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[Bands Spoilers] Chromium Allomancy


TheOneKEA

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In the broadsheet included in BoM, there is a first-person account of a Leecher successfully draining Investiture from a device wielded by the person who may be Nazh. The description in the broadsheet explains how the Investiture is drained away in the Physical Realm and passes elsewhere, possibly into the Spiritual Realm, from the perspective of the Leecher.

 

Prior to this, all we knew about Leeching was that it could destroy the metal reserves inside of an Allomancer. We have multiple WoBs stating that the metals themselves don't have any Investiture and that they are only a key that allows an Allomancer to use Investiture to get an effect. How do we reconcile the WoBs with the story in the broadsheet?

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In the broadsheet included in BoM, there is a first-person account of a Leecher successfully draining Investiture from a device wielded by the person who may be Nazh. The description in the broadsheet explains how the Investiture is drained away in the Physical Realm and passes elsewhere, possibly into the Spiritual Realm, from the perspective of the Leecher.

 

Prior to this, all we knew about Leeching was that it could destroy the metal reserves inside of an Allomancer. We have multiple WoBs stating that the metals themselves don't have any Investiture and that they are only a key that allows an Allomancer to use Investiture to get an effect. How do we reconcile the WoBs with the story in the broadsheet?

My guess would be that it works both ways. As you said, from the Leecher's perspective all he did was destroy the metal reserves inside of the Allomancer but if we look at the bigger picture what he may have actually done is pushed the Investiture that could be tapped by burning metals away or out of the Allomancer, thereby rendering his or her metal reserves inert and effectively "destroying" them.

 

Or at least, that's how I'm reconciling the WoB with the broadsheet in question  :D

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I want to point out that the idea that aluminum and chromium leaves the metal in the body, unburnable, draws attention to some (in my opinion) unsatisfactorily answered questions about how allomancers deal with metal toxicity. (Mistborn can sidestep that by burning pewter, I'll grant, but most allomancers aren't mistborn.)

So we know the power doesn't come from the metal, but instead the allomancer's spiritweb holds a lock for which that metal's physical composition is the key. (I don't think it can be straight chemical composition, since aren't alloys mixtures, not compounds? And I'm pretty sure an allomancer can't swallow an alloys components separately in order to get the allomantic effect. Feel free to correct me if my high school level understanding of chemistry is incorrect.)

And we know that Chromium/Aluminum (I'm assuming they do essentially the same thing- I'd be fascinated to discover they actually work on different principles, and do let me know if you think there's reason to believe that's the case.) "cleanse" the subject of investiture.

I'm pretty sure that everything we've seen and been told suggests that after your metals have been sapped, you'll still be able to down another vial of metals and burn those normally immediately after if you have it available.

And now a first hand account by a leecher tells us that rather than "burning the metal to no effect" like I assumed, the metal stays, but the investiture goes. Assuming this is accurate, what is the leecher actually doing to the metals? Is it somehow twisting their physical composition so they're no longer burnable? Is it actually imbuing them with some sort of counter-investiture to make them effectively inert for the allomancer? Neither of those answers seem to be consistent with the idea that Aluminum cleanses a subject of investiture.

So I think the OP is posing a really good question.

Things from the Secret History novella and brief scenes in The Bands of Mourning suggest that souls and metal look to be invested in similar ways when seen from the perspective of Scadrism shards or super-potent Steel/Iron sight. So is metal on Scadrial special somehow or isn't it? If it is, then this whole thing with Chromium leaving metal but removing investiture makes sense.

But I thought that would contradict what we've been told in WoB, that an allomancer from Scadrial could burn metal on anger world without difficulty. This is what I feel throws a wrench into things.

Or am I actually misremembering, and that was one of the things he said would require the allomancer to "jump through hoops" or do something special to make it work? In that case, all of this fits together, but I really, really want to know what metalborn have to do to burn metal from other worlds.

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Theory: Building directly form your post, when the metal was...passed through the human system, if it was looked at in the cognitive realm, it would not appear invested. Maybe Scadrian metal, by virtue of being connected to the planet, has something extra, sDNA or something, and chromium just removes that, making it normal metal.

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I want to point out that the idea that aluminum and chromium leaves the metal in the body, unburnable, draws attention to some (in my opinion) unsatisfactorily answered questions about how allomancers deal with metal toxicity. (Mistborn can sidestep that by burning pewter, I'll grant, but most allomancers aren't mistborn.)

So we know the power doesn't come from the metal, but instead the allomancer's spiritweb holds a lock for which that metal's physical composition is the key. (I don't think it can be straight chemical composition, since aren't alloys mixtures, not compounds? And I'm pretty sure an allomancer can't swallow an alloys components separately in order to get the allomantic effect. Feel free to correct me if my high school level understanding of chemistry is incorrect.)

And we know that Chromium/Aluminum (I'm assuming they do essentially the same thing- I'd be fascinated to discover they actually work on different principles, and do let me know if you think there's reason to believe that's the case.) "cleanse" the subject of investiture.

I'm pretty sure that everything we've seen and been told suggests that after your metals have been sapped, you'll still be able to down another vial of metals and burn those normally immediately after if you have it available.

And now a first hand account by a leecher tells us that rather than "burning the metal to no effect" like I assumed, the metal stays, but the investiture goes. Assuming this is accurate, what is the leecher actually doing to the metals? Is it somehow twisting their physical composition so they're no longer burnable? Is it actually imbuing them with some sort of counter-investiture to make them effectively inert for the allomancer? Neither of those answers seem to be consistent with the idea that Aluminum cleanses a subject of investiture.

So I think the OP is posing a really good question.

Things from the Secret History novella and brief scenes in The Bands of Mourning suggest that souls and metal look to be invested in similar ways when seen from the perspective of Scadrism shards or super-potent Steel/Iron sight. So is metal on Scadrial special somehow or isn't it? If it is, then this whole thing with Chromium leaving metal but removing investiture makes sense.

But I thought that would contradict what we've been told in WoB, that an allomancer from Scadrial could burn metal on anger world without difficulty. This is what I feel throws a wrench into things.

Or am I actually misremembering, and that was one of the things he said would require the allomancer to "jump through hoops" or do something special to make it work? In that case, all of this fits together, but I really, really want to know what metalborn have to do to burn metal from other worlds.

The WoB that you're talking about says that Allomancers can still use their Allomancy on other planets, but they have hoops they have to go through to make it work (like on Roshar, I'd imagine they'd have to have a gem infused with Stormlight while they are burning metals to power the investiture since the mists aren't around). What those hoops are probably dependent on the world they are on, but we have no clue what those are yet

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Actually, we've never seen leeching work onpage before. The only time we saw anything close was Inquisitors feeding aluminum to Vin, who felt her reserves disappear. It was a big shock to her and even if it wasn't, I doubt she can actually tell if the metals inside her stomach actually disappeared or just became powerless. In this book, we see Wax's reserves drained by the cube and he doesn't comment about the actual metal bits inside his stomach either, just that there's nothing inside to burn. None of these require the metals to actually burn away like with duralumin.

 

If the account in broadsheet story is true (probably, but it's still a pulpy newspaper story), then it points to leeched metals becoming uninvestitured instead of burned away. So there's the difference between aluminum and duralumin.

 

Also a new question: do leeched metals become permanently depowered? Would the same bits of metal continue to be unusable for another Allomancer if they were taken out of the leeched one? Probably nobody thought to test that, as it'd be disgusting from either end, and there's no metal cycle in Scadrial since those metals would've been gone anyway when burned, but it's an interesting question about the nature of Allomantic Investiture.

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If a leecher does actually remove the investure in the metals, not the metals themselves, then that brings up the question of what would happen if a leecher touched an Elantrian... Or someone with breaths. Would a leecher turn anybody from Nalthis into a drab?

By the way Nazh(?) is able to reactivate his Ghost-gun, I would assume there is a way to make leeched objects functional again, including metal. Perhaps when it comes "out the other end," it would be burnable again, though I can only see worth in trying to collect it if the metal in question is something like Atium, gold or bendalloy. Otherwise it's easier to just swallow some more.

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If a leecher does actually remove the investure in the metals, not the metals themselves, then that brings up the question of what would happen if a leecher touched an Elantrian... Or someone with breaths. Would a leecher turn anybody from Nalthis into a drab?

By the way Nazh(?) is able to reactivate his Ghost-gun, I would assume there is a way to make leeched objects functional again, including metal. Perhaps when it comes "out the other end," it would be burnable again, though I can only see worth in trying to collect it if the metal in question is something like Atium, gold or bendalloy. Otherwise it's easier to just swallow some more.

I think it was the etchings on the gun that reinvested it. The way miss karate lady described it, she just put the investiture back where it can from. Then Nazh just activated the markings, injecting more investiture. At least, that was my understanding of the situation.

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I think it makes far more sense from an Investiture Cycle point of view if Leechers make you burn the metal without being able to use it as a Focus to get at Preservation's power, as both the Investiture and the metals are apparently "recycled" somehow. (We have a WoB that Scadrial isn't going to deplete its metals due to Allomancy)

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My related question is about the Wax/Suit showdown. Suit's chromium removed Wax's steel, but when Wax then tapped his metalminds for weight, the leeching didn't do anything. I consider the broadsheet to be pretty definitive evidence (if we needed any) that chromium works on other forms of investiture. So why wouldn't Suit's chromium affect the investiture Wax was drawing from his metalminds?

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My related question is about the Wax/Suit showdown. Suit's chromium removed Wax's steel, but when Wax then tapped his metalminds for weight, the leeching didn't do anything. I consider the broadsheet to be pretty definitive evidence (if we needed any) that chromium works on other forms of investiture. So why wouldn't Suit's chromium affect the investiture Wax was drawing from his metalminds?

 

It's a single burst.  Wax wasn't tapping or storing his metalminds at the time - although I would have been interested to see what would happen to a metalmind's reserve if they're being charged when a Chromium blast goes off.  I forget whether Wax was doing the "lines of steel" thing, because if he was, the chromium might have used that as a foothold.  

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Hm. Regarding the single burst: perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought it had been established that the enhancing metals didn't disappear with their targets. I am fairly sure that duralumin and nicrosil stick around for another burn, so I would have thought chromium does as well.

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Duralumin burns out almost instantly, I think, but there does appear to be a delay like with the metals the duralumin is flaring. Or I could be remembering it wrong.

Of course it could mean that it is flaring itself by its own effects when burned. I don't think anyone has burned it without burning something else first so we've never seen it burning by itself.

Edited by natc
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Duralumin burns out almost instantly, I think, but there does appear to be a delay like with the metals the duralumin is flaring. Or I could be remembering it wrong.

Of course it could mean that it is flaring itself by its own effects when burned. I don't think anyone has burned it without burning something else first so we've never seen it burning by itself.

Technically we have: Vin burned Duralumin for ages trying to figure out what it did before she finally burned it with something else.

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