Wire Spikes

[Trusk'our]

Even though Hemalurgy technically doesn't care about shape, the metal focus of the system is pretty much always turned into spikes for ease of use. But I had an idea. What if you instead made it into a wire?

Think of it like this; you have the main portion of the "spike" which holds the majority of the Investiture in it. There is a wire of the same metal as the main body melded into it, which can be used to pierce a desired bearer of the spike. This way you can have a large storage for Investiture while only having a small point that needs to be inserted into the spike bearer.

This would be impractical for any situation that required mobility, but there are still ways that you could use it. This would allow for someone to have a very large amount of Investiture stapled onto themselves via Hemalurgy while not having to worry about dying once the spike is removed (it would only superficially pierce the skin of the bearer, meaning that the injury would be nothing worse than getting a shot) or the spike's charge decaying (the main body is stored inside a large cut of meat preserved in alcohol solution).

One way in particular that would be interesting to me is to use this for medicinal purposes. You could store a lot of Investiture inside the "battery" portion and then use the wire to let it touch the recipient's Spiritweb. The massive amount of Investiture could help the person overcome even the most virulent of diseases or could make it easier for someone to store health via F-gold.

You also might be able to pierce multiple people at once with the same "spike" since you could have multiple wires coming off the same main portion. Don't exactly know what it could allow, aside from maybe letting them use the same Feruchemical power to store their attributes (it depends on whether they weaken the quality of their stored attributes when they do this or whether the strength of the Feruchemy only matters when tapping. If it merely comes down to the speed that they can store, five bearers storing 20% would be faster and easier on them than one storing 40%)?

In any case, what do you guys think? What possibilities could be achieved with this new kind of "spike"?

[JustQuestin2004]

I honestly have no clue, this whole concept is so simple yet so dumbfounding.

I'm not sure what would happen if you Spiked two people at once with a charged Spike. I think there might be a WOB about this, but I don't know where.

This sounds possible but I just don't know.

I do like the idea of wire-spikes though, it could be a thing in Brandon's hypothetical Cyberpunk Era 3.5 books that he mentions sometimes. It could easily allow a person to hotswap multiple different Spikes on the fly.

[drunkenbotanist]

Human Shardipede incoming 

[+Invocation]

Hemapuncture.

[Trusk'our]

49 minutes ago, drunkenbotanist said:

Human Shardipede incoming 

 

39 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Hemapuncture.

I had no idea the number of puns this would create. . . oh goodness, what have I done (Lol, )

6 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I honestly have no clue, this whole concept is so simple yet so dumbfounding.

Thanks! I strive for innovation 

6 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I do like the idea of wire-spikes though, it could be a thing in Brandon's hypothetical Cyberpunk Era 3.5 books that he mentions sometimes. It could easily allow a person to hotswap multiple different Spikes on the fly.

Yeah, being able to swap out spikes on a human without needing something like F-gold would be very handy. If you're willing to downsize, you could use a much smaller. . . wire?- I'm so used to just saying spike- The main body portion of the Hemalurgic metal could be made smaller so as to be easily portable.

Perhaps the whole design really could just be a wire coiled inside a small aluminum chamber that is then strapped to a housebreaker-harness to hold it in place (since it isn't embedded deeply into the Hemalurgist). The "spikes" could be moved to where they were needed on the bearer and easily swapped out- you may not even need to draw blood if you've done so in the area before (just like Wax's earring).

Actually, maybe you could scrap the whole wire concept for the miniature spikes. Just put a small half-circle of metal with a small spike jetting out in an aluminum chassis and have a spring-loaded device to have the spike implant into the bearer when triggered. This would prevent the spike from decaying as they are essentially coated with aluminum when not inside a person and it would make swapping spikes quick and easy. Plus, as an added bonus the aluminum coating would prevent Coinshots or Lurchers from effecting the spikes even when outside a body.

Basically, you'd have half-sphere "disks" that you'd slap into place and active by twisting or something, which would unleash the springs and let the spiked portion pierce the Hemalurgist, allowing them to use the powers contained in the "spike".

Huh. Well, personally, I think that could be a cool concept for advanced Hemalurgic spikes. Thanks for the inspiration @JustQuestin2004, I appreciate it 

[JustQuestin2004]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Huh. Well, personally, I think that could be a cool concept for advanced Hemalurgic spikes. Thanks for the inspiration @JustQuestin2004, I appreciate it 

All the Investiture on Scadrial is becoming more and more mechanized, we've seen it with Allomancy and Feruchemy. It only makes sense if Hemalurgy follows along as well.

[+Invocation]

Okay so puns aside, I've been thinking about this:

15 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

You also might be able to pierce multiple people at once with the same "spike" since you could have multiple wires coming off the same main portion. Don't exactly know what it could allow, aside from maybe letting them use the same Feruchemical power to store their attributes (it depends on whether they weaken the quality of their stored attributes when they do this or whether the strength of the Feruchemy only matters when tapping. If it merely comes down to the speed that they can store, five bearers storing 20% would be faster and easier on them than one storing 40%)?

and I'm almost wondering if it's a way to fix the issues with the thing that was confirmed possible in TLM. (Spoilering this because I'm not sure how long it'll get)

Spoiler

So the issue with the minispikes, the ones that would let people live after they'd been spiked, was that there wasn't enough Investiture in it to make someone an Allomancer permanently. But if you could line up enough people with sufficient closeness of the same Metalborn potential until they equal normal Allomancer or Feruchemist levels of Investiture, you might be able to take a massive length of wire (thick enough to not shatter and having chosen the bindpoint very carefully to not run any risks) through every single one of the people either in sequence or even at the same time and into a bindpoint on someone at the end of the chain to grant them full Allomantic or Feruchemical capacity based solely on the outcroppings of Metalborn potential in an otherwise-ordinary person.
Forget about killing people or getting nothing sufficient out of it, using wires or needles or other thin or long pieces of metal and that discovery about nonlethal spikes and hopefully willing people, you'd probably be able to get a better charge easier than flat-out killing people. I don't know if it would let you get around the thing Khriss mentions about Era 2 Scadrians not being able to handle the same amount of spikes as an Era 1 person (something about Ruin pulling so many shenanigans causing a higher degree of instability in everyone's spiritwebs or something, but I think there's more to it than that), but it could maybe circumvent the fact that modern Hermalurgists apparently can't Compound. Maybe if you're giving both powers at once or if both are given freely (or both of those are true for both powers), Compounding becomes possible due to lingering Intent. Or maybe it's something else and this won't help that at all.

(It didn't get that long, I just don't feel like taking it out of the spoiler tag)

Edited September 10 by Invocation

[alder24]

19 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Even though Hemalurgy technically doesn't care about shape, the metal focus of the system is pretty much always turned into spikes for ease of use. But I had an idea. What if you instead made it into a wire?

Think of it like this; you have the main portion of the "spike" which holds the majority of the Investiture in it. There is a wire of the same metal as the main body melded into it, which can be used to pierce a desired bearer of the spike. This way you can have a large storage for Investiture while only having a small point that needs to be inserted into the spike bearer.

This would be impractical for any situation that required mobility, but there are still ways that you could use it. This would allow for someone to have a very large amount of Investiture stapled onto themselves via Hemalurgy while not having to worry about dying once the spike is removed (it would only superficially pierce the skin of the bearer, meaning that the injury would be nothing worse than getting a shot) or the spike's charge decaying (the main body is stored inside a large cut of meat preserved in alcohol solution).

One way in particular that would be interesting to me is to use this for medicinal purposes. You could store a lot of Investiture inside the "battery" portion and then use the wire to let it touch the recipient's Spiritweb. The massive amount of Investiture could help the person overcome even the most virulent of diseases or could make it easier for someone to store health via F-gold.

You also might be able to pierce multiple people at once with the same "spike" since you could have multiple wires coming off the same main portion. Don't exactly know what it could allow, aside from maybe letting them use the same Feruchemical power to store their attributes (it depends on whether they weaken the quality of their stored attributes when they do this or whether the strength of the Feruchemy only matters when tapping. If it merely comes down to the speed that they can store, five bearers storing 20% would be faster and easier on them than one storing 40%)?

In any case, what do you guys think? What possibilities could be achieved with this new kind of "spike"?

I'm very skeptical of this idea.

First of all, a wire is very bendy, it would be really hard to push it through tissue and bones precisely into a binding point without it bending or being deflected, not to mention such wire would be very susceptible to breaking. You would have to drill a hole through a person first, but I don't know how this would affect Hemalurgy, as you're not spiking a body anymore, but a hole (however Marsh recover a spike that was pushed out of his eye by Vin, Vin has an earing, so I guess it can be done - but a drill would hurt like hell).

Secondly I doubt you could keep the majority of investiture outside of your body. Hemalurgy is pushing a piece of soul into your soul - if it's outside of your soul I doubt it will connect. You need to have all of it going through your body, not hanging outside of it.

Wiring multiple people into the same spike is out of the question - again, that's a piece of soul that's being stamped into your soul - you can't connect it to multiple souls at the same time. You need to divide the charge into two separate spikes to spike two people.

Next, a wire through your brain, heart or spine will still kill you after removal. It would be easier to survive spiking through different areas, that is true, but we're back to the bendy wire problem. And you're ignoring the damage done to your soul. Hemalurgy isn't damaging just the body, but the mind and the soul as well. The more investiture you have in spike, the bigger the hole in your soul to fit all of that (that's my opinion). The damage done to a soul and mind is permanent - you don't want to be healed by Hemalurgic spikes in hospital, that's a terrible idea.

To make such a wire spike you would need to melt the whole spike and then reforge it into wires. I doubt you could just weld a piece of wire to the spike - the charge likely is bound to Axi of the spike, not the wire.

It's far better and more reliable to just use small and thin spikes - they can still hold a full charge of an invested power and be far less damaging to you than traditional spikes. Rust, Vin and Wax have an earring spike, with Vin getting double A-bronze from that small piece of metal. Just find non lethal binding points, like in your ears, nose or lips, and put a small piercing in it. It's so simple, you can take out those spikes whenever you want it, without any trouble.

 

3 hours ago, Invocation said:

So the issue with the minispikes, the ones that would let people live after they'd been spiked, was that there wasn't enough Investiture in it to make someone an Allomancer permanently.

It wasn't because of the spike's size, it was because Set was spiking raw investiture out of non-Allomancers. A single spiking invested a spike by around 5%, they did tests and determined they needed to spike 20-30 people with the same spike to fill it up completely However powers granted by these spikes didn't last for long and likely that's because of identity contamination - that spike was keyed to 20-30 different identities - but also lack of proper reprogramming of investiture in that spike.. Vin's earring could hold the whole power of A-bronze in it, a small piece of metal can hold a lot of Hemalurgic charge.

4 hours ago, Invocation said:

I don't know if it would let you get around the thing Khriss mentions about Era 2 Scadrians not being able to handle the same amount of spikes as an Era 1 person (something about Ruin pulling so many shenanigans causing a higher degree of instability in everyone's spiritwebs or something, but I think there's more to it than that), but it could maybe circumvent the fact that modern Hermalurgists apparently can't Compound. Maybe if you're giving both powers at once or if both are given freely (or both of those are true for both powers), Compounding becomes possible due to lingering Intent.

The limit on the number of spikes accepted by a soul is because of Ruin's subservient nature towards Preservation. The inability to Compound with modern spikes is due to Identity contamination, and this idea doesn't resolve it at all. Moreover, when spiking people for powers/investiture, trauma is helpful so willing people might give weaker powers, TLM ch 47: "Trauma on the part of the subject is helpful as well."

Tbf I don't fully understand you idea with spiking multiple people at once with a single wire - it doesn't address any problem that Set was facing.

[Trusk'our]

6 hours ago, Invocation said:

and I'm almost wondering if it's a way to fix the issues with the thing that was confirmed possible in TLM. (Spoilering this because I'm not sure how long it'll get)

  Hide contents

So the issue with the minispikes, the ones that would let people live after they'd been spiked, was that there wasn't enough Investiture in it to make someone an Allomancer permanently. But if you could line up enough people with sufficient closeness of the same Metalborn potential until they equal normal Allomancer or Feruchemist levels of Investiture, you might be able to take a massive length of wire (thick enough to not shatter and having chosen the bindpoint very carefully to not run any risks) through every single one of the people either in sequence or even at the same time and into a bindpoint on someone at the end of the chain to grant them full Allomantic or Feruchemical capacity based solely on the outcroppings of Metalborn potential in an otherwise-ordinary person.
Forget about killing people or getting nothing sufficient out of it, using wires or needles or other thin or long pieces of metal and that discovery about nonlethal spikes and hopefully willing people, you'd probably be able to get a better charge easier than flat-out killing people. I don't know if it would let you get around the thing Khriss mentions about Era 2 Scadrians not being able to handle the same amount of spikes as an Era 1 person (something about Ruin pulling so many shenanigans causing a higher degree of instability in everyone's spiritwebs or something, but I think there's more to it than that), but it could maybe circumvent the fact that modern Hermalurgists apparently can't Compound. Maybe if you're giving both powers at once or if both are given freely (or both of those are true for both powers), Compounding becomes possible due to lingering Intent. Or maybe it's something else and this won't help that at all.

(It didn't get that long, I just don't feel like taking it out of the spoiler tag)

An interesting take.

So basically, you're saying that if you use a really long wire to spike multiple people simultaneously who have the same potential for a Metalborn power you could grant that power to one of those people?

I think that could potentially work, assuming that Allomantic powers are preprogrammed and don't gain a set of instructions after Snapping. However, I don't know that you'd strictly need the wire to accomplish this task. A simple spike would probably do it. It is also worth noting that Identity contamination could still be an issue that you'd have to deal with, which may (and I say may because some powers have worked on and off from these types of spikes) prevent the combining of Investitures to make a fully functional power. Additionally, Compounding most likely wouldn't be possible due to Identity contamination.

However, it would be interesting to what else happens if you spike two or more people together with a spike-wire; since their souls are both touched by the same Hemalurgic charge could they interact telepathically (or at least empathically) while they are bound together?

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

Moreover, when spiking people for powers/investiture, trauma is helpful so willing people might give weaker powers, TLM ch 47: "Trauma on the part of the subject is helpful as well."

Interesting. So you hypothesize that without taking the Investiture forcibly from the donor that the resulting powers would be weakened? That could be interesting. It would mean that villainous characters would continue to have a hand up on their heroic counterparts. Don't know if that is how it will turn out, but if it does I could see some cool worldbuilding coming about as a result.

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

First of all, a wire is very bendy, it would be really hard to push it through tissue and bones precisely into a binding point without it bending or being deflected, not to mention such wire would be very susceptible to breaking. You would have to drill a hole through a person first, but I don't know how this would affect Hemalurgy, as you're not spiking a body anymore, but a hole (however Marsh recover a spike that was pushed out of his eye by Vin, Vin has an earing, so I guess it can be done - but a drill would hurt like hell).

Perhaps you could make one of the ends of the wire have a spiked head to make it easier to thread through your patients? Also, it makes me wonder whether or not you could take a bunch of links- a chain- and use that instead of a wire to provide greater durability and flexibility to the device, particularly considering the fact that some of the Hemalurgic metals aren't very flexible.

This would surely depend on whether or not it's the Cognitive portion of the "spike" that matters for an object or not; this would only work if the Investiture saw the spike and chain as a whole object, not just the tip as an object to Invest. But maybe this design would work better.