Trusk'our he/him Posted May 3, 2023 Posted May 3, 2023 Intent is very important to Hemalurgy. You could pierce the right person with the right metal in the right place- but not end up with a Hemalurgic charge because you didn't have the intention of charging the metal. I'm wondering now if this could somehow be used to a Hemalurgist's advantage to protect them from harmful, spiritual intrusions. If a Hemalurgist took a metal (without a Hemalurgic charge) then pierced themselves with it in the right Bindpoint, could they at some later date choose to excise a part of their Spiritweb in the spike? For instance, let's say there's a guy named Josh living on Roshar, fighting in the war against Odium. Odium decides to Connect to Josh, similar to how he's Connecting to Dalinar in an attempt to slowly corrupt and weaken him. Josh knows that this Connection exists, but he deliberately removes it and stores it in the duralumin (another situation where this might be useful is when Kelsier was Connected to Ruin; he could have removed those Connections, then removed the spike, thus ending his Connection to Ruin and subsequent interference with wielding Preservation). A further question here is; does the Intent matter as well as the Bindpoint for Josh's newly charged spike- at least, whether it is "active" or not? To explain better, could the spike be placed in the correct Bindpoint to allow for Josh to use the contents of the spike, but if Josh didn't have the Intent to use or those contents, would they just stay in the spike? Or would the Connection just re-rout itself and automatically hotwire to this Spiritweb, regardless of his desires? Other ideas for the use of this include; excising a Shade's corruption from yourself, tearing out a chunk of Spiritweb from a Voidspren that tries to possess you (such as with Sadeas's men at the battle of Theynena), or removing a Bondsmith's ties to you (such as when the Windrunners and Dalinar were attacked by Ishar). So, does this seem plausible, or am I going off the deep end again guys?
Quantus he/him Posted May 3, 2023 Posted May 3, 2023 A Big disclaimer for any of this is that "Connection tricks" are apparently very common and diverse across cosmere worlds (and/or Worldhopper groups) and we really dont know their mechanics or limitations yet. Including how might they heal back if you are trying to survive being a Hemalurgy donor. If I understand your theory, I think the act of Investing the spiritweb chunk in the spike is what rips it off the donor's spiritweb, not the spike removal. So as soon as you implant it and move the spiritweb to the Physical Realm (in the spike) all the Hemalurgic downsides of the frayed edges would come into effect, including shardic influence and hemalurgic decay. Intent matters to get Hemalurgy to happen, but Intent doesnt necessarily have to match the Effect, in the sense that you can get the Bind Points wrong and get unforeseen effects or even a non-functional spike. That's where the development and experimentation happens. I dont know about Hemalurgy, but I think Feruchemy would work for protecting those Connections if they are stored and retrieved as a discrete thing like Memories or Nicrosil medallions. But if its Filling and Tapping to make shrink it down to some non-zero state, a Bondsmith or whomever could probably still manipulate the Connection regardless of any feruchemical inflation or reduction happening, so long as he can access you (and ALL your connections, it appears).
alder24 Posted May 3, 2023 Posted May 3, 2023 3 hours ago, Trusk'our said: Intent is very important to Hemalurgy. You could pierce the right person with the right metal in the right place- but not end up with a Hemalurgic charge because you didn't have the intention of charging the metal. I'm wondering now if this could somehow be used to a Hemalurgist's advantage to protect them from harmful, spiritual intrusions. If a Hemalurgist took a metal (without a Hemalurgic charge) then pierced themselves with it in the right Bindpoint, could they at some later date choose to excise a part of their Spiritweb in the spike? For instance, let's say there's a guy named Josh living on Roshar, fighting in the war against Odium. Odium decides to Connect to Josh, similar to how he's Connecting to Dalinar in an attempt to slowly corrupt and weaken him. Josh knows that this Connection exists, but he deliberately removes it and stores it in the duralumin (another situation where this might be useful is when Kelsier was Connected to Ruin; he could have removed those Connections, then removed the spike, thus ending his Connection to Ruin and subsequent interference with wielding Preservation). A further question here is; does the Intent matter as well as the Bindpoint for Josh's newly charged spike- at least, whether it is "active" or not? To explain better, could the spike be placed in the correct Bindpoint to allow for Josh to use the contents of the spike, but if Josh didn't have the Intent to use or those contents, would they just stay in the spike? Or would the Connection just re-rout itself and automatically hotwire to this Spiritweb, regardless of his desires? Other ideas for the use of this include; excising a Shade's corruption from yourself, tearing out a chunk of Spiritweb from a Voidspren that tries to possess you (such as with Sadeas's men at the battle of Theynena), or removing a Bondsmith's ties to you (such as when the Windrunners and Dalinar were attacked by Ishar). So, does this seem plausible, or am I going off the deep end again guys? Ok, I think you took it a spike too far. I don't understand it at all You want to spike something out of yourself, then place the spike back in you but without an intent, so it won't act like a hemalurgic spike? - this alone can work. -ish. Neither Vin nor Spook have intents of giving themself spikes and powers, Ruin provided them, in this case Ruin might mess you up as well and simply knowing this piece of metal is holding hemalurgic charge might provide an intent to activate is, but it might not work according to its charge. But then you want to hold a charged spike in your body, but without granting you any charge to your soul, and one day just decite that you want it now and just activate it by intent? I don't think so, the intent is important when placing the spike, not while wearing it (as far as we know right now). I think if you're completely unaware that this piece of metal is a hemalurgic spike, you might be able to place it in your body without hemalurgic consequences. But if you just know that it is a spike and you want to place it in your body, even without activating it, it will mess up your spirit web and do something to it - maybe not give you what's in this spike even if in the correct spot, but it will mess you up. Plus you spiked something out of you, in case of Josh, this alone would give a wider entry for Odium. You don't want to spike yourself unless that's something very messy you can get rid of. Don’t do it at home Correct me if I understand it all wrongly. Spoiler Questioner My question was about Hemalurgy. There was a disagreement on the last Shardcast. When spiking a Mistborn to charge a Hemalurgic spike, does it matter how the Mistborn is killed or is what power is stolen based only on the metal? Brandon Sanderson So you want to place the spike in a specific place. Questioner In the donor. In the recipient, not the donor. Brandon Sanderson In the recipient. And you want to use the specific metal and so basically if you aren't precise about how you spike, you risk taking the wrong thing within the same family. Some of those, that's not as big a deal, but for some it is kind of a big deal. And so you want to be very precise, you'll get something, but if you're not placing the spike in the right place and going into the right place, then you risk it. Questioner You risk stealing the wrong thing. Brandon Sanderson Yeah. Now if you're going off of somebody who's not a Mistborn, you can be a little more flexible, but you still have the danger that you're not going to end up stealing the power, you're going to steal something else. So, precision is advisable, how about that? Questioner Yeah. Because the question was kind of specifically about, like, we know that atium spikes can kill-- can steal pretty much any power. Brandon Sanderson Yes. You want to be super precise with your atium spike. Questioner So, part of the question was like, exactly, if you just killed a Mistborn, you stab a Mistborn in the heart with an atium spike, and you're not placing it immediately-- Brandon Sanderson What do you end up with? You are rolling the dice, let's say. Not as big a roll of the dice as you might think, but you still are. You might not get what you want. Questioner And then when you place the spike on the recipient, if you like tore that spike out again and put it in someone else, you're not going to be able to get more than one power out of it? Brandon Sanderson No. No, and if you place the spike in the wrong place, then you're going to end up with interference and things like this where the spike might just not work the way you want it to. Taking a spike and putting it in the wrong place in someone is not going to make them have a different power, in other words. Idaho Falls signing (Dec. 29, 2018) 1
Trusk'our he/him Posted May 3, 2023 Author Posted May 3, 2023 4 minutes ago, alder24 said: Ok, I think you took it a spike too far. I don't understand it at all Lol, I'm surprised it took this long before my rambling became incomprehensible 5 minutes ago, alder24 said: You want to spike something out of yourself, then place the spike back in you but without an intent, so it won't act like a hemalurgic spike? - this alone can work. -ish. Neither Vin nor Spook have intents of giving themself spikes and powers, Ruin provided them, in this case Ruin might mess you up as well and simply knowing this piece of metal is holding hemalurgic charge might provide an intent to activate is, but it might not work according to its charge. But then you want to hold a charged spike in your body, but without granting you any charge to your soul, and one day just decite that you want it now and just activate it by intent? I don't think so, the intent is important when placing the spike, not while wearing it (as far as we know right now). Yup, you take a non-Invested Hemalurgically viable metal (duralumin in this case), you implant it- probably as a piercing- into your body at a Donor Bindpoint (assuming that the donor's Bindpoint matters for Connection). You don't choose to charge it immediately though, but you do later when something else tries to Connect to or possess you. Then you once it's charged, you don't have the spike give you anything from it since you don't have any Intent for that. 18 minutes ago, alder24 said: I think if you're completely unaware that this piece of metal is a hemalurgic spike, you might be able to place it in your body without hemalurgic consequences. But if you just know that it is a spike and you want to place it in your body, even without activating it, it will mess up your spirit web and do something to it - maybe not give you what's in this spike even if in the correct spot, but it will mess you up. Could be the case. We need some more examples of Hemalurgy to go off to tell for certain though. 20 minutes ago, alder24 said: Plus you spiked something out of you, in case of Josh, this alone would give a wider entry for Odium. You don't want to spike yourself unless that's something very messy you can get rid of. Don’t do it at home Yeah, that could definitely be a problem with Odium (Voidspren trying to possess you would certainly have a bad day though ). I wonder if Josh happened to be a Bloodmaker (or Radiant, more likely) if he could heal the hole made in his Spiritweb, but not grow back the Connection (this is rather doubtful, I'll admit)?
alder24 Posted May 3, 2023 Posted May 3, 2023 11 minutes ago, Trusk'our said: Yup, you take a non-Invested Hemalurgically viable metal (duralumin in this case), you implant it- probably as a piercing- into your body at a Donor Bindpoint (assuming that the donor's Bindpoint matters for Connection). You don't choose to charge it immediately though, but you do later when something else tries to Connect to or possess you. Then you once it's charged, you don't have the spike give you anything from it since you don't have any Intent for that. No, I don't think that will work. Spiking won't work if you have a spike just sitting in your body. You have to move it through your body fully, to rip off a portion of your soul. You kind of need "friction" to rip your soul apart. And I doubt there are many binding points that can act for both donors and recipients outside of the heart (there are 4 points in there). If there is, you still need to spike yourself, and then place it back in that spot. 15 minutes ago, Trusk'our said: I wonder if Josh happened to be a Bloodmaker (or Radiant, more likely) if he could heal the hole made in his Spiritweb, but not grow back the Connection (this is rather doubtful, I'll admit)? Yeah, not possible unless he's a master of self-perception. In that case he might as well remove that connection by simply healing himself.
Argenti he/him Posted May 4, 2023 Posted May 4, 2023 While yes, you could use it to remove connections, please don't forget you are ripping a piece of your soul out, and no matter how good you are, you'll take some stuff you don't intend. Additionally, doing hemalurgy in combat is almost impossible (without some fortune stuff, like atium.) This also covers while you are possessed or Withering from a shade since it's hard to focus while something influences your mind or body. On that note, I'm not sure you could spike out a shade's withering without a lot of practice since it's pretty much replacing your innate investiture with the Shade's; it would be very hard to remove s large amount of your investiture without killing yourself.
alder24 Posted May 4, 2023 Posted May 4, 2023 3 hours ago, Argenti said: Additionally, doing hemalurgy in combat is almost impossible (without some fortune stuff, like atium.) This also covers while you are possessed or Withering from a shade since it's hard to focus while something influences your mind or body. On that note, I'm not sure you could spike out a shade's withering without a lot of practice since it's pretty much replacing your innate investiture with the Shade's; it would be very hard to remove s large amount of your investiture without killing yourself. I think with a nicrosil spike you would be able to rip off the "corrupted" part of your soul, turning you into a Shade, but that would be painful. If you survived this, you would be left far worse than a Drab, as now you're missing a significant portion of your spirit web (even bigger than removal of Preservation's fragment). Plus you will be missing essential parts of your soul, it might be even possible you would be left in a similar state to that of Singers Slaveform or Deadeye spren, depending on what is missing in your soul.
Argenti he/him Posted May 4, 2023 Posted May 4, 2023 20 minutes ago, alder24 said: I think with a nicrosil spike you would be able to rip off the "corrupted" part of your soul, turning you into a Shade, but that would be painful. If you survived this, you would be left far worse than a Drab, as now you're missing a significant portion of your spirit web (even bigger than removal of Preservation's fragment). Plus you will be missing essential parts of your soul, it might be even possible you would be left in a similar state to that of Singers Slaveform or Deadeye spren, depending on what is missing in your soul. Yeah that's what I meant by "it would be very hard to remove large amount of your investiture without killing yourself."
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