Spiking Cell Cultures

[Trusk'our he/him]

It is possible in real life to take some stem cells from a human and turn them into cell culture outside the body. So, what if you did this in the Cosmere?

Could you grow a living cluster of cells that would develop their own Spiritweb which could then be harvested Hemalurgically? That could potentially create a way to ethically use Hemalurgy- no people and not even any animals would be hurt in the process.

Or, what if you did the reverse and spike something into them, creating a new entity altogether? It would be particularly interesting to see if you could take some Spiritweb from the cell donor and add it to the cell culture. Perhaps it would react differently than if it was someone else's due to the similar Identities.

[therunner he/him]

5 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

It is possible in real life to take some stem cells from a human and turn them into cell culture outside the body. So, what if you did this in the Cosmere?

Could you grow a living cluster of cells that would develop their own Spiritweb which could then be harvested Hemalurgically? That could potentially create a way to ethically use Hemalurgy- no people and not even any animals would be hurt in the process.

While I think it would be possible, there would be very little of any attribute to steal something from cell culture.

There would be basically nothing from Cognitive quadrant, next to nothing from Spiritual (I doubt that cell culture Identity/Connection/Investiture/destiny would be in any way useful or relevant). Physical quadrant would also give you nothing, not much physical strength in cell culture and no senses to speak of.

And of course spikes that steal Invested powers would do nothing at all.

So possible yes, useful no.

Quote

Or, what if you did the reverse and spike something into them, creating a new entity altogether? It would be particularly interesting to see if you could take some Spiritweb from the cell donor and add it to the cell culture. Perhaps it would react differently than if it was someone else's due to the similar Identities.

Now that would be more interesting.

You could probably use it to create more careful Hemalurgic constructs, since you would be starting with basically blank slate onto which you are spiking. But you would be limited by amount of spikes, and also by the size of spikes you can fit in.


And general issue of course is that you would probably have no idea where any bind points of the cell culture are, so unless you can figure that out, it will be just trial and error, which as seen from TLR, without Shardic knowledge its basically impossible to create new Hemalurgic constructs.

[Trusk'our he/him]

5 hours ago, therunner said:

While I think it would be possible, there would be very little of any attribute to steal something from cell culture.

There would be basically nothing from Cognitive quadrant, next to nothing from Spiritual (I doubt that cell culture Identity/Connection/Investiture/destiny would be in any way useful or relevant). Physical quadrant would also give you nothing, not much physical strength in cell culture and no senses to speak of.

So possible yes, useful no.

Fair points. What if you found a way to grow more complete parts of the body, such as growing a group of muscles to take strength from or growing an eye to take sense of vision (yes, I know that this level of technology is beyond what is possible currently IRL, but for the sake of discussion let's just say that the Scadriens figure it out)? Growing a part of a brain to take intelligence would probably edge closer to inhumane practices though, as they'd likely become more self-aware in the process.

5 hours ago, therunner said:

And of course spikes that steal Invested powers would do nothing at all.

True, there probably would be barely any Investiture to draw from the cell cultures as they are hardly sentient, which in the Cosmere typically translates to hardly any Investiture in a living being.

But if they figured out how to combine the Investiture of multiple cultures (striping Identity from them somehow) then maybe it would be a viable process to make spikes, though it would likely be time consuming and expensive, so production of spikes this way would be very limited. 

[therunner he/him]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

Fair points. What if you found a way to grow more complete parts of the body, such as growing a group of muscles to take strength from or growing an eye to take sense of vision (yes, I know that this level of technology is beyond what is possible currently IRL, but for the sake of discussion let's just say that the Scadriens figure it out)? Growing a part of a brain to take intelligence would probably edge closer to inhumane practices though, as they'd likely become more self-aware in the process.

That would be plausible I think, though could possibly result in weaker spikes (e.g. if you spike just muscle group you would get proportionally less strength than from spiking entire human).

How it would work for e.g. senses that rely both on the sensory apparatus and on brain to process is an interesting question.

Though there is also the issue of physical deformation, which would probably be far worse than if you are spiking entire living organism (provided that those deformations are truly unavoidable).

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 minutes ago, therunner said:

That would be plausible I think, though could possibly result in weaker spikes (e.g. if you spike just muscle group you would get proportionally less strength than from spiking entire human).

Oh, that certainly would be the case; less muscles, less attribute.

2 minutes ago, therunner said:

Though there is also the issue of physical deformation, which would probably be far worse than if you are spiking entire living organism (provided that those deformations are truly unavoidable).

True, it could definitely lead to some wack scenarios, though I've had some ideas recently regarding how likely it will be to remove the most severe of the deformations caused by Hemalurgy on other threads (though of course doesn't necessarily mean that it does work that way).