killersquirrel59

Personally I doubt it. Autonomy/Bavadin is the Shard on Taldain, the planet of the upcoming White Sand graphic novels. Shards don't travel as a general rule. The only Shard we've seen travel is Odium, and that is remarked as a notably weird and terrifying thing for him to do. It really just doesn't make much sense for people on Scadrial to be directly following a Shard tied to another world.

Ok, a couple of points that I haven't seen raised in this debate yet. 1) On the subject of how much Speed Bleeder could store: Bleeder didn't need to store all the speed himself. We have confirmation that if you get spiked with a feruchemical spike, the spiking grafts enough of the donor's spiritweb onto your sDNA that you can use their metal minds. Bleeder could have watched and waited while her soon-to-be victim spent months storing Speed, then spiked her and stole her metal minds, already full. That's what I would do if I fully understood the intricacies of Hemalurgy and were preparing to spike a Steelrunner. Hell, I'd probably make a point to spike her while she was actively storing, so she has the hardest time running away. 2) On the subject of learning to Compound, practice makes perfect sense to me, not in the sense of practicing how to burn a metal mind, but in the re-storage process. Allomancy produces fast, spectacular bursts of power that flow into you. I would imagine that the real trick of Compounding is one of timing. You have to be able to start storing just as you burn the metal mind, but before the Investiture can take allomantic form as it normally would when burning metals. This is very precise timing, and something that absolutely could take practice (though tapping a Zinc mind would probably help with this).

Holy crap! I never considered that. I really like this theory. At least as far as the abstract of storing a soul in a Nicrosil mind. However I do have to poke the hole that the Lord Ruler could not have stored his soul in the Bands, because the Bands of Mourning (his bracers) were Atium minds, not Nicrosil minds. Nicrosil is one of the metals that is not even in dispute as to whether it could have existed in secret during the final empire. It is made of 84.1% nickel, 14.4% chromium, 1.4% silicon, and 0.1% magnesium. Chromium requires incredibly high temperatures to refine in the first place, far hotter than forges were capable of reaching with medieval technology. And that isn't even mentioning the silicon component or the act of alloying it all together in such precise ratios. The creation of Nicrosil is physically impossible in a world limited to medieval technology.

So, what happens if a Kandra has bits cut off them? Obviously the bones aren't theirs, but what happens to the lost flesh and muscle? Can they reabsorb it or is it lost? If lost, do Kandra actually lose mass when they have bits cut off? I'm wondering if a Kandra could be cut into enough pieces that, even though all pieces are still technically alive, are not large enough to create a body even if new bones were acquired.

I am willing to bet the term "gasoline" was used for clarity rather than necessarily being the same definition. In a world without millions of years of multiple previous eras of evolution and extinction, the idea of fossil fuels would be totally alien to the people, very much including Sazed when he Ascended. He would have no frame of reference with which to create fossil fuels, and no need to do so. Also, while yes fossil fuels provide more horsepower than some forms of bio-fuel, bio-diesels are used today in many 18-wheeler trucks, so the difference can't be that significant.

The definition of hero or villain is entirely subjective. As his soldiers? Hero. Ask his believers? Hero. As his crew? Insane, but a hero. Now go ask the poor schmuck who pulled guard duty at Keep Venture the night of his Atium raid. Go ask Salmen Tekiel who he killed because of the political advantage of staging his body. And perhaps best of all, go ask Yomen, or any of the other true believer Obligators.

There is another very easy answer in the history of the automobile. The early motorcars, the type of which are being described in the book, did not run on gasoline as we see gasoline today. The first gasoline car wasn't developed until 1886 by Karl Benz* and was mostly perceived as an oddity. Going further forward, Henry Ford's first Model Ts were constructed to run on hemp oil and Rudolf Diesel's first model ran on peanut oil. Gasoline being the main thing cars used wasn't such a prominent thing until the 1930s, mostly due to the fact it was cheaper than the other fuel sources and there was a depression. In the abundant land of Elendel, there is no way they would be using petroleum for their fuel. It is rich land full of plants and it makes no sense for Harmony to have steered them towards a finite fuel source instead of a renewable one when everything else he set up was directing them towards sustainability and prosperity.

Ok. Marsh does say "very long-lived". I missed that. However, there is no sense of scale to "very long-lived" this is a world where the average Skaa lifespan can't be much over 40, and even among nobles probably not beyond 50 or 60, just on technological medical grounds. Very long-lived could very easily still just mean like 80.

Really? I missed that one. Doesn't help in this case as the Steel alphabet can't replicated a schwa any better than english can. Accent marks are a possibility. I could buy that idea.

Ok, the pewter mugs makes some sense. I can buy that. Brass seems far less likely though. I have no doubt there is copper and zinc in the water. However, the odds of it forming, not only bronze as an alloy, but in the perfect ratio to be allomantically sound is beyond astronomical. Furthermore, why didn't she (and other instinctive allomancers for that matter) get really sick or even die from burning unsound alloys or impure base metals from trace minerals? I could potentially buy the idea that the Steel Ministry purposely seeded the water with allomantically sound base metals and alloys to draw out Skaa mistings. However, I still ask my follow up question of why no one got really sick or died from burning unsound alloys instinctively.

Transliteration would not be enough to cover Kelsier. With only one vowel for the "I" and "e" sounds, the dipthong would be impossible to achieve. This is a matter of the sound in question not being physically possible to make with the alphabet given. I can see the argument for the use of "ks" instead of "x" to make the same sound.

Compounding Gold would definitely help. It would nip most diseases in the bud. However, Wayne notes how much more difficult it is to deal with disease using Feruchemical gold. Also, eventually age will still catch up with you regardless of Feruchemical gold used. This would account for the WoB listed above that says "slightly longer lifespans", but certainly does not give any evidence for abnormally long ones to reach the levels we are talking about.

TFE notes that Vin was using Allomancy instinctively by burning trace metals in the water. Yet the metals she was burning were all alloys. She was noted as having instinctively used Pewter and Brass. This seems very unlikely, at least that any trace metals in the water would be allomantically sound in their percentage ratios, which need to be so perfectly exact. Pure metals make more sense. I could certainly see someone burning trace Tin, Iron, Zinc or Copper (not that anyone would realize they were instinctively using Copper), but the alloys seem strange to be gained in this manner. Am I missing something or does anyone have a better explanation that would make this make sense?

Live so long? I have never seen anything even hinting that Inquisitors have a longer than normal human lifespan. Do you have a source for this? It notes that they have varying lifespans, but nothing to say that those are longer than human.

Hmmm...while that is possible, it doesn't seem likely to me. There are VERY few Inquisitors, mostly because they have to kill 8 Mistings, a Mistborn (or Seer if they can find one), and a Feruchemist to make each one. I can't see them wasting resources like that. Keep in mind, they aren't going to be able to spike the noble Allomancers very often, as a noble would have to storm up royally to end up in the hands of the Inquisitors. And while noble Allomancers are about 1 in 100 people, Skaa Mistings are about 1 in 10,000 people. If we take Kelsier's word on the size of Luthadel (approximately 1,000,000 Skaa in and around Luthadel), that means there are approximately 100 Skaa Mistings in the city at any given time. Taking the math further, assuming an even distribution of metals (not counting the undiscovered metals), there are approximately 12 Skaa Tineyes in and around Luthadel at any given time. Finding 12 people out of a population of 1,000,000 is not an easy feat, even accounting for Bronze and the ability to pierce Copper Clouds. It just makes no sense they would throw away something so valuable to them. Even if for some reason the Inquisitors didn't want her, you'd think at the very least the Lord Ruler would have had her spiked to make a Kandra blessing spike for the Blessing of Awareness.

I highly doubt he was already a member of the 17th shard or a worldhopper before he snapped. What little we know about worldhopping indicates that one has to have SOME sort of power to make it work, and Demoux didn't snap until HoA. Plus, it really cheapens his story if he were an agent for some outside force all along. it would mean the whole Church of the Survivor that he basically founded was nothing more than a cynical ploy of some kind by the 17th Shard. I like it much better if all of his story was leading to his eventually discovering so much more out in the Cosmere rather than knowing it all along.

It says Inquisitor lifespans vary, but there has never been even the slightest hint I've ever seen that any naturally live longer than a normal human lifespan. Their lifespans vary because human lifespans vary. I believe you are the one making the leap here. I find it questionable whether Inquisitors really even count as non-human Hemalurgic constructs. They do not display any additional traits beyond what they are given with their spikes, which is the case for both Koloss and Kandra. The only even remotely weird thing is the way they see, and I believe we have it confirmed in a WoB that any allomancer could theoretically learn to do that.

Am I the only one who has noticed a large issue with the Steel Alphabet? Namely that it can't be used to write some of the names appearing in the books due to missing/combined letters? Think about it, here are a few off the top of my head. Kelsier - Steel alphabet combines the vowels i and e into a single letter which makes the dipthong in that name impossible to write. Waxilium - There is no x in the steel alphabet. Luthadel - There is no th sound. For reference, here is the link to the Steel Alphabet page on Coppermind.

Well, he doesn't need to use any of that bag to make atium minds. He can use his Inquisitor Atium Spike as a metal mind for storage and use the Atium in the bag for compounding. If a single bead can revert him back to childhood, then he certainly has enough...for now. But he will eventually run out.

"Ruin did it" seems to apply liberal amounts of Handwavium, but I'll take it if there is nothing else. I can see her being interrogated longer on her parentage to find if there were more, but it still makes no sense they wouldn't spike her. There is no evidence anywhere I've seen to hint that anyone in The Final Empire knew a way to spike someone without killing them, and I find it hard to believe that the Inquisitors wouldn't have made use of this method in other cases if they did (e.g. taking "unworthy" nobles and just taking their power for the good of the Steel Ministry).

I'm in the process of writing a gaming system for Mistborn (wasn't that big a fan of MAG system) and I rated Feruchemy on a scale of 1-5 for each metal, determining how long it took to store an attribute. It isn't an even trade, clearly, as Sazed talks about taking months to store up attributes that he burns away in hours or minutes. So I said that the benefit of tapping a single "charge" is enough to increase the relevant attribute by 1 for 1 minute. Storing a charge takes time based on your metal rating as per the following scale: 1 - 8 hours 2 - 1 hour 3 - 30 minutes 4 - 5 minutes 5 - 1 minute A true master at 5, does have an even rate of storage and tapping, but it has been noted quite frequently that Sazed isn't actually very good at what he does, with the notable exception of Copper.

That is a good question. How is Ironeyes still alive at this point? I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that compounding produces a Feruchemical charge tenfold of what was stored. As such the amount of youth stored is irrelevant, since he could store 1 "charge", get 10, store 9, then use the 1 remainder to fill another bead to compound, and repeat as needed. However, the amount of Atium would become a problem at some point, since no more is being produced, and we've assumed that all the Atium Marsh had was what was taken from the fleeing 2nd generation Kandra at the end of HoA, which was not described as being very much.

So it has pretty much been established that Mare's "betrayal" was her use of Tin which allowed the Inquisitors to detect her and Kelsier in the palace. This makes it clear that the Lord Ruler knew she was a Tineye. Given this, why was she sent to the pits instead of being kept and spiked? Normally on capturing a Skaa misting, it would make sense that the Inquisitors would keep her alive and prisoner until they were ready to make a new Inquisitor so they could spike her Tin. She arrived a few weeks after Kelsier, so the Inquisitors definitely did something with her. If it was simple interrogation, as Kelsier theorizes, it makes no sense that Kelsier wouldn't have been similarly interrogated. Has there been any information on this?

Tell me if this makes sense, but the way I figure it, the Lord Ruler shouldn't worry about anyone else managing his immortality trick through Atium alone. One would need to be able to compound 2 metals, not just one to manage. It has been established that you cannot tap a metal mind while sleeping. Once over his natural age, the Lord Ruler needed to be constantly tapping Youth from his Atium minds. Therefore, he needed to remain awake constantly to continue tapping his metal mind. The only way to manage this is to also be constantly compounding Bronze for wakefulness, which would face the same problem of diminishing returns as any Feruchemy use, needing ever more and more bronze. Not as hard to get, but notable that Atium alone will not be a viable answer to immortality. Just a random thought.

So, last year at the Words of Radiance book signing in Seattle, I asked Brandon to leave me a tidbit hint in one of my books he signed. He wrote the following: I spent a few weeks trying to puzzle this out after posting it here for the records, but eventually left it alone, waiting for more books to make things clearer. Well, Shadows of Self seems to have given me a hint as to this, and led to the beginnings of a new theory, and here it is: Trell is Odium and the mystery metal is a godmetal of Odium which I guess, following the other conventions would be called Raysium. I think that the second army Odium is trying to gather is the Kandra. Imagine how frightening an army of Kandra all armed with knowledge of Hemalurgy would be loose in the Cosmere. This could also be what is behind Brandon's cryptic hints about Hemalurgy being used to steal other, non-metallic arts and abilities. We already know there is at least one worldhopper Kandra, and I have my suspicions of more, specifically on Roshar. Furthermore, Odium is the only Shard we know has traveled after settling on a world. We know for certain he has already visited Sel at least, splintering Devotion and Dominion there. Other Shards have often been known by false deific names throughout the Cosmere. Would it not make sense for Odium to have been known as Trell sometime in Scadrial's distant past? For more evidence on this, I also cite the deep similarities between Trelagism as presented in TFE and the religion of the Purelakers in WoK. These are so eerily similar that I strongly suspect a common origin. Now, the Purelakers seem like an odd group to be devotees of Odium with their very laid-back attitudes, but I could easily see either his plans having backfired and the people having warped the faith, or him being very subtle and biding his time with them. In either case, I think they are similar enough that it makes a connection between Roshar and Scadrial via their religions. Well, that was long and rambling, but I just had to get the ideas down before they fled my leaky brain. Thoughts?