How to use hemalurgy to steal breaths

[Trusk'our he/him]

Hemalurgic spikes cannot directly steal breaths from a donor since they are too much within the physical realm, and not enough in the spiritual realm, where pretty much all of their ability to manipulate resides. However, all you need to do to get the breaths of a person is for them to willingly grant them to you. So, if you were to grant them spikes instead of trying to make a spike from them, and then you used emotional allomancy or some other method of mind controlling them, you should be able to force them to give you their breaths.

Does this seem plausible?

[Honorless he/him]

Yeah, it should be possible, though that seems a bit convoluted, 

[Trusk'our he/him]

It sounds like you might actually be able to use nicrosil Hemalurgy to steal breaths . I had a discussion with another 17th sharder, ShardlessVessel, on my "Can Raysium steal Breaths?" thread.

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Questioner

With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths, when they get to the other planets?

Brandon Sanderson

So spikes rip off pieces of the soul and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul. You could maybe get a divine Breath but I haven't really decided on regular Breaths, they're kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm which is not a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

This was the quote I used for my argument that Hemalurgy could not steal breaths.

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Pagerunner

The Hemalurgy table, you wrote down "atium steals any power, lerasium is all abilities, nicrosil is Investiture"; what's the difference between those three?

Hemalurgic atium, lerasium, and nicrosil. What's powers, abilities, and Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

People are Invested in ways that do not give them active powers. So for instance, everyone on Nalthis is Invested. Everyone in the cosmere is, really. You want to steal their Investiture, but they don't have a power. You're still ripping off a piece of their soul. So there is a distinction between the actual Investiture that's in a human being and a specific power that they have.

So that distinction is pretty easy. You can also, with Hemalurgy, steal specific things. You can steal just general Investiture. You can steal, if you want--this is where the kandra Blessings come from. You can instead steal specific things that are not like stealing Allomancy. Stealing, for instance, someone's mental acuity.

Pagerunner

So abilities is like the half that's all the strength, speed, all that kind of stuff? Those are abilities, versus the Metallic Arts are all powers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Pagerunner

Then Investiture, is that offworld magics?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, it's the raw power.

Pagerunner

Nicrosil is their soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. A piece of their soul, essentially.

Pagerunner

So how would you go about stealing an offworld power?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to depend. A Breath, you would steal with nicrosil. It's general Investiture, is what you would probably going call that. You could forcibly remove someone's Breath from them. The ability to be a Sand Master you would steal with the power ability.

And this was the quote used by ShardlessVessel. They also pointed out that the quote I used was from 2015, while the one they used was from 2021. Brandon Sanderson may have now made up his mind and decided that Breaths can, in fact, be stolen via Hemalurgy.

Stealing Breaths themselves may not be a revolutionary ability, since you can forcibly take them though other means (i.e., torture; let's face it, it's something that can happen ), but if you can take regular and not just Divine Breaths, then you could probably take other sources of investiture not tied directly to a person's soul, such as the stormlight held by a Surgebingder, or the power held by a Misting burning metal, or a Feruchemist tapping a metalmind. This means you could fill Hemalurgic nicrosil spikes with investiture using this method, rather than trying to do so with a much rarer and more difficult to obtain source of power, such as divine Breaths.

And if my guess is correct, then nicrosil Hemalurgy can be used to grant heightening-like effect, such as biological immortality. If this is the case, then you could, through a comparatively easy method, gain immortality. Though of course, this is just speculation, and it very well could be that nicrosil Hemalurgy doesn't grant heightening-like effects. Although, if that's not the case, what would it grant?