Kadrok

Nicely summarised! I'm thinking... Nicrosil Feruchemy... the MAG (not an ideal source, but the only one we have) tells us that someone could draw on the mists and convert it Nicrosil stored Investiture (a tap-able but unshaped Temporary Investiture). Perhaps there is a way to rig up a spike charged with Feru-Nicrosil (and connected somehow to a Nicrosilmind) to use as a "solar panel"? A source which powers the Metallic Arts Machine, and recharges while the mists are out...

Fair enough. My understanding was that the well was rejecting only her earring, but she assumed the well was rejecting all metal because she didn't know at that point that her earring was a Hemalurgic spike, and thus didn't have a reason to distinguish it from her other metals.

I like your thinking Argent. Upvote. However, if I may... Can I suggest "disperse" instead of "burn away"? After all, Leras and Ati both left bodies, as did Vin as I recall... so the bodies exist somewhere, or are in some state, when you're using the power (I imagine Rashek and the well are an exception given he never really held the shard on his own, he was more "lent" the power, and further Rashek was able to edit his body while using the power. I digress). BRAINWAVE! Perhaps the bodies of Shardholders (not to be confused with Shardbearers) exist in a state similar to Heralds and Shardblades while they're using the power... something physical stored in Shadesmar (or where ever...)

I see no reason why they can't snap into Allomancers given that Alendi was a Seeker, though Mistborn would be unheard of. Here's a WoB:

Perhaps the plot of a future Mistborn book is a war between the north and the newly discovered south, with Marsh's book being the key to turning the tide, allowing Wax or whoever to figure out the south's strange Hemalurgic technology.

Let's call collecting magic the hobby Hoid pursues when he has time between pursuing his real goals... like if James Bond was addicted to Magic the Gathering. It's a really good theory! If it ever gets knocked down, so much of my thinking and theorizing about the Cosmere goes with it.

This post will contain spoilers for 'Shattered State', the MAG game I am narrating. So if tec or anyone else is online, please do not read this, or any responses to my response. Claincy, you can feel free, just don't tell them anything. To be honest, I would assume that the Southerners were placed underground. My key clue was that Brandon said they survived when the sun was moved to their side of the planet... that led me to thinking they were placed in a subterranean cavern, along with a food source which could be grown underground (similar to Kandra food). (Basically, while the North languishes under Rashek, the South gets a thousand years of Minecraft). As for the mechanical way of using the Metallic Arts... we know that Hemalurgy was part of the pre-Empire culture, and everything you're saying about charging an object with Allomantic or Feruchemic power puts me in mind of spikes. Perhaps the key is to give machines a way of interfacing with spikes? It would certainly solve the "influenced by Ruin" problems of Hemalurgy... do machines have souls or minds? I'm thinking the "mechanical" use of the Metallic Arts could be... "safe" Hemalurgy. Mistfabrials as Hemalurgic spikes would certainly be consistent with your reasoning that it would be easily explained, and fit with what we know.

This has been talked about before, with Peter putting it down to handwavium I believe. Let me just find the link... EDIT: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/233-redshift/?p=3277 There you go.

Shardplate and a gun. Brings back all sorts of Fallout 1 feelings. Unfortunately it would mean I would have to have access to a world with guns on it (or be a visionary polymath) both of which are unlikely. Without a gun, I'd be more inclined towards a Shardblade, since Shardplate is less convenient.

That is a fair point, although his response "the answer to your question is it can be done" leads me to think that it is a physical spike, given just how much the word spike appears in the question: "Q: Could a Nalthian with the proper knowledge and skill create a hemalurgic spike by spiking a Rosharan having some spikeable attribute?" I think he would have needed to have worded his answer more complicatedly to avoid agreeing it is a spike of some sort. But really I'm splitting hairs. We are in almost perfect agreement.

Darn it, I missed seeing it!

Yeah, as I said it is reaching a bit. Woah, where is this from? I don't remember Demoux having a girlfriend (as some of my posts might suggest). Is this a forgotten passage of HoA?

Same way Hoid and Demoux have outlived their natural lifespans... we'llfindoutium.

That is fair enough. Copper does seem a... suggestive... choice from a narrative perspective, though I admit I am shamelessly reaching here. Yes she is. But if she's pre-LR-Ascension, she's been around a fair while. What is decades to an immortal? Time to study something in depth, like the nature of Returned.

What if (and I realise this is reaching a bit) the Terris-Woman is Inhanna? pg 161 Being a Priestess seems like a good fit for a Terris. And is Copper really so valuable that they'd care? Why bring it up, unless you subconsciously apply a higher value to copper than the average person (say... because you're connected to the Terris culture). She's a bit more... aggressive than the Terris we've encountered before, but that could fit with her being a pre-Empire (and therefore pre-breeding program) Terris who has insinuated herself into the priesthood to learn more about Nalthis. From a narrative perspective... why bother naming her? She is named once (here) and then the name is never mentioned again, although she is: pg 365 If Inhanna is our mark, I can see her as having ulterior motives for wanting the tunnels connected. I don't have time today to further follow up this possibility, so I leave it to you guys.

I have a thought. Perhaps Terris-Janeway is in the printed edition of Warbreaker, but not the free online one which is likely more prevalent (and easier to search by keywords). That would actually be a brilliant way to hide something... have a free release of a work, and a printed one, and hide a sentence or phrase in the printed one that is not in the free one, and isn't obviously significant. If that is a tactic Brandon has deployed, I suppose the quickest way to find her would be to compare the two versions of Warbreaker... which would probably take even more effort than just our random searching.

Literally laughed out loud.

Wait wait wait... are you telling me there is a place where even more cosmere literary analysis is happening?! Because I feel left out whenever these geniuses start churning out formula and physics, but I poop literary analysis for breakfast! (Wow. Mixed metaphors there... but... it kind of works). Where is this magical utopia?!

Huzzah! My author sense (or perhaps wishful thinking) is telling me that she is not Demoux's girlfriend (though I will be massively shut down if that is mentioned in the transcript). Why? I think we need female character exploring the galaxy without having to rely on the powers of others, and without necessarily having the girlfriend/wife connection which would risk defining her in connection to her male counterpart. I personally hope the Terriswoman is a Janeway-like Galactic explorer whose attachments are comparable to those of Hoid. So yes, I suppose it is wishful thinking, but Brandon has shown himself capable of writing good female characters (in my opinion) and perhaps he too would see making the Terriswoman Demoux's girlfriend as potentially reductive (this is not to say that it would be terrible if she was, I'm just interested in the narrative possibilities of her not being someone's squeeze... that sounds more aggressive than I want it to, but I can't think of any other way to say it). Your words imply that the problems with her being a Feruchemist are temporally localized, which I agree with, and I am inclined to think, therefore, that she is from earlier in Scadrial's history when full-Feruchemists were still prevalent. Afterall, Demoux and Hoid are both kicking centuries after they should have been dead, and I therefore see no reason why Terris-Janeway (as I will hereafter refer to her) couldn't have also (I am sure you agree with me on this, based on your post, I just want to make the idea explicit). For all we know, she could be the last Worldbringer, and that would be awesome! True, but for the above reasons I think (read: "would prefer"... wishful thinking again) her to be able to personally do so. EDIT: I should probably explain the link rather than just slipping it in there. Basically the idea is that one of the great things about Voyager is that it presents a female character in a strong role without making a big deal about her being a female character. It doesn't ignore her femaleness, but nor does it make it the issue. For me the key bit of the article is: "Janeway is a strong female character to rock all strong female characters: A leader who is female-gendered, in touch with her sense of gender, and yet invested with a non-gendered position of highest responsibility which she executes with capability and compassion... This is why I think Voyager is fantastic, and why I think Janeway is an amazing character; because the show chooses to deal with the question of a female captain by not making it a question." Personally I love Janeway as a character because she is so... distinct. She has her own style which I don't always agree with, but which works for her and the situation. I agree with the author that that can be rare for a female character in fiction. As I mentioned, I am not suggesting that Brandon is guilty of writing poor female characters, quite the opposite, which is why I secretly hope he develops this Terriswoman (oooh, or gives her a book!). EDIT: Wow. This post was not meant to be this long. I apologise for the essays I am flooding the board with everyone.

I AM SO EXCITED BY THIS! Is there a transcript for that signing by any chance? Also, should be take this to mean that Feruchemy contains one of the Shadesmar keys (given that every world has a way of accessing it, but not every system)?

I disagree with the idea that the focus would change. I suspect the focus would have been set at the formation of the system on whatever world and wouldn't change if the user became a worldhopper and jumped world (which is to say I think the world on which the system emerged was more important to the rules of that system than whatever world the user happens to be standing on at the time of use). I have a few reasons for this which can be grouped under several themes: 1. Narrative Complications: It can be easy to forget that we are reading a narrative, and that the formation of the worlds we visit in our imaginations are fixed somewhat by the capabilities and interests of the author. My point is that having focuses jump depending on what world the user is visiting creates a lot of work for very little payoff, in that Brandon would have to determine, say, the keys to each of Allomancy's 16 natural powers if he wants to do a crossover, and so forth. There is very little gain, and a lot of work to creating several redundant versions of each magic system for each world. You could argue that he only needs to make the systems he is going to show on "stage", but come on... he knows us, and he knows how badly we'd crave knowing every little quirk of the systems with an Obsessive Compulsive fervor. For these reasons, I can see him taking the focus as fixed based on the world it emerged on, rather than the world the user is on. 2. System Complications: Let me plot out a scenario... A Scadrian Feruchemist becomes a worldhopper, and jumps over to Roshar. Do his metalminds suddenly stop working because the focus changes? If that is the case, does Hoid (being a Worldhopping Feruchemist) have a really rubbish time jumping from world to world because he has to keep switching minds? What about when FTL space travel comes into play (which, on Scadrial at least, is said to involve the magic systems)? So the ship travels from Scadrial to Roshar... how far out from Scadrial and close to Roshar does the Feruchemy/Allomancy stop powering the ship? Is there an overlap where both the Scadrian Metallic Arts, and the Hypothetical Rosharan Metallic Arts function, or a dead zone in which neither of them function? These kinds of issues could be solved, I guess, but they seem like needless, and frankly unintuitive complications. 3. The Universality of Spiking: If Hemalurgy continues to use the Scadrian focus, why would the other systems (or even just the other metallic arts) continue to use their focuses? There are two counter arguments which keeps this point from being ironclad, which I shall now acknowledge: a) firstly, you could argue that Hemalurgy keeps its focus because it is designed to be universal. I would argue that its universality is based on it needing only knowledge, not an innate investiture, and not through some magical undefined trait inherent in it which lets it break all the rules. Yes it's a surprise that it doesn't require an innate investiture but now that we know that it makes sense for it to be universal, and this gives no reasonable account of why it would keep its focus and the others shift. b ) secondly, you could argue that Hemalurgy doesn't keep its focus and that the spikes Brandon describes are made of Aons or commands or whatever on different worlds. The issue of whether focuses change or not is of course the entire matter I am arguing and it would thus be circular to simultaneously use this point as evidence for my claim, and the claim it is supporting as evidence for it. Thus if you feel that the focus of Hemalurgy changes from world to world feel free to disregard point three. However, let me point out some strangeness which arises from that position: Brandon said spike. How does one spike with a focus like "commands" except very metaphorically? 4. As you have noted Brandon has said that using the systems on different worlds is possible, though some would be harder than others, with him singling out the Metallic Arts as the easiest: IF the focuses remain the same from world to world, as I suppose they do, it makes perfect sense that Scadrial's systems would be easiest to carry over. An Allomancer or Feruchemist traveling to another world needs only metal to use their system (and I imagine metals are on most worlds) which is far easier than, say, a Surgebinder needing to establish a supply line to bring him Stormlight, or the mentioned recalibration of region Sel's magics would require. In contrast, suppose they shifted. Suddenly Scadrial's magics become really difficult to transfer, as the Allomancer on Nalthis needs to figure out which commands to ... "burn"? Or would they consume colours? Like my previous point, there is wiggle room for argument here, but my reading of this quote suggests to me that Scadrial's systems are easiest to transfer because of the universality of metals compared to things like Stormlight. For the above reasons, I am of the school of thought that the systems of the various worlds obey the same general rules on other worlds as they do on their own, with nothing so exciting as a change of focus, and that any changes made to the systems from world to world are intuitively tied to the systems as they are on their core worlds (changes like the region based magics of Sel needing to accommodate a change in region, or a "distance workaround"). EDIT: Claincy responded while I was writing that mammoth post. This is something we've disagreed on before. I had considered the possibility of an Allomancer born on Roshar using Stormlight or whatever, and I suppose it is possible. Never-the-less, I stand by my argument that, say, a Worldhopping Feruchemist would still be using metal on Roshar. EDIT 2: I seem to have a love for unnecessary commas. This makes me afraid for my thesis.

Thanks Shardlet! I was surprised by the universality of Hemalurgy. Very surprised. I guess "the seeds of the metallic arts" only applies to Feruchemy and Allomancy. Also, like Kurk I will now pat myself on the back! Well... sort of... I guess I'll give myself a partial pat on the back since I was only half right: So... yeah... applying a bemused half pat...

Honour and Odium are opposites? That doesn't seem right. As for the rest... the Adonalsium is in spren form, on Roshar, which I imagine shapes it along Surgebinding lines...

I did not know this. Would you be so kind as to link to all of this information so I can read it and salivate over the magical potential of these beings? Also, I wonder what would happen if one bonded an Adonalsium spren... would you become a Surgebinder with access to every surge (like, a... Surgeborn... I guess, although with a much better name, obviously)? Or would the link grant you every manifestation of investiture in the Cosmere?

I would just like to say that I am intrigued by these ideas (that Yolen became Roshar, or that Don shattered at Roshar) and will be keeping them at the back of my mind. Good work!