Oudeis

But that completely misses the point. You're never going to find Marasi that way, and the only possible way to research is the available records; you certainly can't interview Spook's granddaughter's housekeeper to find out if she had a child out of wedlock. The point isn't that you're researching up or down, you're trying to make the connection. If you just go back a generation and check every single person to find out which, if any, kids they had out of wedlock... that's as many checks as going from the current generation backwards. Because it's so hard to prove a negative; "In the five years I worked for him, that I know of, he didn't get a mistress pregant", and you have to disqualify a man's entire life long exhaustively. If you saved any time on the number of people, you'd increase it by orders of magnitude in an attempt to actually prove every single person who never had a child out of wedlock. But let's even say that this is somehow more efficient; we're talking astronomical sums, anyway. If you were able to cut the amount of research in half (which is not only a generous estimate, but very very likely to let people like Marasi slip through the cracks), congratulations, you're hiring 125 private investigators for six months, not 250. It's still an insane waste of resources, and guaranteed to be noticed. We need this to be less costly by many orders of magnitude before it becomes at all viable. We don't need a "well this might be a bit cheaper," we need a silver bullet, something that's going to reduce the cost from the GDP of some developing nations to the monthly food budget for a low-income family of three. And you still haven't addressed my single, huge, shinging-like-the-sun point: Why? You said something once about Marasi being a better target because no one would care for her, but that's an incredibly marginal benefit based on guesses and supposition, not the sort of thing people like the Set would engage in, nor have they engaged in it elsewhere. Every other woman had powerful allomantic lines, obviously. If they really did all this insanely expensive research, remember, there are thousands of women. Surely at least five of them are in Marasi's boat; someone from the right line, but hidden. Wax would never have put two and two together if Marasi hadn't been an exception to the pattern. Why not kidnap only by-blows? If they're preferable, and if they really do know EVERY result of a droit de seignur, they should have a dozen options, and so far they've only taken five women (counting Steris, but not Marasi). No one has seriously challenged the central point. Even if the cost were minimal, it doesn't matter. It's cost without benefit. Why on earth would they bother? Why should they care? There are only two viable options I've seen suggested. Kaymyth suggested that it might be simple chance; obviously, the secret is not perfectly kept, and it might simply be a bit of gossip that someone in the Set happened to know, so they made use of it. Entirely possible, and somewhat boring. Or, there's something we don't know yet. Something, perhaps, that would also answer the bigger question; why do they want these women? Is it to breed allomancers? Their gender and their allomantic potential are the only two commonalities we know of, so far. It seems logical to assume they are related, and that the Set wants to breed allomancers. But, why? What does that actually gain them? We have a few theories, but nothing solid. Does this nebulous reason perhaps have some bearing on why they bothered looking into Marasi? Are we wrong about our basic assumptions? Is it something more specific to a more restrictive bloodline? Could it be that there were fewer than 100 women to check for this trait, explaining why it really would be simple to check them all and discover Marasi's secret?

C'mon, he's at least as reliable a source as Teft.

Doesn't it mention that this is because of his eye? The darkness on that side where he used to see things freaks him out, I thought.

I think someone referenced this, doesn't the Stormfather tell Kaladin, you killed her? That seems pretty definite. I'm gonna look that up when I get home... or maybe on the commute... As I've referenced, "just before he says the ideal" is after the huge revelation when he makes the choice to act like a Windrunner. Just as the bond weakened before it broke, I contend that this point is when the "rock broken in two" that is dead!Syl is slowly being put back together; when she's trapped out of the physical realm but starting to get conscious is part of this mending process, a process completed (but absolutely not begun) when he says the Ideal. By the time she speaks to Kaladin, in those last few seconds, she's practically alive; he's clearly made the decision to live by this Ideal, and that's the important thing, but vocalizing it will realize the Intent and complete the process.

LabRat: Yes, I am aware we don't know enough. I was hoping people could find places where more is stated. I just finished the books and won't be re-reading them, likely, for some time. I guess I could just search the second two for every instance of duralumin. I was just wondering if anyone knew of a time when one person is using a power, then the power with duralumin, to give us a sense of scale between two ceteris parabis uses of the same power. Bronze is tricky; how much "harder" was Vin sensing Breeze in order to determine the specific emotions he was Soothing? She does say her hearbeat is like a drum. Can we make a reasonable assumption about the decibel level of a drum and compare it to how loud hearts sound to a normal tin burner?

Aru? Where does it say that the terris possessed feruchemy before Preservation trapped Ruin? We know it was before Rashek's ascension, but I do not recall any reference saying that they possessed it before Ruin was trapped.

There are five million residents of Elendel. 1 in fifty people are allomancers. If Nobles are the 1%, that's 50K nobles. Roughly half female gives you 25K women to research. There's no wikipedia, and we know there are no clues Wax could find in the 'official' geneaology. We're talking days, minimum, per woman, hoping to find some unlikely secret through direct interviews with people who would know, since there's literally no other way to determine. Even if it's just two days per woman, that's 50K days of work. If you hire more than 250 clerks, it would take them six months. This is, by absolutely no means, a small expense. Nor would it go unnoticed. The Vanishers are necessary. And there are less than forty of them. Like you said, a clerk has done not much wrong. He can go to the Conners, turn the Vanishers in for a reward, knowing he's not gonna get the hammer dropped on him, either. The Vanishers have their hands dirty. They can't turn in anyone else without getting hit with robbery, kidnapping, any number of charges. With excellent legal advice, that one guy Wayne talked to might be able to get away from this with a clean slate; there's no reasonable chance of him getting a reward out of it, so he's not incentivized to turn anyone in. Also, the Vanishers are a necessary risk. And have less information; I don't know why they even bothered telling Miles that Marasi is a bastard; he didn't need to know. The clerks would have to know what they were looking for; at the very least, they'd have the clues to make some deductions. And we circle back to the point I've raised a dozen times that not a single person has addressed: Why bother? There are dozens of potential targets, openly of allomantic families if not open allomancers themselves. Why go to any effort, why pay any expense, why open yourself up to any potential risk, for literally no gain? Marasi is no better a target than any of a dozen other women who were at that wedding. Also, someone mentioned before that the Set is drowning in money. They are expressly not. They made the Machine, they made this hideout. They are not paying the Vanishers; the Vanishers get their money from the heists, as evidenced when Wax notes that they are thorough in their search for valuables. They embezzled funds to set themselves up, but that revenue stream has dried up; House Ladrian, for example, is not only out of money, but now in the hands of Wax. I'm not sure what other revenue streams they had, but we have no reason to suspec they are flush. Also, from the masterful ways they commit white collar crime, it's not unreasonable to assume they are shrewd and cunning businessmen. Such people are typically marked by tendencies like "never pay out money we don't have to," even if the cost to research literally every woman weren't as astronomical as it clearly is, these are exactly the kind of men who would say, "Why spend any money at all, when we're getting no gain out of it?".

I'm necro-ing. And double-posting. On a thread no one but me has ever said anything in. I REGRET NOTHING. I have an additional question. I guess I could have just started an entire new thread but I didn't want to. What is the factor of a duralumin burst? By how much is the power amplified? We know that in feruchemy, if you 'compound' an attribute (not the allomantic compounding, just the, more-than-double the output compounding native to feruchemy) you get diminished returns; some of the 'energy' is used up to compress it. Does something like this happen in allomancy with duralumin? We know all the energy comes from Preservation anyway, so it doesn't have the same limit as feruchemy for the same reason, but might the increased rate still provide less efficiency? It's possible; who knows? Can anyone think of examples from the books that give a definite comparison between normal allomantic might, and duralumin might? From above, I have a citation to give us an idea of rate; we know Vin starts with a system entirely empty of pewter, and gets enough from one standard vial to duralumin burn it for about 15 seconds. How long does a vial normally last? I feel like we see them last a long, long time. The MAG suggests it can only burn for two minutes from a charge, but we must see Vin fighting, burning pewter, even flaring it, for far longer than that between vials, at least a few times. Her first fight against the koloss in Hero of Ages, for example. Maybe she could have taken an extra dose, however, knowing she'd burn through it quickly. Still. It must burn at least 8x as quickly; 2 minutes seems like an absolute minimum, so 15 seconds is 8x. Does this mean an 8x increase in power? Less due to inefficiency? Any thoughts on the matter?

...Anything that's not a paraphrase? I mean, I think it's obvious from the book that it's her, and I absolutely believe it and will be SHOCKED if it's not. But after so consistently saying, "I'm not going to answer that question," I blink a bit at casual confirmation. Actually it's not even a paraphrase, it's just a reference. "He just confirmed that Baxil's Mistress is Shallash." I've just seen people take the things he says or writes and make assumptions before. Did Mr. Sanderson actually say, "Baxil's Mistress is Shallash"? I've seen people take quotes as confirmation that I personally see as still pretty vague.

Your point is valid, but something simple like being underground could help. After all, that was Rashek's plan if he couldn't beat Ruin. Stick people underground with a lot of food, just let them survive. They couldn't survive even a year in the Final Empire... but underground? With a huge lake? With some of the fungus the kandra eat, and herds of goats to eat the fungus and provide meat? That seems do-able. Yes, it takes SOMETHING more than the GCM. But it doesn't have to be more magic (I'm not sure how steel/iron would help, anyway). Just getting a population to scrape by for a few years is difficult, but not something impossible without arcana.

1. I think people were talking about the fact that you'd get an entire day's worth of solar radiation in, at most, half an hour. As we're discussing, even though that makes logic, it's clearly not what happens, or every time bubble/speed bubble would kill you. 2. There is a reason they wouldn't be able to survive; they were Rashek's control group. Unmodified, unchanged. Not designed to breath an atmosphere of ash, or to eat plants brown and pathetic with few nutrients. Even if there were ashmounts, the ashmounts create more problems, which the Southern Scadrians were expressly not modified to be able to deal with. Beyond which, anything could happen in a thousand years. Famine. Drought. War. Pestilence. People not figuring out in time how to farm in a world that no longer makes any kind of sense. And even if they weren't going to die, they were going to advance. They were going to develop technology, they could do anything. It only took the Scadrians we know three centuries to stitch the land with railroads. Rashek didn't want them to die, and he didn't want them to grow as a civilization/culture; left alone for a thousand years, they would do one or the other. Maybe he simply pulled a Sleeping Beauty and put them all to sleep for a thousand years, but that doesn't explain how people with so little allomancy that they don't even know they have it would think to innovate allomancy machines. A Giant Cadmium Machine neatly addresses all extant issues. It skips them ahead, preventing them from dying or advancing, using a type of magic we already know exists, instead of generic "god puts people to sleep" which I'm sure is possible but feels like a kludge. It lacks elegance. In addition, by spending however long with the great machine, it would give the people the inspiration to design their own allomancy machines. Just my two cents. I see it as a simple and elegant solution that explains a great many things currently unexplained. Other options are all possible, but they leave a lot of loose ends to be tied together another way.

Etou... I realize I'm going to be accused of nitpicking. But that second quote does not, itself, say that Baxil's Mistress is Shalash. It's brought up in a footnote. Do we have the actual confirmation somewhere?

Moogle: I disagree with your premise. You're providing us with evidence to suggest that there is a way to end the bond without the spren's death. Nothing about that suggests that this is the only way a bond can end. Knowing that I can take an elevator safely to the ground floor of a building doesn't mean there's no way to get to the street from the roof without harming myself.

Well, we do know the mist spirit, the Shadow of Self, used to be much more than it currently is. Why couldn't it be Terr's communication to his people? The Firsts clearly know of the shadow of self, and in the third book, the epigraphs speak of a time the Mist Spirit wielded enormous power, able to perform powerful allomancy. I wonder if part of its weakening came from Vin... we know the Mists came to her as a child, preparing her to one day take the Well and eventually all of the Mists. She was also unparalleled good at allomancy. Maybe the Spirit gave her some of his talent?

You raise an interesting point; Vin, in the Chamber in Kredik Shaw, metal inlays in the walls were made specifically to disguise the thicker metal lines used to open the way to the Well. Vin is flaring steel and tin constantly; it strains credulity to imagine she's never once noticed that tin makes her steelsight better. This is a woman constantly searching for every edge, and preternaturally good at every aspect of allomancy. If simply burning tin improved steelsight, she'd realize it and she'd do it sometimes, like exactly the scene I'm referencing.

Moogle: Marsh specifically says that he burns tin because of the dark. Since we have many in-text references telling us ironlines are unaffected by light (Kelsier in the stairwell, Vin locating a guard to pull on when she was fleeing Shan, etc) nothing you bring up is relevant. If steel works perfectly fine in near total darkness, I don't buy that you need to use tin to read letters in dim light.

Yeah, by the time Syl had her "chat" (which is an odd way to describe that interaction) Kaladin had fully made the choice of honor; even if she wasn't "back in the physical realm" revived yet, she was not as dead as she was in the interim. Also, most people seem to be talking about "dead" in a mostly human way, even if they think they're describing it in a not-fully-human way. Syl herself says a dead spren is like a dead rock; it's broken in two and isn't the same rock anymore, but can be put back together and be the same rock. Humans don't do that; something within them leaves when the rock is broken. Syl was dead, not simply comatose or "regressed" or unbound, but dead. She wasn't a computer that had been switched off, she was a computer that had been chucked into a wood chipper. Kaladin's revelation, and his acceptance of the course honor demanded, magically reconstructed the computer, and the Oath flipped the switch. Eh. I'm also not sold on the Stormfather "keeping them apart." I know what she says, and I don't agree with the interpretation. I think they're apart because he has yet to heal the bond the last bit it requires. I think the Stormfather was clearly against the bond, and basically showed up to tell Kaladin to stuff it, but Syl stood up to him. There's a line from Firefly; River says, "No power in the 'verse can stop me." The line doesn't imply that every power in the 'verse is currently trying to stop her, just that it would be futile if they did. This is just my interpretation, and maybe I'm 100% wrong, or maybe the real answer is a mix of both ideas, or a third idea none of us have yet expressed. But I see it as her saying to Kaladin, "Ignore him. You're never going to convince him, and as long as you say the words, his opinion is irrelevant." But that's just me.

Honor: To speak of what is to come is forbidden. I know people mince words here... well if it's just a mathematical guess then it's not "what's to come"... Honor doesn't strike me as a grammar nazi, I could be wrong. I feel like taking him at his word in the manner he seemed to intend it. If it weren't for this line, I wouldn't have so much trouble believing it's simply something all Truthwatchers do.

Lift can metabolize food directly into Stormlight, which we know is not an Edgedancer trait. Just because we saw that Renarin can see the future, this does not automatically mean it's related to being a Truthwatcher. It might be, but as the OP says, this seems entirely out of character with what we know of the Truthwatchers. It might just be like Shallan's memory, which doesn't necessarily make sense, either... apparently she's making a spiritual connection (maybe via Soulcasting?) to bind her to the thing in a way that allows her to craft it as an illusion. Jasnah's ability, her geolocation, must be somehow tied in to Transportation?

I guess I was spoiled by the Hero of Ages; that very first epigraph, "I am, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages," just sounded so utterly like Sazed's voice to me, I spent the whole book assuming it was him. I shouldn't be so confident, likely. Common assumption is that the Set are planning to use the women to breed metalborn. Otherwise, if you're only picking them because they'll be easier to overpower than men, what are you actually kidnapping them for? None of them have been ransomed back yet, and there are better ways to make money.

Would it be a good rule-of-thumb to say that if you can burn gold to see a specific "other you" as a Goldshadow, it's "plausible" enough that a decent soulforger could make a Soulstamp to become that person?

Well, you say "same storeable attribute"... that we know of, he's not "storing" in metal, and which feruchemical attribute would let him "know where he needs to be"? It could be something that works like feruchemy in a way, but might not be like Scadrian feruchemy.

I find myself wondering how bronze and copper would interact with channeling... Would it tip the balance if Team Scadrial had access to plentiful nicrosil and chromium? ...I have an odd image in my head now of two mistborn, fighting side-by-side, each with nicrosil, but neight has duralumin... needing to coordinate for their bursts. "When I stop burning bronze and start burning iron, burst me! ... Then drag me away, very fast." "Kay, I'll be reading your pulses."

I suppose. I get the impression from the Harms that they, at least, believe the secret has actually been kept, but if the only Noble who doesn't know Marasi's true parentage is Wax, then no other explanation is needed. It just feels more "Sanderson" that there's something there. This is exactly the kind of twist he throws at us. Something that makes sense to us, as the readers, so we don't really question when we see it on the page, but if you stop and think about it, you realize it shouldn't be as widely known as it seems to be... Just a guess, however. Your explanation would plug all the holes.

and then Jasnah used the cognitive aspect to assemble a Shadesmar statue and command it to attack, but this shouldn't have affected the original statue. Still, for all we know, doing things like that might have affects on the real world. Maybe when she had her fake statue swing his sword, the real one tried to follow and exploded. She does tell Shallan that Soulcasting is dangerous to experiment with; perhaps this was one of her earlier mishaps. Still, I am on board with most people who assume it was related to Shallash destroying artwork of herself.