cometaryorbit

This is true, but one big factor will be working in the opposite direction- population and scale. The Basin population is about 10 million as of TLM, and the Roughs seem to be very thinly populated so the total Northern population is probably 11 million or less. The US population in the mid-1910s was about 100 million, and the US was deeply involved in trading with the rest of the world (though obviously WW1 temporarily interfered). The Basin is basically isolated, and likely to remain isolated if things move toward cold war conditions with the South. They're likely to hit their demographic transition pretty soon, too. What will their population peak at? Probably a very low value by our standards. Their geographical scope is also very small - the Basin seems to be somewhat smaller than Texas. And it's incredibly centralized - nearly half the population is in Elendel itself. That's going to limit advancement in several ways: 1) there's just fewer people working on things. 2) the extreme centralization + small population means that the intellectual community will probably be very strongly influenced by a few key individuals on each subject. Most or all the scientists studying X will know each other personally. So "accepted wisdom" will probably be stronger than in our history. 3) new mineral resources will be harder to get. We use in our technology all kinds of things that weren't relevant 100 years ago (lithium for batteries is a big current example, but there's a ton of them). It'd be hard to have a half-the-world mining/refining/distribution infrastructure with only a few tens of millions of people total. So these might balance out with the pressures toward faster development, and hints from "outside" - whatever Kelsier's going to do, and whatever they find out from Telsin's projects. 50 to 70 years seems reasonable in that light.

I actually don't think it works this way. If cadmium stores oxygen in a breathable form, that's O2, not the oxygen atom in CO - for the same reason that you can't Steelpush on metal oxide rocks like limestone/marble. Also, cadmium and bendalloy are "Hybrid" metals, not pure Physical... just like Gold, which stores more of a Spiritual health (correspondence between the Physical state of the body and the Spiritual ideal) than just "rate of healing wounds" or "immune system strength". So cadmium may not store actual oxygen - it may be the state of the body having sufficient breath. More like a direct edit of the body's state than a tank of compressed air.

Steelsight from spiked eyes is weird. We know it's something that any Coinshot/Lurcher/Mistborn can theoretically learn, and we see Wax in TLM using steel lines for spatial awareness (though not full "sight") ... but Kelsier's epilogue in TLM shows he has steelsight but not actually Allomancy. So somehow he gets the lines without actually burning the metal. It kind of sounds like he's getting the super powerful version that can see things other than just metal, too (though Inquisitors can see traces of metal in basically everything, so who knows). That's really interesting. I don't know how you can steal an ability with Hemalurgy that the original person didn't have (steel lines without burning metals). Unless it has to do with the Spiritual nature of the lines, and the Spiritual nature of Hemalurgy and its wounding/opening of the soul/spiritweb... maybe it's like looking through a gap into the Spiritual?

Coins seem to be subsonic (sonic booms aren't mentioned), so they're comparable to early bullets, which were way larger (in mass) than coins. Early 1800s (Napoleonic era) was still largely muskets, though rifles were around. Musket balls were very large - they had to be. The French Napoleonic Charleville musket used a 27 gram ball... a US quarter is about 5.6 grams.

I'd say they are different organizations even though they started as one.

Why would steelsight help him see people in the CR? Vin was burning metals with Kelsier's shadow around and didn't see him. Would a Shardblade hit a being fully in the Cognitive Realm? You can hit a spren with a Shardblade, sure (like Kaladin cutting a voidspren with Sylblade) but those are spren manifested in the Physical. I don't think a Fullborn can practically get enough Investiture to create a perpendicularity. In theory, sure, any source of Investiture can do that. But I don't think a practical sized metalmind can do it. (The Bands are completely full, still less Invested than a Shardblade, and a Shardblade is nowhere near perpendicularity levels.) In the Division aerial fight, the enemy Radiant would never get close to the ground for TLR to use f-Steel against him. Re the Sliver Connections vs Investiture thing: I think we are reading the same text and WoBs in opposite ways. That's probably a theory tangent for a different thread anyway.

I don't think the Oldbloods are secret really. Sleepless ... yeah definitely. Envisagers - seems likely, though they may not be currently operating. Ire - also likely, though it's not clear if they really operate on Roshar; one guy sitting in a lighthouse might not count.

Hmm, OK, maybe they're more useful than I thought. I think you're overestimating how tough they are though. A koloss should still have all the same vital points as a human. They're somewhat tougher & have more muscle shielding vital points, but I don't think they could just ignore Napoleonic-era bullet wounds in torso or limbs. Especially newly made koloss which are still human sized, which is what TLR would have had at the beginning.

Yeah, if the Fullborn gets on board he can wreck the machinery and kill the crew very easily. But if the battleship crew know that's a possibility they can prevent him getting on board - an airship can't get very close to a battleship at all. We don't know the speed of large Malwish airships (the 'skimmers' like Wilg are slower than a train apparently), but they're probably not any good at dodging. And battleship guns have quite a range. That's why the knowledge issue is so key. If they know Fullborn are a possibility they can stay 5 miles off shore and blast every port city into rubble with total immunity. But if they get too close they could easily lose the ship. On land, the knowledge issue might go the other way. Emotional Allomancy would be really hard to figure out if you don't already know about it - there's no obvious external sign, and emotions are running high in battle anyway. That could have huge morale effects. -- Yet another key question: does the Metallic Arts side have Hemalurgic constructs? Koloss won't be effective on a WW1+ battlefield* - they'd just be machine-gunned down - but Mistborn assassinating, and kandra replacing, a few key enemy leaders could wreck a war effort. 1920 tech definitely can't spot them, even if Brandon ultimately decides they can't mimic at the DNA level. Inquisitors are also *frankly, they seem kind of questionable even in the early-1800s environment TLR invented them in. They don't sound terribly effective against even Napoleonic armies; I doubt they're any good with guns. They're tougher to coins, and so probably to bullets, than normal humans - but not *that* tough (pre-lerasium Elend can kill one with a knife and unaided strength), and a lot would die before they closed to blade range. But it kind of sounds like, from Tindwyl's book, their real advantage was logistics - they can eat almost anything, while their enemies were still food-depleted from the Deepness. Maybe gunpowder logistics were messed up too? And TLR didn't need to train koloss (especially as he could directly mind-control them) so as long as he was willing to kill or transform lots of people, he could replenish losses terrifyingly fast. So maybe losing a ton of koloss in each major battle was acceptable. And they'd have a huge morale advantage. So I'm thinking they worked for TLR largely because he was dealing with an already near-collapsed civilization; giving koloss to one side in a 19th century conflict between two powerful nations probably wouldn't accomplish much, and once some version of machine guns shows up (by the late 19th - Gatling guns in the 1860s, fully automatic Maxim guns in the 1880s) they'd be useless.

I think this should be more in Cosmere Discussion? (Warbreaker/Stormlight) I think medallions are more alive in maybe, two ways: first, in the sense that their Investiture is separated from the original creator. All Investiture seeks life or intelligence or self-awareness, at least if it's not already held by a living/intelligent being. Medallions are no longer keyed to the original Feruchemist's Identity, but more than that, they're unsealed so the user doesn't have to be a Feruchemist at all. But second, the medallion itself seems to be able to supply some level of Intent. Not 100% - the person still needs to know what it is and use it - but it can function when the person is asleep, and Marasi feels the medallion "wanting" weight. It's like ... it has part of the Intent, not enough to initiate the use of Feruchemy, but enough to sustain the process once the user falls asleep.

I think it's entirely possible in theory but not in practice. You'd need a deep "method actor" kandra keeping one human role for a very long time in the Era 1 style - rather than the briefer taking of roles we see in Era 2 - who also had access to f-Gold... which wasn't available then (or, really, even in Era 2 - there don't seem to be f-Gold medallions, so you'd need Paalm's special Hemalurgy knowledge, and Trell talking to you would probably prevent you from seeing yourself as just a normal human). And even the Era 1 long term kandra were very Contract focused... wouldn't they have to give that up to really see themselves as human? The only way I could see it happening is if this kandra who somehow had f-Gold took a human role, and then developed deeper and deeper emotional bonds (fell in love or adopted a child or something) and spent years or decades thinking of their real kandra-identity less and less, slowly becoming the identity they'd assumed.

WW1 hand bombs dropped by pilots from planes were indeed a thing, but those were small bombs falling at relatively slow speeds, so one Coinshot on each airship could protect against them very well. I was thinking incendiaries because they aren't necessarily metal-containing*, so a Coinshot couldn't just Push them away. *I guess you could make nonmetallic bombs even with pre plastic technology, though. Explosives in a ceramic pot with a hand lit fuse? They'd be more like early attempts at bombs than like WW1 bombs, but they could work, I guess. -- Yeah, Dreadnought battleships are probably the biggest tech advantage. I'm actually not totally sure a Fullborn could deal with them. Their gun range is more than even a Duralumin Steelpush jump, so as long as they stayed well offshore (and sank any boats moving toward them) they might be just immune. But that ties into a key question: how much knowledge is each side assumed to start with about the other side's capabilities? Things like a Fullborn's powers, or aluminum bullets being immune to Allomancy, or how emotional Allomancy works, would be really hard to figure out except by luck or betrayal ... spying might be key. Without knowledge, a Mistborn with Duralumin Emotional Allomancy could mess up whole battles by morale. Now, longer range of WW1+ era guns may make this avoidable ... but if the Tech side doesn't know emotional allomancy exists, then would they know why their army suddenly routed?

I think a sufficiently skilled kandra could flatten out enough to have a safe terminal velocity, and still keep the bones in their body. They could get a surface area a lot larger than a wingsuit. And they're tougher than humans anyway. However, most kandra in Era 1 can't do changes very quickly, and have only really learned to imitate humans. I still don't think a fall would kill one though (they're hard to kill with anything that doesn't directly destroy cells, like fire or acid).

See, I kind of think that you can't do any of this deliberately ... almost by definition. Because if you are trying to change into X, you are necessarily acknowledging that your self-identity currently isn't X.

Yeah, those smaller tanks should be doable with reasonable amounts of metal and anchoring (and either F-Gold or Duralumin A-Pewter to withstand being crushed). Vin flings multiple horses with one vial - and that's by their horseshoes, Pushing on all metal objects like a tank should be more efficient (better anchor quality). Wax saw Tillaume fiddling with it and warned Wayne; Wayne wasn't reacting to the explosion itself. In the quote you posted, Wax warns Wayne before the "blossoming ball of fire"; the bubble and explosion are developing at the same time. A detonation wave is faster than the speed of sound; there's no way to react to a nearby explosion in time unless you're already tapping Zinc (or maybe Steel) or burning Bendalloy. Minimum normal human reaction time is about 100 milliseconds (150-200 ms is more normal iirc) and speed of sound in air is about 1100 feet per second, so the explosion would have to be farther than 110 feet away (or probably 160 feet plus since the Fullborn probably doesn't have peak human reactions without powers). Now, a Fullborn might be burning Pewter just by default, which might improve reaction times somewhat ... maybe raising it to the human peak of around 100 ms, maybe even more (if pewter is double normal strength, maybe it's half normal reaction time, down to say 75 ms) ... but that still won't be enough to deal with an explosion in the next room. To be fair, the ability of Allomancers to stop coins shot at them, which must be moving quite rapidly (though still subsonic, I think, since we don't hear sonic booms) suggests that Allomantic reaction times might be faster than physical reaction times. They don't seem able to react to individual bullets, though (as opposed to Pushing on everything generally, or doing a steel bubble), and Era 2 bullets are probably around the speed of sound. So I don't think even Coinshot Allomantic reaction times support reacting to explosions nearby when unprepared and unwarned. -- The point is, fighting a Fullborn directly is generally a losing move (unless you're Vin backed by Preservation, with Ruin messing with your enemy's head). But if this is a large scale war, the tech side can still win by winning all the fights the Fullborn isn't personally present at. The larger scale problems are dealing with Pushes on guns, and Malwish airship bombing. Medallions won't be that decisive, because it seems from TLM that there are no medallions for the really combat-heavy powers. Pushes on guns can probably be largely dealt with in WW1+ era, given longer ranges. Musket era armies had to get pretty close to hit things, so they'd get messed up badly by even a small number of Coinshots in the enemy front line. But I think WW1+ ones can do better. Malwish airship bombing, though... I think once 1920ish planes were re-armed with incendiary weapons, they could take down Malwish airships. I don't know how effective just shooting them up would be, since they're not dependent on a gasbag or even really on aerodynamics - you'd have to hit the engine- but incendiaries should work. That depends, though - could the Malwish-tech side just put F-Brass technology in their airships to store the heat, as easily as the regular-tech side could equip their planes with incendiaries? If so, the Malwish airships might be really hard to deal with. - A naval conflict is much better for the tech side. Steelpushing/Ironpulling flight doesn't work well over the ocean since you can't drop anchors (as pointed out in TLM); you'd need a Mistborn with the skill to pull off Vin's (utterly unique) horseshoe flight trick. So basically all the Metallic Arts side can contribute here is Malwish airship bombing, and they can't bomb accurately from a height that battleship guns can't hit them.

I don't think that this sort of thing is anywhere near as easy as it sounds - otherwise everyone with f-Gold would end up taller / stronger / more attractive etc. It's not enough to want to be some way, it requires self-perception as actually already being that way. This could have some very weird interactions with kandra. If they get too deep into their roles, could they start to lose their kandra traits and become human (or whatever they're imitating)?

Even as a Radiant, he's still got the atiummind vulnerability. So two possibilities: - Give Jasnah Ishar's Honorblade for unlimited Stormlight; she pops into the Cognitive and Soulcasts his metalminds into smoke. - Use a Honorblade to get a high ideal Radiant with Adhesion + Gravitation + Division + Abrasion. This Radiant can outmatch Skybreaker Rashek in aerial combat, with the ability to reduce air pressure and friction, which pure Gravitation and Iron/Steel Allomancy can't do (and if Rashek reduces his weight with F-Iron to get more out of Iron/Steel, air resistance will actually hit him worse). Trade Division fire at range until his metalminds melt; his bracers aren't pure atium, so they will melt. Oh, not even close to second place, IMO. I don't think he's as Invested as a normal Returned or Vivenna with hundreds of Breaths, or a Knight Radiant or Fused holding their full quantity of Light. He's much more Invested than a normal Mistborn, sure, but Scadrial is a very low Investiture world. I doubt a Mistborn's Innate Investiture is more than a few Breaths worth - they don't show any signs like Elantrians, Radiants, Returned, or Awakeners. And the amount they pull when burning metals isn't that large. He's a Sliver, yes, which would have easily let him become a Cognitive Shadow - but that's more about how he's Connected than quantity of Investiture. There is a WoB that Hemalurgy might make spren not want to bond you, but highspren are crazy, so it might work. Yeah, that would be a terrifying combination.

TLR isn't remotely as Invested as Susebron. He doesn't have any aura/glow/leakage effect like Returned/Awakeners, Elantrians, or Radiants - notably, Marasi with the Bands does leak Mist. So I think TLR is way less Invested than a normal Returned, much less Susebron. He's constantly tapping youth, but his atiumminds are actually quite small metalminds (Vin points that out when talking about selling them in WoA). There's just not that much actual power there. I can see TLR not killing himself, but if he draws Nightblood he's probably dead anyway - it'll drain away his youth.

That's also possible, but breaking the tanks by Pushing and Pulling simultaneously on different metal parts of them is probably more metal-efficient than throwing them around. Tossing tanks through the air ought to be possible with Compounded F-Iron and Duralumin Steel, but would probably require a lot more metal than a normal Allomancer usually carries. Vin could throw horses around with a vial, but Mark I tanks are ~50x heavier or more. That's why I said "sabotage and treachery". Yes, a Fullborn on a battlefield could dodge* projectiles moving at WW1 tech speeds, with F-zinc + F-steel. But if the Fullborn is not expecting a threat and is suddenly caught in a giant explosion when not tapping f-Zinc or burning bendalloy for crazy reaction speeds... Once actually in the explosion that's probably the end. The only chance would be to F-Steel out before being destroyed, and even Marasi's BoM speed might not be enough for that. No, Wayne threw Wax off the ship before the bomb was set off. The duralumin time bubble gave Wayne a chance to work (internal time) but didn't protect him because it burned out in basically zero external time, and the explosion was still there. *TLM suggests that even a user of the BoM - with much higher Allomantic strength than a hypothetical "generic" Fullborn - would need some extra, not-yet-understood "conflux" power to deal with a missile, which is kind of surprising because you'd think F-zinc for mental speed + F-iron for weight + Duralumin A-Steel for Push would work. So the upper limits of some of this may be lower than we tend to assume. But the dodging should still work.

Yeah, Paalm was TLR's personal agent, so I think it's very likely she knew the secrets of Blessings - or at least part of them. But Trellium Hemalurgy wouldn’t have been part of that knowledge base, so I think Autonomy was also heavily involved.

There are several key things that will decide the outcome: - are we assuming equal populations, or does the tech side get the advantage of being able to support a larger population? - "post-WW1 tech" covers a huge amount of advancement in some relevant technologies. 1919 warplanes were pretty feeble, 1938 ones not so much. I think Malwish airships would probably be ok against 1919 ones, but couldn't fight near-WW2 ones. - land vs naval. If it's a pure land fight, the Metallic Arts side does better. WW1 battleships are going to be really hard to hurt; their gun range is a lot larger than the altitude from which a Malwish airship could effectively bomb (which is surprisingly low to get decent accuracy, with even early WW2 tech). - what kind of mundane tech does the non-tech side? To have all sixteen metals available, you need at least 19th century technology (aluminum and cadmium were both discovered in the 19th century). 19th century tech plus Metallic Arts is a lot different situation than 10th century tech plus Metallic Arts. I think if we assume 1825 tech (aluminum was the last of the Allomantic base metals to be discovered in 1825) + Metallic Arts and Malwish ettmetal tech, that side clearly wins, but that might not really be the spirit of the comparison. 1825 is already beginning to industrialize. -- I don't think WW1 tanks are a clear winner. They're more of a "pitched battle" thing and a Fullborn could imo wreck them fairly easily. Compounded F Iron for incredible weight + A Duralumin boosted A Steel and Iron = probably broken tanks. But the way to beat a Fullborn isn't pitched battle. They can only be in one place at a time, so their side can still lose the war. A huge logistical advantage and advantage in numbers would suffice. (Also, sabotage and treachery. 1920 tech can kill a Fullborn. They aren't immune to very large explosions. Wayne wouldn't have survived the end of TLM even with full goldminds, and a Gold Compounder is just a Gold Ferring with always-full goldminds. Any explosion that blows the Compounder into tiny pieces is lethal, since the goldminds will be gone.)

Marasi claims mistwraiths are thought to be extinct by scientists. They at least don't seem to be around in Era 2. And I absolutely think Sazed should have turned them back to humans.

Yeah good point... electrum is just not that great. Actually, I don't think sun heat is possible... I think the limit is when their brassminds melt and fall off (or even vaporize). Brass is an alloy, and the Allomantic/Feruchemical ideal mix is probably not the same as the most common brass for us, so its melting point isn't 100% certain - but Googling gives numbers around 900 C or 1700 F for brass... somewhat lower than pure copper (~1084C/1984F). But metals can soften before they melt. So sun heat is definitely off the table and even low lava temperatures around 800C are probably not safe for the brassminds' life expectancy. But yeah, clothes will burn way below that. And since clothes are going to be much more in contact with the body than the opponent will, using F-brass as a weapon is probably very tricky. It sounds like a good desperation tactic if grappled by an enemy, but not a good first resort. -- I don't think aluminum really heals the spiritweb, it flushes out foreign investiture. So it would get rid of Shade corruption but not heal a Shardblade wound. I don't think you could burn aluminum while tapping gold (it'd probably wipe out the effect of the gold you're tapping just like it wipes out your own Allomantic metals - it doesn't *only* remove unwanted things, Vin certainly didn't want her metals to go away), but this might still affect the Resonance. Perhaps this Twinborn could heal spiritual wounds more efficiently. (Though we still have basically nothing to go on for resonances.)

See to me those two statements don't totally line up, mania in that sense is less healthy than just "being really determined". I think it would be incredibly useful for that, one of the few situations where it would really be a great power to have. (I actually can see several other uses for F-Electrum, but they're very niche, like resisting super powerful "depression" Soothing like Vin's Duralumin blast on Straff or TLR's aura, or a Full Feruchemist using it to power through extreme pain without fainting to hide a goldmind inside their body before healing up the cut with F-Gold.) -- I feel like F-Copper was a super big deal in Era 1 when lots of things were kept secret and records were destroyed or suppressed, but will be less and less powerful as communications and information technology advances. Once everyone has a smartphone to serve as external memory...

Yeah, I was just recently wondering about the vulnerability Amaram showed. His healing doesn't even seem Fused level, much less Radiant level. Amaram is really quite unimpressive for a guy with all 10 (or at least 9) Surges and dual Shardblades. I don't think so. If Progression gave them healing equal to high Ideal Radiants, the two Heralds with it would have been literally impossible to kill in the Desolations until Stormlight drain fabrials were invented (and maybe even then depending on how fast they can draw from Honor vs how fast the fabrials drain).