Trace Metals and Feruchemy

[Trusk'our he/him]

Vin was able to burn trace metals in the water she drank and from utensils she ate with for Allomancy.

My wondering was, could a Feruchemist do something similar? Could a Feruchemist who was captured and had their Metalminds taken from them use a pinch of trace metal in their body to store an attribute and then Tap it in order to escape (i.e. a Brute saving just enough strength to bust the bars/door of their prison)?

Also, it had eluded me for a while how Miles survived at the end of AoL, as it seemed that his Metalminds were all taken. While it's possible that this was just from a better hidden Metalmind or Autonomy's intervention, could it also have been from traces of gold in his system?

[alder24]

31 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Vin was able to burn trace metals in the water she drank and from utensils she ate with for Allomancy.

My wondering was, could a Feruchemist do something similar? Could a Feruchemist who was captured and had their Metalminds taken from them use a pinch of trace metal in their body to store an attribute and then Tap it in order to escape (i.e. a Brute saving just enough strength to bust the bars/door of their prison)?

Also, it had eluded me for a while how Miles survived at the end of AoL, as it seemed that his Metalminds were all taken. While it's possible that this was just from a better hidden Metalmind or Autonomy's intervention, could it also have been from traces of gold in his system?

Yyyy possibly, but that isn't much. It would have to be metals that aren't bound in molecules or proteins, it has to be something that they've eaten or drunk and there isn't much of it for storing, you won't get a lot of attribute from that, especially gold. It's impossible for Miles to survive even a single gunshot wound just by using traces of gold in his body - that requires several days of storing health. And Miles' execution was carried out probably several days to weeks after his capture, long enough to wash out any traces of gold from his body if he used to drink from golden chalices - he didn't. Moreover gold is chemically inert, it doesn't react with any other substances, so gold in his metalminds wouldn't be broken down and introduced into his bloodstream (by I'm not good at chemistry, don't trust me on that one).

I think at best you might be able to do something like Sazed at the end of TFE - store muscle mass to be so thin to escape shackles, maybe tap it to kick through a door, but I don't think he would be able to bend metal bars with just attribute stored in traces metals. That's simply too little metal for that. 

[Quantus he/him]

Assuming it's inter enough to remain the correct Alloy, I think it would be harder to target with Intent than a single object that you can actually perceive and touch, etc, akin to [Stormlight].  

Spoiler

targeting the Air or a partial object for Soulcasting rather than a discrete cognitive entity.  

 

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

Also, it had eluded me for a while how Miles survived at the end of AoL,

Please note this WoB:

Spoiler

Questioner

There are Allomantic savants, are there Feruchemical savants?

Brandon Sanderson

Much harder to do. My feeling on Feruchemical savants was because it was your own power in the first place, you can't steep in it so much in the way. But, if you can get someone else's power or if you are fueling your Feruchemy another way, you would become one. So, the Lord Ruler is a good example.

Questioner

Was Miles a...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Miles would be the same sort of thing.

Questioner

Is that why he didn't die as quickly in the execution?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

So yeah. Normally no but if you can Compound you become... basically that is how I am explaining part of the Compounding abilities. 

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

So, it would seem that lingering investiture in his Spiritweb from Compounding enough to become a Feruchemical Savant is why his execution went as it did. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

So, it would seem that lingering investiture in his Spiritweb from Compounding enough to become a Feruchemical Savant is why his execution went as it did. 

Huh. Does this mean that Savants- at least Compounding Savants- are able to carry around some extra Investiture in the Spiritweb itself for later use? That seems pretty interesting, particularly if one could find a way to expand that mechanic further.

[Treamayne]

2 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Huh. Does this mean that Savants- at least Compounding Savants- are able to carry around some extra Investiture in the Spiritweb itself for later use? That seems pretty interesting, particularly if one could find a way to expand that mechanic further.

My guess is that it would depend on the Manifestation of Investiture.

In Spook we saw that the Savantism Soul Deformation meant that without Tin burning he was nearly numb and senses far lower than normal. In Miles, he also lost the ability to feel pain (and fear to some extent) which made it easier to be injured or push things too far (not much of an issue for double-gold). SA Spoilers

Spoiler

In Oathbringer we see that Kaza not only has to deal with the physical changes from her Savantism, but has to fight the Investiture to not accidentally Soulcast herself as well (and uses that on purpose at the end of the Interlude)

So, I would guess it is less "a Savant thing" and more of a "Miles thing."

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Huh. Does this mean that Savants- at least Compounding Savants- are able to carry around some extra Investiture in the Spiritweb itself for later use? That seems pretty interesting, particularly if one could find a way to expand that mechanic further.

No, I disagree. That's not what Savantism does. You don't carry extra static/kinetic investiture in your soul or anything like that. Your soul is changed and molded by the power. A gold compounder might be able to naturally heal better, or not - just like Spook was numbed without Tin, a gold compounder savant might have decreased healing because their soul and body are so molded by the power that they can't function without it. The core idea of Savanthood is that it is bad for you, there are serious consequences of being a Savant and it's not all good and nice. 

Miles can't heal multiple bullet wounds without a hidden metalmind. Savanthood would make him heal more efficiently, but it won't heal him on his own. Wayne can heal 3-4 GSW with a nearly-full goldmind, which has to be filled for 2 weeks (per AoL ch 5/6), Miles can simply heal much more with the same and that's his advantage as a Savant and that's why he was able to survive so long during his execution. 

[Duxredux he/him]

I'd say that the most likely scenario with Miles' execution is that he hid a Goldmind somewhere that the police couldn't reasonably search without risk of killing him, like in his skull or chest cavity. The trick would be placing the metalmind so that it would remain in his body even while he was healing. They probably were to try to make the execution minimally disturbing for the onlookers, but even when you have a Gold Compounder they didn't need to remove his metalminds, they could have just tied him up and shot him until he was dead. 

As for trace metals, Feruchemy is slightly different from Allomancy I think. Allomancy can be activated unconsciously when the body is under stress, but I'm not sure if you can unconsciously and unintentionally start storing a Feruchemical attribute. With Medallions and unkeyed metalminds the person has to know that there is an accessible attribute before they can use it. It may also be that Feruchemists have to be intentional as to which piece of metal they store an attribute into, Sazed for example had separate Tinminds for his different senses. The fact that Sazed can create an index for his Copperminds implies that you can intentionally store and retrieve specific Investiture from a metalmind. I'm not sure how you would visualize storing into trace metals in the body. 

Slight tangent, the more I think about it, the weirder it seems that Vin's "Luck" that she got through trace metals was brass. If anything, you would expect the periodic table metals like iron, tin, copper, and zinc to be more easily accessed in trace amounts compared to alloys with precise metal percentages like brass. For that matter, those periodic table metals are found naturally in foods, alloys of 91% tin and 9% lead less so. Despite TLR's suppression of some of the Allomantic metals, that shouldn't change that cadmium and chromium also found in various foods and Allomancers instinctively burn metals with Seekers listening for those pulses. Simplest answer to reconcile this oddity is that TLR removed those metals from the modified crops of the Final Empire.

[alder24]

27 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

As for trace metals, Feruchemy is slightly different from Allomancy I think. Allomancy can be activated unconsciously when the body is under stress, but I'm not sure if you can unconsciously and unintentionally start storing a Feruchemical attribute. With Medallions and unkeyed metalminds the person has to know that there is an accessible attribute before they can use it. It may also be that Feruchemists have to be intentional as to which piece of metal they store an attribute into, Sazed for example had separate Tinminds for his different senses. The fact that Sazed can create an index for his Copperminds implies that you can intentionally store and retrieve specific Investiture from a metalmind. I'm not sure how you would visualize storing into trace metals in the body. 

That wouldn't work with unintentional storing, but it may be possible to tap metalminds just like Vin was burning metals subconsciously. Of course that would require to have metalminds with an attribute stored in it and that wouldn't work for someone who's fresh in Feruchemy unless they have access to unkeyed metalminds. Basically your body has an intent of its own - survive - and under a lot of stress it will be enough to reach and heal via goldmind for example, in the same way Vin was burning pewter. That doesn't really work in this particular situation, but in general you can tap in life threatening situations. Slight SA spoiler WoB:

Spoiler

Aradanftw

Kaladin and Vin both have used magic subconsciously. Kaladin while training with the bridge plank and drawing in Stormlight, and Vin burning pewter while being beaten. Does that mean that Intent is not always required, or is a simple Intent like "I will be strong" enough to activate the magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to go with the simple Intent answer that you're giving there. So, at the basic level... the more specific and the more powerful you want to be, the more you need to understand your Intent, is where this is. The body has an Intent. Kaladin uses the magic while he's unconscious, right? The Intent is survive, basically the body knowing it needs to survive. And this is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems, just kind of in the base, physical sense, your body knowing how to use what it's been given, is going to happen. You're going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, you can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Yes, it's the second one in that you can make the argument that your body just wants to survive, and things like this, but Intent really starts to play into it when you're doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like your ability to focus, right? You can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that you want to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in the magic systems is often Intent-related.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

36 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Slight tangent, the more I think about it, the weirder it seems that Vin's "Luck" that she got through trace metals was brass. If anything, you would expect the periodic table metals like iron, tin, copper, and zinc to be more easily accessed in trace amounts compared to alloys with precise metal percentages like brass. For that matter, those periodic table metals are found naturally in foods, alloys of 91% tin and 9% lead less so. Despite TLR's suppression of some of the Allomantic metals, that shouldn't change that cadmium and chromium also found in various foods and Allomancers instinctively burn metals with Seekers listening for those pulses. Simplest answer to reconcile this oddity is that TLR removed those metals from the modified crops of the Final Empire.

True, but it doesn't have to be a pure Allomantic metal, it can be slightly off and still provide power, less than in its pure form. I suspect that Vin didn't burn pure alloys. Regarding cadmium and chromium (and aluminum too), the amount of those would be even smaller, 2 of them are useless on their own and would be unnoticeable, cadmium wasn't the best choice for body's survival thus I wouldn't expect those Mistings to burn it subconsciously. Sure they are in the ground, but it was mainly due to dishes and cutlery that Vin ingested trace metals, not from food alone. TFE ch 7:

Quote

“Now, there’s something you need to know about Allomantic metals,” Kelsier said as they strolled forward in the mists. “The more pure they are, the more effective they are. The vials we prepare contain absolutely pure metals, prepared and sold specifically for Allomancers.
“Alloys—like pewter—are even trickier, since the metal percentages have to be mixed just right, if you want maximum power. In fact, if you aren’t careful when you buy your metals, you could end up with the wrong alloy entirely.”
Vin frowned. “You mean, someone might scam me?”
“Not intentionally,” Kelsier said. “The thing is, most of the terms that people use—words like ‘brass,’ ‘pewter,’ and ‘bronze’—are really quite vague, when you get down to it. Pewter, for instance, is generally accepted as an alloy of tin mixed with lead, with perhaps some copper or silver, depending on the use and the circumstances. Allomancer’s pewter, however, is an alloy of ninety-one percent tin, nine percent lead. If you want maximum strength from your metal, you have to use those percentages.”
“And . . . if you burn the wrong percentage?” Vin asked.
“If the mixture is only off by a bit, you’ll still get some power out of it,” Kelsier said. “However, if it’s too far off, burning it will make you sick.”
Vin nodded slowly. “I . . . think I’ve burned this metal before. Once in a while, in very small amounts.”
“Trace metals,” Kelsier said. “From drinking water contaminated by metals, or by eating with pewter utensils.”
Vin nodded. Some of the mugs in Camon’s lair had been pewter