happyman

Technically, that's speculation still. It is easily the most likely case, though.

I doubt this, Voidus, primarily because our source of information about the influence Preservation had on Rashek was Sazed's annotations. If there is one thing the successive shardholders had access to, it was memories of the previous uses of the power. Sazed says outright that tLR's actions were strongly modulated by Preservation's intent; the tLR's actions were strongly modulated by Preservations intent. Overwhelming that with speculation isn't likely to lead down useful paths. I like Darnam's analysis more. Lacking strong motivation in any other direction, TLR followed Preservation's intent. With motivation (motivation imparted at least partly by the part of Ruin still in her cognitive aspect), Vin was able to buck it. Edited: As for Hemalurgy, Ruin was also whispering to him when he ascended. There was some aspect of Ruin in his cognitive aspect even with the power, but Ruin directed it as he liked. I see no reason to remove Sazed's basic statement (and he should know) given this fact.

That's one interpretation, but not necessarily the only one. I'm undecided on this issue. I would note, though, that when TLR took up the small amount of power in the Well of Ascension, he almost instantly began preserving rather than creating. The effect was subtle, but real. How Vin got around this is a good question, and I wouldn't dismiss Chicken's idea quite so readily.

Sounds like a time-dependent thing. In the final empire, I'm guessing that Inkthinker's covered the general bases. You're much more likely to be jumped by a thug in an alley with a wooden knife or be attacked by a rival's armed troops then you are to face a full Mistborn, and so metal usage would be perfectly Earth-standard at their technology level. Allomancer-proofing your life would have been an exercise only for the most powerful or paranoid, and definitely only for the wealthy. Mirrors would seem to be no exception. As for AoL time frame, using Aluminum seems the safest bet. I'm thinking that the alloy wouldn't be nearly as expensive as for making guns or bullets, and I don't think most mirrors use that much of it (a thin layer works.)

Yep, Phantom dug up the relevant quote with annotation. Humans on Scadrial were created by Ruin and Preservation, but they weren't the ones who created the original blueprints, or whatever actually happened in the distant past.

This is a good tactical point, especially if the Parshendi have a better knowledge of the shattered plains.

As stated, he was compounding both. In AoL, Miles explicitly claims that compounded gold won't stop him from aging. He should know.

The first paragraph here seems possible. Worth keeping in the back of our heads, yes? As for the second part, well, it's complicated. My feel from Alloy of Law is that they have been experiencing an enormous internal expansion (technology, politics, etc.) which his distracted them from systematic exploration. They had an odd combination of technologies after Sazed's ascension, due to their extremely odd history. Some things got pushed forward and others backward relative to our world (or, frankly, their world without the Ruin/Preservation conflict suddenly heating up again.) Or to put it more clearly, the northern surviving humans landed in an almost perfect environment with an enormous library at their disposal and no known rivals. A little complacency and tendency to just read the library seems like a natural result.

11thorderknight, this assumption seems insufficiently supported to hold up the rest of your argument. If Hoid can, for instance, jump around worlds in, say, a single day, and if the letter is important enough, all he would have to do is leave it where the recipient would certainly find it, which could be anywhere in the cosmere. No postal service needed.

Sounds like candidates for questions to ask Brandon.

Others have been saying this, but I wished to clarify it. Zane's trick was to keep the coin in reserve in his mouth. When he actually pushed and pulled on it, it was outside him. Basically, it was another Mistborn trick, a clever one. Your opponent thinks you don't have any metal left and can't follow you? Guess what...

This is the best I've been able to come up with as well, but the sheer number of holes in that theory makes me suspect there is a lot more going on than we have been privy to. Basically, every time I theorize about this, I come up with "Insufficient data." So I leave it at that.

Pity they weren't able to make this work somehow to trap Miles. Wax might've taken less of a beating.

My theory about this? I think Ruin would have had to actually appear "in body" to metabolize the Atium. After all, it still existed somewhere. It's probably a rare and dangerous thing for Shards to do.

Bandwidth is a technical term which simply measures information, period. For pure abstract words, it seems likely that the telegraph might have an edge, like you said. When you include the possibility of pictures and emotional state of the writer, though, things begin to shift back the other way. Maybe not all the way; it depends wildly on what you are using it for. The suggested simplifications that make it more like a telegraph probably would make it more efficient for, say, military uses.

OK, I'm glad a comment of mine started this discussion. Just saw it. I think that most of the comments have been on the mark. The discussions of the pros and cons of Spanreeds vs. telegraphs are quite intelligent. They actually represent a classic trade-off in technology of bandwidth vs. reliability. The span-reeds have much larger bandwidth, representing complex actions and images, but have a much larger price with maintenance, reliability and compatibility of the mechanisms at both ends. The telegraphs focus the information much more tightly in order to keep the noise down and the reliability up, at the price of slower communication. I think that the security, if we are right that it is secure, is by far the biggest advantage Rosharian fabrials would have over the telegraph, regardless of whether they use a Morse code analog or something else.

Much more likely, I'd say, is the idea that both the sender and recipient of the letter have lived so long, they view time in a way different from normal humans. "Recently" depends very much on the time-scale you live at.

If you don't have electricity, that's actually a very good idea. Aren't those called spanreeds, and aren't they used for communication that's actually much more subtle than the telegraph ever was?

OK, that's fair. There might be a deeper relationship. Personally, I'd wait until we knew more about the magic in Way of Kings before trying too hard, though!

I think that Kurkistan is right. Forging is, stated simply, rewriting (or, perhaps, temporarily overwriting) an objects past. That's the only way we see it manifest in any of its forms. The details are complicated and the applications amazingly rich, but none of it contradicts this simple essence. Bloodsealing, from what we can see, never overwrites anythings past. It can track Shai using her blood, which has everything to do with the present and nothing to do with the past. It can create skeletals which will track Shai. As others have said repeatedly, this is not a natural state for skeletons to be in, in any form. I agree with others who say that the bloodsealer is apparently connected to the skeletals in some way; this manifestation of magic is nothing like anything we have seen elsewhere in the Cosmere. It certainly has nothing to do with Forging as Shai practices it; Shai's forgeries will work indefinitely for anyone who can get ahold of her stamp and some ink, and a plausible target, with her none the wiser. Literally, the only thing Bloodsealing and Forgery appear to have in common are the fact that they use stamps. Given that both are magic systems on Sel, this is less impressive than it sounds; all magic systems we have seen in Sel use symbols (perhaps geography-based symbols) to perform their work. So all we have left in common is that they both use stamps to make the symbols they use. That is a very weak connection indeed. In short, I feel that for most people, calling them different magic systems makes much more sense. Shai's ignorance about the Bloodsealer is a much better explanation, I feel.

I am also LDS, and I have to agree with this. Most Mormon's, in doctrine and practice, are only dualists---body and spirit. The split into three in Brandon's work isn't particularly traditional, as far as I can tell. As for the Tree of Life---yes, it's an important symbol for Latter-day Saints, but it's hardly unique. Being referenced early in Genesis spread the idea to an awful large part of the world. Those parts of the world which weren't Judeo-Christian also often picked up on the use of trees to represent life/growth/family/etc, resulting in similar symbolism.

I bolded the line in your quote because that is the very big, very real danger people are objecting to. I would add that the Alethi high-princes seem to be rather self-centered. Putting Shard-bearers at stake may be the best way for the army (although I doubt it; the cost of losing Shards to the Parshendi is very high; unlike chess, any shards the Parshendi take can be used against the Alethi later), but I don't see any besides Adolin and Galivar even being willing to consider it.

You don't use your queen to take a pawn if it puts them directly into the sights of an enemy bishop unless you have a plan to turn a loss into a stalemate in the endgame.

I'd be more likely to agree with this if, as others have pointed out, Brandon hadn't explicitly touched on the subject briefly in the book itself. As it is, in order to control currency, there must be a centralized body with a monopoly on producing the currency in question. Who would that be, in Alethar? Maybe the soul-casters themselves (aren't they ardents)? That would be a lot of very subtle power to wield.

No, it actually doesn't. During one of Dalinar's visions (the one with the Midnight Essences), the woman swears using the epithet "Three gods!" It's clear that at one point, the people of Roshar had a better idea of who was actually in charge. How the information was lost is interesting. I would note that, given Odium's recent strategy, having people forget would be very much in his favor. That may have been part of what has happened.