How could Marasi tap the Bands of Mourning?

[SkyBolt]

How could Marasi tap the Bands of Mourning. She didn't have the power to tap investiture

[Yata]

44 minutes ago, SLNC said:

IIRC it was filled with un-keyed Investiture, so the identity of the user is irrelevant. Everybody could use it.

If you are a feruchemist and fill a metalmind, you key that metalmind to your identity, so only you can tap it. Now, if you are an aluminum ferring and a ferring for another feruchemal metal, let's say gold, you can divest yourself completely from identity and fill a goldmind with health, that any gold ferring could use. Creating an unkeyed metalmind.

Using that technique and being a nicrosil ferring, you can create an unkeyed nicrosilmind, which stores your Investiture. The tapper gains your allomantic/feruchemal powers, while tapping the nicrosilmind. It having no identity means, that anyone can tap it. You don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap nicrosil. I guess, that every person in Scadrial has enough Investiture to tap nicrosil. If you are a full feruchemist/allomancer, like the Lord Ruler, you can create an unkeyed nicrosilmind filled with Investiture, which allows you to tap/burn all metals. It being unkeyed means everyone can tap it.

This is a bit unclear.

Unkeyed a Metalmind alone, allow only to by-pass the Identity. So every being with the right Power could tap an unkeyed Metalmind but no One else (see the unkeyed goldmind they found in the book).

The southerns know a way to create and "unsealed" Metalmind. Everyone could tap an Unsealed Metalmind.

The Medallions (and the BoM) are Simply unsealed Nicrosilmind with the appropriate Powers+ a set of other metals for usefulness (the band for example comes with 15 unkeyed metalminds)

[Spoolofwhool]

All Brandon has told us is that the medallions, and presumably the bands by extension, somehow trick the spiritual of the holder to make it seem like they have a power they don't actually have. Whether this is some inherent property of nicrosil feruchemy or some additional process added is unknown. Brandon's last statement leads me to believe that it's some additional process, though others think otherwise.

Quote

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.

 

[Pyromie]

27 minutes ago, SkyBolt said:

How could Marasi tap the Bands of Mourning. She didn't have the power to tap investiture

"  Nicrosil can be filled with Investiture, giving the tapper the ability to burn metals and tap or fill other metalminds. "

http://coppermind.net/wiki/Bands_of_Mourning

The metals inside of the Bands actually granted the ability! 

Pretty nifty, I'd say!

[Guest]

IIRC it was filled with un-keyed Investiture, so the identity of the user is irrelevant. Everybody could use it.

If you are a feruchemist and fill a metalmind, you key that metalmind to your identity, so only you can tap it. Now, if you are an aluminum ferring and a ferring for another feruchemal metal, let's say gold, you can divest yourself completely from identity and fill a goldmind with health, that any gold ferring could use. Creating an unkeyed metalmind.

Using that technique and being a nicrosil ferring, you can create an unkeyed nicrosilmind, which stores your Investiture. The tapper gains your allomantic/feruchemal powers, while tapping the nicrosilmind. It having no identity means, that anyone can tap it. You don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap nicrosil. I guess, that every person in Scadrial has enough Investiture to tap nicrosil. If you are a full feruchemist/allomancer, like the Lord Ruler, you can create an unkeyed nicrosilmind filled with Investiture, which allows you to tap/burn all metals. It being unkeyed means everyone can tap it.

Edited March 22, 2017 by SLNC
Further explaination

[SkyBolt]

59 minutes ago, SLNC said:

You don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap nicrosil.

thanks, that was i was confused about

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, SkyBolt said:

thanks, that was i was confused about

Please refer to @Yatas answer. He provides further information I forgot.

[Pattern]

On 22.3.2017 at 9:12 AM, SkyBolt said:

You don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap nicrosil.

That is a hypothesis others and I posted a while ago, but it's still only a hypothesis. Might be that bits of Scadrian SDNA being of Preservation are enough to make everybody able to tap a nirosilmind. Might be there is some other mechanism involved. To produce the medallions, an "excizor" is needed, which reeks like Hemalurgy for me. Also there is Ettmetal (harmonium, sazedium, whatever...) the southerners used to create allomantic machines.

The usual way to transfer/grant allomantic or feruchemical abilities would be the classical Hemalurgic spike. The medallions don't pierce anything, so they are something else. The easiest solution to this would be the hypothesis, that you don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap a nicrosilmind. As far as I know, this theory is not confirmed, though.

New WoB: Also Non-Scadrians can use the Medallions, so the part of Preservation in Scadrial's population does not play a part in how the Medallions actually work. Creation flow chart was promised after TLM, but it will also be explained in the book.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Pattern
New WoB

[Turambar]

1 hour ago, Pattern said:

The easiest solution to this would be the hypothesis, that you don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap a nicrosilmind. As far as I know, this theory is not confirmed, though.

But won't this theory mean that there is no point in being a nicrosil ferring. That is, if anyone in Scadrial can tap a nicrosilmind (I'm assuming that means they can both fill and empty it), then effectively everyone in Scadrial is a nicrosil ferring. The nicrosil ability of the ferring would only matter if he/she is a Twinborn in which case, people accessing their nicrosilminds can also gain the ability to burn the metal that he/she is a Twinborn of.

[Yata]

4 minutes ago, Turambar said:

But won't this theory mean that there is no point in being a nicrosil ferring. That is, if anyone in Scadrial can tap a nicrosilmind (I'm assuming that means they can both fill and empty it), then effectively everyone in Scadrial is a nicrosil ferring. The nicrosil ability of the ferring would only matter if he/she is a Twinborn in which case, people accessing their nicrosilminds can also gain the ability to burn the metal that he/she is a Twinborn of.

Not at all, Unsealing work into "trick" the Metalmind to believe you have the right Power (whatever they do It is a mistery).

But also if the Nicrosolmind were auto-unsealed. This don't mean everyone could store into a piece of Nicrosil

[Pattern]

16 minutes ago, Turambar said:

But won't this theory mean that there is no point in being a nicrosil ferring.

That is the argument that is bugging me with that theory. The only advantage for the ferring would be the ability to store Investiture. So in relation to the general population he would be a "half"-ferring.

Ok, to be clear - if you want to create unkeyed metalminds you need either a full feruchemist or mistings+excisors, whatever they are. So the nicrosil ferring would still be essential in creating the medallions in the first place, assuming that full feruchemists are really rare in era 2.

An additional proposition I made in another thread was that the Investiture stored in an unkeyed nicrosilmind is not tapped when the medallion is used, but that it is attached to the spiritweb of the Scadrian, granting him the stored ability, while he has skin contact. Reason for this proposition is that the medallions don't seem to run out of Investiture.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Pattern

[Pagerunner]

Duralumin and aluminum mistings are basically useless. Their abilities are only relevant when you have multiple powers. I don't think there's an underlying problem with F.Nicrosil or even F.Aluminum only being useful in the creation of unkeyed metalminds.

As to the original question, the simplest answer is this: The Bands operate on the same phenomenon as the Southerns' medallions, but they grant every power, not just two. We don't yet fully understand the mechanics of how the medallions work. But whatever the answer is, it's the same for both.