Hemalurgic Shardblade

[Trusk'our he/him]

Let's have another fun little hypothetical scenario, shall we 

Say there was a blood thirsty Scadrien (basically Atilla the Hun, but Scadrial instead of Earth) who knows of Hemalurgy and is a big fan of ripping off chunks of enemies Spiritwebs as he kills them.

Scadrien Atilla then gets regular steel sword forged for himself and gets an aluminum sheath for it.

Every time Scadrien Atilla kills someone with his sword (which is a lot) he uses the Intent to perform Hemalurgy, charging his sword with a little more Investiture each time he slays an opponent, and since the sword his secured in aluminum between killings, it doesn't lose power during that time.

Time passes, and Scadrien Atilla gets old and passes his sword to his descendants, who are each told the secret of Hemalurgically stealing Investiture when the use the sword, and they all use the same tactic as their fathers (/mothers?).

More time passes, and the sword has become so Invested that it begins to take a life of its own, with its personality shaped by the view of Scadrien Atilla's descendants and followers.

Eventually, it begins to become self-aware, and starts to act like Nightblood, absorbing Investiture of its enemies (and possibly wielder) of its own accord and takes on Shardblade-like qualities to help it fulfill its Intent filtered by its congnitive aspect; to destroy, to Ruin. 

Does this sound like a plausible way to create a new Nightblood, or at least to create some form of a Scadrien-style Shardblade?

Also, would a Hemalurgic Shardblade be able to become supersaturated with Investiture, similar to Nightblood, or do you think it would have stricter limitations?

[therunner he/him]

You cannot re-use Hemalurgic spikes, not unless you somehow strip them of Identity, and even then it is not as easy.
Plus you need to hit bind point to perform Hemalurgy, regular old stabbing/slashing won't be enough.
The only instance of on the fly Hemalurgy were done by people guided by Ruin, all others had victims restrained, and Hemalurgist possibly used Atium to guide spike even then (Inquisitors). So spiking someone in battle is going to be super difficult.

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yulerule

Can you reuse a spike?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Uh, yes, technically, but not as easily as that question makes it sound.

yulerule

Can you re-use it if it's for the same exact thing or for a different thing? Will that change?

Brandon Sanderson

Spikes are going to get keyed by Identity--

yulerule

So you can't already spike that person. But if you spike and don't kill them can you spike the same person again?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah and if you can somehow strip the identity of the person or the spike-- So yes you can use them again but it comes into a sort of-- Like, you can't just take that spike and spike somebody else.

JordanCon 2018 (April 22, 2018)

So there would have to be multiple hoops to jump through before that can happen.

33 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

More time passes, and the sword has become so Invested that it begins to take a life of its own, with its personality shaped by the view of Scadrien Atilla's descendants and followers.

Eventually, it begins to become self-aware, and starts to act like Nightblood, absorbing Investiture of its enemies (and possibly wielder) of its own accord and takes on Shardblade-like qualities to help it fulfill its Intent filtered by its congnitive aspect; to destroy, to Ruin.

Also, Investiture taking on Conciousness of its own takes a lot of time, possibly hundreds if not thousands of years (depending on when exactly Dor was formed).

Nightblood was also created via Command with Intent, neither of which is present in creation of this sword (plus there was possible Shardic intervention in its creation).
Doubtful this blade could absorb Investiture on its own, since seemingly the other Nalthian blades does not do that.

It could become eventually sentient, but would not get other powers out of it I expect. Even Nalthians blades required complex visualization to work in the first place, and some of the powers can be side-effect of interaction of visualization/Command/Shardic influence.

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Also, would a Hemalurgic Shardblade be able to become supersaturated with Investiture, similar to Nightblood, or do you think it would have stricter limitations?

Most likely no.

Edited April 20, 2023 by therunner

[Trusk'our he/him]

15 minutes ago, therunner said:

You cannot re-use Hemalurgic spikes, not unless you somehow strip them of Identity, and even then it is not as easy.

True, a Hemalurgist cannot make direct use of multiple Identited charges, but you can put that Investiture in a spike or other metal compartment as the Set proves. Plus, Identity isn't necessarily going to prevent those charges from becoming a being that is made up of said Investiture.

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https://wob.coppermind.net/events/368/#e11607

Questioner

If someone were to create a human shape, with full articulations, made out of the four Feruchemical Spiritual metals and copper and do like a full dump into them, would it be able to-- I mean, Investiture attains sapience on its own. And then with-- If those were mixed with the memories in the copper would it be able to effectively become an android of the person who created it?

Brandon Sanderson

So we got a couple of issues you have to overcome in creating this. Number one, the memories are not going to attune to the Investiture itself, they're going to be attuned to you. The Investiture as it attains sapience is gonna create its own Identity, which is then going to be a mismatch for those memories. So you would have to find a way to get those memories to work for that creation.

Questioner

It wouldn't tie with the Identity that was stored in the aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it would not... The other thing you were getting at there though, is that just Investing it alone, you would have to leave it alone for a long time, naturally, for it to start developing anything. And so we're looking at thousands of years, probably. There are ways to speed that process along, but just doing that and leaving it, it's gonna take a while.

 

19 minutes ago, therunner said:

Plus you need to hit bind point to perform Hemalurgy, regular old stabbing/slashing won't be enough.
The only instance of on the fly Hemalurgy were done by people guided by Ruin, all others had victims restrained, and Hemalurgist possibly used Atium to guide spike even then (Inquisitors). So spiking someone in battle is going to be super difficult.

Yeah, that could be a bit of a problem. Maybe Scadrien Atilla just really likes personally executing a lot of people through the correct Bindpoints?

21 minutes ago, therunner said:

Also, Investiture taking on Conciousness of its own takes a lot of time, possibly hundreds if not thousands of years (depending on when exactly Dor was formed).

Yeah, apparently it would take thousands of years for it to do so naturally. Not very practical if one wanted to actually use said Hemalurgy Shardblade in their lifetime 

Maybe there are good ways to speed it up though? I wonder if Scadrien Atilla happened to be a Connector Ferring if he could enhance his Connection to the sword, sort of creating a rudimentary Nahel Bond, but instead of maintaining the sapience of a previously existing piece of Investiture, it would help form it?

26 minutes ago, therunner said:

Nightblood was also created via Command with Intent, neither of which is present in creation of this sword (plus there was possible Shardic intervention in its creation).
Doubtful this blade could absorb Investiture on its own, since seemingly the other Nalthian blades does not do that.

It could become eventually sentient, but would not get other powers out of it I expect. Even Nalthians blades required complex visualization to work in the first place, and some of the powers can be side-effect of interaction of visualization/Command/Shardic influence.

That's a fair conclusion.

I wonder if Intent were used correctly by the person who made the sword if such a thing would be more likely to occur, similar to how a Soulstamp must be made by someone with a valid Connection to MaiPon, but afterwards it could be used by anyone. Basically, the blacksmith has the proper Intent of what he wants the sword to do (be a Sharblade like Nightblood) when he creates the sword, inlaying a pseudo-Command there. The Hemalurgic charges act as the Investiture to fulfill that "Command" as the power of the sword grows.

31 minutes ago, therunner said:

Most likely no.

Yeah, I Nightblood probably has something extra going on to allow what it does, I suppose.

[therunner he/him]

13 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

True, a Hemalurgist cannot make direct use of multiple Identited charges, but you can put that Investiture in a spike or other metal compartment as the Set proves. Plus, Identity isn't necessarily going to prevent those charges from becoming a being that is made up of said Investiture.

Hmm, good point on the Set experiments.

Though notably, per those same experiments, Spike becomes fully charged after 20-30 people, and that is when they take only 'vestigial' part of soul, not what regular spiking would do. So there is an upper limit to how Invested a spike can get, and it is not that much.

If size is a factor in spike, then the Spike Set used was 6 inches long, large needle. Regular needles that are at most inch long weight around 1 gram, so this one weighted at minimum 6 grams. So regular sword would be ~200 times the size, and so could hold vestigial Investiture from ~4000-6000 people, before it would become impossible to Invest it more using Hemalurgy.

Now there is a question of what is the ratio between vestigial Investiture from a single person, and Breath, because it could possibly be less than 1000 Breaths required to just Awaken a sword.

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Yeah, that could be a bit of a problem. Maybe Scadrien Atilla just really likes personally executing a lot of people through the correct Bindpoints?

Sure that could work.

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Yeah, apparently it would take thousands of years for it to do so naturally. Not very practical if one wanted to actually use said Hemalurgy Shardblade in their lifetime 
Maybe there are good ways to speed it up though? I wonder if Scadrien Atilla happened to be a Connector Ferring if he could enhance his Connection to the sword, sort of creating a rudimentary Nahel Bond, but instead of maintaining the sapience of a previously existing piece of Investiture, it would help form it?

Nahel Bond requires is between Concious entities already, so that would not be happening.
If anything I think it would hinder the process, since the Investiture would then be Connected to the wielder and his Conciousness (sort of like what happens with Shards).

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I wonder if Intent were used correctly by the person who made the sword if such a thing would be more likely to occur, similar to how a Soulstamp must be made by someone with a valid Connection to MaiPon, but afterwards it could be used by anyone. Basically, the blacksmith has the proper Intent of what he wants the sword to do (be a Sharblade like Nightblood) when he creates the sword, inlaying a pseudo-Command there. The Hemalurgic charges act as the Investiture to fulfill that "Command" as the power of the sword grows.

Probably not, even creation of the Soulstamp is act of Invested art  (creation of soulstamp away from Sel requires Invested Ink to work).
Blacksmithing a sword is not like that at all.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Let's have another fun little hypothetical scenario, shall we 

Say there was a blood thirsty Scadrien (basically Atilla the Hun, but Scadrial instead of Earth) who knows of Hemalurgy and is a big fan of ripping off chunks of enemies Spiritwebs as he kills them.

Scadrien Atilla then gets regular steel sword forged for himself and gets an aluminum sheath for it.

Every time Scadrien Atilla kills someone with his sword (which is a lot) he uses the Intent to perform Hemalurgy, charging his sword with a little more Investiture each time he slays an opponent, and since the sword his secured in aluminum between killings, it doesn't lose power during that time.

Time passes, and Scadrien Atilla gets old and passes his sword to his descendants, who are each told the secret of Hemalurgically stealing Investiture when the use the sword, and they all use the same tactic as their fathers (/mothers?).

More time passes, and the sword has become so Invested that it begins to take a life of its own, with its personality shaped by the view of Scadrien Atilla's descendants and followers.

Eventually, it begins to become self-aware, and starts to act like Nightblood, absorbing Investiture of its enemies (and possibly wielder) of its own accord and takes on Shardblade-like qualities to help it fulfill its Intent filtered by its congnitive aspect; to destroy, to Ruin. 

Does this sound like a plausible way to create a new Nightblood, or at least to create some form of a Scadrien-style Shardblade?

Also, would a Hemalurgic Shardblade be able to become supersaturated with Investiture, similar to Nightblood, or do you think it would have stricter limitations?

Interesting idea, @therunner already brought up problems with this, but I just add that steel steals physical Allomantic powers, and while it's possible for a metal to steal something else (like ReLuur spikes are pewter), it might be best to steal strength with an iron sword instead, just to make it easier. And because you want to make an invested piece of metal, not a usable spike, investing it with several different people, like Set was doing, is a viable strategy. 

Also also, you don't need to invest it by executions. After each battle there would be lots of wounded people, who can be used and spiked in the correct binding point. It's very likely that if Atilla has an army with him, battling another army, after just one battle he would have enough wounded prisoners to fully invest his sword. And that’s scary, as during a single campaign, he can create hundreds of such swords, not to mention using civilians as well during plunder.

However I doubt such a spike would cut like a Shardblade, as it requires more than investiture alone. It would be very good at resisting a Shardblade, so that's a good thing, likely the best option Scadrial has at creating invested objects that can fully resist Shardblades.

Edited April 20, 2023 by alder24

[therunner he/him]

20 minutes ago, alder24 said:

However I doubt such a spike would cut like a Shardblade, as it requires more than investiture alone. It would be very good at resisting a Shardblade, so that's a good thing, likely the best option Scadrial has at creating invested objects that can fully resist Shardblades.

Not sure if I would call murdering hundreds of people (or permanently crippling them) the best way to create object that can resist Shardblade
For single sword, you would maim thousands.

Metalminds seems like the better option, though more time-intesive.

[alder24]

1 minute ago, therunner said:

Not sure if I would call murdering hundreds of people (or permanently crippling them) the best way to create object that can resist Shardblade
For single sword, you would maim thousands.

Metalminds seems like the better option, though more time-intesive.

It's faster than metalminds!  You just need "a little" sacrifice.

[therunner he/him]

Just now, alder24 said:

It's faster than metalminds!  You just need "a little" sacrifice.

Ah, impatience, cause of human sacrifice since Era 2

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Ah, impatience, cause of human sacrifice since Era 2

 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

It's faster than metalminds!  You just need "a little" sacrifice.

Curious about metalmind creation?  Could you take medallions and pay people to store?  Wr have soothing parlors already.  You could have a pseudo plasma donation bank.  People get paid to use your medallions and store attributes to create full metalminds. Noone has to die and you could toss bonuses to allomancers who can compound for you based on what metals you use.  

 

How to keep them honest? That is a discussion.  Maybe awakened ropes around the neck to kill anyone who tries to steal a medallion?  Perhaps some cubes loaded with chromium with security?  

I am not sure how the identity would work for this.  Perhaps you need someone with an aluminum medallion to tap and restore everything with blanked identity?  

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Curious about metalmind creation?  Could you take medallions and pay people to store?

Very likely. There are medallions where you store weight, and where you tap heat, I doubt those two are different and you can't store/tap the same medallion. After all there are people in Malwish whose sole duty is to store heat in medallions - firemothers and firefathers.

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

How to keep them honest? That is a discussion.  Maybe awakened ropes around the neck to kill anyone who tries to steal a medallion?  Perhaps some cubes loaded with chromium with security?  

Money! You finished storing? Let me check if this medallion is now more invested. It is, here you go, your payment. Or have medallions trapped in a metal frame in your floor, only accessible in a special way, you a person can only touch it, but never pick it up, even if it's F-pewter. Leechers or Aluminum Gnats with cubes are also a very good idea for additional security.

2 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I am not sure how the identity would work for this.  Perhaps you need someone with an aluminum medallion to tap and restore everything with blanked identity?  

No identity problem here. Those are unsealed metalminds. Everyone can use them. And we've already seen that in BoM where multiple different metalminds were shuffled from hands to hands, and nobody was like "hey, that's not my medallion". Steris hid her medallion in the notebook and later gave it to Allik.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Very likely. There are medallions where you store weight, and where you tap heat, I doubt those two are different and you can't store/tap the same medallion. After all there are people in Malwish whose sole duty is to store heat in medallions - firemothers and firefathers.

Money! You finished storing? Let me check if this medallion is now more invested. It is, here you go, your payment. Or have medallions trapped in a metal frame in your floor, only accessible in a special way, you a person can only touch it, but never pick it up, even if it's F-pewter. Leechers or Aluminum Gnats with cubes are also a very good idea for additional security.

No identity problem here. Those are unsealed metalminds. Everyone can use them. And we've already seen that in BoM where multiple different metalminds were shuffled from hands to hands, and nobody was like "hey, that's not my medallion". Steris hid her medallion in the notebook and later gave it to Allik.

I really like the idea of the medallions in the floor. 

I was definately thinking less storing into the medallions and more using the medallions to access the ability to store and have ingots that they store into.  

A metalmind factory if you will.  Medallions and ingots that are unable to be removed except by specific employees with the keys.  You go in and are assigned an ingot or two or three and the necessary medallions.   You use the medallion to fill the ingots and then those ingots, once filled, can go and be worked into metalmind weapons / armor / jewelry.  

You could hire nicrobursts to aid the speed with which your compounders can transfer and multiply the attributes stored.  

I agree money solves most of the problems.  

 

This would make for some epic heist stories and would allow anyone to buy full identity blanked feruchemical metalminds in the shape of whatever they want.  

Want a dagger or a piece of armor that acts as a metalmind?  

You would be paying premiums for this and I am not sure how happy Kelsier would be with a world economy based around feruchemically charged metalminds being available only to those noble enough to afford them.  

[alder24]

3 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I was definately thinking less storing into the medallions and more using the medallions to access the ability to store and have ingots that they store into.  

[...]

This would make for some epic heist stories and would allow anyone to buy full identity blanked feruchemical metalminds in the shape of whatever they want.  

I don't know if those metalminds, which aren't part of a medallion, would be identityless. They might be keyed to your identity so no switching. But even if so, this shouldn't matter with your idea, you want to create an invested weapon and armor, and multiple Feruchemist can store in the same metalmind, without changing their identity, but they can't access each other's attributes.

Spoiler

ReaderAt2046

Can a Feruchemist store an attribute in a metalmind that someone else has already stored in and if so, do the charges affect each other in any way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but the charges are just stored in separate pieces of the metal, and don't really influence one another.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

 

9 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Want a dagger or a piece of armor that acts as a metalmind?  

Except for steel and iron (copper and bronze, people in past times used those metals for a reason), most metals are just bat at being a weapon. The same with armor. Not to mention there are different kinds of steel, each with different properties, only one of them is usable in metalic arts.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

53 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I don't know if those metalminds, which aren't part of a medallion, would be identityless. They might be keyed to your identity so no switching. But even if so, this shouldn't matter with your idea, you want to create an invested weapon and armor, and multiple Feruchemist can store in the same metalmind, without changing their identity, but they can't access each other's attributes.

  Hide contents

ReaderAt2046

Can a Feruchemist store an attribute in a metalmind that someone else has already stored in and if so, do the charges affect each other in any way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but the charges are just stored in separate pieces of the metal, and don't really influence one another.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

 

Except for steel and iron (copper and bronze, people in past times used those metals for a reason), most metals are just bat at being a weapon. The same with armor. Not to mention there are different kinds of steel, each with different properties, only one of them is usable in metalic arts.

Absolutely.  Not all of these metals will work as weapons or armor.  

I simply mean there is a form of production available that could achieve a similar result on a large scale for all of the metals without the need of murdering thousands of people.  

If you have an aluminum ferring then couldn't they be paid to blank their identity and tap / restore all of the attributes of a large collection metalmind and put out large scale identity-less metalminds as well? This would be in combination of a medallion to access all identity locked stores of a large collection metalmind and then store it all back again as an unkeyed and unlocked metalmind?  

 

[alder24]

24 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Absolutely.  Not all of these metals will work as weapons or armor.  

I simply mean there is a form of production available that could achieve a similar result on a large scale for all of the metals without the need of murdering thousands of people.  

If you have an aluminum ferring then couldn't they be paid to blank their identity and tap / restore all of the attributes of a large collection metalmind and put out large scale identity-less metalminds as well? This would be in combination of a medallion to access all identity locked stores of a large collection metalmind and then store it all back again as an unkeyed and unlocked metalmind?  

You're asking if an aluminum ferring, with medallions, can blank the identity of an already full metalmind filled by multiple people? Unlikely because the metalmind has multiple identities (was created by people with many identities) and he doesn't share any of them (even when blanked), so he wouldn't be able to access investiture at all. The metalmind has to be blank for him to access investiture, but it isn't. Tbf, it's hard to say how it works, because Brandon leaves this for later books.

Spoiler

Questioner

In Mistborn, we know if someone puts their Identity into a metalmind, they can create metalminds other people can use. Would other people be able to use that aluminummind to overwrite their own Identity, or is it still tied to the creator because it was still keyed to their Identity when they were filling it?

Brandon Sanderson

So if you have no Identity and you fill a metalmind, that metalmind is full of Identity-less...

Questioner

Yeah, so anyone can use that. But can someone use your aluminummind?

Brandon Sanderson

Ooh wait a minute, so...that you filled with your Identity. So they would have to have your Identity already. 

Questioner

Ok, so you can't have two people fill Identity and effectively swap aluminumminds.

Brandon Sanderson

If you can...there are ways to make this happen but the best way to make what you're talking about happen, is to be filling your own Identity while having a blank metalmind. That is the best way, obviously. But there are other workarounds for both situations, like a blank metalmind is pretty easy to use. It's blank. But if you were blank, and using a blank, it's a little better. 

Questioner

Ok. Because you're both blank.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, and so I'll give you the mechanics of all this eventually, they're just trying to still figure it all out themselves. Because right now they're just doing things they've been told "do this" but they don't know the why's. But if you are blank and have a metalmind that has an Identity, right, that is not an impossible situation that you're in either.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

If a Feruchemist using an aluminum metalmind stored their Identity to zero, then filled a coppermind with all of their knowledge, would another Feruchemist with an identity set to zero be able to access the first Feruchemist's coppermind?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I'm not going to tell you a definite yes or no, this is something that needs to be saved for future books, but you are thinking along the correct lines about how Identity works regarding Feruchemists.

JordanCon 2014 (April 11, 2014)

 

Buuut, because you're creating those metalminds with the use of medallions, this might cheat identity in such a way, that those metalminds would act more or less as a part of metallion, so anybody with medallion would be able to tap all investiture in that metalmind, despite it being stored there by multiple people. Medallions have the identity of their own, and this might be the identity to which investiture in metalminds, stored when using medallions, is keyed to.

Spoiler

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

27 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You're asking if an aluminum ferring, with medallions, can blank the identity of an already full metalmind filled by multiple people? Unlikely because the metalmind has multiple identities (was created by people with many identities) and he doesn't share any of them (even when blanked), so he wouldn't be able to access investiture at all. The metalmind has to be blank for him to access investiture, but it isn't. Tbf, it's hard to say how it works, because Brandon leaves this for later books.

  Hide contents

Questioner

In Mistborn, we know if someone puts their Identity into a metalmind, they can create metalminds other people can use. Would other people be able to use that aluminummind to overwrite their own Identity, or is it still tied to the creator because it was still keyed to their Identity when they were filling it?

Brandon Sanderson

So if you have no Identity and you fill a metalmind, that metalmind is full of Identity-less...

Questioner

Yeah, so anyone can use that. But can someone use your aluminummind?

Brandon Sanderson

Ooh wait a minute, so...that you filled with your Identity. So they would have to have your Identity already. 

Questioner

Ok, so you can't have two people fill Identity and effectively swap aluminumminds.

Brandon Sanderson

If you can...there are ways to make this happen but the best way to make what you're talking about happen, is to be filling your own Identity while having a blank metalmind. That is the best way, obviously. But there are other workarounds for both situations, like a blank metalmind is pretty easy to use. It's blank. But if you were blank, and using a blank, it's a little better. 

Questioner

Ok. Because you're both blank.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, and so I'll give you the mechanics of all this eventually, they're just trying to still figure it all out themselves. Because right now they're just doing things they've been told "do this" but they don't know the why's. But if you are blank and have a metalmind that has an Identity, right, that is not an impossible situation that you're in either.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

 

  Hide contents

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

If a Feruchemist using an aluminum metalmind stored their Identity to zero, then filled a coppermind with all of their knowledge, would another Feruchemist with an identity set to zero be able to access the first Feruchemist's coppermind?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I'm not going to tell you a definite yes or no, this is something that needs to be saved for future books, but you are thinking along the correct lines about how Identity works regarding Feruchemists.

JordanCon 2014 (April 11, 2014)

 

Buuut, because you're creating those metalminds with the use of medallions, this might cheat identity in such a way, that those metalminds would act more or less as a part of metallion, so anybody with medallion would be able to tap all investiture in that metalmind, despite it being stored there by multiple people. Medallions have the identity of their own, and this might be the identity to which investiture in metalminds, stored when using medallions, is keyed to.

  Hide contents

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

There is some confusion on this.  Ch. 3 of BoM is referenced on the coppermind.  

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 A Trueself who fills an aluminummind to the point where they have no Identity and then fills another metalmind is able to produce a metalmind that any Feruchemist with the relevant power can tap. In a similar manner, a Feruchemist may be able to tap another person's metalminds by filling their own aluminummind completely.^[18] 

I had headcannoned the idea that a feruchemist storing all identity could potentially siphon all of the attributes out of their opponents metalminds in a sort of leeching kind of way.  

If that were the case then perhaps the trueself ferring could hold a medallion granting access to steelminds and then clear all of their identity tapping into the metalmind and then restoring it to a new metalmind with no identity at all. It would still be inaccessible to anyone who doesn't have that power.  

What it would do is allow the military to pay civilian workers to create an "ammo" for their medallion using soldiers and resupply them constantly with full metalminds. 

 

This is going far off topic of making shards but I am so anxious for Era 3 and 4 to see just how bananas Scadrials tech advancement allows them to get. 

[alder24]

5 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

There is some confusion on this.  Ch. 3 of BoM is referenced on the coppermind.  

Right, BoM ch 3:

Quote

“So if a person could store their Identity,” Marasi said, “as Waxillium does with his weight…”
“They’d be without it for a time,” VenDell said. “A blank slate, so to speak.”
“So they could use anyone’s metalmind?” Marasi asked.
“Possibly,”

So yes, it's possible that a blank Feruchemist would be able to access metalminds with identity.

But Aluminum Ferring would likely have to tap all of that and store it in another metalmind, to make it fully identity blanked, and this would result in some loss.

Spoiler

Lightning

If you have a metalmind, you have, like, weight stored in it, and you want to transfer it to a different metalmind, can you just transfer it directly? Or does it pass into you, and then you lose some of the power, and then it goes...

Brandon Sanderson

You don't have to draw it completely out. You are gonna lose a little in the transfer. But it's not as much as you probably think. You can kind of do a little hack thing where it goes through.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

 

[Nogo]

I'm not one to stifle creativity... but I don't think thousands of spikes into a sword is an efficient way to go.  Plus, if you kill all the dang Allomancers and Feruchemists you won't have anyone left to spike (children will stop being invested).   You got me thinking though... if you manipulated some connection, identity, and got some allomancy and ferucheonomy compounding directly into a hermologic sword, then you just might create your shardblade like weapon.  So like basically having someone compounding and spiking at the same time... sucking all that compounding out into the sword/spike.

Thinking on that route... if you made a nicrosile compounded blade, would you be essentially an investiture thief killer?  What would happen if the investiture stealing blade clashed with Nightblood?

Probably 50million holes in that thought process... lets here them

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Nogo said:

I'm not one to stifle creativity... but I don't think thousands of spikes into a sword is an efficient way to go.  Plus, if you kill all the dang Allomancers and Feruchemists you won't have anyone left to spike (children will stop being invested). 

You don't need to spike Allomancers, you can spike anybody, just to steal their strength or innate investiture. It doesn't matter what, as long as you steal something from them to invest the spike sword.

10 hours ago, Nogo said:

if you manipulated some connection, identity, and got some allomancy and ferucheonomy compounding directly into a hermologic sword, then you just might create your shardblade like weapon.  So like basically having someone compounding and spiking at the same time... sucking all that compounding out into the sword/spike.

Thinking on that route... if you made a nicrosile compounded blade, would you be essentially an investiture thief killer?  What would happen if the investiture stealing blade clashed with Nightblood?

Probably 50million holes in that thought process... lets here them

That won't work. Spikes don't steal kinetic/static investiture, and that's the investiture that's coming when you're compounding. Kineting investiture is coming from Preservation, turning into static in a metalmind. Spike is stealing innate investiture, parts of the soul. Feruchemical attributes stored in a metalminds aren't parts of the soul, they are kinetic/static investiture. What you are describing is Allomantic chromium, leecher, that can suck kinetic investiture out of a person, even compounded one. 

However Nicrosil does steal investiture, general investiture, not ability, but because compounding isn't instant, it takes time to burn metalmind and gain attribute, just like it takes time to burn regular metal, and spiking IS instant (happening in a single moment, not prolong period of time), you would be able to steal at most just a fraction of the power that is flowing to a compounder, and he won't even feel the loss of that power (if he survives). Spiking compounder who is actively compounding won't invest the spike with unlimited power, you would just take a very small fraction of that power, only that what was flowing through him at the very second the spike was passing through his spirit web.

[Nogo]

That's a lot of holes in my hairbrained idea.   Welp, it was a hairbrained idea.  I was hoping maybe you could keep the sword inside as a spike and keep absorbing the investiture until it was super invested.  Guess that's wanky.  Oh well.  Back using a kazillion breaths or bonding a spren.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

15 minutes ago, Nogo said:

That's a lot of holes in my hairbrained idea.   Welp, it was a hairbrained idea.  I was hoping maybe you could keep the sword inside as a spike and keep absorbing the investiture until it was super invested.  Guess that's wanky.  Oh well.  Back using a kazillion breaths or bonding a spren.

The tech will make up a huge difference in the future of the cosmere.  

Medallion tech will allow for trade of highly invested unsealed metalminds and those with the money will be trading investiture left and right.  

Granted no shards smite everyone as they attempt this.  

I can totally see someone with a heightening or two being willing to part way with some breaths for a single metalmind of health like the one Wayne got in BoM. 

I can also see people willing to trade unsealed metalminds for cloaks that catch arrows out of the sky.  

The industrialization of the cosmere is going to be bonkers.  

[Duxredux he/him]

If the goal is to get a weapon saturated with general Investiture through Hemalurgy, why not charge them with livestock in Elendel slaughterhouses? Animals work for hemalurgy.

Quote

Vegasdev

Would Hemalurgy work on animals?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it would. 

Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

Looking ahead to Era 3 and extrapolating from US population counts, in 2020 9.76 billion land animals were slaughtered in a year for the US population of 329.5 million. Using the same ratio and ignoring exported and imported meat, for a city of 5 million (Coppermind's population estimate of Elendel at the time of AoL), that's about 400,000 animals a day. That should be plenty to saturate all the hemalurgic weaponry you need. Plenty for iterative experimentation, compared to starting wars and executing prisoners.

As a side note, an Era 3 butcher as a villain could be pretty creepy. Reminiscent of Sweeney Todd.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Duxredux
clarity

[Argenti he/him]

Oh god, don't give Brandon any ideas

 

[alder24]

13 hours ago, Duxredux said:

If the goal is to get a weapon saturated with general Investiture through Hemalurgy, why not charge them with livestock in Elendel slaughterhouses? Animals work for hemalurgy.

BORING!  

I feel bad, I didn't think about that and instead I wanted to just massacre people.

But I bet from animals you would get less investiture, but that's certainly a more "humane" way.

[Argenti he/him]

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

but that's certainly a more "humane" way.

I'm not sure raising livestock to have their souls harvested is human.

Oh no hemalurgic vegans...

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Argenti said:

Oh no hemalurgic vegans...

Heh, Lol