The Technovore

Calcified Organisms Replicating Nosospontaneously.

The corn was environmentally infectious, in fact.

"Sure thing! Lil Sis you're my demolitions expert, here hold this nitroglycerin and this bag of gunpowder, try not to drop it. Okay, so Yiro, how comfortable are you with potentially being absolutely drenched in blood?" WTWTTSWY find your home surrounded by a SWAT team consisting of metalborn?

I wonder of the implications of this could mean that actually everyone on Scadrial is some sort of allomancer or feruchemist, it's just that the vast majority of them are Mistings/Ferrings for unobtainable/nonexistent metals. Some of them would be snapped, some of them wouldn't, but due to the fact that a Bavadinium-Atium-Tanavastium-Tin Misting is basically never going to encounter that alloy, it doesn't make a difference. The few "Metalborn" on Scadrial are just the ones lucky enough to be aligned to existing metals. (Likely not, due to a bunch of factors, but still a funny thought)

which caused skin to melt instantly on contact.

I like imagining a Lightweaver disguised as an artillery-crewman just walking up to a big-ol Scadrian howitzer and be like "Hey!" Howitzer: "I LIKE GOING BOOM!" Spy: "You like going boom?" Howitzer: "BOOM!" Spy: "Going boom is great! I can help you go boom, you know!" Howitzer: "I can do more BOOM?" Spy: "Yes! All you need to do is become oil." Howitzer: "YES! GO BOOM!" r.i.p. Scadrian Howitzer. r.i.p. Artillery crewmates. r.i.p. anyone else nearby. I think the effects of emotional allomancy can't be discounted. The ability to sooth or riot Rosharan non-radiant soldiers is a pretty big deal, especially with Mistborn that also have access to Duralumin (or normal Soothers or Rioters with a duralumin medallion) I also think that if Thaidakar and the Ghostbloods work out fabrial mechanics figure out how to combine it with SoScad medallions, they could make a lot of amazing effects that don't require metalborn on the battlefield but can still get their abilities, for example, a Nicrosil grenade that a foot soldier can toss toward some Radiants or Shardbearers with plate to nullify their abilities, or, again, emotional allomancy at range. If they liberally work Hemalurgy into their weapons the Rosharans could be in trouble. Can you imagine the devastating effects of an aluminum or chromium spike-bullet hitting a Radiant? Hitting a Bondsmith? Even if Hemalurgy ends up purely restricted to Scadrial, the prospect of capturing a Radiant, transporting them to Scadrial, and stealing their destiny(? if that is the effect of chromium spikes, it's not confirmed) would be extremely dangerous.

Well, the guy made an account, he's read all the books, and he's posted in the unpopular opinions thread, and boy did he! I respect the guts. Also I'm just sitting here curious about this MBoTF

Some applications for Speed Bubbles: Bendalloy: Cannon-Reload. Cannons and artillery IRL take quite a long time to fire, but set up a tight-knit area for reloading and a Slider can get that thing reloaded in no time. Bit of a problem for unfortunate Rosharan grunt soldiers. Cadmium Fabrials/Medallions: Develop a fabrial that activates Cadmium's slow-bubble and litter a battlefield with them (if you can get them cheaply). Have an unsuspecting Radiant step on one, and uh-oh spaghetti-o's they're a sitting duck. If a Pulser is skilled enough, brave enough, and foolish enough they can do the same effect close quarters to any Radiant (outside soldiers just need to shoot the Radiant dead before the blade slow-motion-slices the Pulser) An application for Lightweaving: Step 1, kill a Scadrian officer. Step 2, steal their appearance. Step 3, walk into Scadrian base. Step 4, Wipe out command structure with an unexpected Shardblade in their back. Also note that Raboniel mentions that Windrunners in the past used Gravitation to create homing arrows and Kal could do similar things to redirect Parshendi arrows. It seems likely that if a coinshot can make a steel bubble, a Windrunner or Skybreaker can do the same. Also consider that what coinshots and lurchers can do to metal, Gravitation-Radiants can do to pretty much any investible object. Also also consider that you don't need to soulcast a human to kill or trap them. Just get that metalborn to sit still long enough and soulcast the air around them to crystal before ramming a shardblade through it. Also also also consider that we've seen Stormlight healing be very impressive, from healing Kal's spine in the beginning of RoW to healing Shard-dead legs twice, once in WoR and once in RoW. An invested Radiant is almost as durable as Miles.

Now, I don't know why, but I'm under the impression that Harmony is not particularly invested into Scadrial like Odium and Honor are. He is invested, but I believe he's hold back on a lot, likely due to Intent. We saw Preservation's Mists snap a pretty sizable army of Allomancers in an emergency, which implies that Harmony could do the same in a pinch, and likely raise a larger army due to genetic diluting possibly meaning more candidates? Idk, that's pure conjecture, but I think that if Harmony a: wasn't dealing with Autonomy, b: wasn't dealing with conflicting Intents, and c: was motivated to do so, he could likely raise an impressive army of metalborn simply by investing more heavily into humanity, which could easily double that number and tip the scales towards Scadrial's favor. Also note that there are metalborn in SoScad, but we're told that they're pretty rare. We really don't know a lot about it, but depending on the size and population of SoScad that could increase your shot-in-the-dark number anywhere from 25% to 100%. Considering that "almost every living honorspren" amounted to ~2,000 Windrunners during the False Desolation, and we know that there should be some ~10k deadeyes and shards running around Roshar, that means that Roshar definitely not particularly lacking in numbers of its own. You could rely on at least 2,000+ Radiants and up to 6,000+ by the time Era 2 Mistborn runs around, plus the thousands of dead Shards still up for use (if someone in-world can work out what happened to most of them). Edit: Note the requirements for both Radiants and Metalborn require some sort of "snapping event". Kaladin's journey from Oath 1 to Oath 3 took less than a year, and then to Oath 4 another year. For Shallan's current spren, she's made it to Truth 4 in about the same time. Dying Radiants traumatize but do not break spren. A spren could choose a new Radiant anywhere from instantly to after a decade, and then that Radiant's journey can take anywhere from 2 to 5 years to get to Oath 4, usually requiring traumatizing combat situations to crack the spirit-web enough for new surges of power. A reasonable conclusion of this is that Scadrial likely has a sizable reserve of Metalborn that can be snapped and used in a moment's notice, a sure advantage, however Roshar is objectively able to replentish their Radiants far faster than Scadrial can with Metalborn. New Metalborn have to be born and raised and snapped, a new Radiant simply requires a worthy Rosharan that needs therapy and a couple years. A short campaign favors Scadrial on this factor, a much longer one would favor Roshar on this factor.

lol, that's fair, I remembered that he was only 1 of 3, but I couldn't remember if that was "3 living" or "3 ever". I think point still somewhat stands that as a Twinborn he's more skilled than average, almost by virtue of being the MC.

Consider that it may be possible that there has been some polarization on both sides? Perhaps you both have overbiased in your positions due to over-debating? I'm still firmly in the camp that both magic systems are perfectly viable and suited for victory against the other, and that whether one can defeat another is mostly based on the actions of Shards and individual leaders in the conflict. @BenduLuke I totally get what you're saying with Scadrian magic, and would like to add that in Era 2 it's likely that while any one combination is somewhat rare, the sheer amount of magic users would heavily outnumber Rosharan magic users. However, remember that the main characters we see in both Era 1 and Era 2 represent exceptionally powerful metalborn. Wax is considered to be the most skilled of his twinborn combination, and the main cast generally outperforms your bog-standard Allomancer or Feruchemist in both Eras. Now, of course, the same applies to the SA, obviously Kaladin is much more than the average Windrunner, but we see that while other Windrunner don't quite meet to his skill, they're still very competent, and the surges of Gravitation and Adhesion are still very potent for sky warfare, and in any open battlefield will vastly outperform the aerial capabilities of coinshots, and I would even go so far as to imply their flying machines as well. Also consider that we've seen Elsecallers capable of... frankly terrifying feats in combat. Jasnah has a scene where she just soulcasts the air above a group of enemies into oil, and then lights it on fire. Steelrunners might avoid that; but when a sheet of flaming oil appears above you, the Misting, Ferring, or Twinborn that is not super-speedy, you're going to get caught in that. Also consider that while we have yet to understand the capabilities of the Surge of Division, the opening scene of WoK shows a blasted wasteland of burning corpses, thanks to the Dustbringers. I've recently realized that the Surges are often severely underestimated in this conversation, a mistake because Jasnah has repeatedly shown Soulcasting to be extremely effective in any and all combat situations. Then consider combat against a Radiant Army with a Bondsmith that can open a perpendicularity. Radiants might die, but any Scadrian invasion force on Roshar would be crushed swiftly. Scadrial's biggest strength is actually subversion tactics, espionage and sabotage via the Kandra, but even that may not be foolproof with Elsecallers, Lightweavers, and fabrials and spren that can see into the CR. Also: Me, watching Frustration and Benduluke duel above the skies of the Cosmere.

Absolutely granted, exactly as you wish, no strings attached. Well... one string attached. Your bane is that you are transported to a universe where the SCP Foundation exists. Assuming the universe doesn't spontaneously stop, assuming some horrible deity doesn't scorch humanity, and assuming you don't die from some seemingly benign object that takes over your mind and causes your body to decide blood is something that definitely belongs on the outside...the Foundation is likely going to be very interested in your little bolo there. I wish to be able to go about my life here on Earth in America, but as a full feruchemist. (I know it's unoriginal but I'm very passionate about the fact that Feruchemy should be canon in real life)

It was unreleased because the Ascended Butt Venture from page 548 commanded it so.

The Soul Guitar, Instrument of Infinity, Chord of Divinity, capable of dropping the sickest riffs, the most righteous solos, and a slamming backbeat too--it was the most Legendary musical device of all time.

He liked to line them up and listen to them sing.

During TFE Allomancers were pretty common, Luthadel having near a dozen mistborn (including Kell, Vin, and Zane) and Allomancy being not-uncommon among the nobility, and the Steel Ministry essentially being a garrison of Allomancers. I'm doing a re-read of Mistborn rn to get a better perspective on Scadrian history and mechanics.

Not really. Stormlight and Voidlight don't really exist outside of "pressurized conditions" unless they're in a vacuum or being actively used in a surge. The most common form of existence for light is in a gem. I can think of a design for an anti-voidlight grenade right now. You have two gems, one light, one anti-light, in a grenade-like sphere being held apart under compression by a simple fabrial contraption. Lob the sucker, wait, and tap a gem on your gauntlet to release the compression, smash the spheres together, and make a nice big boom. Honestly at point I think maybe you should do a little less conjecturing and pick up those Sanderson books again because that point with Kel and not being to leave Scadrial is a big misunderstanding in the nature of the Cosmere. Worldhopping has very little to do with innate investiture and more to do with whether or not you have a Physical Realm body. Kel is a Cognitive Shadow, his existence is tied to his highly-invested state and the magic of his planet. Spren behave the same way on Roshar. We should probably all do a re-read of Secret History before we continue down this path. Edit: Also a note that RoW saw several uninvested soldiers enter Shadesmar through the Dalinar's perpendicularity. They "piggybacked" only so much that it required Dalinar to force Honor's perpendicularity to stand still. We also see an uninvested Jasnah struggle through Shadesmar to find Cultivation's(?) perpendicularity (because a Radiant with no stormlight is about as invested as a cow) because, like Frustration said, those things let ANYONE transfer from the PR to the CR and back again.

See this is an interesting take (one that I agree with fully personally), for a lot of real life reasons, namely that of a lot of (mostly white) folks living in places that their ancestors colonized hating white folks for originally doing the colonizing. It's a irl almost-parallel that's threatening a lot of cultures. Which is interesting because it was people of our species doing to others of our species. Not aliens, or strange humanoid creatures with four biological genders and carapace growing out of their skin. Humans moving in on other humans and then either accidentally or purposefully desolating them. And that's causing divides today based on nothing more than arbitrary melanin content differences and old "your grandpappy cheated my grandpappy"-style hatred. So here in Roshar we have two species that are very different, on a biological level, but still share very very similar psychologies. They still have anger, and love, and senses of honor and preservation and justice and compassion. They still experience jealousy, and greed, and remorse. Is it really all that different? In the context of a universe sapient creatures trying to make a living, under the same stars created by the same gods, don't those biological and cultural differences just seem arbitrary? I can't see this revelation shaking me so badly I broke Oaths... unless I didn't truly understand the history. The human race that started the first desolations was a race that was created, molded, shaped, and guided entirely by Odium, the god of hatred. Am I really surprised that they'd turn out to be destructive and awful? The people of Odium? And those people are not my people. Those people lived and died thousands of years ago, the only living remnants a handful of immortal lunatics. The people of the singers experienced an effect similar to that of a deadeye spren thousands of years ago, and my species of lunatics, exploiters, heroes and builders exploited the deadeye singers in the meantime. My species found a group of sentient singers, a remnant of the species Odium destroyed twice already, and then went to war because of the character failings of the listeners, the humans. Then Odium destroyed them a third time, resurrecting an entire army of immortal lunatics to destroy my people. Who's fault is this? It's the fault of Odium, it's the fault of his servants, it's the fault of all of us that fell to his influence. Maybe the Skybreakers can look at the situation and blame humanity for the sins of their fathers, but the Windrunner in me insists that the grand majority of individuals in my species alive today are innocent, as well the grand majority of the singer people, and those who claim otherwise are the entire problem. Only one man in the history of Roshar had the power and influence to inflict upon an entire species destruction, desolation, hatred and war for 7,000 years, and his name is Rayse. End of story. TL;DR I don't see any sufficiently educated group of Radiants (or at least the Windrunners, perhaps the Bondsmiths) being shaken by this knowledge. I can however see this fact creating divides between orders and ruining their cohesion. I think it's far more likely that the Recreance had more to do with the death of Tanavast and the Dawnshards. The stormfather has been wrong plenty of times before. He might be wrong on this.

@BenduLuke I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on a matter of opinion, although I'm 100% upvoting for the Connecticut Yankee reference. One of Mark Twain's best books, and so underrated!

Yea, it seems that Harmony, both for Intent reasons, and for self-preservation reasons, isn't particularly invested in Scadrial, compared to the insane amounts of Investiture running around Roshar. Clever workarounds like this would definitely be a boon for them.

Well, if you're tapping the metalmind and F-Zinc simultaneously. There's a lot of decay in long-term memory for the first 6 days especially when it comes to raw data and information. I think Brandon actually mentioned in a Sazed POV that he doesn't like to tap his copperminds much because of the decay factor. I guess it depends on whether copperminds tap into short-term or long-term. I suppose we'd better hope it's long term because otherwise you're basically wasting copperminds. Anyway the point is that raw information and data (rote memorization of facts) tends to degrade very quickly in long-term, but conceptual and semantic understanding sticks around for longer. So you'd have to either tap a coppermind very slowly to make sure it all sticks, or tap it with zinc so you can process it faster to make it stick. Because humans tend to learn something permanently when they understand it completely and can fit it with their view of the world, not just when they "know" it. This is a really interesting point of discussion, talking about the ability to expand knowledge this way. That is definitely a plus for Scadrial and I hadn't considered that. That might be something we see in Era 3 or Era 4, because in Era 2 NoScad and SoScad are still split. Let's remember that unless Harmony invests more in Scadrial, we'll continue seeing a very small part of the population actually having powers. The main cast in the Era 2 books are almost all powered, but they represent an almost-population anomaly. Their society hasn't even seen a mistborn in a while (or am I wrong on that, are there a couple?). Feruchemy might end up being even a little more complicated because we don't know yet if there's a Lerasium for Feruchemists, and that's really where the most powerful effects of Scadrian magic lie. (ngl I kinda hope there is) I suppose that what I'm saying is that while it's an amazing concept that we likely will see, it's likely not going to be as universally common or used to the advantage suggested here in the actual books, since it will be limited by the amount of feruchemists actually available and desirous to make them, and by the mechanics of memory itself. Edit: Especially if you're trying to raise the base education level. Can you imagine the sheer amount of copper medallions you'd need? The harmonium required? The feruchemists required? Where will you get the Ferrings? You'd be looking at either eugenics to get more Feruchemy in the population or slavery for all Feruchemists. I can't see Harmony tolerating either of those options. Medallion-learning would likely be for highly advanced and specialized fields, research fields for biology and physics and the like. Where they could be used to pass expertise to graduate students from their mentors in the field.

Upvoting Stan Lemon's post because he's called me out in a very truthful way. The original premise of this thread was comparing on-screen Scadrian Magic to Rosharan Magic now that we've seen the Willshapers, some Voidbinding, Bondsmithing, and the Windrunner 4th Oath. Where this thread now is much more similar to the old "who would win?" post, which like Stan says is disengenous because we can't reliably tell what the battleground would look like in such a situation. Era 2 Scadrial is not equivilent to Era 1 Roshar, and until we see the end of SA 5, we have no idea how the two planets actually stand in comparasion to each other. Even on the premise of comparing Magics it's still hard to compare because the majority of Scadrian magic combos has not been seen onscreen yet and the same applies for Radiants. Benduluke is forced to theorize on combinations that have no canon grounding yet, and we still don't know about the capabilities of approximately... six orders worth of Surges? 16, counting Voidbinding? Also having no idea what fabrials are capable of? I guess what I'm saying is, maybe in 31 pages, this thread has run its course.

An incredible work of Alethi-to-English Translation has just been done over here. I seem to remember Renett weapons being truly unique, but I cannot give credibility to "Renett is much more advanced than Navani at developing weapons both technical and magical...." after seeing exactly what Navani was capable of in the writings up there. Honestly claiming Renett > Navani seems to have not much more foundation than biased opinion. Which is fine, I'm pretty biased toward Roshar myself, almost purely out of preference, while trying to maintain some "academic integrity". In the end, I think the Navani-vs-Renett comparison doesn't work for a few reasons. First, Renett is a magi-gunsmith. She makes guns. Amazing guns that work great with the magic system at play, yes. Meanwhile, Navani is a theoretical magi-physicist. She's working out the exact mechanics of fabrials, and how they interact with metals, and discovering the secrets of the Cosmere itself. She and her army of engineers are replicating the surge of Gravitation, building flying machines, and she's discovered how to manufacture both anti-Investiture and mixed Investiture. Even more powerful is her political ability to rally literal armies of scientists under her direction. Renett irl would be the engineer that made the first repeating rifle. Navani irl would be Einstein making the thermonuclear bomb. Is one better than the other? Well, in terms of warfare, both were revolutionary and both define modern combat. But in very different ways that are hard to adequately compare. The other reason why Navani-vs-Renett doesn't work is the positions that each has in their respective societies. Navani is the Rosharan Tony Stark. Not only does she have the brains, she has the resources, power, and influence to maximize them. Renett, by comparison, is Peter Parker. A genius as well, but without any the resources that get her beyond producing specialized small-arms. Where would Renett be if she had the resources and power Navani has? What could Navani accomplish as "just another scientist" making a living on Scadrial? They'd likely be pretty similar to each other, or they could be dramatically different. It's difficult to compare. It's like trying to say a bear is better than a shark. You can make cases all day long, but in the end they're too far apart for comparisons to be fair to either of them. One of the comments in that thread there floated the idea that if Era 2 is 20 years after SA Era 1, then it's possible the Scadrian flying machines are based off of stolen Rosharan plans a la the Ghostbloods. Just a theory, but, if it does turn out to be true... kind of hard to claim technological superiority when your best stuff is stolen from the other side.

I feel like Bigmikey's analysis is very accurate concerning Roshar vs Scadrian war doctrine. Scadrial has the tech advantage and the magic advantage compared to Roshar right now. Surgebinding + Stormlight has a lot of power but is a lot more restricted compared to Scadrial's delightful "Triad of Metal Magic". Now, that might be changing in the coming books, as SA has seen some foreshadowing that Honor's restrictions designed to stop surgebinders from literally breaking their planet apart has been failing. There's currently plot pointing toward surgebinders possibly being able to use their powers off-world (I mean it's basically confirmed to happen by Mistborn Era 4 so). Scadrians have the tech, they know how to use aluminum, and they do have plenty of geniuses and heroes on their planet, plus Thaidakar and Harmony (hopefully in the future he won't become Discord. That would be bad). Someone a page or so ago made a good point that Roshar's war tactics are laughable in the face of modern weaponry, but remember that Scadrial currently has exactly no war tactics. Like Bigmikey said, it's a matter of how quickly can Scadrial catch up in war doctrine before their tech advantage dries up. Now, this entire situation is entirely hypothetical, we may never see Roshar and Scadrial going to war, but I think both planets are being built up as having very distinct and unique differences that make it so that there can be no clear winner in a matchup. Either side could win, but it's up to the individual accomplishments of heroes to decide who actually wins. Also, if we're comparing BoM Scad with RoW Roshar, let's remember Roshar's size advantage. NoScad has Elendel--a single kingdom, and then a smattering of cowboys outside. SoScad seems to have a more robust population, we have no idea what their nation really looks like. Compare that to RoW Roshar, where vast swaths of humanity cover the continent in a variety of kingdoms. Roshar has over a dozen fully-functional and robust nations, Scadrial has 2, possibly 3. In a situation where Odium is defeated in the contest of champions, they discover that stormlight and surgebinding can work off-world, Roshar finds Scadrial, and (for SOME STRANGE REASON) they decide to invade in a couple years time with their armies of Radiants? NoScad at least would be broken and conquered very quickly. Teams of Allomancer mercenaries and security guards will be no match against advanced warrior surgebinders, especially if they're unlocked. It's not magical mechanics, it's pure experience and skill. The government falls, resources get disrupted, surrender is forced, within a couple weeks tops. I won't be so hyperbolic to say it would be an unmitigated Rosharan victory (again, Harmony and Thaidakar), but for the Scads it would be a good mirror for what the Everstorm did to Roshar. It would send them reeling on their heels and scrambling to form a resistance, and because Scadrial has plenty of their own resources, they'd be able to resist very well. On the reverse, if in SA 5 Odium wins and Thaidakar and Harmony decide it's time for Roshar to die, they could easily rally resources and armies within a couple years and bring Desolations 2.0 to Roshar. Thaidakar's Ghostbloods have intimate knowledge of Rosharan magical mechanics, all it takes a little Scadrian teamwork and they'd have fantastic anti-investiture weapons. It'd be extremely easy for the Shard with a very active presence in his people (assuming his Intent doesn't stop Saze too much, or if, perhaps, Wax took up the Shard) to rally support, redirect resources, educate in the ways of war and magic, and bring them to bear against Roshar and wipe the floor with them. Now, neither of those are likely to happen, at least until Era 4 when Roshar has the whole Odium business far behind them and both planets have immense strength and knowledge. Then, it would likely be a Cosmere Cold War, U.S. vs U.S.S.R. situation, and neither side would be able to destroy the other.

Granted, they're made of red ants that have ingeniously bonded together. I wish for a creative and interesting bane that I could live with.