Hemalurgy's Weak Intent

[Trusk'our he/him]

Fairly certain I've had this idea before, but it wasn't as refined. I have a good WoB to back it up now.

Hemalurgy's been used on Scadrial for a while, but, do they really understand what they're doing when they use it?

Intent is very, very important when trying to perform tasks with Investiture, and the powerful and specific you want to be, the more refined your Intent must be. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/498-youtube-spoiler-stream-4/#e15700

Aradanftw

<redacted> and Vin both have used magic subconsciously. <redacted>, and Vin burning pewter while being beaten. Does that mean that Intent is not always required, or is a simple Intent like "I will be strong" enough to activate the magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to go with the simple Intent answer that you're giving there. So, at the basic level... the more specific and the more powerful you want to be, the more you need to understand your Intent, is where this is. The body has an Intent. <redacted> uses the magic while he's unconscious, right? The Intent is survive, basically the body knowing it needs to survive. And this is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems, just kind of in the base, physical sense, your body knowing how to use what it's been given, is going to happen. You're going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, you can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Yes, it's the second one in that you can make the argument that your body just wants to survive, and things like this, but Intent really starts to play into it when you're doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like your ability to focus, right? You can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that you want to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in the magic systems is often Intent-related.

This makes me wonder, is Hemalurgy being used incorrectly?

Basically, Hemalurgy is like a knife in some ways, cutting off parts of one being to sew onto another. But, if the Spiritweb isn't really understood by most Hemalurgists and they're just going off the most basic instructions of "I stab here and get this ability" then is this a weak Intent?

Perhaps this is part if why attribute spikes mess up their bearers so much- you're using a butcher's knife where you need a scalpel, so you unintentionally rip off more Spiritweb than you need, and since the extra pieces are relevant to core attributes the extra stuff warps the spike's recipient more.

This could be comparable to AI art, but with your soul. The less refined your Intent, the more input the inhuman will of the Investiture has. The more specific your Intent, the more manually you do the work.

Of course, Ruin himself wanted maximum destruction, so he wouldn't have moderated the power, but perhaps Hemalurgy can be less gruesome in the future given the pivotal roll I assume it will play with the other Metallic Arts in Scadrial's story.

Edited November 16, 2024 by Trusk'our

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Fairly certain I've had this idea before, but it wasn't as refined. I have a good WoB to back it up now.

Hemalurgy's been used on Scadrial for a while, but, do they really understand what they're doing when they use it?

Intent is very, very important when trying to perform tasks with Investiture, and the powerful and specific you want to be, the more refined your Intent must be. 

  Hide contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/498-youtube-spoiler-stream-4/#e15700

Aradanftw

<redacted> and Vin both have used magic subconsciously. <redacted>, and Vin burning pewter while being beaten. Does that mean that Intent is not always required, or is a simple Intent like "I will be strong" enough to activate the magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to go with the simple Intent answer that you're giving there. So, at the basic level... the more specific and the more powerful you want to be, the more you need to understand your Intent, is where this is. The body has an Intent. <redacted> uses the magic while he's unconscious, right? The Intent is survive, basically the body knowing it needs to survive. And this is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems, just kind of in the base, physical sense, your body knowing how to use what it's been given, is going to happen. You're going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, you can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Yes, it's the second one in that you can make the argument that your body just wants to survive, and things like this, but Intent really starts to play into it when you're doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like your ability to focus, right? You can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that you want to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in the magic systems is often Intent-related.

This makes me wonder, is Hemalurgy being used incorrectly?

Basically, Hemalurgy is like a knife in some ways, cutting off parts of one being to sew onto another. But, if the Spiritweb isn't really understood by most Hemalurgists and they're just going off the most basic instructions of "I stab here and get this ability" then is this a weak Intent?

Perhaps this is part if why attribute spikes mess up their bearers so much- you're using a butcher's knife where you need a scalpel, so you unintentionally rip off more Spiritweb than you need and the extra stuff warps the spike's recipient more. Like AI art, but with your soul instead of a picture. 

Of course, Ruin himself wanted maximum destruction, so he wouldn't have moderated the power, but perhaps Hemalurgy can be less gruesome in the future given the pivotal roll I assume it will play with the other Metallic Arts in Scadrial's story.

 

This was a really good summary and critique in my opinion.

First, to the issue of Intent and specificity:

Recall: a general in an army who understands nothing around himself specifically outranks and may freely override the Intent and wishes of any specification officer under him, so I think that WoB has to be treated as only being generally true (all puns intended).

Second, to the question of correctness: this is purely subjective and a matter of opinion. (Edit: not-yet-canon bits underlined). The southerners seem to use hemalurgy to ritualistically sacrifice people for the betterment and improvement of society at large technologically in a ruthlessly utilitarian, possibly religious, sense of the word. The northerners have gangsters and mobsters who use it to murder wealthy children of nobles and conduct nazi-esque experiments trying to consolidate and/or breed a more powerful strain of human to support their ambitions for interplanetary trade, exploration, and continued evolution...I'm not sure either sides of that spectrum can be called "correct," but they've been doing it for a long time now and it's getting baked into the cake at this point.

Third, to the point of systemic weakness in hemalurgy as an artform:

I 100% agree. A normal person is just not mentally capable of conducting hemalurgic operations with the level of awareness and precision needed to artifice a novel creature out of test subjects. It's like scadrians are playing kickball with a pile of unexploded nuclear bombs left for them by an evil god because...well...that's pretty much what was given to them and by whom.  even the lord ruler struggled with hemalurgy and he had all the time and money in the world to try whatever he could imagine with it.

Edited November 16, 2024 by Lewis Nethur

[Treamayne]

On 11/16/2024 at 9:50 AM, Trusk'our said:

Like AI art, but with your soul instead of a picture.

One could argue that AI Art does significant harm to one's soul.

On 11/16/2024 at 9:50 AM, Trusk'our said:

Basically, Hemalurgy is like a knife in some ways, cutting off parts of one being to sew onto another. But, if the Spiritweb isn't really understood by most Hemalurgists and they're just going off the most basic instructions of "I stab here and get this ability" then is this a weak Intent?

Perhaps this is part if why attribute spikes mess up their bearers so much- you're using a butcher's knife where you need a scalpel, so you unintentionally rip off more Spiritweb than you need and the extra stuff warps the spike's recipient more.

I do agree that Intent is not well understood by the end of Era 2, though I would argue Rashek had a better basic understanding of it after the Well, but only as it applied to the three races he concieved while holding the power (which, combined with a shepherd's "knowledge" of science, is why his H-experiments later did not yeild significant results) - the combination bind points, correct intent for which attribute/MoI to gather from that point, and the correct placement in the recipient need to mesh for a functional final product. However, I would argue that stealing attributes is always going to warp the recipient more:

1. An MoI is like this extra bit added to the whole (beings without it are not incomplete) and lopping that off or adding it on is something Realmatics already accounts for - bits of MoI added to the base. However, an attribute is part of the normal whole (if that attribute were missing in a being, they would be incomplete - like the Parshmen missing Connection/Identity/Both) which also means that when you add that to a being, they now have two of the same bit, from different sources - and while they may reinforce each other for a more strongly expressed attribute, they will also likely cause interference because they simply don't-quite-match.
2. Even if you are not pulling "extra stuff" you are still using an innate part of the spiritweb, which WoB has said will always cause more significant changes. (but I agree your theory may minimize how that is expressed, or possibly use intent to influence how that is expressed)

Good post, thank you.

WoB:

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

The Mechanism of Hemalurgy

The Blessings and the workings of Hemalurgy gave me some trouble as I designed the second and third books of this series. On one hand, I liked the way Hemalurgy worked by stealing powers from Allomancers or Feruchemists and giving them to other people. However, if I was going to limit myself to sixteen metals and be able to steal both Allomancy and Feruchemy, that meant I needed a mechanism to determine which power got stolen. If, for instance, you drove a pewter spike into a person who was both an Allomancer and a Feruchemist, then how would that spike know which power to suck out and grant to the one who would gain it?

As I was toying with how this would work, I realized that I needed to work the kandra and the koloss into this as well. Only, it was ridiculous to assume that the Lord Ruler would kill Allomancers to make koloss. There weren't enough Allomancers, for one thing—plus it would be foolish to lose the power of an Allomancer to gain an inferior tool in a koloss.

So that meant koloss had to be made out of regular people, not Allomancers or Feruchemists. Suddenly I had another set of abilities that Hemalurgy had to be able to steal—the basic pieces of Preservation inside the souls of all men.

Hence the decision that where the spike was placed in the receiver, and how it was used to kill a person, influenced how the power was shaped. Now a pewter spike could steal any of a number of powers, based on how it was used. And regular people could be used instead of Allomancers—however, when that happened, the receiver was twisted much more than if an Allomantically charged spike or a Feruchemically charged spike was used.

My rationale for this is that if the spike is pulling out the pure power of Preservation—part of the power of all creation—and twisting it, it would change the body of the recipient greatly. Twisting them through use of the twisted power.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Nov. 17, 2009)

 

On 11/16/2024 at 10:27 AM, Lewis Nethur said:

The southerners seem to use hemalurgy to ritualistically sacrifice people for the betterment and improvement of society at large technologically in a ruthlessly utilitarian, possibly religious, sense of the word.

I think you need to source a statement like this, because that sounds like a lot of supposition. We still do not really know what excisors are or how they work, much less the cultural impact and implications of that process, as far as I know.

Edited November 17, 2024 by Treamayne
SPAG

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

13 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

...

I think you need to source a statement like this, because that sounds like a lot of supposition. We still do not really know what excisors are or how they work, much less the cultural impact and implications of that process, as far as I know.

That's fair pushback and I understand your point, but i don't have a source. I do however believe the etymology of the word "excisor" considered alongside the fact that Kelsier gifted the excisors to the southerners, who seem to regard him as a christ-like figure who saved their society, alongside the fact that they use these mysterious devices to somehow bestow power unto others (itself a symbolic operation) makes the process that they are using fairly self-evident.

I...don't think it's fair to classify it as a legitimate spoiler, but I also don't totally agree that it legitimately counts as mere supposition (although authors can and have changed the meaning of words before to suit their narrative...). I'll try to think of an appropriate caveat to add in those situations, point taken.

[Treamayne]

39 minutes ago, Lewis Nethur said:

don't think it's fair to classify it as a legitimate spoiler,

Who said it was a spoiler?

39 minutes ago, Lewis Nethur said:

That's fair pushback and I understand your point, but i don't have a source. I do however believe the etymology of the word "excisor" considered alongside the fact that Kelsier gifted the excisors to the southerners, who seem to regard him as a christ-like figure who saved their society, alongside the fact that they use these mysterious devices to somehow bestow power unto others (itself a symbolic operation) makes the process that they are using fairly self-evident.

Oh, I'm not saying I disagree (I proposed something like this back when BoM first released) - I'm just saying that when you do not preface with something like "I Think, My Theory, My Analysis, etc." then it reads like this theory is somehow Canon Fact and that will confuse new readers. I have no problem with most theories (agree or disagree) but I have a strong dislike for opinion-presented-as-fact. I'm Sorry.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

8 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Who said it was a spoiler?

Oh, I'm not saying I disagree (I proposed something like this back when BoM first released) - I'm just saying that when you do not preface with something like "I Think, My Theory, My Analysis, etc." then it reads like this theory is somehow Canon Fact and that will confuse new readers. I have no problem with most theories (agree or disagree) but I have a strong dislike for opinion-presented-as-fact. I'm Sorry.

Fair enough, i added some formatting to my original post, hopefully that helps. Regarding spoilers, sorry for the confusion, a spoiler tag is just how I would normally treat the sharing of information that is controversial or unconfirmed.

My retort to the "opinion-presented-as-fact" statement in this case is that:

Some words have origins and meanings and some intentionally do not, and I don't consider what I said to be a matter of opinion so much as a fact that many readers just haven't really noticed yet because it hasn't been explained to them (which is...kinda why i thought it interesting to share at all...) . I think your pushback would have been truly valid and it would have been a really uncool move on my part posting without formatting like i originally did if and only if BS had named excisors something arbitrary and random, like widgety-wackies, or fun-ruiners. No apologies warranted, they make me uncomfortable. I make loads of errors and cause lots of problems in real life too; I hear and feel you.

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 11/16/2024 at 10:27 AM, Lewis Nethur said:

This was a really good summary and critique in my opinion.

On 11/16/2024 at 10:39 AM, Treamayne said:

Good post, thank you.

Thanks guys! It's nice to know it's appreciated 

On 11/16/2024 at 10:39 AM, Treamayne said:

I do agree that Intent is not well understood by the end of Era 2, though I would argue Rashek had a better basic understanding of it after the Well, but only as it applied to the three races he concieved hile holding the power (which, combined with a shepherd's "knowledge" of science, is why his H-experiments later did not yeild significant results) - the combination bind points, correct intent for which attribute/MoI to gather from that point, and the correct placement in the recipient need to mesh for a functional final product. However, I would argue that stealing attributes is always going to warp the recipient more:

1. An MoI is like this extra bit added to the whole (beings without it are not incomplete) and lopping that off or adding it on is something Realmatics already accounts for - bits of MoI added to the base. However, an attribute is part of the normal whole (if that attribute were missing in a being, they would be imcomplete - like the Parshmen missing Connection/Identity/Both) which also means that when you add that to a being, they now have two of the same bit, from different sources - and while they may reinforce each other for a more strongly expressed attribute, they will also likely cause interference because they simply don't-quite-match.
2. Even if you are not pulling "extra stuff" you are still using an innate part of the spiritweb, which WoB has said will always cause more significant changes. (but I agree your theory may minimize how that is expressed, or possibly use intent to influence how that is expressed)

Makes sense to me.

The longer I think on it, the more steps there will be to figuring out Hemalurgy. Identity contamination isn't just the issue, the bridge between the spike and the recipient isn't just the issue, bindpoint placement isn't just the issue. It's probably all of them to some varying degree, plus more.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

1 minute ago, Trusk&#x27;our said:

Thanks guys! It's nice to know it's appreciated 

Makes sense to me.

The longer I think on it, the more steps there will be to figuring out Hemalurgy. Identity contamination isn't just the issue, the bridge between the spike and the recipient isn't just the issue, bindpoint placement isn't just the issue. It's probably all of them to some varying degree, plus more.

It's definitely hard beyond belief to figure out while limited to the physical realm observations available, yeah. Kelsier made some breakthroughs with apparently just a few years (give or take) in the CR (or possibly SR) though, so...the answer to some of the secrets are out there!