The Amount of Investiture in the Metallic Arts

[Trusk'our]

I recently re-read era 1 Mistborn when I noticed something interesting when Tensoon comments on the Blessing of Potency. He mentions it as "more than doubling" his strength, but not tripling. This actually sounds a lot like Allomantic Pewter's affects, with it roughly doubling one's strength when burned normally, and roughly tripling it when flared.

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Calamity Philadelphia signing - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

Sandastron

I’m very curious about pewter. How much Feruchemical pewter, steel, and gold would you have to take in in order to be equal to burning pewter and flaring.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh…um, okay. So you wanna...ok, let’s back this up. So you wanna know feruchemically what would it take to match burning?

Sandastron

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay. So burning pewter, I kind of imagine...roughly doubling. Roughly.

Sandastron

Double your strength?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. But without the muscle mass change, it’s a magical boost. So because of that it has some pretty dramatic effects, like when Vin jumps and things like that.

Sandastron

So it’s only a double, so would flaring it bring it any higher?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Flaring would go higher.

Sandastron

Would it be like triple?

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe like triple.

Sandastron

Maybe like tripling...that’s fascinating. So I always thought normal burning would triple it and flaring would quadruple.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah I always felt kind of double. You won’t see people burning pewter and lifting a car.

Sandastron

Right, exactly.

Brandon Sanderson

You see people burning pewter and delivering a really solid punch.

Sandastron

Gotcha, thank you. That is fascinating…and would it be about doubling speed and healing ability?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven’t worked out the numbers on that exactly. I have an instinct that says thatburning pewter, healing goes a bit faster but I have to look in the books and see what we’ve done in the past and then kind of canonize it.

Since we know that Hemalurgic spikes typically provide the Investiture from only one person, and that a Blessing requires two spikes, a Blessing provides nearly (Hemalurgic decay) the raw level of Investiture found in two regular humans.

Using this principle, a Thug burning pewter would only count as being a few times as Invested as a normal human being, even when flaring his metal. And that's for one of the faster burning, and therefore more Investing, metals.

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/r/books AMA 2015 (July 14, 2015)

mooglefrooglian

Does a more powerful Mistborn burn their metals more quickly, or do they use what they get more efficiently?

Brandon Sanderson

Metal burning speed is proportional to power withdrawn.

Originally, I had just kind of head cannoned that Mistings were about as Invested as first Heightening Awakeners when burning metals (albeit with kinetic Investiture rather than static), with a slight variation based on what specific metal they burned. It now seems like I was totally out of the ball park: the Metallic arts do not have very much Investiture within the system compared to some others. Which we do have a WoB on, but I hadn't realized just how big the difference was until recently.

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DragonCon 2012 (Sept. 4, 2012)

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.

1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.

2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.

This also means that quite a bit of stuff can be done with a comparatively small amount of Investiture to what I had once imagined (which I suppose makes sense. After all, you can more or less permanently Awaken a Lifeless with only a single Breath).

This also means that a first Heightening Awakener is likely dozens of times as powerful (in terms of raw Investiture) than your run-of-the-mill Allomancer.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Trusk'our

[StanLemon]

The Metallic Arts are by far the most Investiture efficient magic system. Compare a Surgebinder to an Allomancer. A sack of infused gems will be used up by the Surgebinder in an hour or two. A same sized sack of Pewter though could easily last an Allomancer a day of flairing based on what we see in TFE.

Additionally, Copper is one of, if not the least Investiture intensive metal in Allomancy. Kelsier burning it became immune to Rashek's Soothing, which is a middling Investiture intensive metal as Brandon put it, and from the strongest Allomancer ever. Sure Vin could still feel it through her Copper, but she was Spiked and thus likely had a vulnerability to emotional Allomancy that others wouldn't have. I'm sure if Rashek really tried he could break through any Coppercloud, but they did seem to be immune to his general Soothing which was at least an order of magnitude stronger than any other Allomancer 

Edited February 8, 2023 by StanLemon

[Quantus]

1 hour ago, StanLemon said:

The Metallic Arts are by far the most Investiture efficient magic system. Compare a Surgebinder to an Allomancer. A sack of infused gems will be used up by the Surgebinder in an hour or two. A same sized sack of Pewter though could easily last an Allomancer a day of flairing based on what we see in TFE.

Additionally, Copper is one of, if not the least Investiture intensive metal in Allomancy. Kelsier burning it became immune to Rashek's Soothing, which is a middling Investiture intensive metal as Brandon put it, and from the strongest Allomancer ever. Sure Vin could still feel it through her Copper, but she was Spiked and thus likely had a vulnerability to emotional Allomancy that others wouldn't have. I'm sure if Rashek really tried he could break through any Coppercloud, but they did seem to be immune to his general Soothing which was at least an order of magnitude stronger than any other Allomancer 

I think that misses the point: Unlike nearly every other magic (so far) Allomancy doesnt have to use Stores of Investiture in the Physical realm to power it.  All that Investiture gets pulled directly from the Spiritual Realm, and the only limits are the capacity of their Connection to Preservation (manipulatable with Flaring and duralumin) and the base metals that key it. Otherwise, they can pull and use as much as they want for as long as they want, until Savantism sets in.   In other words, they run around with as much Investiture available to them as a Radiant in a Highstorm.  

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Quantus
Awful spelling...

[StanLemon]

8 hours ago, Quantus said:

 In other words, they run around with as much Investiture available to them as a Radiant in a Highstorm.  

I'm not entirely sure this is truly accurate though,

The Lost Metal spoiler information

Spoiler

We see in TLM that truly having access to raw Investiture like that, even an average Allomancer can have Rashek levels of power in their Allomancy

 

[Quantus]

9 hours ago, StanLemon said:

I'm not entirely sure this is truly accurate though,

The Lost Metal spoiler information

  Reveal hidden contents

We see in TLM that truly having access to raw Investiture like that, even an average Allomancer can have Rashek levels of power in their Allomancy

 

My secret shame, I haven't finished TLM.  But if it's something with an Investiture that already exists in the physical realm (breaths or Lights or Mists or whatever), it would likely be bypassing the realmic Connection mechanism entirely so it makes sense that it would be less throttled than when it's getting pulled across realms through normal Burning.

[StanLemon]

2 hours ago, Quantus said:

My secret shame, I haven't finished TLM.

No shame in that, not everyone has time to binge 

[cometaryorbit]

They don't have access to as much as they want, generally. They're limited by mass of metal and burn rate. Even when flaring, the Investiture-over-time (equivalent of "power" in physics) is not very high.

Sure, metal is very easy to get compared to Breath or Feruchemical charge, at least the common metals. But it's still a limiting factor, especially given that it usually needs to be swallowed (yeah, metal inside the body in other ways can theoretically be burned, but sticking tons of metal into someone's flesh is generally unhealthy) and the Investiture to metal ratio doesn't seem that high.

Now, there's exceptions to those statements - godmetals presumably have a higher Investiture to metal ratio, ultra strong Allomancy gets more Investiture per mass of metal and a higher burn rate, and duralumin overcomes the burn rate limit. But the vast majority of Allomancers don't have access to godmetals, duralumin, or the Bands or Elend/TLR level strength. (When atium was available only electrum Mistings or Mistborn could use it, and duralumin is Mistborn-only too.)