Phantom Monstrosity

They worshiped Preservation - who has some pretty good future sight. Obviously he left notes.

Wolverine claws? For a gold twinborn.

I suspect that the Lord Ruler was the first, actually.

I'm pretty sure the raciest scene penned is from Warbreaker. So, unless HBO options the rights, I don't think you'll find anything particularly offensive. I will note, however, that it's in a bathtub, and still 'clean'. Personally, I really liked Mistborn 1, and felt that the first book was so strong that the next two couldn't quite live up to the high expectations it set up. Don't get me wrong, they're still good, but Mistborn 1 was more self-contained - the best part of a Sanderson novel is generally the last 20% or so, and Mistborn 2 lost a bit of that because so much of its conclusion was tied into Mistborn 3. Warbreaker is pretty excellent as well. A complete version is also up on Sanderson's website for free, to give people a taste of his style. He's matured a bit as a writer since then, but I still like Lightsong's scenes - though I've been told that really depends on how much you like 'dad jokes'. Anyway, if you want an easy starting point, it'll save you a trip to the bookstore, and it's a pretty good story. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of The Way of Kings, mostly because it's the first book in a ten book series, and, while the plot threads and viewpoint characters are interesting on their own, they're scattered across a rather large continent, and don't have any chance to interact with each other as frequently as I'd like - I think I'll like it better once the second or third ones come out.

Ruin is shortsighted. When he has the choice between 'get free in ten thousand years' and 'maybe win now', he'll pick the second one every time. And what does he have to lose? And even if a hero comes along regularly, things'll tick down eventually.

Okay, a little more information. Apparently Ruin's koloss army was around two hundred thousand or so. That's a little less than I was expecting - but it still means that he killed a million people to make it.

Still, aware enough to be a viewpoint character is aware enough for me.

I think that the Hero Of Ages needed to 'renew' the prison from time to time. So I'm guessing that it would eventually release Ruin

Bookfinder.com is your best bet. It's what I use for textbooks - it searches *everywhere*, and includes shipping in the price comparisons. Looks like you can get it from the UK new, hardcover, for the equivalent of $20.48 USD Or new from Canada for 24 USD

They're a lot more aware than people give them credit for, though.

Hey, does anyone know whether the bindpoints are the same between nonallomancers, mistings, and mistborn? Obviously you can't extract abilities from people who don't have them, but do you stab a mistborn in the same place to grant a power as you would to a misting or a feruchemist?

WoB is that you can, but compounding would be easier.

"The incomparable beam of radiant searing incandescence burnt through the failing shields, flaring them into the far ultraviolet and microwave spectrums before they ruptured entirely." The main character is reading an ersatz-Lensmen in class. I decided to start every chapter with something overdramatic.

I can't help but notice the similarity between copperclouds and aluminum. And since aluminum apparently was designed to have weird effects on all allomantic powers... I dunno, seems like it should counter the 'you are more part of the mists, so you can see through them' thing that tin has going on.

The problem is, the quote from the alloy of law signing implies that it's a lot more vague than the type of future seeing atium provides.

I guess maybe luck could work... but there's this from the alloy of law Q&A So... I'm not sure if luck quite fits the bill. I'm thinking an alloy of atium and chromium, maybe? Alternatively, there have been hints that you can use feruchemy to enhance allomancy and do reverse-compounding... maybe you can use it to remove the requirement for a metal entirely (somehow?), or create some sort of bargain-bin atium-like effect?

Cool! Good luck!

I'm trying to piece together just how big the Final Empire was. The annotations mention that it was hard to give a sense of scope, so I'm trying to figure out a rough estimate. Here's the information I have so far: Luthadel: So... roughly 800-900k as Luthadel's population seems reasonable. The Garrison was 20k people, which is a high ratio for a lawkeeping organization - but that makes sense. This is, incidentally, considerably smaller than Rome was during its Empire. Some other quotes that don't help much: Getting 130 mistings for the soothing stations in the Capital was enough to take virtually all of them from the central dominance. Note that it's probably just the three seekers in each five-misting base shift that was the issue - so that's actually 78 mistings of each type across the whole central dominance in ministry control. Roughly. I'm not sure what fraction of the nobles abandon their titles to join the Cantons, or how good the bloodline purity is within them. Still, that puts the Central Dominance as having about 64,000 canton members (and thus, about 6 mistborn). Assuming the central dominance is vaguely representative, about 600,000 members across the whole empire, 60ish mistborn, and 6000ish mistings of each variety. Similarly, with the one million to two million number cited later in the thread for Luthadel's population, there are roughly 100 to 200 skaa mistings. There were also about forty or so Steel Inquisitors across the whole empire, and each of those requires you to kill off about ten allomancers (give or take). The Keepers had recorded over 300 religions (and 500 different sects). Not sure how useful a metric that is. Possibly metaphorical: Now, we know that Luthadel is the biggest city in the Empire. We have this quote: Which is interesting, in terms of scope. So, as a high end estimate, I think that we can put the population as somewhere around 100 million or so. That assumes that all the cities are roughly Luthadel sized when you include their surrounding lands (which is an obvious overestimation), but it seems to be the closest option. Ruin had to use five people per Koloss, which means he killed millions and millions for his army at the end of Hero of Ages. That's a few percent of the pre-collapse population... which I think is a reasonable ratio, especially considering the very low survival rate as the books went on. With generous assumptions, you could estimate that Ruin turned about a quarter of the remaining humans into Koloss. Anyone have any other quotes about this? Or suggestions for how to improve my estimate?

The thing is... increasing your mass *does* decrease impact depth. There's a nice diagram on that wikipedia page... but basically, when something like a bullet is penetrating another body, the momentum gets fully transferred after it displaces its own mass of the target. It's a very good approximation for bullets. So something seriously screwy is going on with this, and it's worth watching.

Anyone interested in homestuck liveblogs? Treestuck is a pretty hilarious one - she get super emotionally invested in the story, which makes her reactions really funny. Next update is supposed to be Cascade, which'll be fun.

Hmm... if you want an in universe justification, you could always say that your character had an identical twin that was reabsorbed in the womb. Allomantic powers are based on spiritual genetics instead of physical ones, which means they could have a different metal It's rare enough that it would be basically impossible to come up in setting - you need to be a chimera with different cell type in your stomach, with both siblings inheriting allomantic power. And you'd have to have the sibling get reabsorbed after the spirit web started forming. The reason that you ended up as tin/pewter is because it's the internal/external split of the same metal. Solid enough as a justification, I think. Sanderson also made a comment about hemalurgy having some effects upon inheritance, so you could say your father was a Steel Inquisitor... or something along those lines. Still the product of hemalurgy, but a generation removed.

I actually just dug up that quote a couple days ago... http://mistbornrpg.17thshard.com/topic/230-questions-for-brandon "If two people are identical twins, and one is a Mistborn, will the second be Mistborn?" " No. They could have different Spiritual DNA." "In the Cosmere, a person has three sets of genetic material. Biological DNA, Personality/Cognative self, Spiritual Soul. All are influenced by heritage and parents. All all are also influenced by the land you are born in. A Punnett square wouldn't cover it. Think of a 4-dimensional Punnett square." There's also that quote about aluminum feruchemy. It stores spiritual identity, and apparently could (somehow) be used to access someone else's metalminds. So it looks like the twins would have different spiritwebs, and it seems that whatever is used to determine metalmind ownership is spiritual in nature. So as far as I can tell, the twins wouldn't be able to do it. Of course, there's always the off chance that there's some (unknown) way for twins to share a spiritual identity. You could maybe pull it off with a good enough Forgery.

While it'd be extremely difficult to pull off, it's within the realm of theoretical possibility for a coppercloud guy to shield other peoples' emotions. I figure if it's that tenuous and still a stunt... Maybe you could train to *lower* the intensity of your coppercloud instead. Make it seem like the guys you're covering are unshielded but far away. Or *invert* it (somehow) so that you make the pulses louder instead of quieter. Or 'concentrate' the cloud, so that it only covers a few feet of radius, but makes you totally undetectable to bronze. Maybe if you work hard enough, you can counter the mist-piercing effects of tin within your bubble.

Thanks a lot, man. Hope the dinner goes well! Actually, I was wondering about something similar myself. Something like "Is hemalurgy limited to metals only, or could other Invested objects (like a wooden stake full of Breath) be used in some manner." EDIT: Heh... I just realized that Sanderson mentioned Returned are treated as vampires in some areas of the world. Stake through the heart! Mistwraiths are humans with a blockage between their cognitive and physical aspects. We also know that Lifeless have far more sapience than people give them credit for - enough to be a POV character (upcoming for nightblood). So... a question about what effect a kandra's blessings would have on a Lifeless, or what effect Breath would have if applied to a mistwraith? It would probably clarify how the Physical and Cognitive realms interact. Plus, hybrids are cool. Lifewraiths.