Silver: Any benefits?

[Danthemystic he/him]

I was wondering if there are any theories as to what silver might do if burned by an Allomancer or used to store something by a Feruchemist. 

[hgleclair]

I believe it is stated to be like lead absolutely useless by Vin while she was inprisoned by Yomen in HoA.

[Wandering Investor]

Silver has no properties in the Metallic arts. I think the issue is that tin was originally silver, which meant you have silvereyes as the nickname, which are already copyrighted. So he changed it to tin, and made silver useless. You'll occasionally find interviews where he accidently uses the word silver instead of tin, #random knowledge of the day.

[Gilphon]

I've been toying with the idea that Silver might have an affect that they simply weren't able to recognize at the time; something that would've been indistinguishable from no effect at all during Era 1. Like, just to toss out some examples, something that requires strong electrical currents or direct sunlight, or foreign sources of investiture.

It would've seemed to do nothing from their perspective, so they would've written it off as useless, but perhaps it'll end up being significant in Era 3 or 4.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

31 minutes ago, Gilphon said:

I've been toying with the idea that Silver might have an affect that they simply weren't able to recognize at the time; something that would've been indistinguishable from no effect at all during Era 1. Like, just to toss out some examples, something that requires strong electrical currents or direct sunlight, or foreign sources of investiture.

It would've seemed to do nothing from their perspective, so they would've written it off as useless, but perhaps it'll end up being significant in Era 3 or 4.

I remember that the Blades and Beasts wiki gave Silver the effect of adding extra power output to other metals burned with it, not quite like duralumin as the Burn Rate was the same as normal, but with Silver, it sort of... copied the power of the other metals and gave you extra effect potency. And if you burned Silver by itself it makes you sick because it has no effect to copy (the same as allomantically inert metals do), and can even kill you if you burn silver with just duralumin, due to the feedback loop.

It was part of 4 metals in the Enrichment category of an expanded Allomantic table, too, which is interesting...

(oh and silver feruchemy stored "ionic energy" such as electricity. storing it would let the ferring/feruchemist absorb electricity, which makes sense for being an undiscovered feruchemic power because Era 1 feruchemists didn't have electricity to store, and in era 2 they probably assume it's inert because of silver allomancy, i suppose, so they don't bother checking for silver ferrings or twinborns with F-Silver.)

[18th Shard he/him]

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Brandon Sanderson

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.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Feb. 11, 2010)

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Questioner

In Mistborn, silver doesn’t play a role. But then in Shadows for Silence, silver does play a role...

Brandon Sanderson

It does. I still wanted silver to be part of the Cosmere.

Questioner

But we’ll never see it in Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

It does not, as they understand currently, interact with Allomancy, with the three Metallurgic Arts. Silver does have a Cosmere role.

Boskone 54 (Feb. 18, 2017)

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Peter Ahlstrom

Silver is not Allomantically inert the way aluminum is. In that annotation, Brandon just meant that silver didn't do anything if you swallowed it and tried to burn it. It can be Pushed and Pulled. Years after Brandon wrote that annotation, what he means by "Allomantically inert" has changed.

Miscellaneous 2012 (March 14, 2012)

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wiresegal

Could someone burn an Allomantically inert metal that was Invested, like Invested silver or Invested lead?

Brandon Sanderson

...I'm gonna give you a no on this one. I rarely give straight up "no"s, but you've got to remember that the Allomantic metal is the key, and the power behind it is gonna be inaccessible without the key. Now, there are more things that are Allomantically viable than have been discovered or talked about. But that's the problem right there. If it's not the right metal, if it doesn't provide the right-- I'll just stop at key. If it isn't the right key. We'll get more into this as the cosmere progresses. That's a very rare no for me. Usually you're gonna get a "well, it depends."

Read For Pixels 2018 (Sept. 1, 2018)

 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

14 minutes ago, 18th Shard said:

 

I mean... Yes, but also couldn't Harmony/Preservation technically add more metals as keys to the system? I know that Preservation booted two metals off of the system for Atium/malatium mistings to be a thing, but could Harmony now add Silver as an Allomantic metal, as a conscious choice? He was able to replace Atium and malatium with the proper non-god metals for the base 16 metals, and Preservation only kept things at 16 as a sign of his plan, so... Without that requirement, couldn't that be changed?

Of course, if silver did become Allomantic, it would be a Pulling metal, so it would need a Pushing alloy and either an internal or external counterpart (depending on if silver is internal or external) with its own Pushing alloy, too. So that means that Harmony would need to make 3 other Allomantic metals in silver's segment/group, right?

 

Wonder what those could be like...

[Gilphon]

Considering this on a meta level...

I feel like Era 4 having interactions between planets gives us more than enough new magics to explore for three books; having a whole new set of Allomantic Metals on top of that feels like overkill. So if Silver is going to be a thing in the Metallic Arts, it would have to be introduced in Era 3. So I feel like we can conclude that it wasn't part of Brandon's original plan, since before Era 2 existed, Era 3 would've been about exploring Cadmium and Chromium. 

Which means that when he wrote that Annotation, he didn't plan for Silver to be able to do anything. But I note that he's a bit more evasive on the topic in the more recent WoBs. 

[18th Shard he/him]

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Questioner

For the space Mistborn are we going to have more elements?

Brandon Sanderson

The base 16 are basically it. But the interactions between them and things. And there is one more metal, there is harmonium, so you will hear about that later on.

Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 (Sept. 4, 2014)

 

[Karger he/him]

6 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

I mean... Yes, but also couldn't Harmony/Preservation technically add more metals as keys to the system?

Yeah but they could also change the current metals to be whatever they wanted.  It is one of the perks of being god.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

12 hours ago, Karger said:

Yeah but they could also change the current metals to be whatever they wanted.  It is one of the perks of being god.

So... Silvereyes could become a thing, for real

[Karger he/him]

11 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

So... Silvereyes could become a thing, for real

I suppose, but why?

[Honorless he/him]

It is suspected that silver might have an effect specifically on Cognitive Entities. Silver can repel shades, a chain made of silver was very expensive in Shadesmar, and the name of the Worldhopper city in the Cognitive Realm, 'Silverlight' might suggest something too