robardin

Also, even if Edwarn hadn't burned through his store of chromium when Leeching Wax of his steel reserves, he may already have stopped burning chromium after Leeching "the usual amount" to empty someone of their Allomantic metals. Whether he had enough chromium left to "shunt off" any or most of the Investiture from mega-tapping a large metalmind (Wax had enough weight stored in his bracer from "hundreds of hours" of filling it, enough to crash through the ship's floor when tapped in a single burst), is almost besides the point, because as Wax said as he did it, "You forget... I'm not surprised. You've always hated it. I'm a Terrisman, Uncle." Edwarn only ever thought of Leeching Allomantic metal reserves. He never even considered needing to block or to dilute someone tapping a metalmind, and perhaps never even experienced what that kind of Leeching would be like.

Having just re-read The Reckoners, I think there's another, slightly more subtle take/answer to why Dawnslight "wasn't evil" in Firefight: perhaps he DID experience "the Rending", but the expression of that would be pretty mild (non-destructive) given his powerset, and the fact that he gained his powers while already physically comatose. And then there's the fact that his powers are very beneficent: Babilar is able to function as well as it does because of him, and later was even saved from destruction after the fall of Regalia, due to his ability to control the glowing fruit-bearing plants. If his powerset contains any destructive side, we haven't seen it. More to the point, we find out by the end of Firefight that "pushing through the fear to altruistically save someone else" greatly allowed an Epic to overcome the dark, corrupting influence of Calamity's emotions that was the primary reason for "The Rending" (the act of fully embracing, or maximally using/testing, one's Epic powers being an expression of full alignment with Calamity). And then, in Calamity, that "fully claiming the powers" as a part of oneself, and not something externally gained or lost, broke that link entirely, even before Calamity exited stage left. So Dawnslight could have done both quite quickly. What would he have "feared" that would form a weakness, we may not know; but "fully claiming" his power would probably be very natural for a comatose child, where his Epic power (granting the ability to sense and communicate through the glowing plants/fruits) would quickly be integrated into his identity as a conscious being. That "fully claiming" his power thing alone should be enough to "banish the link to Calamity" and thus the darkness behind the Rending. And if not, the act of using his powers to feed and to generate power for people should count as altruism, too; like if his "fear" were something about approaching strangers or something. What wasn't clear to me was if Dawnslight's existince in, and relationship with "Babilar" pre-dated or post-dated Regalia taking it over.

I just re-read The Reckoners trilogy (plus Mitosis) after/while recommending it to someone, and wondered something. While David, and his father in the Other Universe, both have Steelheart's "power portfolio" (flying, power blasts, invulnerability, turning stuff into steel, and IIRC also some kind of wind control related to flying, that let Steelheart swoop up a gun from the ground and into his hand, airbender-style), they don't have Steelheart's weakness of "can only be harmed by someone who doesn't fear him", right? The powerset is one thing (an aspect of the arrival of Calamity/Invocation and the, uh, Epicization of various random people), but the "weakness" is rooted in the individual. I would think that's true in the Invocationverse, as it is in the Calamityverse. Because that "with this power comes a dampening weakness" bit wasn't part of Calamity's "corruption", right? It's part of the mechanics of however Calamity/Invocation gives the powers to humans. Even after Edmund and Megan first "resisted/overcame the darkness" by pushing through the fear that got magnified into a "weakness" by their Epicizing "to save someone else" (an altruistic confrontation with the fear), they still had their powers and their effects weakened or negated by fire or dogs. And then even after "claiming the powers" fully (thereby expelling the underlying presence of Calamity that formed that drive to darkness -- which still came through in Megan when she used her power very heavily at Sharp Tower in Ch. 33 of Calamity, but not after she "fully claimed" her powers in Ch. 37), the ring of Limelight's minions with flamethrowers in Ch. 45 were able to use them to short out Megan's powers. So... Is David's "weakness" still water? Which is to say, immersion in water (not like throwing a cup of water at him) would be how to fight Steelheart 2.0 (or whatever David is going to assume as an Epic name)? Yeah, side note, what WOULD "Steelslayer" adopt as an Epic name? And he and Mizzy are like, the last new Epics to be created, right, now that Calamity disappeared? (Other than children of Epics, who can, but not necessarily, exhibit or inherit powers?) And what about Blain, David's father? Certainly can't be about someone "not fearing" him. And does he call himself "Steelheart" in the Invocationverse?

Well, Jasnah could soulcast air... When the entirety of Thaylen City was supercharged with Investiture by Dalinar opening a Perpendicularity while reaching the Third Ideal of the Bondsmiths, making the "three realms close". Not at all sure if she could so easily and casually do that under normal circumstances! It was kind of a special situation, though I suppose that does mean a Herald with a Heraldblade and directly accessing Investiture from Honor could have had the same power level (which is to say, Battar). I think such limitations of "boundaries of form" for Awakening or Soulcasting can be overcome to a large degree with the right (extremely focused and practiced) Intent and sufficient Investiture (Breath). When we see Vasher working the little straw man at the start of Warbreaker, it is partly serving to introduce us to the mechanics and principles of Awakening, but also showing how efficient he had to be given that he had only fifty Breaths and couldn't afford to use too much. I mean, water or some other liquid would be the ultimate in an amorphous target for Awakening, right? And we have this WoB: "Almost" impossible... Because you would need so much Investiture that it'd practically be on the level of a Shard creating some kind of spren out of water, is how I read it.

I think there ought to be a question of how exactly one would Awaken "hair", assuming you aren't talking about a single strand of it; the term "hair" describes kind of an indefinite mass of unconnected strands pushed or heaped together. And in order to stay Awakened, it would require staying in one piece, right? Like the little straw figure that Vasher Awakens in his prison cell at the very beginning of Warbreaker. He had to tie it together with some threads from his cloak, to hold a form. I don't think he could just Awaken a loose pile of straw very effectively. And so, if someone had whomped that little straw guy into pieces, I would think that it would be the end of it, right? It wouldn't pull itself back together? At least, not with the relatively small amount of Breath he put into it. A toupee is a different case, as that's hair woven into a mat, so to speak, and it's the mat that would give the hair definition and cohesion.

Well he'd be leaving behind everyone he knew and loved... Tough choice to make. We know from Steris' quoting of history that "The Lord Mistborn" built and ruled Elendel for a CENTURY after the Catacendre (when discussing the Outer Rim cities like New Seran resenting Elendel's continued dominance while on the train there with Wax in BoM, that direct rule "was supposed to have ended when the Lord Mistborn stepped down after his century of rule"). And Spook was already 18 years old when Sazed Ascended, right? Yet his rule didn't end with his death. He "stepped down". And then... We don't know! And frankly it'd be pretty impressive to live to 118 years old, without an atiummind or even a goldmind to Compound for health for maximum longevity. Just a whole lotta pewter burning? Or was he already "time-skimming" a bit with cadmium even then. I mean, they discovered it after the Catacendre, and Sazed may even have had to restore it to the Allomantic table for Mistings for it to be born, so how many Allomancers for it could there have been right away? Their discovery of new metals to burn could well have been TLM doing lots of taste testing (The Lord Mistborn... Feels like calling him "Spook" in the context of him ruling as Emperor for 100 years is not quite right, LOL).

Wow, that parallels my experience as well! I was given the Mistborn trilogy as a gift, put it on a shelf for a long while, then "discovered I already had it" after reading the first Sanderson Wheel of Time book (The Gathering Storm) in 2009 and really liking the pacing and style of his writing, and learning that he'd been tapped for it by Harriet Jordan after reading Mistborn. I tore through the Era 1 trilogy about two weeks before Alloy of Law got released (2011). I spent those two weeks re-reading Mistborn, and then re-re-reading parts of it, in anticipation of "More Mistborn!" As I now know, that was a mistake and a half! I didn't read another Sanderson work (other than the WoT books) until I decided to try the freebie Warbreaker, and really enjoyed that one. I then read Elantris and The Emperor's Soul, and then a few non-Sanderson works, such as the Assassin/Liveship books by Robin Hobb (that dovetailed with each other as The Realm of the Elderlings), before finally going back and giving AoL another chance, around 2013-2014. This time I appreciated it, and also now noticed/learned that all of those books tied together -- Mistborn Era 1, AoL, Elantris, TES, Warbreaker -- in themes and ways (like Hoid). So when Words of Radiance got published in 2014, I decided to embark on Stormlight Archive despite swearing never to start another huge-arc doorstop fantasy series until it was definitely going to be finished (looking at you, GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss), and that was... Well. It! I would definitely recommend reading Warbreaker before Stormlight, especially WoR, for that very reason... Nothing like finishing WoR for the first time on a NYC subway at rush hour, and having people back away from you when on a crowded train. LOLOL.

Yeah, I always imagined it like how vampires may view consuming blood from humans. Sure all humans have blood, and bigger people have more blood due to volume, but there are also different blood types, and different vampires could have different preferences.

I personally would strongly recommend NOT going straight from Mistborn Era 1 into Era 2, I feel like doing that ruined it for me because the setting and tone was so different. "This isn't Mistborn!!!", and "so what happened after Spook and Co. came out of the caverns, you're just not going to say?!" Read stuff in between, Cosmere or otherwise, so when you read Alloy of Law you are doing so with a background memory of the World of Ash, more like what the POV characters have got, versus expecting "Mistborn Part 2". It is, and it isn't.

Well, a singer or listener bonding a spren for a form involves hosting it in their gemheart. And a Radiant armorspren functions by being attracted to a specific Radiant (it’s not like Kaladin’s Plate forms from random windspren in the area every time — I’m pretty sure it’s the same bunch always with him now), manifesting physically as Plate in a similar way to their Radiant spren manifesting as a Blade. So the only weirdness about Venli (say) bonding a joyspren, or (say) a windspren, in order to assume a Form, would be that that spren could no longer manifest as armor, whether for her or a Windrunner, without leaving her gemheart. And if the windspren were already the armorspren for a Windrunner, it seems really unlikely to want to enter her gemheart. And if Venli somehow bonded one of her own armor joyspren as a Willshaper of the Fourth Ideal, I guess she’d just be down a piece of her armor?

It's an interesting question, as you might think Kelsier's natural sympathies would lie with the Elendel Basin and its denizens who descended from his friends (and we know he dropped in on Spook pretty soon after the Catacendre as Elendel was just getting founded). OTOH, not only do we have that coppermind coin indicating that Kelsier had indeed Gone South to become their Sovereign 300+ years prior to Era 2, we also see in TLM that he was traveling by airship back to the Northern Hemisphere from the South, still "twelve hours" away from Bilming, when Moonlight and TwinSoul contact him by seon with Marasi present; he even comments, "I shouldn't have left for the South. I thought Saze would stop it before it got this far..." And hey. That was in Ch. 40 of TLM; then shortly afterwards, in Ch. 48 we find that the leaders of the Basin, with the Malwish representative Daal present, agree to use the Bands of Mourning address the emergency situation, only to find them drained... And then Daal claims them per agreement: "You had your chance to use them. It happens they are useless to you. Now we must have our chance. I wonder if it is piety that makes them work, yah?" In what Steris considered a "prepared speech". Yeah, just what WAS Kelsier doing in the South, and what influence DOES he still retain there? Is he revered like the Survivorists would do -- would he be owed... Piety?

Wow, bit of a zombie thread to revive after 3-1/2 years (and in the "No WaT spoilers" forum at that)! But you reminded me that I, too, had headcanon that "Taln wasn't tortured similar to before other desolations" with a "very different theory"...

Unless Harmony changes something fundamental about Allomancy, that's mechanically impossible as a naturally occuring thing. In fact even having more than one metal for Allomancy is "unnatural": it required some large injection of Connection to Preservation in one's Spiritweb (via either lerasium or Divine Twiddle) to get past that, and then the result was a "Mistborn" (Allomancy for all metals). It's why we only see "Twinborn" once the "genes for Feruchemy and Allomancy began to mix" -- the natural outcome is to have a Metalborn power for one metal, when Allomancy is involved. While possible, it's "very unlikely" to have a Natural Born 'Fullborn', and I would think even less likely for a Natural Born Mistborn With One Feruchemical Power (or the opposite, Natural Born Feruchemist With One Allomantic Power). Hemalurgy can "staple" someone else's Allomancy to you, and medallion type unsealed metalminds can temporarily grant you a Metalborn power (powerminds?), but that's external and artificial. Feruchemists originally all being "full Feruchemists" is a curious thing as yet unexplained (like, how did Feruchemy arise originally, and why only in the Terris, and how did they manage to stay so separate for so long?), but that's more backstory at this point than future development related. Unless the Village People in Elendel, as I shall refer to them for no reason whatsoever, manage to eugenicize their way back to breeding a natural born Full Feruchemist. Or perhaps in Era 4, "CRISPR type technology for sDNA" will be developed that can splice in genes for Feruchemy while excluding those for Allomancy.

Yeah, I was already posting thoughts going back a few years about how what we learned in The Bands of Mourning -- the Big Reveal about how The Sovereign = creator of the Bands = Kelsier -- had a lot of holes in it. And after reading The Lost Metal, where we actually see Kelsier again in the... Umm... In the person, those holes only get bigger. I don't see Kelsier being able to create the Bands of Mourning, certainly not on his own; and having had help in doing so, would not have made just one of them, nor would he just have left it as the spearhead on a statue of himself in a frozen mountain area of the Northern Hemisphere, while telling only people in the Southern Hemisphere about them. Especially when we know kandra still existed, still served Harmony (well, except for that one, ... eventually), and could well have cached Kelsier's bones somewhere from Era 1 that became accessible, especially with God's help (Harmony). But this is becoming fodder for another thread, eh?

Innnnteresting... I know he's RAFO'ed some questions and full-on shut down some other ones, had not considered the "I'll play along" answer without a preface amounting to that

There's a more basic question, actually. The Honorblade was chipped after it was used to block a swing from Szeth wielding Nightblood, resulting in a "burst of power" with a "shock wave" that "sent both men sprawling backward". And it was then that Ishar's Honorblade flew free from his hand, bounced, stuck halfway into the ground, and showed "a chip in its unearthly steel". The Blade was now slightly notched, but that doesn't mean a sizeable piece of metal was knocked off of it to land on the ground... This is Nightblood! That Investiture could have been CONSUMED! OTOH, if Brandon himself answered a question about Allomantically burning that very chip by saying, "If you were able to get a hold of that piece", ... I guess that means "that piece" did in fact come off of it.

I doubt we'll ever see another in-the-flesh "Fullborn" in the Cosmere again; we haven't even seen someone wielding the Bands of Mourning again yet, and that's the artificial way to grant someone the full complement of Metalborn powers for both Allomancy and Feruchemy. And even hemalurgy can't help now, at least not with spikes for both powers that have been created since the Catacendre. Marsh can Compound atium (and probably a few other metals, depending on what Feruchemical spikes he was given) because his F- and A- spikes for atium were made before then, but new spikes created in Era 2 have "Identity contamination" that prevent Compounding -- information that Marsh ("Death") himself drops on Wax and Co. in Ch. 28 of The Lost Metal. I can feel the wheels turning in some heads out there right now: Hey, if one can create unkeyed metalminds with no Identity, why not an unkeyed hemalurgic spike? For one, it feels like that would require the donor to be actively involved in shunting off their Identity at the time of the spike's creation, which would be... Difficult to arrange? But really, the better question is: if one had possession of the Bands of Mourning, a much better way to gain Compounding in all metals in one go; and could, as Wax intuited, recharge the Bands with Compounding... Wouldn't your first order of business be to construct more Bands, and then fill them with the unsealed powers, too? Sure, the one they got at the temple was given over to the kandra for "neutral safekeeping" between the Basin and the Malwish claims, but can you imagine Kelsier being involved in creating them, and then not making a private copy? Since he obviously didn't (or he'd almost certainly have used it to stop the Set in TLM), ... well ... there's always another secret, eh?

Yeah, for "flying" purposes, filling an ironmind makes falling pretty safe. Both Sazed and Wax do that in first person POV passages. Meanwhile, without being Twinborn, for a Lurcher to add on weight is not really a challenge, in the scenarios where that would provide the advantage. Which are more than you might imagine. In addition to the simple matter of wearing a weighted vest, as some people do while running to increase the difficulty; or just carrying some 40-50 lb. rucksack like the Marines do; ... a Lurcher could just, you know, sit on the couch eating a lot of junk food and sweets to gain weight in the usual fashion. Like, imagine a Lurcher wrestler facing someone with metal on them. Not doing a steady Pull but the sudden flared Pull to lurch not himself but his lighter weight opponent (who is unwittingly wearing some kind of metal, like a belt) at just the right time would be the winning move. And we see Vin and Elend using only Ironpulling to do impressive things like opening the heavy doors of the storage cache at Vetitian, by Pulling on something heavy behind themselves while also Pulling on the heavy metal object in front. So a Lurcher would be very useful in a dangerous traffic intersection or in a railyard. Runaway or out of control vehicles could be brought to a halt at any time, as there would be plenty of similar or larger sized vehicles (especially in aggregate, across multiple anchor points) available to leverage. Heck, in terms of "day to day, IRL useability", a Coinshot flying around or being a human gun would probably quickly get "recruited" into use by The Powers That Be, but a Lurcher? You could low-key hypermile your car by installing the right kind of harness in the driver's seat, drafting behind a truck going your way, shifting to Neutral, and then Ironpulling your way to like 100 miles per gallon, LOL. Nobody would know! (Well, except the truck driver who would probably feel some strange shift in their truck's handling)

Yeah, a lurcher in a modern urban environment with metal all around (and generally well above street/head level) could, as Brandon himself put it in a WoB, "slingshot around like Spider-Man". They weren't quite there yet in Era 2, but by Era 3, very possibly: OTOH, that does not translate well to "using telephone poles in rural Wyoming", LOL. The slingshotting technique of Ironpulling would be dangerous mainly for the landing, if you don't have something overhead or above/behind you to Pull on as you came down. It would however be pretty useful as a kind of infinitely available tether for things like scaling or rappelling down the sides of buildings built with metal beams or frames, or to "self-anchor" to a building or craft of metal in a highly volatile environment like with high winds or waves.

Don't we see Wayne and his father as examples of Metalborn -- even Twinborn -- who fall to or grow up in somewhat desperate financial situations? IIRC, Wayne told Marasi early on in Alloy of Law that he grew up knowing his metals, but with no access to them because gold was expensive, and bendalloy was both rare and expensive. He said that one of the reasons he had turned to robbery, accidentally killing the man in the incident that haunted him for life, was to be able to buy some metals. And that he got his Feruchemy from his father, who had also been a Feruchemist (of unknown metal). Then in The Lost Metal, we see that his father did dangerous work at a mining operation in the Roughs, which ultimately resulted in a fatal accident of some kind. So whatever his father's metal was, it wasn't valuable enough a power to be hired for it, like pewter for a bodyguard, nor did he have enough attributes stored in a metalmind to prevent/save/recover from the accident (or else if he were a Bloodmaker too, that he had been forced to sell his goldminds for cash at some point). It does seem surprising for almost any Metalborn to end up living in a shack and working in a tin mine out in the Roughs, and being not just a Terrisman but a rare Feruchemist, you'd think the Terris Village would have given him a home. But maybe he was on the run from something.

I would agree that so far, it's TLR... Not just because of the "hidden menace" he starts out as in TFE, only to show up in person even more scary at the executions and the fight in his throne room, ... and then ultimately, at the very end, Sazed the Eunuch Terrisman appraises his life's work as someone who had "planned very well for [the Catacendre]", who "suffered much beneath Ruin's hand" but proved "a good man who ultimately had honorable intentions". For the most part, "villains" in Cosmere works have been similarly well-done in the sense that they're fully fleshed out, often had sympathetic moments or "moments of decision" to Make A Choice, and in general do not view themselves as "villains". They are, as all people are, the Hero Of Their Own Stories. Moash/Vyre comes closest, because of his self-hatred and need to have his pain taken from him for the deeds he's done. When he sees his shadow image as a Windrunner after killing a few captive prisoners in the basement at Hearthstone, the image of himself had he chosen differently when facing down Kaladin with Graves over the unconscious Elhokar ("Me? Or petty vengeance?") -- standing tall in a blue Bridge Four coat, protecting people, bursting afire with Stormlight while summoning a Shardspear... I almost felt bad for him. Almost. I would exclude a few rather cartoonish Fused antagonists from Stormlight like Lezian The Pursuer, or another Fused that we see in Wind and Truth (no spoilers!), but you could argue that they are presented as "cartoonish" exactly to highlight that they're on the way to becoming mad and "sprenlike" from so many soul recyclings. They're not MEANT to be "fully fleshed out", because they no longer are, even in-world. But that can come across pretty badly in the first reading.

Wait, what? It's been a while since I last re-read Dawnshard, but AFAICR, larkins are indeed native to Roshar, being a kind of greatshell that have to bond to a mandra (luckspren) at some point of their life cycle to be able to continue to grow -- and for lanceryn/larkin, it had to be one that only exists on Aimia, the "scouring" of which is the primary reason larkins are both so rare now and have also stayed small. (And which Rysn's larkin "Chiri-Chiri" is the first larkin to come back and do in quite a long time.)

We also see a few other clear examples of someone tapping a steelmind: TLR when fighting Vin and Marsh in his throne room, when he moved impossibly fast, "moving with a speed as if to make the fury of a tornado's winds seem sluggish. Even within a full pewter flare, Vin couldn't outrun him" The Inquisitor with a back protector that Vin an Elend fight outside of Vetitian, "Lord Fatren's" city at the beginning of HoA, that "moved with a sudden jolt of speed. Its form became a blur, ... moving inhumanly fast -- faster than any Allomancer should have managed" Paalm/Bleeder tapping speed using a spike created from the murdered Steelrunner in SoS, while trying to escape after being caught imitating Governor Innate (but it runs out) Even better, earlier in Ch. 16, we also had a Wax/Wayne vs. Bleeder scene where Wax surprised her by "canceling out" her steelmind speed by being in one of Wayne's bendalloy speed bubbles, who had been playing dead. The last part is the most illustrative, as we don't see many first-person POVs for tapping a steelmind but we do see a lot of Wayne using his speed bubbles to do things like change disguises faster than anybody can notice, right in front of them. So that would mean that tapping a steelmind could do the same thing, if there were enough stored (in fact, there is a much higher limit to the "bandwidth" one can get of an attribute from tapping vs. how much more you can get by Allomantically flaring a metal, right?)

Well, technically a chromiummind stores the attribute of Fortune and not "luck" -- the mechanism behind which Wit (Hoid) describes to Dalinar that "doesn't always work as well as I'd like it to" when it prompts him to leave (Roshar) in order to "be where he has to be", even though he doesn't know why. In that sense, it's not clear what "natural reserves" of Fortune one would normally have, and thus would be lowering when filling a metalmind. I think it'd be less "you got hit by a freak accident" which is more "active bad luck" than an abnormal lack of good luck, if you follow what I mean? Unless you think that all people walk around under a cloud of impending random disaster but for a veneer of innate good luck that we'd better not strip away, LOL. I'm thinking the worst that could happen (which is still "unfortunate") would be if one were in the wrong environment while filling a chromiummind, one with a lot of potential misfortunes that could compound if linked together, like in a kitchen.

Oh, and it’s too late for me to go back and edit add this bit, but there’s another clue in the text of when Dalinar gets “pruned” by Cultivation in Ch. 114 of Oathbringer: afterwards, when he can’t remember exactly what happened to him while returning to Felt and the others, and is surprised to realize he remembers literally nothing about his wife, not even her name: ”It seemed that the Nightwatcher had taken memories of his wife, and in so doing, given him the boon of peace. However, he did still feel sorrow and guilt for failing Gavilar, so he wasn’t completely healed. … Dalinar relaxed, but felt like something else was missing inside of him. Something he couldn’t identify.” Something else was missing, eh? More than just the memories of Evi!