As topic creator, I feel it is my duty to tell you people to post your Hemalurgy stuff in, well, the Hemalurgy thread. Now, if you happen to have a legitimate theory for Hemalurgy pushing away the mists, then that would be acceptable, but I still think that is more correct to post in the Hemalurgy thread.
So... move those thoughts to the Hemalurgy thread, please! I shall attempt to refute my colleague Comatose there.
Moving on to Mists.
AS for your theory Chaos, I like it, but I also still like my mist magic skaa theory.
Also I still think that the mists are a tool of ruin and he used it to trap preservation (in the form of the mistspirit), because the mists are change, preservation's opposite, and preservation used the power of creation ( the opposite of destruction) to trap ruin.
Perfectly honestly, your skaa magic theory is a bunch of crock
Skaa is basically just a nice way of saying "not nobles", so I think skaa do not inherently have special abilities unless they are half-breeds.
Of course,
I have a crazy theory that Preservation is somehow ash. I have absolutely no basis to support this, and I'll be the first to admit that it is crazy. But! I can neither refute Comatose's skaa magic theory, nor can he refute my Preservation-ash theory, so the theory is no more valid than any other. More crazy, perhaps, but no more valid.
I've gone through some chapters (and annotations) checking specifically for Mist info.
Like Comatose mentioned, the mist is likely to have some kind of common link to our own mist. For instance Mist is wet and wets things.
Vin landed softly on the mist-slicked cobblestones
But, at night the mists fell like a deep cloud. They dampened, softened, shaded.
More dense than a simple fog and more constant than any normal weather pattern
She landed skidding on mist-wetted feet.
She fell to a crouch as the men died, holding the staff in one hand, her other hand resting against the mist-wetted cobbles.
It's just mist, he told himself. Water vapor. Nothing to fear.
So, I presume that like regular mist, when the sun comes up, it just transforms itself into its gaz form. Talking about physic, I kind of remember that matter has 3 forms - solid, liquid, gaz ; and liquid is sort of before gaz... (Thanks to Mr Nye, the Science Guy ). The transition, though, seems quite sudden :
They (the mists) puffed into existence as darkness fell, growing like tangles of translucent vines, twisting and wrapping around one another.
But, at night the mists fell like a deep cloud.
The mist is formed of what ? Elend refers it as "just mist. Water vapor", but he doesn't mention its curls. If it is just water vapor, then it's mixed with ash enabling people to see its movement otherwise there would be nothing to see. I have to conclude to that part that the ash isn't the mist but is what makes it visible, nothing more.
That was to take care of the physic side of things.
I believe though that being somehow related to the three magic system, the mist has to be neutral, neither from Ruin or Preservation, and that would enable it to be used by both sides.
Regarding the Mist Spirit, I found a very intersting annotation:
By the time I finished this book, I realized that--for the mythology I wanted--there could only be a single mist spirit.
So the Mist Spirit could be thought as one entity. Like Comatose, I think it is Preservation because it seeks life ( yes, I know, sticking a knife into a body's person is a very strange way to seek life - unless you need to do it in order to force a person to snap right after - and I kind of recall it wanted to do it with Alendi but did not succeed, then ).
Does this help anyone ?
As our resident physicist (or at least, physicist to be, I guess, since I don't start college until August) I think it is my duty to say that water vapor is already a gas. The three common states of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. Water has names for all of them: ice, water, and water vapor, respectively. I don't know about you, but you can't evaporate a gas, because... it's already a gas. The only state of matter that is above that is a plasma, which normally occurs on the surface of the sun and in other, very specialized scenarios.
They (the mists) puffed into existence as darkness fell, growing like tangles of translucent vines, twisting and wrapping around one another.
But, at night the mists fell like a deep cloud.
The mist is formed of what ? Elend refers it as "just mist. Water vapor", but he doesn't mention its curls. If it is just water vapor, then it's mixed with ash enabling people to see its movement otherwise there would be nothing to see. I have to conclude to that part that the ash isn't the mist but is what makes it visible, nothing more.
And of course,
just as I reference my insane ash theory, you have to ruin it with that. Way to go, jerk (just kidding)!
Ash... we need an ash topic...