Trusk'our

True. It would be interesting to see if that is a viable strategy for an aspiring Hemalurgist. You might get less total Investiture from each person you spike, but the charges could stack, plus, you wouldn't need access to Medallion tech or a (willing) Trueself Ferring to spike.

Well, Kandra can regenerate from Shardblades, so a Mistwraith probably could recover from being spiked eventually. Neither would I. I'd want to test it out first, perhaps on animals. If your dog starts morphing into different shapes, there you go, test successful Oh yeah, spiders' ability to sense via their hairs is astounding- it comes to the limits of what is physically achievable in terms of sensitivity. In terms of animal abilities, I'd take enhanced senses, I think. Kandra basically have F-tin in their power portfolio, and in some ways they are superior since they can get more senses than a human could by molding their body.

I, personally, don't think that the amount of Investiture inside a Hemalurgic spike makes the individual who bears it more vulnerable to control. Otherwise, Wax's earring shouldn't have been able to make Bleeder vulnerable to Harmony as there was basically nothing left in the spike. The more Invested the spike, the more it would resist Allomantic pushing and pulling, so a supercharged spike would be basically immune to direct Allomantic manipulation for all practical purposes. I think that the Blessing of Presensce and Blessing of Stability would help counteract Hemalurgic weakness due to their specific enhancements, though due to this WoB talking about Susebron being potentially immune to Rashek's Soothing suggests that if you Invested a spike enough that it would help the bearer be more resistant to control due to their sheer amount of Investiture. So basically, yes, I think that if you Invested a Hemalurgic spike more it could make the bearer more resistant to Shardic control, probably by "crowding out" any other Investiture that tried to enter through the holes the spikes made, or at least the spikes would Invest their bearer enough to tough out the intruding Investiture. It would probably have to be a lot of extra Investiture added to the spikes to make a noticeable difference though. Honestly, I'm not sure. Based on the fact that the Blessing of Stability seems to be doing less "work" than the Blessing of Presence (from what we know, it only protects from outside influences. Presence has to boost multiple other cognitive factors), a Blessing of Stability with the same amount of Investiture as a Blessing of Presence would probably shield more its bearer more. Also, it may be that both work in a different way, though I don't know if there is any proof for that. It could be that they boost different parts of the mind; they enhance different aspects, but the end result for protection is the same. It also could be that the protection they provide is using the same mechanism, though Presence is dispersed across more things than Stability, probably making it comparatively weaker. Talking about this actually makes me think of Allomantic pewter; the Blessing of Presence seems to be doing a lot of things in one, and in that respect it's kind of like the cognitive version of A-pewter.

I actually made a post a while ago about this very thing, and I'm pretty sure the idea is similar to what I had before, though now I have more information and have had time to consider things better. I also made a post recently about how Kandra Blessings were made- Kandra Blessings, Identity, and Commands- and that got me thinking on this matter again. Okay, based on my recent post about Kandra Blessings, I think that it's possible to spike out a being's "self" enough to change another being into taking on characteristics of the donor creature. I hypothesize that this is what was done with Chimera (canines were donors for humans, making the humans more like the canines) and potentially the Kandra (human donors used with correct Intent plus potentially a specialized Command on Mistwraiths, making those Mistwraiths take on some human characteristics). But, what happens if you use a Mistwraith as a donor and a human as the recipient for a Hemalurgic spike? I hypothesize that, with the proper knowledge, skill, and with the correct Intent, you could take some aspects of a Mistwraith and staple them onto a human. I don't know that you would turn them into an actual Kandra, but more like a "cousin" species; perhaps the human would gain some shape-shifting abilities, but not to the extent that a Kandra would have them and maybe they'd live a few hundred years longer than normal. As an upside, they might not have the Kandra's level of susceptibility to being controlled or the same need for Blessings to retain sapience. It also would be interesting to see if the new being could hold Kandra Blessings without being turned into a monstrous being due to their new shape shifting nature. This is speculative, of course, but we do know that it is possible to spike a Singer's ability to grow a Gemheart. Why not spike a Mistwraith's ability to change its shape? This older quote (from 2015) says that you couldn't spike a Listener's Forms, but I the quote above (from 2018) implies that you could take the abilities Listeners use to achieve those forms. As such, I believe that the same could be done with Mistwraiths. So, what are your guy's thoughts (especially you, @Tamriel Wolfsbaine; I know you really like Kandra related stuff )? Do you think that this would be achievable?

You know, I've wondered about that for a while; why do Breaths get weaker as people age? I know we probably don't have any good answers right now, but seriously, I'd like to know peoples thoughts on that.

Heh, Lol

Actually, I was going to make a separate post about such a thing occurring, but looks like you beat me to it ! I think that this would work; Bio-Chromatic Breaths are the easiest Investiture to move from vessel to vessel, and can be varied and adapted in their use. We know that when you Compound, you use a Feruchemical charge inside of the metal burned to allow for the Feruchemical power to be drawn from the SR instead of the Allomantic one. Using this knowledge, I think that it is very possible to do as you suggested and Awaken a Hemalurgic spike to enhance its power; it would follow a similar principle to Compounding, using the Investiture already inside the spike as a base, which the Breaths would then use as a model to copy, which would increase the total power of the spike. Plus, there's a WoB saying that you can Awaken a spike, though it would be harder than normal, so you'd either need to find a way to make Awakening inorganic material easier (which very well may be possible) or you'd need at least the Nineth Heightening. In fact, you might be able to pull a Nightblood and Invest the spikes far more than ever could be achieved through more conventional means, and because Hemalurgic spikes don't leak Investiture while inside a body, you would retain all the power crammed inside. Do that with the Blessing of Presence and gain a mind capable of unraveling the secrets of the Cosmere As a side note, you could probably use Breaths to add onto a Metalmind's charge as you would Hemalurgic spikes- fueling Feruchemy with Awakening- though that's hardly groundbreaking as Compounding exists and is probably easier and cheaper to do in the long run. Yeah, Intent is very important for Cosmere magics, and apparently Commands are more universal in nature than I had previously assumed. I now think that Commands may just be a way of specifying Intent more, giving it a more controlled "path" to achieve its objectives. That's an interesting idea. I hadn't considered it before, but there isn't anything that necessarily rules it out. And I have wondered if who the spikes are made from influences the Kandra's personality, and it would be pretty interesting to see if TLR decided to get willing people to bring sapience to the next Kandra generation. In fact, we do have a WoB regarding this area, though I don't think it specifically entails anything about Kandra Blessings.

Kandra Blessings and their creation have been elusive for a while now, but I have another educated hypothesis as to how it's done. We know that the Lord Ruler personally created the Kandra Blessings. We also know that a few of the fundamental differences between Hemalurgic spikes made for Koloss and spikes made for Kandra is the amount of Investiture pulled from the donor and what specific segments are taken. We also know from Bleeder that it is possible for a Kandra to create new spikes for themselves to replace their old Blessings, otherwise Bleeder wouldn't have been able to use a Trellium spike. And we know from TLM that Commands can be used when using Hemalurgy to be more specific in what is taken and what is not. With that evidence in mind, my current idea for how Kandra Blessings are made is that TLR would use Commands to take larger than average sections of the Spiritweb of the donors for the Kandra Blessings, including more of the part that specifically makes humans... human (in fact, I think that something similar happened with the Chimera that Bleeder made; she spiked some canines, took a large portion of their innate "self", and spiked that into humans, creating a bigger change than what would have normally been possible with a single spike). True sapience and higher cognitive functions. As this was done, the Identity of the spikes was somehow Blanked, or at least made to be more adaptable to its host. When the spikes were given to a Mistwraith, they granted them sapience by altering them to be more humanlike in nature. The spikes would then "grow" into the Kandra, becoming a fundamental part of their Identity, which explains why ReLuur couldn't take another Kandra's spike without both of his; the Identity of the spikes weren't compatible with each other, so they caused him pain. This also makes sense if we look at Bleeder; she was able to make two spikes, one that provided Feruchemical steel, and the other that provided Allomantic steel, neither of which she should have been able to bear unless they were Identity compatible with her. Bleeder's case also proves that it isn't just the Kandra growing into the Identity of the spikes, since that would mean that she couldn't have created new spikes for herself, as their Identity wouldn't have been compatible with hers. There are some other very interesting implications for Hemalurgy if this proves true, but I'll make another post sometime for those ideas as this post is specifically for Kandra Blessings. In any case, I'd love to hear what all of you guys think. If anyone has solid evidence that disproves this hypothesis, I'll gladly listen, as I'd rather have this idea of mine be wrong than have a false head cannon. That said, if you do try to disprove it, I'm sure I'll defend my point if I reasonably can, cause it's fun Edit: Oh, and it may be worth noting that it isn't really the amount of Investiture in the spikes that matters too much, it's what is taken in them. Otherwise, enough Breaths would do the job of bringing them sapience.

Based on how both powers work similarly, though with slight differences, I'd say that a Twinborn would with both these powers would be very interesting. I like it I bet that at the very least the Twinborn could use Fortune to better read and predict their own electrum shadows, making them more competent at seeing the future; It seems that one of Fortune's biggest limitations is that it is a "gut feeling", making it difficult to accurately predict or understand why you need to do what you need to do. Electrum's biggest limitation is that you have to try and predict what happens in the future based on your shadow alone, and you don't get nearly the same kind of cognitive enhancement as with A-Atium. If you combined the two abilities though, you could instinctively understand which shadow to follow better, granting a more useful form of future-sight, and if you tapped enough Fortune it might even approach A-Atium levels of power. Maybe. And who knows what the Resonance would be- though it would likely tie into predicting the future somehow.

We can say with certainty that F-Atium is purely a physical realm change. This is an interesting idea, but I think that the way F-Atium works is by diverting the Spiritweb's physical "youthfulness" so that it can be tapped later. I don't think that you could hack F-Atium to provide yourself with a future version of your own self, since it's more like F-gold; it isn't actually a new "version" of yourself that you're making, you're just temporarily reducing or increasing your body's ability to hold itself together in some way. I think that Allomantic gold and electrum and the spiritual Feruchemical attributes have some interesting things similar(ish) in nature to this though, so if you're looking for temporal shenanigans, that's probably you're best bet.

But... why would anyone buy unhealthy pre-eaten food? I think that if you ate only extremely healthy buy untasty food that people would then be willing to buy it.

Yelig-nar has the vulnerability to its Gemstone being broken, and as we saw with Amaram, that's a pretty big liability. Additionally, Yelig-nar's host doesn't naturally have any Shards to fight with, putting another pretty big disadvantage on their side. We also haven't seen Yelig-nar exhibit the Surge of Adhesion, and since the Fused seem to think only Honor has it, I find it doubtful that one of the Unmade happens to have it at their disposal. If both sides have equal Investiture and equal training/skill, I'd have to say that the Herald of Hearalds has the battle in the bag.

You're most very welcome, it was enjoyable More spikes always means more vulnerability to being controlled unless you have some other way of reducing outside influence, such as Trellium or a strengthened mind. Honestly the Blessing of Presence is my favorite Kandra Blessing. The resistance to Shardic control is pretty nice, but where it really shines for me is the intelligence boost. I'd really like to see someone hack Hemalurgy in such a way as to allow humans to have Kandra Blessings. That would be something neat. I think that @Quantus had a pretty interesting point, one that I hadn't considered before; even if Lerasium spikes allow one to take all human attributes in one go, it may not be possible to actually benefit from all of them at once. I suppose it would depend on whether the Bindpoints matter too much for Lerasium Hemalurgy- other spikes can't be placed anywhere you want, position matters. A Kandra might be able to fit a pair of spikes through multiple Bindpoints due to their flexible anatomy. Though, because the spike is piercing multiple Bindpoints, it may just cause the same amount of damage to the Spiritweb of the Kandra but provide less Investiture than four pairs of normal Blessings. At the very least, a Kandra could move their Lerasium Blessings around without suffering Hemalurgic decay to benefit from different parts of their spikes at different times, which certainly could be useful. As @alder24 mentioned, other Shards can control Kandra and others pierced sufficiently by Hemalurgy. However, I think that it requires a sufficient Connection in place. The reason Ruin and Harmony can so easily control Kandra, Koloss, Inquisitors etc. is because their spikes not only crack open their Spiritweb, but it also Connects them to Ruin, creating a bridge between the two beings. That bridge can be used to take control of the Hemalurgic creature. Shards need this Connection, since they exist primarily in the Spiritual Realm, meaning that they can't "touch" or even "see" something they don't have a sufficient Connection to. There are some workarounds for this- such as when Sazed could see what was around Wax, even though he couldn't see anything else due to Autonomy's influence- but direct action seems to require sufficient Connection. Soothers/Rioters and Connector Ferrings just force a Connection to exist if they push hard enough with Emotional Allomancy or Feruchemical duralumin. However, they have much less power, and are therefore easier to resist. Basically, for example, if a Kandra traveled to Roshar and managed to anger Odium, Odium wouldn't be able to take control of the Kandra unless they were to have a sufficient Connection to said Kandra. A random Soother of sufficient power could control that Kandra though, as they don't need a pr-existing Connection. Interesting. This WoB suggests that the Blessing of Presence helps a lot more than I had previously assumed. I used to think that it was a minor benefit, barely of consequence really. However, if Tensoon had his Spiritweb cracked open twice as much as the other Kandra yet was only about as susceptible as they were... this means that strength of mind matters a whole lot more than I had thought, even when resisting Shardic control. I suppose that it does make some sense though; Koloss are very easy to control compared to Kandra and Inquisitors. Perhaps Shards can't even breach the Spiritweb of a Hemalurgic construct's mind if that mind is strong enough, so that creature could handle more spikes before they became susceptible to control. Supercharged Blessing of Presence seems even more appealing now. Perhaps a Kandra with it would be effectively immune to Shardic control, assuming they don't give themselves too many spikes on top of it.

If they can figure out the proper way to manipulate Connection, yes, I'd say so.

I think that it would be difficult for a Radiant to directly use nicrosil to fuel their Surges, since Ferucehmical nicrosil stores the ability to use the powers they have, not the fuel itself. However, if you could find a way to Unkey the Investiture of nicrosil, I think that you could use it as an alternative to Stormlight for to fuel Radiant powers.

I suppose that could be the case, but I think that it's specifically Hemalurgic spikes that cause damage to the Spiritweb, not the Investiture itself- the spikes must pierce the Spiritweb in order to attach the Investiture of the spike and the Hemalurgist which unavoidably causes some damage. Otherwise, Ruin's Vessel would have expired very quickly, rather than becoming functionally immortal.

Okay then, clearly color isn't as useful for creating Lifeless as I once thought

Interesting question! I don't know if Kandra could go without a Linchpin spike, though we do know that their Bindpoints are flexible due to their shapeshifting. I don't know if that would let them bypass the need for Linchpin spikes, but perhaps if they clumped all their spikes in one part of their body it could be done, since the whole need for a Linchpin spike is to coordinate the Hemalurgic spikes in different sections of the body. As far as we know currently, no. We know that an old Inquisitor spike was used to open Paalm up to Harmony's control though, so I'd be willing to bet that all Hemalurgic spikes have the same kind of effect when cracking open a Spiritweb. Oh, absolutely I think Kandra could take all four Blessings known to exist at once. In fact, I bet that a Kandra could potentially handle more spikes than a human could, though they'd perhaps need to alter their form to handle them better. Yes, 100%, having two Blessings made him more susceptible to Ruin's control. The more spikes a being has, the more holes there are in their Spiritweb to be invaded by external forces.

I was thinking over TLM again, and I wondered how Wax managed to use his duralumin-enhanced Steelpush to make it to the ship from the tower since he didn't have any burnable duralumin on him (I mean, I guess he could have taken some flakes from Dumad's stomach, but... yeah). And then I remembered Gertruda saying- on page 329 of TLM. And then when Wayne tricked Dumad into pushing them into the air and Wayne dumped his aluminum canteen, Dumad tried to search himself for his back up vials, only to find none. So, basically, Gertruda is the worst sidekick ever, it would seem Also, this would explain how Wax got some duralumin to burn; he lifted it off of Gertruda.

Good point on the squirrel, I had forgotten about that. That does point away from Lifeless skin color mattering, and more towards the practitioner's skill. Although, how much Breath was used to Awaken it again? I thought Vasher mentioned it was more than one Breath, which that would also improve its cognitive function. Yeah, I think we'd really need to ask Brandon or see in the books to confirm whether it matters or not. But, that's how these things always work

No no, it's never a bad thing to post legitimate ideas on the 17th Shard

Interesting idea. My personal thought on Adonalsium's Godmetal is that it is Dradongsteel, as Dragons existed before the Shattering. Personally, I think that silver and aluminum may just have weird Realmatic properties, but we don't know anything for certain yet Oh, and if you think that was rambling, you should see some of my posts

Is this the quote you're referring to? In WoR Wyndle mentions that Lift becomes malnourished when she tries to use her power too much while not having enough food inside her, suggesting that she can use her fat stores in place of recently eaten food. I think that this supports the idea that Ferucehmical bendalloy could be used to store bodyfat potentially, allowing for quick weight loss.

I think that you could get some objects to move even if they didn't originally have the ability to move. Consider Kalad's Phantoms, for example; they're skeletons encased inside of stone (concrete, most likely), and therefore don't have flexible parts. Them having joints and enough Bio-Chromatic Breath combined with the Intent of their creator seems to be enough to allow for locomotion though. So in short, yes, I think that your idea of creating a more autonomous and/or Awakened blade could probably work if handled correctly. As for the tamer Command, yeah, I think that would be possible to achieve. Azure's blade seems to exemplify this, in fact.