trytoguess

I guess the boring answer would be I’d serve none of them since all shards tend to ask their followers to do some pretty difficult and traumatic things. But if I had to choose for some reason… Ruin: JustQuestin2004 already mentioned Ruin can control you. Even if that didn’t exist, I don’t think serving someone who wants you dead is a good idea. Not to mention as a 1st generation Kandra, you won’t be very good at shapeshifting. This is a pass. Preservation: Allomancy offers a decent set of abilities but most of them aren’t too useful in the modern day. One exception would be emotional allomancy but using that would be quite unethical. Harmony: Ferchumy offers abilities that are generally more useful, but having to store things would be a big hassle. It’ll really depend on how much downtime you have. With that said, if the tabletop RPG is canon and you can use nicrosil to convert one type of investiture to another then Feruchemy becomes significantly more powerful. It’ll also lets you easily convert mundane matter into raw investiture which could have some interesting applications. Honor: Hard pass on this one. Not getting any privacy in life is too much for me. Even if I get to become a Truthwatcher. Also, there’s the small issue of where to get a steady source of investiture to power a decent chunk of my abilities. Cultivation: The boon & bane system is too random. It’s probably not worth it. Pass. Odium: Having to eternally serve a god whose pissed off by his very nature sounds like a terrible idea. Another hard pass. Endowment: Hitting the fourth heightening doesn’t really give you any useful abilities unless you’re really passionate about the arts. Or, maybe you REALLY need the ability to store and edit your memories.. For me this is a pass. I guess if the Mistborn tabletop isn’t canon, I’d pick Preservation for some easily accessible abilities (even if 2 of them are unethical). If the tabletop is canon, then I’m going with Harmony and am going to do a bunch of experiment with the massive amount of investiture I’ll can get from eating and drinking while also living a life with no sickness, abnormally high luck, and genius level intellect.

I guess in theory if the Set had enough unsealed metalminds with health they could take the ability from a gold ferring and have that person undo the damage with the unsealed metalmind. It's an expensive method, but it would draw less attention than killing a bunch of people.

Spoilers for other cosmere works ahead:

I think this would be viable (and not just because I had a similar theory some time ago). If coating a piece of metal was a concern, then someone with a full stomach might not be able to access their power. Or, they might have inconsistent access to their power as the metal pieces move around in their gut. However, the books never warned characters to only ingest their metals with an empty stomach. Also, I believe in Bands of Mourning Wax swallows metal that's suspended in oil. The oil coating on the metal flakes did not interfere with his allomancy.

Hmm, I think in a better more just world that cared about rehabilitation, what Jasna did would be incredibly immoral. But in current day Roshar, I can't really find fault with her actions. The way I see it, there's two ways things could gone down. Jasna simply kill the men. Or, she cripples the men, takes them to the local law enforcement who then summarily execute them w/o trial because they're not going to doubt the word of Alethkar royalty. Neither options strike me as more moral then the other. They're both end with death, only one needlessly involves a disinterested & not all that just third party. I simply do not understand why bringing in law enforcement would be so important. Also, I noticed people mentioning how Jasna could've disabled the men and I find this mindset odd. Jasna is an Elsecaller. Her abilities (transformation, transportation & shardblade) don't really give her the ability to disable a person w/o injuring them. So, if she did try to subdue those men, they most likely would've ended up crippled or severely injured. Imo, a quick execution is better then spending a few hours/days crippled by a shardblade then executed...

They're 3 options I could think of that could take care of Odium in theory. Only issue is all options are far beyond the current capabilities of the Cosmere. Perhaps the sci-fi setting can do these: Kill Taravangian somehow. Condense his power into a metal and shoot the mass into a random direction in space. Kill Taravangian again. Convert half of Odium's investiture into it's antithesis. Remix the two halves together and watch the explosion from several light years away. Or instead of destroying the Odium investiture/anti-investiture combo, get a "balanced" person to absorb both powers. The result should be a god-like entity like Sazed who would mostly be frozen in indecision.

Do we know if it's possible to burn a metal if it's encased in something? For example, take a bit of cadmium, then cover it with something that dones't break down in our digestive system (maybe wax or resin), then swallow the whole thing. If this is possible, then it would make testing for allomancy relatively safe.

I'd definitely love to win anything related to Mr. Sanderson's books.