Forced Medallion Use

[Walter The Moral]

So, once someone starts storing something in a medallion, it will continue even in their sleep. I was wondering, if there was a way to jump-start that process, what could the uses be? A Bronzemind could be used as a tranquiliser, and also as an anaesthetic in hospitals. You could make handcuffs with Pewterminds and Electrumminds, to make people bad at escaping, and to steal their will of escaping (though that might count as psychological warfare).  Firefighters could use Ironminds to make people easier to carry, and therefore to save. A Mafia might give someone a Cadmiummind and then push them into a pond, forcing them to breathe in all the water (that one might be a bit macabre).

What other uses could this have?

[Quantus he/him]

That is not true, the only attribute that you can store while sleeping is Wakefulness specifically and uniquely. All others require conscious Intent. I dont think we are clear yet on how you Wake Up from a wakefulness storing session.  And you have to know what the medallion is doing and consciously trigger either the Tapping or Storing, so you cant force the effect on somebody else, at least not without Ettmetal or some specific Duralumin/compounding situations.  

 

[alder24]

34 minutes ago, Quantus said:

That is not true, the only attribute that you can store while sleeping is Wakefulness specifically and uniquely. All others require conscious Intent. I dont think we are clear yet on how you Wake Up from a wakefulness storing session.  And you have to know what the medallion is doing and consciously trigger either the Tapping or Storing, so you cant force the effect on somebody else, at least not without Ettmetal or some specific Duralumin/compounding situations.  

No, that's true. Using Feruchemical metalminds, you can only store in bronzemind, but medallions have a bit of identity themselves which allows them to store everything when sleeping:

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)

 

So yes, you can use medallions when sleeping. But I don't think you can force a sleeping person to unwillingly use any medallion, unless they're wounded or in coma and you gave them F-gold medallion - their body's intent to survive will search and reach for it to heal itself. @Walter The Moral ideas are cool, but not possible with medallions - what you need is some kind of targeted Primal Cube that only affects a single person and is switched on/off by one person based on their identity. Medallions just don't work if the person won't start using them and there is no way to reliably force a person to tap a medallion. Good luck forcing a criminal to store his strength in a pewter medallion for "the safety of police officers". 

SA spoiler WoB:

Spoiler

Aradanftw

Kaladin and Vin both have used magic subconsciously. Kaladin while training with the bridge plank and drawing in Stormlight, and Vin burning pewter while being beaten. Does that mean that Intent is not always required, or is a simple Intent like "I will be strong" enough to activate the magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to go with the simple Intent answer that you're giving there. So, at the basic level... the more specific and the more powerful you want to be, the more you need to understand your Intent, is where this is. The body has an Intent. Kaladin uses the magic while he's unconscious, right? The Intent is survive, basically the body knowing it needs to survive. And this is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems, just kind of in the base, physical sense, your body knowing how to use what it's been given, is going to happen. You're going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, you can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Yes, it's the second one in that you can make the argument that your body just wants to survive, and things like this, but Intent really starts to play into it when you're doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like your ability to focus, right? You can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that you want to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in the magic systems is often Intent-related.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

[Walter The Moral]

Could you use (SA spoilers)

Spoiler

Could you use Raysium to conduct the Investiture from your body to the Medallion, and ensure that it doesn't come back? Or am I just reaching at straws now?

 

[alder24]

32 minutes ago, Walter The Moral said:

Could you use (SA spoilers)

  Hide contents

Could you use Raysium to conduct the Investiture from your body to the Medallion, and ensure that it doesn't come back? Or am I just reaching at straws now?

 

SA:

Spoiler

Unlikely, because what investiture would you be conducting? Your attributes are physical and are turned into investiture by the process of Feruchemy. 

 

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

You could maybe achieve what you want through charging Primer Cubes with Tapping or Storing, but not with Medallions alone. You could maybe create off-shoot technology from Medallions that have enough of an Identity of their own to follow a Command and do the things you suggest, but we don't even know how regular Medallions work yet, so that's a topic for the future. As for the Bronzemind storing thing, I think that you're still (and only) aware enough to be able to tell how long it's been and to be able to choose to stop storing. I do wonder though, does Bronzemind storing actually provide the beneficial effects of sleep, or is it more like you have to sacrifice waking hours to lie there becoming as useless as a sleeping person without actually falling asleep? Because if it is indistinguishable from sleeping, it easily becomes one of the easiest attributes to store, since you have to sleep every night anyway. If it doesn't, it becomes more balanced, but I almost hate to have it confirmed to be the latter and lose such a useful and easy-to-use ability.

[Walter The Moral]

17 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

I do wonder though, does Bronzemind storing actually provide the beneficial effects of sleep, or is it more like you have to sacrifice waking hours to lie there becoming as useless as a sleeping person without actually falling asleep?

I think the sleep is what's being stored, so you'd wake up and feel like you didn't sleep at all. But then you can tap the sleep, and you will feel the effects of the sleep.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

9 hours ago, Walter The Moral said:

I think the sleep is what's being stored, so you'd wake up and feel like you didn't sleep at all. But then you can tap the sleep, and you will feel the effects of the sleep.

You store wakefulness, so not really the sleep but the beneficial effects of it, which is what I assume you meant. But yeah, that makes sense, the Bronzemind storing sleep probably wouldn't be restful at all. Another Bronzemind question, though. If you were fully rested and energetic before you started tapping, and you keep tapping for 24 hours or so, when you stop tapping, will you return to that original state, or will all the fatigue you've been keeping at bay hit you at once like a tonne of bricks to the face?

Edited July 8, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[bmcclure7]

On 7/6/2023 at 3:10 PM, Quantus said:

That is not true, the only attribute that you can store while sleeping is Wakefulness specifically and uniquely. All others require conscious Intent. I dont think we are clear yet on how you Wake Up from a wakefulness storing session.  And you have to know what the medallion is doing and consciously trigger either the Tapping or Storing, so you cant force the effect on somebody else, at least not without Ettmetal or some specific Duralumin/compounding situations.  

 

Just wait. 

[Shadeshadow227]

On 7/8/2023 at 8:40 AM, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

You store wakefulness, so not really the sleep but the beneficial effects of it, which is what I assume you meant. But yeah, that makes sense, the Bronzemind storing sleep probably wouldn't be restful at all. Another Bronzemind question, though. If you were fully rested and energetic before you started tapping, and you keep tapping for 24 hours or so, when you stop tapping, will you return to that original state, or will all the fatigue you've been keeping at bay hit you at once like a tonne of bricks to the face?

You'll return to a baseline level of wakefulness, which would be that "well-rested" state. Feruchemy doesn't really "hold back" stuff iirc. If you're well-rested and tap wakefulness to prolong that, when you stop tapping it wouldn't dip below normal levels, because that makes no sense considering what Feruchemy does.

If you're already tired and store wakefulness only to tap it later to wake yourself up, after you stop you'd probably return to being tired, because being tired is the baseline state in that situation.

Putting it in simple terms, If you're already at -5 wakefulness because you're pulling an all-nighter, storing 10 puts you at -15, tapping puts you at 5, when you run out you'd go back to -5, not 0, because feruchemy is net-neutral. You get out exactly what you put in.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

34 minutes ago, Shadeshadow227 said:

You'll return to a baseline level of wakefulness, which would be that "well-rested" state. Feruchemy doesn't really "hold back" stuff iirc. If you're well-rested and tap wakefulness to prolong that, when you stop tapping it wouldn't dip below normal levels, because that makes no sense considering what Feruchemy does.

If you're already tired and store wakefulness only to tap it later to wake yourself up, after you stop you'd probably return to being tired, because being tired is the baseline state in that situation.

Putting it in simple terms, If you're already at -5 wakefulness because you're pulling an all-nighter, storing 10 puts you at -15, tapping puts you at 5, when you run out you'd go back to -5, not 0, because feruchemy is net-neutral. You get out exactly what you put in.

Makes sense, thanks! I was just wondering whether your original restfulness is also used up in the process. Like if you were well rested originally, then tapped a Bronzemind to stay awake for a week straight, would you not be tired when you stop tapping, or did that original restfullness be preserved somehow?

[alder24]

3 hours ago, Shadeshadow227 said:

You'll return to a baseline level of wakefulness, which would be that "well-rested" state. Feruchemy doesn't really "hold back" stuff iirc. If you're well-rested and tap wakefulness to prolong that, when you stop tapping it wouldn't dip below normal levels, because that makes no sense considering what Feruchemy does.

If you're already tired and store wakefulness only to tap it later to wake yourself up, after you stop you'd probably return to being tired, because being tired is the baseline state in that situation.

Putting it in simple terms, If you're already at -5 wakefulness because you're pulling an all-nighter, storing 10 puts you at -15, tapping puts you at 5, when you run out you'd go back to -5, not 0, because feruchemy is net-neutral. You get out exactly what you put in.

So why do they sleep then? 

They sleep because their body is gathering energy and resting. That's what they're getting back when tapping - energy and rest. Sleeping changes that baseline you're talking about. If they weren't in coma/sleep when storing in bronze, then what you're talking about would be true. But because sleep is involved then they always have the same increased baseline available to them to store and that's what they're storing.

I think storing it doesn't make you rested after you wake up, because most of the wakefulness you got during that sleep was stored in metalmind.

On 8.07.2023 at 4:40 PM, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Another Bronzemind question, though. If you were fully rested and energetic before you started tapping, and you keep tapping for 24 hours or so, when you stop tapping, will you return to that original state, or will all the fatigue you've been keeping at bay hit you at once like a tonne of bricks to the face?

I think you would return to the original state, or at least somewhat close to it, depending how long you were sleeping. Because you store what you get from sleep, not what you had in your body before sleeping (but your body would still need to function and use energy and rest for that). If you were tired before storing, you might be even more tired after. But that also might depend on the amount of wakefulness you're storing. If you're storing 80-90% of it, then you would get tired through that, as your body is using more than what's getting (10-20%), but around 50% then you would wake up as rested as you were before sleep, if you store fewer than that, then that sleep will be beneficial to your body as it can now store that wakefulness for when you wake up. Of course that's assuming a bronzemind doesn't work like a coppermind and stores everything you got from sleep, which might be the case.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

So why do they sleep then? 

They sleep because their body is gathering energy and resting. That's what they're getting back when tapping - energy and rest. Sleeping changes that baseline you're talking about. If they weren't in coma/sleep when storing in bronze, then what you're talking about would be true. But because sleep is involved then they always have the same increased baseline available to them to store and that's what they're storing.

I think storing it doesn't make you rested after you wake up, because most of the wakefulness you got during that sleep was stored in metalmind.

I think you would return to the original state, or at least somewhat close to it, depending how long you were sleeping. Because you store what you get from sleep, not what you had in your body before sleeping (but your body would still need to function and use energy and rest for that). If you were tired before storing, you might be even more tired after. But that also might depend on the amount of wakefulness you're storing. If you're storing 80-90% of it, then you would get tired through that, as your body is using more than what's getting (10-20%), but around 50% then you would wake up as rested as you were before sleep, if you store fewer than that, then that sleep will be beneficial to your body as it can now store that wakefulness for when you wake up. Of course that's assuming a bronzemind doesn't work like a coppermind and stores everything you got from sleep, which might be the case.

I agree, but my question was on tapping, not storing. Let's say you have a full Bronzemind. You get an excellent night's sleep, and are wide awake and fresh. Then you tap the Bronzemind, and keep tapping for a week straight, without sleeping. Once you stop tapping, do you return to being wide awake and fresh, or was that rest used up in the background during the first day of the week and you just didn't notice because of the influx of wakefulness coming from the Bronzemind?

Edited July 19, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[alder24]

3 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

I agree, but my question was on tapping, not storing. Let's say you have a full Bronzemind. You get an excellent night's sleep, and are wide awake and fresh. Then you tap the Bronzemind, and keep tapping for a week straight, without sleeping. Once you stop tapping, do you return to being wide awake and fresh, or was that rest used up in the background during the first day of the week and you just didn't notice because of the influx of wakefulness coming from the Bronzemind?

Oh. Your rest should be used up alongside tapped one. It just makes more sense to me.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

Oh. Your rest should be used up alongside tapped one. It just makes more sense to me.

That was my first instinct as well, but it just seems weird to me that there's this extra cost of being extremely tired when you stop tapping on top of all the other time you spend comatose. It adds an extra negative to what should be a balanced system, and it triggers my OCD. It feels more Ferchemy-like if you return to whatever state of consciousness you were in when you started tapping, which is what @Shadeshadow227 was getting at.