HSuperLee

Yeah, as Darth said, it really is a theological question if you want to talk about it from a monotheistic or Abrahamic perspective, which may or may not apply to Adonalsium. But I think the more general idea connects to the "trickster god" archetype. So Loki, Coyote, Hermes, etc. That idea of a god that just kind of does whatever they want and is sometimes a hero and sometimes a villain because of it. They're something to be respected, but also avoided if possible.

In a similar vein, we've seen that Sazed tended to narrate notes he specifically wants to remember and store them in his copperminds. I wonder if part of that is "splitting" the memory so that he remembers what he saw normally, but stores the memory of hearing himself speak away. This specifically makes sense to me because its easier to remember words than a picture in your head, and thus storing words in a coppermind would risk less degradation whenever you tap them and thus be better for a Keeper. Especially since you can't really share a visual memory, but you can always narrate to pass on words you remember when helping to fill another Keeper's coppermind. All that to say, Hoid might have some kind of trick where he stores his stories differently than his main memories, and thus while his main memories got deleted he still might be able to remember what he was saying while going to meet Odium and thus realize he told the same story twice or has hidden some hint within his narration. But that's just one idea. Whatever Hoid does to store his memory is likely way more advanced and deliberate than anything else we've seen and as a result he might have some subtle safeguards against it being tampered with. He'd just need a reason to check those safeguards.

Alright, take a look at my profile picture. Take a good look. Now you've probably figured out where I fall on this issue, but to put it to words: I would trust a good skybreaker more than a good windrunner. Being a skybreaker is about admitting that you're flawed, admitting that you don't always know what's right. For me personally, I don't trust my own desires. There are times when I get angry and feel like I should hit someone because of it. Now we all know that's bad, and I wouldn't do it, but that's not the point. The point is that when I feel angry enough violence feels like the right thing to do even when its not. To be a skybreaker is to admit that we're not good, and to admit that the human conscience sometimes needs to be trained to actually recognize what is moral. Now, I will not uphold that "the law" is perfect and always moral, its clearly not. But that's the point of the 5th oath, to "become the law." Its to say, "Sometimes I can't trust myself. Sometimes I need external guidance to know what's right. But this isn't one of those times. This time the law is wrong." I get it, corrupt and even evil laws exist. But that shouldn't completely destroy the idea of laws. I get that people dislike skybreakers because they see too much chance for corruption. But its no different with other orders. What if an elsecaller decided the most logical situation is the evil one? The truth is that no order is complete until it has all its oaths, and its that way for a reason. A windrunner needs their oath to protect those they hate when its right, or they're not really protecting. A skybreaker needs their oath to become the law when its right or they've missed the whole point of the law. Yes, the skybreakers we've seen have fallen into the trap of the letter or nothing, but don't take that as the inevitable conclusion of the skybreakers. Make no mistake, the ones we've seen have fallen. Ultimately, being a skybreaker is a commitment to becoming a more moral person. It's saying, "I am bad at doing what's right, and even knowing what's right. So I'm committing to find the right thing, then follow it until I become a better person." Now, you can argue about a skybreakers individual choice of what they follow, and I will join you in calling many out for making a stupid choice. But please, don't condemn the entire order just because the current ones have been corrupted by a madman. The skybreakers are awesome, and have the potential to be an incredibly moral order, and I just wish more people saw that.

This post got me to listen to the reading and man I'm excited for Era 4. Its going to be so interesting seeing all these technological additions to the magics coming about. I think we're all agreed on the skybreaker part, and if I were a betting man my money would be on a singer or hybrid, what with the "distorted" voice. What's interesting is that while the Scardrian East Cosmere Company idea seems likely, we could probably also apply that logic to the Rosharan. Now, I've not read RoW, but it seems to me that we can't assume Roshar will be an entirely united planet in Era 4. I know in sci-fi planets seem to become a single government once they reach space age, but I feel like Sanderson will subvert that and be somewhat more nuanced. With that in mind, I don't know that we can say the radiant represents Roshar or even just the skybreakers. I'm also wondering, why a skybreaker? They don't exactly seem like they'd make good diplomats. The reasons I can think of is that they have access to gravitation, and thus can travel through space more subtly than a ship could. Especially if the color of the stormlight is off because the radiant has some function in the plate that makes it's investiture more difficult to detect (basically, purple = stealthmode.) So why a skybreaker over a windrunner? Maybe just because of their experience with law being useful for detailing a contract or something. But that still feels off. Wouldn't an elsecaller be the more logical choice? At least if they can actually teleport off a planet. Or why not send someone with the skybreaker, some order that would be better fit for negotiations. But the whole situation just makes me suspicious that maybe a skybreaker was sent because its the only one the group they were working with had to send.

This is where I question the limits of perception impacting healing. Yeah, it clearly does. But healing is not a cognitive power. Ultimately when you heal, you are healing from a spiritual ideal of yourself. Your perception seems to allow you to muddy that ideal with things like scars or some disabilities, but if healing were absolutely based on perception, only doctors could heal themselves as they're the only ones who have any idea what things like their internal structure should really look like. I don't know that we should assume that the spiritual "fills in the gaps" of your self-perception, rather it seems that it is the perception that interferes with what otherwise would be a perfect healing. But I feel like that perception has to be pretty dang big to have any kind of impact at all. It essentially has to be part of your Identity. I know a couple colorblind people, and none of them would describe that as part of who they are, just something they experience. Or for my own Renarin-esque example, I wear contacts, but that's not an important fact to me, its just something I do. If I woke up one morning and could suddenly see perfectly, I'd be grateful, but it wouldn't change who I am. Because it wouldn't change how I think of myself, I imagine my eyesight would be healed by stormlight.

Force doesn't have a speed. The different strengths of gravity are caused by mass, which does affect force, but it doesn't make the force not constant. Without air resistance, gravity's effect on an object is F = G * (M1*M2)/(r^2) where F is force, G is the universal gravitational constant, M is mass, and r is distance (technically radius but eh, same thing.) There's nothing in the equation that would cause this to have a limit to how fast an object could go. It does cause a limit to acceleration, because A=F/M, but that acceleration would be constant, and thus velocity would keep increasing with time. Edit: I'm not sure I actually addressed much of what you said. But you seem to think gravity isn't a constant force. It most certainly is. You'd know if it wasn't because things would suddenly become weightless.

I don't think it works like that. If it did, I'd expect Wax to be able to push his own metalminds, which if he could do, he just needs to store up a bunch of weight in an iron ball and then launch it around and no other allomancer would be able to push on it. I feel like we'd have seen it if he could do that.

Of the shards we know of, I'd genuinely take Honor. I know to a lot of people that seems like a weird choice because of how bound Honor is to rules and promises, but I'd argue that my mind kind of works like that anyway, and I think I would become a better person in general with the honor shard.

That is a fantastic idea, and for now it has my full support.

These are really excellent questions, some of which we may need to ask Sanderson. I would imagine that most metabolic functions are handled by investiture. How that interfaces with ATP and other energy carrying molecules in terms of continuing the normal biological functions of the body, I have no idea and the answer might ultimately just be "magic." But it seems to me that mass isn't really a big deal for Returned considering they can shift theirs with practice. Maybe they have some ability to pull it from the SR as investiture then convert it to mass and then reverse the process. Maybe that's how their metabolism works and they're constantly turning investiture into chemicals to continue their biological functions without needing other inputs. For all we know, the divine breath is really a kind of portal to the SR that allows them to push and pull investiture through in the first place. That might actually make the most sense, as so long as they have it they're connected to their spiritual ideal and when they give it up they're briefly creating a surge of Connection to the ideal of another person along with the investiture to allow that ideal to manifest. But its clear that while the divine breath skips over some biological functions, at some point they do take effect. Otherwise they wouldn't need air and thus wouldn't be able to bleed to death. As for menstruation, I imagine they probably don't but could if they knew how (that's weird to say but I think its correct) considering that returned are considered sterile unless they have special knowledge that allows it.

Yeah, we really haven't seen any non-shards yet that I think can really threaten a fullborn. I'm sure they exist or will be discovered in later eras, and I currently expect if we ever see prime Heralds with their blades then we'll have such an example, but thus far they represent the apex of human invested achievements. Which is why frankly I think they should be disqualified from this discussion. If the general consensus is that a prepared and competent fullborn is the most dangerous type of person in the cosmere, then lets have some fun trying to find second place.

I'm sorry, this might be another conversation, but did you really just say you'd put a normal radiant in a higher power level than a fullborn? Fullborn being able to accidentally break the sound barrier and move buildings. Fullborn being able to heal just about any injury a shardblade could inflict. Just a normal radiant ranks above that? Yeah, can't agree to that. I agree that Marsh isn't a particularly noteworthy combatant, in part because I remember a thread where we tried to figure out all his metals, and he's definitely not fullborn, even if he's got some compounding abilities. And guns really are not useful against anyone with healing. Bullets just don't have the surface area to force healing to spread out and deplete a healer's investiture. Szeth is a master of the surges, I'll give you that. But we haven't really seen him fight without powers enough for me to be convinced he'd be better than Kaladin. I do agree with your choice of Denth, but I think Denth is probably the best swordsman we've actually seen on screen. Mostly because we've never actually seen what the Heralds can do, but even then, he had a lot of time to perfect his craft. I mean, from everything we know, Vasher is a really good swordsman, and Denth barely had to try to best him, only losing when Vasher did his breath overload trick.

The best for what?

I do want to point out, even if you could stick a bunch of metal in your body, some allomantic metals are toxic and having them in not easily burnable amounts can and will cause long term health problems. Ear piercing probably wouldn't do too much, but its not like you'd just want a bunch of mental plates surgically implanted throughout your body. Generally, the human body doesn't like having a bunch of metal in it, and allomancers don't get any kind of special defense against metal toxicity.

So, even deprived of stormlight and their Heraldy powers, I'd have to give it to one of the Heralds, with my personal bias towards Taln. They have actual millennium of combat experience. Even if they're not the most naturally talented, I'm reminded of a wheel of time WoB where Sanderson said the Heralds were able to make mistakes, get killed because of them, and now never make those same mistakes again. That's an insane experience for combat, and they've had so long to master their skills that I can't imagine them being anything but godlike, even with no powers. After them, probably Denth, for similar reasons. If they don't count and you want relatively "vanilla" mortals, I have to go with Kaladin or Adolin. Kaladin is a prodigy with years of experience and instincts that would make a wild beast jealous and Adolin is a dueling genius with some of the best training possible on his world and years of regular front line experience in a massive war. Once you start bringing powers into the mix, I actually would have to give it to Kelsier. His fighting style relying on his thus far unrivaled mastery allomantic steel and iron is so unpredictable and versatile that I find it hard to imagine anyone really coming up with a good counter for him. And to those who might say that gravitation would let someone keep up with him, I disagree. Gravitation has a higher maximum speed, but Kel has far more acceleration and maneuverability midair.

So wouldn't the age of ash then have killed and buried all the living plants on Scadrial that hadn't been modified to survive the new climate and those plants would then have been allowed to undergo the coal formation process?

This is the closest we've got. Now, this might cause some contention I don't mean to cause, but, Scadrial didn't exactly have normal circumstances in regards to its tectonic activity. So I'd argue that with the whole planet being shoved around + volcanic activity + microbes that broke down ash for 1,000 years + the rearranging of everything by Sazed could mean that they've had rapid coal formation due to the unique circumstances the planet has found itself in. I'm not an expert in coal formation (or any geology really,) but my understanding has generally been that they way it happened here on earth is not the only way it could happen and different circumstances could lead to faster or slower or just different development. Alright, now for an actual expert to appear and completely throw everything I said out.

I actually love WoA and would say for me personally it places above HoA. I'm actually a fan of political drama, and the siege and Elend going from a dreamer to a king is just super satisfying to me. I will admit I'm not a big fan of Zane, but he never was enough of an annoyance to really bother me. So yeah, I might be the one person who thinks HoA is the worst of the original trilogy, but that's where it is for me. Still love it, its just the lowest of many amazing books.

This is not a reasonable question. I guess I have to go with Bands of Mourning, but we're splitting hairs to get to that. I need a all of the above option.

Its more, you store 20 years and become 20 years older until you stop storing, whereas you then return to your original age, then when you tap you become 20 years younger than your true age. You're just missing the middle step. To put some numbers to it, say you're 40 and you store 20 years for an hour. While storing you're 60 years old. Then you stop storing and return to 40 years old. Now, when you tap that age, you can reduce yourself to 20 years old for one hour, or make yourself an infant for half an hour, with other ages for different duration in between. But unlike something like strength, your age is constantly changing. While you're 60, you're still aging and while your 20 you're still aging, so even while you're not using feruchemy your age is still going up. The mostly end neutral nature of feruchemy is the issue. Time passing means you're constantly running out of youth, and the fact that feruchemy never creates more of a trait means that it can't actually give you more net youth, only redistribute the youth you already possess. And yes, you're right about the compounding, the issue is just that you have the spirit realm interfering. When you compound 2 years into 20 to get a net +18 years, you're not actually 18 years younger, and your spiritweb knows it. Essentially, your age isn't 18 years younger, but (x-18) with x being your original age. Now you might say that's the same thing, but realmatically its not. Rashek's age during the final empire was (~1024-1000) which is not the same as 24. He had a millenium of "debt" that was being suspended by magic, but as soon as that magic went away the debt came back. Feruchemy can't make a permanent change to you, even with compounding. I guess that's the biggest thing, realizing that feruchemy can't make permanent changes.

That's actually a really good point. As we all know, fullborn are the kryptonians of the Cosmere. (had to do it. Frustration has his bit, I have mine.)

I apologize, I'm about to be real stubborn on this. Sorry, y'all. Dynamite is not comparable to a shardblade. Dynamite is a purely physical form of damage, whereas shardblades are not. Unconscious is also very different from dead. As for Wax, that's a weird situation that may or may not involve shardic intervention. Now, I will admit that if y'all are right, and a gold compounder can survive a shardblade though the central nervous system (which would be frustrating from a story perspective as it means they are essentially truly unkillable) then I don't actually know if a Radiant could win that fight. Like, at all. It would be a long long fight. But yeah, I don't see how a compounder could lose in that situation. Unless the Radiant lashes them to the ground and starts systematically surgically cutting out their metalminds, and even that I don't know how effective it would be considering shardblades don't cut living flesh. Maybe a 5th ideal Windrunner could full lashing them in place while reverse lashing only the metal out of their body at something like 20g, but other than that I've no ideas.

Fully agreed. However, we're talking about a blade that, unless you're making yourself super invested, that blade is going to have no resistance going through a body, plus it can possibly cut off metalminds, plus it cannot be pushed or pulled on. Once that blade is swinging, its going where its going, no being blocked or redirected. Thus, the metalborn is going to have to keep their central nervous system out of that path. That's way easier to do by moving at super speed than by hoping the radiant is going to miss. I guess my issue is less to do with the potency of gold, and more the fact that once your soul is severed from your body, I'm not convinced a metalborn would have the presence of mind or spirit to keep tapping while, you know, dying (especially since SH gave us a clear detail of just how painful that is.) Maybe if the tapping persisted after the hit the metalborn could heal (even that I question though) but it seems very unlikely that they'd be able to continue that healing after damage like that. And to those who might suggest that of course they can keep tapping, because of Intent, everything we've seen from SH indicates you need a body to use the metallic arts (see Kel eating a nail in the cognitive realm.) Once your mind and soul are being separated from your brain, you probably can't keep using feruchemy.

The issue is that while gold healing can heal a shardblade wound, I'm still fairly certain that a fatal wound from a shardblade cannot be healed. I'd need someone to confirm for me, as my books are currently in a different state, but I believe both Words of Radiance and Othbringer mention that a shardblade through the brain or spine will instantly kill a Radiant with no hope of regeneration. I imagine it would have a similar effect for gold healing. Thus, it can only take a non-lethal hit. Steel would be better for just avoiding that possibility at all.

The scars are part of his cognitive Identity. Every magic that we know of that would heal or regrow his flesh would see the scars as part of his body to be regenerated, and thus he'd still have them.