Leviathan

Spoilers for Warbreaker

A random thing that came to me last night while reading Oathbringer is on the topic of Stormlight healing (or any investiture healing really, but lets stick with the place where it's so common that it literally falls from the sky). On an unrelated note, STAY AWAY FROM THE WIKI, I just accidentally spoilered myself while checking the name of something for this post We know from WoB that Stormlight essentially heals your physical self to match your cognitive self, hence why some 'injuries' don't heal like the Bridge 4 tattoos and Kaladin's brands because the person's self image essentially says "Those are part of Me". Lets start looking at that and jumping to some logical extensions. Age: Does this mean that if you often draw on Stormlight, you're essentially going to stop aging for as long as your self image says "I'm a person of X age", Stormlight will just keep you at that age? We do know that holding a lot of Breath seems to slow the aging process. Conversely, if someone's self image is that of an older person than they physically are (say a teenager who has had to look after his baby siblings all his life and therefore 'sees' himself as an adult), would Stormlight healing actually *age* them when they used it? Very minor spoiler here for early Oathbringer. I am unsure if this was in Words of Radiance or not. Lasting Injury: Would someone who sees a particular injury as truly part of themselves simply *not* heal that thing? eg, if Renarin truly sees himself as someone with Epilepsy who requires glasses (as opposed to a healthy person with those inflicted upon him) then would this prevent his eyes or brain from healing? Transgender people: And now lets take things a bit further. If Stormlight heals your body to match your self image, then what about transgender people? Does this mean that they could essentially change their body to match how they are inside by taking in enough Stormlight? Deliberately warping self image: And now we're going off the reservation and to places unknown. What if you found a Parshendi baby and raised them Alethi, using Lightweaving (or possibly even cosmetics) on them their entire life so that they always see themselves as Alethi, with no clue that they're actually an entirely different species, and then once their self image has stabilised, pour Stormlight into them. Would their very species change to match their self image of being Alethi? What about other similar things? Could you raise someone as 'knowing' that they used to have horns and a tail, but these were cut off when they were a baby in a grievous act of violence, so that their image of themselves includes "I should have horns and a tail but I was maimed" and then have Stormlight 'heal' those imagined injuries? Could you imagine a Truthwatcher Dominatrix, someone who specialises in warping people's self image with psychology and lightweaving and then using Progression to heal them to match their new self? Anyways, that's my thoughts/theory, I'd be curious to hear what people think the limits of Stormlight are

Killing a regenerator is a pretty standard topic. In the case of a Gold Compounder, with insane amounts of gold that's been implanted internally to prevent removal? Bury them alive in concrete. They'll either die (eventually) or wish they could die. The important things is basically just "Give him a constant source of damage and no way of escaping it". Chains and such aren't as helpful, since when the bit of him that's chained up burns through he'll just walk free of the chains. Just trick him into entering a large metal box (shipping container), lock the door, fill it with concrete and then bury it all.

Granted. The Pizza contains Potassium Benzoate

I wish that I could change my body at will to match my gender identity...

Random crazy theory: Dalinar's request to the Nightwatcher was something along the lines of "The ability to best serve my brother and his Kingdom" or something of the like. What happened is a piece of the mind/soul of one of the Heralds was stapled into his brain. It lay mostly dormant for years until the reading of the Way of Kings triggered it, leading to him stringently following the Codes, and getting visions from the Shard who set 'him' (the Heralds) their eternal duty. This is also one of the reasons he's such a powerful warrior, he has a piece of a centuries skilled being attached to him, and he can subconsciously utilise Stormlight in the right circumstances (hence Adolin's comments about how Dalinar "seemed to glow" during the fight with the Greatshell in book one). Unfortunately this piece 'stapled over' the memories of his Wife.

Gotta admit, right up until the end I thought Steelheart's weakness was going to be either: 1) Can only be harmed by someone who believes he's a hero (hence why he sends out all those messages about slaughtering people who never existed, even while he makes a stable empire with power and water and generally better lives than most. People have to believe that he's a villain otherwise he becomes powerless and can't help anyone, so he does as much good as he can within that model without anyone questioning it). 2) Can only be harmed by someone not attempting to harm him (hence whey the accidental graze hurt him).

I'm imagining a Mistborn fighting against a non-flight capable radiant just Flying a while up in the air and popping a Cadmium bubble and just staying there until the Radiant either gets annoyed and leaves, or drains their stormlight reserves

I should possible clarify my OP I'm looking for superstitions from fictional works, rather than just making up random superstitions.

So! I need a bunch of superstitions and/or things involving the number 13 from fictional works (don't care if it's games, books, tv, movies, etc). Anyone able to help me out? Random superstitions and such from media you happen to have seen recently? *Edit* To clarify, I'm looking for superstitions from fictional works, rather than randomly made up superstitions.

Clearly there is only one logical explanation. That blade is actually a giant Hemalurgic spike, which has taken the Investiture of an honourblade and its Herald at some point in the past. Taln is an imposter (possibly a Kandra) from Scadrial who worldhopped, killed the original Herald and stole his power (just to see if it was possible), and then went "Aw crap, there's more Heralds.. I'd better play along for a while so they don't kill me..." After a bunch of cycles he became kinda indoctrinated (or maybe saw that it was so important and knew he'd better keep it up) and just kept doing it. And that's why Taln kept up his cycle for so much longer than the other Heralds, who abandoned their posts. He was an imposter and so had been doing it a LOT less time than the others had.

I just read that as carving crystal is hard because, well, it's a hard material and I don't really see Sel as having a lot of diamond-bit carving implements around.

I was going to mention the same thing. Loooot of people who could potentially fit the requirements of Dominion & Devotion in the kink community. Hell, the Lord Ruler was partway there himself. "I must subjugate you in order to protect you" isn't that uncommon a thing.

Eh, they put a crossbow bolt through his head and ruined his brain, I'd say it was a pretty good attempt. They may not know about the local healing abilities and even if they do, they could think "Great! Either we kill him outright or they heal his head and they're left with a vegetable that they eventually need to kill themselves after he's found out, *and* the Heritage faction get discredited for covering it up and ruling for themselves." No way they could have known that it'd be possible for Shai to Forge a soul

So.... I feel a little embarassed... I *completely* missed the TLR/Kelsier thing with the Southerners until I read it here. Maybe it would have twigged to me if I'd read the OT more recently than the month they came out? And what, did Harmony just resurrect him afterwards? Are we sure that this isn't just a Kandra running around with Kel's old bones? Totally called Telsin being a mole, like, that one was obvious as obvious to me, though not that she was higher ranked. Also.. holy hell a Mistborn/Feruchemist would end up nuttily powerful across the Cosmere if you can Compound the Investiture to make yourself stronger with that ability than you were before...

1. What would your power/secondary power be? Shadow/darkness manipulation and the usual extras (intangibility, teleportation, flight, etc) and Electricity manipulation/projection. Tiny tertiary power of being able to swap gender 2. What is your weakness? Being called out for breaking social/gender norms/stereotypes 3. What is your cheesy name? Tempest 4. In what way does your inevitable evil manifest itself (why do ordinary people really hate you?) (S)he will come down like a hammer on anyone policing gender stereotypes, social norms of things like appearance, trying to impose religious laws on the unwanting, any form of sexual assault or breach of consent, basically any attempt to go "No, THIS is how you're suppose to look/act/think" to another person. Sounds kinda noble, right? But what about that tiny shred of doubt at the back of your mind of if you've ever inadvertently restricted someone's freedom of expression, or laughed at someone because of how they choose to dress, or warned someone not to do something? Better sidle away just in case...

That was my understanding as well. Heck, I thought it was listed in the first book somewhere actually, around the bit where one of them is speculating on how terrifying a Mistborn would be. Basically, Sazed/Harmony went "No more full Metalborn".

I'd... never heard of that being called Compounding before. I thought that was just standard Feruchemical tapping, and Compounding was strictly the "Store and burn" method combining Allomancy & Feruchemy.

As a matter of interest, where are you getting this "the more you compound the more you lose" thing? Because everything I've seen about Compounding strictly says that you get more out of it than you put in and I can't find anything about diminishing returns. On the other hand, dear gods the size of the metalmind, I didn't even consider that. That'd be terrifying!

Well, except that Compounding explicitly means you get more out of the equation than you put in. I'm not sure that exact numbers have ever been advised but if say Compounding doubles what you put in then you'll hit relativistic and beyond speeds quite easily. I mean, you store an hour of double moving speed and compound it for two hours, compound again for four, eight, sixteen, thirty two.. As Crichton said "Okay boys and girls, here are the rules. Find a penny, pick it up. Double it, you've got two pennies. Double it again - four. Double it 27 more times, and you've got a million dollars and the IRS all over your chull. Round and round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows, but it all adds up...quick." Ah, well WoB trumps my random theorying I'd have to say that not being able to hit the speed of light would (mathematically speaking) be a physics issue rather than a 'can't store up enough speed' issue.

It's probably wrong that my brain went straight to a Speed compounder pulling a Flash to move at relativistic speeds and hurl a spaceship like a discuss, isn't it? .... actually.. that's another thought... Speed tapping is quite linear in Mistborn. ie, you store ten hours of speed in a metalmind and you can move at ten times normal speed for an hour. What happens if you store up enough speed and then tap it all at once to move at two, three, ten, fifty times the speed of light?...

In Prof's case I can certainly see something like: Prof gets powers, Prof massacres his students, Prof goes to kill Tia, "The power of Love" strikes and he has a momentary BSOD at what he's done, which is enough to snap him out of it and fight off the corruption (especially if he, accidentally or deliberately, then Gifts his powers to Tia). When he stops the ObliterBomb (love the word) he's not only using a massive amount of power for the first time in what, a decade or more, he's also had David whispering in his ear like a Devil on his shoulder for the last year going "It's okay Prof, you can control it, you can be a Hero instead, I know you don't like it, but you've proved that you can fight the corruption, you can be one of the Good Epics....". So a big chunk of power hits his conscious mind, and David's ongoing talking has eroded his subconscious resistance enough that the dam breaks and he goes full Limelight in an instant. Dawnslight is an interesting case. Maybe because he literally couldn't lash out and feel the deaths of everyone nearby the corruption had a different effect on him. Also, the fruits seem to have a drug-like effect, at least over time, on those who eat them, Dawnslight's fortune cookies 'talk' like a stereotypical surfer dude at times. Maybe Dawnslight has simply been high on whatever is being pumped through his IV for all these years and that's affected his personality and Rending?

Agreed! It would have also made an excellent bit of conflict when David & Prof found out "Why in Calamity do you think I do this? This is as good as I can make this place without the other Epics getting suspicious, calling me a Hero and murdering us all!!" I appreciate that, thankyou I've actually been trying to find dodgy PDF copies online because I'm chomping at the bit waiting for it to arrive

So. I finished Steelheart a couple of days ago (yes yes, rather late, I know. The second book will arrive on my doorstep in the next week sometime). Quite enjoyed it, though found it quite predictable in a lot of ways. I read a couple of reviews, and one pointed out that while everyone in their book club found it predictable, they pretty much all predicted different things! So I thought I'd ask the question: What did *you* predict? Personally, I predicted: 1) That Megan was an illusionist epic with reincarnation powers (illusionist because of first the illusionary motorcycle and then the elevator shaft, both because of the seeming illusion and because Megan started going megalomaniac straight after. Reincarnator because when she died I'm like "It really doesn't feel like that kind of book. And reincarnation just got mentioned..). Didn't pick that she was Firefight though. 2) Prof was an epic. This one took me a while, but when he did his "Save David" thing it was confirmed for me. A couple of inklings earlier what with his "doesn't want to use them" thing, and "I don't care if it's broken David, try and use it anyway" bits. 3) Steelheart's Weakness. I actually didn't quite get this one. My predictions were either the "Can only be harmed when you're not intending to" or "Can only be harmed by someone who believes he's a hero." I did actually wonder for a chunk of it if Steelheart really *was* the first Epic Hero, but he deliberately made himself into a villain because he could be harmed by anyone who thought him a hero. Those were the major ones. What about you guys?

How on earth did I not spot that? Woohoo!! I have another book to read!!! Thanks Dahak