Oudeis

While I agree that AonDor and Allomancy obviously share one fundamental similarity, your extension of that one similarity to assume that several other aspects are also similar is, I believe, flawed. Among other things, you bring up that people only swallow metals because they believe they have to. This pre-supposes, then, that the first person ever to use Allomancy knew what it was and how to use it, and thought to himself, "I am going to intentionally swallow this metal and then access its power" to fit your model. Keep in mind that as far back as Alendi, he didn't even know that allomancy was a thing, and instinctively used the power anyway without intent. In short, while it's possible someone could just draw a picture of an iron molecule on a piece of paper and then make it disappear in order to pull metal to their body, I think it's very, very premature to suspect this could actually be the case. However, if we learn one day that it was always that easy and that simply no one ever thought to try it, you may tell me that you told me so. That is one huge difference between Allomancy and AonDor. Allomancy can be done instinctively and without knowledge that you're even doing it. AonDor cannot. If your hand travels through the air, it will not start drawing with light unless you specifically will it to. Similarly, if someone in MaiPon happened to be doodling and by sheer coincidence stumbled upon a pattern that would make a crude but technically effective forgery stamp, I suspect it would have all the arcane might of a lace doily. Finally, as this is the Mistborn forum, I would recommend it get moved to the Cosmere Knowledge forum, as there are already many hefty Elantris spoilers.

First, upvote for being willing and able to say, "Good point, not sure" without taking it as an attack. We need more like you on this forum. Second, I had always thought of those as two different phenomena, but you might have a point. Regardless, I still believe both circumstances point to the conclusion that Stormlight doesn't passively generate normal light, that the light we see is Stormlight escaping the container. I admit all evidence at this point is circumspect, either way. Interesting... Had not thought about this. This all comes down to what people believe, not what is actually true. They do want to keep and use the spheres for monetary reasons, but they also want them for Stormlight. If the bridgemen believe that a clearmark and a skymark hold the same amount of Stormlight, they would almost certainly turn in the sphere with greater monetary value and keep the ones that will help them just as much with Surgebinding.

Eh. The metals where you store subsets of attributes seem to be much rarer than the ones where you store an attribute in its entirety. We do have the precedent of tin and bendalloy and copper for the idea that duralumin stores individual aspects... Wait... physical, mental, temporal. Enhancement. There's one metal per quadrant that feruchemically stores in the atypical fashion. Maybe duralumin actually does. I would, however, be surprised.

I disagree. In Words of Radiance (Chapter 22), a large ruby fabrial is noted to glow less brightly than it should. The energy, the stormlight inside, is going into heating the room, rather than glowing. If the sheer amount of stormlight inside passively generated light (and also, how could it possibly generate actual light without using up fuel?) then the fact that the stormlight is being used to heat the room shouldn't change how brightly it glows, but it does.

1. How quick need something be to be "near instant"? Are we talking relatavistic speeds? We know that if a sphere is on a table, and Shallan Invests from it, the Stormlight starts in the sphere. Then it spends some time in the air between them. Then it's in her. Is that really fast enough to be near-instant? I honestly do not know. 2. I believe differently than you about N, but I don't think either of us are convincing the other any time soon. That I know of, absolutely nothing in the books does much to suggest one way or the other, apart from the fact that when you're absolutely bursting with Stormlight you feel compelled to physical activity, moreso than when you've got just a bit of it. Shardplate, without Stormlight, grants no strength. Does it actually use Stormlight to grant strength, or is that just a function of Stormlight existing? Mistborn, Warbreaker

@Paradox: Excellent questions. I'm sorry I have no answers. @ Herdazian: You mean in people, or in spheres? We do know that the rate changes in people; Kaladin mentions it when he's getting his tattoo. When he's filled with Stormlight, it pours out of him. When there's just a touch in his body, it barely trickles out. As for gems, I don't know, and I've often wondered. We know that gems dim as time goes by. Keep in mind, Stormlight isn't like water. You can look at a glass pitcher and if you see a lot of water in it, there's a lot of water in it. If you see very little water in it, there's very little water in it. However, the Stormlight you're seeing isn't the Stormlight in the gem, it's the Stormlight that's escaping. So if you see a dull sphere, we assume that means the sphere itself is weak, but all it really means is that only a very little Stormlight is pouring out. In theory, a very large Gemheart somehow made in such a way to retain Stormlight better would look very, very dull, but could very well have much more Stormlight that one glowing brightly. Szeth says the Voidbringers can hold Stormlight perfectly; therefore, in contrast to the Radiants, they shouldn't glow at all. No loss, no inefficiency, no glowing mist pouring from your skin. Though this does make you question how light interacts with Stormlight. When Kal gazes deeply into a gem and sees the light roil, is he seeing Stormlight itself? Or is light passing through the gem, hitting the trapped quantity of Stormlight, bouncing off and hitting his eyes? Basically, does Stormlight reflect visible light? In conclusion, since we know a gem near the end of its glow will glow more dimly, it's reasonable to assume that the rate is non-constant, though this technically remains speculation since the phenomenon is poorly understood. Hrm... yet you keep all the subsequent expressions in the second formula as (t)? Not as (t-1)? Aren't they being affected by the moment in the past, not the moment in the present? Kaladin doesn't gain Stormlight because he's about to inhale it, he gains Stormlight because he inhaled it a moment ago. You sort of address this as you go on, but I just want to point out that "small fortune" is an incredibly subjective term. Are we hearing it now from Kaladin, the boy who grew up middle-class(well, ish) with a huge store of diamond marks in the next room? Or the slave who gets paid each week enough to buy twenty-five loaves of bread? Just gonna mention here that "fully charged" is, obviously, a function of how long it's been since the last Highstorm. I don't think we know, in either of your examples, how long it's been. Simple hours could be enough to change the amount of Stormlight in a single sphere by significant amounts. Gonna disagree here. I think we can get much, much more accurate with a different estimation. First, Kaladin wasn't fishing for a random sphere, he would have preferentially selected a larger one to get more Stormlight. So a mark is more like an upper bound than an average. Also, consider actual change in real life. I happen to collect change I get and almost never spend it, for reasons. I have one jar of mixed silver, and one just with my pennies. By volume, there are nearly twice as many pennies as the rest of the coins combined. I hasten to suggest that chips will prove to be far, far more common to be found than marks. Also consider distribution of polestone types. A single emerald mark would be half a year's salary for Kaladin. I don't think that would be considered a 'small' fortune. In short, I suggest we assume the 50 spheres are two parts chips and one part marks, so let's say 17 marks and 34 chips. Prolly not relevant since all of your terms are within the same frame of reference... is an hour on Roshar the same as an hour on Earth? You're comparing two five-minute talking losses as equal when we know they are not. The first time, it was not the last of his Stormlight, and so would have been streaming at a much faster rate. The very final trickle would have been as slow as the leak will ever get. The difference could easily be in orders of magnitude. And I'm going to suggest again a distribution of sphere sizes. How about three chips, two marks? Man. There are a few hundred thousand questions we'd need to ask and measurements we'd need to take before we can start to get the very first idea of how much Stormlight it takes to do something.

When Vasher hides his Breath, he doesn't get the benefit of it. Hoid clearly does. However he's doing it, it's not like how Vasher does it. We know that much for certain.

I'm real sorry, I didn't mean to imply your formula had flaws. It was an excellent formula. I simply wanted to make sure everyone understood, as I'm sure you did, that seemingly-simple things like your value of "a" were more likely themselves derived from another formula. And, regrettably, noting that there are many, many values and expressions we can barely even guess at. Your initial work was and continues to be amazing and I don't wish to detract from that. Also, one other thing to throw out. As has been pointed out before, this whole thing is difficult even to begin until we learn what a unit of "Stormlight" even is, and how much of it fits into a chip, mark, and broam. It's like trying to come up with formulae to compare distances when we don't know what a meter is and our only source is someone telling a story where the concept of length is obliquely referenced.

My personal theory is it just becomes a permanent memory. The Lord Ruler, after all, is famed for having perfect recall, especially of faces and names. Presumably he keeps a copper reserves, meets someone, puts the face to a name, stores that memory in the copper in his stomach, and immediately burns it, giving him that memory permanently. Just a thought. Although, your idea of a Shard obtaining extra detail gives me an idea. Warbreaker

Do they not? Everyone wears bright colors as a matter of course. Brilliant undershirts, even. On Nalthis, it's also prolly far less common to try to hide your Awakening, when people know what that is, and anyone with 50 Breaths will instantly know what you're doing regardless; even people with less will be able to get an idea. 50 is where your ability to enumerate an aura is perfected, not where you first acquire the ability.

Yep. WoB. But valid point; both Honorblades and living Sprenblades might not appear concurrently, but could certainly appear nigh-instantaneously. C here is the key, because recall that stormlight gets used up constantly. It's not like metals in allomancy which sit there perfectly preserved until used, merely holding Stormlight not only activates its passive effects, but causes you to lose it. Love this. I am going to be 'that guy' however. Let me clarify that this is awesome, and prolly as good as we can get right now with what we know, or close to. There is much more to it, however. First let me make sure I understand a, b, c, and d. a: So this is a specific Radiant's efficiency with holding Stormlight, then? Including its use to passively increase physical abilities. b: Specifically how efficient an individual is at healing, as well as how much damage is currently a part of them. c: The Radiant's efficiency with a Surge; how much Stormlight they choose to put into a Surge, and if different Surges have different efficiencies, not to mention the difference between, say, one small illusion and one huge illusion. d: If different Knights, or Knights at different levels of Ideals, have a different coefficient of waste when Investing. Obviously Lift might be a whole separate category. In short, each of a-d is really a full equation of their own, with many, many sub-factors we can at best guess at. i: A couple of things. It's not linear, Kaladin comments that having a ton makes it drain very quickly, but having just a bit will cause it to trickle out. Or is that another factor of b? I feel like i, h, x, and d are truthfully all just part of the larger a, b, c, and d equations. Maybe also an equation e for idiosyncratic things? When Kaladin fell down from the Chasm, or landed after jumping at the listeners at the Tower, a pulse of stormlight flew out from him. Maybe it's a part of "healing"? a part of "general abilities"? A specific part of his Pressure Surge? And don't forget that Radiants can apparently devest. Shallan deliberately releases her Stormlight into the gems of the Oathgate. That, certainly, doesn't seem to fit any of the previous categories, unless we expand c to include all deliberate uses of Stormlight, not just Surges. Also, Shallan ties in her waste Stormlight to feed her Lightweaving. I don't even know how you write that, mathematically. How do you indicate that under some circumstances, a factor shows up in one part of the equation, but in other circumstances, it shows up in another? Is that even mathematically a thing? Is there a way to indicate, "Of these two separate expressions, in every instance multiply one of them by 1 and one of them by 0"? So... simplified, S(t+1)=S(t)-a-b-c+d-e. Within the expression a, we need to consider a baseline algorithm of the efficiency just to hold stormlight as a function of total stormlight currently held Specific efficiency of the Surgebinder, i.e. number of Ideals spoken, are you holding an Honorblade, do individuals just have unique capacity, is it something you can train or control. We might fold into this factor things like are you holding your breath or not Does stormlight get used up more if you're exerting yourself? If you sprint for miles and miles, will it drain stormlight from you faster? Possibly things like the pulse that came from Kaladin, if it's part of this aspect of the overall equation Things like Shallan feeding her waste Stormlight into her illusory constructs; does this affect rate of drain? Whether or not it affects the cost of Surgebinding is best left for another part of the equation Within the expression b, we need to consider Current damage to the body How efficient this specific Surgebinder is with healing Within the expression c, we need to consider... actually, I'm changing my mind. Let's combine c and e, and just make it "active use of Stormlight" So we've got, first, the amount of Stormlight you're putting into every Surge This is possibly modified by an individual Surgebinder's efficiency, which among other factors is possible to train and improve Individual Surges might have a different factor of efficiency... though I suppose that actually doesn't matter, since we're only looking here at the total amount you're putting into a Surge. Maybe each one has a Surge tax? Like, it takes n units of Stormlight just to activate a Full Lashing, apart from how much you put into it, but only n/2 to make a Basic Lashing? Possibly ameliorated by things like Shallan hooking up her waste Stormlight to feed a construct What about Surges that work in fundamentally different ways? Lightweaving only works when nearby either Shallan or Pattern, and constantly feed off the Stormlight in her system; by contrast, all three Lashings Kaladin is capable of are one-time Stormlight 'payments' which then work independently until they run out, or until their Stormlight is recalled. Lift has one Surge which, from what we've seen is either off or "on", constantly draining awesomeness, and a second Surge which seems to be the Kaladin "put Stormlight into this, get instant effect" thing, though in this case it seems to just effect immediate change, rather than slowly using up available Investiture to keep an effect going Shallan gifting Stormlight to Pattern; is Surgebinder-and-Spren part of the same system, so we don't count this? Shallan devesting to fill the gems of the Oathgate with Stormlight. Is there efficiency lost here? And finally, for d. Amount of Stormlight from the source Efficiency Possibly some factor unique to Orders/whether or not you have an Honorblade/individuals, which might be trained or might be static. Is there a point in mentioning things like Lift here? Or are circumstances like hers idiosyncratic enough to warrant exclusion from the general principle? And I no longer remember if I was going anywhere with this. That is long and somewhat convoluted. And I'm sure I've either forgotten some things or messed something up. And there are probably assumptions we're making that will eventually prove false. Wow Surgebinding is complicated.

Coincidence or Reference? Someone named Syl with a talent called Windrunner. EDIT: Update. Apparently her full given name is Sylvanas Windrunner. So she was already a Syl named Windrunner. Not sure when she was first made but it might predate the book, meaning it's likely a coincidence.

1. Kae is the circle east of Elantris. It is a walled city with a circular wall. 2. There was a recent WoB that said the other cities were named after the Aons for North, South, and West, and I believe it might also have said we will learn those words when the 10th anniversary edition comes out. (Special note: Elantris is not oriented north. To read the Aon Rao properly, Kae is actually on the bottom. This is per my copy of Emperor's Soul, where Mr. Sanderson drew the Aon Rao with the chasm line added. In the book, we know the chasm line touched the circle of Kae, and the only circle the chasm line touched in his drawing is the bottom one. If you saw this man's hand-drawing skills, you would understand why I consider this to be of limited canonicity.) 3. There's a what now? I mean... Raoden and co. start at the pool and literally climb down the mountain to Kae; by that reasoning there's a way from Teod to the pool. Are you talking of the secret tunnel? That started in Elantris, in the library at the edge of the city (they describe it as very far from the entrance everyone uses, so I assume that means west? But who knows.) 4. Dunno. 5. Excellent question. I've wondered this myself. What happens if an Elantrian draws the symbol for "yellow" in the air. Does it just glow yellow? Will it turn nearby object permanently/temporarily yellow? I have no real answer for you, but my gut tells me it would have something to do with directionality; if you draw it in the air, the aon will rotate until it faces east, for example. Or maybe within its light you will simply know which way east is.

First part: We do have very few examples, the most concrete one being when his powers instantly (but temporarily) left him at the spar with Adolin. Later, they were getting weaker, but the actual break came, almost ironically, when he actually did successfully use his powers out on the Plains. My head!canon is this. The bond is controlled from both ends. I think Kaladin's decision to act without honor weakened the bond; Syl exercised a conscious decision to weaken the bond further during that moment, revoking Kaladin's powers. This being her decision, it was easy enough to reverse shortly thereafter. So, while a spren, once Bonded, might not have the ability to retract the Surges on a simple whim, they do have some capacity to strengthen or weaken it, and Kal's actions gave Syl an opportunity. I see the moment as he fell into the chasm as the opposite. His broken promise had weakened the bond immensely, but not severed it, not yet. Then he would have died without the power. Syl made the opposite decision at this point, forcing the bond open wider than it could sustain. In its weakened state, this surge of power was enough to break the bond, until Kal later repaired it. For the second part: To be clear, and not sure if this is what you're saying, I don't think any Knight can simply lie to himself to get over things. If anything, that's what Kal was doing, and it clearly didn't work. He convinced himself that he was "protecting" the people of Alethkar by removing an incompetent chull as its King. Deep down, I'm not going to say he knew he was lying, I'm just saying that his own personal code of honor would never accept such an act, regardless of the circumstances. He was lying to himself, and it didn't work. The bond weakened all the same. By contrast, I don't think Jasnah was lying to herself. In a purely rational way, she fully understood the implications of her actions, and in a very solid way accepted them as necessary. Mistborn spoilers. I myself am capable of dissociation to a degree I'm not very proud of. I do not believe this disqualifies me from being a good person, as I typically only avail myself of the capacity in crisis situations. That said, picture me as a king versus Kaladin as a king. In certain crisis situations, where tough decisions have to be made, we might both make a call to pull back our armies and abandon innocent villagers to an invader, in order to protect most of our subjects. I would regret the necessity and it would be with a heavy heart, but I think I could make such a call without feeling as though I had forsaken a Nahel oath. Kaladin, son of a surgeon, the boy who can't divest his emotions when it comes to his patients, would probably be rational enough to make that decision, but he would definitely feel as though he'd betrayed his Oath. Maybe not to the point of breaking his bond, but it would be under strain. Two Windrunners, same Oath, neither lying to themselves, just two different unique perspectives coming to two different outcomes. Uh... in the book, it's flat-out stated they are significantly worse than muggers. They are at the least murderers. It is implied with the subtlety of a ton of bricks that they are guilty of far darker crimes even than that. Her actions may have skipped due process, but the punishment is absolutely no worse than what they would almost certainly have been sentenced to. Unless you want to get into the "cruel and unusual" aspect in case any of the violent criminals happened to be a devout Vorin who would have gone through undue anguish at being killed with what they believed to be a holy relic, but even if Kharbranth is atypical enough to have a cruel and unusual clause, it strains credulity to think these sociopaths are legitimately devout to the extent that they would suffer undue hardships at the psychological trauma of being killed with the equivalent of a tabernacle.

Actually, do we know this for sure? I know she didn't lose the use of her powers during the attack, the way Kaladin did, but Shallan comments that for a while afterwards she also doesn't see Jasnah Soulcast anything, even less frequently than usual. Is it possible she actually was patching things up with Ivory. In other books, Mistborn most explicitly, relative morality is touched upon. The idea that acts themselves aren't as important as who you are underneath. Two people can both be very, very good men, both in a position which requires a necessary evil. For wholly personal reasons, one person might be able to make his peace with this necessary evil, and move on, while the other simply cannot do it and stay the person he wishes to be. Jasnah believed, through and through, that these men were evil monsters that needed to be killed. Kaladin thought Adolin was an annoying upstart, but if anything on the right side. Deep down, Kaladin knew on some level that he was just using his powers in a spar to show off in a moment of rage. Jasnah was never going to feel any more remorse for killing them than she'd feel for swatting an insect. The real good she did saving even one future victim from their attention was, to her, something which fully justified her actions (alongside things like an academic surety that no other form of justice was legitimately available). I've perhaps rambled a bit here; basically, I don't know that this was a Windrunner/Elsecaller difference. It's possible other Elsecallers would not have been able to do what she did and retain their bond intact. It's possible another Windrunner, acting for different reasons, could have used their secret advantage to beat Adolin senseless in a practice bout and high-fived their Spren on the way out. I fully think that some thing are universal to the Windrunners while not being common to Elsecallers, but that said, not every example is going to be that.

Well, interesting point you bring up. Duralumin is immune to its own effects. And we honestly have been given no sense of its actual burn rate. With enough duralumin there's no reason you couldn't flare it allomantically for a full year; it's not like aluminum where you'd need some Rube Goldbergian feeding tube. But do you have to actually be USING a metal to Savant in it? A duralumin gnat could flare for a solid year, and it wouldn't technically do anything. Yet, Investiture is pouring into his spiritweb. In theory, you'd be like a bronze savant; there's an epigraph I believe saying that many Seekers Savant without realizing it. It's not as drastic a change as it is for other metals. What would the effect be on a Mistborn? In this thread, I touch on what duralumin actually does, and the difference between power levels. Would it simply compress the burst more? Shorter burst at greater relative power? What about when you're not burning? Would you start to have issues with burning metals? Would your base burn rate of every metal be slower unless you're burning duralumin, having the effect of letting you burn for longer, but unable to achieve the same feats you used to?

Interesting... upon what are you basing this? Presumably the initial comment was in reference to Syl's statement that the wielder of an honorblade will consume "dangerous amounts" of Stormlight, and an expectation that if one Blade absorbs mucho Stormlight, a second blade would have the same tax. Do you know this isn't true?

Kay I still have a dumb question. ...What does this hidden thing MEAN? Is there any significance? Does this have any bearing on anything in the story? Mistborn Spoilers Does it mean something intelligent deliberately shaped the continent? Is the fact that it was a Julia Set relevant, or is simply the fact that it's something mathematical relevant? I mean, the Golden Ratio is found in nature and shells grow in the Fibonacci Sequence (disclaimer: I may have those facts slightly muddled, but something similar is true). There's no real significance in those facts. Does this mean something? What actually is a Julia Set? To what things is it relevant, mathematically? Like? Avagadro's Number is all about counting molecules. Pi is the ratio found in circles. What is a Julia Set?

To answer this part: Source. From his tone answering the question, you might have a stronger connection to the Gravitation Surge from having both Blades, but it looks like you can just use up however much stormlight you've got, and that's the fundamental difference between "strength" of one Gravitation Surgebind and another.

Posted this as a thread before realizing it should prolly just be a question here... TenSoon is a horse when he sees the mists flow through the skies as Vin ascends. Hours later, he's a wolfhound again, massing less than a human. Where did all the extra flesh go? Did he have to dissolve it away in acid or could he just shapeshift and pinch off a bubble of flesh and leave it behind? ... Because that's how you get ants.

TenSoon swallows and eats an entire pig, and then the horse, to have enough mass to emulate the horse. We last see him as a horse observing the river of lava, seeing the mists rip from the sky as Vin ascends, and turning back to the Homeland. Hours later, he's at the Homeland, once again a wolfhound, a body specifically mentioned to be of smaller mass than a human. Where did it all go? Did he take an acid bath to trim all that excess flesh? Can Kandra just pinch off the bits they don't need and leave gobs of muscle behind to rot? What happened?

TenSoon had Kelsier's bones with him on his back, and carried them into the Homeland.