How Aluminum Actually Works

[+ShardlessVessel]

This is a sequence of thought processes that built on one another and let to some slightly crazy conclusions.

I was initially thinking of Breath-based fabrials. Theoretically, it should be possible to get any kind of gaseous Investiture into a polestone (or any kind of Investiture at all), so logically if you could get Breath into a polestone and fit a metal cage around it, you could use that to power a fabrial.

The question is: how do you put the Breath in there? It’s easy enough to put Stormlight into a gemstone, as you can simply leave it out during a highstorm. That wouldn’t work for Breath. Maybe you could have an Awakener Breathe into the stone, but unless they are of a very high Heightening, that is unlikely to be possible. But what about tuning forks?

You can use a specially constructed tuning fork to take Light out of a polestone and move it to another. The process is simple: hit the fork to make it vibrate, then touch the vibrating fork to an infused gemstone. This produces a flow of Light that you can then push into another gemstone by touching it with the fork. Could you do that with Breath?

Could it be possible to pull Breath out of an object by creating a tuning fork that vibrates to Endowment’s Tone and using it to draw Breath out of, say, a shirt and then into a gemstone? And what does this have to do with aluminum? Well, consider that to move Investiture around you use vibration. Vibrate an object at the right frequency, and you can pull Investiture into it, or through it.

The question now is: could you vibrate an object at a frequency that would push Investiture out? Yes. We see in Rhythm of War that if you expose a gem bearing Voidlight to Odium’s anti-Tone, the Voidlight is pushed out of it.

Most objects don’t particularly care about what Tone you input into them. Infuse a stone with Adhesion and it will stick to a wall. Command a wall to turn into smoke and it will comply. Convince a mural that it was actually painted on the lower floor and it will appear there. What if you had a material that did care about frequency it vibrates at? A material that responds to a Tone with its anti-Tone, cancelling it out?

This is what I think aluminum is actually doing, and also the effect it provides in Allomancy. When you try to Invest aluminum, it resonates with an incompatible Tone, shoving the Investiture out of itself. When you burn aluminum, you are not Investing it, but instead replicating its properties, creating a cacophony of anti-Tones that cleanses all kinetic Investiture in your body.

This would also explain why Invested things resist external Investiture. When an object isn’t Invested, it’s not vibrating to any particular Shard’s Tone. However, when it is Invested, it vibrates with a Rhythm that combines the Identity of whoever Invested it and the pure Tone of the Shard to whom that Investiture belongs, and you need to either match that Rhythm or just brute force

your way into the object with a lot of Investiture - which is confirmed by WoB to be possible, though very difficult, to do to aluminum.

[EmulatonStromenkiin]

Interesting theory, Makes sense to me.

[Frustration]

A-Aluminum wipes all metals you have in you, not just the one's you are burning, and those metals aren't invested.

[+ShardlessVessel]

10 minutes ago, Frustration said:

A-Aluminum wipes all metals you have in you, not just the one's you are burning, and those metals aren't invested.

Good point. I'll have to rethink this.

[HSuperLee]

2 hours ago, ShardlessVessel said:

Good point. I'll have to rethink this.

Do we know whether or not an aluminum gnat can vaporize the viable metals that they can't burn? Because I feel like whether they could or not would have significant implications on this theory.