The Most Fascinating Magic System In Mistborn

Allomancy is one of the three magic systems present on Scadrial. It has been described as brutal, raw and powerful by one of the Cosmere’s most knowledgable scholars. In this video, we’ll explore Allomancy’s mechanics, discuss how Allomantic abilities are unlocked, learn about each of the Allomantic metals, and discover the origin of Allomancy.
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Artist Attribution:
Aan Turnip
Isaac Stewart
Santi Bosch - Kelsier and Vin Cutouts
Armando Funes Vidal
LittleGreyDragon
NovyIsPainting
Juanes Burbano - Shirtless Male Human Cutout
Michele Giorgi
Anna Kay
Icason
Ben McSweeney - Terris and Noble cutouts
Reddit user u/GagaTurmanishvili
razielim
Manuel Castanon
runmien
lamaery
Travis Clark
Gunship Revolution
Emanuele Desiati
Marko Radulovic
Anna Podedworna
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Stock Images and stock footage from Mixkit, pixabay, and pngwing
Sources:
coppermind.net/wiki/
wob.coppermind.net/
Mistborn Eras 1 and 2 books
Music Used
Relaxing Green Nature by David Fesliyan
Elven Forest by David Renda
Time Stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:27 - Mechanics
3:13 - Gaining Allomantic Abilities
5:10 - Types of Allomancers
6:13 - Basic Allomantic Metals
14:01 - God Metals
17:19 - Origins of Allomancy

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

My favorite Allomantic metal is Pewter! What's yours? Get Patron exclusive perks: www.patreon.com/ExploringtheCosmere Get $5 invested when you sign up for Acorns: acorns.com/share/?shareable_code=SWAT4YW&advocate.partner_share_id=7688676594755954

[@herreiro1865]

Tin

[@thatnerdygaywerewolf9559]

Either Iron or Cadmium. Iron and Steel are the two quintessential metals for the narrative, so it is hard not to pick one of them. I went with Iron, because while Steel is generally more versatile and allows for easier flight, there's just something weirdly compelling to me about having the "pull" version of a pair. Plus having a base metal (which are all inherently "pull") means I don't have to worry about alloy ratios. Meanwhile, Cadmium is an alternate pick for me since I like time powers. I picked it over its twin for a similar reason to Iron, but also because I'd get more personal use out of it (removing some "dead time" where I'm just waiting around), won't have to worry about how overuse affects my relative age compared to the people around me, and excitement about finding niche applications for it.

[@skilfularcher]

I forget if it’s cadmium or bendalloy, but the one that allows me to experience more time than the world around me would be so nice, pewter would be good too tho!

[@macmay3042]

@@thatnerdygaywerewolf9559 I actually worried if bendalloy would age some prematurely, but I did the math and it turns out it ends up being pretty negligible. With access to way more bendalloy that might be different.

[@macmay3042]

Bronze, by far. I love the potential for what it might be possible to learn by burning it and seeking others.

[@linuxsbc]

Your explanation of atium has actually been retconned. The "atium" used in era 1 was actually an alloy of electrum and atium, and pure atium lets you see the Spiritual Realm (like what happened to Elend in HoA). It's speculated (but not proven, IIRC) that it kind of redirects the effect to others (as well as bringing your mind a bit closer to the Spiritual Realm), as shown by "atium" being electrum but referring to others (and with mind expansion) and malatium being gold but referring to others. Atium, like all godmetals, can be burned by anyone, and the "atium Mistings" in Era 1 were actually electrum Mistings.

[@dotarian6754]

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[@dotarian6754]

😊🎉

[@dotarian6754]

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[@dotarian6754]

😮😊

[@dotarian6754]

😮😊😅

[@StNemo]

Allomancy is my favourite in the Cosmere too! Though, the Rosharen's are OP.

[@dinocollins720]

Another fantastic video! Thank you!

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@nalfo0956]

Great video man!

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

Thanks! More to come!

[@malcolmhodnett8874]

Nice breakdown

[@herreiro1865]

nice

[@frankhewitt1986]

I believe it was stated outright that Harmony believes Mistborns to be far too powerful, so by Era 2 he just doesn’t allow them to arise. As a substitute, he does allow for the creation of twinborn however.

[@HMK-nh4ft]

Does that mean that Harmony is also the reason that full Feruchemists are no longer born? Or is that just a natural side effect of what the Steel Inquisitors did to the Keepers?

[@arkana9684]

Nope, that two things are because genetics.

[@patrickwycoff9382]

actually, there is a way to get it other than hemalurgy, one can also use an unkeyed metalmind for a short amount of time. awesome video by the way its really good and concise

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

That's interesting! I think I need to do a reread of era 2 lol and I need to read more about unkeyed metalminds, I don't know much about them.

[@ao2129]

I want to understand something. Do they eat the metals and their body dissolve them? Does the metal they swallow or eat, powdered or like chunks of metals?

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

The metals burn away as they use their powers. A lot of the time, allomancers will use a file to get shavings off a piece of metal, then they drink those shavings down with an alcohol solution. Powdered metal would work too. They could even swallow big chunks, but they might choke on them 😅

[@curtiswfranks]

I wonder how many alloys of god metals are possible. There are sixteen normal allomantic metals and sixteen god metals. Even just pairing them up between categories gives us another sixteen alloys. But there can also be god-god alloys or maybe each god metal can be alloyed with a normal metal. That potentially results very, very many options. Even just pairing god metals for alloys results in 16*15/2 = 120 options; if they can be combined by, say, thirds for a different effect, then we are talking about factorials. If each pure god metal can alloy with every normal metal by pairing, then that is 256 options. Combining these yields even more possibilities. And that is ignoring the introduction of non-allomantic metals for alloying purposes (if the result has some distinct effect) or altering the proportions of the metals in the alloys (again, if this has some different effect - there are hints against this being possible but no firm in-text confirmation). If Sanderson wants, he could achieve an effectively infinite magic system which nonetheless can be grounded in well-defined physical principles. This is much like chemistry. (I am excluding Harmonium because combination of Shards complicates the counts even further)

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

There are definitely a huge number of possibilities! That's why the metallic arts are probably my favorite Cosmere magic systems; they're just so unique and, like you said, much like a science.

[@macmay3042]

I believe we know that the Lord Ruler did not burn a bead of lerasium, he just gave his body powers directly at the time of his Ascension. Not that this super matters.

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

That's a good point! I didn't see that WoB before making this. Thanks for pointing that out.

[@macmay3042]

@@ExploringTheCosmere yeah, just a nitpick. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, the outcome is all the same. Great video!

[@pinkliongaming8769]

2:56 Actually that one isn't true, it's an in-world myth created from incomplete knowledge. You can see on the next WoB "they kind of a have a change in their physiology that this doesn't hurt them" so they can be allergic but they won't suffer from the standard downsides.

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

Good catch! That WoB is also from 2022, I wonder if Brandon changed his mind about that in the 16 years between TFE being published and that WoB?

[@SogMosee]

The magic seems too forced- too balanced. Like, for every power, there is a precise counter for that power. As a result, many of the powers are not memorable, and some of them do very little (because they are simply counters to some other power). They just dont feel unique enough and lack identity.

[@ExploringTheCosmere]

Brandon prefers making hard magic systems over soft magic systems. It does limit the power of the magic, but it also is so well defined that you can combine various magics in cool ways. He actually has three "laws" that he follows when writing magic in his books, you can read about them here if you're interested: faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/what-are-sandersons-laws-of-magic/

[@frankhewitt1986]

The system was created by an intelligent being, Leras. It doesn’t just arrive naturally from an unbiased natural means. It would then make sense to see balance in it all.