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what happens if an hemalurgic spike does not kill you


king of nowhere

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We know to imbue a spike with power it has to be driven through the heart, killing the subject and stealing a piece of its soul. planting a spike through someone's heart generally is lethal, so nobody asked what happens in case it just isn't.

I'm not talking about using feruchemy to heal, as that also restores the spiritweb, plus investiture vs investiture is always a mess. No, I'm curious as to what will happen if we do that with science. say we take the subject to an hospital, in a specialized operation room for heart transplantation. we stop his heart, put him into extracorporeal circulation, then we pound the spike through his heart, then we remove the spiked heart, implant a new heart, and send the patient to reanimation. I see three options

- the subject dies the moment the heart is spiked, because being spiked rips the souls, and that's the cause of death, not blood loss

- the spike fails to kill the subject and it does not acquire any hemalurgic power; for it fails to steal the soul from a still-living victim

- the subject survives, but the spike still steals part of his soul. the subject is mentally unstable and/or phisically diminished ever after.

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I don't think a spike has to go through the heart to take a henalurgic charge, and in fact I think we have a few WoBs on the subject. I am on my phone and can't find them atm but I am pretty sure Brandon has said the heart isn't necessary, that hemalurgy doesn't need to kill the donor and that if you survived being the donor you would be like a stab but worse.

 

We won't know many specifics until it's covered (hopefully) in future novels 

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A couple of relevant WoBs

Quote

BRANDON SANDERSON (PARAPHRASED)

One does not have to kill someone with Hemalurgy to charge a spike, but it rips off a large part of the soul. The person would not be the same.

Quote

QUESTION

The hemalurgic constructs in Shadows of Self, are they as twisted as they are because something was spiked into them, or because something was spiked out?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Something spiked in. RAFO on the spiked out part, but nobody knows how to spike something out of someone without killing them, so most likely just spiked in.

So it's possible but no one knows how to do it. The only question is whether it's possible without healing but I suspect it is.  @skaa recently did an interesting post proposing there could be a secondary part of the body that could have things spiked out in addition to the heart. 

Edited by Extesian
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The Spike needs to hit the right Bindpoint and the damage It deals Need to be serious to allow the ripping Soul.

If the Spike is placed into a not surelly lethal location and the victim doesn't due for the Spiritual Shock....It would be Spiritual different.

Brandon described this out come as an Drab-like (if you read Warbreaker). So the less Soul mean that the guy is less connected with the world around him and likely to suffer of depression-like issues. His health Will be poorer and he would be more Influenced by magic (as the Investiture interfere with Investiture).

There are also specific problems related to Hemalurgy itself. If I steal "Strenght" from a man. The guy Will Lost a great amount of his physical Power. Maybe become uncapable of moving at all.

Edited by Yata
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I think I read, either in Hero of Ages or at the Ars Arcanum in the end of Bands of Morning, that the spike has to go through moving blood, not just lots of blood. So you'd have to spike them through the heart and give them a Miles Dagouter-worthy gold metalmind for this to happen (which might heal both the body and the soul (maybe not the Investiture part though) according to Brandon at one signing transcripted on Theoryland)

   So maybe the first medallions were given by death, and then safety?

Edited by Walin
I said "Theoryland signing" which is oddly put, so I changed it to a better phrase
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