Semiweekly WoB #1: Hoid is Immortal

[Argent]

7 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

That's what I meant, really Shardblades wouldn't be all that scary to the well prepared. On the other hand, he was only unafraid of the Blade. Now that I think about it, she might be extremely dangerous to him. Depending on just how much Breath he has, she might be able to Soulcast him... Even if she needs to be sitting with him in a Highstorm, it should be possible. She's done it to random mooks before without too much trouble, so with a lot more power, even Hoid should fall to the might of Soulcasting.

Eh, I suspect he is stupidly Invested, and not just with Breath. Jasnah is powerful, if Hoid is unconcerned about having his Spiritual aspect (which is kind of his soul) cut by a Shardblade, I doubt he'll be too worried about someone like Jasnah trying to impose her will upon his. The way I see it, Soulcasting a living thing is a battle of the minds (as opposed to Soulcasting a nonliving thing, which is more like a power transfer) - and I am confident Hoid will crush pretty much anyone who is not a contemporary of his and doesn't have access to a Shard.

[theuntaintedchild]

7 minutes ago, Argent said:

Eh, I suspect he is stupidly Invested, and not just with Breath. Jasnah is powerful, if Hoid is unconcerned about having his Spiritual aspect (which is kind of his soul) cut by a Shardblade, I doubt he'll be too worried about someone like Jasnah trying to impose her will upon his. The way I see it, Soulcasting a living thing is a battle of the minds (as opposed to Soulcasting a nonliving thing, which is more like a power transfer) - and I am confident Hoid will crush pretty much anyone who is not a contemporary of his and doesn't have access to a Shard.

It seems to me like Changing anything into something else regardless of method is a battle of the minds. The stick wouldn't change because it viewed itself as a stick and the Window in Emperor's soul wouldn't change because it viewed itself as a beautiful stained glass window. 

[Argent]

10 minutes ago, theuntaintedchild said:

It seems to me like Changing anything into something else regardless of method is a battle of the minds. The stick wouldn't change because it viewed itself as a stick and the Window in Emperor's soul wouldn't change because it viewed itself as a beautiful stained glass window. 

That's fair. Investiture, in this case, simply helps (a lot). The energy required for the transformation has to come from somewhere, after all.

[Pagerunner]

17 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

It's interesting though, because there are 16 shards but only ten major shardworlds, then unless a number of shards aren't investing in worlds, there are 6 dishardic worlds and 4 monoshardic. So I guess since they're rare, either there's a world where a bunch of shards have invested, leaving most of the other major shardworlds monoshardic, or there are just a number of shards not investing in worlds like Odium.

Good logic, but several assumptions that can wildly alter the final conclusions.

1. There is a Shard that isn't on a planet.
2. The '10 core Shardworlds' appears to be an out-of-universe description of the 10 worlds that tell the 'overarching story of the cosmere.'
   1. It's possible there are worlds with a Shard that do not have a book or a series set on them, so there can be more than 10 worlds with Shards as long as some of them don't play a role in the overarching story of the cosmere.
   2. If there's no Shard on Ashyn, then that would be a 'core' Shardworld without a full Shard, but influence from the three Shards elsewhere in the system.
3. We don't know the mechanism of how the Shards dispersed. It might have been that they just needed to spread out since the Cognitive Realm on Yolen was getting too crowded, so there we'd see a fairly even distribution. But maybe Odium started killing them on Yolen, so they needed to spread out so he couldn't get them. That could leave Yolen with a lot of Shards, maybe with some of them Splintered. (I recall one poster a few years back doing process-of-elimination to determine that Yolen had 5 Shards!)

I plan on asking about this topic this weekend when Brandon comes to NYC. I hope, since he's opened the door to understanding the cosmere more as a galaxy with this book, that he'll be willing to talk about it. 

[Full Metal Rithmatist]

On 27/11/2016 at 1:18 AM, Djarskublar said:

I like the idea of having threads like this. Helps the newer lurkers learn what might seem to be common knowledge to the rest of us. Cosmere Theories sounds fine for location to me, unless someone else has a problem with it.

I have to cautiously disagree with you @Spoolofwhool. For him to not be concerned about having his head chopped off would take more than standard immortality. I am mixing this WoB with the in text bit where he isn't afraid of Jasnah at all. With gold compounding, I can totally see it, but normal gold Ferrings or people with lots of Light probably wouldn't be able to grow a storming head... They take too much time, or you lose too much power to a stronger tap. A suregebinder may not be able to even hold that much Light. Lopen got almost nothing added to his stump from his sphere.

I feel like he has to have something abnormally powerful (read: a hack like compounding) to survive it. Maybe he is just incredibly Invested, so he can just straight up resist Blades anyway. Who knows.

The lord ruler had his entire body pretty much incinerated down to the bones and he still survived. hell it didnt even phase him. so a fullborn can certainly survive decapitation

[Argent]

11 minutes ago, Full Metal Rithmatist said:

The lord ruler had his entire body pretty much incinerated down to the bones and he still survived. hell it didnt even phase him. so a fullborn can certainly survive decapitation

In all fairness, that's an in-world legend. While I think it might be a true one (Miles eating a shotgun blast to the face certainly makes it likely that gold can heal almost anything), it's worth keeping in mind that it might have been twisted over time. For example, I find it hard to believe that even the Lord Ruler would be able to walk of his ligaments and muscles were burned to ash. 

[Spoolofwhool]

39 minutes ago, Full Metal Rithmatist said:

The lord ruler had his entire body pretty much incinerated down to the bones and he still survived. hell it didnt even phase him. so a fullborn can certainly survive decapitation

WoB is that he has survived a decapitation.

[Djarskublar]

He is a full power mistborn though, so his fueling of Feruchemy via Allomancy would be extremely high rate. He really was basically a god. In the end, you really have to disconnect either his atiumminds or his goldminds from his body entirely, or else he would regrow from most anything, I think.

Hoid is a different story, though. We don't know how much power he has. Lots of people on the forum seem to think he is some ultimate being capable of competing with Shards, but I think he is nowhere near that. He is presumably still acquiring powers, so I can't see him being all that ridiculous yet. Maybe by Mistborn era 4 he will be crazy buff, but for him to be an actual relevant character then, he can't be too Rule of Cool from a meta-textual standpoint.

[Spoolofwhool]

55 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

He is a full power mistborn though, so his fueling of Feruchemy via Allomancy would be extremely high rate. He really was basically a god. In the end, you really have to disconnect either his atiumminds or his goldminds from his body entirely, or else he would regrow from most anything, I think.

Hoid is a different story, though. We don't know how much power he has. Lots of people on the forum seem to think he is some ultimate being capable of competing with Shards, but I think he is nowhere near that. He is presumably still acquiring powers, so I can't see him being all that ridiculous yet. Maybe by Mistborn era 4 he will be crazy buff, but for him to be an actual relevant character then, he can't be too Rule of Cool from a meta-textual standpoint.

Yes. He clearly doesn't have shard-level power. After all, that much power does vaporize your physical form