NovaSeeker

Apologies, I did not mean to sound dismissive. Let me explain myself better. I'm using facts that have happened (Sazed lying, Preservation lying) to support an argument. I'm not claiming my argument IS fact. I'm fully aware that I can't prove that Harmony lied about shoving Lessie into the way of the bullet. All I can do is make a case that it is plausible, given the facts we know. What I meant here is that you're supposition that Ati's personality was arrogant to begin with was pure conjecture with no basis in what's been written. It's based on not trusting the only source we have, and my response to that is "If you're not going to trust the only source we have, then you can't make any suppositions on the topic because then it can be anything." If Hoid's letter is suspect, then Ati's original personality can be ANYTHING and no useful argument can be drawn from it. (Example: "Well we can't trust Hoid's assement of Ati just being kind and generous. He was probably a serial killer all along. Serial killers are sometimes good at faking being charming, so he probably just fooled Hoid.") Also, I apologize if I've avoided and jumped around specific points you've tried to make. I was attempting to avoid spoilers for Secret History. Now that it's the 9th, I can include them in a spoiler. Secret History spoiler

I'm pretty sure from my understanding of events and Cosmere's cosmology that it would be visible in any era. Scadrial, Threnody, and Roshar are all in separate solar systems, orbiting their own suns. The dense patch of red stars is visible in the night sky from each of these's stars orbits. A minor adjustment (on the astronomical scale) of Scadrial's orbit wouldn't make a difference.

What does copper let you do? Copper = Knowledge = Power. (Copper let Sazed save the world, recall) Also I may be mistaken but I thought through Identity shenanigans that the Bands of Mourning also turned you into a full Mistborn? In which case, copper would be present to let you burn copper... I thought...

I don't think that's necessarily true. Look at tin and pewter. Those have wildly different effects, and pewter can be argued to be the more "powerful" of them (Spook would definitely tell you so). Even better, look at copper and bronze. You can say that copper is more powerful than bronze, since a smoker's coppercloud can (assuming equal allomantic strength) perfectly hide from a seeker's magic-sense (AND it has a second effect of making you immune to two other metals. So gold does something seemingly useless. That doesn't tell you anything about what it's alloy does, because there's no indication of the relative strengths between a metal and its alloy (before you make and test it, which is what Kelsier was doing during the book).

Ahh, that's true. If he admitted to being an "accidental" science teacher, then, he would have to falsely "admit" to not being the one to invent the tech. I didn't catch that because by that time I had already suspected Prof of being a gifter.

Hmm. Looks like we were both right. (This is me pretending to salvage some dignity from actually being wrong). Yeah, I was thinking of definitions 1, 3, 4, and 5. (I knew of 6, a choir of angels, but it seemd irrelevant to the discussion.) I will say that I still think that "Dominion" is not a verb. It's the synonym to a noun form of a verb. That seems like a bunch of semantic hoops to jump through to fit the "only actions or traits" theory. Has it been confirmed by WoB that Intents are always personality traits or actions? Or is that just the current supposition based on available evidence? Because to me, "Fortune" just feels like it has the right amount of gravitas.

Hmm. Something tells me Kelsier is (for the moment) out of Trell's weight division. Trell is giving Harmony a run for his money, and Harmony is currently the biggest confirmed heavyweight there is (He scares even Odium, He-Who-Shatters-Shards.) My theory is that Trell has something to do with the patch of red stars in the night sky, visible from Scadrial, Threnody, and Greater Roshar. This has always seemed portentous to me, a bizarre patch of bright, discolored stars visible from multiple points in the Cosmere. Trell's mythology about being the god "of many eyes" either directly or implicitly (I forget which) refers to this patch of red stars visible from Scadrial There's also the fact that the Set's Faceless Immortal has red eyes. Red eyes -> Red Stars -> Eyes of Trell

Wax's story arch may be nearing it's end... but Harmony's may not be. Who knows, his ability to "make the tough calls" as I posit, may be a plot point in either of the next two trilogies. Or maybe Harmony becomes even more distant as time goes on and stops proving his existence to people.... *shrug*

So... it has the complete set of metals?

What makes you say there's no copper in there?

I believe what actually made him stay was the directive to "Do better." He's determined to get back to the physical plane so he can, in fact, actually do better. But then he goes around and ignores Leras's admonition that men's souls are not his toys, and starts planning on how to use them like legoblocks to build himself a new body. (using hemalurgical spikes)

Weeell, I think it's a bit different. I've been able to support my claim about Harmony's falsehood with precedent and at least some modicum of logic. We can disagree on whether that logic is correct, but there are facts that can be drawn on to support it. The question of what Ati was really like as a person before taking up the Shard, though, has only one source, Hoid's Letter. To claim that only source is invalid means we know NOTHING about Ati's personality pre-Shard, so no arguements can be made either way.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. I think it is far too early to suggest literally the only thing we know about Ati pre-influence wasn't indicative of what he was actually like. What you say COULD be the case, but I think it's grasping at straws. There's too little to support it. Hoid's letter says that Ruin twisted him, and without any other evidence to suggest it, there's no reason to assume this isn't true.

There's always going to be someone willing to do it. Whether they are just athiest and progressive ("For progress!") or are awaiting the sweet release of death, who knows. I honestly doubt that the plethora of possibilities for the human psyche wouldn't produce even ONE volunteer.

I just read that short story yesterday, but I admit I was reading it in a rush. (I had just bought Secret History, but then figured I might want to read Eleventh Metal first). I may have missed the mention of an actual malatium bar, but I think all Kelsier grabbed was the notebook written by the noble documenting his experiments.

Lets look as what Hoid specifically said: As in... it's inside his skin. Because he swallowed it. (And then burned it so now its a permanent part of him... and his skin)

We know that Ati was a kind and generous man. We can only surmise that the Shard changed him into the deceitful psycopath he was. Further, I do not think of Ruin as a devil on Sazed's shoulder. I think of Ruin giving Sazed the... moral capacity to make "destructive" decisions. Let me give an example: How far would you go to save a child's life? Would you tell a lie? Would you steal? Would you hurt someone? Would you permanently maim someone? Would you kill someone? I think having the force of Ruin be a part of you makes you more able to say yes to more of those questions. Answering yes to them becomes less "morally painful" to you. Do I think that Harmony was influenced to destroy Wax's mental and emotional well being for shits and giggles? No, I think Harmony was influenced to accept the destruction of Wax's mental and emotional well being as being necessary for the greater good.

I don't think, statistically speaking, every last person asked would say no. That's a little too "neat" to make the world and society feel real. (It reads too much like a story and not a plausible event.) I think it makes more sense to say that Spook is innocent of any wrong doing. He developed a humane way of spiking people (complete anesthetization of the voluntary donor and recipient, followed by painless euthenization if the donor survived the spiking maimed but still not quite dead). But, once you know something and share it, it's hard to keep the genie in a bottle. The Set, if they were not given Hemalurgy by this outside "Trell" influence, most likely can trace the origin of their knowledge to Spook. But that doesn't mean he condones their actions.

Ah, but Harmony is not just Sazed/Preservation. There is a LOT of Ruin in him. (You could say, there is the sum total of ALL of Ruin in him.) Is he completely Ruin? Would he assume direct control of all kandra and kolos and heavily spiked people all the times? No, because he's Harmony, not Ruin. But he DOES have a dark side. And I AM worried about what that's done to Sazed. (Also remember that Preservation was not above killing one sixteenth of one sixteenth of any given population that was exposed to full-strength Mist.)

I believe it goes like this. Kelsier Snaps at the Pits, kills all the guards, steals a butt load of Atium (most of which went to paying for OreSeur's Contract) Kelsier goes to Gemmel for Mistborn training. Gemmel is bonkers and is influenced by Ruin. This lets Ruin guide Kelsier to a specific noble doing allomancy experiments. Kelsier takes the dead noble's notes (which, no matter what the noble was actually researching, could have been altered by Ruin to give the exact mix of gold and atium needed to produce the allomantic alloy of malatium) Kelsier takes some gold and some of the Atium he stole from the Pits, and makes the alloy himself or has it made for him.

Well, I don't think so. I mean, sure, he's technically lying about the tech itself being important, but it makes sense for how a "good gifter" might view his powers. That they don't actually belong to him. It's the mindset that probably allows him to remain in control. Unless... Prof has actually been evil all along? He has bad intentions even when he ISN'T using his powers (maybe some sort of long con to gift his powers away until all Epics are dead, THEN take them back and use them to rule the world?)

Pathfinder, I respect that you disagree with me, and your opinions. But I feel the need to debate further the points you just brought up, so allow me to do so, and do not feel that you cannot also continue the debate. I like healthy, friendly debate. For Sazed and Preservation's duplicity, my examples are not about quantity, but quality. (And I do think it was the Shard that influenced Leras to scheme around the deal with Ati. By this time, Leras was already influenced by the Shard he held, enough that he couldn't directly fight Ati because doing so would not fit with Preservation's Intent. But apparently breaking your word in order to ultimately Preserve? That's fine.) In either case, both Sazed and Preservation are shown to lie. Do they do it often? I'll grant you, no, they do not. But do they do it when it's really freaking important? Evidence shows that, yes, they do.

Yeah. I think it was even said that David's dad wore a comic book logo t-shirt to the bank in the prologue. So in the Reckoners world, they probably had DC and Marvel comics, and when you need a symbol for everything a heroic Epic could be, obviously you go for Superman. Makes perfect sense! I've started reading Firefight. No big predictions so far. I do have a new theory about Prof's past, but just from thinking about more things from Steelheart, not anything said in Firefight.

I'll point out, again, that both Preservation and Sazed have proven to be duplicitous in pivotal situations of great importance, always for the greater good. And now Sazed has a dark force of entropy and death that is influencing him, a force that, previously, had no compunctions against lying to everybody and everything. As for why Harmony doesn't just act like Ruin all the time, if he can? Well, because he's not all Ruin. Basically I don't trust Sazed to be Sazed anymore. I'm worried about what the Ruin part of him is influencing him to do. He was already willing to lie before when it was for what he thought was the "greater good". Now that he has the literal embodiment of destruction influencing his thoughts, would he also be willing to destroy the life of one of his chosen servants, who he would normally let act as she wishes but in this situation it is too important to let her do so? I think he would. (Also I never thought Bloody Tan was controlled by Harmony, so I can't speak to that theory.)

Well okay then. I'll submit to popular opinion.