Useless hemalurgical metal

[Alumínio he/him]

Nicrosil is an incredibly useful metal when we talk about Allomancy and Ferruchemia, but when it comes to hemalurgy the story changes, it only steals investiture, not invested art but standard investiture and it does not seem to be renewable. In my opinion, this would only be useful if you could store an absurd amount, because you are destroying your spiritual web in the process of inserting the stake into yourself, but according to Coppermind the amount is negligible, so I don't find any use for these piles

[Quantus he/him]

It steals the investiture that is currently physically in the person.  So with a Nicrosil spike you could, for example, Steal the Breath horde of the Godking.  It might also be what you'd reach for to steal a Dawnshard, but Im less sure on that.  

 

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Pagerunner

The Hemalurgy table, you wrote down "atium steals any power, lerasium is all abilities, nicrosil is Investiture"; what's the difference between those three?

Hemalurgic atium, lerasium, and nicrosil. What's powers, abilities, and Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

People are Invested in ways that do not give them active powers. So for instance, everyone on Nalthis is Invested. Everyone in the cosmere is, really. You want to steal their Investiture, but they don't have a power. You're still ripping off a piece of their soul. So there is a distinction between the actual Investiture that's in a human being and a specific power that they have.

So that distinction is pretty easy. You can also, with Hemalurgy, steal specific things. You can steal just general Investiture. You can steal, if you want--this is where the kandra Blessings come from. You can instead steal specific things that are not like stealing Allomancy. Stealing, for instance, someone's mental acuity.

Pagerunner

So abilities is like the half that's all the strength, speed, all that kind of stuff? Those are abilities, versus the Metallic Arts are all powers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Pagerunner

Then Investiture, is that offworld magics?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, it's the raw power.

Pagerunner

Nicrosil is their soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. A piece of their soul, essentially.

Pagerunner

So how would you go about stealing an offworld power?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to depend. A Breath, you would steal with nicrosil. It's general Investiture, is what you would probably going call that. You could forcibly remove someone's Breath from them. The ability to be a Sand Master you would steal with the power ability.

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

 

 

[..... he/him]

13 minutes ago, Alumínio said:

Nicrosil is an incredibly useful metal when we talk about Allomancy and Ferruchemia, but when it comes to hemalurgy the story changes, it only steals investiture, not invested art but standard investiture and it does not seem to be renewable. In my opinion, this would only be useful if you could store an absurd amount, because you are destroying your spiritual web in the process of inserting the stake into yourself, but according to Coppermind the amount is negligible, so I don't find any use for these piles

so F-nicrosil can store any investiture related ability and it stores investiture so nicrosil should be able to steal any investiture related ability

[alder24]

7 minutes ago, Alumínio said:

Nicrosil is an incredibly useful metal when we talk about Allomancy and Ferruchemia, but when it comes to hemalurgy the story changes, it only steals investiture, not invested art but standard investiture and it does not seem to be renewable. In my opinion, this would only be useful if you could store an absurd amount, because you are destroying your spiritual web in the process of inserting the stake into yourself, but according to Coppermind the amount is negligible, so I don't find any use for these piles

The Set in TLM most likely used nicrosil spikes as they were stealing raw innate investiture from 20-30 people with a single spike, and that has to be a nicrosil spike - it has a potential to grant powers. You can steal Breaths with it too, maybe even a Divine Breath. I think nicrosil spike has a big potential that we simply can't see yet, because we know too little about it. Maybe you can steal Sliverism or Savantism, you can steal investiture from a spren, form Cognitive Shadows, Elantrians etc. While yes, each spike damages you, each spike also makes you more invested, and the more invested you are, the more resilient you are to certain influences of investiture. Becoming more invested can make you into a Cognitive Shadow - that's very useful.

Spoiler

Pagerunner

The Hemalurgy table, you wrote down "atium steals any power, lerasium is all abilities, nicrosil is Investiture"; what's the difference between those three?

Hemalurgic atium, lerasium, and nicrosil. What's powers, abilities, and Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

People are Invested in ways that do not give them active powers. So for instance, everyone on Nalthis is Invested. Everyone in the cosmere is, really. You want to steal their Investiture, but they don't have a power. You're still ripping off a piece of their soul. So there is a distinction between the actual Investiture that's in a human being and a specific power that they have.

So that distinction is pretty easy. You can also, with Hemalurgy, steal specific things. You can steal just general Investiture. You can steal, if you want--this is where the kandra Blessings come from. You can instead steal specific things that are not like stealing Allomancy. Stealing, for instance, someone's mental acuity.

Pagerunner

So abilities is like the half that's all the strength, speed, all that kind of stuff? Those are abilities, versus the Metallic Arts are all powers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Pagerunner

Then Investiture, is that offworld magics?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, it's the raw power.

Pagerunner

Nicrosil is their soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. A piece of their soul, essentially.

Pagerunner

So how would you go about stealing an offworld power?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to depend. A Breath, you would steal with nicrosil. It's general Investiture, is what you would probably going call that. You could forcibly remove someone's Breath from them. The ability to be a Sand Master you would steal with the power ability.

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Because Zahel was especially Invested when he died, he became that other soul. Does that mean that Elend wasn't actually...?

Brandon Sanderson

Zahel is a special case. What happened with him is, on his planet, he was specifically chosen by the Shard to be Returned. That happens, you don't have to be specifically Invested for that. The god gives them that. Now, to become a Cognitive Shadow, which is what certain people in the cosmere are, you need a powerful amount, an enormous amount.

Questioner

So not the bead?

Brandon Sanderson

Not just being a Mistborn, not just... he wasn't even close to being where he needed to be, if you want to end up as a Cognitive Shadow. You need to do some special hoops. We're talking, drawing forth the power of a Shard, or being endowed with the power of a Shard, or a certain number of Breaths would do it. There is a threshold that you could get, you're gonna end up as a Cognitive Shadow.

FanX 2021 (Sept. 17, 2021)

 

1 minute ago, ..... said:

so F-nicrosil can store any investiture related ability and it stores investiture so nicrosil should be able to steal any investiture related ability

No, F-nicrosil stores only abilities, not raw investiture, nicrosil spikes steal only raw investiture, which is a part of a soul, but not any abilities. You can store Allomancy in a nicrosilmind, but you can't steal it with a nicrosil spike. Look at the WoB. Both tables use the term "investiture" but this can mean both the ability like Allomancy, and raw investiture.

[Alumínio he/him]

14 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Rouba a investidura que atualmente está fisicamente na pessoa. Então, com um pico de Nicrosil você poderia, por exemplo, roubar a respiração da horda do Godking. Também pode ser o que você usaria para roubar um Dawnshard, mas não tenho certeza disso.  

 

 

I thought there was a limit to the investiture that a spike could steal, I didn't know it reached the godking level, and this one about the set clarified a lot of things for me, perhaps the nicrosil spikes are the most important because you could encode anything in that investiture base? 

Thinking like this, nicrosil is a very special metal

[Quantus he/him]

9 minutes ago, Alumínio said:

I thought there was a limit to the investiture that a spike could steal, I didn't know it reached the godking level, and this one about the set clarified a lot of things for me, perhaps the nicrosil spikes are the most important because you could encode anything in that investiture base? 

Thinking like this, nicrosil is a very special metal

There is a limit but it usually comes into play when it's things like spiking a whole Shard and such.  Whatever is in the Godking still fits in one person's worth of organic matter, so it cant take more than that.  WOB says the only upper limit on the size of a spike is the practical side, so just literally still being able to stick it into the target.  If you want to see a gross example of a giant spike that could still work, Google the Titan's Prick from the Foundation TV show (it's a giant mechanical execution device akin to a guillotine).  

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Alumínio said:

Nicrosil is an incredibly useful metal when we talk about Allomancy and Ferruchemia, but when it comes to hemalurgy the story changes, it only steals investiture, not invested art but standard investiture and it does not seem to be renewable. In my opinion, this would only be useful if you could store an absurd amount, because you are destroying your spiritual web in the process of inserting the stake into yourself, but according to Coppermind the amount is negligible, so I don't find any use for these piles

@alder24 makes some good points; first, that being able to Invest yourself more with general Investiture can make you more resistant to other forms of Investiture, it could potentially make you into a Cognitive Shadow, and maybe it could take Savantism because it seems to take a larger chunk of the Spiritweb.

This just occurred to me, but if Savantism is on the table for Hemalurgic nicrosil (which admittedly is pure conjecture at this point in time) then Resonances could possibly be available too. If you can take multiple power's worth of Invesiture in such a spike, Resonances could potentially be caught and transferred with it to the Hemalurgist. This might seem a small boon when compared to the loss of the powers themselves, but if you found a way to increase the Investiture of the spikes you could get a stronger, more pronounced Resonance, which would be a power in and of itself.

Warbreaker spoilers:

Spoiler

Another thing that general Investiture can do is grant Heightening-like effects, similar to Breaths:

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Dawnshard Annotations Reddit Q&A - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

tskyeguye

From Rysn's observations in the epilogue, it seems like she has a lot of the same aspects of a Fifth Heightening/Returned at the least. Is this because her Dawnshard is particularly connected to Endowment or because the effects of a certain level of Investment result in similar effects?

Brandon Sanderson

The latter.

Skrimyt

Interesting. So are actively Surgebinding Radiants or metal-burning Allomancers just not Invested enough to gain those passive effects, or do they not experience perfect pitch/color/etc. because their Investiture is just not as tightly bound to their Spiritweb as Endowment's Breaths or a Dawnshard would be?

Brandon Sanderson

Be aware that the two groups you mention don't generally hold much Investiture themselves, at least not in large quantities over time. More in Surgebinding. Almost none in Allomancy.

But RAFO to specifics.

This means that if you got a larger spike than the Set used (more like an Inquisitor's spike) or found another way to increase a spike's Investiture storage that you could gain a slowing of aging, better general health, Lifesense, and other nice perks. Additionally, the more Invetiture of a system you hold, the more your intrinsic knowledge of it increases; more Breaths, the more you understand about Awakening and the easier it is to learn more complex features of it.

With highly Invested Hemalurgic nicrosil spikes, you may be able to learn new ways to utilize other spikes or to use correct Bindpoints for lots of other crazy Hemalurgic shenanigans.

 

[Alumínio he/him]

46 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

@alder24 apresenta alguns pontos positivos; primeiro, que ser capaz de investir mais com a Investidura geral pode torná-lo mais resistente a outras formas de Investidura, pode potencialmente torná-lo uma Sombra Cognitiva, e talvez possa levar ao Savantismo porque parece ocupar uma parte maior da Teia Espiritual. .

savantism is when power permeates your soul, so maybe if I used a spike that gave me A-steel and an H-nicrosil I would have an ability like wax?

47 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

@alder24 (I couldn't get it out)

Isso acabou de me ocorrer, mas se o savantismo estiver na mesa para o nicrosil hemalúrgico (o que reconhecidamente é pura conjectura neste momento), então as ressonâncias também poderiam estar disponíveis. Se você puder obter vários poderes de Investidura em tal pico, as Ressonâncias poderão ser potencialmente capturadas e transferidas com ele para o Hemalurgista. Isso pode parecer uma pequena vantagem quando comparado à perda dos poderes em si, mas se você encontrar uma maneira de aumentar a Investidura dos espinhos, poderá obter uma Ressonância mais forte e pronunciada, o que seria um poder por si só.

 

This is considering that you can steal more than one metal from the same hemalurgical quadrant with the same peak, as your theory said previously, right?

[alder24]

23 minutes ago, Alumínio said:

savantism is when power permeates your soul, so maybe if I used a spike that gave me A-steel and an H-nicrosil I would have an ability like wax?

Wax isn't a Savant, Brandon changed his mind because Wax had no negative consequences of being a Savant. 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Warning, Evgeni. I'm really considering doing a backpedal on savants. The more i think about them, the less I'm not liking how my current course has them being treated in upcoming books. I think it deviates too far from my original vision.

Argent

Hey, I wouldn't normally contact you directly like this, but given that you thought it important enough to reach out and let me know you might change how savants work, I figured you probably wouldn't be too upset by this message. I replied to your Facebook comment, asking if you could clarify a little bit which aspects of savantism you are thinking of keeping and/or cutting. I don't need an essay on the topic (though you know I'd love one!), just some details on what we can consider canon for theories, and what we should be careful around.

Brandon Sanderson

Evgeni,

So here's the problem. The more I dig into savants in the later outlines, the more I feel that I'm in a dangerous area--in that I'm disobeying their original intention. (Which is that using the power so much that it permeates your soul can be dangerous, a kind of uncontrolled version of a spren bond.)

And so, I don't want to let myself just start making people savants right and left. It needs to be a specific thing. Wax is the troubling one, as I have him burning so much steel that he's well on his way, but isn't showing any side effects. If I'm going to give him savant-like abilities, he needs savant-like consequences.

That's the danger, just falling back on savanthood to do some of the things I want, so often that it undermines the actual point and purpose of them in the cosmere lore.

So if I backpedal, it will be to contain this and point myself the right way, sharply curtailing my desire to make people savants without their savanthood being an intrinsic part of their story and conflict in life. (Like it was for Spook, and is for Soulcasting savants on Roshar.)

Feel free to share this.

Argent

Okay, so - if you do decide to go this route, I see the story implications (larger focus on consequences, less easy to get to the point where a character can be considered a savant). What I am not sure about is the potential for a mechanical change. Would a backpedal on your side cause a conflict with information you've shared with us, in or out of your books? Are you saying that it's possible that Wax won't be considered a savant (if you can't squeeze a good ramifications plot for him that doesn't contradict the apparent lack of consequences so far, for example)?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't decided on anything yet. It's mostly consequences for the future--just a kind of, "be aware I'm not 100% pleased with how Wax turned out, re: savanthood and Allomantic resonance."

The idea of resonance is that two powers, combined, meld kind of into one single power. This is a manifestation of the way Shards combine. Wax was intended as a savant of the two melded powers. But without consequences in his plot, I'm not confident that I'll continue in the same vein for future books.

Footnote: The first message comes from Brandon reaching out to Argent (Evgeni) on Facebook with a follow-up regarding this entry. This rest is from a Reddit PM exchange between Argent and Brandon.
Miscellaneous 2016 (Dec. 15, 2016)

But if you can steal it, you could have consequences of being a Savant without even having the power. That can be painful.

[therunner he/him]

3 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

This just occurred to me, but if Savantism is on the table for Hemalurgic nicrosil (which admittedly is pure conjecture at this point in time) then Resonances could possibly be available too.

Savantism cannot be stolen (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/77/#e6816), which makes sense since it is not part of spiritweb, but change to the entire spiritweb as a whole.

Similarly, resonance is natural effect of two powers inside the spiritweb. Hemalrugy mostly cannot create it (so your natural power and your spiked power won't create resonance), so most likely because it is this 'non-local' effect you cannot steal it either.

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 10/20/2023 at 2:27 PM, Alumínio said:

This is considering that you can steal more than one metal from the same hemalurgical quadrant with the same peak, as your theory said previously, right?

Mostly that hypothesis refers to being able to fit four separate powers into a single spike with the powers all belonging to the same metal focus (i.e., a single steel spike holding A-steel, iron, pewter, and tin, but no more as they aren't part of the same Hemalurgic metal). They'd need to have the same Identity (spike a mistborn multiple times or Blank the Identity of the Donors) to make this work, but it should be possible.

With the H-nicrosil, I mostly meant that you take the Investiture of the powers, but the functionality of the powers is not preserved. 

On 10/20/2023 at 5:00 PM, therunner said:

Similarly, resonance is natural effect of two powers inside the spiritweb. Hemalrugy mostly cannot create it (so your natural power and your spiked power won't create resonance), so most likely because it is this 'non-local' effect you cannot steal it either.

This is probably true. I'm mostly just trying to come up with more interesting ways that might work, as we don't know for certain yet. The one reason I think that H-nicrosil might be able to steal Resonances is because it seems to take a larger overall amount of Investiture, it just doesn't keep the powers working the same way.

If the powers are taken into the same spike, a Resonance might still be able to exist between them, as they'd still have some interaction.