Lewis Nethur

In order to tap someone else's aluminum mind, my understanding is that you have to murder them with a duralumin spike, implant it into yourself, already have access to aluminum feruchemy, store your own identity completely, and then you can tap their's freely to experience their spiritual ID at extreme levels, recover any breath that they have stored in objects, or tap any other metalminds that they may have created. Edit: because you would have their spiritual ID, I think this does mean that if you killed a full Feruchemist, you couldn't directly take all 16 of their powers, but you could access all of their metalminds and, if you were a mistborn, compound them. This might actually be how kelsier created the bands of mourning: Identity theft 101. Edit: Something about this suggestion doesn't jive quite right; I'm sure I got at least one thing wrong...

I'm inclined to disagree. When I say infinite Identity, I just mean compounded aluminum. Let me explain:I 1. Identity is, on a metaphysical level, made of Investiture. 2. Investiture is neither created nor destroyed in Feruchemy storage or tapping. It can leak out as a form of waste if pushed to the extreme or acquired hemalurgically, but it goes somewhere and can be drawn back in. 3. The crystal structure of metals is what allows them to be used for Feruchemy. Sorry, I'm a bit busy at the present moment so I can't hunt for the WoB right now but I will try to circle back later. 4. If the crystal structure of aluminum specifically allows it to be used for storing Identity it doesn't make much sense that the metal would simply destroy the Investiture being pumped into it. 5. Tapping compounded Identity should therefore simply increase the strength of one's spiritual ID. Aspects of one's identity may change day to day, but a person is themselves and being more of one's self would simply mean to me that one has achieved what Robert Jordan called the state of Oneness. A sort of "Trueself" state of being. Edit: okay, out of a desire for completeness, I admit that I could definitely see storing Identity being closely related to something resembling a state of Oneness over tapping it from a certain point of view. I'm gonna give my initial statement 70/30 odds on zero grounds and just agree that I feel where you're coming from. Hopefully that's fair.

This is true, but what I'm looking forward to is seeing what scadrians can do on page if they ever figure out how to build machines that can compound. It should be possible by my figuring; there is very little that is truly organic about either feruchemy or Allomancy. Might be tough for them to work it out though.

Theoretically, if all of the unmade and Rayse's other creations were killed off and the planet Braize was depopulated of any remaining life and any Odium-Spren that have evolved naturally and feed on Odiuos Investiture, then whoever holds the Shard of Odium at the end of book 5 might legitimately be able to freely leave Roshar. @Treamayne - recall, Rayse had inhibitions about combining with other shards (and had personally sworn not to during his ascension). New holders may or may not share such Rayse views. Imagine how an ultra liberal Odium would behave: Is it not just as hateful and evil to try to combine with as many of the other shards as possible as it would be to try to splinter them if it means killing their operators one by one still? That said, if Odium eventually combines with Honor (and/or cultivation) as has been theorized, it might be truly impossible for him to ever leave Roshar to take his crusade back on the road (at least...without completely destroying the planet in the process). Wishing and hoping here, but it would feel divinely poetic to me to see Szeth take Odium for himself, unmake the unmade, move back to Threnody, scoop up Ambition's corpse, and really REALLY earn his 4th ideal on a cosmic scale before, very literally, becoming the law of his own world. (You know...to either wage remote war in the space age or eat more shards). lol

Hey! No one said double aluminum was useless. Imagine what it would mean to have infinite identity in real life! One would be incorruptible by external force and impossible to influence except via transparent direct negotiation. I...could imagine how that could be problematic in the sense that they could very quickly appear sociopathic and transactional if they didn't have it in their heart to occasionally give back to others free and of themselves though; even then, one might still be extremely difficult to deal with. I assume some part of that will translate into cosmere space in some manner eventually.

Mhm. It helps a bunch, thanks. Nope, no sir/ma'am, no irony here, not one little bit. Just trying to respond to all the many thousands of people who make my pocket shake with alerts because bad things happen if I don't and having all of their rules memorized isn't enough to be able to apply them in real time.

Mhm. I've been attacked by zombies before, I feel you. The threat is exactly as real as the associated lessons-learned.

Yikes!!! Agreed. Everyone please exercise care with old topics; I wasn't paying attention and got poked by a message, my bad. I'm aware the the fanbase is, and can only, ever be moving forward. It's a feature, not a bug. Marching backwards is only for showing off.

So, first, recall that lerasium hemalurgy is hyper inefficient, just on a fundamental level. You need a whole lot of the rarest useful material to make it work properly. Second...yeah, it seems to be implied that once used for hemalurgy, that material could no longer be burned to generate super charged mistborn anymore. Instead, it's implied that burning the resultant spike would permanently graft the excised piece of soul into the hemalurgically induced hole in the soul of the one burning it. If this didn't immediately drive the recipient insane I assume it would turn them into a deformed monster...there's still an unverified possibility that it could be used to create super humans with unnatural strength, speed, intelligence, ect. But again, literally the least efficient use of resources possible in terms of imbuing or augmenting existing life.

If the head isn't fully separated from the body the two objects will attempt to reconnect, otherwise the body simply grows a new head and the old one dies. Due to how extremely problematic this depiction is however, I don't expect to ever see it occur on page. Honestly, if gold compounders are getting decapitated, there are way worse systemic problems at play.

Haha, strongly agree again, sorry if I'm mixing up my terms, it's been a very long week already. I'm as confident as I can be that a full feruchemist could manufacture medallions with as few as a single excisor. More is more, but lean and efficient processes are always preferable to bloated and wasteful ones.

@alder24 has the right of it again but I'll just add that, due to the fact that Szeth swore an Oath to follow a person, who are specifically subject to change and dynamic fluid interpretation, I would opine that his oaths are uniquely flexible whereas, for example, a skybreaker who swore to obey the laws of kharbranth specifically, would not have been able to kill the sovereign of said city-state under any circumstances without also killing his spren. His spren is alive, so his oaths were not broken. He probably wasn't thinking about it, but he still acted within his defined code of honor and remains one of very few main characters who can really say that.

Strongly agree, except for the part about Unsealed metalminds. Those are for criminal use only, like IED's in real life. Medallions though, medallions might work to keep from being eaten alive. Edit: Sorry. Criminals, AND active duty soldiers in need.

Honestly, someone with access to all of the metals would be a fool to fight in my opinion. Still a great thread, but wanted to put that out there.

It's possible that seeing the future can be actualized through multiple distinct methods. The most straight forward, in my opinion, is turbocharging a spiritually-grounded power and bursting ones soul through to through to the spiritual realm. Elend does this with duralumin and atium, but it's just as easy (and waaaaaay cheaper) to do with two people working together using electrum and nicrosil allomancy. It's worth noting that it hasn't been confirmed that this method is "safe;" it's entirely possible that it could be permanently mind-altering and traumatizing since, if you'll recall, Elend, with his magically ultra-enhanced godlike perspective, immediately embraces death. On the flipside, extreme intelligence has been demonstrated to be enough to see the future on its own; is it possible to be intelligent enough to plot out, see, and control the future without magic? Maybe, maybe not, we don't have good examples on that front so far. One thing that honestly should work fine and be the easiest method in my opinion (we just haven't ever seen it happen on page) is asking a Shard to show or tell one the future. It would be an extreme act of favoritism for them to divulge such information to anyone who wasn't their champion, but none of the rules revealed thus far appear to prohibit them from doing it if they like you for some reason. This would require faith and trust, as shards are capable of lying when not bound by Contest, but it's less dangerous than risking blowing up your soul.

I don't think this would work as a general solution for unlocking hemalurgic Compounding for just anybody for the reasons that @alder24 noted. However...I do believe it would work just fine for allowing a F: aluminum twinborn to Compound their other power if they used a single complimentary hemalurgic spike. For example, if a trueself-coinshot stored all their Identity and shoved in a spike for F: steel, then I would fully expect them to be able to Compound steel for speed to their hearts content.

This was actually a pretty funny thread; on that note: Atium+Chromium definitely stores one's sense of irony and humor and I would gladly fight and die on that hill. Store to be as dry, sober, and serious as batman. Tap to see the world from the eyes of The Comedian from the Watchmen.

I...think this one is painfully correct, yes. I would expect rewriting memories to be most successful and feasible in beings with fractured and damaged identities and spiritwebs. This is sort of a sensitive subject, I'd rather not say more if that makes enough sense on its own. Good observation in my opinion.

I suspect that the cosmere shall and must end in the establishment of a mechanism of lasting peace and security between worlds. Whether this is by the eradication of several shards, or by the unification of all of them, or by something inbetween remains to be seen however. I'm hopeful though that the hostilities between major shardic worlds will largely begin to taper off once strong transparent understanding of the underlying mechanics of the major future magic systems is widely available (fabrial science, scadrian medallions and excisors, elantrian symbolic programming, ect). Will there be war? Sure. Sociopathic mistborn who believe themselves to be God and wish to recreate the order of Inquisition to aggregate magical arcana for themselves? Maybe. Shall we learn from all of them and better understand and guide ourselves? Definitely. I'm excited for the future of storytelling.

What I just heard is that: it would be a surprising, interesting, and impactful twist requiring very little on screen clarification regarding mechanics for aluminum hemalurgy to be almost as narrow, esoteric, and specialized in scope/usage as aluminum Allomancy and Feruchemy...aaaannnnndddd...the symmetry of such a trinity does have some divine appeal to it when I think about it further... Like I said, just playing devil's advocate; if we see a sandmaster get his hand poked while handling a piece of cheap wire in the space age and suddenly become crippled or insane I shall gladly fall back in line with the options up top.

Playing devil's advocate here...buuuut...the hemalurgic chart was specifically outlined for Inquisitors, not human beings in general and is labeled appropriately as such. While it seems like (thus far) spikes of a given metal behave uniformly between human beings in most cases, exceptions already exist in world on page (Koloss/Kandra/those crazy dog monsters/ect.)... How shocked would we be if aluminum hemalurgy only "removed all powers" when performed on a hemalurgic construct or machine and did something else, or almost nothing at all, under the majority of other circumstances circumstances (like aluminum Allomancy) for normal people, animals, and creatures? My thought is that Isaac may have been simply trying to reveal a silver bullet (forgive the wordplay sorry lol) against inquisitors, not trying to foretell a future super weapon. IE: If inquisitors come back in era 4, they will...bear an extreme and easily exploitable vulnerability, buuuut...swat teams of allomancers shall not share such a weakness.

It will end with ambiguity, open loops, plot holes, and arcs that yet might be. If it doesn't, the fans who make the whole operation float will lose interest before Sanderson dies, retires, or formally names a successor who shall take over for him. The cosmere shall conclude, either delightfully as one of, if not the best, anthologies of all time, or in catastrophic failure as one of, if the not worst, most squandered projects of all time, by 2050 at the latest. The insurers (actuarial science majors) will guarantee that that prophecy comes true unless 100% of them are guaranteed to survive to 100 years old or older, and I challenge anyone to challenge that...

Hoid...turns up in every cosmere novel. He's a master of disguise and intrigue and gets around like crazy. The members of the 17th shard seem to believe that he has had his spiritual Fortune hacked to the point that he is essentially a fully loaded deus ex machina just walking around waiting to happen. Imagine being drunk on Felix Felicis potions 24/7 and also so Invested that one can no longer be harmed in the traditional sense of the word...that's Hoid.

Hahaha, I'll have to give the audio books a listen sometime. Let's see...they are both aloof to the point of casual cruelty to bystanders on occasion. They both use comedy and self deprecation as a defense mechanism. They both have deep social and emotional trauma relating to personal injury experiences on opposite sides of the spectrum (Wayne on the survivor's guilt side and Lopen on the permanent disability side). They're both ridiculously tough despite wearing the persona of a goofball like a glove. And it is famously difficult to gauge how self-aware either of them is at any given moment despite implications that they might be wise in a borderline divine sense of the word at times. Lol.

I'm actually inclined to agree with this. The founding of the oathpact represents the first time that humanity successfully defied and denied, the will of a full an intact Shard. Sure, it proved that no mortal or group of mortals can stand up to a Shard who is being a bully without grave and horrible consequences (this...honestly should already be self evident though...) but it also proved that they can choose to do it anyway. That's all the way up there with 'destruction of an entire major civilization' on the cosmic impact scale though. From now on, everyone who doesn't like something that a Shard does has a legitimate avenue of retaliation, and that's...very different...than how things worked when the cosmere was young.