Permanent Spiritweb Modification Via Feruchemy

[Trusk'our he/him]

I've been thinking about how Scadrial's technology is going to advance and what it will ultimately mean in the long term, how the Metallic Arts will evolve in their use and access, and specifics on how this will be achieved. 

Currently, natural Metalborn powers are undeniably the best version; Hemalurgic spikes damage the practitioner's Spiritweb, contend with Identity contamination, and have a maximum number that can be born by a Hemalurgist.

Unsealed Metalminds seem to have a fair share of caveats as well. The Medallions used by the Malwish interfere with each other, and can't seem to grant access to Allomancy. The BoM were better in a lot of ways, but they required replenishment after having their Nicrosil Stores drained, limiting their practicality. 

Natural powers can Compound, don't run out (of the base power, that is), can potentially generate Resonances, and don't have true limits to the number a person can possess.

I think that what will most likely allow this to happen will be Lerasium distillation from the Mists (probably come era 5), but I think that there could be another way.

We know that it is possible to rewrite the Spiritweb with F-gold to regain Metalborn powers lost to Hemalurgy, that healing the Spiritweb requires patching on an infusion of Investiture, and that one's Cognitive Aspect is of prime concern when rewriting the Spiritweb. 

As such, if someone could use Unsealed Copper to trick their Cognitive Aspect into believing it had a Metalborn power, and that powers had been ripped off by Hemalurgy, I believe you could grow a new power by Tapping a sufficient amount of Health via F-gold (probably requiring a temporary gold Hemalurgic spike, as it's unlikely that Unsealed Metalminds as they are currently understood can heal the Spiritual Aspect, based on their relationship with Honorblades and their inability to do so).

This would take a lot of work with copper Feruchemy, but it would be interesting to see if you could use an advanced computer to simulate new memories from scratch for this process, kind of like a Forgery used to temporarily change one's Cognitive Aspect. 

It also would require a LOT of health probably, but for permanent, undiluted Allomantic/Feruchemical power, it's probably worth the original Investment (pun intended).

It's also possible that Tapping some Connection to the desired power via Duralumin Feruchemy may help the process along, as the Spiritweb would have more to go off of.

In any case, I believe that this could be a way to eventually create Metalborn without extensive use of Hemalurgy or a continuous dependency on Unsealed Metalminds.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

In any case, I believe that this could be a way to eventually create Metalborn without extensive use of Hemalurgy or a continuous dependency on Unsealed Metalminds.

Hmm, I don't really see anything wrong with this, hypothetically speaking, but I don't think it would be that easy. When Wax tapped F-copper, he was living through Kelsier's memories, his thoughts and all of that. That might put you in the correct mental state to believe you had powers stolen from you, but with this comes also the belief that you are a totally different person and you might end up healing yourself to look like them. That's not ideal. And there is also the issue of identity - your soul knows that you never had any powers and your cognitive image of yourself is also written in your soul, next to your spiritual ideal. It would be really hard to separate that from you. Blanking Identity might help, but that won't remove those Ideals from your soul. 

So yes, I think you're onto something with this F-copper trick, but that might not be enough (or it might be too much), even with identity blanking. Something else might be needed. Unfortunately you probably still have to use Hemalurgy to get rid of those ideals from your spirit web first (fortunately for you).

Spoiler

Questioner

We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like Lopen and Rysn. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.

Questioner

And if they were storing Identity instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

[+hwiles]

3 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I've been thinking about how Scadrial's technology is going to advance and what it will ultimately mean in the long term, how the Metallic Arts will evolve in their use and access, and specifics on how this will be achieved. 

Currently, natural Metalborn powers are undeniably the best version; Hemalurgic spikes damage the practitioner's Spiritweb, contend with Identity contamination, and have a maximum number that can be born by a Hemalurgist.

Unsealed Metalminds seem to have a fair share of caveats as well. The Medallions used by the Malwish interfere with each other, and can't seem to grant access to Allomancy. The BoM were better in a lot of ways, but they required replenishment after having their Nicrosil Stores drained, limiting their practicality. 

Natural powers can Compound, don't run out (of the base power, that is), can potentially generate Resonances, and don't have true limits to the number a person can possess.

I think that what will most likely allow this to happen will be Lerasium distillation from the Mists (probably come era 5), but I think that there could be another way.

We know that it is possible to rewrite the Spiritweb with F-gold to regain Metalborn powers lost to Hemalurgy, that healing the Spiritweb requires patching on an infusion of Investiture, and that one's Cognitive Aspect is of prime concern when rewriting the Spiritweb. 

As such, if someone could use Unsealed Copper to trick their Cognitive Aspect into believing it had a Metalborn power, and that powers had been ripped off by Hemalurgy, I believe you could grow a new power by Tapping a sufficient amount of Health via F-gold (probably requiring a temporary gold Hemalurgic spike, as it's unlikely that Unsealed Metalminds as they are currently understood can heal the Spiritual Aspect, based on their relationship with Honorblades and their inability to do so).

This would take a lot of work with copper Feruchemy, but it would be interesting to see if you could use an advanced computer to simulate new memories from scratch for this process, kind of like a Forgery used to temporarily change one's Cognitive Aspect. 

It also would require a LOT of health probably, but for permanent, undiluted Allomantic/Feruchemical power, it's probably worth the original Investment (pun intended).

It's also possible that Tapping some Connection to the desired power via Duralumin Feruchemy may help the process along, as the Spiritweb would have more to go off of.

In any case, I believe that this could be a way to eventually create Metalborn without extensive use of Hemalurgy or a continuous dependency on Unsealed Metalminds.

The problem that I see here is that you might essentially need to simulate an entire alternate lifetime, identity, and internal monologue for someone to tap into while they simultaneously store virtually all of their real one. That...could go horribly wrong very easily by my understanding.

In principle though, I think your suggestion technically passes the smell-test from what is canonized currently: A gold compounder, with access to a hacked coppermind that artificially shows them as always having had abilities that they never actually did, who can also separate and store ALL of their real memories that could contradict any part of that false narrative, who then tapped a massive amount of gold Feruchemically, would naturally "heal" themselves to be who they believe that they "are, and always have been."

Would the effects be permanent? Well...probably not if they tapped any of their old memories, or spoke too long to anyone who knew them before the alteration...and it might all unravel itself if someone ever accidentally explained to them that their powers were artificial...lol. this might be a horrifyingly efficient way to make exotic or custom hemalurgic spikes without killing someone if the powers couldn't be stabilized in the host though I suppose. What a great a terrible idea!

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 5/14/2024 at 2:44 PM, alder24 said:

Hmm, I don't really see anything wrong with this, hypothetically speaking, but I don't think it would be that easy. When Wax tapped F-copper, he was living through Kelsier's memories, his thoughts and all of that. That might put you in the correct mental state to believe you had powers stolen from you, but with this comes also the belief that you are a totally different person and you might end up healing yourself to look like them. That's not ideal. 

Hmm, true.

However, since the power should be a more permanent graft on your Spiritweb, I suppose if it came to the worst and you did heal to match another's appearance you could always just Tap a memory of your old self plus health to change your appearance back. Might remove the power, but I'm skeptical towards that as it's now a more fundamental part of your Spiritweb, much like age.

My original thought was to create a new set of memories from scratch though, kind of like a Forgery that gives your a plausible alternative mindset so as to prevent such a problem. That probably requires access to advanced theoretical Coppermind-VR technology, which I suppose is kind of cheating since we haven't seen anything like it yet, so maybe instead you could just find a way to have a Feruchemist splice two memories together.

I wonder if a skilled Archivist could take the Unkeyed experiences of an Allomancer or Feruchemist using their power but could then overwrite who was doing it with the person to gain the powers in question. Then when they were Tapped, there would be no weird interface of personality or physical appearance. 

On 5/14/2024 at 2:44 PM, alder24 said:

And there is also the issue of identity - your soul knows that you never had any powers and your cognitive image of yourself is also written in your soul, next to your spiritual ideal. It would be really hard to separate that from you. Blanking Identity might help, but that won't remove those Ideals from your soul. 

As well as Blanking Identity, perhaps if you were to Tap the kind of Connections formed when a Metalborn uses their power? Connection seems to be like a kind of spiritual memory, where Connections are read to see the future or the past, if I remember correctly, so if you have those Connections perhaps that would fit the spiritual ideal enough?

On 5/14/2024 at 2:44 PM, alder24 said:

Unfortunately you probably still have to use Hemalurgy to get rid of those ideals from your spirit web first (fortunately for you).

Eh, Hemalurgy's really neat, but I don’t think it should be the only answer to every question. 

In fact, as I've really sat down and thought about it, Hemalurgy's main advantage is that it's comparatively easy to get results, though those results pretty much always come with a greater cost attached or a lesser output as said result.

Basically, it's really useful as a shortcut of getting Investiture to work for you (or perhaps starting you off better off to obtaining more) but I don't know that it should be the ultimate end goal power anymore. 

On 5/14/2024 at 3:18 PM, hwiles said:

The problem that I see here is that you might essentially need to simulate an entire alternate lifetime, identity, and internal monologue for someone to tap into while they simultaneously store virtually all of their real one. That...could go horribly wrong very easily by my understanding.

That was the original plan, yes. And yes, going wrong would be very possible in such a scenario. 

However, if you splice the right memories together, I'm not sure that this is strictly necessary anymore; you'd just need to ingrain some key memories of you using the desired power while meddling with Identity, Connection, and health, and I think that would take care of it.

On 5/14/2024 at 3:18 PM, hwiles said:

Would the effects be permanent? Well...probably not if they tapped any of their old memories, or spoke too long to anyone who knew them before the alteration...and it might all unravel itself if someone ever accidentally explained to them that their powers were artificial...lol. 

I see no reason it wouldn't be permanent; most physical injuries not healed within a certain time frame don't change back to normal even with more healing applied due to the change in the Cognitive Aspect, so not Tapping health for a week or so after the procedure would make the power more permanently ingrained into the patient.

On 5/14/2024 at 3:18 PM, hwiles said:

this might be a horrifyingly efficient way to make exotic or custom hemalurgic spikes without killing someone if the powers couldn't be stabilized in the host though I suppose.

I mean, it's basically just Forgery but with extra steps, so yeah, making Hemalurgic spikes with the process may be viable. 

If the powers are just temporary for some reason, making spikes from them may become the most efficient option. 

On 5/14/2024 at 3:18 PM, hwiles said:

What a great a terrible idea!

I do my best/worst 

[alder24]

4 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

However, since the power should be a more permanent graft on your Spiritweb, I suppose if it came to the worst and you did heal to match another's appearance you could always just Tap a memory of your old self plus health to change your appearance back. Might remove the power, but I'm skeptical towards that as it's now a more fundamental part of your Spiritweb, much like age.

If your self-perception influenced you enough to give you powers of someone else, it would work to take them away to align you back to your former self, who was without that power. 

8 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

As well as Blanking Identity, perhaps if you were to Tap the kind of Connections formed when a Metalborn uses their power? Connection seems to be like a kind of spiritual memory, where Connections are read to see the future or the past, if I remember correctly, so if you have those Connections perhaps that would fit the spiritual ideal enough?

I don't think I understand you here. Tapping connection to a specific power you want to graft won't change your spiritual or cognitive ideal saved in your spirit web. Tapping connection is still a temporary thing, you would have to imprint that into your soul and that's what Lerasium does (or a duralumin spike).

[+hwiles]

44 minutes ago, alder24 said:

If your self-perception influenced you enough to give you powers of someone else, it would work to take them away to align you back to your former self, who was without that power. 

...

Strongly agree. The metaphor that I would use here to drive the point home is: if I logged onto the Coppermind right now and wrote that Kelsier is, was, and always has been 6'9", 300lbs, with jet black hair and a pug nose, the Metadata on the backend would record that a change had been made. There's a tiny chance that I might get away with tricking a couple people, but eventually (maybe immediately) someone would correct the record and anyone who was naive enough to be fooled would be corrected upon checking back or speaking with anyone who was familiar with source material. Could I implant false citations to make it look more convincing? Sure. Could I include excerpts from hacked and edited ebooks or WoBs? Yes. Would these work? Not for very long. The type of magical pseudo forgery being discussed here would be like characters in-world being able to make retcons more powerful than even the author of the books is capable of, which is...so super meta and mindbending that it probably won't be allowed (at least on screen) for narrative reasons.