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On the Feruchemy of Nicrosil


skaa

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Of all the base metals, only two have Feruchemical properties that are not yet well understood even by Terrismen as of AoL. These are nicrosil and aluminum. I would like to put forth my thoughts regarding them.

 

This thread will be about nicrosil. Here's my thread about aluminum.

 

According to the Coppermind Wiki, this is what we know about nicrosil Feruchemy:

 

A nicrosil Ferring is known as a Soulbearer. Nicrosil is used to store Investiture. This ability is not understood (even by those who utilize it).

 

My theory is that nicrosil allows its user to store any Invested abilities. Not just Feruchemical or Allomantic abilities, but any human-level magic ability in the Cosmere.

 

One could say that nicrosil Feruchemy is like the Feruchemical equivalent of duralumin Allomancy: it's useless when it's your only power, but can be useful when combined with other powers. Note that once a Soulbearer stores his single Invested ability (nicrosil Feruchemy) in a Nicrosilmind, he won't be able to get it back since his power to access his Nicrosilmind would be absent. Whoops.

 

"So what's the use of storing abilities?" you might ask. At first glance, it doesn't seem to be useful even to full Feruchemists since there seems to be little sense in storing your own Feruchemical powers. It could be a way to strengthen a Twinborn's Allomantic power (e.g. make your Rioting stronger by spending time with just a fraction of your zinc Allomancy), but that still doesn't sound terribly exciting (especially for a Gnat Twinborn).

 

But wait, we're forgetting the third Metallic Art: Hemalurgy.

 

There are hundreds of hemalurgical spike points in the body, and it's possible that non-Scadrial powers can be stolen via Hemalurgy. But as we know, there are drawbacks:

  • A Hemalurgical spike's charge grows weaker over time (unless you keep it in your body constantly).
  • Any ability obtained from a spike disappears once the spike is removed.
  • The smaller a spike is, the less charge it can have.
  • It is probably not physically possible to place decent-sized spikes on all the bind points in a human body without tearing the body apart.
  • Having lots of spikes in one's body makes one very conspicuous.

What if all those drawbacks can be avoided? Let me present this scenario:

 

Imagine a Feruchemist who understood the full potential of nicrosil. One day, he finds a treasure chest full of Hemalurgical spikes of all types that are already helpfully labelled (alright, that's quite unlikely; let's just say he used lots of Chromiumminds earlier that day :P). Let's say he takes a bronze spike charged with gold Allomancy, and uses it to become a gold Compounder just like Miles. Then (and here's the important part), he stores his new gold Allomancy power in one of his Nicrosilminds.

 

Why is this important? Because once he retrieves that power back by tapping the Nicrosilmind, the power no longer belongs to the spike; it now belongs to him. He can therefore remove the spike and still be a gold Compounder. He repeats the process using other spikes, healing his wounds as he discards each spike. Soon, he finds himself wielding all the powers of a Mistborn alongside his Feruchemy powers, and there's not a single spike in his body! He can use the same trick to obtain all the Invested abilities in Cosmere (well, Stormlight and Dor-based powers might be tricky to use while he's on Scadrial, but maybe Hoid could teach him world-hopping). He'd look just like a normal human being, but he'd be magical in ALL the Shardworlds.

 

What do you guys think of that?

 

 

Edit: After Kadrok informed me about how nicrosil Feruchemy is explained in MAG, I decided to incorporate that and my theory above into a larger theory: nicrosil Feruchemy can store any kind of Investiture: Invested abilities, contents of metalminds, Spiritual DNA, etc. Read all about it here.

Edited by skaa
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Feruchemy tends not to create permanent loss of something, the exception being copper. I'd think it unlikely that you would be able to do something like this with feruchemy, it's unlikely to ever be usable by anyone other than a primary antagonist since they'd still have to make the spikes (Kill people) which is what I'd view as the actual main drawback from hemalurgy, spikes don't have to be particularly large to be effective, especially if you're just doing it for compounding so I don't see this as being particularly helpful.

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Feruchemy tends not to create permanent loss of something, the exception being copper.

 

Correction: we have not yet seen Feruchemy create complete loss of something, the exception being copper. Other metalminds store traits that would either be fatal or paradoxical if stored completely (e.g. storing all your nutrition in a Bendalloymind would kill you). Logically speaking, memories (copper) and Invested abilities (nicrosil) can be safely stored in their entirety. And in the case of some Invested abilities like Forgery and [insert-metal-name-here] Feruchemy, you're probably forced to store them completely since they're not really divisible (what would storing 65% of Forgery Investiture look like?!).

 

 

it's unlikely to ever be usable by anyone other than a primary antagonist since they'd still have to make the spikes (Kill people) which is what I'd view as the actual main drawback from hemalurgy

 

I agree. Just like Steel Inquisitors, a Feruchemist with Nicrosilminds and knowledge of Hemalurgy would probably be villainous, especially once he realizes the existence of other Shardworlds. Or for all we know he could be a Pathian, a follower of Harmony, and is content with whatever ability he got from his Hemalurgical earring.

Edited by skaa
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Correction: we have not yet seen Feruchemy create complete loss of something, the exception being copper. Other metalminds store traits that would either be fatal or paradoxical if stored completely (e.g. storing all your nutrition in a Bendalloymind would kill you). Logically speaking, memories (copper) and Invested abilities (nicrosil) can be safely stored in their entirety. And in the case of some Invested abilities like Forgery and [insert-metal-name-here] Feruchemy, you're probably forced to store them completely since they're not really divisible (what would storing 65% of Forgery Investiture look like?!).

Weight is frequently stored in its entirety, doesn't cause anyone to be permanently weightless, and I actually got WoB on copper that you could partially store a memory in a coppermind and it'd still be a permanent loss until you retrieved it.

I agree. Just like Steel Inquisitors, a Feruchemist with Nicrosilminds and knowledge of Hemalurgy would probably be villainous, especially once he realizes the existence of other Shardworlds. Or for all we know he could be a Pathian, a follower of Harmony, and is content with whatever ability he got from his Hemalurgical earring.

Pathian earrings would have such a small charge by AoL that they'd be nigh on useless

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Voidus, I'm afraid you've been picking at minor, irrelevant points, so let me rephrase my counter-argument. I *know* that memory storage is, as of now, the only trait we've seen in the books that is permanently lost upon storage. But just because it's the only exception we've seen so far doesn't mean there aren't other exceptions. I think Investiture storage works just like memory storage. That's my theory, anyhow. Whether or not Brandon decides to make a nicrosil Feruchemy antagonist or a nicrosil Feruchemy protagonist is completely up to him.

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Voidus, I'm afraid you've been picking at minor, irrelevant points, so let me rephrase my counter-argument. I *know* that memory storage is, as of now, the only trait we've seen in the books that is permanently lost upon storage. But just because it's the only exception we've seen so far doesn't mean there aren't other exceptions. I think Investiture storage works just like memory storage. That's my theory, anyhow. Whether or not Brandon decides to make a nicrosil Feruchemy antagonist or a nicrosil Feruchemy protagonist is completely up to him.

That's partially my point, that you really couldn't have a protagonist if this was his ability, he'd either be useless because he'd never use hemalurgy or not a protagonist because he has to murder or maim people to gain useful abilities. That aside it provides little conceivable benefits compared to just using hemalurgy anyway, Vins earring held enough of a charge to significantly increase her allomancy, a few more earrings would not really hinder anyone in a noticeable way.

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That aside it provides little conceivable benefits compared to just using hemalurgy anyway, Vins earring held enough of a charge to significantly increase her allomancy, a few more earrings would not really hinder anyone in a noticeable way.

 

I can think of a few benefits:

  • You won't have to rely on always wearing spikes which (as we've seen in the first trilogy) can be removed by powerful/persistent/resourceful/lucky opponents.
  • You won't have to listen to Harmony if you don't want to (e.g. if you're a villain); even Pathians don't wear their earrings all the time.
  • You can have all your bind points pierced at some point, and you'll retain all the abilities you gain.
  • You can blend in with normal non-pierced people and not have to worry about your spikes losing their charge or having to repierce when you need to fight.
  • I imagine it would be possible to use nicrosil to compound some Invested abilities like Allomancy (which does have levels of power unlike, say, Forgery). So you can become as powerful an Allomancer as the Lord Ruler even when the spikes you originally used were weak.

Like I said, I really wouldn't mind if nicrosil Feruchemy will only be used by villains. Maybe Brandon will find some clever way for a protagonist to use it, or maybe not. If we had another Lord Ruler-level villain, so what? He still wouldn't compare to god-level enemies like Ruin and Odium, right?

Edited by skaa
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Actually come to think of it, this probably wouldn't even work with Hemalurgy, same problem as with a coppermind once you take a memory out it starts to degrade again, you might be able to briefly use an ability without a spike but since your body doesn't actually have the spike providing the support for the extra piece of spiritweb you'd probably lose the Investiture once you stopped tapping, which is still kind of useful for an antagonist, if this weren't a permanent type thing and you could store a few hours' worth of hemalurgic investiture and then later not need your spikes for a few hours.

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Actually come to think of it, this probably wouldn't even work with Hemalurgy, same problem as with a coppermind once you take a memory out it starts to degrade again, you might be able to briefly use an ability without a spike but since your body doesn't actually have the spike providing the support for the extra piece of spiritweb you'd probably lose the Investiture once you stopped tapping, which is still kind of useful for an antagonist, if this weren't a permanent type thing and you could store a few hours' worth of hemalurgic investiture and then later not need your spikes for a few hours.

 

Interesting. I guess that would be one way to balance out the advantage of getting extra Investitures. I was actually thinking a few minutes ago that Hoid might be using nicrosil Feruchemy somehow to wield multiple Investitures, but that won't be much use if the powers degrade over time.

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Have you read how Nicrosil works in the MAG. Because it isn't like this. In the MAG the Feruchemist used Nicrosilminds to convert other stored attributes into a generic energy source that can be tapped to boost other tapped attributes... say you've stored a tonne of heat you don't need after walking in a desert... you use Nicrosil feruchemy to convert the heat to investiture... then later when tapping pewter (or gold or whatever) you can tap Nicrosil and the investiture becomes flavoured as pewter... so it is... as you suppose, kind of useless on it's own. So Nicrosil doesn't so much store abilities as it stores generic energy. There are a couple of other ways to store which are of note, you can store influxes of energy depending on how good you are at storing and the examples given are if you could draw power from the mists, the Well of Ascension or even a Duralumin/Nicrosil burst. If you tap tonnes of it you can use it to erase other people's Metalminds. What I am interested in is how it interacts with Allomancy (the MAG is leaving the Feruchemy-Allomancy crossovers for the Alloy of Law supplement) since it seems like you should be able to store Allomantic burning as investiture and draw it later to pad out your metals. Like some kind of mana battery...

EDIT:

Interesting. I guess that would be one way to balance out the advantage of getting extra Investitures. I was actually thinking a few minutes ago that Hoid might be using nicrosil Feruchemy somehow to wield multiple Investitures, but that won't be much use if the powers degrade over time.

Coming off the back of my Gold Allomancy and Aluminium Feruchemy idea (the same connection you arrived at independently) I suggested that perhaps someone skilled with Malatium, or some other similar power, could store other identities for access to other regional identities... and perhaps as part of accessing multiple magic systems... let me find the link...

DOUBLE EDIT:

BRAINWAVE!!!!

 

Recently in a topic connecting Gold Allomancy to identity I speculated thus:

"Also, with regard to the theory connecting Gold to identity, while it is true that Gold is a temporal metal, I wonder if Aluminium Feruchemy could be used to store these shadow identities. A Gold/Aluminum Twinborn might actually be really interesting, able to have several different versions of themselves 'living' in different Metalminds able to be drawn in appropriate situations... or you could tap them all at once and have multiple personality disorder..."

 

And then it hit me! What if this is the key to what you're talking about?! What if MALATIUM shades could be stored in Aluminium instead of Gold ones? The Malatium shades of someone from a different region?

 

 

Obviously though there is more to being born somewhere than where you think you're from, as Phantom Points out.

 

 

EDIT [Mistborn spoilers]: Forgive me if this doesn't give enough of an explanation, and sounds like crazed ramblings... I hope quoting myself (as conceited as that feels) from the other topic gives enough background, but brainwaves tend to skew my perceptions a tad. I remember this one time, I had an iced coffee before bed... it was all crazy fever dreams and arguments (in the logic sense) which made no sense running through my head at a million miles an hour... it felt kind of like how I imagine the Magic the Gathering card "Mind Unbound" would feel: a surge of insight and then your head explodes. Suffice it to say, now that I have cooled down a bit, I see some obvious problems... the Gold thread examines the connection Vin felt to her Shadow Self, but I don't recall if any such connection or insight was experienced by her when she burned Malatium... I only recall the visual she got... perhaps a trained Malatium burner could gain the connection to another's past/possible self to be able to store it in an Aluminium-mind.

I figured I'd just quote it here as you're interested in possible ways of having multiple investitures... being able to swap out regional identities seems at least part of the puzzle. Edited by Windrunner
Please don't post multiple times in a row. You can simply edit your original post. Thanks! :)
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Have you read how Nicrosil works in the MAG. Because it isn't like this. In the MAG the Feruchemist used Nicrosilminds to convert other stored attributes into a generic energy source that can be tapped to boost other tapped attributes... say you've stored a tonne of heat you don't need after walking in a desert... you use Nicrosil feruchemy to convert the heat to investiture... then later when tapping pewter (or gold or whatever) you can tap Nicrosil and the investiture becomes flavoured as pewter... so it is... as you suppose, kind of useless on it's own. So Nicrosil doesn't so much store abilities as it stores generic energy. There are a couple of other ways to store which are of note, you can store influxes of energy depending on how good you are at storing and the examples given are if you could draw power from the mists, the Well of Ascension or even a Duralumin/Nicrosil burst. If you tap tonnes of it you can use it to erase other people's Metalminds.

Oh! I almost forgot about MAG. I don't think it's available where I live. :( Thanks for the info, Kadrok!

Okay, I'm willing to suspend my own nicrosil theory for now, unless Brandon says that this particular MAG rule isn't canon.

(MAG wouldn't happen to have rules for aluminum Feruchemy, would it? :P)

But since AoL says that people using nicrosil Feruchemy don't really know exactly what they're doing, I bet there's even more to it than just that. What if this "generic energy" can be converted to non-Scadrial Investiture? Say, convert it to BioChroma, or Stormlight, or even Dor. I guess you'd still need to have non-Scadrial spiritual DNA for that to work, though... (Hemalurgy, anyone? :lol: )

Anyway, if I correctly understand your description of MAG rules on the matter, tapping a Nicrosilmind acts a bit (but not exactly) like Allomantic duralumin in that it allows the Feruchemist to sort of get more power out of his other metals (say, get more strength when tapping from his Pewtermind). This makes me wonder if there's an inherent relationship between duralumin and nicrosil in the Metallic Arts, since Allomantic duralumin and Allomantic nicrosil also work in similar ways (except in the recipient of their power). In which case, maybe duralumin Feruchemy ("Spiritual Connection/Friendship") somehow has a yet-unknown connection to Investiture.

I have a question about MAG-type nicrosil Feruchemy. Does Investiture storage require that you have another non-empty metalmind to get Investiture from, or can a full Feruchemist store any trait as Investiture directly to a Nicrosilmind?

Another question: For example, if you have more Investiture stored in a Nicrosilmind than you have Strength stored in a Pewtermind, how much total Strength can you tap? Just twice your Pewtermind's contents? Or can you convert all your Investiture to Strength?

 

What I am interested in is how it interacts with Allomancy (the MAG is leaving the Feruchemy-Allomancy crossovers for the Alloy of Law supplement) since it seems like you should be able to store Allomantic burning as investiture and draw it later to pad out your metals. Like some kind of mana battery...

I guess the way it would work is when a Twinborn taps Investiture while burning a metal, it would boost the Allomantic power that he'd produce even if he's not flaring. I wonder if a Twinborn could reach duralumin-burst-like levels of Allomantic power using this "generic energy" without immediately depleting his metal reserves. That would be awesome!

Edited by skaa
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I have a question about MAG-type nicrosil Feruchemy. Does Investiture storage require that you have another non-empty metalmind to get Investiture from, or can a full Feruchemist store any trait as Investiture directly to a Nicrosilmind?

You have to tap from another metalmind, yeah. And you can only drain from one other at a time.

Basically it lets you shuffle between metalminds. Though, there's a mention you might be able to like, store the power from the well of ascension.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could use a nicrosilmind and like, pump up a normal Breath to like 2000x the size and have a pseudo-Divine Breath, but you'd probably have to be a compounder or something.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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Oh! I almost forgot about MAG. I don't think it's available where I live. :( Thanks for the info, Kadrok!

Okay, I'm willing to suspend my own nicrosil theory for now, unless Brandon says that this particular MAG rule isn't canon.

(MAG wouldn't happen to have rules for aluminum Feruchemy, would it? :P)

 

As it happens, yes... but it's weird... Brandon notes in one of his boxes (he has Brandon-says boxes throughout the MAG) that it's a very RP thing to store it... when storing you should play your character different, thinking about what personality traits make your character your character... and tone them down a lot... also make them more impressionable and "wishy-washy". In terms of hard rules when storing you're more amenable to manipulation (deception, seduction, intimidation, interrogation) and you're more suceptible to zinc/brass allomancy. Tapping is kind of the opposite... your character becomes a more extreme version of themselves... and they're harder to manipulate. The real interesting bit is the "Tapping More than 10 charges" section (which is a section every metal has and details extreme things you can do, kind of like feats... eg. if you want to use Gold to regrow limbs, it's in this section of Gold Feruchemy). Tapping lots of Aluminum resets your personality back to an earlier point... with more charges required for earlier personality regressions... and if you tap the max, you essentially reset your personality.

 

 

But since AoL says that people using nicrosil Feruchemy don't really know exactly what they're doing, I bet there's even more to it than just that. What if this "generic energy" can be converted to non-Scadrial Investiture? Say, convert it to BioChroma, or Stormlight, or even Dor. I guess you'd still need to have non-Scadrial spiritual DNA for that to work, though... (Hemalurgy, anyone? :lol: )

Anyway, if I correctly understand your description of MAG rules on the matter, tapping a Nicrosilmind acts a bit (but not exactly) like Allomantic duralumin in that it allows the Feruchemist to sort of get more power out of his other metals (say, get more strength when tapping from his Pewtermind). This makes me wonder if there's an inherent relationship between duralumin and nicrosil in the Metallic Arts, since Allomantic duralumin and Allomantic nicrosil also work in similar ways (except in the recipient of their power). In which case, maybe duralumin Feruchemy ("Spiritual Connection/Friendship") somehow has a yet-unknown connection to Investiture.

I would compare it more to... tapping more of whatever you're tapping. You can only tap as much investiture as you're already tapping of whatever you want the investiture to act as, so say you're tapping 10 Pewter, you can only tap 10 Nicrosil to boost the Pewter. So you're functionally tapping 20 Pewter, but 10 of those Pewter charges are Nicrosil charges. There are no rules yet for tapping Nicrosil to boost Allomancy, but I am almost certain it is possible and I can't wait for the Alloy of Law rules in part for confirmation of this.

 

I have a question about MAG-type nicrosil Feruchemy. Does Investiture storage require that you have another non-empty metalmind to get Investiture from, or can a full Feruchemist store any trait as Investiture directly to a Nicrosilmind?

 

You need to spend time converting a stored trait into Investiture, and during that time you can't store anything else. So you do need another non-empty metalmind to store Investiture this way. However, the MAG also gives rules for converting non-metalmind power such as the influx of power from a Nicrosil/Duralumin (Allomancy) burst or the power you would gain from the Well of Ascension or if you could somehow draw on the Mists like Vin can. How much you can store from this is limited by your ability in Nicrosil Feruchemy, and the power is converted into raw investiture, so you can't just drink up the whole Well of Ascension and pull it's power out whenever you want! This also explains why you need to be tapping another metalmind to use the stored investiture... you need it to "shape" the stored power. So, in theory a Nicrosil Ferring, having no other Metalminds to convert from would need a Nicrosil Allomancer buddy to burst him, so he could store it.

 

 Another question: For example, if you have more Investiture stored in a Nicrosilmind than you have Strength stored in a Pewtermind, how much total Strength can you tap? Just twice your Pewtermind's contents? Or can you convert all your Investiture to Strength?

I think I already answered this, but only as much Investiture, or less, than you are drawing Strength. 

 

I guess the way it would work is when a Twinborn taps Investiture while burning a metal, it would boost the Allomantic power that he'd produce even if he's not flaring. I wonder if a Twinborn could reach burst-like levels of Allomantic power using this "generic energy" without immediately depleting his metal reserves. That would be awesome!

I imagine it works more like the 'ghost' metal reserves that characters from the novels use... so you'd be able to pad out your metal burning... less cool, but still awesome in my opinion. Or perhaps the very nature of Allomancy would allow you to use the raw investiture like "mana", that is, perhaps your allomantic ability would do the "investiture shaping" without requiring the metal as a "power key". So for example, perhaps a Steel/Nicrosil could draw Investiture from his Nicrosilminds to power his Steel Allomancy without needing vials... it would be an effective counter to Chromium Allomancy, certainly.

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Or perhaps the very nature of Allomancy would allow you to use the raw investiture like "mana", that is, perhaps your allomantic ability would do the "investiture shaping" without requiring the metal as a "power key". So for example, perhaps a Steel/Nicrosil could draw Investiture from his Nicrosilminds to power his Steel Allomancy without needing vials... it would be an effective counter to Chromium Allomancy, certainly.

To be entirely honest, I really want this to be the case. Yeah, it's a bit boring, trading what could be the ability to mess with my weight, think a billion times faster, heal from wounds or superheat metals (so my coinshot is shooting molten metal... doesn't Steel/Brass sound totally kickass?) and yeah I'd need a Nicroburst bitch to constantly top me up (unless I can figure out how to drain the occasional mists...) but dammit, who doesn't want Allomancy without having to chow down on metals?

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As it happens, yes... but it's weird... Brandon notes in one of his boxes (he has Brandon-says boxes throughout the MAG) that it's a very RP thing to store it... when storing you should play your character different, thinking about what personality traits make your character your character... and tone them down a lot... also make them more impressionable and "wishy-washy". In terms of hard rules when storing you're more amenable to manipulation (deception, seduction, intimidation, interrogation) and you're more suceptible to zinc/brass allomancy. Tapping is kind of the opposite... your character becomes a more extreme version of themselves... and they're harder to manipulate. The real interesting bit is the "Tapping More than 10 charges" section (which is a section every metal has and details extreme things you can do, kind of like feats... eg. if you want to use Gold to regrow limbs, it's in this section of Gold Feruchemy). Tapping lots of Aluminum resets your personality back to an earlier point... with more charges required for earlier personality regressions... and if you tap the max, you essentially reset your personality.

 

So it basically just stores stubbornness? That's a bit... disappointing, actually. Brandon said that Compounding aluminum does nothing, but if aluminum Feruchemy is a counter to emotional Allomancy, won't Compounding it be useful against, say, a Lord Ruler-level super-Soothing?

 

Meh. I'll just wait for the Mistborn book that shows nicrosil and aluminum Feruchemy in action. Perhaps there's still a chance that Brandon supplied some non-canon rules for the MAG. :)

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So it basically just stores stubbornness? That's a bit... disappointing, actually. Brandon said that Compounding aluminum does nothing, but if aluminum Feruchemy is a counter to emotional Allomancy, won't Compounding it be useful against, say, a Lord Ruler-level super-Soothing?

 

Meh. I'll just wait for the Mistborn book that shows nicrosil and aluminum Feruchemy in action. Perhaps there's still a chance that Brandon supplied some non-canon rules for the MAG. :)

Not stubbornness so much as own-personality-ness. A compassionate person wouldn't care much about others while storing identity, but when tapping it they'd be really really compassionate.

But yeah it isn't *that* useful since generally being more who you already are isn't very helpful.

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Not stubbornness so much as own-personality-ness. A compassionate person wouldn't care much about others while storing identity, but when tapping it they'd be really really compassionate.

 

I see a problem with that. If a person is already naturally wishy washy, what happens to him while storing? If he stores his wishy washy personality, making him less wishy washy, that would contradict the rules as described by Kadrok.

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I see a problem with that. If a person is already naturally wishy washy, what happens to him while storing? If he stores his wishy washy personality, making him less wishy washy, that would contradict the rules as described by Kadrok.

Someone without a discernable personality would have less personality to store, yes. Just like how someone without any muscle mass would have trouble filling pewterminds.
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I haven't read all of page 1 yet so advanced apologies, but the OP theory isn't actually contradicted by MAG. In fact ALLOY SPOILER this could be the result of the breeding program. Mistborn may never occur naturally, no matter how much you inbreed. But you'll get a lot of mistings for spikes!

 

EDIT:

 

Sorry for double post, I don't see edit button on phone.

Even if you stored all your nicrosil, methinks tapping is tied to identity, not your own personal investiture.

 

EDIT: Found a real computer!  If the above were true, a spike (which I believe we have WoB on being able to tap the victim's metalminds?) would allow tapping of abilities not possessed.  E.g. if Sazed were killed with a spike to give an Inquisitor Feruchemic Gold, he'd still be able to tap all of sazed's pewterminds -- just not store replacements. 

 

Which would be interesting, but is pretty far off topic.

Edited by Windrunner
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I haven't read all of page 1 yet so advanced apologies, but the OP theory isn't actually contradicted by MAG.

 

Holy moly, Pechvarry! You're right!

 

When a Feruchemist stores something into a metalmind, what he's really doing (in Realmatic terms) is Investing the metalmind with parts of his Physical, Spiritual, or Cognitive aspects. That act is a form of Investiture. That's why you can store a metalmind's contents in a Nicrosilmind (which stores Investiture). You're basically Investing the Nicrosilmind with Investiture from your other metalmind.

 

But we know that Feruchemically stored things are not the only kind of Investiture that can be stored in Nicrosilminds. There's also Investiture from Physical manifestations of Shards (the Mist, or the Well of Ascension), as well as Investiture gained from Allomancy. So... what if all kinds of Investiture can be stored? That would include Investiture taken from Hemalurgical spikes. And since the Spiritual DNA of a typical post-Adonalsium Cosmere human being was Invested to him by a Shard (e.g. Preservation), one's own Spiritual DNA (i.e. the thing that makes you a Feruchemist, or a Mistborn, etc.) should be storable in Nicrosilminds!

 

Alright, I officially revive my original theory (that Nicrosilminds can store abilities) as a valid sub-theory of the larger theory above. :D

 

Now it's time to develop it further.

 

I further theorize that while nicrosil Feruchemy can receive from any source of Investiture, it can still distinguish which Investiture came from what source. If an Investiture requires a specific Spiritual DNA or Physical DNA, you're going to have to incorporate that into your own body via Hemalurgy. Otherwise, you'll just end up with an inaccessible Nicrosilmind you won't be able to store that Investiture.

 

(Ewww... who'd want to incorporate someone else's Physical DNA into his own? Besides Koloss, I mean.)

 

Anyway, this has a very interesting implication. It means that a Feruchemist with a Nicrosilmind can actually take the contents of another person's metalmind. But it also means that he won't be able to access the stolen content unless it has no Physical or Spiritual requirements (or unless he uses Hemalurgy). But that also means that if the stolen content is just a Cognitive trait, he should be able to access it.

 

Let me repeat: a Feruchemist with a Nicrosilmind can steal the contents of another Feruchemist's Cognitive metalminds.

 

What are the Cognitive metals? Brass, Zinc, Bronze... and Copper.

 

Feruchemists, hide your Copperminds!

 

(Note that it was 2AM when I suddenly woke up and thought this whole thing up. It's 3AM now. I think I'm gonna have to see a shrink after this...)

 

Edit: I crossed out everything that contradicted MAG rules as described by Kadrok. I still think that what's left is a pretty workable theory for nicrosil Feruchemy. It's not as powerful as I originally thought, but that's okay since Feruchemy has always been all about balance, right?

Edited by skaa
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I get the impression from the Nicrosil chapter of the MAG that you need to already be able to draw the energy to store it in a Nicrosil mind... so to store the energy from the mists in a Nicrosilmind you'd have to first be able to draw on the mists... I don't think you could go around leeching other people's metalminds. And even if you could, you'd convert the knowledge into generic energy I would think.

 

However... you can dump investiture from your Nicrosilminds into other people's metalminds... the MAG is specific on this... the investiture destroys whatever they have stored... so if you want to grief an Archivist Ferring, with one touch you could channel a tonne of investiture into their copper minds, wiping them clean. CAUTION: Grievious bodily harm may follow.

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I get the impression from the Nicrosil chapter of the MAG that you need to already be able to draw the energy to store it in a Nicrosil mind... so to store the energy from the mists in a Nicrosilmind you'd have to first be able to draw on the mists...

 

Well, that's one way to interpret it, I'm sure. Would you mind sharing a link to the actual text of the MAG rules? It would make discussions more convenient if we were all on the same page.

 

Anyway, my theory already assumes that the MAG rules aren't all there is to nicrosil Feruchemy. Maybe Terrismen will discover other aspects of Investiture later.

 

 

I don't think you could go around leeching other people's metalminds.

 

Perhaps the Terrismen were just too used to not being able to use other people's metalminds that they never even tried to experiment on it with nicrosil, so they never discovered that ability (at least, not yet). After all, it would only work on Cognitive metalminds, anyway. What decent, self-respecting Terrisman would ask if he could borrow his colleague's Copperminds?

 

 

And even if you could, you'd convert the knowledge into generic energy I would think.

 

That depends on how well thought-out Realmatic Theory is. It is trivial in a magical environment to imagine traits like heat, strength, speed, etc. being converted to each other. But what happens when you try to convert Investiture to Memory? I don't think you can, especially not if you got that Investiture from something like Strength. It just doesn't make sense. Unless... the Investiture stored came from another Coppermind... a Memory Investiture.

 

I already said in my revised theory that I think Nicrosilminds can distinguish the source of Investiture. That's why I believe it could preserve the form of a Memory Investiture that it took from a Coppermind. The Memory will have to be stored in a separate Nicrosilmind, though, or at least one that is reserved for Memories. Otherwise, the Memory might be destroyed. Which leads us to...

 

 

However... you can dump investiture from your Nicrosilminds into other people's metalminds... the MAG is specific on this... the investiture destroys whatever they have stored... 

 

There it is, evidence that you can use nicrosil to access metalminds other than yours. If a Feruchemist with a Nicrosilmind can "store" into other people's metalminds, why can't he tap them? That doesn't seem very consistent.

Edited by skaa
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