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Hemalurgy and Communication


fyodor

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That's . . . not how metal works.

If they aren't actually alloyed together then it basically isn't a "trellium" spike, just a spike stuck to trellium. If it is alloyed together it'd do something completely different from both. At that point it wouldn't be trellium.

Edited by natc
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Something in a different thread made me think about how Ruin can talk in people's minds, and I came to a conclusion that makes me happy. It's not Hemalurgy that puts you on Ruin's speed dial, it's his Investiture. A Hemalurgic spike would, by definition, have some of that, so you'll get to hear his voice. Pieces of atium touching your blood might have the same effect because atium is Ruin - which could explain the conflicting answers we've been getting about whether the Lord Ruler's was spiked (yes, his metalminds were his spikes, and yes, he could hear Ruin's voice, but there was no actual Hemalurgic charge in his bracers. Which makes sense too, as it would interfere with the age he is storing there). 

 

Somebody asked, not too long ago, maybe in the AMA, whether things would've worked out differently if Vin had done what Rashek did at the Well - taken the power, become a new Lord Ruler. This is not the exact question, but it was similar enough to count. Brandon's reply included a bit about how she would've had to pull Rashek's atium Compounding trick if she wanted to stay alive long enough to maybe do something different in another thousand years, which would've opened her to Ruin's influence. Which, to me, sounded like it was the atium that allowed Ruin to nag Rashek all these years, not an actual Hemalurgic spike.

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While I was reading, I kept thinking that the spike to mind communication was really weird. No one had ever done that before, except Ruin (and Harmony, obviously, but he was using the Ruin Shard). I don't know how sound the theory is, but I kept thinking that maybe the voice wasn't Bleeder's at all. Sure, Wax thought it was, but I don't know that anything happens to 100% confirm that.

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what is strange is that Ruin amd Preservation can commincate with humans because humans were de by those shards. A metal from another shard should not grant telepathic abilities on this planet.

1) An entire verb is missing in the first sentence.

2) I can guess what you're saying, but where was that ever said? If the statement exists it eludes me, because Ruin can't even speak to most people without a spike to help in the first place.

Edited by natc
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The humans on this planet were created artificially by Ruin and Preservation. Preservation had the ability to read these new minds via spikes, and Ruin could read minds if there was a spike. Humanoids on other planets, as far as we know, were not directly made this way. There isnt a direct link to their minds.

 

WoB on the issue is located here http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=708#3

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It's true that it's not clear. We should clarify this during one of the signings. I am in favor of her having only spike at a time, but all of her spikes would be made of this... let's say trellium. So she prepared this trellium spike early on, removed both of hers (becoming invisible to Harmony), fell on the new one (remaining invisible because of the new metal - it's still not clear how this works), and then kept on acquiring new trellium spikes and swapping them in and out as she wished. So what grants control is the Hemalurgic charge, not the metal - the moment she got too much Hemalurgy in her (by way of bullet to the forehead), Harmony could take her again. And either because Wax's bulletspike was too low on charge or because Paalm's Coinshot trellium spike wasn't made of one of Harmony's metals, he couldn't take control instantaneously, which gave her enough time to trigger her death spiral mechanism. 

 

 

I am not certain Harmony would have stopped the death spiral.  That seems to be a choice they are free to make on their own.  Even if he could have, I do not think he would have intervened on her choice to do this.  

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I am not certain Harmony would have stopped the death spiral. That seems to be a choice they are free to make on their own. Even if he could have, I do not think he would have intervened on her choice to do this.

Actualy, even if he tried to take over there is a delay, otherwise the Kandra "suicide" pact wouldn't have stoped Ruin at the end of HoA.

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The ability to communicate via a disembodied voice and the ability to not be detected are powers that I once attributed to Atium-Brass Allomancy, but since Bavadium/Trellium is so much cooler, by Sanderson's Zeroth Law I'm going with that instead. (And also, MeLaan stated that Harmony didn't know the metal, so it's probably not atium-brass.)

 

I also believe that Bleeder was using two spikes, and the reason Harmony et al. thought she only had one was because Harmony couldn't detect the foreign god metal. In the scene that Moogle provided, not only does she speed off immediately after talking to Wax telepathically, she can also hear Wax's softened voice from a significant distance during the telepathic conversation:

 

"Can we talk?" Wax asked a little softer.

Isn't that what we're doing?

...

Bleeder didn't seem to have trouble hearing, though Wax had softened his voice. Allomancy?

 

So Bleeder was probably using Tin at the time. So either her "trellium" spike could grant her telepathic ability as well other Feruchemical/Allomantic abilities at the same time, or she was using two spikes.

 

I think the two spikes solution is more elegant.

 

 

Based on the quote from the book you provided, I now think *all* of Bleeder's spikes were of this "Trellium" (or at the very least she had multiple). Here is the last part of the quote, with my emphasis as to why.

 

“Waxillium,” Marasi said. “We can’t identify the metal. It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. It certainly wasn’t one of the spikes she started with. That means she removed both, and stuck one like this in instead. Where did she get them? Who gave them to her?”

 

Each of the underlined sections implies there is more than one "Trellium" spike (and that the characters know that).

 

Let me propose another solution: What if there are multiple "trellium" spikes, but Bleeder only uses the rest to spike other people? We know that she created a horde of Hemalurgic creatures. We also know that she spiked that guy who tried to assassinate the governor. What if she used trellium on all of them? So basically, I propose that she only had a single trellium spike inside her at all times and a second spike made of ordinary metal, and that she also had a stash of trellium spikes that she used on her minions.

Edited by skaa
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...In the scene that Moogle provided, not only does she speed off immediately after talking to Wax telepathically, she can also hear Wax's softened voice from a significant distance during the telepathic conversation:

 

"Can we talk?" Wax asked a little softer.

Isn't that what we're doing?

...

Bleeder didn't seem to have trouble hearing, though Wax had softened his voice. Allomancy?

 

So Bleeder was probably using Tin at the time. So either her "trellium" spike could grant her telepathic ability as well other Feruchemical/Allomantic abilities at the same time, or she was using two spikes.

 

Right after that quote ends (without even a linebreak):

...softened his voice. Allomancy? Or did she just have the ability to make ears that worked better than human ones?

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Yes, I'd say that that's exactly what the text implied. Why was she so rational when one spike should have left her insane? Because she had a trellium spike, too. Why did they refer to multiple trellium spikes if she only had one in her? Because she used the others to create new hemallurgic creatures.

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Right after that quote ends (without even a linebreak):

...softened his voice. Allomancy? Or did she just have the ability to make ears that worked better than human ones?

Pffft... I knew someone would point that out. :P I purposefully left that out because that was the boring solution, and while Brandon sometimes goes for the less awesome route (rarely, but it's happened before), I wouldn't as a rule use that possibility in my speculations.

Besides, here's another evidence: Right after Bleeder first uses telepathic communication on Wax in that party scene on top of a tower, she gets chased and jumps out the window. Now, kandra can heal pretty well, but they're kind of useless with broken bones, and broken bones is what one would have after falling from such a height... unless one had Allomantic Steel. Just like in Moogle's example, she had no time to switch between telepathy-spike and allomancy-spike during the chase. So she probably had both spikes inside her already.

 

Edit: So, I got downvoted. I guess I deserved that. I need to remember that what's funny in my mind might sound arrogant to others. I'll let this post serve as an example of how not to reply to someone.

Edited by skaa
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I don't really appreciate deliberately leaving out highly relevant evidence, skaa.  :unsure:

 

--

 

Didn't we know pretty fast that the person Wax chased from the party wasn't Paalm? Not to mention the fact that we saw that guy and the governor at the same time, and what with Paalm impersonating the governor it's a bit impossible for her to have been the one jumping out of that window.

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I don't really appreciate deliberately leaving out highly relevant evidence, skaa. :unsure:

You're right. I should have included that for completeness' sake. I'll be more thorough next time.

Didn't we know pretty fast that the person Wax chased from the party wasn't Paalm?

Did we? "He" was explicitly referred to as Bleeder in the narrative.

Bleeder threw a chair at the weakened window, shattering it. Then, as Wax fired again, he leaped through. Twenty-plus stories in the air.

The Set (who was trying to help Bleeder) then lured Wax away from Bleeder into their trap, so he wasn't able to continue his pursuit.

Not to mention the fact that we saw that guy and the governor at the same time, and what with Paalm impersonating the governor it's a bit impossible for her to have been the one jumping out of that window.

It wasn't exactly clear when Bleeder killed the governor. My guess was after she killed the priest but before Wax found "him" and Drim later on.

If I'm correct, then he was still alive at the party. Unless I missed something. :unsure:

Edited by skaa
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Only sort of. It was heavily implied that, as the governor, Paalm had been intentionally destabilizing society: all those months of corruption were her, not the human. That was never definitively proven, though, so it's possible that the governor was still human at that point.


 

There is a further problem with Paalm only having one spike the entire time (but merely switching it out): that gives us three oddities that we have to use Trellium to explain:

 

1) Paalm is able to hide from Harmony (unusually so)

2) Paalm can utilize telepathy via hemalurgic spike.

3) Paalm is notably not totes cray-cray.

Hiding from Harmony seems like a reasonable side effect of using a non-Atium, non-Lerasium, non-Sazedium godmetal: it's a power he has no control over, and a substance he doesn't understand. It'd be like Preservation trying to find someone through atium. (though I have a suggestion about this that I'll discuss at the end).

 

Telepathy, however, doesn't seem like a side effect, but rather a primary effect: it is the power that the spike grants (given that Spikes themselves don't grant powers, only those with a charge stolen from someone else, I would wager this means that the telepathy was stolen from something else, possibly meaning that we know an allomantic power that burning Trellium produces).
 

However, MeLaan and Harmony act like Paalm must be crazy as an inherent and unavoidable side effect of having just one spike. To them, one-spike = crazy. Yet, everything we see indicates that Paalm is perfectly rational (her plan is incredibly meticulous and well-thoughtout). Indeed, is has one spike and is thus crazy, wouldn't giving her another spike (such as at the end) make her sane? As there is no indication at the end that she suddenly became sane, the indication there is that she always was.

So if Paalm only had one, Trellium, spike, then that spike is hiding her from Sazed, giving her telepathy, AND making her sane. That is a lot more than we've seen any other metal do, so much more that I am dubious of it. But in contrast, if she had two spikes, then the Trellium spike is only doing two things (hiding her and giving her telepathy). Still a stretch compared to what we've see otherwise, but not so far of a stretch.



I would like to briefly mention two additional possibilities related to trellium and communication.

The first is that the Trellium spike may actually be a trellium/atium alloy. Why? Paalm displays severaI Ruin-like powers: an innate knowledge of hemalurgy, hemalurgic communication, and the ability to control others with hemalurgic spikes (a necessity for all the other people who had to help her for her plan to succeed). It might be simplest to group all those together under a single power. In turn, a trellium/lerasium alloy would have given one an innate knowledge of allomancy, the ability to hear thoughts, etc.
 

The second (and at odds with the one above) is that we may have actually seen trellium interact with all three of the metalic arts. In Hemalurgy, it allows a construct to use allomantic powers, which is a new thing to the system. In allomancy, it allows one to project one's thoughts (hence, Paalm was actually using a hemalurgic spike of a trelliumm misting), which is also a new thing. And in feruchemy, it allows one to store whatever attribute that allows a Shard to see/find you, hencea  third new thing.  The nice thing here is that the trellium hemalurgic spike could have been doing all the unusual things we see it doing based on the magic systems we already know about.

Anywho, just a thought.

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I am beginning to suspect we may be overthinking Bleeder's ability to hide from Harmony. Because we don't actually know what this means. Was Harmony unable to detect her magically, by looking for her spikes? If so, we need to know whether it is the Hemalurgic charge (the piece of spiked person's soul) or the metal itself that he sees*. If Ruin and Harmony can see Hemalurgy itself, if they can see pieces of Spiritweb glued to pieces of metal, then Bleeder should've been visible to Sazed, I think (unless the trellium spike grants more than one effect - one native to the metal, and whatever was stolen; I find this less likely, however).

 

If Vin's chapters from The Hero of Ages are a reliable indicated of what it is like to be a Shardholder, then we know that while Sazed can see anything, he doesn't see everything. Not at the same time, he needs to focus his attention, so in searching for Bleeder, he has to scan Scadrial for her. Which he can do either by visual inspection (which could be unreliable, I don't know), or by scanning for "landmarks," so to speak. Metals, since they are pretty obvious to him.

 

So maybe Harmony can't find Bleeder's spike because he can only look for the spike itself, and since it is made of a material - metal - unknown to him, maybe it either looks different enough from the other metals that he doesn't recognize it as a spike, or it doesn't trigger his metal blindness at all, or is completely invisible to him for some reason. In each one of those scenarios I could see him be unable to locate it.

 

* Well, doesn't see, because of metal blindness. But he still knows there is metal there.

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I am beginning to suspect we may be overthinking Bleeder's ability to hide from Harmony. Because we don't actually know what this means. Was Harmony unable to detect her magically, by looking for her spikes? If so, we need to know whether it is the Hemalurgic charge (the piece of spiked person's soul) or the metal itself that he sees*. If Ruin and Harmony can see Hemalurgy itself, if they can see pieces of Spiritweb glued to pieces of metal, then Bleeder should've been visible to Sazed, I think (unless the trellium spike grants more than one effect - one native to the metal, and whatever was stolen; I find this less likely, however).

 

If Vin's chapters from The Hero of Ages are a reliable indicated of what it is like to be a Shardholder, then we know that while Sazed can see anything, he doesn't see everything. Not at the same time, he needs to focus his attention, so in searching for Bleeder, he has to scan Scadrial for her. Which he can do either by visual inspection (which could be unreliable, I don't know), or by scanning for "landmarks," so to speak. Metals, since they are pretty obvious to him.

 

So maybe Harmony can't find Bleeder's spike because he can only look for the spike itself, and since it is made of a material - metal - unknown to him, maybe it either looks different enough from the other metals that he doesn't recognize it as a spike, or it doesn't trigger his metal blindness at all, or is completely invisible to him for some reason. In each one of those scenarios I could see him be unable to locate it.

 

* Well, doesn't see, because of metal blindness. But he still knows there is metal there.

Also, when Harmony tells Wax that he can't just track down Paalm, he doesn't seem to disturbed by it. It's not like it should be impossible. He just tells Wax that "it's complicated," and they have a good laugh about it. The other kandra seem more perplexed by Bleeder's ability to use allomancy/feruchemy than the fact that she's hiding from Harmony.

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Beard, the problem there is that Harmony does seem to be disturbed by his inabiluity to track down Paalm (and Wax downright has the heebie jeebies). To wit, from Chapter 7:

Something is wrong, unforutnately.

"What?" Wax asked.

God was silent for a time. I don't know yet.

Wax felt cold. "Is that possible?"
It appears so. Somehow, Bleeder has figured out how to hide from me. At times I can spot her, but only when she takes direct and obvious action.

Unfortunately, she has removed one of her Blessings--one of the two spikes that kandra must keep inside themselves to retain their cognition. I would forcibly control her if I could, but one spike does not pierce the soul sufficiently for me to get in.

Sazed seems genuinely confounded by his inability to track Paalm.

Argent, I would note that Sazed separates his inability to track Paalm from the fact that she has only one spike. He doesn't attribute the former to the latter. If it was just the lack of two spikes that was making it difficult, shouldn't Sazed at least be able to realize that that was the cause?

Additionally, Sazed isn't just having trouble finding her: he is having trouble keeping track of her once found. He can spot her, occasionally, but then she is able to slip away from his attention/gaze/knowledge. It seems like if the one-spike just made her hard to find, Sazed should still be able to follow her once found. Since he can, it appears that there is more at work.

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Hmm. Yes, you might be correct here. I can still see parts of my theory working with the given phrasing, but I don't know if it is the best explanation. I am mostly confused about how she can disappear from his sight - it almost sounds like she is using Kinetic Investiture of some sorts to disappear.

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The foreign god metal spike must be fogging him. Sazed seems a little confused about why it's so hard to track Paalm. He has to know that there's more at work than a missing spike. He keeps his eye on Wax just fine, even though the number of spikes he has in him is usually zero--only sometimes one, the same number as in Paalm.

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Unless her telepathy comes from trellium itself, and her Allomantic or Feruchemical abilities come from whatever the spike stole.

 

I'm very much in favour of this option. It's entirely possible that Trell, whoever Trell is, has the same ability to communicate with people who have spiritual holes that Ruin did, and that part of what the trellium spike does when Paalm uses it is bestow that ability. (Which Trell could have Invested directly into the spike similar to how you can steal anything you like with Atium) And while Harmony can't manipulate Paalm through one hemalurgic spike, it's possible that Trell can manipulate her through the trellium spike and a normal spike? Although that would be problematic for one of the Trell candidates.

 

In which case we have no idea what would happen if someone burned Trell's element. It's possible that like Lerasium it would spiritually attune you to be able to use their planet's investiture? The reason we don't get that side-effect for Atium is that anyone can use Hemalurgy. It would probably also make you act somewhat more in accordance with the Shard's intent, the way Atium makes you more violent. If Trell is who we expect they are, then I guess it would free you from other Shardic influences and compel you to liberate others?

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I'm very much in favour of this option. It's entirely possible that Trell, whoever Trell is, has the same ability to communicate with people who have spiritual holes that Ruin did, and that part of what the trellium spike does when Paalm uses it is bestow that ability.

 

Somebody somewhere confirmed that other Shards can also communicate with spiked people. We don't have much more than that, but it's apparently not as clear as Ruin's casual chats - perhaps it's closer to a beefed up emotional Allomancy than actual communication. 

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