Questioner
What is your favorite magic system that you made?
Brandon Sanderson
Allomancy.
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What is your favorite magic system that you made?
Allomancy.
Would aluminum give an atium shadow? Like if someone threw an aluminum spear?
The aluminum would not give an atium shadow. Good question.
Why does Preservation fueling Allomancy not weaken Preservation compared to Ruin?
Because the power, once used, returns to him--much as water, after passing over a turbine, continues on in its system.
Allomancy can be such an internal form of magic... how would you see it being dealt with visually, if Mistborn were ever to have a TV/movie version?
Pushes and Pulls are going to be done (if this version of the film gets made) by having metals glow blue when an Allomancer is using their powers. There will be visual or auditory cues for the other powers as well.
After the Ascension and everything, how the Allomancy got exponentially weaker after generations. Is something happening after that in the current Mistborn?
Yes, but it’s going to hit a certain point of saturation where it’s going to stop weakening. It’s already kind of, the weakening is…
Evened out?
Yeah
Would tapping Feruchemical speed cause you to burn metals faster as your whole body speeds up?
Yeah. I think it probably would. I don't know if we've gotten to that interaction yet, but it probably would. Good question. If it's speeding up... Yeah, I think it would. Good question. If you're in a speed bubble and doing it, it's totally going to do it, and there's some analogies there.
We know that any person can burn lerasium. Are there other God Metals that any person can burn?
Yes.
Chapter Sixty - Part One
Silver, the Useless Metal
I've annotated about this before, but I figured I'd mention it again. As you probably know, in book one, tin was originally silver. I swapped it out for various reasons.
However, that left silver having no Allomantic powers. That feels strange to a lot of people because of how common and useful it is in our modern culture. Such an obvious metal doing nothing seems wrong to readers.
I toyed with using it in place of aluminum at the end of book one, but I realized that wouldn't work. It was too common, so if it had any Allomantic powers, people would know about them for certain. Only a metal that was very hard to find—like aluminum—would be believable as a new metal that most people hadn't heard of.
So silver is Allomantically inert. Just one of the quirks of the magic system.
When will we visit the Spiritual Realm like we have done the Cognitive Realm.
Yes, you already have, briefly when Elend transcended and burned atium with duralumin.
Kelsier said to Vin, "Always make sure to burn off your metals before you go to sleep," because of toxicity issues. And when we get to Second Era, that just makes me think, because cadmium is truly nasty stuff. And most metals to burn them off, that'll be just fine. But with its effect, it would mean that trying to burn it off would shorten the night and you don't end up with any time to sleep. How does Marasi deal with this?
You measure very carefully and you deal with the side effects of being an Allomancer.
The longest lasting of the Allomantic metals is actually copper, which is used by Smokers to hide Allomancy. Tin is second, however. Steel and Iron are actually rather quick, but since they're generally used in bursts, it's hard to notice. Both brass and zinc are medium, as is bronze. Pewter burns the fastest of the basic eight, though atium and gold both burn faster than it does.
In my mind, it's related to how much 'work' the metal has to do. That's why pewter, steel, and iron burn so quickly. A lot of weight and power is getting thrown around, while copper only has to do something simple. However, I never really set any of these things hard-fast.
And, only atium is really all that rare. Because of the value of the metals, the noble houses expended a lot of resources finding and exploiting mines to produce the metals. This resulted in a slightly higher value for most of them as opposed to our world, but not really noticeably so, because Allomancers really don't need that much metal. Even fast burning metals, like pewter, are generally only swallowed in very small amounts. (i.e. A small bit goes a long way.)
If Wayne and Breeze, like if Wayne had a time bubble up and Breeze was inside Pushing on somebody's emotions what--
He could still make that work.
Would it affect it?
Not really. It wouldn't dramatically affect it. You're going to have one of these sort-of effects-- Yeah, because what he is doing is on another Realm, it's not going to affect it.
Is that the same with all of the *audio obscured*
Not necessarily. See what's going on is if you are affecting things on the Cognitive Realm--
It's kind of time-independent?
Yeah? It's not as-- Really it's the Spiritual Realm that is completely time-independent, right? All time and space are irrelevant once you reach the Spiritual. You're kind of going to go over the top a little bit, it's going to work just fine. In fact you can probably-- So he could use that to make his metals last a little bit better, probably. So that is a hack of the magic systems that you could probably do.
If atium isn't a regular metal then why are there atium Mistings?
They were designed and created specifically to do what they did. Remember this is-- Preservation and Ruin were able to influence the world and rewrite people's spiritual DNA.
Speed bubbles--
Yes. Ehhhh... these are the hardest ones.
We've seen them work and move with trains, we've seen them not work with carriages: is there a size requirement, or is it how they view themselves?
That's a good question. So I build in this thing, right? I'm like "Oooh, speed bubbles! Speed bubbles are cool!" but the Delorean problem, right? You're like "I'm going to go back in time: to the middle of SPACE", because the planet is in the same position, right? This is stuff that science fiction writers have been having fun with since the silver age of science fiction. So I'm like "Alright, I need to deal with the Delorean problem". And so I'm like "Alright, we're going to have to say that frame of reference is a big part of it: so perception and frame of reference is a big part of it; and also size of the thing that you're on". So it would be possible to use kind of cosmere cognitive training to get that speed bubble moving with you-- And someone asked me a question about this on tour, I believe, so it would be in one of the reports-- Not this exact same thing, but "Could they learn to move their speed bubble with them?" And yes you can.
So it is how the allomancer views it, not how the thing views itself?
That's a part of it. Partially how it view itself, *garbled* It's really also mass. Big thing-- The speed bubbles required all kinds of physics-gymnastics. I'm sorry physicists, but once you start playing with time the stuff you gotta do. It's just crazy stuff you gotta do.
We actually sat down and worked out what the metric would have to do to have a speed bubble-- Yeah, it was gnarly.
...We did run the math on these things, and stuff like that. And Peter, y'know, he rais-- "Redshift" and stuff like this we talked about. And all kinds of fun stuff about speed bubbles that I then had to--
Khriss asked about that?
Yeah. So this is-- This one and manipulating weight... Those are the math ones. So these are the ones where-- They create the fun things to talk about, but they are where this is fantasy and not science fiction. Like a lot of these questions I could answer and you'd be like "Alright, if there were this alternate power source, we could buy this" but in this case we're like exception-list-of-asterisks to make it work. But they're too fun to not do, right? And I knew I was doing gravity on Stormlight, so I'm like "I gotta do weight separately".
What's the most complex magic system in your books?
Allomancy is probably the most complex, I would say. Predictably when you start getting into the later applications of it it gets-- It's pretty complicated.
Is Allomancy a recessive or dominant gene?
It doesn't work according to Physical genetics, it works according to Spiritual genetics, and they don't work exactly the same way.
Does the general population know about nicrosil and chromium?
Yes, though they are like this world's version of advanced physics in our world. They've heard of them, but many an average person might be hard-pressed to say exactly what they do.
Is aluminum shielding from emotional Allomancy strictly line of sight? So, can someone in the basement bypass somebody’s aluminum hat on the first floor
No, they could not. You just put enough aluminum there and it disrupts.
So it disrupts like a field.
Yep.
Can a Seeker, standing outside a Coppercloud, that is between them and another Allomancer, can he sense the person standing on the other side of the Coppercloud?
Yes, but he might get some interference.
Would you sense the cloud itself, like "Hey, there's a cloud between me and what I'm looking at"?
If you know what you're doing, you might be able to say something is interfering, but you wouldn't be able to determine what. There are multiple things that could cause that, for instance-- Most of them are only-- That they would be able to-- Yeah, there are multiple things that could cause that. Like, for instance--
Big buildings?
Well, aluminum.
The compounding trick that the Lord Ruler performed. When you're storing Investiture, are you storing your "Mistborn-ness" or all the powers individually?
All of the powers individually.
Oh okay!
Yeah, the compounding trick. Really what's happening is you're fueling Feruchemy with the power of Allomancy, but you're filtering it through you, and then you're storing it.
So it's not that you're a more powerful mistborn when you've tapped [investiture]
No, good question.
So can you affect [a "zombie" Elantrian] with Emotional Allomancy?
Yes.
Mistborn travels to Roshar, what does he or she use to get Invested?
*pause* So. *pause* I think I've talked about this before on the 17th Shard, but I'm not 100% sure and so I don't want to anything right now, not knowing what I've said. But you can look it up. You can ask Peter. Hey Peter, have I talked about someone using-- Have I ever in an interview before talked about using metals... A Mistborn travels to Roshar and uses the metals there?
I think that you have said that they could do it.
I said it. Okay, so the thing about the metals you have to understand is the metals are a key, the metals are not magical themselves, except for specific ones. If I've already said that I can tell you, go to Roshar and you could use the metals that are there to power your Allomancy because the difference is in your soul and you're actually drawing directly from Preservation. Remember that on the Spiritual Realm, this is the big tidbit--they're listening. On the Spiritual Realm time, distance, and space are irrelevant. It's a place where time and space are compounded in one. So anything that exists on the Spiritual Realm, space doesn't matter for it.
What would happen if you Allomantically burned an Awakened piece of metal?
RAFO.
If Hoid swallowed duraluminum would anything happen?
If Hoid swallowed duralumin would anything happen... Um… yes!
Is that the end of your answer?
Yes, that’s the end of my answer.
Since burning Feruchemically charged metal seems to require a choice between getting the Allomantic or Feruchemical property (e.g., Miles only sees gold ghosts when he wants to, not as a side effect of compounded healing), is there any special advantage to compounding pewter and tin, where the Allomantic and Feruchemical use is the same? Is their compounding even stronger than normal compounding because you can tap both power sources simultaneously, or maybe because Preservation is particularly attuned to providing those powers through those metals?
Remember that compounding is a "hack" of the magic. You're looking to fool the magics, and use one to power the other. The value in it is that you can use Allomantic power to fuel Feruchemy. It's like hooking a power cord up to a device that, up to that point, you'd powered by using a hand crank.
What benefit does an aluminum savant get? Yes, I know this would normally never happen because aluminum burns itself up. Suppose a mad scientist with a willing Mistborn test subject shoved a feeding tube down the Mistborn's throat to pump in a continuous stream of aluminum, replenishing it steadily so there's always a new unburned supply. Add another tube to pump out excess water if necessary. What would he discover? Alternatively, what would Sazed with his Shard-granted knowledge know?
Ha, that IS a little silly of a method. However, on the extreme end of aluminum, I have in the notes the possibility of cleansing the spirit of unwanted effects of other Investitures. You'd get really good at this, and maybe even be able to cleanse the body of other impurities.
What were the Allomantic metals based on?
The Allomantic metals were based on two main concepts, magic that feels one step science one step superstition so I was reading things like alchemy and I wanted something that was one half chemistry, one half alchemy. The idea of eating the metals and metabolizing them was really interesting to me because it's kind of almost scientific but not really. That mixed with me wanting to have a thieving crew have different powers that would help different members of a crew and I built the powers to match people like Ham and Breeze.
Do allomantic pushes and pulls apply forces only to an allomancer’s center of gravity?
Yes, they do.
Oh, and I don't know why Kelsier didn't think of the coin in the mouth trick. Probably since I didn't think of it until this book–so, if the one who created the magic system can miss that little trick, then I figure Kelsier is allowed to.