Hemalurgy is Cosmere Universal (absolute confirmation)

[Shardlet]

So, Brandon has confirmed that Hemalurgy is absolutely universal to the entire cosmere.  An person from any planet can make a spike, effectively place a spike, or be effectively spiked so long as someone involved intends for it to happen. 

 

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Q: Could a Nalthian with the proper knowledge and skill create a hemalurgic spike by spiking a Rosharan having some spikeable attribute?

 

A: Umm, Hemalurgy is of great interest in the Cosmere because it was designed and can be used by anyone on any of the planets who has the right intention.  It is of great interest to people for that reason so the answer to your question is it can be done.

 

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Q: If you shot Miles with pewter bullets through the heart, would the bullets become hemalurgically charged and remove Miles’s bloodmaking ability?

 

A: Umm, you would have to get them in exactly the right place.

 

Q: Oh, so it’s more than just the heart, it’s got to be the right place in the heart?

 

A: Well, you have to, it’s like acupuncture.  A hemalurgic spike has to be specifically placed.

 

Q: Well, I don’t mean for placement. I just mean for making Miles a donor.

 

A: You could hemalurgically steal Miles’s power.

 

Q: With pewter bullets?

 

A: I don’t know that bullets would work.  But they might.  How about this, it is theoretically possible to do what you just described.  If you knew what you were doing,  because intention is part of a lot of the magic system.  Intention is involved.  It’s tricky because Ruin did it to people who didn’t know what they were doing, but…

Q: But, Ruin intended to do it, though.

 

A: But, Ruin intended to do it and knows how to manipulate it so that intentions would happen.  Intention is very important, if you read through the magics, to a lot of them.

 

Q: It is part of the cognitive aspect.

 

A: Yes.

 

So, once the cat gets out of the bag about hemalurgy, the cosmere is going to get a lot more interesting (and messy). 

This also means that the book that Wax has and is reading in the SoS reading is very powerful since the writer speaks of hemalurgy in it.

Edited October 17, 2013 by Shardlet

[Robot Aztec]

Does The metal they use have to be from Mistborn because it doesnt make sense if ruin goes to mistborn and because of the mistborn planet he gets metal-magic why would he make metal magic if he left I dont want to think that ruin can be all 'way over here' and make magic happen way over there because that doesnt make sense but if he just goes to mistborn planet and the metal is now magic then that makes snese because that would mean he goes to i dunno magic bird planet and now those magic birds eat your soul that makes sense because he has to go there to make it magic.

[Argent]

I was under the impression that all magic systems are universal. Some might be more difficult than others, but as long as you have the proper Investiture (or sDNA?), you can do anything anywhere - that's kind of the core of many Hoid theories. Or were you suggesting that anyone, regardless of Investiture, could grab a regular metal spike, stab a magic user of their world in the right place, and do Hemalurgy?

[Kurkistan]

@Robot

Punctuation would be appreciated in the future.

--

Not to throw a fly in the ointment, but are we sure that it's always metal? What if you need to use a gemstone on Roshar, or the like?

Edited October 17, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Robot Aztec]

/>

I was under the impression that all magic systems are universal. Some might be more difficult than others, but as long as you have the proper Investiture (or sDNA?), you can do anything anywhere - that's kind of the core of many Hoid theories. Or were you suggesting that anyone, regardless of Investiture, could grab a regular metal spike, stab a magic user of their world in the right place, and do Hemalurgy?

At Spokon shardlet found out they dont need investitutre they jsut need knowledge for it.

[Shardlet]

No magic metal is required and no investiture at all is required.  Brandon said anyone from any planet (within the cosmere).  As to using gems, I doubt it.  that would suggest that the metal on Scadrial and the gems on Roshar have a particular specialness about them.  Which, although it may be worth asking about, seems very unlikely to me.

[Robot Aztec]

 

/>

No magic metal is required and no investiture at all is required.  Brandon said anyone from any planet (within the cosmere).

The People from any pleant but that doesnt mean they can use any metal they find all the metal glows in mistborn because it has power and we know the metals in mistborn not just atium all the metals iwll come back a long time after being used so they already are magical and brandon does the aes sedai truths so he could be laughing to himself because you never asked about the metals

[Shardlet]

The metal in Mistborn glows because that is the focus for Scadrial and Ruin and Preservation are essentially blinded by that focus.  His statements regarding the cosmeric interest in hemalurgy due to its universality strongly suggest that the metal on Scadrial is not important to hemalurgy.  But, I concede that I could have hedged a bit on the statement.

[Unknowingly]

The possibilities of this are endless...

The metals on scadrial don't glow to anyone but a shards eyes. What is important about the spike is the ratios of the metal, remember to alllomatically burn a metal it needs to be like 58% this and 20% that. Its the same with spikes, as long as they have the right composition and are placed correctly you can steal anything

[name_here]

Huh, so anyone can use Hemalurgy, even though it's Ruin's system and he is only known to have contributed to Scadrial humans? That seems odd, since not even everyone created by the other Shards can use their systems except on Nalthis.

 

The metal in Mistborn glows because that is the focus for Scadrial and Ruin and Preservation are essentially blinded by that focus.  His statements regarding the cosmeric interest in hemalurgy due to its universality strongly suggest that the metal on Scadrial is not important to hemalurgy.  But, I concede that I could have hedged a bit on the statement.

 

You've stumbled onto one of our big standing questions, which is the extent to which magic systems are affected by the planet they're on. We've been told that magic systems come from the interaction of Shards and their worlds, and not gotten much information on what happens when someone moves between worlds except some vague suggestion that it's a bit difficult to continue using their system. So there's debate over exactly what would happen; we're pretty confident that people can use their systems on other planets, but it's theorized that they'd have to use them in a manner similar to how the locals use theirs, so a Surgebinder on Scadrial would need to use metal somehow.

 

Even if they do transfer, there's the question of what sort of spike you'd need to steal other systems, since the metal spikes are keyed to stealing specific things and the full set of the sixteen Scadrial metals is taken up by human attributes and the other Metallic Arts.

[Shardlet]

Can't go wrong with atium, the universal spike.

[Robot Aztec]

How Do you know it is because the metal is focus and not because te metal has power in it instead?

Why Would atium be brighter than any other metal if it was just blinding because it was a focus? Vin says that metals are power and I cant find anything on theorylend that says its blinding BECAuSE it is a focus just people asking who think that and getting rafo. When Elend's army comes out with the atium they are glowing wen they burn it and people arent the focus and that means that it ISNT becausee its a focus that things glow.

Mitbonr metals are special because we know about the whole planet being a big pits of hatshihm for them because burnt metals all respawn in long term and since the metals for spikes except atium are half ruin half preservation they are all special already. IF you ave shadesmar you can go pop to mistborn and steal a peweter fork or a big box of iron nails or sell and apple for copper or a lto of apples to gold you dont need much to get the metals really and if you cant go to other worlds then you dont care about hemalrugy on other worlds.

[Dysphoric Kitten]

Vin knows... what?

A. What Kel taught her. (which is wrong)

B. What she discovered by experimentation (which is not much)

C. Nothing about the Cosmere.

I would say she might be wrong.

By the way, only Atium and Lerasium regenerate. It was confirmed that if Scadrial had much more Allomancers, it would have had the danger of being hollowed from metal.

[Shardlet]

I recall something about all burned metals returning but that it takes a long time.  I suspect however that that has more to do with the burning rather than something special about the metal itself.

[name_here]

I know that's pretty common speculation, since the caches were in mining towns when they were built and a thousand years later they were still in mining towns. Usually one would expect the mines to stop being commercially viable in much less time than that. But I don't know if it's been confirmed that they regenerated instead of Scadrial just being much more mineral-rich than Earth. And Scadrial is rather tectonically active, so more metal would emerge from the mantle every so often. Granted, that would only happen frequently near the Ashmounts, and I don't think the caches were anywhere near them.

 

I expect it does regenerate, though, since it getting obliterated would violate conservation of energy in the opposite direction of what we'd expect from Preservation. According to the annotations, Allomancy draws in energy from Preservation instead of being powered by matter conversion, and furthermore the amount of energy gained by converting matter to energy is completely outlandish, vastly greater than the amount used by Mistborn. Of course, it's also possible that burning a metal converts it into a compound or allotrope that can't be used for Allomancy, which would keep the total amount in the world the same but make some of it rather difficult to access for the forseeable future.

[Robot Aztec]

It Was the phonex comicon that had the info with the whole palnt being a giant pits of hathsim. ANd if anyone could make spikes anywhere with any metal then it wouldnt be ruins sysetm at all you wouldn't need ruin investiture anywhere, and also ruin sititng in mistborn would cahnge how everything works in the whole universe even when he was imprisoned and that doesnt make sense because otherwise odium would go to 'gas-theme magic planet' and say 'my new magic system is baesd on breathing gasses and intentionally brething oxygen now makes you hurt a lot' and everyone would choke to death.

[Kurkistan]

Broken link, Robot. Here's the real one.

[Shardlet]

It Was the phonex comicon that had the info with the whole palnt being a giant pits of hathsim. ANd if anyone could make spikes anywhere with any metal then it wouldnt be ruins sysetm at all you wouldn't need ruin investiture anywhere, and also ruin sititng in mistborn would cahnge how everything works in the whole universe even when he was imprisoned and that doesnt make sense because otherwise odium would go to 'gas-theme magic planet' and say 'my new magic system is baesd on breathing gasses and intentionally brething oxygen now makes you hurt a lot' and everyone would choke to death.

 

Wow Robot.  Some punctuation and a readthrough before posting would really be helpful here.  That is really challenging to decipher.

[Claincy]

but it's theorized that they'd have to use them in a manner similar to how the locals use theirs, so a Surgebinder on Scadrial would need to use metal somehow.

Personally I think that is likely the case. That or that an allomancer born on scadrial would use metals but a Rosharian allomancer would use stormlight in some manner. Regardless, given how haemalurgy is more universal and doesn't require investiture from ruin, it could well be an exception to this. Although I get the feeling that Atium might well work on other planets even if normal metals did not.

 

I know that's pretty common speculation, since the caches were in mining towns when they were built and a thousand years later they were still in mining towns.

Just a quick clarification on that. I doubt that there had been mining towns in those places for a thousand years. Although we have no hard facts on this, from what TLR had written on the plates in the storage caverns I strongly suspect that they had been put there some time in the last couple of centuries of his reign.

[Kadrok]

You've stumbled onto one of our big standing questions, which is the extent to which magic systems are affected by the planet they're on. We've been told that magic systems come from the interaction of Shards and their worlds, and not gotten much information on what happens when someone moves between worlds except some vague suggestion that it's a bit difficult to continue using their system. So there's debate over exactly what would happen; we're pretty confident that people can use their systems on other planets, but it's theorized that they'd have to use them in a manner similar to how the locals use theirs, so a Surgebinder on Scadrial would need to use metal somehow.

I disagree with the idea that the focus would change. I suspect the focus would have been set at the formation of the system on whatever world and wouldn't change if the user became a worldhopper and jumped world (which is to say I think the world on which the system emerged was more important to the rules of that system than whatever world the user happens to be standing on at the time of use).

 

I have a few reasons for this which can be grouped under several themes:

 

1. Narrative Complications: It can be easy to forget that we are reading a narrative, and that the formation of the worlds we visit in our imaginations are fixed somewhat by the capabilities and interests of the author. My point is that having focuses jump depending on what world the user is visiting creates a lot of work for very little payoff, in that Brandon would have to determine, say, the keys to each of Allomancy's 16 natural powers if he wants to do a crossover, and so forth. There is very little gain, and a lot of work to creating several redundant versions of each magic system for each world. You could argue that he only needs to make the systems he is going to show on "stage", but come on... he knows us, and he knows how badly we'd crave knowing every little quirk of the systems with an Obsessive Compulsive fervor. For these reasons, I can see him taking the focus as fixed based on the world it emerged on, rather than the world the user is on.

 

2. System Complications: Let me plot out a scenario... A Scadrian Feruchemist becomes a worldhopper, and jumps over to Roshar. Do his metalminds suddenly stop working because the focus changes? If that is the case, does Hoid (being a Worldhopping Feruchemist) have a really rubbish time jumping from world to world because he has to keep switching minds? What about when FTL space travel comes into play (which, on Scadrial at least, is said to involve the magic systems)? So the ship travels from Scadrial to Roshar... how far out from Scadrial and close to Roshar does the Feruchemy/Allomancy stop powering the ship? Is there an overlap where both the Scadrian Metallic Arts, and the Hypothetical Rosharan Metallic Arts function, or a dead zone in which neither of them function? These kinds of issues could be solved, I guess, but they seem like needless, and frankly unintuitive complications.

 

3. The Universality of Spiking:

Q: Could a Nalthian with the proper knowledge and skill create a hemalurgic spike by spiking a Rosharan having some spikeable attribute?

 

A: Umm, Hemalurgy is of great interest in the Cosmere because it was designed and can be used by anyone on any of the planets who has the right intention.  It is of great interest to people for that reason so the answer to your question is it can be done.

 

If Hemalurgy continues to use the Scadrian focus, why would the other systems (or even just the other metallic arts) continue to use their focuses? There are two counter arguments which keeps this point from being ironclad, which I shall now acknowledge:

 

a) firstly, you could argue that Hemalurgy keeps its focus because it is designed to be universal. I would argue that its universality is based on it needing only knowledge, not an innate investiture, and not through some magical undefined trait inherent in it which lets it break all the rules. Yes it's a surprise that it doesn't require an innate investiture but now that we know that it makes sense for it to be universal, and this gives no reasonable account of why it would keep its focus and the others shift.

 

b ) secondly, you could argue that Hemalurgy doesn't keep its focus and that the spikes Brandon describes are made of Aons or commands or whatever on different worlds. The issue of whether focuses change or not is of course the entire matter I am arguing and it would thus be circular to simultaneously use this point as evidence for my claim, and the claim it is supporting as evidence for it. Thus if you feel that the focus of Hemalurgy changes from world to world feel free to disregard point three. However, let me point out some strangeness which arises from that position: Brandon said spike. How does one spike with a focus like "commands" except very metaphorically?

 

4. As you have noted Brandon has said that using the systems on different worlds is possible, though some would be harder than others, with him singling out the Metallic Arts as the easiest:

 

Interview: Sep, 2012

Cosmere Q&A - 17th Shard (Verbatim)

Odium's_Shard

Can magic systems from one world work in any given other?

Brandon Sanderson

For some, it will take quite a bit of work, but it's possible to get them each to work. Sel's magics are regional, and so they are going to be tough. Scadrial's magics are the easiest.

Tags

sel, scadrial, worldhopping, investiture, worlds, conflux, cosmere,

 

IF the focuses remain the same from world to world, as I suppose they do, it makes perfect sense that Scadrial's systems would be easiest to carry over. An Allomancer or Feruchemist traveling to another world needs only metal to use their system (and I imagine metals are on most worlds) which is far easier than, say, a Surgebinder needing to establish a supply line to bring him Stormlight, or the mentioned recalibration of region Sel's magics would require. In contrast, suppose they shifted. Suddenly Scadrial's magics become really difficult to transfer, as the Allomancer on Nalthis needs to figure out which commands to ... "burn"? Or would they consume colours? Like my previous point, there is wiggle room for argument here, but my reading of this quote suggests to me that Scadrial's systems are easiest to transfer because of the universality of metals compared to things like Stormlight.

 

 

For the above reasons, I am of the school of thought that the systems of the various worlds obey the same general rules on other worlds as they do on their own, with nothing so exciting as a change of focus, and that any changes made to the systems from world to world are intuitively tied to the systems as they are on their core worlds (changes like the region based magics of Sel needing to accommodate a change in region, or a "distance workaround").

 

 

EDIT: Claincy responded while I was writing that mammoth post.

 

Personally I think that is likely the case. That or that an allomancer born on scadrial would use metals but a Rosharian allomancer would use stormlight in some manner. Regardless, given how haemalurgy is more universal and doesn't require investiture from ruin, it could well be an exception to this. Although I get the feeling that Atium might well work on other planets even if normal metals did not.

 

This is something we've disagreed on before. I had considered the possibility of an Allomancer born on Roshar using Stormlight or whatever, and I suppose it is possible. Never-the-less, I stand by my argument that, say, a Worldhopping Feruchemist would still be using metal on Roshar.

 

 

EDIT 2: I seem to have a love for unnecessary commas. This makes me afraid for my thesis.

Edited October 17, 2013 by Kadrok

[Claincy]

Regarding point 3b, Brandon did not use the word spike in that quote and there was some hesitance to th phrasing of his answer. Just saying I wouldn't take that for evidence of whether it would use a physical spike on other words.

 

Now to clarify my viewpoint:

 

I think it is most likely that a Scadrian allomancer on Roshar would still burn metals.

 

But I am sitting squarely on the fence as to whether an allomancer born on Roshar, with both Rosharan and Scadrian heritage, would use metal or not.

 

Should a piece of Preservations power somehow become invested in Roshar however, and someone gain allomancy through that. Then I strongly suspect they would use stormlight.

[Kadrok]

Regarding point 3b, Brandon did not use the word spike in that quote and there was some hesitance to th phrasing of his answer. Just saying I wouldn't take that for evidence of whether it would use a physical spike on other words.

That is a fair point, although his response "the answer to your question is it can be done" leads me to think that it is a physical spike, given just how much the word spike appears in the question: "Q: Could a Nalthian with the proper knowledge and skill create a hemalurgic spike by spiking a Rosharan having some spikeable attribute?" I think he would have needed to have worded his answer more complicatedly to avoid agreeing it is a spike of some sort. But really I'm splitting hairs.

 

Now to clarify my viewpoint:

 

I think it is most likely that a Scadrian allomancer on Roshar would still burn metals.

 

But I am sitting squarely on the fence as to whether an allomancer born on Roshar, with both Rosharan and Scadrian heritage, would use metal or not.

 

Should a piece of Preservations power somehow become invested in Roshar however, and someone gain allomancy through that. Then I strongly suspect they would use stormlight.

We are in almost perfect agreement.

[Claincy]

That is a fair point, although his response "the answer to your question is it can be done" leads me to think that it is a physical spike, given just how much the word spike appears in the question: "Q: Could a Nalthian with the proper knowledge and skill create a hemalurgic spike by spiking a Rosharan having some spikeable attribute?" I think he would have needed to have worded his answer more complicatedly to avoid agreeing it is a spike of some sort. But really I'm splitting hairs.

True, the wording does lend itself slightly towards actual metal spikes. It's just a non-definite.

 

(Incidentally I will freely admit that your previous post modified my views a little. The point on the narrative complications was a good one.)

 

We are in almost perfect agreement.

Always nice when that happens

[Shardlet]

Regarding point 3b, Brandon did not use the word spike in that quote and there was some hesitance to th phrasing of his answer. Just saying I wouldn't take that for evidence of whether it would use a physical spike on other words.

 

Hard to place something non-physical in a physical bindpoint to grant an attribute or through a physical theft-point to steal an attribute.  Also, in what manner would the stolen attribute be stored to make the transfer from donor to recipient?

[Claincy]

Hard to place something non-physical in a physical bindpoint to grant an attribute or through a physical theft-point to steal an attribute.  Also, in what manner would the stolen attribute be stored to make the transfer from donor to recipient?

For the record I am actually of the opinion that it is most likely metal spikes cosmere wide. I was merely pointing out that that particular quote did not explicitly imply that it would always be a spike.