HSuperLee

I don't necessarily agree with everything StanLemons is saying, but I do think there might be something to Vin having the right Intent to counter atium, and trying to do what she did without knowing that Zane was using atium might have different results. Considering how Sanderson is leaking that Intent is really important to all his magic systems (all I can say without Cosmere spoilers), I wouldn't call that inconsistent.

I don't know, Frus. My combat experience is definitely limited, but when I was in martial arts, I got beat by old men who I was faster than multiple times because nothing I did could surprise them and they could surprise me in a dozen different ways. You and I could probably go on and on in circles about this topic forever, and I don't want to completely flood this thread with only two opinions. In the end, I just think fights are absurdly complicated. Its why I generally don't participate in versus threads, it seems to me that there's no real way to predict the outcome of a fight until it happens, there are just too many variables. The thing atium does is give you more brain power to simplify a fight so that its easier to gain an advantage. Seeing the future almost seems like the lesser of atium's two benefits to me, with the mental enhancement being the greater. At least as far as combat is concerned. I also know that atium seems to make seers or mistborn more efficient, cutting unnecessary movement and refining their every action. I think does more than just show you the future, I think it optimizes the metalborn using it for combat. Sure, that's just a theory, but it seems reflected in the text. I certainly hope we get to see more atium in the future, and that its precise effects are better documented. Especially now that we have the WoB about Era 1 atium not being "true" atium (I'm still annoyed with that). All this to say, please, other people, join this thread and share your opinions so that Frustration and I aren't just playing opinion-pong with one another here. This is a very fascinating discussion and I don't want it to end just because I refuse to respond too many times in quick succession.

I will first point out that virtually all the examples we have of detailed fights involving atium involve mistborn or inquistors, which means we're not just looking at two vanilla humans with just atium engaging with eachother. We're seeing metalborn with many powers that have to be balanced against each other. In such a situation, atium would be invaluable. Take, for example, fighting someone with pewter. It would be very hard to gauge the speed and force of their attacks in a fight because they can burn or not-burn pewter, as well as flare it. Plus each pewterarm will have a slightly different strength of allomancy, making it all very complicated. But if you can see that their next attack is going to be done with flared pewter (which you could judge from the speed of the attack) you know that you'll need to flare pewter to avoid it. I will secondly point out that they're not seeing just a split second ahead, but several seconds ahead. Most fights only last a few seconds. They're not just seeing one attack, they are seeing and processing the whole fight before it happens. Yes, it is true that knowing an attack is coming doesn't necessarily mean you can avoid it, but they're not just seeing the attack, they're seeing everything that leads up to it, all the tells and positioning, how the environment is going to factor into it, etc. Seeing a few second ahead in everyday life is not that significant. Seeing a few seconds ahead in a fight makes you effectively omniscient for that fight. My third and final point is that for those who are trained combatants operating at the top of their game, the fight is going to be much less about your physical abilities. While strength or flexibility is a valuable resource that can sway a fight, skill ultimately beats raw ability. Thus, a high level fight is about reading your opponent and being able to predict what they're going to do and what you need to do to counter it. Yes, there is a limit to how fast the human body can move, but as we see with Zane, someone burning atium is not reacting to what you're doing, they're reacting to what you're going to do before you do it. Yeah, a steelrunner can probably outspeed a seer, but I don't think anyone else can, not even pewterarms. Even if you theoretically could make an attack faster than a seer could dodge, they'll just not put themselves in a position where you can make that attack. If a seer knows that they can't overpower you once you start your assault, they'll kill you before you can make that assault. Simply put, I just think you're underestimating atium. I agree, there are ways to beat it, its not an insta-win, and we're shown those ways in mistborn; Vin outmaneuvers atium and the koloss outgun it. There are a ton of magics that could beat it. But in the situations we've seen it be used in, it should be as powerful as its presented. Atium well deserves its title of godmetal, in my opinion.

This would seem to be why. So I guess its because it fit with his idea of regular cycles involving huge amounts of water that sustain a small system. I certainly can't deny the aesthetic is cool.

As much as I understand why Sanderson included a scene of the Lord Ruler appearing old, I kind of wish he hadn't just due to how much confusion it caused. The Lord Ruler didn't have to appear old, he did so only because it allowed his body to better reflect the way his mind felt. Even when he appeared as an old man, he was still drawing a huge amount of youth from his metalminds to make himself almost a thousand years younger than what he actually was. Frustration is correct in his answer. The Lord Ruler stored a small amount of youth in some atium a long time ago, probably something like a decade or so. Then he burned that piece of atium and, rather than getting the normal future sight, his allomancy identified the youth stored in the atium and was like, "Oh, youth. I know what that is. You want more of this? Okay." And then it burned the atium and produced more youth than was stored in the metal alone, resulting in a net gain of something like a century of youth, which the Lord Ruler immediately stored in another piece of atium. He now had his default age as the ability to make himself a year younger for a hundred years, or two years younger for fifty, four for twenty-five, etc. But then he took that piece of atium with a century of youth in it and burned that too, resulting in a millennia of youth, which he stored in another piece of atium. On and on he did this until he had enough to keep him in the prime of his life for a very very long time, and he stored all of that in one of the two bracers he wore on his arms. From then on he could slowly draw out the youth stored in the bracer as time went on to counteract his aging, making him youthful again. When he appeared old, he was simply drawing less youth from the bracers, and he only did that because he felt old and it made him feel better to look old. He had a kind of body dysmorphia thing going on with that. But that's basically how he did it.

Its probably a pretty fair comparison, minus the fact that breaths seem to have a fairly considerable amount of investiture, whereas it seems that the extra Preservation in Scadrians is a lot less than that. The Scadrians that have their extra investiture taken out probably have poorer health and lifespan than those that don't, but I'd be surprised if its as dramatic as becoming a drab.

I wouldn't be surprised if Wax has a longer than average lifespan. While metalborn aren't invested for long stretches of time under most circumstances, Wax burns steel very regularly. Plus now that he's a weak mistborn and has access to pewter, not to mention whatever side-effects of duralumin, I could see his general health being higher than it should be, which would allow him to live a little longer. I definitely don't think he'll go beyond a normal human lifespan, but he still could live longer than average. But that's me reaching, I suspect his lifespan will not be notably affected by his abilities.

Absolutely agreed, citation needed. My point is more complex but would take us on a tangent, so I'm going to move past it for now. You are correct to call me out though. And this is the problem I keep coming back to with Sazed position. And, Returned, I'm not just replying to you here, I've been thinking about it as I've looked through this whole thread. I truly believe that humanity doesn't change, our circumstances do. I think that Scadrians under the Lord Ruler have the same fundamental nature as Scadrians in Era 2 as Scadrians in Era 4 as Scadrians when the species ceases to exist. And if that's the case, I struggle to see why an infusion of knowledge, and I do differentiate that from an infusion of technology is an inherently bad thing like Sazed seems to believe. I understand that people can be given technology they're not ready for because they don't know how it works and can underestimate the consequences of it. But if you just give them knowledge and have them develop the technology on their own, that seems to solve a number of problems. I mean its not like any of us are born with all the scientific knowledge of our civilizations, we have to go to school and learn it, which just a slow infusion of knowledge. Once that knowledge is gained people develop off the technology we have. I think there's a difference between Sazed giving Scadrians a computer, or even blueprints to build a computer, and giving them the periodic table of elements. Two of those are gifting them the knowledge of how to build something, the last is giving them knowledge of how the universe works. If people's nature doesn't change with time, and if we all start learning from having personal knowledge whatsoever, I am really struggling, though I am trying, to see how Sazed giving the Scadrians knowledge and only knowledge would be any different than a modern person getting a scientific education. I will admit, this is based on my assumption of people's nature not changing over time, which I do not know if Sanderson agrees with. It is also based on my assumption that Sazed would give scientific knowledge rather than technological knowledge (I know I'm splitting hairs with those terms, but I'm doing it intentionally).

I don't know that the cruelty of Earth's industrial revolution and the speed of our technological development are linked like that, and I certainly don't think that has to be the case. If anything, one of the problems of our industrial revolution might have been that it didn't progress fast enough. Humans were used to make up for the fact that machines were crude but widely implemented. The big thing about technological advancement is that as technology develops things that were more expensive become cheaper. In the industrial revolution, doing things safely and morally was more expensive than doing them cruelly and cheaply. But as technology has developed the safe and moral ways have become cheaper than the dangerous ways. Society hasn't improved because people became more moral over the centuries, its improved because its become easier to be good than evil. Part of that ease is technology increasing the amount of available resources and available quality of living (and also the ability to uncover evidence and track down criminal, but I'm staying on the more optimistic side for this post). In that case, more cruelty might be avoided if Sazed accelerated technological development. Now, I do agree that people will misuse any technology that they're given. But I'd also argue that on a whole, more people have benefited from advancements in technology than have been hurt by it. I know that's a bold claim and I don't want to dismiss away the suffering of others, I just want to point out that if we're talking about reason why Sazed should avoid accelerating the Basin's technology, I don't know that reducing cruelty is a valid reason. I agree that what Kelsier wants has consequences, but I'm not sure they're what you're describing. At least not so inherently so.

Savantism is a warping of the spiritweb, which is a bit more than just an addiction. Savantism likely is possible to heal, but it would need to be done by restoring the spiritweb to a more natural state. Considering that things like gold healing come from comparing the body to the spiritweb, that makes it more difficult to heal the spiritweb itself than just applying a healing source or taking away the metal. I suspect hemalurgy might actually be the best way to repair savantism, though that comes with its own damage. It would be quite like surgery, where you're attempting to do minor harm to the body in order to facilitate major healing.

Dang, that's actually a really good point. Enough so that I now need to reconsider my stance of agreeing with Kel.

I've seen it happen many times, if you can believe it.

This is moving towards an argument of definitions, which rarely end. To refocus a little, the point of this thread is to discuss what the people in-world might start to believe as a result of the events in TLM. First thing I will point out is that we are not in the Cosmere spoilers section. Second, the fact this debate is happening among us is, if nothing else, and indication that such a debate could be had in-world, or at least one similar to it. I could see the sides taken in this discussion being reflective of positions different Scadrians take. What makes this interesting is that this is all done without denying the existence of Harmony. Rather than narrow the religious diversity of Scadrial, the events that happened in TLM will likely only increase the breadth of religious beliefs. This is assuming, of course, that the circumstances around TLM become common knowledge, which I kind of doubt they will. But whether or not they do, I can definitely see the piety of Survivorists increasing. For one, it seems Kel has used that religion so seed thinking that advances his goals. To be more specific, the tenet of survival when faced with conflict leads to innovation. I can see how that would be appealing in a world that seems to grow more dangerous by the day. And if the whole business with Trell/Autonomy becomes public knowledge, well the original Survivor stood against a god, why should his followers not do the same?

Alternatively they could just have a very exclusive definition of "god". Some people believe that title can only be given to an omnipotent and omnipresent being, and then deny that such a being exists. Thus they are atheists in the sense that they don't believe god(s) as they would define the term exist. The fact others would say that gods don't need to be omnipresent or omnipotent, but have all sorts of traits in different religions, is seen as irrelevant. The only god that's mere existence would demand worship is an all-powerful one, so anything less than that is something one can choose to worship or not regardless of philosophy. Realize I'm summarizing arguments that have occurred on this very site that I doubt many are desirous to repeat. My point is just that there are schools of thought that allow for the existence of atheists in the Cosmere. And that's without acknowledging that many peoples in the Cosmere would probably believe in the gods without seeing a point in worshiping them. I don't know if you can call that atheism or just impiety, but its probably going to be a fairly common stance.

If people must make their own advancements, does that mean we as modern people are wrong to use electric lights, computers, refrigerators, cars, etc? Most of us don't have even the fundamental ideas of how modern technology works, let alone the knowledge to actually build it. We know how to operate it in many cases, but sometimes not even that. We have specialists who study and learn how this technology works, but they represent a tiny fragment of the people that benefit from the work and learning of those that came before us. I know a lot of sci-fi talks about how dangerous it is to give advanced technology to those that how not gone through the development to make it on their own. But think this is confusing technological and moral progress. A society is not more moral or made of better people due to technological advancement. Frankly, I shouldn't even need to state that. But often it seems to me that people take the word, "progress" and assume it can be applied at a uniform rate. It really can't. I believe people are fundamentally of the same nature, which means you and I are no more or less innately moral than a caveman in the neolithic era. Nor are we more or less innately moral than our far future decedents will be. The result is that I don't think there's any technology people are going to be "not ready for." Sure, they might not understand it and need to develop their scientific knowledge more to use it efficiently or replicate it, but I don't think we should pretend that we're more moral people than the Romans because we have microwaves. We may be generally more moral than them (I'm not saying we are), but technology is certainly not the reason why. So what's my point with all this? I don't understand Sazed argument fully. I get that Scadrian society needs to develop their scientific knowledge to make use of technology. But Sazed wouldn't just be giving them the machines already assembled, he'd giving them knowledge. In other words, he'd be teaching them, just as any modern scientist is schooled in the knowledge of past advances before they make anything of their own, the Scadrian scientists would be learning about the principles behind any technology Sazed could give them before actually being able to build it. Unless Sazed just starts giving them blueprints, in which case they'd be reverse engineering those blueprints, and the outcome would be mostly the same. Sure, you can say that they would be gaining knowledge without wisdom, but societies don't have wisdom, individuals have wisdom. So yeah, I agree with Kel. Sazed is holding to a principle that, while noble, is flawed. I don't think Sazed should give Scadrial all the knowledge he has, or even give them a ton of knowledge in a single burst. But I do think that he should take efforts to accelerate their advancement.

That's actually pretty straightforward. Its really hard to damage a kandra when they can just reform their tissues. Sure, you can damage the bones they're using, but that doesn't actually hurt them, it just reduces them back to kandra-blobs. But if you chemically damage their cells, such as via fire or acid, that actually does substantial damage to them. Back in Era 1, that was how Kandra executed those who broke the First Contract.

I suspect that the second detonation that occurred when Wax was inspecting the remains of primary detonation was what actually created the Lerasium. I know Wax theorized that he must have gotten some remaining Harmonium wet, and that's what caused the second explosion, but since VenDell was there when Wax said that, Sazed probably had the Kandra attempt it. It makes me wonder what really caused that second explosion. I do find it fascinating that Atium apparently survives the splitting of Harmonium. This book was the first time we got a good look at the chemical properties of godmetals, which makes me wonder how Lerasium is destroyed in an explosion. I mean it seems that godmetals can't change phase based only on energy input (I suspect they can be melted by filling them with enough investiture), so the heat of the explosion wouldn't destroy the Lerasium. It might not be as durable of a metal as Atium, but that just means that the Lerasium should still be there, just reduced to particles. But I imagine that's not too different from the Atium, which probably is collected as dust after the explosion and then reforged (in the weird way that seems to work with godmetals) into a form Marsh can use. So what exactly happens with the Lerasium? What is it reacting to that causes it to become something other than itself? I think whatever Wax did was taking something away from the environment, and that's what resulted in the Lerasium being formed. But that's just conjecture.

Now you've got me wondering if stormlight healing has any affect affect on hair. I know technically hair isn't part of your body, but neither is gut flora, and I assume stormlight takes care of that. Part of me wonders if using stormlight regularly maintains hair in a healthy, though perhaps not clean, condition. Plus Rosharans in general would have some small boon due to the increased health they get by living in an investiture saturated environment. What I'm saying is, Kaladin may not have to do much to have amazing hair.

As far as I know, the atium producing things* break around allomancy due to the presence of Preservation's power in allomancy. Since atium isn't powered by Preservation, it shouldn't interfere with the atium producing things*. Note*, I have no idea what to call the fissures that produce atium. I don't remember exactly how all that worked since its been a while since I read Mistborn and I don't have my book on me, but I didn't think the geodes were themselves producing atium.

I believe we've been told that stormlight substitutes oxygen in the body, though I'm not sure if that's just a result it constant healing or not, but I suppose it is possible that while the Fused are holding voidlight they just don't ever need to breathe. If that's the case, maybe radiants could stay underwater until their stormlight leaks out rather than worrying about it getting used up (unless they heal or use surges). But I do agree with the comment about Fused not being able to survive at extreme depths. The difficulty with healing your way through pressure is that because pressure is constant, no matter how fast you heal you can't just ignore it. All and all, the lights definitely expand on a person's ability to operate under the water. A radiant with plate may even be able to spend great lengths of time without worrying about pressure or air supply. This thread has made me very interesting in seeing that idea explored.

The greatest difficulty with more underwater confrontations is that we see in Dawnshard that radiants apparently struggle to breathe in more stormlight while they're underwater. Now that might just be a psychological thing, as its really hard to force yourself to try and take a breath underwater since even babies have the instinct to not do that. But beyond that, I would not count on stormlight equalizing water pressure at extreme depths. RoW had a scene where Raboniel explained that some Fused tried to go to space, and their voidlight didn't protect them from the zero pressure environment. That could be, as I'm sure many people want it to be for rule of cool, that they ran out of voidlight, I would prefer if be the case that the way zero atmosphere damages the body makes it particularly difficult for the lights to keep you alive in that environment, but I'm sure we'll get more detail in the future. My point just being that I suspect radiants can't necessarily deal with water pressure, as, even though it might not kill them, it will quickly render them incapable of moving and eventually of even taking a breath, which would then present issues with continuing to breathe in stormlight.

The test consistently says I'm a truthwatcher, so that's what I selected. But if I had my choice, I'd go with skybreaker. The who aren't really exclusive in my mind, so if I could manage to attract both spren I would, but I understand why truthwatcher is more compatible for me. I do believe in absolute truth, and that extends to morality. I'd want to go Skybreaker because I admit that my own view of morality is skewed, and I need the morality of absolute truth to act as an external guide to me. The result is that I am seeking the truth, its just that the truth I'm seeking is related to law and justice (among many other things, but this isn't the place for my life philosophy).

I'd probably be most compatible with Preservation or Odium, but I want Honor.

Its also stated that Ruin can talk to the insane. Rashek definitely was losing his grip on reality as atium is not a great form of immortality. It definitely wasn't as severe of manipulation as it could have been, but it probably crept up on Rashek due to him becoming more and more open to it as the years passed.

There's also the fact that being in an environment so investiture saturated makes them really healthy, which might be preventing the degradation due to lack of gravity that we'd expect. In addition, it probably just means its easier for people on Roshar to get stronger and build muscle.