Oudeis

What is your source for this information on how recallers work?

I think you'll find that he asked if anyone had used allomancy on atium, not aluminum. The answer is yes. When Vin fought Shan she pushed and pulled her bead to eat it. In the second book, she used TenSoon's shoulder-pocket (ew) expressly to block allomancy from affecting it.

I guess I'm not sure why we think there's a connection between the dawncities and the ghostbloods. Our only connection is something Kabsal brings up briefly, and from his interaction with Jasnah I got the impression that it's a common (and fairly simple) means of converting people to Vorinism. Did he say it was a particular study of his? Otherwise, borrowing the plate and practicing for half an hour could have granted him his expertise.

OR. Mr. Sanderson was making a very innappropriate joke.

If he exists, my money is on that horse thief from the start of the story.

I have long wondered this. I don't have the quotes to hand right now, but my last read-through, the control Ruin had over Marsh, and his influence on Vin, both seemed to be deliberately related to emotional allomancy, so I wondered what effect a coppercloud would have. I think I agree with you that Ruin's sheer difference in power would render the cloud moot, but the theory remains sound. Though, does Marsh have the power of Copper?

...But Zane DID have only one hemalurgic spike... that we know of, I suppose. Are you suggesting you think he had more? I figure the difference is, once the spikes actually adjust you in such a way that you are no longer biologically human, you're a hemalurgic creation, which I'd suspect goes hand-in-hand with Ruin's ability to exercise direct (near-)complete control. I think a single iron spike will change you physically, but only to the extent that anabolic steroids would; you're different than you were, but not literally inhuman. At some point you've got flabby blue skin, and at that point you are not human, and now you're a hemalurgic creation.

Its effects on emotional allomancy aren't physical, they're cognitive... Speaking of aluminum clothes... first and foremost, I'm all for realmatics, but I feel like hard-and-fast rules will trump them. If it gets written that a Leecher has to touch skin-to-skin, then those are the rules, regardless of how any of us feel about realmatic identiy. That said, if we are going to treat realmatics as the ultimate trump card, then the act of deciding "I'm doing this thing in order to protect myself from chromium" will probably give your clothes the "identity" of armor, so would then likely protect you. BTW, the fact that mistcloaks are designed to be torn off in a fight if need be prolly gives them the same "armor" identity. I don't understand this though. If you can do literally anything by simply believing it, why can't crazy cosmermen fly? They will believe, wholly, deep down, that they can fly. If that's all it takes, shouldn't they be flying?

I should like to point out that only that last one is good evidence that life was used to highstorms even back then. The rest of them are like the time when he said, "It was too dark to see spren, or else he'd surely see fearspren around her." He sees a lack of grass, and since he's used to how grass works in his time, he just assumes "oh, it must be for this reason." I'd still quibble, but yeah, that last one is as solid proof as I could ask for. Thank you!

I asked because we know Zane and Spook both had steel spikes granting them physical allomancy, and the voice they both heard was frequently (if not constantly) ordering them to kill. In "The Eleventh Metal" Gemmel says something that really makes it sound like he's hearing a voice telling him to kill people. Or at least just Kelsier. Though in his case, if I had to train Kelsier, I imagine I'd get frustrated, too. Whereas Reen's voice in Vin's head tells her not to trust people, to be alone, not to kill people. Penrod gets the same metal spike, also for mental allomancy; I'm getting close to the part in the book where he shows Ruin's influence, and I wonder what he'll say. The impression I get is, when Ruin is influencing you, that's a constant thing, or he can talk to you expressly when he feels like it. I wonder if the "Ruin's not here right now" call-waiting that you get when his attention is elsewhere depends specifically on the metal of the spike in you; will everyone with a Steel spike hear a voice telling them to kill everyone? I also wonder; do we ever see Ruin take absolute control over anyone that isn't a hemalurgic creation? I know we've seen him guide the hands of the insane, or people with one or two spikes, but apart from nudges like that I don't believe we've ever seen him take literal control of such a person. Is it possible he can only do that if you're an actual hemalurgic creation, not simply a hemalurgist? Which phrasing is a bit odd... I consider the hemalurgist to be "the person with a spike in him," which isn't necessarily the same as "the person who knows how hemalurgy works" or even, for that matter, "the person who knows that hemalurgy is a thing."

Fascinating. I've never heard this theory. Is there any textual support for this, or is it speculation?

While I don't fully disagree, I have some trouble following your logic here... correct me if I'm mistaken, but it almost sounds like you're saying, "the fact that tin lets you see mist better doesn't affect your ability to see spren, because mist is physical and spren are cognitive." I have two issues with the premise. The first and most obvious is that tin doesn't help you see the mist; it lets you see through it. If mist is physical, then that proves it's not a specifically realmatic thing, because it doesn't let you see through things like buildings. Your eyes are being attuned to something strongly Invested. I'm not sure I buy your idea that Spren are entirely cognitive. I think that, like Shallan traveling to Shadesmar, they're being cognitive, but the ones we've seen are all now here. Wyndle said his consciousness is here, he can run along walls and ledges (yes I know only Lift can touch him, but the fact remains, he's correlating to physical places in the physical realm.) Syl can carry leaves. I think the spren we've seen so far have a FAR stronger presence in the Physical Realm than you give them credit for. I think the difference is more like the visible spectrum vs. infrared. There's infrared radiation everywhere around us, carrying information, our eyes just can't see it. If your eye could be attuned slightly, you might be able to pick up on some of it. In the case of tin on Scadrial, that shift filters out the mist. I don't see why it's unlikely that the shift might find the area of the spectrum that spren hide from normal human eyes from. Syl is always visible to Kaladin and to Rock. However hard she tries to hide, there are ways for human eyes to always find her. I think tin might be one of those ways.

Since it was part of his cover as an Ardent, and explained as such in-world (and no one seemed to find it weird) it at least has to be a topic that masquerades as normal.

Hopefully I'm worried over nothing, then. I just fear potential misunderstandings on any text-based communication where you can't get inflections, face, or gestures. I've seen people who will start talking about "allomantic gold" or "Allomantic gold" but then, like naming a person and then switching to "he", they'll just talk about "gold" from then on for the post (or sometimes in replies). If this is really about to expand, if it turns out that gold has properties on its own even when not used in any metallic art, I was simply speculating that it might arise that people will come up with a term for this, too. I hadn't even made the connection to the "unforgeable metal", good catch. If it turns out aluminum on every planet has the same anti-Investing powers, then that'd be a strong indication that an allomancer really could just drop onto Sel, pick up some local iron, and burn it, which is counter to my current theory. Perhaps a had with nicrosil in the hatband could be used by a Soother as a boost to his own powers? Maybe pewter has higher tensile strength in this world than in others; maybe a tin mirror reflects light more perfectly than it should, with less diffusion and refraction?

I think we all know all that... my question is, do we see retracting grass or lying trees in the past? In the prologue or any of Dalinar's visions?

I've seen a few things from Mr. Ahlstrom that made it look like Mr. Sanderson may or may not have changed his mind on that. For all we know, without the power of a Shard, the Cognitive Realm isn't safe to travel, or doesn't even extend there. We know "cognition" is one thing it requires; we don't know that this is ALL that it requires. That I know of, we have no textual support for either case. If Hoid did show up, that would be confirmation. Your speculation is valid, but doesn't actually help us.

That's how I read it, too. I just like to examine all options, especially if you think about how many doors this opens up. If aluminum can affect more than just the external, physical and mental metals... this could be huge. Any time something excites me as much as this does, I try to play devil's advocate and make sure our foundation is rock-solid before proceeding. With this sentence, and proof that it's not a typo, our foundation might be less than rock-solid but it's pretty darn strong. Sidenote: we talk about allomantic aluminum and feruchemical aluminum... are we gonna come up with a retronym when we're talking about just aluminum, itself? The actual literal metal? Is there any chance this might be part of how southern Scadrians use mechanical allomancy? Is it possible the other metals all have properties of their own, like how aluminum does, and people just don't know it. As some of you may know, my personal interest is in copper and bronze. How does it work? If a Smoker is surrounded by aluminum, does it prevent his cloud? If there's a wall made of aluminum, could it block his power? If there's a small ring of aluminum on the ground with a soother and a seeker inside, and a smoker smokes the area all around outside, can the seeker still seek the soother? Is that redundant; would the ring of aluminum block everything outside anyway? Can it just be a circle on the ground like a magical ward, or does it need to be a full wall to block the power? How do Smoke and Bronzepulses refract at the edges of aluminum? Cosmere-wide: Does Scadrian aluminum resist Soulcasting? Would an aluminum statue not appear in any Memory Shallan drew of it? If you stab a Dakhor Monk with an aluminum knife, does it affect him as it would a Thug? Metal is already pretty resistant to Awakening, so I dunno that I think there's a ton of "point" in asking if aluminum is immune to something it's already incredibly resistant to, just by virtue of being a metal. Shadows for Silence:

I'd personally love to confirm whether or not Hoid is there, as I wish to know if Shadesmar even connects to "unimportant" shardworlds.

For both 1 and 2: Allomantic aluminum. It destroys the physical metal itself, and the catalyst inside which would start an Investiture. Thus we've got precedent that there's something in Allomancy, Preservation's own system, that does destroy things and does run counter to the power of Preservation. 3: You're ascribing Intents to the author and I don't think you have the authority to. I personally believe he's a good enough author to realize that weaknesses make anything (heroes, powers, worlds) more interesting. Not to mention, lerasium isn't nerfed just because it's difficult. By my reasoning, it is possible to use lerasium to do all the things everyone thinks it can, you just have to know what you're doing. I'm saying that what you all want would require there to be an active intelligence behind the power, which is a thing Mr. Sanderson has already "nerfed" when Preservation sacrificed his mind to trap Ruin. Preservation set up things to help humans (like lerasium, like the mists) but we saw from the mists they run on default instructions; they don't have complicated heuristics to deal with changing circumstances, and so they strike down the elderly, the young and the infirm, killing how many thousands of people. Which again, to reference you first two points, doesn't "sound" like something of Preservation, proving the point that Intents aren't absolute standards, they're simply very strong guidelines.

When I finally get around to writing that worldhopping fanfiction, I'll make a character like that and let you name him.

?? I'm afraid I don't understand. Are you referring to the fact that Kabsal (sp?) was interested in the symmetric cities with cymatics, and turned out to be from an evil secret society?

To play devil's advocate... the phrasing doesn't fully support this interpretation but I like to consider all possibilities... he's not simply saying something like "An aluminum bullet will hurt a Thug worse because his Lurcher friend can't pull it out of the way"?

The underlying premise of your idea is that the system must remain perfectly efficient, and every burn has to be a sheer advantage for you, a premise I don't think is supported. Even though you say "increasing one trait once isn't worth the rest", you don't know that, because you don't know how much energy it takes. Perhaps using a lerasium alloy and re-writing your sDNA to increase Pewter requires so much energy due to inefficiency, so remarkably more than just the base energy required to increase a stat on its own, that at the end you are, technically, closer to Preservation. I'm also slightly confused... are you suggesting that this is what you think happens in the actual books, or are you arguing for what would happen in the game? I look at the phrase, "re-writes your spiritual DNA". It's a bit of metal powered by a mindless God. I think asking it to look at your current sDNA and make decisions to incorporate what it finds there to ensure optimization is something that would require intelligence behind it, intelligence we know is busy elsewhere. If you've got a CD with an executable file designed to re-write parts of your computer to make it faster, but there are parts it would re-write that you want to keep, you can't expect the CD on its own to figure that out. Now, it's been implied that this is only the default use of Lerasium; hypothetically, if you got good at burning the lerasium-pewter alloy, you'd be able to use your own intelligence to take control of the process and refine how it works, so in theory you're correct, this is entirely possible. I just don't think you can make the case that it's the automatic, default option. In conclusion. Leras programmed lerasium to format the entire part of your spiritweb responsible for allomancy, and then build one specific pattern in its place. The alloys are known (suspected?) to adjust this process with sixteen other specific builds. In theory, if you get good at buring lerasium or its alloys, you should be able to figure out how to take control of the program and build your spiritweb itself, but you don't do so by default, any more than people can naturally modulate their Ironpulls as well as you can after years of practice.

Have we seen any evidence of biome adaptation in the past? But I like madness...

I honestly cannot remember... do we know for sure there WERE highstorms way back then?