Mistborn Jawbreaker

[Soother]

Are Allomantic metal stores a surface area or volume phenomena? For example, is the available metal store immediately available the same between a sphere of metal and an equal volume of flakes? If its a function of revealed surface area can you create a Mistborn Jawbreaker with alternating layers of the Allomantic metals, that you could incrementally burn through? You could alternate layers of gold and sectors of the other metals to create a safe multi day store of metals since gold is biologically inactive. In the morning, you just take a trip down memory lane and then you're good to go. If the above theory is true, you could also store flaked metal in a gold pill form and you avoid carrying syllable metal on your person further.

[Oversleep]

Yes, you'd have to burn your way through the outer layer first:

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Lurcher

Can you burn a metal wrapped in another metal, if both are Allomantic? Like, the inner metal, could you just burn that before?

Brandon Sanderson

No, you're gonna have to work your way through the outer one.

Lurcher

And what if it was a non-Allomantic metal? The same?

Brandon Sanderson

It's gonna depend on how thick it is, and stuff. But I would say, if you wrap it in a non-Allomantic metal, that's not good for getting to the metal. It's viable, but it just depends on how thick it is, and things like that. Like, sometimes things have been plated to keep the access to the metal off, but usually you would want to do that in aluminum, to make sure.

source

But... I don't see any reason to. Burning your way through so much gold would be unpleasant and the advantage is pretty much non-existent. Not to mention the fact that, well, gold is expensive...

Brandon actually addresed such ideas of forgoing metal vials:

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Brandon Sanderson

Metal vials. People may wonder why Allomancers use them. Why ingest only small bits of metal, which could run out on you? There are a couple of reasons for this.

First off, you don't want to eat too much metal because, simply put, it's poisonous. Kelsier talks a little bit about this in book one, and it's given token nods from characters throughout the series. I don't do a whole lot with it–dying from metal poisoning isn't the type of extended disease you tend to deal with in a novel that only covers a few months time, like this one.

The second reason for metal vials is more simple. Allomancers with the right powers can Push or Pull on sources of metal–the larger the metal source, the harder the Allomancer can Push on it. So, little flakes of metal make a terrible Anchor, and so if you're caught wearing your vials, you aren't giving much of an advantage to your enemies.

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Basically, it boils down to being way too impractical for such a little advantage. (and I doubt having a ball of metal in your stomach for a long time is a good idea)

Edited May 30, 2018 by Oversleep

[anna]

On 5/27/2018 at 8:11 PM, Oversleep said:

Basically, it boils down to being way to impractical for such a little advantage. (and I doubt having a ball of metal in your stomach for a long time is a good idea)

You'd probably pass the ball of metal in a day or two, so it might not be in your stomach for too long.  Still, you probably wouldn't want to swallow anything left over again to try to use it all up ...

[Soother]

There might be an advantage if you plate atium though. I don't have the quote, but I remember Kelsier saying Atium reacts with your digestive acid. If you have the opportunity to retrieve it if you dont burn it, there's a decent cost savings.

[Barbarian AL]

Imagine if you can make a controlled release tablet of metal. The pharmaceutical industry in scadrial would blossom! 

[+robardin]

Another aspect of an Allomantic gobstopper nugget of metals is that you'd only be burning the outside layer, reaching the next inner layer after the outermost one was burned away. So a Mistborn would have to be very sure of the timing and sequence of when they'd want their "metal" (no longer plural), which could never really be advantageous to do.

And a Mistborn experiences different allomantic metals as them creating different reserves within them: you can't trick them into burning a metal unexpectedly by nesting it inside something else, which would be the only reason I could see to want to do something like this (e.g., putting an aluminum core under a thin layer of atium).