cometaryorbit

Roshar could have no tectonic activity but still have a core structure like Earth's, probably. The plate tectonics we have are more a crust/upper mantle thing. But this is very poorly understood in RL: I don't think anyone 100% knows why Venus doesn't have plate tectonics despite its bulk composition and mass being so much like Earth's. (Arguably Venus' crust is too thick, but our geological data on Venus is not very good.) Basically this is poorly understood enough that Brandon could justify it either way even with real world science. Roshar isn't nearly old enough for magnetic field habitability issues to matter, anyway. -- I really don't think an Earthlike core is Feruchemically valid iron. It's basically an alloy of iron, nickel, and other stuff. It's much less pure iron than steel is.

Hmm. In general I tend to think the Dawnshard mural implies each Shard derives from only one Dawnshard. But I do like this, because your "boundaries" Shard IMO fits well with the idea that the last Shard is something like Wisdom or Prudence - "boundaries" might be Discernment, which is quite similar to Prudence. I would move a couple Shards around though. I'd flip Odium and Autonomy - Odium's whole Passion thing implies change, whereas (TLM) and the concept of Autonomy seems to be the closest to "pure Separation" anyway. I'd also put Devotion and Dominion under the uniting primary heading. My own model requires that the last Shard be a Create/Bestow one, which doesn't fit very well. The only Wisdom concept I can see for that is Inspiration (in the sense of divine inspiration - Bestowing wisdom/knowledge/truth/revelation on mortals) which isn't much like Prudence.

I doubt it, because if nothing moves no work is done - I think Vin pushing on the door to the Well with regular steel, when she's not moving (because she's braced against the wall and the door is too heavy) before she burns duralumin, is still putting out force.

Actually, I believe Rysn is more Invested than even Susebron. She can't really use that power though - and I don't know what would happen if she drew Nightblood, since "Dawnshards self-protect". Yeah, TLR with just metals/metalminds would burn out pretty fast. The Well of Ascension itself is a major chunk of Shard power, even more Investiture than a "normal" perpendicularity, so would surely send Nightblood into satisfied / 'food coma' mode before he could eat it all.

Also, Ishar vs Dalinar I think is a case of both people having comparable Investiture (both are drawing on the remnants of Honor) where say stealing a full Shard wouldn't be. And... I don't know how broadly that scene can be extrapolated because there's a sort of appropriateness to what Ishar was trying to steal (bond to Stormfather + "destiny" as champion). Sure he's Herald-insane now, but he's the Bondsmith Herald and was once kind of the spiritual leader of Honor's forces, so both Connections are actually kind of appropriate for him (Herald-madness aside). So I don't think we can necessarily assume that Ishar or Dalinar could steal/build completely unsuitable Connections (like making a plant the champion or bonding the Stormfather to a chull). I'm not even sure Ishar could steal spren bonds to spren he doesn't have a link to (most non-Bondsmith spren) like say Timbre. EDIT: I'm also not sure what would happen if the "link to ground" trick was tried with other forms of Investiture. Stormlight is both relatively transient, not discrete like Breath, and Stormlight healing is kind of "automatic". Stormlight goes kinetic very easily; Breaths or Feruchemical metalminds need Intent for that. So I am not sure what would happen if Ishar linked Azure/Vivenna to the ground. I see at least four possibilities, and no way to choose between them: 1) it's similar to Stormlight, and the Breaths flow to the ground: but because Breaths are discrete, some proportion (probably nearly all because the continent is vastly larger than Vivenna, but possibly half) end up held by the ground, with any remnant held by Vivenna 2) since Breaths don't become kinetic without Command, they don't flow; both Vivenna and the ground now count as holding the *same* set of Breaths; since the ground can't Command them, effectively nothing changes (Vivenna still controls them). This would be equivalent to the WoB about using Forgery to make yourself bonded to a Shardblade someone else is already bonded to: the Shardblade thinks it's bonded to both people. 3) same as above, except the Breaths also being held by the ground interferes with Vivenna's ability to Command them (so Vivenna can't Awaken but presumably still gets passive Heightenings) 4) nothing happens because Breaths are too stuck to Vivenna's Physical self, for the same reason you possibly can't steal Breath with Hemalurgy (WoBs disagree on this though iirc) I don't think Ishar could steal Breath and use it for himself - Breath is Identity keyed, and control of Connection won't get around that (they're separate Spiritual properties). Ishar might be able to keep someone else from using Breath (unless 2 or 4 is true), but not get it for himself. Similarly for Feruchemical metalminds (that aren't unkeyed or unsealed) - they are Identity keyed not Connection based.

Almost, but not quite. In a sense, it's the reverse situation: Mistwraiths are Physical biological lifeforms, but the spike does connect them better to their own Cognitive Aspect. Mistwraiths' problem is a blockage between Physical and Cognitive. NinjaMeTimbers How intelligent is a mistwraith? Could you raise and train mistwraiths like dogs or horses, controlling what forms they take by the bones you give them? Would you be able to train yourself a horsewraith steed by giving it only the bones of a horse? Brandon Sanderson This is feasible. One thing to keep in mind is that mistwraiths are people who have a blockage between the Physical and the Cognitive Realm, messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it... 17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 27, 2012)

Yeah. I think there are basically three steps: 1) strength of the Push itself, which is based on the fundamental strength of the Allomancer (Elend > Vin > normal Era 1 strength > normal Era 2 strength) and modified by burn rate ( duralumin > flaring > normal) 2) "effectiveness"/efficiency of the Push: if the metal object is too far away or too small, not all the force the Push *could* apply will actually be applied. 3) weight (presumably actually mass): Given a certain force from steps 2 and 3, weight determines who/what moves and how much. I think being braced affects both 2 and 3. Obviously if Vin is braced against a city wall she won't move because the Push is trying to move not only her mass but the entire mass of the city wall (step 3). But it *also* seems like a coin braced against a wall or the ground is a better anchor (higher Push effectiveness - step 2) than a free-flying coin. When Vin and Kelsier have their early training Pushing match, Kelsier is still able to win because of his greater mass (step 3). But he feels much more force than he was expecting, feels beat up afterward, because Vin's fundamental strength (step 1) is more than he was expecting. That greater force is applied to both of them, but it moves Vin more (but it still pummels Kelsier, his body still has to take the strain of being an anchor for it - and presumably his somewhat lesser Allomantic strength means he gets less pewter boost for that than Vin).

I imagine "Harmony's quest for Truth" refers to Sazed's period of doubt researching all the religions in HoA before finding out from TenSoon about the kandra/Terris religion.

Per the Taldain System essay in AU, Sand Masters actually hold "very small amounts" of Investiture. So they don't last long at all. It's probably like a normal Nalthis resident picking up Nightblood. Elantrians... their inherent Investiture isn't enough, "Nightblood would just eat their soul". They could feed Nightblood briefly with an Aon, but the Aon would get destroyed "pretty quickly". Two 2017 WoBs on this spoilered for length. Normal Radiant with spheres... well, we see this briefly in RoW. I think you run low on spheres pretty fast, but Nightblood is usable. Lord Ruler or Bands of Mourning... Burning metals and tapping metalminds would work for a little while. Susebron with >50,000 Breaths... quite a while. I think Vasher only has hundreds at the end of Warbreaker. However, Nightblood's consumption rate accelerates, so even he will be in trouble if he leaves the sword drawn too long. Vin with full mist input end of HoA (not just limited mist burning at end of TFE) is probably safe. At that point she was Ascending to the full Shard of Preservation, and Nightblood cannot eat an entire Shard all at once. Eventually he'd hit 'food coma' mode. (Post-RoW 2020 WoB) Other magic systems you didn't mention... I don't think Aviar bonded people get any kinetic Investiture flowing through them (the bird is using the power), so they're dead. Forgery doesn't use much Investiture so they're probably worse off than Elantrians - a soulstamp gets eaten really fast and then their soul. Dakhor... presumably their bone sigils would get eaten like Aons, which is probably super unpleasant (then their soul goes).

Re banishing the Everstorm, there's probably power limits (Investiture resists Investiture, etc). I don't think when Odium appeared to Dalinar, Dalinar could have just touched him and stolen the Shard. Also, that might not work because it's touch based, and I don't think they can just *destroy* Connections. If Dalinar replaced the Everstorm's Connection to Roshar with something else he can touch... well all those things are still on Roshar. (Also, Physical location probably isn't defined by Spiritual Connection anyway.) Bondsmiths can do Surge synergy stuff with all Orders, sure. That doesn't mean they get the actual resonances of the other Orders. I don't think Dalinar will get photographic memory just because he makes maps with Shallan, or extra-strong squires from Kaladin. (Bondsmiths don't even get squires with actual powers, do they?)

Yeah. Not everything is Connection. It's extremely important, but there are other properties even in the Spiritual. Bondsmiths don't, IMO, have any special power over Identity, or over Investiture (beyond pulling Light from the Spiritual). I don't think they can blank Identity like Aluminum Feruchemy or Leech Investiture like Chromium Allomancy. It's not a wild card that gives them *all* Spiritual effects. And their control over Connection may be... one-way in a sense. They're Bond *Smiths*. They can create or rebuild or strengthen Connections, or transfer existing Connections (Ishar trying to steal Dalinar's), but can they break Connections? I don't think a Bondsmith could break a Splinter into multiple Splinters, for example, though they probably could form smaller Splinters into a larger one. I think a Bondsmith also has to have some way to establish a Connection. I don't think Ishar could just forcibly create a Nahel bond to the Nightwatcher unless he was actually *there* in the Valley and could touch the Nightwatcher, though he could steal Dalinar's bond to the Stormfather by touching Dalinar. I doubt Dalinar could just turn Stormlight into Whimsy's Investiture by changing its Connection unless he had some link to Whimsy to work with.

Weight vs weight determines who/what moves. But the force seems to be based on Allomantic strength, burn rate (normal / flaring / duralumin), and anchor quality (mass of metal / distance to object / etc.) Duralumin steel gives a burst of increased force. If Vin had just been braced against the wall burning normal steel and pewter, no duralumin, probably nothing would have happened (the force wouldn't be sufficient either to open the door or crush her against the wall, so the metal gets used up but nothing moves). Similarly when one of Vin's early uses of duralumin steel + pewter sends horses flying by their horseshoes... without duralumin the horses would probably have stumbled but not much more. F-iron may help Wax for the same reason suddenly weighing tons doesn't break all his bones. It gives enough structural strength the increased weight isn't harmful, though not muscular strength (that's pewter).

Hmm, ok, that is possible yeah. And probably means we can avoid needing really extremely close (Mercury like) distances. I still think to have the sun intensity rapidly fatal to humans you have to assume *both* that Scadrial is at least as close to the sun as Venus, and that Vin pushing the planet has messed up the tilt enough that Luthadel is now effectively in a relatively low latitude (neither by itself would be enough: a Scotland-like latitude, say, at Venus' distance from the sun wouldn't be nearly bad enough; neither would an equatorial latitude at 0.8-0.9 AU). But yeah, there will probably never be a real answer. (I think this is a case of Era 1 being written before Brandon had his full team to work out these details.)

I disagree. When Vin removes the ash at the end of HoA, trees are bursting into flame. And it's only been a few hours, so there hasn't been time for the atmosphere to reach equilibrium with the new heat input (and hasn't been time for trees to die and fully dehydrate either). So that's got to be mostly direct solar heat input. (Sazed's ascension scene also sounds like he'd be killed quickly by the noon intensity if he weren't protected by touching the Shards - IMO it implies something much quicker than just heatstroke or severe sunburn.) I actually think that implies much more insolation than you'd realistically get at Venus's distance from the sun - especially since while we don't know what Vin did to Scadrial's axis orientation when she rotated the planet, it's unlikely that it just randomly ended up with the sun directly overhead at Luthadel. At Venus' distance, the maximum insolation they'd get would be about double tropical noon Earth levels - maybe 2000 Watts per square meter - or if you assume that Vin didn't just clear the ash from the atmosphere but made it *unnaturally* transparent, it could be more, but still no more than 2500 Watts per square meter (about what you'd get with zero atmosphere). But Luthadel wouldn't actually see those energy levels unless it were either exactly on the equator, or it were in the tropics and Vin happened to mess up the tilt so that particular day was the highest sun for that location. (If the tilt was not changed, and so Luthadel remained at the high-but-not-arctic latitude it presumably was at before, outside midsummer it could get *less solar energy* at Venus' distance from the sun than an equatorial location on Earth gets at equinox noon.) I think the description actually fits a Mercury-like distance or worse, but there's no way to make that compatible with even temporary habitability. So I think 0.6 AU or so is the most reasonable compromise.

Doesn't work that way, for two reasons: 200 F isn't 25% of 800 F; that kind of calculation needs absolute temperature. More importantly, Mercury has super long day length and no atmosphere/ocean to distribute heat. One would need to compare *average* temperatures, and Mercury's average temp is nowhere near 800 F (the night side is very cold). The Moon has the same solar input Earth does (before atmospheric effects) and it has dayside temperatures hotter than boiling (something like 250 F). I will have to see if I can find where I saw the 93 F number.

Well, Plate is too Invested to Push on. Besides that, sending Radiants in Plate flying would probably be super bad news without pewter, yeah. Dead plate is like 1400lb and when Vin sends horses flying by their horseshoes in WoA she has duralumin pewter to keep it from crushing her. That's also duralumin boosted steel. Wax's Push strength is also limited - with super high weight he can make sure all the force moves the other object, but it shouldn't give him unbounded Push strength.

The mountain sized ironmind might work... but might not. If you're tapping and not Duralumin burning, then you're dealing with diminishing returns. Diminishing returns get really bad at much lower levels. Wax spends most of his life at 75% weight or so, but he taps months of weight in a second to become heavier than a building and break through thick floors. Without diminishing returns he could do it with a day's worth. (If Wax is 160lb he's storing 40lb most of the time. If he stores for 15 hours = 54,000 seconds he could tap 2,160,000 lb = 1080 tons for 1 second, without diminishing returns.) So he's already probably losing 98-99% of it at this level. If we're 20+ orders of magnitude beyond this ...I think the diminishing returns will just make it impossible in practice. Or at least make the necessary metalmind larger than Mt Everest (which is basically the same as 'impossible in practice'). I agree that Marasi is going more like Mach 1. I just meant that I don't think you could hit the Mach 10,000 / 1% of lightspeed range.

It might also improve efficiency. You might get more out of duralumin burning a metalmind than you would by burning the metalmind normally and storing the attribute, then tapping it all at once (since that would be subject to diminishing returns for tapping at high rates). It's probably pretty niche though; the better controllability of tapping is likely usually worth much more than extra power, since a Compounder usually has enough. Fortune is intuitive future sight, the same mechanism Hoid uses to know where he needs to be (but not necessarily why). It's basically incredibly accurate hunches / "my spider sense is tingling" / "I feel a disturbance in the Force". It's not the Ringworld luck effect changing the world around the person (Feruchemy is inherently internal.) Duralumin + compounded Iron black hole won't work. Duralumin just burns all the metal at once; it isn't actually *extra* Investiture compared to burning the same mass of metal via regular Allomancy, just compressed in time. There's no way to eat enough charged iron to become a black hole - that metalmind wouldn't fit in a stomach. In fact, a battleship might not be enough iron. Turning a human into a black hole is a ridiculous amount of mass. If the Compounder can scrunch down enough to fit in a 30 cm radius (so a 60 cm = 2' diameter sphere) the mass needed to be a black hole is about 34 times the mass of Earth. Compounders are still limited by how much will fit in their metalminds / how much metal they can fit in their stomach. I would expect the same limit would prevent relativistic speeds with f-Steel; Marasi is probably breaking the sound barrier- very briefly - in BoM, but even 1% of light speed is nearly 10,000 times Mach 1. I think doing much more than what Marasi does in BoM is probably thoroughly impractical. Diminishing returns will eat the Compounder's lunch, so probably the only way to get much faster would be with a Duralumin burning metalmind which is effectively uncontrollable. (Even that wouldn't get you relativity speeds. Just not enough room in the stomach.)

Anti-investiture might be purely artificial, so if it was only invented in RoW, it probably didn't exist back then. The potential to create it would have, but likely none was actually made.

Shardic power can do it - Sazed repairs Spook's savantism at the end of HoA. Otherwise... probably not, at least without knowledge way beyond what anyone has. Hemalurgy principles might get there someday, but Hemalurgy as we know it is inherently Ruinous. Perhaps there'd be an Era 4 way to do it with multiple magic systems and multiple worlds' knowledge interacting.

Yeah, @alder24 is right - Goldilocks zone is not really relevant here, because 1024 years is nothing on an astronomical time scale. Venus's extreme temperature is essentially *all* due to its atmosphere, yes. If Venus had Earth's atmosphere, its average surface temperature would be in the 90s F, so its polar regions would be quite habitable. Era 1 Scadrial is worse off than that - ash shielding antigreenhouse effect, or something else special in the South, is needed to keep even small regions habitable. The issue is that an Earthlike atmosphere/ocean system isn't stable at Venus distance from the Sun. But Era 1 Scadrial doesn't have to be *stable* because it doesn't last over geological/astronomical time scales. The intensity of the sunlight at the end of HoA is quite extreme. More than Venus distance intensity, I'd think - 2x sun intensity won't burst living trees into flame in a few hours. (Especially as Luthadel is at a rather high latitude - 2x Earth intensity there is probably not much more than equatorial noon on Earth.) Even if Vin pushing the planet had changed the axial tilt, which is likely, I think that's more than double the max intensity you can get on Earth. Definitely outside the habitable zone.

Only ones I had ethical issues on are emotional Allomancy. I can *sort of* see Breeze's argument, but it's a much more dangerous temptation in a world like modern Earth where people don't believe the powers exist. Breeze's comparison to influence by beauty or money might hold on Scadrial where people are aware emotional Allomancy is possible (though I'm not entirely convinced even there). But on Earth where people aren't aware of the possibility, it's definitely[/i] imo not on the same level as influence by beauty or money which people are aware of and thus able to adjust for. For all the others, yeah, I think they're perfectly ethical if used responsibly. If I decided not to try to keep the powers secret, yeah, it would be fine. If secrecy was a goal, though, I'd have to find excuses why I wanted weird specific alloys like 91% tin / 9% lead. Those probably aren't standard, so I'd need to find someone who did metalwork on a small batch level, probably. And I'm not sure I could develop the artistic skills I'd need to cover it up as being an artisan jewelry maker -- I'm really not a hands on person. With every metal? Including lerasium, so I can make at least one other person Mistborn? Hmmm. - Compound enough gold to be basically unkillable. - put one or more charged goldminds inside my body so I can't lose my healing source - just for fun, buy some fantasy replica metal items and use them as metalminds so I can have actually magical versions. (One Ring replica goldmind, etc.) - Go to a con and beg Brandon to explain how medallions are made. If there turns out to be a non Hemalurgy way to make them, make some. Ability to hand out medallions would be really awesome - I could Compound to make gold medallions which people could use to heal incurable diseases, or cadmium medallions for life support for astronauts and deep-sea divers, etc. Beyond the humanitarian benefits, if I could make an useful product like that rather than it just being *my* superpowers, it'd be a lot safer to reveal my abilities (and selling medallions would be an income source to replenish my supply of the expensive metals). - If medallions aren't possible, I'd keep the lerasium beads in reserve so that I could give a couple other people powers if needed. (Depends how much lerasium I had access to. If I had a dozen beads or more, it might be safer to reveal what's one sense, discovery wouldn't maybe be *that* much of a risk - with full Fullborn powers and all metals, I probablywouldn't really be in danger or able to be captured - but I don't want to spend my life fleeing and I don't want to conquer ) (Hilariously, Brandon and the Dragonsteel team would be probably the safest people in the world to reveal the powers too, because any mention of it would be taken as promotion of the series, lol.) -- A modern military would probably, eventually, beat a Fullborn, or at least leave them hunted and isolated*, but it would be far from easy. I agree that a sufficiently big explosion (separating the metalminds from the largest remaining piece of body) would be fatal even to a Gold Compounder, but that probably means a lot of collateral damage and no guarantee of actually catching them in the explosion. One of the big questions is how powerful Fortune Compounding would be. It could potentially keep the person from getting into a position where they could be caught in an explosion or captured. Even if they can't see the missile coming, Fortune can. (I definitely don't think modern AI prediction capabilities could beat sufficient Fortune - Fortune accesses the future / Spiritual Realm and so doesn't have to rely on information that's knowable by normal means.) *Someone Compounding Wakefulness, Speed, and Fortune would probably be impossible to catch, but they could also never rest.

Post atium electrum retcon, I'm not sure the magical properties correspond.. Physical ones do, though - harmonium is an alkali metal compared to cesium by WoB and atium is a platinum group metal and specifically designed based on platinum by WoB. Neither cesium nor platinum are Allomantic metals, so I think the correspondence is just physical. Though not 100%, because from TLM melting points are absurdly high. (Which makes me wonder how malatium was made with Era 1 technology.)

Hmmm, ok, good point. They would likely be recreated relatively soon (compared to Stormlight/Era 2 time period), but if this is as of the end of the book (and it kind of needs to be since we don't know about advancements later) yeah it's gone.

Under the Armed Forces section for Hallandren, their Lifeless army should be mentioned. I believe it's four units of 10,000 = 40,000 total.