Compounding and Soulcasting, Forever

[Mazman he/him]

Nicrosil stores Investiture, and Stormlight is Investiture. Meaning you can, probably, store it in Nicrosil. If you were an Elsecaller, Lightweaver, or held the right Honorblade, you could use that Stormlight to Soulcast more Nicrosil, or other Allomantically viable metals. If you got the method down, you could theoretically Compound forever without needing to get more metals from an outside source.

Assuming, of course, that you can store Stormlight in Nicrosil.

[Wandering Shade]

20 hours ago, Mazman said:

Nicrosil stores Investiture, and Stormlight is Investiture. Meaning you can, probably, store it in Nicrosil. If you were an Elsecaller, Lightweaver, or held the right Honorblade, you could use that Stormlight to Soulcast more Nicrosil, or other Allomantically viable metals. If you got the method down, you could theoretically Compound forever without needing to get more metals from an outside source.

Assuming, of course, that you can store Stormlight in Nicrosil.

So this is assuming that a Nicrosil Ferring or Compounder somehow became a Soulcaster? Alright.

Yeah, a Soulcaster being able to make Nicrosil sounds right and a Radiant with F-Nicrosil could probably store their Stormlight in Nicrosil for later use.

As for Compounding forever, I'm more skeptical, but this does sound like a way to do it. Store Stormlight in Nicrosil. Compound that Nicrosil to get more Stormlight. Use the excess Stormlight to Soulcast more Nicrosil. Rinse, repeat. It would let a Compounder or even a Fullborn get basically unlimited metal to use.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

Not necessarily you could go the other route too. 

A Surgebinder with Soulcasting Surge to have access to unsealed Nicrosilmind that grants Nicrosil compounding. You'd have to have both nicrosil allomancy and feruchemy though. 

There is a WoB I remember once that said a nicrosil compounder could create infinite investiture essentially. I guess Soulcasting would be a way to store it!

[Duxredux he/him]

Well, Brandon has Rafo'd a piece of that, so it's potentially viable but unconfirmed.

Quote

Necarion

Could a double-nicrosil Twinborn compound Breath or Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, you’re getting a RAFO card on that. You're getting SUCH a RAFO card on that!

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing (Nov. 30, 2016)

Something in me says that there would need to be some kind of limit to how powerful this can get, but then I would have said that about Componding in general and here we are. The next thoughts are possible extrapolations of how insanely broken this powerset could be.

If this Twinborn Radiant (a powerset that is possible to get naturally) were given the equipment and knowledge to make Unsealed Metalminds that granted the ability to Soulcast, store Investiture, and burn Nicrosil, then you could mass produce this busted powerset and make an army of Soulcasters that have the ability enhancements and healing of Stormlight. 

If Breaths can indeed be Compounded, then you buy some Breaths with Soulcast valuable metals and then Compound enough that we can give our Investiture Compounding army immortality and enough extra to Awaken a newly Soulcast Awakened army of cloth soldiers with Soulcast weaponry.

If the Awakener decides not to sell, then you use your Nicrosil to spike out the general Investiture from them, taking the Breaths for yourself. Either burn the Nicrosil Hemalurgic spike filled with stolen Investiture and use it for Compunding, or if that doesn't work, stick the spike in, withdraw the Breaths and Compound them before removing the spike while healing with your infinite Stormlight.

Somewhere in here, considering Breaths are transferrable off Nalthis, I think something needs to make this not viable, or space age commerce and conflict is going to be insane once anyone figures this out. 

Edit:

Talked with my brother and a potential issue that we came up with is whether or not Compounding allows you to duplicate Investiture that is not of Preservation. Technically, Compounding doesn't give you infinite Investiture, the stored attribute is the focus that determines the form that the magic manifests, this process being fueled by Preservation. I could see it just not working or consuming a percentage of the Investiture to convert Preservation's power into another Shard's Investiture. Depending on the percentage this could make this impractical. An alternate option is you get a burst of Investiture from Preservation that is not Stormlight, unkeyed to a specific ability, you might be able to fuel your Surgebinding with that, then we start coming full circle. You wouldn't get the intrinsic benefits of Stormlight though. This is complicated stuff, and it doesn't addressing things like the rate of Stormlight decay from Nicrosil.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Duxredux
Added another thought

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Well, Brandon has Rafo'd a piece of that, so it's potentially viable but unconfirmed.

Something in me says that there would need to be some kind of limit to how powerful this can get, but then I would have said that about Componding in general and here we are. The next thoughts are possible extrapolations of how insanely broken this powerset could be.

If this Twinborn Radiant (a powerset that is possible to get naturally) were given the equipment and knowledge to make Unsealed Metalminds that granted the ability to Soulcast, store Investiture, and burn Nicrosil, then you could mass produce this busted powerset and make an army of Soulcasters that have the ability enhancements and healing of Stormlight. 

If Breaths can indeed be Compounded, then you buy some Breaths with Soulcast valuable metals and then Compound enough that we can give our Investiture Compounding army immortality and enough extra to Awaken a newly Soulcast Awakened army of cloth soldiers with Soulcast weaponry.

If the Awakener decides not to sell, then you use your Nicrosil to spike out the general Investiture from them, taking the Breaths for yourself. Either burn the Nicrosil Hemalurgic spike filled with stolen Investiture and use it for Compunding, or if that doesn't work, stick the spike in, withdraw the Breaths and Compound them before removing the spike while healing with your infinite Stormlight.

Somewhere in here, considering Breaths are transferrable off Nalthis, I think something needs to make this not viable, or space age commerce and conflict is going to be insane once anyone figures this out. 

Edit:

Talked with my brother and a potential issue that we came up with is whether or not Compounding allows you to duplicate Investiture that is not of Preservation. Technically, Compounding doesn't give you infinite Investiture, the stored attribute is the focus that determines the form that the magic manifests, this process being fueled by Preservation. I could see it just not working or consuming a percentage of the Investiture to convert Preservation's power into another Shard's Investiture. Depending on the percentage this could make this impractical. An alternate option is you get a burst of Investiture from Preservation that is not Stormlight, unkeyed to a specific ability, you might be able to fuel your Surgebinding with that, then we start coming full circle. You wouldn't get the intrinsic benefits of Stormlight though. This is complicated stuff, and it doesn't addressing things like the rate of Stormlight decay from Nicrosil.

Imagine if a certain person with access to compounding were to also have access to soulcasting... 

I would imagine that there are 2 potential candidates on Roshar atm who could fit the bill... 1 already does have access to all these things (now that this person very obviously knows about medallions).  The 2nd is only a breath and an honor blade away I would imagine.  (Then again the 2nd one may does have access to soulcasters even if this person is not one themselves).  

I have been thinking about these combos for a while now as well.  I imagine there will be less stopping this progression than I as a reader would like to think.  With compounding, hemalurgy, soulcasters, and medallion tech existing there is honestly a dangerous exponential power surge heading for the cosmere.  I think the ultimate question is, with access to compounding and nicrosil at what point do the power combining worldhoppers become shards themselves? 

Is nicrosil compounding truly creating infinite investiture or is the investiture in the cosmere finite and it being taken from the cosmere itself to be stored in nicrosil battery packs going to weaken the structure that holds the cosmere as a whole up?  

We are dangerously close to these things already happening and until we see what limits feruchemical nicrosil has we won't know.  That RAFO card is one of the most important ones out there, in my mind, for concealing the entire cosmeres ultimate fate.