Oudeis

The main point to take away is that any Steelpush adds a certain amount of force that tries to make two bodies be farther apart via the path of least resistance. From that point on, it's nothing but figuring out where the energy goes. EDIT: Like really aggressive jelly in a sandwich where the bread is lead weights.

So we officially have no idea whether he burned lerasium or not. Explaining the physics might get somewhat into the weeds. Wax does not push any harder for being heavier. Steel adds a force that increases the distance between you and the metal against which you push. The reason Wax seems to push better is because he is heavier, which is helpful in most, but not all, circumstances. It's basically like getting ultimate leverage. Give me a big enough lever and a place to stand and I shall move the world. The "destroy the building" trick is interesting. He's not actually pushing over a whole building all at once, he's just pushing on a bunch of individual nails. Vin has fired off dozens of coins at once. They weigh practically nothing and are braced against air, so they all fly away from her, because the difference in weight is negligible. If Vin were to fly up in the air over a building and push on every nail, her weight would be spread across every single nail. If it were in the hundreds, that would be less than a pound per nail. The energy of her steelpush is shoving them apart. She's pushing on hundreds of things at once, so the energy for every individual steelpush is multiplied, but every individual nail is only taking on a fraction of her weight. The brace against the wood of the structure is enough to counterbalance the pound or so of weight, so she goes up. Wax's Pushes are no stronger; they don't have to be. He's simply pushing against a hundred nails all at once. The energy is trying to increase the distance between him and every nail. Because he weighs so much, however, the division puts hundreds of pounds of weight on one side of the equation, instead of a pound per nail. The energy will shove Wax and the nail apart, no stronger than it shoved Vin and the nail apart, the only difference being that because Wax is "braced" by his incredible weight, the nail is what gives. Does that make sense? I understand this, but I don't know that I'm explaining it well.

Any chance of us getting this verbatim?

The very first scene with Duralumin, when she's burning it alone, it burns along for a while without boosting anything and doesn't burn itself out. Later, when she uses it for the first time with tin and pewter, she does use up both of those stores, and it's expressly stated that the duralumin didn't burn itself out. Every time she has to replenish, it's every metal but duralumin.

How many years until I remember to start checking the annotations when I can't find a quote I know I remember?

I've been searching but I cannot find the WoB... I know I've read somewhere that all compasses point to Kredik Shaw, which is magnetic north on Scadrial, and that the Lord Ruler uses that as more proof of his own divinity. If compasses exist, perforce magnets must.

First, let me say that you make a number of excellent points. In fact, just last night in bed it occurred to me that we see Elend burn duralumin and brass, and still achieve a greater effect than Vin could, which does not mesh very well with my proposed model (the only possible recovery would be if he's actually better at duralumin, and while Vin burns through her store in five seconds, he does it in two, more than doubling how powerful it is for those two seconds, but at this point I'm justifying; it would be suspicious that they not mention that his duraboosts are faster than hers). Ultimately, we're in agreement. I think this is a good question to ask that will give us interesting information either way, and even just because Panda asked about it I've thought about allomancy in some interesting new ways I've never thought before, so even if we get a RAFO I'm happy. That said... I am going to provide a few more points of data. We do have WoB that feruchemy has a way to boost allomancy. We also have WoB that the Lord Ruler used hemalurgy to produce some of his more spectacular effects. All I'm saying is, Elend may have been as allomantically powerful as the Lord Ruler, but that's not quite the same thing as saying we can look at stuff Rashek did and know with any certainty that Elend was also capable of it. By definition, the upper limit of what TLR did (his most spectacular effects, e.g. Soothing thousands of people or affecting metal inside someone's body) which we'd need to look at to gauge Elend's upper limit are the ones most suspect. When it comes to affecting Koloss, I wonder if it was the number of individuals being affected, or simply the area? Could Vin not have reached far enough to get the whole army? If Elend had even a quarter longer radius than Vin, he'd be covering significantly more area and therefore many, many more Koloss at once. Yes, Vin does mention that the soothing itself is also stronger, but is that the reason he's getting more at once? We do know it takes multiple Soothers to take down a koloss. Assuming that this means Soothers are now less than half as strong as they once were forces us to assume that the process of "ganging up" to Soothe a koloss is at peak efficiency. I'm 6' tall. My buddy is 5'6". There are reasonably few ways that the two of us together could easily get to 11'6". The process of me lifting him up is simply not that efficient. We have not the first idea how the model of multiple soothing would work (frankly we have one reference from a madman that it even DOES work). It might be a purely additive situation like five interns all taking a pile of envelopes to stuff. There might be a law of diminishing returns as each new Soother adds less and less. It might be an inefficient process from the start where each Soother after the first can only contribute 10% of their power. Your point, however, is a good one. I sorta want to ask about this anyway in relation to my question about "can Lurchers work together the way Soothers apparently can" so my apologies if I was a bit verbose on this topic; I've given it prior thought. Most of your other points still stand, however. You make a convincing argument. In case we do get RAFO'd, I think you've convinced me that Elend prolly does actually gain more power from the same metal than Vin does, which blows my mind and completely changes how I used to think about the model of allomancy. Follow up question, which someone else has already pointed out; a bit of a "splitting hairs" difference but still interesting. If Elend gets more power, is it that his connection to Preservation actually ekes more "units" of Investiture from the same mass of metal, or that his spiritweb is simply more efficient at using the same amount of Investiture to greater effect? Random, insane speculation... what if this was Ruin's plan? What if Vin is less powerful because she takes the same amount of Investiture as Elend, but his spiritweb is airtight, and she leaks power invisibly? What if Ruin has "ruined" people's spiritwebs over the years, leaking more of Preservation's power into the atmosphere. The more time passes, the leakier people are, the more Mistings use their power... the stronger the Mists get? Until they swamp the land and kill the crops? No that's a terrible idea cuz the Deepness came in the time of Alendi before there were any Mistborn... wait that's another interesting point. Alendi's power. He was insanely weak. He never knew he had powers, and would never have thought to drink any more bronze that he'd get from groundwater. Would he have had to drink a whole vial just to get the teensiest bit of power and be able to sense the Well? Or could he burn it just as efficiently as Vin, his rate was simply that much slower, so he could burn a trace of it for hours and was only able to Seek something as loud as the Well? EDIT: One final point: Rashek did not burn lerasium.

Sorry to backseat troubleshoot, and I don't mean to imply that I think you'd make an obvious error... are you sure your "share" settings are right on the google doc? Usually when someone gives me a google doc link and I can't see the file it's because they've made it private. I have clicked the link, and I see the same files Weiry does.

Moogle: I'm not sure I agree with your numbers. Basically, I'm expressing the viewpoint that Elend is burning faster, but not fast enough to warrant pointing out. We don't know that a thousand is Vin's limit. She takes a thousand with no problem; we're given no indication if she could have easily taken twice that many, or if that was near her limit. Perhaps I'll check the end of Well of Ascension and see how many koloss she's got attacking Straff... Ah ha. Chapter 55. Cett's men estimate that Vin is in charge of twelve thousand Koloss. So... yes, Elend is more powerful. I do not, however, think he is 10x as powerful. Maybe he's not even twice as powerful. I think that, since Vin doesn't experiment with her metals and make notes of burn times and when she flares and all that, and given that she tends to specialize in different metals than Elend, that the model is plausible. His burn rate is somewhat faster, but not enough to be shockingly apparent. Keep in mind, I'm simply proposing an alternate model. I'm not even sure which of the two models I think is actually more accurate. I will reiterate what I've said before. Assuming that Elend gets more power out of the same quantity of metal (or even that he can use that amount of power to greater effect) is a departure from the facts we know to be absolutely true. We have seen two different phenomena whereby someone gains great power accompanied with a faster burn rate. If it turns out that Elend isn't burning through metal any faster and is simply changing the power coefficient, that would be a matter of huge impact to our understanding of allomancy. For this reason, I think Panda has come up with an excellent question to ask.

Doubling the duralumin should have no effect, since duralumin has a constant burn and doesn't use itself up. Maybe if you flare duralumin, it compresses the power even more?

That doesn't quite address Titan's concern... he's not suggesting that Mr. Sanderson doesn't full-well KNOW the answers to the questions. He's pointing out how often someone will ask a question about one book, character, magic or item, and get an answer that is clearly in reference to something else. When it's obvious, we catch it. The point is, however, that the existence of misunderstandings proves that they can happen, and we can't know we've caught every single one. Perhaps there were nuances to the question asked that Mr. Sanderson misunderstood, but the answer he gave sounds like it could fit the question, so we think it's fine and let it go. Under most circumstances, I'm willing to accept WoB as canon, especially when it's clear, specific, and unequivocal. In a case like Honorblades, however, when he's contradicted and corrected himself so many times... well, it proves that in the past, we've either misunderstood him, he misspoke, or he simply changed his mind since. Or, one of a number of other reasons that might lead to miscommunication. Since one of those has happened in the past, it proves it's possible it happened again. In an instance like this, with such clearly ambiguous WoB, I feel like picking one or two things that support our personal theory and saying, "This is the WoB that's true, all the others are wrong" doesn't have a great deal of support.

See this is the problem. You say, "It's not about being more efficient, it's about more water coming out of the pipe." If you'll read what I say when I talk about efficiency... that's exactly what I'm saying it is. If more water comes out faster... I'm sorry I really don't like this analogy. I'm just going to talk about the power. If Kelsier burns a gram of pewter and gains enough physical strength to lift 100kg, and Elend burns a gram of pewter and grains enough physical strength to lift 150kg... by my terms, that's Elend burning more efficiently. By your analogy, that's "more water coming out of the pipe." If I understand you correctly. We know that's not how duralumin or savantism work. Neither of them allow for more efficient burns, that we know of. Duralumin simply burns it all at once; you're not getting a net gain in the power, you're just applying it at a much faster rate. Whereas savantism is sorta a midway; you burn the metal faster and gain more power, but not to the rate of duralumin. (There are also aspects of savantism that muddy the waters, like how Spook's body, mind and spirit seemed to physically adapt to make even better use of the power he was getting, like his dodgy trick in that battle. Those are interesting but not relevant to this discussion). The answer to this question will either give us strong evidence that the conversion rate from mass of metal into raw Investiture is a cosmeric constant, or will flat-out tell us that the rate is variable. Which would blow my mind. Aaaand... I realize we've pretty well derailed this thread. How would you feel about moving to Mistborn (if we're going to continue at all, that is?)

That's pretty much what we're discussing, Panda. ...I'm sorry, but I don't like the analogy. It's hard to tell the difference between "the pipe being bigger" meaning you can burn more at once, versus a more efficient burn. Basically, Panda, we know that a lerasium misting would be stronger in every individual metal. What we don't know is, by what mechanic will they be more powerful? Does it mean they'll have the capacity to burn metal faster? If you've got one car that can only go 60mph, and another goes 80mph, the second car is faster. But that doesn't mean it can go any farther, if going that fast just means it's able to burn more fuel. Whereas a car with a more efficient engine/design/etc will be able to travel further on the same tank of gas, because it gets more functionality out of the same amount of fuel. So that's our question, the next step after the WoB you cited. Is a lerasium Mistborn just burning the metals faster, or is he also burning more efficiently? Is the amount of Investiture a gram of steel can grant a universal constant, or a factor of the individual Mistborn?

I was at a signing once where he told us there was one irregular rule.. that the letter E in an Aon could be pronounced as either the hard E sound or the hard A sound. The example he gave was that technically Sarene is "sar-AY-nay".

Ah. I think we were victims of a misunderstanding. Your post seemed to indicate by its tone that you disagreed with me, but most of what you said seemed in line with what I was saying, apart from your use of the word catalyst, so I thought you thought the metals actually were catalysts. At first I hadn't understood your pipe analogy, but now I think I do, and I see we're still on the same page. Keep in mind, of the various ways we've seen for someone to get more power, no one has yet been able to "increase the size of the pipe." Like I said, it would be fascinating if we learn that each successive generation of mistborn hasn't simply slowed their rate of burn but actually became less efficient at burning their metals.

Interesting. Where is the source for all of this information? I don't recall it being mentioned in the book. Do you have a WoB that explains all this? I would very much like to read it.

Ah. I would be surprised. We're given to believe that there's a fundamental similarity between lerasium Mistborn and someone like Kelsier; one is simply a watered-down version of the other. But the difference between someone with an Honorblade and someone with a Nahel bond is a distinct fundamental change; Spren tried to emulate Honorblades. How perfectly? Through the same means? It's still a good question.

Someone did at the last event I went to! Brandon asked if his name actually was Waldo and was sad when the answer was no... That is pretty much what I said, except that the metal is not, in fact, a catalyst. It's confusing since I think he himself used the word catalyst, but a catalyst would remain unchanged by the reaction. If the metal were a true catalyst, you would never run out of metals. Even a flake of steel in your stomach would let through Preservation's power until it's broken down by your stomach or passed in processes unrelated to allomancy. That's not the case. I believe there's a term for something like this, something that behaves as a catalyst except for the fact that it is, in fact, used up in the chemical reaction, but I can't recall it. The very phrase "duralumin burns up all the catalyst" should clue you in that it cannot, therefore, be a catalyst. I'm not sure what point you're bringing up here? You don't directly address my point. I know that it's a connection to Preservation's power, I even mention that it's a connection to Presevation's power, but the fact remains that metal is "used up" to forge that connection, and this gives us two limits. One is how much of the metal you can burn as a function of time, and the other is the total limit of the mass of the metal. The model we have for duralumin shows that when one limit is manipulated, the other reacts accordingly; in order to gain more of Preservation's power as a function of time, you must more rapidly go through as much metal as you have. I believe there's a WoB out there about savantism which also pertains. He basically says that with practice and training, you're able to burn metals at a higher rate, and flare at a higher rate, to get more power. This is essentially what savantism is. Spook gets more power from his tin, but he has to gulp down enormous quantities of it to sustain the burn. More power, more metal. So, as I propose, the current model for duralumin or savantism is that to gain more power, you need to burn through metal faster. Either lerasium Mistborn follow this model and Elend must burn through metals faster than Vin does, or they really are able to burn metal more efficiently than their successors, which would then give us a third metric by which to measure the power of allomancy, which would be enormously exciting. Lastly, there's a WoB out there (which I will try to find) saying that Allomancy is like a waterwheel, that the power of Preservation flows to spin the wheel and produce energy but that doesn't diminish the river. Basically, you don't weaken Preservation, no matter how much Allomancy you do.

So... you're saying that you won't read an entire book because there will be five or six paragraphs of redundant information? Is just skipping those paragraphs an option?

...how do we reconcile this with the fact that Szeth's Blade vanished all the time? So, Honorblades CAN be dismissed, but if someone simply disarms you and grabs it, it's theirs now?

I give up.

Eh. We know so little about how "being lucky" would work. Ironically, you would need initial, unaugmented luck to gamble that "feruchemical luck" is an actually useful trait. Recall that feruchemical traits cannot be deliberately channeled. We have WoB, for example, that you cannot use feruchemical pewter to increase the power just of your right arm; it's all or none. So we might end up with the situation where you throw a dart at a board with your eyes closed, tap luck in the hopes that you get a bull's-eye... while you do so the bartender forgets to charge you for half your beers, the cute blonde decides she's over Tony and wants to take you for a spin, and back home your cat accidentally turns off the stove you forgot and left on... and you still miss with the dart. Precedent suggests you don't get to decide where your luck goes. Or, since we know so little, it might end up being something very niche with limited efficacy. Who knows?

That's an excellent question. The precedent of duralumin seems to suggest that a more powerful mistborn does burn through metals faster. Duralumin grants great power, but it does so by burning the metal all at once. Either Elend, as a more powerful mistborn, follows this model, in which case he is stronger due to an ability to burn metals faster than anyone else, or it follows a different model, meaning it could be anything. This feels like the sort of thing he'd have a good chance to answer, and the answer could end up telling us a lot about the fundamental models of allomancy. If he does burn metal faster, that would be strong evidence for the idea that there's only so much "power of preservation" any given physical volume of metal can possibly convey, regardless of the method of accessing that power.

They aren't completely full; they only have a few minutes worth of each attribute. In fact he runs out of most of them by the time their brief battle is over. Still, it's worth noting that Marsh is surprised that they're metalminds at all. He apparently does not feel enough resistance from them to notice at all.

You could be totally right; in fact, you probably are. Since there is sensory feedback in the external physical metals, we know there there must be at least that much difference in the models of how Soothing and Ironpulls work. For all I know, I'm comparing a flashlight to a garden hose. It's just a random brainstorm that occurred to me today that I wanted to share.