SwordNimiForPresident

They can see the future. Or at least a vague impression of it. If I was ranking the orders on the significance of their powers, I would definitely put Bondsmiths and Truthwatchers at the top. Everyone else has very dynamic powers, they're flashy and impressive. These two orders do most of their flashy stuff in invisible ways that are ultimately more powerful than anything the others can do. Consider that Renarin is, apparently, invisible to Odium's future sight and that Dalinar can pull Stormlight directly from the Spiritual realm. There's also that bit where the Stormfather is talking to Dalinar about the founding of the orders and tells him that Ishar told the early knights that they had to be bound by oaths, or he would destroy them. I assume said destruction would somehow be accomplished with his Bondsmith powers.

That is partly true. The Ire show us that it is possible to be away from Elantris and still be an Elantrian. Riino for example lives in Roshars CR but is several hundred years old. You would lose your silvery skin and you wouldn't be able to use Aons, but you are still an Elantrian even when you aren't in Elantris. My point was that being an Elantrian is the only magic system in that list that can't be acquired by other means. You can gain feruchemy and allomancy through hemalurgy. The surges come from bonding spren. Breath is a commodity Investiture. Aviar can be tamed. Shades can be captured. But Elantrians, have to be born near Arelon and they have to be taken by the Shaod, you can't cheat your way into it.

Aon Dor for sure. It's pretty much the only one you have to be born with. Once you're an Elantrian world hopper you can go around grabbing up other types of Investiture. They're also passively immortal. No need for fifth heightening or twinborn atium. You'd also be pretty intimidating with metallic skin, spikes in your torso and an aura that makes a prism in the air around you. I'm not sure if I would go for an eye spike or not. Maybe just one, because dudes with eye patches are intimidating.

Fair enough, I've taken to much space in this thread anyway. I'll finish by saying that the real psychopaths in Mistborn are the nobility. It is remarkable that Kelsier, Elend, Breeze and Marsh all managed to grow up in their society and not come out of it completely lacking compassion for people less fortunate than themselves.

Of course I am, I'm justifying his position. They were all slavers, that cannot be contested. The Lord Ruler owned the skaa. The nobility oversaw them. That makes them slavers. You are correct that it is a generalization to say that all of them were rapists and murderers. If I were facing a group that was made up of half murdering, raping slavers and half slavers. I would call them murdering, raping slavers. Even their children, who are not yet old enough to actually be slavers, are living the lives they do on the backs of slaves. The same could be done for Era 1, all you would need to do is write a book from the PoV of the nobility. Mistborn terrorist is tearing down your way of life, incites a revolt in your property and finally, kills your god. He sounds like a pretty bad guy in that context, you just have to ignore that the person who's PoV you're seeing through is morally bankrupt. IMO, if Kelsier is a villain in Era 3, it will only be because of perception. His goal will still have a greater good in mind.

The Cantons are the departments of the government. The nobility are the ones that directly oversee the skaa. They seem to be the ones that perpetrate most of the rape and murder. It seems odd to have to explain why this group of people were bad. Slavers, rapist, murderers. They seem to check all of the big boxes for me.

All nobles are part of the government. All soldiers work for the government. They may have noble blood, but they do not live as nobles. They have no skaa slaves. They do no frivolously murder skaa. There is at least some small argument for calling them good people. While I don't agree with Kelsier's assertion that all nobles are the same, it could be argued that neither did he (or at least that he lacked conviction it it) since in the end, he saved Elend.

Ah. Well Vin seems to me like the other kind of person. The one that does not dehumanize the enemy, and suffers for each death they cause. She does seem to bounce back and forth a bit though. I think she's ok with it when it's a "fair" fight. We never see her lamenting over killing Cett's allomancers or over killing Rashek (except as it relates to the end of the world). The flip side is obviously the previously mentioned murder house with Zane event.

But it is the standard, or rather one of them, for people in combat situations. Which in this case is very relevant to the topic. Kelsier watched, not just a fellow soldier but his wife, get brutally beaten to death. I would say that counts.

A: very few soldiers actually want to fight a battle. They either feel that it needs to be done, or they are there because they are obligated either through contract or conscription. B: this is mostly true, especially in the early parts of a conflict before either side has seen many casualties. Many people feel that way all till the end. Many others, after watching their friends die, tend to dehumanize the enemy. Well now I'm wondering if I'm crazy. I would be unhappy about the situation, but the fact that I killed a would be murderer would not make me lose a second of sleep. It would probably make me sleep more soundly in fact, knowing that there was one less person out there that might try to murder me.

He also saved the lives of every other girl that Tresting was going to rape. Can you honestly say that you could stand by and listen to a young girl get raped and murdered if you had the power to stop it? I would venture to guess that that would make someone more of a psychopath than stopping him would. It does suck that the plantation skaa had to run and hide, but from where I'm standing there is no middle ground on that.

Do you have any specific example of him killing someone other than a nobleman or a soldier? I can't bring any to mind. Also, I would never suggest that Vin and Kelsier are similar people. She is oddly selective about who she thinks she should feel bad about killing. IMO, Cett's soldiers were an invading force holding the city hostage. They threatened the lives of everyone there. Vin shouldn't have felt bad at all. I'm not talking about some cartoon villain, or a cannibal from some serial killer movie. We never see Kelsier kill anyone that he shouldn't. All of the people he killed, he had a pretty good reason to do it (overthrowing the final empire). We never see him just wander into a nobleman's kitchen an slaughter the staff. That comes down to RAFO I guess.

I don't see how trying to give people hope is problematic. His last thought was "Stand tall. Give them something to remember". He decided to die to help other people which is, as far as I know, the most selfless thing you can do. Saying that he could do bad things with the people that follow him is a bit hollow. You could say that of any character that is revered by others. Frank is a great parallel to Kelsier. He's brutal, but under all the scar tissue and gristle is a heart of gold. BTW for anyone reading this, The Punisher on Netflix is glorious. So many feels. This is a bit like saying "if that character decides to be evil they're sure gonna be evil". It's meaningless without being able to actually point at something that he has done.

In the religion he is an absent martyr with no hand in church doctrine (the whole point of the religion was to give the skaa something to fight for). In the south he was their head of government, but left of his own choice (I suspect either because he didn't like how similar to Rashek he was, or because he had decided that they were now able to take care of themselves). It's not like he's some godking ruling over all of Scadrial. As a side note, I like to imagine Era 3 Kelsier wearing graphic t-shirts with stupid Survivor themed stuff printed on them.

@Calderis Killing enemy combatants is a pretty broad line to use for sociopathy. By that logic any soldier that ever felt justified in killing the enemy is a sociopath. In my opinion, slaves have an innate right to murder their overlords in an attempt at freedom. Likewise, anyone who chooses to murder said overlord in an attempt to free those slave is also doing the right thing. Anyone that chooses to serve that overlord has forfeited their right to live. Basically, if you engage in slavery, or facilitate slavery, you deserve to die and anyone that kills you should feel not just justified, but satisfied that they made the world a better place. As far as the "just trying to feed my family" argument. If you stop to ask every enemy combatant if they would like the chance to surrender, you are going to lose. The best you can do is to ask yourself if your cause is worthy. If it is, then you kill your enemies until they surrender or are all dead. I can think of no example where Kelsier killed an innocent or noncombatant. Vin choosing not to kill Goradel was a great part of the story. If she had chosen to kill him I would have been completely on board. He was, after all, helping TLR enslave millions of people. He was also totally replaceable. Literally anyone could have been killed by Marsh to deliver that message. Edit: I guess my point in all this is: If Brandon intended Kelsier to be a psychopath, he should have made him much darker. There's a ton in there about the things he cares about, but not a lot of twisted sinister murdery stuff. The only people he every had those feeling towards always felt completely justified.

Inkspren confirmed.

I'm making this thread so I can stop derailing the Era 3 thread. Here's a link if you want to catch up (or post about what you want to see in Era 3). Era 3 Thread Ok, to the subject at hand. Is Kelsier a good guy or a bad guy? I come out on the good guy side. According to WoBs, Kelsier is a psychopath, but if that is true, then he is a badly written character, in my opinion. I can't think of any specific instance of him doing something that would make me think he lacked empathy or remorse. Nothing in the books ever gave me the feeling that he was anything other than a revolutionary that was trying to make the world a better place.

Does anyone have an example of an unjustified murder that Kelsier committed? I think I'm on reread number four now and nothing has stood out to me. On second thought, maybe this should be it's own thread so we don't derail this one anymore. New Thread

Sorry, I kind of missed the mark on what I was trying to describe with solar wind. I was trying to differentiate between the ISM inside the heliopause versus the ISM outside the heliopause. My thought process is that since the ISM is largely composed of hydrogen and helium, steel pushes may be able to affect them. Hydrogen and helium both have metallic properties at the right pressure and temperature, so I figured they would count as metals. I'm not sure what Scadrial's atmospheric composition looks like, but I guess its safe to assume it is similar to earth. That would likely make pushing on the air impossible since there are no metallic gasses in our atmosphere (or at least only trace amounts). In regards to pushing on the ISM though, I was thinking that since you would need to be ridiculously Invested in order even gain any purchase on the tiny amount of metal around you, you would also have exceptional range. This would let you make a large scale push in a 180 degree arc opposite the direction you wanted to move. It would effectively work like a parachute, only several hundred times larger. Edit: It just occurred to me that if you can push you can pull. You could pull on the front 180 degrees and push out the back. This would create a sort of ram jet situation where you would have pressurized gas flowing past you in one direction.

That book had me on the edge of my seat from the prologue onward. If feel like Mat and Perin finally become the characters that they were always meant to be. And Rand... I’m not a religious person, but I think I can understand what people who truly believe must feel when they think about their god.

They might not, but starting now, I do.

While I agree that what OP is talking about isn't possible, I do wonder if there is a certain Investiture level where steel pushes and iron pulls are able to hit air. Obviously Vin hits this level when she takes up Preservation, but what about a Fullborn using nicrosil? I guess it would depend on whether or not they gain that ability before hitting "mistpoint". In a similar train of thought, if they do gain the ability to push on air, what about solar winds or the interstellar medium? Can fullborn travel through space under their own power?

Back to the topic at hand. For my one twinborn, I'm going double pewter because Hulk smash (it should be a really tall gangly guy too). If compounders are not allowed then A-Pewter and F-Gold. For everything else, I'd like to see some of the Feruchemical powers that we haven't explored much yet, so F-Duralumin, F-Chromium and F-Electrum. Then if I'm finishing out a team to hunt a Mistborn, A-Bronze, A-Copper, A-Chromium and F-Steel.

Sociopath and Psychopath aren't the same thing are they? Psychopaths are the "kills small animals (or people) for fun" guys and sociopaths are the "I don't feel bad about what I do or who I do it to" guys

I did not. Thank you for the text. I guess if Brandon says it, it's true. It does mean ignoring all of the times that Kel showed compassion for others, but can't really do anything about that. To use his death scene as an example, he decides to save Elend because Vin loves him. So is he a psychopath or isn't he? There's a bunch of examples like this throughout the books. It's one thing to say he's a psychopath, but he really isn't written like one.