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(Steelhunt) Shadows of Self: Who Wrote Marsh's Book?


Oudeis

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I haven't read this anywhere else so I'm gonna post it here: First, do we think the book Wax is reading in the blurb is the book Marsh gave Marasi at the end of Alloy? And second, who do we think is the author of the book?I have my own ideas, but I'd like to see what other people think, too.

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I think it's almost certainly the book Marsh gave Marasi, but we know that whatever book Wax is reading wasn't written by Marsh.

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/4258-questions-for-seattle-signing-1014/page-6#entry68628

EDIT: Actually, Brandon basically says in that quote that it's the book Marsh gave Marasi. So no speculation needed there.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Or it could be neither of them. Or Breeze, or Ham, or even Yomen. All of the crew will have changed by the time that they read this, and knowing Brandon, I wouldn't be surprised.

(But given how he has said that Spook will be playing some other (barely) greater roles, I think that it is Spook also. He had the greatest experience with hemalurgy).

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I'm definitely thinking Spook. It sounds like him, and he's had experience with Hemalurgy pre-Final Ascension, and it seems just within his character to try and become immortal. (I would just like to point out that whoever wrote it has some twisted moral logic. Just because using a power no longer places you under the whims of a malevolent force, doesn't mean that killing people to access it is okay.)

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I'm definitely thinking Spook. It sounds like him, and he's had experience with Hemalurgy pre-Final Ascension, and it seems just within his character to try and become immortal. (I would just like to point out that whoever wrote it has some twisted moral logic. Just because using a power no longer places you under the whims of a malevolent force, doesn't mean that killing people to access it is okay.)

 

That's a bit of a harsh reading, Serendipity. We've had a number of discussion over more "humane" Hemalurgy: from using previously-created spikes (ala Pathians) to Hemalurgy-as-capital punishment to "needs of the many...", as well as several other variations. The author of the book needn't be advocating wholesale slaughter of innocents to see Hemalurgy as potentially-not-evil.

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On a reread, I agree that the writer might be considering more pseudo-humane uses for it, but the feeling I got was that they're justifying it's use simply because Ruin isn't around to control people anymore. There's an argument to be made, I think, for reusing old spikes and such, but I think a lot of people will argue that stabbing someone with a railroad spike is a terrible means of execution.

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I think the argument was more like: Ruin used to be in charge of that power (not just the influence of users, but the power itself). Now that Sazed is technically in charge of it, the writer feels that this means the power itself is different. Like how the scary house at the end of the block is only scary cuz the old man who lives there is crotchety and mean, but when he moves to florida and a nice young couple with a puppy moves in the house is suddenly nice.

 

This is false, of course, but I think it is the writer's argument.

 

Also yeah, I hadn't considered the other surviving members of the crew. If memory serves, the book references Saze, not Sazed, and there are very, very few people who would call God by not only his first name, but his nickname. I'm currently in a Mistborn reread, and I'm going to look at which characters tend to call him Saze and which call him Sazed.

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Nope, it's evil. Always has been, always will be. WoB.

 

Since we're not talking about Alignment requirements for spells, you'll forgive me if I don't take an author's word (any author or anyone, in fact, not just Brandon) on whether an act is morally acceptable.

 

Also, even Brandon is more nuanced than that:

 

Is Hemalurgy evil? Most certainly. Killing someone and stealing a part of their soul isn’t a goodly act. There’s room to argue, however, that once a spike is made, its use may or may not be evil. Some might consider it abominable, of course, but others might make a case that death happens, and that it might as well serve some good. Every character’s views on this will be different, and in fact deciding how your Hero feels about this is one of many ways you can learn more about him (or her).

 

So while Brandon might want to rule out Hemalurgy for executions (or "organ-donations," it seems), not all uses are evil in his eyes.

Edited by Kurkistan
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 So while Brandon might want to rule out Hemalurgy for executions (or "organ-donations," it seems), not all uses are evil in his eyes.

 

The way I read the quote is this.

 

Brandon feels Hemalurgy is evil.

 

 

Is Hemalurgy evil? Most certainly.

 

I don't see a lot of wiggle room here.

 

Now, I think what Brandon was saying is that he could understand how someone else might feel differently and offered up some ways that someone might be able to justify the use of Hemalurgy to themselves.

 

"Why waste it, he's already a deader." Because it isn't just power, it's a part of someones soul, and to use it, you have to attach it to your own soul. This is the horror of the Frankenstein Monster on a spiritual level.

 

What I'm saying, is that if someone offered Brandon a Hemalurgic spike he would need a very good reason before he accepted it, and even then he'd be torn. I think he'd use the power to save his family, or a child, but I also think he'd hate himself for doing it. But I think if you took the spike and used it to save your family or an innocent child, he would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt rather than revile you on the same level as a cannibal.

 

Edit: I Up voted your down vote because I didn't see a down vote as justified. Your interpretation of the quote is valid as far as that goes.

Edited by Gloom
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I agree with Kurk on this one. There are many ambiguous uses for Hemalurgy...

 

Example...

 

The head of a house is a bronze misting (for example).

 

Rather than have that power be lost on his death, the power is bequeathed to his heir and when the lord is ready to die (or on his death bed) he is spiked, killed and his power passed on to serve the family for another generation.

 

I could even envisage a society seeing this as a positive thing, honouring your ancestors, keeping the power / legacy alive and all that.

 

There you go, Hereditary spikes. or Hereditary Hemalurgy

 

An interesting question for me is:

 

If father and son are both bronze mistings, the father is spiked and his power given to the son. The son gets married and has a son (grandson) who is also a bronze misting...

 

Can you spike the son into the grandson and get three generations of bronze in the single individual?

Edited by MadRand
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Can you spike the son into the grandson and get three generations of bronze in the single individual?

 

First, you seem to be dismissing the "rip someone's soul apart and staple it onto someone else" thing. Even without Ruin, it's been heavily implied that there are other downsides to a patchwork soul. Can you point to one hemalurged individual who isn't a little crazy? I'm not sure you can simply hand-wave away that "oh that was all Ruin." He spoke directly to people, yes, and took direct control of the Inquisitors, but I don't think you can say for certain that people weren't just always a little off while spiked.

 

Second, to answer your question, I'm not sure, but I believe not. I always wondered; when we learn of the koloss and how they work, there seems to be a great deal implied but never flat-out stated; I wouldn't hate to read an essay Mr. Sanderson might write explaining it a bit differently. Rashek thought that if he stopped giving the Koloss fresh spikes, they would die out. They learned another way; they used the spikes they harvested from the dead koloss, and re-charged them from humans, then turned other humans into koloss. The original charge seemed to be mostly lost; the new koloss were not now twice as strong. Still, it is stated that the old charge was never completely wiped off the spike; this extra bit of spiritweb made the new koloss crazier, but also more human, hence why they tried to dress up and acquire wealth. The whole explanation is rather confusing and I could stand to have it explained to me again, but it seems that you could neither 1) simply take the first spike and pass it to the son, then kill the father and pass that to the son, as well, nor 2) remove the father's spike, use it to kill him and thus double charge it, and then give the double-spike to the son and grant him access to the father AND grandfather's power.

 

The other thing you may have meant was, can you spike the father, and steal the patchwork soul? More importantly, since you seem to only get one spike per victim, can you stab him with a single spike that will steal both his native bronze and his stolen bronze? This would require two assumptions: First, that stolen attributes are now in the person and can be stolen. I think this is not the case, since Vin loses her extra bronze when her earring is removed. Second, that the two bronzes inside of a person meld into a single, super-powered trait that can be stolen, rather than operating in parellel. I'm inclined to say no, though I have difficulty expressing why I think that is so.

 

On a grander scale, Ruin crafted a power that would have dire cost. Finding a way to concentrate power across generations feels opposed to this Intent, though to be fair "I shoot you with coins and kill you" certainly seems to be against Preservation's Intent, so that's hardly hard-and-fast.

 

I've provided such thought and evidence as I feel I can. My personal belief is that no, for the reasons I've stated you could not pass traits along like this. (Now, a grandfather could directly spike his own grandson, then in the fullness of time the father could spike his now doubly-empowered son and get a treble-Seeker, but that's a very different system than the one you're suggesting). I personally take the koloss explanation as WoB that a single charge will only work for one person, so you could not pass Bronze down a family line, only to one single descendant, but as I've said the whole explanation was a bit esoteric, so I understand if not everyone agrees.

 

edit: found a typo.

Edited by Darnam
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The way I read the quote is this.

Brandon feels Hemalurgy is evil.

I don't see a lot of wiggle room here.

I think he oversimplified, and views it as a white lie because he's concerned about the public image of RPGs and related games. He "has problems with some of the things" games like Skryim do. Yet he has no problem RPing characters like Ruin or the Lord Ruler when he writes villains, even going to lengths to explain how they weren't evil. It's inconsistent. He offered a fig leaf in the game, because our society freaks out about morality in games, that's all.

It may also be a typical RPG rationalization. Hemalurgy is overpowered, but "Don't because it's overpowered and will ruin the game," is metagaming and some people get uncomfortable with it. Telling them it's always evil is a workaround.

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I don't. I think he felt he over stated it, and felt the need to go back and calm his statement down a little bit, but I feel he was being quite candid in what he thinks of it on a personal level.

 

I look at Hemalurgy as theft and murder. You steal a power and it kills the victim. Killing someone for personal gain is considered harmful to the human psych by most experts, so killing them and then injecting a piece of another persons soul into your own can only be more harmful.

I used cannibalism as an example in the last post, and I see this was avoided, but this is what Hemalurgy is. Hemalurgy is spiritual cannibalism. If it was verifiable that you could gain the strength of your father by eating his heart, would you do it? Would that make it okay? Would it be okay if you just bought someone elses fathers heart and ate it? would this make you any less the despicable cannibal?

 

Lets say someone murders and robs a loving family. A Rolex watch was part of the loot. It's got the dead fathers name engraved on the bottom. You recognize the name and that this person was murdered. It's got traces of blood in a couple of the grooves. He'll sell it to you, a $20,000 watch, but he'll sell it to you for $20 because he doesn't know how valuable it is. Would you buy that watch and profit off of it knowing that by doing so you are not only profiting off of the death of a family, not only allowing a man who murders children to escape justice, but are actually encouraging this man to go out and kill another family just so you can profit? I don't see a difference between this and Hemalurgy...actually, I do see a difference between this and Hemalurgy. Hemalurgy is worse because it violates not only a persons body, but their very soul.

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I do see a difference between this and Hemalurgy. Hemalurgy is worse because it violates not only a persons body, but their very soul.

 

And what use is that soul, precisely? We know very, very little about the afterlife in the Cosmere beyond the fact that there might be one. Do you need a soul to have an afterlife, or is it as 'useless' as your physical body? It seems to me that the Cognitive portion of you is the part that makes you 'you'. I wouldn't get too hung up on the fact that Hemalurgy steals bits of the soul, because it's very likely that a 'soul' in the Cosmere is nothing like what it is considered in this world. (Then again, it might be.)

 

Would you find Hemalurgy as bad if it turned out to not make a difference for someone's afterlife?

 

As to Brandon saying Hemalurgy is 'evil', the Cosmere is not D&D and until he introduces a magic system with an equivalent 'detect evil' spell then I feel his statement on the matter is mostly irrelevant. His books are written, and now they're open to interpretation. That said, I find Hemalurgy decidedly distasteful (and not a little disgusting), and think Spook (if that's who wrote the book) is crazy for wanting to use it without understanding the consequences of ripping off a part of someone's soul. The only way you can learn about Hemalurgy is either massive amounts of death or else getting knowledge directly from a Shard, and I can't see Sazed teaching Spook. I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs unless it turns out that the soul plays no part in the afterlife.

Edited by Moogle
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The way I read the quote is this.

 

Brandon feels Hemalurgy is evil.

 

 

I don't see a lot of wiggle room here.

 

Now, I think what Brandon was saying is that he could understand how someone else might feel differently and offered up some ways that someone might be able to justify the use of Hemalurgy to themselves.

 

"Why waste it, he's already a deader." Because it isn't just power, it's a part of someones soul, and to use it, you have to attach it to your own soul. This is the horror of the Frankenstein Monster on a spiritual level.

 

What I'm saying, is that if someone offered Brandon a Hemalurgic spike he would need a very good reason before he accepted it, and even then he'd be torn. I think he'd use the power to save his family, or a child, but I also think he'd hate himself for doing it. But I think if you took the spike and used it to save your family or an innocent child, he would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt rather than revile you on the same level as a cannibal.

 

Edit: I Up voted your down vote because I didn't see a down vote as justified. Your interpretation of the quote is valid as far as that goes.

 

I disagree a bit on how to interpret Brandon, but at this point it'd just be quibbling over impressions, so let's just leave it at that. :)

 

Thank you for the upvote, also.

 

Second, to answer your question, I'm not sure, but I believe not. I always wondered; when we learn of the koloss and how they work, there seems to be a great deal implied but never flat-out stated; I wouldn't hate to read an essay Mr. Sanderson might write explaining it a bit differently. Rashek thought that if he stopped giving the Koloss fresh spikes, they would die out. They learned another way; they used the spikes they harvested from the dead koloss, and re-charged them from humans, then turned other humans into koloss. The original charge seemed to be mostly lost; the new koloss were not now twice as strong. Still, it is stated that the old charge was never completely wiped off the spike; this extra bit of spiritweb made the new koloss crazier, but also more human, hence why they tried to dress up and acquire wealth. The whole explanation is rather confusing and I could stand to have it explained to me again, but it seems that you could neither 1) simply take the first spike and pass it to the son, then kill the father and pass that to the son, as well, nor 2) remove the father's spike, use it to kill him and thus double charge it, and then give the double-spike to the son and grant him access to the father AND grandfather's power.

 

Just a quick quote-insertion then I'll be on my way: The way I read MadRand was '2', that you'd be passing along the same physical chunk of metal. Koloss did it well enough, and Brandon has hinted that you can multi-charge spikes, though side-effects might be an issue.

 

I don't. I think he felt he over stated it, and felt the need to go back and calm his statement down a little bit, but I feel he was being quite candid in what he thinks of it on a personal level.

 

I look at Hemalurgy as theft and murder. You steal a power and it kills the victim. Killing someone for personal gain is considered harmful to the human psych by most experts, so killing them and then injecting a piece of another persons soul into your own can only be more harmful.

 

That's a bit of a fallacy, Gloom. "A is bad, therefore A and B is worse" doesn't exactly hold up.

 

Killing + Injection could be as harmful as just Killing, if the Injection is a neutral act, or perhaps even less harmful if the Injection is somehow cathartic or healing: See MadRand's idea of "family heirlooms," where having a piece of your father be part of you could potentially be comforting.

 

I used cannibalism as an example in the last post, and I see this was avoided, but this is what Hemalurgy is. Hemalurgy is spiritual cannibalism. If it was verifiable that you could gain the strength of your father by eating his heart, would you do it? Would that make it okay? Would it be okay if you just bought someone elses fathers heart and ate it? would this make you any less the despicable cannibal?

 

Forgive me, but this brought good old Darius to mind, so I found that I had to reply. ;) Cannibalism is a taboo; one with a fair amount of cultural, psychological, and even physiological founding, but a taboo nonetheless. I would certainly prefer not to devour my father's heart, but a Callatian might well disagree.

 

Cannibalism is not necessarily evil. Even if it is, it could well be offset by sufficient circumstances.

 

 Lets say someone murders and robs a loving family. A Rolex watch was part of the loot. It's got the dead fathers name engraved on the bottom. You recognize the name and that this person was murdered. It's got traces of blood in a couple of the grooves. He'll sell it to you, a $20,000 watch, but he'll sell it to you for $20 because he doesn't know how valuable it is. Would you buy that watch and profit off of it knowing that by doing so you are not only profiting off of the death of a family, not only allowing a man who murders children to escape justice, but are actually encouraging this man to go out and kill another family just so you can profit? I don't see a difference between this and Hemalurgy...actually, I do see a difference between this and Hemalurgy. Hemalurgy is worse because it violates not only a persons body, but their very soul.

 

The first of your three negatives is a universal and legitimate concern, I think. Hemalurgy as benefiting from the death of another is something that must be weighed when considering its morality.

 

The other two, that I bolded, though, are entirely circumstantial. We can easily construct scenarios where letting murderers walk free and/or encouraging future crime are both off the table, so those two negatives don't really have a place in a discussion of the inherent morality of Hemalurgy.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Wow. Didn't mean to spark an argument over the morality of hemalurgy.

It occurred to me that the writer probably doesn't understand the spiritual mechanics of hemalurgy (we certainly don't understand them perfectly), and thus it wouldn't be fair to criticize him too much for ripping out souls, when he thinks it's just a transfer of power.

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Wow. Didn't mean to spark an argument over the morality of hemalurgy.

It occurred to me that the writer probably doesn't understand the spiritual mechanics of hemalurgy (we certainly don't understand them perfectly), and thus it wouldn't be fair to criticize him too much for ripping out souls, when he thinks it's just a transfer of power.

 

There is an argument to be made that it is Sazed's fault for not intervening and wiping out Hemalurgy out completely. It is hard to blame Spook when Sazed is busy using Hemalurgy left and right with the kandra and earrings for his worshipers. Especially if Sazed didn't tell Spook about the consequences.

 

As for the Hemalurgy morality arguments... it doesn't take much. :D

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I think he oversimplified, and views it as a white lie because he's concerned about the public image of RPGs and related games.

 

If we're going to start deciding which Words of Brandon are canon and which aren't, this entire forum will likely collapse. I'm sorry, and I'm sure you feel that this is just one exception, and you can come up with a number of reasons why this quote is questionable, but all the quotes that support what you want to believe are unassailable.

 

When I asked Mr. Sanderson how to pronounce "Sazed," I got... a lot more than I bargained for. One large point was, "I wrote a screenplay; you are the director of the movie in your mind that is made when you read my book." Essentially, he gives us, the readers, carte blanche to envision things however we wish. So if you want to feel one way about hemalurgy, you shouldn't let even WoB change your mind, or try to justify why you do so. However, and I could be mistaken so someone please correct me, but I believe that one of the central tenets of this forum is that WoB is gospel.

 

I myself have posted more than a few threads, I hope carefully labeled, where I go off on a flight of fancy about something either so speculative there could be no proof one way or another, or even flagrantly defying what we know to be true, so please believe me when I tell you I find nothing wrong with discussing such ideas on the forum. However, if you are trying to convince anyone of "canon", then I'm just going to tell you that as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to have my mind swayed by someone telling me that Mr. Sanderson didn't really mean what he expressly said. I hope that's cool.

 

I don't. I think he felt he over stated it, and felt the need to go back and calm his statement down a little bit, but I feel he was being quite candid in what he thinks of it on a personal level.

 

 

A thousand upvotes. Be my valentine.

 

And what use is that soul, precisely?

 

As to Brandon saying Hemalurgy is 'evil', the Cosmere is not D&D and until he introduces a magic system with an equivalent 'detect evil' spell then I feel his statement on the matter is mostly irrelevant.

 

1, are you already on the list of people not to meet in a dark alley?

 

2, you're not using your appendix. I'm gonna slay you, tear it out of you, and staple it to my knee. That's cool, right?

 

3, DnD is not the only measure of morality in the world. There is more than one way to measure it. You seem to subscribe to the idea of ends mattering more than means, actions mattering more than intents. That is one way to measure morality. I realize it's a matter of philosophy, and therefore not one of hard data, but I believe that there are actions, tools, and powers that are simply evil, that however one tries to twist or justify them, they are basically evil. I can't convince you of this, any more than you'll ever convince me that your belief system is "true."

 

And 4, while he himself admits that in the privacy of our minds, what we want to believe trumps anything Mr. Sanderson writes, this is after all a forum of people here to be fans of his work. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't claim that anything he says is ever "irrelevant" to his own body of work.

 

 

That's a bit of a fallacy, Gloom. "A is bad, therefore A and B is worse" doesn't exactly hold up.

 

Killing + Injection could be as harmful as just Killing, if the Injection is a neutral act, or perhaps even less harmful if the Injection is somehow cathartic or healing: See MadRand's idea of "family heirlooms," where having a piece of your father be part of you could potentially be comforting.

 

The first of your three negatives is a universal and legitimate concern, I think. Hemalurgy as benefiting from the death of another is something that must be weighed when considering its morality.

 

The other two, that I bolded, though, are entirely circumstantial. We can easily construct scenarios where letting murderers walk free and/or encouraging future crime are both off the table, so those two negatives don't really have a place in a discussion of the inherent morality of Hemalurgy.

 

Gloom's point, with which I happen to agree, is that B is also bad, and that bad + bad = worse. "Having a piece of your father" isn't like inheriting his pipe and remembering the evenings spent by his side near the fire. This isn't a memory or an heirloom, this is a literal part of him. If it were physical, imagine how sweet and charming and comforting it would be if, on your father's deathbed, you ripped off his hand (killing him) and superglued it to your own elbow. If it did function, it would be useful and very convenient. And there's no circumstance where it wouldn't be creepy.

 

For your second point, I don't think you can justify the actions of buying goods you know were the result of theft and murder. In America, in most states it's known as "accessory after the fact" and it is punishable by law, regardless of how you justify it or how well you can explain how you made sure it didn't enourage future crime (I'm honestly not sure if that's the exact term used in literally every state, but I believe it's the norm). I understand that the US penal system isn't an absolute moral authority, but it at least IS a moral authority. Please let me know what moral standard backs up your arguments.

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If we're going to start deciding which Words of Brandon are canon and which aren't, this entire forum will likely collapse. I'm sorry, and I'm sure you feel that this is just one exception, and you can come up with a number of reasons why this quote is questionable, but all the quotes that support what you want to believe are unassailable.

 

WoB is gospel when it refers to in-world facts. WoB does not suddenly mean Brandon is right when he talks about an objective morality unless the Cosmere has such a thing, like D&D, which was my point.

 

 

1, are you already on the list of people not to meet in a dark alley?

 

I certainly hope I'm not. I'm really a mild person. It helps me surprise my victims.

 

 

2, you're not using your appendix. I'm gonna slay you, tear it out of you, and staple it to my knee. That's cool, right?

 

If you offer me something on my deathbed in exchange, that would be acceptable to me. Killing me on the street is not something I'd like. Again: assuming tearing the soul does not permanently harm someone in the afterlife, I do not see too many issues to using Hemalurgy on the terminally ill if they agree to it.

 

For example, I could see a poor Misting on his deathbed, dying of terminal cancer, agreeing to sell his Allomancy in exchange for a large amount of cash to help out his children. Dying sucks, but dying knowing your children will have a better life is, I think, an alternative a lot of people would choose to take. And do note that I am proposing it be a choice.

 

There could be issues. People might set up situations where Mistings 'accidentally' get poisoned for the sole purpose of getting them to agree to Hemalurgy on their deathbed. I think this would happen about as often as children kill their parents for an early inheritance, and is not a terrible flaw, but there are definite downsides that would have to be explored.

 

 

3, DnD is not the only measure of morality in the world. There is more than one way to measure it. You seem to subscribe to the idea of ends mattering more than means, actions mattering more than intents. That is one way to measure morality. I realize it's a matter of philosophy, and therefore not one of hard data, but I believe that there are actions, tools, and powers that are simply evil, that however one tries to twist or justify them, they are basically evil. I can't convince you of this, any more than you'll ever convince me that your belief system is "true."

 

I have never claimed that my belief system is true. I don't think it's possible for a moral system to have a truth value. I bring up D&D because there is an objective morality at play there; people are Good, Evil, or Neutral. Demons are Evil, celestials are Good. Your alignment dictates your actions. Unfortunately, no such thing exists in the Cosmere (as far as I know), hence why I take issue with the WoB being taken as gospel when he says Hemalurgy is 'evil'. There might be an argument that Investiture is a sort of objective morality, but Honor or Preservation are not quite the same as Good.

 

I believe this post risks us getting off topic and discussing philosophy, so I'd like to say that you can PM me if you want to discuss objective morality more in depth.

 

 

And 4, while he himself admits that in the privacy of our minds, what we want to believe trumps anything Mr. Sanderson writes, this is after all a forum of people here to be fans of his work. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't claim that anything he says is ever "irrelevant" to his own body of work.

 

I apologize if what I said was offensive. It was not my intent, and I hope I've clarified more on why I think what Brandon considers 'evil' is irrelevant in this post.

 

 

Gloom's point, with which I happen to agree, is that B is also bad, and that bad + bad = worse. "Having a piece of your father" isn't like inheriting his pipe and remembering the evenings spent by his side near the fire. This isn't a memory or an heirloom, this is a literal part of him. If it were physical, imagine how sweet and charming and comforting it would be if, on your father's deathbed, you ripped off his hand (killing him) and superglued it to your own elbow. If it did function, it would be useful and very convenient. And there's no circumstance where it wouldn't be creepy.

 

People do keep literal parts of their family members. It is not uncommon for people to keep an urn with someone's ashes on their fireplace, I believe. I agree that this is creepy, but people still do it. That doesn't mean Hemalurgy isn't useful or shouldn't be used. It just means it makes you feel uncomfortable.

 

 

For your second point, I don't think you can justify the actions of buying goods you know were the result of theft and murder. In America, in most states it's known as "accessory after the fact" and it is punishable by law, regardless of how you justify it or how well you can explain how you made sure it didn't enourage future crime (I'm honestly not sure if that's the exact term used in literally every state, but I believe it's the norm). I understand that the US penal system isn't an absolute moral authority, but it at least IS a moral authority. Please let me know what moral standard backs up your arguments.

 

This interests me. I don't know of anyone who says the law is a moral authority. I believe even Shallan, as wool-headed as she can be, brings up that point. It's used as an incentive to promote certain systems of morality (ie. putting murderers in jail makes people want to murder less, thus following some system of ethics), not as a moral system itself. Further complicating matters is that people subscribe to different moral systems and they all add or change laws, making the legal system sort of a mishmash of utilitarian/deontological ideas.

 

Edit: Also I apologize for derailing this thread into Hemalurgy morality discussion. It attracts me like a moth to flame.

Edited by Moogle
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If we're going to start deciding which Words of Brandon are canon and which aren't, this entire forum will likely collapse. I'm sorry, and I'm sure you feel that this is just one exception, and you can come up with a number of reasons why this quote is questionable, but all the quotes that support what you want to believe are unassailable.

 

When I asked Mr. Sanderson how to pronounce "Sazed," I got... a lot more than I bargained for. One large point was, "I wrote a screenplay; you are the director of the movie in your mind that is made when you read my book." Essentially, he gives us, the readers, carte blanche to envision things however we wish. So if you want to feel one way about hemalurgy, you shouldn't let even WoB change your mind, or try to justify why you do so. However, and I could be mistaken so someone please correct me, but I believe that one of the central tenets of this forum is that WoB is gospel.

 

Gospel so far as worldbuilding goes, certainly, but not necessarily characterization or anything more "fluffy". So I'll WoB at you if you say that Sazed's name is spelled with a 'W', but not on its pronunciation.

 

A more nuanced example: Brandon has said on several occasions that Kelsier is a psychopath. Now that word has a lot of connotations and associations which not every reader will agree applies to Kelsier. On that point, then, I think Brandon will defer to the reader's interpretation of Kelsier's character, just as we shouldn't say "WoB tells us Kel is a psychopath, so no" if a Sharder claims that he sees Kelsier as an altruist.

 

1, are you already on the list of people not to meet in a dark alley?

 

No, but then again I never did account for that second slot...

 

3, DnD is not the only measure of morality in the world. There is more than one way to measure it. You seem to subscribe to the idea of ends mattering more than means, actions mattering more than intents. That is one way to measure morality. I realize it's a matter of philosophy, and therefore not one of hard data, but I believe that there are actions, tools, and powers that are simply evil, that however one tries to twist or justify them, they are basically evil. I can't convince you of this, any more than you'll ever convince me that your belief system is "true."

 

And 4, while he himself admits that in the privacy of our minds, what we want to believe trumps anything Mr. Sanderson writes, this is after all a forum of people here to be fans of his work. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't claim that anything he says is ever "irrelevant" to his own body of work.

 

Moogle's point, I believe (a point which I also agree with), is that Brandon's opinion on the morality of an action ought to have little-to-nothing to do with our own assessment of its morality. In DnD, the authors' opinions matter because they actually affect how the magic system works.

 

So I think that both I and Moogle would agree that there are multiple ways of measuring morality. Whether one is right or wrong or better than others is, of course, still up for debate (a debate I'd prefer not to have here), but Brandon applying his own system to assess Hemalurgy does not suddenly make it evil across all possible moral systems.

 

Gloom's point, with which I happen to agree, is that B is also bad, and that bad + bad = worse. "Having a piece of your father" isn't like inheriting his pipe and remembering the evenings spent by his side near the fire. This isn't a memory or an heirloom, this is a literal part of him. If it were physical, imagine how sweet and charming and comforting it would be if, on your father's deathbed, you ripped off his hand (killing him) and superglued it to your own elbow. If it did function, it would be useful and very convenient. And there's no circumstance where it wouldn't be creepy.

 

I read Gloom's point as concluding that B was bad, not asserting it. My apologies if I misread him.

 

As I've mentioned in more private discussions, Darnam, I don't find "creepyness" to be an adequate measure of moral worth. I will also direct you to my comments on the Callatians.

 

For your second point, I don't think you can justify the actions of buying goods you know were the result of theft and murder. In America, in most states it's known as "accessory after the fact" and it is punishable by law, regardless of how you justify it or how well you can explain how you made sure it didn't enourage future crime (I'm honestly not sure if that's the exact term used in literally every state, but I believe it's the norm). I understand that the US penal system isn't an absolute moral authority, but it at least IS a moral authority. Please let me know what moral standard backs up your arguments.

 

As I said "The first of [Gloom's] three negatives is a universal and legitimate concern, I think. Hemalurgy as benefiting from the death of another is something that must be weighed when considering its morality." I was mostly concerned with dismissing the other two negative outcomes of his example.

 

So far as alternative moral standards go, you yourself mentioned the existence of many sets of moral standards. Feel free to pick one of them (some flavor of utilitarianism springs to mind) as one in which the ends justify the means or the like.

 

To provide an overblown example of such an act being allowable: I could justify buying goods that I knew were the result of theft or murder if, in so doing, I stop the sun from exploding. Or I could justify cannibalism if, in so doing, a dozen lives are saved.

 

EDIT: Well that's just creepy. Moogle NINJAD ( :ph34r:) my massive post with his own massive post, both of which posts make eerily similar points.

Edited by Kurkistan
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To consider whether or not the use of hemalurgy in any way is evil, the first thing that needs to be considered is the moral authority in the world in which it exists.  It would be innappropriate to absolutely declare something set in an alternate universe to be evil based upon our own personal, social, and/or religious concepts of morality.

 

There does not appear to be an overarching moral authority in the cosmere.  We don't know enough about Adonalsium to know if it exerted a moral ethic upon the cosmere.  So, we must then focus in on Scadrial.  The closest to an overarching moral ethic for Scadrial is Harmony.  I'll discuss him in a bit.  Then we should focus in on the Elendel basin (the apparent center of human activity on the northern continent and the location of the people of whom we are speaking of). 

 

So, does Harmony think that hemalurgy is evil in all its forms and uses?  If we say yes, then we must accept that Harmony views himself to be evil or at the least commiting evil actions.  He uses Kandra who must necessarily be spiked to function.  He distributes, via said Kandra, hemalurgic spikes to people who either may benefit from those spikes or are of a mindset to follow after the ideals that Harmony holds. An example of this is the case of MeLaan giving a spike to Wax (we'll discuss the ethics some other time of encouraging someone to unwittingly spike themselves thereby unwittingly give a measure of control and influence of themselves over to another being).     

 

As to the people of the Elendel Basin, if they (hypothetically) don't have a problem with using legacy spikes, there doesn't appear to be any other moral authority to state that such actions are "evil".  If they (hypothetically) don't have a problem with inheritance spikings (where the future decedent instructs others to spike the future decedent prior to death in order to bequeath an ability to an heir) and harmony (also hyposthetically) doesn't have a problem with such practices, how can we say that it is an evil practice.

 

There are cultures which would consider cremation to be indecent or even evil.  The same goes for burial.  The same goes for many many other practices that are considered by one culture to be right and other cultures to be wrong.  Without an overarching source of morality, how can an internal practice of a culture be considered evil?

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