Eagle of the Forest Path

But by what is a ricochet caused?

 

I'll try to keep the bolding in mind from now on, Voidus. As another aside, did you like my strikethrough T as a symbol for temporal compression factor? (If one already exists for that... wow)

 

 

PS Message to every reader: If you don't agree with my theory, do please suggest an alternative, I am genuinely interested.

My incredibly pedantic brain would like you to know that you should really be using displacement not distance since Force is a vector

The problem is that when you convert that force back into acceleration (ie. it's being exerted on something) it goes straight back to only being relative to each timeframe, so to an object outside the bubble the punch would only be as strong as a normal punch, though to people inside the bubble it would seem stronger, but only in the sense that all forces outside would seem stronger since the acceleration is relatively speaking a lot faster.

 

But I can't make the little arrow thingy for vectors in this text editor! 

 

IMO that's directly contrary to the WoB in the OP i.e. (just to get another abbreviation in there) Wayne wouldn't get a ricochet when punching out of his speed-bubble if it was as strong as a normal punch. (QED )

 

(PS This isn't contrary to my resolution of halting my pushing, since I didn't start my theory from the beginning all over again)

The force doesn't change at all, it's just the acceleration that's different. If you exert 10N of force on a 1kg object through a 10x slowed bubble then that object will accelerate backwards at 10 m.s^-2 but since it's in 10x slowed time it'll seem to you like it's only moving back at 1m.s^-2, but the force remains the same.

 

Actually, since the object is outside the bubble and you are inside, if the object is moving backwards at 10m/s² in real time, then it would appear to be moving 100m/s² from inside a cadmium bubble.

 

I probably went wrong trying to put this in story form.

 

So one last try.

 

t°= T . t'

Where 

t° is objective time (not in a time-bubble)

t' is subjective time (in a time-bubble)

and T is the Temporal Factor, how much time is compressed (bendalloy) or stretched (cadmium)

 

The formula for force is F = m.d/ t² (Force equals mass times distance divided by the square of the duration)

 

Now look at the formula in subjective and objective time

 

F' = m.d/ t'² 

F° = m.d/ t°²                             and we know that t°= T . t'

<=>    F° = m.d/ (T . t')²

<=>    F° = m.d/ T² . t'²

<=>    F° = F' / T²         (Objective force equals subjective force divided by the square of the temporal factor)

(Or: The force generated inside a time bubble is inversely proportional to the square of the temporal factor)

 

Up to here I shouldn't be running into too much opposition, I hope.

 

For every objective second that passes, 10 seconds pass in a bendalloy speed-bubble so  t°= 10.t' => T = 10

With a cadmium slow-bubble it's the reverse => t°= 1/10.t' => T = 1/10

 

Plug that into the last Force equation and you get

F° = F' / 100

for a bendalloy bubble

F° = F' . 100

for a cadmium bubble

 

If this remains true when directing that force through the bubbles boundary, then a slider can only exert 1/100 of the force he could exert without burning bendalloy, and a pulser can exert 100 times the force he could exert without burning cadmium.

 

I really can't do any better than this, so I promise I won't be pushing my interpretation on you any further. If I haven't convinced anyone by now, I obviously never will.

(*grumble* Just wait till the relevant book comes out *grumble* you'll be eating your words *grumble* )

 

PS: Every formula printed in a book means that book will only sell half the number of copies than without the formula. If this hold true here, then this post will be read by 1,3 people.

From the quote it seems like crossing the border is what causes the ricochet but you'd still be a part of the bubble.

It causes a ricochet for Wayne and his bendalloy bubble, because crossing the border in that case drains momentum.

I'm suggesting that crossing the border of a cadmium bubble would amplify momentum.

 

I don't think this works.

 

Consider it from a frame of reference outside the bubble:

 

The person in the cadmium bubble swings his hammer 10x slower, and then when it exits the speed bubble it goes 10x faster... for a total speedup of 1x, ie. the same as if the person had never been in the bubble in the first place.

 

Yes, the cadmium bubble has to add energy, but it's still a waste because of how little energy there is inside the bubble in the first place.

 

From the Pulser's perspective, he just made his hammer swing really really fast the moment his hammer left the speed bubble... but to the regular world, which is what we care about, it's going at normal speed.

 

When the hammer doesn't completely leave the bubble, it's considered as being inside the bubble, so no speedup, to the regular world it will be going really slow.

 

Let's try looking at this another way, because still objects make it more difficult to see.

 

You and I are standing on a flat piece of ice (or you're wearing roller skates, or standing on a skateboard, whatever). You're holding your arm towards me and I have to push you backwards over the ice by your arm. This means that I have to direct an amount of force every second, for the point of argument let's say 10 Newtons per second. This means you are receiving 10N per second, which results in you moving back over the ice. I expend less force, you move slower, more force and you move faster.

 

Now let's say you are a Pulser and your arm is extended toward me through the boundary of your slow-bubble. I direct my 10N per second through your arm to move you back over the ice. But because of the time difference, you can only receive 1N out of every 10N  I expend (if you dilate time by a factor of 10) because there is less time for it in which to affect you. So to move you back at the same speed I have to use 10 times more force. In other words I'm pushing you for 10 seconds at 10N per second (100N in total) but you can only experience 1 second at 10N.

 

Turn it around and let's have you push me back from inside your slow-bubble. My arm is extended in your direction, but outside of your bubble, you reach out of your bubble and push on my arm, because you are still partly inside the bubble you still move 10 times slower. You direct 10N at me over 1 second, bubble-time. Outside the bubble I receive 10N per second, but for 10 seconds real-time instead of just 1, so 100N in total.

 

So I guess I'm saying force expended stays constant, but directing it out of a cadmium bubble extends it to a larger period, meaning force received gets multiplied.

 

It works the other way around for bendalloy-bubbles.

 

I'll freely admit that I had to do some mental gymnastics to make this work (even a bit), because logically it should probably be the direct opposite, but we are talking about magic here.

I suppose Brandon felt Sliders were already powerful enough, so he gave them the "loss of momentum" rule, which should mean Pulsers get a power boost from inverting the principle.

 

@Sarge:

You don't really need any machine, just have a Skimmer swing the hammer, it'll take a lot to affect one of those.

First time starting a topic here, so be gentle please.

 

This is a theory about a possible application for a Pulser's slow-bubbles.

What startes me thinking on it was the following quote about speed-bubbles:

  

Kurkistan: Last question: If Wayne was inside of a speed bubble and punches somebody who's standing outside it, what's happening with his fist and them: are they like sucked into the bubble, or what?
Brandon: So, I have... So _exiting_ a speed bubble, while it's going, has _weird_ ramifications on lots of things. It would be really hard to punch somebody through a speed bubble-
Kurkistan: So would the surface like distend around his fist-
-<Illustrates with fist "stretching out" invisible film>
Brandon: It's going to steal your momentum, but if you actually managed to do it, then- yes. Anything in the speed bubble that's touching through is counted as being as part of the speed bubble.
Kurkistan: Okay, so the bubble would end here <Draws invisible surface in the air> and his fist would be out there <Illustrates by "punching" arm through the fake surface, demonstrating the fist extending past the bubble while he arm is within>, but still fast?
Brandon: Yes.
Kurkistan: Oh okay, thank you.
Brandon: That's how I would imagine it so far.
Kurkistan: But the bubble does _end_ at [the same place still, with the fist extending out past its boundary].
Brandon: The bubble does end, yes.
Kurkistan: <Makes pleasantries and goes to leave>
Brandon: And when you're punching through, it's going to- your momentum is gonna'- you're going to lose momentum and get a ricochet, because you're lurching from- <notices Kurkistan (very foolishly) acting like he's about to leave> anyway... I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

 

 

 

Specifically the bit about punching out of a speed-bubble stealing your momentum.

 

The normal formula for that is "momentum (p) equals mass (m) times distance(d) divided by time(t)"

 

->   p=(m*d)/t

 

From a Slider's perspective what happens outside of the bubble happens (let's say) 10 times faster, so his momentum when punching from inside to outside would be p=(m*d) /(10*t), 10 times less than normal.

 

If we turn that around for a Pulser it becomes p=(m*d) /(t/10), resulting in 10 times more momentum than if no time-bubbles were involved.

 

If you expand that to kinetic energy, which is equal to the momentum squared, divided by twice the mass, a Pulser punching out of their slow-bubble will be moving really slow, but they would be able to transfer 100 times the kinetic energy of a regular punch.

 

Now that could have a lot of uses in demolition, or maybe mining or quarrying, but to make the example interesting, I made my Pulser a criminal.

To avoid breaking the poor Pulser thief's hand, let's give him a sledgehammer. 

Now he managed to get into the bank itself, and is standing in front of the really heavy aluminum-covered steel vault door.

He raises his slow-bubble so that it is close to the door, but not touching, and he takes a swing through the boundary with his sledgehammer. Because he's experienced with cadmium, he can stretch time to 20 times slower than normal, so the hammer that could normally knock over a small part of a thin brick wall is suddenly 400 times more powerful, and knocks that door clean off it's hinges. (And since swinging a hammer doesn't really take longer than 5 or 6 seconds it's done in about 2 minutes outside time.)

 

I'd like to say I'm sure this is what happens, but it is of course also possible that the filthy allomancer scofflaw gets catapulted backwards into a wall by his own swing and dies from horrifying blunt force trauma.

 

What are your thoughts?

...If light wasn't effected you wouldn't be able to see that bluring...

How do you figure that? What do you think you would see instead?

 

Ah!

Different meanings for "blur". I interpreted it as sort of afterimages, as Steelrunning people are also described as "blurring". Are you possibly interpreting it as the people in the speedbubble looking fuzzy (first synonym I could come up with) due to photons being redirected because of traversing the speedbubble's edge like happens with bullets?

But we know that the people do in fact blur.  Your vision is based on waves of light and as such light/energy does definitely seem to be effected.

If you wave your hand in front of your eyes really fast it will also look blurred, does that mean it's in a speed bubble?

 

The blurring is more a consequence of our eyes and visual centre of the brain only being able to process 10 to 12  images per second (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate I'd always heard 23img/second before, but it doesn't affect the argument).

It does not mean anything about the effects of speed bubbles on lightwaves.

@ LabRat: Elantrians being Splinters doesn't make sense at all IMO, that would mean new splinters could be made from a shard that's already been splintered. Since Seons and Skaze have already been confirmed to be splinters of Devotion and Dominion, it would also mean that splinters of the same shard could take different forms/manifestations, of which there has been no indication at all in any other Cosmere book.

 

I think it has something to do with being selected to be different from the general population.

On Nalthis everyone is potentially an awakener, and I don't think Endowment had any choice in that, so the Decision he/she can make is who becomes Returned and is therefore set apart from most people.

On Scadrial it's genetically determined who is a Feruchemist (so they're initiated at birth, and who has the possibility of becoming an Allomancer. Even if a person hasn't snapped, they're still different from normal, because there's the option that they might. (Hemalurgy's tricky, unless you're Initiated by being bonkers enough to want to practice it.)

Roshar sets people apart through the Nahel bond, which is sort of a Shard's Decision (like on Nalthis), since it's the Spren (a Splinter of Honor) who decides with whom to bond.

 

Like the Ars Arcanum suggests, it's hard to determine which factor Initiates a person on Sel. Though it has been theorised (I don't know about confirmed) that people are chosen by the Shaod because they have a lot of devotion for something. So showing devotion would start (initiate ) the process of being chosen by the Shaod.

 

Also note that the extract from the AA talks about AonDor, it specifically does not mention Dakhor, Forgery, BloodSealing or ChayShan, perhaps implying that there are different Initiations for each, but we don't really know enough about these three to be sure. (You may say that we know quite a bit about Forgery, and we do: about the practice itself, but not about how one becomes a Forger, it may require something besides studying.) 

Allo-pewter increases your strength (among other things), feru-pewter stores strength. If your strength is higher to begin with (because of allo-pewter) it would be easier to fill your pewtermind. But if you have access to both allo- and feru-pewter, you can just fill a pewtermind, burn that and start (yes) ferucompounding for near-infinite strength. A different WoB states that you can also store the health boost from allo-pewter in a gold-mind,  but I don't think anyone would call that reverse compounding. 

Didn't Wax just steelpush on the second bullet to speed it up?

Very clear and concise, thank you Voidus.

 

Edit:

 

So I've been reading some of the FTL threads here too, and I'm wondering.

If you put a pulser and a slider with equal-sized bubbles in a space-ship going at a decent clip (possibly with my previous mechanism) and they simultaneously raise their bubbles so they don't overlap completely.

The slow-bubble is in front of the ship, the speed-bubble is behind the ship and the ship itself is in the area where they cancel each other out. Could that be an Alcubierre drive? (Alcumancy?) Contracting space by expanding time sort of thing? (maybe reverse the bubble positions, like I said, not a physicist)

That could get you to go very, very fast potentially but not FTL.

Since I'm not an astrophysicist, could you explain why not?

(And since I'm not a physicist at all, could you explain it like I'm five? )

We apparently don't have all the clues necessary to figure FTL out yet, there's some basic theories and almost all of them have to do with time bubbles but yeah, not enough information yet.

 

Mine actually has to do with iron compounding, steelpushing, ironpulling and chains of nicrobursts.

Haven't worked out the details yet though, time bubbles might become involved at some point.

Dominion (Elantris shard) -> dominance (Mistborn "province")

Devotion (Elantris shard) -> devotaries (Stormlight "church")

Ati (Ruin from Mistborn) -> Ati (Aon meaning "Hope")

 

Window (Mistborn) -> Window (The Emperor's Soul) 

Duralumin-burning a metal wouldn't increase the amount of the trait gained with compounding. Duralumin increases the power output of Allomancy by increasing the burn rate. If a piece of pewter of a certain size contains 10 "units" of effect and a regular burn would use those over (let's say) an hour, then flaring pewter would do the same in 20 minutes, and Duralumin-burning pewter would do it in half a minute (or a few seconds) but it's still the same ten "units".

 

Rashek had diminishing returns from his Atium-compounding because of two reasons, the first is that while he kept himself young-looking he was still aging naturally, so when he was a hundred years old he would have to draw 70 years out of his metalmind to look 30, but at 200 years he would have to draw 170 years etc.

 

The second reason is the purely Feruchemic definition of compounding. Let's say that to increase your weight by 10kg for an hour you need to store 10kg for an hour, but to tap 20 kg for an hour you'd need to store 25kg for an hour, to tap 30kg, store 40kg, and so on.

 

So for TLR, when he met Vin & co. he had to draw 1000 years of youth from his atiumminds, meaning beforehand he had to store an amount of youth vastly greater than that. Still possible, but his atiumminds kept getting drained faster and faster.

(Probably you all already know and understand this, but I didn't see it in the thread, so I thought I'd mention it)

 

For the "soft compounding", storing allomantically gained traits in metalminds, tin and pewter are the obvious candidates. Tin for tinminds, and pewter for pewterminds, goldminds, maybe steelminds, and it might be compatible somehow with storing wakefulness in a bronzemind.

 

How do you feel about storing the mental boost from atium in a zincmind?

Could you store the seeking-sense from allo-bronze in a tinmind?

How about the sense of balance gained from burning pewter, could you put that in a tinmind?

If you use allo-zinc to increase people's personal connections with you, you could store that in a duraluminmind, without people disliking or ignoring you.

And if you trust a soother or rioter enough you could have them use their powers on you so you could charge an electrummind without going all depressed. 

 

You could maybe do some interesting things with allomantic gold or electrum and a coppermind, but it's anyone's guess as to what might happen (well, Brandon Sanderson's guess is the only one that matters, really).

 

PS: We really need different terms for purely Feruchemic compounding and the mixed kind Miles and Rashek use(d). Since the mixed kind is what most people associate with the term "compounding", how about "Inflating" or "Augmenting" for the purely Feruchemic kind?

(and maybe "Shifting" for the soft compounding of this thread)

 

PPS:This isn't really a spoiler, but a linguistic aside of possibly limited interest and definitely limited relevance, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

Following the same logic, the problem with the glasses is you could just get a pair of binoculars instead.   You would't want to make a spectacle of yourself (hurray for really ancient jokes!)

 

You're actually right on the bracer issue, of course, but just because a specific application of a mechanic is rather useless, does not mean the mechanic itself isn't valid. 

 

Let's see, a useful application...

 

You could awaken a piece of wood that has a switch with 3 positions, and you command it to draw heat from your body in position 1, to release it back to you in position 3, and to do nothing in position 2. Now you've got a wooden brassmind facsimile... or one of those ruby space heater fabrials. The command would have to be really complicated though, using loads of breath, and your awakened wooden object might just burst into flame from using it.

 

Edit:

 

If you want to get really fancy you could make it a gauge instead of a switch to add compounding (the purely Feruchemic kind, not the one with allomancy mixed in).

Food is applied to you from external sources, yet you can store that in a bendalloymind. How is allomancy any different? Steel itself isn't pushing on metal. Steel changes something within you, so you have the trait "I push on metal now". This trait is what is stored.

 

Yes, but you have to eat it first, you can't just touch a potato and store it in a metalmind. Anyway, what is stored is nutrition, not food, you could theoretically charge a bendalloymind without eating, but you'd lose weight and suffer from malnutrition instead, probably unpleasant.

 

@Voidus, I also don't think my suggestion would work, because I don't believe the basic premise of storing Allomantic powers inside metalminds is the correct interpretation of Allomantic compounding. However, I allow for the possibility that I'm wrong on that count, and therefore suggest a possible way I can see to trick the metalmind into storing the Allomantic effect over the Feruchemic one. Since the only way (I know of) that an Allomancer interacts with his focus metals is burning them, the actual piece of metal that is being burned should be the one that is turned into a metalmind, not easy considering the metal is destroyed when you burn it.

 

I agree that the effects of your interpretation of compounding can be achieved through a nicrosilmind (the use of which is also still open for debate, but whatever), but without the interplay of both the Allomantic and Feruchemic versions of the same metal, I don't know if you could even call it compounding anymore.

Could you guys shelve the whole journalistic accuracy/Marasi didn't know debate? At this point I can't see it as a valid argument for either side. I'm actually rather interested in the original question, but everyone seems to have forgotten about it.

 

My two cents on that count are as follows.

Seeing that Feruchemy is basically completely internal, I think it highly unlikely that external allomancy could be stored in a metalmind. It just wouldn't fit the logic of the system to me.

 

I'm going to completely contradict myself now and suggest a possible way to achieve this.

Classical compounding works by overriding the Allomantic effect of a metal with the Feruchemic effect.

Reverse compounding (according to dijini's theory) would require one to affect a piece of metal so it could store the Allomantic effect.

First you swallow a large(non-charged) piece of metal. You start burning the metal very slowly and right after that you make it into a metalmind (and then stop burning it). This might create enough "cognitive confusion" so that the attribute stored in the metalmind is the Allomantic one, instead of the Feruchemic. Then your only problem would be that you have a large piece of metal in your bowels that somehow has to ... pass. 

 

Well, certainly the largest and most immediate problem, since the question remains of whether you could re-charge the modified metalmind once it is out of your body.

 

The difficulty with theorizing about this is that compounding has several qualities/steps/layers, each of which could be the basis of the Feruchemy/Allomancy reversal (the change of Feruchemical compounding to Allomantic compounding), affecting the requirements and effects depending on where you place the switch.

But, what if you instead awakened a flute to sense investiture, and play a different note for each kind/form?

 Same problem: unless you sense investiture yourself, you can't form the mental construct (with enough detail) to tell your flute what to do.

 

If you can't tell the difference between someone using AonDor and someone using allomancy (without looking, because that's cheating) how are you supposed to tell your flute what to look for? And if you are able to sense the difference, why would you need to awaken a flute to do it for you? Unless you're an amazingly charitable person and you're going to give it to someone else to use.

Granted, but I was just trying to outline a general mechanism, not the exact command.

 

And as a last measure you could just use the "your breath to mine" command.

"Upon my touch, grant me the stormlight you hold." is more likely, I think, Ari.

 

Now, as to powering other magic systems using Awakening, I think it would be impossible (or at the least insanely difficult), because of the required understanding of those systems, as has been illustrated before, you can't awaken something to grant yourself bronze allomancy if firstly you don't know how it works, and secondly you don't know what it feels like, since both of those would be necessary for the mental image linked to the command.

 

It might be possible to imitate some systems. I'm thinking of Feruchemy specifically, think about the others yourself (can't take all the fun out of it for you guys).

 

Imagine awakening a leather bracelet (or other miscellaneous organic object) with the command "Upon my command *weaken*, take my strength into you and return it to me upon my command *strenghten*." Ta dah: fake pewtermind. You'd have to have the appropriate heightening of course, since it's a rather complex command, as well as some understanding of Feruchemy.

Drat, the wiki is wrong 

 

But actually it rather reinforces the idea that Dominion is hierarchy, not territory.

Devotion and Dominion are complementary, yes, but I'm not sure I'd agree that they are very compatible.

In a way they're as much opposites as Ruin and Preservation were.

 

If you look at the real world mythological definition of "Dominions" you'll find this on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelic_hierarchy#Dominions_or_Lordships)

 

 

The "Dominions" ... or "Dominations" are presented as the hierarchy of celestial beings "Lordships" in some English translations of the De Coelesti Hierarchia. The Dominions regulate the duties of lower angels. It is only with extreme rarity that the angelic lords make themselves physically known to humans.

So Dominion, apart from being linked to territorial possession, represents hierarchy (this idea is reinforced by the Shu-Dereth religion).

Specifically hierarchy from a superior-to-subordinate perspective.

 

Devotion, on the other hand, is the act of intentionally placing someone or something above oneself. Raoden being devoted to his people's wellbeing means that Raoden acknowledges that his people are more important than he himself.

 

This model would tend to work well in the two splintered shards cooperating to form the Dor as a single source of power, as has already been established. In my opinion, however, it would actually prevent the shards merging into one, due to their remaining intent.

 

You'd essentially be asking something that wants to be supreme to become one with something that wants to support/worship something greater than itself. (Combining the two wouldn't be 'Unity', if anything it'd be called Narcissism. )

 

ParadoxSpren mentioned a black and a white splintered shard being seen as grey from a distance, and I must say I have trouble thinking of a different situation than that of Devotion and Dominion to fit that description. And I might be misinterpreting him, but that sounds like him saying that the two shards remain separate. I personally envision the Dor more like a Yin and Yang symbol (or the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai to this crowd): two opposites cooperating to form a single whole, but also remaining distinct and separate. (I guess if it spins fast enough it'd also look gray  )

 

The fact that the different Selian magics only work in certain areas is a function of some of their power coming from Dominion, specifically the territorial aspect of the Shard. Remember that a Shard's intent determines how it's associated magics obtain their power (as in fuel).

 

from the Coppermind.net 

 

 

 Dominion is why nationality and the land is a focus for many forms of accessing the Dor, but it is unclear how Devotion affected it...

 

It goes on to say that one way is that Elantrians must be devoted to something to be taken by the Shaod...

Dakhor monks have to be amazingly devoted to allow someone to reform their bones in some rather gruesome ways, and ChayShan and Forgery take years of study and practice, which counts as pretty devoted in my book.

 

Now a last question to ponder, if two shards are splintered, effectively becoming isolated fragments of investiture, could they recombine without 'unsplintering' in the process? And can a complete shard even exist without a mind to guide it? (I'll be attempting to research that)

Oh bugger.

Well, thanks for pointing out my mistakes.

And I'm glad you think my theory's interesting anyways.

 

 

Edit:

I just found this quote from Sanderson  (here's the link http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#66)

 

To use Feruchemy or Allomancy in almost every case, one must have the right spiritual and genetic codes, imprinted upon people during the creation of Scadrial by Ati and Leras. To use Hemalurgy, one must first have someone with these right spiritual and genetic codes, then take the power from them. Other people on other worlds are not going to simply discover the Three Metallic Arts by accident.

 

I thought it was pertinent so there you go, no explanation on who became what though.

Yata, on 02 Oct 2015 - 1:24 PM, said:

The Allomancy came from the Preservation's Investiture inside everyone, not by the proximity to Preservation and there was (incredible rare) misting-feruchemist in the Terris' History therefore there isn't a mutual exclusion Allomancer/Feruchemist.

More, the people of Luthandel live for 1000 years exactly in the original Terris and the Ska never develop the Feruchemy.

...

Well, I did say "...at the time R. and P. developed intelligent life on Scadrial", so those 1000 years in Luthadel wouldn't matter because at that point only the ancestry would matter. Same thing for the misting-feruchemist in Terris history, he could have had mixed ancestry.

Thanks for the welcome !

About Atium in another state, we've seen both of those. Ruin in solid form is Atium, in liquid form it's the black lake underneath Hathsin which is analogous to the Well of Ascension for Preservation, and the gaseous from of Ruin is the black smoke in the side chamber near the Well of Ascension.

And the sentence(s) about Preservation is (are) on the page about Shards under "Forms and Subdivisions", if that's the one you were thinking about.

@ Oudeis: It's normally impossible to create a Hemalurgic spike without the intent to do so. I think it probably only worked on Spook because Ruin was free at that point. I don't think I recall ever specifically reading that Alendi's piercings were Hemalurgic spikes, but it is a suggestive quote.

also @ Oudeis: Drat! I forgot about Dominion!

However, I'm not entirely convinced my proximity at creation idea was wrong, it just needs to be refined a bit, so I did some research and I came across this: "The lake that Fedik discovered is below us now - I can see it from the ledge. It looks even more eerie from up here, with its glassy - almost metallic - sheen. I almost wish I had let him take a sample of its waters."

Could that lake possibly be Ruin's shardpool? That would mean both shard pools were relatively close before the first Ascension, when Rashek moved the Well of Ascension to Luthadel, he would have also buried the lake underneath what would become the Pits of Hathsin.

Anyway, with both wells located in Terris, the people closest by (the eventual Terrismen) would be influenced by both, becoming Feruchemists, while the people further away would only be influenced by Preservation's well, because they were created with more Preservation in them than Ruin, therefore becoming Allomancers. Or, at least, people with the potential to become Allomancers.

The thing is, whether a person can become a Feruchemist or not is linked to their Spiritweb, which is not an easy thing to do with the magics available on Scadrial: There's Hemalurgy, which may or may not pass the result on genetically, but that would require Feruchemists to start with, not explaining where they came from originally; and Lerasium, which is a finite resource (a limited number of beads, which didn't regenerate during the 1024 years of the Final Empire) granting abilities other than Feruchemy.

(Before anyone suggests, an Atium/Lerasium alloy would make the user become an Atium misting, not a Feruchemist)

The only way to get a definitive answer is probably to just ask Brandon Sanderson, which he might RAFO.

EDIT: Ooooh! Brainstorm.

So, Lerasium was intentionally created by Preservation to create Mistborn (whether or not that is the primary effect of burning it), allowing the user to preserve things. But for Feruchemy, that would require Ruin to do that also, and granting someone a power that could be used to preserve would be contrary to his intent, so he couldn't do it, right? (Ok, so that same power could also be used to destroy, but since humans have more Preservation than Ruin, they'd be more likely to protect than destroy)