Hemalurgy on Sel

[DSC01 he/him]

In the Ars Arcanum in The Allow of Law, the author mentions that hemalurgy, not being intrinsically evil, could have some interesting applications on Sel. My first thought was, Well, sure, you could spike an Elantrian, and it probably wouldn't kill them. It seems like there might be caveat or two, there, but I didn't give it much more thought.

 

I didn't even think about soulforging. Could a spike be forged without having to actually kill someone? Could a soulforger forge their own soul, such that they could temporarily become an Inquisitor (or a less thoroughly spiked-up hemalurgist)? 

 

Not knowing much about Dahkor monks, I don't know how to begin to think how hemalurgy would apply to them, but I thought the soulforging idea was interesting.

Edited April 25, 2014 by DSC01

[Swimmingly he/him]

Well, it could mean that you could adapt any magic system to any area, for one thing.

[DSC01 he/him]

Well, I already assumed as much (with the exception of the geographically bound Elantrian magic). What I'm getting at is, it seems that mentioning that hemalurgy could be useful on Sel--immediately after saying it isn't necessarily evil--was a hint that hemalurgy could be used without all of the nastiness that goes with it on Scadrial. 

[Swimmingly he/him]

A few, and possibly all, of the magic on Sel seems to geographically bound. Soulstamps, for example, reportedly don't work in Elantris.

[Stalagmite]

But, unless I'm mistaken when you take a power with hemalurgy it becomes powered by ruin, how this would affect AonDor I don't know. It could even mean that distance from Elantris no longer matters.

[DSC01 he/him]

I don't know about that. I thought that it was Ruin's power that steals the power, but it remains powered by whatever Shard powered it to begin with.

[Tempus]

I'm thinking Forging would be very interesting as an interplay with hemalurgy. Forging seems to change the spiritual and cognitive aspects as well as the physical ones. So... at best, an essence stamp Forged individual could be spiked, tearing off a part of the changed spiritual aspect, and then the aspect would revert to original, leaving the spiked individual unharmed or mostly unharmed. Brilliant.

 

At worst, you could use essence stamps as a neat little spiking factory - take a semi-plausible stamp with a quality you like, stamp it, quickly spike it in the five minutes or so before it dissipates, get yourself a shiny spike with the spiritual aspect you want without all the rubbish of running around trying to find the perfect victim. Evil Hemalurgic mass production ho!

Edited April 26, 2014 by Tempus

[Aether he/him]

I wonder how much of things like this Brandon has actually thought of. There are several Threads on the subject of gaming the different magic systems, and it seems to me that he cannot possibly have thought of an answer to every scenario. Either that, or some of the systems will be ridiculously over-powered later in the Cosmere series.

[Tempus]

There are not so many magic systems, and he has the advantage of having all the rules. While he surely hasn't thought of every scenario, he probably has a list of the major interactions.