cometaryorbit

Yeah, with regards to the medallion tech I was talking about working with Scadrian magic systems, sorry. A Bondsmith would probably make this way easier! It's definitely a very interesting topic. Paalm's example shows that there is something possible, but it's very unexplored.

End-positive/neutral/negative have to do with the gain or loss (or neither) of Investiture. An end-neutral system can still draw energy as long as the Investiture in the system is constant (like powering machines with Awakening). And there's WoB that the end-positive/neutral/negative thing is an in world classification that may not be totally perfect.

Powerful in what situation? AonDor is a very strong and broad set of powers, but it's location limited. Awakening is narrower but you can take Breaths with you anywhere. So if you're in Arelon AonDor is stronger, for a worldhopper or for living on another planet Awakening is stronger.

I would think that you'd probably need earring-style Hemalurgy for opening the soul-crack plus medallion-tech for the Connection, but who knows. It's not clear to me how Paalm got the ability to "send" thoughts, even if Wax could receive through the earring soul-crack - she had only one power at a time, so it wasn't Duralumin Feruchemy. I don't think the Connection she had with him as Lessie is enough, or other Pathians would get telepathy from those closest to them (and Wax clearly considers this something totally unknown).

I think Preservation could speak to Kelsier then since he was near death, the borders between Realms "thinning". Vin could kill Ruin, when Leras couldn't, because she'd *just then* taken up the power - it hadn't molded her personality/mind yet. If Vin had held Preservation for hundreds or thousands of years, she would have become like Leras. -- It seems implied that a Dawnshard by itself gives Heightening like abilities, but combined with another Invested Art it's very dramatic. So I don't think Kelsier could have had one in Era 1, since his Allomancy wasn't supercharged.

In Shadows of Self, Bleeder/Paalm finds a way to telepathically talk to Wax, which I think is at least implied to be Hemalurgy based using Wax's Hemalurgic earring and maybe Paalm's weird kandra spike? Connection is likely relevant here too though... maybe that would only work with Wax, not anyone else with a Pathian Hemalurgic earring? So something of the sort is definitely possible, but it might also require a "crack in the soul" of some sort in addition to Connection magic.

I wonder if the moons are not really orbiting in the conventional sense, but are held up by some equivalent of iron/steel lines from Mistborn*, with the spores falling along the line - thus the rigid icosahedron shape, the planet + all moons basically form one rigid structure, the "support beams" are just invisible. If the moons are Aethers they might have vastly less mass than we'd expect- they could be "shadowed on the Physical" like seons, shades, or many spren - visible Physically but with little mass and only partial solidity. *hmm, what about the hion lines from SP3? Obviously those are visible to everyone, unlike iron/steel lines, but it might still be precedent.

Aether of Night (the book) isn't canon, but there's a WoB that the canon Aethers are basically similar (though more were added and their origin is maybe non-Shard-related now?). I think the Midnight Sea corresponds to the (new, non-Shard-related version of) the Night Aether just as the Verdant/Emerald Sea corresponds to the Verdant Aether.

Yeah, pretty sure it is Wax. The Lost Metal blurb also supports that.

TLR definitely used the Well to give himself supercharged Allomantic power (canonized in a WoB) - the HoA Epigraphs seem to say that his fundamental Allomantic power is equal to a Lerasium Mistborn's, but his actual effects seem greater (though 'savant or near-savant' ability could explain the disparity, maybe). The WoB that people quote to say TLR gave himself increased power with Hemalurgy doesn't necessarily say that. It's actually not clear whether "his most dramatic effects" means Marsh's or TLR's. And if it does refer to TLR, his "most dramatic effects" might be creating the koloss/kandra/Inquisitor 'species' (as others have pointed out).

There's also a significant difference between TLR and a hypothetical Era 2 Fullborn. TLR had very high base Allomantic strength and access to Atium, but possibly no access to Chromium/Nicrosil/Cadmium/Bendalloy (he knew about them, but the Final Empire didn't have the ability to make them), and the critical weakness of dying if he loses his metalminds. A hypothetical Era 2 Fullborn would have the new metals, but not Atium; might have lower base Allomantic strength; and wouldn't necessarily die without metalminds (unless unnaturally old).

I really like the idea. We've only seen Chromium used through the primer cube, and never seen Nicrosil Allomancy at all... these metals have a lot of unknowns. I think the defensive Leeching sounds plausible, in the right circumstances, but wouldn't be the same thing as using Aluminum Allomancy that way - it would be Leeching external Investiture before it enters the Leecher's self, not wiping out already present foreign Investiture. (Like the difference between grabbing a Radiant's glowing hand and Leeching their Stormlight before they can Lash you, using Chromium... vs burning away a Lashing already working on you using Aluminum.) I think the external/internal distinction needs to stay since its the main difference between Chromium/Aluminum and Duralumin/Nicrosil. This might not be a Savantism thing so much as speed, reflexes, and precision. Carefully shaping others' use of Investiture strikes me as beyond Chromium, even with Savantism, but who knows. @Crucible of Shards's idea of savantism allowing more precise control of what is Leeched sounds plausible to me.

My guess is that it's geographical. The Selish System essay talks about the land itself being Invested. It often lines up with political boundaries since natural features (e.g. the mountains and sea for Arelon) often define political boundaries, but i think that's less causal and more both the politics and the Dor being affected by the geography.

There is a 'wound on the Spiritual Realm' in Threnody or its solar system, per Harmony in the RoW epigraphs. So Threnody might be like a person with a Shardblade soul-wound - the Forests of Hell continent is its "deadened limb", realmatically cut off in a way that leads to Shades rather than 'proper' Cognitive Shadows. Becoming a Shade seems to involve an infusion of Investiture from an existing Shade ... presumably derived from Ambition with some Odium? (The Threnody theory in my signature is about this...)

Roshar alternated between stone age and bronze or maybe iron age, but I don't think they ever got anywhere near developing science, where advancement could be expected to accelerate. And Roshar's very weird geology may make it a very poor prospect for industrial civilization based on our-world technology ever arising... probably no oil/coal at all, and some metals and other mineral resources may be rare, absent or inaccessible. I do think there will be space age Rosharans, but much more heavily magic/fabrial based than Scadrial tech. I am not sure how much actual knowledge was lost due to the Evil, it seems like the limitations of the Simple Rules prevent a lot of activities, but the knowledge exists. And we don't really see the fort cities, I think the implication is that they are American frontier era... so not really much behind Scadrial at the same time frame. TLR taking over is *comparatively* recent on the overall timeline. Roshar's human history is like 7000 local years so almost 8000 standard years (Raboniel is 7000), while TLR taking over is "only" 1300-some years before the 'present' of Mistborn Era 2 / Stormlight arc 1 ... definitely after the False Desolation and Recreance for example. Until about the "present" of Era 2 Mistborn/arc 1 Stormlight, I don't think perpendicularity travel led to much information getting into the "mainstream" societies (as opposed to places like Silverlight). With the Ghostbloods etc. that may be changing now.

Roshar is generally higher power than Scadrial. Regular dead Shardplate grants 'the strength of many men', whereas allomantic pewter (at normal strength) is about 2x, flaring 3x. Given that Dalinar's hammer is heavy enough to be a major burden for 2 soldiers to carry, it's probably well over 100 lbs... maybe 150 or so? RL warhammers were more like 5 lbs. So 30x strength seems reasonable... probably at least 20x. A koloss has 4 iron hemalurgic spikes so is probably a bit less (due to decay) than 5x human strength (at base... they must get stronger as they grow). So I'd argue that someone in Shardplate is probably stronger than a large koloss or Sazed amped-up to large-koloss muscle-mass in WoA; at least 4x stronger than a 5-foot 'base' koloss (and likely more like 6x); and about 10x stronger than a (non-Lerasium strength) pewter burner.

Not necessarily. The only clear case of that, I'd say, is Scadrial's technological freeze under the Lord Ruler; Taldain was cut off from exporting its technology, but not destroyed or anything. The cosmere timeline is supposed to be something like 10,000 years total, but that extends into the sci-fi tech future; that's not too far off the timeline for civilization on Earth really. And scholarly attention that in RL would be directed to natural science/technology goes to Investiture stuff in the cosmere. Roshar's technology is medieval at best, but they are having a Scientific Revolution with fabrial science... but could that be extrapolated to physical science/technology? Possibly not. Same for all the work going to Awakening stuff on Nalthis, etc. And technological progress isn't necessarily automatic, even in our world. Most civilizations have had a relatively slow pace of progress. IIRC a thousand years ago the idea of technological progress wasn't 'natural' to people; they illustrated classical and Biblical characters in armor and weapons of their own time, and that didn't seem wrong to them the way it would to us. (To us, it's a natural assumption that technology changes over time.) And many things were invented but not used much. The Maya had the wheel and axle, but apparently never put it to practical use. The Romans had primitive steam engines certainly by the first century AD and likely by the first century BC, but nothing useful was ever really done with them. China developed small, simple hot air balloons in the first few centuries AD (Kongming lanterns) but they were not developed into human-carrying vehicles. Etc.

Ok. So then I guess the question is what is the highest power level a Fullborn can achieve in practice. Maybe what we see from the Bands? Supersonic speed with steel, but not orbital velocity or anything; gold to heal back from basically death; etc. Though we see TLR use Feruchemical speed when he fights Vin and Marsh, and it's nothing like supersonic, though far faster than a flared pewter run. Maybe the Bands have a higher limit, or TLR just wasn't really trying.

TLR based noble fashion, keep architecture, etc on Khlennium - but I thought the Khlenni probably did become skaa. The kings he bribed were presumably others, neither Terris nor ones Rashek saw specifically as oppressors like Khlennium. As for being honest about the Well: as long as TLR lives, he controls access. But if he's dead, having the true story out there in a non-Ruin-alterable form has to be better than only having the corrupted versions.

That's only like one order of magnitude less, whereas we're talking seventeen or eighteen orders of magnitude beyond what's demonstrated (Wax heavier than a building might be hundreds of tons - say, 10^5 to 10^6 kg - whereas Mercury is about 3x10^23 kg). Splitting, sure... but we still might be talking about eating a pile of ironminds literally the size of a mountain, or more. But maybe it would be theoretically possible... unless the diminishing returns eventually get to the point of serving as an effective upper limit (Like it asymptotically approaches a maximum, or something). I feel like that *should* be true to keep an era 3 Compounder from unbalancing Harmony by storing into a supertanker, or something. (OK, maybe supertankers aren't Allomantically pure, but still...)

He might not have been evil pre-madness, though. I mean, the Oathpact seems pretty self-sacrificing*, and the Stormfather makes it sound like it was not just voluntary, but initiated by the Heralds (they "went to Honor"). I wonder if Ashyn wasn't basically the magical version of an industrial accident. *(Sure, the torture part wasn't expected, but they would still be stuck on the planet of their enemies, leaving all the non-Heralds they knew behind forever.)

I kind of think Rashek started with more hateful motives, then turned more good, then more evil again under Ruin's influence. Rashek pre-Ascension hated Khlennium and the idea of a non-Terris Hero, so while Kwaan got him to kill Alendi to save the world, I think Rashek's motives (as opposed to Kwaan's) were pretty hate driven - thus turning nations he didn't like into skaa, etc. But understanding the bigger picture turned him more altruistic, thus he started planning to save the world even if he died. But over time, Ruin's influence plus the "wearing" of time made his rule become bloodier, as he got fixed into one model and using more and more oppressive tactics to enforce it. (It seems that the Terris weren't so oppressed in the first two centuries. There was apparently a big purge of Feruchemists like 200+ years in, and the system we see was set up in IIRC the sixth century.) I wonder if part of his problem was lack of education/breadth of experience before being thrown into all this. I feel like he used Hemalurgy too freely. Koloss were a mistake IMO, too useful of a tool for Ruin and he didn't really need them. He could have built an empire just by bribing kings with lerasium and demonstrating his 'divine' powers. (And if pre TLR Scadrial had guns and was ~early 19th century tech, it seems that koloss would have been *less* useful in his early conquests.) Even the Inquisitors were... questionably necessary. Sure, he used them to hunt skaa Allomancers, and they were motivated to do so since that's how they perpetuated their 'species', but if he'd built his society differently Allomancy among the skaa wouldn't have been a threat. Personally I think he'd have had a better bet of keeping Ruin imprisoned if he'd told everyone exactly what was going on with the Well - Ruin can change text, but not people's memories, and if TLR had given say a yearly sermon on the topic to the whole population of Luthadel, I don't think the info would have been able to be corrupted. But I guess TLR expected to live forever... but, he specifically planned for his death, so...

I can see that, maybe Era 4 really is going to be that far in the future. It just seems weird to me since recent books have been bringing in more inter-world connections, and I would think that once those things become known and information starts really crossing worlds it wouldn't be *that* long from modern tech to interstellar, given the advantages of having magic to get FTL and the knowledge that there are other inhabited worlds out there to trade with pushing space development in a way we haven't seen in RL (I doubt RL humanity would have abandoned the ability to go to the Moon for 50+ years if we knew for a fact there were aliens out there, and had even had limited interactions).

I am pretty sure the diminishing returns WoB says that it is a greater degree of loss the higher the tapping rate is... will have to look for that. I think it's worse than that. Rashek, say, could walk around at half weight for 200 years and then multiply that stored weight by Compounding and storing, then Compounding those ironminds, etc.... But I think way before he got to planet breaking/black hole levels, he'd be stopped by not having enough iron to store in and eat. The multiplying via Compounding is going to stop working when he has to eat ironminds the size of ships... (actually, probably it will stop well before that point). A planet or black hole just has *so ridiculously much mass*. Months of storage (maybe a couple years) make Wax heavier than a building for a moment... maybe hundreds of tons? But that's probably fairly near full for his regular sized ironminds. I doubt you could store a billion times that much in any reasonably sized metalmind, and a hundred billion tons isn't even close to this range.

Well, we've seen Heralds display super-reflexes and such. I think they have some enhancements without their Blades, probably due to being powerful Cognitive Shadows, though not Surgebinding itself.