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Spiritual Surgery with Shardblades


Scriptorian

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Yes this about shardblades, but it's pretty heavy in realmantic theory and it relates to Mistborn, so I'm putting it in Cosmere theories.

 

Before discussing my main theory, I want to take about the mechanics of shardblades. I don't know if this has been discussed else where, but for the sake of clarity, here's the idea that I've based the rest if my theory on. Shardblades cut things by affecting them in the Spiritual Realm. Essentially, it is just a really sharp blade in the Spiritual Realm that can cut most things also in that realm. So, when a shardbearer slices a rock in the Physical Realm, in the Spiritual the shardblade cuts the rocks spiritual essence in half, which, by realmantic voodoo, means the rocks physical aspect is seamlessly cut in two. With living things, its a bit more complecated. Basically if you cut someones arm with a shardblade, their spiritual arm is severed, resulting in the physical essentially dying. When someone is cut in a vital area (i.e. spine or face) their spiritual aspect stops working, so their physical body dies. (As a tangent, this would mean most forms of healing Investiture could not heal shardblade wounds, since, as I understand it, healing magic works by restoring the body to its ideal state. i.e. its spiritual aspect. Since the spiritual aspect is armless, tapping gold, if anything, would make your physical arms fall off). Things like shardplate (and hypothetically other invested items) are resistant because of the weird investiture-interference principle.

 

That was longer than I thought it would be...Anyway, the main idea that I wanted to bring up is that if shardblades function essentially as I described above, then could you possibly use a sharblade to preform sort of spiritual surgery similar to Hemalurgy? Basically you would stab someone at a bindpoint and the shardblade severs whatever spiritual essence is there that Hemalurgy would steal. Hypothtically, if you hit just the bindpoint precisly enough, you would leave the person more or less intact.

 

Since Hemalurgy is universal, it stands to reason that anything that can affect things spiritualy should be able to preform a similar function.

 

Although, it wouldn't really be considered Hemalurgy because you can't steal anything, but say you wanted to non-lethally stop a Mistborn, you just slice out his Mistborn-sDNA, leaving him alive but without any powers. Whether this is feasible is another matter. For instance, you'd probably wan't a shardscalpel or something to get the precision needed to hit the bindpoints. This probably isn't something you could do with a normal, giant-sized shardblade, but I thought it sounded cool.

 

Any thoughts on either half of this theory?

 

Edit: Hmm...I misspelled 'shardblades' in the tags. Any idea how to fix that?

Edited by Windrunner
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Interesting, it sounds theoretically possible, though i agree that a shardblade would be rather unwieldy.

 

Just a note: Feruchemical gold can heal shardblade injuries. Basic stormlight healing like Kal has cannot and I think regrowth probably can't, not certain about regrowth though.

http://theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=979#166

Edited by lord_Ffnord
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Just a note: Feruchemical gold can heal shardblade injuries. Basic stormlight healing like Kal has cannot and I think regrowth probably can't, not certain about regrowth though.

http://theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=979#166

Thanks for that. Now that I think about it, it's kind of obvious. Gold is hybrid metal, supposedly affecting all three realms, so there's no reason why it couldn't heal a shardblade wound.

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That's an interesting idea, although I'm not entirely sure what it would be used for. I also don't think that it can be done without damaging a person in some way. Cutting off part of someone's soul seems like too drastic a thing to leave someone the same person, no matter how carefully it was done.

Also, I fixed your tag for you. You can change tags by editing you post and then using into the "use full editor" button.

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Shardblades cut things by affecting them in the Spiritual Realm. Essentially, it is just a really sharp blade in the Spiritual Realm that can cut most things also in that realm. So, when a shardbearer slices a rock in the Physical Realm, in the Spiritual the shardblade cuts the rocks spiritual essence in half, which, by realmantic voodoo, means the rocks physical aspect is seamlessly cut in two. With living things, its a bit more complecated. Basically if you cut someones arm with a shardblade, their spiritual arm is severed, resulting in the physical essentially dying.

 

I'm not quite so sure on this. I agree that Shardblades almost certainly act in the Spiritual, but they well might act in the Physical at the same time when it comes to non-living objects. Note how they "fuzz" when "cutting" living people, but not rocks. That suggests that something more is happening in the second case. Perhaps not, but worth keeping in mind.

 

When someone is cut in a vital area (i.e. spine or face) their spiritual aspect stops working, so their physical body dies. (As a tangent, this would mean most forms of healing Investiture could not heal shardblade wounds, since, as I understand it, healing magic works by restoring the body to its ideal state. i.e. its spiritual aspect. Since the spiritual aspect is armless, tapping gold, if anything, would make your physical arms fall off). Things like shardplate (and hypothetically other invested items) are resistant because of the weird investiture-interference principle.

 

This is wrong, I think.

 

First of all, "severed" limbs don't die, they're simply paralyzed. This is exposited in the prologue, I believe. It's not like the thing rots off. Or you might be talking exclusively about "whole body death" and assuming simple paralysis for every other case, in which case I apologize for misinterpreting you.

 

Also, killing the person outright seems to be of a different type from killing a limb, as it causes the emission of black smoke akin to Nightblood's. Given that connection, I think it may be fair to say that it's more a case of destruction than that the Spiritual aspect simply "stops working." Or, once again, I could be misinterpreting you. Or wrong.

 

More concretely, you are wrong about a pair of things:

 

First: Healing is determined by Cognitive aspects, not Spiritual.

 

Second: Feruchemical Gold, at the least, can repair "severed" limbs:

 

Kurkistan:

2) Does a limb that has been "severed" by a Shardblade have any Hemalurgic bindpoints? If the same limb was then cut off more conventionally, would a Bloodmaker ferring be able to grow it back?

 

Brandon:

2) A severed Shardblade limb needs repair to the soul before it would function again. A Bloodmaker would be able to heal it without needing to grow it back.

 

Also, tangentially, we can surmise from these two facts that Shardblades most certainly do not damage Cognitive aspects, at least when they're not killing you outright.

 

That was longer than I thought it would be...Anyway, the main idea that I wanted to bring up is that if shardblades function essentially as I described above, then could you possibly use a sharblade to preform sort of spiritual surgery similar to Hemalurgy? Basically you would stab someone at a bindpoint and the shardblade severs whatever spiritual essence is there that Hemalurgy would steal. Hypothtically, if you hit just the bindpoint precisly enough, you would leave the person more or less intact.

 

Since Hemalurgy is universal, it stands to reason that anything that can affect things spiritualy should be able to preform a similar function.

 

Although, it wouldn't really be considered Hemalurgy because you can't steal anything, but say you wanted to non-lethally stop a Mistborn, you just slice out his Mistborn-sDNA, leaving him alive but without any powers. Whether this is feasible is another matter. For instance, you'd probably wan't a shardscalpel or something to get the precision needed to hit the bindpoints. This probably isn't something you could do with a normal, giant-sized shardblade, but I thought it sounded cool.

 

Any thoughts on either half of this theory?

 

It's interesting. Shardblades seem pretty intent on killing the whole limb once they get to the middle of it, though: wouldn't they also be inclined to kill organs is they touch part of it?

 

It seems like Shardblades are in the business of getting to any given "branch" of the spiritweb and then burning it back to where it splits off from the main trunk (along the spine, it would seem). In that case, they'd burn out everything on the path that any given bindpoint rested on, not just the one point.

 

Edit: Hmm...I misspelled 'shardblades' in the tags. Any idea how to fix that?

 

Just click "Edit" and then "Use Full Editor" on the OP, then you should be able to mess with the tags. ;)

 

EDIT: *Grumble grumble* I take the time for a nice detailed post, then ninjas pop out of the woodwork *Grumble*

 

EDIT 2:

 

Thanks for that. Now that I think about it, it's kind of obvious. Gold is hybrid metal, supposedly affecting all three realms, so there's no reason why it couldn't heal a shardblade wound.

 

I'll have to disagree with Claincy here, actually. I think that any "proper" healing magic could deal with a "severed" limb, and that stormlight is somewhat uniquely deficient in this case. So Regrowth could probably get the job done.

 

Also, Feruchemical gold is technically a Physical metal, so it's "hybrid" status is not necessarily making it special in also affecting at least one other Realm.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Just click "Edit" and then "Use Full Editor" on the OP, then you should be able to mess with the tags. ;)

 

EDIT: *Grumble grumble* I take the time for a nice detailed post, then ninjas pop out of the woodwork *Grumble*

Does it count as ninja'ing when I post nearly a half an hour before you? :P
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I wonder about the non-lethally stop a Mistborn part. There doesn't seem to be a "be a Mistborn" bindpoint, or I think Inquisitors would have less spikes. Granted this could be because you can't steal more than one ability at a time, but it makes more sense to me if it's a distributed network. Now it would be cool to sever someone's pewter, for example, and leave them with the rest of their abilities, but I doubt that's very useful.

 

In an on-Roshar example though, could you use a Shardblade to sever out half of a Surge? For example, removing the pressure parts of Windrunning?

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Being the technical douche I am, I will note that Pressure is a surge itself. Windrunning is not... well, it's not anything. It doesn't mean anything (unless it turns out that each Order has an ability completely unique from what the others have; then the Windrunners could have an ability called Stormriding Windrunning). Being a Windrunner means you have control over the Atmospheric Pressure surge and the Gravity surge. 

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Although, it wouldn't really be considered Hemalurgy because you can't steal anything, but say you wanted to non-lethally stop a Mistborn, you just slice out his Mistborn-sDNA, leaving him alive but without any powers.

That's... pretty abominable in my opinion... that would be like cutting hands off an opposing swordsman, or lobotomizing people who use their intellect against you. Honestly, between executing my enemies and maiming them, I would consider executing the more moral option.

 

Yes this means that I think the ending of Avatar: the Last Airbender is completely messed up, especially if you consider that Aang only had to stall the Firelord till the comet passed, and was doing a good job of that anyway. Cutting out the Firelord's firebending is plain evil... it comes from having a child messiah, I suppose... they don't consider properly the moral implications of their actions.

 

 

 

I'll have to disagree with Claincy here, actually. I think that any "proper" healing magic could deal with a "severed" limb, and that stormlight is somewhat uniquely deficient in this case. So Regrowth could probably get the job done.

 

Also, Feruchemical gold is technically a Physical metal, so it's "hybrid" status is not necessarily making it special in also affecting at least one other Realm.

I agree with Darnam here. I think we need to draw a distinction between healing magic, and enhanced recovery. Allomantic pewter and holding Stormlight enhance your recovery, Feruchemical gold and Divine Breath, and probably Regrowth are healing magic. Given that Brandon has said that similar magics work the same way (all Illusion magic will work pretty much the way Lightweaving does), I think it's fair to say that Regrowth and Divine breath would, like Feruchemical gold, heal shardblade severing.

Edited by Kadrok
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Being the technical douche I am, I will note that Pressure is a surge itself. Windrunning is not... well, it's not anything. It doesn't mean anything (unless it turns out that each Order has an ability completely unique from what the others have; then the Windrunners could have an ability called Stormriding Windrunning). Being a Windrunner means you have control over the Atmospheric Pressure surge and the Gravity surge. 

 

I'm assuming that each order of KR have unique abilities based upon the combination of two surges. This could be wrong though.

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I agree with Darnam here. I think we need to draw a distinction between healing magic, and enhanced recovery. Allomantic pewter and holding Stormlight enhance your recovery, Feruchemical gold and Divine Breath, and probably Regrowth are healing magic. Given that Brandon has said that similar magics work the same way (all Illusion magic will work pretty much the way Lightweaving does), I think it's fair to say that Regrowth and Divine breath would, like Feruchemical gold, heal shardblade severing.

Point taken. I'll agree that Regrowth classifies as healing magic and could probably heal a shardblade wound.

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