DeadFencer

Yeah, he used the Well of Ascension. However, there's nothing saying he didn't also compound nicrosil for more power.

This has turned into another "Why was TLR defeated" thread. Check out the last one, entitled Feuchemical Dentistry, for some valuable insight on how Rashek was defeated. Short answer: he was toying with Vin, and didn't think she could Pull off his metalminds.

*spoilers for the first four books* Yes. That's sort of the point. By burning a metalmind, you gain the power of the metal, but as the feruchemical power instead of Allomantic. It's exponential based on how much feruchemical power was stored. Also that's why Compounding is so stupidly overpowered. Feruchemical powers technically have no upper limit. The classic example is pewter. A pewter-burning allomamcer could lift a carriage, if they were flaring the metal. A pewter feruchemist could hypothetically lift a train. That's limited by the fact that feruchemists need to store power in order to use it. However, compounders don't need to store power. That's why any compounders that show up are ridiculously powerful, like Miles and TLR.

I don't know if nicrosilminds require that much effort to refill either. It seemed Allik had enough to give to the rest of the Southern Scadrialians after they were recovered from the Set. If the medallions took a ton of storing to activate, they'd be rarer.

You can't adapt over 1000 years. It's not long enough. Plus, since the changes to temperature were instant, if they could adapt to it and live, they could adapt back.

Why do it? Why not do it? Your metalminds are literally your only weakness. Why not implant some backup ones in your teeth in case someone actually manages to remove your metalminds?

This is brilliant. The metal is touching your body, so you can use it Feruchemically. It's Invested, so it's already hard to Push, and is made more difficult to Push since it's inside your body. You could even burn it Allomanticallly if you wanted. Why didn't Rashek do this? It's harder to laugh than bracers, and could be a backup supply of feruchemical power.

The Southerners couldn't have lived at the equator. We assume that, like Earth, Scadrial's equator is its hottest point. If humans could have survived there, then there would have been no need for Rashek to do what he did to cool the Final Empire. Its people could have just survived. Regarding the Final Empire's temperature, do we have any evidence to suggest the Final Empire was colder than the South Pole? Even examples from Earth would be useful. Also the people of the final empire were genetically altered to better survive high temperatures, while the southerners were not. That implies the North should be warmer in spite of the ash.

Maybe medallions give you a positive feedback loop until you go above the levels of a "normal" Metalborn, at which point it starts running out

So the southerners were never genetically altered at all. They just lived at the South Pole when Scadrial was too close to the sun. That makes sense, since the South Pole would be of a decent temperature during that time. Then Scadrial was moved back to its original orbit, and the South Pole was too cold for life. Again, that makes sense. The Southerners began to die of hypothermia, until the Soverign came and gave them brassminds to survive. The problem arises when the Southerners consider Elendel too cold. Didn't the South Pole during the Final Empire have average temperatures, like Elendel does now?

This is a really stupid question, but it didn't occur to me until after I read all the books, so I just wanted to check. If a misting has a bunch of, say, steel, which they then have nicrobursted, it's going to release more power than if they had a small amount of the steel, right? Like nicrobursting a tiny bit of metal might let you push something pretty fast, but nicrobursting a bunch of steel will let you push it much, much faster? If that's true, the potential for extremely powerful bursts of allomancy is high.

Mistwraiths. Restored mistwariths. That's my theory at least.

I don't know if this helps but I do know that, based on how the symbols for metals appear at the start of each chapter, the Scadrailians may use base 16 math.

I do recall that actually. Something about TLR choosing to stay the age he appears as.

Um... shoot that's a really good thought. Maybe all the other feruchemy powers do store the specific stuff, it just doesn't really matter? Like, pewter stores strength you had at that specific time, but people don't notice or care. And maybe bendalloy stores the specific calories and nutrition you had in you at the time, like it would give you the nutrition from cake if you stored after eating cake, and the nutrition from lettuce if you stored with lettuce in you. I don't know.

There was a WoB that a single atium bead could restore someone elderly to youth. If we assume that means around 80 to 10, TLR wouldn't need too much atium. A lot, yes, but not the whole production of the Pits.

TLR was a bit of an idiot. I have so many posts I want to make that all culminate in: he shouldn't have been defeated. The only explanation is that Ruin wanted him to lose and so manipulated him into not making the right decisions.

Yes, that's where the Ferrings in Elendel Basin come from. I was wondering where the southern ferrings who supplied the nicrosilmind power for the medallions could have come from, if not from the Mistwraiths.

But where would these initial ferrings come from? Ferrings are of Terris descent, and the Terris stayed in north Scadrial during the Final Empire.

Also you couldn't compound an armband you were wearing. The metal has to be inside the body to be Allomantically burned. Generally that just means swallowing the metalmind, though a spike could be compounded.

Still a better explanation than midi-chlorians.

It's never clearly said what the Excisors that allowed the southerners to gain metallic abilities are. Many think they're spikes, but that seems too obvious. I have another theory: Mistwraiths are the Excisors. We don't know what happened to the Mistwraiths. Sazed isn't described as having changed them in any way. There was probably a decent amount of Mistwraiths alive at the time of the Catacendre, since the species was able to breed and survive for TLR to keep making new kandra. Sazed probably wouldn't just leave these descendants of the early feruchemists as non-sapient blobs. I'm assuming he turned them back into humans. However, I don't think they were integrated into Northern Scadrial. These Mistwraiths would be the descendants of Terris feruchemists who existed before any attempts to breed out the power. Had these people been put in Northern Scadrial, their mDNA would have cussed almost everyone to be a feruchemist by 300 years later. I propose Sazed did restore the mistwraiths to human form, and then got them to the southern people somehow. That would mean he didn't just adandon the south as well.

I think he revealed it in a Reddit AMA. Someone asked and Brandon answered. It was crazy. Everyone freaked out for a few days.

To handle removing the spike, maybe make the spike an explosive that would detonate after taking the power. That would destroy the spike, destroying its power as well.

The One-Eye Spike Man is obviously Allomancer Jak. It's so clear.