Djarskublar

Regarding "the biggest RAFO ever." my bet is that it's not the most important, just that it refers to something large like a planet- Braize. Simple.

Agreed that it's baseless, but still possible and cool. But depending on what is possibly buried there, Shards may not know or be avoiding it. If it's Adonalsium's body, then the Shards may be avoiding Threnody to avoid bad memories or some such. If it's the weapon, a certain storyteller may have hidden it there without the knowledge of the Shards. That would explain why Rayse isn't running around shattering Shards every other day with a weapon capable of Shattering Adonalsium. Basically I'm saying there are circumstances where there could be something really important there without any Shards wanting to Invest there. I do agree it is unlikely in that respect though. On the other hand, the number of Intents that would actually concern themselves with whatever is there is a non-16 number. Assuming there is something significant hidden/buried/interred in Threnody, it could be invested enough (and be made in a such a way or be sapient enough) to be causing the Cognitive strangeness. And just because there aren't any shards invested there doesn't mean nothing important is there.

I never said that Hemalurgy came from another shard, or even that it could, only that IF, hypothetically speaking, it had, it would be less destructive to the spirit. If Hemalurgy had been the system of, say, Preservation or Endowment, I think it would be a less messy system, in that you would get cleaner chunks of web. The power wouldn't be reduced in efficacy as much or at all. To clarify, if it came from Preservation specifically, and all the mechanics of spiking were the same in procedure, i.e. you stab someone in a bindpoint with a spike, usually killing them, (not a very Preservationy thing, but it's an example so I don't care. It's the end result I'm arguing) and you steal some spiritweb, you might end up with a perfect piece. No power loss necessary. All the power is Preserved. Of course, Hemalurgy isn't of any shard but Ruin. If it had come from Preservation, you probably wouldn't kill people to steal power. It would excise the power from the old to keep it with young people, thereby preserving it, or some such. All else equal, Hemalurgy comes from Ruin, so it (Hemalurgy, not Ruin... This is something you appear to not perceive correctly every time I try to explain it) damages the thing you are trying to grab. I NEVER said anything in any of my posts saying that Ruin was creating or influencing the creation of Hemalurgic constructs, only that because the system stems from Ruin, it has nasty degenerative side effects when used. If Ruin went off and invested in another Shardworld, then the power manifested there would definitely be entropic in some way as well. While it IS theoretically possible to not kill someone when you spike them, nobody knows how except for maybe Nahz or Khriss. I doubt even they know. For someone to figure it out would likely require *dramatic pause* practice. That isn't something that will happen outside of the Set, and they won't share with the rest of us. They apparently already gave up on Hemalurgic experimentation anyway. I never said where or when TLR designed his constructs. Of course it was while he held the Well's power. I knew, it just wasn't relevant so I didn't say. The expanded conscious and free knowledge that came from taking the power were why he could do it. Afterwards I'm sure he may have liked to, but didn't have the resources to experiment. With his mind back to normalish I'm fairly sure he would be back to trial and error like everyone else. I'm sure he still had a fair portion of the knowledge he gained, but I don't think he could have remembered everything. He didn't do a coppermind dump right then ;). They were still cobbled together even while he held the power of the Well. IIRC he made them as the power was running out after he had played with the planet for a while, so they were flawed even with his great knowledge and temporary intellect. He didn't have time for anything else. I see exactly why you are saying what you are saying, but it doesn't apply because I know what I'm talking about, you are just misunderstanding most of what I'm saying. I understand all your points, they just don't apply to what I'm saying. The only actual point you have is how the constructs aren't necessarily as flawed as I made them out to be, and how TLR made mistwraiths, and that Kandra come from those after the fact. (btw I just realized that since different species would have different bind points, so different constructs can probably be made from them, mistwraiths being included in those different species... bring on the catquisitors!) You successfully shifted my understanding of the constructs we have though, so you didn't waste your time. Thank you. At this point all that is really left is a difference of opinion. I think that Hemalurgy is akin to Shattering and you don't. It's a cool theory that I'll keep in mind. If you don't like it, it's no skin off my nose. If I sound like a jerk right now, I'm typing this at 2 a.m. on an aggravating keyboard, so... sorry about that.

Of course I agree. Right now, spiking Lift is the only method available that I know of to power one system via another. Fueling Nightblood with stormlight doesn't count. Sorry Szeth. You may get some other hacks with Allomancy and/or Lerasium. Hemalurgy is really the only way to get cool stuff done right now though.

First off, I haven't read Shadows for Silence yet, so I'd like to avoid spoilers, but I've been reading all the relevant threads anyway. On to the main point! Someone (I'll maybe edit in a quote if I can figure that out) posted about the origin of the name Threnody. They were guessing that it had to do with a shattered shard. That was all well, good, and unprovable, but the thing that caught my attention was someone's comment that maybe the name came from something or someone interred in Threnody. Baseless guesswork time! Basically, either the body of Adonalsium, or the weapon with which it was shattered is buried in Threnody. Which may or may not be causing the funkyness in their corner of the cognitive realm. Again, not having read the relevant novella, and since we know basically nothing about Mr A, I don't expect this to be correct. It is an interesting idea though. I didn't want to necropost over there, and this is a bit of a different topic, so here we are. Thoughts? Evidence otherwise?

Sorry if this is a bit necrotic, but here's my 2 cents. Others mentioned that there are any number of reasons that Mr A was shattered. We know there is no way it was an accident. It required the use of a weapon of some sort. To provide additional perspective here are a couple other scenarios. Personally I don't think that Adonalsium was restricted at all. He was likely either a sapient force, or was a power held like modern shards. They were simply men of different philosophies. The 16 Vessels just didn't agree with Mr A and killed him as the only way to stop him. Assuming for a second that it was a power held by a person, they may have killed him for the power, but accidentally shattered it, or deliberately divvied it up. Mr A could have pulled a Guide to the Galaxy and decided to destroy Yolen for a new intergalactic highway. Yolen didn't like that plan, and shattered Adonalsium to prevent it. (I like this possibility. It's funny) There are a few possibilities to keep discussion open. My personal opinion is that Adonalsium was doing something the 16 didn't like and stopped him, or that Adonalsium let himself be shattered to further his agenda.

It would be cool if tranquility was a shard and then the book set wherever it decides to invest itself has some awesome malcontent character shattering tranquility. In every sense of the phrase.

Oh alright then. Haven't kept up with that aspect of Archive. Cool to know though. I've lurked here for a long time, and only in the last 6 months have I kept up at all or posted. My point about concentration still holds though. Shards have their conscious expanded. No way would controlling a puppet like an avatar pose a problem. Creating it in the first place is the tough part.

Hmmm. I guess my examples of cross over magic weren't clear enough. Thank you for detailing how the mechanics of her converting the compounding over to stormlight would work detail wise. So for my examples of Light or Dor into Breath, I wasn't meaning that you would use light to fuel awakening, I meant converting Stormlight into Breaths you hold onto to attain heightenings. That would be too cool. Also, I meant exhaling the light into the form of an Aon, instead of drawing it. Not that you you use Light's investiture rather than the Dor. Just shifting the form of investiture, not effects. Attaining the tenth heightening just by drawing a bunch of really fat Aons sounds pretty great to me! Awakening pales in power compared to other systems (for towels, not lifeless), but heightenings are sweet. Also, drawing an Aon to make a lifeless servant is great.

It would be funny if dragons are hard to kill, not because they have tough scales, but because they or their hide is so heavily Invested that it is hard to affect. And then their breath weapons would be similar in concept to AonDor. I can totally see this being how it works. I'm NOT saying dragons would use AonDor. Just forestalling misunderstandings. The timeline and mechanics for that don't work. No dragons that we know of that could become Elantrians. Though I bet that would be REALLY cool.

Hmmm. Good points. However, I still like my hammer analogy. Basically I'm saying that to survive it, your glass needs to be tempered by some other power to survive it without shattering completely. Like bulletproof glass, but different in that the glass breaks normally in one spot, leaving the rest mostly intact. The hammer analogy came from the idea that Hemalurgy is basically the same as Shattering a person. It is by no means perfect. I do think that Ruin has an influence on how Hemalurgy works, in that I think it's possible to get other end negative powers. Perhaps Odium's hatred could cause an end negative system. Or Dominion. The difference is how Ruin corrupts. Odium would make hateful magic users. Probably. Ruin makes things that are influenced towards destruction. Even Kandra need to kill to get new skeletons. Koloss are berserk rampagers. Inquisitors are, well, Inquisitors. I'm saying that if you are creating Hemalurgic constructs, the piece you are grabbing is more damaged than if Hemalurgy came from a different Shard. That's why it's basically impossible to create flawless new types of constructs. Hence Inquisitors have lynchpin spikes, Kandra start as mistwraiths, and koloss are stupid and impotent. Not that these effects we're necessarily undesired by TLR (he probably had some influence in picking what was wrong with the constructs), but that such things ARE unavoidable. Regarding your last point, I mostly agree. With tons of bindpoints to choose from, and effectively infinite variety of combinations to choose from, they are in the dark about any logic in it. They are like average three year olds trying to program. They have figured out a bit of basic syntax, and even written a few ultra basic programs, but they don't know everything the 'language' is capable of, let alone nuances of its use. They can still use their programs they do know effectively... I.e. they can steal powers and TLR cobbled together a few construct designs. My bet is that because of how it is done (killing people), unless Hitler (or Khriss hehe) gets to be in charge on Scadrial, Hemalurgy will never even approach being fully understood. So yes, they aren't blindly stealing attributes, but they aren't doing it knowledgeably either. That wasn't the main topic anyway, to bring things back a bit, what are your thoughts regarding the similarity between Hemalurgy and Shattering?

Perhaps we have sort of seen this, or the effect anyway. The nightwatcher may be Cultivation, and the nightwatcher likely has a physical form. I'm of the opinion that they could totally create and manipulate an avatar. The idea that it would take too much concentration is ludicrous. Ati controlled a whole bunch of inquisitors at once with no issues. Whether it is highly dangerous for some reason... I can see that, but I cant imagine they are unable to do it in the first place.

Ehhh... I know it's a very long shot for it to happen. Maybe Hoid will get a hold of her and steal the ability with Hemalurgy. Nightblood already showed up. That's probably as far as major crossover is going to go. I agree with basically everything you guys have said, but I can still dream. The cosmeric implications are big just in that it is possible. It means you can convert the power of Preservation (the compounding) into the power of Honor, or wherever the stormlight comes from (not sure on where it comes from... But it is Shardic right?). It is a pretty roundabout hack, but it should work. That means it is possible to do other conversions with the right ability set. Stormlight or the Dor to Breaths. Nuff said. Imagine a person who could exhale Stormlight into the shape of Aons and have it produce the effect. Wow.

Yeah I was talking about etching a circle to get a specific piece of glass. I don't agree that the possibility of a person surviving Hemalurgy disproves my idea. I got the sense that Hemalurgy will always kill the subject unless something else comes into play. So it is possible, but only if you know exactly what you are doing. I got the sense that it requires other powers/abilities interfering. And of course abilities are better defined in the spiritweb. I can't see it being any other way. Targeting some specific aspect of a person would be very difficult. Spiking someone's curiousity out would be incredibly difficult. It would be tangled up with their fear of the unknown and other things. Hemalurgy is probably more complex than neurosurgery. That is probably the closest thing we know to it. Stealing abilities would be more like cutting off a chip in someone's brain that gives them better 'Something.' Right now though, the people on Scadrial can't perform neurosurgery on a person's spiritweb. They whack the person's pane of glass and hope they get the right chunk of it. Even once they figure it out, it is still Ruin's thing, so it would be like doing surgery with a soldering iron rather than a scalpel. That sounds rather destructive and like ruin, so that is why it is end negative. I never said that Ruin was influencing the results directly, only that because it was the power that came from him investing in Scadrial it has nasty side effects. Ruinous side effects, you might say ;). I guess our disagreement stems mostly from our views on whether taking abilities is any different than any other piece of a person.

I'm NOT saying ruin is influencing things. I'm saying the fact that it is OF ruin is doing things. I suppose an analogy would help. My understanding of Hemalurgy so far has been that it cuts off a piece of the person. I thought it was very surgical. Now I'm saying that spiking someone is more like taking a hammer to a window and using a piece of the glass. You are trying to get a specific piece, and so you have to spike it in just the right spot. Because it's end negative, the glass you are grabbing is cracked up a bit. The making of inquisitors is much easier than that because you are stealing a power, which has a spy glass circle cutter type thing done to it (if that made any sense, sorry). Yes it makes them inhuman, but it is still drastically different than hemalurgic experimentation. I still think the idea of Hemalurgy being like Shattering a person to be meritous, even if my explanation of it was poor. That make some more sense?

Agreed... those horses have been ground into dust. Sanderson is too good to go to the norms. There are things called dragons though. Hopefully they are something really nifty that will give us lots of cool hacks.

I suppose that wasn't clear. It was the effect of using a power based off ruin. It is end negative, and ruinous. The creation of new species via Hemalurgy will always have negative effects as well because the power is end negative. These effects can end up being beneficial in certain cases I would imagine, but they aren't by design. The fact that koloss were sterile was because Hemalurgy is messy and very hard. The nature of Hemalurgy was corrupting the intent and making them wierd. I would bet lots of money that they had no preservation before harmony, and got a piece afterward, hence reproduction. Kandra got no such thing. They are good as is.

The coolest combo that wouldn't have to be unique to Lift would be a pewter compounder that was made into a dakhor monk. Indestructible! Green skin level strength! Toss in Chay-Shan training for funzies. Give them plate and blade assuming plate doesn't interfere. That would be one tanky son of a gun! Normal weapons already suck against the dakhor. Pewter buffs that resistance. The 3 of them all grant strength. That is picking up buildings potential.

So... Don't tell her. Spike the person into a vial of blood. That way there isn't deterioration over time. Say that the spike will make her more awesome and she'll be all over it. Then she can stay pure and awesome. I'll get my hands dirty instead. Besides, it is theoretically possible to spike someone without killing them. It just hurts a lot. For the creation of a virtual deity, it's worth it. Especially with Roshar being what it is. Cultivation can just be like "behave! Or I'll sic my immortal pet that flies so fast it escapes orbit if it isn't careful on you!" She seriously might be able to do some funky stuff with that much stormlight. Like Vin taking in the mists and ascending funky. Tenth heightening funky (actually it goes to eleven XD). Maybe she could repair shards or resurrect the dead with her surges (drawing a blank on the name of the healing one... Restoration maybe?). Dumping a huge load of healing into a person could maybe call their three aspects back together if done quickly enough i.e. before the spirit moves on. Talking about escape velocity put a funny thought in my head. She can accelerate infinitely without friction. Put Lift in a particle accelerator-ish thing. Lots of anchors in a circle so she can push off the sides and turn/accelerate, and some on the ground so she can stay airborne. She might need mental speed just to handle that though... And really powerful pushing to not splat into the sides of it. She isn't a lurcher in this scenario, so Vin's horseshoe trick won't work as well for her. Lift is also the only practical wielder of Nightblood in this case. She can fuel it as long as she has Bendalloy. Wow.

I realized today that koloss are very similar to Odium. That got me thinking. I now theorize that Hemalurgy mimics the shattering to a smaller degree. You shatter off a piece of someone and staple it to another person. Depending on how you spike the person, you get a different 'intent' from the chunk of person. This more applies to new species experimentation like the Kandra and koloss than with stealing abilities. Abilities have no intent, they just are. Like tools aren't good or evil, their use is. This is still shifted by the fact that Hemalurgy is end negative. If you try to make an 'Honor'-able species, you would likely get something that has a personal code but no real morals. A lawful-evil/neutral rather than lawful-good. Ruin would basically corrupt the intent, and/or do something funky to their physiology that matters. Sterility and no skin growth for koloss, for example. Thoughts?

You may be right, but my understanding of hemalugy is different. It staples someone else's spiritweb to you. It doesn't change 'you'. It is stealing, not changing. That's why when Vin doesn't have in her earring she is normal. If it worked how you say, I would expect a spike to shift your web, and then basically drain the spike. You could take out the spike and you would still be a different person. That's why I was wondering what flaring would affect. Would it damage 'you' or the bit of someone else stapled to you? How would that affect your ability to use the spike? If it damages you, I can see it affecting your probability of becoming an Elantrian. For clarification, I was saying you would spike someone with a strong connection to Elantris, i.e. someone who already had a chance of becoming an Elantrian. Sel is the only planet where location and form really matter. WoB consistently states that the fact that non-Sel systems work basically the same on other planets. I personally asked if Syl would still manifest as a Shardblade in the same way on Sel or Scadrial. He said she would. Capiche? Hemalurgy is NOT forging.

Dragons. They are a thing. Hence Dragonsteel. I would bet they differ greatly from the stereotype, though.

I'm not saying Ati wasn't one of the originals, but that Rayse is new. I knew about Ati being shaped, and I guess that colored my memory of Rayse. Ati is definitely original, but I thought that Rayse killed the previous holder. I just wasn't sure if there was something saying the guy he killed was a decent fellow. Rayse was a bad dude, so he wanted the bad power that fit him the best. On a side note, Ati got shaped a long time ago. Does that mean that even the Shards that were stronger mentally have been fully shaped by now? Not counting Sazed of course.

From Bands of Mourning Ars Arcanum: Bendalloy: (stuff about mistings, of which Wayne is one. Basically, bendalloy is for speed bubbles)... Subsumer Ferrings can store nutrition and calories in a bendalloy metalmind; they can eat large amounts of food during active storage without feeling full or gaining weight, and then can go without the need to eat while tapping the metalmind. A separate bendalloy metalmind can be used to similarly regulate fluids intake. I take this to mean that compounding this would equal eating lots of food, so Lift should be able to convert the compounded storage to stormlight.

Wait, I thought Rayse killed the first Odium holder and stole it because it matched him... I'm not great at remembering things like that, but I'm fairly sure of this one. I thought the original Odium holder was a decent fellow. May be confusing that with Ati being shaped by Ruin. Also, we do have the whole bit about Ati being shaped by the shardic intent, not the other way around. That isn't exactly what you were talking about, but still. I don't think this theory is without merit by any means, but it feels off. I could maybe see it being shaped by the emotions of the holders at first, but not intents, they just don't match. I think there are enough minor discrepancies to say the theory is at least incomplete. Still like it a lot though. Good thinking OP! Perhaps a better explanation would be that the shards had a general area they could break into (see the why Devotion rather than Love bit), and their first holders cemented the exact intents. Discrepancies can be accounted for by saying that as some were cemented it shifted the others to eliminate some overlap. If, for example, multiple people hated Mr A, one became hatred, and one became a more sinister connotation of the base general intent.