Returned

I like it a lot as a setup for the rest, and the colloquial way Megan speaks to herself feels natural and fluid. I think you can make good use of the remaining 559 words, (what a frustrating number to work with!). Given that that will still leave this as a relatively short piece set towards the end of a novel, I think that they'd be best used providing a little bit of background to express the scenario and stakes (a small portion of the 559) and the rest heightening the conflict Megan is dealing with. Depending on the contest the reader may not be familiar with Steelheart, in which case something like an "Epic nerd" might come across as a typo instead of a very succinct description. Even a single line which clarifies that Epics are superpowered humans, and that Megan is one of them, will help someone who doesn't know the books to understand. If it fits what you want to express, underlining that David is opposed to Epics generally or Steelheart specifically might also be worthwhile-- making clear that Megan isn't instructed to murder some passerby but has a role to play in a high-stakes contest can make Megan's inner conflict more well-rounded. You wouldn't need too many words to set that up if you want to keep the focus on Megan and her (nascent) struggle (which I think is a good idea, from what's written so far). Since 559 words isn't all that many to work with I think that it might be an effective use of them to make the scene more immersive and descriptive. Where is Megan, what kinds of things surround her there, and how would someone with her attitude in her mental state perceive them? How can your descriptions of those things move the reader to feel the similarly to her, to enhance her inner narration? A maximum addition of fewer than 600 words can get used up in a flash, so I probably wouldn't try to insert details to make the scene more complex, even avoiding things like similes, but would instead try to deepen the tone and mood of what's already there with every sentence. All subject to your style, voice, and preferences, of course. You've got a strong base already, and have chosen a really good point in the narrative to work with Megan in an interesting way, so I'm excited to see the final product!

También, ¿cómo usa el signo de exclamación a máquina? El internet no está ayudarme con esto, y prefiero no copiar y pegar.

|Hola! Estaba mejor en el pasado que hoy, y lo siento por los errores que escribirá aquí. Estudió en colegio e universidad, pero desde entonces y hoy he faltado oportunidades a practicar (particularmente hablar y escuchar). Un rato, miré telenovelas y me ayudó mucho pero no pude tolerar el cambio de Pecadora a Alma Indomable y dejé. Aun así, mi español siempre era más académico que normal en el mejor de casos. Si ustedes puedan tolerar mi tortura de la idioma, me gustaría participar aquí. Particularmente estoy interesado en los colocaciones típicos a hispanohablantes, pero me beneficiaría de cualquier práctica y corrección que puedo encontrar.

I'd not double-checked which sub-forum I was in when the topic turned into spoiler-evidence territory, and have already lost track of how long it's been since TLM came out. Thank you for fixing my post to comply with the policy, I'll be more attentive in the future.

And even then we'd have trouble accounting for some physical differences, skill, experience burning metals, etc. Maybe something more complicated could be worked out via Feruchemy, but it still seems difficult. For example, a piece of metal of known composition and mass could be filled X% full by one person and Y% by another. It still seems like there would be lots of issues to deal with, and I don't think an in-world character would find much use for the information and so wouldn't pursue it. Right, but that doesn't give us information on the rate of decrease in Allomantic strength from an initial hit of lerasium (by itself). Maybe there could be some cool extrapolations but I feel like we'd still need more information that in-world sources are unlikely to bother trying to get. Unrelatedly, I made an edit to my above post to remove the spoiler, per @Frustration's comment, but it'll still be in your quote of it unless you change it. Could you help me clear up my mistake and update it when you have a chance? Still too early? Thanks for the reminder, I've edited it (hopefully enough).

It might be interesting to know the rate of dilution across generations removed from someone who burned a given amount of lerasium, as suggested in the OP, but we don't have enough information to make good guesses about it. For practical reasons relating to how Allomancy works, I suspect that we'll never get to this information outside of a WoB (or similar).

Found it! And I didn't think I was going to today, or at all without re-reading all of Rhythm. I'm pretty sure it's the one I was thinking of, though unfortunately it's not quite as I remembered it, and not a great support for my position: My read of it is that the power likes questions and arguments, full stop. Those can't ever be opposed to the Shard because they're a major part of what it fundamentally is, though the Vessel may not feel similarly. It's the opposite of being agreeable or giving way to another's desires, and doesn't seem conducive to working together as a team. The drive isn't towards conflict, exactly, but certainly towards non-compliance and challenge. This is reflected pretty well in how the Fused seem to operate amongst each other and especially around the Singers, I think. I still feel that my position is correct (or at least a strongly supported interpretation), but 100% respect that others may not find it persuasive based on what I've been able to muster. And I'm suggesting less that Odium's power can't bind things together than that that sort of thing is more in Honor's portfolio, and so I wouldn't expect Odium's contrary and disagreeable aspects to mimic Honor's core thing all that strongly. I also think it's likely to be Lift, and I wonder what issues that might cause. It's a lot of Surges and a lot of raw power to be held by one person, and dual tracks of oaths might be an issue. And I also agree that my theorycrafting here is far from airtight, so I'm not surprised if you and others are holding it in abeyance. I think that we need to see more Voidbinding in action before any theories like this have much weight, and I think that when we do see it it's going to upend a lot of what we've guessed at so far. Yeah, I don't think that we disagree. I was just reiterating my position that Surgebinding + tons of power from an entity a person is Connected to != Bondsmith. My mention of the Heralds were meant as more of an analogy than a 1:1 comparison.

I've been basing that interpretation of Odium's Intent through a quote along the lines of "Odium's power can't help but promote conflict, even against itself". I don't recall the exact quote nor where it's from offhand and can't look it up right now, but that's the thrust of it. Based on that I've thought of conflict being as central to Odium as destruction was to Ruin and growth/development is to Cultivation, at least so far. We'll see if that bears out. All good and accurate observations. What I'm not as convinced of is the hard division between powers by Shard, given that the three on Roshar are significantly Invested there and that people can apparently use each others' forms of Investiture to power their magic in at least some circumstances (Surges with Stormlight, Lifelight, Towerlight, or Voidlight). My current impression (and I don't have a strong textual basis for this) is that the magic available on Roshar is largely a function of Honor and Cultivation having Invested themselves there so strongly, including defining the Surges themselves; I don't think that their powers are so discretely categorized any more. A Radiant strongly aligned with Cultivation, perhaps more so than Honor, still progresses via Oaths binding them to ideals, and a Radiant strongly aligned with Honor rather than Cultivation still needs to grow and change to advance. Odium is the odd one out, as a latecomer to the system. But as his Investiture continues to develop there I'd bet that the magic will become more complicated due to needing to interact with his power too (an example being Enlightened spren). I maintain that the powers on Roshar, as elsewhere in the Cosmere, are very heavily mediated by the Shards which grant them. I don't believe that there is any sort of "all else being equal" or "in a vacuum" sort of power. I don't think that Hoid, for example, can just be a Bondsmith despite his enormous Investiture and knowledge, and similarly I don't think that if Syl somehow absorbed enough Investiture Kaladin would suddenly be a Bondsmith. We'll learn a lot more about this in book 5, when we have Navani and the Sibling as an example (though the Sibling is half Honor anyways), and even more if and when someone bonds the Nightwatcher. At present we don't know much at all about Bondsmithing, but I personally don't see much reason to think that it's about raw power or a spren's greatness. It's intriguing, but vague to the point of uselessness (which is a big part of the intrigue!). It would make sense, given the fragments we've learned, since Ashyn was primarily under Odium's influence (so no Adhesion) and Honor was on Roshar (so his Surge would be present there along with him). I'm not 100% convinced of this, since the Surges seem to work system-wide, but I just am not knowledgeable enough about the timeline or the nature of the powers to feel confident about any conclusion. But that just further suggests that Odium's forces can't use Adhesion as others might be able to, if they can use it at all, which is contrary to the topic of the thread. If Adhesion is accessible to a person whose powers derive from Honor to some degree in the first place, that seems uncontroversial. It would be one thing to power it with Voidlight or Lifelight, which should work OK under at least some conditions. But it's another to access one Shard's primary thing through another Shard with a conflicting (though not diametrically opposed) alignment. To my mind it's like Allomancy and Hemalurgy: you can use the latter to become and Allomancer, even Mistborn, but you can't make Hemalurgy not be destructive just because you use it to work with an end-positive power. You could probably find some way to use Odium's power to fiddle with Adhesion (if not necessarily the same way as you would through Honor's power), but if the source of your access to Adhesion is somehow Odium I don't think that you can expect to avoid Odium strongly influencing how that works for you. But I can appreciate that there are other arguments, even using the same examples, that have obvious merit and that people may find persuasive. Very true, but that's why I mentioned that the other Heralds don't seem to have similar abilities. If it were just a matter of Connection to a powerful force, spren or Shard, they would all be able to do similarly. Because they can't (presumably), it follows that it isn't.

I'd prefer them to be longer but tighter narratively. The books are long, and getting longer, but are also becoming more unwieldy. There are (to my eye) increasing portions of the books that are fanservice (irrelevant to the story, and rewarding only if you are personally invested in that particular thing), increasing portions that are basically recitations of lists (of powers, of categories of powerful people), and a real gaps-and-islands issue with character POV (sometimes unavoidable, but if you like character X you might go a very long time without seeing them, let alone seeing them do something). I think that we've also hit a point where the scaling of conflicts has become unmanageable (if every climactic threat is the biggest ever it becomes harder to set it up in the same number of pages as the previous one). I'll read any number of pages as long as I'm engaged, but my average engagement per page for SA has dropped a bit. Some things will look different in hindsight (there were bits of Wheel of Time which I didn't love the first time through, but on re-reads I have enough context to appreciate them more). But overall I feel that there has been more of a disconnect between characters observing and experiencing the world, developing their personal storylines, and the major events of the world as it is in each book. So I don't have a target length that I think is generically appropriate for each, and there is some portioning of events across volumes that I think dictate what each book really needs to cover. But I wish that the books were a bit tighter in pacing and content they have. If it feels like there is bloat, the book will feel too long for me.

I put it glibly, but what I had wanted to express is that Odium is about conflict in the same way that Honor is about bonds. It's not bond breaking that would be the focus of an Odium-based Adhesion power, but that the push towards conflict would undermine the commitments that seem to underlie Honor's less physical applications of Adhesion. I appreciate that this is a popular idea, but I'm not convinced it's accurate; Ishar could manipulate bonds pretty effectively before spren bonds were even a thing, and we don't have any indication that any of the other Heralds could do similarly (so it's not just about proximity to Honor's power). There is certainly more to it than just "powerful spren + Radiant-style bond = Bondsmith". But I'll definitely grant that "Honor's truest Surge" doesn't necessarily mean that Honor needs to be involved with accessing or applying it.

I don't know if a Fused could use Adhesion in a way that would align with Honor's Intent, being so permeated with Odium's essence as they are. If they could use the Surge at all I have to think it would be in a way that at least follows Odium, if not in a way that directly opposes Honor. I'd call them something like Unravelers or Oathbreakers, and I think that their use of the Surge would be something like taking things which are bound together and cause their connections to weaken and fail. Physically they'd break things in ways that would make it harder to put them back together (maybe like the reverse of Dalinar fixing the statue, causing edges to be irregular so that they couldn't just be put back together as they were originally). Spiritually (or at least more metaphorically) they'd cause groups to distrust one another by emphasizing things they cared about but didn't have in common, play up ideas and ways of thinking that make it harder for people to keep their oaths (like preventing people from advancing in Radiance, or causing them to fail to live up to their commitments and losing Radiance altogether), and help people keep the letter of oaths but violate the spirit of the agreements as much as possible. The physical side is interesting because Adhesion seems to be duplicated by some combinations of the Surges relating to axial interconnections and Division. Adhesion has some physical powers, for sure, but it seems to me that its most important (and distinct) contributions to Roshar are less tangible: the creation of the Oathpact, the formation of the Knights Radiant, the coupling of Oaths to powers in the first place, and the concept of gaining might by uniting a changeable person with a less changeable ideal.

She (potentially) gives quick access to things that are hard to get, or can't be come by any other way. People seek her out for all the usual reasons someone might take a bad, or at least dangerous deal: desperation, arrogance, thirst for power. I'll be interested to hear if your outlook changes any down the line. I think that you're using a broader and more judgement-containing definition of "smart" than what is related to Taravangian's boon/curse, and maybe not appreciating his moral system (a very hard-edged utilitarianism). "Smart" Taravangian (a designation with an ambiguous cutoff) isn't hyper-rational, exactly, just really good at dry computation and extrapolation. He also loses access to some traits that are hard to quantify, like empathy, and so cannot factor them into his designs. It's a bit like asking how someone can be perceptive if they're blind. He definitely has the resources to make it happen (a strong enough "suggestion" of suicide which is indistinguishable from murder). He really thought that the city would be better off without all of the "dumb" chaff in it. And he really thought that people (the survivors, anyways) would be onboard with the idea of killing the "dumb" half of the city because of that. And certainly his designation of the "smart" half includes that they would appreciate that improvement borne of the massacre. His total lack of ability to empathize prevented him from appreciating that other people might disagree with his calculation (unthinkable, since he's so much smarter than everyone) or that emotional factors might influence how they viewed his plan. I guarantee that, if you could convince him to explain his reasoning, he'd be able to present some very cogent equations indicating why that half of the population simply had to go, and that you'd have a hard time refuting them under the philosophy he espouses. There is some really interesting stuff that buds off from Taravangian's boon/curse, and adhering to the Diagram that he trusts but can't quite understand. I like your line of thinking on it, and hope that you'll continue to post your thoughts as you encounter more of him in the future. It's a very intriguing setup that he could be so intelligent as to create the Diagram, but also be wrong-- is something a bad idea because on a given day he's too smart and therefore too heartless, or because on that day he's super-smart but not smart enough to appreciate the error?

I wasn't referencing this to talk about Halfborn, but rather to point out that "Allomancy and Feruchemy traits interfere with each other" doesn't eliminate the possibility of a child inheriting both traits. Were that the case, the Lord Ruler's actions wouldn't track. Whether or not such offspring could potentially be Halfborn is a separate issue. I don't see any reason they'd be more or less likely to be Fullborn, Mistborn, full Feruchemist, Misting, Ferring, or Twinborn than the normal inheritance patterns would suggest, and Halfborn seems (to me) like it would just be another point on that continuum of possible outcomes. The don't have to be. The "strength" of Allomantic traits doesn't need to be expressed in a person at all for them to pass it on to children, only present. We don't know a lot about the mechanisms of this, but the Straff/Zane example is pretty clear in this direction, as is Spook's case. The "strength" of those traits (latent or not) hasn't been all that well defined but you are correct that even a person with no Metallic Arts powers could produce a child that does have them. The era 2 Terris efforts are to increase the "strength" of Feruchemical ability in their population, the reverse of the dilution which has led to only Mistings being born, and never any more Mistborn. Yes, that is correct. We certainly know that Mistings and Ferrings don't need to have the same metals as their parents, and that the parents don't need to have powers at all. My curiosity is more about whether or not, for a Twinborn, one trait is more likely than the other to be passed on or if there are other factors which influence the process. I'm thinking of Khriss' comment to Wax that he is one of only a few (three? I don't remember offhand) Crashers ever to have existed. Twinborn are so rare, even compared with Mistborn, Feruchemists, Mistings, and Ferrings, that it's hard to feel confident about guesses regarding them and the heritability of their powers. You're probably right that there aren't other meaningful factors beyond the Allomantic/Feruchemical traits. We might learn more in era 3, but the whole issue might just be superseded by Hemalurgy and medallion technology.

The Lord Ruler was explicitly concerned about someone being born with powers from both Feruchemy and Allomancy, which was why he tried to exterminate the Terris people and later to breed Feruchemy out of their population. Since he gained his knowledge of the Metallic Arts from his brief Ascension I'd assume that his concern was realistic, even if unlikely to actually happen. As for parentage I don't think we need anything unusual. As the Feruchemical and Allomantic traits weaken in the population we see fewer and fewer Mistborn until they just aren't born naturally. In era 2 the Terris are trying to work in the opposite direction, to consolidate Feruchemical ability in the hopes of giving rise to new full Feruchemists. So to get a Halfborn I think we'd just need one parent with a strong enough Allomantic/Feruchemical trait to allow for a Mistborn/full Feruchemist in their offspring and another with a weaker trait in the other art. Or even both parents with strong traits in their respective arts, since either could probably produce a Misting or Ferring normally. I don't think we know enough about the heritability of Allomancy and Feruchemy to get more specific than that, though. I'm curious about how a Twinborn's traits might be passed on (could they produce Twinborn children with only their own abilities in the parentage?), but Twinborn are so rare that I doubt any in-world information on it exists.

As others have said, they probably weren't maintaining their population. They usually committed relatively few troops to engagements on the Shattered Plains, were much more capable of retreat (no need for maneuvering bridges), seemed to have a serviceably-sized standing military, and had an ample civilian population which was not needed for industry (they didn't build much or make weapons, and had enough excess labor to be able to heavily invest in researching new forms). Because the Alethi couldn't locate or reach their population center the Listeners' only suffered attrition among their soldiers, which could be quickly replaced with the excess labor force of civilians taking Warform. The Alethi strategy at the end of WoR was explicitly to destroy enough of the Listener population to shatter their ability to continue fighting the war, and they were more or less successful. If not for the coming of the Everstorm, this probably would have been effective.

I would choose Misting + Feruchemist without hesitation, though I maintain that members of the forum tend to really underestimate how much storing attributes usually sucks, and how much time you'd have to spend doing it to get a useful amount into a metalmind. There are a lot of good options for compounding, but I think that being able to compound zinc is one of the most versatile. Lots of attributes allow for cool tricks but are still pretty narrow in what tools they offer to accomplish tasks or solve problems. But mental speed, especially in the sense that it grants flashes of inspired insight (instead of requiring the same effort but just sped up, as with Steelrunning), would allow you to figure out ways to address any issue effectively based on the full suite of resources available to you. Plus you could figure it out really, really quickly and on demand. The "on demand" part is what causes it to edge out gold for me, because to really get the benefits you'd have to be constantly compounding it, and that's dangerous in undefined ways. And with my superior planning abilities, I think I'd be in serious physical danger beyond my abilities to handle pretty rarely.

Alternatively, Wax has a ton of practice with both shooting and his Allomancy. It's plausible that he could judge when a Push on a bullet would be helpful or when it would ruin the shot, and what timing is practical (like just before hitting the target or an obstacle in the way). But I do think that Frustration's answer is likely to be a factor as well, even the dominant factor. Wax is an amazingly skilled Coinshot.

There's no wrong answer, so that answer is definitely sufficient! The issue is one that is a substantial theme of the series, which really starts being emphasized in WoR. I'm looking forward to the story wrestling with it further in future books too, and maybe you'll be similarly interested. I found a lot of the sequences that deal with the topic to be uncomfortable, given the internal and external conflicts involved, but I can't imagine the series without them. The Oaths are at the heart of Radiance, even if no one involved quite understands what that means or how to deal with it. I'm really glad you've stuck with it! I hope you continue to find the series rewarding. I did, and I like seeing other people enjoy it.

I'm curious to hear about how this squares with your earlier comment regarding people in power arbitrarily crushing those beneath them. If you're open to discussing a bit more (and you don't have to, obviously), would you expand on why the link between morals and the incredible powers of Surgebinding is unsatisfying to you?

I'm sorry, this post came out much longer than I'd hoped, but I wanted to provide the best expression I could of my reasoning so I've had trouble slimming it down. This is an interesting point that matters to the issue, I think. Savantism via Allomancy and godmetals, as we're discussing here, is going to be a specific thing compared with other forms of savantism. There isn't any other (known) similar mode of interaction with godmetals, so that's a good distinction to have made. I don't know that becoming a savant through burning godmetals would be fundamentally different than burning other metals, given that we're operating only in the Allomantic frame. Lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn Allomantically, and thereby become an Allomancer, but it isn't clear that all other godmetals could be used that way (or that it would have a similar effect), so I don't think that "godmetal savant" is any more of a thing than "tin and pewter savant". You could do both, but they're separate. Additionally, I want to clarify that savantism is an effect of distorting the spiritweb, with any changes to the body or mind being incidental to that. I'm pretty sure that that is the established mechanism, though I may be mistaken; if so, I would appreciate any references to help me get it right. I don't think we disagree about this, but the mechanism is important to the topic. This is how savantism develops in Allomancers, so there's no dispute there. Your established Connection to Preservation lets you access Investiture via burning a metal, and the resulting flow of Investiture that infuses you can distort your spiritweb if you get enough of it for a long enough period. What that distortion does is what defines savantism in one metal or another, or even a non-metallic power. Lots of tin dramatically enhances how much your senses improve when burning tin in the future, etc. The question about becoming an Allomantic savant with a godmetal is, then, what enhancement comes from the accompanying spiritweb distortion? This is the part where a specific conclusion still feels arbitrary and heavily assumption-based to me. We have only the barest understanding of what godmetals really do at all, including lerasium burned Allomantically. I'm not convinced that the effect of becoming a savant with lerasium means that your Allomancy will super-effectively Connect you to the Shard associated with any given godmetal, were you to burn that metal. Burning a metal at all is still drawing on Preservation's power, and that power is translated via the metal into an effect. What seems to be the effect posited in this thread is that lerasium's Allomantic property is the ability to super-Connect to a Shard (generically), and a lerasium savant would have that effect turbocharged. So, for a savant, one more scrap of lerasium burned would lead to taking up Preservation, one droplet of atium burned would lead to taking up Ruin, one flake of raysium would lead to taking up Odium, and so on for the rest of the Shards. This seems unfounded to me-- it doesn't seem to track with how Allomancy works, nor how lerasium has been seen to operate, nor taking up or losing a Shard, and more. That said, we don't have any other examples of Allomantic godmetal burning besides lerasium, and godmetals are likely to be odd anyhow, so who knows? But the only support I've seen for the idea is that one WoB, and I think that it has to be misinterpreted to provide it (given the lack of corroboration from anything else, so far). This seems a bit off to me. I don't think that Shards create godmetals, specifically, so much as godmetals are the physical manifestation of Shards-- this is how Sazed explains it. The form can change, but there isn't more or less of it-- only more or less physical manifestation in a given spot. We see this in the lerasium beads, the liquid metal at the Well of Ascension, and the mists themselves. It does "stick" in some instances: on Scadrial some of Preservation's power is in people (which permanently weakened Leras), and when you burn lerasium you get more of that power, which stays within the person who burned it and their descendants. So I don't think that a lerasium bead would re-form in the way you're describing, certainly not if you burned it as we've seen characters do on-screen. You'd have to find more. It's necessary to note that we don't know very much about this: the Well refills, the mists come and go, and atium reformed over time, but lerasium didn't seem to work that way. So I could be way off on this. Anyways, the position that is persuasive to me, based on the WoB upthread, is that to become a lerasium savant would require so much lerasium as to be equivalent to just taking up the Shard anyhow. I don't think that that requires concentrating the Shard's power in a particular form or sequestering it within a person, though one could do that. For example, Vin physically draws in all of the mists (which are also a physical form of Preservation's Investiture) to Ascend. But Sazed didn't have to, and even while Preservation was held its power still manifested physically as mist.

I'm not sure that tracks with what we know of savantism, but I might not be understanding exactly what you mean. Would you be willing to describe some of the savants we know of with this interpretation? Like, an Allomantic savant, Soulcaster savant, etc.? That might help me feel more confident I'm getting the full picture.

Every time for me. The endings for each part of each book are really well placed, though sometimes they overshadow interludes for me a little bit.

I think it's important to point out that these are just my musings, and they're far from proven! The fun of posting on the forums (for me) is to have lots of ideas floating back and forth with other fans who have other perspectives on the same texts. My guess is that they wouldn't, for the reasons above, but if one of the Unmade does end up producing a Bondsmith it'll just be that much more exciting of a twist for me. I'm also very interested in the idea of a Bondsmith working with Voidlight, however they came by their Bondsmith powers. I hadn't really thought about it before this thread. There are some differences in how Surges work for Odium's forces (the Heavenly Ones' lesser agility in the skies compared to Windrunners comes to mind), especially since it seems not to run out on its own. A corrupted, deceived, or traitorous Bondsmith might be able to do some really interesting things with power that never runs dry and arbitrary limitations. Do you have any thoughts on how a Bondsmith using Voidlight might differ from what we've seen of Dalinar so far?

I really like that idea and description; they feel true to me given what we know about the Cosmere and Investiture. I guess I'll have to amend my pet theory to "I still think the blade was initially composed of atium to at least some degree"

I still think there is at least some atium in the blade...