Duxredux

Hmmm... Interesting. I'm not thinking of a way to validate or disprove this at this stage, since tones are still a fairly new discovery and we haven't gotten much detail. It's definitely worth thinking about how rhythms affect people internally, as we clearly know they do with Navani's reaction to Anti-Stormlight tones before she was a Radiant. I was trying to address those same questions from a different angle and came up with something that seems equally hard to prove or disprove. My direction comes from Hemalurgy and Spiritwebs and pretty much hinges on Brandon saying that Hemalurgy was based off of acupuncture and meridians. The first idea was that the heart corresponds to a portion of the Spiritweb that coordinates/directs/controls Invested arts (not sure of a better term here, but those words will give you the gist). This... Spiritweb organ(?) is one of the main pieces being stolen by conventional Hemalurgy and it is usually necessary to steal it because it enables the recipient to consistently utilize the power. I got the idea for the heart connecting to a coordinating Spiritweb component from how Inquisitors have a linchpin to coordinate powers at higher numbers - perhaps there was a natural component that did the same function? This attached piece of soul might also explain why it's the bindpoint location on the recipient that determines the power they receive from a spiked Mistborn - because when that organ / power gets interfaced into the new Spiritweb it aligns itself to the system that grants that power, or to use the acupuncture terminology, because you are stapling it into the proper meridian. My guess is that what the Set is doing when they are trying to do non-lethal Hemalurgic harvesting is that they are either intentionally or unintentionally gathering power along those Spiritweb lines / meridians and it's those lines that would determine the power received - if the body could properly coordinate the function. This might explain why they sometimes get power out of those spikes but that it's inconsistent due to Identity contamination, imprecise harvesting away from the proper bindpoints to grant powers (i.e. I suspect that non-lethal harvesting at bindpoints that grant powers is the way to gain those same powers), and possibly because there isn't something locally coordinating the power. This loops back to how Inquisitors have a linchpin spike that coordinates the powers and are killed if that spike is removed - possible from too many alien and conflicting powers. Maybe Hemalurgic spikes could grant resonances with a linchpin as coordinator, but not when you're looking at the scale of a Mistborn anyway, since Mistborn don't have resonances. This might also lead in to how the fragment of soul trapped in the spike is technically intelligent, but just barely enough to get fooled into thinking it's back in a body of it's encased in a slab of meat. This necessary intelligence to grant powers in tandem may also be tied to Unsealed Metalminds, where perhaps they needed an added degree of intelligence in the Metalmind to enable coordination of multiple abilities. Where rhythms might come in is that this coordinating Spiritweb organ might be the internal thingy that A-Copper uses to create a Coppercloud - and is the reason why this was a valid bindpoint for the spike embedded in Penrod's heart that made him a very weak Smoker. Rhythms and the difficulty in finding a balance among competing rhythms might explain why Allomancers and Feruchemists either have a single ability or all the abilities - perhaps there's a spiritual alignment issue where if the Spirit is out of alignment it only has access to the power it is leaning to. Perhaps Lerasium in enlarging the soul also realigns it to more properly gain access to the different channels of power since we know that granting Mistborn status is technically only a side effect of Lerasium? That one feels like a stretch, since I would expect that alignment to have made a strong Allomancer like Wax into a full Mistborn, not just a very weak Mistborn and a strong Coinshot. That said, maybe this Spiritweb organ that can resonate with pulses or deaden them has to be able to coordinate all of those rhythms properly tying this back into your idea. This might also explain why spikes might not be able to steal multiple powers if that component of the Spiritweb doesn't get divided well... though apparently an earring is big enough to properly harvest a viable ability, at least from the Spiritweb of an infant. Basically that chunk of soul away from its native Spiritweb and the proper setup to grant and utilize powers can only effectively grant a power at the proper junction in the recipient's Spiritweb - the bindpoints. This was written out while my little family has been sick, so my thinking may not be the most clear, and I haven't fact checked with WoBs, but it's along the same line as why multiple powers may introduce complications. Also, sorry if this totally derails this from rhythms if that was what you were really wanting to discuss. Thanks for tagging me on this, I've been wondering for a while why this is an apparently hard rule that is now being brought into question. I'd add in the question "why do Allomancers and Feruchemists either have a single power or all 16?"

I could see that... except it would feel like a really lame and obvious answer. The Inquisitors tried to draw more power to themselves over the course of hundreds of years of laboratory experiments and political maneuvering while Ruin augmented those same Inquisitors in HoA. If they always could just use 2-3 spikes instead of 1 to double or more the powers harvested from a Mistborn or Feruchemist, that feels like a huge oversight. We can't blame advancements in technology either, as the metals themselves haven't changed, blacksmithing that can make needles for sewing and swords can make the proper size spike for anything you had in mind, and they had the drugs to leave someone comatose while they lined up the donor and recipient. What they didn't have was Nicrosil, Chromium, Bendalloy, and Cadmium, which steal in order: Investiture, possibly destiny, temporal Allomantic powers, and Spiritual Feruchemical powers. Still plenty to work with. If stealing multiple powers from a single Mistborn is possible, then I want it to require something more. An ability inaccessible to Ruin or the Inquisitors, some step that would take the recipient out of Ruin's control, something. If the answer is legitimately "line up multiple spikes by punching them into a sheet of cardboard and use a flat plank on top to hammer them all in at the same time" I'd feel let down. No added cost? Free?? Just your conscience, dignity, self-respect, additional soap to wash the blood off your hands, possible therapy and counseling, and the time spent either in eugenics projects or capturing half a dozen Allomancers. I don't see any of the efforts to socialize Hemalurgy or find volunteer terminally ill donors letting you through the line 10 times, which probably means this is done illegally and against the donors' wills. Even if you only look at the cost of getting the Hemalurgic donors, the setup costs are significant and non-trivial, but yes, once you have your single spike, assuming it doesn't max out along the way, you will have an abnormally powerful burn and flare. No, I don't think capturing 10 Coinshots alive before you put a single spike in yourself to be easy or low cost.

It looks to me that the two core ideas for this are: creating a spike capable of granting multiple Invested abilities, and stacking the same ability within the same spike. I'll address both. I'm not sure how the first works, and I think we have better options for the second. I'm still iffy about storing multiple usable abilities in a single spike with current understanding, even if all the abilities are within the same Hemalurgic quadrant. Unless someone has a viable explanation for why Atium can't steal multiple powers, why any single spike can't steal multiple powers from a Mistborn, and an explanation for how your methodology diverges significantly from the scenario of trying to steal multiple powers from a Mistborn, I don't see how this would work with current understanding. Ruin at least made a point to subvert Mistborn since it was very lossy to only be able to steal a single power from their whole skill set (https://coppermind.net/wiki/The_Hero_of_Ages/Epigraphs#Chapter_72). I don't think Identity contamination is the issue. Basically, I'm not convinced if multiple powers in a single spike is plausible until we nail down why Ruin could only steal a single power from a Mistborn with Hemalurgy even with access to Atium spikes that can steal any power. Next, I'll talk about the more complicated Hemalurgic methods suggested to amplify a single power as a separate topic from multiple powers in a single spike. if you have access to this much... Hemalurgic material along with methods to blank Identity, then you might as well start looking at A-Duralumin to enhance Allomancy and Compounding to enhance Feruchemy. If the end recipient already has one of the necessary powers, then you can still get away with only a single spike. We also know that Scadrians are already working on the drawbacks to A-Duralumin with the Set method of a mixed solution in a flask for Dumad, and 17th Sharders have had at least 3 or 4 other ideas as well. Metalborn are a limited resource, and the less Hemalurgic spiking necessary to get the desired result the more power you'll have overall due to the Law of Hemalurgic decay. Now granted, this is if you have access to the proper powers to harvest. If you have way more Coinshots than Duralumin Gnats, then... organizations like the Set would probably make do with what they have. If this is a mental exercise to boost the efficiency of a single Hemalurgic spike, then sure, we can try to figure it out. If it's just to get more power to the Hemalurgist, I think better options are already available. If the Identify blanking works, 2 spikes max to get Duralumin enhanced Allomancy or Compounding is formidable and efficient.

This can have complications because the speed bubble gets jolted as it absorbs the momentum of objects passing through the boundary as the Slider runs and as the frame of reference can be shifted based on the objects entering the speed bubble. Too much interference, and it will pop the bubble. I had a question of what happens if a train with a Cadmium bubble on the front went plowing through downtown Elendel, and after some digging I found the bubble would get popped once it hit anything major. The same is likely true of a runner with an Bendalloy bubble anchored to them. Some relevant WoBs. First one is specifically Brandon talking about how anchoring a speed bubble to yourself will introduce complications - and where we learn that this is something a Savant could do. So, yes, people have asked about this, but this is totally the kind of thing that's worth confirming that it's been considered.

I think this is a clever and out of the box idea, but I don't see it being practical. The hoops to jump through to get this to work require having access to abilities with more effective methods of healing than this hack - and whether or not it even could work seems to be in doubt. Let's say that hypothetically we introduce a Surgebinder's cells into another person's body. In order to heal the person we would need the transplanted cells to have sufficient Connection to the recipient to infuse their body with Stormlight, Connection to the Surgebinder granting access to Stormlight, but we can't have the Surgebinder too Connected in case their Identity forces the injured party to be healed toward the Surgebinder. Using Connection, hypnotism, truth serum (if one exists that doesn't get negated by Stormlight healing), or whatever to force the Surgebinder to view a different person as part of their self - but only to a certain extent - looks like it would take much more Connection shenanigans or brain twisting than convincing the Surgebinder that the injured party is a temporary Squire. Becoming a temporary Squire should allow for as full healing as anything else available. Even if the Surgebinder on hand is only a Squire, the Squire can only Surgebind within close proximity to the full Radiant, meaning that there is a full Radiant nearby. Again, trying to enable this hack requires resources that are more effective at the task you are trying to perform. Same with Forgery. If you have the knowledge and skill to Forge on a cellular level, you might as well just use Flesh Forgery and work at the tissue and organ scale rather than what is basically cellular level microsurgery to install a temporary implant. Again, a clever idea, but impractical based on existing options.

I'm sorely, sorely tempted to tag PeterAhlstrom and let him know that he's potentially gained a new alias/nickname on 17th Shard, but I don't want to waste his time. At least, since Peter is the one who reads and responds to the typo threads, I'm assuming he's helping sort out these kinds of things.

My guess is that yes, it does affect Awakening, but that it would take fringe scenarios or a true master of the art to really tell the difference. Let's see if I explain my reasoning. First off, at the larger scale starting at the First or Second Heightening, it likely doesn't matter because Heightening is calculated based on Aura Recognition which is a summation of total BioChromatic aura in the first place. A cup of rice is a cup of rice, even if the individual grains are varying sizes and will have similarly varying totals. Per the Law of Comparability, the number of Breaths used to Awaken an object is not indicative of power since a cloth cut in a square and a cloth cut in the shape of person will serve basically the same function even with vastly different amounts of Investiture. So long as you have sufficient Breaths to Awaken it in the first place, the "health of the Breath" likely will introduce relatively little variance when compared to the target of Awakening and its adjacency to life. That said, Breath quality may matter more at small scales. We know that a Lifeless Awakened with their own Breath will have differences compared to a random Breath used on a random corpse, so even an older less vibrant Breath of the previous owner may be preferrable to a random child's Breath. We also learn from Vasher teaching Nanrovah's daughter how to modify her own memory that a person can manipulate their own Breath for Invested Arts and if Brandon expands on this then personal health and individual Breath quality may be more important. Beyond that, it's hard to nail down specifics because so many aspects of Awakening operate on sliding scales. The color of the object used to Awaken, if the dye was Invested like the Tears of Edgli or not, the life-adjacency of the object to be Awakened, the complexity of the Command, Visualization, Heightening of the Awakener, and any factors I've missed all affect the result of Awakening - and yet if you're desperate you can make do by ripping out chunks of your own hair and using being very careful with wording. Quality of Breath matters... but so does everything else and most other variables are easier to control than a person's life experiences. I think it may matter in fringe cases or when a virtuoso of the art is at work, but for the vast majority of Awakeners, I don't think it would be particularly relevant. The nature of accruing Breaths generally means that either you received the Breaths from unknown individuals, or you have individually convinced dozens if not hundreds of people to give up their original Breath to you in a non-repeatable fashion. Beyond that, I suspect that for any of the really remarkable feats of Awakening where the specific source of Breath matters, you really need a master. I've been told that if you hand a decent violin to both a master and a decent violinist, you'll get decent sound quality because that's the extent of the capability of the instrument. If you have a high quality violin, then a decent violinist will produce decent sound quality while a master can produce high quality sound because it takes a master to use the instrument to the full extent. A decent musician just won't be able to adequately account for the factors that affect their art, temperature, humidity, the extent that the tuning pegs shift while under pressure, friction heating up strings, etc.. I once saw a performance where a song was played so forcefully that the orchestra had to pause to retune instruments because the very act of playing their instruments made them go out of tune. The factors to supreme musical performance to me at least seem similarly complicated and multifaceted as the aspects of Awakening I listed at the start of this paragraph. On a side note, it's worth noting that Lightsong's aura responds to his heightened emotions when he throws a tantrum and shouts at his priests. Lemex's aura was flaring sporadically. Vibrancy isn't only about health apparently. Perhaps its related to Other tangential thought is that we know that the Returned of Hallendren are shaped by the populace's view of perfection. I think the current idea is that this distortion is caused simply by Cognitive Realm power of thought and Connection with relatively little understanding of the mechanism. What if it is caused by the Returned consuming the Breaths of the Hallendren people and literally taking pieces of their soul including their perceptions and beliefs into themselves to sustain themselves? Larger Cosmere spoilers:

Hm... here's the thing, I'm not sure what more Nomad actually can do as a former Dawnshard. Aux offered himself up as a final burst of power to give Nomad temporary access to the Surges of a Skybreaker. He may have lost access to the Surges and we learn from the novella Dawnshard that bearers of Dawnshards are only so dangerous when held by someone with Invested abilities. That said, Nomad's adoption into the Beaconite society seems to have granted their ability to absorb and give Investiture, so he's not totally without access to an Invested art. Otherwise, what does he have? He has Connection abilities to link himself to the locality, healing, strength enhancement, durability enhancement, an Auxblade, Skipping and maybe Shardplate but I'm not sure on how permanently he can summon his Plate. Teleportation via Skipping is pretty useful, but it seems too costly and poorly directed to be using repeatedly, even if you had access to a Shardpool equivalent of Investiture. He might be tough to kill, but I don't think I've seen anything in his powerset to suggest that he's significantly more dangerous than a typical Stormlight-infused 4th Order Radiant, and he'd probably still get pounded into the dirt by any of the Heralds in their prime. Sure he can absorb and store Investiture on his person to rival the Godkings of Hallendren, but that doesn't mean he can effectively use it. I wouldn't say that as he was at the end that he was dangerous at the scale of depopulating entire planets - which we know is something the Night Brigade has done. This isn't to say that Nomad can't get more powerful, particularly if he gets access to other Invested arts, it's just that what he currently has by himself doesn't seems overtly dangerous, even as an Investiture battery. Heightening-like abilities may not be too powerful compared to the utility offered by some of the Invested arts. It's worth noting that in TotES, Xisis as a Dragon with the Tenth Heightening, was afraid of the Sorceress.

Wax, because we've seen him tested in a huge number of scenarios with incredible results, not just a single miracle shot. As has been mentioned before, shooting a bullet out of air and deflecting it. Shot Miles in the eye when both were on the roof of a moving train. That kind of motion for both the marksman and the target would be really hard to anticipate. When fighting the small army when breaking out of the Set's compound in BoM, he was identifying and selectively targeting those shooting ammo that he couldn't see and hitting those with Aluminum in a hailstorm of bullets. That's a huge amount of distractions that he was able to filter out for his shooting, which is also nothing to sneeze at. Possibly the furthest shot simply by gut instinct was in TLM when he A-Duralumin Pushed himself and Wayne somewhere in the ball park of 30-50 miles away to reach the set ship. First time he had ever used A-Duralumin, had to calculate the proper amount of Steel on the fly, the angle, account for the speed of the ship etc. without any prior ranging shots. It is worth noting that we have seen this kind of stunt before when Vin hit Straff Venture while riding a Koloss sword from Luthadel. Not sure on the comparative distance though. Tin would have helped her too (yes Wax was technically a Mistborn, but I'm pretty sure he would have noticed if he was subconsciously getting a full burn out of Tin). On that score, Vin was aiming for a much, much smaller target and got him dead center. So... of the rest, for me Vin gets honorable mention, though that's one of the more precise shots we see from her. Otherwise she generally just throws out a handful of coins and uses spread shots. Wax as a my vote is somewhat unfair because he see him trying to make trick shots more than anyone else, so he simply has more exposure. I'm thinking for the non-Cosmere I might go for that Rithmatist, Adelle Choi. It's much smaller scale, but for a Grand Melee, we're talking about being able to see multiple chalk lines from probably 5-15 feet away if not further, calculate the angles not from a top down view, but from a kneeling vantage point, bounce a sine wave off multiple straight lines made set up by other Rithamtists to hit a weak point probably mostly obscured by an enemy Rithamtist still in their circle sending chalklings or Lines of Vigor at you. Oh, and you not only have to calculate all the angles properly, you need to calculate the distance so that the Line of Vigor is in proper phase to hit the desired weakened section. That kind of angle calculation seems supernaturally good.

How do I put this... I feel like this view of technological advancement as an expected progression is incomplete. The next paragraph is my views from listening to people and historians talk about this (like the YouTube channel Technology Connections), but I'm not an expert. From my viewpoint, technological advancement is intrinsically tied to the challenges and existing technology of the given period in history. In particular, technology develops as innovators work to solve the challenges currently troubling the people of that time and place. For example, in the U.S., an electricity bill used to be called the "light bill" - because the main purpose of bringing electricity into homes was to replace the rather unpleasant dim, smokey, and hot options of the day: gas or candle lighting. Notably we see electric lighting as one of the first indoor uses of electricity in Elendel for Era 2 Scadrial. Bringing reliable lighting into the average household was the push for the power grid - it was after that power source was established that there was a market for electronic consumer products that have become household staples. There's a lot of drivers of innovation, disease, famine, competing companies, competitions, and yes, war. I won't elaborate on every point, but it's worth noting that innovation sometimes can be predicted, as research and development departments, well, exist. Sometimes innovation and technological advancement can be incredibly consistent - Gordon Moore once stated that the number of transistors that can be fit into an integrated circuit will double about every 2 years with the results being consistent enough in the last 50 years for this concept to be dubbed Moore's Law - in part because the processing power of computers is something that has not hit a ceiling yet with the amount of data available to be processed and utilized for economic gain. So... I'd say that measuring when IRL gets developed as a measure of how "accelerated" or "stunted" a planet's technological progression is incomplete and may be better viewed as when each planet develops solutions to similar problems that we saw IRL. It wouldn't surprise me if Roshar never developed an electric power grid at all because "that Invested jazz" solves many of the problems that we use electricity. Rosharan currency naturally provides smokeless lighting. Heating fabrials provide indoor heating and cooking appliances. The tech used by the Reachers in Shadesmar implies that water can be gathered by fabrial tech - the one they used gathers water via condensation. Transportation and communication are currently addressed by Oathgates providing teleporation and spanreeds respectively. Beyond that, the Highstorms that deposit hardened layers of crem over the whole planet add significant complications to creating a cost effective and reliable power grid. Power, gas, and plumbing lines that have to be embedded through hardened crem and survive Highstorms is likely possible but would need to be engineered beyond what most municipalities need to plan for IRL. The biggest reason I can think of that electricity could compete with Stormlight as an energy source is the consistent availability even during a Weeping, but it's a hard sell when the majority of the year power is globally accessible and free to boot with each Highstorm.

Well... it's instantaneous from the degree of measurement available to Era 1 and 2, but surely it takes a technically measurable amount of time to occur. Now Duralumin allows someone to outrun electrons and made Wayne go effectively blind, so that's insanely fast utilization, but that speed of burn may be Bendalloy specific. In the same way that a Steelrunner tapping speed can enhance a burn rate of a metal and get a higher effective burn, it wouldn't surprise me if Bendalloy has a similar effect and may be an outlier compared to other allomantic metals. There may also be differences between Aluminum and Duralumin vs Nicrosil and Chromium. We haven't seen A-Nicrosil used - ever, and we only saw A-Aluminum a handful of times when Vin was forced to use it under duress. However we do know that Chromium doesn't burn all of a person's metals completely - so long as you have huge amounts of metal like Wayne did. So... it occurs to me that metals like Aluminum and Duralumin used by the Allomancer may have a practically instantaneous effect, but the metals that externally affect another person may take more power and have a much lower metal enhancement/leeching rate - because it has to work through the Identity of the other person. In other words, I could see a Nicroburst having a reduced enhancement rate compared to Duralumin for the sole reason that it has to work through a person's natural defenses that I think are linked to Identity. If this is the case, then yes, a Nicroburst enhancing a Nicroburst may allow for near instantaneous forced enhancement and total utilization of a target's metals. Now if you are looking to enhance a willingly target, then Duralumin may get you everything that you need for sheer power. As it is, Duralumin-enhanced burns are super dangerous and this line of experimentation seems quite likely to result in casualties. Greater Cosmere Spoilers:

I second the motion, in part to push this back to the top of the board. Odds are, if it's interesting enough to comment on, we in the no-spoiler period don't want to hear about it. If your thread title tells the reader at all what is in the contents of the thread, short of "SP5 discussion", don't forget that we have a community of fans who go to extreme lengths to tease out the smallest bit of information from every single WoB - and still don't like spoilers.

Not quite sure how to phrase this without sounding petty, but I think I came up with the multi-layer design after you pitched the idea of coating Harmonium in an Allomantic metal and hoping that it could be burned without exploding. It's not a big deal, and it wouldn't be the first time we've seen multiple people pitch a brand new revolutionary idea that has been already posted assuming we both came up with that. The core of this idea is to grant steady delivery of Allomantic metals to the Duralumin user correct? I'm not particularly surprised that the Hemalurgy enthusiast went directly to fine-tuned stabbing. Delivering metal straight to the stomach is likely much easier. Any of you familiar with gastrostomy tubes? They're IRL feeding tubes that go straight through the abdomen into the stomach, often to deliver drug doses or liquid food to a patient. They even have setups with pumps that allow for constant and regulated doses for specific needs. Add in Dumad's trick of an aluminum flask that has the appropriate proportions of Duralumin and the metal to be boosted, and it seems like we're already 95% of the way there. I don't see why a flat tank and pump secured around the waist like a fanny pack couldn't just sit over the port. If that seems too risky, we can lean into cyberpunk with the whole system embedded and the only access point the controls along side the port to refill the tank and recharge the pump. With the principle that internal metal storages have to be burned from the outside in, have the outermost metal be an unburnable metal to insulate the metals to be burned from the Allomancer (meaning cannot be burned by the Allomancer, so if they can't burn Aluminum, make this component Aluminum), assuming we have some sort of bio-friendly coating on the surface. This should give us a mechanism that can pump a regulated dosage of Allomantic metals into the stomach ready to be burned. The control system is whatever format that you want, anywhere from dial on the stomach, glove controls, to AI assistant. If we want it to be really cyberpunk, make the refill system dual cartridge-based so they can pop in aluminum-protected refills on the go or swap Allomantic metals mid-fight without running out. It's basically an automated system expanding from the layered metal design. Instead of isolating the metal with Duralumin and making the layer thickness a prescribed dose of Duralumin, we just have an Allomantically-insulated pump with an external refill port that can adjust the dosage on the fly. Not a bad next step.

Got it completed and turned in. My next project was writing the code for a recurrent neural network to analyze HVAC data and make temperature recommendations. That one was a headache and I've been working on it alone for two days, but I'll be graded on quality of work and thought process, not completion. That was due yesterday and I submitted it. My next project today is fix the family bicycles and study for my final exams on Thursday and Friday, which thankfully I don't have to stress about. If I did my math right, I'll still pass even if I only get 50% on them. Oh perhaps, but even procrastinators can eventually get things done. Despite being a rather consistent procrastinator, I'm about to get my Bachelor's degree. Sure, I'm getting it 5-8 years after the rest of my high school class, but I'm still getting it (COVID put some huge detours in my planned route). In my case, my degree is in a field that wasn't even taught 5 years ago and my college still hasn't updated some of their webpages to acknowledge that it's a field of study. Not every time, but sometimes taking the long scenic route still can have things work out, since I wouldn't have been able to even study what I ended up studying.

Worst. Prank. Ever.

Is that Cord's Plate? The very special set that for whatever reason was reserved for a protector of the Dawnshard if I'm remembering right? That one may be an outlier, either because of its unusual origin or because it is worn by someone who swore an oath to use it to protect the Dawnshard. It may be in a state of recovery similar to Maya.

I believe this is relevant to the conversation: This implies to me that the Plate spren don't constantly follow the Radiant around, and are not bound to them as they are when they are first summoned as Shardplate. Once summoned, then they are directly associated to that specific Radiant and will become dead spren should the Radiant forsake their Ideals.

Let's address the Kandra/Mistwraith in the room. First off, Realmatically it is totally possible for Kandra to gain Allomancy and Feruchemy. Paalm indisputably proved that as both a Coinshot and a Steelrunner. Top theory that Kelsier is really more of a Kandra means that this is still either more complicated than what he has solved, involves measures he's not willing to take (maybe needs second spike opening him up to Shardic interference), or his specific circumstance still disqualifies him (like if you need to rip out a spike and use a Trellium spike, and he can't do it because his current spike hold his consciousness or something). Next, this quote: This is Wax and VenDell speculating at the beginning of BoM before they've even seen an unkeyed Metalmind, let alone an unsealed one. Neither has produced empirical evidence to this point. Notably the assertion that this has to do with shared Terris heritage with the rationale that the Elendel Basin intermarried after the Catacendre doesn't explain how all of Southern Scadrial uses this technology. We know hardly anything about the Southern Scadrians other than that metalborn are incredibly rare and considered pieces of god, so... do they even have any Terris ancestry whatsoever? I'll also note that the Weight medallions in BoM worked for everyone - including MeLaan. If the Bands of Mourning don't work for Kelsier, it's probably not because he's a Kandra/Mistwraith. Medallion tech works for non-Scadrians as well. Just forget everything about them requiring Terris blood. WoB Beyond that for the creation of the Bands, there's too many unknowns. We don't know what the excisors are, how Medallion's are made at all, let alone all the constraints that would have to be met in order to produce the Bands. I'm still waiting on an explanation on the Medallions which won't come until Era 3 because Brandon lost his original writeup. It's complicated enough that it took several pages, so I don't think we'll get it just by guessing. If it's that complicated for Medallions and they have no idea how to make the Bands, then goooood luck.

Huzzah! Glad that my distractibility was helpful this time! As a fellow procrastinator with terrible focus, I'm similarly a work-in-progress trying to get better at self-management. If other people have cool strategies that have worked for them, I certainly won't turn them down. My follow up report is that I rewrote my 5 page essay and I'm on my second draft. I'll be handing it to my family to read and make comments before I do last tweaks and submit it tomorrow. I can't promise that I'll always be around on this thread for accountability, but I might pop in every so often. 17th Shard definitely is a big time sink for me, and I'm trying to be mindful of how I manage myself.

Well, it says something that I'm responding to this rather than working on my 5-page essay due tomorrow. See: getting distracted, failing to do my homework, and putting off a project. Here are my 2 cents to try make me spending time here actually productive, rather than a continuation of getting distracted and putting off my homework projects. I do think it is possible that going onto 17th Shard can genuinely make someone more productive, but only within the framework of other practices. 17th Shard as a fan forum for entertainment, socialization, and with its own writing corner is not something that screams "I will be more productive by going to this website", and usually the opposite. So how do we make it productive? I don't want to take over your thread @Through The Living Glass and dictate a structure, so feel free to ask me to tweak my post so that it better fits the vision of what you hope it can accomplish. First suggestion is to not make this solely a bragging thread for all the productive people to boast about their awesome accomplishments while the procrastinators feel even guiltier by looking at what everyone else is achieving. Perhaps use a format where whenever someone accomplishes something to try to post the next task/milestone/etc. that they want to achieve? Sometimes it may be fine to post updates and not only completion of tasks, like "I finished the rough draft of my essay, now I just need to read over the copyediting notes my family gave me and rewrite it before tomorrow". Don't compare. Everyone has different skills where some tasks are easier than others. I've known someone who was an amazing organizers and could manage a super complicated shift roster but for whatever reason couldn't clean their room. It's fine to post "I cleaned my room, and for me that's a major accomplishment" right next to "I just recarpeted my room and painted the walls". Don't diminish your own accomplishment just because it feels small next to what someone else did, the direction you are moving is the important part. 17th Shard as a social forum can potentially provide some accountability. If you feel like it would help you personally, ask for something like "I have an essay due tomorrow, if you see me posting random YKYASFW memes in an hour, tag me here and call me out please?" or "I need to write 2000 words a day if I want to finish this before summer. Can someone ask me for updates?" That said, people might get busy doing other things like their own projects, so we may have to see how effective asking for accountability actually is. Last bit of advice, is that it is totally fine to take breaks, but I think there's a big difference between taking a break, and avoiding work. Some tasks are just hard mentally, physically, and/or emotionally and can take a lot out of you. Stopping for 15 minutes or so to decompress can help you get back to the main task with more energy. If 17th Shard is a place where that works for you, awesome. However, if that 15 minute break stretches to hours, then it's a problem. Sometimes simply mentally giving myself permission to take a break, setting a timer, and then doing something fun for a while knowing that I will get back to work can be the difference between feeling like a guilty procrastinator and a productive person simply taking a break. Sometimes taking a break from artificial intelligence to write an essay on Realmatic Theory really does help the brain unwind, not really sure why. Guilt is an exhausting motivator, and it's hard to feel accomplishment if it's the primary driver since it often feels more like "finally, it's over" rather than "Yes, I did it!", so for me at least, trying to minimize the guilt of procrastination is a huge step in getting the actual energy to do the stuff that needs to be done. If the task in front of you feels monumentally big and unbearable to look at, then consider the Pomodoro technique of breaking down your task into smaller chunks of time. Other people have explained it better than me, such as here, but if you can't remember Pomodoro, just look up "tomato clock method" And so, today my first accomplishment is that I wrote an unsolicited essay on productivity. What I intend to do next is apply said essay and get myself to write my actual essay on supply chain management productivity due tomorrow night. Feel free to ask me Friday afternoon how it's coming or if I'm done Saturday morning. If you see me posting elsewhere today or tomorrow, feel free to call me out and see if I'm just procrastinating or if I've actually got something done and I'm just taking a break.

Well... for many things we know about Cosmere humans it feels like they would largely be stubs leading into other topics because many of the relevant points emphasize how they are different or distinct from IRL humans. Cosmere humans are not exactly like IRL humans and we can explain those distinctions beyond ancestry, though as we learn things, we can certainly try to fill out what @Treamayne laid out for heritages. Things we know: Humans were present before the Shattering on Yolen. Most if not all humans seen are descended from or designed off of the Yolish template. (link into Yolen and the Shattering, source M:SH) Humans have innate Investiture not found in IRL humans and can accumulate greater levels of innate Investiture into descendants developing on highly Invested planets. The example is how Rosharans with ambient Stormlight are much less susceptible to diseases when compared to the IRL counterpart. (link into Investiture?, WoB on common cold spreading to Roshar, I think) Humans, like most things, exist within the Three Realms, the Physical Realm, Cognitive Realm, and Spiritual Realm. When a human dies, ties to the PR are broken, the mind persist for a short time in the CR before passing into The Beyond unless extenuating circumstances intervene. (link into Realmatic Theory, source M:SH) The cognitive aspect of an immediately deceased human can be used as a template for Investiture to create a Cognitive Shadow, see Cognitive Shadows, Returned, Shades, etc. All humans have different and distinctly unique Spiritual Identities, including identical twins. This is intrinsic to birth in the Cosmere. As part of this, humans have lifespan tied to their spiritual aspect, as we see when the attribute of Age is altered by feruchemy. This Age dictates when a person should naturally decay or die with TLR aging dramatically due to a forcibly altered Spiritual Age that snapped back when he lost his Atiumminds. (link into Identity, feruchemy, or maybe spiritwebs, WoB on mechanism of death of TLR. A bit of speculation, but there's some disturbing ramifications surrounding the mechanism of death for TLR) Humans carry sDNA in addition to typical DNA. Invested attributes are passed on via sDNA that obeys different rules from the standard, including Allomancy, Feruchemy, Sand Mastery, and probably whatever makes a Threnodite become a Shade. (link into sDNA if we have a page for it or whatever is closest) Humans can naturally and natively become vessels of Shards of Adonalsium. They also can bond Cognitive beings of Investiture via the Nahel Bond such as spren or Seons gaining access to Invested abilities. (link into Shards, Nahel Bond) Humans can interbreed with nonhumans creating hybrid progeny capable of procreation, notably the Horneaters and Herdazians of Roshar have both Human and Singer ancestry. (I don't know if we have any other confirmed cases, be it dragons who have human forms or Sho Del, WoB on Horneater and Herdazian heritage) For some reason, dragons spend a portion of their lives in the form of a human. (link to dragon page etc. There's probably more that could go here, but what we have here is longer than some pages. I was just making a bullet point list without trying to format it for the Coppermind, but we can at least discuss if a compilation of this information is worth making a page for. It's not obvious at first glance, but Cosmere Humans are significantly different from IRL Humans in ways that are not necessarily intuitive or expected for someone new to the Cosmere particularly in how they interact with the magic and realmatics. Sorry I didn't grab any actual WoBs, but I'm just taking a break from a college final project to think about something easier.

Yup, if we're looking for countermeasures and solutions to combat Steelrunners that's a way to balance them without having to actually decrease their capability. There's a lot of ways to do this that don't even require access to Ettmetal or the Metallic arts, though it does make it easier. Literal speed trap. Going too fast indoors? Speed detector sets off A-Cadmium bubbles isolating the hallway, or something similar. Difficult to tune, and some work would need to be done to protect bystanders, but it's doable. Maybe use it in conjunction with the Leeching you suggested. IRL metal detectors or x-ray machines that ignore the strategies to hide metal from Steelsight. Here's a twist on an existing design: some automatic door closers are engineered so that the door closes at an adjustable rate. Try to force the door to close faster than that rate and the closing assembly resists. To limit Steelrunners, simply reverse the direction so that the door can only be opened at a specified rate and greatly increases resistance when someone attempts to open it faster. A lot of finetuning would have to be done to make it safe for other scenarios, like maybe disabling the mechanism in the event of a fire alarm just like how there are already fire alarm triggered doors, but it could significantly limit how fast a Steelrunner could move through a building. Sure a determined Steelrunner assassin could get around it, just set fire to the building and wait for the target to run out, but then no security system is infallible.

Interesting. I hadn't been looking for alternative interpretations, but if we start looking for an individual carrying burdens of nine entities, it could be Taln carrying the burdens of the other Heralds, it could be the champion of nine shadows, it could be a successor to the Nine Fused that form a council. Madness could be associated with them all. The wording though... the Almighty is the Vorin term for Honor, right? Dalinar believes the Almighty to be dead, or that the being originally thought to be the Almighty wasn't and that there is something beyond Honor. I'm not sure if we have enough info on Taln's belief system or the exact mechanism of Death Rattles to know if this is being filtered through Connection or something similar. Is it really the Almighty they call to or is it "Oh, <insert relevant diety>, release me"? That said, we don't have any particular metric to estimate the probable accuracy of the Death Rattles compared to other forms of future sight, including Renarin's vision of his own death and Dalinar's fall. It's not guaranteed that all of them will be fulfilled, so it wouldn't surprise me if this Death Rattle predicted the same event as Renarin's vision... with similar uncertainty on if Dalinar completely dodged it.

Now this could be general propaganda or conditioning from holding Preservation, but I'm remembering the very beginning of M:SH where Leras tells Kelsier that one shouldn't trust Ati's essence even in a diluted form. We also know that Ruin helped orchestrate the demise of TLR so... I'm a bit suspicious of trusting the knowledge gained from Ruin's power. Hopping over to Roshar, Renarin seemed to be able to see Odium's visions of the future and saw Dalinar as the champion of nine shadows and his own death at Jasnah's hands. This wasn't a controlled vision, it was probably linked to his old epileptic seizures, and it didn't show Renarin's desired outcomes but apparently Odium's goals. So... how confident are you that the future glimpsed from the SR that you are trying to discern is really according to your wishes? Did Ruin nudge Zane to choose the wrong Atium shadow to keep Vin alive when Vin managed to split the Atium shadow? Granted that may have been from Hemalurgic influence and not solely Atium's power, but we also saw Vin fight 2 Mistborn and a squad of Mistings alone when she killed Shan Elariel. I do wonder if that wasn't just pure skill on her part while wearing a Hemalurgic spike and burning Atium against a more experienced Atium burner. Vin's major triumphs over others while burning Atium seem to be directly supportive of Ruin's escape with her survival as a nice side effect. Be wary of anyone claiming to know the future. Advice from Hoid, so take it for what it's worth. Beyond that, I expect burning Atium to impart a substantial portion of Ruin's Intent into my soul. It seems like no accident that Electrum/Atium alloys optimize you for close-combat killing. Maybe Malatium tries to let you pinpoint and identify the target's weaknesses based on personal history, though we rarely see it used (and didn't get much info on the Inquisitor). It wouldn't surprise me at all if it's technically possible to seek out constructive use-cases for the vision granted by Atium, but that the default is destructive or negatively competitive in nature. Even Elend's glimpse into the SR ended with him choosing to get axed. If combat, dominance, and destruction of your enemies is the main objective, then yes, Atium is your friend. If those elements aren't a core piece of your agenda, then I recommend being very careful. In the right usage, we saw Yomen as an almost normal human outmaneuvering Vin as one of the most skilled Mistborn ever seen, so yes, it can be very powerful with applied foresight or peeks into the SR. I end with: highly risky, have someone who can see Spiritwebs or Connections confirm what Ruin's essence is doing to your soul before committing to large-scale consumption. In the right scenario it can prove more pivotal than Lerasium, particularly when it was a renewable resource, but not one I would recommend using lightly.

So... help me understand why you think someone daydreaming of epic fight scenes who doesn't have any real combat experience or training would fight better than someone properly trained? Awakened objects still have to obey physics and improper visualization even with proper Intent was a failure point for Vivenna asking a cup to fetch a cup of tea. Dramatic flourishes and twirls, pauses for witty banter, and many of the things that make cinematic fights fun are often bad ideas. In fact, be wary of imitating any fantasized fight scene not choreographed by a professional. So... personal untrained daydream? I wouldn't trust my life to it. Store hours of watching professional fighters, martial artists, etc. as an armchair enthusiast? Hours of HEMA fighting played first at 0.5 speed to learn the proper form then 1.25 speed for the final visualization? Maybe with some experimentation and live tests. The biggest unknown is finding the right Command phrase, but it seems plausible. The "Fight for me as if you were me" Command may be a shortcut to reduce the load on Awakener rather than trying to visualize decades of experience. F-Copper looks like it lets you withdraw more information than can naturally be recalled in a single moment (Sazed at the end of HoA while Ascending so not the best example and he needed the expanded mind of a Shard to retain it all), so you may be able to briefly withdraw hours upon hours of memories crisply, Awaken the object, then archive the memories. Slight tweak to your idea that feels more viable.