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What shape are Hemalurgic Spikes


Arook

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It has been bothering me for some time now. unfortunately I have been unable to read Mistborn again to check on account of lending out my copy to a friend. Does anyone know whether they are round spikes or square spikes like old nails. See they could make them round if they directly cast them and that is not unreasonable for the size. However there could be an argument make for the square as it would be easier for you to have them made without the foundry making them directly. This is most relevant for the steel spikes which have the highest melting point. However because cost is not a factor for the lord ruler convenience means nothing to the lord ruler. He could halve had them made for looks not factoring anything else. A round Spike would be able to easily go though a person into a second person with out taking a lot of the first person with it. If I remember correctly that steel inquisitors have round steel circles for eyes.

 

 

 I always pictured them as round myself and the ends could be round regardless of the main body of the spike being round or square. Examples below

10Sets-High-Quality-Big-font-b-Cone-b-foil_340x270.321571960.jpg

 

Well one have any thoughts on this I would really appreciate the help. I have started casting with brass and I want to make a brass spike for display purposes, but I want to make the right kind.

I did find this on the Coppermind from the Mistborn RPG and that seems to indicate that they are round. 

373px-Inquisitor.jpg

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Ben McSweeney's Steel Inquisitor concept art and the MAG cover also show round spikes (which is how I mentally pictured them too) so we can imagine that a 'typical' hemalurgic spike probably follows that pattern. There's also the things which are almost certainly hemalurgic spikes seen in Mraize's trophy collection in Words of Radiance (which Shallan thinks might be hairpins of a sort) which suggest something more rounded as well. So if you're trying to make a display spike for a Steel Inquisitor, rounded is probably the way to go.

But just to split hairs, it helps to remember that any sufficiently pointy bit of metal can become a hemalurgic spike under the right circumstances, like the broken sword tip that gave Spook A-Pewter, the pin portion of Vin's earring or even a bullet. So if you wanted to try out something else for fun after doing a rounded spike you could experiment with all sorts of designs.

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Considering a broken sword tip was a spike for Spook, I don't think the shape matters as long as they are the correct metal and the intent to use hemalurgy is there. 

I imagine that for ease of use and because they were made for that purpose the inquisitors spikes were probably round, but I don't believe there is a standard beyond them. 

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14 minutes ago, Weltall said:

There's also the things which are almost certainly hemalurgic spikes seen in Mraize's trophy collection in Words of Radiance (which Shallan thinks might be hairpins of a sort) which suggest something more rounded as well.

The only confirmed thing of Mraize's collection is the tree branch which is Yolish:

Quote

Event: SoS London signing (Oct 19, 2015)

[02:37:00]

Questioner: The cosmere treasure room had a white tree branch thing, was that the bone from Sel.

Brandon: It is not from Sel, it’s from Yolen.
source

The hairpins could be just hairpins. Maybe somebody's important hairpins. Sand is probably from Taldain. Silver knife is probably from Threnody.
The rest is pure speculation.

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14 minutes ago, Crucible of Shards said:

Speaking of Spook's spike, wouldn't the person who spiked him have to have the intent to do so, or was Ruin just bein a meddler?

Ruin can give the intent to create in place of the person spiking. 

Personally, my impression were like long nails for the spikes, with length of around railroad spikes. I never thought of them being cones. 

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According to Marasi, kandra spikes are "narrow," less than 3 inches long, and best described as "lengths of metal."  Her descriptions in BoM seem to imply that the spikes don't have "heads" like what would be found on a typical nail.  They ought to be pretty close to the dimensions of a deck nail I believe, minus the head. (she describes them as almost unbelievably small)

Inquisitor eye spikes are described as being roughly 1 inch in diameter at the top, about 8-10 inches long, and, judging from how the spikes get pounded straight through human bodies with wooden mallets, they probably don't have heads like normal nails either, as this would cause them to needlessly get caught in the bones and bodies of the victim while serving no function.

Inquisitor spikes that aren't in the eyes are, to the best of my knowledge, never thoroughly described.  They should be shorter than the eye spikes because otherwise inquisitors would have a spike protruding from the front of their throat, and narrower to avoid interfering with the placement of the ribs.  For the sake of simplicity, I would assume that all of their non-eye spikes are roughly the same size, and built to roughly the same physical proportions as the eye spikes.  Meaning they should be roughly 0.25 - 0.5 inches in diameter at their top and approximately 4-5 inches long.  If they were wider than this they might displace bones in the chest cavity.  While this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker with hemalurgy, it would make sense that they would avoid messing up their own physiology in a way that could make them weaker; ie: not having properly formed rib bones would be a serious disadvantage for inquisitors.

My best guess would be that the torso spikes would also lack the "heads" found on normal nails, and be conical in shape.  Otherwise pounding them through one person's chest and into another's could be frustratingly difficult rather than relatively easy.

Most of this isn't directly confirmed by Brandon, it's just deduced from my own interpretation of the scenes and my rough knowledge of anatomy after a little googling of things like: "Width/spacing of human rib bones," and "average diameter of an adult male skull."  Hope it helps for the sake of visualization though. :D 

Edited by hwiles
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6 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Most of this isn't directly confirmed by Brandon, it's just deduced from my own interpretation of the scenes and my rough knowledge of anatomy after a little googling of things like: "Width/spacing of human rib bones," and "average diameter of an adult male skull."  Hope it helps for the sake of visualization though. :D 

I agree with your reasoning, and think your searches increase your chances of finding a spot on a government watch list. 

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Ha, maybe, but in my experience I simply have the search history of a typical physicist.  Any spy would see the visits to the shard and XKCD and see the absurd questions I sometimes get asked by friends and family and immediately lose all interest in why I would need to reference WWII-era medical journals.  :lol:

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5 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Ha, maybe, but in my experience I simply have the search history of a typical physicist.  Any spy would see the visits to the shard and XKCD and see the absurd questions I sometimes get asked by friends and family and immediately lose all interest in why I would need to reference WWII-era medical journals.  :lol:

Makes sense, I personally use "aspiring author" to cover for my serial ki... er search history. 

Edited by Calderis
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Here's Word of Inkthinker regarding both Marsh and the Spike Diagram Image in the OP(this is the 5th time I've brought this one up. You people really like discussing the Spikes)

Quote

It's pretty close to a similar piece I did for The Mistborn Adventure Game >> www.inkthinker.net/illustratio… <<. Everything we put into that book was run past Brandon, and while I don't recall his feedback on the Codex page verbatim, it's what we published so I reckon it's either close enough or not that important (I have a vague memory of him telling me that what's most important is lots of blood contact). 

It'll probably do until someone can ask him at a signing or something, but even then I bet a clip he asks Peter. Between all the Cosmere books just up to now, he's got so many details to keep track of that they've started to wiki them.

Marsh's page in the Game says he has, prior to the death of TLR, 10 spikes in total (4 Steel, 4 Bronze, 1 Gold and 1 Atium). At the height of his power, just before Harmony, he had 22 spikes (8 Steel, 2 Pewter, 8 Bronze, 2 Gold, 1 Aluminum and 1 Atium). I'm 99% sure that the four steel go two in the eyes, one at the top of the spine, and one through the heart. As to the bronze, gold and atium, I'd put the singles into his torso along the center line, and the four bronze into his ribs (2 each side). Symmetry is more attractive. 

If you want to add more, placing them along the sides of the spine makes for a neat silhouette. I don't suggest actually having them stick out of his skin very far, that's just the diagram. In practice, I think you'd nail 'em all the way in. And they don't all have to be as long or wide as rail spikes, that's just the first four steel ones.

I hope that helps, some!

It's not much detail on shape, but it's got a bit on size. And since he's the one who made the illustration in the OP, I'd consider it canon enough to call them round spikes, and that they don't have a head like nails do. I'm curious about the "first four steel ones" again, given the rail spike comparison

Edited by The One Who Connects
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1 hour ago, The One Who Connects said:

You people really like discussing the Spikes

... and you're only discovering it now? You must be foruming wrong :P

Anyway, that's a great Word of Inkthinker, do you perhaps have a source for that?

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Just now, Oversleep said:

... and you're only discovering it now? You must be foruming wrong :P

Anyway, that's a great Word of Inkthinker, do you perhaps have a source for that?

The actual source, no. The first time it was brought up on the Shard, yes.

@TheArcanist hasn't been on since February, so it might be a while before getting any further answer about where they found it.

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9 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

The first time it was brought up on the Shard, yes.

That's a great thread I can cannibalize use for my thread about Inquisitor builds.

Although it's wrong since Marsh started with eleven spikes...

Edited by Oversleep
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Just now, Oversleep said:

That's a great thread I can cannibalize use for my thread about Inquisitor builds.

Join the club. I jotted down most of the interesting details for my own reasons last August.

As an update on searching for the Word of Inkthinker, none of his posts on the Forums that contain the word(s) "spike," "spikes," or "marsh" are the WoI in question, so that's out.

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4 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Join the club. I jotted down most of the interesting details for my own reasons last August.

Meh, most of what is there is based off MAG which is not really a good source for that stuff.

They assume gold spikes stole Feruchemical gold and we know that pewter spikes stole Feruchemical gold. The issue of Hemalurgy in MAG was brought up with Peter but he said he'll look into it and never got back to us :<

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8 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

They assume gold spikes stole Feruchemical gold and we know that pewter spikes stole Feruchemical gold. The issue of Hemalurgy in MAG was brought up with Peter but he said he'll look into it and never got back to us :<

Well, it was back in 2014, so mayhaps we weren't aware of that fact. I honestly don't remember when we got that info. We can always ask Peter again, since he's been posting on the forums a bit in the past few days.

As for the Gold issue, I said it before and I'll say it again:

On 3/5/2017 at 11:30 AM, The One Who Connects said:

I know this goes back to the MAG, but Inkthinker did say that they ran a lot(if not all) of the stuff past Brandon, and if he says Marsh has Gold Spikes then they must do something useful.

Especially if one of those gold spikes was Pre-TLR's death as his MAG page says

Edited by The One Who Connects
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1 minute ago, The One Who Connects said:

Well, it was back in 2014, so mayhaps we weren't aware of that fact. I honestly don't remember when we got that info.

Sazed talks about pewter spikes in HoA epigraphs. Then we've got it backed by WoB.

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