Cadmium

I bought The Way of Kings on Audiobook on Audible because I was looking for 4-star+ rated books that were SUPER long to get the most bang for my buck. I loved it so much that I immediately bought Words of Radiance on audiobook because it came out like a week after I started Way of Kings. I googled for a wiki to try to figure out how to spell one of the Horneater words because it was hard to understand on the audiobook and found the coppermind, which opened my eyes to the Cosmere idea. After that I looked at reviews on Goodreads for Elantris and the Mistborn series. I saw that Felicia Day RAVED about mistborn, so I bought the paperback box set plus Alloy of Law and read them all. Now I'm all in and will read anything Brandon writes.

SOmeone please make sure that Peter and Brandon are given these ideas. IT's so corny that they'd love it...

There was a thread about a month ago discussing Wit's Flute (the topic titles only differ by punctuation, even). There was a post that collected several WoB verbatim here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/45000-wits-flute/?p=329574

but weren't most inquisitors already natural Seekers?

His metalminds were shoved into his skin. It's possible that they pierced the spiritweb enough to allow Ruin's influence.

Hero of Ages Spoiler There were so very few Keepers and those hidden away.Ferrings were likely bred out. Twinborn were nigh impossible because The Lord Ruler wasn't going to allow a Noble to breeding with the Terris mothers like Tindwyl. But remember that the mists hit everyone and only 16% were sick and only 16% of those were Atium Mistings. If those ratios held true, only 16% of the population at that time were any kind of Misting, then remember that the general populace didn't know about Duralumin, Aluminum, Bendalloy, Cadmium, at least two other metals, and didn't have access to Atium. Most only thought there were 8 metals. That means that only 8-9% would have had any likelihood of discovering their status as a Misting. That's going to draw the numbers down even further. Consider the overall arc that Brandon is taking the novels on. IF he wanted a character with the full set of one of the powers and a single power from the other set, it's far less likely right now that he'd write a natural-born Mistborn-Ferring or Misting-Feruchemist than say... a Feruchemist or Allomancer with a Hemalurgic spike. Don't you agree?

As suggested elsewhere, we also know that Rashek/The Lord Ruler created microorganisms that decomposed the ash. Many forms of liquid crude oil are largely derived from anaerobic decomposition of algaes, phytoplankton, and zooplankton. If these ash-decomposing organisms are buried under sedimentary rock or hardened ash, then exposed to pressure, they could naturally(?) become fossil fuels, though that would be on a much accelerated time-table compared to the formation that occurs/occured on Earth. Those organisms were there only for about a millennium. There's potential there, though it is more complicated than the "They were always there, even before TLR or Harmony" answer. Tangent: If these elevated pressure scenarios exist, wouldn't there be a higher incidence of diamond where all the coal supplies were compressed?

Without delving too deeply into Earth religions, many "Young Earth" Creationists support the theory of "Creation with Apparent Age." i.e. What if the world were formed with strata of rock (and petroleum deposits) in situ as if it had been there for ages? This allows for reservoirs of fossil fuels ages for "millions of years" on Day One of a planet... or year 1,000, 1,300, etc. Regardless, it stands to reason that if Harmony included documents that indicated internal combustion engines are possible that he would also see to it that they understood how to locate and produce the required fuels. If we apply Occam's Razor, the solution that is the simplest and requires the fewest assumptions is that: The word "gasoline" is similar to the refined petroleum product that we call by that name on Earth. Sazed/Harmony included fossil fuel and petroleum reservoirs in the reshaping of Scadrial. Amongst the Words of Founding are instructions for the exploration, drilling, and production of crude and its refinement into petroleum products. Regarding the source of the fossil fuels there are yet more options. He could have merely preserved the already present Fossil Fuel Reservoirs (More likely) Or He could have created new reservoirs from existing carbon sources and introduced extreme heat/pressure to advance the time table. Or he could have forced them to be, ex nihilo, though that doesn't line up with the abilities of Preservation & Ruin as easily. (Least likely) I've been thinking this over for awhile now since I work in the Oil & Gas Industry, but didn't posit the question to the board yet as it seemed rather specialized and doesn't have a lot of bearing on the greater cosmere.

That'd be a good question for Brandon, then. Something to the effect of "You previously said that Syl considers herself the purest form of Honor Spren and Wyndle is a pure spren of Cultivation. This would lead me to think that Edgedancers and windrunners are polar opposites, yet they are not polar opposites on the Radiant chart. Is this because Honor and Cultivation are not in direct opposition like preservation and ruin? Can you explain a bit about why Edgedancers and windrunners are not opposite? Is it more than just the Edgedancers' second ideals?"

Not all had given up. For my money, I'm looking at Rock and Lopen... mostly because they're my favorites.

Yeah, but guess what? I'm not done with Hero of Ages yet, only Storm light and Elantris. I came to the forums to look up an Elantris question and ostrichofevil's Spoiler in the title post Ruined (no pun intended) what's coming up. Can staff fix the title of this thread so it doesn't spoil anything for folks looking at the forum index?

As an aside, what becomes the Aon for Wood if that forest were burned to the ground or chopped down? Are there any Aons that are no longer functional because non-elantrians messed up the geography in the period between the Reod and Raoden's restoration of the complete Shaod cycle?

Or perhaps most Bridgemen have survived multiple traumatic events leading up to becoming bridgemen. Most of them are slaves or criminals. Most of them have been caged and mistreated for weeks prior to arriving and being assigned to bridge duty. If they're not already catatonic from seeing slaves beaten or criminal co-conspirators executed, perhaps marching into a hail of arrows won't break them because they are resigned to their fate. Sure, some percentage will buckle... but my question is if a Knight Radiant must capital B Break like an Allomancer Snaps, why is Kaladin the first Knight Radiant to emerge from the Bridges. What do y'all think the chances are of seeing a few more? Not at all. Would you like me to introduce you to several of my friends who are medically-retired Airborne or Special Operations? 7 out of 10 want nothing more than to be back in the fight. Many of them felt they excelled best in the worst situations and they wanted to be outside the wire protecting people more than sitting around the FOB watching DVDs and sweating for no reason.

In Houston there were a couple Kindles, an iPad, and a couple books with a dark title page (not sure which it was. Some Special Edition)... Brandon sent the bookstore handler/hand me your phone for a picture guy to grab three or four silver sharpies from Brandon's bag.

This just opens more questions for me.

They are quite pricey.

For real. I wanted to escort her from the building for being so rude. I understand that it's fantasy book signing, so the average level of social skills is below the mean of society in general, but that young lady did not understand how selfish and arrogant she sounded. Cringe-worthy does not cover that interaction.

That said, Aluminum projectiles are terrible ballisticly because they are too light to work well with any kind of rifling, so you wouldn't be able to get super high velocity, range or accuracy like with a steel, lead, or copper projectile.

Done. Always welcome. I'll admit it was this board that got me to wondering about the question in the first place, so why not share the answer?

I'm realizing that the audiobook may have colored my perception/pronunciation of this name (Ee-ah-l-ai) and I didn't even catch the significance until now. If nothing else comes of the discussion, thanks for fixing that in my head!

Howdy, y'all. Spent yesterday evening at Murder By The Book, the best hole-in-the-wall independent bookseller in Texas. Picked up Shadows of Self (and a signed copy of Jim Butcher's new Aeronaut's Windlass) and enjoyed my second Brandon Sanderson signing event. A quick aside, both Butcher and Sanderson recommended Brian McClellan's The Powder Mage Trilogy as their number 1 current recommendation. Probably going to read that soon based on their high praise. I won't give a complete minute-by-minute recounting as there were about 5 people video recording the entire signing, and I have a splitting headache at the moment. Best Q&A, crowd friendly question was asking about how the Brandon does the blocking for fight scenes like in Mistborn. He answered that he writes the emotional cues for the fight scene first, then fills in the punches, kicks and dodges. The reading was a selection from Stormlight 3, specifically This is as near as I can remember the exact wording for my question as I don't have it recorded and the lady doing the sticky notes wasn't letting folks write questions on them by the time I got up to the line (#79 of 200+ and it was already 8:45pm. Store closes at 6pm.) Heck, I got a dirty look for requesting that he write "Merry Christmas!" in the copy of Firefight that's a gift. Me: "Howdy." Brandon: "Hi there. Thank you for welcoming me back to Houston earlier. That was nice." Me: "Always welcome." Store Employee: "Photo or?" Me: No, thanks. Line is long and "Do unto others, as you'd have them do unto you." Brandon: Do you have a question for me? Me: (Stammering) Well, yes. hmm. We... we've seen someone with a hemallurgic spike communicate or under the control of Ruin or Harmony. Can other spikes communi, sorry no people, well Shards... ugh so nervous." (Trying to get it accurate.) Brandon looks a little confused at me, but smiles. "Can other *Shards* communicate or control those individuals?" (I excitedly, but rudely, interrupt a bit) To what extent? What about on other planets than Scadrial? He looked at me expectantly for another question. I stammered, "Oh well, thank you. I wasn't expecting that plain an answer. I thought I'd get something more cryptic, so I don't have a follow up. ... Brandon patiently smiled. Me: "Umm, My son turns 1 this weekend. Will the Elantris sequel be out before he graduates college? Brandon laughed. I thanked him for coming to visit. We're pretty much BFFFFFFFs now. I gave my other question to my friend, but she was #55 in line so I didn't hear the answer, so I'll wait to get her to write it out for me.

Last night at the Houston SoS signing stop he said "Trying for Christmas 2016. The book tours are complicating that work right now, but I'm really pushing to keep that date."

Howdy y'all. I've lurked for a year or so, but registered because I asked Brandon a question during the signing last night and wanted to share the answer. What's the best forum to do that? Signing thread, Cosmere theories? Soemwhere else? If it helps categorize it, the question was I've tried to review the question lists, but I can't find that anyone else has posted a Brandon answer to my exact question. Thanks in advance.