Bands of Mourning Observations

[Duxredux]

Hi all, I listened to the Medallions of South Scadrial podcast recently and had a few observations about the book that I haven't been able to find addressed, though it's possible it's in the forums and I just haven't found it from searching. In no particular order, here goes:

First, kandra generally don't know how to access the metallic arts other than what they get from their blessings, with the exception of Paalm, right? Except, apparently MeLaan can use the weight medallions. Apparently this doesn't interfere with her blessings (at least in these numbers), so Southern tech can grant Feruchemy and presumably Allomancy to kandra without having to resort to a Trellium spike. That's pretty neat, and it's just glossed over in the concept that everyone can get these powers now, but I think that's a non-trivial point considering how effective Bleeder was at doing things.

Second, the ettmetal Allomantic grenade was odd to me, also in what I consider a significant way. When Wax charged the grenade and threw it, this little cube would throw presumably much heavier guns and equipment aside in its path, not following the usual Newtonian physics we see in Pushes and Pulls in which I would have expected the cube to get deflected from the much heavier weapons sometimes held in soldier's hands. No one in the books comments on this being odd, but it confused me for quite some time. We've seen Steel pushes and Iron pulls work on most metals, even Atium quite readily, while having problems "sensing" heavily invested metals such as metalminds and the Bands of Mourning. I seem to recall Brandon saying that he wishes he had done Atium differently if he had known how the Cosmere was going to develop, and I wonder if Atium would have also been resistant to Pushing and Pulling. Moving on, my theory is that this wasn't an error on the part of the physics of the Allomantic grenade, but that Pushes and Pulls are not using only physical mass in their calculation but more an "Invested mass". A godmetal with a presumably higher Investiture density Pushing against the ordinary metal weapons could push with more strength perhaps. 

Third, an aspect of the medallions that I don't get. Why can multiple people store weight in the medallions? Does their Identity not matter in process of storing in the metal, or is this a weird aspect of the construction of the medallions? Alternately, is this just an aspect of Feruchemy that has never come up, that multiple people can store attributes in a metalmind, but they could only withdraw their own storage? It seems odd to me, where I can see withdrawing from an unkeyed mind would work just fine, but I'm not sure on storing in an unkeyed mind.

Fourth, at the end, presumably Kelsier stores a memory in a copper medallion. So... whatever mechanism that they are doing with the medallions allows copper memory storage that other people can access (which revolutionizes information storage), or it means that Kelsier has gained at least a Copper Ferring's abilities right?

Fifth, another thing that seems highly relevant: Wax and Marasi were able to use the Bands of Mourning. Either from the mechanics of creating them, some aspect of Identity and time that I don't know about, or whatever, for some reason the Bands of Mourning were not Keyed to Kelsier. If Kelsier wanted to make a weapon for himself to reclaim that happened to be a metalmind that he could use, why not make it keyed through Identity to himself? Unless it always a test and he actually meant for someone to find something that powerful on the doorstep to his temple.

[Trusk'our]

12 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Third, an aspect of the medallions that I don't get. Why can multiple people store weight in the medallions? Does their Identity not matter in process of storing in the metal, or is this a weird aspect of the construction of the medallions? Alternately, is this just an aspect of Feruchemy that has never come up, that multiple people can store attributes in a metalmind, but they could only withdraw their own storage? It seems odd to me, where I can see withdrawing from an unkeyed mind would work just fine, but I'm not sure on storing in an unkeyed mind.

Here is a quote that says multiple Feruchemists can store in the same piece of metal. I imagine that the medallions work after a similar fashion. 

Quote

ReaderAt2046

Can a Feruchemist store an attribute in a metalmind that someone else has already stored in and if so, do the charges affect each other in any way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but the charges are just stored in separate pieces of the metal, and don't really influence one another.

Unless one person were to blank their Identity while storing their weight, I don't believe that a second person who used the medallion would be able to tap the other person's weight, because it probably is keyed to their Identity. I could be wrong though, since medallion tech is kind of weird and we don't understand it completely yet.