How do you think the Cyberpunk era of Scadrial could look alike?

[Sythrin]

Brandon has teased mulitble times that Mistborns sagas could be orientated on different genres of fantasy.
High fanatasy
Steampunk
Urban fantasy
Cyberpunk
Space Opera.

Not sure if he will still do it, but after playing Cyberpunk 2077, I am in Cyberpunk fether. Would like to hear by you how it could become? Do you think it will be just slight body modifications or will it go heavy in the body sculpting direction and introduce maybe things like Mantis-Shardblades?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Hemalurgy and cybernetics are a match made in the Beyond. Hemalurgic Spikes, when placed properly, warp the body to some extreme degrees, as shown by the Inquisitors whose hearts and brains are warped around the spikes. And without any infection, even with blood being passed around. There's no doubt in my mind that when technology advances ahead far enough, people will be inspired by the idea of putting metal inside your body to make you stronger and decide the next best step is to start putting full on technology inside your body.

There are many ideas for this, but I have a few I'd love to talk about.

-Modular Spike Systems: Having a set-up whre you can store many Hemalurgic Spikes within your body without them piercing you, and be able to switch between them rapidly. Could fake being a Mistborn by switching between the different powers. Could also go further by adding on some Unsealed Metalminds to give yourself even more powers than the "3 Spikes max unless you want to get turned into a meat puppet" limit would allow.

Could also allow easy transfer of Feruchemical Attributes through said Unsealed Metalminds, like Copperminds that would act like the BD's from Cyberpunk, plus Goldminds for quick healing. And so on.

Maybe there could also be a way for one to attach a cybernetic limb and have it be connected to your soul instead of your nerves through a spike, allowing you full control over it?

[Sythrin]

Hemalurgy and cybernetics are a match made in the Beyond. Hemalurgic Spikes, when placed properly, warp the body to some extreme degrees, as shown by the Inquisitors whose hearts and brains are warped around the spikes. And without any infection, even with blood being passed around. There's no doubt in my mind that when technology advances ahead far enough, people will be inspired by the idea of putting metal inside your body to make you stronger and decide the next best step is to start putting full on technology inside your body.
 

Do you think a cybernatic limb could be made into a hermalugic spike and than be easier to be attached to a person.

lets say you make a prostethic arm with a sharp end where the stump is supposed to be. Than you pierce a person with the sharp end and make it into a hermalurgic spike.

Than you pierce a crippled person without an arm at their stump. Making the prostehtic be installed without big medical complications?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

 

17 minutes ago, Sythrin said:

Do you think a cybernatic limb could be made into a hermalugic spike and than be easier to be attached to a person.

lets say you make a prostethic arm with a sharp end where the stump is supposed to be. Than you pierce a person with the sharp end and make it into a hermalurgic spike.

Than you pierce a crippled person without an arm at their stump. Making the prostehtic be installed without big medical complications?

That's what I'm thinking, stuff like that becomes a lot easier with how Hemalurgy functions. Just attach the technology to a spike then insert the right way and then you have an easy way to insert metal directly into a human body without risk of metal poisoning or infection. Which cuts out much of the hard part that comes with putting metal into one's body.

Then comes the complication of how the recipient is meant to actually control the arm, as Hemalurgy just allows the attachment, it won't do anything more than that. You'd need to find a way to directly connect it to the nerves, or perhaps the soul even?

But that part could be handled by the Cyberpunk Era being a post-modern setting and thus sci-fi tech, like directly connecting it to the nerves and what not to be controlled by the brain, which isn't exactly sci-fi anymore considering that there are prosthetics that function like that in real life.

[Sythrin]

21 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Then comes the complication of how the recipient is meant to actually control the arm, as Hemalurgy just allows the attachment, it won't do anything more than that. You'd need to find a way to directly connect it to the nerves, or perhaps the soul even?

I could see a case made for intent and maybe metal pushing/pulling?

the fine tuning, i dont know.

And than attach blades to the arms that have heat medallions to basicly make cybernatic mantis heat swords

[Trusk'our he/him]

3 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Maybe there could also be a way for one to attach a cybernetic limb and have it be connected to your soul instead of your nerves through a spike, allowing you full control over it?

I very strongly suspect you could add prosthetic limbs or organs via Hemalurgy. 

After all, Shardblades remove feeling and function when they sever the Spiritweb from limbs and organs. Attaching an extra Spiritweb piece with a physical extension should do the opposite. 

You'd likely need to do a little work on the spikes and prosthetics to make them work together, but it seems like an intuitive possibility. 

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Stepping away from how the technology and magic of the Cyberpunk Era, I think another possibility is thus:

Will Hemalurgy become public knowledge by this point?

Because I have a feeling that between Era 3 and the Space Age, the knowledge that Harmony has done almost everything he can to suppress will inevitably get out for anyone to learn and study for better or worse. Especially in the Information Age as Era 3 is the beginning of Scadrial's computer age. The ability for him and his agents to conceal such information will be gradually outstripped by the ability to spread such information. Or potentially, Discord might not even bother hiding it for whatever reason.

How would the world change when everyone knows that it's possible to take power from others? And how to do so?

I could see a Bad Future for Cyberpunk Scadrial where natural Metalborn are hunted by ruthless corporations to harvest their powers, with the rich and powerful doing everything they can to subvert the rule of law and basic human decency. Though I think its more liekly that, as the knowledge of non-lethal Hemalurgy spreads, corporations will coerce as many people as possible to willingly let themselves be spiked for the Preservation in them in exchange for monetary compensation, much like how Breaths are traded for money on Nalthis only much more painful.

According to the Set, it should take 20-30 non-metalborns to make a spike that should be able to grant a power, after being properly 'coded' to do so. So, I could see there being some kind of black market for this, with people either willingly giving up their Preservation and becoming a Drab-equivalent for money, or even it being a punishment for getting into debt with criminal groups or loan sharks.

[Nitpicking]

I wonder how specific an "ability" is, that you can spike out of someone.

If you formulate your Intent perfectly, can you spike out the ability to reject organs, thus making transplants incredibly easy? You could just let the spike "decay" and lose the ability to give that ability to someone else, nobody wants to be able to reject organs, it's an unwanted side effect of the ability to fight off infections.

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

Spiking something out would prolly end in death

but

There is promise in coding abilities or attributes into a spike and then burning it for compounding to gain attributes

Cuz like

We can think of Lerasium as a sort of Spike with Leras’ and Preservation’s spiritweb, and the same with Atium. Atium lets you temporarily see like a Shard can, and Lerasium gives you MoIs. In fact, Lerasium itself can be “coded” to modify what ability you get.

 

weird tangent

[Qianweilian He/him]

1 hour ago, Through the Living Wrath said:

Spiking something out would prolly end in death

Spiking stuff without the death of the victim is already a thing.

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

43 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

Spiking stuff without the death of the victim is already a thing.

Yeah, but to extract a physical ability in just one spike seems like it would take it too far

Maybe you could tactically (edit: I have no idea what word I meant to say here) plan like, one hundred spike to get rid of the ability without killing the person, but I doubt it

Edited Saturday at 06:19 PM by Through the Living Wrath

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Through the Living Wrath said:

There is promise in coding abilities or attributes into a spike and then burning it for compounding to gain attributes

Cuz like

We can think of Lerasium as a sort of Spike with Leras’ and Preservation’s spiritweb, and the same with Atium. Atium lets you temporarily see like a Shard can, and Lerasium gives you MoIs. In fact, Lerasium itself can be “coded” to modify what ability you get.

The weird thing with burning Hemalurgic spikes is that they will splice the Allomancer's Spiritweb with that of the spike. However, this won't allow you to bootleg your way into Lerasium- this process specifically won't grant you powers stored in a spike.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76-shadows-of-self-chicago-signing/#e6295

Questioner

If you burn a Hemalurgic spike, would it graft the piece of stolen soul onto your soul?

Brandon Sanderson

No, but it would have... There are some interesting effects there.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/210-torcom-qa-with-brandon-sanderson/#e4616

Maru Nui

What happens when you burn a Hemalurgic spike?

Brandon Sanderson

Burning a Hemalurgic spike would have the effect of splicing your spiritual DNA to that of the person's that is in the spike, which would have some very strange consequences.

Also note that you cannot automatically burn a Hemalurgic spike- it has an Identity, similar to a Metalmind and will need to either come from the Allomancer attempting to burn it or it will need to be blanked.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/200-tweettheauthor-2009/#e4413

Czanos

Would anything interesting happen if an Allomancer Burned a Hemalurgic spike, or a Feruchemist Tapped one?

Brandon Sanderson

Er, well, it’s possible. But you’d have to be burning a Hemalurgic spike that killed you and took your power…

Just like you can’t gain anything by burning a metalmind unless you infused it yourself.

 

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

1 minute ago, Trusk'our said:

The weird thing with burning Hemalurgic spikes is that they will splice the Allomancer's Spiritweb with that of the spike. However, this won't allow you to bootleg your way into Lerasium- this process specifically won't grant you powers stored in a spike.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76-shadows-of-self-chicago-signing/#e6295

Questioner

If you burn a Hemalurgic spike, would it graft the piece of stolen soul onto your soul?

Brandon Sanderson

No, but it would have... There are some interesting effects there.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/210-torcom-qa-with-brandon-sanderson/#e4616

Maru Nui

What happens when you burn a Hemalurgic spike?

Brandon Sanderson

Burning a Hemalurgic spike would have the effect of splicing your spiritual DNA to that of the person's that is in the spike, which would have some very strange consequences.

Also note that you cannot automatically burn a Hemalurgic spike- it has an Identity, similar to a Metalmind and will need to either come from the Allomancer attempting to burn it or it will need to be blanked.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/200-tweettheauthor-2009/#e4413

Czanos

Would anything interesting happen if an Allomancer Burned a Hemalurgic spike, or a Feruchemist Tapped one?

Brandon Sanderson

Er, well, it’s possible. But you’d have to be burning a Hemalurgic spike that killed you and took your power…

Just like you can’t gain anything by burning a metalmind unless you infused it yourself.

 

These are all true

I was more thinking about the capabilities of coding a spike as a parallel to Lerasium alloys.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Through the Living Wrath said:

These are all true

I was more thinking about the capabilities of coding a spike as a parallel to Lerasium alloys.

Ah, my misunderstanding.