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Steeldancer

Hoid. Does he have more unkeyed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid has access to lots of different things, so, yes he does.

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. But, so there are some other tricks with this as well that don't make it...so anyway, you've got a couple of things that can go on. So you've got a blank metalmind, right, with nothing. You need either investiture, to be able...like you need to be the right type. There are ways to access that if you are completely blank also, if you were a blank slate, but that is still...kind of hard. It's even harder if you are blank, and the metalmind is not blank, but that's not what they're doing in Mistborn right now. You are tapping investiture, gaining the ability of feruchemy and then you are drawing out a blank metalmind, ok. That's the one you need to be...and everything else I'm hedging on intentionally, and I'm worried I hedged in a way that made it sound confusing, ok. So you know now what they're doing. You know that there are other things possible. But I don't want you to think that you have the explanations for how all those things happen, ok.

Questioner

So nicrosil.  Wax couldn’t use a blank gold metalmind because he’s not a gold ferring, why can he use a blank nicrosil metalmind?

Brandon Sanderson

So this will all come out eventually but the idea is there are certain ways to connect yourself to magic, to hack the magic and make it think you have the Spiritual DNA that you don’t actually have.  And this is one of the ways.

Questioner

So then the people who made this medallion have this thing that a regular nicrosil Ferring couldn’t--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you’re picking up on it. We’ll dig deeper into it as the series progresses.

Brandon Sanderson

For the recording and for the sake of you, Peter and I have a big document that talks about all these mechanics [of blank identity and metalminds]. It's entirely possible that when I'm actually sitting down and building future Mistborn, like 1980s technology, that I'm like "Ahh some of this needs tweaking". So what's not expressly in the books, that I'm telling you guys, has not...I mean it's like 90% canon but it's possible that I'm like "Ahh this is just not going to work" because when we get to the actual plotting of that and future Mistborn, science fiction Mistborn, I'm going to have to look at that and decide, how is the power ratio, right, am I breaking the economy by doing these things. So things that I just have instincts on right now, I haven't worked out the economics of. 

Questioner

So that'll come later.

Brandon Sanderson

That'll come later in the series, so I'm just giving myself some wiggle room on some of these things, but that's how I have it in my head right now.

Questioner

We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like Lopen and Rysn. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.

Questioner

And if they were storing Identity instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.

Kurkistan

Could an Augur Compound Health out of a goldmind if its proper owner messed with Identity in the right way?

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible

Paleo

Then we also talked about, theorized about unkeyed metalminds - that is Identity-less ones that anybody can that has the power can tap.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Paleo

We also were wondering is it like, we compared it to cryptography and encryption, stuff like that. Is it just that like, your Identity is sort of this unique encryption key.

Brandon Sanderson

And you need a key to you getting it. That's a valid line of theorizing. It is not exactly but it's close enough to be a good model.

Paleo

And would an unkeyed metalmind theoretically be capable of storing a little more than a keyed one.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, because of yeah.

Paleo

Because it has to... Is it inherent to the Investiture or is it like an extra bit?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that, mostly because I haven't considered that yet.