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Theory: Steris is a Copper Cloud


Fritochip

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I am listening to the Bands of Mourning and I have been wondering if Steris is a misting. She could be an Aluminum or Duralumin Gnat. But I am realizing how often Steris tries to stay close to Wax in dangerous situations. I assumed it was as she explained, that she was safest near him. What if she is a copper misting and she is trying to protect him by hiding him from seekers?

When they are walking around the party in New Seran, it was when Wax left her and used steel that the seeker in the party found him, not before then. This would also explain why the Set tried to abduct her (in addition to her heritage). She is secretive in her own way, so she might even keep this secret from Wax and Marisi. 

I am reading the rest of the book and will look for more hints that she is using copper.

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4 hours ago, Fritochip said:

Also, do we know if Steris could block steelsight with a copper cloud? She showed up to the party with a gun on her thigh and didn't seem worried about a lurcher or coinshot seeing it. Wax never noticed a large metal source on her leg. Would copper explain that?

Copper savant, perhaps?

Not sure on that, but the rest of it sounds at the very least possible... Dunno if/why brandon would keep it a secret from the viewers for THIS long, though.

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Just finished a reread of MB2 and nothing comes to mind that would disprove this.  While I dislike the idea that every important character needs to end up with magic powers (I feel the same way about the Stormlight Archives), it certainly doesn't seem impossible.

If Steris is an Allomancer and is aware of it, I feel like it would be out of character for her to lie directly to Wax about it, or even keep it a secret from him.  However, if she DOESN'T know... it could be a tasty SanderTwist™ for her Allomantic ability to suddenly be revealed to all of us - readers and characters alike - in TLM.

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53 minutes ago, AquaRegia said:

However, if she DOESN'T know... it could be a tasty SanderTwist™ for her Allomantic ability to suddenly be revealed to all of us - readers and characters alike - in TLM.

You know what, that genuinely didn't cross my mind. Probably because I assumed they (she and her family) would've checked when she was younger to see if she was able to burn copper. But maybe she didn't Snap until after that?

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56 minutes ago, AquaRegia said:

Just finished a reread of MB2 and nothing comes to mind that would disprove this.  While I dislike the idea that every important character needs to end up with magic powers (I feel the same way about the Stormlight Archives), it certainly doesn't seem impossible.

If Steris is an Allomancer and is aware of it, I feel like it would be out of character for her to lie directly to Wax about it, or even keep it a secret from him.  However, if she DOESN'T know... it could be a tasty SanderTwist™ for her Allomantic ability to suddenly be revealed to all of us - readers and characters alike - in TLM.

First off, I love the name AquaRegia. I am having good chemistry flashbacks. 

I don't know that she ever tells Wax she is not an Allomancer. It is Marisi who says that she is not an Allomancer. That said, she has a lot of viewpoints, so it would be a little weird never to bring it up to herself.  

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4 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

You know what, that genuinely didn't cross my mind. Probably because I assumed they (she and her family) would've checked when she was younger to see if she was able to burn copper. But maybe she didn't Snap until after that?

I feel like snapping has changed after the events of the Catasandra (sp?). But it may only be from hearing episodes of Shardcast. I don't think it is written into any of the Wax and Wayne books. Wouldn't it be juicy if she was an unsnapped Mistborn?

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1 hour ago, Fritochip said:

First off, I love the name AquaRegia. I am having good chemistry flashbacks.

Thanks!  I'm not sure very many people get the reference.  I was a HS chem teacher for 26 years, and have some pretty vivid college flashbacks of Aqua Regia myself!  I could definitely tell a few stories of things one should NOT do with it.

1 hour ago, Fritochip said:

I don't know that she ever tells Wax she is not an Allomancer. It is Marisi who says that she is not an Allomancer. That said, she has a lot of viewpoints, so it would be a little weird never to bring it up to herself.  

I hate to contradict you... but I don't think Steris ever had any POV chapters.  If she did I can't think of them now.  I agree, I don't recall her ever explicitly denying having Allomancy.  My feeling, though, is that she is nothing if not honest; to a fault, and even to her own detriment.  After all the painful truth she's willing to confide to Wax - about her life, her past, how she relates to people and they to her - it doesn't feel true to her character for her to hide something like that, at least not from him.

1 hour ago, Fritochip said:

I feel like snapping has changed after the events of the Catasandra (sp?). But it may only be from hearing episodes of Shardcast. I don't think it is written into any of the Wax and Wayne books. Wouldn't it be juicy if she was an unsnapped Mistborn?

It's "catacendre", which, in keeping with the French language theme of Northern Scadrial, probably does more or less rhyme with "cassandra" when pronounced correctly.  I'm also not real clear about how snapping works now, so I don't think we can rule out the idea that someone might develop latent Allomancy as an adult.

The thought of Steris flying effortlessly through a cloud of hostile fighters, tassels on her mistcloak flapping, makes me chuckle... but I don't think it's in the cards.  ;-)

PS:  Double-posting in a topic rubs some people the wrong way - feel free to edit a previous post to add new thoughts.

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18 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

  I'm also not real clear about how snapping works now, so I don't think we can rule out the idea that someone might develop latent Allomancy as an adult.

Now that you say that, I wonder if it's possible that the more powerful you would be (the more investiture you would be capable of handling) the more that would be required to make you "snap"?  That could explain it, but I also feel like some combination of the previous suitors that told her of her shortcomings (noted in Alloy of Law), being captured by Miles, having her wedding ruined by a rusting WATERTOWER falling on it, and even Wax telling her on the train in Bands of Mourning that he'd only HAVE to be intimate with her a dozen times or so would snap anyone.  To mix a few memes: that's a lot of (emotional) damage...

 

Thus, if snapping was an issue for her, I think it would have happened by now, but that's just my $0.02

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27 minutes ago, Lazarus52980 said:

Now that you say that, I wonder if it's possible that the more powerful you would be (the more investiture you would be capable of handling) the more that would be required to make you "snap"?  That could explain it, but I also feel like some combination of the previous suitors that told her of her shortcomings (noted in Alloy of Law), being captured by Miles, having her wedding ruined by a rusting WATERTOWER falling on it, and even Wax telling her on the train in Bands of Mourning that he'd only HAVE to be intimate with her a dozen times or so would snap anyone.  To mix a few memes: that's a lot of (emotional) damage...

 

Thus, if snapping was an issue for her, I think it would have happened by now, but that's just my $0.02

19 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

I'm also not real clear about how snapping works now, so I don't think we can rule out the idea that someone might develop latent Allomancy as an adult.

Snapping is very easy now, 

Spoiler

KChan

How does Snapping work after Sazed changed it? If you don't want to reveal it all right now, are there any hints you can give us?

Brandon Sanderson

He couldn't get rid of this entirely. I don't want to spoil things, but Snapping was built into Allomancy primarily because of larger-scale magical issues. This is getting deep into the issue, but it has to do with a person's spiritual makeup and a 'wounded' spirit being easier to fill with something else, kind of like a cut would let something into the bloodstream. Sazed made this threshold on Scadrial much easier to obtain.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 25, 2012)

 

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22 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

but I don't think Steris ever had any POV chapters.  If she did I can't think of them now. 

She had a few POV moments in BoM IIRC. She talks about her sister gaining the Bands not making the appendix, and there's an earlier time where she's a PoV, but I can't remember what the conversation was about. Still, I think the idea of her being a Misting (maybe one who who snapped because of the kidnapping?) to be a really cool twist! 

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As noted, Snapping has become easier since Harmony remade things, but I'd imagine some kinds of Mistings might go completely unknown or undetected - the "gnats" who burn aluminum or duralumin, in particular.

The proverbial term in Era 2 for "wasting time or resources" is "burning gold" (as Miles, himself an Augur, reflects on in Alloy of Law), where you'd think burning a metal that literally has no purpose on its own - and in the case of aluminum, even has no purpose except to drain one's own metals/Investiture - would be a much better analogy. The obvious inference is: they don't know about (or rather, don't care to identify) such Mistings, as aluminum is rare and expensive. Who would waste aluminum just to test for a potential Allomantic power to burn it or its alloy? They know such Mistings must exist out there, but that's about it.

Imagine if Steris somehow ingests part of a "translation medallion" that contain an unkeyed duraluminmind for Connection (along with the unsealed nicrosilmind for the ability to tap that duraluminmind), and discovers to her amazement that she now has a reserve within herself that she can burn. Burning the duraluminmind would give her a huge burst of Connection - what could that do for her?

Quote

Dopetruffles

And finally, whether a duralumin compounder could break into a kandra?

Brandon Sanderson

Um... yes, possible, yeah.

WorldCon 76 (Aug. 18, 2018)

And with enough Connection-invested duraluminminds to burn, a "duraluminum gnat" maybe could even take over Marsh, then!

 

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