Deus Ex Biotica

Well, you are sacrificing youth which you may want later on. You did spend a year exerting a minor but constant mental effort while you were awake to get it. But, sure, someone probably has tried it.

I really like the idea of a Tineye with Ironminds - if they glimpse something suspicious, they tap Mental Speed to get all the details, and look for patterns and angles of attack, instantly. Just try to get the drop on a guard like that.

Pulsing (and Sliding) appear to end if you leave the bubble, or fall unconscious. Here's an odd use for Pulsing, that assumes I am wrong in the Deflection thread: if it really is practical for someone outside a bubble to slowly pick off someone inside, then a Gold Ferring who was a Pulser could trap a bunch of enemies at once, then hit the deck, while an ally outside picked them off one by one. A few stray shots might hit the Pulser, too, which is why they need Goldminds. Other people have pointed out its uses in emergency care, which would be awesome. To expand on those, if someone is drowning or on fire, and you cannot reach them, you might be able to get close enough that your bubble can, while boats/water are brought in. Fun game to play if an enemy Coinshot comes flying at you: pulse for just a fraction of a second. It'll probably take you 2-3 seconds in real time, but not long enough to make you totally helpless, and passing through the bubble in mid-air would send them veering off course, for potentially hilarious results. And think of the performance art! Imagine an acrobat who leaps into the air, then begins Pulsing, doing intricate movements all the while. The audience has plenty of time to appreciate the complex aerial ballet. Assuming you could shield yourself adequately, Pulsed fireworks would be awesome, too. Really, if you cannot think of a use for altering the flow of time, you're not trying hard enough. -- Deus Ex Biotica

This brings up an interesting point: how much can Sliders/Pulsers control the sizes of their bubbles? We know that Pulsers can have bigger areas, but could they elect to effect only a small one? Can they choose to slow down time to a lesser degree? Or is it an on/off metal, like Copper?

Frustratingly vague. Thanks for confirming I didn't miss anyone talking about coins or precious metals, though. Well, about coins by name (Wax does use them like an oldschool Coinshot, once), or precious metals as currency. They talk a lot about gold and aluminum for other reasons... It is a very Roman form of government, isn't it? Somehow, that hadn't occurred to me. A Rome with no enemy states, no slaves, little desire to expand and no standing army, but still. The republic part seems to check out. VERY important. Like, London being the only center in Britain for centuries-level important. The power of that "the" cannot be overstated. 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

Sadly, the ethnicity which seems to make the most sense for Terrismen is Tibetan, but finding someone who looks even vaguely Tibetan and is tall enough to be a good Sazed without wasting a bunch of budget on Lord Of The Rings-style height effects. Then again, finding any actors at all who naturally approach Sazed's written height would be quite the chore, so he'd probably need to be shortened a touch, anyway. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Don't underestimate accidents on Earth, either - the Hindenburg killed public trust in dirigibles fairly completely. ... but, of course, all that research switched to aerofoils1, and even in the Elendel Basin, long-range communication would be a plus. It might be heliographs, or radios, or what have you, but it seems unlikely to me that there would be no such technology, unless the physics of Scadrial somehow make it more difficult, or the Words Of Founding actively discouraged such research somehow. That said, I still see no reason be assured there are no such technologies, either, even if the absence of their mention is sometimes conspicuous. -- Deus Ex Biotica 1: Gross over-generalizations for the win!

They could... after spending decades several years older than they really are. Age fills slowly. And, y'know, assuming that the metalmind stayed affixed to the embryo, and that you can use "youth" to get younger than your physical prime, and so forth.

Wow. I have no idea how I missed Kell-syay. And I was so proud of reading the online guide to Elantris before I got into the habit of thinking them wrong. Thanks for the tip, internet!

I considered that, too, but it didn't seem accurate - Marasi answers Wayne's question about overlapping time bubbles by citing experiments, rather than saying "it was in the Words of Founding," which shows an outlook of exploration, rather than blinding taking God's word for everything. That might just be because Marasi examines conclusions more closely than most people, but there was someone to do the experiment, too. And once an experiment showed the technology was possible, surely at least one of the rapaciously capitalist Houses would have pursued it. -- Deus Ex Biotica

Indeed they have. Unlike other metalminds, copper stores individual things (memories) rather than an overall quality. However, we know that Identity and Investure are the "odd ones" from the new set, so it seems plausible to me that Aluminum stores specific parts of your identity, rather than your overall ability to identify as yourself. It doesn't necessarily seem likely, of course. I'm not even sure it seems likely that there still are Keepers. But what would be the fun in a Mistborn game without any surprising realizations about the nature of magic/the world? -- Deus Ex Biotica

Well, that's not entirely true. If your Copperminds are stolen, those memories don't come back. So, if your Aluminumminds are stolen, it's pretty certain that you would go back to the same level of "Identity-ness" you had before, but there's assurance it would be the same identity, depending on how Aluminumminds work. Thanks for the ideas, everyone - keep them coming! Inspiration is always good. The two most important things I have determined so far are that (1) I certainly shouldn't reveal the Keeper's agenda too quickly - letting the PCs wonder "why's this crazy Terrisman trying to kill us? Aren't they supposed to be peaceful?" makes for good drama and (2) There's really a lot of reasons for there to be angry/arrogant/violent Keepers, the key will be finding the right one to tie with the larger plot. Most excellent. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. None70: I am on the East Coast right now, but sadly nowhere as cool as New York.

The director, probably. Or Brandon Sanderson. Though either choice would cause problems if The Stormlight Archive were adapted into a movie, I really dout that could ever happen.

Thanks! Also, my fellow Brandon Sanderson fans I know in real life are informing me that Viggo Mortensen is a much better fit for Wax than Ed Norton.

Mistborn trilogy: Kelsier. Every time. In the later books, the Kandra POVs were a lot of fun, as well. Warbreaker: Like so many, I will have to choose Lightsong, though Vivenna is a close second, due to her character growth, and the fact that she let me see more of Denth (AKA, my favorite Brandon Sanderson character of all time). Elantris: I will buck the trend and say Raoden. Hrather was the most engaging character, but Raoden's chapters were the ones where things really moved forward. They were much more filled with engaging foils, advancing goals, magic secrets, and the general heart of why I read books than the other two. Alloy of Law: I honestly found Wayne funniest when we just saw his communication, rather than his internal crowing about how he was setting his buddy up with a girl. Wax's POVs got plenty of Wayne's jokes, but tempered them with a longer perspective Wayne generally lacks (although it was awesome to, after seeing through Wayne's eyes how much work he puts into using his accent and body language to make everyone open up around him, switch to Wax assuming it's all purely subconscious). -- Deus Ex Biotica

Well, it suggests that Wayne believes in some God he does not call Sliver or Survivor. I;m not sure we ever learned his religion at all, let alone whether his views are typical (since it is Wayne, I would bet they are not). As for the theist-ness of assorted religions, the following ones come directly from worshiping magic and its effects: * Worship of Elantrians1 * Worship of the Returned * Worship of The Lord Ruler Then, there are religions which directly venerate their Shard, and seem to have been guided by said Shard: * The original Terris religion * The Path * Worship of the Almighty on Roshar All of those are shaped by things which have not been proven to be acting on Earth. Looking at religions other than those six seems to have a pretty good mix of theistic and non-theistic concepts floating around: Survivorism, the Idrian religion, and Shu-Korath/Dereth are very Christian in appearance, while Stone Shamanism2 appears to be more of a "venerate spirits and uphold tabboos" kind of a practice. And religions Sazed mentions are, if anything, mostly non-theistic, full of worshipping plants or art, with the main exception being the vaguely Zorostrian Tregalism. Brandon Sanderson's worlds do have the theological motif of all having a way for a human to, in some sense "become a god," but in terms of people's beliefs, the range seems much wider to me that you appear to view it. -- Deus Ex Biotica 1: I got the impression that Elantrians themselves had a fairly non-theistic religious appreciation of the Dor, but that might have been in part because our main source of information on them was a practitioner of Jesker. Kolo? 2: Wait, that's from a world with observable elemental spirits. Do I need to move this to the "products of magic" set?

I was a fan of Jordan back in high school, but had quit the Wheel Of Time for years before TVtropes' "Magic A Is Magic A" page lead me to Sanderson, who I found so excellent, I think I might pick the Wheel of Time back up, just to reach the books of it he is writing. I am not sure which way to answer the poll.

This, to the max. Holding a Shard changes you, until it's really just the Shard colored by you. So, the shards we've seen have no genders*, since they have been Shards long enough that their human natures are pretty secondary. And if they don't care anymore, why should we? -- Deus Ex Biotica * Yes, there's one or arguably two exceptions to that, as alluded to in Sir R-A-L's spoiler.

I intend to run a Mistborn game set in the Alloy of Law timeline in the near future. I have a bunch of plans (some of them stolen shamelessly from assorted TV shows and Wild West RPGs, some more original), but there's one thing I haven't yet integrated properly: I really want to have a Keeper (AKA, a full Feruchemist) as an ongoing nemesis to the group, since that seems like one of a handful of people that even 3-4 Twinborn working together would have to be afraid of. But, Keepers (assuming they exist in Alloy times, which incidentally, is exactly what I shall assume for the purposes of the game) would be hugely honored and cloistered within Terris society, as both the ultimate expression of Feruchemy and incredibly pure lineage. I envision this character as a lone wanderer who keeps on coming after the PCs relentlessly, which is hard to reconcile with that - if they were doing this for the good of the Terris nation, they would probably have allies to help them, if they had run away since they don't want to be involved in political and philosophical matters they would probably be living quietly by themselves instead of drawing attention by picking fights with famous marshals, and if they had sought power for corrupt reasons, they would either still have it (and, once again, have allies) or been caught and locked up (my initial plan was an exiled Keeper, but I decided that exiling something that valuable made no sense). So... what ideas do you all have for ways a Keeper could go bad? -- Deus Ex Biotica

Alright, then. Assuming that even an infant could keep on storing age, and you have an Atiummind which is big enough, and also shaped so that it doesn't fall off as you get smaller (say, a navel piercing), you could probably kill yourself. It wouldn't be as tidy as "disappearing," though: you would eventually regress to a state which cannot survive outside of the womb, and die of exposure. It would certainly be a... dramatic form of suicide. -- Deus Ex Biotica

I still cannot find the spoiler text thing, so SPOILERS ARE IMMINENT, and also, read Alloy Of Law already - it's awesome. I am proceeding on the assumption that an Alloy of Law movie would either (a) have Wax end up with Marasi, or ( leave it ambiguous, gambling that there would be sequels in which he could end up with Marasi*. I don't think I would cast things differently if I thought otherwise, though - Marasi looks and acts like a classic ingenue, and Steris... doesn't. The ending subverts their roles, so even if it was going to ending like the book, you would a cute young actress playing up Marasi's tension with Wax for all its worth, and an older one acting cold as Steris (until after the climax). Tillaume is a really juicy part in the books, but might need to be cut down in the quest for movie length. If all his scenes stayed intact, an aging big name actor might very much wish to steal the show as him. Although, really, if one were going to cut any one character for length, t would have to be Ranette.I'm sure sequels will use her more, but in Alloy itself, the plot could logically unfold the exact same way without her (all you need is a room somewhere for the gang to hole up and plot their next move, and a new trick for Wax to beat Push with - or, heck, give Wayne some love and let him bring down Push). In terms of structure, I also think the movie would have to begin as the book originally did, with Wax bailing out of a party (literally), then running through the Mists in Luthadel after criminals (the credits would probably appear in the mists, too), and eventually having a breakdown when he thinks there's a hostage. The stuff with Bloody Tan is important, but a movie cannot really get away with two of the first three named characters it introduces dying for real in events apparently unrelated to the plot, all within the first five minutes (it's even worse if you include the stuff about that gang fighting Wax for more reasons still). Books have more liberty with that sort of thing. There would probably be a few flashbacks later on, though, to help explain Wax's fears throughout the story. -- Deus Ex Biotica * Yes, I realize that some people say this latter option is what happened in the book, too.

I really want to know what Scadrial activity associates "hat tricks" with the number three...

Ultimately, I have to conclude that it doesn't really matter whether they are a "different species" or not. Their biology works very differently, (insofar as it works at all), since they should functionally be dead, but are kept alive through the extra souls attached to them, they have different senses, and they lived apart from outsiders, but they could still sire human children on other humans. Any question we have about them, we can answer through their properties, rather than by contemplating whether those properties make them a "species" or not. Note that this only holds until there is some kind of magic which cares about "species" status, at which point Brandon's statement that, as far as he's concerned, they are a separate species will provide the best guideline available. -- Deus Ex Biotica P.S. Although, it did just occur to me that there might be some interesting ground in the implied fact that changing spiritual DNA does not alter physical DNA, even if it does alter the body's functioning.

This is an easy one: you roll around, gaining infinite age, yet staying young at heart, just like The Lord Santa. More seriously, whatever the answer to this question is, it's not likely to come up often, since Feruchemical storage is based on how much of a metal you have access to, and it would be hard to find enough Atium to store 20-50 years all at once, I suspect.

I'm not sure I have any that are not already covered in this thread, which makes me feel like a boring and generic person. To combat this, I will be listing one dramatic moment and one comedic one per book. Final Empire: My favorite dramatic moment was Kelsier killing an Inquisitor in the middle of Luthadel, where Skaa and nobles alike can see. "Thank you for talking me into this." My favorite comedic one was the Eastern Slang gang-up on Breeze. Well Of Ascension: My top dramatic moment here is a little understated - Sazed holding Tindwyl and letting his senses return to full. For comedy, it has to be "OreSeur" musing on eating the crewmembers. "One of them is ever so soft and juicy, while the other is named Ham." Hero Of Ages: Marsh recovering himself to remove Vin's earring. So much foreshadowing, and still more awesome in practice than I could have anticipated. For comedy, Vin and Elend showing up at the ball, complete with Elend reading on the dance floor, has my vote. And a special bonus: the creepiest moment of the series, "I am human." Alloy Of Law: Wax's many acts o badassery were impressive, but I was never more caught up in the action than when Wax and Miles each express sympathy for the other... and then Miles starts beating him to death. For comedy, the winner is hard to choose (it has a thread for a reason), but I think I shall settle upon Wayne's stealthily crude compliments and Marasi's inability to react to them. -- Deus Ex Biotica