Duxredux

Nice one. Confirmed dead doesn't necessarily mean actually dead. At least, that's what we're currently theorizing I think. This character has never fed Torol Sadeas a chull dung chutney. This character has never pulled legs off of a cremling that we've seen. This character has never stolen a bridgeman's boots. This character was not killed by Testament. This character's cognitive shadow was not punched in the face by Kelsier. 1. This character has red hair. 2. This character has a weird family. 3. This character was confirmed to be dead. 4. This character has won multiple competitions.

@Primeval Chaos I think they generally go over the rules whenever they do a "who's that Cosmere character" on Shardcast. You can totally guess along with even the older casts, but that format is generally how the rest of this style of game goes I think. This character has never fed Torol Sadeas a chull dung chutney. This character has never pulled legs off of a cremling that we've seen. This character has never stolen a bridgeman's boots. 1. This character has red hair. 2. This character has a weird family. 3. This character was confirmed to be dead.

This character has never fed Torol Sadeas a chull dung chutney. 1. This character has red hair. 2. This character has a weird family.

Now this is interesting. I think this indicates that Breaths are looking not at the physical state, but something to do with the Cognitive or Spiritual that allows Breaths to stick to an object. I wonder how formerly organic soulcast objects compare to say, cloth in terms of "steps away from life" when looking at Breath compatibility. It also makes me wonder if it's possible to make a Nightblood counterpart with far less Breaths using soulcast metal. The shape of the item will still matter for the number of Breaths, but maybe not the material. I'd guess that Stormlight can't make Lifeless, at least not without serious hacking of the system that we haven't seen yet. Lifelight could be a different matter, but we don't know that much about it, nor do we know how to consistently/easily get it. We see Zahel Awakening cloths when sparring with Kaladin, but since a lot of the cloth ends up gray, he's using Breath to do that. Since we know he can utilize Stormlight, at least to eat, that probably means he can't use the Stormlight for Awakening. That does however imply that he has a couple hundred Breaths presently that he could use to Awaken some Phantoms. Breaths are a very limited commodity on Roshar so he could probably make a small strike force, but not be able to put out an army. At least not without some way of hacking the current Lights to do it. I'm also not sure if they would be as effective as we would hope. The Phantoms would tear through regular Singer troops with ease but would probably be countered by the same Fused and Regals that have been targeting non-Radiant Shardbearers. They would throw off the Fuzed for the first couple of encounters, but they're the best examples at learning from being killed. That said, there is a pretty high chance due to the nature of the Alethi nobility that have been soulcast into stone that the existing statues would be extremely good at fighting as if they were Shardbearers, especially if they were to retain their fighting skills over the two transformations. I could see Phantoms making a crucial tip to the balance in an important battle, but I wouldn't expect them to flood Roshar sweeping the enemy before them. From this, I could see the Phantoms potentially making a relatively small impact, but for the meta reasons @Elegy stated, I don't expect them to save Roshar. There might be foreshadowing if you look into a bunch of WoBs but I can only think of a couple from canonical sources. We see Azure making cloth soldiers to fight Fused, and I posted earlier that I thought the Phantoms were based on Shardplate, but I haven't seen anyone in-universe even thinking about Awakening soulcast objects.

Woohoo! This character has red hair.

Silence?

We'll see if anyone's still watching this thread 2-9 years later. Sorry that I'm waaaay late to the party. I read everyone's thoughts and I think that there's a lot of weight to the concept that there is a set number of Rithmatists that is only occasionally touched on this thread. The whole plan to start capturing Rithmatists without killing them seemed pretty well supported throughout the book. I've been rereading the book for fun, and they keep very careful track of when Rithmatists die - from the census records that Joel dug through for Fitch tracking the deaths of Rithmatists in the last 80 years, to Nalizar being removed from active service for the supposed death of William Muns. Yes, there was more at play at Nalizar kicked out, but we hear about how seriously the War Cabinet takes Rithmatist deaths from Principal York. If the whole point of this plan is to try to prevent new Rithmatists from being made, which makes a lot of sense in a war spanning centuries, then may not have been a slot open for Joel. Melody was sure that the Induction would work, possibly because she had scheduled Joel's Induction ahead of the 4th of July and she thought William was dead leaving open a slot (yes, there were the three missing students, but at that point there was debate on whether they were kidnapped or not). If she thought she was giving William's spot to Joel, that puts a bittersweet context to her actions. If they really do keep track of the number of Rithmatists alive, then Joel's Inception getting skipped may have not been trying to keep him from becoming a Rithmatist, but simply because they knew there weren't any slots. Or the church and others could be manipulating the process, with the Muns Family being a primary example. Not sure if this really fits, but I do have a theory that somewhat plays into some of the concepts from the past 9 years. To my knowledge, we've never seen a chalkling operating with the Glyph of Rending, which enables them to interact with physical objects, right? One theory I have is that the vertical chalk entity that Joel sees is actually a chalkling a member of the church drew with the Glyph of Rending that has to operate as the Bindagent to attach the Shadowblaze to the child being inducted. Joel didn't gain Rithmatic powers because there wasn't any Shadowblazes available, since no Rithmatist had died, but the priest didn't know that. So... my theory is that Joel is prepped as a vessel to become a Rithmatist, but can't use his abilities until a slot becomes open. Which would only happen when someone dies. Granted, a large part of why I like this theory is because of the narrative reveal that Brandon could use in a climactic moment. I have this mental image of Joel in another highly dangerous situation, still drawing lines for tracing, and having this moment when a Rithmatist who was in peril dies where Joel can't see them. Joel's tracings suddenly gain Rithmatic power and there's this moment of "Yes!!! Joel's a Rithmatist now!" combined with "wait... that means that Melody/Fitch/hopefully-someone-else is... dead." I think Brandon could make that moment way cooler than I'm describing it. At least, if he ever gets to writing Rithmatist 2. I'd be happy if it came out, but I'm not holding my breath anymore. Especially since it didn't seem to be any of his secret projects.

I think that there would be effects depending on what you did, but I don't know what they would be. The Listeners have a technique to enhance plant growth by bathing them in Stormlight and beating a specific rhythm, and it wouldn't surprise me if this kind of thing is possible for other forms of life. Clearly you can affect living things with Stormlight. What I don't know if the plant's soul is becoming invested, or if the rhythm is enabling the plant or lifespren to utilize the Stormlight to do something similar to the Surge of Progression that allows it to utilize the Stormlight without the soul becoming invested. I suspect that you could get more interesting results if you were manipulating the Stormlight in the room in some way, but I would guess that without doing anything other than letting them sit the people sit and bath in the Stormlight, the effects would be too small to be meaningful.

I've thought more about this and I think that there's a good case that invested metals are resistant to corrosion (possibly impervious at high levels of Investiture). Remember how the Bands of Mourning were literally left outside for several centuries in an area with snowstorms? They initially thought it was aluminum, and so I mistakenly discounted weathering. The aspect that makes me not sure is how gemstones in Shardplate crack when stressed. Maybe this is an aspect of how the vast majority of gemstones in circulation are flawed containers of the Investiture, whereas perfect Allomantic metals and alloys are more perfect containers? @Invocation, your point on Sazed's care routine is also a good case and it would make sense if those aspects of Terris fastidiousness has persisted to Era 2, especially for anyone lives at the Terris village at any point in time. We never see Wayne worrying about it, but then he's working with gold, not iron.

"Harmony's Forearms" is a curse used in Mistborn Era 2, and it got me thinking. If you wear copper rings or bracelets you get green bands on your skin from the oxidation. Does Sazed have green forearms? I'm sure someone's asked a question like this, like if rusted Metalminds have degraded stores, but I'm having trouble finding the information. I would guess that what actually happens is that Feruchemists have to routinely clean/oil their Metalminds to prevent degradation, but I can't think of a time this happens on screen, even though we see Wax diving into water while wearing pure iron bracers. That can't be good for them.

If we start getting to some really fundamental aspects of sensory input, sight and hearing are basically differentiating between various wavelengths and amplitudes of light waves and air pressure, right? If the analogy persists to tones and rhythms, then someone could train their "Allomantic ear" to pick up really detailed information. Take electromagnetism, with enough sensitivity and understanding, it may not be an exaggeration for this OP Seeker to say, "I can hear you thinking." Neural impulses are probably on the large scale if you can hear subatomic forces. Again, looking at Spook, if you get to Savant level, it could be really wonky and dangerous.

This has me wondering what the Seeker would be detecting. I'm looking at this WoB: I imagine you would get massive information overload, and you'd have to practice Spook's lesson on using Tin, that it's not about what you can sense but what you can ignore. If you can get to Savant levels of compounded Allomantic senses... well we see what Spook pulls off as a Tin Savant.

Welcome BGMusgrave! I see that this is your first post. Just so you know, the theorizing and debating gets really deep here at 17th Shard, and seen that even though I haven't been here very long compared to most. Depending on how deep you want to get into Brandon Sanderson's works, I'd recommend going to this post that gives an overview of the books that fit into the same universe. If you're already familiar with the Cosmere and have read most of Brandon's books, this is where you get some information that hasn't ever appeared in the books but have been confirmed (or at least referred to) by Brandon. The question you have here delves into some concepts that are seen in other books but not as much in the original Mistborn trilogy. I'm not sure if there's an answer to this, but here's my best take on it. Here's something that Brandon put out that seems related. I got this from https://wob.coppermind.net/: and this one From these, you can have metals that simply do nothing. In this case, silver can't be Pushed or Pulled by someone burning Steel or Iron, but it also does nothing if an Allomancer attempts to burn it. In the case of an Allomancer getting sick from burning a metal that isn't quite the right alloy, it may be a case of it only working because it was close to the right "catalytic key" that allows Allomancers to gain access to the powers of Preservation, but different enough to cause issues with the soul. As for why specific metals give people access to the magic, that's probably just how the system works. A bit of information from Mistborn: Secret History, but there was a pretty definitive source that said that there were 16 Allomantic metals at the time of the first Mistborn trilogy. Even that number is a bit screwy when you start looking further into it, but it's a far cry from the 60 odd metals on the periodic table which doesn't even take into account alloys like brass. I'd guess that non-Allomantic metals just don't burn, and if you eat lead, Allomancer or not, you're gonna get sick. What I don't know is if the metals show up to an Allomancer's "internal reserves", but I imagine that if a Pewterarm ate some tin, they wouldn't be able to sense it.

Here's a line of thought. Assuming that he is effectively a Fullborn Kandra, once he has fully stapled his Cognitive self to the Mistwraith, do we know if he absolutely needs to keep his body in it's current shape? If the shenanigans with getting his OG bones was to get a "new string", does he still need to keep it like that, or does he now have all of the advantages and disadvantages of a single spike Kandra? When we see MeLaan regain her spikes in BoM, bind points didn't seem to be important, Wayne just tossed the spikes on her. If spike placement doesn't matter, Kelsier might just have the eye spike for Steelsight and dramatic purposes. 300 years later and I guarantee Kelsier still will be dramatic whenever possible. I bring this up, because if he isn't restricted to his bones and can run around with all of the abilities of a Kandra, he totally will use that to his advantage for whatever high stakes con he has going. Basically, Kelsier could totally have been on screen and we wouldn't have known it if he (and Brandon) didn't want us to.

I agree with a lot of this, but I'll throw in a few more things that Rashek had actively done to reduce the odds of him getting killed and the insane odds that led to his death. In order to kill Rashek, you would need to remove his metalminds that granted him healing and/or immortality. To know that you would need to do that, you would need an in-depth understanding of Feruchemy, which he had suppressed for a thousand years with the breeding program, as well as somehow guess that he was Fullborn and figure out compounding. For that matter, Vin and friends only figured it out because they had Sazed as a Feruchemist and the Keepers had managed to preserve a dead language that Alendi's logbook was written in, and they figured out the misdirection that Alendi was not TLR. Figuring out that TLR was Rashek also took someone experimenting with alloys of Atium until they made Malatium, which seems pretty pointless compared to Atium, especially considering the insane research costs to make such a useless metal. Rashek's metalminds were both highly invested and piercing his skin, basically making them nearly impossible to Push/Pull without Duralumin or being fueled by Preservation, and he had suppressed knowledge of Aluminum and Duralumin. That theoretically leaves someone physically pulling his bracers off, and he was prepared for that, even from someone with the abilities of an Inquisitor. Oh, and the only reason that Vin was even alive was because the High Prelan literally didn't do what his job was supposed to prevent having Vin, and even then the Inquisitors figured it out and were actively hunting her down. To us as readers, Brandon did such a good job of setting this up and foreshadowing that it has that feel of "surprising yet inevitable" but in-world Rashek's fall could only have been setup by Ruin and Preservation seemingly working simultaneously to take him down (yes, I know Preservation didn't mean for TLR to die, but his power enabled Vin in the end). As for not whipping out the full extent of his powers whenever he needed to, he had been squashing Skaa rebellions for literally millennia. He had been twisted by Ruin, but ultimately I don't think he really wanted to kill as often as he did, he just wanted stability and from his perspective executing a percentage of people was better than just slaughtering them and starting from scratch (though we all agree that Rashek was terrible at considering quality of life for his people). Consider that when he built his storage supplies he didn't just plan for the nobility, but also for the Skaa, otherwise Vin and Elend would never have had enough supplies for the population they were trying to support. We see it as monologuing, but spending a bit of time trying to convince the leaders of the rebellion that their goal was literally impossible would have saved him a lot of trouble if they had actually stopped the revolt. This gets more into the theoretical, but Rashek was very, very good at reading people. I wonder if he would have let Vin go and leave to stop the rebellion if he had seen her give up, but nope, the girl was stubborn even though he was literally crushing the life out of her by pushing on the trace metals in her body. If she had given up, then he wouldn't have had to spend the next couple of centuries rebuilding the social structure that he had found the most stable and the least likely to create large scale problems for the city as a whole, and then the story of how not even The Survivor and a Mistborn had been able to kill him would have come out. If that story had stopped rebellion for several more centuries, then it would have been worth monologuing from his perspective, I think. And as a last idea that I haven't heard yet, and no idea if this played into his rationale at all, but the more he used his Feruchemy the more likely that someone could make the connection that he was Fullborn, considering Sazed was pretty much just around the corner when Rashek's last battle happened. Maybe that's why he used Allomancy far more than any overt Feruchemy. The more he revealed his Feruchemical abilities the closer they would get to the secret of his immortality and compounding.

Hm... the inherent advantage to Awakening is that it uses color for fuel on the initial Awakening, otherwise the Breaths are not used up for most of their arts. Plate in contrast runs on Stormlight and can run out of Investiture as it gets damaged or used. If I was an Awakener and had to go against someone using Plate and Blade, I probably wouldn't fight them directly and would go for a battle of attrition, which is a really bad idea but seems better than going toe-to-toe. Vasher noted that relatively thin ropes can be used to hurl boulders toward fortified positions, so I imagine there is a limit to the strength of Awakened objects, but it's certainly enough to hurl boulders. What I might end up doing is using ropes or cloth to pelt the Shardbearer with boulders and use unusually long Awakened clothing or ropes to give me added mobility while I try to drain their Plate. It's going to be hard to keep away from a Shardbearer that is actively targeting me. A few other ideas, but they might be hard to manage the mental Commands and visualization: Sturdy ribbons that have small blades sewn into the edges. Command them to climb in through the eye slit of the Plate and cut the throat. I imagine this would be hard to Command though. Awakened nets used to either immobilize or impede their movement. Similar to your idea of using something to wrap their arms and legs, it's using something that is hard to break or cut to impede their movement.

I wasn't really talking about the mechanical aspect of driving chunks of metal into someone as torture, I was looking more at the warping of the soul. We know that 3 spikes is what the Set determined they could use before opening themselves up to Harmony's influence. If we're talking normal Soothing or Rioting without Duralumin, that number starts increasing before you would be able to consistently take control of them. If we're talking 4+ spikes driven into someone, what is that going to do to their Spiritweb? Even if we use the known bind points that allow you to bestow Allomantic or Feruchemical abilities, if you use animals to make the spikes, will that warp the spiked soul making them less human? I expect there to be side effects to the Hemalurgy far beyond merely opening them up to Allomantic control. Then there's the violation of their free will by taking control of someone's body without their consent. That said, it's a probably a meaningless judgment call to say which is more inhumane, warping someone's soul to give you the ability to control their every action, or to bring out the thumbscrews and painrials until their will breaks. Both can pretty well wreck the victim physically or psychologically.

I listened to Warbreaker again recently, and there's a fair chance that other people have already realized this and I'm just slow. We've known for a while that Nightblood is a hacked version of Shardblades, but it occurred to me that those aren't the only things Vasher and some of the other Five Scholars saw on Roshar. He also saw Plate and presumably the dueling stances, and this ends up making his own fighting style of Nightblood with Awakened clothing make a lot more sense. Considering his centuries of fighting with basically magical power armor and Nightblood, it also makes a lot more sense why he's a master at teaching new people how to use Shards. We see wisdom from the lessons he gives to Kaladin and Renarin in the few battles we see Vasher fighting. His first lesson to Kaladin and Bridge Four is to not get distracted by the Blade, and we've seen what he accomplishes when people just stare at Nightblood. Yes, Nightblood is doing more than just looking flashy or dangerous, but there's a lot to the intimidation factor that Vasher probably uses to his advantage. He has Renarin diving headfirst into the ground using Plate, and we've seen him trusting his life to an Awakened rope strengthening his leg when falling out of a building. Vasher's Awakened clothing combat style probably wasn't solely inspired by Roshar and Plate, but it obviously was influenced by it. The one that probably should have been obvious to me is that Kalad's Phantoms are a hacked version of Shardplate. Of course Vasher wouldn't have stopped at copying just a Shardblade if he saw Plate. He just made an army of his versions rather than just a handful. It may also put Vasher killing Shashara into a different perspective, since Nightblood or other Shardblades are probably one of the handful of things that would consistently be able to deal with the phantoms. It also makes sense how those two inventions, Nightblood and Awakened statues, came out relatively close together. Really though, I've known for a while that Warbreaker was meant as a prequel to SA, and that SA was written before Warbreaker, but it still astounds me how good Brandon is at what he does. Are there any other Rosharan elements that people can spot in Vasher's actions?

Thanks, I appreciate that. I ended up taking a break anyway, since I've got a lot on my plate with life, but I'll still pop in once in a while.

Sigh... I'm not good at forums it seems. I had been specifically trying to not sound defensive, because you made a valid point. It might be that I'm trying to be too clever, because I fully expect there to be aspects to Sanderson's magic systems that he's kept deliberately obscure, since that's always been my experience when reading his books. I picked up Elantris as a junior high student in the school library before Hero of Ages was even released, and I spent years thinking that there were only 11-14 metals. I enjoy trying to guess the weird thing he built in and is hiding, but if this is the wrong place or way to do it I can do it elsewhere.

You're right, we don't know the limitations of leeching which why I'm theorizing. This is obviously RAFO territory. If we're looking at resisting Investiture, then really, plating everything with Aluminum is simpler and more cost efficient, though it can restrict your own abilities which is why I don't think it will be a catchall solution. I'm also looking at A-Chromium as an option since it doesn't have the side effect of also wiping all of your other Investiture reserves, making it more versatile if perhaps less effective. And thanks @EmulatonStromenkiin, I think I hid the other one. My computer got an error when I posted and I think it posted twice.

I've been wondering about what a A-Chromium savant could do and have a few ideas. It'd probably make sense for a Leecher to be able to use Chromium as a defensive technique if someone was trying to force investiture into them, such as Lashing, Soulcasting or blocking Lightwoven lasers. That might come up when we get to space age and have laser fabrials. Crackpot idea for A-Chromium, we know it seems to only work on kinetic Investiture (though maybe a Savant could do something with passive/static), but it looks like Chromium allows a redirection/release of power, probably into the SR. I think it would be cool if a savant could actually redirect Investiture, instead of just burning it off. Like... Hoid somehow modifying Shallan's storytelling Lightweaving. Tweaking a Soulcasting to change whatever product the Radiant was hoping to make, changing the intended vector of a Lashing, or adjusting the Commands of an Awakened object such as a doll. Thoughts?

I have a bunch of dumb answers that hopefully get a laugh: Lerasium and finally figure out what it and all of its alloys actually does Feruchemically, and when I'm done playing around as a Fullborn, make EVERYONE a Mistborn/Feruchmist/Fullborn. Harmony would probably put out the hit on me or at least try to convince me to stop from making things blow up for the next thousand years if we last that long. Or find out if that's enough Lerasium to do this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/105-17th-shard-forum-qa/#e1248 Atium again for Feruchemical research and for the same thing TLR actively used it for. Bacon. Because bacon. Ettmetal so when I accidentally spill water it expl- wait. Probably need something with that if I just get dumped on the ground with 1000 lbs of Ettmetal next to me And a Stormlight 1-3 spoiler technically

Nah... we know of at least one of the original Shards that was specifically bad at cards and considered it beneath him. Can't be poker. RTS or Civ, maybe, but not poker.

Thanks for those, I sometime have trouble finding everything. Uh... how is pounding metal spikes into someone with the express purpose of punching holes in their soul so you can take control of them not torture? Particularly as you have to have killed other people to get the spikes charged in the first place?