The Ultimate List of Questions for Brandon

[Dunkum]

You'd need the calories as well.  Otherwise The Martian would be a very boring book.

right, but I assume a multivitamin has some slight (non-zero) amount of calories.  the beauty of compounding is that it rises exponentially.  even a very small starting amount becomes unfathomably big after just a few iterations.  if a vitamin had only one one thousandth of a calorie, it would only require about 7 rounds to get it to an amount that lasts more than a day (10^-3 * 10^7=10^4=10000=5 days worth of food calories).  another three rounds and you have several years worth.

 

so a vitamin and a little bit of water (sugar water if the vitamin really doesn't have enough caloric value to get the process rolling) would be all you need for...well ever, really

Edited February 17, 2016 by Dunkum

[Master_Moridin]

It doesn't remove the mass of the food, just the nutritive value and the calories.  Much like Crashers can't store their mass in a metalmind, just the weight that mass exerts.  Spiking someone in the chull with a F.Bendalloy spike would cause them to have, uh, buildups.

 

Crashers actually are storing their mass.  In-world they just happen to not understand this so they say they're storing their weight.

 

Question

Does Iron store mass or weight?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. The thing is it really does involve mass, but I’m breaking some physics rules, basically. I have to break a number of physics rules in order to make Magic work in the first place. Those whole laws of Thermodynamics, I’m like “You are my bane!” (laughter) But I try to work within the framework, and I have reasonings built up for myself, and some of them have to be kind of arbitrary. But the thing is, it does store mass if you look at how it interacts, but when a Feruchemist punches someone, you’re not having a mass transference of a 1000 pounds transferring the mass into someone else.

So there are a few little tweaks. You can go talk to Peter, because Peter has the actual math. Oh Peter’s back there. Peter is dressed up as Allomancer Jak from the broadsheet. In fact we’re giving some out broadsheets, aren’t we Peter. So when you come through the line, we’re giving out Broadsheets. Please don’t take fifty—I think we might have enough for everybody. The broadsheets are the newspaper from the Alloy of Law time. It’s an inworld newspaper. It’s actually reproduced in the book in four different pages, and we put it together in one big broadsheet.

So anyway, you can talk with him, he’s got more of the math of it. I explained the concept to Peter and he’s better with the actual math, so he said “We’ll figure it out.”

(source)

[Oversleep]

 

Crashers actually are storing their mass.  In-world they just happen to not understand this so they say they're storing their weight.

 

In fact, they are not storing their mass. Because their density doesn't change. They're storing something like... boson field interaction?

[Master_Moridin]

In fact, they are not storing their mass. Because their density doesn't change. They're storing something like... boson field interaction?

 

They're still "storing mass", they're just doing so through manipulation of Higgs field interactions.  It can't be storing that interaction cause then that would have the exact same effect straight up storing mass should have.

 

Either way, they don't store weight and Brandon has said they "store mass", but the whole mechanic of it is weird and breaks things.

[natc]

In fact, they are not storing their mass. Because their density doesn't change. They're storing something like... boson field interaction?

Those interactions cause the affects that mass, for all intents and purposes, causes and influences in physics. The mass is definitely different.

What it really does that's weird is that "mass" and "amount of matter" become completely decoupled from each other. In that a point can be made.

[Oudeis]

Well, if it was simply "changing mass" Wax's density would change, and it does not.

 

I need help phrasing my question to be less awful. I want it to be something like, "If you took Adolin's Shardblade to the lake near Elantris and put it in the water, might it react like a Hoed Elantrian?"

[Meg]

I had a similar question in mind concerning Nightblood. Or is that one already answered?

Though I'd have asked whether Nightblood would dissolve as does an Elantrian.

I am not "up to date", though.

A follow up question would be if the same would happen with the *pool* on the Horneater Peaks.

A question out of curiosity: why is your question about Adolin's Blade?

[Oudeis]

Just trying to narrow it down to "a dead sprenblade" without getting needlessly technical. He's wriggled out of questions before when it turns out, there's this one weird unique "dead sprenblade" that would act a certain way under certain circumstances. This is a shorthand so I don't have to fill my questions with qualifiers.

[ParadoxicalZen]

A question on cognitive representation: in the cognitive realm, what has more weight to it; how a person/thing sees them/itself or how everyone sees them/it and how does this translate exactly into the Physical Realm? I.e thinking along Nalthian Returned lines hetre

[Oversleep]

Could Lift inhale Stormlight and then convert it to body fat/nutritional energy?

[ParadoxicalZen]

Could a spike that can take alternative attributes be used again to steal another, different attribute (we'll say atium, given its apply-all nature)

[Oversleep]

What would happen if an Awakener who is also a Surgebinder spoke an Ideal with intent of Awakening? (Could Ideals be Commands?)

[Straw]

Could a spike that can take alternative attributes be used again to steal another, different attribute (we'll say atium, given its apply-all nature)

See end of secret history for answers

kelsier comments on spook having a "pile of spikes" that he can use to make new allomancers I assume the at least one of those spikes were atium because of ruin upgrading the inquisitors.

[Dunkum]

See end of secret history for answers

kelsier comments on spook having a "pile of spikes" that he can use to make new allomancers I assume the at least one of those spikes were atium because of ruin upgrading the inquisitors.

don't think that was quite what he was asking.  it sounded more like he wanted to know if the same spike could be charged with two (or more) different attributes.  for example could you charge an atium spike with allomantic bronze and then charge it again so it also grants allomantic pewter?

[ParadoxicalZen]

Well, I meant can you swap the attributes, I.e atium spike with allomantic bronze gets rewritten to give allomantic pewter. I'm thinking the whole 'investiture blocks investiture' thing would stop 2 or more powers being able to happen (unless both take up an equal percentage of the Spike's potential capacity) but I wonder if you could rewrite the spike

Another question; could you make a kandra from a human or is the mistwraith stage the foundation/starting point of the process?

[Landis963]

Well, I meant can you swap the attributes, I.e atium spike with allomantic bronze gets rewritten to give allomantic pewter. I'm thinking the whole 'investiture blocks investiture' thing would stop 2 or more powers being able to happen (unless both take up an equal percentage of the Spike's potential capacity) but I wonder if you could rewrite the spike

Another question; could you make a kandra from a human or is the mistwraith stage the foundation/starting point of the process?

 

Coppermind seems to suggest that the mistwraith was the starting point, but I seem to recall that the Lord Ruler used Hemalurgy to turn the human Worldbringers into the kandra, after he returned to human form.  

[Dunkum]

Well, I meant can you swap the attributes, I.e atium spike with allomantic bronze gets rewritten to give allomantic pewter. I'm thinking the whole 'investiture blocks investiture' thing would stop 2 or more powers being able to happen (unless both take up an equal percentage of the Spike's potential capacity) but I wonder if you could rewrite the spike

Another question; could you make a kandra from a human or is the mistwraith stage the foundation/starting point of the process?

ah, yes that is slightly different than how I had interpreted it.  though honestly, I think both might be worthwhile questions.  for adding a second attribute, I imagine it would normally be difficult, but what about something like the pathian earrings, which have a very weak charge.  presumably there wouldn't be all that much interference from something like that (though the granted attribute wouldn't be very strong either).

[natc]

Mistwraiths are a biologically different species, that can reshape their tissue. Even if you spike a human with blessings their body won't change much.

[Master Elodin]

Has Adonalsium changed his/her name and/or appearance?

[Straw]

Has Adonalsium changed his/her name and/or appearance?

Yes, he is now the stick.

[Dunkum]

Question occurred to me in another thread: Can a ferruchemist with 2 metalminds of the same attribute simultaneously tap one and store into the other?  (example: could someone tap weight from an ironmind and, at the exact same time, store weight into a different ironmind?)  don't see why they wouldn't be able to, but I don't know of any example of it happening either

[Oversleep]

If kandra had somehow attained gold feruchemy (or became a Radiant), how would healing work? We know that those healings work by alligning Physical self with Spiritual self filtered by Cognitive Self.
There is a number of questions to be asked:

• since kandra were/origin from humans, could extreme healing convert them to be human?
• since kandra are shapeshifters, I suppose their Cognitive self must be pretty weird. How do they view themselves, actually? They can become anyone they want, that has to have some impact on Cognitive self. How would healing work?
• mistwraiths had this Cognitive blockage going on. Blessing are a way to bypass that, but I guess it isn't working 100%. Would that create problems for kandra?
• If mistwraiths had healing, how would that work with that blockage?

[ParadoxicalZen]

Mistwraiths are a biologically different species, that can reshape their tissue. Even if you spike a human with blessings their body won't change much.

Although Spook's writings say with Haemalurgy, you can stumble blindly as there are tonnes of different bind points (in the hundreds wasn't it?) So I was just wondering if it was possible to bypass the mistwraith stage

[Landis963]

Although Spook's writings say with Haemalurgy, you can stumble blindly as there are tonnes of different bind points (in the hundreds wasn't it?) So I was just wondering if it was possible to bypass the mistwraith stage

 

If it was possible, the act of tearing things out of (and jamming things into) a human soul such that they turn into a kandra would necessitate that somewhere along the line you get something that is so close to a mistwraith as to defeat the purpose of "skipping the mistwraith stage" in the first place.  

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

...

• If mistwraiths had healing, how would that work with that blockage?

 

How would healing work at all?

Since the only way we know of to actually harm a Kandra is by using acid, I don't imagine it will come up much in the first place, but the possibility does exist, so...

The problem is that acid harms by consuming body-mass, which logically speaking can't be recovered through simply healing, for a Kandra to recover from an acid attack, getting back to normal consists of recovering the lost mass, which can be achieved by eating.

We do have the possible counterexample of Lopen starting to regrow his arm, but from all appearances this is going to be a very slow process, so it's easy to explain the added mass of his restored arm as coming from food intake, so the healing is more an allocation of mass than creation of it.

 

I suggest that the blockage mistwraiths and Kandra have with their cognitive aspect also removes the filter used in Investitural healing, meaning that they are constantly at the ideal level of health outlined by the spiritual aspect, even when they're being dissolved in acid, the portion of them that remains is perfectly healthy.