Roundabout Investiture Resistance for non-Invested weapons

[Trusk'our]

We know that it's possible to pierce yourself with metal or swallow it in order for it to receive a level of protection from others' Allomantic Pushes and Pulls. But what if you try to use that mechanic a step further?

What if you take a weapon and weld a flexible wire to it, then pierce yourself with that wire? Could you grant your weapon resistance to Pushing and Pulling while not needing to make it of aluminum or Investing it directly?

And what if you were to Invest yourself more fully (Hemalurgic spikes, Breaths, etc.) and were to then clash with a Shardblade? Would your own soul's Investiture prevent the Shardblade from immediately shearing cleanly through your weapon due to the interference? And would it damage your own soul even though it's not directly hit by the Shardblade?

Edit: oh, and could this potentially be a way to possess a much larger Hemalurgic spike? After all, if you can take a Koloss blade and Invest it with a power, then use the wire to pierce the correct Bindpoint, you now have a much, much larger storage space for your Hemalurgic Investiture.

Edited January 17 by Trusk'our

[Walter The Moral]

7 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Edit: oh, and could this potentially be a way to possess a much larger Hemalurgic spike? After all, if you can take a Koloss blade and Invest it with a power, then use the wire to pierce the correct Bindpoint, you now have a much, much larger storage space for your Hemalurgic Investiture.

I really like the first idea, but I don't have much to comment on. Talking about this though, I don't think that the Storage Space for Hemalurgy is much of a problem. You'd still only be able to put one charge in it, though you would be able to put a more powerful "power" into it.

Talking about that, do you think any of TLR's powers could fit inside a normal Hemalurgic spike? He was incredibly powerful, because of his Lerasium, and the fact that he was a Sliver, so could all of that power fit inside a normal sized Hemalurgic Spike?

[Xiahida]

8 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

And what if you were to Invest yourself more fully (Hemalurgic spikes, Breaths, etc.) and were to then clash with a Shardblade? Would your own soul's Investiture prevent the Shardblade from immediately shearing cleanly through your weapon due to the interference? And would it damage your own soul even though it's not directly hit by the Shardblade?

Wob:

Spoiler

Questioner

If something is heavily Invested, it's harder for a Shardblade to go through it, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Kind of. It depends on the kind of Investiture and things that are going on. But yes. If you want to block a Shardblade... Like a metalmind would be a good thing to use to fight a Shardblade.

Questioner

A person with a lot of Breath, like the God-King, would you be able to chop them with a Shardblade or no?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to get very tricky on that, so I'll RAFO that for now. Let's just say that there are things. For instance, a Shardblade excising someone who's been Hemalurgically spiked is a theoretical possibility. 

Investiture resists Investiture. The God King might be resistant but we aren't sure.

And if you attach a wire to yourself and to a Koloss sword you're going to be in a world of hurt when you drop it and it tears out of your body. It might still be resistant to Pushes or Pulls like the Lord Ruler's Bracers or Vin's earing but the idea isn't practical for an entire sword.

[Trusk'our]

12 minutes ago, Xiahida said:

Wob:

  Hide contents

Questioner

If something is heavily Invested, it's harder for a Shardblade to go through it, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Kind of. It depends on the kind of Investiture and things that are going on. But yes. If you want to block a Shardblade... Like a metalmind would be a good thing to use to fight a Shardblade.

Questioner

A person with a lot of Breath, like the God-King, would you be able to chop them with a Shardblade or no?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to get very tricky on that, so I'll RAFO that for now. Let's just say that there are things. For instance, a Shardblade excising someone who's been Hemalurgically spiked is a theoretical possibility. 

Investiture resists Investiture. The God King might be resistant but we aren't sure.

Indeed. Actually, Ishar's Honorblade did pretty well at resisting Nightblood's attack despite probably being less Invested than the literal Vessel of Odium, and we all know how that turned out for Rayse.

I think that a metal that is Invested will better resist Shardblades then, hence the reasoning for a highly Invested person attaching the sword via wire to themselves.

12 minutes ago, Xiahida said:

And if you attach a wire to yourself and to a Koloss sword you're going to be in a world of hurt when you drop it and it tears out of your body. It might still be resistant to Pushes or Pulls like the Lord Ruler's Bracers or Vin's earing but the idea isn't practical for an entire sword.

I mean, at first, yes, I suppose it would hurt, but neither Wax nor Wayne have issues with their Metalmind implants as of TLM, so I don't think it's that large of an issue.

And if you're really concerned about the pain aspect, I suppose you could equip F-tin and store your ability to feel pain.

Quote

Talking about that, do you think any of TLR's powers could fit inside a normal Hemalurgic spike? He was incredibly powerful, because of his Lerasium, and the fact that he was a Sliver, so could all of that power fit inside a normal sized Hemalurgic Spike?

Well, I suppose since we've seen a similar level of power from the Bands of Mourning it's probably possible to at least get that much power into a spike.

So, maybe it wouldn't be necessary for storage in most cases then.

Edited January 17 by Trusk'our

[alder24]

8 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

We know that it's possible to pierce yourself with metal or swallow it in order for it to receive a level of protection from others' Allomantic Pushes and Pulls. But what if you try to use that mechanic a step further?

What if you take a weapon and weld a flexible wire to it, then pierce yourself with that wire? Could you grant your weapon resistance to Pushing and Pulling while not needing to make it of aluminum or Investing it directly?

What do you have with all those wires? XD

No, the wire would not be perceived as a part of a weapon, it would be a separate thing. Everyone recognizes a spear, but if you add a weird wire to it everyone would treat it as a odd attachment rather than a part of a spear. 

8 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

And what if you were to Invest yourself more fully (Hemalurgic spikes, Breaths, etc.) and were to then clash with a Shardblade? Would your own soul's Investiture prevent the Shardblade from immediately shearing cleanly through your weapon due to the interference? And would it damage your own soul even though it's not directly hit by the Shardblade?

Maybe, Xiahida has already provided the WoB. What I will point out it's possible that the blade would still physically cut, just like in contact with an aluminum foil:

Spoiler

Yata

Hi, the community has a [question], we have two WoBs: Shardblades can cut aluminum and Shardblades can't cut it. Which one is true?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2/Part 3)

Hm. Yes, I wondered last night if I'd ever answered this before. Truth is, the answer is contentious at Team Sanderson.

I've been pushing for one answer, but Peter (whom I trust) is pushing back. We will see what ends up in the books as canon.

Problem with magic like I do is sometimes you have to wait for the scientific consensus... Err on "no" for now.

Peter Ahlstrom (Part 1/Part 2/Part 3)

Oh, I think aluminum would stop Shardblades from magical cutting. But if it's too thin like foil, a sword...

...would cut it anyway. What I'm arguing is that something else that Shardblades don't cut doesn't need...

...to necessarily be made of aluminum, for various reasons.

Yata

For example Invested objects (metalmind,spike,etc) or polestones (from some SA's Quote) ?

Peter Ahlstrom

RAFO

Footnote: The two conflicting WoBs can be found here and here. Also the "something else" that Peter was referring to is likely the Shardblade guards, which have since been confirmed to not be aluminum.
General Twitter 2017 (Feb. 3, 2017)

 

9 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Edit: oh, and could this potentially be a way to possess a much larger Hemalurgic spike? After all, if you can take a Koloss blade and Invest it with a power, then use the wire to pierce the correct Bindpoint, you now have a much, much larger storage space for your Hemalurgic Investiture.

I am still opposed to the idea of the Hemalurgic wires and I also think that the larger the charge in a spike, the bigger the changes to the Spirit Web, the bigger the "hole" in the Spirit Web. It's not as big as with the use of multiple spikes, but it's still bigger than if you use one spike with a single, normal charge. For example one spike with 4 powers would be comparable with the changes made to the soul and openings it produces to 2 spikes with 1 power each or something like that. That's my opinion on that. We've never seen any spike being full and you can steal a Divine Breath with one and that's worth 2000 Breaths. I don't think you need to worry about "space" in a spike. At worst you're gonna have something like Nightblood that is so invested that it's basically a god metal leaking investiture physically.

 

 

1 hour ago, Walter The Moral said:

Talking about that, do you think any of TLR's powers could fit inside a normal Hemalurgic spike? He was incredibly powerful, because of his Lerasium, and the fact that he was a Sliver, so could all of that power fit inside a normal sized Hemalurgic Spike?

Sure you can. If a Divine Breath can be fit then Rashek's power can fit too. And he didn't use Lerasium, he used the power of the Well to make himself even stronger than Lerasium would have made him.

Spoiler

Chris King

Did the Lord Ruler use lerasium to gain his super Allomantic abilities or did he grant that to himself with the Well's power? If he used the bead, does he count as one of the nine original Allomancers that Sazed mentions?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. He did not use the bead. He-- In all of this he granted himself basically, he rebuilt himself to be extremely powerful and he did not use one of the beads.

Chris King interview (Sept. 24, 2013)

 

7 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Indeed. Actually, Ishar's Honorblade did pretty well at resisting Nightblood's attack despite probably being less Invested than the literal Vessel of Odium, and we all know how that turned out for Rayse.

Physical solid form of investiture is generally more resilient to those types of things. Breaths in the Susebron aren't solid. Being invested and being made out of solid investiture are to vastly different things.

[Xiahida]

My main point with wires is they can get pulled out. Even if they provided protection that goes out the window when the wire is pulled out and is no longer inside your body.

[Trusk'our]

37 minutes ago, Xiahida said:

My main point with wires is they can get pulled out. Even if they provided protection that goes out the window when the wire is pulled out and is no longer inside your body.

True.

Still, if you want to make a non-aluminum non Metalmind metal weapon that is resistant to Allomancy, I think that this would be a possibility.

[MistbornMathematician]

On 1/17/2024 at 10:16 AM, alder24 said:

No, the wire would not be perceived as a part of a weapon, it would be a separate thing. Everyone recognizes a spear, but if you add a weird wire to it everyone would treat it as a odd attachment rather than a part of a spear. 

I'm not sure that the perception of being an "object" has much of anything to do with it. It is almost certainly some kind of mechanical/flesh-to-metal ratio, because otherwise you'd end up with the question of "how small do ear gauges have to be before a hoop earring through them can't be easily pushed" being answered by "idk, depends on your perception of it". I don't think Scadrial's allomancers would rely on earrings as unpushable metal if it was possible to convince yourself that the metal's in a closed and healed hole that happens to exist in the body and then steelpush an earring right through someone's head. And it seems similarly unlikely that, if you had massive gauged ears and just held a needle in the middle of the hole, people wouldn't be able to push or pull on it anymore. 

On 1/17/2024 at 11:53 AM, Xiahida said:

My main point with wires is they can get pulled out. Even if they provided protection that goes out the window when the wire is pulled out and is no longer inside your body.

Apart from anything else, it would be supremely embarrassing to have your master plan get foiled because your wires got caught on a doorknob or a chair. Or a cat. 

[alder24]

7 hours ago, MistbornMathematician said:

I'm not sure that the perception of being an "object" has much of anything to do with it.

Perception has everything to do with it - as always in Cosmere. A ship isn't viewed as a sum of plants, ropes and sails - all of this is a ship. Just like your body is one thing and no body part of yours has a separate soul. An object can "merge" with a bigger object - a carpet in a room will eventually be perceived as a part of a room if it will stay there long enough. The same applies here - a wire attached to a weapon would be still perceived as a separate thing and it would take a loooong time for those things to be eventually perceived as one. 

Spoiler

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

If Nightblood were in the cognitive realm and was used to stab a bead that was the cognitive representation of a castle, would the castle be destroyed in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If you could get Nightblood into the Cognitive Realm, then yes. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

What would happen to people who were in the castle at the time? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They wouldn't be affected (other than possibly plummeting to their death).

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

How about a carpet that had been in the castle for 50 years? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, 50 years most likely wouldn't be enough time. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

Is this like the "Ship of Theseus?" 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes

Oathbringer Portland signing (Nov. 16, 2017)

 

7 hours ago, MistbornMathematician said:

I don't think Scadrial's allomancers would rely on earrings as unpushable metal if it was possible to convince yourself that the metal's in a closed and healed hole that happens to exist in the body and then steelpush an earring right through someone's head.

That's not remotely the same thing. The earring spike/metalmind is invested and it is touching your blood and soul. Perception can't get rid of that.

Spoiler

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.

1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.

2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.

DragonCon 2012 (Sept. 4, 2012)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

If there was an aluminum Misting that convinced themselves that aluminum outside their body was inside their body, could they burn it?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Perception can affect a lot of things, that's not a case where it would.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

 

In this case you have a wire which touches your soul and can't be pushed and a weapon that doesn't touch your soul and can be pushed, but they are welded together - perception matters here a lot because those are two separate objects uncommonly stuck together. They have separate souls. It's possible for them to be "merged" as one but that would take too long to be practical in any way and that would require a constant interaction with people who do see them as one, which would be unlikely because of how unnatural those things are. 

[MistbornMathematician]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

That's not remotely the same thing. The earring spike/metalmind is invested and it is touching your blood and soul. Perception can't get rid of that.

 

I don't have time to respond fully, but ear piercings shouldn't be bleeding after the first few days. If they do bleed, it's usually a sign of infection. Do you think people who wear earrings just repeatedly stab their ears?

[therunner]

7 minutes ago, MistbornMathematician said:

I don't have time to respond fully, but ear piercings shouldn't be bleeding after the first few days. If they do bleed, it's usually a sign of infection. Do you think people who wear earrings just repeatedly stab their ears?

I think the intent there is that for a proper spike, it becomes part of your soul during first spiking, where you Spike has to make contact with blood.

So for a piece of metal to get that 'soul interference', it has be stabbed into a body, and wound it/make contact with blood.

[MistbornMathematician]

7 hours ago, therunner said:

I think the intent there is that for a proper spike, it becomes part of your soul during first spiking, where you Spike has to make contact with blood.

To be a Hemalurgic spike, definitely. But to "pierce the body" and thus be harder to push/pull on? That doesn't appear to be the case unless Kelsier was very misinformed about why Vin's earring was safe from being pushed or pulled while it was in her ear. If we assume he was right, and a normal earring in a normal pierced ear will gain this resistance, it never needs to touch blood at all. 

More generally, being "inside" a body is quite an interesting concept. We know by that WoB that it is explicitly not a matter of perception (making the statement "Perception has everything to do with it - as always in Cosmere" a bit of an inaccuracy). Therefore, if it's not a matter of perception or observation, it has to be by some objective metric. Inside the stomach and inside a closed mouth are confirmed to count as "inside". Holding a large metal object in your hand does not count. Earrings do, as does anything that has a part that goes under the skin. Unfortunately, I couldn't find many examples at all for testing the limits or rules, which means it's hard to say exactly what they are. 

You can still do some thought experiments, though:

• Take a thin hoop earring and someone with a normal pierced ear. From what we know already, it should be hard to push that earring in that ear. 
• Take the same hoop earring and someone with a very, very stretched piercing. It seems the largest ear gauge is over four inches in diameter, so that's pretty significant. Now, take the earring and put it around the earlobe without touching the skin at all. 
  • Do you think it would be hard to push the earring?
  • If the earring was allowed to touch the earlobe, do you think it would be hard to push the earring?
  • If it isn't hard to push the earring, then how big can someone's ear piercing be before this happens?
  • Is it a binary hard/not hard or a gradient?

and

• Take some lengths of wire, ranging from very short (say, one centimeter) to very long (say, a spool of ten thousand feet of wire).
• Put the shortest in a normal pierced ear. From what we know already, it should be hard to push.
• Put the end of the huge 10,000 foot spool of wire in a normal pierced ear. 
  • Do you think it would be hard to push the spool of wire? 
  • If not, then how long can the wire get before it stops being hard to push?
  • Is it a binary hard/not hard or a gradient?
• Take a fairly short wire which is hard to push. Cut it in half, then twist the cut ends back together.
  • If one half is in the ear, will the other half (which is now separate) be hard to push?
  • What if we weld it back together instead?

Given that none of these questions (as far as I am aware) have been answered in any way, it seems difficult to say that (given that metal being inside/outside the body isn't affected in any way by perception) an object's perception-based soul must absolutely determine whether it's inside/piercing the body or not. Frankly, it's a stretch to say with any surety that "a spear with a wire" would necessarily have two souls. Say the spearhead was forged from half of a spool of wire while the other half stayed attached the entire time. Would that have to split the soul? As far as I know, there's nothing one way or the other on that topic. 

 

For all the information we have, since "metal and soul are the same", it could just be that metal inside someone "conducts" that person's soul somewhat. Like if the soul was a type of weak magnet, making metal inside of the body slightly soul-magnetized. This is what I'd bet on, if I had to -- it's a simple rule, since it avoids perception and object souls entirely. 

[alder24]

13 hours ago, MistbornMathematician said:

To be a Hemalurgic spike, definitely. But to "pierce the body" and thus be harder to push/pull on? That doesn't appear to be the case unless Kelsier was very misinformed about why Vin's earring was safe from being pushed or pulled while it was in her ear. If we assume he was right, and a normal earring in a normal pierced ear will gain this resistance, it never needs to touch blood at all. 

You misunderstood me, I was not precise enough. I didn't claim that anything has to touch your blood to be harder to push - Hemalurgic spikes have to when they are placed. It's all about proximity to the soul and being inside of the body is enough, without touching blood - metal reserves for an Allomancer can't be pushed after all, coins in mouth too, etc. 

When perception matters is when we're talking about a wire welded into a weapon - whether it's one object or two combined would be subjected to perception over long periods of time (as per WoB a carpet even after 50 years won't be considered to be a part of a palace).

In the case of a very long wire which only partially pierces your body, I would say that it would be like splitting one steel line into multiple ones - a skilled Allomancer can see steel lines pointing all around an object not just to the center of it. The overall percentage of the object which is inside of the body and the skill of an Allomancer would determine how hard the whole thing would be to push. With a long wire a skilled Allomancer can see weak lines pointing to parts of the wire that are outside of the body and  push on them (not with the full strength) but they can't see lines pointing to the parts that are in the body and are sticking in and out of it. We know that with enough power and skill you can push on metalminds, spikes or even trace of metals inside your body, so just piercing your body is not enough to protect a metal from being pushed, it just provides resistance but other factors matter as well.

[MistbornMathematician]

17 hours ago, alder24 said:

You misunderstood me, I was not precise enough.

You were fairly precise, just you responded to a statement about non-invested metals with a statement, apparently, that was about hemalurgy and wasn't particularly related. It's all good, we all make mistakes! 

17 hours ago, alder24 said:

It's all about proximity to the soul and being inside of the body is enough, without touching blood - metal reserves for an Allomancer can't be pushed after all, coins in mouth too, etc. 

Correct, which is also why it appears that you have a "stronger" protection if the metal is piercing your body as opposed to being in your mouth, though whether it's better if it's touching blood or not hasn't been answered. 

17 hours ago, alder24 said:

When perception matters is when we're talking about a wire welded into a weapon - whether it's one object or two combined would be subjected to perception over long periods of time (as per WoB a carpet even after 50 years won't be considered to be a part of a palace).

Correct -- perception, history, and all that would affect how an object's soul is structured. We know that to be true. What we don't know is whether this structuring of the object's soul is relevant to how your own soul is conducted into metal. It's possible that it's as you conjecture, where a person's soul influence only affects singular objects as defined by their souls (with the mechanical aspect being irrelevant), it may be as I conjecture, where a person's soul influence is conducted purely mechanically (with the object soul aspect being irrelevant), and it may be somewhere in between, where your soul's influence can be conducted from one soul-distinct object to another mechanically, but it loses a bit of potency when it makes that jump. 

17 hours ago, alder24 said:

In the case of a very long wire which only partially pierces your body, I would say that it would be like splitting one steel line into multiple ones - a skilled Allomancer can see steel lines pointing all around an object not just to the center of it. The overall percentage of the object which is inside of the body and the skill of an Allomancer would determine how hard the whole thing would be to push. With a long wire a skilled Allomancer can see weak lines pointing to parts of the wire that are outside of the body and  push on them (not with the full strength) but they can't see lines pointing to the parts that are in the body and are sticking in and out of it. We know that with enough power and skill you can push on metalminds, spikes or even trace of metals inside your body, so just piercing your body is not enough to protect a metal from being pushed, it just provides resistance but other factors matter as well.

That's what I think as well. Out of curiosity, what do you think would happen with the gauged ears experiment?