Trusk'our

Thanks! I think that this could be yet another interesting way to limit Hemalurgy, and perhaps be rather fun to find ways to overcome. That's my favorite part about the Metallic Arts; it's simple enough to learn the basics, but there always seems to be something new to learn about them or new ways to use them.

I've been wondering why Hemalurgic spikes don't usually provide Resonances, and I have a hypothesis; Ruin's Intent it ruining the potential of power combos. We know that Surgebinders have Resonances that are more noticeable than that of Twinborn, as per the Mistborn era 2 Ars Arcanum. Now, this could be due to their being more Investiture in Surgebinding than the Metallic Arts, but I think that because Surgebinding is half Cultivation's manifestation of magic that her Intent may be "boosting" the constructive interference of the Knights Radiant. Conversely, Ruin is the opposite; it's about breaking things down, so constructive interference in the form of Resonances doesn't seem like something that would come naturally to it. Now, I think that because of this that if you were to somehow replace Ruin's Investiture/Intent in a pair of Hemalurgic spikes with a different Investiture/Intent (such as through Awakening or Forgery), then give those spikes to someone, that person would start to manifest a Resonance if they used the powers enough. This would be especially effective if you could find a way to use Cultivation's Investiture/Intent instead, though I don't know how it would be achieved.

Yes, I think that's a very real possibility. Hmmm, yeah, that might prove to be a problem when trying to spike them.

Much easier to tell what's okay to move around if you've done it before on yourself. I actually wondered about this; if the Ghostblood's can access the same method of age-slowing as the 17th Shard, why didn't they use it to help Marsh when he clearly needed it? I have a hypothesis on how the 17th Shard slows aging that would explain this... ToES spoilers. Interesting. I wonder if he meant Flesh Forgery too, or if he was only thinking of Soul Forgery; Flesh Forgery age-reduction would be more complex perhaps, but also might take more easily. However, the Soul of the recipient would fight against the change the longer it was maintained, making it temporary at best. Changing one's past via Soul Forgery to reduce age would be more Investiture efficient as it actually overwrites Connection, but would have to rely on probability more, which also reduces its utility- you probably can't change yourself to be born one-hundred years later than you actually were, it's just too unlikely. So, both methods have their limitations, it would seem. Why thank you, I appreciate the compliment

Personally, I think the reason Hemalurgic spikes have such a small amount of Investiture is because they don't have such highly Invested targets, just normal humans or Allomancers, which aren't counted as being "particularly Invested" when not burning metals. And I think that you're right in that a spike just couldn't hold a charge big enough to account for a Vessel's power, but I don't necessarily think that rules out that some damage could be done with it. It's too early to tell if this is actually the case, however, or just my current thought process. I don't know that Hemalurgy is ever really going to be on par with Unchained Bondsmithing; Bondsmithing has no "cost" involved from what I can tell, especially since you can just open a Perpendicularity with it to fuel your powers. Hemalurgy may be accessible to anyone with the proper knowledge, but it has multiple costs (some of them very high) and there are greater physical limitations in that there a limit to the number of spikes a practioner can bear at once. So, from a meta perspective, I don't think restrictions on Hemalurgy's "level of power" are necessary, since it already has balancing factors. That is personal opinion on my part, however.

Good to see one of my ideas was actually on par with someone else ! Kandra are far, far better at understanding the limitations of anatomical adjustment than a human could without some kind of direct Shardic intervention. So I agree; the Kandra would have little use for it on themselves. However, if they apply their insights to someone else who isn't a Kandra, all kinds of new possibilities open up for their allies. Plus, the Kandra could get a gather a lot more people willing to serve them or pay them for body modifications, which only brings benefit to the Kandra, even if they don't directly benefit from their skills in Flesh Forgery. Oh, I don't think that using Flesh Forgery would be efficient for staying young, just that it might be possible. Now, I suppose that if you could create a Universal Stamp that could temporarily reduce age, perhaps a group such as the Ghostbloods could use it to make some of their more experianced agents spry enough to operate in the field (like Twinsoul). You also might be able to extend the life of people living in MaiPon itself by a few decades perhaps, since such a Forgery could be directly fuled by the Dor, though you're right- such changes would be overwhelmed by the natural state of the Soul eventually as the person ages, but perhaps they could buy themselves a little more time, though not nearly as much as an Atium Compounder could. I imagined that it would be less of a "I'm changing my past to hit the gym more often" and more of a "I'm directly changing my body's structure to say I have eight-hundred pounds of muscle", something that would be beyond the scope of standard human capacity, since you're making direct, "unnatural" changes to the body. Same applies for the enhanced senses; modify them to take after other living creatures. As for the Miles scenario, I think you're right; someone of his caliber could probably override the Forgery since he's so Invested, which negates its whole purpose. As an aside, I just want to mention how much I enjoy our conversations; I really enjoy it when hear others want to hear my ideas. So, thank you for that

I was re-reading the Emperor's Soul earlier today when something caught my eye; in order to use a Flesh Forgery, you have to have a very specific knowledge of the body's structure. You can kill someone if you aren't careful. I believe that this means that this aspect of Forgery isn't the same as simply rewriting your past so that you never took the wound- otherwise, things wouldn't be so hazardous, since if you messed up the worst that would happen would be that the injury stayed put until you came up with a more convincing stamp. No, it is my hypothesis that Flesh Forgery allows one to directly alter the body's structure, hence the reason you can accidentally kill someone with it; you aren't bound by what a person's past is, you can just write their body to be what you want it to be. This has made me wonder if someone highly skilled could use effects similar to Hemalurgy- physically altering individuals to the practitioner's liking, and since the practitioner is the one writing every little change, they'd be able to be much more precise in what they modified. Perhaps a Kandra could use a Connection hack to access Forgery, then combine their honed knowledge of the body's inner workings with Flesh Forgery to achieve better results. Or perhaps just having a Kandra skilled with modifying their body talking to and experimenting with a Flesh Forger could lead to new innovations on body modification. If you really want to see a stamp made permanent and portable beyond MaiPon's borders, you could Hemalurgically spike out the stamp's effects, then give them back to yourself via the spike. And now I wonder what some of the creative uses of Flesh Forgery could be; could you temporarily rewrite your age, similar to Atium Compounding? Could you enhance your natural senses beyond human capacity? Could you make yourself into a more humane form of a Koloss (inhumanly muscled, but nothing else)? Could you create a universal stamp that physically hampers you enemies (very low muscle mass or some form of paralysis) so that even those with Invested healing such as Miles could be temporarily disabled? So much potential, assuming, of course, that it all works the way I'm imagining it, which, of course it may not

Got it, I'll give it a try. Thanks! Uh, I know I'm probably betraying my ignorance here, but how do I make a Coppermind account? Oop, nevermind, I figured it out!

I suppose that's a fair conclusion. Plus, I suppose we don't really know how much "color" the stick had compared to Vivenna's tunic, due to the size difference between them, not just the color difference. Lol

The Coppermind Wiki says that Marsh has twenty-one Hemalurgic spikes; he originally had eleven, and then in HoA page 104 it says that he was given ten more. However, he did not get his F-Atium until after Ruin had been defeated and the other Steel Inquisitors killed. This means that Marsh has at least twenty-two Hemalurgic spikes, not twenty-one. So, does anybody know how we go about modifying the Coppermind to fix that error?

Ah, good to know (especially with the quote for confirmation ). I wonder if Marsh has F-bronze, since he would have been more burdened than any other Inquisitor, and therefore needed it more. Interesting idea. Plus, there's some presedence for this; the Elantrians. They don't have a physical limit to their lifespan, though it's mentally taxing- more so than any other form of immortality in the Cosmere. It also makes me wonder, if Hemalurgic spikes lengthen the life of someone, why doesn't the power of a Mistborn extend their life? Is it because it's all in the SR, not the PR? I mean, Bio-Chromatic Breaths are mostly PR based, so perhaps that is the case; holding more Investiture in the Physical Realm will extend your life, but having more in the Spiritual Realm is of minimal benefit to prevent aging, since it isn't saturating your body. That would also explain why Rashek died even though he was so ridiculously Invested an individual. Perhaps I should make a post about that at some point, actually

What about when Vivenna tries out Awakening and uses her tunic to Awaken the first time, then tries it out with a branch the second time? with the less colorful branch, it took a lot more Breath to awaken her rope. And if one were Awakening a Lifeless with a one Breath Command, would the "extra" Investiture from the Breath due to a Lifeless formerly having darker skin let them operate better? There would be less Investiture needed to make the Lifeless understand Commands, but Awakener's don't know how to split a single Breath yet, so would there be a little tiny bit extra for the Lifeless's cognition?

I like the idea and look forward to the next post! Honestly, after reading that post talking about potential uses for A-gold, I've started being more intrigued with the uses for the "less powerful" metals. Less known Twinborn combos seem to be a good direction for that! Actually, now I wonder about a Twinborn of A-gold and F-chromium; if they tapped a lot of Fortune while burning to see their gold shadow, would they perhaps be able to glean more information from it? Their Resonance would probably have to do with post-cognition mixing with pre-cognition, though I can't fathom what exactly it would be.

Ah, nice. Good to see that's an option too

Got it, thanks

Ah, I see. Yeah, I don't think it's technically proper to do that with a compound word, but, then again, it's not like we're writing essays here (okay, some basically are ).

Good thought. That would make sense; spikes don't directly casue aging per se, but they could potentially cause someone to die more quickly by pushing their body until it gives out. How do we know that it couldn't be F-gold? I'm not saying that this idea is bunk (I mean, we saw Tarson heal from a bullet wound in like two days, even if he was a A-pewter Savant), it does has some merit, seeing as how the Inquisitors aren't really human anymore, but couldn't Kar have just tapped health very slowly to conserve his Feruchemical reserves? After all, a usable amount of health in combat is hard to gather (Wayne spent two weeks in bed to gather enough health to survive a few bullets) and Inquisitors engage in battle frequently I'd assume, so using it as efficiently as possible seems like something they'd be used to.

Hey, nice to see a fellow enjoyer of the Cosmere! Welcome! Hope to see what you think of some of my crazy hypothesizes and ideas- always nice to hear another's thoughts.

If I remember correctly, some colors are more effective than others for Awakening; brown works, but colors like red and orange are better, and black is the best color for Awakening, as per WoB. So, let's have an imaginary scenario play out; and Awakener brings to life two Lifeless with a single Breath Command. The two Lifeless were made from two people who were the same in skill, age, and physical and mental capacity. However, one has a very dark skin tone while the other is an albino. Would the Lifeless made from the person with darker skin have a higher awareness, since they had more color to fuel the Awakening process? Also, what about tattoos? If you Awakened someone with tattoos, would the Awakening draw on their color as well? If so, perhaps you could make a more effective Lifeless would be to tattoo every inch of the body you want to Awaken (though, would you have to do it while they were still alive?).

In the Ars Arcanum for TLM, it mentions that the reason Steel Inquisitors got exhausted more quickly than normal people was because their Spiritwebs were unreasonably burdened by their large number of Hemalurgic spikes. I was wondering if perhaps bronze Feruchemy could help overcome this, particularly with Compounding, since it provides all the benefits of a good night's sleep. Also, could there be more problems with having too many Hemalurgic spikes, such as maybe a reduced healing rate (from Spiritweb deterioration)? Brandon Sanderson mentioned that some Inquisitors "burn up" more quickly than others depending on their specific power set. Perhaps those with more spikes age a bit faster due to their Spiritwebs being worn down? This also makes me wonder if it's the number of spikes that wears one down (due to more holes being in the Spiritweb) or if it's the total Investiture of the spikes; it would be kind of weird if more Investiture in the spikes led to a greatly reduced lifespan, since we've seen elsewhere in the Cosmere than more Investiture means a greater lifespan.

Heh, personally, I just capitalize anything that's Cosmere related. That way, I we can separate the fictional stuff from the non-fiction, like Identity and identity or Connection and connection

Yeah, I don't think what happened in RoW could have been so easily achieved through the Hemalurgy method- more RoW spoilers. It does make me wonder though; how much "power" fuels Hemalurgy when you're ripping of chunks of Spiritweb? We have a more stable amount Nightblood- the Investiture it holds from its Awakening and what it's taken from slain opponents- but a Hemalurgic spike contains no power until it's charged with a person's Investiture. My current thinking is that when you use Hemalurgy you draw directly from Shard of Ruin in the SR, side-stepping the need for Ruin's current Vessel to give permission, similar to Allomancy and Preservation. If you draw only on a portion of Ruin proportional to the size of the spike you use, perhaps a larger spike would transfer more Investiture from the donor to the spike. In that case, spiking a Vessel likely would just not be very useful, at least to kill or maim them. Or perhaps it only depends on how much Investiture the donor has- if you're drawing upon an amount of Ruin proportional to the amount of Investiture of your donor, you'd get all the targeted Investiture of donor torn out, regardless of the size of the spike (though, if you're using a small spike, most of the Investiture may be lost, similar to how Nightblood can't really hold all of its Investiture). If this turns out to be the case, I think that seriously harming a Shardic Vessel via Hemalurgy is a much more realistic course of action. More RoW spoilers.

A conversation involving Hemalurgy's mechanics has be started again- I hath been summoned. It is stated in HoA Epigraphs 66 and 67 that more spikes makes a Hemalurgic construct or human more susceptible to all forms of control; more spikes, more holes in the Spiritweb for foreign Investiture to creep in and exert their influence. It is also worth noting that Elend's brother, Zane, would not have been susceptible to an Allomancer's or even Ruin's complete control; he had only one spike, which is nowhere near enough to open one's Spiritweb to being dominated by another, no matter how powerful they may be. BoM spoilers... Whispers, particularly if from a being the person bearing the spike has a strong Connection to (such as Ruin through their spike's Intent) can get through, manifesting itself as Zane's supposed insanity. And as for why Marsh was only able to be controlled by Vin after she drew upon the Mists, he was currently being controlled by Ruin at the time; I believe that this would have greatly limited another being's ability to dominate such an individual, as they would have had to overwhelm Ruin's direct influence. Hope this helps out a bit

I think that an aluminum spike would just tear off a chunk of the Vessel's Spiritweb, possibly killing them? I doubt anything really weird would happen with the aluminum spike though, as it is stated to "destroy all powers"- I take that to mean that you can't take the powers and grant them to someone else because they are no longer in the spike; they immediately are ripped off the individual and shunted into the SR. That's what I think would happen based off my own interpretation of aluminum Hemalurgy's mechanics, but I could be wrong- we haven't seen any examples of it in any books yet. As for any other form of Hemalurgy, I suspect that something similar to Nightblood would be created- a spike supersaturated with Investiture till it could no longer hold any. That power could be granted to anybody, and some crazy stuff might happen. You would probably create a demigod-level being, one step down from a Shardic Vessel (and if you specifically steal Connection from the Vessel, you might be able to hack the system and steal their Shardhood from them ). RoW spoilers... That's true, I should have clarified my statements better. However, the Vessel is the one that counts most I would think, since they are the one directing the power.

As @alder24 mentioned, you simply wouldn't be able to hold an entire Shard inside a single spike. However, I believe that a large Hemalurgic spike may be one of the few weapons a mortal could wield that could seriously wound/kill a Shardic Vessel. Use a sizable duralumin spike, lure the Vessel to you, stab them when they least expect it, tear a sizable chunk of their Connection to their Shard away, making them mortal again, then stab them again to finish the job. Or, if that does not work (which, let's be honest, is probably going to be the case ) spike the stolen Shardic Connection into yourself. If you're lucky, the Vessel will be so shocked that a mere human managed to tear a freaking hole into their soul that it will give you an opportunity to turn the very Shard they wield against them. Plus, there is still a hole in their Soul... RoW spoilers This would be particularly easy if the Shard in question is Odium or Ruin, as their Intent makes it easier to destroy other Shards, so you could more easily turn the Vessel's own power against them. Now, I don't think that either of these strategies would be likely to work (original Vessel has stronger Connection to Shard, more experience wielding it, and there is just so much Investiture they can wield), but I think that they have a possibility of working for someone desperate. As to having Hemalurgic spikes while you Ascend, I think that their influence would still be there (putting holes in your Spiritweb), but they would be more inconsequential; a Vessel's mind is so strong that a few holes aren't going to be a big deal unless another Vessel is trying to actively kill you. Spikes could almost certainly be removed by the Vessel if they wanted, however, as mortals can do the same.