Oudeis

@ Moogle: You're sorta running into "all fingers are thumbs". Spikes rip off a piece of the spiritweb. We know, or at least suspect, that "spiritwebs" are made up of Investiture. However, just because a spike can absorb one sort of Investiture, it doesn't logically follow that this means it can absorb EVERY type of Investiture. In fact, the name people call them. Cognitive shadows. I don't believe it's suggested anywhere that hemalurgy affects the cognitive aspect; it seems pretty specific that it takes in the spiritual aspect. If Shades are, therefore, largely cognitive, there's little in the way of a direct link which would let us safely assume that all of a Shade can be absorbed by a spike. For a clarifying example: A spike can absorb the Investiture that makes up a spiritweb. That's like saying a square peg will fit in a square hole (and steal its allomancy). Saying that this means that hemalurgy absorbs every type of investiture is like saying that this means that a square peg will fit into any hole. It's possible that whatever sort of Investiture a Shade is comprised of is the equivalent of a "round hole", and that the square peg of hemalurgy simply doesn't fit. This is, of course, not meant to say that I think you're definitely wrong. I'm merely pointing out that there's no particular reason to assume that you're right.

Comprehensive. I like it. I will subject it to peer review next time I read Warbreaker.

Also, someone raised a good point. I was only thinking of this in terms of the perspective from the first book, but it really does belong in the Words of Radiance section. Would a mod please correct my error and move this thread? I would hate to be the cause of spoilers. Thank you, and I will try to be more careful! I cannot find the quote about the Secret Societies. I am forced to admit my recollection might be faulty. Perhaps someone else recalls something pertinent?

Whichever one makes for a crazier host; that's the one I want to believe is real.

... Kaladin was already bonding to Syl, at the very least as early as the border conflict we're discussing (when he fights to defend Cenn, Cenn notices that as he's fighting, the wind seems to warp and become visible around him, and in the flashback to just before said battle, Syl is zipping around, Adhering his pouch of spheres to his hand) and possibly far, FAR earlier (when he was a young child, and held a staff for the first time, he exhibited atypical skill with it, which might be an indication of the beginnings of his bond). Also, Kaladin arrived at the Shattered Plains only eight or nine months after this battle, and was inhaling Stormlight within a few more months of that, so there wasn't time for him to become a Radiant years earlier.

How would hemalurgic decay affect a stored Identity?

I will try to find the quote but at a signing i went to someone asked how many secret societies there were and the answer was something huge and crazy like 10. Though i think he said the newly reformed Radiants were one.

Ooooooooh... you make a number of excellent points. While this is all interesting speculation, I still wonder if there's something bigger we just can't see yet. I'm gonna re-read the bits that mention this attack and see if there's any suggestion of Helaran's intentions during the scene. He's clearly operating on the side of one of the Lords, yes? He first runs around killing some soldiers (Kaladin's specifically included) and then targets Amaram when... doesn't Amaram run out onto the field at one point, as is his habit? I really need to re-read that section. I wonder if perhaps we'll learn at some point that there's something unknown but important about that spit of land which will be crucial for something. This smacks of the Diagram to me, though, and we're already involving a great many secret societies. It will amuse me beyond measure if it turns out that LITERALLY EVERY secret society had a hand in this specific, supposedly minor border skirmish and that thanks to the coincidental involvement of an uninformed Radiant who hadn't even spoken the first Ideal yet, absolutely none of them got what they wanted.

The connection is that someone mentions at one point that shallans brother sought the skybreakers. We know her father was connected to the ghostbloods. Do we know helaran was, too? If they wanted amaram dead, why do 8 more months pass without a second attempt? A poisoning or a prostitute with a knife? Good catch about how he thinks the dad killed the mom. Im not actually certain they couldnt have known there was a surgebinder. Syl is flying around adhering things, and when Kaladin fights with unnatural skill the wind visibly warps around him, per chapter 1 of the Way of Kings. Its at least almost as much as how Ym got on his radar. EDIT: One month to the day later, I notice a typo.

Why would helaran, with plate and blade, care enough to fight in a random border skirmish? Whoever sent him must've wanted to guarantee his side would win. What is the fallout from the monkey wrench thrown in this plan? If helaran is with the skybreakers, and if Nalan is in charge of them, wouldnt he suspect a radiant had killed his shardbearer? Why not come after that person? If helaran is a skybreaker, he was targetting amaram. Is it possible they suspected he really is a radiant? Did he know his own sister was a radiant?

Nah, dude, Nan Balat has got Skybreaker written all over him! This is the Order whose ideal is, "I will needlessly torture small, defenseless animals", yes?

Are there diminishing returns on Flaring your metal? By burning it so hot, like a feruchemist compounding his own traits, do you get a power boost at the cost of efficiency in burning? What about duralumin? Is the total amount of power you get exactly equal to what you would have gotten over time by simply burning it? Is there any fundamental difference between flaring a metal before a duraburst, as opposed to simply burning it?

@ Tavash: I specifically asked you not to respond to individual points, as my aggregate point was that I have dozens of examples of inconsistencies. I have literally less than no interest in compiling the entire list for you, or to engage you in debating every point. You've even already conceded one of them. My underlying premise, which is that the mechanics of the game already contradict canon, stands. @Inch: I have a number of concerns about your hypothesis, but here's the biggest. Even if all of this did work, which I find unlikely, it still wouldn't make the super-nicroburst grant additional power to other allomancers. Duralumin, and nicrosil, causes a burst of power by burning all of the metal at one time. What you get out of it is the sum total of what you'd've gotten if you burned it all consistently. If I nicroburst two pewterarms, and one had 5g of pewter in his system and the other had 15g, the one with 15g would be three times as strong. If I did somehow become a stronger nicroburst and did the same thing... the one with 15g would be three times as strong. He would still burn those 15g within seconds, just as the other guy would still burn his 5g in seconds, and they would each get the benefit of having burned it all at once. There is some speculation that a more powerful nicroburst can compress the burst even faster, so that rather than power spread over three seconds it's concentrated to one second at triple strength, but your skill/power still isn't adding anything to the Thug's burst, you're simply making the burst possible.

Relevant Quotes: Source Source

Hrm... a random, tangential thought. I still think it's unlikely that a Spiked trait can be Spiked out of someone... however, I'm willing to stipulate that I think a Godmetal spike could break this rule. None of what I say is based on anything other than "gut-feeling".

Eeeeeh.... I'm afraid this doesn't scan, for a few reasons. I mean, it's totally viable as a hypothesis, it's completely possible that this is the case. But you make a few connections that are rather tenuous. First, you're saying that since a Spike is unlike a trait in this one way, it has to be unlike the trait in all ways. I disagree. A spike-trait is different from a normal-trait, in that you can lose the ability by losing the spike. However, it's also alike the normal trait in a lot of ways. A man with a spike for allomantic steel will still burn the metal just like a natural Coinshot, he Pushes on the same metals, he sees the same steellines. So, hemalurgic traits are similar to natural traits in some ways, and different in others. We don't know which of these categories "theft of the trait kills you" would fall into. Second, the whole "die when you lost a trait" thing is less clear-cut than you're making it out to be. We know it's (almost) always been fatal, but it also involves someone stabbing you with metal, so there's that. Basically, what little we know/suspect is that hemalurgic theft deals significant physical and spiritual trauma. Either on its own is enough to kill you, typically. We know that it's possible to be a "donor" in such a manner that you lose the trait, but don't die from either trauma. We know very little about the process or what it might entail.

Not sure what you mean here, but remember that you lose the ability if you lose the spike, yet if you then regain the same spike, you get the power back, and also remember that the Well, which would not suffer Vin when she wore the earring, had no problem with her once she removed it; same with the Mists. So, the fact remains that the "trait" in any given spike is modular, able to be removed and replaced. The question now becomes, while the spike is in you, is the trait tied strongly enough to your own spiritweb that spiking you in a theftpoint will rip the entire trait, not just out of your spiritweb, but out of the original spike itself.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here, while simply pointing out that this is your opinion. You can choose to believe as you wish, but that doesn't make something canon. It's possible that, as a gamer, Mr. Sanderson would not let them print anything flat-out wrong. However, it's also possible that, as a gamer and an author, he would understand that the two were completely separate media, and would have no problem with things being incorrect in the fantasy world, especially when his other option is "reveal a ton of information about the mechanics of allomancy that I will not reveal in-text for years and have consistently RAFO'ed." While your scenario is plausible, it is itself a justification for why something ELSE should be considered canon, and it's not compelling enough to be a slam dunk for that. You can personally believe whatever you wish; I do on many issues. However, I try not to act as though my own personal belief must be true unless I have compelling evidence, and your supposition that there is only one way a "serious gamer" who licenses his property to be made into an RPG would possibly act is, in my opinion, too weak a premise to make it all canon. In addition, here's a partial list of known deviations between the MAG and the canon Cosmere. Again, let me reiterate that I think this is a good thing. The MAG and the novels are two completely different media, and slavishly trying to force them to match would have made the MAG much worse. It's my opinion that the game itself is much better expressly because of these deviations. 1. Atium. Tap 100 charges, revert to literally any age for 1 day. Actually an upgrade over how atium works in books. 2. Duralumin isn't burned like normal metals, but spent in charges like it was feruchemy. 3. With Steel, you're force to Push on one single piece of metal or every source of metal by default unless you take a stunt. This is a short, partial list. Please do not respond to this post by justifying the individual points, because the underlying point is, this is a common occurence. The game was never meant to be canonical. I play this game. I love this game. And a bunch of my friends who play, we frequently discuss how it diverges from canon. One particular friend makes a hobby of taking things that happened in the books, and re-working them to see how plausible they'd be under the rules of the MAG. Lastly, an anecdote. It was actually invented for the MAG that feruchemical bendalloy could store, not simply caloric energy, but also the hydration of drinking water. Mr. Sanderson thought this was such a good idea, he actually adapted it into the novels. But that's the thing. The authors of the game invented it, out of whole cloth, with no regards to the novels, because they felt like it. Mr. Sanderson liked it enough to adapt it back into canon, but that's one isolated incident. What this story proves is, it's entirely possible for Crafty, the people who made the game, to invent something on their own, without it being canon.

There are conflicts beyond that of direct physical confrontation. Perhaps he'll travel Shinovar, talking with the common people, inspiring a rebellion against the Shamans. After all, what good would it serve to kill the Shamans themselves, if the people still believe these myths, and would simply choose new Shamans just like the old ones to follow? In addition, Skybreakers must obey the law in all things. There is presumably little wiggle room in "assassinate the leaders of the entire country"; we are, after all, not talking about Elend, who probably DID write a clause into the charter allowing for his own removal by death. He would likely need the justification of a popular uprising before he's allowed to kill the Shamans.

This... fascinates me. Per my own thoughts on Hemalurgy, I would absolutely have agreed that an attribute gained via spiking could never be stolen via a second spiking. However, your proposed model... is intriguing. I certainly don't think now "this is absolutely the case" but it's absolutely plausible, and I hereby change my mind. I am now no longer convinced that spiked attributes cannot be stolen via a hemalurgic spike. In fact, since your idea is both eminently plausible and far more interesting, I officially want your answer to be right. I do wonder now. Per this model, what would be the spiritual traits of the original spike, post-theft?

...You're just poking the troll now, right? You're not even trying to seriously debate this topic? You're just trying to figure out what you can say to provoke me, right?

This line made me chortle. It's possible that atium might be required for some transactions. It's a bit of a stretch, but still plausible. Let's say someone is selling some raw material that you want. Someone else is paying their asking price, in gold. Perhaps if you offer the same value, but in the more-stable currency of atium, you might convince them to sell to you, instead.

Remember, though, how "messy" hemalurgy is. This probably doesn't mean simply the physical realm. The Hero of Ages mentions that he believes the reuse of the iron spikes on the Koloss was why their personalities shifted. Your idea might work, but you'd end up with one very powerful coinshot with fractions of a dozen souls stapled to his own. The end result probably would not be terribly stable.

I'd like to re-iterate that the MAG is only slightly more canon than fanfiction. In fact, the Enhancement Metals specifically begin with a note, from Mr. Sanderson himself, noting that this was the section where they went the most off on their own. You are right, in that it's technically a part of a book which had some input from the author, but if canon has levels, this is about a quantum more canon than "that dream I had last night."

But you're missing the point, which I bring up in the OP. The issue is that "Destroy Evil" is only logical and reasonable if you believe that killing every human being the first time they do something despicable. In the book, Vasher says, "The Command 'Destroy Evil' seems perfectly logical and reasonable." So are you saying that Vasher, as we see him in the books, believes that killing people is a logical, reasonable way to reduce the amount of Evil in the world?