Oudeis

I agree with all the stuff you said. I think that Intents have, at best, a tangential correlation to their magic systems. Except for Endowment, and as I've said before, that's because just about any magic system can be considered "giving one thing to something". I own a karaoke machine; I travel everywhere with the two microphones. And yes, "in-depth" certainly describes my tattoo experience... only a fraction of an inch deep, granted, but I assure you, that was enough. Hrm... there was talk once of using metallic ink in tattoos as metalminds, which was rather soundly rejected. What about hemalugic spikes? How deep into your body is the bindpoint? Are any along the skin, and could a very small spike be placed just under the skin? Presumably since people can survive having their brain stabbed with a spike bloody from the death of a victim, metal toxicity isn't an issue.

Would having a lot of Breath make you more resistant to shades (a la, how they avoid people when not enraged) or more attractive to shades (a la mmm delicious Investiture...)

Well, not exactly. If I've got a stationary bike attached to a pump, that's like saying the only limit to how much pressure I can apply is how much water I've got to pump. There's still only so fast I can pedal. Others might be able to pedal faster than I, maybe there are those who pedal less fast, but at the end of the day we all have limits. And keep in mind, a valve isn't immortal. If you tried to force that much weight from one ironmind to another, are you certain the smaller ironmind would break before the feruchemist did?

Cool, that's how I use it, too. My question was specifically towards one instance of its use.

When you burn a metalmind, do you give off bronzepulses like allomancy? I know we've got WoB that in theory a Seeker could detect a feruchemist, but that it "feels" different than allomancy. Does compounding "feel" like allomancy, feruchemy, some combination of both, or something altogether new?

An interesting thought... I agree with Shardlet, I don't think it would work that way, but it remains intriguing to contemplate...

Um... well the Shard on Sel (Devotion) was dead at the time, which may have prevented ease of communication. Preservation couldn't speak, not because he was introverted, but because he had sacrificed his mind to create the prison that trapped Ruin. Honor was also dead. Endowment spoke to Lightsong just fine. Ruin was able to talk to Spook and keep the "oh hey let's kill him" talk to a minimum. If you don't mind some constructive criticism, you seem to be looking at events in the book and deciding you know why it was portrayed that way. If you continue stating opinions like these as facts, I think you will find that you'll confuse people who come here looking for information. To clarify what I meant by my defense of sazium: I understand what you're saying. Preservation's Intent is stasis, and Ruin's Intent is destruction. Logically, a combination of these forces (such as combining lerasium and atium) would give you something in between... presumably still destruction, just slower. I would agree with you, except we have precedent. The precedent was the interaction between Preservation and Ruin before they made their agreement. Before they worked together to create humans, before Leras gave them more of his own power than Ati did of his, it was simply the force of Preservation and Ruin. Logically, you are totally right. This should have been a slow death. It wasn't; nothing changed. Their powers matched, and neither could change anything, which incongruously is exactly what Preservation should have wanted. So, it looks like when the force for stability utterly matches the force for destruction, things just stay however they were. When it was a barren wasteland without change, it stayed a barren wasteland. By the end of the third book, when the world was doomed, it kept being doomed. So that's our precedent. I think that's what a combination of lerasium and atium would do. Two forces would rage inside you, holding each other in perfect balance, but with so much pressure that no typical amount of Investiture could survive contact.

I'm sure I can find them sometime when I'm not running out the door, but I believe we have WoB that this is not the case? That in fact he DOES have both Intents, he is simply balanced between the two, feeling equal desire to protect and to destroy. Also, I see where you're going with the "stasis is more Preservation than Ruin" and while in principle I agree with you, our in-world evidence suggests otherwise. When the two forces are side-by-side, stasis is what happens. Way back before they made people, there was a world neither could affect. Ruin couldn't destroy, things just went along fine for however long. That was the definition of Preservation. Inertia was on Preservation's side, so with his power matching Ruin's perfectly, inertia gave the tie to Preservation. So I don't think it's wholly outside of possibility that equal atium and lerasium (which may or may not be the same thing as sazium) might have an effect that looks like Preservation.

Fortunately, if I understand feruchemical duralumin right, it's far less subtle than brass. When tapping it, it doesn't make people like you, it just makes people think of you. If I already like you, it makes me like you more. If I disagree with you, it makes me disagree even stronger. If I'm ambivalent, I become torn. Storing might be a worse problem. A Connector could store so hard you wouldn't even realize he's in the room with you, in theory, although doing so would make him temporarily have an almost autistic inability to accept the existence of other people. The advent of motion sensing technology that picks up any moving object, no matter how little people care about it, would be their nemesis.

Ah. Presumably this isn't what Journi meant, since he/she speaks of atium being put on it erroneously. If it's a nebulous thing that sort of emerges from the sea foam, it's hard to think of a metal being on it erroneously.

Ah. I'd always translated this as, the Parshendi turned their back on all of their "forms", and now at Eshonai's instigation they are pursuing them again. Tying in with Navani's epigraph that they are flirting with a risk of bringing back Voidbringers... I think that's the power they once "fled".

I could see that; it seems overpowered, but then again this isn't exactly a trick you can repeat often. What would it do if you touch a Radiant full of Stormlight? A Mistborn burning metals? An Elantrian or a Dakhor?

Could it tie in with her atheism? Mayhaps it was a religious figure who took advantage of her? The problem with this theory is that her atheism lacks passion. She's not angry at religion, she finds it almost dismissive and silly. Not like the ire in her eyes at "men like these".

@11th: You make several good points, not the least of which your various holes in my own theory that it is the Plains. I am going to quibble on "Nearest Honor" meaning "Up", I think it's your most tenuous of connections, but the rest is solid. Idle thought that occurred to me while I considered this... no one ever seems to talk about "Almight Above" or "The Heralds in Heaven," but they DO talk about the Tranquiline Halls. What if there was once a location thought to be where Roshar physically connected to the Tranquiline Halls? That would 1) be a place "Close to Honor" and 2) make a pretty good UN spot.

First, I totally understand what you're saying with your PUs and all, I just happen not to agree. It's possible you're right, but I can't think of any in-world evidence to support your theory. If you can provide evidence, or if any evidence appears in future books, I will change my mind and agree with you. Now to answer your question. Let me tackle the second half first, as it is slightly easier. Are Seons smarter than Nightblood? My truthful answer is yes, but I fear it's misleading. I'm not sure raw "intelligence" is exactly what I'm talking about. If a metal lectern were Awakened and Commanded to Become Wise, I think it could become very smart, very much smarter than any Seon. It would still be alien, and it would still have about as bizarre a grasp of the human concept of "Wisdom" as Nightblood does of Evil. I don't think Nightblood is alien for being dumb (though I do think he's an adorable little puppy and thick as a brick sandwich, bless his heart). I think he's alien for being divorced from human experience. You raise a good point; why aren't Seons? Why do they seem to be people made up of glowy floating-ness? First, something I want to point out: as you surmised, I think more is going on here than simple "amount of power". One factor I think matters is "building up" versus "breaking down". A Shard is Adonalsium, broken down. A Splinter is a Shard, broken down. Something like Nightblood is a bunch of scraps of Investiture, built up. Even if you took 500,000 Breaths to Awaken something like Nightblood, even if it was ridiculously more powerful than some Splinters, I don't think it'd be the same thing. I'm not sure why exactly, but it seems that snapping off a piece of something larger fundamentally gives you a different outcome than joining together a lot of little things. So that's one big part. Seons are Splinters of Devotion after Aona died, and I think that's why they act human. Aona was once mortal before she took up Devotion, and the Splinters of what she held remember that and act accordingly. Individual Breaths were once part of people, true, but no Breath is "big" enough to remember enough of the person to make that mean anything. It's like trying to build a person's DNA when you've got 10K chromosomes; dumping them all into a blender and hitting "mix" isn't going to provide you with one cohesive DNA strand. So I guess that's most of what I'm trying to say. Nightblood was never human, has no experience as a human, can never get any experience as a human, and the scraps of Breath sacrificed to make him can't carry any real humanity with them. If the dictionary were shredded into millions of pieces and ten thousand were chosen and stuffed into a bag... there is, in theory, a way to go through and piece them back together, see if you have any pieces that belong side-by-side and paste them together, but Shashara didn't do that, she just stuffed them into a sack. However, if War and Peace were torn to scraps, while no piece would be the full book, you'd at least get a few full sentence fragments. There'd be a touch of sense there, at least enough to understand what books and words and sentences are supposed to be. And that's what Seons are.

I'm sure I recall this; in-book, they casually do mention "Vin's life was so horrible, who knows when she Snapped", but I think in an annotation Mr. Sanderson does specifically say it was technically her birth itself that was so hard, she Snapped. Again, hardly matters, I'm just saying, that's why people say it. Er.... atium isn't of Scadrial? Come again? Do you mean it's not of the Physical realm? Cuz it absolutely is of Scadrial. Atium is Ruin's "body", and Ruin is Invested in Scadrial. It is as "from Scadrial" as anything is. No native Scadrian by the time of Hero of Ages, or for that matter by the time of Alloy of Law, knows about all 16 mundane metals (that we know of, it's possible someone down south knows). I'm not sure if you mean the "table" as in how we the readers look at it, or if you're saying there's a "table" that they use in-universe. The God Metals get their own charts; the mundane chart has 16 metals, two of which no one in North Scadrial has ever seen or used (again, to the best of our knowledge. Is that an acronym yet? TTBOOK?)

That... is one of the most specious arguments I've ever heard. I'm just going to point out quickly that the notation for that quote points out that the translation was questionable, meaning let's not look too deeply into the connotation of word choice. I've wondered about this. Isn't it Dalinar who comments briefly that there's a similarity to the Plains? I don't see it. We know the west side is huge plateaus, and the east is very, very small ones. Does he mean that he thinks if the smaller ones hadn't been worn away, it'd be similar? I suppose the symmetry could be north-south line symmetry, but all the other cymatic cities had point symmetry. Does anyone have any deeper thoughts on what specifically was meant by the reference to symmetry, if I'm even remembering that part right? While we're at it, does anyone know of a place to get a good pic of the plains? I'm gonna try coppermind and googling once I post this...

Probably not... that's my opinion. There might be some differences, but good and evil require moral choices, which require... well, choices. He'd have to have been made out of something capable of making a decision before he could really understand the concept of being given the option between good and evil. Trees can't make decisions (citation needed).

I think he's saying that there was one Shard, named Justice, but that it somehow Splintered into just two big pieces, rather than many, many tiny Splinters, like what's happened on Roshar and Sel. In this case he thinks it split the Intent of Justice into two sub-intents, Punishment and Mercy. Personally, I disagree with his assessment. These are clearly two different worlds, and we have WoB that they are insignificant, and that insignificant worlds don't have full Shards. They both clearly have some Investiture; maybe scraps of Adonalsium? He's also said that a Splinter of a Shard might be on one of the insignificant worlds. Which admittedly, I'm not sure of since all those Shades look like a big enough deal that I don't really understand how something roughly analogous to a Seon or one Divine Breath could do all that. Even the Innate Investiture of humans that the Shades shy away from/feed on has to come from somewhere. If we can posit that the humans here are getting their Innate Investiture in a manner that we just haven't figured out yet, I propose it's possible that one dark Splinter floats through the Forest as sort-of a super-shade, that he uses the power inside of people to make new shades, which themselves can repeat the process. This only works if really more people die via shade than get killed. Presumably in the early days, it wouldn't have taken very many shades very long to build up a lot of shades before people figured out the Simple Rules and the thing with silver.

I agree with you, with one caveat... Wyndle didn't sound entirely sure. If all he said was, "you can metabolize food directly into Stormlight," I'd agree, but look at the whole paragraph. He seems very certain in the first sentence, but the second already retracts, "this is the only explanation we can think of." I think you're right; Wyndle's best guess is the best guess there is, and I personally subscribe to it; I plan to believe that she's metabolizing food directly into Stormlight until a better source comes along. That said, even Wyndle admits this is somewhat outside of his wheelhouse. I'm not sure I agree. We've got WoB somewhere, I think from the annotations, that the problem with Nightblood isn't that he didn't have enough Breaths (although honestly, considering how many a Heightening takes, a thousand's not that much). It's what Vasher said in the book; Nightblood is crafted of metal. A sword has no ability to distinguish good and bad. If I need new batteries for my flashlight, it doesn't matter how much wood you give me for a fire, it will never be the kind of power I need to turn on my flashlight. "Sentience" isn't the same thing as "Human", and Nightblood, even if he somehow Ascended, would remain utterly alien from human experience. Evil is simply a concept he does not have the hardware to understand.

Perhaps some force of stability? Like immunity to Investiture while you burn it? Based on the idea that if you've got the power of one Shard pushing you one way and another pulling equally strong in direct opposition, perhaps there's a side-effect that simply lets your survive the pressure. If so, if you are granted nothing more than the ability to survive being ripped apart by deific forces, maybe something like a Lashing or emotional allomancy would just shrug right off you. Something like an Awakened rope strangling you would likely still work, obviously.

Interesting idea. The scarcity of atium is a factor. A thought on language. When Galladon speaks to Raoden in Elantris, he says "sule" and "kolo" in his own language. Yet in the interlude of WoK, his interjection sentences are in the local language, Selay, when he says, "Understand?" They also seem to have no trouble all three switching to a different language to talk where Ishikk can't hear them. And Thinker (Demoux) has a terrible accent. So probably not the same magic that lets Taln speak perfect current Alethi. Have they really all just learned that many languages? And has Galladon broken the habit of saying "Understand" in his own language, but not the habit of saying "understand" period? (("Vao" calls Galladon "Temoo"... Ishikk thinks these are fake names, but maybe that's just what a Yoleni saying a Dula name sounds like to a Purelaker)). Sidenote: Demoux had a scar on his scalp that early in Hero of Ages is mentioned as being from a koloss sword. After Harmony's ascension, he fixed things like Cett's legs so the remaining humans would have their best chance to survive in this new world. Apparently either head scars aren't bad enough to warrant direct intervention, or he got a second scar in roughly the same place, giving him perhaps the least lucky scalp in existence. EDIT: Typo

Oooo, fascinating. Thank you. I wonder if any Tineyes ever noticed... D'aw, shucks, you're making me blush.

?? This happened? There's a lot of talk about how having 18 types of Mistings would ruin Preservation's clue. Here's my thought. Perspective. I think that Preservation would be flabberghasted to hear that we (or Scadrians) thought Atium and Malatium were simply other metals. I think from his perspective, God metals are so utterly and obviously different from base metals that he can't understand how anyone could confuse the two. I think he anticipated that anyone with a mind that would pay attention to something like percentages of sick would deduce, like Yomen did, that 16 is a number of power, regardless of whether they know specific metals or not, as a matter of pure theory. Not having discovered Nicrosil, or the existence of a clearly (to Preservation) atypical metal like atium, I think Preservation literally couldn't think like a human anymore enough to realize how confusing that could be to us.

Is the base question still "does it count as 'magic' whenever Lift eats, even if she doesn't convert it?"? Cuz I'm gonna say no. That would be like Vasher telling a rope "hold this" without deliberately giving it a Command; it's one part of the Awakening and is required for the magic to work, but on its own is simply a phrase with no magic. If I've got a wire lying on my table, it isn't part of an electrical system. i could use it as part of a system to connect a battery to a lightbulb, then electricity would be flowing through it and it would be part of a system, but just a length of metal in insulation has no (significant) flow of electricity through it, so it's not pat of an electric system, even though under different circumstances it would be. To answer a previous point... I don't necessarily think Investiture needs to be "consumed" like the charge of a battery in order to be magic. A Feruchemist is Invested, but their Investiture simply acts as a catalyst, allowing them to transfer traits between their own bodies and bits of metal. It's not being burned off or used up like the metals of Allomancy or the color in Awakening, but it's still Investment. I guess what I'm trying to say is... I believe everything that we'd consider "magic" on Earth is Investiture. Anything that wouldn't be physically possible. The existence of spren, formal systems like Hemalurgy or Surgebinding, the Royal Locks. If it is magic, Investiture is being used somehow. I'm just trying to separate the instances we know of into "Formal systems", "Racial traits", and "One-off instances". If anyone can think of additional categories I will gladly listen.