16 Shards, 16 Metals

[Moogle]

Will and intent do not replace foci, simply make a sort of secondary focus. The Nalthis focus is color, demonstrated by the Tears of Edgli, who is the confirmed Shardholder of Endowment. Note that on Nalthis, auditory Commands are not always necessary, as shown by Susebron's use of Breath.

So what's Scadrial's focus, given you can use the mists for Allomancy without metals?

[Stormgate he/him]

The mists are literally part of Preservation. The focus is metal.

[Moogle]

The mists are literally part of Preservation. The focus is metal.

I'm confused, then. Since metals aren't required to use Allomancy, why are you saying will and intent don't replace them when the WoB I posted says as much?

I feel like I'm misunderstanding you.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Will and intent do not replace foci, simply make a sort of secondary focus. The Nalthis focus is color, demonstrated by the Tears of Edgli, who is the confirmed Shardholder of Endowment. Note that on Nalthis, auditory Commands are not always necessary, as shown by Susebron's use of Breath.

 

I'm currently looking for the WoB that explicitly states this, but color is NOT the focus of Awakening, Commands are.

[Chaos he/him]

Will and intent do not replace foci, simply make a sort of secondary focus. The Nalthis focus is color, demonstrated by the Tears of Edgli, who is the confirmed Shardholder of Endowment. Note that on Nalthis, auditory Commands are not always necessary, as shown by Susebron's use of Breath.

This is not accurate. (It is also not a logical conclusion from the Tears, either.)

Before this site existed and we had the power of interview databases, and before Brandon even finished Gathering Storm, Mi'chelle forced me to meet Brandon. Mi'chelle was taking Brandon's class. I didn't want to bother him after class but Brandon really didn't mind.

In this conversation we asked him a lot of things. One such thing is that--to my surprise--color is NOT the focus for Awakening. It is the Commands. This is unequivocal. You'll need to take my word for it, as I don't have the exact wording. This was a very long time ago.

Of course, this should come as no surprise if you've looked closely. Focuses are not fuels. A focus is what gives the power a defined effect. It is a filter. Metal is a key which grants an effect. The particular Aon shapes the Dor to a specific effect. And so, it should be obvious that color is not like these other things. Instead, it is the Command that filters the power into a particular form. So, this really does make sense.

Now, of course Roshar throws a wrench into this model of a focus, but that is a topic that has been well discussed elsewhere (and a topic that I discuss in my Realmatic Attributes theory). It is also less clear how important and necessary a focus is for a system.

But, from Brandon himself, Commands are the focus.

[Moogle]

I'm currently looking for the WoB that explicitly states this, but color is NOT the focus of Awakening, Commands are.

 

I don't believe there is one beyond Chaos mentioning it. Back when I was new to the forum, we couldn't find it.

[Stormgate he/him]

Look, can we just add this to the list of questions and table the issue? Quite frankly, I am getting a bit scared of all the moderators telling me I'm wrong.

[Chaos he/him]

Look, can we just add this to the list of questions and table the issue? Quite frankly, I am getting a bit scared of all the moderators telling me I'm wrong.

I don't mean to scare you: I'm just sharing WoBs. I don't know what else you want me to do We should get a recorded confirmation on it, sure. This has come up enough that it is relevant.

EDIT: I also want to say that the reason why WeiryWriter and Moogle were promoted is largely in part of their extreme knowledge of Brandon quotes (in addition to other reasons). I should hope that you aren't scared of mod interaction on the theory boards--I would be very sad to not be able to post!--but I just wanted to come at it at an angle of relative expertise, as I heard it myself. It's not really all that different than if I had posted a topic of a report saying this and then it getting into the database.

Anyway, sorry for scaring! Not to be the intent, of course, just to inform!

Edited December 28, 2015 by Chaos

[Eagle of the Forest Path he/him]

I thought of a new way to tell which metal goes with which Shard. In another thread, I propose that electrum Mistings can burn atium. What if Allomantically burning a God Metal provides an altered effect to their Allomantic counterpart? So Ruin and electrum would go together, and we don't know what burning Lerasium does, exactly. We know what it does to non-Allomancers, but Mistborn? I think he's RAFOed every attempt.

 

There's two WoBs that might answer this:

primo

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.

secundo

SHARDLET

If Vin and Elend hypothetically each blindly ingested equivalently sized beads of lerasium, would Vin be a stronger Mistborn than Elend, or would they be equal?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, Vin would be stronger. It is additive, not just an overwrite.

The same thing happens with Hemalurgy; with Hemalurgy when you're spiking someone's soul, you're ripping off a piece and adding it.

Edited December 28, 2015 by EagleOfTheForestPath

[Ari he/him]

In Shadows of Silence, I'm not convinced that the metal is silver. I think it's aluminum.

Remember the Everstorm? Nobody can deny that it was/is magical, but no gemstones were used. There is the possibility of Listeners having gemhearts, but beyond that, we might have some insight into the focus for Roshar. Maybe those Rhythms that we have been hearing about with bronze or briefly in AonDor finally are revealed. I think, maybe, that symmetry is the focus. The glyphs have reflected symmetry. The Void glyphs and the cymatics of the Plains and certain cities use rotational symmetry.

 

We know from Era 1 of Mistborn already that Silver is also allomantically inert, (It just doesn't have any properties in the magic system itself, unlike aluminium) and we have WoBs already that establish that this carries over to general investiture, hence silver's effect on Threnody.

 

I don't see why we'd have unreliable narration about Silver in Shadows for Silence when it's already on record that it has similar properties (although they may not work exactly the same) as Aluminium. It's probably that given they already know they have silver to defend against shades, nobody's gone experimenting with Aluminium just yet.

 

This is not accurate. (It is also not a logical conclusion from the Tears, either.)

Before this site existed and we had the power of interview databases, and before Brandon even finished Gathering Storm, Mi'chelle forced me to meet Brandon. Mi'chelle was taking Brandon's class. I didn't want to bother him after class but Brandon really didn't mind.

In this conversation we asked him a lot of things. One such thing is that--to my surprise--color is NOT the focus for Awakening. It is the Commands. This is unequivocal. You'll need to take my word for it, as I don't have the exact wording. This was a very long time ago.

Of course, this should come as no surprise if you've looked closely. Focuses are not fuels. A focus is what gives the power a defined effect. It is a filter. Metal is a key which grants an effect. The particular Aon shapes the Dor to a specific effect. And so, it should be obvious that color is not like these other things. Instead, it is the Command that filters the power into a particular form. So, this really does make sense.

Now, of course Roshar throws a wrench into this model of a focus, but that is a topic that has been well discussed elsewhere (and a topic that I discuss in my Realmatic Attributes theory). It is also less clear how important and necessary a focus is for a system.

But, from Brandon himself, Commands are the focus.

 

Cool to know. In which case we should be looking more to oaths or spren bonds as the "focus" on Roshar, and we probably need some additional terminology to describe what colour on Nalthis and gemstones on Roshar do. (colour seems to behave almost like a catalyst in chemical reactions, wheras Gemstones are more like an investiture battery, so it's entirely possible they even have different roles)