countering Hemalurgy

[Dancer]

If you were a Mistborn and someone was trying to spike you with a Hemalurgic spike and you burnt it the moment it penatrated you what would happen. 

1. The act of burning would force Preservation's Investiture through the metal first blocking any of Ruins Investiture leaving you with just a stab wound.
2. Ruins Investiture flows through the metal first blocking any of Preservation's Investiture leaving you dead with a chunk of your soul missing.
3. Ruin's and Preservation's Investiture flow through the metal at the same time and because both are diametrically opposed to each other they rebuff each other and cause an explosion similar to Harmonium.
4. Nothing happens.   

[Honorless]

57 minutes ago, Dancer said:

If you were a Mistborn and someone was trying to spike you with a Hemalurgic spike and you burnt it the moment it penatrated you what would happen. 

1. The act of burning would force Preservation's Investiture through the metal first blocking any of Ruins Investiture leaving you with just a stab wound.
2. Ruins Investiture flows through the metal first blocking any of Preservation's Investiture leaving you dead with a chunk of your soul missing.
3. Ruin's and Preservation's Investiture flow through the metal at the same time and because both are diametrically opposed to each other they rebuff each other and cause an explosion similar to Harmonium.
4. Nothing happens.   

Hmm, if they manage to burn all of the metal (unlikely since Allomancy seems to take an hour to burn a few flakes) then it would just be a stab wound.

Most likely, the moment they are stabbed, their Spiritweb would be torn by Hemalurgy and their ability to burn metal would be lost. This is just stealing attributes, it should be a much faster process than bestowing them without killing them by altering the recipient's body (like the spikes that go through the Inquisitors' eyes)

Number 1) is a possibility but number 2) is more more likely to happen.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Honorless

[Karger]

4 hours ago, Dancer said:

If you were a Mistborn and someone was trying to spike you with a Hemalurgic spike and you burnt it the moment it penatrated you what would happen. 

You have to swallow metals to burn them.

 

[+Invocation]

2 hours ago, Karger said:

You have to swallow metals to burn them.

Debatable.

Quote

Kaymyth

I asked the question about chromium vs a Compounder with both Invested and un-Invested metals in both their stomach and piercings.

Brandon Sanderson

What it boils down to is this:

1) Yes, the piercings will get burned off.

2) The non-Invested metals go before the Invested ones. He said that because Invested metals are harder to affect, it takes a little extra time and effort to get them to burn off. So a Leecher trying to clean out a Compounder would have to get a good grip and hang on for a few seconds.

3) Chromium burns about as quickly as duralumin, so if you're trying to burn off a lot of metals, it is possible to run out of chromium before your target is clean. This would probably only be an issue when dealing with larger pieces (like jewelry) rather than your standard metal-flakes-in-the-stomach deal.

ConQuest 46 (May 22, 2015)

Quote

Questioner

So, would Allomancy work if the metals were a suppository?

Brandon Sanderson

That is theoretically possible, but gross... There's nothing special about the stomach. It's kinda getting it into your spirit, and things.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

[GoWibble]

7 hours ago, Dancer said:

If you were a Mistborn and someone was trying to spike you with a Hemalurgic spike and you burnt it the moment it penatrated you what would happen. 

1. The act of burning would force Preservation's Investiture through the metal first blocking any of Ruins Investiture leaving you with just a stab wound.
2. Ruins Investiture flows through the metal first blocking any of Preservation's Investiture leaving you dead with a chunk of your soul missing.
3. Ruin's and Preservation's Investiture flow through the metal at the same time and because both are diametrically opposed to each other they rebuff each other and cause an explosion similar to Harmonium.
4. Nothing happens.   

What do you mean by 4? That you get stabbed AND you lose your *powers*? 

[Dancer]

40 minutes ago, GoWibble said:

What do you mean by 4? That you get stabbed AND you lose your *powers*? 

Both Ruin and Preservation's Investiture try to enter through the metal and get rebuffed by each other but instead of exploding they just cancel each other out. Kind of like Ruin and Vin during their struggle at the end of HoA. The Mistborn is just left with a stab wound but with their powers intact. I would say that this is the least likely of the scenarios. 

[GoWibble]

1 minute ago, Dancer said:

Both Ruin and Preservation's Investiture try to enter through the metal and get rebuffed by each other but instead of exploding they just cancel each other out. Kind of like Ruin and Vin during their struggle at the end of HoA. The Mistborn is just left with a stab wound but with their powers intact. I would say that this is the least likely of the scenarios. 

and that is different than #1?

[Dancer]

Not really. #1 you are burning the spike and #4 you are not burning it but you still can if you tried. The end result is the same but the mechanics of how it happened are slightly different. 

[Weltall]

We know you can't counter spiking with aluminum:

Quote

Questioner

If someone had a Hemalurgic spike and they burned aluminum, would the negation of-- am I going to get RAFO'd?

Brandon Sanderson

You're asking if it would destroy the Hemalurgic power? Burning aluminum at that point would not destroy the Hemalurgic power. It would pull the Investiture through whatever you're doing. It would blank your power, but it wouldn't destroy you being an Allomancer with the spike...

I actually considered this in building it and that would be too easy a way to remove Inquisitors, particularly if there were dissension between them.

Skyward Atlanta signing (Nov. 17, 2018)

From this we can extrapolate that negating Ruin/Harmony's influence by simply burning a spike is probably also something that wouldn't be possible

On a related note, Brandon almost wrote a scene where someone gets spiked and burns it but it didn't make it onto the page so we don't know how things would have gone with that. We do know from other WoBs that burning a spike is possible but it would be excruciating (at least for some spikes) and for Inquisitors probably lethal to try to burn the lynchpin spike and we know that Weird Things would happen if you tried it. An old WoB says that it would splice your sDNA with that contained in the spike with strange consequences while a newer one says it doesn't function like a permanent graft of the stolen spiritweb (which seems to contradict the first one) but there would be 'interesting effects'. The lesson here is: You probably don't want to be burning any hemalurgic spikes.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Weltall

[Karger]

5 hours ago, Invocation said:

That is theoretically possible, but gross

Note this.  A lot of things are theoretically possible but impractical.  I generally get this as sign to take a pinch of copper.

[+Invocation]

2 hours ago, Karger said:

Note this.  A lot of things are theoretically possible but impractical.  I generally get this as sign to take a pinch of copper.

It's not really impractical, they just don't know that they can do something like that, so they don't even try to burn metals anywhere else. It would be impractical if it was something like "only certain metals can be burned via non-stomach ways" or something, but it's mostly just that they think you have to eat the metals because that's the way it's always been done.

[Gilphon]

I mean, wasn't Miles burning the metalminds embedded into his arms? That's why they talked about yanking those out of him being the only way to kill him, and why we never see him pause mid-battle to pull one out and swallow it, and why it was weird and notable when he survived the first round of bullets after being deprived of his metalminds.

But- I'm not sure if any of these scenario are particularly different for the Mistborn; you get a big thing of metal shoved into your gut, and you're gonna die soon. The best case is that you managed to stop the person killing from getting your power, but if it worked that way, it would be a pretty crippling weakness in a magic system that already has a bunch of crippling weaknesses, so narratively option #2 make the most sense.

[Karger]

1 hour ago, Gilphon said:

I mean, wasn't Miles burning the metalminds embedded into his arms? That's why they talked about yanking those out of him being the only way to kill him, and

No.  He stored healing in his arms bands.  He then used these to heal rather then constantly have gold in his stomach.  He never burned them,

[Gilphon]

No, he was most certainly burning his metalminds. Combining Allomancy and Feruchemy by burning your metalminds is the entire principal behind compounding. So it's either burn them directly from his arms or swallow them and burn them from his stomach. And there aren't any references to him doing the latter, and nor does anyone ever talk about it as a tactical consideration.

[Weltall]

4 hours ago, Gilphon said:

No, he was most certainly burning his metalminds.

You don't need to burn your metalminds to access your stored healing at all times, just when you're actively compounding. Then you can store that massive burst of health in another metalmind and have it available whenever you need it. For normal purposes, all Miles has to do is what we see him do every time we're looking at things from his POV: Tap his massive reserves of health.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Weltall

[RShara]

22 hours ago, Weltall said:

We know you can't counter spiking with aluminum:

From this we can extrapolate that negating Ruin/Harmony's influence by simply burning a spike is probably also something that wouldn't be possible

On a related note, Brandon almost wrote a scene where someone gets spiked and burns it but it didn't make it onto the page so we don't know how things would have gone with that. We do know from other WoBs that burning a spike is possible but it would be excruciating (at least for some spikes) and for Inquisitors probably lethal to try to burn the lynchpin spike and we know that Weird Things would happen if you tried it. An old WoB says that it would splice your sDNA with that contained in the spike with strange consequences while a newer one says it doesn't function like a permanent graft of the stolen spiritweb (which seems to contradict the first one) but there would be 'interesting effects'. The lesson here is: You probably don't want to be burning any hemalurgic spikes.

And honestly, if you have enough control of yourself to try to burn the spike out, you'd have enough control to pull the spike out. Which would be much faster and easier.,

[Karger]

11 hours ago, Weltall said:

You don't need to burn your metalminds to access your stored healing at all times, just when you're actively compounding. Then you can store that massive burst of health in another metalmind and have it available whenever you need it. For normal purposes, all Miles has to do is what we see him do every time we're looking at things from his POV: Tap his massive reserves of health.

Thank you.

[Karger]

45 minutes ago, RShara said:

And honestly, if you have enough control of yourself to try to burn the spike out, you'd have enough control to pull the spike out. Which would be much faster and easier.,

Although also probably lethal.

[Calderis]

The biggest issue here for me, is burn rate. 

Allomancers swallow flakes of metal, and they last them for a good chunk of time. 

I don't think you're going to burn away a spike before the damage is done. Even with duralumin, it only appears "instant" because the burnrate is massively accelerated. 

So overall, I don't think this is a viable option unless your both burning duralumin, and the spike is ridiculously small. 

[RShara]

22 hours ago, Karger said:

Although also probably lethal.

The times we see people pull out their own spikes, it was not lethal. Spook, Vin, and Yomen all removed their spikes without dying. It depends on where the spike is placed.

[Lunu’anaki]

12 hours ago, RShara said:

The times we see people pull out their own spikes, it was not lethal. Spook, Vin, and Yomen all removed their spikes without dying. It depends on where the spike is placed.

Yes, but those are people with powered spikes, not the people who are having their power stolen in the first place.

[Quantus]

On 11/11/2019 at 6:42 PM, Calderis said:

The biggest issue here for me, is burn rate. 

Allomancers swallow flakes of metal, and they last them for a good chunk of time. 

I don't think you're going to burn away a spike before the damage is done. Even with duralumin, it only appears "instant" because the burnrate is massively accelerated. 

So overall, I don't think this is a viable option unless your both burning duralumin, and the spike is ridiculously small. 

Agreed.  It might work with a bullet-spike, like we saw that time.  They describe a shot of (usually) alcohol with metal shavings in suspension.  Out of suspension and packed, I always imagined that those doses could reasonably be comparable to modern pills, in terms of actual volume of metal.  Call it 1x to maybe 4x the amount of metal in a bullet, depending on caliber, compared to an average dose of a single metal, with a proportional amount of time needed to obliterate it.   

[danox46]

I would say nothing would happen. However, with Duralinum you might be able to burn the full spike away. In that case, I would guess the process would be interrupted. I think he would need to spike the Mistborn in the stomach though.

[Quantus]

If we are talking about a mistborn trying to stop a Spiking with a last-minute Hail Mary flare, I think Id go for a Steel-push on the logic that the pre-charged spike is almost certainly unInvested.  Unless they are coming at you with a godmetal spike that is.  If they are still far enough away you might use Bendalloy to doge and escape. 

If you are twinborn and might be able to tap/flair enough Gold to prevent the spike from actually drawing blood and itself push the spike back out (we saw flairing gold ejects bullets, yes?), or tap/flair F-Steel and superspeed Flash your way out of it.   

[+robardin]

So really it's question of which comes first: the metal spike taking on the hemalurgical charge (and thereby stealing whatever it was stealing from the Mistborn - perhaps the very ability to burn the metal the spike is made of?!), or the Allomancer's ability to burn metals "inside" their body, right?

Maybe the timing would have to be so very precise and immediate that it would only be possible to pull off the stunt while (already) burning atium, which is Ruin's body, to counter Ruin's power in hemalurgy. Ha! How do you like that! I Ruined your hemalurgy! Ah, rusts.