cometaryorbit

Wow. I'd already thought that A-pewter/F-steel and A-pewter/F-gold were probably the most powerful non-Compounding Twinborn in combat*, both because the powers individually are among the best and because A-pewter gives more speed or health to store, but that makes A-pewter/F-steel even better. (Brandon's even said that an A-pewter/F-steel Twinborn would probably have a higher peak speed than double steel, since the A-pewter will help withstand the strain of wind resistance etc). About the only downside (besides no Compounding, of course) is the loss of A-steel mobility. F-steel probably doesn't really speed up ballistic A-steel movement (since it doesn't speed up falling) - you could have higher accelerations since your burning is accelerated though- so F-steel and A-steel movement don't stack well; but the option of aerial mobility is really useful. *although, in earlier post-Catacendre times when guns were less advanced and aluminum bullets presumably less common/available, A-steel/F-gold might win out due to ranged capability. By Wax's age, though, repeating firearms are quite good. I agree that F-Electrum is pretty poor. I wouldn't necessarily call it the absolutely worst - I'm not sure F-Aluminum or F-Nicrosil do anything at all unless you have other powers, so a pure Ferring of those types might be effectively a Gnat - but it might be the most unpleasant. The Ars Arcanum describes it as "Pinnacle Ferrings can store determination in an electrum metalmind, entering a depressed state during active storage, and can tap it at a later time to enter a manic phase". That sounds more like a controlled form of bipolar disorder than simple 'determination' in the usual sense. Yeah, if it were pure determination/willpower there would be a ton of everyday-life uses. But the use of the word "manic" makes it sound (to me anyway) less good.

The Rayse thing is interesting. Arguably the idea that he's vulnerable by fighting the Shard means that Rayse's actual self is "exposed" because it's insufficiently merged with Odium (kind of like when Kelsier as Preservation tries to attack Ruin, he has to pull back or the collision would rip Preservation off his soul). If "exposed", the actual Vessel might have been closer to a Sliver than a Shard. Still, a Vessel has to have a massively expanded mind/soul. I think Nightblood would eat a normal Radiant Spren in non-Shardblade form but chip a Radiant Shardblade (I do think the metallic form makes a difference, probably for the same reason that a Radiant Shardblade would resist anti-Light better than the same spren in normal form). Nightblood might have trouble with one of the Bondsmith Spren, though.

I disagree that Rashek (as we see him in TFE/SH) has either a strong mind or will. He's in very bad mental shape after a millennium of unstable immortality. He's also very bored, tired, and overconfident. I agree that burning copper could probably save him, but disagree that bronze would warn him to burn copper. If Nightblood was just handed to him, still sheathed, it probably wouldn't register at all until drawn (there's no Kinetic Investiture until then) by which point it's already got its fingers in his mind. I also don't think that Rashek would automatically recognize Nightblood's effect as an equivalent of Rioting/Soothing. It's probably not the same pulse at all And he might have very little time - Scadrian magic is low Investiture, and since he's constantly tapping his atiumminds, Nightblood would start draining those immediately. I think he'd die very fast whether he stabbed himself or not. I do think Nightblood would register him as evil, but I can see why you'd disagree. If he wasn't fundamentally a power hungry person, though, he wouldn't have conquered the world. I think aluminum would probably mess up the Awakening, but otherwise that'd probably work... at least against normal coins. Its reaction time wouldn't necessarily be enough against duralumin steelpush coins, though, and if it was thick enough to block them it'd be pretty awkward (same limits as bulletproof armor - though the Awakening might help somewhat). Oh, right, 9th Heightening Audible Command - Susebron can Awaken at range. Yeah, he could easily defeat a normal Mistborn. A Pewter compounder could tear out of Awakened clothes, though, so TLR would probably still be okay.

I don't think it's guaranteed that the non-lethal spiking can be repeated. There might well not be enough left ... the next spiking might kill even if done in the normally nonlethal way. Well, I guess that's still double spiking... I don't know if Hemalurgy is gentle enough to get 16 individual power spikes out of a Mistborn, though. They'd probably lose something beyond the power itself with each spiking.

Susebron (or anyone) with Nightblood could quite possibly kill him ... not by fighting, but by handing Nightblood to Rashek, who would then be compelled to kill himself with Nightblood because Nightblood would register him as evil. Copper might save him, but he probably doesn't have it on most of the time (he's a Seeker who can pierce copperclouds ... but not his own, since he's as strong as himself). In an actual fight, no way. I think even a normal Mistborn, if they knew duralumin, could probably kill Susebron wielding Nightblood, and a Coinshot with a gun might well be able to (even a regular human with a gun might have a chance, if they started far apart). Awakening gives some mobility (lifted by cloak, etc) but not as much as Mistborn Allomancy, which also has much better range capabilities. So the Mistborn could probably stay out of Nightblood range pretty easily - pewter should help make up for the superior speed and reflexes of a Returned (and Rashek's f-Steel definitely would outmatch them). The only question is how well Awakened tassels/cloak etc would block coins or bullets. I think a skilled (Kelsier in book 1 or Vin late in book 2) Mistborn who knew duralumin and had backup metal vials, or Wax pushing a bullet already shot from a powerful gun, could get around that, but a normal non-duralumin era 1 Mistborn like Shan Elariel or Antillius Shezler maybe couldn't. -- I think a Dawnshard with a powerful Invested Art, or maybe a very experienced Bondsmith Unchained, could win. I don't think much else could, short of Shards (or near Shards like Vin moments before her Ascension in HoA). I'm not even sure if AonDor could do it without help. Of course, you could always stack powers on the opponent, too. Hand a 5th ideal Radiant two Honorblades (with nonoverlapping Surges) and feed them a lerasium bead... -- I kind of wonder if that sort of stacking powers (including a Fullborn Radiant) would actually work, though. There might be too much stuff already in Rashek's soul for a Radiant bond to be added; OTOH, he is also a Sliver with greatly expanded soul, so it might work for him specifically. I kind of think a similar Dawnshard ("Dawnsliver"?) effect is how Hoid can combine a bunch of magic systems - I don't really think a normal cosmere human could have Yolish Lightweaving plus Mistborn Allomancy plus Breath plus a Radiant bond plus either Chromium Feruchemy or some similar Fortune power... and likely other stuff too. (I also don't think Rashek could be a 5th ideal Skybreaker. He would be "an okay Skybreaker, but not a great one", and as most Skybreakers don't make it past 3rd ideal he would probably be stuck there. But 3rd ideal Skybreaker + Fullborn is already a super terrifying combination.

Era 2 started from a very small population. There were less than 200,000 Originators (the Originators were 1/5 Terris, and we know there were 40,000 Terris at the Pits earlier in HoA) so current population is more than 50x what it was immediately post-Catacendre. Ancient Scadrial hadn't had a recent apocalypse. There were lots of different nations and cultures - it doesn't seem to have been a near empty/recent bottleneck world like Era 2 Scadrial. Re city sizes: It's not about the % of total population, its about the sheer size of Luthadel and what it takes to support a city like that. You just didn't get >1 million cities in the pre-industrial world (ancient Rome at its height was 1 million or a bit less). A society capable of supporting a 1-2 million city is not a society that resembles medieval Europe. The Roman Empire is a better analogy, and does suggest some growth. But the policy of organized killing of half-skaa children and potential mothers could easily wipe out a 0.1% growth rate.

I think Odium has been being tricky/deceptive about the meaning of Passion, and its seeped into the cultures (eg the Thaylen Passions). I think it's likelier that the *name* is Odium influenced than that the actual spren is. If they're of Odium then probably angerspren and fearspren should be too.

I don't think Identity can change that much over time, because Keepers can use the same copperminds for ages. I don't think Identity includes everything we think of as identity (in the personality-sense). I think it's more what defines 'self' in the Ship of Theseus sense. Dalinar's Identity isn't made up of "I'm a Rosharan, I'm an Alethi, I'm a lighteyes, I'm a father, I'm a husband" etc the way we'd think of identity in the colloquial/modern English sense. I think it's more like an unique identifier key that "these spiritweb bits belong to Dalinar". The Spiritual Realm doesn't have dimensions, so things have to be defined by Identity and Connection (and made of Investiture, I think). All those things which normally change over someone's life are Connections, not Identity, I believe. (Connection handles even fundamental things like where someone is from and what their native language is. I think Identity is probably set - maybe at conception like hemalurgic potential and DNA - and doesn't change short of magical alteration.)

I wouldn't be surprised if medallion-granted f-Gold can't heal soul wounds like Hemalurgy and Shardblades inflict, for the same reason Honorblade-granted Stormlight healing can't ... the power from a "mechanical" source is less deeply part of you. (Also, TLM implies that f-Gold medallions don't exist anyway, and Hemalurgic Compounding no longer works unless you got the spikes back in Era 1.) Also, I don't personally think Hemalurgically Compounded attributes actually draw from Ruin; the Allomancy, even if granted by a spike, is still the same power and should draw from Preservation. However, I acknowledge there's a WoB that says so (Lift with Bendalloy), so I'm probably technically wrong with current canon. I really do think that was Brandon mis-speaking though. I think Feruchemy (outside Nicrosil at least) converts attributes into Investiture, rather than storing Investiture the Feruchemist already has. So I think if you gave a Nalthian a F-Gold spike, the Health they stored would still be stored as Ruin+Preservation/Harmony "flavored" Investiture rather than Endowment "flavored". However, that's much more speculative. I think you can replace a soul with a different "flavor" of Investiture, however. I think that's what happened to Telsin, and why she's left gray and dead when Autonomy retreats - there wasn't enough of her original Ruin+Preservation/Harmony soul left. I think the "soul fossilization" in becoming a Cognitive Shadow is the same thing ... the Heralds didn't originally have Honor souls, presumably.

I don't know if a thin coating of aluminum would necessarily be enough. It works for some things (aluminum-lined hats vs emotional Allomancy) but not others (guns and bullets are actually made from aluminum alloys, despite that being an absolutely terrible choice for bullet performance, so I don't think a thin layer would protect against Pushing/Pulling).

(Numbers added for reference) 1. Absolutely, but TFE population was like 100 million. Before those events, tech level was early 1800s; population might have been 1 billion + like early 1800s Earth. The fact that there was massive population loss during the Deepness and Alendi/Rashek's wars doesn't mean it was recovered later. While it's likely that there was a brief recovery after people adapted to the new conditions and stability returned (say, the first century or two post-TLR Ascension) TLR specifically wanted a static/unchanging society. I don't think he'd see significant population growth as desirable... even if his ecological changes + technology limits allowed for a higher population. 2. I disagree that the conflicts after the first few years were significant enough to have a meaningful impact on the overall population. Tindwyl says that Wednegon was the last ruler to oppose TLR in "meaningful" conflict - and that was soon enough that his kingdom was still dealing with Deepness effects on food stores, so within a few years. Conquests definitely happened afterward - there's a reference to koloss being used against societies discovered on the islands in what seem to be comparatively 'recent' times - but they don't seem to have involved major wars. Probably either the societies conquered were small to start with, or things were so one-sided that they surrendered quickly, or TLR used Inquisitors or Mistborn to remove the leadership and kandra to replace them, or some combination. There were absolutely rebellions, but I don't think there's evidence of rebellions large enough to make a noticeable difference in populations of this scale. Even Yeden's army wouldn't. 3. I can totally see using RL analogues, but I think medieval Europe is not at all a close match to the Final Empire. There really aren't any very close matches in our history, but I think large urban empires are a much closer match than medieval Europe. Medieval Europe was decentralized and low-infrastructure, without huge cities on the scale of Luthadel, and subject to many significant wars, plagues, and famines; while the FE is centralized, very stable, very high infrastructure for premodern societies, and Luthadel is larger than any pre-industrial city on Earth. The more stable era (Pax Romana) of the Roman Empire is probably the closest RL analogue (huge capital city with centralized rule + high infrastructure, broad regional peace under an emperor) though the FE is more stable and higher-infrastructure than even that, and has much more extensive slavery. And Rome did have the Antonine Plague. China might be vaguely close (big capital city, imperial rule, infrastructure) but lacked a large slave/serf class, and rice agriculture is likely way more productive than what they had in TFE. 4. I agree population stagnation is rare in our history, but TFE seems to have the right conditions for it ... high urbanization, very harsh treatment of the rural slave class (including murder of many young women), bad agricultural conditions. Also, TLR didn't allow either technological advance or significant conquest, and there's no habitable lands to expand into.

For Rosharans, it is the same; in the sense that "everything has a spren", they're using "spren" broadly to include Cognitive aspects of objects, not just actually manifest Splinters. Oh, probably aluminum does have a very weak Cognitive/Spiritual aspect, I just don't think it's known as a fact. (And I don't think being able to Soulcast it with multiple-Shard level power proves anything, since with much less Investiture than that you can make the Three Realms one.)

I think it has to do with the effects of "more real" dimension things on "less real" dimension things- higher reality is "contagious", which is why people and devices from John/Jen/Ryan's world are bad for wights and gods. So if you eat food from a lower dimension, once it gets metabolized into your body it "catches" higher reality from your existing cells/molecules. Clothes and equipment aren't inside the body & actually involved in chemical bonds with its existing components (even water you drink is going to have hydrogen bonding, etc), and clothes are changed / equipment put down regularly. It seems totally possible that undigested/not yet metabolized food in the stomach might disappear when traveling upstream, or that if hypothetically someone wore the same clothes for a month (including sleeping in them) they might travel with them. - Either that, or it's a feature of the portals themselves. The 'gods' traveled upstream somehow, before hitting a "wall of pain" above Sefawynn/Ealstan's dimension. I think the epilogue with Logna reading about the portal implies they used a fundamentally different method. So not all possible methods of dimensional travel have this limit. So it might be more "portals only take something upstream if it's already gone downstream" and the way the portals recognize "something" isn't atom-by-atom but at a higher level of organization. If a portal 'tags' or simply records people and objects that go through it downstream, and only allows things upstream that are already tagged/recorded, you'd get the described effect. So it could be intentional, but not by simply lying about it (which, yeah, would be figured out very quickly) -- by actually designing the portal technology to create the limitation. -- But since we know higher reality *is* contagious and messes up lower reality dimensions, I think it's the first one. -- I think diseases and parasites could theoretically travel upstream in a traveler's body, but in practice their nanites would make it not a real issue.

Yeah, she's got to be a female version of Loki. In addition to the connections @HSuperLeementioned, "Thokk" is an actual mythological alias/disguise of Loki (in the myth of Baldr's death), and Logna is called "mother of monsters" - Loki is the father of the Fenris Wolf and Midgard Serpent.

I think an experienced/high Ideal unchained Bondsmith Radiant would win. Dalinar or Navani might not, at their current end-of-RoW Ideal and experience level; I don't know if they'd know to use the time dilation trick in battle or how to use Connection effectively to fight. The Stormfather does tell Dalinar that Bondsmith Surges aren't really for battle, so the combat uses that we see from Ishar may be tricky to learn. Ishar likely would win, but his inferior healing means that he could be one hit killed by a super f Steel+f Pewter bash, so it's not 100%. With Ishar's skill level + full Radiant powers and living Plate ... yeah.

Out-of-world, I don't know why Brandon did that rather than just give the nanites translation powers.

The story that he can only be killed by his own child also fits Arthur - Mordred was Arthur's illegitimate son in many versions.

I think the sixteen Shards could be combined -- Intent/Connection issues would be a problem, but the Ire Connection orb shows that can be bypassed -- but it might not recreate Adonalsium, per se. It depends on what Adonalsium was. If Adonalsium's personality went Beyond, then you'd just get a new Vessel of Adonalsium, not really the same person. If Adonalsium being Shattered was more like Syl being killed by Kaladin's broken oaths in WoR, then maybe it could truly be reassembled (Syl's broken rock analogy - all the pieces still exist?)

See, I'm also skeptical that it scales like this. IMO it's just as possible that the FE population has been essentially constant for most of its history, or slightly declining with agricultural capacity if TLR's climatic changes weren't perfectly stable. (Were the Outer Dominances always as empty as they seem to be? They're almost left off the newer map, which is an in-world artifact.) 200 Mistborn in a city of 500,000 just doesn't seem that crazy to me in an era when Mistborn were supposed to not be that rare. 264 in the whole Empire honestly feels low to me for that era. One early near-Lerasium-strength bloodline king who specifically tried to have a bunch of Allomancer children (which seems an obvious enough strategy that I'd be surprised if someone in the first few generations didn't try) could easily account for that many, if basically all their descendants would be Mistborn that early. -- I think secrecy of Mistborn has to be a later development, once they became relatively rare. At the beginning, descendants of one of the original nine kings would be assumed to be Mistborn. We know there have been past House Wars, I wouldn't be surprised if the reluctance to have Mistborn battles came out of a really bad early one (maybe that was part of what ended the period of more-common Mistborn, by killing off a lot of them!)

You can't get compounding from spikes any more, according to TLM. That worked in Era 1, but not now.

Also, Plate is weird. It doesn't break like real steel plate would (it cracks then explodes, rather than denting/deforming/being punctured... it's incredibly hard and strong, but brittle rather than ductile, which isn't really metal behavior). Kaladin likely had a lot more kinetic energy than a Warform hammer blow, and the damage to Plate may not scale neatly. Metals in the Metallic Arts, probably not, in these the key to Investiture is atomic structure based. However, for gems on Roshar, color is more important than the actual atomic structure. So yeah, an Awakener can make gems useless for Soulcasting and much worse at holding Light, and unsuitable for making fabrials. I'm not sure if an already-trapped spren would be released if the gem was color drained though... the gem color seems to be important for attracting the spren? This is a cool thought, I'd never really thought about this interaction. I don't think you need 10th Heightening total color drain for this, probably regular Awakening drain to gray will mess up gemstones (except maybe smokestone?) Diamond likely isn't drainable as an Awakening color source though. Aluminum *might* be the exception. It's unclear https://wob.coppermind.net/events/332/#e9545 Yeah, the Mists are immense power, they're just not available to the ecosystem (and people making fabrials, etc) the way Roshar's Stormlight cycle is. They only work in ways set by the Vessel (Mist-snapping / choosing Vin programmed by Leras, Mists boosting Wax because of Harmony's choosing him). Shards were equal at their origin, but some (like Preservation) have committed more power into the physical world/their creations.

The 800 is from 3 Soothers per station x 32 stations = 96 Soothers. Times 8 types of publicly known Mistings is about 800. Even if half of the public noble Mistings end up in the Steel Ministry, that's 1600. If 25% do, that's 3200. Plus secret noble Mistings (which seem very common) and part-skaa illegal Mistings. Just for the Central Dominance alone (which admittedly has the highest noble:skaa ratio, but the other four Inner Dominances should also have significant numbers.) OTOH, Terris should have none except maybe a few obligator overseers, and the other four Outer Dominances seem thinly populated, and the noble ratio is lowest on the fringes. These are the numbers for Vin's time, yeah but if there were more Allomancers in the past then her time sets a minimum for what the peak could have been like.

I think it's not rule of cool exactly, but close: Brandon momentarily slipping into the common assumption that RL longswords / two handed swords are exceptionally heavy, so something 2x or 3x would be really hard to carry. Brandon didn't have his team when WoA was written. Yeah, the art may actually overstate the size of koloss swords. I agree they vary with the size of the koloss, but maybe not linearly... if a 5' koloss uses a 4'-5' sword that doesn't mean a 12' koloss uses a 9'-12' sword. I think those near 6 kg swords might be ceremonial/parade, not actual combat. Also, 3x strength isn't all it takes to use a sword that big - inertia/weight distribution matters. I know pewter helps greatly with balance and grace, but still... I mean, the strongest people in the modern world are probably at least 3x stronger than the average medieval soldier, but I don't think anyone in the modern world - even one of the World's Strongest Man contestants- could use a 18 kg sword.

I agree koloss swords are blunter than most RL swords, due to poor construction and maintenance. But surely not that blunt! If it was that blunt, why have a blade at all rather than using giant clubs or hammers or maces? Wedge-like isn't that unusual in RL swords, though it's not what you see in the kind of High Medieval to Renaissance ones we usually imagine. Backswords have a triangular (ie wedge-like) cross section. The first picture you posted is actually where I got my mental image of koloss swords, which is kind of half backsword and half meat cleaver. If the smaller koloss in that picture is a small (human height, say 5'-6') individual, I don't think the sword looks *that* ridiculously large. The giant koloss's is, of course, but we know koloss swords vary. But you're right that that second picture does look like a very thick blade. It doesn't look remotely plausible to me as a weapon, even for a super strong koloss, but I could certainly be wrong. (The problem - besides the thickness of the blade itself - that wielding a heavy weapon isn't just about strength, but inertia. A newly made 5' koloss might be 4-5x stronger than a human, but while they're bulkier, it's not by *that* much. More like 1.5x to 2x weight than 4-5x.)

The fertility changes have basically disappeared centuries before Vin's time (as ought to have been expected! Low fertility traits will get selected out, especially since TLR couldn't completely prevent interbreeding. That was a really dumb move on TLR's part.) But they were real once, and might matter for the demographics of the early centuries. How much they'd matter depends on the details of what was changed, whether the early kings were polygamist, etc etc. TFE isn't a very religious society. Elend says in WoA the nobles mostly see the religion as a justification for their rule and otherwise don't think about it much. The fact that someone as educated as him barely knows the stories about the Well is really telling. He says they're basically taught not to worry about religion, let the obligators handle it. Sure, people accept as fact that TLR is divine - but that's not in itself an argument to devote ones life to religion in a context where that isn't expected of you. TLR's religion is very worldly.