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Theory: The Set are using trellium-based "partial hemalurgy"


robardin

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So with just one hemalurgic spike, Spook and Quellion ("The Citizen of Urtreau") could see and hear visions of Ruin impersonating Kelsier, Wax can communicate with Harmony (via earring), and in Mistborn: Secret History,

Spoiler

Spook can see Ghost Kelsier in the Cognitive Realm.

With just two spikes, a a kandra is subject to the direct control of Ruin/Harmony - though by their own admission, they are "weaker than other hemalurgic constructs" in this regard. On the other hand, koloss have four and that's enough, and Inquisitors have at least ten, and Marsh has way more than even that ("upwards of twenty").

We've seen that using a "trellium" spike - an unknown god-metal - can work in new and different ways, both in terms of being invisible to Harmony, and it terms of what they can steal/do with just one spike (create mutants, allow Bleeder to steal Feruchemical and Allomantic abilities without a second spike). However, hemalurgy as a magical art is still fundamentally something drawing on Ruin's power, and so a second spike as small as Wax's earring turned into a bullet was enough to subject Bleeder to Harmony's control again, even though the other spike was trellium. The "spike count" included the trellium one, even if Harmony couldn't leverage that spike to see/communicate with Bleeder.

Given that, how can Edwarn and Telsin have spiked themselves enough to gain multiple powers, both Allomantic and Feruchemical, without Harmony's understanding? In particular, Harmony should have been able to witness his interaction with the non-kandra, Trell-serving Faceless Immortal that blew him up.

Then I remembered that Edwarn/Suit commented to Wax that "if you spike yourself too much, you become subject to Harmony's... interference", and that he is "limited to three boons, even if we have discovered how to make someone else be weak, while we gain the benefit." Meaning they have a way to have up to three spikes without Harmony's awareness.

At first, I interpreted this as them just using trellium spikes to steal attributes, and that only after three spikes would the trellium nature of the spikes get superceded by the fundamental mechanics of hemalurgy. But then I noticed the comment "make someone else be weak", not "kill someone". We know the Set are not above the torture and killing of people for power and information; see what they did to Allik's crewmates. There must be a reason for Edwarn to use such an awkardly precise turn of phrase.

Per a Tweet of Brandon, it is possible to "partially spike" someone with hemalurgy:

 

And what would be "worse than being a drab"? I can think of something else we've seen.

Perhaps the twisted, trellium-spiked hemalurgic constructs that Wax and TenSoon encountered in the original kandra Homeland in the caverns under Elendel are the original Allomancers or Feruchemists the Set have used as "donors" to steal attributes? First spiked, but not killed, in such a way as to steal their power, with that spike being given to another person - and then being given another trellium spike to complete their transformation?

Brrr.

 

 

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22 minutes ago, robardin said:

Then I remembered that Edwarn/Suit commented to Wax that "if you spike yourself too much, you become subject to Harmony's... interference", and that he is "limited to three boons, even if we have discovered how to make someone else be weak, while we gain the benefit." Meaning they have a way to have up to three spikes without Harmony's awareness.

At first, I interpreted this as them just using trellium spikes to steal attributes, and that only after three spikes would the trellium nature of the spikes get superceded by the fundamental mechanics of hemalurgy. But then I noticed the comment "make someone else be weak", not "kill someone". We know the Set are not above the torture and killing of people for power and information; see what they did to Allik's crewmates. There must be a reason for Edwarn to use such an awkardly precise turn of phrase.

I remember this came up before, right after the book came out. I was confused by this sort of approach, that there's some deep dark secret behind this phrase. The Set has the ability to create unkeyed metalminds, like the gold one that Wayne was using. This matches up perfectly with what Edwarn is saying; someone is weak, storing in the metalmind, and someone else is using the stored power to gain the benefit. Textbook feruchemy, you're weak to gain the benefit later. With Aluminum ferrings, you can mix and match who's doing each part.

That being said, there is some precedent to different number of spikes controlling people. With the humans, it appears to be four, which is why they limit themselves to 3. With Kandra, it's two; Bleeder was still only using one Trellium spike at a time (IIRC; I know there was some clarification that we were looking for at the time, and Brandon made us wait just to be cruel), and then the earring bullet was #2. Without their spikes, Kandra have less of a mind than humans, so it might be why they need fewer spikes. So, the same principle could be applied to the chimeras, they only need 1 spike because they've had most of their mind stripped away. Maybe by Hemalurgic means, maybe some other phenomenon. I like the path it's going down.

But, I don't think you can connect the two. Edwarn's quote makes plain sense if he's referring to the unkeyed metalminds, so that's what I'm sticking with.

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43 minutes ago, robardin said:

We've seen that using a "trellium" spike - an unknown god-metal - can work in new and different ways, both in terms of being invisible to Harmony, and it terms of what they can steal/do with just one spike (create mutants, allow Bleeder to steal Feruchemical and Allomantic abilities without a second spike). However, hemalurgy as a magical art is still fundamentally something drawing on Ruin's power, and so a second spike as small as Wax's earring turned into a bullet was enough to subject Bleeder to Harmony's control again, even though the other spike was trellium. The "spike count" included the trellium one, even if Harmony couldn't leverage that spike to see/communicate with Bleeder.

A Trellium's Spike works not far from an Atium Spike (but without the "better efficiency" of H-Atium) with the ability to steal multiple attributes...but always one for Spike.

Bleeder didn't performe nothing special, She had multiple Trellium Spikes with a single Power in each of them, and she switched them when she want to use the right power. She had not a Spike with multiple powers.

The only weirdness a Trellium Spike showed, it is the ability to hide from Harmony. But we can't say if this is an actual Trellium ability or if it simply a side effect of use a Godmetal Spike (as far as we know you may get the same effect with a Lerasium Spike...when Ruin and Preservation weren't hold by the same guy).

43 minutes ago, robardin said:

Given that, how can Edwarn and Telsin have spiked themselves enough to gain multiple powers, both Allomantic and Feruchemical, without Harmony's understanding? In particular, Harmony should have been able to witness his interaction with the non-kandra, Trell-serving Faceless Immortal that blew him up.

Four Spikes are needed to control an Human or an Human based being (koloss and Inquisitor) until the Set didn't reach this point their are safe from this problem. If they uses Trellium spike, they may also be hidden from the Hemalurgy-Sense of Sazed.

Like Pagerunner said the "weak" part, may be a reference to the ability to use others Feruchemical charge...But I thought they get the Unkeyed Goldmind from the southern, not a production of the Set, also if with a single F-Alluminium Spike they may start a Northern Production of Unkeyed Metalminds

 

EDIT: I forgot a part, some speculate that the Chimeras were so twisted because the Spikes are filled with not human attributes

Edited by Yata
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10 minutes ago, Yata said:

Like Pagerunner said the "weak" part, may be a reference to the ability to use others Feruchemical charge...But I thought they get the Unkeyed Goldmind from the southern, not a production of the Set, also if with a single F-Alluminium Spike they may start a Northern Production of Unkeyed Metalminds

The Southerners' medallions have more going on with them in regards to unkeyed F.Nicrosil. All they need to do to create an unkeyed goldmind is spike F.Aluminum into an F.Gold ferring, or vice versa. My understanding of the medallions, you also need an Identity-less Nicrosil compounder with that Feruchemical ability (to fill up the nicrosil portion of the medallions). The Set wasn't able to figure out how to refill the heat medallions, which should be straightforward if they know how an unkeyed metalmind works. Unless they don't know how to refill the nicrosil portion, just the brass portion.

Interestingly enough, that reminds me of something. I've theorized Firemothers and Firefathers are compounders that fill the heat medallions. (Without compounding, medallions aren't heat generation, they're merely heat storage, which I don't think would solve the problem the Southerners were originally facing). They would need two kinds of compounders: F.Aluminum, A.Nicrosil, F.Nicrosil, (to fill the nicrosil, with possibly F.Brass required as well), and F.Aluminum, F.Brass, A.Brass (to fill up the brass). If they're made using Hemalurgy (Excisors, as I think the Southerners call them), then you might need a natural Misting to keep within the 3-spike limit that the Set identified. To store 2 kinds of Investiture in nicrosil, to make the heat/translation medallions you'd need to have a twinborn. (F.Aluminum, A.Nicrosil, F.Nicrosil, F.Brass, A.Duralumin) with a separate person to fill up of the two other parts of the metalmind. To get three kinds of abilities in a single medallion and use fewer than four spikes, you'd need a full Feruchemist, and then spike A.Nicrosil and whatever other two Allomantic abilities you want. Allik has seen triple medallions, but they're rare, and they'd be limited to what your Full Feruchemist has. This spike cap could easily explain why the medallions rarity is what we've seen; Kelsier must have natural abilities (to create the Bands), but anyone else who would want to get close would need way too many spikes, so they settle for a lot of double-medallions for military expeditions and single-medallions for the general population.

Then again, it's possible that, if the Southerners use Hemalurgy to create the people who create their medallions, they also intentionally spike them up to the point they could be controlled by another person, and then have F.Duralumin and A.Brass/Zinc minders 'oversee' the compounders.

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1 hour ago, Pagerunner said:

The Southerners' medallions have more going on with them in regards to unkeyed F.Nicrosil. All they need to do to create an unkeyed goldmind is spike F.Aluminum into an F.Gold ferring, or vice versa. My understanding of the medallions, you also need an Identity-less Nicrosil compounder with that Feruchemical ability (to fill up the nicrosil portion of the medallions). The Set wasn't able to figure out how to refill the heat medallions, which should be straightforward if they know how an unkeyed metalmind works. Unless they don't know how to refill the nicrosil portion, just the brass portion.

You may be right about the Set's knowledge...Just a point, to craft a Medallion you don't need a Nicrosil compounder... a simple Soulbearer is enough.

1 hour ago, Pagerunner said:

Interestingly enough, that reminds me of something. I've theorized Firemothers and Firefathers are compounders that fill the heat medallions. (Without compounding, medallions aren't heat generation, they're merely heat storage, which I don't think would solve the problem the Southerners were originally facing). They would need two kinds of compounders: F.Aluminum, A.Nicrosil, F.Nicrosil, (to fill the nicrosil, with possibly F.Brass required as well), and F.Aluminum, F.Brass, A.Brass (to fill up the brass). If they're made using Hemalurgy (Excisors, as I think the Southerners call them), then you might need a natural Misting to keep within the 3-spike limit that the Set identified. To store 2 kinds of Investiture in nicrosil, to make the heat/translation medallions you'd need to have a twinborn. (F.Aluminum, A.Nicrosil, F.Nicrosil, F.Brass, A.Duralumin) with a separate person to fill up of the two other parts of the metalmind. To get three kinds of abilities in a single medallion and use fewer than four spikes, you'd need a full Feruchemist, and then spike A.Nicrosil and whatever other two Allomantic abilities you want. Allik has seen triple medallions, but they're rare, and they'd be limited to what your Full Feruchemist has. This spike cap could easily explain why the medallions rarity is what we've seen; Kelsier must have natural abilities (to create the Bands), but anyone else who would want to get close would need way too many spikes, so they settle for a lot of double-medallions for military expeditions and single-medallions for the general population.

Yes I am another one who think that Fireparents are Brass Compounder and they offer their service to the whole comunity.

Again I don't honest understand the reason You will need a Nicrosil Compounder (sure it may be nice to have, but you don't need him).

You indeed need different people:

- A "simple" Brass Compounder to generate the quite infinite amount of Heat and store it away in Brassminds.

- Then another guy with F-Brass and F-Alluminium to remove Identity from the Brassminds (He would act as a filter tapping from the keyed metalminds and storing the heat again in another metal, while he store away his Identity)....Of course this guy may be a trueself equipped with a F-Brass Medallion.

With this specific Metalborn you may generate infinite unkeyed brassminds.

Of course I considerated only how to generate the charge, not the actual Medallion...To them there is need of at least three powers (maybe more) F-Alluminium, F-Nicrosil and F-Brass

Edited by Yata
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2 minutes ago, Yata said:

You may be right about the Set's knowledge...Just a point, to craft a Medallion you don't need a Nicrosil compounder... a simple Soulbearer is enough.

Yes I am another one who think that Fireparents are Brass Compounder and they offer their service to the whole comunity.

Again I don't honest understand the reason You will need a Nicrosil Compounder (sure it may be nice to have, but you don't need him).

You indeed need different people:

- A "simple" Brass Compounder to generate the quite infinite amount of Heat and store it away in Brassminds.

- Then another guy with F-Brass and F-Alluminium to remove Identity from the Brassminds (He would act as a filter tapping from the keyed metalminds and storing the heat again in another metal, while he store away his Identity)....Of course this guy may be a trueself equipped with a F-Brass Medallion.

With this specific Metalborn you may generate infinite unkeyed brassminds.

Oh, yeah, that 'filtering' could work, too, as long as you don't do it to the point you're damaging yourself. That might limit how quickly you could transfer beyond a reasonable amount of time.

There are a couple of different approaches I've seen to how Nicrosil Feruchemy actually works, and both of them would require a lot of people to make medallions without compounding.

  • Nicrosilminds store abilities like copperminds store memories. Take off a piece of your spiritweb, put it in the mind, someone else pulls it out and uses. It would mean, for each medallion ability, you would have to have had a person lose their abilities to create it (two people for a heat medallion, three people for a heat/weight medallion). It doesn't increase the total number of Mistings or Ferrings in the world (although it could split a Full Feruchemist or a Mistborn into 16 other users).
  • Nicrosilminds store a time-dependent version of Allomantic strength. If you are a 1/2 Allomancer for 1 hour while storing, someone else could be a full strength Allomancer for 1/2 an hour. This, again, limits you to how many people you have making the medallions in the first place. I did some math when Bands first came out to estimate how many man-hours of F.Iron ability was needed for the airships to function, and I think it was 3 man-months for every 5 minutes of flight, or something obscene like that. I'd have to go back and check. But it would make them impractical unless they had a lot of metalbon (which we know they don't) or they had compounders.

If the entire culture keeps from freezing to death because of these medallions, and Feruchemy can only repurpose what is there (not create new), then they'll definitely need nicrosil compounding to create the ability to use brass feruchemy, the same way they need brass compounders to create the heat that isn't there.

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16 minutes ago, Yata said:

Then another guy with F-Brass and F-Alluminium to remove Identity from the Brassminds (He would act as a filter tapping from the keyed metalminds and storing the heat again in another metal, while he store away his Identity)....Of course this guy may be a trueself equipped with a F-Brass Medallion.

Are you sure it works that way? I'm not convinced that someone with F-Alluminum can just storeIdentity to tap ANY keyed metalmind. My understanding is that if a metalmind is keyed then you NEED the key (the creator's Identity) to use it. Having no Identity doesn't give you a skeleton key into all metalminds. It just means you can make metalminds with no key.

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It may be a digression from the (my) OP, but what you wrote there reminded me of another question I've had in my mind.

The Southern Hemisphere cultures on Scadrial have some means of creating two or three power medallions that involve F-Nicrosil. A Soulbearer.

We're led to believe that they were taught, and/or imparted with this ability by "The Sovereign", who came from the North to them, and at the end of BoM, appears to be a re-physicalized Kelsier.

Kelsier wasn't originally a Feruchemist, but he has at least one spike (through his eye), and was interested in the "pile of Inquisitor spikes" left over from Vin's slaughter of them at Kredik Shaw, so whatever he's got is likely to be obtained from some kind of spike that Ruin harvested from the kidnapped Terris Keepers. And he (as the Sovereign) then created the Bands himself, which required being Fullborn, and especially to have F-nicrosil.

But as with Allomancy, each spike could only steal one power. Nicrosil was an unknown metal in the Final Empire - it was unavailable to anybody. Why would Ruin have created an F-nicrosil spike at all, without access to a nicrosilmind for an Inquisitor to use?

Edited by robardin
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Wait, I'm confused @robardin. Why are you assuming Ruin created a nicrosil spike?

To get more back on track, I agree with what @Yata said here:

2 hours ago, Yata said:

The only weirdness a Trellium Spike showed, it is the ability to hide from Harmony. But we can't say if this is an actual Trellium ability or if it simply a side effect of use a Godmetal Spike (as far as we know you may get the same effect with a Lerasium Spike...when Ruin and Preservation weren't hold by the same guy).

I don't think the Set is using trellium spikes to hide from Harmony. You seem to be assuming that they're trying to hide from Harmony. I don't think that's the case. Harmony knows what the Set is up to. The point about limiting spikes is to prevent Harmony from taking control of them (as Ruin did Marsh, for example). And by their estimation, they can have three spikes before this becomes a concern.

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14 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

@jofwu I'll answer your question on why it is thought an identityless Feruchemist can tap a keyed metalmind. It has to do with the discussion they had with VenDell at the start of BoM and ends with my opinion that the key and lock analogy is kind of incorrect. 

Thanks, I'll have to give that a look.

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57 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Wait, I'm confused @robardin. Why are you assuming Ruin created a nicrosil spike?

To get more back on track, I agree with what @Yata said here:

I don't think the Set is using trellium spikes to hide from Harmony. You seem to be assuming that they're trying to hide from Harmony. I don't think that's the case. Harmony knows what the Set is up to. The point about limiting spikes is to prevent Harmony from taking control of them (as Ruin did Marsh, for example). And by their estimation, they can have three spikes before this becomes a concern.

My logic re: the nicrosil spike goes like this -

  1. The Sovereign created the Bands of Mourning, which required F-nicrosil (among many other things).
  2. The Sovereign is apparently some kind of revived Kelsier.
  3. Kelsier could only have any Feruchemical abilities as obtained via hemalurgy.
  4. Kelsier only had access to F-spikes pulled by Vin from Inquisitors, left in the cavern formerly under Kredik Shaw.
  5. Those spikes were created by Ruin-controlled Inquisitors raiding the Synod of Terris at the end of The Well of Ascension.
  6. Therefore, if Kelsier could create Investiture-storing metalminds, he did so because Ruin chose to create an F-nicrosil spike from a Terris Keeper.
    • Alternatively, Kelsier found a Soulbearer Ferring some time post-Catacendre and after returning in a physical form, and killed/hemalurgically stole his Soulbearing. Which doesn't seem in character.

As for the trellium spikes, I thought one of the reasons Harmony was dealing with The Set via Wax was because he couldn't see into their motivations. If he could see them dealing with Trell, wouldn't He know more about who Trell was, and who he/she was up to on Scadrial? There's a difference between Harmony wanting to let Scadrial mortals work things out for themselves - including "disapproving" of Spook, Kelsier, and Marsh writing and promulgating knowledge of hemalurgy, but allowing them to do so anyway - and acting more overtly/directly to prevent another Shard from acting "to remove life on this sphere". I don't think the Trellian Faceless Immortal would have said that if it thought Harmony would hear it.

 

Edited by robardin
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2 minutes ago, robardin said:

Alternatively, Kelsier found a Soulbearer Ferring some time post-Catacendre, and killed/hemalurgically stole his Soulbearing. Which doesn't seem in character.

See, I think this is totally possible. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Kelsier killed somebody to get a spike. Especially if he didn't like the guy he got it from. Kelsier's not above hurting someone if it's for a perceived greater good. Or if he doesn't like you.

One could also argue that he got it from some other source that we're not aware of yet.

I'm also not convinced about the need for trellium spikes. I think I would need proof that Harmony can't figure out what's going on for me to assume that's the case, and I don't see it yet. It clearly was with Paalm, and he made it clear. I would expect the same for the Set, but we haven't seen any hint of that. And I'm not convinced Trell particularly cares to hide from Harmony. It seems to me that he's mounting a direct attack against Harmony and Scadrial. Harmony doesn't understand what Trell is, but he already know that it's bad news and that it intends him and his world harm. The time of secrecy is gone.

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2 minutes ago, jofwu said:
18 minutes ago, robardin said:

Alternatively, Kelsier found a Soulbearer Ferring some time post-Catacendre and after returning in a physical form, and killed/hemalurgically stole his Soulbearing. Which doesn't seem in character.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Kelsier killed somebody to get a spike.

Assuming that the spiritweb remains largely intact after revival, is it possible that the body used to house Kelsier used to be a Nicrosil Ferring? Kelsier might assume that would anger Harmony less than if he actually killed someone for that purpose, and given his enhanced knowledge from a certain event in Secret History, he may know if such an idea would work.

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2 hours ago, jofwu said:

Thanks, I'll have to give that a look.

Okay, so the basis for the fact that identityless feruchemists can tap any key metalmind they would be able to create and tap on their own is based off of what VenDell says in BoM. Specifically:

Quote

“So if a person could store their Identity,” Marasi said, “as Waxillium does with his weight…”

“They’d be without it for a time,” VenDell said. “A blank slate, so to speak.”

“So they could use anyone’s metalmind?” Marasi asked.

“Possibly,” VenDell said. He cycled through pictures of several more Feruchemists using their abilities before coming to rest on an image of a set of bracers. Simple metal bands, like wide bracelets, meant to be worn on the upper arms beneath clothing. It was impossible to tell the type of metal without color, but they had ancient Terris markings engraved on them.

“Some have been experimenting with your idea,” VenDell said, “and early results are promising.  However, having a Feruchemist who can use anyone’s metalminds is intriguing, but not particularly life-changing. Our society is strewn with individuals who have extraordinary abilities—this would simply be one more variety. No, what interests me is the opposite, Miss Colms. What if a Feruchemist were to divest himself of all Identity, then fill another metalmind with an attribute. Say, strength. What would it do?”

- Bands of Mourning

While VenDell doesn't confirm Marasi's question, the fact that he doesn't deny its possibility despite experimenting with it strongly implies to me that they managed to make it happen. Otherwise, I can't see how there would be promising results. 

With this, my opinion is that the lock-and-key model of identity and metalminds is fairly incorrect. Instead, I think I have a better model describing it which I came up with today. Imagine the feruchemist and the metalmind are each the open end of a hose leading to somewhere. The hoses are the exact same size and can fit perfectly end-to-end. However, identity is like a collar around the end of the hose with an irregular edge. When the identity of the feruchemist and the hose match, the collars fit together perfectly, and the hoses can seal together and the investiture can be withdrawn. However, when the collars don't fit together, then there's no perfect seal, so no investiture can be drawn. When either end doesn't have identity however, then there's no collar on that segment of hose. In this case, the hose can just bypass the collar and directly fit against the end of the other hose and investiture can be withdrawn.

tl;dr Identity prevents the use of another metalmind because of interference between the different identities. When one of the parties doesn't have identity attached, then there's not interference so the metalmind can be tapped. 

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3 hours ago, jofwu said:

See, I think this is totally possible. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Kelsier killed somebody to get a spike. Especially if he didn't like the guy he got it from. Kelsier's not above hurting someone if it's for a perceived greater good. Or if he doesn't like you.

One could also argue that he got it from some other source that we're not aware of yet.

I'm also not convinced about the need for trellium spikes. I think I would need proof that Harmony can't figure out what's going on for me to assume that's the case, and I don't see it yet. It clearly was with Paalm, and he made it clear. I would expect the same for the Set, but we haven't seen any hint of that. And I'm not convinced Trell particularly cares to hide from Harmony. It seems to me that he's mounting a direct attack against Harmony and Scadrial. Harmony doesn't understand what Trell is, but he already know that it's bad news and that it intends him and his world harm. The time of secrecy is gone.

Also, Spook, presumably as a result of Kelsier's teachings/guidance, strongly advocates for the hemalurgic spiking of the elderly and terminally ill for the benefit of society at large.

I've heard a lot of convoluted theories about how the medallions get made...something to keep in mind is that the basic procedure of making the medallions is almost certainly going to have to be described on screen at some point; it's just becoming too important to Scadrial's plots to be waved away forever.  This means it has to pass the test of being able to be easily and quickly explained to a casual reader that doesn't possess any knowledge of the Cosmere.

That said, I'm a huge supporter of the theory that the apparent limit of medallions to 3 powers and the apparent limit of people to 3 spikes are related.  Not sure how yet, it just feels right.

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2 hours ago, hwiles said:

Also, Spook, presumably as a result of Kelsier's teachings/guidance, strongly advocates for the hemalurgic spiking of the elderly and terminally ill for the benefit of society at large.

Umm... WHAT?

 

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26 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

Pretty sure that's straight out of Bands of Mourning.

Correct.  Spook advocates literally gathering "elderly and terminally ill" metalborn for the purpose of extracting and passing on their powers.  He casually recommends that experimenters not play around with trying to rewrite other parts of the spirit web, noting that The Lord Ruler spent 1000 years doing so with no meaningful results.  Bear in mind though that, given his overwhelming disdain for change, Rashek probably wasn't a particularly competent and thorough scientist/engineer.

Secret History Spoilers:

Spoiler

It's also Strongly implied that Spook helps bring Kelsier back to life by "building him a new thread," (which I take to mean: reestablishing his connection to the physical realm) using hemalurgy before they traveled to the southern continent with, off the top of my head, somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hemalurgic spikes.  And WoB has it that Ironeyes, Kelsier's brother, has been spending a lot of time investigating the southern continent, though as far as I'm aware it's unclear if he's acting as an agent of Harmony, as an ally to Kelsier, neither, or both.

Edit: Didn't mean to get off topic; I mean all of this to be support for the theory that the medallions have more to do with hemalurgy than has been let on so far, and proof of concept that hemalurgy in general will gradually become more prevalent in the Mistborn series.  Which loosely supports the concept of OP's original post.

Edited by hwiles
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14 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Bear in mind though that, given his overwhelming disdain for change, Rashek probably wasn't a particularly competent and thorough scientist/engineer.

By disdain for change, are you referring to the freeze on technological development in the Final Empire? If so, that was entirely political in order to maintain control, having nothing to do with Rashek's ability to engineer anything, or indicating anything about Rashek's personal opinion on change. Considering he was able to figure out how to engineer bacteria and alter the human DNA, albeit with the power of Preservation, I wouldn't say he wasn't competent. Also, it is stated that he constructed the political, societal, economical, judicial and bureaucratic branches of the Final Empire drawing from a number of different pre-existing systems, indicating that he was fairly receptive to change, instead of just maintaining the Terris standard he had grown up with.

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4 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

By disdain for change, are you referring to the freeze on technological development in the Final Empire? If so, that was entirely political in order to maintain control, having nothing to do with Rashek's ability to engineer anything, or indicating anything about Rashek's personal opinion on change. Considering he was able to figure out how to engineer bacteria and alter the human DNA, albeit with the power of Preservation, I wouldn't say he wasn't competent. Also, it is stated that he constructed the political, societal, economical, judicial and bureaucratic branches of the Final Empire drawing from a number of different pre-existing systems, indicating that he was fairly receptive to change, instead of just maintaining the Terris standard he had grown up with.

I feel like I'm kinda splitting hairs here, but we do know that Preservation's Intent was imprinted on him when he used the power at the Well of Ascension...so yes, I believe he had a personal opinion that change was largely needless and unnecessary.  As a person who was immortal, didn't need to sleep, eat, or drink, and could compound mental speed, the Lord Ruler got remarkably little done.  I attribute this not to his competence as a politician or his intellect; he was said to be cunning and charismatic.  His agenda however left some things to be desired.  I don't think it's unfair to say Rashek was resistant to change, in 1000 years the only changes he allowed his society to adopt were those that he believed would make it more stable and resistant to change, like food preservation technology, feudal government with a supernaturally powerful overlords, and occasional genocidal purges...

Point taken on the engineering soot-eating bacteria, that was a Godly feat, literally.  However, a man who dedicates an entire millennium to combating child literacy and murdering scientists can't reasonably be called a paragon of progressive thought...

The real point is that he was never able to make a new hemalurgic construct after he used up the power at the well, despite trying throughout his reign.  While this seems on its face like a good indication that Hemalurgy is impossibly difficult, we don't really know how hard the Lord Ruler was working on his creations, or how rigorous and systematic his methods were.  That said, Harmony appears to be pretty firm in his disapproval of hemalurgy, so I suspect that as long as he's around, Scadrians are going to find their study of the topic stymied to some degree; even if it's just by Harmony forcing anyone with 4 spikes to pull one out.

But then...do Scadrians even need Harmony?  It sort of sounds like he's just stepping on their Autonomy...:ph34r:

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How was his agenda anything to be desired? Everything he did as a tyrant was with the intent of stopping Ruin from destroying the world. The current prophecies were corrupt so he had them eradicated to prevent anyone from repeating Alethi's mistake, which unfortunately didn't work because of Kwaan. He removed the feruchemists, assuring that his power would remain unknown. Technology would've been a threat as well so he removed. Yes, he stopped progression, but considering it was all for preventing the destruction of the world, I don't see how that demonstrates his personal views on the matter. He didn't need to get anything done; he just needed to hold the world together until he  old obtain the power to fix it. This was all a stop-gap measure to ensure that their lucky escape from world destruction remained. Perhaps then he would've allowed the gears of progress to turn again, but we can't say for certain. In any case, I don't think you can pass any judgment on him on that front, since all his actions were under an insane constraint.

Anyhow, hemalurgy is definitely one of the harder magics to understand. It contains little to no instinctual component unlike other magics. TLR only was able to create the Koloss, inquisitors and Kandra because Ruin told him how to. Additionally, even if TLR was as poor at progressive thinking as you are concluding, that no inquisitor was able to either is a strong indicator that it is difficult. Unlike Rashek, they actually drew from educated backgrounds, and we're likely all intelligent obligatory before being recruited. 

 

 

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On 1/30/2017 at 11:47 AM, robardin said:

 

And what would be "worse than being a drab"? I can think of something else we've seen.

Perhaps the twisted, trellium-spiked hemalurgic constructs that Wax and TenSoon encountered in the original kandra Homeland in the caverns under Elendel are the original Allomancers or Feruchemists the Set have used as "donors" to steal attributes? First spiked, but not killed, in such a way as to steal their power, with that spike being given to another person - and then being given another trellium spike to complete their transformation?

Brrr.

 

 

I think someone recently asked Brandon at a signing if those constructs had something spiked in or spiked out. I'll try to find it and link it, but I'm pretty sure the answer was "spiked in."

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