allomantic metals around the cosmere

[Trutharchivist]

Yes, technically there are already two other threads about this. I still started this one, since it's a little different topic: instead of speaking mainly about fabrials, here I wish to discuss the connection between every application of any metal in the four magic systems: allomancy, feruchemy, hemalurgy and fabrials. I might've lost myself in the middle of that sentence, I hope you understood me.

anyway, what we've seen so far:

Iron - A: pulls on metals. Fe: stores weight. H: steals strength. Fa: changes polarity (whatever that means)/attracts attribute.

Steel - A: pushes on metals. Fe: stores physical speed. H: steals physical allomantic powers. Fa: same as Iron.

Tin - A: enhances senses. Fe: stores senses. H: steals senses. Fa: diminishes attribute.

Pewter - A: enhances strength and balance. Fe: storing physical strength. H: steals physical feruchemical powers. Fa: expresses attribute.

Zinc - A: riots emotions. Fe: stores mental speed. H: steals emotional fortitude. Fa: manifests the spren more strongly.

Brass - A: soothes emotions. Fe: stores warmth. H: steals cognitive feruchemy. Fa: makes the spren withdraw.

Copper - A: hides allomantic pulses. Fe: stores memory. H: steals mental fortitude, memory, and intelligence. Fa: unknown.

Bronze - A: allows to hear allomantic pulses. Fe: stores wakefulness. H: steals mental allomancy. Fa: warns of things getting close.

Aluminum - A: wipes internal allomantic reserves. Fe: stores Identity. H: removes all powers. Fa: cuts connection, no other known function.

Duralumin - A: quickly burns any burning metals in powerful burst. Fe: stores connection. H: steals connection and identity. Fa: unknown.

Chromium - A: wipes out target's allomantic reserves. Fe: stores furtune. H: might steal destiny? Fa: unknown.

Nicrosil - A: enhances allomantic burn of target. Fe: stores investiture. H: steals investiture. Fa: unknown.

Gold - A: shows past self (or alternative present self). Fe: stores health. H: steals hybrid feruchemy. Fa: unknown, probably known in-world.

Electrum - A: shows possible future of the burner. Fe: stores determination. H: steals enhancement allomancy. Fa: unknown.

Cadmium - A: slows down time. Fe: stores breath. H: steals temporal allomancy. Fa: unknown.

Bendalloy - A: speeds up time. Fe: stores energy. H: steals spiritual feruchemy. Fa: unknown.

Now, there are patterns inside each magic system, if you look for it, though so far only allomancy and hemalurgy have sensible division for each metal. 

For now, it might be better to stick to discussing only the lower metals - the first eight, since we understand those the most, and know mostly all of their applications in the magic systems (lets use the acronym MS for that) in discussion.

Tin is irregular because it's the only one that does exactly the same in the first three MSs. I can't actually see any thorough connection between one metal's applications in all the MSs, and it's a little late at night in my country, and since I'm also lazy I'll leave you to think over it.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Trutharchivist

[Halyo_Alex]

Tin being "Internal Pulling" and yet enhancing your senses always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Creating a Diminisher fabrial seems much more in line with that categorization.

[+Oltux72]

Well we can list the known fabrials and find metals for them:

• diminisher - tin
• augmenters - pewter
• alerters - bronze

We can expect attractors and repellers to use steel and iron. It fits too neatly.

The problem is determining what zinc and brass actually do. If you want your fabrial to act more strongly why not more of the correct material? Is that a binary thing?

[Trutharchivist]

6 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Tin being "Internal Pulling" and yet enhancing your senses always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Creating a Diminisher fabrial seems much more in line with that categorization.

Actually I think it's pulling because it pulls impressions from the world to the allomancer. Still, I can see what you mean.

Maybe I should explain in more details why I created this thread. In all the other threads, everybody thinks only to see if fabrial metals act like allomantic metals - which they seem to do. Thing is, there are three other metalic arts, and the fact that they have almost no resemblance to each other for some unapparent reason doesn't seem weird to anyone. The question is not only on fabrials, but on every magic system that uses allomantic metals. Maybe I should try starting a similar thread on the Mistborn sub-forum.

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The problem is determining what zinc and brass actually do. If you want your fabrial to act more strongly why not more of the correct material? Is that a binary thing?

Zinc and brass affect the spren, not the fabrial as a whole. you can't use more material - this is how you use more of the spren, I think. 

It's sometimes hard for me to grasp the difference between pewter and zinc in fabrials, I think zinc changes the power of the fabrial and pewter makes the spren express it's attribute. For example, heatrials would have zinc to produce more heat, and pewter to start producing heat on the first place, which would make pewter and tin binary. Maybe we justt think in opposite directions.

[+Oltux72]

31 minutes ago, Trutharchivist said:

It's sometimes hard for me to grasp the difference between pewter and zinc in fabrials, I think zinc changes the power of the fabrial and pewter makes the spren express it's attribute. For example, heatrials would have zinc to produce more heat, and pewter to start producing heat on the first place, which would make pewter and tin binary. Maybe we justt think in opposite directions.

So what happens if you use only pewter? Nothing? A basic level of activity?

[spaidapig]

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

So what happens if you use only pewter? Nothing? A basic level of activity?

That's what I suppose. With zinc and brass you can regulate the emitted heat. Without them, it's just a standard level of heat, which may depend on the size of the gem I think.

[+Oltux72]

28 minutes ago, spaidapig said:

That's what I suppose. With zinc and brass you can regulate the emitted heat. Without them, it's just a standard level of heat, which may depend on the size of the gem I think.

But what happens if you add pewter wires? Nothing? That woud be the consequence.

[spaidapig]

3 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

But what happens if you add pewter wires? Nothing? That woud be the consequence.

Through the addition of pewter wires the flamesprens produces heat by consuming Stormlight.
Without it, it would propably do nothing I suppose.

Maybe it produces some warmth that will not be enough for heating a room or so.
Pewter makes the spren express its attribut violently. The attribut of a flame/flamespren is heat, so that's what it will produce with pewter.

[Trutharchivist]

Wrote this hours ago, sorry. Seems like spaidapig's explanation works, though I'm not that much sure about it.

Anyway, as I wrote above, I don't want this thread to become another thread discussing only fabrial-to-allomancy relations. Should I just start a new thread in the Mistborn portion of the forum and leave this one to only discussing how fabrials get into it all?

Edited September 10, 2020 by Trutharchivist
the message was a bit irrelevant.

[+Bzhydack]

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

But what happens if you add pewter wires? Nothing? That woud be the consequence.

Probably, like you need exact shape of Aons, similarly you need exact shape of wires. So addet new can do nothing at best, or even cause malfunction of fabrial.

[spaidapig]

2 hours ago, Trutharchivist said:

Wrote this hours ago, sorry. Seems like spaidapig's explanation works, though I'm not that much sure about it.

Anyway, as I wrote above, I don't want this thread to become another thread discussing only fabrial-to-allomancy relations. Should I just start a new thread in the Mistborn portion of the forum and leave this one to only discussing how fabrials get into it all?

What I'm trying to keep in mind is not the actual allomantic effect of the metal, but the innate specification of it. We have the allomantic table, with internal/external, pulling/pushing and so on. And I think this can be applied to all the magic systems that interact with and use metals.

 

Metals have innate properties all over the cosmer. The best example is Aluminum. No matter where we are in the Cosmer, Aluminum can be used to block Investiture from influencing itslef and things contained by it.

On Sel for example:

Spoiler

Ralkalest, the unforgable metal, is nothing more than Aluminum

Aluminum cannot be soulcast. And neither can an Allomancer push or pull on it.

Nalthis:

Spoiler

Afaik The sheath of Nightblood is made out Aluminum to block its Investiture.

Aluminum can most certainly not be awaikend at all. 

 

The Fabrial mechanics are only another field, where these innate properties are expressed. Of course not in the exact same way as in the three Metall Art ("capital" because of their direct connection to Scadrial). But this is a theme. And will most likely be a theme in other series where metal interacts with Investiture.

The other Metallic Art can all be fit into the theme of the internal/external classification of the used metal. It is simply expressed in a different way each time. We have the Mental, Physical, Temporal and Enhancement classification of allomantic metal. But in Hemalurgy and Feruchemy this fits as well. On the Feruchemical table they are callled differently, because the classification is an in world document which can be flawed or incomplete. 

I'm fairly sure that is a higher concept behind each of the metals, and the groupings are spanning the several systems.

[Trutharchivist]

17 minutes ago, spaidapig said:

The other Metallic Art can all be fit into the theme of the internal/external classification of the used metal.

I believe I understand what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to me like it works. In feruchemy, for example, the external cognitive metals - which I'd agree isn't different from allomantic mental - are storing things I don't believe could be counted as external. Zinc, for example, stores mental speed, which I can't see as anything external to the feruchemist.

By the way, I think it's better to refer the quadrants in their feruchemical names, since it corresponds with the realmatic theory. 

[spaidapig]

2 minutes ago, Trutharchivist said:

By the way, I think it's better to refer the quadrants in their feruchemical names, since it corresponds with the realmatic theory. 

I like this

3 minutes ago, Trutharchivist said:

I believe I understand what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to me like it works. In feruchemy, for example, the external cognitive metals - which I'd agree isn't different from allomantic mental - are storing things I don't believe could be counted as external. Zinc, for example, stores mental speed, which I can't see as anything external to the feruchemist.

That is why I said, that there must an underlying concept behind it, that manifests as internal/external in Allomancy and Fabrials, but not in Feruchemy.

I'm trying to find a fitting pattern behind it. If I have a breakthrough I will share it as good as I can.

[Gilphon]

So I don't think that the metals are a 'natural' part of the magic behind Fabrials; they don't seem to be a part of 'naturally-occurring' 'Fabrials' like the Singers and Chasmfiends. What we're seeing with metals in Fabrials, I think, is the innate properties of metals in the cosmere and so on.

If you at this through that lens, Feruchemy is the weird one. Allomancy is, for the most part, very similar to what you apparently naturally get just by rubbing metal and Investiture together. And we've always known exactly what it takes to draw out the Hemlurgic properties of a piece of mundane metal. 

But what's up with Feruchemy? What exactly are the Feruchemists doing that lets them draw out an entirely new set of properties from the metals? Like the most obviously weird example of this is that Feruchemy is the only magic system we know of that lets you Invest aluminium, but now I'm not certain that's any weirder, than, say Cadmium. 

[Halyo_Alex]

1 hour ago, Gilphon said:

So I don't think that the metals are a 'natural' part of the magic behind Fabrials; they don't seem to be a part of 'naturally-occurring' 'Fabrials' like the Singers and Chasmfiends. What we're seeing with metals in Fabrials, I think, is the innate properties of metals in the cosmere and so on.

Still have an aluminum foil hat on that Singers will someday have metal with their gemhearts to make advanced Forms. Somehow, some way. Would that count as a bionic Singer?

1 hour ago, Gilphon said:

If you at this through that lens, Feruchemy is the weird one. Allomancy is, for the most part, very similar to what you apparently naturally get just by rubbing metal and Investiture together. And we've always known exactly what it takes to draw out the Hemlurgic properties of a piece of mundane metal.

And yet Feruchemy is the Metallic Art with the 3 realms defining it's quadrants (and also with a mental/physical power flipped by mistake... I'm still mildly annoyed but it can't be helped now). Curious indeed...

1 hour ago, Gilphon said:

But what's up with Feruchemy? What exactly are the Feruchemists doing that lets them draw out an entirely new set of properties from the metals? Like the most obviously weird example of this is that Feruchemy is the only magic system we know of that lets you Invest aluminium, but now I'm not certain that's any weirder, than, say Cadmium. 

I think it might have to do with the source of the Investiture and the fact that Feruchemy is a Resonance of Preservation and Ruin's powers. It takes things from both Allomancy and Hemalurgy.

1. The investiture comes from the feruchemist's body, but not as a chunk of spiritweb (i.e hemalurgic spike), but a stream of it that returns to normal after storing ends. That's incredibly weird; how does the Feruchemist's body return to normal without tapping the power it just siphoned off? That doesn't conserve power at all. That's net-positive.

2. Many of the powers (not all of them though...) seem to be present in Allomancy and Hemalurgy too (Tin, I'm looking at you). Physical strength is an interesting outlier; Allomantically that's caused by Pewter, and hemalurgically it's done by Iron. ...But wait, Feruchemical Iron also modulates your strength so you can carry the immense weight (of gravity "pulling" on you) from tapping Iron. That's an interesting crossover. Copper in Hemalurgy steals memory, mental fortitude, and intelligence. Copper in allomancy hides allomantic pulses. Put them together and you get the ability to hide your memory inside copper. Copper feruchemy.

I'm sure I could find other logical ways of blending allomantic and hemalurgic effects to explain at least a few more Feruchemical ones.

[Karger]

11 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

But what happens if you add pewter wires? Nothing? That woud be the consequence.

You are not increasing the heat source merely the conductivity. 

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

On 9/10/2020 at 2:27 PM, Gilphon said:

Feruchemy is the only magic system we know of that lets you Invest aluminium

How exactly does aluminum work with hemalurgy? According to the table it "removes all powers" but how does that work?

[18th Shard]

Quote

Josh

The Allomantic metals are separated into four quadrants. Do the Shards have classifications as well, in groups of four?

 

Brandon Sanderson

This division, the Allomantic division is a thing researchers and scholars placed upon it.

 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/295/#e10095

Quote

Oversleep

So you have said previously that you could categorize metals in Feruchemy like 8 Physical, 4 Cognitive, and 4 Spiritual. But the Hemalurgy chart says they are Hybrid <Feruchemy> metals so...

 

Brandon Sanderson

So they are what?

 

Oversleep

The Hybrid metals.

 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, remember that all of these categorizations are by in-world philosophers doing their best to come up so you can decide how you want to categorize them, alright.

 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/398/#e13198

 

[Gilphon]

2 hours ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

How exactly does aluminum work with hemalurgy? According to the table it "removes all powers" but how does that work?

Well, one assumes that if you have the right Intent, stabbing somebody in the right spot with an aluminium spike makes them lose all their powers. So you can instantly kill somebody who has Stormlight or F-Gold or some other form of regeneration. But unlike other forms of Hemalurgy, it doesn't create a spike that useful to stick into yourself. Which is why the tables says 'removes' instead of 'steals'.

Or that's how I've always understood it, anyway. 

[+Oltux72]

On 10/09/2020 at 8:27 PM, Gilphon said:

So I don't think that the metals are a 'natural' part of the magic behind Fabrials; they don't seem to be a part of 'naturally-occurring' 'Fabrials' like the Singers and Chasmfiends.

Chasmfinds are not fabrials. Shallan and Kaladin observed their spren outside the chasmfiends. The same deal with skyeels. Greatshells have gem hearts to store Stormlight. They use a predecessor of the Nahel Bond.

Neither are Singers likely to be fabrials. They'd lose their forms without Stormlight. This seems not to be the case.

On 10/09/2020 at 8:27 PM, Gilphon said:

But what's up with Feruchemy? What exactly are the Feruchemists doing that lets them draw out an entirely new set of properties from the metals? Like the most obviously weird example of this is that Feruchemy is the only magic system we know of that lets you Invest aluminium, but now I'm not certain that's any weirder, than, say Cadmium. 

They put Identity into aluminium. We have no idea whether Identity consists out of Investiture.

9 hours ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

How exactly does aluminum work with hemalurgy? According to the table it "removes all powers" but how does that work?

You kill somebody with it. Then you pierce somebody at the right spot and they lose powers. A waste, but theoretically interesting.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

5 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

They put Identity into aluminium. We have no idea whether Identity consists out of Investiture.

I’m pretty sure Brandon has said somewhere that for all metalminds, the attribute is stored as investiture. So if I’m storing identity, as I store it it becomes investiture trapped in the metalmind. And then as I tap the aluminum, it converts back from investiture into identity. I don’t have an exact quote though; maybe someone can find that.

5 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

You kill somebody with it. Then you pierce somebody at the right spot and they lose powers. A waste, but theoretically interesting.

See this is why I’m confused, because even just in this thread we have to conflicting ideas about how it works. 

 

13 hours ago, Gilphon said:

Well, one assumes that if you have the right Intent, stabbing somebody in the right spot with an aluminium spike makes them lose all their powers. So you can instantly kill somebody who has Stormlight or F-Gold or some other form of regeneration. But unlike other forms of Hemalurgy, it doesn't create a spike that useful to stick into yourself. Which is why the tables says 'removes' instead of 'steals'.

So the way Oltux is thinking, it acts more like a hemalurgic spike, but also Gilphon has a point that since it’s removing rather than stealing it may not act like other spikes. I’d be inclined to believe Gilphon’s theory if only because Oltux’s way involves Investing in aluminum but since we know you definitely can invest in aluminum through Feruchemy it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think you could invest it using the related system Hemalurgy. Hence my confusion. I’d love to see it in action honestly, to get an idea for how it works.

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

I’m pretty sure Brandon has said somewhere that for all metalminds, the attribute is stored as investiture. So if I’m storing identity, as I store it it becomes investiture trapped in the metalmind. And then as I tap the aluminum, it converts back from investiture into identity. I don’t have an exact quote though; maybe someone can find that.

That leads to the big question why aluminium acts the way it acts. The great thought experiment would be whether your own aluminium metalmind still stops your rioting or soothing. We just have no observational data.

1 hour ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

See this is why I’m confused, because even just in this thread we have to conflicting ideas about how it works.

That is the way hemalurgy in general works. The problem with assuming that an uncharged spike would do that is that

(cosmere)

Spoiler

aluminium is known on multiple planets. If a simple intent to remove powers were to do the job, aluminium blades would be common and prized.

 

1 hour ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

So the way Oltux is thinking, it acts more like a hemalurgic spike, but also Gilphon has a point that since it’s removing rather than stealing it may not act like other spikes.

Stealing is a specialised, basic use case of hemalurgy. Spook recommended limiting yourself to it, as you'd screw up the advanced parts anyway, but in theory you can use it to rewrite spirit webs in quite arbitrary a way. It is only logical that it contains a way to purge parts of a spiritweb.

 

[Gilphon]

6 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

aluminium is known on multiple planets. If a simple intent to remove powers were to do the job, aluminium blades would be common and prized

There are a few problems with this assertion. First, aluminium blades would never be common because a) aluminium isn't common anywhere and b ) aluminium is bad material for a blade. Second, as I said, Intent isn't enough; you also have to hit the right bind point. Third, people that you'd need an Aluminium spike to kill are not common enough for the practice to become widespread or discovered accidentally.

11 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Stealing is a specialised, basic use case of hemalurgy. Spook recommended limiting yourself to it, as you'd screw up the advanced parts anyway, but in theory you can use it to rewrite spirit webs in quite arbitrary a way. It is only logical that it contains a way to purge parts of a spiritweb.

No no. Spook was advising that you stick you stealing Allomancy and Feruchemy, since those are relatively safe and predictable applications. Don't bother trying to steal Intellect or Strength or stuff like that, Spook says, because Kandra and Koloss are only viable things that have ever come out of that, and they both have serious problems. It's all still stealing a piece of one spiritweb and stapling onto another. 

[+Bzhydack]

On 10.09.2020 at 8:27 PM, Gilphon said:

So I don't think that the metals are a 'natural' part of the magic behind Fabrials; they don't seem to be a part of 'naturally-occurring' 'Fabrials' like the Singers and Chasmfiends. What we're seeing with metals in Fabrials, I think, is the innate properties of metals in the cosmere and so on.

 

9 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Chasmfinds are not fabrials. Shallan and Kaladin observed their spren outside the chasmfiends. The same deal with skyeels. Greatshells have gem hearts to store Stormlight. They use a predecessor of the Nahel Bond.

Neither are Singers likely to be fabrials. They'd lose their forms without Stormlight. This seems not to be the case.

Singers gemheart is integrated with their bones. And bones are partialy made from metal - in humans case it is calcium, but Singers are build differently.

But I agree, Singers are not Fabrials. Or not conventional ones. It seems like their forms are more similar to Feruchemy - Spren trapped in Gemheart is using Singer inner Investiture. They need Stormlight (or Voidlight) to fuel Change - change form is mainly mind chnage (to be more similar to spren Intent), and when Change is complete, Spren needs only Inner Investiture of Singer.

Also, Fabrials seems to work on basic level as "reversed" Allomancy.

In Allomancy metals are Focus of magic, and they are destroyed in process. And "controling device" is Allomancer - living mind.

In Fabrials Spren (living mind) trapped in gemstone is Focus of magic, he is not destryoed, but gemstone can be. And "controling device" is metal cage.

[+Oltux72]

51 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Singers gemheart is integrated with their bones. And bones are partialy made from metal - in humans case it is calcium, but Singers are build differently.

Well, no. They are made from a salt of calcium, which is an isolator. As Wax tells us, an alloy is a differen material. So for determining what is a metal nuclear physics is inappropriate. We need to look at chemistry and crystallography.

51 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

In Allomancy metals are Focus of magic, and they are destroyed in process. And "controling device" is Allomancer - living mind.

Primer cubes suggest that a living mind is not absolutely necessary.

51 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

In Fabrials Spren (living mind) trapped in gemstone is Focus of magic, he is not destryoed, but gemstone can be. And "controling device" is metal cage.

But the Spren is not destroyed. And the Spren determines most of the effect of the fabrial.

What exactly destroys the metal? Is it really the allomancy? I am afraid not. The metal is also destroyed when you compound, which technically means doing feruchemy just with an alternate power source. Hence the destruction is a result of drawing the power, not the efffect.
It looks to me like the human with a modified spiritweb replaces the spren. That makes me suspect that the Metallic Arts are a modification of something more basic, that you see in fabrials and which shows itself in metal looking like souls in Scadrial's CR and Ruin being unable to read what is written on metal. That also explains why there are metals like silver that show an arcane effect, but are useless in allomancy. Preservation just did not hook them up to the power supply.