Larkins and other leechers of investiture

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

I am trying to nail down some inconsistencies I have seen in the nature of leeching.  I would like to present a few different examples to highlight my questions.  By all means if my recollection of these events is wrong set them right so I can try to better grasp the mechanics here.  

The larkin is shown to have drained Lifts lifelight.  I know they eat stormlight and other investiture as well.  In that scene I remember Lift losing her awesomeness and being hungry.  Did the larkin empty her stomach of potential lifelight?  Had Lift already metabolized all of the food she had eaten in that scene to lifelight and the Larkin simply ate the light?  Could Lift turn to fat stores and metabolize that for lifelight and if she could could a larkin eat that as well?   

With the metallic arts... does the Larkin have a chance to feed off of preservations investiture?  Is it able to feast and burn away metals or eat the investiture from a metalmind?  On the train in BoM we saw the cube be used to burn away Wax's steel.  Was that just because he was burning at the time and it just consumed what was being burnt?  If he had not been burning his steel at the time would it have been leeched still?  If Wax is so used to always storing weight he was likely connected to his metalmind at the time that the allomantic grenade was tossed his way... why did he not mention any difference or change to his metalmind at the time?   Leechers can leech from metalminds but it was not noteworthy in this scene that I recall.  Was that the interaction with the grenade specifically?   In this instance Wax was accessing both portions of his powers (I assume).  

If chromium allomancy quickly works its way through investiture that is being accessed at the time would a leecher touching Lift while she was turning her meal into lifelight be able to leech her to the point of malnutrition and death?  If so why would the larkin have stopped?  

Allomantic aluminum breaks all the rules I feel.  It consumed all of Vins metals as it burned.  I can't remember if she even actively had to burn the aluminum.  Really, why would a mistborn eat and use a random metal fed to them by their enemies, knowing bad alloy could kill them as well, in the first place? 

I guess all this word vomit boils down to whether the investiture being eaten / leeched must be active vs nonactive or in gaseous state..... or whatever.  What are the big differences between larkins and leechers?   

Could a Leecher drain a whole banks worth of spheres at the beginning of the weeping and cripple Roshar?  I know it is highly unlikely due to Dalinar being allowed to completely remove the cost of stormlight by opening a perpendicularity. 

Do our very old Awakeners / Returned and Lift have to be extra cautious around leechers / larkin for fear of being literally leeched to death (awakeners right on the edge of 5th awakening and a few hundred years old that is)?  Or is there a stop that prevents you being leeched to death?  

Is Lift able to metabolize her own body to the point of death like a gold ferring could store so much health they die?

[+Kolten]

We have not been in the head of someone who is a leecher, and have relatively little data on it. Because leeching is a power that is going to be most useful in how it can act across magic systems, I am guessing that this won't be nailed down until we start seeing a lot more cross magic system fighting taking place. 

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

The larkin is shown to have drained Lifts lifelight.  I know they eat stormlight and other investiture as well.  In that scene I remember Lift losing her awesomeness and being hungry.  Did the larkin empty her stomach of potential lifelight?  Had Lift already metabolized all of the food she had eaten in that scene to lifelight and the Larkin simply ate the light?  Could Lift turn to fat stores and metabolize that for lifelight and if she could could a larkin eat that as well? 

It seemed like the larkin was able to absorb everything she could use for lifelight. It also seems like as soon as she had more food in her stomach she was able to get lifelight out of it. So it seems to me that lifts ability to turn food into lifelight is more like an allomancer burning metals than it is her body converting glucose to lifelight. That probably means that she can't be leeched to death, and that the larkin/leecher will stop when they have empty any potential investiture source from them. 

 

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

With the metallic arts... does the Larkin have a chance to feed off of preservations investiture?  Is it able to feast and burn away metals or eat the investiture from a metalmind?  On the train in BoM we saw the cube be used to burn away Wax's steel.  Was that just because he was burning at the time and it just consumed what was being burnt?  If he had not been burning his steel at the time would it have been leeched still?  If Wax is so used to always storing weight he was likely connected to his metalmind at the time that the allomantic grenade was tossed his way... why did he not mention any difference or change to his metalmind at the time?   Leechers can leech from metalminds but it was not noteworthy in this scene that I recall.  Was that the interaction with the grenade specifically?   In this instance Wax was accessing both portions of his powers (I assume).  

I would just note here that normally a leecher needs to make physical contact with their target to leech them, but the cube does not need to do so in the same way. So the cube is already following different rules than a human leecher does, and that makes it hard to extrapolate. Maybe the cube would have leeched the metalmind if it had physically touched it? Who can say . . .

 

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Allomantic aluminum breaks all the rules I feel.  It consumed all of Vins metals as it burned.  I can't remember if she even actively had to burn the aluminum.  Really, why would a mistborn eat and use a random metal fed to them by their enemies, knowing bad alloy could kill them as well, in the first place? 

Vin did have to burn it. The inquisitor made her do it, and could tell once she had.

Quote

A pair of rough hands hoisted her into the air. She coughed as the Inquisitor shoved something into her mouth.

 “Swallow,” he ordered, twisting her arm.

 Vin cried out, trying without success to resist the pain. Eventually, she gave in and swallowed the bit of metal.

 “Now burn it,” the Inquisitor ordered, twisting harder.

 Vin resisted nonetheless, sensing the unfamiliar metal reserve within her. The Inquisitor could be trying to get her to burn a useless metal, one that would make her sick—or, worse, kill her.

 But, there are easier ways to kill a captive, she thought in agony. Her arm hurt so much that it felt like it would twist free. Finally, Vin relented, burning the metal.

 Immediately, all of her other metal reserves vanished.
 

So we actually have pretty good idea of how aluminium works, seems to me like it sets the rules rather than breaking them since this is the first such effect we see. 

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Could a Leecher drain a whole banks worth of spheres at the beginning of the weeping and cripple Roshar?  I know it is highly unlikely due to Dalinar being allowed to completely remove the cost of stormlight by opening a perpendicularity. 

I think a leecher could do that eventually. I imagine that given enough investiture to leech it takes some time to do so, and costs chromium. A larkin eventually gets full and stops (incidentally this also happens to nightblood when he was used on a shard, he was not able to absorb it all and eventually satiated). 

 

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do our very old Awakeners / Returned and Lift have to be extra cautious around leechers / larkin for fear of being literally leeched to death (awakeners right on the edge of 5th awakening and a few hundred years old that is)?  Or is there a stop that prevents you being leeched to death? 

We have WoBs that seem to say that Brandon is leaning towards leechers being able to leech breath. I don't think an old awakener would be in trouble because it seems like the 5th heightening actually stops aging (doesn't stretch it out like other immortality methods do like atium). Otherwise old awakeners would not be able to use their breath to awaken things. A returned might be in trouble. But then again it might not. It could be a leecher would just need them to find another breath before next week is up, since their bodies seem to absorb one breath a week discretely, as opposed to continuously. 

Have we seen a leecher leech anything besides just metals on screen? Larkins seem to metabolize investiture for energy and growth, but leechers seem to just have it disappear somehow, which seems weird because Brandon seem to be leaning towards a sort of 1st law of thermodynamics sort of principle with investiture, I wonder where the power goes? Does it just get converted into mist or something? 

In the end I think a lot of these decisions are going to hinge on the specific plots Brandon needs to write once things start crossing paths a lot. But for now it seems like leeching effects directly on investiture and indirectly on potential catalysts to access investiture. 

[Returned]

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

The larkin is shown to have drained Lifts lifelight.  I know they eat stormlight and other investiture as well.  In that scene I remember Lift losing her awesomeness and being hungry.  Did the larkin empty her stomach of potential lifelight?  Had Lift already metabolized all of the food she had eaten in that scene to lifelight and the Larkin simply ate the light?  Could Lift turn to fat stores and metabolize that for lifelight and if she could could a larkin eat that as well?

If I remember correctly, Lift does regularly metabolize fat into Light (Wendel mentions it). She doesn't have to (else she would starve to death pretty easily), but when she's trying to use Investiture her metabolism obliges. I, personally, doubt that a larkin could remove food from her body pre-metabolism but the rules for Lift are odd and not totally clear right now. A larkin consumes Investiture.

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

With the metallic arts... does the Larkin have a chance to feed off of preservations investiture?

In at least some forms, certainly yes, but not in every possible case:

Quote

coltonx9

Are there types of Investiture that the larkin can't consume?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I would say that there are, but it's going to depend on the state they're in. Pure Investiture, a larkin is always going to probably be able to grab, but lots of people can get pure Investiture. Kinetic Investiture they're are gonna have a good chance at being able to grab, but they can't get everything.

Idaho Falls signing (Dec. 29, 2018)

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Was that just because he was burning at the time and it just consumed what was being burnt?  If he had not been burning his steel at the time would it have been leeched still? If he had not been burning his steel at the time would it have been leeched still?  If Wax is so used to always storing weight he was likely connected to his metalmind at the time that the allomantic grenade was tossed his way... why did he not mention any difference or change to his metalmind at the time?   Leechers can leech from metalminds but it was not noteworthy in this scene that I recall.  Was that the interaction with the grenade specifically?   In this instance Wax was accessing both portions of his powers (I assume).  

The current listing on Coppermind states that Allomantic chromium causes the target Allomancer to lose their metal reserves, so his burning steel should be irrelevant. Coppermind also states that non-Invested metals are affected before Invested ones, so possibly the grenade just didn't have enough charge to interfere with the ironmind after dealing with the steel. It's not 100% clear from the scene's description.

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

If chromium allomancy quickly works its way through investiture that is being accessed at the time would a leecher touching Lift while she was turning her meal into lifelight be able to leech her to the point of malnutrition and death?  If so why would the larkin have stopped?

We don't have any indication that Lift's body will consume itself to the point of death just to provide Investiture. If she were prevented from metabolizing her food into Light, it's not clear if it would be metabolized normally or would disappear to no purpose. As above, a larkin consumes Investiture. Any potential calories in Lift's body are also potential Investiture, but are not themselves Investiture, so a larkin shouldn't be able to do anything with them. Also as above, Lift doesn't have to metabolize food into Light-- her body clearly still has the calories to function and grow. We've also seen her run out of Investiture multiple times without dying, so it seems unlikely that a larkin could force death via that mechanism.

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Allomantic aluminum breaks all the rules I feel.  It consumed all of Vins metals as it burned.  I can't remember if she even actively had to burn the aluminum.  Really, why would a mistborn eat and use a random metal fed to them by their enemies, knowing bad alloy could kill them as well, in the first place? 

She did have to actively burn it, and she was forced to. She recognized that refusing to burn the aluminum wasn't really going to improve her situation, and if the Inquisitors had wanted to kill her they could easily have done so while she was unconscious and wouldn't have needed to bother with doing it via forcing her to use Allomancy.

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I guess all this word vomit boils down to whether the investiture being eaten / leeched must be active vs nonactive or in gaseous state..... or whatever.  What are the big differences between larkins and leechers?

There are many differences, and many similarities. The most efficient, salient WoB response is the one I quoted above: there are some types of Investiture that a larkin won't be able to consume. We don't yet have a full accounting of how they differ.

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Could a Leecher drain a whole banks worth of spheres at the beginning of the weeping and cripple Roshar?  I know it is highly unlikely due to Dalinar being allowed to completely remove the cost of stormlight by opening a perpendicularity.

Given enough time and chromium, probably.

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do our very old Awakeners / Returned and Lift have to be extra cautious around leechers / larkin for fear of being literally leeched to death (awakeners right on the edge of 5th awakening and a few hundred years old that is)?  Or is there a stop that prevents you being leeched to death?

Yes:

Quote

Mason Wheeler

So, Vasher has been on Roshar to live off the Stormlight. Does he know about larkins?

Brandon Sanderson

He has heard of larkins.

Mason Wheeler

How afraid of them is he?

Brandon Sanderson

He is happy that are all supposedly extinct. They would kill him.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

 

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Is Lift able to metabolize her own body to the point of death like a gold ferring could store so much health they die?

Unknown, but probably not. Otherwise she would have likely starved to death by now. She could starve via the conventional route though, I would assume.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Returned
Fixed bizarre typo

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

51 minutes ago, Returned said:

If I remember correctly, Lift does regularly metabolize fat into Light (Wendel mentions it). She doesn't have to (else she would starve to death pretty easily), but when she's trying to use Investiture her metabolism obliges. I, personally, doubt that a larkin could remove food from her body pre-metabolism but the rules for Lift are odd and not totally clear right now. A larkin consumes Investiture.

1 hour ago, Kolten said:

It seemed like the larkin was able to absorb everything she could use for lifelight. It also seems like as soon as she had more food in her stomach she was able to get lifelight out of it. So it seems to me that lifts ability to turn food into lifelight is more like an allomancer burning metals than it is her body converting glucose to lifelight. That probably means that she can't be leeched to death, and that the larkin/leecher will stop when they have empty any potential investiture source from them.

1 hour ago, Kolten said:

So we actually have pretty good idea of how aluminium works, seems to me like it sets the rules rather than breaking them since this is the first such effect we see. 

Thanks for the responses.  So Vin definitely burnt the aluminum, and then it wiped out her stores of metal period.

This is where I think my brain makes a disconnect in how the magics work.  Aluminum works on the metal itself or the investiture?  Metal is not investiture it is potential investiture inside an allomancer specifically.  Duralumin works on specifically the metal that is being burned at the time that the allomancer uses duralumin.  There is a disconnect here.  How far does that stretch? 

Could an aluminum misting swallow a toxic level of other metals and burn aluminum to make them poof away?  If chromium works on a similar principle wouldn't the grenade have eaten a hole in the train?  Will we see a leecher just dissolve chunks of metal? (This question has special importance as the idea of soulcasting chunk of aluminum around someone's head has been used a ton in some threads.)    

Back to this principle of leeching investiture or the potential investiture though.  This is where I feel the lines are blurry.  

Should a misting carrying metal in their stomach be safe from a larkin?  When does that larkin feast upon the investiture?  Would it be while they actively burn the metal?  Or is allomancy more in that kinetic investiture space where it is harder to access?  Would leeching a sphere of its light be easier than leeching a chunk of pewter of its potential?  

The speed of leeching I assume is the same as the speed of duralumin and aluminum.  I thought it was described as an infinite loop instantly until one of the metals was gone.  Trading X duralumin for burning away Y of another metal until one or the other runs out.  I noticed in the quote that it says:

1 hour ago, Kolten said:

Immediately, all of her other metal reserves vanished.

Do you think that aluminum can be burned by aluminum?  Aluminum is usually resistant to other investiture but if you had 2 chunks of aluminum in your body and you burned one would the other disappear?  Is there a threshold where aluminum consumption would have killed Vin had they fed her too much and she couldn't burn it away except by allowing it to pass??? 

[+Kolten]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

If I remember correctly, Lift does regularly metabolize fat into Light (Wendel mentions it)

Do you remember where he mentions it? I am curious to reread the passage.

Also good catch on Vasher being killable by a larkin, it does make sense that a returned could be dealt with in that way.

 

15 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

This is where I think my brain makes a disconnect in how the magics work.  Aluminum works on the metal itself or the investiture?  Metal is not investiture it is potential investiture inside an allomancer specifically.  Duralumin works on specifically the metal that is being burned at the time that the allomancer uses duralumin.  There is a disconnect here.  How far does that stretch? 

I think it stretches that far exactly. Aluminium works on all other metals but itself, duralumin works on metals you are burning, and that is just the way allomancy works. Other opposing metals have even more disparate effects than that, so I don't think this particular disconnect is any more notable than say gold and electrum. 

 

As for the way it drains metals and/or investiture this is my own understanding of it. The metal in your stomach's part in the magic system is like a key, by burning it you are essentially using it as a catalyst to access preservation investiture via the spiritual realm. By having the metal in your stomach you open the "door" to the spiritual realm, and by burning the metal you pull out the investiture through the door. Run out of metal and the door closes. 

So what chromium/aluminium does is to drain preservations investiture through the door. Due to the way the magic system works that causes the metals to burn until the door closes at which point there is no more investiture to leech. A leecher can not erode physical metals because the eroding of metals is a side effect of the magic system, not a fuel source that they are specifically leeching. External metal structures are not opening the same door to preservation's investiture and so would not be burnt away.

I guess that means that an aluminium burning mistborn might be able to resist stab wounds from allomantic metals by burning them away before they can stab deeply? I guess another question that might be fun to ask Brandon. 

30 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

The speed of leeching I assume is the same as the speed of duralumin and aluminum.  I thought it was described as an infinite loop instantly until one of the metals was gone.  Trading X duralumin for burning away Y of another metal until one or the other runs out.  I noticed in the quote that it says:

I think the speed at which metals are leeched is a specific effect of aluminium and duralumin, and that on other forms of investiture it is probably slower. And I think it likely that aluminum does not necessarily burn away other pieces of itself but it could if Brandon wanted it to I guess. Maybe with practice an aluminium burner can have it burn away the aluminium too? I would buy it either way . . . 

[Returned]

5 hours ago, Kolten said:

Do you remember where he mentions it? I am curious to reread the passage.

It's less definitive than I'd remembered, though at least the reference actually exists. That doesn't always happen for me! Wyndle is making his best guess, not declaring something that is definitely true, but the bit about body fat only makes sense if metabolism of fat is relevant to Lift's strange ability:

Quote

"Mistress!" Wyndle said, twisting up nearby. "Oh... oh dear. There is something very wrong with that man! He is not right, not right at all. You must use your powers."

"Trying," Lift said, grunting.

"You've let yourself grow too thin," Wyndle said. "You always use up the excess.... Low body fat... That might be the problem. I don't know how this works!" (Words of Radiance, page 699).

 

6 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Aluminum works on the metal itself or the investiture?  Metal is not investiture it is potential investiture inside an allomancer specifically.  Duralumin works on specifically the metal that is being burned at the time that the allomancer uses duralumin.  There is a disconnect here.  How far does that stretch? 

Could an aluminum misting swallow a toxic level of other metals and burn aluminum to make them poof away?  If chromium works on a similar principle wouldn't the grenade have eaten a hole in the train?  Will we see a leecher just dissolve chunks of metal? (This question has special importance as the idea of soulcasting chunk of aluminum around someone's head has been used a ton in some threads.)

In Allomancy, aluminum specifically destroys Allomantically relevant metals. The specific Allomantic effect is stablished by WoB:

Quote

Questioner

Aluminum, when you burn aluminum, does it actually destroy the metals or just take away their power?

Brandon Sanderson

It destroys the metals.

Questioner

Same with chromium?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

So it actually gets rid of the metals?

Brandon Sanderson

It actually trans--  It does a--  matter, energy, investiture are the same things in the cosmere.  You have some sort of transfer happening relating to those things.

Questioner

The question sort of relates to metal poisoning--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you would not get metal poisoning after that.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

 

But more generally, you are correct to note that aluminum is strange. Aluminum is a very odd thing in the Cosmere and it has properties that transcend any individual magic system for reasons that are still unknown. Unlike other Allomantic metals, which have cool effects only because the Metallic Arts made them more than mundane, aluminum has always been strange in the Cosmere:

Quote

Kurkistan

Was aluminum weird before the metallic arts were created?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Oathbringer Chicago signing (Nov. 21, 2017)

 

6 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Should a misting carrying metal in their stomach be safe from a larkin?  When does that larkin feast upon the investiture?  Would it be while they actively burn the metal?  Or is allomancy more in that kinetic investiture space where it is harder to access?  Would leeching a sphere of its light be easier than leeching a chunk of pewter of its potential?  

Allomantic metals are not themselves Investiture, nor are they Invested. They are a catalyst which allows the Allomancer to access Investiture, which comes from the spiritual realm in a specific way and producing a specific effect defined by the metal burned. So a misting with metal in their stomach doesn't have any Investiture a larkin is likely to be able to access unless they're burning it. I say "likely to be able to access" because Allomancy, like any Cosmere magical ability, requires "extra" Investiture in a person in the first place. But that isn't "Invested" in the sense of what a larkin eats. See these two quotes, an annotation from The Hero of Ages and a WoB for relevant details on Allomancy:

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Preservation's Power

All right, so maybe I lied about there only being three magic systems in this book. It comes down to how you term the powers of Preservation and Ruin, who kind of blanket the entire system. There are a lot of things going on here, and—well, the truth is I don't want to mention all of them, for fear of spoiling future books. However, I'll give you a few rules to apply.

First, to these forces, energy and mass are the same thing. So, their power can take physical shape—as Preservation's did in the bead of metal Elend ate. Second, there is a bit of Preservation inside of all the people—and it's this that allows the people to perform Allomancy. It needs to be awakened and stirred to be of use, but when it is, a proper metal can draw forth more of Preservation's power. It's like the metal attunes the bit within the person, allowing it to act as a catalyst to grab more power.

Allomancy is not fueled by metal; it is fueled by Preservation. The metal is the means by which a person can access that fuel, however. If there were another way to access it, then the metal wouldn't be needed.

Preservation's touch on people differs. Some have more, some have less. This doesn't make them better or worse people—indeed, some most touched by Preservation have been among the worst people in the world. As Ruin later points out, there is a difference between being evil and being destructive.

Regardless, if a person can get more Preservation into them, they become better Allomancers. Hence Elend becoming a Mistborn. Like all people, he had the potential within him—it was just too small of a potential to be awakened through normal means. That little jolt of Preservation's body, however, expanded and awakened his Allomancy.

As a tidbit, that was a side effect of what that bead of metal did. It wasn't the main purpose of the bead, and if another Allomancer were to burn it, it would do something else.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Nov. 12, 2009)

 

Quote

Blightsong

Would it be harder for Jasnah to Soulcast a Knight Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Would it be harder for her to Soulcast a Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, Investiture resists Investiture. It's harder for her to even Soulcast a person than a rock, right?

Questioner

Is a Mistborn Invested?

Brandon Sanderson

The Mistborn, while they're burning the metal. They are not specifically Invested when they are not burning. When the Investiture becomes active, then yes. Before, no.

Blightsong

So Kelsier, he stayed around longer, not because he was Invested, but because he had the potential to use Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Over time using the magic will Invest you, on Scadrial. Most of the power is not coming from, on Roshar the power isn't coming from the person either [he cut himself off, so I assume this is how it works on Scadrial even though he didn't finish his thought] so I'm going to have to back up on that one and say, yes, the Mistborn are as Invested as a Knight Radiant, because in both cases the majority, bulk, of the power is coming from somewhere else, but there is the Spiritweb. Investing the wrong term, but you have all these connections in the Spiritual Realm, so yanking you away from them, or rewriting them is harder.

Questioner

Would they be harder with more Stormlight or metals burning?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes. That would increase the difficulty ratio. For instance, wearing Shardplate is gonna be a great barrier, right, and things like that so yeah. The problem is like, Invested is the wrong term for that, their Spiritweb is connected in different ways.

OdysseyCon 2016 (April 8, 2016)

 

6 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

The speed of leeching I assume is the same as the speed of duralumin and aluminum.  I thought it was described as an infinite loop instantly until one of the metals was gone.  Trading X duralumin for burning away Y of another metal until one or the other runs out.

As far as I know this is unclear, but it seems like a reasonable guess. You'll burn away the Allomantic metals as long as you have a sufficient amount of chromium to burn, just like effects of any other Allomantic metal. What we saw with Wax and the grenade happened instantly, at least according to his ability to notice it. But we've seen precious little leeching in action so it's not explicitly known.

 

6 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do you think that aluminum can be burned by aluminum?  Aluminum is usually resistant to other investiture but if you had 2 chunks of aluminum in your body and you burned one would the other disappear?  Is there a threshold where aluminum consumption would have killed Vin had they fed her too much and she couldn't burn it away except by allowing it to pass???

Also unclear, but I doubt it. The quote provided by Kolten, that Vin's other metals disappeared, suggests that aluminum doesn't work on itself and it's not obvious that separate beads of metal are considered distinct in Allomancy; if it worked that way, even discounting aluminum's resistance to Investiture, it would be hard to explain aluminum not eliminating itself when burned. Duralumin doesn't seem to work that way (not that it would, given its effect, but it's probably the best comparison we have for now):

Quote

She had duralumin still--burning it only make other metals vanish, not the duralumin itself[...] (The Well of Ascension, page 462).

That said, the Inquisitors certainly could have killed Vin by choking her with aluminum or force-feeding her enough that it would destroy her intestinal tract. If, that is, they could get enough aluminum, which they almost certainly couldn't at the time that scene took place. And, as above, there were far easier ways to kill her had that been what they wanted to do.

 

6 hours ago, Kolten said:

I guess that means that an aluminium burning mistborn might be able to resist stab wounds from allomantic metals by burning them away before they can stab deeply? I guess another question that might be fun to ask Brandon. [...] Maybe with practice an aluminium burner can have it burn away the aluminium too? I would buy it either way . . .

Burning aluminum to do more than get rid of other Allomantic metals is hard to do, never mind becoming a savant with it. But if someone were to do that they could start to do some pretty cool things:

Quote

Douglas

What benefit does an aluminum savant get? Yes, I know this would normally never happen because aluminum burns itself up. Suppose a mad scientist with a willing Mistborn test subject shoved a feeding tube down the Mistborn's throat to pump in a continuous stream of aluminum, replenishing it steadily so there's always a new unburned supply. Add another tube to pump out excess water if necessary. What would he discover? Alternatively, what would Sazed with his Shard-granted knowledge know?

Brandon Sanderson

Ha, that IS a little silly of a method. However, on the extreme end of aluminum, I have in the notes the possibility of cleansing the spirit of unwanted effects of other Investitures. You'd get really good at this, and maybe even be able to cleanse the body of other impurities.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 27, 2012)