Look! It’s Vin’s Terrisman steward!
That joke doesn’t work in America.
Hi Internet! I’m Steve, and this is RAFO.
Continuing on with our analysis of the metallic arts, we come to Feruchemy - pronounced like
Biochem, not fer-U-chemy like my brain wants it to be.
Thanks to everyone who repeatedly called me out on that.
Over and over again.
My last video talked about Allomancy, the flashiest of the magicks on Scadrial, the
planet of Mistborn, and Feruchemy is pretty similar in one main respect: the use of metal
as the focus or key for investiture.
However, there are some MASSIVE differences in terms of application and abilities of its
users.
In order to get this, you have to understand exactly WHERE the investiture comes from.
This is going to get into Realmatics and Shards, so if you don’t yet know what those are,
check out these other videos first.
Every living thing in the Cosmere has a tiny bit of investiture called the Spark of Life
(presumably that’s the little flame you can see from the Cognitive Realm).
Depending on where you’re from, many humans also have a little bit of extra called Innate
Investiture, which seems to have to be specifically granted or Connected to a Shard.
Native Nalthians have Breath from Endowment, Elantrians have a Connection to the Dor, Scadrians
have a little piece of Preservation in them, even Rosharans apparently have something extra.
Brandon has said that this Innate Investiture causes the person to be a conduit to/from
the Spiritual Realm.
Theoretically, the stream of investiture coming through that Connection is what allows access
to the magic systems of the “patron shard”: Allomancers direct a flow of Preservation’s
investiture using metals as a key, the Dor obeys an Elantrian’s instructions given
through Aons, and Kaladin can...make poor life choices and cry.
Feruchemists are a little bit different though, because Feruchemy is End-Neutral - they don’t
gain access to Preservation’s investiture when using their power; they’re able to
redirect the stream of their own Innate Investiture.
That’s an important distinction: the energy comes from the user, not a Shard.
Because the investiture is their own, Feruchemists have much more control over how that investiture
is used.
The user can Store certain attributes or abilites within a metalmind - a piece of the appropriate
metal used as a spiritual battery, typically some type of jewelry or wearable ornamentation
- and then can Tap those metalminds to bring forth that stored power.
Not literally tap, and not like the Magic: The Gathering Tap.
Conceptually, it’s like tapping a maple tree or a wine barrel, allowing access to
what's stored within.
Which I guess is the same concept as in Magic.
But you don’t have to knock on or twist a metalmind to get it to work.
The same metals used in Allomancy, even the same percentages in the alloys, are used in
Feruchemy.
Their application, or attribute they're keyed to though, is not necessarily the same.
So take everything you know about what metals do, and coinshoot it out the window.
Rather than being based on effect, the table for Feruchemy is Realmatically based, being
broken into the quadrants of Physical, Mental, Spiritual, and Hybrid (which is actually just
another Physical).
Although it’s set up similarly to the Allomany table, (same metals, same groupings, same
pairs of pure and alloy), the distinction of Internal/External, Pulling/Pushing kind
of breaks down.
For example, Zinc, which in allomancy is an external pulling metal, stores mental speed.
Definitely an internal thing.
In fact, one of the reasons the Feruchemy table took so long to produce is that Isaac
apparently kept “thinking like an allomancer.”
He also accidentally switched the symbols for Chromium and Nicrosil, so technically
it’s supposed to be this way.
(though he’s said that will apparently be resolved in future printings?)
The individual metals do some really interesting stuff, especially when you consider the physics
behind them.
While a full Feruchemist would be able to do all of these things, by Era 2 there have
arisen “Ferrings”, basically the Feruchemist version of allomantic Mistings.
So here are all the different Feruchemical powers!
Each with at least one mini-theory to keep things exciting!
Skimmer Ferrings, who can store and tap Iron, are able to store physical weight.
It’s not like they fluctuate between super fat and emaciated - their appearance doesn’t
change - but their mass changes, making them more or less affected by gravity.
This may actually be related to the Higgs field: the energy field that all particles
in the universe interact with and by which they gain mass.
Tapping or storing iron either increases or decreases the user’s interaction with that
field, literally giving them more or less mass.
SCIENCE!
While tapping iron doesn’t affect a person physically, users do gain additional strength
proportional to their increased mass: so they can actually still move while weighing an
extra 400 pounds.
A Steelrunner, who uses … Steel, stores physical speed, making them feel like they’re
walking through molasses while storing, and then moving blindingly fast when tapping.
It’s possible that this is some type of storage of kinetic energy?
A Steelrunner, like a Skimmer, is granted additional strength in proportion to their
speed, so they’re able to withstand the Gs they put themselves through, but they still
are affected by wind resistance and friction.
Which means, if they run too fast, it’ll get pretty toasty.
Potentially, Steel feruchemy might also increase the speed of the users brain as well, so they’re
not slamming into walls before they register them as existing.
Windwhisperers have access to Tin, and are able to store specific senses, each sense
in a different metalmind.
In relation to the traditional 5 (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), a Windwhisperer
can selectively dampen or heighten certain senses, useful if you’re changing a nasty
diaper (storing smell - basically plugging your nose) or trying to read a menu that’s
too far away (tapping sight - giving yourself binoculars).
It’s possible to store other less well-known senses too - pain, proprioception, even feeling
allomantic pulses with bronze.
In fact, if such a thing as a Feruchemist platypus existed, it could technically store
its electric field sense in a tinmind.
Makes me wonder if it’s possible to spike animals…
Feruchemists with access to pewter, appropriately named Brutes, store physical strength.
This one gets kinda weird, because it’s not like allomantic pewter - where your muscles
just get extra strong.
No no, when a feruchemist stores strength in a pewtermind, their muscle mass actually
decreases, literally making them scrawny.
When they tap it, the additional strength comes not from investiture, but from more
and bigger muscles.
Pewter therefore doesn’t store strength, it literally stores muscle mass!
Silly Steve Rogers was just storing strength for the first 20 years of his life, then when
he finally learned how to tap it…
We all wanted to tap it.
What would happen if you took a muscle biopsy from a Brute?
Zinc Feruchemists are called Sparklers.
SPARKERS.
They are able to store their mental speed, the first metal in the Mental quadrant of our table.
A Sparker storing: …
"You are literally too stupid to insult."
"Thank you."
A Sparker tapping: ...
One interesting thing to note is that Zinc doesn’t boost your brain up to higher speeds,
it increases the speed of the natural processes your brain goes through when you think.
Your brain uses 20% of the calories you intake, so tapping Zinc is like making your brain
sprint: it’s going faster, but it uses more calories.
So when you tap Zinc, you also get the munchies.
Next in the Mental quadrant is Brass, which stores warmth.
Yeah, not actually a mental ability.
Brandon belatedly realized that Sazed tapped a Brassmind for warmth in book one instead
of an electrummind - they couldn’t know about electrum yet - so the effects of those
metals got canonically switched.
Which is fine because Feruchemy obeys its own rules, and totally isn’t just an oops!
Brass users are called Firesouls, because Brass doesn’t just store the FEELING of warmth.
It stores the actual heat.
A feruchemist would ACTUALLY become cooler when filling a brassmind, to the point of
being resistant to fire or other heat damage.
No sunburns?
A Steelrunner could likely use brass to neutralize the heat from air resistance at high speeds.
In fact, with continued development of mechanical investiture access, would brass feruchemical
heat shields be possible?
The ability we’re probably most familiar with is Copper.
Sazed, in the Mistborn Era 1, stored info about all his favorite religions in his handy-dandy copperminds.
This preserved them as if they were freshly memorized, only degrading whenever he put
them back into his brain.
There must be some way to organize all the stored memories, and Archivists will usually
memorize some sort of index in order to be able to sort through everything.
Going along with the technology advancement thread, will mechanical copperminds eventually
be used as feruchemical hard-drives?
Also, according to Locke’s Memory Theory: one’s personal identity only extends so
far as their own consciousness - their memories.
B.J. Neblett said it this way: “We are the sum total of our experiences.
Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at
any given point in our lives.”
So would it be possible for an Archivist to fundamentally mess with their Spiritual Identity
by dumping large portions of their memories into a coppermind?
That’s the type of question that can keep you up at night.
Speaking of: Bronze!
Feruchemical bronze stores wakefulness, and it’s the only metalmind that you can actively
fill while sleeping.
Bronze users, or Sentries, can presumably sleep for days at a time, and then tap that
store to go without sleep.
Contrary to just having manic depression, a tapped bronzemind actually does provide
all of the benefits of a good nights sleep; it’s not just a caffeine patch.
Interestingly, this was the very first feruchemical power Brandon envisioned as an insomniac in
highschool.
Mini-theory for this one - ummm… would a bronze user have to eat more - similar to
a Sparker - because of the increased caloric demand of being awake rather than asleep?
Could they potentially develop insomnia due to underutilization and therefore atrophy
of sleep hormone producing structures?
Could the heightened alertness from tapping while already awake become addictive?
Could the various processes that happen during sleep be separated out and stored in other
bronzeminds - for example protein synthesis and growth hormone release - then used individually,
like after a workout?
Wow, I thought I wouldn’t have many theories about this one, but then they just kept rolling out.
Now comes the Hybrid quadrant, otherwise known as
Physical 2: Electrum Boogaloo!
Gaspers are able to use Cadmium to store breath.
Not Breath, but breath.
When storing, Gaspers have to hyperventilate in order to get enough oxygen.
Tapping allows them to go without breathing, OR, and this is important, hyperoxygenate
their blood.
From that, we know that Cadmium doesn’t just store the need to breathe, it stores
the actual oxygen.
Oxygen is a flammable gas.
So does that mean, if you had a way to mechanically tap an invested cadmiummind, could you create
something like a blowtorch?
Or could they be used to supply oxygen in life support systems?
Bendalloy, also known on Earth as Wood’s Metal for you collectors, stores caloric energy,
or nutrition.
A Subsumer can eat as much as they want and never get full, then tap to go for long periods without food.
Basically they can have external reserve stomachs for food and liquid.
The question is then raised, when do they poop?
Does a bendalloymind store ATP, glucose, or the actual food?
In one case, a Subsumer would have a lot in their system regardless of whether they stored
anything or not.
In the other, the poops would come regularly with tapping.
But then if they tap a huge amount at once…
explosive diarrhea?
Bloodmakers store health!
A Feruchemist with a full goldmind can tap to heal themselves from injuries that would
normally be fatal, or to just heal up quickly from minor things.
However, in order to store in a goldmind, Bloodmakers have to spend time being weak and sickly.
And if they get sick while filling a goldmind, they’d have to tap it to heal, but then that would...
We’ve seen two bloodmakers on screen- Wayne and Miles, but Miles cheats in a way that
we’ll explain later because it gets complicated and this video is too long already.
Feruchemical gold healing works in the same way most Cosmere healing does: aligning the
Physical with the Spiritual, and is even able to heal spiritual damage - like from a Hemalurgic
spike, shardblade, or Threnody shade.
We’ve had WoBs saying that Regrowth could potentially enable a trans person to physically
transition, but could gold be used the same way?
Electrum, which got switched with Brass, stores determination.
And also starts us into the “We just don’t know a lot” territory.
Electrum Feruchemists are called Pinnacles, and become depressed or unmotivated when storing,
then can tap to enter a manic state -
instant “in-the-zone.”
We know Soothing parlors exist in Mistborn Era 2.
Could unsealed metalminds like Electrum be used in the future the way we use antidepressants?
Last is the Spiritual Quandrant, which not even Feruchemical Scholars know much about so far.
Chromium stores Fortune.
Tap it to get lucky.
Kinda.
Hoid, while not necessarily with chromium, apparently uses the same underlying mechanic
as a Spinner to end up wherever he needs to be.
Other uses of Fortune, perhaps with Feruchemy, potentially allow a user to see the future
via the Spiritual Realm.
A Nicrosil Soulbearer is able to store Investiture.
Like we talked about in the beginning, Feruchemists don’t use investiture from any Shard (apart
from the little bit that all native Scadrians have), but are instead able to manipulate
and redirect their own Innate Investiture.
With most other feruchemical powers, that Innate Investiture gets filtered through whatever
the metal is attuned to: speed, memory, carbs.
When filling a nicrosilmind, the entire stream gets poured in, meaning the user no longer
has access to their Innate Investiture, which is their ability to BE a feruchemist.
Nicrosil doesn’t just store investiture, because technically ALL metalminds do that.
Nicrosil stores a person’s ability to USE Investiture.
This, in combination with a device known only as an Excisor, is how unsealed metalminds are made.
Nicrosilminds have also been confirmed to be able to store the Divine Breath of a Nalthian Returned
- not sure if that would just kill them or what -
and the ability to use Knight Radiant Surges.
Meaning with a nicrosilmind you could, for example, use the surges of Gravitation and
Adhesion without having to bond a spren.
Sound familiar?
Then we come to Aluminum, which everywhere else in the Cosmere is basically the Anti-investiture
metal: wipes Mistborn metal reserves; blocks spanreeds; interferes with all sorts of Cosmere
healing; and can’t be Forged, Awakened, or affected by surges.
With Feruchemy though, Aluminum stores Identity: essentially your Spiritual DNA, your own personal
fingerprint that makes everything that’s yours actually yours.
A Feruchemist who can use Aluminum is called a Trueself, because they can store their Identity,
and then, I guess, get it back later.
We don’t know what effect this actually has on a user, except that it would enable
a full Feruchemist to create “unkeyed” metalminds - a metalmind that any feruchemist
with the appropriate power could tap - basically removing the spiritual encryption that typically
makes metalminds YOURS.
We don’t know if this Spiritual Identity is at all related to physical genetics though;
Brandon has RAFOd whether identical twins could share metalminds or not.
Duralumin stores Connection, its users are Connectors.
We’re not talking about sticking LEGOs together here, but Cosmere Connection.
Essentially, Spiritwebs.
I went over Spiritwebs in my Roshar Investiture video, but basically whenever you form a relationship
with someone, or even something or some place, a spiritual thread is laid that Connects you
and that… noun.
As that relationship deepens, that thread becomes thicker or stronger.
A Connector is able to store that Spiritual Connection in a Duraluminmind, decreasing
the strength of those threads and consequently diminishing the strength of their relationships,
making people trust them less or even just be less aware of them.
Tapping Connection would enable the user to form trust relationships more easily, or even
establish artificial Connection between people.
If you’ve read Oathbringer, you’ve seen Connection manipulation at work: that’s
how Tight-Butt is able to speak, and even make word-plays, in his non-native tongue.
In fact, playing with Connection is how Hoid usually blends in so well on different shardworlds.
I’ll probably go deeper into these Fundamental Spiritual elements later on (Connection, Fortune,
Identity), but I’m curious as to exactly how selective a Duralumin Feruchemist can be.
Can they store or tap Connection to specific individuals?
Categories of people, like family or coworkers?
Would those categories be transferable in an unsealed metalmind?
Or if you store Connection to your mother, would another person be able to tap that to
increase the strength of the relationship with theirs?
That finishes out the Feruchemical Table, but there’s actually one more metal we know
of that has Feruchemical application: Atium.
The mythical metal of the Final Empire and God metal of Ruin, is able to store Youth.
Fill it to be however much older, then tap it to be that much younger.
Useful if you want to visit a bar if you’re underage, or finally be allowed back in the
McDonalds Playplace.
Since you get out what you put in, there’s no net change in your age, so used alone you
don’t really get any long term benefit - really like all Feruchemical powers.
But if a person happens to be an allomancer as well, things can start to get really interesting.
Which we’ll talk about later.
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