Question on a metal (minor spoilers for 2nd Era)

[Shqueeves]

If you haven't read at least the first era of Mistborn, go do that, as I will be discussing one of the metals discussed in the 2nd era

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

 

Spoiler

Chromium

drains allomancers of their metals. At least, that's what we're told. However, in one of the broadsheets in the 2nd era (can't quite remember which book it was in) a 

Spoiler

Chromium

misting describes using it. She says that the metals themselves weren't drained, just the power. I propose that the enhancement metals don't affect metal, they affect Investiture.

What do you think? 

 

Edit: it isn't really much of a question. sorry?

Edited December 12, 2016 by Shqueeves

[Sallin Zeras]

10 minutes ago, Shqueeves said:

If you haven't read at least the first era of Mistborn, go do that, as I will be discussing one of the metals discussed in the 2nd era

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Chromium

drains allomancers of their metals. At least, that's what we're told. However, in one of the broadsheets in the 2nd era (can't quite remember which book it was in) a 

  Reveal hidden contents

Chromium

misting describes using it. She says that the metals themselves weren't drained, just the power. I propose that the enhancement metals don't affect metal, they affect Investiture.

What do you think? 

 

Edit: it isn't really much of a question. sorry?

It probably affects either the cognitive realm or the Spiritual, but not the physical, that's for sure. We still don't see any important chromium misting, so, whenever we see that, it's going to be really interesting.

[Spoolofwhool]

Chromium destroys the target's burnable metals, any that they possess, either ingested or at least somewhat internalized. I'm not sure about metals just on the surface of the body. There's a WoB on the matter where if you used chromium on misting with piercings of their metals, the piercings would burn off. 

Quote

KAYMYTH

OK, so in the signing line, I asked the question about chromium vs a Compounder with both invested and uninvested metals in both their stomach and piercings.

BRANDON SANDERSON

1) Yes, the piercings will get burned off. (I bet that seeing that happen would look downright weird.) 2) The noninvested metals go before the invested ones. He said that because invested metals are harder to effect, it takes a little extra time and effort to get them to burn off. So a Leecher trying to clean out a Compounder would have to get a good grip and hang on for a few seconds. 3) Chromium burns about as quickly as duralumin, so if you're trying to burn off a lot of metals, it is possible to run out of chromium before your target is clean. This would probably only be an issue when dealing with larger pieces (like jewelry) rather than your standard metal-flakes-in-the-stomach deal.

FOOTNOTE

Sorry I don't have exact quotes, but there was a line and no easy way to take notes. But what it boils down to is this:

[Source]

 

[Kaymyth]

If someone can find this broadsheet passage, I'd like to take a second look at it.  (It would almost certainly be in Shadows of Self or Bands of Mourning.  I've been over Alloy of Law with a fine-toothed comb.)

A lot of folks take the broadsheets with a grain of salt, as a lot of them come via unreliable narrators; I'd like to dig through and look at the circumstances and wording.  Like...how do you know if the metals themselves are really gone, unless you're burning off a piercing?  Was this written in the context of being an in-world theory, or through actual experimentation?

[Eki]

1 hour ago, Kaymyth said:

If someone can find this broadsheet passage, I'd like to take a second look at it.  (It would almost certainly be in Shadows of Self or Bands of Mourning.  I've been over Alloy of Law with a fine-toothed comb.)

A lot of folks take the broadsheets with a grain of salt, as a lot of them come via unreliable narrators; I'd like to dig through and look at the circumstances and wording.  Like...how do you know if the metals themselves are really gone, unless you're burning off a piercing?  Was this written in the context of being an in-world theory, or through actual experimentation?

It's from a story in BoM, but the author (and main character) is an actual Chromium Misting. Also, there's probably more truth to the story than the average newspaper reader in-universe would think.

Quote

When I drain a Misting of metal reserves, I feel something I can only describe as pulling power from the metal and returning this power to some external source. The metal remains, but the power is gone.

I imagined that same intent as I touched the pistol. I pulled power from the device and returned it... elsewhere.

After which the gun holder does something that recharges the gun (which shoots ghosts (probably Shades) (I have not yet read SfSitFoH)) and makes it work again. Though it reads like a fantasy story, the narrator's opponent is likely Nazh, so it's probably less imagined than it's supposed to look.

However, Allomantic metals aren't actually Invested, so it can't be Investiture in particular that Chromium drains. It seems to just change the metal so it doesn't work as a key anymore. Probably only temporarily, as well.

Obviously this is contradicting the WoB @Spoolofwhool posted. Either BoM overrides it, being published later, or the narrator of the broadsheet story is just wrong, or Brandon thought the question was about Nicrosil.

I don't think the narrator is wrong, just because her power does work on the gun. Of course, she's only telling a story, so she could have just made that up.

[Spoolofwhool]

4 hours ago, Eki said:

Obviously this is contradicting the WoB @Spoolofwhool posted. Either BoM overrides it, being published later, or the narrator of the broadsheet story is just wrong, or Brandon thought the question was about Nicrosil.

It's weird though because looking at the dates of the release of BoM and this WoB, BoM was January 2016, and this was said May 2015, which means that BoM probably would've been basically done first draft, or already into revisions for release.

[Eki]

5 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

It's weird though because looking at the dates of the release of BoM and this WoB, BoM was January 2016, and this was said May 2015, which means that BoM probably would've been basically done first draft, or already into revisions for release.

True. That's why I'm thinking Brandon may have been thinking about Nicrosil.

[Kaymyth]

OK, so I'm the person who originally obtained that WoB.  It's important for me to note at this point that the bit in parentheses about how that would "look weird" in the original WoB was an interjection by me.  This is confusing and stupid and was a terrible, awful thing for me to do.  I need to dig back in and edit the original post and change it into a footnote or something.  And if this has been input into the Theoryland database, I need to ask @WeiryWriter to fix it there, too.

I will go find the broadsheet article and pore over it when I get home from work tonight.  I have thinky thoughts brewing, but I need to read over the full reference before I can articulate them properly.

[Ted aka WinespringBrother]

1 hour ago, Kaymyth said:

OK, so I'm the person who originally obtained that WoB.  It's important for me to note at this point that the bit in parentheses about how that would "look weird" in the original WoB was an interjection by me.  This is confusing and stupid and was a terrible, awful thing for me to do.  I need to dig back in and edit the original post and change it into a footnote or something.  And if this has been input into the Theoryland database, I need to ask @WeiryWriter to fix it there, too.

I will go find the broadsheet article and pore over it when I get home from work tonight.  I have thinky thoughts brewing, but I need to read over the full reference before I can articulate them properly.

The part in parentheses is not in the TL database.

[Kaymyth]

36 minutes ago, Segren said:

The part in parentheses is not in the TL database.

Oh, good, that makes me feel much better.

Now I just have to dig through the Events and Signings board and find my post again and fix it.

[WeiryWriter]

Oh sorry, it was in there but I went in and took it out. I thought I had posted about that but I guess I didn't...

[Kaymyth]

2 hours ago, WeiryWriter said:

Oh sorry, it was in there but I went in and took it out. I thought I had posted about that but I guess I didn't...

And NOW I see this, and the PM I sent you a few minutes ago is suddenly slightly dumber than when I sent it.

*flail*

[Shqueeves]

On 12/12/2016 at 8:29 AM, Kaymyth said:

I will go find the broadsheet article and pore over it when I get home from work tonight.  I have thinky thoughts brewing, but I need to read over the full reference before I can articulate them properly.

Have you had time to think your thinky thoughts? 

[Kaymyth]

19 hours ago, Shqueeves said:

Have you had time to think your thinky thoughts? 

Yes, sorry!  Sometimes it takes me a few days to gather my thoughts.  And then sometimes I do that, and only then think to poke through Theoryland, and find gems like this one that render about half of my ponderances moot:

Quote

Question

Aluminum, when you burn aluminum, does it actually destroy the metals or just take away their power?

Brandon Sanderson

It destroys the metals.

Question

Same with chromium?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Question

So it actually gets rid of the metals?

Brandon Sanderson

It actually trans-- It does a-- matter, energy, investiture are the same things in the cosmere. You have some sort of transfer happening relating to those things.

Question

The question sort of relates to metal poisoning--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you would not get metal poisoning after that.

Tags

aluminum, chronium, metal poisoning,

Source: http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kw=chromium

This is much clearer (and slightly more recent) than the WoB I got.  It states pretty clearly that chromium, like aluminum, completely destroys the metals, at least enough to remove any possibility of metal poisoning.  Which is what I really wanted to know, beyond the simple aesthetics of whether a piercing would disappear or just drain.  Chromium mistings, then, would be very useful to Allomancers who had accidentally ingested an impure base metal or a bad alloy.

It also would suggest that chromium savants could potentially obtain the ability to cleanse impurities from the body the way Aluminum savants only could theoretically.  With aluminum, you zap all your metal reserves, including the aluminum itself.  Chromium, however, works on others, which means that you're burning the metal at a normal rate rather than just losing it every time you use it. 

I would posit that the WoBs are probably more accurate than the story's PoV, for several possible reasons:

1)  This is an adventure story in a broadsheet.  We can recognize Nazh and posit that the basic events probably happened, but we don't actually know whether they happened exactly like that (though the dialogue sounds pretty in-character).  We also do not know whether the misting actually wrote this, or if she has a ghostwriter who embellishes things up for the audience.

2a)  How would your average chromium misting even know for sure whether the metals themselves are gone?  Most of them are hitting Allomancers, who carry their reserves unseen.  We don't really know if the power works on ferrings or their metalminds.  In the scenario I put forward, the target was a Twinborn Compounder, so the Allomancy worked on both her internal reserves and pierced metalminds without bringing true Feruchemy into the equation.

2b)  So to know for sure whether the metals disappear, our chromium misting would have to have tested it on someone with charged piercings.  Possibly that target would have to be a Compounder, which would make it even harder to test the theory, though I will admit that we do not know for sure this is the case.

 

My conclusion is that the WoB is accurate and the broadsheet story wrong on this subject.  Feel free to disagree with me if you like; I believe the evidence above supports this theory, but it's not a 100% slam dunk.  It is, however, solid enough that I feel confident that my fanfic WiP is using the correct mechanics.

So either a ghostwriter decided to add their own spin to chromium, or the misting is simply taking what their power "feels" like and making assumptions based on that feeling.

[Eki]

Thanks, @Kaymyth! I think you are most likely right. For 2a), the detail about metals not disappearing is important for the story, since the gun isn't destroyed, just... discharged. Or something. I thought that detail was mentioned in the story as an actual showcase of metal not disappearing, but it could just be her made-up excuse to make the story seem more plausible, and her powers more useful for an adventurer. (Although, I guess being able to destroy metals would be even more useful, but...) Still, the gun probably does exist.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Eki