cometaryorbit

I don't think the Shards' power (quantity of Investiture) is truly infinite in the mathematical sense. Effectively so, from the human perspective (even relatively powerful Investiture-users such as Mistborn or Surgebinders). But if it were actually mathematically infinite, a finite quantity of atium wouldn't have affected the balance of power between Ruin and Preservation.

Also from Shadows of Self, MeLaan's snoring comments to Aradel. 'Like unto a hundred angry koloss in the middle of a rockslide'... And in Alloy of Law, Wayne's ward against logic, 'It lets me add two an' two and get a pickle'.

I don't think so, the question is specific about more powerful Mistborn; I think it's an actual contradiction. I really doubt that it would work that way (with medallions, things like that aren't going to be as rare in the series going forward, so I really don't think the system would be built to allow that). I would expect that if "efficiency" is a thing at all for non-savants, it is a marginal increase with an upper limit. But I can't prove that. I agree. Oh, the armies were probably large as a proportion of the population, but given the technology level, the population would have been much less than modern Roshar. I think that means that each time they lost what they had built up since the last Desolation, not that it was a steady decrease over the whole era of Desolations. I wouldn't expect the Truthwatcher (Illumination/Progression) Herald to be able to do that, their only combat powers would be the massive Stormlight enhancement. The Fused are probably too Invested to be killed by Soulcasting, so I'd say the Lightweaver and Elsecaller Heralds might be in the same situation. Maybe the Willshaper Herald too depending on what the combat applications of Cohesion are. That physical enhancement would be really dramatic on a normal mortal level, probably well beyond what Shardplate gives you, but thunderclasts are also going to be much stronger than someone in Shardplate, so if the Herald was heavily outnumbered, I can totally see them getting killed the way Kelek was. It only takes one hit, with the way their healing works. Hmmm. I doubt it, but will have to re-read Oathbringer and look for clues as to how good their healing and basic physical enhancements are. I'm arguing for numbers to be effective vs the Heralds since one solid hit would still be fatal (they can't heal from instant death). That would only work with regular soldiers vs the Fused if one hit with a bronze sword or spear could kill them near-instantly. I don't think 1,000 normal soldiers could kill Kaladin at this point until he ran out of Stormlight. Which the Fused probably don't do. Anyway, the original argument was about Compounding vs Herald powers. A thunderclast is going to be operating at several hundred times human strength at the very least - they'd have to be, to move at all. (Dalinar describes the vaguely human-shaped ones as five or six times a man's height, which means 125-216 times the mass by square cube law, plus rock is usually two or three times denser than flesh... Each arm is going to weigh tons.) At that level, even Compounders will burn through reserves fast. Their Feruchemy isn't actually unlimited in the short term, they have only so much mass in their metalminds and so much metal in their stomach/vials. Rosharan stuff is generally operating on a much higher level than Scadrian stuff. Shardplate strength is way, way beyond what pewter Allomancy provides, even flared. Gold healing is one of the most powerful abilities on Scadrial, but all Surgebinders get a much better version (since they don't have to be sick to store up health, and thus have far more healing available). Gravitation works like Allomantic iron+steel, but not limited to metals. And so on.

I think this is correct. As long as you are storing as much heat as the fire is adding, you won't burn; but it won't protect you from smoke inhalation and anything else that isn't directly heat-related. It would probably keep the sunlight at the end of Hero of Ages from setting you on fire, but any exposed skin would still sunburn, since that's a UV light effect rather than caused by heat.

Hmm. Apparently, WOBs conflict on this issue. Here is the one I was thinking of: mooglefrooglian Does a more powerful Mistborn burn their metals more quickly, or do they use what they get more efficiently? Brandon Sanderson Metal burning speed is proportional to power withdrawn. /r/books AMA 2015 (July 14, 2015) But there is also: Oversleep (paraphrased) Allomantic strength. There are stronger Allomancers, they can burn metals faster, right? Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased) Yes, they can also squeeze more power out of it. They can use it more efficiently. Oversleep (paraphrased) So there is some loss of power along the way? How do savants work into that? Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased) Savants can use it way more efficiently. They are more Connected to the Shard. Closer to Spiritual Realm. Warsaw signing (March 18, 2017) And: Questioner There is quantitative difference in Allomancy (e.g. Elend is stronger than Vin), there is skill difference (e.g. Breeze is better than Vin with zinc), but is there a qualitative difference too? Brandon Sanderson That’s the scale of what we call savant. Wax can do more with less. It’s not just skill, the burning for long, using for so long, will actually adapt your soul to the power. Shadows of Self San Francisco signing (Oct. 9, 2015) Which seems to imply a third possibility, that 'normal' Allomantic strength differences don't impact power-per-mass, but savantism does. Hmmm... Either way, I think the general point holds - even if there is some increase in efficiency, the upper end of Compounding is going to be set by the mass of metal available (both the amount in the stomach to burn, and the amount of metalminds).

Doesn't Taln say that often the Heralds had to teach humans how to make bronze? I think their resources were much more limited, though the Heraldic Epochs have become mythified in modern Rosharan (at least Vorin) culture. Numbers. There were only 10 Heralds, not all of whom had the prime combat powers. Individually they don't have comparable power, true, but a couple of Heralds vs 50 Fused or 500 Thunderclasts is a quite different picture. And they couldn't be everywhere at once. They won the Desolations eventually, but Odium's forces could destroy unchecked anywhere that the Heralds weren't. (Bronze-age human forces, before KR, probably couldn't do very much to harm something like a Thunderclast, though they would have been effective against regular singers and - in sufficiently superior numbers - probably the Regals/forms of power). The KR were founded "to offset the destruction of the Desolations". It's not that the Heralds were losing without them, it's that the world got torn up in the time it took to win. No, I wouldn't say that he could "turn the entire battlefield into mush". Kelek was the Willshaper Herald; his Surges were Transportation/Cohesion. Those don't give him large area destruction or immobilization powers the way Adhesion, Gravitation, or Division fueled with vast quantities of Stormlight might. Kelek would still have had enormous physical abilities, with the Stormlight physical enhancements fueled by a direct feed from Honor... but thunderclasts are 30 foot stone monsters that can tear down fortified walls trivially. And we don't know how many thunderclasts it took to take him down. And his form of healing couldn't restore from an instant-death wound, which almost any hit from something that size would be. The 4 Heralds with the prime battle powers probably were flattening whole battlefields full of enemies, but they were fighting a continent scale war against huge numbers, and they could still mess up and get killed - they had no atium equivalent.

I think that WOB means that tapping heat won't protect you from fire. Filling a brassmind should still work.

I really doubt it. I think they probably just take good care of their metalminds, in the cases where it matters (probably just iron and maybe zinc and steel - I don't think we know the exact alloy of Allomantic steel). Investiture is, in the cosmere, a "third state" separate from matter and energy, that can be interconverted. I don't think the investiture is going to be taking up valence electrons, which would essentially mean an Investiture/metal chemical reaction. I think the storage is going to happen on a different level (different Realm? Investiture is a Spiritual attribute...) from the Physical electrons and other particles making up the metal. The kind of destructive rust iron suffers from is actually pretty unusual among metals. Copper and likely brass/bronze (I don't think we know the specific Allomantic alloy used and the terms brass/bronze can cover a fairly wide range of compositions) are going to tarnish some, but that's just a surface effect - the main mass of the metalmind won't be affected. (The tarnish layer can actually be protective.) Tin is fairly corrosion resistant. Gold doesn't generally corrode in the first place. Atium is supposed to be platinum group-esque so it shouldn't either. Iron at least is probably fairly "easy come/easy go" since storing is at least as useful as tapping, so losing a tiny fraction of the stored weight to rust is probably not terribly troubling. I don't think we've seen anyone keep a charged zincmind around for very long (Sazed stores it up before the final fight in Well of Ascension, have we ever seen it used any other time?) So maybe they do take a lot of precautions for that one.

Because direct access to a Shard's power essentially doesn't have an upper limit, while using metals does. (OK, there probably is still technically an upper limit, but it's going to be way higher than anything you can get out of a few ounces or pounds of metal.) I really don't think Compounding is as unlimited as people tend to assume; we never see it pitted against other really powerful things. TLR is said to survive decapitation and being burned up by conventional fire, Miles survives a stick of dynamite at point blank range etc. But that's not really that much energy, and none of those things totally destroy the body. I think the same applies to Compounding Speed, Strength, etc. It's really powerful compared to other things available on Scadrial at era 1/2 tech level, but I don't think it automatically wins against high-powered applications of Rosharan magic, or advanced technology (which is probably how it'll be kept under control in the later era Mistborn books). Oh, probably more than that, but a hundred times strength isn't really that impressive on the scale I am talking. A thunderclast is probably on the order of a hundred times human strength (actually probably more, even to move, they ought to weigh something like Oh probably, yeah. Well they apparently fought several Desolations before the KR existed, so I mean, they were apparently fighting armies single-handedly. But in terms of how they got killed, because they were fighting things like thunderclasts in large numbers, and their most powerful enemies (whatever the modern Fused were in those first Desolations) had a direct power feed from Odium. Also, Desolations lasted a long time, and I don't think any of the Surgebinding powers give you an atium-equivalent. They could make mistakes, and they were fighting things that could smash them beyond what their imperfect Stormlight healing could fix* in an instant. Honestly, I think they had to be operating at these sorts of power levels for just 10 Heralds to be any use at all. *Honorblades aren't as good at that as actual Nahel bonds...

i am not sure that Ryshadium spren bond is the same thing as what greatshells/skyeels are doing. i'd say that Rosharan native life spren bonds are part of the pre-Honor/Cultivation (presumably pre-Shattering) natural magic of Roshar. And Fabrials, Nahel bonds, and Voidspren-listener 'forms of power' bonds are all ways intelligent beings have built upon that system. The native life bonds do seem to involve a gemheart. In the "wild animals" it might just store Stormlight to 'feed' to the spren rather than actually contain the spren though; when the Alethi cut gemhearts out of chasmfiends they don't seem to be "pre-fabrial-ized". This might be the case, the spren around them are attracted by the "natural magic" of the chasmfiend/skyeel, but may not be the individual spren actually providing the gravity

A Gravity Lashing fueled with ridiculous amounts of stormlight, as a pre-Splintering Herald with Honorblade would have access to, is going to immobilize even someone compounding both Speed and Strength. I don't think it's quite the same. It's a hugely impressive level of power, granted, enough to replicate some of TLR's tricks with Pushing and such, even enough to start producing mist "leakage", but it's still limited to what will fit in a metalmind. Someone with an "open connection to a Shard" like Vin Mist-burning, or a pre-Splintering Herald with Honorblade, is going to have access to way more power than the amount of metal you can fit in your stomach/attribute you can store in a metalmind represents. Compounding is fueling Feruchemy with Allomancy, it's end-positive, but still limited by metals. Feruchemical metalminds can be tapped really fast (very high rate of attribute use) but they're limited in how much they can store by the physical size/mass of the metalmind. Similarly, Allomancy is limited by the amount of metal - even extreme allomantic strength (Elend post-lerasium) or Duralumin doesn't get you more power per gram of metal, just burns it faster. They aren't large enough to hold that much investiture; Well of Ascension specifically points out they're actually quite small (when Vin is lamenting the lack of Atium). Smaller metalminds are quite Pushable (Marsh vs Sazed in Well of Ascension, Wax does it sometimes & specifcially comments on how some - less full - are more practical to Push IIRC) even without the sort of power boost that lets you push on metal inside the body. So while Investiture interference is indeed a thing, I don't think it's going to do much good against the raw power Surgebinding provides, even without throwing in Heralds. (Pushing a jewelry-size metalmind is easier than Pushing on metal inside a body, so if the Surgebinder can use Division or Soulcasting on a regular non-magic-using person, it should work on a metalmind.) Depending on how much/what they are actually burning/tapping at the moment, a strong enough Elsecaller might be able to Soulcast the Fullborn directly. I think Investiture interference would stop this if they were actively Compounding, certainly if tapping at high rates, but as a surprise attack it might actually be fatal even to someone with unlimited Gold healing. Surgebinding used to full extent is really scary powerful, there's a reason people worry about it destroying the world...

It's the " There's a tweak that you need to do to make it work and I haven't talked about that yet. They do not know how to do it… on Scadrial. " bit I'm talking about. If it's not Kinetic, bronze can't detect it no matter what. If it is Kinetic, but not Allomancy, it's theoretically detectable by bronze... but no one knows how. Marsh burning bronze wouldn't be able to detect Sazed tapping metalminds in the same room.

Sazed did totally re-shape the continents. I'm talking about moving it then (if he had known about the issue) not later. He already had to totally re-create all the ecology and so on anyway, most of the planet was totally lifeless except for the comparatively small protected regions of the Final Empire and the South. - The more I think about this "adaptation to heat" thing, the less sense it makes as a biological/natural thing. It's got to be something magical... but I don't see how it can be, if Rashek didn't change them. If the heat medallions allowed the Southerners to survive, that implies it wasn't cold enough to kill off the other animals and plants (since they have to have some kind of food source). And if it is warm enough for that, you shouldn't need heat magic to survive - just warm clothing and fires. It's almost like the Southern Scadrians are cold-blooded, but there is no way that could be a natural adaptation, especially not in a mere thousand years, 30-40 generations, and probably not at all. Raising the body temperature (so the environment is cooler, relatively) shouldn't work either. There is some variation in body temperatures between individuals - not everyone averages out at a perfect 98.6 F - so there is a little room for evolution to work. But it wouldn't be nearly enough to help, even given far more time. The brain is very vulnerable to temperature changes.

Actually Nale could probably do this - not because of his rebirth, but because he knows about using larkins to capture Investiture-users. Roshar is relatively high-Investiture, Scadrial is relatively low-Investiture. So a larkin would probably drain the Fullborn's metalminds near-instantly. Before Honor's death, Nale could probably have won without any tricks like that; the Heralds back then were basically at "Mist-burning" level, drawing Investiture straight from Honor. I think a near-infinite-Stormlight Gravity lashing would make Speed and any of the other physical abilities essentially useless; there is a limit even to compounding, at least in the short term. Awakening is very weak as a combat ability, at least "in real time". A Nightblood-type weapon with sufficient access to Investiture might work... if the wielder had the physical abilities to hit... which seems unlikely.

I was actually just working on a shard quadrants theory a couple of days ago. I think the divine attributes model is probably correct, but with a tweak. I think the Shard intents that don't fit the classical divine attributes are actually part of a split one. Odium is what "Wrath" turns into separated from any Honor, Wisdom, or Love type aspect. Ambition is part of 'Creation', the drive to create greater things, probably the natural pair to an Inspiration Shard. Cultivation is I think another part of Creation. The rest are fairly straightforward: Devotion = Love Dominion = Kingship Endowment = Generosity, possibly even Grace Autonomy = 'Self-existence' (the "uncaused Cause", not relying on any other entity) Honor includes Justice, and also (given his bonds emphasis) the concept of 'covenant' Preservation and Ruin are I think drawn from some forms of Hinduism: Vishnu (Preserver) and Shiva (Destroyer) as aspects of Brahman (the Absolute). The Creator aspect seems to be missing, however. - If we apply the quadrant model, I think the quadrants would be something like (hypothetical ones in italics): "Supreme Being" - Dominion/Autonomy, Eternity/??? "Creator" - Endowment/Cultivation, Ambition/Inspiration "Judge" - Devotion/Odium, Honor/Discernment or Wisdom "Overseeing the Universe?" (need better quadrant name) - Preservation/Ruin. Restoration or Redemption/???* *I have a feeling that this ought to be a shard that represents change that is neither necessarily entropic (as Ruin) nor growth (as Cultivation), but a reversal of what is established - the concept of "the last shall be first". I have no idea what the name would be though.

Also - maybe more fundamentally - the Shards have to do with how you get the power in the first place. Allomancy (usually) requires surviving a traumatic event of some sort - Snapping. Hemalurgy (usually if not always) requires killing someone else to gain the power. This seems to apply to the other magic systems as well - you get Surgebinding by swearing oaths, you have to be given Breaths (Endowment) to do much of anything useful with Awakening, etc.

Actually, I was wrong about the post-Recreance numbers. Pattern says "Spren with minds were less plentiful then, and the majorities of several spren people were all bonded." So they are more plentiful now, after the death of all those that became dead-Shardblades, than before the Recreance. Presumably because the Splintering of Honor freed up a lot of Investiture to become sapient spren...

I think the difficulty/tiring nature of using them probably has more to do with length/leverage/awkwardness than weight. I mean, real-world swords are actually much lighter than usually thought - anything over 5 pounds or thereabouts was generally either ceremonial or used by unusually large and strong soldiers, like a zweihander - but that doesn't mean they weren't physically demanding to use.

Right. That would have been faster, but he needed to leave enough Hemalurgically spiked people alive to find the atium -- he must have known it was shielded behind metal since he couldn't see it immediately, so if everyone died, he'd probably never find it. And once he got the atium, I think he could just disintegrate the planet or something... (I think that might be important. IMO, Ruin's goal wasn't specifically to kill everyone, it was to destroy the entire planet, inanimate aspects as well.) Driving people to seek out TLR's storage caches might even have been part of the purpose for the increased ashmount activity, the same way he strengthened the mists to create the Deepness, driving people to seek out the Well of Ascension. It does, from the Hero of Ages Annotations, Chapter 76 (it's a really long one, just quoting the relevant bit) True. Thankfully, no one lived there! A bunch of lifeless desert just got even more fried than it already was. A normal temperature in Era 1, or Era 2? I don't see why moving it to the equator would have particularly caused any problems, if Sazed had done it when he was rearranging the entire planet's surface anyway. I don't think the Southerners are so heat-dependent that they'd have trouble in a tropical sea-level climate.

The power is potentially capable of it, but that doesn't mean anyone - even TLR - actually learned how. Chaos (paraphrased) We asked if it was possible to use bronze to Seek Feruchemy. Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased) He said it could be possible. If it were to happen, it was very hard, because the Inquisitors would desperately like to be able to find Feruchemists that way, and it was implied they had not discovered this power. So, it is a freaking hard technique to learn, if possible at all. Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

I'm not sure that there is much difference between the statements. Sure, Sazed's problem is the inherent opposition of the two Shards, but the Intent of Harmony is Sazed's interpretation of how to combine the two. I think an Intent of Discord might be somewhat more active, but almost certainly not better for the people on Scadrial. Harmony doesn't seem very destructive either. I'm not sure that combining shard intents needs to be a simple 50/50 mix of both, I think you could get a new concept which somehow includes both. Otherwise Preservation and Ruin together would just cancel out. Also, Elend does comment in Secret History (in reference to why Sazed was Connected to both Shards), "Ruin is more than death and destruction. It is peace with these things."

Arguably none of the Shards as impersonal cosmic forces are evil as such (though I'd still argue that Odium in isolation is at least harmful, though it might combine with one or more other Shards to produce something more positive) But Rayse/Odium, as a person with the power of that cosmic force, is definitely evil. Honor's moral position isn't really relevant in the current situation, as he's long dead. I say Odium is evil because of his role in fostering war between humans and listeners (and, apparently, between humans and humans on Ashyn, leading to its ruination). Yes we do - per WoB, he wants to be the only Shard remaining. Rayse/Odium feels that picking up another Shard would change who he is, so to become the most powerful being in the cosmere, he has to destroy all the rest.

It seems wrong for Preservation's metal to be better in Hemalurgy than Ruin's. So yeah, there's got to be some disadvantage, like getting the whole soul or enough of it to wreck your personality. Or... hmmm... maybe the wording "Steals any power" vs "Steals all abilities" is significant. Maybe Atium spikes steal any Metallic Arts power (or potentially other magic systems' equivalents once non-Scadrian systems become involved) while Lerasium spikes steal all human attributes? That would be powerful, but probably mess up the recipient really badly, given that human-attribute spikes seem to be more warping.

Bands of Mourning hints that he is using most of his power to hold back some kind of other-Shardic enemy/influence from elsewhere (the weird red thing in Wax's edge-of-death vision). Their conversation seems to me to imply that Sazed is willing to intervene 'directly' to protect Scadrial as a whole against harm originating elsewhere, but only acts through agents and hints against harm caused by Scadrian people to other Scadrian people. I doubt any combination of Ruin and Preservation would produce a Shard that was much more helpful. Discord sounds rather more harmful. I think you could plausibly get something like Memory/Remembrance (preservation of some part of what has now decayed) but that doesn't sound terribly active either.

Yeah, the "history of the power" aspect of holding the Shard wouldn't tell him about it. But he might not have even known until after the fact, for that reason. If he'd known about it but not known how to fix it, he could have just warmed the region up (moved it to the equator, lowered the elevation and surrounded it with raised land to keep the sea out, or something). There should be more to what happened than natural evolution. From what we see at the end of Hero of Ages, near-the-sun Scadrial without ashmounts would have been rapidly lethal - they couldn't have survived long enough for evolution to work. Trees are bursting into flame - I think that would imply a much higher sunlight intensity than you'd get at even Venus' distance from our Sun. The Scadrian system map in Arcanum Unbounded also shows a huge difference between old and new orbits. Even at the south pole itself, it probably wouldn't have been survivable without some form of protection. Now, there are possible things TLR could have done that would have allowed survival without genetic modification, like lifting the entire south pole region to much higher altitude. Combining the effects of a polar latitude and Tibet-like elevation would have made it dramatically cooler. But if it was cooler, they wouldn't need to adapt to extreme heat... (By the way, at least in real world physics, I think Scadrial as TLR made it was ultimately doomed to total desiccation, as too much water evaporated from the seas reaching outside the shielded area of the Final Empire, and rose into the stratosphere, got dissociated by UV radiation, and escaped as hydrogen from Scadrial's gravity. Eventually, without the oceans' role in the carbon cycle, the planet would become like Venus. But this would take far, far longer than the thousand years of the Final Empire - millions, maybe many millions for the complete process, though it'd be lethal to humans well before that.)