Sapient metalminds?

[Trusk'our]

Alright, I was thinking about what would happen if someone wanted to make a sapient piece of investiture, similar to a spren or Nightblood. If investiture is left alone long enough, it gains a mind of its own, becoming sentient, and possibly even sapient. I was thinking feruchemy would be one of the easiest options, aside from awakening, so I will use this magic system for this post.

Quote

Questioner

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. And then with-- 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

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

It wouldn't tie with the Identity that was stored in the aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

From this quote, if you blank your Identity before you store your memories, or whatever other investiture you put in there, you might be able to allow the metalmind-mind (yes, that's what I'm calling it) to tap or otherwise benefit from the other sources of investiture there. This could allow you to help shape the personality of the metalmind-mind while its forming, and you can use a speed bubble, probably also using harmonium so you don't also get caught with it, to speed up the process. Boom. A sapient piece of investiture that you formed.

Perhaps if you split pieces of the metalmind-mind off with raysium, you can create multiple, separate parts of the same entity that can still communicate with one another. Maybe you could use this process to create a magical spy network by placing these pieces throughout a city.

Could compounding somehow be implemented to make a copy of the metalmind-mind, allowing you to manufacture "metallic servants", that are essentially AI?

Could the sapient investiture inside the metalmind-mind move through surrounding pieces of metal, allowing it to flow and travel freely and escape from the metal that once held it?

Could it somehow use a zinc metalmind to become a singularity of intelligence?

Could it become a sort of magical AI dictator of future Scadrial, like a metalmind-Lord Ruler? (okay, this last one's just for kicks )

[Honorless]

Yeah, seems like living Metalminds should be possible. I'm not sure about splitting them up though, not unless you made the entity that way from their creation. Also why Raysium specifically? No, I don't think compounding would create more copies of the Metalmind entity, probably just give them more Investiture that they may or may not be able to use.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Honorless

[Trusk'our]

7 hours ago, Honorless said:

Yeah, seems like living Metalminds should be possible. I'm not sure about splitting them up though, not unless you made the entity that way from their creation. Also why Raysium specifically? No, I don't think compounding would create more copies of the Metalmind entity, probably just give them more Investiture that they may or may not be able to use.

Oops. I somehow got it into my head that Raysium was used to break gemstones with spren inside to make two gemstone halves, each with half the spren inside. I looked at the coppermind wiki again, and it reminded me that Raysium allows for the transfer of a spren from one gemstone to another, including those that have already been split in half.

So maybe you could just split it in half, since a sentient metalmind is kind of like a artificial spren?

Also, if a sapient metalmind had access to feruchemical Connection, would it maybe be able to control a hemalurgic construct, and use it like a host body?

[Honorless]

6 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Oops. I somehow got it into my head that Raysium was used to break gemstones with spren inside to make two gemstone halves, each with half the spren inside. I looked at the coppermind wiki again, and it reminded me that Raysium allows for the transfer of a spren from one gemstone to another, including those that have already been split in half.

So maybe you could just split it in half, since a sentient metalmind is kind of like a artificial spren?

Also, if a sapient metalmind had access to feruchemical Connection, would it maybe be able to control a hemalurgic construct, and use it like a host body?

Well, Connection can be used to make Investiture believe two things are part of the same and shattered things are Connected to each other. There might be a hack there.