fyodor

Is it possible that flaring tin allows him to see where the blue lines end better, making it easier to tell the depth of various parts of the metal so he can read it easier? I'm gonna agree with everyone here and write it off as savant level abilities. If you can see color, you can judge thickness.

We've never seen any other references to Tin affecting your ability to see metal. It doesn't come from your eyes, which is why inquisitors can use their metal-view to see things. I'm willing to buy that inquisitors can see well enough to read with their metalvision (presumably they couldn't have run the church without the ability to read) but absent some other supporting reference I'm calling error on the Tin.

Interestingly during this scene it says that Marsh flares his tin to read it better-this I would say is an author error.

Iron and steel are visual abilities, right? Blue lines point to sources of metal. So how do:

Inquisitors see? They're vision would be covered with blue lines. How can they tell color, too?

AofL spoilers

How does Ranette pull metals to her from behind her?

What is the range for bronze?

What are the ratios for all the metals in Mistborn? I plan on making a collection of them.

Near the end of Mistborn 1, we have an inquisitor POV where he describes what everything looks like from an inquisitor's point of view.

http://books.google.com/books?id=q0pF7ly_vTEC&lpg=PP1&dq=mistborn&pg=PA620#v=onepage&q=mistborn&f=false

A Pewter misting/steel ferring could also presumably store speed and use his pewter to compensate for the difference.

I'd kind of like a pewter misting/iron ferring. Impossibly high jumps and other feats of agility and the collision-resilience needed to smash into and destroy heavy objects.

I think allomantic pewter and feruchemic steel would be what I would want. According to the adventure game, f-steel's biggest weakness is that while feruchemy keeps your body from tearing itself apart it doesn't protect you from a high-speed collision with something else. It means you have slow down a bit if you want to punch something.

A-Pewter gives you not just enhanced strength, but enhanced durability and coordination as well as better reflexes. All would be a huge advantage for someone who wants to fight without slowing down from near superhuman speed.

The only limit is how fast your mind can keep up with your body. Without a zincmind you couldn't safely move faster than you can see and understand where you are going.

It seems to me that those are different ways of wording the same things, though admittedly the game doesn't bother to model the "if you keep on tapping the same memories again and again for years, it gets blurrier" part, for the same reason it doesn't model Hemalurgic spikes winding up with a charge that grants no measurable power.

Yeah-there's always a need to simplify/adjust things to be applicable in a role playing game. A lot of the Allomantic/Feruchemical traits have effects that may not convey perfectly to role playing or provide ridiculous advantages.

For example, the books show pretty much every Pewter burner having borderline superhuman strength and resistance to injury, whereas in the RPG it provides a noticeable bump but not one that makes you capable of unbelievable feats of strength/toughenss depending on your abilities with pewter and/or normal physique.

And that's fine-you don't want everyone to be a Thug because it's so much better than the other metals.

Similarly, in the books, Atium makes you more or less invincible. So much so that significant effort has gone into trying to figure out theoretical ways to kill an Atium burner. In the RPG it gives you a very significant advantage but not a "kill everyone without being hurt" advantage.

For the more abstract characteristics like copper, there's going to be some loss of translation as you attempt to convert it to RPG terms.

Don't forget, the Adventures of Allomancer Jak are about as true as the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I think that the story came from half-remembered legends of Koloss spiking, and has no connection to whether or not spiking new Koloss is still possible. (which it might be, but this story is not proof that it is.)

I don't know-why would Jak say that they were claiming to have previously been human and then go on to say that it was impossible? How would such legends have formed? Only a few people knew about the origins of the Koloss in the previous era and the Ars Arcanum says that the Originators stifled all knowledge of Hemalurgy.

It's so specific as to be intentionally misleading if he's not actually trying to convey that they're spiking humans into Koloss.

Another thing to consider when the two civilizations meet is that the Lord ruler kept his people in a dark age (no scientific advancement) for 1000 years. The other civilization may not have had the words of founding but they also had a 1000 years to progress normally. How much more advanced is the civ on the other side of the world.

They would also be progressing from the early 18th century technology of pre-accession times instead of the regressed pre-gunpowder society that TLR created.

This one won't blow your minds, but I was thinking, since the third trilogy is science fiction and involves going to other worlds, then I believe a major conflict in the second trilogy will be less the Set and more the people on the other side of Scadrial. Really, we can't start going to other planets until we settle that major mystery at home, right?

What do you think?

I think that they'll have some significant role to play. It's worth noting also that the Trell/Trelism religion that Miles follows, assuming that it's the same as the "Trelagism" that Sazed discusses in Mistborn, is the religion of the polar people.

Sazed moved everyone in a storage chamber into one area (where they settle and presumably made Elendel). Anyone not in a chamber was either destroyed by the mists and by Ruin's awesome might, or luckily survived perhaps and set up tiny settlements.

In one of the FAQ's (in the Brandonology) Sanderson said that they were still alive.

Q: "3) So here's my last question. If there ARE people on the other side of the world, did Vin kill them all by placing the sun on their side, or do they have they're own Ruin/Preservation battle going on over there as well? Do they also have allomancy feruchemy and hemalurgy? "

A:No, they're not dead. Yes, Rashek was aware of them. In fact, he placed them there as a reserve. I knew he wanted a 'control' group of people in case his changes to genetics ended with the race being in serious trouble. All I'll say is that he found a way other than changing them genetically to help them survive in the world he created. And since they were created by Ruin and Preservation, they have the seeds of the Three Metallic Arts in them--though without anyone among them having burned Larasium, Allomancers would have been very rare in their population and full Mistborn unheard of. "

I most likely did, then. Its not like I got the wrong reference at all...

I'm assuming that there is some sort of weird things going on on the South Pole. Maybe they are busy experimenting with Mistings and Ferrings? Do they even have them? Maybe 17th Shard have visited them without us knowing...?

It's... a conspiracy!

Here's what Sanderson said (From the Brandonology)

"And since they were created by Ruin and Preservation, they have the seeds of the Three Metallic Arts in them--though without anyone among them having burned Larasium, Allomancers would have been very rare in their population and full Mistborn unheard of. "

Where did Sazed, as Harmony, move the God metal deposits? That's a good point.

I assume that they the Pits of Eltania (referenced in the broadsheet) are where the Atium deposition is now occurring.

I'm not sure that these "new" Hemalurgic koloss are any different then the old ones. Human new that he was human once, and made a couple of chilling comments about killing people and living in their houses so they would become human. If the koloss still have all their old spikes I guess they're probably reusing them, but I imagine the charge has weakened. I wonder if becoming koloss now requires more spikes? Or maybe you just are less twisted by them because they are less powerful now.

Human called himself "human" and knew on some level that he had been human. He wasn't able to communicate this to anyone, let alone tell them what city he was from.

It may just be a question of the spikes having lost charge.

They could be re-using old spikes, as Human did in the third book.

I assume they are, but I am surprised that if Sazed made them into true-breeding creatures that he'd also let them keep their spikes.

The Alloy of Law Broadsheet includes this quote from adventuring tineye Allomancer Jak

"Any man they deemed worthy could be made koloss, they claimed. Indeed, several of their most brutish and powerful warriors claimed to have once been men from the City. Obviously false, but there is something in their mindset that makes them think this way"

I originally remembered Jak maybe going through some sort of induction ceremony, thinking that the Koloss symbolically allowed people into their tribe in sort of a 19th century adventurer serial type of way, but this seems to pretty clearly indicate that people are being made into Koloss.

I think someone mentioned the making of new Koloss during the State of the Union thread but I didn't remember this bit.

It wouldn't seem sensible that Sazed would allow the Koloss to keep their spikes but it's hard to come up with an alternative explanation. Given what we know about Koloss, it would be almost intentionally misleading to include that.

Other than that, it seems that these new Hemalurgic Koloss are a little more coherent than the old ones, having specific memories of being human and living in the city.

F

In AoL, Marsh seems to refer to Kelsier in a present tense (though the tense isn't actually specified). "He does my brother's work." This could mean surviving, in general, or perhaps something a little more specific.

I understood this to mean generally pursuing Kelsier's goals of fairness, defeating evil, etc, rather than literally working for Kelsier.

I'd be very disappointed if Kelsier came back in any corporeal way.

So we know that the Pits were created by Preservation to hide away Ruin's body/power in the form of Atium. And if Ruin had gotten access to the Atium he'd be stronger than Preservation and then able to destroy the world completely (as opposed to merely killing everyone on it).

But Elend and his army of superfriends burns the Atium away (one of my favorite parts). So at this point it's no longer accessible to Ruin and he gets really pissed off. Presumably it wasn't going to be available any time soon, given Ruin's response.

So what happens to the power now? Does Sazed have access to it? Is it just kind of gone forever? Absent Atium does it come back to Sazed gradually? I know that under normal circumstances it just would have reformed in the Pits, but that was because the Pits were specifically designed to shunt it.

Thoughts?

I am not sure about the making of Lerasium weakening Sazed. First, if it's burned, it presumably is dispersed again and available.

Second, I'm not sure about the shards and their natures being weaker as such. I think that Sazed's ability to bring to bear his power might be limited (i.e. to build things, destroy the world, etc), but I don't know that the Preservation shard itself and/or it's ability to influence his personality is affected.

He made Spook into a Mistborn. He might have been able to do more, had he wanted to - evidently, he doesn't feel the need for that kind of power in the world right now.

It's kind of a common theme in fantasy-as society becomes more advanced the greater magic kind of fades away and disappears. The elves leave so the age of man can begin, etc.

On a side note, I always thought that it was odd that Sazed didn't return the Koloss to their previous incarnations- "you've been turned into a Hemlurgical monster against your will, so I'll show mercy and turn you into a somewhat less violent and naturally breeding version of these monsters. Also, some of you will be turned into female monsters."

I seem to be explaining this badly - I shall try again:

So, maybe Sazed left them hidden, maybe he sent them to be earring'd too, and maybe he let them fall in lava. We do not know that. The thing I am absolutely sure of is that he would not leave them in the form of spikes large enough to kill people and make (original) Koloss, nor leave them in the hands of (new) Koloss, who know to use the spikes for exactly that.

Hope that makes sense.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

Can you cite to wherever it says that that pulls can only be attached to an object's center of mass? I know that it is drawn to the Lurcher's center of mass, but I'm not familiar with where the books say that an object can only be Pulled from its center of mass.

If Harmony could fuel the basic attributes of the unspiked, then there would be very little reason for such importance being placed on Wax's earring, nor for Brandon to state the earring had some sort of Hemalurgic charge.

There seems to be a difference between would happens automatically-humans utilizing the passive powers of the gods and what they can intervene to do. If Rashek can use Preservation's power to turn people into Mistwraiths, if Sazed can turn Koloss into normal creatures, it would seem that Sazed could make Wax stronger/more resilient.

Sanderson said the following about the post-reuinification mists.

"Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy all work as they once did. However, now they are more directly affected by the presence or absence of the mists, which will slowly return to the world but not be of the extent they once were. (The mists are now an extent of Sazed's power, and where they roam, he is better able to influence things. There will also be two kinds of mists.) ....

It would seem that "influencing" things could refer to bolstering Wax's physical abilities.

I assume that the "two kinds of mists" refer to Ruin and Preservation mists.

I think it is a pretty decent theory. Vin and Kelsier would not have known about Electrum, but the LR would have known. Remember he puts plates in the caches with additional metal combinations that Vin and Elend didn't even know about at the end. Gold was considered a useless allomantic metal, so why would someone have tried making different alloys of it at random? Electrum makes it into the list by the second book, so it is fairly believable that it may have been used in the first book.

I think that the main problem is that someone asked the author about how they found seers to give atium to inquisitors and he gave a straightforward answer (that is the source of the drink spiking quote). I don't think that he would mislead us about atium abilities and it doesn't make sense to go through that much trouble to give them atium if they aren't going to use it.

So when a iron twinborn stores weight, then burns it, does he get back the weight faster than normal? And how did Miles manage to keep compounding gold without storing anything into the gold in his stomach? Could someone answer these questions for me?

I think that he did his storage/compounding offscreen. He presumably had some edible (ring sized) metalminds around that he had previously filled. He burns them, uses most of the excess to fill his main metalminds and then uses the rest to fill smaller edible metalminds that he burns later.

I noticed the "standard" inquisitors error too, but I just chalked it up to the inquisitors not being tied to a specific time. So they're plausibly HoA era inquisitors.

WRT to the different spikes, I thought that was in reference to the healing spikes and/or Atium. I'm pretty sure that we don't see any inquisitors who are visibly missing Pewter and a bunch are described as having Pewter abilities.

1. I think this is an in-game balance issue. It stops the Inquisitors being to powerful.

2. Standard Inquisitors have this anomaly too. I think this must be an error.

3. I think that there's a quote somewhere implying that Marsh has a bunch of double-powers. The RPG certainly gives him some double allomantic powers. He presumably has the 8 basic allomantic spikes, 8 basic feruchemical spikes, atium, duralumin, and a few double spikes (steel, iron, pewter, etc).

With the above, I think they stopped Inquisitors having pewter allomancy because of their feruchemy. But their feruchemy is wrong. Looking at the inquisitor Vin and Elend kill at the start of the HoA, it has 5 steel spikes and 4 bronze ones (and a pewter one). This would give all the basic 8 allomantic powers, and probably double pewter.

Also, I think it was said somewhere that not all inquisitors have the same spikes. So maybe some have those described in the RPG. But I think Marsh is off.

PS I think it is funny they added Marsh at the start of HoA, not the end. By the end, he is described as having over 20 spikes. I've been trying to count them all, and havn't yet reached 20. That Marsh would be very powerful. Game-breakingly so.

One point in favor of the electrum theory: The only Atium in Kredik Shaw after the death of the Lord Ruler was the Atium in his bracers. If there had been enough Atium for the Inquisitors to use it with regularity, they would presumably have a significant quantity on hand that Vin would have recovered for later use.

Fair enough, but they didn't find any electrum either.