drunkenbotanist

The 200 number I believe comes from this quote "Hmmm… Aux said. I’d guess around two hundred BEUs in this one. Far less than what powers a full ship." But the quote makes clear that a fresh or whole sunheart contains more than 200 BEUs.

The story says that a sunheart can power a ship for months, but that the cinderking has prevented them from picking up sunhearts at dawn, so their supplies have been dwindling

Not brought up here also is that this reading I think would have not have had the normal amounts of continuity edits that the books get, which could change very specific details

I imagined it either worked the same way shard plate did where it's still flexible and has distinct parts, but is airtight at all "seams". Smaller links between the links and smaller links between those links etc etc Or instead if being a chain like you think where it's {(}{)(}{)} It's more like O-O-O-O where it's a solid piece

"Adonalsium-Will-Get-Us-Off-This-Rock"

He's mentioned that there are four main systems, scadrial, Roshar, sel, and taldain. And I think it was in the context of the four main groups in space age cosmere

It's also possible the device did the allomancy not her, like a special form of allomantic grenade.

I also it's because a ) Hoid is conservative with investiture and b ) he doesn't want to end up somewhere random

This exactly A goldmind like this creating awful vampire-like devices is pretty scary.

I noticed the same thing but interpreted the difference as it was because it was mechanical allomancy. It is semi -alive, and because of that either it's an issue of intent where that is what it is designed to do, and/or Sigzil doesn't get the benefits of feruchemy that help you withstand the effects with this type of device because the feruchemy isn't coming from him.

They tapped into the deep well of power always available to Threnodites: Misery and Puritan Angst

I just mean that Vivenna's blade is very dangerous and one could assume that having awakening that even reliably makes weapons as dangerous as a shard blade is scary and could maybe justify Vasher's actions even if Nightblood specifically is unique

Vivenna's weapon is still an extremely dangerous murder machine on the level of a dead shard blade

So it only takes the scribes in Tashik to start selling luxury spanreads made of premium strong materials and now it's a guild of assassins

I agree that there's a reason why most books don't have the 5 first chapters being difficult time periods, locations, and people, and I'm glad it's not common. But I do think it was necessary for the story Brandon wants to tell. I suspect that his team probably had this same argument with him

Human Shardipede incoming

I think you misread what I wrote. I maybe get why you interpreted it that way, but I think it's because you have some deep assumptions about how the magics are working that no one else does and you have only halfway spelled them out. I actually firmly agree that Ishar's actions in no way invoke Ruin. Hemalurgy involves stealing chunks of souls in an organized magic system. It doesn't mean that all stealing of chunks of souls involves Ruin's magic system. Just as every bond formation or alteration of connection doesn't involve Honor's magic system/s. Compounding causes allomancy to fuel feruchemical attributes. Instead of iron meaning "pull" when burned by an allomancer, feruchemical iron means "make heavier" or w/e. The form of the power changes. Allomancy is the source of the extra power -> Preservation is the source of the extra power. The term "invested art" needs a hard concrete definition that contrasts it from other manifestations of cosmere magic only in the situation where your "leap" theory of "each shard can only provide 16 invested arts" is true. But most confusingly I do not understand what is happening now. How can this be "the best way" to identify cosmere mechanics? "metaphorical Connection?" We know what the requirement for Hemalurgy is: Intent. Intent is a mechanical part of invested arts/magic/whatever. Is intent your "metaphorical Connection? I don't see how this helps to describe anything because it just seems like it's conflating two things that are different: Intent and Connection. Hemalurgy requires intent, it requires metal, and it requires placement.

Yes exactly

I basically disagree with everything you say here lol and think maybe you should make a post outlining what you want to say about Hemalurgy only first? And try to keep it separate from lerasium and things you're thinking about 16 types of powers? Allomancy and Hemalurgy work very similarly. Allomancy: someone swallows specific metal. This combination of the metal used and the intent causes a bit of Preservation's power to be pulled from the spiritual realm to do a specific thing, determined by intent and the metal used. Hemalurgy: someone is stabbed with a bit of metal. The combination of where you stab the metal and what metal you use and the intent causes ~somehow (but specifically involving Ruin)~ a bit of the targets spiritweb to be ripped off. It does not mean that Ruin is investing either the victim or the stabber, but instead the magic of Hemalurgy takes place in the spiritual realm moving bits of souls around. (I'm just gonna as an aside say that while we don't have as much WOB on the mechanics of this, every bit of info we have says this act of slicing and dicing is Ruin's) Now, in allomancy, Preservation's power doesn't care every time some rando swallows a quarter. To be noticed by the power, you have to have a little bit of Preservation's investiture in you. So allomancer's are a little more invested than a nonallomancer. In Hemalurgy, the intent to do hemalurgy when you are stabbing is sufficient to be noticed by the power. This difference isn't crazy to me. In awakening, all the power is given to people up front when they're born and Endowment isn't involved except to hand out more breaths. All the different shards have unique ways of obtaining access to their magics, and these are informed by the nature of the shard, per WOB. Hemalurgy doesn't exist without Ruin. It can be used anywhere in the cosmere just like allomancy can, because the power can be accessed anywhere in the cosmere. It just doesn't require a hunk of Preservation's investiture up front to get any results.

I take the above WOB that is pretty recent about Hemalurgy to mean that you can steal powers without involving Ruin, you can carve off bits of a soul and stick them other places. This is similar to how Connection and bonding doesn't always actually involve Honor, but Honor has a system based on bonds. You can bond things without it implicating Honor specifically. But Ruin has a specific form of this called Hemalurgy that is Ruin's. Maybe it's the intent to destroy that is the specific part only, and maybe more likely (in my opinion) it's the whole specific system of bind points and intents and to a degree the effects of metals in Hemalurgy. I don't know what this means necessarily for implications about your ideas about the effects of a lerasium + other god metal + other metal situation for powers...and I do think you're right and most people would agree that it seems like Lerasium is forming a connection to Preservation. Lerasium + Endowment metal seems like it could give you breaths...or even lets you use Preservation's power in a way identical to Breath's, but it makes sense to me that Lerasium + atium doesn't give you Hemalurgy not because Hemalurgy isn't Ruin's, but because using Hemalurgy doesn't require you to have pre-existing Ruin investiture. But canonically feruchemy is the set of powers that involves them both. But one other way to think about the Lerasium + Trellium giving you sand mastery...we don't know that the investiture giving the ability to use sand mastery would be come from autonomy, or even that it would last after you're finished burning the alloy do we? We know that metals burned by an allomancer tell Preservation's investiture what effects to cause. God metals in the Lerasium alloy situations could just be playing the same role. And in that scenario, I don't know if the 16 theoretical mashups of particular shard combination + extra metal means that there should be a 16 limit on shard magic systems. Because the numerology of specific shards we have in canon does already seem to be involved in that. Edit: clarification I think your point 2 is what I most disagree with tbh and I might be unique here, but. "2. We know that Hemalurgy does not follow any of the patterns set out by the other known invested arts. Specifically, it does not involve any kind of Investiture on the part of the user and involves no Connection of any kind to any Shard." I don't agree that Hemalurgy is all that unique as a [magic system, practice, invested art, w/e]. You obtain power in a way that aligns with the intent of Ruin. Ruin's investiture in the spiritual realm is what causes a chunk of a spiritweb to be ripped with the intent/key being metal stabbed into someone somewhere. Related I also think that Hemalurgy is not the only way to steal powers. What Ishar almost did to Dalinar with his bond is similar in principle. By that I mean it would involve carving off a bit of Dalinar's spiritweb, the bond with the stormfather, and splicing it into Ishar's. That's hemalurgy to me in a similar way to Yolen and Roshar both having "lightweaving", but it isn't Hemalurgy in that you don't have to have intent aligned with ruin and stab specific metals into a person in a specific place. Investiture can be used by any shard to make an illusion, can be used by any shard to make a gateway in the physical realm, those are called lightweaving, elsecalling. Ruin has a system that allows editing a spirit web, but the ability to use investiture to do so is not restricted to Ruin.

This seems like a lot of discussion over one observation/assumption Correct me if I'm wrong, but the central idea here is that because Lerasium +metal creates 16 types of misting, that logic may apply to all other shard metals + alloy, and because of that each shard should have 16 different ~~magic systems~~ defined somehow. And that assumptions assumptions later, hemalurgy isn't part of this system because really ruin's god metal alloy for 16 sets of powers creates feruchemy and ferrings. Do I have that right? It just seems that the Lerasium + metal = misting idea is such a minor never to be seen idea existing only in WoB to extrapolate a deep underlying part of the cosmere from. The idea that each shard should have 16 powers / "invested arts" they can grant doesn't have really have canon hints really unless you count feruchemy and then make more assumptions about voidbinding. But even without the text explicitly supporting this fundamental cosmere principle nevertheless to be true it would have probably had to have been probably a fundamental characteristic from the early times if not beginning of Brandon's career. You called it a wild conjecture in your post I know...I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were thinking before re-reading the 12 posts going back and forth about the definition of "invested art" which I feel like at the end of the day is meaningless. Because your idea is "because of the 16 allomantic metals influencing how lerasium works, Lerasium + other god metal + other metal reflects that each shard can have 16 different outcomes/magic types." And therefore it doesn't really matter what term you use, because some things are going to count as the 16 manifestations per shard, and some won't regardless of what you call the two categories.

We know there were allomancers before lerasium, although they were weaker and different.

So the scariest to me thing about the father machine is how it slurped up an entire country worth of people and rendered their souls to black goo. There has to be some limiting principle on this, per the recent shardcast interview Brandon did (and probably meta reasons about preventing anyone from making whole-planet soul juice weapons). The part I want to highlight is the possibility the father machine could do this because of the way Virtuosity's magic works. I think the mechanism the father machine exploits is the way that Yoki-Hijo are made. Yumi chapter 2: Brandon said in 2021 that he was outlining a character chosen by society. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/472/#e14984 Yumi chapter 2 Somehow Yumi had to be given the ability to influence the hijo after she was chosen. If the choosing of a new Yoki-Hijo involves investiture that comes from the people, some of the Virtuosity in all the people per WOB, then that could be the process that the father machine exploited. It took in energy from people because it was trying to become a Yoki-Hijo, or something like one.

I wonder if it was written before the father machine rock stacking bit had had some revising done? Or maybe the realization that because the rock stacking was all more or less an illusion, having a bunch of mechanics for it didn't make too much sense?

In the preview chapters, the rocks get stuck there and then slowly fall down as the binding wears off over years. "Each bound spirit had reinforced her sculpture, the stones of which would now resist tipping as if they’d been glued in place. As the bond weakened, and the stones eventually started to drop over the years, the powers of the spirits would respond in kind. But in general, the more spirits you bound in a session, the longer all of them would last. What she’d done that day was unprecedented." But this was removed from the final version. I've not seen anyone speculate about why, but surely it's a mechanics/continuity thing right? Because it was a nice detail.