Scriptorian

On a reread, I agree that the writer might be considering more pseudo-humane uses for it, but the feeling I got was that they're justifying it's use simply because Ruin isn't around to control people anymore. There's an argument to be made, I think, for reusing old spikes and such, but I think a lot of people will argue that stabbing someone with a railroad spike is a terrible means of execution.

I have a solution to our predicament, but it will require some quantities of atium, bronze, brass, and the lives of at least 5 individuals. We have to get hemalurgic spikes charged with the following: Allomantic bendalloy, Feruchemical bronze, Allomantic bronze, Feruchemical zinc, and Allomantic zinc, somehow get them into Sanderson, so that he can simultaneously burn Bandelloy, compound Wake-fullness, and Mental Speed. I estimate an increase of at least 900,000% in writing output over time. Problem solved. Any volunteers?

I'm definitely thinking Spook. It sounds like him, and he's had experience with Hemalurgy pre-Final Ascension, and it seems just within his character to try and become immortal. (I would just like to point out that whoever wrote it has some twisted moral logic. Just because using a power no longer places you under the whims of a malevolent force, doesn't mean that killing people to access it is okay.)

I kind of liked the idea that the spheres are soulcast, but I remember that Kaladin specifically noted that a certain sphere had air bubbles in it, and from what we've seen with soulcasting (at least my interpretation) it doesn't seem likely that some of the air was just left out of the transformation. On a side note, I think spheres as currency is a really cool idea, because it's all based on the gems soulcasting properties. The value of a gem is based on both its size and usefulness in soulcasting, creating a natural currency stabilizer, since I assume it takes a relatively set amount of stormlight to soulcast so much matter. A person can say "I know a gem is worth x much, because it can potentialy create y amount of bread". While there would be some fluctuation for commodities not able to be soulcast, the economy is set on something even more concrete than a gold-standard.

Evil Librarian, began

Hmmm...at this point I just want to read the next mistborn trilogy...

Okay, I see what you mean. I think the difference is that a Misting has the power to burn a certain metal. That metal, when burned, filters the power of preservation to create an effect based on the metal. This effect is not something inherent to the allomancer, the ability to burn the metal is. I think Compounding works when the feruchemical charge in the metal acts like a filter on the incoming preservation-investure, so they energy is relased as the feruchemical attribute instead of the normal effect. So assuming I've interpreted this right, allomacers can't "burn two things", they can burn one metal, and that metal filters the power of preservation in different ways. Now, you could argue that since all of this is inherent in the metal, then a ferring of that metal should be able to store whatever "thing" is associated with that metal, like allomantic power. But I would argue that a metals feruchemical and allomantic properties are not so accessible by the other systems means of access (tapping and burning respectively), otherwise an allomancer could burn a metal for the feruchemical effect without having to store anything first. This would also hypothetically mean that you could access a metal's Hemallurgic properties freely. I hope this makes sense. Granted, we don't know if allomancy and fercuchemy actually work this way, with the powers being inherent to the metal and not the individual. In any case, it feels like we would have heard if it was as simple as storing allomantic power as an attribute in its corresponding metal.

Pretty much the only evidence we have is we haven't seen any Twinborn try it, but it would mean that Ferrings can actually store two things, their metal's attribute and corresponding allomantic power, and I don't think there's any precedence for a power in one system being directly related to a power in another system. The only thing I can think of is that Feruchemy was broken up by the introduction of allomantic genes, so I guess it's possible that the two powers are tied together now. Either way we're just guessing . I think I heard somewhere that it is theoretically possible to burn a Hemalurgic spike the same way you can Compound a metalmind, but the problem was that you'd be "locked out" of the spike's power unless you've been spiked with it, the same way you can't compound someone else's metalmind. Having a hemalurgic spike in your stomach sounds painful to me. (It's possible I completely made this up, since I have no idea where I would've read it, but it makes sense to me). In any case, it's clear you've thought about this quite a bit. You explained Compounding, as we know it, very well, and came up with some decent extrapolations.

Serendipity!!! Umm, Spontaneity, Deception...Bad Hair Days...

I really like the idea of a "good" Thrill, this passage immediately came to mind when I read the OP: Also, for the sake of conversation, how about calling it "the Drive"?

"Rutabaga".

"Where isn't he?"

I'm pretty sure lashings work by directly altering the way gravity affects something, so a feruchemist couldn't tap iron to resist the lashing, but tapping weight doesn't really make one fall faster, they would just hit the ceiling harder. If the mass of an object affects how much stormlight it takes to lash it (i don't remember for certain if it does...), then perhaps a iron ferring could simply tap enough weight such that the surgebinder doesn't have enough stormlight to lash him.

Because we've established that the Lord Ruler could beat almost anyone, and Vin beat the Lord Ruler !

My posts attract ninjas!

the Cognitive Realm

Thanks Windrunner.

Thanks for that. Now that I think about it, it's kind of obvious. Gold is hybrid metal, supposedly affecting all three realms, so there's no reason why it couldn't heal a shardblade wound.

I am the real-life shardholder of Serendipity. I'm on these forms to discover how much you puny mortals know of the Cosmere . Serendipty04 was my Eve user name, but I only played the game for like a week. I actually decided I liked the word when I was reciting the Jedi Code and accidentally said 'There is no passion, there is serendipity." After I got Cosmere-savey, I decided that it would make a cool Intent for a Shard. Did you know that its one of the ten hardest words to translate from English? My given name actually comes from a dream my father had, and it's a biblical name so it does mean something.

Yes this about shardblades, but it's pretty heavy in realmantic theory and it relates to Mistborn, so I'm putting it in Cosmere theories. Before discussing my main theory, I want to take about the mechanics of shardblades. I don't know if this has been discussed else where, but for the sake of clarity, here's the idea that I've based the rest if my theory on. Shardblades cut things by affecting them in the Spiritual Realm. Essentially, it is just a really sharp blade in the Spiritual Realm that can cut most things also in that realm. So, when a shardbearer slices a rock in the Physical Realm, in the Spiritual the shardblade cuts the rocks spiritual essence in half, which, by realmantic voodoo, means the rocks physical aspect is seamlessly cut in two. With living things, its a bit more complecated. Basically if you cut someones arm with a shardblade, their spiritual arm is severed, resulting in the physical essentially dying. When someone is cut in a vital area (i.e. spine or face) their spiritual aspect stops working, so their physical body dies. (As a tangent, this would mean most forms of healing Investiture could not heal shardblade wounds, since, as I understand it, healing magic works by restoring the body to its ideal state. i.e. its spiritual aspect. Since the spiritual aspect is armless, tapping gold, if anything, would make your physical arms fall off). Things like shardplate (and hypothetically other invested items) are resistant because of the weird investiture-interference principle. That was longer than I thought it would be...Anyway, the main idea that I wanted to bring up is that if shardblades function essentially as I described above, then could you possibly use a sharblade to preform sort of spiritual surgery similar to Hemalurgy? Basically you would stab someone at a bindpoint and the shardblade severs whatever spiritual essence is there that Hemalurgy would steal. Hypothtically, if you hit just the bindpoint precisly enough, you would leave the person more or less intact. Since Hemalurgy is universal, it stands to reason that anything that can affect things spiritualy should be able to preform a similar function. Although, it wouldn't really be considered Hemalurgy because you can't steal anything, but say you wanted to non-lethally stop a Mistborn, you just slice out his Mistborn-sDNA, leaving him alive but without any powers. Whether this is feasible is another matter. For instance, you'd probably wan't a shardscalpel or something to get the precision needed to hit the bindpoints. This probably isn't something you could do with a normal, giant-sized shardblade, but I thought it sounded cool. Any thoughts on either half of this theory? Edit: Hmm...I misspelled 'shardblades' in the tags. Any idea how to fix that?

Nice theory. I've though a bit about this myself, but the only real conclusion I've come to is that rocks are important some how. I do find it interesting that parshendi/parshmen lay their dead on stone, and Szeth says that (as long as he follows his oaths) his body will be given to the stones after his death. Connection? Eh, I doubt it. The ecology and geography of the world is so centered around hightstorms, it would have taken major shard-meddling to adjust the life-forms to be able to survive highstorms suddenly appearing. At the very least, I doubt there was a time without highstorms when humans lived on Roshar.

I'm just saying, he goes through the trouble to track down these random people who happen to be surgebinders, but ignores the guy who's actually brutally slaughtering people. Would it really be that much trouble to actually do some good? Maybe there's some stupid legal thing that, in Shadow's mind, says that Szeth isn't actually guilty for his crimes. I guess I don't really expect a good reason, but I think this highlights something strange about his motivations. It has to be something more than just that it would be too much trouble to hunt Szeth.

On Shadow/Nalan, if he is out trying to stop surgebinders for whatever reason, then why the heck isn't he going after Szeth?

Ah, but we know Denth has a wonderful sense of humor, so is he a viable option ?

Sell, as funny as that would be, she shows up in one of the photos. Presumably none of his other aspects can be photographed. We will see the results of a chasmfiend pupating in Words of Radiance.