Feruchemical Purity

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

The need for metals to be either completely pure or absolutely precise in their ratios for alloys is very important in Allomancy. Burning an impure metal can make you very sick or even kill you if it is bad enough. Burning one that's almost correct will work but to a lesser degree.

 

What about Feruchemy? Does the metal purity matter as much as it does in Allomancy? What happens if you attempt to store or tap in an impure metal mind?

 

For that matter what of Hemalurgy? Same questions. Suppose my Pewter spike is 12% lead instead of 9%. What happens?

[Moogle]

I don't believe there's a known answer to the question. I think the answer is that an impure alloy in Feruchemy would 'leak' a lot of the charge placed into it, so for example you put an hour's worth of strength into an impure pewtermind but only get a half hour out. Hemalurgy is similar, in that you spike someone and only get half their power or whatever. An impure alloy is probably less 'sticky' for Investiture and so it leaks - an impure gemstone in Stormlight probably doesn't hold as much Stormlight and leaks what it has more quickly.

[Newan he/him]

My guess is that an impure metalmind would hold less charge.  I like the leaking idea, and I expect that holds true for hemalurgy, but since feruchemy is all about balance, I think it would make sense for the charge to hold.  

[Stormwalker]

I think the answer is that an impure alloy in Feruchemy would 'leak' a lot of the charge placed into it, so for example you put an hour's worth of strength into an impure pewtermind but only get a half hour out.

 

I'm not so sure about this: In allomancy, one has to seemingly burn the whole metal at once, but this isn't necessarily true for feruchemy or hemalurgy.

 

For example, I would imagine that one can use any amount of copper for a metalmind. Even, theoretically, one atom of copper (although the quantity would surely be negligible). However, this would suggest that if you had a piece of metal that was, say, 98% copper, 2% zinc, then, when trying to store memories, you would be able to store them in the copper part of the metalmind (i.e., the 98%). Thus, the compound acts like a regular coppermind, except that the effective size is (in this case slightly) reduced. I can see no reason for there to suddenly be any leakage.

 

Now, for alloys, we can only assume that the same reasoning works.* Thus if you have 1 unit** of pewter made with 12% lead and 88% tin, it would act like you had ~96.7% of a unit of allomantic pewter (9% lead, 91% tin) and the remaining ~3.3% of a unit as pure lead. You would then store your strength in the allomantic pewter part as normal. Again, the effective size of the metalmind is decreased, but there is no leakage.

 

My explanation for the inevitable question of "if that is the case, then why can't you store senses in your pewtermind (using the tin part)?" is that it is a perception problem. Same goes for any other metals that happen to have both tin and lead in them.

 

A similar thing would then happen for hemalurgy.

 

Footnotes:

*I should note here that I don't really understand the concept of alloys, but I will assume they have no more structure than just a bunch of the constituent elements mixed together.

 

**I use 'units' here because I don't know if the alloy ratios are by number of atoms, by weight, or by volume

[Topomouse he/him]

Response from an engineer:

Metallurgy is pretty complicated, the properties of your metal depend not only on the composition but also on the exact process of solidification.

For a pure metal (i.e. iron, tin, copper) the atoms form a mostly regular matrix formed of repeated cells. When you put in other components and make an alloy the new atoms deforms this matrix by substituting atoms of the main metal in the grid or by lodging themselves in the gaps inside each cell. So, the properties of an alloy don't depend just from the sum of its components but also on their interactions.

 

Consequences for a Cosmere-savvy reader:

The difference between a perfect alloy and an imperfect one( or a pure metal) is not just Cognitive but also Physical, so I don't think it's just a matter of capacity of the metalmind.

Also, when you say "leak" do you mean that the charge in the metalmind diminish with the passing of time, or that you can tap it for less then what you stored but still a fixed amount? The former seems more like Hemalurgy, so I think it's the latter.

Another possibility is that with an impure metalmind there is a sort of resistence in storing and tapping, so you have to both in great intensity in order to get power in or out of the metalmind.

[Stormwalker]

Response from an engineer:

Metallurgy is pretty complicated, the properties of your metal depend not only on the composition but also on the exact process of solidification.

For a pure metal (i.e. iron, tin, copper) the atoms form a mostly regular matrix formed of repeated cells. When you put in other components and make an alloy the new atoms deforms this matrix by substituting atoms of the main metal in the grid or by lodging themselves in the gaps inside each cell. So, the properties of an alloy don't depend just from the sum of its components but also on their interactions.

 

Consequences for a Cosmere-savvy reader:

The difference between a perfect alloy and an imperfect one( or a pure metal) is not just Cognitive but also Physical, so I don't think it's just a matter of capacity of the metalmind.

Also, when you say "leak" do you mean that the charge in the metalmind diminish with the passing of time, or that you can tap it for less then what you stored but still a fixed amount? The former seems more like Hemalurgy, so I think it's the latter.

Another possibility is that with an impure metalmind there is a sort of resistence in storing and tapping, so you have to both in great intensity in order to get power in or out of the metalmind.

 

Ok. So this pretty much refutes my explanation/theory for alloys, although not my argument for (im)pure metals.

 

Out of curiosity, do we actually have explicit evidence that the process of making the alloy matters for allomancy? I only remember them talking about the amounts of the metals. Given how complicated it sounds, and the number of ways you could possibly try to make the alloy, it would seem that it would take a long time to find the right alloy for use in allomancy. Maybe they could have found bendalloy by tAoL time, but Vin & crew did seem to find duralumin pretty quickly (and they didn't even know the right metals to use at the time).

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Ok. So this pretty much refutes my explanation/theory for alloys, although not my argument for (im)pure metals.

 

Out of curiosity, do we actually have explicit evidence that the process of making the alloy matters for allomancy? I only remember them talking about the amounts of the metals. Given how complicated it sounds, and the number of ways you could possibly try to make the alloy, it would seem that it would take a long time to find the right alloy for use in allomancy. Maybe they could have found bendalloy by tAoL time, but Vin & crew did seem to find duralumin pretty quickly (and they didn't even know the right metals to use at the time).

Well, this wouldn't have come up much in the original trilogy, since with medieval technology there weren't too many options for how to create alloys. Correct me if I'm wrong (really, my expertise on this matter consists of what I can pull off of Google and Wikipedia) but really until electricity there weren't many options and it mostly came down to some variation of melt and mix. Most of the other modern techniques I'm skimming through all seem to require electricity in some form or another. Now with electricity starting to become a thing in Alloy of Law, who knows?

[Moogle]

For example, I would imagine that one can use any amount of copper for a metalmind. Even, theoretically, one atom of copper (although the quantity would surely be negligible). However, this would suggest that if you had a piece of metal that was, say, 98% copper, 2% zinc, then, when trying to store memories, you would be able to store them in the copper part of the metalmind (i.e., the 98%). Thus, the compound acts like a regular coppermind, except that the effective size is (in this case slightly) reduced. I can see no reason for there to suddenly be any leakage.

 

My explanation for the inevitable question of "if that is the case, then why can't you store senses in your pewtermind (using the tin part)?" is that it is a perception problem. Same goes for any other metals that happen to have both tin and lead in them.

 

We know that the atomic structure is what acts as a key for Investiture to be filtered into useful effects, so I would expect that since alloys have a different effect then they should act as a different sort of key and you should be completely unable to store memories in a sufficiently impure coppermind.

 

Metals are (apparently from a quick skim of a few google articles using my one university-level chem course knowledge) like crystals. Assuming this crystalline structure is what acts as the key, impurities would manifest here and there as one atom being replaced by something else, or else impurities would find their way into the gaps in the crystalline structure. Either way, the key is not the same, and so the metalmind shouldn't work. A few atoms worth of impurities won't matter, as most of the structure is preserved, but I'd expect all impure metals to stop working very well Allomantically/Feruchemically at around the 5% mark (by number of atoms) of impurities. (Depends how many atoms need to be grouped to count as a key - obviously one is not enough, and most patterns don't need more than 9-10 atoms before you can say the pattern is just 'look at this, and repeat it', but maybe Investiture looks at groups of 100 atoms and if there's even one atom off from an impurity it invalidates the entire structure. This would mean even 1% worth of impurities, assuming it is evenly distributed, would completely ruin a metal for magic purposes.)

 

Also, when you say "leak" do you mean that the charge in the metalmind diminish with the passing of time, or that you can tap it for less then what you stored but still a fixed amount? The former seems more like Hemalurgy, so I think it's the latter.

Another possibility is that with an impure metalmind there is a sort of resistence in storing and tapping, so you have to both in great intensity in order to get power in or out of the metalmind.

 

My concept of a leak to me is that it's similar to how it works in Allomancy: you put your power into the impure metalmind, and some of it is stored properly and the rest of it does not 'stick' and is instead evaporated as the Investiture-equivalent of heat (which is what causes headaches for Allomancers using impure alloys). The charge will not reduce over time, it's just that storing is super inefficient - a pure metalmind could get you an hour of 1.5x strength if you spent an hour at 0.5x strength, but an impure metalmind would get you an hour of 1.25x strength if you spent an hour at 0.25x strength.

 

An analogy to resistance works well here. Pure metalminds are superconductors, impure are like regular resistors and lose some energy from a 'current' to heat.

 

It's like impure gemstones not being able to hold as much Stormlight because their structure is off. Indeed, WoB is that it's basically exactly the same:

ArsenoPyrite ()

I have a technical question here re: gemstones in The Stormlight Archive. How are the lines drawn between different types of gems? Emerald and Heliodor are both varieties of the mineral beryl. Emerald can get its color from trace amounts of chromium, vanadium and/or iron. Heliodor gets its color from iron combined with microscopic crystal defects. So, is the line between these two defined by color? If so, would a heliodor lose its usefulness if it were heated (which would turn it colorless or pale blue). Is it defined by trace elements—in which case, how do you deal with emeralds, or with aquamarine (the blue variety of beryl, which can also contain chromium or vanadium in small quantities and is mostly colored by iron)? Sorry for getting so technical, but this gem nerd needs to know!

Brandon Sanderson

I actually spent a long time working on this while building the world. You'd probably be amused by how long I spent on it. Chemically, many of them are actually very similar, as you pointed out. I tried doing the book originally with them all being different, not using any that were basically the same crystal with different colors, but it didn't work out. There weren't enough, and so I had to stretch to make it all work.

So, I went back to the original, and decided that color was enough to differentiate them. Just as steel and iron are very similar in the Mistborn world, emerald and heliodor can be very similar—but produce different effects. The idea here is that the physical items (like the metals or the crystals) provide a key by which magical interaction occurs.

So, in a long winded answer, a gemstone with an impure color would be considered like a bad alloy in the Mistborn magic—it either wouldn't work at all, or would work very poorly. The chemical and color signature needs to be of a specific variety to provide the proper key to accessing the power of transformation.

(source)

 

It's really hard to say without more information, though. A lot of people have brought up interesting ideas in this thread.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Moogle

[Stormwalker]

 

We know that the atomic structure is what acts as a key for Investiture to be filtered into useful effects, so I would expect that since alloys have a different effect then they should act as a different sort of key and you should be completely unable to store memories in a sufficiently impure coppermind.

 

Metals are (apparently from a quick skim of a few google articles using my one university-level chem course knowledge) like crystals. Assuming this crystalline structure is what acts as the key, impurities would manifest here and there as one atom being replaced by something else, or else impurities would find their way into the gaps in the crystalline structure. Either way, the key is not the same, and so the metalmind shouldn't work. A few atoms worth of impurities won't matter, as most of the structure is preserved, but I'd expect all impure metals to stop working very well Allomantically/Feruchemically at around the 5% mark (by number of atoms) of impurities. (Depends how many atoms need to be grouped to count as a key - obviously one is not enough, and most patterns don't need more than 9-10 atoms before you can say the pattern is just 'look at this, and repeat it', but maybe Investiture looks at groups of 100 atoms and if there's even one atom off from an impurity it invalidates the entire structure. This would mean even 1% worth of impurities, assuming it is evenly distributed, would completely ruin a metal for magic purposes.)

 

But I would think that with copper (or the other pure metals), the atomic structure is just a single atom of the element itself (as it is the smallest repeating unit in the crystal). So each atom of copper in the impure specimen would still individually match the allomantic atomic structure necessary for storing memories. As long as all the copper atoms are connected in the crystaline structure, they should then act as a group.

 

Put another way, my idea was that if you had a pure coppermind touching, say, a smaller piece of lead, then I think everyone would agree that you can still store memories in the copper. Similarly, if you had a lead core surrounded by pure copper, you would still be able to store memories without any inefficiency. You could then consider the case where you split up the lead core into two seperate pieces. Again, I think everyone would agree this doesn't hinder you. You can then proceed by induction: each step you mix up the lead a bit more. I see no reason why at some point you would suddenly either stop being able to store memories in the 'mind, or start storing them inefficiently. Thus one would think this should even apply at the molecular level—where the lead is mixed up with the copper so well, that it effectively is a homogenous crystal. The only thing that would stop you IMO, is eventually, for sufficiently impure copper, you would no longer perceive it as copper, and so you could no longer store memories in it.

[Oudeis he/him]

You can then proceed by induction: each step you mix up the lead a bit more. I see no reason why at some point you would suddenly either stop being able to store memories in the 'mind, or start storing them inefficiently.

 

I believe Topomouse answered this for us before, when he mentioned that alloying a metal isn't at all like pouring salt and pepper into a bowl and mixing it, it's more like baking a cake. Chemical reactions occur and the final product is not simply eggs mixed up with flour.

[Moogle]

But I would think that with copper (or the other pure metals), the atomic structure is just a single atom of the element itself (as it is the smallest repeating unit in the crystal). So each atom of copper in the impure specimen would still individually match the allomantic atomic structure necessary for storing memories. As long as all the copper atoms are connected in the crystaline structure, they should then act as a group.

 

There is a big difference between a single atom of something and a group of them connected in a lattice. I don't agree with your first assertion at all!

 

Example: Aluminum, when you have it at nanoscale levels (something like under 200 nm), can burn or is reactive or something. I imagine if you just had a chunk of aluminum that small and tried to burn it, it wouldn't work - there's something different about aluminum amounts that small and aluminum ones bigger, and Allomany wants the bigger one. (I may be completely off my rocker; I can't recall what exactly it was about it being so small that caused the effect.)

[Topomouse he/him]

I'll try explain what I meant a bit better.

These are some examples of the cells them make up the crystal lattice of a metal(in my previous post I said "matrix", sorry for my bad english):

 

 

 

Every metal is composed of a lattice of one type of these cells repeated in all directions of space. With a pure metal you just have a standard lattice, but if you have an alloy, the atoms of the alloyed metal will insert themselves in the lattice in various configurations:

 

 

 

As you see just one different atom disrupts the matrix in 2 dimensions. Now consider that there are a lot more extraneous atoms in a typical alloy, and that the cells are three-dimensional as I showed earlier, you will see that the lattice can change dramatically.

 

@Stormwalker: what you described, taking smaller and smaller pieces of copper and lead and mixing them could only work until you come close to molecular length. Up to that point you are just accosting two different lattice of two different metals, you could have a bit of mixing al the borders of each crystal but not much problems. But when you talk about alloy and/or metal impurities, you are talking about difference at molecular levels, with difference in the lattice.

[Stormwalker]

 

@Stormwalker: what you described, taking smaller and smaller pieces of copper and lead and mixing them could only work until you come close to molecular length. Up to that point you are just accosting two different lattice of two different metals, you could have a bit of mixing al the borders of each crystal but not much problems. But when you talk about alloy and/or metal impurities, you are talking about difference at molecular levels, with difference in the lattice.

 

Ok, I think I get it now. I was just thinking that the lattice structure didn't matter for a pure metal (as I thought it would always have the same crystal structure), and so the base unit would just be an atom. If there are multiple different types of possible lattices, then it makes sense that the base unit is made up of many molecules.

 

So if there are different types of lattices for pure metals as well (as I assume your first set of pictures is describing), would this mean that not all pure coppers work perfectly as a metalmind either (because it doesn't have the exact lattice structure of the 'ideal' allomantic copper)?

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

There's no mention of different molecular structures behaving differently for Allomancy. Granted this could be an oversight, but it does seem that given that different forms could occur naturally, this is something that would have been discovered in the pure metals unless all were mined and refined in exactly the same way from exactly the same vein of ore for a thousand years (extremely unlikely). Therefore, I would conclude that the specific molecular structure is not relevant to its purity for the purposes of Allomancy.

[Topomouse he/him]

I was about to answer no, what I meant with the picture is that different pure metals form different types of lattices, but it is actually possible.

For example: at ambient temperature iron is body-centered cubic, but at about 1000°C its stable form is face-centered cubic. Normally if you cool it from 1000°C to ambient temperature it shifts from face-centered to body-centered but if you cool it very quickly you could have the face-centered lattice at ambient temperature.

The process to obtain allomantically pure iron should be complicated enough that there is no way that someone could try to prepare allomantic iron and end up with the face-centered matrix by chance, but it's theoretically possible and it could actually change the metallic art properties of the metal.

For other pure metals, and even more for their alloys, the question would be more delicate, but it would still probably not be a problem unless you were actively trying to make this happen.

In order to have such a quick cooling you have to submerge the metal in a water or oil based solution, that's bound to introduce impurities in your metal. If you are trying to obtain a precise composition for an allomancer you not going to risk it just to make it cool faster unless you have a really good reason.

 

 

@killersquirrel: We have some Word of Brandon that the atomic structure does matter. Moogle quoted it earlier.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Ok. There is some evidence then though that at least it doesn't matter as much for Feruchemy since Sazed had no trouble storing weight in a random iron lock he found and it's rather doubtful that such a lock was made with Allomantic precision if such perfect precision is necessary.

[Topomouse he/him]

I had completely forgot about that, and I even re-read Hero of Ages last week. Well, I have to say that that is pretty strong evidence, apparently Feruchemy is less fussy about metal purity compared to Allomancy.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Hemalurgy probably is as well if the random sword the guard was using worked as a steel spike to give Spook Allomantic pewter and the Bronze earring the mother happened to have, even notably coated with gold, still worked to give Vin Allomantic bronze.

[Oudeis he/him]

Ok. There is some evidence then though that at least it doesn't matter as much for Feruchemy since Sazed had no trouble storing weight in a random iron lock he found and it's rather doubtful that such a lock was made with Allomantic precision if such perfect precision is necessary.

 

 

Hemalurgy probably is as well if the random sword the guard was using worked as a steel spike to give Spook Allomantic pewter and the Bronze earring the mother happened to have, even notably coated with gold, still worked to give Vin Allomantic bronze.

 

First, a couple of nitpicks.

 

The lock was steel. The grate was iron.

 

The earring was plated with silver, not gold.

 

End of nitpick, start of actual response.

 

We know the lock/grate worked; we don't know they worked well. Sazed stored for hours, and only needed to use the attributes for a couple of minutes, not even at all that much of a compounding mulitplier. Allomantic metals at impure percentages were said to work, just badly. Sazed's use could have been an inefficient use of feruchemy.

 

The earring... is interesting. It spent years outside of her body, yet still let her hear pierce copper better than anyone, ever. It seems to break more rules than just this one. This is bizarre and warrants further consideration. I admit it's good evidence for the case that impure metals work fine in hemalurgy... but it also contradicts what little we know of hemalurgy, and how it loses charge when outside of a body. So, like many things about Vin, this one specific data point might be an exceptional scenario.

 

Just my two clips.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

First, a couple of nitpicks.

 

The lock was steel. The grate was iron.

 

The earring was plated with silver, not gold.

 

End of nitpick, start of actual response.

 

You're right. I remembered the events but not the specifics correctly.

 

 

 

We know the lock/grate worked; we don't know they worked well. Sazed stored for hours, and only needed to use the attributes for a couple of minutes, not even at all that much of a compounding mulitplier. Allomantic metals at impure percentages were said to work, just badly. Sazed's use could have been an inefficient use of feruchemy.

 

It could I suppose be a factor of it working less efficiently, however this seems unlikely given Brandon's writing style. Given how much he usually writes in explicit detail about how his magic systems work and the complications around them, this seems a very odd omission. 

 

And bad alloys for allomancy don't always work just less efficiently. It is noted that most of the time a bad alloy will make you very sick or possibly even kill you. Only if the percentages are very close, only off by a slight bit, will the alloy work but less efficiently.

 

The earring... is interesting. It spent years outside of her body, yet still let her hear pierce copper better than anyone, ever. It seems to break more rules than just this one. This is bizarre and warrants further consideration. I admit it's good evidence for the case that impure metals work fine in hemalurgy... but it also contradicts what little we know of hemalurgy, and how it loses charge when outside of a body. So, like many things about Vin, this one specific data point might be an exceptional scenario.

 

This one I'm with you on. The earring is a bizarre anomaly that breaks the established hemalurgical rules in several ways. This bugged me a lot when reading the books. Same thing applies to Wax's earring in Alloy. He almost never wears it, and yet it has still been confirmed to carry a hemalurgic charge allowing Harmony to speak to him. Maybe we just don't understand this bit about time spent out of the body very well.

Edited September 19, 2014 by killersquirrel59

[Oudeis he/him]

It could I suppose be a factor of it working less efficiently, however this seems unlikely given Brandon's writing style. Given how much he usually writes in explicit detail about how his magic systems work and the complications around them, this seems a very odd omission. 

 

And bad alloys for allomancy don't always work just less efficiently. It is noted that most of the time a bad alloy will make you very sick or possibly even kill you. Only if the percentages are very close, only off by a slight bit, will the alloy work but less efficiently.

 

 

I'm in Hero of Ages now, I'll re-read that section. I feel like in the first scene, when he first decides to start storing traits, he touches the iron and steel, and makes some comment about how they're "pure enough." Still coincidence, but I believe it does get mentioned. When I get to that scene I will try to remember to come back to this thread and remark upon it.

 

Eh... the information we have is less specific, I think, than you are recalling. We know that if you try to burn a metal that has no allomantic properties whatsoever, it will kill you. Yet, Vin tries several possible aluminum alloys, and is sick, but not only were those percentages way off, they weren't even mixes of the right metals. Once she gets the metals right, and Terion makes her some duralumin, the very first ratio he tries works perfectly fine.

 

From this, and from Kelsier's first explanation to Vin, I suspect that a perfect alloy burns with peak efficiency. The correct alloy at bad percentages works poorly, without much detriment. If the ration is off by a ton, it will still work but make you sick. If you're not even mixing the right metals, it will make you sick and it won't work. And if you burn the wrong metal entirely, you die.

 

This is just one man's opinion. I'm going to re-read Kelsier's explanation near the end of part one of The Final Empire, and Vin when she talks with Ham and Elend about duralumin, and Vin in the scene when she's trying to Pewterdrag back to Luthadel at the end of Well of Ascension, to try to find more accurate information.

[king of nowhere]

yes, from vin experimenting aluminium alloys  and sazed storing attributes into random stuff, we can assume that probably metals work allomantically/feruchemically/hemalurgically with a tolerance for impurities of at least 5%, possibly greater.

 

As for the earrings, it is possible that once you stick a spike into a body, the spike stops leaking even if you then take it out.

[Oudeis he/him]

yes, from vin experimenting aluminium alloys  and sazed storing attributes into random stuff, we can assume that probably metals work allomantically/feruchemically/hemalurgically with a tolerance for impurities of at least 5%, possibly greater.

 

As for the earrings, it is possible that once you stick a spike into a body, the spike stops leaking even if you then take it out.

 

...randomly selected numbers are random. The general point is, I think, still relevant.

 

Earring: That's more-or-less exactly my personal theory, though I can think of no evidence for that. Basically the idea that there are three stages to a hemalurgic spike. Stage one is simply a blank spike with no charge. Stage two is after it's slain someone and gained a charge, but before this charge has been given to someone else. It's during this phase that it constantly loses power. The third stage, then, is after the spike has bonded to someone. It only grants the benefit when piercing flesh, but even when unattached, it remains "bonded" and the charge is stable.

 

There are a few flaws with the idea, or at least a few questions remaining. Wax's earring is made from bits of an Inquisitor's spike, meaning he's at least the second person it ever bonded. Does that mean a single Charged spike can bond twice? Does it ever return to Stage 2? Does the first person have to die before the spike can re-bond to someone else? If Elend had taken Vin's earring, while she was still alive, and stuck it in exactly the right spot of his own ear, would he have gained double-bronze?

 

Tangent: This makes me wonder something else. We know Wax's earring is from an Inquisitor spike. Does that necessarily mean it was never re-charged? After the Inquisitor died, and it was broken into pieces, it could still have been used to kill someone else and re-charge.

 

It's been debated and never resolved how exactly the Koloss worked. The text in the books is very unclear. Either the same iron spikes, with their initial charge, were used to turn a new person into a Koloss, or the spikes were all recharged by slaying people and THEN used to make a new Koloss. This might be a good question for Brandon, as it's difficult to see why the answer would possibly be secret, and yet it's very unclear, and might tell us a lot about hemalurgy if we know the answer.

 

Wax's earring being recently re-charged would answer a few of the questions people have had about how it has kept a charge for 300 years...

 

EDIT: Other random thoughts. I think I want to retract my phrasing, and not call the spike "bonded." I'm trying to liken it more to allomancy. There are certain things that react to Vin in certain ways because she's using hemalurgy, like the Mists and the Well, which react differently if she simply removes the earring. If the spike were "bonded" you'd imagine there'd be some residual trace of Ruin that would make her still scan as a "hemalurgist". I'm thinking of bronzepulses. You cannot tell that someone is a Misting, only that they are currently burning. So, basically, Vin, with her earring on the table next to her, is like Vin, with no metals, with a vial of bronze on the table next to her. Her spiritweb is still that of an allomancer. Unlike most people, she has the potential to take that vial and use it, at which point bronze could detect her. She has the potential to read as an Allomancer, but it's inactive, the way your computer is protected from power surges if you leave it turned off. It can't do anything, but that's a form of safety, itself.

 

I think that, similarly, when the earring is on the table, her spiritweb still has the potential for hemalurgy. The act of spiking adjusted them both. It manipulated the Spike to "close off" the charge, stabilize it, bring the spike to Phase 3. It also manipulated Vin's spiritweb to make her the lock that fits the key, but without the spike it's a static, stable change, like a misting with no metal. I dunno. Just one man's opinion.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Outis

[Moogle]

It could I suppose be a factor of it working less efficiently, however this seems unlikely given Brandon's writing style. Given how much he usually writes in explicit detail about how his magic systems work and the complications around them, this seems a very odd omission.

 

It sounds to me more like Sazed is just a bad (combat) Feruchemist and hasn't practiced enough to know when he's getting less efficiency out of metal.

 

The only metalminds he regularly taps are his copperminds. He doesn't do Wax's trick with being at 3/4 weight constantly. He's just not very... inquisitive, as to how Feruchemy works. See: Vin discovering duralumin, and Sazed never seeing what a duraluminmind or aluminummind did. (Also: electrumminds, malatiumminds...)

 

Sazed could have escaped the koloss for example by storing weight, tapping pewter, and jumping forward, then tapping weight (he'd go ridiculously far very quickly). Or crafting himself a handglider, and doing that same trick and being capable of limited flight. He could have killed Marsh himself by speedblitzing him while tapping pewter and weight and then crushing Marsh's head before Marsh could react. Instead... uh... well, he doesn't do that. He's not a warrior or a scientist, he's a religious scholar.

 

A big part of this lies on Terris culture. Obviously Sazed could never have been flashy with his powers, or he'd have ended up as a spike. Terris people were raised to be docile and unassuming, and I'm sure Sazed crushed any curiosity he had regarding his powers long before. Sazed as a character just doesn't work to explore Feruchemy in minute detail. Vin did work well for Allomancy - she had clear scientific curiosity, like when she tried burning one of Sazed's metalminds.

 

It's also quite possible the steel in the lock was Allomantic-grade. TLR himself would have equipped the kandra with their materials, or the kandra would have bought them with atium - leading to extremely high quality stuff, which I imagine means "Allomantic grade" in TFE.

 

As to how Hemalurgic charge decays, we investigated a number of models in a thread somewhere that I can't find now. A part of it is that it's really hard to determine how Allomantic power works - if your spike has twice as much Investiture, are you twice as powerful or some sort of flat amount more powerful? After hundreds of years, Wax's spike still provides what seems to be a pretty significant boost, though it's not powerful enough for him to notice he's burning the mists or anything. If you assume exponential decay and logarithmic power boosts with regard to charge, it makes no sense why the Inquisitors would have worried about spikes losing charge because they were outside a body...

Edited September 19, 2014 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

After hundreds of years, Wax's spike still provides what seems to be a pretty significant boost, though it's not powerful enough for him to notice he's burning the mists or anything. If you assume exponential decay and logarithmic power boosts with regard to charge, it makes no sense why the Inquisitors would have worried about spikes losing charge because they were outside a body...

 

It's only assumed that Wax's earring lets him burn Pewter, fueled by the Mists. There's very little in the way of evidence, this is at best a hypothesis. Also, there's no reason to assume any specific rate of decay; the curve could simply be much steeper than you assume, and then most of the problems with the math are gone.

 

Finally, a thought occurred to me today. We know Wax's earring came from an Inquisitor's spike. Do we actually expressly know it was never re-charged? For all we know, two days before it was given to him, it was used to kill someone and steal the hemalurgic charge, or Harmony could simply have used the half of him that is Ruin and charged it for free.

 

Or... this literally just occurred to me, so I haven't yet explored it to see if it makes sense, so it's a total brainstorm. There's a WoB that Sazed is doing "something" with all the extra Investiture of Ruin, to match the Investiture Preservation invested in humanity. Maybe it's this? Maybe he put all that extra energy into the hemalurgic spikes, so Pathian earrings aren't like typical hemalurgic spikes, they're being directly fueled by Ruin's power? It sorta fits the flavor, and it's a safe enough place to leave all that extra power without a lot of risk of it being evil. One of the biggest flaws that immediately occurs to me; while it's difficult to measure units of Divine Power, I still feel like it would take a LOT of charged spikes, even assuming each spike has more Investiture than the average human, to balance all the energy that must be invested in all of humanity.

 

I state again, this is a brainstorm that literally occurred to me since I started typing this reply, so I gratefully welcome any and all challenges that might help me refine my theory, or put it to bed entirely.