happyman

I imagine that living for 5000 years or so, at some point you'd get the urge to change your lifestyle, get a new wardrobe, that kind of thing. I mean, normal people have mid-life crises at roughly 40-50. Can you imagine hitting 3300 and wondering what you are doing with your life?

I have another theory: My theory is that the atium mistings were sick longer so that they would be sent back to Luthadel and then get side-tracked into the Pits of Hathsin, thereby fulfilling the prophecy that the Hero of Ages would come and bring with him (sorta; Sazed supplied said army with Atium) an army of Allomancers to the Kandra homeland, who would then fight and save the Kandra and the world. Preservation was playing the long game, no question.

It's void in Sel because the missionaries have a hard time navigating Shadesmar to get there.

The set of all finite sets is infinite, so the limit to "finite" is not all that helpful in practice. Only really dedicated mathematicians try to parse that craziness.

If it's a coincidence, I'll eat my book. This doesn't mean it is right or means anything (what if the 99 count is wrong?), but it probably came from somewhere or someone or something who had a purpose.

This seems very plausible. It seems that it takes some kind of Shardic power to create sapience, and Honor claimed that he, specifically, created humans.

English is lucky to be as standard as it is. When I got the really in-depth German dictionaries, the variety in usage and pronunciation was much more regional than most forms of modern English. And I'll admit that American and British English have drifted apart a bit! Take joy in our diversity, that's what I say.

I think you've made the first really solid logical point in this entire thread. Maybe we shouldn't use the term "intent." Maybe we should use the term "purpose." All of the Shards have a purpose which drives them.

Kurkistan's answer may not be correct, but it is by far the most coherent theory I have seen on the subject. If it is something else, I will be disappointed. After all, by far the most impressive use of Feruchemy is to "surge," or whatever, so this definition is a very good way of measuring Feruchemical strength. Incidentally, surging is also a key part of making compounding so impressive. After all, Miles is using health up at an impressive rate whenever he takes damage. An hCompounder (Hemalurgical compounder) would be, in principle, less powerful than an otherwise natural Doppelganger, and in a direct fight, the natural one would have the edge, being able to compound for longer at the same strength with the same amount of metal.

I assume he kept it mostly to remember how the king responded to her when he saw her painting there. Either that, or as a conversation piece. "Is that a dog with a bone, or a special kind of radish?"

We already knew that whatever caused metals to burn, it created a beat with wavelength and everything in the fabric of creation. What we don't know is whether all the other effects are also wave-like. If Copperclouds, for instance, are the result of a wave, then it must be something with an extremely short wavelength, because the wave effects are unobserved at the human level. (I'm not being snarky there; I'm being technical. That waves with the right wavelength and dispersion curve can act almost like particles is a basic result of quantum mechanics. It happens around us all the time.)

I almost agree. I think that Preservation managed to tie the mist-snappings to something very fundamental and natural in the Cosmere, something even the other shards would have a hard time changing. Otherwise, Ruin could just have undone whatever Preservation did, and the whole hint would have been quite useless. On the other hand, we have word of Brandon that Preservation made some changes to the system from the fully "natural" state of Allomancy so that people would have an easier time recognizing it. The Atium mistings should stand out for very obvious reasons. So obviously he had some control over whatever underlying system he rigged.

Axies would love to try to find that one. Even trickier than Alespren.

Interesting. Is it possibly this workaround which also makes them vulnerable to outside control? That is, Hemalurgic spikes are common to all Hemalurgic creations, and they each give access to something that was previously outside the spiked person's soul. Brandon once used the term "hack" to refer to how this works. Thus you have the (physical) metal, giving somebody else' (spiritual) powers to the person spiked. It sounds almost like the power has been *rerouted* somehow. Maybe Hemalurgic spikes are "conductors" which, among other things, transmit spiritual power from one spiritweb to another, perhaps by going through the cognitive realm. Then adding spikes to kandra would, almost as a side-effect, create an open connection to the cognitive realm, allowing them to finally grow up mentally. These spikes would also be more exposed to the rest of the world, and presumably other magics which affect the cognitive realm, than the original spirit. Thus they provide a short-cut into the Hemalurgic creation which is easier to use than normal, say, mental external Allomancy.

See? The $10 billion works even in our world! How cool is that?

That's part of it. We were just wondering if he could also save lives and be more effective. Sadeas uses bridgemen for a reason. It's a badly immoral, and frankly self-defeating in the long term, but it is effective. We just feel that "effective" and "moral" might be a false dichotomy.

The method for buying these things is called "employing people who can." Seriously, in many of the magic systems we've seen, the magic is bought and sold in the respective worlds, although the medium isn't always money.

Folks, $10 billion can buy any of the others. Not to mention that if you invest it wisely, it will continue to be able to buy them for the foreseeable future!

OK, for the records, Lightflame: That upvote was for RAFOspren and Sprenspren. I really like the recursion, but then I'm a math geek. Also, I think it would be cool if we had Hoidspren.

It seems unlikely that the ghostbloods are evil incarnate. Brandon seldom creates groups which are pure anything at all. Individuals can be evil in his works, as well as misguided, insane, and selfish, but groups are almost always a mix of the above. This doesn't mean what they are doing is good, or even unselfish. We just don't know enough.

Probably true, but for a compounder like Miles, that's not really a problem. Also, gold is much more general purpose than Cadmium, and so would take care of a lot more problems at once. The extra Feruchemical charge would be energy well spent.

This. Getting blown up by a stick of dynamite is much more damaging, short term, than exposure to vacuum. Miles would have no trouble surviving. He'd probably barely notice, given all the damage he's taken.

You missed a key point in that scene, Satsuoni. His orders were very explicitly to talk to the king, wait for the kind to acknowledge that he heard his original statement, and then kill him. Taragavinian very carefully never acknowledged Szeth's original statement until he showed him the oathstone and ordered him not to kill him, which clearly superseded his prior orders entirely. I think that had Szeth really had a loophole he could have used once he understood what Taragavinian was up too, he would have taken it, but he never really had that option, under the assumption that he had to follow the orders exactly. It is this second assumption which people, understandably, have beef with. I'm not comfortable with it either, but I am interested in seeing where Brandon is going with it.

Midius may not be Hoid, but that also doesn't mean it isn't related. What I find interesting from the Liar of Partinel sample chapters is that the world was already in a bind even before the Shattering. Whatever happened there, it was already part of the larger story. I can't wait to get more hints on the back-story!

I agree with Observer. I also suspect that it is amusement rather than anything else. After all, he sent his pursuers on a harmless wild-goose chase to a relatively pleasant part of Roshar. This sounds to me wildly unlike a grudge.