A forest that was not there yesterday

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.

His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.

At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.

The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.

After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"Sorcery takes time," (she elects not to clarify that this is time to become familiar with the surroundings and target rather than time to cast the spell) "but yes, I can improve plants and it should at least help. I'm not sure if this legal signing thing will contribute, though. The concept is fairly irrelevant in Fairyland - one owns a place by keeping other fairies out of it or using it a lot while not subordinate to someone else in so doing or by idiosyncratic forms of magical claim."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"About how much time? If it's long, the water could still be better. It'd just have to be redosed every however often whereas wheat is self-perpetuating.
If there's no reason it should follow mortal property law, I think I'll forgo finding something big enough to bribe every landowner in the empire. It might matter when we move to Fairyland, though, so I'd like to test it on a smaller scale."

[imeanforever]

"It depends on a lot of factors. Minutes to hours, generally; for particularly dramatic results I may need weeks of prep time, although I can multitask."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Definitely worth doing the wheat, then. You don't need to worry about getting large results fast; there isn't a shortage on or anything."

[imeanforever]

"Noted. Speaking of which, I would prefer to stay continuously on this side of my gate for at least the next few days, which is long enough for me to get hungry. I would really rather not have to order you to feed me. Is that going to present a problem?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Of course not, just tell me whenever you want food." As far as he knows, she just appeared in his world right before she noticeably-didn't-appear in his window.

"Speaking of food constraints, can sorcery make a substance given a description of it? There's a metal which, if it existed in the right alloy, could effectively remove my need to eat. Unfortunately it can't do the same for anyone who isn't me without seriously harming someone else."

[imeanforever]

"I can transmute things, if they're simple enough. I can't make it from nothing, and the source material has to be similar."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I can supply similar. I don't have any bismuth on hand—it's not by itself useful in any way—but it does exist and makes up half of the target alloy."

[imeanforever]

"Is there some reason you can't just alloy these things yourself? And how does all this metal magic work anyway?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"How it all works is a long explanation, or at least a long list of short ones; how much do you want?
I can't do it myself because some of the other elements don't naturally exist. Well, the elements all do, but there's no known way to get some of the the pure metals from the compounds they're found in. And until Fairyland, ability to not eat was never a priority anyway."

[imeanforever]

"Will anything that I might want you to be attending to come up during the time it would take to give me the long explanation?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"If that's the constraint, we should be good with time.

Okay, so there are three types, Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy.
Allomancy is the well-known one. An Allomancer swallows a metal, and can later 'burn' it for a predefined effect. This is why I had vials of metal on hand in Fairyland. Most Allomancers can only use one type of metal. They're called Mistings. Some—Mistborn—can burn any Allomantic metal.

There are sixteen relevant metals plus a pair made entirely of the concentrated power of Preservation or Ruin.
These metals are: Steel, which when burned shows bright blue lines leading to any nearby metal from your center of mass. And it allows you to telekinetically push along those lines. Iron is the same except it allows you to pull. These metals are also the primary sense of the Inquisitors.
Pewter makes the Allomancer stronger, tougher, faster, and basically physically better in every way. How much better depends on how quickly it's being burned, and anyone who overuses it will hurt in the morning. Tin strengthens the senses in a similar way.
Zinc and brass are the emotion-affecting ones. One strengthens emotions and one weakens them, but since people have at least some of most emotions nearly all the time the effects are similar. Burning bronze detects nearby Allomancy, and copper protects against the previous three.

Those eight are the only commonly burned metals; the others are either rare, nonexistent, or near useless.
The ones made of Preservation and Ruin are called lerasium and atium respectively. I doubt you could make those with sorcery. Lerasium will turn anyone into a Mistborn and atium will show the Allomancer what their opponent's next action is going to be. It makes a Mistborn all but unstoppable if the opponent is not similarly equipped.

Metals, obviously, do not intrinsically contain any such abilities. All they do is provide a focus for people who are capable of drawing on the power of Preservation in prescribed ways. This is why I couldn't use Allomancy in Fairyland: there is no power of Preservation there, so burning any metal other than atium or lerasium would connect to nothing at all.

Should I explain further, or go on with the next two?"

[imeanforever]

"Mm - go on."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Feruchemy is what I was using on Fairyland. It's not drawing on Preservation or Ruin; the power is from the practitioner themselves. A Feruchemist can store their own attributes in a piece of metal for later use: Weight, physical speed, mental speed, senses, strength, warmth, memory, wakefulness, and health are the common ones. For each of these they need a corresponding metal. Weight can only be stored in iron, health in gold, and so on. That's why I'm wearing so much metal.

Since it's storing your own abilities, the amount you get out is equal to the amount you put in. Spending some time at half your normal speed will allow you to be half again as fast for the same time, or twice as quick for half, and so on. To cure a fatal wound, a Feruchemist would have to spend an awful lot of time with a cold.
This is also where the ability I offered you comes in. By Feruchemically storing all your sense of hearing, you could become temporarily deaf at will. You'd want a tinmind for each sense, but the relevant one is hearing.

Feruchemy works on the principle that what you put in is what you get out. There's an exception. If the Feruchemist is also an Allomancer capable of burning the metal in question, they can burn a charged metalmind. Instead of the normal Allomantic effect, this will give them several times the Feruchemical attribute stored in the metalmind. This extra can then be stored in another metalmind, and possibly burned again for even more of it.
Since I'm both a Feruchemist and a Mistborn, this gives me an effectively infinite supply of any attribute that Feruchemy can store, limited only by whether I have enough metal to store all of it. If I had bendalloy that could include food, and if I had chromium it could include luck. That one I'd be very interested to test. Atium can store youth. This, combined with the fact that I can burn a charged metalmind, is how I've lived so long.

Hemalurgy is the practice of stealing an attribute from someone else. This can be physical strength, physical senses, or any Allomantic or Feruchemical power. Having an attribute stolen is almost always fatal. The transfer is powered by Ruin, and so unlike Allomancy or Feruchemy it's a net loss. It would take several spikes' worth of the same attribute to bring someone with none of an ability up to the same level as a typical Misting or Feruchemist.

Theoretically Hemalurgy can also steal anything that's intrinsically a part of someone's...I suppose the closest word is soul. I don't know how to use it for anything I haven't listed, but it means it might be possible to steal immortality. Which we've been over.

And yes I know what your opinion of Hemalurgy is likely to be."

[imeanforever]

"Why is it almost always fatal? What's going on when it's not?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"It's effectively ripping off a piece of their self. They wouldn't be the same person afterwards, except physically. The damage is variable but always large. To a first approximation, you can think of it as lifelong brain damage of unpredictable type. There's a reason this is only used on condemned criminals."

[imeanforever]

"Can feruchemists share stored things?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No, you can only tap your own metalminds. If someone's Feruchemy was obtained through Hemalurgy then they can use anything of that attribute that was stored by the previous Feruchemist, but that's the only exception."

[imeanforever]

"Do you have any live victims of hemalurgy lying around?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No. It'd usually be fatal even if it weren't being intentionally used as a way of executing criminals."

[imeanforever]

"Yes, but if you had any who were still alive, since it's not invariably fatal, I could see if I could fix them or something."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I would be very surprised if that's even theoretically possible, but it's a moot point. There haven't been any in centuries.

I hope you won't refuse the spikes that can give you the deafness ability because of their origin?"

[imeanforever]

"I haven't decided yet. Relatedly - one thing that occurs to me is that there might be fairies who don't want to be immortal, who've gotten tired of being alive. I haven't met any who've expressed such an opinion to me but there could be some."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"That is possibly the strangest preference I've ever heard of," says the man under a truth compulsion. "But once we're established as a group that exists in Fairyland we can spread the word that it might be an option.

If it helps, there'd obviously be no need to even ask if it involved killing anybody. There are some Inquisitors who don't need Feruchemical tin as much as you do; I can just take the spikes that they're getting the ability from and stick them in you instead."

[imeanforever]

"Is that as uncomfortable as it sounds?"