cometaryorbit

I think anyone with a Dawnshard plus an Invested Art to boost with it would be more powerful than anyone mentioned so far - maybe even more powerful in some ways than a Shard given that the Dawnshards were used in the Shattering. But we haven't seen anyone like that yet. Rysn doesn't have an Invested Art yet and was told not to bond a spren.

For characters we've seen using their powers on page / have a good idea of their power set (thus excluding reborn Kelsier as we don't really know what he has now), but including characters who are dead as of the newest books: 1. Highest Investiture (non-Shard): probably the Stormfather (by WoB probably even more Invested than Nightblood). 2. Greatest combat power: probably either TLR or Marsh (end of HoA and after) - Fullborn abilities or nearly so plus access to atium. TLR had more powers, but Marsh probably had all the combat relevant ones and might have a deadlier mindset, TLR didnt take fighting seriously 3. Largest world changing implications (non-Shard): Probably Ishar so far. Dalinars bondsmith powers, as a true Radiant, are theoretically more efficient than the Honorblade version, but he has way less knowledge/experience than Ishar. 4. Greatest political power: hmm. Probably the Lord Ruler given how absolute & long lasting his rule was (though he did eventually get overthrown). Ashravan (post healing) could rule a larger population but doesn't have the both god and secular monarch, immortal ruler, thing. His political *skills* were not good, but *power* absolutely.

I wonder what the mechanism of Returned body change is anyway. Is it a Divine Breath thing or a Cognitive Shadow thing? Hmm the Royal Locks color change implies it's probably a Divine Breath thing since Idrian royals are regular humans with a Divine Breath 'fragment'* not Shadows. *and I still want to know what that means since Divine Breath is used up all at once when used to heal... and regular Breaths don't seem to be divisible... does reproduction weaken a Returned's Divine Breath by carving off a fragment of Investiture?

What doesn't strike me as clear yet is whether Cognitive Shadows normally need bodies to use Invested Arts, or whether (Mistborn)

That's possible, but it seems like the "formal" names use Sea rather than Ocean (Verdant Sea, Crimson Sea, Midnight Sea) which can often imply a more bounded body of water, either inland like the Caspian Sea or connected by a narrow passage like the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Not that the naming of these things is at all consistent in RL nomenclature... why does the Salton Sea in California get to be a Sea while the Great Salt Lake in Utah doesn't? I am pretty sure that a non-equatorial geostationary orbit is impossible in RL without some major constant external force.

There have got to be limits to how dramatic a change is possible without more Investiture input, IMO. And it's probably impossible to think of yourself as healed while in severe pain.

Something like it, at least... this may be a kind of loose use of terminology like how all magic is Surgebinding and Cognitive Shadows are spren to Rosharans. But probably something at least close, like Hoid's pre-Oathbringer Yolish Lightweaving or AonDor illusions vs. the Rosharan Order of Lightweavers.

The most recent Shardcast got me thinking about this... Preservation is definitely the best fit for my personality (I dislike change and have a protective side, am deeply interested in the environment, etc.) but Preservation alone easily becomes harmful stasis, so that might actually be a bad idea. Maybe Mercy?

Right -- but the question I am asking is how the conditions at the time of the books *arose* from what existed right after the Catacendre. How did their equivalent of our 1800s Industrial Revolution happen? It's much easier to see why people wouldn't want to leave a 1910s-era city with its easily available manufactured products, where they are used to living, and go be subsistence farmers. The issue is why people who were already farmers would go become factory workers under pre-labor-laws conditions, in an environment where most of the difficulties of RL farming don't exist, and most of those manufactured products and modern conveniences don't yet exist either. (Given that no structures other than the caverns survived the Catacendre and there was no industry or infrastructure at the beginning, most people must have been subsistence farmers at first.) And Elendel if anything seems *more* urbanized than comparable era on Earth, I don't think there were any cities of 5 million in 1910. I agree that the current situation is rather oligarchic, but again, the question is how it ever became so centralized in the first place. Spook was after all part of the skaa rebellion, and ruled for a long time post-Catacendre; one would think that they wouldn't have laws allowing absentee landlords to get legal claim to vast tracts of unused land. (And given the size and fertility of the Basin, the vast majority of the land must have been totally unused for the first 250 years or so. Even now, much probably is.) But I think an unavoidable one given Bands of Mourning chapter 17 describes an environment where crops just grow wild, apparently even nicely placed in their own fields/patches rather than growing all mixed like RL wild plants generally do; and Wax's thoughts imply this is the norm for the Basin, and that crop failures are unknown except in the Roughs. Marasi's POV at the beginning implies that this area is actually *less* rich than the inner Basin... "this was still good farmland. All of the Basin was, even here at the edges, where things were dryer than in the center." ...which is really astonishing. I was actually pretty startled when I really thought about this chapter; the Basin's super benign environment seems to go much farther than the previously stated mild climate and self-renewing fertile soil. That's what really got me wondering about this.

There is though. The Basin is really fertile, it doesn't take much land at all to support people, and the population is only like 15 million even in Wax's time... and they're maybe a century into their industrial revolution (early 20th century era) so at its beginning there must have been vast unused expanses.

Hmm it does make more sense if all the land was quickly claimed/owned by someone... but the Basin is pretty huge (like Texas sized) and the starting population must have been quite small. As for training etc.. the picture we get in BoM is that crops literally grow wild in nice neat fields. There seems to be no real knowledge needed in the Basin.

They might also not mix because they're distinct basins with land between.

Right. If he'd had a charged atium mind in his stomach then, he could have burned it to get younger & survived a lot longer.

Well I figured low rate since normally there's not really anything to heal...

I think he's likely constantly tapping at a rather low rate (and refills every so often by burning a metalmind and storing the resulting health) not burning constantly. I think the melting point of gold is higher than most lava. But lava immersion would damage the whole body constantly, not just the comparatively localized damage of say a bullet. And it's constantly reoccurring! A minute of lava is probably equivalent to hundreds of bullets.

I don't think that's within its powers, F-gold heals the body. That sounds more like Cadmium's role. I think it would be continuously restoring the cells to their healthy state, not just adding ATP but more like a constant re-set. That probably takes a lot of stored health. I tend to think Compounding is more limited than often assumed. Miles survived dynamite and such, but I imagine being immersed in lava more than briefly would probably kill him (due to running out of gold).

I don't think the mechanism is the same. I think the lack of need to breathe when holding Stormlight is part of the specific powers it gives (related to breathing it in, etc) not general healing. EDIT: Stormlight is gaseous Investiture, more analogous to Mist than a specific Feruchemical power. Stormlight also gives broader physical enhancements including dexterity/grace, and maybe a bit of strength as well. It's not just healing. Gold Feruchemy is *just* healing, using it to survive without air would mean healing all kinds of cellular damage constantly. I'd expect that to burn through reserves really fast since the damage is constantly reoccurring.

Depends on the efficiency of using gold to heal suffocation. If, for example, you could survive underwater for a week with 5 grams of cadmiumminds but it took a kilogram of goldminds...

I think Dalinar was probably right... maybe not 0% chance (because Honorblades don't heal Shardblade wounds, it's at least *possible*) but very very little. Szeth has not just Surges, but the physical enhancement of holding Stormlight Dalinar is incredibly awesome, but he's not yet a proto Radiant at the time of Gavilars death (the Stormfather was working with Gavilar then) so no Stormlight boost. And Szeth seems extremely skilled too ... and he trained with Surges before becoming Truthless. @Treamayne is likely right that Dalinar wouldn't have been wearing Shardplate even if sober.

I think undoing Splintering might be more an issue of Identity than anything else. The Investiture is all in the location-less Spiritual Realm, so maybe Identity is what makes the difference between many Splinters and one Shard. Intent may be involved too... if you held a bunch of Splinters with the right intent you might be able to merge them (Mistborn Era 1 spoilers) But I don't know that you can "hold" a sapient Splinter like a Radiant spren in that sense, just bond to it. -- Does Investiture go back to the Spiritual on spren death, anyway? It seems that normal dead spren stay in the Cognitive, just non-functional... but Anti-Investiture deaths? Do they convert Investiture to energy (like a matter/antimatter reaction) or send the Investiture into the Spiritual?

That is ... really interesting. I'd just taken it as meaning "devoted" and being used to show they aren't exactly RL monks or priests, but this is very plausible. The Thaylen Passions are also highly suspicious. ...hmm, and there is a comment by Jasnah talking to Shallan about how the gods Honor/the Almighty and Cultivation were inspired by the grouping of spren into emotion spren and nature spren. Obviously that isn't literally true (they are actually Shards) but I wonder if the Honor/emotion spren connection is another sign of Odium adding Passion stuff to formerly Honor-centered thought. (Maybe he had less chance to mess with Cultivation beliefs since she's alive and active.) ...and what about the "all future sight is of the enemy" thing? There's some truth to it (Moelach's death rattles) but future sight is a general Cosmere thing not exclusive to Odium (and the gem archive "I foresaw this" implies pre-Recreance Truthwatchers had it). It did prime people not to believe Dalinar about the visions from Honor.

Sure, it just seems like the incredible benign nature of the Basin's environment would really change the economics of labor. Yes, people would still want the products of technology -- but I would expect far fewer people than in RL to choose working in a factory over farming ... mostly just people who really like machines.. if factory conditions are like the RL Industrial Revolution but agricultural conditions are vastly nicer. So I'd expect market forces (demand for labor) to push toward higher pay/shorter hours/better working conditions for factory workers, to make it an attractive option for people who aren't super into machines. Some of this may be out-of-world/writing reasons; Scadrial is meant to be an Earth analogue, with basically Earthlike tech development path. So the effects of a society developing in the presence of a super benign natural environment + a near empty world with no other cultures around are downplayed. EDIT: one explanation, I guess, is the comment that "the Originators were all city people"; that might explain the Elendel centric, industrial development path rather than something like an US frontier / old Appalachia model with scattered small family farms*... But I am not sure if that is enough.

I wonder what the practical upper limits of Compounding (based on a reasonable mass of metal) are. How long could Miles survive swimming in lava with a stomach full of charged gold? Could late-HoA Marsh have walked all the way to South Scadrial, or would surviving the sun that long have taken more gold than he could carry in practice?

Hmm, so maybe if someone like Jasnah or Taravangian or Dalinar who's spent a lot of time thinking about morality Awakened a sword to Destroy Evil they'd get a very different result (depending on their own definition of evil)? Though I think someone like that would also use a more specific Command.

I took "burdens of nine become mine" to refer to whatever Ishar did to pin the Oathpact on just Taln at the time of Aharietiam. If one of the other Heralds broke, which is totally possible, I still don't think they'd be carrying the whole Oathpact the way Taln did. The Diagram also says "the Desolation needs no usher", but talks about killing the Parshendi before "they can form a bridge". That strikes me as a bit contradictory. Is that 'forming a bridge' a way of 'ushering in' the Desolation? But maybe something else would have eventually brought the Desolation if the Alethi had struck earlier in WoR and prevented the Parshendi from summoning the Everstorm?