Duxredux

There may not be a big bad. Not all wars or conflicts have a definitive good and bad side. Will there be major powers at play? Certainly, and we know at least several of the those involved (Scadrial, Roshar, Autonomy). That doesn't mean one will be the primary "evil" side or that there will be a unification against them. For that matter, if you have viewpoint books from the various sides then who is "the" antagonist? Conflicts can arise from resource limitations, misunderstandings, failure to compromise, or simple us vs them scenarios. Anyone play RTS games like Age of Empires with 8 player matches? There doesn't have to be a major villain for a lot of conflict to happen (even if it actually was my oldest brother because he was the best at resource management and we knew it and he crushed us anyway). To use MTG terminology, there's a difference between 6 player Commander and Archenemy formats. Now there totally can be a big bad and it most likely will be someone who doesn't play well with others. Pretty terrifying one that comes to mind is if Dalinar is forced to become a Fused, kills Szeth and claims Nightblood. Bound by his Oaths and his pact with Odium, this could potentially persist even if Taravangian was killed or Odium was Splintered, the Blackthorn becoming a terrifying reprisal of the Assassin in White on the Cosmere scale.

I'd say almost definitely. 40,000 Lifeless is the bulk of the Hallnedren military though the command and support structure is made of the living. It seems pretty unlikely that the entire army is comprised of former soldiers and guards when Lifeless makes the bulk of the army anyway. Lifeless also participate in patrols, and perform peacekeeping duties so it seems pretty likely that many were trained to new responsibilities after the deceased was purchased. Will they be as effective as a career soldier who died and then was Awakened? Probably not, but then they are years or decades behind in training. That said, if you don't mine me asking for your expertise, @Treamayne, do you have an estimate on how much a soldier would have to learn just in the course of performing their regular duties, be it patrols or specific peacekeeping duties? As a side note, now that I think about medical laws and wills might be weird in Hallendren. "Do not resuscitate. If my body is in good condition, let me die and sell the corpse to the army and reimburse my family" could totally be a thing. Malpractice lawsuits could be really tricky.

If you consider IRL, we try to make logical classifications based on how we perceive the world and how we see different elements interact. We talk about chemistry, physics, biology, etc., and it makes sense to learn each science separately as many of the concepts can largely be self-contained within each topic. However if you try applying biology, chemistry, and physics to something as simple as walking it become incredibly complicated and overlaps when you start going into the super nitty-gritty. Try describing the necessary motion of blood for the delivery of glucose to muscle cells to process ATP to fire the necessary muscle groups in accordance with the signals from the nervous system in order to walk without tripping and you might see what I mean. Now try doing that but only as descriptions of the motion of protons, neutrons, and electrons which theoretically should be possible, but I sure can't explain it that way. In the same way, matter, energy, and Investiture are the building blocks in the Cosmere and arcanists are applying similar methods of study to the Cosmere as we do to the sciences. The Arcanum is made by normal people attempting to categorize and comprehend the underlying principles that govern the observed Invested Arts - and they will revise the same way our science text books get updated fairly regularly. A couple weeks ago when helping my sister-in-law with homework I cracked open a new high school chemistry text book after a decade and there were concepts I sure don't remember being taught. Is there merit to discuss Breath in its own right as a starting seed to Awakening and Heightenings? Absolutely. Same as discussing the sheer complexity that can occur with electricity and magnetism when considering the movement of electrons that are powering whatever device you are using to read this post from a circuitry and computational standpoint at the same time as considering the electrical engineering necessary to build a city power grid. There's merit to examining the universe at each level, macro and micro. It's why we teach physics, chemistry, electromagnetism, fluid dynamics, biology, microbiology, even though many of these are just larger models based on atomic and quantum mechanics. In other words, I don't think it's necessary to jettison the description found in the Arcanum at the back of Warbreaker and place it under an umbrella topic on Breaths, they each deserve their own examination. The term "magic system" is a method of classification and is meant to help people understand the principles that govern the Cosmere - but they don't actually define them, nor is the Cosmere restricted to what is found in the Arcanum. I guarantee that there are gaps in known knowledge with stuff that Brandon is waiting to spring on us, or that in some cases the very nature of the magic can change. Unless there is a very compelling reason to retire the terms "Heightening", "Awakening", or "Breaths" (which, I heavily, heavily doubt will be the case), then just stick with the model that everyone reads at the back of the book. It's the simplest method to have shared and understood terminology on the subject. Beyond that, magic system has its own meaning outside of the Cosmere in Brandon's Laws of Magic Systems - which are really guidelines for proper foreshadowing in story telling when using magic to solve problems. The way the magic is described, the way the character and the reader understand the magic, that is an outgrowth of Brandon wanting to tell really cool stories. Linking back to the previous thoughts, again these terms are here to try to help people in-world and out to understand what is going on in the Cosmere. That said, larger Cosmere spoilers:

So... this?

I'll toss this in here. Someone pulled it up on another thread but I thought it was fitting to place it here as well. Looks like this idea may have seen use in Aux's sacrifice and it fits the original concept much more closely than Lightsong's sacrifice. It's a mark of how wise of an author Brandon considering at how long he waits to use some of his most powerful moments.

A while back someone had the theory that Kelsier gained the same Dawnshard that Hoid had been holder of and that he gained it when Preservation told him to SURVIVE. I'm not going to reference as I don't want to necro that thread, but here's my take on the concept that that Command that Kelsier heard was related to a Dawnshard. The reason that Preservation can't talk to people is that his very power shores up the cracks in a person's soul. However I think it's possible that Preservation could communicate here by instilling the message in the very power used to bind up Kelsier's broken mind and soul, to survive. It's quite likely that Preservation couldn't communicate any other message, or to someone already sane. I may have a second instance of this type of heard Command from Preservation to verify the idea. That said, I listen to audio books and I got a really cheap $3 copy of Arcanum Unbounded, so I know in that text it says SURVIVE. Would someone be willing to look up the corresponding section in HoA where Spook saves Urteau? In SH, Kelsier talks to Spook for a time before Spook runs into the burning building, and near the end he draws the power back to himself and Commands Spook to SURVIVE, reinforcing his soul in the process - Spook becoming the Survivor of the Flames as an echo of Kelsier the Survivor of Hathsin. I'm 95% sure on the SH side, but I haven't read a physical copy of HoA in a decade. If I remember correctly this should help indicate if that Command is a specific ability that Preservation could do to shore up broken souls and unrelated to a Dawnshard. Certainly Urteau is far from Hathsin, so it won't be a proximity thing.

My reading of that is that a Hemalurgist has extra Investiture because of the presence of the spike, not that the kandra spike itself is more invested than a normal Scadrian. I would say that Hemalurgic spikes have a bit more Investiture than the chunk of soul that they ripped out when created, as I'm guessing there is an additional measure of Ruin's Investiture that is facilitating the process (as we know that even Nightblood has some of Ruin's Investiture, so it seems to me that we do see Ruin's power has a presence outside of Atium). I don't know how much of Ruin's Investiture this is, or if it makes you more susceptible to external influence rather than less. Beyond that, the amount of Investiture in the spike will be dependent on how Invested the donor was and how much of the soul was ripped out. I'm guessing the amount in a typical spike is less than 2 Breaths, possibly less than 1. It's a fraction of a soul, with maybe a hint of Ruin's Investiture in the mix. For the original question, it's complicated. Kandra are the weird case among Hemalurgy as they require spikes to become sapient and they become more aware and stable when they have a complete Blessing. We know that more spikes means more susceptibility to Ruin, but what we don't know is if they suffer the same limitations that Steel Inquisitors have in spike count. As we know, a human soul with lots of spikes becomes so distorted that it requires a linchpin spike to hold their body and soul together. I don't know if Kandra have the same threshold or not, if they would need a linchpin, nor do I know how that would work with their fluid nature. There's also the issue where creating a Steel Inquisitor is no longer possible as Ruin has become subservient to Preservation within Harmony, as the distortion to the soul has been unconsciously limited by Sazed. It seems quite plausible that this restriction also extends to Kandra, which is not something that Breath can overcome. As it is, in terms of becoming immune to the flaw, a rather simple question should be asked. Does MeLaan's Aluminum True Body protect her from being taken over by an Allomancer or a Shard? Aluminum disrupts emotional Allomancy like a field. Do we already have a solution in place that we've seen on screen? It's a simple, well known solution and will become substantially cheaper in later eras. It helps in the sense that if you manage to remove all of a Kandra's bones, then they're basically at your mercy anyway so it's a more resilient and reliable solution than just wearing an aluminum hat. The Aluminum True Body doesn't seem to slow MeLaan down or give her any problems either.

Interesting idea! There's similar concepts already in place though. The concept of infusing someone with Investiture and yeeting them in a chosen direction is Radiant Gravitational Lashings in a nutshell. Doing the same with Connection seems substantially more complicated on various levels, though who knows, maybe a skilled enough Bondsmith could imitate gravitational lashings by doing funky shenanigans with the target's Connection to the planet and gravitation. Who knows, Bondsmithing is a pretty scary giant question mark that we don't really know the full limits or constraints on the power. We've also seen weaponized Connection with Ishar Connecting Windrunners to the ground so their Stormlight drains into the ground. Presumably the dead spren in Ishar's laboratory were also pulled over using Bondsmithing Connection powers. As you noted, the Fused trapped on Braise is an effect of the Oathpact and presumably Connection manipulation, given that it seems to be Honor's schtick. At any rate, if you were attempting to anchor someone through Connection to a distant location to physically draw them to that Connection, then I assume that there would need to be some method to form that Connection. Thus far, Bondsmiths have generally used physical contact to form or manipulate Connections, with Dalinar having to make physical contact with a local to learn Azish, Ishar touching first Dalinar then himself when attempting to steal the Nahel bond between Dalinar and the Stormfather. Clearly Honor was directly supporting the Oathpact, and likely was infused through the whole Rosharan system, so I'm guessing that Ishar didn't individually yeet the Fused to Braise, but rather Honor was able to Connect an entire group to a specific planet that he was already infused in. If that scale requires a Shard's power or presence, then you might as well raise your strategy to a Shard's level. Connecting someone to a planet that neither of you have been to sounds incredibly difficult, complicated, or flat out impossible. If it is possible and practical, then Bondsmithing is utterly and completely busted beyond what we already know it can do. I'm imagining manipulating your concept of that distant star into something that draws a person toward it, and if you can do that, then you can do insane things like Connection-based homing ICBMs (intercosmere balistic missile). No one and nothing would be safe unless you can actively block off Connections to the very concept of who you are.

In Bands of Mourning at one point when Wax and Wayne are fighting the small army at the end of the book, Wax charges an Allomantic grenade with Steel, and gets it to Wayne. Wayne whoops and throws the little cube at the Set soldiers and it knocks their weapons out of their hands. Is this an inconsistency with how Steelpush physics and Ettmetal have been portrayed, or is this indicating something about the "relative mass" that a Godmetal has when Pushing? Normally I would expect the little cube to get deflected, not continue in an arc and continuing to Push on the weapons. Presumably the primer cube is not modulating its Push like a Coinshot or Mistborn might subconsciously. What's going on here?

Depending on how you interpret the whole "does the wind bring the spren or the spren bring the wind" thing, fire is unusual on Roshar due to the nature of flamespren. In WoK Interlude I-8, you have the two ardents who discover that measuring a flame spren's size and recording it locks it into a fixed size. I looked it up to see if the measurements that they call out are indicative of anything, but it's logs in a hearth, not something easily comparable like a candle flame. Incidentally, the measurements were 3 7/10 inches, 2 8/10 inches, and 2 3/10 inches which indicates that they could be measured to the nearest tenth by an elderly ardent adjusting a set of calipers, which may say something about the stability of the flames. It's not related to fire, but a few people have noted that 10 heart beats seems like it takes an abnormally long time with a lot of stuff happening when Shardbearers summon dead Blades. Roshar's reduction in gravity and increase of oxygen in the atmosphere that supports greatshells also changes the heart rates of Rosharans. A decrease in gravity and an increase in oxygen levels have both shown to decrease heart rate. This means that summoning time for dead Blades is longer than would be expected from a typical heart rate seen on earth of anywhere from 40 to 200 bpm depending on athleticism and activity which corresponds to 15 to 3 seconds for 10 heart beats respectively. Another example may be at how constantly Kaladin works at maintaining his equipment and teaching his command to do the same. Between Highstorms and the Weeping providing high humidity and water content and a highly oxygenated atmosphere, metals will rust much faster than on earth. On returning to Hearthstone, he finds fault with one of the guards because of the rust on his helmet going so far as to think "That rusted cap was a disgrace." Basically the higher oxygen level will effect everything that chemically relates to atmospheric oxygen, combustion, metabolism, or oxidization. By increasing the oxygen in the atmosphere, every chemical reaction that is reliant on atmospheric oxygen will react more quickly as more oxygen is available for the reaction. Yup, though I think the distinctions here really boil down to the state of the flammable matter. Yes, the specific chemicals involved in the combustion make a difference, but the state of the matter makes a huge difference. Flammable gasses quickly mix with the atmospheric oxygen allowing the combustion reaction to happen faster. This means that it burns fast and hot. Flammable liquids can totally douse a fire so long as it is depriving the fire of oxygen, which is why vehicles very carefully control the air to fuel ratio to ensure the proper stochiometric balance to optimize combustion. As a side note, imbalances in a car's air to fuel ratio will either leave unspent fuel which is a pollutant, or the oxygen will not all fully react leaving some carbon monoxide with the rest of the carbon dioxide. Both results are pretty bad to breathe. In this case, a puddle sitting on the floor will burn slower and longer than a gas because the liquid state restricts the rate that the combustion occurs, though the liquid probably will spread, bubble, or evaporate which will increase surface area and so get a higher oxygen to fuel ratio. Get to solid fuels and it takes even longer to burn because of the density of the fuel as well as the limited surface area restricting the rate of combustion which also allows it to thoroughly heat up other objects as it burns. If you take a solid fuel and increase the surface area, it becomes easier to burn (log vs sawdust) and is the reason why grain mills and silos need to very carefully maintained and cleaned so they don't explode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradeston_Flour_Mills_explosion). Mythbusters could probably test how hard it is to set a human sized and shaped person dunked in pitch on fire, but I'm not sure who else would do that safely. In this case I assume she used pitch instead of a liquid fuel because she wanted to cover only the Fused in something flammable, not dump a wall's worth of oil on everything around her. Pitch is a good sticky, stable, flammable substance and not one that the Fused would just bounce off of or would splash down once formed. You can test it, you just need to know the concentration of oxygen on Roshar and create an environment on Earth that matches it. Don't blow yourself up.

I remember years ago as a child I got a documentary called March of the Penguins for Christmas and I watched it with my family. It was a nice movie for a kid with fun music (at least, that's what I remember, this is probably 15+ years ago). It was fun up until they got to the leg of their migratory journey when they were hunted by killer whales. Cue the dramatic and tense music as penguins are threatened by these predators. My older brother commented that had this been a documentary on killer whales, this would have been the point in the narrative with the happy cheerful music because after so long with meager offerings, the penguins have finally returned! The long months of fasting are over! Hooray! Weird take to hear as kid, but I remember it. The villain of the story depends on the degree that you would agree with the character's decisions and actions in addition to the role they play as the antagonist as the opposing force against the protagonist's efforts. You can have very logical and sympathetic antagonists who are still framed as opposing the "good guy". From a Luthadel nobility perspective, Kelsier was a villain working to start a house war and kill many of them. Had it served him and if Vin hadn't asked him, he probably would have killed Elend if the opportunity presented itself. I think a major reason why people might expect Kelsier to be a villain is how the Ghostbloods are handling Roshar. The head of that chapter of the Ghostbloods, Mraise, is highly manipulative, ruthless, and intimidating. He doesn't do much to support Shallan's mental health or encourage her to do healthy things. Within the context of the Stormlight Archive, the Ghostbloods thus far haven't been portrayed in a particularly heroic light. It's not too far of a leap to assume that other non-Scadrian worlds and viewpoints may view Kelsier's way of doing things to be antagonistic to their own goals. I think it helps to reflect on Kelsier's introduction to the larger Cosmere in Secret History. After dying he finds out that other people (Nazh and Khriss, and the entire economy of off world traders) have been aware of the circumstance of Scadrial, presumably The Lord Ruler, and Ruin trying to destroy the planet and all the Scadrians, and they haven't done anything to help. Not only that, but now that Ruin is free, they won't help and will run away instead. He next finds out about the Ire, people sitting on the sidelines hoping to poach Preservation's power for their own gain. No one was willing to help Scadrial in any significant way. He had to steal the stuff from the Ire, Ascend, and do a whole lot of scrambling and by a lot of luck and foresight from Leras, they barely managed to avoid annihilation. SA 5 spoiler: Basically, I don't think Kelsier has had a very good introduction to government or foreign planets and is determined that his people at least will survive at any cost, at the detriment to other planets if necessary, as from his perspective they have not tried to be a friend to Scadrial or to Scadrians. Part of the issue is that people generally don't respond well when they find that foreign agents are monitoring their activities without ever letting their presence known, so Kelsier's modus operandi is unlikely to endear him to many planets either. From Kelsier's perspective, one of their most powerful assets, Scadrial's Shard, is largely inactive and may be getting worse and they barely avoided a nuke wiping out Elendel while a foreign power working in the shadows tried to invade. It doesn't help that Sazed is hiding how much he actually did help Wax and Wayne, and once again, Kelsier feels like he and his team had to scramble to save the world and because Dawnshot is really effective, they barely survived. Again. It's not that far of a stretch that he will try to gain more and more power and influence because his planet keeps almost getting wiped out while foreign powers are either waiting to scavenge from or actively nuke his people.

I was lazy and didn't want to look it up. It's not a few days, but it's on the scale of weeks, not months. She died 2 weeks previous to Rebeke picking up Nomad. Now... I'm not sure if that's 2 Earth weeks (24x14 = 336 hours) or 2 Canticle weeks (10*14 = 140 hours). That can make a bit difference, and that puts it in a range of 26 - 62 Sunhearts to sustain 135-150 people an Earth year (earth year = 24*365=8760. That's substantially better, but that's still between 17% - 46% of the population needing to be replaced every year to maintain equilibrium, assuming that Sunheart conversion account for 100% of the deaths on Canticle. That's better than 146% replacement rate, and much more plausible, but still... To maximize the utilization of a single Sunheart then we would assume that Rebeke's mother was the only person sacrificed 2 weeks previous to their 10-20 hours of running out of power. However the sunheart from Rebeke's mother is powering her personal cycle, it's not powering the rest of the Beacon ships. How many people did they have to sacrifice to get less than 3 weeks of power? I assume that if it came to it, they would slot Rebeke's mother's sunheart into the rest of the Beacon ships, so I think the maximum runtime that a sunheart can produce is still given by this 2-3 week window for all of Beacon. The rest of their historical stores don't really matter, it's the time from their last refueling with brand new sunheart(s) to running out of power for the population they're sustaining. Adding any sunhearts to the equation just reduces the efficiency of each sunheart and correspondingly increases the necessary death rate. I think the justification for this is that Cosmere humans often have innate Investiture and so have less diseases and lower mortality rates. The Demographic Transition Model (DTM) is based on birth rates and death rates: DTM 1 is characterized by high birth rates and high death rates. Population growth is low. DTM 2 is characterized by high birth rates and decreasing death rates. Population growth is high. DTM 3 is characterized by decreasing birth rates and low death rates. Population growth is slows. DTM 4 is characterized by low birth rates and low death rates. Population stabilizes and growth nears zero as the land approaches carrying capacity. Generally advances in medicine and technology kick off DTM 2 and 3 as death rates are reduced as food production increases with technology and medical and sanitation practices reduce mortality rates. The Cosmere breaks this as death rates for diseases are lower by nature of humanity's innate Investiture making them hardier and faster healing. It breaks it even more when people have magic that utterly upend earth technology development rates, like Roshar having access to Soulcasters after the various desolations. DTM 2 and 3 are colonial periods where people are still having high birth rates to counteract the death rate and it takes overcrowding and saturation of the local land's carrying capacity for birth rates to start to decrease. In other words, the high birth rate we expect in a colonial historical period on is not to sustain colonization, the high birth rate is a carry over from when death rates were so high and more and more hands were needed to sustain life. Cosmere worlds naturally have lower death rates, so the birth rates may not be at a preexisting high state to kick off colonization at a rate that was seen on Earth, despite in many ways mirroring historical Earth time periods. At any rate, Canticle still seems unsustainable without something going on. Innate resistance to disease provides zero reduction to death rate by solar immolation, so I would expect the birth rate to be at least as high as the death rate prior to discovering that sunhearts could be recharged. If that's the case, I would expect more social pressure to protect those capable of childrearing.

I think the Scadrian ship had purified Dor which was presumably enough for them to get back to wherever they would check in for an emergency. Other than that, I don't think we've seen what kind of Investiture sources are sufficient to sustain space travel let alone FTL. Based on what Nomad says while talking to Aux, the main constraints on space travel is getting a sufficiently portable power source. This can be found in portable power dense batteries (Sunhearts, purified Dor, I'll add Aether spores as their initial mass is a fraction of the end result), or anything that can indefinitely pull power from the Spiritual Realm (Bondsmith, Fused's Song of Prayer) so long as the power gain exceeds life support and propulsion demands. I don't think we've seen anything yet that could provide that kind of power on Threnody (I mean, maybe they have Shades run on a giant hamster wheel, but I don't think that's enough), so who knows if they're using a native technology or are using a non-native one like the Scadrians. Until we know how the power source actually works, if it was a renewable power source or just a really good battery (like buying a lot of purified Dor), if they had full knowledge and capacity to rebuild or run maintenance on the power source, I don't think we can say with certainty what pressures led to the transition to Sunhearts, other than at some point resource constraints led to the continued use of Sunhearts. I will note that landing on Canticle has much lower power requirements than leaving Canticle - as any pilot who has had to glide in for a landing after running out of fuel can tell you. To leave Canticle they would need sufficient resources to sustain life and power to get to another habitable planet. Without knowing the state of the arriving Threnodites, we don't know what choices were available to them. Could it have been suppression of technology? Sure, but the full implications with that is that the Threnodites had a renewable and sustainable power source that was sufficient for them to leave Threnody, travel to Canticle, land with everything intact, avoid the sun long enough to not lose any important infrastructure, learn what the sun did to people and conclude that it was a viable method to reduce Shade production as opposed to using Silver, in addition to all of this have the necessary resources available to be able to obtain escape velocity, sustain propulsion, and life support systems to get to another habitable planet and then choose not to take that route and cripple their technological growth. Sure they can be stuck anyway and then choose to burn the old fuel cells, but that seems kinda dumb. Possible, yes, but that seems like a lot of assumptions to make with so little data when they can get stuck for simple reasons like "we didn't have enough fuel to get to different solar system" or "the important doohickey broke and we don't have the resources to repair it again so we're stuck here." I find it more likely that they had to make changes on the fly and had to repurpose space equipment by giving the parts to the Chorus and having them convert it into more efficient atmospheric equipment as opposed to someone choosing to strand them when they had the choice to get everyone off the planet.

Something I've been wondering that I'm sure the Dragonsteel team considered is what is the actual birthrate compared to power usage needed to sustain Beacon and Union? A day on Canticle is about 10 standard hours. Rebeke's mother sacrificed herself I think in the last cycle or two and they barely had enough juice to do one more cycle before they were out of power. That means that had what, 30-40 hours max from their last new Sunheart to their city of less than 135 people to run out of juice? If we assume that 1 Sunheart can sustain a population of 150 people for 40 hours, that means that they would need... 219 Sunhearts to last a year. How in the world do they have geriatrics who have lived their whole lives on Canticle? Some basic math taken from Coppermind measurements: 1 Sunheart is at least 200 BEUs. 1 Canticle day = 10 hours. Assuming traveling approximately at ground level at the perimeter (which we know they aren't, but this makes the math simple) 1 day = 628 miles traveled Average human gestation period = 672 Canticle days (422,230 miles traveled) Early female age of fertility (12-18 years old, yes there's earlier cases but even 12 seems really young for most societies and especially for this brand of Threnodite prudishness) = 10512 to 15768 Canticle days (6,604,884 to 9,907,327 miles traveled) The Sunheart utilization rate at least defines the minimum death rate to sustain the cities, and we know that Union at least generally takes up the equator and so will take the longest route to circumnavigate the planet. I'm not quite sure where to look for a baseline to calculate the death rate, or power expenditure to fly a city that far, but that still seems pretty high. I'm assuming the overall population of Canticle is at a sustainable level or that it isn't dramatically decreasing, otherwise I'm not sure if The Cinder King would have the luxury to blow Sunhearts on making Charred. So a few options: the power consumption is with the necessary bounds to not significantly increase the death rate (which says something about how much 200 BEUs worth of Investiture can get you and let you travel) or it implies that their birth rate can match the death rate. There doesn't seem to be any specific protection of women in childbearing years which I think is necessary for any population faced with a high death rate. So... what do we think is going on here? A few ideas and options, though it won't be an exhaustive list. My first thought is that perhaps the Threnodites of Canticle have the same accelerated growth cycle experience by the plants - though not sure how that works on a cognitive level, nor why the Investiture necessary to produce that kind of mass gain doesn't also sustain their dietary needs. That doesn't explain their perception of Nomad's age though, but it could explain that they actually have an accelerated birth rate that can balance the death rate. 200 BEUs is a lot of power and Beacon is grossly oversized, but that doesn't seem that likely. They have alternative power sources, but I don't think I saw anything that implied anything that could supplement the Sunhearts enough to cover the power demands. Union can't support itself, The Cinder King is trading for power in addition to his other toys. Not sure how this worked before the Scadrians showed up (assuming the Threnodites were here first). Thoughts? A look at this seems like it will either reveal something weird with the birth rate or how much power the Sunhearts are actually supplying as a look at how much 200+ BEUs will get you.

We have one more very notable case. SP spoilers, not saying which one because even hinting that this topic is relevant is a spoiler and if you know, you know. My guess for the spren is that the template for the PR body has to come from the spren themselves - and all of the Investiture that they hold they consider to be part of themselves so all of the Investiture gets used in to creation of the body. If the body works great, if it doesn't then their life-support organs if they have any fail and they die. If you were to plug a spren transitioned to the PR into a large enough Investiture source that they could live on raw Investiture, then they could probably make the transition and live. The Heralds are directly tied to Honor's power and it's quite possible that this external source is still viewed as separate from their spiritual aspect. They subsist off of that Investiture granting them immortality separate from serial rebirth in an adult body. If that's the case, they might have been able to persist even if their body wasn't suited for life support like a Cryptic (in fact if any of them started showing their ages, they'd crumble like TLR). I could see a Returned pulling this off in the right context so long as they had enough breaths to make to survive the transition. Perhaps they would use their Divine Breath (which is the template for their soul) to create the new body but depending on how old they are they would need at least the 5th Heightening to not crumple into dust if they were a normal human again. The Investiture for the body has to come from somewhere. Maaaybe they could get the normal Breaths to make the body but I'm not sure if that would work. That's my 2 cents while I take a break from homework. I didn't think too hard on this, now back to data analysis.

You're missing a huge piece with the ability to share memories directly with someone. Wax was deeply affected by Kelsier's memory stored in the medallion at the end of BoM. With sufficient splicing and and if duplication of memories becomes plausible (two big ifs), then F-Copper could make the most immersive movies in the entire Cosmere. Direct memory complete with thought process and sensory input can totally beat out any visual display - though not sure if I personally would want anything quite that immersive. Watching Jackie Chan beat up thugs with a bicycle and a ladder is really funny but I'm not sure I would want to take the hits from the first person POV. Trainings of all kinds could be dramatically improved if you can actually live a day in the life of what you are being trained to become. A gymnast actually feeling the motions used to do a proper tumble, a soldier maintaining situational awareness in a firefight, or as a janitor mentally going through the checklist of everything that needs to be done to prepare a building for the day. Being able to examine the mental process of a genius at work could be fascinating. Combine unkeyed F-Copper with other abilities and you get other cool use cases. For example, if Marsh could share what he can sense as an extra powerful Seeker to someone without A-Bronze or what he sees via Steelsight. Being able to share with a deaf or blind person the memory of a symphony or a sunrise. You could have some really sad stories of an Archivist who remembers hardly any of their favorite songs because they have given them to their deaf friend. There's so many possibilities even if powers start to become democratized. There's some big if's here and we don't really know what the technology is capable of - but that almost certainly was a memory from Kelsier and he's almost certainly not an Archivist Ferring and Wax definitely isn't one either. That implies a huge number of possibilities and if memory duplication becomes possible those possibilities will grow exponentially. I'll also note that Copper sounds really useful and it is - so long as you are organized and are fine keeping indices of what you have stored and have temporarily forgotten. In my opinion, Sazed is an extreme case of the effectiveness of F-Copper because frankly he's a genius. Give me a textbook to refer to constantly and I still wouldn't be half the surgeon or mechanical engineer that Sazed was. Realtime access to detailed information we currently have with the internet does not make me a master of plumbing, drywalling, or surgery. A good number of the personal use cases of F-copper will also be lessened by having similar access to the internet on a smartphone without having to walk around with big copper bracers. Being able to forget things can still be useful, but as accessibility to information grows, the disadvantage of having to forget the memory also increases. F-Copper has the potential to change a lot in later eras.

Okay, at the extreme end A-Steel can affect the trace metals in a person's body. Could Leeching do the same if similarly supercharged? Can a Leecher burn the iron atoms right out of the hemoglobin, denature their very blood and cause catastrophic shock to the body? Is there any other use cases for similarly overpowered applications of Allomancy?

Echo of @Trusk'our, if you haven't done something about this, and this is not directly tied to the post, I'd recommend doing something about your physiological condition. We'll still be here, and the question is posted. If coming to the Shard and thinking about the Cosmere is a form of decompressing from whatever caused the shaking and mental disorientation, then I hope you have someone reliable near you to act as support, as I'm pretty sure posting on forums won't actually help with whatever led to your current state. If something serious is going down and you're not sure what else to do, I'd recommend contacting someone you trust. If it's something more typical like doing a 10k or a marathon and you're shaking and exhausted, that's totally fine, I'm erring on the side of caution (and probably Trusk'our is as well).

Okay, two hemalurgy thoughts. I'll let @Trusk'our tell me if anyone's already asked this, but I'm posting it here rather than in the Mistborn or Q&A channel in case it has larger implications. Question 1: We think of Hemalurgy as a precision art where you have to setup fine-tuned scenarios steal or grant powers. To what extent does Ruin's Intent require you to be intending to steal or grant the powers to activate Hemalurgy or can you trigger a similar intent if all you want to do is use a big hunk of metal to bludgeon off chunks of their Spiritweb? Minigun loaded with Hemalurgically viable metals? In essence, is the Intent required specific to stealing the power or can the right intent simply be to ruin or otherwise damage their soul and not just their body? Basically, does Hemalurgy have to be a spike, or can you have the right intent with a steel baseball bat and start hitting souls and not just heads? We know that Hemalurgy is a universally applicable art, so anyone can use it. So... once the secret that Hemalurgy can be used by anyone anywhere to damage souls will it become the universal poor man's Shardblade? For example, if any of the Set had figured out the correct intent when fighting Wayne, would aluminum bullets have started tearing out chunks of his soul rather than just punching holes in him that would be slightly more problematic to heal? Per WoB, some healing systems can still handle the kind of spiritual damage that Hemalurgy can dish out, but not all of them. Thus far, Surgebinders and Hoid both of whom we already knew could heal Shardblade wounds, are the two cited examples of healing from Hemalurgy. Question 2: What kind of attributes can you harvest from a Kandra and will they grow back? Kandra bindpoints are fluid, so knowing exactly where to spike them especially if the Kandra is resisting you could make this very problematic, but it seems feasible. Hypothetically if the Set had captured a few Kandra when they were revealed during the Bleeder incident, would they have been able to make them into spike factories? Now Allomantic or Feruchemical powers are the primary attributes of interest to the Set, but being able to harvest unlimited strength from a kandra could have very interesting applications (assuming that the harvesting is survivable and reversable which may or may not be the case).

I don't think it would be that bad to store. I might use it like I would A-Cadmium but without the obvious AoE tell that I've checked out. Just zone out during the previews before the movie. Sometimes I have a really hard time not thinking when I'm trying to fall asleep and being able to shut off my brain could be nice. I don't think I need to go too much into tapping Zinc, we've seen that, but I can see benefits for slowed thought assuming the rest of the body's reflexes and subconscious behavior continues at a regular pace. Such as blanking out while peeling potatoes. I have a much harder time coming up with positive use cases for active speed storage.

I have some general guesses and questions related to this, but nothing concrete. Maybe the Sliver that Sliverism is referring to is to is Marsh himself and not actually TLR. We learn in TLM that periodically Harmony Invests Marsh and expands his capacity to operate as the mythological figure of Death. With direct delegation of power from a dual Shard, has Marsh's soul expanded to become a Sliver at this point? Does this boost of power have any similar effects to the Well of Ascension as either an attuning power or the effect on the soul? Why did Saze do this, was he Investing Marsh in this manner meant to provide greater stability to Marsh's frayed conglomerate soul? Was he just pulling in Marsh for some subcontracted work and that's it? If Marsh were to die, is his soul sufficiently infused by this process for Marsh to persist indefinitely as a Cognitive Shadow and perhaps make a similar return to the physical realm using the same mechanism that Kelsier has? Greater Cosmere spoilers: I think that clearly Brandon has something in mind for Marsh other than him quietly passing away between eras and that there are quite a few hints as to what that could be, but I don't know if we have enough pieces to really put anything together yet.

Uh... I'm self-conscious about explaining physics when there's a literal professor on the thread, but aren't you ignoring the normal force in your explanations? The only difference between abruptly thrusting your arms forward and a pushup is the normal force. In the case of Vin and the coin, pushing with the coin is the equivalent of pushing out with a stick and the stick running into an unexpected wall but with way more force. Force is added into the equation when the coin or stick hits the wall via the normal force even though the force of the push remains constant. In Vin's case the amount of force she was applying to the coin would have been sufficient to throw her to the side had the coin started out pressed against the wall. My terminology is rusty, but it feels like you're conflating force with another concept, maybe work.

It's like with any job, I want to know more about the work culture, the ideals, and who would be my team and supervisor. All of the current heads of the various orders of Knight Radiant are cool to read about, but I don't know if I want to be subordinate to any of them except maybe Kaladin, and I'm not likely to join the military just to fly (I get air sick in small aircraft, not because I'm a lowlander). Working for Xisis could be cool. Scadrian chapter of Ghostbloods could be cool, I wouldn't do well with the Rosharan chapter at all. I probably wouldn't ever get the invitation to join though, I'm too obviously who I am and I would probably bug Kelsier. Definitely not the Set or Diagram, both are basically defunct anyway. Had I been born on Roshar I could see myself joining the Ardentia, but if I'm Cosmere aware I wouldn't do it. So, like Felt? Not part of a group, if you move planets it's about as notable as moving from Texas to California? I thought about that. So... probably I wouldn't be part of a faction or I might go with Silverlight. I want to know my odds of retiring before I join the organization.

Probably will need to move any more technical questions outside of the Introduce Yourself board, but "Hey guys, you gotta see this!" @Trusk'our @Frustration @therunner @Underwater_Worldhopper @Quantus @Nameless* @Tamriel Wolfsbaine, I think all of you have been some of the more major participants in the various physics related questions regarding the Cosmere and may have asked some of these questions that I cited. Apparently DrPhysics is appropriately named.

Welcome to the Shard! I also started with Elantris, read many of the books as they were released and only joined the Shard a couple of years ago. Just as a heads up, you'll find that there a fair number of people on the Shard who not infrequently ask really detailed physics related questions, so... let us know when we should do the homework ourselves or when you're fine explaining what's going on. Our physics questions have ranged everywhere across all the various books, and I for one will have no problem whatsoever if you explain what we're getting wrong. What books have you read so far? I'll put this in a spoiler box and have it cover all released books, but off the top of my head we've had the following physics questions while I've been here: At any rate, if you've come to geek out about physics applied to the Cosmere, you've come to the right place. As a side note, one of my favorite books as a teenager was The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios.