Can a Leecher wipe out Breath and Stormlight?

[kroen]

If so... imagine unleashing one in Nalthis. He could single handedly kill all Returned with a touch. Not to mention disarming Surgebinders of their Stormlight.

 

Another question: What would happen if a Nicroburst used his Allomancy on someone with Breath? would they gain more Breath or something?

Edited June 18, 2015 by kroen

[Guest]

If so... imagine unleashing one in Nalthis. He could single handedly kill all Returned with a touch. Not to mention disarming Surgebinders of their Stormlight.

 

I think its unclear if this would kill a Returned instantly. A returned dies if they use their Divine Breath or if they consume their own Divine Breath, but as Vasher proves a Returned can survive without having their Divine Breath. (though the sudden scarcity of Breath would likely cause Returned to begin staving to death quite quickly)

 

Another question: What would happen if a Nicroburst used his Allomancy on someone with Breath? would they gain more Breath or something?

 

Likely nothing, maybe it would cause a "super-Awakening" if it was done during the Awakening. What exactly that would do I have no idea.

[kroen]

Vasher uses Stormlight instead of Breath. And if regular Breath can be Leeched, I don't see why a divine one couldn't.

[DreamEternal]

Vasher actualy had his Divine Breath. He just learned to supress it somehow. While supressed it does not contribute to heightening count, is "invisible" to lifesense and is not given by the "My life to yours, my breath is yours" command.

Edited June 18, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Topomouse]

From the little I have understood of the workings of the Cosmere I think that yes, leecher should work with other investitures. Thought maybe they would require some jury-rigging as said in other WoB about other cross world interactions.

 

About the nicroburst, given how they work with allomancy I think that maybe they would let the awakener put more breaths then normal in a object with an enhanced effect.

[kroen]

Hmm. If a Smoker Smokes a Nalthis person with Breath, would they appear Drab?

 

Also, a non-crossover question: If a Nicroburst uses his power on a Ferring tapping his metalmind, would the effect be as if Compounded?

 

One more thing: Can Breath be stolen Hemalurgically? and what about storing it in a Nicrosilmind?

Edited June 18, 2015 by kroen

[Moogle]

If so... imagine unleashing one in Nalthis. He could single handedly kill all Returned with a touch. Not to mention disarming Surgebinders of their Stormlight.

 

Another question: What would happen if a Nicroburst used his Allomancy on someone with Breath? would they gain more Breath or something?

 

Recent WoB:

OK, so in the signing line, I asked the question about chromium vs a Compounder with both invested and uninvested metals in both their stomach and piercings.

 

Sorry I don't have exact quotes, but there was a line and no easy way to take notes. 

 

But what it boils down to is this:

 

1)  Yes, the piercings will get burned off.  (I bet that seeing that happen would look downright weird.)

2)  The noninvested metals go before the invested ones.  He said that because invested metals are harder to effect, it takes a little extra time and effort to get them to burn off.  So a Leecher trying to clean out a Compounder would have to get a good grip and hang on for a few seconds.

3)  Chromium burns about as quickly as duralumin, so if you're trying to burn off a lot of metals, it is possible to run out of chromium before your target is clean.  This would probably only be an issue when dealing with larger pieces (like jewelry) rather than your standard metal-flakes-in-the-stomach deal.

(source)

 

This, to me, makes it unclear whether you can Leech off Investiture. It seems like it will 'vanish' metals, rather than directly kill off Investiture. However, there's a WoB on aluminum mentioning that a skillful user could use it to cleanse other Investitures from themselves.

 

So... it's a bit weird.

 

However, what's clear is that if you could drain Returned to kill them, it wouldn't be instant. Metalminds are relatively weakly Invested relative to the things on Nalthis. By WoB, metalminds are in the "middle" of how Invested things can be, while Nightblood is super hard. 1000 Breaths went into Nightblood, and the Divine Breath of a Returned effectively gives 2000 Breaths. If a metalmind on a Compounder would take a while to burn off, burning a Returned's Divine Breath is going to take a lot longer. (If it's even possible.)

 

Allomantic nicrosil, we don't know what would happen. As speculation, I think there's no way it'll give them extra Breath or make Awakenings more powerful. Nicrosil/duralumin don't give you extra energy, they just allow you to compress the amount of time it takes to use the energy you have. Tentatively, I'd go with "nothing interesting" or "your Breath might flow from you to your Awakened object faster". I expect Allomantic nicrosil would have more significant effects on AonDor, since they seem to allow you to 'widen' whatever 'pipe' hooks you up to Preservation, and AonDor is similar in that each Aon is a 'pipe' to the Dor. (If you can even use Allomantic nicrosil on an Aon...)

 

Hmm. If a Smoker Smokes a Nalthis person with Breath, would they appear Drab?

 

Brandon's RAFO'd cross-Cosmere copper consistently.

 

Also, a non-crossover question: If a Nicroburst uses his power on a Ferring tapping his metalmind, would the effect be as if Compounded?

 

I don't believe this exact question has been asked, but again as speculation I doubt it. Again, Allomantic nicrosil does not give you extra energy, it just lets you take what power you have and use it in a shorter time. What might happen is that a Feruchemist could draw on his metalminds more efficiently. With Feruchemy, when you draw 10x strength from a pewtermind, you use more than 10x of the stored strength (diminishing returns). You have to use some of the energy in the metalmind to accelerate how much you can draw from it. Nicrosil may 'widen' the 'pipe' and reduce the effect of these diminishing returns.

 

Or... maybe it won't.

 

One more thing: Can Breath be stolen Hemalurgically? and what about storing it in a Nicrosilmind?

 

As a general policy, everything to do with Feruchemical nicrosil is being RAFO'd.

 

Breath can in fact be stolen Hemalurgically. Anything encoded on the soul can, and Breaths are most assuredly part of your soul. Brandon further describes the similarities here:

Question

Hemalurgy, does the person having the metal shoved through them have to die?

Brandon Sanderson

It has to rip off a piece of their soul. That normally results in death.

Question

Because I'm thinking you're going a bit into the future, surgery, precise things like that...

Brandon Sanderson

It's plausible but-- I mean it would leave the person like-- It's ripping off a piece of their soul. But the same thing happens when you give up your Breath. So you're giving up a piece of your soul. There are-- It's plausible you could take off pieces of a soul without killing the person.

(source)

[Zas678]

(On Nicrosil) 

 

I don't believe this exact question has been asked, but again as speculation I doubt it. Again, Allomantic nicrosil does not give you extra energy, it just lets you take what power you have and use it in a shorter time. What might happen is that a Feruchemist could draw on his metalminds more efficiently. With Feruchemy, when you draw 10x strength from a pewtermind, you use more than 10x of the stored strength (diminishing returns). You have to use some of the energy in the metalmind to accelerate how much you can draw from it. Nicrosil may 'widen' the 'pipe' and reduce the effect of these diminishing returns.

 

Or... maybe it won't.

 

I beg to differ on this (same, on speculation). I bet that it either doesn't do anything, or it causes you to compound. After all, all it does with Allomancy is that it causes all of it to "flare" up in one big burst. It involuntarily forces that investiture pipe wide open. (On a side note, I wonder if someone on a Nicrosil high for long enough would do as Vin did?). If Nicrosil has an affect on Ferrings, I bet it does the same thing, and would force the Ferring to tap it all in a giant burst.  And it would make Chromium super deadly. Can you imagine the affect of someone painstakingly storing luck for months and months and months, to have a Chromium touch you and drain it all away? 

 

 

However, the Ars Arcanum is an in-world artifact, and I bet that if Nicrosil had such an affect, it would be mentioned in the Ars Arcanum, as that doubles its usefulness. So I bet it doesn't do it, unless there's unusual circumstances. 

[Moogle]

I beg to differ on this (same, on speculation). I bet that it either doesn't do anything, or it causes you to compound. After all, all it does with Allomancy is that it causes all of it to "flare" up in one big burst. It involuntarily forces that investiture pipe wide open.

 

I think we're actually thinking of similar things (or rather focusing on different parts of the same thing). I don't disagree at all with what you typed! I didn't think about the possible combat uses of forcing Ferrings to use their metalminds in a giant burst, so that's a very good point, but I suspect any such forced tapping of metalminds would be more efficient than normal. If it's possible.

 

We have a recent WoB mentioning that Feruchemists actually have a very fine control of their powers due to how it's internal. (I can't find it, but I think it's in one of the 13 pages of the Reddit AMA thread.) I wonder if that means they'd be resistant to the involuntary aspect of Feruchemical nicrosil.

[Dunkum]

I think we're actually thinking of similar things (or rather focusing on different parts of the same thing). I don't disagree at all with what you typed! I didn't think about the possible combat uses of forcing Ferrings to use their metalminds in a giant burst, so that's a very good point, but I suspect any such forced tapping of metalminds would be more efficient than normal. If it's possible.

 

We have a recent WoB mentioning that Feruchemists actually have a very fine control of their powers due to how it's internal. (I can't find it, but I think it's in one of the 13 pages of the Reddit AMA thread.) I wonder if that means they'd be resistant to the involuntary aspect of Feruchemical nicrosil.

I imagine it would be more difficult to force someone to use up their metalmind with nicrosil.  partly at least because invested objects tend to resist further investiture, so a metalmind would inherently resist the nicrosil tampering.  that said, forcing someone to insta-burn all of their stored attribute seems likely.  I'm trying to decide which attribute would have it worst.  right now id guess age.  Though doing it for warmth would be interesting.  if the person had enough stored up, it could be deadly for everyone around.  i bet doing it for zinc would be similar to taravangian's best day

[Guest]

I think we're missing an important piece towards being able to answer this question, mostly because we've only seen Duralumin and Aluminium used with tiny bits of Metal.

Does Duralumin (and Nicrosil) force a FULL burn in 1 second? Or does it simply INCREASE the burn rate to a point where Allomantic metals are fully burned in 1 second?

Put another way, if TLR were to swallow a cannonball made of pure Iron and begin to burn it, then was grabbed by a Nicroburst, would the entire Cannonball burn away on 1 second? Or would it burn away at a rate of X ounces/second? Assume X is much greater than any normal Allomantic reserve.

[natc]

Won't duralumin actually have a stronger burst than nicrosil? Logically it would actually flare itself exponentially, since it is burning.

[Oudeis]

But we know that it doesn't. When Vin first uses duralumin, it simply works without flaring itself. Several other times, she duralumin boosts one thing, then later boosts another, without replenishing metals. Aluminum does metalbolize itself, but duralumin is immune to its own effects.

[Guest]

I actually assumed that Aluminum was self-immune at first because Duralumin was, but I've seen several WoB's that say Aluminum wipes itself out

[Guest]

Mistborn 2, Ch38

She struggled in vain. She had duralumin still—burning it only made other metals vanish, not the duralumin itself—but last time that had nearly gotten her killed. If she didn’t take the Thug down quickly, she’d be left without pewter once again.

[Oudeis]

I'm about to read before bed, and I'm just before that actual part, but at the end of the first book, I believe the only time anyone burns aluminum, Vin specifically mentions that aluminum metabolizes even itself. I'll post the quote in the morning.

[natc]

I'm about to read before bed, and I'm just before that actual part, but at the end of the first book, I believe the only time anyone burns aluminum, Vin specifically mentions that aluminum metabolizes even itself. I'll post the quote in the morning.

See, that makes it seem strange.

Maybe it just burns really, really slowly? That even the mega flare doesn't burn right through it? Or maybe it instinctively stops burning after the initial burst?

[Oudeis]

This is possibly why there is sometimes confusion about whether or not aluminum metabolizes itself. The instant she burns it, here's the line:

 

"Immediately, all of her other metal reserves vanished."

 

The phrase "other metals" seems to distinguish that aluminum itself didn't vanish. However, just a few paragraphs later, we have:

 

"My metals! She searched desperately inside, but she found nothing. She couldn't feel any metals, not even the one she had ingested moments before."

 

I see this as a slam-dunk. The first sentence is inexact, but doesn't state that aluminum is still there. The second is conclusive and concrete; aluminum metabolized itself.

 

Recall that most mistborn vials have a few flakes of each metal, and even the fastest burning of them lasts for a few minutes. This is an entire bead of aluminum, large enough to be swallowed. If it doesn't metabolize itself, it burns so fast that there's no real difference.

[natc]

If aluminum does burn that quickly it may be reasonable for duralumin to survive its own flare intact I guess.

Some metal pairs do have burn rate differences mentioned a bit too often.