Wait, Unsealed Metalminds are PERMANENT?!

[Trusk'our he/him]

I was trying to find a quote for another thread I was making when I stumbled upon this. . .

Quote

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

So, one thing that I was thinking about was that Hemalurgy would still have an edge over Unsealed Metalmind tech in that you can get a spike, then use the power associated with it as long as you continue to have that spike; ran out of Feruchemical stores? No problem, just store some more. No more metal to burn? Just go grab some more; you're still an Allomancer because you've got that spike.

But now, is sounds like you may be able to not use up a Unsealed Metalmind's nicrosil power when you use it. Which is super, duper important, if you ask me.

Although, maybe I got this wrong. Maybe I'm extrapolating too much from this little quote. This is also probably not that world changing, but can someone please tell me I'm not crazy?

Edited January 14, 2022 by Trusk'our

[CryoZenith he/him]

We would have to find out what Excisors are and how exactly they work before we can fully determine how "overpowered" unsealed metalminds are. Because that might be, say, a bottleneck to mass production of medallions.

So like, I feel pretty strongly that you are descriptively correct about "unsealedness" being permanent (as in, about a medallion staying a functional medallion no matter how much it is used) but exactly how powerful that is relies on the specifics of other rungs in the medallion production process.

Because it might very well be the case that an unsealed metalmind is like a shardblade. In that it could go through tens of users and hundreds of years passing and still be a "functional" shardblade, but there's only so many shardblades that can exist, so there's no exponential power explosion.

Edited January 14, 2022 by CryoZenith
Typo, accidentally said extractors instead of excisors

[+Bzhydack he/him]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

I was trying to find a quote for another thread I was making when I stumbled upon this. . .

So, one thing that I was thinking about was that Hemalurgy would still have an edge over Unsealed Metalmind tech in that you can get a spike, then use the power associated with it as long as you continue to have that spike; ran out of Feruchemical stores? No problem, just store some more. No more metal to burn? Just go grab some more; you're still an Allomancer because you've got that spike.

But now, is sounds like you may be able to not use up a Unsealed Metalmind's nicrosil power when you use it. Which is super, duper important, if you ask me.

Although, maybe I got this wrong. Maybe I'm extrapolating too much from this little quote. This is also probably not that world changing, but can someone please tell me I'm not crazy?

Remember, memory in coppermind is slowly fading, if is uploaded/used. So if nicrosilmind works the same, it will also lose charge over time.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

3 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

But now, is sounds like you may be able to not use up a Unsealed Metalmind's nicrosil power when you use it. Which is super, duper important, if you ask me.

Unsealed metalminds are real weird. You don't actually have to consciously tap or even know about the nicrosil portion for it to take effect, touching it just automatically grants the power. (The Bands of Mourning don't actually behave at all similarly to other medallions in... pretty much any regard, they seem a lot more just like normal metalminds anyone can use. My theory is that rather than being a 32-power medallion like people in-world think, they're just a one-power medallion that allows you to use Feruchamical nicrosil, and then a bunch of normal nicrosilminds.)

[Honorless he/him]

2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Unsealed metalminds are real weird. You don't actually have to consciously tap or even know about the nicrosil portion for it to take effect, touching it just automatically grants the power. (The Bands of Mourning don't actually behave at all similarly to other medallions in... pretty much any regard, they seem a lot more just like normal metalminds anyone can use. My theory is that rather than being a 32-power medallion like people in-world think, they're just a one-power medallion that allows you to use Feruchamical nicrosil, and then a bunch of normal nicrosilminds.)

You think they're connected to a bunch of other metalminds like a... metalmind-net or metalmind-hive? Hmm... but they themselves were forged of many metals (which in seems weird, now that I think about it) and I think Wax or Marasi would've noticed the connection 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

11 minutes ago, Honorless said:

You think they're connected to a bunch of other metalminds like a... metalmind-net or metalmind-hive? Hmm... but they themselves were forged of many metals (which in seems weird, now that I think about it) and I think Wax or Marasi would've noticed the connection 

More just that imo they're just a bunch of normal (but Identityless) metalminds attached to each other that you can tap at once, or something like that. Same way they have steel metalminds and such attached to the power-granting portion.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 14.1.2022 at 11:23 PM, Trusk'our said:

But now, is sounds like you may be able to not use up a Unsealed Metalmind's nicrosil power when you use it. Which is super, duper important, if you ask me.

It is

On 14.1.2022 at 11:23 PM, Trusk'our said:

Although, maybe I got this wrong. Maybe I'm extrapolating too much from this little quote. This is also probably not that world changing, but can someone please tell me I'm not crazy?

They are behaving like a coppermind in principle. Why would that be unusual? It makes me wonder what would happen if you were unintentionally separated from one, though.

[Trusk'our he/him]

14 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

They are behaving like a coppermind in principle. Why would that be unusual? It makes me wonder what would happen if you were unintentionally separated from one, though.

I guess it feels unusual because most of the attributes that you can tap with Feruchemy are not like copper; you temporarily store a certain amount of strength of a certain attribute which you later tap to enhance that same attribute temporarily, but copper stores a specific part of your self that is permanently separated from you until you tap it again.

So, would someone storing in a Nicrosilmind permanently loose their power until it was tapped again, similar to how Feruchemical copper works?

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/7/2022 at 9:06 PM, Trusk'our said:

So, would someone storing in a Nicrosilmind permanently loose their power until it was tapped again, similar to how Feruchemical copper works?

Hmm. Quite possibly. So does someone permanently lose power for every medallion made? Or is Nicrosil Compounding involved?

[+Bzhydack he/him]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

Or is Nicrosil Compounding involved?

This probably. From practical perspective, we know that Southerners dont have many Metalborn, so it need to be possible for them to make many medalions for every Metalborn.

[cometaryorbit]

So maybe "Excisors" are hemalurgic spikes granting f-Nicrosil and a-Nicrosil?

[+robardin he/him]

On 2/11/2022 at 1:01 AM, cometaryorbit said:

So maybe "Excisors" are hemalurgic spikes granting f-Nicrosil and a-Nicrosil?

That's basically what I've always imagined, since an "excisor" (a fictional word) sounds a lot like "device or mechanism for performing an excision" (a real word, defined by Webster's as the act or procedure of removing by or as if by cutting out; especially : surgical removal or resection)

Which sounds an awful lot like "spiking a Metalborn power out of someone, and retaining that boon for later use"

[Anomander Rake he/him]

We know that burning Lerasium increases your power as a Mistborn (connection to preservation, whatever, details on this to be hammered out later) - ie Vin, already mistborn, would have her raw power increased if she burned some more. 

It only makes sense to me that transferring whatever that is into a nicrosil-mind works the same way, being continuous rather than discrete - letting you store X amount of lerasiums worth of your strength as a mistborn.

[+robardin he/him]

On 2/7/2022 at 7:16 AM, Oltux72 said:

It is

They are behaving like a coppermind in principle. Why would that be unusual? It makes me wonder what would happen if you were unintentionally separated from one, though.

Or intentional... Why not tap 32 medallions for their Metalborn power?

Allik mentioned they interfere with each other, but that was if someone wore them at the same time. If you could tap the medallion, gain the power, then toss the medallion but keep the power, would there be a reason you couldn't do that 32 times (sequentially)?

I'm thinking it's a contact thing with an unsealed metalmind - once you lose physical contact with it, the (false) Connection is broken and the ability is lost. Or perhaps, the Identity-less aspect is lost, and you lose access to the power because it's no longer free anybody.

In which case, what may also be lost is the ability to "put it back" into the medallion. Keep those things strapped on!

[Wandering Shade]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

I'm thinking it's a contact thing with an unsealed metalmind - once you lose physical contact with it, the (false) Connection is broken and the ability is lost. Or perhaps, the Identity-less aspect is lost, and you lose access to the power because it's no longer free anybody.

Its a contact thing with all metalminds. You need to be in contact with the metal that the Investiture is stored in.

[+robardin he/him]

3 minutes ago, Wandering Shade said:

Its a contact thing with all metalminds. You need to be in contact with the metal that the Investiture is stored in.

Right, but if you tap (your own) coppermind, you don't have to be in constant contact with it to retain the memory, right? You're "getting it back". And a coppermind was the analogy given in that WoB as to the nature of an unsealed metalmind.

Otherwise, once you "offloaded" a memory of something into a coppermind, you could ONLY access it while tapping that particular coppermind.

Well maybe that is how it works, actually, I just never thought about it. I sort of assumed the "identity-free" aspect of the unsealed metalmind was the twist.

Edited February 15, 2022 by robardin

[Wandering Shade]

3 hours ago, robardin said:

Right, but if you tap (your own) coppermind, you don't have to be in constant contact with it to retain the memory, right? You're "getting it back". And a coppermind was the analogy given in that WoB as to the nature of an unsealed metalmind.

Otherwise, once you "offloaded" a memory of something into a coppermind, you could ONLY access it while tapping that particular coppermind.

Well maybe that is how it works, actually, I just never thought about it. I sort of assumed the "identity-free" aspect of the unsealed metalmind was the twist.

When you tap a coppermind, you are returning that memory you stored to your mind. Then it's in your head until you want to store it again. You dont need to be in constant contact with the metalmind after you've tapped it, but you do for the act of tapping it and the act of storing it away again.

But copper is something of an exception since most metalminds give something to you only for when you're tapping it and the moment you stop tapping (or stop touching the metalmind) you lose whatever you would have been gaining.

As for what this means to Nicrosilminds and Medallions, I think it means that you tap the nicrosilmind and gain the ability to tap the other metalmind(s) in the medallion. And when your done using the medallion, you store that ability back in the nicrosilmind. I think.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Wandering Shade

[+robardin he/him]

12 hours ago, Wandering Shade said:

When you tap a coppermind, you are returning that memory you stored to your mind. Then it's in your head until you want to store it again. You dont need to be in constant contact with the metalmind after you've tapped it, but you do for the act of tapping it and the act of storing it away again.

But copper is something of an exception since most metalminds give something to you only for when you're tapping it and the moment you stop tapping (or stop touching the metalmind) you lose whatever you would have been gaining.

As for what this means to Nicrosilminds and Medallions, I think it means that you tap the nicrosilmind and gain the ability to tap the other metalmind(s) in the medallion. And when your done using the medallion, you store that ability back in the nicrosilmind. I think.

Right, but if you could "keep" the power from the nicrosilmind after tapping it after relinquishing it, that would be pretty OP and also not what we see happening with the medallions (which appear to need constant contact).

So I'm thinking the "you can permanently get back what you put in" aspect of a normal coppermind has to do with the metalmind "belonging to" the Feruchemist in question (via Identity keying), and that an unsealed (Identity-free) nicrosilmind would "pull back" the Investiture when contact was broken. Being Identity-less would mean anyone can draw in the Investiture from the nicrosilmind (to gain the Metalborn power) but that nobody could keep it, so to speak.

Otherwise, it would seem that Wax dropping the coppermind coin at the end of BoM would either mean he had gained F-copper (until/unless putting that power back into the medallion), or that the coin's memory was now inaccessible except by an Archivist or someone with another unsealed medallion granting F-copper.

But we don't really yet know how these things are made (and thus to function) - it's something we will find out in The Lost Metal.