Gold Healing Spikes

[Mushroom Catalog]

Just a thought:

Would it be possible to heal a spike, if one had feruchemical gold and tons of investiture stored in their metalminds, and considered the spike part of them?

Quote

R'Shara

Would Stormlight healing, Progression, or Feruchemical gold healing count as some of the ways that a transgender person could change their body to match their identity?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Those would work. In fact, that's kind of the main way that you would make that happen. Injections of Investiture making the body match the Spiritual and Cognitive.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

So, if the spike became part of their identity, theoretically they may be able to heal it back with a lot of investiture.

Maybe. How possible might this be?

[Pathfinder]

4 minutes ago, Mushroom Catalog said:

Just a thought:

Would it be possible to heal a spike, if one had feruchemical gold and tons of investiture stored in their metalminds, and considered the spike part of them?

So, if the spike became part of their identity, theoretically they may be able to heal it back with a lot of investiture.

Maybe. How possible might this be?

Before I comment, I just want to make sure I understand what you are proposing.

 

1. person was spiked with whatever ability, but naturally had feruchemical gold and had tons of full metal minds

2. that person considers the spike as part of themselves

3. someone removes the spike from that person. 

4. the person then taps all their gold healing, resulting in the spike regrowing. 

 

I get that right?

Edited February 5, 2020 by Pathfinder

[Mushroom Catalog]

Just now, Pathfinder said:

Before I comment, I just want to make sure I understand what you are proposing.

 

1. person was spiked with whatever ability, but naturally had feruchemical gold and had tons of full metal minds

2. that person considers the spike as part of themselves

3. someone removes the spike from that person. 

4. the person then taps all their gold healing, resulting in the spike regrowing as the person considered it part of themselves. 

 

I get that right?

yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry if I explained that poorly.

[Pathfinder]

13 minutes ago, Mushroom Catalog said:

yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry if I explained that poorly.

No problem, was probably more me than you. So I do not think it would work given the spike is in-organic. Also since the spike was invested, I believe it would be like trying to convert the investiture in your metal minds, to an invested spike via healing. So I do not think it is possible. The below WoB kind of coincides, but otherwise I do not know of something that explicitly says it does not work. Just my gut says it would not. I wish you luck with your theory

 

Djarskublar

So, say you have a gold/gold Twinborn and they worldhop to Roshar and they study the magic and do the whole Khriss and Nazh thing for a while so they know a lot about the magic, but they've also left themselves a lot of options with what they can do. So then they manage to pull up a gold shadow of them having actually become a Surgebinder and then kind of meld themselves with that shadow a bunch, could they change their Cognitive Identity enough so that they could, like, tap a lot of gold and grow the spren and actually be a Surgebinder?

Brandon Sanderson

Unfortunately, no. It's a good question, but no. That won't work for a couple of reasons. One of which is, simply creating Investiture is not something that can happen, right?

Djarskublar

They are a gold Twinborn, so they can tap a lot of gold...

Brandon Sanderson

They can tap a whole bunch, that's true, they can do that, but simply having it is not gonna create a spren because the spren is from a different god, right, a different Shard.

Djarskublar

So if they had Regrowth cast on them, would that do it?

Brandon Sanderson

*hems and haws for a second*

Djarskublar

A really, really big Regrowth, like in the middle of a Highstorm.

Brandon Sanderson

Hmmm, this, you are getting to the realm of plausibility at that point. I still don't think gold is the way to do it. I think you just get all that Investiture. It would become sapient by you sticking a whole bunch of Investiture in, and then you can bond to that. But it's not like people gain what you would have done. Does that make sense? That's just what's going to happen, is you're gonna, you can create a, potentially create a spren that way, but you are more likely to end up with something like Nightblood. But you could potentially create a spren, but I mean you're just gonna end up...

Djarskublar

So there are other, more optimal ways to do that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, go bond a spren. (evil grin of course)

Djarskublar

But you can't easily bond multiple, and if you did this you could maybe get multiple.

Brandon Sanderson

Nyeaaahhh... The spren still has to choose. If you want to be a Surgebinder, the choice is being made. You can't fake your way into it. Decision and Honor are too much a part of Surgebinding for you to be able to fake your way into that. Other magics you might be able to do that. Other magics that don't require, like... Surgebinding works because a piece of Honor or Cultivation or a mix has chosen you specifically. There is will from the actual Investiture involved in it in Roshar. So it's not something you can cheat your way into, right. But cheating your way into Breath might be easier.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

[Quantus]

We chased this thought in circles about a year ago.  I was originally of the opinion that it could work, but there was enough WOB about the limits of and changes that occur with Spikes that I was convinced otherwise.  That doesnt mean you will too, but it's worth the read:

 

 

[Honorless]

I don't think regrowing a spike should be possible. To begin with that would need you to recreate the Investiture that was stored in the original spike. Hemalurgic spikes are made by cutting & grafting parts of Spiritwebs, one shouldn't be able to regrow someone else's Spiritweb as part of their own, or at least not be able to do so using only their perception of self, this should require more complex hacks, I think

Edited February 7, 2020 by Honorless

[Gilphon]

I mean, I don't think the way that Spikes are in-organic is gonna be the problem- imagine if you had a tattoo made with some kind of metallic ink, and then the arm it was tattoo'd on got chopped off. You'd expect anything that got restore the arm to also restore the tattoo, right? 

The fact that the spikes are Invested strikes me as something that would make it harder, but necessarily impossible- you'd probably need to a huge store of healing to make it work. 

But then, there's the trickiest part; making sure the Investiture re-grows in exactly the right way. That's almost certainly not gonna be automatic- healing alone surely isn't gonna let you recover from having something spiked out of you, right? To me, it feels like in order to get this part right, you'd need to understand the Spiritual Realm in a way that most people simply can't, and then internalize that understanding to the degree where the correct structure of the spiritweb is part of your self-image. Which sounds like it would be really hard to do. 

So I suppose I'm landing on 'this is theoretically possible, but difficult enough that it's effectively impossible.' I feel like the most likely result would be that you'd re-grow a spike that counts as Invested but doesn't give you any powers.