Elbereth

It's been a couple days since I finished Shadows of Self, and I really loved it. I'm posting here to ask some questions, some from this specific book, some just thoughts I had as I read. Many of them are likely answerable. Do we know exactly how long it will be before the Pits reform? I know it's scheduled as around 300 years, but it's already been 341. I feel like there's a power of 2 that should be in there, but the closest is either 256 (which would probably be estimated as 250, not 300) or 512 (which would be about 500). Why isn't it a power of 2, then? 16x19 is 304, and 16x20 is 320, I guess. Where did Sazed put the new location for atium creation? The Pits aren't likely, because Wax crawls through them. So where? If he were smart, he would have put it in the desert, where it wouldn't be found for a while longer, but I don't think that's likely. Did the world have a giant desert wrapping around its middle even before Rashek moved it too close? Did Rashek also create Ashmounts in the South? If not, how did they survive? Why did Wax go to the Roughs in the first place? What was the catalyst? Did early motorcars actually have roofs? Is the "man of hours" a reference to somebody we know? Can you still spike someone after they're (recently) dead? Can you take someone's powers through Hemalurgy without killing them? Is any of the First Generation still alive? (My guess is no.) How does Sazed see aluminum? Is it bright like other metals, or dark, or something else? Do mistwraiths still exist? What were sequins made of before there was plastic? I'm SUPER CONFUSED about atium. On the one hand, it's a "lost metal". On the other, various food items are infused or sprinkled with atium. What? Why don't the mists come as often anymore? Did we ever figure out why mist doesn't enter buildings? Was Brettin a kandra we know? What happened during the Remarked Duplicity? The room with two baskets in it-- Is that Vin's old room? Something else? What did Paalm do between the Lord Ruler's death and the end of the world? If you made an alloy of an Allomantic metal (say, iron) and atium, would an Iron Misting be able to burn that metal, or would it take a specific iron-atium Misting? Are there 3 magics on Sel? (because there's two Shards, like on Scadrial) How many have we seen? How can Marsh be immortal? I know he has a little bit of atium, but I don't understand why he can compound atium (there were a limited number of Feruchemists available and atium seems like a really useless Feruchemical power for Marsh to have) or how he can survive 300 years with only the little bit that he has. Obviously some of these can only be answered by Brandon or future books, but I thought I'd post here first in case anyone can clear up some of the others.

First of all, we have no idea who writes the Ars Arcanum. My intincts say it's not Hoid, actually, because Hoid's Ars Arcanum would be a lot funnier and more snarky. Next. I interpreted Wax's extra strength in the mists from Harmony giving him a boost, like Vin did with Elend. The 32 alloys we don't know about are only atium and lerasium alloys, not trellium. I don't think the author of the Ars Arcanum knows about trellium. Storms, even Harmony doesn't know about trellium. EDIT: That said, a trellium/atium alloy is still possible. It's unlikely to me because 1) I feel like Harmony might have found her, even with the trellium, if she also had a part of Ruin's body within her, and 2) because atium hasn't been rediscovered yet, so another Shard might have been able to find some, but it's still unlikely. I suppose Paalm might have had some too.

I seem to remember thinking at the very beginning that I thought a RAFO wasn't important, but by the end I had realized that they were obviously important. Sorry about that. I'd forgotted I did that.

Great! I'm happy you'll credit askers, because I thought people should be credited, but I didn't have any way of knowing who was who. And no, you're not being presumptuous at all. I did whatever felt natural for me to transcribe, but some of the wording might be improvable. After I finishe Personalization 2, I'll go back over all of them to make sure I didn't miss anything. On the other hand, if I missed it the first time, I might miss it again, so any extra eyes would be greatly appreciated. The other thing I took out occasionally was a prefacing statement by the asker that told Brandon the general topic (e.g. "we know that nicrosil can store Investiture"). Sometimes I left them in, if the question was a combination of two different things. They could be deleted, though. I'm not sure.

Still, if trellium steals Allomantic/Feruchemical powers, it would have the same power as atium, which is a little boring. And Brandon, as we know, is never boring.

Generally I tried to make it verbatim, particularly Brandon's answers and when the wording was important. The parts where I paraphrased were either confusing on the asker's part, or all of the words were overlapping and I simplified it into more of Brandon's speech and left out where the asker was repeating something that had already been said. I can go back and put thos in if you want, though. I will totally flag those points tonight. This is my first transcript, so I wasn't sure how verbatim to be. Thanks for clearing it up!

I will. I have to figure out how to make it public on my iPad first, but I'll put it up in a few minutes. EDIT: Got it! Here! EDIT 2: I have finished Personalization 1 and am close to the end of Extras, which is great. Seriously, awesome questions and (some) awesome answers. EDIT 3: Extras is done. Unless someone else gets to it, I'll work on Personalization 2 tomorrow, and you should expect it done around this time (9:00 PST)

I am almost finished with Personalization 1. There's nothing hugely significant in there, but there is at least one potentially very interesting thing that I can't quite figure out, from 56:14 onward. I'll share the doc once I finish tonight. EDIT: Then I'll probably start on Extras, which promises to be interesting.

Post it in the Ultimate List!

You get an earthrending earthquake! *inserts Shardpool*

That's right! The Elantris books are also signed in silver. I forgot about that.

From the transcripts I've heard, he does have a silver on hand, for this exact occurence.

So we have a WoB on this topic: So yeah... We'll find out eventually, I suppose.

Yeah. Wow. Sometimes I can't decide whether Brandon or Peter is better at trolling.

You get Adolin's good luck chain. *inserts a Worldhopper*

This made me laugh the hardest I have laughed all day.Also, I will likely help to transcribe this one, given that you did all of the work on my own signing before I could get to it.

Thank you very much! I don't know why I didn't see your post before.I made a 3D printed copy of Aon Sao too, but it looks like I'll have to remake it. The tenth anniversary changed it to be more symmetrical. I actually came here to say I also had my Shadows of Self say "Hands all red...", which I'm guessing was just meant to be foreboding, given its actual context. But I also got a message in Words of Radiance, which says "Bridge Four!" So there's that.

So what image is on the cover of Words of Radiance? I have the hardback, but I can't really tell. Also, this thread is awesome, particularly the beginning bit. I can't find that symbol anywhere else in Words of Radiance that we haven't already found it (i.e. in the modern Roshar map). It's not even on the endpage map.

Those are the most interesting questions I've read all day. Upvote for that!

So I can't edit the transcript because of my stupid iPad, but there were two things that I particularly wanted to point out. (Though if anyone can't understand a particular bit, I feel reasonably certain I understood basically all of it). First, the part that is marked as unintelligible sounds to me like Brandon or the signer deliberately paused it, possibly because it was a quiestion about Dragonsteel. But we already know whatever the thing is, so it shouldn't make much difference. Second, one of the last questions spells "heritability" and "inheritable" wrong. So if someone could fix that before I degenerate to convulsing on the floor, that would be great.

I honestly assumed that Edgard Ladrian was Breeze and Allrianne's son. I can totally see it being Breeze's real name too, though.

This is rather far fetched, given the picture at the top of the article, but I also thought of Paalm's new Hemalurgic creatures, which might help with the theory about Paalm having the rest of Ruin's power. They are creepy enough, and presumably the drawing was just based on the witness' description, even though she only saw it in shadow. Not something worth storing in a Coppermind, but that's what I thought of.

We don't know that the godmetal was also what she was using to steal allomantic/freuchemical powers, due to the utter confusion of Paalm's spikes. It might just be a regular pewter Hemalurgical spike.

Now, I don't know whether she had one or two spikes. I prefer the two spikes explanation, but I would not be surprised at either.If she did have two spikes in her most of the time (one trellium and one normal Hemalurgic spike), she could still have been insane (which is how she seemed to me). To the best of our knowledge, she probably had two different types of Investiture within her. I would not be surprised to find that they were in conflict within her, making her at least a little bit insane even though she had two spikes. We have a WoB that most Investiture interferes with other Investiture. I'm not sure if that applies in this case, though. Thoughts?

That makes a lot more sense. I feel a bit dumb for not thinking of that.Of course, it depends on their eventual goal (which I am quite confused about), but it seems very likely that Hemalurgy will be a primary component. Excuse me while I dump the memory of that post into a Coppermind, which I will then throw away with great force. The only part of my previous post that seems at all relevant anymore is the notion that this could result in a full Mistborn Feruchemist, not only a Mistborn. I don't know that that's likely, though, given that all of the hostages were picked for Allomancy rather than a Feruchemist background. However. If they do want to spike themselves a Mistborn, why do they have to go to the trouble of breeding Allomancers? There are enough Metalborn around that they could just spike people currently living and confirmed Allomancers and get a Mistborn now, rather than in a decade or more.