king of nowhere

she has no apparent function in the book, so we can speculate but it will remain a mistery. The main theories before the end were - component of cytonic drive - former pilot - krell All those were shot down, however. The cytonic drive only needs the human pilot. The former pilot was human. the krell are not slugs, and they weren't on the planet so long ago. She could also be a part of texture, and a red herring to confuse readers ("everyone will expect that slug to be important, while it has no significance whatsoever. I'll drive my fans crazy, muahaha!"), but she has too much screen time for that. And it does seem that the slug can teleport. I guess we'll see in the next books

it's also established that they were intentionally not trying to kill the humans, just keep them busy. It's also possible the krell are intentionally using what for them is sub-par technology. After all, M-bot has nothing that seems too advanced to me. the krell station was able to repel the hacking pretty fast. And the capacity to protect a pilot against what amount to possession is a fundamental prerequisite if you are a fighting ship designed for a pilot with the hole in him. the shield is three times stronger than standard DDF, placing it about even with krell shields. m-bot superior technology is nothing but what gave humankind an even playing field.

well, turns out i was right that the krell weren't actually trying to win. though "prison" wasn't very high in my list of scenarios. It reminds me of vetinari's prisons in discworld: the prisons contain a lot of possible escape routes, and each one has been accounted for and properly blocked; but the prisoner doesn't know it, and loses valuable time chasing a false hope, thus preventing him from concocting a truly successful escape. the krells were doing the same. Along with the planet's name, I wonder if it is an intentional homage to discworld. By the way, them containing humans as "dangerous barbarians" would actually have a better moral standing if they hadn't nuked a civilian population.

Well, pretty much what it says in the title. I can find a list of calibre-compatible formats, but most vendors are not specifying the format until after you buy the ebook. Also, I have no idea if some of them put in some anti-piracy protections that make it only readable by their specific program. I just want to be sure I can read my ebook; I once had troubles opening one, and since then I've been super suspicious

they don't seem similar at all to me.

their attack patterns especially don't make any sense. Supposedly, there was this giant human fleet, and this fleet lost against the krell, and crashed on this planet. So now the krell, the force that took down this huge armada, that had further 70 years to recover while humans were living in caves, is defeated by a bunch of fighters? Doesn't make any sense. Seems one of those videogames where the enemy is always sending waves just big enough to be challenging. Also, I have a hard time thinking that in 20 years of trying to nuke the base, they didn't succeed once. Basically, the krell don't look like they actually want to win this war. If they did, then it would require a large number of coincidences to explain how they came from knocking a fleet down from space, to losing to a handful of fighters. From other, sloppier media, I could just believe that's how the story works, for story reasons. This being sanderson, I'm sure there are reasons for it. I can't fathom them with the info we have, though.

actually, he almost made it. wasn't a bad plan. though shooting wax while he was asleep would have been even better

if we want to be technical, then most examples here would be disqualified, as getting killed by another person does not award a darwin. but for the sake of this thread, we can accept the general laymen acception of darwin award, that is "death caused by consequences of acting really dumb". I nominate yeden, the former skaa rebellion leader on scadrial, for leading his army against overwhelming forces against the advice of people much more competent than he was

True. Not even the lord ruler had that power, though. and the thousands of kilometers of rock in the way certainly make detection harder.

Yes, that is a possibility, although I don't like to think he was lying to wax; he seemed in sincerity mode, and he never directly lied previously (misleading truth, that yes). So I'm not saying that harmony didn't plan for it. I'm not even saying harmony should have done things differently. What I'm saying is that he can't say that the northerners has all the advantage at the beginning: sure, they had the advantage of a fertile land, but the southerners had other advantages that the northerners lacked.

Harmony has complained that he has made life too easy for them, and therefore they don't progress, while southerners faced much more hardship and progressed much more. In particular, he complains that not much exploration has been done outside of the basin. I believe, however, that harmony is missing a few key points. 1) harmony made the basin surrounded by nigh-impassable mountains, with only two available passes. Outside of those mountains, are semidesertic lands. Outside of those are full-blown deserts. Short of putting minefields around the roughs, I don't know what more harmony could have done to keep the population boxed in. 2) the southerners only have their allomantic technology because kelsier showed them. I'm sure if somebody had shown them the basics, even the northeners would have managed it. And it's not like they didn't experiment with the metallic arts, but they are still tied to the basic paradigm that powers are tied to the person. I'm sure just adding some bits in the words of founding could have fixed that; I mean, they even reference electricity and flight. But they do not mention at all that it's possible to make metallic powers for everyone. 3) the southerners have access to harmonium. Enough of it that they can use it as fuel, or to make bombs. The northerners don't have it. So, while sazed claims that he wanted the people to explore outside, he surrounded them with impassable obstacles. He complains that the southerners are more advanced, but forgets that they had their allomantic technology handed down, while the northerners weren't even aware of its possible existance. Finally, he gave the most precious resource for that technology available to southerners, but not to northerners. I know he doesn't claim to be infallible, but the claim that he has "made people's life too easy" doesn't hold to close scrutiny. Sure, it made surviving easy, not thriving.

Ok, so you'd need two spikes. And placing both requires way too much coordination. I wonder if a bullet made of two interwined metals could work as two spikes in one. Or a sort of trident arrow, that may actually work, though it would have terrible aerodinamics.

Not to mention acqua regia still takes a while to dissolve gold. Not sure of the actual time, as I've never tried it, and it depends on the size and shape of the gold to be burned, but even something small as an earring should last a few minutes to a few hours. Human skin also would resist a few minutes, though for a gold compounder that would not be an issue anyway. No, the most practical way to kill a gold compounder is through clever use of hemalurgy. You spike them with a gold spike, you steal away their capacity to heal, then they die because they have a hole in their heart. The spiking can be done with a gold bullet or arrowtip, if you know what you're doing. It could even work on the lord ruler, if caught off-guard. That method can itself be countered by having a large goldmind usable by anyone, so that even if you lose your capacity to heal, you still can heal - and with enough healing power, you can even restore the damage to your spiritweb and get back your healing power.

I imagine vials as being the size of a finger. So, a bit less than a shot glass. But that's just how I imagine them. I don't think we were ever given a size. Still, a vial lasts for a while so you don't need to drink more, except for fast burning pewter, which solves the problem. the discovery of duraluminium increased the amount of vials a mistborn needs, but again that implies a pewter burner. Oh, and I did some check of the first mistborn. I was sure kelsier told that alcohol is for preserving metals, but I could not find any reference to it. I also checked the annotations for the first 8 chapters I would hazard fluorocarbons. Some of the most inert substances known, not-toxic, non-reactive. They have high density and low viscosity, which helps to suspend more of the metal and minimize the amount that remains stuck in a vial. They dissolve large amounts of gases, but that's not a concern as long as the vial is stoppered. They are not cheap, but neither terribly expensive. Only problem is that there are concerns that they may actually be dangerous in the long term. Fluorocarbons in the body get stuck inside the cell membranes and in fatty tissue, instead of staying in the blood and getting eventually excreted. So they will stay in the body for decades, and it's possible that this accumulation would eventually result in healt damage.

soap was made since ancient times using ash (relatively rich in carbonate) as an alkali catalyst on ffaty substances. I think they boiled fat and ash, but I may be wrong on the specific details. Anyway, having soap doesn't imply any other capacity to obtain fats and oils industrially.

You are totally right, I didn't consider alcholates and I absolutely never thought of complexes. Guess I'm getting rusty (I wasn't stored in a stoppered vial filled with oil). Though I would surmise that alcohol reactions with metals should at least be somewhat slower than water reactions, as far as carrying the first oxydation step (and after that, the metal is already ruined allomantically). Your theory holds some merit, but I remember kelsier also mentioning that the alcohol is to prevent metal oxidation. Too lazy to find the reference right now. But now that I'm thinking, did they actually have oil in the final empire? Olives and most of the flowering plants from which you get oil may not have existed at the time. I can't recall oil being mentioned a single time, and while there probably were some seeds that could yield oil when crushed, it may have been too few and not appetizable enough to justify the process. It may well be that in the final empire they used alcohol because that's all they had and then it became traditional. If they really had no oil in the final empire, I'm going to add it to the list of reasons I'm glad I don't live there.

metal vials have traditionally been filled with alcohol, supposedly for the purpose of helping preservation of the metals. As a chemist, I've been thinking of how much sense it makes, and now I just need to vent out what I got. Metals oxydize in the presence of oxygen. We tend to think water is also needed, because rusts forms with water, but rust is an hydroxide; oxydation can well go without water, though water speed up the process by providing an electrolithic solution where all manners of redox processes can take place. Under that premise, storing metals in alcohol is not effective. Oxygen, as a nonpolar molecule, is actually more soluble in alcohol than in water (by about 5 times, according to what I could google). Alcohol mixes well with water, meaning it will readily absorb water from the atmosphere. So, metals should degrade faster in alcohol than dry. However, considering that allomancers need some fluid to help them swallow the metals, alcohol is probably still better than water, because alcohol by itself does not react with metals, nor does it provide much electrolytes to help speed up redox reactions. Steris used cod liver oil in the vials she carries for wax, and that's an interesting choice. Oxygen is about as soluble in oil as it is in alcohol, but oil will not absors water from the atmosphere. Its apolar nature make it bad at stabilizing charged intermediates, so it should also slow down redox reactions a tad. It's probably a good choice. In fact, oil is akin to petroleum ethers, which are used to store alkali metal away from oxygen. So it seems the increased solubility of oxygen doesn't play a large role. ultimately, though, the biggest factor in conserving vials is just how much oxygen they contain. gases have low density, so the amount of oxygen in a vial is tiny. If the vial is accurately stoppered, possibly sealed with vax, then metals won't degrade any further once the initial oxygen has been consummed. Finally, wax putting whisky in his metal vials seems a terrible choice. Whisky is still about 60% water, and water can eventually corrode metals alone. Plus it contains all kind of organic molecules, some of which may actually help the oxydation process. To his credit, he probably drank them fast enough that they never had much time to rust. To sum it up: - alcohol is a mediocre solvent for storing metals. - oil is actually a very good choice, though Steris doesn't know enough chemistry to appreciate the fact - whisky is a terrible choice, practically as bad as water - the most important precaution is to keep the vial airtight anyway

MUAHAHAHAHA! You'll never sleep well at night again! Bcause you'll be staying up to read, of course.

Oh, my. Now I'm picturing him at a ball with all the other plotting nobles

Anyone would do poorly in classical scadrial, as the world was fairly crappy. Some people would just fare worse than others. Huh. I'm thinking now at nale during ashworld scadrial trying to stop kelsier and his team because they are breaking the law...

It's not a matter of "important". Brandon does not prioritize much what is important, else he would be working only on mistborn and stormlight and not starting new stuff. Brandon is an artist, and as such he does what he feels like doing. sometimes that means writing an important book, sometimes it involves going for a totallly new project. not much point trying to predict it. sure, he has a schedule, but it's not set in stone. he'll swap it in a moment if he can't manage to write a book he's supposed to be writing, or if he just comes up with a new idea he can't stop thinking about.

As far as I know, the plan is still to write the first 5 stormlight books, then the modern mistborn trilogy, then the last 5 stormlight books, then the future mistborn trilogy. lost metal may be delayed, but it should come before stormlight 5. Maybe brandon will write it next year, and will pospone stormlight 4 by a few months?

in chapter 9, wax told wayne that there is bendalloy on the desk, amid the metallurgical apparatus. wayne is reluctant to get it, because of an old accident with a similar apparatus, and comments to wax One page and less than one minute later, the tea tray explodes. Nice foreshadowing EDIT: I found another nice piece of foreshadowing in the following chapter Of course lassie was good at lying, not for being a woman but for being a kandra. of course if she pretended to be a dancer even wayne would fall for it. I wonder how many of those little tidbits are planned and how many are accidental.

Rock is not closer just because of that. Rock can see all spren. Most of his people cannot - he states several times that he is special among his people because of this skill. And I'm not sure about singers, but i believe they also cannot normally see all spren. Mind you, I'm not pushing much for my interpretation of the cuts - it was a farfetched hypothesis made as a possible explanation to a discrepancy that can be explained in other ways. But there IS something strange with rock. he's not "just a strong guy"

I never wanted to imply that his connection to the cognitive is responsible for his physical might, though rereading my original post I see I forgot to specify. No, his strenght is simply a result of him being naturally big and having trained froom early age to become ever bigger. His connection to the cognitive is an established fact, and I was trying to use it to justify the inconsistency of his cuts. Because, while I'd also be tempted to dismiss it with mundane explanations, there really is something strange there. the assassin had a shardblade, there's no reason to cut rock with a mundane blade.