What metal was Hoid burning?

[Jofwu he/him]

In Words of Radiance we see Hoid dump some powder into his water, and presumably it's metal. Is there a WoB or any evidence to suggest which metal it was?

I had assumed he was using emotional allomancy on Shallan, but a Reddit thread had a lot of people who seemed to assume he was using Bronze. Just curious if we know what he was doing or not.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Yeah it was metal, and it was emotional allomancy, looks like.

[Argent he/him]

I am left with a vague memory that it was brass, to allow Hoid to flare Shallan's curiosity. I seem to recall something about her curiosity being unnatural in those scenes. 

[Argel he/him]

But wasn't her father much calmer and congenial in that scene as well?

[Spoolofwhool]

On 9/29/2016 at 11:52 AM, Argel said:

But wasn't her father much calmer and congenial in that scene as well?

You can do that with brass as well. As I think Breeze said, the zinc and brass can basically do the same thing, just by using opposing effects.. You can calm someone with brass by soothing their unease, or use zinc to riot their ease. I think.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[The One Who Connects he/him]

44 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

You can do that with brass as well. As I think Breeze said, the zinc and brass can basically do the same thing, just by using opposing effects.. You can calm someone with zinc by soothing their unease, or use brass to riot their ease. I think.

Soothing all but what you want them to feel is basically Rioting what you want them to feel. Same goes for vise-versa.
Only problem with that is there's probably limits on both ends. Can't go lower than a lack of emotion for Soothing, and I imagine a point where the mind cannot comprehend anything stronger for Rioting, but that's personal speculation

[Dunkum he/him]

4 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Soothing all but what you want them to feel is basically Rioting what you want them to feel. Same goes for vise-versa.
Only problem with that is there's probably limits on both ends. Can't go lower than a lack of emotion for Soothing, and I imagine a point where the mind cannot comprehend anything stronger for Rioting, but that's personal speculation

well, pluss there are probably downsides to soothing a bunch of emotions at once, and especially for rioting a bunch at once.  if you want to dull someone's anger by rioting everything else, you may end up rioting something you didn't really want to, like their desire to take action (there is probably a better term for that, but one isn't coming to me) which could result in side effects

[The One Who Connects he/him]

27 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

well, plus there are probably downsides to soothing a bunch of emotions at once, and especially for rioting a bunch at once.  if you want to dull someone's anger by rioting everything else, you may end up rioting something you didn't really want to, like their desire to take action (there is probably a better term for that, but one isn't coming to me) which could result in side effects

You could call it Determination, but Feruchemy takes offense to that so... But yea. I figured that someone would (not Breeze level) but at least have some practice to know related things to not sooth/riot before trying what I suggested. Plus rioting related emotions instead of just one would probably feel more natural to the person being rioted

Edited September 29, 2016 by The One Who Connects
Sentence Structure

[Dunkum he/him]

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

You could call it Determination, but Feruchemy takes offense to that so... But yea. I figured that someone would (not Breeze level) but at least have some practice to know related things to not sooth/riot before trying what I suggested. Plus rioting related emotions instead of just one would probably feel more natural to the person being rioted

true.  though I will say without a very very deft hand, soothing/rioting all (even if you are good enough to not touch certain related emotions) still is probably more noticeable than then just soothing or rioting the one you want.  so that is a downside

[Nightblade]

On 9/29/2016 at 10:43 AM, Spoolofwhool said:

You can do that with brass as well. As I think Breeze said, the zinc and brass can basically do the same thing, just by using opposing effects.. You can calm someone with zinc by soothing their unease, or use brass to riot their ease. I think.

I think you got that mixed up zinc is rioting, brass is soothing.

[Spoolofwhool]

4 hours ago, Nightblade said:

I think you got that mixed up zinc is rioting, brass is soothing.

Good call.

[Ari he/him]

You can swallow multiple metals in one vial, remember, so it's entirely possible it was both Zinc and Brass, and that while he was Rioting Shallan's curiosity, he might also have been soothing her suspicion, etc...