"Magic is what makes fantasy fantastic," someone says, "you can't apply rules to them or else it loses wonder!" I respond, "Sure, but if you want to write them you will certainly want to know how they work." Writing is all about execution, and I find applying some basic laws of physics to magic systems make them more understandable and realistic. Here, I'm going to outline my basic method for developing a magic system.
Column by Chaos2651
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What other townborn combo would be good like steel and iron? Pewter and healing(don't remember the metal for that) maybe?The best would be the same metal for both because then they could use the Lord Ruler's combo amplification trick. Pewter or Steel would be best for that, I think, giving you utterly absurd strength or speed plus either, well, more strength (also toughness) or pushing ability. Gold might also be good for the ability to heal from practically anything almost instantly, but there's only so far that will get you if you don't have anything else and the Allomantic ability is near useless on its own.
Back to the original question, has anyone considered the fact that what the king said was the last words out of his mouth, spoken just seconds before his death? There's a definite possibility that what the king spoke was actually just death-babbling, (perhaps he was channeling Nohadon,) and Szeth simply interpreted it as actually coming from the king's conscious will because 1) it seemed to fit the context and 2) the death-babbling phenomenon seems to have started at right about this same time and Szeth was probably not aware of it yet.I've considered that, but in a rather different way - there's nothing "just" about "just death babbling". The pre-death blurbs are all full of meaning, prophecy, and supernatural insight, and at least some of them definitively indicate continued awareness of the speaker's present situation and preferences - for example, there's one where one of Taravangian's victims states specifically that he refuses to tell of what he sees because he knows what Taravangian is doing and hates him for it. Thus, Gavilar's request being part of that phenomenon would grant it more weight, not less.
I know what I'd wish for... The knowledge of who killed Asmodean!But we already have that. Towers of Midnight revealed it.
I don't think it has to be a spike, per se... Ruin was able to influence Vin through her earring, and Spook through a splinter. It has to be piercing the body, but it doesn't need to be a spike of the sort used for the Inquisitors.Functionally, both of those were spikes. They were both hemalurgically imbued, and they both granted or enhanced an Allomantic power. They may have been smaller and less obvious than an Inquisitor's spikes, but they served the same purposes.
One issue is the Skaa vs nobility. In the book one character mentions that the nobility are the descendants of the people who sided with TLR from the start. There is some evidence supporting this. Such as TLR mention all the stuff that was done to him to try and kill him (i.e. being flayed), implying there was a struggle at the start, and he had to fight for his power and needed allies to do so.I'm not sure if the choice of which peoples became nobles and skaa is ever really explained. Rashek may well have turned Alendi's people into the skaa. The nobles were probably just carried over from any existing power structure that he didn't especially hate. Rashek ended up not raising up the Terrismen because he feared the possibility of someone else being born both an Allomancer and a Feruchemist and being able to match his abilities.
However, at the same time, Rashek HATES the people Aendi was apart of (from Khelenim or something I believe). So it makes sense that that would become the Skaa. If they became the skaa, who became the nobles?
A lot of the diary entries are of Rashek talking about how his people should be dominate. You could almost make a case for the terrismen becoming nobles and Alendi's people becoming skaa, if there weren't the other terrismen around.
During the end Kar also mentions how in order for Vin to be as strong as she is, she had to come from a "very pure bloodline." Which bloodline is that? Aren't all nobelemen of a pure bloodline since interbreeding with skaa is so forbidden?That would be the bloodline(s) descended specifically from the 10 or so kings and lords that Rashek gave beads of Lerasium to. As for interbreeding being forbidden, when has that ever really stopped people from doing something? Yes it will stop some, but 100% all the time? Not going to happen.
Also, with TLR being stabbed in the chest, flayed, etc (even beheaded if the stories are right) and him not dying, what is that exactly? It's similar to the Inquisitors so it could be a property of Hemalurgy, but other than the bracelets he doesn't seem to have the spikes that they do. Or is it just a super stockpile of stored 'health' from his Feruchemy that he can burn with Allomancy to instantly heal himself? Brandon does confirm in one of the annotations that TLR uses Hemalurgy, but I'm not sure to what extent. I.e. a spear through the heart killed him when he was old, so it makes sense that a spear through the heart would of killed him when he was young as well (such as when he was stabbed right before Kel's death)One of the annotations mentions that the story about beheading was exaggerated, and that if Rashek's head actually came off it really would have killed him. Surviving wounds like that is a function of supercharged Feruchemic healing, possibly combined with burning Pewter Allomantically. As for the spear killing him at the end, I think that was really more window dressing than anything else - he was about to die from old age anyway.
Finally, I'm trying to understand exactly how TLR became immortal. When I first read the 1st book and was waiting for the 2nd and 3rd I always thought he was storing youth in the Atium and then burning it to get a larger amount of youth than normally allowed by Feruchemists, and staying young that way. However, we now know that isn't true, the Atium was somewhere else (it could of been some other metal of course).The giant stockpile of Atium was somewhere else, but Rashek didn't need such huge amounts of it to maintain his youth. Your initial idea was accurate, though portions of your new impression may also be correct. I think the system went something like this:
I think after rereading carefully, my impression now is that he would go into that room of his for 3 hours or whatever it was every few days and make him self old, storing youth into his bracelets. Those bracelets then became a piece of metal with the 'power' of youth stored in them. He could then slowly burn the metal in those bracelets (without ingesting them?) over the course of the next few days and keep his youthful appearance. So in a way, he was able to 'create' a new metal to burn with Allomancy. Ideally you could do that with any of the things Feruchemists can store, and overwrite the metals Allomantic effect and have it give off a new attribute when burned. Does anyone know how accurate that is?
Fabrials are powered by spren? Please give me a quote from the book that says this or even remotely supports it.See this thread. It's a bit of an easter egg, as it's in one of the pictures in the book and in a simple code. Breaking the code produces, among other things:
The cut and type of the gem determines what kind of spren are attracted to it and can be imprisoned in it. There must be thousands of possible combinations.
Once a spren is captured and the gem infused with Stormlight the fabrial can be used in machines.
less in fact than the theory that Szeth has an honor spren (which is contrary to everything we know of him and his homeland).Contrary to what we know of his homeland? Yes. Weakened by the fact that we never see any such spren around him? Yes. Contrary to what we know of him specifically? Not even close.
