Phantom Monstrosity

You're assuming that relativity has any say in the matter. I seriously doubt that Brandon will be close to hard SF on this; if he *was*, then based on relativity any FTL drive would also be a time machine, and we'd need a *really* good explanation why there aren't a bunch of space tourists showing up in orbit during Elantris. As is, there's a lot of funky stuff going on with feruchemical weight - while you're altering the mass of the feruchemist, the momentum transfers aren't actually fully in line with your changed mass. (Let alone the secondary changes needed to prevent serious bloodflow issues).

It seems more that it's people who are super Devoted to something.

Brandon just scribbled 'and Hoid was there too' at the end, didn't he?

Well, Lensmen is a classic series. I suspect Howard would already have read it and/or bugged Brandon into reading it.

So I've recently been rereading Triplanetary. It's by Doc Smith, the guy you might know of as the inventor of Space Opera, and thus most modern science fiction as we know it. Now, Triplanetary is the prequel to the Lensmen series (which is a ton of silly fun, start with Galactic Patrol if you can find it - most of Smith' stuff is public domain now). It's a fast-paced, breathless novel, and pretty fun. It's also got some weird mistborn similarities. In this scene, the good guys in the Boise have recently reverse-engineered the alien power generation technology. Their ships basically take any ferric matter (iron or steel), and disintegrate it, converting into raw energy. Once their ships start burning iron and steel, they create lines of force directly towards or away from themselves, which they use to push and pull, and get into a shoving match - the outcome of which is decided by the quality of their anchors. Sound familiar? Okay, but that's just a coincidence. It's not like they have some sort of weird FTL that you could easily achieve via feruchem... Yeah, they have some kind of weird FTL that can be easily achieved via feruchemical technology. Well, provided you ignore relativity, which at the time was rather more cutting-edge (heck, Smith started writing in 1915). And hey, if there's spiritual gravity, there's no reason we can't have some sort of spiritual preferred frame of reference to make Einstein sad. (The test drive of triplanetary FTL boils down to 'hey, we're two lightyears away now. Phone home on the ultrawave, ask them if it's been two years. It hasn't? So much for relativity then, let's zoom around space some more'.) Oh, yeah, where was I.... right, actually explaining the 'Bergenholm' drive. It's pretty simple in principle. You reduce the inertia/mass of your ship practically to zero, and then fire your thrusters. Cruising speed is reached when the friction of interstellar dust particles against your ship is equal to your thrust. In practice, this means that the first prototype ship can zip through the whole galaxy in a couple months. So all you *really* need to do is set up an artificial ironmind, and have it store all the mass inside the ship. You perfectly duplicate a classic FTL engine. Isn't that easy? None of this mucking about with time bubbles and spacewhatsits. Just get in and blast off. But wait, you ask, was the secret to using this technological application of iron ALSO given to inhabitants of an isolated nation by a near-omniscient guy, as part of a plan to thwart an all-destroying evil? Yes. Yes it was.

Nah, she puts three stamps on the wall, and multiple stamps on the desk as well. Along with the billion-and-one stamps she uses for her essence marks, of course.

Just because it's unwieldy doesn't mean you can't use it, it just means you won't be nearly as good with it.

I admit it could be that she doesn't know enough about bloodsealing to plausibly change anything... though it's more probable that this is one of those 'you can only put in so much investiture' situations.

Unwieldy doesn't necessarily mean 'heavy' - after all, your moment of inertia has to be huge on something that long, even if it isn't very dense. I mean, yeah, they aren't weightless But they're so cutty they do feel really light in combat, which is what people are thinking of.

It wasn't to escape, just to pretty up the place.

It's a separate system, but Shai can't forge the bloodsealed door. On the other hand, you can definitely combine multiple seals for greater effect.

Red and Gold? Clearly Poke-men.

Then use Lines of Forbiddance to build a floating castle.

There's also your sense of time as well, but that seems fairly useless in comparison. But yeah storing your sense of itch = best feruchemical ability ever.

According to Brandon, people who study realmatic theory in universe conclude (for lack of an opportunity to experiment) that alloying atium and lerasium would either make you an atium misting or "create a substance so volatile that it would have world-ending repercussions". Note that excludes shards and splinters, who can (at least, to some extent) intuit that stuff.

Hardly experts. I doubt anyone would've guess that atium+lerasium = planet-threatening nuke.

Well, Kelsier had no idea who Hoid was at that point beyond 'a well heeled informant'.

Are they in the spiritual realm? All I could find about them was this

Is putting links to the youtube video/audio acceptable?

Also, Brandon told me in person that you could give Breath to a mistwraith.

Feruchemical Radar Okay, so tin feruchemy is supposed to enhance the 'five senses', but, well, people having five senses is a misconception, and you can also use tin to get rid of pain, which honestly isn't covered even under the 'five senses' model. So it's pretty obvious that the limit is an in-universe one owing to a lack of sensory research. Now, what can we do with that? Well, there are a lot of very faint senses both real and in-universe that would be really great to use if you could actually, you know, use them. And since they're so faint, there'd be very little consequence for tapping... though that also means that you'd have to charge for a long time or compound. Magnetoreception: Oddly enough, humans actually have this; it's just ridiculously weak. Being able to sense magnetic fields seems fairly useful in Mistborn - especially since we know that the Well of Ascension defines magnetic north, so clearly there's *something* going on with magnetism. Some people who can tell a live extension cord from a dead one in blind tests, so... sorta useful. Kinesthesia : Your awareness of your body's location in space. Enhanced by pewter burners, obviously. Becoming clumsy temporarily and more graceful later seems like a pretty good use to me. Other bits of proprioception are useful too, of course, including sense of balance. Lifesense isn't granted by Breath, just enhanced by it. So a tin compounder could end up with a *massive* life-dar range, and know the exact location, health, and age of every dude in Elendel. Handy! Related to that, the 'detect your awakened objects' sense, which would only be useful for someone with a lot of spikes, and whatever kids and animals use to detect a Divine Breath. Reserve-Sense. Hey, seeing those 'reserves' is a distinct sense as well. When storing, you'd have trouble detecting metalminds or metals, when tapping you'd... I guess be able to detect nearby allomantic or feruchemical metals? Get a real good look at the composition, and detect if someone else had feruchemically charged them (by looking for the feruchemical shadow).

That's in the official synopsis, too.

I'm pretty sure " That's not to say that they can't receive breaths though" implies you can *get* a breath.