Can a Feruchemist use a Shardblade as a Metalmind?

[Trusk'our he/him]

If a Feruchemist could get their hands on a Shardblade, could they store an attribute in it? Would a dead Shardblade work better since it is at least a little less invested than a live one?

[cometaryorbit]

I think at least an Honorblade (pure "tanavastium") would have to be a viable metal for the Metallic Arts. Whether it's too Invested to actually store in, is another question.

I don't think we know whether the metal of Shardblades made from Honor/Cultivation combined spren would count as "alloys" for the Metallic Arts (thus having 'wrong percentage' problems), or whether they'd count as their own new godmetal (Splinter-metal). Harmonium/ettmetal is technically not an alloy.

On 7/21/2022 at 6:55 AM, Nicosium said:

What would interest me personally would be what a Tanavastium and Lerasium alloy would do if burnt.... Would it create a sort of Surgebinding Mistborn? Or not do anything?

Not actually confirmed, but this WoB would suggest granting the associated magic is at least a possible effect of lerasium/non-Scadrian godmetal alloys:

Stormlightning

If Hoid was to get his hands on "bavadinium," could he alloy it with lerasium and get Sand Mastery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 6, 2018)

Not sure how that would work in this case due to the bond based nature of Surgebinding though.

Edited August 3, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[CryoZenith he/him]

Hm. All godmetals have a feruchemical property, and any combination of two godmetals has at least 1 alloy which has a feruchemical property. It is *possible* none of the ten Tanavastium-Korraveliumium alloys present in shardblades is the proper alloy, but who knows.

[Dunkum he/him]

I think you have 2 possible problems:

1 we don't know if the metal of the shardbade is the right proportions for use in the Metallic Arts as CryZenith point out. It isn't clear what the shardblades are made of but various theories suggest that the different radiant spren have different levels of Honor and Preservation's power (i.e. HonorSpren are 100% Honor, or close too it, CultivationSpren being 100% cultivation and he rest being some percentage of the 2) as a result the thought is that their respective shardblades must be alloys of the honor and cultivation godmetals in varying mixes.  but since the Metallic Arts require specific blends for their alloys, it wouldn't be clear if any of the blades would qualify

2. shardblades are heavily invested, which would theoretically make them harder to use as metalminds. Atium and Lerasium should be similarly invested, but we know they can be used, so perhaps this isn't as big of a problem as it would seem, but then Atium and Lerasium don't have their own sapent entity attached to them like the spren (including deadeyes) to a shardblade.

[Nicosium he/him]

On this note, pure Tanavastium

Spoiler

(Honorblades and pieces of them)

 

and pure Korraveliumium

Spoiler

(don't think we've ever seen a physical metal representation of this alone, maybe if the Nightwatcher manifested a shardblade)

 can likely be used as metalminds.

 

Shardblades and the like (mixtures of Honor and Cultivation's investiture) are unlikely to be viable Allomantically or Feruchemically, due to not being true allomantic alloy pairs (that would likely be Godmetal + "Normal" Metals)
Though, Lerasium already seems like an example that would allow shardblades to be burnt, as it behaves strangely with other metals

Spoiler

by making mistborn if burnt purely, and if alloyed with a specific metal making mistings of that metal according to the Mistborn Adventure Game

 

What would interest me personally would be what a Tanavastium and Lerasium alloy would do if burnt.... Would it create a sort of Surgebinding Mistborn? Or not do anything?

[Quantus he/him]

WOB's are inconsistent on whether foreign Godmetals can be Burned by a full Mistborn natively or if they would need some extra steps to make it work with the Metallic Arts, so I think the same uncertainty would apply to any Feruchemical use.  The biggest barrier is that Allomancy can just Burn the metal without needing to know what it will do, but a Feruchemist needs the Intent to store and tap the actual specific attribute, which makes experimentation a lot more difficult.  

 

And nowadays we don't actually know for certain that Pure Godmetals are feruchemcially viable at all, since the only example of a Godmetal being used as a metalmind is now a naturally occurring Alloy.  

Edited August 4, 2022 by Quantus

[Some Random Spren he/him]

I would say that yes, they could be used as metalminds, since lerasium and atium can also be used as metalminds

However, shardblades aren't just shard metals. They also have the spren attached, as well whatever function of nahel bonds makes the blades unbreakable and able to cut through everything. Therefore, I would guess that they are most likely too invested to be used as a metalmind, and even if they aren't, the spren are sentient and therefore probably have identity, which would most likely interfere with feruchemy anyway.