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Medallion Creation Without Hemalurgy?


8bitBob

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So I was rereading Bands of Mourning in an effort to get a better grasp of medallion creation when I came across this line:

“You must be very skilled,” Allik said. “More skilled than any who has lived among us. Or…” He chuckled. “Or you’d have to have all the powers,

rather than adding yours to the medallion, then passing it to another to have it added to! If that were the case, you’d be a great god indeed. As powerful as the Sovereign.”

Bolded for emphasis. From this quote, it is implied that a group of metalborn can work in teams to create medallions. It got me thinking about how this could be possible without the need of spikes. For this to work, we need to be able to create medallions which grant two abilities, which has been shown to be difficult but possible in Bands of Mourning. I have no idea what makes this difficult, but let's assume it has been worked out.

From my understanding, a medallion is simply a nicrosil metalmind filled with a desired type of metalborn Investiture that has been divorced of any Identity. This allows anyone to tap it and temporarily gain the abilities of said metalborn. The added rings of other metals are simply a convenience. With this in mind, I think it is indeed possible to create a medallion without someone who has multiple feruchemical abilities.

For this, you would need 3 metalborn: 1 Nicrosil Ferring, 1 Aluminum Ferring and 1 Metalborn of the desired ability, let's say Steel Misting. My theoretical process has 6 steps. Warning, this is about to get very wordy, but I have avoided pronouns to make it absolutely clear who's filling and tapping what when. Here goes.

1. The Nicrosil Ferring fills a nicrsosil metalmind with nicrosil ferring Investiture, which is keyed to their Identity. This metalmind should now grant anyone who can tap it the abilities of a Nicrosil Ferring.

2. The Aluminum Ferring begins filling an aluminum metalmind with nearly all of their Identity, which should allow them to tap the keyed nicrosil metalmind created in step one.

3. Now able to store their Investiture, the Aluminum Ferring fills an unkeyed nicrosil metalmind with aluminum ferring Investiture, which should grant anyone the ability to store Identity. We shall call this Medallion A.

4. The Nicrosil Ferring then taps Medallion A, which grants them the ability to store Identity. This should allow them to create unkeyed metalminds.

5. Here's the step that is difficult for unclear reasons. The Nicrosil Ferring now needs to create an unkeyed medallion filled with both aluminum and nicrosil ferring Investiture, which should grant anyone wearing it the ability to store Identity and Investiture. We shall call this Medallion B.

6. Assuming that worked, the Steel Misting then taps Medallion B and stores their Identity in an aluminum metalmind while filling a nicrosil metalmind with steel misting Investiture. This should theoretically create a third medallion that grants anyone the abilities of a Coinshot, which we shall call Medallion C.

From this point, anyone should be able to tap Medallion C until the Investiture runs out. There's an extra step from here to create medallions with any two abilities, but I think that was already difficult enough to follow.

 

Thoughts?

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Take a read down here for some other speculations on the matter.

I haven't had time to read the entire post but I'll point out now that medallions have altered nicrosilminds which allow them to be tapped by non-soulbearer ferrings. So step 2 fails already because the trueself ferrings can't tap the nicrosilmind unless it becomes unsealed by whatever process the Southerners have, so not a significant change to the process once you add that step in to all necessary points.

Edited by Spoolofwhool
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Having read over the thread, it seems we were indeed both thinking of the same basic idea. The thread seems to have been confused slightly by the aluminum misting mistake and compounding for mass production, but same basic idea.

5 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I'll point that to complete step 5, you would've already created a medallion which grants two powers according to the process you've outlined.

Yes, that is the case. Making a 2 ability medallion afterwards would simply require making a Steel Misting/Nicrosil Ferring medallion and handing it off to say an Iron Misting and have them create a Steel/Iron Misting medallion. I just left it out so as to not confuse the matter.

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Whoops, missed this edit. Will double post to avoid the same.

1 hour ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I haven't had time to read the entire post but I'll point out now that medallions have altered nicrosilminds which allow them to be tapped by non-soulbearer ferrings. So step 2 fails already because the trueself ferrings can't tap the nicrosilmind unless it becomes unsealed by whatever process the Southerners have, so not a significant change to the process once you add that step in to all necessary points.

From what I can tell, you're misunderstanding medallions. Unless this is a red herring somehow, the process of creating medallions is explicitly stated at the beginning of Bands of Mourning and require no form of "unsealing."

Quote

 

“Some have been experimenting with your idea,” VenDell said, “and early results are promising. However, having a Feruchemist who can use anyone’s metalminds is intriguing, but not particularly life-changing. Our society is strewn with individuals who have extraordinary abilities—this would simply be one more variety. No, what interests me is the opposite, Miss Colms. What if a Feruchemist were to divest himself of all Identity, then fill another metalmind with an attribute. Say, strength. What would it do?”

“Create an unkeyed metalmind?” Marasi asked. “One that another Feruchemist could access?”

“Possibly,” VenDell said. “Or is there another possibility? Most people living right now have at least some Feruchemist blood in them. Could it be that such a metalmind as I describe, one that is keyed to no single individual, might be usable by anyone?”

Understanding settled on Wax like a slowly burned metal. From the chair beside the image device, Wayne whistled slowly.

“Anyone could be a Feruchemist,” Wax said.

VenDell nodded. “Investiture—the innate ability to burn metals or tap metalminds—is also one of the things Feruchemy can store. Lord Waxillium … these are arts we are only beginning to comprehend. But the secrets they contain could change the world.

 

Unless we're being misled, this is the exact process in which medallions are created. The "unsealing" you speak of is simply an unkeyed metalmind.

edit:

Sorry, having some formatting issues. Will just italicize the second quote for now. Always a pain adjusting to new forums.

Edited by 8bitBob
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10 minutes ago, 8bitBob said:

Whoops, missed this edit. Will double post to avoid the same.

From what I can tell, you're misunderstanding medallions. Unless this is a red herring somehow, the process of creating medallions is explicitly stated at the beginning of Bands of Mourning and require no form of "unsealing."

No I'm not unfortunately. There is another process required. Removing identity is what makes it so that another feruchemist of the appropriate power can tap it. However, nicrosilminds are not innately special that someone without the appropriate feruchemical ability can them, any more than any other metalmind is. Don't forget that Wax's and VenDell'a conversation, which you quoted, is speculation. They haven't actually managed to create medallions and do not know the steps required. There's a WoB that states that there is some other process needed. I'll pull it when I get home.

To offer an example: They found an unkeyed metalmind in BoM. Only Wayne could tap it though, because only he possessed the ability to tap gold metalminds out of the group. Removing identity still doesn't grant an ability to attempt to access the power. It just makes it so that there is no prevention when you do.

Edited by Spoolofwhool
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11 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

No I'm not unfortunately. There is another process required. Removing identity is what makes it so that another feruchemist of the appropriate power can tap it. However, nicrosilminds are not innately special that someone without the appropriate feruchemical ability can them, any more than any other metalmind is. Don't forget that Wax's and VenDell'a conversation, which you quoted, is speculation. They haven't actually managed to create medallions and do not know the steps required. There's a WoB that states that there is some other process needed. I'll pull it when I get home.

Interesting. I haven't seen that one, so I look forward to that. I wonder if that means excisors are related to this process and not Hemalurgical spikes as has been theorized.

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3 minutes ago, 8bitBob said:

Interesting. I haven't seen that one, so I look forward to that. I wonder if that means excisors are related to this process and not Hemalurgical spikes as has been theorized.

There's still a strong possibility for them to be using hemalurgy because it would make the process a lot easier. Also, I added an example to my last post.

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I don't think that fully applies here. The metalmind contained an attribute (health) which only Wayne had the right Investiture to access. Not exactly the same situation, from what I understand.

edit:

Think I found the WoB you mentioned. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Quote

 

QUESTION

So nicrosil. Wax couldn’t use a blank gold metalmind because he’s not a gold ferring, why can he use a blank nicrosil metalmind?

BRANDON SANDERSON

So this will all come out eventually but the idea is there are certain ways to connect yourself to the magic, to hack the magic and make it think you have the Spiritual DNA that you don’t actually have. And this is one of the ways.

QUESTION

And the people who made this medallion have this thing that a regular nicrosil Ferring couldn’t--

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yeah, you’re picking up on it. We’ll dig deeper into it as the series progresses

 

I stand corrected. I'll put in a mention of also figuring out whatever method unlocks metalminds in the OP. 

Edited by 8bitBob
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30 minutes ago, 8bitBob said:

I don't think that fully applies here. The metalmind contained an attribute (health) which only Wayne had the right Investiture to access. Not exactly the same situation, from what I understand.

That's the right WoB. How did you think that it wasn't an applicable example? Only Wayne had the investiture to access health, and no one other than soulbearer ferrings have the right investiture to tap nicrosilminds. 

Edited by Spoolofwhool
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In your example, Wax cannot access the gold metalmind because he lacks the Investiture needed to do so. This is not a case of there being a "seal" preventing Wax from using it, since Wayne can, but a case of him simply lacking the ability to do so. This is why nicrosil metalminds are used to grant these abilities.

In the case of the nicrosil metalmind, the Investiture is readily available inside, but the a "seal" would be preventing you from tapping it in the first place. We know that non ferring can access this Investiture somehow though.

Upon rereading the WoB, it's actually really vague and could still be referring to Investiture as the reason why it doesn't work. After all, it could be argued that a "regular nicrosil ferring" does not have the ability to wipe their Identity and thus cannot make a universal medallion, nor do they have the Investiture for gold. Under this logic, the "hack" could still be referring to the process of using borrowed nicrosil metalminds as a source of Investiture.

Of course, this doesn't explain why we'll need to dig deeper into it later if we already understood the process. Even then, he could have simply misunderstood the question, or was simply not willing to explicitly detail the process of how it's manufactured. I know this could seem pedantic, but I no longer think this is irrefutable evidence of some additional unknown step in the process.

edit:

It's possible that I'm thinking of feruchemical nicrosil wrong, and that you're storing the ability to access Investiture rather than Investiture itself as the wording would imply. After all, metalminds are still considered Invested and harder to affect allomatically. This would actually make sense in the context of tricking magic to believe you have Spiritual DNA that you don't actually have.

edit2:

Looking back, VenDell does specifically refer to Investiture as such:

Quote

VenDell nodded. “Investiture—the innate ability to burn metals or tap metalminds—is also one of the things Feruchemy can store.

While slightly confusing from a realmatic point of view, it would make more sense when considering medallion mechanics.

Edited by 8bitBob
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Yeah. That's what my theory is: nicrosil stores the ability to use manifestations of investiture such as the metallic arts. This is encoded with a person as innate investiture, so it is storing investiture. 

Your argument still isn't making much sense to me. Are you saying that without the identity lock, the investiture within it would just jump out and into anyone who tries of tap it? That still makes no sense because as I said before, there's really nothing different about a nicrosilmind compared to a goldmind. All metalminds store the attribute as investiture. What you generally need to tap it though is the innate investiture to remove that investiture and change it back into the attribute it was stored for. The missing innate investiture probably can't normally be provided by a nicrosilmind because like other metalminds, the attribute, I suspect, is encoded in a different form of investiture, which constitutes the feruchemical charge.

If I were to theorize, I'd say that the unsealing process the Southerners use might decode the stored nicrosil charge so essentially, it would be on a state where it can jump straight to the holder like you suggested, probably by the medallion creating a specific connection to the holder, which might be why multiple medallions cant be used at once since the connections would interfere. 

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21 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Your argument still isn't making much sense to me. Are you saying that without the identity lock, the investiture within it would just jump out and into anyone who tries of tap it?

Basically, I'm saying maybe. I know that sounds ridiculous, but you can come up with plenty of in universe reasons why. It could be from scadrian's innate connection to Harmony, or the fact that nearly everyone has some Terris DNA (according to VenDell) that gives them a minute ability, or it seeps into the tiny fractures in people's sDNA and widens from there. Or maybe there really is some additional step to make it usable. What I'm saying is that the WoB does not explicitly state there is another step, and while you can make arguments for or against, it does kind fall into the realm of theorizing outside the scope of the original discussion, that being whether or not you can create medallions with just single ability ferrings.

Edited by 8bitBob
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1 hour ago, 8bitBob said:

What I'm saying is that the WoB does not explicitly state there is another step, and while you can make arguments for or against, it does kind fall into the realm of theorizing outside the scope of the original discussion, that being whether or not you can create medallions with just single ability ferrings.

Fair enough. I think there's a reasonable chance you can, though I doubt the southerners use single power people to do so. It depends a lot on what the additional process is. However, it seems fairly clear that whatever it is is beyond simply storing identity. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

To put my bit to this discussion: Assume we have an unkeyed nicrosilmind, filled with Investiture - the abililty to burn metals or tap metalminds as the kandra decribe it. This is obviously not the cosmere definition of Investiture, but it should describe what the feruchemical does correctly. Otherwise VenDell would deliberately give us misinformation.

What we know from old WoBs (I am really bad at finding them) is that every Scadrian carries pieces of Ruin and Preservation in them, since they created humanity on Scadrial together.

My part of theorizing:

Those pieces in the sDNA might be enough to give access to an unkeyed filled nicrosilmind which acts like an amplifier for the stored ability, so the person becomes a fering in that ability. The ability to draw and tap from an unkeyed nicrosilmind would be inherited from Preservation and Ruin. This possibility is also there for any other unkeyed metalmind, but the person could not use the power, because there is not enough of Preservation and Ruin in the sDNA (otherwise the person would already be a Misting, Mistborn, Fering or Feruchemist) . This would make nicrosil not really different from the other metals, just the fact that Investiture is stored in it instead of e.g weight. This stored Investiture (more of Preservation?)) in combination with the sDNA from Ruin and Preservation would be enough to get access to the magic.

Question is, would that nicrosilmind run out of Investiture as it is used or is it just the presence of more Investiture together with the bits in the sDNA that is enabling the ability but no Investiture is drawn from the nicrosilmind while using that ability?

If no Investiture were drawn from the nicrosilmind, it would not even be necessary for the person to draw from the nicrosilmind. The presence of sDNA from Preservation and Ruin together with the stored unkeyed Investiture would somehow merge in the spiritweb and this would be enough to make the person a misting.

Taking off the Medallion would also take away the additional Investiture from the spiritweb so the person becomes "unmagical" again.

The problem I see here is: Why is physical contact necessary, if location is of no import in the Spiritual Realm? Wearing a Medallion for a long time should yield permanent effects, which we are not shown so far.

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I've been pondering the nature of nicromind tapping since I posted this thread, and the more I think on the matter, the more I am convinced that it's one of the most subtly complex questions I've come across. Full disclosure, I am not here to answer questions or posit theories, but to show how little we actually understand on the subject.

@Spoolofwhool has the position that it doesn't make sense for the Investiture to simply "jump out" of the nicromind, and it's an understandable position based on our understanding of metalminds. Thing is, we have plenty of examples in the cosmere of different Invested objects behaving differently. Why is it that gems leak Stormlight on Roshar and eventually go dun while metalminds hold their charge forever? Why does an iron hemalurgical spike leak power over time while an ironmind does not? Why does an awakened object hold breaths without leaking and allow for retrieval, while Lifeless are so "clingy" to their Investiture that you can't retrieve the Breath? Why does Stormlight leak from a Knight Radiant but Breaths are perfectly sealed in an Awakener?

If some vessels aren't leaking Investiture, how are they having effects on the outside world? Vin can sense Sazed's metalminds without being able to access them, and highly Invested Awakeners have drastic effects on the world around them. That's not even getting into the really weird stuff. Like, why can't you tap or sense the Investiture in a metalmind until you realise that it is in fact a metalmind?

While it could be that accessing nicrominds has to do with DNA and a connection to Harmony, I think the most likely answer is that this is a part of very advanced realmatics that we are nowhere near understanding yet. I realise that this answer is no fun and unsatisfying, but there's just so much we don't know on the subject.

Edited by 8bitBob
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I agree we don't understand it yet, and the idea of nicrosil functioning differently than other metalminds seems wrong. The only evidence we have of the medallions seems to imply just that.

No one on the skimmer had to be told to tap the nicrosil. They had to be made aware of the iron and actively store weight, but where was the need to tap the ability to store? Allik switches medallions for speaking and warmth, but is the ever a hint that the medallions need to be replaced because they run out? It doesn't seem that the Nicrosil is tapped. Just touching the medallion allows the granted Feruchemy

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So the experiment crucis would be to give a medallion to an non-Scadrian and see whether it still worked or not - or ask Brandon about that. My proposition would be:

Scadrian sDNA (with parts of Ruin and Preservation) + Investiture stored in nicrosilmind => Abililty available from which Investiture is stored in nicrosilmind.

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