The Lord Ruler and Hemalurgy (Spoilers and Questions)

[Lightning he/him]

So apparently

Brandon has revealed that the Lord Ruler was using hemalurgy on himself, via his atium bracers

.  I find this strange given that the Lord Ruler was effectively immortal anyway

just using compounding

.  Why would he do that to himself?

 

But then I realized this may be the entirely wrong question.  

Indeed, what would the Lord Ruler even gain from hemalurgy, since it put him under the influence of Ruin, without really giving him much more power in terms of allomancy or feruchemy.  He was already a full allomancer and feruchemist!  And what bind points are on the arms??

 

Couldn't the Lord Ruler have just embedded the bracers inside himself, where nobody could even see them?They wouldn't need to be hemalurgical spikes.

 

So something very strange is going on here.

[TheArcanist he/him]

Well, according to the Coppermind, Atium's Feruchemical purpose is to store age. We already knew this, and we also know that compounding enables the Feruchemical stores to be multiplied by something like a factor of ten when burned. Therefore, chances are the Lord Ruler transferred some of the Atium metalminds' Investiture stores to a bead of Atium, swallowed it, burned it, then used it to reduce his age while storing the excess.

 

Now- the primary reason he used them as Hemalurgic spikes is quite easily explained. No normal Allomancer would've been able to remove them from his body if he impaled them in his skin, and no Feruchemist who figured out what he was doing would've been able to get close enough to remove them.

 

However, it's also stated that the Hemalurgic use of Atium is to steal any trait at all. Whether it be Allomantic, Feruchemical, or 'Human'. The emphasis seems to be more towards stealing some sort of psychological trait, and the bind point on the arms is Allomantic Bronze. However, as this is an Atium spike we're talking about, it could probably do whatever the Lord Ruler wanted it to do, and give a boost to his Allomantic Bronze. The truth is, we really have very little evidence to go over, so this is the best I've got.

[Lightning he/him]

TheArcanist,

 

Good ideas, but I don't think it works.

 

1. He could have just as easily coated part of his skeleton with atium (kind of like wolverine), and not only would allomancers be unable to remove the metal, but they wouldn't even know he had it!

 

2.  This would also have allowed himself to use feruchemy since he is touching the metal, without the drawback of opening his mind to Ruin's influence.

 

You are right about the upper arms being bind points for bronze.  I've got nothing there either (so I'll give you a rep point).

[TheArcanist he/him]

How on earth would he have been able to coat his skeleton with Atium without killing himself?

[Moogle]

How on earth would he have been able to coat his skeleton with Atium without killing himself?

 

Compounded Feruchemical gold. Miles could take a stick of dynamite to the face and survive without much issue. I don't think a little bit of invasive surgery would cause TLR much trouble.

[TheArcanist he/him]

Makes sense, now that I think about it. Still- how much Atium would that have taken and would it have been practical to even attempt to acquire that much?

 

In any case, the only way to get some real answers would be to ask Brandon what trait the Atium spikes had stolen.

Edited April 2, 2014 by TheArcanist

[Lightning he/him]

Remember that Sazed at one point also had his metalminds embedded in his body (during his fight with Marsh).  It wouldn't be too hard to put that much atium in your body.  Just coat your skull, or something like that.

 

It would only take the same amount of atium as in the bracers the Lord Ruler actually wore, so perhaps enough to cover a few bones.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Lightning

[Levian]

I agree that he had them piercing his skin at the very least so they couldn't be affected allomantically. But if we have WoB that they were also Spikes, then TLR didn't do that for no reason. He probably has knowledge of all of the metals effects for all three metallic arts, having held the knowledge of Preservation multiple times (it was multiple times right? Been a while).

 

So the chance that he just happened to pierce his skin with atium bracers in the exact location needed for a Spike is slim to none. He was getting some benefit from it for sure.

[TheArcanist he/him]

He just held the power of Preservation the one time- the Well refills once every 1,000 years. I think some of the Terris texts call it the "Millennial Power". However, being a former Shardholder, a Sliver, he would've been affected by the time he'd held the Shard. We also don't know how much knowledge of the metallic arts the Worldbringers had- Rashek, as the nephew of Kwaan -could likely have had copious amounts of knowledge regarding them already; at least in the case of Feruchemy.

 

We know for sure that he had a near-perfect knowledge of Hemalurgy, but that he never managed to surpass what he was capable of doing while holding Preservation's power. We also know that he knew things about Allomancy that no one else knew, and that he was quite likely the most proficient, skilled, and knowledgeable Allomancer in Scadrial's history. I would've added 'most powerful' as well, but Vin seems to take that spot. Then again, we really have no idea what he could do. In any case, there's no real way of knowing what the Lord Ruler's Hemalurgic Atium spikes were for without asking Brandon what was invested in them other than age via Feruchemy.

[Lightning he/him]

One thought I've had is that maybe he wanted the extra boost to bronze in order to hear the well when it was ready to use.  That way nobody else could beat him to it.

 

Another option is perhaps he used bronze pulses to subdue the spirit of Preservation and the mists somehow.