Tamriel Wolfsbaine

A mistborn without atium is like a windrunner without his spren blade. Why would we have to imagine the fight without giving both combatants their entire toolkit? As far as the chances of a mistborn landing a shot on the windrunner without atium... it is higher chances than anyone else who has landed hits. Kaladin shows us that on just stormlight you can work around blades.... the mistborn has plenty of speed and dexterity to not be a complete sitting duck in the fight. Spren blade is spooky when you get hit by it. A mistborn with a withered arm is still a threat so long as the sacrificed arm allowed the mistborn to touch the windrunner. Atium vs 3rd ideal is 99% mistborn. Without atium I feel it fair to offer a 60/40 split in favor of the magic sword user. I say that because mistborn aren't known for taking sacrificial hits for nothing. A kolos blade is just as capable of one-shotting a mistborn as a sprenblade. If anything the windrunner is more likely to be reckless knowing they can heal than the mistborn knowing they can't.

Absolutely. Once the mistborn let's you go you can summon your blade and start healing everything they do again via a fresh breath of stormlight. But as a mistborn once I touch a radiant why on earth would I let them go to continue the fight. Once the mistborn touches the radiant the fight us over... you can't heal you can't fly you can't do anything other than fight as a normal human... at least you are bigger than the magically enhanced enemy who has a hold on you... This is why atium is the win con of win cons in this match-up. The mistborn needs to grab hold of the radiant and it is game over. Atium let's the mistborn effortlessly duck and weave their way through the radiants attacks.

While being leeched you cannot summon the blade. So once touched the radiant is pretty much wrestling for their life with no weapon or stormlight. Stormlight is hard to take off of Roshar. Very hard. And if a radiant were on a planet where everything suddenly weighed 140+% of what they were used to they would run into more of an issue with relative strength.

This fight is high risk high reward for both sides. Letting a mistborn get close enough to touch you seems like a good way to have all of your stormlight leeched and your sprenblade no longer summonable and get 1 shot as well. Atium just gives the mistborn the ability to see all of the radiants moves ahead of time and easily navigate safely to grappling range. That is not proof that the mere existence of stormlight in a radiants lungs makes them immune to emotional allomancy. Yes they are highly invested when breathing stormlight but it is not taking the place of aluminum hats or replace the existence of an entire magic built around countering it. Being larger doesn't necessarily mean they are stronger. Arguably a mistborn used to 30% more gravitational pull working against them in every daily activity would cause a difference in strength baseline as well which is then further boosted. If everything you lifted your entire life was suddenly 30% lighter... which is has to be fighting on Roshar (because a 3rd ideal radiant can't really fight anywhere else anyways) there would be a big change. The scadrial native mistborn pound for pound will naturally be stronger than the roshar native radiant. Then you add your pewter on top. Arm wrestling the mistborn on pewter wins against the stormlight infused radiant without plate.

I liked the thesis but perhaps the body of the paper could use some work?? I love Adolins character. He is the high-school jock fighting against the fact that college play is faster and meaner than he thought. I never thought he was a jerk or anything. He totally is at the top of his game but the power creep on Roshar is totally busted and the new released Champs just outclassed him having access to every ability providing CC and damage and personal buffs all at once. He was the classic bruiser tank with too much damage but all of those character archetypes got left in the dust 2 patches ago. For what Adolin is he is the best character at doing it. Sadly the devs and newer age player base demands more shiny more depressing edgelord characters and the good ole boys from yesteryear are being left in the dust.

Do we have WOB saying that lungs full of stormlight are the equivalent to aluminum lined hats and copperclouds? A mistborn flaring all other metals minus copper doesn't gain protection from emotional allomancy do they? How many breaths would be required to provide the same immunity to an awakener and how much feruchemical tapping is needed for it to immunize a feruchemist?

I don't believe stormlight will shield a radiant from zinc and brass. Kaladin, even with stormlight, still has his depression to deal with. Is stormlight a nice high for the radiant temporarily? Sure but it doesn't suddenly reverse their years of trauma and cracked spirit web. A zinc and brass attack would definately be more than useless. I won't say it will win a fight alone but soothing down the fire for a fight or rioting the feelings of uselessness in an already unstable person would do a lot. Plus there is the oaths that radiants have to adhere to. If emotional instability was to hit and a radiant no longer felt capable of upholding their oaths or they started to desire something contrary to their oaths they may even lose their spren blade altogether. Kaladin didn't even have to plan out an assassination with Moash. Just him being torn between his buddy and his oaths was enough to nearly cost him his bond and kill Syl. Emotional allomancy is far from useless in a fight against a cracked spirit and emotional radiant. I believe you cannot reverse lash a spren anything. It is far to invested to be effected that way. You can reverse lash a lot and help against the mistborn but the spren shield is not something you can do that for. Rosharans stature isn't a counter to pewter. Pewter arm is still faster and stronger than your radiant with stormlight. Leeching is a matter of touching a radiant once. As is a potential duralumin pewter powered instakill. Atium left out I can see the blade being an issue but it literally takes a matter of seconds to get into range due to knowing exactly where the radiant and their blade will be a second or two ahead of time. Future sight is far beyond busted in the fight vs anyone without future sight. Until the radiant can turtle into their plate atium is the win condition to over come. Its probably easier for a mistborn to deal with a radiant and the blade minus atium than it is for a radiant to deal with atium minus plate. Plus, in those cases where plate is in play the radiant has to pray they don't have their plate leeched to the point of locking up or the mistborn broke through it with other methods. Luckily 4th ideal isn't a rabbit hole for this discussion.

This idea that a spren is investiture makes me curious about how quickly they replenish their investiture when it is damaged. If a leecher were to clap a living spren blade and then leech it would it be leeching the stormlight the radiant is using or would it be killing the spren directly? I know WoB says a leecher leeching Nightblood would die but Nightblood is a totally different creation than a spren and he works in a totally different way for how he destroys so I feel like the interaction with a sprenblade would likely be a lot different.

I have heard some theories on Adolin perhaps healing back his shard via speaking some oaths in the future. It is not the original radiant who would have to speak the oaths again then right? Syl was also a radiant spren pre kaladin but if memory serves right the difference between her and the dead eyes is that her radiant was killed rather than abandoning their oaths. I wonder how you imbue a dead eye with more investiture. Biochromatic breath via commands seems like the easiest way. But I guess there are others as well. Would progression healing channeled to a dead eye blade via some fabrial be possible or would you need a radiant in the Cognitive realm channeling progression into the dead eye? Like wise would any surge that allows you to shove investiture into an item or thing (are spren more thing than person?) be a potential highway of investiture to reconstitute a dead eye?

We see dead eye spren. But they are not necessarily dead spren. Can a spren be killed further than dead eye? Are spren pure investiture? Does investiture only stem from the spiritual realm making spren pure cognitive forms directly from the spiritual but something funky happens to keep them from passing into less invested physical world? Is the spiritual realm a place that can be visited and returned from? Could biochromatic breath be used to awaken a dead eye spren or make a pseudo lifeless version of it? And would that break the bond that may be had in the physical world?

Wind tunnels would help. Gravity is lower so wouldn't that make terminal velocity lower/ take longer to achieve? Atmospheric pressure wise we really don't know much more than there is more oxygen. So the air may be thinner (with less gravity it would likely be thinner as well). Being a foot taller and likely broader work against themselves as far as surface area is concerned and wind resistance. There is a lot less factor for the mistborn. The factors working against fall speed actually work in favor of the mistborns flight mechanism being more thrust. You can only fall so fast and it drains significantly more stormlight to stack lashings. You can do it fast (how many lashings did kaladin stack in the arena when he fell into the shardplate shattering it and both legs?) but it is still just a fall. The anchors running towards Luthadel are used differently too. The mistborns fastest flight speed isn't in a straight line toward point B, it is straight away from your anchor and your proximity to said anchor plays a role. A mistborn floating high above the anchors would be slower than one staying low and close to them. Timing of when you push and the angle or your push would also effect it as a mistborn pushing at a more acute angle will go further faster than one choosing launching points closer to 90 degrees. Balancing that with the gravitational pull of the planet always pulling you down as well. It is ironic that neither is actual flight. They are both just falling with style and working in totally different ways. One just has the capability to slingshot themselves off of a new anchor when needed. When in the air and further away from ground anchors or any buildings with metals then the mistborn is at a huge disadvantage. I do think any piece of metal being worn on the radiant is going to make hitting the mistborn in air impossible. In a setting with buildings to anchor with the mistborn will have far more mobility and maneuverability than the radiant. I think of it more like a goshawk (mistborn) flying through the forest vs a falcon in the open plains. Both are kings in their landscape specifically and both would find disadvantages in the other space.

Significantly faster than what terminal velocity would allow you go.

It is also not taking into effect that Roshars gravitational pull is lower and the air density (given that the air is higher O2 % that other planets) would also throw off the calculations. Again pure conjecture. Unless Brandon gives us some constants for each planet these points will always be back and forth. All that together if you take a mistborn native to Scadrial and put it on Roshar for the fight then it would be like John Carter of Mars. The opposite is true if you put a radiant on scadrial. They would be drug down so much more. In terms of whose body is built in favor or strength and speed and height of a jump wouldn't the advantage go to the person native to a higher gravitational pulling planet baseline?

Big brain math here. Thanks. It could be argued that the mistborn actually covers faster given that they are going that fast in distance but not counting the up and down arcs that come from jumping and falling. How long does it take to reach terminal velocity though? 12 seconds roughly vs the near instant acceleration from the mistborn. In a high maneuverability enviorment do you think steel pushes and iron pulls can pull of bigger faster changes while pewter and stormlight can both be used to overcome the inherent dangers of undergoing that many G forces.

I still have to stand by the idea that if you are a mistborn and someone has a shiny pointy weapon that you can't see and push off of you will likely know that the fight is dangerous. Atium doesn't shadow aluminum but wouldnt spren would be seen in the spiritual realm? Also even without blue lines on the blade the mistborn is so difficult to drop in on. Any worn metal will show up as well as bronze and tin...

Dang it. This pokes a giant hole in the plot for me. To think that Wax knew his buddy just grabbed a metal object that he couldn't see with steel sight and didn't investigate that further at all. I'm not doubting the way it is written. It is just making Wax’s detective skill set less impressive.

This is where we see what atium truly is. A prolonged fight with atium only happens when both parties have atium. Otherwise it is future sight to dance around this one attack and then instakill your opponent. There isn't a drawn out fight between a person with future sight and someone without. That was the entire reason behind Vins arc... how plot armor and an understanding of the metal can allow you to kill a god. Wax can see highly invested metalminds even though he can't really push on them. Shardblades are too invested to push on and move around but they are not invisible like aluminum would be.

There is a lot of math that can go into exactly how fast mistborn are able to accelerate and fly. I believe it is faster than terminal velocity (approximately 145 mph or around 213fps) How fast does a coin have to go to cut through a person? 213fps is a speed that would make any barebow archer excited about. Coins are not as sharp as an arrow and significantly less weighty. Laws of physics say that a coin needs to be traveling a lot faster than that to be an effective projectile weapon vs anything. If speed is based on steel pushers mass vs the mass of the coin then the mass of an earth is far far greater compared to the steel pushers own. There would be a limit to what the steel allows you to move but it would be well within terminal velocity speeds and would likely be pushing past that. I don't think mistborn has an hour worth of atium. But it doesn't need an hours worth of atium. You toggle it off when danger is far and you toggle it on when it's go time. Tin and bronze will be plenty to warn the mistborn that danger is incoming and pinpoint where it is coming from is easy enough if that radiant has even a spec of metal on them. (For what it is worth I believe steel sight would still pick up a spren blade even if you can't push on it). As for the idea that the mistborn wouldn't start with atium... I would say if the mistborn can see a blade but can't push on it they would immediately turn on atium once in range because something funky is going on.

People think stormlight gives you abilities. It perfects what you have. Allows you to push to your absolute upper limit. It doesn't, however, magically make you more than you are. That is exactly what pewter does. That requires touching the mistborn in which case the radiant is leeched or pewter slapped to damnation. I would think that it wouldn't be hard to want to avoid the massive, glowing sword being swung at you I think it is less about "this thing killed me right here" and more about "I will die if I go right there thus I need to choose another course of action". Unfortunately that leads to electrums biggest fault which is that it shows so many shadows it is hard to mentally take it in.

Its also 3rd ideal and no plate anyways right? These discussions always digress into who and how and where and they are always countered with "if you just give this side this one more thing then its gg for them". This is where atium is the key for mistborn. The idea that the radiant will be relentless plays in favor for the atium. And since its toggleable the mistborn doesn't have to use it until the radiant is in range to be a threat and then duralumin powered pewter head smash is an all to real possibility. Spren blade is countered by atium. And to an extent electrum showing the mistborn where they die so they avoid those movements. Yes. But then again luthadel would be skewed in favor of the mistborn because the radiant wouldn't have access to the majority of their kit given it is not on Roshar. There are other metal rich areas and we see Vin using the same 2 horse shoes to travel long distances. Remember all metals provide the mental ability to process their uses as well.

I re-read this scene in question (it's in Chapter 17) and found no mention of the horrible nausea you described. The disorientation that occurs is due to Marasi creating a small bubble with a 'pinch' of cadmium. This causes the stagecoach to lurch because it isn't massive enough for the speed bubble to follow Marasi, causing the occupants to knock about. This certainly causes disorientation, but no crippling nausea. It's also a very specific instance of speed bubble shenanigan's on moving objects. Stationary bubbles don't seem to have this effect, otherwise it would be mentioned whenever Wax and/or Wayne leap out of their speed bubbles during combat. I knew there was something about them all jolting and being upset with her for doing what she did. I thought maybe there was another scene where Wax went through a bubble and described it as being pretty horrible but I can't remember and likely am getting magics confused (my kid was way into apparition at the time. That definately causes the nausea). Over all I can't help but agree that 1 shot kill is easier for the radiant... in the event the mistborn does not have atium. Which leads me to reassess my initial breakdown. Radiant at 1st and 2nd oaths are mistborn fodder with or without atium. No insta kill weapon leaves mistborn winning out 80+% without atium. Radiant at 4th ideal wins 80+% of the time even with atium on the table. Radiant of 3rd ideal specifically I think the presence of a blade gives it to the radiant 60% of the time without atium and 95+% of the time to the mistborn without atium. I think Roshars magic system has gone off the rails as far as power curve goes unfortunately. As I read it I feel like radiants progressing through the ideals are exponentially more and more powerful. Their downside is really the lack of ease with which they can mobilize and colonize other worlds. (Hence my belief that it will be roshar defending against invasion when space travel becomes a thing. They are made for it.) Perhaps the mistborns greatest weapon in this is emotional allomancy. All radiants are emotionally damaged. Its the only way to form a bond. Those spren need cracked spirit webs to hold onto. How would Kaladin hold up to the trick Vin pulled on Venture? Even if the other windrunners we see on screen don't seem as broken... being broken to some degree is a prerequisite for spren bonding to you. But magic swords and magic armor is where all of that that is offered from other worlds falls off really. (The exception perhaps being Nalthis but the number of magically powerful people are lower due to innate investiture being handed out one breath at a time.)

There is a lot to unload here. There is still plenty of brain activity when one gets shot through the head for healing to take place. In Vins instance there is no brain activity whatsoever ever once the head is mutilated beyond repair. We have kept people breathing and working with GSW to the head for a long time. GSWs to the head have come back and lived a full life after being shot through the face and out through the back of the skull. Noone has ever come back from having their head totally obliterated. Shallan survived what is survivable. TLR survived being beheaded... gold compounding and your average radiant healing are not the same thing. Vins headbutt needs more healing than we have ever seen in the cosmere. Even a beheading if you can repair the cut as it happens. But this is far beyond even that in terms of raw tissue damage. Bones shattering brain turned to jelly and all the soft tissue damage that goes along with it. It is apples to oranges... even the arrow through the eye slit is not comparable given the mechanism of injury and the actual structures in need of immediate repair. Atium gets you plenty close to do what you want. If the radiant closes the gap and the mistborn has access to both atium and duralumin it should be within reason that a potential 1 shot happens. If the mistborn closes the gap with nicrosil or with chromium then the radiant loses the ability to shift shape their spren (I believe kaladin had to drop Syl each time he wanted to change to a different weapon) and more importantly to the fight they lose their stormlight reserves and thus their healing.

Yeah. Duralumin creates this never ending chain reaction with whatever else is being burnt when you burn it. It is always counted as instant to our perceived time. I imagine there is a limit to how much this reaction can take place but am totally willing to accept any WoB against this theory. If you had a 1mg shaving of duralumin I imagine that reaction would end faster than a a few hundred grams of another metal. Would be burned away by the duralumin. I have no idea what the breakpoints would be if there are any... I believe that is probably all rafo. Atium burns way fast. No getting around that except stack more atium. Which is financially difficult.

Duralumin only effects what metal is currently being burnt. It is not in any way tied to what is in your stomach. A stomach with a lb of solid pewter that is not being used will be unaffected by burning a whole lb of duralumin. Atium like every other metal is toggleable. So your atium stores are safe from duralumin as well. Let's suppose that stormlight in a non progression surge radiant is more akin to gold feruchemy alone as opposed to gold compounding. Miles was able to heal through some insane stuff but that was far beyond what stormlight alone can do. Vin exploded a man's head with a headbutt powered by duralumin pewter. Exploded head syndrome is not survivable without the compounding and / or progression. Stormlight healing is great. But dead is dead and stormlight healing can only heal what isn't yet quite dead. A headbutt is less force spread over a greater surface area than a hit from a weapon or even a fist. I imagine a duralumin pewter fueled pop in the mouth would in fact hold enough force to negate passive stormlight healing. Miles shot through the eye it describes him as healing as the bullet was working its way through his body. Progression levels of healing yes. Passive stormlight? I think not.

Honestly. I was always on the feruchemist side of this argument until just a few months ago. Now I am with you on mistborn. We have access to all of the metals easily in our world and I don't ever have to spend time feeling less than... Flying would be a fun benefit but I can see so many uses for all of the metals almost in my daily life. Tin would be great for my job being able to be just that much more sensitive to sounds and smells when it comes to assessing patients. Pewter is hugely beneficial in so many things. Soothing and rioting could benefit everyone at some point. Never have to get up to get the remote again... with iron and steel sight I would never lose the remote in the blankets either! Speed bubbles would be such a boon. More time for studying or doing just about anything, it also allows you to pass time when you are bored and just need to get to the next part of your day. There are more useless metals in allomancy than feruchemy, but I never have to store and be weaker or sick or slower... and of course I can fly.