Deus Ex Biotica

Note to self: next time I think of a theory, attempt one that everyone else wasn't already believing. Although I suppose there is some value in getting these things "out in the open."

I meant that, after transforming the Koloss, their spikes would presumably have fallen out. At that point, it's pretty easy to seal them in an underground cavern, or melt them with an Ashmount, or put them somewhere for the Kandra to find and make into earrings.

If Sazed could make the Koloss breed true, he probably would and could alter the spikes to no longer function, so that the Koloss would stop stabbing people. Even if he had not, it's been some 350 years. Those spikes would be awfully weak by now.

It hardly seems worth an argument, does it? People can change their votes in this poll. If they swarm to switch over to Overtap, then they have spoken. If nobody cares enough to edit their votes, then we know that nobody cares enough for run-offs, and go with what we have.

This is my first Theory post. I spend relatively little time in this forum, but I have checked and do not believe it was posted before. So, Brandon Sanderson has said that Hoid is getting to be somewhat more active in The Stormlight Archive, but we won't really get to see his main story until the third Mistborn trilogy. He has also confirmed ten core Shardworlds, the story of which will basically be told by the so-called "core" Cosmere books. On the surface, both statements seem a little confusing: whatever else may be the case with Hoid, his interest span the affairs of multiple worlds and Shards, which makes it seem odd that his biggest involvement will be with the now-stable (Shard-wise, at least) matters in Scadrial. And there's a thread dedicted to pointing out that we might not even be able to account for half of the Ten Worlds, and certainly not all of them, in a rough schedule of writing which extended a decade or two into the future. But, of course, that all assumes that the later Mistborn books will all focus on Scadrial. We know that the stated goal of the Mistborn meta-trilogy is to step outside the usual assumptions of "Fantasy," by showing a fantasy world grow to a spacefaring civilization. And we know that, for all its magic and wonder, Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere is largely a place of physical laws functioning as they do on Earth - Scadrial in particular has issues with its orbit and relationships to other celestial bodies. So, maybe Shadesmar (or whatever Hoid is using) is not the only way to travel among the worlds. Maybe a faster-than-light ship will serve just as well, and the final Mistborn trilogy will be a sort of space opera - but, instead of finding strange new alien civilizations, the interstellar travelers will seek out other Shardworlds, with their own variants on humanity (possibly the best explanation for shockingly human-looking aliens ever), and native magics. With travel among the worlds suddenly less restricted than before, Hoid's true agenda would finally be drawn into the light, and a bunch of new corners of the Cosmere shown to us within one series (though there would always be the chance for prequel or sequel novels focused on them, later). What do you think? -- Deus Ex Biotica

I see your point, and have changed my vote to one of the front-runners.

I am not certain it's that simple: Preservation and Ruin react to metal in very strong ways, so it makes sense to me that their power would carry that as well. That said, it is a good point about how all the humans of Scadrial have some Ruin in them, which might grant access to Atium. That might mean that only a human with some ancestors from another world could use the embodiments of those worlds' Shards. That, or the proper application of Hemalurgy. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Alright, I am calling it: "Surge" is the new official unofficial word for "Flaring" your Feruchemy, as in, "Wax Surged weight," "the constant Surging was running my Goldminds dangerously low," "If you Surge Tin after that, you're insane," "A Surge of my Metalminds made him trust me at once," etc. Take that, lower-case-"c"-compounding! Hooray for the democratic process! -- Deus Ex Biotica

I assumed that the Koloss-blooded were made the same way most half-Orcs are. And now that the Koloss are a true-breeding species, I doubt humans can be spiked in. Exactly what was going on with Jak, if anything, is more mysterious - I like to assume they were going to eat him.

Right, but he clearly doesn't know exactly where the bullet is going to end up until he sees it deflect. The discussion is about whether you could, given time, meaningfully compensate for the deflection/refraction, allowing to shoot out of it and hit things, rather than waiting until the moment it drops (as Wax does for his second, much more carefully-aimed, shot).

"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of situations it is incapable of resolving approaches zero." If you know where someone is going to be, and nothing you care about is too close to it, a sufficiently deadly explosion could vaporize even a Gold Compounder. There's no question of that. Defensively, the problem with most Mistings (especially things like Mistborn, Coinshot Twinborn, and Keepers) is the extra ways they move, and the difficulty defending against all those possibilities. This becomes a real nightmare if you're facing a team of them. Offensively, it's even tougher, since you're trying to catch them somewhere you might not have all your fancy aluminum toys. Therefore, the core of my Scadrial defenses is a facade. Maintain a manor in Elendel, and set some baseline defensive efforts (guards, minimal metal on the perimeter, etc.), but nothing impenetrable. Come and go regularly from this residence... but don't actually stay there. Instead, do things Set-style with tunnels under the building, and come and go through those. With any luck, an attack will miss your real hideout, while revealing your enemies' abilities. Without that much luck, they will find the tunnel, and a lone guard at the far end will seal both ends off with massive stone doors. Have three such tunnels, each only able to be sealed/unsealed from the inside, and all watched constantly, so that even if you have someone trapped, you may still come and go at will. For defense while walking around, I am tempted to say "have a couple of badass bodyguards," but the goal here is to find ways of fighting Mistings/Ferrings which are both practical and require no magic of your own. The best bodyguards, then, are not simply strong men with dueling canes (and, if appropriate, aluminum guns) who are used to fighting Allomancers. The best guard is one who excels in rapidly changing the landscape of the fight. As observed before, the best weapon against Allomancy is the unexpected - have people with a lot of tricks for making loud noises, sticky or slippery surfaces, moving around, using lassos or harpoons to tie things to their foe, etc. A given trick might not be deeply effective against a given foe, but the simple mental effort of realizing what it is should keep them off-balance, giving enemies a chance. One more piece of tactical advice: if you are ambushed by an unknown magic-using enemy indoors, immediately head outside, and vice-versa. Range is everything in an Allomantic fight - Coinshots are deadliest when they can stay away from you, while Thugs are a nightmare up close. Trust your enemy to know their best range... and do not let them have it. Hunting an Allomancer is primarily a matter of bait. Almost any combat Allomancer can either outrun you, or stay away from you indefinitely. If you manage to lure them in in "neutral territory," (say, a narrow alley, or an abandoned building), you probably have not managed to rig up sealable rooms, or mounted rotary guns (if you can lure them into a trap that deadly, congratulations! Just don't get complacent), so you need a concealable and man-portable weapon. I recommend crossbows with non-metal lances (coated in a sticky substance), attached to the strongest non-metallic tether available (is there silk in Scadrial? Hemp? Eventually, there will probably be strong plastics...). Almost any kind of Allomancer is at a huge disadvantage when tied down - even a Thug will be impeded. Three to five people armed with such weapons give good odds of scoring at least a hit or two (and, even if the foe uses something as a shield or wears armor, the adhesive will give them a few problems), while another 2-4 members of the team are given more conventional weaponry (dueling canes, obsidian throwing knives, bows, etc.) to use quickly on the target while they are dealing with the grapples. Ideally, each squad member is trained with each weapon, so that if the initial burst of grapples only scores limited hits, the two teams can switch roles (since reloading the grapples described would be highly difficult). It goes without saying that these people should drill as a squad, and wear the best non-metal armor available. One final note: if you expect several Allomantic or Feruchemical enemies, use the least flashy methods you can, fight at night or in hidden spaces, and do everything you can to obscure knowledge of your victory. Explosions, rotary guns, flamethrowers, and so on may be effective, but even they become increasingly ineffective as people learn to expect them. The great weakness of your enemy is that they have a very specific set of abilities to utilize, and must learn how to apply them to each situation - never let them be prepared for you. This goes both ways: if attacked by unknown enemies, work to expose their specific abilities, to have an edge later. -- Deus Ex Biotica

AKA, the current only-one-person-in-the-world-has-a-single-bead-of-Atium? Good show with that quote - it states both the vast capacity of Atium (which also helps explain how Rashek Compounded it so effectively) and the fact that Atium can take you to your "youth," not just your physical prime. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Good one! I think that a fast-time bubble which spanned a stream would create a wave. Between the deflection of water going in and out1, and the fact that all the water which was inside when the bubble was created would be exiting at almost the same time, it still probably wouldn't be huge, but could be noteworthy. A bubble which only came partway across would probably do much the same thing, but with an even more muted effect. In either case, I think the water level inside would steadily fall, as the water is not flowing in as fast as it flows out. A slow-time bubble which completely spans a river (or, given its larger size, maybe an entire canal) would be the opposite: it would fill with water, since the water inside moves more slowly than the water outside. Once it filled even a little, though, water would be flowing out the sides in all directions, even back up stream, so it probably would not fill very fast. It would still be cool to watch, though. If you kept it going long enough, however, it might appreciably reduce the water level downstream, while the bubble held. The behavior of a totally submerged bubble would probably be harder to notice. -- Deus Ex Biotica 1:I refuse to believe that deflection entering and exiting a time bubble cancel each other out, since if they did, that would mean the deflection is entirely predictable, which in turn means that a shot as good as Max could learn to accurately compensate for it.

Ah - that's an excellent point! The writer clearly notes that even the people of Terris have no idea what they are talking about with regards to Chromiumminds. And since Terris clearly has ongoing cultural contact with the Elendel Basin, it is logical to assume that the people of the Basin do, too. I suppose it remains possible that Nicrosil is still a mystery, however.

Clearly, I need to re-read Sazed's fights in Well of Ascension. As for this: People outside the bubble to hear a fast jumbling of everything said inside, though (Wayne covers this by coughing). And Wax and Wayne are probably speaking pretty quietly (Marasi isn't when the explosion comes at her, but any noise she made was dwarfed by, well, the explosion). Since a sonic boom is the result of sound waves forced to interfere with each other, it seems to me that the edge of a time bubble is a perfect environment to generate them. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. I am saddened that nobody else has seen fit to share their quandaries in my thread. I can't be the only person who thinks of these things!

That seems like a really expensive way to do something which could be accomplished by people reciting their Copperminds to each other, Keeper-style. On the other hand, a sufficiently-powerful religion might pay for it in order to keep a prophetic figure or saint alive.

Also lagging behind: weaponry. We were starting to move from double-action revolvers to semiautomatics in 1910. But, of course, it makes perfect sense that a world without large-scale wars would be lagging behind in weaponry (and, to a lesser degree, medicine), so I really like that. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. I second the request for an unambiguous yes/no on whether Scadrial has telegraphs, assuming that such a thing is know. But, either way, thanks for the detail!

4) Ironminds store weight, but not volume or density. Pewterminds, on the other hand, do change your volume when you use them. Do they also change weight, or do you weigh the same amount no matter how much "bulk" of muscles you create with it? Would the extra bulk decrease your agility? Do Metalminds resize to match, and if not, how is Sazed not cutting himself up when he taps Strength? 5) If you made a lot of loud noises in a Bendalloy bubble, would them being compressed together as they leave it result in a sonic boom?

That's the problem: it's actually a very useful idea, which is why it was hard to take as a joke. A limited one in many ways, but certainly useful against a wide variety of defenses (just ask Harry Dresden). Wax is probably one of the best marksmen in the world (he hit a moving bullet using a handgun!), and even he has some trouble finding clean shots against Tarson - the combination of inhuman speed with the knowledge that if he grabs you once it's all over is potent! And a Compounder could be constantly smashing through walls, or carrying a 10,000 lb piece of metal as a shield/potential projectile, or otherwise making a nuisance of themselves. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. You raise a really good point I had been overlooking with the "10 foot wide" detail, but that's a matter for http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1349-allomatic-thought-experiments/.

Honestly, much as I love elaborate death traps, I doubt we'll ever get more efficient than Yomen: lure them into a very sturdy room, then seal it off. Even Miles would be neutralized by that. The only problem I forsee is a Strength Compounder, who could have the power to get out, even from the sturdiest room. Really, that would be a nightmare to defend against in general, since as a Thug, they'd also heal fast and be resistant to poisons. For someone like that, I think you're best served dropping them down a pit, then flooding it with water to drown them. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. The pit is not my solution of choice for everyone, because Coinshots are pretty hard to drop, and fairly common.

Easy enough: have a breakaway ceiling with concealed spikes in it, and repulsing magnet below the floor. Granted, it probably still only works on people with magnetic Metalminds. I wonder if one could make a magnet, but still allomatically inert, alloy of aluminum...

Would the delay even be noticeable with a near-light speed process of electron transfer, though, however complex the signal it conveyed?

To be fair, those exploded when Pulled, and so might go off too far away. In a modern era, with the tech to make real exploding bullets that go off upon impact, it becomes a bit nastier. Flames rising off of burning wood are one thing, and actually having napalm (2-3 times hotter) on your skin is another. And you'd need some pretty small shavings of aluminum (and iron) to make thermite. I don't deny that getting a working Hazekiller Flamethrower would be hard, though. -- Deus Ex Biotica

In Scadrial, metal is power. So I do not think that the Tears could be burned. However, if you ground them up, you might be able to alloy them with the other sixteen metals and get a burnable result. Myself, I had been wondering if you could charge Atium crystals with Stormlight. -- Deus Ex Biotica

While we're on the subject of Mist Snapping, I've been meaning to ask: did we ever learn whether the Mists still Snap people in Alloy of Law?