Duxredux

@Stoneshaper Welcome to the Shard! If you're caught up on the Stormlight Archive, then I'd recommend looking at the Coppermind wiki, particularly Spren and Shadesmar as there's some pretty fascinating information on this topic. Pretty hefty spoilers though, so be warned or use the Time Machine function. Something relevant I think is that Honorspren were originally created first by Honor and later by the Stormfather. There are also examples of spren families and parentage, notably the Reacher sailor that kept their father locked in a cabin so they wouldn't wander off towards wherever the Shardblade in the physical realm was. However spren biology and ecology works, Shadesmar has it's own flora and fauna, with human emotions or preceptions or thoughts as a necessary resource, somehow there is some way for different spren, truespren and lesser spren to reproduce if they require sustenance and can die. Apparently Honorspren hunt gloomspren in a similar way that chasmfiends are hunted. However this place works as a reflection of the mind, it isn't recursive and has it's own rules. Spren by nature feed off of specific resources, so while Honorspren can lie, I doubt they produce whatever it is that attracts Cryptics. As for how they change and develop, I'm willing to bet that Creationspren have been around for a very long time, but that they didn't always appear as they do currently, forming contemporary objects familiar to the human observer. As technology progresses, Creationspren may one day look like cars, contemporary furniture, airships, or other items not commonly seen currently in Shadesmar. How this works with all of the various spren, who knows.

That's the question isn't it? Are windspren attracted to the wind or do they create it? I don't think the presence of deathspren immediately means a death fabrial, but the question of what exactly the effect is that they have on someone that is dying. A possibility is that an augmenter wouldn't kill someone unless they were already close to dead. For example, Navani's painrial augmenter has a few or knives that cause pain and then greatly amplify it, though apparently she still gets hit by the backwash. Similarly, I'd be surprised if a diminisher with a deathspren would make someone impossible to kill, even with an insane amount of Stormlight powering the device, though I guess it depends on what the Stormlight usage was for the Regrowth fabrial that Nale used to resurrect Szeth. Either that, or Brandon decided to bake in immortality here.

I'll make a few notes, not being an expert on the brain, but I assume that different nervous systems are in some way optimized for survival. For example, many invertebrates and insects have extremely low reaction times. I could be wrong, but my assumption is that this could be due to either scale of the nervous system, as the nerve impulses have a much shorter distance to travel, and in some cases because the response behavior is the only option available to them so it only is stimulus -> response, rather than stimulus -> decision making -> response. There will be amazing things in nature that simply won't scale up, like if you were to graft gigantic flea legs onto an elephant, it would not be able to jump 50 times its own height. Incredibly fast reflexes can be trained, but they come at a cost of optimizing the subconscious decision making process to react to specific stimuli in specific ways. These are not things you can just grow, extensive practice performing the technique is required to develop the desired reflex for the given situation. So... I think they can probably optimize to a certain extent, but I don't think you can actually get a bullet time effect like F-Zinc or F-Steel just from adjusting neurons, I think you'd need magic in order to get accelerated decision making faster than what the processing that a human brain does. With practice a Kandra may be able to optimize their nervous system to give them a slight edge in combat, but I think it's possible that they would get more mileage by being able to alter the percentage of their muscle fibers between fast twitch and slow twitch fibers, if that's possible. If they can always have the optimum muscle configuration for their task (assuming it doesn't take more energy to change their body mass composition), slow twitch for endurance tasks, fast twitch for quick motions including combat, that is an advantage that top athletes can't even train for, as humans are born with their muscle composition. This in addition to training would let them perform what we would consider superhuman feats of speed and physical prowess. I won't say it's impossible for a Kandra to optimize their nervous system to gain faster processing speed, but if anyone has looked at computer data processing and how complicated that can be, I'd expect figuring out how to optimize a brain to allow for accelerated processing to be just as complicated if not more so, particularly if they don't actually need a human brain to think. Imagine performing brain surgery on yourself and trying to identify if you're getting smarter or dumber. It's probably possible, but not something just any Kandra would be willing to risk, or at least I probably wouldn't risk it.

That's quite possible, and tactically would make sense why a Dustbringer would have both hands uncovered but then the question should go the other way. Of the other three Heralds, does the glove or sleeve not conflict with their powers? We have Soulcasting or Regrowth used by each of the other three, and while there are exceptions, these abilities also often require direct contact. Did they really only use a single hand during a Desolation, or is this just showing them outside of the context of combat, and if so, why not for Chanarach? Chanarach is also definitely wearing armor, and combat is one of the Masculine Arts, and the Arts usually accompany the rest of the Vorin social construct. Notably, in the Cosmere you have the archetypal story of "woman breaks custom and excels in a male-dominated role" with stories told in-world of the Ascendant Warrior on Scadrial and Yalaani the Brave on First of the Sun (earth's Mulan as a quick generally known example). I don't think I've heard that archetype referenced for Chanarach, though those stories could be there and just haven't been mentioned yet. If the omission of a safehand covering was intentional, I do think it will tell us something more, even if it's how they were viewed historically or maybe their personality.

Thanks @Treamayne

I'm trying to figure that one out, and I'll note that's an annotation from a long time ago. In Oathbringer the Fused blocked Nightblood with the Aluminum sheath and that was a viable defensive strategy, when even an Honorblade was damaged by Nightblood. The scabbard was in good enough shape after getting hit repeatedly to be used to sheath Nightblood after that battle, not dented or torn to prevent him being fully encased. How does this work into that?

I agree with the other answers, there may be multiple ways this could go. For example, I'm still a bit surprised that Lerasium or Trellium can hold a Hemalurgic charge without conflicting issues, though apparently Godmetals can be used for Hemalurgy without the complication of Investiture saturation or conflicting Investiture. It's also a question of storage space, whether or not the Bands of Mourning were fully saturated or not, considering that they aren't as Invested as a Shardblade. Get too Invested and it will just slice through the soul like a Shardblade if you're not careful, rather than taking a Hemalurgic charge. This distinction is noteworthy I think.

Lightsong is actually a good example of when this may be worth testing. At the bare minimum, I assume that whatever the cause of death has to be removed or repaired before the Lifeless would operate correctly (and not go inactive shortly after Awakening), so if they bled out you would need to replenish the blood with ichor alcohol, if you stabbed them in the heart, I assume you would have to sew up the damage first. A drowning victim may be a good subject, you just have to drain the water from them (asphyxiation death may be the best actually). The most direct answer to this that I see is that the immensely powerful Divine Breath would just overwhelm the Breath in the Lifeless, and they would Return normally, getting healed of whatever killed them in the first place and undoing any sewing done to prepare the body to be a Lifeless. Depends on if there's any issues with Command breaking with only the equivalent of 2,000 Breaths in the Divine Breath or if when Endowment sent back the Returned the Command in the Lifeless would just get overridden. If the Command to the Breath that was turning the body into the Lifeless remained, unless the Awakener decided to dump an inordinate amount of Breath into this body, I'd guess that it wouldn't do much to effect the Returned other than a slight nudging to follow the Command, just in terms of the relative Investiture. It probably wouldn't matter too much, since that Breath would probably get eaten by the Returned the following week.

What do people think would happen if you tried to draw Nightblood while wearing Aluminum gauntlets (or full plate mail, which seems the safest way to draw Nightblood, if there is indeed a safe way to do so)? Would Nightblood still go active and try to destroy, not be able to draw Investiture out of the wielder, would those weird tendrils try to climb over the Aluminum to suck Investiture out of you anyway, would Nightblood's power be lessened, or something else?

That's a clever note that Kandra are as distinct from Mistwraiths as Koloss are from humans. This could provide an explanation, but then why do more recent memories degrade first? Is it possible for the reverted Mistwraith to accidentally convert that useless brain mass into muscle for locomotion and just completely wipe the slate? Shapeshifters are tricky, and that seems like a worry regardless if they are keeping memory on brain-like tissue.

This has been brought up before at least in part, but anyone a bit disturbed by the connotation that is given when something is claimed to be a mercy in the Cosmere? Harmony was worried by Mercy and I am too. Ruin calling killing Preservation a mercy Sadeas attempting to kill Dalinar and called it a mercy Granite Joe calling killing Wax a mercy Moash wanting Kaladin dead considered a mercy I know a few Sharders have the Cosmere in a searchable format. If you're willing to indulge me, other than Mercystar (who had command of 10,000 Lifeless), what usages of "mercy" are there in the Cosmere? How consistent is this idea that killing someone weak, injured, out of place, old, or depressed is somehow a mercy in the Cosmere? We know that Hemalurgy can be used anywhere without needing physical proximity to Ruin or Harmony, so it seems possible that there are Shards that have influence outside of their known system. I don't really have a specific direction with this, and Brandon will probably RAFO everything to with Mercy, but I thought I'd mention it, since some 17th Sharders have way more knowledge about the Shards than I do and there may be information available that I haven't heard. There's even been talk that Mercy either assisted in killing Ambition or did so directly after Ambition was injured. Thoughts? Here's a few short threads of existing Mercy discussion: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/94434-theory-on-ambition/ https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/94792-i-have-a-theory-please-prove-me-wrong/ https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/105290-could-ambition-have-been-splintered-but-uli-da-still-be-alive/ https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/93326-theory-mercy-killed-ambition/

I'll toss this in here, Gravitation isn't strictly better than Iron and Steel. It can go faster, and doesn't have to rely on anchors, but I think a skilled Mistborn may be able to change directions faster. It's kind of the distinction between a cheetah and a gazelle, one has a higher top speed, the other has good turning and maneuverability. A Windrunner or a Skybreaker will be able to outpace a Mistborn (short of insane Duralumin stunts) and can flee very easily when low on Stormlight so the advantage is still theirs, but it's not just a flat trump. I think I'd give fairly good odds to Wax taking down some of the 3rd or 4th Ideal Radiants if he had all of the weaponry he usually carries around. That hand cannon that Ranette made for him could probably do some heavy damage to Plate, particularly if he pushed on the slug with increased weight. He's fought healers, shape shifters, and even came up with a viable strategy against a Steelrunner (though he needed Wayne for that). He's fast, maneuverable, has stunts that he can do with weight that are hard to predict, and has accurate, ranged weaponry. Also, Wax is good evidence that you can do plenty do distract a healer and Radiants still feel pain. Getting plugged in the face repeatedly cannot be good for concentration. He'd probably have trouble with Gravitation, Elsecallers, and maybe Stonewards though. On the Radiant side, one of the Radiant strategies that we see rarely but seems way more powerful than most usages of living Blades is (Dawnshard spoiler)

The end value is going to be considerably lower than that as they will cut the gem to be able to hold more Stormlight. Anywhere from 60-75% of a gem is lost based on the cutting process, though if you're lucky you can only lose 40% if the gem was already mostly the right shape and is of high quality. Inconsistent gem grade can cause more losses if the poorer material has to be cut out. With a gemheart that large, I could see some of the sections from the initial cuts being shaped for broams, marks, or chips, but it wouldn't surprise me if 40-60% is lost from cutting and polishing. I've only carved some jade once, so I'm definitely no expert, but the grinding and polishing took off a lot more material than I expected. It's also possible that they would cut gemhearts into individual broams, and I don't know what that would do in terms of loss. That's still several million, which is hefty chunk of money to toss to make a point. The value definitely explains how the contest for gemhearts became a viable method for the Highprinces to enrich themselves despite heavy casualties, equipping and paying their armies, and all the resources that go into that kind of battle.

I hesitate to bring this topic back up, but I've been thinking about this comment. I think if sexism is part of the issue with how Shallan is viewed, then it goes very deep. I find that if I look for injustice or discrimination, I can find it even if it never was intended or actually present, though that said some very damaging discrimination is unintentional. It's a big can of worms. So... I hesitate. Shallan's story in some ways is about sexism, because she is the primary viewpoint in a world that has taken away her ability to use one of hands, dictated how she should live in terms of propriety, and is the one that has to navigate those social constructs. Kaladin's issue is with class difference and was constantly getting into fights because he wouldn't conform unless it would get him what he wanted. His antagonists were clearly defined, Roshone, Amaram, and Sadeas, and much of that went away when Kaladin became a Lighteyes (and because they're all dead). Shallan... doesn't have an antagonist that forces her into her proper feminine role, except Vorin society itself and her own upbringing. I could be missing things, but Navani and Jasnah's stories don't have this element, in part because they have mastered how to use the "idealized Alethi woman" as a tool to exert influence on others, in part because they are the top of the top and can either ignore or potentially define propriety as they choose without the backlash that Shallan would have. On Roshar Shallan couldn't actually have a combat role until she totally broke society by being one of the lost Radiants returned, and I think media glorifies violence and combat. Incidentally, I'm not implying that we need to get more women into the role of "punchy-punchy, stabby-stabby", but that I think there may be too much of glorifying men in those roles, but that's a value judgment and not what I want to focus on. Going back to Roshar and the Masculine and Feminine Arts, Shallan unfortunately is somewhat required by propriety to be inactive during a war. I mean, look at the division of the Arts: Masculine combat[3] (facetiously, "hitting things", according to Navani Kholin)[9] tactics[21] politics[22] carpentry[23] commerce[24] Feminine reading and writing[17] painting and drawing[18] science[17] (e.g., zoology, botany, and natural history)[19] logic[17] playing musical instruments[20] So... she actually has to fight against societal norms or find workarounds to really interact with a war story in ways that the male characters don't. Anyway, if people agree that sexism is part of her character arc, then there may be a divide in reader experience based on how they view or have experienced sexism in general. Aaand if you start looking for sexism then their spren and Oaths are a large part of their arc and... Kaladin - Honorspren. Protect others. The perfect soldier. Dalinar - Stormfather, holds the remnant of Honor's power. Unite the nations. The perfect general or leader. Shallan - Liespren, though they prefer to be called Cryptics. Lie to others, disguise yourself, and stop lying to yourself. The perfect... wait, what? Many of the Orders seem to exemplify a particular role to be lauded. Healers, Police, Soldiers, Engineers, Scientists... I'm not sure what that would be for the Lightweavers. Spies? Saboteurs? That's what Shallan's arc currently seems to be leading her towards, roles that can be cool but morally debatable (as a step to the side, Shalash is Herald of Beauty, and is known as the Artist in the Dragonsteel Entertainment files. Outside of a Desolation, Lightweavers could be amazing artists with Illumination and Soulcasting, but art was the starting point for Shallan, not what she's progressing towards). Yeah, this could look bad depending on how you spin it, and while I'm pretty sure Brandon baked in some sexism into Roshar, I don't want to make a call on how deeply it was meant to go. This is my third monster post on this topic, and I'm sure that for some people that didn't like Shallan it wasn't about sexism, but I think it may be incorrect to say that sexism isn't part of how Shallan is viewed. It just is complicated. Also, as a guy writing a post about a female character dealing with sexism written by another guy, take it with a grain of salt, and if any girls want to correct anything, feel free. I'm trying to understand, okay? I might be adding too many things, but I will note that we know that Shallan's humor was developed as a defense mechanism in a broken home tainted by an Unmade. Her humor was relied on by her siblings, some of whom were older than her, as a method of coping for a large percentage of Shallan's life. That reliance perhaps meant that they could break, but she couldn't. No, I don't usually laugh at her jokes, but I could make a case that I wasn't necessarily supposed to. Frankly, since she was a child Shallan's life has been seriously messed up, her family life is messed up, and honestly the state of those relationships do make me uncomfortable because I don't want anything like that to happen to anyone within my own relationships. This isn't to say that it broken homes and horrible family choices don't happen, and that it's a very real nightmare for some people. Ever seen a video of a car crash or a train wreck? Shallan's backstory kind of feels like that, it's horrible but hard to look away from and it makes you uncomfortable thinking about how it can actually happen (well, not the supernatural stuff, but certainly the abuse). Dalinar's treatment of Evi bothers me for similar reasons. Anyway, I've rambled on and should stop.

Someone's probably noticed this before, but I'll mention it in case it hasn't been. For the official Herald portraits, Chanarach doesn't have her safehand covered. Anyone have any idea why this would be the case in setting? The other 3 portraits of female Heralds only their left hand covered, either by a sleeve or a glove, so we know that the custom was being followed by the artists. I kind of want to ask Peter or Brandon if this was deliberate. (copied from Coppermind)

Duh. I got confused with a WoB that accidentally contradicted that I think. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/377/#e12295, I looked at it again and the footnote links to a post on Reddit where Brandon retracts his statement. Thanks!

Could I have a source on that? Mostly because I don't think I've heard or read that before, and it seems like an important distinction, though perhaps an obvious one. At any rate, the cited WoB may not have cared. Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

Well, they did win every single Desolation until the last one. Humanity never got wiped out completely, and that was only with 10 Heralds that could remember and train a whole new batch every time compared to all of the Fused who were endlessly reborn. At the end of each bout every time but the last the Heralds left to seal the enemy on Braize, leaving Roshar to figure things out. Notably Taln's rambling considered the Radiants as something new that Ishar had come up with, so that may or may not give a time frame before the Aharietiam. No, their weakness are in other forms outside of straight combat. By necessity, many of them have mental issues, cracks in their soul, so not all of them are terribly stable. Because they follow a code of conduct that they have to obey to maintain their Oaths, you can force them into specific situations as the Lezian and Raboniel did to Kaladin. Fused have Voidbinding abilities that they can use indefinitely compared to how a Radiant always burns through their Stormlight. I should also note that most Bondsmiths are not Dalinar Kholin or Ishar and will not do as well in combat as is usually suggested in these threads. Opening up a Perpendicularity is not something that can be done constantly or indefinitely, and I suspect that once you start getting into Stormlight usage it becomes quite different. The Alethi Princedoms just spent 5 years harvesting gigantic gemhearts from Chasmfiends, so they likely have an unusually high level of Stormlight storage capacity for each Radiant, particularly because they may still have low Radiant numbers compared to before the Recreance. There's also a danger where if the Radiant is killed, presumably all of their Squires lose their abilities. They are far from unbeatable, and what we see in the books may put them in unusually favorable odds on an individual basis. Whenever we see Kaladin fighting these days he's carrying around a fortune in his pouch.

Well, for the writerly reason, there absolutely has to be conflict of one form or another in Mistborn Era 4. There isn't a story if there isn't conflict, and Brandon always layers his conflicts with large scale "the fate of the world/city/etc. is in jeopardy" down to personal "I have trust issues". He's been coached on this for decades, if you read the forward written by Dan Wells for the 10th Anniversary edition of Elantris. What form this conflict takes is what makes the story, and that could be anything from social pressure, ship-to-ship combat, corporate espionage etc. It makes sense that First of the Sun is hard to get through and is being colonized from the Physical Realm if the only spot you come out from the Cognitive Realm is Patji, where just about everything can kill you. Trade that has to go through Patji is nuts and will get most of your people killed. Probably only highly skilled people like Mraise, Iyatil, Hoid, or Kelsier would try going in somewhere that dangerous regularly, especially if disrupting the ecosystem threatens the Aviar. Considering that the predators can hear minds, I wouldn't be surprised if most travelers going through Shadesmar pop through with a bunch of predators ready to eat them, though there is some protection at the Perpendicularity itself. People have probably already gone over that and I digress. The Cosmere itself is pretty small in compared with the rest of the known universe in setting. I think it's a small cluster of stars, not even a dwarf galaxy. Though there can be conflict based on proximity, but once they get FTL and can travel outside of the known Cosmere, then there's plenty of space to grow and expand. Real estate shouldn't be an issue for a long time, though there may be planets with particularly useful resources or strategic positions. In this case, the resource that would be in contest isn't just from expansion, it would a focus on Invested worlds that have gained power from a Shard. Those who can gain access to Invested abilities that no one else has will have an edge, which is why apparently Fourth Ideal Radiants are interested in birds and worms. I don't think it will necessarily be about world vs world, as there are organizations that are growing power and influence throughout the Cosmere. Some have standards that dictate how they interact with a new world, some do not. It is possible as Stormtide_Leviathan said that a dominant culture would take over their planet, but there's plenty of multigovernmental (or at least factional) space age stories out there. As for the conflict, too much of how an Invested starship war would go down requires information that we don't have, such as production costs, fighter specifications, ease of transporting Investiture off-world, etc. Interplanetary war could be the direction this goes, but Brandon has space combat from the Cytoverse (I haven't read Cytonic yet, I've been meaning to, so I'm limited on that information) and multinational war from Stormlight Archive, so I'm guessing the large conflict will be something different from the core of these. Somewhere, our viewpoint character(s) has to be someone who is deeply entrenched in the conflict and can do something about it, and I doubt we'll get another Spin or Dalinar. I guess those are my armchair writerly reasons for why I don't think it will necessarily be war, or at least have the focus be on war.

I agree that comparatively Mistborn are far, far better at quiet assassination than most Radiants. Tin and Bronze should make it really, really hard to sneak up on a Mistborn, though I don't know if they can detect Lightweaving or an Elsecaller in Shadesmar. Most Radiants light up like a beacon whenever they use their abilities. Now this is a dumb strategy, but could result in some potentially advantageous or goofy scenarios. Again, we haven't seen this in action, but a lot of Radiants could get in serious trouble if you Nicrobursted them. Windrunner shoots into the sky at insane speeds, burning through all of their Stormlight, Edgedancer grows a tree or becomes entirely frictionless, etc.. I guess it depends on if there's a difference between resistance to Leeching compared to Nicrosil (accidentally typed Nicrosyl, now I wonder how Syl would report the experience).

We get a lot of "who would win in a fight" threads, so I thought I'd start something a bit different. Hopefully this will be fun. Pick a sport. Of all the non-Shard Cosmere , who would you want on your sports team? You can have a fun team or a competitive team. Example: Baseball Catcher - Breeze who would be demoralizing the opposition Pitcher - Lopen, because he'd totally be willing to use Lashings or Full Lashings on the ball when other Bridge 4 members wouldn't. Hope Breeze knows when to duck. Outfielders - Bridge 4 is pretty busted being able to fly and use Reverse Lashings. Sazed would do pretty well too with F-Speed. Bases - Kenton, though only if it counts if he's standing on base and his ribbon holds the glove that catches the ball Batter - Lift, not because she would be the best pick, but because she would have so much fun sliding onto the base. Being fast doesn't hurt though. Example: Basketball (villainous team, or at least considered bad guys at one point or another) Leshwi. It only counts as traveling if you land. Human, who is big enough to dunk from standing and defend a huge portion of the court, though there's a high risk of fouls. Moash because Kaladin is probably a prime pick for the other team. Marsh, because there aren't too many players that can "accidentally" puncture the ball because they have spikes sticking out of them. And he's just fast and powerful. Drile, who has quite a bit of control and defensive ability even without taking a step.

What, no Ferrings? There's just way, way too many undefined parameters on these threads. We're talking fight to the death, right? Era 1 or Era 2 Mistborn, Allomancers, and Feruchemists? Do they get any equipment? Where are they fighting, downtown Elendel, Luthadel, The Shattered Plains, or Alethkar? Are they walking up to each other with full knowledge of the other's abilities or do they come in blind? Are we including sneaky backstabbing as a viable win condition? For Ferchemists, how much time do they have to prepare, or how full are their Metalminds? Do they have access to their necessary Investiture resources to refuel or if not, what is their starting amounts? *Deep breath* How do we rule abilities that are shown on charts but have never or rarely been seen? Feruchemical Fortune Division Can Aluminum hats or Copperclouds block emotion spren from sensing you? The full effect of Leeching on Radiants (Blade, Light, Plate) Could only Vin use Bronze to hear someone in the Cognitive Realm using Investiture (Kelsier fueled by Preservation)? Lightwoven lasers? 5th Ideal Radiants? What level of combat training and experience do they have, as most of our book viewpoints are of the cream of the crop? Yeah... to me there's way too many factors. As far as I know, none of the Radiants have supernatural sensory abilities (except for seeing into Shadesmar and watching spren behavior) and their Investiture is on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, which makes games of hide-and-seek very bad for them, though some spren can make good scouts. The rate of Investiture usage between the different combatants can make a big difference in a protracted fight, and the ability of a Feruchemist to with time and hiding build their Metalmind stores while the Radiant's Light fades from their body and spheres could decide a battle. If you have them run up and attack each other until dead, sure, Radiants have an advantage with healing, and were specifically created to fight in large scale wars, but that's not how Mistborn or Feruchemists usually fight if they don't have to. The location makes a huge difference whenever hide tactics become viable strategies for victory. For that matter, 1 v 1 removes an incredibly powerful advantage that most Knights Radiant have, which is to turn their buddies into squires, something that Allomancy and Feruchemy can't do without Lerasium, Hemalurgy, or Southern Scadrian Medallion tech. Yeah... I could argue a lot of directions based on how the battle is setup. Also, why so much fighting? Now if we're talking a competition like an eating contest between Kelsier and Kaladin, then it depends on what rumors about Kelsier are true. Basic Mistborn to 4th Ideal Windrunner, then it depends on what's on the line, is Bridge 4 in danger if Kaladin loses? Will he notice Kelsier slipping poison/kremling into his pie or hotdog? In a straight contest it probably depends on who runs out of Pewter or Stormlight first, since both are big tall men. If Kelsier is a Kandra that may not need to sleep and can purge eaten food, that's pretty hard to beat. If he's a Fullborn that can compound Determination and Wakefulness in addition to storing calories, he could probably outlast even Lift, even if the contest stretched into months and years If he could zip away with Speed to get more metal. He'd have to really want it though. Being able to store his memories so he doesn't remember just how long he had been eating could probably help too.

The linchpin for this idea came from a question that came to mind while viewing other threads, though I will admit that it's based on supposition and unconfirmed ideas. I'm not asking if Paalm was influenced or corrupted by Trell, that much is obvious, I'm wondering if the control was to the extent to make her a slave as Marsh was. Ruin could corrupt and alter a person with even a small degraded Hemalurgic spike, as seen with Lord Penrod who eventually drove Luthadel to collapse. However, it seems that Harmony required 2 Spikes in Bleeder to take control of a Kandra. Three spikes was the limit that the Set determined would let them avoid influence from Harmony. I'm not sure why there is this great of a disparity. The question is this: how much control would Ruin have had over someone with a freshly charged Atium spike in them? It would make sense to me that Ruin would have much, much deeper control with his own essence piercing the soul of his slave. The follow up question is if a single spike of Trellium would have given Trell sufficient power over Paalm, particularly if Trell could make Paalm think that there wasn't anything wrong? This would be in the same way that Ruin could make Marsh think death and ash was beautiful, even while part of him was horrified at what he was doing. A few things that have made me wonder this is that in BoM, we get transcripts of VenDell's interview with ReLuur while ReLuur was missing a spike. Compare ReLuur's behavior, language, and mannerisms to the level of control Paalm has when mimicking Governor Innate or taking up the persona of Lessie. Basically I think there's no way ReLuur could have held it together to do a fraction of what Paalm did. So why does Paalm have such control, creating and executing an intricate and convoluted plan that almost works without a hitch, tricking a city, Wax, and the Kandra? Why didn't she have a major personality mood swing when Wax shot her with his earring, making a mismatched Blessing that apparently was incredibly unpleasant when ReLuur was given one of TenSoon's spikes? What happened with Paalm is not consistent with what we see later without a Trellium spike. Basically, I think that there was a lot of control and planning involved with Paalm, it just wasn't her own. There's obfuscation in that Edwarn Ladrian says that the Set are merely riding the storm of Bleeder's campaign, but we now know that the Set follow Trell, and that spike was from Trell (or at least Brandon lets us call it Trellium. Which brings me to my idea that Paalm was being controlled all along to do things that had she been sane might have agreed in a specific context, so even as a slave perhaps she never considered or even had the control to kill herself as she did at the end of SoS. I suspect she died there because Trell didn't want to reveal their hand more than had already been done. As a final note, at the end of BoM, Harmony says that Paalm would have remained "a slave in her mind" had Wax not killed her. Thoughts?

I had a similar thought a while back actually, that Kandra memories were stored in the piece of the soul within their spikes, but I was running into the same issues that are being brought up here. In BoM Ch. 19, when MeLaan and Marasi are breaking into the Set's fort built around the fallen Southern airship, MeLaan tells Marasi that a Kandra's cognitive system is spread throughout their body but that MeLaan was storing her memories in a solid metal compartment in her thigh, as people aim for the head. This tells us a few things, but might raise more questions: Kandra are aware of where their memories are stored physically Bullets hitting the memory storage is problematic or annoying enough that MeLaan deliberately placed her memories in a reinforced container away from common kill targets Despite all of these safeguards, having her spikes removed still left MeLaan as a Mistwraith with no memory, other than the feeling that her state as a Mistwraith was horribly wrong. Unless MeLaan was lying about the metal compartment in her thigh, her spikes were not her memory storage, as Telsin removed the two spikes easily enough with some messy work with a knife. MeLaan's memories still degraded while her spikes were out. So... for some reason the loss of spikes makes it so that a Kandra can no longer access their memories, despite them physically stored in a known location. Here's a list of things I think we know about Kandra memory: ReLuur lost a spike and was no longer fully sane, but still seemed to retain most memory of what had happened to him. MeLaan was still worried that there would be losses from ReLuur missing one of his spikes, so even a single spike removed will cause memories to decay. The Kandra thought it was worth temporarily giving ReLuur one of TenSoon's spikes, but ReLuur spat it out shortly after (notably, ReLuur's spike was made of Pewter, TenSoon's made of Iron and Copper). Either the issue was of incorrect pairing to create a Blessing, wrong spike, both, or something I haven't thought of. The Blessing of Presence with Copper spikes gives Kandra exceptionally sharp memory, though this too will degrade when spikes are removed. Memories seem to degrade from the most recently recorded memories first when spikes are removed (TenSoon's story for Wax, MeLaan at the end of BoM) I'm going to pass over Bleeder, because so much about Bleeder doesn't make sense to me or seem to match what happens to other Kandra. I'm making a thread with where that train of thought went, as it went far beyond this topic. Basically, there has to be some sort of Cognitive or Spiritual reason why a Kandra can't access their memories without Hemalurgic spikes, even though there is a physical component to memory storage. My crackpot idea right now is that the spikes give them access to a component of their Cognitive or Spiritual Identity, and that while the spike is removed, either their Identity or their Connection to their Identity degrades as the spike loses its Hemalurgic charge. They can't access those memories because it's not physically tied to their Identity, it's Spiritually tied through Hemalurgy, and as their Identity degrades the memory becomes inaccessible, starting with short term, recent events that have not been incorporated into their Identity. Another way of looking at this Feruchemically is, what happens if a Hemalurgist gains a Feruchemical ability, stores an attribute for a while, then removes the spike and lets it degrade before attempting to access their metalminds? Can they still access the entirety of the storage, or would portions of the metalmind start to become inaccessible as the Identity and Feruchemical power within the spike degrades?

Ah... that makes more sense. I know you're the Hemalurgy enthusiast, but my gut thinks that there are much cleaner ways to get this kind of change. I think what you are suggesting with physical change is technically possible with a few extra steps, maybe some healing thrown in there, but I think you would need an inhuman level of accuracy to get just the right amount of the Spiritweb that you are trying to morph into. I'm guessing physical alterations are hard to get right, especially since it's a messy process if you get it wrong (for example, I could see an error having you grow an additional set of features rather than overwriting the original).