Chromium on Breaths?

[Kaerak]

Hi, I run a Mistborn Adventure Game that's just started to pull the Cosmere into it, namely Alloy of Law era introducing Awakeners. One of my players is a Chromium twinborn and asked what effect Chromium would have on draining Breaths from an awakener. Any ideas...?

[skaa he/him]

That is an excellent question! Unfortunately we don't have a definite answer yet. We know (based on this WoB) that Chromium Allomancy works in a similar sort of way as when Nightblood or a larkin consumes Investiture, and we know that Nightblood consumes Breath, so maybe your player's idea is possible, but we're just not certain.

We also know that it's more difficult to affect something with Chromium Allomancy the more Invested it is (from this WoB, and from the oft-repeated concept of Investiture resisting Investiture). So even if Leechers could theoretically drain Breaths, we don't know how much chromium it would take to do that, or if it would require a boost from duralumin/nicrosil or even Mist to accomplish that.

Edit: And yeah, as @Jondesu pointed out, we don't even know if Leechers can affect non-metals. The only in-book instance of Chromium Allomancy used against non-Scadrian Investiture involves a metallic gun, and we don't even know if that story really did happen in-universe (if so, Nazh being the assailant is the obvious guess) or if "Nicelle Sauvage" merely made it up.

Edited April 4, 2017 by skaa

[Jondesu he/him]

You know, I'm not sure that's been asked.  I don't know if we're actually aware of whether Chromium targets metals or Investiture. If it's the former, there'd be no effect.  Since metals on Scadrial aren't actually Invested anyways (not anymore so than anything else), my guess is it's only really good for that.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

I feel like there was something that implied it worked on other systems, but I can't find it at the moment.

Maybe Jondesu is right, and it's never been asked, but I feel like it was.. Something about Shades?

Edited April 4, 2017 by The One Who Connects

[+Extesian he/him]

It was asked in 2015

Quote

QUESTION

If an Allomancer found themselves on Nalthis or Roshar, would they be able to use chromium on someone using Stormlight or Breath?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I am staying away from answering too many questions like that until I start having it happen. But do know that the magics interact... some ways they interact very naturally, some ways, they don’t. One way I’ve released is, you could use bronze on most forms of Investiture to find it. So you can extrapolate that some of these things would work. But not necessarily all. All of them could be made to work

I think yes in the way @skaa said, that it relates to larkins and Nightblood. But yeah nothing definitive i could find.

[Dunkum he/him]

Also, I seem to recall that Breaths are sort of stickier than other types of investiture, like stormlight.  so it may be harder to drain breaths than an equivalent amount of stormlight/metal/etc

Edited April 4, 2017 by Dunkum

[Yata he/him]

To me this interesting question has a bit more complex answer than the ones other proposed.

Breath seems to work under two different natures. It works like Innate Investiture while It's "parked" in someone soul and as Kinetic Investiture elsewhere (for example while you use to Awake).

So I think a Leecher could discharge Breath from awakened Object's/lifeless but no from someone Who Simply hold in his soul.

The drain probably could happen also in the meanwhile of a Breath trasfert from people to people.

Thanks for make me think again of Breath's nature...I developed some interesting points

[skaa he/him]

17 hours ago, Yata said:

To me this interesting question has a bit more complex answer than the ones other proposed.

Breath seems to work under two different natures. It works like Innate Investiture while It's "parked" in someone soul and as Kinetic Investiture elsewhere (for example while you use to Awake).

So I think a Leecher could discharge Breath from awakened Object's/lifeless but no from someone Who Simply hold in his soul.

The drain probably could happen also in the meanwhile of a Breath trasfert from people to people.

 

I've had similar thoughts while writing my post above, but the questions still stand: First, can Chromium Allomancy affect non-metals? Second, if it can affect non-metals, how much power is needed to drain a single Breath from an Awakened object? Can a regular Leecher do it? How much chromium will he need?

In other words, even if Chromium Allomancy can theoretically drain any Kinetic Investiture (which is an unknown), we still need to know if a particular Leecher's power is enough to drain a particular an object of a given amount of Kinetic Investiture.

Edited April 5, 2017 by skaa

[Yata he/him]

1 hour ago, skaa said:

I've had similar thoughts while writing my post above, but the questions still stand: First, can Chromium Allomancy affect non-metals? Second, if it can affect non-metals, how much power is needed to drain a single Breath from an Awakened object? Can a regular Leecher do it? How much chromium will he need?

In other words, even if Chromium Allomancy can theoretically drain any Kinetic Investiture (which is an unknown), we still need to know if a particular Leecher's power is enough to drain a particular an object of a given amount of Kinetic Investiture.

We know It could be used to interact with other form of Investiture, If he is an external Alluminium effect.

The practical usage is doubtful, I honestly don't think you could discharge too much Investiture but without an actual reference It's hardly to say. The only informations we have is about the WoB "Metalmind Vs Leecher" that seems to point aganist the Leecher's efficiency and the BoM's Story showing a Leecher who suppress for a while an Invested Weapon..Again here without know how the weapon works we Can't extrapolate too much

Edited April 5, 2017 by Yata