Irkutsk

It's been a while since I read the SA. Are the beads that make up everything in the cognitive realm actually made of glass, or do they just appear that way? If we are following the idea that "essence" of a shardworld's investure = appearance of cognitive realm, they could definitely be solid diamond spheres, rather than glass. That would seem to fit, given the Mists on Scadrial, Colors(?) on Nalthis, etc. To push that train of thought a little farther, the glowing liquid the Ire members drink could be Sel's manifestation of this substance. It glows because Sel has a lot more free investure floating around since the splintering of Devotion and Dominion.

I wonder if it's possible that Threnody is in the same solar system as Scadrial? The fact that the Ire is worried about Threnodite shades while they are near Scadrial seems to indicate that Scadrial and Threnody are close to each other, at least in the cognitive realm. The importance of Silver (a metal) to the Thredonite society is another connection. Do we have WoB on the Scadrian Solar system?

I am fairly certain you can only store investure if you already have that power. So a Nicrosil Ferring can only store the power to use F.Nicrosil. If they were twinborn or had a spike or something they could store their other power, but they can't acquire powers they don't have by tapping investure.

Another theory I have seen for Scadrian FTL is the Alcubierre drive. Wikipedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive (Side note, how do I embed links in text? Newbie here) Anyways, it works on a principle of creating an expanding region of space behind your ship and a contracting region in front. You then ride the "wave" of expanding space, with no relativistic effects. This should theoretically be possible with Cadmium and bendalloy bubbles, which by contracting and expanding time would also expand and contract space.

I've considered this. I think a A.Pewter F.Nicrosil twinborn would be an amazing super-soldier. Pewter is already a very useful ability with increased strength and durability and minor increases to healing, reflexes and pain tolerance. Tapping Nicrosil would make pewter incredibly powerful by increasing all it's effects.

If I'm correct, you can't simply store investure and pull it out as any power. That could make a fullborn out of any Nicrosil Ferring. Rather, I believe it works like F.Tin does, but instead of storing individual senses, you store individual powers. In this case you would need to have access to both F.Brass and F.Nicrosil to store Brass investure in a Nicrosilmind. To make it useable by anybody you need F.Aluminum. And finally, for a never-ending supply of investure in a population with very few natural metalborn, you need A.Nicrosil for compounding. This gives us four metals in one Medallion, or three powers (If Allik isn't counting F.Nicrosil). So I guess it fits with what Allik said.

If a leecher does actually remove the investure in the metals, not the metals themselves, then that brings up the question of what would happen if a leecher touched an Elantrian... Or someone with breaths. Would a leecher turn anybody from Nalthis into a drab? By the way Nazh(?) is able to reactivate his Ghost-gun, I would assume there is a way to make leeched objects functional again, including metal. Perhaps when it comes "out the other end," it would be burnable again, though I can only see worth in trying to collect it if the metal in question is something like Atium, gold or bendalloy. Otherwise it's easier to just swallow some more.

I am pretty sure some combinations would probably be more rare than others. Wasn't there something about Ferrings with powers in the spiritual quadrant being notably less common than the others? Which I guess would mean there are even less than your estimate. You also have to take into account twinborn with Allomantic Aluminum/Duralumin, who are technically twinborn, but don't really have two useful powers. So that's even less twinborn running around. I think Khriss was noting how Wax is special because there are so few Crashers, them being particularly rare for some reason. I'd say there are probably around 1000 twinborn ever born.

Chromium wasn't discovered until after the Final Ascension. It's possible the Lord Ruler knew about it, having held the power of preservation and all, but didn't have the means to refine and manufacture it with the current technology level. The Lord Ruler was killed via a combination of planning, determination, skill, and shardly intervention.

I think it's interesting that F.Nicrosil stores Investure, not just specifically metallic arts. I believe it's possible that an elantrian spiked with F.Nicrosil and F.Aluminum could store their elantrian abilities in an unkeyed metalmind medallion for anyone to use. Similarly, a surgebinder or maybe even Nalthian returned could do the same.

Supposed to be an up vote, sorry bout that. I agree. We need more information before we can make any concrete judgements.

I feel that perhaps the book never says that they consciously tap Nicrosil because it would be wordy and distracting. It's not much fun to read, "Marasi strapped the medallion to her arm, tapped Nicrosil and then filled weight." It seems implied, especially with how Wax talks about tapping Nicrosil and that the Bands of Mourning seemed to drop in power slightly as he wore them.

That's definitely a possibility. I don't think we've seen enough of the mechanical metallic arts to really know what is possible. The other issue with both our theories is the inability to use more than one at a time. Somehow, the bands of mourning give you all the powers, including allomancy, despite the fact that Allik says you can't use more than one medallion at once. I think it's probably because of the fact that being a Ferring and being a Feruchemist are different spiritual traits. You can't have more than one feruchemical ability, unless you are a full Feruchemist. Similarly, it seems you can't borrow more than one (or two?) powers from a medallion, unless it happens to be the bands, which contain full Feruchemical and Allomantic investure, rather than one power like the medallions. Thoughts?

Well, obviously we know anyone can use the medallions, so there must be some method by which to make anybody able to use a metalmind, not just Ferrings of the same type. So we have a few possibilities: 1) The southern Scadrians have some way of creating entirely unkeyed metalminds that anyone can use, with no Nicrosil requirement. This could be through mechanical metallic arts, possibly related to Ettmetal and/or the "Excisors." 2) The medallions do actually function by tapping the Nicrosilmind. This would mean that anyone can tap an unkeyed Nicrosilmind, not just Nicrosil Ferrings. This would be due to traces of Terris blood, innate investure, or what have you. This wouldn't be entirely a first, because we know that anyone can burn Lerasium, not just Mistborn. Tapping Nicrosil seems to have a similar, if much weaker effect. This seems to make more sense to me as well, because otherwise there would be no need for Nicrosil at all as a part of the medallions.

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding how the medallions were created, so I've decided to make a single thread for discussing the discreet steps for making a medallion. Feel free to correct me if I have something grossly wrong. I am assuming for these purposes that storing investure in a Nicrosilmind stores "hours of metallic-art ability." So you store F.Brass in a Nicrosilmind for two hours, and another person can tap it to have the abilities of a brass Ferring for two hours. An unkeyed metalmind refers to one that was created while storing identity, so that anyone (with access to the correct powers, naturally or by tapping Nicrosil) can use it. I am also assuming that as long as the first person to begin filling a metalmind was storing identity at the time, then the metalmind can be filled or tapped at will without keying it accidentally. 1) The Sovereign (Spike-eye man) visits the south. He is a fullborn and carries the bands of mourning. He creates two unkeyed Nicrosilminds containing F.Nicrosil, and one with A.Nicrosil. 2) He fills one F.Nicrosilmind with some investure, then burns it to compound and fill the other two with the excess investure. 3) He creates an unkeyed Nicrosilmind containing F.Aluminum. 4) He now has three Nicrosilminds containing F.Nicrosil, A.Nicrosil, and F.Aluminum. He puts these together as a medallion along with some aluminum metal. This makes a medallion that anybody can access and use to create new unkeyed Nicrosilminds containing any of those three powers. They can also Compound to refill their Nicrosilminds, as they are not naturally a Feruchemist and therefore would not be able to store investure. 5) Using this medallion along with an unkeyed Nicrosilmind containing another power, one can create more medallions. This would be how they produce medallions with Nicrosilminds granting F.nicrosil and F.brass, for example. Compounding refills the Nicrosilminds and makes the practice sustainable, given that they have enough Nicrosil to burn for compounding. That's it. FireParents would be people who use a medallion with F.Aluminum, F.Brass and A.Brass for compounding heat. After the original set of medallions were created, it would be easy for anyone with access to Nicrosil to create more. The only hole in this process is that one step requires you to have a medallion with four powers (F.Aluminum, F.Nicrosil, A.Nicrosil, and a fourth power of your choosing) which Alliki says he's never seen. It's possible that medallions that were so important to their society's survival would be kept locked away and only allowed to be used by tribe leaders and such. Thoughts? See any other major holes in this process?

I wouldn't say Scadrial's Magic is any stronger than the other worlds. Awakening on Nalthis can be used to create undead armies, immortal magical humans and was used to make Nightblood. We all know what kind of power that has. Sel's form-based magics are incredibly diverse and mostly unknown to us. We know they have immortal humans as well, along with teleportation and enough magical diversity to create almost any effect they desire. Roshar... I don't think we've seen enough of their magic to really judge it, though I would dare say a Windrunner in full plate and blade could easily go toe-to-toe with a full Mistborn. The "overpowered" abilities you propose are the result of the combination of two magic systems, and thus would obviously be more powerful. But they are also extremely rare without hemalurgy (or other effects, but describing them would be BoM spoilers. I think any combination of two magic systems will create overpowered comboes like Steel or Nicrosil compounding. Heck, there's a whole thread about combining magic systems for overpowered effects on these boards.

There are theories that it might be Harmonium, or perhaps an alloy of Harmonium. The whole "explodes in water" thing does seem to indicate a group 1 Metal, but I can't see Brandon breaking his whole system of 16 metals in 4 quadrants. Perhaps Ettmetal is in fact a group 1 metal, but it is not burnable by Mistborn. In this case, it would be Invested like other metals on Scadrial, but not allomantically useful outside of the mechanical metallic arts.

From what we've seen though, Allomantic and feruchemical abilities either come as a single power, or a full Feruchemist or Mistborn. You can be a twinborn, but there is no way to naturally have more than one allomantic or feruchemical ability, unless you have all of them. Which seems to show that the genetic traits and sDNA for "one allomantic power" and "Mistborn" are separate. So, I think that TLR would be able to store "Mistbornness" in a Nicrosilmind, without storing all 16 powers in separate metalminds.

That's duralumin. I'm talking about Aluminum, which stores Identity, not connection. Besides, I'm not sure you could connect to Elantris like that.

So Feruchemical Aluminum stores Identity. This is not well understood. But, I was thinking about how Identity affects other magic systems, and I realized that soulcasting is essentially convincing an object that it is something else on the cognitive level, so it follows that an object with a stronger sense of Identity would resist soulcasting. So, would it be possible for a worldhopping Aluminum Ferring to protect themselves from being Soulcast by tapping Identity? It seems this could be a useful ability, more so than I previously thought. Another system that seems to make use of Identity is forgery, from The Emperor's Soul. Soulstamps apparently wear off after a while because your spirit rejects the stamp as it realizes the imprinted "history" in the stamp is not true. Could a Ferring store Identity to make a stamp last longer, or perhaps even use another person's stamps? It seems that as they store Identity, they would be sort of a "blank slate," which would allow them to be much more radical with the changes made in SoulForging. Thoughts?

Hello everybody! I just signed up and decided it would be good to post one of these thingies to introduce myself to the forum. I am a teenage male and I live in Sanderson's own home state of Utah. I've read every major book by him and most of the minor ones too. I joined mostly to post theories and ask questions to satisfy my friend's and my own curiosity about various cosmerical topics. I'll try to be polite and helpful as much as I can.