Excisors are using harmonium (theory)

[Mistchemist16]

I was thinking about the unsealed metalminds, trying to wrap my head around how they worked. I kept getting bothered by the fact that F-Duralumin is used when F-Aluminum appears to be naturally better and still doesn’t work. But then I had an idea.

The consistent problem with unsealed metalminds is getting into the nicrosil metalminds. Even blanking Identity only makes it usable for Nicrosil Feruchemists and Ferrings, not just anyone. But then I realized there’s one other thing we know on Scadrial that gives ordinary people powers: God Metals. In fact, the one godmetal we can canonically confirm to do this very thing.

I would posit that an unsealed metalminds is used to duplicate a nearby Nicrosil Ferring or Feruchemists ability, just like we’ve seen with the Allomancy grenades. Since it’s a God Metal duplicating, it has the same universal use option as lerasium. Or to use Brandon’s own terminology, it is pure Investiture 

Brandon Sanderson

So one of the things people have been asking about a lot the nature of Identity and its uses for accessing other people's metalminds, and things like this right. And I hedged a little bit when somebody asked me... *inaudible*...send people into spirals of confusion, so I'm gonna clarify it for now. So, someone comes in and says, we need a blank metalmind, anybody can use that. I'm like, yes but, the reason that it's a hedge is that you need to actually be a feruchemist to access it, right, you can't just hold the blank metalmind not being a feruchemist, even though it's somebody else's investiture that's been blanked, right. So people keep kind of missing this thing. I'm hedging in the sort of, you don't quite have it, I've kind of dodged it, but I worry that it's just going to be confusing.

So the issue is, you need two things from one of these. You need something that makes you a feruchemist, and then you need a metalmind that somebody else has filled with blank investiture, ok. Now if you can get pure investiture, that can be used by anybody, regardless, ok, you need it in pure form though. 
 

<snip>

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

In fact, the Allomancy grenades should work similarly and simply not be noticed because no person is actively tapping an ability. 
 

What about Feruchemical duralumin, you ask? That’s a bit trickier. My theory is that F-Duralumin is used to make harmonium itself into a metalmind. Logically speaking, if any one can Allomantically burn a true God Metal, the same should apply for Feruchemy. After that, one can infer that it is possible to draw out other applicable traits than whatever Harmonium’s base is, which should apply to both Connection and Identity. The former already works with how Shards are always tied to their power and the fact that Lerasium grants Connection. The latter simply supposes that the ability to do Feruchemy is basically coded Investiture in your soul that allows it to do that, kinda like Breaths (which can be stolen by nicrosil Hemalurgy under similar terminology)
 

As such, I propose two procedures: the Tapping Method and the Storage Method.

Tapping Method:

1. Have your duralumin Feruchemist tap Connection from harmonium. Continue until it’s blank. If all goes well, you should be left with pure Investiture, unaligned to any master.

2. With this new blank slate, have the Nicrosil Feruchemist fill the Investiture with their ability. 

3. After sufficiently filling it, have the Nicrosil Feruchemist draw back the pure Investiture.

4. Fill a nicrosil mind with the pure Investiture. That nicrosil is now coded like a God Metal and works for everyone a la lerasium

5. Have other Metalborn fill the nicro godmind with their own powers, saving it for later

 

Storage method

1. Have the Nicrosil Feruchemist store their ability in Harmonium. This tells the Harmnium to copy that ability, like how burning a metalmind changes what the metal does.

2. Have the Duralumin Feruchemist store their Connection. This contaminates the nicrosil ability into thinking it’s always part of the God Metal

3. Have the nicrosil Feruchemist tap the harmonium and store the resulting products in a nicrosil mind

4. Fill the new nicrosil mind with the desired abilities

There may be a few other variations, but the end result is a nicrosilmind that acts like a Godmetal. This can then be filed as full as the nicrosil can store, which would explain why medallions only store a few powers.

If there anything I missed let me know. Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Edit: Thinking about it, I don’t think God Metals work for Feruchemy in the same way lerasium lets anyone use it. It might function as a universal metalmind, but you’d need to be able to give it an attribute in the first place. In other words, have Feruchemy yourself. However, my points about nicrosil and duralumin still stand.

Edit 2: You may not even need duralumin more than once. An exicsor could easily be harmonium tapped of Connection. Once you’ve got that, any nicrosil Feruchemist can use it by storing into Exicsor, tapping, and putting the hacked ability in a nicrosil mind.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Mistchemist16
typos