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WOR Spoilers - Powering Surgebinding with other forms of Investiture


LiquidBlue

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Since the appearnace in WOR of Vasher and Nightblood. Both of whom seem to be able to do a straightforward substitution of Stormlight for breath, I have wondered about the opposite. What if you fueled surgebinding with breath.

 

I think that they are very similar, a big difference is that breath is sticky and stormlight leaks. To build upon this I imagine that a lashing or illusion, which endures until all of the stormlight has leaked away, if fueled by breath would remain until the breath was recovered. Other types of surgebinding such as soulcasting or regrowth which used up the stormlight would likely use up the breath as well. (Soulcasting has the additional complication that it involves the use of a focus)

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This WoB seems to answer the question:

 

Q:  Can Breath be used to power Surgebinding?
A:  They are very similar Investitures, and most of the magics can be powered with the other magics if you are capable of making that happen.
 
Q:  What would happen to the Breath?
A:  The Breath would be consumed in the same way that Stormlight is.  A renewing resource, much like Atium is.

(source)

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Mistborn spoilers:

At the end of The Final Empire, and elsewhere in the series, Vin directly absorbs the mists to power her Allomancy. With a bit of jury-rigging, it should be possible to power other forms of Investiture with the mists.

Breaths are probably possible, but would be a lot more expensive than Stormlight.

Now, what if a spren took the shape of an Aon, on Sel? If we got Syl to do some Aon Daa yoga, can we have Elantrian-style Surgebinding?

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Thanks for the WoB.

 

So for surges that don't seem to consume stormlight but persist until the stormlight has leaked away would the surge remain until the the breath was recovered?

 

I don't know! It seems possible that Breath could cause permanent Lashings/illusions but I am doubtful. I'm pretty sure those constantly consume Investiture, just like healing and everything else.

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I don't know! It seems possible that Breath could cause permanent Lashings/illusions but I am doubtful. I'm pretty sure those constantly consume Investiture, just like healing and everything else.

But making the dead walk or a scarf grab seems like it should consume Investiture as well. The fact that it doesn't is rather strange. I think that if the magic used was small enough relative to the amount of Breath used, like a Lashed rock or something, then the Breath wouldn't be consumed anymore than Awakening does. But something bigger would, just like how Nightblood soaks up Breath like a sponge when he's in full destruction mode. It could make for some very interesting uses.

Since the Breath acts like Stormlight in Roshar, constantly Draining, Does that mean that Zahel/Vasher would have to be constantly sucking up Stormlight, or cani he convert Stormlight to Breath?

Where did you get this from, exactly? I would think Breath is Breath, even on Roshar. Edited by PorridgeBrick
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Except the investiture you get from Allomancy comes typed, molded to a specific purpose. For example, a Mistborn can't burn Iron to fuel a Steelpush. I'm sure Nicrosilminds would work for fueling Surgebinding, but none of the other known metals should (except for possibly Atium and Lerasium, depending on what their as-yet-unseen secondary uses are). The Mists themselves should work, but they seem similar enough to Stormlight that I don't think there would be much difference in its use for Surgebinding.

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I would think that if you had a Nahel bond and you were a misting/mistborn and you burned a metal I think you should be able to fuel the surges.

 

 

Except the investiture you get from Allomancy comes typed, molded to a specific purpose. For example, a Mistborn can't burn Iron to fuel a Steelpush. I'm sure Nicrosilminds would work for fueling Surgebinding, but none of the other known metals should (except for possibly Atium and Lerasium, depending on what their as-yet-unseen secondary uses are). The Mists themselves should work, but they seem similar enough to Stormlight that I don't think there would be much difference in its use for Surgebinding.

 

Allomancy seems to use the metals for two purposes. The first is to shape it for a purpose. The second is to somehow access investiture provided by Preservation. The process seems to be indivisible and so it would not be possible to divert it power surges.

 

There are a couple of possibilities that might allow a mistborn to power the surges provided by the Nahel bond.

 

1) A mistborn that acquires a Nahel bond with a spren might notice that they have additional reservoirs. These would be the surges. Basically the bond allows investiture to be shaped, and the mechanics of a mistborn presents this as an additional reservoir. In this case it is not the metal that permits access to the investiture, but it is a natural ability of the mistborn, they just can't draw investiture unless there is a valid outlet. 

 

2) Metal burning is required not only to shape and direct the investiture, but mistborn also cannot draw from Preservation without burning a metal. In this case, perhaps they could injest a reshaped shardblade and burn bits of it. I wonder if there would be any affect on the spren in this case

 

I wonder what would happen if a mistborn tried to burn a dead shardblade.

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Something to note: Surgebinding seems to be an order of magnitude (if not more) more powerful than Allomancy, or at least it uses much more Investiture. Powering it via Allomancy would likely be difficult, and even if you could (duralumin), the stress of that much Investiture flowing through you could easily harm and have Soulcasting ardent-like effects on you. Stormlight is rather unique in that just holding it heals you (Divine Breaths do as well); Preservation's Investiture may not be so kind, so you'd perhaps need to be using duralumin+pewter at the same time, or tapping Feruchemical gold, to properly do things.

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I think there may be one of the three reactions to powering Surgebinding with Breaths:

1. The breaths are consumed, like the Returned and Nightblood do it. They return to the global cycle, or whatever happens to them.

2. The breaths provide enough power to run Surgebinding permanently, until recovered. (Note that breaths, unlike stormlight, have preferences... well, more of those. They are hard to stick to something not living, harder still to something that was never living, so Lashing the stone may not be easy)

3. Breaths are like generators, or trickle-chraged batteries... Not a very good analogy, but essentially, Surges would consume the power from Breaths, but it would regenerate slowly, resulting in weak or intermittent Surge, like the stone that sticks sometimes and not for long.

 

 

Allomancy seems to use the metals for two purposes. The first is to shape it for a purpose. The second is to somehow access investiture provided by Preservation. The process seems to be indivisible and so it would not be possible to divert it power surges.

 

 

My belief is that there are two filters: in metal, and in the Spiritweb. A mistborn has 16-ish developed filters in the spiritweb, a Misting one developed and possibly several non-functional, etc. A metal then provides a conduit and a fuse, making power safer and more accessible, while raw power feed like Mists would give all the powers in the Spiritweb (except for the ones that are not of that Shard, those are harder), like Vin, who got almost all Mistborn powers at once - but at a price, as her physical body was under strain. Which means that a Mistborn would probably be able to use all powers at once, if one would somehow get the ability to suck it in. For this ability, I personally recommend spiking a Larkin :)

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My belief is that there are two filters: in metal, and in the Spiritweb. A mistborn has 16-ish developed filters in the spiritweb, a Misting one developed and possibly several non-functional, etc.

 

The only problem with this is that having 16 developed filters would imply that you could have more than one Misting power without being a full Mistborn. Certainly in the case of someone spiked through Hemalurgy, they'd have more filters and links to Preservation, but I'd hazard a guess that Mistborn just have one filter that is 'perfect' while each Misting's filter is flawed or deformed in some manner and thus can only work with certain wavelengths corresponding to one metal (+god alloys).

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The only problem with this is that having 16 developed filters would imply that you could have more than one Misting power without being a full Mistborn. Certainly in the case of someone spiked through Hemalurgy, they'd have more filters and links to Preservation, but I'd hazard a guess that Mistborn just have one filter that is 'perfect' while each Misting's filter is flawed or deformed in some manner and thus can only work with certain wavelengths corresponding to one metal (+god alloys).

 

I think that a mistborn having a single link to preservation, and a misting having an imperfect or deformed link makes a lot of sense. Some how this seems related to the allomatic use of Lerasium. I don't think that that using Lerasium to gain allomatic powers means burning it in the allomatic sense. Rather some how the body is able to process Lerasium or Lerasium alloy in order augment an individuals sDNA. Isn't there a WoB that states that there is an actual allomatic use for Lerasium?

 

If the filter model is correct, then a simple question for Brandon would clarify if there are multiple filters or a single filter: "If a misting were to ingest a Lerasium alloy corresponding to a different power, would they gain the new allomatic power in addition to their previous power, or would their misting power be replaced by the new one?"

 

If the single filter model is correct, than it suggests that it might be possible that a mistborn could directly power surges made available by a Nahel bond. Surges seem to be much more investiture heavy than the allomatic arts, so perhaps only a terribly powerful mistborn would be able to effectively do so.

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The only problem with this is that having 16 developed filters would imply that you could have more than one Misting power without being a full Mistborn. Certainly in the case of someone spiked through Hemalurgy, they'd have more filters and links to Preservation, but I'd hazard a guess that Mistborn just have one filter that is 'perfect' while each Misting's filter is flawed or deformed in some manner and thus can only work with certain wavelengths corresponding to one metal (+god alloys).

That implies that filters are linked, yes. On the other hand, the Mistborn filter is not perfect - it doesn't give you raw power, just 16 bands of it. I am almost sure, for example, that mist-sucking Feruchemist would be able to use all Feruchemic powers, but not Allomancy, like Vin.

And as you mentioned, you can have only two powers by using Hemalurgy, etc. In that case, do you have two filters, or one with a multiple-gaussian frequency response? Does it matter?  It is somewhat easier to imagine a spike ripping out a piece of spiritweb in spatial domain than it ripping one in Fourier domain, but the end result is more or less the same. The lerasium question is a good one, though.  My low-probability theory is that you'd end up with a Mistborn that sucks in all but two metals.

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That implies that filters are linked, yes. On the other hand, the Mistborn filter is not perfect - it doesn't give you raw power, just 16 bands of it. I am almost sure, for example, that mist-sucking Feruchemist would be able to use all Feruchemic powers, but not Allomancy, like Vin.

 

But Mistborn can burn atium and every god-metal that will come to exist, while Mistings cannot. This suggests there's something more to Allomancy than just having 16 bands - I think we can both agree that if Honor (as Tanavast) came and Invested some of his power on Roshar, we'd get tanavastium, and Mistborn would be able to burn it, but Mistings could not. This implies there's not a set of filters on Mistborn that there is on Mistings. They very well may have a source of pure Investiture that they can use on everything.

 

Also: you've raised an important question regarding the mists and Feruchemy. I am reasonably confident that the mists would not be able to power Feruchemy without some jury-rigging. You can't just convert blank Investiture from nicrosilminds to anything you want according to the MAG, which I suspect would limit the mists in a similar manner. Allomancers have a direct link to Preservation, so the mists can probably just flow through whatever link there is on the spiritweb of the Allomancer and replicate every Allomantic power, since that's what Preservation's Investiture normally does. Feruchemists have a different system in place for Investiture-usage (there's likely no existing link or 'wound' on the soul that the mists could just force themselves through), so...

 

There's also issues with the fact that Allomancy is a human interpretation of Preservation's Investiture. A non-human with the power to burn metals likely wouldn't get the same effects from the metals (unless they used Hemalurgy), which suggests that something about the human form also acts as a filter, not just the metals. I don't know where I'm going with this:

 

Kaimipono (16 October 2008)
Allomancy is fueled by Preservation's body? How exactly does that work? And how does that interact with Atium—it's fueled by both gods' bodies?
Brandon Sanderson (17 October 2008)

The powers of Ruin and Preservation are Shards of Adonalsium, pieces of the power of creation itself. Allomancy, Hemalurgy, Feruchemy are manifestations of this power in mortal form, the ability to touch the powers of creation and use them. These metallic powers are how people's physical forms interpret the use of the Shard, though it's not the only possible way they could be interpreted or used. It's what the genetics and Realmatic interactions of Scadrial allow for, and has to do with the Spiritual, the Cognitive, and the Physical Realms.

Condensed 'essence' of these godly powers can act as super-fuel for Allomancy, Feruchemy, or really any of the powers. The form of that super fuel is important. In liquid form it's most potent, in gas form it's able to fuel Allomancy as if working as a metal. In physical form it is rigid and does one specific thing. In the case of atium, it allows sight into the future. In the case of concentrated Preservation, it gives one a permanent connection to the mists and the powers of creation. (I.e., it makes them an Allomancer.)

So when a person is burning metals, they aren't using Preservation's body as a fuel so to speak—though they are tapping into the powers of creation just slightly. When Vin burns the mists, however, she'd doing just that—using the essence of Preservation, the Shard of Adonalsium itself—to fuel Allomancy. Doing this, however, rips 'troughs' through her body. It's like forcing far too much pressure through a very small, fragile hose. That much power eventually vaporizes the corporeal host, which is acting as the block and forcing the power into a single type of conduit (Allomancy) and frees it to be more expansive.

 

This is however contradicted by:

 

Open The Fridge
My question is if there’s anything that you’ve never been asked that you would like to talk about?
Brandon Sanderson

Oooooh, ok. Hm. That one is so hard! Every time people ask me something like this... What have I never been asked that people should be asking, is basically what the question is? Something that the fans have just missed... They pick up on so much, that it’s hard... I do wonder if, you know… all the magic systems [in my books] are connected and work on some basic fundamental principles, and a lot of people haven’t been asking questions about this. One thing I did get a question on today, and I’ll just talk about this one... they didn’t ask the right question, but I nudged them the right way, is understanding that tie between Aondor [the magic system from Elantris] and allomancy [Mistborn’s magic system].

People ask about getting the power from metals and things, but that’s not actually how it works. The power’s not coming from metal. I talked a little about this before, but you are drawing power from some source, and the metal is actually just a gateway. It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal works in the same way as an Aon does in Elantris. It filters the power. So it is just a sign of “this is what power this energy is going to be shaped into and give you.” When you understand that, compounding [in Alloy of Law] makes much more sense.

Compounding is where you are able to kind of draw in more power than you should with feruchemy. What’s going on there is you’re actually charging a piece of metal, and then you are burning that metal as a feruchemical charge. What is happening is that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge, and so you actually fuel feruchemy with allomancy, is what you are doing. Then if you just get out another piece of metal and store it in, since you’re not drawing the power from yourself, you’re cheating the system, you’re short-circuiting the system a little bit. So you can actually use the power that usually fuels allomancy, to fuel feruchemy, which you can then store in a metalmind, and basically build up these huge reservoirs of it. So what’s going on there is… imagine there’s like, an imprint, a wavelength, so to speak. A beat for an allomantic thing, that when you burn a metal, it says “ok, this is what power we give.” When it’s got that charge, it changes that beat and says, “now we get this power.” And you access a set of feruchemical power. That’s why compounding is so powerful.

 

So... if we accept the metals as acting as 'gateways' that filter pure power from Preservation... how the heck do the mists act as metals?

 

I may also be wrong on there being a contradiction here. Perhaps non-humans just wouldn't be able to burn metals, but might be able to use them in other interesting ways. This still leaves the question open in regards to mists, though.

Edited by Moogle
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The powers still stay discrete, though. While the body/soul system is in place, metal-burning Mistborn cannot, for example, push on water or move planets. A frequency with overtones? Soul resonance bands? And god-metals are different. Not anybody can burn Atium , but anybody can burn Lerasium, and we don't know what would happen to Tanavastium, maybe it is perfect for grinding it into powder and snorting :) I am imagining something like a Gaussian response in multiple dimensions, with unit sphere as a limit. Get some power, ...

...

Need to think more on this, maybe in the morning. Getting dizzy.

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The powers still stay discrete, though. While the body/soul system is in place, metal-burning Mistborn cannot, for example, push on water or move planets. A frequency with overtones? Soul resonance bands? And god-metals are different. Not anybody can burn Atium , but anybody can burn Lerasium, and we don't know what would happen to Tanavastium, maybe it is perfect for grinding it into powder and snorting :) I am imagining something like a Gaussian response in multiple dimensions, with unit sphere as a limit. Get some power, ...

...

Need to think more on this, maybe in the morning. Getting dizzy.

 

I think that there is some seperation between the ability to draw investiture and the ability to use metals in order to shape it for a purpose. One model for mistborn and mistings is that mistborn have a general ability to draw investiture and push it through their various metals, while a misting has an ability to draw investiture that is only compatible with a single metal (or something sufficiently close, such a feruchemically charged metal.)

 

Another model that still makes use of the disconnect between the ability to draw investure then use a metal to shape it for a purpose is that both mistborn and mistings have some general ability to draw investiture, mistborn then can use any metal to shape it, while a misting can only access a single metal.

 

There is a difference between the two models. If it is true that a nahel-bonded allomancer can use their ability to draw investiture to power surges, then in the first model only a mistborn can use their ability to directly power surges. In the second model both a mistborn and a misting can power the granted surges.

 

I wonder, though, if I understand Mistborn and mistings correctly. Mistborn seem to be able to use many types of metals (16 base metals and alloys, 2 god metals, 16 Laresium alloys, 16 Atium alloys, more?), plus Feruchemically charged metals to create a wide variety of effects, potentially the vast majority of which are not known. A misting seems to be only able to use a single metal and it feruchemically charged conjugate. Why? Why aren't there people that naturally have multiple abilities, but not the full set. And interestingly, why does hemalurgy only steal a single ability? Did the steel inquisitors sometimes make a mistake with the spiking and instead of the ability they wanted, they made a spike that allowed a person to burn the Laresium-pewter alloy? (In which case they thought that they had just failed.)

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And interestingly, why does hemalurgy only steal a single ability?

 

If you take the model of the link to Preservation being 'pure' for a Mistborn and slightly deformed for Mistings, then you could argue that Hemalurgy damages the connection slightly so it turns a Mistborn link into a Misting link. We do have a WoB that implies you can steal multiple powers from a Mistborn, it's just that Hemalurgy as an art has not progressed that far to hit the right nerves or something.

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If you take the model of the link to Preservation being 'pure' for a Mistborn and slightly deformed for Mistings, then you could argue that Hemalurgy damages the connection slightly so it turns a Mistborn link into a Misting link. We do have a WoB that implies you can steal multiple powers from a Mistborn, it's just that Hemalurgy as an art has not progressed that far to hit the right nerves or something.

 

That makes a lot of sense. If Allomancy is a collection of 16 (or 50) seperate powers, there should be no reason that person could not be born with multiple different abilities. But if instead Allomancy is a single power that when weakened or corroupted only allows access to a single power, it makes alot more sense. So instead of it being a fast rule that you can only get one power off a mistborn, it is the case that lack of skill and knowledge, and the inherent hemolgical decay means that the transfered mistborn power is not of sufficient fidelity to provide full mistborn abilities.

 

Eli responded to me in the Questions for Brandon topic, that there already is a WoB that lerasium-alloy would change the power of a misting, not grant it an additional power. This goes towards the idea that Allomancy is a singular power that when weakened or corrupted only grants a single ability. This means that there is a true difference between an actual mistborn and someone who has received hemalogical spikes that grant all of the allomatic powers.

 

I think that this points towards Feruchemy being a magic system purely of preservation. My justification is first its end-neutral natural and the ability to store (preserve) attributes seem entirely aligned with preservation. Further, before the ascension, feruchemy was always passed down without weakening or being corrupted. It was only when preservation and ruin were combined that ferrings started to appear. That is a ferring just has a corrupted version of the full ferchumist power, which corruption is now happening because the shards are joined.

 

*I guess this means that Allomancy would be some combination of both preservation and ruin.

 

*******

 

I think that I will try to turn back to the original topic. I think that a mistborn could directly power surges granted from a nahel-bond. Due to its imperfect nature a misting would not be able to power such surges. A mistborn may have difficulty drawing enough investiture to power the surges.

 

A surge-binder with breath may directly power surges. The nature of breath may lead to slightly different results such as permant lashing or more life like illusions. (I think that a breath powered illusion of the person is like to be much more human.)

 

Using Dor to power surges seems hard. I think easiest system to adapt would be ChaySan since it seems to be used to fill the users body with Dor.

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CZANOS (17 OCTOBER 2008)

Preservation can fuel Allomancy, (Minus Atium.) but can Ruin fuel Hemalurgy? (Or Atium?) And could Sazed fuel all three Metallic Arts?

BRANDON SANDERSON (17 OCTOBER 2008)

Both gods could, if they wanted, fuel all of the metallic arts. Preservation is stronger at fueling Allomancy, Ruin stronger at fueling Allomancy or Feruchemy when it has been given via a spike. Both are balanced when it comes to Feruchemy. But this rarely comes up in the books, as it required expending power in a way that the gods were hesitant to do.

Not the WoB I was looking for, but it works. Feruchemy's the balance, Allomancy of Preservation, and Hemalurgy of Ruin.
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Not the WoB I was looking for, but it works. Feruchemy's the balance, Allomancy of Preservation, and Hemalurgy of Ruin.

 

I know that I've seen that WoB before or something like that, so I was a bit hesitant to post my speculation. The problem is that to me it just seems more natural that Feruchemy is an art purely of Preservation while Allomancy is of both.

 

I guess the wiggle room that I have is that the quote you provided says that Preservation is more likely to power Allomancy, and Ruin is more likely to power Hemalurgy. This might be different than who made the system.

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It is from HoA, assuming Sazed, as a shard, knew what he was talking about:

 

Allomancy, obviously, is of Preservation. The rational mind will see this. For, in the case of Allomancy, net power is gained. It is provided by an external source—Preservation’s own body.

 

The corruption does not explain why only one power can be gained - why is there not a corruption that would allow one access to two powers? And how does Hemalurgy work in that case? By adding another connection or modifying existing one?

P.S: I would like a link to that WoB.

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