Oudeis

...Seriously? If you were told that you had a terminal illness and there was a small percentage chance you'd recover, but here are these two doctors. One is brilliant, and 50% of his patients who go through his treatment survive. The other has a 25% survival rate, but he's very "nice." You actually believe more people will halve their chances of survival, because someone is nice?

Can you source this? If it's from before WoR came out, that SEVERELY restricts the potential number of candidates.

Not positive I agree here. I think I'd give this match to the steelrunner every time. Bleeder shows that she can react in bullet-time. Vin was able to fool atium by reading Zane's reaction without this ability. So picture it. The steelrunner intends to come from the left and put nineteen knives in the Seer's brain in the space of a second. The Seer sees this coming; the shadow itself moves too fast to see or react to, but that doesn't matter, atium guides one's actions anyway. So she holds up her own knife so that now, the steelrunner would run straight into it before killing her. Except we saw from Wax-in-the-speed-bubble that Bleeder can react that fast. So now the steelrunner is coming at her, she looks like a statue holding out a knife, and instead of thinking, "Well, I had planned to walk this route, so I'm going to anyway, guess I should just die," decides to circle and come at her from the right. Now, since his decision is based ultimately on something that came about from atium burning, his shadow splits, like Vin's did with Zane. Now there's a second atium shadow to the right. We saw from Zane that atium guiding one's actions cannot tell which shadow actually will happen (he blocked the wrong one, remember). But let's say this Seer is better at atium. And has a second knife. So the Seer holds out knives to block both incoming shadows. Well, now upon approach, the Steelrunner sees a statue holding out two knives. And so he comes at her from behind instead. So now we're in a position where the Seer sees at least three shadows. Even if she can come up with a third way to make the approach dangerous in the span of a few seconds (so no laying down trapdoors or anything), this can continue easily until there are a dozen shadows and the Seer cannot possibly block them all; since the Steelrunner isn't selecting his approach randomly, he's selecting the unguarded one, he has a 100% chance of getting in and killing her. Atium is basically worthless against a steelrunner. And at the rate it burns, you're almost certain to run out of it before the Steelrunner drains his speed reserves, anyway. Steelrunning: Taking Godmetal allomancy out back behind the woodshed and tanning its hide. This is why the system is now broken.

This was posited a while ago, and I have the same issue with it now that we know he's got a 'perk' that I did when I first heard that maybe he was part kandra... Why does everything cool have to be Invested? Why can't someone just be skilled, in a purely human way? Why can't someone be awesome or amazing or effective without it having to be "magic"? This is one big complaint I have about a lot of Mr. Sanderson's books. He pays lip service to people like Dox (who was one of the only Crewmembers to die) or Sarene... but almost everyone in every book he writes who has any impact or agency has magic powers. Siri doesn't count because she has no agency; she play-acts at learning some politics, and it's great that she helps her husband be effective, but apart from one realization she doesn't actually do anything herself but get kidnapped and saved dramatically. Adolin is the best with his Shards, Navani is an artifabrian, Eshonai has stormform and is apparently gonna be a Radiant, even Rysn gets a pet larkin. It would be nice if non-powered people didn't get sidelined almost without exception in his books. As it is, the message we're getting is, your worth and value are defined by your magic. If you don't get taken by the Shaod, if your life's dedication doesn't like up to one of then Ideals, if you don't buy a TON of Breaths, or if you're not just born amazing, take a back seat and let the real protagonists handle this. Nah. Kaladin's spear mastery happens literally the moment his hands touch a weapon for the first time. As we see from Wax, it's not even on his first bounty, he's become famous enough that people know what his powers are, and he's still an awful shot. His accuracy is something he had to train for and earn, not something that was just given to him. EDIT: Upon reflection, I suppose he could have gotten the capacity for accuracy, rather than just being handed the skill the way Kaladin was? Which doesn't sound like it needs magic, to me, but I suppose it's possible. Regardless, it's non-analogous to Kaladin. Healers and empathy... is... a fantasy trope, not actually something real. Have you seen the show House? Or Grey's Anatomy? What you need in order to heal others is a functional knowledge of human biology and pharmacology. Empathy is... a nice bonus, as it is in literally any profession where you interact with people, but any sane person would rather have a brilliant surgeon, as opposed to a competent one who will feel really, REALLY bad when you die. Also, the analogy breaks down even within the fantasy trope, because Wayne can't heal anyone but himself.

Eh, gold is more of a turtle power. It lets you survive anything, but it's not very proactive. Think about it; if Wax had a second net, he'd've won. Whereas with steel, with infinite speed (and we all just saw how over-the-top cheating that would be. It's basically a bendalloy bubble that moves with you) as well as flight and ranged attacks... sure, it's not literally omnipotent, someone could catch you while you're asleep or distracted, but most fights will be over before the other person realizes there's a fight. If Bleeder hadn't wanted Wax alive, by the time he realized she'd run to the mansion she could have simply run behind him and left a knife in his brain.

Respectfully, Edwarn would know from Wax how difficult it is to raise a child to be pliant. Also, what would a single Mistborn do for them? What tasks do they want to accomplish that one Mistborn could perform? Also, this.

There's a quote that Sazed would have had to do something with the 'extra ruin' to stay balanced... but I confess, I cannot think of how a bit of his own power could be running around causing this chaos without him realizing what was happening.

I've been told I put the 'b' in subtle.

Thank you. This was intelligent, well-thought-out, and comprehensive. It addresses every concern I've always had with the half-life model with all the math I never bothered to put behind it.

His death scene always sorta bothered me in Era 1... I mean, I know it served kind of a purpose, but it seemed such an ignoble, castaway end. Knowing not only that his line lives on, but that Goradel's name is known and he is treated as a martyr, makes me feel WAY better.

Would you please go to this thread and tell people all of that, please? Sazed's number might be spit-balled, but by your own quote, he's a scholar of both allomantic and feruchemical theory. No, that doesn't mean he's got it perfect, but it does mean he probably knows a ton of things about both arts that we, the readers, do not yet. You're making it sound like he got the number by rolling dice. His knowledge isn't perfect, and no one is saying it is, but can you point to another time Sazed firmly stated something when he was actually just guessing? This is Sazed. The shyest, humblest man ever. Tindwyl gets upset at him because he won't even speak up to defend himself when he is both certain and right; upon what are you basing the assumption that he'd firmly state a solid, concrete number if he had absolutely no basis for it? Wax and Miles: The quote you posted seems to support... everything I say. I didn't call them bosom chums, I called them acquaintances. "Allies, but not friends" seems to fit. "Mostly" from a distance, so they have spent some time together. Elsewhere, Wax talks about how lawmakers are a special alloy and they have to keep watch on each other; the specifics of Miles's powers are exactly the kind of thing he'd know a lot about, and be sure of; after all, look at this scene, where he knows so much about Compounding, when apparently the 'general populace of Elendel' doesn't even believe it really exists. I'm sure the number is vague and inexact, and not "exactly ten", but it's a good reference point. It's also an absolutely perfect time for him to say, "If he stores any health at all in a goldmind, he can burn the entire goldmind, and get health from the whole thing." Instead, he does give us a concrete number. So you're asking us to believe that the resident 'person who knows anything about Compounding' not only doesn't know as much as you do, but that he's so wrong about a crucial aspect (based, apparently, on a firm commitment to making the exact same assumptions someone else made three centuries prior) that he doesn't just say "I don't know" or "some amount more", he gives us an exact number, yet is totally and completely wrong. I'm sorry. Look at my feelings on Teft. When someone in the book has a track record of being wrong about things, I am absolutely willing to believe it's simply faulty "in-universe" knowledge. However, you're asking us to dismiss a lot of evidence from the book itself from people who are both quite knowledgeable on the subject, because there's a small chance that they don't know everything, yet in both cases uncharacteristically firmly and definitively state something they are absolutely positive of, is easily checked and confirmed, yet are totally and absolutely wrong. Yes, I know they're mistaken as to the specific source of the power, and while that's interesting and fundamental in a profound way, it doesn't have a lot of impact on the day-to-day use, and it's not exactly the kind of thing you could simply check with a basic experiment. Wax's grandmother, perhaps I shouldn't have brought her up; she's not good evidence one way or the other. However, you're very, very mistaken if you think someone is ignorant on a subject just because they hate it. "Know thy enemy". "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." "A man you love to hate." All throughout human history, we've understood that hatred is at least as attractive an emotion as love. Granted, this is poor evidence, but she does state that the mix of feruchemy and allomancy has always been bad, it's too much power in one person; the Sliver ruled the world through its mix. If you think someone like Granny V would deliberately leave herself ignorant of something she thinks is so dangerous... you got a very, very different impression of her than I did. On that subject, let me touch on something somewhat ancillary; keep in mind that when Wax talks about the Sliver's immortality, he amends it, "according to legend." Not historical fact. Recall that Sliverism is a powerful religion in Elendel, and their dogma is likely not "oh, the Sliver was never actually divine, it was just a trick." Like I've said a few times now, there's not just one story going around; that's why Marasi hears about Miles, and dismisses it as hyperbole. Because there's not one "true" story, nor are there a dozen stories but one that is magically hashtagged as "this is what really happened." Wax has two reasons for being more knowledgeable than average on this fact; the first, of course, we now know is his Granny, who clearly preaches the evils of people like Rashek mixing the powers. The second, he's a Pathian. In Alloy, he thinks to himself that it is the Path to study all old religions, and divine the truth from them. The Words, even the Historica, are long and sometimes seen as metaphor, like how Aradel assumed MeLaan's talk of his snoring was an allegory for the Constables. Marasi struck me as someone who would read it for Elend's political theories and Harmony's plans for the city, not for obscura about a type of arcana widely assumed to be impossible anymore. Remember, the Words alone account for literally everything that was in Sazed's copperminds; doesn't he state once that he spent years making them, having another Keeper recite them out to him, word for word? There's a lot to cover, and while I'm sure there are scholars out there on the entirety, I'm equally sure most people know only certain portions well at all. Maybe the section of them that discussed the Sliver's immortality was an assignment she did in grade school and hasn't thought about since. (Maybe she Pulsed through that chapter...)

An Inquisitor made from a Mistborn would be double-everything; most of them would be slightly weaker than the average Misting in seven metals, and the ones made from non-allomancers would be weaker in all of them.

Please, you should see Thanksgiving at my house.

The mechanics, sure... but you don't have to know the mechanics to see an outcome. If a car were magically transported back to Victorian England, and it completed a 10 hour trip in an hour, anyone could tell you that went 10 times as fast. They don't have to understand internal combustion or how fossil fuel was made in order to measure the output. This is a simple, solid, concrete number provided twice, once by a scholar, once by someone who was a close acquaintance to an actual compounder. (And is, himself, twinborn. And is the grandson of a feruchemical matriarch.) If it were obscure, or subjective, or in-depth, I might agree with you that what they say could be suspect. I don't see why they would both give us a definite number, and have it be the same one, especially if the actual 'estimate' based on your model is... hundreds. Sazed spends a week filling a goldmind ring and, near as we can tell, was nowhere near capacity. If Miles stored in a ring for ten seconds, but was able to get the entire ring's worth of health, that would be... well, more than a hundred seconds. By a lot. Back-of-the-envelope calculations puts it at a factor of 25K, and that's assuming Sazed maxed out his capacity (and only stored for ten hours a day). Now, I'm willing to grant that these guys are off by quite a wide margin, and that they misunderstand a lot of the finer details. But Brandon saying, "I can explain this better in person, their knowledge isn't perfect" is by no means a reason to suspect that they're so utterly incompetent, they think a car travels at the same speed as a horse. Can you point to anything else about the Metallic Arts people are wrong about, in-universe? Apart from the rather pedantic "where the energy technically comes from." That's pretty in-the-weeds, not easily tested or confirmed, and not the basis for any further false assumptions. Whereas the factor of power returned is easily tested and confirmed, concrete, and repeated twice across centuries.

I bet the tenth circle IS a cadmium bubble...

This... is very interesting, and I hadn't even considered it. Which is unusual for me. It strikes me as something Wax wouldn't want to do. But you're right. Tactically, it's a brilliant move.

Moogle: In two different books, we have two different people, both in a position to know, specifically mentioning a tenfold increase in the amount of power stored. What is your basis for ignoring this in favor of your own model?

Yet, she herself is an allomancer, and a criminal with sickle-cell anemia probably isn't using his condition to help him commit crimes. If there was a famous criminal our hypothetical criminologist studied who did turn a medical condition into an advantage in his field, you would expect her to... I dunno, be aware of the existence of that condition. This isn't a matter of Marasi not being up to speed on the specifics of compounding; she literally doesn't understand that it exists. And, if you're right, and compounding is a lot more common in cities... wouldn't she have heard about it, anyway? Marasi might be an academic, but she also fits the category of 'general population', so if something is common knowledge, she'd likely know. She's done research into at least her own sort of allomancy; she tells Wayne about documentation that happens when Sliders and Pulsers burn together. I find it unlikely in the extreme that in her position, if it was common knowledge how compounding worked, Marasi would remain in the dark. You bring up quantum physics... in a discussion where you're trying to say the public would, apparently, know something that academics do not. Are you positing that random people at a bar know more about quantum physics than scientists do? A zinc compounder could totally publish a text on his powers... but so can literally anyone else. Allomancer Jak is a famous example of someone who clearly doesn't understand how tin works, nevertheless making money by selling stories. There's no fact-checking, there's no peer review. In our world, a few years back, a man was able to walk on stage with United States President Obama and wave his arms vaguely for the length of an entire speech and it was the next day before most of the world learned that this didn't know any sign language. This is in a world with background checks and digital records. In Elendel, in an analogue of 1910, there is no way to pick up two "THIS IS HOW ALLOMANCY WORKS" textbooks and intuit by any method which one is right and which one was written to sensationalize and make money. I'd like to stress this again; Marasi absolutely did hear the story of how compounding works, specifically how Miles Hundredlives works. And she dismissed them as rumors. Whether from the roughs or the city, a lot of stories are passed around. People are apparently in the habit of just not believing them at this point.

The main reason I support the must-burn-allomantically-first is how expressly in Final Empire it's pointed out that Vin starts to feel Sazed's reserve... after she begins burning allomantically. Obviously this is weird, because she's not a feruchemist and it's not her reserve, and if she were a feruchemist she'd be able to feel the reserve there whether or not she could tap it before she burned it (by virtue of the fact that by being in her stomach it's axiomatically in contact with her) and if it were her reserve she'd be able to feel and tap it. Seeing what happened if Miles swallowed someone else's goldmind would be fascinting. Or... I guess while I'm wishing, I could just wish we could see Miles simply compound from his own perspective.

You seem to be operating on the assumption that subterfuge is required; that the default state of being is "everyone knows all things" and the burden of proof is to show that information can be hidden. Miles does not hide what his powers are. Marasi has even heard of his powers. She simply assumes it's an exaggeration. This is not a time and place with smartphones and mythbusters and wikipedia. Thousands of reports come in from all around the Roughs. Some of them true, most of them false. The true ones do not have a magic quality to them that will ensure everyone knows which ones to believe and which ones are poppycock. In a setting such as Elendel, the default assumption is that people know pretty much nothing. Shadows of Self spoiler In Era 2, there is not perfect information. Compounders, even regular twinborn, are not perfectly understood. Even just regular allomancy and feruchemy. It is a false premise to assume that everyone has perfect knowledge of the Metallic Arts and attempt to justify why specific individuals might have unknown talents/powers; in truth, we have evidence that Marasi, an allomancer, a student at University who's specific field includes men like Miles, doesn't even believe regular compounding is a thing, despite having heard reports of it. Miles could be shouting who and what he is from the rooftops; that is not going to change the fact that, across all the Basin, most people have no clue.

I wonder if the steel model might help us better? Elend gets into a push contest with an Inquisitor, but his push is so much stronger it overrides the other. Can we make educated guesses about how fast the coin was moving towards the Inquisitor, and extrapolate how many factors Elend was stronger by?

I'm pretty sure Elend never tries piercing a coppercloud. Was he ever in the presence of one? Even Vin's?

SA

He pulls a spike out of them, and comments that they were made this way with only one spike.

Thank you, I had not seen this quote yet. That is... so depressing. I'm fascinated by the 'Mist Spirits' and had really hoped we would learn more about them. Finding out he's just using the same phrase to describe a bit of psychological cliche is... disappointing.