Tamriel Wolfsbaine

So I just read Warbreaker and assume the "silvery metal sheath" that holds nightblood is simply aluminum. If it is that is what holds in the investiture then would it make sense that it could also preserve the power in a spike? Hemalurgic spikes leak investiture and become weaker over time. If you placed a pair of them into an aluminum box or case would it preserve their power while outside of a body?

I LOVED the whole biochromatic breath, awakening and returned system. I still have tons of questions and theories to mull around in my mind... but I noticed something in those last few chapters... 95% of the book was destroyed by an offl screen faction who was the only one to successfully see a plan into action and would have been the victors if not for some sweet plot armor. You have 40,000 lifeless under your control and an entire palaces worth of rooms to keep prisoners in. Instead you cram them all close enough together to let all the plot armor work in their favor. The only character to not fail at his intended goal (barring plot armor) was Nightblood. He got to destroy! Ciri's months of pain were all 90% wrong and her biggest success was being thrown in jail before absolutely humiliating herself in front of the masses... the only people alive at the end of it all who know how incredibly wrong she was is herself and Susebron. Vivenna and Lightsong both had the second half of the book to overcome their issues and if not for the 2 of them stepping up from their ashes there wouldn't have been much of a happy ending. Each of them provided the plot armor for the other failed protagonists to survive the story and stop the only truly prepared faction of the book... Bluefingers and his rebellion. I feel terrible for Bluefingers... I mean the guy was a slimy one from the start and he was a pretty heartless dude at the end but that doesn't change the fact that he was the only one to really get to put his well organized plan in motion. He did 90% of the work off screen for that awesome ending and he got 100% of the credit for being behind all the bad. The characters were really neat and I enjoyed seeing them grow but I did get a crack up about how badly their big brain plans got destroyed only to have it all work out for them in the end. Nightblood was a really fun character to read about and since it is the first time I have seen him on screen (not just hearing about him in the forums) it cleared up so many things. TLDR: The story had me sucked in and it was like watching a bad CW show where in the end all of the protagonists efforts turn out to be a huge waste but it still works out for them because we need a second season. The world hasnt replaced scadrial as my favorite world... but the metalic arts have been moved down to my 2nd favorite magic system. (I like the imagery of cloaks and tassels and ribbons flowing around more than shooting coins and jumping real far). I cant wait to learn more about the magic system but I am nervous that this system won't be visited again for a bunch of years still yet. It is a shame Nalthis is taking a backseat but who knows maybe I will like Roshar more as I start into the Stormlight Archive.

I few days ago I would have said a kandra with allomantic bendalloy for insane quick change magic tricks to land the biggest "Fool Us" win ever... changing shape size or even species along with my clothing as I appear to continuously walk back and forth behind a curtain (or even just have curtains fall in front of me and try to get the changes done as they fall). But I just read warbreaker and I think I would give up my instant appearance changing act to fool Penn and Teller for the chance to be a kandra with awakening. I have no idea what blessing I would want... I feel like potency would have obvious advantages with the ability to augment your strength through awakened objects further. Awareness would just be epic to further enhance all of your senses (would life sense potentially be extended and more powerful with awareness?). Blessing of presence with awakening could be super useful for picking up and learning new commands and the blessing of stability... well I honestly don't know how it would do as there don't seem to be many folks working on emotions in warbreaker but its never a bad idea to guard your biggest weakness further as a Hemalurgic construct. With how durable kandra are shown to be in era 2 I love the idea of bullets and blades passing as harmlessly through my person as they do the cloth and ropes I am commanding in a fight. And an added benefit of being a kandra with awakening... I can create another mouth or perhaps move my mouth if I was gagged and silences... I can hide a few colored handkerchiefs under my skin or make a few bones for a true body with layers of compressed colored cloth as certain bones (eventually being cosmere aware I would work to amass an entire true body made of aluminum). Being a kandra has so much untold flexibility and they are by far my favorite monsters from any fantasy world.... and after warbreaker this last weekend awakening has to be my new favorite magic system in the cosmere. Their powers combined... I think would make for a truly terrifying foe.

Only 7 more hours in this book but I cant help asking some questions about the way the magic works. I have seen awakeners shifting between heightening's a few times and it appears once those breaths are used that pull you down a heightening you lose the gifts from that previous level until you gather the needed breaths again. We have seen the loss of stored age kill quickly... but I have a feeling that the 5th heightening must work differently than simply tapping metalminds... At the 5th heightening does it pause your age where you are? So if you spent a hundred years holding just enough breaths to exist at the 5th heightening would spending some and dropping down to the 4th just resume your aging from that point? Or would it leave you rapidly gaining age again? In the case of returned it appears that those who know how to suppress divine breath still gain at least one benefit of it but in the opening of the book we see Vasher not having all of the benefits on the first 5 heightenings... aside from the whole immortal thing right? I am quite confused by this one aspect of the magic and maybe it will all be answered in the final 3rd of the book but I am a bit antsy and a true sucker for spoilers (in fact I still refuse to watch the last season of one of my favorite shows, Chuck, because I got some spoilers and decided I wanted it to end at the end of season 4 in my mind at least... yes I am one of those).

I am still only about 75% of the way through Warbreaker but am curious if a returned must get a breath each week specifically or if it is just some form of investiture to keep themselves alive? Could a ferring store enough of an attribute to survive off of by allowing it to be consumed at the end of a week? Could an allomancer simply burn up extra metal to buy a weeks worth of time? If you had 2 different types of investiture could you choose which one to use? Say you have access to breath for survival but also have been spiked and have feruchemy or allomancy now as well? Could you choose to spare the breath or store it elsewhere as the time comes due and then just use up the other form of investiture instead? I was always a huge fan of the metallic arts but warbreakers returned and awakening might be a new favorite system.

I think this just makes so many more questions and assumptions about feruchemy than I can process at the moment but here are a few off the top of my head. What exactly is a metalmind? How does the power in a typical metalmind fill it and work? If I have a ring and I store half my weight in it and then cut it in half... do I then have 2 metalminds with a quarter of my weight in them? If I compounded that and got 10x the weight could I cram it all into one metalmind and then cut it into fifths and have my entire weight in each one stored for future use? If nicrosil and copper work the same way then how exactly do they compound? If I store a memory and cut that coppermind in half do I end up with half a memory? When compounded does it stick around for significantly longer or does it only compound into multiple metalminds of the same memory? Perhaps TLR can thank his ability to compound copper on his perfect memory. If I store Allomantic pewter in a nicrosil mind and split it in half does only one half have any power in it or do both halves offer half of the power of Allomantic pewter? I think if we can figure out what will happen when a metalmind is cut down and then tapped we can have a much better view of how compounding that attribute would work? Perhaps compounding a power just means that you need to create 10 metalminds of the same power. I still feel like seeing the trace metals with the bands should have taken a lot more than just wax + kelsiers steel and iron power. Whether we can thank preservation and kelsiers shenanigans or not is a separate consideration.

I definately see Miles as being an even more OP kandra in the healing world. He would shrug off anything excluding aluminum even if it was vital. He was constantly tapping at such a rate he got shot in the face multiple times and grew it back instantly. I doubt a shardblade to the spike would have much effect unless they kept it sitting in the spine. I would imagine aluminum being left buried into a 1 shot kill space would do it. He might be able to heal himself long enough to perform a surgery to remove something from his heart... It would most likely require aluminum staying lodged into the CNS for enough length to keep him well and dead. Even at that people live with their brains turned off for a long time. He could burn gold on instinct alone like a pewter arm, likely until some random person were to remove it or he totally ran out of gold reserves.... Even MeLaan being torn to shreds in a corridor of death and just waiting for a new set of bones looks awfully mortal compared to Miles.

I do believe all allomantic senses can be stored... you could theoretically store the spiritual sight granted by any of the spiritual metals as well as the ability to hear pulses from bronze. In the "tin master metal" world of thinking there is an argument for even pewters sense of balance or even the sense of proprioception which is basically spidey senses. If being John Carter from Mars wasn't as simple as Allomantic pewter and Feruchemical iron and I couldn't choose the kandra life... I would have to run tin compounder because you just stack all of those benefits forever and can store whatever you need to negate the negative effects of savantism (potentially).

A-pewter is my choice 99% of the time. Way to useful in everyday life to not use it. Feruchemy is where I struggle. Tin is brilliant for anything spy related. Zinc is fantastic for dueling or just about anything you know even a little about (zinc compounding is basically an endless supply of limitless pills). Steel would compliment A pewter so well for so much but doesn't really offer a whole lot that is new, instead I feel like it would just enhance the pewter speed and make for a nice spidey sense/ bullet time effect for when A pewter needs an extra hand. Iron is fantastic and pewter fueled jumps with iron could straight up allow me to hop around like John Carter of Mars so I think that would have to be my go to. Coin shots can keep their flying. Allomantic bendalloy would be my go to over pewter if... and really only if I was a Kandra. I would use it to put on a quick change act that blows the socks off Penn and Teller. I picture carrying in a "bag of tricks" with some animal bones and going through various sized humans with a few random big cats thrown in (anything that I can duplicate bones but change fur patters or even fat distribution with). I want to land that trophy and convince those dudes that real magic has to be the only explanation. (Honestly if it isn't too small for a kandra to use I would end it all as a shoebill stork making its prehistoric call and then a quick fly around the room only to land behind a curtain throw up my speed bubble swap back to the original body and look and then drop the speed bubble as my curtain falls to my feet leaving just me and my bag of tricks standing there.) But since being a monster isn't part of the discussion I will just stick to A pewter and F iron to make those dope John Carter leaps.

I have often said that I thought he actually anticipated the moment that he would die. He wasn't willing to do it to himself but perhaps spread a rumor about an extra metal to one day have someone put him out of his mortal hell. I only refer to it as that because I know I for one would feel I was in hell if I were carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. If he died and there wasn't a group strong enough and clever enough left on the earth then ruin would win it all. Despite being surrounded by a millenias worth of generations of people who lived in fear of him and quite often tried to kill him... he still loved that world and still felt the weight of knowing what he was locking away and protecting the people from. I don't think he cared too much about being immortal past that. I am sure it had its perks but everyone he ever got close to died or tried to kill him. Noone knew why he was necessary and that is a big big weight. I think the home could have easily snapped Vin in half but in that moment decided she was the one who would now have to carry all of those burdens. Rashek was tired and old. No matter how much atium you compound, its him and his kandra. Heck he had to watch his creations become slaves to a contract because his "friends" (and their offspring) he entrusted allomancy to tried to wipe out the entire kandra population. Rashek was in over his head and did everything he could to fulfill his obligations but I agree there was no more joy in his life. He was anxiously awaiting someone to shift his burden over to.

I know that a blessing is what gives a kandra their sentience but would the mistwraith Oreseur had been created from totally subconsciously found the bones as well? It probably wouldn't have taken much luring by Kelsier to get it back to the bones anyways. Look at animals in our world. There are incredible feats of migratory birds and even fish instinctively following back certain hardwired paths. I imagine a mistwraith has the intelligence of a salmon at least. I am sure instinct would take a mistwraith on paths that are familiar even if it doesn't remember or know why they are familiar.

I definately don't think Harmony is as gracious as his followers would have us believe. He still uses the kandra as slaves and sadly due to being born to the first contract they have never known freedom of will to compare it to. I thought kelsiers bones were used by a kandra already after he had died... somewhere between his death and Tensoon becomes a legend that kandra had died. I can't remember if we know what that kandra did with his bones but perhaps they were already fed to a mistwraith by said kandra before tensoon acquired its spikes. Speaking of Tensoon killing Oreseur, do we know how that happened exactly? Could it have been a removal of blessings and then oreseur was left as said mistwraith still in possession of Kels bones? I haven't read the book in a decade and am probably way way off on my memory.

I like the comparison to feruchemy to demonstrate multiplicatice vs additive. It makes perfect sense in that case and helps make sense of both the WOB and the text.

For copper would a more powerful copper cloud be able to eventually protect others from mental manipulation as well? I liked the idea of copper being almost an anti-investiture zone that offers protection. I know that aluminum alone does it better but a powerful coppercloud could potentially offer the protection and shielding they recieve to others. Copper vs lashings I am also curious about. As mental attacks can't harm a coppercloud could the coppercloud be protected by some of another systems attacks?

I am sort of confused by this as on screen it is mentioned a couple times that Vin gets more out of pewter than others due to her small size. Yet we see her heaving around kolos blades and still moving fluidly that kolos that are far more than double her size use. I figured additive answered it a lot better than if it was just multiplying strength by X. If Ham is able to lift double what Vin is and they both burn pewter I guess he is able to always lift double. So if a 1kilo deadlift is possible from the world's strongest man and he burns pewter he can deadlift 2k where as a small person who can deadlift 150lbs can only deadlift 300lbs. Seems the WOB runs a bit against what we have seen on screen. Then again I get a feeling that Brandon isn't super happy about mistborn era 1 being used to figure out the rules anyway.

I feel like pewter is one that the MAG does a pretty good job showcasing lining up with how I pictured it on screen. Again going off of what Ham and Kelsier both show with Vin. Her base physique may be lower so the pewter itself is a much more significant boost. In game it is posed as your physique + rating = new physique. If you have someone with a 6 for their physique and a rating of 4 then they are just gaining 66% of their normal abilities. Someone with a 4 base physique and that same rating of 4 would be getting a 100% increase to what they had. Someone with a 3 physique and a 6 rating would gain 200% increase. I figure the smaller frame allows you to get a lot more from the pewter because that is only up against what you already had. All of this said physique is not just strength and takes all physical attributes as part of it. A steel runner in game effects his physique just as pewter does so speed, strength, dexterity and even agility all fit into that bubble. The MAG isn't cannon by any stretch but I feel like the rating system added onto a persons base physique is a good illustration of the bonuses that some get vs others. Its not that Vin was outright stronger than Ham or Kelsier when burning pewter but by the same token by the end of era 1 I would imagine Vin was nearing savant levels with pewter which would explain even if she could beat Ham in an arm wrestling contest. Not to mention any resonances that come from being a full mistborn vs just a thug that are still RAFO.

I truly am fine with a magic wand solution. I think you explain cadmium being a great explanation. I was only speaking towards the OPs question of if while tapping just blood oxygenation would allow you to speak and continue functioning. I explained the physiology of the need to continue physical gasses to work the vocal cords and how exhaling was needed for that plus the want to stay alive. I think the explanation of diffusion was great for how that barrier works but that a deeper dive was necessary to explain why, without magical feruchemical protection from one's self, the explanation of just storing and tapping one part of it would seriously throw off the bodies ability to maintain homeostasis, and in fact hinder the ability to speak or function. I like that feruchemy fixes issues that the magic creates. It is not as hard of a system as allomancy and that makes it fun to read about. Just trying to clear up why the magic arm waving is necessary if it works as described on the wiki. Not trying to offend

For sure I think you are definately right. Feruchemy usually has a way to protect its users from itself anyways so I have little doubt that cadmium burners are not killing themselves by holding their breath. We also have to remember that soooo much of what we have on how the magics work is provided from the point of view of a person alive in those periods of time who would be interested to figure it out or speculate. Knowing you need oxygen to stay alive and without oxygen your body dies makes the idea that blood oxygen levels being stored is a good simple explanation of where era 2 scadrial characters might be at. And I believe there will be a time for every single feruchemical power where those same scholars in scadrial will have to accept that the investiture is breaking some rules and the explanations for how certain powers work may never be satisfactory.

I agree that your lungs work through diffusion and that the CO2 would pool over back and forth as would the O2 levels. The need for constant exhale is simply that you need to be moving that CO2 out of your lungs so that you can get adequate diffusion of CO2 out of your blood stream. pH balance is essential and CO2 climbing up will eventually kill you. If cadmium were to only store pressure of O2 in the blood (or on hemoglobin) then you would be able to tap it all day long to oxygenate tissue without the act of breathing... you would just metabolize all of the O2 and not offload an appropriate amount of CO2 without exhaling thus become acidic and die. Unless somehow your kidneys get kicked into hyperdrive and they create enough HCO3 to balance the pH but then when you finally do start breathing again your body will have to deal with all of that excess HCO3 before you become alkalotic enough to die as well. That exhale I was mentioning was a very simple thought on how to offload the CO2 only. Your next problems would come in the form of inevitably washing out all of the nitrogen which is what helps the lungs stay open. Those alveoli don't like lower pressures and will collapse down on themselves when that pressure changes too much. This is why keeping people on 100% oxygen all the time usually requires some amount of positive pressure to help it anyways. Sometimes thinning out the air is a good thing hence the use of Heliox to bump O2 sats in patients with acute airway obstructions, however in this case when talking about the feruchemy only changing that one pressure source of oxygen in the blood we don't want to thin out the air in our lungs... but we have to. Without a way to refresh the nitrogen in your lungs while blowing off all of the CO2 then when you stop tapping your metalmind you would be left with 2 very very collapsed lungs that wouldn't function normally anyway. Not to mention when you have atelectasis the alveolar capillary membrane has thickened up making the simple diffusion needed for respiration even harder. Without the act of exhalation you would end up with a bunch of true blue CO2 retaining COPDers. Normal physiology has your drive to breathe based upon your need to expel CO2 and maintain that pH balance. When you're unable to offload that CO2 because of chronic obstruction then your kidneys make up for it with bicarb production. Eventually if you are far enough into the disease process this switch changes and your drive to breathe isn't based on your need to offload CO2 anymore but instead you breathe based on O2 need specifically. That is why the struggle is real convincing COPDers on O2 that their sweet spot for SpO2 is 88-94%. Nothing worse than coding an old COPD patient who was just sating 100% on their oxygen but is found with an ABG reading 6.8pH 130PaCO2 and a PaO2 of 300.... sure you made sure they weren't alarming low O2 but now they are dead because even though their blood oxygen was great they weren't exhaling off the acidic CO2. If cadmium does work off of just the partial pressure of O2 in the blood stream or even the O2 bound to the hemoglobin then magic wands must appear to keep the user alive. That said feruchemy actually does this all the time (waving magic wands to allow your body to not kill itself when tapped) and I wouldn't be against that as the answer. There would be a lot less wand waving if every breath you store you are storing all of the parts of that breath (both ventilation and respiration) and tapping it simply allowed your body to do all of the respiratory process without the need to ventilate. It is the issue of adding in a bunch of just oxygen and ignoring the fact that there is nothing getting rid of the other stuff that is being created as that oxygen is being tossed in there.

Hence why I mentioned a need for continuous exhale. If all that was stored was the blood oxygen saturation then tapping it would, in my mind, increase said blood oxygen saturation. So long as you are exhaling off the CO2 you wouldn't have need for breathing in... Well sort of. You would develop atelectasis without the nitrogen from normal air to hold your lungs open. The "treats your body as if it has been breathing normally" would serve a much better explanation to cadmium than "stores oxygen from the blood". If it stores your normal physiological breathing then it is far and away more useful than just storing oxygen. There is just way to much going on with each breath we take in the body to break it down to simply storing blood oxygen saturation.

This is kind of a bummer in my mind. Breathing is driven by the need to get rid of CO2 not necessarily the need for oxygenation. The idea that all your storing is the pressure of O2 in the blood means you would still need to breathe or die anyways... at least continually be exhaling while tapping. In which case F gold is just so much more superior than cadmium. Plus it ruins my hopes and dreams of seeing a cadmium compounder get a hold of breath or stormlight and store those. I would say even if you were tapping as much as you can the parts of air are far more than just O2 and CO2. Without inhaling more room air and adding mass to it you likely wouldn't be able to metabolize enough O2 to make a dense enough gas mixture to vibrate the vocal cords in the first place. But feruchemy breaks laws where it needs to to drive the magic so I am sure there is something cool that a cadmium ferring can do that simply healing through not being able to breathe would help. Maybe deep sea diving where you can have a need to use O2 constantly and the luxury of still being able to breathe.

With metalminds, do we know if identity can only be stored when making them to make them accessible to others? Or can identity be stored so a person can access a keyed metalmind? I know an unkeyed mind is like a door with no lock. But could a ghost enter a room that has a lock? Could someone storing their identity get around even owned and keyed metalminds? If yes, this could open another avenue for pseudo compounding if a person has access to F aluminum and any number of allomantic powers. Imagine a mistborn with an aluminum medallion stealing random peoples metalminds and being able to burn them from there. Or any F aluminum / A _____ twinborn.

At risk of this being way off I must ask about TLRs atium bracers... Did Vin ever burn any of that atium? I was reading a post/ theory on how Bleeder could have been pseudo compounding via only using a spike that allowed for A-steel on screen and that she was burning metal minds perhaps created through another spike to store speed thus gaining 10x the speed she stored without having access to the feruchemy when she was burning the steel metalminds. If the lord rulers armbands were in fact full and feruchemically charged shouldn't it have become a new alloy to be burned... I guess we did see Vin attempt to burn one of Sazeds metalminds and she noted she could feel it was different but when she burnt it she only got the normal allomantic enhancement. Perhaps if that metalmind had been unkeyed she could have in fact accessed the stored abilities instead? If we were to see an auger on screen again who got a hold of an unkeyed metalmind like the one that Wayne received could that gold allomancer have access to Miles level of healing (even if only for a bracers worth)? Likewise with medallion tech if a person were to rent a medallion for a night and store into the same metal that they are naturally able to burn could they have a metalmind that can be burnt for explosive pseudocompounded power later post medallion rental?

I am not very versed in the stormlight archives yet but I know a bit. When Dalinar creates a pseudo perpendicularity is that through his access to connection? If it is connection related truly how far do you think a duralumin compounder could take their connection? Could a duralumin compounder become connected enough to scadrial to gain other powers? I always thought they would make great spy's or even interrogators but I am trying to see what other plays could be up their sleeve especially as a compounder.

Perhaps the nicrosil would be more dramatic. Brandon also stated that if you were to compound and burn duralumin with it that it would have explosive effects. That said the 4 metals on that corner of the allomantic chart confuse the heck out of me as none of them seem to truly follow any rules with the push pull concept except for what looks best on screen.