Ari

Remember Taravangian also seems to lose touch with his empathy on days when he's smarter, and gain empathy which seems to be above his baseline on days when he's dumber. That doesn't sound like how Zinc feruchemy works at all. This may or may not be a natural explanation for why his plan sets him against the Radiants, or there could be something fishier going on, like influence from certain Spren giving him ideas... There's no particular indication as to whether Taravangian is actually seeing the future or merely making logical predictions based upon greatly expanded understanding of the universe when he wrote the Diagram. I think unless Oathbringer gives us a lot more information about this process we're not really going to be able to draw solid conclusions on the matter until maybe Book 5 or later.

You can swallow multiple metals in one vial, remember, so it's entirely possible it was both Zinc and Brass, and that while he was Rioting Shallan's curiosity, he might also have been soothing her suspicion, etc...

That would kinda suggest that Trellium is Bavidinium, but that Trell isn't Autonomy, as we're kinda using "Trell" as a shorthand for "whoever was behind Bleeder's weird actions." I'm open to the idea that there are actually multiple shards or shard-aligned forces involved. So we have the individual with the red eyes, which is quite possibly a Parshendi agent of Odium, and possibly Odium, if free after SA5, is spending some energy attacking Sazed to keep him distracted, while the shard that provided the Trellium is probably Autonomy, who was making a play to liberate the Northern scadrians from Harmony's influence.

I'm pretty sure that's an inaccurate understanding of what VenDell says in that chapter, but I'll confirm later.

Do we actually know that storing your identity lets you tap keyed metalminds? I thought we only suspected it allowed you to unkey your own metalminds as you stored, which is part of the "unsealing" process for the nicrosilmind medallions.

You're assuming that groups from Era 2 will last to Era 4. Given that many notable political groups from Era 1 are outright gone in Era 2, (such as nobles, skaa, and obligators) it seems reasonable to assume that the Set might not make it to Era 4. If you pay close attention, they also seem somewhat alarmed at the possibility of a Threnodite making it all the way to Scadrial. So that suggests that Threnody is closer (cognitively, at least) to Sel than to Scadrial, and that Scadrial is traditionally out of the range an Elantrian would have seen a cognitive shadow from Threnody. Yeah, if it's easier to move large groups of mundanes through magitech spaceships than it is to ferry them between Perpendicularities, then spaceships will become practical once the Cosmere and the necessary magical and/or scientific principles become common knowledge. That said, Era 2 has made clear that northern Scadrial is still being held back, and Sazed suspects this was because he was too nice in setting up northern Scadrian society post catacendre.

Yeah, I'm referring to the idea that he'd still be after those powers post-Elantris, which I'm not sure makes sense. Or fan theories. XD Seriously though, if your idea fails Occam's razor, refine it until it passes. You'll have a better idea in the end.

...no it doesn't. Again, "burning" Lerasium overwrites your spiritual DNA to make you a mistborn. Alloying it with other metals can make you a misting. There is no evidence to suggest that touching Lerasium would temporarily change your spiritweb to make you a Feruchemist, especially when we already know that touching an unsealed Nicrosilmind can have the same effect. Why would Lerasium's feruchemical ability simply be a variant of Nicrosil's? It makes no sense. Now arguably, Lerasium might act as a feruchemical wildcard, allowing you to use it as any type of metalmind you like, (arguably. I expect it simply stores a new unique attribute similar to Atium personally, and that if there is a feruchemical wildcard, it's Harmonium) in which case your argument works if Hoid was already a Feruchemist. Hoid's "special luck" doesn't require special explanations. He could easily tap feruchemical Chromium before he decides where to go next. Remember, Occam's razor- the explanation with the fewest and smallest assumptions is best.

I'm trying to find where I sourced it so I can link you, I know it was on the Mistborn Reddit somewhere, but the searches I can think of on both Reddit and Google aren't finding it. The most relevant hit was another of my posts on this forum, lol.

Wasn't the latest we heard that the protagonist was a Terris geek-girl, and she was a sorta-hacker working for a "dawn of computers" type spy agency?

It could also be related to what Sazed is doing with that extra piece of Ruin. Historically Scadrial hasn't had a large amount of ambient investiture running around and thus hasn't had to contend with Splinters like Sel and Roshar have. But it's possible that theare are some splinters of Ruin running around on Scadrial. Maybe. If Sazed judged it to be the most prudent option of what to do with his excess Ruin power. It's also possible they're looking for a worldhopping Awakener of a similar calibre to Vasher.

I would theorise that Copper blocks any kinetic cognitive Investiture aimed within the cloud, given its effect on emotional allomancy and potentially on lifesense. Given that all of the Rosharan Surges are physical, it wouldn't block any of them. Now, if you wanted to block a Lashing, I would suggest an Aluminium shield (which blocks all kinetic investiture) or as above, an Invested artifact. (for which kinetic investiture must be a degree of magnitude stronger than the Invested object)

I don't know, Sel could arguably make sense too in terms of using magitech, which, other than building spaceships, is all we know about them.

The reason anyone can burn Lerasium is that it rewrites your sDNA when burned. I doubt that anyone can use Lerasium as a metalmind. If Hoid's doing Feruchemy without being a Feruchemist, it's using something like those medallions, however he would have needed a Feruchemist who knew how to make them before Era 2 when we know they became common in Southern Scadrial, so that seems an unlikely explanation. It's more likely he found a way to become a Feruchemist permanently. There are other limits to being an Elantrian. Given Hoid already at least has a form of extreme longevity, I don't think he'd want to become an Elantrian unless he had a specific use for the power, as he could achieve true immortality through Breaths, and it's heavily implied he has several hundreds of those in the Stormlight Archive, so I imagine he's become functionally immortal that way instead, and his only reason to want to become an Elantrian would be access to AonDor. Those limits, btw, are that you can die far more easily of mental or emotional stress as an Elantrian. Galladon (is that name right?) wasn't kidding that his father essentially died of a broken heart.

Yeah, I saw that, it was the one Spool was linking. The issue is it looks a lot like he's gotten stuck on spikes losing efficiency and I'm not sure he's understood the actual twist to the question that Kurk was asking about what benefits a stronger Feruchemist gets as a result of having a more strongly charged hemalurgical spike. The thing is, I know he's answered a straight question on this (ie. where he didn't get confused about the wording previously) and I recall the answer being different, but that's the only WoB even tangentally related to this subject that I can currently find. I could be misremembering I suppose, but usually for this kind of answer I'm not, so it's driving me crazy that I can't find it written down, lol edit: For instance, this Wob suggests that Feruchemy never goes below 100% efficiency.

In terms of "how much of an attribute ends up in a metalmind," efficiency and storage speed being the delta variables doesn't make much difference. (the difference really is whether you keep what's not being stored for yourself or not) Whichever one you have more of, you still see a larger store at the end than you normally would. You'd only notice the difference if you could accurately quantify the amount you had stored and the amount you tapped from a metalmind. Now that theoryland is working again, that WoB is definitely about spikes losing their power, not about Feruchemy. (ie. so you'd end up being a weaker Ferring from being spiked with a spike that was left outside a body/blood, because it had been "leaking" investiture) I've been scouring Theoryland for a comment on what stronger feruchemists do better than weaker ones, but I haven't found a good WoB answering that. I'm sure he's tweeted or posted on Reddit or something about what benefit stronger Feruchemists get, but I haven't found it yet. I'm like 90% sure that feruchemists can naturally modulate how much of an attribute they store up to a given limit, and that being stronger extends that limit, but I can't find the answer in writing. I went through his most recent reddit AMA too and actually found a question asking exactly this, but it was the one thing in that post he didn't answer, lol.

I'll check up on that, you might be right that it's one physical part, still, it's relevant that it needs to have the correct types of investiture stored in it. You can't tap being a Bloodmaker from a Nicrosilmind where there's only Connector powers stored, it doesn't work that way even if any Nicrosilmind can potentially store any combination of types of investiture. (To be honest, I had suspected they made the rings look combined. As for the bands, it's described as a ridiculously interwoven metalmind, so it really wouldn't make much difference between 32 metalminds and 47)

They talked about them being twisted by a single spike in the book. There was no explicit mention of the Chimaeras having Trellium spikes, it'll just be a question of whether there's an implication when they discuss Paalm's spikes. I'm gonna do a re-read for something else so I'll try to remember to come back to this topic after. edit: On checking SoS, Marasi specifically says she has one of Bleeder's spikes, and it wasn't one of her original Kandra "blessings," which later in the scene Melaan then goes on to confirm is a God metal that Harmony doesn't know about. No mention of the Chimerical spikes at all in that scene.

Thanks for the correction on Ferring types, I get confused on some of the less obvious Ferring names sometimes, don't ask me why I thought Pinnacle was right there. I was assuming it was storage speed as opposed to efficiency, but functionally it amounts to a very similar thing, with the difference that if you have enough power to go over 100% efficiency, you no longer store any faster. That WoB is incredibly low quality, and I'd be very concerned that when Brandon agrees that "it" is leaky, he's talking about the Spike leaking Investiture, not the Feruchemist themselves. In fact, I'm reasonably sure I've seen a WoB that said storage speed is what feruchemical strength translates to. (Theoryland is now not responding for me at the moment, so I can't look up a reference just yet, but I'm very sure that that description could be applied to the strength of a spike) You're right of course that functionally using half of your storage ability as a Soulbearer and putting half into the metalmind results in a quarter speed charge. Your description of identity works only for efficiency. That's where it's relevant whether you're interpretting that low-quality WoB right, or whether my memory is right that it's actually storage speed that Feruchemical strength modifies. If it's storage speed/bandwidth, then it actually becomes highly relevant to how you make Trueself Nicrosilminds, and it would work how I outlined in my post. If you're right and it's efficiency, then Oversleep has something of a point, and by default a Trueself can never create an unkeyed Nicrosilmind of their ability, because they need all 100% of their efficiency to drain away their Identity, assuming 100% is the correct threshold for unkeying a metalmind. You could get around that by spiking yourself up to 190% efficiency or something similar, which like with the storing speed, would mean you could store all 100% of your identity and still have 90% ability-to-store left over, which you could then put into an unkeyed Nicrosilmind. This is why I was using simple numbers and not percentages anyway, because it gets confusing talking about having the ability to store 190% of your identity, even if technically it makes a certain amount of sense. That said, it would be extra confusing if you're right, because Feruchemists can elect to store less of an attribute they have, and they're not modulating their efficiency when they do that, they're actually keeping a percentage of that attribute for themselves. ie. they store 25% of their health. If Feruchemy varied by efficiency, it wouldn't make sense than when you store health more slowly, you don't get as sick as you would when you store it very fast.

So, for Allomancy-granting medallions, the process is simple. They need a Nicrosil disc or ring for each Allomantic ability they grant. Remember, it's easy to two a two-part medallion, and harder and harder to do each subsequent ring after that. For Feruchemy-granting medallions, you actually need two parts. You need a ring that's a Nicrosilmind of the relevant Ferring ability, and then a disc or ring that also serves as the appropriate type of metalmind. You could also substitute the disc in the middle for any unkeyed metalmind, such as Wayne's gold bracelet. You're focusing on the unkeyed brass(?) metalmind disc in the centre of the medallion, but that's only half of it. You also need a nicrosil ring that's got the right type of Investiture stored in it, and the narrative so far suggests that Nicrosilminds are like Tinminds, that is, you have to have one for each different type of investiture you want to store. (Which means there are 32 Nicrosilminds and at least 15 other metalminds within the Bands)

Actually, let's make this even clearer. Let's say we have a Trueself who we've spiked with the abilities of a Pinnacle. They have 2.0 efficiency (or "strength" if you prefer) in Aluminium Feruchemy, and 1.0 efficiency in Nicrosil Feruchemy. Our Feruchemist wants to make a metalminds that will let anyone else give away their powers to anyone ungifted. So they get a two-ring medallion ready. They store off all the necessary identity in a side metalmind that's not relevant, and then start storing their ability to store investiture. How fast can they store? Assuming there aren't any hidden multipliers, they need to put 0.5 of their ability in the metalmind, and leave 0.5 for themselves in order to be able to keep storing, in effect storing as if they were half as efficient as a Pinnacle. If they store any faster, there's less "leftover" Pinnacle investiture to go into the metalmind, so it paradoxically gets slower. That's the "tension" for Pinnacles. Now, when they want to make the Trueself part of the metalmind, they don't have to balance out their Pinnacle abilities anymore. But, there's a "threshold" for how fast they need to be able to store Identity in order for the metalmind to actually stay unkeyed. If that threshold is 1.5, then they can only store 0.5 of their ability as a Trueself, because they need to keep back 1.5 of it to dump Identity into their side metalmind fast enough that there's none left keying the Trueself Nicrosilmind to them. However, let's say the threshold is a bit lower, like 0.8. Then the Trueself can actually store up to 1.2 of their ability in the Nicrosilmind, and they're instead limited by their ability with feruchemical Nicrosil, because they can only store Investiture with 1.0 efficiency. So they're left with a 1.0 ability to dump Identity into their dump Aluminiummind. Now, if you assume that the Threshold for unkeying a metalmind is 1.0 and Trueselves never naturally get over 1.0 efficiency, then yes, the OP is half-right. An unspiked Trueself or even Full Feruchemist would never be able to create an unkeyed Trueself Nicrosilmind. But if you spiked them with additional efficiency with feruchemical Aluminium, then they would be able to. So whatever the constants are for the threshold, it's absolutely possible to start producing metalminds that let other people produce metalminds. (which you can then pass to a Nicrosil compounder to mass-produce them)

Sure. Okay, so two key things: We don't know the exact steps to create an unkeyed Nicrosilmind, but it needs to involve at least storing your entire identity (or at least, a "threshold" amount that leaves only enough residual identity on the metalmind that anyone can use it) in an Aluminiummind and storing your ability to use the relevant type of investiture in the Nicrosilmind. For 30 of the 32 basic divisions of the metallic arts, this doesn't prevent any problems. The "Trueself" (ie. Aluminium ferring) and "Pinnacle" (ie. Nicrosil Ferring) abilities are involved in the process of creating unkeyed Nicrosilminds. Therefore, in order to create these types of Nicrosilminds, ferrings need to retain some of their abilities For Pinnacle Nicrosilminds, a feruchemist is only able to create Nicrosilminds for their feruchemical ability half as fast as they could for an allomantic ability, or any ability they've been spiked with, because they need to retain some of the investiture in order to be able to keep storing it. (that is, they effectively store half as fast because they have to keep back half of their ability to store, because if you try to entirely drain your ability to store the power, you've not actually left any Investiture to store it with. Trying any other balance ends up wasting power one way or the other and creating the Nicrosilmind even slower) For Trueself Nicrosilminds, it's a little different. There's no "balance" to be struck, rather, there's a threshold to be cleared. A Trueself that's too weak to store enough of their identity to hit the "threshold" at which a metalmind becomes unkeyed can never make Trueself Nicrosilminds for other people, because those Nicrosilminds would still be keyed to them. However, if a Trueself were strong enough, (or had been spiked with a strong enough gift...) they might have enough efficiency in storing their identity that they could simultaneously store enough power to create unkeyed metalminds, and also have enough power left over to store their remaining efficiency in a Nicrosilmind. These problems can of course be solved by using Nicrosil compounders to produce the relevant Nicrosilminds once you've started up production the hard way, but you still need strong Trueselves and Pinnacles making medallions in order to get started. And of course, to ever get started you either need a full Feruchemist or to go around spiking a few people to be reasonably strong in both the Trueself and Pinnacle abilities. edit: Sorry for the doublepost, I was trying to work a quote into my post after the fact and it didn't work, lol.

There's a tension to being able to create an unkeyed aluminium feruchemy nicrosilmind, if we understand the process correctly. That tension is that you need to remain strong enough as a Trueself to completely store your identity so that the nicrosilmind remains completely unkeyed. But that just means you need to be efficient (strong) enough at Feruchemy to store away your entire identity and have enough capacity to store to be able to put some of it into the nicrosilmind. Not impossible, but would require you to be a relatively strong Ferring/Feruchemist. My apologies if those terms are confusing, but inevitably they get a little convoluted when it comes to storing your capacity to use Investiture in a nicrosilmind. It's entirely possible to be strong enough to store more capacity of an attribute than you actually have, which is useful for both Trueself and Pinnacle nicrosilminds in particular.

Did they? I thought it was only Paalm's spikes they were talking about being made of Trellium.

Well, he did make it into The Emperor's Soul, so it's possible he could make it into Edgedancer, it just depends if his business takes him to the right part of Roshar. I certainly wouldn't bet on it, though. It's probably a better way of looking at it to assume Hoid may have bigger fish to fry than to show up in every novella, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility that he might make it into any given novella if he's not busy elsewhere at the time.