Batemenace

Brandon confirmed that an allomancer doesn't have to injest metal in order to burn it on his live stream tonight, so the theory seems pretty cemented in canon at this point. I've had a theory about Hoid and allomantic suppositories for a few years, but I just can't bring myself ask Brandon about it.

Well, so much for my theory that it was a misunderstanding, it was pretty clear telecommunications are supposed to be a couple decades away.

I think we also have to take into account the timeline Brandon was thinking about when he gave these answers. You have to remember that when he originally envisioned Mistborn, he was planning to take it into a futuristic sci-fi setting after doing industrial revolution and present day settings. There would certainly have been telecommunications in the sci-fi era. He could easily have been assuming the question pertained to a period in Scadrial's time before they developed telecommunications and only had couriers as an option, like immediately after the end of the Hero of Ages. As for the Kandra, there might have been a period of time while they were reforming their society where they took a vow to not use human bodies, only to renege on it later for the sake of convenience, or at Sazed's request. I'm totally in agreement with the Koloss thing, he seems to have shifted gears on that one. The problem I see with trying to catalog WoB into a non-cannon section is that we've had things he's said seem to be rendered non-cannon by a book, only to later be shown to be still true in a later book either by retconning or a misunderstanding by readers or a character in the book working with limited knowledge. I think we'll actually need new WoBs directly saying old ones are invalid before we can be sure.

There've been discussions about using the cognitive realm as a "Hyperspace" for a couple years now, but until Oathbringer we mostly only had minor glimpses into how it functioned which limited speculation quite a bit, hopefully we should get some new theories cropping up soon... One of the limitations of using the cognitive realm as a "hyperspace" method of transportation is that it basically limits you to areas of the galaxy that contain (fairly) intelligent life. If you've got a destination in mind, you'd best hope it happens to be within a stone's throw from a populated planet. On the other hand, space is big with lots of unimportant or barren patches spanning large swaths of the dwarf galaxy the Cosmere takes place in. If you go out exploring specifically like the good old Enterprise, you've got a shortcut to the new life forms and new alien civilizations of the galaxy with the empty bits cut away.

When telling Dalinar about the limitations of becoming a Bondsmith, he specifically used the term "shards", referring to both Blade and Plate, meaning that he won't get his own Radiant Plate, and taking the option of using Dead Shardplate off the table, despite Dead Shardplate not carrying the same taboo as the dead blades and Dalinar having ready access to any if he needed a set. I'm betting that wielding Nightblood would negatively impact Dalinar's bond with the Stormfather, in the same way that Kaladin's bond with Syl got wrecked when he started associating with people who were plotting to assassinate the king and put Dalinar on the throne. Dalinar might be able to use Nightblood for a time, but it would erode his connection to the Stormfather, as the role of Bondsmith seems to be leading the Orders and not actually swinging around weapons like everyone else. If we want to get really technical, I'm sure Dalinar could even use a dead blade if he really wanted to, despite the screaming, seeing as this is exactly what Renarin did for some time, but these aren't long term practices that are sustainable. That being said, the idea of Nightblood and the Stormfather using Dalinar's mind as a forum to bicker back and forth with each other would be totally amazing to read. On a slightly different note... Brandon has stated that Nightblood is essentially a mechanical/artificial/android spren. The difference is that he doesn't need a bond in order to manifest himself in the physical realm. My gut feeling is that Szeth has bonded a spren just like any other Radiant, but is hesitant to show itself too much while Nightblood is around. Of course, Brandon has stated that even lesser spren could theoretically bond with a person, and we've seen that Seons bond to people, much like their spren counterparts. I'm betting it's totally possible for Nightblood to form a similar bond, but I'm not convinced that that's what's going on with Szeth, as he would be manifesting different powers/abilities, and its been too short of a time frame.

In regards to Dalinar using Nightblood, I think it's also worth noting that Bondsmiths aren't allowed to bear shards, and Nightblood would definately count as a shard in my opinion.

I'd like to point out that it might just be a matter of personal preference. As shown with Shallan, simply manifesting a shardblade doesn't automatically grant you any special skills in using it effectively. While Szeth does have practice with the Windrunner Honorblade, it was notably smaller than most shardblades and some of the practice he picked up with it might not translate over to a new, most likely larger blade. Nightblood is roughly the same size as the Windrunner Honorblade, and Szeth is already used to dealing with a blade that drains investiture, a skill still rare among other shardbearers. Szeth seems pretty committed to Nightblood, and even if he could manifest a living shardblade, he'd still probably be lugging Nightblood around at the same time. While I don't doubt there are specific circumstances where duel wielding both Nightblood and a more typical shardblade would be ideal, Nightblood is still pretty effective to use even while sheathed and is probably capable of dealing with most situations readily.

If memory serves me correctly, the marks Azure's sword leaves on the people it cuts are really similar to the scaring Lift and Szeth received after Nightblood tried to suck them dry of investiture. To me this indicates Azure's sword is sucking investiture from the people it cuts into, though in a far less violent or potent maner as OG Nightblood. I'd be willing to accept that Azure's sword isn't a danger to its user, but it's definitely Nightblood Lite®.

I was finally able to ask Brandon about this at the signing last night. I wasn't recording so I'm having to paraphrase here, but this is how it went. Me: So, which happened first, Nightblood showing up on Roshar, or the first successful production of working half shards? Brandon: Umm... [scrunches up his face and chews on a pen for bit] Me: Okay, what I was getting at was whether or not they were reverse engineered from Nightblood. Brandon: No, Half-Shards were not reverse engineered from Nightblood, they're something else. Me: Okay, so, when allomancers talk about burning metals, that they're metabolizing metals, but you have allomancers using metals long after they would have passed from the stomach, so does it have to be in the digestive sys- Brandon: It doesn't have to be in the stomach, it can be anywhere in the body. If you stabbed an allomancer with an allomantic metal, they could burn it if they're able to. Me: Okay, that lead leads me to the second part of my question, Ranette, Ranette made anti-thug rounds, right? Brandon: Right. Me: They're basically just magnum rounds, hotter loads, right? Brandon: Yeah. Me: Well, wouldn't it be more effective to just make loads where the bullets or buckshot are made of pewter that's just slightly off, you know, enough to make you sick if you burn it? If they kept burning pewter it would take them out of the fight. Brandon: Hmm... I think that a thug would be able to tell which metal is which. Me: I thought they wouldn't be able to choose which bits of the same type of metal they burn. Brandon: I think that they woul- well, wait. But you do occasionally run across a bad metal that messes you up, so you might be right. So, Maybe? [thinks for a bit] It's plausible. I'd need to think about it. It's 1 in the morning and I don't want to commit to something like this, so I'm going to have to RAFO you for right now. [A few moments later as my wife and I are grabbing our stuff from the seats and heading out of the store] Brandon: [Pointing at me] Hey, you were right! Me: Huh? Brandon: I was thinking about it, it would take the thug out of the fight. They'd have to stop burning or else get sick. Me: Cool So I was wrong about Nightblood and the Half-Shards, but it looks like I was correct about the Ranette thing. It also seems to answer the question about whether or not mistings can get sick from off-metals.

I absolutely agree with you, she has no idea where it's coming from and that she assumes it regenerates over time on its own (with no mention of any ebbs or flows, something that she certainly would be aware of if she lost all her luck 4 to 5 hours after eating). What that quote says to me is that the build up took several days, and she's experienced enough in managing her luck she plans ahead on when to use it and when not to (meaning that she rations it out for future use, for more than just a few hours into the future) . A quick peek on google reveals the following. 50% of stomach contents emptied 2.5 to 3 hours Total emptying of the stomach 4 to 5 hours 50% emptying of the small intestine 2.5 to 3 hours Transit through the colon 30 to 40 hours This might account for why she could stock up over the course of a couple days, but be unable to keep storing for more than that, after a couple of days all the trace metals would have been voided along with everything else. The way I look at it is that she's definitely burning metals outside of her stomach prior to Kelsier, which would make the burning of metals in non-stomach body areas viable. P.S. Thanks for that quote, I was specifically looking for it yesterday but couldn't find it.

I don't think it was weeks, but I think remember reading somewhere that she could store it up over a couple days. It might have been in the annotations or time wasters guide. However, I might be crazy and she can't store it up, but I find it hard to believe Vin wouldn't have been able to make the connection between eating a meal and restoration of her luck. She would have been eating maybe one meal a day most of the time (if even that, they also would have been light meals and passed from her stomach within a few hours) and she would certainly have gone a couple days without eating on a regular basis. I'm sure she would have noticed her lack of luck during those days, and made the connection, unless she had maintained a small store of luck from one day to the next (She was absolutely obsessed with food and began hoarding it once she found herself in Kelsier's crew at first, she would have made the connection). Brass, being an alloy and necessary for soothing and her default use of luck, would only be found when using cutlery or other utensils as it wouldn't have been found in the groundwater so she wouldn't have had access to it on days she only managed to drink some water.

Water remains in the stomach for less than two hours after you drink it, it starts getting absorbed through the lining and is quickly distributed through the blood and tissue. Even if the trace metals weren't absorbed through the lining (if they really are "trace" they would be absorbed, this is basically how fast acting medication and alcohol works) they would pass through the system and exit long before Vin would have time to store them up over the course of days or weeks, meaning that the only way she is burning those metals is by building them up in her body outside of the digestive tract, just like what happens to regular people when they eat heavy metals. Additionally, Leechers have the ability to burn away allomantically viable piercings on their target's body, something they wouldn't be able to do if the target allomancer in question wouldn't be able to metabolize the piercing on their own due to the fact that the leecher isn't burning the metals away himself, he's forcing the target to do it for him, otherwise a leecher would only be able to leech another allomancer's chromium deposit.

I'm not so sure about the stomach thing. Vin was doing it for years without really comprehending what she was doing exactly or how. None of the metals she was burning were in her stomach, based on how she would have to store up for weeks at a time to do a single weak soothing or rioting. And yeah, Miles would absolutely be tapping instead of compounding, my thought was you could wear Miles down over a drawn out fight, like over a day or so. Healing, even through compounding, can be very costly. and metalminds can only hold so much at a time. I'm not certain that his body would be able to automatically dispel any gold chunks because his body might think "oh, this is gold, I can just burn this instead of trying to manipulate tissue, muscle, and bone to force it out".

I was at a signing some time ago and the event was running long so those of us at the end of the line got booted outside. There were maybe ten or so of us and we were all huddled pretty close together (this was winter after all). There was a gay couple in the group and they asked Brandon about gay characters in the Cosmere, and he said that the only LGBT character he had included in the Stormlight Archive so far (at that point Words of Radiance hadn't quite come out yet) was Drehy.

Okay, I’m not just referring specifically to Ranette, although since Sanderson set her up as someone who researches ways to better kill allomancers, and as one herself, she certainly has less of an excuse. In Alloy of Law, Ranette provided Wax with specialized “Hazekiller” rounds, as well as a gun specifically designed to incorporate them in addition to conventional rounds. For Coinshots, she added a ceramic tip resistant to Pushes or Pulls. For Tineyes she essentially made a noisy bullet. For Thugs, she went all out with her genius and simply added more powder to conventional rounds, essentially creating a +P magnum round. I can live with her solutions to deal with coinshots and tineyes, but her solution to thugs is atrocious considering the fact that all you would need to do is craft a slug or buckshot out of slightly off pewter. One of the biggest dangers to allomancers is trying to burn metal that isn’t quite up to allomantic standards. Try burning steel with a bit too much or a bit too little carbon and you can get sick. Too much silver in your electrum? You might die. Thugs don’t have bullet proof skin, one of the dangers Thugs face is continuing the fight too long because they don’t recognize how wounded they are or how much blood they’ve lost. Pump some pewter in them with a bit too much lead in i and you’ve got a thug about to drop mid flair because he just burned poison. There are various WOB out there confirming allomancers can burn metals in their body that they haven’t eaten through the mouth. In fact, for years Vin was surviving off of the built up metals collecting in her bloodstream. Allomancers also don’t seem to be able to tell a metal is slightly off until they’ve burned it, a hit pewter burner would have to immediately stop burning the second they were hit with an bad pewter round which would be difficult given that 1. Pewter burners instinctively burn when they’ve been injured, even when unconscious, and 2. They wouldn’t even recognize the off-brand pewter until it’s too late, especially in the heat of battle. This technique would be especially useful against a double gold Bloodmaker like Miles. As Brandon has explained, compounding has less to do with one metallic art directly fueling the other than a general short circuiting of the spiritweb. By burning a filled metalmind with allomancy, you aren’t actually burning or tapping the attribute you stored inside, instead you’re tricking allomancy into thinking that the metal you’re burning is spirit-coded to whatever attribute the feruchemical attribute identifies itself as. The power you’re getting out of it isn’t the same power that you put in. It’s like using your debit card but tricking the merchant into using the card number to someone else’s card. Why is this important? A double gold Bloodmaker burning a gold metalmind (such as when in the actual act of compounding) will automatically start burning any off-gold buckshot introduced into their system first. If the Bloodmaker is burning gold, he won’t be unable to burn any feruchemically charged gold until he either expels or burns up the non-metal mind gold because metalminds are invested and therefore slightly harder to metabolize, as can be inferred here. KAYMYTH OK, so in the signing line, I asked the question about chromium vs a Compounder with both invested and uninvested metals in both their stomach and piercings. BRANDON SANDERSON 1) Yes, the piercings will get burned off. (I bet that seeing that happen would look downright weird.) 2) The noninvested metals go before the invested ones. He said that because invested metals are harder to effect, it takes a little extra time and effort to get them to burn off. So a Leecher trying to clean out a Compounder would have to get a good grip and hang on for a few seconds. 3) Chromium burns about as quickly as duralumin, so if you're trying to burn off a lot of metals, it is possible to run out of chromium before your target is clean. This would probably only be an issue when dealing with larger pieces (like jewelry) rather than your standard metal-flakes-in-the-stomach deal. Could the Bloodmaker simply tap his metalmind to heal? Sure, but he wouldn’t be able to compound until he extracted the faulty gold, and there’s a chance that the bloodmaker’s body might instinctively try to clear the wounds of debris by metabolizing the bad gold due to the bloodmaker’s personal identity including the allomantic ability to burn gold. Is it a perfect strategy? No, but it would allow you to more quickly wear down a double gold twinborn like Miles and give him plenty of grief. This concept isn't just for bloodmakers and thugs, you could apply this to a number of any other allomantically inclined targets. widespread birdshot might not pack a punch, but it will embed itself below the skin, and is hard to dodge.

Yeah, I can't see enough evidence about her being Dalinar's wife. It's an interesting thought the more I think about it, though. When Brandon first began writing Warbreaker, he intended it as an origin story for Vasher, who had been a character in The Way of Kings Prime. Back then, Dalinar was unhappily married to his second wife. Given the current mystery Brandon has surrounded Dalinar's married past, I wouldn't be surprised at his wife being a world hopper, or even a secret second wife thrown in as a twist that might get around the hair issue.

It was working fine, and now whenever I try to go to it I get this Sorry, there is a problem You do not have permission to view this content. Error code: 1F176/3 Is this a problem with the site, or is the archive off limits now?

I spent about two hours trying to get the wayback machine to work on both the archive and the old site itself, but wasn't able to get anything

Is there any update on when this issue will be taken care of?

This is a pretty important point. While it might be fun to speculate about one of the unknown shards, Threnody certainly isn't one of them. Brandon already has each one worked out, and wouldn't simply rewrite or retcon Threnody as one of the shards because Isaac came up with a cool name that would work on a bunch of levels. Of course, that wouldn't stop Brandon from mixing previously unknown, less developed aspects of the cosmere with Threnody. I wouldn't put it past Brandon to have decided that something or someone important is interred beneath Threnody...

Part of the problem with trying to categorize or compare things in the cosmere is that there isn't always a one-to-one match. Grouping and comparing different magics, investiture, and what ever else in the cosmere is more akin to translating from one language to the next than a mathematical equation. You're probably going to be forced to settle for approximations. Like Yata mentioned above me with the Ten Essences, many of the groupings mentioned in-book are more of an interpretation by the characters trying to make sense of the stuff around them using limited and incomplete information than any actual underlying law of the cosmere. That said, the magics in the cosmere do have some underlying direct relationships with each other, one of which is that they are derived from the same origin (Adonalsium, etc.), and Sanderson has stated that he does in fact have a complex equation roughly linking all the different forms of investiture. Beyond that, much of the way things in the cosmere manifest are dependent on the people interacting with the investiture, and as we all are well aware of at this point, no two people are quite the same...

I'm pretty sure he was from Yolen, originally. Although from Brandon's perspective, that exactly how he came into being

In regards to painspren, I think we also need to take into account that what happens on Shadesmar might not be indicative of what happens everywhere else in the Cognitive realm. Roshar is such that some weird cognitive stuff happens that doesn't occur on any other Shardworld, especially involving Spren-type manifestations of power. You could also theoretically drug up the expectant mother before hand so that she doesn't feel any pain.

I think it would work, despite the weird environment, humans are still able to function in much the same way they do in the physical realm. I think the hard part about getting into the cognitive realm isn't so much getting there, so much as arriving there in a way that you can still operate and function like you do in the physical realm, after all, everyone technically exists and interacts in the cognitive realm at all times, it's just that normally you aren't aware of it or aren't able to interact with it in a meaningful way from a physical point of view.

The title pretty much sums it up, what would happen if someone gave birth in the cognitive realm after traveling there? Is it possible to conceive a child in the cognitive realm? My initial thought would be “Of course not, normal laws and physics don’t act like they do in the physical realm once you cross over into the cognitive, plus, it would open up so many cans of worms Brandon would simply make it impossible to avoid the headache that ensued to trying to figure out the rules.” However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s possible. Many of the magic systems are based on where someone is born. Since all of the cognitive realm is technically one large connected mass spanning the cosmere, connecting any planet with sufficient intelligent life, could one’s spiritweb include all the connected Shardworlds as that person’s “Birth Planet”, or would the place of birth simply be the cognitive realm (or whichever particular world that specific spot in the cognitive realm happens to be reflecting)? For the sake of simplicity, let’s roll conception and birth into the same thing, the creation of new human life. I started thinking about this because we know at some point, certain people reach the point they start building spaceships and start buzzing other planets in the cosmere, and I was wondering if it would just be easier to use the cognitive realm as a sort of “Hyperspace” for spaceships.