Spiking the wrong person

[+ShardlessVessel]

Suppose you went to Nalthis with a steel dagger and knowledge of Hemalurgy. You find a victim and stab them through the heart right in the Coinshot nerve to steal from them.

What happens? Does the spiking fail and leave the dagger uncharged, or does it become a charged spike that grants no powers?

[Quantus]

You have to have the Intent of Hemalurgy to pierce the realms and interact with the Spriitweb.  But past that you can absolutely steal something unintended by missing the Bind Point, etc, which is where the distasteful experimentation comes in.  You can make it easier, for example, by using a specific metal that targets the type/wavelength of you want to steal in addition to the Bind Point factors, but with an Atium spike it's all about the Bind Point and the Intent. 

 

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Questioner

My question was about Hemalurgy. There was a disagreement on the last Shardcast. When spiking a Mistborn to charge a Hemalurgic spike, does it matter how the Mistborn is killed or is what power is stolen based only on the metal?

Brandon Sanderson

So you want to place the spike in a specific place.

Questioner

In the donor. In the recipient, not the donor.

Brandon Sanderson

In the recipient. And you want to use the specific metal and so basically if you aren't precise about how you spike, you risk taking the wrong thing within the same family. Some of those, that's not as big a deal, but for some it is kind of a big deal. And so you want to be very precise, you'll get something, but if you're not placing the spike in the right place and going into the right place, then you risk it.

Questioner

You risk stealing the wrong thing.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Now if you're going off of somebody who's not a Mistborn, you can be a little more flexible, but you still have the danger that you're not going to end up stealing the power, you're going to steal something else. So, precision is advisable, how about that?

Questioner

Yeah. Because the question was kind of specifically about, like, we know that atium spikes can kill-- can steal pretty much any power.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. You want to be super precise with your atium spike.

Questioner

So, part of the question was like, exactly, if you just killed a Mistborn, you stab a Mistborn in the heart with an atium spike, and you're not placing it immediately--

Brandon Sanderson

What do you end up with? You are rolling the dice, let's say. Not as big a roll of the dice as you might think, but you still are. You might not get what you want.

Questioner

And then when you place the spike on the recipient, if you like tore that spike out again and put it in someone else, you're not going to be able to get more than one power out of it?

Brandon Sanderson

No. No, and if you place the spike in the wrong place, then you're going to end up with interference and things like this where the spike might just not work the way you want it to. Taking a spike and putting it in the wrong place in someone is not going to make them have a different power, in other words.

Idaho Falls signing (Dec. 29, 2018)

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[+ShardlessVessel]

2 hours ago, Quantus said:

You have to have the Intent of Hemalurgy to pierce the realms and interact with the Spriitweb.  But past that you can absolutely steal something unintended by missing the Bind Point, etc, which is where the distasteful experimentation comes in.  You can make it easier, for example, by using a specific metal that targets the type/wavelength of you want to steal in addition to the Bind Point factors, but with an Atium spike it's all about the Bind Point and the Intent.

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I thought. What I meant is: what if you try to steal something that the victim doesn't have?

If you used steel to spike a victim, you would be stealing Physical Allomancy. But what if the person you stab with a steel spike doesn't have Allomancy at all?

I wonder what would happen. I'm not sure if we have definitive information, but I want to see what the community thinks. I'm divided on whether the spike rips anything or not - you're stabbing the right place with the right metal, but you have the wrong person. Is it enough to charge a useless spike, or does it entirely fail?

[Quantus]

6 minutes ago, ShardlessVessel said:

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I thought. What I meant is: what if you try to steal something that the victim doesn't have?

If you used steel to spike a victim, you would be stealing Physical Allomancy. But what if the person you stab with a steel spike doesn't have Allomancy at all?

I wonder what would happen. I'm not sure if we have definitive information, but I want to see what the community thinks. I'm divided on whether the spike rips anything or not - you're stabbing the right place with the right metal, but you have the wrong person. Is it enough to charge a useless spike, or does it entirely fail?

Same thing, I think.  If you attempt to spike something out of a person that doesnt exist, it's the same as hitting the "incorrect" Bind Point and steal something unexpected in the same general "sector" of the spiritweb circuitry.  Allomancy, for example, functions via a Connection to Preservation, so if the person had another similar Power Connection to some other shard it might steal that instead (assuming the metal used is compatible and all that).  Essentially it will (most likely) successfully rip off some chunk of Spiritweb and take an Investiture Charge, but that chunk may or may not be Functional once it's implanted in a Donor.  Or it might be functional but require some specific unknown Bind point to be implanted successfully, making it useless for any practical purposes.  

The analogy for Hemalurgy is that you are ripping off chunks of a Circuit board and splicing it into some other one.  The Ripping is easy and pretty reliable, but the ability to rip the chunk in the right places and splice it back in gets more complicated and can fail.