Trusk'our

Ah. So you mean that the Hemalurgist - the one with the charged spikes implanted into their body - would blank their Identity, and that would allow the spikes to function normally?

I believe that it would, as when an individual blanks their Identity and fills a Metalmind, the Investiture that can later be tapped is also devoid of any Identity. The same principle should apply to Hemalurgy.

Yup. Which doesn't make the whole torture thing very useful.

Well, a normal Spiritweb is a very small amount of Investiture. Even if their Spiritweb was made up entirely of one kind of Investiture, I don't think that that small of an amount would cause a human being to behave in a noticeably different manner. It's worth mentioning that Vahr had achieved the fourth Heightening, which means that he had at least 1,000 BioChromatic Breaths.

One of the interesting things about Investiture is that the Intent of what Investiture you are using matters. For example, you can only alter yourself so much with Awakening's standard system because Endowment's Intent permeates the Investiture you are using. I think that if you could find a way to craft an Invested power from Endowment's Investiture then, you may be able to transfer it as you would BioChromatic-Breaths. Here's a method that I thought of. Step one: get an Unsealed Metalmind that provides the ability to use Feruchemical gold and aluminum (health and Identity) or a pair of Hemalurgic spikes that provide the same powers. Step two: give the powers to a willing Nalthian who then stores a ton of health while blanking their Identity. NO COMPOUNDING. The health must come from the Nalthian's own Spiritweb. Step three: excise the Invested power of another willing individual via Hemalurgy without killing them (probably an Allomancer or Ferring, though it may be that other Invested powers that are innately part of someone's Spiritweb could work). Step four: have the donor tap the healing from the Unsealed metalmind (or Hemalurgic spikes) to replace the power. And at this point, it is important to know that when you heal a part of someone's Spiritweb, you actually graft an entirely new piece of Investiture on. And in this case, that Investiture came entirely from Endowment, as Nalthian's Spiritwebs are made up entirely of her essence. So now we have an Invested power made up entirely of Endowment's Investiture. This may mean that you could transfer it as you could normal Breaths, though you may have to Connect the donor to Nalthis in order to gain the ability to do so. If this is the case, you could create very powerful individuals, but without the vulnerabilities and limitations of Hemalurgy- though the powers may be able to be drained by things like larken and chromium Mistings, but I'm not sure; this is entirely theoretical. Let me guys know what you think!

It is possible that they did do just that. It is possible that any duralumin gnats or other Mistings and Ferrings are informally cataloged by some people as well (though not all of them), since people will want to hire them for specific tasks. I could see the noble houses doing this or larger businesses that wish to hire Metalborn and have the resources to spare to hire someone to find someone else to hire. The Set could do the same, or talk to/steal the information from others. But duralumin would still be a very difficult ability to get ahold of even if this were the case.

I recently re-read era 1 Mistborn when I noticed something interesting when Tensoon comments on the Blessing of Potency. He mentions it as "more than doubling" his strength, but not tripling. This actually sounds a lot like Allomantic Pewter's affects, with it roughly doubling one's strength when burned normally, and roughly tripling it when flared. Since we know that Hemalurgic spikes typically provide the Investiture from only one person, and that a Blessing requires two spikes, a Blessing provides nearly (Hemalurgic decay) the raw level of Investiture found in two regular humans. Using this principle, a Thug burning pewter would only count as being a few times as Invested as a normal human being, even when flaring his metal. And that's for one of the faster burning, and therefore more Investing, metals. Originally, I had just kind of head cannoned that Mistings were about as Invested as first Heightening Awakeners when burning metals (albeit with kinetic Investiture rather than static), with a slight variation based on what specific metal they burned. It now seems like I was totally out of the ball park: the Metallic arts do not have very much Investiture within the system compared to some others. Which we do have a WoB on, but I hadn't realized just how big the difference was until recently. This also means that quite a bit of stuff can be done with a comparatively small amount of Investiture to what I had once imagined (which I suppose makes sense. After all, you can more or less permanently Awaken a Lifeless with only a single Breath). This also means that a first Heightening Awakener is likely dozens of times as powerful (in terms of raw Investiture) than your run-of-the-mill Allomancer.

Hee, hee Okay, that makes a lot more sense: Ruin was making his system stronger back when he was fighting Preservation and now that Ruin isn't fighting Preservation, the system is cooling down and returning to normal levels (I wonder if it was a byproduct of the Ruin/Preservation conflict, or an active pressure brought on by the Vessel?). I bet that Preservation creating more Allomancers via the Mists was his version of enhancing his system - which we also don't see in modern Scadrial.

Huh. True. So Kelsier probably could have used the Bands of Mourning. Makes me wonder why he would be willing to give up the Bands of Mourning, seeing as he is so desperate to control the metals again by the end of TLM. Okay, then having a Kandra body wouldn't affect Kelsier's ability to access his Allomancy or Hemalurgically granted powers. So it's still probably related to him being a Cognitive Shadow, and possibly because his body doesn't have a good Connection to his spirit? I get the feeling that I'm just going around in circles. I don't think I'm going to understand why Kelsier can't use his Allomancy until Brandon tells us why.

I mean, maybe if you could if you were a skilled enough Savant? It seems like it would be really powerful potentially.

Whooo! That would be pretty dangerous. Plus, they wouldn't have to tap as much speed as a normal Steelrunner in a fight, since the bubble of sped up time would allow them to focus on one or a few enemies at once. Although, you might also increase the speed at which you Bendalloy burns as well. Perhaps this would increase how much you can compress time via Allomancy, since a quicker burning of metal equals a larger amount of Investiture (as we see with flairing metals), which mean more time compression.

Okay, so it probably was Spook and Kelsier working together, possibly with the help of a Feruchemist, to create the Bands of Mourning. Perhaps Spook wanted to secret away the Bands because he thought that they contained too much power for any one person to hold. Unless the situation was truely dire, which would be why he would have told the Southern Scadrian's about their existence (or they figured it out on their own). Kelsier is the Sovereign and would have been involved in their creation then, but maybe couldn't even use them, since he has the body of a Kandra (can Kandra tap Unsealed Metalminds?).

Ah! That makes sense. I wonder he used Trellium spikes if he'd be able to gain access to Invested powers, since those grant Allomancy and Feruchemy to Kandra. This also would likely mean that Kelsier has at least one other spike somewhere in his body, or else he shouldn't be sapient.

I know that this is a rather nit-picky opinion of mine, but doesn't saying that "Hemalurgy was stronger back then" and "Hemalurgy is weaker now" mean basically the same thing?

I'm also confused as to who made the Bands of Mourning, as it almost certainly wasn't Kelsier. He doesn't even have access to one of the Metallic arts currently and is searching for a way to regain access. Even if he had made the Bands in the past somehow, he doesn't seem like the kind of person to leave that kind of power behind for someone else to grab. whoever made the Bands is likely not someone we know. Or it was Spook. that's the one guess I've got. After all, it is confirmed that Rashek did not create the Bands, and Kelsier almost certainly didn't, and Marsh didn't (he doesn't even have all the powers, nor does he fit the description of the Sovereign). But Spook had some Hemalurgic spikes to play around with and is a natural Mistborn by the end of era 1, so it could potentially be him. But most likely, the Sovereign is some character we haven't met yet. I wonder who they are?

Personally, I loved TLM. I loved that Cosmere connections finally came more out into the open, I loved the characters and how they had developed (mostly; I'll explain more in a minute), and especially the new insights with Hemalurgy. But yeah, I feel like the story was a bit disconjoined with the rest of the era 2 books. It's hard to really pin down what it was (except that the jokes were cruder, I think), but it felt a bit wonky. I think that Wayne's humor, and the humor or much of the story, was a bit...off... a bit different than the rest of the era 2 books, though maybe that was just because Brandon took a while to get to TLM from BOM (I actually feel that OB and ROW had a somewhat similar issue, where they were a bit different, and not necessarily in a good way). But overall, I'm satisfied with the book.

Hmmm. Interesting idea. I personally think that Kelsier may not be able to use Allomancy because he's not enough in the Physical Realm. He has stappled his Soul back into his body via Hemalurgy, but hasn't maybe fused back together perfectly. I think that it is also possible that he counts as being "dead" still, maybe because his body was dead, and he was re-united with it rather than taking a new, living body like the Fused do. Whatever the reason, it probably has to do with Realmatics of his resurrection rather than his actual Allomantic potential being gone (his spiritual DNA being messed up), since Hemalurgy still doesn't do the trick and Lerasium has had doubt placed on it by Harmony.

Well, it's not useful for many situations that don't involve torture, but you could Hemalurgically pierce someone with four or more spikes, and then use a duralumin empowered blast of Emotional Allomancy to control them, and force them to tap the increased sense of pain. Probably not ethically acceptable though (especially not to me), and not useful in many situations anyway, since you could already control them.

I think that a A-pewter Savant may want to tap pain, as they could then tell "oh hey, I am dying, maybe I should take a rest or see a doctor before I drop dead". It would also perhaps be useful to increase one's sense of pain briefly so as to tell if you had anything going on in your body that wasn't good but was subtle enough that you normally would ignore it.

I theorize that Trellium/Bavadinuim alloys with other Godmetals rewrite one's Connection to the Shard whose Godmetal is alloyed with Autonomy's, similar to how Lerasium can be alloyed with other Godmetals to forge a Connection to the other Shard in question rather than Preservation.

That makes a lot of sense. It doesn't simply replace your need to think and remember; it's just another tool in your toolbox. I also found this quote, which helps solidify this fact. So Copper Feruchemy is useful as a way to efficiently preserve, sort, and carry around a lot of information, but it won't let you simply replace your need for hard work and skill building. I suppose that it's like Allomantic pewter in this regard; you can do more physically than you normally could with pewter, but you still need to train and develop skills with the power for it to be truly useful. Sazed could use Copperminds to carry around a whole library of knowledge with ease. He can translate languages with the knowledge he has recorded but couldn't speak fluently in such languages unless he devoted the time and effort that anyone else would need. He can right down notes with knowledge he temporarily taps and can use the notes for things like building a floodgate mechanism. I think that I understand now how Copperminds are useful. Thank you guys for helping me out!

Yeah, I was thinking that hiding the Copperimnds in one's body would be more like a smokescreen than a shield. You can't overpower a Shard, but it wouldn't matter how much Investiture Ruin had if he couldn't tell what he was doing. After all, the Atium was hidden from Ruin inside of coin shipments, and Ruin wasn't able to tell that his own essence was there.

Well, yes, but I mean why is it weaker now, mechanically speaking? Because if you understand why something is, you can then take steps to change it according to your desires.

I like number three in particular, as it make the most sense to me. Odium wouldn't have as big a presence on Roshar (Realmatically speaking) as Honor or Cultivation, since Rayse wanted to be free to roam the Cosmere to destroy other Shards and therefore didn't Invest himself into Roshar as the others did.

True. I mostly used the knowledge of languages as an example because it was what was used in the book, but I suppose I mostly was questioning about Copper Feruchemy's uses in general.