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I meant to reply much earlier, but I won't be there tonight. I have another engagement, which is too bad, as I enjoy these. I meant to see if you wanted to meet somewhere so I could give you the recorder, Angie, but that's probably not feasible now. Sorry!

Okay, I uploaded the signing line audio here. I don't remember much of great import, but perhaps there was something I missed. There were a couple of nuggets in there though as I remember. Have fun whoever's willing to slog through 4 hours of audio to pull out the bite size nuggets of interesting information from them.

Angie brought her recorder, but she couldn't stay, so I took the recorder at the end of the signing. I'll post it when I get home from work. I asked a few questions at the end. Paraphrased (a small Bands of Mourning spoiler): Q. What is the intent of the 17th Shard? A. This has not been revealed yet (I got my first RAFO card! This was really just a sneaky way to see if the 17th shard had an intent like other shards. I suppose I could have probed further.) Q. When you burn aluminum, does it destroy the metal, or just make it inert? A. It destroys it. Q. What about chromium? A. Yes, that too. (Here I talked about trying to understand if that would prevent metal poisoning, etc. by using these metals, and he said it would. Essentially metal, energy and Investiture are all one, and something is happening here to change the metal.) Q. Can a Leecher drain a metalmind? A. I'm not going to answer that yet. I was going to ask about what else Leechers can drain, like the gun in the broadsheet, but he said that he didn't want to say more about them. He's going to have a Leecher character eventually, and we'll see more then. After I left, I realized that I had at least two more questions that have been bugging me that I forgot to ask. Oh well, there's always next time.

Hey all, the Calamity tour comes through Seattle second, like the Firefight tour. I'll probably go (along with a couple of work friends to whom I've introduced Sanderson). Anyone else coming? I'll also try to record the signing line and hang out there - I did that last time and really enjoyed it. I have a few questions that I want to ask - mostly mechanics questions. Let me know if we have answers to these (not just speculation): - Does metal actually get burned in Allomancy? Like the metal actually disappears? There's a throwaway mention in Well of Ascension or Hero of Ages that Vin burns off all of her metals at night to avoid metal poisoning, so I would assume so. So you have 1g of chromium, burn it for a minute, have .5g of chromium, burn it for another minute and have no chromium left in your body? - Similarly, does the metal disappear when using aluminum or chromium, or become inert somehow? (Minor and major Bands of Mourning spoilers) - Could a leecher drain Breath from a Nalthian? Could he drain the Divine Breath from a Returned? As a note, if you're considering going to this (or any signing near you) but are on the fence, I would highly recommend going. They are really fun, and Brandon is very fan friendly. You can go for as little or much as you want - he'll sign whatever and answer whatever until everyone is done. I went last year with high expectations and had them exceeded.

Moogle, I think I see your difficulty. But I wouldn't say that metals and mists are 2 ways of doing the same thing as in your gun analogy. Rather, I would say that when one uses metals, one draws the investiture in, and now has filtered investiture. So if one uses iron, one now has a bunch of investiture inside, but it can only be used to pull on metals. We've seen this before on Roshar, where certain colored gems can be used to Soulcast certain things. That seems to be another example of what I would term filtered investiture. Mists on the other hand are pure investiture - although it's probably also filtered in that it's Preservation's investiture, but it's less filtered in that it can power all of the Allomantic powers, instead of only one, in the case of metals. So when one draws the mists directly, now there's the unfiltered, or less filtered investiture to be used any way one sees fit. Now, there are some things about this that I don't fully understand. Why can one be either a 1-metal misting or a full mistborn, but nothing in between? That is, why can one use certain filters to pull in the investiture, but not any others, until suddenly one can use all of them? Why could only Vin draw the mists? Why, when she used a little of the mists, could she only use Allomancy, but when she drew them all she could do whatever she wanted? But the basics of filtered / unfiltered investiture seem to make sense to me.

I'll give this a shot. So, my understanding would be that the metals take spiritual power (investiture from the shard) and filter it through the cognitive (the metal's elemental structure; how the metal sees itself) to create a physical effect (or mental I suppose, but anyway the effect of the metal you're burning.) So, the mists being pure investiture, they don't need to go through a metal filter to decide the power - the person "burning" the mists chooses which power to use. If you don't have access to pure investiture, you need to have the ability written on your spiritweb and a specific filter, but if you have the mists, you act as your own cognitive filter.

Well that got out of hand.

So it looks like she started recording after the Elantris part, so the White Sand sort-of spoiler and the Elantris discussion isn't there. Alas. Following is the transcript of me asking him questions that probably everyone knows about Hemalurgy and Knights Radiant:

Oh, that was me. I was the one asking awesome questions (they were not particularly awesome, but what are you going to do). There was only the one White Sand question, and it was more of an Elantris question. Once Angie figures out how we can see the audio, I could do the transcript, but the most interesting thing I learned was that Elantris was built after people started to be transformed by the Shaod. I said "oh, so they started transforming, then built Elantris?" and he said "I didn't say they built it." Also, that guy up there who said "holy [crem] thank you!" was not responding to something that was written in his book. I was watching him. He was walking away and kind of pondering on the idea that Brandon gave him something that had a deep implication that people haven't picked out yet, and then said that. Sorry to disappoint.

Hello, I made an account. I guess this makes me a reformed lurker. Catalyst: went to Brandon's signing in Seattle on 1/7. I had heard nothing but good things about his signings, enjoyed all of his books, still had my expectations exceeded at the signing. It was a great experience. If you're reading this and are on the fence about going to a signing near you, I would highly recommend going. That's it. Hello all.