Potential Bands of Mourning Spoilers: Investiture

[Coinshot1122]

In Bands of Mourning, we see people inadvertently tapping Investiture metalminds (when they first board the airship) and get access to fill iron metalminds.  They only realized they could fill the iron metalminds once they thought about it. 

If they had instead thought they could burn some metal, woukd they have been able to?  In short, how does storing Feruchemy Investiture give one power to allomancy?

[Pagerunner]

A Nicrosil metalmind can store either Allomantic or Feruchemical powers. Those particular medallions had Iron Feruchemy stored in them, but it is possible to make them to hold Allomancy.

I'll do an analogy:

• A Feruchemist can store any one of his senses in a tin metalmind.
• A Feruchemist can store any one of his memories in a copper metalmind.
• A Feruchemist can store any one of his magical abilities in a nicrosil metalmind.

The thing that is being stored is not the power that allows storage. A Feruchemist won't store their nicrosil Feruchemy in a nicrosil metalmind; that'd be a total waste of time. They'll store one of their other abilities, like their iron Feruchemy or their steel Allomancy. Or whatever other abilities they might somehow have.

Realizing that they were metalminds allowed the team to tap the nicrosil metalmind in the first place. If you don't know what a cell phone is, it's just a fancy brick; in the same way, the medallions were useless until they realized what they really were. But what's inside the metalmind isn't determined by perception or intention, it's determined by whatever particular kind of Investiture was stored in the nicrosil metalmind in the first place.

[Coinshot1122]

That was an excellent answer. Thank you.

Can a Nicrosil metalminds hold more than one magical attribute?  The team on the airship had access to tap brass (warmth) as well as fill an ironmind. On a related note, assuming the Investiture that is being stored is free of identity, could multiple Nicrosil ferrings store different magical abilities into the same metalminds (assuming they were spiked  with an additional power or something similar)?

Can people sense how much investiture is left in a Nicrosil metalmind?

 

[Pagerunner]

Allik does speak of medallions that hold 2 or even 3 powers, which are as far as they can go. And the Bands, obviously, have 32 powers. That is the current limit of our understanding; they might be made through different Metalborn collaborating, or they might need to spike all relevant powers into a single person. Even whether or not the Nicrosil charge is a consumable is under debate. Some of us think using the medallion slowly depletes its charge, while others of is think it's more like a copper metalminds, and you use a power and put it back in.

[Weltall]

On the question of sensing how much of an attribute is left in a medallion-metalmind, the answer would seem to be 'yes'. We know that people using the Bands of Mourning can tell what the feruchemical reserve status of those are. If there's any specific comment about the medallions from any of the characters who used them, I don't recall it offhand but.I don't think there's any reason to assume they'd be different from the Bands in that respect.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Weltall

[Coinshot1122]

I remember Wax sensing reserve quantities in the Bands...my question was the "Investiture" reserve.  Could the user of medallions (or anything else) stop using them because their access to Feruchemy Investiture is gone? Page Runner mentioned that the Nicrosil charge may not ever deplete...this is still an outstanding question.

As for your comment about devices...i think it has merit. In Bands, Allik says (in references to the sovereign who came after the great freeze) "He gave us devices, and started the fire mothers and fire fathers who live to fill these medallions." Wax asks "You can make these medallions?" Allik: "If you have the metal born to do so, and the Excisors, then yes."

Edited May 24, 2017 by Coinshot1122
Spelling