Quantus

Duh, of course. You are correct, I dont know what I was thinking. Im generally in the camp that doesnt think Feruchemy or Hemalurgy actually impart a charge, so of course they wouldnt have the survival benefits (no death, no infection, etc). I tend to picture it more like a shardblade, so when it's transitioning between realms it's more literally fuzzing out of the Physical Realm where it touches the blood and fuzzing back into the PR when it comes out on the other side. Mostly because they also get spikes in major joints without any mechanical disruption, if I recall correctly. It'll have to be earrings then, for prisoner control. I think there will always be a hemalurgy black market, because they arent going to be able to scrub the knowledge entirely and it's available to anyone with more metal than morals. It can also permanently steal attributes, that's something medallions cant do. The rest depends on how well the medallion tech makes it to the masses and not just those with the money or bloodlines or whatever. Good points, all. Counterpoint: Discord. If Scadrial goes down a dark timeline it could end up fracturing into warring kindgoms like Sel or Nalthis. At that point a major hemalurgical movement feel all but inevitable somewhere, be it a religious movement or "scientific" research, or even a rival world/shard curious about Hemalurgy's potential.

Indeed you'd need the reserves available and at hand, though supposedly survival instinct will Tap any available gold to keep you alive without needing to consciously do it, and donating to Hemalurgy is generally lethal or pretty close. That's the question: It's not healing to survive the implantation of a Spike in the head's Bind Points, that's just the innate function of hemalurgy's realmics. But as always, aluminum is special so I cant really say how it plays long-term.

Fwiw, Stygian colors are a real thing, they are the non-"real" colors our eyes see in afterimages. Not coincidentally, Stygian Violet is probably produced from staring at bright gold for too long if Stygian Blue comes from Yellow.

Ooh! OK, I see. They can be healed part way. That could work, though it leaves them capable of restoring their powers if they can get more healing. A really obvious Aluminum Spike through the Forehead or something would work better from a Crime&Punishment standpoint, though there's some ethics around the stigma and public shaming element of it. ...side note: Can you survive an Aluminum spike through the brain the way you can with other metals? Standard Rules of Hemalurgy say Yes but it feels like too magical of an effect to work around Aluminum.

No, since the Gold Healing would be able to restore the missing Spiritweb including the stolen powers, per WOB, so it wouldnt remove them. But I do fully expect they'd use Aluminum Spikes for this purpose, though it might be paired with a Supermax prison and not a parole system.

Im late to the party, sorry. Off the top of my head I'm struggling to get better than a Tier list, because several are equally useful depending on your goals and lifestyle. S-Tier: Supremely Useful to Anyone F-Gold - Anyone can make use of stockpiled Health. F-Chromium(Probably) - We dont know the specifics for limitations, but most variations I can think of are still universally useful. F-Duralumin (With Blank Connection) - If you can Blank you Connections to attach them to different/local things like the Medallions do, this becomes so weirdly and broadly useful it would change the whole experience of life. A-Tier: Supremely useful within it's domain, depends on what facet of life you most value. F-Tin F-Steel F-Zinc F-Duralumin (WithOUT Blank Connection) - EDIT: If you can only strengthen and weaken your own existing Connections, it can still be helpful in a broad swath of Social experiences, but it's not quite as transcendently awesome as Blank Connection could become. B-Tier - Solidly useful but a little more niche, you'd need to want it for your own reasons F-Pewter - It would be A-Tier but it has an upper limit to tapping because it eventually makes you too bulky to move and doesnt provide the Healing, etc. of A-Pewter. Unlike Tin where the effects are distinct but equally useful, F-Pewter always seemed the clear lesser of the two. F-Iron - You can be stupid heavy to counter strength or you can be feather light to increase mobility some. It's sort of the half-class option between Steel and Pewter, but inferior to both. F-Copper F-Duralumin (Without Blank Connection) C Tier - Useful to some or in specific circumstances. F-Brass F-Bronze F-Cadmium F-Bendalloy F-Electrum F-Atium D-Tier - Probably doesnt do anything really useful on it's own. F-Nicrosil

Lab grown Gem have fundamentally different grain structure than natural gems (curved/spherical grain instead of parallel) so they would not work without a bunch of additional work to develop new gem cuts to contain the Stormlight which are likely to be distinct from the standard ones. Also, Gemhearts are innately Chemically Pure to a degree that modern earth technology struggled to match. Not impossible with Fabiral Magic but probably ways down the line for Rosharan development.

Probably not Perfect Gemhearts, since that seems to be random even in animal sourced Gems, and also related to the Gem Cut and these would be living and uncut. But I think they could certainly breed hordlings with oversize gemhearts for lots of personal Capacity, even if it's not literally Perfect in the sense of infinite storage duration.

Im going to make several guess here, but I suspect all the hordlings are likely to be able to use Surges, a Distance from their single spren with range comparable to their normal limits or Squires (whichever is shorter). I also think that while each hordling can do surges they will each only be able to hold a very small amount of Stormlight so they'll be sharply limited in what they can do without some amount of the collective present. But they can most likely breed specialized Hordlings with Gemheart-based Stormlight storage.

If I understand the question, It's not that his more recent and extreme Investment would tie him Less to Roshar, it's that he'd tried everything else he could think of and just decided to go all-in on Investing in Roshar to Win the War and escape Honor's prison, regardless of the eventual apocalyptic damage to Roshar he'll cause when he rips his power back and leaves the system.

What if we came at it from another direction: Given how well Breaths adapt to whatever they are given to (even if they cannot be retrieved), I think it's entirely likely that Breaths could be use to ReCharge an existing Spike, on the theory that that it would take on the Tuning (Identity, effect, and otherwise) of the Spike's Investiture, just like with Compounding a pre-charged Metalmind with allomantic Investiture. Now, (big) IF you can do that, and you have enough realmic knowledge to craft a very specific Command one step to the left of the standard Gifting Command, maybe you could use the breath's sacrifice to Inject some minor modifications into the Spike's existing Investiture pattern?

@Treamayne has outlined what little we know and how much we dont actually know. So what fallows is all just theoryland, but I think it comes down to Odium's level of Investment in Roshar. I think he's been trying to avoid any actual investment for as long as possible, trickling it out in an attempt to Hit&Run the other Shards without being Bound to Roshar any more than necessary (and that did not go well, overall). So at first he did whatever he could to make tools with the locally availible materials: Instead of his own Spren He turned Singers into Cognitive Shadows, and instead of his own Herald Champions he UnMade things he found. There's a pretty strong theory that the Fused are functionally closer to Spren-Fabrials than Radiants or whatever "Voidbinders" may prove to be, with the Fused being the spren-spirit driving it and the Singer's Gemheart providing the realmic functions. He trickled his own light and metal out personally and in small amounts. And the some Voidspren (the older ones, I think) have the telltale Red of Corrupted Investiture while others have Odium's own Gold. I think the tipping point came with the Everstorm and the emergence of Odium's own Pure Tone of Roshar (whichever came first); he said himself that it changed everything. I think he is only recently fully Invested in the planet enough to have his own Tone, Light, and thus Magic System start to emerge. Anything that came before, including the Fused, the UnMade, the very concept of Enlightened Spren, etc were all just him experimenting in ways to dip his toes into the Investment waters without adding any more Connections which I assume would just add to the strength of his prison.

Generally speaking, Spren can only become a single solid object, so they cannot become a mechanical device with any moving parts like a modern earth Gun. But they can become Fabrials, and so in the distant future (and with enough realmic understanding, we assume) they can become gun-shaped magic weapons but they'd require a separate magic ammunition/power source just like any fabrial.

Manny Jacinto is Adolin. While we're looking at the Good Place cast: Left to right: Mr.T, Adolin, Shallan-as-Veil, Sigzil, Venli/Eshonai, Jasnah

Larkin as an example will drain Light from a fabrial but not the trapped Spren, and the only explanation Ive seen proposed is that they are protected by having their own Identity. I suspect Metalminds and Spikes both have a similar Identity-based protection. Which is probably something that can be pushed through as is the case with most allomancy, or otherwise bypassed with complex tricks.

I'd assume they use the same method as non-Lifeless combatants to determine friend from foe: Uniforms.

Ah, you are correct, I was conflating the two Lakes. The only perpendicularity shown is called The Lake (or The Pool), but it's up in the mountains, and as far as I know we have no confirmation on where the other one might be (assuming Devotion and Dominion still each get one on Sel.

The curved line on the left is representative of the mountain range, but if you look at the map Arelon does extend further south than the southern-most point of the mountain curve (and southern river and border arent represented for whatever reason). Anything south of Fellavoo and Kaltii would be south of the curve line and end up outside of the straight southern wall.

If Im not mistaken, the Dot is not Elantris, it's Lake Alonoe, where the Perpendicularity is.

WOB strongly implies that all of Sel IS one giant time bubble, we just dont know which direction it runs. So assuming the Forger is a Worldhopper and off-world when they do the Stamp, they should be able to change their history to have spent more or less time on Sel than elsewhere and modify their age that way.

I cant speak to the wiki code or anything, but I think technically the Straight one is the actual apostrophe, and the tilted one is technically a Single Quotation Mark.

Any sort of organic binder (egg, animal glue, even the person's own feces) could be added to turn it into a moldable clay, and I think that's on par with including cloth to give a voodoo doll it's shape. That likely also has the benefit of making a single cognitive object instead of a pile of tiny separate things (same issue as with Soulcasting a single big rock vs a pile of gravel).

I think to make a Spike, or really anything including the AI example, viable for Hemalurgy would require a fully Awake target, something that is either naturally or artificially sapient. On the other hand WoB says you can make a viable Spike from a Forges Spiritweb, so some interaction with other magics does work. I suspect you could subdivide a Spike, though, using a living person. For example, I think it could be possible that you steal "Full Mistborn" with a Duralumin Spike (stealing/Spiking the Connection to Preservation) and then use that person to Charge individual Spikes of Steel, Bronze, Cadmium, or Electrum with each of the individual Powers.

I cant find the exact quote at the moment, but there was a line where somebody described Cultivation as a Mother Nature figure and Hoid said he thought She'd Like that. With that Im assuming Cultivation herself views here role along those same Mother of Nature. Side note is that if she could Create the Nightwatcher to be UnConnected and immune to the formative effects of the population's view of her, and thought it was worth doing, there's a good chance she'd be able to similar protect herself from their influence.