Tamriel Wolfsbaine

I feel like this is the versatility of the mistborn. To limit a mistborn in their metals to the same runtime as a windrunner is a bit of a stretch in the argument of what they can carry. Gems aren't huge but certainly a sack of gems is larger than the equivalent run time of metals. If you swallowed a perfect spheres volume of pewter no doubt the pewter would unlock far more time of that metals use than the stormlight held by said sphere. A solid takes up considerably less space for the same mass than a gas and that is the exact point to make here. Pewter being the fastest burning of the metals still would be far more dense in potential investiture unlocked than a sphere with a perfect gemstone and crammed full of stormlight. Vials are just convenient ways to transport metal and drink it down without risking heavy metal poisoning if you don't use all of it. And for mistborn there is the added option of using aluminum to protect yourself from a massive chunk of unused metal as well.

On just the basis of the question I have to go with fullborn. Plate and magical sword would be sweet but compounding every metal would be sweeter. Rocket like flight with iron compounding and steel pushing. The ability to heal through the friction of moving at the speed of sound ++. Duralumin compounding .... chromium compounding.... being able to make medallions likely of every combo and give them to your elite. Hemalurgy aside fullborn is insane. All 10 surges... as has already been pointed out would be a lot of oaths or some really messed up way of acquiring them. What was missing from this list though is my #1. 10th heightening awakener... silent commands at range and the ability to just awaken your own set of shardplate and shardblades. Awakening is the bees knees. Maybe not as powerful as the other 2 listed here but then again we haven't seen it be used at nearly the extent of the others either. We got 1 scene of a 10th heightening awakener who never used his powers before and that was it (lots of scenes with the results of lower investiture and greater knowledge though).

I am very interested in reading more about this. If you know where that post is please do share. Biochromatic breath is my absolute favorite. It only gets better when I realize it can be obtained by anyone in the cosmere with any other magic system already as well. The amount of home brewing mixes and matches of 5th heightening + X I have done in my brain is embarrassing. But who doesn't want functional immortality, lifesense, perfect pitch and the color recognition... freaking cool stuff.

Perhaps there is some source I am missing proving this but I believe that if a spren weapon is too invested to push or pull on it would be too invested to imbue with stormlight. Still a spren shield is a great option for blocking projectiles but I don't believe it would be able to be sprayed with enough stormlight to act as an anchor for reverse lashing. I believe there is a scene that everyone overlooks when discussing speed bubbles. When Marasi uses the cube in BoM the entire party gets slapped by this horrible disorientation and nausea spell. The world going from normal to suddenly very not normal as you pass through that space is a far better advantage than I think is let on. The way they described it in the book was like the characters were put through some vasovagal symptoms. The whole world suddenly spinning as your mouth begins to water and you have to fight from throwing up. This is a large advantage if weaponized and since the very first time I read about this "side effect" of using the metal I have pictured pulsers standing at the front of armies and putting up this dome of death where their enemies would be running in formation only to hit a wall of horrible disorientation and nausea followed by their allies suddenly crashing into their backs only to experience the same exact thing. Even in a 1 on 1 dual this can prove plenty useful. A mistborn using their speed advantage in the air to quickly get above the windrunner and put up a bubble and then letting that windrunner blow through it in pursuit. Being 100 yards above the ground traveling at 100+ miles per hour and then suddenly not knowing which way is up or down as your world spins around you and your get smacked by terrible nausea (cause all nausea is terrible) and your body goes through a small systems shock... Time constriction and dilation is cool but in combat it is far less useful than blasting your opponent with that disorientation and illness. This is valuable time to set up for mental attacks and close quarters attacks both. I agree with a lot of this. I have said that TLR biggest threat is his own hubris. TLR vs Vasher should be so one sided but I wouldn't put it past TLR to let Vasher smack him with Nightblood just to prove that Vasher can't hurt him. We all know how that would turn out. Mistborn are used to being the top dog on their planet. Until the see what a sprenblade can do they may not treat it as the threat that it is. Then again pewter doesn't fix getting stabbed by glass or steel either so they shouldn't be all that reckless. Plus, as soon as they realize they can't push on that shiny sword I think their brains will be working and treating it differently than other fights. The steel and iron usage always does something, and you don't have to have physical contact to do that thing either. If the mistborn doesn't want the radiant to touch it then the radiant won't touch it short of stripping down to nothing. Radiant is larger than the mistborn then the mistborn gets a free anchor. If the radiant is smaller than the mistborn then the radiant is going to get tossed and pulled around like a ragdoll. Radiant wants to fly 200 mph towards me... then I can fly 200 mph away from him as he pushes me. Once I make contact with something bigger than the 2 of us it doesn't matter how many lashings their are that radiant is going to go zipping off in the other direction. Likewise if they want to flee I can iron pull behind them the same speed they are flying like holding onto the end of a rope. Then we remember that iron and steel last a lot longer than stormlight too. I don't know that this is entirely accurate. From my understanding stormlight doesn't increase strength so much as allow you to access your full potential of strength (healing muscle fibers as they tear and letting you push past those limits of where you would normally stop). Not saying that isn't an advantage but pewter is literal magic speed, strength, balance and toughness (denser tissues and bones as well). Stormlight heals and perfects what you naturally have to work with. Atium is the ace in the hole. Only needs to be used when fighting close quarters against this foe with a metal blade that is immune to my steel and iron attacks. Pewter makes you stronger and faster on the ground as well. My final thoughts are that mistborn does win the war of attrition as well as the down and dirty quick close quarters action as long as atium is on. Stormlight doesn't heal insta kills either. Sure Shallan gets to heal an arrow through the eyeslot but that is not saying that arrow was instant death (given the length of time we have kept GSW to the head alive). Everyone short of gold compounders, edgedancer and truthwatchers are susceptible to a severed C1-5... magic sword or not. I love the breakdown and agree with a lot but I think a lot was overlooked on the mistborn side of things. I still think mistborn fare much better vs 3rd ideal than what most do. 4th ideal is where the needle really starts to move.

I highly recommend it. Hands down my favorite cosmere magic system.

I agree that they probably can. But biochromatic breath is awesomely sticky innate investiture where the lights on Roshar are all leaky kinetic investiture. I feel like biochromatic breath would be wasted on surges as I can't picture how you could return it to yourself after using it.

Metals don't have the power. They are just the key that unlocks investiture to empower the mistborn directly from the spiritual realm I believe. Biochromatic breath and allomancy are the most portable magics in the cosmere. Others are very tied to their home worlds.

Hence my argument that the mistborn could specifically out sprint a windrunner ground up (until they hit a height the mistborn can't maintain an anchor at). The home field advantage argument is just as bad for both sides. Metals at least exist on Roshar. If the fight were on Scadrial the radiant wouldn't have access to more light than what they could carry and their spren (thus their surges) aren't going to be there at all.

I think the biggest weakness of lashings and reverse lashings is that you have to touch the things you wish to lash... yes a coin being drug down would help to protect the radiant but I don't think it will be as effective no efficient as the argument says. How many lashings would you need to stop a coin from hitting you if you are just lashing the ground? A lot more stormlight to stop coins than steel to push them. And once the ground is lashed it is stationary. A fight moving around would cause a lot more wasted light than steel or coins... and you are literally giving the mistborn more anchor points to aid in their maneuverability at that point. The windrunner is better off reverse lashing a shield and using it more like a lurcher... again then you hand the mistborn more tools for maneuverability. It becomes mass vs mass at that point as well. While I agree that windrunners have more maneuverability and control in the air I would seriously advocate for the mistborn winning in acceleration. The need to flare pewter to keep from blacking out points to some pretty bonkers G forces that the mistborn go through when flying. They may not make it up as high in a jump off as a windrunner but those first few hundred feet will happen way faster for a mistborn. Its the difference between a bullet being shot out of a gun and being dropped off of a building. I know you can stack lashings but again we run into 1 use of steel and continuous flow and stacking of stormlight to keep up.

Ah I missed that. There is still the fact that it is the fastest leaking investiture source out there. Metal doesn't lose its ability to be converted to investiture. All gems with the exception of perfect gemstones are leaking and the light is evaporating off of them all the time. Even if a surgebinder were to breathe back onto the gems they would lose their investiture at an infinitely faster rate than metals in a vial (with the exception of perfect gems, 0.00001% of investiture lost over time is infinitely larger than zero). This was really just to the point of waiting out the atium. Just turn it off... how would the windrunner ever know that the mistborn was burning atium anyways? It wouldn't be obvious until suddenly they were being hit in the vitals every swing meanwhile none of their attacks hit. How many times can an unarmored radiant heal pierced vitals while missing every attack before realizing something weird is happening and still have the light to dip out? Meanwhile the mistborn very obviously knows when the magic is being used by his opponent and will be able to land shots from ranged ripping through torsos with future sight as the windrunner is running... plus yanking on nonmagically metal to keep in range? Windrunner at 3rd ideal is fighting an uphill battle the entire time against a mistborn from even era 1 already. Add in atium and the the 3rd ideal windrunner is hosed. Atium vs the 3rd ideal radiant is as much "can't touch this" plot armor in favor for the mistborn as shardplate is for the 4th ideal radiants vs everything short of nightblood (or other shardblades but speaking of outside Roshar systems specifically). Atium can sort of even out the playing field vs plate but seeing every move doesn't do anything if you can't break through (which is a horse so dead now its not even funny).

There is a pretty big difference between mistborn and radiant in this case specifically. Once a radiant takes a deep breath that stormlight is on a timer... it will run out. The mistborn has way way way longer to choose to use atium or not. A bead of atium may only last a couple of minutes but you don't HAVE to burn it all away once you start burning it. If the windrunners strategy is to run away until the atium is gone then only a truly stupid mistborn would burn it while not under attack. The windrunner has no way to know what or when a mistborn is burning metals meanwhile the mistborn will always be able to see when the windrunner is holding a breath of light... through tin usage and bronze the windrunner can't hide their usage of stormlight... which as already noted is use or lose once breathed in. I can't say for sure but I see the mistborn inching out the radiant in strength and speed pre 4th ideal. I believe steel and iron are faster acceleration when used for flight vs stacking lashings. Radiant has better healing and a potential 1 shot kill in the spren blade but the mistborn has ranged attacks and pewter enhanced movements. Stormlight perfects what your body can naturally do at its peak... pewter is literal magic enhancement. With no shardplate to block steel and iron yet the windrunner still has to wear clothes which likely means wearing some metal in one form or another. None of that is talking about emotional allomancy. Every other chapter we see these broken radiants spiraling away from their oaths one way or another... it wouldn't be that big of a stretch to think someone could riot and soothe Kaladin into a catatonic state. We can ignore all of the other metals for this fight and it wouldn't make that much of a difference. Add in the era 2 metals and you have leeching and access to time manipulation as well. A radiant passing through a time bubble would be hit by that terrible nausea and disorientation... stormlight heals well but all you need is a second to land potentially crippling attack of leeching all stormlight or an attack to the CNS. Again. All metals have an on off switch. Stormlight is the go button. You breathe and you need to fight. Infact there is more likelihood of the mistborn being able to evade conflict while the radiant runs out of light than the radiant evading until the mistborn runs out of metal. A vial on your belt will last the entire weeping while all spheres eventually lose light. I think mistborn vs windrunner before shardplate even with shardblade is 75% in favor of the mistborn without atium. 90+% with atium.

That is what I am trying to understand. Is a Larkins feeding process a passive thing or more of an active "I'm going to eat your investiture now"? If a person wakes one up and the Larkin no longer requires food to survive could the awakener not command it to feed on radiant X across the room? The larkin doesn't have to feed and per the existence of a command system the person who awakened it would have the ability to expressly forbid it from feeding on their investiture no? Nale didn't seem super worried about his own stormlight nor the stormlight presumably being used to light the building when he drained Lift of her reserves. It seemed a very targeted attack at her investiture specifically. Wouldn't a lifeless larkin be even less likely to turn on its creator? Also would the stormlight, being so leaky, leak out overtime keeping said larkin lifeless so long as it didn't feed too much at any one time? Or do you think it will be totally cumulative?

So a larkin lifeless could likely still consume investiture but after enough time could become no longer a lifeless? I imagine it would be safe for the awakener to be near it in lifeless form as it would be following commands to consume what investiture the person with command of it would have it consume... at least until it had consumed enough to ascend past lifelessness into whatever next form it would take. I also believe I remember lifeless being less of what they were. Ichor alcohol allows a lifeless to take a significantly larger beating but they are slower and less than they were in life as well right? How do you think a lifeless whitespine would stand against a living version of whitespine?

I believe I remember reading something about it being a matter of identity and what that breath really belongs too. (Whether it was the holder of breath or the breath itself that pertained to I can't remember). I really need to reread warbreaker because I honestly don't remember that command requiring ichor alcohol. I remember vasher using the squirrel but it could very well be that it cost more than the 1 breath given the size and shape of the animal. I imagine anything that was alive would work better than not. Wouldn't awakening a critter on roshar be about the same as awakening a really big crab or lobster?

I was thinking about lifeless this morning and how I am not a huge fan of reanimated human bodies... for what its worth I am also not a giant fan of reanimated anything but I was definately more on board with the squirrel than the lifeless which got me thinking about some of the creatures on Roshar. Do lifeless eat? I don't know that it is a requirement for them but if they can eat then could a lifeless larkin be used as a mobile safe form of leeching for an awakener who found one? It follows your command and it would be highly unlikely a person would command it to feed on themselves I imagine. A small pack of lifeless whitespines... who wouldn't want to be hunted by them? But then I thought bigger, which led me to my next question. Vashers command that allows for 1 breath awakening even of the squirrel, would it work on a chasmfiend? Reanimating a gigantic chitinlined ally could be well used as a strategy.

So it probably isn't such a big issue for the shooting of guns. As far as physiological necessities there is a huge difference between giving the body too much O2 and too little. 30% is about the equivalent of 2.5L of O2 delivered on top of our normal 21%. For healths sake we can go up to 100% delivered O2 for a period of time and it actually be greatly helpful (though we deliver this usually with a flow high enough to cause pressure to make up for the fact that we have washed out all of the denser nitrogen from your lungs. But there is a huge difference between normally being on 21% and bumping to 30% and being 21% and only receiving 12% (the real pillow therapy there). Unless Rosharans were created for a 21% O2 enviorment and then never once evolved over thousands of years ... even humans on earth adapt when at elevation. Run at 12000 feet and you are a natural blood doper compared to someone doing the same workout at sea-level. Going up in O2 by 9% might slowly damage your lungs and shorten your lifespan but not nearly as much as going down 9% from a persons baseline. (Folks who are on 2L baseline last a lot less time when taken off than folks who get 2L put on who don't need it). Again I can accept the line of "because magic" when I have to. As far as fire and gun powder I imagine 30% vs 21% wouldn't make as much of a difference as if it was like 40-50%

Do we have any sources for this?

Interesting link for sure. I guess a lot of roshar (or what I have seen of it) doesn't seem to be full of flammable plant life anyways. Not sure if even a hot casing would hurt much. Again the oxygen has to be used with something that is flammable to add anything to a flame and it would have to be highly concentrated there. Smoking while using oxygen doesn't lead to an exploding tank... just that all the clothes and hairs that have been saturated in the O2 ignite and spread wicked fast (seen a few burnt up faces from that one... awful smell). I can see that shooting in specific areas might not be safe but again I really am curious about peoples thoughts on Kel and the ghostbloods being cool with firearms use or if you think they would go after it the way they sort of do other magics? As for the actual concentration of O2 on Roshar I would be curious to how high just to think of the physiological implications for world hoppers bodies designed to be in that enviorment... We already have the spren bond making world hopping for a radiant difficult. Add onto that this idea that native rosharans are born and adapted to needing higher O2... they will have to have supplementation for that in the future surely. A bit more evidence to my thoughts that Roshar will end up being the defensive party in the first planet vs planet story lines.

This is kind of my feelings on it all. I envision this goal of Kelsiers to protect Scadrial. Just as important as not letting foreign magic get out of hand would be to keep tech advancements hidden from potential threats. Just like the countries of our world don't like it when other countries of our world attempt to steal blueprints of advanced military tech I imagined Kelsier and the Ghostbloods may not be happy if someone was bringing tech into Roshar and sticking out using it to a point where a firearm could be reverse engineered. In regards to the O2. I definately prefer the idea that guns are being kept hush hush to an extent over the idea that science prevents it. Again, oxygen has to be able to saturate whatever actually flammable source is near by. There aren't many parts on a fire arm that are flammable thus the combustible nature of a mildly higher O2 concentration shouldn't be an issue. I get that Brandon is the god of the cosmere and if he wants to wave his hand and it be so then that is totally up to him. But "because science" is honestly as bad as "because magic". Messing with gaseous composition of atmospheres to an extent where fire works differently without making fire work differently and keeping everyone's physiology intact is bad cherry picking of physical law IMHO. (Not that my opinion nor perception of immersion matters at all in the grand scheme of things.)

Do we know roughly how much higher the O2 content is on Roshar? I never would have thought of a higher O2 enviorment and shooting as being necessarily dangerous together in a world where building a fire is a normal task. It isn't that O2 is flammable. Crack a tank of oxygen and light a candle in front of it and that oxygen will blow the candle out. Saturate a cloth in oxygen and light it on fire and that cloth becomes far more combustible. A metal bullet in a metal gun and a case holding all of the powder with a primer don't leave much room for anything to become saturated with oxygen in the firearm itself. I can see the danger of a hotter round kicking out more of a fire ball potentially catching something around the shooter on fire but again once you have any flame it would have the same issue and Rosharans are not a flameless species. The higher O2 content in world also makes me wonder what other mechanics are going on with world hoppers who don't posses actual healing powers. Supplemental O2 in a person with normal saturation at room air has been linked to actually damage lung tissue and in an environment with more oxygen you find less nitrogen... if Scadrial is closer to earths atmospheric build up their lungs need that balance for optimal lifespan anyways. All that aside (because the answer "investiture" seems to fix most things like instantly teleporting an army up in elevation to a point where without magic to stop it they all would have stroked out or down on their own blood via the bends and HAPE) ... this does make me wonder what other powers the 17th shard and the ghostbloods have been lending to their members traveling through the cosmere. It also leads to more questions about biochromatic breath and its healing capabilities since we have Vivenna and Vasher both on Roshar and, at least up to my spot in oathbringer, I haven't seen any tie between them and another organization. Keeping you alive via never aging and keeping you alive via healing have always been a separate thing in the cosmere and physiologically changing O2 content would have effects that should need to be addressed via a degree of healing. (Assuming it is a big enough difference to make shooting that much more dangerous on Roshar.)

In one of the paper clippings we hear a story of a lady with a gun that shoots spirits. Pretty convincing evidence of a worldhopper on Scadrial who is using power/ tech from a different world. Also given that era 2 is near the same point in time as current stormlight novels I was wondering why I hadn't seen any firearms usage on Roshar yet. Given Kelsiers interest in keeping other magics away from Scadrial I wonder how offended or not happy he would be if he found out about someone on Roshar waving some firearms and Scadrial tech around. Do you think they genuinely hasn't been someone with access to firearms on Roshar yet or do you think they simply get intercepted by the Ghostbloods before they get a chance to start the rumors?

Another reason biochromatic breath is awesome. I wonder if someone with access to both, or I should say someone who gains access to both, can remove and replace and replicate memories as they wish. Maybe having a coppermind and breaths could allow a person to view a memory from one and copy it to the other... perhaps creating many copies of the same memory without needing to compound through the metallic arts specifically. I know in the case of Hoid and the existence of medallions he has access to compounding what he would like when he would like (most likely) even without breath. But still an interesting potential mixup of systems.

That is my question. If aluminum being a filled metalmind is just redundant at that point. Investiture does some weird things. Aluminum acts differently with investiture at every turn. I wonder if aluminum metalminds are as cut and dry as all the others.

In the world of things that can block shardblades we have aluminum and full metalminds. Does anyone think there is a bonus interaction for a totally crammed full aluminum mind shaped as a shield or a blade?

I think the current scadrial cast are prime candidates for a bit of world hopping. Scadrial has moved on past infighting between their worlds shards. The new threat seems to not of their world and having a sword seems to hint that harmony is willing to go on the offensive in this conflict... to take the fight to Trell... whoever and where ever that might be. Roshar hasn't completed the in network story arc yet. That isn't to say that the cast from stormlight doesn't have suitable worldhoppers just that they should really get their own house in order before branching out. Scadrial also has the benefit of very portable magic while your surgebinders are very limited geographically to where they may practice their invested arts. We do see just how important these things are with what worldhoppers already exist on Roshar. I do believe that a large part of a persons ability and willingness to hop worlds is dependent on how portable their abilities allow them to be. In this case Nalthis takes the cake. Biochromatic breath is the most portable and reliable source of investiture that a worldhopper could ask for (perhaps Hoid would argue that but that is just because he knows his hand and we as readers don't even know half of what the deck could have). The metallic arts are next for portability. I imagine there would be an initial language barrier for getting metals and you would also be limited to what that planet is capable of producing (a good portion of era 2 metals could be out of reach technologically for them on Roshar). The other thing a good worldhopper needs is a way to ignore aging and time. Again Biochromatic breath excels at this where other magics fall far behind. We haven't seen much outside of the heralds that hints at Rosharans having any access to that yet (maybe the 5th ideal but I kind if doubt it more likely to be some twisted fabrial of the future). Scadrial had atium compounding but that is all in the past. Perhaps when they learn to break harmonium down into atium and lerasium again (if ever).