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You've mentioned in the past aluminum savants being able to somewhat heal their spiritweb, healing them of the cracks, sort of healing them of Allomancy. Could a chromium savant do this to other people, kind of like in the Avatar [The Last Airbender] finale where he seals bending?
I will say RAFO, but I will say you're theorizing along correct directions.
How precise can iron and steel Allomancy be? For example, could a Mistborn unscrew a light bulb just by Pushing and Pulling on the edges?
Yes. You see Kelsier do something like this when he spins metal poles and things like that. What you're asking for is an order of magnitude more difficult, but it is within the realm of possibility. I want to be careful not to get to Magneto-ish with it, but the more you... yeah. It is possible to do things like they just said.
I know Allomancy is, like, "alloy" and "mancy." Were you inspired by "alomancy", which is the divination of salt?
I wanted to use "mancy" because in part I was working in a seeing-the-future with atium. And I thought: number one, it's resonant; and number two, it works because we are looking at the future. So that's where the name came from.
No future salt-based magic system, though?
No. I've toyed with it for a while, but I just have never come up with anything that I'm satisfied with.
Speaking of time bubbles, can iron and steel and emotional Allomancy go beyond the boundaries of time bubbles; like if I'm inside a time bubble can I just like super Steelpush outside?
Oh, time bubbles interfere with almost all forms of Investiture.
If Allomancy works once the planet is left, does that mean that the FTL travel will have the vessels carrying a portable Shard? How will the energy of that Shard affect things where they travel to?
You're just going to have to get a real RAFO on that one, 'cause that book is a long ways away.
My question is, what 'causes' an effect in the end for Allomancy? You've got Investiture being filtered through a metal, but does putting it through the metal turn the Investiture cause a Steelpush, or is it putting the Investiture through your soul that causes it? At what point do you turn Preservation's Investiture into a Steelpush, or is there no one 'point' where it happens?
Okay, imagine you've got one of those play-dough machines you can stuff with dough, then press a handle on the top to make a little snake-like tube of play-dough squirt out.
Those have appendages you can affix to the front to change the shape of the tube that comes out. The metals are the appendage that determines the shape of the power released, but only certain souls can unlock those metals and use them.
Allomancy is a conversion from matter to energy... Is it inherently an unreplacable resource or is there a process by which it's replaced to propagate?
There is a process by which it is replaced.
When either Rashek or a Twinborn like Miles, how does he fuel his metalminds? Does he have to actually burn the gold in order to fuel them? Because, I feel like there's a paragraph in here where you kind of explained it, but I feel like you didn't actually say that you had to burn more gold in order to fill a metalmind. Is that how that works?
Yes. You can cross the streams and use one to power the other. But you are using the metal to power your Feruchemy instead of your own-- You're using, basically, the power that's coming through the metal...
So you do have to be burning one the whole time? Sounds good, good to know. So you could just infinitely fill it, basically? As you burn, you just use it to fill it and it just gets-- and that's where that comes from?
Yep. You are burning a metalmind that you've already filled, right? That's the key there. You fill a metalmind, then you burn that, and what that does is it keys the metalmind to the Feruchemy instead. Which normally no one can do because you could-
You can't do both.
Yeah. But if you can do both, you fill a metalmind, you burn that metalmind. What comes out of it is Feruchemical power instead, and you then are filling the metalmind with more.
So Allomancy is fueled by the power of the Shard. So what you're doing is you're powering your Feruchemy with the power of the Shard, instead of your own body. Using their Investiture instead of yours. Which is very dangerous.
Quick question to help me settle a debate. Could Allomancy affect a Shardplate/blade?
No. Investiture interferes with most magics.
Wait, are Mistborn and Stormlight Archive somehow connected?
Multiple people from Mistborn appeared in The Way of Kings.
Title Page - Part One
All right, first annotation! About the title page.
I'm generally just going to call this book Mistborn, though the entire series is the "Mistborn Trilogy." Technically, this book is Mistborn: The Final Empire. The second book is Mistborn: The Well of Ascension, and the third book is Mistborn: The Hero of Ages.
There’s an interesting story behind this title. As some of you may know, I spent a number of years trying to get published, writing books all the while. My first five books are what I call the "throwaway books." Those were ones I did mostly as practice, figuring out how to do the whole novel-writing thing. Book six was Elantris, which was published in May of 2005; it was the first book I managed to sell.
However, while I was trying to get Elantris published, I wrote a number of other books. The three after Elantris were big epic fantasy books, much like it in style. After that, I decided that I was writing things that were too big–that no publisher was going to take a huge epic fantasy book from an unknown author. (Though that's eventually what happened. . . .)
Anyway, I decided to try writing some shorter (i.e. only about 125,000 words instead of 250,000 words) fantasy novels. The first of these was what I now call Mistborn Prime. It was the story of a man who was a "Mistborn" (a kind of super-powerful assassin) who gets trapped in a small village with people hunting him, and has to try and blend in with the population there.
Mistborn was a different book for me in many ways. It was shorter, for one thing, and it was also about a kind of anti-hero. It only had one viewpoint character, and the plot was much smaller in scope than my other books. It was successful in some ways, but a failure in others. The magic system I developed for it–Allomancy–was quite spectacular, as were the action sequences. The character, however, didn't appeal to many readers. And, the plot was just a little. . .uninspiring. I'm really better when I have more to deal with.
As you can probably tell, this book–which was unpublishable–became the inspiration for the book I eventually wrote named Mistborn: The Final Empire. We'll cover that second part in the next annotation.
I continued to ask about the Lord Ruler and his Allomantic strength.
There's an upper bound to the amount of power you can get from being a savant. Brandon said that, obviously, the Lord Ruler wasn't using duralumin and Elend could only get that powerful in Soothing using duralumin. He implied that there was a way to Compound to enhance Allomancy.
I really want to know what the last two metals are. I always thought the bead Elend ate was one of them, but perhaps they are just things of Preservation, not meant to be understood
The metal chunk that Elend ate is intended to be something of a mystery. Much like atium, actually. Suffice it to say that atium isn't, and never was, what people thought it was.
I intended Allomancy to be much like a real science. People investigate and put things into boxes, trying to describe and understand the world around them. That doesn't mean they always get things right, however.
Let me say this, as I don't want to spoil too much. If that metal Elend ate were fused into specific alloys with certain metals, it could have instead created Mistings of each of the different Allomantic powers. Atium's abilities are not entirely explored yet either.
How does Snapping work after Sazed changed it? If you don't want to reveal it all right now, are there any hints you can give us?
He couldn't get rid of this entirely. I don't want to spoil things, but Snapping was built into Allomancy primarily because of larger-scale magical issues. This is getting deep into the issue, but it has to do with a person's spiritual makeup and a 'wounded' spirit being easier to fill with something else, kind of like a cut would let something into the bloodstream. Sazed made this threshold on Scadrial much easier to obtain.
How effective would pewter Allomancy and iron Feruchemy be in a Twinborn?
That would do some really cool stuff. Some really cool stuff.
Electrum
I held off on using this metal because while I knew what it had to do, I also knew that it would make atium far less important.
The way I built Allomancy, there is a logic to its framework. Atium shows other people's futures. Gold shows your own past. Each group of metals has internal and external powers. Therefore, one of the two alloys (either atium's or gold's) had to show other people's pasts—the Eleventh Metal from book one, an alloy of atium.
The final metal of that group, then, had to show your own future. I wanted this to be an alloy of atium. But the problem was that it couldn't be. There is always a pushing metal and a pulling metal to each set. The pull always comes first; the push is always the alloy. The two external metals (that do things to other people) have to be grouped together, and the two internal metals (that do things to yourself) have to be grouped together.
That means atium and gold are both pulling metals, and the ones that do things to you both had to be related to gold—and both metals that do things to other people had to be related to atium. Therefore, even though initial logic makes it seem that the alloy of atium should be the one that shows your own future, the way the magic is arranged means that it has to show other people's pasts. [Editor's note: Careful readers may intuit something else about this that Brandon is holding back.]
Does Allomancy have Cognitive and Spiritual manifestations as well as the Physical?
Yes... Yes, it does, but*. A little asterisk.
The Inquisitor's Speed
What the Inquisitor does here at the end is very important. If you've read book two recently, you may recognize this as what Sazed did when he tapped speed at the end of that book.
The Inquisitors are gaining Feruchemical powers, which makes them very, very dangerous. Mixing Feruchemy and Allomancy is what made the Lord Ruler so formidable. Fortunately, it took him a long time to figure out how to mix the powers correctly, and the Inquisitors haven't had the time to practice, regardless of the force controlling them.
The ninth metal. It was difficult to decide what this one would do. I wanted something opposite, yet complimentary, to the power of atium. So, I decided that it would give a kind of skewed perspective of the past, kind of like atium gives a limited view of the future. Obviously, this will come back into the plot later.
I do worry that it took too long to get to this scene. You've probably been wondering for quite a long time what the ninth metal did–and that concerns me, because if you wonder it, you'll also wonder why Vin herself didn't get around to figuring out what it was.
The problem is, this really is the first place I could work it in. Allomancy is a very complicated magic system, and I wanted plenty of time for you to get used to it before I delved into its more odd aspects.
Is there any real difference between Steelrunners and Sliders? It seems like that could be sort of similar class--
Yeah. But different.
--Sliders have the bubble around them, but...
Yes. They work similarly, the big difference is you're seeing the limitations of Allomancy versus Feruchemy. Where Feruchemy there upper limit is unbounded, but you have really much more distinct cost and that can be stored up. You see that these have a different kind of cost to them, but I would call them the same category of thing, it's just the Feruchemy can be way more powerful. Except its limited by how much you store up.
Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?
No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. [recording starts here] And so, for the same reasons that you can, um, it is possible that a coppercloud can play with it. Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you’ve seen them do stuff similar.
Can you use Allomancy in the Cognitive Realm?
Yes... you can.
So do Inquisitors, when they use Allomancy, have to actually ingest the metals?
They actually do. So what is happening is Hemalurgy rips off a piece of one person's soul and spikes it somebody else and so it is basically taking off the piece of someone's soul that makes them an Allomancer and adding it to someone else instead and so then they act as an Allomancer just as it would happen.
Mechanically speaking, how does steelsight work? The scientific definition of "metal" gets a little murky in the middle of the periodic table-
It does.
-and we see that powerful enough Allomancers can see more than just metals.
Yep.
Are Connection and perception significantly involved here?
To an extent, but the science of it also is. I feel like the stronger steelsight is getting, the more it is detecting things like electromagnetic bonds and even, you know, the strong and weak force and some of these sorts of things that is just in everything, right? And I do think that in strongest applications, Allomancy is going to be moving beyond metals and moving toward things like fundamental forces. So there you go.
The First Noblemen Weren't Rashek's Friends
I'm curious to know if anyone figured out the logical problem with the Terrismen becoming nobility. It's what everyone assumed, and it's been mentioned in the previous books. Everyone knows that the Lord Ruler made his friends into Allomancers.
Only, he didn't. That's simply a fabrication he allowed to continue as rumor, then become fact, so that he could cover up the origins of the kandra. The men who became the first Allomancers were actually foreign kings. Rashek knew that he could conquer the world if he needed to—but he also knew that it would be a lot easier to rule that conquered world if he had allies and kingdoms who joined him out of desire, not out of fear. So, he offered Allomancy to the royal families who would give their allegiance to him. Once he showed off his own power as a Mistborn, he managed to get several important monarchs to throw their weight behind him. They got to be Allomancers.
Because of connection and the fact that we attribute emotions to animals, can you use emotional Allomancy on animals?
Depends on the animal and the situation, but generally, no.
Allomancy is of Preservation, correct?
Yes...
What are Feruchemy and Hemalurgy of?
Hemalurgy is definitely of Ruin.
Is it of pure Ruin?
Yes. That's a very Ruin thing. And Feruchemy is more of a blend. Though… there is more philosophy to that and human construct—like the Allomantic table—than I think I’ve made clear before.
I would have a question about Soulcasting: is Soulcasting an Invested object harder ? And if it is a human (let's say, an Allomancer) but he is not burning any metal, would he be as easy as Soulcast as any "normal" person ?
It is harder to Soulcast an Invested object, but Soulcasters--by their nature--are used to dealing with this.
When Allomancers aren't burning metal, they are not considered highly-Invested.
What would a Hemalurgic spike granting atium do for an Allomancer already able to burn atium? Does it function similarly to bronze, granting enhanced atium-ing? Along this line of thought, would enhancing electrum burning via spike be of any advantage?
A spike of something you have would enhance your ability, giving your more strength. With atium, more strength makes for a minimal edge--the length you can push out the atium shadows. However, there's a certain breaking point where you kind of crack the whole system, peer straight into the [Spiritual Realm], and kind of have a "It's full of stars" moment.
Electrum could reach this same moment, potentially, though there's more interference to fight through. Extra strength in electrum isn't going to be terribly useful up to that point.
Is that what happened when atium was burned with duralumin?
Yes.
Would being fat be advantageous for steelpushing? Asking for a friend.
Advantageous in pushing against someone else, trying to knock them over. Disadvantageous when lifting yourself into the air
Would a Mistborn see the atium shadow of someone wearing Shardplate?
Yes, they would be able to. Good question, but they would indeed be able to.
Marasi is an Allomancer
One of my big goals in these post-epic Mistborn books is to give a chance for more limited-power people (Mistings and their Feruchemical cousins, Ferrings) a chance to shine. In the previous trilogy, the focus really was on the Mistborn. Vin and Kelsier fit the epic fantasy mindset I wanted, powerful in an epic sort of way, broadly capable with abilities in a lot of areas.
For these books, I wanted to show people who had one or two powers, instead of sixteen, and show how specialization can achieve some incredible results. Because of that, I intentionally held back in the first trilogy in letting Vin do a few things. (Note how much better Zane was with minute steelpushes and ironpulls than she was.) Vin was incredibly skilled, but because she had so many powers to work with, she didn't home in as much on any one of them. Things like Wax's steel bubble are tricks I wanted to save for people like Wax. (He's what we’d call in the Mistborn world a steel savant, so capable with his metal—and having burned it so long, for so many years—that he's got an instinctive ability with it that lets him be very precise.)
And so we come to Marasi, who has the power opposite—but paired with—Wayne's ability. Both she and Wayne have powers I wanted to delve into. Indeed, I kind of promised that the last metals would get highlighted in these newer books. Matching that, I've given Miles the same power the Lord Ruler used to heal himself from so many incredible wounds. I wanted to explore more of what this skill was capable of when not overshadowed by so many other powers and abilities.
What happens if you burn atium at the same time as cadmium or bendalloy?
That would be really cool to see. *laughter* Here you go, you can have a RAFO card.
What would happen if you shot a thug with an aluminum bullet or stabbed him with an aluminum knife?
Ah, that's a good question. The wound would not be able to heal around the aluminum, but once the aluminum came out and was gone from the system, they would be okay.
Wait, is that a Bloodmaker, not a Thug?
Oh, you're talking about Thugs?
It would work similarly, but it really wouldn't have a huge effect on them.
Alright, because Peter was implying that there was some weird aluminum interaction with Thugs.
What was he thinking of...?
There is some weird interaction but...
In the wedding scene, Wax thinks they would have aluminum bullets to deal with Thugs, and I was like, "Oh, that's a typo." And Peter was like, "Oh no it's not..."
No, no. That would just be-- it's like I said: healing it until the bullet is gone, it's just the same as Bloodmakers.
Do you know off the top of your head what the rate of decay is from a Leecher's touch?
No, not off the top of my head, I'm sorry.
Could someone burn an Allomantically inert metal that was Invested, like Invested silver or Invested lead?
...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."
If someone is a full Mistborn and is able to use Feruchemical gold... can they safely burn harmonium?
Oh, okay. This is theoretically possible.
Would it have an effect?
Yes. It would do something.
And I'm going to hopefully ask what that is.
*gives a RAFO card* You've earned their card.
What abilities, if any, does a double aluminum Twinborn have?
RAFO.
Can you tell me what Wit put in his drink in Shallan's flashback scene?
It was something that you or I would probably not want to eat in our world, but that Wit got some benefit from eating...
Something we've seen in the Mistborn books, perhaps?
[sounding pleased] Yes, perhaps like something you've seen in Mistborn.
Is Wit, or Hoid-- Is he an Allomancer
He did steal a bead of lerasium off of Scadrial. If he were to make use of that bead, certain powers could have been gained.
Okay. "If he were to have used it."
If he were to have used it.
With a cadmium or bendalloy savant, would they be able to impact the amount of time that they can compress or expand?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they could fit-- Theoretically they could make-- fit more time into the same amount of metal.
Oh, that's what you're asking. Yeee-- *pauses* So, yes, technically, because... Yes, but mostly what that's going to do is going to influence your strength and how much you can multiply--
The size of the bubble?
The size of the bubble and the amount of time, like when you flare, you are pressing more time into it and a savant is gonna get really good at that. They're gonna get good at changing the bubble and the shape of the bubble, they're gonna get good at some of the other things involving the bubble. It does technically, as you become a savant, does mean you're able to squeeze a little bit more out of your metal, because that's just how it works, but that's not the main effect.
Would emotion spren react in any way if a Rioter or Soother were operating in the area?
Yes, you would be able to see that sort of change if you were paying attention.
I noticed on re-reading Well of Ascension is that duralumin is described as a mix between aluminum and copper. However one of the first things we are told about the metals is that each metal is paired: one base and one alloy. Copper already has brass as an alloy. Is this an error, a case of incorrect in-world understanding, or is this implying something further about aluminum?
The below reply thread covers it--when I was building these, I wan't using the alloyed-in metal(s) as being unique. Rather the purity of the original against a mixed form was my guide. I mean, steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, making it really odd compared to the others, which tend to be alloys with metallics instead of nonmetallics.
My RAFO question will probably be, will an Allomancer or a Mistborn take that chip of Honorblade that fell off and burn it?
*hands RAFO card*
Would it be possibly to have a bunch of iron Ferrings store a bunch of weight into some iron, turn that iron into steel, and then use that steel to make guns as a cheaper alternative to aluminum?
Yeah but the guns wouldn't be immune--
But they would be resistant, that little bit of extra time could be enough to make a difference.
Yeah.
And the guns would be harder to see with iron/steelsight, correct?
Yes, they would be. Do keep in mind however that we get a very skewed perception of the world and how important stuff like this is because the main characters of the books are Allomancers. This just isn't something that is important to the average person on the street. But this does relate to some things later on in the series.
So this flashlight is made of aluminum. So obviously, I could not affect the flashlight itself with iron or steel. Could I affect the battery inside it?
No.
Could I like, pop the trigger?
Yes.
I noticed in a lot of your cosmere books, like for example Elantris or Mistborn, they have something to do with some sort of subject matter or school or something. For example the Steelpush and Ironpulling in Mistborn is based on physics.
Yes.
If you push too hard it's based on...
Vector physics, yes.
And then like Warbreaker is just like math, adding Breaths together. Did you intend that?
Not necessarily. I read a lot and I like science and I like philosophy and I like and things like this. And those spark most of my ideas. So yes in a term but I'm not like "Let's do this subject".
I would say Warbreaker, the big part of Warbreaker is the idea of sympathetic magic. Which is the idea that like affects like, which is a very common type of magic throughout all cultures on the planet, on our planet. When people believe in magic they believe in sympathetic magic. A voodoo doll is sympathetic magic. And that's where the idea came from.
So in Elantris, which is different and then--
Yeah that's basically fantasy programming, is where that one came from.
And then there is The Stormlight Archive, which basically violates all the laws of physics by just saying everything comes from spren.
Well no they still have arguments on that, are spren attracted to these things or do they cause them.
Yeah that's kind of weird...
Stormlight Archive was based on the fundamental forces, if you want go read on physics google fundamental forces.
If you electrified metal would that have any impact on being able to Steelpush or Ironpull it?
I do not currently have that as an effect, that interfering with it requires Investiture, and electrifying is not Investiture. So no it would not. In fact, I'm absolutely sure it will not because the plans call for that to be a possibility they are doing in the future.
Are twins more likely to be Allomancers?
They are more likely to share--
--to share Allomantic attributes.
--to share Allomantic attributes.
Does it make a difference if they’re identical or fraternal?
It does… Yeah, it does. Fraternals are still more likely. But identical are even more likely.
Okay so fraternal are more likely than siblings--
Than siblings, yes.
And identical are more likely than--
Mmhmm.
We asked if it was possible to use bronze to Seek Feruchemy.
He said it could be possible. If it were to happen, it was very hard, because the Inquisitors would desperately like to be able to find Feruchemists that way, and it was implied they had not discovered this power. So, it is a freaking hard technique to learn, if possible at all.
Have you revealed what the primary effect is of burning lerasium is?
I have not.
Can you in the book?
No. I can write a RAFO though.
