killersquirrel59

Ok, I really like Wayne as a character, so just posting my bias upfront. I've been absent from the forums for a while and this is the first I'm hearing of the Church of Wayne, but will most likely become a proud member. That said... I think your issue with starting this bitching thread is that you started it with the idea of not liking Wayne due to his purpose in story, noting how you feel he has grown into a one-dimensional and pointless charicature whose purpose has been served and is now diminishing the story. These are objections on a meta-level that have nothing to do with his in-character choices or personality traits, and yet every single person who has responded (on either side I'll add) has completely ignored the OP and been fighting to attack/defend his actions rather than his purpose. This seems to miss the point entirely. That's my $0.02 anyway. @Kaymyth: Oh, and speaking as a high functioning autistic myself, if someone were to offer me a cure, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Sorry to burst your self-appointed PC bubble oh great Speaker for the Autistic.

I really like the possibility of it being Jasnah, though that may be the desperation at the idea of a worldhopper actually for once having an immediately identifiable method of worldhopping (Elsecalling is as close as you can get to the obvious answer for worldhopping). I have also heard the hypothesis that it might be Shai from Emperor's Soul.

I think a lot depends on what is happening to you in the Cognitive Realm while storing Identity. Is your glass bead actually changing ala being Forged or Soulcast? Or is it just getting blurry and confused? If you store fully to zero do you cease to exist at all in the Cognitive? (Incidentally this is the beginning of a theory I'm potentially working on to account for Scadrian world hopping through Feruchemy by ceasing to exist in the Cognitive realm then immediately tapping all that Identity at once and somehow following your newly recreated Identity back to the Cognitive Realm).

This brings up some interesting implications and a necessary follow-up. How accurate is a stored memory necessarily? Is it possible to store a false memory (i.e. could I conjure up a mental image that's pure fiction and store that image in a coppermind)? And that's not even getting into the sheer unreliability of our own memories with regards to witness testimony (here is just one of many scholarly papers on the subject) and this wouldn't be made better by the use of Feruchemical copper unless the memories were stored immediately on the scene, and possibly not even then. I'm not sure the justice system would really be any better off by introducing memory storing to the equation.

I think this is a red herring. Brandon has done this before, deliberately drawing our attention to misleading things. It's all part of the game. This seems far more like just a cool cultural curse and use of alliteration, a way to show the progression of the new culture while giving a nice nod back to the first trilogy. All part of the events of the first trilogy becoming myth and legend.

Hemalurgy Direct quote under Copper: "Steals Intelligence and memory". Now that is not necessarily conclusive proof since the source they're quoting in that article is the MAG. However, I do believe there is a statement from Brandon that the MAG is to be considered canon unless he later contradicts it (as he DEFINITELY did in BoM with regards to Nicrosil). Therefore, with regards to copper hemalurgy, this should still be considered the definitive source until Brandon covers the subject himself, and thus canon.

I don't buy Rashek creating anything like the Bands of Mourning. It is just totally out of character for him and furthermore makes no sense to his plans to deal with Ruin. Yes he made many contingency plans, but each of them at least made some kind of sense toward a reasonable end goal. With the bands...seriously why? Actually, there are a number of large problems with the "real" bands actually being what is being sought. 1. Nicrosil: We have no evidence whatsoever that this alloy existed in the Final Empire. Now I know we have no direct evidence of it not existing either, but there are several problems with assuming it did. First of all, if it did exist, why was it (and Chromium for that matter) not on the message plates? He included Electrum, notably the easy way to beat his most powerful weapon (Atium) there (not to mention the complete collapse of his entire economy), so it makes no sense not to include something like Chromium and Nicrosil if he had them. Second, have you looked up Nicrosil? Take a look at the components and alloy process. It is ridiculously precise (14.4% Chromium, 0.1% Magnesium, 1.4% Silicon, and 84.1% Nickel), not to mention requiring the addition of Silicon. Seriously, this stuff cannot be created outside a modern(ish) lab. And that's not even going into the fact that the process for refining Chromium itself requires temperatures in excess of 1900 degrees centigrade (3400 degrees Farenheit). Even with the assumption of more advanced metallurgy technology, that is just too much of a stretch given that Blast Furnace technology which was the standard until the 19th century maxed out at around 1500 degrees Centigrade. Yes I know that Rashek could have somehow intuited the knowledge of these metals while holding the power and could have made himself a secret stockpile, but even if he did, he wouldn't be able to work said metal after losing the power, and it notes how he was running out of time with the power trying to accomplish the things he wanted to on a grand scale, so I just can't see him taking the time to design some special bracers of unknown and frankly impossible metal during the short time he was frantically trying to save the world. It just doesn't make any sense. 2. The "real" bands were broken apart to get the Atium. I won't go into this one too much as it has already been brought up earlier in the thread, but yeah. It notes in Well of Ascension that the bracers were found and the Atium was sold. I suppose you could argue that they didn't necessarily break up the bands to sell, but even that makes no sense. The sheer amount of Atium that was in those bands would be completely idiotic to try to sell all at once. Remember this is when the entire economy of the Empire was still Atium dependent and a single swallowable bead was worth a small fortune. Even if they were selling the Atium at a ludicrous discount, like 10% of its current value, no way in hell anyone had the money to buy the complete bracers. They would have had to melt it down and sell it to many investors. And before anyone says that the bracers weren't entirely composed of Atium, I know that, but that only adds to my argument, since the Atium was the part they were wanting to sell so they would have to break them apart to extract the Atium. And there had to be a substantial amount to hold the hundreds of years of Youth stored in them to keep Rashek young. This had to be a substantial metal mind. 3. Why? Just why? What possible benefit was Rashek getting out of making these bands? He was already Godborn (or Twin-Awesome if you must), so they wouldn't give him any extra power. And we know he was not at all in favour of sharing his power, even with his most trusted servants. So what does he gain? Would they just be some sort of insane video game bonus treasure for beating the mid-boss if someone killed him? Even if for some reason he would want that (see #4 for that issue), how is anyone who killed him supposed to have the slightest idea what to do with them, or even that they are invested in the first place? Let's not forget that he actively suppressed all knowledge of Feruchemy completely, let alone Feruchemy involving metals that straight up did not exist in this world (see #1 for the impossibility of Nicrosil) outside of these bracers if he specially made them while holding the Power. He didn't leave an instruction manual anywhere, notably not mentioning them on the steel plates in the storage caches. And those were his final hail mary. Do you really think he would have left reference to some kind of ultimate weapon he'd made off of them? It just makes no sense. 4. Making something like this is totally outside his character. Let's begin with the fact that the only possible way he could have made these like this is while wielding the Power (see #1 for the impossibility of Nicrosil). Let's look at Rashek's character at this point. Here we have a brash, angry, racist youth fresh from committing murder who just took up all the powers of a God. Yes, his actions were attempted benevolence at first, trying to throw off Ruin's influence in the form of the Deepness, but looking at those actions, they were the actions of someone who wasn't really thinking that clearly or long-term. Mists are a problem? Move the planet closer to the sun. World's on fire? Fill the sky with ash and alter the magnetic poles to create a safe haven with the most ash. All life is freaking dying from lack of sunlight/ash-filled air? Alter the people and animals and put some Miracle-Gro microbes in the ash. All his actions are completely reactionary and impulsive. It's clear he is scrambling to do whatever he could with limited time and extremely limited knowledge. Making vast contingency plans was not in this guy's mindset. I get the idea that the web of contingencies he had set up were things he came up with much later, long after losing the Power once he had time to stop and think. Using a power he didn't remotely understand to make something out of materials the world had never known to perform a function no one had ever thought of by combining Feruchemy tricks involving two different metals (Aluminum which was insanely rare and hard to refine and thus unlikely to have much prominence and Nicrosil which just straight up didn't exist) in a complicated cheat code to reality meant to hack someone's sDNA just seems WAY too much for someone in the mindset Rashek was in at the time. If we was thinking clearly enough to make something like those bracers while holding the Power, I'm sorry, but he would have done a way better job with the planet as a whole in his attempts to save it. Again, it just makes no sense. So there you have it. These bracers being what the Bands were eventually revealed to be just doesn't add up, even in the slightest. It doesn't make sense plot wise, it doesn't make sense character wise, and it doesn't make sense scientifically either in world or out. Now how the hell The Sovereign (Kelsier, obviously) figured out this Nicrosil trick is another matter entirely and involves many more questions I'd like to see answered, but I can pretty conclusively say that The Lord Ruler did not have these bracers.

And why was that not immediately suspicious? Furthermore, how is the fact that Gifting doesn't work on Epics not common knowledge, at least among the High Epics? Conflux talked about how his first master was furious at the fact that he couldn't take his powers, and that he has been passed from master to master, being sold when one discovered he couldn't take his powers. This implies that the idea of kidnapping and enslaving Gifters is a reasonable and common thing in this world. As such, how has this limitation not become common knowledge, at least for those who study such things?

I'm rereading Steelheart and Firefight in preparation for the release of Calamity and keep hitting the same plot hole in Steelheart. How did Prof not know Megan was an Epic? I get that she was able to fool the douser with her weird reality bending powers, but the inability to use Prof's "technology" in the forms of the Tensers and the Harmsway should have been a dead giveaway for an experienced Gifter like Prof. Edit: I get that Prof might not have realized this immediately, since he doesn't interact with other epics often (unless you count killing them), but after Conflux confirms the idea, how did he not figure it out, even if he couldn't tell anyone but Tia?

Nice catch. I really like the Discord quote. I think this only lends further credence to my theory that the mystery metal was actually Sazedium (Harmonium if you must, though in this case if you insist on breaking the naming paradigm then Discordium would be used) and has nothing to do with either Autonomy or Odium.

I remember a WoB at some point that said there were female Obligators. There is also a quote somewhere noting how sexism was much less of a thing in the final empire since no Noble House could afford to discount an Allomancer simply because she was female. You just have to look at Shan Alarial for proof of that. The Lord Ruler was a right bastard in many ways, but I haven't seen any evidence to support him being misogynist or sexist.

I hated Elend at first as well. However, I agree with the previous posters, he gets a lot better. Stick with it and wait until you see him in book 3 before you judge too harshly. Where you're at, he's still cooking. Needs some time to finish.

Thank you Stormgate for using the proper name Raysium and following the naming format for God metals based on the names of the Shardholders not the Shards. Take an upvote for that.

He's not even necessarily lying. Sazed is still learning all that comes with godhood. His expanded mind is filled with all the knowledge of his Copperminds, not with the secrets of the Cosmere that were known by Ati and Leras. Assuming that what was true for Ati is true for him as well and he cannot sense his own god metal, I think it is well within reason that he might not even know the rules about how it works, where/when it forms, and why he can't sense or manipulate it, naturally leading him to genuinely believe it is alien.

I don't think that's the case Edgedancer. Ruin couldn't even see any metal at all, needing Marsh to read him the note on the steel sheet. All metal shone equally, making it indistinguishable. Otherwise, why wouldn't he have had his servants take control of the Pits long ago? He didn't find the atium at all until KanPar was talking about selling it outside the Homeland.

I just had a thought while rereading HoA. There has been a lot of debate as to what Trellium might be. It is generally assumed to be a new God Metal. The most common theories seem to be one from Odium or from Autonomy. But what if it isn't alien at all? In Hero of Ages, it is revealed that Ruin could not see the Atium. He only found out where it was when he heard the Kandra talking about it outside the Homeland. What if the same principle applies here? What if this unknown godmetal spike is Sazedium (or Harmonium if you must, though I hate that name)? It fits with everything we've seen about God Metals so far.

Has there ever been any confirmation on what generation Paalm was? I'm curious if she might have actually been one of the First, but taken away to serve Rashek directly outside the usual Kandra structure. Maybe even as a sign of one person he couldn't let go of despite turning them into a Mistwraith.

Given that Marsh was already planning and trying to resist when Ati held Ruin and was controlling him, I'm willing to bet he would do the same to Harmony. I imagine that Sazed talked with him in the early days and Marsh laid down an ultimatum saying that if Harmony tried to control him like that, he'd pull his linchpin and be done with it. Harmony agrees out of respect to let him be an autonomous agent rather than let Marsh commit suicide.

Your premise here is flawed. The energy powering Allomancy is not being created, it is being transferred from the Shard Preservation. It is not contained in the metal itself, therefore, your calculations of mass to energy based on the amount of metal are irrelevant. The metal acts as a key of sorts, unlocking access to the stream of energy coming from Preservation. There is a calculable amount of energy gained when burning metal, but this follows very different conservation laws than the standard E=MC 2. To address your other point, Allomancy being end-positive, this is in reference to the Allomancer himself. The Allomancer is not spending any of his own energy to accomplish Allomantic feats. Instead all of the energy is coming directly from Preservation.

So this one has been bothering me for a while. How does anyone figure out they are a Smoker? I'm imagining the process of Allomantic testing in pre-Collapse days was the kid gets beaten half to death to snap them, then is given metal vials while a Seeker stands by to detect any burning. But that Seeker won't detect the Copper. There's no visible sign of it burning either. So how does anyone find out if it worked or not?

Oh I love how thick I am as a reader on the first time. It makes the second, third, and fourth times so much more enjoyable as on each subsequent time I read these books I pick up something new, one more amazing piece of subtle foreshadowing or little hint as to what's really going on and just want to kick myself for being so dense.

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Were the details of how TenSoon killed and replaced OreSeur ever mentioned? This always rang a bit false to me, once Kandra were a bit better understood. OreSeur had the Blessing of Potency and TenSoon didn't. How did TenSoon kill him? Not only kill him, but kill him quickly and quietly?

Note however, he said he had very little use for atium before there were Mistborn. This implies that it did exist prior to their being Mistborn. Therefore your theory is flawed.

You said the word!