DoctaDajman

Becoming a little nitpicky with words here. So please forgive me. Sentience and sapience are totally different. Sentience is something that the ape already has. I feel like Sentience is almost a you have it or you dont sort of thing. Sapience is consciousness and the ability to reason, that is something that apes already have. In this case you aren't trying to give anything to them but enhance what they have already. However, perhaps the more direct route, and far less costly would be via copper hemalurgy. A couple of spikes of that could maybe find a gorilla at Winston from Overwatch levels. Great... now I am picturing Rocket Racoons backstory in the cosmere being all hemalurgic experimentation related.

I know this is probably an odd topic but I heard the zoo tier guy talk about 100 men vs 1 silverback gorilla and he mentioned the gorilla being 6x stronger than a man. Which instantly made me think about pewter allomancy and think of a pewter arm vs a gorilla. Which then led me of an army of lifeless gorillas and chimps... While thinking further about the lifeless chimps and gorillas I had, what I consider to be a totally natural progression of thought, the idea of how apes are able to communicate and feel. Do they have enough sapience to use emotional allomancy against? @Trusk'our I might as well tag you in this next one, since I am asking about emotional allomancy... how would the weakness of hemalurgy transfer over? Do you suspect the bindpoints may be more similar to humans due to the closeness in anatomy and the gene pool? Would an ape need less spikes to make them vulnerable to hemalurgic control? Does anyone think enough innate investiture could kick an ape up to human levels of sapience and intelligence? I could take this list of questions on and on... but current thoughts are that they would be far more effective than my pack of lifeless dogs for 2 major reasons... #1 sapience / intelligence. I think the great apes would be able to understand far more complicated communication than dogs and this would translate to more complex commands and more exactness in carrying them out. #2 anatomy. The apes still have terrifying bite forces and chompers. They have hands and feet and their bodies can just move in so many more useful ways. Could this translate to them being able to use primitive tools and weapons via command? I know this is a whacky topic but I have been yearning for some shard talk and a squad of lifeless armored apes running around doing their awakeners bidding forced me to make a new one.

I think it will be a key component to FTL travel as well. In space I dont know how much thruster it would take to move a massively heavy craft but if that craft could start moving and then start storing all of that weight they would speed up and continue speeding up until acted upon by something else no? You get a speed bubble or two to surround the ship as well and suddenly you are absolutely cooking through space. Slowing down? I imagine that tapping a ton of weight and putting on the opposite speed bubble would be able to really really aid in slowing one down to a near standstill. But truly I know nothing of physics outside of what I need to know for my job. And my job certainly doesn't require me to even begin thinking of how conservation of momentum might work in the vaccum of space. I reserve that for thinking about the cosmere and how dope a full feruchemist would be as an astronaut... add in the ability to make a space suit out of roseite or some other aetherbound ability and you are set. (Well some way to generate a bit of thrust would be welcome as well but the vision still stands)

This one always read differently to me. Atium speaks of powers. Lerasium speaks of abilities. I picture abilities to be like the persons traits (thinking ability scores) as opposed to powers.

So TLM leads me to believe that compounding with hemalurgic spikes is something of the past. Because of identity contamination and the fact that those abilities didn't belong to the person. My question is this... shouldn't all of the duralumin uses via allomancy we saw in TLM have been nicrosil by the same logic? If there is identity corruption there and that power isn't actually you... wouldn't you need to boost the abilities of another spiritweb instead of your own? If we can make the argument that duralumin is fine because your spiritweb can recognize it as a part of you then why would you not be able to compound if you were natural born with one of the powers and got a spike for the opposite art of the same metal? While in the shower I was trying to think of a nicrosil compounder using nicrosil to nicroburst themselves and immediately thought about this identity crisis with hemalurgy that is blocking people from compounding. If it's because it isn't your ability... can you treat that foreign spiritweb using allomancy within yourself as contact with another allomancer to cause a nicroburst?

I totally hear all of this. Yeah aircraft are still going to be the meta. Metalborn with any real capacity to hurt them would need to be utilized more like the guns on another aircraft than trying to target them from the ground. I do think you could rig up some sort of system with iron feruchemy combined with either iron or steel to cause a lot of damage to the enemy aircraft... the trick is getting them to the aircraft. Would aluminum that is pure enough to resist all allomancy actually offer enough structural integrity to hold an entire plane together at those speeds? I dont know. Noone in the books has described duralumin as being inert to investiture and that is mostly aluminum as well isnt it? So for a metalborn to compete against an aircraft I think it is totally possible... assuming that metalborn is also using an aircraft. If you got an iron compounder to get within range of a jet flying mach 1 I think that metalborn could absolutely get massive enough to cause irreparable damage with a single pull. How do you manage it? Would the metalborn need to be ejected out of whatever aircraft he is being transported in in order to do it? Would a passenger in a plane going hundreds of miles per hour suddenly weighing a million pounds wreck your own aircraft? Or would inertia help carry it forward for the few seconds that person needs to start and iron pull on an adjacent aircraft? You also make a good point about weaponry and range. Iron and steel have never had such incredible range. You would have to be within a few aircraft lengths of the enemy to do anything anyways. Bullets and missiles will outplay that in a heart beat. What are some things you could do with a metalborn in aerial combat though? Would dragging a lurcher behind your plane on a tether destroy the ability to fly enough that it is useless? Maybe for bombers or larger transport planes. Keep a lurcher in the back on a wench that you could throw out the plane and he could pull on anti aircraft projectiles? It's a funny image in my mind but how would you armor him? Probably not well at all. Easier to do the same with a triggering device and harmonium cubs. They get dropped out and pull on everything to divert projectiles from the body of the plane and then the wench pulls them back in for new usage? You could employ an iron allomancer just to fill the cubes reel them back and then fill them again. Good use. So yeah I have to agree. No metalborn on their own is going to be able to compete with planes. Could they destroy one using steel and iron with duralumin or iron feruchemy. Sure. I think they have the mechanical ability to destroy a plane. Is it feasible to get them into a position and range to destroy a plane? I dont think so. The best bet would be having the iron compounder as a passenger on a super fast super stealthy plane to catch up to and get behind the enemy without them noticing, eject the compounder when in range and let them go Ham becoming millions of pounds for a moment and giving a tug on the enemy aircraft. Absolutely that enemies plane will be out of the fight. And the compounder is going to be able to manipulate his own weight to a safe landing on the ground even without a parachute. But now you have to recover your metalborn and get him loaded on another plane to do it all again. I think I may have seen redbull catch a wingsuit guy in the back of a plane. So I guess that is an option but if you have all this tech why not just let the tech do what it needs to anyways. A far better use of an iron compounder would be to use them to sink enemy ships in my opinion.

A crasher or a deader (my favorite name for iron compounder) would be devastating to airships of any kind. Could totally pull them straight out of the air if not full aluminum.

Given the dates of those WOBs and the fact that both RAFOs were back in 2017 and the yes was 2023, I have a good feeling about this one being a character he is already planning on having, at the least as a side character. How it would look and work is an interesting thing to think about. I mean I would be excited to see someone who grows a skeleton like normal but other organs are more maleable and they have control over that. Maybe they could replicate their own cells at will and have a significantly higher regeneration rate or something neat. Even just being able to build some mass based on what they have consumed would be really neat. A version of changing skin and hair color would be super RAD as well. Human skeleton kandra goo body. Perfect.

I should clarify. Not that the divine breath be given to him to make him as a Returned, but that a Returned say the words and command their breath to his. Would it heal him to his old kelsier self with that spirit web back to what it was 300 years ago. Or would it heal the spirit web of the body that the spike is currently sitting in and Kelsiers brain gets yeeted back into the cognitive realm... or worse?

I'll be honest. I sort of half expected Kelsier to be lying about the whole thing. I didn't realize that Harmony himself has spoken on the fact. Do you think if a Returned were to gift Kelsier their healing breath it would restore him or the body his spike is currently sitting in?

Would a lifeless kandra be able to replicate human targets still? I dont think it would succeed in deception checks at all if confronted. But strictly for the purpose of having someone smile and wave with the right face? Would you need a kandra at all or would you just need a mistwraith? How would awakening a hemalurgic construct work in general? If they are dead do those spikes fail to keep them working the way they did or would the spikes latch onto the Breath and still offer their benefits to the construct? Edit: Can a mod please move this. I didn't realize Iwas still in warbreaker forum.

It makes me wonder... would crude oil count as having been alive? I'm not sure how smart it is to awaken something like that... but it would be thicker... closer to clay. Although I think that the blood clay has already been thought of and may work just fine as well.

That absolutely helps. Thank you.

I know Wayne invested in the silly game where guys were competing with the ball or something along that line (I pictured american football in my mind so that is what I will talk on). How do you make sure the league stays void of powers? Or is it just that only powered people play? Even if you leeched every participant before hand, what is stopping a thug from hiding a bead of pewter to conveniently time everytime he is has to take a hit or shoot a gap? Would f zinc be disallowed? If your player happened to get injured but had a gold mind in his locker could he come back for the next play or would he be out for the rest of the game at least? I love the idea of sports on scadrial. It would be fun to watch a pewterarm league play against one another in rugby. I bet you could even make a legit quidich pitch for lurchers and coinshots. But how does one balance things like kolossblooded with no powers... are they allowed in human leagues or are they only allowed in kolossblooded leagues? What if they have powers? I just see a need for so many leagues in each sport... or a perfect way to eliminate any cheating through the metallic arts.... But then would there be an equivalent to breaking kneecaps by just giving your biggest opponent some suprize spike that would kill them if removed?

We have already seen that grandpa Smedry can arrive late to his own death over and over again. I actually think this is my favorite talent for the defensive applications... But what about offensively? Would he be far more prone to missing his own shots? Or even just whiffing every attempt at a punch or other strike? Or could he be so late swinging at the persons face that they inadvertently dodge their head into his punch 3 seconds ago because they themselves forgot where it was coming from?

Do you think the South still has any connection to Kelsier as anything other than the Sovereign? How do you anticipate the relationship between Southern Scadrial and the Ghostbloods will be? Kelsier cares about the planet and the peoples survival in general right? Would he not work to stop wars and build peace?

I do wonder if it is more of a connection thing as opposed to identity? Not saying this would be extremely useful but say a duralumin ferring being able to fill a metalmind and push / pull on it while tapping another metalmind boosting a connection to the first? Its probably a wildly out there thought. It seems like making metalminds, even those belonging to the twinborn, able to be manipulated by the twinborn as normal would really trivialize a lot of conflicts. Wax would not need special bullets against Push and Pull because he could just push his metalminds into their faces and that entire epic chase / fight along with the fun preparation and introduction of Ranette would be wasted. In this case the rool of cool fits more into limitations being more exciting that the powers themselves.

My question is would that count as having the proper intent? I can see someone using a rifle, taking aim and shooting for what they know is a bindpoint as intentionally hitting a bindpoint. I feel like spray and pray and saying "when one of these inevitably hits a bindpoint I want it to work hemalurgically" is a weak showing of truly being intentional to be honest. Words of Radiance spoilers: I just don't see spray and pray as intentionally trying to hit a bindpoint. It's inevitable that it hits one is a very nonchalant way of thinking that I feel would be a bit lacking in the sense of hemalurgy.

Now I picture some maximum security prison where inmates have aluminum implanted into them to ground out their powers or whatever. Like someone uses emotional allomancy in ways that break the laws and they serve their time of not being able to use it anymore or whatever. Though I think the Nicrosil spikes will be punishments worse than death. It would be foolish to not harvest innate investiture off of criminals who are destined to never be of use in society again... but now I sound like a crazy person. If criminals could be apprehended via some aluminum needle embedded into the pair of handcuffs then they could stand trial safely and their abilities could be harvested on deathrow for the betterment of society. For those life with out parol folks just skim off their innate investiture as their last way of giving back to society what their criminal dealings had taken from it.

So the working theory is that is just blocks the powers? I read it as it removes all powers. Which leads me to believe that anything external would be safe. But if it blocks all use of powers then that would be interesting. Would it interfere with fabrial technology?

Thinking about Kandra I feel like they may be the only real characters in the cosmere who might not be effected by aluminum weapons. The kandras "powers" aren't even a part of their own spirit web. Would aluminum spikes steal their ability to be kandra without removing the spikes that complete their spiritweb? But then that would have to be asked about all hemalurgic spikes right? Can aluminum spikes remove the powers granted from other hemalurgic spikes or only powers that are a part of the individuals spirit web? I know that spikes implant a part of the other persons spiritweb but it is still the victims spirit web and it is stapled onto the host. Example. You spike a pewter arm and steal pewter allomancy. Now you go and give it to a tin eye. That tineye never becomes a pewterarm... they can use pewter because they have a spot on their spirit web that can access that power from someone else's spiritweb. So now that person gets spiked by aluminum. Does it ruin their spiritweb and short circuit the spike holding pewter allomancy? Or does the tineye lose his powers but still able to use the pewterarm powers?

Absolutely. Even if you dont steal all powers aluminum stops healing until it is removed. Digging out bullets would be really hard while fighting for ones life. Especially if it has some sort of aoe effect and your flesh won't even try to close in proximity to it. Hitting the right bindpoint to erase all abilities is just a bonus. If you fail in your attempts over and over again does that intent start to not be true intent? Spray and pray while thinking I'm spiking you and stealing your junk may not count as true intent. I think of intent as being intentional in what you are doing if you are trying to hit a specific bindpoint while not really trying to hit the bindpoint but instead hoping one of the bullets hits it, I think your attempt at true intent may not count as well.

I am trying to reconcile aluminum weaponry and intent. So I will reach out to some folks who have been active in similar discussions. @Trusk'our @CoderDrag0n8 @Duxredux One of the big components of hemalurgy is the bindpoints. So, is the spike being in the proper spot necessary for it to bind to your spiritweb? But I find myself questioning 2 scenes. The first is Spook. I believe the answer is that Ruin guided the arm of the dude who stabbed him and that is why it both pierced the thug in the correct place and it pierced Spook in the right place. Or is that wrong and shards can't directly control the trajectory of someone's swinging arm and it was a happy coincidence that they were stabbed where they were stabbed and Ruin simply juiced it up with some good intent? For Paalm I wonder about this same thing. Did Harmony guide the bullet (unlikely that he could change the course of the bullet) or did he position Wax properly or does kandra anatomy explain the issues with placement? Next question. Does placement of the spike entering the body you are stealing from matter as much? I dont think shards can exert any sort of control over aluminum can they? This could be changed via the shard guiding the arm of the spike holder though right. In the end I think that it will be very hard for a mere mortal to get the correct placement of a shot against some fullborn or so radiant in armor and thus intent doesn't much matter in the fact that it is the only easy part.

What do you think having excess innate investiture does for a metalborn? We see the Set strip people of their innate investiture and even leave the person alive and worse off than a drab. I feel like the presence or extra innate investiture as we see it in the form of biochromatic breath allows people to have a better understanding of what their magics can do... for instance the 6th heightening granting instinctive awakening. We also know that more innate investiture makes you more immune to some invested attacks and can even grant extra senses. With the nicrosil spikes able to hold more than 1 persons innate investiture and, at least in my head must not be large spikes as it was threaded in and out of the person without killing them... what benefits do you suppose metalborn will gain from being spiked with 50 peoples innate investiture? Do you think they could obtain some sort of life sense? Maybe perfect pitch? Or start to see some faint aura that would indicate other metalborn? Perhaps they will simply have a better understanding of their metalborn powers or become stronger in every power? Do you think you could get closer to lerasium levels of power in the metallic arts with a bunch of innate investiture? I know we saw it harvested but did we ever see it applied to anyone? That is probably the biggest cliffhanger for me. I would love to see a POV of someone spiked with that. Do you think it could be a viable eye spike to grant you that vision of the Gods as Kelsier describes it? To gain that and more... that is a spike I wouldn't complain about waking up having recieved.

I think it should be noted that you dont need to be a fullborn to be an absoluty terrifying opponent. I think you could make a build nearly as physically capable with medallions and 3 spikes alone. Also worth noting that there is something fairly good evidence you can stack charges on a single spike and ramp up the raw power level of said spike. Who knows what a pure nicrosil spike that is stacked to the max with innate investiture could do for a metalborn. There are a lot of "this is possible RAFO" answers given in WoBs. Warbreaker / awakening spoilers If nicrosil spikes allow some higher innate understandings of each metal we might see that Rashek was just barely scraping the icing off of the fullborn potential cake.