Aluminum savant fixing your spirit web?

[A Hemalugic Abomination]

I can’t find the source for it, so sorry I can’t cite it, but I remember reading somewhere that becoming an aluminum savant would cleanse you of impurities. So, if you had multiple hemalurgic spikes and you didn’t want to be controlled by any shard you came across, could you burn enough aluminum to cleanse your spirit web of impurities, seamlessly melding your spirit web and the spliced spirit web together, leaving one’s self protected against direct control?

[Trusk'our he/him]

Sounds like the kind of question that I would ask

I'm not sure that would work, unfortunately. Even if burning aluminum did prevent other entities from controlling you, which it might, burning any amount of it would wipe out the rest of your aluminum stores, making you vulnerable again. 

[A Hemalugic Abomination]

Sorry, I should have made it more clear. I meant that becoming an aluminum savant, not simply burning aluminum, would permanently change your spirit web, making it harder, if not impossible to manipulate you

[Honorless he/him]

I think you're talking about this WoB:

Quote

Kurkistan

If you're on Threnody and you get withered by a shade, are you better off burning Allomantic aluminum, or tapping Feruchemical gold?

*laughter*

[clarification on the question]

Brandon Sanderson

They would both work pretty well. I would say if you burned aluminum, that would kind of have the effect that you are wanting it to have, which is the effect-- negating and sucking out, so that's probably safer. But the gold would work, too.

Kurkistan

So would it be fair to describe withering as a kind of cancerous Forging-

Brandon Sanderson

Sure.

Kurkistan

That just kind of slowly takes over your soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Sure.

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

Hmm... I think that might work depending on the amount of patchwork Spiritweb maybe? 

Assuming F-aluminium doesn't just attack the grafted parts of your Spiritweb? Would that leave you with Hemalurgically pure blank spikes or some such? Or... just kill you by making you a pincushion 

Or might not work? Would aluminium really heal your Spiritweb? That's more of a F-Gold thing, which might also not work as the Hemalurgy might just overwrite your Spiritweb to include the Spiritweb patches spliced onto yours via Hemalurgy as a whole set.

Edit: oh wait Allomantic aluminum, not Feruchemical aluminium.

The above paragraphs still apply, I think. Would burning aluminium also burn out your Hemalurgic spikes? I think not, not unless you specifically targeted them in addition to your Allomantic reserves. Would the Aluminium consider the spikes' Investiture foreign? Maybe. Regardless, the holes in your Spiritweb will still remain, I don't know about the idea of aluminium making the grafted bits of Spiritweb truly integrating with yours. Burning aluminium might help, becoming a Savant might help even more by not letting foreign Investiture influencing you but it won't solve the problem permanently

Edited October 24, 2021 by Honorless

[HSuperLee]

My initial instinct is that the aluminum might help "smooth" your spiritweb, but it would do so by rejecting the spikes, which probably would kill you if you still have the spike in when you do it, since now you have a giant piece of metal puncturing your organs without any magic keeping them from harming you. So yeah, while it might fix your spiritweb, I'm not convinced it would fix the grafted pieces from the spike into your soul. Though oddly, I have to wonder if tapping gold as the savant is burning aluminum might be more what you're looking for. Granted, you'd need to be tapping a lot of gold to overcome the effect of the aluminum.

[Frustration]

No, it would not allow you to graft spikes into your spiritweb, if you want to do that you would have to burn the spikes.

[garlick]

I feel like that word of brandon was taken out of context. When burning aluminium your getting rid of the metals/investiture inside you. When a shade touches you and the withering starts, burning aluminium would destroy the investiture thats causing the withering stopping it in its tracks. 

[Willshaper3]

I don't know. But imagine if you could with some ability fix others spirit webs? The positive implications might be the ability to heal others trauma, but on the scarier side of things a lot of magic users have cracked spirit webs that allow them to bond with investiture and if you could heal those cracks you may inadvertently seal off their investiture access.