robardin

I still think TOdium's insight is more subtle than "I can pick a champion who will definitely win". His thought was, "The way to win was to make sure that, no matter the outcome, you were satisfied? -- It can still be done, ... Dalinar has set himself up to fail." We all assume - are supposed to assume - that Taravangian seeing a way that "Dalinar has set himself up to fail", that that means "set himself up to lose the Contest of Champions". But what if it's just that he sees a way such that even if Odium's Champion is defeated - or perhaps even, especially if his champion is defeated, in a specific way - he Taravangian is still "satisfied" as to advancing his greater goals? Because to be honest, we don't know what they are any more. It was RAYSE'S goal to Splinter/eliminate all other Shards to be the "only god" in the Cosmere. That's not actually the Intent of Odium, which is why Rayse was beginning to struggle so much in controlling himself. Taravangian knows "his predecessor's plans", but that doesn't mean he's obliged to continue to pursue them. Instead, he "knew the cosmere was in chaos. Ruled by fools. Presided over by broken gods", and that with him as Odium now, "Taravangian was going to save them all." Also, it occurs to me that when Taravangian said he inherited "some of the knowledge" of his predecessor - what Rayse had done with the power of Odium after Ascending - like Harmony, he wouldn't have the background knowledge of events leading to the Splintering of Adonalsium, the natures (or identities) of the other Shards, and so on. But Hoid does. And Taravangian had rummaged through his Breath-stored memories to snip out the part where he inadvertently gave away that Odium was no longer held by Rayse, but someone much more thoughtful. It's quite possible that TOdium now knows most of what Hoid does, and quite likely what Hoid planned/is planning to do.

So, Kaladin can Surgebind using Towerlight, eh? He mentions how Navani's new light was "constantly replenished" in Urithiru, so that he just hovers around all the time without worrying about draining spheres of Stormlight, and that his Lashings lasted seemingly indefinitely. Is that because he Invested it with Towerlight in the tower itself? And holding Towerlight feels different from Stormlight, it doesn't impart an "urgency to act" but rather has a "calming" feeling. I wonder if Lift can use it, too, with her twiddle to use Lifelight (which she produces metabolically from eating food), since Towerlight is a fusion of it and Stormlight? And if some difference between Towerlight and Stormlight is why Vyre being blinded by it by Navani isn't something he could heal from with Stormlight?

Final terms are these: A contest of champions to the death. On the tenth day of the month Palah, tenth hour. We each send a willing champion, allowed to meet at the top of Urithiru, otherwise unharmed by either side’s forces. Where does it say the "contest" is a physical battle? If not specified, who gets to determine it? Like, what if the "contest" could be, I dunno, a chouta eating contest? ... To the DEATH?! "Ah, Dalinar," chuckled Odium to himself. "You set yourself up to fail. You HATE chouta!"

In addition to the mention of how his Lashings within Urithiru "stuck" for far longer than they usually would, something else Kaladin mentioned is very intriguing as well: Radiants can Invest with Towerlight for Surgebinding, it would seem (Kaladin hovers and floats around Urithiru constantly because he doesn't have to drain spheres of Stormlight to do it), plus it "feels" different to hold it. Whether or not drawing it in involves a "sharp breath" like with Stormlight remains to be seen. As an aside, Lift doesn't draw in Stormlight from spheres, instead metabolizing food into Lifelight; I wonder if she can draw in the new Towerlight in Urithiru? And the "Towerlight burn" that Navani blasted Vyre with that seared his vision at the end of RoW couldn't been healed with Stormlight, either. Interesting, eh?

Is it just me, or was the newly released prologue very different in key details from the one I'd heard/read before? Anyway, especially after recently re-reading Mistborn: The Lost Metal, I'm more sure than ever that the "champion" sought after by the "Stormfather" was actually Autonomy Stormfaking an insertion into the Honorvisions from the Real Stormfather, and that the "champion" sought in Gavilar was some way to make an avatar of Autonomy. That would explain a quite number of things: Why the "Stormfather" (henceforth Stormfaker) said he'd not trust Gavilar's family "again", when in fact the Real Stormfather (RSF) started showing Honorvisions to Dalinar as we see in TWoK, about five years later. How the Stormfaker could lie, when spren cannot. And about some very basic things, too, like claiming that the Heralds were dead and on Braize. How something like demanding power could be "so close" to the Words to find, instead of the Immortal Words. How the Stormfaker could say something like "if I try again..." while leaving Gavilar, when the RSF cannot help but show Honorvisions to a nascent Bondsmith! "THE ALMIGHTY DEMANDED IT OF ME. I COULD NO MORE DISOBEY THAN I COULD REFUSE TO BLOW THE WINDS." Who the "they" were in "they mustn't see, they mustn't know" upon the Stormfaker sensing "the death of a Herald" (and thus, the likely imminence of a Desolation and the Everstorm). "They" are the other Shards, especially the two still on Roshar, Cultivation and Odium. Why the Stormfaker forms a shimmering, indistinct body and even a head that turns to face Gavilar, where the RSF never does in SA1-4. Why Gavilar hasn't spoken the First Ideal to bond the Stormfather: it's not the Stormfather, and those are not the Words the Stormfaker are after. Not only are the Immortal Words likely contained in Nohadon's TWoK, if Gavilar had received Real Honorvisions, they would have been told to him directly by Honor in one of them, as was Dalinar later, with the explicit directive: "speak again the ancient oaths, and restore to men the Shards they once bore"! In fact, it could be that a vision of Aharietiam that we see him dwelling on, with the nine abandoned Honorblades, that we see him obsessing over in the SA5 prologue, is the only one that Gavilar ever saw! And yet, since the Stormfaker DID want Gavilar to find specific Words, and said they were in The Way of Kings, that must actually be true. (Why would even the Stormfaker lie about where he might find the Words he wanted him to say?) So a more accurate question might be: what Words might one say to swear to Autonomy, that another avatar of Autonomy from TLM would have said, and that Gavilar was close to saying, and also maybe in what we've seen/read already from the in-world TWoK? Best candidates to me, if it is something we've read of it by SA5, would be some statement embodying: It becomes the responsibility of every man, upon realizing he lacks the truth, to seek it out. The substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method. A man's emotions are what define him, and control is the hallmark of true strength.

Though TBH you don't really "see" him in Stormlight until the pre-released prologue to SA5, IIRC.

I don't see why A-pewter Mistings get called "Thugs", and of course in-world they surely prefer to be called "Pewterarms", LOL. As for Ferrings, "Windwhisperer" sounds vaguely like they play too many Zelda games, plus it only refers to the ability to tap for hearing when the ability allows storing of ALL the senses for later enhancement. Then again "Tineye" for a tin-burning Misting also emphasizes the use of burning tin to enhance vision specifically, so I guess you have to pick one of them to make a nice name, rather than something terrible like "Dynosenser"

For the record: I am in Camp Stormfaker who believes that that comment "that was almost [the right Words to say]" to form a bond, a very un-First-Idealish sentiment demanding power based on personal need, clearly indicates that that is NOT the Stormfather - either an Unmade or some other new powerful entity (like an avatar of Autonomy) doing a full-on masquerade or hijacking of the Stormfather's Honorvisions.

Regarding "burning" lerasium, I've always thought that last comment from Brandon was telling: there are ways to do really cool things with lerasium that I don't see how anyone would know. Were most Mistborn to just burn it, it would rewrite their genetic code to increase their power as an Allomancer. In other words, the "default action" of burning lerasium is to form such a deep(er) Connection to Preservation that you become Mistborn (from nothing), or an Even Stronger Mistborn if you're one already (similar to how Rashek and his "directly self-modified sDNA while Ascended as the Temporary Avatar of Preservation" Mistborn powers were stronger than even Elend's "the direct ingestor of a lerasium bead"). But, if you "know what you're doing", I think you can rewrite your sDNA... Period. In computer programming terms, it's like being given root level access to your own sDNA with a tool that has a simple command, "lerasium", and if you run it, you get the default template that embeds an inheritable (if diluted over time) Connection to Preservation, with the power of Allomancy as a side effect. But this tool also has optional (and undocumented!) "switches" where you could give customized template instructions to modify your sDNA - and physical form, to match - to turn yourself into pretty much anything. Remember, the power of Preservation was used by Rashek to turn all Feruchemists into mistwraiths (with a backdoor for a hemalurgic upgrade to becoming kandra), but could not be used to destroy (as to strike down his uncle Kwaan when he turned Rashek down - who could have "made him a mistwraith anyway" but didn't). So ingesting lerasium is like being given a chance to do that, I think, but only to yourself. And only if you exerted the extra Intent to do so, in the right way. But, as Brandon emphasized, who's going to have that level of knowledge, not just of Realmatic Theory, but on how to use lerasium? Who would be able to understand how to "run lerasium" without documentation? It would need source code level understanding of it, right? So it'd have to be someone who'd already Ascended before as Preservation, de-Ascended, and now is having a second go-round with it. Like if Rashek had managed to re-enter the Well, or chose to ingest a bead of lerasium himself. Or... Er... If some other guy who had held Preservation, gave it up, and yet stuck around and is looking for... Oh no.

Yes, something about the Radiant orders does feel "of Cultivation", but it isn't Surgebinding so much as the nature of the Nahel bond. The progression of Ideals resulting in a Surgebinder's deeper and more powerful Nahel bond with a spren is not inherently about Rosharan "Surgebinding". As we see, the Fused also have access to (mostly) the same Surges, but without such progression; more to the point, even the Surgebinding granted by the Honorblades to the Heralds do not have any progression of Ideals. In fact, bonding and using an Honorblade, despite the name, doesn't require any kind of oath at all! It's why Syl called the Blade dropped by Szeth "dangerous", as it would make anybody a Windrunner, "without the checks that a spren bond requires". And of course, that's how Vyre is able to wield it in service to Odium. Furthering the Cultivation angle, a sufficiently advanced Radiant is actually a BETTER Surgebinder than someone with an Honorblade would be. Not to mention the whole Fourth Ideal Plate business.

well for one thing, I wonder if it was necessary to create the coppermind medallion that Wax unlocked at the end of BoM that had the memory of Kelsier telling a freezing Southern Scadrian after the Catacendre to SURVIVE! That had to be Kelsier's own memory, especially since there is the flicker of association of the longhouse he finds them huddled in with the plantation skaa hovels of the Final Empire. But if all the "coins" that had been appearing and circulating in New Seran, per the informant at Lady Kelesina's party there (Devlin Airs), as he said after inspecting the one Wax showed him, were also unsealed copperminds... Did they have the same memory? And how did Hoid get a hold of one to throw at Wax's head, when we also have a WoB that the memory in that coppermind was not something Kelsier would have wanted known? So if the memory was Kelsier's, and was a memory (that reveals him to be the Sovereign) that he didn't want to get out, ... why would he have created and disseminated it? Perhaps Compounding copper allows "cookie-stamping" out the same memory into multiple copperminds? Or to be able to "offload" a memory and still keep it in your head? We saw in the original trilogy that Sazed needed "indexing" to keep track of where and in which coppermind he needed to tap to fetch the right stored information, even that much was not left in his head after a memory dump.

Ah, that was my bad to in a way to go off on a tangent from the original topic of "most useless Compounding Twinborn". I meant to start out by saying that even being a double aluminum Twinborn wasn't necessarily useless, no Compounder is (though double copper is curious and RAFO'ed) - but I would say having aluminum for Allomancy (gnat) but F-nicrosil instead of F-aluminum would be way worse (no Compounding, and still nothing personally useful in either Metalborn power). And now I see I actually wrote A-duralumin for the "gnat" power for some reason. Doubly my fault for confusion!

Being double anything as a Twinborn means you can Compound the Feruchemical attribute, so it's never completely useless. While I can't really say what would be the result of Compounding for... Let's see... Infinite Identity, well I guess maybe we will find out, LOL. OTOH being a Twinborn with, say, A-duralumin (gnat) and F-nicrosil (Investiture) would be truly useless. You can do nothing useful with your own Allomantic power, and your Feruchemical power would be to store that ability in a metalmind so that someone else could do nothing useful with it!

Haha. Well, apparently there was no steak handy either. I didn’t realize the spikes wouldn’t decay if simply left in the dead body, though!

I think this or a similar discussion has been raised before, and I gave this same answer: I think Bart Simpson already did it.

I see what you are implying there. LOL

Well hold on a moment. First, I assume we're talking about hemalurgic spikes harvested from human Metalborn. Does hemalurgy work across species? Since it works on the principle of "tearing off bits of the soul" to attach to another soul and all. Seems like it'd have to be "soul-compatible" to stick that way. I could see maybe making a "kolossal" chicken out of four original chickens*, but using koloss spikes on a chicken, not so much? But, if you were to decide yeah, you COULD stick an Inquisitor's spikes into a chicken to useful effect, even if that didn't mean the chicken were ABLE to Steelpush, etc., due to lack of sapience, would it at least serve as a kind of living repository to keep the spikes from decaying in power? Like, say you're Kar the Inquisitor who just witnessed "poor Bendal" getting decapitated by Kelsier at the "Square of the Survivor". You rush in to extract some of his spikes for potential reuse, the hard-to-obtain ones for Feruchemy he happened to have for example; then realize in frustration that you didn't have the usual jar of fresh human blood as a preservative because nobody had expected Kelsier to actually WIN that fight, ... ...and then you spy the chicken clucking quietly in on a curb while the Lord Ruler appeared in his coach to quell the surge of exultant and rebellious skaa. Hello! [ *EDIT: I am now imagining a point in Scadrian history where Kolossal Fried Chicken is a fast-food chain with a secret process involving Awakened metalminds at the slaughterhouse. "Why buy a bucket of chicken parts, when you can buy a single ... KOLOSSAL CHICKEN!" ]

Well it's not an "entire culture", there are multiple nations and cultures in the Southern Hemisphere, often at odds with each other. But many of them do seem to share the mask-wearing practice, to different degrees (the Hunters who NEVER remove them, versus those like Allik who do so, but infrequently and momentarily, as a gesture of respect or intimacy - where his airship captain regarded him as being particularly "free" with that). But we also know that there is a group in the Southern Hemisphere Allik referred to as "The Deniers of Masks" in BoM who were "really dangerous" as compared to the Set who just captured, tortured, and killed a number of his ship's crew, that we don't see or hear mention of at all in TLM. "The Maskless" (of who the DoMs may be synonmyous, or a subgroup thereof) are shown as having an entire region in the lower right of the Era 2 "Map of Scadrial", extending to an unknown degree off the map. Whether or not their refusal or "denial" of mask-wearing is at all related to them being "really dangerous", is also up for question!

Well, you would want to Compound it at least a little bit, just so you wouldn't have to compensate for putting wakefulness into the bronzemind by spending time being drowsy. The downside to that would be that the normal Allomantic power for bronze would not be very useful IRL; not much point in being a Seeker unless other Allomancers (or magic users) were walking around. (Hmm, maybe that's the pitch, then - if you AREN'T a Seeker, how would you KNOW there weren't other Investiture users walking around all of a sudden?) As for enjoying sleeping - is that when you're a Viking? - I have a headcanon theory that that's why TLR got more and more cruel, uncaring, and jaded/tired/bored seeming as his life extended longer and longer. Once he was past a normal Investure-extended lifespan of say 120 years, tops (with infinite A-pewter and F-gold), Rashek had to continuously tap his atiumminds for youth, and I think we have it established that you can't unconsciously tap or fill a metalmind. So TLR could never sleep, he had to keep on keepin' on with the never-ending tapping and occasional compounding and filling of those atiumminds. And possibly electrumminds to keep the Determination up to bother doing so. And never sleeping can do weird things to your mind, even with infinite goldmind tapping, which doesn't seem to address mental health as that is literally cognitive.

I didn't think a brass Compounder would be like the Human Torch, but that could be interesting. If Cosmere-derived magic-physics were similar to that in the Marvel Universe, then if you could pull off the Human Torch Effect, you could fly around, too! And waitaminute... Compounding is like squaring a Metalborn power... And four squared is... SIXTEEN, hot diggity dog!

Huh, I wouldn't have thought of depression as "lack of determination" but I guess that does put a different context to it that I was thinking it would be! As for Compounding brass, it wouldn't be day-to-day useful like some of the others, but it would be very useful to have a lot of it pre-stored due to Compounding (and not chilling yourself for long periods of time) for when you DO find it necessary or convenient to tap a brassmind. It wouldn't have to be a "lot of time outdoors", either, or even some "crash landed in the mountains / swimming away from the Titanic in arctic waters" hypothermia scenario - just your typical "person who wears a sweater in the office with the thermostat set to 68F" would probably tap it here and there without even thinking about it much. The tie-breaker, though, would be in how useful the normal Allomantic power for the metal would be, without using it to Compound for the Feruchemical attribute. In which case, being a Soother would be very useful in daily life, but being an Oracle who can see their own future by upwards of 30 seconds ahead could be even more useful, if you're a pro athlete. Imagine that, a baseball batter who somehow always avoids swinging at the wipeout slider, or knows exactly where the next pitch will be coming in! (Unless the pitcher is also burning electrum, LOL!)

We don't really know what some of the attributes are like to tap, Feruchemically, at least not yet (like Fortune, Determination, or even what would would mean to Compound memories in a coppermind). But of the attributes we can see getting tapped from a metalmind so far, and considering "what if I had a nigh-infinite, net positive leveraged way of gaining that attribute for later use", they all seem pretty useful IRL. The least useful to me would be "determination", I think, because we haven't seen what it would really change about a person. If it is what it seems like it would be - like, holding fast against something like torture, temptation, etc., - then I have to say, I'm either fortunate or determinate enough on my own never to have really regretted failing to do something due to lack of determination. As for Compounding weight with iron, that seems obviously useful. We've seen how Wax uses it to help with his Steelpushing, but the same thing would apply in everyday life. Not only would FILLING an ironmind be useful to make yourself lighter, being able to tap an ironmind to make yourself heavier or MUCH heavier would be extremely useful in many physical situations (wrestling being an obvious scenario) where your body weight as a counterweight is important. Like, being able to push something heavy isn't about "strength" so much as having as much or more weight as the object being pushed. The idea that someone huge and muscled will push, say, a refrigerator easier, lies mostly in the fact that someone huge and muscled is going to be a lot heavier than a normal person. (Whether they have the stamina to push it for a long time, or to do it again and again, is a different story.)

I'm going to guess that the Fifth Ideal represents enhanced resonance. So for Windrunners where the resonance of the two Surges of Adhesion and Gravitation results in squad-squiring, maybe a Fifth Ideal Windrunner can squire at will instead of "it just kind of, I dunno, happens?" Like, Kaladin was at a loss to figure out why Skar took longer than Lyn to squire to him even though Skar was OG Bridge Four; why Rlain and Dabbid never have at all (he thought Dabbid was held back by being mute, but in fact he's not); and all of Bridge Thirteen just "up and squired" to Teft as soon as he swore the Third Ideal. So maybe Fifth Ideal Kaladin could just point at Dabbid and squire him up?

Well, according to Yomen who wasn't surprised at all about the fixed and recurring 16% figure in the "mistfallen", because "it figures prominently in Church doctrine". Yomen was as devout a Minstry obligator as they came - even founding the post-Catacendre religion of "Sliverism" that continued to revere Rashek, The Lord Ruler - so figuring out there were (or must be) sixteen Allomantic metals in total, with some unknown to them for reasons of God (Rashek), was hardly "heretical", and Yomen felt free to drop that on someone not of the priestly caste in Elend. In fact, as a high nobleman, he may even has been subtly chastising Elend for not knowing his doctrine well enough!

Oh, and back to the actual topic of the OP of this thread: I would say the obvious answer is, through practical experimentation. Remember, Kwaan was able to see through or past Ruin's changes in writen texts and the contents of copperminds (that even if Ruin couldn't "see" well directly, he could evidently see/modify the Investiture within them just fine at the Spiritual level) because he naturally possessed eidetic recall - a "photographic memory" - in which he was fully confident. Alone among all Feruchemists, he could say "yo, my coppermind got hacked" instead of "eh, guess I didn't remember what my coppermind had it in it the last time I tapped it, because I put that memory back into the coppermind, that's just how it goes, yup yup". And once he suspected this was going on (since at that time, the Worldbringers were fully aware of the nature and intent of Ruin in their religious doctrine - just not of how he had subtly altered the Terris Prophecies over time), I could see him trying to write what he remembered the original prophecies to be in various ways, to see if any of them would "stick" First on paper (immediately changed); on paper, weighed down by metal (changed); written indoors in a wood frame house (changed); written in a cave he was hiding in (changed... but only after he left the cave) ... Wait, what was that? What was special about that cave? Ah, it had veins of iron ore in the walls?! Whoa... Well if it was the metal that made the difference, how about writing it directly on metal in the first place?