How do you store fractions of Investiture, with Nicrosil?

[SkyBolt]

As you probably know, Feruchemical Nicrosil can be used to store Investiture. However, like other Feruchemical attributes, it doesn't make sense to store a fraction of Investiture. Lets use Allomantic Steel as an example. If The Lord Ruler (using him as he has full access to both power sets) were to store 50% of his Allomantic Steel power in a Nicrosilmind, would his steel pushes be half as powerful as he is filling the Mind?

Alternatively, perhaps Nicrosilminds are filled all or nothing. Maybe, the TLR fills the Nicrosilmind instantly, and when he stops, he is completely devoid of the ability to burn steel Allomantically. Then, someone else could come tap that same Nicrosilmind (assuming it had no Identity) and immediately gain full access to Allomantic Steel forever, even when they were to take the Mind off. In this scenario, Nicrosilminds would work like a gift, giving an ability to someone, until they can give it back.

Does anyone know how it works, I would like to know, just so it will be easier to comprehend things in The Lost Metal, which I assume will be full of complicated Identity and Investiture storing. So confusing, please explain?

Edited December 26, 2016 by SkyBolt

[Dunkum he/him]

It is an interesting question.  We do know that it is possible to be stronger or weaker with allomancy.  Elend, for instance was the strongest allomancer in generations after the lerasium, he literally pushed and pulled harder, though there are certain specifics about that situation that I think are a bit unclear; and Vin with her earring had stronger bronze allomancy than average, which is why she could pierce copperclouds.  so it makes sense that drawing more quickly from a nicrosilmind could make you stronger for a shorter period of time (subject to the normal rules of ferruchemy) it would basically be like being temporarily spiked with an allomantic ability you already have; or that storing 50% of your steel allomancy for an hour would make steelpushes 50% weaker, to use your example.  presumably then, someone tapping that metalmind would then be able to access that same level (50% of the storer's base strength) for an hour, or maybe 100% for 25 minutes (or whatever the correct amount would be.  a little less than half an hour).  it seems like going from nothing to something should require a little extra, but it isn't really clear that it should.  getting from 0 to1 unit of something requires the same as going from 1 to 2 the fact that you start from 0 doesn't necessarily end up mattering

[Spoolofwhool]

Brandon has said that Rashek spent time old because he felt like it, not because it was necessary for his immortality. 

[Spoolofwhool]

Yes. It is known that allomancy can exist at different strengths in an individual, and feruchemy likely has the same gradient, though we don't know what its effect are. As such, my opinion is that tapping or storing a manifestation of investiture simply shifts you on the gradient. So fractional taps are possible. 

[Yata he/him]

35 minutes ago, FiveLate said:

Vin and her hearing was hematology not allomency.

Yes but it's an example of how the Allomancy may have different tier of power....Hemalurgy simply add strenght, for the purpose of the topic there is no difference between an "hemalurgy gift" or "natural power".

Anyway returning to the main topic, I think we have a Wob in the last tour that destroys the idea of "you may become a stronger allomancer than the one who fills the Nicrosilmind" but I have not actually the time to find it.

In my own opinion Nicrosil store section of Spirit-Web so when you decide to store some of it, you have really little finesse about How much Store/Tap...Or to be more precise, you can Store/Tap as hard as you want, but your partial S-Web probably is not functional to all the %.

[Dunkum he/him]

4 hours ago, FiveLate said:

Vin and her hearing was hematology not allomency.

Vin's ability to pierce copper clouds came aboit because her earring was a hemalurgic spike of allomantic bronze.  when she was wearing the earring ,her natural allomantic bronze power was enhanced beyond its normal level.

[+robardin he/him]

On 12/26/2016 at 7:39 AM, Dunkum said:

Vin's ability to pierce copper clouds came aboit because her earring was a hemalurgic spike of allomantic bronze.  when she was wearing the earring ,her natural allomantic bronze power was enhanced beyond its normal level.

As I understand it, we've seen this ascending spectrum of relative Allomantic strength (probably not a linear progression); do I have this right?

Mistings in Era 2 (Wax/Wayne)

Mistings/Mistborn at the end of the Final Empire

Era 2 Misting, flaring their metal

Mistborn/Misting at the end of the FE, flaring their metal

Vin, Zane: last-gen FE Mistborn who were "stacked" with Allomatic Hemalurgy (Vin with enhanced Bronze, Zane with enhanced Steel), can do things even flared Allomancers of their time cannot (pierce copperclouds, easily balance on coins)

Elend: first-gen FE level Mistborn (directly consumed lerasium), who can Riot/Soothe control of koloss and kandra without duralumin (as was apparently also true of close-to-first-gen Mistings).

Ordinary "last-gen" Mistborn with duralumin (this is how Vin is able to control kandra and koloss) - presumably, Kelsier (Mark I) with duralumin could have pierced a coppercloud, too.

Rashek as Lord Ruler: directly twiddled his own spiritweb while briefly Ascended, and was evidently even more powerful than that.

(Elend-level Allomancer flaring ... and Elend-level Allomancer with duralumin go here)

(Rashek flaring, and Preservation save us, Rashek using a duralumin flare to burn one of his Feruchemical stores)

An Ascended entity (Preservation, Vin, Kelsier) directly fueling a Mistborn with mist

 

Edited December 27, 2016 by robardin

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

Rashek as Lord Ruler: directly twiddled his own spiritweb while briefly Ascended, and was evidently even more powerful than that.

(Elend-level Allomancer flaring ... and Elend-level Allomancer with duralumin go here)

I feel like Elend flaring would still be under TLR. Elend + Duralumin would definitely be stronger, but I'm still of the "TLR is overpowered" mindset Otherwise, good chart. Well thought out, easy to read, fairly accurate as well.

[+robardin he/him]

7 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

I feel like Elend flaring would still be under TLR. Elend + Duralumin would definitely be stronger, but I'm still of the "TLR is overpowered" mindset Otherwise, good chart. Well thought out, easy to read, fairly accurate as well.

I forgot to add in hemalurgically stolen attributes in there - a "hemalurgic Misting", like Edwarn "Suit" Ladrian exhibits with in BoM - but that's largely dependent on the strength of the person the attribute was stolen from, minus a decay factor.

What if you could spike TLR to steal one of his powers, how would that hemalurgic Misting rank? Probably pretty badass. Though imagine if at the critical decision point you confused Allomantic gold with Feruchemical gold, or (incorrectly) assumed you'd get his Twinborn compounding of a metal for free, and stole "his gold" only to find you'd killed(?)* the most powerful mortal being ever on Scadrial just to become a really, really powerful Augur. Good going, navel gazer.

*If anybody could survive and heal being hemalurgically spiked while asleep, it'd be TLR

[Jondesu he/him]

3 hours ago, robardin said:

*If anybody could survive and heal being hemalurgically spiked while asleep, it'd be TLR

Did TLR sleep, or did he compound wakefulness and just never sleep?

[+robardin he/him]

Just now, Jondesu said:

Did TLR sleep, or did he compound wakefulness and just never sleep?

I only wrote that because I assumed the only way you'd ever be able to spike TLR would be while he was unguarded and unconscious - literally catching him napping. But as a fully compounding Allomancer/Feruchemist, he could take steps to avoid that, eh? At some point he'd have to store wakefulness in a bronzemind before burning it, just like Vin managed to catch him in the act of filling an atiummind, but I guess he could just be "kinda drowsy" for a bit and not full on fall asleep.

Actually never sleeping would probably do things to his sanity, though which - oh wait.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

10 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

Did TLR sleep, or did he compound wakefulness and just never sleep?

5 minutes ago, robardin said:

Actually never sleeping would probably do things to his sanity, though which - oh wait.

A thing to remember is that Sleep isn't just "not being tired." Sleep is when your body restores itself from the events of the day (Why intense workouts every day are bad for you), though this could probably be negated by Gold Healing. Him never sleeping might be caused by paranoia, which in turn would make it worse (though given how confident he is in his own immortality, that likely isn't an issue anymore, if it ever was)

What other benefits/functions come from sleep? If at least 2 of these things cannot be negated by some manner of Fullborn trickery, then he takes naps. Otherwise, it's anybody's guess

[+robardin he/him]

3 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

A thing to remember is that Sleep isn't just "not being tired." Sleep is when your body restores itself from the events of the day (Why intense workouts every day are bad for you), though this could probably be negated by Gold Healing. Him never sleeping might be caused by paranoia, which in turn would make it worse (though given how confident he is in his own immortality, that likely isn't an issue anymore, if it ever was).

Does gold healing fix crazy, though? Mental health seems like something more of the cognitive than physical realm, if we're not talking neurological damage, anyway. I could see how paranoia about people legitimately being out to get him (especially while he was in the process of conquering the world to become TLR, way back when) led him to eschew sleeping for moments of drowsiness to store compounded wakefulness, leading to the paranoia getting worse, leading to hearing Ruin's voice all the stronger, telling him things that would make him (or keep him) paranoid (and awake). His extreme self-confidence seems akin to paranoia, as well.

 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 minute ago, robardin said:

Does gold healing fix crazy, though? Mental health seems like something more of the cognitive than physical realm, if we're not talking neurological damage, anyway.

I more meant the gold healing would negate him not letting his body restore itself each day by sleeping.
The paranoia point was a separate statement. I guess I didn't write it that clearly :|

[Yata he/him]

11 hours ago, robardin said:

I only wrote that because I assumed the only way you'd ever be able to spike TLR would be while he was unguarded and unconscious - literally catching him napping. But as a fully compounding Allomancer/Feruchemist, he could take steps to avoid that, eh? At some point he'd have to store wakefulness in a bronzemind before burning it, just like Vin managed to catch him in the act of filling an atiummind, but I guess he could just be "kinda drowsy" for a bit and not full on fall asleep.

Actually never sleeping would probably do things to his sanity, though which - oh wait.

Rashek never sleep, or He simply would die...He can't tap his Atiummind in the sleep and to him it would mean die.

Another point, with a little charge of wakefulness, he may continue to compound forever (as long he had metal), the scene with Vin see him old, isn't a "He stores Youth to a later compound", He can't do this, if he stops compound he would simply die.

Probably Rashek spent almost all his "private time" in an old form to consume less Youth and he appear as a cool guy only in the rare public events.

[+robardin he/him]

9 hours ago, Yata said:

Rashek never sleep, or He simply would die...He can't tap his Atiummind in the sleep and to him it would mean die.

Another point, with a little charge of wakefulness, he may continue to compound forever (as long he had metal), the scene with Vin see him old, isn't a "He stores Youth to a later compound", He can't do this, if he stops compound he would simply die.

Probably Rashek spent almost all his "private time" in an old form to consume less Youth and he appear as a cool guy only in the rare public events.

That's an interesting point I'd never realized. Not just that, with compounded bronze, a Fullborn could stay awake indefinitely... But that after a certain point, TLR would have to do that, unless one could tap a metalmind unconsciously, which we've seen no evidence of (and plenty to the contrary).

I always imagined TLR was old in that scene due to his occasional need to refill an atiummind, because that's how Sazed initially explains Compounding at the end of Mistborn: The Final Empire:

Quote

"So, what the Lord Ruler did - I presume - was combine these two abilities. He used one of the attributes only available to Feruchemy - that of changing his age - but fueled it with Allomancy instead. By burning a Feruchemical storage that he himself had made, he effectively made a new Allomantic metal for himself - one that made him younger when he burned it. If my guess is correct, he would have gained a limitless supply of youth, since he was drawing most of the power from the metal itself, rather than his own body. All he would have to do was spend the occasional bit of time aged to give himself Feruchemical storages to burn and stay young."

But there's no reason that would be necessary unless he'd tapped his atiumminds dry completely, which he couldn't afford to do after 1,024 years, right? Since burning a metalmind releases 10x of what was stored into it, you could: store 1x of health or youth in a metalmind, then eat and burn it, getting 10x of it back; then, use 2x of it to be healthier/younger than you are, while storing 8x into a different metalind, then draw on that metalmind as necessary.  When it gets down to around 2x or something (maybe 3x to play it safe), eat only as much of the metalmind as has got 1x of Feruchemical attribute in it, burn it for 10x, store it back in the same or different metalmind. As long as you have a steady supply of the metal, you could recycle your own factored-up initial investment for 10x each time?

[Yata he/him]

36 minutes ago, robardin said:

As long as you have a steady supply of the metal, you could recycle your own factored-up initial investment for 10x each time?

yes exactly, of course He may use some trick to obtain the starting charge from someone else in case he would be unable to do this (also if in his case this would result in his death with the Atium-Youth)

[Dunkum he/him]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

That's an interesting point I'd never realized. Not just that, with compounded bronze, a Fullborn could stay awake indefinitely... But that after a certain point, TLR would have to do that, unless one could tap a metalmind unconsciously, which we've seen no evidence of (and plenty to the contrary).

coppermind has a citation to Well of Ascension that says bronze is the only metal you can store into while sleeping, nohting on tapping, but presumably if you can't store, you can't tap either.

[Oversleep]

Well, if it's possible to tap while sleeping, I bet TLR figured it out. Maybe bronze protects from insanity side-effects of never sleeping but it would still wrack your nerves to always be awake.

[PewterAGoldF]

Vin burns pewter while sleeping, so even if TLR couldnt tap a metal mind while sleeping, he could slowly burn one.

[Yata he/him]

6 minutes ago, PewterAGoldF said:

Vin burns pewter while sleeping, so even if TLR couldnt tap a metal mind while sleeping, he could slowly burn one.

Compounding is not an automatic task, it need a specific mental image and twisting the regular allomancy's outcome...I am very unsure you can compound while sleeping

[The One Who Connects he/him]

6 hours ago, Yata said:

7 hours ago, PewterAGoldF said:

Vin burns pewter while sleeping, so even if TLR couldn't tap a metal mind while sleeping, he could slowly burn one.

Compounding is not an automatic task, it need a specific mental image and twisting the regular Allomantic outcome...I am very unsure you can compound while sleeping

As a side note, even if he can compound while asleep, he wouldn't. The 10x power you gain is given in one giant burst, the only reason that power is useful is because you store most all of it in your Metalminds so you don't have to manually spend time weaker to have that much power stored up.

To properly compound while sleeping, you would have to be able to do the mental visualization to burn a Feruchemical storage, and have the wherewithal to store that massive amount of extra power lest it get wasted, but not accidentally store too much of your natural ability (which is only lethal with some powers, so I may excuse that)

[djammmer]

On December 27, 2016 at 7:00 AM, robardin said:

As I understand it, we've seen this ascending spectrum of relative Allomantic strength (probably not a linear progression); do I have this right?

Mistings in Era 2 (Wax/Wayne)

Mistings/Mistborn at the end of the Final Empire

Era 2 Misting, flaring their metal

Mistborn/Misting at the end of the FE, flaring their metal

Vin, Zane: last-gen FE Mistborn who were "stacked" with Allomatic Hemalurgy (Vin with enhanced Bronze, Zane with enhanced Steel), can do things even flared Allomancers of their time cannot (pierce copperclouds, easily balance on coins)

Elend: first-gen FE level Mistborn (directly consumed lerasium), who can Riot/Soothe control of koloss and kandra without duralumin (as was apparently also true of close-to-first-gen Mistings).

Ordinary "last-gen" Mistborn with duralumin (this is how Vin is able to control kandra and koloss) - presumably, Kelsier (Mark I) with duralumin could have pierced a coppercloud, too.

Rashek as Lord Ruler: directly twiddled his own spiritweb while briefly Ascended, and was evidently even more powerful than that.

(Elend-level Allomancer flaring ... and Elend-level Allomancer with duralumin go here)

(Rashek flaring, and Preservation save us, Rashek using a duralumin flare to burn one of his Feruchemical stores)

An Ascended entity (Preservation, Vin, Kelsier) directly fueling a Mistborn with mist

 

Now I'm wishing for a formal way to name these levels... The way warbreaker has names for the different thresholds of breaths, or Roshar counts ideals.

[Jondesu he/him]

7 hours ago, djammmer said:

Now I'm wishing for a formal way to name these levels... The way warbreaker has names for the different thresholds of breaths, or Roshar counts ideals.

That would be very helpful.  Are we measuring Investment levels, though, or ability to channel/access Investiture, or Connection?  The problem is there's several different ways to reach those levels, so we need a term that wouldn't be specific to one and exclude others.  We could just call them Power Levels, but that seems…pedestrian. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 hour ago, Jondesu said:

That would be very helpful.  Are we measuring Investment levels, though, or ability to channel/access Investiture, or Connection?  The problem is there's several different ways to reach those levels, so we need a term that wouldn't be specific to one and exclude others.  We could just call them Power Levels, but that seems…pedestrian. 

Power level does seem a bit overused. If we are measuring investment levels, Era 2 Mistings would be a baseline of 1, as Brandon has said that the power has diluted as much as it can.

If we had a way of comparing how much weaker each generation gets as they drift further from the Lerasium, that would speed things up quite nicely. Ex: 15 gen from Le to weakest, make the levels 1 - 15, etc..

It would also cancel out Hemalurgic spike issues, since they are.. (We'll say 80% of the normal power level, if they get placed in with minimal loss) by knowing what Gen. it takes that % extra from.