alder24

Nah, it was like the first one that showed up in my first search. I am really skeptical about this, but on the other hand in HoA Marsh survived a shot into his head from Vin, while in AoL it was suggested that to kill a Bloodmaker you need to shoot him in the head. Marsh wouldn't know compounding yet, so he would be just a regular Bloodmaker at that point. Of course not every shot in the head is deadly and at that point he was under Ruin’s control who could provide additional intent to tap metalminds faster when Marsh was dying. There are some uncertainties about Marsh’s headshot but him surviving it because of Hemalurgy might be another possibility. HoA ch 65: AoL ch 6: It doesn't make them immortal. They can survive removal of some spikes, but not every spike. The more they have they more they can take - Kelsier doesn't have his own physical body anyway so this doesn't apply to him. I'm really doubtful. Look at the Hemalurgic table for Steel Inquisitors - there is only one place for a linchpin spike (also note that this spike is necessary/recommended for 4 spikes and above, which we all missed when discussing how you can give yourself more spikes). The linchpin spike holds their body together, coordinates all other spikes, it has to be the task of a singular spike.

They could but they didn't do that, intent matters. You need to burn a spike that matches your identity. However it is extremely painful to burn spikes that are inside of you.

You didn't say it must be safe to activate Anti-investiture bombs are the best. Just use three gemstones, one holding Stormlight, the second anti-Stormlight - use tuning forks to drag investiture from them both into the third, empty gemstone, placed in between the two. The Stormlight will interact with the anti-Stormlight and boom! However this will work on a small scale, not with large gemstones, because the explosion would happen with minimal amount of interaction between investiture and anti-investiture, blowing all gemstones to pieces before most of investiture got transferred to the central gemstone. This isn't that big of the problem with smaller gemstones, as RoW showed us. This anti-investiture bomb can be made with any kind of investiture - two jars of Dor, one filled with anti-Dor produced in the same way Navani produced anti-Light. Throw one at the other and boom. Capture some Mists, or use Metalminds, fill one with anti-investiture and transfer investiture from the other one into that with anti-investiture. Anti-Breaths - make those and with "my Breath to yours" Command, transferring your Breaths into the object containing anti-Breaths. Remember, investiture and anti-investiture must be under pressure to cause an explosion. Use Aether spores - some mechanism to throw water into a barrel filled with Sunlight spores for example. That's a more conventional type of bomb. Malwish use F-iron to somehow store the weight of their ariships - you can do the same with F-brass, but in reverse. Have a big metalmind filled with lots of heat and make it release all of that heat at once into the air. The expansion of extremely heated air will cause an explosion. Yes. But leech only investiture not anti-Investiture. Anti-investiture would annihilate your soul. For bigger bombs you would need a lot of chromium. Yeah, Zephyr and Sunlight spores would make a nice explosion together. I don't think so. The explosion in gemstones with anti-Light happens because the investiture is under pressure, when it's outside, like a soul, there is no explosion. Breaking a gemstone would just release the investiture without having any effect. RoW ch 97:

Here are some of my thoughts on changes I don't like (PC, Google Chrome): About the "Shardcast" and "More" menus I agree, a delay would be nice. I usually open those menus when I'm scrolling up to use navigation or go back to the main page. It's a bit distracting to have the navigation covered by a giant pop-up because I accidentally move my mouse through the "Shardcast". I'm not a fan of hiding the "edit", "share" and "report" options, I can live with that and get used to it but I cannot count how many times I click "quote" when I want to edit. Another thing that bothers me a bit is that the count of posts and reputation points on profile/posts are shortened and rounded up to "3.4k" instead of just showing the whole number - there is a lot of space for that. The number of posts can be shown when hovered on, but the precise number of reputation points can't be seen anywhere at all, which doesn't work well when ranks start at something like 1550 points and you can't see how much you or others have. I personally hate the topic statistics sidebar. It's interesting, yes, but why does it have to be there all the time, shrinking the usable page by 1/3, which just looks ugly? It shouldn't be shown constantly, I think there should be an option to open/hide statistics, where the topic title is, right next to the "share" and "follow" options or something like that. Or like it is on mobiles - short statistics are shown right under the first post (it would look better if they were above the first post, or maybe just below the topic title bar) and you can just open or close them at will. This is much better than having 1/3 of the site replaced by a gray, useless background. I don't even want this sidebar to float, I want it gone from the side, so we can have wider posts and reply areas, just like they are in new threats. Why is there a hide option when I'm writing a new post? I don't really get why I would want to hide a post I'm just writing, but now I'm scared I will click it accidentally The default Shard profile pic is gone, instead we've got the classic and boring giant letter "X" or "A" or whatever the first letter of your name is. I miss the Shard symbol and I don't like the auto-generated, colorful avatars. Profile pictures with letters in the steel alphabet would be cool and have a soul - just an idea, I have no clue how feasible that would be. When you copy and paste a text, its background color messes up with the bluish background color of a spoiler or quote box. Like: This makes boxes look really ugly with those white stripes. Yes, you can "remove formatting", that works fine, but in some cases, like when copying WoBs, this would destroy the formatting of a WoB. The white stripes looks really bad in WoBs: example Edit: This is not something that happens every time (I have no white stripes when I paste a WoB into a spoiler box) but I've seen this happening to others and sometimes to me when I just want to copy some text into a box. I think that's it about negatives. Overall I really like this update, the side looks refreshingly nice and smooth. Thanks for your great work! Edit2: I've just realized, I have no sound notifications at all. Not even when somebody posts something new in a thread I'm reading.

Well, Brandon is warning us that some time compounding doesn't really do much: I like your theory. Seems reasonable and simple.

Yumi seems to take place really far in the Future, in the space era, around Mistborn Era 4 - that's hundreds of years into the future. I doubt Navani is still alive by this point, or that she created advanced Fabrial like this one, but her work most likely was a foundation for such devices, even if this particular fabrial didn't originate from Roshar.

Shai can do it. She can rewrite herself to be born on Scadrial or to ingest Lerasium at some point, it doesn't matter. But she would need a lot of investiture for her Mistborn powers to work, like a jar of pure Dor she used in TLM. This jar would fuel her Allomantic powers, as when it runs out, she can't burn metals anymore. But yes, you can do that: But if you want a Scadrian to become a Forger then that's much, much harder. Invested arts on Sel are location locked - only people with a specific connection to a certain land can have the opportunity to gain access to one of them - like only people from Arelon and Teod can become Elantrians, nobody else. A Scadrian won't have that connection to MaiPon to become a Forger. At best they would have to be a duralumin Ferring in the first place and fabricate their connection to the land and it might give them Forgery, but Forgery is granted by birth, so probably this wouldn't work. What I want to say is that it would be much harder for a Scadrian to become a Forger, than for a Forger to become a Mistborn/Feruchemist. But Forgery can do what you want.

Not every metal can be burned to begin with - burning wrong alloys of Allomantic metals can harm you. But silver was proven to be Allomantically inert, you can't even burn it. No. People on Scadrial tried burning silver. Silver isn't a part of Allomancy. It's not a key for a power. That's not because of Preservation, Preservation didn't create Allomancy, Allomancy came into existence naturally from interactions between Scadrial and Shards that created it.

Interesting. That might be possible, especially if you can also blank your original Identity. Good thinking.

Well, true, but in ~11000 years since the Shattering only Rayse had been trying to redefine Odium into Passion, and he wasn't successful. Ati on the other hand was more successful but he didn't change Ruin's intent, just focused it towards entropy. Once you pick up a Shard it becomes a battle of minds that you will eventually lose. This is because of his nature as a Cognitive Shadow, not because he held Preservation. It's because his spirit web was infused with so much Investiture that he got tied to Scadrian system. It's really hard for Cognitive Shadows to leave their world. Yes but that's hard, and they don't know how to leave their system yet. Spren, like Cognitive Shadows, are pure Investiture of a Shard, they are tied to the system and can't leave. Other planets, like Braize, don't count if you're on Roshar, this is still the same star system. If spren or Cognitive Shadows want to leave, they have to mess with this Connection that ties them to their system. Nightblood didn't yeet a Vessel into the Spiritual Realm (he already was there), he consumed Rayse entirely. Rayse is gone, his spirit web got eaten by Nightblood. Truthfully he might have some Connection to Odium, and Brandon said he would be as dangerous as Odium. But remember Kelsier changed because of Vin. She showed him that not every noble was bad, and even if he hated the idea of Elend becoming a king, he eventually grew to like him. Kelsier isn't the same as we saw him early in TFE. However Kelsier as Odium would have the same problem as with Preservation - he lacks Connection to the Physical Realm, he has no body, he is just a shadow of a person - this would make it hard for him to control the Shard and use its power to its full potential. SH 6.4: Unless Kelsier gets a permanent Connection to PR (a spike isn't that) he won't be very good at being any Shard. No. He can't predict where Shards will get Splintered and where they will appear. That doesn't work like that. He doesn't have any future sight. He is a Sliver, he held a Shard, his mind WAS expanded, but isn't anymore. Keep in mind, the longer a Cognitive Shadow lives, the more mentally unstable they become. Just look at Heralds or Fused. Kelsier living for thousands of years will end up like them unless he figures something out, like Hoid did. An insane Shardholder sounds really bad. You can't just go around and pick up multiple Shards, not to mention Splintered Shards in CR. Look what it took for Sazed to pick up both Shards - he needed specific Connections to both of them and detailed understanding of their nature when they're combined. Kelsier wasn't suitable for Preservation, he was lacking both Connection and understanding, he needed Ire's device to Ascend, and even with this the Shard was opposing him. It's hard to Ascend to multiple Shards. And it's really hard to unite Splintered Shards, so hard that nobody ever did this. Odium pushed Devotion and Dominion into CR specifically to prevent someone from Ascending to those Shards - it's even harder to Ascend to those Shards. And we don't know how Ambition ended up, but we can expect Odium did something to her to prevent Ascension. So while theoretically it's possible, it's really, really hard. Overall that's an interesting idea, Kelsier as Odium alone sounds terrifying.

Awakeners aren't really a faction, but I would join them, make me a Returned and throw me at the Court of Gods or something. Radiants are powerful, Elantrains are versatile, Feruchemists are practical. All are great choices but those are more or less people, not factions - which Radiants would you join, those on Odium's side, Honor's side or neutral? But realistically I would probably join either 17th Shard, to stay out of the way of grant Cosmere conflicts, or Ghostbloods because of Kelsier's goal of democratizing powers - he is your best bet if you want to get some invested arts (let be real, we won't bond a spren). Silverlight is a great option if you want to learn all there is about Cosmere, but they aren’t really a faction too.

No, as said it was about Bendalloy and Cadmium. But this probably no longer applies because of the Atium Retcon. Atium Mistings were just Electrum Mistings, so switching out Atium/Malatium makes no sense now as there is no need for that. To make both the retcon and WoBs about replacing metals with Atium and Malatium work together, I think that the people making Allomantic tables put god metal alloys in the place where bendalloy and cadmium were meant to be - but that's a human creation, artificial tables, not Preservation's doing. This?

Yes but no - in the Steel Inquisitor table it's used for Physical spikes: iron, steel, tin and pewter. But we've seen the use of spikes outside of their known applications, like pewter Blessings, so this could be any spike. Unlikely, but it is possible. It might be that Spook had to be in CR (but I think not when you don't want to steal anything), but I don't think he took Kelsier's Connection - it would rip it off his spirit web and give it to a Mistwraith - this Connection would no longer be "Connected" to Kelsier so he would not get nailed into Mistwraith's body. That's why I think this spike couldn't rip anything off Kelsier, because Kelsier would simply lose it. Your idea wouldn't Connect Kelsier to PR. The opposite might - spiking Mistwraith's Connection to PR out and giving it to Kelsier while nailing him into Mistwraith's body. Identity would match, and Kelsier's spirit would get Connected to the body with a physical spike alongside his new gained Connection.

That's what I meant. I was talking about the decay in general, thus if spikes are inside your body, the decay is practically stopped, as the time spikes spent outside is negligible. But when spikes are in your body, the decay is fully stopped as far as we know.

I understand and agree - antagonists representing death itself are far better when they are cold and calculated, always having a plan, always smarter than protagonists. I like such bad guys a lot. Ruin wasn't the best of Brandon's "evil" characters, but I think he did his job not only as an antagonist, but also as a set up of Shards, Shardic nature and greater powers of Cosmere. I wouldn't call Ruin a god, nor Preservation, not even Harmony. Ruin had some clever moments, like planting Koloss in Elend's army and then taking control over them, but he was angry a lot of times, which isn't the type of "death god" you like, and I feel it. And Ruin does represent what you want him to represent, but it was more in the background, it was said and mentioned by Ruin rather than shown on pages. The core of Brandon's take on Shards is "godly power in the hands of flawed, ordinary people" and Ruin is a perfect example of this. Either way your criticism is fair, I think it would be interesting to see Ruin as you proposed, I would most likely like him.

I agree. You can spike a spren, a body doesn't matter, and that's what Kelsier was at the end of SH. I believe with a correct intent and maybe even command, you can use a spike to spike through all 3 realms, as that's what ripping off chunks of a spirit web does - it reaches into SR. With Kelsier I simply think that someone in PR (Spook) spiked a mistwraith, while Kelsier was just standing in front of it in CR and was dragged by a spike into the mistwraith's body. He wasn't "loaded" into a spike, rather than "nailed" into a body, just like Frustration's WoB is saying. I believe Brandon said in a WoB that Kel's spike is made out of steel, but I can't find it.

Possible, you don't even have to melt it, Vin's earring was small and still gave her full power of A-bronze. Of course you need to take care of identity and programming if needed. This one too? Every idea about Hemalurgy was already posted by you, and somehow you still have more

Is it the opposite? A Soulstamp is temporary, a spike is permanent. It decays a little, but if it's inside of your body, the decay is practically stopped. A Soulstamp requires restamping every day or so often. Shai didn't draw from the Dor, like normal Elantrins, she used her jar of Dor to fuel her Aons. She could use only that investiture from the jar, not from the whole Dor. It's possible but more complicated than this. You would need to give the investiture, which would fuel your Allomancy, with the soulstamp, as a Forged Mistborn won't be able to draw from Preservation.

Yes, with a correction. The Set used a single spike to steal raw, innate Investiture (Preservation's fragment) from 20-30 people, creating a fully charged spike, that was able to grant Metalborn powers only for a short period of time. They couldn't make this spike work. It was most likely a nicrosil spike, as they were stealing raw investiture and that's what nicrosil is doing. TLM ch 47: Identity contamination is definitely a problem - a fully charged spike contains investiture keyed to 20-30 different people. Another is coding, as mentioned in the quote - they need to find a way to code this investiture to grant a specific power - they didn't figure this out yet. Those two problems prevent this spike from working. But remember, it's a single spike charged by 20-30 people. That's a good point. If this is truly a nicrosil spike, it can't be placed in typical binding points that are for granting powers. There would be some interference preventing this spike from working because of the wrong binding point in which it was placed. This can possibly be resolved by finding a suitable binding point (maybe some kind of general point that allows for placement of all types of spike) - there are 200-300 known binding points, I'm sure you can find at least one that would work. Speaking Commands might help as well. Feruchemy is about storing an attribute and then tapping it later, but you can replace the storing with external investiture, like during the compounding process. Hemalurgy is similar, there are two processes - one is for stealing, the other is for grafting. I think it's possible to replace the stealing part with an external source of investiture (raw investiture), but the grafting would still be the same, causing damage to your spirit web and everything. It’s a hack, no different than compounding. But it already worked, even if just for a short time. I think it's possible, I've seen such a theory before. But is the power already coded in this 5% or not? If not you still need to code the investiture to grant you a specific power. You definitely solved the identity contamination problem. The theory I've seen was about spiking a Misting and dividing the spike into hundreds of small pieces, each containing only a tiny fraction of the stolen soul. Then those pieces are melted into larger spikes, which are filled with raw investiture - the raw investiture would amplify/merge with the real, tiny piece of the soul,which acts like a definition for raw investiture, granting you a strong version of the power you've stolen and divided - or something like that (Oh that was yours @Trusk'our?) Everytime you burn a metal, tap a metalmind etc, you're making pulses detectable by A-bronze. What you need to do with raw investiture is to code it, change its intent, to this specific pulse, tied to one of the powers. That's kind of it, or something similar to it. RoW spoilers:

That's an interesting question. I think Kandra can detect and sustain pregnancy (without getting into RAFO'd if they can become pregnant), so every Kandra has the potential to create a suitable environment for a fetus to develop. But the timing is what matters, most Kandra won't be able to do that, TenSoon might, but others won't. Technically TenSoon could remove the fetus, create a temporary womb for the fetus, digest the mother's body and implant the fetus back into his fully developed womb and placenta. However that's almost stepping over the edge of the First Contract. A Kandra won't be able to digest the body of a living fetus, that would be against the First Contract. But that's only something TenSoon can do. Unless your character is some kind of crazy Kandra, that have been digesting bodies of dead, pregnant women for centuries, so long that they can just fully form specific organs without any need for digesting a body, then yes, this is a viable option. Law isn't everything, perception matters. If there are no such laws on Scadrial (I doubt there are yet), Kandra's perception would be the deciding factor. If Kandra perceives a fetus 6 week old as a living human, they can't kill him without breaking the First Contract. If there are laws on Scadrial which specify how old a fetus has to be to be considered a human, then those would apply. Overall good analysis.

A single spike, made out of one metal, will work - WoBs, including the one I've quoted, suggest that there is a way to steal more than one power with a spike, but people don't know about it yet. I personally think that a single spike can steal all powers from the same quadrant - like a steel spike will steal all Allomantic physical powers at once. That makes a lot of sense to me. But mixing spikes won't work, because of binding points. There are multiple binding points in the heart alone, and it matters through which you want to put your spike. Even mixing steel and pewter, to get both Allomancy and Feruchemy won't work, as they probably require different points. Also, as mentioned by Trusk'our, you have different points for receiving powers, therefore mixing already charged spikes won't work as well, unless you make sure those spikes are from the same quadrant. However can two spikes be placed in a single binding point? I think not, so even this idea won't work. I'm also doubtful it wouldn't damage your soul as much as if you place those spikes in separate binding points - they are still acting like two, separate spikes. Mixing metals together like you want won't change that. You need both Hemalurgic charges to be in a single spike, made out of the single metal, and that's more problematic.

He wasn't fighting with another Shard, but he was fighting with time. The planet was burning, people were dying, he had to quickly reverse changes done by Rashek otherwise life on Scadrial would be destroyed. That's why he was focused on him, that's why he knew what Rashek did. He also knew what Vin did as it just happened. I think the in-world explanation, for why there isn’t anything more about previous Ascendants or the whole history of Scadrial, is there. But I wouldn’t mind learning more about that but that would be better as a short story/novella rather than a single paragraph in the book.

It likely can't work. There are multiple binding points in the heart, and they matter when you're stealing the powers.

When Sazed created the Words of Founding he still didn't fully realize the knowledge he got, his mind was still overwhelmed by the sudden expansion. HoA ch 2&3 HoA ch 39: ch 46: ch 57: Epilogue:

It has been a while since I've read the Reckoners, but I don't remember their powers being weakened by gifting. Coppermind (Transference Epics) also doesn't mention this is happening, but that's not conclusive.