How Hoid Could Kill if he Wanted to

[Trusk'our]

When Hoid tries to hurt someone or even contemplates it, he is incapacitated due to the way his Spiritweb was changed by holding a Dawnshard.

However, there are ways to use magic to compel you to cause harm rather than avoiding it.

The first that comes to mind would be by him using Hemalurgic spikes to grant himself a more Ruinous Intent on his Spiritweb, which would, if there were enough spikes placed and enough time given, allow him to override the current structure of his Spiritweb allow him to physically harm others. There are definitely some problems with this, such as how he would need someone else to charge and place the spikes for him, and how he would be opening himself up to shardic influence (which is NOT something that he wants to have happen), but this may hypothetically be possible. 

Another possibility would be for Hoid to wield Nightblood. Since Nightblood compels whoever is holding it to destroy, it seems likely that Hoid would be able to overcome is own magical compulsion to not do any physical harm if he were to use the blade. However, even if he could do so, I doubt that he would risk himself to try and directly kill someone via Nightblood; he's crafty and patient and he would likely rather carefully plan for someone else to do the fighting for him, which he could even without needing to cause direct physical harm. 

[Ixthos]

@Trusk'our it may be that - as the Dawnshards are the commands from the Power, that it could override even those attempts. Hoid may be unable to use Hemalurgy, or the Intent of the Dawnshard's imprint actively would prevent Hemalurgy from affecting him, his spiritweb actively rejecting the spike, or passively preventing it from grafting itself to him.

For the second plan, Hoid is afraid of Nightblood - and we know even Vessels are afraid - and again it could be the Command of the Dawnshard could negate Nightblood's command if he did use it.

We know Hoid can harm Cognitive Shadows, but it seems if something is seen by him to be alive he can't hurt it directly. I don't think he can be altered to be able to harm something he sees as a live due to the nature of how he was affected by the Dawnshard, and it is possible no form of Investiture can change that, even if he wanted to, and we know he wants to be able to do at least a few things the change prevents him from doing (like eating bacon ... delicious bacon ramen ...). It comes down to "can a Shard's power reverse the effects of the Commands of the Power when it was whole, or does a Shard need to reunite with all the others to be able to do this?"

[Trusk'our]

One other way Hoid might be able to push himself to cause physical harm would be to gather a very large number of Bio-Chromatic Breaths that came from violent-minded people, as enough Breaths will cause a change in the mindset of the one who holds them.

[CryoZenith]

On 17.02.2022 at 5:26 AM, Trusk'our said:

One other way Hoid might be able to push himself to cause physical harm would be to gather a very large number of Bio-Chromatic Breaths that came from violent-minded people, as enough Breaths will cause a change in the mindset of the one who holds them.

I talked about this before, but Hoid is not a pacifist. He actively *wants* to hurt people if necessary, he just can't. So what he needs is not a mindset shift to make himself more violent (he already is violent enough intent-wise), what he needs is a mindset shift that significantly narrows down what he perceives qualifies as harm.

In other words, in a hypothetical situation where two other people had the same dawnshardic restriction as Hoid, the first being a misanthropic mass murderer, the second being an extreme "every experience is positive" type hedonist, I would expect the restriction to inhibit the last of those three people the least.

Edited February 18, 2022 by CryoZenith

[DiePie]

What if we were to steal the part of him that incapacitates him with Hemalurgy?

I think either it would have to take the part of his spiritweb that makes him immortal with it (just outright killing it), his Spiritweb would resist too much for the spike to steal anything, or he would naturally heal that portion of his Spiritweb.

I like the third option the most, since it means he could suppress his healing after getting spiked to allow himself to do some measure of harm. I think the first is most likely, though.