robardin

So I went back to check on when Allik talks about the Sovereign and the Bands for the first time - he said “When the Sovereign left us, he took them with him, along with his priests, his closest servants." Them being the Bands. "He’d left the priests there, with the Bands, and told them to protect them until he returned for them. And, that was dumb, yah? Because we could really use those to fight the Deniers of Masks.” So they know what the Bands are and can do, suggesting they'd seen them used and taken away - but not that it was a spearhead. The false bracers at the temple were probably decoys even then. I think the Excisors are somehow a form of Limited Bands.

Yes, and the "spikes" don't need to be railroad spike sized, just the size of a sewing needle. (Or an earring pin!) The real problem is killing someone with a sewing needle or earring. I never really thought about exactly how horrible it was for Vin's mother to kill her Seeker baby sister with an earring pin... I guess the spike just has to be the "coup de grace". (Elsewhere there's a WoB that you can actually "spike out" the power from a Metalborn without killing them, too, though I can't imagine how that's achieved - maybe with Intent, as Ruin had no reason to want to NOT kill his chosen hemalurgic "donors", quite the opposite.)

Well the way I figure it's going to work eventually (if hemalurgy becomes a standard, instead of a dark, magic on Scadrial) is that people get outfitted with the equivalent hemalurgic jacks at the bind points at some point in their life - either rich/powerful people, or as part of their job, like a police detective - and then you can buy or even rent hemalurgic spikes to insert into them. Getting the bind point "just right" is difficult to do by accident or happenstance and a hard skill to learn - so, get a few people trained to do it exactly right, and they just do hemalurgic pre-op for a living. In another thread, I already suspected the Set are hot-swapping hemalurgic spikes; as technology advances not much further from Era 2, it would make sense to make that more widespread. In terms of :"jacks" they couldn't actually be metal sleeves, as hemalurgy needs contact with blood to work, so it'd be a little more gruesome, in that the jack would have to be "naked flesh" and you'd have to stick in a kind of prep needle into the jack to scrape up the healed wound a bit before putting in the spike.

This sounds familiar but I don't remember why. A WoB, or something in Arcanum Unbounded? And he can't just hit the Shardsauna and sweat out some atium, because as a new Shard called Harmony, he sweats harmonium and nothing else, right?

Also, didn't Leras (Preservation) alter the "Allomantic table" to add atium, in that there were such things as Mistings who could burn atium (and presumably its designated alloy, malatium, "the eleventh metal", even though as a god metal it probably could alloy with all the other metals)? That implies that the "16 spokes of allomancy" was minus one metal and its alloy until Harmony's ascension, with atium/malatium in its place. Probably the temporal metals (cadmium/bendalloy), leaving chromium/nicrosil as the metal that was "known to TLR but impractically hard to get/use" in The Final Empire, and which disruptive and enhancing abilities TLR would probably not want around except for himself to use, anyway. (Though giving Inquisitors A-chromium would have made a lot of sense, as only Mistborn could be forced to burn aluminum)

We did see him use F-steel, actually, when he moved "faster than even pewter could account for" in the throne room while beating up on Vin and Marsh. But it's true, he was taking the time to monologue - choking Marsh and saying, "How dare you! After what I gave you?" and stuff like "Did you think I was some common Inquisitor?" and "how many of you must I kill before you idiot skaa see the truth!" to Vin. He doesn't think he's a bad guy, even to the skaa; he's out to save (Preserve) them too, as we see later with the storage caverns. If they would only just listen, and know their place! (Sounds like Shallan's father on Roshar in Stormlight Archive, doesn't it?) Meanwhile it was fully within his power to Push or Pull out Marsh's spikes from him with Allomancy so strong that it would not care about the investiture in them, or to zoom over to them with Steelrunning speed and then just crushing their heads with a combined flare of Allomantic and Feruchemical pewter before they could even react. No temporal metals needed. Hell, for some real fun, he could have duralumin-soothed Marsh (if he would even need the duralumin), taken control of his body, and forced MARSH to kill Vin. I'm pretty sure he knew about The Weakness in the hemalurgic constructs; since the kandra themselves knew it, how would The Father not know?

Towards the end of The Bands of Mourning, in the area beneath the Sovereign's Temple with the (second) set of false Bands, Wax's uncle "Suit" monologues a bit on what the Set have discovered of hemalurgy: "The trouble with Hemalurgy is in its limitations," Suit says in The Bands of Mourning. "If you spike yourself too much, you become subject to Harmony's... Interference. ... I am limited to three boons." I found it interesting to later find the three Hemalurgic "boons" he chose for himself turned out to be F-gold (Bloodmaker), A-steel (Coinshot), and A-chromium (Leecher). The last one has always struck me as an odd choice. Having a Leecher around in a fight between groups of Allomancers would certainly be very useful, but one could simply be employed a henchman, like the guy who threw the allomantic "grenade" at Wax on the train. Given that he had personally known Miles Hundredlives before gaining Hemalurgic spikes, you'd think Suit might have chosen to spike himself for A-gold for the Compounding effect, or to pair A-steel with its complementary A-iron to be as effective as a Mistborn might be in manipulating metals, with techniques not seen since the time of the Lord Mistborn: the Shrapnel Cloud, the Flight of Four Horseshoes, and so on. I could see forgoing gold Compounding since the Set had some way of creating and passing around unkeyed goldminds - likely what he was referring to when he added, "we have discovered how to make someone else be weak, while we gain the benefit." So he wouldn't need to Compound gold to gain free health more or less on demand. But why choose A-chromium? It's like he prepared himself with Leecherhood in anticipation of close-quarters combat with Wax and Friends. Well, maybe he did. Who said his set of three spikes had to be permanent? In fact, his smug declaration of "Aha! I made myself a Leecher!" in his duel with Wax suggests he did it specfically in preparation for that encounter - that he wouldn't have been able to plan for all that much ahead of time. Like he'd only JUST made himself a Leecher before Wax showed up. As I understand it, hemalurgic spikes that are removed can be restored, though they lose charge when outside a body, or kept in blood. I'd guess that there's also a maximum loss threshold to them, too, so that after a certain point, it'd be as weak a spike as it would get - maybe granting half or even a quarter the potency of the source Allomancer or Feruchemist when alive, but no worse. Vin's earring turned out to be a hemalurgic spike for A-copper that made her a super-Seeker, as well as exposing her to Ruin's voice - and she lost and re-inserted that earring a number of times that we saw (and removed it voluntarily on other occasions, too). Spook was able to remove his pewter spike in The Hero of Ages, and presumably could have either put it back, or gotten a different spike. Marsh regains his missing Inquisitor eye-spike somewhere along the way after the Catacendre. So does that mean someone like Suit could theoretically carry a full set of 32 spikes (or as many as they have access to) in a bloody carrying case, and just stick himself in the right places with any three spikes he wanted to, at any time? Sure, he'd hear Harmony talking to him, but I guess he's just ignoring Him all the time, as it is. (Or perhaps Sazed is still enough himself to adhere to the maxim, "If you don't have something nice to say to someone, don't say anything at all," LOL.) That reminds me, the scene at the mansion where the Brute Feruchemist from the Set shoots Kelesina, then fished at something on Kelesina's body, and shot her again. That wasn't just to take her unkeyed goldmind - maybe it was also her spike for F-gold, so someone else in the Set could make use of it? You wouldn't have to "fish" at someone's body to take off a bracelet, but you would to dig out a spike from her side.

Al Roker. They all look like Al Roker. Even the women. They just cover their safehands.

I didn't mean to pull down Harmony, but to unbalance him (hence my post's subject, speculating on "Ruining" him). Though I believe there is a WoB about how after his Ascension Harmony is effectively a new single Shard with double the power and not a dual-Shard being, so it's not like if you drew enough Allomancy (and the using the Bands did cause mists to appear) you'd "steal" Preservation from Harmony. However, might it "unbalance" Harmony to be more Ruinous in inclination?

Allomancy is "end positive": power is gained directly from Preservation. It's a temporary draw, though, that happens for as long as the Allomancer can burn a metal to form the conduit to the power, and when released, the power returns to Preservation. Feruchemy is end-neutral - the innate attribute of a person is stored into a metalmind, for use later, no net gain or loss. Compounding is a way to convert the end-positive drawing of power from Preservation into an end-positive store of the Feruchemical attribute stored in a metalmind... Which can then be stored back into another metalmind. Doesn't that mean some amount of Preservation is thus siphoned off and frozen? Is it possible that 1,000+ years of continuous Compounding by TLR in multiple attributes (gold, bronze, atium at a minimum) might have contributed to the weakening of Preservation by the events of The Final Empire? There are very few people on Scadrial capable of Compounding after Harmony's Ascension, but we've seen at least one (Miles), and with the rediscovery of hemalurgy, it could be artificially enabled. If The Set wanted to split Harmony, would all they need to do be to set up a circle of Compounders to go at it night and day for a while?

It's probably like that blind guy IRL who "figured out" how to use echolocation by making little click noises with his mouth, like a human bat... Anyone is physically equipped to do the same, but would not be motivated to do so (it requires remapping one's cerebral cortex with extensive training)

It's in The Bands of Mourning, Ch. 12: I was a little surprised when Suit said they could gain three boons via Hemalurgy without being subject to Harmony's "interference", that he'd made himself a Bloodmaker Ferring... And an Allomantic Leecher and a Coinshot. I get that with the ability to create unkeyed goldminds maybe he didn't feel the need to make himself like Miles, but pairing complementary physical metals seems to be the way to go. Like how Spook felt about gaining pewter after a lifetime as a Tineye, or how Kelsier used both Steelpushes and Ironpulls to amazing effect (not to mention the Four Horseshoes Flying Trick). Leecher? Get a henchman to do that, like the guy who threw the Allomatic cube at Wax on the train.

I agree, with my assumptions it seems like there works be a max of 10 Twinborn in a Northern Scadrial population of 50M, and that was assuming all Feruchemists were as likely to be Allomancers as the non-Terris population, when in fact that would be even lower a rate. Which makes Khriss' comment that Wax was "only" the third Crasher Twinborn ever kind of interesting, since it's less than 350 years since the Catacendre. Maybe some Twinborn are more likely than others.

I'd always assumed that Misting-ness was a certain distribution in the population, and that each type of Misting was essentially equal in distrubution. (At least in Era 2, after Harmony undid the "atium Misting twiddle") But I seem to remember reading in one of the Era 2 books that Coinshots were considered "common" for Mistings, implying there were more Coinshots than Leechers - or the as-yet-never-seen Nicroburst, or the unfortunate "gnats" who can only burn aluminum or duralumin. Ah yes, here it is - in Alloy of Law, Ch. 13, when Wax surprises Miles Hundredlives with his F-iron ability to increase his weight in a fistfight: "[Miles] was used to dealing with Coinshots - they were one of the most common types of Allomancer, particularly among criminals. Feruchemists were far more rare." And Ferrings, too: Steelrunners were described by Wax in Shadows of Self as "uncommon, even as Feruchemists go", which suggests that F-steel is less common than other forms of Feruchemy. Is there a WoB on the distribution of the Metallic Powers? Maybe Wax was simply talking about how prominent Coinshots were (like Pewterarms) in terms of being Obviously Useful versus other Mistings, but the comment about Steelrunners being uncommon among Feruchemists suggests distributions are indeed skewed. Just what is the approximate population of Northern Scadrial in Era 2, anyway? I was trying to work out the probability/distribution of a Twinborn. If I assumed (and it appears to be a false one) that all 16 forms of Allomancy are equally likely; that Feruchemy is about 4 times rarer than Allomancy (an arbitrary assumption), and that Allomancy occurs in the Northern Scadrial population at, say, a 1 in a 1,000 rate (another arbitrary assumption - maybe there's a WoB on those?), then in a total population of a nice, round, normalized figure of 10M people in the Basin, that would work out to about 10,000 Allomancers, of who no more than 1 in 4,000 would also be a Feruchemist (if they were all at least a little bit Terris-blooded). Which comes out to 2.5 out of 10M being Twinborn. Make the current population of the Basin something like 50M (about the population of Spain) and there are about ten Twinborn walking around, period. Two of them are Wax and Wayne, and they just killed Miles Hundredlives! How unlikely is it for a Natural Born Compounder like him to come up, then? If it were all equal probabilities by metal, it'd have to be 1/16 of all Twinborn, right? Whatever metal your Feruchemy happened to be, it's a 1/16 chance that your Allomancy would be in the same metal? Except it seems some metals are more likely than others?

A Shardflute? LOL I can just see Syl doing a Lauren Bacall impression on Kaladin... "Just put your lips together and blow"

I mean, they are the order of WINDrunners. A flute being a wind instrument and all. Coincidence?!

Maybe the Fourth Ideal is about the flute! LOL. "[he Fourth Ideal] is going to be a hard one, isn't it?... I will... I will learn... To play... Arggh, I just don't have the time!"

Yeah, I wasn't being entirely serious about the earring specifically - Wax converts his first one into a bullet for Paalm, and refuses to put in a replacement one for most of BoM, while still being able to Steelbubble. I'm just saying that there are numerous ways I could see Harmony twiddling Wax to be different, including subtle hemalurgy. For all we know, he once stepped on a steel nail from a floorboard that snapped off a piece in his heel that he's long forgotten about.

I meant that Ministry tampering would be a very plausible reason for there being trace amounts of brass in the water in Luthadel. Because it's not otherwise a naturally occurring or commonly used alloy that would be available to skaa in routine circumstances.

Yeah I could buy trace zinc in the water, not so much brass. But Ministry "contamination" to highlight any unconscious skaa Allomancy would be pretty plausible.

Well, Wax is the Favored Hand of Harmony - "his Ruin", as he is eventually called to his face. That has to count for something somehow. Harmony won't directly interfere in human events; however, he still healed and made Spook a Mistborn (though that was immediately after Ascending and while he still wasn't constrained as much by Shardic Intent), and we see that in Era 2 he isn't above giving Wax "a little help" in the form of having wonderful coincidences work out in his favor, like his trunk from the Roughs getting stolen by his uncle's henchmen and stored in exactly the place he has the big duel with Miles and the Vanishers gang at the end of AoL. So it stands to reason it's possible Wax can do Steel Bubbles because God Said He Could. Sazed was always the playing-with-wording-of-rules type even when mortal, and could probably come up with a way that this is something any Crasher could do, but only if they had a particular kind of hemalurgic spike as an earring, which hey, he got a kandra to give to him after converting him to Pathism.

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

Random thought crossed my mind the other day... Maybe it's been brought up before in a WoB, andI look to the usual gurus to elaborate and elucidate Vin has been Mistborn basically her whole life, and Kelsier and co. are cued onto her because Marsh (as a Seeker) detects her Allomancy before she even knows she's doing it. He tells her during her Seeking lesson with him that she'd Soothed him "eight months ago, in my shop", knew she was Mistborn because she was also burning pewter and tin that day, "just a tiny bit, barely noticeable. You probably got the metals from water and dining utensils", and commented that that she could do so unconsciously meant she was very "attuned" to Allomancy. Earlier, Kelsier had said the same thing about Vin's observation that she felt something familiar about burning pewter - it was because of "trace metals" from "water contaminated by metals" or utensils. Upon which Vin recalled there being pewterware in use by Camon's crew (though being an alloy pure enough to use Allomantically was surely a lucky coincidence, though maybe its impurity was partially responsible for a very low level reaction). Well, what about brass, steel, and iron then? It seems odd that the only Allomantic power that Vin was conscious of using for most of her life was her "Luck", which she didn't associate with a metal, yet which is based on burning the relatively uncommon brass. Where was she getting a regular, if small, supply of "trace brass"? Did Camon figure out she was a Soother (no way could he have imagined her a full Mistborn?!), and surreptitiously supplied her with brass in her food or water? (Could someone even drink water with brass shavings and not know?) Or was being in Luthadel somehow part of it, that maybe there are so many Allomancers there (especially with all the Steel Ministry "Soothing Stations" we find out about later) that there are is fact "trace amounts of brass" contaminating the local water supply? And surely the most common metals of all would be iron and steel. Who hasn't chewed on a steel fork to get all the melted cheese off of it, or gnawed desperately at the iron manacles on one's wrist? (Well, maybe not the second one, I hope?) Wouldn't Vin the Instinctively Attuned Mistborn have some familiarity with Steelsight, even if she'd never thought to Push with steel until taught by Kelsier? Finally, when Kelsier Snapped at the Pits, how did he do the Kill Everyone And Escape bit, exactly? "That night [when Mare was killed], Kelsier had Snapped, coming into his powers as a Mistborn. The next night, men had died. Many men." So it's implied he did it with Allomancy, even as yet untrained with Steel and Iron. I guess also with "trace pewter" from pewterware used by the doomed slaves at the Pit, either pure enough or in large enough quantities that he was able to slaughter his way out, while also discovering Allomancy's effect on the geodes. ("Hey, you slave! Why are you swallowing all those spoons? Suicide is -- OH, NO...!") So, is it fair to say that the End of the Final Empire really came about because TLR never legislated that common pewterware be made of an alloy insufficiently pure for Allomantic use? Pretty sloppy, Rashek. For a guy who was so careful with the atium mining and cavern preparations over centuries upon centuries... Pretty sloppy. Hey, was Ruin responsible for that? Wow, that Ati, he played a deep and subtle long game!

So does that mean at some point he will "remember" about investigating Sadeas'mysterious death? Hmmm

After reading the early release chapters as they came out, I blew through the remaining 2/3rds or so Oathbringer upon its release, and it was quite a ride. I suspect a lot of the pacing jolts I felt had more to do with reading the early release stuff in segmented form. I might not do that for the next Cosmere work with early previews. It's hard not to want to get the text "hot off the presses", but this isn't actually written to be read in digest form (like Dickens' works), and I think it showed. On the other hand, I've waited this long to re-read Oathbringer - and went back and re-read pretty much all the Mistborn works as a break - because so much of it was emotionally draining, or otherwise bombshell type stuff. The deaths of the freed Listeners... Elhokar... Moash breaking Kaladin's heart... Seeing the impact of the Unmade, unleashed... The apparent resolution of the ASK triangle, a Radiant working with the Diagram, etc., etc. And of course, the Ascendancy of Dalinar Kholin. It will definitely take a re-read for me to digest it all, and I think I'm ready for it now. I was so rooting for Elhokar just before he died. Man.