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Scadrian Blades and Plate


Gasper

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So here we go. Most people on the 17th Shard know that nicrosil can store investure, including investure from other worlds like breath, surges, and stormlight. We also know that spren are basically just sentient investure. Shardblades are living or dead spren, and Shardplate is some sort of investure/investure related phenomena connected to the ten Surges, stormlight, and/or spren. All of this means that Shardblades and Shardplate are just a form of investure, as evidenced by Radiant summoning/dismissing blades and plate in and out of midair. That most likely means that blades and plate can be stored in a metal mind.

We also know that someone was looking for talking metal in Era 2 Scadrial. I think that they are planning on using that metal/scadrian equivalent to spren to make Scadrian Shards. The Set are interested in hemalurgy, not to make a mistborn, but to make a nicrosil compounder. We know that the eight "new" metals are rarer compared to the eight basic metals like Iron, Steel, Pewter, and Tin Etc. This goes for both Allomancy and Feruchemy, but especially for Feruchemy. They are trying to find the right combination so that they can make medallions or power something like south scadrian technology. Wax's Uncle and Sister are merely the result of the experiments to figure out hemalurgy so that they do not waste a good ferring. Nicrosil Ferring worth>Steel Misting worth. Given that most splinters assume the form of a sword when pushed into the physical realm enough, it is likely that an artificially created splinter would manifest as a Blade/Plate that could be stored in a metalmind and called on when needed. It would give the Set an huge advantage over a high powered Twinborn like Wax, any Mistborn that decide to come out of the woodwork  or a person armed with Allomancer killing rifle rounds. 

The Blade/Plate would not be effected by most allomacy/feruchemy and most likely give a boost to any abilities inherent to the user. The user could also store the armor in the metalmind and tap it to summon the shards when they needed them. The Bands of Mourning may have been Kelsier's early attempt at making such a weapon. I suspect that it would required a hack we have not seen yet to shape the investure into a blade/plate, which would most likely be similar to the hack that allows Allomantic Bronze to be used on non-Scadrain investures.

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I don't know.  It feels a little like mixing magic, which is something that Brandon rarely does, and even then with something like Hoid.  I do see where you're taking this, and can easily imagine some allomantic armor that grants specific abilities.

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56 minutes ago, Gasper said:

Given that most splinters assume the form of a sword when pushed into the physical realm enough, it is likely that an artificially created splinter would manifest as a Blade/Plate that could be stored in a metalmind and called on when needed.

Name one naturally-occuring Splinter that's not associated with Roshar that assumes a sword-shaped form in the Physical Realm. Nightblood doesn't count, its Physical form was created specifically for it, in order to mimic a Shardblade. Even the radiantspren default to a sword-shape only because they're patterned after the Honorblades. Nightblood is copying them copying the Honorblades but there's no evidence that this is some sort of fundamental rule of the Cosmere..

Quote

which would most likely be similar to the hack that allows Allomantic Bronze to be used on non-Scadrain investures.

I don't think any 'hack' is required, it just needs the Seeker to be exposed to non-local Kinetic Investiture. For example, we know that Vin could theoretically detect a Shardblade in the process of being summoned because at that point the Investiture is in motion. Taldaini sand doesn't require any hacking and will happily detect any Kinetic Investiture in its vicinity, A-Bronze shouldn't be any different; the only thing we know it has trouble with is detecting feruchemy and that's a very subtle system where you're moving your own Investiture around through time, compared to something flashy like AonDor or Surgebinding where there's a transfer of power from the Spiritual (or Cognitive in the case of Sel) to the Physical.

Edited by Ookla the Gralsritter
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Honestly I dont think you can actually store a Spren in Nicrosil.  While we dont actually know what it is, I dont think Nicrosil an Investiture Battery (not any more than all metalminds, anyway).  And while I do fully think you could Store the bond you get to the Honorblades, the fact that you cannot take the Nahel bond without using two spikes and spiking the Spren's native Cog-realm form, I really dont think it would work on the shardblades (certainly not living, likely not dead).  The Plate is something else and was never sentient, so it might work.  Spren are Investiture, but they still have Spiritwebs like physical beings so there are some qualitative differences between them and "commodity" Investiture like Stormlight, the metallic arts, or even Breaths.  That being said they can be stored in Gems like stormlight, so maybe it could work...

What I believe Nicrosil does is Store whatever the Connection you may have to a Shard, more or less by mimicking the relevant bits of Spiritweb, and thus Investuture functions that dont involve the Spiritweb wouldnt qualify.  So it would give you the ability to use a Surge, which otherwise takes either your own Nahel Bond or a squire Connection a Radiant, but it would not let you store Stormlight in it.  It would let you store a Connection to Endowment enough to use Breaths for Awakening, but you wouldnt be able to store Breaths themselves (at least not using the Feruchemy, you can always just store breaths in objects regardless).    

 

 

Random Thoughts:

-Why would you need to store Plate or a Shardblade in the metalmind if they already can be summoned at will?  Or are you talking about getting a Nicrosil Metalmind so Invested that it would become sentient like a spren or Seon? My understanding is that the relative power scale of Scadrial is significantly lower than the other shardworlds, to the point were I think that would take crazy, nigh ungodly amounts of investiture to accomplish. 

-Rosharan Spren are the only things that have any predisposition to a sword shape, and that is specifically because they were mimicking he Honorblades.  Even Nightblood is explicitly an attempt to recreate the rosharan blades. 

-For what it's worth, I took the mention of talking metal in Era2 to be an Awakening cameo, though I believe we do have WOB that rosharan spren have been spotted off-world.

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1 hour ago, Gasper said:

We also know that someone was looking for talking metal in Era 2 Scadrial.

 

23 minutes ago, Quantus said:

For what it's worth, I took the mention of talking metal in Era2 to be an Awakening cameo

Yeah. It is Khriss and Nazh looking.

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30 minutes ago, Quantus said:

What I believe Nicrosil does is Store whatever the Connection you may have to a Shard, more or less by mimicking the relevant bits of Spiritweb, and thus Investuture functions that dont involve the Spiritweb wouldnt qualify.  So it would give you the ability to use a Surge, which otherwise takes either your own Nahel Bond or a squire Connection a Radiant, but it would not let you store Stormlight in it.  It would let you store a Connection to Endowment enough to use Breaths for Awakening, but you wouldnt be able to store Breaths themselves (at least not using the Feruchemy, you can always just store breaths in objects regardless).    

 

Connection is stored in Duraluminum, not Nicrosil. Nicrosil stores investure, not a connection to a Shard. Breath is a part of your spiritweb as a Nalthin, its just a part you can give away, which is why you become a drab. Become a drab is similar to what happened to the Singers when they got turned into Parshmen, only less drastic. And since you can store breath in a metalmind, you can store part of a spiritweb in a metalmind. Coppermind article on Nicrosil mentions that you could store the Divine Breath of a Returned in a metalmind: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Nicrosil The Divine Breath is not a connection to Endowment, it is a splinter of Endowment.

Surges are not a connection to a shard, they are sort of like an allomantic metal, they are a gate that shapes and changes the investure into a useable form. If stormlight is chemical potential energy in a battery(gemstone) then a surge is the mechanical energy in the motor that the battery is powering. A Herald's connection to Honor through the Honorblade is like powering a dremel tool motor directly off the sun, the power(investure) changes directly from thermal energy to mechanical energy, no intermediate change to and from chemical/electrical energy needed.  

Investure it's self is power, as in joules of power. That power can take many forms depending on the world and "gate" that it uses. Nicrosil stores the power and the "gate" or the form the investure takes (as I understand it) thats why it can store a surge, Allomancy, or the divine breath of a Returned. It can also just store investure, which is how it would work if a person is only a nicrosil Ferring. 

To store a shardblade/shardplate, the investure is "keyed" to the blades form. Then the investure that makes up the blade is stored in the mind. When a person taps the metalmind in which the blade is stored, then the investure is pulled out in the form that it went in with. I think the process would work similar to how Identity prevents one feruchemist from tapping another feruchemist's metalmind. The investure is keyed to the Identity of the blade and thus is pulled out in the blades form when the metalmind is tapped. The same thing applies to storing plate. 

1 hour ago, Ookla the Gralsritter said:

Name one naturally-occuring Splinter that's not associated with Roshar that assumes a sword-shaped form in the Physical Realm

Seons can is given a stronger connection to the physical realm.

 

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

-Why would you need to store Plate or a Shardblade in the metalmind if they already can be summoned at will?  Or are you talking about getting a Nicrosil Metalmind so Invested that it would become sentient like a spren or Seon? My understanding is that the relative power scale of Scadrial is significantly lower than the other shardworlds, to the point were I think that would take crazy, nigh ungodly amounts of investiture to accomplish. 

The reason is because the Scadrians do not have spren and the summoning at will part is part of the Nahel bond mechanic native to Roshar. The bond between dead shardblade and shardbearer is a shallow mimicry of the Nahel bond between spren and Radiant. Which is why Adolin can hear Maya with out him saying any Oaths and Maya missing part of her spiritweb. The blades and plate I am talking about would be native to Scadrial, which is why the Nahel bond mechanic that allows for the summoning of Scadrian Shardblades would not work. The Nicrosil mind would allow for the blade to be stored and summoned with out having to replicate the psedo-Nahel bond mechanic that the dead shardblades operate under. The living shardblades are another kettle of fish that I am not sure can be replicated on Scardial because the mechanics of it (the spren attaching to your spiritweb and the mental connection that allows for the weapon to change) are levels of complexity greater than a dead shardblade. And yes, it would likely take a massive amount of investure to make such a weapon.

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49 minutes ago, Gasper said:

Seons can is given a stronger connection to the physical realm.

That is totally not a response to my question. You said that "most splinters assume the form of a sword when pushed into the physical realm enough". That a Seon might theoretically be made into something like a Shardblade does not mean that it would default to this shape or that it's some sort of Cosmerological constant that Splinters pulled into the Physical Realm take sword-form.

Edited by Ookla the Gralsritter
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36 minutes ago, Ookla the Gralsritter said:

most splinters assume the form of a sword when pushed into the physical realm enough

I was making an assumption based on Spren and the information that Seons could turn into shardblades. The only other splinters we have seen are the divine breaths of the Returned, so I assumed that Spren and Seons counted for most of the known splinters. I should have clarified that.

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Not Connection as in the feruchemical trait, I was using Connection in the more general sense that Spiritwebs are basically a bunch of Connections; for example your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times, even though feruchemically it's a different metal entirely.  The sort of shardic Connection I meant was the connection to a Shard required to hack yourself into magic systems, like the connection to Preservation that Lerasium gives you.

Also, regarding Breaths, that Coppermind entry is based on This WOB, which is a lot less specific or definitive.  It can store the "Invested abilities" of a Returned or a Radiant but that's not realmically descriptive. And combined with This One that points out how there is a qualitative difference between Breath and Divine Breath regarding how they interact with the Spiritweb or whether they can be stored in Spikes, so it's very likely they are going to be different to Nicrosil as well; but it's pretty specific that normal Breaths are not part of the Spiritweb.  

And as a much more general point:  While it is quantifiable and he does intend to establish conversion equivalency between the different types, Investiture is very specifically Not Joules.  In the Cosmere the normally binary Matter&Energy nature of the Universe is expanded out to Matter, Energy, and Investiture as three separate things that all interact to create reality.  Personally I see it as it's interaction with Matter and Energy as being buried down at the quantum level where things like being Perceived start having tangible effects on the state of reality.  

 

But a lot of that is irrelevant to your topic, I misunderstood your whole point.  If you are talking about using Nicrosil to create a Scadrial equivalent to plate and/or shardblades, thats something else.  I thought you were more talking about a worldhopper that got their hands on a shard using Nicrosil to store that in a metalmind for some reason.  Cosmere-wide is is a function of any Investiture to gain sentience, so one path would be to attempt to make a scadrian robot-spren, some metallic arts equivalent of Nightblood.  I think that would be possible, though short of just cramming astronomical amounts of investiture I think it would take more of a multi-metal Medallion with a combination of spiritual traits, and likely Ettmetal depending on how it actually functions as an allomantic emitter.  I suspect it's literally making a temporary pseudo-spiritweb to emit the allomantic effect, by touching a misting's spiritweb and "preserving" it's shape and function for a short time, using it's investiture charge to create a sort of Spiritweb Hologram.  

The biggest barrier unknown I see is that there are fundamental functional differences between the types of Investiture, which make them behave differently even if channeled into thew same magic system.  Breathes are fundamentally more prone to permanence and to transferring (usually limited) sentience than most, while Stormlight is more prone to moving things (spren, people, objects) across the Physical/Cognitive boundary. And in the case of Stormlight, a lot of it has to do with Roshar having a rich, porous Investiture ecosystem, making it easy to move things back and forth (spren do it naturally all the time, even without Bonding).  By comparison, in Scadrial it takes years to crystallize a small bead of godmetal, and the Metallic arts have very few mechanism that actually convert Investiture to Matter, and I dont think any of them are Externally acting.  You can 100% get to a half-shard with Invested Metalminds, but I think trying to get something that you can freely dismiss like a shardblade would be a lot harder (let alone the multi-realmic attack capability).  Nightblood is stuck in the Physical Realm, and he's the closest thing to a shardblade around.  

 

 

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I don't think Nicrosil ability to store "Investiture" means you can store spren, or breath, or stormlight.... At least not easily. 

I think it stores the Investiture of the Spiritweb itself. You could store the part of you that grants access to powers, but not the fuel for this powers... And storing a spren... I don't agree at all. Feruchemy is internal, and a spren is a separate entity. 

For reference. 

Quote

shoeties

Since Stormlight and Breath are both investiture, would it be possible to use Nightblood with the former rather than the latter? Would it be possible to store Stormlight in metal using Feruchemy?

Brandon Sanderson

Mixing the magics is possible, but some are easier and more natural than other. Feeding Stormlight to Nightblood is easy. Storing stormlight in metal is tough.

source

 

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10 hours ago, Calderis said:

I don't think Nicrosil ability to store "Investiture" means you can store spren, or breath, or stormlight.... At least not easily. 

I think it stores the Investiture of the Spiritweb itself. You could store the part of you that grants access to powers, but not the fuel for this powers... And storing a spren... I don't agree at all. Feruchemy is internal, and a spren is a separate entity. 

For reference. 

 

I agree that it would be hard, but I was thinking more like you force your stored feruchemical investure out of the metal mind and into a sword or plate shape. it would take a huge amount, but I think it might be possible if you where a nicrosil compounder with a A-duraluminum spike. And even then it might be hard.

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If I am understanding you right I don't think that would work.

Scadrial is different to Roshar and Nalthis in that the investiture is tapped directly, there is no Stormlight/Breath equivalent. Without that I am not sure you could do anything with the investiture from a Metalmind other than tap/burn it. 

Using nicrosil or A-duralumin to mess with your levels of investiture won't grant you a power to somehow solidify investiture being tapped from a metalmind when that power doesn't usually exist. Even the idea of that seems beyond the scope of the metallic arts in my opinion. 

I think your best bet for a Scadrian Shardblade would be to just pump a metalmind full of so much investiture that it eventually gained sentience, but since even the bands weren't that invested I don't know if its plausible with Scadrial being such a low-investiture planet.

Now if we are talking about making a Scadriam metalmind using powers from various planets, maybe. But at that point its probably easier to just get a regular Shardblade.

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2 minutes ago, Jace21 said:

I think your best bet for a Scadrian Shardblade would be to just pump a metalmind full of so much investiture that it eventually gained sentience, but since even the bands weren't that invested I don't know if its plausible with Scadrial being such a low-investiture planet.

That would be your best bet... And you'd still have to leave it alone for millenia to develop a mind. 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

If someone were to create a human shape, with full articulations, made out of the four Feruchemical Spiritual metals and copper and do like a full dump into them, would it be able to... I mean, Investiture attains sapience on its own. If those were mixed with the memories in the copper would it be able to effectively become [an] android of the person who created it?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

So we got a couple of issues you have to overcome in creating this. Number one, the memories are not going to attune to the Investiture itself, they're going to be attuned to you. The Investiture as it attains sapience is gonna create its own Identity, which is then going to be a mismatch for those memories. So you would have to find a way to get those memories to work for that creation.

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

It wouldn't tie with the Identity that was *inaudible* aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

No, it would not. The other thing you were getting at there though, is that just Investing it alone, you would have to leave it alone for a long time, naturally, for it to start developing anything. And so we're looking at thousands of years, probably. There are ways to speed that process along, but just doing that and leaving it, it's gonna take a while.

source

 

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I don't know if you could create full sharblade equivalents with the metallic arts, for example I don't know if they have any way to cut through any material (with exceptions) like Nightblood or actual sharblades. But, if you just want a weapon that can kill in a single hit by severing the soul, then I propose hemalurgic swords. Which, honestly, might just be a sword that you declare, "This is a spike." Granted, it might only work once. In which case, hear me out here, how about hemalurgic shard-bullets?

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On 11/30/2018 at 1:29 PM, Ookla the Mind Sculptor said:

I think your best bet for a Scadrian Shardblade would be to just pump a metalmind full of so much investiture that it eventually gained sentience, but since even the bands weren't that invested I don't know if its plausible with Scadrial being such a low-investiture planet.

I disagree with Scadrial being a low investure planet, I think there is less ambient investure because the shard(s) that build the planet poured most of their accessible investure into the planet and its people. Remember, Ruin and Preservation created Scadrial and the humans on that world from scratch, which is why Ruin could change the writing on paper and in metal minds, but Odium and Honor can't change the information in the Way of Kings or in the gem archive. 

 

22 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

I don't know if you could create full sharblade equivalents with the metallic arts, for example I don't know if they have any way to cut through any material (with exceptions) like Nightblood or actual sharblades. But, if you just want a weapon that can kill in a single hit by severing the soul, then I propose hemalurgic swords. Which, honestly, might just be a sword that you declare, "This is a spike." Granted, it might only work once. In which case, hear me out here, how about hemalurgic shard-bullets?

That is an awesome Idea, a shard weapon that has the same effect of a shardblade, only you can take out a target from a mile away.

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4 hours ago, Gasper said:

I disagree with Scadrial being a low investure planet, I think there is less ambient investure because the shard(s) that build the planet poured most of their accessible investure into the planet and its people. Remember, Ruin and Preservation created Scadrial and the humans on that world from scratch, which is why Ruin could change the writing on paper and in metal minds, but Odium and Honor can't change the information in the Way of Kings or in the gem archive. 

Sadly that wasn't just my opinion, we have evidence from the big man himself:

Quote

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.

1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.

2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.

When I say low-investiture world I mean there is less ambient investiture and manifestations of investiture and/or magic systems are relatively low power. Sure, Preservation and Ruin created Scadrial, but for anyone except the Shards themselves, that makes no difference to the power available there. Even the Shards would have to destroy the planet to access that power again.

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On 11/30/2018 at 1:36 PM, Calderis said:

That would be your best bet... And you'd still have to leave it alone for millenia to develop a mind. 

We have seen time-alteration bubbles, but does the person who creates it, have to be at the center of the bubble? Could you make a time bubble to age a highly invested sword/metalmind thousands, millions or even billions of years in a relatively short period of time? Or could you make multiple time bubbles overlap? 

Shard blades aside, that could be a great way to age things like wine, vinegar, cheese, cured wood, etc. 

Edited by ZenBossanova
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3 minutes ago, Ookla the Mind Sculptor said:

I don't think they have to be in the exact center, but I'm not sure.

I am almost certain they have to be inside it though, otherwise in AoL they could have put a bubble just around miles instead of needing to be in it too.

That may be one of the various applications that require a mechanical usage of Allomancy.

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True, we know that you can project a speed bubble using the allomantic grenades from Mistborn Era 2.

The bendalloy required to give the object thousands of years to develop sentience would be insane though, probably making it unfeasible.

Edited by Ookla the Mind Sculptor
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If you can (A) get a number of bendalloy savants to create an extended bubbles that (B) overlap and (C) when they do overlap, the new time speed inside the overlapping bubbles is the product of the individual bubbles, then it is actually quite possible. The real limitation is going to be getting enough bendalloy. 

Wayne is doing what I would estimate to be at least 10,000:1 or 100,000:1 in terms of time speed. 

Four overlapping bendalloy bubbles working at 100,000:1 could do 3 trillion years in one second of real time. 

Are there any WoB on overlapping time bubbles? 

Edited by ZenBossanova
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@ZenBossanova yes. Their multiplicative.

Quote

Questioner

So what happens if you have a Bendalloy bubble, and then another Bendalloy bubble inside of it?

Brandon Sanderson

It will compound and double, and it will multiply. Bendalloy is one of the metals from Alloy of Law if you haven’t read it, as this person obviously has, or has read the Ars Arcanum, you’ll find out what it does.

source

People have worked on it before. 

For some reason, linking this WoB only shows the table, so first the link to the discussion... 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/131/#e3936

Then the table

Hujpz8c.png

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Just pointing out, it would take a massive amount of both bendalloy and ettmetal to reduce several million years to a reasonable amount of time. While maybe, just maybe, it would be worth it for a shardblade, you're not guaranteed to get one. You're basically putting a massive investment into a random effect by just sticking a ton of investiture in a time bubble for a million relative years.

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3 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

Just pointing out, it would take a massive amount of both bendalloy and ettmetal to reduce several million years to a reasonable amount of time. While maybe, just maybe, it would be worth it for a shardblade, you're not guaranteed to get one. You're basically putting a massive investment into a random effect by just sticking a ton of investiture in a time bubble for a million relative years.

The real limiter is the number of people good with bendalloy. If your time speed ratio was only 8, and you had 11 overlapping bubbles, you could do about a million years in an hour of real-time. 

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45 minutes ago, ZenBossanova said:

The real limiter is the number of people good with bendalloy. If your time speed ratio was only 8, and you had 11 overlapping bubbles, you could do about a million years in an hour of real-time. 

Except that's not necessarily the real limiter. Yes, time compression builds up super fast with nested bubbles, but they each still need to burn bendalloy and ettmetal relative to their internal times. I think Wax said that for Wayne, one nugget is something like five minutes of compressed time. So you'd need literal tons of bendalloy, plus the ettmetal to burn it without it being a death sentence for the slider. That's what I believe would really be the limiting factor.

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