Metal Piercing Advantages

[ostrichofevil he/him]

We know that metal in the body is part of the body in Allomancy, but I've been wondering whether metal inside of the body is part of the body for the purpose of Feruchemy.  If a Feruchemist ate their Ironmind and stored weight in it, would they be weighed down by it, or would the weight of the Ironmind be stored too?

[HurinThalion he/him]

The weight of the Ironmind itself would probably weigh the person down because it still counts as a lump of metal stuck in their body. However, any weight stored in it would remain stuck in the Ironmind without weighing the person down until they tapped into it. Sazed (unintentionally) did that in WoA, I think, though it might have been some other power.

[Unhinged he/him]

The weight of the Ironmind itself would probably weigh the person down because it still counts as a lump of metal stuck in their body. However, any weight stored in it would remain stuck in the Ironmind without weighing the person down until they tapped into it. Sazed (unintentionally) did that in WoA, I think, though it might have been some other power.

 

He did it intentionally in FA in order to break Vin out of prison and unintentionally in WoA when his metalminds where pushed into his chest by Marsh.

[Oudeis he/him]

I see the question you're asking, and I suspect the answer is no. Personally, I don't think this is one of those "however you see yourself" magics, but the argument in favor is that if you personally "see" the metal as "part of you" you should be able to store its weight. I see no evidence to assume that feruchemy acts as "think of a thing and it happens" in this case, especially since Sazed mentioned that it doesn't store the weight of clothes. Surely they are as much "a part of you" as earrings are.

 

"Metal inside someone" is immune to steel and iron because contact with your blood makes your body's innate Investiture surround it, protecting it from the influence of unboosted iron and steel. It's not because the allomancy stops seeing the metal as metal and starts seeing it as "part of a body and therefore not metal". Unless you meant that metal in your body can be an allomantic reserve, in which case I don't know.

[Voidus]

I see the question you're asking, and I suspect the answer is no. Personally, I don't think this is one of those "however you see yourself" magics, but the argument in favor is that if you personally "see" the metal as "part of you" you should be able to store its weight. I see no evidence to assume that feruchemy acts as "think of a thing and it happens" in this case, especially since Sazed mentioned that it doesn't store the weight of clothes. Surely they are as much "a part of you" as earrings are.

 

"Metal inside someone" is immune to steel and iron because contact with your blood makes your body's innate Investiture surround it, protecting it from the influence of unboosted iron and steel. It's not because the allomancy stops seeing the metal as metal and starts seeing it as "part of a body and therefore not metal". Unless you meant that metal in your body can be an allomantic reserve, in which case I don't know.

I'd think clothing would be a less apt comparison to say food would be, can a Feruchemist store the weight of water they've drunk or food they've eaten? At what stage of digestion can they store it?

[Oudeis he/him]

Excellent question, and the one on my mind. I suspect we won't know until someone asks him or it comes up in a book.

 

I actually wonder what happens to the physical food or water when you store/tap bendalloy. Best i can figure, you don't store from actual food, you store from metabolic energy within your system, meaning the entire process with food would go as it ever does, through elimination, and once the metabolic energy is stored in your body as ATP you can transfer it to a bendalloymind. Water is a far different scenario. Does the water magically vanish from your system, to be magically restored later? That I know of, no other feruchemical metal actually stores something that has physical mass, not even the thing that stores something which is a bit like mass and a bit like weight but isn't really either. Where does the water go? At what point does it vanish? are there side effects to mass being destroyed and created within the biome of your body?

 

EDIT: Metal storing mass: Cadmium, bendalloy's pair, depending on how it works, may or may not store air molecules. Goldminds store health which can let you regenerate mass, but it just hijacks the body's own process that turns food into more you, so that's not really the same thing.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Oudeis

[Voidus]

Excellent question, and the one on my mind. I suspect we won't know until someone asks him or it comes up in a book.

 

I actually wonder what happens to the physical food or water when you store/tap bendalloy. Best i can figure, you don't store from actual food, you store from metabolic energy within your system, meaning the entire process with food would go as it ever does, through elimination, and once the metabolic energy is stored in your body as ATP you can transfer it to a bendalloymind. Water is a far different scenario. Does the water magically vanish from your system, to be magically restored later? That I know of, no other feruchemical metal actually stores something that has physical mass, not even the thing that stores something which is a bit like mass and a bit like weight but isn't really either. Where does the water go? At what point does it vanish? are there side effects to mass being destroyed and created within the biome of your body?

Strength stores physical mass, but it is an interesting question with the consequences.

[IAmTheBeard]

Excellent question, and the one on my mind. I suspect we won't know until someone asks him or it comes up in a book.

 

I actually wonder what happens to the physical food or water when you store/tap bendalloy. Best i can figure, you don't store from actual food, you store from metabolic energy within your system, meaning the entire process with food would go as it ever does, through elimination, and once the metabolic energy is stored in your body as ATP you can transfer it to a bendalloymind. Water is a far different scenario. Does the water magically vanish from your system, to be magically restored later? That I know of, no other feruchemical metal actually stores something that has physical mass, not even the thing that stores something which is a bit like mass and a bit like weight but isn't really either. Where does the water go? At what point does it vanish? are there side effects to mass being destroyed and created within the biome of your body?

 

EDIT: Metal storing mass: Cadmium, bendalloy's pair, depending on how it works, may or may not store air molecules. Goldminds store health which can let you regenerate mass, but it just hijacks the body's own process that turns food into more you, so that's not really the same thing.

 

 

Strength stores physical mass, but it is an interesting question with the consequences.

 

Almost all of them store something with mass. ATP is a molecule so Bendalloyminds store mass no matter how they do it. Oxygen has mass. Pewter stores muscle mass. Iron does actually alter mass and density even though the way it does it isn't quite how we'd imagine it in our world. Even with Copper, memories take up space in our brain. So almost everything that Feruchemy stores involves mass in some way. 

[Oudeis he/him]

But bendalloyminds prolly don't store the ATP. They store the energy which causes the ATP to revert back to the lower-energy ADP. Presumably.

 

I've already stipulated to cadmiumminds, even though we have no real idea on how it works. It does seem most likely that it stores the actual oxygen molecules.

 

Iron is seriously weird. It very much does not store your mass because it does not change your density. It doesn't store weight because unless it's changing the gravitational constant the only way to change your weight is by changing your mass and it doesn't do that. And it doesn't store either because we have WoB that it doesn't really store either. Personally my suspicion is that it's something spiritual like the Gravitation Surge that simply breaks the laws of physics in ways we don't yet understand, but doesn't require the loss of actual volumes of physical material.

 

Pewter is an interesting one, though I wonder what's truly happening there. So we've got pewter and prolly cadmium, and the water half of bendalloy. That's three. And you suggest copper because... wow. I just don't even know how to respond to the argument that "memories take up space in our brain." I just... wow.

 

So that's three. Four if you're right and Mr. Sanderson is wrong on iron. I think we're a little shy of "almost everything that Feruchemy stores involves mass in some way." Call me an empiricist.

[natc]

Memories take up physical space in the brain as much as they will take up physical space in a computer.

As in none at all . . .