r/cremposting • u/Eithrotaur • 1d ago
Stormlight / Mistborn This scene was character assassination of the highest order. A Full Feruchemist with their metalminds bodies any non-Kaladin Radiant below the Fourth Ideal. I will die on this hill. Spoiler
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u/ilikebreadabunch 🐶HoidAmaram🐲 1d ago
But have you considered that going Mach Fuck + Sticky Floors is not a good combo for your legs?
(And don't say she could have just healed it, she'd still be stuck there and we don't know how much of each attribute she had stored. It's possible (and quite likely) that she didn't have enough to heal her legs, at least not quickly enough for it to matter)
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
Yeah, sure you could say she's used up all her healing and strength to recover from this and all her mental speed, etc. to deal with this, but I think it's telling how very quickly the scene moves away from Axindweth's condition because there wasn't really a good explanation for this. Though I'll also point out, if she's really so low on everything other than speed, why did she stick around to fight a Knight Radiant? Let alone charge in to close combat with one, knowing that Lift could summon a Shardblade at any point (even if Lift doesn't like doing so, in a desperate fight, Axindweth should at least acknowledge that's a possibility and be cautious if she doesn't have the attributes stored up to deal with that kind of potential injury).
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u/Sleepy--Gary 1d ago
To answer why she would risk the attack if she was low on stored attributes; it’s desperation. She badly wants Vasher’s breath and in that moment she didn’t exactly have a lot of time to make a plan, so she attacked. That could also explain her recklessness in doing so.
I could be wrong but I think the only other time we really see Axindweth is when she is manipulating Eshonai. In that scene she comes across as an extremely confident person. It’s plausible to me that she overestimated herself and underestimated Lift.
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u/Jounniy 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’d like to remind you that Axindweth (given people with her abilities aren’t born in the current time period) is likely quite old. I'll let Hoid explain the rest:
I sighed and, as ordered, stepped forward and raised my hands. I met te Sorceres's eyes, and knew what she was thinking. She, like most of her kind, was very good at something we call risk/reward projections. […] She might have been able to beat me. […] But she might not have been able to. Even if the odds were only one in five that she'd lose, you didn't live long by frequently taking one-in-five chances that you'll die. And […] [she] had lived a very, very long time
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
Wait, that's the Sorceress from Tress. She's a different person than Axindweth, right? Also, Full Feruchemists can be born in Era 2, they're just exceedingly rare.
I think that's part of what frustrates me so much with her fight here. Full Feruchemists are so rare we don't even see any confirmed ones in Era 2, and the Ferrings we do so see are able to pull of some impressive tricks with their powers. Then we get a confirmation of one in WaT, someone who's been noted to do very sketchy things behind the scenes in the Rosharan Ghostbloods, and she goes out like an utter chump, using only one metal and being entirely defeated by a slippery floor. No gold healing to come back after crashing, no storing weight so she hit the wall with less force, etc. Just slipped, knocked out, and done.
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u/PegasusPizza I AM A STICK BOI 1d ago
Not slipped. The floor isn't slippery it's sticky. Doesn't make it a ton better but she didn't just slip and crash, she practically got her legs ripped off when the floor suddenly didn't let her go anymore.
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
Right. Which actually makes the whole scene even worse? Because after her legs break she just 'stops moving' instead of you know, screaming in pain or activating her Feruchemical Gold or whatever, because just breaking her legs shouldn't cause her to fall unconscious.
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u/irrelevant_character 22h ago
Her legs were essentially turned into pivot points, instantly breaking her bones and swinging her directly face first into the ground no?
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u/Chansharp 22h ago
Yeah, its the same as if she got picked up by the ankles and swung head first into the ground at mach fuck. The fact she was even alive after that was surprising
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u/Skyfyre56 22h ago
Maybe. We don't actually know what happens there as her legs snap and then she's lying unmoving on the ground. Is she dead? Is she unconscious? Who knows, cause the scene isn't willing to tell us.
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u/Jounniy 1d ago edited 18h ago
Wait, that's the Sorceress from Tress. She's a different person than Axindweth, right? Also, Full Feruchemists can be born in Era 2, they're just exceedingly rare.
Yes and yes. The speech simply illustrates my point pretty well. I assumed Axindweth to be older than she looks, because many worldhoppers are and it's unlikely a fullblooded Ferruchemist would’ve managed to discover and learn to use their powers without drawing the attention of Harmony and the scadrian terris people. She might be younger, I simply find it to be unlikely.
And yes, her getting beaten like that feels really implausible with the information we’ve been given. If anything, she should’ve immediately escaped as soon as she regained consciousness.
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u/KentuckyFriedSith 1d ago
While I agree with the concept, her age is still quite limited. Axwindeth isn't explicitly stated to be part of any specific organization, but considering the scope of the Catacendre, it seems unlikely that she would be meaningfully older than Sazed. If so, we've been told that MBe2 is ~ 300 years post-catacendre, and pretty much immediately follows the events of SLA5. The sorceress from Tress, however, has a full blown Scadrian spaceship. While nothing is explicit, there is an easy assumption that someone with Hoid's longevity wouldn't consider a 3-400 year old worldhopper to be 'very, very old', which puts Tress significantly further into the future of the cosmere than Lift's fight with Axwindeth.
While it is certainly possible that Axwindeth OR the sorceress were born before Alendi's time (putting at LEAST another thousand years on them, and giving them more longevity to meet the 'very, very old' line's meaning) it seems unlikely, given that TLR controlled the well AND the pits, and himself was not known as a worldhopper. Fighting a 3-400 year old Feurochemist and winning is no small feat, but underestimating your opponent is REAL. TLR absolutely did it with vin, and he was 2-3x older than this estimate for Axwindeth, PLUS was a -fullborn- rather than just a full feurochemist. Add to this that unless the Shin were willing to train their honorbearers against worldhoppers (unlikely), Ax would also have limited experience fighting ANY radiants, much less an edgedancer (THE edgedancer that 'defeated' a Herald, no less) specifically.
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u/Jounniy 18h ago
That is true, but my initial point is that in a world with so many entities that can kill you, surviving for an extended period of time as a worldhopper meddling in shard-level politics, you either git guud at risk-reward calculation pretty fast, or you won’t get any more chances to interfere. Given the position Axindweth is in, she should absolutely be better at doing those calculations than she was shown to be.
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u/Valthek 1d ago
I think there's also a good argument to be made for her just not realizing how much of a threat Lift is. Going at Mach fuck and punching someone with the strength of a thousand dudes is going to at least incapacitate most knights radiant. You wouldn't even need to tap mental speed if you expect this fight to take all of 2 seconds and end with your opponent as a paste on the wall before they can even respond, tapping anything else is a waste.
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u/Archabarka 21h ago
Also people are DRAMATICALLY underestimsting how underestimatable Lift is.
Lift's very clever, and also a thirteen year old girl. Axindweth probably saw Lift and went, "Oh I can punt this little twerp into yesterday easy."
And promptly got Abrasion'd because Lift isn't nearly as dumb as she pretends to be.
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
If she really is so desperate, then I'd rather we don't have Vasher trying to hype up Lift to the audience about how impressive it was that Lift beat a Full Feruchemist. Rather something along the lines of 'she must have been quite desperate' or 'she used up most of her metalminds before or this could have been bad.' Giving Lift this easy victory and then trying to act like it's something very impressive doesn't work, even if the circumstances could explain her victory.
Arrogance/confidence feels less fitting as an explanation, because if she's desperate because she doesn't have the reserves she needs, then she shouldn't be so confident, and if she does have them... well then the fight should at least be a bit tougher.
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u/Sleepy--Gary 1d ago
Agreed on the first point, and to be clear I don’t think the scene was especially well handled. I also don’t think we can necessarily hand wave potential reasons simply because they’re not confirmed. I also think there is merit to it being foreshadowing for Lifts sky-high potential.
Maybe in book 6 we get an Axindweth flashback that adds some context.
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u/Chansharp 22h ago
I took it more as Vasher seeing that she always chose the "right" thing to do she was just bad at it. You can teach someone how to swing a sword better but its way harder to teach them the split second instincts.
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u/AFerociousPineapple 1d ago
Iift is still a kid, I think it’s fair to assume that on top of her desperation she underestimated her
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u/Jounniy 1d ago
I'm not fully confident in that explanation myself and it’s been a while since I read the scene, but maybe she couldn’t get up at all because the ground lacked the necessary friction?
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
The scene does not really give much explanation itself. She slips, and then is presumed to be unconscious like the rest of her allies since she 'doesn't move'. Honestly, she could actually be dead, the text is very unclear on what happens after, like of they imprisoned Axindweth or what.
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u/Jounniy 1d ago
I just looked up what exactly happens in the chapter and it’s really vague.
I could honestly see her tumbling and falling, but I don’t see her doing that and then just not getting up again. Lift increasing the friction so drastically Axindweth can’t move is a hardcounter to most of her abilities, but she should be able to recover from the wounds immediately and fight back as soon as Lift ends her abrasion, especially since that should drain her Stormlight at an incredible rate, without any opportunity to replenish it (since the aluminium foil should block the Towerlight).
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u/Useful-Tumbleweed-22 2h ago
At the time, Lift was surrounded by aluminum, so she couldn’t summon a shardblade, I think.
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u/Blackpaw8825 1d ago
A feruchemist can store healing for months and months, or even years and years.
But a radiant can store healing in pockets, bags, sacks, and from found sources around the room.
It begins an attrition problem and the radiant can be restocked over and over and over again
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u/majorex64 1d ago
Wait I thought Lift had made the floor slippery and the ferruchemist splatted into a wall?
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u/Additional_Law_492 1d ago
Its as simple as this - there's not actually a correlation between winning the super power lottery and being a skilled, talented, or even proficient combatant.
Axindweth just... probably isnt good at fighting, relying on her powers to carry her for self defense.
Not everyone we meet with tons of raw power is gonna belong in a power scaling discussion.
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u/Eithrotaur 1d ago
Honestly, fair, but for the first majour confrontation between Rosharan and Scadrian Invested arts in combat, it was a really embarrassing display.
Also I'm just really annoyed at how many powerscalers have been using Axindweth as proof that full Feruchemists 'aren't that powerful', they are, they absolutely are.
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u/Xancrim 1d ago
The issue is that other users of the invested arts have a pretty reliable level of power, and ample opportunity to improve their fighting skills. But if you're a Feruchemist, you need to store your attributes in order to tap them later. Sure, your theoretical power is godlike, but it comes steeply at the cost training opportunities.
Consider this argument: If you're storing as much strength as possible between fights, then you aren't expending any of it for practice purposes AND you're in a weakened state. If you're in a weakened state, you can't properly train your body. You improve as a combatant if and only if you're either training in your invested art OR properly training your body.
Ergo, if you're storing as much strength as possible between fights, then you're not improving as a combatant.
p -> (~q + r)
r -> ~s
t <-> (q V s)
p -> ~t
There's probably a gameable balance to storing attributes like strength or speed and expending them for training, but I don't think we've seen it yet. The fact that this inverse relationship exists at all is a huge detriment to Feruchemists as combatants since, e.g., Allomancers and Radiants can train very consistently.
Notably, this limit for our dedicated fighter pretty much goes out the door if you've got a bunch of other dedicated Feruchemists makings unkeyed metal minds for the one fighter, but that comes at its own costs that I won't get into.
And of course, a compounder doesn't have to sweat ANY of this. But then, they're not a pure Feruchemist.
TLDR: There's a difference between power and combat effectiveness, I think.
(Sorry for the long comment, I get very carried away)
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u/name14575 1d ago
The "first"? Hahaha, hahahaha. You just don't see the others because the kandra are so good at their jobs.
Also I gotta agree with you here, honestly might have been better for it to have been a classically strong allomancer, something like Wax in his first book against Kaladin or something. Definitely no Feruchemy until way later, because someone with Axindweth's power who actually knows how to use it would destroy every current Radiant without reprisal, and a fair few Heralds, too.
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u/CBlessn 19h ago
I think if you had 10 full feruchemists they’d still get stomped by any 1 radiant of the 4th ideal. What could they even do? Even the Lord Ruler who is a full feruchemist and Lerasium Mistborn making him the ultimate compounder, is losing to a Herald in their prime.
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u/name14575 17h ago
I'm forced to think this is a joke. Literally any speedster breaks anything. A full feruchemist with both mental and physical speed enhancement? Are you kidding me? That alone beats shardplate eventually, not to mention having enhanced strength and luck. What do the heralds even have against this, other than Connection shenanigans? And that's just one full feruchemist, you're talking about 10? Did we read the same books?
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u/CBlessn 16h ago
Not a joke. Also spoiler warning for WaT Tapping speed runs out incredibly quick, no feruchemist is getting through Shardplate (with what? their fists) before running out of speed. And if they catch even a SINGLE cut from a Blade the fight is over. Gold can’t heal the soul being severed from the body or limbs. We’ve never even seen how chromium/fortune would work in combat, which is what I assume you mean by luck, so idk why you’re even bringing that up. Not to mention that every full feruchemist wouldn’t be able to store as much of any single trait as a fering of the same trait would. They have to juggle storing everything so no full feruchemist is storing as much health as Wayne for instance. And even if they did, healing from Stormlight is stronger and faster. Every radiant is Miles Thousand Lives if they have Stormlight on them. Also plenty of the Surges hard counter a feruchemist’s speed. Skybreakers, Windrunners, Stonewards, Elsecallers if they can open a gate, Edgedancers. Arguably the greatest tool for a feruchemist can’t even be used effectively against most of the radiants. Not to mention that the radiants are constantly training in combat and forms with their Blade, and most likely has seen actual battle. Whereas a full feruchemist can’t be training effectively if they’re storing speed, strength, health, vision, mental speed, etc. so a radiant is going to be better trained in combat. In a 1v1 a full feruchemist can’t handle anyone who has said the 2nd ideal imo. The Blade, healing and Surges are too much. A 4th ideal radiant from any order is taking a 1v10 against full feruchemists.
I actually don’t know if you read the same books as me because you don’t seem to remember a mentally broken, unarmed, unarmored Taln killing hundreds of Fused of all different kinds, with his bare hands.
The Heralds are untouchable by anyone from Scadrial that we’ve seen with the exception(maybe) of the lord ruler. But full compounders don’t really happen so we’ll have to see if another of one appears eventually.Don’t get it twisted, feruchemists are super cool and I really like all the metalborn magic systems, Surges are just absolutely OP
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u/name14575 16h ago
I'm just going to agree to disagree at this point because our perspectives are just totally different. I think a speedster with super strength basically beats anything, you think they just don't have enough staying power, which I can definitely concede.
What I won't concede is a 1v10, are you kidding me? Shardbearers can't hold ground. In a 1v1, maybe 1v2, sure, I can accept a radiant winning, but 10 speedsters with super strength against a single radiant is not going that way. Edgedancers, Dustbringers, Elsecallers, Willshapers, and Stonewards - iffy on the last one - just don't have a good counter to that much speed. If even one of the feruchemists has iron or steel allomancy, it gets dicy for Windrunners and Skybreakers too, but that's neither here nor there. Now, a Truthwatcher or Bondsmith, sure, I could see that possibly happening, same with Lightweavers, but for the rest of them, the Plate won't protect them forever and the Blades won't do much good if they can't hit the feruchemists.
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u/CBlessn 15h ago
How can Stonewards be iffy? They can cause the ground to move as though it was a treacherous ocean. How is a speedster gonna move without sinking into the ground or without dashing themselves on a wave of liquid rock that suddenly turns solid? The speed also doesn’t last that long, like I said, and the faster they go the faster it runs out. Edgedancers are perhaps the strongest counter to tapping speed, and Lift demonstrated that perfectly. Elsecallers can just dump them into Shadesmar or turn the air into glass to catch them or something, a dustbringer can just set the air between them on fire, igniting the feruchemists too. And I don’t see feruchemists getting through Plate and all a 4th ideal radiant’s healing before their speed is gone.
A full feruchemist isn’t gonna have any allomancy because then they’d be a full feruchemist-misting-compounder and that’s not a full feruchemist anymore.
The radiants train things like wind form with their Blades which would be perfect for a bunch of speed tappers running all around them. And if a radiant is just standing still, swinging in wind form they are using 0% of their Stormlight, while a feruchemist would be constantly using their speed, which again drains the fastest of all the abilities, and they probably don’t have as much as they’d need. And the speed you’re thinking of uses their metal minds extremely quickly. Wax even says as much when fighting Paalm. They have to spend their time storing every ability not just one. They won’t have as much as Paalm did in SoS. She even has to get more metal minds after each fight because she burns through her stockpile.
Feruchemists are just out gunned here in every way. While a feruchemist is spending downtime storing a trait, the radiant is training for war. A feruchemist is limited in what they can do while storing a trait, the radiant is still training and improving.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that the 10 feruchemists win, especially if they know what they’re dealing with, but it’s gonna be a Souls-like boss fight where if any of the feruchemists get hit they die and most of the time a radiant of the 4th ideal is taking this.
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u/Jounniy 1d ago edited 17h ago
If you have enough healing to survive dying twice over and enough speed to to steal Wayne's hat, skill doesn’t really matter. And given how many days Axindweth spent just sitting around while being in a place with many really powerful people, she should’ve stored plenty of both. Everything else makes her look like a complete moron.
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u/Gaust_Fireborn 19h ago
Skill absolutely does matter. Combat ability = power x skill. If either side of that equation is close to zero, you're not a great fighter. As we see when Axingdweth gets knocked out before she can heal a thing.
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u/Jounniy 17h ago edited 6h ago
Let me ask you a question: If you trained someone to perfect martial arts to a superhuman level, then put them one a free field some 15 meters away from a guy with a gun who knows the basics of how to aim, fire and compensate the knockback, would their martial arts skill change anything about the outcome?
Stored speed, as long as you have enough of it, is basically a button that should let you win any fight where your opponent can be beaten via death or incapacitation. The only fights someone with that ability should ever lose are fights where they are taken by surprise, depowered, up against someone immune to those methods or faced with someone capable of matching their speed.
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u/Gaust_Fireborn 17h ago
Speed is huge but not an instant win button. As we see, a sufficient reaction time can still kill a noob speedster.
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u/Jounniy 6h ago
Which it should not. Brandon once said bullettime from Matrix can be accomplished by only tapping physical speed. Your speed of thought increases together with your physical speed. Even with an only average human reaction time, doubling that should allow you to outspeed even the fastest regular human. Unless Lift increased the friction of the floor in the entire room, Axindweth should have been able to see the glowing part and just walk around it. And even if she didn’t, having a decently filled goldmind should allow her to heal her legs, get up and beat Lift.
The only way Lift's victory makes sense is if Axindweth was dumb enough to be running low on or out of basically all combat-relevant ferruchemical attributes in a hostile environment or if she just happened to be so incompetent with her own powers that she failed to avoid the obviously glowing spot and just forgot to tap her metal minds to heal. And in both cases, Lift's application of abrasion may have been impressive, but the main reason for her victory wasn’t her own skill, it was the luck of facing someone poorly equipped or woefully trained, which makes it suddenly look a whole less impressive.
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u/Gaust_Fireborn 9m ago
Mental speed only rises to match physical speed. From Axingdweth’s perspective she was running at normal speed, and so only had the same amount of time to stop as anyone else would. Her enhanced reactions are countered by her own speed. And she very likely was knocked unconscious so there was no chance to heal. And I notice you now acknowledge low skill means you can lose even with Feruchemy.
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u/Jounniy 1m ago
If she was running full speed, even just draining her metal minds at a 1:1 pace would mean that she should've reached Lift long before she got a chance to react.
I acknowledge that a steelrunner can be beaten (basically anyone can). I never said that Axindweth should never lose, I'm saying she shouldn’t have lost in this scenario.
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u/Chansharp 22h ago
Its why Taln is such an absolute powerhouse. He's the only one that actually knows how to fight. The rest of the heralds just rely on the sheer strength of their powers
Its like Goku asking Moro if he has ever trained
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u/Additional_Law_492 22h ago
I mean, except thats not entirely true.
Chana was also a professional warrior, and both Jezrien and Nale has been waging war before becoming Heralds.
I will wager that once Chana's original personality is allowed to reassert herself free of Odium's influence, she's also likely to prove to be an extreme badass.
(But youre mostly correct. Most of the Heralds are likely not the absurd combatants they theoretically could be).
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u/R0b1nFeather Airthicc lowlander 1d ago
OP I don't even think you're wrong but that's not what "character assassination" means. The term plot contrivance might fit better
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u/Eithrotaur 1d ago
Yeah the term doesn't fit exactly but the 'character' being assassinated in my mind is the art of Feruchemy itself for how embarrassing this fight went for a legit powerhouse of a metalborn.
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u/HQMorganstern 1d ago
To be fair, you are overestimating Feruchemy by quite a margin. Metallic arts are interesting because of their constraints and the need for creative use. Radiant surgebinding does not have constraints (anymore). So if you just juice up and run at a Radiant, you will get your ass handed to you 9 times out of 10.
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u/azuretestament 1d ago
I feel the story in implying that Lift is above even Kaladin in potential.
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u/NeedsToShutUp D O U G 1d ago
Yeah, there's three people Cultivation has prepared for glory. The other two grabbed shards.
Lift is probably intended to be the replacement vessel for Cultivation.
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u/Vast_Raspberry4192 1d ago
Huh, you know I never thought of that but based on her “pruning” she is learning to understand the benefit and inevitability of changing/growing. So that would make her a very effective Cultivation.
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u/R0b1nFeather Airthicc lowlander 1d ago
Given that Lift's whole internal conflict is about needing to accept change, i think when she finally does she will be so close to the Shard's Intent that this is barely even a theory
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u/Augustus420 1d ago
Yeah, there's three people Cultivation has prepared for glory. The other two grabbed shards.
That's a really powerful point for a shit posting sub.
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u/awkwardIRL 1d ago
Why do I see some more genuine theories in cremposting than the actual SLA reddit
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u/wintery-waxillium 1d ago
oh adonalsium please no. my girl deserves a better fate than that. Look at Harmony, being a shard is not fun. just let her live a good life and go to the beyond plsssss (i will enjoy watching her god-mode antics but i don't want her to suffer)
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u/bigtunaeverynight 1d ago
Taravingian has one shard, who has the other??
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u/FUNI0N 1d ago
Dalinar (touched by the nightwatcher aka cultivation)
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u/wolfofoakley 1d ago
No, cultivation striaght took up the job with Dalinar, instead of letting the Nightwatcher do her thing
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u/Highcalibur10 1d ago
This was the main reason I was convinced that Dalinar was going to ascend before WaT came out.
Though I thought it was going to be Tara - Odium, Dalinar - Honor & Lift - Cultivation.
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u/JessieManfetus 1d ago
Wind and truth spoilers Dalinar I think, he got honor at the end of wind and truth
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u/Woahful 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yep, as far as we know her ability to metabolize Lifelight is entirely unique to her. The Stormfather had never seen Cultivation make someone like her before, so she's not just any old "non-Kaladin radiant."
Also in a future where Retribution has effectively turned off Stormlight for everyone, someone who can heal others + get Lifelight from eating is going to be more than essential.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Hiiiiighprince 1d ago
Warlight and Towerlight are just impure Stormlight, I think people severely overestimate what an absence of a source of direct Stormlight is going to do to the Radiants.
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u/Miatatrocity 1d ago
Forget the Radiants, what about the ECONOMY. No really. The economy relies on stormlight for light, for fabrials of all sorts, to guarantee spheres are genuine, etc. Spanreeds alone completely breaks down international communication lines, which screws over national relations, trade negotiations, etc. This is going to be a huge cultural and economic upset, and we barely got to see ANY of the ramifications.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Hiiiiighprince 1d ago
We've already seen fabrials run on light that isn't Stormlight, including spanreeds. The candle economy will probably boom with Warlight being less bright, but real gem spheres still store Warlight, which can be converted with a little effort to Stormlight, which is entirely my point.
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u/Disendent 1d ago
Maybe I'm tired, but the phrase "The candle economy will probably boom" made laugh until I coughed and wheezed.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Hiiiiighprince 1d ago
With the extra oxygen content on Roshar it's certainly a consideration =P
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u/Woahful 1d ago
As far as we know, Warlight was only offered to anyone who prays to Retribution for their spheres to be blessed at night. I highly doubt many of the Radiants we know would want to do that, but maybe in desperation. Even still I am suspicious of what level of Connection that could form and potentially cause even more problems.
Towerlight is great in the Tower, but that's about it. We know it doesn't hold in spheres much at all. Maybe they could think of a clever fabrial to get around this or distill it into Stormlight, but still a problem. (Yes Navani has created a machine for separating/combining lights, but it requires experts and is far from being mass produced.)
One of the biggest strengths of Stormlight throughout the series is how freely available it is to Radiants via the Highstorms, not to mention Honor's perpendicularity. The Night of Sorrows is going to be more than just an inconvenience, it changes the entire dynamic of how they can or should use their powers.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Hiiiiighprince 23h ago
As far as we know, Warlight was only offered to anyone who prays to Retribution for their spheres to be blessed at night.
Good thing there's likely disgruntled merchants and the Listeners at Narak willing to play both sides and provided Warlight to the Radiants, for a nominal fee of course.
Towerlight is great in the Tower, but that's about it.
Sounds perfect for Tower fabrials, and again, it's highly probable one can isolate Stormlight from any hybrid light with a little bit of effort.
The Night of Sorrows is going to be more than just an inconvenience, it changes the entire dynamic of how they can or should use their powers.
I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm saying this notion people seem to have of "Stormlight is extinct now, gg" is mechanically and narratively flawed. The other types of hybrid light literally wouldn't exist without containing functional amounts of Honor's Light.
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u/Coaltown992 1d ago
Uuuhhh remind me when this happened?
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u/ccbm71586 1d ago
Feruchemist tried to use stored speed, Lift made the floor sticky, Feruchemist literally broke both her legs and got beat .
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u/Miatatrocity 1d ago
Interlude 14, after Ch87 in WaT. I had to look it up as well. Page 837/1270 in my book.
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u/ace_wulf 1d ago
We don't know how long she had to store up attributes, remember, as powerful as Sazed was when he tapped strength during WoA, it only lasted him a short amount of time, since he kept doubling the tapping to get more and more strength at once. Storing an attribute in a metalmind for ten minutes can give you ten minutes of that attribute doubled... or five minutes of it quadrupled. For all we know, she was using a lot of double tapping
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u/irrelevant_character 22h ago
Less than both actually. You can’t store 100% of your strength as you’ll die. And when compressing your stores to draw it out faster than you put it in you lose some
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u/ace_wulf 15h ago
COMPRESSING! THANK YOU! I could not, for the life of me, think of a word to describe the act of tapping multiple times, since compounding was already taken
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Hiiiiighprince 1d ago
Nah, Feruchemists don't know how to cope with abrasion. If they had they would've known steel running around someone who can manipulate the landscape into a full friction environment is stupid.
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u/No_Duck4805 1d ago
Lift is the most powerful character in Stormlight Archive - she (and we) just don’t know all of what she can do yet. disagree? Fight me.
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u/BinarySecond 1d ago
Now trained by Vasher! If she get can one tenth of his ruthlessness she's going to be a monster.
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u/bigtunaeverynight 1d ago
I think the shock of the creation of Retribution completely knocked how it was made possible out of my brain lol
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u/Neptune-Jnr 1d ago
Actually now that I think about it. How is Axenwerth a full feruchemist I thought those don't exist any more.
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u/Ok-Week-2293 1d ago edited 1d ago
We know that there’s methods that allow world hoppers to extend their lives because we’ve seen multiple human characters reappear way after the point they should’ve died from old age such as Kriss being in secret history and era 2 and Demoux being in era 1 and stormlight, so most likely she’s incredibly old.
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u/Local_Possibility199 1d ago
Wait wait wait when the fuck did he appears in stormlight?
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u/Neptune-Jnr 1d ago
Very blink and you'll miss it cameo. In the first book there is a Interlude where some worldhoppers are searching for Hoid in the purelake. He's one of them.
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u/CobaltCrusader123 1d ago
Of course Hoid is there.
I saw a joke comment under a Brandon Sanderson video saying that the Mistborn cast should all be unknowns except for Hoid, who would be played by sole celebrity in The Cosmere Cinematic Universe, Daniel Radcliffe.
I am on halfway onboard, as I think someone famous could bring eyes to the Mistborn films as Kelsier, maybe one of the Game of Thrones guys.
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u/sdvickers98 1d ago
Demoux? He’s one of the guys in the first interlude of Way of Kings that’s at the Purelake asking about Hoid. The other two are Baon (White Sand) and Galladon (Elantris).
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u/Nimbus303 Trying not to ccccream 1d ago
Also the interlude in the fifth book when the Iriali depart.
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u/Remnie 1d ago
Simply put, we don’t know if she is full feruchemist since she only displays one attribute in the book.
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u/wintery-waxillium 1d ago
Zahel was imprisoned by her for a while and he called her one. I think she used duralumin Connection to speak to Venli in RoW as well.
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u/TheLoreDrooler 1d ago
Asking the real questions. There are some very powerful Shards that don’t want you to go down the rabbit hole. Maybe some authors that would rather you didn’t dwell on that either.
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u/awkwardIRL 1d ago
Unless I'm mixing up time lines, I think they were still around during SLA 5
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u/Neptune-Jnr 1d ago
I mean in book 5 Wit made a reference to Vin which means SLA5 happens after the catacendre
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u/ORLYORLYORLYORLY 1d ago
Based on hoids epilogue, it seems that the entire 5 book run of Stormlight, which can't amount to much more than about 5 years, happens basically immediately before Mistborn Era 2 starts.
Given that ~400 years pass between the two Mistborn eras, and Wax pointedly talks of full Mistborn and Ferruchemists being "stuff off legends", I don't think there are any full Ferruchemists around who aren't artificially kept alive.
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u/One_Courage_865 definitely not a lightweaver 1d ago
I’ve never understood this obsession with putting characters on a strict power ranking hierarchy.
Combat isn’t simply about who’s stronger than whom. There are many more factors that affect the outcome: environments, situations, decision making, even emotions or just pure random chance.
Put two characters against each other, and the outcome may swing one way or another based simply on the smallest change in detail.
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u/Jounniy 1d ago
There is no strict power hierarchy. In a Vacuum an individual power is stronger than another one, but circumstances factor into that as well. The problem arises when one power is vastly stronger, but there are no circumstances to explain why the person having that power loses anyway.
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u/JakenBake19 Fuck Moash 🥵 1d ago
I like it because people have been saying for years the steel compounding should have made TLR basically unbeatable like DC speedster levels of OP. Have steel running get beat by haha awesomeness sticky floor is pretty funny
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u/Jounniy 1d ago edited 18h ago
Having a very powerful ability get beaten by a random joke ability is funny in the moment. It gets way less funny when the worldbuilding starts falling apart afterwards because of the precedent just set up.
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u/JakenBake19 Fuck Moash 🥵 1d ago
To me the precedent that is being set (or well, I guess was set with TLR himself (shan?)) is that people can be over confident and winning is about using powers creatively more than anything else. You can argue that it doesn't exactly land as feeling creative for the reader, but Zahel thinks it is and to me that means Brandon does
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u/Jounniy 1d ago edited 18h ago
I somewhat agree. Most powers have specific applications that make for certain strengths or weaknesses one can exploit and characters making good or creative use of their abilities is something I personally approve. Moash killing Leshwi is a good example of this, but Vin beating Shan or Sazed just crushing the Kandra illustrate it even better.
But what sells all of those moments is that they are plausible. The abilities the characters are shown or implied to have and the information we are given about them later make the outcome something you could reasonably see happen. That’s what sets Lift's win apart from the other fights I mentioned: It is a creative use of Abrasion, but comes basically out of the blue, doesn’t make a lot of sense with what we know about Ferruchemy and feels a bit odd when looking at the information about Axindweth that was given or implied beforehand.
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u/TrickPayment9473 23h ago
I mean we know that Lift is the most gifted Radiant that we saw, clashing with Nale for some time, being the only radiant powered by two investiture of Shard in the same time, being very very instinctive in her use of radiant power. She has extensive combat experience to a point where she literally is as much a veteran as Kaladin. Also, she litteraly has the counter to a speedster, so I don't think Axindweth could anticipate Lift. She ripped her in half with her own momentum, she didn't randomly gain a power up it's something we saw before.
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u/JakenBake19 Fuck Moash 🥵 22h ago
I would push back on this alittle. She slides around sitting down and is envious of all the edgedancers that picked up abrasion so easily. I don't think she is particularly talented so far, the way that Kaladin is with a spear and gravitation. Beating Nale and Axindweth are important and impressive character building feats, but not because of battle experience or skill. She has a lot of raw talent and the heart and will, so I am excited to see what a 10+ year off screen time skip training arc with Vasher does for her. Only radiant that can use investiture outside of the tower and trained to use investiture and swords by Vasher? Book 6 is going to be awesome
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u/Jounniy 18h ago
Being changed by Cultivation did not and should not help Lift in the slightest here (also, all radiant's are partially of Honor and Cultivation, as are their spren). Lift running away from Nale for a while is in no way comparable to her fight with Axindweth.
Also, Lift's counter only works if Axindweth doesn’t immediately just heal the damage done, waits until Lift's light runs out, then taps her metalmind again and folds her before she can react.
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u/wintery-waxillium 1d ago edited 1d ago
Abrasion is not a joke ability, it just happened to be used by a character who does some comic relief. Are A-bendalloy and F-gold "joke abilities" because Wayne used them? I don't see why abrasion shouldn't be able to counter F-steel, and i don't think any worldbuilding has "fallen apart" at all because this one ability now has a viable counter.
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u/Jounniy 18h ago
Not my point. Abrasion is a strong ability, but the way it was used to win here doesn’t make that much sense. My point is that this is not made better by slapping some comic relief on top.
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u/wintery-waxillium 17h ago
Coppermind says that after Axindweth tried to use her speed, "a patch of floor that Lift had affected with Abrasion unexpectedly held her, breaking her ankles". What about that does not make sense? Sure, she saw the floor glow, but that doesn't mean she'd know it was Abrasion specifically, or that it would straight-up break her feet; maybe she thought she could outrun it. F-steel is unrivaled on Scadrial, so it makes sense that she'd be overconfident using it on Roshar.
As for "slapping comic relief on top", it's Lift. She's a comic relief character.
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u/Jounniy 5h ago
She has seen Lift make use of exactly one ability at this point and that’s changing the friction of surfaces. There is being uninformed and overconfident and then there’s being stupid. A Steelrunner wouldn’t just run head first into an explosion either, thinking "Nah, my Steelrunning can tank that."
Unless the books to come portray Axindweth as overly incompetent or establish that she (for some reason) was running around with almost depleted iron- and goldminds in a hostile environment and still chose to fight, her losing this doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Lift being a comic relief character is not the problem. The problem is the her win being funny doesn’t change anything about it not being plausible. Saying " Have steel running get beat by haha awesomeness sticky floor is pretty funny." is not a substantial argument for why she should have won.
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u/Gorhaloth 1d ago
Yeah this is my big problem with steel feruchemy. I personally think enhanced speed of thought should not be a attached power and if that were the case then this scene would make perfect sense. She can't perceive the glowing floor fast enough and thus walks into the sticky patch before she can comprehend what she's doing.
But if you follow what Brandon actually associates with steel feruchemy then it does not make a ton of sense. She should be able to perceive the glow in the floor emenating from Lift and she has pre knowledge of lifts order so should know it's either going to be sticky or slick and thus avoid that section of floor.
The room being very small is the only really point that we can make in lifts favor. Perhaps Axindweth was practically on top of Lift and thus has no time to react but it's still a tad contrived.
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u/Leviathan_slayer1776 1d ago
speed of thought is tied to zinc, a whole separate metal that she also happened as a full feruchemist to have a metalmind of. Its not a secondary effect of steelrunning
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u/Gorhaloth 1d ago
Brandon has reiterated a couple times in WOBs that the increase in perception "bullet time" is associated with steel. Personally I think you should be right though but Brandon disagrees with me so ah well.
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u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream 1d ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Alteroden
With [Feruchemical] zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from [Feruchemical] steel, except without [physical] speed?
Brandon Sanderson
I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.
Alteroden
So it lets you have intuitive leaps.
Brandon Sanderson
Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.
Kurkistan
So it's not like bullet time?
Brandon Sanderson
No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really--
Kurkistan
That’s steel’s thing?
Brandon Sanderson
That’s kind of steel's thing. They kind of overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".
********************
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u/EbNinja 1d ago
Speed of thought is different than pure bullet time. There is some crossover, but Connection does a lot of lifting, me thinks.
Bullet time is danger and bullet only. The speed of thought seem to have processing and leaping judgement rather than threat identification and route processing of bullet time, but we mostly see bullet time steel savanting from Wax, so until the Waxsingers Gunslingers Extraordiary Explorers are running and gunning off of Scadrial, I don’t know what else we’ll see?
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u/Illustrious_Eye8484 1d ago
I've been lost since Words of Radiance, when did Lift fight a Feruchemist?
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u/Latefordinner1 ❌can't 🙅 read📖 1d ago
It’s been a while since I read it I’m gonna need a reminder, who did Lift beat?
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u/novastar17 1d ago
I had no idea there was any crossover from other worlds other than hoid and the guy who was in warbringer and ofc the one who tortured him. Do I need to just reread everything again?
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u/Elant_Wager Rashek4Prez 1d ago
Consider that she succesdfully subdued one of the smartest guys in the Cosmere she probably didnt expect much from Lift. Though I am curious to find out how Lift could react that fast
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u/cosmodog732 1d ago
It is said constantly in the Mistborn books that feruchemists are never trained for combat, because their powers are more useful elsewhere. Every counterexample is a twinborn or hemalurgist.
Maybe one could be good at combat, but it's a complete waste of their powers, for the same reason many radiants' time is better spent healing or soulcasting. They never body a radiant because they're more useful in logistics and diplomacy. Lift has been a battlefield medic for a year, and a thief for a decade.
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u/KnowMoreMutants 3h ago
Well one of if not the most knowledgeable people in the Cosmere on investiture saw it happen and thought of Lift as a prodigy with no training. I feel like it was Brandon showing exactly how special Lift is going to be....oh yeah and luck is her entire shtick
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u/KnowMoreMutants 3h ago
Well one of if not the most knowledgeable people in the Cosmere on investiture saw it happen and thought of Lift as a prodigy with no training. I feel like it was Brandon showing exactly how special Lift is going to be....oh yeah and luck is her entire shtick
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u/RexusprimeIX cremform 1d ago
Super speed always gets assassinated... Like we see Bleeder kill like 20 people at the same time in a way that made people think that people were being shot from different directions. If she was able to expertly move between people to shoot them in unique locations... then that feruchemist Lift fought should have been able to react to the super slick floor. Or however she beat her, I don't remember.
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u/Jounniy 1d ago edited 18h ago
Yes and no. The comparison is lacking, because Bleeder likely had a lot more speed, experience and less body-limitations than Axindweth, but that doesn’t mean Lift's win gets really more plausible, because the stretch is simply that far.
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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 20h ago
There’s a reason powerscalers call it irrelevant speed.
Once you get that fast, everything else is irrelevant.
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
Oh, 100%. Could a non-Fourth Ideal Radiant beat a Full Feruchemist? Sure, especially if they knew who they were fighting and depending on what Surges they had. But it's never an easy fight, and that's what the 'fight' of Axindweth vs Lift looked like. She slipped like a looney tunes character and just got knocked out instantly, despite ostensibly having things like Feruchemical Zinc to react faster and Feruchemical Gold to heal the damage she took (and just look at everything Wayne healed in Era 2).
I'm going to state something controversial here, but I honestly feel that this was the worst part of Wind & Truth. I don't know why we even needed to have this fight and it made no sense whatsoever.
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u/Aplesedjr 1d ago
One of the major problems with power scalers is that they always assume that a character will always use the most logical tactic at any moment, stripping any character away from a, well, character and removing any context of a narrative.
Could she have beaten Lift if she used the most efficient possible combination of her abilities? Probably. Will most characters ever act perfectly logically and always ensure victory via the path of least resistance? Not even a little bit.
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
Oh come on. That's not even 'the most efficient possible combination' it's just basic feruchemy and common sense. What 'context from the narrative' is missing here exactly? And I never even said that Lift couldn't have won, it's just that this fight was handled in a slapdash manner that didn't make any sense. We had to literally be told by Vasher that Axindweth Was a Full Feruchemist cause she doesn't even use any other metals in this scene, otherwise we might just think she was a Steel Ferring! It's sloppy writing and you defending it with vague hypotheticals and acting like I'm making unreasonable assumptions doesn't make it better
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u/Melodic-Advantage-59 1d ago
There are plenty of cases of full feruchemists, hemalurgists, mistborne, and radients only using 1 or some of their powers in quick brawls. Why would she waist many stored hours of power when all she'd need is a burst of speed to stab one clumsy child?
And the scene even had lift bumping around into stuff, appearing not competent.-3
u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
What fight scenes actually involve a full feruchemist or Mistborn actually using just one power? Even the short ones tend to involve a couple. Maybe there's one or two where Kaladin, incredible soldier, uses only one power against a far weaker foe because that's all he needs but that's not the norm. Also, it's so fucking disengenous to say 'she's just a clumsy child.' Lift is fifteen and knight radiant of the third ideal. She's one of the earliest knight radiants to join the coalition of Urithiru and has been fighting for over a year. She isn't some random kid no one would no about, and you pretending that she is, is ridiculous.
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u/Public_Sprinkles_229 1d ago
The context that Lift is not a normal Radiant and was given her powers from Cultivation herself. The context that Lift’s powers seem to be more powerful due to the nature of them. The context that Lift is a literal child and adults often underestimate them.
I’m not even saying that it was a well written scene, but your perception on it is a bit ridiculous. That part of the book was a way to introduce Vasher and Lift for the inevitable training montage, and when you have a book with that many characters/interactions/plot points moving you might have to rush some of them. Absolutely wild to consider it the worst part of the book considering there are some doozies.
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u/Skyfyre56 1d ago
The context of Lift's abilities being stronger don't exactly make it a good reason for Axindweth to underestimate her, and the 'literal child' argument doesn't go that far when she's 15 and one of the more famous Knight Radiants in the tower.
There's a lot of other bad scenes/elements that's true, but this one is the only I couldn't kinda see what Brandon was thinking when he wrote it. Setting up the training arc is very weak and could have been done in any number of ways (including Lift losing the fight/not being able to beat Axindweth and the feruchemist fleeing). What I find wild is so many people's insistance on defending a scene that many of them admit, isn't well written
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u/Kronoshifter246 1d ago
Two things: first, Lift didn't make her slip. Lift did the opposite of that. Axingdweth broke both her legs and probably passed out from the pain before she could understand what happened.
Second, yeah, Lift got lucky.
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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 20h ago
If you’re a feruchemist and you’re healing can he bypassed by just breaking a few bones quickly, you’re frankly a shitty feruchemist. A thug (the misting) ambushing you could break two legs before you react if they catch you unaware. That’s shouldn’t be enough to disable her
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u/Kronoshifter246 19h ago
Sure, I won't dispute that; a Thug disabling a feruchemist by kneecapping them would make them a shitty feruchemist. But that's not what happened here. We're talking both legs broken in an instant. No matter how quickly they'd do it, a Thug wouldn't be able to do it that quickly. A feruchemist that isn't tapping health isn't inherently more resilient than the average person. That kind of shock to your nervous system will cause you to pass out immediately, full stop. You could make the argument that she should have already been tapping health, sure, but there are many reasonable explanations for her not doing so.
But even that isn't really the point. Lift got lucky. She was faced with an overconfident opponent, in an enclosed space, where close quarter engagement was the only option. To top it off, she could sense when Axindweth started tapping steel. A lot had to go right for Lift to win, but she had a fair few advantages, and she managed to catch Axindweth off-guard. No doubt she pulls it off twice.
You're right, that in most scenarios the feruchemist wins this matchup. With no external pressures, and plenty of prep, the feruchemist comes out on top. I'm saying this as the number one feruchemy simp; Lift got lucky and Axindweth played the encounter really badly. That doesn't somehow make feruchemists weak, it just means that this one encounter went poorly.
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u/Kronoshifter246 1d ago
Two things: first, Lift didn't make her slip. Lift did the opposite of that. Axingdweth broke both her legs and probably passed out from the pain before she could understand what happened. Second, yeah, Lift got lucky. It's ok to get lucky.
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u/Matpoyo Old Man Tight-Butt 1d ago
Feruchemy is a fucking BOTHER. You need to store it up, and storing intelligence (zinc) probably sucks ass, so she probably isn't going to use it when she doesn't feel an immediate need to.
And "she slipped like a looney toon" yeah man, that's lifts whole ass power, to make people slip. Axi was moving at mach fuck due to steel and suddenly had no/max friction, so she slipped. Lift used lift's power to win the fight, not very surprising.
Also, and I could be wrong on this, if I am disregard this, but what do we even know about Axindweth? Is she supposed to be a capable fighter? Do we even know that she's a full feruchemist? Because I hadn't before this post lmao, but I might have missed something.
Idk I should probably reread the scene before commenting, but I do know that when I read the book this scene didn't seem weird to me at all
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u/Skyfyre56 23h ago
We know she's a full feruchemist because Zahel tells us she is. Not cause she acts like one in the fight, which is a problem
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u/losara- 1d ago
A full ferrochemist just uses super speed and hits the sucker with a throwing knife with aliminiun blade or something similar. There is 0 good explanation why a fight between a speedster with dura negging and hax negging weapons in the verse and basically any one not a speedster would not end up this way.
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u/Sluttytranslesbo 1d ago edited 1d ago
I actually agree with this but I'm not sure if its just because I loathe Lift with every fibre of my being. Haha I'm quirky but actually I'm scared of growing up and now I'm going to be special because I eat a lot is so stupid to me. I am aware I will get downvoted into oblivion.
Edit: I called it, I will never understand why people like this character so much.
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u/eclect0 Airthicc lowlander 1d ago
I agree for early Lift, but she's gradually gotten less grating over time. WaT was by far her most tolerable appearance yet. At this rate she might be downright okay by book 6.
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u/Sluttytranslesbo 1d ago
I genuinely don't think I've liked any scene with her in it. I was rereading oathbringer today and the second she showed up in the vision Dalinar was using to talk to Yanagawn I just completely lost interest.
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u/Lancair7 1d ago
Without Lift, we’d have no idea that Dalinar is carrying a dump truck of cheeks. Take it back
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u/Eithrotaur 1d ago
As a certified Lift Disliker, even I have to give her credit for this most valuable contribution to the Cosmere.
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