Could a nicrosil compounder become more powerful than a shard?

[The First Gem]

ok so I was doing some digging and found out that a nicrosil stores investiture and that a nicrosil coumpounder would theoretically have a nigh Infinte amount of investiture. So I was wondering just by pure investiture could they become a shard? And if they can’t become a shard could they just become more powerful anyway?

[Dunkum]

Allomancy (and compounding by extension) sources its power from Preservation. At the absolute maximum a Nicrosil compounder could only pull in all of Preservation's power.  Maybe all of Harmony's power, given that Preservation is sort of merged into that.

but that is the theoretical limit.  the practical limit would be much, much lower than that. I don't know that we have exact numbers for how much investiture you get per gram of nicrosil compounded, but i'd wager to pull in a full shard's power you would need to burn literal tons - and not just a few; we are talking billions to quadrillions of tons. basically there is  WOB comparing the power of a shard to the mass of a planet, it isn't very precise but it gives a reasonable impression of the scale of what you are talking about.  so if human scale allomancy usage is a few grams of metal, then shard scale would need an entire planet's worth of metal; and even just a single mountain is going to run into the billions of tons.  there isn't really a way for an individual human to acquire that much nicrosil, let alone physically burn that much metal in a short enough time to hold onto it

[Quantus]

No, the amount of power in a Shard far exceeds how much can be physically crammed into mundane metal of practical size.  And while compounders can get Savant warped from over-use, Allomancy doesnt actually let the person hold a lot of Investiture at once; they are limited to what they can do with Flaring and Duralumin.  They are a firehose but not necessarily a water tower.  And they couldnt fit a whole Shard in a metalmind to be able to flush it out all at once.   

The closest possibility that I see is that the God-king Breath horde could someday (millennia down the line) become so big it collapses in on itself and becomes a Sliver-Mantle.  But even then it would provide a Connection to pick up an unattended shard but it would probably still need to keep growing a huge amount before you could wrestle control of the full shard from the current Endowment.  

 

 

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Blightsong

Is it theoretically possible to Hemalurgically spike a Shard into someone else, and if so, what would be the outcome?

Brandon Sanderson

A full shard? Hemalurgy could not hold that much of an Invested charge... not... yeah, like a hemallurgic spike really couldn't hold that much. Not without something really weird happening, so.

OdysseyCon 2016 (April 8, 2016)

 

 

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Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.

1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.

2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.

DragonCon 2012 (Sept. 4, 2012)

 

 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by Quantus

[NerdyAarakocra]

Yes, you could get a large amount of Investiture.

However, as mentioned by Dunkum, there would be a limit involving how much metal you could procure.

You also wouldn't really be able to use your massive Investiture stockpile - unless you had other Investiture abilities.

[The First Gem]

Ok thanks. Still I bet that they could get really powerful.

[Proletariat]

I don't think it's possible to do what you're thinking of in order to make one person all powerful since there's limits on how much a human body can hold and what they can do with it, but I think something similar will need to become a plot point.

There needs to be renewable Investiture access if there's going to be consistent space stuff in the future, otherwise where are the never ending sources of metal going to come from to fly between different solar systems? Or the loads of perfect gems to store all the light necessary to send a ship between planets and back again? And how will Selish magic users fuel their abilities once they figure out the connection issue? 

These expanding empires will need to be powered somehow, and it will require producing the amount of investiture you're thinking of but distributed amongst a huge number of people.

[Trusk'our]

I don't believe that it would be possible to use Nicrosil Compounding to obtain a Shard's full power. Even if you could compound and store enough Investiture to ascend, you likely wouldn't gain the Connection to the Shard to actually hold it indefinitely. 

You might be able to Ascend like with the Well of Ascension temporarily though, which would be pretty cool .