Dunkum

this. I was more or less assuming that pretty much everyone lives to like 125 or so, but they die of old age eventually. though there could be sociological factors that I didn't include. maybe they would still reproduce less. or maybe they would do it more, because they are all perfectly healthy. no idea

oh, agreed. geographically, for people in Europe, there was a lot less land to the west than the east. the result being that the east was harder to get to and more mysterious for centuries. and even when they could access it, the cultures that had arisen there were, in some ways, very different from their own, all of this sort of feeds into the current western mindset in Europe and the Americas.

This was my reaction too. I can only think of 2 examples of this (LoTR and the Belgariad/Mallorean books mentioned in the OP) offhand, so I'm not sure I'd say it is quite a pattern, but it could be. if so, I would assume it is probably what you suggest. just a sort of an unconcious ignorance thing

So far I am liking this season's villain on Arrow. Ra's wasn't nearly as good as either Slade or Merlyn, but Darhk has been pretty great these past few episodes. that gives me a lot of hope for the rest of the season. well that and the fact that they've decreased a lot of the secret-keeping drama, which was often the worst part of the last few seasons (and Flash for that matter)

ahh, that would be why I haven't seen it.

one way around it: the energy from the burned metal creates the conduit that the investiture flows through. thus allowing for conservation of matter/energy and investiture

do you have a source for that? because I have never seen that proposed as an explanation(though I haven't exactly been looking either).

I don't think that's quite right. WoB is pretty clear that if Sazed were to die, he would drop one shard, not 2 (thats close to an exact quote...unless he's changed his mind since then)

I didn't see anything about this in a brief glimpse through the SoS spoilers forum, so I thought I would ask: It seems pretty clear that the "Mountain Pool" from the broadsheet is probably a shardpool. However, the text describes it as being "a most perfect blue." I seem to recall, though I am having trouble tracking it down, that Ruin and Preservation's shardpools were metallic black and metallic white respectively. so my question is: Is this Harmony's shardpool, and the color just a reflection that the new shard formed by merging Ruin and Preservation is different? or could it be evidence of the other shard mentioned at the end of the book?

Can't answer most of these (and the Coppermind and shardblade ones are really interesting) but for hemalury, we actually have an example of a spike being broken apart and still retaining a charge: Wax's earring. I don't know how much charge is there, but it is enough to qualify as a hemalurgical spike and allow Harmony to talk to him (like Ruin used to do in the original Mistborn, but less insane), and we have WoB that it was an inquisitor spike that was melted down

1. we know for some, but not all. for example, we know scadrians were created by Ruin and Preservation working together, but I think it is less clear for most others. 2. Not sure if we know 100%, but I think it should. 3. probably this: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Chronologythough some of the other forum members may be able to improve on that slightly 4. I don't think there is a 100% answer to that, but given actual human proclivities, I wouldn't rule out voluntary mating...just probably not very likely 5. bind points are important, but so is the metal itself. offhand, I don't recall what metal Wax's earring was made out of (or even if we actually have an answer for that), but I don't think it was the same, so it wouldn't provide the same effect. also not sure whether or not Wax's earring would need to actually provide him with any hemalurgical attribute at all in order to fulfill its primary purpose which is to make it easy for Harmony to communicate with him.

true enough, especially if there are higher concentrations of metals. that should extend the length somewhat. I mostly started that post thinking it would be used up pretty quickly, but by the end, it was a bit more iffy than I had thought.

well unless spiking the spren bond does something to both the person and the spren. in that case, you may not be able to heal that bond, because you might need to heal the torn part of the spren too. Back to the OP, I think the key is "as long as gold supplies last". for a small society, you could keep this up pretty much indefinitely. but for a large society (or one that grows exponentially, and thus becomes large quickly) you would probably run out of gold within a few generations, barring some significant space-travel/mining operations. and that ignores the other resource constraints you would be running into along the way. these things are surmountable, but if you don't work out the way past them quickly enough, you are in trouble. for reference, about halfway through typing this, I did some rough estimates. guessing conservatively that any given individual would only have to actually burn a few grams of gold in their lifetime (thus removing it from existence, for all intents and purposes), and using wikipedia's estimate that there have been about 183,600,000,000 grams of gold mined in the history of the earth, you'd probably burn through that amount of gold in a few tens of generations. it is hard to be precise because there are a lot of other variables that need to be taken into account, like starting population and growth rate. but if your population roughly doubles until you get to about the current earth population, then levels off, then depending on the exact starting population, you could be looking at something like 50 generations. less if I am underestimating the amount of gold burned per person. on the other hand if the gold is actually recoverable, you could maybe go on indefinitely. idle thoughts: 1. I wonder if this would result in later generations being more likely to be born as augurs/bloodmakers 2. I wonder if the large amount of investiture involved (especially the large amount of hemalurgy) would have any weird effects on later generations' SDNA

I think this is probably a pretty good analogy, actually. regardless of who the other shard is, if they can create a solid/metal version of their essence, analogous to atium or lerasium, then it stands to reason that it could probably be used for hemalurgy.

not sure we 100% know this although (SoS spoiler, sort of): at any rate, assuming it is true, is Wax's ability to push in a general bubble around himself an instance of such a perk? aside: @Maldis it is possible that melting the gold would not stop any further regeneration. I would have to double check for ferruchemy, but for hemalurgy, melting and recasting the metal does not remove the charge. and melted gold is still gold.

working my way through Malazan Book of the Fallen. ~2/3 of the way through book 2 right now. this may take some time.

I can't comprehend how you could be more excited for Arrow season 4 than for Flash season 2. it boggles the mind. that said, season 4 is already looking better than season 3 was. as long as they can maintain that trajectory, I'll be happy

Yea, just finished Shadows of Self, but I basically had to stop myself from reading through the night these past few days in order to be functional in the mornings.

Yea, Flash episode was pretty good. I'm really hoping that they use the upcoming multiple universe shenanigans as an excuse to give us more Tom Cavanaugh, because he was great last season. Arrow...we'll see. last season was a low point, but season 2 was fantastic, so i'll give them a few episodes, at least. the premier was decent. Though I was sick of whatever that Guitar Hero thing they were pushing was about 5 seconds into the first mention

I was pretty sure I had read that somewhere, but a brief search on theoryland didn't turn up anything.

well, plus we have examples of two opposing steelpushes holding a coin up in the air. maybe they both had a vertical element to their force, enough to counteract gravity, but I'm not sure i believe that.

honestly, was the cause of the hole itself really all that important? it was team flash's fault, in one way or another, but that barely seemed to matter within the context of the episode, or even the show as a whole.

we've seen what an allomancer gets from burning malatium. Vin does it in the first Mistborn. I don't think we've seen hemalurgy or ferruchemy with it, though

planning to pick it up this evening. I went though WoR when it came out in a single weekend. pretty much grabbed it on the Friday evening, and barely put it down until Sunday Morning. can't do that with Shadows of Self, though, not if I want to be even semi-conscious at work in the morning

bear in mind: not every person on Scadrial can use ferruchemy or allomancy. Hemalurgy is different from them, but it is still magic, it still manipulates investiture. I'd pose that, in theory, it is possible that a person could know all of the bind points, understand exactly what they are doing, and have spikes that are perfectly pure versions of the necessary metals, and still be unable to charge them, no matter how many people they stab with them. I'm not sure I believe it works that way, but it seems possible. basically, I am positing that the ability to charge a spike could be (though probably isnt) genetic.