Kurkistan

I'll pile on.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he didn't spot them at first, since they were on the opposite side of the world from where all the action was going down. Then after that I imagine social/cultural differences plus his Harmonious "I should probably not interfere too much" mojo settling in.

I recall that WoB as well. *Spends too long hunting it down* I really wish we'd gotten Shardlet's signing reports into Theoryland... Source: I find the "drr drr drr..." particularly telling. Especially in light of the fact that aluminumminds apparently can't be compounded because burning them immediately kills all your metals. This leads us back to the old debate about whether you get an instant of Allomantic effect before compounding kicks in (which is how I've historically chosen to interpret the WoB). --- I think we really need to flee from silliness here. I reject a world in which you can turn a building into a metalmind and just chip off flakes to compound from forever. Maybe the charge resides in specific parts of the metalmind and those parts are burned first when compounding. Maybe the charge is distributed, but the parts of metal it's in end up being targeted first by compounding, like lightning rods attracting the power. Maybe the charge isn't really vested in the physical metal at all, but is actually a spiritual overlay that gets burned off bit by bit as it redirects/reshapes Preservations power while you compound the metalmind. In that case, it could be like how Vin got vaporized ("like a hose under too high a pressure" is an accurate paraphrase from Brandon, I believe) when she channeled in/shaped too much power. Either way let's pick something and try to hash it out, rather than residing in a world in which the I-beams can be perpetually compounded off of.

For some reason I don't think you can cheat quite that easily with compounding. It'd be kind of silly if you could store Feruchemical steel in an I-beam for 10 seconds and then be able to Compound off of it for the rest of your life. This kind of demands a model of how stored attributes are distributed through the physical metalmind, as well as potentially a discussion of how "density of storage" interacts with compounding, but I don't think such a discussion is going to end with "so of course all need you need is an I-beam and half a minute to spare..." EDIT: Also, as an aside, no one really needs to swallow things in order to burn a metal. Source

It occurs to me that for all we know she was compounding the whole time. A few weeks during which Bleeder certainly had other things to be doing is not a whole lot of time to build up an attribute as arduous to store as speed, and she was moving at Flash-levels basically every time we saw her use it. Actually... it wasn't weeks. It was days. The donor was alive and well and undigested in the prologue, and everything sparked off right after that (unless my reading comprehension is failing me). So Bleeder would have been relying almost entirely on stolen metalminds if she wasn't compounding. So the way I see it is either the original donor having an indecently large storage that she didn't burn through in the prologue or Bleeder relying on compounding meager storages the entire time she uses Feruchemical steel.

I don't believe we've got firm details on how exactly non-Feruchemists can go about compounding, but it's certainly possible with Identity manipulation of one kind or another. Best bet is on making the identity of the metalmind "blank", so it may well be that attributes generated by spiked-in Feruchemy might not do the trick. Some WoB on metalminds, hemalurgy, and Identity. Source: So Bleeder could supplement her stores with whatever was left from the original donor's metalminds. It's a bit up in the air whether any new stores she made would be so tightly keyed to the Identity of the original donor, though I'm guessing not: my read is that it's more of a matter of a bit of overlap with the old soul of the donor allowing access to the old stores, instead of all and only the bits of soul in the spike being the key. -But then again it looks like "just" ripping off the Feruchemy-related bits of the soul is enough to shut down access for the original Ferring (though that as well might be a case of the post-Ferring just not having an ability to tap, rather than because his Identity is messed up. But then again there's supposedly a way for muggles to be able to tap...)

At first I assumed everyone immediately got it, and so decided that it wasn't worth bringing up. But I haven't seen any mention of it on the forums and I don't want to run into another "Denth's hair" situation, so I'll just post it anyway... Did everyone catch the fairly direct reference to the South during Harmony's chat with Wax? SoS Ch 7: Harmony: "[...]You've barely progresed technologically from what I gave you in the books. Yet others, who were nearly destroyed..." EDIT: I suppose he could theoretically be referring to other shardworlds or something, but I seriously doubt it. - Unrelated note: did something happen to Kelsier? After Wax backsassed god, Harmony went "Since Kelsier... well, I haven't had much [sarcasm directed my way]." EDIT 2: Ah, looks like there's some mention in the full book reactions thread.

I also just see Wayne as a method actor. As does Brandon, unless he's next-leveling us.

WoB on friction. (somewhat paraphrased)

I agree entirely with Argent. On an unrelated note, I am moderately aghast at my lack of reading comprehension the first time through a new Sanderson book, as that completely went by me.

Whoever said that the letter arriving was the first that Paalm had heard of Wax going back to Elendel? Particularly if Harmony knew about the Set (likely), then he could well have had a pretty good idea pretty far in advance that Mr. Suit was planning on "dying".

2. There's a small gap. Your own quote has the last mind-speech followed by Wax walking up and seeing her clearly in the window. All we saw before was "Wax saw something shift just inside the window, ambient light barely sufficient to let him discern it." A charitable reading of the scene could have a not-insignificant gap between "tail." and Wax seeing her. WoR spoilers:

What Fyodor said. Here's the quote: "He didn't try to control her directly, but He did push her very hard to do something she didn't want to do." (relayed via TenSoon). Let's also look at Lessie's dying words: "He moved us, even then!" she whispered. "I refused. I wouldn't manipulate you into returning to Elendel! You loved it out there. I wouldn't bring you back, to become his pawn...." So if we're to believe Harmony (which I do), then he never took her over directly and she refused to do what Harmony wanted. My initial read of the situation is thus: Harmony wanted Lessie to help Wax decide to go back to Elendel. Lessie disagreed. Harmony grew insistent. At this point, I'd say the crazy started setting in (or perhaps came to fruition). Lessie, concluding that Harmony would probably be able to get his way through one machination or another, started her plots. She got her hands on the "trellium" or whatever other spike let her talk into people's brains, then set to work on Bloody Tan. She may or may not have gone single-spike by this point. She manipulates Bloody Tan into getting her killed, in order to <Something, this one's a bit fuzzy>. Tan knows to shift her into the path of the bullet because she tells him, either beforehand or telepathically. So far as Lessie's motivations on being fake-killed go, that's up in the air. But I think this general scenario is more in line with what we've seen so far than assuming that Harmony's become that nasty/liarly.

Apparently Feruchemical duralumin lets you change your "Connection" to allow better access to a new planet's magics.

What "recent" information are you referring to? We've known that Aslydin was a member of the Seventeenth Shard for a while now. Is there new information saying that she and Demoux actually got hitched?

Thanks for the scene. Two thoughts: 1. If you're right and Bleeder had two spikes in all of this time, then she didn't necessarily have to mistwraith-ify in order to swap out from head-whispering to steelrunning. It's important for us to figure out if the head-whispering is just a novel use of Allomancy or somehow unique to the new godmetal. 2. I think you might be overestimating the difficulty of swapping out spikes. For all we know, it could be something so simple as Bleeder leaning down against the new spike (propped against the wall or the like) while using her arms to stop being impaled; then yank out the old spike, fall down onto the new one, lean back again. Tada. At the very least we know already that it's not an hours-long process or anything, as she had time to swap both spikes and bodies during the final chase. Those are just possibilities, though. I fear that the question of how many spikes Bleeder had is going to need some WoB to clear up.

Silly question that I would know the answer too if I hadn't blazed through the book: Did we ever actually see her using both her mind-speaking powers and another power at the same time? That power might have a spike of its own.

I believe so. Here's Brandon on the Elantris question, btw. Source:

I don't think there's any need to resort to oddness to explain why Paalm wasn't instantly taken over at the end there. The kandra in HoA had time to talk and pull out their own spikes when Ruin tried to control them. All Paalm had to do was trigger her biological death-spiral.

MeLaan(?) was talking about the new metal being why Paalm was able, as a kandra, to steal/user Allomancy and Feruchemy, so it could just be that she had a lot of spikes all made from this same new metal, and switched those out.

Apparently you have to actually contact Amazon customer services for them to update which file you get.

OF COURSE NOT! We have always been at war with Eastasia! I've immediately head-cannoned the two provinces into being North and South Eon (or more accurately Ato and Toa Eon).

You wound me, sir.

Them's fightin' words, Argent!!! ( )

I'll also be there again. I'll try to record a second copy of the Q&A/signing line in case Argent's phone gets eaten by a dog or the like, but otherwise Argent's pretty much got it covered. EDIT: Added transcript (as of 11/30/2015) in spoiler. It's technically incomplete, but we need to be able to Google this stuff eventually.