Gold Foreshadowing Hemalurgy

[Trusk'our he/him]

There's a fine little WoB that says anything that lets you see into the SR will aid in knowing where to place Hemalurgic spikes.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/48-nooktalks-twitter-qa-with-barnes-noble/#e545

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.

<snip>

I had still kind of dismissed gold Allomancy for its use here, but I think I see a possibility now.

If gold Allomancy shows you a different self you could have become, does that mean it can show you a version of you that bears Hemalurgic spikes and their placement?

For example, let's say an Auger had the opportunity to use Hemalurgic spikes on themself to become a construct, but turned it down. If they burned gold later and saw how things could have gone, maybe they could see a version of themselves with a spike configuration stable enough not to instantly collapse (or else the shadow couldn't show that timeline, since you'd be dead).

Plus, they could experience that version's eyes and thoughts, allowing them a more solid understanding of the consequences of that form before just choosing to go through with it.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

We've never seen an Augur control their Gold Shadows to intentionally show a specific future, but then again we've only ever seen two uses of it total. I've a feeling it would take extensive practice or maybe Savantism in the ability to show such a specific future.

Gold Shadows also change depending on your current situation, so maybe if you sat around a bunch of Hemalurgic Spikes and really considered using them on yourself and then burned Gold then your Gold Shadows would start showing some of those possibilities.

So I'd say it'd be possible, though probably very unpleasant. Gold Shadows always make the user uncomfortable, adding in Hemalurgy would probably make the experience torturous. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

8 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

We've never seen an Augur control their Gold Shadows to intentionally show a specific future, but then again we've only ever seen two uses of it total. I've a feeling it would take extensive practice or maybe Savantism in the ability to show such a specific future.

Gold Shadows also change depending on your current situation, so maybe if you sat around a bunch of Hemalurgic Spikes and really considered using them on yourself and then burned Gold then your Gold Shadows would start showing some of those possibilities.

True, consciously controlling your gold shadows or at least controlling the situation enough to alter them would almost certainly be necessary. 

9 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

So I'd say it'd be possible, though probably very unpleasant. Gold Shadows always make the user uncomfortable, adding in Hemalurgy would probably make the experience torturous. 

Yeah, that's probably true. 

Seeing through the eyes and feeling the thoughts of an inhuman monstrosity may be especially unsettling for the psyche, but it's certainly better than using the spikes blindly or cruelly testing it on others.

[Quantus he/him]

Gold shadows theoretically show your current temporal Path, so if the Auger were the Subject but not necessarily the mind behind the Experimentation, it might work a lot easier. 

Consider:  An auger is held prisoner by a Hemalurgist of limited moral restraint.  That Hemalurgist intends to use (and use up) said Auger in his experiments.  The Auger burns gold and sees that their current path is to become a horribly twisted construct that would be a failure of the Hemalurgists goals.  You convince him that you've foreseen his failure by describing the result you saw (and felt), and that alters but doesnt end his plans for you.  The two of you become a feedback loop between the Auger repeatedly trying to avoid a horrible Hemalurgic fate and the Hemalurgist never abandoning their Intent to shove some Spikes into the Auger eventually.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

I have a sneaking suspicion that an augur who burned gold continuously would eventually begin to see multiple gold shadows simultaneously, most likely by weighted statistical probability. If that ends up being the case, then seeing themselves as various alternative hemalurgic constructs should theoretically be possible, and the shared consciousness between minds could potentially grant enough knowledge to replicate the construction. It probably wouldn't help with the harvest and charging side of the equation though.

[Trusk'our he/him]

37 minutes ago, hwiles said:

I have a sneaking suspicion that an augur who burned gold continuously would eventually begin to see multiple gold shadows simultaneously, most likely by weighted statistical probability. If that ends up being the case, then seeing themselves as various alternative hemalurgic constructs should theoretically be possible, and the shared consciousness between minds could potentially grant enough knowledge to replicate the construction.

That would be interesting. Kinda want to see gold Allomancy used more practically. 

52 minutes ago, hwiles said:

It probably wouldn't help with the harvest and charging side of the equation though.

True, but ironically gold Feruchemy can potentially help with that. 

Charge a spike with your own Investiture via Bloodmaking (spiking yourself and then healing), then use gold shadows to determine where to place the spikes on yourself. 

4 hours ago, Quantus said:

Gold shadows theoretically show your current temporal Path, so if the Auger were the Subject but not necessarily the mind behind the Experimentation, it might work a lot easier. 

Agreed. Gold shadows aren't able to look at another individual's alternate history, so you have to be the one to having the spiking done on.

That said, once you know where the spikes go, you can easily apply that knowledge to others.

[Mr. Misting he/him]

4 minutes ago, Trusk&#x27;our said:

That would be interesting. Kinda want to see gold Allomancy used more practically. 

This is kind of unrelated to the main topic, but it's a logical tangent. Let's say I go to college and major in business, but really considered majoring in art. It'd be probably take some practice in gold usage, but it'd make sense that I could burn gold and use the shadow's mind be able to draw art as well as if I had majored in it. 

Going further, I technically considered every single major at the college, just much less than the first two. So, if I was lucky, or really skilled at gold, I could gain the skills from any major, and even further, I could gain the knowledge of anything, because I could have done anything with my life.

For something much more reasonable, lets say I need to read two books to study for a test. I have the intent to read the entirety of one of those books. I flip a coin, and read one book randomly. With minimal skill I could probably burn gold, to have the knowledge of the book I might have read. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Mr. Misting said:

This is kind of unrelated to the main topic, but it's a logical tangent. Let's say I go to college and major in business, but really considered majoring in art. It'd be probably take some practice in gold usage, but it'd make sense that I could burn gold and use the shadow's mind be able to draw art as well as if I had majored in it. 

Going further, I technically considered every single major at the college, just much less than the first two. So, if I was lucky, or really skilled at gold, I could gain the skills from any major, and even further, I could gain the knowledge of anything, because I could have done anything with my life.

For something much more reasonable, lets say I need to read two books to study for a test. I have the intent to read the entirety of one of those books. I flip a coin, and read one book randomly. With minimal skill I could probably burn gold, to have the knowledge of the book I might have read. 

This would be an epic use of gold shadows, but I don't know if actual skill is transferred.

It's more limited than a similar Selish Investiture, but at the very least information itself can be transferred, so it might be more like how you can tap a Coppermind for knowledge but not muscle memory. 

TES spoilers:

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120-warsaw-signing/#e1830

Questioner

In The Emperor’s Soul, Forgery allows you to Forge your soul to create a different past. My question is, would on Scadrial burning gold in a controlled way allow you to do something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow, you guys are good. So, they are similar but different. I would say that no, gold is not gonna do this exact thing. They're working from the same fundamental roots, but gold is a lot more bounded in what it can accomplish.

So, maybe you could use it to quickly gather analytical knowledge, maybe even store it in a Coppermind, but applying it wouldn't likely be any easier than watching a DIY YouTube tutorial. 

Edited September 27, 2024 by Trusk'our

[Mr. Misting he/him]

21 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

So, maybe you could use it to quickly gather analytical knowledge, maybe even store it in a Coppermind, but applying it wouldn't likely be any easier than watching a DIY YouTube tutorial. 

But you you literally share the mind of the shadow. Muscle memory is all in the brain anyway. I would think that if your shadow was a gunslinger, your minds combined would be able to fire a gun very well. That's my assumption, but I don't know how Brandon will make it work.

But yeah, just general knowledge should be cheatable with gold shadows.

Edited September 28, 2024 by Mr. Misting

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Mr. Misting said:

But you you literally share the mind of the shadow. Muscle memory is all in the brain anyway. I would think that if your shadow was a gunslinger, your minds combined would be able to fire a gun very well. That's my assumption, but I don't know how Brandon will make it work.

True, we don't know a lot about gold's specifics yet, so maybe it is doable. 

I do wonder, since you can think multiple sets of thoughts simultaneously with gold, can you potentially cheat with it to process information more quickly, or at least have multiple different points of view on a topic? 

Or, if you're still barred to your normal mental capacity (gold shadows not actually expanding your brain power), perhaps tapping zinc while burning gold can still get you multiple points of view effectively, or allow you to function normally while under the effects of gold without so much mental stress.

[Mr. Misting he/him]

10 hours ago, Trusk&#x27;our said:

I do wonder, since you can think multiple sets of thoughts simultaneously with gold, can you potentially cheat with it to process information more quickly, or at least have multiple different points of view on a topic? 

Or, if you're still barred to your normal mental capacity (gold shadows not actually expanding your brain power), perhaps tapping zinc while burning gold can still get you multiple points of view effectively, or allow you to function normally while under the effects of gold without so much mental stress.

Interesting point. I think in one of the cosmere rpg brotherwise videos, where they talked about mistborn mechanics, one video talked about how if you got over the nausea of using gold, then you could do a bunch of cool stuff. I don't remember the exact quoting, but that seems to imply you don't need other powers to get over the negative effects, it might require repeated exposure. And since we've never seen someone who consistently burns gold, we don't know if the negative effects would eventually go away.

Also, to dump more random gold ideas, if you can touch the shadow, that means it can exert force on you. Can it lift you up to a higher ledge? If you're in a shoving match, can it push you, effectively doubling your force? Also, if it sees separately of you, can it look around a corner and tell you what's going on? Could you summon your gold shadow in a room, leave the room, and use the persisting gold shadow to overhear private conversations? What's the range between you and gold shadow? I assume we could extrapolate from Yumi and Painter's initial range, which only gives maybe 20 feet, but if you could improve that, could you shadow run down a few blocks and see what's going on?

Like you said, we know very few of gold's specifics, but all of these seem like very logical and possible uses of gold, based on what we know.

[Trusk'our he/him]

6 hours ago, Mr. Misting said:

Interesting point. I think in one of the cosmere rpg brotherwise videos, where they talked about mistborn mechanics, one video talked about how if you got over the nausea of using gold, then you could do a bunch of cool stuff. I don't remember the exact quoting, but that seems to imply you don't need other powers to get over the negative effects, it might require repeated exposure. And since we've never seen someone who consistently burns gold, we don't know if the negative effects would eventually go away.

Personally I would be careful not to take any RPG content to heart, as it’s not necessarily considered cannon.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/77-shadows-of-self-lansing-signing/#e6603

Questioner

There is a Mistborn pen & paper RPG, Dungeons & Dragons style RPG does it give more information on the world?

Brandon Sanderson

It does.

Though I oversaw that I let them go-- They wanted to do more than I felt comfortable doing myself for my timing, so I let them go pretty crazy. So I say that it is canon until I contradict it. And some of it I will end up contradicting because they needed to be able to make the game the best way they could and I didn’t feel comfortable telling them all the stuff that was coming up because I didn’t want that to sneak into there.

<snip>

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/506-cosmerees-interview/#e15819

Cosmere.es

And it's interesting that you mentioned the RPG because I remember like many years ago we started reading the RPG from [Crafty Games] and some things that were inside—because when you are doing an RPG you are reading it to explain like the lore and things about everything that's going on and the magic system and blah blah—and we didn't know if, for example, the metals that were included in there that were not yet on the book were canonical, and now I think that most of them are going to be canonical as well.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah when we were working on the Crafty game there were certain liberties we needed to take, and some of them I knew we were gonna use and some of them I knew we weren't going to. And this is just the freedom they asked for to make their game. You can't take everything as canon unfortunately in the Mistborn game, but theoretically there's a lot in there that will be.

But still, some interesting things might become possible with experimentation, especially considering that the boundaries haven't been well tested yet.

6 hours ago, Mr. Misting said:

Also, to dump more random gold ideas, if you can touch the shadow, that means it can exert force on you. Can it lift you up to a higher ledge? If you're in a shoving match, can it push you, effectively doubling your force?

Unfortunately, gold shadows can't actually exert physical force- it's all hallucinatory. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/141-mistborn-the-final-empire-annotations/#e2478

Brandon Sanderson

Vin's attempt at killing the Lord Ruler was, I thought, rather clever. I made a point of making her be able to touch her past self when she was burning gold. There are a couple of reasons why this didn't work. First of all, the images are just that–images. When Vin touched the face of her past self, it was all part of the illusion that gold produced. None of it was real. So, even if she HAD been able to touch the image of the Lord Ruler's past self, she wouldn't have been able to hurt the Lord Ruler himself by killing it.

<snip>

 

6 hours ago, Mr. Misting said:

Also, if it sees separately of you, can it look around a corner and tell you what's going on? Could you summon your gold shadow in a room, leave the room, and use the persisting gold shadow to overhear private conversations? 

Maybe, I think that your shadow is still limited to your own body's senses. It's a hallucination and therefore is probably intrinsically tied to your Cognitive Aspect. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/190-rfantasy-ama-2013/#e4073

Herowannabe

What happens when a blind person burns Gold- especially of he "sees" a version of himself that isn't blind? Can he see the other version or just hear/feel/sense him? What about the other version, can it see things? Could a blind person use gold in this way to see the world around him?

Brandon Sanderson

A blind person would indeed sense these things, but not have the vision with the eyes. In the same way that a blind person still dreams, but doesn't "See" in them. (As I understand it.) I'd suggest talking to someone who is blind and getting their take on how this would work.

TSM spoilers: 

Spoiler

So, perhaps it could be used like how Aux was limited to Nomad's body and its senses, though he could pay attention to other things. At the very least a gold shadow could also provide a different perspective on a topic similar to Aux, as it’s essentially another mind, or at least making you temporarily think like another mind.

Sorry, it feels like I'm mostly just knocking down your ideas, but I do think they're rather clever. 

[Mr. Misting he/him]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

Sorry, it feels like I'm mostly just knocking down your ideas, but I do think they're rather clever. 

No, these are all great things to point out. I guess I haven't studied the WOBs on gold as much as I thought I have. 

Though I feel like my ideas relating to vision and scouting aren't disproven by the blind WOB, just more unlikely. It would make sense that the shadow reflects you, but that doesn't change that the shadow can see behind you.

Edited September 29, 2024 by Mr. Misting