Southern "medallions" seen in Bands of Mourning

[+robardin he/him]

Off the top of my head, I can only recall Feruchemical abilities stored in them in a nicrosilmind, along with a metalmind with something pre-loaded to tap, or an empty one to allow you to fill them:

• F-brass and a brassmind pre-loaded with body heat
• F-iron and a (mostly empty) ironmind to fill with weight (for taking off in the aircraft)
• F-duralumin and a duraluminmind pre-loaded with Connectivity, allowing communication in foreign lands
• F-copper and a coppermind with a pre-loaded memory (of the Sovereign)

Other than the Bands of Mourning, we haven't seen an Allomantic power stored in a medallion, have we? Yet to make the skimmer Wilg take off, Allik needed Wax to Push on an ettmetal plate that apparently amplified it into something able to make the entire craft take off (after the non-Skimmer folks used medallions to lighten themselves). So that implies there should have been a medallion somewhere granting A-steel, and a vial of Allomantically usable steel powder or flakes, that we didn't see.

Also, it seems that tapping on a nicrosilmind is relatively efficient, on a par with a brassmind, in that those heat medallions evidently last quite a while - and to use them at all, the F-brass ability must be tapped at least as long as the brassmind would be (since your average Southerner would only be able to use the brassmind as long as the nicrosilmind allowed them to do so).

[Jofwu he/him]

20 minutes ago, robardin said:

So that implies there should have been a medallion somewhere granting A-steel, and a vial of Allomantically usable steel powder or flakes, that we didn't see.

Not necessarily. My interpretation is that the ship normally takes off by means of either (1) a mechanical device (the main ship wasn't operating, which is why Wax was needed) and/or (2) an ettmetal contraption (i.e. one of the "allomantic grenades" using steel). These solutions are more elegant (in my opinion) than requiring one of the crew to use A-steel, swallow metal, and "manually" push the thing away.

[Spoolofwhool]

When did it say he pushed on an ettmetal plate? I thought it was just a regular plate to get them airborne, then the ettmetal core cube used Wax's allomantic power to move the fans and keep them airborne. 

[+robardin he/him]

18 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Not necessarily. My interpretation is that the ship normally takes off by means of either (1) a mechanical device (the main ship wasn't operating, which is why Wax was needed) and/or (2) an ettmetal contraption (i.e. one of the "allomantic grenades" using steel). These solutions are more elegant (in my opinion) than requiring one of the crew to use A-steel, swallow metal, and "manually" push the thing away.

I like that. An allomantic "grenade" of A-steel that could be pre-loaded by a Coinshot to push off (without any need for a nicrosilmind or a vial of steel) at the flip of a switch. In fact that was possibly even its original function, before being removed by The Set and used as a Leechbomb on the train (and then acquired by Wax and co.). By design it'd be a one-shot use, then, since the Southerners don't have a lot of Metalborn, and "refilling" the ettmetal device would require them to go home to do so.

That only highlights what I was saying, though. Whatever Metalborn the Southerners have seem to be very Feruchemiically skewed. Yet Allik said they didn't have ANY Metalborn before the Sovereign came ("he taught us that the Metalborn were pieces of God, ... though we didn't have any of those at first"), or maybe they were just all not Snapped yet. Hmm.

 

[+robardin he/him]

6 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

When did it say he pushed on an ettmetal plate? I thought it was just a regular plate to get them airborne, then the ettmetal core cube used Wax's allomantic power to move the fans and keep them airborne. 

Wax pushes off by himself at first, but after a while, Allik asks for the "primer cube" and charges it against Wax, then drops it into place to keep the Push going. hich suggests it was supposed to have been there all along, presumably pre-charged with Pushing?

So yeah, there was no plate to push off on, it was the cube I was remembering.

 

Edited February 8, 2017 by robardin

[Spoolofwhool]

2 minutes ago, robardin said:

Wax pushes off by himself at first, but after a while, Allik asks for the "primer cube" and charges it against Wax, then drops it into place to keep the Push going. hich suggests it was supposed to have been there all along, presumably pre-charged with Pushing?

So yeah, there was no plate to push off on, it was the cube I was remembering.

 

No. The primer cube doesn't continue Wax's push against the plate. That was just to launch them from the greater ship. The cube activated the propellers on the craft to keep them up and move them.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what you're quite saying, but it sounds like one of us is misremembering what exactly happened.

[+robardin he/him]

Just now, Spoolofwhool said:

No. The primer cube doesn't continue Wax's push against the plate. That was just to launch them from the greater ship. The cube activated the propellers on the craft to keep them up and move them.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what you're quite saying, but it sounds like one of us is misremembering what exactly happened.

It was me, initially, until I went back and re-read the scene on my phone just now.

My original point was that I found it interesting that we've only seen Feruchemical abilities stored in the Southern medallions, even though it seemed like an Allomantic Push was designed into making the skimmer go. I remembered Wax's Pushing ability being required, and did not remember the detail of Allik using the cube to make the propellers go once they were clear - I only remembered something leveraging his Allomancy and then "running with it".

That still means the cube must have originally come pre-loaded from the Motherland with a Push, probably just to make the propellers go, as the skimmer was probably designed to come free and drop from the ship while in the air, rather than needing Wax to Push it off into the sky from the ground. And be a one-shot use, by design, since none of the airship crew were Coinshots.

Does that imply that Southern technology uses medallions for Feruchemy and cubes for Allomancy?
 

[Spoolofwhool]

They probably just had feruchemical medallions because feruchemy is more utilitarian than allomancy. No reason why they can't create allomantic medallions. Also, was it stated that they didn't have any coinshots? Even so, they probably had a medallion for steel allomancy for someone to use to power the ship.

[Pagerunner he/him]

24 minutes ago, robardin said:

It was me, initially, until I went back and re-read the scene on my phone just now.

My original point was that I found it interesting that we've only seen Feruchemical abilities stored in the Southern medallions, even though it seemed like an Allomantic Push was designed into making the skimmer go. I remembered Wax's Pushing ability being required, and did not remember the detail of Allik using the cube to make the propellers go once they were clear - I only remembered something leveraging his Allomancy and then "running with it".

That still means the cube must have originally come pre-loaded from the Motherland with a Push, probably just to make the propellers go, as the skimmer was probably designed to come free and drop from the ship while in the air, rather than needing Wax to Push it off into the sky from the ground. And be a one-shot use, by design, since none of the airship crew were Coinshots.

Does that imply that Southern technology uses medallions for Feruchemy and cubes for Allomancy?
 

The cubes don't hold charge for that long, only a few moments, unless they're plugged into to an ettmetal source. Allik charged the cube using Wax's initial Push against the plate.

We haven't seen primer cubes for Feruchemy, but the second ship at the end of the book did indeed have weight-changing machinery, so you can have inanimate objects using Feruchemy. I think it's more of what we have seen, rather than what's possible.

[Itchy Savant he/him]

I think the fact that allik  recognizes Wax as metalborn due to him flying around the room using allomancy a d the fact that the ettmetal grenades are used alongside allomancy means that they do have allomancers and are familiar with coinshots. A lot of the crew died before Wax and Co rescued allik. Safe to assume the crew would have included relalvent metalborn on their jourey

Edited February 8, 2017 by Itchy Savant

[+robardin he/him]

1 hour ago, Itchy Savant said:

I think the fact that allik  recognizes Wax as metalborn due to him flying around the room using allomancy a d the fact that the ettmetal grenades are used alongside allomancy means that they do have allomancers and are familiar with coinshots. A lot of the crew died before Wax and Co rescued allik. Safe to assume the crew would have included relalvent metalborn on their jourey

I hope so. There's a bit of a dark expectation on my part that the veneration implied in the appellations of "Firemothers", "Firefathers", and "Great Metallic Ones" are honorary... But that in practice, Metalborn in the South are much less free than their peers, being used as human generators of power. In a best case scenario, Metalborn have to do an regular turn of duty related to medallion and cube making, kind of like being in the Navy Reserve or something. In a worst case scenario... They may not even be "free ranging", if you get my meaning.

After all, Allik says that without the heat medallions, "all five peoples" in the South would have died out. Which means every single person in the Southern hemisphere depends on regular use of one of them just to stay alive. Less so than being stranded on the frozen mountaintop, but still, that's a LOT of heat medallions that need to be filled, at least some every day, with unkeyed heat.

There may be some kind of artificial Compounding going on, but if that were the case, the Southern Hemisphere would actually be far more powerful than the North, unless vastly outnumbered, and until the North catches up with the technology involved.

[Itchy Savant he/him]

There is always another secret. I suspect exactly what is going on with the south is something we haven't seen yet

[Nashan’Elin he/him]

I would assume that it's simply because it is much harder to create an Allomantic medallion than a normal one. In order to create an Allomantic medallion, wouldn't you need to be a Twinborn with Feruchemical nicrosil and whatever Allomantic power you will be storing?

[Itchy Savant he/him]

Yeah but if the incisors are hemalurgic spikes and that's how they are making the medallions you would think they would have access to allomantic spikes as well