Lewis Nethur
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Everything posted by Lewis Nethur
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@Calderis , after @FiveLate 's last post I have to concede that you're probably right that Nightblood is still bound by the rules and physics of awakening, as it's clear from those quotes that as of Warbreaker he was still heavily defined by the command used to awaken him. I was mistaken in thinking he wasn't, good discussion.
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I guess...It just seems kinda weird that: Shashara would tell Vasher she was going to teach people how to make Nightbloods Argue with him passionately Then get herself murdered over the argument all without ever divulging that she wouldn't have actually been able to teach people how to make their own Nightbloods without first teaching them to worldhop. Like, she probably would've thrown in there at some point: "Jk Vasher, making Nightbloods can't just be done with awakening, please don't murder me," thereby diffusing the situation...
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@The One Who Connects Fair point, I might have been a bit pedantic in trying to establish a hard limit. As you say, a practical limit should clearly exist and be more important. Pewter feruchemy makes the muscles larger but does not appear to change the size of one's bones. You'd probably start encountering serious mobility problems before you got close to dying, which would stop any sane person from tapping more.
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@Calderis I was trying to suggest that Nightblood essentially "escaped" the awakening magic system; sort of like his creation was a hack of the physics underlying awakening. In essence, by focusing so much assembled Investiture into an object, in this case a sword, Nightblood's cognitive manifestation, which probably resembled that of Shallan's Stick in terms of complexity, was able to make the leap to fully functioning sentient being, thereby "reforging" the 1,000 individual pieces of Endowment's Investiture into what could be considered a single indivisible soul. Nightblood's "soul" may be made out of Investiture that originally belonged to Endowment, but the way he consumes Investiture from his user and attacks his targets across all three realms just doesn't seem consistent with how awakening normally operates. You argue that this implies that he has mixed Endowment's Investiture with another Shard's Investiture, which would be another possible explanation, however, I personally feel that that explanation is needlessly complicated. I'm unconvinced that Vasher would've murdered his wife if creating additional Nightbloods would've required securing pieces of another Shard's Investiture.
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@Doonl the Destroyer You are absolutely correct, much as I love the Cosmere, it has little place for realism at times, for example: In AoL Waxillium dives out of a speed bubble and shoots a bullet in mid-flight with another bullet to ricochet them into the back of the head of a man holding Marasi hostage that he couldn't get a clear shot on...He doesn't tap mental speed or burn atium...he just shoots and ricochets a bullet in midair into another man's head by virtue of his mad skillz...
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First, Nightblood is heavy where shardblades are lightweight, notably shorter than dead spren-blades, and colored and shaped wildly differently than any other dead spren-blade we've seen. Regarding the corrupted Investiture thing...Since Nightblood's Breath can't be drawn back out by an awakener and he (it?) doesn't really follow the normal rules of awakening, I've always subscribed to the belief that, very shortly after his creation, he technically ceased to be an awakened object in the traditional sense and instead became a highly Invested being with his own magical rules independent of Endowment. IE: the Investiture that composes his spiritual aspect was created by corrupting Breath by disassociating it from Endowment. (speculation) He turns brick walls into clouds of smoke...Admittedly, we don't know that much about Endowment's magic system, but that seems pretty outrageously different from any other awakening we've seen...
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@MattedBricks Seems to have been too humble and respectful to come right out and solicit people to click on the link and officially register their support, so I guess I'll do it on their behalf: The project might require some further polishing, but I think it has reached an admirable level of quality. If you agree, it would be mighty decent of you to take a few moments to help support a fellow sharder in their endeavor. Just a thought, you might try getting this on /r/books to reach a bigger audience.
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So I had a thought about unsealed/unkeyed copperminds and the Soverign's medallion that Wax uses at the end of BoM. Wax taps the medallion and immediately experiences the vision contained within. It occurred to me that, considering the clarity of the vision, which to him seems to have felt as real as if he had lived it himself, he was extremely lucky that the medallion didn't contain a memory of a horrifying nightmare, been filled with nefarious messages aimed at his subconscious, or contained any other traumatic memory. I had a couple ideas I wanted to propose to the community for discussion: Do you think it would be possible to fill/manipulate a copper medallion in such a way as to cause the next person to tap it to be, in some capacity, brainwashed, permanently altered mentally, or driven mad? Bonus points if it can be done without them being aware of the change, otherwise they could just refill the metalmind... In an interrogation or intelligence gathering scenario, could a person be reliably compelled to fill a copper medallion as a means of extracting information from them while simultaneously removing that information from their brain? Would it be possible to determine if they were holding back information? If a person who was not particularly adept at using copper feruchemy filled a copper medallion with, for the sake of example, their knowledge of mathematics, while they were actively filled with murderous rage, might the person who taps that coppermind end up filled with some or all of that murderous rage? Thoughts?
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If a kandra were to have feruchemy and/or allomancy
Lewis Nethur replied to Conatus's topic in Mistborn
This is a fascinating idea I've never heard before. I would guess that yes, they probably would be immune to control. From normal allomancers. Recall that Vin could feel TLR's soothing through her copper cloud, so we can guess that it would still be possible for several soothers/rioters working in tandem to mind control the kandra. Harmony could probably still take control of them directly as well, as his means of controlling them doesn't rely on allomancy. Plus, if Marsh could've broken free of Ruin by burning copper, his body might've done it instinctively when Ruin wasn't paying close attention. (speculation) -
@Yata Koloss blooded also grow throughout their lifetime unlike normal humans, which is why when Wax notes that the koloss-blooded pewter arm in AoL is short and stocky, he guesses he must be relatively young. It's also noted in universe that they heal faster than normal humans. Since Koloss blooded are human, at least in the sense that they can interbreed with humans, I think it's a fair assumption for the time being that the differences are magical in nature, and relating to their inherited sDNA rather than physiological, and relating to their inherited DNA. Somewhat speculative, but wanted to throw it out there. @PewterAGoldF A huge problem with inquisitors is that their spirit webs are so tattered that they can't live without the linchpin spike in their spine. I would think that any children they had would be much more likely to be born allomancers, but also much more likely to be stillborn or possess the debilitating disorders associated with extremely damaged sDNA. Hemalurgy could probably be used to, on average, breed more intelligent or physically capable humans. However, this process would likely be bounded by the fact that the parents of each generation could only have so many spikes and still be able to have a decent chance of producing viable offspring. Meaning, depending on how powerful you wanted your final super-humans to be and how many you wanted to produce, you would need a rapidly increasing number of successive parent generations of wildly increasing size. So yeah, with enough time and spikes you could probably breed a Master Chief or Gerrard Capashen type of superhero...but you'd have to do something with their many psychotic brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles...
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It's stated in Mistborn that for The Lord Ruler: I think it's interesting that they make a distinction about how he handles being decapitated; the characters seem to imply that decapitation does affect TLR slightly (albeit not for long), or at least screw with him a bit, unlike simply being stabbed in the chest with several spears. I imagine how he healed losing his head depended on the situation. I'd assume that his body would first attempt to heal the tissue connecting his severed head then, if that failed either because someone grabbed the head and ran off or it was completely destroyed, grow a new one. If something was physically restricting the regrowth I assume that it couldn't happen, with the caveat that his corpse would probably be flailing around, not just sitting still.
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Can't find the WoB at the moment, but he clarified some time ago that even with just the two shards on Scadrial there are an absurdly high number of possible allomantic metals. For example: Gold + atium, Gold + atium + lerasium, Gold + atium + lerasium + atium, ect... IIRC, he says outright that there would be some limit to this pattern and there are not an infinite number of metals, but he also makes no promises that all of the possible metals would do unique or interesting things. It's possible that some or many of them do the same things and/or are so similar in composition that differentiating between them would be a herculean effort in and of itself.
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@The One Who Connects Pretty sure I can't outright prove you wrong, but we have some indications that tapping pewter wouldn't be bound by skin-stretchyness IMO: Sazed's skin doesn't hang off him when he stores strength and he grows many times larger while tapping without ripping his skin, or even reporting discomfort. If there's a limit to how much pewter someone can tap at once I would assume that it would be defined by the simple practicality that they can only be so massive/muscley and still be able to move. Further, if you tapped way too much pewter, one of two things would probably happen: You would be so massive that your heart would not be able to pump blood through your body against the back pressure resulting from the friction between your blood and the walls of your veins and the constricting force of your muscles, or... Your heart, being similarly pewter enhanced as the rest of your muscles, pumps blood so hard that your blood vessels pop and you explode in a massive gorey mess... All that said...The feats of strength described in the Logbook actually don't seem possible for even a person as strong and large as physically possible, so it's also possible that, just like how tapping steel for speed gives the user's feet increased friction with the ground (so they don't simply run in place or go sliding around like a drunk maniac), tapping pewter might allow the user to temporarily overcome those troublesome physics that would otherwise interfere with their ability to use their magic effectively.
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The wiki page on bendalloy is, in my opinion, very misleading. In a round-about sort of way it claims bendalloy speeds time up by a factor of 8 by citing a quote from Wax who was doing off the cuff calculations regarding how much bendalloy would be required for a slider to compress time enough for 5-6 men to unload a train car filled with pallets of iron before guards could arrive on the scene. I won't delve into the math of the scene here, but suffice to say that it is, at best, quite peculiar. The 8x speed boost factor probably shouldn't be treated as gospel (despite the fact that it was clearly stated by the main character) as it seems to be somewhat erroneous or lacking vital supplementary information. For example: we've seen Wayne stand within at most 10m of a bundle of dynamite (and probably between 1 and 5) that was exploding at about the same time that he threw up a speed bubble. He then proceeds to exchange dialogue with Wax for at least 1 minute from my analysis of the scene and probably closer to 2 while flaring his bendalloy. The explosion of a stick of dynamite propagates at around 7,000 m/s. Meaning Wayne compresses at least 1 minute (and probably 2) into approximately 0.0014 seconds. Roughly a 40,000 x speed increase. That's a conservative estimate for the scene, more likely, the speed increase was closer to 100,000 x... The rate at which bendalloy burns, the factor of speed increase, and the ability of a slider to manipulate the size of their bubbles is often left deliberately vague in scenes to avoid outright contradictions. Sometimes when Wayne is in a bubble he can see bullets moving slowly through the air, an increase of roughly 100-1000 x. Oddly, we also see him barely able to maintain 2 minutes of dialogue with Wax in a speed bubble over the course of several seconds at one point (When Wax first meets Steris and she is looking over her shoulder at something Wayne points at as a distraction). A factor of something like 10 x. I generally advise against trying to analyze time bubbles, as they're somewhat screwy. All that said, I like your theory of anchoring massive time bubbles to a ship's center of mass as a means of achieving a sort of "warpdrive" effect. Very interesting!
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@skaa Love the theory; some of the specifics about religious Connection seem somewhat inelegant to me, but the overarching concept of how/why hemalurgy is fundamental to medallion technology seems highly plausible. I suspect you understand hemalurgic soul interference just fine, but I wanted to add a couple points for any readers who may not recall offhand just how important this phenomenon and its consequences are, as it's something I've been rather interested in. Discussions of hemalurgy tend to gloss over a few potentially important aspects of the magic system, specifically when they're centered on granting multiple powers to an individual: I suspect that the rules of hemalurgy, soul interference, and reforging (and transfering hemalurgic charge to/from) spikes, are going to be integral to the final explanation of how the medallions work and why creating >3-power medallions appears to be prohibitively difficult (maybe impossible) without access to full feruchemists and mistborns. However, I have to admit that your proposed Connection-based explanation for these two points seems internally consistent and makes some interesting predictions. Hope you don't view these additional points on hemalurgic soul interference as a needless distraction; your critique on hemalurgy, and indeed your theory as a whole, was thought-provoking and well argued, thanks for posting!
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I think the confusion is introduced by the concept of relativity, which in general, Sanderson seems to be trying to avoid referencing in-book, as many Cosmere fans aren't super interested in astrophysics. Whether bendalloy is "speeding time up" or "slowing time down" depends on which side of the bubble you're using to observe the phenomenon. For the sake of simplicity, I think it's easier to say that: bendalloy "speeds time up" in a small sphere around the user. However, it's very likely that an equivalent description would be that: bendalloy "slows time down" for the entire Cosmere, except in a small sphere around the user. The current explanation as I understand it for, "why don't time bubbles have red/blue shifts?" is that there is an as yet unexplained energy/momentum transference for particles (which in this case, includes photons) that pass through the edge of a bubble. IE: as a beam of light enters a time bubble, it apparently transfers enough of its energy into the Cognitive and/or Spiritual realms to maintain its wavelength (so shining a flashlight on Marasi doesn't cause her to be blasted with gamma rays if she's in a cadmium bubble), then if/when it bounces back out of the bubble, it recovers that energy. The process doesn't work in a precisely 1 to 1 manner however, and there's some "twisting" involved that ultimately results in the light (or projectiles like bullets) being scattered slightly, resulting in a visual blurring effect around the edge of speed bubbles.
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Agreed, the survivor's spears would be good, or the 10 interlocking rings of The Path. I believe there's some pretty cool fan art work for symbols relating to Harmony's rings and the Bands of Mourning that's probably worth considering. Alternatively, the symbol for feruchemic copper would be very fitting. Sazeds copperminds saved Scadrial and the series has repeatedly played on the themes of remembering the past and passing on wisdom.
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The ultimate mistborn tattoo is, was, and always will be: Inquisitor eye tattoos I bet if you write Brandon Sanderson, Peter Ahlmstrom, and Isaac Stuart (and promise to get the tattoos applied) you could convince them to do a sketch up for you that a tattoo artist could then adapt. Come to think of it, there are some brief descriptions of Marsh's tattoos in the Mistborn books, so Sanderson probably has concept art already drafted up in his notes. Might even be able to get them to canonize it if you ask really nicely.
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One of Leras' last acts as Preservation was to use the mists to infect mistings with a short-duration physical ailment (mist-sickness) through which he could forcibly cause them to snap. I assume Sazed uses a similar mechanic. This may even be why the mists don't appear as often in Wax's time, IE: the mists' Investiture is being "used up," so to speak, in the process of snapping new allomancers, and now they require more than one day to recharge and manifest.
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A WoB you may find interesting: I believe in WoA or HoA it's mentioned that lerasium mistborn sire mistborn children and that for several generations after TLR's ascension mistings were rare, if not unheard of. Lerasium mistborn are also crazy powerful, so, between these two facts...I don't think we're ever going to see another one. It seems like it would just undermine too much of the groundwork Sanderson has established. Something that's almost as interesting as the possibility of mistborn however is: Since the Pits of Hathsin are gone, and the next book is titled The Lost Metal, the mist-distillation technique sounds like a good candidate for how Scadrians could discover some new and exciting metals. Between metals that anyone can burn, twinborn, the Southern Scadrian's technology, and hemalurgy, there's a lot of potential for crazy powerful magic shenanigans in the metallic arts without having to fall back on mistborn.
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Fair point @Bcknight2 . Until we know what a voidbringer is, the question of "where they come from" is probably moot. The best I can do to satisfy OP's curiosity is that, from what little we've seen, Odium's servants on Roshar appear to all be native to the planet that have been warped by voidspren introduced by Odium. IE: a thunderclast appears to be a slab of granite that's been bonded with a voidspren in a manner that's more-or-less analogous to how stormform parshendi are made. For the time being Odium lives on Braize and it's implied that he's Invested in the planet, so I think it's a safe bet that if he keeps a stockpile of minions somewhere, it's there. It's possible that the Everstorm is acting as a Perpendicularity and that's how Odium is able to once again flood Roshar with his evil spren. If this is the case, it would imply that Honor/Cultivation and/or the Heralds/Radiants had previously managed to lock, block, or otherwise jam Roshar's other Perpendicularities; presumably through some aspect of the Oathpact. This is highly speculative though.
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If you were a twinborn, what would you like to be?
Lewis Nethur replied to Lord Bookwyrm's topic in Mistborn
@8bitBob IIRC, Ham proposes in either WoA or HoA that allomantic pewter is more of a additive bonus in strength than a multiplicative bonus. This is used to explain why Vin can jump to incredible heights while burning pewter compared to other Thugs he's met. IE: Because she gains a similar amount of strength as Ham when burning pewter, but is about half his weight, she can jump significantly higher than him. There's no arguing with the fact that the modifiers haven't been canonized yet, but lacking any other onscreen statements to the contrary, I would propose that the best way to treat the strength modifier for the time being would be as: burning pewter for a misting in the FE most likely gives a more-or-less flat strength boost comparable to that of about 1 large grown man (2 when flaring), and somewhat less in the current era. The 2x - 3x multiplier seems pretty reasonable for most of the things we see Thugs do on screen, but I'm not sure that would be enough to explain all of Vin's feats, considering her small stature. Definitely like where your heads at though, that would be a pretty deadly combination. -
Well, keep in mind also that in Dalinar's flashbacks we see a voidspren animating a stone in a lake bed into a giant rock-monster, and if that's not worthy of being called a voidbringer I don't know what is...We don't have a precise definition for "voidbringer" yet. Right now, it seems equally valid to treat midnight essences, parshendi bound to voidspren, thunderclasts, and indeed all giant rock-monsters serving Odium as "voidbringers," but this may change in the future as we learn more about these bizarre creatures. I'd speculate that anything on Roshar that's bound to, or otherwise animated by, a voidspren or an Unmade could safely be considered a voidbringer at this point. The voidspren, and possibly the Unmade, which seem to either be splinters of Odium or pre-shattering-splinters that Odium hijacked with his Investiture, are alleged to be based on Braize, though I can't remember if this has been stated in book yet; probably not. How they're getting to Roshar from Braize, and why the return of the Radiants is supposedly allowing them to return to Roshar are still closely guarded secrets though. Something to do with Investiture and the Cognitive Realm no doubt, but we just don't have a lot to go on until the next big reveal.
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If you were a twinborn, what would you like to be?
Lewis Nethur replied to Lord Bookwyrm's topic in Mistborn
Well...If I wanted to be a super villain...I'd probably go with allomantic Bronze and feruchemic steel: Spend a few days storing loads of physical speed and chilling out doing things that don't require much movement; maybe read a few books. Wander around populated areas finding and stalking metalborn with your bronze; ideally ones you've never met or had any prior connection to (not Connection) Follow them home and harvest them with a hemalurgic spike then set the building on fire and flee with super speed. (WoB maintains that it's possible to detect feruchemy with bronze, but no one's done it on screen yet, so it may require being a savant or possessing multiple bronze spikes...) Skip town and leave law enforcement baffled. Find a new town/city, rinse, and repeat. There's currently a theory that compounding Determination (electrum) might allow a person to overcome Harmony's ability to control people with more than 3 spikes, which would allow you to become a fullborn. And if you really wanted...you could give yourself extra allomantic brass spikes so you could control other hemalurgic constructs, including kandra . (or I guess just use duralumin, whatever) I won't delve into the details here, but even if that didn't work, you could still just switch the spikes out as needed. It occurs to me that you could also just use double nicrosil spikes to circumvent the 3 spikes at a time limit: Pop in your double nicrosil spikes and an allomantic gold spike. Compound nicrosil and store your ability to use allomantic gold in a nicrosilmind. Replace allomantic gold spike with a feruchemic gold spike. Draw gold allomancy from your nicrosilmind, swallow some gold, and compound gold to fill up some large goldminds, then compound nicrosil to store your ability to use feruchemic gold in a nicrosilmind. Repeat for each metal (including nicrosil) (Note, you might run into a problem compounding aluminum, but I don't think you should) Be a fullborn. Remove all spikes, then give yourself 3 allomantic bronze spikes. Stalk the Cosmere using bronze allomancy to find new abilities to harvest and store. -
When precisely did Bleeder take the Governor Innate's life?
Lewis Nethur replied to tabitreader's topic in Mistborn
There's also the possibility that she was working with other kandra who could've been impersonating Innate by turns for..pretty much any period of time, from weeks, to months, to years. Harmony implies that most, if not all, of the 2nd generation kandra have died or vanished in some manner IIRC. It's possible that they've switched to Trell's side rather than having just offed themselves. Innate's lifetime and entire political career might've been the work of Trell's faceless immortals attempting to infiltrate and manipulate Scadrial. (who knows, Innate's kids might really have been fathered by homunculi kandra...) #KandraConspiracy #Kanspiracy
