Impact of destroying a planet on the magic systems native to that planet

[Ixthos]

I should be posting a theory on Cyborg hemalurgy in a few days, a week or two tops, but I just wanted to put this question and theory in a topic before I go any further, as something mentioned in another topic reminded me of something that has been bothering me for a while - Hemalurgy and the destruction of Scadrial.

 

In Mistborn, Ruin intended to destroy Scadrial, but also hinted that the Inquisitors would be used offworld as a weapon. Hemalurgy can be used off world, indeed it is the most easily used system anywhere in the Cosmere, as even those who aren't native to Scadrial can use it - the opposite of the Dor in a sense. But it still, theoretically, is grounded to Scadrial. It is based off of Ruin interacting with Scadrial. Now I have said before that Preservation and Ruin specifically made Scadrial so that metal would be the focus so that their three systems could interact with the power of other shards, and each other, and I also theorised that Scadrial contains two "moon" from Yolen, which Ruin and Preservation rode to reach the system and then used as the base for the planet, piling more material on top of them. This question, based on those two assumptions, proposes a few possible solutions as to what Ruin was trying to do, based on whether those theories are right or not:

 

• Hemalurgy would have survived the planets destruction, as only a shard leaving a system with an intact planet destroys a magic, so the Inquisitors would still have been useful tools even if Scadrial had been destroyed, so long as Ruin remained intact (dubious, though the only know example of a system being destroyed rather than changed involved the shard - Ambition - leaving before being killed, while Honour is splintered but Surgebinding remains, though also tied to another shard)
• Hemalurgy would have been lost, but the Inquisitors would have been transformed into cognitive shadows under Ruins control, as Hemalurgy animated them and their bodies would have been destroyed, and so hemalurgy vanishing would have meant the investiture would have remained in their cognitive components but no-longer granted power
• Hemalurgy would have been lost ... if Ruin fully destroyed the planet, but he would have left enough for hemalurgy to remain, and the Inquisitors would have retained their powers
• Hemalurgy would have been lost ... but because the planet was based on Ruins moon hemalurgy would have survived (dubious if my theory on moons is wrong, and also doesn't explain how allomancy and feruchemy could have survived, as Inquisitors used those powers, unless Preservation's moon would also have survived, or hemalurgically granted powers are exempt from normal rules once granted and can survive a system being lost)
• Hemalurgy would have been lost ... but Ruin could maintain the powers of the Inquisitors despite this
• Hemalurgy would have been lost ... and Ruin was okay with that (only viable if Ruin either hadn't intended to use the Inquisitors on other planets, or didn't have any plans with hemalurgy and other systems, contradicted by Ruin specifically empowering the Inquisitors to survive old age)

 

Applying this back to the question, what happens if a planet is destroyed? Or, rather, what happens when a shard is destroyed and / or a planet is destroyed?

• Only a shard's loss destroys or changes a magic system, the planet can survive or be destroyed without anything happening
• Only a planet's loss, or the shard leaving the planet, destroys a magic system, with anything happening to the shard only changing the system
• A planet's loss and a shard's loss at the same time destroys a magic system, and anything else will only weaken it

 

Thanks for reading. Does anyone know any other possible explanations?

Also, Ruin said Scadrial was like an old man ... so what does Ruin think of other planets that were around before the they arrived in the system?

[Wandering Investor]

Great question, but I don't think we have enough information to make conclusively say.

My theory is that the magic is actually tied to the "subastral" instead of the planet. That's a term used by Hoid at one point, and I think it refers to the area of space that the planet occupies. The cognitive realm seems divided up into different areas, with each area having very different traits. If you destroyed the planet you'd likely see the cognitive space shrink, but I don't know if the space would disappear or not. I would guess not, but have nothing to really base that one.

With the planet destroyed, I think some of Ruin's investiture would still remain within the subastral, enough to keep Hemalurgy in its current form. But if it is possible for Ruin to fully reclaim all of his power, I think that's when we would see either the disappearance of alteration of hemalurgy.

As for Ruin describing the planet as an old man, that's just him trying to explain away his actions to Vin. He just wanted to break the place.

[SwordNimiForPresident]

The magic all Comes from the Spiritual realm, which is nondimensional. This would make location (and planet) irrelevant. The magic systems that are location dependent are that way because accessing the Spiritual realm requires a stepping stone like the Dor. If, for example, Sel was destroyed, Aona and Skai’s corpses would still be in the CR. Eventually Sel’s CR would fade away and the neighboring CRs would creep into the Dor. Another example would be Roshar. If the planet was destroyed, the Highstorms would no longer be around to grant Stormlight. If said destruction destroyed the Spren as well, then the magic system would be lost. If it didn’t, the Bonsmiths would still be able to summon Honors perpendicularity and give access to Stormlight.

[Ixthos]

@Wandering Investor Good theory :-) though that would put a time limit on how long hemalurgy would remain viable, so Ruin would have to keep from being delayed again while travelling the Cosmere, assuming that it wouldn't have used that time to make another system using another planet to replace hemalurgy. I still would have enjoyed seeing Ruin travel to Roshar and take on the shards there.

 

@SwordNimiForPresident The only problem is that the planets are integral parts of the magic systems - Awakening exists because Endowment is on Nalthis, true, but if Endowment was on another planet then that planet wouldn't have Awakening, but another system. The metallic arts only exist because Ruin and Preservation interact with Scadrial and each other. Each planet also shapes the system, so it isn't just the shards that are important.

[SwordNimiForPresident]

The metallic arts and Scadrial were custom designed by the Vessels of Preservation and Ruin and work anywhere in the Cosmere. Scadrial has been physically moved twice and remade once with no effect on the metallic arts, other than the intentional changes made by Preservation’s vessels.

[Ixthos]

8 minutes ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

The metallic arts and Scadrial were custom designed by the Vessels of Preservation and Ruin and work anywhere in the Cosmere. Scadrial has been physically moved twice and remade once with no effect on the metallic arts, other than the intentional changes made by Preservation’s vessels.

And this is my point. The planet itself - the core of the planet - wasn't changed, only its surface and its location. We can all agree that moving something, or changing its coat of paint, is not the same as destroying it. So, if it were destroyed, what would happen? If any planet with a shard interacting with it to produce a system is destroyed, what would happen to that system?

[Quantus]

Another possibility is that Hemalurgy, or at least it's fundamentals, predate Scadrial itself in the same way Lightweaving existed on Yolen before the Shattering, and Stormlight-in-gems existed on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation arrived and co-opted it.  The implication would be that Scadrial was created more to give them an opportunity to Modify and/or Refine Hemalurgy, rather than creating it whole. Much like Yolen's version of Lightweaving, I wouldnt be surprised if some or even all of the Metallic Arts are modeled after older Dragonsteel era magics. For example, I could see it playing out that Dragons were innately Feruchemists, or that prior to Scadrial Hemalurgy worked but only with spikes made of Dragonsteel. 

 

[HSuperLee]

Personally I'd go with the theory that hemalurgy would be lost, but that the act of destroying Scadrial while there are Inquisitors would transform them into something else which is possibly more powerful and more helpful to Ruin. Maybe they would have become cognitive shadows, but ones with "holes" in them allowing them to pick up any local magic when they arrived in a new system.

Edited February 20, 2019 by HSuperLee

[SwordNimiForPresident]

53 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Another possibility is that Hemalurgy, or at least it's fundamentals, predate Scadrial itself in the same way Lightweaving existed on Yolen before the Shattering, and Stormlight-in-gems existed on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation arrived and co-opted it.  The implication would be that Scadrial was created more to give them an opportunity to Modify and/or Refine Hemalurgy, rather than creating it whole. Much like Yolen's version of Lightweaving, I wouldnt be surprised if some or even all of the Metallic Arts are modeled after older Dragonsteel era magics. For example, I could see it playing out that Dragons were innately Feruchemists, or that prior to Scadrial Hemalurgy worked but only with spikes made of Dragonsteel. 

 

I think Feruchemy is a fundamental magic of the Cosmere and that the 16 metals we know are just the ones that P/R decided to use for their world. I like the idea that there are other metals/aspects out there that can be used.

[Ixthos]

@Quantus That makes a lot of sense :-) Brandon specifically said it wasn't a coincidence he used the term "spiking" when discussing perpendicularities, how they pierce between cognitive, physical, and spiritual. And it also could tie into Stormlight Archives dagger ...

 

@HSuperLee That's a rather novel approach! I don't know if I fully agree, but that is clever!

[+Oltux72]

2 hours ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

I think Feruchemy is a fundamental magic of the Cosmere and that the 16 metals we know are just the ones that P/R decided to use for their world. I like the idea that there are other metals/aspects out there that can be used.

Aluminium works outside. Silver presumably also would. However, what says that there must be three Metallic Arts? Outside of aluminium Ruin and Preservation likely had free choice in what they power. But it is not clear to me that they could choose the effects freely. It is entirely possible that other metals would have effects, if you hooked them up to an external source of Investiture.

[Calderis]

On 2/20/2019 at 4:58 AM, SwordNimiForPresident said:

The metallic arts and Scadrial were custom designed by the Vessels of Preservation and Ruin and work anywhere in the Cosmere. Scadrial has been physically moved twice and remade once with no effect on the metallic arts, other than the intentional changes made by Preservation’s vessels.

The Metallic Arts were not custom designed. They were able to nudge them in certain directions and change some specific things, but the magic itself is a natural outgrowth of the Shards Investiture interacting with a planet. 

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Kaimipono

On a broader level, is Hemalurgy officially dead, then? Or is it still extant in some Ruin-free (but still messy) form? (If it's gone, is there any imbalance since Preservation's magic power is kept and Ruin's isn't?)

Brandon Sanderson

Is Hemalurgy dead? No, not at all. It, like the other two powers, was not created by Ruin or Preservation, but by the natural state of the world and its interaction with the gods who created it. It still requires the same method of creation, but very few people are aware of how it works.

Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

They could push and change things, like Ruin creating the hole that allows control, and Preservation altering the way the Mists snapped people, but the system itself was not designed... 

There is argumentation though, that this could have been much more complicated and that in building the world, they built the magic system... If that is the case though, then there is still a lot we don't know. 

I'm personally in the camp that a destroyed shard world would upend the magic system. There would still be a record of the world in the Spiritual Realm, it's Spiritual "corpse" but I don't believe that would function to the extent of a fully realized, present in all three realms world, any more than a dead person. 

As to the use of Inquisitors after Scadrial fall, I believe that Ruin could sustain them, albeit in some altered form most likely, as tools to implement destruction. Sort of the Dark Heralds of Ruin. 

Edited February 21, 2019 by Calderis

[Karger]

I think that it is more likely that Hemalurgy would linger for a time until the pieces of the planet forgot what it was like to be part of a planet and instead thought of themselves as pieces.  Once that happens the magic system which was dependent on the spiritual aspect of the planet would either collapses entirely or change substantially depending on how ruin desired to destroy it.

[SwordNimiForPresident]

@Calderis Thanks for the WoB. One part of it I find interesting is his statement about the "natural state" of the world. This raises two questions in my mind. One, what is the natural state of an entirely manufactured world given that it is, by its creation, unnatural? Two, the planet has been moved and remade at various points, so how does that relate to it's natural state? I like the meta argument that, since P/R designed the planet, they also designed the magic system.

Another thought I had, what if a planet is depopulated? Would it lose it's CR? What about its magic? How much of the "natural state" is tied up in the CR?

[Ixthos]

@Calderis I like that idea, especially if it would mean any new system Ruin formed would be available to them. Hopefully this is something that would be elaborated on by Brandon later if asked, or something shown in another story.

@SwordNimiForPresident I suspect that the natural state ties into the core of the planet, the majority of the material that it is composed of, and how it thinks of itself. How much that is related to the beliefs of the people on its surface and on any outside observers is an open question.