fyodor

On a side note, I noticed that there were a few discrepancies in how the Inquisitors were powered vs. the books.

1.The standard inquisitors and Marsh do not appear to have Pewter allomancy.

2.WoA era Marsh has Steel and pewter Feruchemy. I had been under the impression that the Inquisitors only had gold Feruchemy until the end of WoA/beginning of HoA.

I don't have my copy, but can somebody check the Elend vs Marsh fight scene in HoA to check how it was described?

It's basically described as a sensation of having access to metals that he had previously used up-he still used them the way he had before. Unfortunately the google books preview is blocked for those pages.

Depending on what Investure is, they might be able to become Mistborn.

In the RPG at least, Investiture appears to be limited to enhancing/feeding abilities that the user already has.

I think it's also worth noting that in the first book generally atium is a somewhat less rare commodity. Kelsier is pretty confident of his ability to get it-he can spare enough to let Vin try it out. On top of this the Lord Ruler would presumably be somewhat freer with the Atium with his servants.

It also seems reasonable to me that the Inquisitors swallowed some when they detected other Allomancers in the building. They could (presumably) pierce copperclouds so they knew that they were dealing with two mistborn. It would seem prudent to swallow their Atium beforehand instead of trying to eat it in a fight with another atium-powered mistborn.

I'll also add that we never see the characters performing any actual feats of strength while heavy. They're able to mimic some feats of strength by selectively increasing their weight after generating velocity (Wax knocking down the door, Sazed closing the gate). But they always generate speed while still light and then increase their mass to have higher momentum.

1)Why would it be atypical of Feruchemy? As far as I remember, (though I admit my memory can be an untrustworthy source) we've never seen that storing attributes always has an exactly opposite effect to tapping them.

Virtually every description, from the AoL Ars Arcanum to Sazed and Kelsier's descriptions emphasize it as energy neutral and emphasize that every benefit comes with a corresponding cost.User must put in what they get out.

Half Ruin and half Preservation. It would pretty badly mess up the balance of the art to have something that doesn't operate in the reverse.

well obviously his body has got to be strengthened to some degree, otherwise he'd squish himself under his own weight. kind of a Required Secondary Power there. it just seems like it doesn't completely compensate for extreme amounts of tapped weight, so it makes it harder to move.

There's a pretty comprehensive discussion of this in the linked-to-thread. But basically, the descriptions seem to describe the user getting an increase in structural strength but not movement-strength. So the bones/connective tissues are stronger so that he does not literally fall apart, but the user does not have any increased ability to move.

Nice theory. It might also go to explain why Wax could lift his guns above his head while tapping weight during the wedding fight. I certainly like the idea of Harmony fueling pewter Allomancy through the mists more than the mists just magically (yes, I recognize the irony) invigorating him.

I'm betting that this is just an author screwup or out-of-sequence narrative. IIRC in one of the arm-lifting scenes he's at one-hundred times weight. Even with pewter, this would seem like too much strength.

Actually, they prevent that on page 102:

I read this as being a gameplay restriction rather than some sort of actual statement on the nature of the in-book-universe.

Coming over from the Trellism thread. Some folks over there noted correctly that Trellism (as practiced by Miles) was practiced by people who lived near the poles.

Some folks observantly connected this to Brandon's references to a so-called-polar control group that TLR kept living on the other side of the world. Can folks give me a hand finding these references? I seem to remember him specifically saying that these other people would play a role in the new trilogy (maybe in the annotations).

Note from the Elendel Daily that humans can apparently still be made into Koloss. (See Allomancer Jak). So it seems they can be created both ways. Alternately, maybe Koloss-blooded have been through some sort of partial transformation?

I understood this to mean that Jak was going to be inducted into their tribe rather than physically converted to a Koloss. It kind of mimics the old-adventurer serials (like the villain from Up) where the heroic westerner would meet some primitive tribe and get initiated into their tribe after proving his valor.

This is what Sanderson said

"Marsh survived. (He'll show up in the Mistborn sequel series.) The Kandra were restored, and have taken a vow to live only in animal bodies. There will never be any more of them, but they are functionally immortal. So you'll see them again. The Koloss who were in the cavern at the time survived, and were changed to become a race that breeds true, rather than Hemalurgic monsters. More below. "

I read this to read that the surviving Koloss became "real" creatures that were not dependent on their spikes for their current forms. Now it's probably true that the spikes would still work, but I'd think that Sazed would dump or get rid of the spikes instead of leaving them with the Koloss.

I don't know about The Path being a Terris thing. Steris is pretty judgmental about religion, but she does not mention Terris when critiquing The Path, nor do Wax and the broadsheet, when the Faceless Immortals are mentioned.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

I am a little curious how much of belief in Harmony is historical vs. religious. Is it generally accepted that Harmony saved everyone from the Ruinpocalypse, with Pathists following the specific religious tenets laid out by Sazed or do Sliverists and Surivorists have their own creation story? Do people know that Harmony was a Keeper named Sazed before he ascended*?

*It's clear that the populace doesn't know everything that was in the HoA epigraphs, since the Ars Arcanum says that Hemalurgy was suppressed, and people also don't know that "ironeyes" was an inquisitor, etc.

Honestly, much as I love elaborate death traps, I doubt we'll ever get more efficient than Yomen: lure them into a very sturdy room, then seal it off. Even Miles would be neutralized by that. The only problem I forsee is a Strength Compounder, who could have the power to get out, even from the sturdiest room. Really, that would be a nightmare to defend against in general, since as a Thug, they'd also heal fast and be resistant to poisons. For someone like that, I think you're best served dropping them down a pit, then flooding it with water to drown them.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

P.S. The pit is not my solution of choice for everyone, because Coinshots are pretty hard to drop, and fairly common.

It seems that Thugs are more resistant to physical injury but they're not bulletproof. Tarkin is still dropped by a shot to an arm.

I don't know that a thug could handle three or four people filling him with bullets. I think that the main problem is that one-on-one they can stay up long enough to kill you, but it seems that for Thugs the best strategy is to have a group of people shoot them up.

This.

The technology level is meant to be about 1910 New York, but their electrical wires are mostly underground, and technology lags 1910 in certain areas and is ahead in certain areas (especially metallurgy). Let's say that internal combustion engines are at 1910 level, metallurgy is decades ahead, and anything involving electricity is decades behind. Also, I have no idea at all about the current state of medicine.

Just so I'm understanding you, you're confirming that there is no telegraphy?

The only one I can find that matches at all is Demoux.

Thinker:

Demoux

Any of the returned could be of course but no description that I can find matches.

Innnteresting and good catch. I wonder exactly how that worked given the time elapse between the books.

While we're on the subject of Mist Snapping, I've been meaning to ask: did we ever learn whether the Mists still Snap people in Alloy of Law?

Sanderson said that the way snapping works has changed since Sazed didn't like the way it worked before. Presumably it can be done without excruciating pain now.

EDIT: Sazed talks about Atium being "the body of Ruin" in the Epigraphs, but the mistake could still quite reasonably be made.

It's not clear that the population had full access to the contents of the epigraphs. The Ars Arcanum mentions that knowledge of Hemalurgy was suppressed (for obvious reasons) so they at least don't have access to the ones talking about Hemalurgy.

This is electricity for light bulbs to a few very rich houses, which is not hard to do.

Telegraphy, while not hard to do, is not easier then power distribution, it only requires less power.

Communication is also more vulnerable to pulsers and sliders. Also, for telegraphy someone would have to had thought up a binary code and I can imagine that no one had up until AoL (post apocalyptic, every one speaks the same langue, no wars and the fact that they don’t have a very large cultural and individual pool to draw ideas from).

Telegraphy is much easier than power distribution in terms of the types of technology needed, understanding of electromagnetism, etc. They must have some means of generating electricity which requires a pretty good understanding of electromagnetism. They have working electric fans, etc. This is all much more complicated in terms of E&M understanding/application than telegraphy.

As I said, if this was some sort of chemical application or the germ theory of disease, or refrigeration, I'd buy it, but telegraphy is a vastly simpler application of the electromagnetic principles you need to understand to do power generation/distribution/motoring, etc.

Or is it? To send a guy on a train, you have to use a train. IE: a lot of fuel, it is limited to specific schedules, accidents in the line could interrupt the path to begin with and etc. A coinshot is one of the most common allomancers and all he needs is a feel beads of a inexpensive metal and his monthly/weekly/whatever payment.

I don't think that there are THAT many coinshots. It seems like a lot of effort to keep one on call every time you want to put in an order for supplies, ask questions, convey news, etc. As I mentioned earlier, the most common use of telegraphy was to notify train stations that trains were late. Telegraph stations by the 1850s were handling so many messages a day that they needed to set up switching stations, etc. It was so much better than everything else even in the age of trains that it was mass-distributed everywhere in the civilized world.

I feel like this must have been asked before, but I can't find the answer.

If the mists didn't snap nobles, and skaa can't become Allomancers, who were the mists snapping?

Basically the people who were snapped were people of marginal ability whose ability couldn't be brought out by normal physical abuse.

It's probably a combination of people with noble blood or just mistings in the general gene pool. Basically the population at large has a limited ability for allomancy but most people who are strong enough to Snap normally are noble descendants of the original seven who ate the beads at the Well. But the population at large has some weak allomantic potential.

The "spoiler" section of this annotation discusses it in greater detail.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/318/Mistborn-3-Chapter-Forty-Nine-Part-2

True - The big question here is how fast can an allomancer control his flight - if it is less then 1 day to take a message anywhere they might not have had the push to develop faster communications.

Distance looks about 200 miles from Elendel to anywhere in the basin and 400 from the southern most city to the northernmost.

Assuming flying for 8 hours a day that would be 50 miles an hour. Easily within controllable flight speeds

If you equipped the allomancer with a windshield of some kind to stop bugs that he might hit in flight I would guess that even the 200 miles an hour to have a message to any other city from Elendel in 1 hour would not be unreasonable.

Given that I could see the telegraph not being developed due to lack of economic value.

Once again, the US had regular train routes in place before telegraphy was deployed. No one thought "hey, we can just send a guy by train, no need to have instantaneous communication." And sending someone on a regular train route is much easier and cheaper than having a flying sorcerer constantly on call for routine communications.

Mr. Ahlstrom indicated here (bottom)that Hoid was in Alloy of Law

http://twg.17thshard.com/index.php?action=profile;u=6;area=showposts;start=75

Any thoughts/speculation?

Don't underestimate accidents on Earth, either - the Hindenburg killed public trust in dirigibles fairly completely.

¹: Gross over-generalizations for the win!

Yeah, but that had a lot to do with the fact that dirgibles were really kind of crappy-they filled a niche need (slow direct air access to cities) and was replaced by much faster vehicles, albeit ones that had to leave from airports.

When a technology is really crucial it can kill tons and tons of people and still get advanced. Until about the 1840s the most common kind of accidental death was steamship accidents until it was overtaken by .....railroads.

However, this doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of the absence of the telegraph. Perhaps early attempts to create a telegraph set things on fire, or exploded for some reason (I'm not even going to pretend I could come up with a reason why a telegraph would explode), and this set back telegraph development for some time. With such a centralized civilization, I suspect that independent development of technology was a lot less common than it was on Earth, and therefore a couple accidents could set back technology more than they would have on Earth.

I don't want to dwell on it too much, but telegraphy is such an elementary application of the electromagnetic principles you'd need to be able to master in a much more sophisticated way to do electricity distribution that it's almost impossible to be able to have the technology they're showing in AoL without telegraphy.

If this were say the germ theory of disease or refrigeration or some sort of chemical refining, sure it's plausible, but electricity distribution is a much more advanced application along the same axis.

You could go for some sort of social/economic resentment. He might resent the subservient role of the Terrismen, thinking that the regular folks crap all over them. Maybe mix in a little bit of Rashek's entitled superiority over their powers.