Oudeis

Do we think there will be different parasites explaining why some animals have some powers and some have others? Or all parasites are the same and they grant a specific power to each species they infect? How did land mammals get them? Do they infect plants? If they can infect tiny mouse-like land mammals, enormous aquatic predators and avians, can they/do they infect humans? How could they not? Does anyone else see them as a regionally-based bonding organism, kind of a mix between Sel and Roshar, like if Spren could only grant powers on one island chain? If a mother bird is infect how come her children aren't just because they were born off-island? Perhaps the parasite is localized to non-reproductive areas of the body? What other effects do these parasites have on their hosts? If you fed a fully-grown, non-Invested Aviar from the Northern Lands a fish caught in these waters, would it catch the parasites and gain powers? If your Aviar got sick and you gave it some medicine, what are the odds it would kill the parasites inside and lose its powers? How would something non-sentient like an Aviar react to the loss of something like Investiture? Do you think Sixth's bird sees her own death while he sees his?

Do we have WoB on this? Also, I'm not sure if you thought I was being allegorical or metaphorical. I didn't mean dark as in bad. I meant that Alendi very specifically and repeatedly said that the mist spirit of his day was colored black. As far as I've gotten in my re-read of the trilogy, Vin (the only person who has seen it yet) hasn't expressly said that the spirit she sees is white, but she does say that the mists are white and that the spirit is part of the mists, almost impossible to see because it is outlined by the substance of the mist. I feel it's a stretch that she wouldn't be able to see a figure made of black smoke amidst white mist. I admit this is partially tangential to my theory that the classic mist spirit is Ati, not Leras, but I wanted to clarify that point if there was any confusion. There absolutely was a dark mist spirit; when I said "dark" I literally meant "black". I apologize, I hadn't thought about how my meaning could potentially be misunderstood. The last debate I had about the mist spirit I was very express in pointing out the color change, and I forgot to repeat my premise this time. I absolutely admit that Leras could have appeared black a thousand years ago and white now, I just happen to think the one in the past is Ati. There is a lot that would be explained if the black spirit was Ruin that doesn't make any sense if he's Preservation. Fedik was stabbed several days before they found the Well, and was physically well enough to walk about unaided afterwards; hardly the kind of wound that would convince Alendi to take an action he was certain would literally doom the world to heal. Again, Preservation might still be the spirit that stabbed Fedik, but I do not accept that it was for the same reason Preservation stabbed Elend. If you disagree with my reasoning I would very much like to hear your reasoning. One final semi-tangent. I asked Mr. Sanderson, "When the dark mist spirit stabbed Fedik, was that an instance of hemalurgic theft?" His answer was a RAFO and an evil cackle. I do have the physical RAFO card, I didn't know that was a thing... EDIT: Because I realize I made an assumption. It's entirely possible you realized I was talking about colors and are claiming that the mist spirit of the past was not a dark-color. If so, I apologize for assuming your position.

I don't think those quotes support you as well as you seem to think... you're right, they don't expressly say, "the limbs will rot and fall off." They also don't say anything specific about what happens in the future, so it also doesn't say "the limb will continue looking fine forever." On our world of Earth, if someone cannot feel or use their arm, it will atrophy. I'm no medical doctor, but I don't think that with Arthurian level technology, a limb that presented with total nerve damage would last long. Do we know that a Shardblade does nothing worse than nerve damage? Will blood still travel? Will it still heal on its own? How could it, with no sensation to anything? Bumps, bruises, cuts. There are medical conditions which include a total lack of the sensation of touch/pain, and one of the biggest issues patients face is that, like an Elantrian, you bump your own limbs on things constantly in normal use. I mean... correct me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be, "if the limb rotted and fell off, Szeth would have mentioned it," and I don't agree. If I am mistaken, please feel free to enlighten me.

I've only ever seen the coppermind reference that there are 10 Shardworlds. Do you know where I can find the original quote? EDIT: Found it. I'm not so positive that we already know that Sixth and Forests of Hell aren't "important" enough to be core, but you're right that we haven't heard anything yet that would confirm that they are core.

That's only in the prologue, yes? In context, he could very easily mean in the short term. Shardblades are rare, and injuries with them might not be terribly well-documented. Szeth would have a lot of experience swiping at a person and seeing one limb stop responding with no other obvious outward sign, but on the rare occasions that he does wound someone with his Blade but not kill him, I doubt he follows up with the after-patient care. It sounds even to me that I'm starting to justify my theory in the face of evidence, so I'm just going to be silent from now on. I guess all I've got is that it doesn't "feel" right that you suffer some wound that looks a lot like total nerve severance, yet blood keeps pumping and all the other things your body needs to do for your arm not to fall off.

In the short term that might be all, but surely having your spiritual aspect and your physical aspect separated cannot be healthy for either. I suppose I cannot prove it, but I am still sure that both of your aspects will decay, deteriorate and die seperated.

Unimportant, sure, but they still exist. Do we know that there are 10 worlds, period, or do we know that there are 10 worlds that matter? If it's just ten shardworlds, then Dusk and Forests of Hell are worlds, and unless they are Yolen, Braize, Ashyn, or Taldain, this means we now have some information on literally every shardworld. I'm with Ookla on this. Interesting; are the parasites the only form of Investiture? Presumably the water-shadows then also have parasites, as do the tiny mouse-things from the island. I'd be amused that the shadows are what happens when a single parasite manages to grow to gargantuan size. Hee, for your second line. Incredibly off topic, I don't know if anyone here has read the Sword of Truth series. The wikipedia article for the main female protagonist states, "She has an irrational fear of snakes. By contrast, her fear of Shota the Witch-Woman is entirely rational and quite well-founded."

I think the atium was taken by Rashek, actually. I think that Ruin was able to access its power to manifest as the dark Mist Spirit and stab Fedik, but he couldn't do that even when freed by Vin because the atium was hidden from him.

16 shards seems fairly confirmed, and I think I heard that there are 10 worlds. Worlds we've seen officially in released books: 1. Sel 2. Scadrial 3. Nalthis 4. Roshar Shards we know as parts of those worlds: 1. Devotion 2. Dominion 3. Ruin 4. Preservation 5. Endowment 6. Honor 7. Cultivation ((I'll get back to Odium in a moment)) There are a few worlds we know of from WoB or his two upcoming stories. 5. Yolen (Dragonsteel) 6. Shadows of Silence world. 7. Sixth of Dusk world 8. Ashyn (Silence Divine) 9. Braize (See below) 10. Taldain (White Sand) If Sixth and Shadows are "official" Shardworlds, then that's all ten. Other Shards we know a little of but have never seen... 8. Odium, from what I understand, was originally based on Braize. 9. A fellow named Bavadin holds a Shard on Taldain. 10. There is WoB that some Shard somewhere just wants to hide and survive. So with Odium attached to Braize and Bavadin's Shard on Taldain, that leaves four "empty" Shardworlds, and seven Shards without a home. Even if Sixth of Dusk and Shadows of Silence are worlds outside of the important 10, they could still have their own Shards out of the 16. That would mean that of the 10 basic Shardworlds, there are 4 with two shards, and 6 with 1 shard apiece. For my part I'd rather be a trapper. I guess it's easy for me, on Earth, to think that Investiture is exotic. On Dusk it'd prolly be boring and commonplace, and if I grew up there I'm sure I'd prefer to be safe on the homeland, but from my current perspective I would want to study (and maybe master?) the metaphysics. Sidenote... at first glance, it seems the Investiture of this world is in the animals, and people simply tame them. One of the obstacles in making Super Cosmere Man has been that a body can only hold so much Investiture; like trying to listen to every radio station at once, they would all just interfere within your body. Since the Investiture on Dusk appears to be external to your own body, I wonder if a Mistborn or a Shardbearer could tame an Aviar, or any of the other animals on Dusk, and gain access to two systems of Investiture... I feel like Sixth's impulse at this point is to find out how this girl knew where to find his camp, how she got past most of his traps, who else knows his secrets, and so on. Also for my part, I'm still suspicious. She gets past a dozen deadly traps, and then just HAPPENS to get caught in the only one we hear mentioned that sounds non-lethal, right before he shows up anyway? Setup.

I don't think Intents are absolute. I think they become overriding drives, but even the Shards of Mr. Sanderson's worlds aren't one-dimensional, boring beings. Honor feels compelled in all things to act honorably, presumably therefore if he gives his word he has to keep it. We have no way to confirm that he must protect every weak person. One order of Radiants, the Windrunners, swore an ideal to "protect those who cannot protect themselves," but that doesn't mean it's Tanavast's own belief. Kaladin is "honorable" enough to attract an honorspren and he kills any number of people. If a man is your stated foe, if you have seen that he has before and will again kill others, I don't think Honor would be forced like an automaton to protect him no matter what; wouldn't that mean the opposite of protecting all the people Odium would then go on to kill? Honor allows for justice, vengeance, and a bunch of other words that all involve a lot of killing.

Is that really the only way? I see two other possiblities. 1 Unless literally every strand of DNA in your entire body gets damaged at once, it could find your "good" DNA and copy it over to the damaged sections. 2 Feruchemical gold doesn't have to work like normal medical science. When you "store" your health, perhaps it also stores things like a copy of what your DNA should look like.

Possible, likely, and valid. I think systems of Investiture do largely just 'happen' though I'd be surprised if Shards didn't have the capacity to direct it at least a little. That said, I think we've seen in the Cosmere that apart from the systems of magic, Shards can still (barring a strange balance like Scadrial had) directly intervene whenever they like. So Surgebinding is one thing, but the Old Magic and the Heralds are chosen by the Shards themselves because technically they aren't exactly a system of Investiture. Just one man's opinion. Why is everyone named ookla?

I think it's been confirmed that Intents affect you more the longer you hold them. When Vin was Preservation, she'd barely held it for a few hours, and was surrounded by a world collapsing into Ruin, the polar opposite of her Intent. It was not hard for her to defy Preservation's Intent and use the power to kill, especially considering it was no worse for her Intent than allowing the world to die. Leras had the power who knows how long, and had a fulfilled Intent. He not only had to take actions opposed to his Intent, he had to do it for the underlying purpose of change the world from statis (his ideal situation) to first near destruction and then progress. I've long wondered that, myself. All humans of Scadrial, whether allomancers, feruchemists, hemalurgists or just Frank down the street have a bit of Ruin and Preservation in them. I wondered if that "primer" were required for a person to take up either (or in this case both) Shards. The only time we've seen two Shards meld is this case. If and I can't stress how big this "if" is but if someone is required to take up multiple Shards in order to meld them... and if you can only take up a Shard if you are somehow "of" it... then we'll either need to find someone from a race of people that predate the Shattering, or there will have to be many generations of worldhopping cross-breeders until we have someone with ancestry from every Shardworld to take up every Shard. Next season on the Bachelor: Cosmere...

That is where my mind went... I'm not sold that surgebinding is of both Shards, but if it is, the Old Magic seems to be a matter of direct-intervention on the part of Cultivation. If Honor has ever directly intervened, it would be the Heralds, yes? I can see a scenario where Honor and Cultivation, a romantic couple, would craft one system of magic between them. Only when Odium showed up did they find cause to act seperately, and direct intervention (old magic/heralds) could be the result. Like how Ati made all that atium which ostensibly is not as "powerful" as lerasium, but he made just a few beads, Cultivation could have a great number of people with tiny gifts (offset by curses) while Honor made just ten individuals with power beyond imagining. I'm still not sold on the idea, but I certainly see it as more than plausible.

If we're going to start deciding which Words of Brandon are canon and which aren't, this entire forum will likely collapse. I'm sorry, and I'm sure you feel that this is just one exception, and you can come up with a number of reasons why this quote is questionable, but all the quotes that support what you want to believe are unassailable. When I asked Mr. Sanderson how to pronounce "Sazed," I got... a lot more than I bargained for. One large point was, "I wrote a screenplay; you are the director of the movie in your mind that is made when you read my book." Essentially, he gives us, the readers, carte blanche to envision things however we wish. So if you want to feel one way about hemalurgy, you shouldn't let even WoB change your mind, or try to justify why you do so. However, and I could be mistaken so someone please correct me, but I believe that one of the central tenets of this forum is that WoB is gospel. I myself have posted more than a few threads, I hope carefully labeled, where I go off on a flight of fancy about something either so speculative there could be no proof one way or another, or even flagrantly defying what we know to be true, so please believe me when I tell you I find nothing wrong with discussing such ideas on the forum. However, if you are trying to convince anyone of "canon", then I'm just going to tell you that as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to have my mind swayed by someone telling me that Mr. Sanderson didn't really mean what he expressly said. I hope that's cool. A thousand upvotes. Be my valentine. 1, are you already on the list of people not to meet in a dark alley? 2, you're not using your appendix. I'm gonna slay you, tear it out of you, and staple it to my knee. That's cool, right? 3, DnD is not the only measure of morality in the world. There is more than one way to measure it. You seem to subscribe to the idea of ends mattering more than means, actions mattering more than intents. That is one way to measure morality. I realize it's a matter of philosophy, and therefore not one of hard data, but I believe that there are actions, tools, and powers that are simply evil, that however one tries to twist or justify them, they are basically evil. I can't convince you of this, any more than you'll ever convince me that your belief system is "true." And 4, while he himself admits that in the privacy of our minds, what we want to believe trumps anything Mr. Sanderson writes, this is after all a forum of people here to be fans of his work. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't claim that anything he says is ever "irrelevant" to his own body of work. Gloom's point, with which I happen to agree, is that B is also bad, and that bad + bad = worse. "Having a piece of your father" isn't like inheriting his pipe and remembering the evenings spent by his side near the fire. This isn't a memory or an heirloom, this is a literal part of him. If it were physical, imagine how sweet and charming and comforting it would be if, on your father's deathbed, you ripped off his hand (killing him) and superglued it to your own elbow. If it did function, it would be useful and very convenient. And there's no circumstance where it wouldn't be creepy. For your second point, I don't think you can justify the actions of buying goods you know were the result of theft and murder. In America, in most states it's known as "accessory after the fact" and it is punishable by law, regardless of how you justify it or how well you can explain how you made sure it didn't enourage future crime (I'm honestly not sure if that's the exact term used in literally every state, but I believe it's the norm). I understand that the US penal system isn't an absolute moral authority, but it at least IS a moral authority. Please let me know what moral standard backs up your arguments.

First, you seem to be dismissing the "rip someone's soul apart and staple it onto someone else" thing. Even without Ruin, it's been heavily implied that there are other downsides to a patchwork soul. Can you point to one hemalurged individual who isn't a little crazy? I'm not sure you can simply hand-wave away that "oh that was all Ruin." He spoke directly to people, yes, and took direct control of the Inquisitors, but I don't think you can say for certain that people weren't just always a little off while spiked. Second, to answer your question, I'm not sure, but I believe not. I always wondered; when we learn of the koloss and how they work, there seems to be a great deal implied but never flat-out stated; I wouldn't hate to read an essay Mr. Sanderson might write explaining it a bit differently. Rashek thought that if he stopped giving the Koloss fresh spikes, they would die out. They learned another way; they used the spikes they harvested from the dead koloss, and re-charged them from humans, then turned other humans into koloss. The original charge seemed to be mostly lost; the new koloss were not now twice as strong. Still, it is stated that the old charge was never completely wiped off the spike; this extra bit of spiritweb made the new koloss crazier, but also more human, hence why they tried to dress up and acquire wealth. The whole explanation is rather confusing and I could stand to have it explained to me again, but it seems that you could neither 1) simply take the first spike and pass it to the son, then kill the father and pass that to the son, as well, nor 2) remove the father's spike, use it to kill him and thus double charge it, and then give the double-spike to the son and grant him access to the father AND grandfather's power. The other thing you may have meant was, can you spike the father, and steal the patchwork soul? More importantly, since you seem to only get one spike per victim, can you stab him with a single spike that will steal both his native bronze and his stolen bronze? This would require two assumptions: First, that stolen attributes are now in the person and can be stolen. I think this is not the case, since Vin loses her extra bronze when her earring is removed. Second, that the two bronzes inside of a person meld into a single, super-powered trait that can be stolen, rather than operating in parellel. I'm inclined to say no, though I have difficulty expressing why I think that is so. On a grander scale, Ruin crafted a power that would have dire cost. Finding a way to concentrate power across generations feels opposed to this Intent, though to be fair "I shoot you with coins and kill you" certainly seems to be against Preservation's Intent, so that's hardly hard-and-fast. I've provided such thought and evidence as I feel I can. My personal belief is that no, for the reasons I've stated you could not pass traits along like this. (Now, a grandfather could directly spike his own grandson, then in the fullness of time the father could spike his now doubly-empowered son and get a treble-Seeker, but that's a very different system than the one you're suggesting). I personally take the koloss explanation as WoB that a single charge will only work for one person, so you could not pass Bronze down a family line, only to one single descendant, but as I've said the whole explanation was a bit esoteric, so I understand if not everyone agrees. edit: found a typo.

Shucks. Still, he did say it was a good question. I'm going to resist the urge to justify my theory by claiming hemalurgy or semantics, and accept that something new is going on there.

Upvote. FOR SCIENCE!

I think the argument was more like: Ruin used to be in charge of that power (not just the influence of users, but the power itself). Now that Sazed is technically in charge of it, the writer feels that this means the power itself is different. Like how the scary house at the end of the block is only scary cuz the old man who lives there is crotchety and mean, but when he moves to florida and a nice young couple with a puppy moves in the house is suddenly nice. This is false, of course, but I think it is the writer's argument. Also yeah, I hadn't considered the other surviving members of the crew. If memory serves, the book references Saze, not Sazed, and there are very, very few people who would call God by not only his first name, but his nickname. I'm currently in a Mistborn reread, and I'm going to look at which characters tend to call him Saze and which call him Sazed.

Er... first, I do not believe the "assassin" is Bloody Tan. Does anyone here think that it is? I suppose that part was from Marasi's perspective so she might not necessarily have noticed it, but she's obsessed with Wax, and surely she'd've seen (and this being Marasi memorized) his picture from his wanted poster, and recognized it. So, I don't think this person is using either Feruchemical chromium or Allomantic atium, I think he's just an assassin. In fact, her line of thought is, "this person couldn't have known he'd be so lucky, he'll probably circle around and make sure," and sure enough, he circles around to make sure. If he were simply relying on luck, he wouldn't have needed to bother. We don't know Wayne was in the shadows, just that he was in an alleyway. Atium could very easily have helped with that; see the head of Wayne's atium shadow pop up, fire at it just before his real head does. Again, I don't think he needed either, because I don't think this guy was Bloody Tan. He's just a dude with a crossbow and halfway decent aim. Marasi, who is an excellent riflewoman but had never been in combat before, did quite well at that social event in Alloy. Presumably a trained assassin can hit a decent-sized fellow in broad daylight at a moderate distance. To review, I don't think he's Bloody Tan, and I don't think he is using either allomantic atium or feruchemical chromium. If he is using f-chromium, he should have been more careful to save enough luck not to die. As to the question on the pits and the time of regernation, you make a very good point, one I've wondered myself. The best I can figure is this: At some point in the past thousand years, people did try to use allomancy in the pits and the crystals cracked. Notes were taken and it became known, not widely but known, that it takes roughly 300 years to recover. Kelsier could have heard guards/administrators discuss it, or after he escaped and started his plan to fight back, learned everything he could on the Pits, including this tidbit. Not gonna lie, I'd feel better if we had WoB one way or the other. I'm certainly not convinced Bloody Tan was a Seer, but I think it's a possibility brought about by a suspicious conjunction of coincidences.

Nope, it's evil. Always has been, always will be. WoB.

Actually we don't know how feruchemy started. In fact, we don't know how allomancy started, since we know it started before lerasium (Alendi was a Seeker, after all, and I think we have WoB that Rashek and his buddies were the first to burn lerasium). Regardless... yes, what you say is technically plausible. There are a dozen parts of your argument I think are flimsy, and I'm going to continue believing as I believe that allomancy is of Preservation, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish.

Soother ringleader and Rioter clowns waemming up the audience.

There is a WoB quote somewhere about what happens when you burn lerasium, and I believe it says that it provides a permanent link to Preservation. Upvote to anyone who can find it (I am both babysitting and mobile at the moment or i'd do it myself). Marian, I like your reasoning and i'd be inclined to believe it if it weren't for that quote. To hark back to the original topic, that doesn't mean Lift might not be an inadvertant Mistborn. If the Nightwatcher did change Lift to turn her stomach into an engine that turns physical matter into Investiture, it might be a 'hack' that would grant her the ability to get the powers of an Ironpull from Scadrian Iron. As we've seen from Vin's own experience, she'd have enough trace metals in her system that she'd've burned them by now if she could've. Now, was the parellel intentional on Cultivation's part? I know we've wondered here how cosmerically aware Shards are. Could Cultivation know how Allomancy works and deliberately model her boon to Lift along that principle? Or is it coincidence?

Ah. That is rather conclusive, then. I, too, believe it is Spook, simply from the "voice".