Oudeis

No, this is the thread where one person, reading the book, posts all of his or her own questions, and then everyone chimes in.

All I know is, I'll be mirroring those pictures before I show them to any children, that's all I'll say.

I think that Wayne's acting skill, like Wax's deductive reasoning, Marasi's pattern reconition, Steris's organization, or Lord Harms's money, are all indications that you can be awesome without magic. You don't need to be magically good to be good, you can sometimes just be good.

Is polestone a word in real life, or is it the word on roshar for those ten gems?

Why, exactly, wouldn't they?

How about, "Considering the fact that they existed in Classic scadrial, and the entire thing was expressly designed as a genetic reserve by Rashek, it strains credulity to believe that Southern Scadrians would NOT have full feruchemists"?

Yeah for realz, what is this soulcaster?

Functionally... yes. Which is why I tried to water down the "it cannot be changed" aspect, since we actually see someone change that in-book. It's very much like something hard-written into a computer. It makes it impossible to change... but only in theory. In practice, there's always a way. But for all intents and purposes, it's inaccurate but simple to say that it means, "cannot be changed."

...Except that his is the ONLY blade that DOES change eye color.

...jaw-drop.

Also I'm sure it's expressly stated at some point that Szeth's blade was given to him by the Stone Shamans, and that when he dies it will be collected by them. Doesn't sound like "I made this shard myself out of my Spren" to me.

"Actual outlet" simply means that the metal determines what power it is. Not quite exactly the same thing as being a Mistborn or an allomancer... it just means that, specifically, if you burn tin, your senses will be enhanced. Burning Tin will never allow you to Pull on metal. The "actual outlet" means the specific effect of the magic. In Tin's case, that's senses. As for "hardwritten," it's a computer term. It means something that cannot be changed (though, in truth, what it more specifically means is, it cannot be changed easily). If something is hardwritten onto your computer, that means your computer likely came that way, and you can't just click on a file and change it. Likewise, when you are born, your spiritweb is "hardwritten" to be a Misting, a Mistborn, or neither. You cannot easily change that. The only known way involves lerasium, possibly the single rarest substance on the planet. I don't know that anyone really uses the word "softwritten" but do you know how your computer has software? In theory, all you need to do to change your "software" is to overwite the memory with a new program. "Hardware" is stuff like your physical hard-drive itself; again, in theory you can change it with effort, but it isn't easy. Hope that helps.

Interesting... Ferrero Rocher appears to be a mix of Italian and French. That is neither here-nor-there. I think there's a WoB out there where he says that the metals in Feruchemy are grouped not by physical, mental, temporal and enhancement, but by physical, cognitive and mental. Does anyone have the quote to hand?

1. They would absolutely have full feruchemists, as that's a thing that existed in classic Scadrial. See Rashek et al. Even if you don't believe my personal theory that Rashek would deliberately have left some feruchemists down south in order to preserve the genetic line, Terrismen like Kwaan were wanderers who traveled the world. There's every reason to believe they would have been in whatever random sampling ended up trapped at the South Pole. 2. In both Wax's and Miles's cases, it was their being twinborn that made them special. Granted, for Miles, being just a bloodmaker would have been more combat-useful than being just an auger, but in Wax's case, if he were merely a Skimmer that wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting as someone being just a Coinshot. I'll grant you, the alchemical mixture of the two traits was far greater than either part, but if we do break it down to the components, Wax's feruchemy made a good power great. On its own, iron feruchemy is of extremely limited efficacy. Adding allomantic steel made a barely-useful power into an amazing one.

I could be mistaken, but I believe Doc didn't mean "information about the nugget of lerasium," I assume he meant, "that little nugget of information," i.e., the fact that the well was Ruin's prison.

...surely a french word written as "rocher" would be pronounced "roh-shay"? I realize it's still close, but there are only so many phonemes in the world. The french word for "a lot" sounds almost exactly like one of the Japanese personal pronouns, and that's simple coincidence. You seem to be referring to a phenomenon called a "false cognate", where a word in one language happens to sound like a word in another, when there's no real connection there. It happens pretty frequently.

I don't think a lot of those things would actually diminish his reputation. He's trying to pass himself off as the Sliver of Infinity, not some Christian God. Zeus slept with everyone he felt like, and he was respected just fine. Honestly, I think after a thousand years, it's hard for us mortals to say what his mind would have been like or how he diverted himself. Perhaps days passed like moments to a man who has seen centuries go by. Perhaps he simply stored zinc when he'd otherwise be bored. Perhaps compounded copper allowed him to relive his days as a mortal. And don't forget, he spent quite some time secretly thwarting Ruin. Writing all those notes on steel, cycling canned goods through the warehouses, keeping up the atium-scam at the Pits, these all take time. And don't forget, he's always got that invisible friend whispering in his ear if he wants someone even older than himself to talk to.

I'm going to sit here giggling quietly and pondering the phrase, "Properly godly". Has anyone seen a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000? "Well I'm not that omnipotent!"

My apologies for misrepresenting you. I'm not saying the definition is loose... I'm saying it's, as yet, ill-defined. I just mean that, "Stores Investiture" might be shorthand for a clearer definition, like "It stores whatever formal system of Investiture a person manifests". I'm not sure if anyone has a better, more specific definition yet. I'm just saying that what tiny little bit we have is so small, we can't possibly start to make any assumptions about it, not even to say "it lets you store raw investiture".

One theory that seems popular on this forum is, there's no such thing as a defined standard of objective morality. Everyone will always just do whatever they want, and you can't judge them, because they are obeying whatever personal moral code they hold themselves to. By that reasoning, Sazed didn't require any sort of authority to do what he did. He was powerful enough to do so, so he did it. Anyone strong enough to oppose him is welcome to, but since morality doesn't exist, nothing he did was wrong.

I think he's saying, the very rare appearances of the occasional misting would defy explanation. The Deepness comes, and some people fall. The ones who arise... well they aren't quite the same again. (We know that they pick up trace metals from water and utensils, but they don't know that.) They simply see a woman who can sometimes exhibit unreasonable strength for a few moments; a man who seems unexpectedly able to sway those around him. Don't tease that little girl... when she gets scared, coins jump away from her briefly. It's tied to the Deepness somehow, it's very weak and barely explicable... but there are a few Deepstruck priests who seem to be able to tell when those like them are near. It'd be hard to replicate, as the mechanism isn't understood, so maybe most people don't even believe in it, but Trellists might believe. Maybe they think Trell has rewarded those who were struck by the Deepness, yet fought it off and persevered. Maybe it's the other way; perhaps Trell has already blessed a chosen few, and the Deepness knows, and so attacks them. I'm not saying I believe this is true, I'm just trying to explain what I suspect Windrunner's theory is.

Nope. Bloodmaking is easy. Miles was a Compounder and that made him a special case. It's expressly stated constantly throughout the book. If Wayne got shot in the head, he'd be dead, no matter if he had a dozen full metalminds on him at the time. Or decapitated. There's a couple of insta-deaths that would work, not to mention Feruchemy's eternal weakness; remove the goldminds. Miles is able to keep all of his piercing his skin because he literally had health to burn; I could be mistaken, and please someone correct me, but it's rarely safe to leave metal bigger than an earring embedded in your skin (especially at the level of technology/medicine available at the time of Alloy of Law). You'd use up any health you saved just trying to avoid infections, I believe. Without them piercing your skin, any coinshot or lurcher can at least tell where you've got them, even if it's something like a bracer that you can't simply pull off of them; even then, wearing metal that any lurcher or coinshot can use to drag you around the battlefield isn't the smartest move. I don't think bloodmaking is as combat over-powered as people seem to think it is.

Some minor confusion, I think. Porridge was talking about how "your ability to start an Investiture" was a part of your spiritweb, and therefore could not be stored in a nicrosilmind. My only point was to say that since your spiritweb itself is possibly similar to Investiture itself, that you could, in fact, "store" this specific part, the way you store a memory, or the way you store the power of your muscles. From what you say, how tags on your web contain things like strength, it seems as though you and I might agree on that basic concept, the idea that it is sometimes possible to store specific aspects of your spiritweb (prolly not the whole thing at once; apart from being a trump, we've seen from Shardblade wounds what happens when your spiritweb is entirely detached from your body) is something we both seem to agree is possible. Hope this clears up any confusion! I should have been more clear as to what parts of the things I was saying referenced which things Porridge said.

Interesting, interesting... where are you getting Tregalism from? I can't find Tregalism or Tregalist in my copies of any of the four books. Every instance I see, it's called Trellism.

Trellism did exist long ago, and Sazed did know of it. In fact, it's one of the first religions he ever preaches, and the first we see him preach to Vin. It's also one of the last religions he ever reviews at the end of the third book, when he's trying to find the religion that is "true". Trell watches through the million eyes of the stars, while his jealous brother makes his single eye (the sun) blaze brightly enough to wash them out of the sky during the day. People are encouraged to meditate upon questions and allow Trell to provide the answers. We know only a very little bit of it, and we're not sure why Miles thinks that allomancers were chosen by Trell. It's possible in classic Scadrial, when Alendi was a Seeker so weak he didn't even understand what he was, people did notice odd instances of people with a specific set of unique abilities, and explained them via religion; only when allomancy became far more powerful would anyone have realized that this was what Trell was talking about. Good catch on the cigars; I only noticed that myself just recently.