Powering surge binding with the metallic arts

[Knight Oblivion]

4 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Probably different cracks. This is assuming that turning into a mistborn even requires the use of cracks. It might just bypass that entirely by creating the connection to Preservation itself, instead of allomancy using the cracks of snapping in order for the connection to Preservation to form. I doubt also that lerasium would be able to remove any underlying structure, following the intent of Preservation to maintain what is already in place.

Nonetheless, I like your idea that a spren might be able to sense the flow of investiture form Preservation and somehow tap into it. 

 

Thanks for the feedback. The reason I thought Lerasium could potentially overwrite cracks was due to it being a condensed bit of Preservation's power, the power that shores up cracks in spiritwebs and thus making it difficult for the holder of just Preservation to talk to damaged people like a vessel of Ruin. I like the idea of Lerasium bypassing the need for spiritweb cracks through a strong enough Connection (feels wrong not to capitalize in this case) to Preservation.

 

Anyways, yeah... I hit upon the idea of Spren being aware of the flow of Investiture from Wyndle and Syl's interactions with Lift and Kal. They seem to be fairly aware of their Knights' state of being which could mean they can at least identify unusual investiture.

 

 

[LiquidBlue]

To go back and answer the original question. I think that we have seen one particular way that surgebinding could be powered by the metallic arts. The key is the ability Lift has to convert food to stormlight.

If Lift had the abilities of a bendalloy twinborn, she could take the nearly infinite caloric energy available to her and convert it to stormlight.

 As an aside, Lift as a bendalloy twinborn would be the perfect fit. She could eat as much as she wanted without having to stop because she became full. She would never have to be hungry, and would always have stormlight available to power her surges. Wayne has shown how powerful bendalloy bubbles are for forcing one-on-one melee combat, and a bendalloy bubble is a perfect complement to battle field medicine. Lift would be able to effectively instantly heal other people and enjoy an almost perfect defense while doing so.

 

Sorry... Lift grew on me during edgedancer, and I am now imagining what an edgedancer slider with essentially infinite stormlight could do.

 

[Steeldancer]

7 minutes ago, LiquidBlue said:

To go back and answer the original question. I think that we have seen one particular way that surgebinding could be powered by the metallic arts. The key is the ability Lift has to convert food to stormlight.

If Lift had the abilities of a bendalloy twinborn, she could take the nearly infinite caloric energy available to her and convert it to stormlight.

 As an aside, Lift as a bendalloy twinborn would be the perfect fit. She could eat as much as she wanted without having to stop because she became full. She would never have to be hungry, and would always have stormlight available to power her surges. Wayne has shown how powerful bendalloy bubbles are for forcing one-on-one melee combat, and a bendalloy bubble is a perfect complement to battle field medicine. Lift would be able to effectively instantly heal other people and enjoy an almost perfect defense while doing so.

 

Sorry... Lift grew on me during edgedancer, and I am now imagining what an edgedancer slider with essentially infinite stormlight could do.

 

I had never thought about that before. Wow that would be REALLY cool. 

[Yata]

Yes but Lift case isn't really a case of this. She Simply exploits a quirk of herself to gain efficient from two different systems...But She don't actual fuel One with another. They are distinct and they don't actual interact. It's Lift in the middle Who does all the work.

Because It's like to say that Soulcasted food eated by a bandalloy ferring who stores Its nutrient is Feruchemy fueled by Stormlight

[kenod]

Slight tangent, but could a Surgebinder on Scandrial use the mists as fuel? It seems to me that it would be fairly close to Stormlight. I think that they should be able to, but I'm not sure if they need a strong connection to Preservation/Harmony first. If they could, this could make them really strong during Scandrial's nights.

[Farnsworth]

If I remember correctly, the mists are Preservation's body, which I think is different enough from Stormlight that it wouldn't work.

[Spoolofwhool]

On 3/27/2017 at 5:09 PM, kenod said:

Slight tangent, but could a Surgebinder on Scandrial use the mists as fuel? It seems to me that it would be fairly close to Stormlight. I think that they should be able to, but I'm not sure if they need a strong connection to Preservation/Harmony first. If they could, this could make them really strong during Scandrial's nights.

Theoretically yes, as it's investiture. Once again, there would have to be some hack of surgebinding to make it so that it can use a form of investiture it's not defaulted to use.

[Yata]

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Theoretically yes, as it's investiture. Once again, there would have to be some hack of surgebinding to make it so that it can use a form of investiture it's not defaulted to use.

I am with Spool, notice that Mist aren't for default usabile by everyone. So if Harmony let you do It...You could. But honestly this is something every Shard could do.

PS: Ruin's mist and Preservation's Mist is probably the same to fuel foreign magics

Edited March 29, 2017 by Yata

[+Extesian]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it just Connection to Preservation (/Harmony)? Vin could almost the mists because of how much Connection she had then could use them properly when Preservation increased her Connection (and was unable to with the earring because Connection to Ruin interfered)? The IRE couldn't get the Shard without Connection. The Heralds could (from memory) use Stormlight directly because (presumably) they had Connection to Honor provided directly by him?

So anyone not from Scadrial would have no hope without hacking that Connection either through gnarly hemalurgy or similar, or through an IRE-style plan?

[Yata]

Not Connection alone. Rashek was more connected to Preservation than Vin.

But everyone in the Cosmere may have a connection to Preservation...Simply the Scadrial have a advantage for their origin.

[Spoolofwhool]

9 hours ago, Extesian said:

So anyone not from Scadrial would have no hope without hacking that Connection either through gnarly hemalurgy or similar, or through an IRE-style plan?

Creating this connection could be a part of the hack, yes. That would give you access to the mists though. I think you would need further hacking to make surgebinder receptive to it.

[Yitzi2]

On 3/25/2017 at 0:02 AM, hwiles said:

Well, if nothing else, a nicrosil ferring with access to surgebinding might be able to poke their head outside during a highstorm and absorb, then subsequently store, a massive amount of investiture that they could then draw upon at will for fueling their surges.  This would still technically be using stormlight to fuel the surges, but it would be mega convenient.

Alternatively, a windrunner-mistborn might be able to burn a hemalurgic spike that had been charged with another windrunner's surges to use harmony's Investiture to fuel their own surgebinding.  But...even if this worked, we have confirmation from WoB that burning hemalurgic spikes causes permanent changes to one's spirit web, so it would probably be a bad idea unless you really, really, knew what you were doing...

The extreme and super unlikely version = nicrosil-compounding-surgebinder.  They breath in stormlight, then store it in a metal mind that they then burn and compound, allowing them to convert Harmony's Investiture into raw Stormlight that they can then draw upon to fuel their surges.  Hoid and Kelsier are probably the only characters in the Cosmere who could reasonably accomplish such a feat though, and only if they got their hands on a high spren or an honor blade.  (I sort of doubt this will happen, but...who knows?)

I doubt either of them could bond a highspren (the type of spren associated with the Skybreakers) in particular, though other orders might be possible.

[Vecna]

19 hours ago, Figberts said:

If I remember correctly, the mists are Preservation's body, which I think is different enough from Stormlight that it wouldn't work.

I thought the rough conversion was: body/physical -> solid power (Lerasium), mind/cognitive -> liquid power (Shardpool), spiritual -> gasses power (Mists). 

But I've just gone looking for a WoB to back that up, and can't find anything...

[Spoolofwhool]

3 hours ago, Vecna said:

I thought the rough conversion was: body/physical -> solid power (Lerasium), mind/cognitive -> liquid power (Shardpool), spiritual -> gasses power (Mists). 

But I've just gone looking for a WoB to back that up, and can't find anything...

The body analogue is poor. Solid, liquid and gaseous are all investiture. Leras' mind was more bound to the Well in order to react against Ruin, but the actual Well was made from investiture. To be clear, the states of matter of the god materials are not linked to realmatic components of the shards. It's all just investiture in different states of matter

With regards to being their "body," all shards are primarily spiritual, which is the investiture of their being, so to say that the physical manifestations of their investiture is their body is technically correct, but still horribly misleading as it implies a physical state previously, which is not the case. Furthermore, shards don't have a physical state by default, and the physical manifestation of their investiture is the closest to their "physical body".

Edited March 29, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[Vecna]

2 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

The body analogue is poor. Solid, liquid and gaseous are all investiture. Leras' mind was more bound to the Well in order to react against Ruin, but the actual Well was made from investiture. To be clear, the states of matter of the god materials are not linked to realmatic components of the shards. It's all just investiture on different states matter

With regards to being their "body," all shards are primarily spiritual, which is the investiture of their being, so to say that the physical manifestations of their investiture is their body is technically correct, but still horribly misleading as it implies a physical state previously, which is not the case. Furthermore, shards don't have a physical state by default, and the physical manifestation of their investiture is the closest to their "physical body".

Yeah, I can't remember where I got that interpretation from - but TIL that I was wrong when I tried to find sources.

[Spoolofwhool]

33 minutes ago, Vecna said:

Yeah, I can't remember where I got that interpretation from - but TIL that I was wrong when I tried to find sources.

Probably from Hero of Ages which talked about atium being Ruin's body. I dislike that it says that for the misunderstandings it caused, which I have been afflicted with previously.

[Aaronator17]

This is definitely an interesting topic, how magics can be used on different worlds and used to power each other. 

I think for your specific example, one would have to be both an Allomancer and have access to the Surges (either through the Nahel bond or wielding an Honourblade).

The trick here would be to draw on the power of Preservation by burning a metal, yet somehow focusing the power to manipulate the Surges. We know that something like this is possible because of Compounding, whereby the power of Preservation is drawn on to produce an enhanced Feruchemical effect. Compounding is obviously a lot easier because the magics are very closely related (considering both Allomancy and Feruchemy use metals as their 'focus'), but the theoretical principle still stands and should apply for Allomancy and Surgebinding.

I don't think that Storing Stormlight within Feruchemical Metalmind and then burning it would be enough to focus the magic toward the Surges, plus that would require the person to not only be an Allomancer and a Feruchemist and have access to the Surges, but also be specifically someone who could Store in and burn Nicrosil. This does not satisfy me because on Roshar Stormlight is not the 'focus' for the magic, it is the fuel.

For Fabrials the focus is the type and cut of the gem, and the type of Spren trapped inside. For the Knights Radiant their focus in accessing the Surges is their Nahel bond with their Spren. For the Heralds I believe that the bond to the Honourblades act as the focus, allowing them access to the Surges. Stormlight is the fuel that powers all of these functions, much like Preservation's power fuels Allomancy. 

Therefore I think that one way of powering Surgebinding through Allomancy would require you to trap a specific spren within a bead of metal (much like a Fabrial requires a spren trapped in a gemstone) then burn that metal; the power would be drawn from Preservation, but focused by the spren to perform Rosharan magic (depending on the Surges you have access to this may require a different spren). 

Admittedly my 'Spren trapped in metal' idea sounds a little contrived to me too (how/why would a spren get trapped in metal?) but I imagine if it were possible, this would be one way to key the power of Preservation toward powering the Surges.

Edited March 30, 2017 by Aaronator17
spelling errors

[LiquidBlue]

I like this line of thought. The key is to modify the effects of the allomatic metals. 

Burning spren seems like the right track, but not entirely. We know of 4 things can be burned, plain metal with an effect determined by the type of metal, feruchemically invested metal with an effect that releases an amplified amount of the invested effect, hemalurigical spikes with the effect of permanently grafting the hemalurgical charge to the spirit web (WoB only), and god metals which are the physical manifestation of a shard.

I'm am not sure what it would mean to burn a spren. Spren are cognitive beings, and we have not seen what it would mean to allomatically burn a cognitive entity. (Although this might be related to burning a coppermind, we still don't know what happens there either). Would burning a spren trapped in an allomatic metal be like burning a hemalugical spike? 

I think that what needs to be done instead is somehow condense physical manifestation of the spren into solid form. This could then be burned directly(maybe) or alloyed with an allomatic metal. We actually have some evidence that this is possible -- shard blades. I wonder if there is some process that could condense other types of spren, such as rotspren or flamespren?

The other path is to give the metal some sort of invested charge. Maybe fabrial science will advance to accomplish this.

This ties with one of my privately held theories. I think that mistings can burn the gold-metal alloy of their allomatic metal. For example, there isn't a separate malatium misting, but rather, a gold misting is able to burn malatium. Malatium isn't a new allomatic metal, it is instead gold with a modified effect. I like how this simplifies the metallic arts, reducing the proliferation of different types of mistings.

(If the old theory that atium is actually atium-electrum was true, this would mean that Final Empire seers were really electrum mistings.) 

 

------------------------------

 

I just realized that I missed the target again. I became fascinated by how allomancy might be made more diverse or duplicate some of the effect of surgebinding, but I didn't answer the question, can surgebinding be powered by the metallic arts. Maybe... here's my model:

 

In Surgebinding, the surgebinder absorbs and holds stormlight from the environment, and then filters it through one of the surges producing an effect.

In allomancy, the allomancer burns a metal which has the effect of drawing power from preservation, filtering it through the metal producing an effect.

In feruchemy, the feruchemist weakens one of their attributes storing the excess in a metalmind. Later that excess can be drawn out again, strengthening that same attribute.

In hemalurgy, metallic spikes are precisely and purposefully driven through the body of one person ripping away part of their spiritweb, the spike may then be implanted into another person adding that stolen piece to the other's spirit web.

 

Can we replace absorbing stromlight from the environment with something from the metallic arts? (power surgebinding with the metallic arts)

Allomancy: Allomatic effect is determined by the metal burned. Options here include somehow finding a metal that will generate stormlight when burned (perhaps some sort of nicrosil mind), or finding/creating metals that will mimic surgebinding effects (perhaps by physically condensing spren). In neither case is surgebinding directly powered by allomancy. The first is indirectly powering it, and in the second it is mimicking surgebinding.

Feruchemy: May be possible to store surgebinding strength in a nicrosilmind. Perhaps when it is tapped and the surgebinding strength/ability is increased this will result in more efficient/powerful surgebinding. In this case we might be able to consider the more efficient/powerful surgebinding effect to be partially powered by feruchemy, but some stormlight will still be necessary.

Hemalurgy: This is very speculative, but perhaps hemalurgical corruption of the spirit web can be deliberately used. Use hemalurgy to steal someone's allomancy, implant the spike so that the allomancy fragment is in some sense stuck inside another person's surgebinding ability. When the recipient tries to use the hemalurgically granted allomancy, the released investiture gets diverted to the surgebinding. I think that this is impossible to achieve deliberately. I think that such corruptions are possible, and probably why hemalurgy requires skill and understanding, imprecise hemalurgical placement results in non-functional, nonsense corruptions. The term sDNA is even suggestive of this.

[Aaronator17]

Really interesting interpretation LiquidBlue, and I think your explanations might be changing my mind a little. While I still don't like the idea that a person would have to be a NIcrosil Twinborn and a Surgebinder, storing Stormlight Feruchemically within a Nicrosilmind then burning it could in theory function almost exactly like normal Compounding on Scadrial, which is to draw on Preservation to increase the stored attribute, in this case Stormlight. 

This could mean that an individual might be able to Surgebind without any Spheres or environmental Stormlight, provided they had at least a small amount stored. They could perform an endless Compounding trick and be perpetually full of Stormlight (much like Miles' near-infinite healing ability). This assumes of course that one could Store Stormlight within a Metalmind, which may or may not be possible with Nicrosil.

I still don't like it because it requires a ridiculously rare set of attributes (provided Hemalurgy is not involved) to be able to do, and a part of me wants the system to be simpler and more available than that. Of course being an Allomancer and Radiant at the same time is also a ridiculously rare combination of abilities.

A small note on the Spren though, we do know that their energy can be used to provide Stormlight and power Surgebinding through the Nahel bond (when Syl sacrifices herself for Kaladin). They are still Investiture and part of a God's power, regardless of their sentience/sapience. While normal Stormlight may not be enough to key the power toward Surgebinding, I feel like the Connection that particular Spren have to Roshar and the Gods and their energies is important in trying to work out how this process would work.

[Calderis]

@LiquidBlue not trying to disagree, because the thread that was pushing the idea was made by @8bitBob, and I fully support the idea, but as far as I am aware the hemalurgic spike burning just says weird things would happen. The sDNA modification seems plausible and could definitely create a plethora of weirdness, but unless there is a WoB I missed (which is honestly very likely) that is unconfirmed.