necrosil compounding and breaths

[IlstrawberrySeed]

When compounding breaths with necrosil, do you get breaths that are 10* stronger, or do you get 10* the number of breaths? If you just my life to yours to a metal that you burn, does the other happen?

Edited December 9, 2022 by IlstrawberrySeed
Word change

[Dunkum he/him]

To be clear - so far with Nicrosil we haven't seen someone store just raw investiture like breaths or stormlight. we can't actually be sure that is possible.  instead it seems more like Tin where what you store is a discrete ability - the allomantic or ferruchemical ability itself. so in keeping with that, it would seem like you might be able to store the capacity to awaken, rather than the breaths themselves. at least that would be closer to the uses we have already seen

[Frustration]

I don't think you could get breaths exactly. You might get a Preservation equivalent, but I don't know if you could awaken with those.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

19 minutes ago, Ookla the Frustrated. said:

I don't think you could get breaths exactly. You might get a Preservation equivalent, but I don't know if you could awaken with those.

Here's an interesting WOB that might answer your question.

From Dragonsteel 2022:

Spoiler

Balescream (paraphrased)

Can all the Shards manifest the same powers, for example could Honor create an Allomancer?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, but there would be more natural ways for Honor to achieve this.

So if Honor could make an Allomancer that could Burn metals, then I'd extrapolate that Preservation/Harmony could give people Breaths they could Awaken with. It'd probably be a little wonky though.

Edited December 9, 2022 by JustQuestin2004

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Here's an interesting WOB that might answer your question.

From Dragonsteel 2022:

  Reveal hidden contents

Balescream (paraphrased)

Can all the Shards manifest the same powers, for example could Honor create an Allomancer?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, but there would be more natural ways for Honor to achieve this.

So if Honor could make an Allomancer that could Burn metals, then I'd extrapolate that Preservation/Harmony could give people Breaths they could Awaken with. It'd probably be a little wonky though.

I was more wondering if Nicrosil compounding would be able to do the same thing, rather than being an action of a shard.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

13 minutes ago, Ookla the Frustrated. said:

I was more wondering if Nicrosil compounding would be able to do the same thing, rather than being an action of a shard.

I was just trying to point out that Shards can recreate other Magic Systems without the Investiture of other Shards.

No idea on the specifics of what Nicrosil Compounding would do exactly but there's two main possibilities in my eyes that are based on how Copper Compounding works with memories.

Spoiler

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

1) C-Copper improves the quality of a memory, reducing fuzziness and overall just giving you perfect memory.

2) C-Copper duplicates a memory, so you could store the 'New' memory back into a Coppermind to keep it fresh, while keeping the old one in your mind to review it.

So with some extrapolation I'd personally conclude that possibility 1 would result in C-Nicrosil with a Breath would result in a bigger Breath, and 2 would result in a copy of the same Breath.

It's just my personal theories though so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. 

Although if 1 is true, then you could create a regular Breath that would be equal or even greater than a Divine Breath. Which I think is both really cool and kind of funny.

Edited December 10, 2022 by JustQuestin2004

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

2 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

To be clear - so far with Nicrosil we haven't seen someone store just raw investiture like breaths or stormlight. we can't actually be sure that is possible.  instead it seems more like Tin where what you store is a discrete ability - the allomantic or ferruchemical ability itself. so in keeping with that, it would seem like you might be able to store the capacity to awaken, rather than the breaths themselves. at least that would be closer to the uses we have already seen

Stormlight and Breaths have similarities, but they aren't the same. Stormlight is ambient Investiture that flows around everywhere while Breath sticks to the soul and originates from a person's soul at birth. You can be born with one just as one can be born with Allomancy, so I'm not quite following your logic with it.

You can store a Divine Breath into a Nicrosilmind, which you could theoretically compound. 

Spoiler

kingbirdy (paraphrased)

Could Feruchemical nicrosil be used to store other Invested abilities, such as a Returned Breath or the abilities of the Knights Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, that's possible.

So technically you could store a type of Breath and compound it, but I guess you can't store regular Breaths?

I dunno it just doesn't quite make sense to me. 

[Dunkum he/him]

20 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Stormlight and Breaths have similarities, but they aren't the same. Stormlight is ambient Investiture that flows around everywhere while Breath sticks to the soul and originates from a person's soul at birth. You can be born with one just as one can be born with Allomancy, so I'm not quite following your logic with it.

You can store a Divine Breath into a Nicrosilmind, which you could theoretically compound. 

  Hide contents

kingbirdy (paraphrased)

Could Feruchemical nicrosil be used to store other Invested abilities, such as a Returned Breath or the abilities of the Knights Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, that's possible.

So technically you could store a type of Breath and compound it, but I guess you can't store regular Breaths?

I dunno it just doesn't quite make sense to me. 

wasn't aware of that WoB.  I'd agree if you can store the divine breath you can almost certainly store regular ones.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

37 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

wasn't aware of that WoB.  I'd agree if you can store the divine breath you can almost certainly store regular ones.

And just like that, gaining the Tenth Heightening won't necessarily require getting tens of thousands of people to be Drab for the rest of their lives. Probably.

[trav]

I am way out of the loop and may get this wrong...

You would not be able to access the breaths like this as they are not really stored in the Nicrosil mind. If they were you still could not access them as they are keyed. I doubt even unkeyed would be possible.

If its your own breath? Technically its just investiture. You increase its amount while burning. You are not increasing the quantity stored. There would still, at any time, only be 1 Breath or less (if already burned) inside. The additional Investiture you'd be pumping in would not be a Breath.

If you were to take the Breath back after you burned some of it you would get less Breath back than you put in.

[trav]

I think I have to correct myself.

Devine Breath can be stored in the Nicrosil mind. So regular Breath should aswell. This Breath is still "just" Investiture stored. Burning the Nicrosil mind would result in more Investiture. Not necessarily Investiture in form of a Breath.

Given all the necessary factors are right. Breath is stored, the Nicrosil mind is unkeyed, the Breath is also unkeyed and accessible and the user compounds it. Then I'd still say that the outcome would not be additional Breath, but additional Investiture.

I still think Heightening can't be achieved this way. Though its not relevant where the initial Investiture comes from. Whether its from a Breath or something else. We already saw that other forms of Investiture could give you Heightening. Albeit this form would also be more in line with what Breaths do. So it may still not be possible to reach a Heightening by simply becoming heavily invested.

Edited December 15, 2022 by trav