Hemalurgic Creatures and Off-world Investiture

[Quantus he/him]

Came across this WOB and it got me thinking:

 

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Questioner

Could Nightblood theoretically be turned into a Hemalurgic spike?

Brandon Sanderson

The problem with that is that Nightblood is already invested, so it depends on your version of ' Hemalurgic spikes'. Piercing someone's body with Invested metal can have weird effects all through the Cosmere, but ripping off a piece of a person's soul using an un-Invested spike to Invest it and create one is different... we're talking about two different things, right. So there's the.... so what is a Hemalurgic spike? For instance if you've got a spike that's Invested and you stick it into a Kandra on Scadrial it will still work as an Invested Hemalurgic spike. Making a new Invested spike by ripping off a person's soul, that's a different process and a little more difficult to accomplish and requires some specialized knowledge.

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So, this makes it sound to me like any old Invested piece of pointy metal would be close enough to an actual Hemaurgic spike (charged with a chunk of Spirit-web) for the purposes of Kandra (and presumably Kolos by extension?).  So, Up to that point Id been picturing the Kandra and Kolos to be beings made of various scraps of Soulweb all frankensteined together.  But if they dont actually need to hold a Soul-web chunk to work, just general Investiture, what exactly are they doing? The Inquisitors needed one central spike just to hold the other pieces together, is that all that's happening, Investiture providing the cohesive energy?  Does the fact that Kandra need two nonspecific spikes inform on that function, some binary interaction?

Edited August 6, 2018 by Quantus

[Weltall]

Kandra need two matched spikes to be completely sapient and sane. Look at Paalm and ReLuur to see what happens when they're missing a spike or don't have a properly matching pair. In the case of the kandra, the spikes are using Investiture to circumvent a Cognitive block that Rashek put into the spiritwebs of the original feruchemists (and which their mistwraith offspring inherited) so paired chunks of metal with enough Investiture might replicate the effect even if they're not properly hemalurgic spikes. The koloss on the other hand use their spikes to transform into the ugly blue berserkers so they need the specific spikes they have.

With Inquisitors, they need that lynchpin spike because they have so many bits of spiritweb stapled to their own (and consequently so many holes poked in their original web) that the central spike holds the entire construct together. But they're the only ones whose sDNA resembles Frankenstein's monster.

[Quantus he/him]

17 hours ago, Weltall said:

Kandra need two matched spikes to be completely sapient and sane. Look at Paalm and ReLuur to see what happens when they're missing a spike or don't have a properly matching pair. In the case of the kandra, the spikes are using Investiture to circumvent a Cognitive block that Rashek put into the spiritwebs of the original feruchemists (and which their mistwraith offspring inherited) so paired chunks of metal with enough Investiture might replicate the effect even if they're not properly hemalurgic spikes. The koloss on the other hand use their spikes to transform into the ugly blue berserkers so they need the specific spikes they have.

With Inquisitors, they need that lynchpin spike because they have so many bits of spiritweb stapled to their own (and consequently so many holes poked in their original web) that the central spike holds the entire construct together. But they're the only ones whose sDNA resembles Frankenstein's monster.

I agree they definitely need two to stay sane, but Im still on the fence with the whole -preMatched Pair debate (I want to go back and reread pretty much all of Mistborn soon), but either way it seems significant that any old Invested rod would do that much, if for no other reason that to beg the question What else is going on for with the proper Matched pairs.  Tell me more about the Realmic Block, I only vaguely remember the How of the Terris getting turned into mistwraiths. Does that basically mean that it only takes an Invested Object to circumvent the block and regain sentience, so the specific matched Blessings are just to grant those added abilities on top of the base Investment function.  Which makes me think that a pair of sufficiently Invested Metalminds could be reasonably expected to wake up a Kandra.  Still, what is it about the Block that makes /two/ the requirement specifically? A balance issue? Or two anchor points for the realmic bridge?

 

The Kolos, especially the originals created generations, Id probably lump into with the Inquisitors as spiritual Frankenstein; I suspect their better off than the more frayed Inquisitors because they are a standardized, stable design, whereas I think he used his inquisitors in a more experimental fashion. 

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

I agree they definitely need two to stay sane, but Im still on the fence with the whole -preMatched Pair debate (I want to go back and reread pretty much all of Mistborn soon), but either way it seems significant that any old Invested rod would do that much, if for no other reason that to beg the question What else is going on for with the proper Matched pairs.

It probably has to do with the nature of the Investiture that's being added to their spiritweb. We see what happens when a kandra tries to operate with non-matching spikes and they rejected it (and only retained partial lucidity while the 'foreign' spike was in them) so there's probably some Realmatic dissonance or somesuch where spikes that lack matching Investiture don't feel 'right' to them. Relatedly, Brandon has said that the kandra not recycling Blessings to make new kandra is more cultural than magical, but the need for matching spikes definitely has weight behind it.

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Tell me more about the Realmic Block, I only vaguely remember the How of the Terris getting turned into mistwraiths. Does that basically mean that it only takes an Invested Object to circumvent the block and regain sentience, so the specific matched Blessings are just to grant those added abilities on top of the base Investment function.  Which makes me think that a pair of sufficiently Invested Metalminds could be reasonably expected to wake up a Kandra.  Still, what is it about the Block that makes /two/ the requirement specifically? A balance issue? Or two anchor points for the realmic bridge?

Here's where Brandon makes the existence of a block explicit. It's something Rashek did to all the living Terris feruchemists (except Kwaan) while Ascended.

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NinjaMeTimbers

How intelligent is a mistwraith? Could you raise and train mistwraiths like dogs or horses, controlling what forms they take by the bones you give them? Would you be able to train yourself a horsewraith steed by giving it only the bones of a horse?

Brandon Sanderson

This is feasible. One thing to keep in mind is that mistwraiths are people who have a blockage between the Physical and the Cognitive Realm, messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it...

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It needs to be two spikes because a single one doesn't provide the Investiture needed.

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Zas (paraphrased)

Got another one [on behalf of Chaos]. Why do Kandra need two spikes to have a blessing and to become sentient?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It is just the nature of how Hemalurgy works. More spikes are capable of changing form and body more, and I didn’t feel that one spike was viable for the alterations that are made to their nature.

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[Quantus he/him]

Huh, so it sounds like any two charged sticks (and even a single one if big enough) would do it, and that the actual Hemalurgy present is a bit more about a convenient side benefit/buff than anything; based on the "Fluid bind-point" WOB is sounds like a Kanda would have a lot more dynamic control of the Spikes inside them (up to and including /moving/ a spike for a different effect?).  This brings me back to the energy balance of it all:  how Invested would a Metalmind need to be to qualify?  How about an object with stored Breaths?  Ooh, and what would it do to them if you used an actual Shardblade, or a full Radiant Blade...?  That would have to mess with their heads more than most, yes?

 

Im starting to see parallels between the kandra Blockage what was done to the Parshmen...