Random collection of annotations.

[Calderis he/him]

So as my Nightblood annotation thread shows,I decided to start reading the Annotations. I started with Warbreaker because of all the Nightblood speculation, than moved on to Elantris and Mistborn. And in the middle of WoA now and am already amazed by how much that gets brought up on the forums is definitively answered in the annotations. So rather than start a new thread every time I find something interesting, I figured I'd just make this thread and toss it here, and invite anyone else reading the annotations to do the same. 

First one is relevant to our world and not the Cosmere. 

From WoA chapter 5 Annotation

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If you paid any sort of attention during the last book, you were probably expecting a new metal or two to show up in this book. I dropped a lot of hints that there were other metals.

It was a little bit of a stretch to let there be metals that, despite the thousand-year history of Allomancy, weren’t known. However, I rely on the fact that the Lord Ruler had informational control over the society. There are A LOT of things that he knew that aren’t known to a lot of people.

Duralumin is a real alloy from our world, commonly made from Aluminum. Actually, a lot of things we call aluminum–particularly industrial aluminum–is actually duralumin. Aluminum, pre-electrolysis, was really tough to get. It’s said that Napoleon had a set of aluminum plates that were more valuable than his gold or platinum ones.

I've always known that Aluminum is brittle, and wondered why aluminum foil and cans are so flexible. 

Because they're not Aluminum, they're Duraluminum. Who knew. 

Edit: just threw this one into the Allomancy physics thread, so I might as well add it here to. 

From WoA ch. 8 annotation. 

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The second reason for metal vials is more simple. Allomancers with the right powers can Push or Pull on sources of metal–the larger the metal source, the harder the Allomancer can Push on it. So, little flakes of metal make a terrible Anchor, and so if you’re caught wearing your vials, you aren’t giving much of an advantage to your enemies.

 

Edited June 10, 2017 by Calderis

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Here's 4-5 that I always end up sourcing: (Important Bits in Italics)

Warbreaker Chap 21.

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Vasher Fights the Guards, Then Creates a Lifeless Squirrel

I wanted to show the creation of a Lifeless somewhere in this book, as I think the process is interesting. The draining of color happens in a slightly different way than in regular Awakening, though it’s similar. In this case, the creature draws color from its own body in order to come to life.

The better your imagining of the Command when you make it (not the orders you give it, but the one when you give it the Breath), the more intelligent and capable of following orders the Lifeless is. Later in the book, for instance, people are surprised at how good this little squirrel is at doing what it is told.

Lifeless use their own color to come to life. Better visualizations when you create the Lifeless give it greater capacity to do things afterwards.

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Warbreaker Epilogue.

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The Phantoms Charge Away

Did they succeed? Yes, they did. The Lifeless were destroyed, and only a couple of the phantoms were lost. That still leaves Hallandren with a very powerful army.

Kalad's Phantoms can decimate an army of normal lifeless, which gives us a sense of threat level. This second bit is far more interesting though:

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Vasher Explains Some Things, but Leaves Some Things Hidden

I’m worried about leaving Vivenna’s two questions unanswered. One is pretty obvious—how Vasher can hide how he looks—but the other is unintuitive. [...] Can Vivenna change her appearance more? She can indeed. She could actually stoke that fragment of a divine Breath inside of her and start glowing like a Returned. She can’t change her physical features to look like someone else, but she can change her age, her height (within reason), and her body shape (to an extent). It takes practice.

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HoA Chap 74.

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Keeping back duralumin and aluminum gave him and his Inquisitors (the only ones told about those metals, other than a few select obligators) tools that nobody knew about. Very few Inquisitors could burn duralumin (and most who did it gained the ability through the use of spikes reused from previous, dead Inquisitors—and those spikes were therefore much weaker.). However, those who did have the power could appear inordinately skilled in Allomancy, enhancing the Lord Ruler’s divine reputation.

Some Inquisitors had access to duralumin through old spikes.

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HoA Chapter 37 Part 2.

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Human is a very special koloss. He’s quite a bit older than most, his creation running all the way back to before the Lord Ruler’s death.

The Lord Ruler tired of such games and eventually sent his koloss against Vershad and his men. As clever as they were, they weren’t able to stand against a well-laid betrayal and ambush set by an Inquisitor—one who controlled a troop of koloss. The raiders were slaughtered, and Vershad himself was turned into a koloss for his crimes.

He retained enough of his determination and his intelligence, however, to make a remarkably clever koloss. (There is some variety to koloss, based on who they were before the transformation.)

Inquisitors could control Koloss before the events of the books. Koloss can retain a semblance of who they were before they got spiked.

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HoA Chap 76. (Separate boxes for separate parts that are of importance)

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What Rashek decided to do (and he had to make split-second decisions in the brief time he held the power) was to shift the crust of the whole planet so that the Well was at a latitude that would have more standard seasonal variation, and to re-create the Terris mountains in the new North (to maintain the rumors that the Well was located there). [...] The planet’s magnetic pole followed the Well as he relocated it—and the ash from the ashmounts was slightly ferromagnetic. (Ferromagnetic volcanic ash has some precedent in our world.) [...] One side effect of this is that all compasses point toward Luthadel. Since it’s been that way for a thousand years, no one finds it odd–in fact, it’s used as evidence of the Lord Ruler’s divinity.

TLR moved the crust of the planet itself to move the Well, which took the magnetic north pole with it, making compasses point towards Luthadel.

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Not that it’s easy to get lost in the Final Empire in the first place—the geographical area of the planet’s surface that the Final Empire covers is actually quite small.

Lastly, the Final Empire itself covered a geographically small area.

[Calderis he/him]

11 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Here's 4-5 that I always end up sourcing: (Important Bits in Italics)

Those are great. I'd heard the one about Human referenced before, but am not there yet. Thanks for the contribution. 

[Calderis he/him]

From WoA ch. 54 annotation 

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When I was designing the Three Metallurgic Arts for these books, I knew that I wanted Hemalurgy to have a built in flaw. A flaw that, as a deconstructionalist might say, was created intentionally and relied upon by the very force hoping it won’t exploit it.

It was important to me that Ruin eventually be brought down, in part, because of things he did or flaws in his power. Preservation could simply build into the humans he created an innate goodness, then expect them to do as he hoped that they would. Ruin had to be able to directly corrupt and influence people. He felt himself stronger because he could MAKE them do exactly as he wanted.

The problem is, for his magic to work–for him to exercise control over someone–he had to leave a hole, so to speak, that other people could wiggle through and use. And so the entire ‘control the koloss’ plot sequence in Book Two was intended to set up Hemalurgy, and in a way predict Ruin’s fall.

Now, the only problem in all of this (for the heroes, at least) is that when Ruin actually got free, he was so strong that it was all but impossible for anyone else to ‘get through’ the holes that he had left in his Hemalurgists. But it wasn’t impossible. In a way, the foreshadowing in this book was meant to lay the seed that Ruin’s control of his minions is not absolute. And an individual who wanted to resist him had that potential.

I find this one interesting because it shows that the magic systems don't solely develop naturally between a Shard and the world they exist on. Ruin built the hole into hemalurgy intentionally, show that Shards can manipulate the way their magic system functions. 

[Calderis he/him]

HoA ch. 64 spoilered section. 

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“You did well, Spook.”

Yes, that’s Kelsier’s voice at the beginning. As I said in a previous annotation, he can’t help but meddle.

There is an afterlife in this cosmology I’ve built, and Kelsier’s in it. He never has been able to leave well enough alone. He saw, here, that a piece of the puzzle needed to be put together, so he stepped in and tried to get through to Spook about it.

Spook was the only one in the crew he could speak to. That’s because Spook truly has faith in Kelsier as a deity—which, for these few weeks between Preservation’s death and the coming of the Hero of Ages, Kelsier is.

While some of this has obviously change (Kelsier is in the afterlife?) the bit about Spook's faith in Kelsier as a diety allowing Kelsier to speak to him is relevant, and plays into a couple theories I've seen posted within the past couple months. 

[Calderis he/him]

From AoL ch. 15 annotation.

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There’s more going on here, of course. Pay attention to the name he mentions: Trell. This is one of the gods from the ancient religions Sazed talked about. You might think that the spikes in Miles will let Sazed influence him directly, and they would—except that Sazed has taken a complete “free will is needed” perspective on life. He won’t let himself take control of people directly unless they’ve “given themselves” to him, as most of the kandra have at this point. Even then, he usually only nudges.

But there is something odd going on with Miles.

Wait wait wait... I knew miles had placed some of his metalminds internally... But those were hemalurgic? 

Edit: from AoL ch. 17 annotations. 

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The Mists Form

In writing this book, I had to nail down a few worldbuilding issues I’d been contemplating even before the first trilogy ended. What would happen to the mists, for instance, once Sazed took over and became Harmony?

The mists, obviously, are a big part of the series. It didn’t make sense—either narratively or worldbuilding-wise—to lose them completely. However, they’d been created as an effect of Preservation trying to use his essence to fight against Ruin’s destruction of the world. So . . . wouldn’t they go away?

I decided that Sazed would still send them. They’re part of the nature of the world now. To acknowledge what had happened, they wouldn’t come every night any longer. But they would come. They were changed in that they are no longer simply the raw power of Preservation; they’re now a part of Harmony—so they no longer pull away from Hemalurgy in the same way as they used to. They still have the odd effect of being able to power Allomancy. (And Feruchemy as well—if one knows how to do it.)

The mists are, in part, the raw power of creation. And when one is favored of Harmony, the mists have a greater effect than they might otherwise have. We’ll see more of this later.

I knew that because of Harmony the Mists now contained Ruin's essence as well. I didn't realize that they could be used to fuel Feruchemy though. I suppose it makes sense, as Feruchemy is a mixture of R&P, I'd just never considered it. I find it interesting. 

Edited June 11, 2017 by Calderis