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Harmonium Allomancy


UpLifted

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12 minutes ago, UpLifted said:

Hey this may be a dumb question but if Harmonium or Ettmetal explodes when wet, then how the heck can an allomancer ever swallow it? Wouldn't it explode on contact with saliva?

Yes. Yes it would. You could make it burnable if you just pierced yourself with it, though that's still fairly dangerous. 

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25 minutes ago, Markus said:

I've always thought that you could encase the ettmetal in something else, swallow it, and burn it.  Then it doesn't get wet..  Maybe this doesn't work though and the outer layer would stop you from being able to burn it.

You could do that, but I don't think you could actually burn it until it's touching you physically. So you would have to burn the outer layer off, at which point the ettmetal would be exposed to the stomach fluids and probably explode.

Edited by Spoolofwhool
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man... evil and devious way to kill an allomancer though. Like (spoilers Well of Ascension just in case):

Spoiler

Zane did with the large "atium" bead he gave to Vin, which was just a thin layer of atium around lead.

Put a thin layer of a normal allomatic metal around ettmetal/Harmonium and pass it/them out to whoever you wanted to eliminate. Let them ingest it, start to burn and *BOOM*

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2 minutes ago, Green Hoodie Mistborn said:

man... evil and devious way to kill an allomancer though. Like (spoilers Well of Ascension just in case):

  Reveal hidden contents

Zane did with the large "atium" bead he gave to Vin, which was just a thin layer of atium around lead.

Put a thin layer of a normal allomatic metal around ettmetal/Harmonium and pass it/them out to whoever you wanted to eliminate. Let them ingest it, start to burn and *BOOM*

Wouldn't work normally since most metals are ingested as flakes. As far as I can remember, only atium was ever swallowed as a bead.

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4 minutes ago, The Technovore said:

...Wait so we got confirmation that Ettmetal is Harmonium... or did we always know that... #OutofTheLoop

Yes we got a confirmation some time ago. I think Pagerunner was the one who trick Brandon into say it

Edited by Yata
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16 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Wouldn't work normally since most metals are ingested as flakes. As far as I can remember, only atium was ever swallowed as a bead.

Wayne talks about getting bendalloy in nugget form on occasion and one is mentioned in context of how much bendalloy equals how much compressed time, but we also see him take a vial of flakes that was all Wax could get on short notice. I don't think we ever see Wayne swallow a whole nugget but I imagine he might if it was an emergency and he didn't have time to shave it down.

Other that that possible exception, yeah, I think we've only seen metal downed in flake form.

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7 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Wayne talks about getting bendalloy in nugget form on occasion and one is mentioned in context of how much bendalloy equals how much compressed time, but we also see him take a vial of flakes that was all Wax could get on short notice. I don't think we ever see Wayne swallow a whole nugget but I imagine he might if it was an emergency and he didn't have time to shave it down.

Other that that possible exception, yeah, I think we've only seen metal downed in flake form.

Well yeah, he buys the bendalloy in nuggets then shaves them down for his vials. I doubt he would swallow an entire nugget as chances are that he wouldn't burn that much before his body started metabolizing it and becomes harming him.

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Bendalloy seems to burn pretty quickly so it's possible you could burn a small lump of the stuff before the metal poisoning started to be an issue, especially if you were desperate. Or Wayne and could tap stored health. And after I wrote that I remembered another example we have. Secret History:

Kelsier tries swallowing a bolt he swiped from Khriss and Nazh's camp chair in order to see if he can burn it. True, he doesn't need to worry about metal poisoning either so that may not mean much, but he did at least consider the possibility of burning metal not in flake form

But yeah, as interesting an idea as it is, turning Harmonium into a sneaky anti-Allomancer bomb probably won't work under normal circumstances since we don't have any actual confirmation of someone ingesting metal in a solid lump other than atium. Which I suppose you could use like Zane did with the lead pellet. If you had anyone on Scadrial who could burn atium right now. And had some atium. Hmmm, file this one away for Era 3 and its supposed Mistborn serial killer, maybe?

"Hey, Mistborn McMurderface, look at this funny metal bead I found. Oh, you want it? Here ya go. *BOOM* He ate something that disagreed with him. Well, job done."

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5 hours ago, The Technovore said:

...Wait so we got confirmation that Ettmetal is Harmonium... or did we always know that... #OutofTheLoop

As others have said, Brandon confirmed the connection between the two, but I suspect there's a hint in the name ettmetal. Ett is a Swedish word for one, and that translation leads to the possibility that one = harmony. Might be a coincidence, might be intentional. 

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2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Or maybe if a Mistborn ingested Ettmetal, it would immediately burn Allomantically rather than chemically. Elend burns lerasium when unconscious, and pewter can be burned unconsciously, so it wouldn't be totally crazy.

I think the metal has to be in your stomach to be burnt and there's a lot of fluid between your mouth and there for it to react with.

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4 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I think the metal has to be in your stomach to be burnt and there's a lot of fluid between your mouth and there for it to react with.

There are several WOBs that say metal doesn't have to be in the stomach - an the most recent one strongly implies that there doesn't have to be some kind of special trick to burn not-in-the-stomach metal (which IIRC used to be speculated to explain why Vin didn't burn her earring and Inquisitors don't burn their spikes - which I now think is probably something specific to Hemalurgy or Invested metal piercings rather than piercings in general.)

Quote

 

Interview: Nov 30th, 2016

Borderlands SF-AU Tour (Paraphrased)

Necarion

Would a Mistborn have to worry about accidentally burning her copper IUD?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes she would, absolutely (Laughs)

Footnote

[Necarion's note: this confirms that metal does not have to be in the stomach to be burned]

 

Tags

 

@Andy92: yeah, the ettmetal / one connection was brought up before it was confirmed to be the same thing as harmonium, but it wasn't clear whether that supported the harmonium theory or the lithium theory (since it's the first metal on the periodic table).
Edited by cometaryorbit
ettmetal / one connection
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8 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

There are several WOBs that say metal doesn't have to be in the stomach - an the most recent one strongly implies that there doesn't have to be some kind of special trick to burn not-in-the-stomach metal (which IIRC used to be speculated to explain why Vin didn't burn her earring and Inquisitors don't burn their spikes - which I now think is probably something specific to Hemalurgy or Invested metal piercings rather than piercings in general.)

Yes, I know you can burn piercings and metals in other parts of the body. I'm just referring exclusively to the case of swallowing the metal before burning it, since that's what's being discussed, in which case it appears it does need to be in the stomach. I don't think the mouth is cognitively considered inside of you enough for you to burn metals in their and the throat feels on the edge as well.

You did spark the idea though that maybe a plated ettmetal piercing could be burned without danger. Still unknown if you need to touch the metal directly to burn it.

Edited by Spoolofwhool
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On 2/21/2017 at 2:12 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

I don't think the mouth is cognitively considered inside of you enough for you to burn metals in their and the throat feels on the edge as well.

I'm not sure about that: after all, Zane did hide that coin from Vin by putting it in his mouth. This would seem to indicate that inside the mouth is considered to be inside you, thus I don't see why you wouldn't also be able to burn a metal in your mouth.

I suspect that burning a metal inside a capsule could work, though in the case of harmonium doing so would open yourself up to the risk of the capsule failing somehow.

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