robardin

LOL, I wonder if this was drawn at least partly from personal experience on Brandon’s part with his relatively sudden thrust into the big time, first by being tapped to complete TWoT and then with becoming the poster boy for Biggest Kickstarter Evah Poor people get chased by debt collectors… So it stands to reason that suddenly rich people with publicly known names and faces and contact info get chased by people with “investment plans”

How canonical are the Annotations? Because this one is from March 12, 2007: There are a number of questions raised by the Annotation/WoB based on what we subsequently read in published works, and the easiest answer is "Brandon changed his mind a little bit and this is dramatization". For example, we see in Arcanum Unbounded how unpracticed Kelsier is when he seeks out Gemmel for training. We also see how even Vin, one of the most instinctive Allomancers ever to live, needed at least a week of practice with the physical metals (steel and iron) before becoming reliably proficient with them. In fact, in re-reading The Eleventh Metal, Kelsier still had to be prodded to the idea of using his Allomancy for brutal vengeance (his first instinct being to use disguises and emontional Allomancy). Gemmel says to him, "when I'm done with you, you'll be able to kill a hundred men with a single coin... Waste your time with emotional Allomancy when I'm finished. For now, you kill." The implication is that Kelsier found Gemmel soon after Snapping and trained before he became a real killing machine. If he'd "slaughtered every soldier or nobleman within ten miles of the Pits" immediately after "bursting out of his hut", he'd have had a pretty good rebuttal to Gemmel, eh?

I would say that "adonalsium" is the metal of Adonalsium; there is no fundamental distinction except in a mortal mind's context. Paraphrasing something some of you may be familiar with: "In the beginning was the metal, and the metal was with God, and the metal was God." Which would make sense if you consider the name/term for God in our world "Adonai" (my Lord) - His metal would be "Adonai-sium" or more smoothly, "adonalsium", no?

In addition to the "more spikes = more control of the Inquisitor" thing, it could also just be that Ruin's purpose - consciously or unconsciously, and bottled up for so long in the Well of Ascension - drove him to maximize spike production over efficiency of power gained. I mean, that's kind of the whole "theme" of hemalurgy as an expression of Ruin, right? Efficiency is lost - the strength of a Metalborn power is lesser to the spike's recipient than it was for the donor, with further decay while out of a body/not encased in blood - while power is gained (to the recipicent - net power is lost). In that sense, having an Inquisitor with all the (useful) powers with 22 spikes in him (Marsh), each spike representing a Ruined donor, could be more valued, more beautiful to Ruin than some kind of Swiss Masterpiece Edition Inquisitor with minimal spikes for maximum power, like if he'd somehow managed to get Rashek to make himself into an Inquisitor.

More spikes = more control is the most plausible... As for"why run up the score", well, why make all those koloss? That was certainly overkill. But fun. Inquisitors would have been the perfect off-world minions, though, and Ruin did indicate he already was forming plans for after Scadrial was destroyed as promised. Like the Ire, and possibly other planets, we'll never know now. And those plans must have included leveraging Compounding, else why give Marsh spikes for both A- and F-atium? Not to mention A-duralumin, which required killing a Mistborn to harvest, as duralumin gnats would have been basically impossible to find.

I also posed this question, quite a few years back... And @Oversleep pointed out that there was, in fact, a ready source of Allomantic metal for a newly-snapped Mistborn to burn at the Pits of Hathsin, the ban on Allomancy among the guards and obligators notwithstanding. Atium. And perhaps burning atium doesn't shatter the geode crystals the way that burning normal Allomantic metals would do. Yeeeah, I guess that should have been obvious, on second thought. "Why is this emaciated skaa slave charging a group of 20 armed guards, brandishing a wooden spoon? What's he gonna do, scoop us to death?" scoop dodge twirl scoop scoop scoop OH LORD RULER WHAT IS HAPPENING

After all these years, I figured someone would have brought this up or asked Brandon this question, but a casual search in the archives didn't turn anything up... ...but if Feruchemists were so rare at the end of the The Final Empire, thanks to Rashek's breeding (out) programs, and Allomancers comparatively far more common, why did Ruin kill all the Keepers in his Inquisitor Raid on the Synod of Terris to make spikes for Inquisitors he'd already made, instead of making Inquisitors out of the Keepers with Allomancers he could capture? Especially as the mists of Preservation began Snapping more Allomancers into existence! Each Keeper could only be harvested for one Feruchemical power, and in some cases (like Marsh) a single Inquisitor was endowed with multiple spikes for Feruchemy. Seems obvious that it would be a lot more economical to give a full Feruchemist spikes for Allomancy. I mean, a guy like Marsh started out as a Seeker Misting anyway - not a full Mistborn - so instead of giving him spikes for most of the FE era Allomantic powers PLUS quite a few spikes for Feruchemy (he exhibits F-steel, F-gold, F-atium, F-pewter), he could have given the same Allomantic / Inquisitor spikes to four Keepers and gotten the same result, but four times over. Yes, he'd lose the doubled-up A-bronze for enhanced Seeking that came from giving a spike for that to Marsh, but other than that, way more OP of a minion and more of them, right? I get that he already had a whole host of Inquisitors at his command, but making Inquisikeepers in addition to that first set (instead of personally augmenting them) would have been terrifying. Even if they hadn't had time to learn about Compounding yet. I like to think that somewhere in Ruin, the Vessel of Ati who had originally been a "kind and generous man" was, in some small Marsh-like way, holding back his full intelligence while reveling in Ruining things. Making Marsh his primary pawn had to be more of a "twist the knife in Kelsier's Crew and the leaders of the human resistance" act than a strategic one.

It seems pretty unlikely for someone like Wayne to live to 30+ years old and never realize he had 15 more Feruchemical abilities than just F-gold. I mean, it's not like he's not constantly handling base metals like iron and steel, especially around Wax. He even implied at one point that he innately knew he had Metalborn powers for F-gold and A-bendalloy before he could make use of either, being as both were expensive and rare, especially in the Roughs. It was in Alloy of Law, when he spoke about meeting Wax to Marasi: He implies (by my reading) that despite having little to no access to metals like bendalloy and gold he knew he could make use of them and how, albeit unpracticed, and Marasi doesn't question it. At any rate, if he "had an idea" he was a Feruchemist but had no access to gold, he would at least have had relatively easy access to iron, tin, and copper in a mining town.

Fortune doesn't give Futurevision, it's more of a "let the Force guide you" Spiritual type thing; along with the appropriate hook of what you want, I suppose? This WoB wasn't originally about Fortune, but the answer is very illuminating as to how Brandon conceives of it: Note that the "two equally valid theories" refers to the question of the vision Kaladin had of Tien absolving him while also explaining that Kaladin never needed that absolution, helping him to reach the Fourth Ideal. Dalinar could have reached the Beyond to connect Kaladin with the actual-soul-of-departed-Tien, versus some kind of Cognitive/Spiritual Cosmere-model-of-Tien (but where "reaching the Beyond" is something even a double-Shard like Harmony cannot do)... ...but almost certainly, the way Kaladin ended up finding that horse in the junk dealer's stash was through Fortune. How either Tien-Beyond or Cosmere-Model-of-Tien could effectuate that burst of Fortune to Kaladin through the vision is just another secret. Basically, Fortune is like following a trail of crumbs, laid down by crumbling a cookie. (If you see what I'm getting at. LOL.) In that light, I suppose Vin pulling off her atium workaround in The Well of Ascension could have been Fortune-based as well. Having that critical insight or intuitive leap, at just the right time. I do wonder what Compounding Fortune would be like, though. If there is any Intent involved in what Fortune results in, what if you tapped Fortune while burning Allomantic gold to see a very different version of yourself? Haha.

Kandra subjected themselves to what they considered slavery, under the terms of Contract, in order to escape the fate of being destroyed or made puppets by human Allomancers. If they could have just disappeared off-planet and blend in somewhere else, or even find an uninhabited planet or area of a planet to take up residence in, don’t you think they would have done it? Well, except for the salmon-like need to return to Scadrial once every century to get the spikes from TLR to make the next Generation, I suppose. There was nothing in the First Contract, AFAIK, that linked getting generational spikes to serving mankind as spies for payment in atium. I guess there’s that part of the First Contract - they were supposed to be of Preservation and to guard the body of Ruin, the great cache of the Trustwarren, with their secrecy and their very lives - hard to do that from a base in Silverlight or Nalthis or something like that, I suppose.

Heh. At the same time (or at least, in the same book) as Marasi reflecting that Wayne was "wealthier now than most of Elendel", Wayne also justifies taking the apparently solid aluminum spearhead off of the statue of The Sovereign by thinking to himself that "little Sophie Tarcsel needs funds". But then he just swaps it into Marasi's bag in exchange for ReLuur's missing spike, for no obvious reason. What would Sophie Tarcsel have done with that? LOL. Feels like that might have been one of those "a little help" nudges from Harmony in directing human events. Wayne already wanted to do things like fiddle off the huge metal spearhead, and to swap things with Marasi without her noticing... Why not arrange it so that Marasi would have the true Bands of Mourning in her possession, at just the time and place that it could be useful?

Lerasium certainly qualifies as a "lost metal", too. Despite the empty display of atium as "the lost metal" at the Originators Tomb. Heh heh. I like how Wax waves away the idea that he's been pursuing this secretly with the aim of becoming Mistborn. "I'm not trying to isolate lerasium to become Mistborn, just trying to see if it could be done!" "And just how would you test if it was lerasium, since the legendary godmetal has only one known property, that of making a powerful Mistborn like the Last Emperor?" "...Well, you see, the thing about that is, it was never for me... If I were going to make a Lerasium Mistborn in this day and age, intentionally, it should be power given to someone who has no innate desire to power, no inclination to casual domination of others, and would be very calculating as to when it'd be appropriate to use it..." *Everyone looks at Steris* "If you must know," Steris said into the lengthening silence, "I have estimated that me becoming the most powerful Allomancer in centuries is somewhere down in the low 40s on my list of things that could result from our research here, in order of likelihood. Slightly behind our little Max becoming a full Feruchemist." BTW, ever since MeLaan made the comment that Wayne "was wasted as a human" and would be like the perfect kandra, ... Can Harmony not eventually make Wayne a kandra? LOL.

This was also the first thing I noticed in reading these preview chapters! While Harmony uses the kandra as "His agents", He also wants them to have free will (even if more "directed" by him than the humans of Scadrial). For example, ReLuur had to "discover" the temple of the Bands of Mourning (and lose a spike in the process to the Set), and VenDell mentions that Harmony has "let slip" about moving pictures in the future while holding back even from the kandra about things they needed to discover on their own (in His view). And technically, what MeLaan said does not contradict the statement that we've already seen a kandra on Roshar in Oathbringer, SA4, which predates the Wax and Wayne MB Era 2 books that occur between SA5 and SA5: "I’ll be the first kandra to go out there long-term, with an official mission... I get to explore the cosmere, Wayne. I get to go and see everything there is—worlds we can only imagine." She's actually being sent by Harmony's express command, with a parameterized mission. She may or may not know that there have already been kandra "out there". The kandra already known to be on Roshar earlier? Well, that could be an "advance scout", as you say. After all, how else would Harmony know where to send her? Or perhaps a "rogue kandra"? Harmony is capable of taking direct control of them, but that's even more true of the super-spiked Marsh - but as we saw from him giving Spook's notebook on hemalurgy to Marasi at the end of Alloy of Law, the nature of the Shard of Harmony requires that He allow even his agents to view things differently than He himself does. And to act accordingly. Another possibility is that it's one of "Trell's" Faceless Immortals, i.e., a kandra made with a trellium spike somewhere in the mix. I think that'd be "less satisfying" because I'd rather learn about the possibility or existence of such beings in the Mistborn series first, but then again, technically we would have, as the mention of a kandra on Roshar before that is only a WoB and not published canon. Finally, as you say, the "Cosmere Timeline" as we know it is not fully canon until published works are published, WoBs notwithstanding, but there have been so many WoBs referring to MB Era 2 as happening between SA5 and SA6 (plus tidbits like that comment about kandra being in other Cosmere works already, specifically on Roshar) that it's hard to see all of that getting retconned all of a sudden. But yeah, it's certainly possible (expect a WoB shortly after the release of TLM owning up to that, if that turns out to be the case).

But why would the number of people involved be a limiting factor? I called it a "stacking" factor because of the apparent need to pass it on, with "each person adding their power", and a factor that having "all powers in one person" would get around. There isn't a mechanical (physical) cap on "max of four powers in a medallion, full stop", because the Bands of Mourning were essentially exactly that: a "maximum medallion" that only a Fullborn could produce. So it would be reasonable to assume the Bands were NOT made the same way as the medallions are; that whatever the "Excisors" are and how they work, they somehow limit the collection of powers (so far) to three, but that whatever The Sovereign did to create the Bands was done differently. Which brings us back to the idea that the Excisors are hemalurgic in nature (doesn't it sound like it's "excising", or "pulling out", the power from one person to another?), which a Fullborn wouldn't need at all to have access to multiple powers, and that "we can't do more than three powers in medallion construction with them" sounds a lot like the "limited to three boons" thing.

An excellent line of reasoning in the OP! We don't have a lot of information on the technology to create the medallions, only what Allik casually lets drop in BoM: Wearing multiple medallions "interfere with each other", in a way we haven't seen first-hand (nobody's put on two medallions). Does that mean none of the powers work? That you get some weird blend of powers? Is there a hierarchy (A > F, Steel > Iron, etc.)? But using all powers in the Bands has no problem! Because it's basically one big medallion! Medallions with two powers/attributes in them are difficult for the Malwish to make. Medallions with three powers, possible but very rare (though Allik, a young and low-ranking officer, has seen them)... But, "every attempt has failed" in the creation of medallions with 4+ powers. Which means it's not a physical limitation but one from the magical mechanics i.e., it's not "well, there are only three pointy spikes on an Excisor, whaddyagonnado?" They have to "pass around" the medallions to add powers during their creation Someone with a Metalborn power "[adds theirs] to the medallion, then passing it to another to have it added to" Is this limit of three "pass-around" powers related, then, to the "three boons" limit on hemalurgy in Era 2? Where being "subject to Harmony's interference", as Edwarn put it in BoM, might equate to a hard ban? Creating medallions with multiple powers means this "stacking" effect has a limit/cost, despite the removal of Identity "if you had all the powers", you wouldn't need to pass the medallion on, and could make something like the Bands. Perhaps that just means "if you didn't need to use the Excisors" to make a medallion in the first place? To sum up: Medallions, the product of Excisor technology, have a limit in using one medallion at a time (but can access all powers in the medallion). Excisor technology has some kind of threshold limit at 3 powers in medallion creation. This limitation is related to "passing it to another person". A Fullborn is needed to create the Bands. Shouldn't a Twinborn like Wax or Wayne be really valuable, then? In fact, we've only seem Feruchemical powers stored in the medallions, though the Bands could also store Investiture granting Allomancy (which still requires ingesting metals to burn to make use of). However, Allik confirmed with "Yes, any" when Wax asked if "with one of these [Excisors], one can create a medallion for any Allomantic or Feruchemical ability?" And of course, the Bands contain metalminds granting all the Allomantic powers. Where are the medallions for Allomancy? Surely they exist? Otherwise, how are they going to charge those Steelpushing primer cubes to start the ettmetal driven engines on the airships?

Also, the God King was supposed to be dead already. The last he knew, Susebron was bound up and tongueless in the basement, unable to stop his associates from threatening and killing other Returned right in front of him, or to defend himself. So, a huge shock on so many levels. "You! You're... Supposed to be dead! And mute! and like, with the passive nature of a sheltered child! And... Oh... Colors."

Totally agree, I thought the exact same thing down to the investments involved (Sophie Tarcsel). I also wondered if Alliriandre was somehow involved (the girl whose father Wayne killed long ago in the Roughs, who he was seen visiting and pressing money onto in Shadows of Self).

I second (third) the suspicions that the "bean counters" from the "accounting department" that is sending out men in bowler hats to find Wayne are not dunning him for debt collection (given how rich he reflected on having become in BoM), more likely trying to give him his share of profits from investing in Sophie Tarcsel's experiments with electricity at the end of Shadows of Self and him wanting her basically to keep it. There seems to be a huge point in favor of the theories that the "second earring" that Harmony implied he'd need to make "with the proper metal, when it arrives" is trellium; though given its effect on Paalm/Bleeder/Lessie, it would be circumspect to use the first earring he's got, to confirm that of Harmony, before plugging in trellium into his other ear.

I assumed the OP was suggesting that an Elantrian might tattoo themselves with an intricate Aon (or set of them) that would ordinarily take time to construct. Or carrying items around with them pre-drawn, like gloves or amulets or something. It'd be a lot like how "alchemists" in Fullmetal Alchemist, who typically require starting with drawing a "transmutation circle" to perform effects, are often seen to have complex, pre-drawn circles on their person in just that way for their "speciality attack" that they've tailored and trained with. As for the downside of having them tattooed on your person: marring skin is actually not that hard to do, plus it advertises what you can do and have ready. How about the idea of mass-producing durable Elantrian weapons consisting of selectable pre-drawn Aons of several types in a rotator-dial-with-window? Like, five Elantrians sidling down a corridor, with orders to "set phasers to stun" (click-click-click), LOL, ready to zap with a knock on the Dor.

Nah, the airships can’t be flying via Steelpushes, as they are able to cross oceans… Unless Harmony inlaid the seabed of Scadrial with large metal surface seams, LOL. They’re kept aloft via large metal fans, “impellers”, that are powered by Allomancy; lightening the passengers simply means less power is needed to fly: My guess is the ettmetal-fueled “engine” is generating a constant Steelpush (since the primer cube charged off of Wax) that will last for “a day or two” for a small craft like Wilg, making the fan blade spin at the proper rate for the elevation desired. And that a Lurcher charging the cube would make the fans spin the other way? Or maybe they can flip the mechanism 180 degrees if a Lurcher is used? So many questions!

All Steelpushes and Ironpulls are based from the Allomancer’s center of gravity (COG): a Coinshot sees a blue metal line from the target metal to their COG, and creates a straight-line Push. To fly, the anchor must be heavier or less moveable than the Allomancer is (otherwise, it’s the object that gets moved instead). Ironpulling on steel boots one is wearing would only result in doing a very odd kind of squat or crunch exercise The default line to the metal object is probably to the object’s COG, but a skilled Allomancer (as Kelsier or Vin were seen to do) can “latch on” to the edges or other points of the object instead. But I don’t think there’s any way for the line to go to the Allomancer except to the COG, like you can’t Push off something from your shoulder or Pull something directly to your hand, you have to Pull to your COG and then CATCH it with your hand. No, a metal suit would only make the Allomancer heavier and need more power to Push or Pull. For a Lurcher to fly around, it’d have to be somewhere like in a modern city (that Elendel is rapidly becoming in Era 2) with a lot of tall buildings with metal anchors, and lamp posts and sign posts firmly affixed everywhere overhead. They’d Pull up/in front of them to get flying, and Pull on something below/behind them to slow down (and on something above them while landing). Basically, it’d be equivalent to “slinging around like Spider-Man”, which in fact, is exactly how this WoB puts it: And, I would assume (like Spidey) a Lurcher could “slingshot” themselves high into the air using a higher-than-themself anchor, maybe even two of them (one on either side) for better angle control, and flare an Ironpull that they then release as they go past. The problem would be, unlike a Coinshot, you couldn’t throw down/out a piece of metal and Push against it to slow down on the descent, you’d have to have something higher than you somewhere to Pull on to slow down.

Right, their technology is superior to a "naked Coinshot", though they do honor such people. But if their "Steelpushing Tech" is already more powerful than Wax can do alone, then where is the "value added", from the Malwish POV, of having "access to the Metalborn" of the Basinfolk? Are they able to create more medallions, more primer cubes, than before, with more Metalborn people? Or to create new ones they couldn't before? And if that "access" involves physically borrowing those Metalborn... What are they doing to leverage their powers? I'm imagining some kind of trade deal where Wax, Marasi, Wayne, or other Metalborn, are contracted out by the government to spend a few days in a room at the Malwish embassy getting rubbed all over with cubes, or "Excised" for Feruchemical powers, LOL. Actually the "access" has been only of Allomancers, so yeah, cube rub-down? And the Malwish would have liked far more such access.

I also wonder what it is that "access to [the Basin's] Metalborn" has meant in trade to the Malwish. It obviously has had SOME value, or they wouldn't have continued to trade medallions and/or primer cubes for it, while withholding the means of production, unless that was a stall job to scope out the weaknesses of the Basin's defenses. The airship's captain in Ch. 9 making the pointed observation that Wax, a "natural born Coinshot", could not fly up to his ship unaided, should imply they also don't particularly need "access" to more Coinshots, right? What would that access facilitate, and how? And, however it is they are benefiting from the access, shouldn't that give the Basinfolk some insight into the mechanics involved in leverging up Metalborn powers with their tech? Is it possible there are some types of Allomantic or Feruchemical power that they don't have in the South, and thus cannot make cubes from/medallions for? Like, powers that use more rare metals?

Which makes we wonder about what Edwarn was told just before he was blown up: that the new plan was "to remove life on this sphere instead". Maybe he was told that specifically because he was about to be blown up. While being allowed "to serve in another Realm" (haha, is he now a Cognitive Shadow? Perhaps Invested and bound in a box like a seon to be used by the Set in doing interplanetary communications? He'd deserve it...!)

If you're implying the combustion was purely chemical in nature and not magical, i.e., water + ettmetal = boom, then why did Allik need tocharge a primer cube from Wax and then snap into place to keep Wilg flying? Into a space that clearly required it, not as some kind of backup power source: And in fact, from what Allik says, it does require A-steel specifically: So, charging the primer cube with an Allomantic Steelpush appears to be necessary to get these ships into the air, as the alternative is "an Allomancer Pushing full-time", unless that somehow includes charging it with another Allomantic Pushing power like from burning pewter, brass, or bronze. Most likely the simplest explanation is, the "impellers" are giant metal fans, and they're kept in constant motion via constant Steelpushing generated by an extremely large, ettmetal-fueled (consuming) engine that replicates it; and that the "primer cube" has only just enough charge to start it all up. Maybe the design is to have the cubes "charged and ready at the flick of the switch" from some Coinshot back home, but the Set having taken them all and futzed with them made Allik need to get more Steelpushing put into it (and fortunately, Wax is a Coinshot). Which may also imply, amusingly, that having a Lurcher like Ranette surreptitiously charge a primer cube and leaving it somewhere a Malwish ship would expect it, might result in one of their airships collapsing in on itself instead of lifting off when they snapped in into place. Or freezing everbody on board in a slo-time bubble if Marasi charged it. Ha ha!