Bean

Darnam, you believe that lerasium, the power of preservation itself, destroys part of your spiritweb then replaces it. I can see why you are saying that. Your CD analogy is well thought out and reasonable. I understand that you feel that there doesn't need to be a gain in burning lerasium. I disagree. Here is why: 1) The Intent of the power of preservation itself would, I think, prevent this from happening. This seems weak I know, but in overwriting it destroys part of your spiritweb then replaces it. 2) You state that the reason there might not be net gain is that part of the power is used to over write other power. Even ignoring intent, why would preservation's power get rid of preservation's power? It doesn't seem reasonable. 3) Probably the greatest reason, Brandon Sanderson is the one who makes the rules and I don't think he would nerf lerasium. He built it up to this amazing substance, then made it so rare that can't become overpowered. No way he would nerf it. In short I appreciate the reasoned arguments you've made, while completely disagreeing with every one.

Possibly shardlet. The reason I am not of that school of thought is that Lerasium is in fact part of preservation. therefore everytime you consume lerasium you gain more preservation. So if the second alloy overwrites the first completely with no power increase, did you not gain more of preservations power? We have WoB that becoming a Lerasium Savant is essentially ascension. To me this means that with every bit of preservation you consume your spiritweb is more and more attuned to that power and you get stronger.

In the mistborn books it is explicitly stated (though sometimes that doesn't mean as much as you would think) that an allomancer (without hemalurgy) can be able to burn 1 metal, or all of them. While they may be wrong i'm inclined to believe them for the most part on this point. It seems unlikely that after 1300 years, if a person could be born and be able to burn EXACTLY 2 metal, nobody would have been. But that only addresses the issue of genetically acquired allomancy. Lerasium can be alloyed with metals then used to create mistings. If someone consumed lerasium/iron then lerasium/steel I see no reason they shouldn't be able to burn both metals. Brandon has said (I think) that you don't technically burn lerasium and that anyone can use it. Wild Conjecture Time!!! If true, this might be useful. If one bead of lerasium is enough preservation to grant all allomantic powers in one go, it makes sense that it might be possible with the same amount of lerasium to grant all allomantic powers one at a time. You just make 16 lerasium alloys and take them then you are a mistborn. BAM. Wait a second... Why did I want to be able to burn aluminum? I don't want that. Cadmium? It could be ok, but I would rather make my friend here a thug to watch my back. In short since you may not really want all of the powers pick and choose, then by some friends with allomancy. It worked for the lord ruler. Magic system hacked. Of course since Hoid has the last remaining bead there currently is and Sazed seems unlikely to cough any up it's more or less a moot point. It's interesting sometimes to think of how we might have been lied to by these books. how much of what they tell us is correct and how much is misconceptions held in world?

So Brandon has said that Ruin can fuel powers that have been granted via Hemalurgy. I'm pretty sure he was referring just to the metallic arts, but since we know that other powers could be taken could ruin fuel those? Probably not, but it bears thinking on. To what extent is one shard limited when it comes to tampering with another shards magic system. Also Feruchemical gold can heal limbs that have been lost right? Why was Sazed still a eunuch? Was it because he viewed himself as one so it was part of his cognitive identity? Just stuff I was thinking about and i didn;t want to start new threads.

We do know that in some ways the planet influences the expression of magic on that planet. Therefore it has had some influence and/or interaction with the shard. I also think that the planet is part of the fuel for each magic system. Metals come from scadrial. The tears of egli (not necessary, but helpful in awakening) grow from the earth. The geography affects selish magic. We don't know much about the source of the highstorms, but storms are a natural occurrence. Anyways just something I was thinking about.

Thanks isomere. Now that I think about it, we see many people covered in moisture. I always thought it was sweat, but now i'm wondering if in the cosmere there is not sweat... only JTSE. seriously though I did look that up and he does seem unreasonably wet. It makes a pretty specific point of it. Though if he had some coalesced from the spiritual realm or damnation or wherever I'm not sure why he would have had leaves and stuff in his beard. Since this topic has been pretty well derailed, do we have any info on what becomes of metals after they are burned? do they transform inot pure energy? get transferred to the spiritual realm? I would love some WoB on this.

I noticed for the power source you put (planets) spiritual energy for every single one. While this might technically be true you could be more exact. When I think of power source I think of what gets expended in the use. While scadrial's metals might not be inherently more magical than anyone else's metals they are what unlocks the power. Same with color on Nalthis. And while we still aren't sure exactly what stormlight is, we can be pretty sure its the power source.

Shardlet, I think you are focused too much on the example I gave (which may indeed be flawed) and less on the principle I'm trying to demonstrate with it. When I said same volume I meant by dimension of the block so the same surface area. I, perhaps, could have gone through the example changed it to two blocks with the same volume, but different material that are similar in their conductivity, but one is for some reason denser than the other. Also I didn't mean to imply that the matter the block was composed of was Styrofoam. I was just figving an (admittedly bad) example of differing densities among solids. Anyway the point is that while I haven't found a great reason why this works I think something like this is what is happening in the mists and on those shardblades.

This was the other possibility that I was looking at to explain the phenomonon, but I didn't like the explanation quite as much because in order for the arriving spiritual energy/matter to lower the temp it would have to change the pMass. Since we don't see any instance of objects gaining weight as they are invested this seems unlikely. The basis of this theory is that the physical mass, density and volume don't change at all (except the gasses do as a result of the cold but that is after). What I'm saying is there is a difference between the pEnergy and whatever spiritual thing is going on. I would say if the water vapor suddenly had greater sEnergy and the temp dropped, it would still have the same pEnergy. @madrand you can indeed have two solid objects of the same volume of different density. Think of styrofoam. You can compress it to be smaller. You are partially right though in that you are eliminating small pockets of empty space throughout the mass. In other news, I have another theory on why this works: what if the temperature doesn't change at all? If you take a piece of ice and put pressure on it, you can change its state of matter from solid to liquid without changing its temperature. If you place a string with weights on each end on top of an ice block and let the weights dangle, the string will eventually fall out the bottom. Salting ice does much the same thing, it alters the state of matter without altering the temperature. What if instead of making things colder all the magical infusion does is raise the temperature required to form mist or water condensation?

AKA why the cosmere is a cold, cold place. If this exists elsewhere or blatantly contradicts WoB let me know. But I couldn't find it. I noticed something interesting recently as I was pondering the works of Sanderson. It connects a few magical things here and there and I thought it might bring greater understanding to magic in the cosmere. First some boring science. The Joule-Thompson effect is a property of gases that says that as a given amount(mass) of gas decreases in volume its temperature will rise. the opposite is also true. This is how your refrigerator operates. I compresses gas, lets it cool then releases it back to its normal density resulting in cool air in the fridge. In a few magical instances we have seen matter act colder than it ought to. My thought is that infusions of spiritual energy result in a kind of opposite Joule-Thompson effect bringing cold. The prime example is the mists in Mistborn. I believe that the mists themselves are really just water vapor. we see them leave dew and make the stones wet. we know that sufficient heat can burn the mists away just like regular mist. But the mists are appearing when the air should be too warm to cause water vapor to form like that. We know that atium and lerasium are just normal matter with some extra spiritual hoodoo about them. I submit that the mists are just water vapor with the same situation. The spiritual influence grants the vapor some resistance to the dissipating effects of heat. As the power of the mists grow, this resistance increases, meaning that they stay longer and longer. Another excellent example is the summoning of a shardblade. water vapor forms on the blade. We know that the blade is stored in the spiritual realm and its sudden appearance would technically create density where none exists. In my mind I would think that this would create heat, but because of the JBSE it does not. In a slightly less sketchier example, during the highstorm it is freezing cold for Kaladin. in the middle of a hurricane it is probably pretty cold anyway, but I'm throwing this in there anyway. And now for some bogus physics and wild speculation on why this might work. If you want to poke holes in the theory, this is where I would start. My understanding of physics is decent, but its late at this point. Lets say I have two blocks of generic matter of the same volume, but different densities. one is heavier, one is lighter but they are both the same size and are made of the same material. They are also both the same average temperature. If I stuck them both in the oven for 30 min and then take them both out, the lighter block will have a higher average temperature than the heavier one. The heavier one requires more energy to get to the same average temperature. Suddenly some Shard (lets call him Randomness) bestows some power into the lighter block. Correct me if I'm wrong but most, if not all, things has at least some component in each of the 3 realms. This would apply to energy too. The block is experiencing energy in the physical realm as heat. Suddenly the blocks spiritual aspect has some weird other thing attached to it giving it some power or other. Because it's spiritual mass(Smass) increased it is now denser(spiritually) and requires more energy to heat. Does this make complete sense? no way! This means that allomancers would have a lower body temperature than normal people. But hey, maybe that's whats up with mistcloaks. Application: if a guy with a shardblade wanted cold lemonade all he has to do is keep summoning his blade in the glass. More importantly if we can identify times when things turned cold or collected condensation where they shouldn't have we might be able to identify magical moments we were not aware of. Edit: added application so you know why it matters