Hemalurgy and ettmetal

[Koloss17 She/They]

So I just thought of something! For atium, you steal one ability hemalurgically, and with lerasium, you steal all of the abilities! This is like the allomancy/ Feruchemy thing! You can only have one or all

but what makes this better is that there is one way for you to have two abilities: if you are a twinborn.

so what if harmonium hemalurgically steals one of each ability from a magic system!

one from Feruchemy, one for allomancy, one for surgebinding, and so on!

i feel like this has some merit and I’m losing my spheres/marbles!

Edited January 17, 2020 by Koloss17
A bit too exited

[Karger he/him]

6 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

so what if harmonium hemalurgically steals one of each ability from a magic system!

Maybe?  It is not like we know but atium can do the same thing steal one ability from anything or are you saying that it only steals one half the magic system from whoever it spikes?

[Koloss17 She/They]

No, it steals one from each magic system that person is harnessing.

if they are a twinborn, you take both abilities

if you are a L-mistborn Lightweaver, you take an allomantic ability and one surge

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

First of all this topic's title is hilarious

Second of all this does actually seem kinda possible? it's certainly powerful, but given the nature of Harmonium, i'd say it's sufficiently challenging to get it to even happen.

[Weltall]

I think that if you stick a spike of what Brandon's called 'super-cesium' in someone you're not going steal/gain Twinborn abilities, you're going to end up with a very large explosion.

Also, please don't use all-caps, it's distracting and especially with this topic title it just makes you look obnoxious.

[RShara she/her]

7 minutes ago, Weltall said:

I think that if you stick a spike of what Brandon's called 'super-cesium' in someone you're not going steal/gain Twinborn abilities, you're going to end up with a very large explosion.

Also, please don't use all-caps, it's distracting and especially with this topic title it just makes you look obnoxious.

Thank you for saying it

[Koloss17 She/They]

7 hours ago, Weltall said:

I think that if you stick a spike of what Brandon's called 'super-cesium' in someone you're not going steal/gain Twinborn abilities, you're going to end up with a very large explosion.

Also, please don't use all-caps, it's distracting and especially with this topic title it just makes you look obnoxious.

Thank you so very much, I will fix this.

[+robardin he/him]

9 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

First of all this topic's title is hilarious

Second of all this does actually seem kinda possible? it's certainly powerful, but given the nature of Harmonium, i'd say it's sufficiently challenging to get it to even happen.

You’re not kidding. Ettmetal explodes in contact with water, like Cesium does in real life (check out the youtube videos).

Hemalurgic spikes need contact with blood in the body to work, and blood is mostly water in composition.

Kaboom!

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

You’re not kidding. Ettmetal explodes in contact with water, like Cesium does in real life (check out the youtube videos).

Hemalurgic spikes need contact with blood in the body to work, and blood is mostly water in composition.

Kaboom!

For what it's worth, we went around this particular block recently. The ambiguity is that they need to be inside the body, but while they may or may not require blood-contact to be charged initially, a charged spike can theoretically be implanted as a tooth filling (per WOB) or an earring as we've seen on stage.  In the case of piercings, the issue becomes entirely a practical one with keeping it dry and free of significant skin fluids (sweat, something called "sebum", etc).  Charging it in the place is still a critical hurdle, though.    

[Koloss17 She/They]

Would blood actually make it explode though? Doesn’t it only explode in contact with water?

[18th Shard he/him]

Blood is 92% water. Yeah, it would explode. That's not a supernatural effect, that is how alkali metals react with any water or like substances.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Alternatively, we can make a Primer Spike, made of a typical hemalurgic metal, but with a Primer-Cube like device attached to the head of the spike. Turn it on, use something to launch the spike into someone's chest, and bam. Multiple people in the vicinity have pieces of their spiritweb ripped out and crammed into a single hemalurgic spike. Why do I think this? Well, allomantic Chromium, a metal that requires physical contact ordinarily, does not when used as the metal effect of the Primer Cube on the train in BoM. And we know that Harmonium-based technology can also mimic Feruchemy (see: southerner airships), so why would it not be able to mimic Hemalurgy? it contains Ruinous investiture as well, after all. And this would make things MUCH more interesting. For one, if you did this in a super-crowded area, you could get several dozens of times the usual hemalurgic charge for a human attribute like Strength, guaranteed. The Decay rate would probably be immense at this high of a level (assuming that the speed of decay is inversely exponential, meaning it starts fast and slows down as there's less charge), so it would be critical to find some way of preventing decay until you can spike this monstrous thing into someone (like encasing it in Aluminum temporarily).

Assuming all of that actually would work, Primer Spikes could be ridiculously terrifying. Somewhat more speculatively, what if an Atium primer spike could take all the metalborn powers in the vicinity and merge them all into itself? you would have most of a Fullborn in a single spike with a crowded enough place. Of course, all of this assumes that a Primer Cube would be able to replicate a hemalurgic charging and do it in an AoE like a Leeching, to multiple people at once...

[Koloss17 She/They]

That seems hard to pull off, but it could work if you got past some hurdles 

a primer spike would still contain ettmetal, meaning it could still explode. 

Would the Hemalurgic taking effect last long? I wouldn’t think it would, meaning you would need to spike yourself fast, but that might unleash extra hemalurgy to other people around you.

but I do think you would need to physically rip someone’s spiderweb with a spike, so it might not work after all.

[+robardin he/him]

Since removing hemalurgic spikes isn't fatal except for hemalurgic creations (like when Spook un-Thugged himself in Urteau and then removed Quellion's spike for A-bronze), my "wild theory" after finishing the original Era 1 trilogy about hemalurgy was that by Era 3 or 4, they'd havve advanced medical technology to the point where they'll have hemalurgic "jacks" that can be surgically implanted the the right bind points in a person's body, with sieves for blood to flow through them and some kind of sterile cover over the skin surface that can be removed or retracted as needed.

Then, hemalurgic spikes of standard size - about the size of a six inch needle maybe? - would be kept in blood-filled syringe-like tubes with plungers, to be put into people on an as-needed basis, then extracted afterwards back into the same blood-filled tube. (And with some quick sterilization process in between to prevent the spread of disease from "sharing needles" this way.) And some kind of government agent could go around with a small case of such syringes, being authorized to use up to 3 of them at a time.

With the introduction of the Southern Scadrial "medallion" technology though, this all seems unnecessary. Though it could be more portable than medallions that needed recharging or refilling with Investiture, eh?

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

3 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

That seems hard to pull off, but it could work if you got past some hurdles 

1. a primer spike would still contain ettmetal, meaning it could still explode. 

2. Would the Hemalurgic taking effect last long? I wouldn’t think it would, meaning you would need to spike yourself fast, 3. but that might unleash extra hemalurgy to other people around you.

4. but I do think you would need to physically rip someone’s spiderweb with a spike, so it might not work after all.

(Numbers added to the quote for correlation)

1. The ettmetal could be contained inside a shell of regular metal, and would only be present on the head of the spike. So, it exploding's preventable.

2. Whatever mechanism it uses to copy Allomancy burns up the Harmonium to mimic it, so it could likely do the same to replicate the mechanisms of Hemalurgy. With the right Intent behind the person doing the spiking, it could be more successful.

3. Once the spike has done it's thing, you could turn off the primer cube and detach it, and then spike yourself, meaning that it would work normally but with an abnormally large charge.

4. You normally need physical contact with Leeching to remove metals, but Harmonium seems to bypass that requirement and cast the leeching as a bubble. It's not impossible to believe that the same could happen for Hemalurgy.

[Koloss17 She/They]

Hemalurgy is a bit more complicated than the other two. It involves physically ripping a piece of someone’s spiritual spiderweb from them. this would probably need a phisical thing ripping it.         But it could try to rip others, causing a lot of pain and possingly offsetting their spiritual spiderweb, kind of like Szeth’s, I believe.

the primer cube device I think only when it does and doesn’t activate, the effect is from the ettmetal. but it could help the explosion part.

i don’t believe it stores the ability, I think it just poofs, which would give a atium Ferring immortality and a way to make someone else get aged or un aged out of existence.

I think how the inserting part of hemalurgy works is that it rips a bit more of your spiderweb, filling it with the spiked spiderweb. Ettmetal’s effect might make it so that others and your spiritual spiderweb will get a bit detached, which might be a problem.

maybe Sazed had made a way to safely do this, making everyone happy, but who knows.

 

[The Deity he/him]

I don’t know if Lightweaving would be stolen since it’s not specifically of Scadrial, but it could happen

[Koloss17 She/They]

Yes, lightweaving would be stolen. We don’t know the bind points or what spikes would be used to steal it, but we know it can be stolen.

[SirWolfe]

This might be an incredibly effective way of making sure that both the recipient and donor of the Hemalurgic spike die.  

18 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

1. The ettmetal could be contained inside a shell of regular metal, and would only be present on the head of the spike. So, it exploding's preventable.

The issue with this is that the metal that contains the Hemalurgic charge has to be in direct contact with the inside of the body(or at least the spiritweb). Vin's earring only started working when the silver coat wore away, leaving the Bronze spike inside exposed and in contact with her earlobe. This means that at least some of the ettmetal must be touching you. 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

1 hour ago, SirWolfe said:

The issue with this is that the metal that contains the Hemalurgic charge has to be in direct contact with the inside of the body(or at least the spiritweb). Vin's earring only started working when the silver coat wore away, leaving the Bronze spike inside exposed and in contact with her earlobe. This means that at least some of the ettmetal must be touching you. 

It's not the ettmetal that's touching you, it's the normal spike metal. That metal WILL be touching and piercing the body as normal, the ettmetal will be inside the primer cube on the head of the spike. That part is what you can contain inside non-reactive metal.

[Koloss17 She/They]

Smart! That solves the problem, then! Harmonium theories for the win!!!