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Counting the mistings


Shaukan-son-Hasweth

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justWhenever i reread one of Brandon's books i eventually find myself back here to dump my questions here like an archivist puts his thoughts in his coppermind.

 

This time i noticed variations beeing mentioned regarding the amount pf specific mistings.

I always just assumed that the entire misting population would be evenly divided among the 16 metals. But it's mentioned in Era one and two that coinshots are the most common type of misting. And we have a lot of coinshots as characters too. Wax, Forch, Beldre and all those assassin's. Same goes for pewter and tin.

At first i thought Brandon just found steel the best metal to write action scenes for. But it seems to go deeper.

Is it related to the price and availability of the metal? Meaning more coinshots are beeing discovered and active?

Are the physical metals mentioned more often because of the obvious nature of their abilities and their value?

In BoM they mention Aluminum ferrings to be very rare. And i expect the Terris to test all of their children since no metal is lost in doing so.

As always i don't provide direct quotes because I'm not an electrum-Ferring or just lazy. But i wanted to get a discussion going since you guys are fantastic at bringing up points i never get to on my own.

 

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As far as I understand it, The Lord Ruler actively Created the Mistborn and Misting Bloodlines using Lerasium alloyed to each of the other Allomantic Metals (or pure for a full Mistborn), they were not a natural occurrence.  We know he was actively concealing the very existence of several metals, and obfuscating things about the rest, so I would personally assume he simply made more, initially, of the Misting types he felt were most useful individually and left the more niche or hidden ones to the full Mistborn he had.

 

Of course, all that was Pre-Catacendre, and after that Harmony changed the way Snapping works so I couldnt really say if those changes would have rebalanced the bloodlines in any way.

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@Quantus he created the bloodlines by give 9 beads of unalloyed lerasium to human kings. The powers passed down and spread, and as they weakened mistings occurred naturally.

According to the books, yes some are more common than others, in both mistings and ferrings. The reasons for this? No idea. But due to the fact that you brought up @Shaukan-son-Hasweth, I agree it is actual rarity and not just availability of the metals. I highly doubt the Terris in the village at least, have a Ferring born that they don't find. 

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14 hours ago, Calderis said:

@Quantus he created the bloodlines by give 9 beads of unalloyed lerasium to human kings. The powers passed down and spread, and as they weakened mistings occurred naturally.

Huh, so we know that alloying those beads will create relevant Mistings, but your saying that is hyporthetical and has never actually been done?  I thought those beads were a finite supply unlike Atium, and more or less accounted for.

14 hours ago, Calderis said:

According to the books, yes some are more common than others, in both mistings and ferrings. The reasons for this? No idea. But due to the fact that you brought up @Shaukan-son-Hasweth, I agree it is actual rarity and not just availability of the metals. I highly doubt the Terris in the village at least, have a Ferring born that they don't find. 

On the topic of Ferrings, that one I really dont have many guesses on since it's more "natural" than Allomancy in the sense of not being granted externally.  As a general default Id have thought they'd be an even distribution; anything more specific and I think Leras would have use those ratio's for his 1/16th snapping message.  Im curious if the ratios are different outside Harmony's protected basin. 

One relevant factor limiting ferrings could be the Intent Requirement. The rarest ferrings seem to also the most abstract traits, and the simple fact that even the Terris dont entirely understand some of them (the spiritual especially) would limit their ability to identify the early signs of a ferring and train them.   A lot easier to spot a kid toying with his own weight or strength or even memories, but Connections or hell, Nicrosil Investiture might be much harder to spot (or explain and understand), almost like having a radio-interface superpower in the middle ages. 

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It would be hard for an observer to tell if someone was able to store identity or Investiture.

But the ferrings themselves would notice if the metal felt just like any other or if they could "reach out" to it.

Sadly we don't know how instinctive it is for a Feruchemist to use their metals.

 

Is it more likely for a steel misting to have coinshot descendants than other metals? I would say no, but it could be an explanation.

 

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1 minute ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

Is it more likely for a steel misting to have coinshot descendants than other metals? I would say no, but it could be an explanation.

There is some kind of genetic factor. 

Quote

Questioner

When someone is born as a Misting, is the type of Misting they are dependent on random chance or genetics or their personality? Is that something...

Brandon Sanderson

Genetics.

source

What that is or how it manifests though... 

I mean, they're all descended from the same starting point. As things weakened and split apart, I could definitely see the more visible powers being strengthened selected out genetically more often than the others.

With Ferrings though... They're a relatively new development. Has there even been time for this? Or do the allomantic genes that trigger the single feruchemical powers key according to their allomantic genes? I find that idea hard to believe because it seems like it would make compounders much more common, but I just don't see what makes certain ferrings more common than others at this point, even if Allomancy has had time to create distinct "bloodlines." 

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If allomantic abilities were able to be naturally selected, The physical metals should be less common than the others because they are far more likely to die in combat without having (many) children.
Soothers and Rioters should be the mayority if you think about it. They would have it easier to seduce people to have children with.
Then again Breeze is mentioned to have a whole group of skaa soothers working for him to recruit the Army.  So they are quite common too.

 

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5 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

If allomantic abilities were able to be naturally selected, The physical metals should be less common than the others because they are far more likely to die in combat without having (many) children.
Soothers and Rioters should be the mayority if you think about it. They would have it easier to seduce people to have children with.
Then again Breeze is mentioned to have a whole group of skaa soothers working for him to recruit the Army.  So they are quite common too.

 

Not sure that's necessarily the case; it really only holds up if there is a strong cultural drive toward monogamy, and simultaniously against children out of wedlock. Because soldiers, especially well-paid specialist soldiers, are historically known to be, shall we way, less than discriminant with their genetic material.  Ghengas Kahn was a technically soldier and he sired like 8% of Asia. 

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