therunner

Well, there is this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116/#e4788) saying they can heal almost anything. And this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6336) saying difference between stormlight healing and f-gold are minor. So stormlight on its own is comparable to F-gold, so the only things stopping it is stores, so give someone enough stormlight and they will match Miles. Plus surge fabrial can bring someone back from the dead, that is a feat beyond even F-gold, and Radiant Surges are more powerful, so Progression healing is stronger than F-gold at least in some ways.

Nice contributions, but a few points that complicate it a bit Compounding Per the WoB healing soul from spiking would require obscene amounts of investiture (he keeps saying theoretically and only cautiously says yes, and pointedly says it would take TON of investiture) as we have seen in Stormlight Archive that healing spiritual wounds is much more costly than healing physical ones and that was only soul being cut, not part of it torn off. So to compound enough health would take some time, at least a few hours I would assume, possibly more, so you can spike each donor 1-2 times a day at most, possibly even less then that, greatly limiting your output. You need continuous supply of gold to all donors on levels exceeding needs of Miles Hundredlives, that will be quite some economic cost. A single spike would be more expensive than most buildings when obtained like this. Number of spikes in person If they have 4 spikes and more they are opened to Shardic influence, and possibly to influence of anyone who can brute force the Connection (hint Bondsmith hint, or hint Ba-Ado-Mishram hint). This effectively limits them to twin-steel (it is very powerful) and one other attribute, unless you want to risk losing the army. There is some limit to number of spikes before you start deforming (physically and mentally) your subjects, existence of Steel Inquisitors suggests that this limit is lower than 9 spikes and afterwards they become inhuman in body and thought and require lynchpin spike to survive. This would essentially provide them with self-destruct button if you could destroy the lynch pin spike, and they are opened to Shardic influence/control or Bondsmith control. EDIT: Maximum number of spikes in individual we have seen is 21 (Marsh) and he was made this way by Ruin to use as a weapon, who had no reason to hold back, suggesting there is upper limit on number of spikes that is survivable even with lynchpin. You cannot give your soldiers atium as there are no atium mistings left, and Marsh is no Mistborn (so you cannot spike it out of him) and Kelsier is cognitive shadow (so god knows what spiking would do to him). Also, there is seemingly no atium left outside of Marshes bag and he needs that for youth else he is dead. We do not know if/how Bands of Mourning could be reproduced, since medallions are restricted to 2 (3 in extreme cases) powers. It is entirely possible that they require semi-natural Fullborn to produce and we do not know how much time that took. So far Bands seem to completely unique artifact. I have addressed limits of speed below, in short based on Marasi even Fullborn/wielder of BoM could sustain supersonic movement only for tens of seconds at a time, maybe a minute before running dry. You will also run into population issues, Elendel Basin seems to have population in ~15 millions at best and they seem to have the highest proportion of misting/ferrings of anywhere. Mistings are somewhere around 1 in 100 at best 1 in 200 hundred at worst, and ferrings are noticeably rarer so lets say 1 in 300. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/101/#e882) This means that feruchemy will be the limiting factor for your industry, with only 3125 people of any given attribute available, and not all will be able (too young/old/mentally unfit) or willing to do it. Take away ~1/3 for too young and old, and about 40% for mentally unfit (compounding takes some practice and so mental acuity to pull off) and you are left with ~1200 people who would be able to undergo the procedure, not necessarily willing. This effectively means you can produce ~20000 soldiers a day at most, if you just give them all any attribute you can spike. If you want them all to have for example f-steel you are limited to 1200 soldiers a day at most. And finally, not all abilities have the same probability of occurring, in SoS Paalm and Wax both bee-lined for the one steelrunner in Elendel we know of, suggesting that steelrunners are more like ~tens-low hundreds per few million (Wax asked for a list of names of Steelrunners in Elendel, suggesting it would not be that many names, checking few hundred people would take a lot of time). So you could conceivably be limited to just hundreds of f-steel spikes per day. Roshar has far larger population then Scadrial (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e3466), comparable to Sel which is 1.5 the size of Earth, so possibly in low-mid hundreds of millions. If half of those are Singers, make a few hundred thousands of Stormform and then have them shoot lighting at Scadrians, they will be nicely conductive thanks to all the metal they will have on them, and f-steel will not help them avoid lightining as that moves at whooping ~111 000 m/s (Mach 326). The Stormform singers will take horrible losses, but they will hurt the Scadrains pretty bad. Support these with couple hundred thousands of warform singers shooting aluminum arrows and the Scadrian army should start taking some substantial losses. If the Rosharans can kill 1 for every 10-20 they lose, they could win through attrition. And one big final issue with the army, the second Roshar figures out tones of either Harmony or Ruin/Preservation, your entire army is dead or useless. Most spikes (especially if the people have more than a few) seem to have to go to vital places and only Hemalurgy is keeping the subjects alive. If you would then turn on suppressor fabrial attuned to Harmony/Ruin the army would at best lose their powers and at worst drop dead. To figure out the tone they would most likely need to only kidnap one soldier (by having a Bondsmith take control) and then experiment a bit, or do some field experiments. A few dozen suppressor mines would ruin your army quite effectively. For the semi-fullborn, Marsh is definitely also very sensitive to suppressors, as he needs to keep tapping youth to stay alive. So turn on suppressor near him that will mess with Hemalurgy or Feruchemy, he drops dead. Kelsier seems to be spiked into his new body, so mess with that with suppressor and he is most likely back in Cognitive and seething because he cannot do anything. Alternatively, since he is cognitive shadow in a body he might not react so well to Raysium dagger/arrow either. Coppercloud only blocks senses (it prevents people from sensing allomancy is happening in coppercloud, but it does not prevent allomancy from being done) and only makes the Smoker himself resistant to emotional allomancy. Coppercloud is most likely not more powerful then dedicated suppressor fabrials, at best it would make the Smoker slightly more difficult to target with direct Surges like soulcasting/division. I only stated that non-compounders cannot hope to achieve sonic speeds, compounders might but it will still deplete them far too fast to make it anything but one trick usable only ~monthly/yearly at best. I would also challenge the calculation on Mach 17.62 speed of Marasi: She was tapping both F-steel and F-zinc in large amounts. We have seen that F-zinc speeds up mental process considerably to such extent that you can follow entire trains of thought in the break between two words, and f-steel speeds up your perception considerably. In this very sped up state she can only see the vacuum briefly, and she was moving and perceiving at minimum 510x normal human speed. He assumes she moved her arm from resting state to face, but Marasi just finished stealing the vials of metals and drank them. Realistically her hand is not near her resting position but much closer to some halfway state, this cuts down the speed to 8.81 Mach. The longest arc is travelled only by her fingers, that being ~about 0.5 meters assuming she started from non-resting state. Even her palm would travel only ~0.4 meters, and her wrist would travel only ~0.3 meters, giving either Mach 7 palm and Mach 5.3 for her wrist. Based on the above points I would estimate Marasis speed to be in the interval of 5-7 Mach in that scene, her angular velocity being ~6000 radians per second. And Marasi did this only for stealing the vials and drinking them, then she noticed her reserves are draining way too fast and dialed back to speeds were there is no appreciable time interval between her actions and opponents reactions, so she was moving at 3-4x as fast them at most I would say. Since guards reacted to the sonic boom only when she slowed down, she could not have been tapping at supersonic levels for more than ~0.25 seconds (human reaction time to sound + time for sound to move), and yet she was afraid of draining too fast, if she tried to maintain this for 40 times as long (so 10 seconds) she would run out most likely. Frankly in light of this and RAFO on Paalm compounding I think even compounders will have trouble pulling off supersonic moves for more than a dozen seconds at a time. Sure In that time they can kill lot off people, but afterwards they are sitting ducks for flying/sliding/teleporting Radiants in Plate. Point by point A-Chromium is external, so you cannot nullify surges on yourself, but you could drain Radiant or possibly drain placed lashings. A-aluminum is only internal, so it would only help you resist surges affecting your spiritual/cognitive aspects directly, it would most likely not make you immune to lashing for example, much less having soulcasted oil dumped on top of you. A-copper would again only work internally and I addressed it above. True, but you are still limited by compounding time and number of suitable donors (adressed more fully above) In WoB you linked Brandon only states that atium is renewable (in Era 1) so a godmetal, not that any metal is renewable on Scadrial. But it running out of metal completely would not be much concern for the reasons you listed, however it would wreak havoc (especially the gold needed) on their economy. Harmony has great difficulty acting even on his own planet, we only see him take control once, on another planet it might be quite different. Especially if Bondsmith assisted Odium, or both Odium and Cultivation worked in concert, or freed Ba-Ado-Mishram worked in concert with Bondsmith. And Roshar can have at least 4 people with Bondsmith abilities (3 Bondsmith, 1 with Ishar's blade). Adressed above. Vin's earring was also created by someone guided by Ruin, more skilled/powerful bronze mistings could learn to pierce weaker copperclouds too. It definately boosted her, but just how much is hard to say. Wax's earring also gives him no abilities, it still is spike but its charge is far too weak. Thanks for that, I quickly scanned the summary and then reread some chapters in SoS. In light of this yeah, Paalm did move at supersonic speeds for some short time. I adressed the speed more fully above. He also agrees with the idea only hesitantly, and keeps saying how much investiture it would take, and Miles was savant so it might take some time to get to that level with your factory. On healing scared soul, it is how he views himself, knowing you had the ability previously is not the same as viewing it as still something you should have. Kal used to have forhead without scars but it took a while before it healed even though he wanted it gone conciously. So even knowing what is supposed to happen, and wanting it to happen might not be enough to heal the spiritual damage if subconciously they doubt it for example. EDIT: A comment bit outside of the topic of the thread, but when electricity and magnetism are more developed hemalurgic constructs will most likely start having a bad time, as you could start ripping out their spikes with sufficiently strong electromagnets and quickly kill them.

So assume that Kandra has gotten access to feruchemy, maybe through hemalurgy. Could they then use for example elephant bones and store weight in that form and then tap it in the human form? Or gepard bones and store speed in that form. Since feruchemy is tied to spiritual aspects and keyed to Identity which should not change by simple change of form this should work right?

While Idashwy was last seen a week before the party that happens near the start of SoS, however per information from Vwafendel she vanished a month ago and was behaving erratically before that. From the description of the corpse it is probably not much older than the week though, I would wager two weeks at most, as if it was a month old I would assume someone would remark on it. However we know that hemalurgically stolen feruchemy allows recipient to access metalminds of the donor (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/98-worldbuilders-ama/#e872), so Paalm could have simply palmed any metalminds that were left, giving her unknown amounts of speed stored there. EDIT: Also Brandon RAFOed whether Paalm was compounding, so there is that. (https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/46146-sos-spoilers-failure-to-compound/?page=3#comment-342748)

Ah, that makes more sense. I am a bit uneasy with bubble slowing time both having the effect (i.e. speeding those inside incredibly) and yet also being gone instantly so that the misting is safe and Radiant effectively cannot move for the duration of the bubble. It feels wrong to the depths of my physics soul I think I will find duralumin interacting with time-effects to be very weird to my sensibilities. Per WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/3/#e117) Sliders do not seem to have much control over the size of the bubble, so it seems to be a set effect, probably depending on "strength" of their allomancy. However, they can flare to increase the time compression, I think we have seen this in AoL when Wayne created the bubble to help protect them from the explosion. EDIT: Huh, searching arcanum for bendalloy and duralumin together just throws up a lot of RAFOs, with notes that Brandon seemed to be hinting it will be important in future books.

I mentioned the steel bubble only because in chapter 16 of SoS when Wax is in Waynes bubble he moves at the same speed as Bleeder does when outside of it, suggesting she moves at most 11x as fast as human when doing her work (per compression factor of bendalloy from AoL). I am sorry if it sounded like I implied that Bleeder used bendalloy bubbles, I am aware their boundaries mess with trajectories. The feat with those four shots does sound it could have been faster than ~100 m/s, but as we do not know the distances, and we do not actually see it on screen (if you talking about the crime scene from beginning of the book) so I would take any estimates of how she did it with a grain of salt. EDIT: And if she was doing those things in 0,1 seconds she could not have been moving at sonic/supersonic speeds, as she would be generating sonic booms and people would notice those.

For materializing no, but for being kept mobile I think we can be reasonably confident it does not need light to remain mobile. In RoW chapter 64 when Jasnah is in battle she remarks on Plate using stormlight only the plate is damaged, and when she is nearly/completely out of stormlight at the end battle (she needs to start breathing again so the plate opens vents, and is tired) the plate is not described as functioning any differently than before. From this I think we can safely conclude that Plate requires no stormlight, or utterly miniscule amounts, such that even effectively depleted Radiant still supplies enough.

Hemalurgy requires correct bindpoints to work, so hitting Radiant with aluminum would not be enough, although the wound would not heal until aluminum was removed. And if they have plate you need to get through that first. No, abilities are distinct from Identity (per pretty much everything and how feruchemy works). Harmony rewrote Spooks spiritweb manually, Spook never had potential to be Mistborn, if he did he would become one when he snapped. Also Harmony did it when he was not yet restricted by his opposing intents. In that WoB on bullets and plate if you just highlighted different things you would notice that the one bullet is also right shot, right bullet, right moment, i.e. situation where everything goes perfectly for Wax. Steelrunning is affected by inertia, they suffer g-forces when accelerating or turning but the magic compensates for that (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/93/#e2695). And the very same WoB also states that they cannot ignore friction and wind resistance. So wind resistance would be slowing down any steelrunner, and they would need to tap more to compensate for that. Thing is, the four shot things is something that Wax assumes happened (AoL, chapter 5), he has not actually seen it, for all we know it could have sounded like four quick shots merging together, or four separate shots but so close people did not have time to react. Bleeder is not shown doing anything close to this on screen. The compression factor of bendalloy is roughly 11x fold per AoL (coppermind), so if Bleeder looks as if moving normally from inside the speedbubble, than she is moving 11x as fast in reality, i.e. she would be moving at 99 m/s at best quite far from sonic speeds. Marasi was also using BoM (BoM, chapter 28, pg. 395 and after), the fullest metalminds ever seen created by Fullborn most likely, and was literally tapping everything. After drinking those vials she also stopped tapping speed so hard as she was startled how quickly the reserves were draining, and after this the guards could still move fast enough relative to her to start aiming at her, so she is not moving at supersonic speeds for more than a few seconds. Wax when tapping the BoM is not tapping speed so hard, as he could have a conversation with Suit and generally he did not seem to be tapping speed much. Now, what are the limits of f-steel? Per this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/243/#e6126) the feruchemy is increasingly inefficient the harder you tap. In the WoB proper he seems to imply that the increase in tapping speed is relative to storing speed, but in other he says that otherwise, so I will assume that you can always tap without any penalty 100% of attribute, i.e. if you have stored what is effectively 100% speed increase for 1 hours, you can tap it, move at 2x the usual speed and do it for one hour. Now we can analyze the WoB and try to figure out what penalties would be for n-fold tapping speed. I also assume that 100% speed for movement (running, walking etc.) is 9m/s, as that is roughly what above average person can sustain for a 100 meter dash. Scenario 1 We assume that the increasing tapping is not getting progressively difficult, just equally difficult. At 2x tapping we get 5/6 inefficiency, at 3x we get 1/2 inefficiency, ratio of these is 3/5, so then in the most optimistic scenario the penalty when tapping n-fold is 5/6(3/5)^(n-1). If I had 100 hours of 100% speed stored the time I would get out when tapping n-fold would be 100/n *5/6 * (3/5)^(n-1), so Tapping at 10x speeds, to get total of 10+1 the human speed (i.e. 9*11 = 99 m/s), the time would 0.05 hours = 3 minutes (with original store being 100% (9m/s) speed for 100 hours) Tapping at 20x speeds, to get total of 20+1 the human speed (i.e. 9*21 = 189 m/s), the time would be 0.00015 hours = 0.5 second Tapping at 30x speeds, to get total of 30+1 the human speed (i.e. 9*31 = 279 m/s), the time would be 6*10^(-7) hours = 0.0022 second = 22 ms Tapping at 40x speeds, to get total of 35+1 the human speed (i.e. 9*41 = 369 m/s, our first sonic speed!), the time would be 0.00001 second = 0.1 ms So, even in the most optimistic scenario normal steelrunner cannot move anywhere near sonic speeds for more than literal mili/microseconds, and in such short time they can barely move from the spot before completely depleting their entire stores. This was the most optimistic scenario based on what Brandon has said, where we neglected that what he actually says is that each increase is harder than the one before, which is what I will do now. Scenario 2 Now we assume that tapping is getting progressively more difficult. The easiest curve we can fit (and yes I know we have only 3 datapoints, but we also now the loss should be multiplicative and should go to zero only in infinite limit) is (5/6)^((n-1)^2), as for 2x fold we get 5/6 penalty and for 3x fold we get (5/6)^4 ~ 0.5. If I had 100 hours of 100% speed stored the time I would get out when tapping n-fold would be 100/n *(5/6)^((n-1)^2), so Tapping at 10x speeds, to get total of 10+1 the human speed (i.e. 9*11 = 99 m/s), the time would 0.004 second = 4 ms (with original store being 100% speed for 100 hours) Tapping at 20x speeds, to get total of 20+1 the human speed (i.e. 9*21 = 189 m/s), the time would be 7*10^(-27) second The other two scenario would be even smaller numbers, so sonic speeds are completely out of question. So the scenario 1 is something of upper bound, f-steel cannot be much better than this, and most of the limitation is simply due to not having enough stores. The scenario 2 is more akin to lower bound, f-steel is not likely to be worse than this, so I would assume that truth is somewhere in the middle, but I would assume it to be closer to scenario 1 than scenario 2, as what Bleeder demonstrates on-screen throughout the book seems to roughly in line with it, or at least the correct order of magnitude. Either way sonic speeds are outside of limits of non-compounding steelrunner, as to get 1 second of slightly supersonic speeds they would need to have store one million hours of full speed, that is 114 years of non-stop storing. Frankly any speeds over 150 m/s would tap their reserves way to fast for not that great a benefit. The above also completely neglects that air resistance is a thing and steelrunners do experience it(https://wob.coppermind.net/events/93/#e2695), that speed is among the most difficult attributes to store as you yourself need to be moving (per Sazed...and I think this means really moving, not tapping your leg or waving arms and storing that). Someone running 8 hours a day would be running at ~5m/s if we are being very generous, that nets them ~1500 hours of 100% speed (9m/s) after a year, and using all of these stores would net them only 1.5 ms of slightly supersonic speed. However it would give them around 45 minutes of 100m/s speed (if we are assuming the most favourable scenario), or 7.5 seconds at ~190 m/s. Now of course someone with A-pewter could get around some of this, burning pewter roughly doubles the physical attributes and flared triples, this results in For storing this is effectively just a multiplier, thug/runner combo could have 3x the size of his stores, so after a year he could have 4500 hours of 100% speed stored, and since he could maintain sprint for the entire time his store would roughly roughly double again for 9000 hours of 100% speed after a very intense year of 8 hours sprints every day. Now this assumes that pewter speed is storable (when moving!) as I see no reason why it should not be, the Thug is physically moving at those speeds.When just tapping the steelminds could get 4hours 30 minutes of 100m/s or 46 seconds at 190 m/s, or 0.1 second at ~280m/s, so still not enough to reach sonic speeds for any useful amount of time. Now they can also burn/flare when steeltapping but that will effectively just give them a discount as I would assume a-speed and f-speed would be additive, i.e. when flared thug/runner is moving at 27m/s max so to get to 99m/s he needs to tap only at 8x the speed, as feruchemy seems to be relative the base state of Feruchemist. This effectively makes it cheaper for them to run at such speeds, but it is not enough to let them move at/near sonic speeds, they would still get not even 0.02 second at Mach 1 speeds. There is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13501), saying that burning metals while tapping speed increases the speed of burn, likening to what would happen inside bendalloy bubble. However I do not think this means that the metal gives greater benefit, consider this: Thug burns pewter when someone puts up bendalloy bubble around him, for him inside he continues to burn and is 2x/3x as strong due to pewter, however to those outside he is burning 11x times faster, so that when the bubble bursts his stores are 11x times more depleted and yet he was not 22x/33x stronger for the duration. Since Brandon likens tapping speed to the speedbubble in the WoB, I think metals will simply burn faster inside the steelrunner but still impart the same benefit, as to him they burn at the usual rate, i.e. steelrunner burning metals will go through his reserves faster, but will not get any greater benefit. You could in principle try to get around the storage limitations by using unkeyed metalminds, but even if you have hundreds of thousands of people equipped with f-steel and f-aluminum, steelrunner would still not get more than 10 seconds at sonic speeds. Thug/runner with such support team (hundreds of thousands of people) could get maybe 5 minutes of 1 mach speed, and again this assumes the ideal scenario were each increment in tapping speed is not harder than the one before. Ultimately no one outside of compounders or supported by compounders can move at sonic speeds for any useful amount of time. TL;DR: Solo steelrunner, or even thug/runner combo has nowhere near enough store to sustain even just 1 Mach speeds for more than 0.1 second at a time under the most favourable theory, and it would deplete their entire reserves. They most likely can sustain ~100m/s speeds for 10-15 minutes, but it would nearly deplete their entire stores, and those stores would have to be quite extreme to begin with. Effectively sonic speed attacks for non-compounder are impossible, and even 200 m/s attacks would deplete nearly their entire reserves for just one strike. But remember, the BCD-misting is trapped in the bendalloy bubble with the Radiant, who inside the bubble has the stormlight and so can kill the BCD-misting at his convenience. The second the duralumin-bendalloy bubble goes down the Radiant is most likely left without stormlight, but the BCD-misting who was inside with them is dead, if the Radiant has shardblade or any offensive surges. I have a different proposal with the same abilities, start with Cadminum bubble to trap Radiant and BCD-misting in slowed time. Then BCD-misting uses Bendalloy to return to normal speed but leaves Radiant slowed, as B-bubbles are smaller than C-bubbles. Line up a shot, and drop the bubbles at the same time as you (and potentially people outside) take the shot. Repeat as needed.

He most certainly would have, at 200 m/s speeds the air drag (aka wind resistance) would be ~30 kN, so the wind would impart on 80 kg person ~370 m/s² acceleration, enough to very quickly slow the steelrunner down, unless they kept exerting themselves. How exactly does steelrunning work is a good question, but since apparently they do not ignore environmental effects like air drag, they would probably need to tap extraordinary amounts just to stay at this speed, to accelerate they would pull even more. And nearly infinite supply =/= nearly infinite speed, rocket could have nearly infinite supply of fuel but that does not mean it can move infinitely fast, as the environmental factors kick in.

Fabrial soulcasters are more limited then Radiants (and generally surge fabrials), so it stands to reason that Radiants can produce it. Aluminum resists investiture itself, but if that translates to greater cost of investiture when producing aluminum is not given. But this is moot point, as between Dalinar and Highstorms they have nearly unlimited amount of light available. We have seen no Radiant produce it, because until the now they had no reason to produce it in larger amounts. I would personally assume that aluminum will probably be more costly on investiture front, but not enough that they cannot produce it in large quantities, as in history they clearly did produce it in large enough quantities to literately line entire base of Urithiru with it. The issue with industrial production is that it is limited by 1) Mines 2) Transportation 3) Electricity output. All three of these are not easy to scale, so any increase in production capacity will take time, at least years. In contract, Roshar are limited by 1) Number of Radiants+Soulcasters 2) Stormlight, and the second of these is non-issue with Dalinar and regular Highstorms, so they can quickly scale if needed. In principle, Roshar can scale faster and produce aluminum faster and easier per kilogram. However they are limited by their personal, so in enough time I would expect Scadrial to overtake them again, unless the growth in Radiants numbers outpaces industrial growth of Scadrial. For near future I would expect Roshar to outproduce Scadrial, but in ~20-40 years down the line I would expect Scadrians to take the lead again, if they focus on mining and smelting.

Right, but on Scadrial aluminum is heavily involved with all magic systems, and can effectively negate some (pushing/pulling, rioting/soothing), so it stands to reason most people would be aware of it especially if they expect to fight Mistings. Also since they were aware of its applications for the last 3 centuries, of course their already build capacity for sourcing aluminum is greater. However as aluminum weapons do not seem to be standard issue, it is clearly not common enough to equip most people with it. In contrast, on Roshar, there was no surgebinding for the last 2000 years, during this time aluminum was nothing but a curious novelty (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/445/#e14293), for not being soulcastable and possibly for seeming to resist a bit shardblades (if someone thought to try it), so general populace would have no reason to pay much attention to it. Aluminum became industrially/militarily important on Roshar only in the last year or so and it takes time for knowledge to proliferate. The important players now all recognize at least some of its uses, and as they are all in positions of power, they should have no problem commanding people to obtaining more of it. It is possible that Fused have bigger issues producing it, as it seems that their surges work slightly differently, and have different limitations then those of Knights. As it stands, Aluminum is easily sourced with soulcasting and now that it has relatively large strategic importance it should be easy to employ Elsecallers and Lightweavers to produce relatively large amounts, potentially creating larger amounts in shorter time than Scadrial can (until Scadrial can start building power plants and extracting it from bauxite in larger amounts). In summary, while literally at the moment Scadrial does seem to produce larger amounts of aluminum, I think that Roshar can outpace their production within another year or two, as they can scale their production much more easily than Scadrial can. EDIT: Thinking about it a bit more, Scadrial should now be mostly able to produce some from bauxite as they do already use electricity habitually, if they posses the knowledge of chemistry to do so. However they are still limited by mining of bauxite, which would take longer to scale.

I am putting the same kinds of information together, so I can respond in one place. Full suit of steel armor weight at 15-25 kg (33-55 lbs), so a lot more then `few extra pounds`. For a thug most likely not slowing them down that much, but it will slow them down some. Neither hammer nor shot put throws are known for their accuracy, so I am not sure how accurate could such throws be. And yes I am aware that pewter also seems to improve dexterity and as a result maybe also accuracy somewhat, but that is at normal human speeds, not at 10-20x times the normal human speeds. I suspect here pewter dexterity would not help them that much. To store speed they need to move, just burning pewter and storing will do nothing (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/352/#e10297). Second, Bands of Mourning, the most filled metalmind ever seen created definitely by compounder (most likely fullborn) were the size of oversized spearhead, and they were still not as invested as shardblades, so at best maybe comparable to shardplates. Your postulated non-compounder could not even scratch that, so their armour would be most likely barely invested when it comes for defensive purposes. Even full metalmind (which we have never seen as far as I know) would most likely only resist shardblade, and non-compounder does not have access to enough investiture to fill the entire plate, most likely even 50 of non-compounders could not store enough. You also did not address the fact that the second armor leaves the thug/runner hand, it will get slowed down very fast, as it would experience Newton drag ~v^2. Hammer with head of area 0.02m^2 (so 20 by 10 centimeters) thrown at 200m/s would take 2 seconds to fly 200 meters, anything beyond 400 meters would have more than 10 seconds to react, and this neglects gravity, which would complicate aiming much more. However, anyone close than those 200 meters, especially if they were on a ground would have a bad day indeed. I would not call it contradictory. Incomplete? Yes. For degree of durability we actually have some hard limits, 2-3 bullets to shatter section for example. Heat resistance was not yet shown in books, so there we do not have much to go on, outside of the weight of plate and the fact that Nightblood (heavily invested metal) would have rather high melting point. Not fully accurate information is not the same as contradictory information. He occasionally talks to Wax/tries to get him to do stuff, far cry from making lerasium beads for him. Most of his actions are indirect, only telling his agents what to do, not enabling them (he did not even share how to make radios which would much smaller impact than making lerasium). And most of his active involvement was against incursion from seemingly another Shard, Trell. The reason Scadrian have Harmonies investiture in them is because Ruin and Preservation created the entire planet and everything on it wholesale. It does not mean that your average Scadrian is more invested than average person from elsewhere in the Cosmere. No, all Scadrians do not have unawakened potential to be Mistborn, some have potential to be Mistings and then Mists can snap them to make it so. What is plausible is not just dependant on Identity, but on spiritweb as whole i.e. also Connections and such. If your parents did not have correct spiritDNA to allow their offspring to be Mistborn (however heredity of spiritual aspects works) than it is outright impossible (unless random spiritDNA mutations are a thing) for child to be born Mistborn, i.e. it is incredibly unlikely outcome (if we allow for random spiritual mutation). As a result the stamp would quickly wear off even if you were stamped when storing the native Identity. And again, we are supposed to compare Roshar vs Scadrial, not Scadrial and other planets vs Roshar. No, what was shown is that aluminum repels captured spren in conjoined fabrials. Huio even speculates that it is because of aluminum interfering with connection of the two halves of singular spren in conjoiner. If Huio is correct than aluminum would have no effect on other fabrials and free spren. Aluminum is sufficiently common that Fused are equipped with aluminum covered lances. And again, because it can be soulcast it is as common as surgebinders with Transformation want it to be. On coppermind page of Aluminum, there is literally no mention of the words anti, anti-metal or anti-investiture. All the coppermind says is that it is Investiture-inert, i.e. not pushable/pullable, unaffected by surges, unforgable, unawakanable, ignores invested cutting property. Interferes with active uses of investiture, i.e. disrupts time bubbles, shields from rioting/soothing, blocks metallines, seems to interfere with some connections (conjoiner fabrial spren)...this is most likely extension of the investiture-inert property It can be used in Metallic arts, for a) wiping interal investiture reserves (and metals as well) b ) storing Identity c) removes all powers (but this requires proper bind point, or heart)

So far it is specifically spren in conjoiners, possibly due to them being split. If Harmony can just give out lerasium, why not have Cultivation give Radiants boon similar to Taravangian, but less extreme? Or maybe just enhanced reflexes? Direct shardic intervention is not very plausible, since they really do not like doing it (especially Harmony who has trouble acting as it is). Forgery is also based on plausibility of history, so changing someone metal? Sure. Changing them into Mistborn? Not so much at this point in time. Also to Forge soul you need Essence Marks, and those need to be reapplied every 24 hours. Also I though we are comparing Scadrial vs Roshar, not Scadrial and other planets vs Roshar. Syl is recovering her memories, not Identity. When her last Radiant died she went into something akin to coma? So she lost her memories due to trauma and now seems to be recovering them. She also lost some memories when transiting realms, as spren cannot maintain cognitive aspect in physical without bond for longer periods of time. The fact that spren have memories of their previous holders does not suggest shared Identity, I remember a lot of people but I do not share Identities with them. Without compounding they will not be able to completely fill even a single bracer, so larger storage space is wasted. Due to this, it will also not be very effective at resisting damage from shardblades, as it will not be invested enough. The protection from speeds should work. Well, they can impart some speed using steelrunning, but that would be mostly horizontal speed, so not helping them with throwing into heights. The hammer would also be heavily limited by air drag, even a modest warhammer thrown at 200m/s would be acted upon by air drag, slowing it down with acceleration of 100 m/s^2, with the force of air drag growing with the square of velocity, F ~ v^2. This would most likely limit the range to something around 500 meters, so roughly the ballista range at most. The question is if they can hit the target, as precision throwing warhammers is not such an easy feat I would say. Aluminum is still much more common on Roshar than on Scadrial, being obtainable through soulcasting and trade with Horneaters. It will now become even more abundant with the return of Elsecallers and Lightweavers who are not as limited as soulcasters. Heavenly Ones use aluminum coating on their lances to fight Windrunners in RoW, so they are clearly aware of any martial applications. I am not aware of any WoB where he would say that aluminum acts as anti-investiture, at best he says it has weird effects in all magic systems. So far aluminum is always investiture inert, with the exception of Metallic arts and spren in conjoined fabrials. But in the second case, in world characters speculate that the spren is simply trying to maintain connection to its second half, which is being interfered with by the aluminum sheet. They are separable in: Feruchemy treats them separately. Bondsmiths manipulate only Connection, not Identity. Cosmere healing works off Identity.

Hmm, good point, so not exactly like deadblades. Maybe it has to do with investiture in the sword? Living blades are softly glowing, suggesting they are naturally more suffused with investiture than deadblades, and since honorblades grant surgebinding maybe this extra oomph is enough to register as "living" for the purpose of Oathgates. This discrepancy is definitely interesting.

Interesting WoB. Maybe it has to do with Honor being splintered? Effectively being the same as deadeye spren are, but on much larger scale? So now honorblades, being in effect splinters of Honor with direct link to him are now limited as deadblades are. So in principle anyone even Heralds would now take 10 heartbeats to summon the blades, but when Honor was still alive it would be immediate for anyone.

RoW, Interlude 4, pg. 549 It is in process of him trying to learn to throw the sword as Adolin did with Maya, and he remarks on the fact that Adolin did summon shardblade faster then 10 heartbeats. He is clearly aware that it should be possible to do it faster and is trying, but it is not working.

I do see the benefit, but I just think it is too much of an advantage just due to perception issues. We already see plate react and try to anticipate Radiants needs (closing the visor when stabbed, turning faceplate partially translucent to improve field of view, opening vents to allow breathing) so I think this being controlled by perception is not strictly necessary. And since the visor turns translucent when closed, but is still clearly there, I think being completely invisible yet still working as armor is not in scope of shardplate abilities. I see the reasoning and the arguments, but I guess for me it is a bridge too far.

Good point. However I would say the having different summon time is very small change compared to the armor either functioning or not when not visible, that seems like a much larger change.

If aluminum was this effective against shardplate someone would have noticed and it would be the choice for weaponry against shardbearers. Fused would definitely be using such weapons against shardbearers, pretty much nullifying the defensive advantage of plate. And unlike on Scadrial, aluminum is while difficult to obtain, still reasonably easy to procure with soulcasting (or trade in cognitive). It would still be adding investiture, Forgery works by adding additional pieces on top of those already there, not by modifying what is present, if I understand it correctly. If the spiritweb is closer to what the goal of forging is it makes it easier for the stamp to stick and requires less investiture, but misting vs mistborn is pretty big difference. I think changing what misting they are would be much easier, since stamps work off plausibility of change as well and Mistborn are no longer being born making it very unlikely. While related, Identity and Connection are clearly separable, as we have clear examples like Feruchemy (they are separate attributes, unkeyed metalminds require only storing of Identity) and Bondsmiths (they can change and manipulate only Connection, not Identity). I would also point out that the only time Jasnah remarked on the plate using Stormlight is when it was repairing itself. Even at the end of battle when Jasnah is pretty much completely out of stormlight (she needs to start breathing again and so the plate opens small vents for her) the plate is not described as locked up, or slower and weaker than usual. This suggests that living plate requires either minuscule amount of stormlight to function, or (in light of Rlains `always there` comment) requires no stormlight to function and only requires stormlight to repair itself (although I theorize it might be able to use ambient lesser spren for quicker repairs of whole destroyed sections). I would personally find it odd if the only benefit of summoning plate was cosmetic. Also I do not think perception has anything to do with Jasnahs comment on her being vulnerable with dismissed plate, we have so far seen perception mainly effect either internal effects (healing) or just shape/form, not external effects. In short, perception affects what you can do, not what other things do on their own. Also if plate was effected by perception to this extent, then opponents who does not see shardplate as that resistant could have easier time breaking it. Personally I think that living plate (my greater speculations are in indented) Requires no stormlight to maintain its ordinary function (defensive capabilities, increased strength, speed, reflexes, limited shapechanging, reactive attentuation of outside stimuli), or at least so little stormlight that even Radiant who no longer gets its benefits can still power it. Requires stormlight to heal cracked section and entirely shattered section. (I think the completely shattered sections could be replaced by ambient lesser spren of correct type, but that would easier for some orders than for others. I.e. windspren are nearly omnipresent, but creationspren are much rarer so Windrunner would have easier time doing this then Lightweaver) Dismissed plate imparts no defensive benefit, but can be summoned even without stormlight (per point 1.). (Since plate sometimes does thing without conscious command of user, it might also react to immediate danger on its own and summon itself. Personally though, I would doubt this.)

I do agree that using heat is impractical, outside of some extreme scenarios where you have a lot of heat output to waste. I think the armor amortizes outside stimuli, but I think heat sufficient to crack the plate would also overcome this mechanism. Thank you, I was able to find it now. Huio also speculates that the aluminum interferes with their ability to sense their other half, so the pushing away might not be to because they fear the aluminum, but to get to a better position where they can maximize their contact with their other half in the second gem. If so, this effect would be limited to conjoiners, or generally any fabrial which requires splitting of a gem with captive spren. And finally, this effect has so far been observed in captive spren only, not in free spren or spren taking on physical form of their own volition. I sincerely doubt this, it would make shardplate completely useless against anyone wielding aluminum weapons, and that is one big weakness considering that Fused use such weapons routinely. It would effectively nullify the usefulness of shardplate completely. I do think there would some reaction of shardplate to aluminum, but nothing as dramatic as whole sections disappearing or becoming insubstantial. It would also make deadplate better in some regards, as deadplate clearly does not react in such a way to aluminum (someone would have noticed by now), which is odd. The Forger would first have to know how to do that, i.e. they would have to know details of allomancy and its spiritual side quite well. Also you would need to get your hands one Lerasium somehow, and I do not see that happening outside of shardic intervention in the near future as it no longer exists. The only mention I see on coppermind are of turning a person into allomancer generally, not full mistborn specifically. In fact the WoB I linked suggest that it would both very difficult for skill and very intensive on investiture (and some suggest it would not work at all). Storing it as Identity would most likely not work, as the ability to use magic systems is tied to storing nicrosil, so aluminum-twin could not store that. Forgery rewrites spiritweb as a whole, not necessarily just the Identity part. F-nicrosil ferring most likely could per this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/36/#e1560) but he does not sound sure to me, however it does sound plausible. Actually forging someone who is already invested is more difficult not less, and part of the difficulty of forging is based on plausibility. In principle if the Forger worked out the heritability of allomancy they might have a shot at going for the correct details in the past so that your spiritDNA has the important bits. Well just three (four) issues with that Having a connection with deadblade =/= merging its identity to yours. I.e. he simply could not store the identity of the blade, connection and identity are not interchangeable, and having connection to someone (even Nahel bond, and this would not yet be one) does not magically merge Identities. There is nothing whatsoever that suggests that deadblades retain some parts of the original Knights identity. In fact, they seem heavily compromised on their cognitive side. Since whatever did this to them is related to imprisoning of Ba-Ado-Mishram, which robbed Singers of their Identity and Connection, it is highly likely that deadblades also have damaged Connection and Identity aspects. So they would deficient on this front, not possessing more. Reswearing the oaths is not enough (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/41/#e7095) to revive deadblade, something else would need to happen. (As far as I know nothing in feruchemy is permanent, outside of copper but even there memories degrade (and have we seen Sazed keep the memories without contact with the copperminds? I think we did but I am not sure).) I do not need a video of your great grandfather, someone intentionally and consistently hitting the same bullet hole right now would suffice. The other two people you mentioned seem to be quite shrouded in legend, i.e. people tell a lot of tall tales about them. If you have seen videos like that please could you try and point me in their direction? The fastest gunslinger I could find is this person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Miculek) and his fastest feat is also only accurate within a deck of cards, far cry from ~3.5mm accuracy needed to hit eye slit. In the first link the Michael Bird is shooting a rifle with a scope at 45 meters while seated on a bench or prone with tri-pod and even then he put the round into a circle of ~18mm diameter, so again not consistent shots with 3.5mm accuracy, even though he has much more precise gun, scope, superior shooting position and all the time in the world to aim. Other comments in the first link repeatedly say, that while possible, any little thing can throw you off, like pulling a trigger in a bad way, or a heartbeat. In the second link they are talking about accidentally putting a bullet through the same hole twice, not intentionally as your agent would have to. So I do not see the links as too convincing, the shot is possible on a shooting range with stationary target, but still not consistently enough to rely on it in stressful life or death situation, where a lot of factors are not in your control (like aiming time, angle, that the target moves unlike in your examples with stationary targets, weather). Concentration of heat might not matter much if the damage is spread across the entire section, but until we know more it is possible. Since shardblade does not bend or dent, piercing factors are not important, as the bullet would not get caught by the plate. And if the shattering of section does work like ablative armor, then the explosion would be consumed by that, even if the section shatter after a single bullet. We know effects of aluminum on invested weaponry quite well (it just negates the supernatural cutting properties it seems, but nothing else) so we can apply that to its effect on other invested items, like shardplates. This would suggest that aluminum would not do much, if anything. Living plate should have at least the same capabilities as the dead one, as the living blades did have all the abilities of dead ones, and more. So defaulting to properties of deadplate for the living one is reasonable, outside of where we have seen the difference (i.e. sharing living plate, partial summoning, plate being always there etc.) And there is a difference in trying to piece together some new properties (how aluminum effects shardplate) from known facts (how aluminum effects shardblades, how aluminum is used on Roshar in warfare) versus headcanoning new powers wildly outside of anything we have seen (storing attributes of others using personal feruchemy). Depending on their max speed I could see them being formidable. Heavy hitting (3x human strength) so should be able to get through section of a plate in under ~30 seconds? I would say 12 good hits to shatter larger section of plate? Maybe faster, I would need to reread parts of WoK and WoR. It would also depend on their maximum speed, since wind resistence effects them they could not move much faster than ~200-400 km/h I would assume (this is how difficult is to try and walk against ~200km/h hour wind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4pFdLJmG7M), but that still give them at least 4x-6x the speed advantage. I think orders with Transportation would be able to avoid him, just go to cognitive (Elsecallers kill him from Cognitive) order with Gravitation would be able to avoid him, and Windrunners could use Reverse Lashing to tie him to a spot, or close enough at least, as it can impart ~300m/s^2 acceleration, far beyond steelrunners speed if he does not want to waste his stores) orders with Abrasion might slip away (if they can put Abrasion on their armor as well), but they would need to get lucky orders with Cohesion might take their footing away, or trap their legs taking away their advantage orders with Illumination could hide with Illusions, or blind them All in all, if they could get close enough before Radiants can use their surges they might take them, but most orders have at least 1 tool to make the job difficult (with Abrasion and Illumination being the weakest tools in my opinion). Bondsmith would be most likely screwed, unless he simply opens perpendicularity and waits for the attacker to waste their stores.

I meant it in reference to previous discussion where we were talking about bullets melting bullet-sized holes through shardplate. Sufficient heat would most likely break the section, but I think that heat would have to be much larger than that required to theoretically melt a small hole, so incendiary bullets would not be sufficient. The big question than is how much heat is enough heat to break a section, lasers are cool and all, but I think it would still require some sustained action when it comes to hand held lasers. The biggest hand-held laser I know of has 200W, which means it would take ~1.5 seconds to deliver the same amount of energy as a single punch. But focused into small enough area maybe? The working principles of shardplate are still not that well known, I think.

Interesting, was this in the Dawnshard? I was unable to find it in the books.

I agree, my point was that the heat would have to be large enough to shatter the entire section, supplying enough heat to melt a small part would not be enough. Do we have any examples of shardplate being subjected to large heat? Reread that passage, and you are correct. Scabbard seem to be around 3-4 mm thickness, so it seems that that is sufficient to block Nightblood and therefore most likely shardblade. A thought, Nightblood was an ordinary sword before being awakened, as such is it possible it actually has less shard physical edge then shardblades? Shardguns would not be possible with just a spren, spren need to form continuous shape, so no bows and arrows and no guns with bullets. There are some hints it could be done, but it would most likely require some add-on which would supply bullets. Getting to Sel is exceedingly difficult even for experienced worldhoppers (the whole 'plasma storm' in congitive realm) so that would be very difficult trip. Second Forgery would most likely not give access to metallic arts, it requires great skill (beyond Shai) and it also requires large amount of investiture (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/361/#e11253) and finally Forgery will collapse when moved off-world (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/127/#e5192) It would also interfere with their natural Feruchemy (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/216/#e6477). Oddly there is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/96/#e3197), saying you could make a stamp to make someone Allomancer, but it would not actually do anything. So it seems that it possibly might not be fully decided if Forgery can be used to grant access to off-world magic systems. Also most people here assume that both Scadrial and Roshar is united, so assisting Honor against Odium is not feasible reason for the purpose of the discussion. Of course if he did, he could simply ask bondsmith to try and bond him to deadblade and he could try and attract spren on his own, no need to coerce/trick spren of Radiants he killed. Yes but if it can be tapped in part, then it does not work like copperminds and definitely has to be continuously tapped to maintain the effect. Forger would also make a great enemy, but alas their magic works only on Sel, and unlike the Ire we have no example of successfully getting it off-world. Problem is that to revive spren of a deadblade bonds are insufficient as far as we know, se the agent would fail at the very first step. And swearing oaths takes time and dedication, just swearing them without fully understanding them and meaning them means nothing. Plus the oaths need to be accepted by seemingly either Stormfather/Dalinar or Cultivation, and the spren must be willing as well, although there is argument that maybe they cannot refuse earnest oaths and Stormfather just talks big game. Great, if there were Olympics back then he would be Olympian, still does not make it any easier. And rifles are much better at distance shooting than guns, with the long barrel, higher ammo velocity and more stable firing position. Also stories tend to get embellished with time, so 130-150 year old hearsay is not exactly a good argument. Frankly I was unable to find a single video or example of someone hitting a bullet on top of another bullet, much less doing it repeatedly and consistently. Maybe it is just the search algorithm not being cooperative, but if you have such examples please do provide it. Spren do not avoid aluminum at all, in fact they do not seem to pay much attention to it. Aluminum weapon would definitely not pass unhindered, at best it would negate the supernatural resistance of the plate, but the physical aspect of plate would definitely remain. Argument could be made that at least to some extant the shardplate would maintain its supernatural resistance as well, because metalminds being in touch with aluminum does not affect them in any way, suggesting aluminum does not influence internal effects of investiture. On the bondsmith, I do not think he could force someone to dismiss the plate for two reasons: Plate interferes with the surges, so it should definitely make it more difficult, or stop it outright. Ishar did not seem to be able to make them dismiss the Shardblades, or at least he did not attempt it. I think bondsmith unchained might be able to steal the entire bond and with it the plate, but he would need to assign that connection to someone/something. And again, I am not sure if the plate would not at least hinder such attempt. On the second point, since aluminum seems to have only the passive effect of resisting investiture (blocking investiture from passing through, being unaffected, blocking healing in its vicinity) I do not think it would do anything to the connection. Driven hard enough it might shatter a section, but I do not think it would have any spiritual effect on the spren. If the aluminum was driven with Hemalurgic intent, I...have no idea, as we know little of what spiking spren would do, and much less of what spiking spren in shardplate/shardblade form would do (if it is even possible).

Yeah, rereading that you do have a point, thank you. It usually shows shardplated people protecting the shattered area, suggesting that it is vulnerable. (I need to do this sooner in the day so I do not miss stuff like this). In that case creating a bullet which could shatter the entire section is plausible, but the seeming ablative effect might still mean that the bullet would not penetrate the user. The point on melting still stands I think.

Hello, I would add one information that I kind of lost sight off, and I am unsure if others did not as well. Shardplate is described as neither bending nor denting, in fact hits either shatter the section, or cause cracks to run through the section. Whether this effect also extends to thermal damage is not yet known, but I would assume that it does. When the section breaks it also explodes into pieces of metal. These two effects combined remind me of tempered glass, which is glass which has internal tension which strengthens it. In addition, in at least some (I did not go through all) situations where the section breaks, the blow is never described as damaging further layers, suggesting that the when the section breaks it function as ablative armor and absorbs the rest of the strength of the blow. The above facts suggest that creating bullets which would punch straight through shardplate is most likely very difficult (if not straight up impossible), as the bullet would have to 1) Shatter the entire section at once, and 2) Also not be affected by the potential ablative effect of the exploding section and damage deeper sections. It also suggests that melting through plate might be impossible, as the sections would shatter whole rather than having holes burned through, i.e. the heat would have to supply enough energy to shatter the entire section, not just enough to melt a small hole. I have completely missed this fact, at it would have been useful in previous discussions. If there are counterexamples (blow shattering a section and damaging a deeper one as well), please let me know.