Oudeis

First, that's the opposite of what "steep learning curve" means. A steep learning curve means you learn a lot all at once, then taper off, you presumably mean a very shallow learning curve where you learn very little for a long time before starting to learn a lot. Basically, draw two graphs, where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is how much you learn; if you learn a lot very quickly, the graph looks like a cliff, hence "steep learning curve". Second, I agree with you that bronze obviously is more than an on/off metal, even in the first book. That said, people still look down on it. Only Seekers themselves seem to think it can be interesting. The non-Invested, other Mistings, and almost ironically, especially Mistborn, think of it as on/off. Even though you can learn more than one thing from it, they basically treat it as "I am listening to bronzepulses (on)" or "I am not listening to bronzepulses (off)". I don't agree, but from Marsh's talk with Vin, it seems that's what people think of it.

I haven't read this anywhere else so I'm gonna post it here: First, do we think the book Wax is reading in the blurb is the book Marsh gave Marasi at the end of Alloy? And second, who do we think is the author of the book?I have my own ideas, but I'd like to see what other people think, too.

That's very possible, even likely. I guess I have just one question. What is the Old Magic? I suppose if it isn't her system of Investiture, it's simply Cultivation's direct intervention in the world, as we've seen Harmony (and, it could be argued, Endowment) do. It feels like a simple and unsatisfying answer, but that doesn't mean it's unlikely.

My suspicion, admittedly not rock-hard, is that Surgebinding is Honor's form of Investiture, and that the Old Magic is Cultivation's. As gems are an integral part of surgebinding, I'd suspect the gemhearts to be more associated with Honor than with Cultivation. And I agree with the statement above, that gemhearts are to lerasium as gems are to typical metals of Scadrial. I do not agree that any gem will hold Stormlight or that any metal could be burned; I think Shards fully Invest in a planet and make something Spiritually different about their planet, that is expressed in the special metal of Scadrial and the special gems of Roshar. Although, something I haven't thought of before. Ruin and Preservation's magics both used the same metals, and they both had metal bodies. Might that extend? Does the Old Magic also use gems somehow? Could different Gemhearts be the bodies of Honor and Cultivation?

Or just someone new could figure it out. He figured a lot out in a thousand years, but surely a hundred seekers, not fearing for their lives, could figure out as much as one man, given a century or so.

Per my theory, it's because Rashek knew that Bronze could expose his secrets, and thus stifled the Nobility and Ministry. Any Skaa Misting with an ounce of sense only practiced under a coppercloud, where obviously Seekers can't practice. Any Skaa Misting without an ounce of sense would've gotten caught by a Soothing station and killed. In short, The Lord Ruler successfully stifled nearly all human technological and allomantic advancement. He stifled this, too.

Hrm, not sure. That could be a very good question to ask Brandon. We know so little about how bronze actually works.

Vin will be played by Lindsay Wagner, the title will be changed to The Allomantic Woman, and everytime she Steeljumps they will play the sound shananananananana....

DC is my town. Trust me, congress is bad enough as it is; please don't give them the idea to become metaphysically inept.

Is it possible to hemalurgically steal a person's ability to burn lerasium? Or is that a trait of your entire spiritweb, not any single portion? If a Mistborn were to burn pewter with duralumin, how would that affect the bronzepulses put off by pewter?

Choose to believe what you wish, but please do so without the snide superiority. If you cherry pick your facts, deciding that one implication is proof while another is explained away with handwavium, that's fine, but then don't come back to me with "I guess I'll just be over here with all the evidence." You do have strong, but not absolute, evidence of your theory, but I've got evidence, too. I have no problem with your decision that your evidence is more compelling than mine, but it is rude of you to say that your is proof while mine is nonexistant.

Here's what I think Elantris/Rao does, and why it wouldn't work like that. I think that once, long ago, anyone standing on the soil that we call Arelon could draw a symbol, on a piece of paper or in the dirt or whatever. I think that it would have an effect, likely one far less powerful even than what Raoden could do once he had the Chasm Line but before he fixed the Shaod. I think that someone crafted an enormous system of cities for the express purpose of concentrating the magic, making a very few very powerful at the expense of magic-for-all. Rao turns a few people into Elantrians, who can draw the symbols in the air, channel far greater power than the old practitioners could, and have an instinctive knowledge of the Aons (hence Raoden trying to draw the chasm line and, despite a lack of decent cartographical data, somehow "feeling" that he was near the right place). If so, Elantris acts as... this is woefully inaccurate, but try to understand the point I'm making. Elantris acts as a signal booster (except it doesn't expressly boost it, it refines it, but we on Earth don't (i think) have anything like that). On Arelish soil, it can change how the Dor is accessed, and "attune" people on Arelish soil to its power. If you simply draw Rao on a sheet of paper and carry it around, there's no signal to boost. Yes, technically it would do the same thing Elantris does, but Elantris isn't generating any signal, it's just modifying it. If you were able to find an area with a reserve of power similar enough to Arelish Dor (and it would have to be EXCEEDINGLY simila, since the way magic works over a mountain range or across a sea is apparently too different to work, so I don't think anything like the Well of Ascension or an abundance of Breath would count) then yes, you could draw Rao and possibly have greater power as an Elantrian. Magic on Sel is regional. This is one of the few basic, hard-and-fast rules of Sel. I see a lot of people on the fora trying to explain how you can get over/around this limitation with a simple fix that people on Sel would have thought of long ago. I can't speak for anyone else, but you'll have to come up with an incredibly convincing argument based firmly in strict WoB to get past the idea that magic IS regional.

Ah. Well, if on one hand we have 'color of armor' and on the other we have 'type of magic she uses' I'm going to maintain my healthy skepticism that she might be and Edgedancer or whatever Ym was.

Take an upvote for the thought that counts. Also if anyone is confused, Mac is my real name. I guess I should put it in a sig or something.

We know Shards need to "Invest" in not just the people, but the planet themselves, if they want to have an impact there. Odium has reasons not to, but R&P wouldn't have any reason not to go ahead and Invest. (It is my suspicion that Odium DID Invest in Sel, and that his ripping out his power to leave once he Splintered Devotion and Dominion left a wound in the planet that, combined with the undirected power of the Shards, ultimated damaged to the cognitive realm enough to cause a massive event which had ripples in the physical realm, causing the Chasm to appear and, by extension, the Reod to happen. BUT THAT IS NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.) I don't think Iron is a godmetal, or that burning it hurts or requires the permission of Preservation, or anything like that. I think if you're lying in bed wrapped up on a winter's morning, your body heat warms the sheets. You don't decide to do it and you can't prevent it, it's just a thing that happens. Those sheets are now warm... if a child came up to touch them, he'd feel the warmth, which he wouldn't feel in an empty bed. Now here's where my analogy breaks down cuz all the shardworlds are beds, most are occupied, and with humans there's no difference between my body heat and yours, I think the Iron on Scadrial is full of Preservation's "body heat" and thus can be used for the Metallic Arts. I think crystals on Roshar have the "body heat" of Honor and Cultivation and thus can hold Stormlight. I realize this is largely speculative, but to be frank, so are all the supporting arguments I've heard as to why you should be able to use Nalthian iron in allomancy. Until we hear WoB, I think this is a more logical conclusion. Also, it fits with his statement that you need to know what you're doing in order to use Investiture on other worlds; if Hoid ever grabbed Vin and dropped her off on Sel, she wouldn't need to know anything special in order to just eat some iron and start pulling.

How do we know she is a Stoneward? Yeah, I had assumed that it meant "save the stormlight" and the awkward wording was just Brandon's way of telling us "this is the word for healing on this world". It could just be how they talk to dumb locals; when I find myself in the position to describe something very techincal I did at work to someone I consider a peasant, I tend to say things that are easier to understand and not at all true. Sidenote, Lyft's chapter is inconclusive but strongly suggests that Regrowth takes a LOT of Stormlight; whether it was coming from a fabrial or from the Radiant, she could have meant that she'd run out. Hence why I think the device she used was more a battery for Stormlight than anything else. Leading to a few questions, actually... Jasnah's fabrial, despite appearances, isn't entirely for show. At a minimum, it holds her "flavors" of Stormlight. Kaladin seems to be able to absorb any gem's stormlight for the same effect, while Jasnah has never been shown to absorb stormlight, and must match the appropriate gem to what she wants to soulcast. Can Jasnah inhale stormlight? If she does, does the source gem still affect what she can soulcast? Can Lyft metabolize specific flavors of Stormlight?

Ahem. First, you have questioned my theory. Pistols at dawn. Second, I am going to speak of tattoos now. I am not going to cite any sources or link any quotes. If you doubt my qualifications to discuss tattoos from experience, I ask you to look at my profile pic. If you want to challenge my authority on this subject, please have a tattoo at least half as big as that one or a citation that does not begin with the letters 'wiki'. Rapid healing causes tattoos to fade. The process works like this. Wounds bleed, expressly for the purpose of forcing out foreign matter (among other reasons). Ink is foreign matter. The more you bleed while getting a tattoo, the more ink will be forced out. The less ink inside of you, the more faded a tattoo would be. A tattoo needs to remain as a wound and a scar while the stuff under your skin happens. It isn't like putting a lobster in a pot and then slamming the lid down. Healing as shown in a-pewter would be detrimental to the formation of a vibrant tattoo. If, as I theorize, stormlight operates on a similar but empowered principle, the rapid healing would push out most if not all of the ink. Lastly, those of you paying attention will realize that I said getting a tattoo is a very bloody process. However stormlight travels in your body, we know that Kaladin's and Szeth's wounds bled stormlight instead of blood. I don't think any of us are qualified to wonder how stormlight would treat a foreign invader in the body, but I think the stormlight forcing the ink out of the bleeding wound is certainly one plausible scenario. In conclusion, the idea that stormlight is the same type of healing as a-pewter, just stronger, is plausible given the tattoo example. Further the specific phenomenon of wounds bleeding stormlight, syllogized with the phenomenon of bleeding tattoo wounds, makes this specific scenario very likely too idiosyncratic to be of any use in the debate. ::drops mike, walks away::

Oh. You're one of those.

Is there a single instance in the book of anyone ever flaring copper? On a just-barely-related topic, what happens to your bronzepulses when you use duralumin? If Zane had turned off his copper and turned on his Bronze just at the right moment that first time Vin managed to use duralumin, would he have seen her tin, bronze and pewter send out bronzepulses like tidal waves? Would they be unchanged? Would the pulses be different but not necessarily "bigger" or "louder", just modified in some other way?

@Pech: I agree with you that such feats should prolly not be possible... but I don't think a Mistborn can savant, can he? And if he could, I don't see how you can savant in both copper and bronze, especially in my speculation of how they work. So... what I'm admitting is, I'm going to cheat. The story will be boring if I don't, so I'm just gonna make my guy overpowered. Yes, I do plan to have plots and characters that are interesting, but I can do that in any story. The spice, the sprinkles atop the sundae that will be my literary creation, will be some interesting uses of copper and bronze, so I'm gonna fudge the rules for my story. I'm so far out on a speculative bridge that some WoB is going to invalidate my entire work well before we get down to the specifics of copper savanting, so I'm just going to give myself a pass on the details. Will it make my story much more shallow? Probably. Will the deeper story be boring and unreadable without it? I think so. Lesser of two evils, please!

The power in the Well was enough to move planets. The power of a Divine Breath is enough to animate a corpse. That's not comparing an apple and a banana, that's comparing an apple and a plantation.

Your spoiler tag didn't take... in case people who don't want to see show up, can you fix it? Thanks!

What did Tan do that was lucky in Shadows? Honestly I suspected that his power in Alloy was allomantic atium. Kelsier said it would take 300 years for the pits to produce again; the instant we learned it was 300 years that Alloy took place, I started looking for atium. Would a Kandra have even needed the bones? Give him any skull with even loosely the same features, and a picture of Bloody Tan, which can't have been hard to find. He only needed to look enough like him to be seen by Wax for literally a moment, while Wax was hurtling through the air above. Surely a race of beings that can make dogs that talk, have pockets of skin, and paws dextrous enough to grasp paper could mimic a face that well documented at least that well for at least that second of time, even without the literal skull.

Also your whole basis is that dying doesn't stop a Sliver. And the Returned are worshipped as Gods far more formally and universally than Kelsier ever was. If they were Slivers, they'd be far more likely to be the type of person you claim than Kell ever could.

The look better in the dark. Blue is Aan. Green is Omi. The one in the middle is red, and it's Rao. That's the one Mr. Sanderson himself asked for. I think he likes the characters in his stories, as his top two choices for Seon were Ene and Rao, the Aons for his two main Aonic characters. My friend David, with the ever-attendant Omi, showcasing their new copy of Steelheart.