Metalmind weapons/armor?

[DoctaDajman]

Could a feruchemist store an attribute into a blade / mace / gun made of the metal (assuming it is a good mix for the alloy)?  

For use against a coinshot or lurcher we know that metalminds with more investiture are harder to see/push/pull on.  Are these weapons just far too large to be able to store enough investiture into to work like that?   

Likewise could you forge existing metalminds (even those belonging to someone else) to make bullets or casing or blades that would be much more difficult to manipulate?   

We see a lot of this idea that aluminum is immune to the allomancy and even a shardblade doesn't simply cut straight through it.   But if you could get your hands on filled up metal minds to craft into weapons allow you the same benefits?   It would only be cooler if you were able to store / compound into your own weapon.  Iron rebar being swung around or a steel sword that is highly resistant to outside forces would be pretty lit.  

Same question can be applied to potential armor types as well.  

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

I think all of this is possible, the size factor might be a soft limit of some kind but I imagine an Iron feruchemist could load a sword or even bigger objects up, given enough time. 

I have a feeling we will see some interesting use cases for this in Era 3. Possibly even in the upcoming era 2 book. Feruchemical bullets sound like a neat trick to get a good shot of at a certain main character who is adept at pushing them away

[Honorless he/him]

Yup, the shape of the metalmind doesn't matter, it doesn't need to be worn, though the Feruchemist does need Physical contact to access the metalmind, both to store & tap. Allomancers powerful enough to push or pull metalminds away no longer exist... even the instance we saw of this happening was a Mistborn drawing on the Mists, so this might not even be something that's possible without hacks. Perhaps a Lerasium Mistborn with Duralumin burst could achieve a similar feat. Mechanical Allomancy might also work.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Honorless

[Dancer]

5 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Yup, the shape of the metalmind doesn't matter, it doesn't need to be worn, though the Feruchemist does need Physical contact to access the metalmind, both to store & tap. Allomancers powerful enough to push or pull metalminds away no longer exist... even the instance we saw of this happening was a Mistborn drawing on the Mists, so this might not even be something that's possible without hacks. Perhaps a Lerasium Mistborn with Duralumin burst could achieve a similar feat. Mechanical Allomancy might also work.

We actually see this exact thing happen in WoA. Marsh pushes on Sazeds metlaminds. Both his copper bracers and his rings. I attribute these inconsistencies to Brandon not having all the rules of the Cosmere worked out at that point. After all the Inquisitors were using their spikes as Metalminds the entire time. 

[Honorless he/him]

3 minutes ago, Dancer said:

We actually see this exact thing happen in WoA. Marsh pushes on Sazeds metlaminds. Both his copper bracers and his rings. I attribute these inconsistencies to Brandon not having all the rules of the Cosmere worked out at that point. After all the Inquisitors were using their spikes as Metalminds the entire time. 

He did get his Allomancy via Hemalurgy, so maybe his... spike donors were strong enough Allomancers that combined they could do that

edit: wait, this was when he attacked Sazed. I think Ruin himself was directly providing extra oomph to Marsh in this case

Edited June 4, 2021 by Honorless

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

8 hours ago, Honorless said:

He did get his Allomancy via Hemalurgy, so maybe his... spike donors were strong enough Allomancers that combined they could do that

edit: wait, this was when he attacked Sazed. I think Ruin himself was directly providing extra oomph to Marsh in this case

I think at that point marsh had duraluminum too, so its possible he used that as well? Been awhile since I've read Era 1 but I remember inquisitors having incredibly strong alomancy.

[DoctaDajman]

I guess in an effort to understand shardplate/blades a bit better.  What is it about the investiture in shardplate that makes it work against shardblades.  I know shardblades are negated by aluminum as well obviously.   Is it just investiture that protects plate?   If a bunch of metalminds were forged into plate themselves would it protect them from a shardblade?   I do understand it would likely count as a massive waste of investiture but in the spirit of seeing if its possible.  I'm sure stormlight and shardplate fill a lot (and I mean a lot a lot) faster than even a compounder could.  But I would think its worth exploring.  (Especially if it could add to scadrials chances in a war).  

[Dancer]

13 hours ago, Lunu’anaki said:

I think at that point marsh had duraluminum too, so its possible he used that as well? Been awhile since I've read Era 1 but I remember inquisitors having incredibly strong alomancy.

The only way to get A-Duralumin for an Inquisitors at that point was to spike a Mistborn since they didn't know about Duralumin Mistings at that point. Ruin didn't like doing that because it was a huge waste of potential. He liked to turn Mistborn to his side either willingly or unwillingly by spiking them. I don't think Marsh ever had A-Duralumin during Era 1. 

[The Technovore he/him]

Something to consider is the sheer amount of investiture that apparently can be stored in metal. Wax had two arms bracers that together--not quite full--gave him the weight of a building in AoL. A tiny, thin band of gold held an apparent wealth of healing that let Wayne tank like a dozen bullets. Apparently, metalminds can get dense with Investiure, so while making Investiture-resistant armor with Feruchemy is plausible, filling up that much metal is gonna take a LOT of power.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

35 minutes ago, Dancer said:

The only way to get A-Duralumin for an Inquisitors at that point was to spike a Mistborn since they didn't know about Duralumin Mistings at that point. Ruin didn't like doing that because it was a huge waste of potential. He liked to turn Mistborn to his side either willingly or unwillingly by spiking them. I don't think Marsh ever had A-Duralumin during Era 1. 

okay, that makes sense... but am I remembering their insane power level wrong or is it an affect of multiple spikes? Vin's earring made her better at seeking. perhaps two spikes could make an inquisitor more powerful than one? I feel like there is a better explanation than "Ruin did it." but I suppose that's exactly what Preservation did to Vin with the mists so....

[+Bzhydack he/him]

2 hours ago, Lunu’anaki said:

okay, that makes sense... but am I remembering their insane power level wrong or is it an affect of multiple spikes? Vin's earring made her better at seeking. perhaps two spikes could make an inquisitor more powerful than one? I feel like there is a better explanation than "Ruin did it." but I suppose that's exactly what Preservation did to Vin with the mists so....

Probably this is about many spikes. They have 10 spikes initialy, but possible they replace A-Gold with second A-Steel. Later they have even more spikes. Also some of them could be previously Mistborn, so they get extra power from spikes on top of their normal power.

[ScadrianTank he/him]

On 05.06.2021 at 9:13 AM, The Technovore said:

Something to consider is the sheer amount of investiture that apparently can be stored in metal. Wax had two arms bracers that together--not quite full--gave him the weight of a building in AoL. 

In Wax's case, it's not that he had a lot of weight stored - it's that he drew all of it at once. As Kel said in the Final Empire "Feruchemists don’t have that kind of limitation; if a Feruchemist had enough strength stored up to be twice as strong as normal for an hour, he could choose instead to be three times as strong for a shorter period of time — or even four, five, or six times as strong for even shorter periods." So, theoretically, if tapping at high rates didn't result in a loss of Investiture, you could store weight for an hour, then kill your planet by becoming too massive for a fraction of a second.

On 05.06.2021 at 9:13 AM, The Technovore said:

Apparently, metalminds can get dense with Investiure, so while making Investiture-resistant armor with Feruchemy is plausible, filling up that much metal is gonna take a LOT of power.

I don't think that using Feruchemy allows creating objects really dense with Investiture except maybe with F-nicrosil. Metalminds can be full, and they don't show any signs of change in physical appearance when they are, where Nightblood and Vivenna's blade do

On 05.06.2021 at 8:49 AM, Dancer said:

I don't think Marsh ever had A-Duralumin during Era 1. 

He did. Epigraph from chapter 72 of HoA:

Quote

Yes, there are sixteen metals. I find it highly unlikely that the Lord Ruler did not know of them all. Indeed, the fact that he spoke of several on the plates in the storage caches meant that he knew at least of those.

I must assume that he did not tell mankind of them earlier for a reason. Perhaps he held them back to give him a secret edge, much as he kept back the single nugget of Preservation's body that made men into Mistborn.

Or, perhaps he simply decided that mankind had enough power in the ten metals they already understood. Some things we shall never know. Part of me still finds what he did regrettable. During the thousand-year reign of the Lord Ruler, how many people were born, Snapped, lived, and died never knowing that they were Mistings, simply because their metals were unknown?

Of course, this did give us a slight advantage, at the end. Ruin had a lot of trouble giving duralumin to his Inquisitors, since they'd need an Allomancer who could burn it to kill before they could use it. And, since none of the duralumin Mistings in the world knew about their power, they didn't burn it and reveal themselves to Ruin. That left most Inquisitors without the power of duralumin, save in a few important cases—such as Marsh—where they got it from a Mistborn. This was usually considered a waste, for if one killed a Mistborn with Hemalurgy, one could draw out only one of their sixteen powers and lost the rest. Ruin considered it much better to try to subvert them and gain access to all of their power.

 

[apepi]

I wonder how durable they would be. Like if the item is damaged it would damage the investiture right?

[jamesbondsmith]

With weapons there would be the obvious issue of losing access to your feruchemy if you're disarmed. Armour might work better, but if my history knowledge is correct people rarely wore armour straight against the skin. I'm pretty sure feruchemy requires physical contact, so it may not work too well in that case either.

As for shooting a 'bulletmind', it seems like a poor tradeoff for just being harder for a Coinshot or Lurcher to manipulate.

If you could alleviate those problems it might be cool. Now I'm imagining a 'onesiemind' and feruchemical Wolverine claws. That last one could actually approximate Wolverine if it weren't for gold being kind of soft.

[DoctaDajman]

26 minutes ago, jamesbondsmith said:

With weapons there would be the obvious issue of losing access to your feruchemy if you're disarmed. Armour might work better, but if my history knowledge is correct people rarely wore armour straight against the skin. I'm pretty sure feruchemy requires physical contact, so it may not work too well in that case either.

As for shooting a 'bulletmind', it seems like a poor tradeoff for just being harder for a Coinshot or Lurcher to manipulate.

If you could alleviate those problems it might be cool. Now I'm imagining a 'onesiemind' and feruchemical Wolverine claws. That last one could actually approximate Wolverine if it weren't for gold being kind of soft.

The idea of a feruchenist with metalminds encasing his/her bones like wolverine is sort of terrifying and awesome at the same time.  Enough gold they could probably survive the process as well. 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

6 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

The idea of a feruchenist with metalminds encasing his/her bones like wolverine is sort of terrifying and awesome at the same time.  Enough gold they could probably survive the process as well. 

the main issue with that is that your bones produce fresh blood, so if you fully encased them you'd just... run out of blood.

Best to wait until Era 4 and get some kind of micromesh that blood can fit through.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

13 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

the main issue with that is that your bones produce fresh blood, so if you fully encased them you'd just... run out of blood.

Best to wait until Era 4 and get some kind of micromesh that blood can fit through.

You dnot need encast them fully. Also if we give him A-Gold spike he would become Golden Twinborn and he would not need blood, he would just heal himself constantly.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

On 6/13/2021 at 1:04 PM, jamesbondsmith said:

As for shooting a 'bulletmind', it seems like a poor tradeoff for just being harder for a Coinshot or Lurcher to manipulate.

For every day use... certainly. For a single bullet in an assassins' gun? It might be a valid strategy...

 

4 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

You dnot need encast them fully. Also if we give him A-Gold spike he would become Golden Twinborn and he would not need blood, he would just heal himself constantly.

Yeah, I think you'd only need the metal placed in your body in a way which it couldn't easily be torn out. It wouldn't need to fully encase your bones.

[jamesbondsmith]

2 minutes ago, Lunu’anaki said:

For every day use... certainly. For a single bullet in an assassins' gun? It might be a valid strategy...

I still feel like an aluminium bullet (not mispelled, I'm Australian) would provide a similar enough effect that it would be a waste of a metalmind. I could imagine steel/pewter/gold would help with escaping, tin could remove the need for a scope or alert them to threats, bronze/bendalloy/cadmium/zinc/electrum could help with stakeouts in certain circumstances and chromium would probably be invaluable for someone who makes a living on taking out a high-value target and getting away with it.

Now I think of it, if they could figure out how to create an unkeyed metalmind that taps its attribute from whoever it touches, that would be a boon to an assassin. Stab or shoot someone with one of those goldminds, and they're never healing from that.

3 minutes ago, Lunu’anaki said:

Yeah, I think you'd only need the metal placed in your body in a way which it couldn't easily be torn out. It wouldn't need to fully encase your bones.

I think this was more to emulate Wolverine in the Cosmere than anything properly canonical.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

4 hours ago, jamesbondsmith said:

Now I think of it, if they could figure out how to create an unkeyed metalmind that taps its attribute from whoever it touches, that would be a boon to an assassin. Stab or shoot someone with one of those goldminds, and they're never healing from that.

Now that's an interesting idea 

[+Harrycrapper]

On 6/4/2021 at 11:28 PM, Lunu’anaki said:

okay, that makes sense... but am I remembering their insane power level wrong or is it an affect of multiple spikes? Vin's earring made her better at seeking. perhaps two spikes could make an inquisitor more powerful than one? I feel like there is a better explanation than "Ruin did it." but I suppose that's exactly what Preservation did to Vin with the mists so....

I think there's a bit more to this. First, I don't think Sazed filled all of those metalminds to the brim, he didn't have a lot of time when he figured he'd need to start filling them for the upcoming battle. Second, typical metalminds(not TLR's bracers or The Bands of Mourning, which are filled to the brim and piercing the skin in TLR's case) aren't completely unpushable like aluminum. I believe at some point Wax says the lines are fainter but not invisible. Third, the rings likely didn't weigh very much, making them easier to push than a typical bracer metamind. I think all of those things combined make it possible for Marsh to have hit Sazed with the rings without needing duraluminum or TLR levels of Allomantic strength. If they weren't full, didn't weigh that much, and Marsh was properly bracing himself for the steel push, I think it's possible for Marsh to have pushed them fast enough to embed them in Sazed's skin like he did.

For the original question, as someone else pointed out, if you store attributes in a weapon you plan on using in melee combat, any time the weapon is chipped or damaged, you'll lose a bit of the attribute you have stored in it. But, I'm guessing if someone were to do this, they're looking for a cheap way to make an aluminum-like weapon. So, steel wouldn't be an economically sound weapon for this purpose considering how much time/effort it takes to make a steel metalmind. That means you'd have to go with something easy to store metal in, and I can't think of any feruchemically viable metals that are tougher than steel. Iron would probably be the best choice for this. Easy to store and not as soft as something like gold or copper. 

[+honorblades he/him]

On 6/4/2021 at 3:17 AM, Honorless said:

He did get his Allomancy via Hemalurgy, so maybe his... spike donors were strong enough Allomancers that combined they could do that

edit: wait, this was when he attacked Sazed. I think Ruin himself was directly providing extra oomph to Marsh in this case

I am pretty late to this, but I'd like to clarify that Pushing someone using their Metalminds or even Hemalurgic spikes is totally possible without direct Shardic intervention, it just requires a stupid amount of power. Marasi does it in BoM. 

Relevant text:
 

Quote

The left her facing Suit and Telsin, who regarded her with horrified expressions. They were glowing energy to her, but she recognized them. They had spikes inside of them too. 

Convenient. Those spikes resisted Pushes, but not enough to bother Marasi now. She lifted a hand and flung both of them away by the very metals they'd used to pierce themselves.

 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

8 hours ago, honorblades said:

I am pretty late to this, but I'd like to clarify that Pushing someone using their Metalminds or even Hemalurgic spikes is totally possible without direct Shardic intervention, it just requires a stupid amount of power. Marasi does it in BoM. 

Relevant text:
 

 

Also interesting is that she seems to perceive the metal like a Shard (at least R/P) does. Glowing energy. Either that's what happens when you push Metalsight to its limits, beyond even the "see the iron in your blood" of inquisitors, or the Bands are genuinely approaching the power level of Ascending like with the Well.