Aluminium/Chromium question

[Cam]

Allomancy is meant to be a net positive art, Aluminium and Chromium seem net negative (or at least net neutral)

Who thinks they'll do more than we know about?

[Dunkum he/him]

Well there is a WoB about Aluminum Savants:
 

Douglas
What benefit does an aluminum savant get? Yes, I know this would normally never happen because aluminum burns itself up. Suppose a mad scientist with a willing Mistborn test subject shoved a feeding tube down the Mistborn's throat to pump in a continuous stream of aluminum, replenishing it steadily so there's always a new unburned supply. Add another tube to pump out excess water if necessary. What would he discover? Alternatively, what would Sazed with his Shard-granted knowledge know?
Brandon Sanderson
Ha, that IS a little silly of a method. However, on the extreme end of aluminum, I have in the notes the possibility of cleansing the spirit of unwanted effects of other investitures. You'd get really good at this, and maybe even be able to cleanse the body of other impurities.

So they are potentially used for cleansing/purifying, which, in theory, could have beneficial effects

Edited January 30, 2015 by Dunkum

[Cam]

But it's still a power that seems to literally destroy investiture in a specific form, very much net negatively.

[Dunkum he/him]

Imagine you were fighting against a windrunner, and they lashed you upwards.  Being able to rid yourself of the lashing could be a useful ability.

 

The reason it is net positive is that the energy being used to create the effect, in this case the effect of removing investiture, is coming from outside of you, from preservation/harmony

[Cam]

I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm saying that unless it works by providing an equal and opposite force to what it destroys, (which is possible, but would have some really wierd implications) it is by definition end negative. Energy is lost overall.

[Oudeis he/him]

Well... to answer your question, you first have to understand that metal, apart from the God Metals, has no Investiture. They are a gateway to the power of Preservation, and something happens to the metal in the process that makes it go away. We say it gets "burned up" and we know it stops being in the allomancer's system, but besides that we honestly don't know what happens to it.

 

When you burn aluminum, just like with any allomancy, the power of Preservation flows into you. That power does something, restricted by the shape the metal channels it into. In this case, the power is told "find metal within this person's system and make it go away." Doing that does require energy, and it's not destroying the "energy within the metals" because there is no energy within the metals; economically speaking you can talk about the opportunity cost of the power you could have gotten by using up that metal in the process of getting Investiture, but that's not a physical law and nothing concrete is actually "lost", just because access is being denied to it. I can take a butcher knife and cut the power cord to my blender, and my blender will no longer be able to access the power grid, but that doesn't mean I've destroyed the electricity it was going to use.

 

Is the metal annihilated? Is it simply moved elsewhere? Is it converted directly into the spiritual realm? We frankly have no idea. But whatever happens to the metal, the power of Preservation summoned by Aluminum (or Chromium) makes it happen instantly, and the process does take power.

 

It's somewhat counter-intuitive, but as long as you realize that the metals themselves aren't actually Invested, it makes sense. Remember, Invested metal is harder to Push on, like filled metalminds, and normal, burnable steel is easy to Push on. It doesn't have any more Investiture than every rock on Scadrial does.

[ThirdGen]

So Aluminum and Chromium both have the effect of "amplify burning metals", but in keeping with the push/pull, internal/external dynamic of Allomancy, it's just wired to a different destination.

 

Normally, when metals are burned, the power is channeled through someone's Spiritweb.  Aluminum seems to be more just wired to the metals.  It's like Chromium adds a battery to the circuit, but Aluminum is more like wiring a battery to just itself.

 

Edit: wrong metals, sorry.  They're both wiring a battery to itself, just it's your battery vs. someone else's.

Edited January 30, 2015 by ThirdGen

[Voidus]

The ways that Brandon uses the terms in reference to Investiture are only about the way you gain the Investiture that you're using, in Feruchemy it's neutral because you're just shifting it about from one point in time to another, in Allomancy it's positive because it all comes from an outside source, in Hemalurgy it's negative because it destroys someone else's to give you a lesser amount.
If a Lurcher pulled a steel bar through another Allomancers head they've gotten rid of that person's Investiture just as much as Hemalurgy would have, but it's still end-positive because of where the energy to do so came from.

[dewi he/him]

So the damage done to marsh's sdna via hemalurgy could be cleansed, (If he has an aluminium spike) making him whole again.

And eventually cleansing his body of other impurities, like the big spikes of metal jutting through his body. The Wob makes me feel this process would be survivable, and if so, would the ability's remain?

[kinxer he/him]

So the damage done to marsh's sdna via hemalurgy could be cleansed, (If he has an aluminium spike) making him whole again.

And eventually cleansing his body of other impurities, like the big spikes of metal jutting through his body. The Wob makes me feel this process would be survivable, and if so, would the ability's remain?

I don't think it works that way. Marsh's sDNA isn't just corrupted; he has parts of other people's sDNA basically post-it-noted (spliced, technically) on top of his old sDNA. The only viable way of repairing Hemalurgic damage to sDNA that I've seen is using cognitive shenanigans and healing magics, though Kurkistan's latest theory would break that (assuming it's accurate).

[Wrath]

A small amount of aluminium will wipe out a large amount of other metals. Seems end-positive to me. It would be end-negative if you had to burn more aluminium than you had of the other metals to purge them.

[dvoraen]

A small amount of aluminium will wipe out a large amount of other metals. Seems end-positive to me. It would be end-negative if you had to burn more aluminium than you had of the other metals to purge them.

Strictly speaking, that isn't really the case though, is it?  I ask this partly out of ignorance, but wouldn't it still be end-positive since the metals in this example aren't Invested?

[Oudeis he/him]

Strictly speaking, that isn't really the case though, is it?  I ask this partly out of ignorance, but wouldn't it still be end-positive since the metals in this example aren't Invested?

 

Exactly. Allomancy isn't "end-positive" because the energy builds more than it destroys, it's end-positive because the power source is external. Feruchemy is capable of some amazing feats, but it does so at the cost of energy within the same system, and what you get back out is what you put in. Hemalugy is capable of some amazing things, but it's end-negative because the process is so inefficient with so much waste. You can take two Seekers and use hemalurgy to combine their powers into one, but it will be a talent less powerful than the sum of the two powers. A Mistborn can be used for hemalurgic theft, but only one power is saved. Five men have to die for one koloss to be born.

 

Even though the power of aluminum is used to destroy something, it's still an externally applied power. Regardless of whether the power is being used for constructive or destructive purposes, it's still power you get "for free", adding power to the system as a whole, and that makes it end-positive.

[Sirscott13 he/him]

I am not so sure that marsh couldn't cleanse his body with aluminum, but doing so might kill him as he still lives because of compounding. His body would die like the lord ruler because he would loose the power to tap youth. A normal inquisitor might die too solely based on the fact that hemuralgy damages the body. Maybe if you were already a gold fering, you might survive the process of burning alumni m to reverse hemuralgy, but the problem is that it cleans spiritual investiture but not physical damage.

[natc]

The case is really that the investiture itself is end-positive, but pretty much nothing else is.

Yeah, Marsh will probably die if he tries that.