Deus Ex Biotica

Good point, actually... I had considered Nalthis to be related to the User Interface pretty directly due to how Commands work, but I guess every part of a computer works by obeying specific commands, and in Nalthis, power is determined, quite literally, by your ppi and fidelity. Graphics, it is!

Thank Harmony you didn't have those references when you did the cover, Inkthinker - I don't believe my poor mind could handle it being any more awesome.

That's a good point - it wld be the Ministry codifying it, so they would probably really odd to people who are used to seeing with Light, rather than metal lines.

I assume they would involve a grid shape, evoking Bind Points associated with the metal's use.

This came to me as I was contemplating a few oddly-specific details of the various Cosmere worlds. First, and famously, the number 16 shows up in a lot of places. Speaking of numbers, we know that the Well of Ascension refills not every 1000 years, but every 1024, which is an amusingly specific number to get. And then, there are the focuses of the different Shards: metal, language, commands, and electrical charge trapped in crystalline structures. Suddenly, it hit me. I saw the true face of the Cosmere: It is a massive, malfunctioning, computer. What really likes to work in base sixteen (hexadecimal)? Programmers. Where have I seen the number 1024? Kibibytes. After that, putting the rest together became trivial: Andolsium was a supercomputer, but with a wide variety of different non-compatible security programs installed on it at once. They all recognized the others as attacks, and quarantined each other, resulting in a random but harsh partition of the system. Roshar got one of the solid-state memory devices (electricity stored in silicone - I assume that the files on this driver included a report on crustacean biology, and a description of an epic fantasy world in which the Heralds fought the Voidbringers, which is why confused remmants of those two things for the backdrop of events there), but managed to short out the nearest capacitor, leaving it vulnerable to power surges. Awakening is the old user interface, but without sanitized inputs. Sel seems to have a lot of the CPU, given that it has several languages for accessing its system. And Scadrial is the RAM and a bunch of wiring, given that metal is power, but the even the security programs can alter things once they are in the metal. I cannot wait until we see the Shardworld which got the Graphics power - I'm sure it shall be epic! But how could a computer get so dramatically confused? It would need to be broken quite strangely. This was my second breakthrough - the computer belongs to Alcatraz! And what, I hear you ask, is the rationale for Hoid? That's someone hired to sort out the glitches, but who is getting increasingly testy and snarky, because it's so hard to fix things Alcatraz has broken. Personally, I find everything much clearer now. -- Deus Ex Biotica

I've considered that Mental Speed might be helpful for biofeedback, too. A biofeedback expert Thug could be impressive to behold.

It has been spelled different ways at different times.

I seem to be explaining this badly - I shall try again: We know that the earrings are recycled spikes, and that's what happened to the spikes of the Inquisitors (except Marsh, obviously). We know that the Koloss were changed into a true species, but at that time, each had four spikes in them. We know Sazed cannot directly de-power or otherwise alter those spikes, which are made of metal. 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

Very cool! I really need to order that PDF, stat.

Sure, but cancelling the mass of an entire ship requires a lot more mass manipulation than the relatively small amount of negative mass required to start folding spacetime in a (mostly) empty vacuum, under ideal conditions. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. And now I can't stop picturing a fleet of Hemalurgic Whales fighting against Sovereign. I hope you're happy.

... and now it won't let me edit or delete the other post. How embarrassing. Despite my shame, I bear the game no ill will, and still want to possess it!

Tip: click inside this box to load the editor

So, apparently, time bubbles can only be anchored to the surface of a planet. This eliminates the presumed method of space travel. My new theory: an Alcubierre Drive, with Weight Compounders (some of them Surging vast amounts of weight, others filling weight in combination with either "Investure" metalminds or Hemalurgic augmentation to reach negative mass) providing the requisite folding of spacetime. All of them would (through Hemalurgy) have both Iron and Steel Allomancy, allowing them to keep the forces exerted on the ship constant, and avoid tearing it apart. Failing that, just take a whale, use Hemalurgy to allow it to Compound Oxygen, Energy, Wakefulness, Heat, Health, Weight, and Physical Speed, and then start filling it with Attribute Spikes, until the whale grows large enough for whatever crew you have in mind. Then hollow it out (don't worry - with this much Preservation in it, the whale would be nigh immortal even without Gold Compounding), put people (including the Rioter or Soother who controls it, and backups who can assume control later if there's an accident) inside, and fire the whale (or, really, the Leviathan) into space at the greatest speed you can. If Physical Speed is a fact of how the body actually interfaces with time, rather than of how the muscles work (and I don't think that's unreasonable, given the way that Weight functions without other physical changes), a Compounder with a large enough supply of Steel could break the speed of light, while the ability to alter their weight lets them avoid being pulled off course, then reduce their weight and Pull onto a planet once they've reached their destination. Failing both of those things, use stored Connection to befriend some passing Seventeenth Shard types, and ask them how they manage. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Thanks for the info - this should shake up those FTL discussions a bit!

There's still air around then, however. My instinct is that they could, but we really don't have evidence one way or the other.

Correct on both counts.

My main point was that I'd expect Sazed to dispose of the Spikes somehow, since he doesn't seem to like Hemalurgy much.

Regarding placement: So, even for stealing, you need fairly exact placement. It's not impossible, though - the Koloss figured out how to do it, and Sazed implies that wasn't just Ruin making them. I seem to recall a statement to the effect that you'd do have to die when Hemalurgy steals your powers, but you'll be weak and sickly if you live. I cannot find this statement, though. -- Deus Ex Biotica

I had assumed they could, but now that you mention it, they might need to be tracing on something with a cognitive aspect, in which case, hard vaccuum might be the only thing they cannot write upon. Interesting. -- Deus Ex Biotica

It seems to be a touch unclear. "Shadows" of religions, eh? Insofar as that's understandable at all, it seems to make sense - for religions and other things, we'll see similarities (the author revisiting certain ideas), and it works in-setting (for mysterious reasons). Good to know. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Yeah, there's a lot we still don't know about the Dor. Still, everything on Sel seems to involve channeling that power into the world somehow, so I like to think that, given enough time, they could find a way to channel some of it into some sort of battery, which they could carry across the Cosmere to stay at full power (though they might need to revisit Sel semi-regularly to recharge said battery). Wait... did I just make Elantris into the Green Lantern Corps? -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. And a bunch of people who can alter gravity seems like a solid foundation for a space program - do enough Lashings create a singularity? However, (1) unlike metals, Stormlight is something you could reasonably expect to never find anywhere else in the galaxy, and (2) we know very little about how it all works, so I'm not contemplating how that space travel might work out. P.P.S. Also, I think the third Mistborn trilogy most likely to focus on new worlds, but where's the fun in speculating on that?

There must be a way to do it with AonDor, though you would probably need to build a space ship shaped like Aon Rao. I do wonder what would happen if you Awakened some sort of metal boat with 1,000 Breaths and the command "Travel the Stars". -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. I am not responsible for the fate of anyone who attempts interstellar travel in a ship which consumes the breaths of its crew for fuel.

Hemalurgy is terrifying, no doubt, but unless you're Ruin, managing to hit a bind point in combat seems rather difficult to me - though I guess it can't be any harder than shooting a bullet in midair. Man. An expert Hemalurgist Coinshot could be pretty terrifying, nailing people's Bind Points with spikes from a long way off. And, of course, any Hemalurgist could easily become a Coinshot. shudder/i] -- Deus Ex Biotica