Overtaxed Spiritwebs and Hemalurgy

[Trusk'our]

In the Ars Arcanum for TLM, it mentions that the reason Steel Inquisitors got exhausted more quickly than normal people was because their Spiritwebs were unreasonably burdened by their large number of Hemalurgic spikes.

I was wondering if perhaps bronze Feruchemy could help overcome this, particularly with Compounding, since it provides all the benefits of a good night's sleep.

Also, could there be more problems with having too many Hemalurgic spikes, such as maybe a reduced healing rate (from Spiritweb deterioration)? Brandon Sanderson mentioned that some Inquisitors "burn up" more quickly than others depending on their specific power set.

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/247/#e5532

Chaos (paraphrased)

How long is the lifespan of an Inquisitor?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It depends on the powers they're given. Some burn up quickly, and others are extended. In general though they do tend to have slightly longer lives. Since Marsh has the missing bag of atium he's going to be around for a while.

Perhaps those with more spikes age a bit faster due to their Spiritwebs being worn down? This also makes me wonder if it's the number of spikes that wears one down (due to more holes being in the Spiritweb) or if it's the total Investiture of the spikes; it would be kind of weird if more Investiture in the spikes led to a greatly reduced lifespan, since we've seen elsewhere in the Cosmere than more Investiture means a greater lifespan.

[StanLemon]

Considering Inquisitor's are described as aging slowly and living longer, Spikes do no cause faster aging. It's more likely that those that 'burn up' are simply overtaxing their bodies like someone who does too much labor breaks down their body. Also, though it might be an effect of Pewter Allomancy boosted by Hemalurgy, Kar the Inquisitor that Vin harmed and was fully healed by the time she next saw him only hours later could not have had Feruchemical Gold so he clearly had a higher healing rate than a normal person rather than a reduced rate

[Trusk'our]

7 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Considering Inquisitor's are described as aging slowly and living longer, Spikes do no cause faster aging. It's more likely that those that 'burn up' are simply overtaxing their bodies like someone who does too much labor breaks down their body.

Good thought. That would make sense; spikes don't directly casue aging per se, but they could potentially cause someone to die more quickly by pushing their body until it gives out.

7 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Also, though it might be an effect of Pewter Allomancy boosted by Hemalurgy, Kar the Inquisitor that Vin harmed and was fully healed by the time she next saw him only hours later could not have had Feruchemical Gold so he clearly had a higher healing rate than a normal person rather than a reduced rate

How do we know that it couldn't be F-gold? I'm not saying that this idea is bunk (I mean, we saw Tarson heal from a bullet wound in like two days, even if he was a A-pewter Savant), it does has some merit, seeing as how the Inquisitors aren't really human anymore, but couldn't Kar have just tapped health very slowly to conserve his Feruchemical reserves?

After all, a usable amount of health in combat is hard to gather (Wayne spent two weeks in bed to gather enough health to survive a few bullets) and Inquisitors engage in battle frequently I'd assume, so using it as efficiently as possible seems like something they'd be used to.

[alder24]

8 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Also, though it might be an effect of Pewter Allomancy boosted by Hemalurgy, Kar the Inquisitor that Vin harmed and was fully healed by the time she next saw him only hours later could not have had Feruchemical Gold so he clearly had a higher healing rate than a normal person rather than a reduced rate

Kar for sure had to have healing. Or he was a Mistborn before (unlikely). TFE: 

Quote

Vin burned atium, then whipped her hands from beneath her cloak, tossing a double handful of arrowheads into the air. She flared steel, Pushing powerfully against the rings of metal wrapped loosely around the arrowheads’ broken hafts. The missiles shot forward, ripping across the room. The lead Inquisitor chuckled, raising a hand and Pushing disdainfully against the missiles.
His Push ripped the unattached rings free from the hafts, shooting the bits of metal backward. The arrowheads themselves, however, continued forward—no longer Pushed from behind, but still carried by a deadly momentum.
The Inquisitor opened his mouth in surprise as two dozen arrowheads struck him. Several punched completely through his flesh, continuing on to snap against the stone wall behind him. Several others struck his companion in the legs.

[...]

The Inquisitor stopped, confused. To his “eyes” he would see nothing but a mess of blue lines—each one leading to a speck of metal. With so many sources of metal concentrated in one place, the lines would be virtually blinding.
The Inquisitor spun, angry, as Vin dashed past him. He Pushed against the dust, blowing it away, but as he did so, Vin whipped out a glass dagger and flipped it toward him. In the confusing mess of blue lines and atium shadows, he missed noticing the dagger, and it took him square in the thigh. He fell, cursing in a crackly voice.

[...]

Just as she was spinning to dash away, however, rough hands grabbed her from behind. She cursed, struggling as she glanced down at the Inquisitor’s bloodied leg. Even with pewter, he shouldn’t have been able to walk on it. She tried to twist away, but the Inquisitor had her in a powerful grasp.

[...]

The Inquisitor pulled her up, twisting her and easily holding her. He smiled with an evil grin, his face pocked with scars. Scars that looked like...
Arrowhead wounds, she thought with shock. But...healed already? How can it be?

[...]

The scarred Inquisitor stepped forward. “Lord Ruler, we wish to petition that leadership of your Ministry be taken from these...men and granted to the Inquisitors instead.”
“We have discussed this,” the Lord Ruler said. “You and your brothers are needed for more important tasks. You are too valuable to waste on simple administration.”
“But,” the Inquisitor said, “by allowing common men to rule your Ministry, you have unwittingly allowed corruption and vice to enter the very heart of your holy palace!”
“Idle claims!” Tevidian spat. “You say such things often, Kar, but you never of fer any proof.”

One Inquisitor was able to stand up and walk with a severe thigh wound, even though Vin was sure that even with pewter he wouldn't be able to walk - he had gold healing (he wasn't a Mistborn, his Malatium shadow was a merchant). The second one, Kar, who got wounded with arrowheads, was healed only several hours later. Pewter can't heal that fast, even when doubled. This has to be F-gold. But Kar couldn't be a Mistborn, he was a soldier before, and Mistborn don't become soldiers. So he had to have F-gold healing. 

Quote

"You’ll have little success against Kar, child. He was a soldier, many years ago. He knows how to hold a person so that they can’t break his grip, no matter how strong they may be.”

 

Spoiler

17th Shard

Very careful roleplayers have counted the numbers of Inquisitors appearing in the novels and they claim there must have been 25 if Vin and Elend killed two Inquisitors between Mistborn 2 and Mistborn 3. Could you clarify the numbers of Inquisitors there were? They've literally counted.

Brandon Sanderson

They literally, yeah…No, I mean, I've got it written down somewhere. I'm now so separated from this book. I had always imagined there being around three dozen Inquisitors at any given time.

17th Shard

Oh, okay, so quite a bit more than 20.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. Well the thing you've gotta remember is that, with the powers they're given, they're pretty much immune to disease and things like that, particularly after they've gained their healing spike.

17th Shard

Right. Is that common to all Inquisitors?

Brandon Sanderson

It does not come to all. It comes to almost all. That's a pretty common one, but being an Inquisitor does not mean you get it. I think it mentions in the books that there's one spike that they all get, but I can't remember what it is.

17th Shard

I would imagine that would…well, okay, a steel spike so they could see.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. Yeah, obvious, but the thing is you've gotta have a Keeper to be able give a healing spike. The ones alive now pretty much all have healing spikes, but there were times throughout history when he needed a new Inquisitor and he didn't have a Keeper (a Feruchemist) handy. He could make an Inquisitor without that. That is not what's keeping them alive from the spikes being driven through their bodies.

17th Shard

So the linchpin spike is not always the same type of spike.

Brandon Sanderson

It doesn't have to be. The linchpin spike is just, when you're putting that many spikes together into somebody it needs a spike to coordinate them all. That is part of what's holding their body together from all of this damage, and it doesn't have to be the healing spike. The nature of Feruchemy is separate from that, if that makes any sense. For instance, you could put a few spikes into an Inquisitor without a linchpin spike, and they wouldn't die.

17th Shard Interview (Oct. 3, 2010)

 

14 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

In the Ars Arcanum for TLM, it mentions that the reason Steel Inquisitors got exhausted more quickly than normal people was because their Spiritwebs were unreasonably burdened by their large number of Hemalurgic spikes.

I was wondering if perhaps bronze Feruchemy could help overcome this, particularly with Compounding, since it provides all the benefits of a good night's sleep.

Also, could there be more problems with having too many Hemalurgic spikes, such as maybe a reduced healing rate (from Spiritweb deterioration)? Brandon Sanderson mentioned that some Inquisitors "burn up" more quickly than others depending on their specific power set.

Perhaps those with more spikes age a bit faster due to their Spiritwebs being worn down? This also makes me wonder if it's the number of spikes that wears one down (due to more holes being in the Spiritweb) or if it's the total Investiture of the spikes; it would be kind of weird if more Investiture in the spikes led to a greatly reduced lifespan, since we've seen elsewhere in the Cosmere than more Investiture means a greater lifespan.

With the description below, F-Bronze compounding would be a very handy tool for Inquisitors. But if that was spiritual exhaustion rather than physical one, bronze wouldn't help, but it isn't this case, as sleeping helps them.

Quote

He had been awake for too long. Living as an Inquisitor drained the body, and he had to rest often. His brethren were already shuffling from the room, heading toward their rest chambers, which lay intentionally close to the throneroom. They would sleep immediately; with the executions earlier in the day and the excitement of the night, they would be extremely fatigued.

And I think physical exhaustion puts a pressure on their mind. If they have a "weaker" mind, then the effects accumulate and they "burn out quickly", if they have a stronger mind (like Kar), they can withstand more and live longer. I don't think it's about what powers they'd gotten, and how many spikes they have. More spikes invests them more, they should live longer, but because every spike is painful and exhausts the body further, not everyone can live in the state of constant tiredness with pain all over their body. This is what I believe burns them out faster. Also look at the WoB above. Brandon states that Inquisitors are immune to disease, even without F-gold spike. This alone would contribute to expanding their life far beyond normal people, as it was diseases who killed people before they could even get old in the first place. This immunity is because of them being more invested.

[StanLemon]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

How do we know that it couldn't be F-gold? I'm not saying that this idea is bunk (I mean, we saw Tarson heal from a bullet wound in like two days, even if he was a A-pewter Savant), it does has some merit, seeing as how the Inquisitors aren't really human anymore, but couldn't Kar have just tapped health very slowly to conserve his Feruchemical reserves?

 

16 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Kar for sure had to have healing. Or he was a Mistborn before (unlikely). TFE: 

He couldn't have had F-Gold for one very simple reason. The only Spikes that Vin or Elend had seen from any Inquisitors before HoA were Steel and Bronze. This means Kar could not have had Feruchemy 

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

He couldn't have had F-Gold for one very simple reason. The only Spikes that Vin or Elend had seen from any Inquisitors before HoA were Steel and Bronze. This means Kar could not have had Feruchemy 

There were 8 Inquisitors killed by Marsh and NONE of them had gold healing, despite the fact that at least one of them clearly used it during Vin's second intrusion into Kredik Shaw (healing his leg)? And the WoB saying that all of them had F-gold spikes in Vin's times.

I can't find the fragment of them talking about spikes they found in Inquisitors. But F-gold is stolen by a gold spike, not Atium, and I think that's what you're talking about, that they didn't find Atium spikes. But once again, I can't find them saying that they didn't have that spike, only in HoA they were discussing a new pewter spike in the heart. The one in the beginning of HoA didn't have a gold spike.

[StanLemon]

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

There were 8 Inquisitors killed by Marsh and NONE of them had gold healing, despite the fact that at least one of them clearly used it during Vin's second intrusion into Kredik Shaw (healing his leg)? And the WoB saying that all of them had F-gold spikes in Vin's times.

I can't find the fragment of them talking about spikes they found in Inquisitors. But F-gold is stolen by a gold spike, not Atium, and I think that's what you're talking about, that they didn't find Atium spikes. But once again, I can't find them saying that they didn't have that spike, only in HoA they were discussing a new pewter spike in the heart. The one in the beginning of HoA didn't have a gold spike.

That's exactly what I'm saying, none did. During that conversation Elend thinks to himself about the standard Spikes an Inquisitor has and is surprised that there is an extra Spike in that specific Inquisitor. And he's surprised when it's Pewter. It wasn't until the reveal that it is a Pewter Spike that they even start thinking that it's a third power from Allomancy and Feruchemy because he starts thinking about how Allomancy and Feruchemy use different metals for different effects. None of Elend's line of thinking makes any sense if any of the Inquisitors in Kredik Shaw had any Spikes other than Steel or Bronze

[alder24]

26 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

That's exactly what I'm saying, none did. During that conversation Elend thinks to himself about the standard Spikes an Inquisitor has and is surprised that there is an extra Spike in that specific Inquisitor. And he's surprised when it's Pewter. It wasn't until the reveal that it is a Pewter Spike that they even start thinking that it's a third power from Allomancy and Feruchemy because he starts thinking about how Allomancy and Feruchemy use different metals for different effects. None of Elend's line of thinking makes any sense if any of the Inquisitors in Kredik Shaw had any Spikes other than Steel or Bronze

HoA Epigraphs ch 36:

Quote

Spikes made from other metals steal Feruchemical abilities. For example, all of the original Inquisitors were given a pewter spike (my addition: it should have been gold spike here), which—after first being pounded through the body of a Feruchemist—gave the Inquisitor the ability to store up healing power. (Though they couldn't do so as quickly as a real Feruchemist, as per the law of Hemalurgic decay.) This, obviously, is where the Inquisitors got their infamous ability to recover from wounds quickly, and was also why they needed to rest so much.

I dug deeper into this and found on Coppermind page about Steel Inquisitors. It's a mistake in the early versions of the books, later fixed:

Quote

The early editions of the books said Feruchemical healing was granted by pewter spikes,^[26] even though the hemalurgy table says pewter spikes only give Physical Feruchemical abilities.^[11] And the early editions didn't mention the health spike in The Hero of Ages chapter 5.^[21] Later editions of the books changed that to a gold spike in both places.

So yes, the Inquisitor inspected in HoA ch 5 had a gold spike granting him F-gold, which was a part of the standard set of spikes which all Inquisitors had, including the one in Kredik Shaw in TFE. The gold spike is placed between the ribs.

Edited April 22, 2023 by alder24

[StanLemon]

8 minutes ago, alder24 said:

So yes, the Inquisitor inspected in HoA ch 5 had a gold spike granting him F-gold, which was a part of the standard set of spikes which all Inquisitors had, including the one in Kredik Shaw in TFE. The gold spike is placed between the ribs.

Ah, my apologies then. The last time I had read that page, the part about the newest edition retconning that hadn't been in the Coppermind.

[Trusk'our]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

With the description below, F-Bronze compounding would be a very handy tool for Inquisitors. But if that was spiritual exhaustion rather than physical one, bronze wouldn't help, but it isn't this case, as sleeping helps them.

Ah, good to know (especially with the quote for confirmation ). I wonder if Marsh has F-bronze, since he would have been more burdened than any other Inquisitor, and therefore needed it more.

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

And I think physical exhaustion puts a pressure on their mind. If they have a "weaker" mind, then the effects accumulate and they "burn out quickly", if they have a stronger mind (like Kar), they can withstand more and live longer. I don't think it's about what powers they'd gotten, and how many spikes they have. More spikes invests them more, they should live longer, but because every spike is painful and exhausts the body further, not everyone can live in the state of constant tiredness with pain all over their body. This is what I believe burns them out faster. Also look at the WoB above. Brandon states that Inquisitors are immune to disease, even without F-gold spike. This alone would contribute to expanding their life far beyond normal people, as it was diseases who killed people before they could even get old in the first place. This immunity is because of them being more invested.

Interesting idea. Plus, there's some presedence for this; the Elantrians. They don't have a physical limit to their lifespan, though it's mentally taxing- more so than any other form of immortality in the Cosmere.

Quote

GollanczFest London - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

Questioner (paraphrased)

[Something about whether Elantrians are immortal or long-lived] 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Elantrians have no physical limitations on their lifespan. The power will sustain them, but it's emotionally and mentally exhausting to be an Elantrian, so as far as immortality goes it's actually harder to be an Elantrian than other forms of immortality that exist in the cosmere.

It also makes me wonder, if Hemalurgic spikes lengthen the life of someone, why doesn't the power of a Mistborn extend their life? Is it because it's all in the SR, not the PR?

I mean, Bio-Chromatic Breaths are mostly PR based, so perhaps that is the case; holding more Investiture in the Physical Realm will extend your life, but having more in the Spiritual Realm is of minimal benefit to prevent aging, since it isn't saturating your body.

That would also explain why Rashek died even though he was so ridiculously Invested an individual.

Perhaps I should make a post about that at some point, actually 

[alder24]

13 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

It also makes me wonder, if Hemalurgic spikes lengthen the life of someone, why doesn't the power of a Mistborn extend their life? Is it because it's all in the SR, not the PR?

I mean, Bio-Chromatic Breaths are mostly PR based, so perhaps that is the case; holding more Investiture in the Physical Realm will extend your life, but having more in the Spiritual Realm is of minimal benefit to prevent aging, since it isn't saturating your body.

That would also explain why Rashek died even though he was so ridiculously Invested an individual.

Perhaps I should make a post about that at some point, actually 

They should live longer, but not that much longer. We never really saw any old Mistborn, their profession is full of risk factors. But they are more invested, they are more immune to illnesses and should live longer. Mostly they should live longer because of their better immune system. But keep in mind, compared to other worlds, Scadrial is low invested, therefore even Mistborn wouldn't live that much longer. Breaths are far more invested, and they can extend a person's life by a decade on the 1st Heightening alone. 

Or maybe that's why Spook lived over 118 years? 

But Rashek is a different story, even if he was so invested that he could live twice as long, he would still die, as he lived 1000 years.

40 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Ah, good to know (especially with the quote for confirmation ). I wonder if Marsh has F-bronze, since he would have been more burdened than any other Inquisitor, and therefore needed it more.

Possibly, however in TLM he did mention he was too tired to act, partially because of running low on Atium.

[Kendelian]

One observation to take into consideration is that hemalurgy is the magic system tied to the Shard of Ruin, so it stands to reason that having a lot of Connection to Ruin damages the Spiritweb and reduces one’s lifespan.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Kendelian

[Trusk'our]

3 hours ago, Kendelian said:

One observation to take into consideration is that hemalurgy is the magic system tied to the Shard of Ruin, so it stands to reason that having a lot of Connection to Ruin damages the Spiritweb and reduces one’s lifespan.

I suppose that could be the case, but I think that it's specifically Hemalurgic spikes that cause damage to the Spiritweb, not the Investiture itself- the spikes must pierce the Spiritweb in order to attach the Investiture of the spike and the Hemalurgist which unavoidably causes some damage.

Otherwise, Ruin's Vessel would have expired very quickly, rather than becoming functionally immortal.

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Kendelian said:

One observation to take into consideration is that hemalurgy is the magic system tied to the Shard of Ruin, so it stands to reason that having a lot of Connection to Ruin damages the Spiritweb and reduces one’s lifespan.

Kelsier had far more connection to Ruin than to Preservation, and when alive he was "fine", healthy with a non damaged spirit web (because he stayed for so long in CR).