LiquidBlue

I was thinking about the passage where Hoid references the element, and if it was the bead, it seemed to indicate that it was intact. This lead me down this path. Thanks for the WoBs.

Hoid is not an Allomancer. Okay... maybe he is, but I want to suggest and alternate interpretation of the evidence. In one of the Shallan flashbacks, Hoid seems to be using allomancy. Given that he once obtained a bead of lerasium, it seems logical to assume that he used the bead to become a mistborn. However, he doesn't need the bead to be able to use allomancy. We know that he has been introduced to the southern scandrialian's metal arts medallions. He could very easily be using one of these medallions when he used the allomancy seen in the book. Further, there is some evidence from his letter that the bead may still be intact. So I suggest he didn't use the bead to become a mistborn, but that he still has it (probably implanted under his skin). Perhaps he is even using it a a feruchemical metalmind.

So it seems pretty clear now that at least one way that Feruchemical nicrosil works is very similar to storing other attributes such as strength or senses. I.e. weakness now for strength latter. Other then just having that attribute available in greater abundance latter, it is possible to quickly dump the charge for even greater super-powered attributes. Any full feruchemist, who knows about nicrosil, should be able to go through periods of being a "weak" in order to have the option of being a "strong" or super-powerful feruchemist latter. The means that if the idea of a feruchemist being weaker or stronger than another makes sense, any full feruchemist, regardless of feruchemical power, should be able to use a nicrosilmind to temporarily obtain any level of feruchemical strength. We have already seen the characters with different levels of allomantic power, and I am curious to find out what a powerful feruchemist looks like.

If a Forger has access to Breath could they make their essence marks permanent? Could a Feruchemist with access to Breath use a nicrosil mind to increase the number of breaths they have?

Does the Divine Breath of the Returned have an intent? If so: Does the intent change the returned over time? Are the names given to the Returned somehow divined from the intent?

I have a couple of questions about Aluminum and Allomantic Shadows. Do aluminum objects show up in atium shadows? Can aluminum obscure an atium shadow? If allomancer burning gold were to wear an aluminum gauntlet would they still be able to touch their shadow?

Or Khriss works for the AAA. (Is it confirmed that there is a single Ars Arcanum Author?)

Going back to the original question, If a person bonded with two spren, I do not believe that the spren would or really could fuse into a single spren. Even when a person is bonded to a spren, the person and the spren are separate beings. Preservation and Sazed are not separate beings, so neither are Preservation, Ruin, and Sazed. That being said, I believe that there is a way to fuse splinters back together, but I don't think that it is as simple as having both bonded to the same person.

What does Nightblood look like from Shadesmar?

Depending on the Realmatics involved, if this was possible it might actually be useful. The presence of the breath might be enough to inhibit hemalurgical decay just as placing it in a body does.

Thanks for curtailing my eagerness. I think I misread the quote a little, and misremembered how hemalurgy handles traits. I read it to mean that you could use it like a destructive form of feruchemy. That is you steal a certain amount of strength or speed from another person, then when you spike yourself you have a certain amount of that attribute available to use as a feruchemist would. Reviewing the Ars Arcanum however reminds me that it doesn't really seem to steal a quantity of an attribute like a feruchemist would store, but rather the capacity to produce that attribute. This actually enhances my thoughts as to why the Lord Ruler would need hemalurgy for his immortality. It is likely that atium feruchemy doesn't store something like vitality, but something more metaphysical like lifetime potential. Allomatically burning that charge doesn't extend that potential, but maybe intensifies it. So in order to have an extended potential you need to steal it from somebody else. Allomancy in this case is useful to makeup for some of the hemalurgical decay. We only saw massive morphological changes in the case of the kholoss, but this may be a special case. Strength is a little unique among the feruchemical powers in that it causes a morphological change in the feruchemist. The Kholoss also have the additional whammy of having 4 identical spikes. Of course if you are stealing the capacity for something, stealing fortune is more useful. And even though you aren't like Miles, at least to get the hemalurgical benefits of health you don't need to continue stealing it from others, and of course investiture is always intriguing. What if your stole weight from someone and they survived, would they then have permanently reduced weigh?

This makes sense, but the implications are enormous. I knew about the Kandra blessings and the Kholoss spikes, and that they didn't grant access to one one of the magic systems, but transferred other attributes, but I guess I didn't consider the implications. Hemalugy allows someone to steal the youth from somebody and give it to another. I think that there is a WoB that Lord Ruler's immortality involved Hemalurgy, but I also just thought this was a misspeak since the ability to allomatically burn feruchemically charged atium seems like it should be enough to maintain constant youth. But this feruchemical charge is still not well explained, and perhaps this trick still wouldn't allow a person to live beyond their natural life span, you also need to add in the Hemalurgy to steal the lifespans of others. Stealing another's fortune is an interesting idea, but I doubt that any individual person has much luck at a time, and the fact that they are being spiked probably means that their luck has run out. Gold is another scary one. Using it to steal another's heath. You can definitely see the temptation to abuse hemalurgy. In general the hemalurgist is still going to want to go after access to other magic systems, but even in the absence of such people to spike, the hemalurgist still has powerful motivations to steal from other people.

What do cognitive changes look like from the perspective of Shadesmar? For example, what does the process of a log burning into ash, smoke and flame look like from within Shadesmar? Or what does splitting a log into firewood? Can changing cognitive attributes create hazardous conditions in Shadesmar?

I think your assumption that you will be safe in shadesmar is unfounded. Shadesmar is made up of the cognitive aspects of the physical realm. Setting off a nuclear explosion is definately going to cause drastic changes in the cognitive aspects of all of the objects in quite a large area.

Is there such a thing a Kandra-blooded? If so, does Wayne have a Kandra ancestor?

There is no evidence that Wayne has any physical malleability, and I do not suggest that he has it. However, I do not believe that the Kandra's aptitude at imitation was strictly a physical one. Just like they have the ability to shape their bodies, I think that it makes sense that they can shape their minds as well. In the Shadows of Self excerpt Wayne seems to be shaping his mind to an extent and facility that seems to suggest something is going on beyond him being a very good actor. Further, since the Kholoss, who formally could not interbreed with humans, now can, it seems reasonable that the Kandra were given the same option.

So I just discovered the Shadows of Self excerpt on Brandon's website. After reading it I was struck by the ability that Wayne has to immerse himself in a role. From the description it seemed to go beyond just acting. It seemed to be some additional power. Then I remembered the Kholoss-blooded and I wondered if Wayne might be a Kandra-blooded. That is, he has a Kandra in his ancestor y and has inherited some of their skill at imitation. This has been brought up before (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/7399-wayne/?hl=%2Bwayne+%2Bkandra), but that discussion quickly turned from the possibility of a Kandra ancestor to a discussion about whether he was a full feruchemist.

I hope this topic can focus specifically on speculation about interacting magical systems. The topic should be general enough to allow meandering thoughts. Let me kick off with a few quick theories: A forger can create essence marks that can change a misting or ferring into a full mistborn or feruchemist: The idea here is that the cognitive realm can influence the spiritual realm just as it can change the physical. All current mistings and ferrings are descendants of full mistborn or feruchemists. The forger creates an essence mark that changes their history so that the power was passed in full rather simply in part. I imagine that the essence mark would be more involved the more generations that separate the individual from their mistborn or feruchemist ancestor. Bonus: A twinborn can have an essence mark created that grants them both full mistborn and feruchemist powers. Scary. An Individual with a bonded Seon on Roshar can manifest effects based on the Seon's Aon: Seons and spren are very similar in nature and form a similar bond to humans. The idea is that they are similar enough that the Seon bond would allow a human to absorb stormlight just as the Nahel bond does. A necessary supporting theory is that the region locking of Aons is due the process that the Dor is brought forth; however, the shaping of the investiture is independent of region, thus investiture fed directly to an Aon would cause a region independent effect. So an individual full of stormlight could feed it through the Aon in their Seon in order to create effects.

I know that I've seen that WoB before or something like that, so I was a bit hesitant to post my speculation. The problem is that to me it just seems more natural that Feruchemy is an art purely of Preservation while Allomancy is of both. I guess the wiggle room that I have is that the quote you provided says that Preservation is more likely to power Allomancy, and Ruin is more likely to power Hemalurgy. This might be different than who made the system.

That makes a lot of sense. If Allomancy is a collection of 16 (or 50) seperate powers, there should be no reason that person could not be born with multiple different abilities. But if instead Allomancy is a single power that when weakened or corroupted only allows access to a single power, it makes alot more sense. So instead of it being a fast rule that you can only get one power off a mistborn, it is the case that lack of skill and knowledge, and the inherent hemolgical decay means that the transfered mistborn power is not of sufficient fidelity to provide full mistborn abilities. Eli responded to me in the Questions for Brandon topic, that there already is a WoB that lerasium-alloy would change the power of a misting, not grant it an additional power. This goes towards the idea that Allomancy is a singular power that when weakened or corrupted only grants a single ability. This means that there is a true difference between an actual mistborn and someone who has received hemalogical spikes that grant all of the allomatic powers. I think that this points towards Feruchemy being a magic system purely of preservation. My justification is first its end-neutral natural and the ability to store (preserve) attributes seem entirely aligned with preservation. Further, before the ascension, feruchemy was always passed down without weakening or being corrupted. It was only when preservation and ruin were combined that ferrings started to appear. That is a ferring just has a corrupted version of the full ferchumist power, which corruption is now happening because the shards are joined. *I guess this means that Allomancy would be some combination of both preservation and ruin. ******* I think that I will try to turn back to the original topic. I think that a mistborn could directly power surges granted from a nahel-bond. Due to its imperfect nature a misting would not be able to power such surges. A mistborn may have difficulty drawing enough investiture to power the surges. A surge-binder with breath may directly power surges. The nature of breath may lead to slightly different results such as permant lashing or more life like illusions. (I think that a breath powered illusion of the person is like to be much more human.) Using Dor to power surges seems hard. I think easiest system to adapt would be ChaySan since it seems to be used to fill the users body with Dor.

I think that there is some seperation between the ability to draw investiture and the ability to use metals in order to shape it for a purpose. One model for mistborn and mistings is that mistborn have a general ability to draw investiture and push it through their various metals, while a misting has an ability to draw investiture that is only compatible with a single metal (or something sufficiently close, such a feruchemically charged metal.) Another model that still makes use of the disconnect between the ability to draw investure then use a metal to shape it for a purpose is that both mistborn and mistings have some general ability to draw investiture, mistborn then can use any metal to shape it, while a misting can only access a single metal. There is a difference between the two models. If it is true that a nahel-bonded allomancer can use their ability to draw investiture to power surges, then in the first model only a mistborn can use their ability to directly power surges. In the second model both a mistborn and a misting can power the granted surges. I wonder, though, if I understand Mistborn and mistings correctly. Mistborn seem to be able to use many types of metals (16 base metals and alloys, 2 god metals, 16 Laresium alloys, 16 Atium alloys, more?), plus Feruchemically charged metals to create a wide variety of effects, potentially the vast majority of which are not known. A misting seems to be only able to use a single metal and it feruchemically charged conjugate. Why? Why aren't there people that naturally have multiple abilities, but not the full set. And interestingly, why does hemalurgy only steal a single ability? Did the steel inquisitors sometimes make a mistake with the spiking and instead of the ability they wanted, they made a spike that allowed a person to burn the Laresium-pewter alloy? (In which case they thought that they had just failed.)

Lyatil doesn't seem to fit a Kandra. I think that the mask is related to some magic system. Either one of the Rosharian systems as yet unseen, or from a planet that hasn't been seen yet. If the ghostbloods really are involved with world hoppers, I would peg her as from an unseen planet. I mean, given all of the shards and planets out there, why should all of the world hoppers only come from known planets.

If a misting were to ingest a Lerasium alloy that corresponded to a different allomatic art, would they be able to use both their original power as well as the new one, or would the new power replace their original misting power?

I think that a mistborn having a single link to preservation, and a misting having an imperfect or deformed link makes a lot of sense. Some how this seems related to the allomatic use of Lerasium. I don't think that that using Lerasium to gain allomatic powers means burning it in the allomatic sense. Rather some how the body is able to process Lerasium or Lerasium alloy in order augment an individuals sDNA. Isn't there a WoB that states that there is an actual allomatic use for Lerasium? If the filter model is correct, then a simple question for Brandon would clarify if there are multiple filters or a single filter: "If a misting were to ingest a Lerasium alloy corresponding to a different power, would they gain the new allomatic power in addition to their previous power, or would their misting power be replaced by the new one?" If the single filter model is correct, than it suggests that it might be possible that a mistborn could directly power surges made available by a Nahel bond. Surges seem to be much more investiture heavy than the allomatic arts, so perhaps only a terribly powerful mistborn would be able to effectively do so.

I really don't know what to think of shardpools or their use to world hop. When I read that it was hard to travel to/from Sel, I immediately thought that it was due to the Dor. In the book it is described as being under pressure, and when allowed an outlet it rushes through. To my mind, this means that the cognitive realm in the vicinity of Sel is flooded by Dor making travel both difficult and dangerous.