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Here's another possibility for making a single Hemalurgic spike grant you all the powers of a Fullborn: First, you grant yourself F-aluminum, F-nicrosil, and one additional power of your choice all through Hemalurgy. You then Blank your Identity and use nicrosil to store the extra power in a large nicrosil spike that has a partial gold coating. You repeat this process, replacing the third power-granting spike with all the other powers eventually, storing access to these powers in the spike. Finally, you Hemalurgically Invest the gold portion of the spike with that of a Bloodmaker and implant it into yourself. The spike can be tapped Feruchemically to access all the powers of a Fullborn, plus it can be embedded in your body to prevent others from being able to steal it from you (you also may be able to keep your Identity encrypted into the powers held within if you have enough skill with F-aluminum, but that's a hypothetical). Additionally, having some of your F-gold being accessed via Hemalurgy means that you should be able to heal spiritual injuries, such as those made by Hemalurgy. I know that this is mostly a technicality though, as you could make an Unsealed Metalmind granting access to all Metalborn powers without turning it into a Hemalurgic spike- that part is mostly just for extra safety. I still say this is a win though, as there are benefits to it being a spike

I was thinking about the unsealed metalminds, trying to wrap my head around how they worked. I kept getting bothered by the fact that F-Duralumin is used when F-Aluminum appears to be naturally better and still doesn’t work. But then I had an idea. The consistent problem with unsealed metalminds is getting into the nicrosil metalminds. Even blanking Identity only makes it usable for Nicrosil Feruchemists and Ferrings, not just anyone. But then I realized there’s one other thing we know on Scadrial that gives ordinary people powers: God Metals. In fact, the one godmetal we can canonically confirm to do this very thing. I would posit that an unsealed metalminds is used to duplicate a nearby Nicrosil Ferring or Feruchemists ability, just like we’ve seen with the Allomancy grenades. Since it’s a God Metal duplicating, it has the same universal use option as lerasium. Or to use Brandon’s own terminology, it is pure Investiture Brandon Sanderson So one of the things people have been asking about a lot the nature of Identity and its uses for accessing other people's metalminds, and things like this right. And I hedged a little bit when somebody asked me... *inaudible*...send people into spirals of confusion, so I'm gonna clarify it for now. So, someone comes in and says, we need a blank metalmind, anybody can use that. I'm like, yes but, the reason that it's a hedge is that you need to actually be a feruchemist to access it, right, you can't just hold the blank metalmind not being a feruchemist, even though it's somebody else's investiture that's been blanked, right. So people keep kind of missing this thing. I'm hedging in the sort of, you don't quite have it, I've kind of dodged it, but I worry that it's just going to be confusing. So the issue is, you need two things from one of these. You need something that makes you a feruchemist, and then you need a metalmind that somebody else has filled with blank investiture, ok. Now if you can get pure investiture, that can be used by anybody, regardless, ok, you need it in pure form though. <snip> Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016) In fact, the Allomancy grenades should work similarly and simply not be noticed because no person is actively tapping an ability. What about Feruchemical duralumin, you ask? That’s a bit trickier. My theory is that F-Duralumin is used to make harmonium itself into a metalmind. Logically speaking, if any one can Allomantically burn a true God Metal, the same should apply for Feruchemy. After that, one can infer that it is possible to draw out other applicable traits than whatever Harmonium’s base is, which should apply to both Connection and Identity. The former already works with how Shards are always tied to their power and the fact that Lerasium grants Connection. The latter simply supposes that the ability to do Feruchemy is basically coded Investiture in your soul that allows it to do that, kinda like Breaths (which can be stolen by nicrosil Hemalurgy under similar terminology) As such, I propose two procedures: the Tapping Method and the Storage Method. Tapping Method: 1. Have your duralumin Feruchemist tap Connection from harmonium. Continue until it’s blank. If all goes well, you should be left with pure Investiture, unaligned to any master. 2. With this new blank slate, have the Nicrosil Feruchemist fill the Investiture with their ability. 3. After sufficiently filling it, have the Nicrosil Feruchemist draw back the pure Investiture. 4. Fill a nicrosil mind with the pure Investiture. That nicrosil is now coded like a God Metal and works for everyone a la lerasium 5. Have other Metalborn fill the nicro godmind with their own powers, saving it for later Storage method 1. Have the Nicrosil Feruchemist store their ability in Harmonium. This tells the Harmnium to copy that ability, like how burning a metalmind changes what the metal does. 2. Have the Duralumin Feruchemist store their Connection. This contaminates the nicrosil ability into thinking it’s always part of the God Metal 3. Have the nicrosil Feruchemist tap the harmonium and store the resulting products in a nicrosil mind 4. Fill the new nicrosil mind with the desired abilities There may be a few other variations, but the end result is a nicrosilmind that acts like a Godmetal. This can then be filed as full as the nicrosil can store, which would explain why medallions only store a few powers. If there anything I missed let me know. Thank you for coming to my TED talk Edit: Thinking about it, I don’t think God Metals work for Feruchemy in the same way lerasium lets anyone use it. It might function as a universal metalmind, but you’d need to be able to give it an attribute in the first place. In other words, have Feruchemy yourself. However, my points about nicrosil and duralumin still stand. Edit 2: You may not even need duralumin more than once. An exicsor could easily be harmonium tapped of Connection. Once you’ve got that, any nicrosil Feruchemist can use it by storing into Exicsor, tapping, and putting the hacked ability in a nicrosil mind.

So I found this little tidbit on the Arcanum: And it makes me wonder: Are the metalminds you make with an Unsealed Metalmind Keyed to you, Unkeyed or Unsealed?

So Ettmetal seems to be able to replicate any nearby Allomantic or Feruchemical abilities, and does so at range like lowering to weight of an entire airship. So if someone were to have of the 'Primer Cubes' as well as several Unsealed Metalminds, could they use the Medallions to 'Prime' the cube with an attribute, like Health for instance, grant everyone around them additional Health and have them store it in other Unsealed Metalminds? Like a slightly more complicated and less effective version of Compounding. Without any need of any Metalborn, except for creating the Medallions in the first place.

So, first a quick reminder how medallions work: By some yet unknown hack you're granted ability to tap nicrosil. (some sDNA shenanigans) (my personal theory is some trace harmonium projecting Soulbearer ability) You tap an unkeyed nicrosilmind, which contains another ability. Nicrosil works like copper, so it's not that you have a set amount of attribute-hours, but you have a distinct thing that you tap, use, and store back (WoB). You can use the other ability, whatever it is (usually the other ring of metal is an unkeyed metalmind you can tap, like with heat, Connection or weight medallions). Now, I've not exactly been up to date with the community, so maybe someone has already noticed the problem. But in case nobody did, here it goes: The medallions should be single use. Why? Well, you've been hacked to be able to use nicrosil, so you should be able to store the ability you were using back into nicrosil, right? The problem is that it would create a nicrosilmind keyed to you. You'd need to be granted aluminum Feruchemy to be able to blank your Identity to be able to create an unkeyed metalmind. So after using medallion once nobody else should be able to use it. Of course, that's not the case. And we see nobody storing aluminum while they were using medallions, so there's yet another thing going on here.

We see in the of the Bands of Mourning that there are Unsealed Copperminds being traded across Scadrial. Honestly, this seems like one of the most expansive ways that culture and scientific progress will be shaped, even more so than the flying boats allowed by iron Feruchemy. If you could gather a group of individuals, each with an Unsealed Coppermind, who would then go and research an assigned topic, you could have them store and give this knowledge with one specific individual who would gain massive amounts of information very, very quickly. This could greatly speed up Scadrial's technological progress, as scientists could gather a significantly greater amount of knowledge on a subject much more quickly, allowing them to expand on that knowledge with greater speed. If you combined this with Unsealed Zincminds you'd be able to throw Scadrial to the forefront of technological advancement in the Cosmere (it kind of already is, but Roshar is getting there too, so they've got some stiff competition). It would also be interesting to see people who's job it would be to gather information in these Copperminds for the use of others and how they would go about it. Would they need to study the same topic twice so that they could remember it? Would special studying strategies need to be employed? How would they prevent their own idle thoughts, biases, and assumptions from accidentally slipping into a Coppermind along with everything else? That last one in particular seems like there could be some interesting complications.

My 500th post! I found this quote and it got me thinking... Okay, okay, so Brandon didn't sound like he was saying that an Unsealed Metalmind necessarily needed Feruchemical Duralumin to work, but for the purposes of this theory there is enough evidence that I'm going to assume that it is used in their creation. If it turns out that this isn't the case when The Lost Metal comes out, you can tell me you told me so. Alrighty, so we know that the Sovereign (pretty sure everyone knows who they are by now, but I'll just refer to them as that for now) gave the Excisors to the Southern Scadriens so that they could create Unsealed Metalminds for the survival of their people. I hypothesize that the Excisors are actually just Unsealed Metalmind made from Feruchemical nicrosil, aluminum, duralumin, and likely brass. They also likely include their Allomantic counterparts to allow for compounding. I also hypothesize that creation of Unsealed Metalminds requires a few steps; a misting or ferring takes one of the Excisors and taps nicrosil, temporarily granting them the ability to store their own innate power in a Nicrosilmind. While doing this they also store their Identity in an Aluminummind to unseal their power for someone else to use. The resulting Nicrosilmind is then taken and a band of metal corresponding to the power stored (if Feruchemical in nature) is added for convenience, thus making the Southern medallions we see in The Bands of Mourning. However, if one wants to make a Medallion with more powers, I'm guessing that a little more is involved. Two or more Mistings or Ferrings each get an Excisor, tapping nicrosil, and storing their Identity in Aluminum. They then tap Feruchemical duralumin to create a Connection between themselves, possibly before the other steps or during them. They would then store their Investiture in the same Nicrosilmind, and with their being little Identity to the stored Investiture plus with the Connection between them, they act as if they were one power, one Metalmind with one owner so as to not interfere with each other. It may be possible that the reason you can only store up to three powers in the medallions (excluding the Feruchemical nicrosil, of course) is because you can only Feruchemically store at a certain rate, and so you can't completely remove all of your Identity, so the more powers you store, the more incompatible they become due to the small amount of Identity left in them. If this is the case then Hemalurgically granted powers may not become entirely obsolete, as the Identity of the spike and the person using the spike combine when storing power, so they could be used to create Unsealed Metalminds that don't have a limitation to the number of powers that can be added together. Not to mention the fact that you can just use Hemalurgy to grant yourself a number of powers, assuming of course that you're in good standing with Harmony and all that. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this little theory of mine and will be willing to read more of my posts in the future. Can't wait for The Lost Metal to come out!

I was trying to find a quote for another thread I was making when I stumbled upon this. . . So, one thing that I was thinking about was that Hemalurgy would still have an edge over Unsealed Metalmind tech in that you can get a spike, then use the power associated with it as long as you continue to have that spike; ran out of Feruchemical stores? No problem, just store some more. No more metal to burn? Just go grab some more; you're still an Allomancer because you've got that spike. But now, is sounds like you may be able to not use up a Unsealed Metalmind's nicrosil power when you use it. Which is super, duper important, if you ask me. Although, maybe I got this wrong. Maybe I'm extrapolating too much from this little quote. This is also probably not that world changing, but can someone please tell me I'm not crazy?

If a young child were to regularly tap an Unsealed Identitymind, would it leave a lasting effect on their physical and cognitive aspects? Could a society that wanted to cultivate a certain mindset use this method to artificially change their people to better fit their standards? If a Returned were to store their Identity in and Unsealed Aluminum/Goldmind, could someone who tapped both the Identity and health inside change their physique to better match that Returned?

The Bands of Mourning allow for this to work, but they’re a special case. From a meta viewpoint, it feels far too powerful an ability to just hand out. Even using Hemalurgy to gain access to compounding require sacrifice, but if you could gain that kind of power without the cost? Not only that, but if people can make these so that they have compounding available, then why would anyone make an Unsealed Metalmind that doesn’t allow compounding, since those abilities would be so superior to non-compounding abilities? So, would Unsealed Metalminds made from multiple people, the way they are typically made, just not allow this to work? Or are we just going to see a lot more compounding in the future?

I found these quotes in the Arcanum. So it sounds that by changing your Identity you can make "minor" alterations to your physical form, and it will also make some alterations to your mental faculties, though your memories and your core personality will remain intact. This won't let you grow extra limbs, switch biological sex (probably; I'm not totally sure on that one), or change species, but I can still see uses for it's manipulation. Perhaps you could, therefore, get a Singer to fill their Identity into an Unsealed Metalmind while wearing a specific form, which would allow a human to tap it and gain access to that form. Or perhaps Scadrial and other worlds could use this method for cosmetic purposes; hire attractive and healthy individuals to store their Identity, then use compounding to mass produce Unsealed Identity Minds for those who can afford it.

When you Awaken an object, you can only work with the intrinsic properties of that item . So if you were to Awaken an Unsealed Metalmind, could you give it the ability to use those powers in new ways?

Okay, so they don’t naturally have a charismatic personality or anything like that, but they do have a very, very powerful motivator for people to willingly follow them. They should be able to create unsealed metalminds for those who are exceptionally skilled and/or loyal to them. So if people in a society know that they will get magic powers if they follow their leader, and the only way to maintain that power (the metalminds will run out of charge eventually, after all) is to stay loyal and hone their skill with it, then the Fullborn should have a rather large retinue of willing followers.

Because a pandemic of some sort has left me unoccupied recently, I'm writing up this highly speculative theory about the creation of medallions. Long text is long, so there is a point you can skip to if you don't care about the justification behind some of the spectulation. This topic has seen a lot of research, the most reasonable being, in my opinion, Calderis' theory: One thing that makes me doubt this is the method employed by the Southerners is that Allik speaks about multiple power medallions as if they are an accumulative work: There is much we don't know about the topic, and it seems Brandon won't tell us much until he finally unveils the answer in TLM, so we have to make due with what he have. What I propose is one way a medallion could be made, which is most likely not the way they currently make them. I will work on the assumption that this WoB is correct: Which coincidentally allows me to speak about something that doesn't feel right about Calderis' theory: it is straightforward. Yet there have been multiple ocassions where Brandon has been asked about the creation of medallions, and his reply is, like in this instance, that he would have to check his notes, or ask Peter, and the answer apparently needs a flowchart: That being said, this is what I got. I address the fact that the nicrosil portion is never tapped, and the fact that no hemalurgy should be required if Brandon was not mistaken in the first WoB. As a summary, the idea relies on priming cubes to accumulate multiple powers into a single nicrosil storage, and then to use priming machinery like the one on BoM's airship to create the auto-tapping nicrosil ring. There are multiple points I can't explain, but I think there is some merit to this thought process, and perhaps someone else will be able to build something stronger from this theory. Let's begin with small assumptions, namely about the way priming cubes behave under the effects of Allomancy and Feruchemy. We have seen priming cubes used with A-Steel, A-Cadmium and A-Chromium. In all cases the observed effect is that the output of the allomancer's burn is reproduced by the cube, with some harmonium burned away, as if the cube was metal burning inside the allomancer. From Irich's PoV we know there is a method of operation that allows some mechanism to be primed so that it makes something else ligher, and the priming involves a ferring: I believe it would be consistent to expect that storing into an iron metalmind while holding the primer cube would cause it to work as if it was iron being stored into by a feruchemist. This would have the effect of funneling weight from nearby people, though apparently it can be worked to funnel weight from its environment as well (airship becoming lighter). Of course we don't really know how the ship gets lighter, and it would be a valid criticism of this text. It would be somewhat reasonable that the cube could funnel feruchemical attributes from people, as it could be doing so by preventing investiture from flowing from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical making the attribute stop being manifested (i.e. weight being removed), the excess being stored in the ettmetal as any other feruchemical store or getting shunted back to the SR. But what would it mean to prime the cube by tapping an attribute? In particular, the important question is what effect should that have on inanimate objects. When the cube replicates allomancy, it gets burned, presumably to fuel the allomancy. When it draws attributes, it is just behaving as a metalmind, storing a charge, (though I don't think the charge would actually be stored, it just gets siphoned into oblivion, like some people think happens when you store into aluminum). If it were primed by tapping a charge, the cube would have to provide the excess investiture like it does with allomancy. This is problematic, as either you would need to store before being able to tap, or the investiture that makes up the ettmetal would have to fuel the effect. I don't think it makes sense for the ettmetal to fuel the feruchemy by decreasing its investiture level (i.e. desaturating itself) or something like that. If the ettmetal fuels the feruchemical output, I think it would have to work like it does with allomancy, burning itself to provide the effect, as if it was a metalmind being compounded. These are the assumptions I am working on, and I concede they are wildly speculative, but under these premises this is how I envision the origin of the Bands of Mourning: IF LAZY, SKIP HERE! We will require a ferring and misting of each type along with some strategic twinborns, some ettmetal, and no spiky things. Arbitrary Unkeyed Metalminds. The first step is to be able to produce an unkeyed metalmind. An aluminum ferring stores Identity while holding a primer cube. The cube responds by drawing Identity from anyone close by. Any feruchemical charge stored while the cube is working will be clear of Identity, free to be used by any ferring of that metal. Adding Powers to Nicrosil. The second step is to create an unkeyed nicrosil metalmind, with a storage of F-Nicrosil. This can be done by a nicrosil ferring storing their ability under the influence of the Identity-clearing grenade. The resulting metalmind allows any twinborn with access to A-Nicrosil to store their feruchemical ability into a nicrosil metalmind, which can easily be cleared of Identity with the same procedure. The twinborn burns the nicrosil metalmind, compounding the charge that gives them access to F-Nicrosil, allowing them to store their feruchemical power into a nicrosil metalmind. Notice that at this point we can create a sealed version of the Bands of Mourning that can only be used by nicrosil metalborn: To add an Allomantic power, we need a twinborn with that power and F-Nicrosil. The individual stores their allomantic ability while being identity-cleared, resulting in a net power addition to the master nicrosil metalmind. To add a Feruchemical power, we need a twinborn with that power and A-Nicrosil. The individual burns an unkeyed nicrosil metalmind that has been filled with the ability to use F-Nicrosil. During the burn, the charge gets compounded and the twinborn becomes a nicrosil ferring for the duration of the burn, allowing them to store their feruchemical ability into the master nicrosil metalmind. The limit to the amount of powers that can be added is the availability of suitable twinborn and ettmetal. If this was no issue, once all allomantic and feruchemical powers had been stored, the master nicrosil metalmind could be burned by a A-Nicrosil misting while priming the cube producing a Fullborn grenade, though it's effects would by necessity be temporary: A powerless person could perhaps store all powers while under the effects of the grenade, but once its effects decayed they would no longer have access to F-nicrosil. So this method of granting powers is short-lived, and can only be initiated by a nicrosil ferring, and does not qualify as a mechanical mean of accessing Invested Arts like medallions or honorblades do. The next section provides even more outrageous speculation in order to provide a solution to this problem From the excerp I quoted from BoM, it would seem an airship can be primed into being made lighter. While there is a perhaps deceivingly obvious implication, there are a couple extra details that we can infer from this fact. Objects, not only people, can store feruchemical atributes, or at the very least they can see their flow of investiture altered in such a way that the physical manifestation of those attributes are dimishised. The duration of the decrease in the attribute needn't be the same as the duration of the priming. Otherwise the ship would not be viable, because you would need to prime its weight for as long as the expected duration of the flight, which at any reasonable pace would take hours if not days. Ultimately, this weight-changing airship implies that a being without innate feruchemical powers can be forced to store an attribute. This strikes suspiciously close to giving a person a power they don't have! Sadly I can't see any additional info about the weight changing mechanism to explain it's inner workings. From Irich's chapter the ship appears to have a lattice of some lightweight metal couple with some other set of metal wires, plus a golden plate in the shape of a ship. I do believe these are somehow trying to reinforce the cognitive aspect of the ship, somehow making it more aware. In fact I think the pattern of metals going all over the ship is very similar to the lines of strata on the walls of Urithiru, with the gemstone pilar being replaced by a golden plate. In any case, I don't have any additional ideas on this. Therefore, I will assume that the weight changing machinery can be primed by storing an attribute while holding a priming cube, with some unknown extra steps. So if storing weight causes the cube to expand the effect, forcing its surroundings to store weight, what would tapping imply for other feruchemical uses? This is where the amount of unknowns is too big to form a coherent argument with supporting evidence, and so at this point everything is unsupported and likely invalid. I assume that priming the airship works because something in the weight changing machinery defines the airship as the target, and because the ship is in contact with a decent amount of iron it can store its weight into the iron. Perhaps that same machinery could be made to target a ring of nicrosil filled with an unkeyed charge of F-Nicrosil. If you were to store your ability to use your allomantic/feruchemical power while priming the cube -which is set to target the ring and only the ring- the piece of nicrosil would try to store its investiture into its environment. Now, I accept that this is wishful thinking, but maybe this ring would not be able to store anything because there is no amount of nicrosil metal nearby. The physical/spiritual makeup of the nicrosil is what allows it to be a recipient of that specific kind of charge: of Innate Investiture, the ability to use allomancy/feruchemy. Just like only iron has a structure such that it can hold a charge of weight. But nicrosil is not the only suitable recipient of Innate Investiture that grants access to Metallic Arts: people can hold a lot of the stuff. So, a nicrosil ring is looking for a suitable recipient, its charge having no way out but is under pressure to escape because it has been primed to do so by the effect of the ettmetal. A person touches this nicrosil ring, the charge finds an outlet it can flow into, and the person receives the ability to use allomancy/feruchemy as it was originally stored into the ring. This is the reason we never see anyone tap the nicrosil portion of the medallions: the nicrosil is not working as a metalmind, it is working as an entity with access to f-nicrosil, and the wearer is the metalmind being stored into. Of course this doesn't fully work, as it doesn't explain why there is an apparent limit of three powers to a medallion. I cannot explain the fact that the nicrosil ring never runs out, or that the charge is 'given back' to the medallion once the user stops touching it. I don't believe this is how the Southerners are actually making the medallions, as I believe they do use hemalurgy, which could explain both the three power limit (see Calderis' theory) and the nicrosil charge being 'discrete' like memories in a coppermind. Perhaps replacing the steps that involve storing F-Nicrosil with stealing (Excising ) f-nicrosil would give rise to the medallions we know and love. I do want to add some thoughts about the three power limit: could it be that this is a Cosmere-wide limit to the number of abilities granted by the same mechanical method? Medallions are limited to three powers, as Allik tells us: It doesn't mean there is a hard limit on the number of powers, as it could simply be that the tech level is not quite there but could be reached. If we do operate on the assumption that it is a hard limit, where else have we seen anecdotal recalling of three powers being granted, at most? There is this from Sixth of the Dusk: Same situation, we have an observer telling us about a grand maximum of three powers, but no explicit mention that more is impossible. Finally, there is this from Kaza's Interlude in Oathbringer: Which implies Fabrial Soulcasters have three modes of operation, whatever they might be. The most obvious inference is that each 'mode' is one essence, corresponding to each of the three gemstones each Soulcaster can hold. I believe these quotes add credence towars a Cosmere hard limit of three powers given by the same mechanical means. Of course more than three can be achieved through different systems (three powers from medallions and three from hemalurgy, as we know it can be done as we see Suit use a medallion while having three spikes) or through hacks (granting a single power, that of F-Nicrosil, that allows access to a unkeyed storage of any arbitrary set of powers). But this system-specific limit is reasonable even without an in-world reason, as it would prevent scenarios in Era 4 where everyone can be a Fullborn Radiant of ten surges. Though I acknowledge a major flaw: there are WoBs that mention you could bond 5 Honorblades, but this should not be feasible if this limit exists.

I was reading something in another thread about how unsealed gold metalminds would be very popular on Threnody, and I started thinking about how they would work on Ashyn. From what we know you have to get sick in order to have magic. It seems to me that an unsealed gold metalmind would come in very handy for those who want to get sick quickly. And it would be handy to have around when you are ready to be healthy again as well, since you've already stored your health.

The theory is straight forward. An allomancer can burn an unsealed/indentitiless metalmind that corresponds to a metal that they can burn regardless of any feruchemical ability. In support of this, I point out that Vin could sense Sazed's metalminds as if they were another allomatic reserve, but she was unable to burn them. I think that this was because the metalminds were locked to Sazed's identity. However the unsealed metalminds by the south scandrialians can be used by any one with the ability to use them. This, I believe, includes allomancers. This means that Wax would be able to burn steel metalminds filled with physical speed,Wayne would be able to burn bendalloy metalminds filled with nutrition. and Marasi would be able to burn cadmium metalminds filled with breath. This opens up some intriguing possibilities as the medallions and their manufacture spread to the north.