Steel Speedster

Funnily enough, I was just wondering about what spikes Marsh has last night! In addition to what hwiles said, I thought that it seemed unlikely that Marsh would have had any Cognitive Feruchemical powers except F-zinc, because the other the three would not be worth it. Additionally, even taking F-iron or F-tin seems like it would have been a waste, considering that you could have F-steel, F-zinc, or F-gold instead. (I'll also point out that following the atium retcon, Marsh's "spikes for A-atium and F-atium should actually be A- and F-electrum, which would confirm that he does not have separate spikes for those.) I wonder if he has an A-gold spike? That power is obviously quite useless on its own, especially for an Inquisitor, but it would allow Compounding health, so there's a possibility. However, given that Marsh is supposed to have 22 spikes, it seems that he must either have a lot of duplicate spikes or have most of the physical and cognitive Feruchemical powers. I've seen it discussed that Ruin might have wanted to take the Inquisitors off world, in which it makes sense that he might have given Marsh an F-bronze spike solely so that he would be able to stay alive via Compounded atium. In any case, he must have one. It's not too surprising if you think about it. After all, it's already quite odd that some Inquisitors have F-atium spikes.

That could definitely be possible. Hemalurgy can do a lot of weird things, so that explanation should work if you can’t think of anything else.

Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought about him being pre-Catacendre. I had figured identity contamination would fix that issue. The easiest fix I can think of is changing his backstory so that he received the spike after reaching the Alleyverse, although that would require some substantial backstory changes.

I like it! I'm not super good at giving critiques, but there's a couple points I noticed. First off, I'll give you fair warning that Koloss will likely want you to do some balancing. All three of those powers are quite good, especially F-steel. I'm sure this combination of abilities will still be possible, as long as the character has enough negative aspects to balance it out. Adding additional flaws will probably help, especially if they impact his combat capabilities. I'm not sure if it makes too much sense that Inquisitors would have wanted to test Hemalurgic spikes on him, especially considering that they were Feruchemical spikes, which would have been hard to get and quite valuable. (Most Inquisitors had F-gold spikes, so they already knew how to use them.) However, I'm not sure if that will be problematic or not. If it is, I'm sure there could be ways to tweak it so that it works. One idea that could potentially also help with balancing is to make him seem a bit more like an experiment. He could be a failed attempt to create a new type of Hemalurgic construct and have some serious weaknesses as a result. I'm not much of Hemalurgy expert, so I'm not sure how exactly this could work, but I'm sure someone could help with ideas for this if you wanted to. It would change your character quite a bit, so it's just an idea. Don't do it unless you want to. This is something that you would have to talk to @Koloss17 about, but I noticed that this character could potentially fit into some of the stuff that's going on in the background. I don't really know all of what's going on, but what I do know is that the current main villain (who is also spiked) has had dealings with the Dark Alleys (that might even be how he acquired his spikes? I'm not sure), as well as some mysterious entity that seems to be plotting behind the scenes. Like I said, I don't know the details, but it caught my attention that your character is interested in the Dark Alleys and is also spiked. Again, you'd have to talk to Koloss about whether some sort of connection could work out, but I thought it worth mentioning. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Good luck with the rest of the character creation process!

No problem!

To clarify, are you talking about Allomantic steel and gold, Feruchemical steel and gold, or Hemalurgic steel and gold? I would assume not A-steel, since they're already a Coinshot. If you're talking about F-steel and F-gold, then I would personally put: Major Merit: F-steel spike. Normal Merits: Coinshot; F-gold spike. In my opinion, F-steel is significantly more powerful than either of the other two, so I would put it as the major merit. Hope that helps!

I'm not super experienced with this, but personally, I would say it depends on what the spikes do. Do you have specific abilities in mind for the spikes? Either, like you said, it might work to have one power be the major merit, and the other two be normal merits (or even minor merits if they aren't super powerful.) It might be possible for the two spikes to count as a single merit, but I'm not certain. @Koloss17 can probably give you better advice than I can.

My theory is that you see a vision of the moment that caused the split between you and the alternate self you're viewing. Remember in SH when Kelsier flared malatium as he died? He saw the Lord Ruler as he took the power at the Well of Ascension. Personally, I think that was Brandon trying to show us duralumin's effect on malatium, and if that's true, then gold would do the same thing for you. Even if that's not true, I'm sure it has something of the sort, where you peer into the SR since atium and electrum both do.

Fenna could barely move under her own weight, but she didn't dare release her ironmind, lest the creature push her off. Despite how full they had been, her metalminds were running out at an alarming rate. This was weeks' worth of storing, crammed into seconds. The monster seemed unable to move its arms. Was its healing ability running out? Fenna reached out a heavy hand and seized a piece of rubble from the floor beside her and raised it above her head. She slammed the rock down onto the creature's neck, putting all her immense weight into the blow. Without waiting to see if the blow had finished the creature off, Fenna released her ironminds and her pewter flare and leapt to her feet. She stored weight and jumped back up through the hole in the ceiling. Back on the main floor, she found that the second creature had been trapped and subdued. A flicker of hope lit up in Fenna. Maybe we can win after all. However, the sight of the rest of the room quickly snuffed it out. The floor was strewn with dead constables. The largest monster was still wreaking havoc. And he was there. The man with spikes in his eyes stood unfazed by the destruction, the most terrifying of all the monsters. For a moment, a last spark of defiance came alight inside Fenna. Not hope--only defiance. She wanted to keep fighting. To destroy this last, greatest enemy. She clenched her fists and flared her pewter. But it was almost gone. Maybe she still had enough metal for one last fight, but it would truly be her last fight. Without pewter, her injuries would take only minutes to kill her, and there wouldn't be time to find more. There was one last vial of metal in her apartment. If she could get to it, she would be able to survive until her injuries healed on a low burn. She would either die a hero or live a coward and a traitor. The dead lay around her. They had fought and died, knowing it was likely hopeless. But they had fought, nonetheless. They knew there was no escape. If they could have, they would have fled. But she could never know that for sure. And it didn't change anything about the choice before her. Fenna stared into the glinting spike heads, and felt the last of her defiance die out. She wasn't ready. She wasn't ready to die. Not ready to make that decision. And so, she ran.

Fenna stood as her enemy charged again. One last try. She crouched, storing as much weight as she could, then flared pewter and sprang straight up. Her legs, weighted by her ironminds retained more momentum, spinning her around so that her head faced towards the ground. Her feet touched the ceiling, and she allowed her body to coil like a spring. As the foul creature reached the place she had been standing, Fenna flared her pewter again, tapped her ironminds, becoming a dozen times heavier than normal, and launched herself downwards. She stretched out her hands to seize her enemy, pewter still flared for the impact.

The creature began to break under Fenna's blows, but no matter how much she hit it, it refused to die. Its hand latched onto her arm. Immediately, she felt a draining sensation. She could feel her pewter working against it, but that would soon be gone. Panicking, she tried to yank her arm away, but her strength was weakened by the thing's sapping grip, and it managed to hang on. Pewter's numbness was ripped away, and she was hit by a crippling wave of pain all over her body, emanating from a multitude of injuries she hadn't even noticed. Thinking quickly, Fenna tapped weight and let herself fall backwards, dragging her attacker down with her. She hit the floor hard and slipped her wrist free of the creature's hand as it was thrown over her head. Pain faded and strength returned as her pewter recovered from the attack. But that didn't change the fact that she was in bad shape. Without any metal to burn, she would be dead. She scrambled to her feet, but at that moment, the last of her pewter burned up. She staggered backwards into the wall and slid to the floor. Immediately, her vision fuzzed, and darkness threatened to take her. Fighting back the agony that pressed upon her, Fenna seized her last metal vial and downed it. She couldn't keep this up. This last vial would keep her alive a bit longer, but when that ran out... That would be it.

Fenna frowned as the creature un-flattened itself with sickening popping sounds, a smile of deranged glee stretching across its face. Okay... That wasn't terribly effective. Maybe something more straightforward would work better. Fenna stored weight, and pushed off the floor, launching towards the creature. She tapped weight as she touched down in front of it and shot out a hand to slam it bodily into the wall, swinging her other fist towards its head.

Fenna glanced around as the chaos unfurled. Things were going badly from the start. The constables were dying like insects before these four monsters. Fenna's gaze settled on the skinny creature as it withered its enemies to husks. It was clearly deadly, but it didn't look too tough. She stored weight and leapt high into the air towards it. At the apex of her leap, she tapped weight and descended towards it, legs extended for a hefty kick.

Fenna, Smokestack Constabulary Fenna and the foremost constables burst into the room and stopped short, the people behind bumping into them. The scene before them was not the one Fenna had expected. But it was still terrifying. In the middle of the room stood three disgusting creatures, all variously deformed and hideous. And between them was the cloaked man she had seen at the entrance. She now realized that he had metal spikes through his eyes. At his feet was the withered husk of another person. Fenna barely registered the other two people on the other side of the room. There was a moment of deadly silence. Then the constables surrounding her charged into the room with a shout. Fenna hesitated a moment, then leapt after them. One last stand...before death claimed them all. @Koloss17 @Lunamor @Longshot97 @Scars of Hathsin

@Koloss17

I think this would be a similar principle to why electrum shadows split. There doesn't necessarily need to be conflicting forms of futuresight in order to get that feedback loop. Electrum shadows split automatically because you can see your own future and because you know what you would do (if you didn't have futuresight) you can choose to do something else, splitting the shadows. Atium can't possibly show you what will happen for sure while taking your actions into account, because by seeing the effects of your actions you could change them. I see it as every object being locked into a specific path, but anyone with futuresight being able to act freely. In the case of atium, you see the paths that other objects are going to take, but you can change them. Looking at the gun firing example, if you saw a bullet being fired from your gun, there's nothing to stop you from not shooting, or changing your aim and shooting in a different direction. So, I can only think of two possibilities here: 1) you see split shadows because your futuresight interferes with itself similar to electrum or 2) you see what would happen without your intervention (i.e. nothing, because without you acting, the bullet isn't going to fire.) I think the second option fits with what we've seen of atium shadows so far. If it took your actions into account, then someone burning atium would see every object that they could interact with moving around without any apparent cause. If you were a Coinshot or a Lurcher, you would see every piece of metal moving around. There are a lot of weird mechanics of atium like this that haven't really been talked about in the books or WoBs, but I feel like this is a principle we can infer. Another one, for example, is that atium, as far as we know, doesn't show you your clothes floating unsupported in midair. Somehow, it knows to exclude objects that you are wearing or (presumably) carrying in addition to your actual body. If it didn't, then it would essentially have electrum's abilities built in as well.

I'm actually not sure that atium would work too well for this. Atium shadows don't take into consideration what you, the person burning it, will do, (which is usually a good thing, because otherwise it would automatically cause shadows to split.) For example, in a fight you don't see other people's atium shadows getting hit by your attacks. You see what they would do without your interference. So, I don't think you would see atium shadows for your bullets until after you fired them, at which point it's too late to change your aim. Electrum might make it possible, but you still don't see the bullets, so you would have to judge entirely by your shadow's reaction. I think F-chromium is the best potential for shooting out of a time bubble, although A-electrum/F-zinc might work well too.

I would also point out that hemalurgic spikes are at least somewhat resistant to being cut with a Shardblade, so that might give the Inquisitor some additional protection. They have a lot of spikes through their torso, so there would be a good chance of the Shardblade getting blocked by one of those before it hit the spine. A headshot...not so much, but like others are saying, an Inquisitor would be pretty dumb to go for close quarters combat against a Shardbearer.

Honorblades are less efficient and use more Stormlight compared to a Nahel bond because the bond between it and its user is much less deep than a spren bond. This does allow Honorblades to easily be picked up and bonded by anyone, but it makes them less efficient than spren Surgebinding. So, the spren is not really a direct cause of the greater efficiency of a Radiant, but it's related.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but this has always been my assumption about how F-bendalloy works. F-copper works differently from other Feruchemical metals, because you essentially just move an item (a memory) between your mind and the metalmind--when you store a memory in copper, the process is instantaneous, and the memory stays there until you remove it. Compare that to a normal metalmind, let's just say an ironmind, where you spend time storing weight, and once you stop, your weight goes back to normal. The main difference between these two is that F-iron retains a baseline for the attribute (i.e. your normal weight.) When storing you go below that weight and when you tap you go above, but whenever you aren't storing or tapping, you go back to that baseline. I theorize that F-bendalloy works more like F-copper. To illustrate the differences between the two possible mechanics, I'll describe how each one would work in the same situation. If F-bendalloy works like F-copper: The Subsumer eats a large meal, then stores a good portion of the nutrition in a bendalloymind. Storing is instant, and the Subsumer now has less nutrition from the meal. Later, the Subsumer taps, essentially moving all that nutrition back into their body, and it acts as though they had just eaten that food. If F-bendalloy works like a normal metalmind: The Subsumer eats a large meal, then begins the process of storing nutrition. While storing, the Subsumer has less nutrition from the meal, but as soon as they stop storing, their nutrition goes back to normal. Later, the Subsumer taps. While tapping, the Subsumer gains nutrition, but as soon as they stop or the bendalloymind runs out, they go back to normal. As you can see, the second possibility would be way less useful, because the effects are all temporary, whereas in the first option, the extra nutrition lasts until you store it again or it gets used up by the body. These mechanics aren't exactly like a coppermind, mainly because F-bendalloy still stores a quantity of attribute whereas F-copper stores an individual unit. As another illustration, if F-iron worked like this, storing would reduce your weight permanently until you tapped that weight back, and it would be impossible to become heavier than normal. (This wouldn't be a problem for F-bendalloy, because your nutrition fluctuates wildly anyway, and you can get more by eating.) I have 0 evidence to back this up (but of course we haven't even seen F-bendalloy used on screen yet, so that's to be expected.) Like I said, I've unconsciously assumed that F-bendalloy works like this. I do think this makes more sense than the alternative, but I wondered how other people understood this ability.

At the very least, I would imagine that wearing a suit made purely out of aluminum would block life sense, but we also know that aluminum hats block emotional Allomancy without covering the entire head, so I could easily see aluminum lining doing the trick. It seems like it probably would, but aluminum suits would not be practical for most Allomancers, because it blocks all external powers. You can't Push or Pull through aluminum, you can't soothe or riot, you pop your time bubbles immediately, you probably can't leech or nicroburst (is that the verb for using A-nicrosil on someone?) It would also block your own bronze sense obviously, and maybe even a coppercloud, although that's an interesting question. Scadrians haven't invented such a suit, but that is quite possibly just because of how expensive aluminum is. If it does work, though, we might see Thugs and Tineyes wearing anti-bronze stealth suits. However, I also think that it's possible that aluminum might fail to prevent you from emitting Allomantic pulses. While life sense and bronze sense do seem similar, there could very well be a difference between their separate targets that makes an aluminum suit work against one but not the other. The hilt would probably still be enough for his life sense to function, though maybe not as well as without the sheath. Come to think of it, doesn't Nightblood even claim to be able to see better when unsheathed?

I would imagine that if a Shardblade is too Invested to be affected by Allomancy, that it would also be immune to Surges. Sure, Surges have more Investiture, but a Shardblade is one of the most Invested objects in the Cosmere. Maybe with enough Investiture you could create a sticky enough object to hold a Shardblade, but I think in general it's not going to work. Abrasion could be interesting though. It wouldn't be directly acting on the Shardblade, so the slipperiness might still work. It wouldn't be as useful, but you could probably use it to protect yourself from glancing blows.

Basically, what I'm wondering is, can an object that was not originally a part of your body become part of your spiritual ideal so that healing via Stormlight or F-gold will heal it back? If you have any sort of prosthetic, for example, can you heal it if it gets damaged? (Obviously, if you can heal, then you might be able to heal so that you don't need the prosthetic, but we've seen plenty of cases where healing doesn't work, because the person has accepted the injury.) More Cosmere related, could a Hemalurgist use healing to repair damage to their spikes? If this is possible, then it opens up all sorts of ridiculous things you could do. It might let you duplicate spikes, simply by taking them out and healing them back. A Feruchemist could heal back implanted metalminds. Let's take this a step further. Could a Feruchemist heal back the Feruchemical charge of a metalmind? Obviously, the amount of Investiture required to do this would cancel out any gain in Investiture, but let's look at this example. Say you were a full Feruchemist and (to make this a bit easier) an Augur too, so you can Compound health, but no other attribute. Let's say you have a full pewtermind implanted in your body, and it's been there so long that the pewtermind, as well as its charge are part of your spiritual ideal. You use up the strength in the pewtermind, then tap health. The charge heals back, and essentially, you've just converted Investiture in a goldmind into Investiture in a pewtermind. Now you can use this to get unlimited strength. Transfer the strength directly into a new pewtermind outside of your body, then heal back the charge in your implanted metalmind. Repeat this as much as you need, and now you have a bunch of extra pewterminds full of strength. Essentially, you've Compounded strength using gold Compounding. Obviously, this isn't as efficient as normal pewter Compounding, since you need to burn gold, but in theory you could Compound any attribute you wanted as long as you had the appropriate Feruchemical charge as part of your spiritual ideal of yourself. This might seem completely overpowered, and in a way, it is. However, I would have to assume that something like this would not be a common occurrence, since, obviously, we haven't seen anyone do anything like this yet. Either it's not possible to incorporate foreign materials into your spiritual ideal, or it's so difficult than most people aren't going to have it happen. It seems most believable that it might happen with artificial body parts or hemalurgic spikes. A person is much more likely to think about these (which, I think, although I could be misremembering, is relevant to your spiritual ideal) than, for example, a piece of metal lodged inside them that they can't see. Do we have any information on whether any of this is possible?

I suppose another thing to consider is that an object infused with Stormlight runs out over time, so the amount of Investiture in it is extremely variable. The Radiant can choose how much Investiture to put in initially, depending on how long they want it to last, and it will gradually go down from there until it runs out. So, at the high end, there's no way an Allomancer could do anything, but there should be a window right before it runs out where it would work. Well, metal flakes aren't Invested at all, unless we're dealing with atium or something. Going back to the fact that the Radiant can choose how much Investiture to put into an object, it should be theoretically possible to put enough Investiture into an objecto block a Shardblade, although you're average Radiant might not be holding that much at a time, and it might take more Stormlight then it would to simply heal the wound. That reminds me of another point to bring up, although admittedly, there's a lot of exceptional factors going on, so it isn't very useful. The Lord Ruler's bracers were made of nearly pure godmetal. Obviously, they were smaller than a Shardblade, but I think it's the concentration of Investiture that matters. Additionally, they were piercing the skin. I think it's quite possible that that combination would have made them more difficult to Pull or Push on than a Shardblade. Obviously, Vin needed a boost from the mists to Pull them off. I always imagine that it wasn't a huge boost, but I suppose it probably was pretty big, since she overcame the Investiture resistance of nearly pure godmetal and soul proximity. (Like I said, not very useful to bring this up, considering the many unusual factors.) Radiants seem to counter the Metallic Arts in almost every possible way. Their weapons and armor are immune to Pushing/Pulling, some of them can immunize other objects as well, Shardplate makes them immune to emotional Allomancy and probably at least as strong as a Pewterarm, and they even heal much easier than a Bloodmaker. There are only a few advantages Scadrial can bring to the table. Leeching could be pretty effective, and the temporal powers might give you a bit of an edge, since Surgebinding has nothing comparable. Some Feruchemical powers, like steel, zinc, and chromium could be effective as well. I suppose Scadrial probably has the advantage in numbers and technology, but that's about it.