Metals in Fabrials

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

It's mentioned in mistborn that allomantical mixtures for alloys are significantly different to general sources of these alloys.

So, do Artifabrians know this on Roshar? The concepts of different metals having different effects is relatively new, and soulcasted metal can be a major source of what they use for these cages, making it much easier to shape into exactly what they want.

 

If they aren't aware, would there be a significant change in performance from the ideal metals?

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, Ookla the Ansible said:

It's mentioned in mistborn that allomantical mixtures for alloys are significantly different to general sources of these alloys.

So, do Artifabrians know this on Roshar? The concepts of different metals having different effects is relatively new, and soulcasted metal can be a major source of what they use for these cages, making it much easier to shape into exactly what they want.

 

If they aren't aware, would there be a significant change in performance from the ideal metals?

Unlikely that Rosharan Artefabrians are aware of Alloy percentages on how that degrades effectiveness. Roshar is way behind on sciences like Metallurgy - because they have soul casting and don't have much use for the non-magical solution, or the information that knowledge provides. They may get there eventually - and worldhoppers with access to both planets became very interested in these questions after Navani's lecture. WoBs (not directly applicable, but implies this answer):

Spoiler

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Oversleep

I got a question about this and last week's epigraph.

The metals Fused use. How come nobody knows, guesses or even suspects that aluminium and its alloys are Investiture resistant? They know you can Soulcast something into aluminium, so they should also know it's impossible to Soulcast aluminium into something else.

And once they know about metal that cannot be Soulcast, they start experimenting with fabrials - they used that in construction of Fourth Bridge - and then the logical step is to test it against Shardblades.Probably experimenting with alloys of aluminium, too.

Yet the metal Fused use to make weapons resistant to Shardweapons is a mystery to them?

I feel like I'm missing something here.

Brandon Sanderson

They're getting to answers here. Problem is, metallurgy just isn't a big science on Roshar. I feel it's one of those things that is more easy to see externally than internally--and do remember that there are things like god metals (Shardblades, for example) that also behave strangely around investiture. They have far more experience with those than aluminum, which is more of a little historical oddity to them than a big revolutionary part of science. Add to that the fact that some of the metals the fused are using aren't aluminum, and...well, I don't think it's as obvious a leap as you're making it out to be.

ImBuGs

So the Fused's fabrials are not 100% aluminum based? Or they are and they are struggling to reach that conclusion?

Brandon Sanderson

I think what you're asking will be answered in the book, so I'll RAFO for now.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As (Nov. 4, 2020)

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Questioner

In the first epigraphs in Rhythm of War, we get Navani's lecture on the different metals, and it talks about how the different metals can do different things to fabrials. Have all of the 16 metals in Allomancy been tried in relation to fabrials?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Questioner

Have they discovered any others with different effects?

Brandon Sanderson

Any others that she didn't talk about? I don't know. I'm gonna say no, but it's possible that there's one I'm not thinking of. Let's just say that certain people in the cosmere are very aware of this now, and are very quickly experimenting with the metals Navani is not able to get a hold of easily.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

 

Hope that helps

Edited December 18, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG