Some Mistborn Questions

[Shattered]

What follows is a list of things I have scratched my head at innumerable times as I read the Mistborn Trilogy... innumerable times.

 

1. How could Kelsier possibly have known that he had Snapped after Mare's death? Even is he did, where did he get the metals he used to escape?

 

2. How exactly do iron or steel lines interpret different metal objects? Supposedly a single line points to a single object, and a Push or Pull will affect the entire object. But close to the end of FE, Kelsier Pushes and Pulls the opposite ends of solid metal bars from a prison cart to deflect arrows. How?

 

3. I'm sure this one is a widely known answer, so if someone could fill me in, that would be great: How does Lerasium make someone an Allomancer? If you're supposed to burn a metal to activate it, how do non-Allomancers still get the effects?

On a similar note, what happens if someone who is already an Allomancer, even already a Mistborn, burns Lerasium?

 

4. How, exactly, is flaring tin a good idea? Brandon has characters do it all the time to 'clear their head,' if they're waking up from unconsciousness or recovering from a hit. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be a terrible idea. The whole reason the person is out of it in the first place is because of the pain, yet increasing it by flaring tin somehow 'shocks' them back to wakefulness? One would think that it would simply muddle their mind even further because of the wide range of increased sensory input.

 

5. How was Ruin able to change text while he was blocked by Leras? Supposedly, any time that Ruin tried to affect the world, the power of Preservation would push back, rendering him useless. I understand how he was still able to manipulate Spiked people, because they were attuned to his power, but he still shouldn't be able to move things around just 'cause. It makes even less sense that he was able to change the memories stored in Copperminds. One, they're metal, which makes it shine incredibly bright the Ruin, and two, there doesn't seem to be a way or explanation for a Shard to peek inside of a piece of metal and change things around.

 

I hope someone on here who's an even bigger nerd than I am will help me figure this out.

[the winter system]

1. I don't know how he got the metals to escape, I assume he swallowed atium or something. He probably knew about Allomancy from having a Tineye as a wife and working on a Misting crew. Trace iron and steel metals in the water, is my guess.

2. Not sure.

3. I think it's because Lerrasium can be burned by anyone.

4. Like if your head is cloudy and you are starting not being able to feel, it's like tossing a bucket of ice water on your head.

5. Not sure. 

[Redbird]

I will answer the ones I can.

 

2. Kelsier was best with iron and steel, and this was because practice and innate skill. He was on his way to becoming a savant, but not quite.

 

3. It rewrites the spirit web, and it is not actually being burned, that is just a secondary effect, so it would do something else with a mistborn.

 

Edit: I think 5 has to do with feruchemy being equally of ruin and preservation, or Ruin adds to the memory as it is being entered into the metalmind, so the feruchemist would not notice.

Edited March 8, 2015 by Redbird

[Metanat]

5. Ruins influence was able to leak out of his prison but only a tiny bit could escape to be used. As far as I know he only changed information inside of copperminds and the memories are not stored physically. Also feruchemy is made up of equal Ruin and Preservation so they both could influence it.

[Shattered]

1. I don't know how he got the metals to escape, I assume he swallowed atium or something. He probably knew about Allomancy from having a Tineye as a wife and working on a Misting crew. Trace iron and steel metals in the water, is my guess.

2. Not sure.

3. I think it's because Lerrasium can be burned by anyone.

4. Like if your head is cloudy and you are starting not being able to feel, it's like tossing a bucket of ice water on your head.

5. Not sure. 

I already thought of that analogy for 4, and I disagree with it. Ice water shocks one of your senses. Flaring tin while wounded would overload your nervous system. Every single sense amplified at once, probably to painful levels, plus a painful injury. That would floor someone, not give them lucidity.

Edited March 8, 2015 by Shattered Logic

[Voidus]

1- He used the Atium mined in the pits along with presumably trace metals like Vin did before she discovered she was a Mistborn.

2- At the upper end it seems to become more distinct, Inquisitors' eyes seem to be able to distinguish lines pointing to individual particles, Kelsiers at the upper bounds of what's possible with Iron and Steel it certainly wouldn't be easy for another Mistborn to pull his trick.

3- Lerasium is a metal anyone can burn. If a misting or Mistborn burned it most of the time they'd just become a strong Mistborn like anyone with no Allomancy, however there are ways to use it to make it do something else, though we don't know what it can do.

4- I think it's largely just Rule of Cool going on but a sudden burst of intense sensory inormation would certainly wake you up (Not just pain remember, light and sound too)

5- For Copperminds that's because Feruchemy is partly his system I believe, the metals really just act as a gateway to the storage so it's not that the memories are somehow stored in the metal itself and he's just accessing the place they connect to.

[Shattered]

I will answer the ones I can.

 

2. Kelsier was best with iron and steel, and this was because practice and innate skill. He was on his way to becoming a savant, but not quite.

 

3. It rewrites the spirit web, and it is not actually being burned, that is just a secondary effect, so it would do something else with a mistborn.

 

Edit: I think 5 has to do with feruchemy being equally of ruin and preservation, or Ruin adds to the memory as it is being entered into the metalmind, so the feruchemist would not notice.

So would Lerasium still work on someone not native to Scadrial?

[Redbird]

Yes, as it creates a connection with preservation, according to the coppermind.

[skaa]

So would Lerasium still work on someone not native to Scadrial?

Yes, as it creates a connection with preservation, according to the coppermind.

That may be true, but I think we'll need to verify it by asking Brandon whether or not the Lerasium-ingestion method for becoming Mistborn is available only to those with Innate Investiture from Preservation (i.e. every single Scadrian).

Or did he answer that already?

Edit: Hoid appears to be Mistborn, and we do know he has Lerasium, so that could be a counter-example. Nonetheless, his Innate Investiture does come from Adonalsium itself (where all Shards come from). Also, there might be other methods to access Lerasium's power without being Scadrian.

Edited April 5, 2015 by skaa

[Moogle]

2. More skilled Allomancers can bend the rules. Here, Kelsier shows that you don't have to Push on the center of mass of an object. Allomancers can learn to do this with practice, much like Smokers can learn to protect other people in their Copperclouds from Soothing and Rioting but it isn't the default.

4. All of Allomancy has mental effects. In this case, burning pewter and tin make the mind more alert and awake.

5. They can't perfectly block each other. That's why Vin can get power to Elend, that's why Ruin can get messages to his Inquisitors. As well, Ruin tends to work through playing with people's minds, making them hear/write the wrong thing when information is being transcribed. I'm not actually convinced he can alter metalminds. WoB:

Zas

A question that has it’s roots in Dragonsteel. When Ruin changes words, is he actually changing words,or is he changing what people see?

Brandon Sanderson

Did we canonize this question Peter? I’m pretty sure we did. I thought we answered this one already.(It’s not in our records if he did)

Let’s just say that most of the time, Ruin was searching for a place to transition, where he could change what was being trans-transcribed. Or what was being heard, or what was being said.

ZAS

That’s pretty interesting.

BRANDON SANDERSON

So the easiest time for him is when a scribe is writing in a new book, he’s copying a new book down, and he just pops in and changes the words.

ZAS

Okay. That makes sense.

(source)

My own speculation is that he can do the same thing he does for insane people (make them hear/see things) to everyone, but most people will instinctively think they're just hearing things and ignore/block him out. But he can do it to them subtly, resulting in misheard information etc. Edited March 8, 2015 by Moogle

[vertigo 1]

2. More skilled Allomancers can bend the rules. Here, Kelsier shows that you don't have to Push on the center of mass of an object. Allomancers can learn to do this with practice, much like Smokers can learn to protect other people in their Copperclouds from Soothing and Rioting but it isn't the default.

 

could you please send us the WOB that says that?

[Moogle]

could you please send us the WOB that says that?

Here's a couple:

Member of Audience

Also speaking of continutiy...

Brandon Sanderson

Uh—oh.

MEMBER OF AUDIENCE

THis is a very very minor spoiler. It's just a statement that was made in Alloy of Law, that Smokers could...

BRANDON SANDERSON

Oh yeah, that was just a typo.

MEMBER OF AUDIENCE

Is that going to change things?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Wait, go ahead and say it.

MEMBER OF AUDIENCE

Can Copperclouds shield others' emotions?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Oh okay. Did we put that in Alloy of Law in the Ars Arcanum? Is that wwhere you read it?

MEMBER OF AUDIENCE

I forget. I don't remember where it is.

BRANDON SANDERSON

I believe it’s in the Ars Arcanum, which in Alloy of Law was put together by Peter. And that’s mostly a mistake, though the thing is the Role Playing Game came to me and said “Is it feasible that this could happen?” And I said “It’s perhaps feasible, but only a very rare individual could make this work if they knew exactly what they were doing.” And so I said “Yeah, go ahead, but make it a power that someone really has to know what they’re doing to make it work.” And so they put it in, and so Peter assumed that it was canon, that anyone can do it, but that’s not what I intended.

MEMBER OF AUDIENCE

So would it be easier to say that somebody discovered they could do it and now they are training copperclouds to do it?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I would say that it is viable that someone could figure it out, but it would be a very difficult thing to train, and it is not a common Coppercloud—A common Coppercloud isn’t going to be able to be doing it, and almost no Mistborn will ever be capable of doing it, they just don’t focus on that metal enough to learn it. Of course, there aren’t Mistborn around anymore. So it is a possible power, it is plausible, but it is not the standard. Perhaps I will allow it to become the standard eventually, but it’s not right now. It would be much easier to wear a tinfoil hat. (laughter) Aluminum, aluminum. Which does work.

(source)

BRANDON SANDERSON (paraphrased)

We asked if it was possible to use bronze to Seek Feruchemy. He said it could be possible. If it were to happen, it was very hard, because the Inquisitors would desperately like to be able to find Feruchemists that way, and it was implied they had not discovered this power. So, it is a freaking hard technique to learn, if possible at all.

(source)

As well, the Ars Arcanum of Alloy of Law notes you always have to Push away from your center of gravity, but it says nothing about Pushing on the metal's center of gravity.

Edited March 8, 2015 by Moogle

[Shattered]

2. More skilled Allomancers can bend the rules. Here, Kelsier shows that you don't have to Push on the center of mass of an object. Allomancers can learn to do this with practice, much like Smokers can learn to protect other people in their Copperclouds from Soothing and Rioting but it isn't the default.

4. All of Allomancy has mental effects. In this case, burning pewter and tin make the mind more alert and awake.

5. They can't perfectly block each other. That's why Vin can get power to Elend, that's why Ruin can get messages to his Inquisitors. As well, Ruin tends to work through playing with people's minds, making them hear/write the wrong thing when information is being transcribed. I'm not actually convinced he can alter metalminds. WoB:

My own speculation is that he can do the same thing he does for insane people (make them hear/see things) to everyone, but most people will instinctively think they're just hearing things and ignore/block him out. But he can do it to them subtly, resulting in misheard information etc.

Then why did Sazed's rubbing of Kwaan's plate in the Conventical of Seran change? Are you saying that Ruin was constantly affecting the minds of the people who were reading it?

[Moogle]

Then why did Sazed's rubbing of Kwaan's plate in the Conventical of Seran change? Are you saying that Ruin was constantly affecting the minds of the people who were reading it?

 

Or that he messed with Sazed's fingers by playing with his nerves as he rubbed it. Or he had Sazed smudge it in careful ways to screw with the writing as he spent long hours poring over it. Or any number of possibilities. I do think the most likely possibility is that he was actually physically changing things in the case of the rubbing, though. The WoB only indicates that he quite often plays with minds, not that he can't physically alter things. (The mist spirit spelling 'die die die' to Elend would be a pretty big proof of that.)

Edited March 9, 2015 by Moogle

[Dunkum]

I'm not actually convinced he can alter metalminds.

I'm just curious why not? Kwaan states pretty specifically in his inscription that what he remembers of the prophecies and the information within his copperminds are not the same. Are you assuming that he is just mistaken about this? or somethign else is going on?

[natc]

I'm just curious why not? Kwaan states pretty specifically in his inscription that what he remembers of the prophecies and the information within his copperminds are not the same. Are you assuming that he is just mistaken about this? or somethign else is going on?

You don't have to mess with someone's hard drive to change data when you can just intercept the signal from the keyboard and change it, is what I'm getting from Moogle.

[Moogle]

I'm just curious why not? Kwaan states pretty specifically in his inscription that what he remembers of the prophecies and the information within his copperminds are not the same. Are you assuming that he is just mistaken about this? or somethign else is going on?

 

As natc said. Rather than have Ruin bend the rule that metal blinds Shards, I think it would be more reasonable for Ruin to change the information going into or being taken from a coppermind, rather than change the coppermind itself. WoB implies he can do this. Entirely possible I'm wrong on this, we definitely don't know enough to say for sure.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Moogle

[Bort]

1. Snapping is, I'm going to guess, a fairly obvious event. Otherwise, how would people know to stop beating their kids while trying to make them snap? The exceptions to this would be Vin, who snapped at an early age (one of the books mention while her mother was giving birth as a possibility), so she wouldn't remember, and Elend, who didn't snap in the traditional sense.

 

2. Steel and Iron were Kelsier's 'favoured' metals. Vin comments (or thinks) about this in one of the books, quite possibly while watching the fight you mention in your question. Personally, I think that Kelsier was on his way to becoming a Steel and Iron Savant. Pushing and Pulling depends a lot on the strength of the Pusher/Puller, so it stands to reason that as their skills developed, they wouldnot get stronger, so much as they would develop more control.

 

3. As I view it, eating Lerasium basically puts holes in your Spirit Web, which is then filled up with the various Allomantic abilities. Eating Lerasium when already a Mistborn makes your Allomancy stronger. This is mentioned in one of the Ars Arcanas, I believe.

 

4. Flaring Tin isn't just about sensory overload, otherwise, whenever anyone flared tin they would be immediately blinded and deafened, and touching things would probably hurt. What flaring tin does, on top of providing all that sensory information, is allow the extra information to make sense. Yes, you can see more, but it isn't overwhelming your brain. Yes, you hurt, so you flare tin. It doesn't stop the pain, in fact your increased sensitivity means you feel it more acutely, but your senses are stabilized for this new balance, so you can take it.

 

5. With regards to Sazed's research being changed, I think it was Ruin's touch on Sazed himself. Everyone seems to forget that some of Sazed's metalminds were earrings. Early on, at least. Once he stopped wearing them, then it was less important.

 

Also, with regards to the Metalminds changing, it was said that Sazed once spent a whole year memorising the contents of his mentor's metalminds by having them read to him. Plenty of time to slip a few errors through the listenee.

[Dunkum]

As natc said. Rather than have Ruin bend the rule that metal blinds Shards, I think it would be more reasonable for Ruin to change the information going into or being taken from a coppermind, rather than change the coppermind itself. WoB implies he can do this. Entirely possible I'm wrong on this, we definitely don't know enough to say for sure.

Ah, ok, that meshes with what I remember from the books and the WoB. I thought you meant that he couldn't even effect what was going into/coming out of the coppermind, which would have contradicted Kwaan

[Shattered]

1. Snapping is, I'm going to guess, a fairly obvious event. Otherwise, how would people know to stop beating their kids while trying to make them snap? The exceptions to this would be Vin, who snapped at an early age (one of the books mention while her mother was giving birth as a possibility), so she wouldn't remember, and Elend, who didn't snap in the traditional sense. I believe it's actually mentioned in the books that Snapping isn't noticeable. The nobility would test people by giving them metals and seeing if they could burn any. That also explains how people who were Mistings of unknown metals wouldn't think anything was strange when they Snapped and still couldn't burn anything.

 

2. Steel and Iron were Kelsier's 'favoured' metals. Vin comments (or thinks) about this in one of the books, quite possibly while watching the fight you mention in your question. Personally, I think that Kelsier was on his way to becoming a Steel and Iron Savant. Pushing and Pulling depends a lot on the strength of the Pusher/Puller, so it stands to reason that as their skills developed, they wouldnot get stronger, so much as they would develop more control.

 

3. As I view it, eating Lerasium basically puts holes in your Spirit Web, which is then filled up with the various Allomantic abilities. Eating Lerasium when already a Mistborn makes your Allomancy stronger. This is mentioned in one of the Ars Arcanas, I believe.

 

4. Flaring Tin isn't just about sensory overload, otherwise, whenever anyone flared tin they would be immediately blinded and deafened, and touching things would probably hurt. What flaring tin does, on top of providing all that sensory information, is allow the extra information to make sense. Yes, you can see more, but it isn't overwhelming your brain. Yes, you hurt, so you flare tin. It doesn't stop the pain, in fact your increased sensitivity means you feel it more acutely, but your senses are stabilized for this new balance, so you can take it. Well, if the mind is equally adapted to compensate for the increased senses, then it seems the positive and negative effects would cancel each other out. Their senses are even more acute, sure, but there's nothing that shocks them into lucidity, because their mind had been adapted to deal with the senses, so the person would still be disoriented.

 

5. With regards to Sazed's research being changed, I think it was Ruin's touch on Sazed himself. Everyone seems to forget that some of Sazed's metalminds were earrings. Early on, at least. Once he stopped wearing them, then it was less important. Yeah, he had earrings, but that doesn't matter unless they had somehow become charged Hemalurgic spikes. I would be extremely surprised to hear that. 

 

Also, with regards to the Metalminds changing, it was said that Sazed once spent a whole year memorising the contents of his mentor's metalminds by having them read to him. Plenty of time to slip a few errors through the listenee.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Shattered Logic