Kurkistan

Maybe, maybe not. He could have been an unsnapped Seer (which I doubt, given the agony he's likely already gone through in life), or he could have been someone who would never snap, ever, into anything. Now we still have the question on whether he was still technically an unSnapped Seer, or if he was made into a Seer by the snapping. Did the mists really pick out that exact percentage of the army who happened to be latent Seers, or (more likely), did they make them into Seers? http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-Mistborn-3-Chapter-Seventy/ (yeah, Annotations are back up!)

I'll have to disagree, Trizee. This was certainly good, but The Emperor's Soul still blows Brandon's other short work out of the water, in my book.

And he ran out of Pewter just before the direct fueling began.

Sorry, that definitely falls under the "useful" category.

Can I at least ask who that is directed towards?

No, I'm sorry for being unclear. To reiterate (hopefully in more precise terms), I think that Atium's "mind expansion" is relatively limited, as evidenced by the fact that Atium is useless when fighting other Atium (and even Electrum) buners, as opposed to merely having its utility reduced by some amount.

*Looks at Google Books version* I agree that the scene reads like he has only a small amount (though the "Elend's <metal> ran out" line was actually Pewter, so far as I can see). I have certain commitments that stop me from saying "well this obviously means Duralumin adds energy", though, so I'll settle for "it's all super-compressed" or some weird god-metal interaction, for the time being.

I think we're actually on the same side here, since I said the same thing about Atium's mind-expansion being limited...

I think you have the right of it, Shardlet. Just to pile on: You acquire multiple Atium shadows when you receive and are capable of acting on information from the future. Zane essentially "told" Vin something about the future, so she was able to react to that information. The same would hold true for a Sparker: s/he could easily observe and analyze movements and facial expressions caused by the Seer seeing Atium shadows, and so get information from the future.

Hmm. Interesting. I'm still not 100%, though. If I recall correctly (call me out if I don't), Elend didn't specify any amount of time left on his Atium, and had just then been using reserves best measured in terms of hours, rather than the usual minutes. On top of that, he was measuring how long he had to live, essentially, so "low" might be a relative term. Even a minute's worth of Atium, compressed into a split second, might still be able to do the trick. The future he was trying to see was literally a few minutes away from being actualized, after all, so he didn't have that far to go.

I agree with Pech. Atium enhances your mind exactly enough to deal with every object around you having a future-shadow: not to dealing with a dozen of them.

No problem, I just got all "well, I suppose if you must link to my awesome thread that explains the entirety of the universe..." when you started linking to threads, then I got a nice ego-check when mine wasn't one of them.

Hey bookworm, nice to see a new face around these parts. You might want to wait until you've read all the Cosmere books before venturing further, though: here there be spoilers. If you want to continue down this perilous path, some things might be useful to know. First of all, a terminology update: we tend to say "X Realm" to refer to the whole of that plane of existence (for lack of a better term) in the Cosmere, or at least in any given region of it. So Shadesmar is the Cognitive Realm. The Physical/Cognitive/Spiritual parts of individual things, then, we call "aspects." We picked up the first from Brandon and the second from Harmony Also, the general understanding (though, for all we know, you're view of it is actually right and all of us are just hide-bound ignorants) is that the Physical Realm is just the regular world: how everything looks before the rest of Realmatics rears its ugly head. So, without the existence of magic, it would not be possible to know that the Physical Realm is not the whole of the Cosmere. @Shardlet I guess my thoughts aren't prevailing. () There is also the realmatics tag, though we only just recently started using tags, so its coverage is incomplete.

TES's account isn't the whole story: we also have from Harmony that Source: No doubt there are other facets to the Cognitive as well.

Why only 2 shadows? The Sparker can see the Seer react to the second shadow, then react to that, then react to their reaction, then... until you get to the point where the Atium is useless or worse and the Sparker is still an incredibly powerful Ferring.

Ah, sorry. As for Inquisitors, I'd hazard that they're increased sensitivity to even metals they can't affect extends to seeing metals too far away to affect.

I don't really credit the ranges in the MAG. In the books, it seems to be based primarily on the size of the item in question.

Inquisitors can see multiple steel lines for all objects, so I imagine that it's simply a question of power/skill to push on different parts of them.

I would like to note that his "Duralumin" there was Preservation-fueled, though I doubt that changes anything. Just worth keeping in mind. I don't know. He had a belly-full of the stuff, if I recall. Compressing it all down into a single instant of comprehension might do the trick.

I interpret Duralumin as not adding any energy to the process--just enabling a super-flare--so I would say not.

Yes.

Just finished it. 'Twas good.

@Miyabi Oh, you meant actual questions, the kind normal people ask authors... ... I got nuthin'

No! Han burned first! My mistake, then. That would explain why burning Aluminum doesn't let you Compound: it seems you need at least an instant of Allomantic use before you can see the other reserve to burn, so *poof*.

If I recall correctly, Vin was able to sense both reserves without burning: she tried to burn the Feruchemical reserve, but failed, and so then chose to burn the Allomantic one. So she could feel the Feruchemical one without burning, even though it was tuned to Sazed. Using "removable souls" to allow compounding is an interesting thought.