15th/16th metal (dont read if you havent finished MB2)

[Feynmanfan]

After spending presumably 20 of the last 30 hours living in the final empire while reading MB2, i just want to say THANK YOU BS, for there hasnt been any author whose books could hook me up like yours in years. As many other of your newer fans i come from the WoT community and though i know noone can replace RJ, i am now ( after reading Elantris and the MB1/2) absolutly convinced that youll do the best possible job on AMoL

Now to my questions/deductions. (if this has been posted before or is answered in the annotations i apologise but would be glad for a link)

Seeing the 3/4 circle at the Metal Quick-Chart at TWoA it seems obvious to me that there must be in total 16 Allomantic metals, the last 4 being "metallic" or "allomantic" ( like the other 12 being physical/mental/temporal)
The 13th/14th metal are obviously Aluminium and Duralumin and they effect the way the other Metals are burned and since the metals always come in groups of 4 the last two should be somehow related.
This relationship would be given, if we assume that the yet unnamed metal, that awakens Elends allomantic powers at the end of TWoA, would be the 15th. The 16th then should be the opposite of the 15th, probably destroying the ability to burn allomantic metals.

So far for my deductions, but there still remain many questions(assuming my deductions are correct).

1. Are Aluminium/Duralumin or the 15th/16th the internal/external "metallic" metals ( I know sounds kind of stupid,  BS probably has a proper name for this category but thats the first name coming to my mind)? My feeling here would that Aluminium/Duralumin should be the  external ones since they affect the metals, while the 15th/16 effect the Allomancer, but thats just a guess.

2. Is the effect of the 15th/16th permanent(burn one time-> be Mistborn) or temporal (constant burning needed)?
Given the fact that you can run out of the other metals it would seem to me that a temporal effect would be more logical at first sight. Burning the 15th then would give you the possibility to burn the others (though then  it must be very very slow burning seeing that Elend has been an Allomancer for 2 weeks at the Epilog of TWoA and I just cant see him loosing his Allomantic Powers right at the start of  MB3).
On the other hand that would make the 16th pretty much useless. Why burn the 16th just so you cant burn the others, if you can turn it on/off. If the the effect is permanently the 16th would make more sense, seeing that you can force someone to burn it and give up his/her Mistborn powers ( like Vin was forced to burn Aluminium by the Steel Inquisitors)

3.  Can they be used by everyone?
While it seems that way since the 15th made Elende Mistborn, there is still the possibity the he was sort of a 15th-Misting. Would a possible 16th effect Mistings or just Mistborn.

And finally 4. Am i right about the 16th.
While the effect of the 15th metal is pretty much clear (after all we see the effect at the end of TWoA), my guess on the effect of the 16th is very speculative. It would be the opposite to nr.15 but then it might as well force others to stop using Allomancy or make the Mistborn immune to allomantic powers used by other or some other i effect i havent thought of.

While i guess that most if not all those question will be answered in MB3 i just love to speculate, so  i look forward to answers/discussion.


ps. you might have noticed that english is not my native language so just forgive me for weird language/faults.

[Phaz]

I find the metals one of the more interesting parts of the series. 

I am really curious what the 15th and 16th metals are.  Not what they do, but just what kind of metal they are.  Mainly, if they are a 'real' metal that we know of, or something Brandon created (i.e. Atium).   On that note, I'm also curious if Brandon has any 'real' metals that those are based off of.  He seems to of really done his homework when it comes to the alloys.  I learned that duralumin was an actual alloy of Aluminum.

[mists59]

First Post so bear with me on this. lol

as i understad allomancy metals come in pairs. one metal and its alloy the metal pulls and the alloy pushes these then can be paired with another metal and its alloy to form a group of four. one pair is intenal and the other external. ie the physical group contains iron and tin and their alloys steel and pewter. if we take this onto the final group which presumably contains two metals and their two alloy's. we now know from mb2 that the one pair is alluminum and Duralumin the other pair is presumably the metal bead found at the well and its alloy which i am going to call Metal A and Alloy Z. If we assume that alluminum and Duralumin are the internal pair then 'Metal A' and 'Alloy Z' are the external pair.  But wait i hear you cry Metal A grants allomancy surely that is an internal attribute. but i dont think so. i dont want to speculate too much but i think the reason they are called mistborn factores heavilly into how this last metal works. have to wait for mb3 to find out but i digress...

I think the 15th metal grants the gift of allomancy on whoever swallows it.The alloy of this metal will be an external power. So maybe it acts like a copper cloud but with the effect that no one within the cloud can perform allomancy when you burn the alloy. I dont think it would remove the ability to burn metals because thats what alluminium does and as i said earlier i believe that this metal will have an external  effect.

will have to wait till mb3 comes out. Cant wait October is going to take forever too get here. 

[rtm1981]

.....I dont think it would remove the ability to burn metals because thats what alluminium does and as i said earlier i believe that this metal will have an external  effect......

Aluminum doesn't remove the ability to burn metals, it only consumes the metal reservoir the person currently is in possession of I believe the other poster meant that burning this metal would bereave the person of the ability to burn metals forever.

[Chaos]

Feynmanfan, I was thinking the same thing the minute I saw that 3/4's circle.

Of course, aluminum and duralumin are the internal metals of this quartet of metals (if you don't like that term, I'm open for suggestions ), so if anything is set in stone about the 15th and 16th, is that they are external in nature. Any other speculation is very meaningless...

[Shost]

i think something else that supports the theory that the 16th metal takes away a mistborns powers is that the lord ruler presumably made allomancers. he would have built in a weakness (the 16th metal?) just like he did with the inquisitors, the kandra, and the koloss. it would makes sense that if the lord ruler wanted to make mistborn, then he would want the ability to unmake them.

[Comatose]

Again, I can't help but coming back to that lake, with the metallic sheen, it seems to planned to be jsut thrown in for kicks, and I don't think it should be ignored.  I thought it was where the metal that made allomancer came from, but I guess it could also be the alloy.

I am also waiting to see which metal will fill in the circle, but I sometimes think the metal that made allomancers might be separate from the circle.  I also think that it might be, because allomancy is a lot more like a science than a magic system (in it's rules at least) which leads me also to believe that it will be part of the circle.  Confusing stuff, eh??

[darxbane]

EUOL did say this was the most complicated magic system he has come up with.  It seems that we will have to wait and see.

[Chaos]

Again, I can't help but coming back to that lake, with the metallic sheen, it seems to planned to be jsut thrown in for kicks, and I don't think it should be ignored.  I thought it was where the metal that made allomancer came from, but I guess it could also be the alloy.

Hmmm. Perhaps the 15th metal is the one Elend ate, which gives powers of Mistborn, and the 16th is the metal at the Well of Ascension?

I like that theory, but it doesn't seem quite right. For each Allomantic "quartet" (Physical, Mental, Temporal), there are two that are External, two Internal. I expect that the Aluminum quartet would have the same properties. The way I'm reading it, aluminum looks like the Internal pair.

Those 15th and 16th metals would need to be external, right?

Oh, and here's something Brandon posted on the fan art thread. It certainly verifies that there are two more metals.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/graphics/Mistborn%20Wallpaper%20One%201028.jpg

A couple of things about that wallpaper:

1. It's really cool. I need to set it for my desktop.
2. Remember, the Internal metals are the inner circle.
3. Notice the dots on each of the pairs. On one, the dot is inside the rest of the symbol, and the other, it's on the outside. I believe this signifies which metal is a Pushing or Pulling metal.

[Comatose]

Turning someone into an allomancer could be considered external.  Pewter is considered external because it is changeing a person physically, well the ability to burn metals in one's stomach is just as external isn't it?

[darxbane]

I am going to look at the Ars Arcanum in WoE tonight to look into this  a little more.  I did want to point one thing out now, however.  Have any of you taken a closer look at the metal symbols themselves?  They all have spikes going through them!  Every symbol has at least one spike or nail shaped piece to them.  It may not actually tell us anything, but it feeds into my unhealthy obsession with Hemalurgy.

[Shost]

lol i did notice that darxbane. and i'm going to look at mb1 to and see if i can't take notes to figure out which metals push and which pull and anything else i can find. see if i can figure out a pattern. maybe figure out which symbols on that poster are aluminum and duralumin. everyone seems to think they're the internal pair but i'm beginning to think otherwise. they both affect the metals rather than the individual. the metals would strike me as external (you do have to ingest them after all) and so the 15/16th would be internal which would fit with a metal making somebody a mistborn since that would then affect the individual and how they burn metals. which would be internal. anyways i'll see if i can come up with something when i'm done looking through the book and taking notes.

[darxbane]

Your theory is sound.  Just because the metals happen to be inside you, doesnt make the aluminums internal metals.  All the other internal metals affect you directly.  Aluminum has no effect on you.  If you have no other metals, you can burn aluminum and duralumin all day long and nothing will happen.  I think the MB2 Ars Arcanum has the metals listed with the symbols.  I need to remember to check that tonight.

[Shost]

ok so i looked through the books and the ars arcanum for all the copies i had and here's what i found:

1. all the base metals pull and all of the alloys push. the pulling metals have the little dot outside of the crescents and pushing metals have them inside the crescents.

2.  also i found a pattern when moving around the circle. start with steel and move anti-clockwise. alloy, base, base, alloy. those are for the basic eight (upper tier) external metals. the same pattern holds for the internal metals and continues to the lower half of the circle. so malatium and electrum both push and are alloys and gold and atium are base metals and push. so if the last quartet of unnamed metals follow the same pattern then the two next to gold and atium are base metals and the ones below steel and pewter are the pushing alloys. so if my theory holds true the external metal below steel is duralumin and the external next to atium is aluminum. the internal metal above aluminum is whatever elend ate (assuming its the base metal which i think it is since it makes sense that a metal making you a mistborn would pull on something internally) and its alloy is next to it.

3. i couldn't find a pattern to the spikes piercing the crescents but that doesn't mean there isn't one. 

Then just for the fun of it i looked up the alloys to find out what they are composed of. steel is iron and carbon and duralumin is aluminium and copper. pewter is tin/copper. brass is zinc/copper. bronze is copper/tin. electrum is gold/silver. no idea what atium is alloyed with to make malatium.

[Shost]

oh i guess i should have mentioned which symbols are which metals. 

ok so start with external metals. the top half are the eight basic allomantic metals while the lower half are the high metals like gold and atium. so from left to right of external metals are steel, iron (physical metals), zinc, and brass (mental metals). then left to right of internal metals are pewter, tin (physical) then copper and bronze (mental). then continuing clockwise into the lower half. external temporal metals are malatium then atium. internal temporal metals are Electrum and Gold. the last quartet we don't know for sure whats what. but as i mentioned in the last post i think aluminum and duralumin are the external metals with aluminum being adjacent to atium and duralumin being adjacent to steel.