Oudeis

Bluth has a hat which does not suit him at all which he will only say he traded for. Wayne is a worldhopper. only possible explanation.

Ooooo wealth of information there. Thank you!

Ym is almost certainly either a Truthwatcher or an Edgedancer, since he used Progression. The fact that his spren looks different from Wyndle leads me to believe that he's a Truthwatcher, though this is less certain. I actually disagree with you when you say that Pattern doesn't look like blood. Unless he's floating as a ball in the air, Pattern travels everywhere just beneath the surface of things. That says 'blood' to me. And yes, I've believed for a long time that the various Nahel spren are cousins to the spren of the various essences. I had not previously thought to connect them to the Ten Death spren; we know an ENORMOUS spren is what made the Thunderclast. Perhaps they change size when corrupted?

While I admit the specifics of Gaz's case (what happens to the child when the parents are different ranks? Are there specific ranks for heterochromites? Could Gaz have lost rank when he lost his light eye?) are unclear, I still think hoser's quote is very telling. Sixth dahn is simply very, very low for someone who has ANY light-eyed parent, even given Gaz's circumstance.

Hrm... the short, inexact but close enough for your purposes answer is: Aluminum burns instantaneously, regardless of amount. So... yeah atium would be an absolute requirement, and you'd need a new supply every time you did the trick. The longer, more pedantic answer: The burn rate of aluminum is irrelevant. It vanishes every metal reserve you have instantly, including itself. Functionally, you can't destroy a sword unless you don't start burning aluminum until the sword is already piercing your skin, by however much it has to in order to count as your reserve. (Per other, relates W's-o-B, I assume this means touching moving blood.

We all want to know this. We have WoB that any metal piercing the skin can be a reserve, and hemalurgic spikes count. The only thing I can think of which makes any sense is, it's just not the default, there's some additional step one must take to gain access to another source of metal outside of your stomach. If Vin knew this trick, she could have used her earring as an allomantic reserve, and that time she burned duralumin with bronze she'd've burned away the earring. Yomen never gave Vin aluminum; the only time we see her burn it is when an Inquisitor gives it to her after she gets captured the second time she tries to break into that room. Yomen kept her unconscious and drugged for days until her body "processed" all the metal out of it.

Investiture is the energy itself, like the word electricity. If I'm trying to talk specifically about my computer, I can't just call it "an electricity thing" because that might mean lightning strikes or rubbing my socks on a carpet. So we came up with the word "electronics" to narrow it down. Just talking about Investiture can mean a lot more. When i want to narrow it down to a specific field of application powered by Investiture, the word, per the back of every cosmere novel, is Arcanum.

I disagree with your premise that mental powers can be presumed not to require energy, they can simply happen for free. That's like saying a better, faster computer won't draw more electricity than a slow one. Feruchemical zinc improves a purely mental power, and you need to charge it by sacrificing mental speed at another time. If it took no energy, why couldn't a Sparker just have infinite mental speed? Even if the Breath simply enhanced your tongue to allow you to determine more specific flavors in your soup, and even if that state were stable, requiring no additional energy, the act of transformation would still need energy. Also, if it didn't need to be maintained, then when you lost the Breath your tastebuds would retain their sensitivity; since you lose that when you lose the Breath, this implies the Breath was maintaining this feat. How was it maintaining without requiring any energy?

I think it's revealed in the text, and if not it's certainly in the annotations, that there is some trick to it. A Returned can sire a child, it's just not as easy as it is for humans.

Do you have that exact WoB? The one I'm recalling says that the default use of lerasium is to make someone a powerful mistborn, but that one could deliberately use it to rewrite one's own spiritweb in other ways. Regardless, even if that's not what it does, The Crew doesn't have access to WoB, and given their incredibly limited knowledge they might suspect that it could make Vin more powerful. They also could have chosen to do any number of other things with it; I'll grant you it's entirely speculative.

Oh, totally misread that part about it "not being easy." Sorry.

Mistborn: In your example, gravity pulling water down provides the energy that runs the turbine. Are we suggesting then that Breath is simply an incredibly sophisticated bit of Investiture that drawn ambient energy from a different realm, like the spiritual equivalent of a windmill? Nothing in nature produces energy out of nothing. No Investiture that we've seen, barring direct Shardic involvement, creates energy out of nothing. Where does the neutrality of Awakening come from? What is being lost at another time or place in order to power Awakening as it happens?

If the things a Returned do require energy, why don't they require energy now? Why doesn't Endowment need to keep Returned powered, yet you assume Preservation would? Or, if Endowment is powering them constantly without needing a visible "umbilical cord" as you say, why would Preservation's have to be visible? The Dor is able to provide literally limitless energy to keep an entire city glowing for functionally ever. How is this different? Your quotes seem to support my case. We know that Breath is similar to Stormlight, yet even in the WoB, he says something specific would have to be done to allow Nightblood to run on Stormlight. Yes, I'm aware of the idiosyncrasy that Nightblood kills its wielder by eating his soul. However, the WoB you provided shows that this doesn't mean it's simply a sponge that can easily and by default suck in any and all Investiture nearby. Perhaps the mechanism within Nightblood that allows it to bond with its wielder is what also gives it access to that wielder's innate investiture, or perhaps because Nightblood is keyed to Breath, and Breath is similar to innate Investiture, it finds an easier time drawing in that energy. I don't know. I only that that, per the WoB you were kind enough to find, it's not that easy for other systems.

Yet why then does a body not lose color when you sever the spinal column? Why are the eyes "enough" in that circumstance? If you're severing the entire spiritweb, shouldn't the whole body drain to grey, like a Lifeless?

Hrm. While I of course don't dispute the WoB, I have to admit, it perplexes me. You get something out of it without putting anything like the same thing in. Losing a few scraps of color hardly seems equal to the amount of energy you can get out of an Awakening. It's like saying the metal lost is equal to the power achieved by allomancy. We obviously know that it's end-neutral, but it doesn't look end-neutral. Where, then, does the power come from, if not Endowment?

Oh goodness, terribly sorry. I posted something intending to provide a link, but didn't have the time, and by the next time, I remembered that I'd intended to, and forgot that I never had. Please accept this box of stakes. (Sigh, a joke only an MST3K fan would get...)

Something Moogle said in another thread got me thinking. It's always bothered me that Awakening doesn't actually use up any Breaths. The idea that color is somehow fuel is... odd, to me, and I don't really buy that, either. But we have two other examples, and I hereby propose a hypothesis that Endowment directly powers Awakened Objects. In allomancy, the power doesn't come from the metal; the metal is simply a channel you use to get at Preservation's own power. Likewise, in AonDor, you draw a picture, and the simple power of the Dor flows into you. Given these examples, I propose that since Awakening is clearly end-positive, it operates on a similar principle. I think the Breath is this time a catalyst, that it mainly provides a channel for the power of Endowment to flow into the object, make it move. Likewise, this explains why the Heightenings don't seem to draw power from anywhere, or to use up Breaths. By possessing the Breaths yourself, the direct power of Endowment grants you additional abilities. Hrm... but what of the Returned, who consume Breaths? Why isn't the power of Endowment enough to keep them going? Why does their catalyst get used up? Nightblood exhibits a similar phenomenon. Are the two related? The answer seems obvious; I'm always wary of 'obvious' answers.

By the end of your post, it seems now we're arguing semantics. So you have no trouble accepting that Preservation's power can revive a dead body, prevent it from aging, give it the ability to shapeshift, cause it to project an aura of color, and benefit from all Five Heightenings, and even the power to sacrifice yourself to heal another... you just don't want us to call it a Divine Breath. That seems needlessly semantic to me, but very well. Also, I notice about half of your previous post was trying to insist that you cannot turn one Shard into another. I'm reasonably sure everyone has conceded that point by now, and no one but your straw man is arguing that you can. It's essentially come down to the idea that everyone agrees that Preservation's power can cause someone to mimic the effects of being Returned, and the rest of us are fine calling that a Divine Breath, and you just don't want us to use that term. On this point, I am fine agreeing to disagree. Finally, that is an interesting model for Zahel. I had not considered that he simply absorbs Investiture, any Investiture, to stay alive, and that the type he gets doesn't matter. I don't think you have any support for that theory, but since we know absolutely nothing about that process, I also cannot claim that I have any evidence that it's false. You claim that Nightblood can draw in any Investiture... that I know of, there's no WoB to that effect. I know there's one Kurk uses which very clearly says that Nightblood would want to draw in the Mists, but nothing in the sentence assumes he'd be able to. Nightblood has the mind of a child. He decides that he can tell when a woman is pretty, he decides that he feels better in fresh air. Past evidence suggests that Nightblood simply deciding he has the ability to do something doesn't directly translate into a reasonable assumption that he, in fact, has that ability. Bereft of that, there's no support for your hypothesis. It might still be right, but at this point it's pure speculation. We'll simply have to wait for further WoB to learn more. Firefight comes out in January; they're already planning a few release events. Maybe he'll go on a booktour for it. If so, you should be sure to include a question if you can attend.

1. I'm not saying that Vin's hemalurgic reaction is atypical. I'm saying that there are inconsistencies in the commonly-accepted model, which would indicate that the model is, at best, flawed. I'm proposing a second model which is somewhat speculative (though, frankly, no more speculative than the basic model is assumptive) but doesn't have the same flaws. By this logic, ALL hemalurgic reaction conforms to my model. 2. I'm not sure why you think the spiritual realm is the land of Truth? As to what Preservation can do, recall that, per Harmony, Ruin was capable of building something if it let him destroy better. I was being inexact before. I don't think lerasium overwrites literally the entirety of your spiritweb, only the section that deals with Investiture. I admit this is speculative. The fact that we have suggestions that a lerasium/pewter alloy would remove a Seeker's bronze and replace it with pewter is suggestive that it doesn't add, it overwrites.

It's also possible that it's simply not one of the ten essences. In a lot of ways, atium and lerasium are simply metal. Maybe they aren't "enough" like metal to coincide with Foil.

I think Quiver and I are talking about the same guy he's the son of Shallan's Highprince. He shows up in Taravangian's interlude, and if I remember correctly he also shows up in one of Shallan's flashbacks. I feel like the chapter was called heterochroma or something...

Hrm, you're assuming one model of hemalurgy. There's a thread somewhere where we discuss this, and it was inconclusive. We truthfully don't really know how hemalurgy works. It might be the way you describe, but that leave several big questions unanswered. We know that hemalurgic spikes lose their charge when outside of a body between theft and hosting. Yet, Vin's earring is outside of her body for years, and doesn't seem to lose any charge whatsoever. Why not? I will grant that my hemalurgic model is speculative, but so is yours. I humbly submit that while mine is a little more speculative, it has the benefit of containing no contradictions, while yours does. As to your second point, that wasn't how I was suggesting lerasium works. You seem to think that it's like an engineer, looking at a structure, assessing it, and only working on the parts that need work. I suspect that it is far simpler and far more powerful than that. I think it just up and replaces the entire thing, not caring what was there before. Imagine that your spiritweb is a dam. Lerasium is going to add a feature (let's say hydroelectric turbines). By your model, the engineer will do the minimum of work, looking at the dam as is and designing a way to add turbines. In this model, she would have to inspect the entire dam and choose to fix each specific crack individually in order to strip your spiritweb of hemalurgy. I don't think that's what happens. I think the godmetal doesn't worry about niceties like that. I think she just rips out the entire existing dam, and replaces the whole thing with a brand new one based on her template. She's not trying to find individual cracks and fix them, but the cracks were in the old dam. She's gotten rid of them by the simple experience of replacing the entire dam.

1. That quote is very specific, and I concur that it means Lerasium likely cannot create a Divine Breath. There's some little wiggle room, but it would be an extremely bizarre reading of the quote. 2. I understand the rest of what you say, but I'm not sure I agree with it. You assume that turning the Investiture in lerasium into the Investiture of a Divine Breath would mean having to change Preservation into Endowment. I disagree. First, I think all the power comes from the same place, the Power of Creation. Think of it like two Mistings. One is a Rioter, one is a Lurcher. They're doing very different things, but they're both drawing their power from Preservation. As below, so above. Preservation is doing his thing, Cultivation is doing hers. I believe they both draw from the same pool, the Power of Creation. Just a theory, I confess. Second, I don't think a Divine Breath needs to be from Endowment. Recall that per WoB, Ruin could power Allomancy, it would just cost him. I'm not proposing you use Preservation's power to make something of Endowment, I'm suggesting you use Preservation's power to make something of Preservation that happens to have the same qualities as something of Endowment, just as AonDor and Illumination can both be used to craft illusions. As an example, Zahel is surviving on Stormlight. Whatever the process is, he's not siphoning Honor's power and turning it into Endowment's power, or if he is, then since we know it happens, it must be possible. In conclusion, with the example of Zahel, we know one of two things is possible. Either Investiture can be shaped to mimic a different Shard's Intent, or Investiture can in fact be passed from Intent to Intent.

Yes, per Taravangian's Interlude in Words of Radiance.

Thank you for the first part, reviving my theory! Also, nothing about your second part disagrees with me, it's an ancillary point. If "arcanum" is, in your own words, a perfect way to describe what we're talking about, I can only assume that you agree with me that we should use that word.