Trusk'our

That's true, but Rashek knew certain things about allomancy and feruchemy due to his ascension. Plus, he prepared the spikes himself - so their was something going on with their creation that could have been dangerous to the Lord Ruler, as he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to do anything personally unless it was of great importance. Unsealed Metalminds would have been very dangerous in his eyes, as they could potentially be used to create someone as powerful as himself (can't find the quote right now as I'm a mobile device).

Certain animals can do some very impressive things with their brains, even if their overall intelligence is much less developed than humans'. I wonder if Kandra started digesting more animals if they could learn to replicate some of their more impressive cognitive functions, like how dolphins can have part of their brain sleep while allowing the other to stay alert, or how flies and many insects have a much faster reaction time than humans.

I would guess that if someone were to try and create a Koloss and put the first three spikes in place but either forgot, lost, or for some reason chose not to use the fourth and final spike, then the construct wouldn't be a Koloss just with less power and alteration, it would be something else entirely. You wouldn't just lose a portion of power without that spike as with an Inquisitor, you would also lose the spiritual DNA that would be part of the complete "code" that the Investiture follows to create a Koloss. Although, Chimera are supposed to have an unusually large amount of change done to them with one spike, so that suggests that other Hemalurgic constructs with few spikes wouldn't have nearly the same level of change. So if you gave a human only one attribute spike without whatever method is used to create Chimera, I wonder what you would get?

Does this also apply to the rest of the Cosemere? Because if so...

I like Scadrial and it's magic systems, and if I'm being honest, I'm a little biased because Mistborn was the first book of Brandon Sanderson's that I read, introducing me to the Cosmere. That being said, a well practiced Radiant of 3rd oath or higher is going to be really hard for even Mistborn to beat because they can regenerate from most injuries almost instantly, and they have massive vorpal blades with a near immunity to steelpushing/ironpulling. A trained full Feruchemist or Steelrunner with plenty of attributes stored up might be able to overwhelm a Radiant, but any injuries they inflict could still be healed, unless the Feruchemist can do so much damage in such a short time frame as to kill them, which would be insanely hard without access to compounding. A Mistborn with Atium is kind of cheating, since Atium is a bit of a McGuffin, but they could use it to get in close to a Radiant and sap their Stormlight via chromium, probably letting them win in most of those scenarios. A Fullborn with some experience and enough metal isn't going to be particularly challenged by even a 4th oath Radiant, and unless a 5th oath Radiant get some extremely powerful new abilities, even they wouldn't stand much of a chance. Maybe a Bondsmith could present them with some trouble, but that depends if the Fullborn is actually stupid enough to allow them to ever utilize those their full power since Feruchemical steel, Feruchemical iron, and Allomantic steel allow for amazing maneuverability and can allow for shoving others around telekinetically.

Aon Dor would almost certainly be able to better fuel Feruchemical powers due to more Investiture being readily available in that system, but I can't think of any specific mechanics of how to achieve that end result. As a side note, that's why I don't like Aon Dor. It can do basically anything (which is too overpowered to be interesting in my mind), but I can't ever seem to find a way to utilize it other than "I write the correct Aon", which means I can't really use it in most thought experiments.

If Wax were to wear an iron chest plate and fill it with Investiture, would he have a harder time Steelpusing because of the Investiture, or would it act more like a Radiant's own plate, allowing one to still use their abilities unhindered since it is keyed to their own Identity?

Since Kandra can physically shape their bodies, could they potentially shape or grow extra brain matter to increase their fluid intelligence?

If someone were to go to a shardpool and die while inside it, would they become a cognitive shadow? Would they need to have a Connection to the Investiture inside, or would simply being there be enough?

I'm no genius with computers, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I think that using a computer with the right simulation could potentially allow you to find new Hemalurgic constructs, but you would need a way to accurately put the right information about each and every bind point and what the effects of the right spikes into those bind points would be, into the computer in the first place, which would likely mean you already had most of the information you would need to make those constructs. You're best bet would likely to use some spiritual realm shenanigans to allow for the right information, but if you could do that you may not even need a computer in the fist place.

Yeah, power spikes mostly only cause enough change to move organs out of the way to prevent death, but enough do seem to cause some other changes, such as the added height, gravely voice, and blood thirst of Inquisitors. I would guess that to be the case. I would also bet that the linchpin spike is the final straw before the bigger physical changes of Inquisitor-likeness shows up, but that's just a hunch.

I could see that making sense. It would explain the memory loss of a Kandra who has lost their spikes, and also could explain why they can live so long.

Okay, yeah, you make some pretty good points here. So Kandra memories are almost certainly not stored in their spikes. Huh. I still wonder whether Kandra Blessings will continue to grow in Spiritual complexity over time, as they are tied closely to a Kandra and their Identity.

Having a spiritual scar would be like being a drab, but worse. And here's what the Coppermind Wiki has to say. Okay, you may have a point. I still think that some people would rather suffer being a drab-esc being in order to escape the Curse of Kind, but it probably depends on how desperate the person is. Although, I wonder if you could also mitigate the negative side effects of being made drab via Hemalurgy by receiving a little Bio-Chromatic Breath? Maybe that would make the procedure more viable.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Then I suppose you could make functional spikes to be very small. An inch or less maybe?

The Curse of Kind seems to be a kind of "bad luck" that follows an individual, causing bad things to happen because of its relation to Fortune. I think then, that the best way to cure it would be to remove the effects from your Spiritweb via chromium Hemalurgy. It is my belief that the "destiny" that chromium Hemalurgy might steal is simply the Fortune of the individual you took it from, but it is somehow shaped by the individual's Spiritweb so that it pushes the individual to act in certain ways, causing them to potentially usurp the destiny of the donor. If this is the case, you could use chromium Hemalurgy to remove the bad Fortune from a person who had the Curse of Kind, Heal them with a form of Investiture such as gold medallions (just not so much that they completely regrow the lost Spiritweb or you'll just go back to where you started) and then you could give them a different chromium spike containing someone else's shaped Fortune to get a "healthy" destiny. Just make sure that the Fortune you use to graft on to your patient isn't somehow worse than the original. If you want to take it one step further, you could blank the Identity of the donor of the new destiny to make it possible to Allomantically splice into the patient's Spiritweb, which may patch them up better. In the end, the person you're trying to cure may end up with some spiritual scarring, and they might have some other weird side effects from having someone else's destiny spliced into their Spiritweb, but they shouldn't have to worry about the Curse of Kind anymore

Hmmm. If they did switch out their original spikes for new ones, then yes, they would likely lose all of their memories. So my theory may not be correct. However, I wonder if Bleeder maybe didn't do that? Maybe she alloyed her Blessings with Trellium to get a new effect, but the new spikes would still retain most of her original memories, personality, and Identity, but grant new abilities?

That would be problematic, I suppose. You could make the spikes smaller for Aviar bodies, but you might not be able to hold as much of an Invested charge, and if the spikes were ever removed they would leak faster. It does make me wonder though, how small can you make a Hemalurgic spike but still make it functional? Might have to do a post about that at some point. I love that term, and shall now use it whenever I speak of a Hemalurgically enhanced Aviar

If you gave a single Aviar all the powers normally available in Patji's system via Hemalurgy, turning them into something of a parrot Inquisitor, and then Bonded it, would you be able to become a Mistborn version of Patji's magic system?

If you used a Hemalurgic spike to grant an Aviar a piece of a Radiant Spren, would the person who bonded the Aviar gain Radiant powers?

I was thinking more like memories are constantly transferred to and from the spikes, but the non-centralized nervous system is used to process and create new memories. This quote doesn't seem to disprove that to me, but it is possible that I am wrong.

I (very) recently made a post that talked about how I thought Kandra Blessings were made by blanking Identity. But when I was making that post, it got me thinking about Kandra Blessings more and how they function for a Kandra, so here are a few musings and ideas I came to that didn't fit into the original post. If I'm correct, a Kandra's memories are actually stored inside their Blessings, which would explain why a Kandra's memories fade if their spikes are lost for a period of time; the Invesiture that the memories were encoded in is lost, so the memories are too. This would also help explain why Kandra can have memories that span over hundreds of years, as a normal brain just isn't capable of holding more than a few hundred years worth of memories, and mistwraiths aren't naturally immortal, the Coppermind Wiki says that they naturally live up to fifty years, so they probably don't have a specially designed cognitive system that would allow them to hold over a thousand years worth of memories, but if their spikes can magically hold memories, it would help explain how they don't have this issue. I wonder if this means that a Kandra Blessing actually gains an extra charge of Investiture over time as a Kandra gains new memories that are converted into Investiture to be held in the spikes, even if it doesn't enhance the original attribute held by the spike and only works to hold memories, similar to a Coppermind. If a Kandra's memories are held within their spikes, then Hemalurgy might be an even better alternative to Feruchemy or Awakening in terms of memory storage, as a Kandra can (probably) still access their memories as if they were still inside their brain and not stored in a separate place. I also think that even if a Kandra's spikes did have a blanked Identity at some point, it seems that they gain a new Identity, that of the Kandra, which would explain why a Kandra can't take in another Kandra's spikes without pain unless they already have a stable personality; the new Identity of the spikes is incongruent with that of the other Kandra. All in all, it seems like a Kandra has a much deeper connection to their spikes than other Hemalurgic constructs, almost as if they were an extension of the Kandra themselves rather than some foreign piece of power stapled on haphazardly (which to me supports my blank Identity theory). Anyway, this post feels kind of like I'm just rambling, but I wasn't really sure of a better way to share all of my thoughts on this topic.

My original intent of the post was to piece together how the Chimera were formed using only one spike, but then I thought about what else might be possible using it, and people gaining the ability to change their appearance or bodily functions seemed like it was pretty viable, especially since just using standard Hemalurgy by mixing up your spiritual DNA seems to turn you into something drastically removed from your human self, rather than giving you a minor change or improvement such as with Divine Breaths or Singer Forms. So I guess it kind of turned into a "how to use Hemalurgy to make minor alterations and improvements to yourself without turning into an inhuman Hemalurgic construct" which is something I've wanted to know about for a long time. But yeah, I guess I didn't really explain it that well in the original post, did I?

Okay, so this is something that I've been wondering about for a very, very long time, and I'll probably know for certain how it works after The Lost Metal is released, so it's pretty much now or never if I want to post a theory about how Kandra Blessings are made. We know that it's not necessarily a difference in the recipient, the mistwraith, that makes a Kandra Blessing special. We also know that the metals themselves aren't likely to be particularly special, as they are made of standard Hemalurgically viable metals, and it seems unlikely to me that there is another kind of metal hidden underneath the top layer as it wouldn't likely be congruent with the same bind point as the external metal. This really only leaves one option for process of creating Kandra Blessings that could be different from the creation of other Hemalurgic spikes; it must be the donors that are special. Therefore, it is my guess that when the Lord Ruler created Kandra Blessings, he forced the people he was going to Hemalurgically spike to blank their Identity using special Unsealed Metalminds he created specifically for that purpose. Identity is what separates and protects a Spiritweb from outside influences, which likely is why Hemalurgic spikes made through the standard method that hold the Identity of the donor still have some limitations, such as not granting resonances, not passing Allomantic potency to the descendants of the spike holder, and preventing the spikes from being burned Allomantically. However, if the donors didn't have an Identity while being spiked, then the mistwraiths would be able to access the contents of the spike more freely, allowing for them to gain a greater measure of sapience. I also think that the donors of the spikes were likely close relatives, as their Spiritweb's familiarity with one another due to their shared Connection would make them work more congruently in the newly made Kandra. Finally, I think that the reason why two Hemalurgic spikes are required to make a fully sapient Kandra is because Hemalurgic spikes only take a piece of a functional Spiritweb, not the whole thing, so having two compatible spikes working together would help fully form a Kandra's mind. If anybody has any other ideas as to how Kandra Blessings are made, I'd love to hear them

I was thinking that you, as a Feruchemist who was willing to travel to Sel for free Investiture, would use an old Metalmind that you had tapped clean, as you suggested, but then you would get a Forger to create a Soulstamp that would rewrite the Metalmind's past to say that you hadn't tapped it. Then you would attempt to take the new, free charge of Investiture out of the Forged Metalmind and transfer it to another Metalmind so that you could store the Investiture for later use and maybe even reapply the Soulstamp on the once again empty Metalmind so that you can repeat he process and continue to fuel your Feruchemy with he Dor.