Lift and Allomancy

[Windrunner]

Marianmi, the power of creation is what the Shards are. I'm afraid that Weiry is spot on. Shards provide the power for magic systems. When they directly fuel someone, such as when Vin allowed Elend to use Allomancy without metals, that exerts power, but they are largely unimpacted by regular use of power (or Ruin and Preservation at least). The power goes straight back to Preservation, like water turning a wheel and continuing on its way (obviously not a perfect simile, but the one Brandon used). The Dor is commonly theorized to simply be a mixture of the power of both Devotion and Dominion, not some separate power source the Shards allowed access to. The basic premise of this theory has been around for a while, and it was disproved some time ago. I'm sorry.

[Oudeis]

We know Shards need to "Invest" in not just the people, but the planet themselves, if they want to have an impact there. Odium has reasons not to, but R&P wouldn't have any reason not to go ahead and Invest. (It is my suspicion that Odium DID Invest in Sel, and that his ripping out his power to leave once he Splintered Devotion and Dominion left a wound in the planet that, combined with the undirected power of the Shards, ultimated damaged to the cognitive realm enough to cause a massive event which had ripples in the physical realm, causing the Chasm to appear and, by extension, the Reod to happen. BUT THAT IS NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.)

 

I don't think Iron is a godmetal, or that burning it hurts or requires the permission of Preservation, or anything like that. I think if you're lying in bed wrapped up on a winter's morning, your body heat warms the sheets. You don't decide to do it and you can't prevent it, it's just a thing that happens. Those sheets are now warm... if a child came up to touch them, he'd feel the warmth, which he wouldn't feel in an empty bed. Now here's where my analogy breaks down cuz all the shardworlds are beds, most are occupied, and with humans there's no difference between my body heat and yours, I think the Iron on Scadrial is full of Preservation's "body heat" and thus can be used for the Metallic Arts. I think crystals on Roshar have the "body heat" of Honor and Cultivation and thus can hold Stormlight. I realize this is largely speculative, but to be frank, so are all the supporting arguments I've heard as to why you should be able to use Nalthian iron in allomancy. Until we hear WoB, I think this is a more logical conclusion. Also, it fits with his statement that you need to know what you're doing in order to use Investiture on other worlds; if Hoid ever grabbed Vin and dropped her off on Sel, she wouldn't need to know anything special in order to just eat some iron and start pulling.

[marianmi]

Marianmi, the power of creation is what the Shards are. I'm afraid that Weiry is spot on. Shards provide the power for magic systems. When they directly fuel someone, such as when Vin allowed Elend to use Allomancy without metals, that exerts power, but they are largely unimpacted by regular use of power (or Ruin and Preservation at least). The power goes straight back to Preservation, like water turning a wheel and continuing on its way (obviously not a perfect simile, but the one Brandon used). The Dor is commonly theorized to simply be a mixture of the power of both Devotion and Dominion, not some separate power source the Shards allowed access to. The basic premise of this theory has been around for a while, and it was disproved some time ago. I'm sorry.

 

I am willing to concede here points to Shardlet, and partially agree with what you say. But I don't think Weiry is spot on, at all.

 

 

Hoid is much older than 40 as shown here. 

 

 

Also, everybody who does magic does so with the power of Adonalsium which is the power of creation which is the power that all the Shards hold.

 

 

I see a difference between the power of Preservation and the power of Adonalsium. A shard cannot do everything with its power what Adonalsium could do with its  power, just like an invested person that can do magic cannot do all that a shard can do. And I don't think it's just because the intent. Currently we can say that all shards are/were equal in power - but we cannot say that they are equal to what Adonalsium was.

 

Going back to the example of Vin, when drawing upon the mists, she used the power if Preservation, as in Preservation consciously fuelled her directly.

If Preservation wanted to stop the "fuel", he could have done so.

Whereas a mistborn uses the "spiritual power", the power of creation, the power of Adonalsium, the power that Preservation comes from too, but not specifically Preservation's power, Preservation is not consciously fuelling all mistborn. i.e., Preservation cannot stop the "fuel" for a mistborn. He can change the mistborn such that he's not a mistborn anymore and thus cannot access the power anymore, so he can stop the access to the fuel, but not the fuel (like in Vin's case).

 

So, I continue to believe that saying mistborn are fuelled by Preservation is wrong. The power of creation is not Preservation, is Ruin too. So Ruin is fuelling allomancy in the same way Preservation is. And 14 others. Previously, (mostly because of my understanding of the Dor) I was under the impression that the "power of creation" was somehow localized for each planet, which I reconsidered. It's the same "power of creation" spanning probably the spiritual everywhere, and manifested differently on each planet because of different cognitive and physical reflections. BUT, again, I believe it is not ONE SHARD's POWER that fuels a magic system, allomancers do not use Preservation's power (EDIT: but you can say they use the same power that Preservation is using. Then again, you can say Preservation uses the same power as the allomancers, so if you want to say allomancers use Preservation's power then you can equally say Preservation uses allomancer's power, allomancers use Ruin's power, Honor uses Endowment's power, the Dor uses awakener's power, etc since basically and generally, everyone's power == the power of Adonalsium/creation and can be substituted in all of the above).

 

ANOTHER EDIT: about the Dor, I think it's actually correct to say that the way the Dor manifests is localized, not the Dor. Since you have the Dor everywhere, just that it needs to be accessed in different ways (aons / stamps / etc...).

 

YET ANOTHER EDIT: and thus, we see a geographical localization of how to access the Dor in a similar way, but on a smaller scale, of how you access the power of creation in the cosmere. On Roshar you access the power of creation in a different way than on Nhaltis (although it's the same power of creation), just like in Arelon you access the Dor in a differnet way than in Fjorden (although it's the same Dor). Of course, this means that something is very different, probably in the cognitive level, between the regions on Sel. I wonder if Odium had something to do with that...

Edited November 24, 2013 by marianmi

[Oudeis]

There is a WoB quote somewhere about what happens when you burn lerasium, and I believe it says that it provides a permanent link to Preservation. Upvote to anyone who can find it (I am both babysitting and mobile at the moment or i'd do it myself).

Marian, I like your reasoning and i'd be inclined to believe it if it weren't for that quote.

To hark back to the original topic, that doesn't mean Lift might not be an inadvertant Mistborn. If the Nightwatcher did change Lift to turn her stomach into an engine that turns physical matter into Investiture, it might be a 'hack' that would grant her the ability to get the powers of an Ironpull from Scadrian Iron. As we've seen from Vin's own experience, she'd have enough trace metals in her system that she'd've burned them by now if she could've.

Now, was the parellel intentional on Cultivation's part? I know we've wondered here how cosmerically aware Shards are. Could Cultivation know how Allomancy works and deliberately model her boon to Lift along that principle? Or is it coincidence?

[marianmi]

There is a WoB quote somewhere about what happens when you burn lerasium, and I believe it says that it provides a permanent link to Preservation. Upvote to anyone who can find it (I am both babysitting and mobile at the moment or i'd do it myself).

 

It is a shard that gives you access to the power, and there are different ways in which it can do that, "consciously" or not. Maybe it's better to say that it's through a shard (and its intent) that you get access to the power.

Sazed made Spook a mistborn, "consciously". The Almighty probably made the heralds, "consciously". On the other hand, you have the Shaod on Sel, which still happens even with Aona dead and Devotion splintered - "unconsciously". And you have beads of lerasium, one of Preservation's ways of giving access to power. 

 

I would like to see that quote, about being linked to Preservation. Even if that were true, I guess it would be for 1st generation mistborns only. I highly doubt Zane for example was linked to Preservation - quite the contrary, we know he was influenced by Ruin, and we know Preservation was not touching anything that was touched by Ruin (i.e. Vin until she got the earring removed).

 

Plus, it's not only lerasium what gives you access to the power. Feruchemists did not start with lerasium. 

[Oudeis]

Actually we don't know how feruchemy started. In fact, we don't know how allomancy started, since we know it started before lerasium (Alendi was a Seeker, after all, and I think we have WoB that Rashek and his buddies were the first to burn lerasium).

 

Regardless... yes, what you say is technically plausible. There are a dozen parts of your argument I think are flimsy, and I'm going to continue believing as I believe that allomancy is of Preservation, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish.

[marianmi]

Actually we don't know how feruchemy started. In fact, we don't know how allomancy started, since we know it started before lerasium (Alendi was a Seeker, after all, and I think we have WoB that Rashek and his buddies were the first to burn lerasium).

 

Regardless... yes, what you say is technically plausible. There are a dozen parts of your argument I think are flimsy, and I'm going to continue believing as I believe that allomancy is of Preservation, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish.

 

I can agree with you that Allomancy is "of Preservation" in the sense that the gift of allomancy is given to humans by Preservation.

But not that allomancy uses Preservation's power

[Meg]

Going back to the example of Vin, when drawing upon the mists, she used the power if Preservation, as in Preservation consciously fuelled her directly.

I'm fairly sure that when Vin drew upon the mists it was something she was capable of doing (without Ruin's earring) but nothing done consciously by Preservation. The mist were out there and Vin was able to use them. This doesn't have anything to do with Preservations consciousness.

 

There is a WoB quote somewhere about what happens when you burn lerasium, and I believe it says that it provides a permanent link to Preservation. Upvote to anyone who can find it (I am both babysitting and mobile at the moment or i'd do it myself).

I'm sure I too remember such a quote and it's not very old, though I could err. Searching around I found this:

 

BRANDON SANDERSON (paraphrased)

Lerasium overwrites Spiritual DNA. It can do some interesting things, and can overwrite your Spiritual DNA in different ways if you do it right. If a Surgebinder ate lerasium, he would become an Allomancer, but Brandon implied other things could be done.

source

And another interesting tidbit (I think):

 

17th Shard

If a Mistborn burns lerasium, as in, not just ingests it, what effect would it grant Allomantically?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO. It would do something, but the thing you've gotta remember is that, when ingesting lerasium for the first time and gaining the powers, your body is actually burning it. Think of lerasium as a metal anyone can burn. Does that make sense?

17TH SHARD

It does.

BRANDON SANDERSON

By burning it you gain access to those powers. It rewrites your spiritual DNA, and there are ways to do really cool things with lerasium that I don't see how anyone would know. Were most Mistborn to just burn it, it would rewrite their genetic code to increase their power as an Allomancer.

source

And this one:

 

Kaimipono (16 October 2008)

Allomancy is fueled by Preservation's body? How exactly does that work? And how does that interact with Atium—it's fueled by both gods' bodies?

Brandon Sanderson (17 October 2008)

The powers of Ruin and Preservation are Shards of Adonalsium, pieces of the power of creation itself. Allomancy, Hemalurgy, Feruchemy are manifestations of this power in mortal form, the ability to touch the powers of creation and use them. These metallic powers are how people's physical forms interpret the use of the Shard, though it's not the only possible way they could be interpreted or used. It's what the genetics and Realmatic interactions of Scadrial allow for, and has to do with the Spiritual, the Cognitive, and the Physical Realms.

Condensed 'essence' of these godly powers can act as super-fuel for Allomancy, Feruchemy, or really any of the powers. The form of that super fuel is important. In liquid form it's most potent, in gas form it's able to fuel Allomancy as if working as a metal. In physical form it is rigid and does one specific thing. In the case of atium, it allows sight into the future. In the case of concentrated Preservation, it gives one a permanent connection to the mists and the powers of creation. (I.e., it makes them an Allomancer.)

So when a person is burning metals, they aren't using Preservation's body as a fuel so to speak—though they are tapping into the powers of creation just slightly. When Vin burns the mists, however, she'd doing just that—using the essence of Preservation, the Shard of Adonalsium itself—to fuel Allomancy. Doing this, however, rips 'troughs' through her body. It's like forcing far too much pressure through a very small, fragile hose. That much power eventually vaporizes the corporeal host, which is acting as the block and forcing the power into a single type of conduit (Allomancy) and frees it to be more expansive.

source

(Annotation: I think this is one of the most important quotes ever.)

And a last one on the Power of Creation:

 

So Power of Creation. Is the Power of Creation this thing of power that powers Allomancy and powers the Aons, or is the Power of Creation just what each shard has?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say [the power] each shard has. Is more the definition.

source

And this:

 

Phantine ()

Are there any magic systems in the cosmere that aren't shard based?

Brandon Sanderson

This depends on definitions. The effects of Adonalsium permeate everything, and Adonalsium is also the source of the Shards. It is possible to find a magic that isn't DIRECTLY powered by a specific shard, however, though most of these would have been set up before the shattering and would be much smaller in scope than things like Allomancy and Surgebinding.

source

In summary I'd say: Adonalsium was the "total", it was shattered into 16 Shards/Intents. Adonalsium itself could have provided each of the magic systems in the Cosmere (and supposably more/others).

Each Shard interprets the Power of Creation depending on its Intent and their different "magic systems" are based on/related to their Shards interpretations.

So I think each Shard kind of could use or provide each magic system -- more or less useful to the people (example: A surgebinder who burned a bead of Lerasium. He will not automatically know about the Three Metallic Arts nor have the right metals to use. Also he might have problems to access the powers of “pure Preservation” on Roshar and thus will be very weak in Allomancy.)