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Hoid has the Lord Ruler's Atium Bracers


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Yeah, I agree with Kurk.  Allomancy is powered/sourced by Preservation.  But Preservation (or now Harmony) did/does not use allomancy to do what he does.  Also, aluminum loves oxygen so much that there is no metallic aluminum found on Earth and, presumably, Scadrial.  Very few metals are found in nature in metallic (elemental) form.  In fact, I can only think of three (gold, silver, and copper) off the top of my head. 

 

That being said, coating one metal with another metal seems to cause allomantic confusion.  In AoL, an Al hat seems to shield one from emotional allomancy.  In WoA, Zane gives Vin an atium coated bead of lead.  When Vin swallows it, she sees a large supply of Atium.  If that wasn't the case she surely would not have been caught off-guard when the atium suddenly ran out.  She had burned enough atium previously to be able to know at least roughly how long her supply would last.  So coating metals appears to, at least in some cases, affect allomantic perception.  This might extend to shielding coated metals from being pushed or pulled.  In the case of guns however, after firing a couple of rounds, the coating inside the barrel would be done for and thus would be allomantically visible again.

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Are we sure about the bead Vin got from Zane? I remember her swallowing it for her fight with Zane and then immediately burning it (so no chance to really gauge its size), but do not recall any mention of the reserve size otherwise. I could be totally wrong here, but I would appreciate it if you have a definite memory/attribution.

 

As for the barrels of guns, recall that Miles has found a very durable aluminum alloy, so it should last. Even if the barrel's coating does wear off, that's still only a very very small diameter to "see" the metal of the gun through: the allomancer would have to be perfectly aligned with the barrel of the gun.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Here is the quote from WoA (Hardcover, pg. 451):

 

She swallowed it with a gulp.

       "Now let's see how you fare," she hissed, burning atium. Dozens of atium shadows burst from Zane, showing her possible actions he could take--all of them ambiguous.  She would be giving off the same confusing mess to his eyes.  They were even.

       Zane turned, looking into her eyes, and his atium shadows disappeared.

       Impossible! she thought.  TenSoon groaned at her feet as she realized that her atium reserve was gone.  Burned away.  But the bead had been so large....

       "Did you think I'd give you the very weapon you needed to fight me?" Zane asked quietly. "Did you think I'd really give up atium?"

       "But--"

       "A lump of lead ," Zane said, walking forward.  "Plated with a thin layer of atium around it...."

 

The quote does not expressly say she looked to her reserve, but I have always gotten the impression from reading the books that there is an intuitive cognizance of your reserves while you are burning.  I may be wrong, but that is the impression I've always gotten.  Might be a good subject for a question.

 

As to the coating, its endurance will largely depend on its wear resistance relative to the bullet.  But, how far away can you get from a pure aluminum concentration before you lose the dampening effect?  Miles may have found a reasonably durable alloy, but it is going to need to be dang close, compositionally, to pure aluminum otherwise I would not expect the effect to hold.  For example, if duralumin was not allomantically visible, I'm sure it would have been notable enough to bring up in WoA or HoA. 

 

On top of that, hardness, toughness and strength are three very different material properties which all come into play in a gun design.  The barrel and chamber must have sufficient strength to resist the high pressures which come form the powder burning.  Likewise, the metal needs to be tough to resist the shock of the sudden explosion.  Lastly, the barrel needs to have sufficient hardness to resist the wear of the bullets passing through it.  The two most important properties in this case are going to strength and hardness (especially since your bullets are compositionally very similar to your gun).  Unfortunately, strength and toughness are inversely related to hardness.  In other words, if you want to increase the strength or toughness, you will (typically) decrease the hardness and vice verse. 

 

This means that Miles's improved strength aluminum alloy would likely have lower hardness than that of the bullets.  The logical next step would be to try bullets made of the same alloy or a softer one.  But, again, I expect the further you get from pure aluminum, the weaker the effect of the aluminum.

Edited by Shardlet
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The question has been asked.

 

From here

PFCHRISTOPHER
Why didn't Vin know the Atium bead Zane gave her wasn't real? Cant she sense how big reserves are?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Atium reserves always look bigger than they are to an allomancer. It burns so quickly. She just didn’t have enough experience with atium to realize she’d been duped.
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If you insist, Doc :P

 

Preservation's power is not Allomancy. It's the Power of Creation (note the capitalization), and he can do pretty much whatever he pleases with it. Allomancy, as we know from the AoLAAA, is just a very very specific manifestation and utilization of Investiture. Preservation's power moving a planet is no more akin to a Steelpush than Steelpush is to a Lashing.

:D I take no offense my friend (if I may call you that), but; and especially ; you have also inadvertently proven my/our point. Mistfeed should allow for the (P)ushing of Aluminum (LoL just noticed my Kindle has the Euro version stored, AlumiNIUM). Which raises another question in my mind, Do Shards (Preservation, Honor, Endowment) make the planet's they live on/influence? Or does the PoC restrict them to the biological playing field? And if so, This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules are Spren then? 

 

Wow, we're of topic; I apologize

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Not really, since it seems that "Mistfeeding" can only pour some extra power onto existing abilities. In the case of Allomancers, then, it can only bost powers they already have. Elend didn't get super-Lerasium or anything else, just the non-god metals.

An Allomancer can Push/Pull on embedded objects: it's just beyond their ability without some unnatural assistance, such as Duralumin. Heck, apparently any Iron/Steel Allomancer can learn to use Inquisitorial Steelsight; seeing metals that they cannot affect. The idea here is that aluminum's inertness is not a matter of being beyond the ability of Allomancers to affect, but outside of it.

The Shardworlds each have their own thing going on, I believe. I think I've seen a quote about this, but I can't recall where.

EDIT: Added line on steelsight.

Edited by Kurkistan
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OK, so Zizoz's quote suggests I am off-base.  Though if it was anyone but Brandon saying that I'd scoff in their face.  Since it is Brandon, I will just say, 'hrmmp'.

 

As to Kurk's comment about mist enhancing, this is the original kernal of my pondering.  TLR, by virtue of his fancy pants could affect metals inside of Vin's body, even down to the iron in her blood (which is a very good trick since it is ionic not elemental) if I recall correctly.  The only power which enables you to manipulate metal is allomantic iron and steel.  Thus, his ability to affect metals which are normally invisible and unavailable for pushing or pulling is an aenhancement of more mundane iron/steel pulling/pushing.  Recall, Vin had to stoke the fires pretty high just to get to the point where she could allomantically see TLR's bracers.  As I have said before, I may very well be wrong.  I'm not wedded to the idea.  Heck, it is not even a theory per say.  I was just thinking out loud. 

 

As to Doc's question, as I understand it the shardworld planets all existed pre-shattering and at least some of these had humans on them before the arrival of a shard.  On others, such as appears to be the case with Scadrial, humans were shardically created.  Canonically, the PoC does not restrict them to biological manipulation since TLR and Sazed at least used this power to create massive geologic change as well as shifting the planet's orbit.

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Not really, since it seems that "Mistfeeding" can only pour some extra power onto existing abilities. In the case of Allomancers, then, it can only bost powers they already have. Elend didn't get super-Lerasium or anything else, just the non-god metals.

 

An Allomancer can Push/Pull on embedded objects: it's just beyond their ability without some unnatural assistance, such as Duralumin. Heck, apparently any Iron/Steel Allomancer can learn to use Inquisitorial Steelsight; seeing metals that they cannot affect. The idea here is that aluminum's inertness os not a matter of being beyond the ability of Allomancers to affect, to outside of it.

 

The Shardworlds each have their own thing going on, I believe. I think I've seen a quote about this, but I can't recall where.

 

EDIT: Added line on steelsight.

But Aluminum is an Alomantic ability. I can't see any reason why it should be outside the realm of Allowmancy all together, rather than particularly difficult

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I think what Kurk is saying is that, at least theoretically, aluminum is allomantically invisible (to iron and steel and blocks brass and zinc) as a property and no matter how high you stoke your iron or steel (or brass and zinc), even under mistfeed, this property holds.  The wall is just too high.  Something like, no matter how powerful a magnetic field you apply, sulfur just isn't going to be affected.  Whereas, with other materials, such as iron oxide (lets use Fe2O3), it is magnetically inert to a normal powered magnet, but if you apply a magnetic field somewhere in the ballpark of 100 Gauss, then it can be affected.  So, to carry on with the analogy, the question is, is aluminum like sulfur or iron oxide.  Kurk thinks it's like sulfur and I wonder if it is like iron oxide.

 

Edit: However, as I indicated before, this is likely all an academic question which has little practicality.  Not to mention the fact that is very definately off-topic for the thread.  I suggest that we have hijacked this thread long enough and that if we would like to carry this discussion further, we ought to give it its own thread and link back to here for context.

Edited by Shardlet
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I understand what Kurk is getting at, I'm just not getting in the boat. To use your analogy, I'm feeling its more like iron oxide. There might be a wall in the way, but walls are meant to be climbed  ;) It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in Trilogy 3, when Hemalurgy makes a come back.

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