Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A

Event details
Name
Name Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A
Date
Date Nov. 5, 2011
Location
Location Provo, UT
Tour
Tour The Alloy of Law
Entries
Entries 23
Upload sources
#2 Copy

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Shards and Shard intents: Holding a Shard is a contest of willpower against the Shard that, over time, is very hard to resist.

Shards affect you over time, but your mind will not leave a permanent effect on the Shard. A holder's [Vessel's] personality, however, does get to filter the Shard's intent, so to speak. However, if that holder [Vessel] no longer held that Shard, the Shard will not continue to be filtered by that person.

#10 Copy

Chaos (paraphrased)

I continued to ask about the Lord Ruler and his Allomantic strength.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There's an upper bound to the amount of power you can get from being a savant. Brandon said that, obviously, the Lord Ruler wasn't using duralumin and Elend could only get that powerful in Soothing using duralumin. He implied that there was a way to Compound to enhance Allomancy.

#11 Copy

Chaos (paraphrased)

We asked if it was possible to use bronze to Seek Feruchemy.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said it could be possible. If it were to happen, it was very hard, because the Inquisitors would desperately like to be able to find Feruchemists that way, and it was implied they had not discovered this power. So, it is a freaking hard technique to learn, if possible at all.

#12 Copy

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If you are Smoked, you can't Seek.

KChan (paraphrased)

[Brandon] told me that because burning copper creates an Allomantic dead zone, so to speak, everything inside it is effectively silenced. This prevents pulses from reaching Seekers who are outside the cloud, but it also prevents anyone inside the cloud from receiving any pulses whatsoever. The reason Vin could do this is because of her earring.

#14 Copy

Chaos (paraphrased)

For people really into the obscure workings of the politics of the Final Empire, we asked about the legality of assassinations.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It turns out that you have to ask the obligators' permission to assassinate someone--and permission, of course, means bribe in this context. The Steel Ministry can say yes or no. Presumably more high level people would cost more money to be killed. Of course, if the Ministry says no, you can always risk it and assassinate illegally, but you'd have to be very careful not to get caught. Even with legal killings you need to keep things quiet. Brandon said the Steel Ministry has much more corruption than governments in our world. Corruption which we would abhor is commonplace in the Final Empire.

#23 Copy

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

As it turns out, there is an error in the Feruchemical table when Brandon put it in Mistborn 2. If you look closely, Determination (electrum) doesn't belong in its group. The group that it is in is obviously more physical powers. Determination was supposed to be a mental metal, and Warmth was supposed to be in that Physical group. He just made a mistake originally. But it turns out that Feruchemy obeys different rules than Allomancy, so Brandon isn't retconning it, but saying that Feruchemy works differently now. Apparently there was going to be a table of Feruchemy at the end of Alloy of Law, but it wasn't ready because Isaac kept thinking like an Allomancer. Feruchemy has its own rules (for example, Brandon confirmed that pewter does steal Feruchemical health, probably because that second group of physical Feruchemical powers are also "physical", so pewter can steal them.) Hemalurgy also obeys different rules.

Event details
Name
Name Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A
Date
Date Nov. 5, 2011
Location
Location Provo, UT
Tour
Tour The Alloy of Law
Entries
Entries 23
Upload sources