Brandon Sanderson

You can have whatever feelings you want, bro, Sanderson still gonna contradict you.

Yes, yes, even though it's clearly thematically incorrect, but still. Feruchemy, pretty darn broken. Allomancy isn't a power you can bestow. To a limited degree, Feruchemy IS. And once you're doing that, it's a short hop, time skip and jump to EVERYONE in the world being a Full Twinborn Compounder as soon as you pass around enough DRM-free Feruchemical stuff and some of it go to mistings.

Arguing with the author aside, there's quite a bit of space between "everyone's a full compounder" and "every misting is a compounder of one thing."

Anyway, I hesitate to call Feruchemy's bestowability a particular strength, since it's far from unique to it. Radiants get squires, Awakening works for everyone, Forgery seems to just require an absurd level of analysis.

Edited by rikalous on Jul 19th 2018 at 1:09:38 AM

So say you were a person in Mistborn, maybe the second era.

Which religion would you follow and why?

Two scenarios: 1. You're just some rando.

2. You have out-of-universe knowledge.

I gave it a lot of thought after rereading The Final Empire after catching up with Wax and Wayne. I guess, per scenario 2, I know Harmony is a godly being while everything to do with Kelsier's survival is a hoax. (Although there is something afoot....) But at the same time, I loved Kelsier so much that I don't really care. It's the spirit of it all that counts.

Plus Survivorism involves venerating Vin and I can get behind tht. I've kinda supported her as a Chosen One ever since the first book and I was all on-board for her being the Hero in the second book.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jul 22nd 2018 at 6:42:40 AM

She was the hero even if she wasn't the prophesied one, huh?

Harmony is the only god that the people of Scadrial have iron-clad proof actually exists. Though if you're one of the southern Scadrians, there may be some more solid proof of the Survivor.

@last page: I remember talking about a hypothetical Kelsier vs Kaladin (or generic Mistborn vs Windrunner) fight. I think the takeaway was that all in all the Mistborn would have the advantage in a city, the Radiant on an open area. Of course, it also depends on what Ideal they're at, I don't see a Mistborn having many ways to beat a fourth-oath Radiant. \\
Oh, and Vin might not have the raw power as Lerasium Mistborn, but she's noted as being incredibly gifted at actually using Allomancy. I believe Elend talks about it, he's stronger than her but she's much, much better.

Having solid, concrete evidence or proof of God is not something humans in general have ever really needed.

Survivorism is already showing some cracks, since even during it's inception in the original books its pointed out a lot of its practices and philosophies, even at a surface level, hypocritical, and it gets even worse in the new era. If Kelsier is apparently the lord of the mists, why do they NEVER want to be actually in the mists, watching through a dome and only opening the dome sometimes, as opposed to Pathians, who basically have an open gazebo with a few chairs?, and so on. I really hope this doesn't become topical, because Survivorism IS the religion founded by, essentially, a terrorist organization-turned-government...

Wow, so much unfortunate. I better stop talking.

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 23rd 2018 at 12:06:55 AM

Those are cracks seen by an outside observer (Wax). Most of the population is Survivorist; it's the Christianity of the setting. That means it's what people grew up with and what they're used to. It doesn't really matter whether the religion makes sense or not, most people will keep paying lip service because it's what they've always done. Besides, most of that is just cosmetic stuff anyway. If a Survivorist wants to hang out in the mist, he's going against the church, not the religion.

Though the fact that they recently discovered that the Southerners were rescued by their god a few centuries ago is probably going to result in a hefty upswing in faith.

If Survivorism is the setting's Christianity, then I half expect a significant faction of the Survivorists to be gung-ho for a war against the Southerners.

I think that would be the Set's Trellists. Yes they're technically not Survivorists, but it's explicitly mentioned that they're trained using plenty of Survivorist stuff about destroying the oppressors and whatnot.

So they're the vaguely related terrorist faction appealing to the precedent set by a more respected establishment and recruiting the disgruntled. No matter how I try to rewrite that sentence (4th time's the charm), it can't seem to stop being pointedly topical

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 23rd 2018 at 9:33:05 PM

I'd note that a big ol' religious war seems to run against the general tenet of staying alive, but like when has that stopped a nice crusade.

But seriously though, the Northerners are pretty cool with religious pluralism (big shock coming from a society being guided by Sazed) so I'm not expecting any serious religious conflict.

Sanderson has said that, when he gets around to writing the next sequence of Mistborn books, it will be set in an era where technology has progressed to roughly 1980's levels. That got me to wondering how Allomancy and Feruchemy might be used in a more socially and technologically evolved environment.

One thing that I think would be hilarious? An Iron misting who uses their ability to pull on metal to become an ace skateboarder. They pull on the board to keep their feet from losing purchase, pull on metal objects ahead of them to give them forward momentum and help change direction, and can even use it to help when boarding down a metal railing or something else equally tricky and show-offy.

Just seems like something an 80's kid with access to Allomancy would do.

You'd think that if they decided to they wanted to have a religious war, it would be against the Sliverists.

What's interesting about the religions of Scadrial is that none of them are really wrong about the godhood of their deities.

There is tangible evidence to support the belief that Sazed, The Lord Ruler and Kelsier all ascendended to divinity at some point .

Well, their objects of worship are respectively an actual present benevolent god, a human who died, briefly ascended to divinity, came back down and is very likely alive again, and a human who briefly ascended to divinity, came back down, ruled as a pretend god for a millennium and died like a bitch.

Remind me, does a hemulurgic spike need to be an Allomantic metal (obvious exception like godmetals notwithstanding)? Like, no fancy plutonium spikes or titanium spikes?

Also, I wonder if the knife that killed Jezrien is a hemulurgic spike now? What property would it have stored?

He's been cagey about whether other materials can be used as a hemalurgic spike when fans have asked him, but so far we've seen nothing to suggest they can be. Either way I doubt it's a spike, since he's been pretty clear you need to be intentionally attempting to create a spike to make one. You just can't randomly stab a person and wind up with a spike.

Didn't manipulate people into accidentally creating spikes, like the one that gave pewter allomancy to Spook?

Yes, but in that case it was still deliberate—Ruin's will was enough to satisfy the Cognitive requirement of spiking.

Addendum then. Can a SHARDBLADE or awakened metal like... well, not Nightblood, since Nightblood disintegrates stuff on contact, but like Azure's sword be used as a spike? It's TECHNICALLY metal the way godmetal is, so It should work, and much more likely than mundane metals, since it's technically a godmetal.

That Sword Spike was still Steel though.