Timewaster's Guide Archive

First of all, if it's a "surprise attack", then whoever is the attacker generally wins.  In real life, a knife beats a machine gun or even a nuclear weapon if you can sneak up to your opponent by surprise. 

Second, if it's a duel, then I suppose that if the Elantrian isn't allowed to pre-draw Aons then it doesn't look good for them.  Mistborns/Ferunchemists do have the nifty trick of being able to access their powers almost instantly. 

But, here's a quote from Elantris that illustrates why an Elantrian would probably win at least 90% of the time
"A burst of light shot from the Aon, the air warping and twisting around it.
The bolt took Dilaf in the chest and exploded, throwing the monk backward.
Dilaf crashed into the side of a building and collapsed to the ground. Then,
however, the priest groaned, stumbling back to his feet.
Raoden cursed. He dashed the short distance and grabbed Sarene. "Hold on." he
ordered, his free hand tracing another Aon. The designs Raoden crafted around
Aon Tia were complex, but his hand moved dexterously. He finished it just as
Dilaf's men reached them.
Sarene's body lurched, much as it had when Dilaf had brought them to Teod.
Light surrounded her. shaking and pulsing. A brief second later the world
returned. Sarene stumbled in confusion. falling against the familiar Teoish
cobblestones."

Several things are in this paragraph.   First, Dilaf has been boosted with the sacrifices of fifty monks specifically to resist Aon magic.  He's a magical superweapon.  Yet, even though Raoden is so far from Elantris that he is only able to teleport about 50 feet, the basic power Aon blasts Dilaf off his feet and slams him into a building.  A few pages earlier, one of the enemy priests is vaporized in a single hit from that power Aon in a square inside Elantris.  I don't think a mistborn would fare any better.

Second, it only took Raoden a moment to draw a teleport Aon to get away.  I'd say teleport pretty much trumps every single power in the Mistborn book series except for the gods in the last book.  And that's all it takes to guarantee that an Elantrian wins a fight with a Mistborn.  Step 1 is to teleport away, step 2 is to come back later, protected with a ton of buff Aons and a few dozen friends, and blast the Mistborn with targeted Aons from a safe distance.

Yes, Names are mentioned.  I can find a quote out of Elantris if you want...at one point in the story, Raoden tries a spell, and he adds the Aon for the name of one of his friends to target him specifically.  That might be all it takes to stop a Mistborn - a couple of Aons to stun or kill your opponent, followed by an Aon either specifying your opponents name, or one specifying "the nearest person to me" or something similar.

And the system may be "finite"...but all of the things I mentioned are in the book Elantris.  There's illusions, transmutations, teleportation, tons of effects.  Furthermore, you are allowed to create a spell where you can precisely specify what you want to have happen, complete with numbers.  Even if there aren't any Aons not already mentioned in Elantris 1, there's enormous power and flexibility, far beyond anything a Mistborn could wield. 

What's the debate here?

In Elantris, the Aons can be used to work any arbitrarily complex spell.  Teleportation, healing, changing appearance, creating food from dirt, it's all possible.  For combat purposes, among other things, one can use an Aon to specifically target someone.  Hard to dodge a homing missile or magic effects that can't even be dodged.  (for instance, if you drew someone's name and then an Aon to cause death, would there be a projectile that could be dodged or would the effect simply happen?  Probably the latter, and the only defense would be either protective Aons of your own, or maybe in Elantris there aren't any death Aons written into the city) 

In Mistborn, all of the powers are very limited, and generally do exactly one thing only.  You can't "write down" a hugely complex spell and activate it later.

I liked the Mistborn magic system to, but there's just no contest here.  If an Elantrian is sufficiently prepared before battle and close enough to Elantris to be fully juiced up, there's simply no way he or she could lose.  It's most likely possible to create a hugely complex spell by carving it into something and to set the spell to activate when you draw a unique character.  So, by drawing one character, a spell could be set to teleport you around randomly, put a shield around you, block all mental effects, surround you with fire and whirling razor blades, and to automatically target any living being within 100 meters with everything you've got.  Only real limit is that Elantris the city has a finite amount of total magic available to everyone, and individual practitioners can only draw on so much power at once. 

There's a ton of weaknesses built into mistborn's magic.  Among other things, metal users can only push or pull things made out of metal...in elantris, one could write a sequence of Aons to fire pieces of something not made of metal (like rock) at supersonic speed towards any of your enemies.   Goodbye Mistborn. 

As for making your own Aeon that activates a sequence of other Aons...I am extrapolating, but not by much.  Elantris itself obvious has written into the city "translation" that somehow specify what each Aon will do in terms of a simpler form of a magic.  Like a high level versus a lower level programming language.   That's why the city broke in the book....a key library had it's name changed...

One final thing : Atium.  Atium only works if there is a WAY to win.  If there's no possible way to get close enough to that Elantrian surrounded by a shield and maybe whirling non metallic blades and protected by healing Aons set to repair any injury in seconds, you can't win. 

And why fight at all?  A clever Elantrian could simply have an Aon that teleported him home while replacing his body with an illusion that is booby trapped.  That's certainly what I would do : the trap would blast anyone who tried to harm my illusionary body.  If that didn't work, I'd return to the battlefield, invisible (yet another effect that is not available to a mistborn), and spend some time spying on my opponent to determine weaknesses.  Or perhaps simply remote scry my opponent : presumably that's yet another thing that can be done with Aons.