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Hemalurgic Shardblades?


Emerald_Mage

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I'm new here so sorry if this has been discussed before.

So the definition of a shardblade is "A highly invested weapon". Taking that and running with it, wouldn't it be possible to make a shardblade with Hemalurgy? It's kind of morbid to think about how many people you would have to kill, and it would still lose its investiture.

I would think also that since Hemalurgic spikes change what they do based on what metal they are made of the blades would have different properties. Pewter would do more physical damage than the others, while aluminum might ground out the investiture in something instead of killing it.

What are y'all's thoughts on this theory?

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Honestly, you're better off just cramming F-Iron into a sword's worth of iron, then alloying it into steel, and making a heavily invested steel sword. For one, that would make it impossible to unvest (un-invest) the steel, since it's full of F-Iron, not F-Steel, which has been WoB'd that it would be impossible to access the power after alloying it, even if the actual alloy is valid (and it would also still take up "space" in the metal, reducing the F-Steel capacity of the sword).

However, you could make a "Mindblade" by adding metal to the middle of the sword blade that extends through the hilt and into the handle, that the feruchemist can then make contact with while holding. Adding Nicrosil to the handle and making it an Unsealed Mindblade could make it almost like an Honorblade, granting a Feruchemical metal (or two) to the wielder. If you have the Ettmetal for it, and the knowledge, you can even build in a Primer Cube-like mechanism to the hilt and attune the blade to F-Pewter and F-Iron, giving it the ability to tap "strength" and store weight, making it more durable (possibly) and abnormally lightweight, like a Spren Shardblade. Do it right, and you can tap the F-Pewter yourself when needed to buff your strength, which would help cut through stuff that a normal sword wouldn't.

Storms, if you want to go the extra mile, make the rusting thing the shape and size of a full-sized Koloss Sword. Those are probably bigger than a normal Spren Shardblade.

Give that thing to a Pewter misting and you'll have yourself a walking massacre. :P

...If only there was a way to make the storming thing dismissable and recallable like a Spren Shardblade...

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@Halyo_Alex Although that would make a better weapon, I don't think it would count as a shardblade. We know that there is a maximum limit to how much of a Feruchemical charge that can be put in a given amount of metal.  From what I have read, that doesn't seem to be enough to make the metal act like a shardblade.

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Just now, Emerald_Mage said:

@Halyo_Alex Although that would make a better weapon, I don't think it would count as a shardblade. We know that there is a maximum limit to how much of a Feruchemical charge that can be put in a given amount of metal.  From what I have read, that doesn't seem to be enough to make the metal act like a shardblade.

Well, that's the point. As far as I know, the metallic arts CAN'T replicate a Spren blade. I also think you can't multi-charge a hemalurgic spike by killing multiple people with a single spike, or else the Steel Inquisitors would have been doing that all along (or at least with Ruin controlling them) to give them insanely strong allomancy.

Using Ett-tech to allow the sword to replicate certain metal effects seems to be the closest we can get, which makes it closer to an Honorblade. I suppose if you made the Ettmetal burn with Allomantic Pewter, it might be capable of increasing its durability. That seems more likely than F-Pewter, though that might enhance its cutting power instead. (though A-Pewter also enhances strength without bulking muscle mass, so perhaps that would cover it as well).

Basically, the sword would be an A-Pewter F-Iron twinborn. Strong and durable but super light for its size.

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I once heard from someone that the Vikings would douse their swords/weapons in blood (instead of water) because the spirit (or whatever) would be imbued in the weapon and make it stronger. This actually turned the Iron weapons into some sort of primitive steel. So I was thinking, why not turn a feruchemally charged iron sword into a hemalurgic spike by dousing it in a misting?

On an unrelated note, I wonder if there is a way to make a sword that gives you access to the metallic arts (sorta like an honorblade?). And if a hemalurgic sword that could do this killed someone, would it become more powerful? Except for hemalurgic decay... so the sword would have to kill people to keep it's edge (I guess there probably is a way to create a sheath that would stop this by fooling the spike about weather or not it's in a living being, like how the sheath that Nightblood has stops it from draining and killing its holder). So scratch that and imagine a sword that would get more powerful the more people it killed.

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10 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

I also think you can't multi-charge a hemalurgic spike by killing multiple people with a single spike

Ah, that makes sense. Honestly, I was what I was thinking. Well, this might have turned into a Q&A thread instead of a theory.

16 minutes ago, DiePie said:

So I was thinking, why not turn a feruchemally charged iron sword into a hemalurgic spike by dousing it in a misting?

I've thought about this myself. Unfortunately, I read on the coppermind that a metalmind can't become a hemalurgic spike.

The sheath does exist though. If you put spikes in an aluminum box it will stop them from leaking anywhere near as fast.

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7 minutes ago, Emerald_Mage said:

I've thought about this myself. Unfortunately, I read on the coppermind that a metalmind can't become a hemalurgic spike.

The Coppermind also says (look in the "Hemalurgy" page under "Other Uses"):

Quote

The same piece of metal can be Hemalurgically and Feruchemically charged at the same time.

Which I followed to the WoB linked here (question 11).

Where did you find that? I read through the pages of Feruchamy and Hemalurgy on the Coppermind and read through a bunch of WoBs from a search on the Arcanum... It sounds like something I've heard before but I would like a confirmation before we throw out the idea of an honorblade that would give you allomantic powers and get stronger every time you killed someone.

 

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9 minutes ago, DiePie said:

Where did you find that? I read through the pages of Feruchamy and Hemalurgy on the Coppermind and read through a bunch of WoBs from a search on the Arcanum... It sounds like something I've heard before but I would like a confirmation before we throw out the idea of an honorblade that would give you allomantic powers and get stronger every time you killed someone.

 

I thought I read it somewhere. Looks like I was mistaken.

@Halyo_Alex's mindblade that was mentioned above would probably have the effect you're looking for though.

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11 minutes ago, Emerald_Mage said:

@Halyo_Alex's mindblade that was mentioned above would probably have the effect you're looking for though.

I was sort of looking for allomantic powers, but that mind-blade would still function practically the same way.

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1 minute ago, DiePie said:

I was sort of looking for allomantic powers, but that mind-blade would still function practically the same way.

I thought that Nicrosil minds could give allomantic powers as well. Doesn't Wax have access to all allomantic and feruchemical powers when he has the Bands of Morning?

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2 hours ago, Emerald_Mage said:

I thought that Nicrosil minds could give allomantic powers as well. Doesn't Wax have access to all allomantic and feruchemical powers when he has the Bands of Morning?

Yup! Medallions can give Allomantic powers too. Though, cramming 2 Feruchemical powers and a possible array of Allomantic ones into a single Mindblade would be challenging at best and nigh impossible at worst. Maybe stick to just A+F-Pewter, and F-Iron for the average "Perfect" Mindblade (whereas the ones with merely a keyed metalmind is a "Mindblade" and the Unsealed but non-ettmetal ones are "True Mindblades").

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6 hours ago, Emerald_Mage said:

So the definition of a shardblade is "A highly invested weapon". Taking that and running with it, wouldn't it be possible to make a shardblade with Hemalurgy? It's kind of morbid to think about how many people you would have to kill, and it would still lose its investiture.

I am afraid the very attempt is stupid. If your hemalurgy is that advanced, you'd better give yourself the vorpal cutting ability rather than make a bladed weapon.

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6 hours ago, Emerald_Mage said:

@Halyo_Alex Although that would make a better weapon, I don't think it would count as a shardblade. We know that there is a maximum limit to how much of a Feruchemical charge that can be put in a given amount of metal.  From what I have read, that doesn't seem to be enough to make the metal act like a shardblade.

Well, we know metalminds resist shardblades: 

Quote

Questioner

If something is heavily Invested, it's harder for a Shardblade to go through it, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Kind of. It depends on the kind of Investiture and things that are going on. But yes. If you want to block a Shardblade... Like a metalmind would be a good thing to use to fight a Shardblade.

Questioner

A person with a lot of Breath, like the God-King, would you be able to chop them with a Shardblade or no?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to get very tricky on that, so I'll RAFO that for now. Let's just say that there are things. For instance, a Shardblade excising someone who's been Hemalurgically spiked is a theoretical possibility. 

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

 

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It depends in how we are defining shardblade, I would think.

If a shardblade is merely a heavily invested weapon, then a feruchemically charged sword totally fits that bill. As you all have said, fill iron with weight, alloy it to make steel, and top off the steel with speed.

If we're defining a shardblade as a weapon made from sentient investiture, then it might be possible to use the metallic arts to make one. The best post I saw on this subject was here: 

The short version is to use compounding to store vast quantities of strength, determination, investiture, etc. Then, use the stored investiture to turbo charge the traits as they're withdrawn, while storing most of your own identity in a spare metalmind. Use all of this to convince yourself that you are the strongest, sharpest sword in the universe. And then store that sword identity in an aluminum sword, also turbo charging with nicrosil while storing. The original post explains it better than I do.

 

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5 hours ago, Criggleworth said:

It depends in how we are defining shardblade, I would think.

If a shardblade is merely a heavily invested weapon, then a feruchemically charged sword totally fits that bill. As you all have said, fill iron with weight, alloy it to make steel, and top off the steel with speed.If we're defining a shardblade as a weapon made from sentient investiture, then it might be possible to use the metallic arts to make one. The best post I saw on this subject was here: 

Spoiler



The short version is to use compounding to store vast quantities of strength, determination, investiture, etc. Then, use the stored investiture to turbo charge the traits as they're withdrawn, while storing most of your own identity in a spare metalmind. Use all of this to convince yourself that you are the strongest, sharpest sword in the universe. And then store that sword identity in an aluminum sword, also turbo charging with nicrosil while storing. The original post explains it better than I do.

First of all. WOAH. That was a long theory.

Secondly. It sounds just crazy enough that it might do something, but I'm not sure the assumption of "becoming the sword" in a cognitive sense would actually happen. Maybe this is the sort of thing that Copper Compounding would be useful for, but that's just a guess. The idea of throwing all of those feruchemical traits together into the sword is interesting, in and of itself, but we don't even know if you can tap an Aluminummind, or if Aluminum's investiture-resistant nature means that it acts as a bottomless pit to just shunt your Identity into with no hope of retrieval.

Even ignoring that last bit about Aluminumminds, I feel like the fact that the sword is Aluminum at all will futz with our ability to turn it into a Shardblade-like thing. Nightblood's sheath is made of Aluminum, and it can block Nightblood like it's a normal steel sword, as we see in Oathbringer, and presumably elsewhere that I'm forgetting. Really makes me doubt that any amount of Investiture shunted into Aluminum could make it behave magically at all.

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On 3/6/2020 at 1:47 AM, Halyo_Alex said:

The idea of throwing all of those feruchemical traits together into the sword is interesting, in and of itself, but we don't even know if you can tap an Aluminummind, or if Aluminum's investiture-resistant nature means that it acts as a bottomless pit to just shunt your Identity into with no hope of retrieval.

I really doubt Aluminum Feruchemy just automatically fails like that...

I think the resistance thing gets overstated. Aluminum is a valid Allomantic metal too; not a very useful one, but it does destroy other metals (and potentially other external influences), not just itself. That is an Invested effect.

 

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I would think it's likely that the total amount of Investiture you could put into a given mass of metal is the same whether you do it by Hemalurgy or Feruchemy or something else. (Though Nightblood might be an exception, he's weird. As a sapient being of his own right, I think he might be a different case than a "dead spren" Shardblade, not just powered by investiture passively present in his metal.)

Most hemalurgic spikes are nowhere near "full", especially the big Inquisitor ones. Vin's tiny earring was able to hold almost a full Seeker's ability, as she was effectively double power. I think if a large sword was actually fully Hemalurgically (or Feruchemically) charged, it would be as Invested as a Shardblade. But several pounds of metal would be a ton of charge, maybe hundreds of people, even a few thousand...

One of the HOA epigraphs says that koloss spikes got stronger as they were re-used, but hit an upper limit. But these were far, far smaller than a sword (IIRC they're described as nails).

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13 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Most hemalurgic spikes are nowhere near "full", especially the big Inquisitor ones. Vin's tiny earring was able to hold almost a full Seeker's ability, as she was effectively double power. I think if a large sword was actually fully Hemalurgically (or Feruchemically) charged, it would be as Invested as a Shardblade. But several pounds of metal would be a ton of charge, maybe hundreds of people, even a few thousand...

There is an upper limit to how much charge can be put into metal. The bands of mourning were completely full of Feruchemical charge, and this WoB states that they were less invested than a Shardblade:

Quote

Questioner

You've said that Shardblades can be made in other magic systems. So if it's not like a Shardblade from Roshar, what makes it a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

The "Shard" refers to the heavy Investiture of a Shard of Adonalsium. Most of what you’ll see will see are the Roshar ones, but it is technically possible to make them out of the other magic systems. It's going to be a heavily invested magical weapon, is kind of how I would define it.

Questioner

So are the Bands [of Mourning] one?

Brandon Sanderson

I would not call them one, but they are close. They're not Invested enough.

The reason Shardblades are more invested than the Bands of Mourning is that Shardblades are made of pure investiture, as opposed to metal infused with investiture.

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1 hour ago, Nameless said:

as opposed to metal infused with investiture.

Well, Nightblood is metal infused with investiture. So given enough investiture in the metal it can become a shardblade.

However, the question becomes can you put enough investiture into the metal via the metallic arts?

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20 minutes ago, Emerald_Mage said:

However, the question becomes can you put enough investiture into the metal via the metallic arts?

I wonder if you could fill a Hemalurgic spike fruchemically, and if the storage interferes with each other. If the answers are yes, then no, you fill both up all the way and then maybe you could get a sword/spear full enough to count as a shard blade.

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Just now, Emerald_Mage said:

Well, Nightblood is metal infused with investiture. So given enough investiture in the metal it can become a shardblade.

However, the question becomes can you put enough investiture into the metal via the metallic arts?

I dont think you can, because you can fill a metalmind to a point that it cannot be filled anymore, and also:

On 3/4/2020 at 7:08 PM, Halyo_Alex said:

 also think you can't multi-charge a hemalurgic spike by killing multiple people with a single spike, or else the Steel Inquisitors would have been doing that all along (or at least with Ruin controlling them) to give them insanely strong allomancy.

So I don't think you can make a shardblade with metallic arts.

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4 hours ago, Nameless said:

There is an upper limit to how much charge can be put into metal. The bands of mourning were completely full of Feruchemical charge, and this WoB states that they were less invested than a Shardblade:

The reason Shardblades are more invested than the Bands of Mourning is that Shardblades are made of pure investiture, as opposed to metal infused with investiture.

Well, sure. But the Bands are spearhead-sized; necessarily, at 100% charge, they would hold much less Investiture than a Nightblood-size sword.

Nightblood is "metal infused with investiture", yet it is far more Invested than a Rosharan Shardblade.

I don't think being "pure Investiture" is actually a distinction. Matter/energy/investiture are all interconvertible in the Cosmere, like matter and energy in the real world. Ultimately I think everything in the Cosmere is "pure investiture" in that sense - 1 gram of matter is equivalent to a certain fixed amount of Investiture, just as it's equivalent to 9 x 10^13 joules of energy.

Note that Nightblood is unnaturally heavy... Possibly his mass is actually increased by the mass-equivalent of the energy he contains.

I think the really relevant difference between Shardblades, Lerasium, Atium, etc. and normal matter is accessibility of Investiture. (Like the electrical charge in a battery, vs. the far greater but inaccessible energy locked up in its mass.) Shardblades, Atium, Lerasium etc. are tied to their respective worlds' magic (Spren bonds on Roshar, Metallic Arts on Scadrial) and thus do "supernatural" things that ordinary rocks and water don't.

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9 hours ago, Emerald_Mage said:

However, the question becomes can you put enough investiture into the metal via the metallic arts?

With Compounding, why not?

Heavily Invested items can block a Shardblade, so I think the real question is - what gives a (Rosharan) Shardblade its power to cut on the Spiritual Realm? I think there's more to it than just quantity of Investiture - Nightblood has a somewhat different effect (still multi-Realm, but not the same) despite being an attempt to replicate a Rosharan Shardblade.

So if a Compounder put 1,000 Breaths equivalent of Investiture into a blade, and did nothing else, I think it would block (Rosharan) Shardblades, but not cut like one, itself.

However -- we know Nightblood is considered a Shardblade, and it has a somewhat different effect. Aluminum Hemalurgy apparently destroys powers rather than stealing them. Could this be the source of a Scadrian "other-Realm destruction" effect? Get an aluminum sword, have an Aluminum Compounder Twinborn make it into a metalmind just short of being "too full" to be usable as a Hemalurgic spike, then get both the benefits of high Investiture and the power-destruction effect?

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1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

However -- we know Nightblood is considered a Shardblade, and it has a somewhat different effect. Aluminum Hemalurgy apparently destroys powers rather than stealing them.

Nightblood does not destroy powers, it destroys everything. You could use it to clear a forest. Not a good idea, but possible. An aluminiummind will definitely not do that.

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

Could this be the source of a Scadrian "other-Realm destruction" effect? Get an aluminum sword, have an Aluminum Compounder Twinborn make it into a metalmind just short of being "too full" to be usable as a Hemalurgic spike, then get both the benefits of high Investiture and the power-destruction effect?

Nightblood got a specific command to destroy. Why would that be necessary if you could just put enough Breath into an object? In fact, why can't Susebron destroy you with a touch or a scratch?

Even more, shard blades don't destroy by touching. The handle and even the sides are perfectly safe and living shard blades can form into objects without a cutting edge. The edges have a separate magical effect.

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Just for the heck of it (and because I needed something to draw before I go nuts) I decided to draw my theoretical Perfect Mindblade (The kind that acts as a Medallion and has Ettmetal on it).

The Nicrosil is a medallion-like setup that contains A-Pewter and F-Iron, which is given to the user so that they can prime the Ettmetal to mimic both, reducing weight and enhancing the durability of the sword, like a Rosharan Shardblade. It's not as light or truly unbreakable like one, but it's an improvement over mundane steel to be sure.

Replica Shardblade.png

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On 3/13/2020 at 2:01 AM, Oltux72 said:

Nightblood does not destroy powers, it destroys everything. You could use it to clear a forest. Not a good idea, but possible. An aluminiummind will definitely not do that.

I agree that Aluminum Hemalurgy (not aluminumminds - feruchemy) does not do the same thing as Nightblood. I was just saying that the specific Spiritual-cutting effect we see on Roshar isn't necessary to qualify as a "Shardblade", since Nightblood's effect is different.

 

On 3/13/2020 at 2:01 AM, Oltux72 said:

Nightblood got a specific command to destroy. Why would that be necessary if you could just put enough Breath into an object? In fact, why can't Susebron destroy you with a touch or a scratch?

Even more, shard blades don't destroy by touching. The handle and even the sides are perfectly safe and living shard blades can form into objects without a cutting edge. The edges have a separate magical effect.

I agree that being highly Invested by itself doesn't give any destructive effect. It should, however, let the object block a Shardblade (more like a half-shard shield).

My suggestion was that an Aluminummind that was hugely Invested by Compounding (just a bit less than the maximum for a sword-sized object, not totally "full", to allow "room" for the Hemalurgic charge) would block a Shardblade. The Aluminum Hemalurgy (not Feruchemy) was then added to give the "power destruction effect".

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