cometaryorbit

I think he actually had zero charged gold to burn at the time, he'd used up all his healing from the fall at the end of the fight with the Wax and Wayne imitators. I believe his goldminds were completely empty - he ran out of healing with some minor injuries from the fall left.

Yeah in some ways, as crazy as it sounds, what they healed from was fairly limited in that there was still a mostly intact body with intact goldminds attached. The melting point of gold is pretty high (1948 F/1064 C) - TLR in a burning building shouldn't have gotten that hot. The most extreme thing we've seen on page is the Miles dynamite one; TLR being decapitated is probably worse, assuming it's not exaggerated through the centuries. He could have done it though -- *if* he'd started tapping before the head was fully disconnected. If I understand it correctly (far from guaranteed!) once he's tapping it's more an Investiture/soul/Spiritual thing than a Physical brain thing so the goldminds being attached to the headless body is good enough (the body would grow a new head, not the reverse). I don't think gold Compounding or Feruchemy* would save someone from any attack that destroyed the metalminds, and probably also not from any attack that blew the body apart sufficiently that the largest piece remaining was no longer in contact with metalminds. *I also don't think gold Compounding is inherently better healing than regular gold Feruchemy... just much harder to run out. A regular Bloodmaker with a big unkeyed goldmind like they found in BoM should be basically as hard to kill as Miles.

Yeah... it's interesting because on the one hand they'll be more motivated since Kelsier is already thinking about pushing for physical space travel, and the existence of other inhabited worlds will probably be common knowledge by then. But their nearest destination is the gas-giant moons. That's a big jump. They'll start with satellites of their own planet just like we did, surely... but after that? OTOH long missions will be easier for them if they have medallions granting bendalloy/cadmium Feruchemy, which (along with brass which we know exists in medallions form) pretty much solves life support. A Cadmium Misting would also be a huge advantage on long trips... the trip will take much less time from the travelers' perspective. They may not have gotten to the gas giants by Era 3, but I think space efforts will at least be mentioned. They'll almost surely have satellites by then (that was 50s for us) and quite possibly a small station (Skylab and the Salyut stations were around in the 70s, and Mir went up in the 80s).

I was baffled by this mention too. A FTL reference makes sense, I guess. But it does sound more like a teleport/Elsecalling.

The "population" doesnt really need to fight though once you have Radiants, if you move people into a defensible area. Radiants and squires should be more than enough to protect a relatively small area against a few thousand Fused (are there even a few thousand Fused total? 100 leaders, iirc... might be more like 500-1000 total), even backed up by Regals and warforms. Radiant losses just shouldn't need to be replaced very often, if you have the 4th ideals take point. They are *insanely* hard to kill; we haven't even seen 4th ideals working as a team yet (even a few). But the emotional point is good. I'd say the simple, strategically correct, answer is "you move to an Oathgate city or you're on your own - we won't be sending out Radiants" but Windrunner oaths probably wouldn't allow that. Perhaps that's why they didn't pursue this path, yeah. (I doubt there were hundreds of millions of humans alive in the later Desolations, though, given repeated 90%+ losses - and I don't think Roshar ever had a billion people or close to it. In the late Desolations, a million to a few million seems more reasonable imo. They might have got to 50 - 100 million or so with centuries of peace... the human ideal part of Roshar is not that large compared to Earth's, and they weren't that advanced. But the rest of this makes sense.)

Yeah healing from that would probably take a truly absurd amount of gold (far more than was available) if possible at all (if the goldminds get vaporized then even an endless store of health won't save the Feruchemist). Miles survived a stick or two of dynamite but this is a whole other scale. Wow, really? I thought ettmetal-water explosions were just chemical explosions boosted somewhat but nowhere near nuclear scale.

I think at least one of the Inquisitor weapons described in the first book basically is a macuahuitl or something very similar - multiple blades set along a piece of wood, not one axe head.

I think Soulcasting from the Cognitive is not an extreme what-if/edge case but genuinely a feature of Elsecaller powers. I don't think it's something they'd use terribly often since getting back to the Physical is hard, but I think it's genuinely a power they're supposed to have and not just a "well theoretically if they knew everything this would be possible". Bondsmith powers aren't terribly combat oriented, no, but we don't know enough about their limitations imo. Ishar's "the ground is now part of you" trick suggests they might be able to shut down others' powers. However IMO best bet on Roshar against a Fullborn isn't a Bondsmith, it's a Suppressor Fabrial like the one the Fused use early in RoW. It's an area effect, so the Fullborn can't dodge it with super speed - if they want to use super speed against you they'll get into the area and lose their power.

Right - that's why I suggest the obvious strategy is to move all humans to the vicinity of one of the Oathgate cities. Then there are no isolated villages and towns to be vulnerable, and there's no way for the enemy to get at normal people without confronting Radiants almost immediately. Kaladin is exceptionally super awesome, sure, but I do think Moash killing Leshwi without powers is very significant. Also, in the Herald-only (pre-Radiant) Desolations surely many Fused were killed by normal soldiers. I guess part of my issue is, if humanity survived with just 10 Heralds then why didn't the desolations become incredibly one sided once the Radiants appeared? The later Desolations were still huge threats. Yet there were presumably hundreds and possibly low thousands of Radiants, who are by 4th ideal each far harder to kill than a Herald. (Kalak died to thunderclasts repeatedly. Renarin laughs one off without Plate. Sure, that's probably Progression but I don't see them having much luck against Radiants with live Plate and full Stormlight healing.) The implication seems to be loss of infrastructure/technology as the Desolations came closer together... but with the "get everyone close to Oathgates" strategy its not clear you really need infrastructure. There's hardly a point in having regular humans fight then, and the logistic capabilities of Soulcasting are so utterly extreme that regular infrastructure becomes kind of meaningless very fast. IMO things make far more sense if Radiancy developed slowly, the early Radiants did not have the full powers (less advanced healing more like what a Honorblade gives, less efficient Surges, no Plate) as the spren were still perfecting the process. And maybe fewer spren were involved at the beginning? That way there would be time for an "arms race" where the Fused developed counters. Suppressor fabrials would have been an even huger deal if early Radiants didn't necessarily get 4th+ ideal bond strength to resist them, for example. The Feverstone Keep vision arguably implies that fully functional Radiant orders had most people in Plate, so what were the Stormlight draining weapons for? Maybe Plate was once rare or not yet invented... Even then, though, the last two or three Desolations probably had full powered Radiants and were still civilization breaking, so...

I'm going to do my standard "standing up for Well of Ascension" thing here. I can't say it's my favorite since it's the middle of a trilogy - my favorite is either TFE or BoM depending on whether I'm in a more serious or more pulp mood - but I love it because it does stuff which is rarely done, "after the villain loses, how do you deal with the aftermath", "building something that lasts and works is harder than killing the bad guy", and is realistically *messy* about it - people don't just instantly reject even a very evil system, if it's all they've ever known, and especially if the replacement doesn't inspire confidence. I like it primarily because too often in stories killing the main villain fixes everything. I actually don't mind Zane. I mean, I'd hate him if he were a real person, but I think as a character he represents something that needs to be in the book. The temptation to use Mistborn powers to just kill all your enemies, to say "why should we follow regular people's rules of society when we have the power"... Also, WoA is the only book where koloss are a threat through most of the book (they only turn enemies again at the end of HoA) and I love koloss as foes.

If we're discussing a broader definition of power, probably Ishar - he has Unchained Bondsmith powers and essentially defined the fate of two worlds, Ashyn and Roshar - or Rashek - arguably being the absolute ruler of 100 million people and controlling a vast koloss army should count as part of his power, in addition to his already super formidable Fullborn abilities. Rashek's a Sliver though... so probably Ishar. Most Invested non-Shard is probably the Stormfather, but he's also a Sliver. No idea whether Sibling/Nightwatcher or Rysn is more Invested. (Susebron is way up there too, but I think there's a WoB that a Dawnshard is more Invested than him.)

Yeah, I guess Bleeder just used it in short term bursts which *look* more impressive, but it's not really more power overall.

Oh they could easily be full for a Compounder, I was just talking about the comparison to normal Feruchemists and that "full" metalminds isn't the norm. Sorry. Not all Lezian's movements were accelerated, but the ribbon teleport was still very fast. It's trackable, but then Vin can track TLR's super speed in their final fight- she says he's much faster than even a full pewter flare, but definitely doesn't lose track of him. I agree speed gives the Fullborn a significant advantage, but not an auto-win. Sure Plate won't survive more than one hit, but one hit might be enough. Jasnah soulcasts people to death, and most metalminds seem to be less Invested than people's souls since they can be Pushed - soulcast his metalminds away and I think Jasnah, even with her Plate broken and dismissed, would have little trouble defeating a Mistborn. Division might destroy metalminds easily, though we have seen so little of that Surge we can't know. A Bondsmith's "now your Stormlight heals the ground instead of you" trick could probably nullify Feruchemy. (Information is an issue here... if the Radiant doesn't know enough to target metalminds, the Fullborn shouldn't necessarily know the Radiant's powers either.)

1. True, but... - So far the Unmade have a poor record vs Radiants. For those who have actually had confrontations... Re-shephir ran away very quickly after being confronted by Shallan; Yelig-nar Amaram got killed pretty fast, with a very unimpressive performance for someone with all Surges; Ashertmarn apparently retreated willingly, so that's not really evidence either way; Nergaoul got imprisoned (though that's Dalinar, so special case). Moelach doesnt seem to do anything but give Death Rattles. Sja-anat changed sides. So we have 2 poor performances and 4 unclear/special case, with no clear effectiveness vs Radiants. I grant the 3 unseen Unmade may have been far more capable, though - Ba-ado-Mishram was apparently a really big deal in the past, and Chemoarish's title 'Dustmother' could suggest major destructive power. - thunderclasts don't seem all that impressive vs Radiants, though they are awesome living siege weapons. Nightblood wasn't available in the past, but they don't have the mobility to deal with flying or Abrasion-using Radiants, and Renarin isn't really hurt much by a solid hit - and he didn't have Plate yet. - Regals and Midnight Essence are less powerful than Fused, they're going to be very little use vs trained Radiants. I don't think they can really use their very small quantity of Voidlight to heal, and against Radiants who actually had loyal Skybreakers and Dustbringers, not sure anyone who can't heal is effective. (Though some argue Division is touch only... I think that would make it useless, though, since Radiants have Blades; and Hoid talking to Jasnah in RoW implies mass-destruction use of Surges is a thing - IMO that's probably Division). Bringing Regals into the fight is probably a net loss for the Fused, since they're now giving the humans free gemstones (see below). - Unclear that Voidspren can do much physically. 2. This is genuinely possible, since Soulcasting food requires specific gem types. They'd never run out of gemstones in general, since singers have gemhearts and ancient humans harvested them (this is the source of the listeners' corpse taboo), which means using Regals and regular singers is probably a net loss to the Fused - theyre providing resources. But conceivably they could run out of emeralds and heliodors. Even then, though, I don't think its a clear win for the Fused, for two reasons: - The Radiants shouldn't need anything like their full forces to defend the Oathgate cities. I doubt there's enough Fused in existence to beat 200, or even 100, 4th ideal Radiants in a straight fight. (4th ideal Radiants with both Plate and Stormlight healing are incredibly hard to kill; Fused are not.) That leaves Radiants free to go hunt the Fused so they can't organize a siege well. Or to go hunt greatshells for more gems; before millennia of overhunting, they were probably not hard to find, especially for flyers. - Animals with gemhearts are ranched for gems on Roshar. Even with the need to maintain some farming and ranching (so not all humans are literally in the Oathgate cities themselves) the flight speed of Radiants with Gravitation is enough that I don't think any humans would ever have to be out of quick response range of Radiants. Especially with Progression boosted crop growth... you wont need much farmland. And with a double Lashing Windrunners are probably flying well over 100mph. (A diving human's terminal velocity on Earth is about 120mph; a double Basic Lashing is 1.4 g, but we don't have a good value for Roshar's air pressure.)

Well, charged metalminds, certainly. (Very few metalminds we see in the series are actually *full* - perhaps only the Bands when first found in BoM.) I'm sure a Fullborn would always have some charged metalminds on them - at least of the more commonly used, or more useful in emergency, metals. OTOH ... I think people overestimate the power of speed, personally, especially in the Cosmere context. Kaladin with his powers suppressed could beat teleporting Lezian. Allomancers can react to and stop arrows at 150+ mph and coins which are probably much faster. But also more generally, speed isn't everything ... cheetahs aren't invincible, and don't auto-win fights against slower animals (in fact, cheetahs generally back down from pretty much every other decent-sized predator, iirc), nor are they immune to being killed by humans. Big cats have much faster reflexes than humans do, but humans have killed them with blades etc. If it's an arena fight with a starting bell, sure, speed will win it for the Fullborn. But otherwise, speed isn't necessarily decisive.

The difference between external healing like Divine Breath fixing Susebron's tongue, vs internal healing like Sazed's Gold leaving him still an eunuch* or Kaladin's Stormlight not fixing his scars, is definitely interesting. There seem to be odd limits, too. I get that inborn things don't heal from internal effects, nor do old injuries that the person accepts... but it's not clear to me why Venli's mother's dementia(?) is healed by Stormlight but Teft's addiction to firemoss is not. Both are acquired damage, not inborn, surely? *I actually wonder if this is the original, out of world reason cosmere healing has the self-perception limit. If Feruchemists automatically healed old wounds, they'd stop being eunuchs and would have way more trouble hiding as stewards, especially if the healing happened young enough for their growth to be normal (rather than super tall with long limbs like Sazed).

True (though 5 spikes mean one Physical power is doubled.. could be steel or iron). I don't think Inquisitor trace-metal sight is a matter of power per se. From the WoA annotations, any Coinshot/Lurcher/Mistborn can learn to see this way - the PoV characters other than Marsh just don't know it's possible. There's a line somewhere (in AoL I think) that Ranette can identify metals by burning iron, so even short of full trace-metal sight, I think there's more to the blue lines of iron/steel than Vin or Wax got out of them. (But then, both Vin and Wax focused on fighting... as a gunsmith, Ranette would be more interested in specific metal properties.) I think Inquisitors kind of get it hacked in, so they can see quickly after being turned into Inquisitors rather than taking possibly years to learn to see again ... but I don't know that their sight is fundamentally better/more powerful than what a normal Allomancer could learn in theory.

Yeah it's probably roughly double speed... but double speed *plus greatly increased endurance* so over long distances a pewter drag will cover much more than double the distance (since without pewter someone couldn't run flat out that long). Otoh pewter dragging is dangerous.

Lift uses 'she' in RoW, yes, but I think that is just a PoV perspective thing. Vasher uses 'he' and Nightblood has, I think, passively accepted that (ie Nightblood doesn't understand what it means but doesn't object).

Well, what we saw Rashek do on-page is a tiny subset of what he could do. His on-page performance is impressive, but not overwhelming. He never demonstrates the truly extreme abilities he theoretically should have, such as the apparently supersonic speed Marasi uses the Bands for in BoM or building-wrecking physical strength with super-compounded pewter. He also never uses the metals that aren't general Allomantic knowledge in the Final Empire. What does he actually demonstrate? - He's essentially invulnerable until his bracers are gone... but then, he only survives mortal-scale things like spears (and, by rumor, being burned and being decapitated-- but these could be exaggerated). We don't see him survive large explosions (which could plausibly separate his arms / bracers from his body) or similar extreme events. - He uses f-steel (presumably) to move faster than "a full pewter flare", but not invisibly fast - Vin can track his super speed movement. Probably Bleeder is faster in SoS, though the different observers (Vin's perspective vs Wax's) and circumstances might make this less absolute than it seems. This speed is actually quite possibly less than a Mistborn using iron/steel flight (twice as fast as a galloping horse, Vin says early in her training in TFE - so probably freeway speeds, 60-80mph maybe). - He can push on metal inside the body, and even very slightly (it quivers) on stained glass (which probably has a noticeable metal content) - which is very powerful compared to a normal Allomancer, but weaker than what Wax does with the Bands. - He overpowers / manhandles Marsh as an Inquisitor. - He can pierce copperclouds with both Seeking and Soothing. - He uses Soothing at incredible power, affecting presumably at least a couple hundred thousand people. He also controlled a lot of koloss - probably all of them at times , though some seem to have been 'delegated' to Inquisitors at times. Ruin created more koloss in HoA, so it's not clear how many koloss there were in TLR's time, but probably at least high tens of thousands (Jastes' army in WoA is 20k and I don't think that was a majority of all koloss) and likely over 100k. [Elend controls tens of thousands of koloss in HoA, but koloss control is all-or-nothing, low effort once initiated, and so might not scale like Soothing humans. And Elend used duralumin to take control, though he didn't strictly *need* to.] - Lie detection... apparently a combination of tin-enhanced senses and centuries of experience. - Enhanced memory (f-copper). Have I missed anything? --- On-page Dalinar wouldn't beat on-page Rashek, but on-page Jasnah or Kaladin as of end of RoW actually might, depending on how much healing Rashek has in his bracers at the start of the fight vs how much a Shardblade wound takes to heal (and how quickly he can fix a Shardblade-dead arm: if it's not instantaneous, two Shardblade swipes, one to each arm, would be fatal since he's now disconnected from his metalminds). Kaladin beats a teleporting Fused without most of his powers early in RoW; if we're limiting Rashek to his observed on-page speed rather than his possible (Marasi in BoM) supersonic speed, I don't think that's enough speed to make Kaladin auto-lose, if we give him his full power back plus the living Plate he has by the end of RoW. -- I really wonder what would happen if he were exposed to a suppressor fabrial from RoW. It's area-effect, so speed alone won't prevent it working (it can't be dodged). Would it work on Allomancy/Feruchemy at all? If so, would it shut down external powers but not internal ones, or all powers? Would he count as high Ideal and thus be unable to resist the effect, or would the generally low-Investiture nature of Scadrial mean even a near-savant lerasium-strength Mistborn and Feruchemist counts as lower Ideal?

Actually Singers probably do. They're adult much faster than humans... maybe like 10? Venli is 14 in RoW I think and she's been an adult for a few years. On the other hand Singers are usually not in mateform... and while that's not the only fertile form it's not clear if all forms are fertile ("slaveform" definitely is and dull form likely is as kind of a default; not sure if any other form is known to be) and they definitely don't seem to reproduce much in other forms. So while Singers definitely have a shorter *generation time* than humans their overall population growth might not be higher.

The current storyline is balanced pretty well. What I find a plausibility issue is... back when there were Orders of well trained Radiants (the later Desolations) how did the Fused kill 90% of humanity? If I were in charge of the human side, I'd put all humans in the 11 Oathgate cities (Soulcasting can handle all logistics, you don't even really need to farm) and make the Fused come to us. there's nothing the Fused could do, pre-RoW discoveries, against a hundred Windrunners/Skybreakers/Stonewards in living Plate backed up by Dustbringer artillery and Edgedancer/Truthwatcher healing. And with everyone in the Oathgate cities, they can't avoid fighting those groups unless they give up the war entirely. For that matter, tell the Heralds to go retire. The Isolation doesn't provide a permanent solution. Rekilling the Fused to the point they all become useless does. Presumably eventually the Fused will lose horribly enough, often enough* that the Singers will stop serving them... if you've seen your gods helplessly slaughtered in dozens repeatedly, how long can you keep seeing them as gods? And how many Fused would stay functional after 50 deaths and rebirth in immediate succession? I think they'd eventually give up and make peace, unless they all went nonfunctional from repeated deaths first or Odium killed them for trying. *Moash killed Leshwi, a relatively competent Fused, without powers and with a mundane weapon. Kaladin killed the Pursuer the first time with most of his powers suppressed. An actually well-trained 4th ideal Windrunner in living Plate should be able to mow through Heavenly Ones trivially.

I am sure there are some people in any society, including Scadrial's, who are curious... but that tendency can be greatly encouraged, or suppressed, by culture. And Basin people do explore - but without much support, they don't get very far on a whole-continent scale. Or perhaps they do get far, but their discoveries aren't followed up on so remain rumors or travelers' tales rather than "accepted knowledge". There *are* stories brought back by explorers - we see that in the broadsheets. What there isn't is a push to *follow up on* discoveries. Curious explorer-types exist, but aren't supported by society (admired from a distance, yes, actually supported with infrastructure, no). Sure, greed was a huge factor historically, but accumulating wealth was often linked to conquest of or trade with people already there (or trade becoming exploitation becoming conquest as the exploring nation gained power). It's way, way harder when you have no one to give you hints as to where the valuable resources might be. Also, it's way, way easier to get pretty much everything in the Basin compared to 16th-18th century Spain or 17th-19th century Britain. That shifts the balance from greed encouraging expansion to discouraging it (expansion is not economically a win for Basin people, whereas it was for European nations of that era). Cultural momentum matters, too. After Columbus there was a competition between nations, everyone was exploring and that pushed their competitors to explore. But then, nothing came of the Norse discovery of the Americas centuries earlier. We don't necessarily know that BoM was the absolutely first contact (actually, the "Visitors from Other Worlds?" broadsheet bit shows that it wasn't). Any earlier contacts just didn't involve governments and didn't become general knowledge.

"Half compounding" (Allomantically burning previously-Feruchemically-charged steel despite no longer having the Steel Feruchemy spike) for Bleeder makes a lot of sense. Her use of speed is way more impressive than Sazed's.

Yeah, exactly... creating a fan name to replace what the books call "atium" would be confusing also. So I think atium or atium-electrum / pure atium is the best we have. ... or, actually, what about "native atium" for the Pits of Hathsin form? A "native" metal is one found in metallic form before refining...