Lewis Nethur

Haha, and I believe we have WoB somewhere that this would absolutely work, according to Cosmere physics, as a more-or-less free-energy machine (though technically you're converting Cognitive/Spiritual potential energy into kinetic energy in the Physical Realm). I still feel like using coinshots/lurchers, which are relatively common, to spin a turbine would yield a better return on investment, but it's essentially the same thing: using allomancy to produce massive amounts of essentially free energy.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some types of mistings and ferrings are disproportionately rare in the population. In AoL Wax mentions that coinshots are among the most common metal born, and in SoS (IIRC) there's some mention that there are only two or three steelrunners in the whole city of Elendel due to the power being exceptionally rare. Unless you're using hemalurgy to stabilize your employees' access to the metallic arts, most investors would have some serious trepidation pouring money into an operation that balanced on the whims of a handful of people who, besides being almost irreplaceable, could cripple your business by quitting. For example, if you're employing subsumers to, through whatever combination of compounding, hemalurgy, or mechanical/harmonium fueled feruchemical-allomancy the southerners use to make their medallions, to make and sell food-medallions, your production rate is theoretically bottle-necked by the number of subsumers you can employ. If one of those people gets sick, dies, or moves to another city, your business could be devastated if you aren't able to replace them quickly. Harmony is trying to motivate northern Scadrians to be more comfortable with change and risk, presumably so they can begin catching up technologically to the southerners, so it'll be interesting to see how they handle industrializing the metallic arts.

If Dalinar had been drawing in stormlight when he was gravely wounded in the past, he probably would have healed well enough to not leave gruesome scars. To your other point, I could definitely see a younger, more blood-thirsty Dalinar asking the Nightwatcher to restore his ability to fight as his boon if his accumulated decades worth of injuries had begun to slow him down...I've heard people suggest he may have asked the Nightwatcher for combat related boons before, but none of them ever seemed to me to be in line with the nature of his character...until now of course. Have an upvote for originality and what I consider to be a simple yet compelling theory. I'm less confident about the Thrill and the Odium stuff, but I do suppose it seems plausible; it's hard to distinguish from the text if the Thrill is all mental/emotional, or if it actually has some manner of physiological component to it. IE: is it operating at the level of the Cognitive Realm, or is it literally affecting soldier's physical selves? EDIT: Darn...Ninja'd...

I'm sorry, do you have any evidence to support the theory that spike size doesn't matter? That's a fairly bold claim. Do you have a source for this? I won't argue that it isn't perfectly reasonable as speculation, but the way you present it makes it sound like a fact and I want to make sure I understand you correctly.

Er...You mention that we don't know if there are "harmless stealing points," but this is sort of a moot point. WoB clearly expresses that a person can live through being spiked under the right circumstances. Considering the greater context of his response, I think it's fair to say he's intentionally confirming that it is plausible for someone to knowingly and intentionally spike another person, thereby removing part of their spirtweb, without killing them. I'm not seeing any implications of it being a matter of chance like you imply; his words are, as you put it, quite explicit. If a person can be spiked once and live, then they should definitely be able to be spiked at least twice (though that does seem cruel...) Damaging (tearing/cracking/maiming/ect.) someone's spirit web doesn't "normally result in death." People have to experience damage to their spirit webs to be able to use most magic systems in the Cosmere. Damage, be it from severe emotional trauma, a savage beating, or having a nail pounded into your hand, is still just damage, not necessarily a death-sentence. Damaging someone's spirit web isn't fatal in and of itself, it just changes who they are in a very fundamental way; some changes are incompatible with life and some aren't. I suspect the reason people die from hemalurgy so often is because they're having railroad spikes hammered through their chests... (speculation) TLDR; The best hemalurgic traits are harvested from the torso (from what we've seen) and a hemalurgic spike's ability to store change is proportional to its size. Ergo, very few people are likely to survive hemalurgic extractions. If you've already made peace with the fact that you're going to harvest someone for their spiritual essence, I feel like it's an, "in for a penny, in for a pound," kind of situation...

I'm not sure we're ever likely to see a bead of lerasium on Scadrial again since that would allow for the creation of a mistborn, as well as the subsequent breeding of more mistborns. Further, if we did see a bead of lerasium, it would seem almost foolish for whoever found it to do anything other burn it immediately ... But... If we're going to venture into the realm of baseless speculation, I'd like to see lerasium and its alloys to delve into some as yet unexplored feruchemical territory. More abstract attributes like Empathy where storing and tapping could move a person along the spectrum between being a sociopath and being fantastic at intuitively understanding the feelings of others. Or something like Intelligence, which in this case would refer to the speed at which one is able to "learn" and thereby permanently grow new neural pathways rather than being in reference to storing "mental speed" which would be more along the lines of, "how quickly one can send and receive signals along existing neural pathways." Before you try to poke holes, yes, I understand that these aren't perfect models. I think they would be fun feruchemical powers to explore, even if they're unlikely to ever appear on screen...Maybe we'll get to see some atium-alloys in the Lost Metal though, Marsh has way more than he needs and he never struck me as a really selfish person...

Technically, you could explore the Cosmere going any speed, it would simply take an unfathomable amount of time. Travel between Shardworlds at subluminal speeds would probably take decades (or at least years), making it somewhat of a barrier to being used as a plot element. It's not impossible, but it does make things tricky. In our Universe, according to Special Relativity, yes, matter (or even information, but that requires a much more abstract discussion) that was traveling through space faster than the speed of light could be described as traveling "backwards" in time. That said, there are some weird hypothetical scenarios, the plausibility of which have not been positively or negatively demonstrated, that might allow for the cosmic speed limit to be more-or-less circumvented. IIRC, WoB from a few years ago stated that he wasn't planning to explore backwards time travel in the Cosmere though I'm having trouble finding a source for that information. If you can help or disprove please do. This is a highly simplified explanation, but one proposed method for achieving FTL speeds is to artificially shorten the distance between two locations in space along a path by "bending" the space between them. Objects moving directly between the path's endpoints (two shardworlds for example) would appear to an outside observer (IE: someone on a third shardworld) to be moving faster than the speed of light. You can argue that this isn't technically FTL travel, but it does still produce the desired result. Another explanation is to somehow "connect" two regions of space so that they can be traveled between without physically moving through the intervening region of space. If Cosmere FTL travel relies on a method other than just "accelerating your spaceship until it goes faster than light," I believe there are some relatively simple controls or caveats that could be introduced to adequately prevent or explain away most time traveler paradoxes to satisfy the vast majority of readers. Back to OP's topic, I'm skeptical that hemalurgy could be used in FTL travel, unless it was being employed to create metalborns with more than one allomantic and/or feruchemical power, but with ettmetal, this probably wouldn't be necessary. Between time-bubbles, speed storage, and weight/mass storage, Cosmere FTL travel doesn't seem particularly farfetched, however please note that it's been stated that we haven't been told enough yet about the metallic arts and Cosmere physics to be able to logically discern specifically how Scadrians are going to achieve FTL, so it's really anyone's guess at this point.

They do have the Breaths available, people just don't want to use it needlessly...Near as I can tell, most of the people in the capital aren't drabs, they just don't feel adequately incentivized to trade/sell their Breath. I assume if they came to a state of open warfare Hallandrens would be compelled to relinquish their Breath for the war effort; considering the widespread acceptance of military drafts, conscription, rationing, and taxation throughout human history, I feel like this is a totally reasonable assumption. To your second point, Breaths are relatively expensive, and it would probably be viewed as incredibly selfish and crummy for a person to stockpile Breath for just themselves. IE: if you have a wife and three kids, buying Breath soley for yourself would be a crappy thing to do and unlikely to go unremarked on. If you drained tremendous amounts of money out of your business or land ventures for the purpose of enriching yourself with Breath, your partners and subordinates would definitely take notice; money lenders would be unlikely to deem the immortality of a single person to be a worthwhile investment. Once you become immortal the concepts of debt and borrowing start to break down slightly and skipping town, ditching your debt, and starting over fresh becomes a much more viable option. Basically, there are a lot of economic factors that would work to prevent the rise of more than a bare handful of immortals in a society. I think people would generally be jealous and mistrustful of them, which is bad for both the political and business endeavors needed to accumulate Breaths. Edit: Plus, Vasher literally killed his wife because she was going to spread knowledge of awakening metal. More often than not, Vasher has displayed deep empathy for others, keen intelligence, vast knowledge, and rational and precise judgement. He's had some slip ups and lost his temper a time or two, but he's probably not a psychopath. I'm not suggesting he's always right and moral, but I will suggest that his concerns that the creation of more Nightblood-like constructs would constitute an unacceptable atrocity are more likely to be valid than invalid.

A plausible enough theory for the time being; As the rate of Breath/Stormlight consumption increases, so too should Nightblood's potential power output.

Why even wear the armor? Just bring it to life, hand it Nightblood, then send it in and watch it go

Well, I mean...Vasher could probably just enlist with the army right? Or join the camp followers to get in close, or pose as a person delivering food. We're talking about one lightly armed man, with access to godlike powers, infiltrating the least protected, least reputable, and least important sector in a preindustrial war camp for 5 seconds, not sneaking into the officers tent and replacing the general with a kandra. 3c: the more morally upstanding soldiers try to stop the man killing their friends rather than flee and die, or, flee and get slashed in the back by a super-charged bloodthirsty mega-soldier wielding a sword that vaporizes people on contact. Some probably get away, but this just adds to the general chaos and panic. 5c: the good soldier has no understanding of what happened, and keeps running for at least a few hours since he's scared out of his mind. Or, he goes back for Nightblood, vomits everywhere, gets confused, then runs away scared. you get your Nightblood back

Well...They do speak different languages on different Shardworlds...It could just be a typo introduced during editing; they probably thought twig sounded better and thought it was a small enough change that they didn't need to ask first.

This is without a doubt the most intelligent, simple, and intuitive explanation of how and why compounding works that I've yet encountered. Simply excellent, I'd upvote it twice if I could.

I'm hearing a lot that Nightblood wouldn't be effective in a large scale conflict, but I'm not so sure I agree. Consider the following: Vasher sneaks into an enemy army camp at night carrying Nightblood Vasher drops the blade in the midst of some less reputable soldiers who will be susceptible to Nightblood's bloodlust (maybe he finds some drinking or gambling) The soldiers immediately kill each other as Vasher trots off The winner of the fight, seeing more victims around, goes on a rampage, attacking and destroying everyone around him, throwing the camp into chaos and causing other soldiers to charge at him Nightblood consumes his spark of life, killing him At least one of the many other soldiers now present is probably susceptible to Nightblood's temptation and rushes in to take up the blade while those who aren't tempted are forced away from it, feeling violently ill and confused Rinse and repeat until army is routed The last man holding Nightblood dies, and Vasher returns to reclaim it I think the reason Nightblood might come across as underwhelming at times is because it personally seems to prefer wielders who aren't violent psychopaths. But if the secret of making your own Nightbloods became common knowledge, people with access to huge amounts of breath could awaken their own weapons with commands like: "Destroy people I don't like." Even a command like "protect me" could result in a devastating and horrible weapon when Nightblood-esque constructs are involved; the dang thing can read and, to some extent, control people's minds...

I'm afraid I have to agree with @Pagerunner for the time being. Cool as it would be to be able to compound without being a twinborn, our current understanding of compounding is that it is an inadvertent side-effect of blending two distinct forms of Investiture that utilize the same metals. As I understand it, an unkeyed goldmind can still only be tapped by a bloodmaker, so a gold misting with no feruchemic abilities in their spirit web probably wouldn't be able to make use of it. They'd be able to tell it was Invested for sure, there's always some manner of interference when two forms of Investiture collide, similar to why metalminds are more difficult to steelpush against if they're filled. As for the Southern Scadrians medallions, it might be possible for a gold misting to burn one that granted gold feruchemy to gain compounding abilities...but it would probably be much more efficient to just tap it as needed and refill it once its empty, as I suspect these medallions are being created, at least in part, by compounders. Plus, if you swallowed it, which would probably be difficult given the size, you wouldn't be able to burn off the nicrosil portion...I guess the toxicity wouldn't hurt you since you'd be compounding gold...but you'd still have to pass it naturally... An interesting idea @robardin, definitely hadn't heard anyone propose it before.

@UpLifted I think you've definitely caught on to something intentional. It's not clear yet if it's a red herring, or legitimate foreshadowing that Szeth and Odium have some sort of Connection. There are definite similarities in the wording used to describe Odium and Szeth; If I was a bit more fluent in German and French I'd be trying to track down translated versions of the story to see how they handle this parallel in another language. Could give us some insight into just how deliberate and intentional the similarities in their descriptions are; maintaining this type of similarity in descriptions is much more difficult when bouncing between languages.

That's true, it has been confirmed that some aspect of the metallic arts allows them to...somehow...be used for faster than light travel and, in my opinion, it's strongly hinted that, Sixth of Dusk Spoilers: Obviously, some sort of balance will have to be struck in not over saturating the story with wild and outrageous allomancy tech; like, there still have to be plots and characters that are interesting in their own right on every page. That said, I'll offer one more prediction for an era 4 allomancy-feruchemy technology: Identityless copperminds that can be filled directly from a computer terminal. People could compound copper to create content on a public network without losing their memories, then, assuming feruchemic charge can be conducted, or in some way transferred, along copper wires, it could be accessed by any citizen remotely with perfect recall. Imagine, doctors who can instantly read and memorize every medical journal every written when they wake up each morning, soldiers with a full knowledge of every word ever written on military theory and strategy, students who can memorize a dozen textbooks on differential equations in an instant. Now, having knowledge of a topic does not necessarily imply having an understanding of that topic, and the downloaded information would likely be forgotten relatively quickly if too much was pulled in at once so schools, clinicals, and new employee training would all still have to exist, but they would also be wildly more effective.

So...just get a copper misting or two to stand near an external wall of the classroom, then swallow your metalminds and go nuts. Or get a couple hemalurgic copper spikes. Or empty your coppermind right before they take it from you. Use a speed bubble to look over your neighbors shoulder covertly or use tin, or tap fortune when you need to guess. Academic integrity on Scadrial is going to be hard to demonstrate, my theory is that they're going to have to take a more...practical approach. It won't be fair, it'll just be less broken that a typical academic system applied to super humans

Well, first I want to point out that ettmetal can, from what little we've seen, apparently be utilized to store and use allomancy like a mistborn. With the caveat that it can be regulated via as yet unrevealed mechanical or electro-mechanical devices. This opens up the possibility of allomancy being used in automated functions through logic, circuitry, and eventually, full blown computing. This would enable the creation of integrated circuits for detecting/reacting to specific types of investiture, hyper efficient alternating steel pushing and iron pulling drive motors, duralumin over clocked super processors, peweter enhanced cranes and industrial equipment, overlapping mechanically driven time bubble array nuclear reactors...the limits are as endless as they are absurd. Jewelry that makes you feel happy and motivated, towers that provided identityless compounded healing feruchemy to aid stations throughout a city, driverless cabs that speed up or slow down time so you can get where you need to go instantly, or have extra time to work along the way as needed. Ettmetal opens up the ability to essentially have an arbitrarily large team of mistings at the disposal of any task. And it probably has some use for feruchemy as well. Another thing to keep in mind is that while we've only seen hemalurgy used with living beings, it appears to be mechanical in nature. Bind points between human physical manifestations and their spirit webs can be accessed and manipulated using hemalurgy. Lower life forms can be similarly affected. What about a sentient android? What about a toaster? What about a stick? The possibilities dear readers, in my opinion, are endless. The only thing we truly know about hemalurgy is that it's potential has only just barely begun to be recognized and explored...

I don't have a problem with Windrunners having to swear an oath promising to fight to the death if necessary, but I do have trouble imagining how it would come up organically. The last few oaths Kaladin swore came to him at a time when they were particularly relevant to his situation. Like, he swore to "protect those who couldn't protect themselves" because that's literally what he was trying to accomplish. He swore to protect even those he hates so long as its the right thing to do after he came to that conclusion and did just that. I feel like it would be kinda messed up for the final initiation for joining the Windrunners to be something along the lines of: having to be put into a situation where you literally feel like you need to fight to the death or sacrifice yourself. Seems to me like that would be a violation of the first oath, but that's just my own speculation.

Still looking, but off the top of my head, Kar, an inquisitor in FE, gets a short POV scene where he expresses joy that, after two centuries of politicking, the inquisitors are being given authority over a branch of TLR's bureaucracy. He doesn't explicitly state that he's been alive for that entire time, but it seems deliberately implied. It's right before Vin charges the throne room I think.

@Boongeebee I definitely think you're right that they could imitate a heart and circulatory system. The question of whether or not they need to in order to function is interesting though...I don't think we know enough about kandra physiology yet to say one way or the other. I believe Tensoon loses mass during his imprisonment, which sort of implies, but definitely isn't conclusive, that Kandra need to eat at least occasionally and possess some manner of metabolism (IE: he might be losing mass because he's breathing out CO2 as his body eats itself for sustenance); The Coppermind claims they need to maintain a certain amount of mass to remain intelligent, so I would imagine it's at least technically possible for a kandra to essentially starve to death given a long enough timeline. The question of whether kandra need blood and a circulatory system (and therefore a heartbeat), as I understand it, comes down to whether or not they need to breath (absorb?) air in a quantity similar to that required by a human of comparable mass to survive. Honestly, I could see this going either way. Good question.

Ha, yeah...I promise I'm not actually an advocate for this type of authoritarian and evil empire type of practices irl...I think it would make for an interesting evolution of the Mistborn universe for these issues to be confronted in some capacity is all. Basically, I see a lot of creative opportunity in hemalurgy, both as a magic system, and as a mechanism through which characters can be confronted with completely new and complex social and philosophical issues that develop organically from already-established in-world elements.

Bronze Seekers can detect both Allomancy and Feruchemy. Each etmetal block would detect all uses of any investiture (assuming they were strong enough to pierce copper clouds). You're right though, they would actually be catching people who are using 2+ forms of allomancy or 2+ forms of feruchemy simultaneously; my simple off the cuff explanation failed to point this out. Now, I'm assuming that bronze seekers' ability to detect distance/direction is subject to some inherent level of uncertainty; to combat this, you could use multiple seekers and average or triangulate the true location of the event, but it's not clear if this would even be necessary. If you maintained a registry of twinborn in a city you could also detect if any combinations of powers are popping up that shouldn't exist in your population. I don't mean this system to be a fool-proof method for instantly identifying and apprehending hemalurgists. It would just give authority figures a tool to exert pressure on hemalurgists, limit their power and ability to affect society, and gradually root them out if they aren't careful. Sure, a subtle and clever hemalurgist who was familiar with the limits of the technology being used to police their area could go undetected indefinitely, but only if he/she limited their hemalurgic activity, took precautions to hide their nature, and refrained from upsetting society too much. If they did that, then they probably don't really need to be apprehended anyway, so no big deal. My point is, Scadrians could develop reasonable and effective methods through which hemalurgy could be regulated, suppressed, or policed without making any outrageous intellectual leaps. There are also ways that they could use hemalurgy that, depending on your personal beliefs and values, could be described as humane, virtuous, and selfless. I suspect advocates of both approaches will rise, fall, and confront each other as this situation continues to evolve. @Yata I'm not proposing that a young and healthy metalborn would reasonably consider spiking themselves so their powers wouldn't be lost if they died unexpectedly. I'm not advocating or endorsing the practice, however, I could understand, on an intellectual level, how someone who was older, sick, dying, or particularly concerned about their legacy might choose to undergo the necessary hemalurgic procedure to ensure that their powers will continue to live on once they're gone, particularly if they could live through the procedure but also even if they wouldn't. If nothing else, the controversies and twists we have stumbled on in just a few quick posts is proof enough that the future of hemalurgy is worthy of exploration in later Mistborn eras. You've opened a mighty-fine can of worms @jofwu

A thought just occurred to me - We know that Hemalurgy can be used to spike an ability away from someone without killing them, though it will damage them greatly. But what if after they were spiked, the spike was put back into them...? They could then keep their ability and go on living until they die of natural causes, at which point, they could leave their spike(s) to whomever they choose. This isn't a perfect ethical and humane solution, but what do you think about it as a compromise? I'm not sure I could imagine people objecting to a practice that is voluntary, non-lethal, and potentially more-or-less non-destructive to the host.