Trusk'our

Usually, I make posts about crazy hypothetical uses of a magic system (usually Hemalurgy), but every once in a while, it's nice to make a relatively simple one, like guessing the maximum destructive force of a duralumin Steelpush. In TLM we see that not Wax (Dumad) is able to casually toss transport trucks around at his enemies with a low level of Allomantic power and a single quick mouthful of metal flakes. What kind of destructive potential would an Allomancer with a stomach packed to the brim with pewter and steel with a pinch of duralumin be able to do destruction wise? What about a Lerasium Mistborn trying to do the same? What if The Lord Ruler were to do this? Actually, TLR could easily shrug off being run through, so he could just take a large pair of solid steel and pewter bars, stab himself, and burn those as extra fuel. What kind of destructive potential would we see then? Basically, what's the maximum destructive force of a Steelpush via the Metallic Arts?

Exactly Don't know, honestly, though I'm sure they'll be interesting. Actually, it may be that the spiritual attributes don't warp you as much as the others as they aren't tied as directly to one's physical or mental state, though that's just a guess at this point in time.

Perhaps, though Atium and Lerasium don't work that way- Atium is a wild card and can potential take any power while Lerasium used Hemalurgically takes all human attributes. That suggests to me that the other Godmetals probably do different things, more uniquely tied to their Intent. Should've done this ages ago Exactly. You gain power through knowledge and combinations rather than through winning a genetic lottery. Plus you can make just about creature or bodily modification with the correct knowledge of Bindpoints and spikes.

Well, it seems that at the very least Godmetals Connect you to their respective Shard, such as with Trellium Connecting you to Autonomy (I supose that could just be that metal specifically though). They also likely will help you resist more direct Invested attacks, as they are highly Invested and are in close proximity to your spiritual aspect, similar to how it's hard to Allomantically push on a piece of metal in your body because your own Investiture gets in the way, only in this case the metal makes the rest of you more resistant. Other than those general benefits though, I can't really think of anything.

Yay, another cult- I mean club member! Also, yeah, the spiritual Hemalurgic metals seem pretty cool. I'm pretty sure a wrote a thread hypothesizing on what all of them do a while back (not the Feruchemy hacking Hemalrugy one, that's different). Ooooo, I'd love to read that. Do you know where I can find it? Also, @Steelsight, I think you should join the party. Some fun shenanigans are about to ensue

You put all but one of the spikes in a piece of your own severed flesh (technically you could just use some other meat that doesn't belong to you, I suppose) so that they don't lose their Hemalurgic charge. Inquisitors would sometimes use large cuts of meat to do this as well; The idea is that you use a strong Connection between spikes and the same Identity so that you can get them to remotely add to the total charge of the one spike held in your own body. Maybe you're right and this wouldn't work, but it seems to me like this should be accomplishable. Yes, it's just weird not calling them spikes since that's what they almost always are. Perhaps this is the will be the case, but I still think that it would be possible to achieve with the right tools and knowledge. You could have the Donor for the spikes tap large amounts of F-duralumin to Connect to the previous spikes as a new one is charged, allowing them to be permanently Connected to one another. That's my current idea for the construction of such a group of interConnected spikes (not spikes, Hemalurgic metals) anyway.

Exactly what I was thinking.

And if that doesn't work directly for some reason, they could follow in the footsteps of Elysia chlorotica, also called emerald green sea slug or eastern emerald elysia, which eats plants on occasion but then preserves their chloroplasts in their own epithelial cells to photosynthesize. This makes it so that they only have to eat once a year. A clever Kandra could use this strategy as well, though I think that they'd have to drastically increase their surface area to make efficient use of it. I found out about this amazing slug on a TED ED video; These animals are also plants … wait, what? - Luka Seamus Wright - YouTube Naw, it's #15 actually Eh, I think about grosser stuff with most of my Hemalurgy hypothesize anyway @Tamriel Wolfsbaine. Just check out the one I posted a few minutes ago. Anyway, I don't know if this would work- it would depend on whether the mass of muscle would shrink to its original size after being removed from the body, which seems likely to me as it would since it is a temporary change. You could maybe keep it around as other body parts as a Kandra if you digested it and changed its shape, but I would guess that it would still be temporary and would only last as long as you could tap it. Honestly, that might be able to be used to the Kandra's advantage as well, such as if they create a large web of flesh extending out from themselves by tapping pewter, then immediately sucking it all back in as they stop tapping it (such as if they were using #4 to have a spy network through a building) to escape enemies without leaving a trace. Or you could make a meat-wall to block enemies but still be able to move quickly by drawing it all back in at a moment's notice. It would be particularly easy for a Kandra to fuel such extravagent uses of F-pewter as well, seeing as how they could just build up a ton of muscle naturally and store it away to be able to move around without issue.

I made a thread before that talked about using Connection to conjoin two Hemalurgic spikes before (Multi-Pieced Spikes thread), allowing them to act as one distances, though long distances would probably make the process much less efficient. However, what if you tried something else, something more portable? I bet that you could fill a large chunk of flesh, probably your own back that was surgically removed (and grown back with F-gold, Wayne style) with lots of smaller pieces of metal that were Hemalurgically charged in order to prevent the Investiture from decaying. Then you'd inject an ethyl alcohol into it to prevent the flesh from decaying and wrap the whole thing in a plastic bag to prevent leaks. Then you put in in a vest that you wear and carry around with you (yes, it's sort of macabre, but it's efficient). The Invested metals- they don't have to be spikes, as those would probably pierce the plastic and make a mess- would all be Connected to a single spike in your body, linking them together and granting all of their power to you. This strategy would be particularly useful if Feruchemical and Hemalurgic storage is more efficient with lots of smaller containers than a single big one (as the storage size goes up and down non-linearly. We don't know yet whether it is more or less efficient to have a single large storage or many smaller ones).

Kandra don't have a centralized nervous system, but they do have brain matter spread throughout their bodies. The spikes merely pierce the blockage between their physical and cognitive aspects. ToES spoilers: More ToES spoilers:

Thanks! Agreed; Kandra's Shapeshifting can be used to fabricate all kinds of things people could benefit from. Making specialized toxins from only meat should be possible as well, given the fact they can make pretty much any biological structure that isn't bone, enamel, or hair.

I see no reasons they couldn't, as venom producing glands aren't tied to things they can't replicate.

I know, right?

Eh, it would happen anyway, and I enjoy what the conversations become Yeah, his powers are cool in theory but are completely and irrevocably incompatible with physics, which always bothers me; even if you changed the distance between atoms, mass is the same. He also shouldn't be able to breath, since the oxygen molecules outside his body are now a far different size from his own. Plus, his smaller eyes' surface area would make his vision tons worse. And if he were as small as he was he'd freeze to death (smaller animals must a have a quicker metabolism or they will freeze)- or maybe because he has as much mass as a human crammed into a space the size of an ant he'd melt from the compressed heat. In any case, I'm not sure you could pull off a realistic shrinking power unless you found a way around a lot of physics. Maybe something like it could be done in the Cosmere, but lots of Realmatic and Investiture shenanigans would need to be involved.

Nice. Hemalurgy and Awakening are really the most open magic systems in the Cosmere, allowing for more to be done with them than most others. I'd have to say that Awakening is my favorite non-Metallic Art magic system, as there are so many parallels between it and Hemalurgy, particularly with Hemalurgy being able to use Commands now. Glad to see that at least one of my ideas inspired someone else

I've seen clubs for specific powers, such as @Koloss17,s F-tin cult or the F-duralumin one, or for other magic systems, but I haven't yet seen a group for Hemalurgy fans. So, here we go; Hemalurgists unite! Explain to me at length why Hemalury is the best magic system in the Cosmere and how you would use it.

Yup, Hemalurgical excisions are worse than giving away Breath because Hemalurgy also takes some extra actually essential bits along for the ride. Good questions. I'd say that a Returnd's appearance change is more bound to some sort of ideal self, where they can change their appearance based on their views of themself, but where it is too limited to make major changes, such as regrowing lost appendages or healing actual injuries. You're welcome And yes, Drabs in T'Telir would be far more susceptible to an outbreak of some disease due to their weakened immune systems and poor, cramped living conditions. A walking, talking Kandra pandemic-dispenser would be a truly destructive thing to unleash in T'Telir, though I think that most worlds would suffer pretty bad if the correct strain of pathogen were concocted.

Good point- BAM's capture hurt all of Roshar somehow, so spiking enough Spren Connected to Roshar could have negative consequences if not handled correctly. If the Spren are more Invested after a Highstorm, perhaps spiking right after said storm would be most efficient?

Nice. Mine is Hemalurgy (no duh Trusk'our), probably because it A, can be used by anyone and therefore feels like something that would actually be usable in the Cosmere- I always feel somewhat uncomfortable with the concept of being "lucky" enough to have magic in a fantasy setting, as it feels statistically improbable to be realistic to hope for such a thing, similar to how most main characters of stories "happen" to be prodigies and can beat literally anybody else when it comes to skill. In any case, Hemalurgy completely removes that improbability and means that your work and research can lead to more power and capacity. B, I'd say that Hemalurgy is just really cool in that there is always some new secret to tease out, some weakness or flaw that must be solved, or a new unforseen aspect that needs to be studied. And C, I'd say that it's because it allows for crazy amounts of power if understood and used correctly, but it isn't worldbreaking in it's power level- there are limits that must be taken into account and therefore it actually feels like an option as well. Glad you found the thread, it's pretty fun to hear your ideas If I may ask, why would you want F-iron or pewter on an Awakener Kandra specifically? Ah, good to know.

Thank you Posible. Well, if they don't increase their Investedness over time then I guess it would be better to just go capture more wild one's and spike them.

Is Awakening your favorite magic system then?

It's also worth noting that Vivenna had just held a large amount of Breath right before she gave it up, making for a much larger contrast to if she had never had it to begin with, just like how receiving a large amount of Breath will momentarily overwhelm someone. Plus, Vivenna had caught a disease only present in T'Telir that her suddenly compromised immune system couldn't handle, making the experience far worse for her than it would be normally. Yeah, Drabs honestly aren't' too much worse off competence wise than people with a single Breath. That Breath does do some things, but it isn't going to make you more skilled or powerful in the vast majority of cases.

Maybe, but I'm skeptical that could be done- it would be like trying to spike Stormlight that's floating through the air. No viable Spiritweb. Plus, there's the fact that (as it stands currently) plants cannot interact with Hemalurgy, which suggests to me that there must be a certain level of complexity must exist within a Spiritweb to make it a viable target for Hemalurgy, similar to how there must be a certain level of complexity in a sentient organism to be affected by Emotional Allomancy. I apologize, I assumed you meant that you were thinking that I was saying that you spike the two halves of Spren that were trapped in Gemstones. True, but if you could copy the Spren you could get a virtually unending source of fuel for raw Hemalurgic Investiture. Though, you're probably right- capturing wild Spren isn't that hard, and they're quite pleantiful. One problem that might arise is if you spike a LOT of lesser Spren and they turn into Deadeyes permanently that they might take up "space" that may eventually prevent new Spren from forming naturally. Maybe you could solve this by using silver to destroy any Deadeye Spren to clear them out. . . yeah, that does sound pretty heartless, come to think of it. I believe that it was in RoW after Raboniel had betrayed Navani and used Raysium to kill her own daughter that Navani commented on trying to reunify two Flamespren halves as a way to appease the Sibling and make them more willing to talk. If memory serves right, Navani commented on the fact that the Flamespren don't normally rejoin when released, but that they will grow into two separate Flamespren. I don't have the book right now to show the exact quote though, so I suppose my memory could be flawed. I'm sorry. This is a very valid point. The ethics of Spiking Spren would very much matter how you view this sort of thing and could lead to quite a bit of pain for the Lesser Spren. Personally, I think that it would be about as bad as spiking animals, which would also not be ideal but would be better than spiking humans if both options were available. And yes, it's possible that grafting pieces of Spren Spiritweb to a human's would have some weird ramifications, but I mostly was thinking of spiking Spren with nicrosil spikes for the general Investiture held in their Spiritweb- Spren seem to be far more Invested than humans in general, as they are made up entirely of Investiture.

I think that we're actually more comparable to non-Shardworld humans that have no Innate Investiture but also aren't quite as bad as Drabs.

True, but that process hasn't been discovered yet and may be very difficult to actually put into practice. I suspect it will involve the construction of artificial Spiritwebs with raw Investiture that can then be spiked, as that is what Hemalurgy is designed to actually interact with. I don't mean that you separate the two halves and then spike each half- those would still count as a single being, as you say. What I mean is that you capture the spren, split the Gemstone and Spren inside it, then let each half grow into a new Spren. Then spike each new Spren. And yes, this process could very likely create Deadeyes in the process. But it wouldn't be humans or sapient Spren suffering at the very least.