Oudeis

Jasnah, if I recall correctly, claimed that the Gates were locked from the side of Urithiru. In truth, do we know they don't work? We've seen the Oathgate at Kholinar. Has anyone tried to infuse the gemstones with Stormlight, put a living sprenblade into the keyhole, and turn the room around? I mean, Jasnah seemed to be aware of the existence of the other Gates, and she seemed convinced that the others simply didn't work, so on balance I'm inclined to trust her as one of the few in-universe people who actually thinks about things and doesn't just take them on faith. Still, I wonder. Had she tried it? Has she had access to her Sprenblade long ago enough to attempt it? Or did she rule out Kholinar's Oathgate for another reason? Did she not realize where in Kholinar the Oathgate was? Huh. Now I'm thinking. Thank goodness there weren't any other sites at Stormseat as unique as the Oathgate. What if there had been two other large fields protected from the Shattering for similar reasons? She didn't know what an Oathgate looked like, and only devoted all resources to making it work because it was the only option. What if she'd found a place, filled its gems with Stormlight, summoned her Blade, and activated a giant fabrial for Friction? (Though granted, by the time she was inside, the pictures of the cities/Urithiru must've been something of a clue.)

A random thought occurs to me. The other three Blessings we know of all steal something which can be stored feruchemically. Iron and Tin, two physical metals, steal strength and senses, two things stored in that same quadrant of metals. Copper, a mental metal, steals the trait a feruchemist would store in a zincmind, another mental metal. (Possibly. I discuss inconsistencies in the Blessing of Presence here.) Zinc, then, you would expect to steel something else from a Cognitive metal. Wakefulness, warmth, or specific memories. But it doesn't; it steals something not, that we know of, stored in any feruchemical metal. Electrum stores determination which has a correlation to emotional stability, but is absolutely not the same thing. Aluminum stores identity, but we know next to nothing about that. It might be related to emotional stability but it might not. I wonder if there's an in-universe reason for the break in pattern. Maybe it's just that there is no pattern? 75% correlation could just be a coincidence. Or maybe there's another kind of pattern I'm not seeing. Pewter and tin all have similarities across all metallic arts. There's not another pair of metals as closely related. Maybe there's an order of the metals, and the further you get along that order, the less connection there is between the Arts? Thoughts on the matter?

Just going to point out that this assumes we understand what it means to "store Investiture".

I mean, they speculate, yes. But in months and months of heists, they've kidnapped a dozen women. If I had a plan that would only allow me to take an incredibly limited number of women, I would not do it unless I had rock-solid evidence of allomancy. And it still doesn't explain why they take exclusively women. We know they were wrong with Steris, and with Marasi they would only have gotten cadmium. Even for compounding, all cadmium would have given you was infinite breath. Useful, sure, in certain niche circumstances, but c'mon. Without a way to select actual allomancers, let alone actual allomancers with powers anyone would want, and on top of that the idea of duplicates, if this is actually the Set's plan they are far less intelligent that they appear. So, yes, briefly, early in the book, it's speculated that they're trying to find hidden allomancers, but that never really makes sense, and it's not working. Later on they correct themselves, and realize it's far more likely they are trying to get the bloodlines, to breed allomantic children. That said, it's possible, perhaps even likely, that they aren't planning to raise an army so much as use the kids to make Inquisitors. I do wonder how much, if anything, is known of hemalurgy. Koloss could presumably teach people how to steal physical might. It's stated in Hero of Ages that the Lord Ruler provided kandra with charged spikes, so while they seem to know their own bindpoints, there's no reason to assume they know the theftpoints for the Blessings. Marsh was the last Inquisitor, but I can see Spook convincing him to give up some secrets of hemalurgy. Spook himself certainly didn't know how to steal allomantic pewter, since we know from WoB that just stabbing through the heart isn't enough; you must stab the exact right spot, and Spook wasn't in a position to memorize that at the time. How many Thugs was he willing to kill to figure out if he could steal their powers? Quellion might possibly have a better knowledge of the theftpoint for allomantic bronze. Did any other known hemalurgists survive the Rebirth? Otherwise, Marsh is the best bet. Considering how he felt about hemalurgy, it feels like a stretch. From the book, it seems obvious that Spook had reason to believe hemalurgy was a thing he had the option of doing, it was a question of should he or not. I'm not arguing that he didn't learn how, I'm wondering from where he learned.

I don't know that it's been confirmed that they actually suspected that the women kidnapped actually were allomancers. If they did assume this about Steris, we have reason to suspect they were wrong. Also you don't address the fact that every hostage was a woman. One interpretation of the quote is that hemalurgy, of course, still exists, whether or not anyone knows about it or practices it. Also, we know that there are still Kandra and Koloss. I feel like we heard somewhere that the Koloss are still practicing hemalurgy. And interesting idea, and certainly possible. I'm not personally sold yet, however.

They indicate that Clubs belongs to a class of skaa who all live much as he does. I guess they could all be veterans?

I'll try to remember to look it up when I go home, but when Vin is going to the food place to watch Kelsier recruit, I think she says the food place is paid by the House that owns the skaa working in nearby mills. Maybe the House just owns the mills themselves? I suppose I could see a model where they run a mill, and whoever shows up to work at the mill is allowed to work, and is given the food tokens. The skaa not actually leased directly. Since the skaa are all expressly owned by the Lord Ruler, however, it seems unlikely, given that he leases them to the plantations, that he doesn't collect something from it. Perhaps if he doesn't lease the individual skaa, there's a tax placed on any House which runs a mill or factory or whatever within Luthadel to use its workforce? I'm not positive what your point is when you talk about the Crew walking around without being conscripted. As you say, the plantation skaa are kept track of. This doesn't stop Kelsier from wandering in and out, or other travelers mentioned in that prologue chapter, the ones who wander from plantation to plantation bringing news. So, I'd say, the city skaa are exactly as monitored as plantation skaa. As long as enough of them are working, no one really cares if there are three more or less today than yesterday. Also, the crew mostly are in the street. Trying to spend the night at a tenement or, worse, trying to actually join a work crew, would probably cause them to run into someone guarding/counting. Of course, there are the few unique skaa like Clubs. Not positive what their deal is. They appear to be allowed to operate with actual cash. Is he allowed to purchase his own wood, tools, screws, supplies? They don't really get into it. He's clearly allowed to choose his own apprentices, since they're mostly his trainee Smokers, and the women who run his kitchen are trusted enough to see that there's a crew here. Does he simply have an incredibly lax master? Or is he as independent as any skaa can ever be?

My reason for asking: I suddenly got to thinking how whenever I thought of them, I thought of them as full. I know it's referenced pretty frequently that they provide a lot of light, and it got me to wonder if they're always full (or perhaps just never entirely dark?) But then I got to thinking. If they are always full (or possibly even if they're not), do we know they operate like normal moons? Is it possible they glow with something other than reflected glory? Stormlight? An entire other kind of light? Spacelight? Voidlight? Are they reflecting something other than sunlight? Also just gonna toss this out there. I think they aren't actual moons. They seem to travel very quickly across the visible sky, then cross the far side of the planet at a greatly reduced rate. What if they're piloted vessels somehow? What if someone or something send them rapidly across the night sky in order, then holds them each on the far side of the planet during the day, like the tale of Helios and his chariot, or Ra with his barge? It would be very Sanderson to take a common theme of mythology and say, but what if that were actually the case, ironically on a world that has no similar myth?

The atium is a big deal; the prices are insane. Even if it's just a few Houses that have the atium, they have traded/whatever with other Houses, accumulated great wealth, and traded it in for the atium. Taxes are onerous. Not just on shipping goods via canal, which is a lot, but there's a tax mentioned just to maintain a Keep. Again, only the ten Great Houses, but again, those ten have a solid chunk of the wealth of the whole empire. They're sorta the funnel that brings money from every House, however small, eventually to the Ministry. And we know they have contracts and deals just like other Houses. They pay people to transport acolytes and money for payroll; they might have contracts to provide services. I believe it's mentioned in an annotation, or WoB, that you must file a form with a fee to the ministry when you want to legally assassinate someone. Killing a rival without permission is a crime, if I'm remembering correctly. All skaa, therefore literally all labor, and all Obligators are leased from the Ministry. That is... mind-shattering amounts of money there. Even if it's a few clips per skaa, one relatively small plantation leases hundreds of them. That's going to add up quickly, and the Obligators likely cost much, much more. Especially since you can lease a minor one, or a very, very high ranked one, which must cost way more. As to why you'd buy atium, there are reasons. Market speculation. Vanity. To make people believe you do have a Mistborn. If I were in a rivalry with a House, I might try to buy enough atium for a standard kandra contract, and make sure the spies of the other House found out. Let them cull their own trusted advisors looking for my phantom spy, while I spend the actual atium secretly to get something of value from a House that does have a Mistborn.

Well... but the only thing rocket propulsion has taught us about interstellar travel is that no amount of propulsion of any kind will ever allow interstellar travel. I suppose a necessary step, but could a God not somehow find some way to inspire the appropriate scientist to steer his research in a more fruitful direction without killing people in a war, and it could not possibly be considered more "intervention".

Are they always full? I can't remember if it's ever mentioned them being waxing, waning, or new.

Oudeis is Greek, and somewhat difficult to write out phonetically. Roughly, it's pronounced "oh-days" though the vowel sounds in English do not map exactly to the vowels of Greek.

Necro'ing this thread, AND dragging it back to it's OP, ignoring pages and pages of going off-topic. Citing this specific post, although several others I've noticed in the AMA obliquely bring up the point I'm referencing. Not all forgeries require the same levels of energy. To do something implausible, or to mimic another arcana, or to grant sentience, requires "more power" than most forgers have access to. If more power were simply a matter of adding modifiers like AonDor or more intricate carving, that wouldn't be something they don't have access to, it's just a skill they haven't learned yet. I don't know how to use a lathe, but it wouldn't be accurate to say I "don't have access to" the ability to lathe, it's just something I could but haven't yet learned. So. What could possibly make one Forgery "more powerful" than another? The material. Everyone jumping on what they referred to as the "hate-train" all said that since it's not flat-out told to us that Soulstone provides something, we must assume it's not. Here, we have an example of what Soulstone might provide. Perhaps a stamp carved in Soulstone has the ability to channel more Dor. Maybe this is why all of her implausible Forgeries, like the mural Gaotana himself insists should never have worked, do; she's using raw power to break the rules, the way a heroine did in another book.

So, I'm not going to address every single point you make here, apart from reminding people reading this that, despite your very confident tone, almost everything you say here is flagrant speculation and personal interpretation. I'm going to address specifically your comments on the Surgebinding Chart. It's not a matter of if the chart can be trusted; the chart probably can (for all that it's an in-universe creation). However the information you're getting out of it is entirely something fans have made up. It might actually prove to be true, but nothing canon supports it as more than complete speculation. Yet, people have stated it confidently, as though it's a thing that actually is true, and we end up with a post like this basing hypothesis on an assumption. I just want to throw out a caveat to people; if you think there's some evidence for this idea and if you even want to build off of it, that's great, but do not do so on the assumption that this is solid fact. And one other thing; I'm a little confused, or perhaps you are. You say that you're not talking about the Surge "fabrials," you're talking about modern fabrials like heating or warning (which also I don't think have Surge correlations) but your first examples are "foodmakers and builders" which are both references to Soulcasters, which are not Stormlight and spren fabrials. And one last inconsistency; you say that painspren cannot possibly be part of pain fabrials because they don't have enough Investiture. Surely the Stormlight provides the Investiture? If it came from the spren, why would we need Stormlight at all?

Guys, this is the Mistborn forum. Watch your spoilers, please.

Keep in mind that the WoB saying Scadrial and Threnody are close only imply that on a stellar level; the entire cosmere is within a relatively small cluster of stars. Unless there's a new quote I don't know about, he's never said that they're any closer than any two worlds in the Cosmere.

Yeah... clock fabrials, for example, don't seem to mimick a Surge, nor does the one that draws water, or spanreeds... I'm pretty sure the spren trapped in something that reduces pain is just a painspren, and the fabrial causes that trait to diminish, and when the fabrial breaks the spren simply goes wherever flamespren go when the fire is doused.

Also, if you actually read the scene, absolutely no one believes she's 10. Someone calls her a child, and is immediately corrected. "She's a youth. She's at least 12." Which, you'll note, is her actual age (so 13.2 in Earth years). Just because she tells a preposterous lie doesn't mean she has the ability to convince people.

Are you saying it was used purposefully? They knew this metal was harmonium and decided to use it to make a bunch of guns? Or are you saying they just found some metal, had no idea what it was or it's impact on the Metallic Arts, and decided the best idea was to use it to make some guns?

Remember that Penrod had only a single, lightly charged spike through his heart, yet survived perfectly well. Physically, at least.

Yeah I'm pretty sure he was acting entirely appropriately for someone going through a psychotic break, which I would be if my daughter had just killed her own mother and friend who, moments ago, had been trying to kill the child. The moment when he's on the ground, trying desperately to get away from the man who has him gripped, watching his own wife stride across the room to slay their child, feeling totally helpless in the face of it, is pretty much the kicker to me. If he'd started acting totally normally and calmly right afterwards and behaving rationally, I would be significantly more concerned. As it is, his entire brain has shut down, refusing to process the information, and the one and only thing that matters to him at this moment is that his daughter has just been traumatized and he just wants to do something to make her feel a little bit better.

?? Their genders can be established by Blessings? No. Mistwraiths and kandra have biological genders. TenSoon comments that each gender has a unique scent that a mistwraith can detect. Mistwraiths reproduce sexually. That we know of, kandra don't, although knowing that your offspring would be a mindless animal would convince me, at least, to take birth control seriously. What I want to know is, how well could kandra mimic a person? Could a kandra as a man sire children? Could a kandra mimicking a female bear a child? We know their blood is still human blood when it leaves there system, so there's not actually any reason to suppose that kandra cannot at least be fathers.

I would be very surprised, but who knows? We didn't know of aluminum's native properties until Alloy of Law, when no one could use both duralumin and anything else allomanctically, and there's not yet been a nicroburst to test the effects, so we don't know yet. I would, however, be surprised.

The common theory is that it would help "some", in as much as technically holding up an umbrella would have protected you very, very slightly from, say, Hurricane Katrina. Ruin, keep in mind, is as near a God as makes no nevermind. Mere duralumin could be used to overcome the resistance living bodies give to steelpushes; with the force of a Shard, it's commonly suspected that the resistance to be found in aluminum hats would be marginal at best.