Lewis Nethur

My understanding is that the power of transformation is closely tied to one's understanding of their target. How does Jasnah transmute mulitple men remotely at once? Easy. She understood them intuitively so well that she doesn't need to argue with their souls; she commands them to change material and they listen. It is famously hard to say no to Jansah. Even priests, kings, and doctors struggle to do it with her.

Just from a practical standpoint, mounts are extremely rare and expensive on Roshar and a lot of Radiants were very poor and broken individuals before saying the words and having them accepted. While more knights on horses would probably scratch an itch for everyone...I say: Save a horse, ride a skybreaker. The crazy psychopaths can fly!

I've seen many dozens and this is the absolute best by a landslide, excellent work, laudable drive.

Sazed stores mass at one point in order to gently glide down a cliff face, which implies nearly 100% reduction with gravity only pulling on his wesrables. Air and water are both fluids. 1000% skimmers can walk on water, they don't even need to run if they have good control, they should be able to stand on it. They might have to be naked in order to do it though.

Oh no. Whimsy is going to be like a self-aware court fool. Straight up monkey's paw on everything, and always screwing with everyone no matter what they stand for. Discord at least shall have some manner of preference towards individual freedom. Whimsy? Whimsy doesn't care about anyone or anything except having fun at the expense of others. Whimsy is going to make Discord look like a paragon of Justic by comparison by my figuring. To each their own, I'm giving you a like anyway to underscore the difference.

Yeah, if Harmony really care, like...really really...he'd make them all mistborn because he can definitely do that for free when he wants to. He's done it before! We need Discord; Harmony was great and we love him, and now we want mistborn and killer robots made with hemalurgy.

That means I must be close to correct! I am, unfortunately, the next hero of ages, and they shall hate to love me for it.

I think "shifted" toward Ruin or Preservation might not be the best way to look at the difference between the persona of Harmony and the persona of Discord. Honestly...this definition of Harmony could apply equally well to Discord in my opinion, the difference is whether the recipients of the gifted freedom of choice work together harmoniously (which, in a literal interpretation could be like many complimentary voices overlaid to form natural cords), or if they work together independently/asymmetrically (IE: in competition with each other or with many potentially extreme disparate elements juxtaposed). I concede that it sounds confirmed that Harmony could simply "invert" himself to Discord though it almost feels like cheating. For some reason I want to imagine them both as freedom loving polar opposites; the former dedicated to human development through the encouragement of cooperation, collaboration, and restraint...and the latter a chaotic counterpart willing to engage the forces of competition and conflict to keep humanity liberated even if it means improvising and tipping scales manually. I feel like Sazed is usually very serious, methodical, and reserved...I'd like for Discord to be funny in a dark way, unpredictable and a little unhinged at times, and way too free with their thoughts. Scadrial deserves a fun dark god, they've been through a lot of tyranny and restraint.

Honestly, I don't believe Sazed can become Discord, and will simply have to drop the Shards and be replaced or die and be replaced instead sadly...that said...is Discord always a bad thing? My headcannon is that Scadrial is going to experience a massive explosion in the prevalence and popularity of jazz, swing-dancing, fast cars, and technological disruption/innovation whenever their next Hero of Ages is created/chosen/rises-up. The lord of chaos doesn't have to rule with insanity or darkness; he or she could just as easily be a warped-yet-platinum-hearted artist with poor restraint against meddling and a knack for bending the rules in favor of the people they like...which still isn't fair, and does kinda count as outrightly discordant.

I think this is essentially correct, yes, and the mechanics work very similarly to electrical charging systems in some sense. I think this is actually basically why Odium is going to have to massacre everyone in the Rosharan solar system in order to divest and escape (which...seems to be exactly what he's hellbent on doing). Your point about artificially augmenting the Connection of parents to their homeworld seems horrifyingly sound. I would caveat it with the observation that, at least as far as I've heard, inquiries relating to whether life in the Cosmere begins at conception, birth, or somewhere in between specifically do not get answered to avoid extreme political polarization in the fanbase so, to be safe, if you're trying to breed superheroes, you would probably have the best chances if you artificially enhanced the connection of both parents prior to conception and sustained those enhancement elements throughout completion of the process. This...has some kinda dark and manipulative implications from a certain point of view...it might be a way to bring back pseudo-natural mistborn in era-3 or 4 without hemalurgy or eugenics though. One would just need to find volunteers willing to commit their children to a life chosen and controlled by powerful investors in exchange for aid and comfort in getting themselves settled. I can imagine folks taking that deal.

Except in the case of squires, I would expect that the nature of the Oaths that Ishi bound the Radiants and spren to uphold would inadvertently prevent a spren from bonding two Radiants even though a Radiant can theoretically bond two spren at the same time. That is to say, a Radiant bonding two spren is obligated to being more and more constrained and, for lack of a better word, controlled in their actions as they progressed through an additional set of 5 oaths. The spren however would not be any further bound in what they could or couldn't do (because they would be accepting basically the same oaths over and over) if they were able to bond with many people...they would just get more and more powerful with no drawbacks that I can think of, which seems counter-intuitive to the fundamental nature of the bond. A spren that was somehow able to be freed from and reverted back to a state of oathless bonding might be able to do some pretty wild and uncontrollable interactions though, in a similar way to how an unchained bondsmith could wreak absolute havoc on just about anyone or anything.

I have long been confused about why Harmony doesn't seem able or willing to invest spikes for his agents to utilize directly. Aside from bringing them closer to himself spiritually (if they accept the gift) they would be more powerful and reliable without having to manually harvest the souls of others... He seems to have Preservation's power to invest directly into allomancers, and it's implied that he has Ruin's ability to alter the content of text and copperminds through the words of founding. So...I fail to understand why he couldn't, if presented by the Kandra who are loyal to him with spikes at his perpendicularity, create tailor-made hemalurgic spikes of immense power with either blank, or hyper specific (so they can't be traded or reused), identity coding. One or two fully loaded steel or brass spikes would've been almost as valuable as an honorblade in more than a few situations for the purpose of preserving Scadrial's harmony if they had been made available to the people who represent Harmony's boots on the ground. so much hopelessness, helplessness, despair, and human trafficking could have been prevented. If Harmony has zero control over hemalurgy as a magic system to do something like that, Era 4 scadrial might be a very dark and easily exploitable place.

Heh. Honestly, the set would have to pay and entertain a double-golder so much, it probably wouldn't look moral to anyone who knew how it worked. Scadrial would have the best hospitals anywhere outside of Roshar though.

Nice. My preference would definitely be for the first option. If stormlight can be converted into Breath and condensed or frozen, then worldhopping allomancers might actually have a realistic shot at reaching the fifth without having to either be super rich or interplanetary black market traders. Some of them probably deserve that.

The limit should definitely be doubled; saying the words is always appreciated more though.

This is a really interesting concept. I'm disinclined to think burning the solidified essence of Endowment would grant Breath though; burning Godmetal on screen thus far has had either extremely temporary effects (connection to the spiritual realm) or irreversible permanent effects (permanent expansions on one's soul gifting new powers). I'd opine that Endowment's godmetal would essentially be hyper compressed Breath. Burning it, therefore, would be equivalent to fueling one's allomancy with Breath, IE: channeling Breath through One's spiritweb in an extremely concentrated and accelerated way. In my mind, that would look a lot like someone trying to perform a commandless super awakening on their own soul. What would that do...? I would think it would most likely either 1) Grant one somewhere between the first and tenth heightening's worth of passive powers permanently without being able to awaken or transfer the power away via awakening (depending on how much they burned) or, 2) Connect one to Endowment the way Elantrians connect to Devotion. I have no clue what that would ultimately do. Maybe make shapeshifters (Endowment seems to like those), maybe allow one to speak directly to Endowment at all times, (they seem to really care about their invested subjects afterall and speak with all of them upon death), or maybe something super exotic (super connection to a God does weird things after all)

A person would have to be pretty darn paranoid to walk around smoking and wearing an aluminum hat. They'd probably be more difficult to influence or control than anyone except a pinnacle-oracle determination-compounder though. With the benefit of probably being less insane. I know we haven't seen one written, I just assume anyone compounding determination must be so unbelievably stubborn and unwavering as to appear totally bonkers. I'd like to think it was his natural determination that let Ironeyes break free of Ruin and, if that somehow becomes revealed as true, it would make determination compounders extremely scary in my eyes (pardon the phrase). Imagine being able to beat the angel of Death in a staring contest...

That last wob helps a lot. Also, if memory serves, gold compounders are supposed to be able to take a Hemalurgic spike to the chest and regrow their soul after, so...there's at least one application where hemalurgy is...moral but also sadistic and probably dangerous for society in general of over leveraged: making and duplicating gold compounders...

Well, let's list what we know about him and try to speculate based on observation thus far: 1. He declined to take up a Shard even though it's more or less confirmed he could have taken one for himself. I take this to mean he values personal liberty above all else. This implies that the creation and preservation of life, as well as dominion over others, are likely not his goal. 2. He seems to go where needed when he's needed to prevent massive conquering of planets by "corrupt" investiture. This implies to me that the thing he regrets is failing to do that once in the past. 3. He can travel anywhere and leverage almost any magic system. This implies to me that he is, though it pains me to say, likely obsessed to some degree with increasing his own power and resilience. So, I would opine that Hoid's plan, if it can be so called, is to prevent eruptions of corrupt investiture by reactively responding to uprisings of red-eyed beings throughout the cosmere while sampling and incorporating any and all magic that won't damage or weaken his soul that he can, most likely because of how Yolen will be revealed to have been destroyed, infected, conquered, or irreparably changed before he fled it. Maybe he wants to find a way to heal the damage too...

Well...it effects their transition through the cognitive realm upon death, so it's technically possible that it harms them permanently and unendingly in the Beyond, which would make it the most evil and deplorable magic system imaginable in my opinion, but that shall never be confirmed or ruled out... So, assuming that isn't the case, or someone figures out a way to dig powers out of corpses of magic users so the souls are not damaged permanently (which is probably impossible), or only the most deviant criminals get harvested...I suppose scadrians might use it for war and deterence. It's hard to imagine a society running on hemalurgy if they didn't have to.

My headcannon is that they were definitely friends. They paired up immediately after the shattering and architected a world together after agreeing with all the others to stay separate (meaning they were in cohoots). I've heard passionate fan theories that they were lovers, but I think that the deal they made upfront, to build and destroy a planet together, makes that highly unlikely. I just don't believe a romantic couple could come to such an agreement, it would be like planning the deaths of one's own children...

What would you say to the suggestion of a reverse copper compounder? We have (unverified I think) rumors and theories about feruchemy being leveraged to turbocharge allomancy instead of the other way around as is usually demonstrated. I don't suspect they would be able to hide themselves still, since they would likely create a big cloud of blindness centered on themselves if the trick worked...they might be able to hide others in a massive area though. If they could block out a planet, they could render a Shard helpless.

Oh, I have a pet theory that there must be greatshells of extreme proportion far from normal rosharan civilization, out near the origin, where they can't be hunted. In their natural environment, they don't appear to have any upper bound on their size or lifespan, except being attacked by humans. I'd like to think at least a few have achieved intelligence and self determination in all that time.

Well...there are appropriate corresponding real-world analogs to several of the proposals in this thread that honestly shouldn't be depicted in the cosmere in my sincere opinion is all I will say on the matter. No jokes, herrings, or irony meant in that one. I appreciate the response and the WoB's, they're ever a good reminder. Just meant to caution folks against wishing or asking for hyper exotic things that might be more horrifying in practice than they are yet aware yet...being able to laugh at those things anyway is important too though, so either way works.

I kind of like the term Elemental, for those who have achieved the degree of control over a magic system necessary to change what it does and how it operates on a fundamental level. The Lord Ruler didn't just master allomancy and feruchemy, and he didn't simply combine them...he...plugged one into the other and made them both do things that no God had intended to be possible and no human soul could be born with the capacity to be able to do in such a way that (almost) no one could stop him. So...I'd say he achieved metaphorical and literal Elemental control over the 'reality' around him.