Duxredux

I had to go look this up to make sure I was remembering properly, but friction on the molecular level is caused by ridges and valleys in even seemingly smooth materials meeting and basically cold welding themselves together due to pressure with the resistive force we think of as friction the force needed to break those temporary welds. Increasing the force needed to break those welds is going to look a lot like Adhesion, so I'm not sure where that line is drawn, but it probably doesn't overlap too much. Coating yourself in and adhesive-like Abrasion coating would only make the first layer of air molecules stick to you and then the rest will act exactly as if you were falling normally since many don't actually contact you directly, they are deflected in varying shells from the moving object (I think, this may be a gross simplification of the field of fluid dynamics). Basically, don't expect it to slow you down significantly when passing through a fluid, displacement causes way more resistance. So... it depends. The geometry of the shape they land on determines the angle of the normal force exerted on the falling person. Were they diving to minimize air resistance or intentionally slowing themselves down with proper skydiving techniques? Being frictionless won't save you if you hit a flat, level slab of rock, though Stormlight probably will. The deformation of the object they hit, what position they hit (feet first so their legs act as the crumple zone of a car vs head first) and so on. Add in planetary gravity and we have a lot of parameters to fill in before we could start crunching numbers. That said, all Abrasion does is simplify most physics problems that early students are told to do anyway, "assume a frictionless environment".

Technically you can steal a Radiant Bond, but the spren still has Autonomy to terminate the bond from their side. I don't think we've seen an upper limit, though Inquisitor spikes are quite large and Spook had a piece of broken sword in his shoulder. For small, define effective. Vin could pierce copperclouds and hear the Well of Ascension while wearing a simple stud earring, which is pretty small. I'm going to guess a negative on this one. The fragment of soul in the spike gets hot wired into the spiritweb granting the power so presumably that portion is still located in the spike. Besides, if you could kill them with a spike, you're probably in a position to harvest the spike granting pewter anyway. If you want to peruse the basis of our knowledge: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?tags=hemalurgy https://coppermind.net/wiki/Hemalurgy

Welcome to the Shard! I think this is pretty well thought out, and if you enjoy this kind of debate then you will definitely find others on the Shard who would be happy to spend page after page discussing topics like this. So... the biggest issue I see with this has nothing to do with your hypothesis or argument, and has everything to do with how Brandon has tried to conduct himself. To start, it's totally fine for the book to narratively lie to us about what's really going on, to hide that little bit of crucial detail that turns everything on its head, and for you to question everything that book tells you about how a magic system really works. This is pretty much a staple of Brandon's books and we're catching on. I'm totally behind this sentiment, and I think it becomes logical to start questioning our assumptions regarding how the magic really works. That said, my main issue is what Brandon himself has said in WoBs (the shortened term for "words of Brandon" which sounds odd, but we track as many as we can on wob.coppermind.net) because it looks to me that he tries hard to never intentionally lie to us in the interviews and WoBs. He can try to use weasel words and technically be true, he can get confused about a question, he can change his mind, and he can reverse on a WoB because he found that a detail really didn't work in the story and he needed to tweak details to get a story to work - but if he's asked about a major underpinnings of the Cosmere, he explains it as well as the current knowledge allows, he flat out RAFOs the question, says he doesn't want to canonize something, or tries to reach out to the community and let us know if he feels like he's unintentionally led us astray with his commentary external to the books (he reached out to one of the moderators, Argent I think, to let him and us by extension know that he was reworking how savantism works in the Cosmere). There's enough annotations from Brandon in The Hero of Ages to confirm his intentions for how Allomancy, Hemalurgy, and Feruchemy function in relation to Preservation and Ruin are how they were were portrayed in the story and has been further confirmed with later WoBs. If we never had Brandon's commentary, I'm not sure how well I would refute the possible misinformation you see, but I trust Brandon when he's talking in-person, even if he tries to use weasel words to give technically true yet extremely misleading responses to questions. As a tangent, I wrote here about a hypothesis on how Allomancy is tied to Preservation through self-preservation, including the Snapping mechanism that grants Allomancy if you want to peruse it. At any rate, again, welcome to the Shard! We look forward to more of your thinking with great interest.

Well... saying that Godmetals have a specific purpose is like saying water was engineered to sustain life or that plants were designed to be edible. This is possible, but I think would largely be done so in the manner of a universal creation, and that's more of a religious topic specifically unconfirmed for the Cosmere. In the Cosmere, Godmetals are fundamental components of nature just like Investiture and the Shards themselves. They have specific characteristics and properties as fundamental as the properties of carbon, sulfur, iron, copper, aluminum, and silver. Maaaybe the Shard has some control over the Godmetal like where it manifest, perhaps if it is pure or alloyed, but changing the fundamental nature is like changing the core Intent and nature of a Shard (see WoBs at end). The Godmetals will be intrinsically tied to their respective Shard(s) and their properties will be in alignment with those Shards, like Autonomy repulsing other Investitures to be alone or exhibiting incredibly hard material that does not deform easily when acted upon by an external force. That doesn't mean they will specifically help in Invested Arts (like others have asserted). ...but Dux, silver, aluminum, water, and all those materials you mentioned were designed by Brandon to do something and often cool things. Yup, and Brandon gets to decide the fundamental building blocks of the Cosmere - just like how he frames the Intents of the Shards as fundamental concepts of nature. Brandon will choose what each Godmetal does and not all of them necessarily need to have a useful function any more than tearing a person (Adonalsium) into 16 pieces will leave you with something particularly useful when compared with the others. Some powers may not act well in isolation in the same way having 2 legs makes it easier to walk. WoBs:

So... help us understand your main reason for pointing out this contradiction. Narratively Sazed as Harmony is the one confirming that yes, Rashek altered the genetics of the people of the land creating a noble class and a skaa class. Presumably this is a memory from the Shards he holds and probably the most reliable source aside from Brandon. All other historical accounts could be falsified, but there's no reason for residual memory from the Shard of Preservation to have that information if it weren't accurate. Like it or not, historic uncertainties or not, there is reason to believe that the Balance had historical merit, the genetic change made while Rashek held Preservation's power in the Well of Ascension. Sazed wouldn't lie about that.

Not sure if I'm onboard for the specific mechanics, but I agree with this general sentiment: I do think it's well worth noting that Allomantic and Feruchemical inheritance is not an isolated system, particularly before the Catacendre. Vin was chosen as Preservation's vessel before Ruin ever considered using her as a pawn to kill TLR and eventually set him free, and Sazed's circumstance as the Hero of Ages was seen millennia before he was ever born. On the scale of the conflict between Ruin and Preservation, Ruin does not have a heritable power, only the seed of Preservation stolen from humanity via Hemalurgy. The Steel Ministry was an incredibly powerful organization, drawing Allomantic power to itself either by employing the nobility, harvesting Allomancy from skaa half-breeds, or the Inquisitors forcibly elevating an acolyte to Inquisitor. Every Allomancer born was a potential target for Ruin to draw power to himself by converting them into Hemalurgic spikes or by spiking them and starting the process to transform them into an Inquisitor. I don't know if Preservation could prevent a person from Snapping, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the practice of beating children was instigated by Ruin, but we know that Preservation had the power to make Allomancers as that was the function of the Mists, but doing so painted a target for Ruin to gather more power. Basically, if you think of Scadrial as a gameboard with Allomancers created by Preservation as super valuable game pieces that Ruin could capture and use himself, there's good reason for Preservation to try to be intentional as to where power is granted - if he was even in a state to do so. Post-Catecendre with the advent of Twinborn and natural Compounders, Sazed has good reason to be mindful of the distribution of power when he is not in a deadlock between the Intents of Ruin and Preservation, as a dual Shard that is attracting the attention of the likes of Autonomy. It's been hinted that Wax has been able to draw on the Mists, and Sazed speculates that Vin was more powerful as a product of drawing on the Mists... So perhaps this is one method that Sazed can subtly alter the potential within an individual, possibly in preparation for a Metalborn descendent. I'd put a Metalborn child raised by Wax and Steris at a higher probability of turning out decent, though it's never a given. So... I think people can try to engineer situations more likely to create Metalborn, and they will work, but that there is definitely Shardic involvement that is difficult to account for when calculating outcomes. Who knows, if he wanted to maybe Sazed could very subtly siphon off Allomantic potential whenever someone steps on an iron nail through general harvesting of Investiture via activated Hemalurgy (I reaaally doubt he's spending his time doing this, but I don't think it's mechanically impossible).

Nice WoBs. I may be unnecessarily reiterating, but I think a distinction here comes down to the visualization component of the Awakening and less breaking the shape (though that's part of it). Visualize a rope tying up a person, and the same basic function can be done with variable lengths of rope but will fail if too short. Visualize a person sword fighting and Command a shirt and pair of pants, and it will try to fight within that format. The Awakened object acts according to its original Command and doesn't allow for change outside of anything pre-built into the Command, so if it got bisected at the waist, you'll have a pair of pants doing sword fighting footwork and a shirt operating as if it still has legs for positioning. Bisect it vertically, and you'll have two halves that likely will try to uselessly act as if it was a contiguous whole - i.e. pants trying to walk normally instead of hop. I think theoretically you could Command a shirt and pair of pants to fight together and if they got separated to change the fighting style to fit a lone shirt and a lone pair of pants, but that will greatly increase the complexity of the visualization and Command and the additional Command verbiage would be useless for all failure modes except horizontal bisection. Visualizing a fighting style for every possible failure mode for a shirt and pants and getting the Command to match sounds practicably impossible - particularly when Awakening them on the fly as Vasher did. Now one scenario that I'm curious about is when Azure has the Reachers pull out bales of cloth and cut them into the shape of men to fight incoming Fused. What do people think would happen if you had an n-layer stack of cloth cut into a gingerbread man cookie cutter shape, stitched together at the perimeter, Awakened it to fight - and then removed the perimeter stitching so you have n Awakened flat person-shaped soldiers? Would that use more or less Breath than if you were to try to Awaken a single soldier using one layer at a time? I'm not looking at material strength yet, that's flexible, I'm looking at how the Command and Breath operates if you were to repeatedly slice a single Awakened object into thin layers - but they all had the same basic shape and the visualization was suited for that format. Per the Law of Comparability, the amount of Breath used to Awaken something isn't necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened. Vasher's analogy is that it's not like filling a glass with water, it's more like pounding a door down - and once its open it will serve the same function.

What am I coming to... I read the title and I thought: "They have a fantastic medical and dental plan. Retirement may not be great since the only 5th Ideal Radiant we know hasn't retired in millennia and Syl's last Knight died throwing her into slumber. They got room and board at Urithru which counts for something but probably doesn't extend to stock options." ...yeah. Moving on. We see Kaladin getting closer and closer to full telepathy with Syl as he gets closer to the 4th Ideal, and I'm not sure if that's permanent or more prevalent at 4th. Perhaps it becomes more and more constant up until it's just always there at 4th or 5th. We see Syl try to predict and adapt her Shardblade form on the fly, surprising Kaladin in the process and she gets better and predicting what form he wants her to be as they progress. At any rate, full telepathy between spren and Radiant could have a huge variety of implications. First it greatly increases the potential for super precise manifestation as objects as they can send and receive thoughts and maybe full images, possibly with the use-case intent. When we see skepping, Ishar's fantastic at it, but doesn't have to coordinate with a sentient sword/spear/shield/halberd, so it seems like telepathy would increase the potential of the Radiant (Ishar also has had a supernatural amount of practice). Second, Kaladin was having Syl scout for him from the very beginning, but add in full audio and visual communication makes it enormously useful. The OP suggested that the Radiant would become physically unable to swear contrary Oaths, which I think is far less likely than the Radiant being unable to hide or otherwise obscure their mind and decisions that may lead to conflicting Oaths from their spren who would have full awareness and voice to object - which in the vast majority of cases probably amounts to the same thing. If the Radiant is too stubborn and does it anyway, it likely would have much more severe, possibly lethal consequences, but I don't see Brandon removing the ability to make the decision. Being spren-like hasn't prevented the Heralds or Fused from lying or breaking Oaths. A while back I had the idea that 5th Ideal Radiants may be able to manifest the fabrial associated with their Surges to loan them out, which I'm not going to promote here other than mentioning it, but we do see from the beginning Syl using the Surge of Adhesion to prank Kaladin and later Shallan anchors Lightweavings to Pattern. Perhaps the spren will be able to use Surgebinding themselves? Like Syl flying invisibly over to something and Lashing it into the sky? Pattern creating Lightweavings on his own? That opens a world of flexibility, but with the advent of anti-Light and spren detection methods like the sand used to find Phendorana, the risk to the spren for attempting such stunts has similarly increased - particularly as some Fused and Regals can just passively see into the CR. It would be an upgrade but with the current story there would be an accompanying host of risks associated with using the ability. As for channeling the elements themselves, we do see Kaladin create a windbreak in a Highstorm to protect some villagers, so... whatever was going on there wasn't even a 5th Ideal thing. Wasn't even a 4th Ideal thing, using his Plate spren, though I think it absolutely was meant to hint that Windspren were going to become his Platespren. Brandon hasn't delved into all of their abilities that we've seen and we haven't even gotten to 5th Ideal. Most of what's beyond this feels like extrapolating from a single point of data. TSM spoilers:

Nope. It won't. You're thinking too small scale, 10-20 years is waaay too short. I don't think I've seen the "newest member" statistic for 17th Shard ever go beyond a week, at least while I've been paying attention. Even accounting for bots, we still have new people introducing themselves all the time. As new generations grow up and are handed the Cosmere in the same way that mine was handed Lord of the Rings, you'll have a new teenager or adult who reads the books for the first time, and because the Stormlight Archive books are gigantic, we'll get someone who just has to find someone to talk about what they are reading to someone, about Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, and yes, Moash. There's a big enough following and community, that while it will fade after Brandon passes away and no new books are released (assuming we don't find a trunk with 200 Secret-Secret Projects in his closet), there will still be new readers who pick up a book from a library, friend, sibling, uncle, mother's bookshelf and discover the Cosmere (possibly after the leatherbound is wrenched from their hands and the loaner copy is thrust in to replace it). The Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time still have active fan sites decades after the passing of Tolkien and Jordan, and given the size of 17th Shard, I expect this site will one day have a changing of the guard. That is assuming Chaos and the others want their legacy to live on after they get old enough that they have to consider if they are able to manage it. So buckle down, and get used to it. New readers who complain about Moash will be coming here long after you or I are done here at 17th Shard, one way or another, just like people who ask what Tom Bombadil is, or why eagles couldn't have just carried Frodo and friends to Mount Doom (no one get started, this isn't the place, this is just to prove a point). Just smile and move on unless you feel like there's something worth discussing and elaborating on - just like with the "who would win" threads that pop up every few months to a year. Moash hate, at least for readers just getting through the first half of SA, will outlive you.

For lack of a better term, perhaps the potential squire has to feel like they belong in the same group as the nuclear (as in nucleus) Radiant to be sufficiently Connected? If subconsciously they don't believe they really belong that might be as fundamental a barrier as Kaladin healing his slave brands. Lyn doesn't draw Stormlight while feeling like she doesn't belong and she may have felt like she had ulterior motives like breaking feminine Vorin roles, getting to fly, and maybe even dating Stormblessed (as we see actually happens). Skar doesn't draw Stormlight while he also doesn't feel like he belongs - until he comes to the conclusion that he would be at peace remaining in Bridge Four even if only as a facilitator helping the others fly. Dabbid is tricky without his viewpoint in front of me, but Rlain definitely felt ostracized and a bit of a mascot for Bridge Four - even if he felt that Kaladin was a good man and at least tried to listen while the rest patted themselves on the backs for being inclusive. Full Cosmere spoilers: Invitations, acceptance of those Invitations, and the way people view relationships is a fundamental aspect of how power enters the soul. Basically a potential squire needs to be extended an explicit or implicit invitation and they have to accept - really accept, to have Light flood their soul. This probably should go in a different thread... but it really needs to go with the above paragraph. If people want to discuss it I'll spin up a new thread. Idea for a potential climax to Moash's character arc.

Uh... people who talk to birds. Feruchemy or parrots and macaws... We also have that Nicki Savage story with KeSun who purportedly can turn into birds. Could "legit" be from one of Jak's stories that we never read since Wayne and his ma got all of Jak's stories from the broadsheet. Larger Cosmere Spoilers, especially TotES

I agree with @Returned, I'm not sure if it even needs nerfing. The Bands of Mourning exist at all, we saw a hacked Elantrian in TLM, a nuke big enough to wipe out at least a 100 mile radius was deployed against Elendel, and Duralumin allowed Wayne to outrun electrons. Insanely powerful stuff is going on, not just F-Steel. They have specific applications that can make them incredibly useful but a Steelrunner needs to be at the right time, in the right place, with the right information, with the right storages to make a difference. Not only are we assuming sufficient storage for our stunts, but we're assuming a sufficiently disciplined Ferring. Wax and Wayne are in the habit of storing whenever possible because doing so saved their lives, but even Sazed was running into situations when he just hadn't bothered to store enough attribute (I think weight was one he only stored incidentally) and he was really wishing he had been better prepared. Emphasize the hassle and opportunity cost of storing Speed and explore the scenarios where huge bursts of speed aren't the optimal solution and we can go from there. If being able to run at Mach 1 for 5 seconds meant that you could never go out for sports for months, rarely hang out normally with friends and have regular normal conversations, or spending hour after hour moving through life as if a bug through amber? For many, that cost would be too high. Sure, speedsters can be busted, but they aren't the end all solution to everything, otherwise the Justice League wouldn't need anyone other than the Flash. Steelrunners are a severely nerfed version of the Flash anyway, since as Brandon puts it, limitations are more interesting than powers. Steelrunners have plenty of drawbacks, notably access to F-Steel did not save Tyndwyl or Idashwy. That said... we might get more viewpoints like Wax where trying to take down a speedster might be a more interesting challenge than the protagonist being a Steelrunner. Could be false advertising. They print Jak's stuff and ads for talking tools, so I doubt the newspapers fact check all that much. A company claiming Bendalloy or Speed as a cost lets them charge a premium when they could have an alternative business practice or machinery doing the job - like what we see with people speculating how the Vanishers were stealing cargo with Sliders or Steelrunners which Wax shot down pretty readily. This also obscures business secrets with misdirection. We have fast food and speedy message delivery without the Metallic Arts, so maybe we're seeing people par-cook or freeze meals, or maybe the invention of the radio allowing for long-distance communication before it hits the general public. I wouldn't take the broadsheets as too reliable unless specifically confirmed by Brandon as factual.

Yeah... there's a bit of a distinction between fighting someone with a Shardblade and a full Shardbearer. The design space for "resists a Shardblade" is waaay different from "resists Shardbearers". We see Dalinar and Adolin throw in punches when enemies try to get close to get within the effective range of a Shardblade and they knock around armored opponents like rag dolls. Adolin threw Kaladin, what, 10 feet in the air when sparring? It would take some adjustment, but a Shardbearer with proper support can handle aluminum plated soldiers just fine. That said, there's a lot that can happen during that adjustment period. I assume aluminum armor will deform as if had been hit by a typical supernaturally sharp greatsword and will slow down or possibly bind the Shardblade as the soldier dies and falls limp. This is a different failure mode from Halfshards and Shardplate that block then shatter. Many Shardbearers don't swing with their full strength because typically they simply need to keep the blade moving as it slices through armor and flesh like water, and something that only partially resists will introduce an element of surprise that the side expecting it can capitalize on. Again this can be adapted to, but it will slow a Shardbearer with Blade down. They can't just swing at neck height and take out a whole line of soldiers. For partial injuries, a Shardblade is slightly worse than conventional weapons for causing casualties as normal wounds can cause the enemy to bleed out, whereas a Shardblade may just leave dead limbs. So... it helps, and if/when aluminum equipment is first invented and introduced we may see a few more captured Shards. For a fully aluminum equipped army it reduces someone with only the Blade to someone with just a slightly better sword (assuming weapons can be similarly reinforced). Aluminum-plated soldiers will slightly slow down someone in Plate but still fall like autumn leaves. A Shardbearer using a Shardhammer might not even notice the material change. For that matter, the corrosion-resistant properties of aluminum may see aluminum-plated equipment in use not primarily for Shardbearers, but simply because of the abnormally high humidity of Roshar. It makes sense that they use spearmen equipped with leather and wood with only a tiny fraction of steel in the spearhead as their main soldier force compared to full steel armor. Depends on where they are with metallurgy and Soulcasting production.

I don't have the time to dig into this right now, but the topics you want on the Coppermind are the Shattered Plains, Natanatan, and for kicks the Roshar map. First, the Shattered Plains are located to the southeast on the continent of Roshar. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any water feature near the Shattered Plains, so it seems unlikely that Taln died there (which isn't to say that he wasn't over in the Southeast earlier in the Final Desolation). There's interesting factors here. The Shattered Plains are part of one of the old SIlver Kingdom Natanatan. The capital, Stormseat, was destroyed during the Final Desolation, which was the last battle with the Heralds before Taln was left in Braise. When Kaladin flies over the Shattered Plains in a dream following the Highstorm, from an aerial view it looks as if the Shattered Plains were hit by a giant impact in the center creating a symmetrical shattering pattern - in fact this is key to how Shallan charts the Shattered Plains using the principle of cymatics and correctly identifies the Oathgate they use to transport to Urithiru in WoR because the circular platform defied the pattern. So... the Heralds were likely around when the Shattered Plains were formed, and the Oathgates allow the Heralds to move quickly to combat enemy forces, but it's unlikely that Taln died in the process of creating the Shattered Plains for the simple reason that they are southeast, not north. Now as for why the Oathgate at the Shattered Plains was still active despite others being deactivated, perhaps they assumed the Oathgate had been destroyed. Perhaps the Oathgate had been rendered unusable and the spren that comprise it slowly reformed (that one's pure speculation, but living spren fabrials like Shard Plate reform, so perhaps they were slowly regenerated with each passing Highstorm).

So... hate to burst anyone's bubble but... Brandon just doesn't know horses - at least during the beginning of Writing Excuses and writing WoT. Robert Jordan loved horses and put them everywhere and when Brandon took up the reins... they mysteriously became less prevalent. Kaladin not knowing much about horses is one of Brandon's classic ways of getting around this - by having the POV not know squat either. We have two main named horses in Gallant and Sureblood... and Brandon trimmed the herd to simplify things. I'm sure there are WoBs and I know there are Writing Excuses episodes where he talks about this, but there's the writerly reason - he just didn't want the horses and he gets away with it by making them magical with near human intellect. It's almost certainly for writerly reasons that he has them... but doesn't really.

Hmm... I think this ties back to Kaladin and Vasher's discussion about killing a Cognitive Shadow as well as Kalak's letter in the epigraphs. The nature of a Cognitive Shadow is that they are Investiture that has an imprint of a soul that persists after the original person dies. Notably Vasher classifies himself as a Type II Invested Entity, differentiating himself from something like Syl, who he calls a Type I entity. I suspect that the process of imprinting a soul into the Investiture Connects that Investiture to the Beyond in some manner. The soul knows it needs to go beyond, even if it's an imprinted copy of the original soul, so something needs to provide a sufficient tie to the other realms to prevent the soul from passing. This can either be done by a sufficiently strong tie that anchors them to the PR, CR, and SR, or it can be done by active resistance and burning Investiture. So... here's my take. Returned are a bit different than most because they are granted power without ties to Endowment - an aspect of the nature of Endowment giving away power. Because of this, they don't have ties to Endowment and can leave Nalthis freely, but they also are not sustained by Endowment either and will quickly die even locally - unless they can consume Investiture to actively resist the pull of the Beyond. Type I entities like spren and seons do not have to resist the pull the Pull to the Beyond, but are still Connected to their native planet. Both naturally and natively form Connections to the Physical Realm and entities in the Physical Realm with nature spren temporarily manifesting in the PR with even Windspren able to create the force of Adhesion (assuming all those pranking Windspren weren't just Honorspren). While Type I entities may not need sustenance, they are still Connected... so perhaps they are either Connected to a person or object (spren to human, seon to box like we see utilized by both Ghostbloods and Fjorden) and then the general Connection is disrupted by aluminum or something similar? That WoB about a Cognitive Shadow trying to leave a planet on a starship having their spiritual component ripped out... that implies a vacuum like what Navani did by blanking the prevalent Tones of Roshar isn't the solution or the problem for a CS leaving, as a spiritual component is still anchoring them. Interestingly, despite this being the case, Jezrien's soul was severed from the Oathpact and with no valid ties to the other realms his soul degraded into a normal soul and passed into the Beyond. Maybe Navani's experiment with vacuums didn't completely deafen the Tone of Roshar, rather it lessened it to the extent that her produced Anti-Tone allowed it to realign its tone. So... my guess is that Cognitive Shadows like Kelsier, the Heralds, and the Fused are so thoroughly Connected to their respective Shards (Preservation, Honor, and Odium) and this tie is what binds them to life. Heralds don't consume Investiture once incarnate, it's the Oathpact that sustains them (see WoB below). However this tie (perhaps with slight variations based on the nature of the Shard granting their Immortality) is also what keeps them restricted to their respective locales. Thus, it's not as simple as blanking or disrupting Connection, a CS needs an alternative tie to the Realms that is stronger than the pull to the Beyond (in fact, it's the severing of the tie to the PR that usually causes any normal soul to be pulled into the Beyond with souls with greater ties or power that persist longer naturally). Climb into an aluminum box or try to ride out in a gem stone, and their Connection to the Shard will be severed - along with their anchor to life. They need some way to either transfer the Connection that anchors them to something else (maybe we'll see something like the phylactery of a lich, though we've seen versions of this all over the place), or to find a way to reliably sustain themselves without that anchor forged by the power of a Shard. WoB from main thought:

Well first, you get a beaver. Then you get a pile of Hemalurgic spikes... Next you become a Soother... Alternately, see if the Invested parasites of First of the Sun can affect a greater ecology than birds. They Sak seems to be able to form Connections with a target even under the shielding of Kokerlii. Can't think of much for direct confrontation other than what has already been said. F-Pewter would help with posturing and might even make a grizzly stand down, but not likely to make it turn on its handler.

Under normal circumstances circumstances, yes. However Ruin meant to corrupt Spook and turn him into an Inquisitor - even the cloth covered glasses started to resemble an Inquisitors' eye spikes. Ruin was the one who provided the Intent, the placement of the donor getting stabbed, and the precise and valid placement in Spook's body to grant him the power. Ruin proceeded to use the foothold forcibly placed in Spook's soul to try to further subvert him and destroy Urteau by appearing as Kelsier. Ruin orchestrated it all.

Well reasoned and I appreciate the depth of thought. I'll also add that since Harmony's agents will be slowly producing Atium and presumably Lerasium to keep Marsh alive for a while longer this means that they will be able to produce functional powers at a faster rate than creating a full Mistborn every X decades - assuming they wanted to. Minimizing the possibility for enemy agents to identify and backtrack production to the source is easier if the apparent new abilities given individually here or there could be explained by Ettmetal tech like the Allomantic grenades... rather than someone obviously with the full powers of a Mistborn. If the greater Cosmere organizations learn about Lerasium and its potential to give anyone powers... that's a really good reason for Harmony's agents to obscure all signs of Lerasium being produced, transported, or utilized.

@Treamayne and @alder24, I'll answer you both without fiddling with quotes because I'm on mobile right now. Treamayne makes a good point, it could be F-Gold, but there's something more going on. The Cycle stopped healing after a shot to the head, then started back up. In Marasi's after action report to Wax, Wax said that should be impossible , and I'm adding if F-Gold is the only source of healing. Interestingly just after a Q&A board question most of us looked at and weighed in asking if Inquisitors are Cognitive Shadows, we concluded that they are probably not - but I think this Cycle might have been made one after death. I don't think we have any information on Autonomy Cognitive Shadows, but I think it's time you start looking. I've been thinking about this ever since the Set Faceless Immortal told Edwarn that he would be permitted to serve elsewhere in the Set - and proceeded to blow both of them up. Now I'm getting more hypothetical, but maybe Autonomy figured out how to condense and automate what Kelsier did to staple himself back into his body using Hemalurgy - basically embedding a spike that is setup to capture and transform the soul when the bearer dies and then Hemalurgically reconnect the new Cognitive Shadow to the body. Perhaps some aspect of their new nature let's them reshape their body or heal - (greater cosmere spoiler)

To the OP's question, I'll point out the Hemalurgic spike that Harmony did provide that Wax did utilize. Trellium. The spike which allowed Wax to Connect with Telsin, allowing Wax the detective to locate and track the group that had been obscured from Harmony's sight. It gave Wax a way to get into the mind of his opposition and with that knowledge outplay his sister and ultimately identify the bomb launched at Elendel. It enabled Wax in ways that Harmony himself was restricted, and provided sorely needed intel after 6 years of chasing shadows. Honestly, that's better than any single spike that I could think to give Wax the detective and ultimately proved enough. The Hemalurgic power has to come from somewhere, and odds are the best sources for Hemalurgic power were going to be trying to oppose Wax, Wayne, and Marasi - as ultimately was the case. Some powers may simply not have been available anyway, since I believe Bleeder killed the last known Steelrunner. I will note that they had easy access to F-Pewter at the start too, which could have given Wayne a leg up at beating down Getruda, but they worked out their problems anyway.

Inquisitors are most likely not Cognitive Shadows. Hemalurgy distorts the body and rearranges the organs to accommodate the spikes, but in a weird way it is survivable. Brandon has said when creating a koloss the transformation is fast. Perhaps the Hemalurgic transformation is fast enough that pounding a spike through someone's head is incredibly painful not just because of well, spike in face, but also due to the body's organs moving and warping to accommodate the new metal. Oh and the piece of soul stapled to your Spiritweb. Edit: It's worth noting that according to the Coppermind, removing an Inquisitor's spikes inverts the transformation. For key locations this process is what kills them.

I did a bit of poking around, and yes, there is such a thing as aluminized steel. It takes a bit of work to prep the steel to make sure there are no contaminants or corrosion, but it's used in a lot of places, from furnaces, baking sheets, and in a lot of industrial products. One type uses an aluminum-silicon alloy as the coating and it's very hardy, the other uses pure aluminum, and the process is known as "hot-dipping". Now granted the Aluminum coating can have issues due to the different coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE). All materials have a rate of thermal expansion and many of them can vary dramatically. A good example of this is the analog thermostat, which uses the expansion properties of two metals strips welded or riveted together to track temperature. The bi-metal strip (often steel and brass or steel and copper) bends as the ambient temperature changes and this is how analog thermostats operated. Aluminum has a much higher CTE than steel (internet gave me various answers between 2 and 3 times higher) and so the aluminum will expand and possibly peel away depending on how well the steel was prepared prior to hot-dipping. Hot-welding aluminum and steel is very hard, if not impossible. The viability of aluminized steel armor depends on how advanced Roshar's metallurgy is, as I'm iffy on how thick of an aluminum coating can be made without running into issues with thermal expansion properties. It's used in a lot of applications, but I haven't heard of body armor. So... it depends. Having Hoid show up at Alethkar with a chull cart full of aluminum plates is just the kind of thing for Roshar to get reaaally interested in the properties of Aluminum. Alternately, Hoid could just tell Jasnah to make a bunch while visiting Navani or Dalinar. If it can be made in bulk, then it can be outfitted on the regular troops. We're not just worried about Shardbearers in this war, we'll have to see how it fairs against Regals, Fused, and other Invested arts. If aluminum disrupts Stormform lightning, then at least they can't just fry your platoon at long range. In fact, simple protection from ranged Invested attacks can at least get them close enough to get hit by a sword or spear. Edit: did a bit more poking around and thought about it longer since I was confused how aluminized steel could be used for high temperature applications like baking or car exhausts despite the CTE disparity. I think I figured it out: by dipping cold steel into molten aluminum it will cause the aluminum to rapidly cool. By having the initial temperature of the aluminum be so much higher than the steel, once coated it will essentially shrink wrap itself around the steel as it cools to room temperature which will put the aluminum coating under tension. As temperature rises, the tension reduces as the aluminum expands, but it takes until it gets pretty close to the melting point of aluminum before it will start expanding beyond the original cold dimensions of the original steel. It's really clever, and I think this means that you can let the aluminized steel cool before dipping it again to add additional coatings. This concept is what Mark Rober demonstrated in this 97 second video to protect his ice cream except the lid was sized to the container when it was 1000-1100 F (600 C) hotter than the base. That said, hot dipping was invented IRL in 1836, so who knows if Roshar will figure it out in a timely manner.

I think it's worth looking at this from multiple perspectives, and greenhouses aren't a bad place to look. There's quite a few non-trivial considerations that would complicate them as a stable food source though. I'm not an expert, but I once helped maintain a greenhouse and read through the spec sheets. First it's worth understanding what a greenhouse is designed to do. Greenhouses were made to regulate the internal temperature and humidity to create an artificial climate to allow crops to grow unsuited for the local environment. The issue isn't that the temperature or humidity is unsuitable for the local plants, it's the available sunlight. Yes, Mist won't enter buildings, but it's not just the roof of a greenhouse that's made out of transparent material, it's also the sun-facing walls too. The angle of the sun with respect to the mists means that the greenhouse gets the most light when the sun is directly overhead and at a much lower rate compared to a greenhouse not built in the Mists. I don't think this would be much more beneficial than if they were to build giant elevated terraced gardens. You also have to understand that when to create an enclosed environment like that, you replace one kind of work for another. Clearing ash from plantation fields is substituted with watering plants sheltered from precipitation. Damage from ash accumulating on the roof can be mitigated by engineering the pitch of the roof so that ash will slide off instead of accumulating (greenhouses in snowy climates require snow load calculations and the pitch of the roof is designed to compensate). By trapping the air in the greenhouse, you will need systems in place to regulate the temperatures - as greenhouses will get much warmer compared to the outdoors. There's a whole industry and science to properly regulating a greenhouse environment to maintain good temperatures, proper humidity, reduction of algae growth, and on and on - I just did troubleshooting for the controller and cleaned the evaporative cooler. We had systems to regulate all that, but you're going to need a lot of incredibly smart people to build, design, and maintain greenhouses large enough to support the entire Final Empire. It's definitely not as simple as slapping giant panes of glass into the shape of a house. I wont say yet that it's impossible, but it would take a tremendous amount of work. Irrigation would have gotten much harder as the canals choked with ash and failed, and even if you were to build the greenhouses over the canal, it doesn't protect the source waters. The rest of this is really vague internet calculations so expect a lot of error. Several sources on the internet say that about 200 square feet of land is needed to sustain a person for regular seasonal gardening with normal IRL crops - not the modified stunted stuff they had in the Final empire. I'll just leave that number alone since I have no idea how much yield is affected The current world record largest greenhouse is the Eden Project in the U.K., which is 180' tall, and has 273,000 sq ft of floor space. So... one of those can support a bit less than 1500 people. Beyond that, the Eden Project is a dome shape, and I suspect it addresses snow falling on the roof simply by the roof being hot enough to melt it off which won't work with ash. You would need a huge number of these to support the Final Empire in the last days leading up to the Catacendre. I looked at it for a while and I don't think it's actually sustainable at the scale they would need, even if the Mists truly were the only concern and they didn't have to worry about rampaging Koloss, homicidal Inquisitors, accelerated ash accumulation, Ashmount eruptions causing earthquakes, or Ruin literally trying to kill them all. That large of a greenhouse would absolutely need to be reinforced with steel or something similar, making it child's play for a Inquisitor to destroy them all. At any rate, welcome to the Shard! We think about stuff a lot.

Interesting. It puts the final epigraph of HoA into an interesting perspective. TSM musings and spoilers: Another notable influxes of Investiture into a developing child I can think of are the infant or adolescent Returned of Hallendren - the Godkings and Hopefinder. Both Susebron and Hopefinder are remarkably keen and well adjusted considering their isolation from birth without even the residual memories of a past life to subconsciously inform them. Add in how the yoki-hijo of Komashi are identified and trained from birth setting them apart from the rest of their people... I think it's definitely worth paying attention to children exposed to Invenstiture as they develop. Granted there is the obvious note that people who have their literal entire lives to develop and make connection regarding Investiture have a leg up over those who arrive late in life (like how sometimes multilingual children develop language skills much more readily than many adult learners), but it may not account for all of this.