Nicrosil Allomancy is Going to be Amazing

[Dirigible]

I’ve been thinking lately about nicrosil in Allomancy/Feruchemy and I was wondering why Brandon wanted to make the protagonist of Era 3 a Nicroburst. I think I figured out the answer: medallions make Allomantic nicrosil insanely overpowered.

There will always be the standard effects of Allomantic nicrosil: duralumin-flaring your allies’ misting powers (or opponents in some cases). Which is a decent ability. But if Era 2 medallions become available to our Nicroburst protagonist, they will be able to use compounding to create their own Keyed medallions permanently. Theoretically they would only need a shaving of any medallion.

Say we have a Connection medallion. The medallion would appear to have two components: a full Nicrosilmind which grants the user Feruchemical nicrosil and fConnection and an empty Duraluminmind that the user can then use (we’ve seen it used to a blank one’s Locational Connection thus far). Our Nicroburst could instead swallow the medallion and burn the nicrosil. This would grant tenfold the Feruchemical nicrosil and Feruchemical duralumin which the Nicroburst can then store inside their own Nicrosilminds which would be Keyed to their Identity.

(Sidenote on tapping medallions. It seems to me that tapping a Nicrosilmind can be done by anyone as long as it is either Unkeyed or Keyed to them. This may be turn out to be a false axiom).

Since our Nicroburst has natural Allomantic nicrosil, they can always compound their existing feruchemical abilities stored in their Nicrosilminds and thus have that power in perpetuity. A small shaving of any medallion would be enough because of the power of compounding.

I don’t see any reason why medallions couldn’t grant Allomancy, so theoretically a Nicroburst could have Fullborn abilities given the right resources. Or any other ability that can be stored in a Nicrosilmind. All of this makes a resourceful Nicroburst an immensely powerful individual in the cosmere. I hope to see these mechanics play out in Era 3; I guess we’ll see in 5 years!

[Raphaborn]

We don't know exactly how unsealed nicrosilminds work.
But still, a Nicroburst is incredibly powerful. And, yes, that would allow him to use Compouding on unkeyed F-Nicrosil or one that he had done using a medallion. Which seems totally incredible, even if it is uncertain what it does.

Although I really like his perspective. I have always had the theory that there are sealed and unkeyed nicrosilminds that would allow to create metalminds that would grant powers to any Soulbearer (which is probably easier than creating a medallion that anyone can use). And a Nicroburst would be able to do that through Compouding as well.

[Aspiring Writer]

I had just assumed that he made the protag an A-Nicrosil is because there is a Mistborn, which can create an interesting dynamic because one, if she is trying to catch him, forcing a duralumin burst can be both useful and devastating to the Mistborn, like when vin burned duralumin and tin and basically created a flashbang effect. Meanwhile, if the Mistborn ends up joining her, there are interesting ways that dynamic can work, though the Mistborn would already have Duralumin to do that anyways.

[Dirigible]

I think you could be right that Era 3 book 1 (the Mistborn serial killer hunt) won’t get into the mechanics I’ve described. I agree that there’s a lot of depth to the base nicroburst power. Sanderson does like to ramp up the magical shenanigans book by book though, so I think this will be hinted at in book 1 and be a core factor of our protagonist’s power set in book 2 or 3.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Dirigible

[Kingsdaughter613]

This concept gets really interesting when you consider whatever role Kelsier will be playing.

He’s the only person we’ve seen create allomantic medallions, and he’s a Fullborn (or has access to those abilities. What would an unexpected Duralumin burst do to a compounder?!

Random Kelsier being gleeful and sneaky on the 7 of Spears: 

[Halyo_Alex]

59 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

What would an unexpected Duralumin burst do to a compounder?!

We've got a WoB on this, actually. Lemme see if I can find it.

Quote

Questioner

What happens if you burn duralumin while Compounding?

Brandon Sanderson

Duralumin while Compounding. So, what duralumin does is it burns out of all of your metal in one burst. So it doesn't necessarily gain you power, it makes it all happen at the same time. The same thing would happen.

Questioner

Could you turn into a baby?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, you could totally turn into a baby. That is within the power of using that, doing <health wrong>, yeah you could totally... You'd be really dangerous.

Questioner

But it wouldn't really do much?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh it would have explosive... it does things really fast. That's what it does. Yes you could achieve very powerful sudden effects through that. It'd be scary. Controlling it can be dangerous, regardless of which metal you use.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

Yep. Basically it just forces you to burn all of your currently burnable metalminds and receive the power from it all in one go.

[Kingsdaughter613]

7 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

We've got a WoB on this, actually. Lemme see if I can find it.

Yep. Basically it just forces you to burn all of your currently burnable metalminds and receive the power from it all in one go.

I didn’t mean in the technical sense (I could guess at that). I meant in the “how obscenely explosive would those effects be.”

Hypothetically, assuming Kell normally has the kind of power he put in the Bands: Let’s say he’s burning steel, iron, pewter and electrum. He’s also tapping iron and pewter. You Nicroburst hit him and he’s suddenly an extremely heavy, extremely strong, being super-pulling on buildings and pushing on the continental plate while gazing into the Spiritual realm.

Explosive seems insufficient for the possibilities.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Kingsdaughter613

[Quantus]

11 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

I didn’t mean in the technical sense (I could guess at that). I meant in the “how obscenely explosive would those effects be.”

Hypothetically, assuming Kell normally has the kind of power he put in the Bands: Let’s say he’s burning steel, iron, pewter and electrum. He’s also tapping iron and pewter. You Nicroburst hit him and he’s suddenly an extremely heavy, extremely strong, being super-pulling on buildings and pushing on the continental plate while gazing into the Spiritual realm.

Explosive seems insufficient for the possibilities.

The downside is that feruchemy has innate limits that compounding bypasses, sometimes for the worse.  For example, over-tapping F-Pewter can bulk you up tot he point that you can no longer move.  So forcing somebody to overtap it that explosively could start to resemble the 3rd act of Akira.

 

[Kingsdaughter613]

35 minutes ago, Quantus said:

The downside is that feruchemy has innate limits that compounding bypasses, sometimes for the worse.  For example, over-tapping F-Pewter can bulk you up tot he point that you can no longer move.  So forcing somebody to overtap it that explosively could start to resemble the 3rd act of Akira.

 

The real issue is that he can push on trace metals - and he’d be pushing against the continental plate while being extremely heavy. The result would not be great for anyone living in the area.

[+robardin]

On 3/8/2021 at 9:40 PM, Halyo_Alex said:

We've got a WoB on this, actually. Lemme see if I can find it.

Yep. Basically it just forces you to burn all of your currently burnable metalminds and receive the power from it all in one go.

Nitpick: burning duralumin doesn't force you to burn "all your metals at once"; rather, whatever metal(s) you were already burning when you burned the duralumin, those metals get used up and provide all their power in one mega-flash.

We see Vin using duralumin strategically by first extinguishing all her metals other than what she wanted to enhance before burning the duralumin.

For example, when she scared Straff Venture with a Soothing Bomb through the tent while he was busy taunting Elend at their meeting in WoA:

Quote

"...You dismissed Vin as a threat—but would any rational man dismiss a Mistborn, no matter how small or quiet? In fact, you’d think that the small, quiet ones would be the assassins you’d want to pay the most attention to.”

Vin smiled. Clever, she thought. She reached out, Rioting Straff’s emotions, flaring her metal and stoking his sense of anger. He gasped in sudden shock. Take the clue, Elend.

“Fear,” Elend said. She Soothed away Straff’s anger and exchanged it for fear.

“Passion.” She complied.

“Calmness.”

She soothed everything away. Inside the tent, she saw Straff’s shadow standing stiffly. An Allomancer couldn’t force a person to do anything—and usually, strong Pushes or Pulls on an emotion were less effective, since they alerted the target that something was wrong. In this case, however, Vin wanted Straff to know for certain she was watching.

She smiled, extinguishing her tin. Then she burned duralumin and Soothed Straff’s emotions with explosive pressure, wiping away all capacity for feeling within him. His shadow stumbled beneath the attack. Her brass was gone a moment later, and she turned on her tin again, watching the black patterns on the canvas.

 

So I would imagine a nicroburst Misting would have the same effect, but on another Allomancer burning their metal(s).

I do remember wondering if a nicroburst Misting would have a similar "burnout" effect on a Feruchemist. We haven't seen any yet in-world, only Leechers, and while we do have WoBs that a Leecher could/would affect other Cosmere Investiture users such as Awakeners (Warbreaker) or Surgebinders (Stormlight), how they would interact with Feruchemy is still a RAFO as of BoM:

Quote

Questioner

Could a Leecher take away stores in a metalmind?

Brandon Sanderson

You’ll have to find out.  That’s a RAFO.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

Whatever would happen would probably occur if the Leecher/Nicroburst touched a Feruchemist was actively tapping a metalmind.

I do see nicrobursting being a potentially useful disruptor to one's opponents as well as an aid to one's ally. Imagine catching Wax just before he Pushed off a coin to fly off, and making him burn all his steel at once - not only is he now cannonized (not canonized) in whatever direction he'd been jumping in, he now has no steel left to Push himself to slow down and land on the other end. Unless he's flying so high/far that he has time to dig out a backup vial of steel.

He'd better hope he was out in the open, then, and not about to crack his head on some kind of ceiling.

[Halyo_Alex]

2 minutes ago, robardin said:

Nitpick: burning duralumin doesn't force you to burn "all your metals at once"; rather, whatever metal(s) you were already burning when you burned the duralumin, those metals get used up and provide all their power in one mega-flash.

Valid nitpick. That was me just forgetting that the power has to be "active".

[The Technovore]

On 3/8/2021 at 5:39 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

What would an unexpected Duralumin burst do to a compounder?!

I like to imagine that for steel compounders they'd go so fast they'd break the lightspeed barrier but without any kind of protection their mass immediately turns imaginary as time does horrible things to their causality and they just slowly redshift out of reality.

[Halyo_Alex]

On 5/10/2021 at 3:02 PM, The Technovore said:

I like to imagine that for steel compounders they'd go so fast they'd break the lightspeed barrier but without any kind of protection their mass immediately turns imaginary as time does horrible things to their causality and they just slowly redshift out of reality.

Brandon has said you can't go faster than light with F-Steel, BUT they would burn themselves up with "reentry" heating from air friction. Surprise cremation!

[Kalak_]

As soon as I saw what nicrosil did I knew it would be important in era three