Tamriel Wolfsbaine

I definately feel like this is a valid reason. TLM made it quite clear that investiture sources can be used across boundaries. Breaths are so much investiture as well. I am sure that a single breath would supplement the metals well. Use it more to boost what you are already drawing out as it would likely be lost forever... I am curious if the reverse would be possible. We don't know enough about nicrosil to say either way but if it is storing investiture as a general thing then perhaps that can be used to boost everything as well.... including awakening with it? We know that stormlight could be used to awaken. Why not some other hacked source? Feruchemists have the metal as a sort of lock and key only allowing one thing or another. But if the feruchemist were to find a way to convert any attribute into usable investiture for their awakening purposes this could be pretty huge.

You know I am shocked that @Trusk'ourdidn't jump at this chance either. I have had my thoughts torn between the kandra and the Feruchemist as well. I love the idea of feruchemy combining and using 2 end neutral systems to make some really neat scenes. It would be the ultimate survivalist build in my opinion. If the cosmere held a season of ALONE I would totally pray for the feruchemist / awakener lineup. Awakening slings as long range hunting implements / security against the dangerous predators. Being able to awaken ropes to start friction fires or blankets to rub together causing friction for warm that could be stored up. Spending the days storing health and speed / strength for when it is needed. You would be the ultimate survivor. Faster, stronger, sharper when needed. And all those times that those poor people spend doing nothing... you could be refilling your stores. If you balance your hunting via steel and awakened weapons and using tin to track animals you could be a reliable hunter... combine that with being able to eat any game you do catch and store it all away in a scentless and spoil proof bendalloy mind. You could store breath and heat for deep diving for fishing and a higher heightening could make you more resilient to food poisoning while gold would top off your health anytime you actually did get sick... or injured. And your risk of injury would be way lower because you would have access to iron making you lighter anytime you do go out. Lighter and stronger would cause you to be far less likely to get injured on the trail. Back to hunting... store fortune for days or even weeks while bunkered down in awakened shelter feeding off of your stored bendalloy minds and when you get low step outside and tap fortune to find game quickly. I could go on. As for Kandra... the 101 tricks is so convincing that I ended up voting for it initially but then I went on this survival tirade and after binging a season of Alone I am rethinking it heavily. The awakened truebody rope skeleton sounded so epic and I totally loved it, however I was thinking about the benefits of being able to separate smaller bones to allow things to pass straight through you. A rope skeleton would get in the way of that. Maybe there are other perks and ways around that. I am not too sure. The feruchemist ideas are just too strong.

If you could take an influx of breath and put it onto another being in the cosmere what other system would you choose and why?

I agree with the list of roommate criteria. (Not as extensive of a list as yours but I did have 15 other missionaries I lived with over a 2 year mission.) There is nothing worse than a roommate looking at you when you ask them if they would do the dishes and their response being "naw I know a full sink will drive you crazy before it drives me crazy." And he was right. Like a House to my Wilson (binging house for the 3rd time with the wife and I just feel for Wilson more and more every episode.) That said... I think the perfect roommate on this list is Nightblood. He won't make any mess and I could always build or commission an aluminum safe to put him in if he is too annoying. Just for a bit of peace of mind. He would be immensely helpful if I left him out as well. Anyone who wants to break in would immediately try to unsheath him and end up toast. Best security system out there? If I had to choose a person on the list I think I would go with Szeth. I feel like if we laid down some ground rules he would be eager to follow them and easy to get along with. We might be boring roommates but boring can be easier to live with than exciting I think. I always told my brother that friends make terrible roommates but roommates can turn into some of your best friends. I could see myself getting along with Szeth over time for sure and he seems like someone who would have your back so long as you weren't the one screwing up.

I always assumed that the idea of conservation of momentum meant that if your Skimmer was flying at a set speed and then they became half the weight they would move twice as fast. Or if they became twice as heavy midflight they would slow down by half. But I know nothing of physics and this would be greatly limited by air resistance and such also. I imagine they would be confronted with some serious Gs when making sudden changes as well. Perhaps the iron feruchemy would protect them.

I mentioned that due to OP specifying that is what she had. I think she could do some damage with a Koloss sword. Heavy heavy weapon with pewter strength behind it could mess up plate. Even if it gets cut in half a hundred times that still leaves a bunch of anchors for pushes and pulls. Still doesn't fix the flat arena.

I have to agree. This one seems pretty one sided. Its the vs battle everyone wants to know about but its always presented in a way that really highly favors Kaladin. I think there are better representatives of the Scadrial powers at this point. Vin at end of HoA might be a bit different story but then we would be talking a vessel vs a radiant. But I always cringe at any vs battle including shardplate against a glass dagger wielding mistborn. @WhispersOfWit I don't want to steal a topic but what do you think would happen between Wax at the end of TLM with his guns vs Kal at 4th? Inside Elendel where there are actually some good anchors? Granted I guess if you are anywhere other than Roshar the Radiants have some serious disadvantage as well.

I kind of feel like the anti-s are going to be just as, if not more important in the future of the cosmere compared to the magic systems we see now. The magics are so strong and nearly every book already hinges on a moment of not having the magic and needing to get it back or figure out how to do what you need to do without it. Anti systems are just a good break from "and then her pewter ran out." Or "and then his stormlight ran out." The ability to say "and then they entered a zone where all of their powers stopped working." Is just a nice break. Just like aluminum was a good shock when Vin burnt it. Just like when a chromium filled primer cube was used to sap Wax of his powers. The more ways to strip these demigods down to mere mortals without being too repetitive the better for the writing.

I won't say it would ruin any light itself... But the way Susebrons fight scene looked at the end spells spooky for gems and places with many gems. If he showed up to The Tower and started draining everything to white would all of the radiants still be able to function as normal there?

Yeah I don't think that compounding breaths to equal a bigger amount of usable breaths to awaken with is a thing. I just meant that you might be able to compound the innate investiture so much that you artificially reach higher heightenings with the same amount of breath. If 1000 breaths are needed to awaken Nightblood I don't think you could turn 1 breath into 10 nightbloods. I do think you could compound the raw investiture to the point where you have the passive effects of higher heightenings. If you had 1000 breaths you couldn't awaken a sword. But if you compounded that investitue to an equivalent level of the 9th heightening then you could spend all of your breaths to awaken a single sword. Heck you might be able to compound to the 10th heightening and not be able to awaken anything at all because you don't have any actual breaths. But it seems that the more invested you are the more natural instinct you have to use that investiture. So my thought was someone who steals a divine breath could potentially manufacture, through compounding, the 10th heightening regardless of breaths. This could be really dangerous if they learned how to use other, more available, kinetic investiture to awaken. I don't think stormlight will last long enough to really stick to an object for days and days. But this could be a mix match to achieve the Iron Dome type of defense systems. Compound to the 10th heightening and then use kinetic investiture to "return to sender" any sort of targeted large scale weaponry (missiles and rockets). Heck you might be able to hack into other random mechanical systems in the future as well. How spooky if the flight controls suddenly got taken over by your enemy? This would probably open up a very real need for anti investiture tech later on... carry some antilight / aluminum / chromium filled primer cubes on every aircraft or whatever. But I digress way down the speculation hole. Just trying to think how relevant awakened tech can be behind a 9th heightening wall if there is no other way to it than 25000 drabs or dead people.

Thanks guys. I was sort of thinking along the same lines just last night. I saw a video on how Isreal's Iron Dome works and I got curious about awakening in the future of the cosmere. While it would be a waste of breaths to silently command a rocket to "return to sender" or whatever... I think with even more modern day tech awakening could really really outshine. AI was mentioned and I am not entirely sure how much breath could improve upon what we have now but I am sure it could. I am curious though... What speed and distance do you think the 10th heightening can give commands at? Does it require line of sight or could you do it based on a video? Could you command something miles away? Also how fast will it go? Do you even need a command at 10th heightening or is picturing something in your mind all of the command you need? You have the visualization and the intent to send your breath out to awaken. Or do you think you need to think out every word? Also. I know the voiceless commands and the ability to awaken something that is metal or stone are locked behind the 10th heightening. But do you absolutely need to have the 50,000 breaths? If a divine breath counts as 2000 and a Returned only needs 1500 to hit the 6th heightening then could you hack that somehow? If you were a hemalurgist (I better @Trusk'our at this point too) and you gained access to a divine breath and nicrosil F and A and were somehow able to compound... Could you simply multiply the divine breath until you had the equivalent, while tapping of course, of 50,000 breaths worth? Then even if you only had a few hundred breaths you would still benefit from the bonuses of the 10th heightening as far as voiceless commands and turning everything to white instead of gray no?

Perhaps choosing and aiding his sword was in part a step towards unleashing a bit of ruin? Or does he have to directly use investiture from Ruin to create any balance?

I thought a leecher could leech a metalmind? In the case of hemalurgy couldnt they directly leech the investiture from the spike? You would have to touch the spike itself and likely have the intent to leech the spike and not the person. What about a Larkin? If a Larkin hung out next to the godking would they gorge themselves on his investiture? Would they gladly feed off of a pile of metalminds or hemalurgic spikes? I think the world becomes safer for some of my favorite systems if leeching can only effect kinetic investiture but I thought the more innate and static stuff could be targeted specifically.

I think this pretty well says it all. In addition to others points I just need to remember that the end game of The Cosmere is a face off between Roshar and Scadrial. Everyone else, every other book, is ancillary to that goal. Yeah without jumping on the healing rant I really think that is what Awakening lacks... the single greatest weapon in The Cosmere is from the system but without insta healing or super speed you cant truly compete with others. That said, I think Awakening has the greatest scaling potential with other tech. being an ancillary system I think Awakeners will probably have some good access to other systems via the tech. A 10th heightening godking in the future could score some far more modern protection and weaponry to awaken. And I think the ability to awaken by thought could prove invaluable in the future.

This isn't necessarily geared directly towards Sus but towards the 10th heightening itself. I know the answer is most likely just the lack of healing. That aside what other powerhouses in the cosmere do you suspect have better kits that literally being able to raise armies, of flesh or stone or even just fabric, with the speed of thought. I know there are potentially some more devastating abilities out there (we haven't seen a ton from Division), but what else can come close to being able to command the very clothing of your enemies to strangulate them and crush them with your mind? We saw in TLM that strangulation at least chews through healing quickly. Add on bone crushing constriction and you have a fairly quick way to sap even healing investiture. I don't think we really know range limits of the silent awakening but how do you stop that kind of power? There is legitimate counter to the Godking though. Only fight in an open field and make sure you are fighting in the nude. With investiture resisting investiture do you suppose that the 10th heightening is in danger from other direct investiture attacks? Awakening some armor and nightblood 2.0 could make serious gains to his being able to one shot anyone and survive a whole heck of a lot of punishment regardless of the inability to heal. For me the biggest downside is the aura. I really don't want the world to know if I am a high level heightening. I'm looking always for potential ways to hide it while being able to use awakening. Part of me thinks copper allomancy is a good start to dampening your aura but how strong in copper would you have to be to truly hide yourself? Either way why do you suppose this is slept on in power conversations. What other op uses am I missing or what glaring weakness am I overlooking? Of course the breaths cost and the whole no healing thing. But other than that what would be the downside?

So we know F Atium stores age. How would that work for someone who has achieved agelessness through either being Returned or the 5th Hieghtening? Could someone who is ageless store youth into an identity blanked atium metalmind and then sell literal youth to people who will tap it while under supervision?

I love all of these. Kandra as a pseudo ECMO machine for perfusion during surgery sounds epic. I have to now take this surgeon idea to the extremes. Could a Kandra replicate our Cathlabs? What kind of sensory can they have attached to even the tiniest of limbs? Could they make the incision, and then progress a tentacle of themself up through circulatory system consuming any clots along the way? Perhaps even creating grafts and repairs within the body with the most minimal trauma possible? I wonder if they could replicate and attach a new mitral valve or even create new vasculature for a person who needs bypasses.... although wouldn't you just be able to eat and consume all of the clogged vasculature in there anyways? Instead of needing extensive surgical repairs for the heart through bypasses a kandra could be the ultimate cathlab. Branching off a tiny piece of themselves cleaning the entirety of the system. My only concern with this idea is time... how long would it take for a kandra to make all of this progression? The idea that metals physically burn faster while you are tapping steel... if it translated over to a kandra and their ability to replicate organs or DNA... means that a kandra with Feruchemical steel could do this faster than modern medicine can for sure. How would they navigate the inside of a body though? I imagine that if they can replicate other sensory organs or create bioluminescence in combination with some vision down there... or maybe in combination with either systems tin usage?

Harmonium devices could be stacked upon eachother too right? If a bendalloy bubble and cadmium bubble offset eachother in this spaces where they overlap could cadmium bubbles of differing sizes be placed inside one another? If 1 minute inside a cadmium was 1 hours outside of it and you had a full hours worth of cadmium to burn outside then you could skip 60 hours worth of time with just 61 minutes worth of cadmium. This assumes that the outer bubbles will run out before the inner bubble does. Either way you could turn a few seconds into weeks or even years if you wrote it correctly. Not that I know anything about forging or essence marks. But does it cost in investiture to use it the same amount that the investiture would have been required to accomplish it? You would need an ungodly amount of cadmium but if you had the correct amounts placed in the correct order and put up just 4 of the cadmium bubbles the inside one could pass 24 years in a minute. Granted I think it would require 4 years worth of cadmium to be burnt on the outer bubble and just taking that down by 60 times each new bubble. So still an incredible amount of investiture... and if it requires that same amount every time you want to use it then...

Any ninja that speaks more about awakening is cool with me. Thanks for all of the quotes. For some reason I thought I remembered most of the awakening that happened to be in the hundreds of breaths for cost. Its a great reminder that the focus needs to be human shaped and organic to be cheaper. 25 breaths for the protect me command on the cloak is a lot less than I thought I remembered (thinking it was in the 300 range). Is that just because he sprinkled hair on it really? Do we not see Awakeners weave hair into all of their clothing for a reason? Gotta ask about the spider silk too given its newer uses as time is going on. Would a person be able to awaken kevelar if they were to weave enough hairs into it as well? For sure the concrete and rebar thing would be out of the question for Vasher. It is interesting to think that the breaths needed only increased based on the weight of the stone to move it. Certainly inorganic materials now available could offer more protection to the phantoms without having near the same weight... perhaps the phantoms could be even cheaper to make with modern day materials given they are lighter and more resilient than just rock? Also how do you suppose Vasher got the bones into the rocks? Seems like a nice trick if you could use cohesion and tension to shape the bodies around the bones...

Thank you for the quotes. "Fight for me, as if you were me." Is pretty much the perfect command in that instance. I love it. Picturing now an awakener with a few weapons and a few of those morphsuits you see at Halloween and stuff. Instant popup squad of fighters in your bag at all times... I think it is epic for an offensive squad. Not sure I would want to trust protection in the hands of cloth. Probably stick with a phantom or two for that. It also makes me wonder... while the clothing probably could not replicate the strength of a pewter arm (unless the material was strong enough) I wonder if it would replicate the speed of one. What if Vasher were tapping a steel mind moving twice the speed of normal when he awakened that? Would the shirt and trousers have been able to move at the speed of Vasher at the time he spoke the command or would they gain and lose speed as he is tapping or storing it in real time? Or would they completely ignore any magical effects that could be adding to his skill when he says that command?

You make an awesome point about the shielding. I imagine that kalads phantoms could be far upgraded beyond what they are as well. We know they are stone with bones in-between. I'm pictures a sort of concrete pour over bones and then shaped to what you like. The stone is awakened just to make the joints move. I wonder what purpose the bones play though. I am sure if Vasher knew about it he could have placed bones and poured concrete over some rebar enforcements as well? Or even add some steel plating over the stone? I don't know how much good it would do but in theory you could pump enough breath into the stone and metal armoring that the phantoms wear to make them shardproof as well. Which would be real nifty. It would be fun to play with the shapes and types of phantom you could make this way. I assume more mass would require more breath but if you are high enough heightening to awaken stone and metal you probably don't need to worry to much about it. Good points about the cost effectiveness and what you can get in return. I didn't think about Vashers skill being transfered to the clothing. I sort of imagined those things working based on just a static ability from breaths. It makes perfect sense that a skilled fighter awakening and using their knowledge in the intent of creation would make for better phantoms. (Though now I wonder if a Copper ferring could watch a ton of martial videos and pseudo "upload" all of that imagery into awakening constructs like the matrix.)

So we don't exactly know how many breaths it takes to awaken any one specific thing but I was just thinking about efficiency. Obviously there is nothing more efficient in awakening than a 1 breath lifeless. And we know that if you awaken and create a lifeless from someone who is a professional at X they will retain much of that skill. But... its so cringey and unethical in most eyes... I personally have little issues with creating lifeless whitespine as an army and I think a pack of whitespine would do tremendously well at clearing a piece of battle field of enemy soldiers... but the thought of Awakening a squad of lifeless spear-men makes me feel not great. I wonder if there is a more optimal candidate. We see Kalads phantoms. We even see Vasher awaken the clothes on a corpse to use as a meat shield (I think I remember this correctly). Perhaps that is because in that moment he didn't have time to create and give commands to a lifeless? Had he possessed A-bendalloy in that moment maybe he would have conserved breaths and created a lifeless to fight for him? Either way... what are your thoughts on the most efficient fighters from breaths? Could 1 of Kalad's phantoms take on the equivalent amount of lifeless to the amount of breaths it took to create the phantom itself? Do you suppose whitespine have thick enough carapace to be more efficient as soldiers per breath spent? If you had enough breath to awaken 1 of kalads phantoms or an equivalent amount of lifeless what would you awaken? What would you choose to make into lifeless bodyguards to back you up?

But the idea is that even though they stand out as koloss blooded, maybe they will stand out less as lifeless specifically. The whole necromancy parts of Awakening are so useful, but without a doubt the most morally gray area of the system. I have a hard time thinking of a character with access to breaths not using them in this capacity at least a little. Sure an awakened suit of armor or clothing to hold up a meat suit is pretty solid for it but nothing like awakening a fallen solider or fighter for your needs. Way way way less breath and I would imagine more skilled and effective for fighting than some cloth... maybe not though... ropes to do whatever your mind can desire and think up are likely fairly precise based on that command. I wonder about the accuracy of it all.

I completely agree that the cosmere is quickly becoming a "make sure you read this before this and that before that" type of series. I don't know that I think that is the biggest issue I have for it. I personally can't keep up. And the newer books draw me in less and less. I'm still just trying to enjoy thinking of each world on its own... let alone how the future of it all looks. Especially stepping into more and more tech. The fantasy feels are starting to dwindle which is okay for me but a slight bummer at the same time. And I'm not super fond of all of the systems (stormlight healing makes me want to vomit). All that said, I still really enjoy the cosmere and am excited to see what happens next but I am living it all via spoilers and being very selective in which books I want to read. The rest will come from the coppermind and what questions I can have answered here in the forums. Still always stoked to offer up Warbreaker and Mistborn to new readers and I give the disclaimer that if they want to read some high fantasy books that will take them hundreds of hours they can look at stormlight. I am a big fan of the warbreaker / mistborn book lengths. They don't seem like quite as much of a commitment and there is a lot less hours of story lines that I felt trapped waiting to get them over with there. As for understanding how it all connects? Coppermind is glorious. Anytime I am reading a new book I take time to pause it and look up the characters as they are introduced... I know a lot of folks think that is crazy but I don't care about spoilers in the story. I want to world building and magic systems. My friend told me about the 3 metallic arts before I read and if it wasn't for the magic I wouldn't give 2 seconds to the book. Says a lot that I made it so far into stormlight before throwing my hands up. Too much crap going on not magic related and after 150 hours of listening I still haven't been introduced well to the parts of the system that excite me, let alone how many times I have felt let down by fights that include insta healing from all wounds and then running out of fuel to face half a second of real danger before finding the stormlight via magical portal again. Mental health issues don't excite me enough to care about the mountains that the characters are facing... but that probably just makes me sound like an awful person. I guess watching people die from miserable suffocation for a living has jaded me. But back to the magics. Yeah TLM was a cluster of awesome stuff I wanted more of but only got a small glimpse. And as fast as Brandon writes... it just isn't quick enough bouncing from one series to another... WHERE ART THOU NIGHTBLOOD!!!! I really really need more awakening in my life but have accepted that we will likely face the apocalypse before we get the next Nalthis installment.

Simple question here. I know mistborn who willingly joined the steel ministry were like hitting the jackpot. And I know inquisitors would hunt down feruchemists to steal powers. But did Rashek ever choose to allow the ministry to create an inquisitor from a feruchemist? Would it be too much of an issue with them fighting back or could he have dominated their minds through emotional allomancy and not had an issue with them revolting? I assume that feruchemists being turned to inquisitors would have likely been easier in the early parts of the final empire. I doubt one born through the Terris breeding programs would willingly work for the inquisition. And even if they would, would Rashek ever trust them with that power? And for the fun of it... If you were going to recieve a handful of spikes would you rather have a mistborn base or a feruchemist base?