Hermalurgy Question: Any perceived differences from Era 1 to Era 2

[OneNastyChull he/him]

Mistborn Spoilers:

 

So in Era 1 I know that Hermalurgy caused a loss in allomancy effect which could be reduced to a very minimum amount by spiking directly from the giver into the receiver but do we know if that loss of effect still exists in Era 2 now that Harmony holds both shards? Can't find anything in WoB about this specifically. Or is hermalurgy remaining a reduction magic system. 

Or does Hermalurgy work on allomancy this way just because allomancy is a positive magic system? From all that I can tell it doesn't reduce the neutral system in Scandrial outside of only being able to take one ferochemical ability, which if the giver only has one ferochemical ability it wouldn't be a reduction of the effect. 

[Calderis he/him]

I'll try to find some WoBs but the power loss is inherent to the system as it is derived from Ruin. 

It's not specific to Allomancy. The power degrades unless the spike is stored in blood. 

For allomancy, this means a weakened power. For Feruchemy it means efficiency lose. 

Someone who has a feruchemical ability because of hemalurgy is going to store the attribute with a slight power loss. So if a wax stores 50% of his weight for 10 minutes, he can draw to 150% for 10 minutes. A person with Iron Feruchemy gained through Hemalurgy, storing 50% of their weight for 10 minutes would be able to tap to 150% for 9 minutes (total guess on the numbers as the only evidence we have is the word "efficiency").

Edit: here it is

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1153#24

Quote

KURKISTAN

How exactly does hemalurgic decay work for Feruchemy? Is it like a leaky tube or something, or…?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yeah… yeah. (Here misunderstanding and thinking that the question’s about the power of the Feruchemy itself, not storing/tapping metalminds)

KURKISTAN

So they try to store 10 units of health and only 9 gets through, or…?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Hemalurgic decay meaning someone who has been spiked is less powerful? That Hemalurgic decay] or the Hemalurgic decay when a Hemalurgic spike is left outside of blood?

KURKISTAN

Less powerful. So like the Inquisitors are less powerful Feruchemists so they had to spend longer storing: so _why_ did they have to spend longer storing?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yeah they lose a little bit, it’s a leaky… You’re there, exactly. It just doesn’t quite… it’s not as efficient: it’s [an] efficiency thing.

 

Edited July 15, 2017 by Calderis

[+hwiles]

Hemalurgy is still end-negative, meaning that Hemalurgic decay still exists.  This is mentioned on several occasions by Kandra in era 2 in the context that their cache of spikes barely possess any remaining potency (because they've been outside of bodies for 300 years).

People with feruchemic powers granted to them by hemalurgy are less efficient at storing/tapping attributes than people born with the abilities naturally.  They have to store/tap more of each attribute to get the same effect as a normal feruchemist/ferring.

Hemalurgic decay is common to all powers/attributes stolen with hemalurgic spikes, but, as you pointed out, the loss of Investiture is relatively negligible if they are installed into their host quickly after being created.

EDIT: Dang...ninja'd...

Edited July 15, 2017 by hwiles

[OneNastyChull he/him]

Ah I've forgotten this then. Couldn't be remember if it was actually said in era 2 or not. Only read those once and it's been a year practically since BoM. Going to have to reread them.

[King Cole he/him]

3 hours ago, Calderis said:

 

I'll try to find some WoBs but the power loss is inherent to the system as it is derived from Ruin

 

Wait a second, in Arcanum Unbounded Khriss writes that no shard designed. Im not at home right now so I cant get the exact quote but im pretty sure thats what it said

[The One Who Connects he/him]

18 minutes ago, King Cole said:

Wait a second, in Arcanum Unbounded Khriss writes that no shard designed. Im not at home right now so I cant get the exact quote but im pretty sure thats what it said

They didn't design the systems no, but Hemalurgy is of Ruin. Brandon has been quite explicit about this. Additionally, the Law of Hemalurgic Decay is a thing, so even if that isn't because it is derived from the Shard of Entropy, it may as well be the reason.

[Calderis he/him]

2 hours ago, King Cole said:

Wait a second, in Arcanum Unbounded Khriss writes that no shard designed. Im not at home right now so I cant get the exact quote but im pretty sure thats what it said

Derived from, not designed by. 

The magic systems are developed naturally by the interactions between the Shards investiture and the planets. 

That said, the Mistborn annotations make it clear that they have more input than Khriss believes. I don't remember the chapter it's in but I'll come back and edit it in. Ruin intentionally placed the hole in hemalurgy that allowed for the control of spiked individuals, be they Kandra, Koloss, or Inquisitors. 

Edit: Here it is. From the annotations for WoA ch. 54

Quote

When I was designing the Three Metallurgic Arts for these books, I knew that I wanted Hemalurgy to have a built in flaw. A flaw that, as a deconstructionalist might say, was created intentionally and relied upon by the very force hoping it won’t exploit it.

It was important to me that Ruin eventually be brought down, in part, because of things he did or flaws in his power. Preservation could simply build into the humans he created an innate goodness, then expect them to do as he hoped that they would. Ruin had to be able to directly corrupt and influence people. He felt himself stronger because he could MAKE them do exactly as he wanted.

The problem is, for his magic to work–for him to exercise control over someone–he had to leave a hole, so to speak, that other people could wiggle through and use. And so the entire ‘control the koloss’ plot sequence in Book Two was intended to set up Hemalurgy, and in a way predict Ruin’s fall.

Now, the only problem in all of this (for the heroes, at least) is that when Ruin actually got free, he was so strong that it was all but impossible for anyone else to ‘get through’ the holes that he had left in his Hemalurgists. But it wasn’t impossible. In a way, the foreshadowing in this book was meant to lay the seed that Ruin’s control of his minions is not absolute. And an individual who wanted to resist him had that potential

 

Edited July 16, 2017 by Calderis

[Weltall]

53 minutes ago, Calderis said:

 That said, the Mistborn annotations make it clear that they have more input than Khriss believes. I don't remember the chapter it's in but I'll come back and edit it in. Ruin intentionally placed the hole in hemalurgy that allowed for the control of spiked individuals, be they Kandra, Koloss, or Inquisitors. 

There's also Leras' manipulations to make his '16 is important, notice this!' plan to work and Harmony doing something to reduce the snapping threshold as of Era 2.

[Calderis he/him]

3 minutes ago, Weltall said:

There's also Leras' manipulations to make his '16 is important, notice this!' plan to work and Harmony doing something to reduce the snapping threshold as of Era 2.

Yep. They may not have designed them, but they can definitely change things within them. 

Khriss also has to be at least aware of the 16 thing, because with the nature of the things she does, it's a pretty safe bet that she's read the Words of Founding. 

[OneNastyChull he/him]

Another question where does this power go that's lost from Hermalurgy? Does it return to Harmony?

[Calderis he/him]

25 minutes ago, OneNastyChull said:

Another question where does this power go that's lost from Hermalurgy? Does it return to Harmony?

I don't believe so. It's not stealing pieces of the Shards. It stealing the pieces of the soul that allows access to the use of investiture. 

With Feruchemy, that investiture is completely internal to the person using it. 

For Allomancy, the only time that Preservation's power is used is when the metal is burning and that power is pouring in.

So with the spike, the Decay is internal and, other than the damage already done in killing someone to take the power, and preventing them from passing the ability on, there's no greater effect on the Cosmere. 

Edited July 16, 2017 by Calderis

[The One Who Connects he/him]

8 hours ago, OneNastyChull said:

Another question where does this power go that's lost from Hemalurgy? Does it return to Harmony?

Quote

Q: Is investiture finite? Hemalurgy and a Return's need to consume breath seems to show us that it can be destroyed. If it is finite, is the Cosmere's magic source doomed to the law of entropy?
 
A: Investiture can not be created or destroyed. It follows it's own version of the laws of Thermodynamics.
 
Q: So what happens to the investiture that is lost when a person is spiked and the spike isn't set in the new person immediately? Does it return to the big pool of investiture in the sky like the power from wheel of time where if its not actively being used it returns to the source?
 
A: What happens to someone's body when it's not being used by a particular person? The system is built to work like that.

[Source]

[OneNastyChull he/him]

So it doesn't take more innate investiture to be a Mistborn or to be a stronger misting? Sorry just trying to be clear about this because that seems illogical. 

[Calderis he/him]

7 minutes ago, OneNastyChull said:

So it doesn't take more innate investiture to be a Mistborn or to be a stronger misting? Sorry just trying to be clear about this because that seems illogical. 

No. It's encoded into their spiritual DNA. 

unless their are actively burning a metal, they are no more invested than a non-metalborn. They just have the potential to be. 

It's not a matter of more investiture. It's about it being configured correctly in the Spiritual Realm to allow access to the external source. 

A spike does not just steal a chunk of investiture to give away, it cuts out a specific portion of the soul to be placed in another individual at the right place to allow the same access. This is why bind points are important. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

11 minutes ago, OneNastyChull said:

So it doesn't take more innate investiture to be a Mistborn or to be a stronger misting? Sorry just trying to be clear about this because that seems illogical. 

Sort of..? It's more connection to Preservation, which may be related to Innate Investiture, but I cannot confirm or deny that. I do have this though:

Quote

The Sliding Scale of Allomantic Potential

Noblemen, despite what Spook says in this chapter, are not immune to the mistsickness. You see, since the mists are Snapping people and awakening the Allomantic potential within them, it will affect far fewer noblemen than skaa. Why? Because a lot of the noblemen have already Snapped.

However, that won't stop all of them from being affected by the mistsickness, because the mistsickness is also awakening Allomantic potential that would otherwise be too subtle to be brought out. Pretend there's a sliding scale of Allomantic potential. 100% means you're an Allomancer—in this series, only two people have hit 100%—Vin and Elend. Buried within a lot of people, however, is enough of a touch of Preservation's power to hit, say, 50% on the relative scale of Allomantic power. These people, when beaten and made to pass through something traumatic, awaken to their Allomantic abilities.
There are a lot of people out there, however, with something more like 20% to 30%. These are the people the mists are Snapping—since the mists are, themselves, partially the power of Preservation, they can touch people and increase their Allomantic potential slightly and then bring it to the forefront.

It's the best I've got

[+hwiles]

On 7/16/2017 at 7:28 PM, FiveLate said:

Ok, I am going with a heretical WOT example to explain this.  

In WOT, Different people could channel different amounts of the One Power.  That would be like having dif sDNA allowing the Investiture to flow through the metals.

Different people also had slightly different abilities, some could pick apart the treads of weaves, some could find metal deposits under ground, some could read the history of objects.  That is like mistings.  Some could do all ... mistborn.

The you had ones that were very very weak, but could make massive gateways, that is like savants.

It is all channeling the One Power, just in different ways.

Yeah, but that guy who did the gateway nonsense was a character Sanderson made and introduced totally independent of Jordan's notes and outlines IIRC.  That's why he was so pivotal in wrapping up so many diverse loose ends, he was Sanderson's personal response to needing to conclude a bunch of arcs that had been inadvertently assigned to channelers who, in previous books, received very little screen time, and not wanting to give 10 different Ashaman their own pov chapters; so he just made a new one that better fit his normal character template: interesting non-standard strength + legitimate weakness that has to be faced and dealt with.

Upvote for going out of your way to make WoT analogies! 

[Oversleep]

On 15.07.2017 at 9:32 PM, Calderis said:

Someone who has a feruchemical ability because of hemalurgy is going to store the attribute with a slight power loss. So if a wax stores 50% of his weight for 10 minutes, he can draw to 150% for 10 minutes. A person with Iron Feruchemy gained through Hemalurgy, storing 50% of their weight for 10 minutes would be able to tap to 150% for 9 minutes (total guess on the numbers as the only evidence we have is the word "efficiency").

That's not how it works (or at least we have no evidence of Hemalurgic Decay affecting tapping efficiency). The WoB you linked only says that they lose a bit while storing.

So if we had a natural Feruchemist and one with Hemalurgically granted Feruchemy, and if they spend the same amount of time storing at the same rate, the Hemalurgist's metalmind would contain less attribute than the natural Feruchemist's.

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, Oversleep said:

That's not how it works (or at least we have no evidence of Hemalurgic Decay affecting tapping efficiency). The WoB you linked only says that they lose a bit while storing.

So if we had a natural Feruchemist and one with Hemalurgically granted Feruchemy, and if they spend the same amount of time storing at the same rate, the Hemalurgist's metalmind would contain less attribute than the natural Feruchemist's.

Which using numbers that I admitted where picked arbitrarily is what I said. 

Until we see have a baseline to try and attach numbers to, 90% efficiency would store 90% of the amount of a natural born feruchemist, or enough to draw the same amount for a full minute less than the 10 minutes in my example.

Edit: @Oversleep I saw your request on the stack exchange, so I have to ask. Did you think I meant that if you stored at 50% then you have to tap at 50%? I didn't mean to imply that at all. I just used consistent numbers to show equal investiture in and out

Edit 2: with the way it's presented in the books, the idea that the storage and tap rate could be tied together never even crossed my mind. I mean, the higher tap rate feats we see from Wax, and the speed of steel running wouldn't be possible. 

Edited July 18, 2017 by Calderis

[OneNastyChull he/him]

The spike also steals the innate investiture does it not? I mean the investiture that all Scandrial were originally formed with. I thought I read a WoB (will look for it) that stated that it would be possible to spike someone and steal their powers but the person spiked could also survive. But they would then be the equivalent of a drab. What I'm asking is where does that investiture go that was taken by the spike.

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, OneNastyChull said:

The spike also steals the innate investiture does it not? I mean the investiture that all Scandrial were originally formed with. I thought I read a WoB (will look for it) that stated that it would be possible to spike someone and steal their powers but the person spiked could also survive. But they would then be the equivalent of a drab. What I'm asking is where does that investiture go that was taken by the spike.

The spike only steals the innate investiture. 

That investiture is what makes up the soul of a Scadrian. 

When a spike cuts off a portion of the soul, that's exactly what is being taken. 

Imagine the soul as a blueprint drawn of investiture. When a spike goes through, it rips out the portion of the blueprint that allows a power to be used. 

You then have to place that section in the correct spot on a different blueprint to grant the ability. If the section isn't placed correctly, it doesn't fit the design and won't grant the power, like if you put an outlet in your well that didn't have any electrical wires hooked to it. 

Does that all make sense? 

Edited July 19, 2017 by Calderis

[Oversleep]

18 hours ago, Calderis said:

Edit: @Oversleep I saw your request on the stack exchange, so I have to ask. Did you think I meant that if you stored at 50% then you have to tap at 50%? I didn't mean to imply that at all. I just used consistent numbers to show equal investiture in and out

Edit 2: with the way it's presented in the books, the idea that the storage and tap rate could be tied together never even crossed my mind. I mean, the higher tap rate feats we see from Wax, and the speed of steel running wouldn't be possible. 

No, I don't think that's what you meant, I just wanted to include that WoB in this discussion here and I can't find it

[Calderis he/him]

8 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

No, I don't think that's what you meant, I just wanted to include that WoB in this discussion here and I can't find it

OK. I seriously had never considered that people may have taken it that way, and I'm glad I didn't confuse the issue. 

[OneNastyChull he/him]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

The spike only steals the innate investiture. 

That investiture is what makes up the soul of a Scadrian. 

When a spike cuts off a portion of the soul, that's exactly what is being taken. 

Imagine the soul as a blueprint drawn of investiture. When a spike goes through, it rips out the portion of the blueprint that allows a power to be used. 

You then have to place that section in the correct spot on a different blueprint to grant the ability. If the section isn't placed correctly, it doesn't fit the design and won't grant the power, like if you put an outlet in your well that didn't have any electrical wires hooked to it. 

Does that all make sense? 

I understand all of that. I feel like I'm not phrasing this properly. Humans on Scandrial are born with innate investiture. This investiture comes from Preservation > Ruin until Harmony existed and at this point most are assuming that the innate investiture is coming equally from the combined shards. This investiture is also the Spiritual DNA of the humans on Scandrial. This investiture can be absorbed/taken by a hermalurgic spike. This spike contains less spiritual DNA potential. But my question is does the investiture(not the DNA, but the raw investiture ) transfer fully or is there some loss of this raw investiture. If there is a loss where does it go? 

Or am I misinterpreting that Preservation gave up his actual power while creating humans. I thought that was the whole reason he was getting weaker. 

[Calderis he/him]

14 minutes ago, OneNastyChull said:

Or am I misinterpreting that Preservation gave up his actual power while creating humans. I thought that was the whole reason he was getting weaker. 

Leras did put more of himself into the creation of humans, that's why there is an imbalance in Harmony. 

When you speak of Preservation getting weaker, are you talking about in Secret History? Because that doesn't seem to be related to the power imbalance. Leras says that he was killed. I always took this to mean that Ruin mortally wounded him in the process of being trapped and he just took ages to die because, well, he's a Shard. 

[OneNastyChull he/him]

Oh Ive always thought that Preservation grew weaker as more humans came to be. That his depreciation in power partly due to giving up more with each human that came to be. Which is why he grew so weak but very very slowly. Going to have to read both eras again. 

[Calderis he/him]

11 minutes ago, OneNastyChull said:

Oh Ive always thought that Preservation grew weaker as more humans came to be. That his depreciation in power partly due to giving up more with each human that came to be. Which is why he grew so weak but very very slowly. Going to have to read both eras again. 

It would have to be something other than the power imbalance. If that were the problem, Harmony would be far more heavily skewed towards ruin, and Endowment would probably be even more weakened as Breath are a large enough chunk of investiture to equal the "more than half" measure of Preservation to Ruin in Scadrians, and they aren't guaranteed to return to the system upon the death of their holder. 

Endowment seems to be perfectly fine, and Harmony's imbalance seems to be minor. Preservation's problem had to stem from something else.