The White Drake

Granted, first would have been best. Your issue is... my posting style is assertive? And, double-check the record, NOBODY challenged the reference (only a statement about canon policy in general). Paragraph two: I suggest you go back and check that record over again. There was one point of 'pushback' to my claim (which I countered separately), and no reference to the book nor any request for the text. I would have had no reason to admit it was secondhand. And you're somehow trying to paint me as some sort of deceiver for it, and using toxic wording to boot. I mean, just look at this line you wrote as if coming from me. 'oh, I've never seen it and am not providing it, will someone else provide it to prove me right, which I am, see my earlier post?' See my ACTUAL post 'I note, however, that I am getting this information secondhand. If someone could provide the exact text, that would be much appreciated.' See how it's aggressive and accusatory? I might even say it's starting to get toxic. I must ask you to stop such behavior before we need a moderator. Frankly this whole subject seems detrimental to continue, and is derailing things. This post addresses it more than the actual topic. Give it one more post if you must (for I know you collect last words like badges of honor (probably no one will get that reference but I couldn’t resist)), then we ought to shut it down. It's in WaT. Adolin arrives outside the dome to witness the aftermath, and there is a remark in the text about blast patterns showing Fused dropped rocks from high above. I was arguing that they either do, or, if having the capability and choosing not to use it, it must be because they don't need to and so shouldn't be considered so much weaker because of it. Remember the whole thing was a point about them being worth more than a handful of hazekillers. Update: Doing more research, it seems external Lashings do use up Heavenly One Light quickly (Sigzil in WaT chapter 67). This doesn't make sense to me since they must have plentiful Light to heal from Shardblade wounds, but perhaps their external efficiency is simply terrible. I searched all the Sigzil POVs and didn't find it, so it seems I was mistaken. I did find a statement that Masked Ones 'mostly' just change their own features. It seems evidence is piling up that some limitation keeps external powers being used much by the Fused (though I hold the lore blurbs as canon, and thus still assert they could do so in emergencies.)

Maybe, but our world spent thousands of years at more or less the same technological level. Do we even know if a illusion flashbang is possible? More Fused were arriving over time as reinforcements. That fleet was supposedly carrying tens of thousands of troops. With only 4,000 Fused total, and 9 Brands, if every last Masked One were sent there, each one would need to make illusions of roughly a hundred singers 24/7. I believe around half of Fused are mad, so half the number avaliable and thus double how many illusions each Masked One needs to make. Even if viable, that's a huge investment, when civilians in uniforms worked pretty well, and Odium wanted his Invested at Narak. As is, the fake attack on Thaylenah cost him practically nothing. Alas, in case you missed my edit, I don't have the book right now, so finding it will need to wait until tomorrow at least.

I recognize this, but with a lack of evidence either way, the more likely one to me seems to be simply inhaling it. Why are you pressing so hard on the 'you claimed it to firmly' front when I literally told you it was secondhand? I mean... look at your own post. Your example of what you think I should have said literally includes the very thing you attack as poor form. I don't even know what you want at this point. We're arguing over an argument about an argument at this point, and I don't think it's going anywhere. I don't believe we've ever seen Illumination used for a flashbang. It may not be known technique. Point. She could have just been waiting, but also point. She didn't mind getting slowed down. She wanted more time to study. It's the same Surge, so it seems logical that the same limitation (having trouble with formerly living things), would apply however you use it. They may have (though the thicker walls were advantageous for Deepest Ones). We don't see enough of them actually fighting to tell- only clips. They were said not to have many Fused. We don't see any Altered Ones on that front. Most of their Fused come in reinforcements later, so stealing and using the Soulcaster could very well have simply been more expedient. There aren't enough Masked Ones for the fleet sent at Thaylenah. But I do vaguely recall a mention of a battalion being lost at Narak because Masked Ones made an illusion that sent them running over into chasm. I'll see if I can find it. Edit: Shoot. I don't have my copy of Wind and Truth on hand. This will have to be memory-supported only until tomorrow. You can keep moving though. I thought it was all of them. Hmm. That would be impossible. They'd have to kill them all very rapidly. But they did always do it after a particularly huge battle, maximizing the number of dead Fused at the time of their return to Braize. That just doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, it's literally called a 'lore blurb', containing things like a Dawnchant name translation that can't possibly be mechanical. I suspect our views are irreconcilable on this point. My view is on that second paragraph, as I have said. We only even see a Masked One once. One minor quibble: Heavenly Ones do use aerial rocks as artillery strikes, though we don't know if the stones themselves are Lashed or simply carried. Correct. But what is not conjecture is they are capable of it. (By which I mean external use of Surges and having a notable amount of Light. The 'carry and draw from gemstones' bit is still muddled).

Half the reason I like it is it's so easy do mod. I figured out how just from studying the game files.

Because it's the simplest reasonable solution. Before your proposal, the only alternative I saw offered was 'they can't', which we know is wrong. Even your proposal is based on conjecture. Doing it like Radiants is the most likely way, as Fused are Radiant analogs. Yeah, you did. I meant examples of Fused when they should have used their Surges in external ways, but didn't. Heavenly Ones rarely are close to anything to Lash, and we see very little of many other Brands fighting. Demand? I didn't have the book, so I asked if anyone else did. I don't get where you found the idea that I was somehow forcing others to research my claims for me. When no-one stepped up, I went and laid hands on a copy. I fail to see how you can take 'if anyone can provide the exact text, that would be much appreciated' as some sort of demand and 'poor form'. You say I presented my claim to strongly, but I did state it was secondhand. I was not, as you said, 'passing on things I heard wherever as an argument', which is where I take umbridge. Your statement was very aggressive and accusatory. My reasoning on external applications is simple: We don't have consistent evidence they don't use them externally much, because we just don't see very much of most Fused fighting. Magnified Ones and Husked Ones are the exception to being able to use them externally, and Heavenly One combat styles favor keeping distance over close-in Lashing (but the one time one was grappled, it did Lash it's enemy). The other Brands we barely see fight. We've seen one Flowing One in action once, in a situation where effecting the area would be useless. We've seen one Altered One fight once. We've seen a single melee attack from a Focused One. We've never seen a Masked One in the vicinity of any enemy, or a Devastating One at all. The only Fused I can say we've ever seen not apply their Surges externally when they should have is the Deepest Ones in Urithiru when the counterattack was headed down the steps. We know they can and we know they have notable Light. So, from my point of view, it is theories on limitations to them performing external feats that need evidence, not the other way around. From my point of view: Fused can use Surges externally: Fact. Fused have a notable amount of Light: Fact. Fused have some other limitation: Theory. I wouldn't say 'never'- it did seem effective. But you have a point. Dalinar, in his own words, 'shrugged off a lost arm like a stubbed toe'. It didn't take very long at all. Armor is certainly useful, but it can fail, and then you're dead. It might surpass a lesser form of healing, but Light healing is incredibly powerful. The body glows because it holds Voidlight, just as a Radiant glows from holding Stormlight. Holding the Light is what provides the healing, strength, speed, etc. Not what I was asking, sorry. But only ever once the Fused were sealed. How can you consider that the stat block? It's clearly a lore blurb, outside the block. Details on how they serve Odium, saying they're unsettling, a Dawnchant translation of the name, certainly can't be. The canon policy, to my understanding, is thus: mechanics are not canon, specific events (because players can effect them) are not, the rest is. That text is clearly not mechanics. Right beside the stat block is a traditional place to put lore for creatures in many RPG books.

Depends. The deep sea’s pressure levels may crush Phantom if they try that in open ocean, and it would be slow.

The fighting styles may not lead to it much, but when a Heavenly One did get grappled by what it thought was a random guard, it didn't hesitate to Lash him. By and large we simply don't see many Brands of Fused fight, and those that do have fighting styles where this wouldn't come up much. Fair. Still, they can heal from multiple Shardblade wounds, which means they must have quite a bit. Yes, I was postulating she may have transformed it the instant it touched her skin, before it actually cut. That depends entirely on the size of the creature in question. The powerful healing Light offers should offset that lack of armor. As for skill, they are considered the match of Radiants despite having only half the surges and no shapeshifting weapons. The Stormfather said 'even before they learned to wield the Surges, men could not fight them'. It was that WoB, on the logic you can't hide something to large in there, camouflaged or no. But if we have scales from other creatures, that beats that. Besides which, the whole issue is moot as a Fused's entire body can hold Light. I didn't say on-screen. I said he did, which we know is the case because he is stated to do so multiple times. He also demands the Voidlight from a gemstone El is holding. I don't see how you could think he's incapable of breathing in Light from spheres. Correct. They are two different points, one about the relative Light held by a Fused, the other about their ability to fight without Surges. Can you point to some times they failed to do so? We see very little of most Brands of Fused fighting, which makes this difficult to prove. Also, the Desolations were so close 9 out of 10 people were dead from a single one, and the Fused were so scary losing the Heralds to seal them was a necessary tradeoff for mankind's victory, every single time. Which is why I asked for someone to provide the specific text. The fact that I am not the original source of the claim does not make the claim somehow irrelevant, and I will thank you not to insult me by claiming I 'passed on secondhand things heard from wherever' when I checked to see that the original claim was cited, stated it was secondhand, and asked if anyone could help verify it, with a specific page number to look at. It certainly does not seem to fit poorly to me- we see multiple Brands of Fused use their powers externally like Radiants several times. They use the same Surges as Radiants, so it rather seems that we would need some evidence indicating they can't, rather than that they can. I have found a copy of the book. It is, in fact, from a lore blurb right beside the statblock, not a purely mechanical game function. Tis canon. Last sentence- 'they can use the Surge in nearly all the same ways as Radiants', not just 'they can change their own appearance'. There is a similar line for Deepest Ones: 'in addition to using Cohesion like a Radiant'. Thus we know for a fact that they can, and we know for a fact that they have at least enough Light to heal multiple Shardblade wounds, which is a significant amount.

Where do you draw this information from? I've seen statements that they are quite small, so small they are often not spotted among Singer remains. We know they can draw Light from them because of Lezian doing just that, and he also sees El holding what he thinks is just a normal Voidlight gem and doesn't comment on it (except to demand to be given the Light). Normally breathing in Light isn't a very visual thing, so it makes sense we wouldn't see anything if a Fused just pulled some from gemstones they were carrying. Since we know they can both hold and draw from such gemstones, and have as much Investiture as Radiants that do carry, I believe we will need something definitive to state they don't carry. This is half my frustration with Frustration. He claims, for example, that Flowing Ones are just 'faster warforms', and that some Fused are weaker than Regals, assigning them hazekiller coefficients of 2-3, when even without any Surges every Fused is a superhuman, incredibly elite regenerating soldier. I would suggest that this makes them even more dangerous. Since we've established they have the Light of a 3rd Ideal Radiant, if they can win without using any of it up, that doesn't mean they have a lack of Light that limits them, as Frustration is saying, or inability to use it externally. Rather that they are so good they don't need to. Hardly an everyday occurrence, but I do recall during the battle at the Shattered Plains, Leshwi stated Odium was offering his power to all there, and hovered off the ground mere seconds later. So at least when Odium wills it specifically, it can be replenished at rapid rates. I note, however, that I am getting this information secondhand. If someone could provide the exact text, that would be much appreciated.

You could add a bunch of little short blades to the face of your warhammer.

Any external use expends Voidlight. I was looking for something else, but found this WoB. Argent I've been trying to figure out how the Fused and the Regals get their Voidlight. Heavenly Ones seem to be able to levitate indefinitely unless they heal, which presumably expends their Light. But then the Pursuer needs to go get spheres. And then there's the Song of Prayer, which I don't understand at all. Brandon Sanderson All of the Fused have an active and an inactive way to use their Voidlight. For some of them, one is way more dramatic than the other. So you should be watching for the different brands of Fused to each have that. If they don't use it actively, they get a passive effect. And if they do use it actively, it runs out. So watch for that with them. They each only have one power, as opposed to Knights Radiant, but they have the staying power of consistency depending on what they are. The Song of Prayer. Let's just say that Odium likes his Fused being reliant upon him. Does that make sense? Argent I think it does. My assumption has been that anyone can just sing the song and ask for Investiture. Brandon Sanderson Yes, this is true, because most of the time he's not going to be paying direct attention, and it's just going to... yeah. Unfortunately he doesn't state if they carry or not, but I am afraid it demolishes your dynamic of non-Light-expending Fused. We also have WoBs stating Fused have less access to Investiture than Radiants of the Fourth Ideal, implying they do have as much as Radiants as lower Ideals. The only way I can see that working is if they carry. I suppose they could just be able to hold an insane amount, but that still means they don't have a lack of Light, which was my original point. The sword turned to dust 'as it struck her', so it may not have cut deep enough to truly be inside her body. Besides which, we know they (most Fused in general) can. The model you propose does not seem to fit with what we see in the books, the lore from the RPG, or the few WoBs I've found related thus far (though I haven't found much as of yet in that last category). Can you tell me where you got said model from? There are a number of outright untrue mechanics, especially when it comes to surges. Making fire from soulcasting is not harder than making any other essence, soulcasting stone is harder than living beings etc. etc. I am aware. The things I pointed out do not appear to fall into that category. It is worth noting the same book calls out Magnified Ones and Husked Ones as unable to use their Surge like Radiants do, as an exception to a general rule. I am no armor expert, so I will yield this. Still, they are pretty nasty on a battlefield, where they can strike with surprise at will. Thousands of years of experience should leave them good at finding weak spots in armor. But against hazekillers, not so simple.

Well, Direforms take the seas 10/10. Koloss are to stupid to operate well in ships, and Phantoms lose to many of their advantages. A Direform, however, should be able to make some very impressive jumps between ships, and operate as a sailor, not just a soldier, when push comes to shove and all hands are needed.

Your name is proving accurate, what can I say. Apologies. Other Fused do use up their Voidlight- just not for internal applications. We see them apply it in ways that expend it a number of times. I stand by that you will need hard evidence they don't carry Light. She also Soulcast something poisonous to blow into his face. The only time we ever see an Altered One use her powers (save for the huge outlier, corrupting the Sibling), and she's doing it just like a Radiant. The Stormlight World Guide states it, on pages 208-209. The same guide states Deepest Ones can manipulate stone like Stonewards. The lore in it and other RPG books is considered fully canon. I did originally think some Fused were innately different in how they could use their Surges, but it appears I was mistaken. Their different uses just come from incredible expertise. Those ones did have claws, or at least nails they were cutting people's throats with. Armor doesn't help when they strike a vulnerable spot, such as the tendon. They have from-high-above aiming, which isn't much good against a single squadron, but works just fine in a full battle. Yet they never do. Your point about the quantity Soulcasters can produce is valid, so perhaps there is another reason- Ralkalest is not very good as a metal. Breaks easily, lacks weight, and so forth. Even just a coating might break off if you hit something hard with it. Perhaps we don't see legions with it for the same reason Era 1 mistborn guards still have metal armor- it's not worth the lessened effectiveness against regular troops when you can arm just Invested response squads with it.

It doesn't mention Aon Tia though. Just says 'most are lightspeed, with a few exceptions'.

What. You think the Voidlight a Fused can hold in itself can allow regeneration from multiple Shardblade wounds? We know for a fact they can breath in Voidlight and that they can carry it. The damage dealt to get past a Heavenly One's healing doubtless included enough to get them to use up that which they carry, same as harming Radiants. Nothing ever says they do not carry it, so you're going to need to back up your claim with more than it not being a focus. Them not doing so would be ridiculous. I would think them doing so is so obvious it doesn't even need mentioning- and the fact that it is called out Husked Ones cannot, something which wouldn't be bothered with if none of them did, backs this up. Nor did that Fused you reference remain in the battle as you claim. We DO see it within the books. We do, in fact, see Altered Ones using Transformation exactly the way combat Soulcasters do. We see Heavenly Ones Lash other people and Deepest Ones use their Surge to make things slippery in exactly the same way Edgedancers do. It is confirmed Masked Ones can make external illusions. It is confirmed Deepest Ones can manipulate rock exactly like Radiants. These are not just a 'suggestions'- it is a fact that they are capable of all this. A dozen men slipping around on the ground can be killed easily, and as for stopping power, it has the greatest literal stopping of all, preventing enemy movement. Does no good? The tendons are down there, and a man with a cut tendon is out of the fight, and possibly his career as a soldier. Allow me to reference my original claim. 'and can drop rocks for aerial attacks as powerful as catapult stones.' I don't know why you assumed they were Lashed (though they may have been to make them easier to carry), but you are arguing against a position I don't even hold, and that doesn't change the lethality in any case. You have some exaggeration there. Soulcasting makes it affordable enough nations can afford protected rooms, but they hardly make anything 'cheap and available' on a large scale. If they did, there would be serious inflation with anything they could make, and we know there isn't, since they can still be used to make valuable mineral deposits. Fused are armed with Ralkalest weapons, and, as is relevant to your original claim, hazekillers may be, but it's not something the common foot soldier will have. Besides, they can still heal and transform the air and terrain.

We only see a Flowing One once. However it does indeed use an external application, showing that they can, and we have no reason to believe they would be less efficient at it than Edgedancers. I have no idea where you got the idea that they 'don't have the voidlight'- a Fused's ability to carry infused sphere is identical to that of a human. By all logical reasoning, they should perform such feats as well as or even better than (due to superior expertise) an Edgedancer. The floor is their armor. They can emerge only when they have the drop on someone, arguably making them the hardest to kill of all the Fused. No carapace and limited Light make them vulnerable if caught, but you need to catch them first. Only one guard was killed by surprise. Even without any battlefield conditions, any Fused is still an impossibly experienced, enhanced, healing elite. Didn't lose anyone? We see a man get pinned to the wall and thrown off it, and Kaladin requests to go help the wounded. We also see in Wind and Truth that they do indeed drop rocks- Adolin comments on the blast patterns of them doing so. They can carry Light just like Radiants do, and Kaladin has enough to throw a giant boulder and then some. Once again, why are you assuming Fused have less Voidlight than Radiants? They should have just as much and be even more efficient with it. Only Husked Ones and Deepest Ones are limited in their ability to carry gemstones. And Ralkalest is rare and expensive in the current era. A counter, but not a 'you don't matter anymore' one. A lot of your reasoning is based off the assumption Fused have limited Light, but where does this assumption come from?

I believe you massively undervalue some varieties of Fused. Without any Surges whatsoever, their extreme experience and capacity to heal should make just one an equal to ten men, and some of those Surges, while not necessarily the best in a 1v1, are nasty on the battlefield. Flowing Ones: Far more than just fast warforms. They can apply their Surge to other objects, and so disable the movement of entire groups, making them easy prey. A single one could topple an entire cavalry charge. Deepest Ones: Far harder to counter than you surmise. They can pick a target, ambush, kill, and withdraw. Then do it again, almost without limit. Men running around fighting for their lives are not able to keep an eye on the ground 24/7. Battle is chaos, so while a well-built, calm formation might handle them, there will always be somewhere they can find to kill. Masked Ones: Similar to Deepest Ones. They can switch faces and knife soldiers from behind, then escape in the chaos and do it again. I really don't see how you can rate them at a 2-3 when we see one take down four guards without breaking a sweat. Both Masked Ones and Deepest Ones will work, in practice, like Husked Ones, getting a kill or two before fleeing away and then repeating the whole cycle. Heavenly Ones: The fact that they were raiding Kholinar's walls for weeks and never lost a single member tells you ten soldiers won't get a kill on one of these. They only fight 1v1 in the air. They're fine striking at ground troops, and can drop rocks for aerial attacks as powerful as catapult stones. Altered Ones: Blunt force will hardly work when they can turn the weapon not just to something not sharp, but actual dust. Practically unkillable so long as they have Voidlight, and we see the sorts of things Transformation can do in battle when Jasnah fights. Dozens of oil-drenched burning enemies is only one example. Frankly I cannot see any situation where your average Misting could beat any of these at all, save for a Coinshot against a Masked One with a serious terrain advantage (plenty of anchors, and no cover for the Masked One or people to imitate).

We know it does, as when in Teod, Raoden didn't have enough power to teleport back to Elantris. He only went about fifty feet when he tried.

Not sure you quite get the mind-boggling distance you're proposing to cross... it's around 3,125,000,000 times more than our entire planet. Even if Elantris would have let Raoden cross the entire world with a single Aon, and Elantris is a single square mile, you would need a boosting Aon like Elantris over eight hundred times the size of the US, and that's just to reach the nearest star. That's fifteen times the surface area of the earth, using the most generous calculations.

The accuracy would be the lesser problem- the amount of Investiture to travel that distance in the Physical realm would be ridiculous. A city-sized amplifier let Raoden cross a sea, but to teleport across lightyears you'd need an amplifier Aon the size of a planet.

The difficultly of getting into space severely limits spaceships in practical size (until there's a breakthrough), but I can absolutely see Aonic war machines that consist of giant aon arrays on wheels or, potentially, just teleporting around. Imagine if you have an Aon Tia pointed in every direction with a solid distance parameter, you could make your mass bombardment/forcefield generator/whatever extremely mobile. Or you could build titanic Aon sets that are essentially nuclear weaponry and not need to move at all. Even that is probably small scope compared to the full potential of the magic system employed at a national level- just scaled up versions of the basics. I can't imagine what wonders Aonic magic as a science might put out.

It is possible to make a large sequence of Aons, and design an Aon to fire them all at once. So you can set it up beforehand and trigger dozens of linked aons in just a few seconds, spamming energy bolts, fire blasts, transformations, shields, healing, and simple instakill aons all at once. We also know Elantrians could just step up to a predrawn teleport plate, put a hand on it, and be transported. So you can just carry preinscribed plates around with you and press them like buttons. AonDor actually has one of the highest rapid-fire potentials of all Cosmere magic systems.

You still underestimate phantom campaign speed. A military force can march 15-20 miles in a day. A sprint can take you that distance in an hour, and that’s a normal human. In your proposed scenario with a split up enemy, there are 40 targets, but the Phantoms are more than 24 times faster than any of them. I expect them to catch them all within a week. The cavalry will not distract them long, a day at most. Horses are fast over a short distance but aren’t terribly built for endurance. I wasn’t saying the Phantoms alone should make up your entire army, but as a mobile strike force, they are unrivaled to a godly degree. Psychological impact is something these Invested units already have plenty of. At least in the Phantom’s case, I’d rather put the effort into having a second soldier than a horse. Also, since hemalurgic bindpoints are places in the body, the anatomy of a horse means you’d need a lot of work to figure out how to koloss one.

Direform is definitely the one to pick, since they will function as actual soldiers, whereas koloss are more monsters you point in the direction of the enemy. They have several problems, like needing time to bloodlust, and killing each other, or if you use allomancy to fix that, you lose control if your allomancers die. In a 1v1, I'd bet on the koloss winning, since they can get to over ten feet tall and have quintupled strength for that size. However, in group combat, trained direforms should be able to handle koloss, since they can fight as a team and with intelligence, while the koloss' only tactic is standard berserking. I would say, if anything, you are undervaluing the Phantoms. Yes, they are insanely hard to make (I did the math once and figured that the 1,000 whole army required an amount of Breaths equal to the 10th heightening at least, all entirely consumed), but they can march all day, every day, in fact they can SPRINT all day, every day. On a campaign level that makes them ridiculously fast. They can run circles around any opposing army. They can get clean through contested areas by just outrunning all pursuit, and if challenged, can just circle around until the enemy is to exhausted to keep intercepting. In effect they can strike at-will, at anything they like, even across huge distances. A small strike force of Phantoms could utterly wreck enemy supply lines and raid their territory 24/7. Without Invested to respond, nothing can catch them and they're indestructible in battle. Nor do you need koloss horses, or phantom horses. Both of them already have more than the weight of a cavalry charge behind them.

Ah. Control over where it manifests doesn't necessarily allow moving it after it has manifested (why would he care to hit the Shattered Plains so hard if he could just spirit the Well of Control away?), but just sealing it up in rock is a valid point. Scadrial doesn't have the capability to burrow through that much stone easily.

Very late, but where do we get the indication Retribution can open or close his Perpendicularity as he wishes?