mistborns I just received a stomach transplant from a Mistborn. Can either of us burn metals in it, or is my new stomach Allomantically inert?

[ReverentRevenant]

Let’s say the Mistborn’s still alive afterwards. (It’s a partial organ donation and someone’s used Regrowth to help the two stomach pieces heal and grow back the missing parts).

If I swallowed some metals, would I have any ability to convert that into Investiture? Would they be able to? Or does it just turn into a no-using-Investiture situation?

Actually, is there any way for a Mistborn to burn metals if their stomach’s outside of their body? (Say, it’s hooked up to a machine that keeps the cells alive.)

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

38 minutes ago, ReverentRevenant said:

Let’s say the Mistborn’s still alive afterwards. (It’s a partial organ donation and someone’s used Regrowth to help the two stomach pieces heal and grow back the missing parts).

Organ transplant with Cosmere healing are a funny thing that hasn't been shown yet. WOB states that depending on one's self-perception, healing with a transplanted organ can go really well or really badly if you do not subconsciously accept the new organ as part of you. Imagine having the transplant for the stomach, then having the healing done, then the healing Investiture ignores the new stomach and tries to grow a new one instead.

Doesn't sound like a good time.

41 minutes ago, ReverentRevenant said:

If I swallowed some metals, would I have any ability to convert that into Investiture? Would they be able to? Or does it just turn into a no-using-Investiture situation?

Allomancy is part of one's soul, not one's body. So no, you would not be able to gain an Allomantic ability through a transplanted stomach, you'd just get a regular stomach and a lot of wasted time and likely money.

42 minutes ago, ReverentRevenant said:

Actually, is there any way for a Mistborn to burn metals if their stomach’s outside of their body? (Say, it’s hooked up to a machine that keeps the cells alive.)

Allomancers don't need to burn metals in their stomach, anywhere in their bodies will do, like piercings for instance. Its just that the stomach is an easy place to put metals.

Outside of the body? Maybe, but it would require some very esoteric Invested Arts like Bondsmithing to pull it off.

There is an instance of this kind of thing, spoilers if you haven't read rhythm of War yet.

Spoiler

In Rhythm of War, one of the Heralds, Ishar, who has thousands of years of practice with Bondsmithing abilities, the ability to form and control the Spiritual property of Connection, was able to use his powers on some Windrunners and Connect their bodies to the ground, which led to the Stormlight in their bodies to flow out of their bodies because their souls were temporarily tricked into thinking that the planet was part of their physical body, leading to the disperisment of any Stormlight they had as it tried to fill the planet.

 

So maybe, if one is a very experienced Unbound Bondsmith like Ishar, one could use their power to connect an Allomancer to an external piece of metal and trick their soul into thinking it is part of their body, which could theoretically allow them to burn a piece of metal outside of their body.

So, the answer is 'technically yes', but I doubt we'll be seeing anything like it anytime soon.

[BigBadBagsworth He/him/his]

To add on to @JustQuestin2004, you could theoretically burn metals outside of your body, but it would take a level of skill greater than Jasnah’s, and a stupid amount of Feruchemical Zinc.

To explain, the reason that Mistborn can born metals inside their body and the reason metals in someone’s body are harder to push is the same: that in both cases, the Mistborn and everyone around them starts seeing the metal as part of the Mistborn, making their soul, which is made of investiture, infuse it, which makes it harder to push, and which provides the necessary connection to burn the metal by absorbing its investiture.

But connections can be forged, even by non-bondsmiths, by thinking hard of the two things you want to connect as similar, or as one. Dalinar and Navani do this frequently in WaT without any Stormlight or bondsmith powers. So, if you tapped enough zinc and had enough practice thinking and believing the absurd idea that the metal is part of you, you could get the brainpower to overwhelm the thoughts of anyone seeing you and the metal as separate, and the metal would become burnable and harder to push.

I’m not explaining it super well, but the TL;DR is that with enough practice and enough zinc, you can burn metals outside of your body.

[TheBillyGoatGruff]

Seeing as allomancy is part of someones spiritweb, the physical stomach isn' really relevant in the burning of the metals, so you must steal the aspect of Their spiritweb to do with allomancy, which is basically hemalurgy.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, BigBadBagsworth said:

To add on to @JustQuestin2004, you could theoretically burn metals outside of your body, but it would take a level of skill greater than Jasnah’s, and a stupid amount of Feruchemical Zinc.

To explain, the reason that Mistborn can born metals inside their body and the reason metals in someone’s body are harder to push is the same: that in both cases, the Mistborn and everyone around them starts seeing the metal as part of the Mistborn, making their soul, which is made of investiture, infuse it, which makes it harder to push, and which provides the necessary connection to burn the metal by absorbing its investiture.

But connections can be forged, even by non-bondsmiths, by thinking hard of the two things you want to connect as similar, or as one. Dalinar and Navani do this frequently in WaT without any Stormlight or bondsmith powers. So, if you tapped enough zinc and had enough practice thinking and believing the absurd idea that the metal is part of you, you could get the brainpower to overwhelm the thoughts of anyone seeing you and the metal as separate, and the metal would become burnable and harder to push.

I’m not explaining it super well, but the TL;DR is that with enough practice and enough zinc, you can burn metals outside of your body.

This is a fun idea, but it's not confirmed.

Please don't phrase it as a solid tactic. I don't think we should take away newcomer's ability to tell interesting yet hypothetical possibilities from 100% cannon stuff.

Edited September 1, 2025 by Trusk'our

[alder24]

15 hours ago, BigBadBagsworth said:

To add on to @JustQuestin2004, you could theoretically burn metals outside of your body, but it would take a level of skill greater than Jasnah’s, and a stupid amount of Feruchemical Zinc.

To explain, the reason that Mistborn can born metals inside their body and the reason metals in someone’s body are harder to push is the same: that in both cases, the Mistborn and everyone around them starts seeing the metal as part of the Mistborn, making their soul, which is made of investiture, infuse it, which makes it harder to push, and which provides the necessary connection to burn the metal by absorbing its investiture.

This is not true. To burn metal you need to get it into your soul. It doesn't become your soul, no matter of your perception. Touching metal outside of your body is not enough to burn it as it's still outside your your soul. 

Also, when you burn metals you don't turn it into investiture, you're opening a path to the Spiritual Realm from which your draw investiture in - metal is just a keyhole that gives shape to the incoming investiture. Only god metals like Atium are the fuel itself as they are pure investiture in physical form.

F-zinc wouldn't allow you to change your self-perception like you proposed. It's not about how much you think of it, not about your brainpower, it's about believing in your new image that isn't too far off your spiritual ideal. F-zinc makes you think fast, but it's more or less allows you to make logical connections and reasoning faster. No matter how hard you are thinking and even believing in it, you can't grow wings and you can't make a metal outside of your body be considered a part of your spirit web.

Spoiler

Matthew Grady

Does a metal need to be swallowed to be burned? Or can it be injected or snorted?

Brandon Sanderson

It could be either of those two things. Yes. Basically, metal into the body in any way is going to work, generally. There's nothing magical about the stomach, even though it works the best when we talk about it. It's just more intermixing the nature of the metal with your soul in the cosmere, your Spiritual entity, is what gives them that ability.

YouTube Livestream 10 (June 18, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Atium's Mechanism

Atium is, indeed, different from the other metals. When you burn most Allomantic metals, it opens a conduit through which you can draw upon Preservation's power and use it in very specific ways.

Atium doesn't do that. Atium is, itself, a fuel. When you burn it, the metal itself provides the power. A subtle distinction, I know, but it has to do with where the power is coming from. Most Allomancy is fueled by Preservation, but atium and malatium are fueled by Ruin.

This metal doesn't quite belong on the table where it has been placed.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (April 1, 2010)

 

[BigBadBagsworth He/him/his]

22 hours ago, alder24 said:

Also, when you burn metals you don't turn it into investiture, you're opening a path to the Spiritual Realm from which your draw investiture in - metal is just a keyhole that gives shape to the incoming investiture. Only god metals like Atium are the fuel itself as they are pure investiture in physical form.

I’d never seen it that way before. Well, it doesn’t influence my argument.

 

22 hours ago, alder24 said:

This is not true. To burn metal you need to get it into your soul. It doesn't become your soul, no matter of your perception. Touching metal outside of your body is not enough to burn it as it's still outside your your soul. 

Why does putting a metal in your body put it in your soul? At the very least, it lets you burn it because of some sort of connection, which could be mimicked with Zinc. It’s already established that if enough people think of two things as connected, the things become connected. Well, F-Zinc doesn’t make you more logical, it makes you think faster. If you tried to solve two math problems of the same difficulty, you’d make the same number of mistakes with zinc as without, you’d just finish faster. 
Bands of Mourning spoilers:

Spoiler

Wax taps a whole bunch of zinc to have two paragraphs of internal monologue in a tenth of a second. He wasn’t any more logical than otherwise, he just thought faster.

Zinc would make it easier to make a connection by thinking about it, because you think about it more in the same timeframe.

It now occurs to me that Connecter ferrings would have a connection to all metals of the metallic arts (because both ferrying and metal are saturated with preservation’s investiture) and MIGHT be able to apply it to other metals to basically become a full feruchemist And/or Mistborn.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, BigBadBagsworth said:

Why does putting a metal in your body put it in your soul? At the very least, it lets you burn it because of some sort of connection

If I were to guess, this is because of the thing Brandon calls proximity to soul. Putting metal inside of your body will get it very close to your soul, close enough to alkow you to burn it. While I don't discount the possibility that a Bondsmith would be able to connect a Mistborn with a piece of metal to allow him to burn it outside of the body (Ishar did something similar in RoW), this would require a Bondsmith to work.

Spoiler

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.

DragonCon 2012 (Sept. 4, 2012)

 

1 hour ago, BigBadBagsworth said:

At the very least, it lets you burn it because of some sort of connection, which could be mimicked with Zinc. It’s already established that if enough people think of two things as connected, the things become connected. Well, F-Zinc doesn’t make you more logical, it makes you think faster. If you tried to solve two math problems of the same difficulty, you’d make the same number of mistakes with zinc as without, you’d just finish faster. 
Bands of Mourning spoilers:

  Hide contents

Wax taps a whole bunch of zinc to have two paragraphs of internal monologue in a tenth of a second. He wasn’t any more logical than otherwise, he just thought faster.

Zinc would make it easier to make a connection by thinking about it, because you think about it more in the same timeframe.

That's not how F-zinc work, that's not how thinking and consciousness affects things in Cosmere. Just because your thought process is faster with F-zinc, it doesn't mean you can mold things to your perception alone. Those things are affected by thinking of thousands of people that lived through centuries and one person thoughts won't change that, no matter the amount of F-zinc they use. Not to mention that those thoughts of others would still affect the object, you can't separate it from them.

Another thing to consider is that you're asking for something that goes against the Spiritual Ideal of a human being - no human is born with a metal inside of their body, not to mention outside of it. This is something that won't work because of Spiritual Ideal, just like you self-perception can't make you grow wings, no matter how hard you believe you have them. Thinking affects strongly pure investiture, but physical dead objects not so much. 

Spoiler

Alteroden

With [Feruchemical] zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from [Feruchemical] steel, except without [physical] speed?

Brandon Sanderson

I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.

Alteroden

So it lets you have intuitive leaps.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.

Kurkistan

So it's not like bullet time?

Brandon Sanderson

No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really--

Kurkistan

That’s steel’s thing?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s kind of steel's thing. They kind of overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

 

Spoiler

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

If Nightblood were in the cognitive realm and was used to stab a bead that was the cognitive representation of a castle, would the castle be destroyed in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If you could get Nightblood into the Cognitive Realm, then yes. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

What would happen to people who were in the castle at the time? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They wouldn't be affected (other than possibly plummeting to their death).

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

How about a carpet that had been in the castle for 50 years? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, 50 years most likely wouldn't be enough time. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

Is this like the "Ship of Theseus?" 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes

Oathbringer Portland signing (Nov. 16, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Krios (paraphrased)

If you have a form of manipulating your Identity and a form of healing, are you able to shapeshift or even evolve your body like growing wings?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You'd have to do some real work on your Spiritweb to make that work. It'd take more work than you're implying, but the [singers] for instance are doing this. It'll take a little more work, it's not just blanking your Identity. Hemalurgy would make it very easy, but also very evil. But what you want to achieve is possible.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

1 hour ago, BigBadBagsworth said:

It now occurs to me that Connecter ferrings would have a connection to all metals of the metallic arts (because both ferrying and metal are saturated with preservation’s investiture) and MIGHT be able to apply it to other metals to basically become a full feruchemist And/or Mistborn.

This wouldn't work for several reasons. Firstly, metal is just metal. There is nothing special in Scadrian metals, they aren't saturated with Preservation's investiture, they are almost no different from metals from any other part of Cosmere. Secondly, connecting to metals won't grant you powers as it's not metals that gives you powers, it's your Spirit Web that does it. There is Spiritual DNA in which powers like Allomancy and Feruchemy are encoded, this is what Hemalurgy steals. Without ways to modify your Spiritual DNA, you can't get those powers - Lerasium does this, Hemalurgy does this too. 

Spoiler

Questioner (paraphrased)

In order to use magic from one world on another world, do they need a bit of [the first world's] Shard with you?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It helps a lot. But there are other ways to do it. What's going on in the Cosmere is people have 3 sets of DNA. They have Physical DNA, Spiritual DNA, and Cognitive DNA. Their Spiritual DNA is what encodes the magic system into them, their Investiture. So if you can find a way to rewrite your Spiritual DNA, you can do all kinds of funky things. That's what Hemalurgy does. It rips off a piece of someone else's soul, staples it to yours. So if you went with a Hemalurgic spike to the right place, ripped off a piece of someone's soul and stapled it to yourself, you could create short circuits that will let you do all kinds of goofy stuff.

Words of Radiance Washington, DC signing (March 20, 2014)

 

Spoiler

Zmann966

Is the metal on Scadrial specially Invested? Can an Allomancer use metals from other planets?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2)

Metal is a key, not the source of power itself. Most is not specially Invested. It glows because of the power seeking to come through it, not because of the power within it.

#SandersonChat Twitter Q&A with Audible.com (Feb. 4, 2016)