theory Aluminiumminds

[Gagylpus he/him]

With the information from Bands, we now know that unkeyed metalminds are possible: that is, metalminds created while the feruchemist is storing identity, so that they don't "know" who their owner is, allowing any feruchemist with the appropriate ability to tap them.

 

This leads to the question: are all aluminiumminds unkeyed?

 

It is possible that no, they are not: the feruchemist has his/her identity upon beginning to fill an aluminiummind, and the aluminiummind itself contains his/her identity when filled, so there are two avenues by which the aluminiummind could know its owner.

 

But I think the more interesting possibility is yes: since the feruchemist has no identity while filling their aluminiummind, the resulting store of identity is unkeyed and any aluminium ferring can access it. Which would mean that any aluminium ferring could store their own identity and then tap the identity of another feruchemist, allowing them to access all of that feruchemist's keyed metalminds, if the aluminium ferring also had the appropriate feruchemical abilities to access them (through the medallions, or hemalurgy, or through being a full feruchemist).

 

Addition in edit: a further implication of this is that an unkeyed metalmind could be burned allomantically by any allomancer of the appropriate metal!

 

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought of this, but I haven't seen it discussed since Bands of Mourning came out, so I wanted to bring it up. It seems that it is very possible that feruchemists could use aluminiumminds to trade metalminds, without making all metalminds unkeyed.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Gagylpus

[Red Ferring he/him]

its an interesting idea. I think it definitely works for any Trueself if you can tap and store the same attribute from two metalminds. Because if you dump your identity in a metalmind then the other persons metalmind doesn't know you're the wrong person. But I don't think you can make an unkeyed aluminummind, because you have your identity which you are storing into it, so it knows it's you. While other metalminds are filled whilst identity is already being siphoned into some aluminum, so the other metalmind gets no identity imprint.

So my thoughts, it works if it's possible to unkey yourself while simultaneously keying yourself with someone else's identity. But not possible to produce an unkeyed aluminum mind.

But I will say, in BOM, it says Wax tapped "everything" when referring to the Bands. And that could mean all the metals there, including an unkeyed aluminum mind. It could mean "everything" he was able to access (which might exclude the aluminum). Or just mean "everything" as a way to express his tapping a ton of powerful attributes

[Mr. Staccato he/him]

With the information from Bands, we now know that unkeyed metalminds are possible: that is, metalminds created while the feruchemist is storing identity, so that they don't "know" who their owner is, allowing any feruchemist with the appropriate ability to tap them.

 

This leads to the question: are all aluminiumminds unkeyed?

 

First of all, I thought this post was about some kind of aluminum and atium alloy I didn't know about so I had to like, go through the wiki and ridiculous amounts of sources pertaining to questions asked of Brandon before realizing the above might actually be just a plain old typo. I am so stupid   , me and my ridiculous expectations.

 

But hey, that's life. At least I found something interesting!

 

Anyway, although I second @Red Ferring in his idea that you can't completely unkey your very own aluminum mind, some part of me finds the metalmind swapping idea awesome. I can almost imagine what it would look like in later Mistborn books - who knows, metalmind markets? Like, no need for steroids! Just get yourself a pewter metalmind - makes you as ripped as Arnold Schwarzenegger without having to put up with that ridiculous accent!

 

Incidentally, that would give us a whole new perspective to the workings of Feruchemy. Hope it works anyhow.

[Gagylpus he/him]

First of all, I thought this post was about some kind of aluminum and atium alloy I didn't know about so I had to like, go through the wiki and ridiculous amounts of sources pertaining to questions asked of Brandon before realizing the above might actually be just a plain old typo. I am so stupid   , me and my ridiculous expectations.

 

Ah, sorry. I am spelling "aluminum" with the full "-ium" suffix. Drilled into my head as the "correct" way by my chemistry teacher in high school, though it looks like on Wikipedia that IUPAC accepts both spellings. I should try switching to the other way, leaving off that one "i" is somehow so much easier.

 

I think the question of whether aluminium (dang it) metalminds are unkeyed comes down to the inner mechanisms of how metalminds are keyed in the first place, which we don't really know the answer to. Are they keyed by the identity that the feruchemist has while storing it, as I suppose? (This would make aluminumminds stored at 100% unkeyed.) Or are they keyed by the identity that the feruchemist has when he begins to store it? (This would make them keyed.) Or is it the identity somehow carried by the attribute itself? (It could go either way with this one, but probably keyed.) We don't know, but it is interesting to speculate. 

[Red Ferring he/him]

I think the question of whether aluminium (dang it) metalminds are unkeyed comes down to the inner mechanisms of how metalminds are keyed in the first place, which we don't really know the answer to. Are they keyed by the identity that the feruchemist has while storing it, as I suppose? (This would make aluminumminds stored at 100% unkeyed.) Or are they keyed by the identity that the feruchemist has when he begins to store it? (This would make them keyed.) Or is it the identity somehow carried by the attribute itself? (It could go either way with this one, but probably keyed.) We don't know, but it is interesting to speculate.

I second this!

[Sunbird she/her]

If I understand correctly what you are proposing, I think this would work. Since the person who filled the aluminummind would have had no identity while they were filling it, the metalmind would remain unkeyed and contain that person's identity. So I think another Feruchemist should be able to tap the identity stored in the unkeyed metalmind in order to access other attributes stored by that same person in a different metalmind.

 

Of course, the above scenario would necessitate both people having more than one Feruchemical ability in order for it to actually be useful.

 

My question is, would the Feruchemist borrowing the stored identity need to be storing their own identity while drawing upon the borrowed one? Would the identities clash if they didn't?

Edited March 4, 2016 by Sunbird

[natc]

I wonder if it's possible to "half-key" a metalmind . . . say, while at 50% identity. It'd still be locked, of course, but is there a mechanical difference if not a functional one? Would that make faking the necessary identity with soulforging or some other such method be easier?

Is 0% identity even actually possible, or are "unkeyed" metalminds just below some threshold where the identity stops being an issue? I ask this because apparently multiple nicrosil charges from different people still cause interference in a person tapping the charges.

[Gagylpus he/him]

I wonder if it's possible to "half-key" a metalmind . . . say, while at 50% identity. It'd still be locked, of course, but is there a mechanical difference if not a functional one? Would that make faking the necessary identity with soulforging or some other such method be easier?

Is 0% identity even actually possible, or are "unkeyed" metalminds just below some threshold where the identity stops being an issue? I ask this because apparently multiple nicrosil charges from different people still cause interference in a person tapping the charges.

 

Right. The interference between different unkeyed metalminds is a clue that, in fact, the metalminds are not completely unkeyed - they might be stored at 1% identity or 10% identity, or something, and the residual identity is what causes the interference.

 

My personal theory is that you can have partially keyed metalminds, and they would work something like how you imagine - faking identity with soulforging would be easier, for one possibility. For another, someone who is familiar with the feruchemist's soul could access partially keyed metalminds (the way Ashravan's soulstamps worked on Gaotona). It probably depends on the level of Connection with the feruchemist. The more they store identity while creating a metalmind, the less Connected to them you have to be to access it.

[Red Ferring he/him]

 I ask this because apparently multiple nicrosil charges from different people still cause interference in a person tapping the charges.

We don't actually know why this happens yet. Or whether it's because they're from different people.

[natc]

Hence why the question needed to be asked, because the answer would shed light on the correlation between the two, if any exists.