A Question About Hemalurgic Power-Stealing And Regular Human Spiritwebs

[Trusk'our]

If you were to take a steel sword and attempt to charge it by running through a regular human with no Allomantic powers, would the sword still receive a Hemalurgic charge by ripping off the piece of Spiritweb that the Allomantic powers would normally be held in, or would it not receive a charge at all?

[Treamayne]

31 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

If you were to take a steel sword and attempt to charge it by running through a regular human with no Allomantic powers, would the sword still receive a Hemalurgic charge by ripping off the piece of Spiritweb that the Allomantic powers would normally be held in, or would it not receive a charge at all?

It would depend on the metal of the sword and where/how it pierced the target; but yes, spikes can be made from regular people with no allomantic or feruchemical traits. That's how Koloss and Kandra spikes were made (e..g why would TLR waste 4 allomantic spikes in 1 Koloss, when those could go to inquisitors?). In the book they say it as "the strength of five men" because it's the person being spiked and 4 spikes that stole physical strength from normal people.

HoA Annotations - Human:

Spoiler

Human's Origin

Human is a very special koloss. He's quite a bit older than most, his creation running all the way back to before the Lord Ruler's death. He was originally the leader of a rebellion out in the southeast—the same area where Clubs spent his youth fighting. Human, then known as Vershad, was one of the more successful leaders of the wasted men—those who live out in the desert outside the borders of the Final Empire, but come in to raid and steal supplies from outlying villages.

Charismatic and intelligent, he managed to keep his band alive even once the Lord Ruler turned his attention on them. Rather than ravaging villages, Vershad would convert them—quietly, carefully—to his side and get them to give him supplies. In turn, he would "raid" them and destroy the lords' mansions, causing chaos and letting the people get a sideways revenge against their masters. In the chaos, it would be assumed that the raiders got away with the skaa food, and it would be replenished.

The Lord Ruler tired of such games and eventually sent his koloss against Vershad and his men. As clever as they were, they weren't able to stand against a well-laid betrayal and ambush set by an Inquisitor—one who controlled a troop of koloss. The raiders were slaughtered, and Vershad himself was turned into a koloss for his crimes.

He retained enough of his determination and his intelligence, however, to make a remarkably clever koloss. (There is some variety to koloss, based on who they were before the transformation.)

Excerpt from the Words of Founding:

Spoiler

Originally, we assumed that a koloss was a combination of two people into one. That was wrong. Koloss are not the melding of two people, but five, as evidenced by the four spikes needed to make them. Not five bodies, of course, but five souls.
Each pair of spikes grants what the kandra would call the Blessing of Potency. However, each spike also distorts the koloss body a little more, making it increasingly inhuman. Such is the cost of Hemalurgy.
Hemalurgic spikes change people physically, depending on which powers are granted, where the spike is placed, and how many spikes someone has... Koloss are changed in even more drastic ways.
I think that the koloss were more intelligent than we wanted to give them credit for being. For instance, originally, they used only spikes the Lord Ruler gave them to make new members. He would provide the metal and the unfortunate skaa captives, and the koloss would create new "recruits."
At the Lord Ruler's death, then, the koloss should quickly have died out. This was how he had designed them. If they got free from his control, he expected them to kill themselves off and end their own rampage. However, they somehow made the deduction that spikes in the bodies of fallen koloss could be harvested, then reused.

Another reason TLR put down rebellion after rebellion, each 5 Skaa in the rebellion made a new Koloss for his armies. . .

Also, note the reference to the Blessing of Potency - so if two spikes from normal Skaa, stealing physical strength created 1 Blessing of Potency, then it is likely that the other blessings were also created from using spikes on regular people stealing awareness (tin - Blessing of Awareness), Intellectual acuity/memory (copper - Blessing of Presence), and emotional fortitude (zinc - Blessing of Stability).

Edited June 19, 2022 by Treamayne
Excerpt, Formatting

[Trusk'our]

I meant specifically a steel sword, as that would be the most reasonable metal to work with. Would a steel sword (Hemalurgic steel taking physical Allomantic powers) be able to receive a charge of Investiture from a normal person with no powers, even if that charge didn't grant any powers if implanted into someone?

[Honorless]

Iron, tin, copper, zinc, chromium, duralumin and possibly nicrosil can steal stuff from regular humans, trying to use steel would probably just be a waste. Beyond that, we don't know enough about Hemalurgy.

[Trusk'our]

On 6/19/2022 at 2:59 AM, Honorless said:

Iron, tin, copper, zinc, chromium, duralumin and possibly nicrosil can steal stuff from regular humans, trying to use steel would probably just be a waste. Beyond that, we don't know enough about Hemalurgy.

It would be a waste because you'd get a charge from the person but wouldn't be able to effectively use it on yourself are you saying, or because it wouldn't get any Investiture at all? Because honestly, I was just trying to come up with another way to get an Invested sword that didn't need to be made of a metal other than steel.