why the machine works on humans?

[Underwater_Worldhopper]

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

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.

We can only assume the Father Machine wants to stick as much to its prime directives as possible because those are its Commands, as an Awakened Construct. It is driven to stack rocks, lure and trap Hijo, then use them to sustain itself and create Hion. When it was activated, there presumably wasn't enough energy in it for it to work at maximum capacity. The intention of the scholars probably would have been for it to work its way up, luring in more and more Hijo until it can achieve maximum efficiency. However, an Awakened rope does not modulate how powerfully it grips, it simply does the most it can with the amount of Investiture it has. Neither does the Machine. It didn't have enough energy to immediately begin fulfilling its Command, so instead of working its way up, it took the quicker root of ripping out the power of the people around it to jumpstart itself. The Shroud was the product of the Corrupted Investiture that was produced when the Machine used it to power itself. Once it stacked enough rocks to attract enough Hijo to keep the process going, it would have stopped using souls, as that wasn't part of its Commands. Using souls was just a means to an end of kickstarting the Hion-production process so that it started off strong, and once that start was achieved, it was no longer necessary to deviate from it's Commands to do so.

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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.

You're right that it won't act in accordance with human decision-making, but it isn't solely a machine either. Investiture carries with it an innate sentience. Not only is the Machine an Awakened Construct, but it has also been extremely Invested for nearly two thousand years. In Awakening, just a single Breath can develop sentience and presumably sapience if it's put in a suitably life-like body. Even if it takes effort and an unimaginably accurate caricature of a human as a vessel, the potential is there. And that's just a single Breath. The Father Machine got Invested with thousands of souls, and though he releases them to form the Shroud, he only does so once he can replace them with Hijo, every single one in the nation of Torio and probably the entire planet, which are even more Invested. And then he keeps hold of them for millennia, slowly replacing itself with pure Investiture. The Father Machine would have absolutely developed sentience by then, and that would give it reasoning abilities beyond just a machine, or even an Awakened Construct.

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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.

That's for a regular machine. The Father Machine is Awkaned, its sole purpose is to fulfill its Command. It will deviate and do other things to facilitate it, but only if it's needed, and then it will stop deviating once the issue is resolved, because it's Command does not include it.

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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

1. Harmony is inexperienced, and Odium is bound and limited in how he can interact with Rosharans. Unhampered Shards, like Endowment, can detect him easily, she knows he's there every time he shows up on Nalthis.
2. Hoid doesn't run his security measures on purpose, they're automatic and get employed as soon as something tried tampering with his soul. Assumedly, his hiding is also something he's constantly maintaining as opposed to something he only does on occasion. Either way, He also did survey the planet before he touched down, and he decided it was safe enough for him to land on, and there was no Shard in residence.

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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.

Or an even simpler explanation: No off-worlders other than Masaki, Design, and Hoid are relevant to the story, and so aren't mentioned. Worldhoppers aren't always called out. Nothing special is noted about Felt in either Mistborn or Oathbringer, despite him being a Worldhopper. And you're right, there isn't any evidence that human off-worlds would be unaffected. That's why I posit that needing Virtuoso Investiure isn't a requirement for being affected by the Machine.

Also, technical correction, Maska is a Swarm. Hordelings are the individual insects that she's made up of.

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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.

You can't just be 'immune' to Investiture, the only way you can resist Investiture is by either being Aluminum or being Invested yourself. That's how the Yoki-Hijo resisted the Machine, even though it technically, superficially, killed them. Design's machine shows that Nikaro, and assumedly all Komashians except for the Yoki-Hijo, aren't very Invested. You can't be immune to the Father Machine's draining effect than you can be immune to Nightblood.

More likely, I think that the Machine didn't absorb everyone at once, since that wouldn't have helped it function for long enough to stack rocks, but rather did it over a longer period of time (still short, but not instantaneous), feeding on souls until it could draw and trap enough Spirits that it could feed solely on them, working it's way outwards of the Torio City population, until it had enough Hijo to stop relying on souls, at which point only the people on the very outskirts were left.

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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

I do not agree, based on what I said above. Here's what I believe:

1. Father Machine activates, and in trying to fulfill its Command as best as possible, it starts draining souls to kickstart its Hion-making process
2. It uses the souls of the people to fuel itself as it starts stacking rocks and capturing Hijo, producing the Shroud as a byproduct of using souls in the way that it does
3. Once it has enough Hijo, it stops converting souls since it is a function outside of its Command that it no longer needs.
4. By the time souls are stopped being used, only people on the very outskirts of Torio are left, who are soon trapped in the darkness of the Shroud.
5. When the Hijo break free and contact the people of Futinoro, the Father Machine sends stable Nightmares to kill anyone who might know of his existence.
6. Father Machine senses Hoid, realizes there's basically another Yoki-Hijo that needs to be neutralized, and tries to do something to him, possibly mess with his memories and pull him into a simulation but is unable to do so before Hoid's soul goes on lockdown.
7. When Nikaro and the others find out about his existence, Father Machine sends Nightmares to destroy the city, as it is a solution that has worked for him in the past

Edited July 8, 2023 by Underwater_Worldhopper

[Zackarcanum]

I believe the answer is simple. We see in mistborn wax and Wayne series that they are using hermology from regular humans meaning to say that every human soul has a small amount of investure in them. Over here in this book the father machine needed that extra investure to kickstart its operation. Every human is in a small way a soul.

[Lightspine]

I don't have much to say here in terms of theory that hasn't already been said, but I haven't seen this particular passage brought up yet so I thought I would do it:

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“Painter had gone rigid, his eyes wide, as parts of him became smoky and indistinct—his form fuzzing toward the nightmare. His essence twisted, coalescing into twin vortices of smoke like miniature tornadoes. One blue. One magenta.
Hion. His soul was becoming hion. And the nightmare—spreading its many legs around the window and drawing its center bulk toward Painter, pinprick white eyes facing his direction—was feeding on that energy.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 25. 

Whatever the Father machine did is not unique to it. (And remember the smaller "child" machine also extracted hion from the scholar and Yumi when it was being primed). Another instance of souls having hion characteristics is during the carnival ride:

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“He wanted so badly to be able to hold her, but had to content himself with moving his hand an inch closer to hers—until he felt the barest sense of electric warmth at their touch.
It thrummed through him, like magma injected into his veins. If he’d looked closely, he would have seen two little lines—like electric sparks—connecting his skin to hers. Magenta and azure.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 28. 

Since hion seems to be just what Virtuosity's investiture looks like, there's two options here: 1). the people's souls are being converted into Virtuosity investiture when machines/Nightmares feed on them. 2). the people's souls are already Invested by Virtuosity on this particular planet.

I don't know if there's evidence either way about this.

[king of nowhere]

9 hours ago, Zackarcanum said:

I believe the answer is simple. We see in mistborn wax and Wayne series that they are using hermology from regular humans meaning to say that every human soul has a small amount of investure in them. Over here in this book the father machine needed that extra investure to kickstart its operation. Every human is in a small way a soul.

 

4 hours ago, Lightspine said:

I don't have much to say here in terms of theory that hasn't already been said, but I haven't seen this particular passage brought up yet so I thought I would do it:

Whatever the Father machine did is not unique to it. (And remember the smaller "child" machine also extracted hion from the scholar and Yumi when it was being primed). Another instance of souls having hion characteristics is during the carnival ride:

Since hion seems to be just what Virtuosity's investiture looks like, there's two options here: 1). the people's souls are being converted into Virtuosity investiture when machines/Nightmares feed on them. 2). the people's souls are already Invested by Virtuosity on this particular planet.

I don't know if there's evidence either way about this.

hemalurgy requires driving a spike into a person. the nightmare draining nikaro was stabbing him with claws or something similar. nikaro and yumi were touching. this soul draining effect seem to always require touch.

it's not the "turning souls into investitures" part that leaves me puzzled, but the fact that it worked at distance over an entire planet.

the fact that they made it work at a distance over an entire planet by accident.

it's a bit like trying to assembled a toaster in a workshop and accidentally producing a fighter jet.

[Lightspine]

20 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

hemalurgy requires driving a spike into a person. the nightmare draining nikaro was stabbing him with claws or something similar. nikaro and yumi were touching. this soul draining effect seem to always require touch.

Actually, I don't think the Nightmare was touching Nikaro in that scene. What you're remembering is when Liyun is feeding from Yumi. Here's the full passage:

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“The nightmare paused and withdrew its legs. Then it balanced its bulky body in an impossible posture on only two of them as all the rest stretched again toward the window—slowly, carefully elongating—as if the night itself were reaching to swallow Painter.
“You do see me,” Painter said. “I guess if Design can do it, it’s not so surprising that…” His voice drifted off, then he made a strained sound, prompting Yumi to look.
To find him beginning to disintegrate.
Painter had gone rigid, his eyes wide, as parts of him became smoky and indistinct—his form fuzzing toward the nightmare. His essence twisted, coalescing into twin vortices of smoke like miniature tornadoes. One blue. One magenta.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 25. 

However, the Nightmare certainly did need to get closer to Nikaro in order to start feeding on him, and couldn't do it from a significant distance, so I understand your consternation at the machine being able to perform this over a range of (probably) thousands of miles.

My tentative thought here is that the Festival itself probably made it easier. A significant chunk of the Torish population may have been gathered in the capital city at that time, and a crowd of them gathered right up at the machine when it was being activated (Yumi finds the machine in what was once a "grand exhibit hall"). Maybe the large number of nearby souls was able to give the machine the power boost it needed to reach out and gather the more distant ones?

[Werewolff Studios]

22 hours ago, Lightspine said:

Actually, I don't think the Nightmare was touching Nikaro in that scene. What you're remembering is when Liyun is feeding from Yumi. Here's the full passage:

However, the Nightmare certainly did need to get closer to Nikaro in order to start feeding on him, and couldn't do it from a significant distance, so I understand your consternation at the machine being able to perform this over a range of (probably) thousands of miles.

My tentative thought here is that the Festival itself probably made it easier. A significant chunk of the Torish population may have been gathered in the capital city at that time, and a crowd of them gathered right up at the machine when it was being activated (Yumi finds the machine in what was once a "grand exhibit hall"). Maybe the large number of nearby souls was able to give the machine the power boost it needed to reach out and gather the more distant ones?

This is a really good point! Hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense.

In regards to the range question, the way I thought of it is kind of like Radiant's ingesting Stormlight. They don't have to be touching an infused gemstone to breathe in the Stormlight, they just need to be nearby. We can see this relative distance to be re-Invested is at least a few metres, as Kaladin and Szeth were able to fight in front of the stormwall, with their Investiture being renewed as they went. Similar thing with Honor's Perpendicularity. Not country-spanning, but more than the reach of touch. 

For the Machine, I feel that part of its Command was the ability to sense the nature and number of the Hijo present. It would have had to do this through metres and metres of stone. So perhaps that long-range Investiture 'sense' was hardcoded into it? And maybe it was only able to reach out to the more distant towns only because it was so empty upon activation. It couldn't do it in the present day because it was already crammed with Investiture.