Dunkum

the kandra each had a pair of spikes, but that shouldn't matter outside of a body, where hemalurgic decay takes effect. unless you are suggesting the spikes aresomehoe bonded to each other even then, but I don't think we've seen anythign to suggest you can do that. I'd have to double check, but I think they mention in the book that TLR would give them a new batch when they needed them.

As far as using the same spike to steal from multiple people, I wonder if that is even possible. for starters, it would get harder and harder to add to it as it became more invested, since invested objects resist further investiture. beyond that, hemalurgy is described as taking a fragment of someones sDNA, essentially a part of their soul, and stapling it to the recipient. not sure if that sort of action would work with multiple fragments from multiple people. thats all guesswork of course. for the piercings of the hero, I assume that they had to be something beyond simple ear piercings. that could mean the object used to pierce was itself considered special (per my suggestion above) or it could mean that the piercings are somewhere other than just the ear lobe. on my question of enhancing allomancy without spiking another seeker, the thought I had in mind was that you could maybe use a spike to steal a little bit of someone's connection to Preservation, and that this could act as a generic allomancy enhancement (e.g. similar to my understanding of why Elend is stronger than Vin). it seems like this isn't the sort of thing Ruin would actually want to do, but I thought it worth asking from a purely academic standpoint.

hmm, that I wasn't aware of. it does make it a bit less plausible, though you could still have a whole tribe/nation/etc. under Ruin's influence via Hemalurgy, they'd just have to wait to find a seeker until the Well was almost full. Do we know for sure that you would actually need to spike a Seeker in order to enhance an existing allomantic ability? I mean, it seems to be the most likely scenario, based on how the inquisitors went about things, but I'm wondering if there couldn't possibly be some bindpoint and metal combination (other than god metals) that would let you enhance an ability without stealing that same ability.

I'm inclined to agree about the non-fatal possibility, honestly. I threw it out there because we do know it's possible, but it just isn't in Ruin's nature, unless there was no other way he could come up with. I'm inclined toward my second suggestion, personally. That Ruin had manipulated some culture to the point that they had some kind of ritual jewelry which had been passed down, and which Alendi then inherited through some means or other, be it conquest, treaty, or whatever. even the creation of the jewelry could have been influenced by him, so that when he found a seeker, he did his best to get them killed and get the weapon turned into something that could be used as a spike. Allomancy was uncommon, but it did turn up, from time to time, and over a thousand years, there may have been sufficient Seekers for him to do what he needed, especially if aforementioned culture was particularly warlike (which, under Ruin's influence, they probably would be). then have say the tribe leader/king/etc. constantly wear/inherit the items, which keeps the charge from decaying too much over time. finally, when Alendi goes about conquering, he becomes king, and gets the traditional piercings.

Well, we have WoB that you don't necessarily need to die, the spike just needs to hit blood to steal an attribute, so it is possible there is some ritual blood-sharing/piercing ceremony. another possibility would be that ruin was able to influence someone in the past to create a spike, and then create a ritual by which it would be passed down. in this way a centuries old earring or whatever might make its way to Alendi. a third, albeit highly specific an perhaps unlikely, possibility is that the Terris culture, or possibly one of the other extant cultures, could have ritual after killing someone (after a warrior's first kill perhaps) that involves melting down the weapon and making piercings from it. I'm not easily coming up with something that isn't a ritual of some variety, since that would have an element of certainty, though I guess it is also possible that, with 1000 years to plan, Ruin was able to manipulate events just right, even with his limited power, but he isn't known to be good with the whole foresight thing, so that seems a bit unlikely.

In Warbreaker, the point of sending the lifeless against Idris wasn't really to win, it was to scare. they didn't need command tents or anything, because the people doing it didn't really care. I don't think we actually ever see anything like a full-on lifeless battle. as to the Koloss, I don't think Vin or Elend were strong enough to wrest control away from Ruin, but that doesn't mean his control was perfect. in general, the Koloss were the ideal army for him, because he and they shared similar goals: wreck stuff. they did what he wanted, but what he wanted wasn't complicated. I don't know that there was any indication that they exercised any particularly detailed strategy beyond overwhelming the enemy with numbers and physical strength. for Koloss emotions, I think it can go a bit beyond the simple Bored or Rampage type emotions described above, but not by very much.

I was under the impression that Koloss blooded individuals only came about because Harmony altered the Koloss into an actual breeding population at the end of the original Mistborn trilogy. which brings up another question: are we talking original Final Empire era koloss, or the later modified versions? and is there a noticeable difference between the two for the purposes of this exercise?

Set yourself up as the Pied Piper by awakening a bunch of lifeless rats and ordering them to infest towns, then to leave when the townsfolk pay you

well, according to this: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=590#28

Well, plus from WoR:

You're right about my answer: It's been a bit since I read Warbreaker, but my memory of it is that most of the people beyond the second o r third heightening were essentially wealthy merchants and the equivalent of nobility, many of whom would have inherited large portions of their stash. I imagine that follows for the lower heightenings, though with a larger percentage who have clawed their way up from poverty, it is still likely that most of them inherited at least a few breaths. of course this is all speculation, so I could very well be wrong.

To generalize from what oudeis is saying a little bit: population growth is exponential, and most people are probably hesitant to give up that first breath (even in cultures where it is considered acceptable), so the sum total of all the past breaths just isnt that much, and the present breaths are mostly still being held by their original owner. plus, every once in a while, someone with a hoard of breaths will die without passing them on, further diminishing the supply.

well then I highly recommend queuing them up after you are through Clone Wars.

I watched some of the original cartoon version (done by Gendy Tartakovsky, if memory serves) and I liked it. In fact I have no qualms saying it is better than the prequel movies. from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it is worth it for the General Grievous fight scenes alone; which are up there with Avatar and Korra as some of the best I have seen.

Not much I can add to the general discussion above, but I want to key in on one item from the OP that caught my attention: while the question asked, and most of the discussion in the thread, has been at a pretty general level, the reference to the Alex Scarrow article is interesting to me because it is about his son. from that perspective, I think there is something to be said for children reading, that movies and gaming and so forth do not quite match (and I think Maxal was touching on this above). I am not going to say that for an adult, or even college or high school aged adolescent, reading is inherently superior. but for a child that is still learning, I think there is an argument to be made (though I am in no way an expert on this, so take it with a heaping bowl of salt). specifically, it boils down to the old adage that "practice makes perfect." The ability to read is crucial for a lot of adult life, and barring some exceptionally rare circumstances, that ability to read is going to be necessary to really advance in life. it makes sense, then, that you would want children to learn how to read and to practice reading as much as possible. from that standpoint, reading is probably going to provide a greater benefit to a child than any of the other types of entertainment discussed above. Moving from there, I would note that Gaming actually seems to come in second place here. a lot of games are going to provide a chance to practice other useful skills. A lot of games require a certain amount of basic math skill, and you could spin most RPGs and RTS games as using some type of resource management/financial management type skills, which are useful in life. even at their most basic, most games require a certain amount of pattern recognition and spatial reasoning. so for grade school age children, constant practice of these sorts of skills could actually have a tangible benefit. And one last thought, all of this I talk about for younger children, since they are the ones still in learning phases, but it presumably would have lesser benefits for adults as well. my basic logic here, though, is that the one way these activities are going to be beneficial is through actively practicing skills that you will want/need later in life. every book requires you to practice reading. most games are going to involve practicing something, though across a wider range of skills, and possibly to a lesser extent. for movies and tv shows, however, that active practice is not really happening, or at least I am having trouble coming up with any example in most of them. so that's my 2 cents

forgot about that daredevil intro. it is perfect

This would probably actually make the class shorter: outside the classroom time would be running at normal speed so the bells would ring when they normally do. You'd need bendalloy, and a ton of it, to make the class actually take longer

Daredevil is basically the show Arrow was striving to be: gritty and realistic, but also, y'know, good. Not that Arrow was bad (Season 2 was phenomenal, and I mostly enjoyed season 3), but Daredevil managed to maintain its quality pretty much throughout, to the point that I am kinda looking forward to the other Marvel shows Netflix is planning. though having a shorter season helps, and Netflix presumably has less onerous restrictions than CW as well.

These sound pretty close to what I always assumed. though to me ardents are more like Dominican monks

This is basically what they already do. burn cadmium and play a long game of Civilization that takes weeks instead of just days to complete

Not positive but I didn't think ferruchemical iron worked that way.

Yea, seconded on both counts. seasons 1 and 2 of arrow were great, and season 1 of flash as well. I'm even cautiously optimistic about legends of tomorrow, or whatever they called the new spinoff. supergirl too. Plus the DC animated shows are generally really good as well. the 90s batman and 2000s justice league shows were outstanding

Think I have to second this. and since I tend to watch more TV than Movies, this means DC has the edge for me.

Everyone else has gotten the basics of it down but let me add one detail: the way ferruchemy normally works, the power available to you is only equal to the power you have previously stored. with allomancy, however, the power available to you comes from outside yourself, in this case preservation, so it is purely in addition to whatever you might already have. the power of compounding, then, is that it lets you access that outside allomanitc power source, but use it to fuel ferruchemical attributes that allomancy normally cannot help with, or alternatively, it lets you access ferruchemical attributes in large quantities without having to store so much of it up..

I imagine it would be more difficult to force someone to use up their metalmind with nicrosil. partly at least because invested objects tend to resist further investiture, so a metalmind would inherently resist the nicrosil tampering. that said, forcing someone to insta-burn all of their stored attribute seems likely. I'm trying to decide which attribute would have it worst. right now id guess age. Though doing it for warmth would be interesting. if the person had enough stored up, it could be deadly for everyone around. i bet doing it for zinc would be similar to taravangian's best day