DrakeMarshall

That is... Precisely what I am trying to say. Hemalurgy has three distinct parts. First is the hemalurgic charge in the spike. Kinetic investiture. Second is the addition to the spiked individual's spirit. Innate investiture. Third is the physical or mental effects that may possibly occur as a result of the subject's altered spirit. This is a physical or cognitive manifestation of something in the spiritual realm. It is not investiture of any kind in of itself. I am not talking about storing the hemalurgic charge. We both acknowledge that this is probably kinetic. I am also not talking about storing those physical or mental effects that hemalurgy may indirectly cause. Those aren't even investiture, just an effect. I'm talking about storing that change in innate investiture that a spike causes. I believe that if someone turned themself into a koloss with lerasium instead of hemalurgy, they could similarly store up the part of their spirit web that makes them a koloss. Realmatically, the soul is the layout of a person's intrinsic investiture. This includes the spark of life, and any investiture that is actually part of them. Nicrosil feruchemically stores bits of the subject's soul. I suspect that it could not store the spark of life, but I suspect that it could store pretty much any other kind of investiture within a subject's spirit web. This includes the bit of investiture a spike might graft on a koloss' soul.

I do not believe that a hemalurgically granted power is kinetic. If you gain allomancy through a hemalurgic spike, that is clearly innate. I do not believe that physical or mental modifications should be any different. Mind you, I'm not saying that you can store physical strength. Nicrosil stores capacity to use a power, not the actual power itself. It wouldn't store the actual strength of the koloss, it would store up the bit of their spirit which makes them a koloss. This, in practice, would let them spend time weak and then time strong. But what's actually going on behind the scenes is nothing like pewter feruchemy.

I suspect you misunderstand what I said. I don't mean to say that "innate investiture" is only described as something from a shard. Rather I mean to say that innate investiture is both part of a person and from a shard. Like what Yata said, its more the surplus investiture. Because... It doesn't sound like Sanderson classifies the spark of life as "innate investiture."

Hm... I am starting to suspect that Brandon defines innate investiture as all investiture that is part of someone and that originates from a shard. At any rate, @cometaryorbit those WoBs reinforce some of my suppositions about the mechanics of magic...

Hm... Maybe. I'm not sure I reach the same conclusion however. A hemalurgic spike alters the subject's innate investiture. You are right that the altered body of koloss is simply a manifestation... But it isn't a manifestation of kinetic investiture, it's actually a manifestation of a change to the subject's own soul. That is why I hypothesized that storing would not immediately alter a koloss' physical attributes, but their body would take a slight delay to catch up to the subject's changing soul. That's exactly the problem. On Nalthis... The lines of kinetic and innate investiture blur. Is it kinetic investiture that acts like innate, or innate that acts like kinetic? We don't know.

Nope, I haven't. I intend to soon. @Spoolofwhool you brought up a lot of things here and I will do my best to address all of it: I considered this, yes. My reason for concluding that nicrosil would actually effect the ability is that, when hemalurgy enters the picture, the changes to a koloss are a manifestation of investiture. It grafts something onto the soul as if it were always there, but it isn't a natural feature of the spiked individual's soul. It's presence is a result of magic. Has Brandon confirmed that it is kinetic investiture? You are characterizing it as a type of kinetic investiture that stays put really well. I always thought of breath more of as a type of innate investiture that can be voluntarily transferred. Granted, for this one I more of just gave a one effect. There are possibly a large number of ways nicrosil would enhance surgebinding, for example it might also give an elsecaller heightened ability to shape shadesmar with their mind. It is similar to how hemalurgy might enhance the force of one person's steelpush, but the precision of another's. Hemalurgy enhances a power in different ways based on where you spike... For nicrosil, chances are it gives an all-around enhancement. This is more or less what I concluded, for the three most prominent Sellish magics.

I just posted a table that seeks to address this question and some similar ones I have heard. As I understand it, a soulbearer with an honor blade could become a sliver, but by a different mechanism than you suppose. They wouldn't store up stormlight. Rather, they would store their capacity to use stormlight, and if they tapped it to become 100000x as powerful of a surgebinder in an instant, they could probably become a sliver. Mind you, it would take a long time of storing to get that much power. Probably it would take more time than a normal human lifespan. The only way this could possibly work is if you used compounding, or if you extended your life span and stored up your surgebinding potential for centuries...

In the past months I have seen people wonder about how nicrosil feruchemy works. Just today, this theory prompted me to compose this table. So. How does nicrosil feruchemy work? As I understand it, nicrosil feruchemy can store investiture that is actually part of the feruchemist. It cannot store any investiture that is merely passing through the user. It cannot effect investiture that they are channeling from an external source. So far we have seen nicrosil work in Bands of Mourning. In Bands of Mourning, nicrosil exhibits the behavior I describe above. Within allomancy, there are two distinct groupings of investiture. There is the investiture embedded in the allomancer's soul that grants them the ability to draw on preservation's power. And there is the investiture that the allomancer channels from preservation when they actually burn a metal. Nicrosil only stores the first kind. So. I'm just going to suggest a table of exactly how nicrosil will interact with each magic system I have seen in the cosmere. Scadrial Allomancy- Stores how strong of an allomancer the user is. You can spend one hour getting half of much of an effect out of your pewter, then spend one hour getting 1.5x as much strength from burning pewter. Feruchemy- Stores how efficient your feruchemy is. Feruchemy is not 100% efficient, particularly when you draw a lot on a given reserve. You can spend one hour with more loss-y feruchemy, then you can spend one hour with 1.5x less loss in your feruchemy. A nicrosil-boosted feruechemical power might also have higher yield when used in compounding. Hemalurgy- If the hemalurgic spike grants a magic, nicrosil feruchemy treats the magic as if the user were naturally endowed with it. If the hemalurgic spike grants a non-magical attribute (like strength for koloss or sapience for kandra), nicrosil would probably be able to store this attribute. A soulbearer koloss, when storing power, would slowly grow smaller, weaker, and more intelligent as their body and mind adapts to the change in their soul. When not storing or tapping, they would slowly revert to their normal Koloss state. When tapping, they would slowly become bigger, stronger, and less intelligent than a normal Koloss. Roshar Surgebinding- A surgebinder would be able to store their nahel bond, not stormlight. A surgebinder could spend one hour consuming stormlight at 2x rate, and then spend one hour consuming stormlight at 2/3 rate. Of coarse, they wouldn't need to actually be consuming any stormlight while they stored power, which makes this a lot more useful. Listener Forms- I suspect that a normal listener form would find nicrosil useless. A form of power, however, could probably store their symbiosis with Odium in the metalmind. This would mean a stormform might be able to spend one hour feeling weak and having trouble summoning lightning, and then spend one hour feeling stronger and being able to summon lightning more easily... I suspect that while they are storing, they would also feel less in Odium's control, and while they were tapping, they would feel more in Odium's control. Voidbinding- We know absolutely nothing about voidbinding yet, so I really can't say. Old Magic- We know absolutely nothing about the old magic yet, so I really can't say. Nalthis Awakening- For awakening I suspect you could actually just store breaths in the nicrosil mind. Pretty useless since you can store breaths in anything that isn't metal or stone. More useful if you have nicrosil compounding, however... Nicrosil compounding probably wouldn't increase the number of breaths you had access to, but would rather amplify the strength of each breath. This could still increase heightenings. It is also possible but unlikely that nicrosil would only store the strength of the breaths, and not the number of breaths. In this case, storing or tapping wouldn't change your number of breaths, only how strong each one is while you store or tap. This could still decrease and increase your heightenings. The big difference here is, each breath would revert to their normal strength when you stop storing. You could actually spend one hour as a half-strength awakener, then spend one hour as a 1.5x strength awakener, unlike the scenario above. Sel AonDor- You could probably store your Elantrian status in the metalmind (AonDor is on a fundamental level nearly identical to allomancy in how it works). This means you could spend one hour during which time your Aons produce only half the effect they normally would, then spend one hour during which time your Aons would produce an exaggerated, 1.5x effect. Due to the fact that being an Elantrian also has physical effects, someone storing power might additionally transition part of the way to being a fallen Elantrian, and someone tapping power might additionally experience increased physical vitality. Forgery- This one presents a unique question. The ability to forge is only based on knowledge, not on some unique investiture in the user's soul... And yet, presumably that is because everyone in that locality has the ability to forge written into their soul. So... Would nicrosil store the potency of your forgery? Or would it be able to store the effects of a soul-stamp? Would it be able to store both of these things? In any case, chances are nicrosil would allow you to manipulate how well a soul stamp sticks. Dakhor- Dakhor seems to be somewhat similar to AonDor. The subject has a connection to Dominion, and thus they can draw power from Dominion to gain physical enhancement. Chances are, a Dakhor monk storing nicrosil would be able to spend an hour with half of their extra strength and speed, then an hour with 1.5x their additional magic-granted strength and speed. In the hour of storing, they are half as connected to Dominion and can only draw half as much energy from Dominion. In the hour of drawing, they are 1.5x as connected to Dominion and can draw 1.5x as much energy from Dominion. EDIT: I would also like to make a second distinction here. We know that nicrosil only effects innate investiture. I would also like to suggest that nicrosil does not effect all types of innate investiture. For example, I do not believe that you could store the spark of life in a nicrosil mind. I must conclude that nicrosil tends towards storing specifically innate investiture that originates from an external source (IE a shard). If a shard's power is in no way involved in giving someone innate investiture, I do not believe that nicrosil feruchemy can store it.

Hm... Could what he wrote be a reference to a particular verse in the diagram, perhaps?

A lot of people have theorized Trell=Odium in the past. And the theory can't be immediately discounted by any means. We don't know of any other intact evil shards yet, and that alone makes Odium a possible candidate. Plus there's the whole red thing. But we really can't conclude with any confidence that Trell is Odium. Yes we don't know about any other intact evil shards, but with 16 total its not unreasonable that others exist. As for the red glow... Firemarks also glow red. Should we assume that firemarks are evil artifacts?

Taravangian isn't directly antagonistic to the radiants per se... But the course he has set himself on puts him in opposition to them. The radiants are a force to be reckoned with, and Taravangian doesn't want competition. The diagram said to assassinate Dalinar expeditiously if he sued for peace, specifically because if Dalinar walked down this path he might stand in the way of Taravangian becoming king of everything. Because of this, technically Taravangian does "want to kill Dalinar specifically" to the extent that Dalinar specifically is dangerous to Taravangian. He may not have any personal grievance with Dalinar, nor is he in principle opposed to the presence of radiants... But he is opposed to them because he can't afford to have competition.

You may notice how in the mistborn novels, the main characters keep finding out about new metals, and figuring out that their conclusions about how magic works have been all wrong. This is a more realistic depiction of magic in a book, because there is no field in which people have all the answers. It also means that... Well... There's always another secret. RAFO.

Feruchemy tends to be very internal, no? It doesn't seem to afford any of the external powers that allomancy might display, like steel, iron, bronze, or copper... I suspect that aluminum wouldn't be able to block its effects. Most likely, the feruchemy is changing something about only the user, some attribute in the spiritual realm... Its not directly influencing the outside world in any way. Mind you, it can still indirectly influence the outside world. I think this one is a lot like duraluminum feruchemy. Duraluminum feruchemy alters an individual's spiritual connection. It only alters the user's spiritual connection, but this can have effects on other people if the user makes themselves spiritually connected to them. I would also like to predict that duraluminum feruchemy is also impossible to negate with aluminum. Or a coppercloud, for that matter.

I suspect that if one tried to store luck too quickly, they might not live long enough to ever start tapping their luck. Then again, the same can be said for something like health. You can probably kill yourself by storing too much health at once in a goldmind.

That's a little bit like how I pictured it. But I feel like there might be some additional limitations to its use on top of this underlying system. Because, if there isn't some extra catch... A chromium compounder might be more powerful than many of the shards that are bad at future sight.

Maybe, yes! That's the surge of gravitation, I was more of talking about how adhesion could do more things. But your idea is not out of the question by any means. I suspect that a powerful enough third lashing could defend you against even bullets as well.

Alright then. Despite some misunderstanding I see we agree on how this works. I feel like Sanderson would give more thought into the rules governing luck though. Rowling wrote a good story, but her magic was more... Well, more magical. It wasn't as well defined as the sorts of things Sanderson tends to deal with.

I'm not saying it is more than prescience... Honestly its less than true prescience. Like you say, he doesn't even know what is actually going on, he is just able to intuit that there's something noteworthy happening. Probably not so much noteworthy in general as it is noteworthy specifically to his plans. In words of radiance Hoid actually tells Dalinar he has to go somewhere, but he has no idea why. He expresses the wish that it didn't work like that, but concludes he has to leave.

Sounds more like intuition/intelligence feruchemy...

I am reviving this thread briefly, because yesterday I had an idea that made me think of this thread. A good candidate for something to make a mod for... Mount and blade warband perhaps? This game has been around long enough that mods are not uncommon. More importantly though, I feel that the mechanics could be adapted quite well to Roshar. Calradia is in a lot of ways similar to Roshar... Possibly for this game, we would not include surgebinding. The game would rather be set after the heirocracy but before the events in WoK. If that is the case, it would be more about capturing Roshar's setting and less about telling the exact same story that Sanderson has told in the books. On the other hand, this game probably could allow for surgebinding mechanics. But, at least initially, having surgebinders and voidbringers shouldn't be the goal. If everything else gets done, than it could be considered. Shardplate could be an extremely rare armor that the player can get. You could never buy it, and the only people who could wear it would be the player and their heros. Getting it would probably be fabulously difficult because the player won't start out as a shardbearer. If the player has ascended to high enough rank in society, they will also have the opportunity to get shards by challenging a shardbearer to a duel and borrowing a king's shards, but this will be difficult to stage. The nations like Swadia, Saranid Empire, etc. would be replaced with those of Alethkar, Jah Keved, etc. Titles like "Emir" would change to "brightlord." If the player started out with dark eyes, Vorin nations would not allow you to become a lord under them, but other nations still would allow it. Highstorms wouldn't be too hard to include. If you had your army outside (not lodged in a city, castle, or manor) during a highstorm, morale would drop since they had to whether it in shelters. Possibly at some point it would be cool to let the game show an actual view of what a highstorm looks like, but that won't really be neccessary, because most of the time, most people try to get inside when a highstorm is anywhere near, so you don't tend to see them. The shattered plains might be a very difficult map to design. On the other hand, since this (initially) would only cover the events before WoK, there wouldn't necessarily need to be a shattered plains map. It isn't even explored yet. Pretty much the game would be about managing an army on Roshar. You would make sure you have enough spheres to pay your army, recruit and train spearman etc, maybe try to set yourself up as a brightlord or even a king. Like mount and blade warband, except the setting changes from Calradia to Roshar. And there are shards, which would be an interesting touch I think. This is just a random idea for how "stormlight video game" could work. If people aren't really working on this that's completely chill. I'm just putting this out there because I figured I might as well share this thought.

This will be a brief theory, because mostly I just want to open up discussion on the topic. Most of the surges we have seen have... Fairly broad spheres of influence. The surge of illumination doesn't just deal with controlling light in a few limited ways, it even extends to controlling sound. So, lets look at the three lashings. The two most useful lashings in my opinion, first and third, come from the surge of gravitation. We can see that within reasonable limits, someone with the surge of gravitation can control the effects of gravity. That all seems to line up. But lets look at windrunners' second surge, adhesion. Its sort of useful, but compared to any of the other surges, it feels as if it should be able to do more than just stick rocks together. Technically, the surge of adhesion includes all kinds of atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure can do a lot more than hold things together... So... I predict that the surge of adhesion can do more things than Kaladin or Szeth were aware of. The original order of windrunners might not even have been aware of these additional powers. This, I suspect, also lines up a little bit with Sanderson's writing style. Magic is never something set in stone, people are figuring out how it works during the books. This is evident with allomancy, in how people were confused about how many metals there were, learning new metals, and wondering how atium fits in with the others.

Hm... Okay. Granted. All the books drop into your lap as requested. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Sanderson is a very prolific writer in the next years, as one might expect. As such, the stack of books that drop in your lap is colossal and quite heavy, and when it lands in your lap your legs are broken. On the bright side, while you sit around waiting to heal, you will have plenty of good books to read. As for your bane... You forget all of your past. Your personality is still intact and all, but you can't recall any of the events from your life before the moment the wish was granted. I'm sure your family and friends will be able to fill you in on a lot of it, but it isn't a terribly pleasant experience. I wish for the nightwatcher's death.

You should have given her the blessing/curse of Midas Granted. Unfortunately, chouta, being from another world, is rather difficult to acquire. The only place you can find any is the dark alley. Your chouta has two hemalurgic spikes hidden in it, and when you eat it you become half koloss. The bright side is, you can now eat dirt and are probably twice as strong as you were. The less bright side is, your IQ is halved, plus your skin is all stretched over your body which makes you look kind of creepy. I wish to steal nightblood from Szeth, without him noticing.