Marasi and the Bands of Mourning

[jtburrup]

Ok, so me and a friend are doing a re-read through all Cosmere works, and he had a question that I think is a bit valid. He feels like the fact that Marasi is able to instinctively use allomancy and feruchemy when holding the bands of mourning is unrealistic. He speaks of normal character development, specifically with pushing/pulling and how there is a lot of practice involved in order to perfect the subtleties of pushing and pulling, and yet when Marasi has the bands of Mourning, she is able to easily go ham on everyone. Anyone have any good explanations on that? It makes sense that Wax would be good at using them as he is a Twinborn, and a practiced coin shot, but Marasi...? Is there a good answer to why anyone holding the bands of mourning is just crazy legit, regardless of whether they've practiced or is the answer just....it's a mystical object so it gives mystical powers...no matter what...? Thanks in advance.

Edited January 29, 2019 by jtburrup

[Pathfinder]

6 minutes ago, jtburrup said:

Ok, so me and a friend are doing a re-read through all Cosmere works, and he had a question that I think is a bit valid. He feels like the fact that Marasi is able to instinctively use allomancy and feruchemy when holding the bands of mourning is unrealistic. He speaks of normal character development, specifically with pushing/pulling and how there is a lot of practice involved in order to perfect the subtleties of pushing and pulling, and yet when Marasi has the bands of Mourning, she is able to easily go ham on everyone. Anyone have any good explanations on that? It makes sense that Wax would be good at using them as he is a Twinborn, and a practiced coin shot, but Marasi...? Is there a good answer to why anyone holding the bands of mourning is just crazy legit, regardless of whether they've practiced or is the answer just....it's a mystical object so it gives mystical powers...no matter what...? Thanks in advance.

There is skill, and there is power. All Marasi had was power. All she did was move fast, push weapons away from her, and do one push coupled with speed to reach Wax. Not much skill required to accomplish those goals. Coinshots are prevalent enough to know how the power system works, coupled with she has also studied Wax extensively prior to meeting with him, in addition to working with him (during which he explains how his powers work to her at the wedding as well as I believe two other instances). The medallions work through connection once you recognize them as what they are. Just like how do you explain to a new born feruchemist how to tap and store an attribute? They know how to instinctfully. So everything Marasi did is not far fetched at all. 

edit: to further illustrate. Elend could burn pewter while unconscious. He could push and pull on metals despite having never done so in his life. However, take Elend and Vin side by side, and tell Vin to replicate her horse shoe trick and you will have very different results. Elend comments on that exact fact. 

Edited January 29, 2019 by Pathfinder

[+Invocation]

Yeah, pretty much what Pathfinder said. Marasi had raw strength, and stronger Mistborn can use their powers unconsciously (Elend and Vin burning pewter while extremely injured and out of it, along with Vin's "luck" are good examples). Marasi had a little experience with the weight metalminds on the ship, so she knew what to do once she realized the Bands were what they were, and Allomancy is enough of a well-documented thing by this point that she has probably read about what the various metals do/how to handle them (as much as you can get that from books) with the rest just the result of raw strength.

[Quantus]

I tend to agree with @Pathfinder that her actual uses wouldnt have taken a whole lot of training, especially given the various examples of unconscious Allomancy throughout.  The other side of it is that (best we can tell, because they are capital "W" Weird) the function of the Bands (and medallions in general, which we also dont fully understand) rely on Feruchemcial Connection, and if Connecting to a location can grant you such traditionally Learned skills like a Language, I would not be surprised if they also granted a certain level of instinctual understanding, enough for basic use if not the complex things.  And that's setting aside the possibility of a Fortune effect, which at least in the case of Atium is known to expand your mental capabilities enough to use it. 

[Weltall]

41 minutes ago, Quantus said:

And that's setting aside the possibility of a Fortune effect, which at least in the case of Atium is known to expand your mental capabilities enough to use it. 

She might have. Despite the narration saying that she tapped 'everything' Brandon has said that she actually didn't, but she may well have included F-Chromium in her tapping in a 'hey, this might be useful' impulse along with tapping obvious things like F-Tin and Steel.

But yeah, echoing everyone else, between the raw power she had, her academic understanding of the Metallic Arts, her recent practice with medallions and how she wasn't doing anything super-complex, I don't think there's much explanation needed for how she was able to do what we saw.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Weltall

[SwordNimiForPresident]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

I tend to agree with @Pathfinder that her actual uses wouldnt have taken a whole lot of training, especially given the various examples of unconscious Allomancy throughout.  The other side of it is that (best we can tell, because they are capital "W" Weird) the function of the Bands (and medallions in general, which we also dont fully understand) rely on Feruchemcial Connection, and if Connecting to a location can grant you such traditionally Learned skills like a Language, I would not be surprised if they also granted a certain level of instinctual understanding, enough for basic use if not the complex things.  And that's setting aside the possibility of a Fortune effect, which at least in the case of Atium is known to expand your mental capabilities enough to use it. 

Only the Connection medalions use Connection. They all use Investiture though (as in Feruchemical Investiture). They're really not that complicated TBH. Unkeyed F-Nicrosil to grant the appropriate Investiture (A-Steel, F-Gold.. and so on) and then any other type of F-metal to use as a storage. The coin that Wax uses at then end of BoM for example is F-Nicrosil with the ability to use F-Copper stored in it and F-Copper with a fully immersive PoV memory stored in it. Both are unkeyed so anyone can use it.

Edited January 29, 2019 by SwordNimiForPresident

[Quantus]

1 hour ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

Only the Connection medalions use Connection. They all use Investiture though (as in Feruchemical Investiture). They're really not that complicated TBH. Unkeyed F-Nicrosil to grant the appropriate Investiture (A-Steel, F-Gold.. and so on) and then any other type of F-metal to use as a storage. The coin that Wax uses at then end of BoM for example is F-Nicrosil with the ability to use F-Copper stored in it and F-Copper with a fully immersive PoV memory stored in it. Both are unkeyed so anyone can use it.

All Unsealed Medallions involve Connection in their creation at the very least (per the WOB I linked), and I strongly suspect that it's at least partly a Connection effect during use that is allowing the person to Connect to Preservation enough to power Allomancy without having the more permanent Connection that Lerasium provides.  

[SwordNimiForPresident]

Ah my mistake, I thought you meant that they all use Duralumin as one of the metals in every medallion. The nicrosil is what let’s them access preservations power, it is literally storing the ability to use the metallic arts. I would imagine all Scadrians have some degree of Connection to Preservation, given the origin of their world.

[Snipexe]

She was also tapping Zinc, meaning that it was likely much, much easier for her to learn/use the metals.

[goody153]

Yeah this is abit weirdly inconsistent as well. 

Allomancy takes alot of skill (unless you are really just doing the most simple applications then it can be done if you know how allomancy works which i think most people living scadrial at that point does). I can't remember that part of BoM specifically but i think it was simple applications.

Edited January 30, 2019 by goody153

[goody153]

28 minutes ago, Snipexe said:

She was also tapping Zinc, meaning that it was likely much, much easier for her to learn/use the metals.

Zinc doesn't make you smarter but it does help you think multiple times before even doing an action. That might actually help

[Pathfinder]

10 hours ago, goody153 said:

Zinc doesn't make you smarter but it does help you think multiple times before even doing an action. That might actually help

It does however allow you to make intuitive leaps so it could have been beneficial in this case. Will edit post in a moment with the WoB for reference. 

 

Alteroden
With [Feruchemical] zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from [Feruchemical] steel, except without [physical] speed?

Brandon Sanderson
I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.

Alteroden
So it lets you have intuitive leaps.

Brandon Sanderson
Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.

Kurkistan
So it's not like bullet time?

Brandon Sanderson
No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really--

Kurkistan
That’s steel’s thing?

Brandon Sanderson
That’s kind of steel's thing. They kind of overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".

Edited January 30, 2019 by Pathfinder

[+robardin]

I think in several Comsere magic systems, being super-Invested carries with it an increasing degree of instinctive use of that Investiture. We see this in Warbreaker with the upper Heightenings, and of course, when Rashek and Vin temporarily Ascended to the Shard of Preservation (talk about super-Invested), they instinctively knew how to wield the power to do what they wished, even if it wasn't immediately clear to them what they should wish for.

And Marasi tapped enough out of the Bands to draw mists around herself. That's not necessarily Ascendant, but it's close to it - much stronger than just "hey, I just became a full Mistborn!" or even "hey, I just ate a bead of lerasium like Elend did!".