[Bands Spoilers] Nicrosil?

[Yata]

Where is this from? Are there new interviews up?

Yeah sorry I Forgot the link

[fyodor]

Yeah sorry I Forgot the link

Thanks!

[Ari]

That's a helpful WoB, and suggests that Moogle is right that Nicrosilminds do work like all other feruchemical metalminds. So the process got even more complicated, lol.

[mr42]

I think the question on how invasive this metalminds is pretty important. So what happens if someone who taps an unsealed metalmind is killed with a spike for hemalurgic use while doing so. If tapping the nicrosil metalmind changes your spiritweb temporarely you could steal an ability this person doesn't own...if it connects in another way to the spiritweb or if something else is going on, this shouldn't be possible.

But imagine the possibilities of the first idea. By using one investured metalmind you could create a bunch of hemalurgic spikes, you just need a lot of victims. And these doesn't have to have any magical abilities.

And if they tap the metalmind to get a greater amount of investiture than usual you maybe could create a spike which could be used to become a more powerful Allomancer or Feruchemist than usual.

[Torrieltar]

It's obviously significant that whatever hack the Southern Scadrians use to allow non-Feruchemists to access a nicrosilmind ONLY works for the metal that stores Investiture. Possibly related to the innate Investiture that all Scadrians have?

 

Wild theory time!

 

Here's that hack I propose - the unkeyed metalminds the Southern Scadrians create leak a tiny amount of Investiture when in contact with Invested beings. We already have precedence for leaking Investiture all over the place with Hemalurgic spikes and Stormlight leaking from gems and surgebinders. Now that I think about it, we also saw Wax and Marasi leaking Investiture they'd taken in from the Bands of Mourning in the form of mist. The best example is of course Nightblood, our favorite Invested metal object that leaks Investiture when drawn. Investiture tends to leak in the Cosmere. So, it really doesn't seem that far off.

 

Maybe, in order to achieve this effect they made them intentionally imperfect, maybe Investiture just naturally attracts Investiture to a small extent and pulls it out of the metalmind like the weak attraction between droplets of water, or maybe it's something else entirely or a combination of the above. It doesn't really matter.

 

Point is, if a metalmind is leaking small amounts of Investiture, it's not a huge leap to postulate that a small amount of this Investiture would temporarily 'stick' to someone who's similarly Invested. Going back to a water analogy, it's like putting your hand over a boiling pot of water. Most of the steam will pass by, but a little bit of it will condense and stick to your hand and it'll be wet for a little while before the water evaporates again. This makes sense, since we already know that Investiture tends to pool as part of its cycle through the world - that's where shardpools come from. We've also seen that the mists are attracted to Allomancers, swirling around them.

 

Now, let's say you're holding a nicrosilmind which leaks a very small bit of Investiture, some of which naturally 'sticks' to your spiritweb. This is where the hack for tricking the magic system comes into play. When you try to access the nicrosilmind, the magic system 'notices' that you have some investiture which allows the tapping of (unkeyed) nicrosilminds. It's not really your Investiture, but it's sticking to your soul temporarily, so it's close enough that the magic system doesn't really distinguish. Sort of like a far weaker and less permanent version of what a hemalurgic spike does in stapling a piece of someone's soul to yours. It would be tenuous and there wouldn't be very much of it, so you probably wouldn't be able to tap the nicrosilmind very effectively or efficiently. At first. You then tap the nicrosilmind at a very small rate, which would give you a slightly stronger ability to tap it.

 

This would take you through a rapid positive feedback loop, gaining the ability to tap more and more of the stored Investiture, until you're a full-blown Soulbearer, along with whatever other abilities were stored in that nicrosilmind. For obvious reasons, this hack wouldn't work with any ability other than Feruchemical nicrosil.

 

This means that in theory almost anyone in the Cosmere with some form of innate Investiture, not just from Scadrial, should be able to tap an unkeyed nicrosilmind. Which fits with a WoB I got that said a Rosharan could tap a Scadrian medallion in most circumstances.

 

Thoughts?

 

EDIT: Spelling and a few added thoughts.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Evenstrom

[mr42]

I really like your theory. It also ties with my thoughts about some things. If you're right Drabs can't tap Nicrosilminds.

It also indicates that by storing Investiture you don't just store the ability to burn or tap ONE metal but all of your abilities, which seems reasonable to me because which Allomantic or Feruchemical ability you have is part of your spiritweb. In Spiritual Realm Investiture is always the same and Mistborns are more Invested than Mistlings. So I think Investiture itself doesn't differenciate between different Mistlings e.g.

The idea of leaking Investiture is also interesting. We know that burning impure metals or alloys of a wrong composition is not as effectiv as burning pure metals. So maybe using impure metals as metalminds leads to leaking Investiture in the way you pointed out.

[Torrieltar]

Glad you like it! It would be really interesting to ask Brandon about whether a drab could tap an unkeyed nicrosilmind.

 

EDIT: I found a WoB that's somewhat relevant to the discussion about how invasive unkeyed metalminds are:

 

Question

Can Odium pick up pieces of a Shard without changing the nature of his Shard?

 

Brandon Sanderson

Any investiture, over time, will slowly change one’s personality, no matter how small that investiture.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Evenstrom