Trusk'our

Good points made about needing Atium. With that being the case, I think it very likely that spikes providing A-Atium would be required for most, if not all Steel Inquisitors- it would likely be considered part of the "basic" set along with Allomantic steel, iron, and pewter (would be embarrassing for people to find out that your super powered Inquisitors couldn't do even the most basic Steeljump or take a punch from a Thug, no?). However, we do know that some Inquisitors had F-Atium, and as we established earlier, it seems very unlikely that Rashek would want them to discover the secret of Compounding, particularly about F-Atium since it would create an opening for one of his most powerful servants to kill him. I suppose that Ruin could have given those spikes to the Inquisitors though after he was freed though, which would explain how they got them. I agree with you on Bendal being a natural Mistborn, since he had noticablely stronger A-pewter than Kelsier, and Kar was probably a natural Seeker by default. I'm curious as to why you think the Vetitan Inquisitor was Mistborn though (It's been a while since I read the original trilogy though- could you tell me where to find that Inquisitor again?). Ah, that makes sense. Money does makes the world go round, and I do tend to forget that many people are faithful enough to their religion to sacrifice for it (which is kind of ironic, actually, seeing as how I'm ussually faithful enough to sacrifice for my religion ).

I think that this theory makes sense. I like the example you used as well One thing I've actually started to wonder about is how much Fortune would need to be tapped before you started to see tangible benefits. After all, I don't think that most people get a ton of use out of their Fortune; you get some benefit occasionally I'm sure, but I can't think of a time where someone had a naturally occurring precognitive moment where they did something that couldn't be explained through any means aside from Fortune. Basically, my current thinking is that that Fortune on it's own isn't' all that useful from what we've seen, unless perhaps you tap an inhumanly large amount of it.

True, Rashek probably wouldn't have wanted them to use too much Feruchemy, with the exception of F-gold. I wonder how much he allowed them to experiment, or if he even kept a terribly close eye on them; after all, he didn't seem to care about much by the end of his reign. Well, I did some digging and apparently there is confirmation that they don't all have the same powers. And specifically, not all Inquisitors had a Hemalurgic spike providing access to F-gold, though most of them did. In any case, back to @Mistchemist16's question: In the end, I'm going to have to say that most Inquisitors were probably Seekers originally, with only a few of them being Mistborn; I just don't think that someone who is a powerful Mistborn would particularly want to serve in the Steel Ministry- they already have a lot of power, so joining the ministry for that reason wouldn't be appealing to them. Plus, they have more freedom to do what they want when they want on their own. If they are a member of a high-ranking noble house, they're already living a life of luxury. If they're from a minor noble family, they could sell their services to other more powerful (and wealthy) noble houses to improve their lives. Of course, I could be wrong, but that's my viewpoint.

Ah. Yeah, same here.

Absolutely. They had access to at least a few Hemalurgic spikes that provided Feruchemy, so F-iron could have been one of those. Maybe. The physical warping caused by having a Hemalurgic spike containing a human attribute rather than an Invested power is significantly greater and would likely turn the Hemalurgist into something more akin to a Koloss than a Steel Inquisitor. However, Koloss require four spikes to fully transform so perhaps you could pull off empowering yourself but remaining mostly human with only one spike.

How so?

Huh. Well, he did also play around with Hemalurgy at Kelsier's suggestion, so perhaps he found another way to extend his life. However, I'm pretty sure he is dead as of TLM; Marsh mentions that only he, Sazed, and Kelsier are still around, balancing on one another like legs on a tripod.

Hold on, wait, What!? Spook lived 115 years or longer!?

A human needs four iron Hemalurgic spikes to be transformed into a Koloss- a Hemalurgic construct. But what if only one spike is used? I know the Chimera use only one spike, but Tensoon mentions in SoS that it shouldn't be possible for such large changes to occur with only one spike, suggesting that one spike doesn't change a person nearly that much. In addition, what if you did what the Koloss did and repurposed a Koloss spike for yourself, since it apparently allows for a greater amount of one's humanity to remain? Basically, I'm wondering if you could find a way to use one, maybe two Hemalurgic spikes that use human attributes rather than Invested powers and yet somehow retain your humanity (I'm most particularly interested in H-copper, as having 500 IQ seems pretty nice )?

I don't know that that would work very well. Mistborn, for instance, are more Invested than the average Steel Inquisitor (16 full-powered powers, not less than a dozen weakened ones), yet we don't hear of them living longer than average. Plus, each Hemalurgic spike causes further harm to the Spiritweb, which helps explain why Inquisitors would become exhausted so quickly. Now, I bet that if you Invested some Hemalurgic spikes enough you could counteract at least some of the degradation on the Spiritweb and extend one's lifespan a good deal, though it would have to be a lot of power. After all, TLR was a very powerful Allomancer and Feruchemist, yet he still aged and died, so you'd have to have more raw power than him (perhaps he did age slower than normal- just not enough to naturally live 1,000 years?). That's how I envisioned they extended their lives slightly; they aren't human anymore, so they probably age differently from vanilla humans (plus, you know, A-pewter probably helps out a little). Although, since some "burn out" faster, I bet that's due to having a larger number of spikes than other Inquisitors; more spikes, more wear and tear on the spiritweb, the quicker the Inquisitor deteriorates and ages.

Hmmm, good point. I wonder what the consequences of Savantism for the other 14 Allomantic metals are then, since they aren't tied directly to the practitioner's body. I don't know that this disproves my previous statement though; I suppose it would depend on how Savanthood in non-physical metals changes someone and to what extent (though of course, I could be climbing up the wrong tree entirely and Savantism and Hemalurgy aren't really closely related at all). That... actually sounds a lot less disturbing and a lot more useful than what we've seen with, say, Hemalurgic iron; changing your race or mimicking the appearance of a specific individual could be used as a convincing disguise or something along those lines- Hemalurgic iron just straight up turns you into a dull-witted monster that is in constant pain and that is doomed to die from heart failure.

heh, in hindsight, perhaps my assumptions were a bit bold. In HoA the chapter 16 epigraph talks a little about Savants. Tin and Pewter Allomancers who become Savants have pretty severe side effects, but the others don't have massive consequences from what we can tell. I hypothesize that perhaps Spiritual Hemalurgic attributes work similarly; physical attributes like strength (i.e., Koloss) or senses would warp you a lot more than those that aren't physical, though perhaps mental attributes warp you a lot as well since they are tied to your brain's physical structure and therefore changes in one's spiritual aspect regarding them would have a larger impact similar to the physical attributes. So maybe just Spiritual attributes would have less warping effect because they are less tied to one's physical aspect; Destiny, Connection, Identity, and Investiture don't tie much to your physical aspect from what I can tell.

It sounds like the Seethe is caused by or at least closely related to the decay of Spores, hence the reason the Spore oceans don't overfill.

The Hemalurgy table says that it concerns itself with the creation of Steel Inquisitors, but it has Bindpoints located for the Spiritual quadrant. Is this just to show a sample of where to expect certain Bindpoints for all Hemalurgic creations, or is it actually just for Inquisitors? Because if it is just for Inquisitors, there are some interesting implications. If Inquisitors actually used spiritual Hemalurgy on themselves, it would probably mean that the attributes granted by such spikes don't warp you into a Hemalurgic monstrosity, otherwise Inquisitors wouldn't be able to use them for obvious reasons. Perhaps it's like with Allomantic Savantism; only the physical metals have serious implications for one's physiology while others have little impact. Do you guys think I'm reading too much into this and jumping to conclusions, or am I onto something? Hemalurgy table link.

Forgery can only allow something reasonable to be changed about someone's past to create a different present version of oneself. Hemalurgy can take pieces of people's Spiritwebs, their Connection and Identity, and staple it on to someone else. So, could you take a part of someone's Spiritweb, give yourself the spike, and then use a Soulstamp on yourself that would have worked on the other person? For example, could a Scadrien Hemalurgist spike something out of Moonlight, give themselves the spike, then take her Elantrian-making Soulstamp and use it one themselves?

Well, I meant more like you deliberately give them Hemalurgic spikes to crack open their Spiritweb enough to make them susceptible to control the same way Koloss and Inquisitors are. I suppose that it would still be pretty hard though, as they still have their faculties about them. Wish we'd seen a Steel Inquisitor getting controlled by a Mistborn withough Ruin or the Mists interfering- then we'd actually know how viable an option this is. I know! Didn't even get there before I was threatened to have my Sanderson books taken away! Thanks, I appreciate it! (also, thanks for pointing out my mishap with Pi! ) As a fun side note, I decided to find out how much steel was in a longsword's blade to compare it to an Inquisitor spike. Mr. Google-pants the chrome engine said that there's between 2.5 and 4 lbs. of steel in the blade of a longsword. So, since 1 cubic inch of steel is 0.2833 lbs., a sword with 2.5 lbs. of steel would equal 8.8246 cubic inches and a sword with 4 lbs. of steel would equal 14.1193 cubic inches. Which makes an inquisitor spike a bit smaller than a smaller sword, and about 1.6 times smaller than one of the larger swords (8.8246 % 8.6 = 1.026116279, and 14.1193 % 8.6 = 1.64177907). Now we just need to know exactly how much a certain Nalthian Investiture equals compared to Allomantic powers That's a fair takeaway. I suppose I did jump toward assuming that it meant the storage space was bigger than a 1:1 scale though (since I wanted it to be, but of course that doesn't make it true). There are two questions that if we knew the answers to I think would help resolve this: would it be better storage space wise for a Feruchemist to carry 200 little pieces of jewelry that equal the total mass of 2 bracers, or is it more advantageous for a Feruchemist to carry around one or two larger Metalminds? The second question involves Warbreaker and mild OB spoilers... yeah, that might work. I wonder if it matters which eye a Steel Inquisitor uses for their Allomantic iron vs steel? That would help answer that question, I would think. This quote says the Bindpoints are slightly different, but doesn't directly refute whether they are interchangeable or not. Perhaps attribute spikes through different eyes would create a different Hemalurgic construct though (which makes some sense, I believe: one eye is connected to the analytical side of your brain while the other is connected to the artistic side). Also, it mentions that Intent is important when fiddling with them, so perhaps @alder24's idea of tweaking a Bindpoint's purpose would work with Intent.

Yeah, even after coming up with everything else, that's honestly going to be the biggest limiting factor; getting dozens of Mistings to be willing to let you spike their powers out would be very difficult. You might be able to take a powered spike, split it into a dozen or so pieces and pierce the individual with it, then use a duralumin-enhanced Emotional Allomantic blast to make them blank their Identity when you want it and to so that you know they did it. But still, that may end up being harder than it appears on paper. Ah, okay, I can understand that. I think we'll probably need more information on the mechanics of Hemalurgy before we set it in stone though (I guess we do that with basically all our theories, I suppose). Ohhhhh. Okay, I don't know how I managed to completely miss that part despite me reading that section like seven times. But yes, you're right, that wasn't a Trellium spike. True, based on the previous information a single thin, 6" spike can hold about 4 Allomancer's worth Investiture within them, which isn't anywhere close to my original guess. So, I finally decided to do some math (which I actually ended up enjoying far more than I originally thought I would). The spike used by the Set members was 6" long, and is compared to a sewing needle, so I used a non-conservative estimate and said that the Hemalurgic spike had a width of about a quarter inch (0.25"), about as thick as a pencil. Following the equation of Pie x radius squared x height, I estimated that a Set needle-spike has about 0.3 cubic inches of metal (radius- which is 0.125 squared = 0.015625 times Pie = 0.049087385 times 6- the height- equals 0.294524311 cubic inches). I got my dad to help me take some measurements for a Steel Inquisitor spike (to which my mother was utterly disgusted when she found out what I was up to ), and we estimated it would be about 11" long to pierce the eye and come out the back of the head, and the diameter of the spike head would be about 1" if it were to take up most of the eye socket (which I think is how it was described in TFE, but it has been a while). Using the same cylinder area-finding equation, I estimated that a Steel Inquisitor spike had about 8.6 cubic inches of metal (radius is 0.5 squared = 0.25 times Pie = 0.785398163 times the height of 11 = 8.639379797 cubic inches). So if an Inquisitor spike is about 8.6 cubic inches of metal and an experimental Set spike is about 0.3 cubic inches of metal, then an Inquisitor spike is 28.7 times bigger (8.6 % 0.3 = 28.7). And if one of the needle-thin Set spikes can contain 4 Mistings worth of power, an Inquisitor spike could therefore contain 114.8 Mistings worth of power. ...Except that if Hemalurgic mechanics are similar Feruchemical ones, the amount of Investiture you can store inside isn't linear. So based on this WoB, the amount of Investiture you can store inside a piece of metal increases more than just one to one. That means that you could absolutely store a hundred Mistings worth of power- or more even- inside a properly sized Hemalurgic spike- which I honestly didn't think was going to be possible until I did the math and found this WoB (I was just throwing out a random high number), so that's awesome! Thanks for the motivation to dig deeper @alder24, I really appreciate it! Also, Warbreaker spoilers and minor OB spoilers. I actually wonder if you could make four powers of the same Hemalurgic quadrant work within one spike. It would really depend on whether or not the Bindpoints for the quadrant were interchangeable; if they are, it should work. If not, the spike would only provide the power(s) congruent to the Bindpoint the spike was currently piercing.

True, Identity contamination causes some problems with Hemalurgicly Compounding gold, but I bet that F-aluminum could help if a donor blanked their Identity while donating their power. It would require either their willingness or for someone to spike them with four or more Hemalurgic spikes, then to control them and forcibly make them blank their Identity though. There would be an upper limit to the Investiture a Hemalurgic spike could hold, but we don't really know yet what it is. However, we do know exactly how much Investiture is in a single Hemalurgic spike containing a single Metalborn power, but we do know that it isn't a lot. Huh. I hadn't considered that possibility, but maybe that would happen with enough individual Hemalurgic charges. It would be interesting to see a villain use a supercharged spike and turn into a literal monster, which would introduce a new limitation/cost to Hemalurgy, which would also be interesting; if you want to gain godlike power via Hemalurgy, you have to leave behind your humanity. It may be that only certain attributes follow that rule (though we don't really have any proof of that, it might make sense for Medallion tech), but assuming that all of them do that would mean that you can at least combine a few people's powers, since we see something similar happen with the Malwish medallions. Though, you're right; ultimately, it would probably be easier and more efficient to use a single Metalborn who used F-gold to produce all the powers- the trauma on the person donating might be terrible though. I don't know that that proves you can't fit more than 20 people's worth of Investiture inside a Hemalurgic spike. They were attempting to Invest the spikes specifically to create powers, so when they said "Fully Investing one takes between twenty and thirty people (TLM p.g. 318)" I think they meant that it takes between twenty to thirty people's worth of Investiture before you see any powers budding from the spike. And if they were talking about it's total Investment, it's important to remember that they used a Trellium spike (and not a large one at that- if it was like the other Marasi found, it would be four to six inches long); as a Godmetal it would be too Invested to hold much of a charge in the first place, so a normal piece of metal as a Hemalurgic spike would be able to hold a lot more. F-aluminum on the part of the donor may be able to counter, or at least mitigate that problem. I don't know that would be the case. We've seen that even a Hemalurgic spike at its minimum charge (Wax's Pathian earring) can pierce the soul enough to count as a full spike; it was enough to let Harmony directly communicate with Wax and for Paalm to be vulnerable to control. This seems to suggest that it's the number of spikes piercing someone's body and not the total Investiture inside those spikes that matters for Hemalurgic control. I like to think that this is because it's the number of Bindpoints being pierced that matters; more Bindpoints, more holes for outside Investiture to get in. In other words, the hole in the Spiritweb doesn't have to be very big, since it's just used to hotwire the Spiritweb of the recipient to that of the spike, but each new Bindpoint being pierced creates a new entrance for outside Investiture to get in. Although, this isn't concrete, it's just an educated guess, so I could be wrong.

Some Inquisitors were Mistborn before they received their spikes, nearly doubling their Allomantic powers. I think that it's likely that some had more than one spike granting the same power, allowing them to increase their Allomantic might- It would be cool to see if they had some kind of ranking system, with higher ranking Inquisitors getting more spikes to further increase their power. Inquisitors also had some physical transformation going on with them- they were noticeably taller than most people. I think that combined with natural strength training would allow them not only to have greater physical strength than most (Kelsier in TFE commented on this during his final fight) but that the extra weight would have made their Ironpulls and Steelpushes have more force.

I'm on the same train. I don't think that you could heal Breaths back if you give them away voluntarily since there is no "damage" done to your Spiritweb; your natural state now is being Drab, and therefore can't be "healed". I do think that you might be able to heal back your original Breath if it were Hemalurgically spiked out, since it would be actual damage and the Breath was less of something added to you and more a natural part of your being. Hmmm. Perhaps Hemalurgy does still have some use for producing Heightenings more easily- unless Compounding Breaths stored in Nicrosil becomes a thing, of course.

Yeah, I think that if you're body is familiar enough with tapping health from a Goldmind that it will do so unconsciously, even if your brain wouldn't be able to do so- you're Invested enough that your Cognitive aspect jumps the need for your Physical aspect's brain to call the shots. We've seen something similar happen with Vin burning Pewter unconsciously, though her brain was still intact. Perhaps you would need to become a F-gold Savant in order for brain injuries to automatically heal then, since you become far more attached to your powers and you are drawn closer to your Spiritual aspect. Someone else (sorry, can't remember who) mentioned that Trellium Hemalurgy may allow for powers to act more autonomously since that is more in line with the Shard's Intent. Based on how Southern Scadrien Medallion tech allows for unconscious tapping (otherwise they couldn't sleep while flying on an airship), I think that this is similar to what is going on with Trellium spikes.

As @alder24 said, the quote is more about adding power to a Hemalurgic spike by spiking more Investiture from another person on top of what the spike already has. Identity contamination prevents this from working well, but aparently the Set got them to work briefly. Likely the spikes stopped functioning because the Investiture inside the spikes considered themselves to be separate, so they began to break each other down, similar to a body rejecting a donor's organ because of conflicting DNA. The quote also mentions that you could overcome this problem if you managed to either match the Identity of the donors (spiking the same person more than once by healing them between spiking them) or by blanking the Identity of the donors (such as blanking the donor's Identity with aluminum Feruchemy while spiking them). The Set just didn't have time to experiment.

True, but Metalborn aren't considered to be particularly Invested before they burn their metals. The same rule applies to Hemalurgic spikes, as all of their power comes from said Metalborn. It's definitely possible, likely even, that you'd run into some difficulties cramming hundreds of Allomancer's worth of Investiture into a spike (see my aforementioned argument against myself), but there could likely be quite a bit that could be stuffed in there. I suppose it would also be worth noting that the more Investiture a Metalborn or Metalblessed wields, the less efficient their powers would be, similar to compressing Feruchemical attributes or Flaring metals; more and more of the power is siphoned off to offset the compression and to allow the practitioner to use the power they have. This means that one hundred Allomancers' worth of Investiture may look a lot more like twenty times the actual effects it bears. Of course, we don't have any exact measurements for Invested-ness currently, so this point is rather moot.

Often when people come up with crazy ideas on the 17th Shard we disregard how such a circumstance came to be for the sake of discussion. That's okay, but I think that it makes some theories seem far-fetched because from a meta perspective they would be too game breaking if they were true. Take the ability to combine multiple Hemalurgic charges into a single spike; if you took the power of one hundred Pewterarms and cramed it into a single Hemalurgic spike, the recipient becomes bulletproof (or near it at least), strong enough to casually punch people's heads off, and has their natural healing and physical speed increased to insane amounts. Basically like Shardplate, but you always have it, it helps you in more ways (such as healing quickly), it's easier to use when and wherever you want, and since you have an increase to your dexterity, you don't have to worry as much about breaking stuff accidentally (to a reasonable extent, at least). However, even if such a thing were possible, it would be very, very, very difficult to bring about. First, you'd either have to get a single Misting who was willing to donate their power and heal back parts of their Spiritweb a hundred times over via F-gold- which takes some serious Compounding with H-spikes or medallions (the latter of which may actually not be viable due to the Malwish not having Allomantic Medallions) to achieve- or you'd have to find one hundred Mistings of the same type who were willing to donate their powers, as they'd need to use Hemalurgy or Medallions to blank their Identity to prevent the H-charges from being incompatible with each other. Technically, it is achievable, but you pretty much won't see it happen; it's just not very believable that such a scenario could happen. Another limiting factor is Hemalurgic decay. If my hunch is correct, Hemalurgic decay works a bit like a gas under pressure; the more you try to squeeze into a smaller and smaller space, the more Investiture will leak from the spike within the same window of time. There probably are ways to offset this, such as using Raysium and Perfect Gemstones to collect Hemalurgic charges, but I think that there is one more limiting factor; Identity development. We see with the Southern Scadrien Medallions that they have developed some of their own Identity despite the fact that they would have to be made from Blanked Investiture originally, or else they couldn't be tapped (don't ask me why they can still be tapped; it likely has to do with some mechanic Sanderson has yet to introduce). Basically, I think that if you were to Spike out a Misting's power, let them heal it back with Investiture, then give them some time to recover from the lingering aftereffects, the Hemalurgic charge may end up developing a new Identity, which would prevent it from being combined with other H-charges. So you'd have to harvest all your power in one sitting, likely meaning that you'd have to have lots of Mistings willing to donate their powers to prevent the worst of the side effects, which could be possible, but not likely or easy. Basically, I think that the concept of having a single Hemalurgic spike providing godlike power is pretty neat, and we likely will see some spikes containing a few charges in the future, but I don't think that it would be a world-building pit that unbalances magic systems. And if we do ever see a supercharged spike, it will likely be a very rare occurrence which will be used by villains (kind of like Miles gold Compounding).

We saw in TLM that AonDor could be used even on another planet so long as there was an available source of Investiture to fuel it and so long as the Aons were modified to be compatible with the landscape. So my question is, what do you guys think would happen if AonDor were to be used in space? Would landscape requirements disappear while used in space, or would Aons just cease to function all together?