Phantom Monstrosity

I think there was a better confirmation on the weight=push strength elsewhere (currently looking for it), but I think Brandon would have corrected the question here if it were offbase. Incidentally... not sure if it were a typo or a hint when Brandon said "Well, the Lord Ruler--don't forget--could compound any Allomancy he wanted." But that's for a different topic EDIT: from Alloy of Law I think that's a pretty solid confirmation that more weight = stronger pushes. If the issue were just 'avoiding being moved yourself', in any situation where Wax creates an expanding ring of force (like the ballroom bandit scene), it would be unnecessary for him to tap weight, since the forces in all directions would cancel out. But he *does* tap his weight there, and in the other circumstances where he's doing an omnidirectional push.

We know that Pushing and Pulling are mass-based; being heavier means that you're a lot stronger. The mass of your hand is, what? 0.56% of your body mass or so? If you were just trying to Pull something into your hand, it'd be about two hundred times as hard as it would be to just Pull it to your center of mass. It's difficult enough to vary the strength of your Pushes and Pulls; off center isn't something that's easy, just something that's possible. There are already examples of things that are technically possible but not widespread (copper shielding other people, for instance). It could be that nobody's really done an in-depth investigation yet, and that we'll see it show up in Mistborn Ten as a super difficult training exercise.

I have the ebook, so... So it looks like he slowly rotates to face vin, stops, then rotates to stand upright, and then stops and drops to the ground. There's also this from chapter 11 Vin seems to intentionally spin herself in the air - but she is using duraluminum at that point, so who knows... then again, she's out of steel... not really sure what's up with that, probably using iron, or steel after she replenished.

Brandon said that "For MISTBORN, for instance, telekinesis mixed with vector science was interesting to me". I figure that he considered that angle already, since this is pretty low level stuff. It's a controlled rotation - he starts, spins, and stops. Unless he's got some controllable nonallomantic source of angular acceleration (directional burping?) he isn't going to be able to change the rate he's rotating. It's not calculation - it's the physical capability. It's more like saying 'there's no way you can walk without any legs'. The issue is that pushing against the center of mass automatically means you can't have any torque. ... The fact that nobody exploits the ability probably means it's like shielding other people's emotions with copper - theoretically possible, but really difficult, and nobody's figured it out to any great extent yet. If, under normal circumstances, every part of your body was used equally as an anchor to push or pull on a target, it would (to a first order approximation) work out to roughly your center of mass. Using an off-center push or pull would involve 'precision' in selectively using some parts of your body for a particular push and not others - that would explain why Zane's extra precision spike would help. He could use a very tiny push backwards with his left arm and a very tiny push forwards with his right arm, for instance, and get a torque that way.

It looks like there are a few in-universe misconceptions about pushing and pulling. There are claims that they act in lines directly to/from your center of mass. That's rather impossible, given what we see happen in the books. Why? Because if you've got a vector directed at your center of mass, it's by definition going to exert no torque (and hence, cause no rotation). However, when Zane is hanging out playing 'the ground is lava' with Vin, he shows off his MAD SKILLZ by... hovering and rotating in place. That's something that should be completely impossible. We also see stuff like Kelsier's bar-spinning arrow-blocking, which would be EXTREMELY difficult to pull off using vectors from the center of mass. Not impossible, but really hard. In addition, coinshots, and mistborn don't start gradually spinning midair from wind effects when they're suspended over a coin. They also don't spin when they really should - Wax's guns should start him rotating whenever he uses them for propellant. Even balancing off a coin would be insanely difficult if you're using a point source for your pushes and pulls; there's a cylinder above the coin equal to its width where you can direct yourself inward, and in order to balance with a push and hover you have to keep within that cylinder at all times. Zane's hemalurgic spike granted him 'extra precision' to allow him to pull this stuff off - but that doesn't really help with spinning if it's center of mass based. We basically have two options to resolve this A ) Iron and Steel can exert torques on objects as well as pushing/pulling. Like, steel might make objects spin clockwise and the user spin counterclockwise, or vice versa. B ) Iron and Steel aren't necessarily restricted to your center of mass. It's just far easier to do it that way, and nobody has really trained otherwise. Now, this part might just be a research issue, but it looks like it already isn't restricted to center of mass in canon. People consistently get the vector lines out of their chests. Mistborn Chapter 5:"Translucent blue lines sprang into existence around him, visible only to his eyes. Each one led from the center of his chest out to a nearby source of metal" Mistborn Chapter 9: "Blue lines suddenly appeared before her—one end of each pointing at her chest, the other disappearing into the mists." The center of mass of a person isn't their chest. It's actually slightly below the bellybutton. Personally, I'm leaning towards the 'shift center of allomass' theory since it's a little more elegant, and actually helps with the coin hovering problem. If you can push from portions of your body, all you'd need to do is get an arm or a leg or a shoulder over the coin and then adjust - changing the target area from 'a single point' to the entire cross-section of your body. Much more reasonable. It doesn't seem like anyone's actually trained to do this - it's more of a subconscious secondary power. Still, it seems like something that would be interesting to explore.

Darn impressive Guy, maybe?

I think by 'inherent' they mean 'these orders can soulcast without using a fabriel'.

Apparently it actually does cause some changes, given how compounding works.

Filling a metalmind adds investiture, though. So it's possible to put more in. Well, shardblades aren't very susceptible. We also have a secondhand quote that nightblood is orders of magnitude more magical than a shardblade. So that would imply that Nightblood ain't gonna be pushed or pulled around. And, really, without Nightblood Vasher's combat options are pretty limited, no way he'd beat Vin if she could just gesture and remove nightblood from play.

Just tested with this thread. Looks like subboards don't show in the main topic list (it still says 23 February 2013 - 04:49 PM In: One Question I Never Unders... By: Vortaan ) Though the posts will still be under 'view new content'. That topic can be deleted now that science is done.

The forum can be set up so you can't see the topic titles of a hypothetical SA2 forum, right?

I know, right? Calling you a cheater is just rude.

Yeah, but only Sazed knows how to do it.

Or they can be from the hard to spell tranquiline halls.

I'm saying that if people are going to be use nagging as form of negative reinforcement to make me do something, I am going to respond by not doing that thing as a form of negative reinforcement to stop using that strategy. In other words, I find attempts at pushing me around to be far more irritating than any lack of quotation linking could be. You structured your poll in a partial manner, and sculpted it to get the results that fit your particular biases. That's something that I find contemptible in politicians (where it's known as push polling), and incredibly intellectually dishonest.

And let me pull a random quote from the thread in question. "Ok. The gemhearts/stormgems/whatever that are grown inside the beasts in Way of Kings ... is that the same as the way Atium is grown inside geodes in the Pits of Hathsin?" Let's use google by putting it in quotes. Oh, look, one result. That was easy. Now, I personally toss citations in when I feel that they'd be useful, but the idea that I am somehow 'obligated' to do so is souring me on the idea, and probably is going to make it less likely for me to do so in the future. After all, I registered quite recently - if I could find this stuff on my own, it isn't like it's difficult or anything.

I've seen people on other forums who cite everything. It gets SUPER annoying. EDIT: Months later, people *still* aren't getting the joke.

Links are nice to have, but nagging people about including them is rude. Especially when google is a thing.

Ah, but think of the lovely conversations you'd be having. Nightblood and Ruin on a conference call. "Kill everyone." "Oh boy oh boy! Let's go and do that! Kill everyone!" "Stop copying me." "No, you stop copying me." "Nah uh" "Yah uh" "Nah uh" "Yah uh" ...

I also asked Brandon at a signing if putting Breath into a mistwraith would make something awesome. His response was "Breath into a mistwraith? Yeah, that could work." So, imagine a kandrazilla that ate nightblood and used him as a spike.

Neat project. If you're going through all the books, a timeline of canon events would be handy - aside from things like travel times, it's useful for fanfics or games.

That kind of gets into the questions about how you spike a mistwraith in the first place; their amorphous anatomy is weird as heck. I think it's likely that they have some sort of instinctual 'move spike into position' going on. If it eats four koloss spikes, they get plugged in and start activating; since the effect of the spike is 'makes a human bigger, stronger, and totally ragey', the mistwraith starts roiding out. Incidentally, that means a mistwraith who ate a dead steel inquisitor would be freaky.

You mean digest a koloss, right? The spikes still should retain charge inside a koloss corpse for a while.

Dude had a breath-based memory loss (we see vasher do something like that in warbreaker), and is on Scandriel due to worldhopping reasons.

They can still get bigger, even if they don't get more massive. After all, whenever a crab molts it ends up bigger than it was before. You can make an argument about butterfly size as well, though inflating their wings is sort of cheating.