Kurkistan

Yes you did. Sorry I forgot that comment. In my defense, you were talking about defeating Plate, not windrunners

First Paragraph: I suppose that could explain it. Second: I can't find it, but I recall Brandon saying something to the effect that Harmony deliberately stopped Mistborn from being, well, born, because they are too powerful. I think I just automatically extended that to Feruchemists as well I could very well be mistaken on both counts, so I'll accept the sDNA interference theory as the answer instead (not to mention the fact that, since Brandon is the one who said it, it's canon).

I hadn't seen that second quote before. Interesting. It was my impression that Harmony just messed with Feruchemy on purpose. That quote does call TLR's breeding policy into question, since it means that no one except a Lerasium Mistborn could ever be a Mistborn/Full Feruchemist simultaneously. We could get a few compounding Twinborns to call the source of TLR's power into question, but nothing he couldn't squash like a bug.

I think the windrunner would be too busy catching on fire to be able to pull of a Basic Lashing on an amorphous mass of flaming oil flying through the air at his/her face, even assuming the ability to Lash liquids. After the oil impacts the windrunner, I doubt that s/he could perform a lashing on it, since it would just be a layer of (flaming) liquid covering his/her body, not a distinct, tangible object.

I thought I remembered that being the case, but I wasn't sure. Lamp oil it is, then!

Explosives are probably the best way to go with Windrunners. Launch a few dozen projectiles at Szeth from several directions and he can't dodge all of them, so his only recourse would be a reverse lashing on an object within arm's reach. The projectiles hit the lashed object, pressure fuses go off... EDIT: On that note, you might not need explosives (thinking of Roshar tech-level here). If a projectile could be filled with lamp oil or the like (curses, they don't have lamps, do they?), the splashes whenever the projectiles impacted a reverse-lashed "shield" would most likely cover the Windrunner in question. Just throw in an ignition source (either a specialized projectile or incorporated into all of them) and you have the Human Torch. Surgebind away from that!

For mine, I got rid of all "and so" and "kind ofs" I wrestled with "kind of" because it can have some value as a qualifier, but I found it to be verbal clutter rather than genuine thought in the examples I saw. I also committed the mortal sin of culling his abandoned sentences, although I can't recall any instance where Brandon said something significantly different in his proto-sentence. Would you like me to give the interview another listen and add the "kind ofs" and/or proto-sentences back in, Zas? EDIT: Never mind, I just did it anyway. Good thing too, given the embarrassing number of mistakes I made on my first pass. It would still be nice to get a verdict on "kind of," for future reference.

Are you quite sure? The excessive "ands" are simply indicative of massive run-on sentences, and add nothing in the way of content or meaning. I can see keeping cut-off sentences if he changes what he's talking about midway, but not simply if he rephrases himself. Ex. "I though Spook was the most i-- I mean that Vin is an example of when..." should be retained, while "I thought Vin, in my head, initially, was a woman-- I mean that Vin is an example of when..." should just keep the second segment.

Good point. Even leaving aside the question of the morality of capital punishment, though, worst-case scenarios could end up in a Known Space situation where the government decides that tax evasion is a capital offense so that it can have more hemalurgic supersoldiers. Brandon tends to be a bit more optimistic about human nature than that, but it's a thought.

Victory! Cale, Kelsier, and Moraine all went through. I'm glad we'll get to see more of Kemp's story, and I eagerly anticipate Brandon's write up of the K v M battle.

*Grumble grumble* doesn't make sense *grumble*

By the way, would people mind voting for Erevis Cale? He's down by a hair right now, and I've been enjoying Kemp's write-ups immeasurably. @Ironeyes Curse you for your knowledge! I suppose that we lose some amount of ability to Pull/Push if solid objects intervene. It still doesn't make much sense to me, though. Are you positive that Kelsier said that the lines were weaker?

Page 234, Google Books: Also, if it was only a little slit, then it wouldn't be very useful for quick use (say, in a gunfight), since the Allomancer in question would have to align the gun perfectly with his/her center of mass in order to be able to "see through" the slit. I also think that having "solid" objects block pushing/pulling is somewhat arbitrary. It could have been made a rule, but I see no reason why it should be one. We already have a limitation on range. On top of that, I'm fairly sure that this rule is not part of Allomancy. Off the top of my head, I can recall Wax watching the metal-lines disappear through solid objects throughout a large portion of the town in the prologue, when gang-members hiding behind tables and pillars at the wedding, and through the floors and ceilings of that house at the climax of AoL. Vin was able to sense and pull on the metal "switches" embedded in the walls of TLR's storage caverns. I have vague recollections of several scenes in other Mistborn books where I thought that we saw metal through significant amounts of material, but I can't recall them specifically.

*AoL Spoilers* While I'm sure I could think of other examples, remember that, in Alloy of Law, Wax manipulates the safety embedded within Vindicator, which was completely inaccessible to anyone except an Iron/Steel Allomancer. We also see Vin/Kelsier pull metal objects through other people, which would necessarily put those objects out of their line of sight because of the various organs and tissue in the way.

I agree that you're probably better off with a good diffusion of crossbows than relying entirely on ballistae. I got a bit sidetracked there, but ballistae are so cool.

*Ahem* *Cough* Apparently they were. Assuming less-than perfect accuracy, though, let's say a 20% chance of hitting a Shardbearer, I would say that it's still a good bet. Fire 10 bolts at a Shardbearer: 2 hit and he either dies or his plate is severely damaged. The 8 that miss either hit enemy troops or cause far less damage to your own line than it would take to disable a Shardbearer conventionally. We must also recall that Shardbearers don't typically wade into the middle other armies. The major Shardbearer-involving battles we saw involved Dalinar and Adolin fighting a few strides ahead of their own troops, breaking the enemy line while avoiding encirclement. Most misses on an enemy Shardbearer, therefore, would still do significant damage to the enemy, as well as weaken the enemy line near the Shardbearer. Even if misses hit your own troops, Dalina/Adolin—if I recall correctly—killed hundreds of Parshendi who tried the warhammer approach. A little blue on blue is almost certainly better than that.

I wouldn't hold that a man in shardplate is necessarily agile enough to avoid half-a-dozen ballista bolts. As far as I recall, Shardbearers had agility either equal-to or slightly higher-than the agility of an unarmored man -- the fact that they are that agile while encased in nigh-impervious armor is what is of note. Bolts fly pretty quickly, and aren't exactly easy to see or dodge. Remember also that Shardbearers tend to be highly visible during the entirety of a battle, easily targeted both before the lines meet and whenever they get bogged down for any length of time. Even if Shardbearers try to stay mobile, simply positioning your bolt-throwers to cover the toughest fighting will guarantee either that Shardbearers will come to you or that Shardbearers can't be utilized where and when they are most needed because of the deterrent of the bolt-throwers. Gunpowder is fairly hit-and-miss. It was first developed completely accidentally in the real world, and you would need either a similar accident or a thorough understanding of chemistry to get it in Roshar.

I fall in the "massive trauma" category myself. It's all well and good to try clever traps and try to get stuff through the visor, but traps are unweildy, unreliable, and expensive to set up (not to mention only being useful on the defensive), while eye-attacks are even harder to be sure to get right. Looking at these posts, I'd say we should follow up the shardbow/crossbow approach. As I said back in the day, "nothing says 'armor piercing' quite like a ballista bolt to the face." While a shardbow might be impractical in most circumstances, I agree with RJWB0mb that We know from shardbows that, with a bit of fabrial-science to help, the Alethi are capable of constructing high-power bows. All we need now is a simple method (crank, windlass, etc.) to store up the energy, and you've got a crossbow. Make it bigger and you have a man-portable ballista. Make it bigger and you have a light artillery weapon. All of these weapons should give a shardbearer pause, especially if you have a few dozen of them all up and down your line. Even without fabrials, the Alethi should be extremely capable of of making ballistae and crossbows. The engineering really isn't that difficult, especially since they already appear to have ordinary bow-making and a fair amount of metallurgy (full plate body armor in Kelsier's flashback battle, remember) down pat. The Romans were hauling around man-portable ballistae like there was no tomorrow, and the one-man crossbow is a fairly ancient weapon itself.

The author of the Song of Ice and Fire series, of which Tyrion Lannister is a major character.

^I have a stealth-Q&A where we don't hear the questions, and it's mostly about Brandon's development as a writer moreso than a specific series of answers, and so I think I'll try to keep everything, since it essentially boils down to Q: "Oh, Brandon, what awesome writing skills you have!" A: "All the better to defy genre conventions with!"

The sections already on the interview database aren't verbatim: they skip over a few tangents and expansions. Should I leave this alone? Change it? Model my own transcription after it?

I'll take the Tor Forge interview (I want that medal!)

Double Post FTW! (Chaos & pals, please implement an edit feature! ) Correction: "This groups the physical and mental metals into two groups" Found some info from the interview database on what the game might be like:

Did anyone else find the ordering of the metals to be a bit odd on the game page? It went Iron, Tin, Steel, Pewter, Zinc, Copper, Brass, Bronze. This groups the physical mental metals in groups of four, subdivided into pairs of Pull/Push (pure/alloy). @Tulir As far as I can tell, Fathvell is a house that was made up for the Mistborn: The Inquisition RP here on the forum, which Brandon has apparently co-opted for his own nefarious purposes. Either that or it was mentioned off-handedly in one of the books and our fellow Sharders ran with it.

*cough* Ninja'd by several days *cough*