Using Copperclouds to Create Anti-Investiture

[Cocoa he/him]

We know from RoW that in order to 'reverse the polarity' of Investiture and turn it into anti-Investiture, at least in the case of Lights, you need to separate it from its normal tone and then make the next thing it 'hears' that same tone with different intent. Now, Navani accomplished this isolation using vacuum tubes. However, I think that with access to allomancy, there's an easier way.

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. [recording starts here] And so, for the same reasons that you can, um, it is possible that a coppercloud can play with it. Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you’ve seen them do stuff similar.

Footnote: Question was cut off in recording, first bit reproduced from memory
Boskone 54 (Feb. 17, 2017)

So we know that, besides muffling allomantic pulses, coppercoulds interfere with Rhythms. Therefore, I think that if you put a Light inside a coppercloud* and then exposed it to its proper anti-tone while it was still in there, you'd get anti-Investiture.

*It's possible you'd need a copper savant or multiple overlapping clouds or something to fully block out the tone, since we know that with enough juice a coppercloud can be pierced, but maybe not. I want to say just taking scale into account that Shards' pure tones would be pretty good at piercing copperclouds, but looking back it feels like the tones are actually pretty difficult to hear outside certain special conditions.

[Mage he/him]

Hmm. I like the theory. In fact, this makes more sense than using a physical vacuum to block the rhythms. It's hard to say how strong the rhythms are and how powerful of a coppercloud you would need to separate the investiture enough to invert it, but this theory sounds plausible to me.

[Morningtide she/her]

This seems to fit with some WOBs that I have read recently. I think it's a good theory! It makes sense that there would be ways for different magic systems to overlap like this.

[Cocoa he/him]

3 hours ago, Morningtide said:

This seems to fit with some WOBs that I have read recently. I think it's a good theory! It makes sense that there would be ways for different magic systems to overlap like this.

If it's not any trouble, could you point me in the direction of those WoBs? I'd love to read them.

[Morningtide she/her]

 

Quote

 

Questioner (paraphrased)

Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. [recording starts here] And so, for the same reasons that you can, um, it is possible that a coppercloud can play with it. Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you’ve seen them do stuff similar.

Footnote: Question was cut off in recording, first bit reproduced from memory
Boskone 54 (Feb. 17, 2017)

 

Not exactly the same, but it gave me the same idea.

 

Quote

 

Keeper Exile

Would a Coppercloud at all affect how spren act?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

FanX Spring 2019 (April 19, 2019)

 

Again, similar idea. They aren't really related to the topic, but I came across them very recently, so they were on the forefront of my mind.  It just made me think that if copperclouds affected how spren act and a listener's ability to hear rhythms, they would probably interfere with Light's ability to hear rhythms.

[Tglassy]

Interesting.  On Scadrial, Copper Clouds are considered to be mostly useless.  Sure, they can hide other Allomancers from Seekers, and that's great, and has lots of value to people who want to be hidden.  But to themselves, they pretty much can just counter Mental Allomancy.  

But on other worlds, Smokers could have lots of uses, because they aren't hiding Allomancy, they're apparently hiding Investiture.  I wonder if their ability to be immune to Mental Allomancy isn't that they're immune to Mental Allomancy.  Think about it.  Of all the Allomantic powers, only Brass and Zinc actually affect someone else.  Everything else either effects yourself, or metal, or time.  

Maybe a Smoker is actually just immune to being affected by outside investiture.  That would mean Lashings would affect them while burning copper.  Lashings, Lightweaving illusions, Regrowth.  All those are people using Investiture to affect someone else.  If burning Copper would negate that, that's a huge potential advantage.

[Wadders]

With regard to the creation of anti-investiture I think it would depend on whether the copper cloud is supressing the pulses from investiture usage or creating interference.

I think I remember reading that a seeker in a copper cloud can still hear pulses from outside the coppercloud

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 11/13/2021 at 6:51 PM, Tglassy said:

Maybe a Smoker is actually just immune to being affected by outside investiture.  That would mean Lashings would affect them while burning copper.  Lashings, Lightweaving illusions, Regrowth.  All those are people using Investiture to affect someone else.  If burning Copper would negate that, that's a huge potential advantage.

I think that it's more there cognitive aspect that is given added protection from things like emotional Allomancy. They might be especially protected from being Soulcast then, as their cognitive aspect would be much harder to manipulate, but that's just my thought on the matter.