Nicrosil Investiture hack

[NovaOmen Any/All(Get creative!!!)]

Still working on my stuff and things and I got hit in the head with a funny idea that I'm not sure works or not. Near the end the lost metal we learn that Scadrians can thread a Hemalurgic needle through an individual to steal the chunk of preservation's Investiture, without killing them. Could an enterprising Nicroburster and Soulbearer (Nicrosil Ferring) create practically infinite charged spikes with these? My thoughts process is this:

Step 1. The Soulbearer stores their Investiture in a metalmind, then gets their Nicroburster to burst them while they tap the metalmind. Boom, now they're heavily invested. (essentially compounding with an extra step).

Step 2. The Soulbearer stores half of their newly acquired Investiture in a metalmind, returning to their original Invested state as a normal scadrian, with a highly full metalmind. 

Step 3. Their Nicroburster needles away their Investiture (perhaps the Soulbearer can hide this trauma in a coppermind medallion before healing up with a gold one or something).

Step 4. Repeat the process and create more needles.

Step 5. Profit.

Edited April 11 by NovaOmen

[Treamayne]

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6 hours ago, NovaOmen said:

Could an enterprising Nicroburster and Soulbearer (Nicrosil Ferring) create practically infinite charged spikes with these? My thoughts process is this:

The problem with this, as I see it, is how many unknown are involved:

• We know that Nicrosil in a medallion stores powers, not just raw investiture
  • We know Medallions are similar to a Soulbearer but not the same
  • We do not know if a soul bearer is storing just their own personal investiture or not
• We know the needle technique shown in TLM is stealing personal investiture, not Misting or Ferring abilities
  • We do not know if that is the only thing it can steal
• We know that A-Nicrosil and A-Chomium can affect Feruchemy
  • It is implied, but not confirmed that it would only affect what is being tapped from the metalmind - it does not add what is stored int he metalmind 
  • e. g.  A steelrunner tapping F-Steel that is Nicrobursted, would use all of the remaining storage in the metalmind being tapped, not gain more "stored speed"' investiture

There does not seem to be a way to prove or disprove this until we get Ghostbloods and more information on how Medallions, Nicrosil-in-general, and Bursting/draining metalminds works. WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

Questioner

Nicrosil and chromium, do those have any interaction with people using Feruchemy, or other Investiture in general? Leechers or Nicrobursts.

Brandon Sanderson

Could you use those on Feruchemists? You should be able to, yes.

Questioner

Would that only work while they're tapping it?

Brandon Sanderson

If it's active Investiture, probably yes. You'd probably need it to be kinetic Investiture in order for them to do anything about it.

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

Quote

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)

 

Hope that helps

 

Edited April 11 by Treamayne
SPAG

[PanLin they/he]

5 hours ago, NovaOmen said:

Still working on my stuff and things and I got hit in the head with a funny idea that I'm not sure works or not.

Before I start being a party pooper, I just want to say that this is a really interesting idea. I love thinking about how hemalurgy in particular can interact with other Invested arts.

 

6 hours ago, NovaOmen said:

Step 1. The Soulbearer stores their Investiture in a metalmind, then gets their Nicroburster to burst them while they tap the metalmind. Boom, now they're heavily invested. (essentially compounding with an extra step).

I think this is the bit I'm getting tripped up on, for two reasons.

First, Nicrosil stores the ability to use a specific Invested power, not raw Investiture itself. I don't think this interaction would line up the way you expect it to. The Set were doing something wacky with it (either with other metals involved, physical spike design, extra Commands, or something else) that we don't entirely understand yet.

Second, compounding is quite a specific interaction that uses a feruchemically charged metal to change its allomantic effect and bypass the normal limitations an allomancer would face when drawing power from Preservation. Do you have any sources that imply a Nicrosil-boosted feruchemist would get back more than they put in, or would they just tap and deplete their metalmind faster?

 

6 hours ago, NovaOmen said:

Step 3. Their Nicroburster needles away their Investiture (perhaps the Soulbearer can hide this trauma in a coppermind medallion before healing up with a gold one or something).

The spiritual trauma isn't something you can just bin the memories of and be back to normal—all hemalurgy is inherently chaotic and destructive, and repeated use like this would keep damaging and scarring the surrounding spiritweb, even if (and that's a big if) the hole itself were to be healed each time. Spoilers for Warbreaker:

Spoiler

Even after one use, victims are left in a similar state to drabs, so having their Investiture ripped away like that is analogous to Breaths, and can't just be healed back without using some sort of Invested method that might make the whole experiment not worth it even if it did produce extra Investiture (which I doubt).

 

@Treamayne beat me to it while I was writing this, so I won't link the same WoBs as they did

[alder24]

6 hours ago, NovaOmen said:

Step 1. The Soulbearer stores their Investiture in a metalmind, then gets their Nicroburster to burst them while they tap the metalmind. Boom, now they're heavily invested. (essentially compounding with an extra step).

Won't work because using A-nicrosil and A-duralumin doesn't add new investiture, it only gives you all that you already have but at once. For Allomancy, you will burn all the metal that you've already swallowed and get all the power it can give you released at once, for Feruchemy you get all that's already stored in the metalmind. A Soulbearer who stored his innate investiture in a nicrosilmind and gets boosted by a Nicroburster will get back what he stored and that's it. Although we don't know specifically how a F-nicrosil works (like a medallion, or like normal metalminds), this process involving a Nicroburster would be almost no different than just tapping all you stored at once. To gain new investiture, you would have to be a compounder and burn your own metalminds, you can't use A-nicrosil as a substitute.

[NovaOmen Any/All(Get creative!!!)]

See this is why I ask these questions! Thank you so much for clearing it up, I felt like I was missing something but couldn't figure out what it was