WeiryWriter

Draining to white is also important because the 10th Heightening also grants Color Distortion, where an Awakener can "bend light around white objects, creating colors from them as if from a prism." Anyways, I don't see why a heightening should be defined by just one ability as the "real" heightening, most of the heightenings are marked by more than one ability.

This is a fairly well thought out theory but there is some information you seem to be misinformed about, namely Spook. Sazed did not make him a lerasium mistborn but rather an average mistborn form the fall of the Final Empire. The vast majority of the other mistborn were killed during the wars following the Collapse and I don't think any made it into the storage caches (though I'm not sure about that). You are right about Spook having a lot of children, he had like twelve I think. It has also been confirmed that feruchemy fractured as a result of the mixing of allomantic and feruchemical genes.

I might be misreading you, but you seem to be saying that only scadrians can use lerasium to become mistborn, which we know isn't the case. Anyone who burns it, and lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn, becomes a mistborn regardless of the planet they were born. (Evidenced by the quote in the OP) If I did misread you, I apologize, but I do want to straighten this out.

No it should still be open, here is a link to the syllabus and FAQ. (It can be found under the "Learn" tab at the top of the page for future reference.)

So the writing class based on Brandon's lectures started this week over on Write About Dragons. I was wondering if any other 17th Sharders were participating. I figure we can use this thread to discuss how the class is going, any problems we are having, and great successes we experience. It can also as a support group to cheer us on.

Yah, I misremembered. The technical definition is "compounds which result from the neutralization of an acid/base reaction."

Umm... "Salt" isn't another term for ion, salts are ionic compounds (which is what I think you were going for). Specifically salts are ionic compounds of an Alkali metal and a Halogen (groups 1 and 7 on the periodic table). That said "salt grid" isn't a term that is used in chemistry so i would refrain from using it here. It is also important to note that even though Emerald and Heliodor contain ions (which is something I don't remember but I don't really have time right now to check that so I'm taking your word for it) they themselves are not salts (I know Isomere didn't say this, but I just want to make sure no one misinterprets her post). I hadn't really given any thought to the mechanics of how gems actually store stormlight. I could see the crystal lattice being a part of it but I do think there's some funky realmatic stuff going on so I don't think we could come to a satisfactory decision at the moment. This is probably worth a question to Brandon though.

Shallash is one of the Heralds.

The prevailing theory for the woman destroying art is that she is Shallash. Edit: That actually might have been confirmed, or as good as. I can't quite remember.

There's Galladon (Elantris) and Demoux (Mistborn) in the Purelake interlude. The third man is also from an unpublished story. They appear to be members of Seventeenth Shard and are searching for Hoid.

Let's see if I can get the original topic going again, since I was the one who derailed it... oops Hmm... Lerasium is tricky. My personal pet theory (that is probably not going to be true) is that lerasium acts as a wildcard in allomancy like atium is for hemalurgy. I think it would be very nice and symmetrical. All of the Words of Brandon however lend themselves to be interpreted that lerasium is used to re-write spiritwebs in various ways (with "mistborn" being the default). Lerasium on Roshar... I don't know how useful it would be since magic there doesn't really seem to have a genetic component. Then again, I do think the focus there will end up being spiritual in nature (though I don't really have a way of coherently explaining how that would work yet) so I wonder how those two things would interact. I could also see lerasium being used as a fuel for surgebinding, instead of stormlight. We know a shard can directly fuel a magic system that isn't associated with them (i.e. preservation->hemalurgy and ruin->allomancy) so in theory preservation could possibly fuel surgebinding and lerasium is a concentrated portion of preservation's power... Eh that doesn't sound very likely at all... It would probably require that preservation be partially invested in Roshar. So just ignore this paragraph.

I very rarely give downvotes, only giving them when I feel they are warranted and I believe that the ones I gave in this thread are warranted. The implication that I and the others who gave downvotes did it out of pettiness is frankly insulting. Yes Phantom was making simple statements, and blatantly ignoring large portions of posts explaining the flaws in his reasoning. He cherry picked parts of our posts to respond to and neglected to even comment on the bulk of our arguments.

Oh my goodness Phantom, way to not read our posts. We HAVE proposed an alternate interpretation of that quote, that he was referring to the realmatics of atium/lerasium alloys.

Yes they would. A basic understanding requires an understanding of the very fundamentals of a subject. Addition and Subtraction are the fundamentals of math, ergo if one can do addition and subtraction they have a basic understanding of math.

I would say "hey there are other realms of existence" is an incredibly useful fact because it applies to everything in the cosmere. Everything has aspects of each of the three realms which would be kind of useful to know. That is an incredibly high bar for "basic understanding." That is like saying "Oh, you know calculus? Then you have a basic understanding of mathematics. What about arithmetic, algebra, and trigonometry you say? Those are so below basic they aren't important." Which is completely ridiculous. Everything we know about realmatics points to inter-shardic interactions being very high-end problems in realmatics. The impression I'm getting from this is that you are trying to say addition and subtraction isn't math. Like, really? Yes I would agree that the person doesn't have a particularly good grasp of math but if they can add and subtract than they understand basic arithmetic, which by its very definition means they "have a knowledge of 'basic mathematics'." They need to understand addition and subtraction before they can move on to anything more complex which mean they are "the basics." I agree with this. I could see the quote specifically dealing with the realmatics of lerasium/atium alloys. Edit: Can I also say we have gotten very off-topic. What do you have to say about my argument on why Vin has lee-way with Preservation's power that I described in post 25, since you never responded to that?

Yes I mentioned that in my post. As you say "All of this stuff seems obvious to him" which means that it isn't innate knowledge but that Sazed figured it out.

The "I have come to see" line could be taken any number of ways, personally I interpret it as "from observation of certain things I have come to know x" Also the existence of the three realms doesn't require logical deduction just observation.

Yah, he figures it out, he doesn't instinctively know it, which was what I was saying in my post. It also seems instant from a human perspective, we don't know how long it felt like for him. Also the existence of the three realms is an incredibly basic component of realmatic theory.

I am definitely reading that quote differently than you Phantom. Nowhere does it say that "shards have an intuitive grasp of realmatics" just that "you need to be a shard or splinter to begin to understand." Which in my mind are two subtly different things. The "intuitive grasp" you are suggesting would require innate knowledge. Now I'm not saying shards don't have innate knowledge because we know they do, specifically the history of the shard and how to use its power. I just think shards have to learn how realmatics work for themselves. Shards have expanded mental capabilities which would allow them to understand the intricacies of realmatics that humans are just not able to comprehend. Humans are early vacuum-tube computers while shards are today's supercomputers; they just have more processing power then we do. And in my opinion, Vin, during all of her viewpoints, doesn't really show any deep understandings of realmatics.

I'm wary of believing of accepting Vin's reasoning there. We know that Shards are not omniscient so Vin is essentially just making an educated guess. Like Odium's Shard pointed out a person's Innate Investiture is just so minisucle that I really doubt it would have any effect against the full power of a shard. Also the point you are trying to make depends on Vin being able to "destroy" with Preservation's power because of her Innate Investiture which is a mix of Preservation and Ruin. That doesn't feel right to me because I am pretty sure Leras had Innate Investiture from Adonalsium, which would in effect include Ruin. Ergo Vin's Innate Investiture isn't what is giving her leeway. We know that Intents shape the shardholders' minds and Leras would have known this and seen that it was necessary for someone new to come to the power that would be able to use it against its Intent, at least for a little while. As for Rashek, he only had a limited amount of control since he didn't fully ascend and Leras still held Preservation.

Umm... I'm sorry, but do you have a quote for that? I've seen that mentioned before but it runs counter to my understanding of the situation. The way I understand it is Vin had more freedom of action because she was new to the power and hadn't had time to be molded to the Intent.

While I am not Phantom, I do have quotes. Ruin and Preservation each have the ability to fuel any of the Metallic Arts.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, all Commands are Cognitive, not just Mental Commands.

I would be lying if I said that nursery rhyme wasn't going through my head when I was naming this thread... About the splintering of Shards and numbers: I don't think there is a limit to how many Splinters there can be. Mostly because I do not believe that there are 16 Shards because 16 is a cosmere-important number but rather 16 is a cosmere-important number because there are 16 Shards.

Umm... The impression I have been getting from the last few posts is that you are thinking of foci as being exclusively physical, which isn't the case. Foci can, theoretically, be in any of the three realms (we don't have confirmation of any spiritual foci at the moment though). Thank you for acknowledging that Focus is the wrong word for what you are describing, because that phrasing is imprecise and could lead to confusion in new members. I agree that there are aspects of all three realms in every magic system but the focus only exists in one of them, i.e. aons/metals in the physical and commands in the cognitive. Mental Commands are mentioned in Chapter 58 of Warbreaker (on page 576 in the ebook version on Brandon's website). In my mind, mental commands aren't really an exception to the rules of Awakening but rather is the rule. Commands are a cognitive focus so strictly speaking the vocalization is not necessary to accomplish Awakening. The words just aid in getting the Awakener's "mind" into the right shape to act as a focus. Only with a great multitude of breaths does someone have the clarity of thought that allows them to learn to get their mind in the right shape without vocalization. (does that make sense?)