Deus Ex Biotica

... and, i you're a Nicroburster, then Burn them to create a Returned-size Breath?

I know it's a little confusing how he uses the word "compound" here, but he's clearly using it in a more general sense, not talking about burning Metalminds. If you use Feruchemical power at a greater rate than you stored it, some energy is lost in transfer. Interestingly enough, I think this means that a Keeper might actually want to store 100% of an attribute sometimes, even though it might cost other attributes to do so (for example; storing 100% of your strength, even though you now must tap Health to avoid your body literally being crushed by its own weight, or storing 100% of Physical Speed, even though you'll need to tap things like Breath and Energy to not die, now that your heart has stopped*). A few seconds or minutes worth of 100% storage could mean just slightly more yield in those cases where you're tapping for a huge amount at once. Still, most of the time, small investments pay off. -- Deus Ex Biotica *In fact, that might be a really useful trick, to make people think you're dead, though you want to have the Metalminds imbedded in your body such that people don't just remove them.

Huh. This thread makes me want to get an iPad, for no other reason than so I can be the only person in the 17th Shard who actually played Infinity Blade. How are you all even reading it? I thought it was only available on the iPhone/Pad?

AonDor works by making specific symbols, the Aons, which channel the power of the Dor. This power is further magnified by the city of Elantris, which is in turn a giant Aon. All of that, we know. But, how do the other magic systems work? We don't know, but Mistborn (don't worry, no spoilers here, just a rather well-known detail) shows a world with multiple magic systems which all share the theme of Metal, so I assume there should be a similar common link in Elantris. What could that theme be? The monks of Drakhor have had their bones warped into odd shapes, which are visible beneath their skin, and different warpings provide different powers. I put it to you that these, too, are symbols. Glyphs in some magical language other than AonDor. Each means a different thing, and they require different numbers of sacrifices to create. And ChayShan? I believe that must be a language, too, with its adherence to ritually-practiced forms and exact control. I suspect that there are many stock elements in a ChayShan sequence, which have different effects on the powers you get from them. What do you think? -- Deus Ex Biotica

Maybe, but there's only so much you can store that way. Supposing you store all of you weight (and thus begin to drift slightly into the air) for fifteen seconds, then stop. You can have 15 seconds at 200% weight. Now, suppose that you go around at 75% weight for two hours. Even with some energy loss, you probably have at least 10 minutes at 200% weight. And with things like Strength, Physical/Mental Speed, and Health, you could kill yourself by storing too much at once. Generally, it's best to store as much as you can spare, for as long as possible, but in the end, a little all te time for several days will be much more than a ton for a short time. -- Deus Ex Biotica

I am certain there is more to it, but I sincerely hope that the Parshmen are (at least some of the) Voidbringers. If they aren't, then we're down from learning two unambigious facts about the nature of the world in a 1,000 page long book to learning one, which seems absurdly harsh to me.

Whenever he saw Kel, it was Ruin, but he did hear the voice of the real dead Kel a couple of times after his Spike was removed, due to Kel in the Cognitive Realm seizing Preservation's power briefly. Wow. I think you just blew my mind right there.

A single Breath has a defined amount of power, which can be used in various ways, transferred, etc. Sometimes, it can be put into a vessel to do its thing, then recovered, like memories from a Coppermind. Sometimes, you release it, and it's gone (into a Lifeless, say), like most other Feruchemical attributes. Either way, it is a distinct energy which can be traced and neither gets stronger nor weaker from use. Sounds End-Neutral to me! I have considered that Returned might effectively be Lifeless created by the Shard itself, but that leads me in to a larger theory: End-Positive, End-Negative, and End-Neutral aren't just applicable to all forms of magic, they tell us something specific about how the magic really functions. End-Positive arts aren't just creating energy out of nowhere (I suspect that, even in the Cosmere, that's impossible), they draw it from the appropriate Shard (and, perhaps, from other beings, as well). So, Allomancy uses metals to tap the power of Preservation, AonDor uses symbols to tap the power of the Dor, and Surgebinding appears to use Stormlight to tap an outside power as well. Returned, representing a sizeable investment of power seeming directly by Endowment should fit here, although I still think I'm missing a key piece of the puzzle there. End-Neutral arts still seem tied in some way to the resident Shard, but do not rely directly upon them in any form (note, for example, Feruchemy existing before Rashek went to the Well Of Ascension). Their use, then, is limited in some way by the human form - Feruchemy needs time to fill, ChayShan requires you to not break your rhythm, BioChroma needs a source of Breaths. End-Negative arts raise some questions for me. They seem to be directly set into motion by Shards, like End-Positive arts, but not fueled by them. Maybe that's all there is to it. I considered that maybe the Shard is taking the excess power, but I think Sazed would have noted that when he described Feruchemy. For now, I will assume that a Shard setting up magic and then not providing the fuel results in one of these. With me so far? Then let's try to extrapolate something else. Surgebinding is an End-Positive Art. It uses Stormlight as the catalyst to draw upon the power of Honor. Then it disappeared. Why? Honor died. (When the Knights Radiant set aside their weapons, they seemed to still have Surgebinding.) And now, it is showing up again, which seems to invalidate the theory... but it still is getting fuel from somewhere. For example, when Shallan and Jasnath use their Surgebinding, they end up having to deal with some very sinister entities in Shadesmar. From this, I conclude that without a Shard to fuel End-Positive Arts, they might still exist, provided that something else fuels them, though it probably won't be able to do so on the same scale as a true Shard... and may have terms of its own. Thus, I suspect that some unknown entity (or maybe one for each of them) is contributing to the powers of Szeth and Kaladin, for its own reasons. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. EDIT: I am taking it as a good omen that, mere minutes after posting this theory, I saw in the Way Of Kings threads that in an interview, Brandon Sanderson said that Szeth's powers are not gained the same way as Kaladin's.

Also, a forced breeding project needs more females than males. Argh. Can we talk about something else? For example: how much power does the Set really have? They talk like they're invincible, but Wax's uncle staged his own death to work with them (which has advantages, but also removes some measure of policial clout), and I doubt that many other noble Houses are in on it, either - if they were, they could just have Aluminum smuggled to them directly, rather than robbing someone else's smuggled shipments. -- Deis Ex Niotica

Perhaps an Ashmount went of extra forcefully and exposed a pool which had once been buried by Rashek? Heck, maybe it somehow didn't get covered over, so The Lord Ruler has instead just waited for people to discover it, then periodically killed them all off. Seems like his kind of solution. The lake is pretty clearly tied to both Brandon Sanderson's works and his larger mythology - I'm quite willing to cut it slack and see where this goes. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Then again, Kandra get human attribute spikes, and become much more human than Mistwraiths. Hemalurgy is so confusing!

Kel dies 2/3 of the way in, though, and there's not much of a way to keep the plot intact but change that detail. So, I think the risk is less having him take over than it is never getting to develop him at all. It's not easy being Obi Wan.

They did have a train car full of Allomancers, who I assume are mostly male (though Push and Pull are the only ones we get a distinct gender of). And even Wax contemplated his uncle being part of the breeding, and he was just as squicked out as you.

I might, except that the Returned could spend their Breath to save people immediately, anyway, without Heamurgical Decay, or the possibility that you're denying this being their afterlife. If the Returned consents to it, so be it, but it's still a magic system founded in cosmic destruction, so I'm always going to question its use. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Maybe you're right, though in that case, we have a spike unaccounted for. Although, double checking the Branthology, he does say flat-out that not all Inquisitors get the same set of spikes.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Even early on, she says lots of telling things like "Kelsier was your brother? Did he beat you much?" and the like. I think that characterizing her through dialogue is entirely possible. That said, in 2.5 hours or less, her development would still feel too rushed and lack nuance, methinks. That, or everyone except Vin would lose all character focus.

Maybe Ruin has several such lakes? I do have one minor gripe - the old informant seems like someone who should know better than to think that he'd be protected from Rioting just because he was in a Coppercloud (if those clouds protected people other than the Misting making them, then Breeze would have had a lot less fun during The Final Empire). Though I suppose he might have just said that to conceal what he knows... -- Deus Ex Biotica

Yeah, it seems to be 8 spikes for the Base Metals (which means they have doubled skill with one of them, most commonly Bronze), an extra spike of Steel (so they can detect metals well enough to "see"), a spike giving them Gold Feruchemy, and one additional spike, which is sometimes (and maybe always) either Atium or Electrum burning, to let them stand against Mistborn with Atium. 11 spikes total. I seem to recall the Inquisitor Kelsier fought showing bursts of speed, and will re-read the fight to see if I am getting it mixed up with the ones from Hero Of Ages. -- Deus Ex Biotica

It's not too surprising - Kelsier doesn't emphasize it as a secret, and given how near-addictive Pewter burning seems to get, sometimes, it makes sense it would come up often enough to be noticed. What interests me more is the knowledge that there can be savants for metals other than Tin and Pewter. I'd always suspected that to be the case, but not even the Words Of Founding confirmed it before. Still more interesting data...

I thought about mentioning that, since ChayShan appears to need time to build up its power, but we just know so little about it, and the writer does talk about Sel's magic as a whole being End-Positive (which I do not yet understand).

I don't think that the Lord Ruler's Inquisitors got any Gold Compounding, though, just the potential advantages of using Pewter to compensate for filling Goldminds. (Some of them seem to have Steelminds, though, so I guess they must have been able to Compound that.) But, to be honest, I don't even know what exact effects storing up an Inquisitor's health would have, since I do not know what the "normal" health is for a being that's been impaled until it can barely function, and is only surviving through an excess of other people's spirits stuck into its own. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. Continuing with odd synergies, here's a truly goofy one: a Bendalloy Misting with Chromiumminds could enter a bubble of time, and then start firing guns outward, in all directions, while tapping their Luck. by random chance, some of those bullets should score hits, while the Twinborn is relatively impervious. Of course, almost any combination involving Chromiumminds is potentially nuts.

Did Elijah Wood model the right eye?

Right, but the whole issue here is that "luck" is such a nebulous quality, in a magic system that usually deals with much better-defined things. "Unlucky" could mean either actively bad things happening or nothing extraordinary at all, and until we see it being used by someone, it's hard to say which. I had always assumed it meant "bad things happen on Fill, good things happen on Tap," until this thread, but "things are very orderly on Fill, and very chaotic on Tap," makes more sense to me in terms of hos Ferruchemy has worked in the past. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Yeah, I can only attribute my missing the power of Weight Compounding to distraction, and even that is no excuse - I was thinking that too much weight would immobilize the user, but through Wax, we know that would not happen. When using their powers for Pulling and not just creating singularities, though, they'd have to be very careful: pull on a piece of metal while your weight is several tons, and it might come at you hard enough to punch through the two-inch thick Aluminum plate on your belly. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. Everything I have posted in this thread, I had written down from the start, and everything others mention I have been adding as we go. I honestly hope I never go insane enough to start trying to name all 255 non-Crasher combinations. P.P.S. Also, am I the only one who was suspicious of the implication that there were generally-used names for all the possible combinations, despite the fact that Twinborns are maybe one in a thousand and there are so many types, there must not be more than a handful of each time in the whole world at a given time?

I'm reasonably certain that anyone trying to start a Mistborn online RPG of any kind will either post it here, or is not seeking new players.