Spike's weakness (Full Trilogy Spoilers)

[Fifth of Daybreak]

We know that Harmony/Ruin can exert control over beings who have been pierced by two or more spikes, and the more spikes the more susceptible you are, but do we know how far that control can be effective? I assume that there would be no issue if someone were to use the perpendicularity to travel into the cognitive realm on Scadrial, but if they were able to travel off planet to somewhere else in the Cosmere, would Harmony still be able to control their actions? 

To create a practical example, let's say a full feruchemist has dreams of becoming a magic pincushion and the knowledge to do it, so he gathers all the necessary spikes and manages to make it to another planet without being stopped by Harmony's agents. Would he be able to spike himself (logistics of doing that alone aside) and still maintain his free will? Obviously he would never return to Scadrial for dear of being controlled, but is this something that's possible?

Edited September 1, 2017 by Fifth of Daybreak
Grammar

[Calderis]

It's 4 spikes for people as per Koloss and Era 2. And it's not just Ruin/Harmony. 

The fact that allomancers can control Kandra/Koloss shows that anyone with enough strength, and a way to apply the power correctly can control them. 

So a worlhopping pincushion could be controlled by any Shard. 

[shadowwisp]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

It's 4 spikes for people as per Koloss and Era 2. And it's not just Ruin/Harmony. 

The fact that allomancers can control Kandra/Koloss shows that anyone with enough strength, and a way to apply the power correctly can control them. 

So a worlhopping pincushion could be controlled by any Shard. 

I wonder if aluminum could prevent outside sources from controlling spiked individuals. Presumably, a Koloss/Kandra wearing an aluminum lined hat would be immune to being controlled via zinc/brass.  

[Fifth of Daybreak]

3 hours ago, Calderis said:

It's 4 spikes for people as per Koloss and Era 2. And it's not just Ruin/Harmony. 

The fact that allomancers can control Kandra/Koloss shows that anyone with enough strength, and a way to apply the power correctly can control them. 

So a worlhopping pincushion could be controlled by any Shard. 

Thanks for the correction. 

It seems like other shards wouldn't be directly aware of a pincushion without being tipped off to it's presence in some way. Ruin's blind spot with the Kandra at least suggests as much, whereas Harmony would be more directly aware of actions taken on Scadrial to set the chain of events in action. Still, it's an appropriate update to the question.

 

How large is a Shardholder's sphere of influence to exert that kind of control?

[CaptainRyan]

34 minutes ago, Fifth of Daybreak said:

How large is a Shardholder's sphere of influence to exert that kind of control?

With some caveats I would suppose that the answer is "infinite". The spiritual realm has no time or location as we perceive them so a hemalurgic "pincushion" (I like that term btw) could be, conceivably, susceptible to shardic control anytime, anywhere.

Before anyone gets too huffy about this conjecture, let me just say that it would not surprise me if there were limitations to how this works. For example, it is possible that only a Shard that is invested on the same world as the "pincushion" could exert control - e.g. if Harmony is the only Shard on Scadrial then he is the only Shard that can affect "pincushions" on that world. 

There are probably a number of other practical limitations that prevent any Shard from controlling a "pincushion" at anytime/anyplace. 

[The One Who Connects]

On 9/1/2017 at 3:17 PM, CaptainRyan said:

There are probably a number of other practical limitations that prevent any Shard from controlling a "pincushion" at anytime/anyplace. 

I imagine that a Shard could only take control of someone if their target was on the Shardworld that the Shard was Invested in. Something in the same vein of why Shards don't automatically Invest all worlds at once even though "the SR is location-independent." We know that the presence of a Shard is noticeable in the Cognitive Realm, so there's definitely something location-dependent going on.

I imagine that if Harmony(or Ruin) was already controlling a Kandra/Marsh, then they would maintain that control if their target Worldhopped to say.. Roshar. But I don't see Sazed being able to "peer" at Roshar and pick Marsh out of a crowd.

---

That brings up an interesting thought.. Say Ruin won, and was controlling Marsh as an agent off-world. He was already controlling him on Scadrial, so he stays in control when Marsh goes to Roshar. Would one of the other Shards (Honor/Odium) be able to rip control away from Ruin?

For the sake of argument, lets take it to the same world. If Honor took control of Marsh while he was on Roshar, could Odium take control away from Honor or vice/versa?