Oudeis

Well he very specifically says, "Harmony doesn't want me to do this, but by his own rules he must let me" so I think we can rule out Harmony's bidding.

I ask this partially rhetorically, and partially in the hopes Mr. Ahlstrom will actually answer. Will he continue handing out codes to the old Shardhunt on the Firefight tour? Will the first two codes on the new tour count towards the old one, then work on the new one? Will he just start a new Shardhunt fresh and we never get to find out what that last one was? Will he start over, but add this as the first of the new one, but we still need 50 codes? If we finish the new one, will he let us go back and finish the old one?

I'm going. Starting up a thread to see if anyone else is. I'll be coming from out of town and I know Philly less-than-well, so if you live nearby I might ask your advice on things. EDIT: What few things I've figured out so far. Looks like you can see the store from the local train station, which is a straight (reasonably quick) shot down the road from Philly 30th Street. Bad news: Nowhere to eat all that close by. Within a mile it looks like a wendy's, an IHOP, a McD's, a few coffee shops. I plan to get there early, maybe grab a bite somewhere they will let me charge my phone back to full so I can record the signing line, then hang out in the book shop as early as they will let me. The last train back to Philly is at 11:56. The two before that are 10:31 and 9:26. So if the 10:31 is missed, presumably places will start to close and it will be a cold, lonely wait for the midnight train (not to Georgia.) For people who don't want to travel that late, looks like there's a Wyndham within walking distance.

NOOOOOOOOO only one event is even slightly close to me...

You're adorable. Like a thing has to be worth speculating about for us to speculate about it.

Wouldn't there prolly be no atium? Atium exists because it's draining power from Ruin. If Ruin has been Splintered... it's like if you're filling a cup from a pitcher. If you shatter the pitcher, you can't fill up the cup anymore.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?! Other possibility: He's writing trashy romance novels to make ends meet and is ashamed to admit it.

...And if it is, please put spoilers to unpublished works behind tags.

Aaaaah, I see I see I see. Sorry for the confusion!

...So? Rashek knew what lerasium did. All of the Canton of Inquisition knew what aluminum did. Things happen, facts are known, and then information gets hidden, lost, or confused amongst false information. You don't seem to be directly addressing my points. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying, "Spook knew, therefore it should be common knowledge." Is that what you're saying? If not, my apologies for misunderstanding you.

Surely it would be the other way around? It's not that zero looks red to them, it's that a certain shade of red makes them think of the number zero. Also, it would have to be modified synesthesia, where everyone has the exact same code translating color into grapheme, down to the exact shade as perceived by the Third Heigthening.

Recall that we already have the Alerter Fabrial, which can sense "people, object, and phenomena". Does this mean one could be set to detect allomancy, thereby replicating allomantic Bronze? If so, as far as we've seen, you don't require a Misting's spiritweb to power it. So... who knows? One possibility is that you cannot use fabrials to replicate any given magic system without having something attuned to that magic system. Another possibility is that if you know what you're doing, fabrials could eventually be used to mimic any other system using nothing but spren, gems, metal and stormlight. (We do know, for example, that metal from any planet will work for allomancy, and presumably by extension hemalurgy and feruchemy. And we have the example of AonDor, which can probably mimic any power, if only because it you know the right equation you can eventually do literally anything with AonDor, which is admittedly a bit of a trick answer to the conundrum.)

A few concerns with your theory. You speak here of a pattern, when there's exactly one extant example. I'm simply pointing out the flimsiness of the speculation right at this point, which the rest of your theory sorta rests on. Basically, it's like saying, "We've got this one point somewhere along a circle's circumference, so I'm postulating that this is the radius and orientation." You might be right, but you have to admit this is a big leap. Keep in mind that, much like the allomantic chart, this was simply a local convention. In fact, we never hear anyone in the book refer to the metal as lerasium. The name of a metal is not one of it's physical constants. Just to offer one example, it seems like people didn't know about atium until Rashek's ascension. Rashek spoke with Ruin himself. Rashek presented the metal to the people, knew it was part of Ruin's power and that it was held by a man named Ati, and dubbed it atium for lack of a better word. It doesn't change the properties of the metal that Scadrians in Alloy of Law era refer to it as the Lost Metal, nor does it break a pattern. And lerasium is simply Mr. Sanderson's word for it, not that of anyone in world. That we know of, only a handful of people in history have ever known that lerasium existed. Even people in the Final Empire simply assumed Elend Snapped late, or had been hiding his powers all this time. Looking forward, not everyone seems to know that Harmony was once a person, let alone that it is Sazed. He stays quiet. We know there are multiple religions, which would be tricky if everyone simply acknowledged, "Sazed is God." I believe Marasi makes a comment about the Fields of Rebirth saying something about how it's a Gift of the Survivor. She believes the Survivor is God, so even if she believes in Harmony, she prolly thinks that Kelsier Ascended, or perhaps Vin (she is, after all, called the Ascendant Warrior, I believe). The point is, people seem to universally accept Harmony. Not many people (not even Wax, I don't think) realize that this and Sazed are the same person.

I still wanna know what the diacritical mark looks like.

I feel like there's a WoB from somewhere so long ago I barely remember it stating that once a Shard formally Invests in a planet, it cannot simply leave. It could try to force itself away, leaving behind a large chunk of it's power that's bound to the planet (and that sounds immensely painful) or it can unInvest, drawing all that power back. This is implied to take a long time. Decades? Centuries? Months? Who knows. Sazed could presumably choose either route. If he lost less than half of both Ruin and Preservation in the yank, he might still be a match for Odium, though Rayse has killed beings as strong as he is at least four times, so it's possibly you'd want to have more than a slight advantage over him. Or, he could try to unInvest himself, which would prolly mean the end of the mists, of allomancy, feruchemy and hemalurgy, and possibly even worse. He might have to pull back the scrap of Investiture that makes humans sentient.

There's a scene where Kabsal bring Shallan a lantern in Way of Kings just before she draws his picture, and the light is described as azure. I don't think it's in the same paragraph, which threw me off at first, but at two different points in the scene, I believe it's expressly said "the lantern gave azure light" and I know for sure that the gem inside was garnet, because that's the same stone she later uses to Soulcast the goblet into blood, then gave to Jasnah when Jasnah was screaming that she needed a garnet to save Shallan's life in the hospital, at the poisoning. I will try to get page numbers when I'm home from the holidays and have my books. I didn't recall the garnets in the chandelier in chap. 5 of Way of Kings, but I will check again. EDIT and update: Now it all confuses me. i don't know how I missed your reference, but I see it there plain as day now. Garnets are violet. Yet I found my reference, from chapter 45. In real life, the baseline for garnet is burgundy. In Way of Kings, they are described as violet or blue. What. The. What.

Also, if you're going to state your opinion and let us know you won't listen to us, why did you bother saying it in public, anyway? If you're unwilling to discuss it, then don't. Just say it aloud in your room. It's a little rude to say, "I'm going to say this, and unless you agree with me, don't bother responding."

Define "powerful." You mean useful? Destructive? Ideal for modern life on earth? By varying metrics, just about any of them could be considered most powerful. Are we allowing things like Godmetals? If not, Allomancy has a definite upper limit. In terms of raw power we know it's one of the weakest systems, yet we see it used at times to fantastic effect. Surgebinding is spectacular, but how many infused Spheres are you assumed to have on you? AonDor's power supply is basically limitless, yet weakens outside the Elantris Metro area. There does not seem to be an upper limit to how many Breaths a single person can have; Susebron is fantastically powerful with zero training at a mere 50,000 Breaths. If someone had millions, the mind boggles to imagine what new Heightenings they would achieve, what powers they could unleash. Nightblood is, not without reason, considered one of the most powerful artifacts in the entire cosmere. Imagine a person who could not only craft dozens of such items but had the fuel to power them all for hours. So... I'm sure this won't be a popular answer. But truthfully, depending on the subjective metric used, they're all the most powerful. If you'd like a better answer, I suggest you start by establishing what exactly you mean by "most powerful". My spheres are going on modern fabrials. They appear to have the ability to mimic any and all other magic systems, seemingly without having to kill anyone or do anything less moral than "harnessing the wind". Eventually running out of Stormlight is obviously a limiting factor, but assuming I had a decent supply of that I'd like to be an artefabrian. Quasi-ninja'd by Moogle.

Quick note: The original author has corrected the "plot inconsistency".

While I agree with everything you've said on simple scientific principle, we do have WoB on the matter stating that the third Mistborn trilogy will do a lot to tie the whole cosmere together (and I think he's said Hoid will be a big PoV character). Does anyone have a link to this WoB? Though I cannot fault your logic or reasoning. Without the WoB, you would almost certainly be right.

A question from my friend (who, yes, is in fact evil). A series of questions all about one scenario/principle, anyway. Nightblood is supposed to be able to run off of any Investiture. If a Mistborn were burning metals and drew Nightblood, would Nightblood run off the power of that investiture? i.e., the Mistborn would burn pewter, but rather than getting increased strength, would power Nightblood? Metals burn at different rates. A gram of pewter will burn faster than a gram of steel. Do they burn at different power levels of Investiture? Is the same total amount of energy being used for a gram of pewter and a gram of steel, but the pewter drains the power faster? Or is energy use consistent and time-based, meaning you'd get less total energy from a gram of pewter than from steel? If a mistborn were burning both pewter and steel at the same time and drew Nightblood, would Nightblood drain the same amount of Investiture from both?

Mr. Sanderson has written at least one homosexual character, on Scadrial nonetheless. Ranette. Granted, we only know about her sexuality from WoB. While it's true I wouldn't hate seeing characters express a broader spectrum of human sexuality, the truth is it seems to be an area that makes Mr. Sanderson less than comfortable. Since I can hardly see the case being made that non-heteronormative characters have been put on a back seat in modern fantasy literature (where the default setting seems to be omnisexual where it isn't om-nom-nomnisexual) I think he can prolly get away with low-keying sex as he's been doing, without doing any lasting harm to society.

I do agree with you that Pattern has a more interesting foundation, as a being so clearly alien to humans. What sells it for me, though, is the fact that he almost never seems to be at all distressed by anything. And that he's perfectly content to be Shallan's servant. He discusses his own eventual doom with calm equanimity. (Which, again, he's alien so I'm good with that, but then show me some thing about which he DOES care.) We get a very few odd, unrelated and far-between examples of times something upsets him. He freaks out to learn that living things live by eating other living things, then apparently gets over it. He goes a little crazy in the middle of a Highstorm buzzing about Odium, and then hours later behaves like it never happened. One of his most emotional moments happened when he learned that people use a diacritical mark to make other letters sound like an 'h'. He seem alien, which is cool. But I feel no investment in him. Nothing bothers him, so I'm not bothered on his behalf. And it really, really bugs me how he legs Shallan walk all over him. She orders, he obeys. Sylphrena helps Kaladin, on her terms, and makes demands of him in return. Pattern doesn't feel like a character, he seems like a tool in Shallan's belt. I think you're absolutely right; they could do a lot with Pattern. He's alien and they should explore that. They don't.

Maybe nicrosil? If other people Also have magic. Those are two powers with interesting meta magical potential. Imagine of a Soulbearer ferring were trained in a Soulcaster fabrial, were able to store some trait thereby, and then compound it allomantically.

My friends and i discussed this. Recall that feruchemy can already use it all at once, so of i compound and store to build reserves, i can super connect all at once whether or not you can duraboost Feruchemical metals. We posited that much like how compounding iron would destroy the building You're standing on even after your weight reverts back to normal, your "connection" to those around you might not survive a burst of duralumin like that, like the filament of a lightbulb burning out from too much heat. In theory, this would leave you and the other person both incapable of any emotional feeling for each other, ever again. Then i told my friend of that ever happened to us, I'd miss him. Well, i wouldn't, i guess. But i would intellectually realize i should miss him.