Nicrosil

[Farnsworth]

When a non-allomancer is drawing from a Nicrocil mind, would they need alomancy first to draw from it? Why is Nicrosil available to everybody? Also, if whenever somebody puts on a medallion they draw from the nicrosil mind, would they eventually run out? How are they filled? And lastly, when a ferring or ferchumist is filling a Nicrosil mind, I would imagine their ferchemy gets weaker, or goes away. If they are no longer a ferring, how do they fill the mind?

 

Thanks!

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, Walin said:

I thought that nicrosil stores some Kinetic Investiture, and maaaybe Innate Investiture. I'm thinking that Identity is kind of a Cognitive tag for letting you act with Investiture--it won't grant you Allomancy, but determines whether you can summon a shardblade, retrieve Breath, and tap metalminds.

So I think that nicrosil is, in fact, the metal that grants Feruchemy, not aluminum. It would have to be an unkeyed metalmind, though.

This is what we've been trying to explain all along. It stores innate investiture. As in your spiritweb. 

So a person who has nicrosil Feruchemy, and any other power, be it Allomantic, or Feruchemical, can store their ability to use that power in the nicrosilmind. 

They also need to have stored Identity to make that power usable to someone other than themselves. 

This still doesn't explain how a non soul bearer Ferrings can initially tap the nicrosilmind and grant the additional powers. Nicrosil is a known allomantic metal. The misting is called a nicroburst. If nicrosil inherently allowed Feruchemy in and of itself, every nicroburst would be a compounder, and this would have been discovered already. 

We're still missing a piece of the puzzle. 

[StoneWalker he/him]

A lot of this we don't know the precise answers to yet (as far as I know, Brandon usually hands out RAFO to Nicrosil mechanics questions), but some of it is explained in Bands of Mourning.

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When a non-allomancer is drawing from a Nicrocil mind, would they need alomancy first to draw from it?

The answer to this question is no, or at least probably not. Feruchemy by itself is end-neutral after all, so they would really only be changing the base level of innate Investiture they have in their body. We may not really know what that would actually mean, or how it may be useful, but they wouldn't need to have Allomancy to draw from a reserve they had created.

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Why is Nicrosil available to everybody?

This question is a bit more interesting. I personally think it is one of those quirks of Feruchemy. It is my opinion that since storing and tapping Investiture rewrites your spirit web, essentially everyone can do it. Therefore, even if they aren't wired for Feruchemy, using Nicrosil rewrites your sDNA to be able to anyway, at least temporarily. Edit: Calderis convinced me this was probably not the case.

Another possiblity is that there is something special about the mechanics or construction of the medallions that allow anyone to use them, and that Nicrosil is the only metal that can be used for the purpose. In this theory, not everyone can Feruchemically access Nicrosil, but something in the medallions' design allows everyone to access the desired attribute.

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Also, if whenever somebody puts on a medallion they draw from the nicrosil mind, would they eventually run out? How are they filled?

These two questions can be partially answered by using the rules we know, plus hints of insight from Bands of Mourning. The answer must be yes, they do eventually run out if you are tapping something (like heat or connection). Some like the weight/heat medallions apparently allow a person to both store one attribute (which wouldn't run out) and tap another (which should eventually run out). The book mentions Firemother and Firefathers, which presumably means these people are storing both Identity, so that anyone can access it, and heat. We don't know this for certain, but it is likely. Then the blank heat metalmind is somehow made into a medallion that can be used. A similar process likely is used for each of the tapped attributes, but again we don't know this for certain.

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And lastly, when a ferring or ferchumist is filling a Nicrosil mind, I would imagine their ferchemy gets weaker, or goes away. If they are no longer a ferring, how do they fill the mind?

I think this is mostly answered by the answer to the second question. Even more basically, there is a limit to how much they can store an attribute, as evidenced by Sazed's remarks about Feruchemy in the Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages. Even if the above answer is completely wrong, and Feruchemy does get weaker, they could never Invest so much you would lose your ability to Invest. However, I don't think that Feruchemy would get weaker, since they are storing pure Investiture itself, not the ability to use or access said Investiture.

 

If anyone has a WoB that I couldn't find, or has more info, I'd appreciate it.

Edited September 28, 2017 by StoneWalker

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, StoneWalker said:

This question is a bit more interesting. I personally think it is one of those quirks of Feruchemy. It is my opinion that since storing and tapping Investiture rewrites your spirit web, essentially everyone can do it. Therefore, even if they aren't wired for Feruchemy, using Nicrosil rewrites your sDNA to be able to anyway, at least temporarily.

Unfortunately no. There is an element of the creation of the of unsealed metalminds that we just don't know yet. A nicrosil ferring is called a Soulbearer, and normally you must be one to use nicrosil Feruchemy. So your second option is correct. 

Nicrosil Feruchemy allows for storing the innate investiture of the spiritweb. I believe this means that you could store anything that is written into your sDNA, though that's not the only opinion. Some believe that only other magical abilities could be stored. 

Either way, Nicrosil and Chromium are known metals to the Metallic Arts. 

We've seen Leechers, and by extension there should be Nicrobursts. If all nicrosil were naturally unsealed, every Nicrobursts would be a nicrosil compounder. 

Edit: and beyond Soulbearers storing "investiture" Brandon has been mum. 

Edited September 28, 2017 by Calderis

[Yezrien]

The simplest explanation (although probably not the correct one) is that all unsealed metalminds start with a fullborn, probably the Sovereign.

He stored his identity in an aluminummind, allowing him to fill other metalminds without imprinting his identity on them. He would then fill a nicrosilmind with (for example) his powers of feruchemical aluminum, nicrosil, and brass. Any average Scadrian could then pick up that nicrosilmind and do exactly the same thing, creating several weaker duplicates of it.

The problem with this is that, assuming there are no feruchemists among the southern population, their entire civilization can only produce a finite number of these metalminds before the original infusion of investiture runs out. But it's cool to think that every unsealed metalmind, including all those little medallions, contain sDNA from the Sovereign himself.

Does any of this make sense? It's been a while since I read BoM.

[Calderis he/him]

46 minutes ago, Belzedar said:

The simplest explanation (although probably not the correct one) is that all unsealed metalminds start with a fullborn, probably the Sovereign.

He stored his identity in an aluminummind, allowing him to fill other metalminds without imprinting his identity on them. He would then fill a nicrosilmind with (for example) his powers of feruchemical aluminum, nicrosil, and brass. Any average Scadrian could then pick up that nicrosilmind and do exactly the same thing, creating several weaker duplicates of it.

The problem with this is that, assuming there are no feruchemists among the southern population, their entire civilization can only produce a finite number of these metalminds before the original infusion of investiture runs out. But it's cool to think that every unsealed metalmind, including all those little medallions, contain sDNA from the Sovereign himself.

Does any of this make sense? It's been a while since I read BoM.

The problem with this model is that stripping the identity from the nicrosilmind does not, in and of itself, grant someone holding that metalmind nicrosil Feruchemy to access the stored investiture. 

This is the crucial piece we're missing. How can a non-feruchemist access the nicrosil in order to access the other stored powers? 

[CaptainRyan he/him]

On 9/27/2017 at 10:59 PM, Calderis said:

This is the crucial piece we're missing. How can a non-feruchemist access the nicrosil in order to access the other stored powers? 

Perhaps the medallions are not pure Nicrosil but a Harmonium-Nicrosil alloy? Maybe alloying the metals removes the, ahem, explosive nature of Harmonium and grants those who touch the alloy the ability to interact in a Feruchemical way with the non-Harmonium metal of the alloy (in this case, Nicrosil). Then you have someone store Identity while filling the Harmonium-Nicrosil metalmind and, voila, a useable-by-anyone metalmind full of Identity-free investiture!

I think this would tie in nicely with the pure Harmonium ability we have seen that replicates the last Metallic Art (or perhaps only Allomantic) ability used in its presence (e.g. the "grenades" we have seen).

Side note on this random thought: Have we seen medallions that grant Allomantic abilities or only Feruchemical ones? I am pretty sure it is only Feruchemical.

Edited October 12, 2017 by CaptainRyan

[AbsentKeeper he/him]

10 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

Perhaps the medallions are not pure Nicrosil but a Harmonium-Nicrosil alloy? Maybe alloying the metals removes the, ahem, explosive nature of Harmonium and grants those who touch the alloy the ability to interact in a Feruchemical way with the non-Harmonium metal of the alloy (in this case, Nicrosil). Then you have someone store Identity while filling the Harmonium-Nicrosil metalmind and, voila, a useable-by-anyone metalmind full of Identity-free investiture!

I think this would tie in nicely with the pure Harmonium ability we have seen that replicates the last Metallic Art (or perhaps only Allomantic) ability used in its presence (e.g. the "grenades" we have seen).

Side note on this random thought: Have we seen medallions that grant Allomantic abilities or only Feruchemical ones? I am pretty sure it is only Feruchemical.

I like this idea.

The only 'medallion' we've seen grant allomancy is the Bands.

[Yata he/him]

4 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

Perhaps the medallions are not pure Nicrosil but a Harmonium-Nicrosil alloy? Maybe alloying the metals removes the, ahem, explosive nature of Harmonium and grants those who touch the alloy the ability to interact in a Feruchemical way with the non-Harmonium metal of the alloy (in this case, Nicrosil). Then you have someone store Identity while filling the Harmonium-Nicrosil metalmind and, voila, a useable-by-anyone metalmind full of Identity-free investiture!

I think this would tie in nicely with the pure Harmonium ability we have seen that replicates the last Metallic Art (or perhaps only Allomantic) ability used in its presence (e.g. the "grenades" we have seen).

Side note on this random thought: Have we seen medallions that grant Allomantic abilities or only Feruchemical ones? I am pretty sure it is only Feruchemical.

 

4 hours ago, Cowmanthethird said:

I like this idea.

The only 'medallion' we've seen grant allomancy is the Bands.

Really unlikely, First of all he Sovreign arrived to South already with his Medallion tech and the North remembers (whops crossover)....the North has not Harmonium.

Secondly someone on the Ship Need Allomancy to made the whole stuff fly and as we don't see Allik or his crewmate be so workship for someone of their own. I believe there were no Misting in the Ship...so the Allomancy have to come from Medallions too.

Third we know messing with Connections is One of the missing parts into Unsealing a Metalmind and that this process is fair complex to do (by WoB)

Edited October 13, 2017 by Yata

[The Gecko he/him]

I have another question/idea about nicrosil. What if someone from Nalthis his were to worldhop around, getting both a spike granting feruchemical nicrosil and a spren or honorblade. Could this being breath Stormlight, store it as investiture, and then tap it as breath? 

We know that stormlight can fuel a returned, but could it actually be converted to breath through this method?

Also, if someone had a broken spirit web because of a spike, and a spren to heal the spirit web, how would that affect the spike or spren?

Edited October 13, 2017 by TheBMSRanger
Fixed autocorrect for Nalthis

[Yata he/him]

8 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

I have another question/idea about nicrosil. What if someone from Nalthis his were to worldhop around, getting both a spike granting feruchemical nicrosil and a spren or honorblade. Could this being breath Stormlight, store it as investiture, and then tap it as breath? 

We know that stormlight can fuel a returned, but could it actually be converted to breath through this method?

You will simply store (if it is possible at all) Stormlight not Breath, by the way...We don't even know if you could store Kinetic Investiture into Nicrosil so It's possible you can't store Stormlight either.

10 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

Also, if someone had a broken spirit web because of a spike, and a spren to heal the spirit web, how would that affect the spike or spren?

As long as the Spike remains I think you will be unable to heal the crack and the Spike would repel/disgust most of Spren.

I am not sure about what kind of healing are you refering to, The Spren fill the crack with himself, but the Crack in the Soul are still there

[The Gecko he/him]

Ok, I see what you are saying. Thanks. When I said "heal," that is what I meant, the spren filling the hole.

So do you think it is possible to have both spike and Spren? 

And if Nicrosil can store stormlight, couldn't a radiant use nicrosil to hold as much stormlight as they wanted or needed? Like, enough to fall/fly to another planet and hold it there? If so, that would overcome the problem with stormlight only being available where there are highstorms.

[Yata he/him]

35 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

So do you think it is possible to have both spike and Spren? 

As I said the most Spren would be disgusted by it, but this is not an hard limit. A willing Spren could still make a Nahel Bond with you...It's just really really unlikely.

35 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

And if Nicrosil can store stormlight, couldn't a radiant use nicrosil to hold as much stormlight as they wanted or needed? Like, enough to fall/fly to another planet and hold it there? If so, that would overcome the problem with stormlight only being available where there are highstorms.

IF Nicrosil could store Stormlight and IF Stormlight stored with Feruchemy loses its leakly nature.

It's possible to stock a decent amount of Stormlight into a Nicrosilmind, of course the amount will be limited by the metal's amount...So you will not have an unlimited Stormlight storage.

Notice that as we don't know how much Investiture-worth the Stormlight is..It's possible the Nicrosil would be filled up with a relative little amount of Stormlight...as we didn't ever see Kinetic Investiture stored with Feruchemy, everything is possible

[The Gecko he/him]

Ok. So my theory to get breaths would likely not work, but is there any other way we currently know to change between investiture? If there is, that would break the location issues with AonDor and stormlight. Also, what about giving breaths to non Nalthians? We have seen Hoid with breath, but can others get it? And can they awaken? We know that endowments innate investiture is the breaths, so would giving them breath rewrite sDNA like lerasium or just not work? Possibly Hoid can use other innate investiture because his innate investiture is from adonalsium himself.

[Yata he/him]

29 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

Ok. So my theory to get breaths would likely not work, but is there any other way we currently know to change between investiture?

No, you could not turn one kind of investiture into another...This is not really an issue as at their base Mists/Stormlight/Breath/Dor are all Kinetic Investiture and could be used for every magic systems...there are some hack to perform to do it, but it's possible (for example you could find a way to use Surgebinding fueled by Breath).

29 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

If there is, that would break the location issues with AonDor and stormlight. Also, what about giving breaths to non Nalthians? We have seen Hoid with breath, but can others get it? And can they awaken? 

The Selish magic is a special case as it's actually location dependant but as I said before, you could find a way to fuel magics with foreign investiture...Some are easy and others are not. By the way, you could give away to everyone and the reciver could use that Breath to awaken.

29 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

We know that endowments innate investiture is the breaths, so would giving them breath rewrite sDNA like lerasium or just not work? Possibly Hoid can use other innate investiture because his innate investiture is from adonalsium himself.

As I said before the Breath keeps in itself all the needed part to Awaken, Hoid is not special in this....Everyone could awaken if you gave him breath

[Walin he/him]

I thought that nicrosil stores some Kinetic Investiture, and maaaybe Innate Investiture. I'm thinking that Identity is kind of a Cognitive tag for letting you act with Investiture--it won't grant you Allomancy, but determines whether you can summon a shardblade, retrieve Breath, and tap metalminds.

So I think that nicrosil is, in fact, the metal that grants Feruchemy, not aluminum. It would have to be an unkeyed metalmind, though.