessary to achieve a useful effect, while the correct allomantic power were being used nearby to be affected, often enough for someone to notice the correlation, is probably even less likely than The Lord Ruler managing to craft more hemalurgic creations by stabbing prisoners with random spikes, and he had exactly zero success after a thousand years.

 

That leaves only skaa mistborn, who are rare enough to begin with, and apparently all think bronze is worthless because they all think they're fighting people who burn copper. They are the only people out of The Lord Ruler's thumb, with the capacity to hear bronzepulses AND try to generate copperpulses. If this were a world where it were likely that any of them were scientists or researchers, I'd think you might have a point that after a thousand years one of them would have stumbled across it. As it is, I don't think it's very far-fetched that the relatively infinitesimal group of people, in a world that spent a thousand years unable to advance to steam power or electricity, wouldn't have made innovations in this one area. And Vin mentions, I think in the second book, that even if people figure out tricks, that doesn't mean it gets widely published in a journal; there are an awful lot of secrets in the world that get figured out and then taken to graves.

 

In short, a major premise of the trilogy is that The Lord Ruler successfully retarded the advancement of both mundane technology and the application of local magic. That blanket premise is basically why people wouldn't know how to use copper to its best effect.

[Gloom he/him]

You can cut the time line down in regards to the Skaa. The chances of a Skaa mistborn existing and being undetected are reduced every generation you go backwards. It was only after the nobility became lax in ensuring that none of their Skaa mistresses had children that survived that Skaa mistborn even became possible.

[Elementalist he/him]

I'd go atium twinborn for purposes of immortality.

[Moogle]

I'd go atium twinborn for purposes of immortality.

 

Atium Twinborns rely on Ruin being nice to you and giving up atium. Besides, the immortality sucks hard. May I recommend Awakening for immortality if you're rich, or perhaps Surgebinding if you're into more environmentally friendly immortality?

[Elementalist he/him]

Atium Twinborns rely on Ruin being nice to you and giving up atium. Besides, the immortality sucks hard. May I recommend Awakening for immortality if you're rich, or perhaps Surgebinding if you're into more environmentally friendly immortality?

Dunno how I'd get immortality for surgebinding. My choice of atium wasn't based off of how easy it was to get (I'm basically assuming I'll have plenty of Atium all the time).

[Mileswasbestcharacter]

Gold gold twin born, because miles was best character

[Cracknut he/him]

Awakening if I could get 100,000 Breaths as bonus. Immortality and I could see/hear/etc better and clearer(which would be awesome for me because I had -3 when I checked last time and its down to -5 now I think and I've got tone deafness or something like that as well but I love music and I would love to be space-pirate-bard sometimes). + Awakening modern technology. Did I mention immortality?

Edited January 13, 2014 by 213

[Oudeis he/him]

Don't forget spending your life with everyone seeing your aura.

[Moogle]

Don't forget spending your life with everyone seeing your aura.

 

You'd be fabulous! It's even better than the immortality bit.

[Oudeis he/him]

Heh. Context is everything. On Nalthis, being the man with the most Breaths in a world that at least knows what Breath is would be... possibly inconvenient at times, though probably awesome on balance. On Earth, being the only person in the world with real, demonstrable magic would... prolly be more hassle than its worth. Notoriety isn't all its cracked up to be.

[Tybou_14]

Twin born would be cool assuming you can choose which type of twin born you want to be. 

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

Really? Please tell me which type is not cool.

[Moogle]

Really? Please tell me which type is not cool.

 

Allomantic duralumin/Feruchemical bendalloy. Try and figure out something to do with that combination besides gorge yourself without gaining weight as you cry at how not cool you are.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Moogle

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

Oh, please. This is just like saying you do not want to be an allomancer if you become a gnat, not a surgebinder if you have no stormlight, not an Elantrian if there is no dor, not a Reurned if people have no breaths, or something similar.

Allomantic Aluminium and Duralumin should not be considered twinborn unless they are compounders - you only get the feruchemical abilities in these sets, which makes you no different from a ferring (except for breeding purposes, which is actually a very good reason to choose twinborn over other metallic arts - your children might be awesome, even if you aren't).

Do you have an example where the twinborn is not indistinguishable from a ferring?

[Morsk he/him]

I'd enjoy Feruchemical bendalloy now that I think about it. The need to continuously acquire and eat food is hugely annoying, never mind hunger and blood sugar playing with my mood. If I could eat 10 pizzas on Saturday night, and not even think about food the rest of the week, that would be great.

The Fifth Heightening is so much better though.

[Moogle]

Oh, please. This is just like saying you do not want to be an allomancer if you become a gnat, not a surgebinder if you have no stormlight, not an Elantrian if there is no dor, not a Reurned if people have no breaths, or something similar.

Allomantic Aluminium and Duralumin should not be considered twinborn unless they are compounders - you only get the feruchemical abilities in these sets, which makes you no different from a ferring (except for breeding purposes, which is actually a very good reason to choose twinborn over other metallic arts - your children might be awesome, even if you aren't).

Do you have an example where the twinborn is not indistinguishable from a ferring?

 

Allomantic copper, perhaps? Not terribly exciting to be Allomantic copper/Feruchemical bendalloy, you have to admit. Feruchemical bendalloy could be convenient, but it's certainly not all that cool. If you can't choose your metals as a Twinborn (for the purposes of this question), I'm not certain I'd risk it. Fifth Heightening or true Feruchemy all the way.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Moogle

[18th Shard he/him]

Allomantic aluminum/Feruchemical electrum. You can be really determined... and that's it.

[Moogle]

Allomantic aluminum/Feruchemical electrum. You can be really determined... and that's it.

 

To be fair, I'd kill for Feruchemical electrum. Akrasia is no fun, and having the will to work hard simply by tapping a metalmind? Yes please.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Moogle

[Swimmingly he/him]

To be fair, I'd kill for Feruchemical electrum. Akrasia is no fun, and having the will to work hard simply by tapping a metalmind? Yes please.

Anyone with a mental illness with Feruchemical electrum could even regulate it to an extent - for example, by storing REALLY HARD when the voices start telling you to kill people.