A Stab At How That Other Continent Uses Magic (Spoilers?)

[Voidus]

If a tiny shard like the tip of a sword, or the piece of metal Marsh sticks in Penrod can be spikes, I think a syringe can be too. I still think the 'donor' would lose the trait however, as tearing off a chunk of the soul doesn't seem like it would have any other result

Oh the syringe could BE a spike, but what was suggested was using a syringe to draw blood then putting another spike in that blood, which I doubt would work.

[Vortaan]

Oh the syringe could BE a spike, but what was suggested was using a syringe to draw blood then putting another spike in that blood, which I doubt would work.

 

A syringe may not be strong enough to take a power without getting deformed. It could even snap off in the person. I wonder what would happen if you spiked someone with a spike made from their own sDNA

[Observer]

Spike size, according to Marsh/Ruin, does not matter as far as the holding-size goes. Size simply determines how long it can stay outside the body before losing its power. So yes, you could theoretically use a syringe, though you'd have to be fast.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

here's the exact quote

The spike's size was, in this case, immaterial. Just as a pinch of metal dust could fuel Allomancy for a time, or a small ring could hold a small Feruchemical charge, a rather small bit of metal could work for Hemalurgy. Inquisitor spikes were made large to be intimidating, but a small pin could, in many instances, be just as effective as a massive spike. It depended on how long one wanted to leave the spike outside of a person's body after using it to kill someone.

For Marsh's purposes this day, a small spike was preferable; he didn't want to give Penrod powers, just pierce him with metal. Marsh pulled out the spike he had made from the Allomancer in the doomed town a few days back. It was about five inches long—actually bigger than it needed to be, strictly speaking. However, Marsh would need to drive this spike forcefully into a man's body, which meant it needed to be at least large enough to hold its shape

 

Spikes can only hold so much hemalurgic charge.

A spike can only hold so much of a Hemalurgic charge, so they could not create spikes that granted infinite strength, no matter how many people those spikes killed and drew power from. However, did the repeated reuse of spikes perhaps bring more humanity to the koloss they made[/i]

Note that size does matter in terms of how much ruin influence is granted (which is seperate from decay rate):

Each Hemalurgic spike driven through a person's body gave Ruin some small ability to influence them. This was mitigated, however, by the mental fortitude of the one being controlled.

In most cases—depending on the size of the spike and the length of time it had been worn—a single spike gave Ruin only minimal powers over a person. He could appear to them, and could warp their thoughts slightly, making them overlook certain oddities—for instance, their compulsion for keeping and wearing a simple earring.

I personally think that it's just a matter of spikes being practically impossible to fill with just one killing; if you go around reusing koloss spikes a tiny piece of metal is going to be able to hold less total power than a gigantic railroad tie would. A bigger spike also makes a correspondingly bigger backdoor into your mind, as side-effect of being able to hold and channel a lot of investiture. Edited May 4, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[Senor Feesh]

Sorry, I know this is a little OT now... but can anyone with a copy of AoL find a description on Wax's earring? I can't help but wonder (and I'm sorry if it's been answered) how people are making Hemalurgic earrings in the AoL era :S it's a little dark, no? Also, who's responsible for making and distributing them?

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Sorry, I know this is a little OT now... but can anyone with a copy of AoL find a description on Wax's earring? I can't help but wonder (and I'm sorry if it's been answered) how people are making Hemalurgic earrings in the AoL era :S it's a little dark, no? Also, who's responsible for making and distributing them?

They're made from melted down inquisitor spikes, the kandra distribute them.

[Senor Feesh]

They're made from melted down inquisitor spikes, the kandra distribute them.

 

Ah, thanks for that. I had trouble reconciling Sazed and the creation of new Hemalurgic spikes just so he could talk to his followers. Good to know my gut was right.

[king of nowhere]

as for exploring the world, with what we know of scadrial the temperature in the tropical region would be between 50 and 70 degrees, depending on seasonal and day/night fluctuation. 50 degrees are enough to kill anyone with prolonged exposure. and unlike cold, there's no way to shield from heat by putting on more clothes or lighting a fire. there is simply no way people could have gone through the tropical area before the invention of air conditioning.

On the other hand, flight solves all the problems. at high altitude it's colder anyway. there would still be techninal problems however.

One is how much fuel is needed to go around the world. I'm not sure how easy it is to make a plane with 20000 km of autonomy. make it 40000, since it must also come back. Second, they cannot expect to find airstrips. they may use planes capable of landing on water, but what if the north pole is completely covered by landmasses and you can't find a river straight enough to land while your limited autonomy dwindles? The safest thing is to use a vertical take-off and landing plane, but that's some pretty advanced stuff.

 

Another chance is to send a closed ship with a strong air conditioning system. still, making it work is not easy. and there's plenty of things that can go wrong with a 20 thousand km trip through uncharted seas in an environment that would kill a person in a few hours.

 

basically, it takes a lot of technology to do the trip. no wonder those on the south pole didn't make it. And when scadruial was restored back to normal, they suddenly had plenty of goood land to explore and settle in the tropical region. so no wonder they haven't gone so far norrth to meet the other guys.

 

 

As for the matter of how much technology they have, it is also debatable. While on our world there has never been such a fthing as technologiucal stagnation, for mnost of our history technology progressed very slowly. We are used to the idea of progress, to the concept that our sons will live in a different world than our, we've seen computers spread in every home, we learn every year new tricks to work on DNA... but in most of our hystory, change was too slow to be detected by people living in it. agriculture was invented 10 thousands years ago, and it needed several thousands years from there to go to bronze working, and other thousands to discover iron. Romans had a good grasp of engineering, but most of their knowledge was lost when they fell and had to be rediscovered later. Then, somewhere around 400 years ago, we started the scientific revolution. we discovered the scientific method, and we had printing to spread it. new discoveries became exceptionally fast.

So, if people on scadrial south pole didn't hit the scientific revoloution, they may very well be still living as the ancient romans. if they did hit the scientific revolution during the early days of the lord ruler, they may very well be traveling in space by now.

Or, they may be stuck by lack of resources.

If we had no coal or oil, we wouldn't be able to mass produce energy. without that energy, we may not be able to get further developments needed to produce that energy without fossile fuels. Not to mention that around 90% of our chemicals are made with petrol derivatives. those on the south pole are stuck on a small geographical area, it is possible they don't have access to fossile fuels. Or to many other things. platinum and palladium are very rare metals, they are extraced in no more than a half dozen places in the whole world. but they are very important catalysts in many chemical reactions. without them, there are several chemicals we would not be able to produce. Iridium, osmium and some other noble metals are also exremely rare, but are needed for some highly specialized alloys without the which some things would not be possible. alluminium is widespread, but very difficult to extract; it requires some complex chemical procedure, that requires some specific material, which may not be available on the south pole. Then aluminium would remain a rare commodity, and could not be mass produced.

 

Basically, there are many things that could prevent the south pole from expanding too much.

[Yados]

Ah, thanks for that. I had trouble reconciling Sazed and the creation of new Hemalurgic spikes just so he could talk to his followers. Good to know my gut was right.

 

Since Sazed is in control of a power that literally created sentient life on Scadrial, spiritwebs and all, you'd think he, at least, could create hemalurgic spikes with pre-loaded spiritweb bits. Sort of like Hemalurgic Lerasium. 

[Phantom Monstrosity]

as for exploring the world, with what we know of scadrial the temperature in the tropical region would be between 50 and 70 degrees, depending on seasonal and day/night fluctuation. 50 degrees are enough to kill anyone with prolonged exposure. and unlike cold, there's no way to shield from heat by putting on more clothes or lighting a fire. there is simply no way people could have gone through the tropical area before the invention of air conditioning.

 

  The planet apparently has a very high albedo (and presumably minimal greenhouse effects).  Remember that deserts are very cold at night (Death Valley has a temperature range of −9 C to 45 C, for instance).  If you can average out the highs during the day and the lows during the night, it wouldn't be impossible. 

 

Water's a very good thermal regulator, as well.  You might be able to skip through the hottest parts if you got caught in an extreme storm, since that tends to bring up water from deeper down, and you'd be travelling pretty quickly. Not really replicatable, but them's the breaks.

 

Canonically, it's possible, but extremely unlikely.

 

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/2383-qa-with-brandon-sanderson/page-7

3. What's the closest that humans had gotten to the 'inhabitable' zone of the planet during the events of the first Mistborn trilogy?

There were groups who would go out there to escape the Lord Ruler, and the Final Empire in general. Survival was practically impossible. It's possible someone might have gotten across to the southern continent, but it would take a small miracle.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[skaa]

I think it's safe to assume that the south pole inhabitants also experienced regular ashfall during TLR's reign. That probably limited the kinds of technology they could build. For example, I suspect it wouldn't be safe to fly airplanes through an ash-filled atmosphere.

 

By the way, does anyone know if the mists existed in the south pole?

[Phantom Monstrosity]

I think it's safe to assume that the south pole inhabitants also experienced regular ashfall during TLR's reign. That probably limited the kinds of technology they could build. For example, I suspect it wouldn't be safe to fly airplanes through an ash-filled atmosphere.

 

By the way, does anyone know if the mists existed in the south pole?

Actually, they probably didn't have any ashfall. The Lord Ruler had to modify northern Scandrial humans to be able to survive the ash - and the southern continent he intentionally didn't meddle with at all, so they could act as a control if he screwed up.

[skaa]

Actually, they probably didn't have any ashfall. The Lord Ruler had to modify northern Scandrial humans to be able to survive the ash - and the southern continent he intentionally didn't meddle with at all, so they could act as a control if he screwed up.

 

Oh, strange, I thought the ash volcanoes were there because humans wouldn't be able to survive the sun's heat without them, since TLR placed Scadrial too close to the sun. I guess I misread.

Edited May 5, 2013 by skaa

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Oh, strange, I thought the ash volcanoes were there because humans wouldn't be able to survive the sun's heat without them, since TLR placed Scadrial too close to the sun. I guess I misread.

That's what he did in the north. Something else is going on in the south.

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727

Comatose (18 October 2008)

So here's my last question. If there ARE people on the other side of the world, did Vin kill them all by placing the sun on their side, or do they have they're own Ruin/Preservation battle going on over there as well? Do they also have allomancy feruchemy and hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson (20 October 2008)

No, they're not dead. Yes, Rashek was aware of them. In fact, he placed them there as a reserve. I knew he wanted a 'control' group of people in case his changes to genetics ended with the race being in serious trouble. All I'll say is that he found a way other than changing them genetically to help them survive in the world he created. And since they were created by Ruin and Preservation, they have the seeds of the Three Metallic Arts in them—though without anyone among them having burned Lerasium, Allomancers would have been very rare in their population and full Mistborn unheard of.

Incidentally Sazed's notes on hemalurgy rule out a few of the options for techno-lurgy. Seems like you can't use hemalurgy without someone else around.

Hemalurgy is a power about which I wish I knew far less. To Ruin, power must have an inordinately high cost—using it must be attractive, yet must sow chaos and destruction in its very implementation.

In concept, it is a very simple art. A parasitic one. Without other people to steal from, Hemalurgy would be useless.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[king of nowhere]

 

  The planet apparently has a very high albedo (and presumably minimal greenhouse effects).  Remember that deserts are very cold at night (Death Valley has a temperature range of −9 C to 45 C, for instance).  If you can average out the highs during the day and the lows during the night, it wouldn't be impossible. 

 

Water's a very good thermal regulator, as well.  You might be able to skip through the hottest parts if you got caught in an extreme storm, since that tends to bring up water from deeper down, and you'd be travelling pretty quickly. Not really replicatable, but them's the breaks.

 

Canonically, it's possible, but extremely unlikely.

 

Quote

http://www.17thshard...anderson/page-7

Quote

3. What's the closest that humans had gotten to the 'inhabitable' zone of the planet during the events of the first Mistborn trilogy?

There were groups who would go out there to escape the Lord Ruler, and the Final Empire in general. Survival was practically impossible. It's possible someone might have gotten across to the southern continent, but it would take a small miracle.

 

 

I wonder how that would be possible. in our world, there are about 40 degrees of difference from the average temperature of the tropical zone and that of the north pole. 60 degrees to that of the south pole, but antartica has the circumpolar stream keeping all hot air away, makinbg it colder than it would be just by the latitude. Anyway, if on scadrial the polar regions are temperate, we can expect the average temperature on the tropical regions no less than 50 degrees. and tropical regions do not have a winter like temperate ones. temperaure never fall below 20 degrees in several places on earth. though it is possible that something on scadrial is different (after all, they have a huge imbalance of temperature because they have the ash around the north pole but not on the south; that would cause some quite peculiar weather patterns), so if one made the trip on a particularly cold winter he may make it.

I also wonder, if those troopical regions were a desert, where an hypotetical traveler would find food. deepwater fish would probably survive, as only the firrst 30 meters or so of water are affected by air temperature, but all shallow water fishes would likely die too. Since such a trip would require years (compare marco polo's trip to china or ibn battuta's  travels), what would someone eat for all that time?

(Note that multicellular life is probably capable of thriving at up to 70 degrees, but that would require plenty of adaptation. New proteins stable to that temperature would have to be evolved. It would take millions of years.)

 

I feel that, more than a small miracle, it would take mat cauthon himself leading the party.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

We also have no idea what type of axial tilt Scandrial has.

Alternatively you could use a ton of brassminds to store up heat during the daytime. A feruchemist might be able to make the trip, though without rare metals food and water could be an issue.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[kroen]

A bendalloy compounder can survive without foor and water for pretty much indefinitely. The rest I assume clothing can take care of.

 

P.S. Of course, a journey's supply of bendalloy is going to cost a fortune.

Edited May 5, 2013 by kroen

[Phantom Monstrosity]

More than just expensive - impossible to get. While TLR knows about the metals, I'm not sure that he allowed for any to ever be produced.

Also another quote about the extra-empire areas

http://twg.17thshard.com/index.php?topic=6896.0

5) What do the burnlands look like?

A: The burnlands are the area surrounding the Final Empire Area. They are liveable on the border, but as you get further and further from the final empire, they get more and more barren until eventually nothing can survive. Basically a really large desert. Brandon also mentioned that some koloss live there, because they can survive, and some humans live on the border. These humans actually have some technology that the final empire did not, because they needed it to survive, and/or because they were far enough from the oppression of the Lord Ruler to develop new things. Because of this, the border of the Burnlands would actually be a good setting for a game.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[SirShemmington VI]

Its been said, hema involves ripping out a huge chunk of someones spirit web, and nailing it to someone else. Even if there's no physical harm, there soul would be ripped to shreds. Same as why you cant take two spikes from one person.

[kroen]

Its been said, hema involves ripping out a huge chunk of someones spirit web, and nailing it to someone else. Even if there's no physical harm, there soul would be ripped to shreds. Same as why you cant take two spikes from one person.

Interesting. So what happens if you spike someone twice at the same time? 

 

And while we're on the subject on ripping souls to shreds, does that mean that a person killed by Hemalurgy would cease to exist and not have an afterlife?

[king of nowhere]

Alternatively you could use a ton of brassminds to store up heat during the daytime. A feruchemist might be able to make the trip, though without rare metals food and water could be an issue.

Nice idea. At the time of the final empire there were full feruchemists. So with brass to soak up heat and (I don't remember the metal for keeping food and water) a feruchemist could make it. he would also need pewter to carry all the metal he needs, but on the plus side, as he empties the metalminds (or fill, in case of brass), he can abandon them, so he can slow down on peter tapping.

 

To save wheight, he could melt the brass once it's full, but i'm not sure there is something to burn in the burntland. all the plants died 1000 years before, and spontaneous combustion should have taken care of burning everything.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Well, he can just tap massive amounts of brass at night, and let off all the stuff he doesn't need in a giant wave of heat.  Feruchemy protects you from your own power, after all.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[happyman]

I think that King of Nowhere got the answer pretty much right.

 

There are lots of reasons the southern folks wouldn't have been able to make the trip.  Lack of resources is easily the most likely.  Lack of motivation comes a very close second.  The two together are extremely potent.

 

As for technology:  we have no idea how advanced the source population of the people on the south was to begin with.  We know that the part that became the final empire was relatively close to getting gunpowder and was otherwise beyond "medieval," heading into "Renaissance", but that says nothing about the south.  Real-world comparisons between widely separated areas show that absolutely nothing forces the different parts to be in sync.  Typically to the detriment of the folks who start out behind.

[skaa]

I've been thinking about the Southern Continent and how they use the Metallic Arts in a "non-genetic" way. So far we've discussed how they might be using Hemalurgy and Feruchemy in creative ways, but after re-reading Alloy of Law, I'm starting to think the Southern Continent is able to use Allomancy even if they don't have Allomancers.

In Alloy of Law, we find that Aluminum has anti-Allomantic properties even without being burned. What if all the other Allomantic powers can be accessed just by manipulating an Allomantic metal in a particular mechanical way? This could lead to so many cool technological possibilities. Here are just a few:

• Environmentally-safe public transportation via mechanized Ironpulling and Steelpushing.
• Rioting and Soothing gadgets (for government agents, entertainers, therapists, etc.)
• Bronze-based Allomancy-detectors (could be connected to a computer to produce precise reports, once technology has advanced to allow for that)
• Cadmium-powered food preservation machines and Bendalloy-powered instacookers.

The method of mechanically activating an Allomantic metal can't be too obvious for people with Industrial-level technology, or else they'd already be using Allomantic technologies in Elendel. I'm thinking it might have to do with a seventeenth metal (Miles' "final metal"?) that induces Allomancy when put in contact with an Allomantic metal. Or perhaps one of the other Enhancement metals (Chromium? Nicrosil?) could be used for this.

What do you guys think?

Edited May 28, 2013 by skaa

[Senor Feesh]

As for the activation method, I don't know, I feel we need more info for that. Those are some very cool uses for Allomantic tech though. (Allomantech?)