Speculation on the Nature of Metallic Arts

[Araris Valerian]

As the title suggests, this is mostly my speculation as to the nature of a particular aspect of the metallic arts. We know that burning a metal starts an investiture with preservation, and that metals and other inanimate objects are equally balanced between Preservation and Ruin.

 

I propose that neither charged hemalurgic spikes or filled metalminds have "Investiture". Rather, a hemalurgic spike creates a link to Ruin through which an investiture begins. The skill stored within a spike simply overwrites the allomantic coding of the metal to redirect the investiture to the opposite shard. Sazed does say that spiking a non-allomancer steals the innate investiture Preservation gave to that person. My opinion is that the investiture in this situation is returned to Preservation in its entirety while leaving behind a "signal" that acts as an access key to Ruin.

 

Feruchemy is a little different since the power is coming from the perosn themselves. However, we have WoB that it is very difficult to push on an object allomantically if it is invested or involved in an investiture in any way(Shardblades). Vin, before she used the mists, was able to push/pull on all of the metalminds TLR had on him, even though he was accessing some of them during their battle. Again, this is a large assumption, but I would argue that feruchemy drains an attribute of the body to create a pathway through a metal to be able to access that ability in the future, limited to the amount of attribute stored and the size of the metal.

 

So, in summary, I am speculating that the metallic arts all involve a direct link to a shard, removing the need for any investiture to exist within the metals themselves. This allows for allomancy to affect said metals as shown in Vin's battle against the Lord Ruler.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Araris Valerian

[Guest Alaxel]

Hmm I could maaaybe get on board with this, but my Metallic Arts lore is a little...rusty. Maybe, rather than Investiture, it's the metal's cognitive identity that resists Allomantic manipulation. Specifically, it views itself as partially a part of the person it pierces and, to manipulate it with Allomancy, it's a matter of your cognitive perception of that piece of metal as not being a part of the person it pierces.

Or hell, maybe it was just Ruin meddling the whole time. Piercing metal is his domanin, after all.

[bartbug]

Hm. Hate to say, but I really doubt it, just we also know that Ruin has much extra power from what Preservation gave to Scadrial. Hemalurgy as you describe it would upset that boost.

[Kadrok]

Sorry I can't be more constructive, and please don't take this as a jab at you or your theory, but..

As the title suggests, this is mostly my speculation as to the nature of a particular aspect of the metallic arts. We know that burning a metal starts an investiture with preservation, and that metals and other inanimate objects are equally balanced between Reservation and Ruin.

Reservation: The Butler Shard

"Quickly, you need to use your maitre d'mancy to fend off seat these marauders!"

"I can't! I didn't phone ahead to book their use!"

 

"Valetchemy is the noblest of arts... it allows me to leave attributes in another's care and, provided I kept my receipt, I can retrieve them at a later date."

"Astounding!"

Edited December 17, 2013 by Kadrok

[Guest Alaxel]

Sorry I can't be more constructive, and please don't take this as a jab at you or your theory, but..

Reservation: The Butler Shard

"Quickly, you need to use your maitre d'mancy to fend off seat these marauders!"

"I can't! I didn't phone ahead to book their use!"

 

"Valetchemy is the noblest of arts... it allows me to leave attributes in another's care and, provided I kept my receipt, I can retrieve them at a later date."

"Astounding!"

Allow me to be the first to upvote this. I'm considering making several dozen dummy accounts just to upvote this more. Hilarious!

[Araris Valerian]

Whoops! That's what Harmony should be called now since he is the shard of feruchemy. Upvote for you.

 

@Bartbug I'm not really sure what you are getting at. Whether or not the physical manifestation of a spike is invested doesn't really affect how strong Ruin, since the way I described hemalurgy as working is the exact same way that allomancy works, just with spiking instead of burning.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Araris Valerian

[Vortaan]

Pretty sure we have WoB that spikes are Invested and are harder to Push on than non-charged metals. I seem to recall the comment in relation to Nightblood, but don't really feel like looking around for the quote at the moment.

[Scriptorian]

I actually really like this theory for a few reasons. 1) Its pretty well established that metalminds can be Pushed on, which doesn't seem to make sense if they are Invested. 2) And it explains why metalminds are person-specific. 3) It provides a reason why Hemalurgy can be Cosmere-wide, but still tied directly to Ruin. 

Hm. Hate to say, but I really doubt it, just we also know that Ruin has much extra power from what Preservation gave to Scadrial. Hemalurgy as you describe it would upset that boost.

I don't think this applies as much as you think it does, since there were extremely few Hemalurgists at any point in Scadiral's history, while every single human being had extra Preservation.

[Oudeis]

I'm not sure I agree... I think we need to consider what "a lot of Investiture" really means. I think that a metalmind, even a full one, or a charged hemalurgic spike, has a certain degree of Investiture. I think this amount is very low. It does one specific thing, it is otherwise unremarkable, and it's a very common "thing" on the planet.

 

I think something like a Shardblade, an entire blade summoned from the aether by the beating of a heart, something tied intimately to your spiritweb, is a thing of tremendous Investiture. I think if there were a scale of "amounts of Investiture" and you tried to measure a Shardblade versus a charged spike of Allomantic Bronze, orders of magnitude would be involved in the difference.

 

Take, for example, things on Roshar. A Shardblade cannot penetrate Shardplate the way it can almost anything else in the world. Yet it seems to be able to cut fabrials, which are Invested objects, with relative ease. When it was said that some researchers felt they were close to being able to create Shardshields that could block Blades, Adolin (I think it was him) nearly scoffed; even with artefabrian Navani herself speaking on their defense, it was a tough sell.

 

It's widely accepted that the sheer density of Investiture is what protects Shardplate from the attack of a Shardblade, yet items of lesser Investiture provide no challenge. I suspect such is the case on Scadrial. It's possible that, technically, a filled metalmind might not be Pushed as forcefully as silver, or tin that isn't a tinmind, and maybe a charged spike has a similar miniscule degree of resistance, but that doesn't mean they can't have any Investiture, at all. It simply means that even a full metalmind has, on a cosmeric scale, relatively low Investiture.

 

Just my thought. Although I'll throw out, too, for whoever pointed out that Vin pushed on The Lord Ruler's full metalminds... she was drawing on the Mists at the time, and pushing on metal inside his body, considered to be impossible. Adding one more impossibility to that scenario is a comparably minor thing.

[Kadrok]

I'm not sure I agree... I think we need to consider what "a lot of Investiture" really means. I think that a metalmind, even a full one, or a charged hemalurgic spike, has a certain degree of Investiture. I think this amount is very low. It does one specific thing, it is otherwise unremarkable, and it's a very common "thing" on the planet.

 

I think something like a Shardblade, an entire blade summoned from the aether by the beating of a heart, something tied intimately to your spiritweb, is a thing of tremendous Investiture. I think if there were a scale of "amounts of Investiture" and you tried to measure a Shardblade versus a charged spike of Allomantic Bronze, orders of magnitude would be involved in the difference.

I'm going to seize this opportunity to agree with Darnam. Very interesting theory, but I am of the view that a metalmind can be pushed and pulled on precisely because it has so little investiture compared to a Shardblade. Technically a shardblade could be pulled on, it would just require a superhuman degree of power, whereas I'm thinking a metalmind is presenting only a little resistance. It's interesting that the Inquisitors are also using their spikes as metalminds, whereas Brandon specifically says that you probably couldn't use a shardblade as a spike since they're full. I don't really have anymore to add, though, so I will also seize this opportunity to ask when Darnam is thinking of joining our MAG game, and what kind of character he is thinking of playing... feel free to respond in PM so we don't derail this discussion.

[Arook]

metal mind are invested because i believe vin try'ed to burn a metal mind at one point and could not access the invested part but can feel it there. It was defiantly what i would consider invested. Also i believe that koloss were humans with extra human investment from the spikes. 

[Araris Valerian]

@Darnam TLR had metalminds (strength, speed) besides atium that Vin could affect before she drew upon the mists unless he had swallowed them and she couldn't sense them all. She was fairly sure that the atium ones were the only ones that she couldn't affect.

[18th Shard]

But were those piercing his skin? I can't remember if they were or not. As an aside note, if you need a super high amount of power to pull on a Shardblade... well, in Compounding Mechanics, I thought of Compounding the power of DURALUMIN. Super-duper Duralumin fueled Steelpush. Bwahahahaha!

[Oudeis]

metal mind are invested because i believe vin try'ed to burn a metal mind at one point and could not access the invested part but can feel it there. It was defiantly what i would consider invested. Also i believe that koloss were humans with extra human investment from the spikes. 

 

Yes, everyone agrees with that statement. No one is saying metalminds aren't invested; well some people are, but I'm not. I'm saying "invested" isn't a binary thing; a metalmind, even a full one, has only so much Investiture, and it's not enough to block Steelpushes.

 

@Darnam TLR had metalminds (strength, speed) besides atium that Vin could affect before she drew upon the mists unless he had swallowed them and she couldn't sense them all. She was fairly sure that the atium ones were the only ones that she couldn't affect.

 

Valid point, I'd forgotten about those. Thank you. Further evidence that something can be Invested, and yet not possess the same level of Investiture as, say, a Shardblade.

[Araris Valerian]

I kind of was trying to say that metalminds are not invested. In general I have read investiture as "power of a shard" which maybe wrong. Feruchemy comes from your own body so in my opinion we might need a different term for feruchemical storage. However, whether or not that matters to this theory is more dependent upon how the amount a metalmind is filled affects how much it can be coumpounded. My idea is that instead of being invested, some objects could be modified to create an "Investiture Pathway" that requires some sort of maintenance to provide power. This is really hard to demonstrate, since as Darnam pointed out there is almost certainly a scale of investiture that affects pushes and shardblades and such, so whether or not an object actually possesses investiture at any given time.

 

Currently we have three somewhat confirmed examples of these investiture pathways, Aons, allomantic metals and gemstones through soulcasting. I was trying to use compounding to extrapolate that storing in a metalmind creates one of these pathways with a temporary duration/investiture capacity. Compounding could use this separate pathway combined with the power of Preservation to give a special boost.

 

Side Thought: Since atium is the body of a god, and (I assume) thus pure investiture, wouldn't it be hard to push/pull on?

[Oudeis]

I kind of was trying to say that metalminds are not invested. In general I have read investiture as "power of a shard" which maybe wrong. Feruchemy comes from your own body so in my opinion we might need a different term for feruchemical storage.

 

Side Thought: Since atium is the body of a god, and (I assume) thus pure investiture, wouldn't it be hard to push/pull on?

 

It's widely accepted (I don't know if it's proven) that all metaphysics are Investiture; we're not sure how Feruchemy started, but it's something that exists because Scadrial itself is Invested by Ruin and Preservation both. The actual traits themselves might lack Investiture (it's not like your eyesight is being powered by Preservation or Ruin, it's your own eyesight) but the 'magical' ability to temporarily store them in bits of metal is very much Investiture. This might be one reason why a full metalmind isn't very heavily Invested; the trait itself is simply a mundane trait, it's just inside a "bag" if you will of Investiture. Like the candy coating on an M&M, instead of Investiture through-and-through like a Shardblade is.

 

As to your second... you make a very good point, but Vin does both Push and Pull on atium, and expresses some concerns throughout the book that it might be affected by Allomancy, so it seems like for whatever reason atium doesn't resist ironpulls or steelpushes. I'm with you, in that I don't see why it's an exception.

[Satsuoni]

Hm, I am not sure. Feruchemy might deal with your Innate Investiture (aka soul), just as Hemalurgy steals the same.

Atium.. the only idea I have is that Atium isn't invested metal, it is metal made of Investiture, so instead of interfering with other Investiture it mimics the properties of normal metal in Investiture interactions. (to present an analogy, imagine velcro hooks as a metal, Investiture as... epoxy resin spilled on velcro - it would no longer function. But if you make a set of hooks made from epoxy in the same shape as velcro, it would work, after a fashion)