Tamriel Wolfsbaine

So we all understand that investiture resists investiture. How invested are Kandra spikes? It would seem that Tensoon was able to resist Ruins influence longer than other Kandra thanks to the blessing of presence even with a 2nd blessing on board. But could an inheritance of a heightening or two... or more... seal off the weakness of hemalurgy? Could you protect yourself from allomamtic control and shardic control if you held enough breaths? Just using random figures to plug a number. If 50 breaths is the first heightening and it protected the hemaurgist from shardic control after the 4th spike do you think each spike following would require an exponential amount of breath to counteract that? It could be far higher as well. But do you think a Kandra holding the 5th heightening would be able to completely block out Harmony that way without needing to sacrifice their sanity by giving up a spike? Likewise do you think this would allow Kandra to carry more and more blessings? Potentially a single super kandra with all 4 blessings and immune to shardic / allomantic control?

@Trusk'our #75: Full Feruchemist Kandra I don't know if it would truly take aluminum to make this work but in the future of the cosemere when there are actually medallions for each metal a Kandra could collect enough to grant all feruchemist abilities without the need of taking on added risk of extra spikes. Do we know if medallions require contact to flesh in order to work? Could someone wear one over their clothes and gain benefit? If you needed aluminum I imagine you wouldn't necessarily need a tight box that is opened over and over again. If each medallion can hold 3 powers it would take 6 medallions for full feruchemy. If you created an aluminum box with dividers and slid each medallion between the dividers then left a small hole for each one the kandra could hold the perimeter of the box within itself and have created little fleshy tentacles when needed to reach in and touch the medallion needed at that time. I know we don't see medallions work exactly like having the powers at the moment but once Scadrial lands a zinc compounder who takes a serious fancy into these things the progress could be insane. Making medallion combinations that make sense to work with eachother will be important but really if it is as simple as pulling a finger out of a hole and then putting a different one into a hole this should work pretty dang well for granting near full feruchemist types of ability.

I like it all. Now take a kandra and hide medallions in their true bodies. I know that medallion uses are limited to a set amount of powers. But do you suppose a kandra could carry multiple medallions and only be connected to one at a time? The ability to swap between hidden medallions at will basically would allow a kandra the powers of full feruchemist in the future without being known or destroying themselves with spikes.

So highly likely this is all just RAFO but I am curious so I must ask others opinions and thoughts. I have seen a theory that Adolin may be able to save Maya and eventually speak oaths. Is there more or less that could happen with that? Do you suppose there are other systems that could interact with a deadeye to gain the ability of having a summonable shape shifting blade without going to the extreme of reviving it to the point where the person becomes a radiant? Do you think there are any other ways within the cosmere systems to gain shape shifting shardblade type weapons in the future?

I believe Kandra do age... just very very slowly. The first generation are feeling it for sure by era 2. That said a Kandra could make great money filling most metalminds I would say. @Trusk'our #62: this requires access to some bendalloy medallions. Battlefield clean up. Turn the corpses into nutrition and store it into medallions. Move to the cognitive realm and make bank selling sustenance via full medallions to those traveling through the cognitive without direction and other tricks.

Yeah I mostly meant if the battle was between 2 players with 3 spikes each. If I can keep my 3rd spike and then I would probably toss in a emotional allomantic ability. The reason I was going to give it up was so I could use the speed to blitz an opponent who also had 3 spikes and slam them with the 4th one before trying to grab hold. That said we know 4 spikes opens a human to shardic control but we don't know if that would translate to 4 spikes allowing some form of emotional breaking through or connection. I am shocked I don't remember seeing any builds with A-pewter F-zinc and A-electrum yet. If there already has been one my apologies. Always been a super interesting build idea. A-Pewter A-tin and F-Zinc could be a good combo too. Push for tin savantism and combine it with F-zinc for poor man's atium? F-tin A-tin A-pewter. Even without compounding this could be huge. All of the senses you don't want amplified you could store. All of the senses you do want amplified you could tap bonus on top of what A-tin is giving you. There is also the added thought that F-tin can store the bonus proprioception from pewter. Make a Daredevil character with enhanced physical attributes and sonar sense. For a pseudo Spiderman build you could go with A-iron A-Pewter and F-chromium. I always pictured iron flight looking similar to Spiderman. Pewter is a no brainer for the proprioception as well as the bonus physical enhancements. Chomium for some spidersense precog goodies. At least that is how I picture F-chromium (in the MAG it allows you reroll dice which is basically advantage on every roll in D&D but story wise that can be a lot more flexible than simple "luck") I like to think of it as the "Peter Tingle". Lets make a pacifist character who wins by not fighting. At all. F-Duralumin A-Brass A-Copper. The master manipulator who can keep their head down in even the most chaotic battlefields. If emotional allomancy and duralumin allow Marsh to walk around unseen then tossing on a copper cloud with it must be better. Live a peaceful life pulling the strings of unsuspecting puppets everywhere. (Have I ever mentioned Breeze is my favorite Scadrian this far? Wayne is close behind but Breeze is so smooth in how he operates I LOVE it!)

Okay. So hear me out... F steel and F duralumin using your 3rd spike as a weapon instead of in yourself. Be it aluminum or anything else. I believe it is confirmed that F duralumin could control hemalurgic constructs as well.... duralumin and emotional allomancy would take up too many spikes for this to work. Keeping it at 3 spikes only. Store all connection and blitz your opponent hoping they won't really care nor recognize you. Hit them with your 3rd spike and then tap all of the duralumin you have praying they will become controllable or that Harmony takes care of that for you. Or the A duralumin F duralumin A zinc or brass and try to convince them to remove their own spikes through shear manipulation of emotions and connection. Kind of messed up ways of fighting but I like to think of combat applications to the emotional connections and such.

I always pictured the use of time bubbles to be two fold. 1. The obvious dilation and constriction of time. 2. The disorientation of stepping through the bubble. In the case of someone with both powers I always liked the idea of a battle scene where an oncoming group is charging the metalborn who has 2 bubbles up. A smaller bendalloy around themselves and then a significantly larger cadmium bubble around the bendalloy bubble. From the perspective of the outside force they would see the metalborn moving at a totally normal pace. As they charge into the cadmium bubble 3 big things happen. First, the more forward folks would suddenly seam to stop. There would certainly be a collision of the oncoming force and depending on the weapons they are using it could lead to casualties on its own. Second, the sudden disorientation. This is something people could push through with the right powers but it would almost certainly end with the oncoming force losing a productive beat. Third and most important, while in the outer cadmium bubble the bendalloy user is no longer moving the same speed... in fact they would be an absolute blurr to the people who are disoriented and have just been beat up by their own people. With A steel this could be a trick that gets used multiple times in a fight. Fly away and reset the trap. Depending on how uncomfortable it is to run through the time bubbles this could dissuade more than a couple of would be attackers. As the time bubbles don't move with the allomancer (at least not at the power levels we have seen though I believe there is a WoB stating its possible for savants) you could have a scenario where a pulser sets up a bubble at the front of her fighting force and drops back inside that bubble maintaining it until the enemy force hits it and has that huge collision only to let it down and replace it a few paces in front of them again. Repeating this slight retreat in between failed charges. If the enemy is carrying big pointy sticks made of wood or metal even better. Perhaps F nicrosil A steel / iron could allow someone to gain the power level necessary to rip select spikes from their opponents body.

I think the real problem storing a bunch of speed isn't compensating for it in your movement but in your mind. Maybe pewter makes up for an increase in speed by allowing your mind to process it all. We know for fact that tapping large amounts of speed actually allows you to perceive the world around you as moving slower. I would imagine that when storing speed the biggest hurdle you would need to jump through would be that everything around you would appear to be moving far faster than it is. Pewter could allow you to move faster to compensate but could it allow your perception of things to be compensated to an equal degree. Also. What are your thoughts on F-Nicrosil? Is it storing the ability entirely like a thought? Is it either all in or all out or could you store an ability for 20 or 30 minutes and then stop storing and be able to draw on that ability for 20 or 30 minutes? Something about the bands allowed Wax to push on trace metals and I believe it would allow him to easily push on spikes. So perhaps A-steel A-pewter and F-nicrosil? If that isn't going to work then I guess I like the idea of cowardly running and duralumin blasting a herd of koloss to fight for me. Maybe A duralumin A zinc and A steel so that I can leap frog my way around my band of 10 foot tall koloss blade weilding warriors while sending in a coin or two as well.

I won't say it is the most effective option for a murder hobo build.... but... F-Duralimin A-Duralumin A-Brass (or zinc) Strat: Find some Hemalurgic constructs and build your army while sapping any oppositions desire to fight you. Edit: another possibility @Trusk'our Given the nature of potentially fighting other hemalurgically spiked individuals would it be cheating to ask for 3x A-Steel in hopes that it grants enough strength to push against other peoples spikes?

Liquid Dor makes it really hard to think about the power. Duralumin sets off a seeming chain reaction between itself and any other metals burning nonstop and with no cap until they are both gone. How would that reaction work if the user of a single source like Dor were to burn it as both steel and duralumin? Taking a stomach full of Dor and using it instantly. We know Dor made those using it magnitudes stronger but do we know if that put them at some theoretical cap? Would a mistborn made from a lerasium chunk like Elend be on even footing with a mistborn after 1300+ years of genetic weakening so long as they both use Dor? I would think Dor on lerasium mistborn being used as duralumin plus steel would show us pushes that could only be outshined by Vin at the time of her ascending. @alder24 thanks for all of those examples in text. It would certainly seem that allomantic strength can compensate for size difference afterall. I think the idea of having that ascended level of allomancy is neat but at the same time it would really become impractical to use for flying. Zane did show us the ability to burn at lower rates to exert less explosive force as well which would be super important for anyone wanting to fly and not destroy cities with power levels that high. Edit: could a combination of a nicroburst and any single other allomancer have drained the pool near instantly? I can't remember if they were physically drinking anything there but I imagine a nicroburst / misting x combo would have been nearly as effective at draining the pool as a mistborn could have been using it as duralumin / aluminum / chromium. Heck a leecher in the pool probably could have drained it instantly solo right? Speaking of Marasi scene.

I would also say that everything written and given by Brandon is what is known by the characters. Heck the entire cognitive realm is based upon the way that mortals view the world right? Vin playing with power levels that noone has ever seen before doesn't necessarily mean she is breaking the rules. In fact Vin does get thrown upward once the spire had crashed and suddenly Scadrial itself was the new arrow shaft (if I may stick to my analogy). I don't think that she is breaking the rules unless we simply are just now seeing the rules. Wouldn't the inertia of a table cloth being yanked out from under the place settings and them not all breaking vs it slowly being drug be enough to explain this? I am sure there are phenomena in physics where we learn how things work only after pushing further past what we know than we thought possible. Hence why I try to highlight the differences in how the buildings break under both characters. They aren't the same because they are using different rules to do it. If anyone in mistborn ever talks about the strength of another allomancers pushes then there is clearly more going on than the simple, "known" rules of bigger stays smaller goes. Noone should be surprised by another allomancers pushing power ever because there would never be a difference. The fact that Lerasium makes you stronger in the use of all of your metals and that duralumin is able to show the effects it does hints to a sliding scale of the explosiveness and potential power spikes. The spire was unable to withstand the explosive power of the push and crumpled. Vin stayed temporarily because inertia and then Scadrial became her new anchor. I don't enjoy it when Brandon breaks the rules but I have seen him mention that all of the rules are based on PoV and those characters understanding of it at the time. It makes total sense to say that Vin had such an enormous amount of power at her disposal that she pushed past the normal observable limits of the laws of allomancy and uncovered the mechanism of how it worked. This doesn't mean that everyone else still has to follow the observable laws.... in fact they do. But it does allow Brandon a bit of wiggle room to write according to rule of cool without needing to say he broke the rules. Vin was playing with Ascension levels of allomantic power. Not just her raw power but she had the capability to use pure investiture with that power to fuel a duralumin type of push with pure investiture. How on earth does that make sense? Maybe duralumin enhancements don't matter when you are playing the game as a god. My camera will never film the speed of light. Most cameras in the world will never film the speed of light. But in 2011 MIT built a camera that allowed them to film 1 trillion frames per second and they could film light travel through a bottle of water. How much can they learn from that that will uncover the realities of how light works vs what we always assumed? Vin could have been playing within the rules of allomancy but simply possessed enough power in an ascending state that she showed us a layer of the way that allomancy works beyond what anyone else we will get as POV characters will show us. Doesn't mean Brandon broke the rules. Just that power magnitudes of gods uncover unobservable truths. Or he just broke the rules of allomancy cause it looked cool. Either way we know weight of the allomancer is important and there are different levels of power and both of those things matter.

I want to picture steel and iron allomancy as an arrow. I always thought that the heavier the head of the arrow or the user the more the environment or the anchor needed to be strong. At first glance comparing the allomancer as the arrow head and the anchor point as the shaft spine weight was going to work great. Saying that the poundage of the bow is the allomantic strength. If the arrowhead moves you have a flying allomancer. Anything else moving or breaking is actually the shaft of the arrow snapping during the shooting of the bow. That would mean a small allomancer with a strong anchor can push easily. Or in my archery terms a smaller arrowhead on a stiffer spine is no problem. Arrowhead goes forward as the spine pushes it. A heavier (the case of Wax tapping iron) allomancer would need a stronger base to get moving. Same as how you need a stiffer spine for shooting big heavy broadheads or else the in-between will shatter. If the user is too heavy the spine shatters which is what we see from Wax time and time again. In the case of duralumin and or ramping up allomantic power we could just jump the poundage of the bows up magnitudes and make it so that the bow is so powerful there is no spine that is strong enough to even propel the smallest of arrowheads. Vins weight didn't matter because the anchors were not capable of withstanding the initial explosive power of a massive poundage bow. I think I like this a lot more than I thought I would. I was going to use this example to show that it must be more like a gun and the chamber/barrel being too weak for a hot loadout but I actually like the bow theory more. The power of the allomancy has an amount of time before it decides if the allomancer is going to move or if the object they are pushing on is going to move. Much like in archery there is an amount of time where energy is transfered from bow limbs and string down the arrow shaft before pushing the arrow head. As that energy is transferring the anchor (or spine) is either going to hold or it will shatter. The archers paradox is a good example of where Wax bent the steel beams with his duralumin push... I am sure that was combined with his weight too. Which shows how much more powerful Vin was at that time. For her to crumple a city block with no added weight is like shooting a bow with such high poundage and power that it shatters a tree trunk without the arrowhead moving. This power is insane. Wax's example is great in that he was combining a high powered bow with his heavy arrowhead and the bending of the steel support beams of that building prove that he nearly (lack of practice with duralumin) miscalculated the entire thing. He was extremely lucky to moved because if the spine of that arrow were to shatter he would not have gone anywhere and been out of steel. In fact Wax's push and the bending of the steel suggests to me that he lost a lot of potential power and energy in the push from the start. Had he spread his push over another beam as well he could have potentially overshot the ship he was jumping, blindly, towards. So yeah I think I like the Vin example more. It actually makes a lot more sense when thinking of it as a bow and arrow for me now. It is possible that a super high poundage bow shatters the arrow shaft despite the size of the arrow head. That is simply what we saw. She was so many magnitudes higher in the explosiveness and energy produced by the allomantic push that the anchor she was using didn't matter at all. Size was the biggest factor for all of mistborn until playing with duralumin and lerasium and ascending via the mists. Wax can do a ton of things that Vin couldn't do because he can titrate the size of the arrowhead. Vin is always going to be a 75grain field tip and the spine of each individual anchor is going to change. A coin is toothpick being used as the projectile. The minute the coin hits the ground it becomes a tree trunk. Wax has the benefit of changing the size of his arrowhead. He can be a 1grain piece of salt tied to the end of the toothpick if he wants or he can become a 400 grain single bevel broadhead attaching itself to a solid 200 spine shaft. Wax's feats are possible not because his bow poundage is changing but because he changes the weight of the arrowhead. Vins feats are possible not because her arrowhead size changes but because the poundage of that bow changes. Duralumin is epic because it allows for that bow poundage to be exponentially stronger on demand. That said I don't think Vin would have caused more destruction had she been heavier. The bow and arrowhead are both working in conjunction to destroy the shaft. If one or the other is too big then the destruction comes. For her to be so small and destroy that city block she was playing with a bow so powerful that her size would have made no difference. Interestingly I don't know that Wax could pull that off with his level of allomancy alone even if he weighed 10 times more than the building itself. As was pointed out to me in another post once upon a time, Wax didn't explode the building in alloy of law. He became so heavy that simply holding himself up with steel above it crushed the building under his weight. For this to be illustrated we just have to say his bow was attempting to fire him straight up and it wasn't the bow that did it. It was the fact that his arrow head got so heavy it cracked the shaft with gravity more than the allomancy. I think this has done a good job of answering the question in my mind. The mechanisms were different. Wax's destruction was crushing power from his iron more than he steel where he used the size of the arrowhead to destroy the shaft. Vin's destruction was the explosive power of her steel allomancy or bow destroying the shaft despite her low weight. Wax having access to duralumin now allows him to play with both and we saw how dangerous that was and how tricky it is to judge by him almost snapping the shaft of the arrow with the steel beams bending. @Trusk'our with me definately not being an expert this is the best explanation I can come up with to satisfy my mind.

This is really interesting as she was able to destroy so much without any access to F iron. I always thought that a steel push was contingent on either one thing or another being heavier. The fact that she did this while in the air and having no anchor to play with... its not even like she is described as pulling on surrounding structures to give her leverage... just steel. I dont know how much I like that.

Honestly I cant remember #50 at this point. They all just become cool ideas. Can I toss this as #61 then with the asterisks that it is dependent on F pewter? Continually being able to grow back and shed limbs I really dont know if F pewter fits the bill here or if F bendalloy is more important. It is interesting that pewter gives mass needed to support the strength gain and that mass seems to disapear when you stop using it, where as bendalloy allows you to draw the energy and use it and that doesnt go anywhere except to sustain yourself. I dont know if there is a WoB for this but in the MAG (which is of course not entirely cannon) tapping large amounts of Bendalloy actually makes you appear fatter... So thanks to the MAG my mind is clouded when it comes to these two things. Would a Kandra with F bendalloy be able to get bigger or smaller as they store? Is that specific to Pewter? If a Kandra tapped F pewter and became bigger and then someone took a bite out of them before they stopped tapping would the bite of flesh vanish in the persons mouth? Would the Kandra be missing that much of themselves when they stop tapping? Bendalloy is tapped and used and it never comes back. Strength is too. But the mass generated seems like a totally seperate mechanism. The shinking mass of pewter as one stores strength is a side effect of getting smaller and weaker. Gaining that mass back is a side effect of being stronger. The strength itself is being used as you get it back. The mass seems almost a biproduct of it and once that strength is used the mass would disappear anyway... but if you cut it off while using that strength arent you still losing all of the strength that went with it? Doesnt really make sense that it would be lost forever... Sazed wouldnt have lost his strength he was tapping if he had his arm chopped off (granted the metalmind wasnt attached to it) but we dont know if that arm would have stayed that size or shrunk back to normal. There is a new question to ask for a WoB "If a brute is tapping strength and their muscles get bigger but they get an arm chopped off, does it shrink back to the way it was before?" This could either make the Kandra more busted than I thought or it makes me terrified of having a Kandra tapping pewter in general. How do you differentiate the mass of muscle you are gaining from the feruchemy from the mass of muscle that is there. In a Kandras case all muscle falls under a single umbrella. It isnt assigned to anything. It is just meat. Losing an arm means you lose 50% of your bicep and 50% of your bodies tricep. For a Kandra who can regrow limbs they just lose 5% of their meat. What if you double your meat when tapping and get cut in half? How does the spiritual realm know which half was you to start and which half was you to end?

Haha I love casually keeping some antifreeze running through their blood to survive frigid temps. is that #61? In regards to eating and sustenance... This is gross but could a Kandra store extra mass via F pewter constantly and then tap a bunch at once, detaching itself leaving a pile of meat, and then cook it up for others to consume? I imagine they could replicate some good old tenderloin no? What about tapping F pewter detaching part of themselves and then consuming that themselves? Would that be self-cannibalism? Trying to think along the lines of what we know F pewter does. Sazed gets smaller and scrawnier when using it. A 200lb kandra could become a 190lb kandra (not storing weight as iron does not increase mass when tapped only the effects of weight and only on selective roolz of coolz stuff or else they could punch harder). If you stored enough strength to cause a 5% change in your mass for a day and then tapped it all later on how much mass would you be able to remove as a Kandra? Once detached is that going to disappear into thin air? If a Kandra doubled their mass via tapping pewter and then they detached and left half of that 200lbs of muscle laying on the ground would they disappear once they stop tapping pewter? I'm worried that this is going into a really weird direction but I cant help it. Its like an itch I must scratch. Gaining the benefits of so many other powers just by having F pewter seems OP but that is what it is. Now I am ready for some Kandra vs Radiant stuff haha (just joking please don't soulcast my happy fantasy away. I like the seclusion of having these thoughts in this thread).

Something neat I just found out of curiosities sake. This amazing body armor is made from spider silk | We Are The Mighty. Being able to replicate to scale spider silk and venom could be combined to one heck of a scary combo. Create your own spidersilk body armor (which could be worn inside) and bioweapons combined with more conventional weapons could lead to something truly terrifying.

Definitely! @ #55, If a kandra could replicate the venom glands and production of something like a Viper or Taipan then you would certainly interrupt the clotting process. Great now I have images of a Kandra creating some sweet exoskeleton plates and a huge stinger like tail and becoming a giant scorpion producing and injecting the most leathal venoms known. @Trusk'our Could a Kandra reproduce venom glands? This would go side by side wondering if they could reproduce the ability to spin silk? Can they ramp up the process in scale to something more human size? More awakening spoilers ahead:

@alder24 @Trusk'our In other spaces a change physically usually means a change in ability as well. As Vasher changes he obviously gains reach and such. But does he gain strength or speed? Does he stay proportionally strong and fast? What about mass? Is he heavier in Godking form? Sorry to derail the discussion. The dang inconsistencies between systems kills my brain. My biggest gripe with Antman was always how he cracked the tile floor when falling but didn't shoot through peoples bodies when hitting them... or turn into a black hole when going to sub-atomic sizes.

This makes me wonder... Those are the same reasons I love awakening. Accessibility. Kandra being my race of choice points to a love of hemalurgy as well. And with Hemalurgy nothing is really out of the question. F pewter because of one of the tricks theorized. Being able to store muscle mass and draw from it again is epic. More so on a Kandra who could either make themselves denser and not give up mobility or... Warbreaker spoilers:

I am happy to hop on board with the whole "spikes ripping off and damaging the spirit web" idea to explain why the people spiked with nicrosil may look worse off than a drab. What is the limit to changing ones appearance? Kaladin cant heal the scars because of identity issues. Meanwhile Returned can hide their scars but it doesnt count as healing in anyway? Maybe they retain the limp even if the leg appears to be fine? If a returned were to lose a finger could they appear to have all of their fingers? What makes that different than covering a scar? I believe that Identity and healing in the cosmere are tied a lot closer than what we see at face value. Which is fine. I like that Nalthians are susceptible to being injured and killed. I think the healing levels in the cosmere are beyond ludicrous. We are drabs if current WoBs outdate older WoBs. The one I posted states so and is 5 years more current. This makes sense. Thanks for sharing that. T'Telir specific disease could be similar to the one that Brandon spoke about in the WoB I posted. The worldhoppers are extremely dangerous for this very reason. (Hence my walking talking bioweapon theory for Kandra tricks though that WoB convinces me it would have to be one heck of a disease to be used on most worlds.) Nalthis may very well be the most succeptible planet for disease to strike. Depending on how dependent the society is on a drab workforce anyways.

I would like to say yes. Its between that and Feruchemy. To be honest. Kandra with a heightening of some level is my ideal cosmere character. If I could toss in F pewter and/or iron it solidifies it as all my heart could ask for in the cosmere haha. (Big thanks to the ideas posed in that 101 tricks thread. The spoiled ones near the end illustrate exactly where my mind is going.)

2016 vs 2021 There is definately some contradiction in the two WoBs and this one saying we are drabs is the most current which is something I have been using for a lot of my headcannon since reading it. I am not a huge fan of this though. Vivenna makes our normal everyday existence seem terrible. That said it also makes the coolness factor of Denth's speed and the vividness of the world while holding breath that much better. While I am unimpressed at Vivenna's lack of wanting to live without breaths it makes total sense that her feeling sick could have been the first time she ever had to suffer allergies haha. It also makes me feel less bad for drabs and allows me to better understand how someone like Jewels is so capable despite being a drab.

I am so guilty of this. I dont want to miss mistborn topics but I cant help wanting to place thoughts connecting awakening to everything else. It is just too portable to confine to Nalthis alone haha. That is probably what I like most about that system and the ones we see on Scadrial. They can go and be used anywhere! Why not use them together in theory crafting? The hard part is remembering which forum I am in when writing responses.