Wax's earring

[killersquirrel59]

So it's been confirmed that Wax's earring is a hemalurgic spike of some kind. Has there ever been more information on this? As far as I know, we don't even know what metal it is.

Whatever it grants him, besides the ability for Harmony to talk to him, this does raise a few questions. 

 

1. Who got spiked to make it? I doubt Wax understands what it is, as contextually he seems to see it only as a ritual item for use in prayer, but someone still had to be killed to make this trinket.

 

2. How does it still have a hemalurgic charge? Wax doesn't wear it all the time, only when praying. This means it spends a lot of time out of a body, losing charge all the time. 

[Argent]

1. Who got spiked to make it? I doubt Wax understands what it is, as contextually he seems to see it only as a ritual item for use in prayer, but someone still had to be killed to make this trinket.

 

2. How does it still have a hemalurgic charge? Wax doesn't wear it all the time, only when praying. This means it spends a lot of time out of a body, losing charge all the time. 

 

1. I think somebody asked this a while back, and the answer was that the woman who gave him the piercing was really a kandra (possibly even MeLaan?) doing Harmony's will.

 

2. If he is not using it, the charge will deplete very slowly on its own.

[Moogle]

1. I believe it came from the remains of an Inquisitor. I can't find a WoB on this, but I distinctly recall Brandon saying that Sazed was okay with spikes that were already created being used, but was not okay with creating new ones.

 

2. It's losing charge, but I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard it bandied about) that after a certain point spikes stop losing charge, or at least it's an exponential slowdown. And in any case, it's not like you need that strong of a charge. Wax (presuming he was burning pewter) still got a decent effect out of it after hundreds of years.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

Here's a link to the WoB database search I did for "wax" and "earring" over at Theoryland (WoT originally): http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kw=wax+earring

 

It does retain a slight hemalurgic charge, and it was/is a piece of a large spike that was at one time used to kill someone. 

 

I agree that at a certain point it reaches the "bare minimum" charge, i can't find a WoB on that specifically, but i feel like there is one floating around somewhere. 

[Fatebreaker]

It sounds kinda like a hemalurgic bluetooth line to Harmony.

[BlackYeti]

I've been assuming that the decay rate of the Investiture in a hemalurgic spike outside of a body is asymptotic, presumably tending to zero. I don't have any definitive evidence for this, but it makes the most sense to me on account of the charge still in the earing.

 

If this is true, then it's likely that its charge is too weak to provide any measurable enhancement to Wax, but it would still have enough charge for him to communicate with Harmony.

[Moogle]

I've been assuming that the decay rate of the Investiture in a hemalurgic spike outside of a body is asymptotic, presumably tending to zero. I don't have any definitive evidence for this, but it makes the most sense to me on account of the charge still in the earing.

 

If this is true, then it's likely that its charge is too weak to provide any measurable enhancement to Wax, but it would still have enough charge for him to communicate with Harmony.

 

It definitely has an effect. He seems to burn pewter at one point, which lets him take Miles' beating:

His wounds suddenly seemed to crash down upon him. He didn’t know if it was the mists, some action of Harmony, or simple adrenaline that had helped him ignore them for a time. But he hadn’t been healed. His side screamed from where he’d been shot, and his leg and arm had been burned and scraped raw by the explosion. He’d been clipped by bullets in the thigh and the arm. And now, Miles’s beating. It overwhelmed him, and he groaned, slumping down, struggling to merely remain conscious.

 

He was in the mists while this happened, so apparently he was using them to power his pewter ability. The effects match what happens when you stop burning pewter.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle

[Stormwalker]

There is also the example of Vin's earring. If I remember correctly, Vin only started wearing her earring regularly when Kelsier suggests it at the beginning of tFE. So it was outside a human body for over a decade, yet still gave her a significant amount of extra power. That would seem to suggest there is indeed a maximum amount a hemalurgic spike can decay (either that or it decays so slowly as to not really matter).

[BlackYeti]

It definitely has an effect. He seems to burn pewter at one point, which lets him take Miles' beating:

 

He was in the mists while this happened, so apparently he was using them to power his pewter ability. The effects match what happens when you stop burning pewter.

 

That is interesting. It's clearly been too long since I last read Alloy of Law, and I'd forgotten about that.

 

This would suggest then that the decay rate of the charge is asymptotic, but that it is tending to a non-zero value instead.

Edited August 26, 2014 by BlackYeti

[Moogle]

That is interesting. It's clearly been too long since I last read Alloy of Law, and I'd forgotten about that.

 

This would suggest then that the decay rate of the charge is asymptotic, but that it is tending to a non-zero value instead.

 

Or that it's approaching zero, but very slowly and it takes thousands of years (in which case the weakening of the powers granted by a spike should be negligible for at least a week at least). But the Inquisitors seemed big on transferring spikes quickly... hrm. I'm not sure, do we have any examples of other Investiture 'decaying'? Stormlight seems to run out quickly, but it's providing a constant effect, so it doesn't count.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle

[BlackYeti]

Or that it's approaching zero, but very slowly and it takes thousands of years (in which case the weakening of the powers granted by a spike should be negligible for at least a week at least). But the Inquisitors seemed big on transferring spikes quickly... hrm. I'm not sure, do we have any examples of other Investiture 'decaying'? Stormlight seems to run out quickly, but it's providing a constant effect, so it doesn't count.

 

That is a good point. I was under the impression that the decay rate was fast, and that was the reason that the Inquisitors spiked themselves through their victims: if they didn't a significant portion of the power would be lost. I suppose that they could be doing that based on the principle that any power lost, no matter how insignificant would be wasteful, but that doesn't seem to be in their nature given Ruin's influence on them.

 

Regarding other forms of Investiture decay, I'm not sure they're really applicable since hemalurgy seems to be the only system that we know of that is End-Negative. But in case I'm wrong, I can't think of any evidence that Breath is decaying outside of a living body. Kalad's Phantom's still functioned centuries after their creation, though do bones count as a body here? And I can't think of any way to measure the Dor. 

 

What do you mean that Stormlight is providing a constant effect? Are you referring to the Stormlight's apparent renewal through the Highstorms? This would suggest that the amount of Stormlight on Roshar is not changing.

[Moogle]

That is a good point. I was under the impression that the decay rate was fast, and that was the reason that the Inquisitors spiked themselves through their victims: if they didn't a significant portion of the power would be lost. I suppose that they could be doing that based on the principle that any power lost, no matter how insignificant would be wasteful, but that doesn't seem to be in their nature given Ruin's influence on them.

 

I was under the same impression. I distinctly recall Marsh remarking sorrowfully at the power lost in the spike intended for Penrod. Perhaps it's not an exponential decay rate? Instead, it's super-fast for the first week or so, but then it drops off and heads towards zero over millennia?

 

The MAG also suggests that there are ways to stop a spike's decay. As well, atium spikes decay slower.

 

Stormwalker's point on Vin's earring is also valuable: it gave her enough power to pierce copperclouds, so it can't have decayed that much over the ten years or so that she didn't wear it.

 

What do you mean that Stormlight is providing a constant effect? Are you referring to the Stormlight's apparent renewal through the Highstorms? This would suggest that the amount of Stormlight on Roshar is not changing.

 

Stormlight is constantly providing an Feruchemical gold healing-like effect (plus extra strength), so it's being used up in an appropriate manner, not really decaying. We know that healing like that consumes even Divine Breath, so I don't think it really counts as an example of Investiture decaying. It's hard to say, though - Breath gives you extra abilities, but is not consumed. I'm not really sure what the rule is for when Investiture is used up (and returns to the Shard?) and when it's not.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle

[PorridgeBrick]

I was under the same impression. I distinctly recall Marsh remarking sorrowfully at the power lost in the spike intended for Penrod. Perhaps it's not an exponential decay rate? Instead, it's super-fast for the first week or so, but then it drops off and heads towards zero over millennia?

That sounds exactly like exponential decay to me. The charge would drop very quickly at first, but then lose charge less and less with time. Stormlight seems to work similarly- Kal can hold in a small amount for a very long time, but larger amounts dissipate quickly.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

Would nightblood's "burning"/corrupting investiture count as decay of that investiture?

[Moogle]

That sounds exactly like exponential decay to me. The charge would drop very quickly at first, but then lose charge less and less with time. Stormlight seems to work similarly- Kal can hold in a small amount for a very long time, but larger amounts dissipate quickly.

 

But it doesn't fit in with the timescale. If it's exponential decay, then Wax should be incapable of using his earring to do anything as the charge should be mostly gone. If the decay is slow enough that Wax can use his earring hundreds of years later, then the Inquisitors should not be worried about spikes losing power since they'd barely lose any in the timespan the spike is not in a body.

 

Math example:

• Charge left in a spike should follow an equation vaguely similar to charge_left = e^-ct if it's exponential and the charge in a spike tends to zero, where c is some constant and t is the time (we'll say in years).
• We'll assume that Wax's spike was at 0.01% charge left (I doubt the spike would be functional at this level, so it's probably higher). We'll also assume it's been 500 years or so since the spike left the Inquisitor's body. (This is not a safe assumption; Sazed may have had the kandra act as 'incubators' to keep the charge from dissipating.)
• 0.0001 = e^-c*500, so -500c = ln(0.0001). c ~= 0.023
• So, if we leave the spike out for a week (1/52 of a year, assuming Scadrial is sort of on an earth time-scale):
• charge_left = e^{-0.023 / 52} = 99.95%.
• If it's left out for a year, there's still 97.7% of the charge remaining.

If, and I stress if, Wax's earring was out of a body for 500 years and is still providing a charge of 0.01%, then leaving a spike out of an Inquisitor for a week would give you 99.95% of its original charge. The Inquisitors should not have been worried about the spikes losing their potency, and yet they were. If Wax's spike had an even higher charge, then it would have been even less of a problem.

 

Overall, the Inquisitors worrying about the spikes losing power does not match up with what we'd expect with an exponential-tends-to-zero model of Hemalurgic decay.

 

Of course, Sazed could have been keeping the spikes inside someone for the 500 years, in which case ignore everything I said. However, Wax keeps his earring outside of his body continuously, so I doubt this.

 

Would nightblood's "burning"/corrupting investiture count as decay of that investiture?

 

Ooh, didn't think of that. I'm not sure if it counts, since I'm not sure if Nightblood becomes more dangerous because of his consumption of Investiture or what. (Does he run out if left unsheathed?)

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle
math error i should not be allowed near calculators while tired

[BlackYeti]

Stormlight is constantly providing an Feruchemical gold healing-like effect (plus extra strength), so it's being used up in an appropriate manner, not really decaying. We know that healing like that consumes even Divine Breath, so I don't think it really counts as an example of Investiture decaying. It's hard to say, though - Breath gives you extra abilities, but is not consumed. I'm not really sure what the rule is for when Investiture is used up (and returns to the Shard?) and when it's not.

 

That makes sense. I was thinking about Stormlight in spheres, rather than in people: since it does seem to be renewed I don't think it counts as decay in the same way as in hemalurgy. If Breath were like hemalurgy then it would only decay when not in a body, hence why I was trying to find examples of this, but I can't think of any.

 

Would nightblood's "burning"/corrupting investiture count as decay of that investiture?

 

I avoided Nightblood, because I'm really not at all sure what is going on here. I think this is the Investiture being consumed, rather than it decaying and therefore not an example. But then what does it mean for it to be consumed? I don't think we know enough about this to say for sure.

[Moogle]

That makes sense. I was thinking about Stormlight in spheres, rather than in people: since it does seem to be renewed I don't think it counts as decay in the same way as in hemalurgy. If Breath were like hemalurgy then it would only decay when not in a body, hence why I was trying to find examples of this, but I can't think of any.

 

Oh! I'm an idiot. Stormlight in spheres is a perfect example. The Stormlight mostly all leaves in the span of a few weeks, depending on the amount in it. This would fit in with why Inquisitors were so eager to get the spikes in and keep their power up, if spike power loss follows a similar reduction. It doesn't fit in with why Wax's earring works, though - he keeps it outside his body basically all the time. Spikes must decay slower, or else a small charge provides a huge effect. I don't know.

 

Edit: This brings up the question of Allomancy power. If each generation of Allomancers is weaker, how much less innate Investiture do they have (if innate Investiture is what determines power)? If a lerasium Allomancer marries a non-Allomancer and has kids with half his Investiture, but they're only a little bit weaker, then even a spike with extremely small amounts of charge left would provide a huge effect. In other words, if Allomantic power grows logarithmically with spike charge/innate Investiture charge, then everything can still work. (It still doesn't explain why Inquisitors were worried though.)

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle

[BlackYeti]

Oh! I'm an idiot. Stormlight in spheres is a perfect example. The Stormlight mostly all leaves in the span of a few weeks, depending on the amount in it. This would fit in with why Inquisitors were so eager to get the spikes in and keep their power up, if spike power loss follows a similar reduction. It doesn't fit in with why Wax's earring works, though - he keeps it outside his body basically all the time. Spikes must decay slower, or else a small charge provides a huge effect. I don't know.

 

Edit: This brings up the question of Allomancy power. If each generation of Allomancers is weaker, how much less innate Investiture do they have (if innate Investiture is what determines power)? If a lerasium Allomancer marries a non-Allomancer and has kids with half his Investiture, but they're only a little bit weaker, then even a spike with extremely small amounts of charge left would provide a huge effect. In other words, if Allomantic power grows logarithmically with spike charge/innate Investiture charge, then everything can still work. (It still doesn't explain why Inquisitors were worried though.)

 

This raises a few questions. What happens to the investiture that is lost through hemalurgic decay? Is it being moved into another realm? We have WoB that Investiture transcends the realms, so does that even make sense? Is it instead being dispersed in some way for a gain in entropy? With Stormlight we can at least say that it's being collected and then redistributed by means of the Highstorms.

 

​Is a dun sphere necessarily lacking Investiture completely, or is it perhaps retaining a small amount that isn't enough to make the sphere glow? Alternatively, is the sphere still glowing, just imperceptibly under normal lighting conditions.

 

With regard to allomantic power, I thought that the determinant was how spiritually aligned with Preservation you are, not Innate Investiture. If I'm correct, then the Investiture in the hemalurgic spike would be used to alter your Spiritweb, rather than you drawing power from the spike itself.

[Moogle]

This raises a few questions. What happens to the investiture that is lost through hemalurgic decay? Is it being moved into another realm? We have WoB that Investiture transcends the realms, so does that even make sense? Is it instead being dispersed in some way for a gain in entropy? With Stormlight we can at least say that it's being collected and then redistributed by means of the Highstorms.

 

I imagine it returns to Preservation. Hemalurgy is only end-negative in the sense that if you look at the amount of Investiture sitting around before and after some Hemalurgy is performed there's going to be less. (Or at least, this is my understanding of the situation.)

 

Investiture seems to be conserved, though that brings up the question of what Nightblood is doing with his "corrupted" Breath...

 

​Is a dun sphere necessarily lacking Investiture completely, or is it perhaps retaining a small amount that isn't enough to make the sphere glow? Alternatively, is the sphere still glowing, just imperceptibly under normal lighting conditions.

 

I imagine it's like letting gas out of a container (which is an apt analogy, as Stormlight is a gaseous form of Investiture). It should follow an exponential curve, which is to say there should always be a little Stormlight in the gem, though with long lengths of time it might become imperceptible.

 

With regard to allomantic power, I thought that the determinant was how spiritually aligned with Preservation you are, not Innate Investiture. If I'm correct, then the Investiture in the hemalurgic spike would be used to alter your Spiritweb, rather than you drawing power from the spike itself.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "spiritually aligned", but then I've always been rather uncertain when dealing with spiritwebs and sDNA. Snapping is apparently the Investiture of Preservation in you coalescing, like what happens with supersaturated liquid, which is why I assumed the amount of innate Investiture you had should control your strength as Allomancer. WoB from the Annotations:

My idea on this is that Allomantic potential is a little like a supersaturated solution. You can suspend a great deal of something like sugar in a liquid when it is hot, then cool it down and the sugar remains suspended. Drop one bit of sugar in there as a catalyst, however, and the rest will fall out as a precipitate.

Allomancy is the same. It’s in there, but it takes a reaction—in this case, physical anguish—to trigger it and bring it out. That’s because the Allomantic power comes from the extra bit of Preservation inside of humans, that same extra bit that gives us free will. This bit is trapped between the opposing forces of Preservation and Ruin, and to come out and allow it the power to access metals and draw forth energy, it needs to fight its way through the piece of Ruin that is also there inside.

(source)

 

(I'd recommend reading the whole annotation section this came from; it's interesting and relevant. I just wanted to be brief.)

Edited August 26, 2014 by Moogle

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

On my phone right now so I can't check, but isn't there a WoB that says the Nightblood is "corrupting" the investiture he draws out of his wielder? Might be in the annotations...

I assume when he has fully consumed the investiture from a person, he goes dormant after that person is dead...

[Araris Valerian]

Perhaps another explanation is that instant hemalurgic transference is separate from the elapsed time equation. For example, if using the spike immediately like in making an inquisitor has a 99% power transfer rate but leaving it out of a body for an infinitely small amount of time causes a reduction to 80% transference, which then begins to decay exponentially. The two methods are distinguished at least in that the size of the spike only matters in delayed spikings, so perhaps they also have a different "base rate" of efficiency.

[BlackYeti]

I imagine it returns to Preservation. Hemalurgy is only end-negative in the sense that if you look at the amount of Investiture sitting around before and after some Hemalurgy is performed there's going to be less. (Or at least, this is my understanding of the situation.)

 

Investiture seems to be conserved, though that brings up the question of what Nightblood is doing with his "corrupted" Breath...

 

 

I imagine it's like letting gas out of a container (which is an apt analogy, as Stormlight is a gaseous form of Investiture). It should follow an exponential curve, which is to say there should always be a little Stormlight in the gem, though with long lengths of time it might become imperceptible.

 

I like that take on what happens to the Investiture in the Hemalurgic spikes. It easily explains my problems with it, and overwrites my main objections to comparing it to stormlight. As to the apparent differences in the rate of Stormlight decay to the rate of Hemalurgic decay: is this because of the different container for the Investiture, because it's a different type of Investiture, something to do with the environment that we've seen them in, something else, or some combination? I doubt that there's any way to know at this point.

 

As for Nightblood, I'm really not sure what to make of what he does with Investiture.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "spiritually aligned", but then I've always been rather uncertain when dealing with spiritwebs and sDNA. Snapping is apparently the Investiture of Preservation in you coalescing, like what happens with supersaturated liquid, which is why I assumed the amount of innate Investiture you had should control your strength as Allomancer. WoB from the Annotations:

 

(I'd recommend reading the whole annotation section this came from; it's interesting and relevant. I just wanted to be brief.)

 

I was basing the phrase "spiritually aligned" on a WoB that I vaguely recall about how burning lerasium changed someone, but I can't seem to find it now so I'm no longer sure if that's exactly what I read. The closest I can come to it is this:

 

"By burning it [lerasium] you gain access to those powers. It rewrites your spiritual DNA, and there are ways to do really cool things with lerasium that I don't see how anyone would know. Were most Mistborn to just burn it, it would rewrite their genetic code to increase their power as an Allomancer."

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=692#24

 

This doesn't say that it increases your Innate Investiture, but that it alters your sDNA.

 

There's another WoB that I found that I think is highly pertinent here (from the Chapter 71 Hero of Ages Annotations):

 

When you burn most Allomantic metals, it opens a conduit through which you can draw upon Preservation’s power and use it in very specific ways."

  http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-mistborn-3-chapter-seventy-one/

 

The way I'm interpreting this is that the Spiritweb and the metal are acting a bit like a lock and key. You swallow one of the sixteen metals and assuming that your Spiritweb is aligned/configured/encoded (do we have proper terminology for this?) correctly, you get to draw on an external source of Investiture that powers the ability. I don't see why additional Investiture would be required in the Allomancer in order to power the abilities.

 

Now, with regard to the WoB that you provided, I'm a little unsure of how to view it. It could be that everyone gets the same amount of Innate Investiture, and it is the configuration of their Spiritweb that determines how hard it is for them to Snap and how how much allomantic power they get from it when they do.

 

On the other hand, if the quantity of Innate Investiture is not a constant, then this could be taken to mean that those with more Investiture will snap more easily than those without, which probably correlates with the power of their Allomantic abilities. The problem here is how the WoB I quoted earlier regarding lerasium, did not indicate any increase a persons Investiture. Could this mean that by swallowing lerasium they are bypassing the Snapping process and automatically getting super Mistborn powers? But if that were the case would their children not require an increased level of Innate Investiture to allow them to acquire the powerful Allomantic abilities that you would expect them to have? Where is the extra Investiture coming from if it is not possessed by their parents? These questions are why I'm leaning towards the former explanation.

 

By the way, how do you get the quote boxes to put the WoBs in? Thanks for the help WeiryWriter.

Edited August 28, 2014 by BlackYeti

[Shadowspren]

 I'm not sure, do we have any examples of other Investiture 'decaying'? 

 

In the Hero of Ages, Marsh (under the control of Ruin) kills the one guy in order to make a spike for Lord Penrod back in Luthadel. I don't have a quote but I am pretty sure he mentions the decaying of the charge between when it is made and when he gets it into Penrod.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Zaci-chan

[WeiryWriter]

By the way, how do you get the quote boxes to put the WoBs in?

 

You can do it manually by putting the following around the text

[quote] insert text here [/quote]

Or you can click the quote button in the text editor (should be between the code button and the twitter button).

[killersquirrel59]

Delay is definitely a thing, but perhaps there is another explanation as well. Perhaps the only time that matters for delay is the time from when the power is taken by the spike and transferred to another. Perhaps after that, the power is set in their sDNA, altered by the spike and from then on the spike isn't acting as a power source, but a key to unlock that addition to the sDNA. If that were the case, the spike would only leak power in between when it was made and when it was first used to grant its power. 

 

EDIT: No on second thought, that doesn't make sense. Inquisitors then would just spike someone into someone else random, kill the random person immediately and then have a set spike they could build a store of. Also, Wax hardly got the earring fresh from a spiking.

Edited August 27, 2014 by killersquirrel59