Feruchemical Piercings May Not be the Best Idea

[Trusk'our]

I found a quote that may have some interesting implications.

Quote

 

The Alloy of Law Annotations (Nov. 30, 2015)

Chapter Fifteen

Miles talks with Suit, gets two minders, then burns gold to see two versions of himself

One curiosity of dealing only with Mistings, rather than full Mistborn, was what to do with the less powerful metals. Certainly a Pewterarm or a Tineye can be useful. We've seen them in the series do plenty of interesting things.

But what about a person who can burn only gold? I think there's just one place in the entire first trilogy where someone does it, the time Vin burns it in the first book. (I may have put a second time in; I don't recall.) Gold, as a power, was placed into the schematics to give a clue as to what the Eleventh Metal was. Beyond that, I wanted some of the powers of Allomancy to be more metaphysical, more thoughtful, and less about combat.

I'd already decided that Miles would be a Gold Compounder, capable of the Lord Ruler's healing. That meant he had to be a gold Misting. What would one do, with this power? Ignore it? Was there a way to use it? His nature as a gold Misting is a large part of why Miles is such a thoughtful, introspective person. He is not a good man, but he is a self-reflecting one.

There's more going on here, of course. Pay attention to the name he mentions: Trell. This is one of the gods from the ancient religions Sazed talked about. You might think that the spikes in Miles will let Sazed influence him directly, and they would—except that Sazed has taken a complete "free will is needed" perspective on life. He won't let himself take control of people directly unless they've "given themselves" to him, as most of the kandra have at this point. Even then, he usually only nudges.

But there is something odd going on with Miles.

Except, we don't see Miles exhibiting any extra powers from Hemalurgy, and we know that Miles likes to pierce his own body with gold spikes (not Hemalurgic ones) to act as Feruchemical storages. For reasons seen in TLM he may have a single Hemalurgic Trellium spike, but one spike is never enough to control a being.

I think that it may be possible that if someone pierces their body with a Feruchemically charged metal, it may allow external forces to influence, maybe even control them similar to Hemalurgic spikes (though you may need far more Metalminds than spikes to achieve this effect). Investiture exists in all three realms, so if an Invested metal pierces your body, maybe that opens a hole for other things to get in, though likely it wouldn't as pronounced with Feruchemy as with Hemalurgy.

TLR also may have inadvertently made himself more vulnerable to Ruin's influence by doing this, especially since Atium- Ruin's own essence- was what his primary Metalminds were made of.

[alder24]

It's a viable theory, but I don't think so. It's possible he had a Trellium spike in him. If every Feruchemical piercing was damaging your soul, then all Keepers would be as easily controlled by Ruin as Koloss, yet there was nothing like this, no whispering even, and Sazed went through Era 1 without any weird stuff.

Spoiler

Questioner

Miles Hundredlives, is he possessed by a svrakiss from Elantris?

Brandon Sanderson

*long pause* That's a RAFO, you are onto something... I wouldn't say possessed, but influenced by something is definitely a possibility. You are not 100% on.

Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 (Sept. 4, 2014)

So I think he got a Trellium spike, which hid him from Harmony, and opened him to Trell's influence, and that's why he said what he said during his execution. After all he did convert to Trellism.

[Trusk'our]

6 minutes ago, alder24 said:

It's a viable theory, but I don't think so. It's possible he had a Trellium spike in him. If every Feruchemical piercing was damaging your soul, then all Keepers would be as easily controlled by Ruin as Koloss, yet there was nothing like this, no whispering even, and Sazed went through Era 1 without any weird stuff.

 

Okay, that's fair. Even if Metalmind piercings only provided a lesser amount of influence than Hemalurgic spikes, the Keepers' piercings would have a noticeable effect, but we didn't see any.