Questioner
We have a Nicroburst Twinborn, who burns his old stored metal. What happens?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
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We have a Nicroburst Twinborn, who burns his old stored metal. What happens?
RAFO.
Does Allomancy's lineage play a factor in which kind of Misting they are?
Not usually.
In Mistborn, why is it that an Allomancer either has just one metal, or is Mistborn and has all? Why aren't there any that have just two, or three?
Originally he had planned so that people would only have one metal, period. No Mistborns. And then as he went along with the writing he liked this idea, but he really wanted to make some more powerful Allomancers, which is why he created the Mistborn. He did say though that if you are playing the RPG, you are more than welcome to have an Allomancer that can burn two metals without Hemalurgy.
Can a bracelet created by Navani be used to detect emotional Allomancy?
This is possible.
Bronze has always been my favorite allomantic metal. Could a Seeker learn to sense familiar pulses? Could Marsh, for example, have felt the bronzepulses of pewter, and been able to tell the difference between some Thug he'd never met and his friend Ham? Or is pewter is pewter is pewter?
If he recognized something about the burning, it would have to be in the personal way someone was burning the metal. However, Bronze is capable of sensing other types of investiture. Expand from that as you wish.
Would a Feruchemist actively storing Identity be more susceptible to Forgery? Would more outlandish changes be able to take effect? Thanks for your time, and have a wonderful day.
Yes, if you store Identity, it makes you susceptible to ALL KINDS of things in the Cosmere. Forgery would be on the short list.
Does the difficulty of affecting metals in a body with Allomancy have to do with Identity?
No, more to do with the fact that most people are innately Invested in the Cosmere--and certain planets have extra Investiture. Something Invested is more difficult to transform/move/etc with another form of Investiture.
That is what I had originally thought before you capitalized "ALL KINDS." Is Soulcasting people like Jasnah Kholin did doubly hard since people a have a strong sense of Identity and have innate Investiture?
We're getting a bit far on this course, so it's time to pull out the RAFOs. I don't want to overplay my hand and leave the books without anything to talk about. :)
Does that 'inside a body' thing work on most magics?
For instance, if Han stuck Luke into a Mistborn Tauntaun (a distant and unlucky relative of the mistborn llama), would Luke be protected from both the cold and emotional allomancy?
He'd have to get him inside a living one.
It does work on most magics, though the interactions can be odd unless you know a lot about the workings. Emotional Allomancy, for example, works by lapping against the outsides of someone's cognitive self, influencing you the way music might stir your soul. So being inside a living body wouldn't necessarily stop it--you'd just have more interference. Kind of like how you can still hear music outside if it's loud enough.
Actual mind control in the cosmere requires you to get INSIDE the soul, which you've seen happen frequently enough. There has to be a gap or an opening.
Or, conversely, you just have to be so powerful that you can push through the interference.
If [Vin] burns mist-assisted gold, would she have experienced something that felt like one of Dalinar's visions?
Plausibly, yes.
Is there a maximum speed a Coinshot can propel themselves or something else?
Yes. It will vary slightly based on the strength of the Coinshot, but there are maximum velocities, just kind of-- you would burn yourself up at certain points.
So imposed by the laws of physics.
Yeah, laws of physics are going to-- Those aren't normally going to come in play in Allomancy, because Pushing that hard will be really difficult... But, as we are getting into more mechanical uses of Allomancy, those laws of physics become more and more relevant.
In terms of character development, I've noticed you you tend to be concentrated on Twinborns and Mistings, in your new series. Are you going to be exploring the full Mistborn?
Am I going to be exploring full Mistborn in other books. That's kind of a RAFO, which means Read And Find Out. I will-- I am very interested in telling these intimate stories in the Mistborn world right now and Mistborn have kind of fallen out of the world. There aren't many, if any, of them left, but who knows what will happen in the future. So that's what we call a RAFO.
How useful would gold Allomancy be for making Essence Marks?
Useful.
In Alloy of Law, are people still Snapping?
Sazed chose to alter the way Snapping works. It bothered him. It does happen, but differently.
If you paid any sort of attention during the last book, you were probably expecting a new metal or two to show up in this book. I dropped a lot of hints that there were other metals.
It was a little bit of a stretch to let there be metals that, despite the thousand-year history of Allomancy, weren't known. However, I rely on the fact that the Lord Ruler had informational control over the society. There are A LOT of things that he knew that aren't known to a lot of people.
Duralumin is a real alloy from our world, commonly made from aluminum. Actually, a lot of things we call aluminum–particularly industrial aluminum–is actually duralumin. Aluminum, pre-electrolysis, was really tough to get. It's said that Napoleon had a set of aluminum plates that were more valuable than his gold or platinum ones.
Is Scadrial losing mass when people burn metals?
Yes, technically it is, but Investiture is another dimension to matter.
So it doesn't lose mass, it becomes Investiture?
It becomes Investiture... Basically, when you go into the cosmere, we've got matter, we've got energy here. You've got matter, energy, and Investiture there, and you can get things out of Investiture back into matter, and stuff like that. There's always energy, there's entropy, there's always diffusement... it's basically, add to the laws of thermodynamics a third item, and that's how we word it.
You're also famous for your magic systems, do you start with the effect you want to achieve or the mechanic you want to use?
It depends on each magic system, they're all different. Sometimes there's just a really interesting-- Mistborn's a good example of this. I built Mistborn because I wanted a different power for each thieving crew member and I had in the back of my mind a few cool powers to use, but others I just developed. I'd be like, alright, we need something for the fast-talker. So therefore you get the thieving-crew and the classic thieving-crew elements, and I wanted something to improve every one of them. So while I had the Pushing and Pulling already, because that was really interesting and I'd been working it out in my head, I didn't have all these powers set out for the team, so I developed those.
In other cases it's just, you know The Stormlight Archive started with the fundamental forces in physics and extrapolating outwards from them until I had ten fundamental forces because I wanted to do fantastical fundamental forces. So that one started in physics.
The magic for Warbreaker started because my editor called me, true story, and said "ah, after Mistborn and Elantris you've done some very dreary settings, very nice but very dreary, let's do something with more color in it". More color it is!
Hello Mr. Sanderson, I have a question about bendalloy bubbles—what happens to a human that is partially in and partially out of the bubble when it's placed? Does the difference in the flow of time kill him?
And, if yes, is the boundary of active bendalloy bubble effectively impassable for living organisms? I get that bullets shot out of the bubble randomly change directions, but what happens to, let's say, a person trying to jump out of the bubble (or, given enough time, a person trying to get inside)?
Any living thing touching the bubble is affected by the bubble.
Is it is even possible for a full Feruchemist Mistborn to be naturally born, or will the genes for the two interfere with one another too much?
It is possible, but highly unlikely.
So, it's mentioned throughout the Mistborn books that Allomancers can 'see' their metal reserves to determine how much they have left. What allows them to do this? I really have no theories, except the boring one: 'It's an innate property of Allomancy and its interaction with Preservation.'
It's just an innate part of the magic. Not really because of Preservation. A Surgebinder will know when their stormlight is running out. It's more similar to how you might know your strength is running out when you're holding something heavy, though obviously more delineated.
Where do the lines point, exactly, when burning steel or iron?
Generally, right toward your center.
On the objects?
Oh, the objects. Center of mass, unless you are starting to get really good at it, whereupon you'll be able to kind of see a sort of spectrum that you can pull on and yank on.
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.
Is there a connection between Sak's talent and Allomantic electrum? If so, what is it?
Yes. Reading a person's spiritual connections and possibilities. Similar powers, as is atium.
I saw Brandon at a book signing back in mid-December, and I asked him about the 16 percent deal. He said that Preservation replaced the real External Temporal Metals with atium and malatium (at least I'm assuming malatium, but he didn't mention that specifically. He only said atium). So not-cerrobend and cadmium weren't counted in the 16%. nicrosil and chromium, on the other hand, were. So there are chromium andnicrosil Mistings running around, not knowing that they're Mistings.
Could a Brass twinborn compound to effectively be a human flamethrower? Also can a compounder store faster?
RAFO!
Are Allomancer more or less common than in the time of the Survivor?
They are more common, but slightly less powerful.
Could a double-nicrosil Twinborn compound Breath or Stormlight?
Uh, you’re getting a RAFO card on that. You're getting SUCH a RAFO card on that!
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.
At the end of the first Mistborn trilogy it's really significant that 1/16th of the soldiers who got really sick are now atium Mistings.
Yes.
But we know that there's more than sixteen metals. Wh--
So were there-- were 1/16th of the rest of them just *inaudible* just not significant?
Yes. Sixteen that he-- when Preservation set that all up. He, number one, was not all there. But he was trying to create sixteen as a symbol to say, "Hey, catch this. I've given you a clue-- uh-- help." And so it was devised specifically for that. "*inaudible* Something's going on here."
Did he bump one of the other types then to make it sixteen?
No, no, they would have been Mistings of other types as well.
Yeah.
Chromium.
Okay. Do you have in your head *inaudible*?
Yes, that's right. It would probably have been one of the metals that was difficult to get at that level of technology. It would have been chromium - chromium would be hard gather at that time. Actually, no, it would have been aluminum. *about a minute later, while signing someone else's book* Hold on, there's a caveat to that last answer. Let me finish signing this and expand on that. *pause* So, it would still have been aluminum, but not for the reason you're thinking. It would have been aluminum, but there's an asterisk next to that answer.
Chromium?
Okay. Interesting.
Hard to get chromium.
I've been thinking about--
Oh no! He bumped aluminum. Yeah, he bumped aluminum. Sorry I had to-- I changed my mind.
Oh!
*a moment later*
Okay, Chad? I have a <qualification> for you. I'll do this and then we'll...
*a moment later*
So...
On the sixteen or the *inaudible*...
The sixteen. So the answer is "yes," but it's not something-- it's not what you're thinking it is.
Okay.
Alright, there's an asterisk on it, okay? There's an asterisk on it, it's not what you're thinking. Uh, you're making-- you're making assumptions.
If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see goldshadows for a time and then obtain Compounded health when reaching the charged part of the bead? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, no gold shadows, but at a very low rate since only little health was loaded in it? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, but at a standard rate the user would always get when compounding?
He'd hack the system to deliver health for a short time instead of doing what it was supposed to do, but only until the small portion of gold Invested with his Investiture ran out.
Can a Mistborn use the Investiture from a Highstorm?
It takes some effort to convert the Investiture. They can burn metals from other planets, though.
Tineye. I have a condition i cant remember the name of, basically I started suffocating right before I was born and the lack of oxygen caused a very slight brain damage in all my senses. All of my sensory organs are fine, but my brain can’t interpret them quite right. Usually it's done in more of a dulling. I hope that tin would bring me to the same super human level because magic... Wait...if this works my whole week will be made.
[Brandon] would tin fix me? Or is my brain just broken?
I say yes, you'd be pleased with the results. (Sorry to hear about your affliction.)
What's your favorite magic system you've written?
Compared picking a fave system to picking a fave child, it's easier to pick who is most obedient. He likes writing Allomancy/the metallic arts the most
1) What is the name for a Tineye/Archivist Twinborn?
2) How would copper compounding work for a double copper Twinborn? Would you relive the memories stored in the burned copperminds extra vividly?
1) I'm not ready to open the floodgates for giving names to each twinborn combination yet. So RAFO.
2) Another RAFO here. I'll delve into these ideas when/if I do this combination in a book series.
If you are standing inside of a time bubble, and throw a spear out of the bubble, what happens to that spear as it traverses the border of the bubble? Are different parts of the spear ever in different "time zones," going fundamentally different speeds?
On that line of reasoning, what would happen to a train and its occupants if Marasi stood next to railroad tracks holding up a Cadmium bubble while that train sped by?
In general, a large object going through a time bubble is not going to notice. An object is either in or out, and it depends in part on how the object views itself. People inside the train would be inside of its influence, and wouldn't notice the bubble. The spear would go from one to the other, but would never be in both.
I'm curious. Are any of those rare metals from Mistborn on any other world?
So, not those exact metals, unless they've been taken off-world. But there are other metals like them that you could find.
So they could have Allomantic lore?
They theoretically could...
Let's just say it's not a coincidence that you find Investiture manifesting as metal on other places. Such as Shardblades, as well.
Marsh treats seeking and smoking as an either/or
And what would be the greater advantage? Being immune to — but ignorant of — some Soother's attentions? Or instead knowing — from your bronze — exactly which emotions he is trying to suppress?
If you could do both at the same time what he's saying doesn't really make sense.
In addition, Vin switches off her copper before burning bronze and vice versa
TFE:
Curious, Vin extinguished her copper for a moment, burning bronze instead, trying to sense Breeze's use of Allomancy. No pulses came from him. Of course, she thought. I forgot about Clubs's apprentice— he'd keep me from sensing any Allomantic pulses. She turned her copper back on.
and
Let's try something, then, Vin thought, extinguishing her bronze. She lightly began burning copper to mask her Allomancy.
WoA:
The Thugs charged, but Vin retreated, frowning. Why kill the Smoker? He wasn't a threat anymore.
Unless. . .
Vin extinguished her copper, then burned bronze, the metal that let her sense when other Allomancers were using powers nearby. She couldn't feel the Thugs burning pewter. They were still being Smoked, their Allomancy hidden.
Someone else was burning copper.
and
She still wanted to find those Allomancers, and there was only one way to be certain. She turned off her copper, then burned bronze.
It would be extremely odd for Vin to keep doing this if the powers didn't interfere with each other. Maybe /u/peterahlstrom can put the topic to rest?
The seeker being at the soothing station is an interesting example. I want to say they might be able to sense from outside the coppercloud, but that contradicts that secondhand WoB. I also don't think the soother and smoker were on the lower floors. It says those are unused.
A lot of people wanted clarification on weight in regards to Pushing and Pulling, whether or not it has a direct correlation to the power or if it's just something people say because generally someone heavier is going to Push--
Right, right. It's more-- I mean, the whole-- If you really dig down into it, and I've talked about this before, the whole mass, weight, Push, and Pull thing gets a little tricky when--particularly when you throw Feruchemy into the mix-- Are we changing mass? Or are we changing what the power of the earth pulling upon you is, and things like this. Generally understand that most people who are talking about this are not speaking in scientific terms and they are speaking in colloquialisms.
Let's say we have a Twinborn aluminium/nicrosil and he tapped a lot of nicrosil, so much he started to emit mist and then burned aluminum. Would he destroy his own Investiture?
No.
This fight is for the Allomancy junkies. I don't think there's another one quite as technical as it is in the entire rest of the series.
I try to give variety to how my fight scenes are handled. The spar between Ham and Vin was quick and visual. This fight is all about pushes, pulls, and weight. I fear that it's pretty hard to imagine, and unless you're really into Allomancy, I suspect that many of you skimmed most of it.
Yet, writing a book is about putting in lots of things for lots of different people, I think. Allomancy is fun because of its versatility–I can to all kinds of things with it. This was just one of them.
So, if you really like how Allomancy works–with the pushes and pulls, the vectors, mass, acceleration, and all that, this is a present for you. A chapter really showing off what two Mistborn can do when expertly manipulating their powers.
Is duralumin easier, harder, or the same to Push on allomantically as, say, tin?
I'm going to start moving into "RAFO almost everything" mode here, unfortunately, as (with the weekend over) I need to be getting into the ending of the book itself. Some of the questions, though not yours, are getting very detailed and I need to scale back on answers for now. (Sorry.)
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.
So could somebody using maybe a duralumin Push or Pull, or just a strong Allomancer, take control of a Shardblade?
The more heavily Invested something is, the most-- the more <release?> other forms of Investiture? But as we have proof in Mistborn you can Push and Pull on metalminds, you can Push and Pull on even a spike that’s inside of somebody. If you have the strength. So it's kind of pushing against the strength of the Investiture.
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.
Can the 16 Shards be mapped onto the chart of Allomantic metals? i.e. does each Shard have a corresponding Allomantic metal?
The Shards were first. The metals are in a way a...further division on an established pattern.
Why is there only one... I mean is there either one Allomantic power or all of them?
What do you mean? Oh, why is that? That was mostly for narrative reasons and for making it easy for the reader to track. And, so, why in world? Just ended up being the way the Investiture split but mostly it was for narrative reasons, it was for author reasons.
I was thinking if it was related to Identity?
Yeah, no. It's mostly for my convenience as a writer.
Would burning atium and duralumin together grant view of single far future or widespread of everyone's near future?
I haven't answered specifically what happens, but there is a hint at the end of Hero of Ages.
So, in the scene where Kelsier has all the metal around him, and he's Pushing and Pulling on [parts of the metal that are] not center of mass, is that something more along the lines of savantism, or is it just Rule of Cool?
No no, that I was pushing toward... I wouldn't call Kelsier a savant, but I would say that there were certainly steps toward that, and it's something I actually wanted people who were really skilled with the magic to be able to do.
So it's not Rule of Cool.
I would not call that one Rule of Cool, I would say that I want that to actually be part of the magic, that I wanted there to be some level, particularly in Pushing and Pulling, of skill that lets you deviate from the normal. And I've tried to show in other places that people who are really skilled can do some different things like that, particularly with Pushing and Pulling, both on emotions and on metals. So no, not Rule of Cool there, I do occasionally do Rule of Cool stuff, but I wouldn't call that one.
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.
Can a Misting hurt himself burning the wrong metals or a bad alloy ?
Not really, but they can swallow something they can't burn and end up with metal poisoning. Kind of similar.
So we may tell that a Misting's Allomancy is "safer" than a Mistborn's one.
Maybe because it's the original/natural way how Allomancy manifest itself (without godlike interferences)
Sure, you could potentially say that. You can still make yourself sick, though, so I'm not sure. I guess it comes down to your definition of "hurt." But I'd call it safer, yes.
Several of my friends play the [Mistborn] tabletop game, and we have a question, so, if you want to burn a metal Allomantically do you actually have to ingest it, or can it just be in your bloodstream, or-?
If it gets in there somehow, you can use it.
So you can inhale something, or inject something ... what about spikes? Could you like burn a spike that was-?
Yes, you could, but not if it's Hemalurgically placed or Hemalurgically charged. But otherwise yes. If it gets in you-- I almost wrote a scene where someone got stabbed through the chest and they burned it. The problem is your metal also has to be of the right allomantic alloy.
Looking at Allomancy, you've mentioned that over time the power dilutes and each ability becomes less powerful. (for example a Tineye in Era 2 will generally be less powerful than one in Era 1) Does the same effect happen in Feruchemy as well? How would Feruchemy become less pure or diluted (other than Ferrings appearing)?
I have not gone as far with Feruchemy in that regard. I would say that if you're going to get a weakening of Feruchemy, which you're asking about, is the amount of stored attribute you get for lost attribute. There is decay there, you don't get a 1:1. Feruchemy generally I would say is not much weaker than it was before, a little bit but not much. This was done partially for narrative reasons. I wanted Allomancy... I wanted to back off a little on Allomancy and tell stories with it a little bit weaker. Again, mostly narrative reasons at this point. At this point on Scadrial, it's weakened about as much as it's going to because by this point people are having children that are more powerful because of the certain mixing. I'm not saying it's going up, I'm saying they have hit an equilibrium on Scadrial for the most part, at least in the Basin.
But, I get the feeling you forgot about copperclouds making Smokers and mistborn immune to emotional allomancy. Didn't you?
They don't. Only the Smoker himself is made immune.
I am not suggesting otherwise. However, I remember Sanderson saying Zane used emotional Allomancy on Vin, and Vin using duralumin and brass successfully on Yomen's Smoker (and Tineye) at the ball. Among other instances I forget.
Duralumin beats copper. I'm not sure about the other instance.