Toggling Spike's Influence

[Trusk'our he/him]

I have a few more ideas for the use of Hemalurgic Commands.

1. What if you were to put multiple powers of the same Hemalurgic spike that have conflicting Identities, but you use a specialized Command to have the powers inside swap when given a mental trigger. You'd have the ability to use only one of the powers contained in the spike at a time, but you could swap the powers at will (and if A-Bendalloy is any indication for balancing purposes, it may take a second or two for the swap to work).

This would be less powerful than if you were to strip the Identities of the powers in the spike, but perhaps it would be another way to bypass such a limitation.

2. What if you gave yourself or someone else an attribute bearing spike that transformed you into another creature, but you placed a Command on the spike to suppress all benefits of the spike at will or under certain circumstances? I could see this as a way for humans to undergo limited physical and psychological transformations.

Basically, werewolves in Mistborn (especially if you have a timed Command rather than an at-will Command. Sync it up with the full moon, and bam, you got that aspect of it too).

I doubt that you could remove the holes in the Spiritweb caused by the spike by suppressing the attributes or powers (not without reversing the warping that keeps you alive anyway), but I think it's reasonable to have transformations be on the table.

[alder24]

13 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

1. What if you were to put multiple powers of the same Hemalurgic spike that have conflicting Identities, but you use a specialized Command to have the powers inside swap when given a mental trigger. You'd have the ability to use only one of the powers contained in the spike at a time, but you could swap the powers at will (and if A-Bendalloy is any indication for balancing purposes, it may take a second or two for the swap to work).

This would be less powerful than if you were to strip the Identities of the powers in the spike, but perhaps it would be another way to bypass such a limitation.

Binding points won't match in most cases. 

14 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

2. What if you gave yourself or someone else an attribute bearing spike that transformed you into another creature, but you placed a Command on the spike to suppress all benefits of the spike at will or under certain circumstances? I could see this as a way for humans to undergo limited physical and psychological transformations.

Basically, werewolves in Mistborn (especially if you have a timed Command rather than an at-will Command. Sync it up with the full moon, and bam, you got that aspect of it too).

A Hemalurgic construct has usually very decreased mental capacity, so it might be hard to do that. But a werewolf with Mistborn powers would be cool.

Overall I think such idea, or a similar one is quite feasible, as it's not very different from Warbreaker spoilers:

Spoiler

Suppressing a Divine Breath. It's basically the same. But with a Divine Breath it's either suppressing it all the way, or not at all, no in between.

I think with spikes it will be similar, either you suppress the entire spike or not - no suppression of individual charges inside a spike. It still can give you quite an advantage, as you might just spike yourself 10 times (and still expose yourself to Harmony) but suppress like 6-7 spikes of your choice.

 

Tbf I think we take the threat of exposing yourself to Harmony too seriously. Unless you want to be like the Set or Paalm and act directly against Harmony's interests, you will be fine walking around with 4 or more spikes, as you are the necessary Ruin balancing Preservation, and this is not against Harmony's Intent, even if Sazed dislikes that. SoS ch 7:

Quote

“But Bleeder used to be one of Your own, and now she’s acting against You.”
She used to be of Preservation. She has moved to being of Ruin. Both are needed.

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

20 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Binding points won't match in most cases. 

True, most Bindpoints probably won't match. This hypothesis works under the assumption that there are at least some Bindpoints that work in a more universal manner (for a single Hemalurgic quadrant of powers that is), allowing for powers to be traded out, but that hasn't been confirmed to work yet.

22 minutes ago, alder24 said:

A Hemalurgic construct has usually very decreased mental capacity, so it might be hard to do that. But a werewolf with Mistborn powers would be cool.

Another fair point, but the best constructs are at least close to human intelligence, such as the Chimera or Koloss. They could probably change back if they wanted to and had been trained correctly, I would think.

If mental capacity to change back is still lacking in the form granted by the spike(s), you could have a more regulated change, such as programming into the spike "change on command (via Intent), automatically suppress change after X amount of time has passed" to give you time to get to safety or eliminate the threat at large, but without the danger of trapping you in the new form.

26 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Overall I think such idea, or a similar one is quite feasible, as it's not very different from Warbreaker spoilers:

  Hide contents

Suppressing a Divine Breath. It's basically the same. But with a Divine Breath it's either suppressing it all the way, or not at all, no in between.

I think with spikes it will be similar, either you suppress the entire spike or not - no suppression of individual charges inside a spike. It still can give you quite an advantage, as you might just spike yourself 10 times (and still expose yourself to Harmony) but suppress like 6-7 spikes of your choice.

Nice catch. I hadn't noticed that as I came up with this idea, but yeah, that makes sense.

As for the ten-spike idea, I think that could work if you didn't care too much about opening yourself up to outside influences.

28 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Tbf I think we take the threat of exposing yourself to Harmony too seriously. Unless you want to be like the Set or Paalm and act directly against Harmony's interests, you will be fine walking around with 4 or more spikes, as you are the necessary Ruin balancing Preservation, and this is not against Harmony's Intent, even if Sazed dislikes that. 

Yeah, you're probably right. I'm just not too fond of having a blatant weakness in my. . . work, I guess? I'd much rather fix the problems as they come than to jump forward more quickly only to have to back pedal when flaws in the system become exploited.

And even if not many beings can or would seek to control someone using their Flaw, I'd say it would be better safe than sorry.