DrakeMarshall

I don't think we know if one can remove all their mass. Maybe this would render you immune to lashings, though, if it worked. It would also make you buoyant in air, mind you, which may be inconvenient.

This is because I think you will find cars are much better at accelerating forwards than they are at turning. It takes proportionally more energy to change the direction of a larger velocity vector, yes. But if you are tapping speed, you have that much more energy to expend on applying forwards force and angular force. Friction wouldn't for some reason apply less of an impulse simply because velocity has increased. If you are saying one would not be able to get the traction necessary to turn, or in some other way that they would not have enough force to do so, that is incorrect. You certainly wouldn't just slide into the wall and fail to turn, this violates the laws of physics. However, this isn't to say that steelrunning doesn't have problems. There is one huge problem with steel running mechanics that loosely ties in to these forces. The human body is not meant to take such strong forces. While one would certainly be able to exert the necessary torque through friction to make a tight turn, this would still probably snap their legs. For that matter, simply accelerating to the speed that bleeder did just in a straight line would probably break your legs as they pounded into the ground with absurd levels of force (normal running puts 4x the force of body weight on each leg, this would be far, far worse). Not to mention that moving at such a speed puts you in some danger of significant burns due to air resistance. Also, if you accidentally brushed up against a solid surface while enhancing your speed, you would probably break something.

It is true that Szeth would probably follow the edict of the stone shamans even if he didn't agree. We can see how devout he is at the start of WoK. It is sort of hard to say exactly what events took place for him to be named truthless though. We know a fair amount about Szeth, but not very much about the stone shamans. That quote makes it sound like Taravangian may have shaped the events around Szeth to use him as a weapon. Interesting. Not sure if the timing of this works, though, depending on whether Taravangian's predictions came before or after Szeth gained an honorblade.

This also implies that he hasn't ever bonded with somebody... But then, what other spren would create a bondsmith then?

I mean there are situations in which a skybreaker might think the law would allow them to drive a metal spike through a radiant's heart. After all, wasn't the herald of justice trying to kill surgebinders? He came after lift. It isn't likely (this is kind of a far-fetched thing to do for anyone given the conflicting morals involved) but that is the best premise I can think of.

Why would what is basically a splinter of cultivation make that kind of contract with people though? That doesn't really seem in line with cultivation's intent, does it?

Well, there does seem to be some kind of correlation between massive amounts of investiture and sentience. Spren gain sentience if there is enough investiture involved, after all. This is because investiture must be directed by a consciousness. I wouldn't say nightblood needs to keep using up investiture because it is an "unstable spren" or some such. It seems to really just boil down to conservation of energy. Nightblood is a human construct, and apparently doesn't draw on the power of a shard because of this. So, to manifest powers like possessing people, waving their arms around to fight perfectly, and utterly destroy things it strikes, nightblood needs to draw on investiture as a source of power. By logic of conservation of energy, I suppose this means the investiture nightblood consumes is dispersed after use, in a less useful form.

Well, the term "spren" is sort of broad. On Roshar, spren refer to the beings that dwell in the cognitive realm. Most people only see them manifested in the physical world, however. Presumably the presence of humanity and investiture on a planet would necessarily create some degree of cognitive beings. Which are basically spren. The difference is, on Roshar, for some reason, these beings have more power to enter the physical world, and tend to be more intelligent. They might well be present on other worlds, but just not quite so powerful or intelligent. I am inclined to believe this is a result of the fact that people form nahel bonds on this world. In short, these cognitive beings form the medium of the magic system of the world. Spren become something more on roshar, much like metals become something more on Scadrial. Another possible reason spren are more intelligent and visible in the physical realm on Roshar is because the shards present on Roshar actively caused this. Spren of roshar all flow from honor, cultivation, or odium. It is quite possible that spren exist everywhere else, simply in a lesser state.

Huh that would be a kind of funny situation to be in. It still is an awful thing to do by the way. But it would make for an interesting story. Sounds like something a skybreaker would do to somebody that they can't afford to kill.

Hm. An interesting thought on this, since I just remembered something. Here, wit/hoid confirms the presence of exactly one effectively immortal female character on roshar. It might not be Vivenna. But it might be, if she got enough breath to reach the fifth heightening. Or died and returned, I suppose.

It seems that, since Taravangian loses as much intellect as he gains, there isn't necessarily a net gain of investiture. However, obviously, rearranging intellect like that must require some kind of supernatural intervention. This could be the godspren of a shard using investiture (the stormfather appears to have tons of investiture because highstorms fill everything with stormlight). I suppose it could also be something entirely different.

It seems to me that the metal from "trell" is probably a new shard investing itself on Scadrial. Due to the relation shards have with planets, this would mean a new god metal would form that is a physical manifestation of trell's power as a shard of adolnasium. It would be interesting if this was indeed an alloy of atium and a new god metal, however... That would certainly explain the atium-like ability to use hemalurgy to steal any attribute. Has anyone given some though about what happens if you alloy god metals together?

Well I mean, there are many ways one could kill yourself if you could reshape your body. One could just sever their brain stem and instantly be dead. Thing is, kandra basically just wear extra flesh in the formation of life, but I doubt that severing the brain stem of a kandra would even kill it. They have different biology underneath the apparently human system they create. Perhaps the kandra makes the human immune system target its kandra biology.

It should be noted that Sazed possibly changed the nature of feruchemy after his ascension to make stand-alone powers more functional, for example making one's body be able to bear the load of increased weight. Sazed had to tap strength to support his new weight when doing this, but Wax notices he does not need to do this. However, this is just some random speculation. On another note, I feel I should note that friction is not one of the issues with steelrunning (there may well be others, for example trying not to be burnt up by air resistance). The total work exerted by friction should be the same regardless of velocity. Kinetic friction applies a constant force, and this occurs over the same distance... So going faster should not make you require a different amount of friction. This makes sense, because kinetic friction is basically caused by small collisions on a not perfectly smooth surface, so moving faster won't change the number of collisions.

Well bondsmiths presumably aren't all bound to the stormfather. A quote from "words of radiance" (not as in the second book in the stormlight archive, but rather as in the account of the knight's radiant present in sanderson's book) states that there were usually around three bondsmiths at one time (much less than other orders but still more than one). They may well have all lacked shardblades and shardplate though. Oh I see somebody else already brought up that quote I was talking about Also, it is also quite possible that radiants can touch shardplate because those spren aren't really dead. An honorspren would be broken when the person they were bonded to turned their back on honor. But a windspren... Might not be killed by the oath breaking.

Perhaps. Maybe deathspren have some relation to how everyone has apparently prophetic last words the moment before they die.

Well I mean if he isn't evil he screwed up big time trying to "help" things. Still, knowing Sanderson, I wouldn't be surprised if we found out we were wrong about who the bad guys were.

The cookie is a good choice, yes. That title though.

I was thinking more like have an awakened object following whatever command it wants... But you could enhance its functionality by also drawing aons all over it.

For my configuration, alternatively one could have iron compounding and a steel hemalurgic spike. This would not grant the massively impressive speed the other way would offer... On the other hand, with limitless levels of weight and both pushing and pulling powers... You could topple a building effortlessly.

Lol. Thing is, all the ten surges are accounted for by spren that form the nahel bonds in the knights radiant. So this is unlikely. And anyway, what shard are deathspren most closely related to? Interesting thought on that... They are red and black. Could they be of odium? That all aside, deathspren aren't very intelligent to my knowledge. I mean, an animal can fight, which makes it more intelligent than a rock, but not really on a human level either. Spren vary significantly in the range of power and sentience, from things like flamespren all the way to entities like nightwatcher and the stormfather, who can apparently be quite powerful in the material world without a nahel bond. If they were intelligent though, maybe you could bond with one from a near-death experience. Also, on a completely different tangent... If spren become more powerful/intelligent in the material world after forging a nahel bond... Does this mean the stormfather will become even more powerful...?

This is true... That would take significant access to a shard's raw power. A shardholder could certainly do this... Also, in all fairness, awakening is also a bit like a programmed command for magic. If one were to combine these two things... Many unusual "programmed" magical constructs could be created. Objects/beings with both awakened commands and aon-based magic.

Interesting. Larkins eat stormlight then? At any rate, I don't really picture nightblood's cognitive manifestation as a crab-bird thing.

In regard to how atium relates to all this... Wouldn't it be more likely that you would become ruin's shardholder by getting too many atium hemalurgic spikes in you, rather than by burning too much of it with allomancy? Hemalurgy, after all, is the manifestation of ruin's power. This sort of makes sense. Lerasium, preservation's metal, rewrites one's spiritual DNA when used to fuel allomancy, preservation's magic system. Atium, ruin's metal, rewrites one's spiritual DNA when used to fuel hemalurgy, ruin's magic system. This parallelism makes me wonder if using lerasium for a hemalurgic spike would have some kind of temporal effect.

It has been noted that preservation is significantly better at telling the future than ruin. This makes sense, because ruin's intent is for there not to be a future. Only, this begs the question... Why does ruin's god metal let you see the future?