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Possible way to compound allomancy


dijini1

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Hey guys. I thought of a possible method of compounding allomancy. You can go over the basics.
 
Allomancy. You eat the metal you can use then burn it. Different metals burn at different rates. You can cause the metal to burn faster to get more power. However, there is an upper limit to how much power you can get.
 
Feruchemy. You store up attributes like speed, weight, or memories in a piece of metal that can store it. You have to spend an amount of time storing in order to use an equal amount of what you stored for an equal amount of time. If you have enough weight, you could become as heavy as the Earth for a few instants. There is no upper limit, but it is an in=out system.
 
Compounding. If you have both Allomancy and Feruchemy, you can compound. We only know how to compound Feruchemy, but it can give some insight on how to compound Allomancy. Ferucompounding works by storing an attribute, then burning the attribute stored inside to increase the amount of attribute that is available to you, and then storing that attribute in a different metalmind.
 
So my theory on Allocompounding works like Ferucompounding. You take the metal, burn it, then store the power released into a metalmind. This may seem a bit useless, but remember, Feruchemy(which you are now doing) has no upper limit. So you just use the power you just stored up, and use it at twice as powerful that you can do in order to compound Allomancy.

 

Thought? Opinions? Ideas?

 

Edit: I think there is a WoB around that says that you could store allomantic pewter in a pewtermind, but the amount and/or effort involved makes it easier to ferucompound pewter. On a different note, if this method works, you could allocompound and ferucompound at the same time.

Edited by dijini1
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Have fun figuring out how you would even store a steelpush inside a metalmind only capable of holding speed.

I think djini1 is talking about Nicrosil Feruchemy. If you were a Steel-Nicrosil Twinborn, you could theoretically Burn a bit of steel at a time, storing the power inside a Nicrosilmind along the way, until you get a sizable chunk of steel's worth of Steelpush stored. Then you tap all that in a single gigantic burst.

This has an advantage over Duralumin Allomancy in that Duralumin is limited by how much metal your body can hold at one time, whereas with Nicrosilmind storage you can go swallow->burn->store->swallow->burn->store and repeat that as many times as you want or until the Nicrosilmind is full. Your only limit is your Nicrosilmind's capacity.

Of course, this assumes that Nicrosilminds can store Allomantic power, which makes absolute sense but has not been confirmed in the books yet (and no I don't really see MAG as canon).

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Was that downvote really necessary? I might be a naturally cynical person, but whether any of the metalminds can even do that has been the first problem to work out for this particular theory for as long as it has existed (which it has for a good while now).

Nicrosil being an enticing candidate, but we'd all like to know what that actually does, I'm sure. It'd be strange for feruchemy, as a complete power originally, to contain an ability that is just shy of useless with just feruchemy alone.

That ain't a Dislike button, people, it's a downvote on rep.

Edited by natc
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Have fun figuring out how you would even store a steelpush inside a metalmind only capable of holding speed.

 

Have fun figuring out how you would burn steel and get speed instead of steelpushing.

 

OH WAIT THAT'S ALREADY HOW IT WORKS.

 

According to allomancy, the two traits are clearly considered "close enough". Can you give me a reason feruchemy wouldn't follow the same pattern?

 

And Skaa: I don't think he's talking about nicrosil. I know everyone assumes that's how nicrosil works, but I've long been a proponent of exactly the theory djin is proposing. The same way burning steel with a feruchemical charge can overwrite the power coming from allomancy, the same way Vin, when she burns Sazed's metalmind, can see his pewter reserve even if she can't access it, I think that "pushing on metal" is simply another trait which is capable of being stored in a steelmind.

Edited by Oudeis
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Compounder twinborn are rare, but there's enough of them for the term to exist, so you'd think some double steel twinborn out there would've figured out the superpush by now.

Plus, its easier to accept the burning process to detect a difference between an invested steelmind and a lump of normal steel, than it is to accept that normal lump of steel that's supposed to store speed somehow being able to store investiture encoded for "push metal away" without some tinkering with metallic art mechanics. There's no indication that allomancy considers them "close enough", if anything you are burning two atomically identical things and getting entirely different forms of investiture channeled into you.

Edited by natc
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Compounder twinborn are rare, but there's enough of them for the term to exist, so you'd think some double steel twinborn out there would've figured out the superpush by now.

 

Not rare like it seems. statistically 1/16 of the Twinborn are Compounders.

 

Anyway I feel strange the mechanics of "store push" in "steelmind".

Could be the Feruchemical use of the Lerarium's Alloy ?

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I definitely think this is possible, but I dont think it is as simple as "Store allomancy in Metal minds" if it was someone would have done it by now. You probably need to hack the magic system a little for it to work. I have no idea how though, we dont really know enough about investiture.

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@natc: I did say it's not yet confirmed. Oh, and in hindsight I should have upvoted you when I saw that downvote. *gives natc a belated upvote*

 

And Skaa: I don't think he's talking about nicrosil. I know everyone assumes that's how nicrosil works, but I've long been a proponent of exactly the theory djin is proposing. The same way burning steel with a feruchemical charge can overwrite the power coming from allomancy, the same way Vin, when she burns Sazed's metalmind, can see his pewter reserve even if she can't access it, I think that "pushing on metal" is simply another trait which is capable of being stored in a steelmind.

I admit I mentioned Nicrosil only because I didn't wish to entertain the possibility of storing Allomantic Investiture in a metalmind other than Nicrosil, but still wanted to defend the newbie. Now that I've thought about it a bit more, though, I'm starting to see the coolness factor in being able to use any metalmind as a store of its associated Allomantic power.

I hope we'll get some clues regarding this next week! :)

Edited by skaa
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Compounder twinborn are rare, but there's enough of them for the term to exist, so you'd think some double steel twinborn out there would've figured out the superpush by now.

 

And where is your evidence that they haven't? Compounders might or might not be rare, but the fact is we've only seen one, who seemed perfectly content with the amount of allomantic power simply burning gold gave him. Why do you assume it's not been discovered, just because it hasn't been expressly mentioned? Since we don't see a steel compounder, it's not yet conspicuous in its absence.

 

The rest of your post makes absolutely no sense. What you personally are willing to accept or not has no relevance. It is entirely subjective. You, personally, can accept it or not; this is not proper citation to support a legitimate argument.

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I haven't . . . actually made a legitimate argument myself yet though. This is a discussion about something we know little enough about to be unable to do much more than speculate about, and I'm just expressing concern about an answer to performing a certain loophole that seems oddly simple compared to a different existing loophole. Metalminds are at least just discernable enough from normal metal that a distorted response from the burn is somewhat expected, but for feruchemy to naturally be able to store allomantic power without interference seems counterintuitive. But then again, many things about Scadrial are from the wrong perspective.

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Okay. Since you acknowledge that you're not actually making an argument, I'm going to proceed to discount your personal opinion, and try to get back to the actual discussion.

 

Dijini: To take your observation a step further, what about burning a steelmind full of allomantic steel? I feel like since it's already the power of Preservation, you're unlikely to be able to multiply it any further; burning it would simply give you the same form, and same power output, as regular steel.

 

Oooo aluminum! I wonder if this might be the trick to getting a lot of aluminum. Imagine. You've got an aluminummind on your arm, and some flakes in your stomach. Before you burn, you're already storing allomantic aluminum; you've got nothing to give, but you store it anyway. So the instant you start burning, the new 'channel' is open, and the power is diverted to your aluminummind, rather than your body. So it only burns at its own actual burn rate, rather than wiping itself out along with other metals. Then later, you can tap it for the actual aluminum affect, but keep it going, rather than have the aluminum use itself up instantly. This could be very useful for keeping yourself basically immune to "outside Investiture," rather than having to let it affect you while wiping out your own reserves.

 

In fact, if it's not considered a reserve, you could have a bunch of metalminds with stored allomantic powers, and keep aluminum burning continuously to throw off foreign Investiture, while still using other abilities. You wouldn't be able to use duralumin, but that shouldn't matter, since you can just draw out a lot of steel at once, for instance, to be artificially powerful, even better than a duralumin-boost.

 

This is starting to seem broken powerful. Admittedly, someone who is a full feruchemist and mistborn was broken powerful to begin with, before any of this happened, so the functional change is marginal at best.

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I haven't . . . actually made a legitimate argument myself yet though. This is a discussion about something we know little enough about to be unable to do much more than speculate about, and I'm just expressing concern about an answer to performing a certain loophole that seems oddly simple compared to a different existing loophole. Metalminds are at least just discernable enough from normal metal that a distorted response from the burn is somewhat expected, but for feruchemy to naturally be able to store allomantic power without interference seems counterintuitive. But then again, many things about Scadrial are from the wrong perspective.

 

In all honesty, I'm still not convinced 100% that this is even a thing.  I've examined the WoB, and I think this could just as easily be a case where he misspoke and switched his terms around as a clue to new powers.  Has anyone ever asked him to clarify?

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So that escalated a bit quickly...  :mellow: 
Here is a picute of a cat cuddling a teddy:
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To the topic at hand I'm relatively certain that at the least Nicrosil will be needed to store Allomantic Investiture either that or some completely new way to hack the powers. I just see no logical reason why Allomancy should suddenly become a storeable trait with no trickery needed, feruchemy changes the metal by charging it with a feruchemical trait such that it acts as a different channel for Preservations power, burning a metal in your stomach doesn't in any way alter the metal on your arm to enable it to store allomancy. Maybe you could store Allomantic power in a metal you were already burning but I don't even know how that would work.

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Of course, this assumes that Nicrosilminds can store Allomantic power, which makes absolute sense but has not been confirmed in the books yet (and no I don't really see MAG as canon).

Nicrosil wouldn't even have to be able to save the Investiture coded. Even if it saved "pure" Investiture the Twinborn could just recode it the same way it's done when taking in the mist. So if that's how it is, it would work for all f!Nicrosil Twinborns and not just Compounders.

 

Have fun figuring out how you would burn steel and get speed instead of steelpushing.

 

OH WAIT THAT'S ALREADY HOW IT WORKS.

 

According to allomancy, the two traits are clearly considered "close enough". Can you give me a reason feruchemy wouldn't follow the same pattern?

By infusing an impurity into the metal beforehand that then corrupts (maybe not the best term given that the result is considered positive) the allomantic Investure. It really has nothing to do with the sttributes being "close enough" but with Allomancy essentially being hacked through inserting something foreign into its resourcess.

On the other hand there is no connection between the metal burned in Allomancy and the one that it would later be stored in through Feruchemy.

Edited by Edgedancer
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The strange things about the "push-steelmind" was about Ruin and his Inquisitors.

If there is a way to Compound the Allomancy and it is so easy that any Compounder may simply do. Why Ruin's Inquisitors (with the All-knowledge of Ruin) doesn't use it.

There is three options:

- Error of Mr. Sanderson.

- There is no way to compound the Allomancy (we had misunderstood the WoB)

- The method is quite complex and the Inquisitor can't do it (therefore nothing like "I put the allomantic energy in the metalmind).

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The idea that a metalmind can "store" Allomancy isn't particularly far-fetched. It's what happens in the first place! Investiture from Preservation comes and is forced through the "nozzle" of the metal, resulting in an Allomantic effect. Reversing the process and shoving the Allomantic effect back through the metal could convert it back to regular Investiture.

 

Of course, Feruchemy has an additional constraint: the metal itself needs to store the attribute. With this "reverse nozzle" model, the Investiture should just return to Preservation, and your metalminds wouldn't actually store anything.

 

The other problem is forcing your Allomantic effect into the metalmind. The Investiture isn't really a part of you (note: I would actually argue some of it is, but that's a post in its own right), it's a part of the metal, so how can you store it? It would be like Feruchemy trying to store light coming from a lightbulb - it doesn't really make sense.

 

Either way, I strongly would believe that there's no way it's this simple to reverse-Compound Allomancy. The argument that every Compounder isn't doing it in the AoL era and we never saw Marsh do it is a compelling one.

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I just see no logical reason why Allomancy should suddenly become a storeable trait with no trickery needed,

 

Feruchemy does not need any trickery. You store an attribute, then burn it, and get the attribute tenfold. In this model, you burn a metal, and store it in your metalmind. How is the first any more complicated than the second?

 

Yata: While you raise an interesting point, I'm going to rebut with a similar one. You're right. The Inquisitors should have been compounders. At the start of Hero of Ages, an Inquisitor tries to spike Elend, and stops, seemingly because he's run out of speed. Why else would he stop? He slows down enough for Vin to kill him. We know it was Ruin's intention to get a spike into Elend; an epigraph reveals this. So there was no reason for him to deliberately slow down. Yet, we know he has allomantic steel (he did the horseshoe trick) and we know he had feruchemical steel. He should have absolutely been able to spike Elend, but he didn't.

 

We know Marsh has both powers, yet he also didn't just compound infinite speed to fight Elend. (Moogle: Note, you also bring up that Marsh doesn't compound the other way around. To which Ia sk you this simple question: Why didn't he compound the way we know works?) Why not? I'm not sure. Maybe hemalurgically stolen traits don't mesh for compounding? Maybe the Identities of your allomantic and feruchemical steel have to match for compounding, so even if you take the powers hemalurgically and graft them into your own spiritweb, they will each function independently but still won't let you compound. We have no idea. The only people we've seen compound were either born with all their powers, or born with half of them and acquired the others through lerasium.

 

I'm also going to point out the example of tin, and of bendalloy. Feruchemically, they store different things. When you hold a tinmind, you decide if you're going to store your sight, or your smell, or your touch. When you hold a bendalloymind, you can put nutrition in it, or hydration. Why, then, is it so difficult to imagine that if you're holding a steelmind, you can choose whether you're going to store physical speed, or allomantic steel? People keep talking as though it's simply obvious that the second makes no sense while allomantic compounding is obviously a natural outcropping. I don't agree in the least.

 

Moogle: You say, why isn't every compounder doing this? To which I say... are they not? We've seen exactly one AoL era compounder, and his allomantic power was of marginal usefulness. Where, exactly, in the book do they mention that compounding only works one way? Where is there a point in the book where the lack of saying, "By the way, this has no relevance on what's happening here, but here's a trick Compounders other than Miles might use at times" is conspicuous?

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@Marsh's Compounding:

 

We know Inquisitors can Compound. Marsh does it to keep himself alive, and presumably does it to heal from his Elend-inflicted sword wound at the end of HoA, after healing from Vin crushing in half his skull.

 

So why did the Inquisitor not superspeed and spike Elend successfully?

 

Plot armor, as far as I can tell. I refuse to believe Ruin - who was directing every Inquisitor's actions to the point where they knew his name - did not tell each and every Inquisitor the secret of Compounding. I have not been very pleased with Feruchemy's portrayal in the books, TLR's failure being the most notable example. Shadows of Self spoilers:

Fortunately, Steelrunners appear to be properly terrifying in the new books.

 

There are some things I can take things on faith - Brandon has shown himself worthy of an inordinate amount of trust. But I don't think there's a strong case to be made for the Inquisitors.

 

@Compounding's mention in the books:

 

Here's one conversation where it would have fit rather nicely:

“No,” Waxillium said. “They aren’t. But it’s the Compounding that makes Miles so powerful. If your Allomancy and Feruchemy share a metal, you can access its power tenfold. It’s complicated. You store an attribute inside the metal, then burn it to release the power. It’s called Compounding. By the legends, it’s the way the Sliver gained immortality.”

He had enough time to throw in a historical aside. If you could indeed Reverse Compound as a Compounding Twinborn then I find it difficult to find a reason why he wouldn't explain, in a sentence, something along the lines of "You can also store your Allomancy and make it stronger as well."

 

I grant it's not a fact that's likely to have come up very often, but Miles also had plenty of times to mourn the fact while he went on a long monologue about how worthless Allomantic gold was. He could have thrown in an aside like, "it didn't even take advantage of one of his most useful tricks as a Compounder and become more useful when reverse-Compounded".

 

Absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's not proof, but it's enough to make me lean strongly towards Reverse Compounding not being that simple.

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More to the point wouldn't every feruchemist ever have realized this? If they knew that you could actually store two traits in iron or steel even if they didn't know what the second one was or how to store it since they weren't allomancers you'd think it would be mentioned at some point, particularly when Vin discusses it with Sazed.

 

Feruchemy does not need any trickery. You store an attribute, then burn it, and get the attribute tenfold. In this model, you burn a metal, and store it in your metalmind. How is the first any more complicated than the second?

It's not about being complicated but even if it were, the former involves making the less than intuitive leap of logic that you should eat one of your own metalminds, potentially wasting valuable resources which is really not a great idea unless you have any clue that it might do something. The latter merely requires you to have both abilities and touch a piece of metal, much easier to do.
But more importantly allomancy in no conceivable way changes the structure of the metal on your wrist to say 'oh no we're not storing speed now we're storing allomantic pushing', feruchemy charges the metal with a power, when you try to burn this the power that passes through the metal goes 'oh there's healing in here, guess you want that instead of normal allomantic gold'.

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He had enough time to throw in a historical aside.

 

...which would have been entirely irrelevant. He was talking for the express purpose of explaining why Miles was so dangerous; mentioning that he was also really, really good at hurting himself by seeing more of himself had no bearing. Could he have mentioned it? Sure. Is it conspicuous that he didn't? Absolutely not. There are plenty of times he could bring up what feruchemical bendalloy does; it wouldn't have been germane, but he could have thrown it in as a "historical aside." He didn't, because there wasn't a point. We know, nevertheless, that bendalloy does have feruchemical properties.

 

Also, I'm not positive I agree with the assumption that anything a compounder can do must be general knowledge; for example, the exact citation Moogle just gave us. Marasi is in university. She's an allomancer. She studies the great lawkeepers, Miles Dagouter included. Yet she needs to have the basics of regular compounding explained to her.

 

Why, then, if we see that it's apparently not commonly known how regular compounding works, do we assume that everything else has to be common knowledge, and that therefore if everyone doesn't know it, we can assume it's not true? Marasi herself didn't know about regular compounding, and there's every reason she should have. Where is your evidence to support your assumption that if it were possible, literally everyone would know about it?

 

Remember, twinborn alone are very, very rare. Wax says, at the wedding, that although 20% of the Originators were Terris, they've kept mostly to themselves, and only a fraction of the population has mixed blood. A small fraction of those people will have one power or the other; a much smaller fraction will have both and be twinborn. Something like one in sixteen of those will be compounders. Aluminum, duralumin, gold, almost a quarter of compounders have an allomantic power with no real benefit to finding a way to boost via feruchemy. We're down to a miniscule number of people who would ever be in a position to realize how simple it is. Since we already know that people knowledgeable in this specific area don't know how regular compounding works, how do you justify your assumption that their exact same ignorance on the subject of the other kind of compounding is solid enough evidence that you're all very certain it's simply impossible?

 

Moogle: Good catch on Inquisitors compounding, and excellent reference. It's even better than the one I thought of on my way home today; which is a quote saying that if Vin had kept Ruin trapped, and had decided to follow Rashek's example and stay alive for a thousand years to fix it again, she'd've had to use hemalurgy to gain the ability to compound and would therefore be under his influence for all that time, meaning she'd prolly end up as bad and insane as Rashek.

 

However, this is my fault. I sorta nerd-sniped myself and took us down a tangent. The fact remains: Marsh's ability to compound, or not, is entirely irrelevant. My argument is that allomantic compounding is that easy. Moogle's rebuttal was, if it was that easy, Marsh would have done it. He didn't do it, ergo it can't happen. Regardless of anything else, we know that Marsh had the opportunity to use feruchemical compounding in his various fights, and simply never did. Therefore, we know for a fact that, with the opportunity, Marsh simply didn't do it. Therefore, you cannot attack my point by saying, Marsh would have if we could have; we know he could have used regular compounding and didn't, so your premise is entirely gone. Maybe it was plot armor. Maybe it was some other reason. It doesn't matter what the reason was; the fact remains, you cannot say something is impossible because Marsh didn't do it, because we know for a fact that Marsh didn't do something we know was possible.

 

Voidus: ... Why are you assuming they could feel a second way to use feruchemy? Vin is one of the few allomancers, ever, who ever felt a second way to use allomancy, and that was only when the metal she was burning was charged with something.

 

Also, I'm not sure what your point is with the "less than intuitive". Vin does exactly that. Sazed has a "moderate amount" of strength stored in his earring back, but goes ahead and wastes it to see what happens when Vin burns it. As it turns out, it gives a clue to how regular compounding works. What point were you trying to make there?

 

Where do we have evidence of a feruchemist picking up a bit of metal and thinking, "yes, this, this is clearly the thing I can store in this metal, even though I didn't know that before"? Because otherwise you're just assuming that this is how feruchemy works, when... there's no evidence of that. From what I recall, Mr. Sanderson has said that if a feruchemist touches metal in which he can store a trait, he feels an "affinity". Vin had the reserves of metal in her stomach that first night with Kelsier, and just by having the reserves got no clue how the metals worked or what they did. She had to burn them and see. Even when she burned iron, she saw blue lines, but even when she focused on one and made a nail fly at her chest, she needed it explained to her by Kelsier that iron pulls metal to your body.

 

So why exactly are you assuming that a feruchemist touches a piece of metal and instantly knows perfectly any and everything he can do with it? Vin burns iron, and never thinks to herself, "Wow, y'know what, with just a little tweak, this metal would let me weigh a lot...".

 

Nothing in a tinmind changes when you decide to store sight instead of scent. The Intent comes into play. Yet, it does store separate things. When you hold a tinmind, there are five possible things you can choose to store in it. When you're burning steel and holding a steelmind, there are two possible things you can store in it. Nothing has to change in the metal for you to pick one trait over the other, in either example.

 

But I'm done. You're all arguing from a place of assumptions and "that doesn't feel right to me" and I can't change either of those things. But when, in the fullness of time, we learn how the other kind of compounding works and I'm proven right, I'm going to tell you all that I told you so. ;) Just kidding.

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Also, I'm not positive I agree with the assumption that anything a compounder can do must be general knowledge; for example, the exact citation Moogle just gave us. Marasi is in university. She's an allomancer. She studies the great lawkeepers, Miles Dagouter included. Yet she needs to have the basics of regular compounding explained to her.

 

Why, then, if we see that it's apparently not commonly known how regular compounding works, do we assume that everything else has to be common knowledge, and that therefore if everyone doesn't know it, we can assume it's not true? Marasi herself didn't know about regular compounding, and there's every reason she should have. Where is your evidence to support your assumption that if it were possible, literally everyone would know about it?

 

This... this is going to sound awful, and it's so awful but I feel it's something that should be said anyways:

 

I just realized that Marasi literally did not know about Compounding.

 

This makes no sense. She's playing the part of Audience Surrogate there, but there's no way in-world that she doesn't know that. Twinborn like Miles should be so famous that everyone knows that some Twinborn are capable of being immortal or superhuman 24/7 or being human torches, etc. Yes, they're rare, but they're not that rare.

 

Allomancer Jak exists! Allomancers can be like superheroes to them. Only, they're also real. Surely there's a bunch of nerds devoted to learning facts about Allomancy and Feruchemy. There's got to be scientists, too! It's a part of their culture by AoL.

 

She went to university! Are you telling me that in her requisite science courses they didn't spend an hour teaching Allomancy and Feruchemy and the interactions? Particularly given her area of study, where lots of famous lawmen are sure to be Allomancers? Compounding should be like a case study every single person who's even touched science should know about.

 

She needed this explained (as an Allomancer herself!), as if every single person and their mother would not know the basics of this sort of thing.

 

This clashes with my expectations with what Scadrial should be like. I can't believe this is not common knowledge. In light of this, I'll just concede every point to you and leave this conversation while I do a re-read of things.

Edited by Moogle
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...which would have been entirely irrelevant. He was talking for the express purpose of explaining why Miles was so dangerous; mentioning that he was also really, really good at hurting himself by seeing more of himself had no bearing. Could he have mentioned it? Sure. Is it conspicuous that he didn't? Absolutely not. There are plenty of times he could bring up what feruchemical bendalloy does; it wouldn't have been germane, but he could have thrown it in as a "historical aside." He didn't, because there wasn't a point. We know, nevertheless, that bendalloy does have feruchemical properties.

 

Also, I'm not positive I agree with the assumption that anything a compounder can do must be general knowledge; for example, the exact citation Moogle just gave us. Marasi is in university. She's an allomancer. She studies the great lawkeepers, Miles Dagouter included. Yet she needs to have the basics of regular compounding explained to her.

 

Why, then, if we see that it's apparently not commonly known how regular compounding works, do we assume that everything else has to be common knowledge, and that therefore if everyone doesn't know it, we can assume it's not true? Marasi herself didn't know about regular compounding, and there's every reason she should have. Where is your evidence to support your assumption that if it were possible, literally everyone would know about it?

 

Remember, twinborn alone are very, very rare. Wax says, at the wedding, that although 20% of the Originators were Terris, they've kept mostly to themselves, and only a fraction of the population has mixed blood. A small fraction of those people will have one power or the other; a much smaller fraction will have both and be twinborn. Something like one in sixteen of those will be compounders. Aluminum, duralumin, gold, almost a quarter of compounders have an allomantic power with no real benefit to finding a way to boost via feruchemy. We're down to a miniscule number of people who would ever be in a position to realize how simple it is. Since we already know that people knowledgeable in this specific area don't know how regular compounding works, how do you justify your assumption that their exact same ignorance on the subject of the other kind of compounding is solid enough evidence that you're all very certain it's simply impossible?

 

Moogle: Good catch on Inquisitors compounding, and excellent reference. It's even better than the one I thought of on my way home today; which is a quote saying that if Vin had kept Ruin trapped, and had decided to follow Rashek's example and stay alive for a thousand years to fix it again, she'd've had to use hemalurgy to gain the ability to compound and would therefore be under his influence for all that time, meaning she'd prolly end up as bad and insane as Rashek.

 

However, this is my fault. I sorta nerd-sniped myself and took us down a tangent. The fact remains: Marsh's ability to compound, or not, is entirely irrelevant. My argument is that allomantic compounding is that easy. Moogle's rebuttal was, if it was that easy, Marsh would have done it. He didn't do it, ergo it can't happen. Regardless of anything else, we know that Marsh had the opportunity to use feruchemical compounding in his various fights, and simply never did. Therefore, we know for a fact that, with the opportunity, Marsh simply didn't do it. Therefore, you cannot attack my point by saying, Marsh would have if we could have; we know he could have used regular compounding and didn't, so your premise is entirely gone. Maybe it was plot armor. Maybe it was some other reason. It doesn't matter what the reason was; the fact remains, you cannot say something is impossible because Marsh didn't do it, because we know for a fact that Marsh didn't do something we know was possible.

 

Voidus: ... Why are you assuming they could feel a second way to use feruchemy? Vin is one of the few allomancers, ever, who ever felt a second way to use allomancy, and that was only when the metal she was burning was charged with something.

 

Also, I'm not sure what your point is with the "less than intuitive". Vin does exactly that. Sazed has a "moderate amount" of strength stored in his earring back, but goes ahead and wastes it to see what happens when Vin burns it. As it turns out, it gives a clue to how regular compounding works. What point were you trying to make there?

 

Where do we have evidence of a feruchemist picking up a bit of metal and thinking, "yes, this, this is clearly the thing I can store in this metal, even though I didn't know that before"? Because otherwise you're just assuming that this is how feruchemy works, when... there's no evidence of that. From what I recall, Mr. Sanderson has said that if a feruchemist touches metal in which he can store a trait, he feels an "affinity". Vin had the reserves of metal in her stomach that first night with Kelsier, and just by having the reserves got no clue how the metals worked or what they did. She had to burn them and see. Even when she burned iron, she saw blue lines, but even when she focused on one and made a nail fly at her chest, she needed it explained to her by Kelsier that iron pulls metal to your body.

 

So why exactly are you assuming that a feruchemist touches a piece of metal and instantly knows perfectly any and everything he can do with it? Vin burns iron, and never thinks to herself, "Wow, y'know what, with just a little tweak, this metal would let me weigh a lot...".

 

Nothing in a tinmind changes when you decide to store sight instead of scent. The Intent comes into play. Yet, it does store separate things. When you hold a tinmind, there are five possible things you can choose to store in it. When you're burning steel and holding a steelmind, there are two possible things you can store in it. Nothing has to change in the metal for you to pick one trait over the other, in either example.

 

But I'm done. You're all arguing from a place of assumptions and "that doesn't feel right to me" and I can't change either of those things. But when, in the fullness of time, we learn how the other kind of compounding works and I'm proven right, I'm going to tell you all that I told you so. ;) Just kidding.

Studying lawmakers /= studying feruchemy/allomancy and twinborns, perfectly logical, also the obvious reason she needed it explained to her was so that the readers could have it explained. More importantly just because regular gold doesn't seem terribly useful doesn't mean that if you were able to boost it through compounding it would be, Mistborn considered Bronze largely useless until Vin showed that with a slight power boost it could pierce copperclouds, to not even consider that compounding gold allomantically might give Miles some advantage in a fight would be insanely reckless.

Vin was one of the only Allomancers to ever try and that's exactly my point, the metal had to be charged with power before it could be used in any other way or even felt in another way so why do you assume that it doesn't work that way in reverse? All Feruchemists touch their metals and know that they can store in them, if storing allomancy in them involved absolutely no secret or trick to it then there's no reason they wouldn't immediately identify that fact.

Vin was the first person to think of doing that in around a thousand years as far as Sazed knew so yeah I'd say it's a pretty unique leap in logic. Sazed, Kelsier, any of the mistings in Kels team, none of them at any point in their lives even thought about trying it.

I didn't say they knew everything they could do with it, not necessarily what they could store but just as Vin can tell that Sazeds feruchemical charge is different from her normal reserves feruchemists would be able to tell that they could store something else.

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Allomancer Jak is kind of my point. There's no Snopes in Elendel. There are no Mythbusters. They're a culture that went from "believe what you're told" for a thousand years, to near-extinction, to paradise for three hundred years. Peer review is still prolly a bit down the line. Allomancer Jak is almost certainly not happening. I personally suspect that, exactly like the real-world "serials" pretending to be actual accounts that Allomancer Jak is satirizing, it's being written by some old woman who has never left Elendel and prolly isn't metalborn. There's no Allomancer Jak. He's not having tineye adventures among the koloss, he doesn't have a faithful terris servant and he doesn't get tin by licking walls. The writer says things, and people believe them, because people don't know better. People get told a lot. Like Marasi said, she heard about Miles and how he healed, and she assumed it was an exaggeration, that he was simply a bloodmaker like Wayne and the stories made him sound more impressive.
 
You're thinking that in 2015, on earth, a woman in university could not possibly be mistaken about something so fundamental. This is not 2015. There's no internet. There are not world-wide scientific publications. They've had barely any time to figure out, from nothing, a method of scholarship that ensures nothing but true information is disseminated perfectly.
 
Mr. Sanderson posted on facebook today that he was asked to write a summary of Shadows of Self, and in part he mentions that the time period is like 1910. Things weren't exactly the dark ages, but disinformation was everywhere. In the past twenty years, nutritionists have gone from saying eggs are great for you, eat them raw, to saying they're terrible, they have disease, cook them, to saying wait, they're terrible for you anyway because they have cholesterol, never eat an egg, to saying wait, eat them again, because we've discovered that dietary cholesterol has almost no impact on blood cholesterol... and this is an egg. Humans have been eating eggs as long as we've been human. Almost every human who was alive during those two decades has eaten an egg, their ancestors all ate eggs, everyone they know ate eggs. Every generation looks at the 'scientists' of the past and thinks how credulous they were, oh hey, there was once serious consideration given to the idea that the earth was a hollow sphere with layers of other lands deep inside you could get to from the poles, I'm glad we're not silly like that, we just believe everything out scientists tell us is so...
 
It goes against what you might believe, or might want to believe, but it's absolutely in keeping with the time period and the general context that people would be hearing a dozen different contradictory reports about what exactly is or isn't possible in the metallic arts, and would believe some and not have heard of others. Yes, even someone in a university specifically studying that person.
 
The problem isn't that people don't do research. Or that they don't say what they find, or think, or assume, or guess. The biggest, most fundamental problem is, there's no true academic foundation yet. Or if there is, it's relatively recent. I legitimately don't know, but how long did it take Earth to get a solid foundation of academia, with peer review, journals, institutions answerable to someone? How long ago was it that someone could just publish a book and have it be assumed true?
 
The Alaska Gold Rush started in 1896, roughly analogous to the time of Alloy of Law. There is a town, affectionally called Liarsville, where new reporters would all go to, on the edge of gold territory, and sit around chilling all day, sending back 100% fictional accounts of their firsthand experiences out in the Klondike. Sure, they'd ask the prospectors coming back, hey what's it like, but basically for inspiration. The idea of trying to craft an accurate, factual account was ludicrous. They wouldn't even see that as the default setting, or a goal worth reaching. They would treat you like you just said, I know what let's do, next time it snows, let's arrange every flake in size order. ... Why? that's impossible, and there's no benefit.
 
In modern times, we think of accuracy as a laudable goal. But that's a reasonably modern idea.I do not think the world of academia on Scadrial is up there, yet. Have they even discovered the scientific method, yet? Is it enforced universally? Are experiments performed with control groups? Is bias accounted for, margin of error? Are results replicated?
 
Maybe if Elend had survived. Or any of the Keepers. But alas.
 
I'm also gonna take this opportunity to point out again, Twinborn at all, let alone Compounders, let alone people with allomantic powers worth compounding, actually are insanely rare. I don't find it surprising at all, in an age which may or may not even have the telegraph, that accurate and somewhat obscure knowledge is widely known. Keep in mind; who in the book knows how compounding works? People who know Miles personally, not people who have simply read reports on him. This is not an age of wikipedia.

 

All Feruchemists touch their metals and know that they can store in them, if storing allomancy in them involved absolutely no secret or trick to it then there's no reason they wouldn't immediately identify that fact.

 

...

I didn't say they knew everything they could do with it, not necessarily what they could store but just as Vin can tell that Sazeds feruchemical charge is different from her normal reserves feruchemists would be able to tell that they could store something else.

 

...Yes, you did.

 

If they knew that you could actually store two traits in iron or steel even if they didn't know what the second one was or how to store it since they weren't allomancers you'd think it would be mentioned at some point

 

What else are you saying here? If you're not assuming that a feruchemist touches a metal and thinks, "here are the traits which can be stored in this metal", what are you saying? Why do you assume they know, instinctively? When have we seen that happen? Where in the books is it explained to us, or shown, that this is how feruchemy works?

 

The reason no one's ever felt it is beside The Lord Ruler, no feruchemist has ever had an allomantic trait to store. We know, per WoB, that tinminds could, under the right circumstances, store electroreception. Yet Sazed never says aloud, "Huh, it sure it odd while I touch this tinmind, filling it, that I can feel that I should be able to store another type of sense." So either he can't "feel" all the possibilities currently unavailable to him, or he does "feel" them and doesn't mention them. Either way, your point is, he would absolutely have mentioned them if they existed. We know for a fact that things do exist, which he does not mention.

 

To harken to something Moogle said a while ago (I think it was Moogle), to clarify, Miles does not talk about how worthless his gold is. He talks about how people commonly believe it to be worthless, but that he disagrees; he thinks that being able to see his own alternate selves is very useful. And then he does it. There's no reason for him to comment on whether or not he can burn gold EVEN BETTER; a normal burn is perfectly fine for him. Also recall, he's not exactly of a researching kind of mind, and burning gold, even for him, is a jarring experience; I don't have trouble believing he's never gotten around to spending an afternoon burning it, trying to figure out if there's a way to make it even more jarring and confusing via feruchemy. Sure, he'd be interested in other compounders. But we can't assume accurate information was available to him. He didn't have a smartphone, or siri. Reports on Miles himself were apparently less than fully accurate, as we've discussed. Unless he actually knew another compounder who had figured out the trick of the other compounding, why should we assume he'd have heard about it?

 

This isn't our modern world, where nerds have the disposable income and free time to gather in a huge global community, perform experiments and share information back and forth. They might be interested, but just like "Allomancer Jak" makes outrageous claims, the very fact that they'd buy any broadsheet claiming to have interviewed an anonymous compounder is exactly why there's a better chance some broadsheet will make up an interview than that they'd publish a real one.

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All Feruchemists touch their metals and know that they can store in them, if storing allomancy in them involved absolutely no secret or trick to it then there's no reason they wouldn't immediately identify that fact.

 

...

I didn't say they knew everything they could do with it, not necessarily what they could store but just as Vin can tell that Sazeds feruchemical charge is different from her normal reserves feruchemists would be able to tell that they could store something else.

...Yes, you did.

If they knew that you could actually store two traits in iron or steel even if they didn't know what the second one was or how to store it since they weren't allomancers you'd think it would be mentioned at some point

 

 

Emphasis mine, my point is that even if they don't know what it is they'd know that every single metal has another property they can store in it, it might not immediately be recognizable as allomancy but nothing like that is ever mentioned by any feruchemist.

 

 

The reason no one's ever felt it is beside The Lord Ruler, no feruchemist has ever had an allomantic trait to store. We know, per WoB, that tinminds could, under the right circumstances, store electroreception. Yet Sazed never says aloud, "Huh, it sure it odd while I touch this tinmind, filling it, that I can feel that I should be able to store another type of sense." So either he can't "feel" all the possibilities currently unavailable to him, or he does "feel" them and doesn't mention them. Either way, your point is, he would absolutely have mentioned them if they existed. We know for a fact that things do exist, which he does not mention.

 

To harken to something Moogle said a while ago (I think it was Moogle), to clarify, Miles does not talk about how worthless his gold is. He talks about how people commonly believe it to be worthless, but that he disagrees; he thinks that being able to see his own alternate selves is very useful. And then he does it. There's no reason for him to comment on whether or not he can burn gold EVEN BETTER; a normal burn is perfectly fine for him. Also recall, he's not exactly of a researching kind of mind, and burning gold, even for him, is a jarring experience; I don't have trouble believing he's never gotten around to spending an afternoon burning it, trying to figure out if there's a way to make it even more jarring and confusing via feruchemy. Sure, he'd be interested in other compounders. But we can't assume accurate information was available to him. He didn't have a smartphone, or siri. Reports on Miles himself were apparently less than fully accurate, as we've discussed. Unless he actually knew another compounder who had figured out the trick of the other compounding, why should we assume he'd have heard about it?

 

This isn't our modern world, where nerds have the disposable income and free time to gather in a huge global community, perform experiments and share information back and forth. They might be interested, but just like "Allomancer Jak" makes outrageous claims, the very fact that they'd buy any broadsheet claiming to have interviewed an anonymous compounder is exactly why there's a better chance some broadsheet will make up an interview than that they'd publish a real one.

Vin can't tap feruchemy, she could still feel it as a separate reserve of power. 

There's been no need for Sazed to muse on the potential intricacies of all feruchemy, there's been plenty of need, incentive and clues to tip Sazed off about allomantic compounding and plenty of need to discuss it as a potential complication. At no point did he point out to Vin while she was experimenting with burning a metalmind that he had a similar experience of having a trait he could store in a metalmind but he can't store it, particularly odd given his scholarly nature.

I'm not talking about Miles talking about his gold I'm talking about everyone else, if you're Wax, planning to go up against an insanely powerful compounder and you know about reverse compounding too, even if you've never seen or heard about Miles or any other gold compounders doing anything with their abilities you'd at least consider that it might do something dangerous and discuss it as an option.

Newspapers are no more accurate now than they were a hundred years ago. Scientists and researchers on the other hand would be far more accurate and knowledgeable on the subject.

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