Oudeis

There are Spiritual Entities, per a question my friend asked on the Words of Radiance tour. "Spren are native to the Cognitive Realm. Are there entities and factions native to the Spiritual Realm?" "Yes, but not the ones you think." This addendum confused us, since we didn't yet have any preconceptions and thus were not thinking of anything specific. Included for completeness of the quote.

To muddy things even further, Vin comments on those specific coins, saying that she noticed he'd grabbed some coins. Did she see his closed fist and assume it was full of coins? Is a fist not "enclosing" enough, and therefore she noticed the blue lines leading to the coins? Or was his fist simply loosely held, so she could observe with her eyes that he held coins, and this is why they weren't "enclosed" because they weren't entirely surrounded? Yet she pushes and pulls on those coins from a variety of angles over the next several seconds; surely loosely held coins would have broken free from his grip, or at the least he'd've felt the tug and gripped them tighter. I concur, this will be a difficult thing to pin down. As to his mouth, he speaks at two points, and I'm reasonably sure he must've already had coins in his mouth by then, and I believe Vin is burning iron and steel at that point. She doesn't comment on blue lines strobing towards his mouth. The text is somewhat unclear, both on whether she's burning at that exact moment, and whether he'd yet put the coins in his mouth by then. From my reading, however, either of those scenarios would feel awkward and forced, a deliberate act of ontology following intent.

The coin inside Zane's mouth was "within a body" and could not be pushed on. Yet in that same fight, Vin pushes on coins in his hand. What is the distinction?

I always just assumed that this was another wanted criminal that Silence poisoned. His "drunk" demeanor was actually what she'd slipped into his drink, so she could find him later and kill him for his bounty.

This. There's a WoB somewhere saying that feruchemy is how Hoid knows where he needs to go, which presumably he had before he found the Bead.

Your phrasing confused me, as you used the word "stack" which weebojello also used, but he used it to mean the other thing, where having Gravitation twice makes you twice as strong.

Were you saying that you can get multiple honorblades and therefore a multitude of Surges, or were you saying that if you had the first and second Honorblades, you'd be twice as powerful at Gravitation?

What do you mean? Why would they be any better or worse?

Can you? The only time that I can recall when we've seen multiple stamps on a wall was when every stamp was one facet of a a larger, cohesive forgery; the initial stamps were inert until the final stamp completed the forgery and activated them. Or is there another time I'm not recalling? And remember, when Shai escaped, she needed a chamberpot as part of her plan. She took a vase, pried off the stamp, and placed her own. Pressed for time as she was, presumably if it was as simple to just stamp her own over the old one, she'd've done that, instead. What Voidus said. Also, see my theory.

It's an inconsistency. I can't remember where, but it's expressly stated somewhere that metals only have two settings, "burn" and "flare," and that for things like Steelpushes you can only push at a certain strength. But then we see a ton of metals used "lightly" or "subtly" or pewter at its "low burn," implying degrees, and subtle steelpushes and ironpulls all over the place. I don't know what to make of it. It's just an inconsistency.

Does any Shard in particular hold Adonalsium's sense of humor?

nevermind.

This. And this.

I'm just gonna speak up quickly in favor of ignorance; none of us know how hemalurgy works. We've got a few very basic ideas, but Inquisitors are the most complicated, most Spiked hemalurgic creation we've ever seen. We can (and everyone should) feel free to make guesses as to which spike is which, which powers were granted, what's special about the linchpin, and everything else, but at the end of the day, we will have to wait until more information is revealed before we actually know for sure. Perhaps the linchpin is something that seems innocuous, like a spike for human emotional stability, but it has some bizarre effect in the Spiritual Realm of keeping the other 10 spikes aligned, and without it they rip the user's spiritweb apart. As I say, there's no direct reason to think that, but hemalurgy is so mysterious an art, almost anything is possible at this point. Fortunately, Shadows of Self is in the works, and it promises at least a few more hemalurgic scraps for us.

I did not invent Arcana, it comes from the text, when every book ended in an Ars Arcana. Clearly, there's at least one person who has traveled to multiple Shardworlds who thinks that "systems of investiture" are better called arcana, and I'm prepared to oblige.

Back when Mr. Sanderson wrote the first book, and Vin referred to her ability as Luck, did he already know he eventually intended for there to be a metallic power of "luck"?

I would simply like to applaud your use of the term "arcana" which is something I'm trying to encourage.

Does eating and the process of digestion interact in any way with the process of burning metals allomantically?

Word of Brandon. Spike farms aren't possible, you cannot "heal" back something stolen from you via hemalurgy. EDIT: Even with Miles's specific super subconscious healing, hemalurgic theft would prolly prove fatal. There is simply no way a "spike farm" could work.

I was discussing this with my friend, who as a priest was sorta fascinated at the idea of a God who expressly told his followers, "Don't bother believing in me, just get to work." Remember that a contract doesn't happen, a marriage isn't legal, unless an Obligator witnesses it. The Lord Ruler managed to make economics part of his religion. When you sign a contract, you are technically observing one of the rituals of your religion. Or when you attend a public execution and feel the divine Soothing from TLR himself. It's unique to Scadrial to have a "charlatan" God who can actually put his money where his mouth is on the whole "look at my wonders and tremble" front. At the end of the day, it's a situation fundamentally unique from anything analogous to Earth. Though you're absolutely correct, of course, about how the Obligators and Inquisitors themselves did perform what we on Earth would think of as more typical religious ceremonies; what little is revealed in the books about them is in the annotations. I don't know if you're reading those, or have read them in the past.

Imagine a Skimmer standing on a trampoline, at normal weight. The trampoline will be bent in the center from her weight. If she begins storing weight, she will rise up as she is no longer dragging the trampoline down as forcefully. If she then taps the stored weight, she will now descend even farther than she had originally. If she releases her ironmind, she will go back to her standard weight and the trampoline will reset to normal. The effect will not last permanently. Sometimes, simple effects are impermanent. Yet, like the examples I gave, drawing on years worth of an attribute can have permanent effects. I apologize for not being more clear in my original post.

Well, I guess that answers that question.

Thank you both for your support.

Idle thought I had on duralumin feruchemy; wondered what anyone else thought. Basically, I'm trying to think what would happen if you stored "connection" for decades, and then simply used that power, all at once. I will be making many comparisons to feruchemical iron. Like feruchemcial iron, all of the change is inside of you. Iron changes something inside of you that determines how strongly you are forced downwards. Duralumin changes something inside of you that determines how strongly you forge spiritual connection to others. Like feruchemical iron, this one primary effect has effects outside your body. If you tap a ton of weight, you will break the floor you are standing on, even though the feruchemy itself isn't directly working on the floor. If you tap a ton of connection, you are presumably much more strongly connected to other people, even though your feruchmy itself isn't directly working on other people. Like Feruchemical iron, the practitioner seems to have special immunity that nothing else shares. A skimmer can tap enough weight to destroy a building, but that weight will not harm the skimmer's own body. Likewise, it can be conjectured that however much duralumin you tap, you personally will likely remain largely unaffected in the long run. Like feruchemical iron, the primary effect is temporary, but the secondary effects might remain. Here's where we start getting very speculative and a little weird, and very abstract. A Skimmer could stand on top of a metal building and tap a ton of weight. In this example, decades of weight are enough to crumple at least a localized part of the building. A moment later, his weight is normal again, but the building remains crushed. It doesn't fix itself just because he no longer weighs enough to do the damage he did. What, then, of feruchemical duralumin? The phrasing from the Alloy of Law Ars Arcanum specifically calls it a spiritual connection, which I think is at least a decent implication that it affects the spiritual realm, the realm we currently know the least about. We have no idea what properties one's "spiritual connection" might have. Everything that follows, therefore, is purest speculation. What if a man had decades of spiritual connection stored up, then stood in a crowded room and called upon all of it, all at once? What might happen? The first theory is what I will call the boring theory. Nothing happens. You force spiritual connections wide open, and an instant later they simply return to normal, on the assumption that unlike buildings or just about anything else in the world, they have an infinite capacity to suffer damage without the slightest effect. The second theory is that these connections will suffer permanent changes due to the unprecedented activity. Off the top of my head I can think of three possibilities. One is that they might be forced permanently open, that each of them will have an abnormally strong spiritual connection to the Connector that can never be closed. Another possibility is that it will fry the connections; the energy output will destroy the existing connections and you will spend the rest of your life with no spiritual connection to the person whatsoever. Lastly, it's possible the connection would be somehow warped. That your spiritual connection will, in essence, mutate in a way difficult to predict, and possibly in a way unique to yourself, not shared even by the exact same people who suffered the same event you did. Reminding everyone that this speculation is about a metal we've never seen used and barely had described which is very likely about a Realm we know next to nothing about, I would like to encourage people to make it clear, as they respond, whether they are discussing something that is an actual supportable fact, or if it's just a conclusion they personally have drawn. If you want to bring up a point, I strongly urge you to cite the text or Word of Brandon, or to make it plain in your comment that it's merely counter-speculation on your own part. As a reminder, just because a bunch of your friends agree with you, that doesn't make it canon.

Except remember, allomancers aren't even that limited. A single metal bar surely has only one cognitive aspect, yet in his last fight, Kelsier Pulled on one end of a bar and Pushed on the other to make it spin in the air like a windmill.