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Hoid has the Lord Ruler's Atium Bracers


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Not really a complex theory.  I think Hoid has the Lord Ruler's atium bracers.

 

Why?  Well, they got sold between The Final Empire and Well of Ascension in order to get food money... and just vanish from the plot there.  Vin and Elend never bring it up again, even though they're doing their best to try to scrape up some atium from somewhere, and you'd think that one of them would worry that they'd supplied their own enemy at some point when atium was used against them.  After all, the only thing people would use atium for is to become a killing machine, so if someone is buying atium, you'd normally expect them to, oh, have a mistborn on staff somewhere, so you'd really be best off paying close attention to that person.

 

If they sold it to Hoid, he could have used any of his wondrous and largely unexplained powers to deflect suspicion, and make them ignore it.  Heck, Ruin might've made Vin ignore it as well.  Depends if he was the one responsible for scaring her off from Hoid in HoA or not.

 

There was only one problem. Nobody had ever found the reserve. They had found some small bit—the atium that had made up the bracers that the Lord Ruler had used as a Feruchemical battery to store up age. However, they had spent those on supplies for the city, and they had actually contained only a very small bit of atium. Nothing like the cache was said to have. There should still be, somewhere in the city, a wealth of atium thousands of times larger than those bracers.

 

We have (somewhat inconsistent) Word of Brandon on what happens when someone burns a hemalurgic spike, but it seems to be dangerous in general.  Now, some mistborn COULD have chumped out, eaten the bracers, and choked to death on them offscreen, but that would be boring.

 

Hoid always goes for items that are rare, valuable, and mentioned outside their presence in his collection (so far, at least).  And, well, atium is condensed solid essence of a shard he hasn't been mentioned as having yet, and, massive historical value aside, these bracers ALSO have hemalurgic and feruchemical charges in them, so it's like a three-for-one deal.  Maybe four, if you consider that the Lord Ruler was also a sliver of preservation, and that might've rubbed off on the spikes over the centuries.

 

Not really a substantial theory, but I figure that Hoid *has* to have some atium to complete his collection, getting atium offscreen would be far less interesting, and this would by far be the easiest bit for him to get (second-easiest being Zane's cache).  It's cooler than any of the alternatives, and when an author has the option between equally-plausible options, I think the cool one tends to win out. :P

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darxbane (16 October 2008)

In an annotation from book one, it is mentioned that The Lord Ruler needed all three magic systems in order to do what he did. I always assumed that it meant his Hemalurgy enhanced his Allomancy. Did Marsh get a double power, or is the Feruchemy-Allomancy combo enough? (a sidebar to this question is whether or not stacking abilities is possible through Hemalurgy).
Brandon Sanderson (17 October 2008)
He used Hemalurgy to pull off his most dramatic effects. Marsh didn't need them, but it makes things much easier.
 
 
The Lord Ruler didn't have any other spikes piercing his body - it pretty much has to be the bracers.
Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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A more specific confirmation:

DALENTHAS (15 OCTOBER 2008)
Did the Lord Ruler have any Hemalurgic spikes in him? It would seem he'd need to for Ruin to influence him, but it wasn't mentioned. Or did his bracers work as spikes?
BRANDON SANDERSON (16 OCTOBER 2008)
His arm bracers, which pierced his skin, were his spikes.
Source

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Interesting theory. I like it, though I'm not sure if Hoid would have had the resources/opportunity to buy them.

Well, he was hanging out in the area, and he does have shadesmar transportation.  I figure that gives you a leg up on playing the trade game, assuming he didn't just take some food out of his homebase...

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Interesting theory. I like it, though I'm not sure if Hoid would have had the resources/opportunity to buy them.

 

 

Hoid has committed thievery before and will do so again most likely, he's admitted as much to others like Kaladin. He could probably pretty easily steal the bracers from whomever bought it from Elend and co. Using Shadesmar to sneak into someone's home would probably be pretty easy for him.

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Hoid has committed thievery before and will do so again most likely, he's admitted as much to others like Kaladin. He could probably pretty easily steal the bracers from whomever bought it from Elend and co. Using Shadesmar to sneak into someone's home would probably be pretty easy for him.

 

So, tangent.  Does Nightcrawler pop into and out of Shadesmar for his teleporting? :P

 

Edit: added emoticon to give context 

Edited by Shardlet
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So, tangent.  Does Nightcrawler pop into and out of Shadesmar for his teleporting?

Where Nightcrawler goes depends on the writer.  Sometimes it's some kind of astral plane, sometimes it's hell, sometimes it's totally unexplained, sometimes it's 'Right Over There, what, there isn't any distance in between or anything'.

 

If there was a crossover, probably.  I think there was a star trek crossover where he went into subspace...

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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Epic theory Phantom, and I love it.

 

I like this, but I wonder if he could ever find a way to tap what's already stored there (not like he can steal the identity of TLR through any means we know, what with his dead-ness).

Well, if anyone can abuse the rules of their aluminum feruchemy, Hoid can.

Brandon has mentioned that it is theoretically possible to use Alluminum Feruchemy to access other people's metalminds (MAG, 340). As Phantom points out, if any Feruchemist has figured that out, it's Hoid, though I can't imagine that being able to access the Lord Ruler's supply of youth would be massively useful. I wonder what happened to Rashek's other metalminds though... do you think he had a coppermind, say?

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I like this theory. I've often wondered why they didn't do a follow-up question about atium when Brandon revealed that Hoid has a bead of lerasium. Anyway, I think Rashek's bracelets would be the obvious choice for Hoid if he wanted to get an atium sample for his collection.

 

I wonder what Hoid would do with atium. I don't see atium's Allomantic or Feruchemical properties being of any use to him (given what he already has). I suppose he could perform Hemalurgic experiments, especially if he knows how to Hemalurgically charge spikes without killing people.

Edited by skaa
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On the related topic of the Hemalurgic enhancement of the Lord Ruler that Phantom has brought up, I would think he'd have at least two powers Hemalurgically improved (one per bracer) if not more... and I'd like to put forward Soothing and Seeking as the two most likely for him to have enhanced.

 

Seeking was the favorite of the Inquisitors, and I can't see Rashek letting one of his creations be better than him at anything, not to mention copper piercing is just that useful.

 

With Soothing there are the examples of just how damnation strong he is at soothing, not to mention its usefulness at controlling Hemalurgic creations, of which he had many :)

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Another note about TLR's bracers.  They only had a small amount (at least relatively) of atium in them.  Perhaps each was a metalmind consisting of two or more feruchemical metals which could each be accessed as a metalmind.  A multimind, if you will.

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I don't buy this theory. My first insinct on reading the thrad title was to ask why would Hoid want them?  I concluded he wouldn't and he's why.

 

  1. Neither the Allomantic or Feruchemical use, that is limited precognition and storing age respectively seem to be of much ue to Hoid.
  2. If he did want atium for Allomancy he could've grbbed some from the Pits.  Brace are a bit big to swallow and why not just grab a geode or two or however many?
  3. Ferucemically they're useless to him as they're likely fully carged and it's a charge he can't access.
  4. This would mean that he would want them for Hemalurgic purposes.  These things are charged spikes.  Which would mean thaat Hoid wouldwant them for that.  Here's the thinng though Atium is a Hemalurgic wildcard.  He'd not only have to know they were spikes but what attribute they were charged with to want specifically these.  We don't even know which attribute(s) they gave and I find it unlikely Hoid knew.
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Another note about TLR's bracers.  They only had a small amount (at least relatively) of atium in them.  Perhaps each was a metalmind consisting of two or more feruchemical metals which could each be accessed as a metalmind.  A multimind, if you will.

Where did you hear this from? Hemalurgic mistborn/feruchemy twintastic bracers would be very fun. 

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Phantom origonally provided this in the OP, but here it is again for your convenience (emphasis added):

 

There was only one problem. Nobody had ever found the reserve. They had found some small bit—the atium that had made up the bracers that the Lord Ruler had used as a Feruchemical battery to store up age. However, they had spent those on supplies for the city, and they had actually contained only a very small bit of atium. Nothing like the cache was said to have. There should still be, somewhere in the city, a wealth of atium thousands of times larger than those bracers.

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If those bracers had been totally made of atium, even small bracers would represent the largest amount of atium any of them had ever held.  Recal, a bead the size of a marble was worth a fortune.  To me the language suggests that the bracers contained atium, but most of the metal in the bracers was something else.

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Yeah, it definitely seems odd. With purity being a big thing for the metal arts, and them being the only place he had age stored, dilution doesn't make much sense. But I agree that, on rereading the quote, it either says those bracers were mostly other-stuff, or that's one of the most obtuse sentences I've ever read.

Or Hoid already swept in and took the bracers when Vin flung them out the window, leaving a duplicate pair in their place with only a thin veneer of atium...

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Unlikely, as Hoid wouldn't subsitute something in the bracer's place.

 

This idea that the bracers weren't pure atium seems to fit with the theory that the Lord Ruler had multiple uses for the bracers aside from simple age storing.

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