Inverted Metalminds?

[danex he/him]

I had a thought the other day: “Why do metalminds act the way they do? Why does gold store health? Why doesn’t steel or something store health?”

I figured that was a pointless thing to think about, the answer seems pretty obvious, Brandon just wanted it to. It’s his magic system. But then I had another thought: “Why does gold store health? Why doesn’t gold store sickness?”

This might actually be something worth thinking about. Why do the metals store the positive/useful attribute? Why does gold store health and not sickness? Why does brass store warmth and not cold? I guess that one makes more sense, as cold is really just the absence of heat. Why does bronze store wakefulness and not drowsiness? Is it possible, through some sort of hack, to create an inverted metalmind? Probably not, but it’s mildly interesting to think about. 

Edited November 23, 2020 by Danex

[Koloss17 She/They]

Well you can store and tap metalminds. You store warmth in a metalmind to get colder a tap to get warmth. The issue there is that to tap, you would need to have already stored. Gold would be fairly overpowered if you could heal without having to go through any effort. So I can see why that type of hack would be useful. Currently, I don’t know how you could do that, but I think this info is. nice to throw out there.

[Knight of Iron]

I think most of the negative attributes in Feruchemy are the lack of the positive attribute, hence why Feruchemy works the way that it does. There wouldn’t be a way to store the negative attribute (like cold) if this is the case. In whatever case, I think it’s just the way that the attributes are by nature.

[Frustration he/him]

Because storing health is just storing your spiritual ideal of health, you can't store sickness because there isn't an ideal for that.

[+robardin he/him]

8 hours ago, Knight of Iron said:

I think most of the negative attributes in Feruchemy are the lack of the positive attribute, hence why Feruchemy works the way that it does. There wouldn’t be a way to store the negative attribute (like cold) if this is the case. In whatever case, I think it’s just the way that the attributes are by nature.

Right, the way I read it, what a metalmind stores is a "positive" attribute, something the Feruchemist currently possesses at the time of filling the metalmind, for restoration later. (Except when using the Compounding hack that actually gets you back a net positive.)

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

...storing health is just storing your spiritual ideal of health, you can't store sickness because there isn't an ideal for that.

And this also explains why an atiummind stores youth and not age when you might otherwise think of age as the "positive attribute" (since it only naturally increases over time) while youth would be the negative and subtractive attribute (offsetting the age you've accumulated).

You can only tap a goldmind to be as healthy as you've ever been, to your "ideal image of health", as Cosmere healing works. It can't make you "healthier" in a way you don't think of yourself as ever possibly being while still being yourself, i.e., to shapeshift into someone taller, more muscled, or to make your belly button an innie instead of an outie. (Though if you "earned" a muscled body by eating right and working out, I suppose you could maintain that with a goldmind in place of ongoing exercise?)

And atium stores youth because you've been that young before. Thus, you can store it up. The balancing side effect of making you older than you have ever been (again, barring the Compounding trick), well that is a thing of gods, isn't it, to project your "image of self" forward in time? Which is linked to atium's Allomantic effect of seeing the future.

Edited September 30, 2020 by robardin