Trusk'our

I'm glad that this thread isn't like that! Very difficult to a more complete and accurate conclusion of a situation when no one else is willing to be open minded. Admittedly, when someone else tries to dig in and prove their own point, I feel obligated to do the same. I should probably change that about myself rather than using that as an excuse though But at least I guess I have something to work towards now!

Uhhhhhhh. No, I can't say that I did see it.

One would think! (this has got to be the longest thread of back and forth discussions I've ever been on before!)

Fascinating! I don't watch sports, so I didn't know this was a thing. It's cool to know about the upper limits of human capacity. Still don't know how easy it would be to defend against someone who sees the world in slow motion though. I completely forgot about Kaladin taking on a Shardbearer before gaining his powers (I blame that I somehow don't have WoK as part of my collection yet). I suppose that Shardbearers don't have that much extra speed then, so we have some proof that a Fullborn (or even vanilla Steelrunner) really could blitz them (or at least gain a serious advantage against them) without too much difficulty.

Even more SA spoilers.

I don't know if we're supposed to have SA stuff here, so spoilers ahead.

We know that it is already possible to be healed and survive a Shardblade blow to the head or spine, but only if the Surge of Regrowth or theoretically some other form of Invested healing were to come from someone else. Plus, it requires a lot of Investiture and must come immediately after death. We also know that the medallion tech made by the Southern Scadriens is more "automatic" than normal Metalminds and is moving further towards becoming mechanically based than will based. So my idea is that it may be possible to create a Fabrial (or specialized Metalmind tech, if you will) that could automatically heal you of a Shardblade induced death.

I'm going to be blunt, I'm very pleased that you value my opinion enough to actually ask me directly, but I don't think that it's possible to try and calculate Feruchemical potential when we don't even know the rate of loss for Feruchemy, how much Investiture can go into Metalminds of different sizes, and when we don't know the difference in the Investiture between an Allomancer burning a Metal and a Feruchemist storing (for Compounding purposes). Any conclusion involving specific numbers we come up with at the moment will almost certainly be wrong since we don't know how to properly solve the problems at this time. However, we might be able to get a general idea of Feruchemical steel's limits by looking at actual examples in the books, so starting there would be our best bet.

Yeah, this one time I came up with a theory about Kandra blessings actually containing the memories of the Kandra, encoded as Investiture, which would explain why their memories degraded when the spikes were removed; Hemalurgic spikes leak Investiture, which in this case would be the memories. It would also be really cool, since it would be an example of Hemalurgic spikes that actually grow in Investiture over time. Unfortunately, there were three or four problems wrong with the theory as people pointed out, and there was a direct Wob (word of Brandon) that said that Kandra memories are actually stored in the body. Sooooooo, Yeah. Theory busted.

I'm probably just being unobservant again, but could you please clarify your question? As Michal Scott would say "alright, now could you tell it to me like I'm a five-year-old?"

Alright, that's a fair conclusion. To overcome that, maybe you could use a medallion that grants Allomantic gold and Allomantic duralumin, then quickly duralumin blast an Unkeyed Goldmind while the stamp is in effect. You'd ruin the fake Spiritweb, but you might have quickly grown a power in your real Spiritweb in the fraction of time the stamp persisted. Probably less Investiture efficient on the Goldmind's part, but maybe it would still be achievable.

My thoughts exactly

Eh, you get used to coming up with theories and then having about 80% of them shot down. But hey, it's better to have a theory shot down by fellow 17th Sharders than to hold on to it and never see an idea you thought was cool spring up.

I don't think that those snapped by the Mists would have become Mistborn. The reason they were snapping at all was because the Mists needed to goad out the power within them, meaning that they were weaker to begin with. Most who died did so because they were either old or weakened in some other fashion. It's an interesting idea, but Preservation wouldn't have wanted to "waste" extra power making Mistborn when Mistings would be more efficient. P.S. welcome to the 17th Shard!

Thanks!

If I want to do what you just did (make links with post up front), how do I do that?

Alright, I can your respect your opinion on that, though I still believe that it would be possible to create a naturally functioning Allomancer (burning metals to access Investiture) or Feruchemist via Forgery and Feruchemy.

That's for Shai specifically though, who does not have a natural Connection to Scadrial. A natural Scadrien would already have a Connection to Preservation though; the Forgery just tricks the Feruchemical health into molding into a new power rather than healing the Scadrien into what their actual natural state is.

I don't know that the quote means that Allomantic powers can't draw from Preservation if Forged into existence. I think that Brandon was trying to say that a Forger would need more Investiture to create the Forgery than would normally be possible, hence the infusion of external Investiture. I think that the reason that Soulstamps can't replicate most other Invested powers was because there just isn't enough available Investiture at a given point of time; it's a leak in the Dor, not a faucet, and unlike Feruchemy you can't slowly store it up over a long period of time and release it in a short but powerful burst. Trying to replicate a wounded, less Invested than even a regular human Spiritweb probably wouldn't require too much Investiture though.

Okay, that's fair. Even if Metalmind piercings only provided a lesser amount of influence than Hemalurgic spikes, the Keepers' piercings would have a noticeable effect, but we didn't see any.

I thought of another cool hack to gain Allomancy; using Feruchemy to overcome the limited available Investiture in Forgery. 1. Use Forgery on a Scadrian to turn them into an Allomancer or Ferruchemist, but one who has had their power Hemalurgically stolen and survived. This means that the Forgery will require far less Investiture to achieve the end result, and therefore should be more within the scope of what Forgery can normally achieve. 2. Give the Scadrian access to Feruchemical gold, likely with a Southern Scadrian medallion. Since the person's Spiritweb thinks that they should have an Invested power, the Investiture "heals" a new piece of Investiture onto the Spiritweb, creating a new power where one hadn't existed previously. If it proves impossible to get the power to stay after the Soulstamp runs out, you could Hemalurgically remove the new power to use later (which isn't the ideal case, but you'd still get a functional power where one didn't exist before). Plus, if the new power is just an extension of the Forgery, then removing it would likely not cause serious spiritual damage to the donor since it isn't a real part of them.

I found a quote that may have some interesting implications. Except, we don't see Miles exhibiting any extra powers from Hemalurgy, and we know that Miles likes to pierce his own body with gold spikes (not Hemalurgic ones) to act as Feruchemical storages. For reasons seen in TLM he may have a single Hemalurgic Trellium spike, but one spike is never enough to control a being. I think that it may be possible that if someone pierces their body with a Feruchemically charged metal, it may allow external forces to influence, maybe even control them similar to Hemalurgic spikes (though you may need far more Metalminds than spikes to achieve this effect). Investiture exists in all three realms, so if an Invested metal pierces your body, maybe that opens a hole for other things to get in, though likely it wouldn't as pronounced with Feruchemy as with Hemalurgy. TLR also may have inadvertently made himself more vulnerable to Ruin's influence by doing this, especially since Atium- Ruin's own essence- was what his primary Metalminds were made of.

Could be very dangerous to Invested individuals, assuming that a decent alloy exists that can provide the properties of aluminum and make a sword that won't crumple with the first swing. Also, it may be that the aluminum blade needs to strike a specific Bindpoint in order to act Hemalurgically.

I've been trying to connect the dots between Investiture efficiency and the "power" (total amount of Investiture wielded) of the practitioner. Knights Radiant become more efficient at using their Stormlight the further they progress in their oaths. As their Nahel Bond strengthens, they don't make more Stormlight- they just use what they have to achieve more results. And if I recall correctly from Warbreaker, Awakeners require fewer Breaths to Awaken something if they had more Breaths to begin with. All this made me start wondering if Allomancers with greater power are really drawing more Investiture from the spiritual realm per unit of metal burned as I had previously thought, or if they are just using the Investiture they get way more efficiently. These quotes also helped this thought process. For example, is a Lerasium-bead made Mistborn going to get as much Investiture from their metals as a Mistborn born five hundred years later (just get way more effect out of their Investiture)? It would stand to reason. After all, if Awakeners and Surgebinders get more efficient as their Connection and "power" grows, does a "stronger" Allomancer's increased Connection to Preservation just make them able to harness the set amount of Investiture gain from burning metals more efficient? It would also explain why TLR didn't make himself even more powerful Allomantically then he did, even though he had access to the Well of Ascension; perhaps he couldn't, because he already had the maximum effect, the maximum efficiency possible from his burned metals. If this is the case, then supercharged Allomancy (via Hemalurgy, Lerasium, or nicrosil Feruchemy), and potentially Compounding by extension, may be significantly more limited than I had previously assumed. Someone like TLR wouldn't likely be as Invested as I once thought either; their upper bounds of Invested-ness would be determined by how much Investiture can be drawn from a piece of metal rather than their Connection to Preservation. Although, if my previous assumptions made about the actual amount of Investiture in the Metallic arts hold sway, then a very small amount of Investiture used kinetically can have huge effects compared to static Investiture (similar to how real matter contains huge amounts of potential energy), but it would be brief in comparison (i.e., Heightenings and Hemalurgic spikes provide more or less permanent, though immediately small, amounts of continuous effect). (see post here The Amount of Investiture in the Metallic Arts) I could use some other people's thoughts on this matter, if you guys don't mind- basically, does a stronger Allomancer burning metals get more Investiture from that metal as well as becoming more efficient with said Investiture, or is the amount of Investiture gain via burning a metal set in stone regardless of the Allomancer's power, and they only become more efficient?