Kurkistan

It's also possible that she simply never had a reason to steelpush while she was using Feruchemical steel, the most OP of the non-Atium powers. There's also the possiblity that some difficulty arises with trying to switch between burning Allomantic and Feruchemical reserves of the same metal.

*Sidesteps multiplicative discussion* Okay, I think I've got a firm grasp of where you're coming from, at least. So at this point I'll just say that I disagree. I think most of the relevant WoBs on the subject have been brought up by now, though, and given that we both seem to understand the other's model well enough there doesn't seem to be anything to be gained by continuing.

Well this is a bit of a necro. Okay, though, I'll try to reacquire my mindset of a year and a half ago. --- Note that the following is potentially myself giving past-me too much credit: I seem to have phrased myself rather poorly in that post. Try replacing "tap" with "tap into" and I think that's more accurate. I was (I think?) speaking more in generalities about the nature of how metalminds are "locked" to their users, rather than about the mechanics of how you actually get at the attribute. Two relevant WoBs: -Inquisitors (and other Hemalurgists) can access the Feruchemical stores of their "donors"; they don't need to have made their own stores. I'm not quite sure whether you were taking issue with that, so I'll drop the WoB just for completeness's sake. -Muggles can indeed tap somehow, something I seem to have half-remembered (thus explaining some of my certainty) but not been able to find for sure back in 2014 when we were having this discussion. Source (Paraphrase): EDIT: Ah, you seem to have edited your post while I was composing mine. Let's see... -Okay, so you did know about accessing donor metalminds. Feel free to ignore the WoB, then. -It seems I agree that it's possible that Feruchemical aluminum allows Identity erasure, since I acknowledged it as a possibility back in that post you quoted. -Re: Parenthetical on Augor/Trueself-twinborn + Full Feruchemist scenario: Well that seems a bit complicated. Sure, possibly within the bounds of the WoB, but it would seem downright deceptive of Brandon to implicitly assume that the "Augor" I asked about was actually a specific kind of twinborn.

On the multiplicative question: My own position, to be clear, is that for every "charge" of Feruchemy you burn you'll get some multiple of that charge back through compounding. So if you have 1 gram of steel, fill it to the brim with speed, then burn it for the win, you'll have enough speed at that point to fill (say) 10 grams of steel. If you had 2 grams of steel and only filled it halfway, then you'd still get 10 "units" while burning that first gram, but the second gram would just burn as Allomantic steel. Moogle, it seems that you're saying that if you burn a 100% charged metalmind then you'll get exactly 0 benefit from compounding it: you might as well just tap it. Am I reading you correctly? --- I do try (though one negative is that I'm replying less quickly because these things take more time/though). Thank you as well. Hmmm... I might be able to rope you in here. Okay, let's say the charge is like an electric charge. It's spread evenly throughout the metalmind. But by this model if you ground one part of the metalmind, then all the charge should rush out of that point, correct? So that's what I'm saying is (possibly) happening with compounding. You have some finite Feruchemical charge diffusely spread over the entire object. But when you run investiture through the metalmind for Allomancy, the charge is attracted to it, combines with it, and reshapes it. Each time this happens, though, the Feruchemical charge is diminished. Still spread out, still suffusing the entire metalmind, but less than it was before the Allomancy came barreling through and burned off a bit of the Feruchemy. I believe the metaphor I've used in the past is "circuit breaker". So the investiture comes along running through the metal as normal, making some Allomancy. Then it "trips" and is re-routed into Feruchemy-land. But the tripping can't happen until some amount of Allomancy has started flowing through the metalmind, so just the tiniest smidgen of regular Allomantic power seeps through. To a large extent my faith in this model is based on the whole "aluminum compounding is impossible" thing, so I can understand if you don't want to buy into this because we're not reading the quote the same way. Aha! I'd been looking for that one. Thanks. I'll sidestep discussing your model for a moment in order to be annoying and just ask questions again: Let's say for the sake of argument that 1 gram of copper corresponds to exactly 1 distinct memory, say an image of a flower. Let's also just assume for the sake of discussion that the effect of compounding copper is to etch it perfectly into your memory (though this is more for clarity of discussion than anything else, feel free to suggest an alternative effect). Carl the Copper Compounder really wants to remember what this flower looks like, down to its tiniest detail, forever. So he takes out his newly-bought, empty coppermind, which masses at X grams, stores the memory, and then burns it. Scenario 1: X=1. Carl fills up the entire coppermind, then swallows and burns it. Result: The flower is etched into his mind perfectly. I think we can both agree on this scenario, no? Scenario 2: X=10. Carl fills up 1/10th of the coppermind, then swallows and burns it. Result: This is where we have fun. I would say that Carl should burn off 1 gram, get his memory, and then start just burning copper for Allomantic effect. What, exactly, do you say should happen? Will Carl have to burn all 10 grams to get a memory as crisp as he would get in Scenario 1? Will he get a memory as crisp as Scenario 1's after burning the first gram, and then no further effect as he keeps compounding the same memory? Will he get a memory that's better than Scenario 1's: the first gram equaling Scenario 1, every gram after that doubling down and somehow making the memory more vivid?

Welcome to the forums! The rules are in this thread. The necro policy (covered in this post) is fairly lenient, but it depends what you're necroing. Essentially it just needs to meaningful to the discussion that was happening on the thread; a rule of thumb I use before necroing is something to the effect of "if I was Following this thread from a month ago and got an alert that someone posted in it, would the post I'm about to make here be the kind of thing I'd want to see?"

Yeah, I've always tried to have one or two "crowd friendly" but still interesting questions ready. Doesn't mean that I've been called upon, but good to have.

Wow, I somehow managed to miss an entire section of you post, Moogle. Sorry. So what I'd say here is that it looks like he's influencing and meddling in such a way that society is perpetually in a state where he's not needed. Helpful, but not needed. I'll stay silent on the issue of Wax for now, as that's beyond the scope.

I don't really appreciate deliberately leaving out highly relevant evidence, skaa. -- Didn't we know pretty fast that the person Wax chased from the party wasn't Paalm? Not to mention the fact that we saw that guy and the governor at the same time, and what with Paalm impersonating the governor it's a bit impossible for her to have been the one jumping out of that window.

I don't disagree that he's taking an active (if subtle) role in shaping how Scadrian society develops. Whether this is moral is a separate question which I won't try to address. But there is a difference (mostly in kind, but also a bit in principle) between setting things up to run a certain way and making it so things only run if he's there to oversee it all. If we're to take a metaphor that might be a bit too on the nose, consider raising a kid. You can raise them to be self-sufficient—with skills, good judgement, etc.—such that once they leave home they can function well in society. You support them in subtle ways along the way and try to shape them as they develop, but at the end of the day if you keel over dead from choking on a fish bone the kid should be fine and be able to keep living his/her life the same way, as you raised them to. The alternative model is giving your kid a trust fund (that happens to be tied to your staying alive, I guess. Just roll with it). The kid won't die of starvation or want for anything while you're alive, but if that money disappears for any reason (like, say, it suddenly has to fight and interstellar battle with a god of hatred...) then the kid is in a bad shape, not able to support themselves or continue living as they'd grown accustomed. -On the principled side, the argument could be made (and generally is, in contemporary society) that the trust-fund kid is worse off, intrinsically, than the one who's self-sufficient. EDIT: To clarify how this is applicable, if the justice system of Elendel became accustomed to God coming along and giving evidence whenever there was a major case, then Harmony has made himself an integral part of the system, and if he ever stopped giving this testimony then things would come crashing down in some major or minor way. Not to mention the general concerns that lie with allowing a single entity to be essentially the sole source of truth in questions that decide men's freedom.

@natc It's deeply unclear what went down with Lessie's death: whether that was Harmony pressuring Paalm or Paalm rebelling against Harmony. @Moogle To play spoiler, he's not necessarily going all free will with refusing to offer divine testimony in a trial. At least not for the sake of the accused. In this case it could be seen (and is presented in the book) as preserving the integrity of the institutions of justice. If Harmony's whole "thing" these days is for Scadrians to be self-sufficient and building themselves towards a better future, then stepping in and making himself an integral part of their system of law and order probably isn't a good step.

For the Wax's earring question, you could probably get away with going even broader than that. SoS Spoilers

One question that has to be asked first: what options for action did he have? If what happened in SoS (including, quite possibly, even the extent to which he was able to communicate information to his agents) was the true and complete extent of his capabilities, representing Harmony doing literally everything in his (constrained) power to avert the crisis Paalm was brewing, then that's a different tale than if he had a broader range of options available to him.

Right after that quote ends (without even a linebreak): ...softened his voice. Allomancy? Or did she just have the ability to make ears that worked better than human ones?

A good thought, and one I once also endorsed (in a slightly different form), but two problems: 1. Calculus. If part of the bullet is out of a speed slow bubble and the other part is in, then it's moving (say) 10x faster on the outside than the inside. It's still one object, though: So the outside part pulls the inside part along to move faster. Then all the bullet's parts are moving a bit faster than they were originally. Then this continues for infinity and infinite energy explodes the universe. I think. 2. Brandon says no. It's in the OP somewhere, but essentially any discreet object is either entirely in or entirely out of a time bubble. You can't have a bullet that's half in half out.

Nothing's been said on either topic, though I posted some thoughts on the other thread. Personally I don't think that the first question is likely to get a "yes", as I don't see any reason why the bubbles should default to the same size. I've little doubt that you could intentionally shrink down the cadmium bubble (probably even enough to match the size of the bendalloy bubble), but I don't see why they should automatically match each other. -Actually... the investiture-blocking nature of the bubbles might come into play in a very intersting way here: if you put up the bendalloy bubble first, would the size of the cadmium bubble be restricted to the size of the bendalloy bubble because investiture can't (easily) pass through bubbles? Hmmm... Another good question.

Yup, exhaust[ing], that's an excellent word for that thread. Glad you found it interesting. - Ah, I see what you're saying now. So if the two bubbles cancel perfectly over the exact same space, such that the mistborn is just standing there burning valuable metal in normal time, is there a bullet-deflecting, person-jostling, Investiture-interrupting barrier still around him? Excellent question, and I look forward to the answer. If you'd like my guess: I'd say that deflection/jostling won't happen at all because the jostling is proportional to the compression-factor of the bubble: no compression-factor, no jostling, then, would seem to follow. Similarly I don't think there'd be any visual "shimmering" effect. The Investiture-blocking, though, is a more subtle question. Myself I'd say it should still block Investiture (emotional allomancy, Allomantic steel, etc.) from going past the bubbles, but I can't say for sure.

Re: The WoBs: Well this is unfortunate, I suppose. I can see how you can read them the way you are, but it really seems to require bending over backwards for that to be the most natural reading, at least from where I stand. Just to be clear that we're on the same page, here's the quotes: -- Re: Silliness: The thing is I don't think it makes much intuitive sense to say that the I-beam is still a metalmind after you've been compounding off of it for a period of time proportional to the amount of feruchemical charge it had. I won't shake my fist at the skies and cry foul if it turns out to be the case, but it seems ugly. Cheaty. Inelegant. Other bad adjectives. I actually haven't presented any model of multiplicative returns (though I'm not principally opposed to compounding being multiplicative). At this point I'm more arguing an anti-theory than presenting a positive case for an alternative, but sure I'll take a whack. As you could likely tell from the length of the "maybe", I'm partial coming in to some "spiritual overlay" model. To quote myself: I think that you if you have a piece of steel that takes 1 hour to burn and fill it up to 50% capacity with speed, then when your compounder sits down to burn it he'll get Feruchemical speed at full blast for the first 30 minutes and Allomantic steel for the second 30 minutes—well technically I believe he'll also get Allomantic steel for a split second when he first starts burning, which is then hijacked into Feruchemical speed, but that's secondary to this discussion. So the metal is drawing a full flow of investiture the whole time your burning it, it just stops being a metalmind (in the functional sense) after you've burned off all the speed-associated bits of it. This because the act of hijacking the stream from preservation, in being filtered through the stored Feruchemical attribute, burns off that attribute. -- Two more thoughts: 1. Unless Vin's experience of burning a metalmind is 120% atypical for what a compounder sees at all, people burning metalminds are going to get a sense of a distinct, separate reserve. Not an overwrite of the old reserve, or an exact copy of it that is the same size/strength but just for a different effect, but a completely separate pool that really smells a lot like it should be proportional to the storage that allows it to exist. This is another impression/interpretation thing, so feel free to discount it. 2. This one might actually be impactful. Riddle me this, Moogleman: what's going to happen if you put 5 minutes worth of discreet Memories into a giant block of copper? If I turn the statue of Harmony in its entirety into a metalmind, then try to compound off of it for the next month, what the heck is that going to look like? You see the problem with Feruchemical copper is that it's discreet. Everything else can essentially be treated as a bucket of water: fill it up, empty it, put in some water from a different well: who cares, it's just a bucket and water is water. But Allomantic copper stores unique, distinct memories. Yes we don't know what compounded copper is supposed to act like, but we've some good guesses. The most popular at the moment is just that the memory is etched permanently into your mind. How the heck do you square that with compounding into the same memories over and over and over again? Or are we instead to believe that you'll have to burn every single bit of the statue to get at the entirety of all the memories? The results of compounding aside, what would the storage even look like in a "fill it up a bit and it's a metalmind in its entirety" world? If you stored three distinct memories into a huge metamlind, would they be stretched out like butter over too much bread (intentional reference) over the entirety of the metal? So when I'm compounding it for the next month what decides which bit of which memory gets compounded at any given time? Unless we're going to go with the "ultra slo-mo" model of needing to burn the entire block to get at all of its stored memories. If we retreat back to my "ability to compound is proportional to remaining original Feruchemical attribute" camp, though, all is happiness and s'mores. If you store memories A, B, and C into a metalmind, and then compound them out serially, then you'll get compounded!A. At that point, the metalmind will be slightly physically (and significantly spiritually, under my peculiar model) diminished, and still retain B and C memories. Keep going and you'll get compounded!B, then compounded!C. And after that you'll just be sitting there immune to emotional Allomancy as you burn Feruchemically-devoid copper. *Later* I was looking around for WoBs and found a few, though no "head shots" that settle the issue. Still, worth posting here just for the sake of having moving forward. Source: Impact: Feruchemical charges can be discussed as inhabiting pieces of metal, rather than being loosy-goosy associated with the object as a whole. Still leaves us not knowing whether those "separate pieces" are still enough/spread out enough to support Moogle's model. Source: Impact: Not much, doesn't say anything about if the access method/what's stored where is changed. Source: Impact: Answers the above question by showing definitively that pieces of the power are stored in separate parts of the metalmind, rather than there just being a floaty "power associated with this clump of metal" that you can access with any broken-off fleck.

You're right: you are insane. If you'll look at the "above" that Brandon is referring to when he says "the same thing as above", you'll see a Q/A basically discussing the canonical explanation of how compounding works. I really don't see any way to read this as anything but "you can't compound aluminum because trying will cause all your aluminum to go away". EDIT: Reading it again, I suppose I can see how a particularly devilish and pessimistic mind could read that as both the speaker and Brandon talking about an Allomancer with Aluminum/Duralumin burning an off-key metalmind. But recalling the context of the discussion and the paraphrasic nature of the report, the more natural reading is that it was referring to compounding. When I say "silly" let's perhaps give me the (probably undeserved I'll admit) benefit of the doubt and think of it as a shorthand for "not very likely in a literary sense". This is an authored work and it strikes the senses (or at least my senses) as absurd that you could spend a trivial amount of time (seconds or hours, it doesn't really matter on these scales) storing into a comparatively gargantuan structure and then be able to use it as compounding source indefinitely. Scenario that's perfectly plausible from this: our Full Feruchemist friend Friendly Frank is feeling particularly friendly one day, so he goes to a gold statue of Harmony and sits himself down touching it for the afternoon. After spending a bit of time without much Identity and with some sniffles, he stands up and announces that all Augors can now chip off pieces of the Hero of Ages and become perfectly healthy. -- I'll try to step beyond arguments centered around "Kurkistan doesn't like how this sounds", though, as I admit that they might not be the most convincing to a third party. A question to start us off, then: why is it an exaggeration to talk of storing in several tons of steel for a for a microsecond, while it's reasonable to talk about a few pounds for an hour? Wax spends months storing into his bracers and doesn't run out of space, so clearly it's not like you're going to be filling either the block or the building to anything near capacity. What factor makes it less odd to turn a block of steel into a fully-compoundable metalmind in an hour versus a building into one in a second? If you'll look again, it just says "charged metalmind", not "fully charged". EDIT: Ninjas. All the ninjas.

*Wince* And now I feel shamed by association.

TURBO NECRO! Did we ever get that full transcript? I was poking around for it and couldn't find it.

For your bubble-loving needs, here are all of our WoB's on the subject (go to the bottom of the OP). @Beard We assume that the bubbles overlap instead of just cancelling out entirely because we have Word of Brandon to that effect.

To clarify: Who was "he"? Is Brandon saying that TLR mistakenly thought that the bracers weren't spikes, or is Brandon "he" here and saying as the author that they were not spikes? EDIT: Because we have from the annotations that TLR was using Hemalurgy, and from Brandon in 2008 that the bracers were spikes.

Yes. RAFO. It's "an excellent question" though. 1. Probably? Brandon likes to talk about how Iron/Steel follow the laws of equal and opposite reaction. What from the books has implied otherwise to you? 2. WoR Spoilers P.S. Our spoiler policy is here/here. This section (Events and Signings) is generally fairly spoilerific because people are asking/answering cutting-edge questions, but it shouldn't necessarily be, so you're right to try and toe the line and use spoiler tags for things. The problem is, you need to label the Spoilers from the outside so we know what we'd be spoiled for by clicking the button. In this case, I'd say you were probably safe not spoiling stuff (I may be overruled here... ) because all of your questions were pretty mechanical and didn't really touch on plot details. Either way if you do put stuff in spoiler tags be sure to have something indicating what those who click are getting into.

I see where you're coming from, Argent. Could still use clarification, I think, though the question should be re-written to

This may well just be reading-comprehension failing me, since I seem to have had a harder time retaining little facts from SoS than I usually do (I blame the time constraints on my read-through). But I'm just going to bull ahead here until we're sure I'm wrong.