King's Twit

Hey, I just started my first Warbreaker reread, and I already have a bunch of questions, with no answers, that I was wondering if we had any WoB or just previous discussions that might address them. Could Nightblood learn to Awaken? If so, would he drain things to black rather than grey or white? What would happen if you attempted to Awaken a God metal? Would what results be considered a splinter? A Divine Breath has the ability to reshape the human body based on the will of the Returned. Is this related to Syl's ability to change her physical form? Or possibly to the abilities of the Kandra? Would a God King, after they have passed on their breaths, be considered a Sliver? What role does color play in Awakening? And why do things drain to grey or white? Is the place where the Tears of Edgli are grown a Shardpool of Endowment? Are the Tears themselves the condensed power of Endowment? EDIT: Another question I just thought of. How are Divine Breaths related to Breaths? I was picturing them as the same thing, but with a Divine Breath being better bonded to the person, sort of like holding a shardblade vs Kaladin having the Sylblade. Or possibly a person who has said one or none of the Knights Radiant Ideals vs someone who has said more.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that Harmony would repair the destruction, or at least enough of it to recover, but the population of the continent could have been reduced too much for rebuilding a civilization to be feasible.

Hey. I posted the "On the Missing Piece" thread a couple of days ago, but I just thought of a (possibly) new idea on where the missing Ruin may be. I believe that the extra piece of Ruin's power could have been given to the Southern Scadriens, who are now more Ruin than Preservation, contrasting with the Northern Scadriens who are more Preservation than Ruin. From SoS, we know that the Southern Scadriens were almost destroyed (or we think we know, at least). The event of their near destruction that Harmony is referring to is, I think, most likely the day they spent without ash when Vin was Preservation. Based on the damage the Sun did in the few minutes of sunrise on the Northern Continent, the Southern Continent had to have been almost burned beyond recovery, or possibly destroyed beyond the possibility of recovery without divine intervention. This destruction would have happened, then, right before Sazed took up the Shards to become Harmony. He could have saved the Southerners and, in an effort both to balance the Shards and create the Harmony he is named for, created a continent of people of Ruin to contrast the preexisting continent of people of Preservation. Ati, as Ruin, said many times that he is the only force by which things can change. This would make sense with the continent of Preservation being mostly technologically stagnant, while the continent of Ruin is advancing. Drawing on the significance of the "Rust and Ruin" curse that I believe has yet to be explored, those could be the two names by which the Ruin aspect of Harmony is known as, Ruin to the Northerners and Rust to the Southerners.

I thought there was a WoB confirming that he hadn't used it, and in my search I discovered this So Hoid apparently could use the bead, if he hasn't already, contradicting my guess that he couldn't use it. Brandon saying "certain powers" instead of allomancy stands out to me. It could just be that he is being coy like he often is with Cosmere questions, but what if it actually can give other powers, possibly based on whatever other pieces of Shards you may have in your spiritweb.

Hey, combining one theory with another, what if Harmony becomes Discord by reabsorbing that missing piece of Ruin, and "they shall love him for it" because he does it to stop whatever trouble was being caused with that power? It fits with the recurring theme of Harmony making mistakes because of his lack of experience at being God. He cleaved off that extra Ruin because he believed that it would be better if the shards were balanced, but that only causes more trouble.

This is small, and probably nothing, but I wanted to see if others think it may have implications. Its been established that allomantic atium is similar to electrum, only, with atium, one sees slightly into the future of everything and everyone else, and electrum shows only your own future. atium has other effects as well, but for now I don't believe they are relevant. lerasium is, I would suggest, similar to duralumin. Duralumin pushes on your connection to Preservation, expanding it like air in a balloon and allowing you to channel much more investiture through yourself at a time, which produces the effect of burning all of a metal in one massive flare. It apparently only works for metals which are already burning, "channels to Preservation" which are already open. Duralumin is even the feruchemical Connection metal. lerasium, then, is also a "push," or expansion, on your connection to Preservation, but permanent and seemingly not restricted to previously "open channels" like duralumin is. Duralumin pulls on your connection to Preservation from within the limits or context of your spiritweb (or sDNA, are those the same thing?), and lerasium pulls on the connection from outside of the spiritweb, and so is not restricted in the same way. (side thought: We know that Hoid took a lerasium bead with the intention of using it to become a mistborn, but has since changed his mind. What if he chose to not use the bead because he couldn't figure out how to burn it, because he does not have the connection to Preservation that Scadriens have, and so has nothing to "pull" on?) Here is where it starts to get extra tinfoily. Once I saw this analogy (atium is to electrum as lerasium is to duralumin), another connection appeared. Both electrum and duralumin are internal pushing metals, and atium and lerasium are expansions (possibly externalizations) of their effects. Could this be a hint at the allomantic effects of Harmonium? What if Harmonium is related to the mental internal pushing metal, bronze. Bronze lets one hear allomantic pulses, so it is somehow related to the ability to sense Investiture. What if Harmonium reveals all kinds of Investiture, rather than only allomancy? Allomancy beats like a drum. What if every system of magic has a unique sound, and burning Harmonium allows you to fully hear the 'symphony', the harmony of the Cosmere? It's just a thought and almost certainly nothing, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. Thanks for reading!

I actually recently did a post on this on Reddit. Shameless self plug https://www.reddit.com/r/Mistborn/comments/3u9xuv/spoilers_all_regarding_a_certain_prophesy/ Basically, I posited that the text could be unaltered by Ruin, and Harmony's Intent is more accurately named Discord, or has the potential to become Discord. An alternative to this I suggested was that Ruin did alter the line, and the original, which better fits the structure of the preceding lines of the prophesy, was something similar to "His name shall be Harmony, yet they shall hate him for it." I took this as a prophesy that had yet to come true, and that the people of Scadrial would come to hate Harmony. Based on your Brandon quotes, I'm now more convinced of the text being unaltered.

Ah, that makes more sense. I thought you were saying "I like it, but I'm biased toward my theory instead." My mistake. I do really like your theory, though. I understand why you would be biased toward it over others.

It is from a Reddit PM. And I don't think our theories are necessarily incompatible (especially since mine isn't really a theory yet). It could be that metal on Nalthis is attuned to specifically interact with Investiture in a certain way, like the allomantic metals on Scadrial, if I'm understanding you're theory correctly. Or Moogle is correct and it is just a matter of metal requiring a different number of breaths to awaken than stone, which causes different manifestations of power in the awakened weapons.

Humans have extra Preservation in them, so the shards were unbalanced when Sazed took them up. He had to balance them to be able to balance their warring Intents, so he did something (we aren't sure what) with the extra Ruin so that there was Harmony between the shards. There are a couple WoB about this, I think, but I'm not sure where.

Hey, I wasn't really sure what to do with this, but I have a new WoB on Awakening and Nightblood. I figured this might be the best place for it. I figure that this has two possible implications. Either stone reacts differently to Investiture than metal by virtue of being a different material (as in this would be true for any two different materials), or metal actually does interact with Investiture, or at least with Breath, in a unique way because of the properties of metals. Thoughts?

I don't know why he/she would have done so, but if Rust is the one who talks into Paalm's mind, then they have a similar ability to influence people that Ruin does, and so could insert the terminology. It could also have been said by one of the individuals who might be aware of Rust, such as Marsh or a Kandra (though the Kandra we've seen have seemed pretty oblivious to this whole issue). Or Harmony could have introduced the phrase intentionally. He's not one to curse, but He may have foreseen some reason for the name 'Rust' to remain in the common vernacular.

Ah, that makes sense. I would love for Demoux to get an opportunity to talk to his "god" the Survivor. Assuming Kelsier is still around and still Kelsier. Demoux being more Cosmere-aware now, he probably realizes that Kelsier isn't God, but I think he still would put a lot of stock in what Kelsier has to say.

When is Demoux in era 2? I must have missed this. Or is it just that he is a known Worldhopper, and so could potentially appear?

EDIT: One day I'm going to clean this up and take out the parts that have been debunked. Rust is not a Splinter, as there are none of Ruin or Preservation, and I've since become more convinced that Rust is held by Kelsier's cognitive shadow. The location of the missing piece of Ruin has been a subject of a lot of speculation, so this may have been brought up before. This is also my first post here, so I apologize for any mistakes I might make and for the disjointed stream of consciousness that is this post. Basically, I believe that the missing piece of Ruin is either a splinter similar to a powerful spren, or the power was turned into a kind of a minor shard which has been taken up by someone. I believe that this is Rust, and that they are either the force working against Harmony, or aiding another Shard who is also hostile to Harmony, either Autonomy or Odium. There is a WoB somewhere that I haven't been able to find, but which basically says that the phrase "Rust and Ruin" has more significance than it might seem. This is, I think, a hint at another entity called Rust. This could be another, previously unmet Shard, but I doubt that for a couple of reasons which have been brought up in different places on this forum: - Rust is a very similar Intent to Ruin, arguably too similar to be another Shard of Adonalsium - We know that Ruin and Preservation are the only Shards on Scadrial from a WoB - We know that the metal in Paalm's spike was of a Shard we already have met from another WoB I believe that, to balance the forces of Ruin and Preservation within himself, Harmony cleaved the excess Ruin off from the whole, which eventually became Rust. If this is correct, there are a couple possibilities for what the exact nature of Rust is: -It could be a piece of Ruin's power which was large enough to develop a consciousness of its own. We know, from WoB, that a Shard left without a holder for long enough will develop a consciousness of its own. This could extend to large enough pieces of that power as well. -It could be a powerful spren-like entity created intentionally by Harmony. -It could be a person or entity which took up the extra piece of Ruin, either by being given it by Harmony or by obtaining it against Harmony's will. If we now assume that Rust exists and is in some way derived from the excess power of Ruin, there are further questions to explore. Is Rust behind Miles and Paalm's plans? Finding Rust behind Miles is not something I can do right now before a reread. He is connected to the “men of gold and red,” the red men could be tied to Rust, who the gold is I couldn’t say. Maybe Miles himself, as a gold compounder, or maybe there is another Shard involved as well and the gold refers to them. Is Paalm's spike from Rust? The most obvious bit of evidence for this is the rusty spots on Paalm’s spike. That is by no means conclusive however. We are led to believe that Harmony should recognize anything from Scadrial, but we are only told this by Harmony himself, I believe, in his early godhood when he wrote the words of Founding (unless there is a WoB I missed). Even if the metal is not of Rust, Paalm’s extensive knowledge of Hemalurgy must have come from Rust. You might say that she could have gotten the knowledge from her close relationship with the Lord Ruler, but her knowledge of Hemalurgy extends beyond his own. It is said that the Lord Ruler had his inquisitors working on discovering a new Hemalurgic creation for nearly the entirety of his reign, and yet they never succeeded. Paalm created a new Hemalurgic species, and used Hemalurgy in other ways that no one else knew was possible, such as endowing powers on Kandra and speaking into minds. Where could she have gotten all of this knowledge of the ridiculously complex magic system, Hemalurgy, except from a piece of its source. We know that Ruin had an instinctive knowledge of all of the hundreds of bind points on a body and how to use them, so Rust could as well. I’m going to cut this off here, I think, because I don’t want this post to be too long, as I may be suggesting nothing new here I would like to end with a mention of my personal beliefs on this issue. I believe that Rust is something akin to a minor shard of Ruin’s power, and that it has been taken up by a cognitive shadow of either Kelsier or Ati. I know this sounds very tinfoil, and it may be, but I see some evidence for it. The book is entitled Shadows of Self, which is the exact term used to describe the mist spirit, Leras’s cognitive shadow, in HoA. Ati would have the motive to bring down Harmony, and would also already have the Hemalurgic knowledge to aid Paalm if the power of Rust did not endow it. I’m less confident in Kelsier being Rust. He is mentioned as still being around, and I can’t remember if Harmony refers to him in a positive or negative way in era 2. Harmony may have endowed the power on Kelsier, possibly believing him to be beyond the ability to influence the world with the power. He could have been corrupted by its Intent, and now seeks to Rust everything (I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but I also believe that Rust is a name attributed by a metal-driven culture, and a more accurate Intent might be Corruption). The main thing that makes me want to believe Rust is Kelsier is that Rust is likely to be, in some way, tied to the Set. A set is “a group or collection of things that belong together, resemble one another, or are usually found together” or “a group of people with common interests or occupations or of similar social status.” This sounds an awful lot like a crew, no? EDIT: I should clarify something. When I suggest that the power was turned into a minor Shard, I do not mean that this was done intentionally by Harmony. It could have been, but he could also have cleaved off the power and hidden it away somewhere, and someone found it and took up the power. I believe that it would function similar to how a Shard would, whether or not it is what Harmony intended. EDIT 2: I would also like to add that if Rust exists and is working with another Shard, then that Shard could be Autonomy, and Autonomy could have helped Rust to become completely autonomous from, and invisible to, Harmony