Ari

If it's a two-spike combination, I'd really like to see brandon write a Copper and Zinc ferring with mental speed and archival abilities.

It's probably similar to Atium or Electrum where you possibly see into the cognitive and spiritual realms as well.

So we find out in the latter half of the book that southern Scadrians use something they call Ettmetal to power their technology, which doesn't agree with water. This means it's most likely a Group 1 metal- lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium and caesium. However it is specifically mentioned that the metal explodes on impact with water, which would suggest Caesium, which has the most violent reaction to water. If Ettmetal isn't some sort of special Invested metal, we suddenly have another allomantically-related metal that can't be burned like silver. Or is it perhaps that the southern scadrians have access to Lerasium, which we never saw react with water? Thoughts?

Depends how Nicrosilminds work. If they're like tinminds (I think tinminds are senses? I lose track of the metals for the more obscure feruchemical powers) then you need one Nicrosilmind for each type of Investiture you can store. In the absense of evidence that seems like a more likely explanation.

I'm sorry, but not liking Lift is like hating kittens.

Don't forget the Diagramists. Gavilar seemed to be with Amaram on the whole wanting to bring about the desolation thing, and they are very much against that. A lot of the Taravangian scenes suggest they had some part in Szeth even becoming truthless in the first place, so it seems possible that they've been behind some of his assassinations even before he started on their list.

I'm not sure that the flashback characters are going to necessarily be Radiants. In fact, I would be seriously surprised if both Eshonai and Szeth ended up as Radiants. (In fact, I really hope Szeth doesn't. Arguably Eshonai isn't at fault for what she did to her people and the Rosharan humans, but Szeth did some really evil things for no good reason, no matter what Nale says, and I hope even the Skybreakers wouldn't take him) The other thing to keep in mind is that it's perfectly possibly that not every order of Knights Radiant will be represented with a flashback character, and will have tertiary characters if any for their PoVs. I'd say Shalash probably makes that quite clear, in fact, that at least one order is unlikely to be represented by a flashback character.

You're thinking about this wrong. You want to feed those medallions to a nicrosil compounder. Seriously though, I don't see why you couldn't tap a Nicrosilmind created in a similar fashion and use it to compound unlocked metalminds with compatible investiture. But as Natc says, you'd really need a feruchemical steel medallion to moderate the flow of speed at all, so the use is limited to the sorts of situations a Mistborn would want to pewterdrag.

And like a good Sharder, she contibuted her own bit, too, letting us know that twinborn are rare enough that Wax's specific combination has only been recorded three times. If Crashers are typical in that regard, that means we would expect there to have been less than 800 twinborn in the Basin's recorded history. That's pretty rare given how large their society would need to be to start supporting the sort of advances Elendel is showing.

Yeah, I think it's pretty undeniable that Voidbringers are involved with Trell now. (That doesn't necessarily mean that Trell is Odium, but it probably does mean that at the least, it's someone a Voidbringer could reasonably assist, perhaps an ally of Odium... )

While I think another shard is the likely explanation, we really don't know how far you can hack investiture as just a normal Initiated human. It's entirely possible that this work is the result of Adonalsium's opposition, and they're going after Harmony first because he represents the threat of that power re-forming. Well, that may be oversimplifying things somewhat. Harmony doesn't say he's less powerful than his opposition. Just that he doesn't know who they are yet, and that they're keeping him occupied.

Yeah, pre-existing highstorms is definitely a valid explanation for how they used innate investiture to transform, if such an explanation is needed.

Yeah, I agree that the most likely explanation is that they went through the shardpool. I had forgotten that some Elantrians went through recently, and that if they survived that this might have had a positive effect on their condition.

I had thought she was simply talking about Aona and Skai. Sazed will be influenced by the shards he's holding, sure, but I don't really agree with your impression. Sazed is struggling, if anything, with the nature of having godlike powers, and that impression was reinforced to me after reading M:BoM. We have WoB that it's possible to resist a Shard's intent to some degree, and Sazed has the advantage of the two intents pulling him in different directions, which may reduce the influence to a certain extent. (of course, Sazed might still be pushed in a direction the two intents agree on, or if one of the powers has more influence than the other, he might have difficulty staying balanced without taking measures to address that)

My impression was that Ruin's investiture leakage was solid and that the pits were essentially his equivalent of a shardpool, and that a perpendicularity was essentially the point at which a Shard's leaked power congealed as liquid or solid investiture.

Are you sure? Because Preservation talks about how great it was that the Lord Ruler wouldn't die. I think those vessels influenced heavily by or agreeing with their Shard's intent actually could feel good about fulfilling that intent, the same way you or I might feel good about doing well at work, I guess.

Weren't the pits actually Ruin's perpendicularity themselves?

Now, that said, he could possibly do some interesting things with the cognitive ideal of an abandoned spike that might have odd consequences...

Yeah, you could interpret Cephandrius to mean squid-man, lol, given the meaning of the root "andro" in general.

Right, it's something to do with whatever Investiture manifests itself as on that world. (I wouldn't personally use the term Essence, although what that theory refers to as essence is definitely touching on the cognitive realm to some degree) On Scadrial, it's mists. On Nalthis, it's colours. On Roshar, it should be Stormlight, but I have the suspicion for whatever reason that Roshar is being difficult and is instead using the ideal material that stormlight would adhere to, and those spheres represent Roshar's focus instead. Indeed. It actually makes it very clear what happened there when you hear Preservation's explanation that the sun represents the spiritual realm- if the sky has broken in the cognitive realm where Sel is located, all of the Investiture from the spiritual realm will have "fallen" through down into the cognitive, as if it's a layer between the physical and spiritual realms. The interesting question then becomes- why is Sel's cognitive realm different to Roshar when as far as we know the same thing happened on both planets?

I believe you've misunderstood what he was doing. He was taking the cognitive reflections (the ideal forms, if you will) of abandoned physical items. Like when in Stormlight archive... on Scadrial cognitive ideals manifest as balls of mist instead, at least, when they're not evoked into their forms. To date, the only thing we know of that can link a Cognitive being to the Physical realm is a Nahel bond. Kelsier would need to do something similar, however the only thing he has to work with that could carry his bonds to anyone on the physical realm are hemalurgical spikes.

You mean #7 and #16? (Note, they're both #7 in their respective entries, they're only #7 and #16 in your search. If you want to permalink you have to go to the relevant signing page iirc, then just tag #(number of question) onto the end of the URL in your browser to jump the browser to the relevant anchor when you link it here.

The thing is, Preservation didn't necessarily design the system. If there's something intrinsic about preservation that gave him sixteen different goals or purposes, that might be one thing, as we know per WoB that's why the number 10 is relevant to Honour. We know of no such similar subdivision of Preservation's purpose. Besides, only one way of counting the metals gets you 16. (if you count alloys as metals and ignore the god metals) Another gets you 8. (ignoring alloys) Or 20. (including alloys and base God Metals) Or 21. (also including Harmonium) Or 37. (also including Atium alloys) Or 53. (also including Lerasium alloys) It's incredibly arbitrary what the total number of distinct focus metals are, especially when you consider silver's properties may be relevant in some way. But... if you've finished Mistborn: Secret History there's something relevant to our discussion...

Well the interesting thing about a deadspren spike is that, so long as the power doesn't decay too much, you can always resurrect the Spren by committing to the Oaths. Unlike normal dead Spren, you have to let the spike run out of power to orphan one whose bond has been stolen.

Brandon never mentions they're of honour himself, just that they're the Rosharan equivalent to the mists. I'm the one who thinks they're at least somewhat of Honour nowadays. It would be very interesting that Tanavast's cognitive shadow could direct them around if his power wasn't somehow invested in them, however. I'm not ruling out that the highstorms existed from innate investiture before Honour's arrival, of course. I'm not with Yata that the existence of Parshendi forms requires a pre-arrival Stormfather, however. If the Parshendi were changing forms back then, (it's always possible the forms are something of Odium...) they could always have been doing it with innate investiture. We know from Seventh of Dusk that you don't need a Shard to get magic.