Oudeis

Um... perhaps you and I have a different definition of a "game"? Because I thought that a game was an interactive experience where you make decisions that affect the outcome and there is an ultimate goal you strive towards, whereas the books are stories, which were written beforehand and have a foregone conclusion. I could, perhaps, be mistaken? Is reading Mistborn a game and I've been playing it wrong?

The most recent WoB I've seen, from last month, was a RAFO on the "non-Scadrian metal" question, but one that suggested an eventual answer. Kaladin could, in theory, draw from the mists... but straight from the mists? No. The WoB says "with jury-rigging." It would be a complicated system, possibly one requiring direct Shardic involvement. If not, it'd prolly be some very involved (read: sessile and easy exploited as a weakness) system that would have to be designed by someone who knows a lot more about allomancy than anyone in AoL does, a lot more about surgebinding than anyone in TWoK does, and a bunch about cosmere-physics and the interactions between systems of investiture. In theory, with some jury-rigging, you could run a remote-controlled car off the heat produced by a fire burning in your fireplace. It would be difficult, it would not work as well as the native power source, and it would require a lot of time, energy, and expertise to set up. Their "nerf" is a coinshot and a nicroburst, or simply the second guy. Send ten street thugs after them, one at a time, over the course of a week, and either he'll run out of storage, or one will catch him when he's storing zinc and kill him before he thinks to drop it.

I normally tell people, "Read Warbreaker; it's free. It's also not, in my opinion, his best book, but if you read it and you think it's even okay, please take my recommendation and try Mistborn." Thus far, it's typically worked, although frankly, I've mostly used it on people who have heard of Sanderson and were considering giving him a try anyway.

Are you assuming that a Lurcher can burn Nalthian iron? Cuz that's a big point of contention that keeps getting RAFO'd.

Presumably you mean a cloud of atium shadows, rather than merely the existence of atium shadows? And that's exactly what we're talking about, so yes, I remember. Your plan is plausible, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't make as many shadows. Without the allomantic pewter for physical grace or the feruchemical steel to allow your body to react as quickly as your mind, there are only so many times you can physically change your body; not to mention, your own zinc will let you respond but until he does something to give you an idea of what he will do, you only have guesses, not actual future knowledge.

I'm willing to accept that "the next few seconds" are predictable enough to be prohibitively difficult to change.

Okay, I have told you again and again why your initial premise is flawed, and your reaction is "I'm just going to keep talking as though my premise is firm," without addressing anything I say. Like I've said, believe what you want to believe. I'll be here if you'd ever like to actually debate something.

Both of those, obviously might be examples of their nature as Returned, and therefore are tainted data for this particular question.

I'm with you up until the very final step. Do you see your leap of faith? You're just assuming that "immortality" must be something like "is reflected" that all Investiture has to share, instead of "appears green", meaning unique to one system. It could be either. Investiture across the cosmere will share certain things. That doesn't mean it will all grant immortality. You've got literally one solid example of it, a ton of methods of Investiture that do not slow the aging process at all, and a few extremely forced examples besides. Your stance is rather hard-core. "More Investiture MUST ALWAYS equal agelessness" is pretty surely not true. "Many forms of Investiture have a salubrious effect on the user that includes an extended lifespan" is a much lower bar to get over, and is probably the case.

How much physical healing is granted by Heightenings? We know that it cures you of disease and I think it was said to give you a resistance to poison (though as we've seen, not immunity). It also extends your life, though if that's a factor of not dying of disease, I'm not sure. If you've got a very bad wound, would a ton of Breath help you heal any faster? Deal with the pain (or would the pain be worse? Heightened senses are odd)? Would it "cure" you of the painkillers, just not the pain itself? On that note, is it harder to get drunk if you're Heightened?

Your entire theory is based upon the premise that Shards do, and have to, have colors, and there is no support for that theory.

If I recall correctly, Ruin and Preservation's shardpools were the same metallic sheen, for certain neither of them were black or white.

Is Gavilar's sphere an example of Stormdark?

Substitute Investiture for hemalurgy and you've basically got my underlying point. I don't think a lot of things are really "raw" Investiture the way people think it is; I don't think that Dor = Stormlight = Breath. I think they all have their own unique set of rules. There does seem to be a tendency, in a number of (but not all) cases, to promote health and, yes, sometimes even longevity

Heh. Context is everything. On Nalthis, being the man with the most Breaths in a world that at least knows what Breath is would be... possibly inconvenient at times, though probably awesome on balance. On Earth, being the only person in the world with real, demonstrable magic would... prolly be more hassle than its worth. Notoriety isn't all its cracked up to be.

This is almost exactly my entire point; the idea that despite a few similarities, Elantrian does not equal hemalurgic creation, does not equal Shard, does not equal Herald, and therefore any connection between them is speculative and coincidental at best. I might be guilty of conflating you and Aether at this point; you two seem to agree but never claimed to speak for each other, and I wasn't careful enough about remembering which of you said which, and I think I got two thoughts you each said mixed up a bit somewhere. My apologies; that was sloppy and rude of me. The point remains: Charming theory. Huge stretch. You're drawing conclusions from sparse data, and worse, you're trying to force outlandish conclusions to uphold your ideas. Don't be afraid to just believe something you can't prove yet. We're all like the Five Scholars, sitting on a few scraps of knowledge, knowing there're reams of data waiting to be discovered. We don't need to have all the answers yet. Mr. Sanderson has something like 30 books left to publish in the main cosmere story alone, let alone standalones like Dusk, Forests of Hell, and Wax and Wayne. There's nothing wrong with just stating your idea and letting it lie for a bit. You don't have enough information to prove it, but you don't have to try to fabricate any. You just need patience. The proof one way or the other will eventually be revealed in the books.

I disagree; they are quite clearly growing. Every other form of agelessness in these books implies a level of physical stasis (with the exception of the known-to-be-shapeshifter Returned). I suppose you're right, in that it cannot be utterly proven, but at this point you're just flagrantly twisting whatever facts you have to, in order to fit them to the theory, rather than taking the facts and seeing what conclusions arise. It might not be the silver bullet, but it does the opposite of supporting your case. Okay, now you're simply cherry-picking facts. Becoming a Shard is, to you, the exact same thing as just "getting a lot of breaths?" No. No amount of beef that I eat will ever turn me into a bull. And "Koloss are altered enough that they don't count"? You've got a bunch of facts in front of you. You're taking every one that supports your idea, and telling me this is a "good" fact, regardless of how outlandish it is, how little we know about that fact, or how little it has in common with the other "good" facts. Then you're taking other facts, and telling me they are "bad" facts, because of this random reason you just came up with to invalidate it. Like I said. Charming theory. If you'd like to simply believe it, please continue. Like I said, I can't prove that it's false, I'm just pointing out that you've got very little to go on. Also... you're acting like the process of turning a human into a Herald is "Hit him with a sledgehammer full of Investiture." Like that's the only option. Human being: Insert Investiture. See, they are immortal: Clearly that is exactly what happens whenever any Investiture is added to any human, because there is no chance that Honor chose to do something specific in this instance. Direct Shardic intervention is always a special case, unless your point is that Shards don't ever have options, all they can do is just cram a boatload of raw Investiture into someone, which then always works the exact same way.

Don't forget spending your life with everyone seeing your aura.

Spoilers for the Chapter 1 released on tor.com. Red and gold show up a lot. Either this means something, or Mr. Sanderson truthfully just really likes the colors.

Shards are Gods. They are largely composed of the infinite powers of creation itself. No way I'm letting you get away with that as proof of your statement. They are the definition of a special case. Hemalurgy, meh. Remember, Inquisitors are specifically hemalurgic creations. Long-lived? Fine. Immortal? No. Mistwraiths die after fifty years, but with just two spikes they turn into ageless Kandra. Yet koloss have twice that many spikes, and age faster than humans. Hemalurgy clearly does not universally extend life, let alone provide immortality. Heralds, again, are a special case, and while yes agelessness is a part of it, they literally respawn. There are only 10, and it is not a repeatable experiment, and we know next to nothing about them. They are almost for certain a special case of direct Shardic intervention, which invalidates you claim that they support the theory that "more Investiture automatically means longer life". I still disagree with Elantrians. "Legends say". The average person knows next to nothing for sure about Elantrians. They heal rapidly, so without accidents or chronic conditions, and with eternal access to good food and protection from the elements, I'm sure if they reached the ripe old age of 80 or 90 that would lend to a general legend of their immortality among humans, especially since, as we know, the actual death was kept strictly secret from anyone who didn't glow. It's evidence, yes, but it's incredibly weak. So, you've got one specific confirmed cased of the Fifth Heightening, two specific cases muddied by the nature of direct Shardic intervention (Heralds and the Shards themselves), one line in Elantris about what "legends say", and the contradiction that is hemalurgy. It's a charming theory, but you're still basically hinging it on a single point of data, and a load of speculation. The Hoed were very different. They were trapped in time, which led to their particular immortality. It wasn't natural or pleasant. They didn't heal, and couldn't die, they were frozen in one instant.

Both valid points, then. I take them under consideration, and admit that they are evidence of flaws in my theory.

We don't know that Kharbranth or Sesemelex Dar are any older than 2 thousand years, do we? So, we've got one city built inside a massive, natural wall, two cities which could be recent adaptations to the Highstorms, and one city, so far in the past they don't even know how to mine, with flimsy buildings that happens to be next to a rock. I don't think we're stretching coincidence yet. I realize there are holes in my theory, I realize we don't know everything yet. But I don't think you've got very much more evidence to support your theory than I've got to support mine. I don't expect to convince you I'm right, just that that you can't prove I'm wrong. I'm gonna keep believing this until you can prove to me that it isn't true, and if I turn out to be wrong, you are welcome to one hearty "I told you so."

Possible... except we by definition don't truly understand the geometry of a hypercube. It could be a lot more complicated than that. For example, if I were to try walking a hundred feet along a flat, horizontal surface, that would be simple, yeah? Climbing 100 feet up a flat, vertical surface would take skill and equipment I might not have.

Still not buying Elantrian immortality. So far you've got nothing but speculation. We know they don't heal perfectly, as evidenced by Galladon's father. It took him what, days to die? But he still did. I feel like someone would have mentioned by now if Elantrians would never age. It's an idea, and I guess I can't disprove it, but you've got no proof for it. See below re: comparing metal flakes to Stormlight; Swimmingly is right, apples and oranges. I still disagree with you on the physics, but it's not germane. So all you've got are Heralds, who die all the time, they just re-spawn, also there are only 10 of them and if they're not a prime example of direct Shardic involvement I don't know what is; and the Returned/anyone with 2000 Breaths. So that's exactly one example of someone in one specific magic system powerful enough to get agelessness as a passive ability. I'm sorry, but two points of data, especially with one of them having "anomaly" warning signs all over the place, is far from enough to establish that something is "common." Also, as I think I read someone else point out; inhaling a ton of stormlight means you start leaking a ton of stormlight. Breaths can be held perfectly, and apparently only Voidbringers can hold Stormlight perfectly. You'd need to be inhaling it every, what, few seconds to maintain enough? Even if it is possible, which I don't think it is. Valid point. Also, I think people are reading Mr. Sanderson's "Stormlight is Investiture" quote wrong. I think it's like saying, "an apple is a fruit." That doesn't mean an apple and a banana give you the same nutrition. Just one man's opinion.

Kholinar was built to fit the rock formation, and possibly to protect against the more-frequent monster attacks of Desolations. Its storm-breaking potential might be a side-effect.