Ascension via Wakefulness?

[Trusk'our he/him]

I was on a different thread recently that talked about a Fullborn vs a 5th oath Windrunner. In it, I made a joke about a Fullborn tapping enough Wakefulness to ascend (similar to the Well of Ascension) and using the power to smite the Windrunner.

My question is, would this actually be possible?

If a Feruchemist were to theoretically create a Metalmind, perhaps the size of a city (using Soulcasting), could they fill it (via compounding over a very long time) with enough Investiture to ascend if they tapped it all at once?

[NameIess]

I doubt it. I thought I'd seen a WoB on this subject regarding Nicrosil that said it was impossible, but that might just be my imagination. The WoB's I found on it were RAFO'd:

Spoiler

Cheese_Ninja

One question, two parts: If a double nicrosil Twinborn started Compounding and storing Investiture in a nicrosilmind, could they do something cool by tapping a whole huge bunch at once? And since Scadrialians have both Ruin and Preservation in them, could they store both those qualities in a one nicrosilmind, or would it require two different ones?

Brandon Sanderson

Ha. All things regarding Investiture (particularly in regards to Feruchemy) are instant RAFOs at this point, I'm afraid. I've got to save SOME things for future books.

/r/Fantasy_Bookclub Alloy of Law Q&A (Jan. 21, 2012)

Spoiler

mikkomikk

Seeing that Vin and Kelsier was able to absorb Preservation's power due to Connection, is it theoretically possible for a duralumin Compounder to compound Connection so much to the point where they could draw in the mists and 'absorb' some of Harmony's power?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO

General Reddit 2018 (Dec. 21, 2018)

 

[Dunkum he/him]

my guess is no, but it would depend on a few things:

1. How big of a metalmind would you actually need, and how long would it take to fill it? I suspect city size is too small, though longevity is less of an issue - plenty of ways to extend your life enough to matter.

2. would you even be able to keep storing investiture or is there a threshold where it is simply not possible to push more in? investiture resists other investiture, after all.  this might just manifest as needing an even larger metalmind than you might otherwise

but you said to assume they could get their hand on it, so ignore those for now and lets get to the others:

3. for a sufficiently large metalmind, is there a delay to access investiture stored far enough away? every metalmind we've seen has been small and essentially instantaneous, but then light seems instantaneous until you measure it at cosmic distances. if it takes time to travel from one end of the metalmind to the other, then you likely can't pull in enough of it at once to do what you are trying to do.

4. is there a physical limit to how much can be pulled in at once? I'm thinking of this in terms of something like heat transfer where surface area affects overall rates. for ferruchemy, which is specifically stored in the physical realm (as opposed to Allomancy where the power is flowing into the physical from the spiritual) it seems like this could be a problem - the investiture would have to physically move from the metalmind into your body and may thus be limited by the maximum amount of surface area in contact with the metalmind itself

5. We know that there is a penalty for tapping large amounts at once - one that is noticeable enough that era 1 Ferruchemists are aware of it even without access to compounding to enhance their stores. what I don't think we have a clear answer on is: how does it scale? if you waste exponentially more investiture as you try to tap more and more, then there is going to be a practical upper limit that is likely well short of what you'd need.  if, on the other hand it is something like a flat 10% thing then you'd just need 110% of a shard - though I consider this highly unlikely.

6. would it even be possible to pull the investiture out? we know that enough investiture clumped together will tend to develop sentience/sapience and this far outstrips any other source except Harmony itself. the primary other case we've seen of something metal gaining sapience resulted in something that you probably could not pull investiture back out of, though admittedly that could be specific to his creation and not a general thing. but it does seem possible tat your shard-level mass of investiture could gain sapience and prevent you from pulling it back out.

[therunner he/him]

I'd say no, because to Ascend the Shard has to be without Vessel.
And the amount of metal required would be far larger than a city, more like planet sized at minimum. Two shards casually created a full planet out of nothing, and still had power left over. So the amount of Investiture they possess is larger than mass of planet, so to store enough wakefullness you would require a lot of Investiture.

[Treamayne]

10 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

My question is, would this actually be possible?

If a Feruchemist were to theoretically create a Metalmind, perhaps the size of a city (using Soulcasting), could they fill it (via compounding over a very long time) with enough Investiture to ascend if they tapped it all at once?

Probably not. There are a couple of problems with your scenario.

1. Large quantities of investiture do not mean ascension - they do not have Intent and all the other components that make up a Shard's power
   • They can however develop sentience/sapience over time -
   • So you might end up with a Nightbloodish Metalmind if your Ferring never taps the metalmind. . .
2. Investiture in a metal mind is in the PR. For ascension, the investiture needs to be touching all three realms
   • This is why Odium stuck the power of Dominion and Devotion in the CR of Sel / so that a "rival" could not ascend to those shards because they were cut off from the SR.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Trusk'our he/him]

3 hours ago, therunner said:

I'd say no, because to Ascend the Shard has to be without Vessel.

The Well of Ascension was used while Preservation was still around.

Just for some clairification on the topic I DO NOT mean to ask if it's possible to Ascend and become the Vessel of a Shard of Adonalsium. I mean to ask if it's possible hypothetically to use Feruchemy to store and tap enough Investiture to transcend the standard limitations placed on the magic system.

Basically, creating a massive well of Investiture programmed to do one thing, but since there is so much, you briefly become a kind of "mini-Shard" and can now move beyond what the Investiture's original purpose, just like with the Well of Ascension.

[alder24]

That's not possible. Not only Shard needs to be Vesselless (only Ruin and Preservation as only to them you are connected), but this is not the Well of Ascension thing. Then diminishing returns at some point would make it impossible to gain new attributes, so you would gain nothing and lose more and more investiture. To add more, Feruchemy, and all Scadrial's metal arts, are low invested arts. There is little investiture there compared to Surgebinding. With Surgebinding they can open perpendicularly, but they can't Ascend, as this requires a lot more that they can pull from SR. You can open a perpendicularity this way, which can be done with any metalmind likely.

You can become extra smart with zinc, but this won't be Well level smartness, as you don't have liquid, focused essense of a Shard.

 

Spoiler

TheFulgid

Could you Invest... Could you use a nicrosil metalmind to Invest the sort of Investiture enough that you could open a Perpendicularity up to the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I'll just say it this way. Enough concentrated Investiture in one point is going to pierce the Realms, no matter what form it takes. 

TheFulgid

...So, it doesn't have to be a nicrosil metalmind.

Brandon Sanderson

No. 

TheFulgid

Okay... But it could be?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. That is theoretically possible. 

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

[therunner he/him]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

The Well of Ascension was used while Preservation was still around.

Just for some clairification on the topic I DO NOT mean to ask if it's possible to Ascend and become the Vessel of a Shard of Adonalsium. I mean to ask if it's possible hypothetically to use Feruchemy to store and tap enough Investiture to transcend the standard limitations placed on the magic system.

Basically, creating a massive well of Investiture programmed to do one thing, but since there is so much, you briefly become a kind of "mini-Shard" and can now move beyond what the Investiture's original purpose, just like with the Well of Ascension.

But Well of Ascension was intentionally designed to do what it does and allowed to do so by Preservation.

So I don't think you could replicate that, just by a bunch of Investiture.

[Treamayne]

4 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Just for some clairification on the topic I DO NOT mean to ask if it's possible to Ascend and become the Vessel of a Shard of Adonalsium. I mean to ask if it's possible hypothetically to use Feruchemy to store and tap enough Investiture to transcend the standard limitations placed on the magic system.

Basically, creating a massive well of Investiture programmed to do one thing, but since there is so much, you briefly become a kind of "mini-Shard" and can now move beyond what the Investiture's original purpose, just like with the Well of Ascension.

OIC

So, what you really mean is can somebody compound and tap enough investiture to become a Sliver?

(Though Mistborn uses the term Ascend for both Vin and Rashek, it was clarified that that was a case of "in-world-wrong-term-cause-they-don't-know-better" and they both were Slivers after using well - whereas Kelsier became a Sliver because he was a Vessel for the Shard and gave it up to Vin) 

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

OIC

So, what you really mean is can somebody compound and tap enough investiture to become a Sliver?

(Though Mistborn uses the term Ascend for both Vin and Rashek, it was clarified that that was a case of "in-world-wrong-term-cause-they-don't-know-better" and they both were Slivers after using well - whereas Kelsier became a Sliver because he was a Vessel for the Shard and gave it up to Vin) 

In that context, yes, I suppose so.

[Sky Breaker]

In a WoB I read once it said that if you converted a shard’s power into matter it would be about the size of a planet so maybe if you soulcast a planet (which would probably take about enough power that you would already ascend) into a metalmind and the compounded enough to fill it and then tapped all of it at once you’d probably ascend but I feel like if you started getting enough power to become a shard then harmony would probably notice getting substantially weaker and weaker and he’d probably just intervene (send wax to take care of you)

Edited March 2, 2023 by Sky Breaker

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Sky Breaker said:

In a WoB I read once it said that if you converted a shard’s power into matter it would be about the size of a planet so maybe if you soulcast a planet (which would probably take about enough power that you would already ascend) into a metalmind and the compounded enough to fill it and then tapped all of it at once you’d probably ascend but I feel like if you started getting enough power to become a shard then harmony would probably notice getting substantially weaker and weaker and he’d probably just intervene (send wax to take care of you)

Lol .

Wax is pretty scary when you get on his bad side, even if you were a Compounder with the audacity to reach for godlike power.