Mini-mal-loss

[Trusk'our he/him]

Creating Koloss requires four iron spikes placed in the correct Bindpoints. Seems fairly straightforward. 

But, what if you wanted to sacrifice fewer people and so took a single Hemalurgically charged iron spike and split it into four separate spikes, then used those smaller spikes to pierce the necessary Bindpoints?

Sure, splitting them also weakens the Investiture, but present day Koloss spikes have spent centuries being moved from one being to another, leaving plenty of time to degrade, yet they still work well enough.

I suppose the only issue that might come up is whether the specific contents of each mini spike would be sufficient. Essentially, if the spikes act more like Copperminds with specific differing pieces (which the creation of Kandra Blessings seems to support, as their contents differ from a Koloss's, despite sharing at least one metal type), it might make something completely different.

And, assuming this works, how many times could you split a Hemalurgic spike and still make a construct? We know that there's a minimal charge a spike must have, but would it be strong enough to cause a noticeable transformation?

Heck, going off that thought, could using minimally charged spikes allow you to more gently tweak people's attributes, maybe add a tiny extra bit of strength or intelligence without dehumanizing them even when using mostly unknown Bindpoints?

Thoughts?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

5 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

But, what if you wanted to sacrifice fewer people and so took a single Hemalurgically charged iron spike and split it into four separate spikes, then used those smaller spikes to pierce the necessary Bindpoints?

That one spike would count as 4 different spikes, and we know that even a minimally charged spike still counts the same as a full spike, at least towards the Hemalurgic Flaw, Paalm can attest to that. 

So chances are you'd end up with a very small Koloss, relatively small anyway. They'd get buff but not to the point where their skin would rip.

Maybe this would be a way to make artificial Koloss-Blooded, gaining a fraction of the strength of a Koloss without losing any of your humanity, though still being open to being controlled.

5 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Heck, going off that thought, could using minimally charged spikes allow you to more gently tweak people's attributes, maybe add a tiny extra bit of strength or intelligence without dehumanizing them even when using mostly unknown Bindpoints?

Seems fine enough, it's been confirmed that when a spike has less potency it causes less twisting and horrific changes, Koloss with recycled spikes retained more humanity. So this could easily be the case, it'd even be economically efficient since you could spike anyone for those traits then be able to split the spike up a bunch. Though it'd be best to stick to under 3 spikes at once since you wouldn't want to be controlled.

Maybe by the Cyberpunk Era we'll see this, since hemalurgic cyborgs would be way too easy to make. You could even set up a 'hotswap' kind of thing where you can insert spikes into your cybernetics and swap them on the go.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

6 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

...

Heck, going off that thought, could using minimally charged spikes allow you to more gently tweak people's attributes, maybe add a tiny extra bit of strength or intelligence without dehumanizing them even when using mostly unknown Bindpoints?

Thoughts?

I believe it was implied, possibly in the annotations, during era1 that, prior to Rashek's ascension and possibly before Preservation betrayed Ruin, the people of ancient Scadrial (for whom access to the metallic arts was just about as rare as current day southern-scadrians) utilized simple, precise, low-impact hemalurgy as a way of achieving enlightenment and communicating with their Gods.

I don't believe that one can create constructs (giant mutants who's souls are unrecognizable from that of a human) without dipping into the levels of hemalurgic extremism that Rashek first unleashed...I think it's more-or-less confirmed, however, that even a relatively primitive understanding of Hemalurgy is sufficient for the purpose of making minor targeted changes to a human soul or opening one's mind to communicating telepathically with Scadrial's shards. I'm hoping that someone eventually figures out a hack for completing the process without killing people someday though; I wouldn't even call that cheating at this point if it actually worked.

[Through The Living Grub He/Him]

10 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

And, assuming this works, how many times could you split a Hemalurgic spike and still make a construct? We know that there's a minimal charge a spike must have, but would it be strong enough to cause a noticeable transformation?

Heck, going off that thought, could using minimally charged spikes allow you to more gently tweak people's attributes, maybe add a tiny extra bit of strength or intelligence without dehumanizing them even when using mostly unknown Bindpoints?

Using full spikes jam packed with power might be more niche case,as you want those for when making an army *cough*koloss*cough*, but this could make Hemalurgy commercially viable, and people won't suffer some of the worse side effects. I expect in the future this might be more commonplace, as the benefits outweigh the reduced risk from weaker spikes

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 hours ago, hwiles said:

I'm hoping that someone eventually figures out a hack for completing the process without killing people someday though; I wouldn't even call that cheating at this point if it actually worked.

Didn't they do this in TLM?

They were able to steal the Innate Investiture of non-Allomancers non-lethally, which would leave them alive though in a worse state than even a Drab: 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/39-sandersonchat-twitter-qa-with-audiblecom/#e12097

Volratho

If someone was tapping gold, would spiking a separate ability out of them kill them? Or would it work at all?

Brandon Sanderson

It is possible to spike someone without killing them. But they'd never be the same. It would be worse than being a drab.

However, if you had sufficient F-gold you could just heal the damage done and continue on your merry way. Though this doesn't seem terribly economical on large scale, so finding an alternative really would be better. 

5 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Seems fine enough, it's been confirmed that when a spike has less potency it causes less twisting and horrific changes, Koloss with recycled spikes retained more humanity. So this could easily be the case, it'd even be economically efficient since you could spike anyone for those traits then be able to split the spike up a bunch. Though it'd be best to stick to under 3 spikes at once since you wouldn't want to be controlled.

Maybe by the Cyberpunk Era we'll see this, since hemalurgic cyborgs would be way too easy to make. You could even set up a 'hotswap' kind of thing where you can insert spikes into your cybernetics and swap them on the go.

35 minutes ago, Xiahida said:

Using full spikes jam packed with power might be more niche case,as you want those for when making an army *cough*koloss*cough*, but this could make Hemalurgy commercially viable, and people won't suffer some of the worse side effects. I expect in the future this might be more commonplace, as the benefits outweigh the reduced risk from weaker spikes

Thinking upon it further, I suppose it all depends on how Invested the spikes can be without screwing you over. If you can only get a 1% increase to an attribute, they're probably not valuable except maybe to inject some extra potential to your descendants, perhaps, as a 1-3% increase of an attribute pushed each generation with something like intelligence could eventually lead to a race of Einsteins. 

Something like a 5% increase might be a lot more usable though, even if it grants only a relatively small edge, it could still be useful. 

I suppose if the physical and cognitive changes are minor, you might also be able to leverage some benefit from them too rather than just the Investiture portion (as Koloss and Kandra both seem to get a magical boost from their spikes, but Koloss get warped as a side effect), though that kind of goes against the main point of acquiring less Invested spikes in the first place. 

One other benefit of minimally charged spikes could be that you can afford to experiment with Bindpoints more, as the chances probably wouldn't be so drastic. Use this with some Fortune shenanigans and you might yield some useful results at some point. 

[Through The Living Grub He/Him]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

One other benefit of minimally charged spikes could be that you can afford to experiment with Bindpoints more, as the chances probably wouldn't be so drastic. Use this with some Fortune shenanigans and you might yield some useful results at some point. 

I doubt they would get very far, TLR had ascended and knew of 3 kinds of constructs and their applicable bindpoints, and spent another 1000 years tinkering to no avail. You would need Ruin's direct intervention to get farther than that.

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 minutes ago, Xiahida said:

I doubt they would get very far, TLR had ascended and knew of 3 kinds of constructs and their applicable bindpoints, and spent another 1000 years tinkering to no avail. You would need Ruin's direct intervention to get farther than that.

Most likely, or at least some decently powerful Fortune shenanigans. 

[SPECTRE120]

A bit off topic, but I think it'd be cool if in era 4 they had snipers that could shoot spikes into people to damage their spiritwebs as a way of fighting magic users. You're a gold compounder? Not if we spike feruchemy out of you. You're a radiant? Not if we spike your spren bond out of you.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

1 hour ago, SPECTRE120 said:

A bit off topic, but I think it'd be cool if in era 4 they had snipers that could shoot spikes into people to damage their spiritwebs as a way of fighting magic users. You're a gold compounder? Not if we spike feruchemy out of you. You're a radiant? Not if we spike your spren bond out of you.

You'd need incredibly good aim and very intimate knowledge of Bindpoints to have a chance of sniping with a spike.

On the other hand, who needs precision when you can just get an automatic gun with Hemalurgically viable bullets and start spraying and praying, cause even if you don't hit the exact bindpoint to steal the power you'll still tear their soul to shreds.

 

 

[Light In the Darkness]

On 8/28/2024 at 7:51 PM, JustQuestin2004 said:

You'd need incredibly good aim and very intimate knowledge of Bindpoints to have a chance of sniping with a spike.

On the other hand, who needs precision when you can just get an automatic gun with Hemalurgically viable bullets and start spraying and praying, cause even if you don't hit the exact bindpoint to steal the power you'll still tear their soul to shreds.

^^This^^

it would be much more damaging to steal attributes, anyway, which have more bindpoints and cheaper spike metals. This significantly increases lethality of bullets, assuming they come back out of the person - something much harder to do, and which makes crossfire oddly dangerous.