Oudeis

My version is Nook, and the pages don't line up. Can you please give me a chapter? Thank you! I'm not sure I agree with you that the Origin is closest to Honor. No one conflates the Stormfather with the Almighty, as far as I can see, in the books. And the Stormfather is clearly suggested as the Herald Jezrien. Mistborn comparison: I'll grant you that there's no reason we can't assume that after 4,500 years people got their mythologies confused, and maybe Honor was the Stormfather, but right now I don't see any reason to assume so. I still think there's more reason to believe that "closest to Honor" means the Plains, where the largest gemhearts are found.

I don't think Urithiru went to the Shattered Plains from Shadesmar. I think it was the Shattered Plains all along. First, yes, I'm counting on Jasnah's notes on a mistranslation that the word was never meant to be "westward". Maybe it wasn't even a direction, maybe it was to be "placed quickly" or something. Second, I'm thinking about "the place nearest to Honor" I'm gonna get a little Cosmere up in here, so bear with me: (Spoilers below for other books in the cosmere. First, Mistborn) (Spoilers for Warbreaker) So. Where is nearest to Honor in Roshar? Where then is Honor's body? If you didn't read the above, my basic point is that "the place nearest" a god is where that god's body is produced. A god's body is integral to the world's system of magic. It is a thing very much like a natural substance, but different in some important way, and it grows back. It isn't Stormlight. That's simply the energy of Surgebinding. What is the catalyst? Gems. And what gems are very much LIKE other gems, but clearly different in some fundamental way? Which gems grow? Which gems can be constantly harvested? Gemhearts. All greatshells produce gemhearts. But where are the biggest? Where are the ones all of Alethi are astounded to see? The Chasmfiends of the Shattered Plains. The beings that the Parshendi, with their poor grasp of the Alethi tongue, call Gods. Or maybe... the body of God? I think West is a mistranslation. (Spoiler for Mistborn) I think that Urithiru was placed nearest Honor, which means the place that the Chasmfiends gather, which is the Shattered Plains. What I frankly think is most likely is that the plains were never shattered. I agree with the theory that they're just covered in crem. Dalinar himself on the Tower commented that it looked like a field of low walls, covered in snow. That got me thinking... what if someone saw a field covered in snow... and Soulcast the snow into stone? Wouldn't that be what this looked like? Maybe it's crem from the storms. Maybe it's Soulcasting. I don't know. What I do believe, however, is that the city of Urithiru is, and always was, at the Shattered Plains. Which were never actually Shattered.

Hey. I just found this. I was about to post... more or less exactly this theory, though it seems you've beaten me to it. I have a few supporting arguments for this theory I'd like to share: Do you have another post where you explain this more fully?

First, I think combat ability is the decider here. Whichever one of them can fight better would win, hands down. I think the advantage of one metal over the other is otherwise negligible. If we DO assume absolutely equal fighting skill (which is so exact it's like calculating how far a tennis ball will go on a planet with no air) then I'm giving it to the Sparker for the following reason: Allomancy burns metals at a flat rate. Feruchemy lets you tap everything all at once. However fast the Seer can react is one unchanging number. All the Sparker has to do is exceed that speed. With infinite resources, he can. If they're both of equal fighting skill, if they're both equal strategists, if they're both similarly armed, (if you throw the ball on a planet with no air), a Sparker can go faster than a Seer if he has to. The fact that a Seer get to react BEFORE the Sparker moves, while the Sparker has to wait to see what happens, is an advantage, true. If they were limited to the same "amount" of power, I'd give it to the Seer. But that actually works somewhat against the Seer. You don't 'know' what's going to happen and then decide how to react, the books are clear that atium reacts for you. It does whatever action is in your immediate best interests, regardless of your own skill or abilities. It won't be able to lay a trap for a Sparker, but a Sparker will be able to force you into a position where suddenly you're in a corner and you atium realizes that in a few seconds, every option ends with your death. Again, though, I think this battle would be so evenly matched, "power" wise, that I think it's inhuman for them to be so evenly matched in skill, and the better fighter would win. Or, honestly, the Seer might have one advantage. They're so balanced that bad luck could easily sway the battle (a sweaty grip on a blade, stepping on a pebble, the wind rattling a shutter behind you and drawing your attention). Seers would be able to predict random events. Sparkers would not. So depending on your belief in chaos theory, if one random odd thing happened during combat it could give the Seer an advantage the Sparker lacks.

On page 3034 in my Nook edition (Chapter 70, 25th paragraph I believe). Shallan is walking down the hall with what I believe has been identified as a Garnet. Yet, it's called a "weak blue sphere". I realize that on earth, just about any gem can be just about any color depending on chemical composition; nevertheless, I find myself wondering if Brandon had intended to make it blue, or leave it the deep red of a 'classic' garnet. EDIT: Oh, nevermind. I just went back to where this specific garnet was first introduced, in Chapter 45, in Kabsal's lantern, and the light is blue there, too. Does this mean garnets are typically blue in this world, or was this a chemical anomaly?

Per Sanderson: "on the extreme end of aluminum, I have in the notes the possibility of cleansing the spirit of unwanted effects of other investitures. You'd get really good at this, and maybe even be able to cleanse the body of other impurities." What does anyone think would happen if someone possessed a Shardblade, and burned aluminum? The three outcomes I can see are: 1. Nothing. 2. The Blade is destroyed like a reserve of allomantic metals 3. The Blade pops into existence as though its bearer were slain.

As an exercise in the ridiculous, my friend and I decided to see if we could think of some Shards who would make the world they Invested just unbearably awful. Here are a few of our suggestions, what does the audience think? Misery. Denial. Sarcasm. Clowns. Pranks. Paranoia. Irony. Boredom.

I'm with Kurk on this one. I realize that Vin could be wrong, but she expressly says that burning Duralumin boosts a metal by burning it all at once. I guess it's possible that the subtleties could have escaped her; maybe it just multiplied the power of the metal by a static amount, and also burned off all the rest of the metal as a side effect. Nevertheless, since Vin is such an innately good allomancer, I believe she'd have noticed that her bursts were always the same level of power, regardless of if she had a full reserve of a metal or only a bit of it left. Not an ironclad argument, but I think it supports Kurk. This might be even more specious, but as Elend points out, the Metallic Arts make strict, numeric sense. The power from a Steelpush comes from the metal, and a quantity of metal will always output the exact same quantity of force. That's why it makes sense that a burst increases power by burning a metal all up at once. There's no change in the amount of energy that the steel possessed, it's just being applied differently. Actually... maybe I just proved myself wrong. Aluminum simply nulls your metals. They lose all of their power. Where does that power go?

I think... that everyone who has commented so far in this thread makes me think of Elend. I don't have the quote on me (I'll try to find it once I get back from lunch). I can't even recall which book it's in. But Vin doesn't need a reason for what she does, which is what fascinates and somewhat confuses Elend. He sometimes has trouble accepting that she sometimes does things just because they seem right at the time, and she never feels compelled to explain why it should be so, or to justify her actions. So. I don't think Hoid was putting off any odd Allomantic pulses, I don't think she picked up his lightweaving or realized he wasn't a native Scadrian, I don't think she found it odd a beggar would hum or anything. Has anyone on this thread ever just had a gut reaction? Just decided to take one action rather than another, and not really been able to explain why? It doesn't take magic, it doesn't take metaphysics. Maybe it's your subconscious putting together a thousand little clues and presenting you with an answer without bothing to explain to you the question. Maybe it's your soul's intuition of the spiritual aspect. I always thought, from a literary viewpoint, that THAT was the point of this scene. Don't read the passage with an Elend mind, trying to pick it apart logically and find the gears turning behind the face of the clock. Read it with a Vin mind, and know that sometimes things just happen because they happen. Dismantling a clock won't find you the 'tick'.

Minor point: They called Atium the "body" of Ruin often enough that I'd suspect it was his physical aspect (and that lerasium was Preservation's physical aspect) rather than spiritual. The other thought... I'm not so sure I buy the idea that spiritual aspects CAN manifest physically. Have we seen anything do that anywhere else in the cosmere? My alternate hypothesis is that lerasium, the Well, and the mist are the three states of being, and ALL of them are his body, his physical aspect. And that therefore, since you can "release" liquid lerasium, you should be able to "release" solid lerasium, and if so, why not solid atium? Do we all agree that the "mist creature" was Preservation's cognitive aspect? And as we've seen, the creature itself was never technically visible. The only time it could be percieved, and even then only with difficulty, was when the mist swirled around it; when the cognitive aspect interacted with the physical aspect, his body. Speculation, I admit. If anyone can find anything to disprove my ideas, please let me know.

I disagree with your self-assesment. I like your post. It gives me a lot to think about. If your definition of a "good post" is, this provides you with all the information you could possibly need and is complete unto itself and has no room for interaction, then it was a bad post. But my definition is, a post that gets people thinking, that suggests things, that brainstorms even if all the science isn't there yet, and by that definition your post is great.

I am a Lerasium misting, also known as a "normal person".

Two thoughts: First, Flash is right; I don't think the Noble Houses thought to themselves, "Let's ignore all of these Allomancers we're flush with; it's normal people we should really be training!" The plain fact is, they HAD to make do with normal guys, because the most Allomantically powerful House there is, willing to put every last Pewterarm and Coinshot on constant patrol, wouldn't have the manpower to guard their entire Keep. Hazekillers were made because they ran out of normal Allomancers, not because someone liked them better than Allomancers. Second, I'm not sure I agree with your underlying assumption that training them to be as good as a hazekiller, is possible. Any given person can only train so many hours per day, so many days per week. While your Coinshot it out there learning how to leap from roof to roof without breaking his legs, improving aim at firing coins and reaction time at deflecting them, he's missing weapons practice, or strength training, or endurance runs, or just spending a long, boring night with an old experienced guard being taught how to watch. People don't have infinite time; you can't say you're going to give your Pewterarm all of the same training you're giving his non-Misting twin brother, and on top of that training him in pewterdragging, or how to get used to his enhanced balance, or how not to break his own equipment with his extra strength. What's the other brother doing during all the time you're giving the one guy extra training? However you get the extra time out of the Thug to train, you could get that same time out of the normal to train in mundane aspects, and then he'd be that much better than his brother. It's also mental. You can sit there and tell your troops, "don't rely on your own Allomancy, fight every battle as though you've run out of metal," but if Allomancers themselves are rare, how much more rare will people who pay attention to that be? People are lazy. Sure, you'll get a few very dedicated people, and you'll be able to hammer it into a few others. But when they go days, weeks, months of training, of routine work, and never run out of metals, never have to fight as a "normal", do you really think that EVERYONE you train is going to be that dedicated? When you don't get to choose who you train, you HAVE to train the people who come to you with the right sgenetic background? It's not that you'll get people who decide, "meh, my very survival isn't important enough to be worth effort," you're just going to meet people who simply don't believe you, who think they will be better served and have a greater chance to survive by relying on this awesome, amazing power they have, rather than some philosophical point they think you're trying to make. Just my two cents.

I am very much in love with the Vin/Elend relationship, with the ending, with their fate, and all of it. I don't talk about it here a lot because, as has been mentioned, this is more a metaphysics crushing forum. But I consider their relationship to be the most 'real' relationship I've read in a book, ever. Clearly, some people would prefer fairy-tale romance where they live happily ever after, or bodice-ripping romance where it's crazy irrational passion and love at first sight. If that's what you prefer, that's a valid preference, but I've seen a lot of people dissing this love story just because it's not their personal preference. Please try to be civil. I saw in this what you'd see in real life; two people meet, they find each other intriguing, they have some silly moments (look at Elend's scene where he first learns that Vin is probably trying to rob him), there's no greater obstacle to their own happiness than themselves. They get over it, they get over the insecurities and the fear, and they commit because of how much they have in common. They are both heroes. They are both people who would sacrifice everything to save the people of Scadrial, and it was powerful and meaningful that they did. Harmony finding a way to "bring them back" would absolutely cheapen their sacrifice to the point of meaninglessness, the way death in DC or Marvel comic books has lost all meaning because they don't even pretend it's anything other than temporary.

I'm under the impression that zinc is all about perception and reaction-time. Technically, your body will move faster to an outsider, because your reactions themselves will be a bit faster, but before very long you will reach the limits at which your body can go any faster. So, in short, here is what I believe: with zinc everything seems like slo-mo to your own perceptions, even your own motions. (You see the bullet coming at you but can't get out of the way in time) With steel, you move faster but are limited by your own ability to react. (You CAN move fast enough to dodge out of each individual bullet in a spray, but you can't react fast enough and are just as likely to dodge into one as away from one). With both of them, you're basically dancing around gracefully while everyone else slowly takes a step. (BULLET TIME.)

FeruNicrosil and AlloAluminum. You can store Investiture, you just don't have access to any of it. And you can use aluminum to get rid of aluminum. Boom, most useless twinborn.

I agree with Voidus here; it's possible that you can't store the extra weight from pewter, but Wax talking about the percentages of his own weight is very possibly just because his natural weight is NOT going to vastly change any time soon, so for him it's a constant.

Thank you very much! So that's fascinating. The simple existence of investiture is sufficient to ward against other investiture. Would someone with enough Breath be immune to Rioting? Could AonDor not directly affect Shardplate?

What's that from? If that's the case, why aren't metalminds immune to pushes and pulls?

Citation?

Oooo.... are shardblades Pushable?

I sometimes wonder what went through Rashek's mind that last night... He's just made a minor but significant change to the penultimate echelon of his religion/government. He's sitting on his throne, on top of the world, devoting some of his attention to the burning city around him, but not much. All of a sudden, his window breaks. A girl comes tumbling in from the night, rolls across the floor, whips out a dagger, and STABS... at the air a few feet to his left. "I'm being attacked... by either a crazy person, or someone with the WORST aim ever..."

I've never been under the impression that it's a matter of, "you make people have a positive impression." I think it just increases or decreases the degree of that connection. If this guard's natural reaction to a stranger walking up is suspicion, and you walk up tapping duralumin, it's not going to make him suddenly love you. It's going to make his suspicion full-blown paranoia. I could be mistaken; I don't think it's mentioned specifically in the books. Does anyone know if Sanderson has talked about it to fans?

Storing in a duraluminmind reduces your connection to those around you; anyone seeing you is less likely to notice you. Obviously, this is useful if you're gonna be a spy or thief. "What was that sound?" "I'm having trouble caring. Prolly no one." But, the problem is, motivations frequently, somewhere down the line, come down to a person. If you're stealing something for sheer personal greed, you're good. If you're assassinating a cruel dictator for the good of la revolucion, what happens when you lose your connections and suddenly no longer care about Miranda, the fiery rebel organizer, or even when you just stop caring about the evil tyrant, because hate is just another social connection? Is there any sort of trick people can think of (not specific situations, but a general trick that most people could use) to keep yourself focused and motivated when you're putting your own ability to care about people in a box? Second. Tapping pewter makes your muscles physically much larger. This, obviously, makes you weigh more. Can you store this additional weight in an ironmind? EDIT: Another. Can you tap a zincmind as defense against emotional Allomancy? Not from a perspective of, using logic to override passion, but from a perspective of, if your mind is literally moving at a different speed, emotions being induced from outside might be more obvious for being actually slower.

No one got Marsh; three hundred years later Marsh is still alive. I mean, she did beat him in the fight, but she didn't kill him. But yes, you're right, Vin got a handful in the normal course of things, and then Mist!Vin destroyed a dozen. ...and a PALACE.