Advance steel and iron allomancy

[Dancer]

My question for you all is, are there advance skills in steel pushing and Iron pulling that we haven't seen yet. I have a few ideas on abilities that steel and iron allomancy should be able to do.

• Create steel and iron lines not from one center of gravity. Allomancers can see non metallic objects due to the trace metals in those objects. This is due probably to a change in perception (as we know that perception can limit or expand on a magic users abilities). So if the Allomancer is able to trick him/her self into thinking say their hand is their center of gravity, then I see no reason that the can't the blue line come form there.
• Bend or twist the blue lines. Again this will hinge on whether perception can interfere in an allomancers ability with there metal. If an Allomancer perceives that the blue don't have to all ways be straight then they should be able to make them bend or twist. This will mean that then can push or pull on an angle. 

what other abilities that you think allomancers should be able to accomplish but are can't because they are putting artificial limits on themselves.   

[+Artemos he/him]

4 hours ago, Dancer said:

• Create steel and iron lines not from one center of gravity. Allomancers can see non metallic objects due to the trace metals in those objects. This is due probably to a change in perception (as we know that perception can limit or expand on a magic users abilities). So if the Allomancer is able to trick him/her self into thinking say their hand is their center of gravity, then I see no reason that the can't the blue line come form there.

This is definitely possible, but very difficult. In WoA, Zane balances above a single coin and sort of spins himself in the air by manipulating where the Push is "centered" in his body. I think Kell also "splits" the blue line pointing to a metal rod, Pushing on one end and Pulling on the other, so it works both for the Allomancer and metal.

As a side note, the blue lines don't actually point to your center of mass; Vin and Kelsier both describe them pointing to their chest, even though their center of masses wouldn't be in the same place. It's probably either just a minor logical inconsistency or spiritual/cognitive mumbo-jumbo about connections and whatnot.

4 hours ago, Dancer said:

• Bend or twist the blue lines. Again this will hinge on whether perception can interfere in an allomancers ability with there metal. If an Allomancer perceives that the blue don't have to all ways be straight then they should be able to make them bend or twist. This will mean that then can push or pull on an angle. 

I doubt this will happen. Brandon's always said that limitations are more interesting than powers, and "Pushes and Pulls only act in the direction pointing from you to the metal" is the fundamental limitation of it. It's what separates Allomancy from common telekinesis.

[Scion of the Mists]

While I doubt they will be able to Push/Pull at an angle, they definitely can move the origin point (its required to be able to hover something). 

Quote

Questioner

So my quick question: Can you use Identity (I love the speed bubbles!) to anchor speed bubbles to yourself?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, this is possible. That's less a matter of Identity. What’s gonna happen there, like, the more someone uses the powers, the more familiar and intermingled with their soul the powers become, and they are able to accomplish things that others can't. This would be like a Mistborn learning to hover a coin, right, which they can do, but most think you can't. That's the sort of level we're going with.

Necarion

So a savant could?

Brandon Sanderson

A savant could totally do that. The problem is, things moving in and out of a speed bubble, there's a transference of energy. This is how we keep speed bubbles from irradiating people when light moves through them, right, red shift. And so there's a transfer of energy directly from the Spiritual Realm, which means that moving with a speed bubble, you're gonna run into that, and it's gonna be, it's gonna cause all kinds of problems, but it would be possible.

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing (Nov. 30, 2016)  

 

[Not-So-Logicalspren he/him]

I have no basis for thinking this is possible, but being able to control the size of a copper cloud or speed bubble. If a mistborn could turn on court, limit the cloud to him/herself that could be incredibly useful in concealing yourself while still being able to locate and identify other allomancers. Similar thing with the speed bubble, if you could anchor it to yourself, and restrict the size to encompass your body and nothing else, you've basically F-steel, which is freaking awesome

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, Not-So-Logicalspren said:

I have no basis for thinking this is possible, but being able to control the size of a copper cloud or speed bubble. If a mistborn could turn on court, limit the cloud to him/herself that could be incredibly useful in concealing yourself while still being able to locate and identify other allomancers. Similar thing with the speed bubble, if you could anchor it to yourself, and restrict the size to encompass your body and nothing else, you've basically F-steel, which is freaking awesome

We know that for normal purposes you can adjust the size and rate of a speed bubble to some extent while it's going up, but once it's established it's fixed in both size and how much it's slowing/speeding up time. A savant could have much greater control over the process including anchoring the bubble to themselves and allowing it to move with them, as mentioned in the above WoB. Since there's some control over size possible already, a savant could probably shrink the bubble to something closer to just their body but I doubt they could get it completely there. It might not be a violation of Sanderson's Second Law to do it (being a savant would be its own limitation) but my guess is that the spherical shape of the bubble would still be a limiting factor on the size.

[+Artemos he/him]

11 minutes ago, Weltall said:

but my guess is that the spherical shape of the bubble would still be a limiting factor on the size.

Since bubbles affect whatever they're touching, I imagine a savant with (possibly impossibly good) skill with bendalloy could shrink the bubble down to the size of an apple and keep it entirely "inside" their body.

Quote

Klokkan

Hello Mr. Sanderson, I have a question about bendalloy bubbles—what happens to a human that is partially in and partially out of the bubble when it's placed? Does the difference in the flow of time kill him?

And, if yes, is the boundary of active bendalloy bubble effectively impassable for living organisms? I get that bullets shot out of the bubble randomly change directions, but what happens to, let's say, a person trying to jump out of the bubble (or, given enough time, a person trying to get inside)?

Brandon Sanderson

Any living thing touching the bubble is affected by the bubble.

Footnote: Original question has been deleted from Reddit in the interim
/r/fantasy AMA 2013 (April 15, 2013)

[Dancer]

Here is another one. For era 4 engineers I can imagine them pushing and pulling on the metallic molecules of objects to create nano tech. We know that they can see the trace elements of metals in objects so the next logical thing is to push and pull on those tiny trace elements. 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

12 hours ago, Dancer said:

Here is another one. For era 4 engineers I can imagine them pushing and pulling on the metallic molecules of objects to create nano tech. We know that they can see the trace elements of metals in objects so the next logical thing is to push and pull on those tiny trace elements. 

That sounds totally awesome and even plausible, especially if they have stronger-than-average steel or iron, either via spike or by medallion filled with "ability to burn steel/iron" as it may be (a la the BoM) which could be quite interesting. Molecular-level allomancy would be really cool regardless of how exactly it's achieved.

[Dancer]

I have a theory on advance allomancy. So we all know that allomancy works similar to Aondor or any Selish magic. The shape of the metal's molecular structure creates a gateway for the investiture to filter through the spiritual realm to the physical realm. The shape of the molecules force the investiture to perform in a specific way. We see that in Aondor after you draw the basic Aon you can place modifiers on afterwards focusing the power even further or amplifying it. So there should be a way to do this with allomancy. The Allomantic metals are like the base Aon, Iron pulls, steel pushes and pewter reinforces the body. Perhaps there are metals that act as these modifires that don't work unless you are burning one of the 16 allomantic metals (like how modifiers don't do anything in Aondor unless the base Aon has been drawn).     

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

1 minute ago, Dancer said:

I have a theory on advance allomancy. So we all know that allomancy works similar to Aondor or any Selish magic. The shape of the metal's molecular structure creates a gateway for the investiture to filter through the spiritual realm to the physical realm. The shape of the molecules force the investiture to perform in a specific way. We see that in Aondor after you draw the basic Aon you can place modifiers on afterwards focusing the power even further or amplifying it. So there should be a way to do this with allomancy. The Allomantic metals are like the base Aon, Iron pulls, steel pushes and pewter reinforces the body. Perhaps there are metals that act as these modifires that don't work unless you are burning one of the 16 allomantic metals (like how modifiers don't do anything in Aondor unless the base Aon has been drawn).     

That could be interesting, but I don't think it would work, for a few reasons. 1. the Dor is just... a mess of Investiture in the Cognitive realm. The investiture you get from burning a metal comes right from Preservation in the spiritual realm.

2. The number of allomantic metals is and always will be 16, and Mistborns prove that burning multiple metals at once doesn't modify the effects (unless you count Duralumin/nicrosil/etc, but that's it's normal effect, even if you try and burn it by itself).

[Dancer]

Yes but those were the Base 16 metals. They weren't burning like non-allomantic pewter at the same time as burning allomantic pewter. The only time when we see people burning multiple metals are mistborn and aging they were all the known 16. I would look at that like an elantrian drawing 16 different base Aons without stringing them together. 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

28 minutes ago, Dancer said:

Yes but those were the Base 16 metals. They weren't burning like non-allomantic pewter at the same time as burning allomantic pewter. The only time when we see people burning multiple metals are mistborn and aging they were all the known 16. I would look at that like an elantrian drawing 16 different base Aons without stringing them together. 

Okay, fair. So you're suggesting that somehow, there are other alloys or metals that would only have an effect on the 16 base allomantic metals' effects?

[Dancer]

Something like that, yes.

[Dancer]

Take pewter for instance. If there are modifiers and you found the right one you could focus the power to do only one of pewters abilities. Say instead of pewter reinforcing your bones musules and everything else you could find a modifier that focuses only on healing. Something like that.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Just now, Dancer said:

Take pewter for instance. If there are modifiers and you found the right one you could focus the power to do only one of pewters abilities. Say instead of pewter reinforcing your bones musules and everything else you could find a modifier that focuses only on healing. Something like that.

Interesting. That sure would be a cool expansion to the magic, but I'd need to see some evidence of it being possible first.

[Dancer]

It's just a theory after reading elantris and seeing similarities. Maybe they can do stuff like that just with there future tech instead. 

[Dancer]

The more I think about it now the less I agree with my own theory. Allomancy seems to have far more of a cognitive aspect to its magic then sel does. If you want more power just think burn faster (flaring). If you suddenly find out that all things have trace elements of metal in them wow you can see everything with steel/iron sight. any focused application of the metals abilities may just come down to understanding the power and its limitations better and forcing yourself to view the world slightly differently.

example being tin. Brandon has said that tinminds can store bronze sense. He also said that allomantic tin can enhance any sense. So from that if you burn bronze then burn tin your bronze sense should be just as enhanced as all your other senses. We don't see this happen at all throughout the books probably due to the mistborn not perceiving allomantic bronze to be an extra sense to be enhanced.  

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

13 hours ago, Dancer said:

Brandon has said that tinminds can store bronze sense. He also said that allomantic tin can enhance any sense. So from that if you burn bronze then burn tin your bronze sense should be just as enhanced as all your other senses. We don't see this happen at all throughout the books probably due to the mistborn not perceiving allomantic bronze to be an extra sense to be enhanced.  

I find that very believable. I also wonder if allomantic tin can also enhance your "sense of balance" which seems to typically fall under the realm of Pewter allomancy, thus meaning that someone adept in both would have fantastic mobility, far beyond one just burning pewter.

[Dancer]

Yes that has always bugged me. With the bronze thing if tin does enhance seeking (which i believe it should) then what will it look like. Brandon has made it clear that piercing copper clouds takes a ridicules amount of power so tin enhanced bronze probably won't do that. What it will do is probably extend range as well as allow you to hear quieter pulses. Maybe very quiet pulses like feruchemy.   

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

14 hours ago, Dancer said:

Yes that has always bugged me. With the bronze thing if tin does enhance seeking (which i believe it should) then what will it look like. Brandon has made it clear that piercing copper clouds takes a ridicules amount of power so tin enhanced bronze probably won't do that. What it will do is probably extend range as well as allow you to hear quieter pulses. Maybe very quiet pulses like feruchemy.   

Ah, yes, I bet it would help you hear someone tapping or storing feruchemy. I think brandon has said it would take "a tweak" to bronze sense to make it able to detect Feruchemy, so that might be it. Also an extended range makes sense, too.

[Dancer]

Well when you put all this together a mistborn looks OP as hell. 

[Dancer]

As of now in era 2 the Northern Scadrians have only just discovered electricity (we don't know if the Southerners have discovered this yet). I wonder how this will interact with iron and steel Allomancy. Could you perhaps hold a piece of metal with an electric current going through it and transfer that current through the blue spirit lines into another piece of metal. This probably can't happen but I just can't see electricity not interacting with the "metallic arts".   

[Karger he/him]

28 minutes ago, Dancer said:

As of now in era 2 the Northern Scadrians have only just discovered electricity (we don't know if the Southerners have discovered this yet). I wonder how this will interact with iron and steel Allomancy. Could you perhaps hold a piece of metal with an electric current going through it and transfer that current through the blue spirit lines into another piece of metal. This probably can't happen but I just can't see electricity not interacting with the "metallic arts".   

I believe those spirit lines go through you so maybe don't conduct electricity with your body?  Also they are in the spiritual realm and electricity is in the physical realm interaction is probably not going to happen.

[Dancer]

Ye I was just spit-balling I don't think it actually works like that however like I said above there has to be some interaction between electricity and "The Metallic Arts".