Darkness he/him Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 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. So... Solid Lerasium is kind of like a spike, maybe? Splicing some of Leras' DNA into your own, making you able to recognize his investiture and be able to use allomancy? I mean, obviously the little round beads aren't actually spikes, but they could be sharing a similar property.
natc Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 Leras' DNA ought to have no influence on the power of Preservation at all. Even after switching owners and being glued to its polar opposite Preservation still functions enough to screw with its holder's mind. You can use Preservation to power hemalurgy too if you tried hard enough, remember. And atium is burnable.
Darkness he/him Posted March 12, 2015 Author Posted March 12, 2015 Oh good! My mind started to unravel a bit there. Thanks for being confident when I was weak I believe you're right, but I still want to know how solid Lerasium does what it does. I think I get conceptually how burning a charged hemalurgic spike would imprint the donor spirit web onto your own.
Voidus Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 IIRC there's actually a few conflicting WoBs on what exactly would happen if you burned a spike.
natc Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 We need to have someone burn a type IV biochromatic entity and see what happens. Could be more interesting than a spike. And less potentially horrific. Assuming it burns up before their soul is gone of course. Though we don't know whether all type IVs end up like ol' Nightie. 1
laxrulz777 he/him Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 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. So... Solid Lerasium is kind of like a spike, maybe? Splicing some of Leras' DNA into your own, making you able to recognize his investiture and be able to use allomancy? I mean, obviously the little round beads aren't actually spikes, but they could be sharing a similar property. I'll take a shot at this one. We know that burning a Ferruchemically charged metal mind gives you a burst of the ferruchemical power and nothing from the allomantic side (basically, in this case the Ferruchemy "overwrites" any allomantic ability that would have happened otherwise). So the same general principle would seem to indicate that you'd get a supercharged burst of Hemallurgic power. We know that Hemallurgy is basically tearing up some of the sDNA of the victim and transferring it to the recipient. What would a super charged blast of this do? I can think of a couple possibilities. 1) It enhances that bit of sDNA that you already took. So if you ripped off a minor misting maybe you become a really, really strong misting. 2) It makes the sDNA permanent 3) It exactly offsets the power loss implicit in Hemallurgy (this makes sense from a symmetry standpoint) but it only lasts as long as you're burning it 4) There's more than just power use to the sDNA so burning it allomantically might make you spiritually more similar to the vicitim 5) If victims can live through spikings (and I think we assume they can though we've seen no evidence of this) then maybe it links the two individuals in a more meaningful / permanent way? 6) Brandon's exact wording would indicate that it would actually reverse the stream and splice your sDNA back on the victim... I'm not 100% certain if he meant it that way but that seems weird... especially given that most Hemallurgy victims are dead (traditionally).
Lindel he/him Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 These two WoBs seem to be be contradictory: CZANOSWould anything interesting happen if an Allomancer Burned a Hemalurgic spike, or a Feruchemist Tapped one? BRANDON SANDERSONEr, 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. 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. (Emphasis mine) The second was collected three years later than the former, so can we assume that the second overrides the first? The first indicates that a Hemalurgic could only be burned by the same donor who was used to infuse it, while the second seems to be saying exactly the opposite. In the first scenario, you'd basically have spike yourself in a non-lethal way, (which is possible, per this WoB:), ZAS678Does the person being pierced in order to charge a Hemalurgic spike have to die? BRANDON SANDERSONNot necessarily. A spike does require you to rip pieces of a soul from the victim, but that does not mean they must die. They would be a very different person afterwords though. Or travel from Nalthis to Scadrial, burn Lerasium or one of its alloys, spike yourself, Return, and then burn the spike. (Assuming Returned keep their powers. Has this one been asked before?) In the second scenario, you just stab someone through the heart, swallow the spike sword-eater style, burn it, and you're good to go.
laxrulz777 he/him Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 These two WoBs seem to be be contradictory: The second was collected three years later than the former, so can we assume that the second overrides the first? The first indicates that a Hemalurgic could only be burned by the same donor who was used to infuse it, while the second seems to be saying exactly the opposite. I tihnk in between these he had questions like this Q: If a Feruchemist using an aluminum metalmind stored their identity to zero, then filled a coppermind with all of their knowledge, would another Feruchemist with an identity set to zero be able to access the first Feruchemist's coppermind?A: [Paraphrased] I'm not going to tell you a definite yes or no, this is something that needs to be saved for future books, but you are thinking along the correct lines about how identity works regarding Feruchemists. that sort of changed the way we and he think about this stuff... He also may have changed his mind on it. His first statement doesn't make a huge amount of sense in the context of how hemallurgy appears to work in the books.
WindrunnerRadiant he/him Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Lets take both of the WoBs into account. The only person who could burn a hemalurgic spike is the person whose power is in it. So you would have to have been the victim in the making of that spike. Thus, if you burn your own hemalurgic spike you would splice your sDNA with your sDNA?
Voidus Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 These two WoBs seem to be be contradictory: (Emphasis mine) The second was collected three years later than the former, so can we assume that the second overrides the first? The first indicates that a Hemalurgic could only be burned by the same donor who was used to infuse it, while the second seems to be saying exactly the opposite. In the first scenario, you'd basically have spike yourself in a non-lethal way, (which is possible, per this WoB:), Or travel from Nalthis to Scadrial, burn Lerasium or one of its alloys, spike yourself, Return, and then burn the spike. (Assuming Returned keep their powers. Has this one been asked before?) In the second scenario, you just stab someone through the heart, swallow the spike sword-eater style, burn it, and you're good to go. If I'm honest I'm relatively sure that Brandon just didn't have enough time to think it through on that first quote since he seemed to be thinking as he was answering while the second seems more like him recalling a well-researched piece of metaphysics he thought through. The reason that you need to be the one who stored the feruchemical charge to burn it is logically that feruchemists can only access their own charges, not anyone else's. But Hemalurgy can be used on anyone, that's kind of the whole point so I really don't know how the first quote could work. But then maybe it has to do with some piece of Cosmeric metaphysics we are as yet unaware of.
Lord Tavash Shar Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Its also worth remembering that per WOB burning some thing actually acts as a gateway for preservations power and by burning something with a charge you can access your changing what you are asking for. From pewter allomancy to pewter feruchemical charges.What would happen to the the allomantic power of preservation when it comes through as a Hemalurical charge......?
natc Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Its also worth remembering that per WOB burning some thing actually acts as a gateway for preservations power and by burning something with a charge you can access your changing what you are asking for. From pewter allomancy to pewter feruchemical charges. What would happen to the the allomantic power of preservation when it comes through as a Hemalurical charge......? Same thing as the power of ruin coming through as an allomantic charge? Little reason to believe it has much of an effect beyond leading to potential loophole exploitation. You can probably burn even stormlight with some worldhopper-style meddling if you tried. These magic systems are rather flexible in how they can be hacked.
Savanorn he/him Posted March 14, 2015 Posted March 14, 2015 I don't think the WoB are necessarily contradictory. Like, they could be, but as a previous poster noted there's now questions of identity. Like, if two people go null-identity they might actually be able to splice sDNA liberally between each other if and when they draw on identity and burn hemalurgy spikes. Of course, they'd pretty much have to be Fullborn (or every specific twinborn combos) for it to even be a question which makes it pretty darn rare. I mean it would almost be like...what's the point?
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