QafianSage

So, this is a bit of a niche question, but I've been wondering - Progression can obviously cause plants to rapidly grow, but could it be used to make plants rapidly rot as well? I ask because I was thinking of the ability to use seeds to rapidly generate topsoil via Progression; you'd plant some seeds, accelerate their growth, accelerate their rotting, and repeat the process, in a fashion similar to an accelerated version of the way that pioneer species colonize things like new volcanic islands. You'd probably need to mix in some manure or stuff like that, and use nitrogen-fixing species for the best effects, but it seemed like it might be a useful ability (albeit somewhat redundant with Soulcasting, probably). On the other hand, I wasn't sure if Progression could be used to accelerate rot in the first place, or whether the fact that Investiture is fuelling the growth would prevent you from using saprotrophic organisms (e.g. fungi) to do the decomposing - if you're supplying the energy, would they consume the plants you put them on?

Those are all good points, though I was just using Awakening as an example for how one might concentrate a lot of Investiture in an object. I guess my main question is, does aluminum block secondary effects of Investiture like its warping effects on the Realms, or 'only' Investiture itself (whether it's in a 'raw' form or being used in magic).

So, I just had a thought. If one were to gather up enough Investiture to cause a Perpendicularity to form, shove that Investiture into an object (say, via Awakening for sake of argument), then encase that object in aluminum, would it still cause the Realms to draw together on the 'other side' of the aluminum? I.e., while encased, would the Perpendicularity it creates be confined within the aluminum, or could it still stretch beyond it? Aluminum blocks magic, but I'm not sure this effect is magic per se so much as just... a general effect that Investiture has, analogous to the way gravity is caused by mass.

So, in short my question is - it having been a while since I read the books and not being able to access my copies for another week or so - about how long the Mistborn books took place over. I know there's about a year between the end of The Final Empire and the start of The Well of Ascension, and I think a couple months between TWoA and The Hero of Ages, but I'm not sure of the timespan within each book, or exactly what's between TWoA and THoA. Can anyone help me here?

That's a good point; if we were to assume that lifesense would treat a metalmind and an object with Breath invested into it the same - which I think is somewhat reasonable - it would follow that you'd need the Seventh Heightening to sense the Investiture.

So, in short my question is whether there's any confirmation or indications one way or another on whether the lifesense of someone who holds Breath can detect the Investiture a feruchemist stores in their metalminds. For instance, if a firesoul left out a brassmind filled with a lot of heat, would that register to someone with lifesense?

Regarding Kalad's Phantoms, I have to admit that my assumption was that the statues they were encased in were jointed, or otherwise had 'bendable bits'. Though thinking back on that, someone ought to have noticed that while they were hanging out as D'Denir statues. If Awakening can make hard things bendable, that does beg the question why wooden soldiers weren't used. Maybe it's the problem of complexity of commands?

So, a question about Awakening: Anyone know what happens if you Awaken a non-flexible object with a Command which would involve movement? For instance, taking a log of wood and Commanding it to "Jump". Would the Command just not work, as if you didn't put enough Breath in? Would the wood 'try' to obey, but just not be able to? Would it tear its own fibers apart? For that matter, could you Awaken something with a self-destructive Command, like telling a log to "Split" or a cloth to "Tear yourself"?

So, as far as I understand it's the case that organic substances can be Awakened, and then Breath can be retrieved from them later (except in the case of Lifeless, possibly because they gain an Identity). Inorganic substances are far harder to Awaken (seventh Heightening, very high cost etc), and Breath can't be retrieved from them in the example we've seen (also possibly because Nightblood has its own Identity). Where does amber fall on this scale? I don't imagine it would be very useful for everyday Awakening (not exactly very flexible), but for academic/hypothetical purposes, where do your thoughts fall when it comes to the organic versus inorganic nature of amber for the purposes of Awakening? Because on the one hand it's closer in appearance to, say, a precious stone than cloth or straw, but it's actually composed of solidified resin.

Okay, thanks!

So, no idea if anyone actually knows the answer to this, but seeing as Stormlight healing works based on the Spiritual self (hence why no Shash-brand healing), could Radiants use Stormlight to accelerate their gains from working out by speeding up the rate at which their muscles heal, stronger? I'm honestly not sure one way or another, and wanted to open up the question.

So, the Coppermind page for feruchemical cadmium seems to imply that cadmium stores oxygen from the blood, which can then be put back into it later. What I'm wondering is, if you were to store cadmium, and then tap it later, while tapping would you be able to do something like, say, talk constantly without taking breaths? Because that's dealing with physical air coming out of your lungs and through your vocal cords, not the oxygenation of your blood.

Worth pointing out that even if most compounders won't be full feruchemists, if they are, tapping zinc would help them mitigate the impact of Suddenly, Leecher.

Ah, thanks very much for all the info! You're an absolute star. Just to make sure I'm getting your point right, in your view the level to which someone can store a given quality lacks 'safety rails', so to speak, but they don't generally go all the way (especially with vital attributes) because on a psychological level it's deeply unpleasant, and on a physical one it's flat-out dangerous to go below a certain (relatively high by WoB) level with things like strength. Is that right?

So, a question's been bugging me for a while about feruchemy. We know that you can't store all you have of a quality at once; a Brute can't store so much strength at a time that, say, they're physically incapable of moving, or their diaphragm can't pump their lungs. My question is, does that limit stay the same if your total quantity of that quality increases, or does it move? As an example, say our hypothetical feruchemist has 4 units of strength (just an arbitrary measure), and she can store two of those at any given moment, bringing her down to 2 units in the meantime (she's weak, she's unable to do too much etc). If she were to train her body to increase her overall strength, got absolutely ripped and ended up with 6 units of strength, would her limit for the amount she can store at a given time still be 2 (so she can store an equal amount of strength to before about twice as fast) or 3 (so she can store it only about half again as fast, but is only very slightly weaker than she was when she wasn't storing before she did her training). If the limit is essentially a safety measure, like how Rosharan stoneshaping was deliberately limited so it wasn't as dangerous as Yolen microkinesis, it would make sense for the former to be the case. There's at least one other example of a similar thing in feruchemy, in how firesouls are more resistant to the effects of tapping heat; they can't just boil themselves alive unless they're compounding. On the other hand, the 'low bound' of storing might be something more to do with the Cognitive self-image or the Spiritual self; something like feruchemy only being able to 'deviate' from that self a certain amount (though that might imply that storing Identity might let you lower the bound). I hope the question's clear. Don't know if anyone has any answers, but at the very least I hope we can have some fun discussing the thing!