Twinborn Analysis: The Sapper

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

I've been having a look at the Twinborn Names, from the mostly non-canon Mistborn RPG thing that Idon't know much about and I saw a particular combo that caught my eye.

The Sapper, the Twinborn of A-Chromium and F-Nicrosil. The little description next to it says that a Sapper 'Steals and hoards the powers of others'. I know, I know, stuff from the RPG isn't really canon and shouldn't be taken too seriously unless Brandon says something about it, but I've been wondering about the feasability of this pairing nd wondering whether it would actually do as described.

A-Chromium enables a person to 'Leech' away Kinetic Investiture, such as Allomantic Metals, Stormlight, Breaths, etc.

F-Nicrosil enables a person to store 'Innate Invesititure', the powers not the fuel, into Nicrosiminds.

At first glance from this couldn't work as described, A-Chromium wouldn't enable the taking of powers, just the Fuel. F-Nicrosil can't (From what little we know) store the Fuel like Stormlight. Also when a Leecher leeches the Fuel it simply disappears into the Ether.

But perhaps either Savantism or a Resonance, probably both, can make this work. Though there is no actual evidence as to what the effects of Leecher-Savantism is nor what the Resonance for this combination of powers could be, there isn't exactly any proof against it either, though that isn't exactly how the scientific method works unfortunately.

Any ideas? Or is this simply impossible and I'm just rambling on about non-canonical nonsense?

[Mistchemist16]

I’ve actually toyed with a similar Twinborn concept that copied powers. My version used F-Auminum, just in case there’s any lingering Identity problems. But honestly, I’d probably just use Resonance for a copycat.

I believe that the Sapper with no Resonance wouldn’t work. The reserve doesn’t become part of you, so it can’t be stored in a nicrosil mind. I don’t know enough about F-Nicrosil to speak on that difference yet. But even if it doesn’t, I’d bet Resonance fixes that. And if it doesn’t, that’s just a waste. So unless Brandon completely shoots it down, I’d say you’re fully justified in acting as if the Sapper does work, one way or another.

On a side note, how do you think a Sapper’s copying would work? I think they’d have to touch the target, who would be burning metals or tapping metalminds. You can then transfer that into your own metalmind and tap it to gain the metal reserve or tee any effect. You wouldn’t even need new metal vials since you stole the reserve’s power. 

Edited April 1, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

10 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

I’ve actually toyed with a similar Twinborn concept that copied powers. My version used F-Auminum, just in case there’s any lingering Identity problems.

Interesting, but then you probably wouldn't be able to hoard the powers for later, it'd probably be a 'use it or lose it' kind of thing. 

11 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

I believe that the Sapper with no Resonance wouldn’t work. The reserve doesn’t become part of you, so it can’t be stored in a nicrosil mind. I don’t know enough about F-Nicrosil to speak on that difference yet. But even if it doesn’t, I’d bet Resonance fixes that. And if it doesn’t, that’s just a waste. So unless Brandon completely shoots it down, I’d say you’re fully justified in acting as if the Sapper does work, one way or another.

My idea was that either A-Chromium Savantism or the Resonance would allow the Sapper to control where the power is Leeched to, instead of it fading entirely.

 

13 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

On a side note, how do you think a Sapper’s copying would work? I think they’d have to touch the target, who would be burning metals or tapping metalminds. You can then transfer that into your own metalmind and tap it to gain the metal reserve or tee any effect. You wouldn’t even need new metal vials since you stole the reserve’s power. 

Of course it'd be touch based, wouldn't make sense otherwise.

I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't need metals to use the stored powers since the metals would technically already be 'Burned' and all you would be Leeching is the Investiture provided by it. It'd be interesting to see how it would work for other Invested Arts, would it effectively allow you to steal Breaths from people? Could you briefly attain AonDor by Leeching an Elantrian? So many possibilities. It'd almost be like a more limited but less horrifying version of Hemalurgy, especially since you wouldn't keep the powers permanently since you'd only have a limited amount of Invesiture stored up at a single time and couldn't refuel it by yourself.

[alder24]

That sounds a lot like Hemalurgy. What this is doing here is basically ripping a portion of a person's spirit web and attaching it to yours. Maybe you can do that only while maintaining a physical contact with the other person, and it doesn't grant you permanent powers, this would be far less Ruinous. But it's not like Allomancy isn't destructive already.

Should this work? I don't think so. But Resonance could make this work. Both of these powers are purely about Investiture, one kinetic, the other one innate, so it's not so unbelievable, that if you combine those powers you could leech somebody's ability and not just metal reserves and store it in metalmind. Identity might cause some problems here. But on the other hand stealing, and therefore ripping a piece of soul from somebody, would be very hard, far beyond the capabilities of any leecher, because the amount of power they have is far less than what soul has. It would be similar to leeching a spren, which is unthinkable with the power available to them.

Spoiler

Argent.

If you were a Leecher, could you destroy a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that for now, let's just say that it would be incredibly difficult if it were possible, and I'm not going to even say if it is. But that kind of power... 

Argent.

Let's just say they were burning duralumin as well.

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that the Investiture in a Shardblade is much greater than your average Allomancer, but... This type of thing is not unheard of in the Cosmere. The larkin, the Leechers, and Nightblood all have a similar sort of thing going on. Destroying a Shardblade would be really hard. And Investiture resists other forms of Investiture, so.

Calamity Austin signing (Feb. 25, 2016)

 

It could work the other way as well, F-Nicrosil letting you store kinetic Investiture instead, and not only that, but also letting you store leeched kinetic investiture, instead of it going back to SR. In this case you could make it work like it's described, without making it too broken. A coinshot is pushing metals - you leech from him the steelpush and store it in metalmind, later you can tap it, and because it's already in the form of kinetic investiture, you don't need to be a coinshot to use it, nor there is any identity problem there. Somebody is healing with F-gold - you leech and store, later you just tap your Nicrosilmind to heal wounds with pure kinetic Investiture of gold healing. I think that could be a far better solution instead of giving a Sapper permanent abilities from every person he leeched, and this doesn't damage a soul in any way. And because Brandon's magic is all about limitation, this option provides a lot of limitations - you leeched a single steelpush from coinshot, you can use only a single steelpush yourself. It would be impossible to hoard all powers for a long time of use (and become a Fullborn), and using them thoughtlessly would be wasteful, but provides opportunities for some very cool scenes, actions and combinations of powers. The more I think about it the more cool it sounds and now I want to have that power!

However the most unfitting part of it is the name - the Sapper - why? Sappers blow stuff up, there is nothing to blow here! Or anything to build too. Something with F-brass, which stores heat, should be called Sapper.

Edited April 1, 2023 by alder24

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I've been having a look at the Twinborn Names, from the mostly non-canon Mistborn RPG thing that Idon't know much about and I saw a particular combo that caught my eye.

The Sapper, the Twinborn of A-Chromium and F-Nicrosil. The little description next to it says that a Sapper 'Steals and hoards the powers of others'. I know, I know, stuff from the RPG isn't really canon and shouldn't be taken too seriously unless Brandon says something about it, but I've been wondering about the feasability of this pairing nd wondering whether it would actually do as described.

A-Chromium enables a person to 'Leech' away Kinetic Investiture, such as Allomantic Metals, Stormlight, Breaths, etc.

F-Nicrosil enables a person to store 'Innate Invesititure', the powers not the fuel, into Nicrosiminds.

At first glance from this couldn't work as described, A-Chromium wouldn't enable the taking of powers, just the Fuel. F-Nicrosil can't (From what little we know) store the Fuel like Stormlight. Also when a Leecher leeches the Fuel it simply disappears into the Ether.

But perhaps either Savantism or a Resonance, probably both, can make this work. Though there is no actual evidence as to what the effects of Leecher-Savantism is nor what the Resonance for this combination of powers could be, there isn't exactly any proof against it either, though that isn't exactly how the scientific method works unfortunately.

Any ideas? Or is this simply impossible and I'm just rambling on about non-canonical nonsense?

Fascinating! I think that @alder24 had a pretty good take on it; Sanderson's magics are about limitations, so perhaps by utilizing a resonance between A-chromium and F-nicrosil you could take others' Kinetic Investiture, but not Innate Investiture, as that would quickly become imbalanced.

It may be worth noting that you'd likely still need access to the ability to use the power before you could utilize the stolen Investiture; Unsealed Metalminds use this mechanic as well, so I'm not sure that a Sapper Twinborn would actually be too powerful, except that maybe they could Invest a Metalmind when they drain someone's Investiture rather than "wasing" it.

The thing I'm most interested in is the ability to store retrievable Allomantic power inside a Metalmind if this method proves to be possible, as you might be able to use this to control the rate of taping it similar to Feruchemy (after all, Compounding basically does this, only it still uses Feruchemical attributes rather than Allomantic power.)

[alder24]

12 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

It may be worth noting that you'd likely still need access to the ability to use the power before you could utilize the stolen Investiture

I don't think so. You need ability to draw investiture from SR, from Preservation/Harmony. Here however you already have that investiture, that does a very specific thing, filtered through the metal that was burn by a leeched metalborn. It's ready to be used. With Feruchemy investiture, it's also leeched when it was drawn from metalminds, so there would be likely no identity problems (medallions are interchangeable, so there is no problem that different people tap and store in it). What you leeched is pure investiture, that is ready to do specific work.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

16 hours ago, alder24 said:

I don't think so. You need ability to draw investiture from SR, from Preservation/Harmony. Here however you already have that investiture, that does a very specific thing, filtered through the metal that was burn by a leeched metalborn. It's ready to be used. With Feruchemy investiture, it's also leeched when it was drawn from metalminds, so there would be likely no identity problems (medallions are interchangeable, so there is no problem that different people tap and store in it). What you leeched is pure investiture, that is ready to do specific work.

And when you run out, you'll have to refill it with the help of others. But this might let you bypass the need for Innate Investiture since it's all just Kinetic Investiture that you've just put away for later use, so you don't need to be a Coinshot if you Sap A-Steel from someone, it's just a finite pool of power waiting to be used instead of an actual permanent ability.

Edit:

A good metaphor for how a Sapper might work is this: You have an empty bucket with no tap to fill it, so you find someone else with a tap and a bucket then tip the water in their bucket into yours, you don't take their tap nor their bucket, just the water.

18 hours ago, alder24 said:

However the most unfitting part of it is the name - the Sapper - why? Sappers blow stuff up, there is nothing to blow here! Or anything to build too. Something with F-brass, which stores heat, should be called Sapper.

It's meant to be like you're 'Sapping' someone's power for yourself. Not explosions.

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by JustQuestin2004
Because I have a good metaphor

[alder24]

8 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

It's meant to be like you're 'Sapping' someone's power for yourself. Not explosions.

Oh, yeah, now it's making sense!