Kredik Shaw - Hemalurgy on the land?

[CosmereQuestioner]

The first time I read mistborn many years ago it seemed like Kredik Shaw seemed like Hemalurgy on a massive scale (it is described as many spires and towers, some large enough for rooms, others simply thin rods of metal...) but I dismissed this offhand, not knowing Sanderson yet.

Rereading it recently, the thought came back. Why would the Lord Ruler build his palace with so many spires, some being nothing more than metal rods? 

Could this be some sort of power draw or theft from the very land itself? It is somewhat reminiscent of Elantris and the land being used in the aon dor.

Thoughts?

[Yata]

I think Kredik Shaw is just a monito. A place built to remember to everyone TLR and keep his fear hight.

I really doubt there are some Hemalurgy in place for multiple reasons:
- That metal doesn't seem to have Hemalurgic Charge, or the Mistborn would notice it as the Spikes are harder to push/pull into.

- That metal has not way to stop the decay, so it's quite useless.

- The place didn't show strangeness from the CR and the Mists itself has no problem to get there and we know the Mists avoid the Hemalurgy use

I think the place is only a symbol compatible with TLR's religion and in extreme cases a weapon/battlefield perfect for TLR's powers

[CosmereQuestioner]

These are all good points, but not deal breakers.  

For 1 thing, they are massive pieces of metal, so the diminished push/pull wouldn't be as evident, because their size would make them still push/pullable  (I think).

There shouldn't be a need to stop the decay since the "spikes" aren't out of their target sitting around losing charge, but are actively engaged.

The place may or may not have showed strangeness in the CR...i don't think we can't say it didnt. (Unless you have a source that it is perfectly normal in ways a spike wouldn't be in CR?)

And yes, the mists still came to Kedrik Shaw, I need to reread the relevant passages to see how they reacted at times where we see mists around active hemalurgic spikes.

[The One Who Connects]

4 minutes ago, CosmereQuestioner said:

For 1 thing, they are massive pieces of metal, so the diminished push/pull wouldn't be as evident, because their size would make them still push/pullable  (I think).

Doesn't actually work that way. There is no mechanical difference between pushing via Steel/Iron and pushing with your hands. A force is applied, the lighter object gives way.

How Invested something is functions similarly to an electric resistor in this case. More investiture = more resistance = harder to push. The power(Steelpush) goes through the resistor before reaching the object, whether the object is a building or a Spike. A bigger object just has a higher capacity of Investiture it can hold, which means that the largest resistor a fully invested building uses is much stronger than the highest resistor a fully invested spike can use.

Say a standard Hemalurgic Spike holds.. 30 ohms of Investiture. You would have to push with at least 31 ohms of force to have any effect. If you invest a building with the same investiture as a normal spike, then nothing changes, you still need 31+ to do anything. But power theft from the land as you suggest with something as massive as Kredik Shaw implies much more power within the building. Vin(natural) couldn't push on metals within a person, but she could push/pull on Kredik Shaw. This definitively shows that Kredik Shaw has less ambient Investiture stored within it than the Investiture that comprises Soul Interference.

[CosmereQuestioner]

While I agree with some of what you say, there are a couple things we disagree on. For instance a large piece of metal can be seen with the blue lines from further away. It can be affected through push/pull from further away also. Size does matter.

Now I don't know how much metal is in a person, but it is a miniscule amount, it is quite invested, and yes, it is very tough to affect.

However, a HUGE piece of metal with unknown investiture (I suspect not a lot, proportionally: despite the land being large, the actual investiture able to be obtained from it may not be comparable to its size...this isn't Elantris with a much stronger connection to location) should be far more accessible.

[The One Who Connects]

6 minutes ago, CosmereQuestioner said:

For instance a large piece of metal can be seen with the blue lines from further away. It can be affected through push/pull from further away also.

I am fairly certain that both of those, at the very least the second of those is predicated by your own power in Allomancy. You may see the distant lines, but unless you have enough power to affect something from that far away, then those lines mean nothing.

7 minutes ago, CosmereQuestioner said:

Now I don't know how much metal is in a person, but it is a miniscule amount, it is quite invested, and yes, it is very tough to affect.

How much metal is inside the person is irrelevant, as it is uninvested and only serves as a target to push on. My point was that the Investiture of the Human Soul was greater than the Investiture within objects you can push on(like Kredik Shaw), since you can actually push on them. A large portion of the Investiture within a Human Soul can be contained with a single Hemalurgic Spike, so using a giant metal building to take less power than that seemed counterproductive.

[Weltall]

Another point that has to be raised is that your premise is based on a fundamental flaw: Hemalurgy doesn't work on anything without a spiritweb. You can't spike the land because it isn't alive; maybe on Sel you could manage it but we're talking Scadrial. There isn't any 'power' to steal and there's nothing he could do with Hemalurgy to 'add' to the land that he couldn't and didn't already do while he was using the Well of Ascension's power. Also, Rashek wouldn't want to do anything to mess with the Well even if such a thing was possible since keeping it intact is all part of his goal and Hemalurgy and the Well don't interact well.

Oh, and since Hemalurgic spikes lose power when not in contact with fresh blood, even if the spires of Kredik Shaw somehow started out as spikes, they'd be drained to the point of functional uselessness by now.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Weltall

[CosmereQuestioner]

That WAS my point...the Land might HAVE a spirit web...there might BE power to steal.  Just because he hasn't come out and told us that, doesn't mean that the possibility and clues aren't there.  I get it, there's not a lot of supporting evidence.  But a lot of these "oh it couldn't be" I"m hearing are simply assumptions based on incomplete science from the world of Scadrial as we think we know it.

For instance spikes losing power when not in contact with fresh blood...maybe the blood of the land is an underground stream.   Maybe they are currently active, or simply a relic of the past, all power drained, and hence their ease of use with allomancy.

Yes, this theory is not a "clearly there is lots of evidence showing that this is an obvious use of hemalurgy".  But its also a possible explanation for the question (one i haven't yet heard explained away) "Why the heck are there many thin metal poles poked into the ground as part of a castle palace?".

  Also, a side question:

54 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

My point was that the Investiture of the Human Soul was greater than the Investiture within objects you can push on(like Kredik Shaw), since you can actually push on them. A large portion of the Investiture within a Human Soul can be contained with a single Hemalurgic Spike, so using a giant metal building to take less power than that seemed counterproductive.

Are you saying that a feruchemical metal item is just as hard to push on when almost empty as when almost full?  The amount of investiture in it doesn't matter? Because if not, then a giant piece of metal (which can hold more) with very little investiture in it, would be much less affected by this force, as it would be almost empty, compared to its potential, of investiture.

[Weltall]

If Scadrial the planet had power then Khriss would presumably have found that worth commenting on in her AU essay on the system, just like she explicitly pointed out that something like that is apparently happening on Sel.

Now yes, it is vaguely possible that Scadrial has a spiritweb and could be spiked but it's also possible that gravity is controlled by invisible purple snakes that are pulling everything down. Just because something can't be proven wrong doesn't mean it's in any way likely. There's also the 'so what?' factor at work here. Nothing we see Rashek do is outside of the bounds of what we already know his abilities were, with recourse to the Well and later his fullborn power. Kredik Shaw somehow being a Hemalurgic construct does not explain anything that needs explaining and would require that many assumptions with no support be true. And since the place was wrecked by Vin and we're now three hundred years past its destruction there's no continuing relevance or reason to revisit the place.

On top of that, Brandon has said that while it works on animals, Hemalurgy doesn't work on plants so it's extremely unlikely it works on rock. And the Hero of Ages epigraphs reinforce this with Sazed (the guy who is at that point the god who empowers Hemalurgy) remarking that Hemalurgy would be useless without people to steal powers from. Occam's Shardrazor slices and dices.

[The One Who Connects]

1 minute ago, CosmereQuestioner said:

For instance spikes losing power when not in contact with fresh blood...maybe the blood of the land is an underground stream.

Brandon has specifically specified Blood(the human/animal kind) That's probably why "Hemalurgy doesn't really work on trees" is still on the wiki page now that I think about it...

4 minutes ago, CosmereQuestioner said:

Are you saying that a Feruchemical metal item is just as hard to push on when almost empty as when almost full?  The amount of investiture in it doesn't matter? [..] much less affected by this force, as it would be almost empty, compared to its potential, of investiture.

What I've been saying this whole time is the the amount of Investiture is the only thing that matters. If an object has 3 units of Investiture, you need to push with at least 4 to affect it. The size of the object affects how much Investiture it can hold, but "3 units out of a potential 10" and "3 units out of a potential 100" are the same because 3 units = 3 units.
If I fill a Hemalurgic Spike with 10 Units of Investiture and I fill a building with 10 Units, the resistance is still "you need at least 11 Units to affect this object." Imagine the amount of power you push with is a positive number, and the amount of power the object currently has is a negative number.

I could fill a building with 100 units of Investiture, but if it only has 10, it can only resist with that 10. So for your side question, I am saying that a Metalmind filled with 10 units is harder to push on than a near empty Mind with only 1 unit because it has more power to counteract your push. The fact that the empty Mind can have 10 means nothing because it doesn't have a full 10.

[Vissy]

Who knows what the TLR intended? As of the series, they never were hemalurgic spikes. They could have been if TLR fought a colossal Mistborn, but more likely it was just a flamboyant symbol of terror and tyranny.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Rob Lucci

[Farnsworth]

Sel is sentient, so it might have a spiritweb, but since Scadrial isn't I doubt it has one. Also, If there was a giant spiritweb just waiting to have its interesting spiritual aspect taken from it, don't you think people would have done it before? Isn't it much easier to stick a spike in the ground than it is to kill a person for it?