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Lost Metal Chapter 9 Reactions


Little_Dagger

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A short read this week: chapter 9 is here https://www.tor.com/2022/10/10/read-the-lost-metal-by-brandon-sanderson-chapter-nine/

Introducing more political tensions in the relationship with the South and... not much else that caught my eye, except for Max being cute and the medallions potentially not being as powerful as they previously were believed to be.

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28 minutes ago, Frustration said:

No allomancy medallions. That certainly changes things.

I’d made that observation/comment before, after Bands of Mourning, that the way Allik acted and talked about Metalborn seemed inconsistent with observed facts. For example, to release Wilg (their escape pod/glider) from the larger airship that the Set had captured, he hands everybody medallions for weight (F-iron), and then tells Wax to Steelpush on the primer cube so they can take off.

How was that glider supposed to take off, then, without a Coinshot handy? Either there would have to be a medallion for A-steel, or a member of the crew would have had to be a Coinshot.

And yet no medallion we ever see in BoM is other than F-brass (heat), F-duralumin (Connection/translation), F-iron (weight), a combo of weight and connection (two attributes in one medallion - rare), or the F-copper coin that Hoid threw at Wax.

In fact, all the “primer cubes”, aka “Allomantic grenades”, function off of Allomancy, not Feruchemy, that we have seen. So how are they charging their Steelpush primers, if that’s how their airships fly?

Edited by robardin
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Why weren’t there Feruchemical soldiers in the Malwish army with extremely heightened strength, mental speed, or other dangerous Feruchemical talents? Why weren’t there Allomancer medallions?

I was confused as to why Allik wouldn't have snuck Marasi a gold medallion since he's got a thing for her. They must not exist. Or, we'll see her use it to heal her shoulder next chapter. I was very glad for these two sentences because I was so confused on what is and isn't possible with Malwish tech.

Interviewing Allik -- is he in town or not? Is he still a pilot or living with Marasi? Maybe we'll know next chapter

Also it's good to see Wax getting us into position on his interpretation of Wayne too. Curious on Wayne's interactions with Steris, hopefully next chapter gets us some interaction between them too.

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18 minutes ago, robardin said:

How was that glider supposed to take off, then, without a Coinshot handy? Either there would have to be a medallion for A-steel, or a member of the crew would have had to be a Coinshot.

Torpedo tube style? Compressed air to be triggered on the ship? Hence him relying on Waxillium.

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The whole thing about discrepancies in Allik's reports and empirical evidence looks like he is being forced to make a choice between his people's interests and Marasi's. With the new non-"familiar" ambassador, Allik may have an even harder time of it than before. 

If Allik choses the Malwish side, we may see Marasi complaining about her relationship to Wayne the same way he did to her about MeLaan in earlier chapters (it would be a fun reversal, considering that MeLaan is absent on kandra business all the time too)

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21 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Torpedo tube style? Compressed air to be triggered on the ship? Hence him relying on Waxillium.

There was a pair of shoulder straps for Wax to hold himself in place, while Pushing off against a steel plate beneath the pod to release it, and primer cube he needed to charge off of Wax to get the engine started… Certainly seemed like more than a backup plan for launching it. 

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we still don't know how the big airships fly.

the small ones, they are very light, and once you remove the mass of the crew they can easily fly like helicopters. but the heavy ships are too heavy to work with just rotors

as for allomancy, it is possible that they have very few rare allomantic powers, which they pass down generations with hemalurgy, and they use to charge the primer cubes

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If I had to guess, creating an Allomancy Medallion would somehow need to take away the Allomantic powers from the original Misting. Not too much point in doing that.

That, or filling and tapping a medallion is complicated. If I remember right, we've only seen tapping brass, tapping duralumin, and filling iron, then Hoid's Coppermind coin. Maybe they need the original Ferring to fill the brass + duralumin and tap the iron. Doesn't fit for Hoid's coin, but that's Hoid.

Don't really know how much that fits, as tapping brass shouldn't be so different than tapping other attributes.

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3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

we still don't know how the big airships fly.

the small ones, they are very light, and once you remove the mass of the crew they can easily fly like helicopters. but the heavy ships are too heavy to work with just rotors

It's the same as the small ones, they have a machine that stores the weight of the ship like in iron feruchemy.

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3 hours ago, Yuliya said:

The whole thing about discrepancies in Allik's reports and empirical evidence looks like he is being forced to make a choice between his people's interests and Marasi's. With the new non-"familiar" ambassador, Allik may have an even harder time of it than before. 

If Allik choses the Malwish side, we may see Marasi complaining about her relationship to Wayne the same way he did to her about MeLaan in earlier chapters (it would be a fun reversal, considering that MeLaan is absent on kandra business all the time too)

Quote

Obviously these were Malwish trade secrets, which explained part of it, but interviewing Allik they were able to consistently pick out discrepancies in what he said and what they actually saw.

I interpreted this to mean Allik was telling them there was more technology than the Malwish in general were sharing, which made sense if the Malwish were keeping secrets in case war did break out. But now based on your comment I can't tell if Allik is lying to our cast. Dang.

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14 hours ago, Frustration said:

It's the same as the small ones, they have a machine that stores the weight of the ship like in iron feruchemy.

they can store the weight of an inanimate object? I haven't seen any other instance of souther scadrian technology giving internal powers to inanimate objects. and I haven't seen any explanation like that in the books. do we have some sources on it?

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Another question would be how the airships can fly with Steelpushes anyway. They're going over oceans to reach the Northern Hemisphere, right?

So it's not that the primer cube is storing and amplifying Wax's Steelpushing ability when it charged off of him... Maybe any Allomancy would work, and the cube is feeding some kind of Investiture cycle? But not an infinite one.

After all, we see from their use of the cubes as "Allomantic grenades" that the Allomancy effect it's able to store/project is relatively short in duration, like a few minutes, even for A-steel which is one of the slower burning metals. (It was even shorter when Wayne used one to "throw" an A-bendalloy speed bubble.)

On the other hand, if they function by starting some kind of Identity-free Compounding cycle (that eventually burns up the metal), that implies it's a Feruchemical property that it's compounding, and nothing in Feruchemy allows for flight. One could compound F-iron for increasing weight, but not to anti-Compound it for weight reduction. Unless it's a property of F-ettmetal?

Edited by robardin
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18 hours ago, StormingTexan said:

I cannot believe no one has mentioned the giant reveal in this chapter! Finally we have confirmation on what color the TP is in the Northern and Southern Scadrial! 

Dude I 100% agree with you. I need answers. WHY ARE THE MALWISH BLEACHING THEIR TOILET PAPER? Are they just advanced & fancy like that? Is this just another display of Southern Scardial being ahead of the North in terms of technology?

[According to Google: "The bleaching process is what makes toilet paper soft to the touch and increases its absorbency. Unbleached paper is scratchy and doesn't do the job of drying quite like bleached paper does."]

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8 minutes ago, robardin said:

Another question would be how the airships can fly with Steelpushes anyway. They're going over oceans to reach the Northern Hemisphere, right?

So it's not that the primer cube is storing and amplifying Wax's Steelpushing ability when it charged off of him... Maybe any Allomancy would work, and the cube is feeding some kind of Investiture cycle? But not an infinite one.

After all, we see from their use of the cubes as "Allomantic grenades" that the Allomancy effect it's able to store/project is relatively short in duration, like a few minutes, even for A-steel which is one of the slower burning metals. (It was even shorter when Wayne used one to "throw" an A-bendalloy speed bubble.)

On the other hand, if they function by starting some kind of Identity-free Compounding cycle (that eventually burns up the metal), that implies it's a Feruchemical property that it's compounding, and nothing in Feruchemy allows for flight. One could compound F-iron for increasing weight, but not to anti-Compound it for weight reduction. Unless it's a property of F-ettmetal?

Agreed it has to be more than steel pushes. Before these preview chapters I assumed the charged primer cubes were essentially "pushing" the propellers to create lift. Now we have seen they expire pretty quickly and do not indefinitely hold their charge. So they must be more of a starter/battery to get the propellers going then some other means either magically or mechanically maintain the flight. I guess it is possible that there is very little draw on the primer cubes needed to spin the propeller vs. a burst when used as a grenade but I still l think it would be pretty short lived. I also think from what we have learned about the cubes that the crew would have to contain a coinshot to charge the primer cubes continuously and provide the inital push for the lift. 

 

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

they can store the weight of an inanimate object? I haven't seen any other instance of souther scadrian technology giving internal powers to inanimate objects. and I haven't seen any explanation like that in the books. do we have some sources on it?

Yes I also have not seen anything regarding storing weight of an inanimate object. From what we have see it is just used to essentially nullify the weight of the crew. Interestingly this could be used in reverse if you needed to descend quickly (like to avoid cannon balls being shot at you). 

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Corollary to this - shouldn't the northeners have come up with muscle-powered flight for Iron Ferrings at least? I mean iRL the main obstacle is the person's own weight - if you can abstract that, it should be a snap. Now that I think about it, it might even work for pewter Mistings - their extra strength should allow for brief periods of gaining height, followed by gliding. I am speaking of gliders equipped with rotors powered like bicycle-wheels. Of course, we also didn't see any bicycles in Elendel so far, oddly.

It doesn't seem entirely believable to me that people would be so reluctant to leave the basin and seek their fortune outside it, now that everything has been claimed and some ended up empty-handed or with less than they'd like. You'd think that the poor and the ambitious would dare to take risks to improve their situation. In particular I'd have expected a lot of expeditions searching for ettmetal after the events of BoM.

It is very interesting that the medallions apparently are one-way only for users - you can either tap or fill. Is it a real limitation or is it something that makers introduced on purpose to retain control over them? 

I also very much suspect that Trell has been busy in the south, too and exacerbated the tensions.

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5 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

So they must be more of a starter/battery to get the propellers going then some other means either magically or mechanically maintain the flight.

Ok so I just went back and checked and Allik mentions when they pick up Steris they should be "ok" to continue flying until their metal runs out so there must be something that reduces the consumption of the charged primer cube opposed to what we are seeing when used as a grenade. 

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1 minute ago, StormingTexan said:

Ok so I just went back and checked and Allik mentions when they pick up Steris they should be "ok" to continue flying until their metal runs out so there must be something that reduces the consumption of the charged primer cube opposed to what we are seeing when used as a grenade. 

They probably fly using a combustion engine powered by ettmetal.

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11 minutes ago, Nameless said:

They probably fly using a combustion engine powered by ettmetal.

That'd be funny, if it were powered by water + ettmetal = boom-boom for the combustion cycle

But then they wouldn't need an Allomantic primer cube?

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18 minutes ago, Nameless said:

They probably fly using a combustion engine powered by ettmetal.

This is kind of along the lines of what I was thinking but why would Allik worry about running out of metal? I was assuming he is referring to Wax's steel but maybe he was talking about the ettmetal. It seems like the grenades can be used multiple times so in my head the ettmetal is being used like a metal mind and does not actually get consumed just the allomantic charge. 

 

9 minutes ago, robardin said:

But then they wouldn't need an Allomantic primer cube?

You know he does call it a "primer" cube. So instead of supplying continuous power it is potentially just "priming" a mechanical engine of some sorts. This makes more sense from what we have seen with the grenades. If this is the case though still not sure why Allik was concerned with running out of metal. 

 

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6 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

You know he does call it a "primer" cube. So instead of supplying continuous power it is potentially just "priming" a mechanical engine of some sorts. This makes more sense from what we have seen with the grenades. If this is the case though still not sure why Allik was concerned with running out of metal. 

Yeah, it somehow needs an Allomantic "kick-start" to some kind of cycle that can run down, and consumes ettmetal. Those are the facts we know or can infer from his statements/actions.

That, plus the observation that the "primer cubes" / "Allomantic grenades" are based on Allomancy, while the medallions all seem to grant Feruchemy (along with a little metalmind of the right type), even though the Bands of Mourning had unsealed metalminds granting Allomantic powers (so it's technically possible). At least, all the medallions the Southerners have seen fit to share/demonstrate to the Northerners.

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35 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

This is kind of along the lines of what I was thinking but why would Allik worry about running out of metal? I was assuming he is referring to Wax's steel but maybe he was talking about the ettmetal. It seems like the grenades can be used multiple times so in my head the ettmetal is being used like a metal mind and does not actually get consumed just the allomantic charge. 

 

You know he does call it a "primer" cube. So instead of supplying continuous power it is potentially just "priming" a mechanical engine of some sorts. This makes more sense from what we have seen with the grenades. If this is the case though still not sure why Allik was concerned with running out of metal. 

 

A combustion engine would run out of ettmetal eventually.

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