Oudeis

Spook wasn't given the choice; you're healed now. Nor, I believe, were the Terris eunuchs. It is possible the damage from savanthood is simply functionally different from the damage from hemalurgy... I don't think that's borne out by the text, but I've been wrong in my extrapolations before.

Why are people still engaging Archon?

Hrm. He could fix the damage Spook did to himself, no problem, and grant him the full powers of a Mistborn at the same time. I have difficulty believing that if he wanted, he could not restore Marsh, and give him at least atium compounding if nothing else, as well, if he wanted to leave his friend long-lived. Not sure why, then, he didn't.

...then what on earth are you doing on this site? =P Just kidding. ... Mostly.

We saw the three Brutes, and Idashwy. Presumably, at least one of those four was a non-allomantic Ferring.

HA! "In the follow up to Alloy of Love..."

Eh. It's pointed out how few books the Davar's had. I feel like it's a stretch to assume one of them was the Way of Kings, a book in heavy disfavor. If it were heretical, that would be one thing, because then it might be something said to tempt Jasnah, but it's not heretical of Vorinism, it's scandalous for the fact that it seems to indicate Lighteyes have an obligation to help Darkeyes. Shallan doesn't seem to believe this, and has no reason to suspect Jasnah, the sister of the most powerful Lighteyed king there is, would be impressed at her subversive views that her brother is ruling incorrectly. For that matter, later they are both Surgebinders and are discussing books and Radiancy. Isn't it conspicuous that they don't mention the book that Nohadon wrote as a codex for the Knights Radiant?

Recent WoB suggests one of the main viewpoint characters in the second set of books is Ash, so that gives us two Lightweavers. So, we're already down an order.

Ah. That particular book might answer your question. You can order the physical book here, if you'd like.

Have you read Sixth of the Dusk from the Shadows Beneath anthology?

Guys... Intent is NOT the trump card, and you are NOT bound by the rules of the universe to act according to a Shard's Intent just because you're using its power. For a thousand years, Allomancers were assassins and warriors. We have WoB; the Intent influences how you get the power, not what the power does or how it can be used. If Paalm did have a spike of Autonium, there was absolutely nothing compelling her to act following the intent of Autonomy. And if you wonder why he might provide her with the spike if she's not going to broadcast autonomy, I'd like to make two additional points. First, recall that Shards can, and do, fight against their own Intents. It becomes difficult as time goes by, but not everyone agrees with the Intent of the Shard they hold, and not all of them are ruled by it. Just as Preservation was able to put himself in a position to die so that someone else could take up his power and use it to kill herself and Ati, Autonomy might have no trouble providing assistance to someone for a cause other than Autonomy. And my second point, remember the Set. Miles was their agent, and it was their plan all along that he be captured. Just because you're manipulating someone and planning for their eventual downfall does not mean you support their endgame or philosophy. It was the Set's plan all along that Wax stop Miles; it may have been Bavadin's plan all along that he stop Bleeder. There are plenty of correlations between Alloy of Law and Shadows of Self already, anyway.

Kaymyth: What he said. Given what we know, I'm comfortable making the assumption that if they weren't the same metal, they were with alloying distance of each other. Either both alloys of Trellium or one was pure trellium, the other an alloy. Maybe the metal was storing health and got a rash...

Concur; I feel like people make much of the WoB. We know Feruchemy protects you to an extent, but that I've seen we've not had WoB saying that you are granted 100% full and complete immunity not only to your own power but to everything ancillary that your power might be the proximate cause of. This, basically. Wax mentions in the first book that in 300 years the Terris have mostly kept to themselves; a tiny fraction of the population has mixed Terris/other blood. Even if we do assume the people who intermarried with Terris even had allomantic genes, and assuming their numbers keep the "one in fifty" suggestion which I believe has WoB support along the lines of "that sounds about right," (neither of which, I believe, are safe assumptions,) that gives us a number like 1 in 40K. Since this is probably optimistic, while I'm sure Miles isn't the first Compounder there's ever been, I'm not at all surprised at their rarity. I believe we got a guess that there are about 10 million Scadrians in the known world. If 1/40K is a rough guess (which, again, I think is unlikely) that means we've got even odds of a Compounder existing if 1/250 people are of mixed Terris/other blood. So, I'm not surprised Compounders aren't all over the place. EDIT: Spelling

He DID plan to suppress Paalm. He was clear about that. He had not done it yet, but she was killing a LOT of people and had broken her contract with him, and was therefore going to take total control of her body. Permanently? I don't know. The Kandra hope, from what MeLaan explained, was that removing her spike was an act of desperation, and that it drove her insane. It was hoped that if they could restore to her a normal Blessing, she could be talked past the breaking point and some sort of agreement could be reached. Also, remember this was Wax's plan, not Harmony's. Via MeLaan's instructions, Wax was actually supposed to remove the spike and turn her into just a mistwraith, and they were going to deal with her after that. Harmony said he'd be totally willing to control Paalm, but couldn't, not that it was his intention to do so. (Again, I'd like to point out that there was a contract involved. Whether any of us think it was right or not is irrelevant; she presumably had the option to go off on her own, but chose to work for Harmony, knowing that one of the possible outcomes would be that he would take over her body under certain conditions. Obviously we don't know all the terms of the contract, but it remains a choice she made and a consequence she agreed to.) So yeah. "Phase IV" as Edgedancer says was, restore her Blessings and thereby her sanity, and hope she was redeemable. It's entirely possible Harmony accepted that she might not be willing to be rehabilitated, and imprisonment or death was in the cards anyway; keep in mind, stopping her from killing people and burning the city to the ground was Priority 1; there was plenty of time to figure out a long-term solution once the emergency was being handled.

Heh Disagree. The Howlers (chimaerae?) had the spikes, and seemed to be part of Bleeder's plan. (btw I love that she attempted to nerdsnipe him...) Also she had at least a spike for Allomantic steel and a spike for Feruchemical steel. If she could have both powers at once, she could easily simply compound and never run out of speed, so it must be two different spikes.

The whole thing still puzzles me... Tan was talking the same brand of crazy Bleeder eventually came to. So, was she already crazy by then? Did that happen after? At what point did she go from Paalm the "not super excited about Harmony's plan" to Bleeder the "Drive myself insane and start killing people for their powers to free myself"? Was the whole thing orchestrated by Harmony? Was it orchestrated by Bleeder? Was it simply orchestrated by this new Shard on the scene? I dunno. I have this speculative idea that one of the great tragedies of this whole scenario is Paalm's descent into madness. I kinds feel like at the end we're all gonna learn the other Shard was actually the puppet master behind that scene, but by the time Paalm had enough facts to realize this, she was down to one spike and too insane to make the proper connections. One of the great, tragic hallmarks of insanity is an inability to reason your own way out of it. If this other Shard manipulated her into turning against Harmony just so he could use her... this already sad story will become unbelievably tragic.

Also, Marsh isn't Harmony's agent. He does his own thing. The ending of Alloy of Law made that plain.

Minor, interesting point: Air resistance isn't what fries you. Regardless, we do see Bleeder start/stop at speeds bodies shouldn't be capable of. Without the Blessing of Potency there's no reason to assume her body is any more resilient than anyone else's. From her ability to react in bullet time, I get the impression that 'speed' isn't a matter of how your body moves so much as a personal bendalloy bubble, with all the physics-breaking that entails. As it stands, I'd assume changes in speed are hand-waved away the way we see start-stop is. Still, this might be a minor limitation, and you can certainly go fast enough to be officially 'insanely fast' before you get to the point where a human body would take significant damage from changes in velocity (aka, acceleration). In addition, while you can't bash someone over the head with a club at superspeeds without the shock transferring to your body, you can stab them a few dozen times before the first wound has time to start bleeding, and still be taking all the time in the world to line up a perfect stab. It takes insanely little force to puncture human skin.

Keep in mind, Harmony is a God younger than almost every kandra. If anything, he's proof that the powers can transfer hands at times, and he himself is mostly worried about threats of incursions from other Shards (for, as we see, good reason). It took them a century to figure out. Just in case something does come up, if another Shard shows up with the same power to exploit the Flaw, if Harmony falls and his power is taken... it's better to have it ready, now, rather than have something happen and wish they'd prepared. Still, point taken. On an emotional level it might feel like a slap in the face. Still, Harmony strikes me as someone who takes over under only the most dire of conditions, so mostly I expect he's thinking that it doesn't much affect him.

What I think Confused's original point was, it's easier to decide to live life by an ideal if you know such an ideal exists. We are not simply a product of predestination and nature. We make decisions about the type of person we want to be, and decisions can be informed decisions. Yes, the Ideals have to be internalized, but they don't have to be generated from an internal source. Some people, obviously. As Lirin says, no one can follow if someone doesn't lead. But that doesn't mean that people cannot follow.

...Also, per WoB, Intent has less to do with the application of the magic and more with how you get magic. So there's less-than-no-reason to look for a way that "what a trellium spike does" exemplifies "autonomy".

...Aru? Adolin and Sadeas read it. At what point did Helaran give Shallan Way of Kings? Was it mentioned in the same scene where he gave her a sketchpad?

Aru? He never tried to kill Wayne, he tried to arrest him. Like he tells Granny V, if someone isn't armed and isn't a threat or danger, he aims for legs and arms. He doesn't just kill as a first instinct.

Oh... I just figured he was good at compartmentalizing. If Taravangian hadn't made note of it I wouldn't agree it was significant, but you're right, the line prolly implies some actual significance.

They did develop it for that reason; MeLaan tells Wayne this, dropping a seed that it's possible so it's a little less out-of-left-field when Bleeder does it. This is something MeLaan knows how to do, and something she says all kandra know how to do. She could also be a rogue kandra and lying, but I do not believe so. Of course, this doesn't invalidate your whole theory, just that one bit of support. "We decided" is the kandra as a whole, not just a group of rogues.