Creating Investiture for Surge Binding

[RowdyGryphon]

Spoiler

Due to recent developments,

I have been trying to think of ways to fuel surge binding with no access to stormlight. These steps are what I've came up with so far. Would this work? If it won't work what would be stopping it from doing so?

 

1. Be a Twinborn full Feruchemist and steel Misting. (Technically any Misting aside from an aluminum Misting.)

2. Store Identity in aluminum.

3. Burn steel. (While continuing to store Identity.)

4. Store the Investiture from the burning steel in nicrosil instead of using it. (Side questions. What can another Feruchemist do with this? Also would a Mistborn/ Misting burning Identity free Investiture filled nicrosil be able to super charge another's allomancy beyond regular nicrosil?)

5. If a knight radiant as well tap Investiture filled metal mind to fuel surge binding.

6. Infuse gem with Identity free Investiture.

7. Give to another Knight Radiant to fuel their surge binding.

Edited January 6, 2025 by RowdyGryphon

[Treamayne]

Welcome to the Shard. 

13 minutes ago, RowdyGryphon said:

Due to recent developments

Please spoiler tag All content from recent published works. Spoiler policy (see below) requires that threads for new books be confined to the Spoiler Zone until the spoiler period has passed. I have reported this thread, so hopefully a Mod/Admin will be able te move this thread for you. Please see the Sharder FAQ for more info and other useful tips and information for the forum. 

Spoiler

Spoiler Period and Spoiler Period Lengths for Forums and Discord:

• Cosmere novels - six months
• Cosmere everything else - three months
• Non-cosmere novels - three months 
• Non-cosmere everything else - one month

 

[alder24]

21 hours ago, RowdyGryphon said:

I have been trying to think of ways to fuel surge binding with no access to stormlight. These steps are what I've came up with so far. Would this work? If it won't work what would be stopping it from doing so?

To do that you need raw, unkeyed investiture, something like pure Dor. Or Breaths can be used very easily to power Surgebinding. 

Spoiler

Questioner

You've mentioned in the last couple of afterwords that you get interesting results when you mix types of Investiture.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Twinborn and Surgebinders on Roshar. Can you mix a form of magic with a source of Investiture? Can say Vasher use Stormlight in place of Breaths or would that require tampering via Hemalurgy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of them require tampering. Some of them are a little bit easier than others. It depends on really what you mean. For instance, white sand can be charged in the presence of any Investiture right? It's just-- But that's not really using the magic, it's just charging it with other Investiture. But, you know, it would be very easy, for instance, if you can get yourself Invested-- Like, for instance, it'd be very easy to use Breaths to fuel Windrunning right? Because the oath and the bond and things like that are going to make it pretty easy. However fueling Allomancy with something else is going to be a lot harder. So it really depends on the magic. It's the sort of thing that there will be lots of science in the books dedicated to making happen in the future and you will find some of the processes these work easier than other ones.

DragonCon 2016 (Sept. 3, 2016)

 

21 hours ago, RowdyGryphon said:

1. Be a Twinborn full Feruchemist and steel Misting. (Technically any Misting aside from an aluminum Misting.)

Not really. While a full Feruchemist might be able to figure out how to turn their attributes in metalminds into raw unkeyed investiture (because they can manipulate identity and Connections), it would be very hard to do. It's not as easy as storing your identity, because even without identity you still can't tap a steelmind and get heat from it. By tapping an unkeyed steelmind, you're getting speed and speed only. You need to convert it into raw investiture first, which is something we have no idea how to do. The same goes for Allomancers - they're drawing in investiture that is shaped to a specific action and they can't change that.

21 hours ago, RowdyGryphon said:

4. Store the Investiture from the burning steel in nicrosil instead of using it. (Side questions. What can another Feruchemist do with this? Also would a Mistborn/ Misting burning Identity free Investiture filled nicrosil be able to super charge another's allomancy beyond regular nicrosil?)

Firstly we don't know if F-nicrosil stores kinetic investiture at all. From all we know it stores innate investiture - parts of the soul that give invested abilities. You can store Allomancy, Feruchemy, or even Surgebinding in F-nicrosil, but not raw investiture or any lights as far as we are aware. Investiture drawn by a Mistborn is kinetic and shaped to do one specific thing only - storing identity won't change that. 

Spoiler

kingbirdy (paraphrased)

Could Feruchemical nicrosil be used to store other Invested abilities, such as a Returned Breath or the abilities of the Knights Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, that's possible.

DragonCon 2016 (Sept. 4, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Necarion

Could a double-nicrosil Twinborn compound Breath or Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, you’re getting a RAFO card on that. You're getting SUCH a RAFO card on that!

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing (Nov. 30, 2016)

 

22 hours ago, RowdyGryphon said:

5. If a knight radiant as well tap Investiture filled metal mind to fuel surge binding.

A Radiant can't do that because he's not a Metalborn. He would have to at least use unsealed metalminds - Malwish medallions - to gain those powers. But those don't work exactly in the same way as normal Feruchemical powers and do have restrictions. 

Spoiler

Calderis

Does the nicrosil portion of the medallions function identitically to how a Soulbearer Ferring would use Nicrosil? 

Brandon Sanderson

Not exactly. The medallion is a little more restrictive, for one thing.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 31, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

General Signed Books 2018 (Oct. 15, 2018)

 

This is the opposite problem to the one presented in the WoB below. Investiture used by Metalborns has a very rigid structure and it always does one thing only. It knows what it does and you can't just make it do something else. Identity is not the answer, it's not responsible for telling investiture what to do (but it still is a needed step, because you need to unkeyed it from both yourself and Harmony). You need to somehow get rid of that structure and turn it into raw investiture that has no structure and does nothing. Or you can use Warlight/Towerlight.

Spoiler

Questioner

If you were divesting yourself of all Identity, and then tapped a massive amount of Connection and Investiture, would you be able to instantly have access to, say, the Surges on Roshar without oaths?

Brandon Sanderson

So, you wanna get the Surges without oaths? What you're saying is you divest yourself of Identity, you highly Invest yourself... You're still going to need something that's gonna tell that Investiture what to be and how to manifest in yourself. And so if it's the right Intent then maybe, right? 'Cause you can have both Identity and Intent on Investiture and you can unkey it to one or the other or both. And so that might be... But the thing is, you're still gonna have to know... This is a step toward getting what you want, but there's still gotta be something that tells it... "You're holding a massive amount of Investiture, what do I do with this? Do I teleport you across the Cosmere to another planet? What do I do with it?" And you're gonna have to have something to give structure to that Investiture. You're missing a step.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

[RowdyGryphon]

12 hours ago, alder24 said:

A Radiant can't do that because he's not a Metalborn

I mean if someone who is already a Feruchemist bonds a spren can they use the Investiture they store in a nicrosil metal mind? If you are storing the piece of Investiture that grants abilities I agree that you wouldn't be able to. I just have imaged it more like how when you store energy with bendalloy you are really storing the energy in food which you use to fuel your body after your body has turned it into an energy it can use. So you take in Investiture in some way and store it in a form your body can than use later on.

I can see that it would be more complicated to turn that Investiture into something another Knight Radiant can use. So ignoring the whole identity stuff could you use your own Investiture that you store in your own nicrosil metalmind to power surges that you already have access to?

Edited January 8, 2025 by RowdyGryphon

[alder24]

8 hours ago, RowdyGryphon said:

I mean if someone who is already a Feruchemist bonds a spren can they use the Investiture they store in a nicrosil metal mind? If you are storing the piece of Investiture that grants abilities I agree that you wouldn't be able to. I just have imaged it more like how when you store energy with bendalloy you are really storing the energy in food which you use to fuel your body after your body has turned it into an energy it can use. So you take in Investiture in some way and store it in a form your body can than use later on.

I can see that it would be more complicated to turn that Investiture into something another Knight Radiant can use. So ignoring the whole identity stuff could you use your own Investiture that you store in your own nicrosil metalmind to power surges that you already have access to?

From all we know the answer is no. We only know for sure that a Nicrosilmind stores innate investiture, not static or kinetic investiture. What's even more complicated, it seems like a Radiant who's also an Allomancer/Feruchemist might have troubles using his own Stormlight to fuel his Metallic Arts because "Stormlight is still keyed," which probably means it's keyed to Honor and you can't use that to fuel another Shard's invested art. You would need to purify it and unkeyed it fully first. A Metalborn who wants to power Surgebinding with Preservation's investiture would have to find a way to purify and unkey investiture first, turn it into something like pure Dor, which requires additional steps and isn't as easy as just "tapping his metalmind and flying."

Bendalloy stores nutrients, calories and fluids - you're storing very specific things that your body needs and you're getting back those specific things.

Spoiler

Aneesh

If there's a Forger like Shai who plausibly had an opportunity to ingest lerasium and become Mistborn, but she passed it up, could she create a stamp that makes her temporarily a Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

She would have to have access to enough Investiture to make that happen. The stamp saying, "Hey, I'm a Mistborn!" doesn't actually give her the Investiture to do that. She could rewrite her past so that she took that bead. She would not actually be able to use the power, until she got an infusion of Investiture, which could be done with a stamp in the right manner, but most of the time you're gonna have to have some external source. Basically you're gonna have to take a hit of Investiture, a large amount of it, and then use the stamp, and then it will feed on that to change you into basically any of the other magics.

Aneesh

Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

If you could get a hit of Stormlight, that'd work. The problem is, Stormlight's not easy to get off of Roshar, and it still is technically keyed. You could get it a lot more easily-- Stormlight would work fairly well, but what you really want is some pure, unkeyed Dor. That stuff, you could do all kinds of things with. But, you know, it's kinda dangerous. But that's the stuff you're gonna want, or something like unto it.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

 

Spoiler

Questioner (paraphrased)

Can a Mistborn use the Investiture from a Highstorm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It takes some effort to convert the Investiture. They can burn metals from other planets, though.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

If I'm a Mistborn and I change planet-- if I go over to Roshar, do I have to bring metal from Scadrial with me?

Brandon Sanderson

No, you do not.

Questioner

Could I use Stormlight, and just have the same power?

Brandon Sanderson

Not-- not-- It would take some work.

Questioner

Yeah, okay. Okay, but I could use steel from Roshar, and you can-- Okay, thank you sir.

Orem signing (Dec. 21, 2017)

 

[rabidhexley]

Quote

From all we know the answer is no. We only know for sure that a Nicrosilmind stores innate investiture, not static or kinetic investiture. What's even more complicated, it seems like a Radiant who's also an Allomancer/Feruchemist might have troubles using his own Stormlight to fuel his Metallic Arts because "Stormlight is still keyed," which probably means it's keyed to Honor and you can't use that to fuel another Shard's invested art. You would need to purify it and unkeyed it fully first. A Metalborn who wants to power Surgebinding with Preservation's investiture would have to find a way to purify and unkey investiture first, turn it into something like pure Dor, which requires additional steps and isn't as easy as just "tapping his metalmind and flying."

Indeed. So far as we know Dor is the only abundant source of completely unkeyed kinetic Investiture currently shown onscreen, due to being the raw, free-floating Investiture of a dead shard in the Cognitive realm. Though it seems likely Sunhearts also store unkeyed investiture due to being the result of a reaction rather then from a keyed source of investiture like Stormlight. And it's definitely kinetic due to how it seems to have similar base-effects to Stormlight. Though I'm sure in that time period there are multiple known means of generating/gathering unkeyed kinetic investiture.

Quote

Not really. While a full Feruchemist might be able to figure out how to turn their attributes in metalminds into raw unkeyed investiture (because they can manipulate identity and Connections), it would be very hard to do. It's not as easy as storing your identity, because even without identity you still can't tap a steelmind and get heat from it. By tapping an unkeyed steelmind, you're getting speed and speed only. You need to convert it into raw investiture first, which is something we have no idea how to do. The same goes for Allomancers - they're drawing in investiture that is shaped to a specific action and they can't change that.

Due to the efforts of the Ghostbloods it seems somewhat evident that in that time period Scadrial is fairly strapped for kinetic investiture. There have been hints that removing the Connection from Rosharan Light is possible, likely meaning it can be made to function as unkeyed, kinetic investiture. But the main point is that Stormlight is kinetic investiture in a physical state. I think you're correct in that there isn't any good way of using the metallic arts to retrieve raw, kinetic investiture from the spiritual realm.

 

The problem with Ferruchemy/Allomancy is that they don't create kinetic investiture except transiently, it's either immediately consumed or immediately converted into a non-kinetic state. A metalmind is a static, keyed invested object a metalborn specifically can use to directly fuel their arts. A mistborn/steel misting can burn a steelmind and boost it with Preservations investiture for extra speed, but that's an Allomancy/Ferruchemy-specific hack, they're not retrieving raw investiture from the metalmind, they're retrieving speed-boosting power directly into their body and enhancing it with Preservation. And an allomancer can burn metal to pull keyed Preservation investiture directly into their body, but it's immediately being consumed to fuel their arts, it never exists in the physical realm in a kinetic state.

 

Stormlight is special because while it's keyed, it (was) also renewable, kinetic, exists physically, and can be stored in it's kinetic state. This is what separates it from metalminds or even something like breaths, which while at least transferable, invest objects and souls directly. An infused gemstone isn't an invested object, it's a container. And that's why folks holding kinetic investiture can literally feel it in their body, unlike the metallic arts or breath which only create specific powers or enhance the soul. Though the other problem Stormlight has relative to Dor is that it can't inherently be pulled into the body without an invested ability (Radiant/Fused powers), but that also may be a surmountable problem, and at least becoming Radiant is theoretically possible for anyone.

Edited January 8, 2025 by rabidhexley

[Leuthie]

It seems that Retribution is allowing his investiture to be stored and used by Singers. This means it can be stolen and used by Radiants and in fabrials, since those things can also be powered by Breaths.

[RowdyGryphon]

I can see that there are probably more steps involved to turn the Investiture from burning a metal into a form you can use for powering surges but I still think it's reasonably possible. I do think it's much easier to power surges with Investiture from Scadrial than to power metalborn abilities with Investiture from Roshar. Knight Radiants are already taking a form of raw Investiture and using that, a Mistborn and a Feruchemist aren't,  they are definitely doing something much more complicated. It seems like the powers are there Sanderson just hasn't given us enough information to know exactly the process yet. 

Edited January 9, 2025 by RowdyGryphon

[Leuthie]

Radiants have a much more direct path to intentionally use available Investiture through their spren. Allomancy requires "asking for Investiture" through the act of burning metals. They have no ready way to make use of otherwise available Investiture. Currently, metals are easier to obtain than free Investiture. Although we've seen stored Dor being used in Scadrial on screen, so that's not a permanent imbalance.

[Asininity]

Investiture on Roshar manifests as Lights, each associated with a specific Shard and uniquely defined by its Tone. These tones are composed of Frequency, Rhythm and Intent. Navani's research, has revealed that Lights can be manipulated and transformed through use of fabrials, gems and sound frequencies.

In Rhythm of War there was an experiment with transferring light between gemstones using tuning forks. I'd imagine the most straightforward way to distill Stormlight, would be to take a Sphere infused with Hybrid Light and apply Honor's frequency until Odium/Cultivation part evaporates.

Producing Stormlight from raw Investiture would require tuning it to Honor's Frequency, Rhythm and Intent. It should be also possible to transform non-Rosharan Lights by first stripping thjem off their native Intent and Rhythm