robardin

I'm thinking of branding the peep in the front center with a shash for "dangerous", LOL.

Exactly. I have no doubt that the titular Lost Metal is NOT atium, exactly because there is a blank display on a pedestal in the Museum of the World of Ash or whatever it was calling Atium "the lost metal". If Rule #1 is "there's always another secret", that means Rule #0 is "if it looks like a secret (to the characters) has been openly spilled (to the reader) in the title, think again".

I figured it was how a coppermind coin like the one Wax was given by Hoid could be produced without the original memory being lost to whoever put it in there: with compounded copper. If a 10x factor is consistent with other kinds of compounding, it would mean the Feruchemist could create 9x or so "cloned" copperminds of some information while tapping the 10th one to put the memory back into his own head.

In addition to this, isn't there also a WoB somewhere about how you can't stockpile Divine Breaths as you could regular ones, because the act of receiving a Divine Breath "instantly heals" you of what ails ya, as a one-shot type of thing? Or at least, a WoB that says that the recipient of a Divine Breath does not become Returned themselves, which is more or less the same thing, isn't it? (As with Calmseer, the last Returned to heal a supplicant - she died, but the supplicant was still just a person, albeit a healed one, not a person with her original Breath plus Calmseer's gift of a Divine Breath).

Ha, never mind the character names fitting on a vanity license plate. How about RUSTRUIN, STORM IT, YUNOKOLO, something like that? How's this for a Dollar and a Dream: in honor of the "who'd win in a race" thread, if I win the Powerball lottery, I promise to get a sports car, put the plate TAPSTEEL on it, and give it away to a random member of this board.

It's hard not to call a magic system evil when it's predicated on gaining power via the death of another already holding that power. You could construct ethical frameworks around it, like Spook's surmising of voluntary spiking from a terminally ill Metalborn, but it's so easy to go from there to considering a "retirement age" for the elderly, or what the Set appear to have done in kidnapping and murdering people.

This one made me literally LOL when I read it.

By Harmony's lost testicles! Well, that's not one we've seen, but it should be one of the more vulgar variants on post-Catacendre Scadrial. "A rumble of thunder, as from far away under the cloudless sky, could be heard in the sudden shocked silence."

The way I pictured it, both medallions have three nicrosilminds, storing the ability to use F-nicrosil, F-aluminum, A-aluminum in A, and F-nicrosil, F-aluminum, and A-aluminum in B. There are no aluminumminds in the medallions - just the "loose" aluminum needed to shunt off the Identity, some way to compound the ability to use F-nicrosil in a nicrosilmind, and a way to recharge the nicrosilmind that stores the power of F-aluminum. But I see the point that Medallion B having A-aluminum for compounding aluminum is beside the point, since what we need to compound is not aluminum but the power of F-aluminum - which is nicrosil based storage. Still, with a medallion like A that gives compounded Nicrosil, you can create lots of compounded Nicrosil enabling medallions, as long as you can unkey them. Which needs F-aluminum. Which you can store the ability for, with nicrosil, which due to being able to compound nicrosil, you can do not only without a loss, but with a net gain of Investiture. Right? There is something here. I waas also confusing the fact that you need to store different powers in different nicrosilminds, as with different senses of sight, hearing, etc., in different tinminds, from the generic ability of a Soulbearer to store Investiture. Because if you could compound nicrosil - if you could tap two nicrosilminds, one to become a Soulbearer and the other to become a Nicroburst - you could compound nicrosil, and refill BOTH of those nicrosilminds with Soulbearing-ness and Nicroburst-ness, with enough left over to fill other nicrosilminds with the same. Which means that's all you really need, right? Medallion A? You can compound nicrosil, so refilling the nicrosilmind you tapped to be a Trueself (which you needed to refill the nicrosilminds for Soulbearing-ness and Nicroburst-ness as unkeyed ones, shunting off Indentity into a loose aluminummind) is simply a matter of switching "flavors" of Investiture to fill the nicrosilmind for Trueself-ness? I guess it boils down to how compounding Investiture actually works, which maybe is limited when it comes to storing "temporary" abilities versus innate ones.

Here's another conclusion: whoever has the Bands of Mourning, which grants all the Metallic powers, can compound in any of them, just like TLR did. So you could refill each of the bands ad infinitum, with a supply of that band's metal available. Which includes creating more of them. If you had all the metals on hand, and could keep from getting confused as to which metal you were doing what with (F-zinc and a compounded zincmind would probably help!), you could just go on creating more and more Bands of Mourning. This seems pretty rusting overpowered. Have I missed something? As compounding is an "end-positive" magic that "draws on the power of Preservation" to fuel it, at what point would a planet full of artifact-assisted Compounders end up drawing all of Preservation's power between them? (Would that mean Harmony "goes Ruin"?)

Allik said that only a few times had he seen a medallion with as many as three powers - never with more. So however they create medallions, it's either (a) not done with medallions (more on this later), or (b) done with some combination of up-to-three power medallions. So here is the latter mechanism. The Sovereign need only have left the Southerners with these two medallions: Medallion A: A three-power medallion with nicrosilminds for F-nicrosil, A-nicrosil, and F-aluminum. Medallion B: A three-power medallion for F-nicrosil, F-aluminum, and A-aluminum. Along with a supply of non-medallion (loose) nicrosil and aluminum, for compounding. Holding medallion A, tap the nicrosilmind that grants F- and A-nicrosil - you can now compound nicrosil! Fill some of the F-nicrosil ability into the loose nicrosil, eat it, and burn it. And now, store as much or more of F-nicrosil than you tapped out back into the nicrosilmind in medallion A, while also charging the F-nicrosil ring in the medallion B. While doing so, you need to tap the nicrosilmind in medallion A that grants F-aluminum, and store your Identity into a spare aluminumind, so that the F-nicrosil you're "charging" into medallions A and B are unkeyed. That means medallion A can have an infinite supply of unkeyed F-nicrosil, while using a dwindling supply of F-aluminum. Enter Medallion B, which has the opposite compounding. Tap its F-nicrosil, F-aluminum and A-aluminum: you are now an aluminum compounder who can store F-aluminum into an aluminummind, burn it, and refill the unkeyed F-aluminum and A-aluminum metalminds in Medallion B, and also the F-aluminum nicrosilmind in Medallion A. You'd use up the unkeyed F-nicrosil store in Medallion B in doing so, but that gets refilled from using Medallion A. Note that you don't need to be a Metalborn of any kind to do this. Anybody could shuffle between the two medallions to keep them up and running, so long as there were nicrosil and aluminum on hand to fill as metalminds, and then to burn to compound. Heck, since compounding is a 10x yield, you could create even more pairs of A/B medallions! To create "ability" medallions, you just need a Ferring or Misting of any type, and give them Medallion A, along with some aluminum to drain off Identity. With F-nicrosil and F-aluminum, they can create first an unkeyed "ability" nicrosilmind, like F-brass for a heat medallion, then (if applicable) a matching unkeyed metalind (like a brassmind) filled with unkeyed heat.

But why would he have created something like it? His whole thing was to make himself the only one capable of such Allomantic strength, not to mention the only Fullborn. He mutilated and all but eradicated his own people, the Terris, just to prevent Compounders from occuring naturally. I don't see him creating a way to allow Joe Schmo to become a temporary (but rechargeable) Fullborn. I think the whole legend of TLR's arm bracers being an artifact that would grant you all his powers was a blind set up by (of course) Kelsier, to seed the idea of such a thing in people's minds, when in fact the "bands" were not armbands at all, and never were. While it's not impossible that TLR used his armbands for more than just the atiumminds of compounded youth he needed to stay alive, there is no reason he'd have made them an unkeyed atiummind, or to have stored a nicrosilmind with the ability to tap it, in the same artifact.

I'd be interested in reading the phrasing there. Does it say when he did it? After all, TenSoon straight up tells Wax that he is "Harmony's Ruin" to his Preservation (as agents), and as Marasi notes, his modus operandi is to "break things with style".

I've wondered this too. Also that Sazed didn't heal the koloss, who in Secret History Instead he made them "breed true" as a species. He also didn't, say, restore the First Generation of kandra back into Terrismen, though maybe they didn't want to after over 1,000 years. The Terris people sure could've used an infusion of ancient Feruchemist blood after all the Keepers had been harvested. I think them being hemalurgically physically altered - not just spiritweb enhanced for stolen powers - with Ruin's power may preclude Harmony from un-Ruining them.

Hmmm. A meat in our world that is produced factory-style (a la Soulcasting), which makes it "far cheaper than other kinds of meat", that "some disdain due to its origin" but "is often used to cheaply feed large quantities of people, such as bridgemen"... So, like this "miracle meat" that fed millions of meals to GIs in WW2?

I hope so. There's a bit of a dark expectation on my part that the veneration implied in the appellations of "Firemothers", "Firefathers", and "Great Metallic Ones" are honorary... But that in practice, Metalborn in the South are much less free than their peers, being used as human generators of power. In a best case scenario, Metalborn have to do an regular turn of duty related to medallion and cube making, kind of like being in the Navy Reserve or something. In a worst case scenario... They may not even be "free ranging", if you get my meaning. After all, Allik says that without the heat medallions, "all five peoples" in the South would have died out. Which means every single person in the Southern hemisphere depends on regular use of one of them just to stay alive. Less so than being stranded on the frozen mountaintop, but still, that's a LOT of heat medallions that need to be filled, at least some every day, with unkeyed heat. There may be some kind of artificial Compounding going on, but if that were the case, the Southern Hemisphere would actually be far more powerful than the North, unless vastly outnumbered, and until the North catches up with the technology involved.

I do feel like Brandon is setting up Gaz for redemption of a sort. And I think there's something cooking with what Gaz described as shadows fluttering in the corners of his one-eyed vision, echoing what Gavilar mentioned to Kaladin as shadows he saw that "went away" when Kaladin became his bodyguard. I don't think that means they're being set up to be KRs, not by a long shot, but Gaz has an arc in store for him.

It was me, initially, until I went back and re-read the scene on my phone just now. My original point was that I found it interesting that we've only seen Feruchemical abilities stored in the Southern medallions, even though it seemed like an Allomantic Push was designed into making the skimmer go. I remembered Wax's Pushing ability being required, and did not remember the detail of Allik using the cube to make the propellers go once they were clear - I only remembered something leveraging his Allomancy and then "running with it". That still means the cube must have originally come pre-loaded from the Motherland with a Push, probably just to make the propellers go, as the skimmer was probably designed to come free and drop from the ship while in the air, rather than needing Wax to Push it off into the sky from the ground. And be a one-shot use, by design, since none of the airship crew were Coinshots. Does that imply that Southern technology uses medallions for Feruchemy and cubes for Allomancy?

Wax pushes off by himself at first, but after a while, Allik asks for the "primer cube" and charges it against Wax, then drops it into place to keep the Push going. hich suggests it was supposed to have been there all along, presumably pre-charged with Pushing? So yeah, there was no plate to push off on, it was the cube I was remembering.

I like that. An allomantic "grenade" of A-steel that could be pre-loaded by a Coinshot to push off (without any need for a nicrosilmind or a vial of steel) at the flip of a switch. In fact that was possibly even its original function, before being removed by The Set and used as a Leechbomb on the train (and then acquired by Wax and co.). By design it'd be a one-shot use, then, since the Southerners don't have a lot of Metalborn, and "refilling" the ettmetal device would require them to go home to do so. That only highlights what I was saying, though. Whatever Metalborn the Southerners have seem to be very Feruchemiically skewed. Yet Allik said they didn't have ANY Metalborn before the Sovereign came ("he taught us that the Metalborn were pieces of God, ... though we didn't have any of those at first"), or maybe they were just all not Snapped yet. Hmm.

"What I am owed... will come to me eventually! Every bit of it! I will drown in it, stonewalker!"

Ah, I took your "no" to mean "that wouldn't work" (to you-know-what to you-know-which), versus distinguishing between "releasing" and "obtaining" Investiture as when using Allomancy.

But he did heal is nearsightedness with Stormlight, suggesting he truly is a Radiant, unless there is some kind of dark Nahel bond a human can form with a voidspren that also grants healing. What's more curious is that his vision would be healed that way, but not his epilepsy. I guess because he's always been epileptic, but not always nearsighted? How long has it been since he had one of his spells, anyway?

Off the top of my head, I can only recall Feruchemical abilities stored in them in a nicrosilmind, along with a metalmind with something pre-loaded to tap, or an empty one to allow you to fill them: F-brass and a brassmind pre-loaded with body heat F-iron and a (mostly empty) ironmind to fill with weight (for taking off in the aircraft) F-duralumin and a duraluminmind pre-loaded with Connectivity, allowing communication in foreign lands F-copper and a coppermind with a pre-loaded memory (of the Sovereign) Other than the Bands of Mourning, we haven't seen an Allomantic power stored in a medallion, have we? Yet to make the skimmer Wilg take off, Allik needed Wax to Push on an ettmetal plate that apparently amplified it into something able to make the entire craft take off (after the non-Skimmer folks used medallions to lighten themselves). So that implies there should have been a medallion somewhere granting A-steel, and a vial of Allomantically usable steel powder or flakes, that we didn't see. Also, it seems that tapping on a nicrosilmind is relatively efficient, on a par with a brassmind, in that those heat medallions evidently last quite a while - and to use them at all, the F-brass ability must be tapped at least as long as the brassmind would be (since your average Southerner would only be able to use the brassmind as long as the nicrosilmind allowed them to do so).

OK, but is that not effectively the same thing vis-a-vis what you spoilered wrt Warbreaker...