Metalmind storage location

[Lupis]

I did a search but couldn't find an answer to this. Has it ever been explained where whatever is placed into a metalmind actually goes? It's obviously not in the metal itself, so I'm presuming it's the spiritual or cognitive realm, or perhaps a bit of both, but I was wondering if there has been anything definitive said on it.

[HSuperLee]

It is presumably converted into investiture (which exists in all three realms) and is then stored in the metal itself like a battery. This is supported by more full metalminds being harder to affect with investiture than less full ones, as if they were merely "bridges" to wherever they stored the traits then should all be equally invested.

[Calderis]

I mean, even if it is in the Spiritual or the Cognitive, it is in the metal itself. 

It's stored as Investiture. 

[Chromium Compounder]

I think it’s technically in the spiritual realm, but it’s in the spiritual component of the metal.

[Iridium Savant]

I have been searching for the WOB for a minute but can not seem to find it right now.  I believe I have seen a WOB talking about how it is the 'geometric structure' of metals that allow them to work in allomancy and feruchemy (and I assume in hemalurgy as well). 

When burning allomanticly the geometric shape of the metal acts as a mold that channels the investiture to a specific purpose based on the shape of that mold.  When storing Feruchemicaly then you are actually converting investiture/matter/energy from you and storing it as investiture into the geometric shape of the space between molecules in that metal. 

Remember that matter energy and investiture are the same thing in the cosmere, so a feruchemist is taking something physical, or some energy or matter of themselves and converting it into investiture that gets stored into the metalmind, and as far as I can tell the investiture is in the physical realm. That is why the metal has to be a specific metalurgic composition, it is the geometric latticework of the metal that is providing the 'key' to the magic.  [i.e. the shape between iron molecules stores mass in the form of investiture into the metal]

See bolded and underlined section below, this isn't the WOB I was thinking of but it gets close to what I was talking about.

Quote

Lyndsey Luther

My question is if there’s anything that you’ve never been asked that you would like to talk about?

Brandon Sanderson

Oooooh, ok. Hm. That one is so hard! Every time people ask me something like this... What have I never been asked that people should be asking, is basically what the question is? Something that the fans have just missed... They pick up on so much, that it’s hard... I do wonder if, you know… all the magic systems [in my books] are connected and work on some basic fundamental principles, and a lot of people haven’t been asking questions about this. One thing I did get a question on today, and I’ll just talk about this one... they didn’t ask the right question, but I nudged them the right way, is understanding that tie between Aondor [the magic system from Elantris] and allomancy [Mistborn’s magic system].

People ask about getting the power from metals and things, but that’s not actually how it works. The power’s not coming from metal. I talked a little about this before, but you are drawing power from some source, and the metal is actually just a gateway. It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal works in the same way as an Aon does in Elantris. It filters the power. So it is just a sign of “this is what power this energy is going to be shaped into and give you.” When you understand that, compounding [in Alloy of Law] makes much more sense.

Compounding is where you are able to kind of draw in more power than you should with feruchemy. What’s going on there is you’re actually charging a piece of metal, and then you are burning that metal as a feruchemical charge. What is happening is that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge, and so you actually fuel feruchemy with allomancy, is what you are doing. Then if you just get out another piece of metal and store it in, since you’re not drawing the power from yourself, you’re cheating the system, you’re short-circuiting the system a little bit. So you can actually use the power that usually fuels allomancy, to fuel feruchemy, which you can then store in a metalmind, and basically build up these huge reservoirs of it. So what’s going on there is… imagine there’s like, an imprint, a wavelength, so to speak. A beat for an allomantic thing, that when you burn a metal, it says “ok, this is what power we give.” When it’s got that charge, it changes that beat and says, “now we get this power.” And you access a set of feruchemical power. That’s why compounding is so powerful.

Open The Fridge Interview (Nov. 16, 2011)

Happy WOB Hunting, its one of my favorite pastimes, and if anyone can find that WOB where he talks about the empty space between metal molecules being how metalminds work you will get an upvote from me!

Edited April 3, 2019 by Iridium Savant