Pechvarry

So then, what would be a good summary of the states of Ruin and Preservation before the end of Well of Ascension? "Chunked?"

Ok, perhaps it would help if I put this forward in a more brash manner: I Theorize All Shardholders Have Been Reduced to a State of Forced Inactivity. I have no evidence to put forth which could not be seen as circumstantial, at best. This is just one man's theory. And if my observation has merit, a new question opens up: why? Why no shard-imposed utopia worlds? Why would Ruin settle down on one planet instead of trying to wreck them all? If reality is, to some extent, subjective for them, why does even Odium seem so impotent? Aside: the partially/entirely imprisoned bit was thinking about Ruin's Well. In fact, mistborn is full if examples of only certain aspects functoning at any given time.

"As far as we know" is not grounds for a blanket "this is not true" statement. Harmony is the only shardholder I'm aware of who is completely unbroken. Yet, he's tempered by opposing intents. Have we seen evidence of others complete? And Odium? There's a whole thread about whether or not he's been damaged, intentionally or not. I cannot be alone in thinking it strange that someone with the ability to crash planets into their stars who also wants to break everyone else' toys is remaining so hands-off (relative of what he's capable of).

With just a very brief amount of time with Preservation's power, Vin was able to move a planet. Shardholders don't just have far-reaching schemes. They are gods. It seems very easy to forget this when discussing Odium, or other shardholders whose status we're unaware of. But I have a feeling we know one thing: every single one is somehow "spent." Whether it's splintered, murdered; imprisoned in part or entirely, it seems every shardholder's hands are tied one way or another. Here's the question: Is this a coincidence?

I was just thinking 2 nights ago that the highstorms ARE a shardic pool, a la the well. Thinking of them as the mists is much cleaner, though. I also like the highstorms-odium / deepness-ruin comparison.

Cultivation, as a process of improvement, still requires a focus. You need to define what you're getting better at. I can see Odium being quite the whetstone for Cultivation's projects. I think it's worth considering that not all shards belonged, though. At the start of this thread, I thought it very possible that Odium has never belonged. That he's been wandering the cosmere being a Pretty Bad Dude. It's just that Cultivation and Honor locked him into a war. Now, however, I'm considering that Honor is the shard who doesn't belong. Perhaps he was the mingler here. Perhaps he's the writer of the letter even. At the end of the day, while I can understand the concept of Shardic Equilibrium and could get behind the theory as a whole, can we honestly say Roshar has ever been in balance?

Well, Feruchemic Pewter actually makes you bulky and muscular. So I imagine compounding for enhanced feruchemic effect is rather limited (Sazed started suffering from his increased bulk; a compounder could rapidly incapacitate themselves). Still, you could perpetually be a very tough guy. I imagine your pewter consumption would at least be much lower.

Ehh. I just didn't like that when asked if Thinker is Demoux, he did not say "Yes." He said "Demoux is in that scene." Like there was some reason he felt it was inaccurate to label Thinker as Demoux, per se. And all these theories about his lifespan, plus the theories of Sazed wanting an envoy to other planets -- Kandra makes sense for both of these very simply. I'm not saying I'm certain this is it by any means. But it's an unusual enough direction to fit Brandon's style.

Eyebrows. That's right. The magic which ties the entire universe together is linked to your eyebrows. New drinking game: when reading any Sanderson work, have a shot every time you read someone quirking, arching, or otherwise raising an eyebrow. Single brow at a time only. -------- Ok, more seriously, and since I don't drink: I've seen mention of a "Unifying Theory of Magic" from Brandon Q&As a couple times, and I think I've read a couple of questions which boil down to "what question should we be asking?" and the answer (both times, unless I read the same interview twice and didn't realize it) was something to the extent of "you guys should be trying to connect the dots of Cosmere-wide magic." I don't know that we've really delved enough into it. I mean, sure, we have things like the theory of the 3 parts of magic. And I think those are important mysteries to solve. But I feel like we must still be missing some really general rule, or else he'd stop prodding us about what we're missing. Any thoughts? Am I missing any interviews where he says "Yes, that's correct. This is what I've been waiting for you guys to put together"? Assuming I'm not, please feel free to post any theories, as long as it's something we can tie into "The Unifying Theory of Magic."

I know. Brandon said something to the effect of "Demoux is indeed in that scene." But that could just mean his bones were there. i.e. he's a Kandra. Which are immortal. Also, thanks Zas. I just had a bad feeling about trying to fixate too heavily on that point.

May I put forth a theory? Demoux isn't in that scene -- at least, not most of him. His bones are, though. I really don't want to jump the gun and assume this interpretation. "from Mistborn" can just as easily be read as "characters who appeared in the Mistborn series of books, even briefly."

Shallan also does a lot of blinking. Ties in nicely with the theories flying around about her memory.

From what I've gathered around these forums, seeing the future is the only way to ruin it in the cosmere. So that's a pretty ruinous "side effect".

This probably isn't the place for it, but I read this and thought of the hemalurgic augmentation spikes, and what effect stored Investiture would have on said spikes. In turn, this makes me think about the interaction of any Nicrosil Ferring receiving a spike. I'm sure there are some really awesome implications, here. I'm just not sure what they are.

I always thought it relevant that shards can... speak with the dead? Maybe bring them back? If shardic power is tied to the afterlife of the Cosmere, who's to say the seventeenth shard members aren't already dead? Perhaps Shadesmar is the afterlife, in a similar way to Heroes of the Horn hanging around in the Dream world of the Wheel of Time series. That sure would be a convenient way to explain how they're everywhere, if the whole cosmere shares the same afterlife.

Is this from the RPG? Or a supposition?

This makes me think any Steel Ferring should use a flail. Use your speed/momentum to lay on a ton of hurt with a lot more leeway in how much energy is transfered back to the attacker. Aside from chain weapons, thrown knives travel faster than arrows, throwing pointed picks becomes an effective armor-breaching attack. Full mistborn/feruchemists are powerful, but as Brandon says, it's limitations which make your character interesting, and we've already seen TLR.

I'm glad I saw this thread through Odium's_Shard's sig. This is pretty hot. I seem to remember ancient discussions trying to place what "order" she would belong to. I don't know how that discussion ever progressed, or what the commonly-believed answer is, but I remember people putting her in the group attributed to Creativity. Looking at my Ars Arcanum, I see this is where people are associating her with Truth (Shash: Creativity/Honesty). Anyway, with drawing as a creative act, we have an Honest method of storing and a Creative way of accessing. As for no Stormlight being drawn, if each of the 10 systems are truly different, some could be End-Neutral while others are End-Negative or... something. I don't have very strong logic on this part. Same reason Syl hasn't always been fully sentient, I'd assume. The bond is something that grows, perhaps Cultivates. The irony truly resides in Shallan's deceit. The back of the book refers to her as "the liar". But that seems to match the theme of the book's characters anyway. The surgeon who kills, the scholar (a seeker of truth) who deceives, the mass murderer with a love of all life.

So it could work, and there's a pretty good argument about it not working. It's probably the province of another thread that has nothing to do with space travel. If a method for sharing powers without long term negative effects like this does work - or the lasting effects are minimal if you only "pair" up with the same few people, creating military structures where the nodes are only shared with squad mates and squads never rotate members - the future of Scadriens could be pretty darn awesome. There are a lot of follow-up questions, such as if you could split the power multiple ways. i.e. Pierce the spiritweb in such a way that you're weakening the power of the donor instead of taking completely, and giving only a very weak portion of the power to the recipients. Not an issue, as this would create an easy path to Compounding and shared Investiture to make up for weakness in the different systems. But it could be a gateway to investing objects, too. Having a ship with a plug that's just waiting for an Iron Ferring to come along and store weight for it, creating Mass Effects.

Yeah, I think just a regular Zinc Ferring could be good enough in a gunfight to do some bullet dodging. I imagine it'd be on par with Wax's steel bubble. And he'd have the time to consider shooting the post at just the right angle to have it fall on the 3 bad guys. As for compounding zinc, I think about people I went to High School with. People who could grasp Algebra well enough from the week-to-week lessons to do a passable job on the tests, but never understood how the math worked that way (why do I always solve exponents before multiplication? because the teacher said so). Now imagine this type of person is a zinc compounder. There shouldn't be any part of their powers which allows them to overcome their inability or (more likely) unwillingness to apply what they know to arrive at their own conclusions. This sort of compounder could do their math homework extremely fast; they couldn't solve for Y and then run on a million tangents to fully realize quantum mechanics.

Yeah, that's why I imagine it as a future thing.

I was actually just thinking about the fact that Zincminds don't necessarily make you smarter. You just think a lot faster. So while a brilliant Zinc compounder could realize the full works of Tesla and Einstein in one trip to the bathroom, an average intelligence zinc compounder could get bored of topics super fast, which means he'd get as far into theoretical physics as the rest of us. But at least he didn't spend 10 hours on it. It's like TVtropes in your mind. Soooooo many tabs. Also: tapping determination to fight off ADHD.

I'm definitely making a lot of assumptions to make it work, but it doesn't seem too far outside the realm of reason. Here's the list of things pretty much required to be true in order for it to work: -Powers can be stolen without lethal pierce points (presumably, the power stolen would be weaker though. Acceptable loss). -Hemalurgic implants would have zero decay since they never leave your body. -While spiritweb distortion would occur during connection, disconnecting should return both parties back to normal with very minor lasting effects (but probably rather severe short-term disorientation, nausea, etc). The last seems to be the one most debated. I don't see why a recipient would lose anything during a disconnect, since their Spiritweb points weren't used to take anything. I think this might lead to another assumption: -Hemalurgic/Spiritweb/Acupuncture/whatever points come in 2 varieties: theft points and "glue" points (places where the new spiritweb chunk is glued to your own). It makes me think of a stereo with an Audio In and an Audio Out. Though the ports look the same, there's no cross-over in functionality. As pointed out, Spook doesn't have too much issues with losing his spike, and so I think as long as nodes are only installed on "Hemalurgy In" points and not "Hemalurgy Out", it shouldn't be too harmful. Read later in the post: once the node is inserted, the Bloodmaker would link to the fresh node and touch his goldmind to the patient, who would then Tap it to heal the wound. This should work, as I believe Brandon stated hemalurgy would allow you to tap the metalminds of the person you stole the powers from.

Hemalurgy and the future of man: I've been thinking since Christmas morning about something odd (which is to say, perfectly normal for me), and since this is an "advanced culture in space" sort of concept, I'm putting it in the space travel thread. What happens if you use a hemalurgic spike that's still receiving its charge? Could people "share" powers via a spike still lodged in the original user? We don't really know how hemalurgy bind points work, but lets pretend being stabbed in the right spot in the hand would be enough to steal an allomantic power by ripping out part of the spiritweb. Obviously, this would hurt (and according to Brandon, would leave them a different person) but not kill the person. If this were the case, could you walk around with a spike sticking out of your hand and stab people with it, temporarily giving them your powers? That sounds absurd and macabre, but imagine: In the future, people could have metal "nodes" installed in their bodies, surgically implanted with bloodmaker ferrings standing by to keep the operation safe. These nodes would be either small plugs or small prongs. By sticking your prong in someone else' plug, you have temporarily merged spiritwebs because you are now piercing their body with your own hemalurgic spike. This would be particularly useful with Ferrings, as the recipient would be able to tap your metalminds. The uses of sharing copperminds would be staggering, let alone the utilitarian uses of most other metalminds excepting probably physical strength and speed. This is why bloodmakers would be there for the operation: as soon as a node is installed, a bloodmaker would link up so the recipient could tap an already stored goldmind to heal the wound enough to prevent side effects (but not enough to start pushing it out, I suppose). This would likely lead to research into hemalurgic "extensions". Such as creating a cable that's hemalurgically charged but neutral, which takes on properties of whatever node it's plugged into so the characters don't have to touch shoulder-to-hip all the time. Is there something I'm overlooking that would disallow temporary Hemalurgy?

That could be super useful, actually. I'm not sure if Wakefulness=well rested, though assuming it does, and also assuming fatigue is the detriment to any extended pewter use, you could fight for days. Calling it now: when we finally see a Zinc ferring, he's going to be an idiot who arrives at more stupid conclusions per minute than anyone.