Tempus

Cross-world effects on Investiture are tricky, partially because they're complicated, but mostly because we have so few examples to base our theories on. In general, you should be okay following these rules: A Shard could probably do anything, if they tried hard enough, but they have some serious issues preventing them from doing more than a few limited things. Assume that there are no Returned on Roshar (Other than Vasher) until we have evidence otherwise (we don't. People keep pipe dreaming it, but there just isn't any yet) The simplest explanation that accounts for the entire situation is usually right - Rhyshadium could be Returned, but it's much more clean and simple to suggest that it's just a similar effect produced by Roshar magic, rather than introduce insane cross-world things into the mix.

This sounds fun, let's try a few different measurements. Gonna use my home country, sorry. Easier for me, and the currency exchange is close to 1:1 anyway. • Food to feed a family of eight for a year, basic groceries only, no alcohol, one Breath: 5,572$ CDN • Average health care costs in Canada, normalized by average life expectancy extensions by cost over ten years, divided by fifty (1st Heightening gives a decade to lifespan): 630$ CDN per Breath • Cost to develop near perfect pitch and pitch recognition, according to Royal Conservatory of Music, divided by 200, adjusted by above calculation: 792$ CDN per Breath So... somewhere between 600$ and 5000$ seems about correct, for the effects. Supply and demand would futz with that, though. The Biochromatic Bank could build up quite a large store of Breath over the years. I'd expect that most countries would soon have rules regulating the gifting of Breath for dying individuals, but overall demand should vastly outstrip supply (population tends to grow, meaning more people are born than die, generally), and so I'd expect prices to be much higher than their expected effects above.

Best of luck skaa. See you in a bit!

This and so much this. Could be a good interview question - what are the other Aviar abilities? Then again, they might not be all developed and laid out just yet.

Many of the antagonists are super cheesy, because the show first aired in the 60's. Sci-fi as a genre is all about nostalgia - they have no choice but to bring back the horrible designs from early low budget TV again and again, and they do their best to update them. While cheese is an issue from time to time, and plot can be as well, I think what's best about Doctor Who is the tone. Doctor Who is a very rare series in that it display the world in tones of grey, but is optimistic about it. Other series will tell you 'The world is black and white, there is good and there is evil', or instead 'The world is full of grey, and it's a dirty, gritty, confusing and downright awful place because of it.' Doctor Who doesn't do that. It says "The world is full of grey, people die, and it can be horrible. Good people can do terrible things. Yet, if you keep your chin up and put a smile on your face, you'll find that life is still worth living, and more than that, life is fun!" And it is so very rare to find works of merit in any media that acknowledge this. Moral greys don't have to mean the world is dull and grey, lifeless and joyless. I personally think that is the greatest strength of the series.

Argent is correct, every writer will tell you that the most important thing is to write everyday. I don't think this counts as writing advice, though, so much as it is business advice. Any self-employed work from home person will tell you that the hardest thing about the work is keeping yourself motivated, dedicated, and producing habitually. As most writers are in this situation, that's pretty much where they're at, and why that advice crops up again and again. As for actual writing advice, Cory (Doctorow) always talked about narrowing your focus. This applied to both the work environment and the narrative. When you're writing, write, when you're researching, research. Don't mix them together. He said once that he often leaves off in the middle of a sentence, so when he comes back he has no choice but to finish that one specific sentence in order to continue. Narrative too - each paragraph should be about one thing, each section about one thing, each chapter about one thing, etc. Steven King is well know for his advice 'Kill your babies', which I like. The basic concept is that whatever part of the book you like the most is probably the part that's gratuitous self-indulgence, and should be cut because when you wrote it you weren't thinking about making a better story, but just pleasing yourself.

Talking about Splinters, it could be the Survival Shard, but I don't know if it would be a Survival Splinter. We know there are worlds out there that just have a Splinter on them, and no major Shard. I was certainly under the impression that First of the Sun was a minor Shardworld. I'm not sure about Splintering, though - we never see a Shard splinter itself outside of a planet they've Invested in. My thoughts on those minor Splinters are... The Splinters are of Adonalsium, pre-shattering, and thus relatively Intent balanced. The Shattering was not a clean, perfect division of Adonalsium into sixteen, and a number of Splinters were made as well. Of course, it could just be a Splinter of the Survival Shard, just cause we haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Outis - I'm gonna take that Vasher bit as general exposition. Even if he couldn't control the Aura of regular Breaths mentally, he could simply store them all into his clothes to remove them. And he does in fact do so. If you read the whole chapter, though, the quote there has more to do with his casual use of Awakening than the Aura alone. I'm going to have to say that the quote isn't significant as proof that regular Breath cannot be suppressed.

I'm pretty much onboard with everything here, even the crazy theory stuff. Except you misquoted me due to context =P. The argument came out the same in the end, so it's all good! That said, I think we can refine this further. We've got a few separate phenomena to note here. Death When the sick child is dying, their single Breath is noted to flicker by an individual with the 5th. When Lemex dies, his several hundred Breaths are noted to pulse outwards in wide waves, visible to anyone. When a Returned dies from losing their Divine Breath, they are drained of colour, the recipient is healed, and the Divine Breath dissipates Vasher notes that very rarely, dying people exhibit a flare of brightness from their BioChromatic Aura. When a Returned or person dies in every other case (of which there are many), no notable Biochromatic effect takes place. Self-Awakening During the only clear case of this, a single Breath person accomplishes, and their Breath flickers. Memory loss occurs.Breath Consumption Returned consume one Breath a week, as a discrete unit, and it will choose their Divine Breath last. Returned are weak directly prior to the event of consuming a Breath, unknown if this persists when they have multiple Breaths than the Divine. Returned have colour. Gifting a Divine Breath will consume it. Nightblood will consume Breath in discrete units extremely quickly when wielded. Sheathing him in his silver (!!) sheath prevents this from occurring. He will also drain colour as he consumes Breath, first to grey, then to black. Effect seems to be dependent on proximity to the blade, and black smoke will appear during this consumption Notable here is that Lifeless, while they are also Awakened dead people, are drained of colour. Objects or people with Breath in them cannot be colour drained (except by Nightblood). Other notable Realmatic Effects that don't fit Gifting a Divine Breath heals the recipient, despite having the same verbal Command as gifting regular Breath. Returned have memory loss upon Returning. Awakening with a Divine Breath does not count as consuming it, despite it having left your body. Returned can alter their appearance - instinctively at first, and by choice with much mental training. This takes no apparent Command, and consumes no colour or Breath. Nightblood has a Biochromatic aura of a different nature from the norm. What a muddle. I'm getting too tired to think, haha. Notable though - Self-Awakening causes a flicker. Returned do not flicker. Dying does cause flickering. Dying can also cause flaring, or pulsing - those two may be the same (though they are described differently), but they are clearly different from flickering. Violent deaths do not seem to have a flicker, or a pulse. Lemex's pulsing emits strong colours, we're unclear if the Breath itself is weakening or dissipating - we simply have no way to tell. However, Vasher is quite capable of subduing or strengthening his aura without diminishing it. It's unclear if this is because of an Awakening, or related to his physical changes. When he does, though, the Aura grants him the powers of the Heightenings - the Breath does not. Possibilities: All Breath bonds to the body. When the body begins to die, the bond weakens, causing flickering. Breath has a sliding scale built into it - pushing the scale one direction cause a greater Biochromatic Aura (and the Heightenings), pushing it the other does... I'm not sure. When Lemex is dying, when he refuses to give up the Breaths, is when the pulses begin. They stop when he recognizes Vivenna, and he pushes to give up his Breaths. At this point, his Aura is flaring, but not pulsing. Prior to the pulsing, when he was despondent/unresponsive, no significant aura was noted. It's possible the intentions a of person for the use of the Breath allow control of the Aura. Divine Breath bonds too, but is fundamentally different. Divine Breath is designed to Heal - it is constantly sustaining a corpse. It is also designed to consume itself to do so - Lifeless corpses heal themselves and are sustained by Breath, but it is not consumed, even after eons. Adding a Breath prevents this. This implies that the weakness Lightsong feels is not because he needs to consume a Breath at all. It's because his body is becoming weak naturally, and the Divine Breath will soon activate in order to heal him. Upon healing, it consumes, upon consuming itself, the tie to the body disappears. Basically, consumption is only required for healing. Silver is neat - it contains Nightblood like Shades, though it doesn't seem be crumble to dust when it does so. Veeeeery interesting.

Just finished my first readthrough of Sixth. Interesting. Gonna do a second readthrough and take notes on visible Realmatics, but I've already got a number of cool things going through my head. And of course... Spaceships. *edit* Realmatics Notable in Dusk Cognitive detection/lifesense: Giant Shadow Fish, Shadowmaw, deathants AviarsBestow powers to people indiscriminately and quickly Limited Telepathy? Receiving only? Kokerlii - Coppercloud for Cognitive lifesense Sak - External short term future visions, Electrum-like in some ways, limited to death scenes of people multiple, unspecified talents parasite worms grant power... unclear how. Very location limited, possibly due to flora, possibly due to island, possibly due to strange pool, unclear why parasites don't spread Each bird type has different power, despite parasite being the same Many other talents apparently exist (or could exist!) SpacetravelHigh likelihood of FTL Mapping device for Investitures (shows Aviars only) Linguistic universal translator Meekers - Telepathy, projecting and receiving Patji's Finger - general mindsense projection Strange emerald pool - splinter pool of some kind? All minds invisible in the area Critiques: The bigger plot, and the big reveal ending, is like a Matryoshka doll mixed with the classic 'Industry exploits natives' theme. I think it wasn't done well. The whole basis hinges on Sixth, who has both a fierce love and a fierce hate for his lifestyle. So he secretly sets out, holding the dissonance of being both a person who wants to improve and overcome his difficult lifestyle but at the same time defines himself by it. That's fine - in fact, I think that should be brought out more. Then there are all the minor plot points with Vathi - and they are minor, she's basically just there to tell him there were more people than he thought, and to bring up all the stuff about the outworlders. Which is where the Matryoshka doll shows up - local industrials exploit native low tech trappers to get magic birds, non-local super techs exploit low tech industrials to get birds. Neither seems an immediate kind of threat, and neither seems exactly like something that someone can oppose. That was the whole metaphor juxtaposition with the bird wing injury, after all. Yet... that's how the ending goes. Everything will be good and fine because the natives have copped onto the scheme, and are determined to win the battle against being exploited. There isn't anything clever or good, and it wasn't satisfying at all. And the method of introducing the bigger doll exploit thing was hamhanded - no subtlety at all. And the piles of bodies when the mapping gear was going to be used? Unexplained, unsupported, unimportant. What? And it upset all the Aviar, but we learn that no device was ever activated. What upset them? The future sight seems to be very short range in time, so it needs to be immediate... For the ending, I wanted it to be different. I wanted the machine to be activated, to the exploitation to begin, and for the horrible realization that this is what what happen to the industrials to occur as well, probably to Vathi, not Dusk. And I wanted Dusk to come to terms with himself, reconcile his need for improvement and his hatred and love for the island, and determine to use his unique knowledge not to resist the change, but to embrace it, to beat the exploiters at their own game by outpacing them - industrial and spacefarer both. Instead, I'm left with the sour taste of a character who didn't grow past his conflict, didn't come up with a satisfactory resolution to the larger conflict, and in general didn't sit right. I also wanted more things to be brought full circle. I wanted the shadow fish to be symbolic of the exploitation Matryoshka doll situation. I wanted the Meekers to teach a lesson about how greater knowledge peoples might look down on Dusk, instead of being neat creature porn. I wanted the injured bird wing to be a tied into how Dusk has to learn to accept painful change in order to be able to 'fly'. I wanted the Patji's Finger plants to give the idea of how to lure and trap a predator into an untenable situation, and thrive off them. I wanted the parasite magics to mirror the possibilities for relations between the three factions Dusk is a worm, Industrials are birds, spacefarers humans. I wanted the dead trapper to tie into this directly. All those elements are there, just waiting to be brought in, just waiting to come together.... but they don't. The ending just... doesn't do it. The original ending from before the edits doesn't either, though in some ways it's a little closer (and in some further). And in the end, I in turn find this to be one of Brandon's least satisfying published works, despite all the good stuff going on earlier.

A few possibilities. The Heralds do not have the sort of spiritual brokenness necessary to accommodate a spren bond. The Heralds normal Investiture or condition resists spren or resists allowing a bond. Bonding with a spren is simply worse than a bond with an honorblade, and there is no reason to have a bad weapon when you have a better one. I'll note here we really don't have a good understanding of what makes honorblades special.

Outis, the quote is a bit of a misnomer here. Brandon being slippery again. While it's probably true that liking chicken is not something encoded onto a soul, we know unequivocally that Chicken Soup is in fact, a type of food related directly to souls (through supporting external literature). This is probably due to the Realmatic properties of circulation: we see that circulation of blood is directly related to souls, and so Chicken Soup is related while chicken is not because of the stirring motions necessitated to enjoy a tasty spoonful. I don't think she Awakened herself as a Lifeless would, though. A Lifeless takes a single Breath, an entire one, and it drains colour completely. Even giving away your single Breath drains a good amount of colour (Drabs are grey because of how transferring Breath drains colour from yourself - I've got lots of notes on what is happening there). The girl did not have noticeable colour drained. And we know you can actually subdivide Breath, despite what the people in book (except Vasher/Denth) believe. So it's more likely the amount of Breath used/transferred was very small.

I honestly am fine with Self-Awakening and Self-Commands. The mechanics seem to be very much the same. The only instance we actually have of this Self-Awakening occurring is with the girl, and the Command is spoken. All other instances are suspected at best, and just not that at worst. In addition, Vasher is exactly the kind of person who has probably the experience, knowledge, and skills the be able to accomplish some level of Mental Command at lower heightening levels than tenth. As with all Heightening effects, they improve respective to the amount of Breaths you have, and Mental Command is a learned skill on top of that. So we can't really judge much by him. If you really must have another name, something like Auto-awakening could work. Or, hmm... since Commands on an object cause them to come alive (or 'wake up'), and Commands on yourself seem to change or modify something about yourself... maybe Altering, Metamorphosis, or Transmogrification. Also, here's the quote:

It's possible, Telcontar, but probably not. In the second last (does the epilogue count?) chapter of Warbreaker, Vasher reveals himself to Susebron. At this point, he closes his eyes, and his appearance and his aura change. While watching this effect, it is specifically noted that he utters no Command. It seems likely that this is an ability entirely separate from Commands. It's also possible he used a Mental Command - Vasher is exactly the kind of person who could do that. It doesn't seem likely, though.

My notes on this are super sparse. I have a suspicion that self-awakening consumes Breath, similar to a Returned. We see Breath flickering in another place - when a baby is dying of sickness, Lightsong is able to see its Breath flicker. Though you left it out of your quote, Vivenna notes that it seems as if the child loses a part of her Breath (not even a full Breath). As to colour, I suspect that it simply wasn't a large enough Awakening to draw colour. We see human (or animal) Awakening or some similar ability in a few other instances - the creation of Lifeless, the Lifeless squirrel, and the using of a Divine Breath to heal. In all cases, the colour is not drawn from the surroundings, like with object Awakening, but from the organic object. The awakening caused by the memory lapse was so slight as to not even affect the level of Breath more than a flicker - Vivenna did not note the Breath as being noticeably dimmer. Studies show that human contrast colour sensitivity on average is between 2 and 23 degrees - Vivenna should have greater colour perception than that at this point, thanks to First Heightening. Maybe between 1 and 10 or so. Yet, she does not notice the girl being significantly dimmer or less colourful. This leads me to believe that the girl did use some colour and Breath of her own, but it took between 0.27% and 1.11% of her Breath to do it. Just enough for Vivenna to notice a change, but not enough to maintain a comparison to memory. It could also just be there's no colour drain for using Breaths on yourself, because they are already your Breaths. Colour drain may only occur during a transfer. I don't agree the self Awakening abilities are based of Kkell powers. First, Vasher can change his body at will, to become more muscular, and it does not seem to consume Breath (though a Mental Command seems to take place, so perhaps it does). Second, when he required more strength, he Awakened objects to assist him rather than any type of self Awakening. If Breath is consumed, perhaps he was being frugal - which I might buy if he didn't promptly draw Nightblood and let it drain a bathtub of Breath (the official measurement unit). The healing in evidence doesn't match up either. Lastly, Kkell powers are just too perfectly aligned with Feruchemy/Allomancy - with the exception of the priesthood's power of speech acts, which seems to be what converted into Awakening all on its own.

Yes, I did miss that the first time, and I see what you mean. It's a good point, but I'm not sure it holds - we see a multistamp Forgery on the mural in TES, and the multiple stamps are not placed in metal but simply on the stone. It's unclear whether this is the same thing happening as with the Essence Stamps (a series of linked stamps) or whether they are three separate stamps each doing a certain thing, or if they are linked and stone can also achieve this property, and stone just doesn't do it as well as metal does. It's also not clear that the metal in Fabrials does this. Some Fabrials seem to be always active (with available Stormlight), others activate on command. There could be a scale, but you'd have the superior list of Fabrials - I've taken relatively few notes on them. Sorry, that was an error in phrasing. What I meant by 'contains it and shapes it' was simply 'the metal casing that contains the gem blocks the Stormlight emissions, the shadows and highlights of which are what Navani depicts in her notes and calls the Stormlight Pattern'. Basically, when you look at the picture, it looks like the metal frame is blocking the Stormlight the way a stick would block a flashlight beam. So the metal containing the gem (holding it) is generating the pattern similar to a shadow pattern (shaping it). You are mistaken, all your science there is incorrect. Passing electricity through a perfect conductor has minimal loss. Passing it through a resistant material emits the energy as heat. It's called Joule heating, and the amount of energy emitted is directly related to the amount of resistance. The best substances for practical applications of this are resistant metals - strong resistors take too much power to heat, and weak resistors have too low an efficiency to produce enough heat. Incidentally, other energy can be produced than heat - this is also how incandescent lightbulbs work. Superconductor (zero resistance) have no Joule heating effect, and you can pass as much electricity through them as you like and they won't heat at all. Aluminium is quirky, and it is not specific to Allomancy. It is noted by Brandon to have bizarre effects on every magic system, though not always the same effect as with Scadrial magic. It's also quite possible that Ralkalest in TES may be Aluminium. I don't have any more to say here, actually - aluminium is weird, we don't know nearly enough, and it probably shouldn't be brought up. Right. I'm just noting here that 'Realmatic maelleability' as you term it isn't necessarily clear cut when it comes to patterns. If it were, metal inks should be great for Soulcasting, and metal should accept Commands very easily. It could also be a combination of things - why not? Perhaps the reason why metal can be used for on/off Aons is because it's resistant, so it blocks the flow of Investiture until it's short circuited and the pattern can be expressed. Or maybe it holds patterns well, but resists Investiture. Some possibilities to chew. Mining is uncommon on Roshar. In addition, metal seems to be slightly more rare. In Way of Kings, weapons are all metal, but armor is not (though shields seem to have metal bands sometimes). There are a few other odds and ends we see - one metal bar, one metal plate for cymatics, one basket, one metal spoon and two metal pans. One set of metal chains. A few metal buckles. Fabrials have metal casings. Besides armor and protective gear (of which only Shardplate seems to be completely metallic), We see no metal in bridges, we see no metal building materials, though we see many of both. We see no non-fabrial metal fixtures. Anyway, the armor thing, combined with the lack of mining and the WoB that there isn't much Aluminum naturally on Roshar always kind of gave me the impression that Roshar was poor in metals, and that the majority of their metals came from Soulcasting them into existence. I could be quite wrong, though!

I'm certainly onboard with metal being important in the Cosmere, and at least one known metal (Aluminium) has a confirmed unique Realmatic property. That said, I'm not sure if all metals have properties as a class of material, or if metal in specific is better at holding patterns and not some other property that we haven't deduced. As NutiketAiel mentions, the material an Aon is written on is irrelevant - we even have a multi-material Aon in the form of the City of Elantris. That Aon also has subset Aons on it! Like the Aons on the stone walls of Elantris. In addition, I'll note that Soulstamps also can be carved into anything, with the only apparent quality difference being a purely physical one (how easy it is to carve and hold its shape). The ink for Soulstamps does have a realmatic property, though. It works best with organic inks over inorganic, animal matter over plant, and complex life form inks over simple life forms. Which has a nice parallel with Awakening materials. I don't agree with Nutiket that fabrials are metal because metal is useful - metal is scarce on Roshar, and not used as often as it is here. They could easily use shell, wood, bone, stone, or other carving materials, or cast or molded materials such as clay. Metal would work better, and it may just be that Fabrials are rare enough and useful enough to justify the expense of Soulcasting some metal for them, but it's suggestive. One other notable thing is that the metal on Scadrial is the only instance we know of where the manifestation of a pattern (the metal) is consumed when Investiture passes through it. Carved Aons don't disappear, nor do Soulstamps, or Fabrials, or anything we can see the Surgebinders using as a Focus. The sound from Commands does disperse, I suppose, but it doesn't seem related to the Investiture, just normal sound stuff. So maybe the opposite is true. Maybe metal resists patterns, or some aspect of Investiture. And Aluminium best of all? Metal is used in Fabrials not because it holds the pattern, but because it contains it and shapes it, like a resistor in a circuit, or negative space in art. Metal on Scadrial thus reacts poorly when it tries to pass power through it, leading to it being dissolved. Metal inks and metal Awakening are difficult and tie into the resistance aspect directly.

As for Intent, I wanted to work it in, as well as several other Focus things I'd been picking at, but it got too long, far too long. Scrapped that, made the article more.... focused. =D No, this doesn't have anything to do with being a savant. It also doesn't imply that you could use Iron like Steel - there's still a genetic component.

Magic Pictures Symbology and Patterns as Focal Filters Premise I've never really bought all the talk about the Focus of a magic. Every once and a while a Cosmere terms creeps in from a Brandon interview, and Focus is one of these. He uses the word focus a lot, but only rarely does he talk about it in a Cosmere sense. We've learned some things: metals are a Focus on Scadrial, Commands are a Focus on Nalthis, Aons or shapes on Sel are a Focus, and no one is sure what's going on on Roshar yet.[1] The more we learned, though, the more I felt our fundamental understanding of what was going on with a Focus was wrong. Especially with metals. First metal was a key, and the sDNA of the Allomancer was what you needed.[anno] Then metals weren't a focus after all, the molecular pattern of the metal was.[WoB][WoB] But the mists let you use Allomancy with no metals at all, so where was the necessary pattern? And people started talking about how a Focus was Physical or Cognitive, and no one seems to be able to find the source of that. I can't see any evidence supporting a single realm focus either - Investiture is known to transcend realms itself.[3] I've been gathering a lot of notes about everything, and I have a lot of theories on em'. I can't share my whole framework of Focuses - not only do I not have all the pieces I want yet, but it's super frickin' long, just for the overview. I'd like to share my notes here on one aspect that I've been talking about on IRC a bunch lately, that is very intriguing. Hypothesis The only necessary Focus for any given magic is a pattern. Assumptions Gonna lay down some assumptions here first, each one of these is a theory or two of their own, really. But we're gonna roll with it. Investiture is a waveform, that gets passed through a Focus to produce a magic effect.[Elantris] A Focus does not filter Investiture like a prism, or a piece of red glass. It modifies the frequency like an AC adapter.[WoB] A Focus exists on a scale of Explicit to Implicit, where implicit basically means more Cognitive visualization. This is not an intrinsic value, it's a descriptor. Investiture expands mental capacities, and scales by quantity.[Ars Arcanum] This is different from Mental Speed (zinc). Brandon is imprecise in his descriptions on occasion, because he doesn't want to reveal too much about the underlying system. Logic and Evidence I've long been interested in the role of symbols in the Cosmere, and my interest peaked when I found the Word of Brandon that says that symbols are built into his books to help make the magic systems of the Cosmere feel unified.[4] My theory starts at a bit of a strange place. When Kaladin speaks the third Ideal in Words of Radiance, a large symbol in frost appears around his feet.[WoR] The glyph is recognizable as the symbol for the Windrunners. That's pretty strange, and convenient, isn't it? That the use of magic should naturally produce readable language. How odd. Of course with a weather eye out for it, I looked for more instances of this. Of which there are plenty. According to one Word of Brandon, the first Aon to be discovered by the first Elantrian, Aon Ehe, apparently appeared on a coal in her fireplace when she was taken by the Shaod.[WoB] Aon Ehe brings flame. Aons, as we know, eventually became the basis for written language in Elantris. It's also been noted that the constellations are Aons as well.[Elantris] We're starting to see a link here - symbols appear naturally near magic, and those symbols are often used for language. What other instances do we have of this? The Dahkor monks use a strange magic where the develop bone growths, growths that simulate their alphabet. On Scadrial, the letters they use, the Steel Alphabet, are symbolically attached to each Allomantic metal. On Roshar, as we've seen, the general language of glyphs is associated with both Radiants, Surges, Heralds, it is seen on Shardplates and Shardblades, and burnt in effigy as prayers. In a much more tenuous connection, on Nalthis there is a language of colours. There is a clear link here between magic, symbols, and languages. The original Word of Brandon led me to believe that this link is causative - people are not developing words in language to describe magic, they are developing language to mirror the magic they see all around them. Indeed, we know that Aons exist independent of mankind.[WoB] So why do these symbols appear, though? What makes them show up, how are they important? For a long time, we believed that the Focus on Scadrial was metal, on Nalthis it was Commands, and on Sel it was the Aons (or generally form based). Then Brandon swooped in, and said "Sort of, guys, but not really." It turns out, the focus on Scadrial was not a metal - it was the molecular pattern of the metal. And the focus on Sel was really more about programming than form. And Nalthis? We don't need a Word of Brandon to see that if the Focus is Commands, and Commands require spoken words in your native language, that the Mental Command ability of the God King shouldn't work at all. And when Vin and Elend absorb the Mists, they don't need a focus at all, they've got power to spare and it naturally takes the form of the Allomantic powers, as if they already had the focus available. So what's going on? Deduction The metals, the Aons, the Focuses as we know them are distractions from the underlying foundation at play here. The true heart of a Focus is that it takes Investiture, and changes the frequency of it to a new one. And how it does that is by passing the Investiture through a pattern. These patterns are the true Focus, and are represented by the symbols and glyphs we see the magical effects in nature create. This doesn't mean that the symbols we have are all magical in nature, and putting some Investiture in a Surge glyph would make a fabrial. Instead I suggest what we're seeing is a shadow of the pattern. In the same way as a shadow puppet looks like a rabbit, but our hands do not, we get the appearance of a symbol when certain criteria are met during a manifestation of magic. These are the symbols we know. Now, the idea of a pattern being the focus is strongly supported by the Word of Brandon talking about the molecular pattern of metals. Do we have any other instances where a pattern is mentioned as being very clearly associated with magic? You know I wouldn't ask unless I had something to tell, and I do! In Navanni's notes, she talks extensively about the Stormlight generated pattern of Fabrials, a pattern which is apparently not normally visible.[link] Each pattern corresponds to a Fabrial usage. Of course as well, let's not forget Sel. All the visible Foci on Sel are drawn like a symbol or pattern. Commands are perhaps linguistic patterns too. Back up the truck! If Commands are linguistic patterns, then Mental Command should be even less possible. Hahah, your arguments are invalid! In every magic system, there are parts of magic that don't seem to require being explicitly focused. And there are parts that do. What's most interesting is that the explicit/implicit requirement seems to shift. Soulstamps must be painstakingly drawn in detail, precisely, to determine the effect. Aons are similar. Awakening doesn't seem to care much at all, as long as you have a strong picture in your head, one or two words will produce extremely complex effects. Allomancy is pretty rigid, each metal does one thing and one thing only. Yet how do Allomancers choose which metal to push on when burning Iron? Burning it doesn't push everything, it just shows some blue lines. And people don't have some kind of built-in sudo-magnetic orfice to use. The answer is that patterns do not require a specific manifestation. The pattern for metal is not required to be in metal - in fact, the entire pattern is not in the metal at all. The necessary patterns can be generated entirely by the mind. We know that Investiture gives expanded mental capacity - I'll write up the full theory about that sometime. It's this ability that allows people to substitute mental patterns to supplement the physical ones. It is these mental patterns that allow the illusion Aons to have so much detail compared to the symbol. It is these mental patterns that let a coinshot choose what to push. These are the patterns that let an Awakener use only a few words instead of the long paragraphs Brandon originally envisioned.[anno] And it's this mental capacity increase that explains the Heightenings. As the Investiture increases, the mental capacity increases, and the ability to create mental patterns as a Focus increases. First they gain instinctive basic Awakening Commands. Then they discover other Commands easier. Then they gain instinctive understanding of other Commands, learn to Command newer and more complex things, Command from a distance, and finally they do not even need to speak, they can Command with their mental patterns alone. This exposes the true nature of the Focus as we seem them - metal, Commands, etc, they are naturally occurring instances of the pattern (or a portion of the pattern) needed to Focus the Investiture in a given way. They're crutches. The more mental capacity a magic user has, the easier it is for them to dispose of the crutch and use their mind instead. It's quite plausible that we've seen this in another instance from the God King. When Vin and Elend absorb the Mists, they gain a massive amount of Investiture, and no longer need metals to Focus the power they gain from Preservation. The facility of Surgebinders in using their powers in a variety of unique and odd methods may also be an instance of this - they ingest Stormlight, show expanded mental capacity when doing so, and have an extreme level of flexibility in the use of their Surges compared to other rigid systems such as Allomancy. It's notable that Fabrials are not nearly so flexible with their use of Surges. Conclusion For those who thought this theory was far too long to read, here's the tl:dr; A Focus is actually fundamentally a pattern The known Focus (metals, Aons, etc) are an already existing instance or partial instance of the needed pattern, and are simply ways to express that pattern easier With enough mental capacity, the pattern can be generated entirely mentally The natural symbols observed in magic are the shadows cast by the pattern of the Focus Extrapolations This theory is pretty interesting in that extrapolating it is cool. It suggests that, if you could make a person hold a lot of Investiture, such a person could use their magic mentally - an Elantrian could use an Aon without drawing it. In addition, it suggests that mental capacity is essential for using magic with more fine control and finding esoteric skills, such as the ability of a coppercloud to shield emotions. Furthermore, it suggests that people with Shardic levels of Investiture can create powers outside of the known and expressed Foci - thus why Preservation-level power has no problem moving a branch (or a planet) with magic, but the Lord Ruler is limited to pushing on metals. And for technology... Lots of fun stuff implied here, but I'll leave all that for another day! Quotes and References:

So, by happyman's dissection, we could then presume that... The bubble creates a gravitational space-time dilation that extends to the boundaries of the bubble. If we think of this Realmatically, we can think of it probably in the same sort of terms as we think of the gravity lashing. Rather than an actual local gravitational increase/decrease limited to an inwards vector resulting in a modification of space time within the bounds, the relationship between space and time is rewritten within the boundaries. Basically, like how Kaladin changes his relationship to the gravity of objects around him, the bubble changes the relationship of gravity to space-time dilation. This would then follow why things need to be in a bubble or out of it, and never partial. Any object partially within the field would pretty much be torn to bits. If we consider it like the Lashing again, we can justify this by the same rationale that changes the gravity of clothes when the person wearing them is lashed. *STARES HARD AT KURKISTAN* Non-matter seems to be observably not affected - light being the clear example here. We'll also attribute this to the above - light is not included into the bubble for the same reason a house and it's contents would not be included in the dilation if you slightly clip a wall, or the floor. That's all pretty nice and dandy, we can get behind that, and it fits nearly perfectly with all known scenarios. Nearly? If the above posited scenario were true, objects exiting or entering a bubble would have no change in kinetic energy. They would have a change in speed measured over time from a single reference frame, but the kinetic energy would be constant - the bubbles are not adding or removing energy. In fact, this anomalous quote makes no sense. Kinetic energy is a quantitative measure of motion. Were a person to be inside a speed bubble (or enter or exit one) that had a dilation of 20x (under F=ma and KE=1/2mv^2), they would find themselves with either 40 times more force (which does I dunno what but it sounds bad), 40 times more acceleration (which would probably injure or kill you shortly), 10 times more mass (and you would crush yourself), 6.32 times more speed (which would probably mean you'd be flying across the bubble in a most unusual way), or some combination of the above dispersed. As none of those things seem to happen, we can either say that A) The premise is wrong. The premise is right but handwavium is burned to add an inconsistency. C) The above quote was an offhand remark made to illustrate a concept rather than scientifically describe it (or Peter wasn't clear about how it worked). Or lastly D) I'm no good at physics and KE is modified in GR within a gravitational distortion of space time, or I have some other glaring inconsistency with how this stuff works.

Stormfather is correct! Congrats to Delightful.

None of those.

No, not Iadon.

Okay, I guess that makes it my turn. Boring description of a character, eh? An angry parent who blusters and yells.