Wax's earring

[Moogle]

I was basing the phrase "spiritually aligned" on a WoB that I vaguely recall about how burning lerasium changed someone, but I can't seem to find it now so I'm no longer sure if that's exactly what I read. The closest I can come to it is this:

 

This doesn't say that it increases your Innate Investiture, but that it alters your sDNA.

 

The way I'm interpreting this is that the Spiritweb and the metal are acting a bit like a lock and key. You swallow one of the sixteen metals and assuming that your Spiritweb is aligned/configured/encoded (do we have proper terminology for this?) correctly, you get to draw on an external source of Investiture that powers the ability. I don't see why additional Investiture would be required in the Allomancer in order to power the abilities.

 

Well, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of there being this "more perfect" set of sDNA. Like, the genes slowly become degraded as you have kids? It doesn't really seem like real biology, and I guess that's not a good reason, but it just doesn't seem to fit.

 

As a possible model, perhaps your sDNA ends up saying "hey, I have a link to Preservation!" and then when you Snap this link is finally uncovered. It forms a "conduit", and what determines your power as an Allomancer is how "wide" this conduit is (it can let through more Investiture at once, for more power - do stronger Mistborn use up metals at a faster rate, incidentally?) - which is directly related to how much "Investiture" you can use constructing the pipe - if you burn lerasium, you have more Investiture, so you can widen the pipe.

 

If you've got more Investiture to construct the pipe with, it takes a stronger Snapping because it's harder to move all the Investiture into the right "place" without Ruin's Investiture interfering with it.

 

Kids inherit their Investiture from each parent, so if a strong Allomancer marries a Muggle, then their children will be weaker. I've never been able to ask Brandon about Allomancy genetics and whether or not two lerasium Mistborn would have had kids just as strong as them, but I like this model for its simplicity.

 

Also, this provides a mechanism for why kids might have half the Investiture of their parents, but aren't half as strong (instead being 90% as strong or whatever) - the Investiture needed to reinforce the conduit/make it wider increases quadratically or something because the surface area of a pipe increases with its radius squared. (I was hoping for logarithmic, but this works with the analogy).

 

I don't know. I've been talking over Allomancy mechanics with people for ages now, and there's very little that's certain.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Moogle

[Pathfinder]

Could it just be Occam's Razor and its Harmony helping him through the piercing, or the mists? I do not recall in the case of Spook, but I thought even if you got a power from a hemalurgic spike, you still needed to ingest the metal to burn it. Or does spiked individuals basically have an unlimited supply of metals as long as they spike granting the power remains in their body?

[Moogle]

Could it just be Occam's Razor and its Harmony helping him through the piercing, or the mists? I do not recall in the case of Spook, but I thought even if you got a power from a hemalurgic spike, you still needed to ingest the metal to burn it. Or does spiked individuals basically have an unlimited supply of metals as long as they spike granting the power remains in their body?

 

Taking in the mists lets you 'burn' them as if they were any metal, and Harmony can certainly direct-power people. Wax was in the mist at that time, and when he left the mist he ran out of his possible-pewter-power. It definitely seems he took in the mist to power his probable-pewter. (The mists originally fled from those using Hemalurgy, but now there's two types of mists, so Wax could have been in the "Ruinmist" which would have powered it, or maybe Sazed can just override that now.)

Edited August 27, 2014 by Moogle

[BlackYeti]

Well, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of there being this "more perfect" set of sDNA. Like, the genes slowly become degraded as you have kids? It doesn't really seem like real biology, and I guess that's not a good reason, but it just doesn't seem to fit.

 

I might not be doing a good job at explaining myself.    I wasn't intending to imply that some sets of sDNA are in some way "superior" to others: that would be highly elitist, and I hate that sort of attitude, so please understand that I did not want to come across like that. Lack of strength in Allomancy or any other magic is not worse than having such strength, e.g. Dockson was just as important a member of Kelsier's crew as anyone else (and more essential to it's operation than some) despite his lack of powers.

 

I'm thinking of it a little bit like intelligence. Some people are more clever than others, and some are a lot more clever (and again this doesn't make them better than anyone else). They are not more clever however because of some magical property that has been added to their genome, but because of how their DNA has been encoded. I'm merely extending this idea to the sDNA for a persons Allomantic strength.

 

As a possible model, perhaps your sDNA ends up saying "hey, I have a link to Preservation!" and then when you Snap this link is finally uncovered. It forms a "conduit", and what determines your power as an Allomancer is how "wide" this conduit is (it can let through more Investiture at once, for more power - do stronger Mistborn use up metals at a faster rate, incidentally?) - which is directly related to how much "Investiture" you can use constructing the pipe - if you burn lerasium, you have more Investiture, so you can widen the pipe.

 

If you've got more Investiture to construct the pipe with, it takes a stronger Snapping because it's harder to move all the Investiture into the right "place" without Ruin's Investiture interfering with it.

 

 This is much like what I was suggesting actually, the main difference being that the sDNA is itself defining how wide the conduit is and thereby how difficult it is for them to Snap. I do like the idea that it is Ruin's conflicting Investiture that requires Snapping to take place. It fit's well with the analogy to a supersaturated solution, and I think that it could work with both models.

 

It might help if we compare Allomantic Snapping to Snapping (for lack of a better term) on Roshar. Both require some level of trauma to occur that allows them to access some external Investiture. However on Roshar, you still need to act in a manner that will attract a spren and presumably form a similar type of conduit with that spren. Then based on your subsequent actions your powers can potentially increase, presumably through the widening of the conduit. I don't see that you are gaining any additional Investiture for the conduit to widen, so what is going on? Has some system been set up where, by saying the words of your respective order, your sDNA is actually being altered? (If so, this could work with your model as well.) Could Roshar instead have an entirely different method of Snapping that instead of being instantaneous, works gradually through multiple steps?

 

As for the rate of consumption of metals being relative to the strength of the Allomancer: I hadn't considered this before, but I can't see why this wouldn't be the case. Assuming that a specific amount of a metal equates to a set ammount of Investiture (this must be true at least of atium and lerasium, since they are the Investiture), then someone getting more Investiture from them, must be burning through them faster.

 

Kids inherit their Investiture from each parent, so if a strong Allomancer marries a Muggle, then their children will be weaker. I've never been able to ask Brandon about Allomancy genetics and whether or not two lerasium Mistborn would have had kids just as strong as them, but I like this model for its simplicity.

 

Also, this provides a mechanism for why kids might have half the Investiture of their parents, but aren't half as strong (instead being 90% as strong or whatever) - the Investiture needed to reinforce the conduit/make it wider increases quadratically or something because the surface area of a pipe increases with its radius squared. (I was hoping for logarithmic, but this works with the analogy).

 

I don't know. I've been talking over Allomancy mechanics with people for ages now, and there's very little that's certain.

 

Your maths is a little bit wrong here. The area of a circle is determined by the square of the radius (πr²). The surface area of a pipe is determined by the circumference of the pipe (2πr) multiplied by its length. So assuming that all conduits are of the same length, this means that the surface area of the pipe would increase linearly with the length of the radius.

 

This could also be accounted for in the way that the spiritual genes that both parents pass on interact with each other. Genetics is extremely complicated, and by adding an additional two types of DNA, I can only see it becoming more so. I definitely agree with how little with can say for certain.