robardin

I am going to guess that the group of hundreds of "lost" people with "strange outfits" and "odd red hair" MeLaan sees, will end up being the "group of Horneaters who live permanently in Shadesmar" that Shallan saw at Lasting Integrity in RoW, and which I suspect Rock will end up joining/leading in the yet-to-be-written novella Horneater. Whether that destination was Silverlight or somewhere else in Shadesmar remains to be seen.

And thus, after fending off the aggressive incursion into Scadrial from Autonomy, did Harmony fall victim to the far more subtle incursion from another Shard he never even knew was coming. Well played, Whimsy. Well played! EDIT: You know, perhaps Sazed has already done/is doing this. We have mention in Shadows of Self that the Words of Founding are so long, abridged versions are common - and yet Wax can identify pages torn out by Bleeder and overwritten with Lies, Lies, Lies, as being from the eightieth book, "verses 27 through 50", on "Harmony's quest for Truth". Imagine if this "quest for Truth" takes the form of a a dialectic conversation between Harmony's two halves, Preservation and Ruin, in verse form, no less... NOBODY would read that. Well, maybe Elend, but he's dead.

I have long been puzzled by the complete lack of mention of even the existence of Nicroburst mistings in any Wax/Wayne story. We find that since the Catacendre, they have filled out the chart of 16 metals for the Metallic Arts with cadmium, bendalloy, chromium, and nicrosil, and nicrosil proves to be very important as a Feruchemical metal in the functioning of the Southern "medallions"... And in the first three Era 2 stories, we've seen Marasi (Pulser), Wayne (Slider), and multiple Leechers using their powers, but not only have we never seen a "Nicroburst" except in the Ars Arcana, we don't even see anybody mentioning them at all! A Leecher was mentioned as being on the police force AoL, before we ever saw anybody actually Leech in a later book. So why didn't we at least have mention of so-and-so the Nicroburst who's like one of five in existence and constantly under off-screen contract? I am assuming the real reason is that the Wax/Wayne stories were an afterthought, inserted in between Era 1 "epic fantasy" and what he originally intended as "Mistborn second trilogy", set in a 1980s-era urban/tech world and featuring a Nicroburst, and he wanted to keep all that showing off of "cool Nicroburst combos" for its original context. But then they should have added at least references to how Nicrobursts were rare and in high demand or snatched up for military or government services as a reason we don't see them "on screen". Or, seen to be obnoxious in a way that Wax's crew didnt' want to work with. I'm now officially mentally adding the following scenes to the Era 2 novels as headcanon. (You know where they'd go.) The Alloy of Law "Marasi, why would you be ashamed of your power?" "Well, it's so useless, Wayne, not like yours. ... Plus, I was traumatized when I tried to use it in school to skip past some boring speeches we were required to attend." "Why? Seems like the perfect way to skip an hour everybody else had to sit through!" "It would, except there was this annoying kid named Nicolas in my class who found out I did that who could burn nicrosil. Once he manged to touch me lightly just as the assembly was about to start, and then my Pulse lasted for almost a week... Nobody could come into my bubble without also being trapped, so they just left me there in a dark auditorium with yellow tape in a circle around me. It was so embarrassing!" "Wait, Nicolas? You mean, you knew Nicky Nicro growing up? He's FAMOUS! Isn't he --" "Yes, he's like one of four Nicrobursts alive today, and unlike the others, he refused the usual on-call contract arrangement with the military despite the enormous prestige and retainer fees because he thought it was funnier to do what he does." (Their conversation is interrupted before we find out what it is he does) Shadows of Self "If Bleeder is a kandra," mused Wax, "perhaps we could lure her into a pre-arranged location, then stun or even control her briefly with a hidden Soother or Rioter working with a Nicroburst?" "We don't know where she is or who she's posing as at any given time, so this would be difficult to arrange," said Governor Innate. "I don't have enough pull with the military to call in one of their Nicrobursts for a what-if, maybe-here mission of unknown duration." "Well, we don't have to use one of the miltary's Nicros," said Wayne, around a mouthful of nuts. "Marasi over here once told me she's got an in with Nicky Nicro!" Steris raised an eyebrow at this. "Marasi? 'Got an in?' Have you --" Marasi blushed furiously. "No! I haven't seen Nicolas since my school days, and I wouldn't even talk to him if I did!" "To catch Bleeder --" began MeLaan, before Marasi cut her off. "No! Absolutely not!" Wax looked befuddled. "Who is Nicky Nicro?" "It is not clear this would work, anyway," said TenSoon. "Whatever she has done to cloud herself from Harmony may also make it impossible to incapacitate her with emotional Allomancy, however powerful. We should focus on what we can do about Bleeder now, with who and what we have." The Bands of Mourning Wax moved through Lady Kelesina's party, feeling even more on edge after that exchange with Gave. He burned steel, lightly, as he'd done on the train, to create a protective bubble around him that subtly rippled the necklaces and earrings on some women he passed with its Pushing as he did so. "Lord Ladrian? Is that you?" a man behind him said excitedly. Wax turned to see a man in his mid-twenties walking up to him with a grin and a hand extended. "The Dawnshot himself!" Wax didn't recognize him, but took his hand and shook it, anyway. "Yes, and you are --?" At that moment, his Steelsight nearly blinded him with a sudden flare of blue light pointing to every metal object in his vicinity. Stunned, Wax nearly fell to the floor as people and objects flew away from him - including the clothing from a woman who'd worn a stiff, metal-wired corset, which had torn free of its lacing and flown ten feet away into a man's face, taking a good portion of the top of her dress with it. "BOOM! You just got NICRO'ED! -- Did you get that, Bel?" "I sure did, Nicky!" called a smiling woman nearby, with no metal on her and with an evanotype machine that somehow hadn't been Pushed away. "This will be front-page stuff for sure!" "What... Who...?" Sputtered Wax as Steris helped him to stand straight, while on the other side of the ballroom, people were howling with laughter. "They're Nicolas Sauvage and Beldin Frandeu, a Nicroburst and Seeker pair who call themselves 'Nicky and Bel, The Prankomancers!'," said Steris. "You haven't heard of them? They became famous about five years ago." "Well, out in the Roughs, keeping track of who's famous in Elendel is not really a very high priority." "They attend high profile events where Beldin Seeks out people secretly using Allomancy, and then Nicolas outs them by touching them with a Nicroburst. It usually embarrasses them quite spectacularly." The Prankomancers moved over to their cheering fans, signing autographs, while angry people nearby picked themselves up off the ground, glaring at Wax. The woman with the torn dress had fled in tears. "What a terrible waste of Allomantic talent," groaned Wax. "Aren't Nicrobursts usually in military service?" "Nicky, as he likes to be called, is something of an attention-seeker. He became jealous of his sister Nicelle becoming famous via those Allomancer Jak stories. And it turns out, it is quite profitable: Beldin's family had invested in developing a high-speed evanotype, and their photos of famous people getting 'Nicrobombed', as they call it, command extremely high prices from those same papers. Now they use a version made with entirely wooden and aluminum parts, to be immune to a massive Push or Pull." They were interrupted by the approach of their host, Lady Kelesina, a statuesque woman with her hair in a bun and a ring on each finger. "Lord Waxillium," she said, "I see you have just met our most famous guests here tonight! But I was hoping for a chance to speak with you privately." ... And then of course, at some point later, Wayne (who HAD known who "The Prakomancers" were) ribs Wax about it, and how he wished he been there to see a "real live Nicrobombing!"

Well, at first I thought that made sense - Metalborn talents concentrate in those with lines of nobility, who probably don't care to become common officers or security workers, eh? But we see a lot of them in the political world. But then you see ads looking for Coinshot messengers, Slider cooks, Steelrunner food delivery (!), etc., and it's like "yeah, the cops can't outbid these businesses for those talents, even as contract workers?" But the complete lack of mention of even the existence of Nicroburst mistings in any Wax/Wayne story should have been addressed. The Leecher on the police force was mentioned in AoL, before we ever saw anybody actually Leech; why didn't we at least have mention of so-and-so the Nicroburst who's like one of five in existence and constantly under off-screen contract, or at least Marasi or Wayne being astounded at not-Wax's super-Push but without a Nicroburst partner? EDIT: I have decided to mentally insert some headcanon scenes to earlier Era 2 works to fill in this glaring gap. Meet Nicky Nicro.

I posted this as a thought on another thread looking forward to Era 3, now that TLM has "wrapped up" the Era 2 stories, but really it's a core criticism of Era 2 at heart: ...where were all the nicrosil Mistings? Huh? Are they super duper rare or non-existent for some unexplained reason? But they're named in the Ars Arcana as "Nicrobursts" so they must exist! We have long been told that Era 3 would feature a kind of "SWAT Team" of Metalborn that included a Nicroburst - something I was disappointed (and a bit disbelieving) we didn't see in Era 2. Like, we see four new metals introduced to Scadrial that were "off the charts" and unknown to the people of TFE in cadmium, bendalloy, chromium, and nicrosil... But we only ever see people Pulsing, Sliding, and Leeching! We see how awed Marasi, Wayne, and Wax are by not-Wax's freakishly powerful Steelpushes, reasoning that he must have acquired a spike for duralumin (harvested from a poor Misting "gnat" who would have taken some digging to even discover)... Why wouldn't they have seen tag-team mega-Pushes or Pulls before with a nicroburst Misting? Or used/seen an "allomantic grenade" with a nicroburst charge in it (the Set still had their own such "grenades")? It's like nicrobursts didn't even exist in Era 2, because if they did, they should have been in VERY high demand, especially among the constabulary.

We were also promised that Era 3 would feature a kind of "SWAT Team" of Metalborn that included a Nicroburst - something I was disappointed (and a bit disbelieving) we didn't see in Era 2. Like, we see four new metals introduced to Scadrial that were "off the charts" and unknown to the people of TFE in cadmium, bendalloy, chromium, and nicrosil... But we only ever see people Pulsing, Sliding, and Leeching! We see how awed Marasi, Wayne, and Wax are by not-Wax's freakishly powerful Steelpushes, reasoning that he must have acquired a spike for duralumin (harvested from a poor Misting "gnat" who would have taken some digging to even discover)... Why wouldn't they have seen tag-team mega-Pushes or Pulls before with a nicroburst Misting? Or used/seen an "allomantic grenade" with a nicroburst charge in it (the Set still had their own such "grenades")? It's like nicrobursts didn't even exist in Era 2, because if they did, they should have been in VERY high demand, especially among the constabulary.

In the end, we discover that the sixteenth vial in the set given to Wax by Harmony, the one marked with the red X, contained the suspiciously uniquely produced "lerasium dust" along with some of all sixteen metals, that enabled Wayne to Mistborn Up and then to duralumin-Push his large supply of bendalloy to such an extreme that he could outspeed electricity (which noticably also blinded his normal vision to outside his bubble, as it would be light-based, but Steelsight still worked). Wax had also been told to use the other, non-red-X vials in preference to his normal ones, but we never really see why (unless they were aluminum-sided vials?). So what did they have in them? All the sixteen metals but NOT lerasium, just in case Wax had already been made Mistborn by inhaling the dust (which apparently, he hadn't been)? (And don't say "maybe he just didn't notice he had new/more metals to access because he never thought about it", he's had "expanded access" to Allomantic metals already, and would know what it'd be like to be able to burn iron, pewter, tin, etc., as he did it with the Bands.) Because otherwise, where did Wax get the duralumin to Super-Push with Wayne to reach the bombship? Not off of the corpse of the not-Wax they harvested the spike for A-duralumin from (along with adding A-pewter to Wax, and of course A-steel to make Wayne a Coinshot), because he was shown to have been swigging all his duralumin+steel from an aluminum flask instead of carrying multiple vials, a vanity that Wayne used to kill him. [BTW, my post's title is a pun on the title of a completely unrelated book but one I'd highly recommend, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.]

I thought "TenSoon" was suspiciously compliant, easily swayed, and uncomfortable in what totally felt like a setup con job with respect to the BoM. I mean, showing his skeleton briefly should prove he's a kandra, but he can just SAY he's TenSoon... My theory: there is at least one Ghostblood kandra, who was there posing as TenSoon (who would absolutely be loyal to Harmony), and the odd freeze-ups were them fighting with Harmony in his head, who in the end was too "static" to take direct control of them to prevent the ruse from going through. And of course, we had just seen that Kelsier was returning on an airship flying over the ocean, twelve hours away from Bilming or Elendel... Presumably from the Southern Continent. Where he's the Sovereign. And probably behind the recent union forming the Malwish Consortium, AND the sending of Daal to Elendel, with exactly this ruse in mind. As to how the Bands were drained, I'm thinking the GBK (Ghostblood kandra) was really good at palming the real one and swapping in a fake one. Who better than Kelsier to train someone in the arts of misdirection? I could always... Make them choose... The Bands... I wanted them to!

Not sure if "chouta" being from "Roshar" counts as moving this from "Mistborn only" to the "Cosmere spoilers" sub-sub-section of TLM dsicussion, LOL But since Era 2 takes place after SA5, that's plenty of time for Rosharans to start bringing chouta first to Shadesmar, and then popularizing it everywhere The fun thing is to question how "authentic" the chouta is off of Scadrial. Since Soulcast meat would not be available, and "real" meat tastes different even on Roshar, and of course Scadrial would have more animal protein options than Roshar (which is basically crustacean, "chicken", or pork - no cattle).

Niiiice

That’s an interesting point. Creating an Essence Mark for someone else, though, is really, really hard, even if Shai managed to do it in 100 days that one time! But yeah, in theory, it might not be that hard for her, given enough Dor-in a-Jar, with the right motivation and an honest enough subject, to modify someone with enough sDNA for Allomancy or Feruchemy to have it expressed in a different metal for their Metalborn power, which would probably be less unlikely than being a Mistborn or full Feruchemist. For example, if Wayne (sniff) could have been stamped to make himself a Compounding gold Twinborn like Miles Dagouter was, until the Essence Mark wore off - it wouldn’t have to be so good a Mark as to last a long time, just give him like five minutes’ worth of Compounding in burning his own goldminds and filling up other ones.

The first thing he said in that same seon conversation was “I’m twelve hours away, moving quickly via airship.” Either you can imagine his later stating that “…I don’t know how much I can do. I’m traveling over water, and so can’t go much faster than I currently am. Dropping things to Steelpush off doesn’t do much with an ocean underneath you” somehow implies he leapt off a moving airship and started Steelpushing over an ocean, while maintaining the seon connection, and then also by the end of the book is reflecting on how he misses Steelpushing… …or you can conclude that he’s talking about what the airship is (or isn’t) able to do in terms of speeding up its travel.

Why would you think they were anything other than Coinshots? Certainly Steris didn’t think anything odd about them flying off, like “huh, I didn’t see them drop any coins” (not that they’d need to, anyway, in a city like Elendel that’s full of metal achors at many heights).

Eventually a kandra like VenDell will comment on how chouta “is the only human food that tastes good to a kandra”… ”I thought you guys liked rotting carcasses best?” ”Aged meat, indeed, is our favorite.” ”And chouta tastes the same?” ”Not the same, but with the same flavor profile. Oh, and it has to be the real thing, the Rosharan Soulcast meat. So good!” ”Oh, it’s from Roshar originally? Hey Kal, how come you look so upset, then?”

I thought Nalthis was like the safest and most commonly trafficked planet for Cosmere worldhoppers… Even having a “customs processing center” in the Cognitive Realm. The way I interpreted Codenames’ comment, “The perpendicularities are no longer viable. They never were good for mass transportation or commerce, no matter how hard those fools on Nalthis try. We need a different…”, was that the Nalthian “customs” thing was based on transportation and commerce via the Cognitive Realm via perpendicularities being the standard model, which have become increasingly dangerous to use for more and more destinations, making a non-perpendicularity way to travel in the Cosmere a goal of the Ghostbloods.

The “Dor in a Jar” allowed the Aons to work as if they were on Sel (probably as if they were in Arelon itself), because the main thing causing Aons to work less and less well away from Arelon on Sel is related to the Dor being in the Cognitive Realm. With the Dor literally “handy”, all that’s needed is the Connection to the Dor to use Aons - having been transformed by the Shaod, or spiritually retconned for that Connection. The Aons are probably the same as they’d be on Sel, i.e., how to draw and connect them to achieve a specific effect.

As for Autonomy’s saying that Harmony was verging to becoming Discord - I presume that was the “dark shadow” of Harmony that we saw a few times, but not every time, he manifested… What would be the implication of Sazed’s intent moving to “Discord”? Even more inability to act? Or would he act more often but more erratically (randomly alternating between doing acts of Preservation or of Ruin)?

Well, He'd told Wayne that that particular explosion in Wax's lab - unlike all the other ones the Set had done - was special in a way even He didn't understand, and succeeded in splitting off lerasium in dust form. And told Kelsier that the atium that Marsh recently acquired was a result of that same explosion, "collected by the kandra", but that no lerasium had resulted (obviously a lie). The other half being, even if the explosion WAS uniquely productive in splitting out lerasium and atium, they should be in equal measure, and there wouldn't be all that much atium.

Well as we know it as of now (TLM and SA4), the Metallic Arts are FAR more portable than Surgebinding... Neither Stormlight nor people with Nahel Bonds can be taken off of Roshar (yet). So yeah, if Scadrians landed on Roshar, the Radiants have home field advantage for sure, but I can't see an army of 3+ Ideal Radiants finding their way onto Scadrial.

He didn't. When talking via seon, he said he was on an airship - so apparently the airships DO fly via Steelpushing, and not just by giant fans (we already knew "priming" them with A-steel was part of making them go in the first place, at least to drive the "impellers" for the fans). The bigger question about discovering Kelsier is stapled to a physical body but not possessing even his original mortal Mistborn Allomancy, is that that means he can't have created the Bands of Mourning, either. At least, not personally and directly. So... What happened there? And definitely, it felt like Daal somehow engineered a con job to "recover" the Bands of Mourning from TenSoon and Co. TenSoon seemed awfully distracted in that meeting, perhaps even under direct communication from Harmony to let those events transpire (the Bands going South). Huh. We do have a WoB that by Era 3, Scadrial is united, so, we'll get this filled in some time around then, if we don't get some kind of Era 3.5 short story? Also, what Entrone's "lab" discovered, that one could non-fatally "excise" (!!) the "extra" Investiture of Preservation in a Scadrian that, if sufficiently condensed, made them an Allomancer, to under 5% of a "fully Invested" Hemalurgic spike, well that's just ... interesting.... Is that how the "Excisors" of the Southerners work? Wasn't Sazed lying to Kelsier that "only atium dust" was harvested n Wax's explosion? We already know lerasium dust was harvested, but given to Wayne... And we never did see Wax's "blue flashes" resolved. Rust it all! But if the amount of atium recovered was equal to the lerasium recovered, how would that be enough for Marsh to live for any significant period of time, even with Compounding? Who are the "men of gold and red"? They seemed possibly to be some kind of Lifeless (like Kalad's Phantoms), the way they were described and briefly seen, but they also had enough agency or will to have Intent to cross the Perpendicularity, and to be surprised at Marasi's "Pulser grenade" thing to stall them until her team of Allomancers could drain the pool.

I think it's more the "Hunters" mentality that Iyatil and her brother descend from, albeit in Silverlight, the City in Shadesmar. Culturally, they are more, well, like Klingons I guess, viewing the world primarily through the lenses of "hunter" vs. "prey", while eliminating rival "hunters" who are going after the same prey who do not ally themselves with you. Since we have WoBs that they were born "abroad" (not on Scadrial but in Silverlight itself), even making the comparison to them being Scadrian in the same way that he (Brandon Sanderson) is "from Denmark, but more recent". Assuming the Sandersons arrived to the United States (as most Scandinavian immigrants did) no earlier than the mid-1800s, that would mean their forebears emigrated from Scadrial to Silverlight well after the Catacendre - likely through Harmony's Perpendicularity, which is described several times as "well to the South" (probably even in the Southern Hemisphere, probably also explaining why that side of the world is where harmonium/ettmetal is found). I wonder what the list of "four primary systems" they cannot travel to via the Cognitive Realm "without extreme danger, if you count Roshar" (an interesting comment there, being as TLM takes place after SA5...). Roshar, this "Bjendel" system, one presumes Sel (as the Splinters of two Shards churn in the Cognitive Realm there), and... Taldain? Somewhere else?

Well, you mean the “not marked with a big red X and labeled FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY” vials. Still not “normal”, as he was told to use them instead of (or in preference to) his “normal” vials (of steel). If they contain other metals, he apparently is expected to be able to use them… …and the first 15 not being labeled separately suggests they’re all the same?

My guess is, she’s threatened by the ability of the Metallic Arts both to Compound and to be used in technology as they have in the southern continent (you don’t even have to be Metalborn to make use of them!) And either wanted to control the people of Scadrial, or erase them (no sentient life on the planet = no Metalborn = no threat!) But Telsin as an Avatar is interesting because she has three hemalurgic spikes in her, unless she’s removed them; if one more spike would allow Harmony to control her, that’d be a pretty silly way to end TLM (“Nooo! I should never have picked a hemalurgist as an Avatar!”), considering that’s how Paalm ended up in SoS, eh?

Plus, as I mentioned in a couple of other threads about TLM Ch 19, .... how is that even possible, when Harmony is Invested in every person, stone, and drop of water on Scadrial? It was literally created out of nothing by the combined power of Preservation and Ruin, which is now united in Harmony? I guess she wants Scadrial to still exist, with its Metallic Arts fueled by the Shardic powers of Harmony, but for Harmony himself to get lost and leave the use of it to her Avatar and her henchmen? The Shardic equivalent of putting Baby (Harmony) in the corner? That, or no sentient life on Scadrial at all (no Metalborn)?

Yes, it aligns well with what we see happening on Scadrial in Era 2 now that we know Trell = Autonomy, except for the timing. That quote is from Autonomy's reply to Hoid, in one of the letters that we get as epigraphs in Oathbringer (SA3), when we know that the events of the Wax/Wayne stories "take place between SA5 and SA6". I don't think Telsin could already have been an Avatar of Autonomy that long ago. In fact, Harmony says that Autonomy approached him "a year ago" with the ultimatum ("beat it and leave Scadrial to me..."), when the events of BoM happened six years earlier; and it was while rejecting that ultimatum that "one of the last things I saw was the person Autonomy has chosen" who had changed her mind about destroying Scadrial (also from the end of BoM). So while Telsin had been fairly high ranking before in the Set, as Sequence, she is now Avatar of Trell and rules the Set completely.