8bitBob

Oh man, I didn't even think about Wax. I really should have put more thought into this, because I was only thinking about it in terms of using it as a hack to have access to more powers at once via medallions. But yeah, this could theoretically allow him to compound his weight and build a huge reserve. He wouldn't be able to compound more on the fly like Miles could health, but it's still a huge benefit. As for why no one has thought of it, it's important to remember that we know way more about realmatics than most characters. Most people on Scadrial think that the power comes from metal itself, so of course this wouldn't work in their minds. Twinborn are also incredibly rare, despite how many we've seen in Era 2, and a Twinborn with abilities that share a base metal must be even rarer still, so it's not like just anybody can try it.

I have definitely read the same WoB, and for some reason I can't find it either. I found one with a similar explanation though: edit: Oh, I see you found it. Thanks again for that. I swear I read it on the database though. Wonder why I can't find it... edit2: Ah, I see now. It's in the database, but it's only tagged with mistborn, so you won't find it if you search the compounding, allomancy or feruchemy tags. I have no idea how to add such things. Bolded the most relevant portions. I considered this an idle thought when I posted the thread, so I didn't really bother to drag up any WoB when posting despite knowing of these two. You make a good point that they support the idea pretty well though, so big thanks for that. With these WoB, I honestly think it's pretty likely that this would work. When you get down to the mechanics of it, this isn't really that crazy of an idea.

The Way of Kings takes place after Warbreaker. I don't think we've been given any info on the plot of Nightblood.

Sure, it could turn out that this is true, but I don't think it's reasonable to ignore the fact that everything the Lord Ruler "created" was modified from an existing life. Theorizing the limits of Godhood is always going to be an unsure task, but this is actually one of the few limits we have any real indication of. It's said that they couldn't create life alone, and we've yet to see anyone disprove that or give indication it might not be true.

Learning about this is easily the best part of my day. No more manually searching his posts for me.

@Calderis is picking up what I'm putting down here and basically said everything I would have, but I have one more thing to add: it's confirmed that both Preservation and Ruin cannot create life by themselves. It's entirely plausible that the power of the Well cannot simply create more Soul because of this limitation. Similarly, by itself, Hemalurgy can only destroy and move around portions of Souls, and it's possible that only through combining the powers that they're able to create more Soul than they started with. Again, not saying this confirms it, but the power of Preservation does have limitations, even if we don't really understand them. I have ... issues, with a lot said here. Is this a theory, or a WoB? Yep, that one is in the OP. When writing the theory, I had collected all of the evidence and read them together repeatedly. Because of this, it made perfect sense to me that they were all connected, but others have pointed out your very valid interpretation. Personally, I feel Brandon is intentionally being slippery here, as he is known to be at times. Note that, despite being asked about using the Bead and the Well directly, he only confirms that the Bead wasn't used, not that the Well made him so powerful. It's hard to say what he meant for sure, but from context, "In all of this" could still be referring to post Ascension shenanigans. Consuming a Bead likely would have been done after he was finished with the Well (had more pressing things to do at that time than eat some metal, which he could do later) yet he still mentions it "in all of this." There's also that slippery factor cropping up here again, because he doesn't just say "with his time in the Well," or any such variation to make it clear that it was done at that time.

Ah gotcha, turns out I still didn't fully understand. Perspective is a pain sometimes. You've convinced me that this is a reasonable interpretation, but I feel that when he says this line: he's more referring to the process of filling it and how some of the metal should still be able to be filled with a new attribute. I've bolded the sections that make me feel he's referring to filling specifically, but it's still possible that he was also saying that you can use some of the Investiture still. That feels wrong to me, but I can't say it is for sure.

Sorry, I missed that part. My bad! Ohhh okay, I think I get what you're saying here. I totally did not consider that interpretation. I feel it's contradicted by another section of the WoB though: He specifically refers to the old Investiture in a new but viable metal as "corrupted sectors" that reduce how much you can charge it. To me, that seems to imply that it's totally useless for Feruchemical purposes until you change it back to the same metal. I think we're in agreement how this works as far as basic Allomancy and Feruchemy works, and is supported by the fact that Feruchemists can't access the charge after the metal has been changed: Feruchemists can't tap or store more weight in the Steel because the molecular structure has changed. This is how it normally works. WoB has described compounding as creating a "new metal that the Allomancer can burn" though. To me, it seems like the Feruchemical charge is just completely overriding the base metal, seeing as it doesn't create a new or hybrid power, but rather a pure Feruchemical power. I'm suggesting that this means that the base metal is ultimately unimportant for compounding if you can get different Investiture in there. Ooooh, another interesting thought. What happens in you burn Awakened steel that has no Identity? (That is not sentient like Nightblood, 'cause that's a whole other can of worms.)

The post says it would have some interesting effects, so I feel like it wouldn't just be regular Allomancy. While this does not necessarily have to refer to compounding, it's one of the few example I can think of for "advanced uses." Totally possible that it just acts like regular Steel though, similar to compounding keyed metalminds. This one seems particularly unlikely to me. From this thread, every example is said to not alter the Investiture, and turning it back into its original metal allows you to tap it fine. They even used the more extreme example of Pewter. Even if the chemical makeup has changed, it seems unlikely that it would change how the Investiture shapes the magic to such an extreme degree. This would imply that it's the chemical makeup of the metal that is more important when shaping the magic, despite the fact that a Feruchemical charge completely overwrites the results normally. This is totally possible, but here's my thinking: having Feruchemical Investiture in your metal could have all kinds of crazy effects when you burn it, but out of all of the infinite possible outcomes... it shapes the Investiture in exactly the same way as the Feruchemy. I don't think it's crazy to guess that it would do the same here. It's a Steelmind that has weight trapped in it, and I believe that to be an important distinction. You can't store weight in it anymore, but you can store speed. It's still behaving like a Steelmind, it just has some other stuff stuck in there. edit 2: removed added quote as it was the same. Don't mind me while I work this out. So, why can't a Feruchemist get it out, but an Allomancer can? Well, maybe they don't. It's been theorized before that an Allomancer never actually draws out the Investiture in a metalmind, but rather that the power entirely comes from Preservation and the presence of the Feruchemical Investiture just shapes it and is simply released as it burns. Under that logic, this would work fine. As an extra question to bake your noodle: what happens when you burn Steel that has weight and speed?

The example still works under this thinking. It could be that there's only so much rewriting you can do on a Soul, so he did as much as he could with the Well on that front. Then, as a mortal, he used Hemalurgy and effectively gave himself More Soul than the average person has to increase his power. I'm not saying this is exactly how it works or conclusively proves it, but rather that saying "He used the Well" is not an automatic way to disprove the theory. I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying. I agree he had no other spikes. I'm theorizing that he had burned them with Allomancy to splice them into his DNA.

I've been stalking Brandon on reddit for more ideas and I came across a really interesting post here: The whole thread is interesting, especially this post, but I'm most interested in the last line of this one. From what I can tell, altering the physical makeup of the metal does not alter the Investiture inside. This causes problems for "basic uses" i.e. tapping, but not necessarily for "advanced uses." To me, compounding is our most clear example of an advanced use of the metallurgic arts, and I've got a mini theory on how this would play out. Let's use the example of Iron. I propose that you could fill an Ironmind with unkeyed weight, melt it down and turn it into Steel, give it to a Coinshot and then have them burn it to increase their weight. This would be inline with what we understand about compounding. Feruchemical charge in a metal has been described as "creating a new metal for the Allomancer to burn," and while this is a mixing of different metals and effects, it would still just be another new metal that grants weight instead of speed when burned. In effect, Mistings could potentially have access to many different Feruchemical abilities, not just one. Thoughts?

Aaand I'm back. While this could be true, it's not exactly a huge leap in logic. Even if he gained no knowledge of this from Ascending, he still had a clear example from compounding that you can do weird stuff by burning Invested metals. All he'd need to do is eat a spike, sense the Investiture inside like he does with Metalminds and go from there. I mean, we knew way less about the metalic arts than the Lord Ruler at the time, and yet readers almost immediately asked "What would happen if you burned a spike?" after reading the first book. For his experiments to have any success, he'd need to have some knowledge of Identity, but I now realise that it's almost guaranteed that he did. Even if there wasn't pre existing info on the subject, The Lord Ruler clearly had access to and knowledge of aluminum. It would take a supremely dull or incurious mind to not wonder about the Feruchemical properties of a new metal used for Allomancy when all metals have had a purpose for both so far. From reading the passage, later comments in the books and WoB, it's assumed that he was about to die of old age after losing his Atium Metalminds and that stabbing him in the heart probably wasn't even needed. The reason for this is that while tapping Atium makes him younger, he's still 1000 years old. What happened after losing the Metalminds is the same as what happens when Sazed stops tapping Pewter and begins to deflate. In this case though, it's deadly because he's not reverting to a weak scholar, but an impossibly old man who should have died long ago. Interestingly, this is also why he needed to compound more Atium as time went on, because it takes far more tapping to turn a 1000 year old into a 30 year old than it does to turn a 50 year old into one. Well, it's not impossible since we don't really understand how the Well works. It could be that you can only expand a soul so much to increase its power. Like, imagine this as strength. With the Well, maybe you're making the muscles in your arms stronger, and you can only make them so big before they become unwieldy. With Hemalurgy, it's like adding on another pair of arms to your torso to help lift stuff. Both make you stronger, but in different ways. Basically, it could be that the Well gives you Better Soul, whereas Hemalurgy gives you More Soul, and they're not mutually exclusive. Just a thought. I don't remember the context either, but this is possible. I'll try to find the passage today.

Thanks for this. It's certainly interesting, and also lends credence to the original theory of the thread if it's assumed that many powers can be accessed via Identity manipulation. I'd love to see the full WoB if you have it on hand. Identity is swiftly becoming a fascinating topic for me. I think of Identity as a sort of Investiture "Wavelength" rather than a key for access, where Investiture can only interact if it's tuned to the right station, so to speak. The metaphor slightly falls apart when it comes to unkeyed Investiture, but this would be the equivalent of broadcasting on all stations. The reason I like this interpretation is because it removes any associated "role" for different things in this process. Neither Investiture is a "key" or "lock" but rather two things that have rules on how they can interact. It removes any need for a soul to be involved too, which explains why two Feruchemists can store in the same Metalmind because the Investiture doesn't interact. Under this interpretation, the reason you get regular Allomancy when burning a Metalmind that is keyed to someone else is simply because the Investitures aren't interacting, so the Feruchemical charge cannot shape the magic, but the Allomancy Investiture is still passing through the metal to be shaped.

Interesting. I had not considered this interpretation. I worked under the assumption that he simply made himself an Allomancer and then built off of that, but it is possible that he just made himself super strong from the get go. Similarly, I am aware of that compounding the effects of Allomancy is possible, and it could be that he simply knew this trick and that's the reason. This begs the question though, if he's using one of these to boost his Allomancy, what is he using Hemalurgy for that could be considered "the most dramatic"? We know he was using it in a big way for something that we saw. If there had never been anything said on the subject of burning spikes, then I too would have assumed it to be something else, but we know that burning a spike has some sort of effect. I'd argue that "hacks" or "tricks" like compounding are actually really simple, comparatively. Spiking someone requires you to know exactly where to place it and is likely even more complicated to make constructs, whereas this just requires you to try burning a spike sometime and messing with Identity. Realmatics is said to be central to the old Terris religion, so it's possible that Rashek actually knew something about Identity to begin with and the knowledge was surpressed afterwards. Naturally occurring Aluminum is rare, but not unheard of, after all. This is indeed something that bothers me. What was he spiking himself with? Why did he want to? It could be that he just wanted even more insurance that his Atium Metalminds couldn't be Pushed or Pulled, seeing as he almost instantly died of old age after losing them and that's kind of a big deal, but who knows. I mean, this is the Lord Ruler we're talking about. Even if he used a puppeted construct to do this, he definitely killed them afterwards just to be sure. Probably doesn't really matter what he used in the end. On whether or not it's still Hemalurgy, I think it is. I can pull off "dramatic effect" on my car by boosting it with Nitro (shoo, car enthusiasts, you don't need to bother telling me this is wrong lol) and just because the effect is just going really fast and it still runs on gasoline doesn't mean that it wasn't pulled off with Nitro. This is the worst metaphor I have ever told and this is what I get for responding in a car. I'm heading off to a family dinner now, so I probably won't be able to respond for the rest of the night. Glad to see the responses so far.

First off, I realise that there is an existing Hemalurgy thread in the Mistborn section, but I wanted to discuss certain topics without needing to worry about spoilers. Additionally, I wanted the discussion to have a more theoretical direction, rather than a philosophical one. I have a few topics to cover, so they'll be broken up into different sections. ETHICS Hemalurgy is often considered an "evil" magic, and not without reason. So far, we have seen it as a very destructive force that not only kills innocents, but damages their very soul. However, we have had many interesting revelations since the original trilogy both in the books and through WoB. Many of these revelations paint a more... palatable picture of Hemalurgy. First and foremost, we have confirmation that Hemalurgy does not have to kill the person donating a spike. Relevant WoB: The reasons vary between WoB, but the meaning is clear: one does not have to die from getting spiked. It would still rip out a piece of your soul and change you as a person, but you do not have to die. Okay, so you don't have to die, but you're still losing a piece of your soul. That sounds like a big deal, right? Well, maybe not: So in the Before-Afterlife it certainly matters, but in the After-Afterlife? Not so much. That's a good thing, but it ultimately doesn't matter, because we have even better news! Soul wounds can be healed from: So not only is it confirmed you can heal back your soul, essentially creating a new patch of soul out of Investiture, it would also give you back the power you just had spiked away. Theoretically, you could be spiked multiple times for the same power. There's some implications that you wouldn't want to do this repeatedly, but the possibility is there. Alright, that's all well and good, but that only helps people who can heal back from a spiking. So that only means... everyone on Scadrial now. Those fancy medllions that the southerners have kindly introduced mean that everyone can heal back from being spiked by tapping an unkeyed goldmind. What's important to take away from this is that Hemalurgy may not be nearly as bad as we have been lead to believe. You don't have to die, you don't have to lose your power, you don't have to permanently damage your soul and it won't have scary, unknown implications for the After-Afterlife. I have no doubt that certain portions of society would be against it regardless of the science, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be used. MECHANICS In this section, I'm not going to be covering the topics of bind points or the uses of different metals as there's just not much to go on. Ultimately, I don't think the exact details are what's truly interesting about Hemalurgy anyway, but rather the interactions it has with the other magics on Scadrial. So, what do we know about Hemalurgy from the books? Well, you stab spikes into people and it gives them powers. So far as we know, each spike only steals one thing at a time, spiking an ability you already have makes you stronger and you can't have more than three spikes without opening yourself up to the influence of others: That's some pretty harsh restrictions. Suit appears to have his spikes piercing his heart, or at the very least they pierce his chest, and it was assumed that removing them would kill him. Pretty dangerous weakness to have these days, what with Coinshots and getting access to Duralumin medallions, or whatever other power boosting effects that may let people rip your spikes out. There's one person we know of who did fantastic things with Hemalurgy though, and seemed to have none of the associated weakness: the Lord Ruler. He was an impossibly powerful Mistborn, able to push on the metals inside Vin's stomach while she was burning them. Even Elend, with all his Lerasium granted strength, did not perform feats anywhere close to this. So, how did the Lord Ruler achieve this? The obvious answer is that he also ate Lerasium. WoB says that's not the case though: So how did the Lord Ruler become so powerful? According to WoB, it was Hemalurgy: So the Lord Ruler needed all three systems, but Hemalurgy was the most dramatic. Other than his incredible Allomatic strength, I cannot think of anything else he did that was not explained by compounding or God metals. There's a problem with this, though. So far as we know, the Lord Ruler only had two Hemalurgical spikes located in his upper arms, which doubled as his Atium Metlaminds. Even if these had granted Allomancy, they could not explain the entirety of his awesome power: The fact that he had no other spikes was actually a plot point. Remember that Marsh also thought that the Lord Ruler had been spiked like an Inquisitor, and his plan to kill him was based around this: So how can someone use all three systems of magic to benefit from Hemalurgy but not be full of spikes? Well, I think I have the answer, theorized from a few WoB and based around burning spikes with Allomancy: So we have some discrepancies between these WoB. In one, it says you would splice the sDNA together. In another, it says it won't graft the stolen soul on, but it would have some interesting effects. Finally, in one it says it won't have any effect when you burn it unless it also came from you. I believe these seemingly contradicting elements can finally be reconciled after learning about Identity in BoM, while also explaining why the Lord Ruler was so powerful. If you've read some of my other posts, you can probably already see where this is going. My proposition is simple: similar to Identity and Metalminds, the results of burning a Hemalurgical spike are dependent on whether or not you have Identity access to it. If you share an Identity with the Investiture in the spike, or possibly if the spike was donated from an individual who had no Identity at the time, then a process similar to compounding occurs. As the Investiture is drawn from Preservation and filtered through the metal, the Hemalurgical Investiture alters the shape that the magic takes, thereby spicing the sDNA in the spike and the sDNA of the Allomancer together. For a full explanation on my theory for the mechanics of Allomancy and compounding, see my huge ranty post. So, what effect would this have? Well, I believe we saw the results of this in the Lord Ruler. In the case of spikes which grant Metalborn abilities, splicing the sDNA results in granting, or increasing, the abilities of a Metalborn. It does not "graft" or "tack on" a piece of sDNA as has been described of spikes, but rather a full merger or "splicing" between the sDNA, impossible to separate afterwards. If this were the case, it would explain how the Lord Ruler managed to achieve his "dramatic effects" with basically no spikes, and would indeed require all three systems of metal magic. He needed an understanding of Hemalurgy to spike his own powers out (probably controlled a Kandra or Inquisitor for this), Feruchemy to survive said spiking and heal back his ability, and Allomancy to burn the spike and add it back onto his sDNA, thereby increasing his Allomatic strength without being a "common Inquisitor" with "endowed fabrications." He could then repeat this process until he reached some unknown theoretical limit. Keep in mind, the Lord Ruler was the most knowledgeable user of the metalic arts to have ever existed (so far), so if anyone could figure this out, it would be him. Okay, so maybe this is possible and he figured it out. Why did he use spikes for his Inquisitors then? Control, obviously. He brutally controlled the use and knowledge of Feruchemy just to prevent compounding, and this is easily more powerful. He designed all of his Hemalurgical constructs with both clear weaknesses and methods of control, and anyone granted power through this method would have neither. This is the extent of my evidence on the subject, so it is by no means proven, but I think there's a possibility for it to be true. I didn't find anything directly contradicting it, but Brandon has been getting pretty tight lipped about this sort of thing as time goes on. If you have anything on the subject, I'd be interested in seeing it. HEMALURGY USE GOING FORWARD Theoretically, this could be absurdly powerful going forward. If all that is required is an unkeyed spike, rather than a spike you share an Identity with, then you could potentially turn anyone into a Mistborn via the use of medallions. Give a Metalborn a Feruchemical Gold/ Feruchemical Aluminum medallion, dump their Identity while you spike out their power and have them heal it back with the goldmind. Give the recipient an Allomancy medallion corresponding with the metal of the spike, have them burn the spike and then boom, you've got a brand new Metalborn. Rinse and repeat. As I mentioned before, there's anecdotes that you may not want to do this repeatedly, as Soul injuries apparently scar even when healed and who knows what that does, but the ability is strong enough even without spiking people multiple times. That being said, I don't think Hemalurgy would gain wide spread use even if this were possible, simply because it's too damnation powerful. Imagine a world of Lord Rulers. Wax gave up the Bands of Mourning because the power was too great for mortals, and this is potentially even more powerful than that. I can easily see governments suppressing and regulating the use of Hemalurgy for the same reason they regulate guns. Or, perhaps more appropriately, for the same reasons as nukes. Still, the potential is there for this to be even more disruptive than medallions. FINAL THOUGHTS I consider this to be very theoretical and am by no means claiming to be convinced of its veracity. I'd love to hear what others have to say on the subject, and what they think of my interpretation.

Personally, I think it's pretty likely that copper compounding allows you to create duplicate memories, though I think of it more as there being a large well of the same memory to draw from. This jives with what we understand about compounding, which allows you to create Feruchemical abilities from Investiture drawn from Preservation. In the case of metals like Steel or Pewter, this is very simple because those attributes are generic, but the underlying mechanics should still be the same. When you tap a coppermind, you gain exactly as much memory as you put inside. If you compound the coppermind, you should get more than you put inside. This would allow you to share memories with others through the use of unkeyed copperminds, or have very vivid and realistic memories in the case of BoM's epilogue. I think the most valuable aspect is subtler though. Relevant WoB: Bolded the most relevant portions. If you could compound copper, you could tap a coppermind over time and have perfect recollection of the memory for the duration that you do. If you wanted, you could store your entire day of memories every day, compound it and then never forget a thing. You would need increasingly large amounts of copper on your person as time went on, so you'd probably want limit it to important memories, but the ability itself would be incredibly useful.

Ah hah! That is indeed the one. Very much appreciated!

My interpretation is that it's automatic, though I don't have any proof that Intent doesn't play a part. Allomancy is described as instinctive, and the effect of the Investiture is said to be shaped by passing through the metal, not by the intent of the Allomancer. It just seems natural to me that the user wouldn't have any direct, conscious control over this process.

There's no context where this gold comes from or what shape it is, but he simply refers to it as gold here, whereas earlier he says that he's constantly tapping goldminds, not gold. Keep in mind, all he has to do to burn a goldmind Allomatically is transfer all of the health inside to another goldmind, rendering it plain gold to burn. Not that big of a deal for a true Twinborn.

Gotcha, sorry for the mistake. If I am understanding your question, you're asking is he burning the goldmind for its Allomatic effect or its Feruchemical effect? I assume for the Feruchemical effect, seeing as it's healing him. I actually assume it's impossible to burn a metalmind as regular metal if you can compound it.

This is how I see many people interpret compounding, but all the evidence I've found points to the fact that compounding is actually Allomancy, not Feruchemy. If you have not read it, here's my big ranty post on the exact mechanics of compounding that I posted later on in the thread. It has a lot of different citations and evidence to its credit, and it will help you see how I came to this conclusion. This interpretation of compounding actually goes all the way back to the very first Mistborn book. Here's a passage from the epilogue: Even way back here, compounding is described as Allomancy that is being modified by Feruchemy, rather than Feruchemy that is powered by Allomancy.

This is why I later switched to the example of the spiked Coinshot in the same WoB, as the fact that he was already burning a goldmind and could heal back his feruchemy was confusing the issue. If the difference here was that Miles was still burning his goldmind and that's why it worked, I feel Brandon would have clarified here. It's clearly implied that the Coinshot is burning the steelmind after losing the spike, even if it's not explicitly stated. edit: Also, it should be noted that Miles' is in the middle of burning a goldmind, not tapping it.

Alright, I give up trying to find this WoB and would greatly appreciate any help in finding it. Basically, I'm looking for a WoB that says that the strength of an allomancer is related to the rate at which they burn metal reserves. I swear I remember seeing something to the effect of this, but for the life of me I cannot find it.

I have not ignored your arguments here or "wiggled around" the topic, and I have done my best to address every point as they come up. I immediately addressed what I thought it meant and why this isn't contradicted in the theory. In that quote, I did not say that it proves my theory, or even supports it, but rather that it fits within the scope of it. That is to say, it does not necessarily contradict the theory. I am sorry you took offense to the line "correlation doesn't imply causation," but I did not think it was something that could offend. It simply refers to the fact that a relationship between two things does not necessarily mean one is responsible for the other. I realise this was a needlessly complicated and pretentious way of phrasing it, but I had a disclaimer immediately preceding it that I was tired and likely to use pretentious language (this is why I stopped responding afterwards and got some rest. I could tell it was affecting my writing.) That being said, I explain what I meant more directly right afterwards: Note the bolded. An equally valid interpretation, because they both are. I had my own interpretation and it fit the theory well enough that I was not worried about it. I said "I have said it a few times now" because I thought I had made my stance clear, but it kept getting brought up. I see now that it was not as clear as I thought it was, so I'll restate it here: This line is not being discarded, nor is it being ignored. I feel there is a reasonable interpretation that reconciles it within the theory and did not feel the need to elaborate further. There are other ways to interpret it, but this is the position from which I am working from.

@The One Who Connects I'll thank Yata and you for that! My search for it was proving fruitless. That seems pretty conclusive as far as these things go. If TLR has no resonances and can still compound, that should mean that compounding is not related to resonance.