Hemalugy vs. Feruchemy in an Allomancer

[+Oltux72 he/him]

Suppose a Twinborn compunder uses his metal mind as a hemalurgic spike. Burning it does he have a choice between compounding, burning the hemalurgic charge and conventional allomancy or what will happen?

[Dunkum he/him]

A couple things:
1. it would be hard to add a hemalurgic charge to a metalmind, since it is already pretty invested.  but the opposite direction works just fine - using an existing spike as a metalmind, that is - so the basics are still possible

2. when burning a metalmind, it isn't quite that you have a choice between regular allomancy and compounding, it is more that for the most part the metal is not completely full of ferruchemical charge, so the charged portions can be compounded, but not burned for normal allomancy, while the uncharged portions can be burned for regular allomancy but not compounded.

based on this WOB:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/98-worldbuilders-ama/#e860
 

3. So it seems like this should more or less work as follows: in the piece of metal, you have a portion of it storing a hemalurgic charge, a portion storing a ferruchemical charge, and an uncharged/normal portion.  when attempting to burn the metal you would be able to choose which segment to burn. however since a hemalurgic spike has a piece of someone else's spirit, i'm not sure you could burn it (like trying to burn someone else's metalmind).  if you can, then it seems like it ought to work similarly to compounding ferruchemy, though.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Dunkum
typos

[datalaughing he/him]

18 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

however since a hemalurgic spikehas a piece of someone else's spirit, i'm not sure you could burn it (like trying to burn someone else's metalmind).

Well, as an Allomancer, you CAN burn someone else's metalmind for the power of the metal. You just can't access the feruchemical power within it if you're not also the feruchemist who created it (excluding unkeyed shenanigans). So it might be similar where you could burn the spike for whatever Allomantic potential the metal has. You just wouldn't be able to get anything additional out of it.

Edited July 13, 2020 by datalaughing

[Dunkum he/him]

7 minutes ago, datalaughing said:

Well, as an Allomancer, you CAN burn someone else's metalmind for the power of the metal. You just can't access the feruchemical power within it if you're not also the feruchemist who created it (excluding unkeyed shenanigans). So it might be similar where you could burn the spike for whatever Allomantic potential the metal has. You just wouldn't be able to get anything additional out of it.

right, i meant specifically the hemalurgically charged portion, which will, overall, be a pretty small peice, since a hemalurgic charge isn't generally a huge amount of investiture.  you can definitely burn the rest of the spike as normal