Hemalurgic fullborn armies

[sespe14 he/him]

Alright, we know that you can gain allomantic and feruchemical powers through hemalurgy, admittedly some of the power Is lost, although there might be a way to prevent this:

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swieczq
Had a hemalurgic spike been encased in aluminium, would it still decay?
 
Brandon Sanderson
Nobody has tried that! (It might work.)
 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/121/#e5060

This leaves you open to being manipulated by shards though, and the more spikes you have, the harder it Is to resist. We can see this with Marsh and the inquisitors being controlled by Ruin in era 1. We also know that aluminium helmets can help to avoid this mind control

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Questioner
The Lord Ruler used a lot of metal for shielding and stuff. But if he had had an aluminum helmet himself, would it have protected him from Ruin's influence at all, or would the spikes overcome that?
 
Brandon Sanderson
Aluminum helmet would help in that situation. Aluminum could very well have been something useful for resisting, yeah.
 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/472/#e14926

Anyways, thanks to this, we know there Is a way to have all the allomantic and feruchemical powers with little backlash, since aluminium will become so common and cheap, it would be easy to avoid this, or at least to prevent a shard from fully taking control of yourself, although there are more methods to avoid this mind control.

Ok, i will give two things that could happen with all this in lunes

First: an evil organization (like the Set) could start mass killing mistings and ferrings with spikes to get the power for themselves creating armies of fullborns, mistborns, full feruchemists, twinborns (with or without compounding), mistings and ferrings.

Second: there will be like a donor (voluntary or not) system so that when you are close to die someone spikes you to preserve the power and give it to others and make something like a government army full of fullborns, mistborns, full feruchemists, twinborns (with or without compounding), mistings and ferrings.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

14 minutes ago, sespe14 said:

Alright, we know that you can gain allomantic and feruchemical powers through hemalurgy, admittedly some of the power Is lost, although there might be a way to prevent this:

This leaves you open to being manipulated by shards though, and the more spikes you have, the harder it Is to resist. We can see this with Marsh and the inquisitors being controlled by Ruin in era 1. We also know that aluminium helmets can help to avoid this mind control

Anyways, thanks to this, we know there Is a way to have all the allomantic and feruchemical powers with little backlash, since aluminium will become so common and cheap, it would be easy to avoid this, or at least to prevent a shard from fully taking control of yourself, although there are more methods to avoid this mind control.

Ok, i will give two things that could happen with all this in lunes

First: an evil organization (like the Set) could start mass killing mistings and ferrings with spikes to get the power for themselves creating armies of fullborns, mistborns, full feruchemists, twinborns (with or without compounding), mistings and ferrings.

Second: there will be like a donor (voluntary or not) system so that when you are close to die someone spikes you to preserve the power and give it to others and make something like a government army full of fullborns, mistborns, full feruchemists, twinborns (with or without compounding), mistings and ferrings.

If I were to try this, I would use mostly compounding twinborn because of the hemaluric compounding retcon

[sespe14 he/him]

22 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

If I were to try this, I would use mostly compounding twinborn because of the hemaluric compounding retcon

It would also be the easiest and cheapest way that allows for multiple powerful individuals with less recourses. Or thats what i think at the very least.

Also, i wasnt aware there was a retcon on how hemalurgic compounding works, i'll have to check on that later

[Duxredux he/him]

There's several complications with this that I will lay out.

First issue that as of Era 2 there is an limit to the number of spikes that someone gain gain powers from. Under the current management with Harmony, Ruin is subservient to Preservation. This is talked about in TLM Arcanum - during the days before the Catacendre Ruin was exerting significant force on the souls of men, allowing far greater warping and powers than the human soul was ever meant to withstand. While we don't know the upper limit, as of Era 2 there is a limit to the number of power granting spikes - put in more and they simply don't gain more powers. Steel Inquisitors cannot currently be made with known methods.

Complication two is that by my understanding there are two distinct parts to the Law of Hemalurgic Decay. The first is that when harvesting a power from a human donor, there is a loss of strength during the process. This is the case even when driving the spike directly through the donor into the recipient. The second is that if a spike is left outside of a human body, chunk of meat, or jar of blood (as was confirmed during the Final Empire), the power will decay up to a minimum threshold. I suspect that WoB about wrapping a spike in Aluminum is talking the secod category.

Issue three is the strain of having that many spikes is hard. It's taxing to have the soul warped to that degree - Marsh reported that the spikes throbbed and the Inquisitors needed significantly more rest and sleep than normal humans. To get all 32 powers in a single individual, that's probably around 15-16 spikes if the recipient started as a Mistborn or Full Feruchemist, but more likely would take 30-32 spikes which is far above Marsh's 22. We can cut that down if we add in Malwish Medallions, but those generally grant only 2-3 powers at a time. If we're counting the Bands as a manufacturable option, then the exercise is moot. Sure, being ancient doesn't help, but Marsh was not doing too hot last time we saw him, especially when not puppeted by Ruin, and it's canon that Marsh's will power is extraordinary (at least it was during HoA).

It's also worth noting that proportionally there are far fewer Feruchemists than there are Allomancers. The Feruchemists had just been culled by the Steel Inquisitors while the Mists had raised the Allomantic potential of many of the Skaa survivors. Expect to see a unbalanced army for a long time. If I remember right there were only like 2 or 3 known Steelrunners during Wax's time. 

I think there's a reason that Set didn't just harvest powers from the populace and turned to Eugenics and nonlethal spiking to develop powers. Just waiting for people to normally be born, identifying them, and successfully harvesting their power is costly and time consuming - probably doubly so for Gnat Mistings with the coveted A-Duralumin. It's nice to dream about this kind of army, but I don't think it's currently plausible for Scadrial. Amassing this power could take centuries without something to accelerate the process - and Scadrian's version of immortality has major drawbacks.

Also, welcome to the Shard sespe14!

Edited May 22, 2025 by Duxredux

[sespe14 he/him]

Alright, i had forgotten most of that information and it Is quite important for the subject.

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39 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Complication two is that by my understanding there are two distinct parts to the Law of Hemalurgic Decay. The first is that when harvesting a power from a human donor, there is a loss of strength during the process. This is the case even when driving the spike directly through the donor into the recipient. The second is that if a spike is left outside of a human body, chunk of meat, or jar of blood (as was confirmed during the Final Empire), the power will decay up to a minimum threshold. I suspect that WoB about wrapping a spike in Aluminum is talking the secod category.

There are some ways to preserve them for some time, as you said, and the process i imagine would probably be fast: they take your powers, transport them somewhere with people who maybe trained with unsealed metalminds and give it to them.

Also, i remember somewhere in era 2 it was said that you can take the power and leave the person alive, this could mean not only taking powers from people about to die, but also from people who doesnt want them or criminals or deserters at some war. Idk i'm just stating possibilities

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39 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

It's also worth noting that proportionally there are far fewer Feruchemists than there are Allomancers. The Feruchemists had just been culled by the Steel Inquisitors while the Mists had raised the Allomantic potential of many of the Skaa survivors. Expect to see a unbalanced army for a long time. If I remember right there were only like 2 or 3 known Steelrunners during Wax's time. 

I think there's a reason that Set didn't just harvest powers from the populace and turned to Eugenics and nonlethal spiking to develop powers. Just waiting for people to normally be born, identifying them, and successfully harvesting their power is costly and time consuming - probably doubly so for Gnat Mistings with the coveted A-Duralumin. It's nice to dream about this kind of army, but I don't think it's currently plausible for Scadrial. Amassing this power could take centuries without something to accelerate the process - and Scadrian's version of immortality has major drawbacks.

I should have probably specified, but i didnt mean we would get this on era 3 (although we could get a little bit). I was looking more at the possible ciberpunk era and the space opera era. Which by then i'm guessing it will be more than possible with so many advancements, though who knows. It Is but a theory.

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39 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

There's several complications with this that I will lay out.

First issue that as of Era 2 there is an limit to the number of spikes that someone gain gain powers from. Under the current management with Harmony, Ruin is subservient to Preservation. This is talked about in TLM Arcanum - during the days before the Catacendre Ruin was exerting significant force on the souls of men, allowing far greater warping and powers than the human soul was ever meant to withstand. While we don't know the upper limit, as of Era 2 there is a limit to the number of power granting spikes - put in more and they simply don't gain more powers. Steel Inquisitors cannot currently be made with known methods.

(...)

Issue three is the strain of having that many spikes is hard. It's taxing to have the soul warped to that degree - Marsh reported that the spikes throbbed and the Inquisitors needed significantly more rest and sleep than normal humans. To get all 32 powers in a single individual, that's probably around 15-16 spikes if the recipient started as a Mistborn or Full Feruchemist, but more likely would take 30-32 spikes which is far above Marsh's 22. We can cut that down if we add in Malwish Medallions, but those generally grant only 2-3 powers at a time. If we're counting the Bands as a manufacturable option, then the exercise is moot. Sure, being ancient doesn't help, but Marsh was not doing too hot last time we saw him, especially when not puppeted by Ruin, and it's canon that Marsh's will power is extraordinary (at least it was during HoA).

So, we know there indeed Is an upper limit to how many hemalurgic spikes a person can use, both in the sense that it stops giving you abilities and it takes a great toll that humans from current eras cannot withstand.

So lets say that we will try to keep the spikes on a single person to a minimum, so maybe two spikes to allow compounding and one more to complement the others (like duralumin allomancy). We could also assume access to unsealed metalminds will grow as the eras pass. Allowing for further power.

We also know that lerasium and atium can be created from harmonium, allowing for mistborns to be created without the use of hemalurgy. And there Is one WoB that suggests that something similar could be done to create full feruchemists

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Yoitsthew
Would a lerasium/atium alloy create a Feruchemist, rather than an atium misting?? What with the way that it’s an alloy of god metals, and the way that lerasium can be used to acquire other magics? As far as I know there is no lerasium left currently, so this one is also just for my curiosity!!
 
Brandon Sanderson
You can use the god metals from Scadrial to make a Feruchemist, but I have to RAFO the actual means.
 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406/#e14146

Maybe through burning harmonium (although something would have to be done to avoid exploding yourself)

Anyways, with advancements, access to these god metals could become easier and perhaps the opportunity to create fullborns without hemalurgy would rise

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39 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Also, welcome to the Shard sespe14

Thx!