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Hi guys, this might bore some (most) of you but this is my take on why the plants on Scadrial were turned brown after the Lord Ruler's Ascension. So basically, heres a bit of plant biology: Plants absorb light during the first phase of photosynthesis , converting specific waves lengths into high energy electrons, which are then used to create NADPH, ATP and Oxygen. Some of these molecules are then used in the second phase to make carbon molecules, which we break down into energy. However, only specific light waves are used by plants, namely the red, blue, purple and to a lesser degree yellow waves. The green light waves are not absorbed and are actually reflected - the reason why chloroplasts and plant cells containing chloroplasts are in our eyes, green. Because of the ash in the sky, plants were not able to get enough light, and thus were unable to survive. To combat this, the Lord Ruler altered many plants to have a new pigment (say chlorophyll-C) which allowed them to absorb green light waves and therefore get more energy - stopping them from dying. Thus, green light was no longer reflected by plants and they were brown instead (probably because light absorption isn't 100% effective and so the small resulting meld of colours looked brown to the people of Scadrial - like how paint eventually just turns brown when you mix too many different colours). Although this makes sense to me, I'm sure I've overlooked something, and I'm not sure why this would result in plants that were less nutritious to man kind. Maybe because of the ash? I'm pretty sure that at some point Sazed mentions that the plants help breakdown the ash so maybe this made them less nutritious? But yeah, there you go, the science behind the brown plants on Scadrial!

Hey guys this is my first post.. Now TLR was a full Metalborn and so he had access to Double Zinc intelligence (how did he ever lose?!?!). So even if he was confident he wouldn't ever be defeated, he should have realized that his time was running out as his Atium Compounding for youth would soon be too impractical to continue (he needs too tap more and more youth as he got older). My question is: why wasn't he planning for this and preparing a successor to take his place? He should have thought of it, with the Zinc compounding..

Alright, obviously copper compounding can't give you information that you didn't already have, but it could increase their clarity. I refer to this (imperfectly quoted) line from Breeze: "I can't go anywhere where the Lord Ruler will be, because he's seen me before, and you know he has a flawless memory" Therefore, copper compounding allows you to enhance memories to the point where you can remember everything you've ever seen perfectly. In the AoL, a copper compounder could skim every book ever published, and be able to recite any of them word-for-word. Sorry if this was a bit obvious, just wanted to put it out there.

When I recently reread the Mistborn books, during the part with the atium stash, I wondered how much it would acutally have containted. After all, the Lord Ruler would have to burn it literally all the time in order to compound age storing, and not die of old age. Even if the Lord Ruler kept it on a very low burn most of the time (higher when there is anybody to see him) the speed at which atium burns means that he couldn't possibly need less than 10 beads per day. The prisoners in the pits of hathsin get one bead a week. This means that, simply to keep the Lord Ruler alive, there would have to be more than 70 prisoners on average. When Kelsier takes over the pits, he mentions that there are only a couple dozen guards [citation needed]. This means that there could not have been all that many prisoners. Combined with the fact that being sent there is extremely rare (the old guy in the first book had only seen it happen once), I'm thinking that the pits have an average of 100 prisoners at a time, each getting an average of one atium geode a week. With the Lord Ruler using ~70 of those beads and 10 going to the nobility, that leaves 20 going to the kandra each week. Remember, a lot of the atum the nobility gets goes to the kandra, so let's say that the kandra get 25 a week. With some quick math (and assuming that Scadrial has the same length year as Earth) we can conclude that the kandra's cache should have contained (roughly) 1.3 million atium beads. With that number, we no longer have to worry about it being too small an amount, but it could be too large. In the fight against the colos where the atium got burned up, there were about 200 atium mistings, plus Eland, and that they were fighting for roughly 3-5 hours straight. With each misting having to burn a total of 65000 beads, this means that each geode worth of atium would have to take roughly 3.6-6 minutes to burn. Sounds about right. And with that, we can conclude that if I was correct with my calculations, Brandon Sanderson likely was too.

So this is a thing that just happened: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crpb8mn?context=3 I'm in shock. I don't know what to think. It's crazy though. Weiry had an idea that perhaps Lutha was one of his kids. I always thought Lutha was a romantic interest, but this would also make sense. Discuss!

How exactly did the Lord Ruler's compounding system work? I didn't fully understand it after reading Sazed's explanation at the end of The Final Empire. Supposedly his atium compounding was stopped after Vin removed his bracers, but doesn't he have to burn Feruchemically charged atium for it to work? Wouldn't that mean he would be perfectly fine without the bracers, so long as he didn't run out of his metal reserve? If that is the case, do the bracers only serve the function of storing age, then being filed into ingestible metal to be burned? Perhaps I just don't understand the logistics of compounding well enough. Please, relieve me of my ignorance.

So, my friend has this theory: he thinks that the Lord Ruler, during his fight with Vin, used a Duralumin burst with Atium that he had compounded, letting him see several years into the future. He decided that Vin could handle Ruin better than he, and, since he was sick of living (I mean, who wants to live for a thousand years where your noblemen hate and fear you and your vassals hate you), he let Vin win. Tell me what you think.

In WoR, when Szeth attempted to kill Dalinar, both Dalinar and Kaladin had stabbed Szeth with their spears, but Szeth shrugged them off like they were no big deal, also taking their weapons away from them. This is very similar to the Lord Ruler, in the first Mistborn, being stabbed twice with spears by two soldiers, but hardly even flinched. I find this to be a very nice parallel between two books between the Cosmere.

Warning: Mistborn and Words of Radiance spoilers. Ladies and gentlemen, sticks and stones of all ages! Welcome to the Cosmere Colosseum, the topic channel where we debate as to the martial skills of characters from Brandon Sanderson's work. For our first ever episode, I chose a pair of combatants whose power is unmatched on their respective worlds--Szeth-son-son-Vallano and Rashek, the Lord Ruler of the Final Empire. I believe these two have been matched in fan debates before, but not recently. It's time for a fair poll to determine which of these two legendary fighters will survive their confrontation. As a refresher: Szeth-son-son-Vallano is equipped with Jezrien's Honorblade, a weapon with all the destructive finesse of the average Shardblade combined with the trait of granting the powers of the Windrunners to its wielder. Szeth is an extremely skilled and cunning fighter, trained in Lashing, swordsplay, and the Shin martial art of kammar. The Lord Ruler is the Sliver of Infinity himself, a Mistborn and full Feruchemist whose extreme power led to his worship as a deity on Scadrial. He is capable of Compounding every metal, and has had centuries to perfect his awesome skill. Following in the footsteps of EMTrevor with his amazing Monster Melee thread, I will be writing a brief description of the battle once enough votes have come in. Who will prevail? Cast your votes on the poll above!

For the longest time, prior to stumbling upon this forum, I had a theory that Elantris and the Mistborn series were set on the same planet. The reason being, the mention of people on another continent that the main characters did not know about in Mistborn. I thought that these people were the people in Elantris, and furthermore, that the chasm that suddenly appeared and ruined everything in Elantris was caused by the Lord Ruler moving and reshaping the world. I now know this is wrong, but I still think that the two could be related. The way I see it, when the Lord Ruler was moving the planet itself around the solar system, this would have had effects on other planets, and if Scadrial and Sel are in the same solar system, then Sel could have been affected. By moving Scadrial past Sel, its gravitational pull could have affected the other planet, causing an earthquake, and therefore the creation of the chasm. It couldn't be caused by Sazed or Vin from when they held the power, because the Mistborn series takes place after Elantris, but the Lord Ruler would have effected the world one thousand years before, which could put it, chronologically, when the chasm was formed. We also know that Odium did not cause the chasm, and that it did not occur naturally. This might be easily disproved, however, if Sel and Scadrial aren't in the same solar system, but I haven't found anything to against this being a possibility. Thoughts?

I just got done reading the Final Empire. I have not read books 2 or 3. I apologize if this has been discussed before, but please don't make me search through the forums to find my answers because I don't want to inadvertently spoil something from those books. In the epilogue it was explained that LR maintained his eternal youth using tricks that combined Feruchemy with Allomancy. But how was he able to survive violent attempts on his life? Did whatever he found in the cave make him unable to be killed, but not grant eternal youth or immortality from aging? The book describes him as being unkillable. He was burned until all that was left of him was a skeleton. He was beheaded. Impaled by spears. Had his flesh flayed. But none of this killed him. - Was the ability to survive murder also a trick of Feruchemy, or was it from the power he seized from the cave? - If his immortality was from the cave, why did it not also grant eternal youth? - Can anyone who has both Feruchemy and Allomancy do everything he did, or did the cave/well grant him some power they would not have? - If the power from the cave (and not Feruchemy tricks) is what made him immortal, why was he afraid of Terrismen breeding with nobles to create children that could challenge him? What undid his immortality and made him killable was Vin dislodging his bracelets from his arms (curiously, removing them didn't require severing his arms). This seems to imply that the bracelets were responsible for both his youth AND immortality. - Wouldn't some of the methods of attempted murder on him (flaying his flesh, burning him into a skeleton, or severing his limbs) also have dislodged the bracelets and undid his immortality? Don't answer these questions if books 2 and 3 give adequate answers. I just want to know if Mr Sanderson overlooked anything. The reason I haven't read book 2 yet is because I've read a synopsis and reviews and the plot doesn't appeal to me. Book 1 is going to be hard to top. And a book without Kelsier just isn't going to be the same. What made TFE so great was Kelsier, and his conversations with Vin. His hatred of LR was palpable. I also don't think Vin will be as appealing a character now that she's super powerful. I liked the parts where she is learning from her crew, her discovery process. I don't care much for this Elend character or her romance with him. What I enjoyed most about TFE was the struggle against this very evil dark lord's reign, and it's going to be hard to present a new antagonist as evil, powerful or hateable as the Lord Ruler. What adversary could outdo the Lord Ruler? Will book 2 and 3 disappoint or will I like them just as much as book 1?

I have a question for you all. Suppose a Worldhopper traded the Lord Ruler enough Biochromatic-breath to reach the Fifth heightening, in exchange for some Lerasium (or whatever... the nature of the trade is not important). Sidestepping any issues some of you may have with whether it would work for the Lord Ruler, and just assume that if it isn't a simple matter of giving the breath to the Lord Ruler, that the Worldhopper and Rashek work it out between them how to make it work using Hemalurgy (or whatever... once again, this isn't important. The important bit is that the Lord Ruler reaches the Fifth heightening). The crux of the matter is this: if someone who has lived long beyond his natural lifespan through Atium compounding, and who depends on continually tapping an Atium-mind to remain alive, were to receive the Fifth Heightening (Agelessness, Immortality and so forth), would they be able to stop tapping youth? If they discontinued tapping their Atium-mind, would they die, or would the Biochromatic-breath be sufficient to sustain them? And if it is sufficient to sustain them, would they be immortal, but impossibly aged, or would they remain at whatever age they had tapped to, or would they be fixed in the prime of life? Thoughts?