cometaryorbit

More specific thoughts: I think the primary benefit of Iron/Steel savantism, besides the general efficiency benefit, would be extreme precision and control. Kelsier wasn't a savant, but the ability to spin metal bars (push on parts of an object, not the whole) is maybe a step in that direction. So very refined versions of that. Also, moving your center of Pushing or Pulling around your body rather than being limited to your center of mass/Cognitive center of self. Marsh can do that, so a steel savant probably could (maybe Marsh is a savant, he's had centuries to practice*). There might be additional disadvantages, but I feel like an iron or steel savant would be disoriented when not burning their metal - without being able to see the lines, their spatial awareness might be messed up. -- Pewter: being harder to kill from some other source would really help in surviving the process. The only Pewter savant we've actually seen, Tarson in AoL, was koloss-blooded: that probably helped. An A-pewter/F-gold Twinborn would make a very scary Pewter savant. -- I wonder if the subtle disadvantage of copper savantism is that your mind is less protected when not burning? Since you've become dependent on it? I don't know what the parallel to that for bronze would be. Maybe a lack of "instinct" or perceptiveness or something? Or just a disorientation as you lose a sense you've become used to? - I don't think aluminum and duralumin savants are possible in practice, but in theory, I don't think aluminum heals your spiritual self so much as it rejects foreign Investiture. The WoB also says that a theoretical aluminum savant could maybe cleanse their body - I'd think that would mean burning away poisons and such. - I think there's probably never been a savant of the external temporal metals; Harmony says Wayne was the best ever at Bendalloy, and Cadmium is generally considered kind of useless - they're very expensive metals in Era 2, also. But if they existed, I think it'd be the kind of precise time bubble manipulation we see from TLM Wayne at a much higher level (plus the general efficiency benefit, of course). - The other metals ... I'll need to think about those. *That's actually an interesting question - are the spiritweb changes from savantism compatible with the ones to become an Inquisitor?

I'm not sure single Shard worlds are necessarily always a bad thing for their inhabitants. Endowment is a single Shard - while Awakening can definitely be problematic and exploitative, it could arguably be a net benefit to the poor compared to what you'd expect at a comparable tech level in our history (Warbreaker era Nalthis strikes me as Early Modern except for the lack of gunpowder, maybe 1500s or early 1600s ish?). Being a Drab isn't nice, but its better than seeing your family starve. At the very least, Nalthis seems no more unstable than Earth (300 years without a major war is a lot better than you'd expect by our history's standards for a region with at least half a dozen distinct nations, historical beefs with each other, and no external greater threat to unite them, IMO) unlike Scadrial or Roshar. Autonomy is really scary if you're Scadrian, but I'm not sure she's actually that bad for the inhabitants of her own worlds. Moonlight says that people who stay to the safe areas are fine - and if First of the Sun is any indication, that's the vast majority of people. Every Shard in isolation is dangerous. But that's not the same thing as saying that it's always a negative effect. And from what we see of Harmony in TLM, combining Shards isn't necessarily super stable either. - I wouldn't be surprised if Odium got away with it for a while because Ambition was at least as scary as he was; maybe Dominion too.

Eh, I think Brandon is just using Wax's (technically incorrect) language. I don't think it's meant to imply that density has a special Cosmere definition. But yes, Wax's "proper" mass would be remembered - for every Feruchemy except Copper and maybe Nicrosil, once you stop tapping/storing you return to the normal state. Only Copper Feruchemy seems to permanently change your "base" state (there's a WoB that Medallion Nicrosil is discrete like coppermind memories, but that may not apply to the default use of F-Nicrosil).

Well, density by definition is determined by mass and volume. The comments about Wax's density not changing with F-Iron are more an example of Wax not using terms entirely correctly; what's really being described is that he isn't bulletproof at very high mass, i.e. the rule of impact depth doesn't apply to F-Iron. Which is very odd, because it does otherwise conserve momentum. That (plus the "no punching people with 1,000 pounds" WoB) is why I think it really just works on Wax as a whole. This would all have been way easier if F-Iron just decoupled gravitational and inertial mass, but unfortunately BoM rules that out. Unless there's some weird Resonance interaction... - I don't think spiritweb is strictly identical to spiritual DNA, although spiritual DNA has never really been defined so I could be wrong. I think spiritual DNA is the "fixed" parts of the spiritweb, generally defined before birth and not changeable short of extreme methods like lerasium or Hemalurgy (what Khriss calls "hardwritten into the Spiritweb"). I think the spiritweb as a whole is a person's entire Spiritual Aspect, including things that change normally over one's life without magical intervention (Connections to people other than one's parents, for example). But I could be wrong, spiritweb might not be synonymous with the entire Spiritual Aspect.

Yeah, it's just kind of surprising to me that it works at all, because surely the structure difference between molten iron and solid iron is much larger than the difference between iron and steel. The pure metals could be justified as the relevant structure being the atom itself, but I think alloys would need the crystal structure of the metal to be relevant. The iron atoms in steel aren't any different from the iron atoms in pure iron.

Yeah, fragmenting aluminum bullets would be really scary to anyone with Investiture healing. I agree huge slugs (of dense metals like lead or tungsten, not aluminum) would be the best bet against Plate - except maybe rifle grenades or something like that; I don't know which would be more effective. Yeah; I was thinking of "mundane" options but harmonium would be more effective.

Not literally, but I think that programming code & variables may be a decent analogy for the spiritweb. Hemalurgy can steal stuff like muscular strength and physical senses that one would think would be purely physically determined, so it must be coded in the spiritweb somehow.

I think there are probably a lot of Metalborn just doing jobs, but Era 2 books are more narrow focused and pulp style than other Cosmere novels. There are references to things like Soothing parlors and a Coppercloud politician who ran on his immunity to emotional allomancy - and, iirc, Coinshot couriers. They exist in the world but aren't relevant to the plot. However, there probably aren't that many Metalborn at risk of extreme poverty or ending up in very low end jobs either. The Allomantic bloodlines are still linked to nobility, and thus wealth, and the Terris enclaves probably take care of their own. There'd be some - orphans like younger Wayne - but probably not a lot. (If we're to believe Khriss' estimates, there should be about 10,000 Mistings total and somewhat fewer Ferrings.)

Yeah. Its a super cool combination for a magical martial arts, D&D monk class, type character. Not the most powerful combo, but extremely cool. Even if you could tap molten brass, there'd still be an upper limit when it vaporized. BTW, I find it very odd that you can tap molten metals at all, since the physical structure of metal is the key to the Investiture.

What it does in practice, seemingly, is change the mass of Wax as a whole - without the usual physics effects of the individual bits of him being of different mass - bullets can still pierce him, and he doesn't crush himself. It's almost like it just changes the variable defining his mass in an universal "program".

What about "Mindwhisper" as a name (a pun on F-Tin being 'Windwhisper')?

Technically it's both - "the metal, flared at the moment of transition".

No way. 1st Oath healing is quite poor, Tien was 1st Oath. There is some healing early in the bond, even before Oaths are formally sworn, but it's weak and inefficient. In the middle of the highstorm it can make a big difference (like when Kaladin was left for the storm) but I don't think it could remotely save from decapitation even in a highstorm. That's more a 3rd ideal and up thing. I don't think he was orders of magnitude better in healing - or really meaningfully better at all. Miles was a Gold Compounding Savant too (confirmed by WoB) and Allomantic strength doesn't make TLR tap better. TLR's much greater Allomantic strength would give him much more health per gram of goldmind burned, yes - but in practice that wasn't really Miles' limiting factor. Yeah, this would be devastating for any Radiant without Plate. Shallan has enough trouble with a crossbow bolt in the head that an aluminum bullet in the eye would probably incapacitate most 3rd ideal Radiants. Aluminum won't puncture bone very well so it will stay inside the brain.

Thank you!!!

Oh I know they had electricity, I was thinking about the lack of things like tasers to "weaponize" electricity in a small and easily concealed form.

The issue with that, though, is that koloss seem to be a lot more robustly built than humans, so their muscles will be much larger than that simple scaling would suggest. Also, Hemalurgic Iron seems to give extra strength to muscles beyond what their size would suggest - TenSoon says that's how the Blessing of Potency works. To be fair, it may not be identical for koloss and kandra.

For Reverse Lashings, I'd just go with aluminum bullets. That's probably the simplest for Stormlight healing too. Though against non-Windrunner Radiants, a possibility is an outer shell made of denser metal (for better penetration) that explodes inside the body, releasing aluminum shards. The Cosmere doesn't have the Hague/Geneva Conventions to ban this! I wonder if something could be done with sodium or something else that reacts with water? A bullet that breaks open and starts a fire inside the Radiant's body, taking lots of Light to heal the damage? -- I wish we knew more about the material properties of Plate. Its failure mode isn't the same as RL steel plate. It doesn't seem to deform (bend, dent, etc.) - it cracks (and puffs Light) and then shatters explosively. I think that makes it brittle rather than ductile, though incredibly hard, which is odd compared to RL metal armors. It might be more comparable to hard ceramics used in some modern body armors?

I agree. The koloss would be better off with hammers, but their swords are described as crushing as much as cutting, and their strength is extreme (far more than Pewter Allomancy or Radiants with Stormlight, probably well above Warform singers, though less than Shardplate). And Kalad's Phantoms aren't pure solid stone statues - they are jointed. At 10:1 numbers advantage koloss will smash them apart, though the koloss will take a lot of losses. -- Marsh at the end of HoA has an absurd power set, though he maybe doesn't know Compounding yet? Even without that, though... a hit with Nightblood would kill him, but he's got much better mobility than Vasher. Vasher's Awakened clothes would help against coins, but enough to save him? I don't know. Especially since Marsh can use duralumin... a duralumin Steelpush coin should break through Vasher's defenses. He can use F-Steel to keep his distance rather than Allomantic jumps, so duralumin won't make him nearly as vulnerable as it would a normal Mistborn. Marsh thankfully doesn't have Atium at the end of HoA; if he did, he could just effortlessly dodge Nightblood's blade and one hit kill Vasher. -- Nightblood emotional influence: Well, is this Marsh under Ruin's control? If so, Nightblood isn't going to beat that - Vin powered by the Mists barely broke through, and even then she didn't really get full control. Even outside Ruin's control, if Marsh is aware that Nightblood can do that, he can burn copper. Throwing Nightblood into uncontrolled koloss would kill them as they fought over it, but only one or two at a time, so it'd be slow against this large a number of koloss - and as soon as Vasher throws it Marsh can kill him with impunity. But Marsh has duralumin Allomancy, so he can control koloss, which might make them immune (depends on relative strength). -- I don't know that the Pursuer consistently killed Radiants - he probably didn't (at least not full powered Radiants). In the early Desolations there were no Radiants at all, and even once the Radiant-type Nahel bond started appearing they don't seem to have immediately been quite the same as current Radiants. I think the final Radiant Orders were very late in the Desolations. The Fused get different bodies each time, the Heralds get the same one back. I think that could make a significant difference for muscle memory. But I don't think it's the main factor. I think the main factors are: 1. Kaladin just isn't a fair comparison, I don't think. He's basically a prodigy, an extreme natural talent, world-class. I think the comparison to Olympic athletes that age is fair. And that's before the "perfecting" effects of Stormlight. (Which - does Voidlight do that? That could be one major disadvantage for the Fused. I'm not sure they do have that same "grace" or "perfection" advantage, given Leshwi dying to Moash with a normal blade. A lot of Fused also seem careless of death - whereas, for the Heralds, it's a huge problem... but they can still learn from it. So Heralds probably benefit from their experience more.) 2. Fused powers are so far inferior to those of 3rd+ Ideal Radiants that even a vast experience gap can't make up for it. a. Radiants get two Surges, Fused only get one. Radiants also get combination effects (Reverse Lashing for Windrunners... maybe Shallan's making her illusions more solid at Thaylen Field for Lightweavers?) and Resonances because they have two. Windrunners get all Three Lashings, Heavenly Ones only have Basic Lashings. In some cases the Radiants are just more powerful too! (Windrunner Basic Lashings allow higher acceleration than Heavenly Ones' versions). b. Radiants get live, morphing Shardblades "for free" at 3rd ideal, Fused don't... and many (most?) of them have trouble using existing deadblades because of the screaming. c. Fused healing is vastly worse. One hit to the gemheart = death regardless of healing, for a Fused. 3rd ideal Shallan survives crossbow bolt to the brain... and that's actually fairly unimpressive as Radiants go. 3rd not quite 4th ideal Kaladin heals incredibly fast from spine wounds, within seconds probably - this seems vastly better, probably because he's almost 4th ideal. 3rd ideal Renarin survives being stomped by a thunderclast and is up almost instantly ... but Renarin is weird. d. At 4th ideal, Radiants get Plate and it becomes even more crazily one-sided. In contrast, the Fused have one advantage - better Light efficiency. Which can be super important, but not when Dalinar is around. They absolutely can. A couple hundred Seers survived hours against 300,000 koloss. Being outnumbered isn't nearly enough to beat atium. Atium lets an Allomancer react to attacks from behind, even if they don't actually see the shadow - they will instinctively dodge anyway. Yeah, atium isn't absolutely unbeatable- but it's a colossal advantage. Just because Vin (who is extremely exceptional) was able to defeat it once doesn’t make that a normal thing. The mobility/grace advantage of Stormlight isn't much in this context - Elend was burning lerasium strength pewter and Yomen not only dodged him and struck back, but did it effortlessly.

It would be interesting to ask, yeah. But I don't think 4.75x normal human strength would be enough for the largest koloss we see fighting to be able to fight. They are huge.

As written, Transportation Surge, yeah. But excluding all forms of teleportation, regular physical movement ... In space, Gravitation Surge + enough distance and time to accelerate = any speed you want short of light speed, yeah. For regular movement on the surface of a planet, the fastest combination is probably a Double Steel Twinborn with a hemalurgic spike granting A-pewter (Brandon's said pewter/steel might be faster in a short race than double steel) and then the Abrasion and/or Adhesion Surge to reduce friction / air resistance (pick up an Honorblade or two, apparently Radiant spren don't like Hemalurgy, though maybe you could get an Ashspren to pick you anyway). You could throw in another hemalurgic spike for A-bendalloy, but I don't think it helps much. You'd be out of the bubble in an instant and there's a delay of about two seconds, iirc, to make a new one - so you'd only be in bubbles an insignificant fraction of the time.

Yeah, I think as written, the Primal Aethers like Silajana. If we exclude them as "Shard equivalents" then it's probably either the Stormfather or a major Avatar (Patji?). If those are also outside the spirit of the question, and we're really looking for "most Invested person who primarily exists in the Physical Realm", then I'd say it's a Dawnshard - "currently" Rysn, but Hoid was probably more Invested when he held one (Rysn specifically doesn't have anything else, and Hoid was at least already a Lightweaver).

This seems likely. Rashek started with an established core of an empire, and bribed kings with lerasium; he didn't conquer everything just starting with his own powers. Also, koloss can apparently eat whatever. Apparently that was what was decisive in his war against Wednegon. I think he'd ultimately still have won if fighting an intact early 1800s infrastructure, but it would have taken a lot longer (the fact that the last "meaningful combat" was when food shortages from the Deepness were still relevant suggests it only took a few years at most*) and he'd probably have ended up wrecking most of that infrastructure anyway. *though Rashek conquered Urtan "relatively late in his first century of life"; given how young he was when he went to the Well, that's probably at least 40 years later. I guess he did the big conquests quickly and took time absorbing the little places? A Fullborn might be able to single-handedly destroy the enemy army (or even civilization), but not necessarily prevent the enemy army from destroying his own side first. Not only because of the sheer time it would take to hunt down every unit of the enemy, but also, battleships standing well offshore and bombarding cities isn't a tactic a Fullborn can automatically counter. The range of a WW1 Dreadnought battleship's main guns is far greater than even a Duralumin Steelpush. If the Fullborn is there he can protect one spot probably (massive compounded Iron for weight, compounded Zinc and/or Steel for reaction time, Allomantic Steel to Push away shells) but only one spot. - I say might, because we don't know how effective things like F-Chromium or A-Electrum are at preventing surprises/traps. A large explosion will kill even a Gold Compounder, so a Fullborn invading enemy territory isn't 100% invulnerable if the enemy has had time to prepare. An electricity trap would also work, but might be harder with WW1 tech. I don't think we can automatically assume A-Electrum will help much: Vin and Elend didn't know it was usable for anything other than countering A-Atium (despite Vin's exceptional Allomantic intuition), so getting much use out of it might take a level of focus and practice that'd be mostly reserved for a Misting rather than someone with 31 other powers to practice with. I don't think it's necessarily fair to assume a "generic" Fullborn would have an exceptional level of skill in every metal. They're more than powerful enough without that assumption. I'd expect them to be really good at the most common/straightforward/powerful ones (F-Steel, F-Gold, F-Pewter, likely F-Zinc and F-Iron; A-Pewter, A-Steel/Iron, A-Zinc/Brass), reasonably capable at the other common ones (copper, bronze, etc), and basic ability at the others. -- Also, what happens when the other side figures out aluminum works against Allomancy? I think a machine gun load of aluminum bullets would probably at least incapacitate a Fullborn. F-gold might keep him alive but not necessarily let him move or function with a completely shot up body, and eventually he'd run out of health (and any charged gold left in his stomach) and die.

I don't know. Every large scale fight we have seen with koloss involved Allomantic and/or Ruin control of them. Era 2 koloss, at least, I'm pretty sure genuinely could break morale. Era 1 not controlled is unknown... we know fear makes them easier to control, but not if it matters otherwise. I think that probably would be enough to win. I was interpreting it as a large-but-reasonable amount of gems to carry. Another factor is how the fight starts. We know hitting the koloss first, before they frenzy, is a significant advantage. Despite being very strong, koloss aren't very well built to fight Shardbearers. They're not going to dodge, so a Shardblade will go through them like butter. They have the strength to break Plate, and so the Radiants will be burning Light to repair cracks in Plate ... but they won't be very effective at breaking it, I don't think. Koloss use swords instead of hammers, and I doubt even the strongest koloss is as strong as Shardplate*. Basic (small) koloss are probably stronger than warform, though - but their weapons are not great against Plate, so the effect might be similar. Small cracks puffing a little Light, a lot of time needed for real damage. And in that time koloss will be dying like flies. And that's before the actual Surges enter the picture - though conserving Light may be key in a long fight like this. @Frustration may be right about using Soulcasting to alter the terrain, though. Koloss can jump very high, so just walls won't necessarily help, but ... It won't work if the Radiants are trying to defend something (and why else would they be doing this?), but in theory, if they're just 3 Radiants vs 20,000 koloss in an open field, Jasnah could probably make a stone dome with one opening around the Radiants. With a narrow choke point, it might actually be winnable. A Shardblade can cut right through the koloss swords - given Kaladin's fighting skills plus the grace benefits of holding Stormlight, how often would he actually get hit and Plate cracked if he could take on the koloss one at a time? *thoughts on comparative strength spoilered for length

With A-Atium at least*, they don't always see and determine logically. Often they do, but sometimes Vin burning atium reacts to things she didn't even see the shadow of (because it was out of her field of view). How exactly that works is unknown, yeah, but from what we've seen of people burning Atium (especially Vin) it does happen. *and we've never seen anyone use A-Electrum for anything other than countering A-Atium, though we know it is possible

I actually think that if it does work the way I'm suggesting, it would just delete the CO2, yeah - but not all of it, just as much as your body would remove from that amount of normal breathing.