Questions about the Metallic Arts

[scyron]

Hello, I've been looking a bit deeper into the workings of the Metallic Arts and came up with a long list of questions about them that I'm hoping to get some answers on. However, I realize some if not most of them probably don't have very clear cut answers, hopefully those ones make for some interesting discussion. It was actually a lot longer, but I managed to trim it down after doing some Coppermind/Arcanum searching. I wasn't sure where to put this thread since there are so many questions and I didn't think it would work well in the Cosmere Questions, so I put it here. If thats wrong, please move it to where it belongs. Thanks in advance for answering them.

 

1. If a person were a pewter compounder, could they burn pewter while storing strength and thereby store more than if they weren't burning pewter? So basically could a pewter compounder store strength faster than normal pewter ferrings without actually compounding? I'm guessing no because feruchemical pewter seems to be more about muscle mass than just strength, but I'm curious to see what you guys think.
2. What would happen if you burned duralumin while compounding? So you burn your metalmind while also burning duralumin, would this give you an increased amount of that feruchemical attribute compared to if you were compounding while not burning duralumin? Would it have some other effect?
3. I'm about 95% certain this is just in my head, but for some reason I feel like I remember hearing about a way to compound for infinite allomancy instead of the normal way of it for feruchemy, but can someone please confirm that I'm just dreaming?
4. How exactly does feruchemical nicrosil work? Can only one feruchemical or allomantic power be stored per nicrosilmind? If so, how do the Bands work, because it seems like 1 nicrosilmind. Were a bunch of nicrosilminds melted into one piece and then put into the Bands?
5. I believe this was touched on briefly in the Kelsier v. Kaladin thread, but what happens when you burn atium inside a speed bubble? Would the atium shadows outside the bubble slow down accordingly while the ones inside move at a regular speed (from your perspective)?
6. Spikes need a hemalurgic charge, intent, and correct placement in a bindpoint to grant somebody powers right? Would a spike without 1 of those requirements still have an effect on the person? I'm kinda going off this quote from the Coppermind 

   Quote

   If a spike is placed in the wrong location it can have unforeseen effects, such as killing the recipient or possibly not granting any power at all

   So I guess what I'm really wondering is whether or not a spike that's not in a bindpoint but with a charge and the correct intent would still allow Ruin to influence/control the person spiked without granting them powers. Are there any other effects to something like this? More generally, how important are bindpoints in Hemalurgy?

 

Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to read this and answer. (And sorry if you are tired of answering all these same questions.)

 

Edited February 27, 2018 by scyron

[Calderis]

4 hours ago, scyron said:

If a person were a pewter compounder, could they burn pewter while storing strength and thereby store more than if they weren't burning pewter? So basically could a pewter compounder store strength faster than normal pewter ferrings without actually compounding? I'm guessing no because feruchemical pewter seems to be more about muscle mass than just strength, but I'm curious to see what you guys think.

I actually think that it would. The strength enhancement would be less overall than true compounding, but would I would think would still be available. I could easily be wrong here for the reasons you state, but I don't think it's purely muscle mass. 

4 hours ago, scyron said:

What would happen if you burned duralumin while compounding? So you burn your metalmind while also burning duralumin, would this give you an increased amount of that feruchemical attribute compared to if you were compounding while not burning duralumin? Would it have some other effect?

I believe it would do the same thing as normal. Burn up all of the metal being burned exceptionally fast. It doesn't actually give more power, just all at once, which would require very quick storage or it would be wasted. 

4 hours ago, scyron said:

I'm about 95% certain this is just in my head, but for some reason I feel like I remember hearing about a way to compound for infinite allomancy instead of the normal way of it for feruchemy, but can someone please confirm that I'm just dreaming?

It's been confirmed that there is a way to enhance Allomancy via Feruchemy, but no confirmation of how yet, other than that it was available to TLR, which bars nicrosil compounding. 

4 hours ago, scyron said:

How exactly does feruchemical nicrosil work? Can only one feruchemical or allomantic power be stored per nicrosilmind? If so, how do the Bands work, because it seems like 1 nicrosilmind. Were a bunch of nicrosilminds melted into one piece and then put into the Bands?

A soul bearer Ferring can store the innate investiture of their spiritweb. Typically, for someone with only this power, they'd only be able to store inherent human traits, in my opinion. Others think it would only work for storing other abilities. And that's where the real power of nicrosil comes in. If you have another ability, you can store the portion of your spiritweb that gives that ability, effectively removing it temporarily... See where that's going? 

As to the bands, they were essentially a medallion on steroids. Nicrosil granting all 32 abilities, and all of the other metals interwoven with feruchemical stores.

Edit: I wanted to add, that a Soulbearer, if I'm correct that they can store and tap the base investiture of their human traits, would have a very very high chance of killing themselves. But if they did manage to learn how to master their power they'd be insanely frightening. Imagine storing "human strength" and tapping it to transform yourself into something near a Koloss temporarily, using the same base investiture that spikes steal. End Edit. 

4 hours ago, scyron said:

I believe this was touched on briefly in the Kelsier v. Kaladin thread, but what happens when you burn atium inside a speed bubble? Would the atium shadows outside the bubble slow down accordingly while the ones inside move at a regular speed (from your perspective)?

I commented in that thread and I hold to the interpretation I posted there. Time is truly changed for the person inside the bubble. A couple seconds of movement outside of the bubble, from the person's perspective, would be practically no movement at all, wasting the atium. Shadows inside the bubble would move normally. 

4 hours ago, scyron said:

Spikes need a hemalurgic charge, intent, and correct placement in a bindpoint to grant somebody powers right? Would a spike without 1 of those requirements still have an effect on the person? I'm kinda going off this quote from the Coppermind 

Quote

If a spike is placed in the wrong location it can have unforeseen effects, such as killing the recipient or possibly not granting any power at all

So I guess what I'm really wondering is whether or not a spike that's not in a bindpoint but with a charge and the correct intent would still allow Ruin to influence/control the person spiked without granting them powers. Are there any other effects to something like this? More generally, how important are bindpoints in Hemalurgy?

 

Intent is required in the creation of a spike. No intent means no charge. 

As for one that is charged, placing it into an incorrect bindpoint is still going to try to place the piece of stolen investiture into the recipients spiritweb. So the results would be as the coppermind says. Depending on the power stolen, it may do nothing, it may kill, and it may cause warping of the spiritual turning you into some kind of weird hemalurgic monster. Good times. 

As to Ruin's influence... You still have a spike, regardless of if it's doing something productive, so the hole to access and manipulate you is still there. Full control wouldn't be possible until 4 spikes however, so it would only be the crazy visions and whispering we've already seen in Vin/Zane/Spook's cases. 

Bind points are exceptionally important. If the spike is not placed into a compatible point in the Spiritweb to assimilate correctly, you get all of the problems mentioned. 

I know a lot of this stuff is my interpretation, so take it for what it is. I didn't dig through WoBs here, so it's my opinion. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Calderis

[The One Who Connects]

16 hours ago, scyron said:

1) If a person were a pewter compounder, could they burn pewter while storing strength and thereby store more than if they weren't burning pewter? So basically could a pewter compounder store strength faster than normal pewter ferrings without actually compounding? I'm guessing no because feruchemical pewter seems to be more about muscle mass than just strength, but I'm curious to see what you guys think.

1) Yes.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Allomantic pewter strength can be stored in a Metalmind, but it's probably easier to just Compound.

2) I agree with Calderis. Burning 30 minutes of Pewter all at once gives you the same amount of total power as it would over 30 minutes. The only difference is that you get it all at once. That's how burning metal works.
3) I agree with Calderis(again).

16 hours ago, scyron said:

How exactly does feruchemical nicrosil work? Can only one feruchemical or allomantic power be stored per nicrosilmind? If so, how do the Bands work, because it seems like 1 nicrosilmind. Were a bunch of nicrosilminds melted into one piece and then put into the Bands?

4) This is an interesting one. The thing is, this could go both ways. We know that two Feruchemists can store in the same Metalmind, since they'd be stored in different "compartments" of it.

Quote

Necarion
When you're storing Investiture, are you storing your "Mistborn-ness" or all the powers individually?

Brandon Sanderson
All of the powers individually.

---

ReaderAt2046
Can a Feruchemist store an attribute in a metalmind that someone else has already stored in and if so, do the charges affect each other in any way?

Brandon Sanderson
Yes, but the charges are just stored in separate pieces of the metal, and don't really influence one another.

If the first Feruchemist stored hearing in a Tinmind, would the second be able to store a different sense or be limited to hearing? If he can store a different sense, it stands to reason that the first Feruchemist can store multiple senses in different sections of the same Tinmind. Translate this into storing in Nicrosil...

[Calderis]

6 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

If the first Feruchemist stored hearing in a Tinmind, would the second be able to store a different sense or be limited to hearing? If he can store a different sense, it stands to reason that the first Feruchemist can store multiple senses in different sections of the same Tinmind. Translate this into storing in Nicrosil...

Oh, yes. I apparently missed that portion of the question completely. I believe that the Bands were primarily nicrosil, and that the other metals were there for stores of the other powers. But the nicrosil was just one huge metalmind with partitions for all 32 powers stored. 

While I suppose it is possible that one type of storage could lock the metalmind in to that type, I find that unlikely. If investiture locked in the metalmind it seems like it should do that between individuals as well, but I could easily be wrong there. 

I personally think that Sazed for example, used separate tin minds more to avoid confusion than from necessity. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Calderis

[The One Who Connects]

Just now, Calderis said:

While I suppose it is possible that one type of storage could lock the metalmind in to that type, I find that unlikely. If investiture locked in the metalmind it seems like it should do that between individuals as well, but I could easily be wrong there.

I agree, but without actual confirmation, it can go either way. I was more being informative, rather than outright dismissing anything.

[Calderis]

Just now, The One Who Connects said:

I agree, but without actual confirmation, it can go either way. I was more being informative, rather than outright dismissing anything.

Understand completely. I'm curious about the answer, because if it does work counter to our thinking, I'd really like to know why. 

[scyron]

Quote

I believe it would do the same thing as normal. Burn up all of the metal being burned exceptionally fast. It doesn't actually give more power, just all at once, which would require very quick storage or it would be wasted.

You're right, I had forgotten exactly how that worked.

On 2/26/2018 at 8:37 PM, Calderis said:

It's been confirmed that there is a way to enhance Allomancy via Feruchemy, but no confirmation of how yet, other than that it was available to TLR, which bars nicrosil compounding. 

Ok, so I'm not going crazy, thanks for confirming that. 

On 2/26/2018 at 8:37 PM, Calderis said:

As to Ruin's influence... You still have a spike, regardless of if it's doing something productive, so the hole to access and manipulate you is still there. Full control wouldn't be possible until 4 spikes however, so it would only be the crazy visions and whispering we've already seen in Vin/Zane/Spook's cases. 

That makes sense, so if someone was impaled by a random piece of metal, Ruin would not be able to influence them right? Because the spike doesn't have a charge, so it wouldn't affect their spirit web and create a hole for Ruin to use?

Thank you Calderis and The One Who Connects.

Edited March 1, 2018 by scyron

[Calderis]

26 minutes ago, scyron said:

That makes sense, so if someone was impaled by a random piece of metal, Ruin would not be able to influence them right? Because the spike doesn't have a charge, so it wouldn't affect their spirit web and create a hole for Ruin to use?

As far as I'm aware that's correct. Without a charge, the metal would just be a physical injury. 

[Yata]

On 27/2/2018 at 4:37 AM, Calderis said:

Edit: I wanted to add, that a Soulbearer, if I'm correct that they can store and tap the base investiture of their human traits, would have a very very high chance of killing themselves. But if they did manage to learn how to master their power they'd be insanely frightening. Imagine storing "human strength" and tapping it to transform yourself into something near a Koloss temporarily, using the same base investiture that spikes steal. End Edit. 

I agree with most of your points Kal but I assume this Soulbearing applications can't replicate most of Hemalurgy Constructs.

Because, while Soulbearing allows to increase/decrease the amounts of Souls' components, it can't actually "move around those" something hemalurgy could do

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, Yata said:

I agree with most of your points Kal but I assume this Soulbearing applications can't replicate most of Hemalurgy Constructs.

Because, while Soulbearing allows to increase/decrease the amounts of Souls' components, it can't actually "move around those" something hemalurgy could do

I don't think it could replicate them either. I was just using an extreme example, because even without relocating components, I think increasing/reducing chunks of soul are still going to have some pretty drastic effects 

[Isilel]

14 hours ago, scyron said:

That makes sense, so if someone was impaled by a random piece of metal, Ruin would not be able to influence them right? Because the spike doesn't have a charge, so it wouldn't affect their spirit web and create a hole for Ruin to use?

It seems likely that if a person was pierced by uncharged _atium_, which was, after all, it's "body", then Ruin was still able to plague them with his conversation, since that's what happened to TLR. That is, unless Ruin somehow managed to sneak a charged hemalurgic spike into the atium that Rashek made his anti-agatic bands from.

But normal metals were safe, IMHO. Not sure about atium alloys.

BTW, is there any information re: where Kelsier could have gotten nicrosil that he used to create first heating medallions for the Southerners? Judging by his memory  from the coin, they didn't seem advanced enough to have the technology for producing it themselves when he first arrived.

[Yata]

8 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I don't think it could replicate them either. I was just using an extreme example, because even without relocating components, I think increasing/reducing chunks of soul are still going to have some pretty drastic effects 

My bad then, I misunderstood you

[Calderis]

2 minutes ago, Yata said:

My bad then, I misunderstood you

No worries, I see how that could be pretty easily misconstrued.