Can Hemalurgy ever be developed independently?

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

Hemalurgy, like a lot of things in the cosmere, requires Intent. Just stabbing someone isn't enough to make a Spike, you have to mean it. Which from everything we've seen basically means you have to already know hemalurgy is possible. You have to read about it like Wax, or see it done like the Inquisitors, or learn it from divine power like Kelsier and the Lord Ruler. There's wiggle room for experimentation, but that experimentation is "what happens if i spike someone with this metal", you still have to know about it initially. Even in Spook's case, when he got spiked with pewter by a random soldier, the Intent came from Ruin manipulating the soldier to do what Ruin wanted, and Ruin of course knew. It's the equivalent of me, knowing about hemalurgy, hiring an assassin and giving them very specific instructions about how to kill; even if they don't know personally, there's still Intent involved.

So does that mean that, even though hemalurgy works everywhere across the cosmere, someone can never learn about it independently, only if they see it or read about it or are told about it?

If some mad scientist artifabrian on Roshar, who knew nothing of hemalurgy, went "hmm. animals like chulls and chasmfiends, and people like singers, they have gemhearts in them." and did horrific unethical experiments turning living beings and people into fabrials, could their experiments trying to push and pull on the spren inside gemhearts with metals produce hemalurgy even if they were never told about it? (Especially if Raysium gets involved to forcibly transfer the spren, but that makes things even more complicated so let's stick to more simple metals.)

[+Oltux72 he/him]

It depends on how specific the Intent has to be. Possible sequence

1. You stab somebody who has a healing power with an aluminium weapon or you use your healing fabrial on somebody wounded with an aluminium spike
2. The power or fabrial fails
3. You conclude from that that you want to systematically research the interaction of metals and Investiture
4. You want to find out whether any effects are changing the metal. So you reuse a spike.

[alder24]

9 hours ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

Hemalurgy, like a lot of things in the cosmere, requires Intent. Just stabbing someone isn't enough to make a Spike, you have to mean it. Which from everything we've seen basically means you have to already know hemalurgy is possible. You have to read about it like Wax, or see it done like the Inquisitors, or learn it from divine power like Kelsier and the Lord Ruler. There's wiggle room for experimentation, but that experimentation is "what happens if i spike someone with this metal", you still have to know about it initially. Even in Spook's case, when he got spiked with pewter by a random soldier, the Intent came from Ruin manipulating the soldier to do what Ruin wanted, and Ruin of course knew. It's the equivalent of me, knowing about hemalurgy, hiring an assassin and giving them very specific instructions about how to kill; even if they don't know personally, there's still Intent involved.

So does that mean that, even though hemalurgy works everywhere across the cosmere, someone can never learn about it independently, only if they see it or read about it or are told about it?

I think it would be very hard to independently learn about Hemalurgy, with no Shardic intervention. But it is still possible. You need two things: one is jealousy - someone has powers that you want and you start to think if you can steal that from them - the second is lots of Atium, or another way to see the future. Yup, future sight helps with Hemalurgy. Once you have that mindset "I want to steal that," looking into the future might uncover the art of Hemalurgy to you. Randomly stabbing people with spikes won't really work if you don't have this specific mindset, or can't see the future. If this mindset alone is enough to provide needed intent (which is possible) you would be never able to guess the correct binding point to both steal a power and then graft it. Either way, future sight would help.

Spoiler

PhantoMonstrosity

Atium is the best metal to use for Hemalurgy. Does *burning* atium help you figure out where to put the spikes?

Brandon Sanderson

Anything that gets you a glimpse of the Spiritual Realm could help with placing spikes.

PhantoMonstrosity

Would flaring iron and steel also help?

Brandon Sanderson

No, not without additional help.

#NookTalks Twitter Q&A with Barnes & Noble (Feb. 16, 2016)

 

[Leuthie]

Knowledge of the Spirit Web and how it interacts with the other Realms (or, better, how the other Realms interact with it) could lead to Hemalurgy. How you get that knowledge is the bigger question? 

[Duxredux he/him]

So... I think it's theoretically possible, considering acupuncture was developed IRL and seems to require a similar degree of precision. Granted Hemalurgy requires the right intent, so stepping on a sharp rock and realizing that you feeling better isn't going to happen in a vacuum, nor does acupuncture require (usually) lethal experimentation.

I agree with @alder24, I don't think you need the specific Intent to harvest a portion of a Spiritweb and contain it in a piece of metal - any emotion or Intent that is destructive or ruinous in nature may be able to draw Ruin's power. Nightblood for one has an non-typical amount of Ruin's Investiture in it's composition and it wouldn't surprise me if whatever Shashara was feeling when she made something to DESTROY EVIL if it got that Intent across. That kind of Intent or emotion is certainly not limited to Scadrial. The trick is noticing if stabbing a second person with the same metal weapon and have them somehow survive rather killing them outright. I'd guess that harvesting an attribute like strength from iron weapons (think the Iron Age of antiquity) is more likely to happen incidentally and recognizeably than any of the power stealing metals - particularly if the victim develops weird Koloss-like distortions to their bodies.

For example, the fundamental principles of Hemalurgy are not too far off from what the Raysium dagger did when harvesting Jezrien's soul. Brandon wouldn't call it Hemalurgy, but in-world scholars would argue with him.

Quote

kalamitous_emoashions

Have we seen any evidence of Hemalurgy on Roshar? And, as sort of an addendum, given the end of Oathbringer, was what happened to Jezrien Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

There are certain cosmere philosophers that would count it. I would divide it as two separate things that are using similar fundamentals... I wouldn't call it myself, but there are people who would disagree with me in-world. Have we seen evidence? I would say no evidence that is easily-- easy to pick out.

kalamitous_emoashions

But it's there?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are people with Hemalurgy who have been to Roshar. I'm pretty sure they've been on-screen.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

This would be potentially easier to stumble upon if Brandon would ever give a concrete answer to if other materials like gemstones can be used for Hemalurgy. Thus far, he's RAFO'd everything except metal, though in WoK Prime:

Spoiler

Clowdtail12

I was just wondering if Sando [Brandon] has ever said what was behind the very ornate door under The First Capital [in The Way of Kings Prime]?

Brandon Sanderson

An Unmade was behind that door, spiked with crystal spikes to the wall, holding it and preventing it from going anywhere. I believe I talked about it on a stream somewhere.

This was very, very early Hemalurgy--and some of the things I was planning there are no longer canon. You probably could still spike an Unmade to bind it to the Physical Realm, though, so that part remains viable.

General Reddit 2023 (Oct. 6, 2023)

 

I take this to mean that this was his first look at Hemalurgy as an art before he decided to wrap it into the metal systems of The Final Empire, so still inconclusive, but he's thought about crystal spikes.

 

Edited March 8 by Duxredux

[Returned]

Possible ever, at all? Certainly. The Cosmere has well structured, internal rules which can be determined via logical experimentation (see Khriss, for example). How a person  might learn about spiritwebs, Intent, the interactions of metals with magics, etc. is a less clear item, but since the Cosmere's magical properties exist (in-universe) in consistent ways then a person could observe and learn about them and their properties. Once you know the details of the underlying pieces it's possible to imagine applying them in different ways, one of which is Hemalurgy.

No one accidentally builds a functional nuclear reactor to generate electricity. But when enough underlying knowledge of the different components is gained the potential for such a reactor becomes possible to know, and then people (intentionally) design, assemble, and test candidate products to do that. No divine revelation needed.

The big differentiators for Hemalurgy are that it's incredibly complicated and that it's based on magic (which fundamentally doesn't work, in a real-world sense, and so can't quite mesh with real-world efforts or approaches to interact with it, and so can never be completely defined in real-world terms). But Cosmere magic is presented as consistent,  observable, and manipulable in its setting. So an in-world researcher should be able to develop any related magical insight from basic, testable efforts, with enough basic information accrued from whatever source. Ruin/Shardic divinity just prepares that information on a silver platter without the fundamental steps discovering that information would require for someone who doesn't already know.

Edited March 8 by Returned

[Aetherbound he/him]

I could see an independent discovery happening on Roshar if a series of events similar to this happened

1. A wants to use raysium daggers to trap souls in gemstones
2. B sabotages this plan by replacing raysium with painted iron
3. A stabs C with sabotaged dagger, which steals strength of C
4. A realizes it didn't work the way he was intending, runs tests on the dagger, and realizes what happened

Edited March 8 by Aetherbound

[Quantus he/him]

Yeah, I agree with the class on this one: Assuming the Intent does not need to be explicit, I think it could be stumbled on with the right destructive mindset and murder weapon.  Given it's universal cosmere effect, I think it would be Significantly easier to stumble onto Aluminum Hemalurgy to "Shut Down" powers since a person might theorize it's a property of the metal alone.  In fact, I could see a path where that could eb the ONLY form of hemalurgy that might occure to a population for a long time, since it's the only one where the relevant Intent doesnt require a desire to Steal anything or any expectation of Charging the Metal with Soul-chunks (if that kind of Specific knowledge is required).

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 3/8/2024 at 12:32 AM, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

Hemalurgy, like a lot of things in the cosmere, requires Intent. Just stabbing someone isn't enough to make a Spike, you have to mean it. Which from everything we've seen basically means you have to already know hemalurgy is possible. You have to read about it like Wax, or see it done like the Inquisitors, or learn it from divine power like Kelsier and the Lord Ruler. There's wiggle room for experimentation, but that experimentation is "what happens if i spike someone with this metal", you still have to know about it initially. Even in Spook's case, when he got spiked with pewter by a random soldier, the Intent came from Ruin manipulating the soldier to do what Ruin wanted, and Ruin of course knew. It's the equivalent of me, knowing about hemalurgy, hiring an assassin and giving them very specific instructions about how to kill; even if they don't know personally, there's still Intent involved.

So does that mean that, even though hemalurgy works everywhere across the cosmere, someone can never learn about it independently, only if they see it or read about it or are told about it?

If some mad scientist artifabrian on Roshar, who knew nothing of hemalurgy, went "hmm. animals like chulls and chasmfiends, and people like singers, they have gemhearts in them." and did horrific unethical experiments turning living beings and people into fabrials, could their experiments trying to push and pull on the spren inside gemhearts with metals produce hemalurgy even if they were never told about it? (Especially if Raysium gets involved to forcibly transfer the spren, but that makes things even more complicated so let's stick to more simple metals.)

I would say yes, but with some large caveats;

1. You need to have access to the SR and a general idea of what you want to do. As @alder24 mentioned, A-Atium can help with using Hemalurgy, so other methods of accessing the SR (such as F-chromium, Returned's dreams, or Renarin's visions) could all probably help in this area.

There's also the idea that Shards other than Ruin can learn about Hemalurgy if they had the idea to look in the SR with the Intent of "I want to know how to steal something from a Spiritweb", then they could do it pretty much immediately. And this is where using the SR to know Hemalurgy could come in handy for mortals, assuming they could get that power through other means.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/522/#e16293

Questioner

When somebody takes up a Shard, do they inherently get knowledge when they get that Shard? For example, does Taravangian know about hemalurgy, now, just because he took up a Shard? Or was that just Ruin's...?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. Taking up a Shard is going to impart a large amount of knowledge, more than even a Shard can process immediately, and it will take some time. And it's going to give you the ability to access a lot of other kinds of knowledge. Shards aren't omnipresent, but they kind of are; they are able to do many things at once, they are able to focus on places and be aware of that location in a lot of instances. But at the same time, they are limited in their ability to... they don't know everything. They might be able to get access to most things, but it takes conscious... like, "I need to know this. I need to find it out. It happens it's written in a book that I can just... it's on this other planet, and I absorb it and immediately know." Assuming it's not written in a way that you can't access, which certain formats make it hard to do.

So, Taravangian, if he cared to think about what hemalurgy is, it's well enough known that he could be like, "I wonder if there's a way to steal... Oh, it's this. This is how it works on this planet." That would be an almost instantaneous thing for him to be able to learn, if he wanted to. But does he hold it in his head right now? That remains to be seen.

2. It's possible that if Hemalurgy weren't widely used anymore that the system would build up a "pressure", that would want release and would "teach" people how to use it, even if only in a rudimentary fashion (there was a WoB for this, where this is kind of similar to AonDor being first learned, but I've already spent like 45 minutes looking for it and I've decided it's not worth it).

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

It's possible that if Hemalurgy weren't widely used anymore that the system would build up a "pressure", that would want release and would "teach" people how to use it, even if only in a rudimentary fashion (there was a WoB for this, where this is kind of similar to AonDor being first learned, but I've already spent like 45 minutes looking for it and I've decided it's not worth it).

The pressure for AonDor was because the Dor has been stuffed into the Cognitive Realm - not a factor for Hemalurgy:

Spoiler

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

If you were wondering, most of the explanations we get in this chapter are true. The reason that Raoden was subject to the Dor attacks was because he spent so much time practicing with the Aons. He began to make a bridge between this world and the Dor, and because of that, he gave the Dor a slight opening into his soul. I imagine that he isn't the first one to suffer something like this during the ten years that Elantris has been fallen. Other Elantrians probably practiced with the Aons, and the Dor eventually destroyed them. When it was done, they simply became Hoed.

By finally using the Dor effectively, Raoden relieved a little bit of the pressure, letting the nearby buildup of the Dor (the one that he himself had created by practicing so much) rip through him and fuel that single Aon.

Originally, I had Raoden's conflict with the Dor continue on after this scene–I had it continue attacking him. In a later draft, however, I realized that I'd made a mistake. Raoden has other things to worry about in the upcoming chapters–he doesn't need the Dor attacks to create conflict and tension. So, after this chapter, the Dor attacks actually became distractions. I also realized that the way I'd set up the magic system, this chapter was probably the place where the Dor should stop attacking, since Raoden had fulfilled what he wanted it to do.

Elantris Annotations (Jan. 6, 2006)

 

However, this concept was atually a plot point to White Sand (ch 5) Spoilers:

Spoiler

Quote

What are you suggesting, Lord Vey? Hunting sand masters like deep sandlings? Turning Lossand into a nation of fear and prejudice? Sand mastery is not spontaneous, Lord Vey. Without testing the populace for it, within a generation, there will be no sand masters.

The first Sand Master was Lossa, who was "visited" by the "Sand Lord" (Autonomy's Avatar to Dayside) and learned to master sand. After that, new aoclytes must be "introduced" to the power by a Sand Master to be able to form a Luhel bond capable of controlling the Sand. Without that introduction, it is impled that even if a person knew what Sand Mastery was,  and had the intent to Master sand, they would not be able to do so.

So, based on how mind-numbingly complex Hemalurgy is (PM for examples) to master, and how difficult it is to get viable hemalurgic constructs (see below) the chances of having a single hemalurgic "event" accidentally may not be too small; but the chances of being able to truly develop an understanding of the complete system based on accidental starts and experiments likely approaches 0%. HoA Ch 44 Epigraph:

Spoiler

 The Lord Ruler was constantly trying to develop new breeds of servant. It is a testament to Hemalurgy's complexity that, despite a thousand years of trying, he never managed to create anything with it beyond the three kinds of creatures he developed during those few brief moments holding the power.

 

[Duxredux he/him]

3 hours ago, Treamayne said:

So, based on how mind-numbingly complex Hemalurgy is (PM for examples) to master, and how difficult it is to get viable hemalurgic constructs (see below) the chances of having a single hemalurgic "event" accidentally may not be too small; but the chances of being able to truly develop an understanding of the complete system based on accidental starts and experiments likely approaches 0%. HoA Ch 44 Epigraph:

I agree with I think everything else, but we have seen advances in Hemalurgy post-Catacendre. Cadmium placement to steal Temporal Allomancy wasn't possible Era 1, but we saw a Bendalloy Hemalurgist. ReLuur had pewter used in an unknown Kandra Blessing. Kelsier got his soul stapled back to his body and somehow set things up in Southern Scadrial kicking off a technological Renaissance using concepts we certainly haven't had fully revealed to us, but Hemalurgy probably plays into it (though I guess it could be off world Invested Arts or tech, depending on who he chatted to before he got his body back and before the southerners froze).

As I think about it, if the Inquisitors were the main scientists pursuing Hemalurgic advancement, and we know that at least some of their labs were in their own strongholds, then Ruin may have been subtly sabotaging their efforts and by extension TLR. In fact it begs the question of why Ati himself didn't introduce any new Hemalurgic constructs during HoA even after his existence as the main antagonist was revealed. Perhaps Inquisitors and Koloss are simply some of the simplest and most effective constructs? Maybe Ruin influenced their conception from the beginning? I'm nor sure.

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Duxredux said:

agree with I think everything else, but we have seen advances in Hemalurgy post-Catacendre. Cadmium placement to steal Temporal Allomancy wasn't possible Era 1, but we saw a Bendalloy Hemalurgist.

Right, but in the ontext of the question, I stand by my thoughts that you quoted. TLR had "help" from the Well. Inquisitors had help from TLR, The Set had help from Shardic insight (Autonomy-as-Trell), Kelsier had help from being a Sliver. Even Paal likely had Trellish help to make the Chimrae with Trellium Spikes.

So, from the standpoint of an unknown "discovering" Hemalurgy through accidental insights and scientific method without outside assistance. . . very low for a single event to happen and work - near 0% to atually "solve" a majority of bindpoints, metals and how they work and interact. 

7 hours ago, Duxredux said:

why Ati himself didn't introduce any new Hemalurgic constructs during HoA even after his existence as the main antagonist was revealed. Perhaps Inquisitors and Koloss are simply some of the simplest and most effective constructs? Maybe Ruin influenced their conception from the beginning? I'm nor sure.

This seems far too much like reation to be somethign Ruin would have pursued while trying to destroy Scadrial. He had all the tools he needed. More than, since there were tools he didn't really use much (Kandra).

 

Edited March 10 by Treamayne
Clarity/SPAG