Lewis Nethur

I mean...regardless, he suffered a physiological change due to his overuse of Investiture in an end-neutral magic system. Whether that change was beneficial, intentional, a result of spiritual perception, it still implies that his spiritweb and physical manifestation were warped by tapping gold. He was probably only physically able to tap gold enough to warp himself because he could compound, but that's somewhat beside the point, as my original question was whether he still counts as a savant, and everything that's been said seems to reinforce that, yes, he does. @The One Who Connects Do you think Miles isn't a bloodmaker savant? I'm having trouble reconciling realmatically if what he did counts. I feel like a solid argument could be made for him actually being a specialized instance of an Auger-savant.

Well now you've done gone blown my mind lol. Touche, synthetic gemstones counter all of my previous objections. They probably shouldn't be able to reach that point technologically within the currently proposed timeline for Roshar Era 2, which I think is like 20-40 ish years after Era 1, as that's some pretty sophisticated chemistry and engineering. But suddenly the prospects of cross-over battles between Roshar and Scadrial in the distant future seem much more interesting...Giant lightweaver deathrays could actually be plausible if they're allowed to manufacture their own gemstones.

Last I heard on the subject, Miles was speculated, and maybe even confirmed, to be a bloodmaker savant (albeit, he was only able to get that way through his compounding). By tapping gold constantly, he reached a point where he literally couldn't feel pain anymore, IE: his spiritual aspect and physiology had become warped by a constant influx of Investiture. Miles gets stabbed, shot, and blown up without even flinching, whereas Wayne leaves little doubt that he feels incredible agony when those things happen to him, even when he heals really rapidly. I get that compounding is something of a special case, and Miles was hacking the magic system, but...I still feel like he was a savant in an end-neutral system (he just cheated to get access to extra Investiture he shouldn't have had access too). Do you not count this as savantism, or is it just too specialized a scenario to generally be considered? Honestly curious about your thoughts, as you seem well-versed in the subject.

There's a good deal of worldhopper traffic through Roshar, and discovering explosives when the raw materials are staring you in the face (metaphorically speaking...) isn't an impossible feat given a few decades of peace (assuming Odium can be killed or ejected from the system). Fabrial technology making explosives completely unnecessary is a possibility, I'll grant you. However, if there are only ever a few hundred (or even a few thousand) Radiants, they shouldn't be able to run the entire planet's construction industry. Fabrials run into a different limitation; they require gemstones. Powerful fabrials require large gemstones. While gemstones are common on roshar (and possibly a renewable resource) very large gemstones should remain rare, particularly if greatshell populations continue to decline as was noted in WoR. Meaning that while simple fabrials, like spanreeds and heating-units, may become commonplace, as they can basically be powered through the tiny gems that make up Rosharan currency, large devices and soulcasters ought to remain scarce. There just aren't enough large gemstones for everyone to have a soulcaster. Rosharans can't soulcast everything they need, which is why a significant portion of the population has always been dedicated to agriculture. Things like dynamite would allow the Alethi elite to make their darkeyes fantastically more productive in general labor tasks without having to commit their most prized resources. I contend that the labor of 1,000 Radiants and 1,000 artifabrians could not match the labor of 1,000,000,000 darkeyes with pickaxes and dynamite, and even if it could, why would they bother? If some darkeyes with dynamite can take care of digging all those pesky holes, the artifabrians can work on solving real problems, like starvation, death by exposure, and the wage gap...well...maybe not that last one...

I agree that the study of fabrial technology will permeate all levels of scientific and engineering advancement in Stormlight Archive Era 2, however, even if soulcasting replaces all chemical engineering, mining, distilling, and chemical refining processes, which I find to be somewhat unrealistic, soulcasters will still need vast mounds of crumbled rock. The best way to make giant mounds of crumbled rock with very little effort is to drill small holes into the side of a mountain and shove sticks of dynamite in. Making and using gunpowder is just too easy and commercially valuable to pass up. I'll concede that I find the idea of traditional guns and bullets popping up on Roshar unlikely, since I believe fabrials (or shardguns) would make better weapons, but dynamite is another issue. Particularly on a planet where carving out canyons is the best way to build new cities.

Considering how most of Roshar doesn't have soil and crem acts as a plant fertilizer, it's reasonable to speculate that crem is rich in nitrogen containing compounds; in particular, potassium nitrate, a major component of gunpowder, is a common and naturally occurring nitrogen containing compound. In real life, we've been harvesting potassium nitrate as a fertilizer and food preservative since the Middle Ages. Sulfur is also found in most fertilizers...and charcoal is easy to make. Basically, if Rosharans want to manufacture gunpowder, they probably just need to figure out how to separate potassium nitrate and sulfur out of crem and setup some charcoal kilns. Some ardent is bound to figure out how to distill useful chemicals from crem eventually.

I believe that burning aluminum does remove an allomancer's aluminum reserves (though not instantaneously) based on the following points: Burning aluminum removes foreign metals and Investitures from the body, and since aluminum isn't used in any biological processes, it would be recognized as a foreign substance, and therefore be removed. (some scientists theorize that rare bacteria that live near "cool" vents in the ocean may be able to metabolize and produce elemental aluminum, which is totally wild and may be how ralkalest is harvested on Sel, but in general, aluminum just doesn't occur in nature or biology.) Based on the Ars Arcanum, being attacked with chromium by a leecher should wipe both your aluminum and chromium stores. I would think it logically follows that using aluminum on yourself would do precisely the same thing. Aluminum doesn't remove all of your metal stores instantly, it just removes them rapidly. A finite amount of aluminum can only remove a finite amount of foreign metal/Investiture; not exactly a supporting argument, but an important clarifying point that I've seen people get confused over in the past. If a mistborn swallows 1 kilogram of atium, it's unreasonable to assume that burning 1 microgram of aluminum would wipe out their stores. I propose the following model: If an allomancer burns aluminum at a rate of 'A' grams/second to be supplied with 'B' units of Preservation's (Harmony's) Investiture/second - They remove foreign metal/Investiture from their body at a rate of Y grams-of-metal/second and Z units-of-Investiture/second. Furthermore, the order in which metals and Investitures are removed from the body are determined by a multidimensional relationship based on Cognitive and Spiritual perception of how "foreign" each material/Investiture is, how intrusive/damaging each material/Investiture is, and how easily removed each material/Investiture is. For example if you had only a small amount of aluminum to burn, and had swallowed a bunch of iron and pewter, then pewter, being generally more poisonous than iron and possessing a much faster natural burn rate, would typically be removed first (or possibly just removed in disproportionately greater quantities, IE: you remove 50% of your pewter store, and 10% of your iron stores) Whereas an Invested hemalurgic spike in an Inquisitor's neck that is literally keeping them alive would be attacked much less if at all. If you were being withered by a shade immediately after being forcibly endowed with Breath, burning aluminum would prioritize reversing the damage caused by the shade over dispersing any unwanted Breath. Aluminum, being more-or-less biologically inert, would be removed from the body after most (all?) other allomantic metals/foreign Investitures. I haven't checked the LD50 dosages for the allomantic metals, but off the top of my head, I believe aluminum is less poisonous than most of the other metals on a gram-for-gram basis. Please feel free to fact-check/research this and add as necessary. Gold might be more inert, can't remember. I invite knitpicking, hole-poking, and additional research, as I'm too tired at the moment to hunt down all the supporting citations.

Just to clarify, steel/iron lines aren't technically "blue," but rather, the "sensation of seeing blue lines," is the closest approximation of the phenomenon that a non-allomancer can easily understand. A WoB from back in the day explored the topic of what a mistborn who was born completely blind, or color-blind would "see" when burning steel and it ultimately concluded that their ability to use the steel lines to sense and push on metals would be functionally identical to anyone else's. The ability to visually see the things you're pushing on would, in most cases, almost certainly confer an advantage, but even someone with no concept of sight or the color blue would be able to "see" the "blue lines." At some point in AoL Wax mentions looking down at his chest and seeing the blue lines radiating from him to pieces of metal; pieces of metal don't need to be in his line of sight for him to have awareness of them, however, when they are, he feels like there are bright blue lines streaking through his vision pointing them out.

Depends somewhat on bullet size, but I'll take it as a fair point that the issue isn't as black, white, and simple as I made it sound in my metaphor. I was originally considering something like a 22LR, or a 9mm. I'm no gunsmith, but my understanding is that those are more-or-less the most commonly available rounds that would be expected to harm/kill the target without being complete overkill. You brought up a .50 caliber sniper rifle...Besides the fact that those bullets are really heavy relative to normal ammunition used in personal defense (like 20-25 x heavier than a 9mm handgun bullet I think), my understanding of ballistics is that that level of firepower would be more suited to shooting holes in engine blocks (thunderclasts?) than people... Getting shot in the torso with a typical personal defense weapon may or may not be lethal. It will definitely hurt though, and there's a very real chance of permanent injury from shockwave or shrapnel. Similarly, there's a chance for complete recovery. Getting hit in the torso by a ~100 mph baseball usually isn't lethal and won't typically cause permanent damage; getting hit in the torso with a 150+ mph baseball would almost certainly result in death via critical damage to multiple vital organs as long as it wasn't a glancing blow. Getting shot anywhere with a .50 caliber bullet can kill (even a shot in the hand/foot can require immediate medical attention to preserve life), via a combination of organ-damage, internal-hemorrhaging radiating from the site of the wound, and last but not least, blood-loss from the gaping hole. Otherwise thanks! A friend once shared the "Throwing a tomato at a cake," metaphor with me to explain how large non-rigid projectiles and human bodies work in high-speed collisions and I've found it to be an elegantly humorous visualization. Thought I'd brighten the community's day with a comical, if somewhat morbid, materials science lesson.

@Calderis and @The One Who Connects have supplied a good technical argument for softer/non-standard projectiles, but for you more visual learners out there: Compared to traditional bullets/weapons, human bodies are super soft and squishy; relatively speaking, the difference in rigidity between a lead bullet and a human body is basically the same as the difference in rigidity between a lead bullet and a birthday cake. If you want to ruin a birthday cake, you can do a lot more damage to it by throwing a tomato (or baseball) at it than by shooting it with a rifle. Hitting someone in the chest with a 170 mph baseball can do more damage than hitting them with a 1,700 mph bullet. Where the wound left by the bullet is likely to be clean and more-or-less easily patched up if it doesn't pierce a vital organ, the impact of the baseball would crush organs and crack bones not just under the point of impact, but around the point of impact. If the subject wasn't killed instantly, even a veteran surgeon would probably have to scratch their head for a minute wondering where to even begin... In the context of fabrial based weapons based on gravitation, using a larger projectile translates to having to lash your projectile fewer times to achieve equal destructive power. While each lashing will probably require much more stormlight, and the projectiles will be heavier, you could probably use a much shorter "barrel" and overall the device would probably be much easier to manufacture and maintain, as it would require fewer mechanisms working to apply lashings in a highly synchronized short burst. A fabrial based short-barrel shotgun would probably be a highly effective weapon, as it could be loaded with traditional scatter-shot for taking down people in close quarters, or with heavy "slugs" for punching into chitin or granite. A thunderclast might not be damaged much by a single hit, but if it suddenly had a dozen bullets embedded in its chest with active lashings on them, I suppose it could be thrown off balance. Shardblades, shardbows, and catapults hurling boulders will most likely remain the most effective weapons against thunderclasts for the foreseeable future...

My understanding is that malen and femalen apply to everything that can't breed. I'll leave the deep discussion of how gender is defined relative to sex and personal identity to the anthropologists, however, for the layman, the following breakdown should be good enough: Is physiologically similar to human male, can't breed: Malen Is physiologically similar to human male, can breed: Male Is physiologically similar to human female, can't breed: Femalen Is physiologically similar to human female, can breed: Female Please note, this simplistic analysis would probably be offensive, or at least confusing, to an actual parshendi, if not as a matter of principle, then at least because it completely ignores their rich cultural heritage.

This may be sort of knitpicky, but we've only seen Eshonai as femalen, not female; IE: we've never seen mate-form Eshonai. I'll concede that she probably does still identify as, and count as, a woman, but she isn't technically "female," as was OP's question.

Agreed. Then before you let them out, have them kneel down in the middle of the cell and summon, and immediately dismiss, their blade. When the blade disappears you throw open the door, storm the cell, clap their hands and feet in irons, and have a couple big guards haul the prisoner around by wrists and elbows. You could also duct tape oven mitts to their hands...

Point taken. However...Negative mass, super luminal particles, and objects that move "backwards" through time generally don't make for good fantasy novels because they are so theoretical that readers without a pre-existing background in high level math and physics would be left bored or confused. It is my hope, for the sake of the Cosmere's continued popularity, that Sanderson will find a more "elegant" solution to FTL travel than requiring readers to study relativity, or even calculus to be totally honest. I'm familiar with the subject matter and even I don't like applying it if I'm not getting paid. That's just a personal value call though, strictly speaking, what you said would in fact constitute a valid explanation.

Pretty much yeah. Not sure how they justify faster than light travel, though.

Something I hadn't considered in my original response, you could probably achieve a boost in combat effectiveness similar to that granted by shardplate by awakening clothing/ropes/leather like Vasher did to "strengthen" himself, then just wearing thick plate armor that would normally be too cumbersome. Sure, it wouldn't be able to stop a shardblade, but it also probably wouldn't need to. You wouldn't get the tactile transmission, but I also feel like that wouldn't be a huge deal.

You've touched on a subject that has been left deliberately vague because of its relationship with potential FTL theories for the last Mistborn trilogy. When an iron ferring stores mass/weight their momentum is (at least partially) conserved, indicated by their linear velocity increasing. However, their increased speed and decreased weight/mass means they are affected more strongly by air resistance, so crashers like Wax can generally only use this power to get short-lived bursts of speed. In a nearly friction-free environment like the vacuum of space, things get much more interesting... Storing all, or nearly all, of your mass/weight would presumably accelerate you to relativistic speeds if you were moving at any appreciable speed relative to a meaningful reference frame. Things start to get super weird at relativistic speeds though; for starters, your effective mass begins to increase, and the way you approach calculating kinetic energy and momentum get wicked more complicated. Throw in the concept of moving objects suddenly becoming nearly massless and the fact that energy and momentum aren't always conservative in the Cosmere and things get even funkier... To date, I've looked at the equations and not come up with any way that storing in iron could allow someone to exceed the speed of light, but it could probably get you pretty close.

We do know that Nightblood can transmit thought to its wielder and enhance their physical abilities, which, in my opinion, demonstrates that your proposed strength/sensory enhancing super armor ought to be possible. I do see a couple issues though: In order to enhance the wearer, the armor would probably have to establish a bond with them on the spiritual level, as this is how Nightblood appears to function. Meaning: it would probably have to be sentient and you couldn't get the Breath back once committed. In most cases, I would think that a few squads of Kalad's phantom-type monsters would offer better protection from harm for a equal or lesser amount of Breath You couldn't swim in it, and the region around Hallandren is loosely modeled after Hawaii. I'd rather awaken a surfboard, but that's purely a matter of opinion

As @The One Who Connects said, yes, only your sense of smell should be compounded. When you compound, you are basically creating a new allomantic metal that, when burned, duplicates what's stored in the metalmind. I believe a similar phenomenon exists with nicrosil minds, IE: if you store one type of Investiture in a nicrosil mind, you can't compound it to fill another nicrosilmind with a different type of Investiture. Otherwise, nicrosil twinborn might be able to make themselves fullborn, which would be very silly.

@Calderis You're probably right, thanks for the save, just edited.

@Weltall @Pagerunner I would say, yes, it's indicated pretty strongly and directly that the Unknown God is Adonalsium by Sanderson in the AoL annotations: For those who are really interested, here's the wiki article on early Gnostic beliefs in early Christianity... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism#Highest_God For those who just want the quick and dirty of it all: Sanderson stated that the philosophy of The Unknown God is intended to be somewhat analogous to some of the Gnostic beliefs in early Christianity. The philosophy is also slowly spreading through the Cosmere. Those Gnostic beliefs basically promote an idea that there is one true God, who has literally been referred to in real life as "The Unknown God," the true divine driving force of the universe from which all things originate (more-or-less anyway, I'm trying to paraphrase like 12 full-length religious texts) They also state that there are lesser manifestations of The Unknown God that they call "Aeons" SPECULATION: The "Shards of Adonalsium" are intended to be somewhat analogous to these "Aeons" SPECULATION: The Philosophy of The Unknown God probably didn't exist until after the Shattering (at least, if it did it was probably very different), else the aspect of the philosophy relating the Shards to Unknown God wouldn't really make sense. The information we have is mostly just hints and winks and it's more than implied that most of the people who reference The Unknown God don't have much real knowledge of Adonalsium. That said, religions in the Cosmere never have all of the facts right, but they all possess some manner of truth; generally, they even possess some historical truth. That, combined with the statements from Sanderson lead me to conclude that Adonalsium is* (was?) almost certainly The Unknown God. Something else to keep in mind is that the concept (religion?) of The Unknown God has probably evolved tremendously during its propagation.

The gemstones were originally added as ornaments, and it was only by accident that Shardbearers realized they could "bond" a gem-studded blade by maintaining constant (or near-constant) proximity/contact with it for a week. Considering the context in which this is revealed in-book, by Jasnah to Shallan IIRC (EDIT: It was pointed out that it was actually Navani), I feel like it would've been a very odd omission for Sanderson to leave out that each blade requires a specific type of gemstone. This tidbit would've been interesting, thought-provoking, not detracted from the narrative, and would've been somewhat relevant to Jasnah's investigation into the KR and the Voidbringers at the time. Sanderson's style generally makes expert use of these short idle-conversations between characters to deliberately insert small world-building elements, which is what this would probably be classified as. I would posit that since the perfect opportunity to make this reveal in an organic and logical manner wasn't utilized, it isn't going to be made in-book, even if it is a requirement. It might be an interesting question to approach Sanderson with, and he might be willing to cannonize it, but I wouldn't expect it to ever be addressed onscreen.

Not to be a debbie-downer...but even if you solved the problem of actually getting the bubble up and keeping it up, you'd have the problem of extreme air resistance. Just off the cuff, if you were in a cadmium bubble slowing time down by a factor of 100 (we see Wayne throw up a bendalloy bubble and be able to track bullets through the air, so this is totally reasonable), then you would essentially be moving 100x faster than the rest of your reference frame (inside the bubble). Meaning, at a gentle walking pace of 5mph, you would encounter air resistance as if you were piloting a jet... Near as I can tell, it would be more like wading through jelly than running around. You could move around though, and compared to people inside the bubble you would still be moving very quickly, it would just be exhausting and frustrating. That said, cadmium burns super slowly, so it could be viable if you could get the bubble to stay up.

So...a normal helium balloon that you'd find at a party store or amusement park is going to have a net lift of something like 10 grams. All Wax has to do if he wants to fly is get something like 100 of them, strip naked, then wear an ironmind with a mass of less than 1 kg. Considering how much time it takes him to fill his normal bracers walking around at half weight, a 0.5 kg bracer would probably allow him to float at least half a day, if not significantly longer.

@Ciridae First, awesome theory, have an upvote! As to why the Shades manifest in the PR..You reasoning for how a person killed by a Shade is spren-ified seems perfectly sound to me: Person gets killed by a Shade, which is an entity composed of Investiture speculated to have been corrupted in some way by Ambition and Odium's fight Person's soul begins transitioning between the realms in the same manner we're familiar with via secret history Free Investiture, possibly formerly belonging to Ambition and/or corrupted by Odium, pours into the temporary opening between the realms created by the soul's transition This free Investiture takes the shape of, replaces, or otherwise combines with the now deceased person's soul I would therefore propose the following extrapolations: When a shade is created, it retains some of the Connection/Identity of the person it was made from, which makes sense if you consider that it was essentially cast in their image; this helps explain why they manifest in the PR rather than just the CR The free Investiture is Connected to the Shades, which is why people who die naturally don't manifest as Shades; IE, the free Investiture isn't within close enough proximity in the PR or CR to flood in and sprenify their soul during their transition to the Beyond. The free Investiture (or piece of Ambition, whatever) creates a short-lived perpendicularity during the sprenification process since perpendicularities are simply places where highly concentrated Investiture creates a bridge between realms. Feel free to incorporate or reject out of hand these additional speculative points as you will.