Vecna

I've seen a quote somewhere that suggested that Branderson based Atium on platinum - although that might be wishful thinking from the name. I can't find that quote now either. As for Harmonium alloys, yes they should be possible. Given Lerasium alloys are possible for Physical and Enhancement metals, and Atium for Mental and Temporal: it seems likely to me that Harmonium alloys will run the full gamut of all four categories.

Yeah, I can't remember where I got that interpretation from - but TIL that I was wrong when I tried to find sources.

I thought the rough conversion was: body/physical -> solid power (Lerasium), mind/cognitive -> liquid power (Shardpool), spiritual -> gasses power (Mists). But I've just gone looking for a WoB to back that up, and can't find anything...

I don't have the book to hand to check, but I seem to remember there's a point where Sixth asks Sek to fly over to the woman and show her his gift. That seems to imply that the gift is in some way transmitted / switchable.

I don't think that's quite right - because they produce the same effect. Jezrien's Honourblade only granted Szeth the Surges of Gravitation and Adhesion - the same as an Honourspren grants a Windrunner. To quote the Coppermind: If you want to use the Scadrial analogy, then I suppose it could be more like using Hemalurgy to gain Allomancy instead of burning Lerasium.

Given that Surgebinding was originally only possible with the Honourblades, they seem likely to me to be involved with the original Focus. Then the Spren set out to replicate the effect (I forget exactly why, but presumably they thought it would be neat). The fact Honour is involved means that this is all mediated through the lens of Bonds - you bond with the Honourblade, you bond a Spren, you make a bond between two things with Gravity, etc. Bonds are the focus in my mind.

Aye - agreed. I wonder, actually, if Intent plays a part. We know that it is involved in much, if not all, uses of Investiture - can you Intend to only use the Allomantic effect or does the filtering of the Feruchemy charge always kick in?

Yep - that's what I was assuming as well. I need to go and reread the passage where he does actually use A-Gold to see if it implies he burns a metalmind, some gold flakes, just some spare gold he has in his system (presumably to make into a metalmind later on or a metalmind he's emptied) - that might shed more light on if you can just get the Allomancy out of a metalmind if you're a Compounder (I also assume you cannot).

Sorry, I agree. By functionally equivalent I meant they have the same outcome not that they were the same thing. Sure it's Allomancy, but it has a Feruchemical output - or to be even more precise it's Allomancy that produces an effect that can normally only be modified by Feruchemy. Regardless of how the mechanics work underneath, tapping Gold and Compounding Gold still both produce Health - their function is the same even if the internal logic of the code is written in two different languages.

Good point - missed that. Too early on a Saturday morning... As for the burning/tapping - is he burning burning or compounding burning? Because the latter is functionally equivalent to tapping in my mind.

The key difference for me in the Ferring/Miles issue is that in the WoB about Miles still being able to use his Goldmind to heal the question explicitly asks what happens if Miles is already tapping Health when he's Spiked. The flow of Investiture is already open to him, from his metalminds and therefore my conclusion would be that in this case: loosing the ability to tap doesn't mean any open taps just automatically close; you just can't open any new ones.

I've done some thinking on part of this before, and my conclusions were as follows: F-Harmonium: This is the Universal Metalmind. Allows you to store any attribute that is storable via Feruchemy (not just any attribute of your choosing) H-Lerasium: This is a copy of a longer theory I typed out elsewhere: I haven't spent much time considering the other options in the list yet.

Wouldn't that be an Honourable thing to do? To try and contain him to prevent him murdering other people? Even if that meant you died and he was locked in your house?

From a Reddit AMA: [Source]

I believe part of that's been stated to be an in character mistake now, and that the current groupings as we understand them are just Terris attempts to classify the metals as they understand them - not that they're right. [Source] Emphasis mine.

By that argument, it's as solid as a Word of Branderson. Ultimately, I take the view that he isn't deliberately lying to us when he tells Crafty what a metal does. There are clues in there to be found. Anyway, I think this is veering off-topic somewhat - and I don't currently have anything else to add to the Hemalurgy discussion.

I may be alone, but my interpretation of everything that's been said about MAG (in the book itself and outside it) is that things that have appeared in the books before it are correct and things that haven't are close to, but not spoilers, for what's actually happening - so that there can be some sort of game published. F:Aluminium turns out to be Spiritual Identity, not Personal. F:Nicrosil is Investiture, and still weird! Given that once The Lost Metal is out we won't get any more Metallic Arts info for years (and I don't see a huge amount extra becoming clear in TLM either), what we have in the MAG and can tease out of Branderson is literally all we have to speculate on the remaining effects. I'll be over here, in my own little world.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree - but I find it a moot point defining Nicrosil as "A metal the Lord Ruler didn't know about" and as "A metal the Lord Ruler knew about but didn't have access to". If he'd had access to Nicrosil, he would almost by definition have had access to Chromium, which would have been a lot easier for his Steel Inquisitors to use on Allomancers instead of tricking them into burning the very difficult to obtain Aluminium. I don't have any WoBs on this, though, so it's just extrapolation and speculation on my part.

Feruchemy, or maybe Forgery. F:Brass would be so useful...

Recent AMA on Reddit, r/Fantasy.

I buy "clip frames" for them, usually from Amazon. Many of them are the right size, but the two metal table posters have some blank white space around them.

I'm only going to focus on FeruAllom compounding because I don't really understand the Hemalurgy varieties at present - need to reread them. Also, for all of my examples I am going to use Iron arbitrarily, but in most cases I think the logic extends to all the other metals with the possible exception of Nicrosil which I'll get to later. So, my main problem with it having being discovered IC so far is that we aren't aware of any metalmind types OOC that can store 'Allomantic ability with Iron' / 'Steelpushing'. Sure, Hemalurgy that steals that ability, but none of the metals we are aware of for any Feruchemical ability have the capacity to store more than one trait (and yes, I am classing the different senses stored with Tin as one trait here - I know that some people disagree with that assessment) and all the metals we know of have a trait listed. Couple this with the fact it has been implied that the Lord Ruler could do FA Compounding, then we are restricted to the 14 metals that he knew about: Tin, Pewter, Iron, Steel, Copper, Bronze, Zinc, Brass, Gold, Electrum, Aluminium, Duralumin, Atium, and Malatium. Oh, 15. Lerasium, because he didn't use up all of the beads at the Well, and I don't know if we have a confirmed number of them - but I'd be very surprised if there weren't 16 to start with. I can only account for 12 of them (10 noble families that supported the Lord Ruler at the start, Elend, and Hoid), which leaves four mysteriously absent from the Well. Couple that with this WoB? I think there's a strong case there that the missing element is a Lersasiumind forged from four beads (or maybe four smaller Lerasiuminds that he used for different Allomantic abilities - the speculation possibilities here are endless). So, back to Nicrosil and it's link to FAC. While I like the idea that, because a Nicrosilmind stores some nebulous Investiture quality that we don't really understand right now you could store Allomantic ability in it, I don't think we have anything that shows the Lord Ruler was aware of it as a metal - or at least not a metal he could get hold of, which is for my purposes here more or less the same thing. We know that AFC works because the Feruchemy tapped acts as a filter on the Allomantic power being drawn in from Preservation (from the Spiritual Realm) that alters the Investiture so it is the same as the Feruchemical effect instead, so you get a larger amount of Feruchemy out than you put in. What we're looking for as an equivalent, then, to my mind for FA Compounding is something that widens the pipe from Preservation. Allows more Investiture to flow through than the metal-key normally unlocks. This is sort of what A:Duralumin and A:Nicrosil do as far as I can tell: they act as a limited source of extra Investiture, the amount allowed through being, again, pre-determined by the lock opened by the metal-key. But that's where I run dry, and my ideas come to an end. What you could use to modify that pipeline entry, I don't yet know. Maybe that's the effect of the Lerasiumind - you can store the size of your Allomancy hole (Go on, laugh. Get it over with...) to the Spiritual Realm and Preservation's power. While storing, your Allomancy is like a dribble of power from a water pistol; but while tapping, you have access to a full firetruck hose. For a limited period of time, until you run out of charges.

I have always interpreted the phrasing "expanded physical and enhancement effects" and "expanded mental and temporal effects" with regards to Lerasium and Atium (respectively) alloys to mean there are only 8 of each (so an Atium-Pewter alloy wouldn't actually be Allomantically powered, it would just be a metal) - making for 16 plus the 16 from Harmonium (given it's a combination of both halves) which would make for 32. Caveat: That wording is taken from the Table of Allomantic Metals, under the description of the God Metals, so an IC source rather than anything that I've seen a concrete WoB on. Closest WoB is this one from Jan 2011.

Formerly licensed Excel wizard at your service. ~bows~

Yeah, been on the newsletter for ages as well. I just need to get around to actually contacting them to ask for it. It's laziness, nothing else.