The Peculiarity of 16

[Blue Skies]

So here's the thing, I've been listening to the Graphic audio versions of the original mistborn books (They're great by the way, voices are spot on) and something that always interested me before was when Demoux brought up the peculiarity of 16. This has caught me out for two reasons.

 

 

 

 

1) We know that Demoux is a world hopper. His presence on Roshar is evidence enough, however when did he become a world hopper? Was he aware of his power before the events of Hero of Age's? If so that would explain, at least a bit, why he would focus on the number 16 when he was talking with Elend. Maybe he had knowledge prior to the events about what else was 16 (The number of shards) and may have been trying to drop some form of a hint. Thats my interpretation.

 

 

 

2) This got me wondering if there has been any other mention of sixteen outside of Scadrial, either in sub text or blatant in any other books. Perhaps each world has their significant numbers for instance, they're are ten heralds on roshar, ten silver kingdoms.

 

I'll open this up to others. Who else has found significant numbers that keep cropping back up? Is there some significance to the numbers? I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is some sort of code, that seems to be going to far, but there maybe something to it. And like our good friend Kelsier always says "There's always another secret" 

Edited August 18, 2016 by Avalon Blue

[PallonianFire he/him]

I highly doubt Demoux was a worldhopper before HoA. He was very much a naive young guy, and I don't see a worldhopper with knowledge of Adonalsium helping found a religion that worships Kelsier. My guess is that he got recruited into the Seventeenth Shard sometime after the Catacendre. 

[Eki]

What PallonianFire said. Also, if the power you're referring to is him being an atium misting, he snapped during HoA, so he didn't have that power before. If you mean worldhopping, that's not really a power, I think. Anyone could do it if they knew how (though some would indeed have an easier time due to access to magic).

I can't think of any numbers like that other than 16 for Scadrial and the cosmere in general, and 10 for Roshar, but they might exist.

[Espella]

10 shows up in Nalthis with the number of Heightenings.

Or at least the number of Heightenings we know of. Dang it, now I want Susebron to go around getting more Breath to see if he can hit something higher than that.

[PallonianFire he/him]

Isn't there a big Realmatic Number Theory that's bounced around this forum a lot?

[Stick. she/her]

 

This might prove relevant 

[PallonianFire he/him]

That would be the one I was thinking about, thanks! Shardic Number Theory, not Realmatic.

[soyperson]

When Adonalsium splintered, he/she/they/it broke in to sixteen pieces.

Not sure whether or not this has been mentioned in this thread yet or not.

Edited August 29, 2016 by bleeder

[Djarskublar he/him]

11 hours ago, bleeder said:

Hello, 16 Shards of Adonalsium, anyone?

Ummm this isn't a constructive comment. It was already implied in the other posts anyway...

On a different note, anyone want to bet there are 256, 512, or 1024 Hemalurgic bind points?

[soyperson]

5 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

Ummm this isn't a constructive comment. It was already implied in the other posts anyway...

On a different note, anyone want to bet there are 256, 512, or 1024 Hemalurgic bind points?

It takes 1024 years to restore the power at the Well of Ascension.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

8 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

On a different note, anyone want to bet there are 256, 512, or 1024 Hemalurgic bind points?

Quote

The points which can be used for Hemalurgy are known as "Bind points" and there are between 200 and 300 in the human body which can be pierced depending on the effect needed.^[Source]

Most likely 256 if it is gonna fit with the "pattern"

 

[EmeraldPaladin he/him]

so, in summary, our "common" numbers are 10, 16, and probably 256. What relation so these have to each other and other possible numbers that may crop up?

 

[VirtuousTraveller he/him]

There are also the 5 scholars on Nalthis and the 5 visions they gave to mankind.

[Argel he/him]

Maybe there is some octal (base 8) , decimal (base 10) and/or hexadecimal (base 16) play going on here:

 020 == 16 == 0x10

 0400 == 256 == 0x100

02000 == 1024 == 0x400

(where a leading 0 indicates octal and a leading 0x indicates hex)

[Eki]

5 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

There are also the 5 scholars on Nalthis and the 5 visions they gave to mankind.

Wasn't it Vo who gave the visions?

[Yata he/him]

9 hours ago, Eki said:

Wasn't it Vo who gave the visions?

The Austrism said that Vo recived the 5 Visions from Austre. But it's an in world knowledge, therefore the facts may be different

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

There are ten primary Shardworlds.

Quote

"There are 10 core cosmere planets, which tell the overarching story of the cosmere."

(source)

Remember, though, that the prevalence of 16 on Scadrial isn't part of some grand pattern -- It's the result of direct Shardic interference. Preservation used it as a sign that Ruin couldn't tamper with. All the 16s and 1024s on Scadrial are there because Leras intentionally put there.

[Eki]

22 hours ago, Wonko the Sane said:

There are ten primary Shardworlds.

Remember, though, that the prevalence of 16 on Scadrial isn't part of some grand pattern -- It's the result of direct Shardic interference. Preservation used it as a sign that Ruin couldn't tamper with. All the 16s and 1024s on Scadrial are there because Leras intentionally put there.

Preservation did not design Allomancy, it's a natural result of him investing in the planet. So there being 16 metals/alloys is not something Preservation decided. The other things, from HoA, were of course his doing though.

[PantsForSquares he/him]

On 08/21/2016 at 0:22 PM, Espella said:

10 shows up in Nalthis with the number of Heightenings.

Or at least the number of Heightenings we know of. Dang it, now I want Susebron to go around getting more Breath to see if he can hit something higher than that.

I'm actually curious if the number of Breaths required to attain a specific Heightening are based on some function involving 5^n, or maybe an asymptotic function with 5 somewhere (approaching the total number of Breaths ever made).

[Eki]

13 hours ago, PantsForSquares said:

I'm actually curious if the number of Breaths required to attain a specific Heightening are based on some function involving 5^n, or maybe an asymptotic function with 5 somewhere (approaching the total number of Breaths ever made).

I think I'll look closer on this soon, but I don't think this is the case. I can't really see a pattern, except that the number of additional breaths generally goes up more and more (except in one case where the difference is 1500 for two heightenings in a row).

There is also the fact that the Heightenings seem to be human-made terms, not absolute rules of the magic. As you approach the heightening that gives you immunity to disease, for example, you'll get more and more immune; it's not all or nothing. It's also possible that you gain other abilities around other numbers of breaths in between, but that those weren't things the people who wrote this stuff down valued as much.

Edited September 3, 2016 by Eki

[PantsForSquares he/him]

54 minutes ago, Eki said:

I think I'll look closer on this soon, but I don't think this is the case. I can't really see a pattern, except that the number of additional breaths generally goes up more and more (except in one case where the difference is 1500 for two heightenings in a row).

There is also the fact that the Heightenings seem to be human-made terms, not absolute rules of the magic. As you approach the heightening that gives you immunity to disease, for example, you'll get more and more immune; it's not all or nothing. It's also possible that you gain other abilities around other numbers of breaths in between, but that those weren't things the people who wrote this stuff down valued as much.

Doing a quick trendline based off the numbers in the wiki, there's definitely an exponential relationship at work here. It's hard to gauge what the exact numbers are for the formula without knowing the precise values for each Heightening.

But I'll agree with the fact that the Heightenings are a human made benchmark. I'm curious to see if the categorization of Heightening is incorrect, at least from Endowment's own model. I'm also somewhat curious if all Breaths have the same amount of Investiture.

[Eki]

5 minutes ago, PantsForSquares said:

Doing a quick trendline based off the numbers in the wiki, there's definitely an exponential relationship at work here. It's hard to gauge what the exact numbers are for the formula without knowing the precise values for each Heightening.

But I'll agree with the fact that the Heightenings are a human made benchmark. I'm curious to see if the categorization of Heightening is incorrect, at least from Endowment's own model. I'm also somewhat curious if all Breaths have the same amount of Investiture.

They don't, which also complicates things. The physician who examines Siri when she arrives at the Court mentions she has a strong Breath, for example. Of course, that's information from within the book, so it might just be a misunderstanding within the world, but I think there's information outside the book to support it too.

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

It fits pretty closely with Breaths = 50*2^(Heightening). It's nowhere near perfect, but it's interesting how closely it lines up with a whole-number function.

[Landis963 he/him]

On 9/6/2016 at 10:30 AM, Wonko the Sane said:

It fits pretty closely with Breaths = 50*2^(Heightening). It's nowhere near perfect, but it's interesting how closely it lines up with a whole-number function.

Except for wonky things like Divine Breath, which are enough Investiture to rocket someone all the way to the 5th Heightening.  Also, I believe Khriss mentions that there's a little leeway with Heightening thresholds due to the relative strength of the Breaths that an Awakener has on them.  (The original Breath of an old man will be much less potent than that of a child, for example, and therefore more of the former than the latter would be required to achieve a given Heightening)

[Djarskublar he/him]

2 hours ago, Landis963 said:

Except for wonky things like Divine Breath, which are enough Investiture to rocket someone all the way to the 5th Heightening.  Also, I believe Khriss mentions that there's a little leeway with Heightening thresholds due to the relative strength of the Breaths that an Awakener has on them.  (The original Breath of an old man will be much less potent than that of a child, for example, and therefore more of the former than the latter would be required to achieve a given Heightening)

Yes, this is true, however it doesn't really apply to how well it fits a curve. Assuming that breath strength is approximately random, it really only makes a difference for the first few Heightenings. After that, the Law of Large Numbers starts to really kick in. By the time you hit 10th Heightening, it should be pretty darn close to average.

Also, they know the average number of breaths it takes to hit the first few Heightenings because a relatively large number of people hit them. That gives them a solid sample for the ones that experience more variation.

The numbers for Heightenings are probably very close to accurate because of those two facts. I would expect less than 1% variation for the upper Heightenings.