Allomancy-Only Mind Control

[Trusk'our he/him]

Inspired by mine and @Frustration's talk about Ghostblood mindcontrol tactics, I had an idea.

Allomancy has been described by Brandon as being comparable to waves that lap at the outside of someone's soul. There, they can influence the individual and push or pull on their emotions. 

If there are cracks in the Spiritweb, those waves of Investiture can squeeze in and whisper into the actual mind of the person. And if the cracks are wide enough, the Allomancer may even be able to dominate the other's personality and will.

Normally, this isn't an issue. It appears that the standard Spiritweb simply does not open itself up enough to be influenced that way.

However, we see that powerful emotions can be strong enough to Snap people, and trauma cracks open the Spiritweb even more.

To me, this suggests that Emotional Allomancers controlling people is largely a matter of power, not fundamental inability. Just like how you can shove on metals in a person's body with Allomancy, you just need an unreasonable amount of force.

If you have enough raw Emotional Allomancy, it should crack open the Spiritweb, probably causing very real damage in the process and exposing their Spiritweb to greater control. But if mind control or brainwashing is all you seek, you're in a good position. 

 

Now, to address the largest counter argument- if it's a simple matter of raw power, why couldn't Ruin or Odium or Harmony do this? They have functionally infinite power. 

I don't believe we've actually seen a Shard with that level of freedom yet. Odium had some serious restrictions placed on him by his oaths with Honor, and Ruin was constantly being countered by Preservation's power- which had an even greater Investment in the humans trying to be influenced by Ruin (though spikes opened humans up more and stappled on a greater Connection to Ruin, letting the Shard supercede its rival). Harmony struggled with any form of action and Autonomy fiddled with his abilities further, possibly not only via Trellium but also more directly.

Another way to look at it is to ask: if the Shard was free to do so, why exactly couldn't it control a Spiritweb? Just crack it open manually and they're good to go. I mean, Hemalurgy can do it pretty easily so there's precedence for it.

 

Rounding back to my initial idea, I don't think this would be an efficient process by any means- Steelpushing on a non-metal portion of a humans body will require astronomically more power than on a simple coin, just like how it's cheaper to spike someone and then Soothe them, but if you had the raw power I think it's possible to wear down and crack open a Spiritweb. 

It also may require specific Intent or multiple uses to work. But say a Rioter and a Nicroburst decided to work together and stomach full of zinc to burn, I think they could pull it off on someone and directly hijack their autonomy, at least temporarily (since the cracks aren't being artificially held open by Hemalurgic spikes and since their mind's baseline isn't being weakened in the same way some constructs like Koloss are, they could probably choose to break free after a period of time).

Edited January 31 by Trusk'our

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

8 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Inspired by mine and @Frustration's talk about Ghostblood mindcontrol tactics, I had an idea.

Allomancy has been described by Brandon as being comparable to waves that lap at the outside of someone's soul. There, they can influence the individual and push or pull on their emotions. 

If there are cracks in the Spiritweb, those waves of Investiture can squeeze in and whisper into the actual mind of the person. And if the cracks are wide enough, the Allomancer may even be able to dominate the other's personality and will.

Normally, this isn't an issue. It appears that the standard Spiritweb simply does not open itself up enough to be influenced that way.

However, we see that powerful emotions can be strong enough to Snap people, and trauma cracks open the Spiritweb even more.

To me, this suggests that Emotional Allomancers controlling people is largely a matter of power, not fundamental inability. Just like how you can shove on metals in a person's body with Allomancy, you just need an unreasonable amount of force.

If you have enough raw Emotional Allomancy, it should crack open the Spiritweb, probably causing very real damage in the process and exposing their Spiritweb to greater control. But if mind control or brainwashing is all you seek, you're in a good position. 

 

Now, to address the largest counter argument- if it's a simple matter of raw power, why couldn't Ruin or Odium or Harmony do this? They have functionally infinite power. 

I don't believe we've actually seen a Shard with that level of freedom yet. Odium had some serious restrictions placed on him by his oaths with Honor, and Ruin was constantly being countered by Preservation's power- which had an even greater Investment in the humans trying to be influenced by Ruin (though spikes opened humans up more and stappled on a greater Connection to Ruin, letting the Shard supercede its rival). Harmony struggled with any form of action and Autonomy fiddled with his abilities further, possibly not only via Trellium but also more directly.

Another way to look at it is to ask: if the Shard was free to do so, why exactly couldn't it control a Spiritweb? Just crack it open manually and they're good to go. I mean, Hemalurgy can do it pretty easily so there's precedence for it.

 

Rounding back to my initial idea, I don't think this would be an efficient process by any means- Steelpushing on a non-metal portion of a humans body will require astronomically more power than on a simple coin, just like how it's cheaper to spike someone and then Soothe them, but if you had the raw power I think it's possible to wear down and crack open a Spiritweb. 

It also may require specific Intent or multiple uses to work. But say a Rioter and a Nicroburst decided to work together and stomach full of zinc to burn, I think they could pull it off on someone and directly hijack their autonomy, at least temporarily (since the cracks aren't being artificially held open by Hemalurgic spikes and since their mind's baseline isn't being weakened in the same way some constructs like Koloss are, they could probably choose to break free after a period of time).

We know that in begining of TFE, all allomancers were stronger, and any rioter or soother could mind control a kandra. So I believe maybe an early TFE rioter and nicroburst could possibly do it, but era 2 levels of power? Definitely not. A Nicrosil compounder (if f-nicrosil works how I think) could possibly get an era 2 rioter to that level, but I would agree it mostly be an option for a shard.

Who knows, maybe less well seen, less bound shards do it a lot more.

Or maybe they just haven't thought about it (shards only get their infinite information when they think about the problem)

Edited February 1 by CoderDrag0n8

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

Note that in TLM, a massively overkill Rioting fueled by pure Investiture isn't enough to break into Entrone's spiritweb, even though he's been spiked four times (yes, he does have a Trellium spike, but that shouldn't matter with regards to pure spiritweb damage). Your spiritweb would need to be substantially more screwed up than just having experienced massive trauma for it to be open to Allomantic mind control.

[Trusk'our he/him]

59 minutes ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

Note that in TLM, a massively overkill Rioting fueled by pure Investiture isn't enough to break into Entrone's spiritweb, even though he's been spiked four times (yes, he does have a Trellium spike, but that shouldn't matter with regards to pure spiritweb damage). Your spiritweb would need to be substantially more screwed up than just having experienced massive trauma for it to be open to Allomantic mind control.

Fair point, but do we know he wasn't being controlled in some way? We never got a direct PoV from either, and Marasi was on a time crunch. Plus, we don't know how Invested he was- perhaps his surprising physical strength came from Autonomy or something else. 

There would also be an Intent factor, though admittedly that's kind of wobbly ground to stand on.

 

It's a good example, but I think that there are enough plausible unknowns that it could be danced around.