Timewaster's Guide Archive

I seem to recall reading in the book that the eye spikes are both steel. Lemme see if I can find it . . .

Ooh, nope. They're iron. p.70 in Well of Ascension.

And an ominous danger it was. The stranger waited quietly on the worn road, wearing a black robe, standing almost as tall as Sazed himself. The man was bald, and he wore no jewelry--unless, of course, you counted the massive iron spikes that had been driven point first through his eyes.

Here's another thought. While the weaves a channeler spins may be invisible, the actual effects they have are not, most of the time. Things like walls of fire and balefire are objects, so they would shoot off an atium shadow. I think this would give the Mistborn another advantage, as they could tell what weaves were being used against them by the atium shadows of their effect coming into existance. I mean, an atium shadow shows what will happen in the future, so if an object comes into existence I assume it's atium shadow would show it doing so before it materialized. This would negate the advantage a channeler has with physical weaves, and leaves them with the best weapons of compulsion and invisible air. (As some air weaves can be seen, such as when Siuan made the bluish-green sword of air on the boat to Tar Valon.) This fact, combined with the hand gestures and electrum shadows gives the Mistborn a fighting chance against most channelers.

The thing I can't find a way around is complusion. However, luckily for the Mistborn, there are only a few channelers who know the weave. Among regular Aes Sedai and Asha'man compulsion is not something to worry about.

As to the atium vs. balefire temporal aspect, it would probably depend on the strength of the atium burn/balefire. I seem to remember hearing that flaring atium would give you a larger time jump into the future (can't remember if it was canon or not though . . .) but the strength of balefire can burn things out of the pattern at different intervals. So it would probably just come down to which had a larger temporal distance. (And the average size of balefire is about the width of your arm, if I recall correctly.)

However, another advantage Mistborn have is that 90% of Aes Sedai have to use hand gestures to get their weaves to work properly. Burning atium would let them see which hand gestures the Aes Sedai was using, giving another insight in to what the channeler was going to do.

As for zinc and brass, while channelers don't need complete emotional control, they do need to be able to focus. A Mistborn could riot emotions such as shock, worry, absentmindedness, or some such to weaken that control, or soothe all their emotions away in a big push to shock them out of weaving right. Of course, where Aes Sedai are trained to handle their emotions, this might not do much good once they figured out what was going on, but it could be used to stall and close in.

And as for Mistborn not having good long range attacks against Aes Sedai, it may be true, but a steelpush or ironpull (enhanced with duralumin perhaps?) would considerably shorten that distance very quickly. The terrain would really make a differene in a fight between the two though, as a lot of factors come down to how much metal the Mistborn has to use and how fast the channeler can get a weave around them.

Also, most Aes Sedai keep coins on them, don't they? A Mistborn might not have to get too close if they can just push the coins off them far enough to pull them back with lethal force. Aes Sedai aren't likely to guard against their own coins killing them. (Though I bet they'd learn fast.)

And keep in mind, it takes quite a lot of the One Power to go moving earth around, particularly large amounts of it. While the Aes Sedai in question could probably do it, (a touch unfair to give the Mistborn advantages such as atium and metal to work with without the Aes Sedai being equally gifted.) it would take quite a bit of effort to encase someone in stone. Which raises another question. Could a Mistborn riot/soothe an Aes Sedai's emotions to make them more likely to draw on too much of the One Power or otherwise let it consume them? I would think they could, as Rand makes Saidin at least sound easy to fall prey to.

That's what the use of electrum and such would be for. If the metal works in a similar way to atium, you could just watch to see where the flows of air caught you before they actually were flown. I suppose the way I wrote that came off as if the Mistborn would use atium and the other temporal metals to see what the channeler is going to do directly, but the best strategy would be to use it's added mental capacities to see what would happen to you, and use that information to prevent it. Kind of like what Vin does with Zane I guess.

I have to concede the point that in a one-on-one fight, with both parties knowing about the other, a channeler would have the edge in a fight, or pretty much anything. But I think a Mistborn's unique abilities could allow him/her to catch many a channeler unaware. With atium speeding up mental processes and rendering physical combat useless, duralumin and steel or iron to move around, electrum to gain at least marginal warning of any attacks against you, with the other metals throwing in their quirks, a Mistborn who was trying to say, assassinate an important channeler could stand a viable chance of it.