Spoolofwhool

Oh sorry, I missed the part where Chaos said that Brandon confirmed it. Would be nice to have an actual transcript of the answer though.

He's said something similar previously, so you're probably right on your interpretation. Anyhow, I think it would give the feruchemical attribute.

So, theory, not fact. Make sure you keep that in mind when you're using it to argue a point. Overall, that post is interesting, even if it is slightly outdated. I agree with most points made.

I disagree with the idea that you can burn the metal and not gain any power. The way I see it, a metal is burned because power is gained. As the allomantic investiture is drawn from its source, it's filtered through the metal into a specific form, during which the metal is destroyed. Therefore, to destroy the metal without gaining any power would mean that you are somehow drawing power out, but then it is just vanishing before it can reach you proper.

Cosmere breaks. Honestly, i have no idea or speculation too much we don't know.

Sel, the focus appears to be conceptual too. While the concepts of the symbols might appear in the cognitive realm, how they interact with the power would probably look weird.

You could potentially get around the identity problem if the person used to charge the spike or the person trying to burn the spike have no identity at the appropriate moments.

There's a WoB that says that you wouldn't be able to burn the spike unless it was made from you. I'll have to check.

I would think yes, because it's invested. Although, technically it's the plants growing on the sand which is invested, not the sand. This is for a different reason than why metals glow though. I think I read somewhere that metals glow because they're a screen over the spiritual power, like a piece of fabric over a window when it's really bright outside. I'll have to check for a source though.

The identity of the hemalurgic charge would interfere with burning the spike unless it's being burned by the person who was used to create the spike, or possibly someone lacking spiritual identity.

Fascinating discussions. Can't do much about it now but I'd like to offer two thoughts. First of all, VenDell did imply that a ferring without identity could tap a keyed metalmind, at least that he considered it a possibility after experimentation. This indicates to me, along with other information from WoBs, that identity causes interference which prevents tapping or burning. Removing identity from one party removes the interference. Secondly, I don't think the feruchemical charge is releases during compounding. My understanding of the process is that the charge in the metal is destroyed along with the metal, but it filters the allomantic power into a duplicate of the charge. This goes directly into the body of the allomancer as if they had tapped the charge.

Personally, I doubt that Honor created the humans on Roshar. The usage of the title feels more symbolic and more with the intent of falling in line with Kaladin's beliefs, as Vorinism believes that the Almighty created humans, and the Stormfather, is in part, manipulated by people's cognitive impression of him.

They're the names of aons, but the aonic continent has a script which spells the name of the aons. That script is what I'm imagining to have the spellings for the aons to be three characters long. I think there's a fairly good chance that gems are not analogous to metals in the Rosharan magic systems compared to the Scadrian magics. The strongest reason I think this is because surgebinding has practically no connection to gems in its usage, with the only only connection being soulcasting which does require different gems for its magic, but which has been designated as an exception. Furthermore, recently, Brandon has described the process of binding of the surge of gravitation as being accessed through a filter of Cultivation and Honor. This seems to point towards the spren, which we've been told are made of Cultivation and Honor, and this filtering is close to what we know of how the foci work. Therefore, I'm thinking that the focus of Roshar is spren, or more generally, splinters. We also know that they're involved in fabrials.

The PA system could also work if you have CCTV as well. That would you could see everything in the room. Just imagine the God King in some sort of command bunker with a bank of monitors and a microphone, ready to start awakening things. Another question would be the range of mental awakening, whether it requires contact as well.

Oops. Good point, and good point though. Since the words are being "translated" into english characters, it wouldn't be that hard to postulate that "sh" and "th" sounds are one character in aonic script.

Shin are the most white. Alethi have an asian cast.

There are eight levels of sand masters and eight diems. Sel being three is fits too. There's also the fact that there are three separate domains on Sel, and that all the aons use three letters.

Well yes, I didn't say it was useless, I just said it was inefficient because it takes away one of the greatest facets of feruchemy: the power to control the amount of attribute tapped. You are correct, they wouldn't gain the entire metalmind charge compounded at once, though I guess I did imply that, but the compounded charge over the burn time of the metal, presumably at a constant amount.

I see what you mean, but I don't see that interpretation. To me, nothing seems to be indicated from the quote that he was trying to add magic systems because it fit the structure in place or that he stopped and created an exception to reinforce the storytelling. To me, the quote seems to be saying that he started with an approach where he thought that a lot of varied magic systems would be interesting, then switch mindsets and realized that a fewer number of systems but better defined would build the wold better. This wouldn't create an exception as long as he continued to stay within the structure he had in place, and there has been nothing, as far as I can tell, to say that he hasn't. The thing you seemed to have missed, is that my issue with the number of magic systems and associate variations to be the result of a mathematical function from the attribute of the shards was not because it doesn't fit the world structure presented, but rather because your reasoning for why he would do so was something I found to be poor. You argued that he would change the mathematical function used because it would make the narrative easier and more interesting to write, not because it conformed to some underlying structure in the Cosmere. Make no mistake, I have nothing against the multiple mathematical functions idea save that it I don't ascribe to the idea that the numbers are associated with the shards and that we haven't seen a sign of different mathematical functions so that I don't see why we should be adding unneeded complexity to the idea. No, as I said, my issue is that you argued for it from a narrative perspective versus a Cosmere mechanics perspective, and I don't think narrative perspectives have any real merit for explaining a world structure theory. This doesn't mean that you cannot use the narrative as a reason to induce a world structure change; this just means, in my opinion, that a properly defined change in the world structure needs to be made in order to explain the narrative.

This theory is very plausible, and I see no reason why an allomancer wouldn't be able to burn and compound the charge of an appropriate unkeyed metalmind. The only issue however is that doing so is inefficient. Part of the reason why compounding is so powerful is that the twinborn can use their feruchemical powers to store the generated charge, resulting in rapid attribute storage compared to a normal feruchemist. Without the ability to store, the allomancer would just receive a massive attribute burst which would then fade.

Gems shatter when you pull stormlight out of them quickly I think. Similar reason they shatter in soulcasters. Otherwise, it's when you have conjoined fabrials applying a force on each other.

It really doesn't matter how plot-relevant your reference is, please use spoilers. It's just a courtesy and in my opinion, a good precaution to make sure you don't accidentally drop actual plot-relevant stuff. Additionally, just because you don't consider it important, doesn't mean that someone else doesn't. I know for a fact that going forward into a book I'm really looking forward to, I would prefer to have no forward knowledge of, even if said knowledge isn't that significant. You can add spoiler tags manually so there's no excuse for not doing so.

I don't see how you're getting that interpretation. The quote just seems to be saying "Make something consistent and well structured instead of just 'rule of cool'". Nothing about it says that he started adding exceptions to what structures he had already said in place, just that instead of adding more, he reinforced the structure already in place. Creating exceptions doesn't reinforce a structure, nor does it interconnect and consolidate the themes already in place, which is exactly what he said he did.

That's a possibility. The way I see it though, is that the plate runs off of stormlight. When radiants wear it, they're the source of stormlight so everything works fine. However, when regular people wear it, they need an alternate stormlight source, hence the need for gems. We see in Kaladin's fight that the shardplate can feed off of the stormlight from a radiant.

The issue though is that there is no real tangible relationship between gemstones and surgebinding. There is really only one as far as I'm aware, that soulcasting requires gems, but that has been stated to be an exception which the other branches of surgebinding do not have. Furthermore, there isn't really a way to expand that to other system since at least two others appear to have non-physical analogues for metals. Therefore, it seems more likely that it just uses metal as its controller for all theft, as we've seen. There's isn't really a need to use other materials either, as far as I can tell, as with sixteen metals and, if I recall correctly, hundreds of bindpoints, the potential to steal thousands of attributes before even expanding into other materials is there. So you're saying that Brandon would just change up how many variations of the manifestations of investiture would exist just for the sake of making the writing easier? That sounds like killing consistency for the sake of writing, which seems like poor writing, and something completely out of character for him. Therefore, I think that if you're arguing for the variations in magic systems to be based around some function of the numbers of the shards involved, it would have to be consistent throughout all manifestations of investiture.