The Technovore

Granted. On the 29th day of the 5th month of the 60th year of your life, you will receive one absolutely, wonderfully perfect day. You will be surrounded by loved ones, do amazing things, and cherish the memories made forever. Your bane is that you will receive severe gout the next day. I wish for to have the smarts without the doing of study.

An interesting thought about Scadrian magic is that access to it is genetically innate, right? People are born with the ability to use it, and then "crack" to unlock their powers? I just happened to remember today's genetic manipulation technologies we have but ethically do not use... I can imagine an Era 3 or 4 Scadrial that's a little less ethical really going ham on giving its populace powers. In an event like that Scadrial could win any inter-Cosmere war simply for it's ability to rally Invested armies. (Heaven help the Cosmere if they ever thought to create a Fullborn in a lab ) I looked up some WoBs on it--it looks like Physical genetics plays into it, but there's also an element of Spiritual DNA, which is apparently different? I'd bet it's not immune to manipulation though...

@Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Okay, granted. Your research into the chemistry of ugliness is revolutionary and your scholarly acclaim is grand. However at the age if 55 you are afflicted with a new rare strain of Strep Throat, and you live, but your voice box is ruined and swallowing will hurt until you die. I wish for the discipline to avoid checking this website every five minutes.

Granted, however the only way you can accomplish is by ripping apart the universe and everything in it, causing a hard reset that turns back the clock. Do this repeatedly and you go can back as far as you like, and may use time dilation to move forward as much you like. You are forever burdened by the moral ramifications of such power, and haunted by the possibility that you may responsible for the deaths of quintillions of people. Your bane is that the sight of water makes you severely nauseous. I wish to live on Scadrial as a full feruchemist.

Granted. However by doing this you have set in motion a chain of events that results in Sanderson's entire commercial value plummeting and none of the books get published. Your bane is that your spine will crack loudly and inappropriately whenever you turn your head. I wish to be released from all of my flaws, personal mistakes, bad habits, and annoying tendency to talk too much.

Huh, seems I had some seriously outdated information. Era three is really only 70 years in the future? Crazy. And it has been a while since I'd read Mistborn, so while info about the Magic system is *relatively* well stored, my historical details are *clearly* messed up, lol. As for the last point, right, that is an important distinction that I'd messed up. I suppose what I mean is that the Shard of Preservation at that point was almost totally invested in the world as Leras was dying (the entire Shard of Preservation was in the Mists in HoA was it not?), which I think is very similar to what happened/is happening on Roshar with Honor's Shard, where Honor's power almost totally put itself in the spren/stormlight/the Radiants themselves. It seems that Shards weaken themselves to the point of death by over-investing in their worlds, and after dying and splintering their power sticks around on the planet, which is likely why you see Era 2 Scadrial with a very small amount of invested amount of power among its populace (very rare Mistings and Twinborns, almost no Mistborn) compared to the Investiture storm of Threnody or the whirlwind of clashing power that is Roshar. (Let's be real though Rashek *tried* to kill all the mistborn but we knew of at least three running around right under his nose the whole time, so there were likely at least 3-4 more in the entire world that he didn't know about/didn't care about)

So, on the question of "Scadrial vs Roshar now that we know what Roshar looks like post RoW", obviously there's a lot missing because we don't know what Scadrial actually looks like in this point of time. Era 3 Scadrial is going to align with the SA, but that's almost a millennium in the future of where we are in Scadrial now. I believe that lining up Radiants and Allomancers is a question of versatility vs adaptability. We see in RoW that the Radiants are still very fledgling. The Fused are constantly referring to things the Radiants used to do that they don't know how anymore. Windrunners using "homing arrows" as an example. However, the Rosharans, especially Kaladin as the prime combat example, have shown to be *extremely* adaptable to new strategies. In Roshar, every time a new strategy is used, it can only be used once because there's going to be a counter next time. We see this in Kal vs. Lezian where he was taken off guard, but then by the end of the book beat the snot out of him (there were extra power boosts going on then but still). But while the magic system on Roshar is very complex and versatile, the power-arsenal any one Radiant has is relatively limited. Stormlight works as a constant F-Gold and A-Pewter boost, which is a really good baseline, but then the Radiant only has two to three other abilities AT BEST (the two surges, combining the two surges for a third effect) because most Radiants are very new and have not mastered their abilities yet. Contrast the Mistborn. We'll use Era 1 because that was when Scadrial had the most investiture running around (something about being on a Shardworld with a splintered Shard really amps up the power levels). Those Mistborn are highly trained as assassins and combatants. They have worked with their abilities a lot more, and know how to use them much better. That's a bigger advantage than many think. However they're not often challenged like the Radiants are by other powerful magic users, which caps them. So if we were to line up a war between Scadrial and Roshar, and ignoring all the investiture and Connection "realism" nonsense because that takes the fun out of it--how would a battle between a Radiant and a Mistborn go? If we assume a 4th ideal non-Kaladin-plot-armor Radiant with sewn-in spheres and a Mistborn with lots-but-not-unlimited metals... it all depends on adaptability vs versatility. The mistborn has 16 powers, one of which is an investiture leech and other is designed to boost the other 15. The Radiant has armor, a sprenblade, two maybe-three surges, and stormlight. The Mistborn has the edge on pure versatility. However, if we assume the Mistborn and Radiant aren't familiar with each-other's powers, lethal mistakes can quickly be made. A Mistborn attacking with daggers, not knowing about the armor and sprenblade, will be quickly disappointed and--without Atium--killed. A Radiant not realizing that those coins can shatter armor might be pinned down and overwhelmed, or not expecting a grapple because they don't have Kaladin-plot-awesomeness, might find their necks being snapped by A-pewter before having all their stormlight leeched out before they can regen. The main problem that makes this matchup difficult is that the Mistborn is a much more rogue-ish archetype versus the Radiant's raw combat prowess. A fair fight with against a Radiant with more than 10 brain cells will always end in the Mistborn either running, or dying. A fight filled with traps, trickery, surprise, and environmental restrictions (enclosed space, hostile weather, etc.) will quickly find the more limited Radiant overwhelmed and possibly killed. And the Mistborn is very likely to be able to pull off that situational-control just through raw experience with their own abilities. Mistborn, like the D&D rogue, have the greatest advantage when they can do or exploit something their opponent doesn't expect. Rosharans have no reason to not wear metal, therefore a non-Windrunner/Skybreaker Radiant might find themselves being thrown off balance by A-Iron or A-Steel in just the wrong moment, or worse being hoisted into the air just to fall. Over, and over again, until their stormlight is out. But, if the Radiant has some brain cells and manages to avoid being caught by surprise, the advantage can start to creep in their favor. The Radiant has more raw combat power, and the longer the fight goes, the more things the Mistborn pulls out of his bag of tricks, the more the Radiant begins to work out how the Mistborn works, it will get to the point where unless the Radiant runs out of stormlight, he'll have the trickster in full retreat. And that's without considering the surges. Adhesion to stop A-Iron or A-Steel by gluing them to the ground. Cohesion to keep up with a retreating Mistborn or to make the Radiant un-grapple-able. Gravitation can do a *lot* to jack up a flying Mistborn, and Illusion, Soulcasting, or Transportation can help a sufficiently trained Radiant beat the Mistborn in the "trickery and antics" game. So it comes down to "who adapts to the other's abilities faster" and "who slips up first". A Fullborn is another monster entirely. Feruchemy's abilities are objectively better than Allomancy's due to the fact that they're *even more versatile* with the main drawback being a need for sacrifice and prep time. But Allomancy negates that with Compounding. Compounded Gold makes the Fullborn equal-to or superior to Stormlight's regen abilities, especially if they're very familiar with it like Miles was. Compounded Steel + Compounded Pewter lets them cream almost any Radiant through sheer steamrolling, and Iron Feruchemy shenanigans lets them take to the air easier than any would expect. Combine with Allomancy's speed-bubbles, leeching, and duralumin, and he's a walking army. It wouldn't take a Radiant or even a Herald to stop a Fullborn. It would take a Rosharan Radiant army. But, with the advances in anti-investiture weaponry Navani had recently discovered, it would be a matter of weeks or a month or two before a new weapon rolled out that could completely cripple them. Even that would have to rely on the Fullborn getting way too cocky. Versatility vs. Adaptability is the key to everything.

Imagine being the 32,853rd post on this thread.

But it was fine because Dalinar had already died back in Season 23, Episode 145, "Scrombling Spooks".

*strolls into town from long and dangerous exile and begins RPing like nothing happened* The pineapples were still salty about the whole pizza incident.

The third was Shriek, the result when a Shiekah warrior lives in a swamp with a nice boulder. A very rare and impressive dialect indeed.

There was much confusion between him and Colonel O’NeiII, with three i’s. The fact that Colonel O’Neill was a war hero and Colonel O’NeiII was a serial killer was a topic of much confusion in the federal government.

By the Mustard Confederacy’s secret weapon; pest-control salesman.

But then the Mustard wars ravaged the galaxy.

Narrator Tech realized that his characters were totally interrupting a meaningful RP, so he shoved them back behind the Unreasonably Tall Curtain, apologized to his comrades, and went back to attempting to glue the Fourth Wall together with silly string.

Yasnee, the Roaharan shoemaker, (no relation to the dead proto-Radiant) suggested that Star think about bees dipped in jalapeño sauce instead. Becuase that was much more pleasant.

But really who cares about what flavor the boiling ocean is when it’s boiling and they’re swimming in it? Not Dev, the deceased Scadrian lawyer.

Dev the Scadrian lawyer jumped off a dock into a boiling ocean.

Dev the Scadrian lawyer banged his head against the wall in frustration, for reasons no one but him truly understood.

Disclaimer: Narrator Tech sadly does somewhat represent myself. (My poor friends putting up with my shipping over the years... *stares into the distance*)

And it had only one goal. To give the world more ‘kisses’ than it had ever seen before. And Honor help anyone who dared stand in its way.

Granted, your teeth now have the consistently and texture of burnt toast. I wish for a really fun bane.

Somewhere distant, on a vast ocean surrounded by nothing, a lone ship comes into contact with a pirate vessel.

Ovinch gasped at Thoughts immunity to the horror of a boulder of dirt and oil being extracted from a human epidermis. He switched tactics and began goading Thought, thinking about AJ in giraffe onsies, drinking out of a sippy cup with tomato sauce all over his face.