Silver discussion

[NameIess]

So, I noticed this WoB on silver:

Quote

Ace Heat

Would it be possible to use an aluminum spike to permanently kill a spren?

Brandon Sanderson

No, that's not gonna work. Silver, on the other hand, there's some possibility.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

And I think you can understand why I find it interesting.

Silver can damage and kill shades, but I didn't think that extended to all spren/cognitive entities. Apparently it does, or at least can. I'm guessing that silver doesn't have the exact same effect on spren as it does on shades, as something so immediately obvious would doubtless have been discovered by either the Radiants or the Fused during the desolations. So there has to be something more than just stabbing the spren.

As to what that something more could be, I don't really know. The simplest explanation is that you'd need to use silver to cut a spren apart, while keeping it from absorbing Stormlight to heal itself. Perhaps silver is toxic to spren, and you could impale them with a ton of it. Or perhaps the method used involves investiture somehow. Whatever the case, I would be glad to hear other sharders thoughts on this WoB, and silver's place in the Cosmere.

[Why Kaladin?]

I'm guessing that silver would work for the same reason that Raboniel's dagger is made of a silver nickle alloy and we know that that can kill a spren with anti investiture I think that would only work with the anti investiture. But they might only work with each other so maybe it could work?

Quote

Pagerunner

The silver-nickel alloy that is used in Raboniel's dagger where the... Is that going to do the opposite effect (like a Pushing vs. Pulling) of what silver does to shades on Threnody?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, good question. Good question!

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

 

[NameIess]

5 minutes ago, LightweaverWannabe said:

I'm guessing that silver would work for the same reason that Raboniel's dagger is made of a silver nickle alloy and we know that that can kill a spren with anti investiture I think that would only work with the anti investiture. But they might only work with each other so maybe it could work?

I don't think this is it. Brandon saying that there is 'some possibility' of silver killing a spren, that some possibility being combined with anti-voidlight while aluminum would be unable to do so wouldn't make sense, as aluminum could do so when combined with anti-voidlight.

[Rg2045]

Was there anything special about tukari weapons when they attacked notum?
 

Maybe it’s based on the old superstition that silver kills werwolf’s and vampires don’t heal wounds inflicted by them. 
i believe that historically it’s because it’s a “holy metal” (the main reason vampires don’t appear in mirrors made of silver)

it does tarnish when exposed to sulfur in the air so that makes you wonder what shades are made of. 
Using what we know of real silver, and Cognitive entities I think that it might be corrosive to investiture. Not much, just slightly.  so that it can actually  damage CE and make them “bleed” or at least speed up the process.

maybe that’s why raboniels knife needs some silver. To actually “bite” into sprens

[cometaryorbit]

19 hours ago, Nameless said:

I don't think this is it. Brandon saying that there is 'some possibility' of silver killing a spren, that some possibility being combined with anti-voidlight while aluminum would be unable to do so wouldn't make sense, as aluminum could do so when combined with anti-voidlight.

But can you combine aluminum with anti-voidlight (or any Light)?

I agree the silver needs to be doing *something* but I also agree with @Nameless that it can't be as simple as just using a silver weapon - there were thousands of years with neither Heralds nor Fused figuring out how to perma kill the other.

If silver by itself (without some kind of added Investiture or something) hurt non-Threnodite Cognitive Shadows, I think either Fused or Heralds would notice when they happened to touch some silver, and then using it as a weapon would be an obvious thought

[NameIess]

23 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

But can you combine aluminum with anti-voidlight (or any Light)?

I assume that you can. The metal doesn't affect the dagger's function, according to Raboniel.

 

[cometaryorbit]

16 minutes ago, Nameless said:

I assume that you can. The metal doesn't affect the dagger's function, according to Raboniel.

 

Aluminum specifically blocks Investiture though. I don't think an aluminum dagger would let the anti-Light flow through it.

[NameIess]

Just now, cometaryorbit said:

Aluminum specifically blocks Investiture though. I don't think an aluminum dagger would let the anti-Light flow through it.

Fair. Although in that case we'd have to wonder why Brandon brought up silver as opposed to any other metal.

[cometaryorbit]

41 minutes ago, Nameless said:

Fair. Although in that case we'd have to wonder why Brandon brought up silver as opposed to any other metal.

Oh I do think silver has some specific relevance, I was mostly just questioning the idea that the mechanism can't involve anti-Light because then aluminum would work.

I don't think the effect of silver is a purely Threnody thing.

OTOH I don't think silver by itself would kill or even meaningfully harm Fused or Heralds. At some point one of them must have touched silver (Raboniel knows about silver alloys etc) and if it burned them then using it as a weapon against their counterparts would be very obvious.

The fact they got through more than fifteen Desolations without permanently killing any Fused or Heralds imo very strongly suggests that any mechanism that perma kills them must require a pretty high level of Cosmere knowledge/technology.

Now maybe Fused and Heralds are crazily more powerful than Shades so it would take withering like a million tons of silver to dust before anything happens to them... otoh they don't wither things, so the mechanism is probably very different from the Threnodite "shade is harmed but silver withers to dust" mechanism.

It might require some kind of fabrial technology involving silver, a variant of the Jezrien-killing dagger.

Edited July 20, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Rg2045]

Why did the dagger hurt pendoranah? I think it’s because of the silver 

[Frustration]

26 minutes ago, Rg2045 said:

Why did the dagger hurt pendoranah? I think it’s because of the silver 

It was the anti-light.

[Rg2045]

45 minutes ago, Frustration said:

It was the anti-light.

That’s what killed her but I think the silver bit into her. Kinda like how kaladin shardknife tore apart the spren in oathbringer 

[DresdeMBM]

We assume that silver has to be doing something to permakill spren, Heralds, Fused and the like. But we perhaps have to discard the idea that it has to be infused with some Investiture for it to work. Taking the WoBs into account, it seems that Silver has anti-Investiture qualities (not anti as in aislant like aluminum, but a more destructive way). 

Maybe it has to be vibrating to the anti-Rythm of the Investiture we want to destroy? 

[cometaryorbit]

Hmm. Another thought: there's a WoB that the dagger that killed Jezrien works on the same cosmere principles as Hemalurgy, and cosmere scholars might disagree on whether it is Hemalurgy or not.

Now obviously silver isn't one of the sixteen metals, but perhaps this apparent broader non-Scadrian hemalurgy-esque magic is what's needed. The question does ask about an aluminum *spike*, so maybe Brandon's answer is continuing the hemalurgy theme.

[stonehand]

On 7/18/2022 at 1:57 PM, Nameless said:

Silver can damage and kill shades,

 

On 7/18/2022 at 7:48 PM, LightweaverWannabe said:

Raboniel's dagger is made of a silver nickle alloy

 

On 7/21/2022 at 8:43 AM, DresdeMBM said:

We assume that silver has to be doing something to permakill spren, Heralds, Fused and the like. But we perhaps have to discard the idea that it has to be infused with some Investiture for it to work. Taking the WoBs into account, it seems that Silver has anti-Investiture qualities (not anti as in aislant like aluminum, but a more destructive way). 

 

On 7/20/2022 at 3:25 PM, cometaryorbit said:

I don't think the effect of silver is a purely Threnody thing.

What if Silver is Autonomy's God-Metal, and that's why it has a volatile reaction with other flavors of investiture? Autonomy having avatars scattered around could explain why her metal is on so many planets

[cometaryorbit]

I think it's got to be a specifically Cognitive-entity effect, though, not just a reaction with Investiture. If silver had a weird reaction with the Metallic Arts it would have been noticed on Scadrial.

I wonder if maybe it only works on beings without Physical bodies, or something. So Fused or Heralds wouldn't get burned by touching silver.

Even then, though... if you could kill a Radiant spren by just stabbing them with a silver dagger, I think that would have been discovered by the Fused during the later Desolations.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, stonehand said:

What if Silver is Autonomy's God-Metal, and that's why it has a volatile reaction with other flavors of investiture? Autonomy having avatars scattered around could explain why her metal is on so many planets

It can't be. it's silver, not Bavadinium.

[NameIess]

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think it's got to be a specifically Cognitive-entity effect, though, not just a reaction with Investiture. If silver had a weird reaction with the Metallic Arts it would have been noticed on Scadrial.

I wonder if maybe it only works on beings without Physical bodies, or something. So Fused or Heralds wouldn't get burned by touching silver.

Even then, though... if you could kill a Radiant spren by just stabbing them with a silver dagger, I think that would have been discovered by the Fused during the later Desolations.

Yeah. Perhaps the effect isn't evident until you stab the spren a whole lot, like Ishar's men did to Notum.

[stonehand]

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

It can't be. it's silver, not Bavadinium.

Debatable! Nobody in-universe refers to ettmetal as harmonium.

from the Coppermind:

The term "harmonium" has never been used in the stories published so far, but Brandon Sanderson introduced the term in one of his talks even before the release of Shadows of Self^[15] and has afterwards confirmed that it is another term for ettmetal.^[2] Marasi probably did not know the term harmonium when Allik described ettmetal to her, as otherwise the word would have translated.^[7]

[Frustration]

14 minutes ago, stonehand said:

Debatable! Nobody in-universe refers to ettmetal as harmonium.

Nor do they call it Cesium.

Shardmetals are just regular earth metals that have become so infused with Investiture that they change. No regular metal can be a shardmetal, because that change is required.

[cometaryorbit]

2 hours ago, Nameless said:

Yeah. Perhaps the effect isn't evident until you stab the spren a whole lot, like Ishar's men did to Notum.

Hmmm, was that using silver?

Maybe you have to take the silver into the Cognitive Realm to have it work in the Rosharan system? Threnody shades, maybe, are present enough in the Physical to interact with silver whereas Rosharan spren even when visible mostly aren't... unless they're manifested as Blade or Plate in which case you can't stab them with silver?

But even that seems too easy. I really get the feeling that there was no permanent way to kill Radiant spren, Fused, or Heralds in previous Desolations.

Hmm, maybe this has something to do with Raboniel's nickel/silver alloy? Perhaps the silver has to be part of a device.

[NameIess]

Just now, cometaryorbit said:

Hmmm, was that using silver?

No, it wasn't.

14 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Maybe you have to take the silver into the Cognitive Realm to have it work in the Rosharan system? Threnody shades, maybe, are present enough in the Physical to interact with silver whereas Rosharan spren even when visible mostly aren't... unless they're manifested as Blade or Plate in which case you can't stab them with silver?

That's definitely possible, but it still can't be obvious or someone would have discovered it already.

33 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Shardmetals are just regular earth metals that have become so infused with Investiture that they change. No regular metal can be a shardmetal, because that change is required.

No, Shardmetals aren't just regular earth metals that are extremely infused, they are pure Investiture manifested as matter in the physical realm.

[cometaryorbit]

I think the question is, is a god metal:

- identical on the Physical atomic level to a known metal on our RL periodic table and only different because of its Investiture and/or Spiritual nature, or;

- has the general Physical properties of metal, and even of a general group of metals (atium is a platinum group metal, harmonium is an alkali metal), but not actually Physically identical to any of our metals?

I think there are WoBs leaning in both directions ('it's normal matter but wrapped in the Spiritual' vs 'it's not on our periodic table') but none clearly answering e.g. what's the atomic number of atium?

EDIT: in either case, silver can't be one. But under the first idea, there could be a god metal Physically identical to silver (and atium corresponds to platinum and harmonium corresponds to cesium).

Edited July 27, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, Nameless said:

No, Shardmetals aren't just regular earth metals that are extremely infused, they are pure Investiture manifested as matter in the physical realm.

I can't use the arcanum right now, but there is a WoB on it.

If someone who has access wants to look at it Brandon is talking about Atium being from the platinum group and Ettmetal being an alkali metal.

[NameIess]

1 minute ago, Frustration said:

I can't use the arcanum right now, but there is a WoB on it.

If someone who has access wants to look at it Brandon is talking about Atium being from the platinum group and Ettmetal being an alkali metal.

Here you go:

Quote

Phantine

[Question unknown]

Brandon Sanderson

So, don't consider [harmonium] magically-enhanced cesium. Consider it a magically-created alkali metal. It's going to share attributes with the alkali metals, and generally follows the trends of the others, save for its melting point.

But in answer to your real question, atium would be a platinum group metal. (And platinum itself was my model.)

General Reddit 2017 (Jan. 2, 2017)

So they're not magically enhanced metals, they're metals made of Investiture that can be loosely grouped with regular metals. (Aside from the Investiture part).