Possible way to compound allomancy

[Edgedancer]

I'll try boil down my point as much as possible.

There is a perfectly logical reason why compounding works. It has nothing to do with both systems having Preservation in them or the attributes being similair or whatever. It goes somewhat like this:

Metal = code = magical effect, storing something in metal per Feruchemy = different code = different magical effect.

 

This reasoning does not work in reverse. For it to work in reverse every feruchemical metal would inherently need to have a random secondary affinity, that they can't sense at all, not even that it's different, even though they can sense the metal's normal affinity.

 

If there is no further trickery to it, it would be the equivalent of just telling the allomantic metal to give the feruchemical attribute, without storing it in it first to change the code and that's not how it works.

 

So why would normal compounding need mechanical justification but reverse-compounding could work just because?

Edited October 3, 2015 by Edgedancer

[Oudeis]

 

Emphasis mine, my point is that even if they don't know what it is they'd know that every single metal has another property they can store in it, it might not immediately be recognizable as allomancy but nothing like that is ever mentioned by any feruchemist.

 

 

You keep saying this, and I keep asking you to tell me how we know this, and you keep avoiding it.

 

Where, ever, does it say that a feruchemist automatically knows that there are multiple things he can store? From where are you getting this information? Where in the text does it say it? What WoB supports it? You are insistent that it's true, but this is the first I'm hearing of it. The sum total of what we know is that when a feruchemist touches a metal he can use to store things in, he feels "an affinity" for it, he doesn't see it like a number of shelves in a closet. Can you support this, or are you just going to restate it like it's presumed true again?

 

You are totally ignoring the point I bring up about tin. We know tinminds can store at least one more sense than anyone has used. If your supposition is correct, Sazed knows this. He can feel that there's an emptiness in tin, even if he doesn't know what's supposed to go there. And he absolutely, for certain, never once mentions it. So you cannot keep saying, "He never mentions that there are different things that can be stored in a bronzemind" as evidence that this means nothing else can be stored in a bronzemind. Either he cannot sense "empty shelves" in a tinmind and therefore has no reason to believe "there's something extra that could be stored in metalmind, but I don't know what," or he can sense it, and simply chooses not to mention it, just as he does for three books with tin.

 

Edgedancer: I'm bringing up tin again. You can store taste in a tinmind. Or you can store sight. You don't have to do anything different. You don't have to blind yourself to remove your sight in order for tin to take its place. You don't have to overlay your sight with some sort of energy in order to have it supercede taste. You, personally, possess five senses capable of being stored, one at a time, in a tinmind. All you have to do is decide which one. If you lacked a sense of smell, you'd only have four to choose from. If you somehow had electroreception, you'd have six to choose from.

 

My contention is that when you burn steel, you now have two traits which can be stored in a steelmind.

 

I don't see why you look at this and think, "No, that's impossible, nothing could ever work like that." Tin already works exactly like that. Your physical body is in possession of two traits right now, ones that are not terrible similar, but have commonalities. In tin, it's different ways to perceive the world. In steel, it's two traits associated with steel in the metallic arts.The power of Preservation has entered your body, filtered through the "form" of steel. It's steel-shaped. The metalmind on your arm has this exact same shape; it must, because it's steel, and can be burned allomantically. Why can't you accept that it's possible that affinity is enough to give you a second storeable trait? Why can you accept the five of tin (or six, or even more if you add in all the sense of the animal kingdom), or the two of bendalloy, but not that other metals might have multiple traits, as well?

 

I understand normal compounding perfectly well. I never said "it's because they have preservation" or "because traits are similar". Something about the spiritual aspect of steel, when used feruchemically, gives it a certain signature. Something about the spiritual aspect of steel, when used allomantically, gives it a certain signature. The feruchemical signature can be used allomantically, without any special tricks. Why are you so absolutely certain that the allomantic signature cannot be used feruchemically, unless there's some additional step that compounding as we know it doesn't have?

 

Normal compounding does not need special mechanical justification. At least, not compared to the other way around. In one, you store, and then burn. In the other, you burn, and then store. In both cases, it works because the spiritual signature of steel itself acts as a bridge between the metallic arts. Why do you believe the bridge would work one way, but not the other?

 

 

 

I'm not talking about Miles talking about his gold I'm talking about everyone else, if you're Wax, planning to go up against an insanely powerful compounder and you know about reverse compounding too, even if you've never seen or heard about Miles or any other gold compounders doing anything with their abilities you'd at least consider that it might do something dangerous and discuss it as an option.

Newspapers are no more accurate now than they were a hundred years ago. Scientists and researchers on the other hand would be far more accurate and knowledgeable on the subject.

 

 

If you think that both newspapers and scientists have maintained the exact same level of accuracy for the past hundred years... wow. I just... I just don't even know how to address that. A hundred years ago, heroin was sold over the counter to regulate the bowels. Women were considered too erratic to be trusted with the vote. Psychological conditions were dismissed as concussive brain injuries and ignored. And these all had the stamps of approval of the scientific community. You... I just don't even know how to talk to someone who thinks scientists a hundred years ago were right about everything they assumed was true. A hundred years from now, our descendants will look back and laugh at all the things we believed because our "scientists" told us it was true.

 

A hundred years ago, every newspaper published flagrantly false stories of first-person accounts, and no one cared. Today, if you accidentally say a quote was spoken on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, you print a correction the next day. There are media watchdogs checking facts and keeping them in line. There are standards of citation and evidence.

 

Upon what, exactly, are you basing your assumption that neither newspapers nor scientists have gotten any more accurate in a century?

 

As I've said, several times, there's no reason to assume Wax knows about, or understands, the other kind of compounding. And if he does, there's absolutely no reason for him to think that someone being even better at burning allomantic gold would be a threat. He could have mentioned that Miles plays a mean game of poker, he could have talked about that time he won the horseshoe competition three years running, or his sterling baritone, but absolutely none of that was germane.

 

As I said, Wax only knows about regular compounding because he's close, personally, to Miles. Marasi, who studies at a university, is an allomancer, and has done specific research on Miles, believed the stories were exaggerations and that he was simply a Bloodmaker. Why, exactly, would Wax have reason to suspect that the other kind of compounding even exists, if he doesn't know anyone who would ever use it? Maybe he's heard of a steel compounder somewhere in the South Roughs who supposedly has insane capabilities to steelpush... but discounts the stories as exaggerations, exactly like Marasi does. Maybe he says, "Oh, that's ridiculous. We know how regular compounding works, but the idea that compounding could work in reverse is insane. I won't consider it, the stories can't be real." That would be rather foolish of him, wouldn't it?

 

Keep in mind, you cannot assume Wax only ever gets accurate information. People in Elendel believe a tineye could get metal by licking at walls. People will believe anything. Wax didn't get a lot of cohesive, accurate, repeated account of the steel compounder. He prolly hears stories of a new type of ferring that can store its size, go tiny and slip through a keyhole, then grow large and step on you. Or of a coinshot who can push aluminum. Or a new medicine that works, see, it's got snake oil in it, good for what ails ya... You have to get the context of that world in your mind. It's easy for us, with our single source of WoB, to always know instantly when something is right or wrong. But what if there were fifty Brandons going on tours around the country, 49 of them lying, all of them swearing they're telling the truth? All of them telling us things about the cosmere? There's no special magical quality about the "truth" that lets you hear it and know, that's the one that's real, all the others are bad alloys. If two people tell you something confidently, and both have internal consistency, without confirmation you have no way to deduce, this one is right, this one is wrong.

 

So Wax didn't list all the stories that must circle around about Miles, most of them false. Just as he hears a dozen stories about other towns, other Twinborn, maybe even other Compounders, he couldn't possibly know which are real and which are Allomancer Jak unless he spends his life traveling across the known world to interview all these people himself and get the real information.

 

And sure. I'm sure there are some people who do that. And they come back, and they write up their findings, and they publish them and they say, "This is true; buy my book, for it is accurate." And in the years they spent researching and traveling, two dozen other people sat at home, wrote entirely fictional stories about their own travels, made up literally every fact, made it sound fascinating and rivetting, and also published, and also said, "This is true; buy my book, for it is accurate." And there is no peer review. There is no group of people who can check and say, yes, this person actually went to this town, actually spoke to the person." You go to the bookstore and have twenty-five options to pick from, and the actually accurate book has nothing special about it. It's not got any sort of seal of approval, it's not magically floating. This is a world where the only way to learn something, for sure, is with your own research, which not every person in the known world has time to do. There's no internet. There's no snopes. There are no peer reviewed articles. There is no rigor. There are no mythbusters. Wax doesn't live in the world you live in. He lives in Elendel, and the things you take for granted are not available to him. This is a man who literally didn't know that take-out food existed. And yet, you assume he knows literally everything there is to know about an aspect of Investiture with no direct bearing on his life? That crops up incredibly rarely?

[Edgedancer]

I don't see why you look at this and think, "No, that's impossible, nothing could ever work like that." Tin already works exactly like that. Your physical body is in possession of two traits right now, ones that are not terrible similar, but have commonalities. In tin, it's different ways to perceive the world. In steel, it's two traits associated with steel in the metallic arts.The power of Preservation has entered your body, filtered through the "form" of steel. It's steel-shaped. The metalmind on your arm has this exact same shape; it must, because it's steel, and can be burned allomantically. Why can't you accept that it's possible that affinity is enough to give you a second storeable trait? Why can you accept the five of tin (or six, or even more if you add in all the sense of the animal kingdom), or the two of bendalloy, but not that other metals might have multiple traits, as well?

Let's look at zinc then, you can tell it which people and emotion to target, so if you can tell it to do different but similair things (like one could feruchemical tin) and you can tell feruchemical zinc to now just store allomantic zinc Investiture instead of mental speed because they have come from the same shape or whatever then the same should hold true in reverse. Can the allomancer just tell zinc to now do mental speed because that power gets filtered through the same zinc shape? No, you have to metaphorically show it how to do this different thing by inserting it in the system.

Allomancy can't inherently copy feruchemical attributes it has to be shown what to do. How would you show Feruchemy how to do Allomancy?

[Voidus]

 

You keep saying this, and I keep asking you to tell me how we know this, and you keep avoiding it.

 

Where, ever, does it say that a feruchemist automatically knows that there are multiple things he can store? From where are you getting this information? Where in the text does it say it? What WoB supports it? You are insistent that it's true, but this is the first I'm hearing of it. The sum total of what we know is that when a feruchemist touches a metal he can use to store things in, he feels "an affinity" for it, he doesn't see it like a number of shelves in a closet. Can you support this, or are you just going to restate it like it's presumed true again?

Not exactly a tone conducive to a good discussion but regardless, aside from pointing out the obvious that you're doing exactly the same thing I could point out (yet again) that Vin was perfectly able to sense that feruchemical compounding was a separate burnable storage and that you're the one saying that if there's no direct contradiction we should assume allomancy and feruchemy act similarly, or I could point out the exact affinity you just mentioned.

 

 

You are totally ignoring the point I bring up about tin. We know tinminds can store at least one more sense than anyone has used. If your supposition is correct, Sazed knows this. He can feel that there's an emptiness in tin, even if he doesn't know what's supposed to go there. And he absolutely, for certain, never once mentions it. So you cannot keep saying, "He never mentions that there are different things that can be stored in a bronzemind" as evidence that this means nothing else can be stored in a bronzemind. Either he cannot sense "empty shelves" in a tinmind and therefore has no reason to believe "there's something extra that could be stored in metalmind, but I don't know what," or he can sense it, and simply chooses not to mention it, just as he does for three books with tin.

No I'm not.

 

Emphasis mine, my point is that even if they don't know what it is they'd know that every single metal has another property they can store in it, it might not immediately be recognizable as allomancy but nothing like that is ever mentioned by any feruchemist.
 

 

Vin can't tap feruchemy, she could still feel it as a separate reserve of power. 

There's been no need for Sazed to muse on the potential intricacies of all feruchemy, there's been plenty of need, incentive and clues to tip Sazed off about allomantic compounding and plenty of need to discuss it as a potential complication. At no point did he point out to Vin while she was experimenting with burning a metalmind that he had a similar experience of having a trait he could store in a metalmind but he can't store it, particularly odd given his scholarly nature.

I'm not talking about Miles talking about his gold I'm talking about everyone else, if you're Wax, planning to go up against an insanely powerful compounder and you know about reverse compounding too, even if you've never seen or heard about Miles or any other gold compounders doing anything with their abilities you'd at least consider that it might do something dangerous and discuss it as an option.

Newspapers are no more accurate now than they were a hundred years ago. Scientists and researchers on the other hand would be far more accurate and knowledgeable on the subject.

 

But I'll also point out that just as Allomancers don't detect different reserves of Zinc or Brass and yet they can be used to affect a variety of emotions does not mean that they couldn't tell the difference between different power reserves, not being able to detect different sense storage in no way implies a lack of ability to separate the ability to store nutrition and the ability to slow time.
 

 

Edgedancer: I'm bringing up tin again. You can store taste in a tinmind. Or you can store sight. You don't have to do anything different. You don't have to blind yourself to remove your sight in order for tin to take its place. You don't have to overlay your sight with some sort of energy in order to have it supercede taste. You, personally, possess five senses capable of being stored, one at a time, in a tinmind. All you have to do is decide which one. If you lacked a sense of smell, you'd only have four to choose from. If you somehow had electroreception, you'd have six to choose from.

 

My contention is that when you burn steel, you now have two traits which can be stored in a steelmind.

And yet this is emphatically not how compounding has worked in the traditional sense, you definitely do have to do something different to get a different effect.
 

 

I don't see why you look at this and think, "No, that's impossible, nothing could ever work like that." Tin already works exactly like that. Your physical body is in possession of two traits right now, ones that are not terrible similar, but have commonalities. In tin, it's different ways to perceive the world. In steel, it's two traits associated with steel in the metallic arts.The power of Preservation has entered your body, filtered through the "form" of steel. It's steel-shaped. The metalmind on your arm has this exact same shape; it must, because it's steel, and can be burned allomantically. Why can't you accept that it's possible that affinity is enough to give you a second storeable trait? Why can you accept the five of tin (or six, or even more if you add in all the sense of the animal kingdom), or the two of bendalloy, but not that other metals might have multiple traits, as well?

Allomantic compounding should work in exactly the same way then, it should go 'oh this is steel' regardless of whether you've stored any speed in it and ask you which power you want from burning it. This is specifically stated to not be how the power works, the structure of the metal filters the different powers in different ways.
 

 

I understand normal compounding perfectly well. I never said "it's because they have preservation" or "because traits are similar". Something about the spiritual aspect of steel, when used feruchemically, gives it a certain signature. Something about the spiritual aspect of steel, when used allomantically, gives it a certain signature. The feruchemical signature can be used allomantically, without any special tricks. Why are you so absolutely certain that the allomantic signature cannot be used feruchemically, unless there's some additional step that compounding as we know it doesn't have?

 

Normal compounding does not need special mechanical justification. At least, not compared to the other way around. In one, you store, and then burn. In the other, you burn, and then store. In both cases, it works because the spiritual signature of steel itself acts as a bridge between the metallic arts. Why do you believe the bridge would work one way, but not the other?

Evidently not, as has now been pointed out multiple times normal compounding does require a special trick, you change the allomantic signature of the metal itself by storing a feruchemical trait in it, the power gets channeled through the 'healing' shaped hole instead of the regular Allomantic gold shape and gives you healing instead of weird visions. Burning a metal in your stomach does nothing whatsoever to the metal on your wrist, it gives it no power, no Investiture, changes it in no way and so the power you funnel through it shouldn't be changed either. If you could compound feruchemy by storing a charge in one piece of metal then swallowing a separate piece of metal and getting a feruchemical burn then they would be analogous, that's not the case here. For it to be analogous you'd have to be using the metal inside your stomach that you're burning as a metalmind.

 

If you think that both newspapers and scientists have maintained the exact same level of accuracy for the past hundred years... wow. I just... I just don't even know how to address that. A hundred years ago, heroin was sold over the counter to regulate the bowels. Women were considered too erratic to be trusted with the vote. Psychological conditions were dismissed as concussive brain injuries and ignored. And these all had the stamps of approval of the scientific community. You... I just don't even know how to talk to someone who thinks scientists a hundred years ago were right about everything they assumed was true. A hundred years from now, our descendants will look back and laugh at all the things we believed because our "scientists" told us it was true.

Look back at my post and please tell me where at any point I said that. I said that newspapers and the public media have never claimed to apply the scientific method, I didn't say that scientists at any point in time were infallible, merely more accurate regarding the subject of their research than newspapers were. If you disagree with that then I doubt this conversation can progress.

As an aspiring scientist myself I'm well aware that science has been wrong in the past, hell science has been wrong the past two days nevermind a hundred years ago. But the people who study a phenomena for a living be they past or present tend to know a lot more about that subject than most people who don't spend all day looking at it. Sure medicine had far to go in the days before germ theory was discovered but look at classical physics, many standing pillars of mechanics were discovered centuries ago and we still use them today. The difference was mainly one of technology, studying mechanics is easy, it's represented in the entirety of the physical universe. Studying illness when you have neither the means to look at microbes nor the knowledge that they affect the body in any way is near impossible. Now unless you're suggesting that some vast technological achievement needs to be made on Scadrial before allomancy or feruchemy can be studied (Which they already are) then there's no reason to assume the scientific community at large would be ignorant of it.

As I've said, several times, there's no reason to assume Wax knows about, or understands, the other kind of compounding. And if he does, there's absolutely no reason for him to think that someone being even better at burning allomantic gold would be a threat. He could have mentioned that Miles plays a mean game of poker, he could have talked about that time he won the horseshoe competition three years running, or his sterling baritone, but absolutely none of that was germane.

There's also no reason he wouldn't know, he clearly knows a lot about the mechanics of regular compounding and if the latter is as easy as you say it is it should be if anything more commonly known not less. Again if he does know about it then he has no idea what enhanced gold might do, no one knew that emotional allomancy could mind control Koloss, Kandra and Inquisitors if it was powerful enough until someone discovered how to boost it. Knowing that enhanced allomancy is possible and disregarding it out of hand (indeed not even mentioning it) would be downright stupid, not the kind of mistake a seasoned allomancer like Wax would make.

[dijini1]

Hey guys. I was just thinking about you guys were talking about allocompounding being known to other, and I think that the reason why people wouldn't know about it is because they are just as ignorant of allocompounding as people in the Final Empire was ignorant of ferucompounding. Besides, allocompounding can be so useful that you wouldn't want others to know how you do it, like in WoA, Vin mentions that other people might have discovered how to kill people burning atium, but kept it to themselves to gain an unknown edge.

[Voidus]

Hey guys. I was just thinking about you guys were talking about allocompounding being known to other, and I think that the reason why people wouldn't know about it is because they are just as ignorant of allocompounding as people in the Final Empire was ignorant of ferucompounding. Besides, allocompounding can be so useful that you wouldn't want others to know how you do it, like in WoA, Vin mentions that other people might have discovered how to kill people burning atium, but kept it to themselves to gain an unknown edge.

People in the final empire were understandable ignorant, there was only one person on the whole planet who could compound and he absolutely needed to keep it a secret. Since Allomancers are no longer used as assasins by the time of AoL there's no real need for most of them to keep their abilities secret, most wouldn't be fighters they'd just be people. Now a twinborn compounder might be more inclined to do so but they'd probably be more likely to advertise any additional powers if anything, it'd make them more useful and better able to earn money. Sure everyone might know you can make your body pretty much indestructible by compounding Allomantic pewter but if they didn't then you wouldn't be such a famous, well payed bodyguard. If anything, everyone knowing that bullets bounce off you makes them less likely to attack you and so you'd be safer.

[dijini1]

 

 

 

People in the final empire were understandable ignorant, there was only one person on the whole planet who could compound and he absolutely needed to keep it a secret. Since Allomancers are no longer used as assasins by the time of AoL there's no real need for most of them to keep their abilities secret, most wouldn't be fighters they'd just be people. Now a twinborn compounder might be more inclined to do so but they'd probably be more likely to advertise any additional powers if anything, it'd make them more useful and better able to earn money. Sure everyone might know you can make your body pretty much indestructible by compounding Allomantic pewter but if they didn't then you wouldn't be such a famous, well payed bodyguard. If anything, everyone knowing that bullets bounce off you makes them less likely to attack you and so you'd be safer.

They don't necessarily have to tell people that they can allocompound. All they have to do is show people insanely strong allomantic abilities, but leave them wondering about how you do it. It's the exact same method the Lord Ruler used. 

[Voidus]

They don't necessarily have to tell people that they can allocompound. All they have to do is show people insanely strong allomantic abilities, but leave them wondering about how you do it. It's the exact same method the Lord Ruler used. 

They don't have any plausible reason though, the Lord Ruler got by without much scrutiny by claiming to be a piece of god, an allomancer who's just insanely stronger than normal allomancers is going to be under a lot of scrutiny, plus if people know they can ferucompound it's not much of a leap to figure out what they're doing.

[Oudeis]

Now a twinborn compounder might be more inclined to do so but they'd probably be more likely to advertise any additional powers if anything,

 

Respectfully, I do not believe this to be the case. I draw your attention to the fact that Miles found it prudent to keep his own tricks and talents a secret, such as keeping dynamite on his person to obviate the chance of being caught in a net. In addition, I do not believe Wax ever expressed to anyone how to do a steelbubble. Your personal opinions aside, we have a lot of evidence from the books that, yes, people who discover tricks still tend to keep them to themselves.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Oudeis

[Voidus]

Respectfully, I do not believe this to be the case. I draw your attention to the fact that Miles found it prudent to keep his own tricks and talents a secret, such as keeping dynamite on his person to obviate the chance of being caught in a net. In addition, I do not believe Wax ever expressed to anyone how to do a steelbubble. Your personal opinions aside, we have a lot of evidence from the books that, yes, people who discover tricks still tend to keep them to themselves.

He wasn't in the process of hiring himself out at that point and that's just an escape plan not part of his powers. The Goldminds he kept internally that let him heal from the firing squad might be a better point but even so that's just a personal trick that can only really function properly if no one knows about it. Compounding Allomancy is far more obvious, would be used far more and is much more likely to benefit you in the long run if you're open with it rather than trying to hide it. And if you do try to hide it you have to rely on the assumption that every other compounder will do likewise otherwise they'd steal the fame not you. This is not even getting into compounders whose powers of of limited combative use.

[dijini1]

 

 

Compounding Allomancy is far more obvious, would be used far more and is much more likely to benefit you in the long run if you're open with it rather than trying to hide it.

There is a bit of a problem of trying to hire yourself out. There are some things that you just don't tell others, for the same reason you don't see a kandra walking around with a sign saying "Kandra for hire. Pay with atuim."

 

As to earlier people's thoughts on how people wouldn't know about Miles compounding, you have to remember that one of the people who works with him on a regular basis is a bloodmaker almost like him. Wayne would know of the limits that you could do with gold healing, and would have figured out that something is up with Miles and confronted him about it. I think a similar thing could occur with allocompounders. They could lie and say that they are a savent, which would give them a legitimate excuse for their power and to get lots of metal(I just realized that allocompounding this way would require a lot of metal in order to work). I think that only another savent of their metal would be able to figure out that something is up with them, and confront them.

[Oudeis]

You seem to be operating on the assumption that subterfuge is required; that the default state of being is "everyone knows all things" and the burden of proof is to show that information can be hidden.

 

Miles does not hide what his powers are. Marasi has even heard of his powers. She simply assumes it's an exaggeration. This is not a time and place with smartphones and mythbusters and wikipedia. Thousands of reports come in from all around the Roughs. Some of them true, most of them false. The true ones do not have a magic quality to them that will ensure everyone knows which ones to believe and which ones are poppycock.

 

In a setting such as Elendel, the default assumption is that people know pretty much nothing.

 

Shadows of Self spoiler

 

At one point, Wax prevents people from vandalizing a Pathian temple. He assumes it's retaliation for the murder of Father Bin; turns out they hadn't heard. That's unthinkable in our modern world. There was a knifing at the main hub of trains in the city I live in a few weeks ago and I heard about it within minutes, and was able to ascertain that it was a credible source.

 

In Era 2, there is not perfect information. Compounders, even regular twinborn, are not perfectly understood. Even just regular allomancy and feruchemy. It is a false premise to assume that everyone has perfect knowledge of the Metallic Arts and attempt to justify why specific individuals might have unknown talents/powers; in truth, we have evidence that Marasi, an allomancer, a student at University who's specific field includes men like Miles, doesn't even believe regular compounding is a thing, despite having heard reports of it.

 

Miles could be shouting who and what he is from the rooftops; that is not going to change the fact that, across all the Basin, most people have no clue.

[Voidus]

You seem to be operating on the assumption that subterfuge is required; that the default state of being is "everyone knows all things" and the burden of proof is to show that information can be hidden.

 

Miles does not hide what his powers are. Marasi has even heard of his powers. She simply assumes it's an exaggeration. This is not a time and place with smartphones and mythbusters and wikipedia. Thousands of reports come in from all around the Roughs. Some of them true, most of them false. The true ones do not have a magic quality to them that will ensure everyone knows which ones to believe and which ones are poppycock.

 

In a setting such as Elendel, the default assumption is that people know pretty much nothing.

 

Shadows of Self spoiler

 

At one point, Wax prevents people from vandalizing a Pathian temple. He assumes it's retaliation for the murder of Father Bin; turns out they hadn't heard. That's unthinkable in our modern world. There was a knifing at the main hub of trains in the city I live in a few weeks ago and I heard about it within minutes, and was able to ascertain that it was a credible source.

 

In Era 2, there is not perfect information. Compounders, even regular twinborn, are not perfectly understood. Even just regular allomancy and feruchemy. It is a false premise to assume that everyone has perfect knowledge of the Metallic Arts and attempt to justify why specific individuals might have unknown talents/powers; in truth, we have evidence that Marasi, an allomancer, a student at University who's specific field includes men like Miles, doesn't even believe regular compounding is a thing, despite having heard reports of it.

 

Miles could be shouting who and what he is from the rooftops; that is not going to change the fact that, across all the Basin, most people have no clue.

Marasi wasn't studying allomancy or feruchemy she was studying lawmen, some of whom may be allomancers but that's like saying that criminologists study criminals, some criminals may have for example sickle cell anemia, therefore if someone studying criminology doesn't understand sickle cell anemia then no academics do. It'd be a completely separate field of study.

Again there's a difference between the population at large knowing/understanding something and the academic community, compare for example public knowledge of quantum phyiscs (One of the most popularized and commonly portrayed fields of physics) to the academic knowledge it's simply incomparable. 

You're assuming that the only way this information could possibly disseminate is from stories from the roughs but theres no reason that most compounders would even be in the roughs let alone that they could only spread news of their powers through vague stories. A copper or zinc compounder is infinitely more likely to be an academic studying at the university than a gunman spreading wild stories alongside Allomancer Jak.  They'd be more likely to gain the most from their powers by studying themselves and publishing a paper on it than by secreting all knowledge of their abilities from everyone.

[Oudeis]

Marasi wasn't studying allomancy or feruchemy she was studying lawmen, some of whom may be allomancers but that's like saying that criminologists study criminals, some criminals may have for example sickle cell anemia, therefore if someone studying criminology doesn't understand sickle cell anemia then no academics do. It'd be a completely separate field of study.

Again there's a difference between the population at large knowing/understanding something and the academic community, compare for example public knowledge of quantum phyiscs (One of the most popularized and commonly portrayed fields of physics) to the academic knowledge it's simply incomparable. 

You're assuming that the only way this information could possibly disseminate is from stories from the roughs but theres no reason that most compounders would even be in the roughs let alone that they could only spread news of their powers through vague stories. A copper or zinc compounder is infinitely more likely to be an academic studying at the university than a gunman spreading wild stories alongside Allomancer Jak.  They'd be more likely to gain the most from their powers by studying themselves and publishing a paper on it than by secreting all knowledge of their abilities from everyone.

 

Yet, she herself is an allomancer, and a criminal with sickle-cell anemia probably isn't using his condition to help him commit crimes. If there was a famous criminal our hypothetical criminologist studied who did turn a medical condition into an advantage in his field, you would expect her to... I dunno, be aware of the existence of that condition. This isn't a matter of Marasi not being up to speed on the specifics of compounding; she literally doesn't understand that it exists.

 

And, if you're right, and compounding is a lot more common in cities... wouldn't she have heard about it, anyway? Marasi might be an academic, but she also fits the category of 'general population', so if something is common knowledge, she'd likely know. She's done research into at least her own sort of allomancy; she tells Wayne about documentation that happens when Sliders and Pulsers burn together. I find it unlikely in the extreme that in her position, if it was common knowledge how compounding worked, Marasi would remain in the dark.

 

You bring up quantum physics... in a discussion where you're trying to say the public would, apparently, know something that academics do not. Are you positing that random people at a bar know more about quantum physics than scientists do?

 

A zinc compounder could totally publish a text on his powers... but so can literally anyone else. Allomancer Jak is a famous example of someone who clearly doesn't understand how tin works, nevertheless making money by selling stories. There's no fact-checking, there's no peer review. In our world, a few years back, a man was able to walk on stage with United States President Obama and wave his arms vaguely for the length of an entire speech and it was the next day before most of the world learned that this didn't know any sign language. This is in a world with background checks and digital records. In Elendel, in an analogue of 1910, there is no way to pick up two "THIS IS HOW ALLOMANCY WORKS" textbooks and intuit by any method which one is right and which one was written to sensationalize and make money.

 

I'd like to stress this again; Marasi absolutely did hear the story of how compounding works, specifically how Miles Hundredlives works. And she dismissed them as rumors. Whether from the roughs or the city, a lot of stories are passed around. People are apparently in the habit of just not believing them at this point.

[Voidus]

I'd like to stress this again; Marasi absolutely did hear the story of how compounding works, specifically how Miles Hundredlives works. And she dismissed them as rumors. Whether from the roughs or the city, a lot of stories are passed around. People are apparently in the habit of just not believing them at this point.

No she didn't, she'd just heard that he had exceptionally powerful healing, she didn't even know he had gold allomancy so it makes perfect sense that she'd dismiss it. Again the scene is included almost entirely for the readers sake, but even that aside and something I can't stress enough is that she's not studying allomancy, she has only as much knowledge on the subject as anyone else does. Heck records exist that TLR used compounding so if anything she's somehow less informed than most people reasonably should be. Which brings me to...

You bring up quantum physics... in a discussion where you're trying to say the public would, apparently, know something that academics do not. Are you positing that random people at a bar know more about quantum physics than scientists do?

No, I'm saying the opposite, that people who actually study allomancy and feruchemy would know a lot more about it than other people would, whether that person's a baker or a solicitor neither job implies a propensity for allomantic knowledge in any detail.

 

 

Yet, she herself is an allomancer, and a criminal with sickle-cell anemia probably isn't using his condition to help him commit crimes. If there was a famous criminal our hypothetical criminologist studied who did turn a medical condition into an advantage in his field, you would expect her to... I dunno, be aware of the existence of that condition. This isn't a matter of Marasi not being up to speed on the specifics of compounding; she literally doesn't understand that it exists.

 

And, if you're right, and compounding is a lot more common in cities... wouldn't she have heard about it, anyway? Marasi might be an academic, but she also fits the category of 'general population', so if something is common knowledge, she'd likely know. She's done research into at least her own sort of allomancy; she tells Wayne about documentation that happens when Sliders and Pulsers burn together. I find it unlikely in the extreme that in her position, if it was common knowledge how compounding worked, Marasi would remain in the dark.

 

You bring up quantum physics... in a discussion where you're trying to say the public would, apparently, know something that academics do not. Are you positing that random people at a bar know more about quantum physics than scientists do?

 

A zinc compounder could totally publish a text on his powers... but so can literally anyone else. Allomancer Jak is a famous example of someone who clearly doesn't understand how tin works, nevertheless making money by selling stories. There's no fact-checking, there's no peer review. In our world, a few years back, a man was able to walk on stage with United States President Obama and wave his arms vaguely for the length of an entire speech and it was the next day before most of the world learned that this didn't know any sign language. This is in a world with background checks and digital records. In Elendel, in an analogue of 1910, there is no way to pick up two "THIS IS HOW ALLOMANCY WORKS" textbooks and intuit by any method which one is right and which one was written to sensationalize and make money.

A Zinc compounder on the other hand has the benefit of actually being able to compound Zinc, they can publish a paper which other academics and scientists can actually study and replicate. Allomancer Jak is a character in a newspaper. Those kinds stories still get published all the time even in our era. I think you're greatly underestimating the scientific capabilities of Alloy era academics.

[Moogle]

No she didn't, she'd just heard that he had exceptionally powerful healing, she didn't even know he had gold allomancy so it makes perfect sense that she'd dismiss it.

 

Even when Marasi learned that Miles was a Double Gold Twinborn, she had no idea what Compounding was.

 

“Double gold,” Wayne said with a nod, reclining on the cushioned bench opposite Waxillium. Outside, the outer suburbs of Elendel passed in a blur. Marasi sat on the bench near Wayne.

“Gold Allomancers aren’t particularly dangerous, from what I’ve read.”

“No,” Waxillium said. “They aren’t. But it’s the Compounding that makes Miles so powerful. If your Allomancy and Feruchemy share a metal, you can access its power tenfold. It’s complicated. You store an attribute inside the metal, then burn it to release the power. It’s called Compounding. By the legends, it’s the way the Sliver gained immortality.”

Noting Marasi’s confused look, Waxillium explained, “Normally a Feruchemist has to be sparing. It can take months to store up health or weight. I’ve been walking around at half weight since breaking us through the floor, trying to recover some of what I expended. I’ve barely filled my metalmind to a fraction of what I lost. It’s even harder for Wayne.”

Wayne wiped his nose. “I’ll have to spend a few weeks in bed after this, feeling wretched. Otherwise, I’ll be unable to heal myself. Hell, I’m already storing as much as I can and still move about normally. By the end of the day, I’ll barely have enough to heal a scratch.”

“But Miles…” Marasi said.

“Near-infinite healing ability,” Waxillium said.

 

I agree that she really should know more and that it is silly that she did not, but that's just how it works, apparently.

[RadientAllomancer]

What if instead of the actual steelpush but the vision of blue lines are the attribute stored? When tapping you get more savant like stronger lines able to effect and see more or something along those lines. It doesn't have to be a duralumin like push when tapping.

[Voidus]

Even when Marasi learned that Miles was a Double Gold Twinborn, she had no idea what Compounding was.

 

“Double gold,” Wayne said with a nod, reclining on the cushioned bench opposite Waxillium. Outside, the outer suburbs of Elendel passed in a blur. Marasi sat on the bench near Wayne.

“Gold Allomancers aren’t particularly dangerous, from what I’ve read.”

“No,” Waxillium said. “They aren’t. But it’s the Compounding that makes Miles so powerful. If your Allomancy and Feruchemy share a metal, you can access its power tenfold. It’s complicated. You store an attribute inside the metal, then burn it to release the power. It’s called Compounding. By the legends, it’s the way the Sliver gained immortality.”

Noting Marasi’s confused look, Waxillium explained, “Normally a Feruchemist has to be sparing. It can take months to store up health or weight. I’ve been walking around at half weight since breaking us through the floor, trying to recover some of what I expended. I’ve barely filled my metalmind to a fraction of what I lost. It’s even harder for Wayne.”

Wayne wiped his nose. “I’ll have to spend a few weeks in bed after this, feeling wretched. Otherwise, I’ll be unable to heal myself. Hell, I’m already storing as much as I can and still move about normally. By the end of the day, I’ll barely have enough to heal a scratch.”

“But Miles…” Marasi said.

“Near-infinite healing ability,” Waxillium said.

 

I agree that she really should know more and that it is silly that she did not, but that's just how it works, apparently.

She'd quite clearly been unaware of the concept yeah but Oudeis was making it sound like someone must have explained to her that he could compound his gold feruchemy and she'd dismissed it as a myth.

But yeah it's honestly one of the moments that breaks Marasi's character for me, it's a nice way to slip in some exposition about compounding but I really do feel like someone as well educated as Marasi should have known better. If the information that the Lord Ruler used compounding was available to Wax then he's clearly not just going off of his relationship with Miles, I mean I guess he could have just heard it from his grandmother since from that scene in SoS it seems the Terris or at least she specifically is aware of how dangerous compounding is but you'd think someone with Marasi's passion could find similar credible sources. Actually now that I think about it wasn't it mentioned in the words of founding?

[Landis963]

"Mentioned in the Words of Founding" does not equal "Everyone knows about it." See also: The fact that Hemalurgy is almost entirely forgotten despite its pivotal role in the events leading up to the Catacendre and its mentions in the Words.

[Voidus]

"Mentioned in the Words of Founding" does not equal "Everyone knows about it." See also: The fact that Hemalurgy is almost entirely forgotten despite its pivotal role in the events leading up to the Catacendre and its mentions in the Words.

Wasn't it explicitly mentioned that hemalurgy wasn't mentioned in the Words? Spook was pretty annoyed about it as I recall for precisely this reason.

[Landis963]

That doesn't match with the quotes from the Words that we've seen (i.e. the epigraphs to HoA), which do mention Hemalurgy, and how it differs from Allomancy and Feruchemy.  

[Voidus]

Oh yea, there was a quote I found shortly after posting that I meant to include but forgot to edit my post
 

 

Lestibournes’s book said he considered it a crime that the Words of Founding—Harmony’s own record—omitted references to the dark art.

So yeah, definitely not in the WoF.

[Landis963]

Oh yea, there was a quote I found shortly after posting that I meant to include but forgot to edit my post

 

So yeah, definitely not in the WoF.

 

I thought the book that Spook picked up at the end of HoA - the one with his letter inside - was supposed to be the same one as the epigraphs on HoA.  Which have at least 2 references to Hemalurgy.  (I'd try and track down more, but I have misplaced my copy of HoA)

 

 

Hemalurgy is a power about which I wish I knew far less.

 

 

For all that it disgusts me, I cannot help but be impressed by Hemalurgy as an art.  In Allomancy and Feruchemy, skill and subtlety come through the application of one's powers.  The best Allomancer might not be the most powerful, but instead the one who can best manipulate the Pushes and Pulls of metals.  The best Feruchemist is the one who is most capable of sorting the information in his copperminds, or best able to manipulate his weight with iron.  

 

The art that is unique to Hemalurgy, however, is the knowledge of where to place the spikes.   

 

 

So unless Harmony went back through later and removed those references, we can categorically state that Hemalurgy did, in fact, show up in the Words.  

[Voidus]

Well either those aren't the words of founding or it's been retconned then. Particularly in light of the fact that as you mentioned no one knows anything about Hemalurgy even though plenty of people have read the Words of Founding.
Might be worth asking Brandon about though.

[natc]

The book addressed to spook pointed him towards another pile of books in the grass. Those would probably be the Words of Founding.