King's Twit

I guess I was unclear. I meant that speed was a factor, because it is a part of momentum. I think that momentum is conserved, as well.

He wanted Wax's primary goal to be finding the spike with a secondary focus on finding clues about where the Bands may be. Once he told Wax about his sister, both the spike and the Bands take a back seat to finding her. Its very selfish, but not necessarily evil. The Set are likely involved in both, and so finding his sister could mean also finding the spike, but that might not have been a chance that VenDell wanted to take. Plus, if the Set weren't involved with ReLuur losing his spike, then Wax will be risking his life by going against the Set to get his sister back, and could die before he can return the spike.

Speed is factored in, by way of momentum. Bullets travel very fast, but they are too light to have enough momentum to create a significant push-back on a steelpush

Well, I guess that the "Grandmother V is a Full Feruchemist" theory is out, unless Wax and the Kandra both don't know about it, which I suppose could be possible.

I was arguing that Odium may not need to Invest in planets to do this, He may be hijacking Ruin's system for His own, if that is possible. But I guess for Odium to have something like a God metal, He might need to Invest somewhere. He could see it as a temporary measure, though. A temporary Investment until He can use His new pawns to free Himself from Braize.

It could be Harmony, but why would he be interested in in the Bands of Mourning? I'm assuming that, because he holds both Preservation and Ruin, he has an intrinsic understanding of all three of the Metallic Arts. He wouldn't need to study the Bands to understand the magic system, and he wouldn't need any tricks with Feruchemical Identity and Investiture to give people powers. Unless he knows that the Scadriens will need this knowledge for something to come, and is trying to lead them to it rather than handing it to them.

It may not have crossed his mind when he chose aluminum to be the Investiture-inhibiting metal (if that's what aluminum does), but it must have when he decided to have everyone walking around with aluminum foil-lined hats.

Okay, this isn't going to be a real theory, but I wanted to throw an idea out to be discussed, and its partly predicated on the material from the sample chapters, so I needed a thread in the BoM spoiler section. According to the Ars Arcanum, Hemalurgy is "dangerous to the Cosmere". You know what else is dangerous to the Cosmere? Odium. And I think it may be for the same reason. Odium is trapped on Braize (somehow) and the only way he seems to be able to have a direct influence on things outside of Braize is through the Voidspren. But if they can only bond with the Parshendi, that is, on a Cosmere-scale, fairly limited. Hemalurgic Spikes allow Ruin to influence and directly control pretty much anyone and anything, so far as we know, and Paalm had a Spike which somehow seemed to let another Shard (or entity; I haven't given up on you, Rust!) gain the same influence over her. What if the person influencing Paalm is Odium? We know that there was a Kandra worldhopper, and there's speculation that it could have been Paalm. What if she went to Roshar and got herself spiked by one of His voidbringers (if the Parshendi are the voidbringers)? Because of their so-called fluid bindpoints, I would think that Kandra would be one of the easiest creatures in the Cosmere to spike correctly without Ruin's intrinsic knowledge of Hemalurgy. So Paalm comes back to Scadrial with some new spikes and a new voice in her head. Somehow, maybe through experimentation, she figures out how to charge and bind a Spike such that it can grant her Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities. Then she dies and the other Kandra end up with her spikes to study. What if a somewhat amoral and ambitious Kandra (looking at you VenDell) decides that the best way to study the spikes would be to try them out? Now Odium has a new servant who he can continue to study Hemalurgy through, as well as spike at least one other Kandra (assuming that the Kandra who calls herself MeLaan is in on the plan). If Odium can develop an advanced enough understanding of Hemalurgy to successfully spike humans, or create hemalurgic constructs, he could begin to spread his influence across the Cosmere, which would be very dangerous indeed. WOW, that got real tinfoil, real fast. I still think the possibility should be considered, though.

PC as in politically correct? Crustacean-American

I think I'm just resistant to VenDell being evil because it feels lazy. We've already had the Kandra antagonist (no, Paalm wasn't really evil, but she was the antagonist). The situations are different enough that it wouldn't feel too "done," but I still want to believe that VenDell is just being manipulative to get Wax to help him, and not necessarily because of any evil intentions.

Did he claim to not want the bands? I read it as "we need to get back Reluur's spike so he can lead us to the Bands," but I'm not sure. Did it say what Blessing ReLuur had? I wonder if its a problem of mixing Blessings. TenSoon has Potency and Presence, maybe ReLuur had Awareness or Stability? But I would think that the Kandra would have known of this problem. Maybe no one with the right Blessings was willing to go temporarily insane to help out ReLuur? Also, the Kandra having Paalm's spikes (plural) of the unknown metal worries me. It reminds me of the experiments with Parshendi forms. What if they put in the unknown Blessings and were immediately corrupted by Something. That would explain why MeLaan might be helping in this possibly evil plot.

Much as breaking the Nahel bond damages your ability to Surgebind, I think that Harmony breaking his bond with Scadrial would damage, if not destroy, the Metallic Arts.

What do you mean "permanently"? Are you referring to the fact that you don't get memories back when you stop storing them, in the same way as, say, strength or speed? Because I think Bendalloy energy works in the same way. You store Calories, and you don't get them back until you tap them. Or at least that's how I interpreted it.

That makes sense, he was a ridiculously powerful allomancer, and he wouldn't need to too strong in Feruchemy, since he could compound everything.

Huh, so you could possibly harvest the gem without killing the creature? That's certainly more humane, especially if they start trying to domesticate things with gemhearts.

I'm not sure I understand what VenDell was saying about using Identity and Investiture to give anyone powers. Is it that storing Investiture stores, or at least can store, your ability to use Allomancy or Feruchemy itself?

Ooh, I didn't think about the possibility of Ruin spiking them for the harder-to-find powers. Good point. I'm still not sure what you mean by the clue disappearing, though. The Mists weren't snapping 1% of the people into each allomantic ability, because Atium was included, which would make the total 17%, not 16%. I think they were just Snapping a bunch of Mistings, especially the ones who would be helpful in battle (i.e. no aluminum or duralumin gnats).

Have we considered that maybe Ruin just changed the prophesies randomly and they just so happened to line up with Sazed? That's not the kind of thing I would put a lot of thought in to, just throw words in here and there, switch a "shoulders" to an "arms", y'know, the usual stuff you do when you're messing with prophesies. Or what if Ruin changed the prophesies to refer to Sazed intentionally to give the Scadriens a sporting chance. He seems like the kind of guy who would want his enemies to get a fair shake before He smothered them in ash.

The Mists could've Snapped some Mistborn instead of some of the Mistings, I imagine they would be much more helpful in the fight against the Koloss and the Inquisitors. Plus they can burn Atium.

I don't know if they could become a chasmfiend. It's been a while since I've read Stormlight, but isn't their gemheart the only thing that lets them support such a massive body? Maybe a Kandra could simulate that somehow, I'm not sure.

They can be, but Brandon has been very tight-lipped about Hemalurgy, and telling us that there are only metal spikes tells us almost as much about Hemalurgy as telling us that there could be spikes of other materials.

A lot of those things are fairly standard fantasy tropes for the "evil emperor" character. And, if you want to build up the stakes after you've killed off that emperor, you need someone even more powerful, like a god. That all being said, maybe Brandon deserves a royalty check or two.

This is completely off topic, but were the Mists Snapping people who could've Snapped in one of the conventional ways (beatings, etc.) too? Because if they were, I wonder if they did Snap anyone with latent Mistborn abilities, but we never knew about it because it either happened too far from where the plot was happening or they never realized that they'd Snapped.

"And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen." -Hoid

We've been considering the intentions of Preservation and Ruin, but there's one individual who we've left out: Hoid I know it isn't confirmed that Hoid founded the Worldbringers, but he is connected to the Worldsingers. and we know that the Worldsingers and Worldbringers have similar origins I think its reasonable to assume that he was involved in the founding of both groups. If he founded the Worldbringers, he may have founded, or expanded, the Terris religion. If this is true, then I believe that Preservation's goal was to name a successor (Vin/Alendi) who could take up the power at the Well and kill Ruin. I think this is where his plan ends. With Ruin (Ati) gone, the people of Scadrial are safe. The parts of the prophesy relating to a Worldbringer/Keeper would then have come from Hoid. It's fairly widely believed that the goal of Hoid is to reconstruct Adonalsium. This, then, is a very relevant quote from the Terris Prophesies. Note the phrasing. "Begin to find its whole". If the creation of Harmony was the end-goal, the reuniting of Ruin and Preservation would not be the beginning, it would be the final whole. I think this was actually the first major step in Hoid's plan to rebuild Adonalsium, or it was at least an experiment of Hoid to see if Adonalsium even can be put back together. He may have even been involved in the event which introduced Feruchemy into the Terris bloodline, so that Worldbringers could exist. We know that Lerasium can be used to rewrite your sDNA in ways besides giving access to Allomancy. If there was one person besides Leras who could've known how to do this, it would be Hoid. This could also be how he gained Feruchemy. He taught them how to gain the power, and gained it himself as well. I think I've started to ramble, so I'm going to cut myself off now. Thoughts? EDIT: I stumbled upon a WoB which I think supports the idea that the parts of the prophesy which point to a Worldbuilder/Keeper/Sazed came after Preservation trapped Ruin and sacrificed his mind.