Allomantic Pairings: Elements or Alloys

[The Harp Lady]

Hello,

I had a debate with my friend about allomantic pairings. I like the pairings with alloys in the books, with pulling metals being elements and pushing metals being alloys, but he thinks that it would be better if all the metals were elements. The pairings he suggests are:

Tin and Lead

Copper and Silver

Nickel and Platinum

Zinc and Mercury

 

Titanium and Zirconium

Chromium and Tungsten

Manganese and Rhenium

Aluminum and Thallium

As you might notice, the paired elements are all from the same column on the periodic table. He argues that while the in universe characters won't understand the connection between the elements, the readers will understand and the characters don't have to; it's the way it's always been and they'll just accept it. He also says later, in Era 2, the scientists would figure it out. Another point he makes in that an alloy of two allomantic metals should have the ability to be burned as two separate metals not as one which produces a different effect.

Thoughts?

[King Cole he/him]

I love it the way it is. This way, there is a direct link between the metal pairs, besides just being similiar

[Weltall]

Uhhh, it's kind of pointless for your friend to argue for paired elements making more sense when it's already been established that alloys are how it works. Brandon has mentioned that he really wanted to use silver in allomancy but he wasn't able to because he'd already settled on pewter as one of the metals (long story, see here) so by now it's locked in that some metals simply don't do anything in the Metallic Arts.

As for burning alloys as separate metals, that probably wouldn't work Realmatically. I'm not sure how aware you are of it (it's one of the principles that underlies all the Cosmere works) but in essence, the metal in an alloy would probably 'see' itself as one metal rather than two so there'd be no way to make it burn as distinct elemental metals. You also couldn't get god-metal alloys if the system was designed that way. Not that we know of any more than one of those right now, but the possibility of at least another fifteen atium alloys (sixteen if atium/lerasium does something) is well worth having as a potential plot hook for future stories.

Some of those metals are also incredibly rare (like Rhenium) and the viability of a magic system that requires ingesting vast quantities of mercury is... sort of questionable.. The plot developments in the second and third books of the original trilogy where characters discover new metals flow much better when you can say 'I have this known metal (aluminum), I know an alloy of it should produce an effect, let's experiment and see if we can't figure out what it is' instead of having to test literally every possible metal until you find one that doesn't make you sick or kill you when you try to burn it.

TLDR: It works perfectly the way it is.

Also, welcome to the Shard!

[Unlicensed Hemalurgist he/him]

1 hour ago, Weltall said:

Uhhh, it's kind of pointless for your friend to argue for paired elements making more sense when it's already been established that alloys are how it works. Brandon has mentioned that he really wanted to use silver in allomancy but he wasn't able to because he'd already settled on pewter as one of the metals (long story, see here) so by now it's locked in that some metals simply don't do anything in the Metallic Arts.

*TANGENT INCOMING*

 

I've heard that story, but aside from the whole Pewter=Tin+Silver misunderstanding, I don't understand why it became canon that silver was useless in the Metallic Arts. Was it just that aside from Electrum, there were no good alloys? It might be slightly cheating, but maybe a naturally-occurring amalgam like Arquerite (an alloy of Silver and Mercury) would have worked. It's an alloy for the "pure" silver, and like many TMA-active alloys it contains two of the seven "classical metals" of antiquity. I guess it's all academic now, but Tin-->Silver and Pewter-->Arquerite would have been an easy fix. Just something that always bugged me about the Silvereye/Tineye story. Has anyone ever asked Brandon about this?

*TANGENT OVER*

 

Also, a big spikey welcome to @Weltall. Welcome, OP! We like to have fun here.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Unlicensed Hemalurgist

[The One Who Connects he/him]

19 minutes ago, Unlicensed Hemalurgist said:

I've heard that story, but aside from the whole Pewter=Tin+Silver misunderstanding, I don't understand why it became canon that silver was useless in the Metallic Arts. Was it just that aside from Electrum, there were no good alloys?

After the tin+silver debacle, Brandon toyed with Silver replacing Aluminum. Silver was just too common for that to work, since Aluminum was a metal with an "unknown" power at the time.

Quote

Chapter Sixty - Part One

Silver, the Useless Metal

I've annotated about this before, but I figured I'd mention it again. As you probably know, in book one, tin was originally silver. I swapped it out for various reasons.

However, that left silver having no Allomantic powers. That feels strange to a lot of people because of how common and useful it is in our modern culture. Such an obvious metal doing nothing seems wrong to readers.

I toyed with using it in place of aluminum at the end of book one, but I realized that wouldn't work. It was too common, so if it had any Allomantic powers, people would know about them for certain. Only a metal that was very hard to find—like aluminum—would be believable as a new metal that most people hadn't heard of.

So silver is Allomantically inert. Just one of the quirks of the magic system.

Silver was too common of a metal for nobody to have checked it to see if it(and its alloys) did something, so it would have to be two known powers right off the bat. He already had the original 10 set up quite nicely, and probably the full 16(since this is Brandon). Adding/Changing the base of the system isn't as easy as one would imagine, especially since he would be on attempt 3 to add silver to the system.

[SilverTiger she/her]

Anyway, silver ended up having magic powers on Threnody.

[The Harp Lady]

@Weltall thank you very much. That made a lot of sense. I had heard that story about silver before. I've been a lurker on the forums for quite a while. My friend says he picked Rhenium because it is a rare metal and it wouldn't be discovered until Era 2 (like chromium). 

[digitalbusker he/him]

The periodic table column version would have been cool, but then Vin wouldn't have been able to find duralumin by experimenting with aluminum.