Is Aluminum a Cosmere-wide thing?

[Octopi314]

Aluminum on Scadrial has canceling effects on their magic system. Does this apply to all magic systems? If I were to bring Aluminum to Roshar, would it stop a shard blade? Would it resist a lashing, and if so, with enough stormlight, could one lash Aluminum objects? Are there other technicalities like this across the Cosmere?

[Weltall]

Yeah, aluminum works across all magic systems in the Cosmere. It's called Ralkalest on Sel where it's known to be un-Forgeable. Sheets of it are used in Oathbringer to hide soulcasters from detection in Kholinar and we have WoBs that aluminum will block the magical properties of a Shardblade, but won't do anything about the 'heavy chunk of metal with a sharp edge' thing so you'd need a sufficiently thick piece of aluminum to be a truly effective shield. See the Coppermind page for a complete list.

This WoB provides the best explanation for why it works this way currently:

Quote

Questioner

Quick question on aluminum. Why does it affect other forms of Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

When I was building the cosmere, I just had to build certain themes into it, and metal was one of those. And the metals have kind of a Spiritual integrity, and Spiritual component, that if I can get into Dragonsteel explaining why, you'll get your kind of origins.

Questioner

And that's why, in Warbreaker, metals are different with Awakening, and stuff.

Brandon Sanderson

And even in Roshar, the cages that you're building for fabrials, once you start to figure out how those metals affect it, you'll be like, "Oh wait, that makes sense!" And these are just across the cosmere.

And if you want an in-world answer, it has to do with stuff in Dragonsteel. But really, the answer is, I was building this and I'm like, "I just want this to be a theme. So I'm just going to give this Spiritual component to metals." So it works in Mistborn, and it works all across everything.

LTUE 2020 (Feb. 15, 2020)

The out of universe reason why aluminum fills this role is that Brandon wanted a check on magic that would be rare at first and then become commonplace and aluminum is perfect for that because of how rare it was before the industrial processes enabling it to be refined in bulk were discovered.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Weltall

[Honorless he/him]

Yes, aluminium resists Investiture in general. With enough Investiture you could do almost anything, but some things would still take more power than others. Soulcasting aluminum is difficult. On Sel, aluminium is known as Ralkalest and cannot be forged. Nightblood's sheath is made of aluminum. In Allomancy it purges all available metals and in Hemalurgy it removes all powers.

Quote

ChickenBites

Can you Soulcast aluminum into other materials?

Brandon Sanderson

Aluminum would strongly resist any sort of Soulcasting.

Billy Todd

Would that resistance be overcome? Could be overcome?

Brandon Sanderson

This is the question. Everything can be, right? Aluminum, in the cosmere, was created. And can be created. So, people ask me this, "Can? Cannot?" Like, with a powerful enough magnet in our world, what can you do? Like, is water magnetic? ...But, could you make water respond to a magnet? Yes! You can make anything if you really try hard enough... It's, like, this idea, that when people are like, "Can you, yes or no?" Well... yes! Would it take the power of six Shards of Adonalsium working together? Maybe! Can you? Yes, you probably can. Like, we're talking about a fantasy universe where almost anything is possible, and the impossibilities are contradictions, it's "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" sort of questions when you get into "can you?"

Now, could you Soulcast aluminum using a reasonable amount of energy that an individual could conceivably have in a normal setting and situation? No. If that's what you're looking for.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Honorless

[Octopi314]

Understood. Because of the reoccurring metal theme, would other metals like Pewter have a similar effect? In the quote Brandon mentioned that fabrials are closely connected to metals. Would this mean that span reeds use Duralumin since it is related to Connection? Or perhaps a fabrial that emits heat contains brass which stores warmth?

[Honorless he/him]

6 minutes ago, Octopi314 said:

Understood. Because of the reoccurring metal theme, would other metals like Pewter have a similar effect? In the quote Brandon mentioned that fabrials are closely connected to metals. Would this mean that span reeds use Duralumin since it is related to Connection? Or perhaps a fabrial that emits heat contains brass which stores warmth?

No, for the most part, metals having magical properties is due to the three Metallic Arts of Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. Rosharan fabrials work on similar Cosmere-wide principles, but they are fuelled by spren & gemstones not metals. Spanreeds in particular, use conjoiner fabrials, you might be interested in checking out the Coppermind page which I'll link down below:

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Fabrial

Edited July 23, 2020 by Honorless

[Innovation]

I love talking about Fabrials!

Metal type could be important to Fabrials. After all, they do have metal frames. It seems that the metals are used to control and regulate the Fabrials. 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Innovation

[Karger he/him]

3 hours ago, Octopi314 said:

Understood. Because of the reoccurring metal theme, would other metals like Pewter have a similar effect? In the quote Brandon mentioned that fabrials are closely connected to metals. Would this mean that span reeds use Duralumin since it is related to Connection? Or perhaps a fabrial that emits heat contains brass which stores warmth?

Fabrials do always include metal parts.  Shardblades can be any shape but must be metal.  Metal is definitely important cosmere wide.

[Innovation]

Isn’t all solid Investiture in a metallic form?

[Weltall]

27 minutes ago, Innovation said:

Isn’t all solid Investiture in a metallic form?

Currently yes, all examples of Investiture in solid form are metals.

The one thing we're not sure about is the Aethers and Brandon's addressed it but only vaguely. The only one we've seen in canon is a crystal and that WoB references one from the unpublished/non-canon Aether of Night which seems to have inspired Wyndle and other cultivationspren in its appearance. Brandon could be hedging slightly since the one canonical example looks like rose quartz and that contains silicon (metalloid) and gets its coloring from titanium, iron or manganese (metals) so maybe that's considered 'close enough'. Or it could be they're not solid-state Investiture, since we're not sure how Aethers work realmatically (and we can't be sure the one we've seen in SA even works like its counterpart in the unpublished novel) so they may end up being something completely different at the end of the day.

[Innovation]

It could be frozen liquid Investiture, but I doubt that is a possibility. 

[Hoidolasium he/him]

Aluminum causes its effects in the Metallic Arts, not the other way around. It's also interesting to note that because people rarely go mining on Roshar they haven't yet developed the tech for aluminium, even though gilded spheres would be one of the easiest ways to defeat Surgebinders.

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Hoidolasium said:

It's also interesting to note that because people rarely go mining on Roshar they haven't yet developed the tech for aluminium, even though gilded spheres would be one of the easiest ways to defeat Surgebinders.

Elemental aluminum is extremely rare and only found in very specific environments like volcanoes. Guess what Roshar does not have? In other words, they're not going to find usable aluminum lying around Roshar no matter how you mine and the process for refining it from bauxite is way beyond what Rosharans can manage right now.

So not only do they not have the means to mine aluminum if they wanted to, they don't even have any basis for thinking that it can be mined in the first place. They'd need a massive jump in their understanding of physics and chemistry or a worldhopper explaining it to them in order to make the connection. Which is probably how they learned to Soulcast it in the first place, or via one of the Heralds or even the Shards telling them about it.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Weltall

[+Bzhydack he/him]

8 hours ago, Hoidolasium said:

Aluminum causes its effects in the Metallic Arts, not the other way around. It's also interesting to note that because people rarely go mining on Roshar they haven't yet developed the tech for aluminium, even though gilded spheres would be one of the easiest ways to defeat Surgebinders.

Aluminum isnt even known widely on Roshar. Shallan knows it, because she had necless made from it, but others not - Szeth has no idea from what is Nightblood Sheeth made, also Kal and others in Kholinar dont have idea what is that strange silver metal what stops detection of soulcasting. Kal even sees neccless made from aluminium on marketplace in Celebrant and have no idea what is this and why it is so expensive.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Bzhydack