On Kandra Blessings

[Rynon2112]

It's my first post outside of the introductory one so pls let me know anything that I might be doing wrong.

I'm finishing a reread of Mistborn era 1 and while listening to the Epigraphs something caught my attention and decided to read them carefully.

This will be spoilers for the first Mistborn trilogy:

Spoiler

In chapter 38 during the epigraph, we are told about the possibility of using Hemalurgy to extract the power of Preservation present in every person from Scadrial:

Quote

 However, a Hemalurgic spike can also be created by killing a normal person, one who is neither an Allomancer nor a Feruchemist. In that case, the spike instead steals the very power of Preservation existing within the soul of the people. (The power that, in fact, gives all people sentience.)

A Hemalurgic spike can extract this power, then transfer it to another, granting them residual abilities similar to those of Allomancy. After all, Preservation's body—a tiny trace of which is carried by every human being—is the very same essence that fuels Allomancy.

Then, the following line implies that those spikes would then be used to create the Blessings:

 

Quote

And so, a kandra granted the Blessing of Potency is actually acquiring a bit of innate strength similar to that of burning pewter. The Blessing of Presence grants mental capacity in a similar way, while the Blessing of Awareness is the ability to sense with greater acuity and the rarely used Blessing of Stability grants emotional fortitude.

What do you guys think about it? Could Kandra spikes be made from regular people?

 

A second thing also concerning blessings: As of 2016 by what this WoB says, we hadn't seen Kandra spikes being created, but during chapter 47 of The Lost Metal, we see scientists extracting investiture from non-allomancers using a Hemalurgic spike in the form of a needle. They later say that said spike can indeed grant some power to someone but that power runs out quickly.

 

Here comes my theory: what if, instead of using just one spike, they used two? A Blessing of Potency grants an effect similar to burning an amount of pewter, basically increasing the innate fortitude of the person. What if the investiture is just jumping from one spike to the other constantly? Just one spike might cause the investiture to dissipate but if it were to circulate through the person to a second spike it might stay that way.

 

I think that the 2 spikes would probably need to be from the same person for this to make sense, that way there would be a reason for said flow to occur between the 2 spikes.

 

extra spoilers from Secret Project #4 and Stormlight Archive that seem to support my idea:

Spoiler

We know that an investiture differential causes said Investiture to flow from one thing to another. This happens with polestones when they use bigger gems to pull investiture from smaller ones and we also see it happening between Canticle and the sun in the system.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

I wrote everything inside a spoiler because I'm not sure of the etiquette yet, once again let me know if anything isn't done properly hahaha 

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by Rynon2112

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

2 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

It's my first post outside of the introductory one so pls let me know anything that I might be doing wrong.

I'm finishing a reread of Mistborn era 1 and while listening to the Epigraphs something caught my attention and decided to read them carefully.

This will be spoilers for the first Mistborn trilogy:

  Reveal hidden contents

In chapter 38 during the epigraph, we are told about the possibility of using Hemalurgy to extract the power of Preservation present in every person from Scadrial:

Then, the following line implies that those spikes would then be used to create the Blessings:

 

What do you guys think about it? Could Kandra spikes be made from regular people?

 

A second thing also concerning blessings: As of 2016 by what this WoB says, we hadn't seen Kandra spikes being created, but during chapter 47 of The Lost Metal, we see scientists extracting investiture from non-allomancers using a Hemalurgic spike in the form of a needle. They later say that said spike can indeed grant some power to someone but that power runs out quickly.

 

Here comes my theory: what if, instead of using just one spike, they used two? A Blessing of Potency grants an effect similar to burning an amount of pewter, basically increasing the innate fortitude of the person. What if the investiture is just jumping from one spike to the other constantly? Just one spike might cause the investiture to dissipate but if it were to circulate through the person to a second spike it might stay that way.

 

I think that the 2 spikes would probably need to be from the same person for this to make sense, that way there would be a reason for said flow to occur between the 2 spikes.

 

extra spoilers from Secret Project #4 and Stormlight Archive that seem to support my idea:

  Hide contents

We know that an investiture differential causes said Investiture to flow from one thing to another. This happens with polestones when they use bigger gems to pull investiture from smaller ones and we also see it happening between Canticle and the sun in the system.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

I wrote everything inside a spoiler because I'm not sure of the etiquette yet, once again let me know if anything isn't done properly hahaha 

 

I have never thought about power moving from one to the other and back again before.  That is an interesting thought that I will have to keep thinking about.  

For sure the spikes for Kandra are likely from normal people.  I don't think Rashek would waste any powered individuals on Kandra Blessings.  

I have wondered if what makes Kandra blessings special is that the donors were willing participants.  

We know intent is important in the cosmere.  I think that someone being spiked willingly and offering that part of themselves might have a different effect on the spike.  

 

[alder24]

15 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

This will be spoilers for the first Mistborn trilogy:

No need for spoilers except for SP refrences.

15 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

What do you guys think about it? Could Kandra spikes be made from regular people?

Yes, both Kandra and Koloss spikes are made from regular people, by stealing their attributes. They are really similar, with slight differences, but it wouldn't be hard to turn a Koloss spike into Kandra Blsessings. 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

The Mechanism of Hemalurgy

The Blessings and the workings of Hemalurgy gave me some trouble as I designed the second and third books of this series. On one hand, I liked the way Hemalurgy worked by stealing powers from Allomancers or Feruchemists and giving them to other people. However, if I was going to limit myself to sixteen metals and be able to steal both Allomancy and Feruchemy, that meant I needed a mechanism to determine which power got stolen. If, for instance, you drove a pewter spike into a person who was both an Allomancer and a Feruchemist, then how would that spike know which power to suck out and grant to the one who would gain it?

As I was toying with how this would work, I realized that I needed to work the kandra and the koloss into this as well. Only, it was ridiculous to assume that the Lord Ruler would kill Allomancers to make koloss. There weren't enough Allomancers, for one thing—plus it would be foolish to lose the power of an Allomancer to gain an inferior tool in a koloss.

So that meant koloss had to be made out of regular people, not Allomancers or Feruchemists. Suddenly I had another set of abilities that Hemalurgy had to be able to steal—the basic pieces of Preservation inside the souls of all men.

Hence the decision that where the spike was placed in the receiver, and how it was used to kill a person, influenced how the power was shaped. Now a pewter spike could steal any of a number of powers, based on how it was used. And regular people could be used instead of Allomancers—however, when that happened, the receiver was twisted much more than if an Allomantically charged spike or a Feruchemically charged spike was used.

My rationale for this is that if the spike is pulling out the pure power of Preservation—part of the power of all creation—and twisting it, it would change the body of the recipient greatly. Twisting them through use of the twisted power.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Nov. 17, 2009)

 

Spoiler

yulerule

Are Inquisitor spikes, kandra Blessings and koloss spikes interchangeable?  Like if you it spiked in a different way--

Brandon Sanderson

*Hesitant* You could make that work and it wouldn't be that hard. But just as they are, no.

yulerule

Would nothing happen or would weird stuff happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Weird stuff would happen

*pause*

But that one's not very hard to make work.

JordanCon 2018 (April 22, 2018)

 

15 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

A second thing also concerning blessings: As of 2016 by what this WoB says, we hadn't seen Kandra spikes being created, but during chapter 47 of The Lost Metal, we see scientists extracting investiture from non-allomancers using a Hemalurgic spike in the form of a needle. They later say that said spike can indeed grant some power to someone but that power runs out quickly.

Yes, but there are some differences. The Set scientists are taking raw innate investiture from people, and they try to program them to give Metallic Arts. This most likely means that the spikes Set was using were made out of Nicrosil. Kandra Blessings are made out of Iron, Tin, Zinc and Copper (with ReLuur's spikes from BoM being made out of Pewter). Moreover, Set are investing spikes fully, killing 20-30 people to achieve that, Kandra Blessings seems to be made out of one or two people - because the strength of the Blessing of Potency is comparable to an Allomancer burning pewter, which doubles his strength (WoB), thus those two spikes must contain the combined strength of a single person.

And because Koloss and Kandra spikes can be exchangeable after some changes, Kandra Blessings can't be done like Set did (not to mention the identity contamination problem that Set was facing).

Also it wasn't said that the power from spikes run out quickly, only that the spike made a Metalborn only for a short time. We don't know if the spike lost investiture or not, this is unlikely, it's probably identity contamination problem - the identities of 20-30 different people were colliding with each other stopping the spike from working.

16 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

Here comes my theory: what if, instead of using just one spike, they used two?

No changes. that would require 40-60 people worth of investiture to do that like Set did it, and it would mess identity even more. Set's spikes are nowhere near to Koloss or Kandra spikes, they are closer to Inquisitor spikes. While they contain raw investiture and you can program it to give strength instead of Allomancy, it's still ~20 people worth of strength, the level that Kandra do not possess. 

16 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

What if the investiture is just jumping from one spike to the other constantly?

That's not really how spikes work. Pieces of soul are trapped in the spike, they can't jump from it to another. 

16 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

I think that the 2 spikes would probably need to be from the same person for this to make sense

Yes - not about any flow - I think it's likely that the Kandra spike is made with a proper, specific intent, stealing a bit more than normal spikes, then it is divided in half, slicing the power in half as well. The extra stolen part provides sentience. It's also possible, because of how the effects of Blessings are comparable to Allomancy, that they're made by spiking attributes like strength from Allomancers burning metals in the moment of spiking, thus stealing increased strength etc. But this is all speculation, we don't know that, many options are possible.

16 hours ago, Rynon2112 said:

extra spoilers from Secret Project #4 and Stormlight Archive that seem to support my idea:

  Hide contents

We know that an investiture differential causes said Investiture to flow from one thing to another. This happens with polestones when they use bigger gems to pull investiture from smaller ones

SA spoilers:

Spoiler

Yes, there is a flow from less invested objects to more invested objects, which follows laws of thermodynamics. But that was made with static investiture. Spikes deal with innate investiture, pieces of the soul. Those are extra sticky, they get hot wired into your spirit web and are stuck there, in spikes. A flow like this won't happen and it won't give you extra powers (as it would be oscillating between having powers and not having them, which doesn't happen with Kandra). 

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

36 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Kandra Blessings seems to be made out of one or two people - because the strength of the Blessing of Potency is comparable to an Allomancer burning pewter, which doubles his strength (WoB), thus those two spikes must contain the combined strength of a single person.

Minor nitpick I'm going to make here, but doesn't TenSoon say that it more than doubles his strength when he picks up OreSeur's Blessing after leaving the Homeland? It's probably just because of Hemalurgic Decay and Investiture compression that it isn't tripled, meaning that each spike contains nearly 1 person's worth of Investiture, but not quite.

[alder24]

14 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Minor nitpick I'm going to make here, but doesn't TenSoon say that it more than doubles his strength when he picks up OreSeur's Blessing after leaving the Homeland?

I don't remember, that's why it's "one or two" and the Coppermind only mentions "comparable to Allomancer burning pewter". I should have included the other option at the end of this quote just like I did at the beginning. 

Edit @Trusk'our HoA ch 39:

Quote

The Blessing of Potency. He'd stolen the two spikes from OreSeur's body. Without this Blessing, TenSoon would never have been able to follow Vin as he had during their year together. It more than doubled the power and endurance of each muscle. He couldn't regulate or change the level of that added strength—this was not Feruchemy or Allomancy, but something different. Hemalurgy.
A person had died to create each spike.

However, Kandra don't know how Blessings are made, they can be wrong when they say "A person had died to create each spike." But more than double seems to suggest two people died (unless they were made from an Allomancer burning pewter, then his strength would count as that of two persons).

Edit 2: However this could also be because TenSoon had two Blessings at this moment, and his other one, while not being of Potency, added some small amount of strength as well.

Edited November 23, 2023 by alder24

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

I don't remember, that's why it's "one or two" and the Coppermind only mentions "comparable to Allomancer burning pewter". I should have included the other option at the end of this quote just like I did at the beginning. 

Sounds good, I just wanted to be 100% clear, especially since we're presenting this info for a new Shard member.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

However, Kandra don't know how Blessings are made, they can be wrong when they say "A person had died to create each spike." But more than double seems to suggest two people died (unless they were made from an Allomancer burning pewter, then his strength would count as that of two persons).

The Pewterarm being sacrificed to make a spike is an interesting one. I think that it is possible to Hemalurgically spike Kinetic Investiture, so that could be a valid possibility.

Warbreaker spoilers:

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/80/#e5282

Questioner

With spikes, would you be able to actually transfer Breaths, when they get to the other planets?

Brandon Sanderson

So spikes rip off pieces of the soul and so Breaths are not going to be part of the soul. You could maybe get a divine Breath but I haven't really decided on regular Breaths, they're kind of stuck there in the Physical Realm which is not a thing that spikes are dealing with. Divine Breath, potentially, because that's something that's actually melding onto your soul. But, you know, when you're using the Breaths they reach through to the Spiritual Realm so, maybe if you got it while the Breaths were kinetic, right, while you're using them, then you might be able to rip them off. I'm not a hundred percent certain on that one.

Bystander

There's still things to decide upon.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah there's still things, like I have to kind of see. My instinct says no right now. But, you know, how they interact is not something that I have-- Yeah.

My personal headcannon right now is that TLR just used a Command given to him by Ruin during his brief Ascension to spike two non-Metalborn people to create the Kandra Blessings, but that's just an assumption for the moment. We just don't have a lot of information on the subject right now.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Edit 2: However this could also be because TenSoon had two Blessings at this moment, and his other one, while not being of Potency, added some small amount of strength as well.

The only way I could see that working is if more of Ruin's Investiture/Connection makes all the Ruin based powers more efficient, similar to how Allomancers of greater power can use their metals more efficiently, or how a Feruchemist of greater innate power can use their attributes more efficiently.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120/#e1901

Oversleep (paraphrased)

Allomantic strength. There are stronger Allomancers, they can burn metals faster, right?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, they can also squeeze more power out of it. They can use it more efficiently.

Oversleep (paraphrased)

So there is some loss of power along the way? How do savants work into that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Savants can use it way more efficiently. They are more Connected to the Shard. Closer to Spiritual Realm.

Spoiler

Calamity Chicago signing - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

Kurkistan

How exactly does Hemalurgic decay work for Feruchemy? Is it like a leaky tube or something, or…?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah… yeah.

Kurkistan

So they try to store 10 units of health and only 9 gets through, or…?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgic decay meaning someone who has been spiked is less powerful? That Hemalurgic decay, or the Hemalurgic decay when a Hemalurgic spike is left outside of blood?

Kurkistan

Less powerful. So like the Inquisitors are less powerful Feruchemists so they had to spend longer storing: so why did they have to spend longer storing?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah they lose a little bit, it’s a leaky… You’re there, exactly. It just doesn’t quite… it’s not as efficient: it’s an efficiency thing.

That could be pretty neat if it's true.

[alder24]

17 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

The only way I could see that working is if more of Ruin's Investiture/Connection makes all the Ruin based powers more efficient, similar to how Allomancers of greater power can use their metals more efficiently, or how a Feruchemist of greater innate power can use their attributes more efficiently.

How about spikes just rip a big piece of the spirit web, and while it's mostly what you wanted to steal, there are some leftovers ripped from other parts of your spirit web - you might steal a bit of strength with something unrelated as well? 

[Trusk'our he/him]

46 minutes ago, alder24 said:

How about spikes just rip a big piece of the spirit web, and while it's mostly what you wanted to steal, there are some leftovers ripped from other parts of your spirit web - you might steal a bit of strength with something unrelated as well? 

Interesting. Perhaps that could work as well, though there would need to be a way for those extra bits to be attached to the Hemalurgist's Spiritweb. It might just work without any extra steps because the main portion of spike's Spiritweb is already hotwired to the Hemalurgist's, making it act like a bridge.

[Rynon2112]

On 11/23/2023 at 5:45 PM, Trusk'our said:

Minor nitpick I'm going to make here, but doesn't TenSoon say that it more than doubles his strength when he picks up OreSeur's Blessing after leaving the Homeland? It's probably just because of Hemalurgic Decay and Investiture compression that it isn't tripled, meaning that each spike contains nearly 1 person's worth of Investiture, but not quite.

As @Trusk'our pointed with their quote, It is known that there are Allomancers that are stronger, more efficient than others, but I don't think we need to go all the way into Allomancy to talk about it.

I'm sure you know someone who is just naturally stronger than you IRL. I think the blessings take that innate fortitude and just add that extra pewter burning as a spice. My understanding is that if you added your strength and your stronger friend's strength together that wouldn't work as 1 + 1 = 2 but as 1+1.5 = 2.5 even taking into account the Hemalurgic decay.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Rynon2112