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Windrunner's News post "Around the Cosmere: Theories and Coppermind" has a lot of tantalizing information in it, but one tidbit has me confused... "o In Brandon’s mind, burning pewter approximately doubles your strength, while flaring triples it. He has not canonized how much either of these things enhances reflexes or healing." I seem to recall that when Ham was training Vin in burning pewter, he explained things a bit differently. I'm at work so I don't have any books with me, but I thought that he explained that a person that is super buff/muscular will not be that much stronger than someone like Vin, a malnourished small girl who isn't strong at all without pewter. I specifically remember the part when they were talking about why being less muscular is good because burning pewter gives you a certain amount of strength. So if a scrawny thug and a really muscular thug were in a jumping contest, the scrawny one would win because he/she is lighter, and her/his Pewter strength can get he/she higher off the ground than someone else who is burning pewter and has a lot of muscle. Basically, if burning pewter only doubles your strength, I would find it to be pretty worthless if I was a scrawny person. If you can barely manager to wield a regular sword (I'm assuming regular Vin couldn't), then burning pewter would certainly not allow you to easily wield a koloss sword as if it was a wooden stick (Vin burning pewter). Thoughts? Am I completely crazy? If I doubled my strength, my friend Logan could still kick the rust out of me...

Let's assume that you're either a full feruchemist or mist born, which do you want more? I think I'd go with feruchemy, storing some attributes would be amazing, mental speed, healing, speed, etc.

So I don't know if there is a similar theory out there but I came up with this theory during my recent re-read of the original Mistborn Trilogy. First I would like to make a few points... 1) I think I remember reading somewhere that Brandon Sanderson said that the power of Atium was not explored much and that there was still some applications of the metal that remain unrealized. 2) Malatium, the "so called" 11th metal, is an alloy of Atium and gold, but Atium, being part of Ruin, would be paired with Larasium, which is part of Preservation. And electrum is the alloy paired with gold. That leaves malatium alone and without a metal to pair with..... if my logic is correct. 3) Brandon Sanderson said that pure Larasium makes someone into a mistborn, but an alloy of Larasium would make someone into a misting. (I'm assuming that an alloy of Larasium and pewter, for example, would make someone into a thug, or that an alloy of Larasium and steel would make someone into a coinshot, but I'm not sure if that's how it works) So my theory is that Atium has many different alloys, just as I'm assuming Larasium does. In fact, I think Atium (and Larasium) has as many alloys as there are allomantic metals, one for each metal, and that malatium is the one with Atium and gold. That would mean that there are at least 15 more alloys of Atium, (if my theory is correct), and they could be powerful. Feel free to speculate or criticize this theory. Or correct me on my assumptions and/or facts that I laid out if they are incorrect. I am not an expert on this stuff.

While trying to get my over caffeinated mind to sleep last night, I found myself pondering the cosmere (as usual). Something occurred to me that I don't remember ever seeing addressed. What would happen if someone tried to swallow and burn a piece of metal that had a hemalurgic charge instead of a feruchemical one? Now, there are obvious reasons why this would be hard to attempt in the first place. Following the rules, an allomancer can't take just any old metalmind and burn it...it is keyed to the feruchemist's identity...so the only people who can compound are people who, for whatever reason, can use the same metal for both feruchemy and allomancy...twinborn, hemalurgist, etc. Assuming that this remains constant with the theoretical situation I'm positing, you would have to either: A: Take a shaving off of a spike already in your body B: Spike yourself, survive, and still have access to the ability to burn the type of metal the spike is made of. Method A sounds a lot easier to pull off...method B...almost impossible... I could easily accept that this is just not something that works...which is why it has never been addressed. But just for fun, what do you guys think would be the result of hemalurgic compounding?

Rashek's Allomancy was incredibly powerful. Far more so then even Elend, a full Lerasium Mistborn. His latent Allomancy appeared more powerful than a Mistborn flaring duralumin, orders of magnitude stronger than Elend. It is likely that he gave himself a more powerful form of Allomancy at the well, but it seems most likely that this would simply be a scaled up version of a Lerasium Mistborn. But from how he's portrayed, he's orders of magnitude more powerful. Why is this? Is he flaring Duralumin the whole time? This is unlikely, as it would burn out his metals too quickly. So my theory? Rashek was compounding Investiture. I suspect that he was storing investiture in Nicrosil, burning it then storing vast amounts of Investiture from compounding. He would then be able to keep his investiture (like his age and his health) at a steady burn all the time he was out in public. Thoughts? (And if this was posted before, I'm sorry!)

Hemamancer? Hematist? Hemalurgist? Hematologist? Hemalurgian? Hematician?

How can I talk a proud stick into being a lowly bead of Lerasium?

So, can Lurchers Pull objects hidden in buildings. For example, I'm standing on a street and there's a huge chunk of metal inside a building. Can I Pull on it? I finished the first three Mistborn books, but I forgot about this.

Alright, obviously copper compounding can't give you information that you didn't already have, but it could increase their clarity. I refer to this (imperfectly quoted) line from Breeze: "I can't go anywhere where the Lord Ruler will be, because he's seen me before, and you know he has a flawless memory" Therefore, copper compounding allows you to enhance memories to the point where you can remember everything you've ever seen perfectly. In the AoL, a copper compounder could skim every book ever published, and be able to recite any of them word-for-word. Sorry if this was a bit obvious, just wanted to put it out there.

The purpose of this thread is for people to suggest ideas for Allomantic powers that are not mentioned in the books, and for others to analyze these "fake"/"new" Allomantic powers. Who knows? Maybe some of the powers you'll come up with have actually been planned for future books (e.g. as the Allomantic power of an atium alloy or some other god metal). That would be pretty neat, wouldn't it? I know that @EdroGrimshell has a similar thread, which is pretty interesting, but I intend this one to be much smaller in scope since it's only for Allomancy. Also, there are rules: The powers must fit within the Allomantic categories of Internal/External and Pulling/Pushing. Feel free to ignore the four quadrants (Physical, Mental, Enhancement, Temporal) and create your own "quadrant". You may simply comment on other people's ideas if you don't want to share your own. Otherwise you need to suggest at least two powers, a Pulling power and its Pushing counterpart. Don't suggest more than four powers in a single post. You may suggest more after another person has had his chance. Feel free to talk about the Twinborn possibilities of the your new Allomantic powers, but you can only use the 16 base Feruchemical powers and Feruchemical atium. No fake Feruchemy, please. Try to be available to answer people's questions about the powers. I'll post my first contribution later. Have fun! Update: Here are the entries we have so far: Voidus Skaa Thunder_93 (1st, 2nd) SirTraconus 50Metals Stormgate Thermophile ChickenPlague (1st, 2nd) Xel-Hassodin (lots of cool ideas from an RPG wiki; h/t to MistLord)

So, I noticed that one sixteenth of the mistfallen were atium burners. This doesn't make sense, since that would mean the other, normal sixteen metals have a statistically lower number. So what if electrum burners (electrum having the altered effect of atium) can also burn atium, they just don't know it because there is no more atium?

There seems to be an incncistency in the way I understand Allomantic Pushes and Pulls. Maybe someone can clear it up for me. In Mistborn: The Final Empire when Kelsier is teaching Vin about Allomancy, he says that "the force of your Push or Pull is directly away from or toward you". So for example, an Allomancer couldn't lift a coin up off a table unless s/he was directly above or below the table. This seems at odds with a scene we see later in training, on page 153. Vin and Kelsier have a coin between them and are each pushing on it, trying to force it at the other person. "The coin quivered in the air, trapped between the amplified strength of two Allomancers." How can this be so? If the coin is directly between the two's centers of mass , the coin should be falling down due to gravity. Each Allomancer is pushing the coin in a horizontal direction. Their two Pushes are cancelling each other, which is why the coin isn't moving toward either person. But their pushes have no effect on the coins movement in a vertical plane. With no upward force acting on the coin, it should fall to the ground. If the coin is above the two of them, the vertical components of their Pushes should send the coin flying into the sky. If the coin is below the two's centers of mass, their Pushes would send the coin into the ground. The only way the coin should be motionless in the air is if the coin was slightly above the two's centers of mass, so that the slight upward vertical components of their pushes held the coin up. There would only be one point in space where this case would happen, and any flaring of metals would send the coin into the air. I think similar situations to this occur throughout the MB books. Brandon is usually really good about meshing his magic systems with physics, so I'm wondering if there's not something I'm missing here. I'd appreciate anyone's insight on this.

Hey all, Vice, nice to meet you all. I have a couple of character ideas based on the infrastructure Mr. Sanderson created with the twinborn addition to Scadrial. A group of talented mistings and ferrings split from the familiar lands under the influence of the Lord Mistborn. They journeyed to the lands furthest from civilization to start a new way of life based on the philosophy of perfecting the art of allomancy and ferruchemy. Over time the masters developed their ideas and created a synthesis between burning allomantic fuel and perfection of movement. This combination of mastery generated the primary component of this new art, "pulsing (vs. "burning")" Pulsing is a consistent consumption of allomantic fuel cycled and maintained by a misting. Average consumption is likened more to an automobile engine, revving the output with a pedal-push modality. Pulsing regulates the output to a wave or a frequency. The high and low cycles maximizes fuel consumption and promotes precision control of output. Enter our first character, Locke Smythe, iron compounder: lifelong practice with tai chi chuan has given him absolute control of his core movement. Combining iron pulling with perfect spatial positioning allows him to influence the trajectory of a yanked object, hulahooping an object around himself to launch at opponents, very much like chained weapons. As a child, Locke was made to practice orbiting a dripping paintbrush around himself while standing on parchment. His masters used his "paintings" as a measure of his control. Locke had to maintain the initial speed and momentum by modulating his pull. Rhythmic timing, giving just enough pull to alter its trajectory and momentum, can create extremely controlled figure eight patterns which intuitive proficiency can weaponize. Once Locke proved his mastery over his "pulse" weapon he began training his control over accessing and storing his weight to and from his ironmind. His masters would position needles above and below him while having him maintain his perfect weight to hold position between them (while tethered so the wind wouldn't blow him away). Once he developed intuitive control over his weight modulation he had to practice jumping "light"(with reduced weight) and falling"heavy" to light soft landing, in sequence with spinning studded boards offset to give him safety only as he continues to jump and land unerringly. Locke soon found that by launching his weapon skyward and then lightening himself enough to be yanked by his pull on his airborne weapon he could weapon toss himself as far up and as far away as he wanted. To land he adds weight enough to descend at a comfortable speed and around twenty to ten feet above landing he sends the weapon skyward again pulse-pulling himself to a controlled touchdown. Further training experimentation has turned Locke into a competent airborne opponent capable of chasing down escaping coinshots. Currently he is developing an bow-launched gauntlet that can fire serrated pins, shuriken and bolts that dig deep in opponent flesh and create metal anchors he can use to control the victim's position. Once captured, Locke can then parabola-whip his enemies around himself and launch them at their allies or merely distort their positioning in melee combat destroying their balance and dropping them negative space or placing them inside his range. Opponents can be kicked away and yanked back for more destruction all while the anchor is moving inside their flesh. Some success has been had in launched clawed chains that dig into armor and become sturdy anchors for Locke's manipulation. In a pinch, bullets or leadshot become reliable tools for manipulation. I invite thoughts, criticisms, witticisms and the like -Vice

Hi, in this thread I'd like to take a deeper look at how I think allomantic enhancement metals work. I'll start my theorizing with Duralumin, because that's where the most relevant sources seem to be. Firstly, though it's pretty obvious, the faster you burn a metal, the more power you get. When you flare a metal, it will burn away faster, but you do get more power out of it, even more so when burned together with Duralumin. Here's the relevant WoB Second, we need to note that a quantity of metal has a predefined amount of power output. Whether you burn away a nugget of Steel at a regular burn in an hour, or by flaring it for 15 minutes, or with Duralumin in a few seconds, you'll always have expended the same amount of energy pushing on metal, as said in this WoB Edit: made the font larger for ease of reading

Okay. Allomancy has been declared to be end-positive a lot of times. This means that it does not follow the Law of Conservation of Energy, causing more energy to enter the system then was originally there. This is okay, because this is magic. However E=mc^2 means that each kilogram of mass amounts to roughly 9 x 10^16. A metal flake is nowhere near a kilogram. Let's say a metal flake is a ten thousandth of a kilogram, to be conservative. That still means that a metal flake would need to give more than 10^13 joules. That's ten trillion joules. Yikes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convert the energy used in allomancy due to the unusual outputs, scientifically speaking. However, there is one metal that transfers metal almost directly from allomantic power into calculable work: iron/steel. Now, the best chance we get (I think) to measure the energy potential of steel is when Vin is doing the horseshoe trick to get to Luthadel. She spent roughly five hours doing it and used 'almost all of her iron and steel'. I'm not going to be calculating iron, since she wasn't spending as much energy pulling in the horseshoes, and was probably wasting a lot of the energy potential. She was keeping herself aloft on average so that makes the energy output somewhat easy to calculate. Let's assume Vin weighs rougly 150 pounds, or 68 kilograms. This means it would take just over 666 watts to keep her afloat (yes, that is what I got). Over the course of 5 hours, this adds up to roughly 12 million, or 1.2 x 10^7 joules. This is six orders of magnitude away from the energy the mass of the metal contained. At this point, it seems like allomancy should be classified as end-negative. What's really going on here? At first, I thought that the metal may just revert into an inert state, or change into a different element. However, considering what happened at towards end of the third book, I find this unlikely. What I propose is that when metal is burned, the metal itself is returned into the earth. After all, it contains a bit of Ruin and Preservation, so the energy must return to its source, aka, the earth. This means that when an allomancer uses metal, that metal appears back in whatever mine it was taken out of. What do you guys think?

Some kinds of feruchemy when compounded seem really easy to get addicted to, when compounding of course. Stuff like cadmium (which I think when burning a metal mind, you feel more alive, or more oxgenated, but like extreme amounts of it), bronze, Gold, Tin if you're a masochist like Spook, brass, chromium (?), and bend alloy. Then you have the stuff that'd be weird to compound regularly like weight. Would there be other types of investiture that are addicting?

I don't know how this came to me, but I feel like Allomantic abilities could equate to some pretty good superhero powers. Iron- With the ability to pull on any source of metal, you could become like Spiderman, pulling yourself from building to building. Steel- Pushing off buildings and flicking small metals, you could be a terror from above, flying about and raining down death. Pewter- Forget Hulk, Pewterarm is the strongest of them all Tin- Enhanced senses allow you to become a next- level Batman, hearing all, seeing all I feel like the other metals could be used well (excluding God Metals), but these are all i can think of right now

It has been confirmed in The Final Empire that a Mistborn can burn any metal, but that bad ones are bad for them (in book 1, Kelsier says it can kill you, but in book 2 Vin says it can't). However, mistings can only burn one metal. I propose that a misting can burn any metal, but only one 'works', like how all allomantic metals metals work for Mistborn. Also, with 16 types of mistings, does that not mean that Seers (atium mistings) would also be able to burn one of the normal metals (one of the ones not discovered in The Final Empire. Sliders, perhaps?)

I have not read Shadows of Self yet, so please no spoilers for book 5. Why are there no more mistborn in the Wax and Wayne series? Has it just been bred out? If so, I imagine it would become exceedingly rare but not impossible. Is there a confirmed answer or just speculation? Also, why were there no ferrings or twinborn in the original trilogy?

Hoid is both an Allomancer and a Ferrochemist. But please note these few things about him. 1. He didn't necessarily use the bead of Lerasium to become a Allomancer unless there was an interview that I didn't read. Regardless of whether he is a Mistborn or just a Misting, and similarly with Ferruchemy. It's still possible that he is compounding much like the Lord Ruler did in order to stay young. Brandon said "He did steal a bead of Lerasium off of Scadrial. If he were to make use of that bead, certain powers would have been gained." 2. He would likely be from Scadrial given he could gain BioChromatic Breath. Despite this many people think he is from Yolen. I will admit that I haven't read ever book in the Cosmere yet, but I'm almost done, and my theory makes sense; at least to me. 3. None of his powers are gained from Hemalurgy So little is known about the ability LightWeaving on Yolen, so to assume that he's from there and that it is heredity it foolish, so let's assume that like BioChromatic Breath, LightWeaving can be gained, or like Forging, it can at least be taught. The ability to visit Shadesmar can be gain in many ways, and the ability to manipulate it comes from practice. He uses Feruchemy to gain limited foresight, so he can know where he should be. This leads to my believing that he has lived through ages, maybe even since the shattering, though we know he isn't a Shard. It's quite possible though. As far as we know, Ferruchemy is strictly genetic, but being the oldest form of magic on Scadrial, it makes sense that he is from there, likely before the Rise of the Lord Ruler. His ability to heal and "bend time" could also come of Terris heritage. I don't think that he is a MistBorn, but rather a twin born of multiple abilities. NOT a full MistBorn and Ferrochemist though. Comment below with objections or support of this theory, I'd enjoy hearing what you guys think about it. -Java

(It's been a while since I've made a theory. I hope you like this one.) You know, I don't think there's ever been a theory about how the people on the southern continent of Scadrial--which I'll now call Southern Scadrians for simplicity--have their magic. If you had forgotten, the Southern Scadrians do have access to the Metallic Arts, despite there being no lerasium in their bloodlines. In fact, it is a totally different way of access the Metallic Arts than in the northern continent. Instead of it being genetic, it is technological. For a long time, I twisted my head around, utterly baffled at how something like this could work with the Metallic Arts. After all, the hereditary nature of Allomancy and Feruchemy is rather critical. Some people I think mentioned god metals, but they definitely don't have access to either lerasium or atium on the southern continent. So... what the crap. An idea popped into my head last week. And then this quote came about, which supported this idea: Hmmm. Highstorms--and presumably Stormlight--are related to the mists. I am not going to delve into a big discussion on what this quote means, but... well. Where have we seen magical technology? Roshar, in the forms of fabrials. They simulate abilities Surgebinders had. If Stormlight and highstorms are like the mists, then is it not incredibly reasonable to suppose there was some sort of equivalent of fabrials that could be constructed on Scadrial? A way for these Southern Scadrians to harness the Metallic Arts in a technological way, but in a way that we've seen before? On Roshar, fabrials work because you infuse a gemstone with Stormlight, and then you need to trap a specific spren inside of it. Well, then on Scadrial, you'd have metal and maybe one can Invest it with mists somehow. I have no idea what a Scadrian equivalent of a spren is, but if it is possible to Invest mists into metal, then I think we have it figured out. Set a certain piece of metal out in the mists in night, and through some unknown process, get it Invested. Mist fabrials, baby. Somehow, this makes such intuitive sense to me that it seems obvious. In the second Mistborn trilogy, society in Elendel will have already encountered the Southern Scadrians, and by association, their tech. That signals to me that in the second Mistborn trilogy we will have this type of technology at our disposal, and it needs to not seem totally insane and bizarre to readers of the first trilogy. "Well," random Scadrian can say, "legend says Allomancy came from the mists, so of course you just get a bit of mist in this and get some type of Allomancy." It's an explanation a random character can say that really does seem to make sense in an early chapter, and fits with the theme of Scadrial discovering all sorts of new technology for this more modern trilogy. Am I totally insane or does this seem like the most logical thing that the technology could be? I imagine the type of metal the mists are Invested in makes a difference to what ability the mist fabrial simulates. Since there are two types of mist now (one of Preservation and one of Ruin), then maybe you need to Invest some of both to get Allomancy and Feruchemy. And, so the genetic Allomancers and Feruchemists aren't useless, the mist fabrials are surely of a lot more limited use than general Allomancy. I mean, think about Allomancy compared with other magic systems. An Allomancer has it pretty easy when it comes to getting his powers: eat some metal. Here, the mist fabrials probably drain mist faster than a casual Allomancer would, and if it runs out, it isn't as if you can just down another vial. That seems pretty balanced to me. That said, I have no idea how Feruchemy would operate. I also imagine you would not be able to Compound. These mist fabrials are limited things. Now, I'll admit I have absolutely no idea how one would Invest mist in metal, and how northern Scadrians hadn't figured it out. There's a key component missing in the process that I have no idea about. And then there's the Scadrian equivalent of spren. How does that work? I don't know. Maybe that right there is the trickiest part. But I cannot help but think that this can be the only possible way for there to be a technological way to harness the Metallic Arts. It has to be this, somehow. I got this idea a few days ago, and since there was a signing yesterday, it occurred to me that here was something that was very, very easy to test with the simple question, "Is there a method to Invest a piece of metal with mists, similar to how gemstones can be Invested with Stormlight?" So I had Josh ask it for me. I am waiting with baited breath for the answer. Also, as an aside, there is an annotation that suggested the Lord Ruler put people on the southern pole as a reserve, in case his genetic modifications failed. So, if mist fabrials were the method that the Lord Ruler gave these people to survive down there. Sooo, I figured if Brandon said yes to the previous question, I'd ask if the Lord Ruler knew of this method and used it. (He certainly wears enough metal to make it useful, don't you think?) So we'll wait on confirmation on that. Right now, what do you think?

First time starting a topic here, so be gentle please. This is a theory about a possible application for a Pulser's slow-bubbles. What startes me thinking on it was the following quote about speed-bubbles: Specifically the bit about punching out of a speed-bubble stealing your momentum. The normal formula for that is "momentum (p) equals mass (m) times distance(d) divided by time(t)" -> p=(m*d)/t From a Slider's perspective what happens outside of the bubble happens (let's say) 10 times faster, so his momentum when punching from inside to outside would be p=(m*d) /(10*t), 10 times less than normal. If we turn that around for a Pulser it becomes p=(m*d) /(t/10), resulting in 10 times more momentum than if no time-bubbles were involved. If you expand that to kinetic energy, which is equal to the momentum squared, divided by twice the mass, a Pulser punching out of their slow-bubble will be moving really slow, but they would be able to transfer 100 times the kinetic energy of a regular punch. Now that could have a lot of uses in demolition, or maybe mining or quarrying, but to make the example interesting, I made my Pulser a criminal. To avoid breaking the poor Pulser thief's hand, let's give him a sledgehammer. Now he managed to get into the bank itself, and is standing in front of the really heavy aluminum-covered steel vault door. He raises his slow-bubble so that it is close to the door, but not touching, and he takes a swing through the boundary with his sledgehammer. Because he's experienced with cadmium, he can stretch time to 20 times slower than normal, so the hammer that could normally knock over a small part of a thin brick wall is suddenly 400 times more powerful, and knocks that door clean off it's hinges. (And since swinging a hammer doesn't really take longer than 5 or 6 seconds it's done in about 2 minutes outside time.) I'd like to say I'm sure this is what happens, but it is of course also possible that the filthy allomancer scofflaw gets catapulted backwards into a wall by his own swing and dies from horrifying blunt force trauma. What are your thoughts?

So we know from the MAG that "[w]ith proper manipulation [of Feruchemical aluminum], it might be theoretically possible to tap someone else’s metalminds..." There have been some theories on this, with one of the prevalent ones being that a Feruchemist drops themselves to 0 Identity and then their metalminds are "unlocked," and/or that a Feruchemist with 0 Identity can tap someone else's normal storage--doesn't run afoul of whatever mechanism stops people from normally accessing each other's metalminds. Someone asked the former on Twitter today: Source: So that. Assuming that ":)" means yes, then I have had a thought. What's to stop an Allomancer from Compounding such an "unlocked" metalmind? This actually goes beyond whether Brandon's answering yes or no, though, since Compounding can do interesting things either way. Even if the trick is just letting Identity-using-Feruchemist access random metalminds, he could still Compound that metalmind if he could burn it Allomantically. But the first case is far more interesting, since the second is essentially just a streamlining of a normal "tap, then store". EDIT: Wait a second, the second case is not "essentially just a streamlining of a normal "tap, then store". It lets an Feruchemical aluminum/a<Anything> twinborn compound whatever his allomantic metal is, without the need to rely upon another Feruchemist being a willing participant and/or a Full Feruchemist. And there's no storing going on. Past-me had a brain fart... --- So the first case: Scene: We have an Augar named Amy who's feeling a mite ill. She calls her Full-Feruchemist friend Friendly Frank for a favor: "Could I have some Health, please?" "Sure thing," Friendly Frank says. So he stored Identity and filled up some gold with Health and took it to Amy's hospital bed. "Thanks Frank! You're a lifesaver!" With that, Amy swallowed the metalmind and sensed two distinct reserves. Choosing the unfamiliar one, she burned the gold and was flooded with Health. And so Compounding granted a Feruchemical attribute to an Allomancer FIN And, therefore, Augors are actually useful in the future, once they figure this out, since they'll just make a habit of buying Invested metalminds from full Feruchemists. All other stripes of Allomancers could behave similarly. --- Also, a "yes" would essentially confirm some variant of the "key-lock" theory we discussed back in the day. ------- UPDATE: Theory confirmed.

So, I've got this little project that I'm working on. Basically, I want to take (almost) all the symbols associated with Investiture and turn them into 200x200 icons (since that's also the recommended size for user icons here on 17th Shard). So, naturally, I've begun with some of the symbols associated with Allomancy (just the physical, for now): With these two (iron and steel, respectively), I wanted to show them in action. And so I did. It's pretty straightforward - I like the mists in the Steel icon, in particular (it's also my current icon). These two are definitely my favorites, so far. With Tin, I didn't blur the mists and put in stars and distant city lights to show that the senses are sharpened while burning the metal, and with pewter, I did energy ripples and a heartbeat to show that it gives the person more energy, more endurance, etc. Between the two, I have no idea which one's my favorite, but I'm leaning more towards pewter. However, now I have a question - what should I do for the other metals? For Gold, Atium, and Electrum, I've got some ideas, but for zinc and brass, I haven't the slightest idea.

Sorry if this has already been contemplated but I couldn't find it in my search for it. Also, I am not by any means an expert on the cosmere, so please, if I make a mistake, just let me know that I did and put why in a spoiler bar. I would like to figure out why I am wrong on my own (although mentioning which book to look in would be appreciated) I've been thinking lately, how does allomancy work? I don't mean the part about the ingestion of metal and suddenly magic does stuff. The metallic theme doesn't allow for just magic. I'm not denying magic, I'm just contemplating what it does. When an allomancer burns metal, I think that the metal acts as a conduit for the magic to enter the body. This would be why Ruin wasn't able to see writing when it was inscribed in metal. When he focused on it, all he could see was the magic flowing from the metal into the surrounding area. When allomancers burn metals, the magic is released into the person instead of leaking into the environment. This magic then enhances the neural pulses in the brain of the allomancer. Since brain waves are simply electricity, perhaps it could then manipulate the electromagnetic field in a way specific to the area of the brain that the metal affects. Metals and their alloys affect similar places of the neural network resulting in very similar consequences in the outside world. Electro-magnetic manipulation would explain most aspects of allomancy. Steel-pushing and iron-pulling are obvious. Soothing and rioting would be you affecting the emotion center of other peoples brains. Pewterarms and tineyes would be influencing the way their body reacts. (this is actually them manipulating their brains, not the magnetic fields around them) Seeking is just creating a sensitivity to magnetic fields and smoking would create a bubble of immunity to outside allomantic influences. The enhancement metals are doing just that, enhancing your ability to use the magic inside the metals. Cadmium and bendalloy could be creating an isolated wormhole that affects the gravity in the area, because gravity is manipulating space-time. Gold and electrum is where my theory falls apart. I have no idea how to explain it but who knows, it could be possible. Anyways, tell me what you guys think.