Side Effect of Magic

[Landis963 he/him]

7 hours ago, djammmer said:

I guess having 50000 breaths was Nalthis's way of compounding.  Power there does not seem linear WRT to breath count - it seems exponential.

Which is saying something, given that Heightenings seem to also scale exponentially. 

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

It should be pointed out that Selish magic is very different from its original form.  We have a WoB that the system changed after Dominion and Devotion were shattered. It seems likely that there used to be to be three systems prior, as opposed to the current one. This theory includes the opinion that the current manifestation on Sel is an outgrowth of the merged system. The individual systems are what was lost, while the merged system expanded greatly.

This has actually led me to the theory that either something similar will occur on Scadrial as Ruin and Preservation continue to merge, or that Harmony is maintaining the original organization. It also begs the question: Can anyone on Sel, if they knew how, access the original systems? Does anyone have access to it? And why does there not seem be much memory of the world's prior state (setting the Ire aside)?

Shards do seem to be able to manipulate their systems to an extent, such as Edgli choosing whom to return. The ability to Return is inherent in the magic system. Scadrial is not much with regard to evidence, as it was created by its shards and thus has some interesting effects. The God metals seem to be a natural function of realmatics there; it's the quantity of Atium that is unusual, not it's existence.

With regard to the OP nature of Scadrial's powers; Mistborn, which make Fullborn possible, are NOT a natural part of the system. That's why the Southern Scadriens have none. You needed to burn Lerasium to open that possibility. It is entirely possible that this is the case for Feruchemists as well, with Ferrings being the natural manifestation. If I'm right about the second part, then the only way to get a 'natural' OP Fullborn is to have had someone hack BOTH systems at some point in the past. Which happened, but I wouldn't call the result a natural outgrowth of the system, since there was no way for that result to occur by ordinary means (just like some RL created elements.)