Would the Mists be able to recharge or power Sand Mastery?

[SpikeMe he/him]

From my understanding, White Sand from Taldain gets recharged by some combo of investiture and light interacting with a microorganism of some kind on the sand. The Mists on Scadrial are a form of investiture, in a vaporous form similar to water based mist. We have seen the mists power allomancy, although in extreme circumstances, and Brandon has mentioned it could be used to power Feruchemy as well.

Since the Mists are similar to water, they might have a strange interaction with Sand Mastery, which consumes water from the user. It could also be possible that the microorganism itself could start to consume the investiture/water to recharge.

Is something like this possible?

Edited December 29, 2019 by SpikeMe

[Honorless he/him]

Ah, there's an underlying question of whether the Mists are truly a gaseous manifestation of Preservation's Investiture or not. Steam is water in its gaseous state, while mist is composed of small droplets of water in the condensed phase. The Mists might be like the latter. The same can be asked of Stormlight which literally arrives with a massive rainstorm. But gaseous is how Sanderson describes them.

Either way, it shouldn't matter. The Mists aren't composed of water but Investiture so they should be able to turn the Sand white just like Stormlight, which we see an example of in-book. Unless there's very high humidity (which isn't necessary for the Mists to form), Mastery should be possible.

Quote

Questioner

You've mentioned in the last couple of afterwords that you get interesting results when you mix types of Investiture.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Twinborn and Surgebinders on Roshar. Can you mix a form of magic with a source of Investiture? Can say Vasher use Stormlight in place of Breaths or would that require tampering via Hemalurgy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of them require tampering. Some of them are a little bit easier than others. It depends on really what you mean. For instance, white sand can be charged in the presence of any Investiture right? It's just-- But that's not really using the magic, it's just charging it with other Investiture. But, you know, it would be very easy, for instance, if you can get yourself Invested-- Like, for instance, it'd be very easy to use Breaths to fuel Windrunning right? Because the oath and the bond and things like that are going to make it pretty easy. However fueling Allomancy with something else is going to be a lot harder. So it really depends on the magic. It's the sort of thing that there will be lots of science in the books dedicated to making happen in the future and you will find some of the processes these work easier than other ones.

DragonCon 2016 (Sept. 3, 2016)

In case the above WoB is confusing, it means that just White Sand and Investiture does not a Sand Master make. You need to have the necessary component in your Spiritweb. But if you are already a Sand Master then you can recharge your Sand with any kinetic Investiture.

Edited February 9, 2020 by Honorless
edited for clarity

[Landis963 he/him]

19 hours ago, Honorless said:

In case the above WoB is confusing, it means that just White Sand and Investiture does not a Sand Master make. You need to have the necessary component in your Spiritweb. But if you are already a Sand Master then you can recharge your Sand with any kinetic Investiture.

You need to be a Sand Master to use the newly-charged sand, but the charging happens passively in the presence of Investiture (to wit: Hoid's "Radiant Detector" sand bottle, in Kholinar).  Ergo, the sand should charge upon exposure to the Mists, regardless of whether or not its user can then Master them.

[Honorless he/him]

59 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

You need to be a Sand Master to use the newly-charged sand, but the charging happens passively in the presence of Investiture (to wit: Hoid's "Radiant Detector" sand bottle, in Kholinar).  Ergo, the sand should charge upon exposure to the Mists, regardless of whether or not its user can then Master them.

Yeah, I do know. I didn't frame my response as cohesively as I thought I did. Thanks for this!

To clarify for anyone who gets confused here. It's very simple:

1) You need to be a Sand Master to be able to Master the White Sand

2) The White Sand can be recharged via any kinetic Investiture.

3) Just having charged Sand wouldn't make you a Master (such a simple thing that I made seem so overcomplicated, sorry)