Oudeis

::DIES::

...which is prolly why I already addressed this exact point.

Definitely considering the photoshop possibilities. How hard can it possibly be to add mist swirling around me? And maybe some blue lines coming from my chest?

I didn't mean to imply that you're wrong, I'm just saying that there are, in fact, more tassels in the cloak than is immediately apparent from the picture you can see. And also I do plan to add even more tassels at some point. Basically I'm saying that I think you're right. I didn't actually count Inkthinker's picture but that looks like a good number to me. There are also more pics in the Cosplay Gallery of this site, which might show off the tassels better. And also one of me posing with TenSoon.

Eh.... but there are always limits. Even in his example of Nalthis, his personal definition of a place with the least innate nozzle, there are things Awakening can do and things it can't. You're still constrained by the overall system. Vin's will allowed her to use any and all of the powers of allomancy without metal. I don't see any evidence to suggest that "will" can be used to grant you powers outside of your power set, "will-nozzle" or not. Until the point of actual Ascension, we've seen people Invest very, very powerfully, and we've never seen anyone go outside the limits of their own system. Obviously, full Ascension is a whole different story in any circumstance.

I in fact did take one cloak's worth of material and simply cut it into strips; there's a quote I'll try to find where Mr. Sanderson describes the sort of cloak he envisioned, and he said it would be 1.5x density, so I have about 2/3 the tassels I should. he did say about an inch and a half width, so I got that right. I have material of a different grey, and I'm thinking of adding more tassels like that, unless I choose to just start from scratch and use the other material to make a whole new cloak.

Denser like each tassel wider, or more tassels? In fact one thing I learned from this photoshoot is that I need to be more careful how I display the tassels; there are many more that you can't see because of how I'm posed. And thank you for noticing the bare feet! You can't actually see that all my weight is on my hidden foot, which is shod. That part I think I got right, and it gives me a warm glow to see that someone noticed.

...I don't see how anything you posted, Moogle, backs up the theory that Vin could have done more than the familiar powers. Also: Forgery as emotional manipulation... I had not considered that. Technically correct, but wow would you have to do a LOT of work under very difficult circumstances to manipulate someone's emotions for a relatively short period of time...

As for "wouldn't he be seeing goldshadows all the time" we don't have a lot in-text to go on. We never actually see him compound from his own perspective, we see him tap the health in his goldminds (the result of compounding) and we see him burn gold allomantically. W's-o-B that I've read on the subject have been somewhat inconsistent. He's said at times that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic signature, so you cannot burn a goldmind and get the allomantic effect. He's said at other times that you must burn the metal allomantically first, and then once you do you'll see the feruchemical reserve and be able to burn that. This second is backed up in the text. When Vin, in The Final Empire, burns the back of a pewter earring in which Sazed has stored a "moderate amount" of strength, she at first only feels the allomantic reserve. When she starts to burn it, however, she sees a second available reserve, she simply cannot access it. This suggests that you in fact must burn the metal allomantically before you can Compound it, which has interesting implications for aluminum compounders, and even duralumin. @Yuri: To counter one part of your point, none of the quotes you provide say that it isn't proportional. They say there has to be a feruchemical charge, and you seem to be extrapolating that any amount of charge, in however large a metalmind, lets you compound the whole metalmind. That's not expressly said anywhere, and is contradicted by the text. At the end of TFE, when Sazed is explaining how the Lord Ruler lived so long, he says compounding gives you tenfold returns on how much charge you've stored. There's also WoB that the Lord Ruler's trick would not have worked forever; that eventually he would need even more age than he could compound. If he could have made an atiummind the size of his own head, charged it with three minutes of youth, and compounded the whole thing, there'd be no upper limit.

Didn't turn out too shabby, I clearly need to work on how the tassels hang...

Ta-dah.

Eight months after Vin's training begins, eight months of regular meals, Kelsier notes that she's incredibly scrawny still. It seems that despite physical exercise almost every night, she has developed almost no actual muscles, not even flesh. When Ham almost gives Vin some pewter training, he mentions that he only burns it when he has to, to get a bit of an edge in a fight. Ham is big and muscular. When he first arrives at Clubs's, he also grabs a bunch of baywraps to eat. There are several times someone who turns out to be a Thug or a Mistborn are not given away by looking especially muscular. With admittedly very little evidence, I hesitantly propose the following: When you burn pewter, your own muscles get none of the exercise, because pewter is doing the work. However, it still uses up metabolic energy at an increased rate (Ham's appetite, Vin's scrawniness). Whether burning pewter alone simply makes your body burn calories faster, the way it increases your balance, or whether the things you do while burning pewter use up calories, I'm not sure.

Animals are mentioned constantly in art; apparently there's a huge fashion for wall murals of animals among the nobility, and Keep Lekal, with its tiny intricate windows has several with "exotic animals." What actual animals these are is never made clear.

Is that Wax? I don't recall Wax having a long, luxurious ponytail...

One would assume Stonestance...

I know the title is Starfalls, I can't recall the number at the moment.

Wow. Shows you what I know.

How then do you explain the Visions, and the destinies? Stennimar died. He saw a vision of what was to come, and heard a voice talk to him. "And he remembered a voice, calm and comforting, offering him an opportunity. To Return." Chapter 57. There was a presence giving Lightsong the chance to go back and make things better. Something or someone sends him visions. When people with enough Breath channel the Tones, they can create works of art that speak to the Returned. You think Endowment is simply ultimately apathetic, that she doesn't want to do anything. Well, there's SOMEONE supernatural who has an agenda and is actively pursuing it. Do you have any guesses as to who that might be? Also; I cannot now locate it, but I thought I knew a WoB where Mr. Sanderson explains that the Shards are like Greek Gods; that there are limits to their power, they aren't omnipotent. It's not simply Honor saying, "Oh, I can't do this, it wouldn't be to my personal code of ethics," that some things are simply beyond their power. I believe it's the Hero of Ages himself who tells us the history of the power he holds, that Leras wanted to make humans, but couldn't alone. Admittedly, this is why Nalthis is a better example; it could be that he was too close to Ruin who would counter any effort to create life. The implication, I believe, however, was that the power of Preservation was simply never going to be strong enough on its own to create life.

While I neither endorse nor espouse this theory, I am currently re-reading Final Empire, and I must say, having a man use a power that has been briefly alluded to, yet isn't explained to or understood by the readers, does seem like a Sanderson thing to do.

This is basically what I'm talking about; we also have Vin's thoughts from early in Hero of Ages. The Shards are incredibly powerful but definitely obey certain rules. I'm wondering if a study of Nalthis specifically, where a single Shard exists, presumably unfettered by anything but those rules, might tell us more about them. You bring up an interesting point. Ruin's influence, in his case an ability to talk to people, is easy with anyone who partakes of his specific power. You would think, therefore, that someone with many Breaths, or even a Returned, would be someone Endowment could specifically talk to. Instead, we have this annotation talking about how apparently the best way for Endowment to pass notes before study hall is for someone with many Breaths to be influenced by 'the Tones' (which may or may not be Endowment, or at least related to Endowment), paint a picture, and have that picture end up going to a specific Returned, who will see it and receive some manner of message. That's... oddly specific and kind of complicated. Is it really such a unique trait for a being well worth worship to have the least capacity to actually talk to one of her flock? One already so strongly filled with her power?

Well, I must concede that you do make a valid point against an assumption I've made. Truthfully, lack of proof is not proof of lack. We don't really get to see very much Awakening done by "the average Awakener" of T'Telir. The only instances I can think of off the top of my head are a dude who has his cloak lift him in the air to scope out a line, the dudes who lift Susebron to his throne the first time we see him in public, and a mention of Lightsong's Awakeners Breaking the Lifeless squirrel. However, even if a few specific Commands have been discovered in three hundred years, I still don't think that counts as progress. If I'm on a train going from Florida to New York, and after a few hours it stops traveling at a hundred miles an hour and instead travels at a mile a day, it has not actually come to a complete and utter stop; in a purely technical sense, progress is being made. The trip has still, for all intents and purposes, stopped. In a hundred years, Awakening went from "Not existing" to "Nightblood." Innovation, in real life or in good books, doesn't just accrete like adding extensions onto a house, it's made up of fundamental sea changes. Obviously, those don't happen every day. But after three hundred years, the people Awakening today should be able to go to a museum of Awakening and look at how people Awakened 300 years ago and think, "Oh my goodness, isn't that quaint!" Someone figuring out that the word "brush" is a viable Command, over the course of three centuries, is like a train going forward at one mile an hour. Technically progress. Not actually progress. DISCLAIMER: I do not know how fast trains actually travel. I have asked a buddy of mine who is a train buff, and I expect him to reply soon. I will edit this post with a more accurate speed later.

I feel like I get disparaged at times for preferring well-cited sources. If people don't want to discuss with me, they don't have to. When I see a thread started by someone who would rather just discuss their feelings, intuitions, premonitions, or slash fiction, I politely leave them alone. If memory serves, yes, they do mention that they've spent three centuries trying to discover new Commands, without actually getting any. I've been asked questions like "well what advances would you expect" before, fallen for the trap of answering them, and gotten bogged down in minutiae. In fact, I do have some random ideas kicking around in my head which I'm more than willing to discuss with you, if you're curious enough to PM me. However, I reject the premise of your question for the following reason. If you found someone from Victorian London who habitually used doors and asked that person, "What do you think doorknobs will look like in a hundred years?" I believe you would not have gotten an answer that proved in the fullness of time to be accurate. Largely because, that's not really how advances work. You see what happens. You try for one thing, realizing you might make something else. You study the habits of Mexican sex workers because it might lead to a vaccine for a disease known to cause cervical cancer. You set out intending to design a heart medication and accidentally invent a pill that solves erectile dysfunction. Scientists are iconic for exploring and studying what exists and allowing conclusions to arise naturally; people who go into a situation thinking, "This is what I'm going to discover" and then select evidence which supports them are more-or-less the opposite of scientists. I have a RAFO card. On the back, it's explained that sometimes a RAFO is given, not because he doesn't have/know the answer, but because just answering the question might derail the conversation. For this reason, I would rather not, in the context of this thread, tell you what I envision the future of Awakening might be. Though if I ever finish that fanfiction and post it, I might be able to direct you there. Finally, I don't buy the "there's no more Awakening to learn" argument for three reasons. First, that would be boring, not just because "welp, that's all there is to know" is itself boring, but because what are the odds that the Manywar happens literally at the moment people learn all there is to know about BioChroma. Second, we know it's not true. Vasher has new Commands. Yesteel has invented a new chemical which, while not BioChromatic itself, is ancillary to the process of BioChroma. And lastly, because I don't think that's how any branch of knowledge works. As I indicated earlier with book-binding and beds, there's no such thing as "you've learned literally all there is to know." And if there is, you're not reaching it after a hundred years of research. There is not a single branch of knowledge so limited that the entirety of its secrets can be learned in one century, and BioChroma is a wide reaching and complex branch of science. Not to mention, as Vasher himself says, "We know so little about it."