Brassmind

Just something that popped into my head tonight as I was getting ready for bed. I'm not at all sure that it actually means anything, but I will share and hope it makes someone grin, at least. :P/>

My initial instinct says no. First, I just found Nan Balat's interlude again and he says he doesn't want to kill people, only small animals. (Remember that Parlin was the unfortunate victim of Tonk Fah.) Secondly, Brandon says more than once — I think in the Warbreaker annotations — that Tonk Fah is basically a completely evil/destructive waste of flesh. Even for someone who likes to torture small animals, Nan Balat seems gentler than that. The personalities don't seem to match up. So, at least at the time the interlude takes place, I don't think Tonk Fah is pretending to be Nan Balat or vice versa. I'm also not sure if the timelines of the two books line up; my personal notes say there are several hundred years between Warbreaker and WoK, but the wiki's down so I can't check. Now, if Nan Balat has been known to disappear for months at a time (I don't think Shallan mentions any such thing, but I'd have to reread all of WoK to be sure), it might be a theory worth investigating some more.

It does make me think that if Nightblood could hold shards and got hold of Odium, there might be an explosion or something. That said, it seems kind of unlikely. Nightblood is sentient, but I don't know that he/it exactly has a mind in the way a human has a mind, and Nightblood is the only sentient object we've seen. On the other hand, I don't know what qualifies a person to hold a Shard, so...

Thoughts: • I think somewhere it was said that Preservation and Ruin could fuel each other's magics, but it would be less efficient. If this expands, Hemalurgy could, conceivably, work on other worlds with other Shards, just not quite as well as on Scadrial. • However (unless a stab in the heart can do anything) it would probably take some study and/or trial and error to figure out where to put the spike to steal Surgebinding. • Didn't Brandon say Szeth's way of Surgebinding was different from Kaladin's, even though the things they do with them look similar? I can't remember the source, unfortunately, but it seems to me that was said. So Szeth might not need to be spren-bonded to get the power, because he is unusual. I'd rather like to know if he had it before he got his Shardblade, personally. He's very skilled with the power, it seems. Reminds me of how Vasher is an extremely skilled Awakener, but we notice it less because we usually see it from his viewpoint, where that skill level is normal for him. I'm still mulling over the ways in which Hemalurgy and giving Breath are alike/different in terms of changes in the giver/receiver of the power...

I just found this in my personal Brandon Sanderson notes collection. I jotted it down a couple of months ago and thought I would post it now for the community to dissect. "Miles' execution, Alloy of Law He still had some health stored up — still had metalminds hidden somewhere. A lot of health. Enough to withstand two or three volleys of bullets before he died. I can think of two possibilities for where those metalminds were. Either he swallowed them, ala Sazed in Mistborn, which does leave the problem of how he was able to swallow them between his arrest and his execution… or he had a spike. I’m not sure if it would have had to be Hemalurgically charged — perhaps it would have helped the thing not kill him initially, but on the other hand, surely he could have healed himself around it with all that extra health. However, if it was charged, wouldn’t he have been able to hear Sazed?" Go wild.

The end of Alloy of Law set up far too many unanswered questions. I'd like to see a sequel to it for that reason. (And, okay, because I really like Wax and Wayne and Marasi.) If there isn't one, the second trilogy has a LOT of explaining to do. I can't wait until he finishes A Memory of Light — because I can't read it. I haven't read any of the Wheel of Time books, and even if I eventually do, it will take me months to finish them all. I don't think reading only the last three would go well for me. So when he gets back to writing his own books, I will be very happy.

I just know that the first time I picked up Warbreaker I couldn't stop reading. It wasn't even a finished book yet, but I was drawn into the world. The magic system was fascinating. The characters were fascinating. The surprises, especially at the end, were great and never felt out of place. And now I know about the Cosmere and there's all this extra depth. Also, if I need just one book to keep me absorbed for an extended bus ride, he's the guy. :-)

I don't know if this is still one of Hoid's nicknames or if it appears in any of the published novels, but I downloaded the first draft of Warbreaker and found the right bit: So if anyone spots a fellow named Dust in the published books...

My thoughts would be: AonDor involves drawing patterns in the air to create a sort of channel for the Dor to pass through you and create a specific effect. This is why Raoden ends up with it pressing on him before he discovers the missing Aon line. Allomancy involves burning metals to create a channel for the power of Preservation to have a specific effect. (I wish I could remember where Brandon said that that's how it worked, but I think I saw it somewhere. Please feel free to cite it if you know, anyone.) Hemalurgy, on the other hand, punches a sort of gap in your soul when it gives you power, and that gap allows Ruin to sneak in and influence you. I'm not quite sure where Feruchemy fits yet... In Awakening and Surgebinding, your body is literally a container for the Breath/Stormlight that gives you your power. I may be stretching a little — and as a noob on this forum, I'm not familiar with all the theories that are out there — but in my head it seems that all the magics involve ways of making the human body into a conduit for an external source of power, which I presume would be the power of one of the world in question's shards.

I've been rereading all of Brandon's books lately, and saw a quote in Elantris that jumped out at me: I believe there are mentions of (full-powered) Elantrians being able to create food and valuable items out of garbage elsewhere in the book, too. Obviously, the method used would be somewhat different, but to me the end result sounds a lot like the Soulcasting in Way of Kings. I'm rereading Way of Kings now to see if it still sounds similar when I'm not relying on memory (and to look for other various Cosmere crumbs).

I don't know guys, I find Hemalurgy pretty creepy. Maybe I should just run

@ Joe: thanks for the warning :-) @ Zas: No, definitely not. I'm rather sorry I wasn't! I've never been to Orem. For that matter, I don't think I've ever met another Brandon Sanderson fan in the flesh. Someday, though. My school name is probably not identifying info, but it's one of those things I don't like to post on internet forums. I'm weird that way. I looked at the Cosmere 101 thread and have been poking around the wiki and the rest of the forums. My own notes are pretty sketchy thus far — mostly things that have struck my interest on recent rereads of Elantris and Mistborn 1, or things I saw in the annotations, with a couple of conjectures/theories/questions/"this seems similar to this"-type notes. I've been compiling it for less than a week. I hadn't even gotten to the Adonalsium thing, which it appears is pretty basic to this... I'll keep adding to it though. I figured maybe if I wrote down all those little links — the ones I can actually see in the books, mostly — and organized them, the big picture might eventually snap into place. Perhaps, after I finish my reread of all Brandon's books, I'll make threads about a few of those little things...

I guess you can call me Brassmind. ("That girl who wants a brassmind" might be more accurate… I get cold. I think storing heat and tapping it later would be handy. I was flipping through the Alloy of Law Ars Arcanum while trying to think up a user name and, voila!) Anyway, I'm an almost-22-year-old college student who happens to like fantasy novels. Somebody uploaded a draft of Warbreaker to my favorite free e-book site way back in 2008. It got featured on the main page, I downloaded it, and the rest is history. I've now read all the (published) books except the Alcatraz series, plus a noticeable amount of stuff from Brandon's website, which is how I ended up here earlier today. I would just like to say that while I knew there was an overarching Cosmere universe and that Hoid somehow showed up in all the worlds (I actually started my own file of notes on clues left in the notes and annotations the other day), I promptly got information overload when I started poking around here. I guess the collective knowledge and theorizing abilities of a whole bunch of Sanderson fans would do that. I hope you guys are friendly. :-)