Nicrosil Compounding's Practical Limitations

[Trusk'our]

Okay, we don't know for certain yet that someone could use nicrosil Feruchemy to temporarily augment their Allomancy (storing and then tapping their ability to use their Allomantic power at an accelerated rate), but for the sake of this conversation, let's say that it can be done and that Compounding can be used to increase its effectiveness.

I think that there would be a greater physical limitation on nicrosil-empowerment than would be with naturally more powerful Allomancy.

In order to make it work, you'd store your ability to use one of your Allomantic powers inside a Nicrosilmind, then you would tap it faster than normal at a later time (say, at 500%). First off, you'd face the limitation of whether or not a feedback loop was possible or not. If you tap your Nicrosilmind to increase the power of your Allomantic Nicrosil, thus letting you draw more Investiture from the SR when you Compound, thus letting you store that power inside your Metalmind, which you then tap to increase the power of your Allomancy, etc.

I kind of doubt this would work; if it did, you could more or less constantly increase your Allomantic power to ridiculous levels. I think that, more likely, if you tried this method you'd get a net loss of power; more Investiture would be drawn from your Feruchemy to enhance your Allomancy than what your new Compounding-level drew from the SR. That way, your base Allomantic strength still matters, and you can't stay at a greatly enhanced level of Allomantic power constantly.

And it's a good thing that this would be a limitation of nicrosil Compounding, since it makes the power more balanced.

Second limitation: Metalmind size. For example, if you tried to make yourself into a Thug that had fifty times the raw Allomantic power of a normal Thug, you'd have a problem; you can only cram so much Investiture into Nicrosilminds of a usable size. I think that this is also good, because you wouldn't see a Nicrosil Compounder having Lord Ruler level strength on a consistent basis.

TLDR, if Nicrosil Compounding does work, you'd have two limiting factors; base Allomantic strength and Metalmind size. And that's a good thing, because it makes the power more balanced, and actually possible to make cannon because it doesn't break the game, so to speak.

[Quantus]

Add a twist:  Identity Blanking allows Many-to-One conversion in Metalminds, meaning a whole crew with matching powers wouldnt need anything UnSealed, they could all donate to a common UnKeyed metalmind and then have a chosen Champion to wield the reserve.

(And eventually you get a ship-wide Feruchemical Life Support System shared by the entire Crew.  Everyone Sleeping donates a little to those on Watch duty, things like Food and air are converted from raw Investiture, etc. 

[alder24]

25 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

In order to make it work, you'd store your ability to use one of your Allomantic powers inside a Nicrosilmind, then you would tap it faster than normal at a later time (say, at 500%). First off, you'd face the limitation of whether or not a feedback loop was possible or not. If you tap your Nicrosilmind to increase the power of your Allomantic Nicrosil, thus letting you draw more Investiture from the SR when you Compound, thus letting you store that power inside your Metalmind, which you then tap to increase the power of your Allomancy, etc.

I don't think Nicrosil works like regular metalminds. Can you tap memory at 500%? No. Nicrosil isn't like copper (medallion nicrosil is, but medallions are limited and the Bands were running out of Nicrosil), but it's somewhat similar as you store investiture in it, parts of your soul. It doesn't make sense to tap it at 500%. 

I don't know how it works, but for me it makes more sense than normal Feruchemist Nicrosil work as you have it or not (like medallions). But I see it entirely valid for normal Nicrosilmind to work like the rest (like the Bands), you store your Allomancy for 1h and have no Allomancy for 1h, you tap it for 1h and have 2x stronger Allomancy, or 3x for 25 minutes etc. Both options make sense, and both were shown to be used in book (BoM).

30 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I kind of doubt this would work; if it did, you could more or less constantly increase your Allomantic power to ridiculous levels.

There must be an upper limit of how much your soul can take from SR. I think Rashek's Allomancy is that limit, you can't get more powerful than him, without using external sources like Mists, Dor, Perpendicularity, which doesn't burden your soul.

 

But that's a good idea, if Nicrosil works like other metalminds. Tapping A-Nicrosil with diminishing returns before compounding, would give you much more power and you'll get more from compounding. Good one.

[Koloss17]

58 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Add a twist:  Identity Blanking allows Many-to-One conversion in Metalminds, meaning a whole crew with matching powers wouldnt need anything UnSealed, they could all donate to a common UnKeyed metalmind and then have a chosen Champion to wield the reserve.

(And eventually you get a ship-wide Feruchemical Life Support System shared by the entire Crew.  Everyone Sleeping donates a little to those on Watch duty, things like Food and air are converted from raw Investiture, etc. 

Honestly, this is how I think unsealed metalminds work. You rig a device that spikes someone with F-aluminum, both A and F-Nicrosil, and a metalborn ability of choice. You black identity, compound nicrosil, getting two or three people’s worth of metal, and then donating that to a metalmind.

[Quantus]

1 minute ago, Koloss17 said:

Honestly, this is how I think unsealed metalminds work. You rig a device that spikes someone with F-aluminum, both A and F-Nicrosil, and a metalborn ability of choice. You black identity, compound nicrosil, getting two or three people’s worth of metal, and then donating that to a metalmind.

Possibly, though I was imagining a group passing around a single UnSealed F-Aluminum medallion, rather than involving Hemalurgy

[Koloss17]

4 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Possibly, though I was imagining a group passing around a single UnSealed F-Aluminum medallion, rather than involving Hemalurgy

Yeah, honestly I only think Hemalurgy because Excisors seem to be a device, not a person. But your idea would certainly work!

 

and it would fit with Kelsier’s newfound love of Hemalurgy in Era 2

Edited April 19, 2023 by Koloss17

[Mistchemist16]

36 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

Honestly, this is how I think unsealed metalminds work. You rig a device that spikes someone with F-aluminum, both A and F-Nicrosil, and a metalborn ability of choice. You black identity, compound nicrosil, getting two or three people’s worth of metal, and then donating that to a metalmind.

Decent theory. However, I do have one other question about it. Per WoB, creating unsealed metalminds involves F-Duralumin. It was hesitant, but Brandon did say yes and clarified he had the steps listed out. So my question is, where does F-Duralumin fit into your theory? How would it help make an unsealed metalmind?

Quote

Questioner

Does creating unsealed metalmind involve Feruchemical duralumin?

Brandon Sanderson

(hesitating)...Yes. I will write it all out for you eventually. I want to get at least one more book done, then you find out exactly why and how.

Questioner

Because I was pretty confused about the Investiture and Spiritweb...

Brandon Sanderson

Here is the reason I'm kind of hesitant of this, [why not you just RAFO this one right now], but it is not a RAFO, because it is like it's a secret. I want to write it out exactly how it happens, because I have it in my notes in bullet points and it's complicated, right? Cause I want some of the things in the magic system as be as complicated as for instance explaining how a computer works right now. You can do it, but you know...I want the magic to start getting that technical if that makes sense. When you say "involve", right, that's a big word. Why just don't you let me, after lost metal...if I haven't released it, you have permission to come to me and say: "Brandon, you said you would release this, you haven't yet [...]" and I will give to you the bullet point flowchart of how you build the unkeyed metalminds.

Leipzig Book Fair (March 24, 2017)

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[Koloss17]

5 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

Decent theory. However, I do have one other question about it. Per WoB, creating unsealed metalminds involves F-Duralumin. It was hesitant, but Brandon did say yes and clarified he had the steps listed out. So my question is, where does F-Duralumin fit into your theory? How would it help make an unsealed metalmind?

 

Yeah, I keep forgetting this WoB exists. Well, F-Duralumin involves connection. Honestly? I got no clue. I’m certain there’s been older posts about where it factors in.

[Mistchemist16]

1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

Yeah, I keep forgetting this WoB exists. Well, F-Duralumin involves connection. Honestly? I got no clue. I’m certain there’s been older posts about where it factors in.

I did actually have my own theory about the Duralumin connection (pun intended). In my theory, it’s possible for a Duralumin Feruchemist to tap Connection directly from a God Metal, even though it’s not a metalmind. Mostly because the God Metal is still very Invested and Connected to a Shard. So an Excisor is harmonium hacked to act as pure Investuture, allowing free usage of stored powers similar to lerasium. 

Here’s the full theory

 

Quote

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. But, so there are some other tricks with this as well that don't make it...so anyway, you've got a couple of things that can go on. So you've got a blank metalmind, right, with nothing. You need either investiture, to be able...like you need to be the right type. There are ways to access that if you are completely blank also, if you were a blank slate, but that is still...kind of hard. It's even harder if you are blank, and the metalmind is not blank, but that's not what they're doing in Mistborn right now. You are tapping investiture, gaining the ability of feruchemy and then you are drawing out a blank metalmind, ok. That's the one you need to be...and everything else I'm hedging on intentionally, and I'm worried I hedged in a way that made it sound confusing, ok. So you know now what they're doing. You know that there are other things possible. But I don't want you to think that you have the explanations for how all those things happen, ok.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[Trusk'our]

9 hours ago, alder24 said:

I don't think Nicrosil works like regular metalminds. Can you tap memory at 500%? No. Nicrosil isn't like copper (medallion nicrosil is, but medallions are limited and the Bands were running out of Nicrosil), but it's somewhat similar as you store investiture in it, parts of your soul. It doesn't make sense to tap it at 500%. 

That certainly could be the case, but based on the nicrosil being like a Coppermind quote, it's possible that it was referring specifically to the Malwish medallions, which have also been stated to be more limited in some ways than straight up nicrosil Feruchemy (part of the greater restriction on the medallions being that you can't choose to tap them at an accelerated rate).

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/316/#e11247

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/361/#e11519

Calderis

Does the nicrosil portion of the medallions function identitically to how a Soulbearer Ferring would use Nicrosil? 

Brandon Sanderson

Not exactly. The medallion is a little more restrictive, for one thing.

I may just be reading into that too much, however.

9 hours ago, alder24 said:

There must be an upper limit of how much your soul can take from SR. I think Rashek's Allomancy is that limit, you can't get more powerful than him, without using external sources like Mists, Dor, Perpendicularity, which doesn't burden your soul.

That could be the case. It could help explain why Rashek didn't just make himself even more powerful when drawing on the power of the Well of Ascension- he couldn't.

It may just have been that he didn't consider making himself into an ultra-powerful Mistborn until only the dregs of the Well remained though, so him being at the max limit of Allomancy isn't necessarily the only explanation (though it still seems like a good one in my estimation- perhaps you could temporarily draw out more, but stress your Spiritweb when doing so?).

9 hours ago, alder24 said:

But that's a good idea, if Nicrosil works like other metalminds. Tapping A-Nicrosil with diminishing returns before compounding, would give you much more power and you'll get more from compounding. Good one.

Thank you, I appreciate it! 

10 hours ago, Quantus said:

Add a twist:  Identity Blanking allows Many-to-One conversion in Metalminds, meaning a whole crew with matching powers wouldnt need anything UnSealed, they could all donate to a common UnKeyed metalmind and then have a chosen Champion to wield the reserve.

Assuming that's possible, things would very quickly get very powerful (which based on this quote, should be achievable) 

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8659

Yata

If you have 32 Misting and Ferring, every kind possible, without using Hemalurgy, you can craft a medallion? Without the aftermath of the--

Brandon Sanderson

So could you craft a medallion... without-- oh. That should be possible, but this is one of the things where I have to dig out the notes and double-check myself. But this should be possible.

 

8 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

and it would fit with Kelsier’s newfound love of Hemalurgy in Era 2

I don't know, he seemed pretty hesitant about using Hemalurgy during his conversation with Sazed.

8 hours ago, Mistchemist16 said:

Decent theory. However, I do have one other question about it. Per WoB, creating unsealed metalminds involves F-Duralumin. It was hesitant, but Brandon did say yes and clarified he had the steps listed out. So my question is, where does F-Duralumin fit into your theory? How would it help make an unsealed metalmind?

I wonder if, since Spiritwebs are mostly made up of Connection (acting as the "structure" of the Spiritweb, while Identity defines its borders, and Investiture is the substance it's built of), if perhaps a rudimentary Spiritweb is crafted for each medallion via the Excisors. After all, they do have more of a "life force" and individual Identity than other Metalminds.

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509/#e15930

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

 

[Mistchemist16]

21 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

That certainly could be the case, but based on the nicrosil being like a Coppermind quote, it's possible that it was referring specifically to the Malwish medallions, which have also been stated to be more limited in some ways than straight up nicrosil Feruchemy (part of the greater restriction on the medallions being that you can't choose to tap them at an accelerated rate).

I may just be reading into that too much, however.

I hope that the coppermind trait is unique to medallions. If not, that makes the idea of F-nicrosil really annoying. The whole point of Feruchemy is that you’re supposed to get more of an attribute by forgoing it in the moment. Copper is an exception because we can intuitively understand why it would make sense to store memories as they are. F-Nicrosil doesn’t have that. It’s not even like aluminum either, because aluminum makes sense as an Allomantic pairing to duralumin and it doesn’t break the normal rules of Allomancy either. 
 

24 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I wonder if, since Spiritwebs are mostly made up of Connection (acting as the "structure" of the Spiritweb, while Identity defines its borders, and Investiture is the substance it's built of), if perhaps a rudimentary Spiritweb is crafted for each medallion via the Excisors. After all, they do have more of a "life force" and individual Identity than other Metalminds.

 

You could probably do some things like that and I’m sure artificial souls will come up again at some point. However, I don’t get the impression that it’s what the F-duralumin does. Look at the word choice of that WoB again

Quote

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

The tone sounds like Brandon trying to justify a story decision that doesn’t fit perfectly. Especially when he says “we’ll just say”. That sounds like a sort of handwave to me.

To clarify, I’m not saying this as an insult. Brandon is an amazing author and I find Mistborn to be especially addictive. But at the end of the day, authors do have to make choices. I don’t think this is a major breach of Cosmere rules and it allows massive storytelling potential in return. I could see Brandon making that trade.

However, I could also be reading this wrong. If I am, then my best guess is that the mechanics are complicated in a way Brandon doesn’t want to explain. Or he’s leaving us with a more vague explanation to be expanded upon. But I really think this is a mostly meta decision.

On an unrelated note, I have a question. If excisors are spikes, how would you guess F-Duralumin fits in? Do you just have to use the Duralumin Ferring to store in the medallion? Do medallions have Duralumin alongside Duralumin? I do want to know what general ideas you have in mind for the medallions.

[Trusk'our]

4 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

I hope that the coppermind trait is unique to medallions. If not, that makes the idea of F-nicrosil really annoying. The whole point of Feruchemy is that you’re supposed to get more of an attribute by forgoing it in the moment. Copper is an exception because we can intuitively understand why it would make sense to store memories as they are. F-Nicrosil doesn’t have that. It’s not even like aluminum either, because aluminum makes sense as an Allomantic pairing to duralumin and it doesn’t break the normal rules of Allomancy either. 

Same here. I'd love to see nicrosil Compounding allow some epic uses of Allomantic power, Lord Ruler style power.

5 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

You could probably do some things like that and I’m sure artificial souls will come up again at some point. However, I don’t get the impression that it’s what the F-duralumin does. Look at the word choice of that WoB again

The tone sounds like Brandon trying to justify a story decision that doesn’t fit perfectly. Especially when he says “we’ll just say”. That sounds like a sort of handwave to me.

To clarify, I’m not saying this as an insult. Brandon is an amazing author and I find Mistborn to be especially addictive. But at the end of the day, authors do have to make choices. I don’t think this is a major breach of Cosmere rules and it allows massive storytelling potential in return. I could see Brandon making that trade.

However, I could also be reading this wrong. If I am, then my best guess is that the mechanics are complicated in a way Brandon doesn’t want to explain. Or he’s leaving us with a more vague explanation to be expanded upon. But I really think this is a mostly meta decision.

Yeah, I think that we probably just don't have enough information to be sure of anything yet, but sometimes you have to bend the rules a little as an author to make the magic any good, which I personally think is okay, especially if you come up with new mechanics and a proper explanation for why it works the new way afterward.

Hemalurgic Compounding comes to mind, which I actually really like, since it adds more layers to crack through coming up with my crackpot ideas 

8 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

On an unrelated note, I have a question. If excisors are spikes, how would you guess F-Duralumin fits in? Do you just have to use the Duralumin Ferring to store in the medallion? Do medallions have Duralumin alongside Duralumin? I do want to know what general ideas you have in mind for the medallions.

Currently, I think that the Excisors may just be a specialized set of Metalminds created by Kelsier and Spook working together- Kel for the knowledge of a Sliver of Preservation, Spook to bear Hemalurgic spikes and allow for the necessary powers.

I would be willing to bet that the Metalborn who create the Malwish medallions use the Excisors to Blank their Identity whilst storing their power, which can then be tapped for others to use.

F-duralumin may come into play by having two or more Metalborn tapping Connection to each other while they are storing their power; this Connects the powers stored in the new medallions, which would allow them to interact as if they were from one individual. However, too many people with differing Connections would muddy this a little, hence the reason no medallions have been made yet that grant more than three powers.

I also think that since Investiture tends to gain a life of its own, it's possible that the reason medallions have their own Identity and "life" is because they have F-nicrosil; perhaps their is more "soul" inside a Soulbearer's power than other Feruchemical attributes, which the medallions pick up on?

Anyways, those are my current ideas, but I'm excited for era 3 so that we can know for sure how the medallions work soon (thank you for asking btw, I'm honored that you value my opinion ).

[Kendelian]

One potential implication is that nicrosil stores Investiture, which means that compounding it may allow a Radiant to have an infinite or near-infinite supply of Stormlight.

[Trusk'our]

3 hours ago, Kendelian said:

One potential implication is that nicrosil stores Investiture, which means that compounding it may allow a Radiant to have an infinite or near-infinite supply of Stormlight.

I think that it would be difficult for a Radiant to directly use nicrosil to fuel their Surges, since Ferucehmical nicrosil stores the ability to use the powers they have, not the fuel itself.

However, if you could find a way to Unkey the Investiture of nicrosil, I think that you could use it as an alternative to Stormlight for to fuel Radiant powers.

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Kendelian said:

One potential implication is that nicrosil stores Investiture, which means that compounding it may allow a Radiant to have an infinite or near-infinite supply of Stormlight.

Right now, all we know is that nicrosil stores the ability to use investiture, not pure investiture like Stormlight itself. Innate investiture, not kinetic/static.