Steel Speedster

Imagine that you're a Lurcher and you're standing at the edge of the freeway. You suddenly Pull on one of the cars as it is passing by. What happens? Is it like tethering yourself to the car, causing you to instantly accelerate to the car's speed as you are Pulled behind it? Or does it accelerate you just as fast in the same direction as if the car was completely stationary (which almost certainly results in the car leaving your range before you catch up to it)? Essentially, what I'm wondering is, does it make any difference if an object is moving when you Pull on it? When it comes to things like coins and bullets, there isn't much of a difference, because their mass is so small that it doesn't significantly affect the person pulling, but what happens when the moving object is much bigger than the person? Does the momentum of the other object get transferred into you, or is it merely an attractive force that accelerates the two objects towards each other?

Wouldn't withdrawing 25000 Breaths from your scarf stun you? Disregarding that, even if they successfully took out five heralds in their first go, it would take time for them to say the words necessary to get their extra Breaths back and send them into the heralds, which would probably be enough time for at least the heralds with Gravitation or Abrasion to get close. The plan relies on the Scholars being perfectly coordinated. If they mess up just slightly (e.g. two of them stun the same herald leaving another in a position to strike back, they don't kill the herald quick enough after they're stunned, etc.) they are left without Breaths and essentially helpless. There's also only one Nightblood, so even if they managed to stun all 10 heralds, they wouldn't have enough time to kill them all with Nightblood, unless they were grouped together in a nice little clump. Killing them with anything else wouldn't work because the heralds could easily heal it off.

There have already been a lot of posts trying to fit the Shards into some system of organization, usually based on the Dawnshards. I'm not really bringing anything new on that front. What I'm interested in investigating is whether the numbers associated with Shard's has any relation to how the Shards might be mapped. First off, a few of WOBs about Shard numbers: Given these three somewhat contradictory seeming statements, my theory would be that each Shard has an associated number, but it doesn't necessarily show up anywhere in that Shard's motif. So, I've been messing around with fitting the Shards into a table mapped to the Dawnshards like this: I'm basing this off of the theory that UNITE, SURVIVE, and CHANGE are three of the Dawnshards (with CHANGE already being confirmed in Dawnshard (the book).) I'm not really interested in debating whether this is the case or not. I'm mainly interested in the numbers aspect, which likely could work with any other system organization. There are a lot of alternate theories, but this is the one I currently subscribe to. If you want to know my reasons, they are given, briefly here: There are a few Shards whose numbers are known for certain: 16 for Preservation, 10 for Honor, and 9 for Odium. In addition, a couple Shards are not completely confirmed, but possibly hinted at. Namely, 5 for Endowment and 13 for Virtuosity. (WOBs): So, if we put those in, we end up with this: Moving on to speculation... I am fairly convinced that Ruin's number is 11, as it crops up a lot in regard to Ruin-related things. The 11th metal for example. Another is that Inquisitors were originally given 9 - 11 spikes. Cultivation's number is likely 3, which appears a lot on Roshar alongside 9 and 10. There are 3 Shards, 3 moons, and most significantly, 3 people (that we know of) who were directly granted a boon by Cultivation. This is where I think that my number system really gets some credence. This places Ruin and Cultivation in the same column, which, (because of the order I put the columns,) is the CHANGE column--the one I would have put both in regardless of their numbers. Beyond this, I don't think I can predict the specific number of any of the Shards, but I can still try to fit them into a column. The remaining Shards at this point are Dominion, Devotion, Autonomy, Ambition, Whimsy, Valor, Invention, Mercy, and the unknown Shard that wants to hide and survive. That last one seems pretty likely to belong in the SURVIVE column based on that wording. Mercy also seems to fit there the best. Meanwhile, Invention definitely goes in CHANGE. From here on out, most of the Shards could potentially fit in multiple columns but given that the UNITE column is the most open, I'm putting Dominion and Valor in that one, as both seem to fit fairly well. That gives us this: That leaves Autonomy, Ambition, Whimsy, and Devotion, with one spot in each column left. At this point, I'll note that the leftmost column seems like it may be related to emotion. The Shards in it are about giving, hatred (who also happens to claim that he is all emotions), and art. Whimsy and Devotion both seem like they could fit in this column, but to me, Devotion has connotations of service (i.e. actions) rather than mainly emotion. Therefore, I would put Whimsy in the first column and Devotion in the second. Autonomy prioritizes the self, so it fits well in the SURVIVE category, while Ambition could be seen as the desire to change something and therefore seems to fit moderately well in the CHANGE column. Our final chart looks like this: The biggest thing that's missing is a unifying theme across the rows as well as the columns. At the moment, I don't have any ideas about what this might be, so I'll leave it at that. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and let me know what you think!

Great! Thanks! Alright, I’ll keep that in mind! It’s something I’ve thought about. At the moment, my thought is that I’d rather avoid that complication for now. However, at the rate he’s going, he probably would eventually become a Savant, so that could definitely be a future development. I have had some ideas about what it could do. Alright, I’ll get that posted soon. I’m not planning on her abilities having changed between eras, so it will mostly be personality and motivation changes. EDIT: here it is:

Jerrin: Thav: @Koloss17 If I continue using Fenna in this era, there would be a few changes to her motivations and such. Would you want a new character sheet to reflect those changes? I don't remember what the rules are regarding characters continuing from one era to the next.

Alright, makes sense. Thanks again!

The UFO guild thread says no bonds to Invested entities such as spren or aethers. It’s probably safe to assume that if its Investiture, it’s not allowed, unless it’s Investiture which is specifically used to counter other Investiture.

After hearing the details about UFO, I'm most likely not going to use that character right now. It's a concept I've had for a while, so I'll probably just toss him back in storage for now. If I do use him, he'll probably be separate from UFO.

Okay, I figured that was the case. Thanks! I assume the exception for Leechers would extend to any form of Investiture that has the sole purpose of cancelling other Investiture? For example, suppression fabrials? Also, considering that Breaths give passive Investiture use, would UFO want its agents to get rid of those if they carried them?

Okay, that's definitely an interesting idea. That could actually go in his flaws as well. That should definitely help. I figured. They might not technically belong in motivations in that case, since it's more being used to show an aspect of his personality, but it probably doesn't really matter. One thing you could potentially do is swap F-electrum and F-zinc so that F-electrum is his in-born power and F-zinc is from his spike. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it sounds like F-electrum is a lot more ingrained into his character than F-zinc is. In my mind, it also makes more sense that--considering that there's a limited number of spikes one can use--he would steal something really good like F-zinc rather than a weaker one like F-electrum. To me, this arrangement also seems a bit more thematically appropriate, with F-electrum, which he relies on and is addicted to, being a power he's always had, and F-zinc--one of the more powerful abilities--being one that he stole would highlight his desire to become stronger. But really, it doesn't make much of a difference. Whichever way you want to do it works perfectly fine. No problem!

Very cool! Here are my thoughts: First off, there are a couple things that aren't mentioned in the backstory that probably should be. For one, what is the origin of his nickname "the Shardthief"? Secondly, who did he get the F-electrum spike from, and why did he want it? Lastly, what was the reason that his gang betrayed them? Was there some specific event that made them angry with him? Did they resent him for a long time and finally got fed up? I'll note that as he stands, this character comes across as pretty much completely evil and unsympathetic. You could try to make him a bit more morally nuanced, but if you want him to be like that, I don't think that will be a problem. As far as his motivations go, three of them involve finding some external item to make himself more powerful, and it might be a bit hard for him to actually go about trying to achieve these goals. Gettin his hands on anti-Investiture is one thing (there's going to be a guild in this era with anti-Investiture as one of their weapons), but I have no idea where you would find lerasium in Alleycity, and Ascending is downright impossible since there are no Shards in the Alleyverse. In his loose ends you mention that he seeks a new gang and vengeance. Those are good motivations, so I would add them to his motivations section as well as loose ends. Personally, I think he looks pretty balanced, but you'll have to see what @Koloss17 thinks. I'm also curious about why you gave him F-electrum in his set. It's a pretty weak ability, so it shouldn't affect blanace much, but is there a particular reason you included it in his powerset? His backstory states that he lived in Elendel, but no Radiants live on Scadrial at any point in time that we've yet seen. It would probably be a lot easier to just move his backstory to the Alleyverse. It's perfectly allowed to have your character be born in the Alleyverse, and it would barely require any changing. Change Elendel slums to the Mistwarrens and delete the sentence that mentions him entering the Alleyverse, and you should be good. (If you haven't yet, looking at the worldbuilding section of this thread might help you get a better idea of Alleycity.) I'm a bit confused by the character of Reana. The first time she's mentioned, it says that she seeks to bring him back to the light. But in the backstory, she sold him out to the police. Obviously, she was in a tough situation, so it's perfectly possible that she still cared about him, but she then also went on to marry someone else, which really signals that she doesn't. This seems a bit hard to justify, although if you were to expand her characterization, you might be able to explain it. Otherwise, unless this Elantrian that she married is important, if you forgo the detail of her remarrying, I think it makes it a lot more believable that she still cares. Lastly, who is this "Jars" mentioned in the loose ends? From the context, I would assume this is supposed to be Kelivar. An auto-correct error? Hopefully this isn't too much to take in at once. I kind of let myself nitpick. I think that for the most part, the character is quite solid! If this wall of text is confusing, I would say that the main points to focus on would be points 3 and 5, which should be pretty simple fixes.

Hello! I think there’s going to be a new era 8 character thread, but there is not one yet. However, you could post it to the character discussion thread for now. That’s the place where you can get feedback and ideas before submitting a character for approval.

@Stormlightsong Sounds cool! I’ll definitely be considering possible characters for this! (I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to post anything on the UFO thread other than character approval requests, so to be safe, I’m posting here.) I noticed reading over the UFO rules that some forms of Investiture aren’t technically banned. The rules prohibit magic that is genetic or obtained through a bond. Notably, Investiture such as Hemalurgy and Awakening are neither. (AonDor probably isn’t either, but I’m not sure what category it would fall under.) I’m also curious about whether Invested items such as dead Shardblades/plate or fabrials are disallowed. (It strikes me, after reading the rules, that a former Radiant carrying their dead spren blade could be an interesting start for a character concept, although I also understand that one of the main points of this guild is to allow greater opportunities for completely Investiture-less individuals.) You may already be aware of some or all of these points, but I thought I’d point them out just in case. (Trying to poke holes in things is something of a specialty of mine, so I apologize for that.)

Fenna, Smokestack, Fenna’s Apartment, 2 days after the Blood Moon Fenna dropped the iron bar to the floor, its Feruchemical charge siphoned into the metalminds clasped around her legs. The apartment was empty, her scant belongings stowed in a small pack that lay ready by her feet. Disgust rose within her as she surveyed the small room. Disgust that she had lived like this for so many months. Disgust that despite all her efforts, it had come to this. She had tried to be good. Tried to leave her past behind and start again. But the universe seemed determined not to give her that chance. She had fought her hardest—done her utmost to save as many people as she could. Fought until she couldn’t fight anymore. And it had all amounted to nothing. What more was she supposed to have done? It was time to stop trying—to stop pretending that she could be a decent person. She wasn’t. She was selfish. A coward. A killer. Fenna slung the pack over her shoulder with a clinking sound. It was filled with a large stock of pewter vials. The metal, it turned out, was quite easy to come by if one was willing to break a few laws in the process. Without a backwards glance, Fenna strode out of the room and made her way down to the streets. After the horror at the constabulary, she doubted that law enforcement would be on her trail any time soon, but she didn’t intend to give them any opportunity to find her. This was how it always should have been: whatever it took to survive. Fenna slipped down a side street and turned her steps towards the dark slums of the Mistwarrens.

With era 8 beginning, it's time to bring in the first characters I submitted! I thought I'd post them here to see if anyone has some feedback before I submit them (and because we don't have a new era 8 character thread.) Without further ado, here they are. Jerrin: Thav: If I recall correctly, one of Koloss' concerns was power level. I don't remember if we resolved that, but I have added a few more flaws since then, so feedback on power level would be appreciated in particular.

I'm not going to make any final decisions about this until I hear a bit more about what this era will be like, but at this point, I'm considering not including Fenna in this one. The ideas I have for her next character arc don't fit super well, and I almost think it will be better for her character development to have some off-screen time before she reappears. Additionally, this would mean I'm not doing as many characters and make it easier to add another one if I felt like it. @Koloss17 is there going to be a separate Era 8 character thread, or are we doing character submissions here? I've just had a new character idea who could be in the new guild. However, he would very much be pursuing his own ends. Essentially the concept could be summed up as a mad scientist, if said science were in fact Hemalurgy. One thing I'm wondering is how thoroughly this guild would check its members for Investiture, because if he could get away with it, he might be spiked. Otherwise, he personally wouldn't be spiked, but he might have people working for him that are (although I'm not sure of the logistics of that. Would I be able to create NPCs that serve as minions for him?) The reason I thought of creating this character is to tie into the backstory of the other characters I'm submitting for this era. I'm not sure how great of an idea it is to be playing the main enemy of my own characters, seeing as it could go a direction where my characters are just fighting each other and not interacting with anyone else (although being aware of that possibility, I could be careful not to let it happen.) Assuming I avoid that pitfall, however, I think creating this character could tie my characters into the main plot very nicely. Any feedback on this idea is welcome!

That could definitely be true, but I think that there are probably additional A-steel bindpoints. Even if there weren't, as long as there were additional bindpoints for whatever spike was in A-steel's place, they could just switch them out and put that one somewhere else. There are between 200 and 300 bindpoints on the human body, so I don't think that there could possibly be spikes that only have one or two bindpoints. If one were to assume that each bindpoint only takes a single type of spike, that's an average of 11 - 18 bindpoints available for each type of spike, and considering that Inquisitors had 11 spikes at most, they would have plenty of places to put each type of spike. Physical Feruchemical powers use pewter spikes, though it doesn't matter much, because Inquisitors weren't given any Feruchemical powers except F-gold. So, if we're going on the assumption that all steel spikes would share bindpoints, which may or may not be the case, the Inquisitors would have two other steel spikes for A-tin and A-pewter. It's possible that there simply weren't enough bindpoints, but I've never gotten the impression that running out of places for spikes is a concern for a Hemalurgist. I think that there are most likely many bindpoints available for each type of spike and that Inquisitors had eye spikes for other reasons discussed above. Oh yeah. That was my fault. I said back first, but you're right.

My Skybreaker and Elsecaller scores are always very close. However, I don't feel like I am very Elsecaller-like at all, so I always count Skybreaker as my "official" order. To be fair, I think I'm just a bit of an odd case for the quiz to handle. None of the orders jump out at me as being obviously the one I belong to.

I don't know if they knew that Oracles and Seers were the same thing, but they certainly knew that they could harvest spikes from them. There are still the following problems: Like duralumin Mistings, it would have been very hard to find them, since they didn't know about or use their powers. As JustQuestin points out, since they didn't have cadmium, they would need to use atium spikes to steal temporal powers. I don't feel like this is problematic or anything though. We don't really see any evidence that they gained any temporal powers under Ruin's control. Some of them got duralumin, and a lot of them got a few Feruchemical powers, but most of them already had A-atium, and it didn't really matter anyway since they didn't have atium to burn.

Oh yeah, I forgot it would require an atium spike. I guess that means that duralumin is the only power it would have made sense for them to take.

The Coppermind mentions it is possible that they don't need metals (the citation is from TLM, which I don't have a copy of handy), but we don't seem to have confirmation of this. However, I would agree that this could quite possibly be the case, in which case that is a practical reason why the spikes would be in the eyes.

From my understanding, you don't need spikes through the eyes in order to have this ability. Any Coinshot or Lurcher can learn to do it. So, if the spikes were somewhere else, they would be able to see via iron/steelsight and still have their regular vision, although could argue that with access to normal vision they would have less incentive to learn this trick and it might take longer (or they might never learn.) Yeah, I suppose that must be the case, since removing both eye spikes works to kill them as well.

And they also spiked Mistborn for duralumin spikes. I think being able to Compound health wouldn't be considered too wasteful. A-atium was the only other ability they could only get from Mistborn, and a lot of Inquisitors already had that. Additionally, they didn't even have a supply of atium, so having that ability would have been pretty pointless. It's perfectly possible that Marsh does not have an A-gold spike, but I don't think anyone would consider it a waste if they knew it would let them Compound.

I recently asked myself a simple question that I had never thought about before. Why do Inquisitors have spikes through their eyes? There seems to be no practical reason why that had to be the case. I briefly wondered if those were perhaps the only bindpoints for A-steel and A-iron spikes, but we have at least one example that disproves this. Zane had an A-steel spike, and it was in his back, rather than the eye. This means that there are in fact other places the spikes could have gone that would not result in loss of sight. Sure, intimidation could be a reason, but I don't think intimidation is worth losing one of your senses. The answer that I believe to be correct is this: the Lord Ruler did not want his Inquisitors to be as powerful as possible. We have multiple examples of things that the Lord Ruler did to deliberately make them easier to control. He didn't let them wear protection over their linchpin spike, because he wanted to be able to pull it out if need be. He also didn't let them have any Feruchemical powers, except for F-gold (and apparently F-atium in some cases.) So, I think for the same reason, he was willing to sacrifice their ability to see for the intimidation factor of having henchmen with giant chunks of metal sticking through their heads. So, the eye spikes are not the ideal way of doing things, at least not the ideal way for the recipients of those spikes. However, if we're talking about trying to make the most effective Inquisitor possible, all the spikes would most likely be much smaller and less obvious.