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When you say "problem with that" what are you referring to? To clarify, Im not following the relevance, there hasnt actually been ANY mention of things outside the cosmere not because they dont exist but because the finite "Cosmere" boundary is specifically the part of that universe that is relevant to all these stories; Im not sure why that would disallow any of the theories presented so far.

Not sure that's necessarily the case; it really only holds up if there is a strong cultural drive toward monogamy, and simultaniously against children out of wedlock. Because soldiers, especially well-paid specialist soldiers, are historically known to be, shall we way, less than discriminant with their genetic material. Ghengas Kahn was a technically soldier and he sired like 8% of Asia.

"On His Arms" "I dont deserve to be alive" :'( "Voidbringers" "Stories For Children"

Chekhov's Gun

Hmm, there have been a lot, now that I think about it. Top of my list right now is Nale; in edgedancer he had the feel of just a Mike Meyers slow-walking boogy-man, a sterotype Law-zealot. But in OB as we got to hear his actual outlook and reasoning, I really started to be interested in his outlook. He's the basically patron saint of the Law, but he freely aknowledges that it is an entirely imperfect approximation of actual Justice; between that and being self-aware enough to discourage Szeth from swearing fealty to him personally (the understanding he might well be broken) makes me really want to sit down and have a conversation with the guy. The others, in no particular order: Steris Wax and Wayne (both were tons of fun in Allow of Law, but only really became the great, deep characters in the following books) Sazed (he was just kinda boring at first, at least compared to the rest of the crew...little did I know) Both sisters in Warbreaker Most of the Returned (except Lightsong, I loved him from the get-go) Shallan (not sure I like her yet, but she's getting better) Jasnah

Well, we know of a Yolen magic system that predates the Shattering that was strikingly similar to the Lightweaving Surge. Perhaps each of the shardic magics has some relic element of adonalsium's era? There certainly seem to be at least superficial echos of that era (or rather the shattering) present in the Metallic Arts.

Well first off, Ive rewritten my reply three times, each time finding myself more closer to your side. So, for the domino-job you did on my brain, Kudos I read your first statement about Allomancy needing to exist between the Shard and the Planet and initially thought it didt fit at all, because the planet and people were created together whole so there'd have been no evolutionary process required, and I thought the only critical connection was between the shard and the people it created since theres nothing special about the metal. Then I realized that the statement would be entirely correct if we were talking about gemstones on Roshar instead of metal on Scadrial, because there it's all part of a much more complex ecosystem. Which tells me my previous statement that Sel should be the only one with a planetary component cant be the real root of my unease. But Im still stuck on the idea that it's the people rather than the planet that makes the difference, because I fully expect Era4 Scadrians to colonize new planets and that effect to follow them. That was the thought that made it click for me. My hanging point is that there is supposed to be nothing involved in allomancy other than the correct sDNA to connect to Preservation and any old metal (which are known to have common, cosmere-wide traits and functions, ie aluminum). If the metal functions equally well anywhere, it shouldnt behave differently on one place vs another. But, as you say the Cognitive Realm is influenced by the beliefs of the population (conscious or otherwise). So Im thinking that it's not the planet, or the people persay, but the Population as a whole that are causing the effect. Meaning any world with a significant Scadrial population's influence would see the same glow from metals on its shadesmar side, including any potential shard-less colonies. From there I only have two questions: 1) How many scadrian's does it take to affect a region of the Cognitive realm? Im going to go out on a limb and say it's not One like I was previously implying. 2) Is the influence happening because a significant chunk of the population are actually Allomancers whose Spiritwebs know how to use metals as a focus, or is it because of the Cultural significance of Metal (all or just those 16)?

pretty much, yes though gold is also actually rare (as compared to Diamonds that are useful but suprisingly common). Gold is useful in wiring for its high conductivity (3rd behind silver and copper) but the biggest is that it doesnt rust. That's the same reason that it was so valuable in the old days more or less, it was one of the only metals that didnt literally dissolve over time.

Since the harvest bind point and the implantation bind point are not necessarily the same location, so at least the physician side of the process would in most cased/combinations. The spirit-chunk doesnt leave the Spike but it does graft/blend onto the base web (enough that Kolos-blooded became a thing), thought the spike remains as the physical bridge to make the graft take. From there I think you'd just be spiking off a new cut/region of the spiritweb that may or may not include some of the original graft. Id assume that more fractured graft would not function as well as a more "whole graft" and may require the sort of general Binding spike that Inquisitors needed.

@Calderis I get that. My hang-up (and I admit this is a little nit-picky) is that if the glow is the result of the metal being the focus for allomancy, being a thin spot where the Spiritual realm is seeking to come through, then even in the Cog realm that should have nothing to do with Scadrial and everything to to with the Scadrians. Again, I realize this is a fine distinction but as I understand it Metal is Not the focus of the Scadrian World, it is the focus of the Scadrian People, which would be critical here. Put another way, if the Glow is currently restricted to the actual planet (or rather its CR region) then I expect that limitation to be a secondary result of the people (or even Harmony's) currently narrow/restricted outlook, such that once they move to a space-faring society that can separate the two concepts, the effect will follow them. Even presently I expect an allomancer would see that glow no matter where in the Cognitive realm they were.

Huh, that sounds too much like a physical location restriction to me, which shouldnt be the case outside of Sel. If the metal glows because its a thinning 'window' to the spiritual realm, the key for that should be the Allomancer rather than the location of the metal, no? For metallic arts the only difference should be in the Spiritweb of the allomancer/feruchemist, so Im guessing either they only glow in the presence of allomancers/feruchemists (or maybe all Scadrial Natives, being all Invested by Preservation), or else the glow is actually only visible to Scadrial natives (did any non-natives mention it in SH?)

D-oh! That's right. Ok, nevermind. Im now picturing sweatshop power plants where people sit at Investiture stations all day artificially Compounding up stores and stores of Investiture. Like in the era2 Last Airbender show where they had the Lightning-benders lined up shooting electricity at a generator system for three shifts a day.

Do we know (one way or the other) if there was anything around that Predates Adonalsium? Adonalsium IS Investiture the Investiture of the Cosmere, and one Cosmeric Law is that if you let it gather, Investiture will eventually become Sentient. So what if that's exactly what happened: What if the Cosmere's Investiture crystallized that way and gained an Emergent sentience? It would have been a, no THE Godspren, and by spren rules it's personality would have been some sort of aggregate of what all the sentient races and people thought such a being would be like. I can easily see why a group of people might view that sort of God-by-committee to be a Danger, not the Source or the Creator but simply a hazardous and arguably unnecessary accumulation of Power, something best dealt with by dispersing said accumulation. They did so by tearing it apart along several axis, and since tearing is at its most abstract an act of Polarization, they ended up polarizing that Power into 16 Intent vectors, all focused around (I suspect) the primary motivating Intent of each of the participants.

Correct me if Im wrong, but even if they worked out Nicrosil trick on the Bands that let them grant allomancy, you'd still be Burning the medallions to accomplish the compounding Hack, even the Bands couldnt grant you access to that sort of thing permanently, and I strongly doubt the metallic arts are ever going to be so ubiquitous as to make UnSealed medallions disposable. You might me able to work it out with some Ettmetal device to handle the Allomancer side of the equation with normal medallions, but that kind of depends on how exactly Ettmetal is going about and youre still burning medallions. Frankly though, morality aside hemalurgy is by far the easier way to go about artificial Compounding.

Huh, so we know that alloying those beads will create relevant Mistings, but your saying that is hyporthetical and has never actually been done? I thought those beads were a finite supply unlike Atium, and more or less accounted for. On the topic of Ferrings, that one I really dont have many guesses on since it's more "natural" than Allomancy in the sense of not being granted externally. As a general default Id have thought they'd be an even distribution; anything more specific and I think Leras would have use those ratio's for his 1/16th snapping message. Im curious if the ratios are different outside Harmony's protected basin. One relevant factor limiting ferrings could be the Intent Requirement. The rarest ferrings seem to also the most abstract traits, and the simple fact that even the Terris dont entirely understand some of them (the spiritual especially) would limit their ability to identify the early signs of a ferring and train them. A lot easier to spot a kid toying with his own weight or strength or even memories, but Connections or hell, Nicrosil Investiture might be much harder to spot (or explain and understand), almost like having a radio-interface superpower in the middle ages.

I like it! That would make a lot of sense, and I like that it would be a way to illuminate some of the cosmere-wide interactions of Investiture, rather than just being a wholly new/different system. Still begs the Source Question...Odium's Perpendicularity has to be stuck somewhere in Greater Roshar if not on Braize specifically, yes? Being that it is by definition a bulk chunk of him.

As far as I understand it, The Lord Ruler actively Created the Mistborn and Misting Bloodlines using Lerasium alloyed to each of the other Allomantic Metals (or pure for a full Mistborn), they were not a natural occurrence. We know he was actively concealing the very existence of several metals, and obfuscating things about the rest, so I would personally assume he simply made more, initially, of the Misting types he felt were most useful individually and left the more niche or hidden ones to the full Mistborn he had. Of course, all that was Pre-Catacendre, and after that Harmony changed the way Snapping works so I couldnt really say if those changes would have rebalanced the bloodlines in any way.

10-4. Tag me when you do, Im very curious what your thoughts are.

Ok, cool, so we have confirmed that Breathe-powered Surgebinding would not be recoverable the way normal Awakened objects would, more like the Lifeless that are unrecoverable. But would the fact that it is Breathe rather than Stormlight powering the Surge Change (mostly Extend, Im thinking) the behavior of the active Surge? My thinking here is that the reason some Surges (like the Lashings or maybe some Lightweaving effects we've seen) are always temporary because of the innate property of Stormlight that resists containment, that it wants to return to the metaphorical Water Cycle of Roshar. That wouldnt be the case if it were Breaths, so Im thinking it might make for way more longevity in the effect (if still a one-use sort of thing).

So I often thought about fueling Awakening with Stormlight (because of that guy and that thing), but given how much more restricted/finite Breaths are compared to other investiture I never really considered fueling other things with it. We know a big part of why Stormlight doesnt work great for Awakening is that Stormlight is innately less "sticky" from it's role is the Rosharan ecosystem (See WOB Below). But that beggs teh question: Is the opposite true? Would effects like Lashings or Lightweaving or whathaveyou be longer lasting, maybe even permanent, if they were fueled with an equivalent amount of Breath?

Im assuming they cannot turn into systems with moving parts, though id have guessed Bowstrings would be doable just like the various decorative bits; functionally a (Recurve) bow is just springy stick. I see a couple options that could all be tactically workable, if situationally: 1)Shakram: as @Calderis said, a shakram is almost certainly your best option for any Thrown Weapon, which in turn is your best option if a Shardweapon is limited to inert forms (which evidence suggest they are as far as I know). 2)Bow: IF (big If) the spren can in any way "flex" the bow form to provide increased performance over mundane materials, there could be real use to this in the form of supernatural range that would outstretch thrown weapons, though you'd be limited to mundane arrow and damage types. I could see good surge synergy in a few places (lashings certainly). 3)Arrows: Get some Plate and one of the Shardbows they already have, but use your spren as the Arrow. This makes it an armor-piercing super-sniper, and just like a thrown weapon you fire and re-summon it back so you never run out of ammo. The primary down-side is that you are stuck with the tactic of Head-shots or Bust. Not entirely different from RL sniper tactics though, no? The benefit with this over the more slashing capable shakram is the fundamental advantage of all Projectile weapons over Thrown weapons in that they focus/compress the strength into a burst for increased punch and/or distance. 4) Gun (Muzzle-loader only) - assuming there is some super-cool surge based gunpowder substitute (Im looking at you Dustbringers, pretty-please?) this could be viable. And if I was ever going to start experimenting with DIY firearms, it sure would be nice to have one that was indestructible and so incapable of accidentally blowing up in my face. 5)Bullet - Alternatively, if they managed to figure out mundane gunpowder, or a fabrial substitute, most of the advantages of an arrow would translate to the Firearm equivalent. I could see situational usefulness in an actual cannon siege-weapon too, if the spren-shot could grow spikes or razor ridges or something to chew through walls and such. Of course a trebuchet or windrunner lashing or any such launcher would work for that.

Ill admit I was previously hoping they were going to elevate Hela to some semblance of the role of Death and use that to bring things back closer to the comic. Really it was Brolin's performance that won me over, making him surprisingly sympathetic, and I found it a more terrifying opponent to be a rational, motivated Believer rather than the comic version that, for me, was at the end of the day just a ridiculously super-powered (and bleeding crazy) school-boy with a crush (also a bit of a complex over his prettier brother :P).

For what it's worth, with Era 2 being in the early days of practical electricity, radio, etc. any day now they'll discover the basic electrical electrolysis reaction we now use to make beer cans out of a metal that was once more valuable than gold. That doesnt mean the price might not stay artificially elevated due to it's undeniable utility, but it will likely become much more plentiful soon.

Huh, so it sounds like any two charged sticks (and even a single one if big enough) would do it, and that the actual Hemalurgy present is a bit more about a convenient side benefit/buff than anything; based on the "Fluid bind-point" WOB is sounds like a Kanda would have a lot more dynamic control of the Spikes inside them (up to and including /moving/ a spike for a different effect?). This brings me back to the energy balance of it all: how Invested would a Metalmind need to be to qualify? How about an object with stored Breaths? Ooh, and what would it do to them if you used an actual Shardblade, or a full Radiant Blade...? That would have to mess with their heads more than most, yes? Im starting to see parallels between the kandra Blockage what was done to the Parshmen...

Well for starters the Aluminum itself would prevent the kandra from using some metallic arts, (no Healing by WoB and likely nothing else "internal"). With any allomanctic alloy there's also the potential issue of a Leecher being able to get a goo hold on the Kandra at which point (if they have the appropriate allowmancy) they could literally burn away the skeleton.