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In The Lost Metal, we see that Trellium spikes are used by Set Members to sidestep being Controlled by Harmony, but they are still able to be controlled by Autonomy. We also see that Allomancers with Trellium spikes are still able to use Allomancy, which is powered by utilizing a Connection to Preservation to draw on Preservation's Investiture (or possibly Ruin's, if the power is granted by a Hemalurgic spike). This left me confused, since an individual would need a Connection to Harmony in order to utilize their powers, but that leaves them open to influence and even outright control if they bear more than three Hemalurgic spikes. Trellium must then, I figure, rewrite one's Connection, transferring it from whatever Shard they were Connected to before and Connecting them instead to Autonomy since an individual must be Connected to something. The Set's Allomantic powers are probably powered entirely by Autonomy's Investiture, since Allomancy would still need a Shard to fuel them, and those pierced by Trellium wouldn't be Connected to Harmony anymore, and thus wouldn't be able to draw on its Investiture. I bet that if this is the case, Trellium-other Godmetal alloy would rewrite one's Connection to any Shard that the Trellium was alloyed with, similar to how Lerasium can grant a Connection to and powers from any shard when alloyed with that Shard's metal.

I hadn't though of this till just now, but could a Steel Inquisitor or other Hemalurgist with four or more spikes avoid being controlled by others by storing their ability to form Connections to others via Feruchemical duralumin? After all, when Vin controls the Koloss she seems to do so by forging Connections to them. But if those Connections never formed in the first place, she wouldn't have been able to control them.

I realized that Kaladin doesn’t use adhesion the same way that Dalinar does. Is this because of his radiant order, or because he doesn’t want to make a Connection with others in fear of losing them?

Feruchemists can tap their attributes to gain greater abilities than would humanly be possible. So, since a Connector Ferring can increase their friendships with others, then if a Connector Ferring were to tap enough Connection while being near someone else, would that individual grow to like them more than would be natural? Would they get obsessed with the Ferring or "like" them to a zealous degree? And would the feelings of friendship stay after the Ferring had stopped tapping Connection, or would the formed Connections remain in place? Sounds somewhat creepy, actually. And that's coming from a Hemalurgic enthusiast.

I had a thought about Hemalurgy. What if you Hemalurgically transferred the Healing power of a Bloodmaker back to themselves, and they use previously stored health to repair the damage. After that, you give the spike to another individual. Since the Hemalurgic spike contains a portion of the original Bloodmaker's spiritweb, which includes some of their Identity and Connection, would both Bloodmakers have a kind of spiritual Bond between them? It would be pretty interesting to see if they could use some form of telepathy, or at least have some kind of awareness of each other. This doesn't actually seem that unreasonable to me, as we see something like this in SA. RoW spoiler. It would be pretty cool to see Wax and Wayne do this, as they would be an even more powerful duo than before, and I could totally envision Wayne saying to Wax, "look mate, just poke me with the needle real quick like, and then you can grow fingers back too!" or something.

Hi, I'm probably way late to this discussion and probably someone else has done a discussion about this with more research done. But I don't follow these forums much so almost all of this comes from my crackpot brain and hasn't been contrasted with information in other posts over here. [Full spoilers ahead] . . . . . . . . . I recently finished The Lost Metal and my mind was blown more than the ship that carried the bomb. I've been thinking a lot about what Moonlight (which after watching reactions I finally realized that she was Shai) did to become an Elantrian. I've heard some thoughts about it, but none really spoke about the same things as I was thinking, so here goes. At first I didn't think that it was Shai because it felt strange that she would only have only three stamps (one of them an Essence Mark), but after some considering, it now makes sense. The stamps that she has in Scadrial are not only Universal Stamps as she called them, they are "unsealed" stamps, in the sense that they can be used OUTSIDE of Sel, which in itself is pretty incredible. Now, how can these stamps be "unsealed"? I heard a thought in the Shardcast about Offworlders in TLM that suggested that the reason Shai chose Moonlight as her codename was that she had recovered the Moon Scepter at some point. My theory is that she did find it, and discovered the method to create stamps that are disConnected from Sel, and she also developed (probably by herself) the method to create the Universal Stamps, which can be used on multiple objets to obtain the same (or similar) effect, no matter the object or surface that is stamped, as long as the change would be feasible. These Universal and "unsealed" Stamps are sure to take a lot of time to develop and create, and their power is probably linked to the amount of purified Investiture is applied when used, and that's why the doors created with those stamps last for a few seconds, as they would need more investiture to make that change last longer, or even be permanent. Now, addressing the Essence Mark, this one must also have been "unsealed" and, by its complexity, must have taken years or even decades to create (and it was tested for the first time here so what we can observe from it possibly doesn't extrapolate, but anyways), so now I had my justification for why Shai had so few Stamps. I also in my minimal investigation for this theory came to hear about the WoB asking if an Essence Mark could turn someone into an Elantrian and how it would need a lot of Investiture to do something like that. So, after this I started to think with more Detail about the specifics of Soul forgery, and how it works. My conclusion is that what the Essence Mark does is change your Cognitive Self, possibly altering your Spiritweb, and with the ink it opens the body to receive a small amount of Dor that makes the change in the physical body (similarly to how the Healing via surgebinding works, and that's probably how feruchemical gold healing works as well, I don't know if that's confirmed somewhere). Now this change in the Cognitive Self would need Investiture to be sustained due to the changing nature of living beings, and that's why the soulstamps need to be reapplied every day, and it's also why, in some cases, when applied during a very long period of time, it may not be necessary to stamp anymore to maintain the changes, since the Cognitive Self would have been kept in that state for a long enough time so as to make the individual being stamped to have assimilated the changes in their Spiritweb, and thus their Cognitive Self would become the altered one. Now with this understanding of Soul forgery, what Shai did was turn herself into an Elantrian, for which she needed to use a whole jar of purified Investiture to complete the change, but since she wasn't in Sel, she wasn't getting more Investiture, in fact, she was losing it due to the fact that Elantrian bodies seem to use Dor to function and channel it in them, that's why she made an Aon in the floor. My theory is that that Aon was designed with a similar process as the "unsealed" stamps, so as to be able to use Aons outside of Sel, and that Aon could have, in my opinion, one function out of these: either it Connected the Elendel Basin to Elantris and thus created an artificial flow of Dor into Scadrial or it Connected the innate Dor that Shai has as an Elantrian to the Elendel Basin, and tricked it so as to be able to use Scadrial's environmental Investiture to function, or maybe it Tricked Shai's Dor as an Elantrian to think that Elendel Basin was part of Elantris, or maybe something else that I couldn't even think about. Either way, the implications of what that Aon could do are MASSIVE, especially for other Elantrians who may be interested in interplanetary travels. Now for the last thing about this situation, Shai is probably now stuck as an Elantrian with that personality because, as I said earlier, Elantrians naturally channel Investiture constantly to function, so part of that Investiture is fueling the Stamp that maintains the changes, and probably the only way to turn her back is, as it was suggested in the Shardcast I mentioned before, to leech her with a Chromium allomancer or any other type of Investiture absorption or deletion, (such as a Larkin, for example). So that's my theory about that, I'll accept any thoughts about it since, as I said, I've barely researched anything about this topic, so any inconsistencies between this theory and the cannon or WoB cannon you guys can point out to me I would appreciate. Last thought: RIP Wayne, The Statue in your honor couldn't be more perfect, you made me cry, and laugh.

I was thinking, the explosion that killed Wayne was a combination of Harmony Investiture and Autonomy Investiture. I think that his body and maybe even his soul was saturated with the two Investitures. I think that gave him a Connection to both possibly granting him the ability to help Harmony and Autonomy make contact. I can see this being used in a possible Era 3 or beyond.

So I have a theory that’s been cooking recently in my mind, in how szeth will become odiums champion in book 5 So in RoW we know that connections can be used to send visions/ torture people. We also know that in order to do this the connection needs to be significant. Well taravangian and szeth have a distinct, direct connection to each other. And it would follow a sort of theme that’s in the books. That taravangian is always manipulating szeth, even when szeth thinks he’s making his own choice. not only that but taravangian has 10 days to find a capable champion. And I’m sorry every fused but none of you, because their skill seems to be deteriorating. Significantly. also how tragic would it be to have szeths flashbacks of an amazing childhood and his exile, being contrasted with his fall to the enemy side, and possibly killing Dalinar. Possibly in white? the beginning of the first half mirroring the end of the first half. szeth son-neturo wore white the day he was to kill a king. This time of urithiru. anyways yalls thoughts theorizing? evidence? For or against?

I recall reading in the Mistborn books that Rashek was manipulated over time by Ruin, causing him to commit worse and worse atrocities. However, he didn't have any Hemalurgic spikes to allow for manipulation, and he didn't seem to be completely unstable, so that made me think about how he could be manipulated by Ruin then. It is my theory then, that Ruin was able to manipulate him because Rashek needed to burn large amounts of Atium to stay alive, Connecting him to Ruin by suffusing himself with the Shard's essence. That's my idea, anyway.

When a person uses Connection manipulation to gain access to a new language, they forget that language once they stop using that Connection. But if someone were to do this over an extended period of time, could they eventually learn the language, since they would have memories of speaking and understanding it?

So, many magics in the cosmere, feruchemy among them, require touch to use them. Feruchemists have to be in physical contact with their metalminds in order to store or tap. Or so we've seen. Contact is required, yes, but why does it need to be physical contact? This is the cosmere, we have three realms to work on. I think that the reason touch is required is cause it forms a basic Connection needed to access the magic. But if you could Connect in other ways, maybe touch isn't even required. I think that if you could increase your Connection to a metalmind, say through the use of tapping feruchemical duralumin, you could access that metalmind without touching it. With a weak Connection, you might have to see that metal but with a strong Connection you might be able to access it from anywhere (as long as you stored enough connection to it beforehand) And I don't think it stops with Feruchemy either. I think you could find a way to make this work with allomancy as well, though that may be trickier since allomancy involves not just touch but the metal being inside you. If Connection isn't enough here, you might have to do some tricky stuff with aluminum and Identity as well. I'm not sure exactly how this would work, but I'm sure there's a way. Now, why is this significant? Well there's obvious boons of having easier access to your magic, and not having to carry as much metal on your person when facing a coinshot/lurcher. But there are a few things I want to highlight - 1) A!Aluminum. Now, I don't really see any particular advantage to being able to burn aluminum from afar. No, what I'm interested in here is Aluminum's effect. See, aluminum seems to work on a similar principal to burning metals; if you burn aluminum, all allomantically viable metals in you disappear, even ones you aren't burning. So if there's some piece of metal you want gone, maybe you could tap Connection to it, burn aluminum, and make it disappear. - 2) Ettmetal. Ettmetal is a godmetal, which tend to have powerful effects, but sadly it's a lot like caesium so you're gonna have a bad time touching it, and don't even think about swallowing it unless you like exploding. But with this trick, you wouldn't have to. So what do you think? Does this seem feasible? What are some other applications of this trick?

How would you try to fix the Slave-Form Parshmen with their broken Identity and Connection, without the Everstorm or releasing Ba-Ado-Misram? Anything besides Divine Intervention goes. I'm curious.

I remember that once you give up the power of a Shard, you become a Sliver and your soul is expanded. So would this mean you could handle more Bonds, or maybe attract more Spren to you? I read a few WOB's and one of them said that it was technically possible for multiple Spren to Bond with a human, though they wouldn't like it. Perhaps because the average soul can only properly support a single Nahel Bond and it would be difficult for two Bonds to advance to any meaningful degree, thus leaving the Spren unable to gain more sapience. And perhaps a Sliver could properly support more Bonds, thus preventing their spiritweb from getting clogged up by the number of deep spiritual Bonds. And yeah I know that it's also because of potentially conflicting Oaths but not all of them are going to conflict, I'd think that one could easily uphold the Oaths of both a Windrunner and a Willshaper with minimal difficulty.

So, the Order of Bondsmiths have access to the Surges Tension (which they share with the Stonewards) and Adhesion (shared with the Windrunners. And yet, they have a unique ability to manipulate Connection which no other order possesses. It does not seem to have its source in either of the two aforementioned Bondsmith Surges, as neither of the other Orders which have those Surges have this extra ability. It is a common theme in some cosmere magic systems that two parts together create not just the sum of the two parts but an additional effect, as Kriss mentions in her essay on Compounding. However, this additional effect wouldn't yet seem to be present in any other Radiant order, and so I doubt this theory as well. It would however make sense if this extra power is granted by the fact that the three Bondsmith spren are exceptionally powerful, so it could be assumed that this additional ability was granted through them. It makes sense the the additional power is that of Connection: although said power is generally unrelated to the three greater spren (I believe, but there may be logic I didn't think of for this), Connection is certainly of the Bondsmiths. What are your opinions on this reasoning? If you agree with it, then how do you think the Stormfather, the Nightwatcher and the Sibling are able to grant this ability? How is the Nightwatcher, being only of Cultivation, able to grant this kind of bond/ability to a Knight Radiant? (We know because of Lift that Cultivation can force her way into Radiant bonds, but it seems she only started this recently, so how could the Nightwatcher bond a Bondsmith?) If you disagree, then where do you think this Connection ability comes from?

Apparently, Hoid is now stuck on Roshar due to his Bond with Design. But if he is a Feruchemist, he could overcome this by storing his Lightweaving and Soulcasting abilities inside a nicrosil metalmind, then compounding those powers, which would replace Honor’s investiture with Preservation’s, thus allowing him to leave. Well, that and he’d also need to break his Bond with Design, but that would be comparatively simple (if somewhat selfish and traitorous).

For awhile, I've wondered how Hemalurgy's inner mechanics that deal with the original Intent of the parasitized Investiture. After all, it takes pieces of other Investiture, with their Intents, such as Preservations, but it somehow Connects you to Ruin more, despite you taking Investiture with a different Intent. I'm now thinking along the lines that when you take a piece of Investiture via Hemalurgy, it converts the Intent of the Investiture taken to Ruin's, at least until the Investiture leaks out and returns to the Spiritual Realm. This would explain how it Connects you to Ruin. I also think that it is possible for this to be done since we've seen another thing do this on screen. This probably isn't a huge deal, but the whole idea that Hemalurgy somehow didn't involve any of Ruin's own Investiture bugged me. Of course, this may be incorrect, but it makes the most sense to me, so this will be my head cannon until some other piece of information tells me otherwise (which I will be open to, if someone else has any ideas).

Can somebody remind me how Sazed was able to pick up Ruin again? I don't remember his personality or actions having much connection to Ruin, and usually your personality has to be related to a Shard's Intent before you can pick it up, so how could he take both Preservation and Ruin? He certainly seemed to embody Preservation as a Keeper.

Since future sight is reading the Connections of spiritwebs, could you prevent someone from seeing your future by removing or hiding your Connections? Would this make you undetectable to Shards and other beings who ‘see’ primarily through the spiritual realm? If completely removing all of your Connections isn’t a viable option, could you simply use Feruchemical Duralumin to prevent yourself from making any new ones? If you were to perform an action while Feruchemically storing your Connection, would someone who could see into your past, such as by burning Malatium, be unable to witness you taking that action?

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Identity and Connection have a closer relation to one another than other attributes? Hemalurgic duralumin is the only non-godmetal to take more than one attribute, which are Identity and Connection. Slaveform is created when a Singer has no Connection or Identity, and both the Connection and Identity of Singers was taken when Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured. Bonds made with Spren are related not just to Connection, but also Identity. These two attributes seem to be very, very closely related, and affecting one seems to usually have some affect on the other. Why is that? Is Identity formed by what Connections you have? Are they attached to the same part of the Spiritweb, explaining why Hemalurgic duralumin can take both? I'd love it if someone could please give me their take on this, and confirm that I'm not some crazed lunatic jumping at something with no relevance.

It is my current understanding that a Bond is essentially a Connection between to entities that also utilizes Identity somehow. So, if you were to spike someone Hemalurgically with a duralumin spike, split the spike into two pieces, then implant a half in two different people, would the two people have a Bond since they now have a shared Connection and at least some overlapping Identity?

A Radiant increases their power by increasing the strength of their Bond with their Spren, which is really just a very strong Connection. If a Radiant who swore the first oath were to tap large amounts of Connection from a Duraluminmind, could they bypass the need to swear more oaths in order to increase their power? Or maybe even if you couldn’t bypass the need to make more oaths, could you maybe be able to speed up the process of swearing more oaths?

If a Radiant stored their connection to their spren in an unlocked duraluminmind, could someone else pick up the metalmind and become a Surgebinder or is that not how F-Duralumin works?

Regardless of how the connection is created, I believe that human to human telepathy is possible when it is strengthened. Thoughts?

For instance, we see that Allomancers will have their powers weaken over generations; their Connection to Preservation, or at least their ability to create a Connection to Preservation, weakening. Is this because Spiritwebs seek to find a state where they are made up of the least investiture possible? In real life, all things seem to want to take the most direct and most energy efficient route to a desired goal or end result. Is this what’s going on with the Spiritwebs that have powers innately tied to them, perhaps?

Let’s say a Bondsmith were to change the Connection of someone temporarily. Then that person conceived a child during that temporary period where their Connection was changed. Would the child inherit those artificial Connections, or at least what would normally be inherited from them, as if they were natural? Would they be permanent for the child?