Random Theory: 67 Allomantic metals

[callumke]

From my signing with Brandon on tAoL tour, I asked him

Q. Are there 50 Allomantic Metals?

A. "Nearly. Does Harmony have a metal?"

Q. Is that an alloy of Lerasium and Atium?<

A. "You're along the right lines."

(full questions here)

This got me thinking, and so now I present the 67 Allomantic Metals!!

16 Natural metals

Atium and 16 "Atiumatic" Metals (Including Malatium)

Lerasium and 16 "Lerasiumatic" Metals

The alloy of Atium and Lerasium, "Sazium" and 16 "Saziumatic" Metals

Total: 16 natural metals + 3 god metals + 48 god metal alloys = 67 metals

If this is true, then even given the metals we know, most of Allomancy (and Feruchemy and Hemalurgy) is unknown.

And no, I'm not going to try and guess the powers of most of these metals. The only one I will posit is "Sazium", which turns a normal person into a full Feruchemist, and some of its alloys might turn people into Ferrings.

[TheChronicFeruchemist]

This is awesome! It is too bad we don't have more alloys like malatium yet. Then we could start guessing as to what these things could be.

[Aeshdan]

From my signing with Brandon on tAoL tour, I asked him

Q. Are there 50 Allomantic Metals?

A. "Nearly. Does Harmony have a metal?"

Q. Is that an alloy of Lerasium and Atium?<

A. "You're along the right lines."

(full questions here)

This got me thinking, and so now I present the 67 Allomantic Metals!!

16 Natural metals

Atium and 16 "Atiumatic" Metals (Including Malatium)

Lerasium and 16 "Lerasiumatic" Metals

The alloy of Atium and Lerasium, "Sazium" and 16 "Saziumatic" Metals

Total: 16 natural metals + 3 god metals + 48 god metal alloys = 67 metals

If this is true, then even given the metals we know, most of Allomancy (and Feruchemy and Hemalurgy) is unknown.

And no, I'm not going to try and guess the powers of most of these metals. The only one I will posit is "Sazium", which turns a normal person into a full Feruchemist, and some of its alloys might turn people into Ferrings.

i'm guessing that the god-alloy properties are mirrors of the base metals. For example, I would guess that Larasium alloys produce Mistings, Sazedium (which is how it should probably be spelled, considering that Leras and Ati used their full names) alloys produce ferrings when eaten. Maybe each Sazium alloy can store the corresponding Allomancy. i.e. "Harmonious Steel" stores the Allomantic power to push on metals.

[Wispsy]

Don't forget that it is only consuming lerasium tht makes one an allomancer, burning it does something else

[Commander Spoonface]

If you remove the 16 alloys of "Sazium", you get 51, which is closer to the ballpark number you asked. The way you calculated it does make sense, though I think 67 is an odd number for it to come out as. I think that 64 is a more likely number, somehow, which could result from 4 groups of 16 metals. Maybe it works like this:

16 Normal Metals

Atium and 15? alloys it has= 16

Lerasium+15=16

"Sazium"+15=16

16+16+16+16=64.

There could be other combinations, such as:

16 Normal metals,

Lerasium+16=17

Atium+16=17

16+17+17=50

Add an alloy of Lerasium and Atium and you get 51, or "nearly" 50.

[Eric]

Hate to spoil this theory, but from the Brandonothology:

17th Shard: Are there a limited amount of atium and lerasium alloys for each metal?

Brandon: Hmm, yes…I suppose there would be but there are…

17th Shard: More than sixteen?

Brandon: Yeah, way more than sixteen.

17th Shard: Oh wow. Okay. That's fascinating. More than sixteen and less than infinite.

Brandon: Yes.

The God Metal alloys don't seem to count to that "nearly 50". I think there are simply undiscovered metals. Tin and Lead make Allomantic Pewter, Copper and Tin make Allomantic Bronze, and Copper and Zinc make Allomantic Brass, so there's examples of metals having more than one alloy.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Eric

[Commander Spoonface]

Hate to spoil this theory, but from the Brandonothology:

The God Metal alloys don't seem to count to that "nearly 50". I think there are simply undiscovered metals. Tin and Lead make Allomantic Pewter, Copper and Tin make Allomantic Bronze, and Copper and Zinc make Allomantic Brass, so there's examples of metals having more than one alloy.

So there are more than 16 basic Allomantic metals?

[TheChronicFeruchemist]

I'd like to suggest we have the symbols for at least four. Chapters 19 through 22 of final empire have unknown symbols. I haven't gone through the other books in the trilogy to check. None of the metals seem to have any direct relation to lerasium or atium and are rather simple in design. I have no idea what they could be but I am working on it.

Edit: I just checked, Well has the same four unknown symbols for chapters 19 through 22 in the exact same order as final empire. Yes they are in the different style but they correspond the exact same way that the rest of the alphabet does.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Freja

[Eric]

Brandon has said repeatedly that the table of 16 is an in-universe creation. 48 (3 x 16) is pretty close to 50, which would preserve the law of 16.

Heck, Alloy of Law even hints at this:

There are multiple Allomantically neutral aluminum alloys.

[Zas678]

Note that Brandon will change things that he's said before. Whatever has been most recently asked is most right. So for example, he talked about how kandra weren't going to use human bodies anymore, but then he goes ahead and uses the "Faceless Immortals", which are Kandra wearing human bodies going around doing Harmony's will (mostly).

[callumke]

Note that Brandon will change things that he's said before. Whatever has been most recently asked is most right. So for example, he talked about how kandra weren't going to use human bodies anymore, but then he goes ahead and uses the "Faceless Immortals", which are Kandra wearing human bodies going around doing Harmony's will (mostly).

I was thinking this too.

When I asked Brandon if there were 50 metals, I explained I got that number from 16 natural metals, 16 Lerasiumatic Metals, 16 Atiumatic Metals and Learsium and Atium themselves.

I got the impression that he said nearly to that logic more so than the number 50. And if there are many more metals, then the Metallic Arts are hugely more complicated. Being a Mistborn would be incredibly powerful. Maybe that's why he has got rid of them (at least until the Urban trillogy.)

[Pechvarry]

Unless he did something like separating mistborns by type. Like, "Any new mistborns cannot burn atium or its alloys, since they've been replaced with new temporal metals." And then you'd have standard mistborns, atium mistborns, sazedium mistborns, etc. Highly unlikely, though.

I'm really not keen on whole new slews of powers involving the god metals. If there's such a thing as a Lerasium-Pewter Ferring with distinctly different powers than everything we've ever seen, we'll never know about it barring some sort of cah-razy catastrophic event causing the 2-3 god metals to become common-use. If you could find any of them, they'd be priceless artifacts.

Imagine spending heaps of wealth to buy yourself Michelangelo's Pietà just so you can hit it with a hammer every once in a while to temporarily get some super powers.

[Commander Spoonface]

Unless he did something like separating mistborns by type. Like, "Any new mistborns cannot burn atium or its alloys, since they've been replaced with new temporal metals." And then you'd have standard mistborns, atium mistborns, sazedium mistborns, etc. Highly unlikely, though.

Actually, I think that makes a great deal of sense. As far as I can remember, the only time we are specifically told it's either one or all is by Kelsier, who also said there are no Atium mistings, and thought that there were only ten basic allomatic metals. In the Alloy of Law we see that Feruchemy has split into abilities like Allomancy, and a lot of things have changed since the HoA. It's entirely possible that any new Mistborns could be very different from the ones we are familiar with.

[Thought]

Note that Brandon will change things that he's said before. Whatever has been most recently asked is most right. So for example, he talked about how kandra weren't going to use human bodies anymore, but then he goes ahead and uses the "Faceless Immortals", which are Kandra wearing human bodies going around doing Harmony's will (mostly).

I'd propose that what he said and what he did are actually fairly well in line with each other.

Keep in mind that most kandra need a body to digest in order to mimic the muscles and flesh and, particularly, the specific features. TenSoon was unusually skillful in that he didn't need one. Indeed, his captors assumed that he had digested the original body of the bones they had given him, because he looked very human. The implication is that they were expecting a fairly non-humanish appearance.

When Sanderson said that the Kandra weren't going to "use" human bodies anymore, he may have meant that they weren't going to digest them. It might even have meant that they weren't going to use human bones anymore. But, what about the artificial, humanoid-but-not-human frames that we see in HoA? A kandra using one of those would appear humanoid, and most wouldn't have the experience needed to appear like a real person. They'd, presumably, appear somewhat indistinct. Faceless, you might say.

[Aeshdan]

I'd like to suggest we have the symbols for at least four. Chapters 19 through 22 of final empire have unknown symbols. I haven't gone through the other books in the trilogy to check. None of the metals seem to have any direct relation to lerasium or atium and are rather simple in design. I have no idea what they could be but I am working on it.

Edit: I just checked, Well has the same four unknown symbols for chapters 19 through 22 in the exact same order as final empire. Yes they are in the different style but they correspond the exact same way that the rest of the alphabet does.

I think those are the four new natural metals (cadmium, bendalloy, chomnium, nicrosil) which we already have. 16 is clearly a number of power in the Cosmere, so it woudl make sense that there are 16 natural allomantic metals.