king of nowhere

being a coinshot with a very bad case of vertigo. being a soother/rioter without any good perception of how other people really feel, so you can't really nudge them. being a bloodmaker in a third world country where a gram of gold is worth more than your monthly salary. being a tinmind living and working in very loud environment. being a thug while having the kind of personality that will make you live a sedentary life and seek an intellectual job.

You know, I think you hit a good spot there. it's probably nothing to do with shardic magic. Which means that unfortunately we have no way of speculating on it; we clearly miss some key piece of the big picture there. Although I'd say that investiture is involved in it, since every known worldhopper was already a magic user before. Carrying on with that train of thoughts, every worldhopper is also apparently ageless, and we know that massive investiture grants it. So to become a worldhopper one need a lot of investiture, much more than what is normally available. but that still don't tell us how it actually is done. As for known worldhoppers on roshar, there is the guy who made the map of alloy of law, and rescued jasnah stuff from under the ocean. i don't remember his name. and then there are the three guys that were looking for hoid in the way of kings (galladon, demoux, and someone we don't know). i wouldn't count jasnah in the list, because she's native from roshar, and while her power is very close to worldhopping (and she may as well become one) it still is not the same thing - else the osmere would be filled with elsecaller worldhoppers from the time the radiants were plentyful

wow! that's the sanderson book i was looking forward to, even more than stormlight 3 or rithmatist 2 (mainly because those books have some good resolution at the end, while alcatraz 4 has the kind of ending that forces you to read on... yet another proof that alcatraz is not a good person). Anyway, if he finished the first draft, why isn't it mentioned in the advanccement bars in his site? I see firefight, sixth of the dusk, legion skin deep and rithmatist 2, but not mention of alcatraz 5. Is it to avoid librarian detection?

worldhoppers use shadesmar to travel, so ease of traveling between planets has little to do with physical distance.

well, the amount of power you get from a duraluminium burn depends on how big are your reserves. if you do a duraluminium steelpush and are running low, you won't jump the hundreds of meters that vin did after drinking a new vial, but probably just a few dozen. or if you do a duraluminium steelpuush and are running short on pewter, you won't get enough strenght to survive the backlash and you'll exxplode in a spectacular shower of blood (yeah, there are a lot of ways to do that with duraluminium). Also, I can't help but notice that the amount of power you get with duraluinium is much lower than what you get by regular burning. vin could jump hundreds of meters with a vial worth of steel, but if she used that steel for normal jumps she could go several kilometers. there's probably some phenomenon akin to feruchemical compounding here.

You just reminded me of her. that's right, who was she? do we get any explanation?

it depends on how much time you have. if you are in a sspaceship and can slowly push over time, then you can easily deviate the asteorid enough to make it miss the planet years later. if you are on the ground waiting for the asteroid to arrive... well, for start, it will never work: allomancy has a limited range, and by the time the asteroid is close enough to push against it, the heat it made by friction with the atmosphere already turned any coinshot waiting for it on the ground to ash. Discounting that, an asteroid would move at speeds of around 10 km/s. so you only have a couple hundredth of a second ffrom the moment you can push to the one you are dead. not enough for human reflexes. and even if we assume that somehow all those coinshots can survive long enough to push and can push at the right time, then the kinetic energy from the asteroid would be instantly transferred to the allomancers and from them to the ground... resulting in exactly the same effect that the asteroid would have made. sometimmes, the law of conservation of energy sucks. Oh, and personally I think harmony would intervene for whatever would directly threaten the survival of the human race and civilization. so I''d say the bigger cases of asteroid, pandemia and aline invasion. I am a bit uncertain on ecological catastrophe and 1984 scenario, as both do not threaten the survival of the human race, but would effectively prevent it from further progressing.

Well, I partialy agree with you that killing a chasmfiend was improbable, especially since kaladin was unpracticed with the sword. I wouldn't say dalinar couldn't have done it, however. he had much troubles with the other chasmfiend, but he had to protect elokar in that case, and the cramped confines of a chasm actually limit the mobility of the chasmfiend and gives some advantage to the human. Well, kaladin managed to hold his own for a while, and that certainly too skill cause a regular human would have been snatched and eaten in a few seconds. the killing blow was more like a desperate gamble that succeeded. It would have been more realistic if the chasmfiend had retreated after getting sliced a couple times - most real predators won't risk debilitating injury to kill a small prey. Anyway, even if we accept that kaladin lost a measure of skill, I don't think anyone would have bought that he became "average". I doubt the breaking of the bond would nullify the four years when he trained extra hard because he had failed to protect his brother.

I realy don't think anyone can claim kaladin lost his skill after losing stormlight. Even without his bond to syl, he still manages to kill a chasmfiend alone and with a shardblade. if you remember back in the hunt scene in twok, it took three full shardbearers to kill one, and it was still pretty risky, as the original plan woulldd have been to pelt the chasmfiend with arrows before engaging in melee. So, kaladin killing the chasmfiend that way (and mind you that he was probably also a bit tired from a day of marching) proves he's still an exceptional warrior. simply, he got used to have a bit of stormlight in him, and that make him feel slower and less coordinated. remember, people's perception don't have much to do with absolute values, but with changing. People performing high-skill tasks will use their average level as a personal reference for what their skill is supposed to be, and if they lose that, they suddenly feel weak and incompetent. not because they are, but because they were used to their high standard. I know it firsthand. I used to be a very strong chessplayer when I was younger. Now, everytime I play chess, my comment on it generally goes as "I suck!" "I forgot how to play this game" "I'd say I played like an animal, but animals would be offended by that" "You could have taken a drunkard from the street and put him in my place, he would have played better". Those are all real comments I made in recent years to people asking me how I did in a chess match (not 100% sure I actually uttered the 4th one, but i certainly thought it). You'd think I was a totally crappy chessplayer, but actually I am still ranked 200th in italy, 20000th in the world, I still play in the master league in the finnish championship and the last year I played in italy I did ok in the second division. But, I just know that I used to be stronger. I keep seeing how much better I could have played. I see all the missed chances as a failure. Even worse, the "ideal myself" I have for reference is much stronger than I had ever actually been: this imaginary self that I compare myself to has all the raw strenght that I had in my teens, but with the experience and knowledge that I have now. He is sensibly stronger than I was even in my golden period. And that is the kind of performance that I came to consider "normal". No wonder every time I sit in front of a chessboard I feel totally inadequate. EDIT: 1) all my chessplaying friends experience the same and tend to make the same dismissive remarks on their skills, including one who's even better than me. I'm not an isolated case. in fact, the vast majority feels like me. EDIT2: and the only people I know that do not feel like crap are fast-growing youngsters who consistently play the last tournament better than the one before. It again has to do with perception: they consider their "normal" the skill they had a few months prior, which is already significantly lower than the skill they have right now. 2) I have to say that, despite the feeling that I have a sort of block in my mind preventing me from reaching my potential I still enjoy the game much EDIT/ If you look for a more mundane example, as yourself if 20000$ per year is a good salary. an immigrant from a poor country used to living with one tenth of that amount will say that it is an incredible whealt. a rich guy used to totaling several millions per years will instead feel starving poor and won't be able to understand how to survive with that money. and a middle class guy who always earned that much will feel that he has exactly what he needs and he's neither rich nor poor. So, all this long digression to say that, no matter how kaladin feels about losing stormlight, he's still an incredibly skilled warrior. just slightly less incredibly skilled than he was before. And, for the personal example aforementioned, I think his reaction of feeling like he lost all his skill is totally realistic. I guess brandon must have felt like that sometimes too.

It would depend on the metal. in some cases there would be no noticeable effects (gold, for example; you'd just be perfectly healty for a very short time), but in other cases the result would be spectacular. For example, nicrobursting steel with speed accumulated would do nothing if you stand still, but if you try to move it would make you move so fast that you would ignite by contacct with the atmosphere, disintegrating into a fireball; a spectacular death that would probably take the nicroburst with you. In the case of iron, you'd suddenly wheight thousands of tonnes. you'd sink into the ground, and then would die of suffocation trapped at a few dozens meters underground - the ground pressure would stop you from breathing, i think. or the hole woul collapse on you. maybe, if you're lucky, you can just end up trapped and needing rescue. for atium, you'd probably be reverted back to an embryo, another highly spectacular way of killing someone. For brass, you'd become so hot you'd take fire. or if tapping brass make you immune to your own heat, the air would catch fire around you. you may be able to survive if you can store a brasssmind fast enough. whether you survive or not, that would be lethal for the nicroburst. for zinc, your mind would work so fast that those few seconds when you are nicrobursted would expand in your perception like they were years. the outer world would be like frozen in time. your body would move too slowly to be noticeable from yourr point of view; even your eyeballs wouldn't be able to rotate exxcept at the slowest of paces, so you'd only be able to see whatever object you were focusing, and all the rest would be a blur. sound would become a monotone background noise, the changes we associate with voices or sounds too slow to be noticed. This could be the most cruel fate of all; it is basically sensorial deprivation, a known torture that can drive a person crazy. think of spending a few years trapped in a body that is, for all practical purposes, paralyzed, hearing no sound, seeing nothing but a single object. even if you make it to the end with your sanity mostly intact, it sucks mightily. If you are a gasper, your blood would suddenly fill with so much oxygen that it oversaturates and you'd explode. if the effect is general tissue oxygenation and not simply having oxygen in the blood, then you may die of oxydative stress; it will probably destroy your tissues in a way akin to radiation poisoning. if the metal only carries the good side of being oxygenated, instead, you'd have no effect. if you are a subsumer (don't remember the metal), then getting so much nutrition may get you an instant art attack as your cholesterol level rises to "some traces of blood into it". or, you could suddenly become very fat. or it may have no effect at all. If you were a copper compounder, that could be a good way to memorize a whole encyclopaedia in a few seconds. or, the sheer amount of informations that are crammed in your brain in such a short time may drive you mad. MAD! if you stored luck, you could have a life-changing event right there. possibly the [person of appropriate sex and gender orientation] of your dreams just stumbles upon you, or a gold mine is discovered under your backyard.

yeah, i also believe so. hitting a bullet in midflight so that it ricochets and hit a head-sized target? completely impossible, no matter how skilled you can be. it requires a timing accurate within a fraction of milliseconds, and that after the time bubble was dropped. in that case, i think harmony did personally interfere. But all the other times, there's nothing superhuman in his skill. he's just extremely good, at a commando or olimpic athlete level, but still humanly possible. no need for paranormal justifications of his skills. what the hell, if someone told me that a person can run 42 km in 2 hours I would never believe the human body is physically capable of that, except that i know that's the time that champions take to run a marathon. highly trained humans can do stuff that can seem impossible. Also, I don't see how burning steel can help with aiming. spatial perception and all that don't really matter that much; the most important thing, especially with a handgun, is that your hand must be still. yoou can have perfect sight, perfect spatial perception and all such, but if your hand trembles just slightly it won't matter. So I'd say thugs have an easier time aiming, as Allomantic pewter increases dexterity too.

it is true, those two timelines are conflicting. good find. if wok comes before aol, then the second sa pentalogy has to come before the second mistborn trilogy. Probably brandon has to refine all his timelines.

I got the impression that if someone broke the wheel, either by rand killing the dark one, or by the dark one winning, then the creator would just make the universe anew, and it already happened several times. Yes, I'm not that satisfied with it; I see progress (scientifical, cultural, social, everything you can think of) as the goal of the human race and the way to fulfill our potential, and the idea that everything will blow up and we have to restart from scratch every time don't feel so good. but a full cycle of the wheel can last millions of years, most of which spent into highly enlightened and advancced ages. in the face of that, having to endure a few millennia of suffering and obscurantism is a price worth paying.

also, i don't understand where the gain would be. oh, you could make an army of clones to use for spikes, but that's nowhere near moral, so i assume you had some other kind of idea. but what? ah, maybe you want to spike yourself for your personality, the implant that personality on a younger clone as a way to achieve sort-of immortality? i'm sure it was discussed before, but ddon't remember what the conclusion was. pretty sure something would go wrong, anyway. and it certainly has nothing to do with morality. in any case, you can't make copies of yourself: there's only one spike with your personality going around.

Well, it depends on how they are characterized. I think a lot of criticism on the topic comes from the evil humanoid races were treated in dungeons & dragons: "this race like to kill and torture other people. they pillage nearby settlements for loot and slaves. oh, did we mention that they are EEEVIL? of course it's totally ok to attack them on sight, if you are playing the kick-the-door style or if you're too lazy to come up with a better reason they should be enemies" now copy-paste that for several dozens creature types. that's totally sloppy characterization here. why are those creatures so hideously evil that it's ok to attack on sigh any member of their race? and if they are not so evil and many of them could be decent fellows, is it still ok to use them as fodder for the party? Manny D&D players lamented on that, and so when they are presented with an "always evil" race they tend to twist their mouth and say aww, not another one of those... At least that's my issue with the whole "always evil" races, and I read on forums of other people having the same complaint. Not sure how big a percentage of readers we actualy make. However, if a race is properly characterized with a good reason to be evil, and there aren't already a score of those in the world, then I have no problems with it. orcs in lotr, trollocs in wot, koloss in mistborn, all those have a perfectly good reason to be the way they are and serve as enemy mooks. Basically, it's oonly the D&D monster manuals that failed at making them believable. either they spent all their time on playtesting the game mechanics and not enough on creating a good backstory, or they figured that any master who wanted more depth could invent one for himself and/or houserule/homebrew all the races to better fit the kind of world he wanted.

right on allomancy, but on the shaod there are speculations that people are chosen because they are devoted to something. and in the sa radiants become such because of their actions and belief. so, brandon don't use much the old genetic magic.

So, will ssomeone of the coppermind writers noticce this and fix the error, or it must be notified in some way? if so, how?

I just looked the chronology on the coppermind wiki, and it states that kelsier was born in 997 FE. Vin was born in 1005 FE. That is also confirmed in kelser's article. The source is stated to be in the books, and i don't have them with me right now to check. However, wasn't kelsier definitely older than that? he regarded vin as a daughter, and that don't seem to fit well with him being only 8 years older. i also came to the idea that he was an accomplished crime lord for a long time; would be pretty difficult to do all the stuff he did if he got captured at age 21. Also brandon remarked that he inserted the lines about kelsier mentioning a daughter because people were creeped off when they sensed some romance between him and vin; and that's not the kind of reaction people would have if there were only 8 years of difference between them. So, is it a mistake of the coppermind, or what else?

darkfriends are 100% regular humans. they don't have any special powers. they are basically members of a secret society. Of course, a channeler can become a darkfriend like everyone else, so there are darkfriends channelers; but it's not something they aquired by becoming darkfriends. there's an exception in that a few darkfriends very dedicated can become grey man and acquire some special powers, but that's something you won't see until later books so i won't spoiler here. If I remember correctly, warders and aes sedai can sense halfmen and trollocs and other shadowspawn (there are a few others you won't see until further books, like the dragkar). they can do it because they have the taint of the dark one. they cannot sense darkfriends, as they are 100% regular humans; unless they are extremely dedicated, in which case they carry some taint too.

yeah, I wondered the same myself. if there are other groups of epic, they would have heard of the tensor and healing stuff and would start thinking on why it don't work for them. on the other hand, it seems unlikely that there's only one group, so I'm going with edgedancer and his "very loose organization or even unrelated groups" theory for the moment. That's something I hope the sequels will clear.

Nah. the inquisitor-vampire similarity is too weak, the shaod is in another book, and while there is a teen romance, it actually feels like the two of them belong together and not like they are attracted only because the plot says so. Basically, the whole book is not stereotyped enough. [in case you're wondering, yes, I'm still in rant mode] Oh, by the way, you forgot: there's also a perfect fanservice scene when vin fights in underwear. better yet, it is a justified fanservice scene! if only the movie majors realized the huge pile of money they are kicking...

BAh, no surprise here. they announced a movie on the wheel of time, scrapped. they announced a mistborn movie, scrapped. they announced a mistborn videogame... guess what? seems they only make movies with commercial stuff. i'm pretty sure if brandon had put vampires into it it would have become a movie, a videogame, and a tabletop game. Also if there was a zombie apocalypse. Face it: even with his success ever rising, brandon is still too cult to appeal the majors. damnation consumeristic culture. As a side note, ranting should not be abused, but if done properly it can make you feel better.

YEs, trollocs are not intersting. they are just the basic monster mook. in the eye of the world a trolloc tries to talk to rand, but that's the only time. well, not every villain can be intersting. It gets a bit more intersting when the reader discover that they are supersoldiers created with age of legends genetic engineering and then touched by the dark one. myrdral are born from trolloc, oncce every while, as a sort of genetical defect. the guide also mentions female trollocs; they just stay in the blight and breed very fast. that's it. But, well, the trollocs are just mooks. it's not like the regular soldiers in the armmies aare much more intersting than them, from a narrative point of view. the real enemies are the forsaken and other darkfriends powerful enough to have their own agenda. trollocs are no more than their pawns.

I don't know, but he was giving advice to kelsier. If he was fine with the final empire, why would he help kelsier overthrow it? unless he was trying to mislead him, in which case tipping the steel inquisition would have been more effective. Probably his goal was gaining access to the well of ascension, and overthrowing the lord ruler was part of it; but that bring us back to the fact that he could have helped much more. If, instead, he wanted to gain access to the well without overthrowing the lor ruler, giving advice to kelsier is definitely not the way to go at it.

no, there is not. there are legends saying that, but they are exaggerations. I'm pretty sure (no idea where to find the quotes) that brandon said that being burned to the bones, or being decapitated, would kill him. even in case it won't, a regular cannon round has enough explosive potential to tear a man in pieces collectable with a tea spooon. even if one of those pieces remained in contact with a piece of a metalmind (which also would be disintegrated), i'm pretty sure the amount of healing needed to regenerate a full body from a little finger would be more than what that amount of gold can contain. and without a stomach he cannot make more charge. anyway,using a bullet as an hemalurgic spike is by far the most elegant method.