Through the Living Heir

Tondon’s eyes snap open. “Aahh! Ruin! Don’t kill me!” Then his brain catches up to his mouth. “Uhhh. If you kill me in my sleep, you’ll need to sleep eventually, and then someone else will kill you in your sleep. Wait- you have reserves? I would kill for some iron right now. But yeah, there are too many people in alliances to make solos have much of a chance. I think that was a little more than ten seconds, but please don’t kill me.” He’s been trying to tap some duralumin throughout the conversation, but of course he doesn’t have any. His knife, spores, and water gun belt fell off while he was asleep, so he can’t reach it without being choked. @LightRinger

Tondon rolls over in his sleep. Anyway, Tondon is still on the floor, defenseless. Jaksyn could probably take him out, or they could team up.

In that case, Tondon curls up it the vine nest for warmth and camouflage, and falls into a fitful sleep.

Tondon wouldn't go looking for people unless the box was duralumin (is it?). If they're looking for me, that's fine.

I believe it's been stated that the core of the planet is hollow, so the seethe is taking place there. Also, the reaction requires three spores, maybe four if there's one that makes things cold, so this would be happening in the center, because all three wouldn't mix otherwise.

I'm gonna assume that Tondon's box has these as well, and that each spore type has its own vial. The vials resemble those used by allomancers, but the contents look like the vine explosives. Making a split second decision and not wanting to drown, Tondon uncorks and shakes the green vial. Vines explode around him and the surrounding pond, wrapping both combatants partially in vines. Tondon somehow manages to cork the now around half full vial without dropping it in the water, then sees the perfectly good knife underneath it. He takes it out, swapping it for the vial, and slashes at both tentacles and vines. The knife cuts through the vines easily, rendering their edges grey, but the octopus, on the other hand... Tondon stumbles away from the pool to what he thinks is a safe distance, then fills the water gun contraption after a few attempts. He tests it on a spore pile, which blossoms spectacularly. Then, realizing that the area should be both spore and water free, he sits on it, and uses the knife to fashion a strip of jumpsuit sleeve he can use to holster his various weaponry. Then, after filling his green vial back up with spores around him, he sits down to watch the strange images in the sky that appeared, while attempting to fill the box with connection (If it works, he continues to do so). After the presentation ends, it starts to rain, but his pile of already triggered spores is a relatively safe place to be. Once night falls, if the box is duralumin, he will go look for someone to either make friends with or steal from.

Tondon keeps hitting it with the box as the tentacle starts squeezing hard enough to hurt. Then, as it continues to ignore him (after all, he’s trying to hit it with his non-dominant hand), he tries to open the box, hoping something in there, like an iron vial or a weapon, might help him.

He hits it with his stick, which promptly snaps. Switching to just pulling, he yells at it. “Let me go! What do you want, you rusting creature!” He tries to reach to box, stepping a little into the water to do it. Then, he clobbers the tentacle with it to try to make the thing let go. “I’m not edible, you survivor cursed ruin spawn!” If he can get back out of the water, he tries to put a spore pile between him and the pool, then tries to open the box.

“Rust! What is that thing? I thought mistwraiths were supposed to be blobs!” Tondon shouts, on the verge of panic. Tondon drops his vine lasso, mostly out of shock, and the judges distances, trying to figure out if his stick can hit it. He takes a swing, and the entire contraption falls apart, spraying spores into the air. He ducks, covering his head, as vines explode from the pool in front of him. It probably won’t stop the creature for long, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll be able to get to the enticing box, and be able to understand again. He needs some iron. If the monster shows any sign of being entangled, and the box is less than five feet away, Tondon dives in.

Tondon ties a really bad lasso from vines and tries to toss it to the box. He’s worried that his nice spore explosion on a stick might go off on him if he tries to swim or wade. He misses, pulls it back, and tries again, getting the loop around the box on the third try.

If so: Tondon feels more confident with a weapon in hand. Standing up from the log, he picks up his vine coil and spore packet walks forward, avoiding puddles or spore piles to the best of his ability. Maybe he'll find someone or somewhere with some real supplies he can use. If not: Tondon tries to lift the log, but it is way to heavy to carry around. He picks up his vine coil and spore packet walks forward, avoiding puddles or spore piles to the best of his ability. Maybe he'll find someone or somewhere with some real supplies he can use.

This isn't really the most well formatted theory, so apologies for that. The seethe of the spore oceans, which is responsible for the spores being fluid, has baffled in-universe minds, and I don't think the Shard knows either. While I was trying to fall asleep, my half-conscious self seems to have figured it out. My theory is this: Verdant spores are edible, and thus contain sugars (C6H12O6). When glucose is consumed or burned, it releases six CO2s and three H2Os, Water activates the spores, which would cause more vines. In other words, Verdant spores cause an infinite loop, which would replenish the water levels and cause the activation of the other spores, such as the Zephyr ones, which would be the main source of the actual bubbles. The sunlight spores could be the cause of the vine burning. However, this process would probably be slow, and would require time for the water to condense, because I don't think humidity sets them off. (Does ice?) Because the sunlight spores would heat the area up again, and all of the spores would block the water source, the pauses in the Seethe might happen. Anyway, that's my idea. Maybe someone else will elaborate on, further describe, or completely shoot it down. Thanks for reading!

Tondon sits on the log, and works to undo the large vine knot on his ankle. He keeps the vines, coiling them haphazardly. Then, he tries to bring the log, or at least a branch coming off of it, with him as he looks for something else useful.

Tondon wanders around, looking for somewhere that is not a swamp and isn't covered in explosives. He's still disoriented without iron, so he slips and his soaked pant leg brushes a small spore pile. It blossoms around his left leg, leaving it covered in a big knot of vines around his foot. Stomping on it in vain to try to get it off. He keeps walking, then stops, realizing how useful this would be. He does his best to tear of the edge of his jumpsuit sleeve, trying to scoop up some of the strange grains without touching them. Then, he goes back to looking for anything else useful or a place to sit down to get the vine tangle off without having to worry about getting soaked or exploding.

Tondon wakes up with a start as the ground starts to buckle. “Ruin. I’m dead! I’m dead!” He finds himself still alive, however, as his cave shelter melts away. Over the course of the hour, he spends most of his effort panicking, trying to avoid getting flattened by the moving ground, and wishing he’d thought to find food. When the ground is finished changing, he wishes he’d gone back to that building. The place looks miserable to move through.

In that case, Tondon will curl up and try to sleep off the headache and wait for the highstorm to pass.

Tondon doesn’t care if he won’t be able to pull anything. He just wants his iron sight back. He’s not quite an iron savant, but he’s close, so being without it is causing some major panic. Tondon burns iron, sitting up straighter, but also going from crouching to lounging. He smiles and looks around at the metal lines, the highstorm water giving off a very faint blue. He searches for a better source of metal that could be one of the loot boxes, a dropped metal item that he could file or use as a metalmind, or a decent anchor he could use to maneuver or find this place once he had more supplies. For the first time since he even got to this century, he feels confident, and understands his goals. At that exact moment, his iron runs out. “Ruin.” Depending on what the short burn gave him, he’ll either try to drink more storm water (maybe make a distilling device) or check out the potential recourses he found.

Tondon shelters in a small hollow facing the opposite side of the storm. He keeps saying Scadrial curses under his breath. "Rust! What is going on?!" It's hot enough that he's quite thirsty. Not knowing anything about highstorms, he tries to drink the stormwater. He gags on the metallic taste, then his eyes widen. "Thank the Survivor! Finally... Metal!" If it does, Tondon drinks it, then burns iron to pull the metal to himself, trying to collect as much as possible. He sits up straighter and feels more sure of himself. If it has duralumin in it, he'll take his jumpsuit and try to strain the metal out to carry around. He'll also be kinda confused.

Ok. Time for some retroactive posting! Imminently after showing up in the area, Tondon pats himself down for iron. "Rust rust rust rust rust! What am I doing?! Why did I think this is a good idea?" He's dizzy from lack of iron sight, and goes into the jungle to try to find a loot box. I don't know if he finds one or not. @Edema Rue (who I think is currently on) & other GMs If he finds any iron or duralumin, he'll be doing better, but regardless, he needs a place to hide and sleep. If he can find duralumin, he'll be storing it to try to get an alliance by tapping in the future. (Again, I don't know if he's successful in finding a hiding spot) I don't know how much warning there is for the highstorm, but he'll take cover. If he can't find it, I'd say he's almost certainly dead, unless he has enough iron for dodging and 360* vision to escape those boulders. Well, it'd be nice if a GM could tell me how I'm doing. Then I'll make another, present time post.

I'll write my post right now, and try to do so at least once a day (but I have homework to do right now, so I can't guaranty that).

Um what?! That can't be good... Ok. Tondon will probably sulk around till he finds some duralumin anyway, so I don't need to worry about retrospective alliances. Thanks, both of you!

Two days, 21 pages. How did this even happen? Anyway, I'm lost. Can somebody summarize whatever happened so I can figure out what Tondon would have been doing? I'll do my best to post regularly, but I have a lot of homework to do.

I've tried to do "basic" magic tricks, but it didn't work very well. Maybe if I have the time, I'll learn how to do some better ones. In a world with actual magic, I don't know how popular stage magic would be, but I'll do some speculation. "I will now make this person disappear!" "Boring. They're obviously a Willshaper." Sliders or steelrunners could perform slight of hand tricks at high speed, similar to Wayne's quick costume changes. Iron or steel allomancy could be used to move things around, perhaps openly. An iron misting could tie streamers to some metal balls, then juggle them magically as a performance. Lightweaving makes stage magic way too easy. Just use illusions to hide or create things. Forgery might be especially well suited to magic tricks, especially once word of other magic systems gets out, which would make some things more plausible (even though those magic systems wouldn't actually help, because the concept of "weird alien magic can probably do it" definitely extends to things that are impossible). Awakened objects could be helpful. Make a really tight ball of scarves, then command it to "Untie when touched", to make it decompress and spring out of a hat. On a performance related side note, I wonder if I could tell a rope to "dance as if you were me". Although actually, I'm not that good at dancing, so just "dance" is a better command. Anyway, I'm out of initial ideas, but if this thread doesn't just end, I'm exited to see what other people come up with.

Thank you for reading this. Cowloss is a much better name than kow. Maybe even spell it kowloss? Part of the kowloss idea was initiating the transformation then immediately slaughtering the resulting creature for the now increased amount of hide which could be made into blue leather. Other possibility for transformation include horses and oxen (both for farm work and for riding by human koloss), chickens (might provide really big eggs), and hunting dogs (maybe for keeping by koloss, maybe by very brave humans). True. Pewter could also allow for reduction of muscle mass, then tapping in bursts for extra strength and the feruchemical enhancement effect, which would hopefully prevent heart failure. I just though of using cadmium to tap breath, oxidizing the blood to help relieve the heart stress. The issue with unsealed or hemalurgic iron is that you can only get so much iron to store in. As the koloss go older, it would take more and more storage space. However, storing while tapping to provide the feruchemical resilience side effect might work? It's possible I have no idea what I'm talking about. If hemalurgy can make anything, what happens if you convince a chromium compounder to help you?

As said in the title, here are some random koloss related ideas I had, from least to most absurd. Kinda boring. Use koloss to construct things, because they're really strong. Not much else to say for this one. Have koloss fill unsealed metalminds, both to minimize koloss related problems, such as falling through wood floors, and to donate attributes to those who need them. This is likely already an established use of koloss. Possibilities include: Weight, strength, warmth, determination, wakefulness, health (koloss heal faster than humans, right?), and energy/calories (they can live off dirt). Maybe speed, investiture, connection (which could allow them to weaken other creatures control over them), and breath as well. Koloss cousins! Using the other three kandra blessings (tin, zinc, and copper), we can create new kinds of koloss-like creatures. They would have enhanced senses, emotional control, or intelligence. There will probably be side effects, such as a drop in other attributes, turning blue (or maybe a different color), and a physical increase in the effected trait. Hmm, does anybody know of somebody who turned blue and has a really massive brain? Anyway, I'm going to go on a really long tangent in which I try to predict the results of the spiking by comparing the side effects of the koloss transformation, which I will place in a spoiler box cause it might take a while to scroll past. Hybrid koloss. Take one blessing pair, perhaps the copper one, and spike an ordinary koloss with it for more tactical ability. You could even use all four! (Assuming that the bind points aren't mutually exclusive.) Koloss cows! Henceforth referred to as kows, the gist of this completely crazy but potentially possible idea is to give four iron spikes to a cow, transforming it into a very blue, very fast growing kow. Benefits include: Because koloss skin becomes really baggy at the beginning of the process, you can get a lot of very blue, very fashionable leather from relatively young kows. Additionally, these hardy livestock can literally survive off gravel if need be. They also grow very large, and thus have a whole lot of potentially meat. *In really fast disclaimer voice:* Side effects may occur. Consuming hemalurgic meat is potentially cannibalism, and might cause spiritweb modifications, or even death. Dragonheir inc. cannot be held responsible for having your farm be overthrown by bipedal supercows caused by the transfer of human attributes. Honestly it's probably safer and more ethical to just spike the cows to get the strength. Koloss trees!? Do plants even have spiritwebs? What am I even going to do with several tons of blue birch bark? (Maybe some other plants and animals are a better idea.) Minor stormlight spoilers: Anyway, that concludes Dragonheir's stupid ideas he got during swim team practice, koloss edition. If anybody wants to add to the list, elaborate on something, or tell me why one of these wouldn't work, please do!