Steel Speedster

When a Surgebinder uses the Surge of Adhesion or the Surge of Abrasion on an object, would that prevent a Coinshot or Lurcher from affecting it via Allomancy? Or more generally, is such an object sufficiently Invested to resist other Investiture? More relevantly to Roshar, could it block or at least resist a Shardblade? My thought in answer to all these questions is no. We don't have much information in this regard, but whenever a Radiant uses one of these Surges, it never seems to consume very much of their Stormlight. Additionally, I would imagine that if you could stop a Shardblade this way, someone would have figured it out and applied this technique already. As far as Allomancy goes, while Invested objects are harder to Push and Pull, we know that you can affect metalminds (except maybe if they're completely full) and hemalurgic spikes (if they're outside the body.) I think that most likely Stormlight infused objects would not be as Invested as your average metalmind. If you can Push/Pull on them, it opens up some cool techniques you could use if you somehow had access to A-iron or A-steel and the Surge of Adhesion or Abrasion. You could stick an object down to act as an anchor. You could stick an object to an opponent so that you could Push/Pull on them. Slicking a heavy object should make it a bit easier to move. Anyway, that's my conclusion. I'd be interested to here if anyone else has other thoughts.

At the words “outstanding citizen”, Fenna glanced to the side awkwardly. She felt a little guilty about how deceived the man was about her, but on the other hand, she was here to help. She could do far worse than fail to correct a mistaken impression of her—she had done worse. Still, it felt good to be spoken highly of. And after all, she had left her past behind on Scadrial. Maybe here in Alleycity she was an outstanding citizen. Fenna smiled and felt a little more like her old self—or, no: a new self. Not the person she had been on Scadrial—the arrogant, care-free criminal who did whatever she wanted—nor the dour, depressed resident of Smokestack, but someone who was the best of both. Fenna glanced around the room and realized how few constables there were. She felt a prick of dread. It had been difficult to subdue just one monster, and she was Twinborn and had had a Knight Radiant for back-up! She didn’t know how many more of the creatures there were, but she feared there would be too many for them to handle. Her elation disappeared, like the sun vanishing behind a cloud. They were all going to their deaths, and she was a fool. Why did I come? she thought again, angry at herself for her stupidity. She hadn’t changed anything, except given the waiting monsters one more person to kill.

Fenna, Smokestack Constabulary Fenna barely heard anything the man said. However, he seemed surprisingly welcoming, especially considering she had just plowed a hole through his wall. That seemed to be a sign that he was desperate—things were not going well. Focus returned as Fenna’s pewter washed away the pain and fatigue. Her injured arm didn’t hurt at all. That meant she would probably make it worse without realizing, but right now, she wasn’t going to complain. As she faced the police chief, Fenna realized she had no plan and little idea of what was happening. Whatever it was, the police chief and some of his remaining constables had been forced to take shelter in this room. She didn’t know where the enemy was or how many monsters were infesting the building. But she did, at least, have some information she could deliver. ”I came to see what was happening,” Fenna panted. “There’s a Radiant here as well, and someone else. I didn’t get a close look, but he looked like he had a mistcoat, and he went to find…someone. I’m here to help however I can.” She fell silent, and wondered once again what she was even doing there, acutely aware that she didn’t have anything very useful to offer. What was I thinking? she sighed to herself. @Koloss17

Oh, yeah! I forgot about that one (probably because I forget to think about F-electrum in general.) I don’t think it would be as good as the ones I mentioned, but I’ll add it to the list.

Fenna, Smokestack Constabulary The man turned and strode purposefully away. Fenna was almost tempted to follow. He, unlike her, seemed to know exactly where he needed to go. On the other hand, he didn't seem like the sort of person who would take kindly to being followed uninvited. The person in charge. That was it: find the constables, if any remained in the building. She had a feeling that that wasn't the same idea that the newcomer had had. Did he mean the person in charge of all the chaos that was going on? Fenna turned and ran back the way she had come, through the hole in the wall, away from the direction the cloaked man had gone. Where would people hide? As far away from the source of these walking corpses as possible. Still, Fenna had no idea exactly where everyone might be. This is really, really stupid, she thought. Then she sprinted towards the wall. She flared pewter and tapped weight, then pushed harder to maintain her speed, and smashed through the wall. She emerged in another hallway, but didn't stop. Immediately, she crashed through the opposite wall and into another room. It was hard to maintain speed at this weight, so Fenna released her ironmind and began storing weight instead. Only pewter allowed her to keep her balance as her momentum sent her shooting forwards. She tapped weight to smash through the next wall, flaring her pewter continually to protect herself. As it was, she tried to ignore the amount of bruises and cuts she would have when this was over. Fenna lost track of how many walls she had gone through as she fell into a rhythm. All she observed of each room was that it was empty, before bashing through the opposite wall. Suddenly, she found herself in a room that was not empty. Fenna tapped weight and dug in her heels, trying to maximize her friction. The floor cracked and fragmented under the strain, but she managed to stop herself before colliding with the group of shocked looking people in the middle of the room, raising weapons. "It's all right!" panted Fenna, raising her hands to shoulder height. "I don't mean you any harm. I'm unarmed." Both statements, though true, sounded ironic when she had just barreled through the wall. Suddenly, Fenna's pewter ran out. She stumbled backwards, landing hard, due to her still tapped ironmind, and heard a crack from her elbow. Rusts! Pain washed over her. She was suddenly aware of each of the bruises and gashes she had sustained while smashing through walls, and a searing pain in her left elbow, where, she thought, she had broken a bone. Fenna fumbled for a metal vial, and only then realized that one had broken under her weight when she fell. Rusts, rusts, rusts! She detached one of the remaining two vials and downed it, immediately drowning out all her pain. @Scars of Hathsin @Koloss17 @Longshot97 @Lunamor @Stormlightsong

Gold Compounding gives you unlimited health, the Feruchemical attribute, but wouldn't do anything to improve the Allomantic power. However, there's definitely some potential for a gold savant. I would imagine that a gold savant could, at the very least, control what gold shadow appears. If you could actually talk to the gold shadow, that would definitely be useful, though, as you mentioned, depending on the shadow, it might not cooperate.

Those are definitely better. The problem is that those improve the Allomancy and not the Feruchemy, so I couldn’t have picked those for F-bronze or F-bendalloy (although you might actually be able to fill a bronzemind more easily with pewter, so that could be valid.) There is actually a WoB about it being difficult to harm yourself by drawing on too much heat. I don’t have time to locate it now, but I can find it later if you’d like. I think you mean F-brass and F-gold? Since both are Feruchemical powers, a Twinborn can’t have both, but there is an argument to be made for A-pewter. Pewter makes you more resistant to hot and cold, so at the very least, you could use less of your stored warmth when in a cold environment than you would without pewter. Good ideas! I think I’ll add A-pewter for both F-brass and F-bronze.

Yes, I think it is (3). I'm not sure if we actually have absolute confirmation on that, but it seems to be the consensus. One way you can think about it is this: you see a shadow, which shows you what you would do if you weren't burning electrum. However, since you can see this future, it causes the shadow to split, just like two people burning atium causes shadows to split. This produces more shadows which shows what you might do now that you are aware of the first. But the process continues, each shadow splitting into more. I'm not sure when shadows stop appearing. It might be that unlikely enough futures don't appear. Electrum blocks atium because an atium user sees the same shadows. In your specific situation with the safe, it actually might be easier to open it. It might require some mental training, but what if you could get your shadows to signal backward in time? Theoretically your shadows should go through every possible combination. Then the one that got it right could raise its hand in the air and signal the code back to you, allowing you to get it right first try. The tricky thing is that all your shadows will be stacked on top of each other, overlapping, and inputting codes at the same time, so you won't really be able to tell what code each one put in, especially since you won't know which one was right until they're done. So, you'll need to be able to get your shadow to actually signal the information back. It shouldn't be too hard. All you have to do is get in the habit of signaling information, even though it won't actually do anything, because if you are doing it yourself, then your shadows should also do it.

As a bit of an electrum nut, it’s definitely difficult to use, but certainly not useless. You can still make use of the electrum shadows, even though there are more of them than you can comprehend at once. For example, if someone fires a bullet, you’re going to see every single electrum shadow along the path of the bullet get hit, which signals to you that you should get out of there. It’s probably a bit less useful in melee combat, because it’s harder to see the cause of a shadow falling, but with guns existing, most combat will be ranged. At any point in a fight, if you just follow a shadow that doesn’t die, you’re probably going to be fine (although you might have a hard time actually winning.) In almost every situation, there’s going to be some way out. Throw in a feruchemical power, especially steel or zinc, and you’ve got yourself a really good Twinborn!

That would be really interesting. It seems possible, but there’s a bunch on unknowns here. For one thing, do you have access to both sets of memories? If so, F-copper shouldn’t be necessary strictly speaking. It seems like you remember the experience from both perspectives afterwards, so if you, as the gold shadow, focus on bringing certain memories to mind, you might be able to retain them even without F-copper. Of course, if you are an Archivist, you might as well use it. Another consideration is, could you transfer the memories to your real self, or would attempting to store them simply place them in the shadow’s coppermind, where they will be lost once it disappears? Alternatively, since you can touch your gold shadow, maybe you could tap its coppermind. You would have the same Identity, so that wouldn’t be a problem, but maybe the gold shadow is too much of an illusion for that to work. Anyway, if it does work, this would definitely have some useful applications. It would be similar to electrum in some ways (without combat applications, of course.) The main difference is that electrum lets you see a fixed distance into the future, and all information must be gleaned from what your shadows do, whereas memory dumping all your gold shadows memories into your head gives you a lot more details, but the information is all from an alternate past, which may or may not be relevant. Additionally, electrum can only show you things within your line of sight, whereas gold could give you information about something on the other side of town. As other people have pointed out, you would need some control over what shadows you see in order for it to be super useful, because otherwise you’ll have a hard time finding the information you’re looking for.

Yes, I'm pretty sure they do. The one instance we've seen of Division did seem to, and it also would just be really overpowered if they could destroy things from a distance. Soulcasting works at a distance, but it seems to require a lot more force of will or something. Most other powers, including Adhesion, Gravitation, Abrasion, Progression, and Cohesion all require touch, so I would assume the same for Divison.

I'm going to be looking at each of the 32 Mistings and Ferrings (well, maybe not all of them, considering that there are some useless ones in there) and putting forward suggestions on a Twinborn combination to maximize the strength of that Misting/Ferring. It won't necessarily be the best Twinborn that has that power, rather I will be trying to maximize the potential of that one ability, regardless of how good the other power or the Twinborn as a whole is. I will also be ignoring Compounding, except if I need to break a tie, because otherwise the best complement for all Feruchemical powers will just be the Allomantic version of the same metal. To decide what the best compliment is, I'm going to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the ability in question, see what it's limits are, and then see what powers can increase its strengths, lessen its weaknesses, and/or overcome its limitations. Without further ado, let's jump in, starting with the Allomantic powers. Allomantic Iron Strengths: Iron is used primarily as a defensive power to Pull projectiles off course. It can also be used for mobility but is harder to use for this than Steel. Weaknesses: The main weakness of Iron is that everything that you Pull on comes flying towards you, which is potentially very dangerous. Similarly, when used for mobility, you risk crashing into the objects that you Pull on. Limitations: Your ability to Pull is greatly influenced by your weight. Aluminum, Invested metal, and metal inside the body are immune to iron. The Feruchemical powers that I suggest as the best for A-iron are F-iron, F-steel, F-gold, and F-nicrosil. F-iron would let you Pull on very heavy objects by making yourself heavier and make it easy to Pull yourself around when storing weight. However, it does, if anything, increase your chances of injuring yourself by Pulling heavy objects into you. F-steel and F-gold would both mitigate the weakness of hitting yourself with the objects you Pull. Steel would help you avoid them entirely, while gold would let you heal if you did injure yourself, though you would probably need to have a lot of health stored for this to be very effective. Lastly, F-nicrosil could potentially let you Pull on Invested metal and metal inside the body. We've seen that simply having enough power in iron or steel is enough to affect metal inside the body--the Lord Ruler did it, and in Vin's fight with the Inquisitors in HoA, we even see that duralumin is enough to do it. F-nicrosil should allow you to make your iron stronger by storing the ability and then tapping it. This would let you Pull on Feruchemists metalminds, even if they were implanted, which would be a very useful skill. Overall, I would probably put F-iron as the best compliment to A-iron, especially if we consider Compounding, with F-nicrosil as a close second. Allomantic Steel Strengths: Steel is a very good ranged power and can be used much like iron to deflect enemy projectiles. It is much better for mobility than iron. Weaknesses: Steel doesn't have any serious weaknesses. The biggest one is that without any other abilities, there is a decent chance of injury when using it to fly. Limitations: Your ability to Push is greatly influenced by your weight. Aluminum, Invested metal, and metal inside the body are immune to steel. The Feruchemical powers I suggest are F-iron and F-nicrosil. We've already seen the A-steel/F-iron combination be used to great effect by Wax. This combination has much of the advantages of A-iron/F-iron, but lacks Compounding. On the other hand, Pushing heavy objects away is much safer than Pulling them towards you. Additionally, the ability to make yourself lighter mitigates the risks of injury while flying. F-nicrosil is good for A-steel for the same reasons it works for A-iron. By strengthening your power in steel, you should be able to Push on Invested or implanted metal, which is a big advantage. Overall, I would put F-iron as the best compliment to A-steel. Even without Compounding, it is about as good as its A-iron counterpart. F-nicrosil once again takes second place. Allomantic Tin Strengths: Tin is primarily useful for scouting and being a lookout. It grants some advantages in combat, by using your enhanced senses to detect and avoid attacks extra fast. Weaknesses: A Tineye can be stunned by bright lights or loud sounds. Tin enhances pain. Limitations: Tin cannot be used to enhance senses individually--either you get all of them or none of them. The best compliments for A-tin are F-tin, F-bronze, or (once again) F-nicrosil. F-tin would let you store any senses that you didn't need, making it easier to focus on one sense at a time and avoid sensory overload. Though arguably this does not benefit Allomantic tin, you could also tap your enhanced senses back to have stronger senses. F-bronze does not directly benefit A-tin, but since A-tin is often used for standing watch, F-bronze would be useful to let you stay awake. F-nicrosil would let you have very fine control over the amount of enhancement you get from your senses by storing or tapping your tin strength. However, all your senses would still be enhanced the same amount relative to one another, so it wouldn't give you nearly as much control as F-tin. I'd say that F-tin is the clear winner here, even disregarding Compounding. Allomantic Pewter Strengths: Pewter is very versatile, benefitting all kinds of athletic activity. Weaknesses: Though a good combat metal, its lack of range is a big weakness, especially with guns now existing. Limitations: Pewter healing doesn't go very far. While many powers would benefit A-pewter in some way, I will put forward F-steel, F-gold, and F-nicrosil as the best compliments for A-pewter. F-steel helps overcome the weakness against ranged attacks, since it would help avoid projectiles and close the distance. F-steel is also, in general, a great combat metal. F-gold would also help lessen the weakness against projectiles by letting you survive a few shots. Additionally, both powers would be made easier to store by A-pewter. F-nicrosil could be tapped to make you stronger and give you faster healing. However, it doesn't really diminish any of pewter's weaknesses or limitations, but just makes pewter better (as it does for every power.) I would put F-steel as the best, with F-gold in second, though both are valid options, and F-nicrosil in third. Allomantic Zinc and Brass ('m taking these two together, since they are essentially the same, and we aren't taking Compounding into consideration.) Strengths: The only Allomantic powers that are useful for manipulation. They can give you a hard to detect advantage. Weaknesses: Blocked by A-copper. Limitations: They don't magically let you sense your target's current emotions. It takes a lot of skill to use them undetected. I suggest F-zinc, F-duralumin, and (yet again) F-nicrosil. F-zinc should make Soothing/Rioting much easier, because you can think faster and figure out what your target's emotions are more quickly. We don't know much about F-duralumin, but a stronger Connection to your target couldn't hurt. F-nicrosil should let you expand the amount of people you can affect at once. Additionally, it might be able to bypass a Smoker's defenses, since strong enough A-bronze can penetrate a coppercloud. I'll put F-zinc as best, with F-nicrosil in second. F-duralumin scores third, because we don't know much about it. Allomantic Copper Strengths: Hides Allomancy. Protects against emotional Allomancy. Weaknesses: Can be bypassed by strong enough bronze or (presumably) brass/zinc. Limitations: Does nothing else. Copper is a bit of an odd power, because it takes essentially no skill to use and only has a couple of uses. The only power that would make it better is F-nicrosil, which you could use to make your coppercloud harder to penetrate. The problem, however, is that this requires you to spend time with a weaker coppercloud, and Smokers often need to be using their ability all the time. If you have time off, however, this would be a very useful ability to have. Allomantic Bronze Strengths: Finds Allomancers. Reveals information about your opponents. Weaknesses: Weak in combat due to lack of physical enhancements. Limitations: Blocked by A-copper. The best compliments to bronze are F-tin and (surprise!) F-nicrosil. F-tin would let you store bronzesense, then compress it to pierce copperclouds. F-nicrosil would let you increase your power in bronze and pierce copperclouds. However, it is worse than F-tin, since F-tin gives you other abilities as a bonus. As an honorable mention, any combat-oriented power would be good as well, allowing you to use bronze to your advantage in combat. F-tin is clearly the best. Allomantic Chromium Strengths: Neutralizes Allomancers and (to some extent) Feruchemists. Weaknesses: Lacks physical enhancments. Limitations: Requires physical contact. F-steel is clearly the best compliment to A-chromium. It eliminates most of its weaknesses and limitations. Arguably, however, if you have F-steel, A-chromium is pretty useless, unless you need to subdue, rather than kill, someone. Allomantic Nicrosil Strengths: Enhances others' Allomancy. Can also be used to burn up opponents' metals, with potentially dangerous results. Weaknesses: No abilities that can be used independently of another Investiture user. Limitations: Requires physical contact. Only affects currently burning metals. No specific metal directly improves A-nicrosil very much. Any combat metal would be useful, as it makes the Nicroburst not helpless in a fight. I would put forward F-steel once again. It could help navigate fights to boost your allies and make it easier to surprise opponents. Allomantic Aluminum and Duralumin Just kidding! We're skipping these! Allomantic Cadmium Strengths: Slows opponents to a crawl, effectively neutralizing them temporarily. Weaknesses: Also slows you to a crawl, trapping you with your opponents. Limitations: You can't leave without popping the bubble. Once again, it's F-steel to the rescue. This wouldn't entirely negate your vulnerability, but it would certainly help. No other ability provides much help to A-cadmium. Allomantic Bendalloy Strengths: Lets you think and act much faster than those around you. Weaknesses: Time gap between dropping a bubble and placing a new one. Limitations: You can't move the bubble. You can't shoot out of the bubble (accurately.) Bendalloy is very good for nearly all Feruchemical powers, as ducking inside a bubble is a good opportunity to store some attribute. But that's not what we're looking for. We're trying to find what Feruchemical power makes A-bendalloy the best. For this, I would choose F-steel (again.) If necessary, it lets you move even faster, and more importantly, it helps lessen your vulnerability between bubbles. Just dropo the bubble and zip away to make new one. Allomantic Gold Strengths: I don't want to be unfair to A-gold, but honestly, basically none. Weaknesses: Emotionally stressful. Limitations: Not much you can do with it. A-gold is a very weird power. It's not very useful from what we've seen, but I suggest F-zinc, F-aluminum, or F-duralumin as the best options. F-zinc might let you make more use of the gold shadow, since you can think faster. F-aluminum should do something, but I have no idea what. F-duralumin should also be able to do something, but again, I don't know what. So, F-zinc wins. Allomantic Electrum Strengths: Let's you avoid attacks. Makes you hard to surprise. There might be some other odd tricks you could pull off with this. Weaknesses: Confusing and hard to process. Interfered with by other forms of Futuresight. Limitations: Only shows a few seconds into the future. No mental boost to help you comprehend. There are three powers that would be helpful here. F-steel, F-zinc, and F-chromium. F-steel gives you some extra reaction speed, which would be helpful with avoiding the attacks that electrum forewarns you of. F-zinc, in contrast to F-steel, gives you no physical enhancements, but might let you process the electrum shadows more easily. F-chromium, however it works, might give you an easier time deciding what shadows to follow. Or it might just be able to strengthen your electrum. All of these are potentially really good. Since we don't know exactly how it works, I'll put F-chromium in third. Between F-steel and F-zinc, my preference is for F-steel, but it depends on whether you want better ability to process or better ability to react. [Atlas mentioned F-electrum, which you might be able to use to narrow down the amount of possibilities you see. (Basically, you become intent enough on one path that other possibilities are nit shown.) I don’t think this is as good as the other options, but definitely an honorable mention.] And with that, we move onto Feruchemy. Feruchemical Iron Strengths: You can manipulate your weight in combat for extra mobility or greater resistance to blows. Lets you fall slowly. Weaknesses: No particular weaknesses. Limitations: You lose some strength when you store. We've seen that F-iron is very useful for A-iron and A-steel, but neither of those benefit F-iron itself. For that, we turn to A-pewter. A-pewter would be brilliant with F-iron. It makes up for the lost strength when storing, which would let you go bounding through the air, run really fast due to reduced weight, and generally make you very mobile. It lets you maneuver your weight when tapping, and you could use weight and strength in combination to smash through walls and floors without much harm to yourself. Feruchemical Steel Strengths: Lets you move really fast (duh.) Makes you hard to react to. Weaknesses: No aerial capabilities (although most powers don't give those.) Limitations: Hard to store. Gives only a limited amount of mental enhancement (i.e. faster reactions, but not faster overall cognition.) F-steel is one of the best powers. Surprisingly it's hard to find a best power for making it better. There are a few that would be pretty good: A-steel, A-pewter, and A-bendalloy. A-steel gives you ranged capabilities, and the ability to fly, which negates one weakness that might be exploited. A-pewter makes you faster, and therefore lets you store speed more easily. A-bendalloy would let you store speed in a bendalloy bubble. A-pewter and A-steel would both be pretty good. Technically A-pewter gives more direct enhancements to F-steel, so I feel obligated to rank it as #1. A-steel gets second. (Obviously, it would let you Compound, but we're trying to ignore Compounding.) Feruchemical Tin Strengths: Very versatile--stores a variety of senses, which can be used for different scenarios. Unlike A-tin, it can enhance senses individually. Weaknesses: While it can be used in combat, it is, despite its versatility, a lot less useful than other powers. Limitations: Unlike A-tin, you have to store the senses. The only power that will help you store senses for F-tin is (unsurprisingly) A-tin. (Arguably A-steel, A-iron, and A-bronze, since you can store steel/ironsight and bronzesense, but I would consider than more of an enhancement to those powers rather than F-tin.) Even without Compounding, A-tin would make it very easy to fill your tinminds. Feruchemical Pewter Strengths: You can become very strong. Weaknesses: At high amounts of strength, your bulk can become unwieldly. Vulnerable against ranged attacks. Limitations: Unlike A-pewter, it doesn't give you much resistance to damage. The only ability that directly enhances F-pewter is A-pewter, since it would make filling a pewtermind much easier. However, A-pewter does little to cover F-pewter's weaknesses and limitations. They are, overall, very similar abilities. The only other option I see would be A-steel, which would help cover F-pewter's weakness against ranged attacks. Disregarding Compounding, I would put A-steel in first with A-pewter in second. Feruchemical Zinc Strengths: Lets you make decisions very quickly. Thinking fast is useful in almost all situations. Weaknesses: Makes you hungry. Limitations: Difficult to store. F-zinc provides great benefits to most Allomantic powers, but, as with F-steel, it's difficult to find an Allomantic power than enhances F-zinc. Honestly, the best I can come up with is A-bendalloy, which can be used to further increase your thinking speed and provide a good place to store. Feruchemical Brass Strengths: Easy to store, since both storing and tapping are desirable, depending on the circumstance. Weaknesses: No particular weaknesses. Limitations: Tapping too much warmth will melt your brassminds. Not a ton of useful applications. I thought finding a good compliment to F-zinc was hard. F-brass is even worse! I really have no idea what power would be helpful for brass, so honestly, I'm just going to have to say A-brass, which at least lets you compound. [After hearing some suggestions, A-pewter might be the best compliment. It gives you resistance to extreme temperatures, so there’s at least some synergy.] Feruchemical Copper Strengths: General usefulness. Weaknesses: No particular weaknesses. Limitations: No serious limitations, but it isn't very applicable to some situations. The best I could come up with for F-copper is A-tin, which would let you see high levels of detail, which would be useful for storing memories. Feruchemical Bronze Strengths: A very convenient ability to have. Good for lookouts. Weaknesses: No particular weaknesses. Limitations: There's only so much you can do with wakefulness. All I can come up with is A-tin, mainly because both are good abilities for a lookout to have. [After hearing some suggestions, I was reminded that A-pewter could probably let you fill a bronzemind more easily, although it probably has some similarities to what happens when you use caffeine to fill one.] Feruchemical Chromium Strengths: Applicable to essentially all scenarios. Weaknesses: Fortune can only get you so far. Limitations: Seems like it would be pretty difficult to store. We know very little about F-chromium, so I pick A-electrum, simply because another Fortune-based ability seems likely to be a good compliment. Feruchemical Nicrosil Strengths: Enhances any other abilities. Weaknesses: Has no uses on its own. Limitations: Does nothing except increase and decrease the strength of other abilities. It's pretty much impossible to pick a best compliment for F-nicrosil, since it does nothing on its own, but makes any other power better. So, I'll have to pick A-nicrosil for Compounding. Feruchemical Aluminum Strengths: (Irrelevantly) lets you make unkeyed metalminds. Weaknesses: Storing Identity makes you more vulnerable to certain things. Limitations: Few useful applications. The only useful thing we know F-aluminum can do is make unkeyed metalminds, but since we're talking about Twinborn, who don't have other Feruchemical powers, that's useless. We don't even know if F-aluminum can be tapped, so Compounding it might not even be useful. Pretty much impossible to say what would be good with it. Feruchemical Duralumin Strengths: Seemingly quite versatile. Weaknesses: Unknown. Limitations: Unkown. We don't know much about F-duralumin. We do know that it can let you form relationships faster when tapped and weakens relationships when stored. This sort of thing might benefit from A-zinc or A-brass, so I'll suggest those two. Feruchemical Cadmium Strengths: Lets you stay underwater for long periods of time. Enhances the workings of your body (although this would require a lot of storing first.) Weaknesses: N/A Limitations: Highly unpleasant to store. Not particularly useful. I'm sure A-pewter would make storing a bit easier, but not by much. Still, this is probably the best option. If you want to focus on underwater exploration, then A-tin might be good for enhanced vision, and you could use A-steel or A-iron for movement and detecting buried metal. Feruchemical Bendalloy Strengths: Easy to store. Generally convenient. Weaknesses: N/A Limitations: Limited usefulness. There really doesn't seem to be anything that enhances this power much. If you're going to use it to overeat constantly (which I doubt is reccomended) A-tin would give you increased ability to taste your food. (Yes, that's the best I've got.) Feruchemical Gold Strengths: Higher survivability. Weaknesses: Healing will help you survive but doesn't give you any direct way to win a fight. Limitations: Difficult to store. A-pewter is the best choice here. It would make storing gold much easier, and at the same time overcomes gold's main weakness (lack of offensive powers.) Feruchemical Electrum Strengths: Persistence. Weaknesses: Potentially could make you do something stupid. No physical or mental enhancements. Limitations: Doesn't expand your ability to do anything, only your determination to do it. The only thing I can think of here is A-pewter. For one thing, it might help you survive, should F-electrum lead you into doing something stupid. For another, they both would let you last longer in a fight. Pewter physically lets you last longer without getting defeated, while F-electrum makes you less likely to become scared or flee. And with that, we've gone through all 32 powers! (Well, except for A-aluminum and duralumin.) Feel free to suggest anything I might have missed.

What it basically comes down to is that the Surge of Division is better than the Surge of Adhesion, at least in this specific scenario. Adhesion is most useful in tight spaces when you can really get your opponent stuck to things, but since both of them can fly, that will make it harder for Adhesion to be used. It's also possible that the Skybreaker might be able to just use Division to destroy the object they get lashed to and free themselves that way. Windrunners do have access to Reverse Lashings, but against a Skybreaker who can also manipulate gravity, I don't think it would be very useful. I have speculated that Skybreakers don't get a Shardblade until the Fifth Ideal, but we don't know for sure either way. If they don't, then that would give the Windrunner an advantage. If it's a fight to the death, then it basically ends when one of them run out of Stormlight. The things that will use up Stormlight faster is using their Surges and healing wounds. This means that the winner will be whoever is more conservative with their abilities and/or inflicts more damage on their opponent. Shardblades would definitely be good at forcing your opponent to use a lot of Stormlight, and I would imagine that Division would as well.

Fenna, Smokestack Constabulary Stopping halfway across the empty room, Fenna checked her metal reserves. Her pewter was nearly spent, so she unlatched a vial from her belt and downed the contents. Only three left. Just then, a gunshot sounded behind her. Instinctively, Fenna stored weight and spun around, light on her feet. There were voices back in the hall from whence she had come. Fenna crossed back to the hole she had busted through the wall, skimming lightly over the debris on pewter enhanced feet. She slid back into the hall where she froze. Her Radiant acquaintance was facing down the hall away from her, and beyond him was the form of another man, enveloped in a dark coat with trailing tassels, a headless body at his feet. @Koloss17 @Scars of Hathsin

But is that worth the soul warping that attribute spikes give you? That's because copper can be used to steal memories, intelligence, or mental fortitude--it doesn't have to be all three, and in the case of the Kandra, I'm pretty sure it's just mental fortitude.

The difference between warmth, for example, and strength is that a person's strength is essentially constant (it can change based on exercise or lack thereof) but warmth is dependent on the environment. I can see how it could be permanent, but it seems like it would be really odd if it makes you constantly warmer than you should be. It breaks the laws of thermodynamics. That's not to say it's impossible, but it would be really weird. If stealing breath is a permanent effect, then it would be pretty decent. You could survive with half as much air as usual. Copper also steals memories, which is a Feruchemical attribute. Yeah, extra nutrition would not be worth it at all!

So, a while ago, I came across this WoB: We know that H-iron steals strength, H-tin steals senses, H-zinc steals memories, H-duralumin steals Connectioni and Identity, and F-nicrosil's power is covered by H-steel, H-pewter, H-brass, H-bronze, H-cadmium, H-bendalloy, H-gold, and H-electrum, but that's only six out of sixteen attributes that can be stored Feruchemically. Are there really god metal alloys for each of the other Feruchemical attributes? Weight? Speed? Mental speed? Warmth? Wakefulness? Fortune? Breath? Nutrition? Health? Determination? Some of these seem like really overpowered abilities. Stealing physical speed would make someone essentially twice as fast as normal all the time. Stealing mental speed would make someone think twice as fast all the time. Then there are some that would be really weird. If you stole warmth, all the heat would probably flow out of you again in a matter of minutes. If you stole wakefulness, it would probably give you an extra day's worth of wakefulness (assuming the donor had just woken up) and then have no effect for the rest of your life. The amount of breath that a normal person has at one time is so small that it would do essentially nothing if you stole it. Stealing nutrition would basically transfer all of the nutrition that the donor had to the recipient, and it would then run out fairly quickly. I'm not sure about determination. Determination does fluctuate in a person, but it doesn't just run out like other attributes do. Stealing determination might actually add the donor's current level of determination to the recipient permanently. We do know that attribute spikes, like these, cause more deformation in the recipient than Hemalurgic spikes that transfer abilities, so that somewhat inhibits the usefulness of these spikes. But Koloss, even if it isn't exactly desirable to be one are very dangerous and are made with four H-iron (strength) spikes. Imagine a creature with four speed spikes! Or four mental speed spikes! It would be equivalent to a Feruchemist tapping the attribute at a 400% rate, at all times! Fortunately, if these spikes are in fact possible, they'd be ridiculously expensive, assuming that they are made with god metal alloys. Allomancers use atium in bead form, and that grants a decent amount of power; Feruchemists need larger pieces god metal for metalminds, but they can reuse them as long as they need. Hemalurgists on the other hand, need a good size chunk to make a spike (though this is up for debate--we haven't heard much about spike size, but I would assume that if it's too small it won't hold as much of the attribute you're trying to steal, and some will go to waste), and they need a new spike for every instance of the attribute they want to steal. This seems so crazy, that I've wondered if Brandon was actually just trying to say that you can steal any Feruchemical power with Hemalurgy. But that seems like a silly mistake to make, and the language he uses to answer sounds like he understands exactly what the questioner is asking. I've never seen anyone talking about this before, and it seems like a pretty huge thing to me, so I've been a little cautious accepting it as true.

We know that you can store Allomantically granted attributes in metalminds. It would be reasonable to assume from this that one could also store the senses granted by A-tin in tinminds. However, what I am wondering is, does storing Allomantic attributes change them into the Feruchemical attributes? Because the two are not the same. Allomantic pewter does not increase your bulk, for one thing. A-tin and F-tin also have some differences between the senses they give you, although it's not as big of a difference. This WoB seems to suggest that they would not be the same when stored. It isn't exactly the same situation, but it does give us proof that not all versions of an attribute act the same when stored. However, if it's true that Allomantic pewter and Allomantic tin would retain their normal properties when tapped from metalminds, then why, in the first WoB, does Brandon say that it's easier to just compound? The ideal thing to do would be to store a bit of Allomantic pewter strength, then compound that, so you get a supply of strength that doesn't bulk you up when tapped. I suppose he just might not have been thinking of that when he answered? It is one of those paraphrased answers, so there isn't much context. (I'll also point out that, yes, I realize that Brandon isn't giving complete confirmation on caffeine working for a bronzemind, but it's the principle that matters here. It implies that you can store a variant of the normal attribute in a metalmind and have it retain its properties when tapped.) Anyone able to shed some light on this?

Yeah, that sounds good. Fenna and Arranis (might, depending on what Arranis does) have just split up, but he’s probably close enough that he could join in on the interactions if Scars wants to.

I'm good with that. How ever you wanted to do it would work for me.

Ohhh... yeah, I guess that probably makes more sense.

Ah, yes. Thanks for catching that! Hmmm. Well, it was before the retcon was revealed at any rate, although I know that doesn't mean much. The fact that the WoB only mentions temporal effects, while the poster says temporal and mental effects does suggest that something might have changed since then, but there still isn't any evidence that he plans to have any atium alloys with physical or enhancement effects. To me, that's the way that makes the most sense to do it, but he is the author, so I'll trust whatever way he decides to do it!

Intro In the original trilogy, atium and malatium are presented as being the external temporal metals. After the atium retcon, with it now being known that atium is an alloy of pure atium and electrum, and that these metals don't fit into the normal table of Allomancy (their original spots being taken by cadmium and bendalloy), it seems to be assumed that these metals are still external metals. This has laid the groundwork for theories about how atium alloys are categorized. It's been theorized that atium flips the internal/external position of a metal. For example, electrum an internal metal that shows future shadows of yourself, when alloyed with atium, shows shadows of other people and becomes an external metal. I am going to argue here that that is incorrect: atium and malatium are actually internal metals, just like electrum and gold, their base metal counterparts. As a disclaimer, there are many WoBs on the topic that I am addressing, and many do directly contradict some of my claims. However, this whole topic, regarding the atium retcon, how atium alloys work, etc. has become very confusing, and I'm not certain that all the WoBs we have will prove to be entirely accurate. Therefore, I ask that you bear with me, and admit that I could very well be wrong about all this. What makes a metal Internal vs. External? We'll start by figuring out what criteria determines if a metal is internal or external. First, we'll look at the four pairs of external metals: iron/steel, zinc/brass, chromium/nicrosil, and cadmium/bendalloy. Iron and steel directly and tangibly affect something outside of the user--they apply force to physical objects. Zinc and brass directly affect another person's mind. Chromium and nicrosil affect another person's metal reserves. Cadmium and Bendalloy directly affect time around the user. We see that all of these powers have direct and obvious effects on things external to the user. Do atium and malatium? Nope. Both create something that only the user can see, that has no difect effect on others. Looking at the internal metals we see: Pewter and tin affect the user's body, changing it in some way. Copper and bronze affect the user's mind, changing it to block other mental powers, and detect kinetic investiture, respectively. Aluminum and duralumin affect the user's own metal reserves. Gold and electrum show visions that only the user can see. The effects of atium and malatium fit in much better with these powers than with the external powers. The fact that they show other people instead of the user, like gold and electrum do does not make them external. It's easy to see how they could appear that way when looked at next to their base metal counterparts, butt when compared to all the other metals, they act much more like internal metals. External metals all have an obvious effect on some external thing. Internal powers either affect the user's body (pewter, aluminum, duralumin) or allow the user to perceive something new (tin, bronze, gold, electrum.) Even copper, an internal metal, has more external effects than atium or malatium, as it blocks bronze in a large area external to the user. Atium Alloys If this is true, that atium and malatium are internal metals, then it means a change in our understanding of how atium alloys relate to base metals. It has been assumed that alloying a metal with atium inverts the effect, making internal metals external and (presumably) external metals internal. However, I believe that atium alloys fit in the same slot on the table as their base metal. Atium is an internal temporal pushing metal, just like electrum, and malatium is an internal temporal pulling metal, like gold. Atium acts as a modifier on the base metal. It changes the effect slightly, but not to the point of changing the categorization of the metal. I will bring up this WoB that states that atium alloys are all temporal or mental: If this is true, then my theory is not entirely correct, although I would guess that the mental and temporal quadrants would at least follow the pattern I have proposed. However, this WoB is quite old, and possibly outdated. Simply by the question being asked, we can see that this was pre-atium retcon. Anyway, I digress. Conclusion So, to sum up, malatium is actually the internal pulling temporal atium alloy, while atium(-electrum) is the internal pushing temporal atium alloy. They are not external metals, as they have been presented. The fact that compared to electrum and gold their effects seem external has made it easy to overlook this, but compared to other external metals they do not affect external things nearly as much.

I would define Fortune simply as obtaining knowledge from the future. You don't need to be using magic to get it (although I think there always will be some magic involved somewhere in the process.) The difference between Taravangian and Vin's situations is that Vin obtained certain (and yes, I know what Zane saw actually didn't happen, but it's what would have happened if Vin hadn't accessed Fortune and caused interference) knowledge of the future, whereas Taravangian was making guesses and deductions (admittedly very good ones) based on the present. Taravangian's knowledge wouldn't have caused Fortune interference, like Vin did. I think the language used in the WoA really suggests that Vin was using future sight in some way (I don't own a physical copy of the book, so I can't pull up a quote), but I don't think there's enough evidence for us to settle this. Part of the problem is I can't think of any way that storing Fortune might work where being able to store into the negatives doesn't result in being able to store down an unlimitedly high amount. It's precisely because luck has this polarity, while other attributes don't. Like you say, there's no such thing as negative strength. There's no such thing as negative speed. Arguably, the concept of negative weight could exist (falling up instead of down), but we know that's not possible--you can't even get down to 0 weight. The thing is, I don't think storing Fortune is as closely related to the concept of luck as you're presenting it here. We do use the terms "good fortune" and "good luck" interchangeably, but Fortune, as in knowledge of the future is a different thing. The term 'luck' is used in the description of chromium's power, but I think that that's simply a result of them not understanding what it actually does. In my opinion, what's going on is that having a high amount of Fortune means that you do things that get yield positive outcomes, which, to people who don't exactly understand what they're doing, seems like they have good luck. When you store Fortune (let's just say down to 0), you no longer have any knowledge of the future, so you stop making choices that give you good outcomes. If you consider the fact that people in the Cosmere have some innate Fortune, then compared to the number of good vs. bad outcomes they usually get, storing Fortune will by comparison, make it seem like they have bad luck. So, to answer your questions, what is "neutral luck"? From a technical perspective, that would be when you have 0 Fortune--no futuresight. However, one could consider a person's base amount of Fortune to be neutral luck. Bad luck from a technical perspective, would be a negative amount of Fortune (i.e. Fortune that misguides you into bad outcomes), but I don't think you can achieve that with F-chromium, like I said before. However, bad luck could arguably be considered any amount of Fortune below your base amount of Fortune. It's tricky to talk about, because we have the concept of good and bad luck in our world, and it seems that Fortune--this innate knowledge of the future--is being used to explain it in the Cosmere. To be honest, we really don't know much at all about this, so a lot of what I'm arguing here is just stuff that makes sense to me based on what we do know. F-duralumin, admittedly, does affect others a bit more directly than other Feruchemical powers. However, that's simply because Connections, by nature, have to connect two separate things. You could think of it as storing your own Connection to others, which inevitably affects them as well as you. A-copper, an internal power does affect other people, so it's not necessarily a rule that a power cannot directly affect something outside of the user and be considered internal. I think that Fortune only affects the user. That's one of the main differences between chromium working by storing futuresight or just simple "luck." If it could influence things outside of the user, then chromium compounding would be absolutely broken. So, in your example, no, I don't think the wagon would get there. If you had any way to influence where it went, and enough Fortune then, yes, but otherwise, I don't think so.