Non-Ruin Hemalurgy

[Trusk'our he/him]

We now have our first example of an exotic spike as of WaT- one that relies on crystal instead of metal. 

This feels pretty big to me, as Ruin's focus for Investiture is the sixteen metals used for all Metallic Arts. So at this time I find it unlikely that the Shard of Ruin is being used in Moash's eye spikes. 

Instead, I suspect that Hemalurgy has two distinct processes. The first is to Invest a physical medium, such as a spike, and the second is to actually graft that Investiture to another being's Spiritweb via the PR. 

If this is the case, then I suspect what Battar learned to do was to either capture Spren inside a spike-shaped gemstone or to pin Spren with such spikes to be used in grafting onto human Spiritwebs. Either way, I don't currently think Ruin’s Shard was involved, but instead just the Rosharan Realmatics between Spren and gemstones. 

If this holds true, it makes me think that other exotic types of spikes could be used to splice Spiritwebs. 

Perhaps an Awakened piece of bone or ivory whittled into a spike could be used, provided the Command used to Invest it shaped a functional Spiritweb. 

Or, perhaps if a Metalmind was twittled with enough to develop a basic Spiritweb it could become a viable Hemalurgic spike, the ability granted depending on the attribute stored. 

Whatever the case, I think more now that Ruin is just the facilitator for the initial Investment of Scadrian spikes, not necessarily the use of them. Perhaps the metals used on Scadrial don't even strictly need certain bindpoints- if the metal helps focus what is Investing the spike, then it's probably just the contents of the spike that matter for the placement (though this probably changes little for Scadrian Hemalurgy, which have metals focusing what is taken, it would be of greater importance to exotic spikes that don't have those focuses).

[Through The Living Grub He/Him]

22 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

So at this time I find it unlikely that the Shard of Ruin is being used in Moash's eye spikes. 

Odds are this is true, as many MoI are just different forms of old magic systems (ex: Lightweaving) so Ruin is using a form of this perhaps, more geared to that Intent.

 

24 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Either way, I don't currently think Ruin’s Shard was involved, but instead just the Rosharan Realmatics between Spren and gemstones. 

I think what is happening is that a spike takes a bit of a soul, and grafts it onto another. The important thing about the spike is that it must hold Investiture, and gemstones would be nice because they hold more Investiture than metal. This is in a WoB that I can't find.

 

30 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Perhaps the metals used on Scadrial don't even strictly need certain bindpoints- if the metal helps focus what is Investing the spike, then it's probably just the contents of the spike that matter for the placement

I believe that is how this works

 

32 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Perhaps an Awakened piece of bone or ivory whittled into a spike could be used, provided the Command used to Invest it shaped a functional Spiritweb

If it is Awakened, then Investiture resists Investiture. Why would you need to Awaken it? Metals and gemstones are the best Investiture storage units right now, so using another material is just shooting your own foot.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

29 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

If this is the case, then I suspect what Battar learned to do was to either capture Spren inside a spike-shaped gemstone or to pin Spren with such spikes to be used in grafting onto human Spiritwebs.

The spikes shine with the color of Voidlight. A spren should not do that. Neither should a spike charged in the conventional manner. Hence I think we must assume that they are basically charged with Voidlight they got from Odium.

32 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Whatever the case, I think more now that Ruin is just the facilitator for the initial Investment of Scadrian spikes, not necessarily the use of them. Perhaps the metals used on Scadrial don't even strictly need certain bindpoints- if the metal helps focus what is Investing the spike, then it's probably just the contents of the spike that matter for the placement (though this probably changes little for Scadrian Hemalurgy, which have metals focusing what is taken, it would be of greater importance to exotic spikes that don't have those focuses).

Apparently the same bind points for sight were used. That suggests that the points matter everywhere.

And that gives us the third function of hemalurgy: It adjusts the body. Ramming a pair of spikes through your brain should kill you.

[Trusk'our he/him]

3 hours ago, Xiahida said:

I think what is happening is that a spike takes a bit of a soul, and grafts it onto another. The important thing about the spike is that it must hold Investiture, and gemstones would be nice because they hold more Investiture than metal. This is in a WoB that I can't find.

Is this the one you're referring to?

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/522-dragonsteel-2023/#e16311

Questioner

Assuming you have a way to siphon out a Vessel from a Shard, how much hemalurgic metal would be required to contain that Vessel?

Brandon Sanderson

An astronomically large amount. Oh, the Vessel? Or contain a Shard? The Vessel, just a little dude... not that much. Basically, like a decent-sized gemstone would hold an Unmade, and that's more Investiture than we're talking about.

Questioner

Can hemalurgic metal hold around the same amount of an Invested creature as a pure gemstone?

Brandon Sanderson

No, gemstones can do more.

 

3 hours ago, Xiahida said:

If it is Awakened, then Investiture resists Investiture. Why would you need to Awaken it? Metals and gemstones are the best Investiture storage units right now, so using another material is just shooting your own foot.

My thinking was that you wouldn't try to Awaken a pre-Invested spike, but that you'd try to Awaken an organic material with the Intent of using that Bio-Chroma as the Hemalurgic power.

Then you get an effect you can give to others, but it can be retrieved and moved around after they pass or it is given back.

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The spikes shine with the color of Voidlight. A spren should not do that. Neither should a spike charged in the conventional manner. Hence I think we must assume that they are basically charged with Voidlight they got from Odium.

Perhaps they were trapped/pinned Secretspren, which are known for detecting Investiture use.

Those are of Odium, so gemstones holding them would probably have a Voidlight appearance. 

I don't know if raw Investiture can be used to augment a Spiritweb in that way. . . Maybe if it worked by picking up on what was already present in that bindpoint it could, maybe a little like the experimental Set spikes. But even those were harvested from human Spiritwebs.

I hadn’t thought of that before, but perhaps it could work. Definitely need more examples before I'm confident about it though. 

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

And that gives us the third function of hemalurgy: It adjusts the body. Ramming a pair of spikes through your brain should kill you.

I think the splicing half does that automatically. 

If you modify your Spiritweb to change its "shape" to include both the Spiritweb of the medium and of the Spiritweb of the Spren/human/Investiture I think your PR self would automatically adapt to its presence as well.

Edited March 6, 2025 by Trusk'our

[Through The Living Grub He/Him]

35 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Is this the one you're referring to?

 

Yes, thanks.

 

36 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

My thinking was that you wouldn't try to Awaken a pre-Invested spike, but that you'd try to Awaken an organic material with the Intent of using that Bio-Chroma as the Hemalurgic power.

Then you get an effect you can give to others, but it can be retrieved and moved around after they pass or it is given back.

What power would that even give? 

[Trusk'our he/him]

25 minutes ago, Xiahida said:

What power would that even give? 

If it worked at all I'd assume it would depend on the Command used and the skill of the Awakener.

Like, a Command to "be my strength" would function like a Koloss's iron spike.

[Nitpicking]

On 3/6/2025 at 12:26 PM, Trusk'our said:

Perhaps an Awakened piece of bone or ivory whittled into a spike could be used, provided the Command used to Invest it shaped a functional Spiritweb. 

How about a dragon's bone (as in Tamu Keks)? Or Dragonsteel? The weird crystal from Burning Man that Sigzil uses to siphon off his excess energy? Raysium? Etc.

[Ashbringer he/him]

If anyone at Burning Man offers you a weird crystal, it's probably drugs.

Although if you were going to find a sunheart anywhere on Earth, Burning Man's probably not a bad place to look...

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 3/8/2025 at 8:55 PM, Nitpicking said:

How about a dragon's bone (as in Tamu Keks)? Or Dragonsteel? The weird crystal from Burning Man that Sigzil uses to siphon off his excess energy? Raysium? Etc.

Well, Raysium is a Godmetal, automatically checking it as a candidate for Hemalurgy- probably Ruin's version, at least.

Dragonsteel is almost certainly a type of physical Investiture, making me think it'd be in a similar boat.

Tamu Keks are probably already Invested, given their communication abilities, so. . . maybe? I'd think it'd be harder though at the very least, depending on their Investiture levels.

The sunhearts in TSM actually seem to be in a similar boat to Hemalurgy already, come to think of it. Charred creation is probably Realmatically close to Hemalurgy at least, given the Cinder King's ability to control Charred, needing to implant the Cinderheart in the body to gain its power, and the general damage said Cinderheart does to its host.

[Ashbringer he/him]

Dragonsteel would be a good target for Awakening, if it's really a pseudo-living metal.

[Nitpicking]

6 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

Dragonsteel would be a good target for Awakening, if it's really a pseudo-living metal.

If it's Invested, it becomes harder to Awaken than ordinary metal, which is really, really difficult.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 3/6/2025 at 7:38 PM, Trusk'our said:

Perhaps they were trapped/pinned Secretspren, which are known for detecting Investiture use.

Those are of Odium, so gemstones holding them would probably have a Voidlight appearance.

I don't think the develoment time line would work. Secretspren have been available for only a year or so.

It seems to me that the development of the "crystal inquisitors" was inspired by reports from Scadrial. Hence it is likely that the development started centuries ago and she had no reason to assume that spren would work any better than other Investiture. In fact why start with something as complex and hard to get as a Spren? Especially if the reports most likely spoke about Invested spikes and not the way they were created. The Steel Ministry did not publish manuals on how to make Steel Inquisitors, but the results were visible to the public and sample spikes may have been obtained. Nor do I think that she started out by ramming spikes into somebody's head. That is pretty gruesome and makes finding test subjects needlessly difficult, given that the first ones most likely died.