Shadows of Self Chapter 6

[Windrunner]

Tor.com just released the sixth chapter of Shadows of Self! It's pretty awesome, and we only have T-minus 8 days until it is released!

[natc]

Gah! Was about to go to bed.

Must. Read.

[Moogle]

The body wasn't digested. Not a kandra, I take it?

Edit: A misty night,” Flog said. “That’s bad luck, it is.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Winsting said, adjusting his cravat.

“He’s watching us,” Flog said. “The mists are his eyes, my lord. Sure as Ruin, that is.”

“Superstitious nonsense.” Winsting turned and strode into the room. Behind him, Flog shut the doors before the mists could seep into the party.

Much more ominous, if our Ruin-wannabe uses the mists to whisper at our Hemalurgic-Steelrunner.

Edit2: Idashwy disappeared a month prior, and was hearing voices at the time. She also asked the corrupt guy to his face if he was being bribed, and only after did she open fire. It feels like she thought she was doing good - a strike against it being a kandra.

I think she was killed after killing the corrupt guy.

[A Joe in the Bush]

In the old days, Inquisitors had driven the spike right through the body of the one to be killed into the body of the person to gain the powers. That prevented any power from being lost. Apparently, coating the newly made spike in blood could achieve a similar effect.

That's new info.

[Moogle]

That's new info.

Only speculation for the moment. The killer may not have minded the power loss.

Edit: Or not? I thought Wax made that deduction, but it may have been in the book Wax got. In which case, it's much more trustworthy.

Kind of makes sense, the power drain stops when you spike yourself and coat it in blood.

[Kurkistan]

The blood thing is fairly revelatory, actually, since it's been speculated (primarily by Oudies, I believe?) that it's possible that the reason leakage stops is that the spike has "bonded" to a new spirit; this put forward as a possible reason why Vin's spike does anything worthwhile after being out of her body so often.

[natc]

If it's in the book, and the Inquisitors didn't do that . . . did Spook test it? Disturbing thought.

Edited September 28, 2015 by natc

[A Joe in the Bush]

Spook pretty much admitted to doing hemalurgy at the beginning of the book that marsh gave wax.

[Argent]

Huh, the thick plottens.

 

I want to find out what the deal is with Bloody Tan. No combination of Metallic Arts would allow him to survive Wax killing him in the prologue of The Alloy of Law, but he would have to be some kind of Metalborn to know to move Lessie. What's our current stance on kandra with Hemalurgic spikes?

[Moogle]

The blood thing is fairly revelatory, actually, since it's been speculated (primarily by Oudies, I believe?) that it's possible that the reason leakage stops is that the spike has "bonded" to a new spirit; this put forward as a possible reason why Vin's spike does anything worthwhile after being out of her body so often.

 

Presumably the spike in question was coated in Idashwy's blood, which shouldn't stop the leakage under that theory... unless I'm misinterpreting you? She's dead, so she can hardly bond the spike.

 

All Investiture seems to decay and return to the Shard after a while - Stormlight returns to the highstorms, for example. Perhaps this is what happens with the spike: the Investiture wants to return to the world, and only when it's attached to something living will that stop. Blood can 'fake' it and put the Investiture on life support, as it were (blood being Spiritually connected to life or some such notion).

 

We do know the spike must touch blood when you get one, so it certainly does seem like it's involved in the process of stopping the leakage.

 

But I'm still pretty sure Vin's earring should have decayed when it was out of her body.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Moogle

[Kurkistan]

@Moogle

 

To be clear, I was talking about the leakage stopping when you put the spike into the recipient. So the idea (by my understanding) was that because Vin got spiked almost right after the earring was made into a spike, this would then stop all further leakage of power from the spike so long as Vin was alive.

 

This theory becomes a lot less likely if a dead person's blood coating the spike is all it takes to stop leakage. The blood serving as some kind of Spiritual barrier isn't necessarily incompatible with the "bonding means no leakage" theory, but it does start to threaten it with Occam's razor.

 

@Argent

 

Kandra hemalurgy is possible, but not known. It's unclear what time-frame this "knowage" is based on in Brandon's reply.

 

Source:

NINJAMETIMBERS

What would happen if you gave it a spike imbued with steel allomancy? I'm assuming that wouldn't be enough to grant it sentience but could it then use steel powers? Can you give allomantic powers to a kandra?

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

Hemalurgy can give allomantic powers to a kandra. The process to do so is not known to anyone but Harmony.

[Argent]

Hmm. I very much doubt Bloody Tan works for Harmony, so maybe there is a different explanation. Maybe those words Wayne found in Idashwy's pocket are unique to Tan, but are rather something he and his peers, whoever those are, say. 

 

I don't know. All my guesses feel overengineered. 

[Kurkistan]

It really seems like somebody is doing some serious Ruin-level puppeteering/influencing here, it's just disturbing to contemplate who exactly is doing it, and how they're sneaking it by Harmony.

 

Maybe the Southerners are more sophisticated than we've been (kind of) assuming? So rather than just having some machines that can do a steelpush if you push a button, they have sophisticated mechanical implementations of emotional Allomancy that can mimic the hallucinations and urges that Ruin was able to create? This of course assumes some kind of Southern-related conspiracy to infiltrate/invade the North; either that or someone in the North got ahold of mechallomancy.

 

I suppose it's also possible that a very skilled Soother/Rioter who knows exactly what he's doing could go also exploit the Flaw this subtly. They can already take Hemalurgic-constructs over wholesale just like Ruin can, so it stands to reason that they might be able to be more fine-grained about it to.

 

Even if your target needs the Flaw in order to be manipulated, it certainly broadens the suspect pool from our current choices of "maybe Harmony turned evil?" or "unknown but Harmony-bypassing Shard." Just subtly put a spike or two in a few people and a vanilla mortal with connections and knowledge can have them go all Penrod on Elendel.

 

---

 

Also: Confirmation that bullets deflect on their way out of slow bubbles. Fairly intuitive, but not confirmed yet.

 

EDIT: Also increases the likelihood that bullets deflect going both ways through both kinds of bubbles. Now we've seen deflection out of both speed bubbles and slow bubbles: so passing fast->slow and slow->fast both deflect. Either it's a bullets-leaving-bubbles thing or I'd wager that it's universal for crossing the boundary.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Kurkistan

[Moogle]

Even if hallucinations are possible to create, Idashwy was seeing the spirit of her dead brother. This implies whoever is causing the hallucinations knew her dead brother well enough to mimic his appearance.

 

Or that you can use magic and have your target procedurally generate something... but Ruin implies otherwise.

 

That severely cuts down on our candidates, and in my opinion massively shifts the evidence towards something like a Ruin-Splinter. (Kelsier's chances grow.)

Edited September 28, 2015 by Moogle

[Kurkistan]

Even if hallucinations are possible to create, Idashwy was seeing the spirit of her dead brother. This implies whoever is causing the hallucinations knew her dead brother well enough to mimic his appearance.

 

Or that you can use magic and have your target procedurally generate something... but Ruin implies otherwise.

 

That severely cuts down on our candidates, and in my opinion massively shifts the evidence towards something like a Ruin-Splinter. (Kelsier's chances grow.)

 

Question of the day: when/how did her brother die? Because if I was an evil organization looking to Hemalurgically/Allomantically manipulate a specific Steelrunner, I might do my research and then potentially engineer some emotional trauma (and potentially get a spike along the way from the brother) to make her easier to dupe.

[Kaymyth]

Huh, sketch artists amongst the journalists.  It looks as though photography is one of the technologies that's lagged behind the parallels with our own development.

[Kurkistan]

That is interesting, especially considering how advanced gunpowder, metallurgy, cars, etc. imply a fairly sophisticated depth to Scadrian understanding of chemistry.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Kurkistan
spelling

[Curious Anamaximder]

I cried when they mentioned Tindwyl Promenade.

[Argent]

That is interesting, especially considering how advanced gunpower, mettalurgy, cars, etc. imply a fairly sophisticated depth to Scadrian understanding of chemistry.

 

I think optics is the key here. From what I am gathering from these chapters, it looks like Harmony left a lot of hints and/or instructions in the Words of Founding about the knowledge that was lost during the Final Empire. Maybe the people before the Lord Ruler weren't advanced enough in optics, and so the post-Catacendre (sp?) world isn't either. 

 

Scientific discoveries are weird.

[Chaos]

It is so fun to watch you all theorize <3 Heh heh heh heh...

[WeiryWriter]

Oh wow that's a doozy of a chapter.

 

I do wonder if there's a continuity there.  It's mentioned that Sazed didn't include any mention of Hemalurgy in the Words of Founding, but weren't the HoA epigraphs supposed to be excerpts from the Words?  Hemalurgy is definitely mentioned in the epigraphs.

[Kaymyth]

It is so fun to watch you all theorize <3 Heh heh heh heh...

 

Yep, you just keep telling yourself that if it's how you manage to keep from going crazy not being able to talk about it. 

[Chaos]

Yep, you just keep telling yourself that if it's how you manage to keep from going crazy not being able to talk about it. 

Well, I can talk to a few people about it that are also listed in the Acknowledgements

[ccstat]

Huh, sketch artists amongst the journalists.  It looks as though photography is one of the technologies that's lagged behind the parallels with our own development.

 

But what about this quote from chapter five?

 

 

Allriandre reached into her handbag and took out a large locket. She spread it open, displaying a strikingly distinct evanotype of a man with a wide mustache and a twinkle in his eyes. He had a long, friendly face, and his hair was thinning on top. Her father.

That sounds like early photography to me (though I can't think who might be the eponymous Evan to replace our own Daguerre. Is this a real-world name-drop?)

 

I'm particularly interested in seeing what that inventor girl (clearly passing her own inventions off under the name of her father) comes up with besides a microphone. Tons of potential there..

[Kurkistan]

@ccstat

 

Quite right, I'd forgotten that. Not!Daguerreotype's aren't quite suited to use by the press, though, so at the very least it looks like any photography they have is likely behind the curve.

 

--

 

Another thing is that apparently none of us were surprised enough at Spook writing the book on Hemalurgy to think it worth commenting on it, which I find a bit amusing.