hwiles

Welcome to the Shard! Let's not discount the possibility that Odium could be killed again or simply recombined with Honor. Taravangian and Kaladin might not be able to hold both and survive, but I bet Szeth could. His Honor: unbreakable to a suicidal fault. His Hatred: enough to vow to kill his own people in order to free them from their own lies. Plus, he doesn't actually want anything in particular except absolute truth. Szeth would make a brilliant Shard of War. lol

Oh I really like this one. May I just opine the counter-option that the final answer should be more assertive, self-assured, and resolute than "give it to me, I/they need it."? I'm thinking more along the lines of: "give it to me...it is time." A fully ascended bondsmith should ideally (forgive the phrase please) think, speak, and act with the intent of all of their Ideals with everything that they think, say, or do. One does not simply make demands of a godlike force of nature, and asking them for favors is just normal prayer and hopefulness. So...I'd hypothesize that he isn't going to ask for, and he isn't going to demand, anything. He will simply gesture to the situation at hand during a moment of extreme duress and catastrophe and assert that it is self evident why he was chosen and he formally accepts the responsibility and consequences and spiritual bindings required for full ascendancy. And if he is logically correct when making that assertion, the stormfather shall have no choice but to acknowledge the words. Perhaps: "lend me your power...I am ready now..."

Honestly, at this point, I sincerely believe that Nightblood might be a unique one-off beast of the cosmere that can never be emulated or fully understood except at a shard-wielder level. It has been repeatedly implied (but never close to confirmed) that Endowment herself may have personally altered the governing rules of Awakening to prevent any of her practitioners from ever producing another Nightblood simply because of how realmatically-hacked and stupidly-menacing he is. I don't even suspect that Nightblood's form of bonding should have a name; it's completely unnatural. He permanently and irrevocably binds his soul to anyone who touches him and...he can only do that without unraveling his own mind because he's ridiculous powerful and/or kills most of his users. Is Nightblood's bond a form of Luhel or Nahel? No...I believe it is a unique form of bonding that Awakeners accidentally created for themselves; one which violates the normal principles and constraints of any naturally evolved symbiotic bonding relationship and is, quite frankly, no longer allowed by divine decree.

Lol. I love the enthusiasm. Yeah, it seems like this would work just fine within the self-contained rosharan system of fantastical magic. Given the metaphorical nature of how investiture and stormlight translate in a general storytelling sense though, I wouldn't expect any koloss-sized radiants to ever appear on screen unfortunately (fortunately!). Recall: Koloss require four human-sacrifices and a hacked host-body that essentially gets brain-wiped to make...super-swole is technically possible, it just comes with a terrible price!

See, this is exactly why I think there MIGHT (keyword) have to be permanent spiritual changes that result from nicrobursting an Augur. At least the first time. I'm imagining the information that gets slammed through their brain being like unto the experience of "opening the gate" in full metal alchemist terms, or "piercing the veil" in more generic psi-believer and witchcraft terms. Like...people are self-aware in general and "know" how they got to where they are and what they are or could or could not have been capable of under different circumstances in a loose and abstract sense of the word...but this...this would be taking that to the next level of being absolutely unbreakably certain about the underlying details of that general awareness. I think a bursted-augur might be permanently altered, not unlike turning someone into an inquisitor (albeit much less gross, violent, and damaging). I love the added detail though, thank you, this did help. This has crossed my mind, yes.

Just like the title says: what would an Augur see if a nicroburst turbocharged them? In historical and religious text IRL, Augurs leverage their mastery of the past and their deep profound self-knowledge to predict the future by interpreting the "natural signs" all around them in real time. It isn't like atium, it's much more generalized and longterm where atium is hyper-specific and short-term, but it is ultimately all about predicting and controlling the future. So back to the question: what does an Augur see when they are forced to burn and process and incredible amount of gold all at once? Is it a perfect harmonized version of themselves that, upon visualizing, forever changes and alters the way they think and behave? Is it some kind of extremely abstracted form of prophecy and futuresight via historic understanding ala wheel of time? Is it a simple onetime view of who they could have been under different circumstances as is implied in Era 1 with no strong correlation to the real world historical verbiage usage? Or is it something radically different entirely? The world has to know!

I think @Quantus has the golden answer already on this one, but i would just add that the risk for extreme dysfunctional mental illness and emotional collapse resulting from attempting to bind multiple spren, which are embodiment of forces of nature, into a single soul should probably not be ignored for anyone considering attempting hemalurgic experimentation on Singers and Listeners. They would be more likely to create an uncontrollable monster that runs impossibly hot until it kills itself than a construct that "works" in any meaningful way. Not saying it's impossible, it would simply be extremely horrifying in all likelihood.

So...with the retcon that Era 1 atium was actually atium alloyed with electrum, I'm confused about why malatium does not seem to confer any consciousness-expanding properties. Era 1 "atium" gives one the power to comprehend impossible volumes of information about the future, but malatium just...doesn't seem to offer any additional insight into the past than if the power of gold was simply inverted. Has there been any word on whether this will get revised or explained? The uses of malatium are short-lived enough that they could probably get away with saying it does expand the mind and just glossed passed it on screen, but that feels like a really sloppy explanation. Anyone have ideas or references?

This is the literal kindest and coolest response back to my post as is possible. Elend is my favorite character, I just also am hyper aware of how annoying other people can think him to be for...reasons that can be self evident if or when needed...totally agree with you.

Things like this is why I always tell people to read secret history before Era 2. Blend was a bit of an annoying know it all, but he's the only mortal to see what he saw, and it's good to understand how he did what he did and why it worked perfectly.

To the first question: yes, absolutely, Szeth holds a bond to a true artificially intelligent spren who is not bound by the normal constraints of governing oaths and possesses the apparently unique ability to kill souls. To the second: mhm. It works exactly like the nahel bond except that nightbloods parameters are artificially min-maxed, so basically anyone could pick him up and bond him if they aren't a literal deviant criminal. It's just a quirk of his engineering, honestly the story would cast szeth in a better light if that wasn't true... To the third: yes...nightblood can absolutely kill spren by accident and any intelligent spren would think twice before bonding szeth unfortunately. That does, however, mean that any spren that DOES choose to bond him is automatically going to be extra super hardcore and unwavering about it though!

Lol. No yeah, I think that would've worked just as suggested and, unfortunately, yes, that would've made Kaladin a holy knight of the Windbreakers I'd gladly take that curse in exchange for the boon of two spren at the same time though!

One thing that is important to recall is that, even in Era 2, Scadrial's government has begun maintaining lists of the names of those individuals known to possess access to the metallic arts. This will evolve into watch lists and databases of known relatives and connections unfortunately. Much like how world governments IRL keep track of people's academic credentials. If you've ever submitted an idea for a new type of weapon in any world real or fictional, you are, unfortunately, being monitored. I still question if steel needs to be nerfed on a magic-system level. A steel ferring can be persistence hunted just as easily as a gazelle by any government or police department that wants them brought in badly enough to risk human lives over the matter, which they almost always do for literally all deviants and criminals. So...I would suggest that this is going to an extremely soft nerfing, in the sense that it will be with soft controls, like labeling offenders as armed and dangerous menaces to society and harassing their friends and family with investigators (not even Inquisitors! Lol) until they are isolated and forced to run out of charge.

Haha, exactly! They'll just have to break their soul incurably in two places at once to give both spren room to grow and invest!

This makes a lot of intuitive sense. Seems like a double-Radiant would need to be a pretty damaged individual with more heart than head in order to wind up with a pair of extremely understanding spren both feeding their power simultaneously. Still though...it seems to me that swearing six mid-range oaths to two spren might still be easier than swearing all five to one in some cases.

Tie between truthwatcher and windrunner, but I prefer to just say windrunner because I look like Szeth irl.

From what I've seen, true skybreakers almost never pick themselves. Edit: also switched to skybreakers. Also super psyched about the next release. Greatly enjoyed the post, just didn't have a whole lot to add beyond validation.

Okay, so imagine a protoradiant was simply hellbent on bonding two spren. I would think it would be conceptually easiest for a Skybreaker initiate to wrap their head around simply because they have the nature, order, and quantity of oaths explicitly explained to them upfront, meaning they would be well positioned to intuitively understand other Order's oaths. So my question is: what would be the best way to go about doing it? Would it be easier to progress through oath number 5 then loop back around and start at number 1 with a new order? Or would progressing through the first 2 or 3 oaths in parallel with eachother with two non-fully-aware baby-spren be fundamentally more achievable? What orders would pair well with eachother and allow the spren to get along well enough to not tear their radiants mind apart with contradictions and competing priorities?? Asking for a friend...

No no, eugenics works in fiction exactly the same way it works in real life, people just generally seem to hate the concept of coerced breeding programs aimed at power consolidation... As a theoretical alternative, it has been suggested that it might be possible for parents to establish adequate Connection with Harmony to allow them to produce a Mistborn or Feruchemist without being one themselves; this would be sort of like a way of hacking around needing Lerasium, but it certainly hasn't been confirmed as a possibility at this point.

Thinking on this more, it occurs to me that explosives and bendalloy bubbles are a natural pairing for a mistborn who can also steel push. Imagine lighting sticks of dynamite in the safety of a speed bubble then either launching them out or dropping them on the ground and duralumin-steel pushing oneself up in the air to set a speedy trap.

I'm strongly inclined to agree; I'm thinking that northern scadrial is where we'll see the next mistborn if one ever pops up and, if they go rogue, they would probably not have access to hacked metalminds, medallions, or hemalurgic spikes that they don't make for themselves (think unabomber vibes...) On that note, a person with iron, steel, tin, and Pewter would be ridiculously maneuverable in an urban environment at night. If they were also predisposed to flinging dynamite and cackling like a madman, they would be like if superman and the joker were polymerized together. An aluminum garrote would be an obvious weapon of choice for a stealthy serial mistborn, and couldn't be used against them very effectively if the tables turned. Their access to emotional allomancy will make them charming, but they'll probably be solitary by necessity; It's a small detail, but I would infer that they'll probably need to maintain a fake identity and be able to have some rudimentary access to disguising themself quickly (probably not to the extent Wayne does, but at least enough to keep different groups from sharing information on them effectively). This should be going down 80's style, so Kevlar and/or lightweight body armor should be available. I wonder what they'll spend the hours on when they're not hunting people though...

My intuition would be that any special hardware that a mistborn serial killer (if that story still happens) would carry would probably be dedicated to leveraging the utility of having multiple powers. The ideas discussed here so far are fun and interesting, but they primarily would work just as well for a misting as a mistborn, which means that they could be used reciprocally, and...in my opinion, that would be the opposite of how a serial killer would choose to operate. They would WANT to be as exotic and difficult to emulate and counter as possible I'd suspect. Like...Imagine a safe cracker flaring tin while using a stethoscope to crack a lock in a bank vault that continuously plays loud elevator music to induce sensory overload in tineyes, and their only being able to do it because they're also flaring Pewter. Imagine freezing time in a narrow ring around oneself in close quarters combat by using bendalloy and cadmium bubbles simultaneously and then slowly and methodically lining up point blank shots on your targets while any incoming shots taken are range are hopelessly deflected! How about using electrum and duralumin in a casino to figure out which table or machine you should use to win a jackpot!!! Regardless of the fine details though, I think we can all agree than any smart mistborn serial killer will wear an aluminum foil hat because they aren't crazy.

Ooohhh, nice catch. No idea, but a lot of folks are looking forward to seeing if Kaladin picks up the Shard of Honor. On the flipside, a lot of people suspect he's going to die though, so we'll just have to see!

Oooohhh, okay now this is a fun one. I would expect that any change in how one is perceived by, and connected to, flora and fauna as a result of tapping/storing Connection would very seriously depend on their personal Identity. What I mean is, if one were a butcher, or sociopath who kills squirrels in their spare time, or just a really nasty mean-spirited person, tapping Connection would probably drive any animals around them into a rage or cause them to flee because of the natural aversion to such a metaphysically horrible person connecting themselves into their lives. It would be like if a known serial killer walked up to you on the street and offered you a small gift and a free lunch while soaked in the blood of a new victim; you would likely not instantly become their new best good friend or have your pants charmed off. You would probably feel very powerfully connected to them in the absolute worst possible way short of having their knife in your own stomach. On the flipside though, pacifists, veterinarians, and animal trainers might probably enjoy the exact opposite benefits of such an augmentation of Connection. Would it amount to the level of being able to talk to them and be understood? No. Tapping Connection does not increase the size and complexity of the speech center of the brains of sapients around oneself, so I can't possibly imagine it would do so for sentients. Might it allow one to approach strange wild animals without their being startled or gesture to them and have them approach out of curiosity or natural affection/affinity? Totally yeah! (Think Snow White vibes) I think we're going to find that tapping Connection is far more bi-directional than has been implied on screen thus far.

I definitely agree that there shall be a market for converting forms of investiture into Breath due to its utility in daily life, however, I'm still skeptical that the ultra wealthy will have much interest in converting to the more exotic forms (such as most metalminds other than copper, gold, and bronze) except for development of personal armies of super powered individuals dedicated to protecting their patrons. And while many folks will attempt to prevent the accumulation of access to multiple independent systems and powers...it's very difficult to stop a true worldhopper who knows what they're doing. To call them slippery is a ghoulish understatement; Hoid and Kelsier don't seem to be threatened by much other than nightblood and direct personal attacks by Shards at this point...and even then, they're just too fast to catch thus far.