Oudeis

?? I'm sorry if it sounded like I implied that kharbranth was the entirety of the sea. All I meant was that Kharbranth was located inside the area known as the Sea of Lost Lights. My impression of what Shallan said was, as far as she could see in the immediate vicinity, those lights floated. I suspect they continue far, far into the distance, and make up the entire "sea of lost lights". I don't think there's any feature of Shadesmar unique/small enough to represent just the city of kharbranth.

If you're immune to heat, are you immune to fire?

This also isn't a typical bookstore signing. It's at some venue in NYC and it's a panel about YA books with two other YA authors. It is a ticketed event. I went ahead and splurged on "premium" tickets cuz they were not very much more expensive than normal tickets. There will be a line afterwards to sign books, but only if you bring them (and presumably he'll bring some Steelheart to sell) but it's not a bookstore. The website is actually rather unclear on what exactly the event is like. The event starts at 3, I believe my premium ticket only means I get to sit half an hour before others, so I'll automatically cut them in line for seats, but I guess I'll stand in line to get ahead of the other premium ticket holders. I still don't think this means I'll get to "meet" Mr. Sanderson an earlier, I think I sit down in my seat and he sits on the stage. Not sure how people will transition from that event to the signing, or if my ticket gives me any benefit to getting in line for that.

DC to NYC prolly isn't traveling far enough, is it? I've got a costume idea, but I'm afraid that at an event for two other authors, with young adults, that it'll look... out of place. And I didn't mean to imply that I think he hates us, I've just heard a few stories about times he's felt the need to rein us in, and I'd like to avoid becoming one of those anecdotes.

Um, I'm planning to attend. But it is my first Brandon signing, and it is specifically for a non-cosmere book. Not to mention, it's for young adults and there will be two different authors in attendence. And doesn't he get perturbed with the, "persistence" of the 17th Sharders? Any advice for what I can/should do for my first Sanderson event? To be totally blunt, what i'm hoping to get out of this is an original Steelhunt code, so any advice you can give me on that would be swell.

Just re-read the part of the book where Kelsier makes it look like Demoux has allomancy in his fight against Bilg. It'd amuse me if Kelsier only THOUGHT he was pulling these stunts, and Demoux really was a Mistborn, using his own metals.

Jasnah and Shallan where in Kharbranth when they went to Shadesmar. The place on Shadesmar that correlates physically to Kharbranth is called the Sea of Lost Lights. I'm gonna guess those floating lights are related to the name.

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED THAT QUESTION. So. There are two groups of people who might have learned how Copper/Bronze work. Skaa mistings, and the Nobility/Ministry. They are best taken one-by-one. Although first, one blanket reason. The far broader applications of copper/bronze are only truly realized cross-cosmere. With only Allomancy to deal with, they can never be used to their full potential, so they are by definition stunted. Hence one of my questions; being a Mistborn is really most useful if there's a world where I'll frequently run into Awakeners or Surgebinders or Forgers. Almost no Smoker on Scadrial is aware that any form of Investiture beyond Allomancy exists, so how could the practice. The Nobility and Ministry are easier. The Lord Ruler deliberately stunted advancement. Beyond his keeping the secrets of aluminum, duralumin and electrum secret, he did the same with all mundane technology for a millenium, so we know he can. Mr. Sanderson has said that bronze could, theoretically, detect feruchemy; Rashek's greatest fear is anyone learning he is a feruchemist. As Spook expounds upon, paired metals are very, very related. If people learned you could do more with Copper, it would be a short step towards them at least suspecting you could do much more with bronze. In short, The Lord Ruler has the proven capacity to restrain technological and allomantic advancement, and he has a very good reason to do so with copper and bronze. So that's why the Nobility and Ministry have never figured it out. The Skaa are a bit trickier. Any skaa Misting lives his life in constant and fully justified fear of being killed by the Ministry. Any rational Misting will only use his powers when he absolutely must, and if he's going to practice, he'll do so under a coppercloud. Any irrational misting who decides to give it a go without a cloud will very rapidly be found and killed. It took Marsh six months to learn the patterns of metals; presumably in a world where the ministry has Seekers everywhere looking for Mistings, in six months of practice most Mistings would be found and killed. So, skaa Seekers, who by definition can't practice under a coppercloud, would logically be the least-trained Misting there is. So here we have a slightly opposite issue from the Nobility. Now, because no one knows Bronze can do anything interesting, no one thinks that Copper can do anything interesting, either. Here's where we get a bit into my personal theory. A Seeker can feel the pulses from various allomantic powers. I think for copper to actually be effective, you have to send out your own copperpulses, and they have to complement specific patterns. A Smoker, with access to only his metal, can never feel a bronzepulse, and so has no idea what pulse to send out. Even if a Smoker were to figure out, hey, this buzzing in my chest I feel when I burn? I can modulate it! The odds of him stumbling across the exact pulse necessary to achieve a useful effect, while the correct allomantic power were being used nearby to be affected, often enough for someone to notice the correlation, is probably even less likely than The Lord Ruler managing to craft more hemalurgic creations by stabbing prisoners with random spikes, and he had exactly zero success after a thousand years. That leaves only skaa mistborn, who are rare enough to begin with, and apparently all think bronze is worthless because they all think they're fighting people who burn copper. They are the only people out of The Lord Ruler's thumb, with the capacity to hear bronzepulses AND try to generate copperpulses. If this were a world where it were likely that any of them were scientists or researchers, I'd think you might have a point that after a thousand years one of them would have stumbled across it. As it is, I don't think it's very far-fetched that the relatively infinitesimal group of people, in a world that spent a thousand years unable to advance to steam power or electricity, wouldn't have made innovations in this one area. And Vin mentions, I think in the second book, that even if people figure out tricks, that doesn't mean it gets widely published in a journal; there are an awful lot of secrets in the world that get figured out and then taken to graves. In short, a major premise of the trilogy is that The Lord Ruler successfully retarded the advancement of both mundane technology and the application of local magic. That blanket premise is basically why people wouldn't know how to use copper to its best effect.

Is anyone going to this event?

A few important questions before you can answer. In systems like allomancy or surgebinding which require a depletable energy source, do we have access to that? Do we have it in the world it's from, or do we have it on earth? Are there other people with powers? Are we assuming that everyone on this thread all live on one commune on earth and we're living with a bunch of other Invested people? I'm starting to get very interested and excited in the possibilities of bronze and copper, so I'm changing my answer to Allomancy.

Nexus is a direct loan word from Latin. If English weren't so dumb, the plural would be nexi, but like ultimatum we steal a word directly and then apply our own grammar to it. Stupid English. You seem to be making a bunch of assumptions... not entirely without basis, but still flagrant speculation. The main one being, how do you know Shallan doesn't close her eyes? She's only gone twice, only once even sort of on purpose, both times very confusing and odd. Her eyes may have shut themselves without her realizing. Or it could be a purely practical reason. Maybe Shallan's eyes don't close, and maybe Jasnah's doesn't have to, but maybe you don't blink if your mind is in Shadesmar. Maybe Jasnah came back to her body one too many times with dry, irritated eyes so now she closes them before she leaves as a precaution. The main problem I have, however, is that the nexus are clearly physical locations on that map. If Shallan appeared in one spot and Jasnah appeared all the way over there, how did Jasnah get back to her in order to help with the raft? I also think it's an enormous stretch to say that Jasnah, a woman who has shown no extraordinary imagination whatsoever in the books, travels via imagination simply because that's an option, and "closing your eyes helps you imagine".

First, don't ever link me to an FTL thread again. =D Second, I see no reason why Copper might not affect Lurchers. I don't think any normal Smoker would ever have the power to do so, but a Mistborn burning it with Duralumin might. Do we have WoB that it can't? I know the MAG says Copper can block emotional allomancy for others in the cloud, and people seem to be going as though there is WoB that this is true, but I don't think I've ever seen it; does it exclude the ability to block lurchers categorically? I'll get into this more if anyone can find me the quote, for now I'm gonna focus on the bigger part of my theory. The white noise. If you'll pardon the criticism, I think you're fixated a bit on the idea that bronzepulses are sound. Both Kell and Vin mention that they feel like sound, but also like waves lapping against a shore. And in Vin's lesson with Marsh, she could tell that the pulses were coming from Kell, but she could also feel that they were "pulling". If a "sound" felt like it was going towards Kell, wouldn't it sound like it was coming from directly the other direction? Yet she's certain it's coming from Kell. I think that bronzepulses are not directly analogous to any of the other five senses. I think this is part of what distinguishes it from iron; iron is purely a visual effect, and thus it was super-easy to figure out what else you can do with iron. Bronze defies the normal five senses, and Seekers try to describe it or maybe even experience it in terms of the senses they are more used to. Perhaps this would be the mark of one amazing Seeker; someone who let go of the notion that it was an analogy of his normal five senses and embraced it for what it truly was. So yes, if innate investiture were simply white-noise, a Seeker would be able to tell if it suddenly got louder. But we know that's not the case. A Seeker can't 'hear' innate investiture, at all. If he could, it would be a life-sense. A barren mountaintop and a city full of non-Mistings both feel exactly the same to a Seeker, even though the difference would be far greater than the extra innate Investiture a Smoker would put out. And we know that humans do have innate investiture, since that's what blocks a Coinshot from pushing on metal inside a human, even one who isn't a Misting. So we know innate Investiture is a thing, and we know that however much of it there is, a Seeker cannot tell the difference between it and simple background. They can only tell when Investiture is channeled through allomancy (or other means). There are animals that can only really 'see' movement. There are types of technology that can only pick up on color. In fact, some human eyeballs have trouble with color. So we get back to my white canvas analogy. Think of the world as a white canvas. Everyone who walks on it is a blob of white paint. The "eye" looking at it can't tell the difference between white paint, and white canvas, which we know because Seekers actually cannot tell where people are. But when a Misting burns, they set off color. This color is what the Seeker notices (as pulses/physical sensation/sound/what-have-you). So that's what a Smoker does; floods the area with white. Suddenly the drops of color a Lurcher put off are drowned out. Of course, this only makes the color fainter, not disappear. A normal Seeker has as much innate investiture as anyone; this is why he can't "hear" the bronzepulses without burning bronze. When you burn, you're tamping your own investiture down, but not all the way. We know this because Vin can do it better, so there must be different levels. So a Seeker pushes enough of his own Investiture out of his way to be able to "feel" those drops of color, but they don't have to be all that well hidden to hide from him. But then Vin comes along, with her double-bronze, and pushes away even more of her own Investiture. Suddenly she can "feel" oh hey, that spot of red is pale and almost washed away, but I can still see it and tell where it comes from. I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but I think it matches what little we do know about how Bronze, Copper, and emotional allomancy work. And yes, frankly, it is rampant speculation.

I agree with the statement that Adonalsium was once on Roshar, but left before being Shattered, which is like saying my car was once technically buried underground, since it came from metal dug up in a mine. Doesn't mean the hunk of metal was forged into a car in the mine. I swear I've heard WoB that Sel is actually the most Cosmerically aware... I also agree that the timing is off for the Shattered Plains to have been Shattered by Adonalsium, largely because I believe the Plains are Urithiru (and were never technically shattered, it is stated many many times throughout the book that people just think it looks like it was shattered, no one has any knowledge or recollection of any actual shattering event taking place). Roshar at first had only Cultivation and Honor. Odium has his own Shardworld, moved to Sel briefly to mess with Devotion and Dominion, and has since moved on to Roshar.

I had a thought today on how Copper and Bronze work, and why one is Pulling, and the other Pushing. I've heard it suggested that everyone has an innate ability to 'sense' investiture. I agree. I've heard it said that this sense is what Bronze "pushes." I disagree. I think Copper and Bronze work on your own innate Investiture. Someone mentioned Tineyes blocking out the sounds of their own bodies. I think everyone, in theory, can feel the power of creation, but the biggest source for anyone is that which is inside of them. Even a Drab is a Child of Endowment, and has Investiture. We're told expressly that this is why you cannot Push on metals inside someone; it is their Investiture blocking your allomancy. I think everyone can feel investiture, at least a little, but you spend your whole life with one single voice shouting in your ear, the same thing over and over. You can feel changes in yourself (when you burn a metal, you feel a physical sensation of warmth which may or may not be literal), but that single voice is still so loud, you cannot hear anything coming from outside. I think Bronze pushes on that sound. Pushes it down, deep inside of you, quieting the voice in your ear. For the first time ever, it's quiet enough that you can sense the pulses of those around you using Investiture. Ironically, this only pushes your innate Investiture; the Bronze itself is a 'power', and thus sets off its own bronzepulses. This is going to be a common theme in my post, so wrap your head around it now; the idea that the "sound" of a person's innate Investiture is distinct from the "sound" you generate when you actively use a power. What of the curious traits of Copper, then? If Bronze tamps down your innate Investiture, stowing it deep inside, what does Copper do? It swells your Investiture; it causes it to overflow. How could that possibly block someone who could sense Investiture? Hey, this guy is healed by fire! Let's try throwing more fire at him! But think about it. We know everyone has innate Investiture. Yet Bronze cannot sense it. Vin has amazing Bronze, and she never once talks about how it lets her sense the bit of Preservation inside all Scadrians. It is the universe's white noise, a buzzing so constant your sense just tunes it out completely. It is the background. So you, the allomancer, burn Copper and send out pulses to let everyone know that you're burning Copper... yet at the same time, you, the person who has innate investiture, is cranking up your white-noise generator so loud no one can tell. Everyone near you is swamped in your own overflowing Investiture, drowning out their own music in a constant, undetectable buzzing. Think of the world as a white canvas. Everyone who uses allomancy drops a spot of color... but you're a swelling fountain of white paint. People looking for color cannot tell "wow, there sure is more white than I expected". It's all just white. But wait. How could this possibly explain how copper can block emotional allomancy? How it does it instinctively for the smoker, but can merely be learned how to do it for others? How could it stop other forms of investiture? The fact that you even ask that question shows you don't fully appreciate how awesome Breeze is. I've heard it mentioned that Copper cannot block Iron or Steel, because emotional allomancy is a gentle feather-touch and the physical externals are a sledgehammer. Yet we've got proof that brass could take iron out behind the woodshed and show him who's boss. What is steel's weakness? What metal can you not push on? That which pierces a living human body. Why? Because the innate Investiture of a body blocks steel. What does zinc work on again? Oh, right, humans. Those chock-full-of-Investiture humans. Zinc punches right through a defense that has kept steel out since the dawn of time, still has enough control to administer a feather-light touch, and on its way out, flips off steel. Steel has to go play easy-mode, pushing on metal that has no Investiture with which to fight back, like a push-toy, while Brass is owning the ring in MMA. Why does Copper stop emotional allomancy? Cuz emotional allomancy already has an uphill battle. It's fighting a human's innate Investiture... the very thing I suspect Copper pulls out. When you burn copper, you're finally overflowing with enough personal innate Investiture to keep out brass and zinc. I think copper can be used to protect others, when you find ways to direct your spare investiture heavily enough around them to block. For now, the over-flow which hides their pulses with your generic Investiture isn't strong enough. A Smoker could direct this towards metal; she could smother metal in her own overflowing innate Investiture. However, that's now the first line of defense. A human is already resisting emotional allomancy, exactly the way humans resist the external physicals, the difference is that emotional allomancy punches through. A boost from copper is a boost to your own defenses. But metal? There's nothing there to help. Whatever copper does to a nail to block a Steelpush, that would be the only thing Steel would have to overcome. Would it be enough? Maybe; Steel's clearly not all that. But also maybe not. I have further theories, but I'd like to see if anyone can poke holes in my foundation before I start to build on it.

Over at the Mistborn forum we're discussing Copper and Bronze, but a few things are starting to get more Cosmeric, so I thought I'd move that portion of the discussion here. If you want to discuss allomantic implications of copper or bronze, or discuss why people on Scadrial wouldn't be aware of the uses, I would recommend you see what's been written over there. I intend this thread to be a place for discussion of applications of the metals across the wider cosmere. First, let me say that everything I say is rampant speculation. I know I have not one shred of evidence to support that it's true, I just think I can make a case that it is plausible, that it fits the tenor of the cosmere. A very quick primer on how I think bronze/copper works (if you disagree or want to discuss it farther, I will one again direct you to the Mistborn thread). When you burn iron, all that happens is you see blue lines. People rapidly learned that there are ways to interact with these lines, and ironpulls became a thing. In short, I think that Seekers are able to interact with bronzepulses, it just isn't as obvious as Iron's "focus on the glowy lines", hence why no one knows how to do it. I also think that when you burn copper, you send out an interference signal. The default setting is one broadband field, which is useful for some things but not specific enough to be strong; many other signals just cut right through it. I believe if a Smoker knew what he were doing, he'd be able to send out copperpulses, not just one enormous coppercloud, and calibrate them to counter specific investiture. In fact, I believe that's where the pairing comes in. I think if a Mistborn with bronze were able to sense, for example, a Nahel bond, and hear the exact pulses it puts out, he'd then be able to use copper to send out a signal to counter that exact frequency. It would throw up some interference, and it would be like that time when Syl had to fly very far from Kaladin; they both lost a little bit of what they get out of the Bond, but once the interference was over they were back to normal. As for Bronze itself, one of the greatest advantages of crossing the cosmere is finding a world where no one knows how your magic works. Vin was kept in a prison specifically designed to hold a mistborn; no allomantic metal parts. If she were thrown into jail on Sel, she could just scrape some iron or steel off something metal and bob's your uncle. Imagine crossing the cosmere, and knowing the person you're fighting is Invested, and perhaps using Bronze so well, you even get at least some idea of what that person does. An Awakener visits Roshar and no one thinks to take away his shirt, which happens to have a thousand Breaths in it, but a Seeker might be able to tell, hey wait, that shirt is major Invested. Throw him in jail without it. Anyway, that's my basic idea.

As far as opposites... Devotion and Dominion. You can both love something, and control it. (Hi, mom.) Preservation and Ruin. You cannot both destroy something, and save it. You can (and Vin did) destroy one thing to save another, but you cannot do both at once. This is the most literal time possible to use the aphorism, "You cannot have your cake and eat it, too." Either you leave the cake in front of you (preserving it) or you masticate it (ruining it). I'm also talking atomic here; if you eat half the cake, then you've just made two smaller pieces of cake, destroyed one and saved the other. You can love and control an entire cake all at once, you cannot save and destroy an entire cake all at once. As for the basic idea of this thread, that Odium convinced Aona and Skai to fight... I think it might be a bit oversimplified, but in the end, true. I doubt it turned into a matter of, "You see that Shard over there? He says you're fat." I do think it is very plausible, and perhaps even likely, that he tricked them in some manner, set them on a path that ended in both of their deaths, which may or may not have been direct conflict. I am still insanely curious on the method by which a Shard is Splintered, so until I get any information on the subject I'm going to attempt to avoid speculation.

First, there's no reason you can't store a huge burst of power feruchemically. Second, I don't think you're right that enhancement metals all get used up in a flash. Aluminum does, but that's because aluminum cleanses you of all metals, including itself. Duralumin does not. In the book, the first time Vin burns duralumin, she keeps it going for several seconds while she tries to figure out if it's having any effect. If a Trueself Compounder stored some identity in an aluminummind, then ingested the aluminum, he'd feel two pools of power. If he burns the normal allomantic aluminum, it will cleanse itself, presumably destroying both pools. However, he could leave that pool alone, and only burn the feruchemical identity. This would give him a ton more identity than he stored (whatever that means) which he'd either have access to right away, or he could store in a second metalmind. I'm still not seeing why you think any of that means a Trueself can't compound.

Sure, but how would Vin's earring ingest bronze in order to sense bronzepulses? Do you suspect it would then be able to communicate what it knows?

That would be very interesting. "Upon call, store weight, and upon other call, tap weight." We know that hemalurgic spikes can be metalminds; can a hemalurgic spike be its OWN metalmind? Also, a pewter question: Does it toughen skin? Could someone flaring pewter catch a swordblade without getting nicked?

Here's a Skimmer. I've named him Skim. Here's a Windrunner. I've named him Bob. Bob likes pranks. He sneaks up on his buddy Skim, and does a Basic Lashing, sending half of Bob's weight upwards in order to make him weightless. Oh, you zany Bob, up to your old tricks I see. Can Skim, who has access to a half-full metalmind, do anything about this? Can he 'store' specifically the now-upwards-facing half of his weight? Can he tap his stored weight and specify that it be applied to his normal half? Are you able to both store and tap from a single metalmind at the same time?

Early in the book, I believe before we even meet Wayne, we've got a Wax viewpoint where it is mentioned that Wayne has claimed to know the nicknames for every possible Twinborn combination. Wax is skeptical.

I might recommend making this more specific, and directly asking, perhaps as a follow-up, "Could an allomancer from Scadrial worldhop to Nalthis, find some pure Nalthian iron, and burn it allomantically"?

I disagree with this premise. I think he's saying that it's universal, in that Scadrian iron could be made into a spike and stabbed into anyone on ANY Shardworld, and it would become charged with physical might. I do not agree that he means, all iron on any world can be used to kill someone, and gain physical strength. However, I don't believe there's any official word either way, so for now all anyone can do is speculate. This might be a good Question for Mr. Sanderson; since he's been willing to answer about hemalurgy's universality, he might be willing to clarify this otherwise somewhat minor point. If we ever do hear that any metal on any Shardworld can potentially be used hemalurgically, I will concede that it very likely means that they can also be used allomantically.

I have to fanfic this, but I'm running into so many logistical problems. He has to deal with people from other worlds for full effect, but having him meet that many worldhoppers on Scadrial is preposterous, having him stranded on one other world would deny him access to allomantically active metals, and not only do I not have the faintest notion how a Scadrian would world-hop, but making him a full world-hopper is making an already over-powered character even over-er-powered. Best I can think is, a world-hopping merchant named Plot Device who can be paid to bring you to a different world, and who will keep him regularly supplied with Scadrian metals. This way he's on a planet with restricted access to world-hopping (if he suddenly needs to leave the planet but Device doesn't get back for two more weeks, he's out of luck) but I can justify his access to metal, and occasionally move the story around the cosmere. But even just cosmere-awareness is a relatively over-powered ability, not to mention his access to a lot of very powerful allomancy in a number of worlds that have never heard of this power. Kelsier kills eight hazekillers with relative ease, and they've trained to specifically fight him. Imagine how rapidly a Mistborn would go through the royal guards on almost literally any other world, especially if the Mistborn's specialty was sensing your own Investiture. I'll have to write a story with either such great conflicts they challenge even his capacities, or one where the drama is found in things other than direct confrontations or really anything that any of the allomantic metals would make easy. Sort of a day-in-the-life. Or some manner of mystery, something that has nothing to do with Investiture so he can't just bronze-scan the answer, and action scenes which pose no real threat to him are the method of lowering dramatic tension. And I have NO idea what I'm gonna name him.

If you burn them allomantically, you might have a point. But both Vin and Miles showed us that when you ingest a metal with a feruchemical charge, there's a separate "pool" of power to burn. Miles doesn't have to review his own past just to access his own stored health, nor does he have to burn health when he wants to review his past. I don't think it removes anything, and things aren't impossible just because they're ridiculous or nonsensical.