why the machine works on humans?

[king of nowhere]

the whole worldbuilding point of the machine is that it was made to stack stones and thus attract spirits, but instead it sucked humans too.

But how is that possible?

the machine worked by stacking stones, an activity that works at attracting spirits. we can also assume - since normal humans cannot attract spirits, and yumi is heavily invested - that the machine also needed to be invested to work. spirits thus attracted then are ready to offer service.

This does not work on humans at all. It's not like I see someone stacking stones and I offer them my soul.

So, how did the machine sucked human souls in the first place?

And if it is possible for a preindustrial society to accidentally build a machine that has the power to kill (almost) every human on a planetary scale... what are the implications for the cosmere?

[Myuken]

Let's compare human stacking stone rituals with the Machine.

There's 2 phase in the stacking stone ritual :

1. You stack stones in a mathematico-artistic way that attracts Spirits.

2. You bargain with Spirits to make temporary pseudo-fabrial.

The Machine has a similar working except it needs energy to work/start

1. It stacks stones to attract Spirits

2. It converts Spirits into energy (presumably in the form of Hion) that can be used for a lot of different things

3. It uses this energy to power itself and if it had worked as intended its civilisation.

The problem is Step 2 for the Machine as it's just an Investiture -> Energy conversion and there's no difference between converting a Spirit and converting a human soul.

[Underwater_Worldhopper]

I think it was just that the machine tries to use any Investiture to sustain itself and create Hion. The stacking is separate from the absorption and use of Investiture. The stacking lures Hijo close, but the Machine is doing something else to actually harness the Hijo, sucking them into itself to feed on them to sustain itself as well as to create Hion. Since it uses part of that Investiture to actually fuel itself, when it was initially activated it sucked up as much available Investiture as it could to jumpstart the conversion process, and the closest Investiture was the souls of the Torish. Since Torio was relatively small and the cities were close together, there were all close enough to be sucked in, and only the people on the very outskirts survived.

[Firesong]

Yeah, it was also likely that all humans were Invested to some degree by Virtuosity, and thus they were able to be confused with the Hijo, who were her Splinters. That is part of my theory on what happened. The Commands used likely had to do with absorbing those with her Investiture, not being fully aware that they were the same. 

[RedBlue]

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

And if it is possible for a preindustrial society to accidentally build a machine that has the power to kill (almost) every human on a planetary scale... what are the implications for the cosmere?

As Design points out, the situation on Komashi is weird, and stuff happens here that is only possible because of the outlandish circumstances (ie camping out right next to a dead Shard). If the machine had been built and activated anywhere else in the cosmere, it’s likely the results would have been very different, and maybe not as deadly.

The Investiture we see in the book seems much more prone to accepting suggestions than what we see elsewhere in the cosmere, so maybe Virtuosity-flavoured Investiture is inherently more impressionable than baseline? That could mean that Komashi natives are more vulnerable to having their souls messed with (or eaten by a machine) than everyone else.

Having said that, even if this particular disaster could only have happened on Komashi, the cosmere is an incredibly dangerous place. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a near-apocalypse. The situation on Threnody is pretty dire, Ashyn was apparently rendered uninhabitable, and Scadrial has had at least two very near misses. 

[Firesong]

5 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

As Design points out, the situation on Komashi is weird, and stuff happens here that is only possible because of the outlandish circumstances (ie camping out right next to a dead Shard). If the machine had been built and activated anywhere else in the cosmere, it’s likely the results would have been very different, and maybe not as deadly.

The Investiture we see in the book seems much more prone to accepting suggestions than what we see elsewhere in the cosmere, so maybe Virtuosity-flavoured Investiture is inherently more impressionable than baseline? That could mean that Komashi natives are more vulnerable to having their souls messed with (or eaten by a machine) than everyone else.

Having said that, even if this particular disaster could only have happened on Komashi, the cosmere is an incredibly dangerous place. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a near-apocalypse. The situation on Threnody is pretty dire, Ashyn was apparently rendered uninhabitable, and Scadrial has had at least two very near misses. 

Brandon actually said in a WoB that painters are as strong as they are due to not being controlled by another source (when let free by the machine, of course)

Quote

ArgentSun

The way Painter transforms nightmares into other things is reminiscent of the way spren are affected by perception - only much more extreme. Is perception (and the way the world is set up) the only important factor here, or is Painter using Investiture too somehow?

Brandon Sanderson

What's going on here is not Painter using Investiture really. It's the fact that the nightmares have less control over them from another source. Spren have an oversight from Honor, Cultivation, and Odium, and this is kind of leaving them less at the whims of other people's perception. The nightmares do not have that. I'm not going to say they don't have it at all, but Painter is not using Investiture, but the nightmares are specifically more susceptible to what's going on. So for instance, a good way to answer this is if he went and did this for a spren he would not have the same level of power.

But I do like the idea it is also due to Virtuosity's Investiture being more prone to Cognitive influence. 

[Yumiya]

24 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

That could mean that Komashi natives are more vulnerable to having their souls messed with (or eaten by a machine) than everyone else.

Given that Hoid's protections are triggered by the machine, turning him into a statue for years, I don't really think that is the case.

[Underwater_Worldhopper]

17 minutes ago, Yumiya said:

Given that Hoid's protections are triggered by the machine, turning him into a statue for years, I don't really think that is the case.

Possibly. The Machine is nigh-sentient by the time Hoid visits, it may have just sensed his unique Spiritweb and ungodly amount of Investiture and decided to try and slurp it up, so I don't know if Hoid is a good example of why that possibly isn't the case, given there's nothing else like him.

[king of nowhere]

I also wonder why hoid was hit, but design wasn't. perhaps because design is connected to hoid?

3 hours ago, Firesong said:

Brandon actually said in a WoB that painters are as strong as they are due to not being controlled by another source (when let free by the machine, of course)

But I do like the idea it is also due to Virtuosity's Investiture being more prone to Cognitive influence. 

where did you find that word of brandon? the coppermind arcanum has not been updated in months

Edited July 6, 2023 by king of nowhere

[Werewolff Studios]

7 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

where did you find that word of brandon? the coppermind arcanum has not been updated in months

It's from the Secret Project #3 Reveal and Livestream (March 22, 2022) 

8 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I also wonder why hoid was hit, but design wasn't. perhaps because design is connected to hoid?

Probably this. Hoid's protections likely extend to her in some form. Hoid's also way more Invested than Design is - maybe the machine was so blind-sided by Hoid that is missed Design? 

[Firesong]

40 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I also wonder why hoid was hit, but design wasn't. perhaps because design is connected to hoid?

where did you find that word of brandon? the coppermind arcanum has not been updated in months

As Werewolff said, it was during the SP3 reveal. 

And another thing, it has actually been updated a few times recently. There just hasn't been much to update. One is actually really cool, Isaac giving new Terris Alphabet symbols to some symbols we only had the Standard Steel Alphabet forms of. 

[J. Grimm]

59 minutes ago, Werewolff Studios said:

It's from the Secret Project #3 Reveal and Livestream (March 22, 2022) 

Probably this. Hoid's protections likely extend to her in some form. Hoid's also way more Invested than Design is - maybe the machine was so blind-sided by Hoid that is missed Design? 

IMO I think it has to do with Design having that human “shell” around her that makes the machine register her as just another human in the city and not a spren. Also she is actively trying to act, appear, etc as a human, which probably has an effect on her Identity as well. And as Werewolff Studios said above, Hoid is more invested than Design so he would be instantly recognizable as being different from the other humans and too juicy of a target for the machine to ignore. 

[Werewolff Studios]

46 minutes ago, J. Grimm said:

IMO I think it has to do with Design having that human “shell” around her that makes the machine register her as just another human in the city and not a spren. Also she is actively trying to act, appear, etc as a human, which probably has an effect on her Identity as well.

These are both really good points - the fact that the machine inhabits the Physical Realm and Design sits firmly in the Cognitive (backed up by the line about spren bodies) may also impact the process. 

[Bremen]

If the machine could steal Design's Investiture than it could logically steal other spren's Investiture. So why would it need to stack rocks to attract the Hijo if it could just take the Investiture?

[Dager000]

32 minutes ago, Bremen said:

If the machine could steal Design's Investiture then it could logically steal other spren's Investiture. So why would it need to stack rocks to attract the Hijo if it could just take the Investiture?

On the whole, I think you’re right in that the Father Machine can take Investiture from any Invested entity — which is horrifying in its own right. But from what I gathered, this Investiture-slurping was really a consequence of poor design (hah) and Awakening by the Four Scholars: the machine needed any raw Investiture to operate and sustain/maintain itself, so it indiscriminately targeted the easy-to-access humans. With that as fuel, it could attract the Hijo and use their particular Investiture to make tools or hion. Spren Investiture doesn’t get the Father Machine anything other than fuel. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Dager000
Formatting

[+Oltux72]

10 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Possibly. The Machine is nigh-sentient by the time Hoid visits, it may have just sensed his unique Spiritweb and ungodly amount of Investiture and decided to try and slurp it up, so I don't know if Hoid is a good example of why that possibly isn't the case, given there's nothing else like him.

Not really convincing. It leaves Design, the hordelings and all the devices in Hoid's baggage alone. This looks like it only knows how to drain humans and spirits.

[Firesong]

My theory is it is due to Hoid having some of Virtuosity's Investiture, he does get around a lot and seems to be trying to get Investiture from every Shard, while Design has none. That is how I interpreted Design not being effected.  

[Underwater_Worldhopper]

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Not really convincing. It leaves Design, the hordelings and all the devices in Hoid's baggage alone. This looks like it only knows how to drain humans and spirits.

But Design is essentially the same thing as a Spirit, and she isn't affected at all. It's never been stated that Hordelings are all that Invested either, and the devices don't need to be Invested to detect it. Besides, if the Machine is just trying to eat whatever it can possibly get it's hands on, why doesn't it kill all the surviving Komashians? The Machine leaves them alone unless they learn about the Machine's existence. And it's not like it can't absorb them, the Nightmares can easily leave the Shroud, and the Machine can stablisize and marshal a hundred of them effortlessly. It would have to be a conscious choice on the Machine's part.

18 hours ago, RedBlue said:

The Investiture we see in the book seems much more prone to accepting suggestions than what we see elsewhere in the cosmere, so maybe Virtuosity-flavoured Investiture is inherently more impressionable than baseline? That could mean that Komashi natives are more vulnerable to having their souls messed with (or eaten by a machine) than everyone else.

I don't think that's the case. It's a good idea, but here's a passage about the Shroud:

Quote

This machine immediately began feeding on them, destroying their bodies and harvesting their Investiture. The result was the shroud, sprayed into the air, left to rain down and blanket the land. A dark miasma literally crafted from the dead, everyone’s Identities evaporated and transformed into this dark force. Imagine it like…the tar that decomposed bodies sometimes turn into over many years of incredible pressure. The shroud is that, except souls, left as refuse from the machine’s initial activation.

The Nightmares are so malleable because their Identities have been shredded. The part of a person that protects against other peoples' perceptions warping you is literally missing in the Shroud and the Nightmares, and so they can be influenced far more easily. Add onto this the fact that unlike Spren, the Investiture on Komashi is the remains of Virtuosity, who isn't there to guide and the development of her Splinters (and so the Hijo don't have particularly pronounced Identites either), the Splinters and Shroud are more susceptible to outside influence.

To put it more simply, Identity acts kind of like antigens do on cells; it guards your soul and Investiture from outside influence by creating an actual intrinsic property to make your Investiture distinguishable and resistant to merging or being influenced by other Inevstiture just the same way antigens make your body's cells easily recognisable to your own immune system, so that foreign objects can be identified and eliminated. Without it, anything could come along from the outside and mess you up. This is why Nightmares can be Painted away, and to a lesser extent also applies to the Hijo, who can be harnessed to create useful tools.

[Werewolff Studios]

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Not really convincing. It leaves Design, the hordelings and all the devices in Hoid's baggage alone. This looks like it only knows how to drain humans and spirits.

I feel it would be capable of draining Design and other Invested entities, but it's not worth the effort and kind of goes against it's prime directive - to stack stones and generate the hion lines from the Hijo/ raw Investiture. 

The way I think of it is like food. The machine was designed to stack rocks to generate high quality food and then convert that food into energy. However, it needed a bunch of food at the start in order to get going, so it 'ate' the souls of everyone around it, which were easier to access but not very high quality. 

With that done, it starts doing the work to draw out the higher quality food, now easy to access and very nutritious. Design is comparable to a spirit, which you've already got in spades at your feet. Regarding the surviving humans, why worry about the crumbs in a city nearby? Unless they're going to prevent you from eating, they're not worth the effort.

That is until a food truck of A5 Premium Wagyu rocks up in the city next door. Of course you're going to want that! But the moment you reach out, the doors lock and you can't eat anything. Damn shame, but hey, you've still got more food than you need. 

The Father Machine only eats what it needs to in order to keep stacking stones, maintain itself and generate the hion. As we saw at the end, increasing production to draw more spirits can push it beyond its physical limit, which it wouldn't do unless it needed to. 

[GoldMisting]

11 hours ago, Firesong said:

My theory is it is due to Hoid having some of Virtuosity's Investiture, he does get around a lot and seems to be trying to get Investiture from every Shard, while Design has none. That is how I interpreted Design not being effected.  

I suspect that Hoid's trick of Connecting to the worlds he travels to made Father Machine erroneously view him as a native 15th highly invested entity and therefore compatible with it (also potentially threatening).  Design is the splinter of two different shards therefore not compatible 

Edited July 7, 2023 by GoldMisting

[+Oltux72]

16 hours ago, Werewolff Studios said:

I feel it would be capable of draining Design and other Invested entities, but it's not worth the effort and kind of goes against it's prime directive - to stack stones and generate the hion lines from the Hijo/ raw Investiture.

Then why did it go for Hoid? It had been operating for centuries without issue. It did not need the energy.

16 hours ago, Werewolff Studios said:

With that done, it starts doing the work to draw out the higher quality food, now easy to access and very nutritious. Design is comparable to a spirit, which you've already got in spades at your feet. Regarding the surviving humans, why worry about the crumbs in a city nearby? Unless they're going to prevent you from eating, they're not worth the effort.

Then why send in the nightmares instead of just eating them?

15 hours ago, GoldMisting said:

I suspect that Hoid's trick of Connecting to the worlds he travels to made Father Machine erroneously view him as a native 15th highly invested entity and therefore compatible with it (also potentially threatening).  Design is the splinter of two different shards therefore not compatible 

Why would Father Machine care? You have to make up your mind. Was it actively looking for more energy or not?

It seems to me that you are making a wrong unstated assumption, namely that the drainage effect was a one-time effect. There is no evidence for that. I'd say it operated all those 1763 years and that is why it got Hoid. It was designed for humans because only humans were available when it was designed.
It worked. There was no reason to switch it off again. Father Machine does not make changes without reason.

 

[GoldMisting]

I'm suspecting Father Machine would have noticed something approximating a 15th yoki-hijo (not a mere human) suddenly popped up in a refugee settlement it wasn't planning to urgently exterminate previously and would've needed to alter and contain him.  It wasn't doing anything to Yumi besides giving her boring simulations and repeatedly tampering with her memory

[Myuken]

15 minutes ago, GoldMisting said:

repeatedly tampering with her memory

That's specifically Hoid's anti memory tampering measures that activated, it would make sense that the machine tried to loop Hoid's memory like it does for yoki-hijo

[Underwater_Worldhopper]

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Then why did it go for Hoid? It had been operating for centuries without issue. It did not need the energy.

I like the idea that @GoldMisting presented, that it saw Hoid as something approximating a 15th Yoki-Hijo. It didn't need the energy, which is why it doesn't eat Design or the other Komashians, but it realized that Hoid was too Invested for it to eliminate if need be, so it tried to preemptively neutralize him some other way, which is what triggered his protection protocols.

Quote

Then why send in the nightmares instead of just eating them?

Eating them would raise questions. What happened to Kilahito? How? Why? Why not just send in an army of Nightmares they can't possibly defend against, something they already think they understand and something that has been historically documented? Nightmares are an easy solution that won't raise too many eyebrows. The alternative, eating them, is more convoluted and will require more effort to cover up in a way that leaves no loose threads.

Quote

Why would Father Machine care? You have to make up your mind. Was it actively looking for more energy or not?

Those are two different people. @Werewolff Studios, who made a frankly excellent analogy explaining the motivations behind the Machine's actions, and @GoldMisting, who was theorizing why the Father Machine chose to attack Hoid (Which is correct, in my opinion).

Quote

It seems to me that you are making a wrong unstated assumption, namely that the drainage effect was a one-time effect. There is no evidence for that. I'd say it operated all those 1763 years and that is why it got Hoid. It was designed for humans because only humans were available when it was designed.
It worked. There was no reason to switch it off again. Father Machine does not make changes without reason.

Refer back to Werewolff's post about the Father Machine's motives. The Machine's motives are fulfilled by the time Hoid arrives. It doesn't need to drain constantly because it already has a far more efficient source, the Hijo, which it is continually draining. That's why it doesn't just eviscerate all humans on Komashi, which would have been the case had it been consistently draining all Investiture it could get its hands on: it doesn't need to. The same applies to Design, a single Spren's worth of Investiture isn't anything noteworthy at all to the Machine. Hoid is attacked because he's a potential threat. The answer lies right between Werewolff and GoldMisting's theories; Werewolff supplies a holistic rationale for the Machine's actions, and GoldMisting gives a convincing reason for why Hoid was attacked.

I will say, I don't buy that Virtuosity's Investiture is needed for the Father Machine to influence things. I like the idea that Virtuoso Investiture is more impressionable than other types, just the same way Endowing Investiture severs Connections with its previous holder and wholly adapts to its newest holder, something we know is unique to it. However, I don't think that it's required for the Machine to be able to affect you. Hoid is a prime example of this. He doesn't have any more Virtuoso Investiture in him than any other off-worlder would, yet the Machine can affect him, enough so to trigger his protections. If that little bit that he would have in him naturally counts, it would count for all other off-worlders, which eliminates it as a factor altogether, since it's universally applied, except maybe to Drabs or Hemalurgy survivors.

Connection would not grant him Virtuoso Investiture either, unfortunately. Connection can blur lines, but it doesn't introduce new Investiture into his soul, and the Connection itself wouldn't be Virtuoso in nature either. If it for some reason was, it would still at most only open the Connection itself to the Machine's tampering. If it didn't work this way, Design would be vulnerable too, since she's Connected herself to the planet too.

However, even that isn't the crux of why I don't think it's needed. Because the Father Machine is basically the same as Nightblood. Nightblood is an Awakened Construct whose Command drives him to Corrupt Investiture to Ruin's Intent, sucking in other Investiture to do so (more information on this topic here) in accordance with its Command. The Father Machine does basically the same thing. It too is an Awakened Construct*1 whose Command drives it to Corrupt Investiture. However, while Nightblood has a Command that's far more nebulous and open-to-interpretation, the Father Machine's Commands, as is the nature of coding, are far, far more specific. It doesn't need to Corrupt and Destroy whatever it can get it's hands on, only the specific amount needed to stack rocks, capture Hijo, and create Hion through them. Once it achieves an equilibrium of nothing getting in the way of it's "food" source and creating Hion through that food (alongside sustaining itself), it doesn't bother doing anything else. It's essentially Nightblood, but one that can be sated and it useful for more than destroying and killing. And since Nightblood doesn't have any problem Corrupting different sources of Investiture, the Father Machine shouldn't either. The main difference in their actions is that the Father Machine doesn't actually Corrupt Investiture, that's not part of it's Command. The Corruption of what becomes Shroud is a result of the souls of the dead getting shredded together as it feeds on them. That's why it can't get rid of the Yoki-Hijo, they're too Invested for it to destroy, something that Nightblood wouldn't have a problem with.

I will reiterate, however, that I don't think the whole theory about Virtuoso Investiture being impressionable is wrong, it's just yet another reason to tack onto the list making Hijo and Nightmares vulnerable, which I listed in my other post:

Quote

The Nightmares are so malleable because their Identities have been shredded. The part of a person that protects against other peoples' perceptions warping you is literally missing in the Shroud and the Nightmares, and so they can be influenced far more easily. Add onto this the fact that unlike Spren, the Investiture on Komashi is the remains of Virtuosity, who isn't there to guide and the development of her Splinters (and so the Hijo don't have particularly pronounced Identites either), the Splinters and Shroud are more susceptible to outside influence.

Quote

This machine immediately began feeding on them, destroying their bodies and harvesting their Investiture. The result was the shroud, sprayed into the air, left to rain down and blanket the land. A dark miasma literally crafted from the dead, everyone’s Identities evaporated and transformed into this dark force. Imagine it like…the tar that decomposed bodies sometimes turn into over many years of incredible pressure. The shroud is that, except souls, left as refuse from the machine’s initial activation.

To put it more simply, Identity acts kind of like antigens do on cells; it guards your soul and Investiture from outside influence by creating an actual intrinsic property to make your Investiture distinguishable and resistant to merging or being influenced by other Inevstiture just the same way antigens make your body's cells easily recognisable to your own immune system, so that foreign objects can be identified and eliminated. Without it, anything could come along from the outside and mess you up. This is why Nightmares can be Painted away, and to a lesser extent also applies to the Hijo, who can be harnessed to create useful tools.

 

*1(though it's an Awakened Construct only in the sense that it's an artificial Invested creation to fulfill a specific purpose, not in the "Someone Awakened it with Breath and a Command" sense)

Edit: Just thought to add that Hoid's protections aren't specific to keeping his memories safe from tampering, though that is what inspired him to apply them and they do protect them:

Quote

I instituted protection protocols to defend me if something tried to play games with my soul.

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[+Oltux72]

13 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

I like the idea that @GoldMisting presented, that it saw Hoid as something approximating a 15th Yoki-Hijo. It didn't need the energy, which is why it doesn't eat Design or the other Komashians, but it realized that Hoid was too Invested for it to eliminate if need be, so it tried to preemptively neutralize him some other way, which is what triggered his protection protocols.

The problem with that is that it is inconsistent with the level of proactivity Father Machine otherwise displayed. If it were a purely logical actor acting on potential dangers, it would have destroyed all remaining settlements after the last one it destroyed.

13 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Eating them would raise questions. What happened to Kilahito? How? Why? Why not just send in an army of Nightmares they can't possibly defend against, something they already think they understand and something that has been historically documented? Nightmares are an easy solution that won't raise too many eyebrows. The alternative, eating them, is more convoluted and will require more effort to cover up in a way that leaves no loose threads.

Then eat them all at once. This is introducing a complication that does not really exist.

13 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Those are two different people. @Werewolff Studios, who made a frankly excellent analogy explaining the motivations behind the Machine's actions, and @GoldMisting, who was theorizing why the Father Machine chose to attack Hoid (Which is correct, in my opinion).

My apologies for being unclear and not making clear distinctions.

13 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Refer back to Werewolff's post about the Father Machine's motives. The Machine's motives are fulfilled by the time Hoid arrives. It doesn't need to drain constantly because it already has a far more efficient source, the Hijo, which it is continually draining.

At the risk of repeating myself, this projects human decision making to a machine. Father Machine does not think like a human being. It needs a reason for any action. It does not stop doing something unless it has to.
The notion that results from inaction are different from results from action is deeply ingrained into the human mind. You see that in the trolley problem. Father Machine would react in an obvious manner to that, seeing it as a factual iisue, not a moral dilemma. It is not human.

It needed to act to secure an energy supply. So it activated the drainage effect.
Is there an advantage in and a need to deactivate it? No. Then it does not.
Never change a working system.

The idea that Father Machine actively chose to act against Hoid is unsupported. And if you want to entertain it, you'll need to assume that it detected him. Hoid, however, can hide from Shards. You'd have to assume that either

• Father Machine is better at detecting Hoid than Harmony or Odium are
• Hoid was cautious enough to run his tempering defence but did not hide his presence when landing on an alien uncontacted planet

13 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

However, I don't think that it's required for the Machine to be able to affect you. Hoid is a prime example of this. He doesn't have any more Virtuoso Investiture in him than any other off-worlder would, yet the Machine can affect him, enough so to trigger his protections. If that little bit that he would have in him naturally counts, it would count for all other off-worlders, which eliminates it as a factor altogether, since it's universally applied, except maybe to Drabs or Hemalurgy survivors.

There is no evidence at all that other human offworlders would be unaffected. In fact the system has been visited. Yet the only offworlder is a hordeling. Why?
Simple explanation: The humans that did visit became part of the Shroud.

It is true that an ongoing drainage does require an explanation for the continued human population of the planet. I'd say they are just immune. Just as some individuals in a population are usually immune to some diseases, you'll find individuals immune to arcane attacks designed against typical individuals.

I'd say the best explanation for the things we have seen are:

• Father Machine did activate a drainage effect to solve its initial energy shortage
• It never switched it off because there was no need to
• a small fraction of the people proved to be immune. Father Machine ignored them, because they did not matter
• the first time a yoki-hijo broke free Father Machine sent the Nightmares because the people were immune to the drainage, being descendants of immune people
• Hoid landed and was unintentionally and unknown to Father Machine affected by the ongoing effect
• Father Machine did send the Nightmares again as the next yuki-hijo broke free, because it had worked and draining would not