robardin

Right... Now I'm thinking of that computer game, "Undertale". STAY DETERMINED!

Eddie Redmayne would be more suited as Ruin, I think, as pre-Ascension Ati was "a kind, generous fellow" with red hair. It'd be really fun to see him play against type as Ruin, too, especially since for the events of the Well of Ascension, we wouldn't see him on-screen yet, just year his voice telling Zane to "kill him!", and then to Vin at the Well, telling her to "do the right thing". (Which would be an indication to a movie viewer that they were the same agent, that the voice at the Well was not Preservation - that would not be obvious to a book reader, but that's OK with me.)

That's right. Many here even count for an aggregate of multiple single nerds. Compounding, you see.

In "Mistborn: The Hero of Ages", Vin and Elend have discovered Electrum, the alloy of gold that Elend calls "poor man's atium". Its Allomantic effect is for the burner to see his/her own potential future(s) "for a few seconds" - the counterpart to gold's effect being to see one's own alternate past. They use it for its side effect of confusing an atium burner's future visions involving the one burning electrum. In another Cosmere novella, "Sixth of the Dusk", we see someone (the eponymous 6-D) with the (bonded) ability to see visions of his possible near-futures, and using it to avoid deadly traps, or to sense great impending danger. So it seems like it could be a "poor man's atium" in the offensive sense as well as the defensive, then, in the post-Catacendre world that is without atium. In a fight, the ability to see which of your actions or inactions would lead to you getting hurt or killed in the next few seconds, or to spot any possible quick-winning moves you could pull off, would be extremely valuable. And an Electrum-Compounding Twinborn could possibly see further into his/her own future than just a few seconds, or else just super-leverage a supply of Electrum to be able to walk around as a constant Oracular savant who could never be surprised without extremely elaborate planning.

I've also wondered if "atium ingestion to restore neutrality from a slightly-Preservation-tilted Scadrial normal human = Feruchemist". (Was going to write something exploring that as one of my first Theories here, and found this on a search :)). But that's not really possible, because one of Brandon's annotations to HoA (I think it was) said that obligators would spike the punch bowl at noble balls with atium dust to Seek out atium Mistings, relying on them all having been Snapped earlier in life with a routine near-death beating to flush them out (who'd only been lacking the atium on hand, and the very idea of testing for a Seer afterward, to have done it already). If a normal Scadrian ingesting atium were all it took to make a Feruchemist, the Lord Ruler would not have been looking to find them in the noble population (the Allomancer pool) that way, running the side risk of creating a bunch of new Feruchemists among them. (Or even any skaa who surreptitiously drank some leftover punch later while cleaning up!) Plus, that setup would imply it would not be possible both to be P-neutral (Feruchemist) and P-triple-plus (Mistborn) at the same time, which it clearly was.

While the guards searched through the rest of his clothes for information or weapons, Sazed tapped the crumby cookieminds tucked in his underwear waistband. They never think a eunuch has anything to hide in there, he thought. I'm not exactly glad for that, but at least it is proving useful now. These crumbs don't hold much, but... In a sudden burst, he drew upon several hours' worth of stored glibness from his oatmealcrumbs, and suaveness from the chocochipcrumbs. Together, they made him about as effective as a good Soother or Rioter would be in convincing people to trust him, in a way that was undetectable by any Seeker, or trained for by any obligator. But just as he began talking the two guards into giving him back all his clothes, rings, and books, to release him to return to his Mistress at the ball upstairs, a dark form loomed in the doorway. Oh, no, thought Sazed. A Steel Inquisitor! And he's eating... A macadamia nut cookie... This was not going to go well.

Right, I agree, Stormlight on Roshar is generally a use it or leak it thing. I was suggesting that the very nature of a Nalthian is to stockpile Breaths indefinitely, and so a Returned who can "convert" Stormlight into Breaths for purposes of powering their unique Investiture driven metabolism perhaps could convert it into the same kind of Breath-power needed to Awaken things on Nalthis, as Breath is used for both things there. A walking Investiture battery, if you will, who could harvest cheap Stormlight, stockpile it, and hop away... In fact, the hint that Hoid now has (recently, for him) attained perfect pitch may not be because he has the Second Heightening (200 Breaths). Unless Nalthian Breaths specifically are needed as the "flavor" of Investiture for Heightening - which the reverse conversion, where Stormlight suffices for a Breath requirement, seems to contradict - it could be that it's the nature of a Nalthian to "climb the Heightening ladder" via Investiture, due to their base spark coming from Endowment. What am I getting at? That maybe Hoid has acquired the FIFTH Heightening... By virtue of getting a tiny splinter of Endowment when a Returned somehow decided to give Hoid his/her Divine Breath.

I dunno about all these cookies. Unlike an Allomancer I can't just burn them... They'd just add to the padding Though what would a cookie-burning Misting gain thereby? And what would a Feruchemist store in a cookie? And what cookies qualify as "alloys"? I say I "fell" into Sanderson fandom (Fanderson? Sanderdom?) because it's a lot like falling into a pool of water. You thrash about and just get more wet, and ultimately, surrender and just sink in. (I'm not a very good swimmer, you see.) I've read every Cosmere work, plus the Reckoners trilogy and The Rithmatist with my kids, though we haven't gotten in on the Alcatraz/Evil Librarians. Favorite power? Well aside from fantasizing about being a Lord Ruler type compounding dual full Feruchemist and Allomancer, I guess being a Coinshot would be really useful for getting around NYC. Man, my commute would be so much quicker and more awesome. Favorite Sanderson word? Meaning invented word, or turn of phase? For the former I'd go with "Allomancy", which perfectly connotes exactly what it is in-universe: magic derived from alloys of metal. Turn of phrase is probably "Journey before Destination." Truly an Ideal to live by.

True on both counts, except that if Stormlight "leaked quickly" it seems it couldn't serve the "one Breath a week" level of Investiture needed to keep a Returned alive. I was thinking more along the lines of maybe a Nalthian(?), or at least a Returned one, could "hold" Investiture - ingested in the form of Stormlight - differently or better than a Rosharan could. As for giving away "all your Breath, or none" - doesn't one of the annotated notes to Warbreaker say that Denth is not telling Vivenna the truth (though it appears to be the accepted wisdom on Nalthis, that both Denth and Vasher know better)? It just seems like too much of a coincidence that the Nalthis-Roshar connection includes at least one, if not multiple, "scholars" who were (a) Returned and (b) involved in Awakening a sword, inspired by seeing a Shardblade, which (c) required 10,000 Breaths to make, that (d) Stormlight is far easier to get on Roshar than Breath is on Nalthis and that (e) at some level, Stormlight is functionally equivalent to Breath. There are already indications that some kinds of magic are tied to the worlds the users are native to, such as AonDor, and others are completely portable (Hemalurgy). Maybe the reason Vasher/Zahel has tried to Awaken things with Stormlight on Roshar at all is because he's already taken Stormlight back to Nalthis for that purpose, and was wondering if he could do it locally, which he couldn't.

Cool. One of the fascinating things about this site is the collation of nuggets of info that Sanderson drops here and there. I'm sure that's even more pressure on him to keep things straight and consistent in his head So Why would Vasher return to Nathis at all? He's spent "years" on Roshar, it seems, or at least, spent years without Nightblood, which its being with Nalan and now Szeth I'd assume means he gave it to him more or less directly, unless it was stolen from him on Nalthis and he came to Roshar to retrieve it. Which is doubly interesting in that evidently he'd already been to Roshar before, to see Shardblades in action, as one of the Five Scholars... Did all five of them travel to Roshar, stockpile on Stormlight to avoid having to consume a Breath a week, and partition it so their "lifeline Investiture" was separate from their Breath repository on Nalthis? (Since Vasher definitely becomes "drab" a few times, and the first time we see him in the very beginning of Warbreaker, he has "barely enough Breath for the First Heightening".)

Well if Vasher is now on Roshar, as is Nightblood, it stands to reason that Vivenna would likely be as well. I'm curious about what that would mean for her, since unlike Vasher she is not a Returned. How long is the time gap between the end of Warbreaker, and by the time we see "Zahel" in the Alethi warcamps, who still expected hearing a voice in his head he hadn't heard "for years", and Nightblood in the hands of Nalan? After all, as a Returned, he's got a Splinter of Endownment in him enabling shapeshifting and essentially indefinite immortality as long as he can get enough Stormlight to equal one Breath per week. Vivenna would still be mortal, though in very good health (immune to sickness) with all that Breath/Investiture in her. Vivenna, though, would be an Awakener. If Stormlight = Breath in terms of Investiture needed to survive as a Returned, does that also mean Stormlight-powered Awakening works for a native of Nalthis on Roshar?

But Hoid couldn't just grab Taln's sword and run, Taln could just dismiss and resummon it at any time, unless Taln unbonded it, right? The way Szeth does at the end of WoR (the reworked ending), or the other Heralds appear to have done that in the prologue to WoK (though Nalan appears to have reclaimed an Honorblade).

I fell into Branderson's work after reading his first "ghost co-written" WoT book, then picking up Mistborn and Elantris, and then the ride never stopped I've found and read this forum many times over the past few years, and itched to jump into some discussions only to find they were from 2-3 years ago, and finally figured, no way to get into them without being a forum member, so here I am!