Raboniel's Dagger - Nicrosil

[Kinolee]

I've been having lots of fun translating Navani's notebook recently.  Most of it is just flavor, but I do think I have found at least one important thing hidden here.  Check out this page about Raboniel's Soul-Harvesting Dagger...

Spoiler

I suspect this "silver-nickel" alloy is actually nicrosil, which is really a chromium-nickel alloy, and that Raboniel is lying here to throw Navani off the trail.  She says on this very page that Navani is right not to trust her.  Nicrosil has the feruchemical property of storing investiture.  I find it hard to believe that the housing of the gemstone is unrelated to the function of the dagger (all fabrials are housed in a meaningful metal cage, afterall).  So what are the chances that this is not nicrosil?

12/9 update:  Got a RAFO about this from Brandon.  Very interesting.

Edited December 10, 2020 by Kinolee
RAFO

[LordFlea]

You're right I'm pretty sure. Raboniel drops a moderate secret to hide another, I think she's right to fear a Navani that understands the Metallic Arts

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

 

58 minutes ago, Kinolee said:

Raboniel is lying here to throw Navani off the trail.  She says on this very page that Navani is right not to trust her.

It's very possible she's lying; if you put "don't trust me" on the page you should probably put something untrustworthy on there. I'm wondering why she would lie though, since she wants Navani to succeed

[Brgst13]

11 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

 

It's very possible she's lying; if you put "don't trust me" on the page you should probably put something untrustworthy on there. I'm wondering why she would lie though, since she wants Navani to succeed

She wants Navani to succeed, but the composition of the dagger seems like a military secret not necessary for Navani's success.  Remember, she still wants the Fused and Singers to win the war.

[seriodor]

1 hour ago, Kinolee said:

I've been having lots of fun translating Navani's notebook recently.  Most of it is just flavor, but I do think I have found at least one important thing hidden here.  Check out this page about Raboniel's Soul-Harvesting Dagger...

  Hide contents

I suspect this "silver-nickel" alloy is actually nicrosil, which is really a chromium-nickel alloy, and that Raboniel is lying here to throw Navani off the trail.  She says on this very page that Navani is right not to trust her.  Nicrosil has the feruchemical property of storing investiture.  I find it hard to believe that the housing of the gemstone is unrelated to the function of the dagger (all fabrials are housed in a meaningful metal cage, afterall).  So what are the chances that this is not nicrosil?

So I agree with you, but when I said this in another thread the argument they used was that Raboniel said the metal was just decorative, and that it doesn't affect the functionality. I think she was either lying about that, or she just doesn't understand the purpose of Nicrosil. It makes sense that the Nicrosil would be used to draw out the investiture, and the Raysium conducts it to the gem.

[Kinolee]

What do you guys think about this being an example of hemalurgy instead of feruchemy?  Afterall, I think Raboniel did say that the dagger only really works when you stab someone with it...  The hemalurgical property of nicrosil is that it steals investiture.  It seems to fit here.

But being that the dagger's original purpose was to trap a Herald, rather than kill one... I think the part about nicrosil storing investiture is important too.  What if this is an example of using a nicrosil metalmind as a hemalurgic spike?  Using nicrosil to both steal and store investiture, that is then conducted by the raysium to the gemstone.

I feel like I'm on to something...

[Seloun]

Quote

Raboniel took it, and though she didn’t drop it this time, she did flinch. “So strange,” she said. She fitted it into her second dagger. Then she undid a screw and slipped out the piece of metal running through the center. She flipped it around—it had points on both ends, and a hole for the screw—before replacing it.

“To make the anti-Voidlight flow out of the gemstone along the blade?” Navani asked. “Instead of drawing in what it touches?”

“Indeed,” Raboniel said. “You may wish to take cover.” Then she turned, walked across the room, and stabbed her daughter in the chest.

Sanderson, Brandon. Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive) . Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

So flipping it reverse the action of the dagger. This seems to suggest the housing of the gem really isn't that important (or at least isn't the reason why the gem attracts Light). There doesn't seem to be any indication that Raboniel did anything else with the dagger (e.g. somehow inverted the gem housing) though it's possible Navani didn't see everything.

It also seems to suggest the middle section isn't just a piece of raysium, but something that has asymmetry in composition or perhaps a composite piece. 

That said, a 'silver-nickle alloy' seems like a really weird choice if the metal doesn't really matter; why not use something a lot more common? Unless she's being pedantic and the metal doesn't affect the dagger's (i.e. investure draining) function, but does affect the gem's function (perhaps making it less lossy?).

[Kinolee]

19 hours ago, Seloun said:

So flipping it reverse the action of the dagger. This seems to suggest the housing of the gem really isn't that important (or at least isn't the reason why the gem attracts Light). There doesn't seem to be any indication that Raboniel did anything else with the dagger (e.g. somehow inverted the gem housing) though it's possible Navani didn't see everything.

It also seems to suggest the middle section isn't just a piece of raysium, but something that has asymmetry in composition or perhaps a composite piece. 

That said, a 'silver-nickle alloy' seems like a really weird choice if the metal doesn't really matter; why not use something a lot more common? Unless she's being pedantic and the metal doesn't affect the dagger's (i.e. investure draining) function, but does affect the gem's function (perhaps making it less lossy?).

Yes I think you are correct here, and I should have been more clear in my OP.  I don't think the nicrosil has anything to do with the investiture-drawing function of the dagger.  Rather, I believe its entire purpose is to create a fabrial that perfectly stores investiture that has already been drawn out by raysium.  It's a two-part system.  The raysium conducts the investiture and the ruby/nicrosil fabrial at the base stores that investiture.  The raysium vein can then be removed and reversed such that the investiture is conducted either to or from the gemstone storage -- likely via the use of magnetism/poliarity.  There are so many mentions of polarity in the book, and specifically there is one mention that Raboniel knows a way to polarize otherwise non-magnetic metals...

Quote

Raboniel knew a method of changing the polarity of a magnet, a process involving the lightning channeled from a stormform. Captive lightning seemed to have boundless potential applications, but Navani kept herself focused—maybe the polarity-swapping process would also work on gemstones filled with Voidlight.

Quote

A magnet could be made to change its polarity with some captive lightning, and another magnet could realign the pole. But Raboniel had mentioned they could magnetize an ordinary piece of metal that way too.

I don't think the raysium vein is a composite or an alloy or anything like that.  I just think it is polarized such that the investiture flows from the negative end to the positive end, like an electromagnet -- except more like an investituremagnet in this case.  That's why flipping the vein changes the flow of investiture to or from the gemstone.  The part where the nicrosil surely comes in is in the storage, not the flow.

[seriodor]

18 hours ago, Kinolee said:

Yes I think you are correct here, and I should have been more clear in my OP.  I don't think the nicrosil has anything to do with the investiture-drawing function of the dagger.  Rather, I believe its entire purpose is to create a fabrial that perfectly stores investiture that has already been drawn out by raysium.  It's a two-part system.  The raysium conducts the investiture and the ruby/nicrosil fabrial at the base stores that investiture.  The raysium vein can then be removed and reversed such that the investiture is conducted either to or from the gemstone storage -- likely via the use of magnetism/poliarity.  There are so many mentions of polarity in the book, and specifically there is one mention that Raboniel knows a way to polarize otherwise non-magnetic metals...

I don't think the raysium vein is a composite or an alloy or anything like that.  I just think it is polarized such that the investiture flows from the negative end to the positive end, like an electromagnet -- except more like an investituremagnet in this case.  That's why flipping the vein changes the flow of investiture to or from the gemstone.  The part where the nicrosil surely comes in is in the storage, not the flow.

I don't think it's meant for storage. Burning Nicrosil allows an Alloymancer to draw all the investiture from someone they touch. I think the Nicrosil draws the investiture out, into the Raysium, which rapidly conducts all of the investiture to/from the stabee.

[Kinolee]

22 hours ago, seriodor said:

Burning Nicrosil allows an Alloymancer to draw all the investiture from someone they touch.

No it doesn't.  Burning nicrosil as an allomancer allows you to cause a person you are touching to expend all of their investiture in a single large burst.  The ability of nicrosil to allow someone to steal investiture comes from hemalurgy, not allomancy.  It's feruchemical property is as I've said, storage of investiture.

That said, since the dagger is designed for stabbing, and Raboniel even claimed that generally stabbing is needed for the dagger to work, maybe we really are dealing with hemalurgy here.  Maybe this is the first example of hemalurgy being used outside of Scadrial.  But then I have to ask... if nicrosil is what is causing the investiture to be stolen, then what is the point of the raysium?

Perhaps nicrosil is the metal that does the stealing, and raysium simply causes that investiture to be conducted into the gemstone (instead of stored in the metal of the hemalurgic spike)?  I don't think this the case though.   It's the blade that does the stabbing part, and as far as we know there is no nicrosil in the blade itself, only in the housing of the ruby.  I think it's much more likely that the nicrosil is meant to add an investiture-storage property to the ruby fabrial, and that raysium is conducting investiture there.

IMO, I don't believe there are any metallic arts being employed here.  No hemalurgy, allomancy, or feruchemy.  We already know from Navani's lecture on fabrial mechanics that metals across the cosmere have specific effects on investiture that have nothing directly to do with Scardrial's metallic arts, and that artifabrians on Roshar exploit those innate properties in their engineering.  It's the other way around -- Scadrial was created by two shards after the Shattering, so it makes sense that their magic system is sort of a copy and expansion on the natural universe and physical laws created originally by Adonalsium.  I think nicrosil's innate properties have to do with storing, directing, or otherwise controlling investiture, and that's what its function in the dagger is here.

[Kinolee]

Just a small update... Brandon officially RAFO'd me on this... darn I was hoping I could trick him into at least confirming that Raboniel was lying, even if he wasn't ready to reveal what the metal is.  But then again... he could have just said "nah, she's telling the truth..."