Aluminum sheaths and hemalurgy.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

So I just read Warbreaker and assume the "silvery metal sheath" that holds nightblood is simply aluminum.   If it is that is what holds in the investiture then would it make sense that it could also preserve the power in a spike?

Hemalurgic spikes leak investiture and become weaker over time.  If you placed a pair of them into an aluminum box or case would it preserve their power while outside of a body?  

 

Edited February 23, 2022 by Tamriel Wolfsbaine

[Frustration]

Probably

Spoiler

swieczq

Had a hemalurgic spike been encased in aluminium, would it still decay?

Brandon Sanderson

Nobody has tried that! (It might work.)

Kraków signing (March 21, 2017)

 

[Quantus]

It would probably work, though it might depend on how the energy decays, as in out into the world vs realmically.  Aluminum will contain shardpool waters, for example, but you can operate realmic changes like Soulcasting within an aluminum room.  If the decay goes directly into the Spiritual realm it might be hard to block that with aluminum.  If it goes out into the physical world, or if the field disruption effect of aluminum is enough, then it could work. 

That being said, Nightblood's relation to it's sheath is a bit of an oddball thing:

 

Quote

 

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood

Nightblood's name, by the way, is supposed to sound kind of like the names of the Returned. I played with various different ways for his powers to manifest. I liked the idea of him driving those who hold him to kill anyone nearby. It seemed to work with the concepts that have come before—a kind of unholy, sentient mix of Stormbringer and the One Ring.

The strangest thing about him is the idea that his form isn't that important. The sheath is like a binding for him, keeping his power contained. So drawing him out isn't like drawing a regular weapon, but rather an unleashing of a creature who has been kept chained.

Once that creature is unleashed, he becomes a weapon—even if he's unleashed only a little bit. The sheath itself turns into a weapon, twisting those around it. You don't need to stab someone with Nightblood to kill them; smashing them on the back with the sheath works just as well. It will crunch bones, but beyond that, merely touching them with the sheath when the smoke is leaking can be deadly.

Warbreaker Annotations (Feb. 7, 2011)

 

 

[EmulatonStromenkiin]

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

So I just read Warbreaker and assume the "silvery metal sheath" that holds nightblood is simply aluminum.   If it is that is what holds in the investiture then would it make sense that it could also preserve the power in a spike?

Hemalurgic spikes leak investiture and become weaker over time.  If you placed a pair of them into an aluminum box or case would it preserve their power while outside of a body? 

That would make sense, as in the Allomancer Jak episode in Arcanum Unbounded he gets a bunch of really old koloss spikes from a deep pool that were in a solid aluminum box.

[+ShardlessVessel]

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

So I just read Warbreaker and assume the "silvery metal sheath" that holds nightblood is simply aluminum.

You're right in this case, but be careful about assuming that any silvery metal interacting oddly with magic is aluminum. There is at least one case where it really is just silver.