***SPOILERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon****

[little wilson]

A "Peter" misting would be pretty cool, I must admit. I'm not sure how it would come to be in the Mistborn world, but if it would work, man, it would rock. Just get a couple different misting friends, and you'd be set. You'd just have to stay around them....which could be hard if you tried to ironpull and steelpush over long distances, but I'm sure that could be solved...somehow.

[stereomike]

I recently finished HOA - great book, and great ending (didn't like hearing definitively that Kelsier, Vin, and Ellend lived in the afterlife, but it was a very minor disappointment, but necessary that Sazed talk with them to explain his knowledge in the chapter headings), everything was tied together very nicely.  All the clues were there for a discerning observer to notice, so all in all I really liked the ending, explained everything very logically, and without any holes.

Is it true that ANY metal piercing gave Ruin some access to a person?  Or does it have to contain a hemulurgical charge?

If Sazed were to have left the rings embedded inside his body, would Ruin have had access to him?

[CSmythe]

And caught up, that took a long time.

As I was reading I had plenty of comments and questions, most raised by other posts but since I didn't bother to write them down I can't remember most of them.
My new pet theories are both about the Shards (and might need to be restated on that thread assuming it exists at all) but they are:
1. Ruin and Preservation were not two seperate shards but in fact shards of a shard. They were in such perfect balance that it seems strange to me that they could have ever functioned without each other. I expect that the power arrived on the planet and was fractioned through some unknown event (possibly in the moment that Ati and Laras each claimed a portion of it.) This would also explain how, once there was a consiciousness in control of them they were capable of working together. But who knows, I think EUOL said something about us having met 4 shards and since I firmly believe Hoid is one, the pool is another and there is one in Warbreaker (which I have only just started reading) that leaves us only room for one in MB.
2. Hoid is a shard. I suspect that Hoid with his ability to jump worlds (or possibly ability to exist on all worlds at once) is another shard of Adonalsium, possibly even the conciousness and with his power removed he simply has no memory of what he once was. I'll admit a bit of a leap and the character could simply be like Cid for the Final Fantasy games, a nice little in joke for the author and his fans.
3.  Regarding the Seers at the final battle (and in fact a number of the others who fell to the mistsickness) I seem to remember when Elend first figures out the mists snapping people he orders that metals be brought down, but then specifically lists Iron, Steel, Pewter and Tin (IIRC) I got the impression that he only felt it was necessary to get metals into the mistings who had abilities that would be useful in the battle. Really when you have very little time would you care if someone could burn copper? Or really any of the less readily useful metals? Even Zinc and Brass would be fairly useless in that situation since (as Breeze was fond of reminding us) they are not simple powers to use. They require finesse, and finesse comes from training and practice not just from having the power. As for the battle in the Kandra Homeland they had a ton of atium sitting there but did they really have big caches of any other metals? For all we know some of the soldiers (and I hope Demoux) were indeed Mistborn but without the other metals to test how would they, or we know.

Sorry those ran a little long, had a little stream of conciousness moment there.

[CSmythe]

As a note to the poster, first off when do I get to buy a nice big glossy copy of that? Second aren't copper mistings called Smokers? on th eposter it calls them Copperclouds which is the effect but not the name. Also not loving the Aluminum/Duralumin name of Gnat though I can certainly understand it. And kind of like that Duralumin which was arguably the most potent of the true metals in the original triogy being fundamentaly useless in future books.

[happyman]

And caught up, that took a long time.

As I was reading I had plenty of comments and questions, most raised by other posts but since I didn't bother to write them down I can't remember most of them.
My new pet theories are both about the Shards (and might need to be restated on that thread assuming it exists at all) but they are:
1. Ruin and Preservation were not two seperate shards but in fact shards of a shard. They were in such perfect balance that it seems strange to me that they could have ever functioned without each other. I expect that the power arrived on the planet and was fractioned through some unknown event (possibly in the moment that Ati and Laras each claimed a portion of it.) This would also explain how, once there was a consiciousness in control of them they were capable of working together. But who knows, I think EUOL said something about us having met 4 shards and since I firmly believe Hoid is one, the pool is another and there is one in Warbreaker (which I have only just started reading) that leaves us only room for one in MB.
2. Hoid is a shard. I suspect that Hoid with his ability to jump worlds (or possibly ability to exist on all worlds at once) is another shard of Adonalsium, possibly even the conciousness and with his power removed he simply has no memory of what he once was. I'll admit a bit of a leap and the character could simply be like Cid for the Final Fantasy games, a nice little in joke for the author and his fans.
3.  Regarding the Seers at the final battle (and in fact a number of the others who fell to the mistsickness) I seem to remember when Elend first figures out the mists snapping people he orders that metals be brought down, but then specifically lists Iron, Steel, Pewter and Tin (IIRC) I got the impression that he only felt it was necessary to get metals into the mistings who had abilities that would be useful in the battle. Really when you have very little time would you care if someone could burn copper? Or really any of the less readily useful metals? Even Zinc and Brass would be fairly useless in that situation since (as Breeze was fond of reminding us) they are not simple powers to use. They require finesse, and finesse comes from training and practice not just from having the power. As for the battle in the Kandra Homeland they had a ton of atium sitting there but did they really have big caches of any other metals? For all we know some of the soldiers (and I hope Demoux) were indeed Mistborn but without the other metals to test how would they, or we know.

Sorry those ran a little long, had a little stream of conciousness moment there.

The things about Seer's is that we know there were Atium Mistings.  Yomen was one.  We also have Sazed's statements that the mists could snap ordinary people but that it was very hard and that they only got one power when they were snapped (because the power was latent but hard to access somehow).  Put these two together, and it seems much more likely that the ultra-mistfallen were only Atium mistings.

[Reaves]

Is it true that ANY metal piercing gave Ruin some access to a person?  Or does it have to contain a hemulurgical charge?

If Sazed were to have left the rings embedded inside his body, would Ruin have had access to him?

You have to kill someone with that piercing and then place it in one of the hemalurgical bind points.

[douglas]

I just thought of possible hemalurgic effects of Larasium and the Atium/Larasium alloy.  A Larasium spike could steal all the powers of a full mistborn, while the alloy could steal all the powers of a feruchemist, all with a single spike.  Make a new Lord Ruler from a normal human with just two spikes, one Larasium and one Atium/Larasium.  Simple, logical, and fits well within the established framework.  Of course I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Brandon has come up with something spectacularly different for that and I still have no clue what a feruchemist could do with them, but that's my best guess so far.  If Brandon ever comes back to this thread it we be nice to get a comment or two about this.

[Chaos]

As a note to the poster, first off when do I get to buy a nice big glossy copy of that? Second aren't copper mistings called Smokers? on th eposter it calls them Copperclouds which is the effect but not the name. Also not loving the Aluminum/Duralumin name of Gnat though I can certainly understand it. And kind of like that Duralumin which was arguably the most potent of the true metals in the original triogy being fundamentaly useless in future books.

"Copperclouds" is the term scholars apply to it, but their colloquial name is "Smokers". Similar to this is how Pewter mistings are both called Pewterarms and Thugs--Pewterarms is the scholarly term, but Thug is the common term.

[GoryCat]

I just thought of possible hemalurgic effects of Larasium and the Atium/Larasium alloy.  A Larasium spike could steal all the powers of a full mistborn, while the alloy could steal all the powers of a feruchemist, all with a single spike.  Make a new Lord Ruler from a normal human with just two spikes, one Larasium and one Atium/Larasium.  Simple, logical, and fits well within the established framework.  Of course I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Brandon has come up with something spectacularly different for that and I still have no clue what a feruchemist could do with them, but that's my best guess so far.  If Brandon ever comes back to this thread it we be nice to get a comment or two about this.

I think people here need to stop thinking of larasium as a real thing.  Unlike atium, it was clearly created only once for a single purpose, is now gone, and its creator has no reason (and Brandon has said there would be no mistborn in later times) to do it again.

In terms of broad plot, the two god metals have about the same significance in Mistborn as the One Ring had in Middle Earth: they are the central object of the Big War Against Evil, but at the same time, that war is about the object, so war and object go away at the same time.  It's not like there could be a sequel to The Lord of the Rings in which someone makes another One Ring to use wisely; the whole point of the Ring is that it can't be (also, Tolkien's work is all about a long-term decline in power.  The Ring is a powerful thing from times long gone, and no one would have the ability to create another).  Likewise, in Mistborn, the series viewed from back to front evidently turns around the struggle for the atium, and is driven by people empowered by larasium; this mirrors the conflict between the two divine entities behind the metals.  The two things embody a conflict that has ended; you can't have them back now.  (Also, Brandon has already described his intention to allow allomancy to decline in power, so the god metals become inappropriate for the same reason as the Ring would be in a LotR sequel.)

A corollary of all that talk is that the series looks more like Tolkien than I had thought while reading it.  You can have more fun with this if you like: for example, Marsh plays part of Gollum's role (thankfully, not the gulping, sniveling part).  Of course, the big points all end up different, such as what they actually do with the atium.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Has anyone noticed that the metals poster suggests that the atium in the books was NOT atium but actually an atium/electrum alloy? The metals poster says that "pure" atium gives an expansive vision of the future and that its alloys give expanded mental and temporal effects. Now, we know that malatium was a gold alloy that had an effect very similar to gold's effect. The effect of atium shown in the book is very similar to electrum's effect—except for the time Elend burns it with duralumin, in which he gets an expansive vision of the future. It seems to me that the atium produced in the Pits of Hathsin was actually an atium/electrum alloy, which Preservation set up because he didn't want atium to be too powerful a metal. Elend's duralumin burn somehow burned off the electrum part of the alloy and gave him access to the true atium power.

This also could explain why the atium mistings took 16 days—they may have had power to burn all 16 of atium's alloys. If you gave malatium to Yomen, would he be able to burn it? Remember that atium was not originally part of the set of 16, so the rules for it are a bit different.

[Capulus]

Just pondering another question I was recently thinking of. So apparently if you consider the breakdown of "realms" in Mistborn there seems to be 3 major ones, the physical, the conscious, and the beyond. So most of the characters exist in the physical with their physical bodies etc. Now Vin and Sazed (and I assume Leras and Ati) lost their physical forms when they transcended into the realm of consciousness, where it appears these "minor" gods reside (like Sazed in the end), and when their power is used up or destroyed, their corporeal body re-manifests itself in the physical realm. Now my question is, I believe according to an answer Brandon gave earlier, that Sazed cant actually communicate with the beyond, hence why he cant talk to Tindwyl, so why are Kelsier, Vin, and Elend  hanging around in the conscious realm, because for Sazed to be able to communicate with them, one would assume that is where they have to be, based on this "sazed cant reach the beyond" idea. And if they chose to hang out in this region, can they choose to move on to the beyond? Because it seems if Sazed cannot reach there with these "god-like" powers, how could the others, unless the power is what would actually prevent Sazed from reaching that realm. Thoughts?

[douglas]

I think people here need to stop thinking of larasium as a real thing.  Unlike atium, it was clearly created only once for a single purpose, is now gone, and its creator has no reason (and Brandon has said there would be no mistborn in later times) to do it again.

Why?  It may never appear again, but it is most definitely a real thing and Brandon has explicitly stated that it has alloys and that those alloys have specific effects.  Those effects may never be seen in canon stories, but for some people, myself included, discussing the possible full details of the magic system including those metals is interesting for its own sake even if many of those details never come into play in any book Brandon ever writes.

[GoryCat]

Why?  It may never appear again, but it is most definitely a real thing and Brandon has explicitly stated that it has alloys and that those alloys have specific effects.  Those effects may never be seen in canon stories, but for some people, myself included, discussing the possible full details of the magic system including those metals is interesting for its own sake even if many of those details never come into play in any book Brandon ever writes.

So you're shipping allomantic metals, then?

[little wilson]

Oh, I like that idea, Ook. I was looking at the poster the other day, trying to figure out how the alloys of atium would work. I didn't really get very far, mostly because the first one I tried was Electrum, and I couldn't figure it out, because it seemed like what we knew about it (atium) already did that. But your idea makes total sense. Now I think I shall go back and try to figure out the rest.

Also, in this same vein. Since Atium alloys only gives expanded mental and temporal effects, does that mean only mental and temporal metals can be alloyed with it? Or can all of them be, and even the Physical/Enhancement metals would end up being a mental/temporal effect as an alloy?

[douglas]

So you're shipping allomantic metals, then?

  What does that have to do with it?  I'm not trying to get two metals in a relationship with each other, I'm trying to figure out what certain metals do.