[Bands Spoilers] Not quite Hemalurgy

[Havoc]

“The trouble with Hemalurgy is in its limitations,” he said. “If you kill a man and steal his Metallic abilities, the resulting gift to you is weakened. Did you know that? What’s more, if you spike yourself too much, you become subject to Harmony’s … interference. Indeed, by the stories, you might open yourself to the interference of any idiot Soother or Rioter with enough talent.” He shook his head. “I am limited to three boons, even if we have discovered how to make someone else be weak, while we gain the benefit.”

 

This sounds related to the way Destra (Templeton Fig's wife) and Irich were both wasting away, as though they were being used to power someone else.

 

How powerful would Hemalurgy be if you could change abilities on the fly, and not even have to kill your 'donors'? it sounds like you might not even suffer the normal power decay using this method.

[TheHunter]

I wonder if it has to do with filling generic metalminds? I'm still a confused as to how Lady Shores had a goldmind full of huge amounts of health... It could be from Destra.

[Argent he/him]

I was wondering about that bit too. It's interesting to consider siphoning somebody's Investiture, Hemalurgically, slowly and over time instead of taking their ability to Invest completely. If Irich's punishment was to turn him into a source, and assuming he was a gold Ferring, then Keresina Shores' reward for disposing of ReLuur could've been to make her the recipient of his health. 

 

Only, I am not sure he was a gold Ferring - unless he was also Hemalurgically spiked for an Allomantic power, because he tried to use the "Allomantic grenade" on Marasi on the train. And he was already ill then, so his punishment for failing to keep Wax away from New Seran couldn't have been that.

 

But Irich aside, I like the original idea. It's the only thing, so far, that explains Suit's comment.

[Pagerunner he/him]

I'm with TheHunter on this one. When Wayne used the gold metalmind from the Set, he was gaining the benefit without having to be weak first to store up health. The Set's inventors were halfway to the Southern Medallions; they had the unkeyed metalmind, but not the nicrosilmind. I think they spiked a gold feruchemist with aluminum feruchemy (or vice versa) and had that person storing health to pass out to the Set's other gold feruchemists. 

[Argent he/him]

I'm with TheHunter on this one. When Wayne used the gold metalmind from the Set, he was gaining the benefit without having to be weak first to store up health. The Set's inventors were halfway to the Southern Medallions; they had the unkeyed metalmind, but not the nicrosilmind. I think they spiked a gold feruchemist with aluminum feruchemy (or vice versa) and had that person storing health to pass out to the Set's other gold feruchemists. 

 

Except Suit is talking about his Hemalurgic spikes there, not about metalminds. and Hemalurgic spikes don't need the "make someone else feel weak" thing going for them. 

[Pagerunner he/him]

Yes, he's talking about his Hemalurgic spikes, but that's meaningless if he's not talking about what powers they give him. Three boons - A.Steel, A.Chromium, and I think F.Gold. (This is why I don't like to post at work, because I can't go through and check the books. That, and I'm supposed to be working. He used F.Gold to heal from the cave-in he set off, the one that killed Wax, right?) He can only have three Metalborn powers, but one of those "boons" is more powerful than normal, since he doesn't have to spend time sick to gain a stockpile of healing. (If it turns out he doesn't have any Feruchemical abilities, this point still stands, even though he doesn't use it personally. I remember for sure that Telsin had F.Gold.)

 

And the exact quote provided in the first post is "make someone else be weak," not "make someone else feel weak" [emphasis mine]. Being weak is repeatedly associated with Feruchemy, not with Allomancy or Hemalurgy. (Well, unless you count being dead as being weak. In which case it definitely fits Hemalurgy.) That's how you knew when Sazed or Wayne was storing - they wore glasses, or felt sick, or walked with a cane, because they were weak.

 

As to whether or not Irich's crippling was a new application of Hemalurgy... that's not the impression I had. Without the book in front of me, I can only post my recollections:

• He had a diagnosis of 6 months. Unless Edwarn says "I'm gonna completely tap your health out over the course of the next year," where would that number come from? It made me think it was a natural disease, one that he had diagnosed by a doctor.
• He was looking for a miracle to heal him. What would that miracle be? I thought it was a way of getting F.Gold. The way I saw it, he was looking for a medallion to give him a healing ability and a stockpile of healing. He might have even joined the Set originally since they were transferring powers using Hemalurgy.

That being said, I'll definitely take a closer look when I get the chance. (i.e. while I'm waiting for Amazon to send out Secret History) and see how accurately my first impressions held up. It would be a good way for Brandon to hide a new secret, in a phenomenon that we can easily assume is natural, and I wholeheartedly agree that the Set would take advantage of their own members like that.

[KC Hammer]

Could the weakness he is referring to just be being open to Harmony's influence?

[TheHunter]

Irich could have been a Twinborn. Or his ailment could be something else entirely, and Lady Shores' goldmind came from Templeton Fig's wife, Destra. After all, Irich's description of his weakness doesn't compare that well to Wayne's description of storing health.
I'm not 100% sold on this idea, but it does seem like something the Set would do. Forcing Bloodmakers to constantly store health so that people who have been spiked can tap it...yeah. That requires 2 bloodmakers, though. One to spike and one to constantly store health. But that's the only way you can give someone healing with no down sides. 

[The Invested Beard]

Irich could have been a Twinborn. Or his ailment could be something else entirely, and Lady Shores' goldmind came from Templeton Fig's wife, Destra. After all, Irich's description of his weakness doesn't compare that well to Wayne's description of storing health.

I'm not 100% sold on this idea, but it does seem like something the Set would do. Forcing Bloodmakers to constantly store health so that people who have been spiked can tap it...yeah. That requires 2 bloodmakers, though. One to spike and one to constantly store health. But that's the only way you can give someone healing with no down sides. 

 

Well we technically do have two people who are described as consistently losing health...

[Ari he/him]

Given that Brandon has in fact confirmed you can spike someone without killing them, it's entirely possible that the Set is practicising non-lethal hemalurgy. It would be consistent with their ability to figure out secrets that others have missed.

[Moogle]

The fact that the goldmind was AMAZINGLY full (like more than months and months filled if I remember Wayne's thoughts) implied to me that they had made a Compounder via Hemalurgy and given them Feruchemical aluminum to make unkeyed metalminds.

 

No need to keep a prisoner storing for months at a time when it's so much easier to just find a Gold Misting and spike them.

[Pagerunner he/him]

The fact that the goldmind was AMAZINGLY full (like more than months and months filled if I remember Wayne's thoughts) implied to me that they had made a Compounder via Hemalurgy and given them Feruchemical aluminum to make unkeyed metalminds.

 

No need to keep a prisoner storing for months at a time when it's so much easier to just find a Gold Misting and spike them.

If they had a compounder, they wouldn't be making anyone weak, as is implied in the original quote. Also, I wonder if they'd even give one of their own Gold compounding, after seeing how devastating Miles was with it.

[Moogle]

If they had a compounder, they wouldn't be making anyone weak, as is implied in the original quote. Also, I wonder if they'd even give one of their own Gold compounding, after seeing how devastating Miles was with it.

 

I don't really agree that Compounding wouldn't make someone weak; you're still taking the attributes they store and using them yourself.

 

I think it should be parsed as "we're still limited to 3 powers, despite the fact that we don't need to waste spikes on useless Allomantic abilities like gold to Compound, since we can just use metalminds other people make". This fits just fine with Compounding. The original quote by Suit is really weird, so maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I'm seeing things.

 

What do you mean by devastating? Miles literally lost to a dozen non-Metalborn with clubs. He couldn't heal out aluminum bullets. He could be spiked. Gold Compounding seems like one of the weaker (but very convenient if you're in a gunfight) powers to me.

 

Stick chains on your gold Compounder and he can't do anything. Not very terrifying.

[The Ninja Yodeler he/him]

Stick chains on your gold Compounder and he can't do anything. Not very terrifying.

Didn't Wax try that with Miles? Pretty sure he said Miles would just keep dynamite on him for just such incidents. Or maybe it was ropes. Either way, boom sticks would work.

[The Invested Beard]

It was ropes or a net or something, but yeah dynamite would pretty much get rid of those pesky chains too. There's a reason Miles was labeled as having a particularly dangerous twinborn set.

Edited January 30, 2016 by The Invested Beard

[Pagerunner he/him]

I don't really agree that Compounding wouldn't make someone weak; you're still taking the attributes they store and using them yourself.

 

I think it should be parsed as "we're still limited to 3 powers, despite the fact that we don't need to waste spikes on useless Allomantic abilities like gold to Compound, since we can just use metalminds other people make". This fits just fine with Compounding. The original quote by Suit is really weird, so maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I'm seeing things.

 

What do you mean by devastating? Miles literally lost to a dozen non-Metalborn with clubs. He couldn't heal out aluminum bullets. He could be spiked. Gold Compounding seems like one of the weaker (but very convenient if you're in a gunfight) powers to me.

 

Stick chains on your gold Compounder and he can't do anything. Not very terrifying.

 

Now that I think about it, TLR did have to spend time old to store up youth to then compound. Miles was in a constant feedback loop, so that's why he didn't experience it. Those are the only two instances we've seen compounding, so we're at 50/50 for still being weak while you compound. And I absolutely agree that the correct interpretation for Suit's quote is that they can use other peoples' metalminds - whether or not they used compounding to fill them isn't as important to me. (Although, truth be told, I didn't find the quote to be weird at all, and I'm still surprised at all the different ways people are taking it.)

 

I think you're selling Miles short. Wax refers to him as "particularly dangerous" and "virtually immortal." Not only did he heal, but he "never lacked energy" (AoL chapter 11), so he could maintain peak performance in a fistfight (at least until he fell asleep). And I think you're also misremembering his capture. Even after his thugs were defeated and it was just Miles left, they still needed a huge amount of people to capture him. He was taken down by a fellow Twinborn (Wax), another Allomancer (Marasi), and over a hundred constables (not a dozen). Just because a Steel compounder would be better doesn't mean that Miles wasn't a force to be reckoned with. AoL very clearly presents Miles as an army unto himself.

 

But, yes, if Miles could be captured, he could be contained. Same for the Set's hypothetical compounder - if they chained him up properly, he wouldn't be able to escape. But if he was suitably restrained... well, why would he be filling metalminds for the Set? And they definitely wouldn't want him running around loose, not after everyone but Suit expressed aversion to using Miles in case he would turn against them (AoL chapter 15). So, there would have to be a very particular set of circumstances - imprison a Gold feruchemist, spike him with A.Gold and F.Aluminum, capture his family, tell him that unless he fills metalminds all day every day, they're gonna kill his kids. Yeah, it's possible. But I think it's a bit of a stretch to get a scenario like that based on how full Wayne's metalmind was.

 

Incidentally, here's the direct quote to let us gauge how much was stored in the metalmind:

Wayne stumbled to his feet, dragging Wax's gun, his leg twisting about and bones reknitting. damnation fine metalmind, that gold bracelet was. An extensive healing like this would have cost him months of saving up, but this metalmind was still mostly full.

 

So, even if we take "mostly full" to mean 2/3 full and "months" to mean 2 months, that's half a year of storage, at the very least. And Wayne tells us in Alloy that it takes about 2 weeks of storage to heal a gunshot wound. And then, how much storage did we see the Set have in BoM? At the end of the book, Telsin takes two shotgun blasts (albeit, one to the face), Edwarn heals a cut on his arm and heals from crashing through two layers of the airship before Wax punches him out. I think they're comparable to how Wayne soaks up "a dozen bullets" (BoM pg 303) (approximately 6 months of stored healing) and walks away when they're escaping the airship. So, yeah, that's a minimum of 18 months of healing stored up. A lot - but when else would the Set be using their healing? We also don't know how many people the Set have storing health, or how long they've been doing it for. Again, it is definitely possible that they're using a compounder to generate these stores, but I'm still not convinced.

 

But just because I find it unlikely, that doesn't mean the Set doesn't have Compounders. I just think all the spiked Compounders are running around in the Southern continent, creating medallions.

[Moogle]

But, yes, if Miles could be captured, he could be contained. Same for the Set's hypothetical compounder - if they chained him up properly, he wouldn't be able to escape. But if he was suitably restrained... well, why would he be filling metalminds for the Set?

 

Well, for one, they don't need to leave the Allomantic gold spike in him. So if they just leave it inside him when they want him to fill metalminds, that seems like it should work nicely. Our Gold Compounder isn't very dangerous if you take his Allomantic gold spike and leave him as only a Bloodmaker, and without any metalminds you don't want him to have. And capturing a measly Bloodmaker shouldn't be too hard - if you're not Miles, you likely don't have much combat ability, and you can always be surprised in the middle of the night and netted. (Miles did have to sleep - another major flaw.)

 

Second, Wayne indicates that Bloodmakers still feel pain. So there's always old fashioned torture. Soothing/Rioting might be helpful. Forcing compliance should not prove a problem.

 

Or, perhaps, the Set doesn't actually have to mistreat anyone at all. They could just offer some random Bloodmaker some cash to fill up some goldminds for them every month - they come in the evening, spike him with Allomantic gold, fill up a truck filled with fresh goldminds, remove the spike, and are gone with some suitable threats to not mention the spike to anybody. I'd do it for sufficient cash - something the Set doesn't seem to lack.

[GoddessIMHO]

So why did the set kidnap allomantic women but not Terris women? Or Terris men? I suppose maybe the breeding program was separate. I guess those women are just forgotten now.

It does appear they have Terris people as well as twinborn and allomancers willingly on their side.