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Allomancy: Size of beads?


Narcoleptic Axolotl

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I didn't want to start a new topic about this, but I scoured the forums, the coppermind, and even a few WoB's and I didn't find anything helpful. According to one small blip on the coppermind:

Quote

The metals are usually ingested by drinking specifically prepared metal vials, which contain metal flakes suspended in an alcohol solution or other such liquid, e.g. cod oil.

That's very nice, but it makes no mention of dust or beads. I know just from memory that both of those were somewhat common ways to ingest metals. Kelsier and Vin take beads of pewter when they run to try to stop Yeden from getting the army slaughtered. Atium seems to only come in bead form, due to the nature of the pits, so I won't focus too much on that. (And I don't know where exactly the Lerasium beads came from, so I won't focus on that either.)

Then, we also hear about Spook swallowing tin dust in Urteau, and I'm pretty sure Breeze eats brass dust at some point.

Okay, that's not really why I'm here. What I really want to know is how big the beads are. At first, I imagined about the size of a blueberry, before I realized how hard that would be for many people to swallow whole. Now I'm imagining roughly pea-sized, although that might still make them hard to swallow if you're doing several at once. I suppose they could be tiny prills of metal. That would make sense, and be closer to the size of dust and flakes. But no, because when Zane give Vin a bead of what looks like atium, it turns out to be a bead of lead that was just coated with atium. So they can't be that small. And the beads of lerasium probably aren't quite that small either.

If we have to continue relying on conjecture alone, I will assume that either:

  • beads of metal vary in size depending on what kind of metal they are, where you got them, etc.
  • Or most beads are roughly pea-sized, maybe a little smaller.

I guess I'm kind of pitching this out there to see if anyone has some information I couldn't find. But, since many of the minds on here are more brilliant than I, feel free to theorize further on this ultimately inconsequential topic.

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I've always imagined them like bb gun ammo, small pea sized beads. That would make them consistent with being able to be swallowed and with how shaved metal that fits in a small vial can last a significant amount of time depending on the metal. The lead bead that Zane uses Vin describes as being a huge amount that she reckons would last for a solid minute or more so it was probably a good deal larger than a standard Atium bead which have rarely lasted more than a handful of seconds.

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