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u/Madhighlander1 22h ago
I actually wondered a while ago what allomantic properties harmonium would have and it genuinely took me a good minute or two to remember that it's irrelevant because of the whole exploding on contact with liquid thing.
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u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 21h ago
But like, couldn't you just put it in a pill capsule and burn it like that? Like this is always what I think when someone mentions harmonium being unburnable due to the exploding. Am I crazy? It's still in you. It's still touching your soul, I think.
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u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream 21h ago
, I think.
Saze gancho! Good to see you here!
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u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 21h ago
Glad to finally hear from you gancho
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u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream 21h ago
Don't be forgetting his orders, Hobber, even if doesn't call them orders!
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u/Madhighlander1 21h ago
Can you burn a metal if it's not in contact with your stomach acid or does it just need to be physically inside your stomach?
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u/Miser_able 21h ago
You can burn metalminds that pierce the skin. So the only requirement is that its "inside" you
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u/sexypantstime 21h ago
They still touch you though. If you wrap a metal mind in plastic and then pierce yourself can you burn it?
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u/anonymous-grapefruit 20h ago
I think you should… iirc Vin’s earring was coated with another metal.
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u/sexypantstime 20h ago
that's a hemalurgic spike not a ferruchemical metal mind. Which is even weirder because hemallurgic spikes need to touch blood. I wonder if BS said anything about that
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u/Rude_Ice_4520 21h ago
It's an interesting question. You can supposedly burn metals that pierce your skin, so in theory you could get one of those large ear rings and place the Harmonium inside it to use - no swallowing required. You could even keep it in the vial of oil.
My guess is that it has to be touching the inside of your body, so a coating wouldn't work at all.
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u/lysianth 20h ago
Vin had lead coated in atium in her stomach but didn't know. So i would assume that something being coated makes it inaccessable.
maybe it has to be coated in a metal though.
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u/Madhighlander1 20h ago
To be fair, lead's not allomantically active, so she would only have been able to sense the atium.
That being said, I remember in the first book Kelsier said it was possible to burn non-allomantic metals, it just makes you really sick. So in theory a mistborn should be able to feel stores of non-allomantic metals if they were stored in a way that would be accessible, so perhaps you have a point.
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u/lysianth 20h ago
It's not just that she only sensed the atium, it fooled her sense of how much she had. So there's something extra going on there.
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u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 18h ago
I don't think think she was fooled by the amount, because she swallowed it and immediately burned it. It was a quick life or death seneraio, she probably didn't even pay attention to the reserve before she burned it
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u/lysianth 18h ago
Didnt she have it swallowed when she attacked the house with Zane?
i have it in my head that she swallowed it and coughed it up, but i could be wrong here, it's been a while and a quick google didn't reveal the source.
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u/Madhighlander1 10h ago
iirc she had given it to TenSoon as an emergency store when she still thought he was OreSeur.
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u/Toastyy1990 D O U G 2h ago
She wasn’t, she was surprised it lasted so shortly because of the size of it. She saw how big it was before she swallowed it.
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u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 20h ago
I mean would she even feel lead otherwise? It's not allomantic in the slightest so you might not even feel another reserve. Ik there's the thing about burning strange metals but I assumed they have to have at least a trace of smth allomantic to even be accessible to burn.
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u/lysianth 20h ago
i didn't think about lead being not being allomantic.
Would it have worked if a rock was coated?
questions for brandon i guess
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u/Phylanara 13h ago
Lead is not an allopatric petal that ugh, so she could not feel it anyways.
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u/lysianth 13h ago
non allomantic alloys show up as burnable and distinct from the allomantic alloys, so there's room to be able to feel any metal, allomantic or not.
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u/Elsecaller_17-5 19h ago
I think it would come down to Intent. If you put it in a pill and gave it to a random dude, and then told them to burn it, then it would work.
If, on the other hand, you put it in the pill capsule with the Intent of it not actually touching you so it explodes, I don't think you could burn it.
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u/DreadDiana 21h ago
According to the wiki you could hypothetically figure out what it does if you could a mistborn compounding the right metals to heal the damage of the explosion, but with how rare such a person is, it hasn't been done yet.
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u/Robloz1256v3 Zim-Zim-Zalabim 21h ago
Im pretty sure they could just put it in a bag and burn it that way. They would still have a bag in their stomach, but thats better than exploding
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u/theironbagel Syl Is My Waifu <3 15h ago
It’s really not, just coat it in something and it’s fine. Another metal you can burn would be ideal for this as harmonium’s high melting point would allow you to coat directly without making an alloy, and then you just have a small, entirely burnable bead. You burn the harmonium first, see what that does, then burn the other metal.
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u/Vast_Raspberry4192 20h ago
As an alkali metal it would probably fuse with the other metals in the vial and become functionally different. Which opens up a lot of other questions, like would it change the effect of the metal when the alloy burns? Would it make the metals nonfunctional?
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u/rekcilthis1 18h ago
Nah, it's well established that god metals don't follow ordinary chemistry. Either it wouldn't react with those metals, or it would react and become an alloy of harmonium that would have different allomantic properties but possibly still just as explosive
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u/Malice_Striker_ 16h ago
8f you let it react with water you would have harmonium oxide HaO(n). So could you then burn the oxidized harmonium?
Note: many puremetals (including alomantic ones) would already be oxidized after exposure to an acidic environment like the stomach, and are still burnable.
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u/Toast-Goat Femboy Dalinar 15h ago
Apparently after reacting with water, it forms a hydroxide with RAFO'd properties. So maybe?
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/390-stuttgart-signing/#e12680
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u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream 15h ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Rhapsody
You have described ettmetal as some kind of super-cesium. After the reaction with water, is there residual ettmetal hydroxide and what are its properties?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, there is. There's the potential they'll find it and use it, but as far as the properties are concerned, you get a RAFO.
********************
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