Harrycrapper

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Electrum

I held off on using this metal because while I knew what it had to do, I also knew that it would make atium far less important.

The way I built Allomancy, there is a logic to its framework. Atium shows other people's futures. Gold shows your own past. Each group of metals has internal and external powers. Therefore, one of the two alloys (either atium's or gold's) had to show other people's pasts—the Eleventh Metal from book one, an alloy of atium.

The final metal of that group, then, had to show your own future. I wanted this to be an alloy of atium. But the problem was that it couldn't be. There is always a pushing metal and a pulling metal to each set. The pull always comes first; the push is always the alloy. The two external metals (that do things to other people) have to be grouped together, and the two internal metals (that do things to yourself) have to be grouped together.

That means atium and gold are both pulling metals, and the ones that do things to you both had to be related to gold—and both metals that do things to other people had to be related to atium. Therefore, even though initial logic makes it seem that the alloy of atium should be the one that shows your own future, the way the magic is arranged means that it has to show other people's pasts. [Editor's note: Careful readers may intuit something else about this that Brandon is holding back.]

The Hero of Ages Annotations (June 25, 2009)

This contradicts what I said but it's the only thing I found that really touches on this. I'm not really picking up on what the editor's note is implying, maybe someone else knows the answer to that or can puzzle it out?

1 hour ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Actually, Atium alloys do "various temporal AND mental" effects. Because pure Atium not only shows you the future of people and objects (like arrows) around you, but it also boosts your mental capacity and speed (hmm, like F-Zinc) to handle the influx of extra information.

And if the alloys follow the same pattern as gold malatium, then alloys of atium invert the internal/external axis of the allomantic chart. Which kind of makes sense thematically, the god metal of the shard opposite to Preservation causes the effects of his magic system to be inverted. So electrum-atium would... Huh. It would show you the future of others around you. ...Just like normal atium? Wait a minute, but then...

I had a discussion on how I thought the Atium we see in the Mistborn trilogy was an alloy of electrum but someone up high shot it down. I was sure I saw a WoB or something that said the Atium from the pits wasn't the pure form of Atium but there are so may WoBs on Atium that I never finished searching through them to find it. But, yea, Atium does seem to do the opposite of electrum. Electrum allows you to see what you will do in the next few seconds, Atium lets you see what everything around you will do in the next few seconds. The fact that they essentially cancel eachother out always seemed off to me considering Atium is a Godmetal and electrum is not. 

On 8/16/2019 at 10:26 AM, NattyBo said:

It's so crazy to me that there's Cosmere cannon coming out a month from now (allegedly) and there's so little buzz for it it seems like.

 

White Sand has so much potential, but the unofficial prose version will forever be my "head"cannon

I think the excitement has generally been tamped down by the fact that the release date keeps getting pushed back. Now the hardcover is saying October 1st and that makes me really doubt the digital version is being released September 4th as it is currently advertised. We were supposed to get this back in July and now I feel like they'll get all three parts of the graphic audio version out before the graphic novel version, but maybe I'm just being a pessimist at this point. I am significantly more exited for the graphic audio over the graphic novels anyways. I really don't like that art style and I am kinda miffed that they had that chapter at the end of volume 2 that looked so much better but volume 3 is going to try and imitate the original style to make it more cohesive. Hopefully the new artist learned from the mistakes of the old...

11 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Also, killing humans is against the First Contract, killing other kandra is technically not - as TenSoon points out.

Eh... I actually can't see how any kandra that just ran away and hid could ever be caught, either by other kandra or Inquisitors, except by really extreme bad luck. TenSoon-as-OreSeur talks about Mistborn being able to find them, but how? Throwing really powerful emotional Allomancy around everywhere on the off chance you hit a kandra doesn't really sound practical.

Inquisitorsight could spot them, but there are maybe three dozen Inquisitors in the entire empire at most (IIRC, per WOB - Kelsier estimates 20 total in the first book). The chances that a kandra living in some out-of-the-way place would ever see an Inquisitor, even in a thousand years, are pretty low.

(And I'm not sure Inquisitors would automatically spot kandra "in passing", though. If they were closely looking at the person yeah, but if the kandra is just one person in a crowd hundreds of feet away, I doubt a Blessing would automatically stand out as different from jewelry, coins, or whatever.)

Either Inquisitorsight or extra-powerful emotional Allomancy would only really be useful if you were trying to pick out a kandra from a relatively small set of suspects. But a kandra who was just hiding, as opposed to carrying out a contract, would presumably pick a place to live where they'd never be around a Mistborn or Inquisitor.

I mean, if TLR told an Inquisitor, "a kandra went rogue, go catch them", how would they even start? Could be anyone of tens of millions of people, or some animal (a kandra who was really paranoid could hide as a fish for a few decades, until any kandra or Inquisitors hunting them assumed they were dead...)

I disagree. The "runaway" Kandra has four options; hide among the nobility, hide among the Skaa, hide among the thieving crews, or hide in the wilderness. I'm ruling out the nobility and the wilderness because the nobility would be idiotic due to the small amount of nobles and I doubt a Kandra would give up civilized life just to live as a fish as you said. They seem to be able to retire after a while serving contracts so giving up and living like an animal just seems illogical to me. Hiding among the normal Skaa may be effective for a time but also seems illogical. Skaa have it as bad as the Kandra do, the exception being that nobles are more violent with Kandra because they know they can't die easily so there aren't many consequences to beating them to death. Still, trading life like that for the life of a Skaa seems like a small improvement and at some point they'll do something that merits death as a Skaa and they'll be outed as a Kandra when they don't die. In Era 2, hiding in the populace would be easy, but in Era 1 the only large group of people was the slave class and there's no way a Kandra could hide forever among them. That leaves the thieving crews and we never saw a rouge Kandra among them or any of the other groups which means if this ever did happen, the Kandra was found and captured. 

6 hours ago, PrinceGenocide said:

Yeah they were killed by the second generation , and the vacated prison was used to imprison the first generation,  following  the coup de etat . I wonder why they didn't melt down sazed too. Maybe they were still too reluctant about violence. I mean , killing kandra imprisoned for centuries in such conditions was an act of Mercy really.  So I guess Sazed couldn't save them . But he would have gotten the reasons for their imprisonment from the kandra post catecandre. I don't think they were imprisoned for breaking rules like TenSoon did , I think maybe those kandra tried to wipe out humanity or at least kill tlr and then let the chaos that followed wipe out humanity. TenSoon was something of an exception I think. The kandra were already  under a lot of stress due to tlr and tfe death and ruin being released and TenSoon kinda helped ruin getting released so I think the they just wanted a scapegoat and there came TenSoon . 

Oh yea, I forgot about that, have an upvote. It's likely that in some way there were plotting against TLR or maybe just tried to escape the Kandra civilization and blend in with humanity. The Steel Inquisitors would probably have been the ones to hunt them down and bring them in, would be pretty easy with emotional Allomancy and their ability to see the Kandras' spikes. 

I think the combination of A-Tin and A-Pewter truly enhances balance, while separate they only partially enhance it. Balance is based on the coordination of the eyes, ears and the body's sense of where it's spatially located. So A-Tin covers the first two and A-Pewter the last one. I'd say they both enhance balance somewhat and together they really enhance it.

2 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

Yes it is:

"In other words, everything that is introduced in a story needs to have a function."

 

  Hide contents

Why did a white horse show up and she ride off on it, if we see her moments later in the same place, on foot, with no white horse to be seen. 

Thereby it had no function, so why include it. Chekhov's gun. 

I think we agree here but aren't quite on the same page. Game of Thrones isn't exactly a good example of Chekhov's Gun, it's a good example of something that violates it(though not always, see Cats-paw Dagger). Now, Chekhov's gun isn't some sacred law of entertainment, it's a trope. Tropes are tropes for a reason, they have worked in the past. But, when they're overused or obvious, people tend to complain. So, you'll get shows or books that try to violate the tropes to make them different, and that in and of itself is a trope, though one that does succeed(Game of Thrones). As for the white horse, I think it's really an HBO thing. I've seen so many of their dramas have these long scenes with no dialogue where a character is doing something weird. They're always vague and a bunch of people usually find all sorts of symbolic meaning in various things. The white horse supposedly symbolizes death and how Arya can't save lives, only take them(sound familiar anyone?). 

17 hours ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

@Karger I’ll agree that it’s appropriate it a lot of movies, and @Harrycrapper my understanding is that the proverbial gun never comes off the shelf. I honestly can’t thunk of a single example from Brandon.

"'Chekhov's Gun' is a concept that describes how every element of a story should contribute to the whole. It comes from Anton Chekhov's famous book writing advice: 'If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired." (first thing that comes up on google)

Maybe I read it a bit literally but how does the gun get fired if it never leaves the wall? I feel it means that if you make special note of something, it should be relevant later on. What you said is basically the opposite where you make special note of something and it's never relevant to the story. Brandon does make use of both of those, but usually the things that aren't relevant to the story are easter eggs for other Cosmere stories. 

12 hours ago, Karger said:

What?  How?

I don't think the previous guy gave a good explanation of that, go look at how Vin describes her earring in her conversation with Kelsier before she starts her mistborn training. Then go look at how Wax describes the earring that the Kandra gave him to replace the one he shot Bleeder with at ( I can't remember if it's at the end of SoS or the beginning of BoM, those two came out so close to each other). The descriptions are identical. It's not something most people catch, you would have had to remembered exactly how Vin's earring was described in TFE when you read it. I only caught it because I was curious some time ago to see all the hints that Ruin was distracting Vin every time she thought of it so I did a keyword search on "earring" to see all those moments. 

I don't want to be that guy but I don't think that's how Chekhov's Gun works. I'd say a more apt representation was Vin's earring, though that one spanned multiple books. Kelsier said it would be a good backup to use for a steel push in the event she needed it and so it was used. A gun was hung on the wall and later the character used it. Now there may be some future argument for Oath-bringer which has litteraly been hung on a wall and will probably be used for something at some point. But the Stormfather line was more of a misdirection and it was later established that he could be used as a sword but very much does not like to be. I'm not sure if there's a term for the concept of something that is written off as impossible but turns out to be possible, but that's what that was.  

Had Rashek had his metal minds removed when he was say 150 years old, he would have had a bit of time to recover them. But the older he got, the faster that bounce back occurs and it doesn't even need to fully bounce back to kill him, just to a point where the human body is too old. On a tangent, I'm imagining Rashek screwing up the first time he compunded Atium and accidentally turning himself into a baby. It could be a movie called "Three Steel Inquisitors and a Baby."

I bet there is a way to use AonDor using whatever the equivalent of a God Metal is on Sel. This is a common thing in most of the magic systems we've seen by Brandon, there are multiple ways to access them and the physical manifestation of the Shards seems to be the easiest way to gain access. On Scadrial you can be snapped by the Mists, be a descendant of a Lerasium mistborn, burn Lerasium yourself, or the medallions and the Bands of Mourning. Stormlight has the Honorblades, the Radiant Spren, or fabrials. While God Metals are tough to find, they are usually the easiest way to gain access to a given shards magic system once you find them. I could imagine the proto-Elantirans having access to something like that back before Aona was Shattered.

At this point, I feel that they got the actual release date updated for the physical copy and never did for the digital and the systems just keep pushing it forward pending someone inputting the correct information. The surprising thing here is the lack of info from Brandon or his people, this is very unlike them. I'd definitely be a bit more peeved if they did this with a Stormlight or Mistborn book but I guess the graphic novels aren't as high on the priority list for us or them.

I had wondered about this recently and went on a bit of a deep dive to figure it out, but didn't really have enough to put together a cohesive theory post. I had arrived at the same conclusion that Rashek could not have created the spikes while holding the power at the Well. I had wondered if maybe the First Generation didn't have spikes because Rashek purposefully made them mistwraiths without the spiritual blockage but upon researching it they do indeed have spikes, so yea he had to of killed a bunch of people shortly after his Ascension. Another missing piece is exactly when did the First Contract get written, how many generations of Kandra grew up without it? From the way Ten-Soon talked about it, it seemed like it was an event that happened in his lifetime but there's no way to be sure. While he was being relatively honest with Vin he was also intentionally leaving certain things out. I'm also insanely curious about the other Kandra "criminals" that were imprisoned for eternity. What did they do to deserve that? What happened to them when Sazed remade the world? So, yea I got more questions than answers but I do like a good question. Though, the OP should note that mistwraiths are not immortal, they do breed and live for about 50 years(or else every mistwraith would be one of the original Terrismen that Rashek turned into mistwraiths). It's only when they're given spikes that they are given a longer lifespan(I don't think they live forever or at the very least they have to deal with consequences for living as long as they do). 

On 7/26/2019 at 0:58 AM, PrinceGenocide said:

Ok so the spikes required for making Kandra are easy to make right. I mean the metals are plentiful and u need to ordinary humans to get them. Not allomancers or feruchemists. Then why are there so few Kandra. I mean , yes they are nonviolent and might have a stigma towards hemalurgy but still I'm sure u could find thousands of poor or unfortunate ppl on the verge of dying  due to trauma , disease ,etc ,who could be euthanized , even as a service to them. Also u could just steal some koloss spikes. Things would have been even easier in era1 following the Lord rulers death and the chaos unleashed in it's wake , I mean ok tlr's death was unexpected and deeply grievous to them and then ruin got released so they had a lot to think about. But even in era2 , where couples like tensoon and MeLaan , gave been in a relationship for centuries u don't see them hankering after children. Seems strange to me . Can anyone give a good reason why this is so ?

Edit : wait MeLaan and tensoon have a dad daughter dynamic. damnation , I didn't know that. I thought they were a couple. But still if tensoon  the gruff old dog could adopt a new Kandra , why don't the other more pg13 ones ? 

Koloss spikes are not the same as Kandra spikes. They are both made using normal humans but remember seeing somewhere that Kandra can't use Koloss spikes and vice versa. Also, I believe MeLaan says that even if they wanted to make new spikes, TLR never showed them how to make them. 

I'd like to interject another possibility. The way I read what the creature was at the end of BoM was that the Set had found mistwraiths and gave them Hemalurgic spikes made of that metal that was in Bleeder(be it Trellium or whatever). If Sazed couldn't find Bleeder when she had one, then he probably can't see or influence another "Kandra" with just one of those spikes(possibly more too). And he wouldn't know about it because the method of hiding from Ruin and Preservation was probably well documented - caverns surrounded by metal like the ones from the end of HoA - and they were probably created in a place like that. That's how I read it at least.

I'd like to add this, addressing the OP. It could be said that Taravangian's efforts to undermine Dalinar put him in the exact situation that he was in where he was able to resist Odium. I think had Dalinar just gotten the memories but still retained his place of power in Urithiru he might not have been in the same place or situation and we can't really know what would happen then. Also, the attempts to have Dalinar executed actually brought Szeth to Dalinar and therefore Kaladin and changed his path towards helping our favorite protagonists. I guess the question is; are events happening because of or in spite of the Diagram? 

On 7/18/2019 at 11:41 PM, cometaryorbit said:

Kelsier as we knew him in his original lifetime, certainly. But to make the Bands at all he would have had to get access to Nicrosil Feruchemy. Since he was already a Mistborn, that would let him use Nicrosil Compounding to boost his Allomantic strength to maximum. I think that is how it would work anyway...

Being a Sliver of Preservation could also give him somewhat of a boost (IIRC, there's some evidence comparing descriptions in WOA and HOA that Vin is stronger in the latter, but still not as strong as Elend), but I don't think it's necessary, as he could Nicrosil Compound to maximum ("mistpoint") strength even from regular, diminished power Allomancer strength.

Yes, from the coppermind at the end of BOM, the eye spike must be either allomantic steel or iron given the blue-lines-vision. (Which is a bit odd, since that's a power Kelsier already has...)

Vin's extra strength was stated by Sazed in the epigraphs of HoA to have likely been caused by her inhaling some mist before she got her earring and other times she managed to do that. However, I feel like the fact that she never used the power in WoA makes her a poor example for proving or disproving whether have held Preservation's power makes one a stronger allomancer. Honesty, I would have bought that just using the power like Rashek did made him stronger that other Mistborn, but the WOB seems to indicate that Rashek did that on purpose, it wasn't incidental. The Nicrosil Feruchemy is definitely a possibility explaining why the Bands were so powerful though, I hadn't thought of that. On the last point, the Steel/Iron sight that the eye spikes grant seem to have much more strength than normal Steel/Iron sight. The Steel Inquisitor that we got a viewpoint from in Final Empire could read peoples' emotions just by the way the metal moved in their bodies. It's also kinda like a weird X-ray vision and you can identify things that are obscured by a wall or some sort of other visual obstruction. Also, if there were any power that Kelsier would want more strength in, it's A-Steel. We saw the stuff Zane could do with his extra strength, Kelsier would be even scarier. 

1 hour ago, Sakshi said:

I love the Ire part. I think they were from elantris world. Am I right ?

Yes they were, that was also my favorite part. When Kelsier haunts those Elantrians and gets them to give up their device is probably one of the funniest scenes Brandon has written in my opinion.

On 7/15/2019 at 7:29 AM, Quantus said:

Per WOB That's how the Lord Ruler did it initially:

 

 

Hmm I guess technically Kelsier could have altered his spirit web while he was holding Preservation. For some reason I was thinking he would have to have a physical body to alter and make into a powerful Mistborn but if my memory of how Lerasium works is correct, it just rewrites your spirit web to make you a Mistborn. Kelsier would have had knowledge of how Rashek did that for himself and he knew he wasn't going to be a permanent vessel for the Shard, so he may have planned ahead for regaining a physical body. It does seem very Kelsier. 

Personally, I think there's something else going on with the Bands of Mourning that indicates Kelsier couldn't have done it alone. The level of Allomantic power the Bands gave Marasi and Wax seemed more on par with the Lord Ruler's power than Kelsier's. The Feruchemical power level is a little harder to nail down because it's not easy to determine how much was stored in the Bands. Increased Feruchemical strength would affect the ability to store and use attributes but without the knowledge of what was in them before they got to them doesn't tell us much about them other than they make a person Fullborn while holding them. The only way I can see the Band's power coming elusively from Kelsier is if somehow his time in the Well and/or time spent holding Preservation increased his Allomantic power, and I'm not really sure that's a thing.  Also, to address the OP, I think his eye spike just grants A-Steel. It's the one power I could see Kelsier wishing for extra strength in and if he had a Lerasium spike, I can't see him putting it in his eye. Also, now that I think of it, it definitely can't be a Feruchemical spike because it is granting him Steel Sight and that is completely separate from Feruchemy. 

My answers are video game based, so I don't have something physical. Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion: I spent about 50 hours of my first playthrough not knowing I could click on a place I'd been and fast travel there. And in that game there are abilities that level up from walking and jumping that contribute to your overall level which in turn determines how tough the enemies are. So, my character was super weak in combat but really good at moving around so I would just take forever running around an enemy landing strategic blows. Wasn't until I asked friend to help me with something and he looks at my stats and then me as if I were an idiot that I learned that I was an idiot. 

I've gone back and played various older games from the NES/Sega Genesis era and I used to win them all the time and now I can barely play them at all. I'm not sure if the video games have just changed that much or if I have.

8 hours ago, bxcnch said:

I think the problem with this theory is that, first of all, it would be more than a little difficult to introduce 11 new godlike characters in one book and give sufficient exposition to explain what they are without completely ruining the pace of the storytelling. Also there are readers out there that don't know about the Cosmere. After all, even the words "shard", "Adonalsium", "Investiture" etc. have only been revealed via supplimentary material (I think). In the actual books there barely is anything even hinting at the Cosmere's existence. I think your theory makes sense in-universe, but I think a significant part of the readers, especially the more casual ones, would think of this as Deus Ex Machina. Besides, I am pretty sure that WOB says the crossovers between the series would be more subtle and not directly impact the main plots. 

While I don't disagree with your opinion, Adonalsium has been mentioned by both Sazed and Hoid, though Sazed's is kinda a typo. Investiture was referenced in Bands of Mourning in that lesson the Kandra gave and I believe Lyft's spren mentioned it as well though I could be wrong on that one. The Cosmere itself has been mentioned in various books, people tend to say that where they might say universe if they were in our world. I am insanely curious to find a person who sees all these terms in the books and is interested enough to read all of them but not look some of this stuff up on the internet. 

2 minutes ago, Aluminum said:

The one in BoM was Vin's. When did the kandra get that?

Last we heard of it, Marsh removed it from her ear. He probably gave it to them.

It could be that because the changes they went through weren't caused by a Shard and therefore Sazed doesn't know how to reverse those changes with absolute surety that the reversal will work properly. He may just genuinely lack the knowledge to accomplish that while he kinda had the equivalent of Rashek's notes when he fixed the northern Scadrians.

On 5/12/2019 at 6:41 PM, Wyndlerunner said:

Third is who Nakomi is.

It's been a little while since I read WoT and I did it entirely on audiobook, I can't remember a character named Nakomi, could you provide some context?