cometaryorbit

Yeah, we're told that even with Cognitive aspects of objects, "how it sees itself" matters - for a fully sapient being surely self-perception would make much more of a difference. Perhaps like how self-perception shapes and limits Cosmere magical healing? Hmmm, I wonder if healing some Spiritual or Cognitive trauma of repeated deaths is why dying more often makes the Fused worse - they're restored each time to their self-image, not exactly how they were before, so there's a "copy of a copy" degradation effect. So would a Cognitive Shadow that got Shardbladed a lot get worse faster? Does a Shardblade death accelerate Fused madness more than a Physical-injury-only death? Do non fatal Shardblade wounds make Fused worse? Spiritual damage can accelerate Fused madness - Raboniel says she'd return mad after her anti-voidlight wound - but that may be because they can't heal that?

True. I think the confusing part is that they did end up ok economically long term - the original problem was her father being injured and unable to work, and he eventually recovered and could make money again. I also wonder if Jewels sees it as less significant since she was never an adult with a Breath. If maturity comes with ... more of a filter, everyday life affecting you less intensely?... maybe people who sold their Breath in childhood might in retrospect attribute some of the lost vibrancy of perception to that, especially if they don't want to see themselves as lessened.

Yeah... I kind of get the impression that the Thrill as the Alethi's "secret edge" is more of a morale thing. Not that it makes them better fighters, in the sense of skill, or physical strength (except in an "adrenaline rush" kind of way) - but it makes them less likely to hesitate, reduces fear, increases will to fight despite losses. Which can make a huge difference on a large scale of armies etc., but I don't think it helps much in the case of people like Szeth and Dalinar who we can assume are totally committed to the fight already and too well trained to hesitate. I think the Thrill is basically an emotional effect, like Ashertmarn's "revelry" effect, not actually giving powers; it's probably much like (Mistborn)

I think there might also be a protective effect of being closer to the person you were pre-Shadow... more complete, kind of? The way the Fused are discussed, it sounds to me like they're kind of ... eroding, losing the details of their personality, the things that make them fully people. They start to transition from "a person who does X a lot" to "the literal personification of X and nothing else" (eg the comments in RoW about how Lezian has become a spren of vengeance, doing his Pursuer thing even when it's counterproductive). There seem to be degrees of it - Raboniel isn't really sane but is a full personality, Lezian is significantly worse and more mono focused, and Venli meets Fused who aren't functional at all. So maybe if you're still a full complex personality, perception effects can mess around with the edges but not really get to the core of who you are. But the more you become just one thing, the more easily you lose that. And I think it's also not just cultural perception but your own perception- so it can become a feedback loop. Lezian defining himself as "The Pursuer" made him more mono-focused on that, and the more he focused on it the more he defined himself that way, etc. That might be why it still happens to the Fused though there aren't cultural memories of them as individuals, only vague legends of "Voidbringers" among humans or abandoned "gods" among the listeners.

I don't think the 'one bead of atium can reverse age back to your youth' quote is very useful in comparing models of compounding - Allomantic metals have very different "power levels" and burn rates. There's no clear measure we have of how much Investiture it takes to reverse age with Atium compounding vs. push/pull on metals with Iron/Steel or hear Investiture with bronze - with some things like an Ironpull/Steelpush or Pewter strength enhancement you could come up with an energy equivalent in real world physics terms, but reversing age, sensing Investiture, etc. not so much. I mean in RL physics to dilate time as much as you see from bendalloy/cadmium you'd need near black hole gravity wells or near light speeds, but I don't think those Allomancers are dealing with planet breaking levels of Investiture. And atium is a god metal anyway and contains its own power, perhaps atium compounding gives you both Preservation Investiture based on your allomantic strength plus the Ruin Investiture in the metal itself.

While I see the "Spider sense" connection with Chromium, I think Scadrial's Spiderman really needs A-iron (for swinging on buildings). Which probably means either F-pewter, F-steel, or F-gold is needed to do the physical action hero stuff. (Really A-iron + A-pewter would be the best fit but that takes either medallions or Hemalurgy).

That would be cool, but how would he train the horse to store weight?

Yes, if Dalinar were Radiant that would change it radically- Radiant healing would give him a chance to survive Shardblade hits, which Honorblade healing doesn't; that (plus Adhesion and Gavilar's help) could make the difference.

But can you combine aluminum with anti-voidlight (or any Light)? I agree the silver needs to be doing *something* but I also agree with @Nameless that it can't be as simple as just using a silver weapon - there were thousands of years with neither Heralds nor Fused figuring out how to perma kill the other. If silver by itself (without some kind of added Investiture or something) hurt non-Threnodite Cognitive Shadows, I think either Fused or Heralds would notice when they happened to touch some silver, and then using it as a weapon would be an obvious thought

Allomancy does work on metalminds - both Marsh in Era 1 and Wax in Era 2 Steelpush on them. Wax mentions that it's harder, but it still works. A metalmind generally has less Investiture than a human being (since it takes absurd Allomantic strength to push on metals in the body) and Jasnah can Soulcast human beings. Division is more questionable since we haven't seen it on page doing anything but burning a symbol into wood, but I don't think it would necessarily even have to affect the metalminds directly - bathing the Compounder in flames hot enough to melt away/vaporize their metalminds would work.

The Stormfather says with regards to the Fused "each rebirth further injures their minds". He also refers to the Heralds' souls being "worn thin" by torture. I think Vasher is sane mostly because hes never undergone anything like the Fused/Herald cycle. I think that perception likely influences *how* the Heralds' madness manifests (twisted versions of their Divine Attributes), spren-style, but isn't the *cause* of it happening in the first place (or at least not the primary cause). The Fused aren't individually remembered by the living, so no clear source of perception effects, but they still are mostly mad. Vasher and Kelsier are also way younger. The Fused and thus presumably the Heralds are 7000 Rosharan years (~7700 standard years) old. Kelsier is about 383 as of AOL (38 at death + about 4 years to the Catacendre + 341 years post Catacendre). RoW is a couple years before maybe? So 380 ish. Vasher is maybe 500ish (very roughly, but definitely well under a thousand; there's 600 years from the First Returned to Warbreaker + "a few generations" from Warbreaker to RoW, so absolute upper end would be like 700-750).

Yelig-nar as Roshar's Fullborn equivalent is an interesting idea. Surgebinding (and Light based healing) power/efficiency levels seem to vary wildly* - Amaram's poor performance might not have been just inexperience, perhaps Yelig-nar Surge use is inefficient. But if it was experience, then that could be potentially super powerful. There's still no direct Compounding equivalent though. OTOH Compounding is still metal dependent, so Soulcasting or Division can destroy their metalminds... IMO the big question is what's needed to access the hinted-at much higher levels of Surge power for non Bondsmiths (eg Hoids comment to Jasnah about blowing up armies). *Fused Voidlight healing, and Honorblade Stormlight healing, are much worse than high ideal Radiant Stormlight healing. And low Ideal Radiants have much less impressive healing.

I think that this is actually used in Hallandren, there's a reference to renting Lifeless from the Hallandren government to clear land for farming (When Vivenna and the mercenaries are making all those contacts...) So they are sometimes used for non-military purposes. However I think large groups of Lifeless in Hallandren are generally controlled by the government. (I am not sure if there are legal limits, or if it's just that rich individuals prefer to use Breath to prolong their life/boost their health.)

Will Death and Faxes be released as an ebook / non audio eventually?

Thank you!

I thought this topic would be about whether a Feruchemist with Breath could store life sense in a tinmind... Also, maybe this thread should be in Cosmere Discussion.

Honor raved that Surgebinding would destroy Roshar. I think "Surgebinders will cause a new Desolation" was Ishar's crazy interpretation of that-- he probably doesn't want to remember what he caused on Ashyn, especially now that he sees himself as a god. And as a Herald a return of the Desolation cycle & associated torture would be his primary fear.

Well sure most of the Singers currently disagree. But it seems to me that the living (non-Fused) Singers are being scammed by the Fused. The Fused literally require the sacrifice of Singer lives to live themselves, and they're mostly insane. They say they're fighting for the Singers to get their own back, but how plausible is it that the Fused (if they won) would actually let the Singers live free, vs being under the sway of arbitrary mostly insane god-kings? A very few like Leshwi maybe, but they are an extreme minority among the Fused. Only because they still believe the Fused are fighting for them. But it's not really a victory for the average Singers, in the sense of them gaining anything by it. I can't see life under the Fused being better for the average (non-Regal) living Singer than what, say, Dalinar could offer them. There are Singer Radiants now, the situation is totally different from when every human thought parshmen were just zombies. And absent Odium the Singers could have their own nation without need to fight. There is a very large part of eastern Roshar which is unclaimed by human nations, far far larger than the Shattered Plains area inhabited by the Parshendi.

That's true, but from that scene in OB I think there may be two levels. Note that Ivory does think that Jasnah is rational in a way other humans aren't. And I think bonded spren generally have a very clear view of their Radiant's mentality. She's clearly not actually emotionless, but I think she really is much more 'rational' than other people (in the sense that she doesn't generally *act* from emotion, though she totally feels it) and much more able to think outside her upbringing and cultural biases and 'everybody assumes X is true'. I think her own fear of irrationality is combined with (or leading to) a degree of 'impostor syndrome'. But then on top of that she intentionally presents an emotionless/hyper rational facade, saying the things that no one else will (eg "let's just kill all the Heralds!") Which probably contributes to the self doubt/fear of irrationality/impostor syndrome since she's very consciously acting more emotionless than she really is.

IiRC it would take a crazy amount of health to actually restore a spiked out power, more likely he'd heal to a viable living state but without the power- kind of a scarred soul.

Yes, it's said they found a way to allow others to be weak while they gain the benefit- ie storing in identityless metalminds. They can have up to 3 spikes without Harmony interference, which is enough for Gold Compounding plus Aluminum Identity storage even with no starting/natural powers. (Gold Allomancy, Gold Feruchemy, Aluminum Feruchemy)

I agree that compounding isn't as limitless as people sometimes say. Its still limited by quantity of metal to burn, and size of metalminds to store in. Basically compounding means you can have 100% full metalminds all the time as long as you have enough of the right metal to burn. Which is really powerful- you can store a lot in a fairly small metalmind, we see Wax becoming briefly heavier than a building- but far from unlimited. No Fullborn becoming black holes through weight compounding or reaching relativistic speeds through speed compounding. Marasi briefly goes supersonic with the Bands, it seems, but that's likely near a practical upper limit. I don't know whether the tenfold multiplication of attribute we see quoted in-world is literally true or just a rough estimate; probably the latter, as you say the amount of attribute the compounder gets should be determined byAllomantic strength. However if the metalmind is too low charge I think they only get the compounding effect briefly, then the metal is no longer a metalmind and the regular allomantic effect happens.

Oh, ok. Well that idea is out... Then I guess fabrials are only 10 based through the gemstones? There are surely more than 10 types of usable spren...

Theres WoB that there really are 16 natural (non-god) metals in the Metallic Arts. So no allomantic silver. I think there are more than 16 god metals anyway: each kind of Shardblade could be considered a different alloy of tanavastium(?) and koravarium(?). Now maybe only one of those will be Allomantically valid, but they all could be. Connection work might be needed to use non Scadrian god metals in Allomancy though. Although (Era 2) Also (Mistborn)

I think Moash was arguably justified in WoR, depending on one's personal political philosophy on when violently removing a bad ruler is warranted. But by RoW definitely evil. After Elhokar is dead, basically everything he originally was fighting for is achieved (Elhokar is dead and replaced by Jasnah, who is working to remove slavery and the arbitrary power of the Alethi monarchy). So there's no reason to continue on that path. Plus Odium is the kind of being that turns originally good causes into pointless destructive conflict - the Fused were once defending themselves justly but are now body-stealers living off the death of those they are supposedly fighting for. So I think this is kind of an One Ring situation- Odium's help is sufficiently corrupting that no cause justifies accepting it, since it will turn to evil however good the original intentions were. -- Another big difference between Moash and Kelsier is that we see in Secret History that Helping the Singers would be justified, helping the Fused (who are exploiting the Singers just as much as the humans ever did, literally consuming their lives to stay alive) not so much.