Kurkistan

Recall that reverse lashings appear to work as agin toon of the speed of the projectile, so it might be even more effective against high-velocity targets.

Thanks, added it. I also reduced the scope of Presence to just Ruin for now and expanded the scope of Stability, as well as messing with formatting and adding some details for Presence.

^Ah, thanks. Would you mind either throwing the citation on the iron/kandra pages or giving me the page/chapter so I can do it?

Ah, that guy. Never liked him. Always messing up my theories. In all seriousness, are we sure that resistance to Ruin is the same as resistance to emotional Allomancy hijacking? They obviously exploit the same chink in the spiritweb, but it seems to me as if Ruin is more in the business of direct mind interference rather than messing with emotions, and so a "strong" mind would help out against him; Ruin preys on the mentally ill (weak mind), not the emotionally vulnerable. That combined with the RPG (always a secondary source, but still useful, I think) is enough, at least for me, to cast the potency (hur hur) of the Blessing of Potency Presence into doubt.

I was looking to cite-ify the Kandra page, specifically adding the nature of the Blessings, when I ran into a bit of a problem. The RPG says that the Blessing of Potency comes from steel spikes, but we know that those steal allomancy. Iron makes more sense, since it's human strength, but I can't find any source to support it directly and the attribution on iron's page was to the HoA Ars Arcanum, which does not have anything to say on the topic. Also, there is a conflict in definitions of the Hemalurgic effects of copper. The HoA Ars Arcanum says "mental fortitude," but the RPG says "intelligence and memory." I'm inclined to believe the RPG, both because it's newer and because it simply makes more sense, especially since we already have "emotional fortitude." The Ars Arcanum was also the same one that listed Atium as stealing Allomantic temporal powers, so it's not infallible. Thoughts? P.S. Also, I may have missed something, but where did the idea that the Blessing of Presence blocks allomantic-hijacking come from? That stopped OreSeur from going crazy, not from being hijacked by Vin.

Yes, I know that they have the potential (I was the one who found the quote, after all), but it's probably not present or barely present to the degree if pre-ascension Allomancy. So their technology/society is very unlikely to be built upon exceptionally rare magic. That's an interesting thought on the shardpools.

The Shardblade stuff is still speculation, I agree. We really need more evidence. As far as Spiritual interactions with Healing, I would hazard that Spiritual "Forms" (like the spiritual idea of a "window") come into play, probably in guiding and restricting individual Cognitive aspects.

They lack any real amount of Allomancy, at the very least, and it was my impression that Terris was the only place to get Feruchemy.

Ah, that makes much more sense. I'm actually beginnning to doubt whether Shardblades are damaging Spiritual aspects when they "sever" limbs. There's no talk of "scaring their victims on a fundamental level" or anything for people who are just partially paralyzed. We also only see the "black smoke of soul-death" when the spine is cut through, but not for the limbs. What if, instead of "killing" part of the Spiritual aspect when a limb is cut through, all the Shardblade does is sever it's connection to the Cognitive aspect (i.e., you'r ability to perceive or control the limb)? So I suppose the question we should ask is "could someone benefit from a Hemalurgic spike placed in a limb which had been 'severed' with a Shardblade?" That's just a possibility, though. As far as Healing goes, I suspect that people are being a bit too loosey-goosey with with the "how an object is viewed and how it views itself" definition of the Cognitive Realm. It's almost certainly a more metaphysical "view," and a fairly robust one at that--TLR was perceived by most as an inherently immortal god, perhaps by everyone but himself as such, and yet the Human Form's age-restriction was still present. I suspect, then, that Cognitive restrictions on fundamental things (such as what it is to be Human, to be a Window, etc.) are defined on a population, perhaps even Cosmere-wide level, and simply accessed by individuals, while more personal things such as state of health have a bit more freedom.

Healing is quite obviously carried out in accordance with Cognitive aspects. And that's the thing, really. The Spiritual aspect needn't change when the body does--you're still you even if you're missing a piece or two--and really, it shouldn't. The Spiritual aspect, as far as I can tell, is the traditional soul, what makes a person who they are at a foundamental level. The emperor's soul (hur hur) is composed of his personality and important memories; it's not based on the form of his body. Resealing opens up questions, I'll admit. Hopefully I'll address them when my brain starts working again. Think of it this way: some parts of the spiritweb are located in the extremities. Vin and Wax's spikes are earrings. Do you really think that that part of a person's Spiritual aspect would just go away if the extremity were separated? Or would it simply become inaccessible or possibly "contract" into another location? EDIT: In either of the "part of your soul isn't chopped off in your ear" explanations, the Spiritual aspect isn't really changing, it's just that its Physical interface has been altered.

Probably my fault. I focused a lot more on the power flow of magic, which I think has a pretty clear S->C->P directionality, so most of my discussion focused on that. Here's another try: Vin get's a bit more violent than usual and chops off Bob's arms. He is still the same person--still has the same memories and the same history--but his Physical form has been fundamentally altered. His Spiritual aspect is presumably a bit less diffused (no arm to Shardblade through now), but is it really different? I'm still not sure about this one. I'll mull on the nature of Forging for a bit and get back to you. Sorry, I think I was unclear there (I detect a pattern...). My theory is the one of parts, your's is the one with one solid object. Ah, sorry I misunderstood you. Fair enough. I suppose you're drawing on Brandon's "turbine" explanation for why Preservation fuels Allomancy for free?

Probably just me being unclear/changing my mind halfway through. I think I used Physical->Cognitive->Spiritual as an example, but I recall mentioning a Cognitive->Spiritual change once. It's not so much an inequality of the Realms as it is them not being extremely tightly bound. I don't see a problem with any theoretical directionality or degree of change. I may just be misreading you here, but you seem to be demanding immediate changes in the other two Realms as a consequence of a change in one of them. The window in TES thought of itself as a stained glass window that happened to be broken, due to its Cognitive momentum, while rightly it should have had just a "broken window" aspect, if all three of its aspects necessarily immediately affect each other. Rioting or Soothing someone's emotions needn't have a noticeable Physical affect, discounting the brain--and the brain is a tricky subject, what with the whole "potentially doing away with the other two Realms thing" if you leave the brain as the seat of the mind. I do have a bit of a definite direction for energy transfer between the Realms (the buck stops at the Spiritual, at least for magic). As far as visualizations go, I suppose you're is of a solid object: move any part and you move the whole; while mine could be described (off the top of my head) as three objects tied semi-loosely together by strings: moving one will affect the others, but not necessarily immediately and not necessarily to any noticeable degree. ---- EDIT: New matter. I do like your visualization of the cycle: constantly in motion (and thus energetic) but internal and self-sustaining. I suppose you have to include that it builds upon its own energies, at least to some degree, to explain how Breaths do a lot of stuff without running out of energy, as well as other "soulful" activity.

Perfect assassination method: give someone a dud steel spike and tell them that they have to drive it through an eye in order to get Iron/Steel Allomancy. Once death by brain-spiking later, assassination completed. Actually, that's a great way to meet our Skaa half-breed quota, if the target for spiking doesn't have to be the heart...

Interesting. I'll have to mull this one over a bit, but it makes a certain amount of sense on the face of it. One bit of evidence you might want to throw in is that the black mist from Shardblades is linked to that which is produced by Nightblood, presumably from him destroying/dis-articulating Spiritual aspects. EDIT: Also, sorry to put this on you, but where exactly do you disagree with my own MEC? It seems that you're more talking about mechanisms, and i see that you took up my Cognitive definition of Commands. I don't recall saying that the three Realms were unbalanced, though I suppose by definition of mystical energy as originating from the Spiritual might disagree with yours.

Ah, okay.

You may be drawing a false correlation here. If it were the case that Connection acted as "weight" for emotional Allomancy, then we might have seen some mention of this, in the original trilogy, such as "people you like are easier to Push/Pull" when Kelsier or Breeze was explaining it to Vin. Beyond that, if you look at the RPG, it's quite clear that Connection increases affection between parties. So, for TLR to have meaningfully increased his emotional Allomancy through Connection, he would have had to been tapping enough Connection to feel that each of the random Skaa whose heads he was having chopped off were his closest friends; and our crew would have felt reciprocal affection. EDIT: Just to reiterate, the "context" of TLR's mass soothing was a random execution of dozens of innocents.

He actually didn't confirm it outright. He got flustered and RAFO'd. You're theory makes sense, assuming that Odium would be blinded by metal on Scadrial. I think I might have seen something like this theory floating around already, but I can't recall where, so you might be original. EDIT: Yeah, Aminar said it awhile back. Sorry

I've been assuming that Nicrosilminds (Investiture) can be used to boost Allomancy. I doubt that it's Duraluminum. While perhaps Soothing/Rioting can be strengthened or weakened by Connection, recall that Connection's primary function is to increase empathy and positive feelings between the Ferring and those around him. So TLR would have loved every Skaa in that square, including those having their heads chopped off. And everyone in that square would have felt affection for TLR to some degree, not just emotionally crushed.

Just to throw in some points on density: I have my own little crazy-pants theory on density and Iron Feruchemy. Essentially, Wax is just wrong when he says that he doesn't become more dense. It's just that making soft tissue a few times heavier isn't going to do much in stopping a bullet. I may be struck down by Auotpwail again, but that's my take. EDIT: If this is the case, then Wax should sink like a stone in water.

What questions did you end up asking, Aethling?

I didn't mean to imply that you're not doing enough Windrunner. I understand that your overworked and understaffed over there. Also, the "those WoT fans will betray us all!" part was more of a paranoid doomsday scenario than anything else. To reiterate, I would be happy to help out for awhile, if you'll have me. While I doubt "easy" is a good word to describe it, it will probably be a bit less time-intensive, at least, to find and copy-in purely text-based "interviews," like the Q&A and random comments by Peter and Inkwing here on the forums, and I would be willing to commit some time to doing that.

Yeah, that too. Good point. Besides Brandon's own aversion to letting his beliefs overshadow his work, I think that more "rough" pantheons provide more interesting stories either way. Even if Brandon were a secret adherent of Odin, I'd be perfectly fine with him writing based on them, since there's a lot of interesting conflict going on in that kind of mythology. Because of that, I think that Brandon, as a writer, is more likely to draw any religiously-based inspiration from those kinds of mythologies. Panic sounds a bit too active, though, not really implying a willingness to hole up somewhere and hide properly. Also, I just thought of Pain and Panic from Hercules. Good moment.

Hey guys, I just want to get the ball rolling on a discussion on what we're doing to integrate non-interview material into the Interview Database. I know that, last time I looked, the forum Q&A wasn't in there. I doubt that we have much stuff that Peter or Inkwing have said on the forums, or that the current round of Twitter updates about Brandon's world-building is certain to make its way in. There's also the question of the degree to which we have a backup of the data on the database. I know we all like Terez (hi Terez!), but I think it would be proper for some number of purely Sanderson fans to keep their own copies of the compiled data currently on that site; Terez could be hit by a bus tomorrow and then his/her successor could turn out to hate Brandon and purge all non-WoT stuff from the database--then never to be seen again unless painstakingly re-compiled. I don't mean to tell the people currently managing this how to do things, but I am eager to see everything Cosmere-related in one place, both so that it's more easily searchable and so that new members don't suffer, knowledge-wise, versus older members who know where to look for this or that tidbit of information that never made it onto the interview database. Incidentally, I have some free time coming up and would like to help out with importing stuff into the database, if anyone wants to give me godlike powers over there. Kurkistan

It's all about interpretation of the attribute, isn't it? You can twist odium into being a godly attribute, so long as it's properly guided and tempered, if you want to. I can twist Greed into being a godly attibute (god wanting "his" people to love him, wanting to "possess" love and faith, etc.). I can turn Lust into a "godly" attribute. I can turn Heresy into a godly attribute. We could probably turn Blashphemy into a divine attribute if we tried hard enough. The problem is, once you start doing that, you can't really say that anything isn't theoretically divine, and so the "divinity" of a possible Intent is useless metric for its likelihood. -- As for "strength is unity", I was referring more so to your argument that a "just want to hide and survive" Intent is still divine because it becomes devine when paired with Devotion: "Strength through unity," then, was actually a reference to the Shards being stronger/more balanced/more divine if they are united. I see now that I was unclear, since you'd just posited Strength as an Intent, while I was talking about a more metaphorical "strength." Sorry about that. I basically meant to say that Cowardice could very easily be such an "incomplete" attribute. You can say that it's divine in that Cowardice is part of some larger set of attributes that, together, make up divinity, but, once again, that leaves the divinity of any single posited Intent as a worthless metric for judging it's likelihood. Does that clear things up?