If you bottle the base of a white sauce, do you have a roux-in-preservation? Yeah,
I'm a dad now. Hey Internet, I'm Steve! Welcome to RAFO.
Hello and welcome to Scadrial! One of the few planets in the Cosmere where
life was straight-up created, rather than just guided by Shards. Interestingly
though, it's also one of the planets with the least environmental investiture. Now
by that I mean, compared to some of the other planets we know about - Sel, Roshar,
Taldain - that have plant and animal life dependent on investiture, or where
the landscapes themselves are inherently invested, the only interaction with
investiture on Scadrial is that which is channelled by humanity. Don't get me
wrong, Scadrial was originally created and has been fundamentally altered by
Shardic intervention, but the day-to-day goings-on of the planet are fairly
earth-like. Apart from the, you know, ash falling from the sky. Well, then again... To
make up for the fairly familiar scenery - think France, but with volcanoes - there
are three hugely significant magic systems that are collectively referred
to as the Metallic Arts: Allomancy Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy. Allomancy is
the headline system of Mistborn, and is the most straightforward of the three:
individuals with the genetic ability can ingest certain metals, then "burn" these
metals, using them as a key to access specific investiture effects. People who
can utilize a single metal are called Mistings, and those who can use every
metal are Mistborn. Men who can't use any metals are called Mister. At the beginning
of the original trilogy most people knew about ten allomantic metals. These can
generally be categorized in groups of four based on what they influence, with
one metal and its alloy focused externally and another pair focused
internally; the pure metal pulling and the alloy pushing. Each metal can then be
described along that criteria: internal versus external, what it effects, and push
or pull. The original ten has four physical metals, four mental metals, and
two high metals. As you'd expect, the physical metals can
influence the physical world. Iron and its alloy Steel allow the user to
respectively pull or push on external sources of metal. Tin pulls on your
senses making them more, well, sensitive, and Pewter pushes your physical strength
and endurance beyond normal limits. The mental metals are a little more esoteric.
Zinc allows a user to pull or Riot the emotions of others making certain
feelings more powerful. Brass does the opposite - pushing on or Soothing their
emotions, dampening them. When burning a metal, Allomancers give off invisible
pulses that can be felt by someone burning Bronze: the mental internal
pushing metal. Called Seekers, they can feel those pulses pushing against them.
Those pulses can be hidden by an Allomancer burning Copper, pulling them
back in, as well as blocking touches from someone with zinc or brass. The high
metals both seem to influence a user's view of time, and both were really
expensive. Gold grants an Allomancer a vision of different selves they could
have become if they had made different choices. Atium - a mythical metal mined
from geodes in the Final Empire - is much more useful. A Mistborn burning atium will
be able to see into the future by a few seconds, as well as increasing their
ability to process and respond to that information. This grants them almost
supernatural combat abilities; being able to see where opponents will strike and
place their own attacks accordingly. During the Final Empire, it was believed
that high metals were only usable by Mistborn. Mistings of the other metals
however were common enough to have their own names and specializations. This to me
is where Sanderson shines. Yes, his stories are engaging, his
characters relatable, and his curse words are storming brilliant, but his magic
systems all make sense! Okay, it doesn't make sense that eating metal turns you
into Magneto, but internally everything follows its own rules. Take iron and
steel, the external physical pulling and pushing metals. With every push, there is
a pull. If a Lurcher (an iron misting) pulls on an object lighter than they are, that
object will come flying toward them. If they tug on something heavier, they'll be
the one that moves. Same thing with steel mistings. They're called Coinshots
because they can push smaller, lighter metal objects away from themselves. Once
those objects hit something with more mass however, Newton says they push back.
Scadrial may not have had apples, but they still had physics. The internal
physical metals have their own interplay as well. Burning tin enhances all of a
Tineye's senses, not just the ones they want. So it becomes much more about what you
can ignore than what you can see. A Pewterarm or Thug may have increased
strength and healing ability while they're burning, but once they run out,
the impact from exhaustion can be deadly. Because of that push-pull relationship,
the external mental metals can often either be used to accomplish similar
things. Either soothing away emotions you don't want or rioting to the forefront
those that you do. While burning, copper mistings are immune to this emotional
touch; though with a copper cloud around bronze mistings, or seekers,
won't be able to sense allomantic pulses from anyone in the area. A good reason to
hang out with a smoker. Interesting things start to happen if a misting
burns too much. The constant stream of investiture causes changes in the user
which can be quite dramatic, depending on the metal. This is called savantism. For
most users, constantly burning their metal may result in a slight increase in
strength, range, or control. For tin and pewter though, actual physiological
changes or dependency can occur. By the end of the first Mistborn trilogy - so
spoilers if you haven't finished - they discover five more metals that the Lord
Ruler had been suppressing: the 11th Metal - an alloy of atium and gold called
Malatium; the true pair of gold - Electrum; as well as the incredibly
expensive at this point Aluminum and Duralumin. Which, while researching for
this video I discovered I'd been pronouncing wrong for years: Dur-AL-yumin. It
sounds so much cooler. With gold and electrum we finally have our first pair
of temporal metals: gold internally pulling your past into view, and electrum
pushing your future back to you. Basically like
atium, but for yourself rather than others. Atium is paired with a new God Metal -
Larasium, which has the side effect of turning a Mister into a Mistborn when burned.
Aluminum and duralumin give us our first enhancement metals, both internal:
Aluminum pulls your metal reserves away, and duralumin pushes whatever metal
you're burning into overdrive. By Era 2 these have become well known enough to
have their own terminology and applications. Gold mistings are known
as Augurs; presumably related to the root word of August - venerable - rather
than "auger: something that drills holes in things." Then again you might be able
to get some Miles out of that second definition. Anyway, electrum burners are
called Oracles, which implies to me perhaps a little wider of an application
than just counteracting atium. Both aluminum and duralumin mistings are
called gnats. Being able to burn metals that are only useful when burning other
metals would be pretty annoying. You wouldn't really be an Allomancer. More
like an Annoyomancer. Huh; there's probably room for some fanfiction there.
With the progression of technology, by the beginning of Era 2, the four final
metals have also been discovered, finishing the bottom row of our table:
Nicrosil and Chromium as external enhancement metals, and Cadmium and Bendalloy
as external temporal metals. Just hearing those descriptors should
basically tell you what they do. Nicrosil and chromium follow the same pattern as
their internal analogues; nicrosil pushes another person's burning metals up to
eleven - a Nicroburst - and chromium pulls their metal reserves away - Leecher.
Cadmium and bendalloy start to get really cool, and probably are what's
going to enable faster-than-light technology. A cadmium burner or a Pulser
is able to pull on time itself, creating a bubble around them where the
progression of time is s-l-o-w-e-d d-o-w-n. This makes everyone outside the bubble appear to
move incredibly fast, and from the outside looking in, motion would be
virtually unnoticeable. This bubble can be pretty massive, as big as a large
room. Or maybe as big as a spaceship? Bendalloy mistings, called
Sliders, can push a bubble of time around them, speedingitup. These time bubbles are
typically smaller, only about five feet across, and appear to slow time down for
everything outside the bubble. These bubbles, both cadmium and bendalloy, must
either absorb or emit energy as things pass through them. This is why occupants
of time bubbles don't get irradiated due to redshift - light frequencies getting
pushed into higher energy states - as well as stopping anyone from using speed
bubbles as low-tech rail guns. If you throw, or shoot, something out of, or into,
a speed bubble, its speed is the same relative to the speed of time in its
surroundings, though its trajectory is randomly altered as it passes through.
You may think this would be because as an object moves from high to low speed,
or low to high, the forces acting on different parts of the object would
cause its motion to change. But Brandon has explicitly stated that, for example: "a
spear would go from one to the other, but would never be in both." This gets into
some pretty interesting realmatics; which, if you haven't watched my Realmatic
Theory video, now might be a good time. To sum up it all comes down to the nature
of the Cosmere: all things exist in three realms. That means everything, from the
tiniest pebble to entire planets presumably, also have at least some level
of self-awareness, which can change depending on life's collective
perception of it. So when it comes to speed bubbles, "an object is either in or
out, and it depends in part on how the object views itself." So going back to
that spear, this means that somewhere along its length is a point that the
spear considers the center of its self, and when that point passes out of the bubble,
the entire spear considers itself outside. So where is that point?
This is where we'll get more into theory. Or at least, it used to be theory until
Brandon canonized it when I asked him about it at the Starsight release. (giggle)
One view would be that the center of self
and the center of gravity reside at the same point, so the moment more of the
mass of that spear is outside the bubble than in, it would consider itself all out.
That's simple, clean, and easy to generalize. But in thinking about this I
kept going back to a point in Mistborn Era 1 that I was never really
able to reconcile. When Vin, or any allomancer, burns steel, or iron
technically, blue allomantic lines appear, pointing at nearby sources of metal.
These lines - the book specifically states - connect to her chest, and roughly the
same point on Kelsier. "Veh" and "Kels-yay" for you purists. However, the center of
gravity on a biological female is lower, meaning steel lines should point more
towards Vin's stomach or hips. Allomantic lines then CAN'T point at the
center of gravity, but instead must be connected to the individual's center of
self - their cognitive center. Makes sense, right? If I ask you to point to yourself,
where are you pointing? Right here. Heart center. (Namaste.) That's where you consider
YOU to be. This may have implications on a lot of the Metallic Arts.
Vin's whirling horseshoe tornado of death actually makes more sense to me
now. If she's pulling from her chest, rather than from her center of gravity,
the metal would have a much easier time not hitting her in the back of the skull.
The flips and things Kelsier is able to do with that bar at the end of book
one work out better too. His steel pushes and iron pulls are naturally off-center,
so in terms of leverage and angles, he would have much more control than if
pushing from his waist. Thinking about that spear... no the example spear, its
Cognitive Center is more likely closer up to the actual spear head - without that
it's just a staff - so the moment it switches from inside to outside the
speed bubble could be much sooner. This concept of Cognitive Center gets even
more interesting with hemalurgy. But we'll get to that in the next video.
Thanks all for watching! Like and Subscribe, share with your friends, maybe
point them to some of my other videos, like this one! And if you haven't yet, get
a copy of Starsight! It's awesome, so go Read And Find Out!