Forcing Perception

[Trusk'our he/him]

Controlling an individual pierced by too much Hemalurgy is weird. It isn't like puppeteering their body, it's more like an extreme emotional pressure that tricks the mind into thinking and feeling exactly the way the external influence wants.

Spoiler

The Hero of Ages Annotations - Arcanum

Brandon Sanderson

The Resolution

TenSoon and the other kandra resist Ruin and are able to pull the spikes from their shoulders. There are a couple of reasons why they can do this.

The power that Allomancers have to take control of them is the same power Ruin has. That control is exerted in the form of mental pressure through emotional Allomancy. As can be seen from Marsh's viewpoint, it is more than simply forcing the body to act as Ruin wishes. The extreme pressure on emotions changes the very way the mind thinks, tricking it into doing exactly what Ruin wants. The flaw in Hemalurgists leaves them open to this kind of manipulation.

Kandra, who only have two spikes, are far more difficult to control than koloss or Inquisitors. Vin is able to control TenSoon with ease in book two, but that's partially because he wanted her to do so. He would have been able to resist her. If she'd continued to push, she could have broken him, but it would have taken time.

Even Ruin's pressure wasn't enough to take control immediately. The kandra had a few moments during which they could overcome him and maintain their free will. Beyond that, they were in a cavern surrounded by metal ore in the walls, making it very difficult for Ruin to see what was going on and interfering with his ability to control them.

Marsh had most of his own thoughts overwritten by Ruin during HoA, and it took great effort just to maintain a tiny fraction of his former personality.

So, let's say your buddy gets a permanent injury, or perhaps was born with a disability that cannot be healed even if you graft on a Bloodmaker's power.

You use Hemalurgy to grant them the healing power anyway, then add on three or more little spikes you can easily and safely remove later. Then you give yourself Emotional Allomancy and duralumin Allomancy with Hemalurgy or get an Emotional Allomancer plus a Nicroburst to blast your friend. The Allomancy is meant to change their thoughts so that they are temporarily tricked into believing they aren't in their natural state, allowing them to tap health and remove whatever lasting disability they have as they accept the changes wrought by the intrusive thoughts.

It would be a brutal way of fixing the problem and requires access to various Invested powers but might have a shot of working (assuming you can't just do Coppermind/Goldmind shenanigans instead).

 

 

I did consider that you might be able to use this more aggressively on enemy Invested, Coinshotting low-charge Hemalurgic bits into enemies, then blasting with duralumin/zinc/brass to briefly overwrite a regenerating opponent's physical abilities, but it's probably too convoluted to be useful in an actual fight (given that aluminum will kill Invested more easily, that Hemalurgy/Duralumin + Emotional Allomancy is a big slammer anyway, and that Hemalurgic projectiles will mess your enemies up horribly regardless).