Enhancing Feruchemical Storage

[Trusk'our he/him]

In Feruchemy, there is a certain amount of Investiture that you can store in a piece of metal, but it is not linear

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Questioner

I was wondering if the size of a piece of metal determines the amount of Feruchemical charge that can be stored in it.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

So how does that scale, like, in terms of the volume or mass of the metal or...

Brandon Sanderson

It-- So I've talked about this before, I'm trying to remember exactly what I've told people-- It does not scale as logically as you think it does. How about that? It's more like certain thresholds. You can have a-- You can store a Hemalurgic or Feruchemical charge even in very small pieces of metal, but larger pieces of metal will let you get more.

Questioner

So it's kind of like there are different classes of sizes?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, kind of like that.

.This means that physical size of the container is not everything. If it were, any increase in mass of the Metalmind would equally increase the amount of Investiture that could be stored.

So, this seems to mean that the Cognitive or Spiritual aspects could be even more important than the physical aspect, which makes sense since Investiture is mostly Spiritual in it's composition, so that's where most of the "mass" of the Investiture would be stored.

I would suggest then that it may be possible to increase the amount of Investiture that could be stored inside a Metalmind without increasing it's physical size either by expanding it's Spiritual aspect, or by manipulating it's Identity, which is the trait that defines the Spiritual borders of an object or entity.

Edited July 17, 2022 by Trusk'our

[+Invocation]

Interesting idea that comes out of something this: if you could manipulate the Connection or Identity of a chunk of metal that's been shaped into multiple pieces of jewelry (a set of bracelets or piercings or something) into being Spiritually-considered still one piece of metal, would you be able to store and draw from any of those with the set having just one storage supply instead of a bunch of them?

[StanLemon]

The Bands prove that a LOT of Investiture can be stored into small amounts of metal. The spearhead was only slightly larger than the palm of a hand if I recall the size description right, and it was made of multiple pieces of metal (16? More because of Tin and Bendalloy?) and yet enough Investiture was in it to be stupidly powerful. I personally have guessed that it's something like larger pieces of metal are easier to store more with less effort, though I find the idea that altering the metal's Spiritual aspect fascinating.

1 hour ago, Invocation said:

Interesting idea that comes out of something this: if you could manipulate the Connection or Identity of a chunk of metal that's been shaped into multiple pieces of jewelry (a set of bracelets or piercings or something) into being Spiritually-considered still one piece of metal, would you be able to store and draw from any of those with the set having just one storage supply instead of a bunch of them?

If this is possible, that might be almost as game breaking for Feruchemy as Compounding is. Exponentially so if a Compounder does have access to this

[Trusk'our he/him]

14 hours ago, Invocation said:

Interesting idea that comes out of something this: if you could manipulate the Connection or Identity of a chunk of metal that's been shaped into multiple pieces of jewelry (a set of bracelets or piercings or something) into being Spiritually-considered still one piece of metal, would you be able to store and draw from any of those with the set having just one storage supply instead of a bunch of them?

I've actually wondered if it would be possible to do something like this, though I was thinking more along the lines of Spiritually Connecting them together to get the affect. Your idea probably has more credit though; if a Spren captured inside a Gemstone has it's prison split, it's halves with continue to function as if they were one, so, maybe it would be possible to do something similar with Feruchemy and Metalminds with a little work.