name_here

Well, our precedent here is Allomantic Atium. So I suspect it'd have a limited but extremely powerful effect. Possibly it would steal any Allomantic power and not decay.

Well, I have doubts about the long-term stability of that system, but I suppose it would work for a time. Eventually the Foundry would probably be dragged into conflicts between the power blocs supporting them, at the very least in the form of increasing efforts to bribe them into backing one side or another and interference in replacing leadership by inheritance or election, but if the current leader and his successor (whether son or rising star among the board of directors, depending on structure) are sufficently tough and play their cards right, that could easily be after every single current Epic is dead of old age. That would leave them in a somewhat precarious but valuable position. On the one hand, they're going to need to appease all the Epics who provide them with protection, and besides a promise of vengence for destruction, the Foundry will need to bring in supplies of food and raw materials for the mobiles that must be protected somehow. It's not really a viable option to threaten to cut off anyone who doesn't provide a retalitory counterstrike for any raids, because eventually the Epics would decide it's not worth the hassle. They'll probably demand concessions of some kind for providing caravan guards, and even larger ones for forcibly re-opening rare earth mines that someone else decided to close. And then whenever one of them is hurting for cash they'll come back around to negotiate a new contract. On the other hand, they're safe from getting outright conquered unless they really mismanage their dealings, and when an Epic is in dire straits, Knighthawk can make them an offer they're in no position to refuse. The historical example that's coming to mind for me is the Medieval Catholic Church. The various kingdoms of Europe held wildly variable levels of influence over the church depending on the era, ranging from one pope forcing England to beg forgiveness for interfering in church buisness to another pope having to move the Papacy to France because the king said so. However, the Foundry, at least presently, is probably safer by virtue of mattering less; the church had wide-ranging interests and powers, including substantial land holdings (often with associated military forces), the capacity to rally popular support, a pseudotax system, its own court system, and in the early days a virtual monopoly on teaching literacy. Knighthawk, at least at present in Newcago, just has phones, so their only point of dispute with the Epics is over the phone system instead of literally everything related to governance. On the other hand, the Knighthawk Foundry is in the unenviable position of being replacable. Even if no one else can make something as good as the mobiles, they could make inferior telecom devices. And there are many advantages to running a local telecom monopoly, not the least of which are money and wiretapping. In this case (and for that matter even if they've got some independent military might; they don't seem to be a dominant superpower) the deals probably look something like so: 1. Knighthawk provides some number of mobiles at subsidied rates or for free. Probably how many varies and is kept secret to keep Epics guessing how far they can push. The Epics might resell these to the general populace or ask Knighthawk to sell directly to their citizens at lowered rates 2. (As applicable) The Epics sell raw materials in their territory to Knighthawk at below market prices or provide a set amount as part of the deal. 3. The mobiles are not to be opened or tampered with by non-Knighthawk personel (may be rendered unnecessary by a self-destruct). 4. No interference in the sale of mobiles within the territory of the Epic, or trade through their territory regardless of destination. 5. Knighthawk likely requests some number of soldiers be loaned as guards unless they provide their own. There are a number of other things Knighthawk might want, but it's hard to say exactly what without knowing more, and also hard to say what they could actually get.

The comic didn't particularly offend me because Penny Arcade is always like that. The joke was funny, and given the overall context of what they've written previously it didn't feel malicious.

Well, aside from employing personal longevity and superpowers to live well, I'm honestly not sure. I'm not up for becoming a dicatorial god-king, but would also rather not just ignore problems. Probably I'd intervene in the situations where I'd want powerful nations to intervene in the real world, and hopefully compounding Zinc would help me figure out if that's a good idea in the situation.

Defeating the tank: Okay, so we need to exploit his weakness. Unfortunately, the magnetic poles of the Earth are not in his territory, so cleverness will be required. Do his generals also disappear during the week he's in his palace? If so, then it is reasonable to assume that he's mostly powerless during that period; if they're still around then he is at most somewhat weakened or maybe even faking it. In either case, he is ideally confronted during that time period with methods expected to possibly work on his full-power state, but there's the issue of infiltrating the palace. Since strong magnetic fields can cancel the gifted powers, it appears likely the weakness at the magnetic poles is due to the geomagnetic field and not the location. Thus, simulating the field there should disable his powers at any location. Also, certain types of solar activity can distort the geomagnetic field. Unfortunately, it's hard to predict when those will happen, and they are of relatively short duration, so depending on that is out. We need an array of electromagnents tuned to alter the geomagnetic field at a location. The geomagnetic field is suprisingly weak, so that's more achievable than it sounds. Setting one up for a fixed location is much easier than setting one up for an arbitrary location, which means it'd take some real work to do it at the palace. What this calls for is luring him and any generals nearby downriver from a dam with a buried, watertight electromagnet array, blowing the dam, and activating the electromagnents, then shooting him before he's swept away from the magnets. Alternately, if his strength is finite, catching him in a woven nanotube net and attaching it to a supersonic plane might be able to forcibly drag him to a pole.

I expect that their strict neutrality provides them with some level of protection, but that's not enough by itself. Dealing with all sides is only going to protect them as long as no one decides they'd rather no one have top-end secure communications instead of everyone having top-end secure communications. And it should be noted that various power blocks could potentially produce their own communications devices while others can't, so removing the Foundry would hurt some people more than others. Someone needs to provide the threat of enough force to make removing the Foundry as a factor too expensive for the benefits. And if that's an external group, inevitably they'll gain some measure of control over the Foundry. Granted, it's only been ten years, and structurally inevitable things can take generations to come back to haunt people, plus Gloom's suggestion would help divorce providing protection from influence so long as the Epics genuinely believe the Foundry would commit mass suicide, at least until a particular Epic or group gains enough power no one else feels like being stuck with providing a vengence strike against them. I'm still somewhat dubious the Foundry is (openly) run by non-Epics. Regardless of what provides it with neutrality, it's apparently essentially a technologically advanced soveregien nation. People flock to Newcago because Steelheart provides them with food, clean water, power, and the like, even though he runs a brutal dictatorship where Epics kill without consequence, which implies no one provides the same services without the attached dictatorship. It's admittedly not impossible for normal people to be just as bad, though. What generally protects arms dealers is two factors: 1. They're middlemen. 2. There are a lot of arms dealers. What this means is that, first, often the groups that would benefit from getting rid of arms dealers or gaining exclusive control can't hurt the actual infastructure that produces high-end weaponry, and secondly getting rid of one of them means none of the others will deal with you unless you persuade them it was for a reason that doesn't apply to them. Diamond is somewhat protected by his value, but bear in mind that Nightwielder did consider killing everyone in the shop when Davis used the UV light. Also, his benefits aren't exactly zero-sum; he arms both the Reckoners and Newcago, but Steelheart wants his weaponry to fight threats other than the Reckoners, and even without him Steelheart could obtain weaponry that would make life seriously difficult for the Reckoners. Plus, I doubt taking out his factories would be an easy proposition; remember, he did record the demonstration shot from the gauss gun, which means he has a static power source capable of fueling it and therefore could potentially use it defensively.

Well, the mobiles aren't themselves powered by gifting; I guess it's possible that the assembly is done using gifted powers, though. It would be rather difficult, but not impossible, for ordinary people to force an Epic to empower them, and that would explain why the Reckoners trust them. Or maybe Knighthawk is of above-average sanity because he mostly uses his powers by proxy. Also, nothing says the Epic who makes the mobiles has to be the one in charge even if it is run by an Epic.

The weaknesses can be bizzarely specific, as the 37-year-old weakness shows. It appears likely he is only vunerable to direct effects of attacks made by people who are not afraid of him, since he has collapsed buildings he was inside of on purpose. I think it's pretty likely that he could be killed by people who are completely incapable of feeling fear, but that is rather rare. Still, he's clearly afraid someone can kill him, given how paranoid he is and how he doesn't put down riots in person.

Well, apparently her reincarnation gave her temporary retrograde amnesia, which would be why she can't explain it at the time. I'd assume that her limited use of her powers while undercover helped restore her to emotional normalcy and gave her conflicting loyalties, except that using her powers to protect Abraham would undo that.

The thing is, though, they and everyone else trust Knighthawk implicitly. At no point does anyone even consider the possibility information is being leaked to unauthorized devices. Also, they could at least theoretically create their own phones, even if they aren't as good as Knighthawk's; Tia has plenty of technical skill. I am sure the Reckoners have instructed the phone to only transmit encrypted data. That is not the same thing at all. Short of an exhaustive and complicated test of every single possible state the phone can be in or using an electron microscope to compare the unit to a known safe design, there is no way of telling if the hardware is doing what you think it is, a fact that is presently costing the US military a rather large amount of money. It is in Knighthawk's interest to appear neutral, but it's also in his interest to spy on as much as he possibly can without getting caught, and since no one else appears to be able to create the mobiles, no one can really tell if they are actually secure, just that no one except Knighthawk can hack them at present. Essentially, people cannot be certain Knighthawk is incapable of spying on them, so their confidence they are not being spied on implies they believe he won't. Here's the quote that's probably most dramatic, from pg 366 of the hardcover: Note that by this point it's pretty clear that Steelheart knows what they've been planning, but Tia rejects the possibility of the link being hacked out of hand, and not by saying, "Knighthawk wouldn't share information with Steelheart."

There's no particular reason to believe the Enforcer was lying in that instance, and it's doubtful that Steelheart would use that particular lie with his Enforcers, because it'd be pretty hard to keep up and not terribly useful. Whether he would notice some links not being broken is questionable, true. Overall, though, theorizing that Conflux gifts to objects raises a very large number of questions that assuming he just electrifies things does not, and I don't see any compelling reason to reject the assumption that he charges things directly for a more complicated set of assumptions. Plus, what is he gifting to the Enforcement officers in that case?

The Knighthawk Foundry is probably the most enigmatic organization mentioned so far; it gets relatively little discussion, and there are some things conspiciously absent from what mentions it gets. We know only three things besides the name: 1. They make the mobiles. Everyone, absolutely everyone, uses mobiles in Newcago and presumably they've got a virtual monopoly on communications elsewhere. I do not recall even one mention of any other personal communications device. 2. They're neutral. No one ever gives even the slightest consideration of the possibility of them allowing anyone else to tap into the calls. 3. They have a central server of some form which is not quite as trusted. The mobiles can apparently transmit through anything and link either to the central server or to another mobile directly with substantial range. Steelheart did not demonstrate the capacity to jam them; not even in the room he wired with explosives more powerful than the Reckoners used in an attempt to demolish the entire building. The mobiles are also considered absolutely secure. When Davis says to stop using the link, the other Reckoners flatly refuse to believe it might have been breached until he says that Enforcement has Megan's mobile, which is in their network. Now, apparently they're using some form of encryption that might not have been generated on the mobiles themselves, but they establish a new link remotely, so they couldn't have picked a new one. Well, okay, apparently there are some methods of pulling that off, but the resulting encryption is considerably weaker and also involves large enough numbers the mobiles would need to do the math, so it's still dependent on their built-in security. Their level of neutrality implies that the Foundry cannot be easily overpowered by any given other group. This power is almost certainly intrinsic to the Foundry, since Epics control most military power and would collectively oppose the Reckoners, who are apparently confident in the Foundry's neutrality. That is where things get weird, because there are two possibilities: 1. Knighthawk is a powerful Epic who runs a fortress-factory producing the world's most advanced technology, possibly using his powers in the manufacturing process. In this scenario, it is odd that the Reckoners would implicitly trust his creations when their offical policy calls for his death. Sure, they don't route through the central server, but Knighthawk provides both the software and hardware. They cannot be sure the mobiles are not transmitting back to Knighthawk in secret. But if he is a trustworthy Epic, why does no one ever append "Except Knighthawk" to statements about the behavior of Epics in general? 2. The Knighthawk Foundry is not controlled by an Epic at all. This would then mean there is a technologically advanced faction operating openly on a large scale with sufficent power to stand up to all the Epics who have set themselves up as emperors and totally under the control of normal humans. That, uh, seems like it might have come up. Repeatedly. Also, if it doesn't depend on an Epic, people could make knock-offs of the mobiles. I would expect the Reckoners to use their own design if possible no matter how trustworthy the organization. I'm not entirely sure why the Reckoners do trust the mobiles but not the servers, but maybe they assume that the designers don't know any method of hacking the mobiles and are worried someone will manage to conquer the Foundry and access call records.

The Knighthawk Foundry is an enigma. It definitely sounds like it's run by an Epic, it's powerful enough to maintain strict neutrality, and everyone inexplicably trusts them with providing secure communication devices, even the Reckoners. Having them powered by Knighthawk's cloned cells would explain why Newcago outsources their communications infastructure instead of designing their own; if the biological component is tamper-proofed it would be impossible to replicate them. Alternately, they might work in a way that obeys standard physical laws but depends on components only Knighthawk's powers can manufacture, which would dovetail nicely with being powerful enough no one can push Knighthawk around if he makes military gear too and refuses to export it. He might have Enforcement suits with a laptop-size battery holding enough power for 72 hours of continuous combat instead of relying on Conflux, for instance. Either way, it's probably no coincidence that the most omnipresent Epic-based tech is manufactured by a group that has an Epic-style name.

AonDor is definitely the broadest, but it's also pretty fiddly. I'd have to pick between either pewter because I like the idea of generally vastly improved physical capabilties, and Soulcasting, because making things from arbitrary other things is extremely nice.

I think she actually did leak some information to Steelheart, since he doesn't initially believe Limelight exists after the power station hit. I'm guessing Steelheart didn't want to launch a full assault into the Steel Catacombs for whatever reason. What's strange is how she uses her powers to help out people other than herself in the hit on Conflux; I'm not sure what prompted that.

Yes, but while we know that is possible we are also told it is difficult and have never seen it happen, so it is unclear what conditions are necessary.

Essentially, we believe you've got the order backwards; the power is stolen after the victim dies. The order of operations under normal circumstances is believed to be as follows: 1. The subject is spiked through the heart 2. The subject dies 3. The power is stolen Thus, the expected outcome of shooting Miles in the heart is that he does not die, and therefore his power is not stolen, so he is not prevented from using his power to not die.

If shooting a bloodmaker in the heart were fatal, there would be no need to steal his powers in order to kill him by shooting him in the heart.

Swordbearer made a bad choice about what power to disguise, I'd say. No one with sense plans to fight a guy who can cut through anything in close combat anyway. The power to watch is his precog/reflex combo. However, it's limited in duration where Fortuity could sense direct danger far in advance. The master solution to people who evade danger by dodging or appearing to be elsewhere is to arrange a situation that will kill everyone in the area they could possibly dodge into. Precog expands this area because they have extra time to dodge. Plan mad bomber 1) We need explosives and one of his targets; if necessary put a hit out on a team member. 2) Wire a large, abandoned area where you are unlikely to be observed with explosives, then convince him the target is in there. Ideally do this without putting the target in there, but if you select a location which he can only approach from one direction (trivial in Florida if he can't walk on water, otherwise near-impossible) you can trap the path to the location of the target. Alternately, pick a target you do not like, or stick him in a bomb shelter. 3) Since he's a contract killer, he can be expected to come to the target. When he reaches the center, or when he suddenly turns and runs, detonate the explosives. Since you're on a time limit and have a limited team, you probably can't plant enough to be assured of a kill in the entire zone, so sweep the rubble. Plan clever bomber: 1) Get a contact explosive and some method of making it look wildly implausible. Maybe improvise it out of brightly-colored fireworks, stick it into a plush cthulhu, or something. 2) Same lure, but this time into a confined space. 3) Throw the bomb at him; it'll detonate if he cuts it or it strikes the wall or floor Plan used all our explosives last time: 1) automatic weapons, lots of. 2) Still the same lure. However, now it actually matters how he enters the area. Analyse his typical behavior to figure out how he usually approaches targets and station the team elsewhere. 3) Once he's in an area with no effective cover, ideally at a lower elevation, the team emerges from hiding and shoots at him. Honestly, I don't like this one very much; as Megan says it's hard to checkmate precogs with bullets. Still, with enough bullets it can work, and his sword negates most nonexplosive methods of forcing a checkmate. Plan rave 1) Lots and lots of multicolored lights, noisemakers, etc. 2) Same lure 3) Hopefully he can be disoriented by sensory input and his precog will be effectively negated, at which point he can be shot. Plan real weakness 1) Flashbangs, heavy armor, nets and spears 2) This plan can be implemented anywhere, but the smaller the area the better 3) Throw flashbangs, taking out his cutting powers and disorienting him, and throw the nets then stab him. Varient: Do it indoors with night vision and kill the lights. His fake melee weakness cannot be exploited if it would matter, since anything that can break a sword he's holding could just hit him instead, so I'm not going to write up a plan based on that theory As for climate, it never snows in Florida.

Incorrect; Conflux apparently knows instantly when one of the people he gifts powers to is killed, going by what the Enforcement member at Davis's apartment said. If the power cells operated in the same manner, he'd know they had not been destroyed. Granted, figuring it out would require information sharing between him and Steelheart.

Presumably nothing. At a guess, it was some sort of transumation or matter destruction power that affects objects equally regardless of composition, because he seemed to think it would kill Steelheart when Steelheart had survived his primary power and being shot a bunch. It could alternately have been some mental effect, poison, electric, or other attack that couldn't be stopped by mere physical resillence. All we can really conclude is that it was contact-based and could bypass immunity to physical force, which was the only thing he'd observed Steelheart resisting.

Conflux was apparently only able to charge electronics and gift the power to do so, or at least used no other powers and did not act in a way that would imply he had them. If he does, they're apparently not up to staging a breakout from secure facilities while the other Epics are away and without the more exotically powerful technology that's dependent on him, because he was confined for five years. The charging seems to be distinct from gifting because when the plant power cells were stolen, Steelheart didn't have him cut the connection. However, he was sedated for transfer shortly after the theft, so that's not conclusive because they wouldn't have been able to tell exactly which cells were stolen for a while. The Reckoners didn't seem to think they could be remotely shut down, though, and they acted exactly like one would expect a high-density battery/capacitor to behave. Apparently he can induce a voltage in an electronic circuit, which will operate a device which does not have a power source and can be stored in normal power storage systems. He does not seem to have arbitrary electomagnetic powers because holding a gun to his head was at least plausibly threatening. Plus, during the fights with Enforcement none of them shot lighting.

Did he actually know most of those secret metals? The only ones I can recall him verifiably having were Aluminum, Duralium, and Electrum. The others didn't appear in the cache writings. Granted, he may have intentionally omitted Chromium and Nicrosil, since they could be used against him fairly easily yet would be dubiously useful against Ruin-charged Inquisitors who could simply get a recharge from their patron if drained. Still, there's no evidence of him knowing about the external enhancement or temporal metals, and as mentioned they're painfully difficult to extract. Ruin was probably being strategic with his edits, since tampering with too much would risk giving it away and devalue the edits to the prophecies.

Eh. There are a bunch of unknowns with Hemalurgy. For one, it seems unlikely it's quite as simple as blindly stabbing people with random bits of metal, because people get stabbed in various locations with metal a lot, so there'd be a giant quantity of randomly charged spikes about. Secondly, while we know it's possible to steal powers from people without killing them, it is not entirely clear how and all observed theft was fatal so you might need an additional step for a nonfatal theft, which would be necessary for this to work.

We know Prof's gear is a cover for Transferrence Epic powers, but he's not the only person claiming to copy them. Now, we cannot prove they're not doing the same thing, since Megan hasn't attempted to use their gear, but it seems somewhat implausible there's a secret set of Transference Epics who can convincingly imitate the powers of other Epics. I think what is really happening is based on the cell trade. Diamond takes payment in intact cells of Epics, which apparently contribute to imitating their powers. Thing is, that doesn't make much sense for producing non-organic imitations. I suspect that all the "technological imitations" are not replicas of Epic powers; they're the actual powers used by the Epic, generated from cloned cells of the user controlled technologically. Being able to discover things about Epic powers from cells implies this is theoretically possible, even if not all instances of Epic tech do it. However, the only "real" imitation we've seen is possibly an exception; it's a gauss gun that energizes the projectiles and conceptually well understood. Whether it could plausibly be created under known physics depends on exactly what it does to charge the projectile, but it requires an enormous energy input that leads me to suspect it does its damage in an entirely mundane manner because someone saw Rick O'Shea's powers and decided to make a gun that did that. But I'm dubious that all of them are like that, because Fortuity's cells would have been worth something and I don't know where to even begin duplicating his power.