Major Plot Problem (HoA)

[Djarskublar he/him]

So I just re-read HoA for the first time since I became cosmere aware, and I noticed a few things that I don't think add up or aren't strictly true. Good luck.

 

The first is pretty straightforward. Lestibournes isn't Spook's real name. That is the name he told Clubs, but it seems to me that it is actually an Eastern Slang nickname he gave himself on the spot when Clubs asked him. I mean, what kind of parents would name their child "Lefting I'm born" (I have been abandoned). Anyone want to go back and read that passage and let me know what you think?

 

 

The second requires a bit of basic math and supposition. I don't think that the koloss army could have EVER defeated Elend and Demoux's army at the Homeland. First, we need an idea how much atium they really had. Assuming the Trust was a box (I don't think it was, but roll with it, this is just base estimation), each bead was between a half centimeter to a centimeter in diameter, each bead averaged about three seconds worth of burn time, and the trust was about 3 x 3 x 1 meters, then that comes out to 9 million or so beads (conservative estimate). Maybe an estimate based on how much the Pits produced over a thousand years would be better, but this was faster and the first method that came to mind. This comes out to about 27 million seconds of atium burn time. Split up among the 320 or so atium burners, each had about 84000 seconds of burn time, or a full day's burn time. Right there is a plot hole, Elend's army supposedly burned all the atium in a few hours time.

 

Then we get to actual combat. In Elend's speech, he was telling them that they were only fighting to give everyone a bit more time alive. To me, that means that they would be fighting right on the entrances to the caverns. Assuming the cavern entrances are far larger than I think they really are, 40 atium burners with infinite stamina and atium should be able to hold out on one entrance without problem. In all honesty 10 should do, but we will go with 40 for overkill conservatism in the estimate. With four entrances, you only need 160 of your warriors fighting at any time. With a full day's worth of burn time for each man, you could easily set up a rotation so that only half of your men are fighting at once (160 of the 320ish) and double the burn time to two days. This also lets your men take turns resting so that you don't have any of them die due to inablility to react even with atium simply because you are too tired.

 

Then the real kicker. Where do the bodies of the koloss go? They don't magically disappear, so they have to get in the way. Based on how powerful a trained soldier using atium would be, I estimate that the entrances would be completely clogged with bodies in a matter of about a couple minutes. At this point, the defenders have a whole bunch of options. My favorite is to get non-atium-burners to shoot the koloss as they try to clear a path. The atium burners can take turns making sure the blockade of bodies keeps growing, so that not all 40 of them actually have to burn at once at any particular entrance. This again at least doubles the burn time to four days. At this point the soldiers are rotating regularly to sleep, eat, and relieve themselves. Ruin said that he had hundreds of thousands of koloss. I take that to mean no more than about 750,000 koloss. More likely around 300 to 500 thousand. With the fight going on 24/7 for 4 days against atium burners supported by archers, I think that they would all die. Say about 3 koloss die every second from the fighting, Then even if there are 900,000 of them, they would all be dead by around the middle or end of the fourth day of fighting. Ruin didn't stand a chance. Elend could dedicate all of his personal prowess to keeping Marsh from killing off his men one at a time. With support from about ten atium burners, Marsh wouldn't even pose a threat, honestly.

 

Based on all of this etremely conservative estimation, (the only figure that isn't super conservative is the 3 koloss killed a second, which is still not an unrealistic number) Ruin's army of koloss didn't have a prayer. Ruin was out of options with Vin having killed most of the inquisitors and taken Preservation, so only the koloss were still a threat to the people there. Other than the ash and lack of food/water of course.

 

Even if they didn't use those tactics and just had the burners run through the enemy cutting them all down for a couple hours, at least 200 koloss/second would die. Which after two hours (a minimum time that the fight could have actually taken based on the book wording), comes out to 1,440,000 koloss. Certainly more than Ruin had.

 

Thoughts? Sorry for potentially ruining the climax/ending.

 

TL;DR

There is no way Ruin's hundreds of thousands of koloss could have beaten Elend's band of a few hundred. Atium burners in a group like that with a near limitless supply of atium. They couldn't lose to anything other than at least a million koloss. 'Cuz math. Sorry Sanderson, still a fan.

[Peng the Just he/him]

Packing efficiency of randomly placed spheres is close to 64% meaning only 15 hours per person. Just saying.

[Kaymyth she/her]

Regarding Spook:

 

Yeah, we know that Lestibournes isn't his given name, it's just the name that he chose for himself, which is what makes it real to him.  There's a WoB out there that states that Spook was actually named after his father, and that's why he won't use it.

[The Sovereign he/him]

Regarding Spook:

 

Yeah, we know that Lestibournes isn't his given name, it's just the name that he chose for himself, which is what makes it real to him.  There's a WoB out there that states that Spook was actually named after his father, and that's why he won't use it.

Relevent WoB:

 

firstRainbowRose (17 October 2008)

I have a rather simple question. What was Spook's real name? He gives a easternese slang term that becomes his name, then he goes by his Kelsier-given nick. So, what was his birth name? (Yes, I wonder about random things like that.)

Brandon Sanderson (20 October 2008)

Jedal. After his father.

Which is the reason why Spook didn't like using it.

 

[Djarskublar he/him]

Packing efficiency of randomly placed spheres is close to 64% meaning only 15 hours per person. Just saying.

 

Thanks for that. I was wondering about that, but I simply was too lazy to wade into Wikipedia for that one bit of info. That is why I was super conservative on my estimates. I got the feeling that the trust may have been substantially larger than that.

 

Here goes on the aforementioned estimate based on how long the pits were producing. Based on how valuable it was, and how TLR set up his atium economy, I would guess that less than an hour of burn time was used in those 1000 yrs. by the other mistborn, so we can ignore that as essentialy negligible. If I remember right, Kelsier was in the Pits for about 3 months, and that sounded like a pretty decent survival time. So assuming your average person lasted about 4 weeks plus the week they fail in, they pulled out about 4 geodes before being killed. It seems reasonable to me to assume that there were maybe 100 to 200 slaves at any time, so a 150 average. Now, we don't know much about how much atium was in those geodes, so we will go worst case and say they each had one bead. So about 150 slaves times 4/5 of the slaves finding a geode, times the 1000 years, comes to about 6.25 million beads. This is 19500 beads each or 58500 seconds. Close to my estimate above (2/3). I still think that there is no way that Elend could have ever lost.

[SmurfAquamarineBodies he/him]

Thanks for that. I was wondering about that, but I simply was too lazy to wade into Wikipedia for that one bit of info. That is why I was super conservative on my estimates. I got the feeling that the trust may have been substantially larger than that.

 

Here goes on the aforementioned estimate based on how long the pits were producing. Based on how valuable it was, and how TLR set up his atium economy, I would guess that less than an hour of burn time was used in those 1000 yrs. by the other mistborn, so we can ignore that as essentialy negligible. If I remember right, Kelsier was in the Pits for about 3 months, and that sounded like a pretty decent survival time. So assuming your average person lasted about 4 weeks plus the week they fail in, they pulled out about 4 geodes before being killed. It seems reasonable to me to assume that there were maybe 100 to 200 slaves at any time, so a 150 average. Now, we don't know much about how much atium was in those geodes, so we will go worst case and say they each had one bead. So about 150 slaves times 4/5 of the slaves finding a geode, times the 1000 years, comes to about 6.25 million beads. This is 19500 beads each or 58500 seconds. Close to my estimate above (2/3). I still think that there is no way that Elend could have ever lost.

 

 

Except for the fact that the soldiers got tired.

[Charononus]

Except for the fact that the soldiers got tired.

This is it exactly imo.  

 

It doesn't matter if you know the blow is coming if you physically can't get yourself out of the way due to weariness.  These were seers not mistborn so no pewter for them.  They could make the Koloss pay a huge price,  but they'd tire rapidly,  likely in the couple hours mentioned,  and then that's it for them.

[Djarskublar he/him]

This is it exactly imo.  

 

It doesn't matter if you know the blow is coming if you physically can't get yourself out of the way due to weariness.  These were seers not mistborn so no pewter for them.  They could make the Koloss pay a huge price,  but they'd tire rapidly,  likely in the couple hours mentioned,  and then that's it for them.

 

I would agree with this, except for one thing: they couldn't keep fighting like that for 2 hours straight. They would have to regularly replenish their atium. At most, they would be able to drink down about a few minutes worth of atium in a singe go. In the end, they don't have the stomach capacity to eat ALL the Trust's atium in one go. They would be taking regular breathers just to get more atium. Besides, I got the feeling that not all of them were fighting at once for similar reasons to what I described in my first post. They just couldn't effectively present a front that large and not get overwhelmed, while still being able to resupply atium. Elend goes back for atium at least once, and I think it safe to assume that the soldiers did too. Based on the sheer quantity of atium, (~6 million beads using my production estimate) and assuming each is about half a gram, that is 3,000 kilograms of atium they had to eat, or almost 10kg each. That is a lot to eat down, even with a very small amount of water to wash it down. Think about it like trying to eat more around 10kg of small marbles. Most metals you eat as suspended shavings. Atium burns too fast for that, and they didn't have time to make it into shavings.

 

This all means they had to take breathers just to choke down another pound or so of atium. That means they took lots of breaks, unless they are capable of eating a lot more marbles in a matter of a minute or so than I think. Fatigue would be an issue, so combined with the fact that they had to break a lot to resupply (in ones and twos so that you don't lose ofc), the fight would take more than a couple hours, I guess. But they would still win. My money would be on Elend every time. It would also help if they brought out archers that were not allomancers just for support. It explicitly said that the koloss used swords or whatever blunt weapon they had available. No bows. The koloss honestly didn't have a prayer if Elend had half a brain, which according to the book he did. He had read every tactics book out there and a better understanding of the practical application than his obligator friend from Fadrex (Yoden? something like that). And he had Demoux to draw on.

 

I guess the POV was too focused on Vin/Ruin and Elend fighting to know very much about the group's tactics. The koloss were just berserking, and Ruin appeared too busy to nudge them into sound tactics, especially through their bloodlust.

 

EDIT: lol just had a funny thought. With all the dead koloss piling up, they have to go somewhere. I started imagining the living koloss using a bucket line to move dead bodies away from the front so that more of them can go die. I about lost my lunch.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Djarskublar

[Charononus]

I would agree with this, except for one thing: they couldn't keep fighting like that for 2 hours straight. They would have to regularly replenish their atium. At most, they would be able to drink down about a few minutes worth of atium in a singe go. In the end, they don't have the stomach capacity to eat ALL the Trust's atium in one go. They would be taking regular breathers just to get more atium. Besides, I got the feeling that not all of them were fighting at once for similar reasons to what I described in my first post. They just couldn't effectively present a front that large and not get overwhelmed, while still being able to resupply atium. Elend goes back for atium at least once, and I think it safe to assume that the soldiers did too. Based on the sheer quantity of atium, (~6 million beads using my production estimate) and assuming each is about half a gram, that is 3,000 kilograms of atium they had to eat, or almost 10kg each. That is a lot to eat down, even with a very small amount of water to wash it down. Think about it like trying to eat more around 10kg of small marbles. Most metals you eat as suspended shavings. Atium burns too fast for that, and they didn't have time to make it into shavings.

 

This all means they had to take breathers just to choke down another pound or so of atium. That means they took lots of breaks, unless they are capable of eating a lot more marbles in a matter of a minute or so than I think. Fatigue would be an issue, so combined with the fact that they had to break a lot to resupply (in ones and twos so that you don't lose ofc), the fight would take more than a couple hours, I guess. But they would still win. My money would be on Elend every time. It would also help if they brought out archers that were not allomancers just for support. It explicitly said that the koloss used swords or whatever blunt weapon they had available. No bows. The koloss honestly didn't have a prayer if Elend had half a brain, which according to the book he did. He had read every tactics book out there and a better understanding of the practical application than his obligator friend from Fadrex (Yoden? something like that). And he had Demoux to draw on.

 

I guess the POV was too focused on Vin/Ruin and Elend fighting to know very much about the group's tactics. The koloss were just berserking, and Ruin appeared too busy to nudge them into sound tactics, especially through their bloodlust.

Pretty sure that it's mentioned that arrows aren't that useful against Koloss. Also I seriously doubt that the rest provided by gulping down more atrium allowed them much more than the rest to go that couple of hours.

[Brightness Enna she/her]

I would agree with this, except for one thing: they couldn't keep fighting like that for 2 hours straight. They would have to regularly replenish their atium. At most, they would be able to drink down about a few minutes worth of atium in a singe go. In the end, they don't have the stomach capacity to eat ALL the Trust's atium in one go. They would be taking regular breathers just to get more atium. Besides, I got the feeling that not all of them were fighting at once for similar reasons to what I described in my first post. They just couldn't effectively present a front that large and not get overwhelmed, while still being able to resupply atium. Elend goes back for atium at least once, and I think it safe to assume that the soldiers did too. Based on the sheer quantity of atium, (~6 million beads using my production estimate) and assuming each is about half a gram, that is 3,000 kilograms of atium they had to eat, or almost 10kg each. That is a lot to eat down, even with a very small amount of water to wash it down. Think about it like trying to eat more around 10kg of small marbles. Most metals you eat as suspended shavings. Atium burns too fast for that, and they didn't have time to make it into shavings.

 

This all means they had to take breathers just to choke down another pound or so of atium. That means they took lots of breaks, unless they are capable of eating a lot more marbles in a matter of a minute or so than I think. Fatigue would be an issue, so combined with the fact that they had to break a lot to resupply (in ones and twos so that you don't lose ofc), the fight would take more than a couple hours, I guess. But they would still win. My money would be on Elend every time. It would also help if they brought out archers that were not allomancers just for support. It explicitly said that the koloss used swords or whatever blunt weapon they had available. No bows. The koloss honestly didn't have a prayer if Elend had half a brain, which according to the book he did. He had read every tactics book out there and a better understanding of the practical application than his obligator friend from Fadrex (Yoden? something like that). And he had Demoux to draw on.

 

I guess the POV was too focused on Vin/Ruin and Elend fighting to know very much about the group's tactics. The koloss were just berserking, and Ruin appeared too busy to nudge them into sound tactics, especially through their bloodlust.

 

EDIT: lol just had a funny thought. With all the dead koloss piling up, they have to go somewhere. I started imagining the living koloss using a bucket line to move dead bodies away from the front so that more of them can go die. I about lost my lunch.

 

Don't take me too seriously, seeing as I don't have the book with me... But about tactics: I think that the situation that was presented came up a little too quickly for anybody to really react. There wouldn't have been any time for Elend to think too hard about the battle. In addition, I think he was bluffing a bit when he said that they were fighting for more time. I think that the main motivation he had was to burn as much atium as possible - unless my memory is faulty and he had no idea what the atium really meant. Then he was being a little foolhardy and reckless, spreading out his forces like that. Maybe he just wanted to kill some koloss?

 

Charononus has got it right, I think, about the arrows - that arrows don't do much to koloss in the first place, plus I don't believe that the group had enough arrows and bows to stave off the koloss for any significant amount of time, despite there being a small amount of armed soldiers.

 

Fatigue was probably a huge part, too. We suppose that they were fighting all night, right? The original number of atium mistings that they had in the first place was most likely small... what were those numbers again? A sixteenth of a sixteenth of an army of 10,000, even though Elend's was probably something different, is 39. It seems that atium might burn faster than we thought, or atium might give a slight stamina boost, allowing the soldiers to fight for longer, though definitely not as long as somebody burning pewter.

 

Their front was huge, but as to the atium logistics, wouldn't the soldiers be able to feel when their supply got low? They could conserve the last thirty seconds to run back out of the way and get back to the fighting. But that does seem like a huge failing of an army of atium mistings. 

 

I don't remember where I was going with this. Maybe the next question or WoB to find should be about how big the Trust was and how much it had been filled, how large the atium spheres are, and exactly how fast atium burns. Then, perhaps, we could get more accurate numbers and something will surprise us all.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Pausing to go get more Atium would not cover the total amount of rest needed. Anyone who has done any sort of mass battle combat knows the fatigue sets in hard and doesn't go away with a few seconds breather. No way in hell were they all fighting at once. Elend could keep going because of Pewter, but the rest were Seers and would need adequate rest.

 

Second, time was already going wonky during that battle. Vin was trying to fix things and at one point spun the world to stop it catching fire. With such interference we have no idea how long in truth they were fighting for.

 

Third, Elend at least was not just burning the Atium, he was flaring it (and at one point even using a Duralumin flare). And given that the purpose of the exercise was to get rid of all the Atium, I can't imagine that he wouldn't have instructed the others to flare as well. This drastically cuts down the amount of time, somewhere around a 10% of the normal burn time.

 

As for the tactics themselves, there are a few other factors to take into account:

 

1) These are not experienced Allomancers. They don't know very well how to judge metal reserves. It would be very easy for them to get caught in the middle of the battlefield when their Atium ran out and just be slaughtered.

 

2) Even with experienced Allomancers, it has been stated that a viable way to beat an Atium-burner is to put him in a lose-lose situation, a kill box where there simply is no exit. There is nothing better suited to accomplish that goal than swarm tactics from a vastly outnumbering force.

 

Taking these two factors into account, you have to adjust your math for the men Elend is losing throughout the battle.

[Djarskublar he/him]

Pausing to go get more Atium would not cover the total amount of rest needed. Anyone who has done any sort of mass battle combat knows the fatigue sets in hard and doesn't go away with a few seconds breather. No way in hell were they all fighting at once. Elend could keep going because of Pewter, but the rest were Seers and would need adequate rest.

 

Second, time was already going wonky during that battle. Vin was trying to fix things and at one point spun the world to stop it catching fire. With such interference we have no idea how long in truth they were fighting for.

 

Third, Elend at least was not just burning the Atium, he was flaring it (and at one point even using a Duralumin flare). And given that the purpose of the exercise was to get rid of all the Atium, I can't imagine that he wouldn't have instructed the others to flare as well. This drastically cuts down the amount of time, somewhere around a 10% of the normal burn time.

 

As for the tactics themselves, there are a few other factors to take into account:

 

1) These are not experienced Allomancers. They don't know very well how to judge metal reserves. It would be very easy for them to get caught in the middle of the battlefield when their Atium ran out and just be slaughtered.

 

2) Even with experienced Allomancers, it has been stated that a viable way to beat an Atium-burner is to put him in a lose-lose situation, a kill box where there simply is no exit. There is nothing better suited to accomplish that goal than swarm tactics from a vastly outnumbering force.

 

Taking these two factors into account, you have to adjust your math for the men Elend is losing throughout the battle.

 

I agree that my math does need work, but I still think that Elend would win. When I read the book, both times I assumed that Ruin had around 300,000 koloss. Remember that every koloss used to be a human. And getting them spiked is a pain. (Question: did they still have to be alive when they were spiked? I would assume so, otherwise ZOMBIE ALERT. This would make it very hard to spike a lot of them) Worst case senario is that Ruin had 750,000 koloss, otherwise he would have been saying that he had nearly a million koloss. I just can't see that happening. There were only a few million people in the entire Final Empire due to poor growing conditions across the world, and a lot of them died of various reasons. The koloss simply killed too many people too regularly in their raids to grow their population much. I think that there were only 300-500 thousand, and that would be a cake walk for Elend's army.

 

I don't have the book in front of me, so not certain of any of this, but there were more than 39 seers, there were about 320. (@ Enna btw)

 

Also, I don't know a lot about burn times, but we may be able to estimate the length of the battle based on how long it would have taken Elend to run out of pewter/iron/steel. Assuming that he didn't duralumin flare while fighting koloss, anyway. I don't see any reason he should have. I remember that Elend thought to himself that they had been fighting for hours, that really could mean anything from 2-12 easily.

 

Now to adress your points.

1) I can't really dispute this, but I think there are easy ways to mitigate it, like fighting carefully (made easy with atium). Also, I think that after burning more atium than anyone had ever seen in a few minutes, you are considered an experienced allomancer. They would get familiar pretty quickly. I don't think the attrition here would be that bad. Besides all that, use of Allomancy is, at it's core, instinctive. "Your body will know what to do." I agree with anyone that says their control won't be that great, but it's just an atium burn (just an atium burn XD), not trying Vin's horseshoe trick right off. I got the sense that you instinctively knew how much of it you had left. The few times that people burned it before that  went too fast for them to really judge, or they were in a deathmatch and were about to lose, etc. These soldiers had a while in their first burn to get used to it.

 

2) That is why you just defend the entrances, this way you can present a line, rather than being on you own surrounded by enemies with no end in sight. I don't think the koloss are smart enough to even try a checkmate against them, let alone succeed, if they are backing each other up. You would have to simultaneously checkmate several seers that are in a formation you can't surround (they are standing in the entrance). Simply not possible with swords and clubs, no matter how burly and tall you are.

 

Third (yes I took your points out of order) I think that he was only flaring the atium for the fight with Marsh. Could be totally wrong about that one. On the other hand, no way is a flare 10x as strong a burn (I suppose I mean fast, not strong, but whatever). It isn't Feruchemy, where if you want more power faster you have to lose some in the process. There is just a cap on how hard an Allomancer burn. Elend could burn metal very quickly, but I don't think that he could ever flare that hard. I always took a flare to be pushing yourself to get an extra 20-50%, while a duralumin flare got several times the power. Duralumin does appear to be more like Feruchemy in the diminishing returns regard.

 

 

On the other hand, I may have just realized something that debunks the whole problem. TLR must have been burning a LOT of atium to keep his age compounding going, even if it was an extremely small burn. It was constant (and growing in intensity as he had more and more age to compensate for) for a thousand years. This would completely throw off my second estimate of how much atium there was, which is probably the far more accurate of the two, since the Trust is never described that well size wise. Any guesses like mine on how big it was just by the size of the container is somewhat ludicrous. My estimate still stands on how much was produced over those thousand years, but how much was left after TLR got into the cookie jar is up in the air.

 

I still like the picture in my head of koloss bucket lining their dead kin so that they can get to the puny humans without falling over.

[Citadel16 he/him]

this post is why i hate math.

where would they get enough arrows?

are we taking into account metal flaring?

[Thunder_93]

I gotta agree about the fact that they've burnt all the Atium. Probably it would have taken longer until all was gone (didn't check your calculations tough ).

But that they could win this battle? No way.

Of course, Atium boosts you kind of to the perfect warrior. But it's written in the book, that they kept dying because they ran out of Atium.

They were just not experienced Allomancers. Just imagine: Close combat, unexperienced Allomancer with still enough Atium, get's in danger, flares his Atium as reflex - and it's gone.

Other problems are always aware as well... out of arrows, weapons break (don't tell me you can kill 1000 kolloses without your weapon getting damaged), dead end situations were's no escape for them...

And I don't remember... were that 300 Atium-Mistings actually Warriors, or just normal people?

 

If you asume Ruin had "only" 300'000 kolloses (lowest number you've mentioned) - there were about 300 Mistings. They weren't just fighting at the cave-entry. Even with Atium - how do you wanna fight so many kolloses at a time? If Ruin is smart (and he is/was), he's gonna attack each Misting in a wave. Maybe 10, or even 50 Kolloses at a time. The misting will get into serious trouble, even with Atium (dead end situations by so many attackers) and even if he defeats them, the next wave comes before the last Kollos dies.

Can you explain me, how they even would have time to go and get some more Atium, if Ruin only was a little smart? I don't think, as soon as he runs out of it, he'd ask the Kollos something like "Excuse me, Sir, I'll have to fetch a little more Atium so I can slay you and your companions"

[Voidus]

I seriously doubt that a single Seer could take on a thousand Koloss. The danger of being checkmated is just way too high, not to mention the physical advantage Koloss have, they're harder to kill as well as being way stronger, having a longer reach and probably being faster too. Without pewter the Seers are just down to dodging to avoid attacks, and if they all guard the entrances they'd either be too closely packed to be able to dodge effectively or too spread out to provide a reasonable barrier against the Koloss.

I think 100 Koloss for a single Seer would be difficult, 1000 would be impossible. Even Vin would struggle against those kinds of numbers and she's a ninja-warrior who's been blessed by god.

[Edgedancer he/him]

Honestly, the thing that I find questionable is that they actually managed to burn all the Atium, meaning that not a single Seer died because of exhaustion or being over run by several Koloss just throwing themselves on him over the course of several hours.

[Yata he/him]

Honestly, the thing that I find questionable is that they actually managed to burn all the Atium, meaning that not a single Seer died because of exhaustion or being over run by several Koloss just throwing themselves on him over the course of several hours.

Probably some Seer (the ones unable to fight) flare it to consume all the Atium before Ruin may take it. It quite the same things that Elend did at the end (but he may uses Durallumin).

[Thunder_93]

Exactly. But I think the most important point is when they run out of Atium. I don't see it how they're going to fetch more, even if they realize it by time, so they can try to escape the Kolosses with Atium. Even then, it would be nearly impossible to escape that many of them

[Edgedancer he/him]

Probably some Seer (the ones unable to fight) flare it to consume all the Atium before Ruin may take it. It quite the same things that Elend did at the end (but he may uses Durallumin).

Yeah but all it needs is Koloss dog piling on one Seer before he can burn his entire Atium and then Ruin can simply cut the bead out of him.

[Yata he/him]

Yeah but all it needs is Koloss dog piling on one Seer before he can burn his entire Atium and then Ruin can simply cut the bead out of him.

Well one or two Seer that Flare Atium for an hour or two. Will burn a great amount of Atium. The Atium burns pretty fast also with regular burning (It will be quite ilarius if some of the Seers becames Atium Savant during the battle).

To me some Atium was in the Seers, Stomach but it will be a very tiny amount. Probably not so much to unbalance the power of Preservation-Ruin.

And in the end Ruin had not time to check because when Elend died, Vin killed Ati in a minute.

Edited November 18, 2015 by Yata

[Sarge he/him]

Based on personal experience I feel I have to chime in on the recovery breaks, not that i ever fought actual Koloss, but i have been in combat.

 

Assuming actual physical combat time is an hour and each "break" 20mins (literally just throwing out numbers here).

Add in the heat and air quality (which will sap your strength and energy quickly)

Also, we're talking hand-to-hand brute force combat. VERY physically and emotionally draining

 

You'll have at MOST one or two sessions at 100%. Each successive activity period after that will exponentially decrease your combat capability, to the point that in a few short hours you will be completely ineffective. Factor in individual strength and training and you would get a few more but not much. 

 

You'd have to do a 1 on 2 off rotation in order to get any sustained combat.

[Charononus]

Yeah but all it needs is Koloss dog piling on one Seer before he can burn his entire Atium and then Ruin can simply cut the bead out of him.

Pretty sure that someone says that atium is very delicate and you can't leave it in your stomach for long because after a couple hours in your stomach it would break down.  So unless ruin had an atium removal team on duty in each case,  I'd say that atium is going to be gone too.

[Yata he/him]

Pretty sure that someone says that atium is very delicate and you can't leave it in your stomach for long because after a couple hours in your stomach it would break down.  So unless ruin had an atium removal team on duty in each case,  I'd say that atium is going to be gone too.

Koloss surgeon with PhD 

Edited November 18, 2015 by Yata

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

As to the objections saying that the Koloss couldn't checkmate them, have you ever fought against swarm tactics? The Koloss don't need to be smart or strategic when they outnumber them so overwhelmingly. I have done combat LARPs for a while and I can say without a doubt that the increased difficulty for being surrounded cannot be overstated. If you are outnumbered 4:1 or greater, your enemies don't even need to be working together to completely overwhelm you. With Atium, the number you could reasonably handle might increase as high as maybe 10:1, but they were outnumbered easily 1,000:1. There is just no winning against those odds short of the kind of artillery weaponry that didn't exist in the Final Empire. Atium is an amazing personal scale advantage, but it can only do so much.

 

As for the tactical positioning arguments about defending a narrow passage, yes that does provide a substantial advantage. However, look at a real-world example of something similar. Thermopoli and the last stand of the 300. They were outnumbered actually by a smaller ratio than Elend's forces were outnumbered and had ideal ground. They took thousands down with them, but in the end they were slaughtered just as Elend's forces were.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that footing, training, tactics, positioning, technology, even something like Atium, all of these things make substantial differences in your ability to fight a superiour force. However, there is a limit, a point where superiour numbers will always prevail, no matter what other advantages you have.