Duxredux

A couple questions for clarification. Where do profile pics and cover photos fit in on here and Discord? I would guess this would be the most common source of AI generated content. Do I need to draw my own top hat wearing duck and replace this one from 2023? I will admit to having AI check my logic when someone asks really esoteric questions. Last one was about an Attractor Fabrial diving bell and I wanted to get the physics right for the mechanics behind SCUBA and the physiological constraints on a human diver for my response - or at least be told if I was missing something fundamental. Would this constitute AI assisted content, even if all of the text was personally written? Like Frustration, I do not yet fully understand the rationale and I want to be in compliance.

The specific Dawnshard we are protecting changes some things. The current method that is holding up to the Night Brigade and Connection tracking probably leaned into the fact that Hoid's Dawnshard prohibited killing. Apparently step one was talk some super honorable chap, Windrunner probably, into believing that delivering the Dawnshard to a group was vital to save lives. Make him make an oath to protect it and not misuse it - tying his Invested abilities to his mission - forcing him to keep to the mission to retain his powers. Enhance him enough to not be able to kill or harm you, but enough to be really hard to for a third party to take down and let him loose. Arrange for him to deliver it (potentially) back to yourself in disguise then continue on to your next layer of protection. Hypothetically of course. Really though, the biggest hurdle is information protection from the Spiritual Realm. Look at what Dalinar and everyone was able to learn hopping from historical moment to historical moment to a time that no one in the initial investigation was present for. There will be a record there of what you did, no matter the degree of obfuscation for those determined enough to find it. Because the Spiritual Realm exists, security through obscurity does not work. So yes, I also lean toward the "yeet it into a blackhole" camp to fulfill the "no one including yourself can abuse the power" requirement. Basically find a process that can't be reversed, even if they know exactly what you did. Everything else is a delaying tactic. That said, this hardly counts as protection. The main issue is the OP requires that we trust no one, not even ourselves which by its very nature removes the option of making it retrievable if circumstance were such that it was required to be obtained. If effectively destroying it or throwing it away is not an option, best I've got is to obtain the 9th Heightening and use several thousand Breaths to Awaken a metal safe (not sure on the metal, maybe Iron, maybe Steel) with the Command to Protect from Unworthy. Basically the Mirror of Erised gambit that requires that the person attempting to open it must not seek the Dawnshard for their own gain but for the Cosmere. Something like that. Set it up to more or less operate on the scale of Nightblood or the Father Machine that draws Investiture to itself and reinforces itself to fuel its Command, even at the cost of physical material or a sizeable chunk of a planet. If we haven't figured out how to destroy Nightblood, this seems like a good bet. Even attempting to open it might cost a huge amount of Investiture and you might get eaten if you fail the Nightsafe soul check. Of course Hoid would have it open within a month by finding some stooge who believes that getting into it with the right intention is vital and then he just gets them to do what he wants with it (see WoB below). So the final phase assuming that the me as I was when I created the safe was not corrupt, I will have prepared myself at the sealing of the Dawnshard so that the version of me in the Spiritual Realm at that moment can give an interview to determine if the person attempting to retrieve the Dawnshard is doing so with good reason and not directed by the likes of Hoid. I will have a code phrase implanted in the safe similar to the Awakened lock in TLM that detects if the phrase was given in good faith or obtained nefariously. After I Awaken the safe I'll mentally prepare for the interview then store the memory of the phrase in a Breath, place the Breath in a cloth and burn the cloth, excising it from my memory so even I would need to go the Spiritual Realm to retrieve the code phrase - and if I were to change and be corrupted, my past self wouldn't even give my future self the code. Add in that the Dawnshard can bend entire ecosystems to protect itself and this Nightsafe might be boosted far beyond what normal Invested abilities without a Dawnshard could do. Hoid WoB:

My usual approach to all of these response is to then ask what this rogue Fullborn would do to attempt a counter. "Can be used to kill" is not at all the same as "likely to kill". It's like handing someone a ballpoint pen to take down a grizzly bear. Method is as important if not more so than the actual means. Let's say that when recruiting for your squad, if I was one of the members you were pitching to, I would want to know how you plan to deploy the attack with these considerations: Delivery mechanism. Either it needs to: Bypass the Fullborn's senses since A-Tin, A-Bronze, and selective F-Tin are cheap enough to run constantly, or Still work even when they are alert and have prepared their F-Zinc, Steel, A-Bendalloy, F-Gold, Pewter, F-Chromium, etc. Overwhelm or eliminate healing and escape clauses. If the attack doesn't take them out immediately or render them impotent, Compounded Health with A-Pewter pretty much guarantees they will still be on their feet. If they are burning through Health fast, expect them to panic and bolt, sprinting out with F-Steel, or blasting out dozens of miles with a Duralumin-enhanced Push. Anything to get a breather to rebuild stores. In the event the team can't avoid detection, then getting visual on the Fullborn while keeping the squad safe becomes a critical requirement. The Fullborn has A-Copper, storing Connection via F-Duralumin, Soothing suspicion, A-Tin, and that's not even getting to mundane disguises. We see Ironeyes stroll through Elendel without fuss - expect the Fullborn to be even harder to find if they have an inkling that the Shards put the hit on them. If the squad fails the first strike and gets pinged, plan for retaliation. Paalm with normal Steelrunner stores moved fast enough to shoot four people within the span of the sound of a single gunshot - a Fullborn doing the same with Fortune-Guided Aluminum bullets and Hemalurgic Intent seems like the kind of response to plan for - at minimum. And... I'm just gonna say that the solution needs to be something that can be reasonably deployed. How exactly do you bring the Sibling's Bondsmith complete with Urithiru to this fight? Are we really giving a thumbs up to somehow dropping Threnody's Evil on Scadrial? Just... just no. This is not the same situation as taking down TLR who tried to not overtly use Feruchemical power for... reasons. It's also not touching on a lot of gaps in our knowledge of the Metallic arts that could make this waaay harder, like Compounded Fortune (though apparently even the Terris don't fully understand it Era 2), Compounded Nicrosil theoretically creating a Perpendicularity allowing them to slip between realms, the degree that A-Bronze detects Investiture in the CR (as Vin did when Preservation boosted Kelsier in Secret History), healing and restoring powers getting Hemalurgically spiked out, and who knows what Compounded Connection does - all of which favors the Fullborn. This rogue element who is smart or lucky enough to crack becoming a Fullborn will not just be a sitting duck. Without more detail on the specific scenario, the Fullborn's agenda, that kind of thing, I'm not sure what I would try. Certainly nothing that relies on human reaction time to pull any weight whatsoever.

Is it soap box time? Can I get mine out for a minute? We've had some pretty heated debates on morality in the Cosmere over the years. I'm reminded of the Hogman Question (don't necro it), posts on Shallan hate (don't necro them) and a boatload on Moash (really don't necro them). My personal feeling on the matter is that the actual morality of Jasnah's position as a fictional character is far less important than the participants in the thread. Forum discussions are a strange beast and it is so very easy to be totally off on the core reason for why the other person wrote a post - even with the seemingly ample information in the novellas/essays. I made a poll and thread asking why we debate Moash and discuss what was and was not reprehensible, the morality, and proposed punishments and the responses I got were eye-opening. Others made much better points and insights than me on why we discuss characters like this. If you are the kind of person to read to the end of thread like this one and post on it, I recommend reading it within the context of this thread. Edit: Whoa. Missed the last two or three hours of posts. Sorry about that, but maybe this is more pertinent.

No, I'm suggesting that the mole pushed for guards sitting in effectively a mobile bunker. The trains were still arriving, so presumably the security rationale was that a heavily reinforced train car with a natural choke point could be defended by the guards until the train got moving again. Miles removed that choke point by first moving the car into his hideout and then ripping the side right off, creating a kill box with a rotary gun pointed at the suddenly exposed guards. It doesn't take a great stretch to assume the guards would surrender on the spot, particularly if Miles demonstrated his durability. They were horribly unprepared for Miles Hundredlives, unlike Wax. According to the broadsheet before chapter 3, no blood had been spilled in the Vanisher's attacks - so again, what makes you think anyone had already been hurt? I'm in the camp that Wax made his assertion that no one had been hurt (yet) based on the given evidence. Guards vanishing is the same degree of troubling as hostages never being held up for ransom, but apparently there was no evidence of blood or bodies. If I read your original post (often shortened to OP here) correctly, you were trying to reconcile what had happened to the guards with the assertion that no one had been hurt and I think there's been some good options that don't require the guards being killed, injured, or even allowed to resist while the car was still connected to the train. As for where they ended up, read and find out (or RAFO) and decide if the mystery of where the kidnapped people ended up could account for the missing guards too. Logistically, the guards ended up at the Vanisher hideout and could easily have been moved with the kidnapped women.

I think others have made very good points, and if I'm repeating anything anyone has already said, it's so I can frame it into a specific context. Let's start with the question of why Wax believes that no one was hurt despite earlier noting that the Vanishers needed time to process the first shipment of stolen aluminum to make bullets to kill Allomancers. That would be this line based on info I assume he learned from the broadsheets: "The robberies weren't about money, they were about the captives. That was why no bounty had been demanded, and why the bodies of the captives hadn't been discovered dumped somewhere." (ch. 3) Presumably there was no evidence of anyone showing up dead, guard or captive. As for how the guards were dealt with, let's follow what had been the original plan with the Breaknaught before Wax stepped in. Presumably when the Vanishers came to steal a train car, they locked the cars with the same method that Miles used to isolate Wax when he tries to kill him on the train, by jamming metal rods into the mechanisms. With the compartment locked, and the guards are now trapped in what was intended to be a heavily reinforced and defensible train car. The Vanishers take the car back to their hideout then use the mechanical winch to rip the door off and surround the guards with men and a rotary gun to boot. The guards, heavily outgunned, surrender and the Vanishers go from there. The reason this whole scheme worked was that Miles spotted the security hole that that all the focus was on the the contents of the cargo car, not the car itself - and presumably this was their MO the whole time, not just when Wax was along for the ride. Keep in mind that apparently one of the pioneers in this security schema was the heavily targeted House Tekiel who escalated the format to the Breaknaught - maintaining the train security race's focus on the cargo. In the context that the Vanishers, Mr. Suit in particular, had to have a mole in Tekiel to obtain the schematics for the Breaknaught to build a copy. That mole presumably pushed for this security setup with the aim to maintain this vulnerability. As we find out at the end, Tekiel getting targeted by the Vanishers was setup for insurance fraud. When the security and the robbers are colluding, it shouldn't be too hard to minimize casualties, reducing the general fear, and lowering the probability that Wax would involve himself (with the butler, Tillaume's nudging).

Really, what you want is an Aluminum Gnat. Burns all reserves away, including the Aluminum (according to the Coppermind), and the sword looks right. Even the Savantism doesn't look too problematic. Whoops. @PanLin already suggested Aluminum but not in detail.

Well... let's add in a few considerations. The point is to take a hypothetical bead of Lerasium giving effectively 16 units of power and divide it to enhance a squad, correct? An obvious approach would be to find existing Metalborn, particularly Ferrings and make them Twinborn or Compounders. Make someone like Wayne into an Auger. @Trusk'our noted advantages of giving a larger dose of a single power and it's also worth looking the other direction, considering how effective Wayne's speed bubble was with extremely weak Duralumin. Giving the squad all ¼ potency Duralumin may be well worth it. Possibly with reduced Chromium or Nicrosil when paired with Duralumin to compensate for their weaker normal burn. Having the whole squad be able to enhance or Leech when mechanized Allomancy becomes prevalent is also well worth examining. The rest depends on the environment they're expected to operate in. Make them all Seekers, Soothers, or Rioters and they could do targeted and coded Allomantic communication. Give the Steel dose in increments to see how much the strength of Steelsight is changed. There's a considerable degree of flexibility here.

I did a bit of digging and even at a cursory glance it seems that the Bene Gesserit's powerset specifically enables this long-term breeding program in ways that would be difficult to replicate on Scadrial. Spoilers from the Bene Gesserit Wikipedia page: Now I haven't read or seen Dune, so take this with a pinch of copper, but I would guess the Bene Gesserit work in Dune because of the rest of the scaffolding in place. Multi-generational genetic engineering is by no means a given without their abilities that give substantially more control over the process.

I suspect a lot of the oddities you're noticing is a byproduct of a Perpendicularity being a location where the three Realms are closer together than normal. Sak's future sight being clearer when the SR is more accessible makes sense. Jasnah's Soulcasting was much, much easier in OB when Dalinar swears his Third Ideal and opens a Perpendicularity for the first time and the Realms were closer. Mini perpendicularities forming when swearing an Ideal is why Huio got a Stormlight recharge in Dawnshard. I would start looking at the changes that occur as the Realms are drawn closer together and see if the phenomenon you are seeing is due to their proximity and filter that out from the other factors - especially for Cognitive or Spiritual based abilities.

Actually... this is a substantially different question than if a Shardblade can be burned at all because the properties of a Shardblade change specifically while it is cutting through living tissue. The Blade fuzzes and becomes intangible on the PR and only cuts the soul, remember? My current guess is that it cannot be burned because it it severing/vaporizing the soul into Investiture on contact and may not be in a format that the Allomancer's Spiritweb can interface with, for lack of a better term. Tangentially related WoB:

Well... my beef with the legalese in WaT was more that there was no foreshadowing (not counting TOdium spotting the loophole at the end of RoW) for the vulnerabilities in the contract. Everything that went into the contest for the capitals of the Coalition was due to a hideously obscure section of Alethi legal code that had never been mentioned before but apparently existed in the contract created by Yolish Wit using a Connection language hack or the modified version made by Yolish Rayse in the really brief deal made by Dalinar. I didn't see either of them consult a lawbook. Too much weight on that little plot fulcrum. Maybe it's just that this is the consequence of the sudden knee-jerk deal they made, but to have Taravangian exploit a loophole in an agreement that he had no influence over... that bothered me more than the use of contracts. If it had been at the beginning of the series, no problem. This close to the end... it felt like a diabolus ex machina even though it was at the beginning of the book. Okay, I get that it was designed to be the inciting incident and premise for WaT than an arbitrary wrench thrown in at the end of the arc, but still... Everything about Shards or denizens of the realm of the mind being bound by rules or agreements? Fundamental concepts of reality having to continue to be that concept and to be consistent? Sure, I'll buy that. The loophole that Leras exploited? Sure - that's backstory and premise and he paid a price with his mind. The arbitrary definition of a country for a single nation that applies to the entire coalition? That feels... less on point.

Fused culture is by no means monolithic and some joined because they saw no better alternative, not for hatred toward the Humans. Learning and behavioral changes in ancient Cosmere beings in general doesn't seem to inherently imply calcification as to my eyes they seem to be adapting remarkably well to fabrials and technological advancements. Raboniel's mind was still sharp enough to quite adeptly trick Navani, grasp the methodology used to create Anti-Light, and understand the ramifications of its existence. Leshwi successfully leveraged her position and defected from Odium. For romance specifically, Leshwi notes the Singers laud Passion, even Passion that is counter to Odium's agenda. Any other details on time frame or region for this? As far as I know, we don't have a solid confirmation on when the Singers and Humans produced the Herdazians and Unkalaki - though the Coppermind puts Herdaz being created during the era of the Silver Kingdoms and after the Scouring of Aimia. Fused and Radiants, Singers and Humans were likely actively at war when this group intermingled. Figuring out how they managed to coexist and survive long enough to create a full kingdom... probably becomes more plausible if someone from both sides was keeping that community under wraps. ¯\_(-_-)_/¯ Even if I'm not particularly happy about it, looking at these pieces, particularly Kaladin shielding Leswhi with his own Plate and then basically offering to ensure a home for her even during a war and if we saw an echo of that anciently where the Fused stayed and extrapolate that out to years of clandestine protection... I'm not surprised someone interpreted this as plausible room for a romance. My question is if this seems in the same level of plausibility as the Herdazians and Unkalaki existing in the first place. I don't think this precludes the lore, rather is highly unprobable, not implausible. Depends on the time frame the two were involved.

Oh cool! You're reading The Emperor's Soul! That's a great one. What do you think so far? Note: this was before I was married. Went on a single date and then she moved to Arizona.

So much of this is dependent on what I can learn with the power of the Well. With so much at stake, I would really, really, want as much information as possible and the probability of it blowing up in my face. So I would do a couple things - like many I would make myself Mistborn, second I would rearrange geology and the Well not unlike Rashek - except I want to cheat and make a natural gold and Chromium mine. I'm going to lean hard into compounded Fortune and Gold to keep me alive. The next part is where it gets really tricky and that is addressing Ruin's influence, particularly on the other Worldbringers. The Deepness will retreat and presumably the assumption is that Scadrial was saved - except we weren't. We just delayed the problem and clipped the visible weeds of the deeper problem. I acknowledge that doing this would be risky and I would need to Compound a lot of Fortune to do this optimally, but I would hold a mass convention with Kwaan and the other Worldbringers in an Aluminum lined cavern and give them evidence that we were wrong. Unveil Ruin. In preparation for this, at the end of my Ascension I would shove the masses of information into a Coppermind, shielding that process from Ruin's alterations in addition to drawing on Fortune and reaching out to the minds of trustworthy Worldbringers and in detail describing what Ruin had done and ideally methods to independently authentic the dangers. The core idea is to expose Ruin's influence early, maybe set up a mental health institution to reduce Ruin's tools, and double down on the concept of the Terris being strange hermit prophets that can see the future. As part of that legacy, if possible, is make a series of Unsealed Metalminds giving the power to burn Chromium with the express purpose for compounding Fortune. Those would be in a box buried with the location in my will - I would Compound as much Fortune as possible before handing off that power to someone else. Maybe even start with huge stores of unkeyed Fortune. I might, might make my close friends who were with me at the Well into Kandra, but not as spies. See if I can finagle spikes filled with Investiture rather than souls. They would be my friends still and their job would be to use their highly fluid forms to harvest Atium from the Pits of Hathsin. The biggest departure would be that if/when I died without Atium Compounding how much information I could get from Leras. Maybe use the Connection with my Kandra friends to talk to them about everything I learned and if I felt it necessary staple my Cognitive Shadow (built in as a Sliver) to a Mistwraith and get my hand back in the game. Basically... I don't at present trust myself as a Lord Ruler to not screw up my planet. Nor do I want to give it anything less than my best shot. I wouldn't lean away from technology, I would double down on Feruchemical tech. Strictly speaking, if I kept those beads of Lerasium I could pivot to Rashek's approach if I wanted to, but... I doubt I would. I would try to give the Terris who generally seem a very stable people as many tools as I could to recognize and keep the real danger in view. Then... hunker down and try to keep things from blowing up until the Hero of Ages arrived - because I suspect that's what Compounded Fortune would lead me towards. And I don't think I would believe myself to be the Hero. This could be useful too: