Duxredux

Some insidious traps: Shard coffee table with sharpened edges Shard bedframe railing Shard Lego More practical traps would use it as a release wire or pin for a larger mechanism. Setup the mechanism, then summon the pin pack when your spren says the target is in position. Alternately, possibly a universal lockpick if you want to leave less of a trace than just cutting through the door.

Hm... Twinborn Compounding power I would least like to have... Logically, it would be one where none of the component powers are desirable either, which rules out most metals. For most people, I'd argue double Aluminum as the least useful. Component parts aren't particularly useful, and despite some theoretical shenanigans to use Blanking Identity... some part of me expects the process of storing Identity to be thoroughly unpleasant. Imagine siphoning off your sense of self. Being able to skip recycling and eat the tinfoil on my leftovers like a goat isn't particularly useful either. I'm going to have a particularly controversial personal choice though, which is double Gold. Yup, I wouldn't want Miles Hundredlives powers, despite its proven usefulness... because my family is poor enough to qualify for financial aid which isn't that low of a bar for my country. The knowledge that I have the power would be a tremendous temptation, because it is useful - but mostly as personal insurance in a format that no medical insurance company would be willing to pay. I don't see asking for a preemptive payout in solid gold to get more than being made a laughingstock. I also don't want to try to rob Fort Knox or a jeweler. It's personal insurance that I have to save manually that is most useful when carried on my person and most likely to be lost or stolen and can't be used as emergency aid for my family except as collateral. It would feel selfish to hoard gold in case I get injured when my asthmatic wife can't use any of it. But Dux, what about getting rich through blood banks or organ donation? Besides some of the physical unpleasantness of donating my body to the medical industry, it depends on the conversion rate between gold and blood / organ regrowth. Compounding requires burning solid gold which means using the compounded ability will likely cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per pop. We don't have the numbers to say if the gold to blood volume ratio will be worth it. Organ donation is also risky as I can't have access to my Goldmind while they operate since I'd probably unconsciously heal the surgical cuts or burn the anesthetic out of my system - which means trusting the surgeon to give back my gold bracer once they've removed the organ and have me unconscious and at their mercy. It also likely means that I would be a very expensive candidate for organ transplant - since it would likely cost thousands of dollars for me to regrow the organ adding additional financial burden on the recipient. Basically I'm uncertain about any profession that would use the powers since there's the overhead cost and inherent risk. It's like the magic armor from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but way more expensive to use. Yes, technically I could become a spike factory, but each spike would be hugely expensive to produce and again requires a huge amount of risk that I won't be betrayed once I'm strapped down. All it takes is for whomever has the spikes and mallet and has effectively killed me over and over to want a matching set of however many powers without having to pay for the last one. Basically double Gold feels super useful, but introduces way too much risk, uncertainty, and temptation compared to flat out useless combinations like Aluminum seems to be. Even more temptation than just being a Bloodmaker.

Hmmm... Interesting. I'm not thinking of a way to validate or disprove this at this stage, since tones are still a fairly new discovery and we haven't gotten much detail. It's definitely worth thinking about how rhythms affect people internally, as we clearly know they do with Navani's reaction to Anti-Stormlight tones before she was a Radiant. I was trying to address those same questions from a different angle and came up with something that seems equally hard to prove or disprove. My direction comes from Hemalurgy and Spiritwebs and pretty much hinges on Brandon saying that Hemalurgy was based off of acupuncture and meridians. The first idea was that the heart corresponds to a portion of the Spiritweb that coordinates/directs/controls Invested arts (not sure of a better term here, but those words will give you the gist). This... Spiritweb organ(?) is one of the main pieces being stolen by conventional Hemalurgy and it is usually necessary to steal it because it enables the recipient to consistently utilize the power. I got the idea for the heart connecting to a coordinating Spiritweb component from how Inquisitors have a linchpin to coordinate powers at higher numbers - perhaps there was a natural component that did the same function? This attached piece of soul might also explain why it's the bindpoint location on the recipient that determines the power they receive from a spiked Mistborn - because when that organ / power gets interfaced into the new Spiritweb it aligns itself to the system that grants that power, or to use the acupuncture terminology, because you are stapling it into the proper meridian. My guess is that what the Set is doing when they are trying to do non-lethal Hemalurgic harvesting is that they are either intentionally or unintentionally gathering power along those Spiritweb lines / meridians and it's those lines that would determine the power received - if the body could properly coordinate the function. This might explain why they sometimes get power out of those spikes but that it's inconsistent due to Identity contamination, imprecise harvesting away from the proper bindpoints to grant powers (i.e. I suspect that non-lethal harvesting at bindpoints that grant powers is the way to gain those same powers), and possibly because there isn't something locally coordinating the power. This loops back to how Inquisitors have a linchpin spike that coordinates the powers and are killed if that spike is removed - possible from too many alien and conflicting powers. Maybe Hemalurgic spikes could grant resonances with a linchpin as coordinator, but not when you're looking at the scale of a Mistborn anyway, since Mistborn don't have resonances. This might also lead in to how the fragment of soul trapped in the spike is technically intelligent, but just barely enough to get fooled into thinking it's back in a body of it's encased in a slab of meat. This necessary intelligence to grant powers in tandem may also be tied to Unsealed Metalminds, where perhaps they needed an added degree of intelligence in the Metalmind to enable coordination of multiple abilities. Where rhythms might come in is that this coordinating Spiritweb organ might be the internal thingy that A-Copper uses to create a Coppercloud - and is the reason why this was a valid bindpoint for the spike embedded in Penrod's heart that made him a very weak Smoker. Rhythms and the difficulty in finding a balance among competing rhythms might explain why Allomancers and Feruchemists either have a single ability or all the abilities - perhaps there's a spiritual alignment issue where if the Spirit is out of alignment it only has access to the power it is leaning to. Perhaps Lerasium in enlarging the soul also realigns it to more properly gain access to the different channels of power since we know that granting Mistborn status is technically only a side effect of Lerasium? That one feels like a stretch, since I would expect that alignment to have made a strong Allomancer like Wax into a full Mistborn, not just a very weak Mistborn and a strong Coinshot. That said, maybe this Spiritweb organ that can resonate with pulses or deaden them has to be able to coordinate all of those rhythms properly tying this back into your idea. This might also explain why spikes might not be able to steal multiple powers if that component of the Spiritweb doesn't get divided well... though apparently an earring is big enough to properly harvest a viable ability, at least from the Spiritweb of an infant. Basically that chunk of soul away from its native Spiritweb and the proper setup to grant and utilize powers can only effectively grant a power at the proper junction in the recipient's Spiritweb - the bindpoints. This was written out while my little family has been sick, so my thinking may not be the most clear, and I haven't fact checked with WoBs, but it's along the same line as why multiple powers may introduce complications. Also, sorry if this totally derails this from rhythms if that was what you were really wanting to discuss. Thanks for tagging me on this, I've been wondering for a while why this is an apparently hard rule that is now being brought into question. I'd add in the question "why do Allomancers and Feruchemists either have a single power or all 16?"

I could see that... except it would feel like a really lame and obvious answer. The Inquisitors tried to draw more power to themselves over the course of hundreds of years of laboratory experiments and political maneuvering while Ruin augmented those same Inquisitors in HoA. If they always could just use 2-3 spikes instead of 1 to double or more the powers harvested from a Mistborn or Feruchemist, that feels like a huge oversight. We can't blame advancements in technology either, as the metals themselves haven't changed, blacksmithing that can make needles for sewing and swords can make the proper size spike for anything you had in mind, and they had the drugs to leave someone comatose while they lined up the donor and recipient. What they didn't have was Nicrosil, Chromium, Bendalloy, and Cadmium, which steal in order: Investiture, possibly destiny, temporal Allomantic powers, and Spiritual Feruchemical powers. Still plenty to work with. If stealing multiple powers from a single Mistborn is possible, then I want it to require something more. An ability inaccessible to Ruin or the Inquisitors, some step that would take the recipient out of Ruin's control, something. If the answer is legitimately "line up multiple spikes by punching them into a sheet of cardboard and use a flat plank on top to hammer them all in at the same time" I'd feel let down. No added cost? Free?? Just your conscience, dignity, self-respect, additional soap to wash the blood off your hands, possible therapy and counseling, and the time spent either in eugenics projects or capturing half a dozen Allomancers. I don't see any of the efforts to socialize Hemalurgy or find volunteer terminally ill donors letting you through the line 10 times, which probably means this is done illegally and against the donors' wills. Even if you only look at the cost of getting the Hemalurgic donors, the setup costs are significant and non-trivial, but yes, once you have your single spike, assuming it doesn't max out along the way, you will have an abnormally powerful burn and flare. No, I don't think capturing 10 Coinshots alive before you put a single spike in yourself to be easy or low cost.

It looks to me that the two core ideas for this are: creating a spike capable of granting multiple Invested abilities, and stacking the same ability within the same spike. I'll address both. I'm not sure how the first works, and I think we have better options for the second. I'm still iffy about storing multiple usable abilities in a single spike with current understanding, even if all the abilities are within the same Hemalurgic quadrant. Unless someone has a viable explanation for why Atium can't steal multiple powers, why any single spike can't steal multiple powers from a Mistborn, and an explanation for how your methodology diverges significantly from the scenario of trying to steal multiple powers from a Mistborn, I don't see how this would work with current understanding. Ruin at least made a point to subvert Mistborn since it was very lossy to only be able to steal a single power from their whole skill set (https://coppermind.net/wiki/The_Hero_of_Ages/Epigraphs#Chapter_72). I don't think Identity contamination is the issue. Basically, I'm not convinced if multiple powers in a single spike is plausible until we nail down why Ruin could only steal a single power from a Mistborn with Hemalurgy even with access to Atium spikes that can steal any power. Next, I'll talk about the more complicated Hemalurgic methods suggested to amplify a single power as a separate topic from multiple powers in a single spike. if you have access to this much... Hemalurgic material along with methods to blank Identity, then you might as well start looking at A-Duralumin to enhance Allomancy and Compounding to enhance Feruchemy. If the end recipient already has one of the necessary powers, then you can still get away with only a single spike. We also know that Scadrians are already working on the drawbacks to A-Duralumin with the Set method of a mixed solution in a flask for Dumad, and 17th Sharders have had at least 3 or 4 other ideas as well. Metalborn are a limited resource, and the less Hemalurgic spiking necessary to get the desired result the more power you'll have overall due to the Law of Hemalurgic decay. Now granted, this is if you have access to the proper powers to harvest. If you have way more Coinshots than Duralumin Gnats, then... organizations like the Set would probably make do with what they have. If this is a mental exercise to boost the efficiency of a single Hemalurgic spike, then sure, we can try to figure it out. If it's just to get more power to the Hemalurgist, I think better options are already available. If the Identify blanking works, 2 spikes max to get Duralumin enhanced Allomancy or Compounding is formidable and efficient.

This can have complications because the speed bubble gets jolted as it absorbs the momentum of objects passing through the boundary as the Slider runs and as the frame of reference can be shifted based on the objects entering the speed bubble. Too much interference, and it will pop the bubble. I had a question of what happens if a train with a Cadmium bubble on the front went plowing through downtown Elendel, and after some digging I found the bubble would get popped once it hit anything major. The same is likely true of a runner with an Bendalloy bubble anchored to them. Some relevant WoBs. First one is specifically Brandon talking about how anchoring a speed bubble to yourself will introduce complications - and where we learn that this is something a Savant could do. So, yes, people have asked about this, but this is totally the kind of thing that's worth confirming that it's been considered.

I think this is a clever and out of the box idea, but I don't see it being practical. The hoops to jump through to get this to work require having access to abilities with more effective methods of healing than this hack - and whether or not it even could work seems to be in doubt. Let's say that hypothetically we introduce a Surgebinder's cells into another person's body. In order to heal the person we would need the transplanted cells to have sufficient Connection to the recipient to infuse their body with Stormlight, Connection to the Surgebinder granting access to Stormlight, but we can't have the Surgebinder too Connected in case their Identity forces the injured party to be healed toward the Surgebinder. Using Connection, hypnotism, truth serum (if one exists that doesn't get negated by Stormlight healing), or whatever to force the Surgebinder to view a different person as part of their self - but only to a certain extent - looks like it would take much more Connection shenanigans or brain twisting than convincing the Surgebinder that the injured party is a temporary Squire. Becoming a temporary Squire should allow for as full healing as anything else available. Even if the Surgebinder on hand is only a Squire, the Squire can only Surgebind within close proximity to the full Radiant, meaning that there is a full Radiant nearby. Again, trying to enable this hack requires resources that are more effective at the task you are trying to perform. Same with Forgery. If you have the knowledge and skill to Forge on a cellular level, you might as well just use Flesh Forgery and work at the tissue and organ scale rather than what is basically cellular level microsurgery to install a temporary implant. Again, a clever idea, but impractical based on existing options.

I'm sorely, sorely tempted to tag PeterAhlstrom and let him know that he's potentially gained a new alias/nickname on 17th Shard, but I don't want to waste his time. At least, since Peter is the one who reads and responds to the typo threads, I'm assuming he's helping sort out these kinds of things.

My guess is that yes, it does affect Awakening, but that it would take fringe scenarios or a true master of the art to really tell the difference. Let's see if I explain my reasoning. First off, at the larger scale starting at the First or Second Heightening, it likely doesn't matter because Heightening is calculated based on Aura Recognition which is a summation of total BioChromatic aura in the first place. A cup of rice is a cup of rice, even if the individual grains are varying sizes and will have similarly varying totals. Per the Law of Comparability, the number of Breaths used to Awaken an object is not indicative of power since a cloth cut in a square and a cloth cut in the shape of person will serve basically the same function even with vastly different amounts of Investiture. So long as you have sufficient Breaths to Awaken it in the first place, the "health of the Breath" likely will introduce relatively little variance when compared to the target of Awakening and its adjacency to life. That said, Breath quality may matter more at small scales. We know that a Lifeless Awakened with their own Breath will have differences compared to a random Breath used on a random corpse, so even an older less vibrant Breath of the previous owner may be preferrable to a random child's Breath. We also learn from Vasher teaching Nanrovah's daughter how to modify her own memory that a person can manipulate their own Breath for Invested Arts and if Brandon expands on this then personal health and individual Breath quality may be more important. Beyond that, it's hard to nail down specifics because so many aspects of Awakening operate on sliding scales. The color of the object used to Awaken, if the dye was Invested like the Tears of Edgli or not, the life-adjacency of the object to be Awakened, the complexity of the Command, Visualization, Heightening of the Awakener, and any factors I've missed all affect the result of Awakening - and yet if you're desperate you can make do by ripping out chunks of your own hair and using being very careful with wording. Quality of Breath matters... but so does everything else and most other variables are easier to control than a person's life experiences. I think it may matter in fringe cases or when a virtuoso of the art is at work, but for the vast majority of Awakeners, I don't think it would be particularly relevant. The nature of accruing Breaths generally means that either you received the Breaths from unknown individuals, or you have individually convinced dozens if not hundreds of people to give up their original Breath to you in a non-repeatable fashion. Beyond that, I suspect that for any of the really remarkable feats of Awakening where the specific source of Breath matters, you really need a master. I've been told that if you hand a decent violin to both a master and a decent violinist, you'll get decent sound quality because that's the extent of the capability of the instrument. If you have a high quality violin, then a decent violinist will produce decent sound quality while a master can produce high quality sound because it takes a master to use the instrument to the full extent. A decent musician just won't be able to adequately account for the factors that affect their art, temperature, humidity, the extent that the tuning pegs shift while under pressure, friction heating up strings, etc.. I once saw a performance where a song was played so forcefully that the orchestra had to pause to retune instruments because the very act of playing their instruments made them go out of tune. The factors to supreme musical performance to me at least seem similarly complicated and multifaceted as the aspects of Awakening I listed at the start of this paragraph. On a side note, it's worth noting that Lightsong's aura responds to his heightened emotions when he throws a tantrum and shouts at his priests. Lemex's aura was flaring sporadically. Vibrancy isn't only about health apparently. Perhaps its related to Other tangential thought is that we know that the Returned of Hallendren are shaped by the populace's view of perfection. I think the current idea is that this distortion is caused simply by Cognitive Realm power of thought and Connection with relatively little understanding of the mechanism. What if it is caused by the Returned consuming the Breaths of the Hallendren people and literally taking pieces of their soul including their perceptions and beliefs into themselves to sustain themselves? Larger Cosmere spoilers:

Hm... here's the thing, I'm not sure what more Nomad actually can do as a former Dawnshard. Aux offered himself up as a final burst of power to give Nomad temporary access to the Surges of a Skybreaker. He may have lost access to the Surges and we learn from the novella Dawnshard that bearers of Dawnshards are only so dangerous when held by someone with Invested abilities. That said, Nomad's adoption into the Beaconite society seems to have granted their ability to absorb and give Investiture, so he's not totally without access to an Invested art. Otherwise, what does he have? He has Connection abilities to link himself to the locality, healing, strength enhancement, durability enhancement, an Auxblade, Skipping and maybe Shardplate but I'm not sure on how permanently he can summon his Plate. Teleportation via Skipping is pretty useful, but it seems too costly and poorly directed to be using repeatedly, even if you had access to a Shardpool equivalent of Investiture. He might be tough to kill, but I don't think I've seen anything in his powerset to suggest that he's significantly more dangerous than a typical Stormlight-infused 4th Order Radiant, and he'd probably still get pounded into the dirt by any of the Heralds in their prime. Sure he can absorb and store Investiture on his person to rival the Godkings of Hallendren, but that doesn't mean he can effectively use it. I wouldn't say that as he was at the end that he was dangerous at the scale of depopulating entire planets - which we know is something the Night Brigade has done. This isn't to say that Nomad can't get more powerful, particularly if he gets access to other Invested arts, it's just that what he currently has by himself doesn't seems overtly dangerous, even as an Investiture battery. Heightening-like abilities may not be too powerful compared to the utility offered by some of the Invested arts. It's worth noting that in TotES, Xisis as a Dragon with the Tenth Heightening, was afraid of the Sorceress.

Wax, because we've seen him tested in a huge number of scenarios with incredible results, not just a single miracle shot. As has been mentioned before, shooting a bullet out of air and deflecting it. Shot Miles in the eye when both were on the roof of a moving train. That kind of motion for both the marksman and the target would be really hard to anticipate. When fighting the small army when breaking out of the Set's compound in BoM, he was identifying and selectively targeting those shooting ammo that he couldn't see and hitting those with Aluminum in a hailstorm of bullets. That's a huge amount of distractions that he was able to filter out for his shooting, which is also nothing to sneeze at. Possibly the furthest shot simply by gut instinct was in TLM when he A-Duralumin Pushed himself and Wayne somewhere in the ball park of 30-50 miles away to reach the set ship. First time he had ever used A-Duralumin, had to calculate the proper amount of Steel on the fly, the angle, account for the speed of the ship etc. without any prior ranging shots. It is worth noting that we have seen this kind of stunt before when Vin hit Straff Venture while riding a Koloss sword from Luthadel. Not sure on the comparative distance though. Tin would have helped her too (yes Wax was technically a Mistborn, but I'm pretty sure he would have noticed if he was subconsciously getting a full burn out of Tin). On that score, Vin was aiming for a much, much smaller target and got him dead center. So... of the rest, for me Vin gets honorable mention, though that's one of the more precise shots we see from her. Otherwise she generally just throws out a handful of coins and uses spread shots. Wax as a my vote is somewhat unfair because he see him trying to make trick shots more than anyone else, so he simply has more exposure. I'm thinking for the non-Cosmere I might go for that Rithmatist, Adelle Choi. It's much smaller scale, but for a Grand Melee, we're talking about being able to see multiple chalk lines from probably 5-15 feet away if not further, calculate the angles not from a top down view, but from a kneeling vantage point, bounce a sine wave off multiple straight lines made set up by other Rithamtists to hit a weak point probably mostly obscured by an enemy Rithamtist still in their circle sending chalklings or Lines of Vigor at you. Oh, and you not only have to calculate all the angles properly, you need to calculate the distance so that the Line of Vigor is in proper phase to hit the desired weakened section. That kind of angle calculation seems supernaturally good.

How do I put this... I feel like this view of technological advancement as an expected progression is incomplete. The next paragraph is my views from listening to people and historians talk about this (like the YouTube channel Technology Connections), but I'm not an expert. From my viewpoint, technological advancement is intrinsically tied to the challenges and existing technology of the given period in history. In particular, technology develops as innovators work to solve the challenges currently troubling the people of that time and place. For example, in the U.S., an electricity bill used to be called the "light bill" - because the main purpose of bringing electricity into homes was to replace the rather unpleasant dim, smokey, and hot options of the day: gas or candle lighting. Notably we see electric lighting as one of the first indoor uses of electricity in Elendel for Era 2 Scadrial. Bringing reliable lighting into the average household was the push for the power grid - it was after that power source was established that there was a market for electronic consumer products that have become household staples. There's a lot of drivers of innovation, disease, famine, competing companies, competitions, and yes, war. I won't elaborate on every point, but it's worth noting that innovation sometimes can be predicted, as research and development departments, well, exist. Sometimes innovation and technological advancement can be incredibly consistent - Gordon Moore once stated that the number of transistors that can be fit into an integrated circuit will double about every 2 years with the results being consistent enough in the last 50 years for this concept to be dubbed Moore's Law - in part because the processing power of computers is something that has not hit a ceiling yet with the amount of data available to be processed and utilized for economic gain. So... I'd say that measuring when IRL gets developed as a measure of how "accelerated" or "stunted" a planet's technological progression is incomplete and may be better viewed as when each planet develops solutions to similar problems that we saw IRL. It wouldn't surprise me if Roshar never developed an electric power grid at all because "that Invested jazz" solves many of the problems that we use electricity. Rosharan currency naturally provides smokeless lighting. Heating fabrials provide indoor heating and cooking appliances. The tech used by the Reachers in Shadesmar implies that water can be gathered by fabrial tech - the one they used gathers water via condensation. Transportation and communication are currently addressed by Oathgates providing teleporation and spanreeds respectively. Beyond that, the Highstorms that deposit hardened layers of crem over the whole planet add significant complications to creating a cost effective and reliable power grid. Power, gas, and plumbing lines that have to be embedded through hardened crem and survive Highstorms is likely possible but would need to be engineered beyond what most municipalities need to plan for IRL. The biggest reason I can think of that electricity could compete with Stormlight as an energy source is the consistent availability even during a Weeping, but it's a hard sell when the majority of the year power is globally accessible and free to boot with each Highstorm.

Well... it's instantaneous from the degree of measurement available to Era 1 and 2, but surely it takes a technically measurable amount of time to occur. Now Duralumin allows someone to outrun electrons and made Wayne go effectively blind, so that's insanely fast utilization, but that speed of burn may be Bendalloy specific. In the same way that a Steelrunner tapping speed can enhance a burn rate of a metal and get a higher effective burn, it wouldn't surprise me if Bendalloy has a similar effect and may be an outlier compared to other allomantic metals. There may also be differences between Aluminum and Duralumin vs Nicrosil and Chromium. We haven't seen A-Nicrosil used - ever, and we only saw A-Aluminum a handful of times when Vin was forced to use it under duress. However we do know that Chromium doesn't burn all of a person's metals completely - so long as you have huge amounts of metal like Wayne did. So... it occurs to me that metals like Aluminum and Duralumin used by the Allomancer may have a practically instantaneous effect, but the metals that externally affect another person may take more power and have a much lower metal enhancement/leeching rate - because it has to work through the Identity of the other person. In other words, I could see a Nicroburst having a reduced enhancement rate compared to Duralumin for the sole reason that it has to work through a person's natural defenses that I think are linked to Identity. If this is the case, then yes, a Nicroburst enhancing a Nicroburst may allow for near instantaneous forced enhancement and total utilization of a target's metals. Now if you are looking to enhance a willingly target, then Duralumin may get you everything that you need for sheer power. As it is, Duralumin-enhanced burns are super dangerous and this line of experimentation seems quite likely to result in casualties. Greater Cosmere Spoilers:

I second the motion, in part to push this back to the top of the board. Odds are, if it's interesting enough to comment on, we in the no-spoiler period don't want to hear about it. If your thread title tells the reader at all what is in the contents of the thread, short of "SP5 discussion", don't forget that we have a community of fans who go to extreme lengths to tease out the smallest bit of information from every single WoB - and still don't like spoilers.

Not quite sure how to phrase this without sounding petty, but I think I came up with the multi-layer design after you pitched the idea of coating Harmonium in an Allomantic metal and hoping that it could be burned without exploding. It's not a big deal, and it wouldn't be the first time we've seen multiple people pitch a brand new revolutionary idea that has been already posted assuming we both came up with that. The core of this idea is to grant steady delivery of Allomantic metals to the Duralumin user correct? I'm not particularly surprised that the Hemalurgy enthusiast went directly to fine-tuned stabbing. Delivering metal straight to the stomach is likely much easier. Any of you familiar with gastrostomy tubes? They're IRL feeding tubes that go straight through the abdomen into the stomach, often to deliver drug doses or liquid food to a patient. They even have setups with pumps that allow for constant and regulated doses for specific needs. Add in Dumad's trick of an aluminum flask that has the appropriate proportions of Duralumin and the metal to be boosted, and it seems like we're already 95% of the way there. I don't see why a flat tank and pump secured around the waist like a fanny pack couldn't just sit over the port. If that seems too risky, we can lean into cyberpunk with the whole system embedded and the only access point the controls along side the port to refill the tank and recharge the pump. With the principle that internal metal storages have to be burned from the outside in, have the outermost metal be an unburnable metal to insulate the metals to be burned from the Allomancer (meaning cannot be burned by the Allomancer, so if they can't burn Aluminum, make this component Aluminum), assuming we have some sort of bio-friendly coating on the surface. This should give us a mechanism that can pump a regulated dosage of Allomantic metals into the stomach ready to be burned. The control system is whatever format that you want, anywhere from dial on the stomach, glove controls, to AI assistant. If we want it to be really cyberpunk, make the refill system dual cartridge-based so they can pop in aluminum-protected refills on the go or swap Allomantic metals mid-fight without running out. It's basically an automated system expanding from the layered metal design. Instead of isolating the metal with Duralumin and making the layer thickness a prescribed dose of Duralumin, we just have an Allomantically-insulated pump with an external refill port that can adjust the dosage on the fly. Not a bad next step.