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The Enhancement Metals are suspiciously boring


Phantom Monstrosity

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And I mean this in the nicest possible way. That nicrosil and chromium are identical in effect to aluminum and duraluminum is *very* odd - it just doesn't match how other metals work.

Let's look at the other metal groups.

Physical:

The externals (Iron and Steel) are duplicates of each other with the opposite direction.

The internals (Pewter and Tin) are sort of related to each other, but only vaguely related to iron and steel

Emotional

The externals (brass and zinc) are duplicates of each other with the opposite direction.

The internals (copper and bronze) are... well, they're a little more closely related to the externals than the physical metals are, since copper protects against the externals, but overall they're more related to each other.

Temporal

The externals (Cadmium and bendalloy) are duplicates of each other with the opposite direction.

The internal (gold and electrum) are sort of related to each other, but not exactly

So that's a pretty fixed pattern for all the other metals. Externals are always mirrors of each other, internals are different from the externals and don't mirror perfectly. For instance, you don't screw with your own emotions by burning copper and bronze.

Nicrosil and Chromium follow the pattern for the externals metals perfectly. Duplicate effect, opposite direction.

So the weird ones are aluminum and duraluminum. They're something *very* peculiar about the fact that they're duplicating the external effects exactly. That's something that doesn't happen with other metals.

Aluminum and its pair are *also* the metals that are seemingly useless for mistings.

And "[brandon] built aluminum to do all sorts of funky things to all the powers".

So... what to conclude from this? Probably that nicrosil and chromium do something beyond just boosting or sapping metals. Though, I suppose it's possible it's just the legacy of whatever Preservation did to screw with the 16% misting rate. When he reset misting distribution to normal, Sazed might have just picked the obvious 'same as internal, but external' option.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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Yeah back when we didn't know what they did and some people guessed that they'd just enhance/destroy other people's metals, Peter pointed out what you have, that that's not how the other metals work but as Observer said Brandon thought it was just too cool an idea to pass up.

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I think the main meta-story point here is that being useful trumps a lot of the other logic you could use.

For a lot of the powers, internal and external don't translate into useful powers that map directly onto each other. This is different for the enhancement metals, where exact analogues actually work from a mechanical standpoint, so Brandon goes with it.

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Duraluminum - Instantly uses up all burning metals for more power.

Aluminum - Instantly uses up all metals for less power.

They aren't that far from each other and they have smart uses. Aluminum and Duraluminum Mistings are just unlucky, stuff like that happens all the time in real. Though they could make some interesting alloys with godmetals and if Mistings can use godmetal alloys of their metals...

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Want a really random theory? We're still missing a metal, and Aluminum is the Godmetal for another shard. ;)/>

I actually *was* considering the idea that aluminum wasn't really a proper allomantic metal at all.

After all, heavily invested stuff can't be pulled or pushed... and neither can aluminum.

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So it's the god metal of the Shardholder Alumin? :P/> Well with a name like that and such a useless metal perhaps he's the one who just wants to hide from all the others.

Or perhaps aluminum was the metal for Adonalsium, and is useless (not just Allomantically, if we assume that "the unForgeable metal" from TES was another name for aluminum) because of the Shattering.

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