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Preface/Opening Rant: Calamity's Epic Downfall Part I: Transfersion and Impedance I got the term "transfersion" from the "Great Transfersion", the event where Steelheart turned almost every non-living thing in Chicago into steel, thus creating Newcago. I define transfersion as any Epic effect that transmutes the nature of things. Each transfersion ability has an attribute. In the case of Steelheart's "Steel Transfersion", the attribute is steel. Early on in the series, Megan and David described a quirk of Steel Transfersion: One might prefer to believe that this quirk has no implication beyond Steelheart. If that's what you think, that's perfectly okay, but you might want to stop reading this post. Anyway, I theorize that this insulation effect applies to other Transfersion-type powers, and is therefore a general rule for Transfersion: Likeness Limit Rule: Things that are similar in nature to a Transfersion's attribute resist transfersion, and things that fully match the attribute block transfersion completely. The Likeness Limit Rule explains why Gifters can't Gift to other Epics. Gifters are Power Transfersers, and the Likeness Limit hinders them from Transfersing powers to people who already have powers. The Likeness Limit Rule also explains why Megan could only pull shadows of alternate worlds when she wasn't at her full capacity. Just as Steelheart found it more difficult to Transferse steel onto non-steel metal, Megan requires more effort to Transferse a core possibility onto her current core possibility, especially if the two core possibilities are close to each other. Ephemeral Possibility Transfersion (a weaker form of the power that only pulls shadows of possibilities) is much easier, so she relied on that for most of the series. Part II: Transfersion and Weakness Suppose Gifter Bob had the power of enhanced strength, and his weakness is the sound of a chihuahua barking. Bob Gifted his super strength to average Joe, and then Bob went off to terrorize some people in another country. Joe, excited about his new power, decided to impress some girls by lifting a 500 kilogram barbell with just one hand. Suddenly, a woman approached, her pet chihuahua barking madly in her bag. According to David's Large Dispersal Rule ("An Epic's weakness has less and less influence on their powers the farther you get from the Epic's presence"), Bob is too far away for his super strength to be affected by that particular chihuahua who's barking at Joe. But what of Joe? Will the power Gifted to him remain? Will it fade away? Will Joe have a sudden urge to kill the dog with the barbell? Does Bob's weakness have any effect on Joe at all? Now let us look at an example from the books. Calamity's weakness can be triggered by someone who conquered their fear in order to save others. A person that Calamity has Gifted experiences this weird compulsive urge to lose all empathy, be utterly selfish, and be absolutely terrified of Epic Downfall every time they use their Gifted power, and this feeling vanishes once they start freeing themselves from their Gifter. Despite Larcener's sneering and self-rationalization, there has to be a connection there. Does this mean that the darkness is part of Gifting in general? Obviously not, otherwise the Reckoners would have felt it when they used Prof's powers. Rather, the darkness was part of Calamity's Gifting. Somehow, the power being Gifted knows its owner's weakness, and fears that weakness. Downfall Avoidance Rule: When a sentient being is Transfersed by an Epic, the power becomes aware of the concept of ownership and will defer to a "true owner" by actively avoiding his weakness. So in the above example, Joe would definitely be affected by the chihuahua. Once I came to that conclusion, it was surprisingly easy to find evidence in support of it, not just from Gifters but also from other Transfersers of humans as well. For example, sneezing allowed David to grow back from being shrunk by Loophole. The shrinking transfersion fled him the moment he manifested Loophole's weakness. Note that Loophole's Downfall is supposed to be triggered by her own sneezing, not anyone else's, but somehow the power was still repulsed by sneezing even when it was from the target of transfersion (i.e. David). In the first book, there were two instances where David unexpectedly couldn't use the tensor powers properly. In both cases, he experienced a moment of failure before using the powers. In the first scene, David must have felt like a failure many times over: In his mind, he failed to bring Megan to safety, failed to hide from Enforcement, and failed to keep intact his only means of escape. Even though he really was capable of using the powers without the gloves, his feeling of failure triggered the Downfall Avoidance Rule, so the powers fled him. In the second scene, his failure to hit the enemy led to Cody being hurt, and then he failed to take down the enemy with his second shot, but this at least distracted the enemy from finishing Cody off. David was able to use the tensor, but there was resistance. The power was close to leaving him. There are still some open questions. I don't know if the Downfall Avoidance Rule had anything to do with the Diggers going crazy, because we don't know what Digzone's weakness was. I also don't know why the rule no longer applied to Megan after she started "owning" her power (perhaps because the power has accepted her as its true owner?). (Update: The open questions above have mostly been answered by a deeper analysis of power ownership, as I discussed here.) Part III: Transfersion and Death When Steelheart died in the first book, we saw that part of his corpse turned to steel: We've only seen a few other "odd" deaths in the series, but all of those had been of Transfersers. This made me think that Prof was onto something, and that this was another general rule that governed all Transfersers: Death Trigger Rule: A Transfersion effect happens at some point after a Transferser's death, unhindered by the Transferser's weakness. The obvious example of this aside from Steelheart is Megan. Her power of Possibility Transfersion pulls the possibility of a living Megan every time she dies, in accordance to the Death Trigger Rule. "Death Trigger" might remind you of Deathpoint, who was a Transferser who could turn people's flesh into ashes. When Deathpoint died, he didn't turn to ash, so that ironically looks like a violation of the Death Trigger Rule at first glance. But remember that Deathpoint had a second ability, the one that he was about to use on Steelheart before Blain Charleston shot him. Perhaps this second ability is the one that manifested when he died. I'm speculating that this ability's attribute is death itself (instead of ash, as in his first ability); think Avada Kedavra from the Harry Potter series. I'm not sure if such a power could have killed Steelheart, but it would mean that Deathpoint's corpse was lethal to touch. Good thing his corpse was Transfersed into harmless steel moments later. How about Gifters? Well, fortunately we've already seen a Gifter die (well, "close enough"). Calamity is the ultimate Gifter, the one who Gifted all of the Epics on David's core possibility. Soon after our heroes returned from defeating Calamity, they learned that Mizzy has become an Epic. How interesting! But I don't think it's likely that Calamity chose to Gift someone just as he was facing opponents (I mean, priorities...). I think Mizzy became an Epic after Calamity was defeated, that Calamity's Gifting power was Death Triggered. And since the Death Trigger effect is immune to the Epic Downfall (since the Epic already...fell), it must also be immune to Downfall Avoidance. This means that anyone Gifted by Calamity's Death Trigger would not have felt the darkness, and would not have experienced the Rending. This is consistent with the ending scene. When Knighthawk informed Megan about Mizzy turning Epic, there was never any indication that Mizzy went on a homicidal rampage, something that Knighthawk wouldn't have forgotten to mention. They didn't seem worried at all about the news. It stands to reason that Mizzy fully owned her powers the moment they were Gifted to her. Edit: Removed weak speculation about Prof and motivators. Reworded some things for clarity.