Reusing spikes

[XaviGzz]

While browsing another topic, I came across this WoB:

Quote

JordanCon 2018 (April 22, 2018)

yulerule

Can you reuse a spike?

 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Uh, yes, technically, but not as easily as that question makes it sound.

 

yulerule

Can you re-use it if it's for the same exact thing or for a different thing? Will that change?

 

Brandon Sanderson

Spikes are going to get keyed by Identity--

 

yulerule

So you can't already spike that person. But if you spike and don't kill them can you spike the same person again?

 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah and if you can somehow strip the identity of the person or the spike-- So yes you can use them again but it comes into a sort of-- Like, you can't just take that spike and spike somebody else.

Either I'm not understanding the WoB correctly, or isn't this in conflict to Wax and Wayne taking the spikes from not-Wax (and/or not Wayne) near the end of TLM to give themselves a-duralumin and a-steel? Or is the question related to having an a-duralumin granting spike and then using it as a a-iron granting spike?

Thanks for the clarification in advance!

[alder24]

5 hours ago, XaviGzz said:

While browsing another topic, I came across this WoB:

Either I'm not understanding the WoB correctly, or isn't this in conflict to Wax and Wayne taking the spikes from not-Wax (and/or not Wayne) near the end of TLM to give themselves a-duralumin and a-steel? Or is the question related to having an a-duralumin granting spike and then using it as a a-iron granting spike?

Thanks for the clarification in advance!

The WoB is about reusing the spike in the sense of taking an already invested spike and trying to steal something again with it from a different person. That's what Set scientists were doing, and they did mention they had a problem with identity contamination, like WoB said. Like WoB said, you can spike and steal from one person, and if that person somehow survives, you can spike and steal from them again using the same spike. Both pieces of stolen soul have the same identity, so they won't interfere with each other. The WoB is about stealing from multiple people using the same spike.

That's very different from what Wax and Wayne did. They just took an already invested spike, and spiked themself to get powers that already were in those spikes. That's what Kandra and Koloss in Era 2 are doing, that's what Koloss and Inquisitors were doing in Era 1. They just took an already invested spike and placed it in a different person.

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 3/31/2023 at 3:06 AM, XaviGzz said:

Either I'm not understanding the WoB correctly, or isn't this in conflict to Wax and Wayne taking the spikes from not-Wax (and/or not Wayne) near the end of TLM to give themselves a-duralumin and a-steel? Or is the question related to having an a-duralumin granting spike and then using it as a a-iron granting spike?

Thanks for the clarification in advance!

As @alder24 said, the quote is more about adding power to a Hemalurgic spike by spiking more Investiture from another person on top of what the spike already has.

Identity contamination prevents this from working well, but aparently the Set got them to work briefly. Likely the spikes stopped functioning because the Investiture inside the spikes considered themselves to be separate, so they began to break each other down, similar to a body rejecting a donor's organ because of conflicting DNA.

The quote also mentions that you could overcome this problem if you managed to either match the Identity of the donors (spiking the same person more than once by healing them between spiking them) or by blanking the Identity of the donors (such as blanking the donor's Identity with aluminum Feruchemy while spiking them). The Set just didn't have time to experiment.