Sir Jerric

<snip>

I'd suggest searching for topics on Hemalurgy before creating your own, but don't necrobump if you can help it.

<snip>

Which then begs the question: how old can the thread be before it is considered necroing? Three pages deep or more? One year or more since last post?

I am an amateur at wiki editing, so I will likely end up with numerous questions on that process once I start on that. =)

I suppose if I'm going to be posting in the various 17th Shard boards, I should probably make an introduction thread too.

I've been an avid reader of Fantasy since the days when my dad would read us the Lord of the Rings as a bedtime story. One chapter per day. Can't wait to find out what comes next? You could always learn to read for yourself.

My dad is always hunting for new books. When he recommended Elantris as one of the best books he'd found recently, I wasn't about to pass it up. After Elantris and Mistborn: the Final Empire, I was hooked, so I looked for Brandon's other projects. This was about the time that Harriet announced Brandon as the pick for finishing the Wheel of Time, which was a thrill, too.

I eventually got hooked into reading annotations, listening to Writing Excuses, and browsing (lurking) on the 17th Shard. I made my account a while back (25+ hours of Time Online already? Yikes!). The Screen Name is one I use in numerous places (with or without a space), and the avatar is a little photo-manipulation I did (the robe is rather bulky to pack for a fight to Alaska).

I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science from UNOmaha, but not a real job in the field yet. I might try writing novels at some point, but I'm still trying to find a solid enough conflict to support one.

-----------------------------------------

Random questions of local forum etiquette:

If I want to talk about the mechanics of Hemalurgy, should I start a new thread for that, or see if a thread already exists?

If I want to collect the collective knowledge of the fans about the Scadrialan Era before the Lord Ruler, do I start a thread, edit or make a Coppermind wiki page, or both?

Lest people think I'm only interested in Mistborn, is anyone looking into comparitive currency valuations in Roshar?

']

He pulled open the pack, then whipped out a dark grey cloak. Large and enveloping, the cloak wasn't constructed from a single piece of cloth -- rather, it was made up of hundreds of long, ribbonlike strips. They were sewn together at the shoulders and across the chest, but mostly they hung separate from one another, like overlapping streamers.

Also noted that spinning flares the cloak, so it needs to be a decently weighty cloth.

No hood was referenced in the chapter.

']

... a small cloth bundle .... The cloth was slick and soft in Vin's fingers, and she quickly realized what it was. ....

She paused, then threw the cloak over her shoulders and tied it on. It felt ... different. Thick and heavy on her shoulders, but light and unconstraining around her arms and legs. The ribbons were sewn together at the top, allowing her to pull it tight by the mantle if she wished.

In chapter 8, Kelsier observes Vin huddling in her mistcloak, puling it close to shroud herself, yet there is still no mention of a hood.

Mist cloaks appear to be hoodless.

These are the very problems that prompted me to phrase it as the "ability to recollect the event". Ruin could alter the way you recollect the event to give you misinformation. Instead of recalling that you had a vivid blue shirt, you could recall a vivid yellow shirt, or a dull blue shirt, or a vivid blue jacket. Ruin was subtle for some reason, minimizing the changes he made. To me, this has always implied that Kwaan was exceptional, but had Ruin been more blatant, even mundanes would have noticed. If it were actual memory, would this be possible? Couldn't Ruin create memories whole-cloth to more easily acquire his goal?

I am in agreement with you on the phrasing "ability to recall/recollect the event". You might notice that I left out "the event" in my analysis. Your phrasing on the Ruin issue is far better than I was coming up with on short notice, so I avoided it.

And thank you for the page number; that got me back to the scene far faster. I had been thinking more about the portion where Sazed is actively storing as he enters the Conventical.

The ability to recall a visualization degrades very quickly, so he mentions having to store it very directly; he uses this technique on a pillar. Most of his storage during the scene is combined visual and vocal descriptions of the environment. He does vocalize a few other cues, like how the steel floor is cold underfoot. He casually discards the idea of a photo-style memorization of the writing in the basement, noting that "no man could stare at a wall of so much text, then remember the words." [pg 133, PB]

It is hard to say if a Feruchemist can strip a person out of a scene, though storing the audio of a meeting should be easy enough. But would you end up storing just the audio, or would associated body language and other closely tied factors be stored as well? It is hard to define the unit size of a memory.

However, would a Copper Compounder be able to burn a visual memory of the plate back into his head in such a way that he could read the words? Would this make the memory so tightly associated in his head that he couldn't forget it (without storing it again, at least), or does compounding simply increase your ability to recall the item to a level far beyond normal that will take far longer to decay? And does this distinction have any real meaning?

Most likely, a compounded visual memory will be readily recalled for several years after the burn-in, while faces and conversations could last many decades after burn-in. A dramatic, emotional event would become unforgettable (it may already have been, after all).

Specific burn-in durations would depend on the strength of recall at time of storage, how fast your normal decay rate for that type of memory is, and how much you use the memory afterward. For example, I naturally forget names told to me within approximately two hours, so compounding would possibly get me a few months of solid recall. As long as I am around the person at least few more times during those months (or I compound the memory again *hint*), I should not have trouble recalling the name for about a decade. On the other end of the spectrum, I recall anything I read very accurately for months or even years in some cases, so compounding fresh memories of a book's text would probably allow me to recite the book at will; I'd die of old age before it would noticeably decay.

Atium is a incredibly rare and valuable commodity, and too much so to make a good currency.

Other than the god metals, the rest of the metals have the standard Earth-like rarity, distribution, and processing requirements.

Iron and steel suffer significantly from oxidation and are far easier to gather for counterfeiting purposes.

And just why would you want to encourage your citizens to destroy and Allomanticly burn your currency anyway?

. . . Lurker approaching . . .

It could also be an in-universe misunderstanding. Maybe you aren't storing the actual memory so much as your ability to recollect the event. Compounding that would give perfect recall. It would also neatly explain TLR's memory: he drops just about everything into a coppermind, swallows it, burns it very lightly, storing enough to repeat the process later while just basking in the recollection of anything ever experienced. (Kwaan, who had an excellent natural memory, is also the only one to notice when the copperminds get changed. If he's storing as much ability to recall as others do, but has more naturally, he might still recall after storing the 'memory' of his learning. It might just be hard to do increments. Clue or herring?)

This is an interesting angle. If copperminds store your ability to recall, then shouldn't there be a broad application mode (like storing half your speed) wherein you store half your ability to recall, and later tap the coppermind to enhance your ability to recall everything?

This has a significant problem in Ruin's ability to modify a stored memory to something you never actually memorized, while memories that remain in your head are inviolate. If you are storing only the ability to recall, then the memory is still in your head, and Ruin shouldn't be able to edit that.

I would also like to point out how tinminds exhibit a different behavior than most metalminds. You cannot store your sensory abilities as a whole; just one sense per tinmind. Copperminds store any memories that you put in them, but the memory is stored as a whole unit.

That may be an assumption on our part. Could one store part of a memory? Say, having a meeting and stripping out a person you don't like from your recollection of it? You still remember the meeting, but you don't remember that person being there. Or forget the moment of panic where you almost forgot your boss's name. Or strip out all the words spoken and transcribe the meeting later.

Now this part seems much more possible. I think Sazed's scene in WoA at the inquisitors' lair would be the closest canon reference, though I do not have it on hand at the moment.