cometaryorbit

Yeah, Ham says so in chapter 6 of Well of Ascension (explaining Vin's super-jump using pewter). The power comes from the metal, & thus isn't related to the Allomancer's normal strength. Most Thugs build up their muscles as much as possible, because they'll be that much stronger with pewter on. But Vin gets an advantage in mobility because she's so small, but still gets the full power of pewter (probably plus a bit, since her allomantic strength is a bit above normal) to apply to her lesser body mass.

I think a Shardblade might or might not technically 'kill' them in the sense of them passing to 'the Beyond', but it would be quite capable of injuring their spirits to the point of making them ineffectual. OTOH, the Witch-king was killed with swords less magical than a Shardblade... The Ring's power, while great in the relatively low-magic Third Age of Middle-Earth, is pretty small on the Shardic scale. It contains most of the power of Sauron, but Sauron's power is nowhere near enough to vaporize a planet. The greater Valar (including Melkor originally) have the power to reshape the world - but this may be a relatively slow process, the early timeline of Arda is very long. (Rashek used a fraction of a Shard's power to significantly distort a planet's orbit.) And Sauron is much less powerful than a Vala. He's not terribly impressive in the Silmarillion, when other really powerful beings are around. Given that the most impressive thing we see him do is shroud Mordor and Gondor in smoke, Sauron is probably comparable to or somewhat lesser than the Stormfather (who can control the highstorms, which are rather larger scale and really powerful). Given that Nightblood is one of the most Invested non-Shard things in the Cosmere, he's probably on that level. And he's specifically an Investiture-eater; so IMO, Nightblood would shatter the One Ring and eat its Investiture.

The way I see it, this probably has to do with anchor quality (as does, IMO, much of the weirdness of Iron/Steel Allomancy). IMO, your Model 6 is close to right, but I think anchor quality is the 'reconciling' factor. I'd propose Model 7: the Allomancer chooses a "push strength"; the "push strength" combined with the "anchor quality" determines the force. Mathematically, the "anchor quality" would act like an 'efficiency' term. Force = push strength x anchor quality Regime 1 (coin in flight): The coin in the air is a bad anchor, so the force is small. There *is* an equal-and-opposite force on Vin when the coin is in the air, but it is small enough (since Vin's mass is vastly greater than the coin's) that in practice the friction of her feet on the ground (or the force of gravity & air resistance, if she's in the air while pushing on it) means it's not really noticeable. Regime 2 (coin against wall): When the coin hits the wall, it's held in place and becomes a far better anchor. Thus, while Vin keeps her push strength constant, the force increases dramatically, and Vin is thrown back. (Now the coin-plus-wall-plus-ground-it's-anchored-to system has a vastly higher mass than Vin, so the force doesn't do anything noticeable to it.)

Normally, yes, but I think if you were already tapping health sufficiently when the Shardblade hit, you could heal the damage as it was inflicted and thus not die.

The Chapter 55 Warbreaker annotation confirms that it's a real threat, though: https://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-warbreaker-chapter-fifty-five/ For it to expand worldwide, a significant number of Nightblood-type swords would have to be created, so I don't think it can be dependent on off-world materials. There may be less to the issue than we're thinking. Sure, Nightblood is way more Invested than 1,000 Breaths could account for - but he eats Investiture, and he's been around for 300 years (at the time of Warbreaker, more like 600 by the time he shows up in Stormlight Archive). He might not have been one of the most Invested non-Shard things in the Cosmere at the time he was made.

I always figured it had more to do with his epilepsy and thus not being able to do what's 'expected' of a prince in a warrior aristocracy.

It would still mean that he would know that humanity as a whole wasn't at risk of extinction, though. Well, I guess Odium getting loose might be a Cosmere-wide threat, but he really only seems interested in Shards and Heralds and such - he blew up the Shards on Sel and stuffed the pieces in the Cognitive Realm, but he didn't kill off Selish humanity when he was the only Shard there and presumably could have (he didn't even turn it into a screwed-up environment, which you can clearly do with only a relatively small fraction of Shardic power - TLR was able to push Sca I think it's more than just mythological hints. Soulcasters are known and used, so there are people around who have actually been to the Cognitive Realm (at least far enough in to see it). I agree that the ability to Worldhop through the Cognitive isn't part of Rosharan scholarly knowledge, though. The way the Diagram talks about "a seed of humanity" implies that Genius T didn't have any hope for more than a tiny part to survive, though.

Yeah. I don't think all KRs have to have Kaladin and Shallan-level tragedies in their past. That 'soul crack' needs to be there for the spren's Investiture to get in, but we don't know what the threshold is for that.

Do you know where that is? I know there's a WOB that Scadrial is low investiture and Roshar is high investiture, and that's what I was going off of, combined with the lack of obvious 'power glow' like Stormlight glowing or Breath color-distortion aura. Sure, but if you're using something edged (like a sword/spear grabbed off the battlefield) or something small like a coin, rather than a dense chunk of metal, you might have to hit the same spot over and over, not just the same section - depending on what the material properties of Plate are, it might be weakened in one spot without meaningfully weakening the entire section.

I totally agree that a Mistborn or Coinshot could crack shardplate in one hit with the right kind of metal object (heavy and dense - cannonball, ingot, hammer type things) and the right amount of distance. I don't think they could do it with coins, spears etc. though (at least not without many repeated strikes to the same point, which is probably beyond the average Mistborn's skill). You might be overestimating the skill of the average Mistborn, though. The main people we've seen using Iron/Steel are Kelsier (per WOB at about the maximum possible level of skill/precision), Vin (an intuitive Allomantic genius), and Wax (a Savant). Lining it up correctly might be trickier than it looks. However, I think the Mistborn would generally have the advantage against many Radiants, even with Shardplate and Blade, if they knew about the abilities of Plate and Blade beforehand (if they didn't, they'd be likely to get too close and be caught by the mobility and jumping-ability of Plate - it looks a lot more ponderous than it really is). A lot of the Surge stuff we've seen requires touch, so a Mistborn could avoid it pretty easily. Even if they had trouble getting through the Plate, they could stay out of reach and wear them down. However, something like Jasnah's ranged Soulcasting of people into smoke/fire/crystal could change the picture, and we don't know what Division (apparently one of the main battle Surges) does yet except that it apparently causes fires. A Mistborn burning metals would be somewhat resistant to direct Surges, but they're pretty low Investiture compared to Stormlight stuff, so it might not be enough.

Most (though not all) Inquisitors have Feruchemical gold, so they could theoretically survive. However, their Feruchemical gold is weaker than normal due to hemalurgic decay, so it's rather unlikely they'd have enough reserves. They might be able to heal one hit, but they'd run out fast.

The multiple lashings / kick mean a much more concentrated force than a person falling under normal gravity. To a degree, yes... but we don't see the coins going supersonic (bullwhip crack/sonic boom effects) so that still limits the total energy. Also, the force does drop off with distance, though not through anything like a classic inverse-square law. It has to, or Vin could levitate upward from a coin indefinitely rather than stopping at a hundred feet. Problem is, for a coin to have comparable kinetic energy to Vin travelling at "blurring" speed, it would have to be moving absurdly fast - well into hypersonic speeds. Also, I think they'd have to have the same momentum - but not the same kinetic energy. Which makes the problem even worse, since momentum is only linear with velocity, not exponential - so you're talking coins traveling at hundreds of kilometers per second to have the same momentum as Vin traveling at a few tens of meters per second (since Vin probably has something like 10,000 times the mass of a coin - say 45kg vs 2 to 10 grams for a coin). I think anchor quality is the missing factor here. If Vin pushed on a coin in vacuum, Vin and the coin would get the same momentum in opposite directions - but it would be a tiny amount, since a free-floating coin is a terrible anchor. To fly, Vin has to put the coin on the ground, where it's anchored against the mass of the planet. However, it's still not as good of an anchor as a larger metal object on the ground would be. A better anchor seems to allow more total force. True - but as coins still seem to be subsonic, the total work and energy can't be all that high.

Well, yeah, but I doubt you could break Shardplate just by having someone jump on it. That's an equivalent force. No, kinetic energy is just 1/2 * mass * velocity squared. The travel distance isn't going to affect it (bullets, arrows, etc. lose energy as they travel since they lose velocity, but coins are continuously pushed). And things propelled by Coinshots/Mistborn just aren't moving that fast. However, they do seem to be able to impart more energy to larger objects. Vin flying has way more kinetic energy than a coin pushed at any subsonic speed. If Vin is 45kg, she'd have 9000 joules of kinetic energy flying at 20 m/s -- which is like 45mph/72kph, they seem to go really fast so that doesn't seem too much. Even at 10 m/s (22.5mph, 36kph), that would be 2250 joules. Even if my previous coin estimate was low, a 10 gram coin (which is very large coin, US quarter is 5.7 grams, US half dollar is 11.3 grams) moving at 300 m/s would have only 450 joules. Well, sure, but that doesn't mean Steelpushing generates more force or more power than pewter. A pewter jump is much more limited because the force stops being applied as soon as the Allomancer's feet lose contact with the ground. Vin floating there is using much less force than she's using to jump (since she's not moving upwards - she's only matching the force of gravity, not exceeding it) but applied for a longer time. But to break stuff, you need bursts of force, so that doesn't make a Coinshot better at getting through Shardplate than a Thug throwing rocks. Sure, but it can't be applied very usefully as a weapon. That energy was accumulated over time; it's not necessarily comparable to what Vin could achieve in a brief horizontal push. Now, there's the possibility of lifting a heavy object that would make a useful weapon and dropping it on a Shardbearer... that could be very effective and deadly, but awkward to set up.

Sounds right, Soulcasting Savantism probably links you to the Cognitive Realm because the power is inherently tied to the Cognitive. Sazed's epigraphs in HOA say that lots of Seekers become Allomantic Bronze Savants without noticing ... I think they would notice if they started to see everything around them turning misty.

Yeah, I agree. The Death Rattles probably aren't actually new, just newly arrived to the area Taravangian knows about.

Ah. Wax and Lessie are a very good point - I was thinking it wouldn't be an issue because spikes could be covered by clothing, but yeah, they must be able to hide them under flesh.

It did. Roshar had minor spren before Honor, Cultivation, or Odium showed up - those would be small Splinters of Adonalsium (well, they may not be conscious enough to qualify as Splinters, but bits of pre-Shattered Adonalsium's Investiture anyway). As FiveLate says, the 'natural magic' on worlds like First of the Sun is derived from Adonalsium before the Shattering. Threnody - who knows, it does act like 'natural magic' in that it's not really a power of humans, but there was definitely Shardic involvement in the Threnodite System. Maybe a mix of Shardic indirect influence with pre-existing natural magic?

I doubt it. For one thing, it's actually harder to affect kandra than humans, just way more effective once you do. (Normal Era 1 allomantic power isn't enough to touch kandra minds at all; Vin needs Duralumin to manage it. But as Yata said, adding lots of spikes would make them easier to control, so who knows. But the strength of the Coppercloud itself would be based on the kandra's Allomantic strength, not the severity of their 'Hemalurgic flaw'. Even if their resistance to control was basically zero, you'd still need to be able to pierce the Coppercloud, so base Era 1 strength wouldn't be enough. But do the spikes actually have to stick out of the body? If not, they could put them in their interior and surround them with tough tissue.

I agree that TLR probably wasn't involved in the South. He'd have had to either use ridiculous amounts of steel to get there before he died of thirst, or use gold to resist the effects. And that's assuming that there was a land passage all the way there. Steel wouldn't make a boat go faster, and he'd have to sail alone since he couldn't protect others from the heat with brass or from dying of thirst with gold. And sailing alone across unknown oceans would be dangerous, even for him. Gold's heavy, and it would take a long time to swim back from the middle of the ocean then walk back to the Final Empire. And if he was being scalded by super-hot equatorial seas in the process, he probably couldn't carry enough. If there was land all the way there, it would have been easy if he had bendalloy to store water and food... but while he probably knew about it (he probably knew all sixteen metals), the Final Empire didn't have the technology to make any.

Vin was definitely super-intuitive about how to use Allomancy, probably better at that than anybody ever. But given what Kelsier says about Vin being stronger than she should be in the Push contest when they're training in TFE, and the comments about Vin being abnormally strong in the training scene at the beginning of WOA, I think Vin was stronger in raw power than Kelsier. Kelsier's advantage was his skill/precision specifically in iron and steel, which was very high - there's a WOB that he and Zane were about at the maximum possible degree of control. Given that Kelsier got there without Zane's Hemalurgic boost, that's quite impressive.

Well, depends on what they had available... if there was a large dense metal object available that would be a lot better than a coin. I don't think Steelpushing swords or spears into a Shardbearer would be terribly effective, but if they had something like an ingot or a hammer that would work fine. IIRC it takes a bunch of hits for normal hammers to break Plate though, depends on how much kinetic energy you actually get on a Steelpush of an object that size. But if Shardplate is resistant to modern small arms, I don't think it would be terribly easy for a Mistborn or Coinshot to break. The Mistborn could keep out of Shardblade reach if they knew about Shardplate's jumping ability, so they could probably wear them down eventually if the Shardbearer was insistent enough on going after them.

Kelsier isn't that exceptional: he has top-level skill with iron/steel, but Vin is way better. (That comes up in the attack on Cett's tower in WOA: Vin takes out ten hazekillers easily and realizes that Kelsier had a lot of trouble with six.) And that's before she turns on the duralumin, so it is a fair comparison. Kelsier is better with iron/steel, but he was only a Mistborn for a couple of years: I wouldn't assume he was all-around better than your average well-trained Noble House Mistborn. Others might be better with pewter, better at processing tin-senses, etc. (Yes, he killed an Inquisitor, but that was more a matter of knowing its weakness. With that known and the Feruchemical Gold healing advantage therefore mostly taken out of the picture, an Inquisitor -- one that didn't start as a Mistborn anyway -- is going to be weaker in all metals but one than a natural Mistborn.)

Not necessarily, it would depend on exactly how the force was applied, positioning etc. People have survived getting hit by very large bears, and the larger ones probably have something like twenty times the strength of the average man (at least upper body strength - human musculature is more endurance running focused, which is why bulky burst-strength creatures like apes and bears seem so ridiculously strong relative to us). Mundane weapons can do it, but with lots of time and losses among the regular troops. The sling stones were human-head-sized rocks from Warform Parshendi; that's well beyond baseline human strength. Possibly, but not necessarily. There are two difficulties with determining how effective coins would be against Shardplate: 1) Shardplate doesn't seem to quite work like a better version of conventional armor - it seems like massive blunt force is used against it rather than concentrated force (pointed/edged weapons). This doesn't line up with the kinds of weapons (flanged maces, estocs, real warhammers which were more like a modern claw hammer than a maul) invented to fight highly developed plate armor in our world. From what we've seen, it's quite possible that a big slow hammer/stone is a lot more effective vs Shardplate than a small fast coin. 2) Coinshot coins seem to cheat physics a bit. While getting hit with a fast-moving coin would be dangerous, in the real world I don't think it could be made into a reliably lethal/incapacitating weapon against even unarmored normal humans. Against armor, even fairly poor armor, they'd be pretty much useless. Coins are probably subsonic, due to the lack of sonic booms/bullwhip crack sounds. At 250 meters per second, a 5 gram US nickel would have 156.25 joules of kinetic energy [ from 1/2mv^2: 0.5 * 0.005 kg * (250 m/s)^2 ]. That's very close to a .22 bullet according to this: That's dangerous, although it's not the kind of bullet one would use against armored enemies. However... the center-of-mass nature of Iron/Steel allomancy means that the coin is almost guaranteed to hit side-on - air resistance will flip it side-on unless the starting alignment is completely perfectly edge-on. So the impact will be spread out over a much larger area - the nickel is 21.2 mm wide, while the bullet is 5.7 mm wide. That's 3.7 times the diameter, but 13.7 times the area. And the bullet is somewhat pointed at the end... IE, subsonic coins will have basically zero penetration. A jacket or significant fat would probably block them. And if you increase the speed, you get into "impact depth" issues - basically, you can't make low-mass-per-frontal-area projectiles very penetrating by making them very fast (because of conservation of momentum - to make a hole, the projectile has to push the mass of the armor/flesh/whatever out of the way). The only way to make side-on coin impacts effective weapons would be to get the speeds so high they start acting like explosives: shooting it out of a railgun at Mach 8 would probably work.

Shardplate is described as giving "the strength of many men", which sounds significantly more than the 3x or so of flared Allomantic pewter. And given the size of Dalinar's hammer, he'd have to be something like 20 times as strong as a normal man, more like 30 probably. It was difficult for two men to lift, which probably means well over 100 pounds. Historical weapons were actually very light: http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

I think at the time of the first book Kelsier was 'on the side of good' but not really a very good person himself. I think that by that point he wanted to be though. My understanding is that before he & Mare were caught he wasn't that interested in helping others, he wanted wealth but even more so he wanted to be the person who accomplished stuff nobody else did. After Mare's death & his escape he became committed to overthrowing the Final Empire, & had learned about the power of hope in helping people to survive the worst times, but he was still in significant part driven by the desire to be 'the best', he wanted to overthrow the Empire not just because it was cruel but also because it was thought to be impossible. I think that his sparing Elend was another big step, mentoring Vin changed him some more. And then I think Leras/Preservation's 'Do better, the souls of men are not your toys' speech and Vin's final words about love are going to have had an impact, going forwards. Kelsier will probably always have a weakness for grand gestures, but I think in Era 2 (and on?) he'll be more careful about his actions' impact on ordinary people's lives. And he sees the larger picture now. I think he's likely to end up being somewhat of a maverick/rogue agent of Harmony, doing things behind the scenes to protect / strengthen Scadrial in the face of other Cosmere forces, but maybe things that Harmony can't do and maybe can't even want to do or ask other people (eg Wax, kandra) to do due to his 'Shardic Mandate limitations'.