Duxredux

Best for... what? Ask the man with the home shattered by the Everstorm and he'll appreciate a Stoneward. Ask the starving town and they'll appreciate Soulcast grain. Ask the general badly in need of reconnaissance and he'll appreciate someone who can fly. Ask the mother of the child gored by a white spine and no power is more important than Progression. When a Thunderclast is knocking down your city wall, you'll be grateful when the Dustbringer takes it down with powers carefully mastered so they don't also destroy your home. It's like asking which is more important, surgeons, solders, builders, teachers, or farmers. All of them are needed... but some definitely get more recognition and higher salaries. Because of the Bondsmith is likely to get really high recognition, but Urithiru and the Silver Kingdoms probably wouldn't operate nearly as well without all the Orders. I wonder if it will be addressed what happens when the Skybreakers and Willshapers are external to the Coalition. I've been ninja'd! @Trusk'our Me. I would get serious vertigo and nauseous in small aircraft. I prefer to be a different variety of airsick lowlander, thank you.

Agreed, I've seen similar concepts with the idea that tools don't have morality where sure, a hammer can be used for good and bad, but it's really hard to find a purely morally positive use for tools like thumbscrews or the rack. The effect of what those torture implements do to the user and target are troubling at best - and I can see Hemalurgy fitting the same category. I fully believe that the existence of certain inventions, and the minds that devised them, have made the world a worse place. The thing is, I'm not sure the policies necessary to prohibit or eliminate such minds and inventions aren't similarly damaging. There's not an easy answer. I... think I can't absolutely prohibit the use of Hemalurgy, because there are scenarios where having someone with the enhancements available only through Hemalurgy could have incredibly far-reaching effects. I think the vast majority of people would praise Wax and Wayne for spiking themselves at the end of TLM to save two cities - but really wish the Set hadn't created the spikes in the first place or deployed a bomb possibly unintentionally resorting to MAD (mutually assured destruction). The way I look at this is very similar to how Dalinar views the Codes in WoK I think. He tries so hard to live the Codes hoping that others will do the same and in the end concludes that the Codes only works with a people who have a minimum threshold of morality and proceeds to force the Highprinces into compliance. Because of the realities of a world with so many terrible possibilites, I can't fully reject the possible necessity of Hemalurgy - even though the existence and use of Hemalurgy often can create those terrible possibilities. A similar analogy is the differences between regular subsonic flight and supersonic flight. If anyone wants to do a random Wikipedia dive, the SR-71 Blackbird is a marvel of engineering and breaks so many rules of conventional subsonic aerodynamics. It has corrugated wing surfaces, it doesn't have an airfoil shape, and you can't wash the hull with regular tap water - all because if had a Cessna's design the wings would melt or tear off from the drag. It's okay if the rules change based on the changes to the thresholds and conditions of the environment... to a point, that's not a blanket statement. So... it may be the wrong move, but I'm not sure if I could fault Scadrial for maintaining and developing Hemalurgy (hopefully though as moral practices as possible) even though it's likely to escalate the conflict when Autonomy already almost got them nuked when presumably most of the planet is unaware and nonaggressive to other planets. Scadrial has not been getting warning shots here. (greater Cosmere spoilers)

Sorry, I mostly have snarky answers right now. Best one I can think that was in the Mistborn series would be Hoid. I think that beggar/coachman has a good chance to convince say a Cryptic to bond with him. After that, Felt or Demoux as both are actually on Roshar and geographic proximity increases their chances waaay above anyone still on Scadrial - and as other's have noted it's a bit tricky for the known worldhoppers found in the Kandra. Yup, @alder24and I thought similarly, though you neglected Demoux. After after that... Codenames are Stupid, Moonlight, or Dean. Basically I'm weighting most heavily on probility of visiting Roshar above any other fitness since it doesn't matter how well you could fit a company in New York if you live on Mars. A spren won't bond anyone they never meet.

Internet nuance is tricky. The core concept is less about the corpse and more that there should be an identifiable minimum retrievable Breath count to Awaken a Type III object based on the object's adjacency to life. By isolating other factors the idea is that once you have found that retrievable Breath minimum for whatever person shaped Awakenable object then you can start counting the cost for getting that general format and then adjusting it on all of the other sliding scales like material durability and Command complexity. If you can improve Breath utilization efficiency by even 4%, that adds up at even at the 4th Heightening. I'm assuming that all of the other optimizations that @Tamriel Wolfsbaine is listing off like scar placement, hair and blood as focuses, etc. are already in use. For that matter, even just getting a Breath utilization comparison between linen, leather, wool, silk, human hair, etc. for otherwise identical squares of cloth could be quite useful. Knowing that linen requires X% more or less Breaths compared to leather is quite useful when Breath is the limited Invested resource.

Hm... the OP original idea is to see how effectively you can make Awakened minions from Type III Awakened objects? I think there's a few sliding scales to consider. Sure, most probably have this memorized but I'll throw out the Laws regarding Awakening out anyway. The Law of Biochromatic Parallelism and The Law of Comparability indicate that the closer a host is a living shape and form the easier it is to Awaken and that once Awakened they perform essentially the same function regardless of the amount of Breaths used. Awakening requires Breath, a valid Command, visualization, and color. First sliding scale is adjacency to life and retrievability of Breath. At one end of the scale is a fresh corpse ready to be made Lifeless with a single Breath, at the other is objects like rope that do not have the shape of life and can take on the order of hundreds of Breaths to Awaken. Now there should be an optimum where if you were to take a corpse and slowly modify it to no longer resemble life that eventually there would be a sweet spot where a minimal number of Breaths are used to Awaken the object and still have them be retrievable - assuming all other optimizations like using the Awakener's hair as a focus are already in use. Second sliding scale is cost and durability. At one end of the scale is one Breath Lifeless with many of the same failure points as the original deceased, at the other end is Nightblood who chips Honorblades. Basically, life can be fragile and the more steps removed from life the more flexibility you have to reduce failure points. A skeleton can be Awakened as a Lifeless and no longer has to worry about blood loss and severed muscles - but the bones still have to be fixed in place and cost more to Awaken. Awakened cloth can be much stronger than Lifeless muscle as well, so budget Lifeless isn't always better. The optimum is dependent on the expected opposing force. You'll prepare differently if you expect to fight regular soldiers, fliers, swords, or guns, etc. Life means organic and organic means carbon-based so in many cases post-Awakening fireproofing treatment seems prudent. Retrievability means nothing if the enemy captures the fallen Awakened clothing scraps or can fully destroy them and their Breaths. Third sliding scale is Command complexity. This next is hypothetical and unconfirmed but I think it makes sense. The concept is that Breath used to Awaken has two methods to remember and execute Commands - utilizing the mind of the deceased as is the case of the Lifeless, or the Investiture of the Breath itself gaining a small measure of autonomous intelligence. The more complex the Command and the closer to life the object has to behavior, I would guess the more Breaths are required when not using a deceased brain. Hence I would guess "Grab when Thrown" to need less Breaths than "Fight for me as if you were me". So due to the Law of Comparability, more Breath doesn't necessarily mean more strength, but I would guess more complex requires more Breath. Fourth sliding scale is quantity and quality. No surprises here, Breaths are a finite resource and making the call between 5 heavily enhanced Awakened fighters and 20 budget Awakened fighters is always a consideration - particularly depending on the average retrievability of the Breaths of fallen fighters. Fifth parameter is resource availability. If you only have five sets of armor and no corpses, then you might as well make 5 heavily enhanced fabric fighters even though in other circumstances a Lifeless army of 100 could be more effective. I think you could make some pretty powerful soldiers this way and still have the majority of your Breaths be retrievable, but it would need much firmer numbers than what we have to know how effective this would be compared to other options for an Awakener. If your goal is to survive a major war and hopefully get back home with most of your 5th or 6th Heightening to live out your days indefinitely, then figuring out how to do it effectively without Lifeless is a worthwhile venture.

Uh... Nnnnno. Nope. I don't think I can call The Lord Ruler the first known Flounder with a straight face, and even if I were to succeed, I would get really confused looks. Especially when I talk about how incredibly powerful Flounders are. I mean, imagine the Coppermind article: I

Yay practical experience! Bad example then, I should have used the one about how American football players get really bad head injuries because they over trust their protective equipment. Looking back, I forgot to state the key idea that went with that in that wearing brass knuckles might let someone (particularly someone who didn't know how much punching something while wearing a set hurts) psychologically punch harder than someone with bare knuckles and no other reinforcement. Shardbearers are trained to trust in the protective effects of Shardplate by repeatedly diving off of buildings and landing on their head, and so they can commit themselves to actions that anyone sane (or unconditioned to override this element of self-preservation) would balk at without protection.

Well... I think the semantics here is that the strength of Dalinar's motions is the UI input that determines the output of the Shardplate - but Dalinar doesn't actually affect the maximum output of his Shardplate any more than how strongly you press the gas pedal affects the top speed of a car. As a user interface, Shardplate is an amplifier in that it lets you do things that you can't normally do while using the same movements you usually do - it's a really intuitive system that is hideously complicated IRL (false positives on motion detection for full-body strength assist - yikes). Yes, Plate amplifies, but I think the idea is that if you had Dalinar and Adolin arm wrestle, no matter who won that round it would be an effective tie for the Plate rematch. In a single sentence, I think Plate amplifies to a maximum at which point performance plateaus. I probably should have clarified the original post earlier - when we ask "is Shardplate additive" you wanted to know if it adds strength on top of existing strength and ignoring the obvious benefits of handing someone full Plate? I still don't think so, but... you can get away with more because it's flat out some of the most durable materials we know. It would help by default in same way that wearing brass knuckles lets you punch harder because you are hitting with a harder material, you have more mass to use, and you are less likely to break you knuckles in the process even without strength enhancement.

I don't think it would catch on, but I kind of like Fluxburner. Flux is a variety of compounds that are often used when welding metal together (even two different metals), and flux also means something constantly changing. The word also has slant similarities to Feruchemist, Mistborn, and Compounder and I think hints at all of them. The catch is that flux isn't actually metal and is an artificial additive to make the weld go easier... much like how a full Feruchemist + Mistborn just isn't possible naturally I suppose. That or the bland descriptive "Full Compounder". We've started saying Full Feruchemist as we now use Feruchemist for anyone with Feruchemical abilities and to distinguish from Ferrings. Right now, Compounding has its own article on Coppermind and specifies using Allomancy to enhance Feruchemy. I think people intuitively know what a Gold Compounder or Steel Compounder does, so Full Compounder feels like it would be similarly intuitive, but almost by definition the person who thought of the name shouldn't be used to determine if it's intuitive or not.

Just a reminder @robardin and @Zrogezrg, this is the Mistborn forum, not General Cosmere. Please edit your posts and place non-Scadrian topics in spoilers.

So... for strength and speed enhancement I'm juggling this back and forth trying to remember old physics lessons and I'm leaning towards that Plate isn't significantly additive... or more appropriately that most people aren't significantly additive to Plate. Dalinar and Adolin talk about the equalizing effect of Plate where Adolin in his prime is at equivalent strength to his 50+ year old father when equipped as Shardbearers. Look at it this way: Shardplate moves and supports it's own mass. When a Shardbearer easily swings a massive Shardhammer onto their shoulder, their muscles are not doing any of the work to support the Shardhammer itself, the only work they do is moving their body into that stance. In order to apply more force than the Shardplate, you personally have to be able to accelerate the enormous mass of the Plate itself beyond where the Plate is providing assistance starting where the high resistive forces have defined the maximum limits of Plate. Basically for you to add any helpful force you'd have to already be strong enough to move around in unpowered Plate. I'd need someone who has done physics more recently than a decade ago to tell me if the force assistance compensates for the added mass for someone strong enough to walk around in unpowered Plate, but my knee jerk response is that it won't help, and that basically it's not additive and flat out worse than not wearing it all for force added. Here's an example: a Wall Street Journal documentary on the self-propelled bicycle world record of 184 mph (296 kph) set by Denise Mueller-Korenek. To be clear, she was not unassisted, she had an extremely fast specialized car driving directly in front that she was drafting behind using it as a wind break - but she was able to otherwise maintain 184 mph without fighting air resistance. From a Steelrunner wearing Plate perspective, you're asking if the cyclist were to pedal even faster and try to push the car to go even faster - which is trying to accelerate the mass of car and a larger surface area at the extremely high resistive forces at play... and I just don't think it's going to help. The one caveat is that Plate is presumably more heat resistive than a Steelrunner, so if you have that much power to spend, then maybe you can go faster at an exorbitantly expensive cost with other magics to assist you. That said, Plate is an amplifier in that it takes it's cues for how fast to move, how hard to hit from the Shardbearer, so a Shardbearer will get tired eventually, depending on the damage possible before the Plate itself runs low for power-assist. Personal enhancement of this variety, be it a Blessing of Potency, A-Pewter, or Stormlight itself that enhances stamina will mitigate that. As for other powers, if it's not personally your own Plate gained via the Nahel Bond through Oaths, don't count on it working through Plate - and no idea even if it is your own Plate. Szeth as the Assassin in White never kept dead Plate as it would have interfered with his Surgebinding and that's at least in the same Honor/Cultivation magic family. In the second time we see the Starfalls vision, the Radiant Dalinar replaces apparently had to dismiss her armor so that the accompanying 4th+ Ideal Windrunner could Lash her, so even for trusted allies this interference remains. No idea the extent of interference for your own personally bonded Plate spren, maybe Hoid will answer this for us some day.

I'm a bit late, but this could just be TenSoon milking the Contract to get aged meat at every opportunity as the dietary change is one of his main motivators for leaving the Homeland as you so nicely found and quoted in your first post. It's basically the only form of payment he gets to keep, since the Atium that purchased his Contract just goes to the Trustwarren and so he'll ask for meat whether or not he really needs it. In that respect he reminds me of Lord Admiral Delius from White Sand as that's one of his only ways to inconvenience his hated masters. Besides that, this habit of consuming a large variety of animals and memorizing organ and muscle patterns likely contributes to TenSoon being one of the best at changing and adapting his forms on the fly. A Kandra that wants to be similarly fast should preferentially eat meat and practice at every meal. Mushrooms and algae won't help in that department. I think a Kandra could gain mass from any range of animal diets, particularly if they've adapted their digestive system to match the respective animal as the cow is remarkably good at converting grass and other scrubby plants into personal muscle mass with its four stomachs. Now if you want quick mass gain, then yes, the stiff soup of denaturing proteins that is carrion is probably the easiest way to get the necessary nutrients in approximately the right proportions into an easily and swiftly digestible format for a Mistwraith's standard digestive system. If speed is the need, don't bother with an ungulate's digestive system and chew the same wad of grass three or four times to extract maxiumum nutrition, particularly if you have zero plans to turn into grass.

I agree with I think everything else, but we have seen advances in Hemalurgy post-Catacendre. Cadmium placement to steal Temporal Allomancy wasn't possible Era 1, but we saw a Bendalloy Hemalurgist. ReLuur had pewter used in an unknown Kandra Blessing. Kelsier got his soul stapled back to his body and somehow set things up in Southern Scadrial kicking off a technological Renaissance using concepts we certainly haven't had fully revealed to us, but Hemalurgy probably plays into it (though I guess it could be off world Invested Arts or tech, depending on who he chatted to before he got his body back and before the southerners froze). As I think about it, if the Inquisitors were the main scientists pursuing Hemalurgic advancement, and we know that at least some of their labs were in their own strongholds, then Ruin may have been subtly sabotaging their efforts and by extension TLR. In fact it begs the question of why Ati himself didn't introduce any new Hemalurgic constructs during HoA even after his existence as the main antagonist was revealed. Perhaps Inquisitors and Koloss are simply some of the simplest and most effective constructs? Maybe Ruin influenced their conception from the beginning? I'm nor sure.

Not a biologist or geneticist, but I think it's slightly more complicated than simply condensing Feruchemical power as they also have to breed out Allomancy and not just by phenotype (or observed trait). Despite hundreds of years of the Terris breeding program, there were no Ferrings, only Full Feruchemists - and the breeding was done by Skaa due to the Steel Ministry's mandates to eliminate the risk of a Twinborn conceived which was the whole point of the program in the first place. After the Catacendre, we had our first Ferrings, who obviously weren't all Twinborn. The combination of Allomantic and Feruchemical heritage breaks the Feruchemical gene into the component powers even if the offspring never has Allomantic powers, and here's the thing - I don't know if that aspect of sDNA is identical to IRL DNA and that you'll get a full Feruchemist if you just separate the two again or if the magic has more long term consequences since it doesn't actually 100% follow the same heritable pattern as DNA (see WoBs below). Magic may conflict and flat out have residual effects that regular nucleic acids just won't have and I have no idea how long that residual effect will persist since apparently the level of Metalborn percentages somehow stabilized means that naturally breeding out Allomancy as the population expands won't happen. As for this: Spook absolutely had children - and a lot of them. The premise of AoL is that the Vanishers were specifically targeting and collecting women descended from The Lord Mistborn. In a horrible way to think of it from Spooks perspective, they selectively targeted his great*9(+-1)granddaughters to be used as breeding stock.

I'm going to say that it depends. In Hoid's letters in the OB epigraphs it's revealed that Hoid was able to hide his presence from Harmony, though admittedly Harmony is the Shard least adjusted to his powers. Hoid also seemed to be able to hide himself from Rayse. That said, Hoid knowing a method to hide from a Shard is a far cry from saying Allomancy is the way he does it. Regardless, if a Duralumin-enhanced Coppercloud obscures the sight of a Shard, then it almost certainly does so in an area-of-effect. For a Shard that can see at a planetary level, having a dead zone pop up is all kinds of intriguing with the assumed epicenter the instigator with this discrepancy impossible to hide - at least if the dead zone is noticed. The attention of a Shard is limited, so hiding in this way seems possible but not infallible and shouldn't be done only to hide, but only to hide the specifics of what you are doing right at that very moment. It's inconclusive, but worth mentioning that in TLM Wayne was able to compress time so fast that Harmony either wasn't able to communicate with him or wasn't willing to expend the necessary resources to do so. From this I think it's possible to use Copper to hide from a Shard that isn't willing to commit too much attention and power into piercing a boosted Coppercloud, particularly for passive observation. As for emotional manipulation, Vin with a single Hemalurgic spike and no copper was able to resist Ruin's influence. Even a Shard like Ruin or Odium apparently has restrictions that prevent them from just taking over a human - the human has to be compromised already (multiple Hemalurgy) or they have to have given practically an open invitation for influence like Sadeas' army at the Battle of Thaylen City. Odium couldn't force or break Dalinar, not even when he couldn't hear the Stormfather anymore. I'd say no matter what Copper can reduce emotional manipulation, but I have no way of measuring how much power is needed to negate it - if total negation is even possible. It's worth asking - anyone notice if Wax can hear Harmony when he's wearing an spike and has his aluminum hat?

Very well written (not too surprising coming from an aspiring author) and I appreciate that this was posted on 17th Shard to be read and considered by consumers of Brandon's books, ebooks, and audiobooks, and likely people who buy other books (okay, maybe not, I have at least one friend who sold his book collection composed of "inferior literature" and his fiction collection is now just a small bookcase with Brandon's books. I personally have 7 book cases). Dragonsteel is it's own special entity as the vast majority of authors don't have a personal distribution system, so my question to anyone who has deeply researched the author situation: what is the best way to get money as directly to the author and indie author as possible when purchasing their works? In a funny twist of circumstance, just yesterday I remembered Brandon on Intentionally Blank talk about his favorite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, and recommending Going Postal as his personal favorite among Pratchett's extensive works, though in earlier years Brandon has praised The Truth (a satire interestingly about the invention of the printing press and newspaper). I'm was in the process of rereading Going Postal when I read this article. Let's just say that Pratchett is a satirical genius that pairs humor with incredible insights into the world in the way people think and operate. Going Postal is about a megacorporation that doesn't care about its employees opposed by the "hero", a conman pressed into governmental service with a parole officer that will club him if he gets too far out of line. I think it's well worth reading Going Postal in the context of this publishing industry war described in this article because sometimes a narrative gets the visceral point across in a different way than a historical retelling.

Well.. TSM spoilers Depends on when I'm living and where. Scadrial between the Catacendre and Era 2? Probably doesn't matter, I'll live a full life and be dead before anything world threatening happens to my people. On Roshar within the ten days before the contest of champions? That's a much different circumstance. Me personally, I'm not Invested enough or important enough for Hoid to take into consideration so I doubt I'd even have the opportunity. Now if the question is if Shallan, Dalinar, Jasnah, or Harmony should enlist in Hoid's cause? That's a much more nuanced question and it could be argued that he has set things up so he could try to recruit them if he so chose. Until then, I want to hear both sides of the argument, with the assumption that I will not get the whole picture from Hoid. For example talking to Baon and Galladon who are pretty down to earth (Demoux less so) and we know they are tracking Hoid. We just don't know enough about the bigger picture as seen by the world hoppers.

So... I think it's theoretically possible, considering acupuncture was developed IRL and seems to require a similar degree of precision. Granted Hemalurgy requires the right intent, so stepping on a sharp rock and realizing that you feeling better isn't going to happen in a vacuum, nor does acupuncture require (usually) lethal experimentation. I agree with @alder24, I don't think you need the specific Intent to harvest a portion of a Spiritweb and contain it in a piece of metal - any emotion or Intent that is destructive or ruinous in nature may be able to draw Ruin's power. Nightblood for one has an non-typical amount of Ruin's Investiture in it's composition and it wouldn't surprise me if whatever Shashara was feeling when she made something to DESTROY EVIL if it got that Intent across. That kind of Intent or emotion is certainly not limited to Scadrial. The trick is noticing if stabbing a second person with the same metal weapon and have them somehow survive rather killing them outright. I'd guess that harvesting an attribute like strength from iron weapons (think the Iron Age of antiquity) is more likely to happen incidentally and recognizeably than any of the power stealing metals - particularly if the victim develops weird Koloss-like distortions to their bodies. For example, the fundamental principles of Hemalurgy are not too far off from what the Raysium dagger did when harvesting Jezrien's soul. Brandon wouldn't call it Hemalurgy, but in-world scholars would argue with him. This would be potentially easier to stumble upon if Brandon would ever give a concrete answer to if other materials like gemstones can be used for Hemalurgy. Thus far, he's RAFO'd everything except metal, though in WoK Prime:

It's going to be a tradeoff. Feruchemy could heal faster, but that's because it has a built-in system to compress the Investiture to get a bigger effect at a less efficient rate. That's Feruchemy's thing, if you're willing to consume more attribute you can get to ludicrous levels, the limiting factor being safety with heat, weight, or speed as tapping at too high of a rate can be lethal. For example, Steel compounders can't run infinitely fast not because they can't compress the attribute that much but because they would burn up due to air resistance (and yeah, they can't run faster than light due to all object's constraints relating to FTL, because I know someone will mention it, but you get the idea). This probably isn't a limitation for stored health. Drop a Gold Compounder with internal metals and a Radiant who swallowed some spheres into the sun, and maybe the Gold Compounder could survive marginally longer considering it takes measurable time for Kaladin to heal a severed spine. Who knows, if Wayne had cashed out his fortune in gold and somehow had it on him, maybe he could have survived the biggest explosion known to Scadrial as a brand new Gold Compounder. Otherwise, in nearly every other respect, Radiant healing is good enough for most scenarios except for the extreme. Stormlight is literally part of the meteorological cycle and comes with every Highstorm and is waaay cheaper and more prevalent than gold. Most Radiants could run down the street in a lot of towns or cities and be able to scavenge Stormlight on the go... which is less of an option for gold. Raw Stormlight is just so much more power than is generally available to a Feruchemist that it would probably take weeks, months, or years for Wayne to store up an equivalent amount of Investiture that Kaladin carries in his sphere pouch to be recharged at the next Highstorm.

Whaaaaat, like Hoid's asides in TotES where he mentions those people who compulsively track tool material compositions if they seem metal? Or those people who are meteorologically inclined and were wondering how exactly the weather patterns operated on Lumar? Would Brandon do that to us, considering he knows exactly how we will react whenever he announces YASP (yet another secret project)? Regardless, if it is relevant, it's certainly not plot relevant, probably just a little easter egg. I can't think of any particular importance regarding the fact that balderdash is an anagram of Shardblade, and there's no way he could have such a little detail be important to the general audience. If it is important, it will be abundantly clear within the context of that book.

Well... if you want Shallan to go world hopping and you feel like you need Adolin out of the way, I don't think there's much reason that she would have to be the one to bump him off. He could be a random wartime casualty, a former Sadeas troop knifes him a back alley, or maybe a Ghostblood offs him and Shallan's brothers as a warning shot. There's dozens of ways to set up her leaving Roshar without her having to burn her bridges and her mental health in the process. I've listened to Brandon talk about how he doesn't really like how DID and mental health is often portrayed in media when he and Dan talked about Moon Knight on Intentionally Blank (I think they enjoyed it). Mental illness has historically been demonized with media portraying them as villains and murderers at a far, far greater frequency than is representative in life. He's already been skating around some shaky stereotypes when Radiant killed Ialai, but I think the distinction there is that Shallan herself had committed to kill Ialai, it wasn't an alter going off as a serial killer. It's also been revealed that her parents were really messed up, and she really was operating in self-preservation and what she did messed her up for most of life. If Brandon has arguably one of his least stable characters with a poorly represented mental health condition kill her really supportive husband who is trying to help her with her mental health challenges and is one of the more popular Stormlight characters... well that would just be the nail in the coffin for giving the DID community a representation that they would feel good about, doubly so if an alter does the deed. I don't think Brandon would do that.

I'm not much of a political theorist and I only have my high school government classes to inform me, but my biggest reservation with this is that there's nothing here that addresses or acknowledges why the Silver Kingdoms fell, why the system of governance established during the Heraldic epochs dissolved, or why the Recreance happened in the first place resulting in the abandonment of Urithiru and the Knights Radiant. I acknowledge that this reservation isn't very fair as we don't know too much political detail about that period of history, but I pretty much always have reservations about any new system that gets proposed until I know how it plans to succeed above what the last system provided or at least address the old shortcomings. I also recognize that you specify that this was meant as a system of governance only for Urithiru, but... no country or system of governance operates totally in isolation without external factors. How does this system work when an order is absent because their specific powers are essential for a mission? A war, or maybe a natural disaster that needs as many Edgedancers and Truthwatchers as possible? If the vast majority of the order fights for Odium like the Skybreakers? Splinter group in the Willshapers? How do you address political unrest when the native countries of various orders are in conflict? Currently we have at least 3 Radiants who are monarchs in their own right and have responsibilities to their nations, with ample room for a conflict of interests. Urithiru would basically be built out of foreigners if Dalinar hadn't conquered it, how does country loyalty play into it when the Oathgates prop open the door for conflict as we saw when Kharbranth betrayed Urithiru? Basically, it feels like a thought exercise in the same vein as an old hopefully inoffensive joke about stereotypes I heard: in a European utopia the British are the police, the French are the chefs, and the Germans are the engineers. In the European dystopia, the Germans are the police, the British are the chefs, and the French are the engineers. These are stereotypes, I don't mean to give offense, but it feels like a similar concept. Your proposed system feels like it's based off of stereotypes and broad assumptions of how people function and because it's bounded by oaths it looks like it has a built in system of checks and balances and may work in isolation, but it doesn't feel grounded in the cultural, economic, and military environment that is Roshar. Radiants come from a huge variety of cultures and languages and with implied loyalties, the world is in turmoil with the war waged at the level of Shards, and you'll need to address the Listener Radiants, the Fused, and the Enlightened Radiants who may not fit neatly into this political system. It's easier to assign the Radiants to wartime positions because those are logical applications of their Surges, less their ideology. By all means keep discussing, the political ideology can be enlightening, and we certainly want people thinking about how to improve the political climate of the world. Basically don't stop just because I say that I think it's more complicated than initially portrayed and more complicated than I know how to address.

@alder24, I'm just going to reply to your whole response in total. Incidentally I think in paragraphs not sentences and the context of earlier statements are meant to be shaped by later statements, so you won't have to reassert concepts that I actually agree with later on in my post (my greater Cosmere example I rather specifically use as a case that magical triage for healing is not universal). As I think about it, I'm not happy with "you don't store memories in percentages, you just store it and it's gone from your mind.", as that still doesn't explain to me what difference that makes. Now if there's simply a difference between physical, cognitive, and spiritual attribute storage methods, that I'm okay with. I'm not content with the "it's magic" explanation for as many of the things you're pushing into that envelope because it could very well matter the exact nature of how the Investiture is stored in the Metalmind. A situation that I don't think has come up yet in the books that I can think of but seems like an obvious scenario: What happens if a Metalmind is cut or corroded? Are the memories in a Coppermind stored in contiguous chunks (i.e. if you were to cut Sazed's bracers in half you're more likely to get complete books up until the break) or if it's fluid will you basically get random chunks of mostly meaningless data? Metalminds can be filled to a maximum capacity, is that capacity based on total Investiture or is it based on storage time like you can store 200 hours of attribute per 100 grams of metal, regardless of the percent you were storing each hour? It's probably the first, but if it's based on runtime then your Metalminds basically have the same issue as old hard drives that had to defragment. If Wax has only stored 10 seconds where he's storing 10% of his maximum weight while the majority of his storage is 30%, what happens if he taps 10% for longer than 10 seconds? This is more or less the Steelrunner example, you were discussing with @Trusk'our, but a look at the actual mechanics when in use. This is way less intuitive in use than you would think. The solution is of course to simply store at lower capacities, so it makes it a weird and not particularly difficult limitation to get around. If a Firesoul Ferring ends up in a normally lethal fire and stores heat to survive does this mean they can't tap that section of storage without risking catching everything around them on fire because they can't regulate the output below a threshold? Future Sentry Ferring chugs coffee to store Wakefulness. Based on WoBs, some of the jittery caffeine effects are retained on tapping. If they have 10 hours of regular sleep, and then the equivalent of 2 cups of coffee in stored Wakefulness, do they have control over which store they are tapping? Do they just tap until BAM jitters? Can they intentionally draw across multiple storages so that they basically average out the caffeine with the regular sleep? This is what I mean that there's ramifications for this limitation of Feruchemy that basically hasn't come up as far as I know. You see, I too read the books and WoBs along with the current mechanics as they are understood and this is what I see as some of the complications for what you propose when I think of use cases. Some of this like the WoB on caffeine I'm not how to reconcile with other models, but I don't think I've seen any Feruchemist include lower tap limit thresholds into any of their decision making or having to create a gradation of stores for utility. It's mostly store now, tap when you need it. Sure, I can't think of a time that a Feruchemist tried to do a lower tap, but then if you're a Feruchemist and you keep having to keep pace with Mistings, Mistborn, Inquisitors, and Koloss, you pretty much have to tap with high compression to survive the constant high power available to Allomancy and Hemalurgy.

Mm... not exactly, or at least there's room for generalization or adaptation from my reading. When a Bloodmaker stores health they become generally sick, but when tapping the magic specifically targets the areas that are most deadly. We see this when Wayne takes an explosion to the back in AoL and when he falls to his death during Spoiled Tomato in BoM. This is not the standard for all Cosmere healing - general Cosmere spoiler The blanked Connection Medallions also perform tasks that the original person storing Connection may not have been able to do - I'm not sure, but it sounded like it was adapting based on utilization when Allik described it. When Wayne's back gets blown off, Wax notes that Wayne has to work much more slowly when he doesn't have a lot of health stored. Now granted he's almost certainly tapping faster than when he stores over the course of a few weeks laying in bed drunk, so that may not be the most tidy of examples, but if Feruchemical storage and access works as you say then there's some stuff that has to be working behind the scenes that needs to be addressed. For example, Wax stores at a variety of weight percentages depending on what he needs to be doing and how low his Ironminds are after his stunts, though I think he often stores 30% typically. If that power is accessed at the exact percentages that he stores them, then why wouldn't there be fluctuations of weight when he starts tapping? As the investiture gets utilized why wouldn't there be random jumps in power based on when he consumes 30% storage, 25%, or 80%? Wax seems to know instinctively how many times heavier he is getting, so... is it the magic naturally averages out the power when compressed or modulates the output to reduce the fluctuation? If so, then what limits it from accessing the power at slower rates than it was stored? Now I'm not an expert, but Feruchemy doesn't really work the way most storage devices at least as I interpret it or understand them. Let's do a few comparisons. Glass of water. Pour the material to be stored into the container. Issue here is that an Archivist can access specific memories and volumes of text through indexing - so it seems the information is directly accessible and not just... dumped in. Data storage devices (DVDs, Blu-ray, flash drives, SSDs) - these work by writing information to an physical sector on the device itself. In the old days it was done optically or with magnets (back when you had to be careful not to put a magnet near floppy disks or hard drives), now I think it's largely done through electricity and transistors. Here's the catch - either Feruchemy only works with straight physical contact with the power being stored directly from the skin contact directly to the surface of the metal and the typical bracers are much larger than they need to be or the attribute stored can move around. See the issue with a glass of water. Batteries - for these the "storage" often is not directly in the format of power produced, but are instead chemical reagents that can store potential energy to be converted back into electricity when used. Now I guess it's possible Feruchemy does something similar in that the power is transformed or encoded into the metal itself, but again, how does this work for information storage? Yeah... basically I've been on a kick learning about information storage and I don't get Feruchemy because it's supernaturally good at read/writing and bypasses many of the complications that exist with IRL systems. Sazed dumped the entirety of his stored knowledge into his mind without apparent losses on Ascension (since he recreated the books and gave them to the survivors, but that's a weird case anyway). Rate of retrieval matters for strength, speed, or health, but not memory? Basically... I think you're making assumptions. Possibly correct ones, but I think there's a good bit that would have to be working under the covers to create the rules you describe.

My guess for this one is that he was intuitively and instinctively reading the air pressure currents created by the opposing Shardbearer. Kind of like Spook fighting as a Savant, but only with the air pressure sensory boost and without the heartbeat monitoring level of hearing. As for Ham vs Kal when it comes to Shardbearers... well we see what Szeth accomplishes against squads of guards with Halfshards and Shardbearers as a lone aggressor, going against the likes of Gavilar or Adolin. Granted, a lone aggressor using abilities long forgotten over millennia that those Shardbearers' training hasn't accounted for. Ham's enhancements fit into a format that standard training can compensate for, none of this gravity manipulation and adhesion business. Not saying that this is what you were implying, but I wouldn't put Warforms equivalent to a Pewterarm in difficulty as the Listeners are in their own way as easily manipulated as an army of Koloss. The Alethi army comprised of regular humans were regularly defeating the Warform Listeners through better equipment and disciplined battle formations in what seemed to be even bouts. They only fight in pairs, they're easily goaded by disfigurement to their corpses, and they preferentially will not attack the wounded, and Kaladin noted and relied heavily on that predictability. I do think Ham is an incredible fighter in his own way, though because most of what he accomplishes is off-screen, he has a self-effacing attitude as a leader, and he's fighting alongside Vin, Kelsier, and Elend making him naturally overshadowed. He survived for a ridiculously long time in some horrible battles as a frontline general fighting massive armies of Koloss with only the weaker healing afforded to Pewter. In a funny way, Ham is used to fighting incredibly powerful tireless giant soldiers with massive swords that will kill you no matter what you're wearing if they get off a good hit, though never one who used that powerset to the full capacity. It's like watching the 3rd or 4th place runner at the Olympics waaaay behind the first place and while I know he's behind Vin, it doesn't really give me a scale as to how he would compare to non-contemporaries (trying to remember if any Radiant or Warform displays the vertical jump that Vin has when sparring with Ham). Give Kal the Surges and that's pretty unfair, but I'm not sure who would win between a Pewter loaded Ham and a 2nd Ideal Kaladin without surges. Basically... Ham vs Kaladin pre-Shards doesn't look like an apples to apples comparison to me. They weren't afforded the same opportunities and they didn't fight in similar battles. I'd leave that one to Brandon.