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:

I'm thinking through TFE and I'm having a hard time imagining a way to minimize the scene where Kelsier takes the crew and makes them watch the executions. It's a powerful scene in the book and serves as backbone for motivation for the crew and is a caution specifically about ignoring horrible realities that happen to other people by looking away. It's possible to have the sound of the axes and the spray of the fountain turning red without seeing the act but... there's a disconnect there that I suspect people would feel even if they couldn't point out why. They probably could get a lot of mileage with ash obscuring the blood and viscera. I imagine black ash falling constantly would absorb and hide blood quite quickly and effectively. That might reduce the full effect of Camon, Vin's old crew, and the evidence of Marsh's promotion while still being accurate. That said, and if the count matters, I am in the low tolerance for visual violence camp. It just doesn't improve the story for me if not being outright nauseating.

Just checking, how much of Wax specifically surviving against Aluminum bullets and explosions to the age of retirement are we chalking up to plot armor? You call it plot armor in lieu of actual armor, I think this is minimizing how hard it would be to track and shoot a Coinshot/Pewterarm/Slider moving erratically across complex terrain. Basically, if Wax could beat your setup, it needs work. The real point of my post is to start with "if pushed, what would a Mistborn do to fight at a large scale?" Strategies like "have a squad shoot aluminum on all sides around them so they don't have a way they can dodge" is a severe oversimplification of a war zone. In essence, I'm asking you very clever people to start with how you would fight in a war as an Era 3 fully funded and supported Mistborn trying to cause as much damage as possible to the enemy's ability to wage war on you first. Then counter that. And response to this... why are you assuming I want Ettmetal for exploding stuff? Sigh. Is that really all you would use it for? No Allomancy detected AoE A-Aluminum/A-Chromium Leeching? No A-Cadmium traps? Again, your considerable intellect is being applied asymmetrically to the problem. Unless this is part of "we don't have metalborn and so we can't use our own technology effectively." I still assert that we don't know enough about the Malwish, nor are we thinking like them. No talk about airships and air superiority, the exact flex Admiral Daal gave Wax in TLM, the technology the Consortium is most proud of. No talk of how they already cracked aerial bombardment decades before BoM (at least the obsolete ship was carrying a bomb capable of leveling the Sovereign's temple). The solutions I'm seeing feel like they were taken from U.S. war movies/games with Northern Scadrial tech slapped on, not a civilization that took an entirely different leg on the tech tree from anything Earth has seen with mechanized Allomancy and Feruchemy.

No idea, because I don't really know what the Southern Scadrians will have access to. That's a big hole in the information there. I don't know how far my hypothetical technology will have diverged at that point. That said, I do think we're underestimating a fully loaded Mistborn at war. This isn't supposed to be a fair fight like a lot of our matchups. This isn't a smash-and-grab like Kelsier against Venture Hazekillers. We're going up against a Mistborn expecting heavy resistance. Expect them to come in like Wax with the Big Gun and Duralumin at a minimum. Anti-personal grenades in close quarters that would be suicidal for anyone except a Coinshot, vehicles or whole buildings ripped apart by structural steel via Duralumin-Pushes after the grenades blasted the aluminum coating off. Primer cubes charged with Iron lobbed behind our lines. Compared to many conventional energy sources, the power density available to a Mistborn with a stomach full of steel is terrifying. I expect a storm of steel and debris obscuring the Mistborn as they wreak havoc, then the debris blasting outwards when they left a primer cube and faded either back to restock or behind my lines - I don't know which. Beyond that, they are not operating as a one man army here. They will have a support team that can restock them midfight, add suppression fire of their own, and the Mistborn can duck back and recharge the team's primer cubes and make it very difficult to pin down where exactly they are. At this point, who knows, maybe the Mistborn did just a quick recon hit-and-fade and is calling in an airstrike on the target they identified and is planning on going in while the area is actively being bombed. We hardly ever see the protagonists when they aren't outnumbered, generally working nearly solo or with one or two others. I'm gonna sit back and try to think of how I would address this, because this does not look easy to counter and the solution I bring to the war room had better not be "and hope they're out of their most useful equipment." Bare minimum, I would beg for backup and ask for the metalborn and combat ettmetal resources the OP restricted from us posthaste.

Late to the party and coming in with speculation. Fears and weaknesses have historical roots in each Epic right? Well... anyone else have a childhood fear or worry that everything is actually just a dream and that you'll wake up and nothing was real? Seems valid for a Epic in a coma. Me personally, when I had that childhood fear, I had several conclusions but one of them was deciding to just operate as if it was real regardless using the information I had on hand. Dawnslight notes that he isn't ever sure when he's dreaming or not but acts altruistically anyway. Could be that an Epic with dream powers could have had influence over the nightmares that come with the powers - or it could be that it was moot because Dawnslight was already living his worst fear.

At bare minimum we have this WoB: With the right knowledge, probable.

This is a great line of inquiry because it directly leads into Prof's internal conflicts - and why David's push for fighting Epics with Epics was so dangerous. The avoidance of the force fields I think also nods to why he didn't use them - because it made it too easy to kill with his powers and that was skating very close to the edge. The easy answer is that Limelight would have dismantled Steelheart because Prof himself is just that dangerous and still operates like a Reckoner on top of his powerset. The more nuanced answer is that it's tricky because it's dependent on what Prof considers his failure mode. If we're looking at powers... then it depends on the exact mechanism of both sides. We see this not infrequently where the mechanics of how a Epic's power operates defines viable counter measures. Unfortunately for anything conclusive, to me at least they are both belief based and seem to ignore physics applied to them. Looking at the Coppermind article, Steelheart can't be suffocated, shot, exploded, and trashes High Epics. David apparently explicitly gets Steelheart's power profile and caught a falling space station. Pretty sure that just... doesn't work any more than Superman casually lifting a skyscraper with each hand because that's not how those structurally are meant to be supported. Even if he converts the ISS to steel, I think he should have punched through the hull when trying to land the thing if operating with normal Newtonian physics (ignoring flight). I'm not sure if Steelheart's power profile is "super strength, invulnerability, and casual flight" or "Steelheart narratively trumps all that fear him, including gravity" not just in his invulnerability but also his personal attributes. Prof's power profile explicitly ignores certain aspects of physics, starting with how the amount of dust the Tensors make don't match what would be expected, then over to how when he compressed Exel and Val, that should have superheated the material in the process. I didn't see an explosion when he released his force fields. We see Prof's forcefields fail him in two main cases - when confronted with his own powers either in the Tensors or Tavi, or when Megan rewrites reality and shifts the location of the forcefield - so they can be trumped if we're going full reality manipulation. I'm not sure if they follow physics either with what they do, along with his forcefields and regeneration. I'm gonna lean towards on par with Steelheart invulnerability just because they both operate on belief rules. Back to the orginal question, the battle of attrition is entirely dependent on Prof's mental state. That's the crux of the matter: does he get less afraid of Steelheart as nothing works but he can't get killed either, or does the collateral damage as Steelheart does everything he can to make Prof fear him tip him towards believing he failed? The more I look at it, I suspect that Prof couldn't or wouldn't have beaten Steelheart directly. Steelheart's abilities are much larger scale than Limelight, and he doesn't care about collateral damage - if anything it serves Steelheart to cause as much devastation as possible. For Prof who builds teams and has plans, directly engaging Steelheart risks Steelheart going on a rampage and upending whatever objective Prof is working towards. Add in that Prof's profile doesn't preclude him from pain, and getting a skull crushed repeatedly can't be good for the psyche. Short of psychological break through, Prof can't really do anything externally to activate Steelheart's weakness, but Steelheart can wreck stuff that Prof cares about. This actually looks to be in Steelheart's favor because his modus operandi naturally preys upon Prof's weakness, barring Prof as a Reckoner simply figuring out Steelheart. Actually... this begs the question of if Prof would have died if David hadn't figured out the checkmate and the team including Tia got wiped out? He failed going toe-to-toe with Steelheart. Got his head crushed and David should have died. Actually... makes me wonder if this brush with failure when he did use the forcefield to contain the blast that killed Steelheart is why he didn't snap.

Step one. Identify the Heralds' respawn points on Braise and Roshar and Intentionally install heavily reinforced iron maidens with aluminum spikes at those precise locations (thank you Gehn (Riven)). Compounded or Purified Dor fueled Fortune may be necessary for placement. Don't scrimp on budget. If necessary, wait until the Herald is en route before moving them into their final position. Step two. Rig a Harmonium-Trellium bomb on the Cognitive Realm side of Scadrial's Perpendicularity and detonate it when the strike team arrives (Maxim 20, The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries). Kudos if intelligence can find a location with less risk of collateral damage, particularly if the Herald has the Surge of Transportation but don't count on it. Step 1 is where the Fortune must be spent. However the Perpendicularity is a highly logical place for the strike team to try to capture and would be where I would place it without any other information. Step 3. Find out if you won. If the Herald(s) somehow survive and are still trapped, transport them for further containment or elimination. If Nightblood or Anti-Light are unavailable and removing Connection is the best bet, don't bother with standard spikes. Use a spike with a diameter larger than the Herald along with an industrial grade press and strip all available Connection from their Spiritweb.

Correct me if I'm wrong, @Frustration, but the point was to try to find a relatively common term to discuss relative power level in the Cosmere - the Hazekiller coefficient and I want to go back to that rather than fighter jet edge cases. If everyone will indulge me for a few minutes, let's try to put this into hypothetical in-world context to see if the majority agrees about a few aspects to this coefficient and how or why it might be useful. Let's say that you are a Cosmere aware analyst with the Ghostbloods and you've been given the task to estimate relative strength of position between the various worlds and factions. The various Invested combantants make this harder, but spy reports (i.e. you read the books) let you know about their general abilities and numbers. You devise the "Hazekiller Coefficient" and crunch some numbers and need to explain to Kel what it does and doesn't calculate. In my opinion, defining the Hazekiller Coefficient based on the existing is clever because in a way it's describing the capability of the local normal population to suppress a given Invested art. A foreigner could come, look into the options available, and with a bit of research and procurement work be approximately as effective as the local Hazekillers - in addition to their own powerset. Look at Mraise acquiring and practicing with Anti-Light. If it came to war, hopefully this would let you generally calculate how many troops to field and supply on a foreign front. It also helps with calculation somewhat generally defines the "arena" that we're throwing regular people at these invested combatants - it's where we might expect the Invested user to operate. From this standpoint, it seems reasonable to assign a couple coefficients to the same powerset depending on circumstance. For example, a Era 1 Rioter would have a higher coefficient than a Era 2 or 3 Rioter after aluminum becomes ubiquitous - or in otherwords when a foreigner is coming to make trouble in Scadrial, they'll have an easier time in later eras than earlier ones - which is kind of the point of these vs match ups. Making distinctions of this nature encourages people to consider the details a bit more. As for things like Malwish Medallions, Honorblades, or other equipment that grants Invested abilities, just give them their own coefficient assuming a normal user. That's the point of comparing these, right? Notes about this design of the coefficient: The coefficient is not an apples to apples comparison. It's not supposed to be exactly, it's supposed to assume you are going to deal with someone on their turf / or who has resources or equipment from their home planet that you could conceivably acquire from them. It also assumes that you have been decently prepared enough to know what you're dealing with and at least took a look at how the locals deal with the problem. Don't lean too hard on adding coefficients together - because someone is going to look at this and mention Hemalurgy. It probably works to an extent, but this is definitely one of those times when the sum of the parts do not equal the whole. It is not rigorous. It's subjective. Probably don't get too hung up on the numbers and allow for a ballpark range. Give it as much leeway as you might as an actual analyst or tactician. In the words of Wayne, "You can beat anybody, so long as you don't let them fight back properly." I will note that this changes the idea slightly from "how strong is this power" to "how difficult is it to take this power down with what should be expected to be on hand". It's less about dogpiles and cage matches and more about how the different planetary factions will think about bringing the war to the enemy. Thoughts?

There were some kids playing tag in a junkyard, running and laughing until one of them out of view yelps and then makes really good howling and scary noises that chases the other players. Then one of the kids sees a friend cry out in pain, then twist into an inhuman shape and lurch towards him - he had become a Hemalurgic Chimera like Dawnshot fought. Panting and sobbing the kid runs for the junkyard exit and just before he reaches the gates he feels a sharp pain and looks down to see a nail sticking into his foot. Brought to you by Elendel's Occupational Health and Safety Administration - a reminder for all construction workers to keep their workplace clean and to properly dispose of all metal involved in puncture wound incidents. Remember to report it, tag it, or the next guy might end up more than "it".

The idea of using active pumping via fabrial poses non-trivial energy requirements. Scuba divers don't have to carry the aparatus that extracts and compresses the air, they just carry the ready-to-use tank - all the work is done where atmosphere is abundant. A submarine gets around this in two ways - one being big enough to carry its own generator, and second by not extracting dissolved oxygen from local water. Submarines get oxygen by splitting the H2O and harvesting the oxygen from the water molecules themselves via electrolysisr. Basically from an energy stand point, relying on a fabrial to actively pull dissolved air out of water and actively hold it will be more energy intensive than conventional methodology. Either go with a fabrial sub or compress the air on land. Trying to do a man-powered dive with what is essentially a battery-operated air extractor that has to maintain pressure through actively applied Stormlight rather than putting it into a rigid metal container... that's just all sorts of inefficient. If we want to get slightly more into the weeds, the current setup also doesn't address technical challenges that divers have to face when 40+ meters. Recreational freediving instructors are required to be able to go 40 m down (i.e. just by holding their breath), so I figure your fabrial needs to beat "just hold my breath and have good training".