zeppomarks

Well we don't have any proof either way yet. But, you're probably right. Compounding occurs when an allomancer burns a metal that they have feruchemically charged, but since the medallions have no identity, any allomancer could burn the metal, as long as they were the appropriate misting. So if Wayne had swallowed bits of that highly charged ferruchemical gold reserve, he would have been able to compound gold. Wax could compound the weight medallion. But the reason why this doesn't replace hemalurgy is because one would have to be both a nicrosil ferring (to fill nicrosil with the investiture of whatever their misting ability is) and an aluminum ferring in order to remove one's identity while charging the nicrosil with allomantic investiture. As it stands right now, the only way to achieve this is through hemalurgy since no one is born with more than one allomantic or ferrochemical ability. Also, I believe that since Hemalurgy takes a bit of the soul directly, it's not limited to just taking investiture from Scadrial. It's likely that it could be used to take the abilities from any invested person in the Cosmere if the correct process was known. This is something that the medallions certainly couldn't accomplish without Hemalurgy.

Ah, nice! I really need to read Secret History. There's still a lot nitpicky stuff about the Mistborn books that don't make sense to me, but it seems like every time a new book is released, everything I thought I knew gets shaken up. I love these books.

So a thought just popped into my head. Y'all know how a bonded spren can turn into a shardblade and a bunch of other useful stuff? What if all the standard shardblades were spren that had taken that form for the Knights Radiant they had bonded with, and then the Knights Radiant took the sprens' measurements to lock them in place like in Garanid's Interlude chapter and then hid away the measurement somewhere? That would be why those shardblades scream and that might explain exactly how the Knights Radiant betrayed the spren and why the Stormfather is so miffed with humans. Hm, just a thought.

Tiny one, probably obvious: If Elendel is named after Elend and Vindiel is named after Vin, it stands to reason that Luthadel is named after a man. For awhile I assumed Lutha (or maybe, but unlikely, Luthad?) was female due to the "a" at the end, but the naming convention seems to imply the opposite.

Fair points, @goody153. I've seen those WoBs, too. But, of course, if anyone but Ati and Leras had anything to do with the creation of Scadrial, I doubt he would talk about it. What kind of essence would the third shard leave behind? As far as I know there are no examples of a shard leaving their shardworld willingly, so I'm not sure if this conjecture holds up. Like, Ruin has the crystals and Atium in the Pits of Hathsin and Preservation has the mists, but both of those shards are still on Scadrial, so those examples are moot. Then you've got Devotion, Dominion, and Honor, all of whom were killed by Odium and didn't actually leave their shardworld, thus their shards splintered but are still a part of their respected shardworlds. There is no evidence of what might happen if a shard were to willingly leave their shardworld. As for the extra magic system, I still hold to my hypothesis that Feruchemy is that magic system. There's not really anything about it that reflects Ruin's influence. Plus, there's the peculiarity of when the magic systems seemed to arise. Before Rashek's ascension, Feruchemy was common, however, Allomancy didn't exist until the Lerasium beads were consumed by him and his supporters. And as far as we know, no Hemalurgic being existed prior to The Lord Ruler creating them. Now, to be fair, I have no idea what this means, but it definitely makes Feruchemy stand out among the three in a really odd way.

Didn't MeLaan say in SoS that the Kandra population is locked at about 300 after the Catacendre and that they can't make any more? That's why they didn't want to kill Bleeder. It's weird, cause Harmony reformed the Koloss to be able to reproduce naturally but he didn't seem to extend the same courtesy to Kandra. What's up with that? *sigh* Always another secret... I'm gonna be so relieved/empty inside when the Cosmere series gets wrapped up in a few decades. At least still still have a ton of content to look forward to.

Could it just be Frost and/or The Letter Recipient? Or has it been confirmed that it's not him or he doesn't have a shard or something? I always assumed he had a shard given his place in the Cosmere, but I don't know. I could see Frost having a shard like Wisdom or Patience or something.

Good point, @Jondesu. I've read some folks' speculation on this and it would be crazy, I only refrained from mentioning it because I'm still unsure how investiture interacts. I think I read somewhere that some types of investiture have trouble interacting with invested objects or something? I'm not sure what the details are, but if what you said is possible.... Hoo-boy... Can't wait to read those novels.

And just to dig myself deeper into this ridiculous "Trell/Autonomy helped create Scadrial" nonsense, my stupid brain thought up another possible connection... Take how investiture seems to work. Nalthis only has the shard Endowment, and therefore only has one form of investiture, Awakening. On Roshar you have Surgebinding which, I believe, was created in a cooperative effort between Cultivation and Honor since they were at one point romantically involved and Surgebinding seems to be a mix of creating or recreating things and affecting how something perceives its obligations (i.e. if a heavy object perceives that it's obligation is to fall downward, a lashing simply alters that object's perception so that it thinks it should fall sideways or upwards or whatever). Roshar also has Voidbinding which hasn't really been explored much but is most likely of Odium. Sel is a little different, though still fits with the overall scheme we're looking at. Sel only had two shards, yet have far more than two forms of investiture, however I believe that the many forms of investiture simply stem from how the two shards interact with each other. You have Dominion and Devotion. The forms of investiture on Sel are separated by geographic regions, a la Dominion. However, they all seem to need symbols in order to access the Dor. The more well crafted the symbol, the more potent the effect. This is where Devotion comes in. The closer the symbol is to perfection, the better. Which means that the more devoted the crafter is to their craft and getting the symbol correct, the easier it is to access the Dor. We still don't know the details for Dakhor, but even ChayShan fits this formula. While it's not a written or carved symbol, there are still very specific motions one must make before being able to access the Dor. Now, we get to Scadrial. Allomancy is purely of Preservation. Hemalurgy is purely of Ruin. But what about Feruchemy? Now, it could be argued that it is a mix of both Ruin and Preservation, effectively "ruining" a current ability in order to "preserve" it's use for later. But that's not really what's happening. The Ars Arcanum states that a person is essentially transferring their own capabilities forward in time for when they need them. Feruchemy is "end-neutral" with no power being lost or created. All power in Feruchemy comes directly from one's self and is dependent on no other outside source for power, only a container in which to house that power. This seems super Autonomy-ish to me. Like I said, this can be explained as a combination of ruin and preservation, but that doesn't feel quite as elegant to me, and I've come to expect damnation-near-staggering levels of contemplation and elegance from Mr. Sanderson. On top of this, if one is a believer in the Trell-Autonomy theory (which i is one o dem), why is he so fixated on Harmony's "domination" of Scadrial? He doesn't seem super fussy about Odium trying to destroy Roshar for the last who-knows-how-long. And sure, he might show up in Nalthis to (twenty-year-old reference incoming) "people's elbow" Endowment in one of the future Warbreaker novels, but super doubt it. He just seems way too focused on Scadrial to not have some personal stake in the game. You know, at the beginning of this post I was skeptical of this whole line of reasoning, but I'm just gonna go with it. I mean, if you can't accept your own brand of wacky... Also, just in case folks think I'm trying to jack this thread, that's not my intention. I'm currently trying to put together a comprehensive list of all characters in WoK, WoR, SfSitFoH (fun to type, funner to say), and Warbreaker that may have been WalDo.

This. WoB says that Khriss understands the Cosmere better than anyone, even Hoid, so it feels pretty solid when she says that Hemalurgy is incredibly important to the Cosmere. Now, this probably means that there's something that can be done with Hemalurgy that we haven't been told yet. I'm thinking it's either the control by Harmony that it allows (I sincerely doubt it though), the fact that it just gives a person some other power, including the ability to compound, which as far as I understand the medallions don't do (the most likely possibility, imo), or, due to the fact that they deal with the spiritual realm, maybe they can transfer any power that deals with the physical or cognitive realm to another person, essentially allowing the ability to trade powers (via black market, given the whole murder thing, I'm assuming) between worlds. That last one is obviously crazy, but really difficult to disprove, at least as far as my understanding goes. I'm still not super clear on how investiture works and all that. But I don't see why you couldn't spike a coinshot then pop that spike into some rando from Azir or where ever. Then, boom, Sigzil's cousin is pushing dudes in Shardplate around. Ok, so maybe not, but a guy can dream, right?

Yeah, I'm highly skeptical of my own idea there, however in regards to the above sentence, do we have WoB on this or is this information just from the novels. Because to be fair, he's great at providing misleading or outright incorrect information in the novels based on what would be considered common knowledge for the characters in the book. That's certainly possible, but it does beg the question as to why whoever Trell is would bother Swiper swiping the name of a god that hasn't been worshiped in nearly a millennia and a half, and who holds minimal, if any, sway over the people of Mistborn Era 2. Like, it would certainly make sense that Sazed would have mentioned all of his religions in the Words of Founding, given who he was when he was mortal, but in Era 2 there's no evidence to support this if he did. There are only four religions (Pathism, Survivorism, Sliverism, and Trellism) mentioned throughout all three novels. It doesn't make sense to me with the information we have why a being who isn't the real Trell would take the name. Unless it's actually Trell's jealous brother Nalt come back, but I don't know why that would even be a thing. I really doubt any of this, I'm just kind of throwing stuff out there. You're probably right, but I'm not sure. The last half of BoM was pretty revelatory and game changing. TLM could be the same. Especially if it's going to be leading into Era 3 which will have space travel and such. I could see TLM breaking open a lot of the Cosmere to us. Edit: nvm on that last part. Forgot that Era 4 is space travel. You're probably right, TLM probably won't just bust out and say "Paalm was totally the merchant that got Szeth out of Alethkar!" It'll be a few more years until the Cosmere starts really busting out on us.

So, I'm sure this has been brought up already, but I can't easily find anything so here goes... I believe that the Kandra worldhopper is Paalm. It seems doubtful that the Kandra worldhopper appeared in any of the stories taking place on Sel since they happened before Mistborn Era 1 and WoB says that the Lord Ruler wasn't interested in worldhopping. And since we know that the worldhopper has shown up in another text, it has to either be Warbreaker, Shadows for Silence, Stormlight Archive, or Sixth of the Dusk. Of those five possible texts, all of them except for Sixth of the Dusk take place between Mistborn Era 1 and 2. Just going by word count throughout all of those stories, I would say that the Kandra worldhopper showing up in Sixth of the Dusk is certainly possible, albeit statistically unlikely. So, admittedly without any proof, I'm going to assume that the Kandra worldhopper showed up in one of the four texts that takes place between Mistborn Era 1 and 2. This means that they were a servant of Harmony. Now, Mr. Sanderson said, or at least heavily implied, in Dec 2014 that MeLaan is not the worldhopper but that the (at the time) upcoming Mistborn Era 2 novels would give us more options as to who it could be. As far as I remember, the only Kandra introduced in those two novels is Paalm and VenDell. I have no proof that it isn't VenDell, but he doesn't really seem like the ima-shoot-around-the-universe type. Paalm, however, was fanatically loyal to Harmony and would do so in a heartbeat if he was even the slightest bit curious about the rest of the Cosmere, which he certainly is. So, we come to the Odium-laced part of the theory. Trying to guess the future. What I think will end up being revealed, likely in The Last Metal, is that Paalm hopped over to at least one other world, though probably more than one, and that's where she caught the attention of Trell. They probably had some words over Harmony and all that and he was like, "I'm telling you. Someday, he'll ask you to do something that ain't cool and you won't be into it. Just hang on to this spike for me, alright? It might come in handy someday." Badabing badaboom, stuff goes down and Paalm finally realizes that maybe that Trell guy had a point, ditches the two regular spikes, falls onto the Trellium spike, and goes on a riot-riling rampage of revenge. Side note and wild, baseless idea: Do y'all think Trell might be a third shard that created life on Scadrial? There's naught but flimsy connections in my head, but hear me out for a second. It seems wacky to me that life could be created solely by Preservation and Ruin. How does a being that only wants to destroy and another that only wants to preserve come together to make anything? Like it says that Preservation wanted to have kids, but couldn't due to the limitations of the shard. So, he hits up Ruin? How does that make any sense? If Leras was already too bound to his shard, it stands to reason that Ati was too, therefore how could "Lord Kaiju Destroy Everything Jr." help create life? Now, say, if one were to throw another shard into the mix, like, oh I don't know... Autonomy? That sounds like a baby-makin' combination to me. A little bit of Preservation for the desire to live and procreate, a little bit of Ruin for mortality, and a little bit of Autonomy for free will n such. And it would totally make sense why Preservation and Ruin were the only one's around for so long. The nature of their shards compels them to focus their efforts on preserving and destroying Scadrial, respectively, while the nature of Autonomy would compel him not to care in the slightest. Since Preservation and Ruin could keep each other in check, no one was directly controlling the people of Scadrial, so his gift of free will was the strongest. However, once Harmony arose, that balance kind of went out the window with one hand on the reins. And he can't oppose Harmony directly since Harm's got two shards and all. The only bit of evidence for this theory that I can think of, and it's incredibly tenuous evidence, is that Trell has an allomantically active metal associated with him and the only shards revealed to be in any way associated with any sort of metal were Preservation and Ruin with Lerasium and Atium. But then again, it's totally possible that this so called Trellium is just an alloy of one of those two god metals and a base metal though. I mean, the Ars Arcanum hints an another fifteen possible metals, similar to Malatium (the Atium-Gold alloy that doesn't appear anywhere in the Ars Arcanum). Perhaps it's just an alloy of Atium and Aluminum? Alatium? Creating a hemalurgic spike with an alloy combining a god metal with the only allomantically inert metal seems like a good way to hide someone from Harmony. But then again, again, Harmony has no idea what kind of metal it is, and I doubt he wouldn't be able to be like, "Oh, yeah, that's totally a physical manifestation of my power mixed with another metal I totally know." That lends credence to the possibility of another god metal. Plus, the book is called The Last Metal. There's fifteen more alloys to be discovered on Scadrial, but no other metals. This Trellium has to be a completely separate metal, not a combination of two already known metals. TL;DR: I think Paalm is WalDo and maybe, possibly, probably not but who knows, Trell helped create Scadrial. But, with logical arguments to support my theories and stuff. Like I said, I'm sure at least the first one has been brought up by someone before, but I couldn't find it. Edit: Oh, and the strongest clue for identifying the non-Mistborn appearance of the Kandra worldhopper that I know of is that Mr. Sanderson said that he couldn't remember if they had ever had any spoken dialogue during their appearance, which eliminates a TON of characters. You can easily eliminate all major and side characters. Anyone that's had more than a few lines of meaningful dialogue is likely out of the running. Which means we're most likely looking for a character that either didn't speak or had such an incredibly small part that it was easy for the man who wrote it to forget the details. It may not seem like much, but that limits the possibilities to a fraction of the characters.