Merging same-metal Metalminds/Spikes

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

I've been wondering about a few WOBs and the nature of Metalminds/Spikes as containers of Investiture.

We know that if you stored into an Ironmind and alloyed it into steel, you wouldn't be able to access the Physical Weight stored within. Same thing with Spikes.

But what if you didn't alloy them? What if you just merged two Ironminds/Spikes into one? For Feruchemy you'd likely just get a Metalmind that two different Feruchemists can access without blanking Identity beforehand. But what about Hemalurgy? If you merged two charged Iron Spikes together, would you get a stronger spike that counts as a single spike or as two spikes?

[Trusk'our he/him]

17 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I've been wondering about a few WOBs and the nature of Metalminds/Spikes as containers of Investiture.

We know that if you stored into an Ironmind and alloyed it into steel, you wouldn't be able to access the Physical Weight stored within. Same thing with Spikes.

But what if you didn't alloy them? What if you just merged two Ironminds/Spikes into one? For Feruchemy you'd likely just get a Metalmind that two different Feruchemists can access without blanking Identity beforehand. But what about Hemalurgy? If you merged two charged Iron Spikes together, would you get a stronger spike that counts as a single spike or as two spikes?

Identity contamination would prevent the Invested charges of the Hemalurgic spikes from working cooperatively- you'd probably shift from having the benefits of one charge to another randomly.

Now, if you could Blank their Identity somehow (such as storing F-aluminum Identity during the charging process) you could combine them and get a single greater charge. In fact, you probably wouldn't need to use multiple spikes, as you could reuse the same spike on another Donor as long as the Identities of both Donors were Blanked at the time of charging.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Trusk'our

[therunner he/him]

On 15/10/2023 at 7:16 AM, JustQuestin2004 said:

For Feruchemy you'd likely just get a Metalmind that two different Feruchemists can access without blanking Identity beforehand.

For Feruchemy you would probably get Metalmind which two Feruchemists can tap, but each can access only their original stores, and not stores of the other.
The Investiture inside is still keyed as it was beforehand.

So practically speaking, there would be no advantage to doing this, multiple Feruchemists can already store into a single metalmind and access their own stores back.

On 15/10/2023 at 7:16 AM, JustQuestin2004 said:

But what about Hemalurgy? If you merged two charged Iron Spikes together, would you get a stronger spike that counts as a single spike or as two spikes?

@Trusk'our as resident Hemalurgist covered this pretty well. Identity would interfere, but there are ways around it.

[Njvodin]

On 15/10/2023 at 1:34 PM, Trusk'our said:

you'd probably shift from having the benefits of one charge to another randomly.

This could be pretty funny, you could have like a form of Russian Roulette, where you have 6 combined copper/brass spikes that double as F-copper metalminds, all spiked from different people with different abilities and memories. 5 of those memories are nice, happy memories that leave a good impression, and the last one is something really really gross, or just horrible, and leaves you mentally scarred for life.

[Trusk'our he/him]

5 hours ago, Njvodin said:

This could be pretty funny, you could have like a form of Russian Roulette, where you have 6 combined copper/brass spikes that double as F-copper metalminds, all spiked from different people with different abilities and memories. 5 of those memories are nice, happy memories that leave a good impression, and the last one is something really really gross, or just horrible, and leaves you mentally scarred for life.

That could be interesting to see, particularly for a MAG PC or NPC (actually, I came up with the idea for a Hemalurgic construct that had four separate personalities a while ago, but it was more like having three Cognitive Shadows stapled to one living body via Hemalurgy, not the copper spikes, though that's a cool idea too ).

I don't know that it would work canonically though- I believe that Hemalurgic copper can sharpen memory (such as with TenSoon in HoA) and improve one's cognitive abilities a bit, but actual memories themselves are tied more to the Cognitive Aspect themselves, which is not something that Hemalurgy deals with (it can influence the Cognitive and Physical Aspects, but it is an indirect side effect of making changes to the Spiritual Aspect).

That being said, Yumi spoilers:

Spoiler

Yumi seems to have her memories tied to her Spiritual Aspect, not just her Cognitive Aspect as she is so highly Invested that all her Aspects are beginning to blend together more, as Investiture transcends all three Realms. So perhaps if you used Hemalurgic copper on a similarly Invested being you could take actual memories in the process.

I hadn't thought about that before, but it could be really interesting.

 

[Njvodin]

On 16/10/2023 at 9:35 PM, Trusk'our said:

I don't know that it would work canonically though- I believe that Hemalurgic copper can sharpen memory

Yeah, I think the way I said it was a bit screwy, but what I meant was there was a copper metalmind also on the spike, but the spike is primarily made out of brass. But even with that, we're not sure what would happen with the memories in copper metalminds after the metalminds are melted together. 

 

On 16/10/2023 at 9:35 PM, Trusk'our said:

actually, I came up with the idea for a Hemalurgic construct that had four separate personalities a while ago, but it was more like having three Cognitive Shadows stapled to one living body via Hemalurgy, not the copper spikes, though that's a cool idea too

This is so cool, I'd never even thought about multiple cognitive shadows on one body. I'd love to think of it as Spook and Kelsier crammed into the same body, it would be really weird 

[Trusk'our he/him]

9 hours ago, Njvodin said:

Yeah, I think the way I said it was a bit screwy, but what I meant was there was a copper metalmind also on the spike, but the spike is primarily made out of brass. But even with that, we're not sure what would happen with the memories in copper metalminds after the metalminds are melted together. 

Ah, that makes more sense. I think that might actually be possible, though you'd have to find a Bindpoint that worked for both H-brass and H-copper (they belong to the same Hemalurgic quadrant, so it wouldn't likely be that hard), especially considering that H-copper contains a human attribute rather than a power, so misplacement could have dire consequences for the bearer (i.e., turning into a Hemalurigc construct).

9 hours ago, Njvodin said:

This is so cool, I'd never even thought about multiple cognitive shadows on one body. I'd love to think of it as Spook and Kelsier crammed into the same body, it would be really weird 

Yeah, I thought it would make a cool opponent for MAG, and one of the things that would be special about facing it is that you would roll a four-sided die whenever a point of interest would come up and depending on the roll you get a different Spiritweb/personality dominant over the creature for that interaction. The different personalities react differently to given situations, so trying to convince the creature to not kill your party or to perhaps aid you in some way would require different tactics.

Additionally, if you ever tried to control it via the Flaw in its Spiritweb from its spikes, swapping personalities would disrupt the control, making it particularly dangerous to manipulate in that fashion.

EDIT: Yay! 1,800th post 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Trusk'our