Nicrosil Compounding and Hemalurgy

[Guest Breaker]

So, let’s say that I, already in possession of the powers of Allomantic and Feruchemocal Nicrosil, were then given a steel spike, Hemalurgically charged with Allomantic Pewter. 

 

If if I were to place this spike in my ear, and then to store the investiture it endows me with inside a nicrosilmind, would removing the hemalurgic spike then still remove the power to burn pewter from me? 

If I were to place only a tiny, tiny piece of that pewter investiture within a nicrosilmind, and then to burn that nicrosilmind (lather, rinse, compound), could I then remove that spike from my ear, passing it along to someone else for free pewter, while retaining supernatural levels of pewter burning in myself? Or would this spike prevent me from storing such Investiture? Would it still remove it altogether, seeing that investiture as keyed and attached to the spike?

 

If I were to compound and the  remove that spike, and such removal took away my pewter, would the next wielder of my spike have supernaturally strong pewter?

 

I would love to be able to throw people to the moon, but I’m unsure whether I’d like to murder someone on a potentially failed attempt to gain such abilities. 

 

Thoughts?

Edited March 17, 2018 by Breaker

[Calderis]

Storing your ability to burn pewter and then removing the spike, would mean that you could then tap the nicrosil to draw on your ability to burn pewter. 

In order to compound that, you'd need to store the ability in more nicrosil, but theoretically, a nicrosil Twinborn who knows hemalurgy could do this repeatedly and create their own storage equivalent of the bands and maintain the power through compounding.

Edit: the bindpoints are also extremely relevant. Pewter isn't gained through the ear... It's somewhere in the torso? Wherever Spook got hit. Bronze Allomancy is granted through the ear ala Vin. 

And passing a supercharged spike along to. Someone else should only function as the spike was originally, as anything you added to it feruchemically would be keyed to your Identity and inaccessible. 

Edited March 17, 2018 by Calderis

[Yezrien]

To be clear, filling the nicrosilmind does not permanently make you a Thug. If you charged it for three days, then removed the spike, you could use allomantic pewter for three days, but that's it. If you used nicrosil compounding, you could get a lot more than three days, and perhaps a power boost as well, but it's still technically a finite supply. I'm pretty sure that's how nicrosil works.

If you are given an ability via hemalurgy, I don't think there's anything you can do (that we know of) to alter the spike, or the power inside it. If the spike is removed from you and given to someone else, they will not receive anything from you. They will receive the same power that you received, albeit slightly weaker because the spikes degrade. 

And if your hypothetical twinborn self wishes to throw people to the moon, you must also find a way to worldhop. Scadrial, unfortunately, has no moon.

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, Belzedar said:

To be clear, filling the nicrosilmind does not permanently make you a Thug. If you charged it for three days, then removed the spike, you could use allomantic pewter for three days, but that's it. If you used nicrosil compounding, you could get a lot more than three days, and perhaps a power boost as well, but it's still technically a finite supply. I'm pretty sure that's how nicrosil works.

For a Ferring alone, this is true. 

For a compounder, you can fill a nicrosilmind, burn the storage and get back "tenfold" what you stored. So a compounder could burn a nicrosilmind in which they stored, and immediately store what they gain, and then do it again. 

The strength in compounding isn't in burning the metal itself, it's in the ability to have an unlimited amount of an attribute to store. This is how miles could heal endlessly. 

So a nicrosil Twinborn could store an ability, remove the spike, and still replicate that ability indefinitely as long as they had access to nicrosil. 

Edited March 17, 2018 by Calderis

[Guest Breaker]

So, to be clear, storing Investiture to be able to use a metallic art only allows you to store temporary power to use. And, in order to maintain that, you would need to compound?

I was under the impression that Nicrosil compounding was something that would allow you to increase your strength in Allomancy by compounding your own innate Investiture. 

 

Is this, then, wrong?

Do we have a theorycraft page discussing it, or, better yet, WoB’s relating to nicrosil feruchemy? 

 

Regarding bind points: thanks for that reminder. I often forget that bind points for Hemalurgy matter on the recipient, and get confused on whether what matters is where you drive the spike through the victim, into the recipient, or both.

And, regarding the lack of a moon, I’m working on that worldhopping. Looking for Harmonic shardpools, or even the location of any new atium growths. It’s been the requisite 300 years, and Harmony needs some way to offset the shardic imbalance, after all.

Thanks for any feedback, y’all.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Breaker

[Calderis]

53 minutes ago, Breaker said:

I was under the impression that Nicrosil compounding was something that would allow you to increase your strength in Allomancy by compounding your own innate Investiture.

You could absolutely make yourself stronger. You would do this by tapping more heavily, which would eat up the reserves faster. 

Like any other form of Feruchemy, your storing a trait, and weakening it while you do so. If you had that pewter spike, you could store your ability to burn pewter so it was nonexistent for an hour, and then tap that to be twice as strong for the same hour. 

Or you could tap it to be three times as strong for about half an hour (technically a little less do to loss from compression). 

Or, you could remove the spike, tap that store for an hour, and be the strength you were with the spike for an hour. 

Or, as I was saying, you could burn that metalmind, get ten times what you put into it, and store that in a different metalmind and have 10 hours of double strength pewter with the spike in, or baseline with the spike out. 

Make sense? 

 

[Guest Breaker]

Ah, so what you’re suggesting is that, rather than burning Invested nicrosil to up your own baseline power, you would instead be creating either a burst or a reserve for future bursts. You wouldn’t be going from Vin to Elend, but, rather, creating what amounts to longer-lasting duralumin: a Short-term increase in power.

 

I had assumed such things increased your baseline power. 

Do we have a WoB explaining any of this, or is it implicit in BoM text? 

[RShara]

It's implicit in the way compounding works.  If you can store something, that thing is yours, no matter if your ability to store/tap it goes away.  Add what nicrosil allows you to do into the mix, and you can store it, then tap it at any time, or if you are a compounder, burn it at any time, and get back your power plus a bunch.  Even if you can no longer normally tap/store it.

Which, if you think about it, is super cool, and possibly OP.

Though, actually, there is a WoB.  Hah!

Quote

Kurkistan

If you spiked out Miles' Feruchemical gold, would he be able to burn his Allomantic reserves [read: Feruchemical reserves using Allomancy] and heal it back?

Brandon Sanderson

If you spiked out his ability to heal gold and somehow left him alive?

Kurkistan

Yeah, but still having Allomancy.

Brandon Sanderson

Still has Allomancy...

Kurkistan

And he’s like in the middle of burning a goldmind.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that would still work. It'd still have a Spiritual Connection to him.

Kurkistan

So if you're a Coinshot and you get [spiked] to have Feruchemical steel, and then you lose the spike after making a store, you can still Compound that for speed?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes... Yeah, that should still work.

Kurkistan

Was Paalm doing that?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO.

source

 

Edited March 17, 2018 by RShara

[Isilel]

3 hours ago, RShara said:

 Add what nicrosil allows you to do into the mix, and you can store it, then tap it at any time, or if you are a compounder, burn it at any time, and get back your power plus a bunch.  Even if you can no longer normally tap/store it.

Which, if you think about it, is super cool, and possibly OP.

There is no question about it becoming OP, once the SoScad medallions come into the picture and you don't even have to bother with spikes. Just tap a medallion's power, store it in your personal metal-mind, burn to amplify, store again, repeat as necessary and it is yours forever unless you let it run dry or lose the storages. And as established in the first Mistborn trilogy you can wear as many of personal metal-minds as you wish, and tap more than one at a time, so with some careful preparation a Nicrosil Twinborn could become effectively a Fullborn when it counts.

Even just a Nicroburst might be able do this if they first obtained a F-Nicrosil medallion and an intial stock of unkeyed Nicrosil metalminds, filled with other Metallic abilities. Hm... maybe that's Sanderson's character concept for the third Mistborn trilogy? If he still intends to make the protagonist a Nicrosil Misting, that is. I have been struggling to imagine how this power could be used in cool and interesting ways and how such a character would be able to keep up with their teammates in order to to provide boosts.

But a gadgeteer concept could be very enjoyable. Power limits would need to be introduced, of course. Maybe use of the medallion won't allow one to store investiture as efficiently as a real Ferring could, and/or it might take a significant amount of time, so that even with sufficient preparation those other abilities could be only used in short bursts. Not to mention that all the metalminds would also provide targets for the Coinshots and Lurchers of the opposition, particularly if they get enhanced by their own Nicroburst...   

[Guest Breaker]

This is kinda what’s bothering me, yeah. 

The medallions seem to open the doors for an army of lord rulers. 

[Calderis]

@Isilel for a nicrosil Ferring, you're idea should work. The limits for a misting and medallions are much harsher though.

Only a single medallion can be used at a time, so in order to make a personal stockpile in that way, a misting would need a medallion that grants nicrosil Feruchemy, and the ability they wish to make a personal storage of at the same time. 

They'd then be able to burn and use that storage all at once when they desired... But in order to store that again, they'd need either the same medallion, or another combination medallion of nicrosil Feruchemy and something else. 

In a world of medallions though, the Soulbearer is king. 

[17th Splinter]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

They'd then be able to burn and use that storage all at once when they desired... But in order to store that again, they'd need either the same medallion, or another combination medallion of nicrosil Feruchemy and something else. 

Or they could just get a medallion that gives them nicrosil feruchemy, tap it and put a small amount in another nicrosilmind, then burn that one while tapping more of the medallion to create another nicrosilmind to store the ability of nicrosil feruchemy. Rinse and repeat until you have unlimited nicrosil feruchemy. Then do the same for every other metal to become a fullborn

[Calderis]

1 minute ago, 17th Splinter said:

Or they could just get a medallion that gives them nicrosil feruchemy, tap it and put a small amount in another nicrosilmind, then burn that one while tapping more of the medallion to create another nicrosilmind to store the ability of nicrosil feruchemy. Rinse and repeat until you have unlimited nicrosil feruchemy. Then do the same for every other metal to become a fullborn

Yeah, as I said, they'd still require a medallion. In comparison to the Ferring who can just store whatever they get their hands on. Sure the Misting could bootstrap it by burning nicrosil whenever they needed to use anything, but that's going to rip through nicrosil pretty fast. 

Nicrosil is a alloy of chromium, so I'm guessing it burns at a similar rate. Which is fast. 

[17th Splinter]

5 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Sure the Misting could bootstrap it by burning nicrosil whenever they needed to use anything

They would only need to burn nicrosil to initialy get F-nicrosil then they could just tap that to store anything else. They would only need to burn nicrosil after that to replenish their supply of an attribute by compounding. Which the nicrosil ferring would also have to do. 

[Calderis]

3 minutes ago, 17th Splinter said:

They would only need to burn nicrosil to initialy get F-nicrosil then they could just tap that to store anything else. They would only need to burn nicrosil after that to replenish their supply of an attribute by compounding. Which the nicrosil ferring would also have to do. 

The moment they stop burning it without having a medallion, they don't have the spiritual genetics to tap the metal. 

They can burn it as the power is keyed to them, and while doing that have the power and store. But without a medallion or actively burning, they are not a soulbearer. Just because they are the one that stored it does not mean they can tap it on demand. 

RShara already posted this earlier but it shows exactly what I'm talking about. 

Quote

Kurkistan

If you spiked out Miles' Feruchemical gold, would he be able to burn his Allomantic reserves [read: Feruchemical reserves using Allomancy] and heal it back?

Brandon Sanderson

If you spiked out his ability to heal gold and somehow left him alive?

Kurkistan

Yeah, but still having Allomancy.

Brandon Sanderson

Still has Allomancy...

Kurkistan

And he’s like in the middle of burning a goldmind.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that would still work. It'd still have a Spiritual Connection to him.

Kurkistan

So if you're a Coinshot and you get [spiked] to have Feruchemical steel, and then you lose the spike after making a store, you can still Compound that for speed?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes... Yeah, that should still work.

Kurkistan

Was Paalm doing that?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO.

source

If you spike out his ability for feruchemical gold, he could still burn stored reserves... But he'd have to burn them to heal back his feruchemical ability. He couldn't tap them to begin with. 

[17th Splinter]

2 minutes ago, Calderis said:

They can burn it as the power is keyed to them, and while doing that have the power and store. But without a medallion or actively burning, they are not a soulbearer. Just because they are the one that stored it does not mean they can tap it on demand. 

I don't know. It sure seems like they could still tap the metalmind if they made it, considering they can burn it for power. And the WOB doesn't mention him not being able to tap his other reserves. I see what your saying, but I don't feel it works that way.

[Calderis]

8 minutes ago, 17th Splinter said:

I don't know. It sure seems like they could still tap the metalmind if they made it, considering they can burn it for power. And the WOB doesn't mention him not being able to tap his other reserves. I see what your saying, but I don't feel it works that way.

Without the feruchemical ability to tap, they can't. They can still burn it because they have the Spiritual DNA necessary to burn the metal, and the power within it is still keyed to their identity. 

If you have Feruchemy, you can store and tap in metal. If you have Allomancy, you can burn a metal for a power. If you have both, you can burn the stored power and essentially create a new metal for Allomancy that runs off the feruchemical power. 

Losing the feruchemical ability would remove the ability to tap the power even if you had stored it, but the power is still keyed to you, so burning the metal with the storage would still compound. Does that make sense? 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Calderis

[17th Splinter]

4 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Without the feruchemical ability to tap, they can't. They can still burn it because they have the Spiritual DNA necessary to burn the metal, and the power within it is still keyed to their identity. 

If you have Feruchemy, you can store and tap in metal. If you have Allomancy, you can burn a metal for a power. If you have both, you can burn the stored power and essentially create a new metal for Allomancy that runs off the feruchemical power. 

Losing the feruchemical ability would remove the ability to tap the power even if you had stored it, but the power is still keyed to you, so burning the metal with the storage would still compound. Does that make sense? 

Yes, thank you. So it is like you put you power in a safe and the key to open or close he safe is feruchemy. So then without the Feruchemical ability, you have lost the key, but the stuff inside the safe is still yours. You then burn it allomaticaly and access the power by melting off the back of the safe.

Right?

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, 17th Splinter said:

Yes, thank you. So it is like you put you power in a safe and the key to open or close he safe is feruchemy. So then without the Feruchemical ability, you have lost the key, but the stuff inside the safe is still yours. You then burn it allomaticaly and access the power by melting off the back of the safe.

Right?

That's a remarkably apt description, yes. 

[Guest Breaker]

It still seems to me that anyone endowed with either half of Nicrosil comes out sitting very pretty with medallions around. It would take a bit of work, but becoming the Lord Ruler seems well within reach. 

 

Scary rust. I wonder if Brandon has natural limiters against this or whether it’s a crisis waiting to happen.

[Isilel]

7 hours ago, Calderis said:

Only a single medallion can be used at a time, so in order to make a personal stockpile in that way, a misting would need a medallion that grants nicrosil Feruchemy, and the ability they wish to make a personal storage of at the same time. 

They'd then be able to burn and use that storage all at once when they desired... But in order to store that again, they'd need either the same medallion, or another combination medallion of nicrosil Feruchemy and something else. 

Not really. Here is how I see this working:

A Soulbearer Ferring uses a series of medallions containing F-Aluminium and another power and creates a number of unkeyed Nicrosil metalminds of those other powers. These he passes on  to a Nicroburst.

Nicroburst, using an F-Nicrosil medallion, compounds each of the powers by repeatedly burning and storing them in new metalminds, which are now keyed to her. Those are not medallions themselves* and therefore can be tapped and stored in while our Nicroburst continues to wear the F-Nicrosil medallion that allows for it. The only limitation to the system is the medallion itself, which is going to run out eventually and, as far as we know, requires Excissors to re-charge, whatever they are.

It also occurs to me that a Nicroburst burning their/unkeyed F-Nicrosil storage should be still able to tap their other metalminds without a feruchemical medallion, while the burn lasts. Of course, if Nicrosil burns as quickly as Duralumin, this wouldn't be all that useful in practice.

* Wax confirmed with Allik that storage metalminds included in the medallions are only for convenience and one could store in separate metalminds instead.

7 hours ago, Calderis said:

In a world of medallions though, the Soulbearer is king. 

Well, the above  would be much easier for a Soulbearer, who could create the initial stock of metalminds (no need to make them unkeyed either), tap them naturally and just use an A-Nicrosil medallion for compounding. But as far as I know, the word still is that the protagonist of the third trilogy will be a Nicroburst, so...

 

1 hour ago, Breaker said:

It still seems to me that anyone endowed with either half of Nicrosil comes out sitting very pretty with medallions around. It would take a bit of work, but becoming the Lord Ruler seems well within reach. .

For those with only the one half, the requisite medallions for the other would be pretty limiting. For all we know, the process I envisioned could be very cost-prohibitive for anybody not personally rich, or not working for a government. Also, I imagine that TLR's enormous allomantic power significantly enhanced his compounding. His storing and tapping efficiency may have also been higher than that of later Ferrings. And yes, it would take a lot of work to grow and maintain the stores of abilities, leave alone to learn to use them skillfully.

So, lots of potential limiters. And there is this - unlike with TLR, this would never be restricted to just one person, so it is more like any other technology or weapon. Even a non-Metalborn with an F-Nicrosil medallion and a store of unkeyed Nicrosil metalminds filled with abilities could use it, after all. Sure, a Nicrosil Twinborn would have an advantage, but it wouldn't be unsurmountably great.

[Calderis]

The reason I say the Soulbearer wins, is that all they need us a minute or two with a medallion for nicrosil Allomancy to start the compounding process and they're set. Touch that medallion once, store the ability to burn nicrosil, and they have the seed to continually make themselves a nicrosil Twinborn and need nothing else. 

A misting needs either a major amount of juggling medallions, help from a Soulbearer (with an aluminum Feruchemy medallion), or finding every possible type of medallion that contains F-Nicrosil with other powers

For the Nicroburst Misting, it's a juggling act that in the end will still always require a a medallion, or an active burn to make themselves a Soulbearer to start everything else. 

For the Soulbearer Ferring, after they find one medallion to make themselves a nicroburst, and then store that for... Even a few minutes, obtaining a new power for them at the point amounts to, "hey, can I see your medallion for just a second? Cool, thanks."

[Isilel]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

For the Soulbearer Ferring, after they find one medallion to make themselves a nicroburst, and then store that for... Even a few minutes, obtaining a new power for them at the point amounts to, "hey, can I see your medallion for just a second? Cool, thanks."

Ouch, you are right, I missed this. There will still be a lot of juggling of metalminds involved, as you'd need 2 for every Feruchemic ability - one to store the ability itself, one to store the attribute; plus 1 for every allomantic ability. That's a lot of metal for the opponents to target! Then, all the work necessary to maintain the ability stores. The training to actually become proficient in the abilities. Etc. But yea, theoretically a Soulbearer can eventually gain sustainable access to all Feruchemical and Allomantic powers completely independantly from the medallions, only with personal metalminds. That is, if all all abilities can be made into the medallions first - given which ones we did and didn't see in BoM, it is possible that some powers are easier to mechanize than others and SoScads may not have discovered how to do it to all of them.

But yea, I suddenly want a Soulbearer Ferring as a protagonist! But maybe they'll get locked into medallion production as soon as discovered, provided that NoScad will even get the technology by Era 3. If the Excissors are, as I suspect, made from unique materials, the medallions could very well remain a SoScad monopoly.

[Guest Breaker]

Why couldn’t you just store all the Investiture that enables each power within a single metalmind, as the Bands of Mourning do? You could make your own Bands.

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, Breaker said:

Why couldn’t you just store all the Investiture that enables each power within a single metalmind, as the Bands of Mourning do? You could make your own Bands.

As a Soulbearer you could. You'd still need to store bits of all the other powers in smaller nicrosilminds to burn to replenish that metalminds stores though.