Can the Metallic Arts skip a generation?

[Quiver]

So, we know that -short of hemalurgy or weirdness like the Well of Ascension - that the metallic arts show up in families. I mean, it's an important aspect of the first novel, regarding Vin's father and Elend/Straff's relationship.

It's the latter I'm most curious about, though. We know that Elend wasn't a Misting, despite Straff's… uh... best efforts.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether that means that Elend's children couldn't be Mistings (or even Mistborn). Since Elend himself wasn't a Misting, does that preclude anyone he's the father of from becoming a Misting?

(Ignoring the mother in this, partly because I'm assuming under this scenario that she doesn't have abilities).

So, basically, can Allomancy skip a generation, or was Elend "the end of the line", so to speak.

[Karger]

Allrianne is not an allomancer even though her father is not.  Feruchemy absolutely can(Reshek once transformed all living feruchemists ignoring the latent potential).  Steris has the potential to have misting children even though she is not one(hence the kidnapping).

Edited July 16, 2020 by Karger

[+Invocation]

I think the circumstances could arise in which a recessive sDNA Allomantic trait could reappear down the line, but it depends on a lot of things, including the other half of the genetic pair.

[Quiver]

13 minutes ago, Karger said:

Allrianne is not an allomancer even though her father is not.  Feruchemy absolutely can(Reshek once transformed all living feruchemists ignoring the latent potential).  Steris has the potential to have misting children even though she is not one(hence the kidnapping).

 

11 minutes ago, Invocation said:

I think the circumstances could arise in which a recessive sDNA Allomantic trait could reappear down the line, but it depends on a lot of things, including the other half of the genetic pair.

That's the part I'm wondering about, and why I was discounting Allrianne in this scenario. As far as I'm aware, we don't know what her mother was - in terms of what abilities, if any, she may or may not have had - so I wasn't sure if we can use a non-powered father as evidence on it's own.

Steris is actually a better example, but I also imagine that the... experiments were going to be conducted with proven Mistings. Then again, if they planned on mixing and matching bloodlines descended from Spook, maybe they were willing to wager that two non-Mistings were capable of having a powered child due to their legacy.

(...I feel like I maybe need to apologise for the really dark implications and aspects of this question.)

[+Invocation]

30 minutes ago, Quiver said:

Steris is actually a better example, but I also imagine that the... experiments were going to be conducted with proven Mistings. Then again, if they planned on mixing and matching bloodlines descended from Spook, maybe they were willing to wager that two non-Mistings were capable of having a powered child due to their legacy.

Throw enough recessive genes into the pool, eventually something will come about. 

[Quiver]

3 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Throw enough recessive genes into the pool, eventually something will come about. 

That is the point I was getting at, and I blame my lack of scientific interest on not being able to phras eit more succinctly.

Can alomancy work like a recessive gene and throw up again at later opportunities, or does the weirdness of it being magical supersede that in some way?

[Karger]

1 minute ago, Quiver said:

Can alomancy work like a recessive gene and throw up again at later opportunities

Yes.  Otherwise genealogists would be able to track all mistborn.

[+Invocation]

Just now, Quiver said:

Can alomancy work like a recessive gene and throw up again at later opportunities, or does the weirdness of it being magical supersede that in some way?

Which brings me back to the point of it all depending on a lot of other things going right. It can, but there's so many things in motion there that it would be hard to predict.

[+robardin]

1 hour ago, Karger said:

Yes.  Otherwise genealogists would be able to track all mistborn.

This.

sDNA doesn't quite combine/work like "regular" DNA does for Investiture related stuff, in terms of being dominant/recessive and so on; it seems to be more additive? Because what is being passed down in the sDNA is some degree of... Not quite "Connection" with Preservation, like how Vin could use the mists, but more like "concentration" of Preservation. All native born Scadrians have "pieces of" both Preservation and Ruin in them, being what gave humanity sentience there in the first place, the spark of life; and the more of Preservation one has within oneself, the greater the chance of being an Allomancer.

So a "pure noble line" Misting like Straff who fathered lots and lots of children saw some minority proportion of them being Mistings and (only) one being a Mistborn. But pretty much nobody can pull that off after the Catacendre, not even Spook, who apparently fathered quite a few offspring, was himself the last Mistborn known to Scadrian history (as of BoM).

3 hours ago, Quiver said:

We know that Elend wasn't a Misting, despite Straff's… uh... best efforts.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether that means that Elend's children couldn't be Mistings (or even Mistborn). Since Elend himself wasn't a Misting, does that preclude anyone he's the father of from becoming a Misting?

Essentially, all Allomancers in the Final Empire were descended from just nine (or was it ten?) original lerasium Mistborn who founded the great noble houses almost a thousand years ago, recipients of nuggets from Rashek as reward for allying with him early on. So I'd say that Elend's children - especially by Vin, who was a Natural Born Mistborn, not to mention one who'd embraced the mists of Preservation before marrying him - would have been extremely likely to have been Allomancers, most likely Mistborn, given that he was also a lerasium Mistborn.

[Karger]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

Essentially, all Allomancers in the Final Empire were descended from just nine (or was it ten?)

10

[Turos]

I wonder if hemalurgically granted allomancy/feruchemy can be passed on to descendants.

[+Invocation]

56 minutes ago, Turos said:

I wonder if hemalurgically granted allomancy/feruchemy can be passed on to descendants.

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

Would Inqusitors' kids have Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not usually. It happens sometimes, but not usually. He then mentioned a little about sDNA, but that it's not inherited as much as it is when it's natural.

Orem signing 2014 (Dec. 6, 2014)

 

[+Harrycrapper]

It's also possible that some people who weren't allomancers were actually just mistings for a metal that Rashek/Obligators/Inquisitors kept out of public knowledge. For all we know, before Elend burned Lerasium he might have been a Slider or an aluminum gnat. Alllrianne's family might very well have had more allomancers than they knew of, just not of a known allomantically viable metal. 

[Turos]

On that point, what if every part or full noble is at least a misting, but there are so many possible types of alloys out there undiscovered, they will never know it? Wasn’t there mention of a bunch of atium alloys besides malatium?

[Turos]

Hmm, I think I’m wrong about that though.

Spoiler

Straff Venture seems to think it a given that the higher your noble line, the more likely your children will have allomantic power.

There are two elements that need clarification, however.

One: What exactly does a “higher noble line” mean? One could imagine it to indicate “purity” of nobility. That would infer mixing lineage with non-nobles, and, as we see in the books, the Lord Ruler established enforcement against this. How could any noble house be more or less of noble blood than any other?

The alternative would seem to be that the original mistborn granted power by the Lord Ruler were not the only nobles at the time, and that the entire race was not spawned only from these select few, but amongst a larger group, from whom eventually their descendants eventually mixed between all or most families.

Two: If Straff was right, that “higher noble blood” produced more allomancers, as they then understood them to be amongst the basic eight metals, then someone of lower blood would have produced less of these kinds of allomancers.

This is a problem. Why would one group of mistings be less likely to be born than others, like obscure atium-alloy mistings. Unless there is some other facet to determining what one metal you can use allomantically, it should be just as likely to end up with one particular metal as any other. If all nobles are at least mistings of either a base metal or metals then unrevealed there should be no change in what kinds of mistings are possible based upon your relation to the original mistborn. Hence, some nobles must just not have any allomancy. Most, likely.

 

[Hoidolasium]

On 7/17/2020 at 2:43 PM, Invocation said:

Questioner (paraphrased)

Would Inqusitors' kids have Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not usually. It happens sometimes, but not usually. He then mentioned a little about sDNA, but that it's not inherited as much as it is when it's natural.

In-inquisitors had kids? 

[PleatherDuster]

39 minutes ago, Hoidolasium said:

In-inquisitors had kids? 

Seriously!  That's the most horrible thing i can imagine. 

[+Invocation]

3 hours ago, Hoidolasium said:

In-inquisitors had kids? 

TLR had children, apparently, so he probably would have thought it somewhat hypocritical to forbid his servants from doing so. 

Wonder if the Inquisitor-kids had a higher iron count native in their blood  

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

1 hour ago, Invocation said:

Wonder if the Inquisitor-kids had a higher iron count native in their blood  

Ha! probably.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Hoid the Drifter

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

1 hour ago, Invocation said:

Wonder if the Inquisitor-kids had a higher iron count native in their blood  

Ha! probably.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Hoid the Drifter

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

On 7/16/2020 at 2:27 PM, Quiver said:

Steris is actually a better example, but I also imagine that the... experiments were going to be conducted with proven Mistings. Then again, if they planned on mixing and matching bloodlines descended from Spook, maybe they were willing to wager that two non-Mistings were capable of having a powered child due to their legacy.

But Sazed tampered with bloodlines, making mistborns impossible, as well as full Feruchemists. Maybe this also affected Misting bloodlines.

[Frustration]

17 hours ago, Hoid the Drifter said:

But Sazed tampered with bloodlines, making mistborns impossible, as well as full Feruchemists. Maybe this also affected Misting bloodlines.

Not exactly. Most Mistorn got killed off, and Spook was only normal, not Lerasium Mistborn. Second feruchemy and allomancy break each other, so when feruchemists and allomancers started having children they broke each other making Ferings and dropping the possibilities for mistborn, and feruchemists even further.