Fabrial mechas

[Lord_Shmoo]

So I was thinking about the application of fabrials in the future of the cosmere (like around mistborn era 4) and was wondering how these could be used in some interesting SF ways. One of my first thoughts was mechas. I wondered if it would be theoretically possible to build a mecha using conjoined fabrials. Say you built a suit for the 'pilot' with rubies at key joints e.g elbows and then had the matching set attached to the mecha would you theoretically be able to use it?  

[Duxredux he/him]

Not with that approach. Conjoined fabrials don't multiply force or the distance of travel, they transmit it, meaning that to move your pilot suit you would need to be able to physically move the mecha's joints with your own muscle power, and that's just if it's the same size as you. If you try attaching the conjoined rubies to Shardplate it makes it so that you can pilot something with the Plate's strength enhancment, letting you remotely control something similarly sized or weighted, which could be useful but probably not as useful as just using the incredibly durable Plate in the first place. To make it control something larger, you would have to use the trick of using conjoined rubies that are sized to the proportional scale between the pilot suit and the mecha, and you would need a similar proportional increase of force to move the joints of the mecha the distance that they need to move. Not terribly feasible, at least with the current tech and understanding. 

However, dead Shardblades allow for manipulation of the form to a certain extent, at least with the installation of gemstones allowing the Shardbearer to bond with the Blade. Plate will also respond, resizing itself to fit you more perfectly, up to Kaladin using a helmet as a gauntlet. We even see Kaladin summoning his living Plate around other people, Fused, children, etc.. I wouldn't worry about fabrial tech to get the mecha motion working because the existing Shardplate is already powered armor and I could very well believe that you could get Plate to accept additional fabrial armament, though I wouldn't expect dead Plate spren to be able to fire or otherwise trigger the use of weaponry. Not sure if live lesser spren could manage triggering a shoulder mounted cannon, though the Radiant spren would be smart enough. Depending on how the sizing works, since we know that there is Plate for people as big as 7 feet tall, perhaps with enough of the lesser spren you could form supersized armor, just mentally commanding it to scale up. Who knows, maybe a Radiant with living Plate can actually command it to move remotely, we haven't seen it yet.