How do they determine your power?

[StrikerEZ he/him]

Something I've always wondered is how they determined which type of allomancer someone is. I guess in the Final Empire Era, they would just have the recently beaten (and possibly Snapped) child eat each of the metals that they knew about until the kid noticed something, and was able to burn it, or was a Mistborn, but how would they know to keep going after the first one? Actually, that problem would be solved by the first two metals they tested for Mistborn, since they can only burn one or all, nevermind.

But my main question is for Era 2 metalborn. Since everyone Snaps when they're born (presumably, since Snapping is much easier thanks to Harmony now, and none of our lovable metalborn friends have mentioned being beaten), do the doctors just test the babies to see if they're metalborn? Well, that wouldn't work, because it's just a baby. They'd have to wait until the kid is a little bit older to see if they're metalborn. This sparked some interesting ideas for me, as that could lead to the possibility of there being a sort of 'recruitment' of Allomancers (in later Eras), or at least being tracked down by the government when they're old enough.

Also, how do they test Feruchemy? I'd assume the same method, but the kid would have to be old enough to participate in the testing and actually store in the metals. 

This was just an interesting idea I had, and I haven't seen anyone bring it up before, so I though it'd be interesting to talk about.

[+hwiles He/Him]

Well, allomancy and feruchemy are inherited genetically, so if someone knows whether or not they had metalborn within the last few generations of their family, they'll definitely want to get themselves tested.  There are a lot of heavy metals in the basin, so it's feasible for allomancers to discover their powers from their drinking water.

The Terris keep awesome family records and track bloodlines, so my impression has been that they find and test the vast majority of potential ferrings.  It wouldn't shock me if they had some kind of coming of age ceremony where they allowed a potential initiate to touch a small sample of each metal and see if they could store into it, or, alternatively, if they passed children metal minds to see if they could sense the Investiture (Feruchemists can't normally tap each other's metalminds, but they can feel the stored attribute).

I suspect that there are a small number of ferrings who either go untested, or live significant periods of time (maybe their whole lives) without discovering their powers because they don't know the identity of one or more of their parents/grandparents.  Granted, I wouldn't be shocked if the Elendel government provided testing as a free service, considering how easy it is to check for.

Recall, Harmony changed snapping in some as yet unrevealed way to make it much less traumatic.

[Oversleep]

35 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Recall, Harmony changed snapping in some as yet unrevealed way to make it much less traumatic.

My headcanon is that choking on something is now sufficient to Snap.

Testing the metals isn't hard, just swallow all sixteen, try to burn, vomit.

Anyway, as far as Feruchemy goes, IIRC Feruchemists feel an affinity to the metal but I can't find the WoB.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Oversleep

[Weltall]

I don't have the books handy right now to check but I could swear that somewhere in SoS or BoM Wayne had something to say about 'knowing' he had an Allomantic power growing up but he couldn't get his hands on the rare metal that would prove it.

[DocHoliday he/him]

I recal something similar, but the line i recall says obtaining gold isn't cheap, or something to that effect.

[DeadFencer]

I think the fact that the mists are still around has something to do with Snapping. After all, the mists Snapped people earlier; Sazed could have reduced their intensity to go along with the reduced requirements for Snapping (and get rid of that nasty side effect of killing some people.) Also Feruchemical powers are available from birth, no Snapping required.

[Spoolofwhool]

7 hours ago, Weltall said:

I don't have the books handy right now to check but I could swear that somewhere in SoS or BoM Wayne had something to say about 'knowing' he had an Allomantic power growing up but he couldn't get his hands on the rare metal that would prove it.

6 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

I recal something similar, but the line i recall says obtaining gold isn't cheap, or something to that effect.

It was about being a feruchemist. His father was one so he figured he had a good chance of being one, but never got his hands on gold until later in life to know that he was one.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

I wouldn't be surprised if they did test infants, since burning can be instinctual and infants are basically bundles of instincts and reflexes. Maybe the hospital has a Seeker in the maternity ward?

"Sign here to agree to have your child tested for allomancy. And here for her first vaccines."

[SleepyWordsmith he/him]

This is actually something that I've been thinking about for a while now, and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one.

I can't believe that in a world where it is commonplace for people to have magical powers that a standardized testing program wouldn't have come up in some capacity, whether it be instituted by the government or just a service provided by schools at a certain age level, similar to a graduation/advancement ceremony, or even as a part of it. 

This is the kind of small thing that is significant to the in-world society, but is never really addressed in the books, and it has to come up somewhere. I've actually started writing a bunch of stories that showcase these kinds of quirks of the Cosmere worlds, in case anyone's interested, three of which go into the Allomancy and Feruchemy testing process to some extent. 

[Isilel]

Just wanted to say that keeping track of genealogy is probably not that helpful, because according to Ars Arcanum of the Second Era books each of the god metals and their alloys build 2 more groups of 16 metals each. So, 31 additional metals all in all, that have their own Mistings and Ferrings, since pure lerasium can be burned (and tapped?) by anyone. Only, these metals are no longer obtainable, so there is no way to check. But the net effect is that since, as far as we know, being an Allomancer or a Feruchemist is genetic, but the type of your respective metal isn't, there are a lot more people around who can pass on Metalborn abilities to their children than any avaialable tests could reveal. Consequently, most of the Metalborn go through their lives with their abilities unrecognized, but they can and do pop up in their descendants, who are lucky enough to get a talent in one of the basic 16 metals. Well, aluminium and duralumin Mistings not so much, of course. 

This makes me wonder if the women targeted for kidnapping by the Set may have been unrecognized Mistings of some of those supposedly vanished metals? Though it is difficult to see how they could have been tested without them noticing, and, of course, Marasi wouldn't fit there, as her metal is both known and not particularly desirable for aspiring Hemalurgists.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Isilel

[amflare]

On 7/6/2017 at 7:45 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

It was about being a feruchemist. His father was one so he figured he had a good chance of being one, but never got his hands on gold until later in life to know that he was one.

This is insinuated more than anything else

Quote

“Did you know you were an Allomancer?”[Marasi] asked.

“Sure. That was kinda why I was in the Roughs in the first place, but that’s another story. Anyway, bendalloy is hard to make. Bismuth and cadmium aren’t the kinds of metals you find in your corner store. Didn’t know much about Feruchemy yet, though my father was a Feruchemist, so I had an idea. But storing health, it takes gold.”
Alloy of Law - Chapter 10

 

[Weltall]

17 hours ago, SteelSlider said:

I can't believe that in a world where it is commonplace for people to have magical powers that a standardized testing program wouldn't have come up in some capacity, whether it be instituted by the government or just a service provided by schools at a certain age level, similar to a graduation/advancement ceremony, or even as a part of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is such a system in the major cities and it simply hasn't come up yet because it's not been sufficiently important to the narrative. We know that Elend instittuted a controlled 'Snapping attempt' system during his reign so it wouldn't surprise me if this continued into the post-Catacendre world, even if the threshold has been lowered from where it used to be. As long as it's not so low that active intervention isn't necessary at all.

As for determining powers, I'm curious what the cost would be of instituting an appropriate test. You can find certain misting types fairly easily due to burning trace metals they'll encounter naturally (case in point, Vin managing to Soothe before she knew what she was doing) but for everything else you'd need a vial containing trace amounts of all the metals you want to test, for every candidate. I wonder what the economics of that would look like, especially for bendalloy.

In any case, I expect we'll get some information on this either in The Lost Metal or once we hit Era 3. Or someone could ask Brandon.

4 hours ago, Isilel said:

Just wanted to say that keeping track of genealogy is probably not that helpful, because according to Ars Arcanum of the Second Era books each of the god metals and their alloys build 2 more groups of 16 metals each. So, 31 additional metals all in all, that have their own Mistings and Ferrings

There probably aren't naturally-occurring mistings of any godmetal alloys. Atium mistings exist because Preservation tweaked the system to ensure that his plan to keep the atium cache from Ruin worked out. That required that there be atium mistings and that the numbers of people who came down with the mist sickness worked out to create the pattern of sixteens. He apparently did this by bumping out another metal that nobody would notice missing. Brandon's answered various ways on what this is, but has been pretty consistent about it being a metal that would have been difficult or impossible to obtain at that time. Once Harmony Ascended, he could change the system back and there would be no more atium mistings and presumably, no mistings for the many possible alloys involving it and/or lerasium.

Quote

Questioner

If atium isn't a regular metal then why are there atium Mistings?

Brandon Sanderson

They were designed and created specifically to do what they did. Remember this is-- Preservation and Ruin were able to influence the world and rewrite people's spiritual DNA.

source

 

[Spoolofwhool]

5 hours ago, amflare said:

This is insinuated more than anything else

 

Yeah, but I think it's a fair implication. Obviously he couldn't have known that he was a bloodmaker until he touched gold for the first time.

[Shqueeves he/him]

2 hours ago, Weltall said:

Once Harmony Ascended, he could change the system back and there would be no more atium mistings and presumably, no mistings for the many possible alloys involving it and/or lerasium.

Technically, all scadrians agree lerasium/lerasium alloy mistings. Lerasium makes mistborn, lerasium alloys make mistings of whatever metal of the 16 it's alloyed with

[Weltall]

@Shqueeves Fair call that there's no point in, say, a lerasium/steel misting because that's just a Coinshot who may or may not be stronger than normal, probably depending on how much lerasium was in the alloy. But there would presumably be feruchemical uses for those lerasium alloys (the Era 2 ars arcana suggest as much) and the ultimate point is there should be no mistings/ferrings naturally occuring for any godmetal alloys because atium mistings only existed in the first place by Preservation's tweaking to make it so.

[Isilel]

18 hours ago, Weltall said:

As for determining powers, I'm curious what the cost would be of instituting an appropriate test. You can find certain misting types fairly easily due to burning trace metals they'll encounter naturally (case in point, Vin managing to Soothe before she knew what she was doing) but for everything else you'd need a vial containing trace amounts of all the metals you want to test, for every candidate. I wonder what the economics of that would look like, especially for bendalloy.

Well, large business companies and/or government might find it profitable to offer testing to all comers who are young enough, in exchange for them agreeing to an obligatory training and work contracts that would lock them in for a number of years, if they prove to have the talent. With a Seeker to supervise. That used to happen occasionally with very promising, but poor students during the comparable eras iRL, etc.   

18 hours ago, Weltall said:

There probably aren't naturally-occurring mistings of any godmetal alloys. Atium mistings exist because Preservation tweaked the system to ensure that his plan to keep the atium cache from Ruin worked out. That required that there be atium mistings and that the numbers of people who came down with the mist sickness worked out to create the pattern of sixteens.

Khriss talks about 2 groups of 16 provided by the God metals and their alloys in present tense in the Ars Arcanum of Era 2, so I find it to be highly unlikely. Granted, it is possible that anybody can burn lerasium alloys, just like they can the pure metal, but that's because there is more Preservation than Ruin in Scadrian humans. But that wouldn't apply to atium and it's derivatives. And also, we know that atium had feruchemical applications as well.

IMHO, Preservation just mislead humans concerning the number of possible allomantic and feruchemical metals, grouping atium with the basic 16, of which a number was unknown and couldn't be produced during TLR's reign, when in fact, it belongs to a completely different 16-metal group. Percentages of mist-snapped Mistings have been rigged by him to make a recognizable pattern, I agree. Particularly since it is hinted in Era 2 that mistings of some metals are much more common than those of others when the distribution is natural.

I mean, let's not forget that the Mistborn had the ability to burn not just pure atium, but it's alloys, such a malatium as well. Why would Preservation hack in something like that?   

18 hours ago, Weltall said:

 Once Harmony Ascended, he could change the system back and there would be no more atium mistings and presumably, no mistings for the many possible alloys involving it and/or lerasium.

But the fact that both god metals had 15 Metallically useable alloys was only revealed in the Era 2 books - and I somehow doubt that it is a wholly irrelevant detail, added purely for color. IMHO, it will be  significant for the resolution of the Lost Metal. Maybe the force that now wants to extinguish all life on Scadrial will try to do so by unbalancing Harmony with the influx of atium that was stored off-world during TLR's reign?

In fact, I now think that the excisors left to Southern Scadrians by the Sovereign are very special metalminds made form the old god metals and/or their alloys, that somehow let them completely Unseal investiture . Which is why they can't make any new ones.

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Isilel said:

Khriss talks about 2 groups of 16 provided by the God metals and their alloys in present tense in the Ars Arcanum of Era 2, so I find it to be highly unlikely. Granted, it is possible that anybody can burn lerasium alloys, just like they can the pure metal, but that's because there is more Preservation than Ruin in Scadrian humans. But that wouldn't apply to atium and it's derivatives. And also, we know that atium had feruchemical applications as well.

She discusses the godmetal alloys as things that are hypothetical due to the rarity (or for all intents and purposes, nonexistence) of the godmetals needed to create them. Feruchemy is specifically mentioned in the same context as full feruchemists being rare, but doesn't discount the possibility that there could be some, so her discussion of the use of these alloys doesn't necessarily demonstrate that she believes that, say, malatium ferrings exist. There's also the temporal aspect of Khriss' writings at work; we don't know exactly 'when' any given entry was written relative to the events of the books they're written in.

Quote

IMHO, Preservation just mislead humans concerning the number of possible allomantic and feruchemical metals, grouping atium with the basic 16, of which a number was unknown and couldn't be produced during TLR's reign, when in fact, it belongs to a completely different 16-metal group. Percentages of mist-snapped Mistings have been rigged by him to make a recognizable pattern, I agree. Particularly since it is hinted in Era 2 that mistings of some metals are much more common than those of others when the distribution is natural.

Preservation wanted sixteen to be his signature but ran into trouble because knowledge of how many metals were 'supposed' to exist wasn't widely known due to Rashek hiding knowledge of the Enhancement/Temporal metals (which he knew about). But Brandon explicitly said that atium mistings were 'designed' by Preservation so there's more going on than just messing around with the knowledge of viable metals.

Quote

I mean, let's not forget that the Mistborn had the ability to burn not just pure atium, but it's alloys, such a malatium as well. Why would Preservation hack in something like that?   

Mistborn can burn everything, you don't need to hack the system to include godmetal alloys when it's an inherent aspect of their powerset. We know this also applies to feruchemists with their ability to tap/store in all metals because Brandon has confirmed that Sazed experimented with malatium but didn't get very far with it.

Quote

But the fact that both god metals had 15 Metallically useable alloys was only revealed in the Era 2 books - and I somehow doubt that it is a wholly irrelevant detail, added purely for color. IMHO, it will be  significant for the resolution of the Lost Metal. Maybe the force that now wants to extinguish all life on Scadrial will try to do so by unbalancing Harmony with the influx of atium that was stored off-world during TLR's reign?.

We've effectively known about the potential for other godmetal alloys since he revealed that the 'Eleventh Metal' was an alloy of atium and gold. We knew about atium having alloys with all sixteen base metals for about a year before Alloy of Law came out, so we could have easily intuited the existence of lerasium alloys before Brandon revealed it in published form. It's entirely possible Brandon just wanted that information available outside of WoBs but doesn't intend for them to play a major role in the end of Era 2.

As for the unbalancing theory, we don't actually know that atium was being traded offworld. Rashek was aware of the existence of the trade network running through his world and it's unlikely he would allow atium to go anywhere he couldn't keep an eye on it, even if taking it off Scadrial would keep it out of Ruin's reach. Also, when Hoid tells Kelsier the consequences of his destroying the atium geodes, the context makes it sound like the greater disruption was Kelsier cutting off access to Ruin's Perpendicularity, rather than the atium geodes themselves.

[Isilel]

On 23.2.2018 at 8:54 PM, Weltall said:

She discusses the godmetal alloys as things that are hypothetical due to the rarity

She doesn't discuss them as hypothetical, but as a fact:

Quote

"two others—named the “God Metals” locally—can be used in alloy to craft an entirely different set of sixteen each. As these God Metals are no longer commonly available, however, the other metals are not in wide use."

This is from BoM Ars Arcanum section on Allomancy and hints that the God metal alloys _are_ still in use, just not widely. What is hypothesised is their use in Feruchemy. As I have said previously, I now believe that the excisors are special metalminds made from the God metal alloys.

 

Quote

Feruchemy is specifically mentioned in the same context as full feruchemists being rare, but doesn't discount the possibility that there could be some

I couldn't find this, but the kandra do expect that a full Feruchemist will be born eventually and they may have some privileged knowledge. Now that we know that kandra in human form can have human children, this makes me wonder whether kandra origin would make it more likely that these children would have feruchemical abilities.

Quote

 But Brandon explicitly said that atium mistings were 'designed' by Preservation so there's more going on than just messing around with the knowledge of viable metals.

Mistborn can burn everything, you don't need to hack the system to include godmetal alloys when it's an inherent aspect of their powerset. We know this also applies to feruchemists with their ability to tap/store in all metals because Brandon has confirmed that Sazed experimented with malatium but didn't get very far with it.

It doesn't seem logical to me that full Mistborn and Feruchemists would have an additional set of 16  metals, that only they can use, but for which there are no naturally occuring Mistings/Ferrings. I think that the "design" was Preservation providing lerasium for the making of the first Mistborn in the first place, which showed people that atium could be used allomantically and, with time, increased allomantic potential in the population at large, and then tampering with the ratio and the length of sickness of the mist-snapped atium mistings. Also, him somehow influencing TLR to not keep atium secret for his own use. If you mean this:

Quote

The plan was to create something special and new—people who could burn away Ruin’s body in an attempt to get rid of it.

From The Secret History, then this fits with what I am proposing. Before the Final Empire even the Mistings  were exceptionally rare and, IIRC only started to appear due to mist-snapping shortly before Rashek's Acsension. But by the time of  HoA the mists were able to snap fully 16% of the population. There were, of course TLR's prohibitions on noble - skaa interbreeding, but judging by what Ashweather Cett said in, WoA, about how their family had "too much skaa blood", those probably only existed for the last couple of centuries or so of his rule. And from what we were shown a remarkable amount of it continued despite the draconic measures anyway.

I have wondered why TLR didn't just order his obligators to administer systematic beatings to all skaa children of a certain age and then drafted thus discovered half-breed allomancers into something like Janissaries. Those worked well enough iRL and access to emotional allomancy in order to instill bone-deep loyalty in them at an impressionable age, combined with an immortal, immensely personally powerful ruler, who did seem pretty deific would have prevented them from getting too uppity, as they sometimes did historically.

Quote

We've effectively known about the potential for other godmetal alloys since he revealed that the 'Eleventh Metal' was an alloy of atium and gold.

Yes, but all the other allomantic metals only have 1-2 usuable alloys. There was no reason for the readers to expect more.

Quote

. It's entirely possible Brandon just wanted that information available outside of WoBs but doesn't intend for them to play a major role in the end of Era 2.

Or he mentioned it in a WoB _because_ he intended to use it in the Mistborn series at some point anyway. In any case, the title for the last W@W book is "The Lost Metal", which strongly suggests that  information about the group of 16 for every god metal will be significant in some way. In fact, it suddenly occurrs to me that  going with the theme of the series, the titular metal is more likely to be a God Metal _alloy_, than pure atium yet again.

Quote

As for the unbalancing theory, we don't actually know that atium was being traded offworld.

It was just a passing thought, but whoever intends to destroy all life on Scadrial must have some plan for how to get past Harmony, and somehow changing him into a more Ruinious version so that he'd destroy the world himself could be an elegant solution for them. Though Sazed would certainly resist, so it would probably take an unacceptably long time for them even if it were possible.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Isilel

[The One Who Connects he/him]

12 hours ago, Isilel said:

But by the time of HoA the mists were able to snap fully 16% of the population.

1/16 =/= 16%    This happens so much around here.

12 hours ago, Isilel said:

It doesn't seem logical to me that full Mistborn and Feruchemists would have an additional set of 16 metals, that only they can use, but for which there are no naturally occuring Mistings/Ferrings.

Argument 1: The God Metals themselves aren't exactly naturally occurring either, per se. Spoilers SA and WB

Spoiler

Honor chose to make the Honorblades. Had he not, there'd be no Honorblades, and thus no Shardblades.
At present, Cultivation and Odium don't seem to have any God Metal blades of their own(up till Oathbringer, but that's still theory)
Endowment doesn't exactly appear to have any "God Metal" in creation on Nalthis either.
Lastly, Atium was Preservation's fault. He splintered off a portion of Ruin's power and set it to work making Atium.

Argument 2: It's entirely possible for another Shard to have a God Metal that anyone could burn, like Lerasium. If it works in the system, then it stands to reason that you could make viable alloys with it. There aren't Mistings for those now are there?

Argument 3: Bad Alloys. It's been Yata's pet theory for ages that the limit to what a Misting can burn would prevent them from burning a bad alloy of their Metal, while a Mistborn can burn any alloy that's still considered as that metal. I happen to agree, and think this would speak to Mistborn going past the normal limits to Mistings.

I think it's entirely possible for Mistborn to be able to burn metals that there's no natural Misting of. We could also ask Brandon is there were ever Lerasium Mistings too, to help clear this up.

12 hours ago, Isilel said:

I have wondered why TLR didn't just order his obligators to administer systematic beatings to all skaa children of a certain age and then drafted thus discovered half-breed allomancers into something like Janissaries.

There's several reasons for this. The first of which is that it would cheapen the mystical image of the magic(not really important, but TLR kept some metals hidden for this reason). The rest are about the feasibility of the idea.

Two is manpower. IIRC, there's about a million Skaa in Luthadel. How would you monitor that many people, let alone check the children of? Third, the outlying settlements would be lax on this, making everywhere that wasn't Luthadel unchanged by TLR instituting this. Fourth, they were faceless slaves(unless they had a pretty face). Nobody would put in the effort to differentiate them enough to monitor all one million and notice when there's a new one. Kelsier abuses this fact to no end in order to sneak around, and Skaa would just take their children to a communal house that had already been checked, and the Obligators wouldn't see them again for maybe a year(a million+ people takes a while to sift through, communal housing or not), maybe more if they also checked the outer plantations. By that point, the children would be old enough to have exceeded the certain age and not be beaten. There's always a loophole, and when the alternative is your kids getting beaten half to death, you can bet people will abuse it.

[Isilel]

On 26.2.2018 at 2:22 AM, The One Who Connects said:

1/16 =/= 16%    This happens so much around here.

Indeed it does. Though not to me in this case :

Quote

"The calculation came out to be exact—precisely sixteen percent of the soldiers fell sick. To the man."  HoA, Chapter 21

1/16 of those 16%, who have been mistsick for 16 days then proved to be atium Mistings, while the others became different kinds of Mistings.

Re: what is "natural". Sure, Preservation caused the appearance of atium, by splintering up part of Ruin's power. But everything on Scadrial, including humans, is heavily invested by Ruin anyway. Shouldn't it be "natural" that Ruin's investiture can be used by some humans in some way?

Quote

 It's entirely possible for another Shard to have a God Metal that anyone could burn, like Lerasium.

I don't think so. Accessing some of the Shard's power via burning specific metals is very much Preservation's thing. Now that I have read all the Era 1 annotations, I see that the mechanism for how atium works is different than that of basic allomantic metals in that it is both a sort of "catalyst" and the actual power of Ruin being used, while they only link to and channel Preservation's power, but aren't invested themselves. And yes, Preservation "hacked in" the atium allomancy into the system, and, apparently that of it's alloys.  But once it was in, it was in, IMHO.

The more interesting question, IMHO, is how atium and it's derivatives found it's way into Feruchemy, as Preservation had no reason to bring this about on purpose. Was it a natural consequence of Feruchemy being a balanced art and atium being a part of Ruin's investiture?

Quote

 It's been Yata's pet theory for ages that the limit to what a Misting can burn would prevent them from burning a bad alloy of their Metal, while a Mistborn can burn any alloy that's still considered as that metal.

There is no evidence for this hypothesis, is there? IMHO, there is no need to overpower the Mistborn even more and give them some exclusive abilities that Mistings don't get. There is just no reason for the latter to experiment.

Quote

 We could also ask Brandon is there were ever Lerasium Mistings too, to help clear this up.

? Since anybody can burn Lerasium, it stands to reason that everybody is a Lerasium Misting. BTW, I have now trawled the WoBs, and it turns out that alloys of Lerasium with allomantic metals also can also be burned by anybody and will turn them into a Misting of that metal. I guess, this could allow one to stretch one bead of Lerasium into giving allomancy to several (16?) people. The slight problem being, that if Lerasium and it's alloys belong to their own group of 16, then one kind of basic metal Misting can't be produced that way.

Quote

 The first of which is that it would cheapen the mystical image of the magic(not really important, but TLR kept some metals hidden for this reason).

This could have been turned into a mystic rite of finding the few worthy among the unworthy, graced to redeem their ancestors by being given a chance to serve TLR, etc.

Quote

 How would you monitor that many people, let alone check the children of?

I would argue that given the pervasiveness of administrative control by the obligators, it could have been done. In fact, iRL slaveholders and owners of serfs tended to know such things - or their managers did. Make it obligatory to register the children in order to get a food allotment for them, for instance, speaking of the mill- and- mine workers in Luthadel and elsewhere specifically. Brand the children who have been "processed" and proven to have no abilities.

Alternatively, require the noblemen to keep track of and report any half-breed offspring on the pain of death and snap and recruit those, while either making some use of the rest or keeping track of their progeny for a few generations.

These are just idle thoughts, prompted by it being eventually revealed that a lot of even seemingly destructive and bloodthirsty actions of TLR eventually served Preservation's plan... except for this culling of lots of potential Allomancers. Something that you'd think a Sliver of Preservation would have gone out of his way to avoid.

I also think that the whole horrificness of the law that skaa women, who had sex with a nobleman had to be killed, but it was totally OK for noblemen to do so  anyway, as long as they "cleaned up" after themselves, and how it led to a third of male nobility being sadistical serial killers, wasn't treated with enough weight and consequence by the First Era trilogy. Frankly, every time when some noble/obligator  was supposed to be "honorable" and "good" or when the conflict between Vin's "street" and "noble" sides occured, I wanted it to be brought up into the open and discussed. But no. It was somehow supposed to be just a colorful detail/tragic origin story for some characters. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Isilel

[The One Who Connects he/him]

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

1/16 of those 16%, who have been mistsick for 16 days then proved to be atium Mistings, while the others became different kinds of Mistings.

I had them backwards then, huh? Preservation's insanity is making us go insane it appears.

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

Since anybody can burn Lerasium, it stands to reason that everybody is a Lerasium Misting.

I disagree. Lerasium has an actual Allomantic effect, and Brandon specifies the difference between burning and burning with Investiture.

Quote

Questioner
I was curious, what would happen if a full Mistborn burned lerasium? What would the Allomantic powers be?

Brandon Sanderson
Oohh, excellent, excellent question. So, I have not revealed what lerasium does if you already have Investiture. So, the answer to that is a RAFO. We've actually had like three people ask that tonight, so there must have been a discussion on the Sh-- the forums about it and I didn't answer them, so I can't answer you.

So I'd say there's a difference between a Lerasium Misting and a normal person.

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

This could have been turned into a mystic rite of finding the few worthy among the unworthy, graced to redeem their ancestors by being given a chance to serve TLR, etc.

I suppose he could have, but I'm not sure he would have. He was a rather petty man, given he created the Skaa to begin with.

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

Alternatively, require the noblemen to keep track of and report any half-breed offspring on the pain of death and snap and recruit those, while either making some use of the rest or keeping track of their progeny for a few generations.

Failure to keep track of potential half-breed offspring was already punishable of death, just ask Tevidian. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but after 1,000 years of either system, people get careless and others get lazy.

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

These are just idle thoughts, prompted by it being eventually revealed that a lot of even seemingly destructive and bloodthirsty actions of TLR eventually served Preservation's plan... except for this culling of lots of potential Allomancers.

It actually does make sense for Preservation's plan. TLR's culls were largely irrelevant because Preservation would be mist-snapping normal people later, but they did serve a purpose, one which fits the Lord Ruler perfectly: Denying Ruin. By culling potential Allomancers, Ruin had much fewer people to use for making Inquisitors once he was freed. His culling of Feruchemists also had this effect, albeit unintentionally.