Efficient Hemalurgy

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

This was one of my first theories/questions after I finished reading Mistborn. I apologize if this has been brought up before, I haven't seen it.

In the third book, Marsh or some other inquisitor makes a remark about how finding a mist-born or feruchemist could be wasteful, since they could only get one attribute/spike out of them. My question was whether a person could be spiked multiple times. For obvious reasons this doesn't generally work, due to the spike in the chest, but if you could ensure the donor's survival, could you potentially steal all of the powers?

Onto the theory portion: For a mistborn, if an Inquisitor gave them a spike for f-gold, and got them to use it, the donor would survive the spiking and the inquisitor could proceed to systematically remove all the other powers, leaving gold for last. Admittedly you would have to rely on the donor's wish to survive,  but you could likely get most if not all of the powers. Would this work?

As a corollary to this, since we know that spiked attributes can be required if the Feruchemist uses f-gold, could the Steel Ministry have just kept a group of Keepers captive as an unlimited source of spikes?

 

*unrelated side-note: is there a way to avoid auto-correct? It keeps correcting words like mistborn, cosmere, etc. (happened 4 times while typing that sentence.)

[Spoolofwhool]

Yes, you could probably steal all powers if you managed to keep them alive. Full feruchemists or giving someone a spike for feruchemical gold as well would work, as they could prevent their death from the spiking, as well as regenerate the lost spiritual. Once again though, it would require someone to be in agreement with though if you found a mistborn sympathetic to your cause, you could just use them.

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

My thoughts were that the Ministry would break the person mentally so that they would tap f-gold on command, reducing the chance of a donor deciding to deny the Inquisitors more spikes.

[Yata he/him]

I want just to add something to the already great answer of @Spoolofwhool.

First of all, F-gold may heal the Soul and the Hemalurgy damage (But honestly I think you will need a hellish tons of Feruchemical Charge). But we don't know if this may actually help to survive to the Hemalurgy is first place. Then we have the problem that when you are Spiked your remain soul is probably too different from the initial one to access your previous made Metalminds (this may be overcomed with some tricks...but that tricks are not avaliable in TFE).

There are another problem, if you give to someone a F-gold power to Spike out from him multiple things. You give him also the tool to suicide in a fast way....it may be a risk.

Lastly but it's about the Multiple Spiking without Healing, I am honestly  unsure a victim may survive to a couple of Spiking.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Yata

[Weltall]

Brandon has said that a spiked person who survived the experience could heal the damaged portion of the soul but the result would be a 'patch', not the original soul. He was asked about Miles potentially being spiked for his Allomantic gold and whether he could heal that back with Feruchemy and said it might be possible, so perhaps you could steal an attribute multiple times or steal more than one attribute by getting the donor to heal between spikings. Trick is, first you'd need to spike them in a way that they survive the experience (possible but apparently not all that common) and second, the soul-healing would have to work in a way that it doesn't mess up your spiritweb when it comes to other abilities and we don't know enough about that to know whether or not it would be an issue.

But I suspect we'll learn more since hemalurgical research has indeed continued.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Weltall