Invested Aluminum and Nightblood

[Quantus]

I have more questions than theories on this one.  We know Aluminum is Inert for investiture, which is why is blocks some powers and why it's can function as a sheath to contain Nightblood.  By WOB it cannot be Awakened or Forged, but at the same time it's still possible for the metallic arts to Invest Aluminum in the form of Spikes and Metalminds.  So how much of the Inerting function remains at that point?  Would an Invested aluminum metalmind block Nightblood similarly, or would the investiture make it vulnerable to it's Three Realms attack and eat the Investiture as normal, or maybe act more like a shardblade in combat terms?

[Calderis]

I think that it would still act like aluminum completely. 

Aluminum resists all attempts at something to change it. 

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

So, we know that things can be Soulcast into aluminum. But can aluminum itself be Soulcast into something else?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

It resists all forms of Investiture trying to change it to things.

source

I think that there are two ways that Scadrial avoids this.

First, metal is Scadrial's focus. It is keyed to the structure if the metals to determine the powers, similar to the way that characters function in Selish magic.

Second, with both Hemalurgy and Feruchemy, the metal itself is not having anything done to it. The space within it is being used purely for storage.

There is only one thing that I'm not able to rectify in my head between the way that we know aluminum functions, and the Metallic Arts, and that's the fact that the metal itself is consumed when an allomancer burns it. That part still makes absolutely no sense to me. 

[tmnsquirtle]

5 hours ago, Calderis said:

There is only one thing that I'm not able to rectify in my head between the way that we know aluminum functions, and the Metallic Arts, and that's the fact that the metal itself is consumed when an allomancer burns it. That part still makes absolutely no sense to me. 

Couldn't you say  that using investiture to change something (in this case aluminum) is different than changing something into investiture, like when a metal is burned?

[Calderis]

12 minutes ago, tmnsquirtle said:

Couldn't you say  that using investiture to change something (in this case aluminum) is different than changing something into investiture, like when a metal is burned?

And how is that transition into Investiture accomplished? It's still changing.

[tmnsquirtle]

If I was certain about an answer, we wouldn't be having this discussion. But...

Let me preface with this the fact that I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here: do we understand how soulcasting works? The stormlight is granted to the object, and it just kind of changes. Aluminum resists that, but I'm not sure that that kind of change would apply to all kinds of change; sort of like how certain chemicals will resist reacting in certain ways but they're still just forms of energy.

[Calderis]

40 minutes ago, tmnsquirtle said:

Let me preface with this the fact that I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here: do we understand how soulcasting works?

Soulcasting works by convincing or overpowering the Cognitive Aspect of a target to change into something else, and pouring in investiture to change the Spiritual and Physical Aspects of the target to match. Which is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around, because until recently I thought that such a change was only possible from the Spiritual down. This WoB changed that.

OB spoilers. 

Spoiler

wiresegal

In OB, you explained that the Singers have four sexes. I was wondering... Can the Singers have genders other than those four, like humans? Even as simple as just not going with male, female, or malen/femalen. Could a transgender Singer use their ability to shift forms to change their biological reality? And, finally, could a Spren be non-binary, if it wasn't personified in a typical male/female way?

Brandon Sanderson

In the cosmere as a whole, a person's perception of themselves has a lot of power over both their Spiritual and Physical forms. It is possible, with investiture, to change their biology to match Cognitive perceptions--and while this could be easier for some races (like the Singers) it's not outside plausibility for any race.

There are non-binary spren, actually--and you should be meeting one important one quite soon in the books.

source

Considering that WoB, and that soulcasting interacts directly with the Cognitive... Well, I've had to change my opinion. 

As to aluminum though... It doesn't just resist changes physically. It can't be pushed, pulled, soothed or rioted though, or even sensed by Allomancy. It can't be Soulcast. It is Ralkalest, the unforgeable metal, 

OB spoilers 

Spoiler

Spren are unable to detect the use of surges through it, and storming Nightblood can't cut it, let alone convert it into investiture like he does with everything he cuts. 

The only ways that we've seen aluminum successfully interact with investiture in any way other than to shut it down completely is in its applications in the Metallic Arts. 

Edited July 13, 2018 by Calderis

[Kaj]

But doesn't burning aluminum shut down all metals, including itself? Doesn't storing your identity in aluminum basically shut down who you are? 

I realize this doesn't explain Duralumin.

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, Kaj said:

But doesn't burning aluminum shut down all metals, including itself? Doesn't storing your identity in aluminum basically shut down who you are? 

It doesn't just shut them down, it destroys them. They are no longer in the body. Aluminum included.

Storing in Aluminum purges the Investiture in the body of "Identity," a marker suffusing all of the Investiture that makes up "you" telling it that it belongs to you. This is why storing all Identity, and then storing something else, allows that something else to be used by others. There is no marker "keying" that Investiture to be used by you and you only. 

[Fezzik]

Plus, like all feruchemy, you can pull your identity back out again.

[thorongil]

It should be noted, that it is not impossible to interact with Aluminum in Investiture-based ways, it is just not feasible in regular or even not-so-regular Cosmere-terms. I don't have the WoB at hand - it was discussed in a Shardcast a couple of weeks ago. They were talking about a WoB that basically said, that, yes, with enough Investiture you can soulcast/push on/etc. Aluminum, but the amounts of Investiture required are astronomical and just not realistically achievable within the frameworks of the Cosmere.

Sounds a bit like relativistic physics to me in the sense that you can do all sorts of wacky things if you approach or maybe even reach lightspeed, but we just have no physically sensible way of doing it. (Please do not mistake that comparison as me saying that Aluminum would be less inert should one travel very fast with it, given that FTL-travelling is/will be a thing in the Cosmere.)

[Quantus]

On 7/13/2018 at 5:57 PM, Calderis said:

The only ways that we've seen aluminum successfully interact with investiture in any way other than to shut it down completely is in its applications in the Metallic Arts. 

This is really what's hanging me up about Aluminum:  In the other magic systems it is inert and cannot be affected or changed by Investiture.  But all three forms of the metallic Arts are able to Invest it, either adding Investiture as a Metalmind or Spike, or directly converting it to Investiture as is the case with Burning it for Allomancy.  And while it's possible to turn something into Aluminum via other means, none of the other magics can so readily Invest existing aluminum or even work past or through it (since it acts as shielding against the Surges and Nightblood).  

[Fatikis]

This is really what's hanging me up about Aluminum:  In the other magic systems it is inert and cannot be affected or changed by Investiture.  But all three forms of the metallic Arts are able to Invest it, either adding Investiture as a Metalmind or Spike, or directly converting it to Investiture as is the case with Burning it for Allomancy.  

In Allomancy you aren't converting aluminum into investiture. Aluminum is a key to access investiture from Preservation/Harmony. 

Aluminum and the metallic arts are odd. With Allomancy everything seems ok because aluminum is just the key to access the power.
It makes me wonder if the other metallic arts are working on similar principals.

Do we know for certain with Feruchemy that the power is being stored in the metal itself? Is it possible that the metal in Feruchemy is also working as a key? Storing the power elsewhere?
If that is the case, I don't see why Hemalurgy couldn't work on the same principal.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Fatikis

[Calderis]

@Fatikis in every other Feruchemical power, the investiture is stored in the metal. I would find it far more likely that aluminum just dumps the dumps the investiture and it can't be tapped than that it somehow functions differently then the rest I the magic system.

And aluminum spikes being a thing means it has to be able to hold the investiture in itself. The spike anchors the chunk of soul into the target. 

[Quantus]

12 minutes ago, Fatikis said:

In Allomancy you aren't converting aluminum into investiture. Aluminum is a key to access investiture from Preservation/Harmony.

You are doing both.  The Metal's own investiture is not what is powering the effect, but per WOB any time any metal is Burned is is literally destroyed and converted to Investiture, causing among other things a tiny but very real net loss of Mass on the entire planet. 

[ZenBossanova]

I have wondered if Aluminum is the electrical ground for Investiture. That would explain a lot. 

[Quantus]

On 7/17/2018 at 3:36 PM, ZenBossanova said:

I have wondered if Aluminum is the electrical ground for Investiture. That would explain a lot. 

Dude, I LIKE that.

[Ripheus23]

I'm trying to find a reason for Sanderson to have tapped(!) aluminum for such a role, and the only thing I can find that sounds... not quite similar, exactly, but... relevant?... is this from the Wikipedia article on the stuff:

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Of aluminium isotopes, only one is stable: ²⁷Al. This is consistent with the fact aluminium's atomic number is odd. It is the only isotope that has existed on Earth in its current form since the creation of the planet. It is essentially the only isotope representing the element on Earth, which makes aluminium a mononuclidic element and practically equates its standard atomic weight to that of the isotope. Such a low standard atomic weight of aluminium has some effects on the properties of the element (see below).

All other isotopes are radioactive and could not have survived; the most stable isotope of these is ²⁶Al (half-life 720,000 years). ²⁶Al is produced from argon in the atmosphere by spallation caused by cosmic ray protons and used in radiodating. The ratio of ²⁶Al to ¹⁰Be has been used to study transport, deposition, sediment storage, burial times, and erosion on 10⁵ to 10⁶ year time scales. Most meteorite scientists believe that the energy released by the decay of ²⁶Al was responsible for the melting and differentiation of some asteroids after their formation 4.55 billion years ago.

The remaining isotopes of aluminium, with mass numbers ranging from 21 to 43, all have half-lives well under an hour. Three metastable states are known, all with half-lives under a minute.

 

[ZenBossanova]

3 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

I'm trying to find a reason for Sanderson to have tapped(!) aluminum for such a role, and the only thing I can find that sounds... not quite similar, exactly, but... relevant?... is this from the Wikipedia article on the stuff:

 

Interesting! 
But, I wonder if silver also functions in this role, for certain magic systems, for instance, the one on Threnody (Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell). 

I suspect he used Aluminum, because prior to the modern age, it was incredibly rare and expensive. That is why the Washington Monument is capped with aluminum. For a long time it was more expensive, and more rare (in isolated form) than gold.

[Calderis]

4 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

I'm trying to find a reason for Sanderson to have tapped(!) aluminum for such a role, and the only thing I can find that sounds... not quite similar, exactly, but... relevant?... is this from the Wikipedia article on the stuff:

We've actually been given the reason for aluminum to do it. It's purely tech level. 

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

What's the deal with silver? Why does it not fit cleanly into the Allomantic metals, why is aluminum a special one and not silver. Why is it silver powder and not aluminum powder on Threnody?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Do you want the in-world answer or the writerly answer?

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

The in-world answer.

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

The in-world answer is that people are not sure yet.

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Well...that's not the in-world answer. That's the in world answer from Khriss, right? What about the in-world answer from...

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

That's the in-world answer--they're not sure yet. 

The writerly answer is that we started with silver in place of tin. And by the time i swapped it out, aluminum was already its thing. If I had to do it over again, I might make silver aluminum, but I wanted what aluminum does to be rare, and silver isn't. So I might not have. I love what aluminum does because it's super-rare pre-industrial, but you hit industrial and it's everywhere.

So it allowed me to do, when we get to modern era, to have real checks on Allomancy as Allomancy gets more powerful.

source

At low levels of tech, when the magic is also not super advanced, aluminum is pretty rare, so it's not going to be well known or be much of an impediment. 

Once you hit a certain tech level though, aluminum easy to refine, and is both cheap and widely available, so it can act as a check on the magics. 

[Weltall]

What Calderis said. We're already starting to see this in Mistborn Era 2, where tinfoil hats are (literally) able to shield you from emotional allomancy, so people who can afford it line their hats with aluminum foil, but it's still not as ubiquitous as it is on modern Earth. See: The incredible value of the aluminum bullets and guns the Vanishers were carrying. Roshar hasn't yet hit the point where it can be produced at scale (though Surgebinding is also rare at present) but once that changes, it's going to serve as a check on various applications of magic. We don't know how it's used on Sel outside of the Rose Empire where it's applied as a very effective counter to Forgery.

[tmnsquirtle]

On 8/4/2018 at 4:16 PM, Weltall said:

What Calderis said. We're already starting to see this in Mistborn Era 2, where tinfoil hats are (literally) able to shield you from emotional allomancy, so people who can afford it line their hats with aluminum foil, but it's still not as ubiquitous as it is on modern Earth. See: The incredible value of the aluminum bullets and guns the Vanishers were carrying. Roshar hasn't yet hit the point where it can be produced at scale (though Surgebinding is also rare at present) but once that changes, it's going to serve as a check on various applications of magic. We don't know how it's used on Sel outside of the Rose Empire where it's applied as a very effective counter to Forgery.

To be honest, I don't know if we'll ever see the kind of widespread technological development on Roshar that we're seeing currently on Scadrial. When you have a planet whose society is all but wiped out every ~500 years (though the cycle might be permanently broken now - who knows how the desolations will work now?) it gets really hard to advance technology.

Plus, if I understand correctly, Era 4 Mistborn will take place around the second arc of 5 SA books, which doesn't give them a ton of time to develop the steam engine.

[MountainKing]

10 minutes ago, tmnsquirtle said:

To be honest, I don't know if we'll ever see the kind of widespread technological development on Roshar that we're seeing currently on Scadrial. When you have a planet whose society is all but wiped out every ~500 years (though the cycle might be permanently broken now - who knows how the desolations will work now?) it gets really hard to advance technology.

Plus, if I understand correctly, Era 4 Mistborn will take place around the second arc of 5 SA books, which doesn't give them a ton of time to develop the steam engine.

No era 2 happens after Stormlight 5(But he moght change it to be before Stormlight)

[Calderis]

@tmnsquirtle as MountainKing said, the second arc starts roughly in tandem with Era 2.

Roshar is already at the start of a Fabrial-Tech revolution and Brandon has said that when they start advancing, it's going to go quickly for then. 

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DrogaKrolow

Technological progress. So Scadrial is going all the way to cyberpunk.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

But do you plan to do it anywhere else?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, with an asterisk, right? Roshar has a very different technological path but they have access to so much more Investiture in an easy to use format. Roshar is really heading toward what we call magicpunk, or things like this, magepunk, where you are using a magical power source and things like this. So their technology is going to go weird but it's going to go fast once they start figuring things out because they have easy access to Investiture resources.

Scadrial: slower for various reasons and things like that, but it's ahead.

And then there was Taldain, which was really far ahead but then froze when it got-- Offworld travel was stopped and it became isolationist.

So most everybody is kind of heading that direction but, yeah.

source

By the time Era 4 hits, Roshar is going to be a very different world. 

[tmnsquirtle]

3 hours ago, Calderis said:

@tmnsquirtle as MountainKing said, the second arc starts roughly in tandem with Era 2.

Roshar is already at the start of a Fabrial-Tech revolution and Brandon has said that when they start advancing, it's going to go quickly for then. 

By the time Era 4 hits, Roshar is going to be a very different world. 

Nice find on that WoB. Magitech is really cool, so I've never been more excited to be wrong!