Chaos

I personally think Stormlight does not fit the specificity requirement, and the wavelength thing is pushing reason.

I am now putting a Cosmere spoiler tag on this thread, because we need to go in that direction here. I may move this to General Theories eventually. Okay, so, these powers are amazing. Can I just say that? I'm feeling hyper right now. I need to collect my thoughts, but some initial reactions: 1. I want a definition of Investiture. This is not a completely unfamiliar term to me, as it was discovered quite some time ago here: Note, everyone, that on Nalthis, the planet of Warbreaker, they use the term BioChromatic Investiture. So we kind of knew it was a term, and Brandon's mentioned that Shardblades can't be Pushed on because they are Invested. Right now, I want a firm definition of what it means to have an Investiture. 2. Spiritweb. Remember that in the Hero of Ages annotations, that Brandon said Hemalurgy was sort of like acupuncture. He mentioned spiritual overlays at some point. So, the Spiritweb is the thing that, if you knew everything about it, you could use Hemalurgy perfectly. Unrelated, but did you know Crafty Games confirmed that everyone has three aspects? We heavily postulated that, but it's good to have confirmation. Anyways, the Spiritweb seems to be that Spiritual aspect. Or maybe just part of it. It's like a spatial-dependent form of DNA. That's why Allomancy doesn't descend as nicely as regular genetics do, I think, because there can be so many variations of Spiritwebs. Also note that there should be ways to use the power by choosing it, rather than hardwriting it into the Spiritweb. The author mentions that Sel works like that. What if an Allomancer can learn to manipulate things in another way, and that's how you get to Shadesmar? 3. I don't know if it's Hoid. Maybe. It's at least a worldhopper. The way the author suggests "end positive, according to my terminology" suggests that he is more learning these concepts as he is moving along. Hoid would know these concepts inside and out, judging from how long he has lived.

Hopefully. I know I don't have time to do it... but eventually, it will happen.

When he pooped

Hey everyone! KChan, Rubix, and I all interviewed Crafty Games, the creators of the Mistborn Adventure Game, about two weeks ago, and here it is! We blab with Alex Flagg, lead developer for Mistborn (also God King Emperor of Happy Happy Fun Time), and Patrick Kaepera, the lead editor and marketing dude. And it was so much fun. We get a ton of information about the Mistborn Adventure Game. We hear Crafty Games' design philosophy, the mechanics, and essentially everything. We learn some very astonishing things about Feruchemy--Spiritual freaking metals--and we learn that there will actually be annotations in it, by Brandon, commenting about the book! How awesome is that? Also, we make fun of Somalia. (Sorry, Somalians in the audience.) All in all, we had a blast with Alex and Pat. They are genuinely nice dudes, so have a listen, enjoy, and buy a copy of the Mistborn Adventure Game, because we think it will be awesome. Just a note, in the interview, they say that the game will be out October 25th, but it will in fact be out November 8th, the same day as the Alloy of Law. The interview! It's 82:32 minutes long. (and if that link gives you difficulty, you can get it on MegaUpload here)

to the Dor.

The Dor returned

Awesome. I've added that to Joe's title. Oh snap You're lucky I don't add Punmaster to your titles.

Awww, you're too sweet. Upvote for you, and you too, Emeralis. I object to your use of the word Shardholder here I use Shardholder to explicitly refer to the person holding the Shard, separate from the power. So, the Shardholder would be Leras, and he holds Preservation. (I mean, if we're going to use non-canon terms that Brandon doesn't like, we may as well be consistent ) Getting back to actually respond to your comment, rather than babble about semantics: I can totally understand how you'd see Shards that way. I mean, I was bothered by Allomancy not feeling too much like Preservation. Unfortunately, Shards are more subtle than that. That just makes our jobs harder... And really, most of our Shard knowledge about intents came from the Hero of Annotations. Those may have came out slightly after Way of Kings was released. I can't remember.

There shouldn't be a post threshold like that. At least, one that I made intentionally. I tried to disable as many thresholds as possible.

As Emeralis posted, personal pictures and avatars are different. Looking at your profile, I can see that you've set your personal picture (the one that appears on your profile), but probably not your avatar. Sorry for the confusion. It's a very silly distinction to have you do the same thing twice, and I hate it. The next version of the forum software does away with separating personal pictures and avatars. Posts don't have a decay period. If you know what forum and which topic you posted them in, you will always be able to find the post again. Hope this helps!

I do believe that is the correct link. The wiki-fu is all Joe's. He is the Template Overlord.

Technically, Adonalsium could have Shattered, and if no one picked up the Shards for a thousand years, then everything in the letter would still be satisfied. It is not a necessary and logical consequence that the letter writer had to be alive at the when Adonalsium was Shattered. (This is kind of a silly, semantic distinction, because I do think that it is likely the author lived at that time. But it is not at all a logical consequence of the letter that that must be the case.) The element is a huge mystery.

A couple of things. Your first fact, that the author was alive when Adonalsium shattered, is not a direct implication of the letter. You jumped to some conclusions there. More precisely, the letter says that the author was alive and knew the Shardholders before they got their Shards. That could be an important distinction. I do believe that the author was alive when Adonalsium was Shattered, but I just wanted to make sure that that is a theory, not an absolute necessity. I don't think there's anything special about original Hoid. In the Liar of Partinel sample chapters, Hoid dies essentially on the first page. That's supposedly the book where Adonalsium is Shattered (maybe) but even if it wasn't, the old Hoid wasn't a Shardholder. I'd be willing to bet that in the times of Liar, there is no Seventeenth Shard, either. (You can download the Liar sample chapters in the Verified List of Unpublished books/chapters in the Brandon News and Discussion forum. There's a link to it.)

I agree with you on that note, Triumvirate. It's like if Ruin wanted to build the perfect, world-destroying machine. That would be very much in line with his intent to do, but Preservation wouldn't allow it. You raise an interesting point, Matt, but I think the "creation requiring two Shards" thing is related to Ruin and Preservation's specific case. I've always thought that Endowment could easily create by him/herself, because that's "endowing" life. I can definitely think of Shards that would be more conducive to creating (and creating sentience). Endowment, Cultivation, and Honor all seem like reasonable ones that could do that. Odium, not so much. And Triumvirate? I aim to perplex (Though that Allomancy explanation is canonical, surprisingly enough.)

*Scadrial.

I should note that we don't know what the Dor is, at all. That doesn't make what you said wrong, of course, I just wanted to make everyone get on the same page. However, calling it the "power of creation" is premature at best. Part of the power of creation, yes, but I strongly suspect that Adonalsium itself is the power of creation, and "Shards of Adonalsium" mean "fragments of the power of creation." That seems like the most direct interpretation, linguistically, and the simplest conceptually. So, the Dor (whether made up of Aona, Skai, or both) would be a part of the power of creation, but not the power of creation itself. Yup. All the letter author is signifying with referencing Ati is, "Hey, Shard's intents can turn good people into really nasty ones. You really need to pay attention to that nasty dude with an exceptionally nasty Shard. That is especially bad." The reason why a Shard's intent molds its holder's mind is because that intent is what actually keeps that person alive, now that their body is "vaporized." See the article on intents, because copying and pasting the quotes there would be too much effort .

That's very true. The recipient would have had to be alive at the time where Odium went to Sel, which Sazed was not.

The really important question.

I'd argue that Inquisitors have to be iron or steel savants. I recall that in an annotation, Brandon said anyone can learn to see like an Inquisitor [citation needed]. The only logical mechanism that exists for that is by becoming an Allomantic savant. It certainly is not a Hemalurgic effect. Zane had enhanced steel power with his spike, and that lent him extreme precision with his Pushes, but not the ability to see like an Inquisitor. So, yeah, Inquisitors would be blind for a while after their creation. Since they could only see with iron and steel, I figure they would be flaring constantly, and it wouldn't take them long to at least get a feel for their surroundings. I don't think those two abilities come from the same source, though (which gets us back on the topic of the Lord Ruler and lerasium Mistborn). I'm under the impression that any lerasium Mistborn could Push on metals inside bodies, given enough flaring. Maybe they need to be savants, too, but I don't think so. The Lord Ruler's base Allomantic strength was something all the original Allomancers had. That means you can Push on metals inside bodies, but not see like an Inquisitor. Pushing on metals inside someone's body just requires a huge amount of unadulterated Allomantic power which Inquisitors lack. Inquisitor-sight and Pushing on metals inside the body don't need to be correlated effects.

I worried about that Allomancy thing, too, Triumvirate, and in the Principle of Intent, I sought to answer it. When you look at how actual spiritual power moves, it really does make sense. With Hemalurgy, power is being reduced, in that when you spike someone, that spiritual power decays a bit (or a lot, depending on how long the spike is outside a host). In Feruchemy, the balance, spiritual power isn't changing at all, thus the energy comes from your own body. Allomancy seems complicated, but with that, you have metal opening a conduit for power. That spiritual energy has to come from somewhere, but if it took your own spiritual energy, that would be antithetical to Preservation's intent. So, to preserve your own power, it comes from Preservation itself. This was the theory that was postulated, and was recently confirmed to be the way it works. So that answers that question. The thing with Shard intents in general is that their effect does not have to be related to the intent. However, to access a Shard's power, that processing of accessing needs to be in line with the Shard's intent. For example, with Endowment, you Endow power--Breath--but that doesn't actually tell you what Commands can be used. I interpret Preservation's desire to create mankind akin to his desire to create a sentient being that had the ability to protect, like he could, and he had faith that ultimately, that desire to protect would overcome Ruin. Ruin could build something up (which seems antithetical to Ruin's intent) so he could knock two things down later. Why couldn't Preservation destroy a little, in order to protect later? That's essentially what he does with the Well of Ascension, after all. Thing is, Ruin and Preservation are Shards of Adonalsium, fragments of the power of creation (whether Adonalsium refers to the power of creation itself is an open question, but let's assume it is). I don't think of them as essences of just Ruin and just Preservation, only able to do those two things. If Ruin could only destroy, day in and day out, there would be no need for a consciousness to be attached to the power. Ruin would then be a mindless force of destruction. What makes these Shards different is that they aren't drawing upon only Ruin, or only Preservation. Those Shards are fragments of the power of creation--that's what is being utilized. It's just that a Shard's intent molds its user to want to cause more Ruin, or more Preservation. So, in principle, Ruin and Preservation can both create (this isn't too shocking, since Brandon said that both Shards could fuel each of the Metallic Arts. That signals to me that they are part of the same "power," ultimately). It's as Leviathan said--their consciousness only wants to do one of those.

I was under the impression that the size did matter to how much charge they could have, so I'd be interested in seeing confirmation there. Though, Vin's earring definitely suggests that.

I think the ebook of the RPG comes out that day. The physical version will be a bit later.

It's PHP and whatever weird stuff Invision Power Board built on its own.