Hemalurgic experimentation for the cosmerically aware

[Djarskublar]

I realized today that koloss are very similar to Odium. That got me thinking. I now theorize that Hemalurgy mimics the shattering to a smaller degree. You shatter off a piece of someone and staple it to another person. Depending on how you spike the person, you get a different 'intent' from the chunk of person. This more applies to new species experimentation like the Kandra and koloss than with stealing abilities. Abilities have no intent, they just are. Like tools aren't good or evil, their use is.

This is still shifted by the fact that Hemalurgy is end negative. If you try to make an 'Honor'-able species, you would likely get something that has a personal code but no real morals. A lawful-evil/neutral rather than lawful-good. Ruin would basically corrupt the intent, and/or do something funky to their physiology that matters. Sterility and no skin growth for koloss, for example. 

Thoughts?

[Argel]

1 hour ago, Djarskublar said:

Sterility and no skin growth for koloss, for example

The Koloss were designed by TLR, not Ruin. Sazed gave them the ability to procreate after ascending to Harmony.

[Djarskublar]

I suppose that wasn't clear. It was the effect of using a power based off ruin. It is end negative, and ruinous. The creation of new species via Hemalurgy will always have negative effects as well because the power is end negative. These effects can end up being beneficial in certain cases I would imagine, but they aren't by design. The fact that koloss were sterile was because Hemalurgy is messy and very hard. The nature of Hemalurgy was corrupting the intent and making them wierd. I would bet lots of money that they had no preservation before harmony, and got a piece afterward, hence reproduction. Kandra got no such thing. They are good as is.

[Yata]

I think you push the likenesses between Hemalurgy and the Shattering too far.

The Hemalurgy is a Spiritual Genetic Engineering between spirit webs. But the Intents doesn't matter (sure you have to want to create a Spike to made Hemalurgy but it's not the type of Intent you talked about).

The Hemalurgy isn't evil and neither its effect. Ruin didn't corrupt anything of the Spirit-Web in the Spikes. In the end to Ruin what you do with the Spikes in meaningless. To him only improve Entropy matters and you do this creating a Spike (breaking someone to do this).

You may see for example how of three well knowed Hemalurgic Constructs. Only the Koloss are "evil" but they are made exactly to be feral warriors. It's not something build in the Spikes. Like you may see with Kandra with the Blessings of Mighty (the same Koloss's Spike). Neither the Inquisitor became "evil" to the Spikes.

Of course became a Spiritual Patchwork may break a mind. Your Cognitive Self and your Spiritual self began to have too differences and this erode a man I presume (like a Soul Forgery poor made but forced to coexist with the reality). But it's nothing builded in the Hemalurgy. 

[Argel]

7 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

The fact that koloss were sterile was because Hemalurgy is messy and very hard

You're assuming TLR wanted them to be able to procreate. He could always create more if needed, so he either designed them the way they are or didn't care beyond that. Though if I had to guess, he had to experiment to remove the ability to procreate.

Hemalurgy is end-negative because the power in the spike is less than the power that was taken and if if the spike is outside of a human body the power in it decays over time.

[Spoolofwhool]

13 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

I realized today that koloss are very similar to Odium. That got me thinking. I now theorize that Hemalurgy mimics the shattering to a smaller degree. You shatter off a piece of someone and staple it to another person. Depending on how you spike the person, you get a different 'intent' from the chunk of person. This more applies to new species experimentation like the Kandra and koloss than with stealing abilities. Abilities have no intent, they just are. Like tools aren't good or evil, their use is.

This is still shifted by the fact that Hemalurgy is end negative. If you try to make an 'Honor'-able species, you would likely get something that has a personal code but no real morals. A lawful-evil/neutral rather than lawful-good. Ruin would basically corrupt the intent, and/or do something funky to their physiology that matters. Sterility and no skin growth for koloss, for example. 

Thoughts?

Spiking a person doesn't take intent from them, you're just taking a piece of their spiritweb. In addition, new species experimentation includes inquisitors since they according to Sazed they are not human, just like allomantic savants. So your point of intent somehow changing koloss and kandra but not inquisitors doesn't hold since inquisitors were formed in the same way, just with more spikes and many containing abilities related to manifestations of investitures instead of the piece of preservation with people.

Ruin doesn't affect hemalurgy directly. Its existence is a natural factor of his involvement with Scadrial. The only influence he has over it is that he can provide the intent necessary for a spike to be charged and that he can access the cognitive of a person spiked through the tears in their spiritual. 

Overall, I think you're putting too much thought into the relation between hemalurgy and Ruin. Hemalurgy is not something that he designed, it's a natural process which arose as a result of Ruin's influence, with a mechanic associated with Ruin's intent. How hemalurgy changes a species is a result of the hemalurgic charge interacting with their spiritweb. If Ruin wanted to change an entity, he would have to do so directly himself.

[Djarskublar]

I'm NOT saying ruin is influencing things. I'm saying the fact that it is OF ruin is doing things. I suppose an analogy would help. My understanding of Hemalurgy so far has been that it cuts off a piece of the person. I thought it was very surgical. Now I'm saying that spiking someone is more like taking a hammer to a window and using a piece of the glass. You are trying to get a specific piece, and so you have to spike it in just the right spot. Because it's end negative, the glass you are grabbing is cracked up a bit. The making of inquisitors is much easier than that because you are stealing a power, which has a spy glass circle cutter type thing done to it (if that made any sense, sorry). Yes it makes them inhuman, but it is still drastically different than hemalurgic experimentation. I still think the idea of Hemalurgy being like Shattering a person to be meritous, even if my explanation of it was poor.

That make some more sense?

[Spoolofwhool]

Yes. I still disagree however. There is no difference between taking an ability or a piece of Preservation using hemalurgy, or creating an inquisitor, kandra or koloss. In all pf these cases, you are taking a piece of someone's spiritweb and affixing it to another being's spiritweb with the intent of changing it in some significant way, either by creating a new specie in the case of inquisitors or koloss, or by granting sentience in the case of kandra. I don't fully understand your "spy glass circle cutter" analogy, though my guess is that you're referring to etching a circle into a glass then breaking it, so the circle will come out as the force of the break follows the weakened points of the line. If that's the case, and you're saying that abilities are easier to steal because they're more defined in the spiritweb, I still disagree, though I admit that your point has some slight merit when it comes to allomancy. It has been stated that when using allomancy, the power of Preservation flowing through the spiritweb can causes some damage, which leads to savantism. So slight merit there. However, there doesn't seem to be anything that indicates other abilities leave a deeper mark on the spiritweb than the general make-up of the spiritweb.

Also, I really don't think hemalurgy is akin to hammering a window and taking a shard of the glass. The surgical cutting analogy is much better. If the hammer one were true, then hemalurgy would probably always kill the person being used to charge the spike, since I doubt you can live with a destroyed spiritweb. However, it has been confirmed that you can spike someone to fill a charge and have them survive.

[Djarskublar]

Yeah I was talking about etching a circle to get a specific piece of glass. I don't agree that the possibility of a person surviving Hemalurgy disproves my idea. I got the sense that Hemalurgy will always kill the subject unless something else comes into play. So it is possible, but only if you know exactly what you are doing. I got the sense that it requires other powers/abilities interfering.

And of course abilities are better defined in the spiritweb. I can't see it being any other way. Targeting some specific aspect of a person would be very difficult. Spiking someone's curiousity out would be incredibly difficult. It would be tangled up with their fear of the unknown and other things. Hemalurgy is probably more complex than neurosurgery. That is probably the closest thing we know to it. Stealing abilities would be more like cutting off a chip in someone's brain that gives them better 'Something.'

Right now though, the people on Scadrial can't perform neurosurgery on a person's spiritweb. They whack the person's pane of glass and hope they get the right chunk of it. Even once they figure it out, it is still Ruin's thing, so it would be like doing surgery with a soldering iron rather than a scalpel. That sounds rather destructive and like ruin, so that is why it is end negative. I never said that Ruin was influencing the results directly, only that because it was the power that came from him investing in Scadrial it has nasty side effects. Ruinous side effects, you might say ;).

I guess our disagreement stems mostly from our views on whether taking abilities is any different than any other piece of a person.

[Spoolofwhool]

The possibility of a person surviving hemalurgy doesn't disprove your idea, just your hammer analogy, which is all I used it for. 

Overall, I still disagree with your belief that Ruin affects hemalurgy more than just its general concept. With allomancy, Preservation only influenced its concept that it allows the user to preserve their strength. The same is with hemalurgy. Ruin influenced its concept that it causes a general deterioration of sDNA. Other than that, there really are no other side effects. Anything else that occurs is the result of forcefully grafting foreign sDNA fragments onto someone's spiritweb, which as we know has cognitive and physical effects. These effects can occur as a result of other spiritweb changes as well, so it isn't exclusive to hemalurgy either.

While hemalurgy is definitely more difficult then neurosurgery when considering the grafting aspect, I don't think people are as blindly stealing pieces as you portray. Each spike type more-or-less steals a specific narrow range of attributes. While there is wiggle room for each spike, once you determine the attributes a spike steal, nearly all of the guesswork is gone. All that you have left is the very complicated guesswork of determining the right bind point for the spike.

[Djarskublar]

Hmmm. Good points. However,  I still like my hammer analogy. Basically I'm saying that to survive it, your glass needs to be tempered by some other power to survive it without shattering completely. Like bulletproof glass, but different in that the glass breaks normally in one spot, leaving the rest mostly intact. The hammer analogy came from the idea that Hemalurgy is basically the same as Shattering a person. It is by no means perfect.

I do think that Ruin has an influence on how Hemalurgy works, in that I think it's possible to get other end negative powers. Perhaps Odium's hatred could cause an end negative system. Or Dominion. The difference is how Ruin corrupts. Odium would make hateful magic users. Probably. Ruin makes things that are influenced towards destruction. Even Kandra need to kill to get new skeletons. Koloss are berserk rampagers. Inquisitors are, well, Inquisitors.

I'm saying that if you are creating Hemalurgic constructs, the piece you are grabbing is more damaged than if Hemalurgy came from a different Shard. That's why it's basically impossible to create flawless new types of constructs. Hence Inquisitors have lynchpin spikes, Kandra start as mistwraiths, and koloss are stupid and impotent. Not that these effects we're necessarily undesired by TLR (he probably had some influence in picking what was wrong with the constructs), but that such things ARE unavoidable.

Regarding your last point, I mostly agree. With tons of bindpoints to choose from, and effectively infinite variety of combinations to choose from, they are in the dark about any logic in it. They are like average three year olds trying to program. They have figured out a bit of basic syntax, and even written a few ultra basic programs, but they don't know everything the 'language' is capable of, let alone nuances of its use. They can still use their programs they do know effectively... I.e. they can steal powers and TLR cobbled together a few construct designs. My bet is that because of how it is done (killing people), unless Hitler (or Khriss hehe) gets to be in charge on Scadrial, Hemalurgy will never even approach being fully understood. So yes, they aren't blindly stealing attributes, but they aren't doing it knowledgeably either.

That wasn't the main topic anyway, to bring things back a bit, what are your thoughts regarding the similarity between Hemalurgy and Shattering?

[Spoolofwhool]

To start with your original point, I don't believe there really is any comparison between Hemalurgy and Shattering other than the fact that both involve damaging spiritual components.

8 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

I do think that Ruin has an influence on how Hemalurgy works, in that I think it's possible to get other end negative powers. Perhaps Odium's hatred could cause an end negative system. Or Dominion. The difference is how Ruin corrupts. Odium would make hateful magic users. Probably. Ruin makes things that are influenced towards destruction. Even Kandra need to kill to get new skeletons. Koloss are berserk rampagers. Inquisitors are, well, Inquisitors.

Yes it does, as I have stated. Ruin influences original underlying concept which guides hemalurgy; the concept that more must become less. Other than that, Ruin has no influence on the mechanics of hemalurgy. He cannot control how much is lost, or what effects it has on the person gaining the charge, or making them more prone to his intent. A manifestation of Odium's investiture would not affect the nature of the users, it would just make a magic system based around the concept of hatred, which would then build into a complete system. Ruin does want destruction, and influences people in that direction to achieve his goal of destruction. There is no doubt of that. However, neither kandra, nor koloss, nor inquistors were created by Ruin, since Ruin cannot actually create. That's why he had to team with Preservation. Also, kandra don't need to kill. This has been repeatedly mentioned over the course of Era 1 and W&W. They can digest dead bodies. Not to mention that it was TLR that created Mistwraith and the spikes that evolved them into kandra. Koloss are violent because of the diminished intelligence and the way they were created, once again by TLR. Inquisitors were once again created by TLR. While it was stated by Ruin that he influenced TLR into created the hemalurgical constructs so that Ruin could have servants and an army when he was free, by no means does this remotely approach Ruin creating them. 

8 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

I'm saying that if you are creating Hemalurgic constructs, the piece you are grabbing is more damaged than if Hemalurgy came from a different Shard. That's why it's basically impossible to create flawless new types of constructs. Hence Inquisitors have lynchpin spikes, Kandra start as mistwraiths, and koloss are stupid and impotent. Not that these effects we're necessarily undesired by TLR (he probably had some influence in picking what was wrong with the constructs), but that such things ARE unavoidable.

This shows to me you don't understand how the manifestations of investiture systems came to be. Hemalurgy cannot come from another shard at all. It exists solely because Ruin granted the underlying concept. It isn't "A magic to steal spiritual which is influenced by Ruin to cause a deterioration in the stolen attributes." Rather, it's "A magic based around Ruin's concept of eventual destruction, which developed into a system of stealing spiritual to follow that concept." While it's possible that a system to steal spiritual could be formed by another shard, it likely wouldn't bear any resemblances to hemalurgy, as it would be based on a completely different concept. Furthermore, kandra starting as mistwraiths has zero bearing on hemalurgy whatsoever. Zilch. They are mistwraiths because TLR made them so. Spikes just give them sentience to act. As for koloss and inquistors, while I have no doubt that their flaws are perhaps unavoidable, those flaws are just due to the underlying mechanics, plus how spiritwebs works. 

9 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

They can still use their programs they do know effectively... I.e. they can steal powers and TLR cobbled together a few construct designs. My bet is that because of how it is done (killing people), unless Hitler (or Khriss hehe) gets to be in charge on Scadrial, Hemalurgy will never even approach being fully understood. So yes, they aren't blindly stealing attributes, but they aren't doing it knowledgeably either.

Final but minor correction. TLR learned how to make inquisitors, koloss and kandra while he was ascended. This was stated in Hero of Ages. Afterwards he never learned how to make any other effective constructs. Also, reminder that hemalurgy doesn't require death. 


Overall, I just want to say that the reason that I'm being so critical, is that while you have some interesting theories, the discussion is revealing that you are basing them on flawed premises. A fair number of premises, the ones I've been correcting so vehemently, are ones which have been directly portrayed as incorrect by both stories or WoB. While a number of the incorrect premises are minor, some them, such as hemalurgy being able to manifest as a result of another shard's investiture, are rather major. These incorrect premises, in my opinion, are coming together to make for a flawed theory. 

[Djarskublar]

I never said that Hemalurgy came from another shard, or even that it could, only that IF, hypothetically speaking, it had, it would be less destructive to the spirit. If Hemalurgy had been the system of, say, Preservation or Endowment, I think it would be a less messy system, in that you would get cleaner chunks of web. The power wouldn't be reduced in efficacy as much or at all. To clarify, if it came from Preservation specifically, and all the mechanics of spiking were the same in procedure, i.e. you stab someone in a bindpoint with a spike, usually killing them, (not a very Preservationy thing, but it's an example so I don't care. It's the end result I'm arguing) and you steal some spiritweb, you might end up with a perfect piece. No power loss necessary. All the power is Preserved. Of course, Hemalurgy isn't of any shard but Ruin. If it had come from Preservation, you probably wouldn't kill people to steal power. It would excise the power from the old to keep it with young people, thereby preserving it, or some such. All else equal, Hemalurgy comes from Ruin, so it (Hemalurgy, not Ruin... This is something you appear to not perceive correctly every time I try to explain it) damages the thing you are trying to grab.

I NEVER said anything in any of my posts saying that Ruin was creating or influencing the creation of Hemalurgic constructs, only that because the system stems from Ruin, it has nasty degenerative side effects when used. If Ruin went off and invested in another Shardworld, then the power manifested there would definitely be entropic in some way as well.

While it IS theoretically possible to not kill someone when you spike them, nobody knows how except for maybe Nahz or Khriss. I doubt even they know. For someone to figure it out would likely require *dramatic pause* practice. That isn't something that will happen outside of the Set, and they won't share with the rest of us. They apparently already gave up on Hemalurgic experimentation anyway.

I never said where or when TLR designed his constructs. Of course it was while he held the Well's power. I knew, it just wasn't relevant so I didn't say. The expanded conscious and free knowledge that came from taking the power were why he could do it. Afterwards I'm sure he may have liked to, but didn't have the resources to experiment. With his mind back to normalish I'm fairly sure he would be back to trial and error like everyone else. I'm sure he still had a fair portion of the knowledge he gained, but I don't think he could have remembered everything. He didn't do a coppermind dump right then ;). They were still cobbled together even while he held the power of the Well. IIRC he made them as the power was running out after he had played with the planet for a while, so they were flawed even with his great knowledge and temporary intellect. He didn't have time for anything else.

I see exactly why you are saying what you are saying, but it doesn't apply because I know what I'm talking about, you are just misunderstanding most of what I'm saying. I understand all your points, they just don't apply to what I'm saying. The only actual point you have is how the constructs aren't necessarily as flawed as I made them out to be, and how TLR made mistwraiths, and that Kandra come from those after the fact. (btw I just realized that since different species would have different bind points, so different constructs can probably be made from them, mistwraiths being included in those different species... bring on the catquisitors!) You successfully shifted my understanding of the constructs we have though, so you didn't waste your time. Thank you.

At this point all that is really left is a difference of opinion. I think that Hemalurgy is akin to Shattering and you don't. It's a cool theory that I'll keep in mind. If you don't like it, it's no skin off my nose. If I sound like a jerk right now, I'm typing this at 2 a.m. on an aggravating keyboard, so... sorry about that.