Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that scene was the point when I really started needing to finish reading the book for me too.

In fairness, the good guys (ish) had had something similar for ages. Dumai's Wells best scene.

Anyway, I finished The Alloy Of Law and I'm reading Shadows Of Self! It's still not quite five stars yet, but I'm really liking it! The fact that Harmony is so... personally involved in things feels a bit strange, but you can just see how Sanderson wanted to keep writing Sazed dialogue, and it makes sense because he's good at it.

Looks like we officially have another inductee in the Cult of the Cosmere. Glad you liked it.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I am now contractually obligated to recommend that you take a look at the Graphic Audio version of the Sanderson books.

They have a full cast of voice actors to play the various characters and the production qualities are pretty high. The Mistborn Era-2 productions in particular are pretty good. But the Stormlight Archive production takes the cake in terms of sheer quality.

I keep trying to convince other Cosmere fans to listen to them. They really are quite something.

Eww, Graphic Audio! D:

Nah, I'm (mostly) kidding. I'm actually glad to see a fan of them since I think they do something interesting. I only dislike them because I find the background noises distracting and because I prefer unabridged readings so I can absorb every morsel of prose as I read. My tastes aside, I'm glad if those are doing well.

Yeah, the background noise is something that seems to bother a lot of listeners, but I never minded them. I actually feel like they enhance the experience. And I like that they make the additional effort of writing original music for the Hoid scenes.

To be fair, their production of The Stormlight Archive is easily their best work in my opinion. I can see people being turned off by their other book series.

Eh, Graphic Audio. I'm okay with it, though i feel some of the jokes are lost since some of the funny stuff is in the narration, not just the dialogue. Lie that bit in Shadows of Self where Wax is relieved he didn't lose his quarry, he was just led into a trap. It's the narration letting Wax catch up to his own thoughts that makes it hilarious.

I'm reading The Bands Of Mourning, I'm very happy with it! The climax of Shadows Of Self was great too, but in the third book the characters really seem to come to life. I'm shipping Wax and Steris pretty hard, and Wayne and Me Laan even harder. But it sort of feels like the book is setting up for something bad to happen to Wayne...

Mistborn Coins on Kickstarter.

I kinda want to back them,

Glad you're enjoying them! I felt similarly about Bands, and it got me over my initial dislike of Wayne.

So I asked a question over in the Stormlight thread that would actually make more sense to ask here: do you think that the metals that allomancers burn "regrow" in nature, the way atium would condense in the Pits of Hathsin? Because I'm concerned that Scadrial might start to run low on metals in the future, with allomancers serving a population of millions and then billions, you know?

Scadrialans might show up in the space opera books like the Nevians, using terrible, incomprehensible technology to strip another world of an incomparable treasure... iron.

edited 27th Oct '17 3:31:36 AM by Durazno

That's a cool thought. We've been rooting for the scadrians for so long, it would be a pretty nice twist for them to end up being the alien invaders of other Shardworlds.

As far as we know, there is no way to "recycle" metals that have been allomantically burned, so the question of dwindling supplies might very well be a driving factor to what pushes the scadrians to explore space.

Took a look at this article and if Scadrial is anything like Earth, they should probably be fine for stuff like Iron, Aluminium, Zinc and Copper for a while. But I don't know what it would look like for the other metals.

edited 27th Oct '17 6:00:40 AM by GutstheBerserker

To be fair, though, the amounts of metal an Allomancer burns is pretty minuscule.

Its always only flakes in an alcohol solution so a few milligrams tops probably. There's probably more metal waste lying around any machine shop. Or being dumped in some river by toxic side products.

Second, for all we know, when Metal is 'burned' it simply breaks down (ie down to component metal atoms) and gets shed out with other waste products (Khriss maybe take some stool samples of Wax, it'll be hilarious) and the metal is returned to the greater ecosystem. I don't think Allomancy actually breaks conservation of mass (Metal is only the 'catalysator' for Allomancy, not the actual fuel)

Speaking as a Microbiologist, It'd be cool to see if Harmony has maybe set up some microbacterial life (like the Lord Ruler had for the falling ash) to take care of that 'spent' metal to reconstitute it into proper metal.

And finally, there's way easier ways to get some metal in space than invading a hapless world. Scadrials home system has a Comet Belt for one◊ but most asteroids will do.

edited 27th Oct '17 6:25:28 AM by 3of4

That would be much smarter than invading another world, you're right.

Also, your idea about Harmony accounting for allomancy in reshaping Scadrial is really convincing to me. I'll just bet he'd do that.

I'm actually wondering if that had been part of Ruin and Preservation original blueprint. Maybe with Harmony having to fix that as the Lord Rulers changes fucked over the ecoystem big time.

I don't have the numbers on hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if running them came out to Allomancers having a negligible impact on the total metal reserves of a planet. Do we have any info on what percentage of the population are Allomancers?

1/16th of the population. It was a plot point in the last book of the original trilogy, remember?

Yeah, but it's weakened since, and now they're more rare, percentage-wise. Word of God is that it's gotten as weak as it will, though.

Been a while since I read Hero of Ages, but I thought that was a one-time deal with Preservation Snapping 6.25% of the population forcibly to tip them off he was around?

It's a little unclear. It seems like all these people were already Allomancers, they just hadn't Snapped yet. But it seems odd, even considering divine intervention, that exactly one out of every sixteen people would be an Allomancer. There have been theories that he was giving them Allomancy and Snapping them at the same time. The problem is that it's a plot point that none of the nobles fell to the mist sickness since they all had been beaten as children in an attempt to cause them to Snap; if Preservation really was creating new Allomancers, some of the nobles should have been affected as well.

Everyone on Scadrial has some of Preservation's power inside them, which is the source of Allomancy. That might mean that everyone has the potential to become an Allomancer, but the less Preservation you have inside you, the more severe your Snapping has to be in order to awaken it, to the point that, for most people, the trauma would kill you before unlocking any Allomancy. So maybe Preservation had the mists attack as many people as necessary to get the 1/16 figures, even though this meant leaving a lot of other people dead from the attempt.

No, the 1/16 number is number of people attacked, not number of surviving Allomancers. It's even noted that the survivors are a more natural spread; the old or sick died, but healthy people were fine.

In that case, maybe Preservation could have Snapped more people, but chose not to so they'd pick up on the Arc Number thing.

That would imply more Inteligence than i would give the mists at that point. At this point the Mists were on autopilot, since Preservation gave so much of himself to trap Ruin, i don´t think they had enough Inteligence to pick the numer snapping victims to get to the 1/16

Eightish hours left on that Kickstarter for Mistborn coins.

I was very strongly considering getting the Twinborn tier, before talking myself out of it by reasoning the $40 could be better spent on purchasing Oathbringer.

The coins are one of those things where they're really cool and I'm glad that they're being made, but I can't bring myself to actually spend money on them because they'd end up just sitting around cluttering up my house.