Breath Compounding

[Jimpy he/him]

Alright so this is my first time doing this and I'm very excited and pls be gentle.

Compounding with Allomancy and Feruchemy is basically done by investing a piece of metal (I guess replacing the investiture from Preservation with that of a Feruchemical charge) and then using the end positive nature of Allomancy to generate extra power from the 'new metal' right? If this is wrong, hopefully it's close enough for the theory to hold. This is nice because Feruchemy takes a bunch of preparation and storage to be useful.

Now, as far as I can tell breath is somewhat limited by supply, and cost. You could theoretically get more than you could ever need but it would be expensive and generally a pain.

Because of this, being able to make Breath would be neat. 

Enter the 9th Heightening:

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The Ninth Heightening grants Greater Awakening, the ability to Awaken stone and steel, though doing so requires large Investitures of Breath and specialized Commands.^[12] This ability has not been studied or confirmed.

This handy dandy quote from the Coppermind states that when you've got enough breath you can put some of it inside steel (Probably other metals too, but I'd assume that steel is the only tested metal). Now, given how simple compounding is:

Could a steel Misting of the 9th Heightening invest some steel with Breath and burn it?

Assuming any Allomantic metal can be used in Greater Awakening, any Misting could have access to Breath Compounding.

Now, given how costly it was to awaken Nightblood, it's possible that you'd spend more Breaths than you'd gain though this process (Psst here's a nice way to patch this hole if you don't want it to be used).

There's also a WoB stating that awakening isn't easy for non-Nalthians, but through Hemalurgy or Lerasium I suppose this could be entirely avoided by making a Nalthian a Misting.

Anyway I've said my part, and this lowly spren is tired from all this thinking. Would love to hear corrections, compliments on my magnificent genius/stupidity, insults, discussion, really anything.

[Jimpy he/him]

This is all of course so we have a way to fund the creation of giant breath mechs.

[TheBlueShifting he/him]

I'm pretty sure this question has been RAFO by Brandon so there is probably something to this. 

The reason compounding works is because alomancy opens a path to the spiritual realm, which is the source of investiture. When you burn invested metal you expose that investment to that raw investiture, and attuned it to that investiture pattern. We know this can generate feurochemy charge without needing a human source. So I'd guess this method would effectively generate more Breath. However it might not make a whole new Breath, instead it might supercharge the breath you have, effectively the same effect and it could be the path to creating an artificial Divine Breath that exists outside a Returned. Very fun and Cosmere breaking ideas. 

Also I want to point out that you don't need the 9th heighting to imbue metal with Breath, you just can't awaken metal until the 9th heightenin. For this, I doubt the allomancer needs awakened steal to charge his breath metal mind. 

[Calderis he/him]

It's been asked, and unfortunately it doesn't work. Very good thought though. 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120/#e8055

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Questioner (paraphrased)

What would happen if Allomancer was also an Awakener and Awakened metal he'd burn?”

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If he did that, he’d get allomantic power and also get back the Breaths used in Awakening the metal.

 

Footnote: supposedly it was around half an hour into the signing line; has not been found on the record although we may have started it after it was asked already

I think that the reason that it work for Feruchemy is because both are within the Metallic Arts and both associated at least partially with the same shard, so the powers are not completely foreign to each other. 

[MonsterMetroid]

The general idea according to the coppermind wiki is that:

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Compounding is a technique for using Allomancy to enhance Feruchemy. A person capable of compounding is referred to as a compounder.

So to me it seems like it is just as Brandon would call it hacking a magic system. As calderis pointed out they have a very similar nature since they are of the same shard so the hack is relatively easy.

If we assume this WoB that Calderis linked is correct (which I kind of hate to do since it is paraphrased without a recording) Then I think we can assume that we need to establish some sort of connection between breaths and allomancy to get it to work that way because right now I imagine it is like dipping your food in gasoline and eating it. Gasoline powers cars and food powers humans but human digestion does not recognize gasoline in a way that it can use it.

I do think you have a really good point though, and it seems obvious to me that there has to be a way to do it since nightblood can eat any investiture they must be able to be transferred to another form. We just need to find a link to connect two magic systems so that it recognizes the breath as a investment type. Maybe since we have trellium it will have something to do with endownmentium? Or perhaps awakening a gem in stormlight then infusing it... not sure. Good theory though!

[Weltall]

I think it's more than just getting a system to recognize the Investiture because we already know that can be done (specifically, we know Divine Breaths don't care what form the Investiture is in and will happily consume Stormlight or Autonomy's Investiture) and since Breath automatically keys itself to your Identity, your spiritweb is probably already capable of recognizing it for what it is. Otherwise the Breath should be destroyed when the metal is burned, just like when Vin tries to burn a bit of metal that Sazed gave a tiny feruchemical charge to and got nothing out of it.

[MPHRD]

Spoilers Bands of Mourning:

 

Spoiler

My theory is that if someone is a nicrosil feruchemist and an awakener, then they could store not breath but their "heightening" level. This would mean they could increase their heightening temporarily (or even by a lot by compounding) not not store or compound more breath. This could let someone with just a few breath gain the intrinsic awaking of higher heightenings or give life sense to other people (with unkeyed metalminds). But there is not a ton to back this up, just how nicrosil works in BoM.

 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

41 minutes ago, MPHRD said:

Spoilers Bands of Mourning:

  Hide contents

My theory is that if someone is a nicrosil feruchemist and an awakener, then they could store not breath but their "heightening" level. This would mean they could increase their heightening temporarily (or even by a lot by compounding) not not store or compound more breath. This could let someone with just a few breath gain the intrinsic awaking of higher heightenings or give life sense to other people (with unkeyed metalminds). But there is not a ton to back this up, just how nicrosil works in BoM.

Make an assumption based on this WoB.