Timewaster's Guide Archive

I've started a couple times, but when working 70+ hours a week and doing full time school it's a bit hard. lol.

70 hours?  If you work EVERY DAY that's TEN HOURS!  Minimum!  And school?  I'm starting to doubt either the credibilty of your schedule or your sanity.

It'd be interesting to see how the magic system is handled, especially as it expands with new metals and such.

Sorry, I'm no expert, but I think I can answer a different question.

I think that when the characters died they get to move on to the beyond, but they have the option to stick around a little bit and watch things happen.  This would be in a sort of in between place, which is either the same as or close to where the shard minds are.  Thus, Kelsier was able to grab onto Preservation's power when he died and Vin and Elend were able to talk to Sazed, but Tindwyl doesn't seem to have stayed very long.  I guess it's a one way trip.

Agreed, but they both have their downsides.  It's hard to organize a group so they're all at the same place at the same time and a random group makes it difficult to organize, period.

I'm very much against it being a MMO, just saying

Oh, most definitely.  The setting simply isn't built to have that many active participants, plus the story is one of the best parts of the series, and reworking it to be an MMO would totally not work.

I have this idea that for most of the game you'd play as Mistborn Vin, but periodically you'd control different characters in order to try out different or limited sets of powers that make think of different ways to play.  Like playing Ham to get the Thug perspective, or Sazed to try out the Feruchemical powers.  Or perhaps you'd play as Elend to have a political game or large scale battles.

Lerasium is derived from the name Leras, the cognitive force (?) behind the Shard of Preservation.
Atium is derived from the name Ati, the cognitive force behind the Shard of Ruin.

Sazedium would be derived from the name Sazed, the cognitive force behind the Shards of Ruin and Preservation

I thought this too, but Sazedium doesn't really roll off the tongue to me.

I just thought about something...
We know that for every normal metal there is one working alloy.
We know that both Larasium and Atium can be alloyed with all of the basic metals.

But could there be an alloy of Larasium and Atium?
Laratium maybe?

You're not the first to wonder that, it's one of the questions we've been wanting to have Brandon answer, but I do like the name.  I say we should call it Laratium from now on!

The size to feruchemical energy ratio is one that I've wondered about as well.  We know that the energy stored in a ring sized goldmind was enough to heal Sazed when he basically got shot repeatedly in the stomach with the rings.

I like some of theories as to why Ruin can change feruchemical memories but can't see things inscribed in metal, especially Peter's, but I have a different one.

The reason Ruin can't see inscriptions is because metal is power in Scadrial, yes?  The shards see power, and the metal gives off so much power that he can't look directly at the metal.  Like staring straight at the sun hurts your eyes.  I think that the memories are stored in the form of energy, but a different sort of energy than the raw power of the metal by itself.  So Ruin may not be able to see the metal, but he can see the memory power because it's a different kind of power.  And he can mess with the power, changing the memories contained within.  He just can't change the source of the power.

Of course, a sort of corollary to this is that all feruchemical energy is like this.  But the other kinds of stored energy aren't complex enough to really be changed at all, not in a way that Ruin can use, that is.  But memories are very complex and used in such a way that Ruin can change it and use it for his own devices.

I've probably overlooked some obvious flaw in this, but until then, this is what I'm sticking with.

(1) Would it be possible to design a machine that replicates whatever the "burning" process is in the human stomach, enabling a sort of automated allomancy? This would obviously be kind of worthless for metals like gold and electrum, since a machine doesn't really have a use for knowing what its alternate pasts or futures would be like, but a coppercloud engine would be rather useful, and I have a neat design for an iron- or steel- burning automobile engine... Not to mention that metal repulsion would be the obvious way to take Mistborn spacebound. It seems like it should be possible, since I think it was implied earlier in this thread that even a rock exists to some degree in all three realms, but obviously I don't actually know this.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm fairly certain that in future books that allomancy will be limited to human use, due to its magical origins, as well as inanimate objects not having any amount of preservation to augment to create allomancy.  The idea is that allomancy comes from having more than the normal amount of Preservation and while animals and such have Preservation in them (in equal proportions with Ruin) inanimate objects lack that.

(2) Scadrian transhumanism. Would the development of genetic engineering allow for the revival of Mistborns, or is that something that for whatever reason only lerasium can do? (I'm really curious about the chemical structure of lerasium and atium in general - they can be alloyed with normal metals, which implies they have electron shells, but the nucleus almost certainly can't consist of normal protons and neutrons...)

While genetics may contribute to the presence of allomancy, the actual cause of magic is on a more metaphysical level, putting it rather out of reach of normal scientific inquiry.

I've noticed some patterns in Hemalurgy and put together a rather rough table of Hemalurgic Metals.
http://flamepainter.deviantart.com/art/Hemalurgic-Metals-Table-158509497
This link goes to the page of DeviantArt where I have it uploaded since I couldn't get it to upload directly here.