JohnnyKaizen

You are a monster! A monster I say!

will remove plaque, guaranteed.

If you're only going for a speed record and no accuracy...that seems like it would work? However, I thought one couldn't effect things with allomancy outside of a bubble?

OK that makes sense. Unless there is some mechanism (biological, mechanical, and/or supernatural) that allows for a push within..say .001 seconds (or less) of the firing pin hitting the primer..there is just no way in the Cosmere to have any substantive effect on the speed of a bullet to any massive degree, especially when the bullet is already going so fast. The point on stopping power (damage increase) is a good one and makes sense.

Probably because of something Brandon has planned for 2029, but won't get written and published until 2035.

I assume you'd need aluminum wraps for your fingers?

There are bullets commercially available right now, (.220 Swift) that can come out of the barrel at mach 4, and there are experimental ammunitions that have been clocked at Mach 5.8 (Which in Wax's case, he was often shooting experimental rounds, because it seems like Ranette spent most of her time on just that). If we're talking about a full Mistborn and Feruchemist who can increase their weight to, say 2,000 pounds, and use a duralamin steel push on a round that's already going Mach 5.8 as it exits the barrel? I get that we don't have the math for an exact answer, AFIAK anway, when it comes to steel pushing, much less duralumin steel pushing, but it would have to have some considerable effect under the conditions the we (the OP and myself) are describing? Or am I missing something?

I would be very interested in the results of using a shard strainer on something.

I'm not saying I know how, but if the OP's scenario is possible in the first place, then I feel like there should be a way to connect the power of Abrasion to the end of the barrel, from the shooter's hand...so that, the bullet does not become frictionless until the exit and therefore has spin? Edit: And if all this is possible, wouldn't the shooter basically have a portable rail gun? I don't think speed of light is possible, but some of the fastest bullets on the market today top out at Mach 4 (3067 mph) and if you search for "piece of plastic hits aluminum at 15,000 mph" (Mach 19.5ish) you'll see some serious damage. If a bullet could be pushed to between 10-20x Mach 4? I am assuming there's very few things (even in the Cosmere) that could withstand a hit like that.

So was the gem recording of the ancient Truthwatcher admitting "I foresaw this" a red herring, or could Truthwatchers see the future before the enlightened spren came along? If that's the case, was that with Honor's "limited" ability to see the future, and Renarin and Rlain have Odium's "superior to Honor's" ability to see the future?

I really hope we get into this on the page as we get to the more advanced tech ages, because that's fascinating!

Ok, now you and @Wadders have me wondering about keteks as a theme in Vorinism. An art form that has equal and opposite parts, but with distinct meaning on both sides of the ketek. A reflection of each other, but not the same. When Vorinism is, at it's foundation, a religion based on the worship of Shards and their abilities, which fundamentally is the manipulation of massive amounts of investiture. That feels significant to me, in regards to the nature of sapience and investiture. Huh, that's not where I thought this thread would lead me to, but I'm here for it.

Yeah, this just brings up more questions than answers for me.

I also want to throw out there that Sebarial is just the sort of person to change his name to something distinctly not symmetrical, just because it will annoy his peers, and keep up the facade that he's an idiot and not a mad genius. That said, I assume there is a better in-world reason for his name.

I have no idea if Gavilar had any good intentions or not. I do know he was a colossal (bunch of words that would probably get me in trouble with the mods) and he chose to be that way. He decided that this goal(s) meant that he was above everyone he ever loved and cared for, and since he would eventually be immortal, he could treat fellow mortals as if they were already dead, and therefore he couldn't be guilty of mistreating them to any degree. He felt guilt, that much has been said/alluded to. He felt guilt, and he still was a massive jerk. Evil is chosen. As far as I can tell, he walked into that with (what he thought was) both eyes open, and he never turned back when he had the chance.

As with @Quantus's answer, this mostly sets my mind at ease. Near infinite energy is pretty nifty, I'm a fan of that. The part about, if you have enough anti-investiture you can probably deathstar a planet, is not so good. But at that point, I imagine there will have been a crazy stupid supernatural arms race..sooo who knows if it would turn out to be inter-galactic genocide, or maybe a tactical stalemate. I'll hope for that latter.

ok good...because that's the answer I was hoping for

Doesn't a mistborn essentially have invisible webslinging powers, but better because they can push and pull? I realize visually it's not as cool but...?

I tried to search the Arcanum on this, but the variations on anti-investiture I tried were not very fruitful. At it's discovery, the weaponization of anti-investiture was basically the first thought for practical application. And while there is a war on, on Roshar, and that makes sense for marshal societies to immediately think of weapons in the context of their situation, I am wondering about the rest of the Cosmere. Is "un-keyed" anti-investiture possible? Something that would eliminate any investiture it comes into contact with? Wouldn't this stray into the realm of Adonalsium's tone/investiture signature? Would that be possible where we are now? If it is possible now, could the equivalent of a nuclear bomb be made of anti-investiture, and instead of blowing up a city (or wherever) would there just be a crater where the explosion happened because it unraveled the innate investiture present on the planet? Are there other equally (or maybe even more) horrible possibilities on the horizon for the Cosmere as a whole?

I certainly have related to these, and other dark thoughts as I've read through the SA. The first couple of readthroughs, I deeply connected with Kaladin, and felt almost no connection with Shallan. She annoyed me, and felt disingenuous and shallow (which is sort of true, the more we learn about her, but I was mostly just hating her character at the time). In more recent years, I came to understand my own mental health problems/challanges much much better, and in that understanding, reading Shallan again, felt like reading a different person, as if all the words had changed and I suddenly felt a dear kinship with her that was deep, real, empathetic, and intense. I've actually been going through some fairly intensive therapy the last several months, and your post reminded me that I had wanted to start re-reading the SA at a point that I felt I was on a better mental footing, because I'm really interested in how the story with change (again) for me as my mental state has evolved. Thanks for that. I don't know if Sanderson has had the same level of dark thoughts as the characters he writes, or if he's just an extremely good listener (Listener?) but he writes bang on the money. With some of the worst things written in these books, more than once, it has felt like a gremlin stole the thoughts out of my head and gave them to Sanderson to put on a page. There are certainly many thousands of readers who feel similarly.

For a more torturous reference, War and Peace is 587,287 words and I was forced to read that. I could read WaT 10 times in the same amount of time it would take me to read Tolstoy.

I feel like that would be similar to a Dark Lord of the Sith trying to destroy the Force with the Dark Side of the Force? I don't think it's possible, or at least not without the bare minimum of what it took to shatter Adonalsium, if it's possible at all.

Ok, Im a big fan of that In-Cosmere logic. I never would have connected that to this thread even though I've read Elantris 4+ times. That makes very good sense to me. Edit: @alder24 per usual, I fired off a response to something that resonated without being patient enough to read to the bottom of the thread. Ooops, anyway this: 'Because perfect gems have no flaws at all, they shouldn't crack when Stormlight is drawn out of them, or at least they have drastically lower chances of cracking" is exactly what I was wondering. Even if it's technically possible to crack a perfect gemstone, it's at the very least far less likely than a stone with inclusions. Between you and @Treamayne, Im feeling like all the bases are covered.

If this has been asked and answered at some point, please link me, but I didn't find it. I was thinking today about the toughness vs hardness of gemstones. Gemstones can shatter here on earth, but everything I've read about it comes with several caveats, mostly that those stones need inclusions along which to break. Is that the case on Roshar? Would a perfect gemstone shatter, ever? I really am talking about soulcasting, as I don't know of another surge that's been described to shatter gems. If no, perfect gemstones won't shatter, does that make them a perfect engine for fabrials? If yes, are we talking some massive amount of stormlight transfer, or just the same sort of action like Jasnah displayed in TWoKs when turning the boulder to smoke? I think the heart of my wondering is, do gems on Roshar split because of inclusions, or some other weakness, or is it simply the forces involved with soulcasting are sometimes too great?

Why do I get the feeling that's just the way he likes it?