Compounding in FUN new ways. Also questions on fabrials.

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

Something I noticed with fabrial technology is that the metals that evoke different effects each line up to an allomantic/feruchemical metal.

Now, these obviously aren’t invested, so burning them would be useless. But what if someone used a metalmind, or a hemalurgic spike, to make fabrials?

And there are also all the godmetals. Those each have a unique (and quite powerful effect) in allomancy. What would each of them do in fabrial tech?

Raysium is already used in this tech, but not as the actual application, only to transfer investiture. Same with aluminum. But do we have any reason to assume that they are useless in this?

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

3 hours ago, SpiritOfWrath said:

Something I noticed with fabrial technology is that the metals that evoke different effects each line up to an allomantic/feruchemical metal.

Now, these obviously aren’t invested, so burning them would be useless. But what if someone used a metalmind, or a hemalurgic spike, to make fabrials?

And there are also all the godmetals. Those each have a unique (and quite powerful effect) in allomancy. What would each of them do in fabrial tech?

Raysium is already used in this tech, but not as the actual application, only to transfer investiture. Same with aluminum. But do we have any reason to assume that they are useless in this?

This is a very astute question.

The allomantic metals are keys to Investiture and Feruchemically investing them changes their fundamental nature as keys (at least as we understand it today. This implies that, yes, a fabrial created with steel that had been infused with physical speed would fundamentally behave differently than a fabrial created with uninvested steel.

Fabrials require a combination of design elements however, so I do not expect than an elementary 1-to-1 blanket relationship statement can be made about the altering effect that this interaction would have. I do believe it is 100% possible to create extremely exotic time dilating fabrials, or fortune-enhancing fabrials for what it's worth though, which could (operative word) greatly accelerate the discovery process for space-age level technology. Hopefully that speculation helps, you're deep deep deep into rafo territory if you ask me! 

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

16 minutes ago, Lewis Nethur said:

This is a very astute question.

The allomantic metals are keys to Investiture and Feruchemically investing them changes their fundamental nature as keys (at least as we understand it today. This implies that, yes, a fabrial created with steel that had been infused with physical speed would fundamentally behave differently than a fabrial created with uninvested steel.

Fabrials require a combination of design elements however, so I do not expect than an elementary 1-to-1 blanket relationship statement can be made about the altering effect that this interaction would have. I do believe it is 100% possible to create extremely exotic time dilating fabrials, or fortune-enhancing fabrials for what it's worth though, which could (operative word) greatly accelerate the discovery process for space-age level technology. Hopefully that speculation helps, you're deep deep deep into rafo territory if you ask me! 

I know. RAFO is my friend, because all the interesting things hang out with it.

I’m not actually sure what effects these may have if one could get them to work (given they are, ya know, possible), but the tech would not match metallurgy in a direct sense, because it is the spren, not the metal, that decides what attributes to use (ie tin doesn’t increase senses, it diminishes attributes [although, if ya think about it, if an attribute is diminished, ya need increased senses to sense it…]). So a nicrosil (is that the metal?) fabrial wouldn’t necessarily make a time bubble, although it may do something similar, like, given a flamespren, speed up the spread of nearby flame or smt.

Another sad thing about this is that… sad… if this were possible, we prob won’t see much of it at all.

Edited November 24, 2024 by SpiritOfWrath

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Just now, SpiritOfWrath said:

I know. RAFO is my friend, because all the interesting things hang out with it.

I’m not actually sure what effects these may have if one could get them to work (given they are, ya know, possible), but the tech would not match metallurgy in a direct sense, because it is the spren, not the metal, that decides what attributes to use (ie tin doesn’t increase senses, it finishes attributes [although, if ya think about it, if an attribute is diminished, ya need increased senses to sense it…]). So a nicrosil (is that the metal?) fabrial wouldn’t necessarily make a time bubble, although it may do something similar, like, given a flamespren, speed up the spread of nearby flame or smt.

Another sad thing about this is that… sad… if this were possible, we prob won’t see much of it at all.

I disagree completely!

Stuff like this is what is meant to fill the art and design pages of books that are 10 years out from being written friend.

A bendalloy wrist-mounted fabrial that rehydrates or provides caloric enrichment to its user is exactly the type of scadrian-rosharn hybrid fabrial that I'd expect to see Shallan's students' students detailing and annotating 100 years from Roshars present. Have hope! If not for yourself, then for the multiverse at large and in aggregate.

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

1 minute ago, Lewis Nethur said:

I disagree completely!

Stuff like this is what is meant to fill the art and design pages of books that are 10 years out from being written friend.

A bendalloy wrist-mounted fabrial that rehydrates or provides caloric enrichment to its user is exactly the type of scadrian-rosharn hybrid fabrial that I'd expect to see Shallan's students' students detailing and annotating 100 years from Roshars present. Have hope! If not for yourself, then for the multiverse at large and in aggregate.

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh that’s a good idea…

Cool…

(I said nicrosil, but it was bendalloy)

I wonder if a copper spike fabrial could suppress memories of its attribute.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

8 minutes ago, SpiritOfWrath said:

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh that’s a good idea…

Cool…

(I said nicrosil, but it was bendalloy)

I wonder if a copper spike fabrial could suppress memories of its attribute.

Dear god...no offense, but I absolutely hate that everyone keeps trying to make hybrid hemalurgy a thing. Lol.

Yeah, no, that'd probably work just fine. Yes, I 100% agree that inception magic, memory extraction, memory deletion, and memory transfer should all be totally possible with the type of hybrid magic described, you monster.

One can also achieve the same effect with a little care, attention and a single Breath though so like...what the heck are we avoiding by ultra-over-engineering a way to not have that talk...

You're probably right though, at least by my figuring.

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

Just now, Lewis Nethur said:

Dear god...no offense, but I absolutely hate that everyone keeps trying to make hybrid hemalurgy a thing. Lol.

Yeah, no, that'd probably work just fine. Yes, I 100% agree that inception magic, memory extraction, memory deletion, and memory transfer should all be totally possible with the type of hybrid magic described, you monster.

One can also achieve the same effect with a little care, attention and a single Breath though so like...what the heck are we avoiding by ultra-over-engineering a way to not have that talk...

You're probably right though, at least by my figuring.

Ya can get hemalurgy without death, and in noninvested peoples. (Although it may turn em drab.)

But that is a *cough* good point. (It’s really a small price to pay.)

[Quantus he/him]

Side note: With Fabrials the metal governs a lot of the effect, but the baseline/categorical Power is defined by the Spren involved, and I suspect the spren is providing a critical piece of the Intent in the .

• Investiture + Intent + Tuning = Effect    
• Investiture + Spren + Metal = Effect

If for the sake of Theory we assume that metallic Arts are tapping the same realmic effects, I propose that we frame Allomancy as what happens when Preservation is filling the "Spren" role, while Feruchemy is what happens with a mortal/Scadrian is in that role. 

I also suspect you could replace the Spren with an Awakened Object if it had the proper Command.  Which essentially means Nightblood is just an Awakened Fabrial, where the Intelligence (Nightblood himself) is Invested in the "cage" metal (The Sword's original Steel). In other words Nightblood the Sword represents a Steel-based Fabrial with an artificially created spren of the "Destroy Evil" Type, and a remarkably non-denominational appetite.  

Edited November 25, 2024 by Quantus

[Trusk'our he/him]

12 minutes ago, Quantus said:

I also suspect you could replace the Spren with an Awakened Object if it had the proper Command. 

Or maybe use a Hemalurgic spike in place of the Spren.

Then you could harness the Hemalurgic power, but without injuring your own Spiritweb. 

[Quantus he/him]

2 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Or maybe use a Hemalurgic spike in place of the Spren.

Then you could harness the Hemalurgic power, but without injuring your own Spiritweb. 

Ehhhh.... I think it would be theoretically possible but only if the spike had a complete and functional Soul in it and not just a ripped fragment of one. Whatever is serving the spren role needs to be functionally Awake enough to provide some level of Intent, and the average spike is a fragment that only works when plugged into a living/functional Spiritweb.  

On the other hand, if that one theory suggesting that Electrum Metalminds are actually storing Intent (where the Manic/Despressive slider described in WOB is just what happens when you tap or store non-specific Intent) then you might be able to use that without an actually Awake Investiture involved (spren, mortal, lifeless, etc) or even to Create such an awakened Entitity.  In fact that might be what later Comere residents mean by "Awakened Metalminds".  

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

59 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Ehhhh.... I think it would be theoretically possible but only if the spike had a complete and functional Soul in it and not just a ripped fragment of one. Whatever is serving the spren role needs to be functionally Awake enough to provide some level of Intent, and the average spike is a fragment that only works when plugged into a living/functional Spiritweb.  

True, that's likely the case. Otherwise, you'd probably have people who already discovered Hemalurgic Fabrials already. 

Perhaps an Awakened device could utilize Hemalurgic spikes, swapping them out as needed. Or, maybe you slap a power onto a pre-existing lesser Spren in Shadesmar, capture it in a gemstone, then make a Fabrial that harnesses its new power.

[MischiefIsMe He/They]

This is such an interesting question but sadly I think there are limited ways to use feruchemical metalminds and hemallurgic spikes in fabrials.  For the hemallurgic spikes, there power decays when outside of a body and while this can be heavily reduced by storing them in blood, it doesn't fully negate the hemallurgic decay.  The bigger problem though is Identity.  Hemallurgic spikes maintain some of the victim's identity which is then grafted onto the soul of another person/creature but that wouldn't work for a fabrial as it doesn't have a spiritweb.  And a regular metalmind would have the same problem of "you need the power to belong to you".  You could maybe use an unkeyed metalmind but the effects it might have would be very difficult to predict.