happyman

I, like so many other people, felt a bit disappointed at the speed of the ending. That was until I compared notes with my brother and we dug into what really made the ending happen. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the slow way David managed to take down Calamity's defenses until he reached the ultimate ending, forcing Calamity to face his fear head-on, neutralizing him perfectly. We discussed how David refused to access the power until he had faced Calamity and removed the taint. After about half an hour of interested theorizing and putting the pieces together, I realized that despite its speed, I really like how much was packed into it, and how much we learned from so little. So put me in the "It took a bit, but I realized I actually liked it" camp.

I like this approach! Rule one of business is that you need to spend money to make money. It's money well spent if the ROI is good. And at the high end of catering, you could probably pull exactly this kind of stunt.

As far as I can tell, the powers of AonDor are almost unlimited, given unlimited time. The difficulty is with the knowledge of what you are doing, as well as getting the fine controls correct. It's a lot like science, actually.

Yeah, this is an example of "getting the geometry right." There's a good example of this kind of tactic in Bands of Mourning, and it makes sense that it would work.

We had a whole thread on this a while ago. From what I remember, it's all about context. Cadmium isn't as impressive in a fight as Bendalloy (but it does have its uses; it's very effective at neutralizing part or all of a threat if you get the geometry right), but in terms of, say, emergency response services, it could be very useful. Somebody only has a couple of minutes to live if they don't get help? Well, those "couple of minutes" can abruptly turn into "couple of hours". In the civilian sector, Chromium is a fine metal.

To be fair, this was probably trace metallic forms of the metals---the human body can't really metabolize metallic iron. The iron we do use has already been tied up in organic compounds from critters who do know how to get at it. These are probably not easily burned by Allomancers, given that just alloying makes them unavailable. From the McKinley Health Center website,

Destroying all microbial diseases is probably harder than it sounds. We have a contingent of perfectly normal bacteria living in us. If we had a truly infectious disease free world, it probably wouldn't take long for some of them to become pathogens again. Besides, he's half Ruin. I don't think he wanted to destroy all disease or opposition.

I agree with the general idea that the various Shards' Mandates have a strong effect on the worlds they create and dominate. The powers which invest the worlds cannot help but generally push people in the directions they naturally flow. Devotion and dominion dominate Sel, and its peoples, with either service or society dividing the world into natural pieces. Ruin and Preservation, when reasonably balanced, result in a world with relatively stable changes, but still changes. However, when Preservation ends up on top, like with TLR in charge, things stagnate, and nothing ever gets fixed, no matter how broken. When Ruin escapes and gets more powerful, things go downhill very quickly. It's only when the balance is restored that something like a sane society can emerge again. Roshar is hard to say. We just don't know enough about its history. It's pretty clear, though, that the recent history of Roshar has been dominated by Odium, and you can see that from the way that people are constantly fighting petty wars across the entire world. The effects of Honor are still there, but fading. And Cultivation has apparently withdrawn after Honor's death. But we really don't know enough about their history to say what happened.

Ruin can provide the intent. Which means that TLR's wishes really have no bearing on the problem.

I think there is a very important point being missed in this entire discussion. The Lord Ruler was very much playing the long game with Ruin. And he won! Importantly, he won by having Ruin look in all the wrong places for the Atium! By using Atium the way the Lord Ruler did, he made it look like he was stock-piling the metal in Luthadel. This resulted in Ruin looking in all the wrong places for the metal. The last place Ruin looked was at the pits, giving the world the breathing room it needed to survive Ruin's escape. In fact, in the third book, this careful con game was explicitly identified as what the Lord Ruler "did for the world." This, more than anything, is the reason Rashek did what he did. The economic benefits were just a very clever part of the smoke and mirrors. It also very much kept the Lord Ruler on top, as a regular Mistborn, even with Atium, wouldn't really be a threat to him or his Inquisitors. He could get as much* atium as he needed at any time. As for copper---I agree that it was a clever scam on the Lord Ruler's part to give the people what they thought was a perfect defense against Seekers, only to rip the rug out from under them when it was truly important. It's a classic misdirection con as well. The Lord Ruler would have done well as a thief. *As much means "More than anybody else." Transporting too much of the stuff would have been a problem.

From what we can tell, all of the shards can see into the Spiritual Realm, where there is no time. This is the source of what we called "Shardic Future Sight." If Adonalsium didn't have access to the spiritual realm, and better access than any one of the shards of his power, then I am going to have to give up on sensible theories all-together. Which is to say that I agree. If Adonalsium couldn't manipulate his power to his own ends, even from the distant past, I will be very surprised.

They have something more important than the marriage agreement now? After all, they never did finish the "official" ceremony. Surely the private one is more binding?

There are several, and most have been noticed at different places on the forums. You don't have to read them to understand the story, though.

The best description I've heard of his new power is: he can see the matrix now. I haven't felt the need to take it any further than that.

Granted. You and everybody around you can also smell them from the same distance. (Too easy.) I wish for one good old-fashioned, fat-heavy, as healthy-as-is-physically-possible (except deliciously fatty), chocolate and peanut butter ice cream cone.

Bad is a relative term. I don't think it's a coincidence that it doesn't allow you to see very far. Just enough to get an edge in battle, really. Ruin does need to see the future, to some extent. Just not as far as others.

I dare say that Atium is a small version of what shardic future sight looks and acts like.

My guess is that Hoid is pretty much correct: It involves sitting around in a climate-controlled room with no important deadlines, and nobody trying to kill you.

The one I've seen actually used is Hemalurgist.

I was one of those folks who was active online between the release of WoA and HoA, so we got to do all kinds of little nit-picky things with the books during the wait. We knew that something very odd had happened with Vin's earring, and thought it might have something to do with Hemalurgy and her mother's little "present" for her daughter, but I didn't really put all the pieces together until it was laid out for me. Although I did spot that she could only draw in the mists when the earring was gone. So it didn't come as a complete surprise.

If any of the Scandrian natives in the Set figure out what is going on, I bet that many of them would buck for promotion on another planet. Not another Realm, mind. That kind of a promotion is literally deadly.

Note that this is an in-world document, and thus is allowed to be wrong. It's probably right in general, but we can't take it as Word of Harmony.