On the Allomancy of Ettmetal

[LiquidBlue]

There has been speculation that Harmony purposefully made ettmetal so reactive so that it could not be easily used in the traditional manner by practitioners of the metallic arts. That really shouldn't stop a creative and determined person, so I have be trying to think of ways that a allomancer could burn Ettmetal. I think that I have a way.

First it would have to be a mistborn. We don't know if there are  ettmetal mistings, and if there are, they would not have the ability to pull off the following procedure.

Second, I started from the thought of introducing the ettmetal into the body surrounded by another metal. The allomancer would burn through the protective shell first, and then start to burn the ettmetal when it became available. This might be all that it is necessary to burn ettmetal. However, given that it is so reactive, the allomancer may not be able to burn it fast enough, or may not have fast enough reflexes to start it burning when it becomes available, so i've added several more steps.

Third, make the surrounding metal thinner specifically in a small area. This will expose the ettmetal, but reduce the area that might chemically react with the body.

Fourth, flare pewter. The will provide the health and physical resilience to resist the damage done by the reacting ettmetal.

Fifth, burn duraluminium. This will greatly enhance the protective effect of pewter, but also burn through the ettmetal faster. Hopefully burning through it faster than it reacts with the body.

 

So to restate the procedure, the mistborn would (1) Swallow ettmetal that has been enclosed in a protective coating of another allomatic metal. (2) Start flaring pewter. (3) Start burning the protective shell. (4) Start burning duraluminium. (5) Burn the ettmetal reserve as soon as it appears.

Thoughts?

[Calderis he/him]

I think the duralumin method may work, but seeing as we have no clue what Harmonium/ettmetal does, it could be a ridiculous dangerous experiment. 

[Weltall]

Don't forget that there's also a cognitive element to this. You can't just have the metal inside you, you have to know that it's there before you can burn it. Remember how Vin had Zinc and Brass inside her but needed to be prodded by Kelsier before she could recognize the other as something she could use? Or for a Feruchemical case, Wayne needing to consciously think of the bracelet he was holding as a Goldmind before he could sense what it was? I suspect there would be a small delay between Harmonium being exposed (and thus burnable) and that awareness hitting you that you can burn it, especially as it would be something the Mistborn has never burned before. Given how ridiculously violent the reaction is implied to be, by the time you're able to burn the metal odds are it's either finished vaporizing itself (in which case there's not going to be anything to burn) or more likely it's finished vaporizing you. Pewter only speeds up natural healing, it's not like F-Gold where you can insta-heal as you're being harmed as long as you have the reserves. I doubt that even Duralumin-boosted Pewter could keep up with the rate of harm caused by an explosion happening inside the body, right next to all those vital organs.

Neat idea but I'm not sure it's at all practical and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to test it.

[Ciridae]

I like the idea, maybe also spike the mistborn with F-gold just to be safe and have them constantly tapping while they attempt to burn the ettmetal.

[Markus]

There is a thread discussing this here:

I had a similar idea to yours but not nearly as well thought-out.

[Itchy Savant he/him]

@Weltall the cognitive aspect might actually help, if the allomancer knows he has the ettmetal inside of him he should theoretically be able to burn it with out having to burn the protective casing. 

 

There is still a lot of risk though as it could start reacting if the protective casing is burned away by stomach acid. 

 

That being said I am sure once technology advances a bit more, specifically chemistry, scientists will be able to find/create a solution that can be used to safely store and (hopefully) ingest the ettmetal.

 

I think the protective layer of metal is a solid theory and could be used for all 3 metallic arts. But that is going off personal feeling not in world evidence.

We know very little about ettmetal so who knows.

 

Side theory: Ettmetal has no use in the metallic arts and only works in the ways we have seen.  It was made like that by harmony (don't know if he actually had a hand in that part) to bring the metallic arts to everyone of scadrial, thus creating a kind of magical balance in society, or a magical societal balance (harmony)

[LiquidBlue]

On 3/3/2017 at 10:54 PM, Calderis said:

I think the duralumin method may work, but seeing as we have no clue what Harmonium/ettmetal does, it could be a ridiculous dangerous experiment. 

23 hours ago, Weltall said:

Neat idea but I'm not sure it's at all practical and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to test it.

Yes, I agree that it would be very risky. Not only because you would be risking physical injury, but because you would be duraluminium flaring a metal with an unknown effect. On the other hand, the other 2 god-metals have really nice allomatic effects, so it might be worth the gamble.

23 hours ago, Weltall said:

Pewter only speeds up natural healing, it's not like F-Gold where you can insta-heal as you're being harmed as long as you have the reserves. I doubt that even Duralumin-boosted Pewter could keep up with the rate of harm caused by an explosion happening inside the body, right next to all those vital organs.

I included pewter not just for enhanced healing but also for the enhanced physical toughness and resilience.

 

19 hours ago, Ciridae said:

I like the idea, maybe also spike the mistborn with F-gold just to be safe and have them constantly tapping while they attempt to burn the ettmetal.

The are some additional things that could be done to help protect the mistborn or make the procedure safer, but the cost of making it more complicated and harder to accomplish. Feruchemical gold is the obvious first one. I think that Feruchemical zinc would also be helpful, especially if the mistborn had to jump on the ettmetal reserve as soon as it appeared. If we really want to go crazy with the feruchemy, Feruchemical chromium seems like a good fit as well.

Turning back to allomancy. I think that the expanded mental capabilities and understanding provided by burning atium would be very helpful. But mistborn have passed into history. Atium is only legend.

 

16 hours ago, Markus said:

There is a thread discussing this here:

 

Yes, I really should have posted to that thread. It is really recent.

 

12 hours ago, Itchy Savant said:

That being said I am sure once technology advances a bit more, specifically chemistry, scientists will be able to find/create a solution that can be used to safely store and (hopefully) ingest the ettmetal.

I thought about this a little before posting my first message. I wondered if the mistborn could simply burn the ettmetal after letting it react with something first. Unfortunately, I decided that this wouldn't work. The metallic arts seem to depend on the metallic structure of the metals involved. Harmonium oxide or Harmonium carbonate doesn't have that structure... However, this did lead to another idea that I am very excited about.

The reactivity of Harmonium is modeled after the alkali metals. In fact, there is good evidence that it is an alkali metal that is made up of investiture mimicking normal subatomic particles. Here is the exciting part, alloys of alkali metals are not as reactive as the alkali metals themselves, and alloys are a foundational principle of the metallic arts.

So instead of focussing on the allomancy/feruchemy of ettmetal itself. It should be much easier in universe to explore the allomatic/feruchemical properties of the harmonium alloys.

[Weltall]

36 minutes ago, LiquidBlue said:

I included pewter not just for enhanced healing but also for the enhanced physical toughness and resilience.

The key word here is 'enhanced'; there's an upper limit to what A-Pewter can do. Tarson in Alloy of Law had the double resiliency benefit of A-Pewter and being Koloss-blooded. A bullet to the head killed him the same as anyone else. I don't think an explosion happing inside your gut would be any better even if you did have Duralumin going as well and timed it perfectly so you burned the Pewter just as the explosion happened. Thugs have a noted habit of dying from their wounds or just from exhaustion when their Pewter runs out.

[cometaryorbit]

On 3/3/2017 at 11:58 PM, Weltall said:

Don't forget that there's also a cognitive element to this. You can't just have the metal inside you, you have to know that it's there before you can burn it.

Sometimes, but not necessarily. Thugs can burn pewter while unconscious. Now, they're "used to" burning pewter... but Elend burned lerasium (and then pewter) while unconscious, and he wasn't even an Allomancer before that.

[Shard Slayer]

So, it reacts with water. It wouldn't however, react with something like oil. Although I would see how a metal shell could interfere with the alomantic burning, I imagine that it would be possible to coat the metal in a non-metallic non-reactive coating that the person could ignore while burning the metal.

 

Also, probably injecting the capsule into a toe or under the skin somewhere would be better than swallowing it for a couple reasons:

1) You can pull it out if you aren't able to access it right away

2) If it explodes you lose a toe/some skin instead of your life