Underwater_Worldhopper

But then how has Hoid seen one?

Yes, it's quite satisfying to see him find peace in the way he does. Also, try not to double-post, it's against site rules. If you want to add something, you can always edit your original post.

I think the question is what's happening to the Yellow Hion Line in the Docudrama-summoned Hijo. With the Father Machine, it's being used to power the Machine itself, but where's the Yellow Hion in the Docudrama Hijo? If it's being used up, what's it doing to the Hion Viewer that requires an entire band of Yellow Hion? I think they just use the third band to fuel their own Connection to the Physical Realm, anchoring themselves to the Hion-Viewer.

Like @cometaryorbit said, If the Investiture itself gets captured, it'll most likely be temporary, as it doesn't have a source for more to be drained. You'll get Pewter Allomancy for as long as the Investiture you stole allows, then revert to regular strength.

I- :sob: I will say, when I was reading HoA, I found Spook's parts extremely dull and liked Vin and Elend's parts far more, so it's a matter of taste. There's no one objective "best" take, so no one is about to call you crazy for liking some chapters more than others. except maybe MangoBoi.

I stand corrected, I was thinking of that exact WoB, I just misremembered and thought it said that they were worshipped as Deities but didn't view themselves that way.

But Design is essentially the same thing as a Spirit, and she isn't affected at all. It's never been stated that Hordelings are all that Invested either, and the devices don't need to be Invested to detect it. Besides, if the Machine is just trying to eat whatever it can possibly get it's hands on, why doesn't it kill all the surviving Komashians? The Machine leaves them alone unless they learn about the Machine's existence. And it's not like it can't absorb them, the Nightmares can easily leave the Shroud, and the Machine can stablisize and marshal a hundred of them effortlessly. It would have to be a conscious choice on the Machine's part. I don't think that's the case. It's a good idea, but here's a passage about the Shroud: The Nightmares are so malleable because their Identities have been shredded. The part of a person that protects against other peoples' perceptions warping you is literally missing in the Shroud and the Nightmares, and so they can be influenced far more easily. Add onto this the fact that unlike Spren, the Investiture on Komashi is the remains of Virtuosity, who isn't there to guide and the development of her Splinters (and so the Hijo don't have particularly pronounced Identites either), the Splinters and Shroud are more susceptible to outside influence. To put it more simply, Identity acts kind of like antigens do on cells; it guards your soul and Investiture from outside influence by creating an actual intrinsic property to make your Investiture distinguishable and resistant to merging or being influenced by other Inevstiture just the same way antigens make your body's cells easily recognisable to your own immune system, so that foreign objects can be identified and eliminated. Without it, anything could come along from the outside and mess you up. This is why Nightmares can be Painted away, and to a lesser extent also applies to the Hijo, who can be harnessed to create useful tools.

So, my thoughts have been going in weird circles lately, and I just thought of something. Humans can, theoretically, bond with Lesser Spren in what's not quite a Nahel Bond, but something that would still produce some effect, likely something that bends how physics applies to the subject, making them extremely light, or buoyant, or make them immune to air resistance, that sort of thing. However, I realized that in cases where we see that happen, i.e the Greatshells or Singers, they all have Gemhearts. I began to wonder how a Human could bond a Lesser Spren without one, and how they could improvise the equivalent of a Gemheart to do so. I eventually realized that some animals like Skyeels may not have Gemhearts but can still bond with Spren, so the Gemheart may not be necessary. However, I then remembered this: Roseite Aetherbound, like Prasanva, have a chunk of crystal embedded in their bodies, which could act like a Gemheart. So, a couple of questions here: Can Roseite, as a crystal, hold Light or a Spren inside? If it can, would a Roseite Aether Bud count as a Gemheart? Like, if a Singer saw it, would they get distressed thinking your Gemheart formed in your hand like a genetic defect? If you can infuse the Roseite bud with a Spren, would trapping one inside act like a bond, and could you then use it to do things like achieve weightlessness, or change forms like a Singer?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking; things like speed just aren't physical in a storable sense, not in the way it's portrayed, so Feruchemy must be storing away a part of your Spiritual Ideal, which forces your body into a slower state, and then when tapping you add all that stored Spiritual code back onto your Spiritweb, making you faster. In that case, a Feruchemical change would be stolen. This seems reasonable and accurate. You might get the extra strength for a split second before it reverts to the original.

Depends on what you think would happen to a Pewterarm. If you think you could steal more strength off a Pewterarm who's burning, you could get more strength off of a Brute who's tapping. I don't think either is the case since Hemalurgy deals with the Spiritweb and neither one affects the Spiritweb at all, so neither would make a difference. However, if you're a Savant, it would change your Spiritweb, so that could potentially affect it, although Savantism isn't generally transferred with Hemalurgy, so probably not. Actually, depending on how you think Feruchemy works, you could maybe get more strength off of a Brute who's tapping than a regular person, even if you can't from a Pewterarm.

Possibly. The Machine is nigh-sentient by the time Hoid visits, it may have just sensed his unique Spiritweb and ungodly amount of Investiture and decided to try and slurp it up, so I don't know if Hoid is a good example of why that possibly isn't the case, given there's nothing else like him.

I'm inclined to agree with this version, I don't think they actually used Nalthian Awakening. It could be called Awakening in that it's the same effect just achieved through different means. A construct powered by Investiture (in this case Hijo/souls instead of Breaths) and obeying Commands (in this case the coding of the machine rather than an actual, verbal Command). This is taking place after a decent amount of time into the future, enough so that the different populations of different planets know enough about other Invested Arts that they begin to conflate them by effect rather than method. An illusion is a Lightweaving, no matter whether it's been achieved through Rosharan Lightweaving, Yolish Lightweaving, or Aons. Similarly, Teleporting is Elsecalling, whether that's through the actual Surge of Transportation, through Aon Tia, or through a Dakhor sacrifice. Same effect, same name, regardless of how it's achieved.

The 4 armed creatures are Sho Del, they're the human equivalents of the Fainlife ecosystem. And try to avoid double posting, if you forgot to add something, do so with the edit function!

That's a great theory, it makes a lot of sense that the Father Machine would be feeding itself through the third, yellow Hion line. We also see that Yoki-Hijo give up some of their Investiture with each stacking, and need time to rest and recuperate to regenerate that Investiture later, so devices made of Hijo summoned by them are more powerful and last longer, as the Hijo's Investiture is devoted fully to making their device work. Over time, the Yoki-Hijo's Investiture is being used up to maintain a Connection to the Physical Realm allowing the Hijo to manifest, and over time that Connection degrades, making the Hijo devices deteriorate before the Connection eventually degrades away entirely, and the devices stop working. Once the Hijo start manifesting the Hion themselves, there would still be an absence of a Yellow Hion Line, since it's used up to form the Connection. That does mean that if a Yoki-Hijo were to summon Hijo as Hion, there would be a third, yellow Hion Line.

I think it was just that the machine tries to use any Investiture to sustain itself and create Hion. The stacking is separate from the absorption and use of Investiture. The stacking lures Hijo close, but the Machine is doing something else to actually harness the Hijo, sucking them into itself to feed on them to sustain itself as well as to create Hion. Since it uses part of that Investiture to actually fuel itself, when it was initially activated it sucked up as much available Investiture as it could to jumpstart the conversion process, and the closest Investiture was the souls of the Torish. Since Torio was relatively small and the cities were close together, there were all close enough to be sucked in, and only the people on the very outskirts survived.

I'm pretty sure the dragons don't view themselves as gods, although they were worshipped that way. I suppose that they could indeed be dragon experiments, but if they are aquatic, why bother with boats when they can just live underwater? Well, Axolotls have gills just hanging off from their heads, so it's not like it's inconceivable. And they could breathe through their skin too, like frogs, axolotls (again), and even humans (though the amount we get from our skin is negligible). It's not something that directly contradicts the theory, but if it was something planned and intentional, it would be either explicitly called out to just make it known, and if it's meant to be a secret, it still probably would have been referenced in some capacity as foreshadowing.

That's a really interesting theory, I like it a lot. I don't think that this is the case just based on the wider direction the narrative seems to be headed toward (and also that in some unpublished novels, there are things like Fain deer with six legs, although that can be explained by it having evolved after Fainlife leaves the ocean. There's also the Skullmoss, but aquatic algae do exist, so it's not too much of a stretch, especially given time to evolve. Besides, those are all unpublished, so Brandon may have changed his mind), but the theory is quite well put together, there are a lot of things about Fainlife that would make sense in this context, and there's nothing directly contradicting any of it, so far as I can tell. I will say that the hair would cause a lot of drag when swimming, more so than even human hair would, so the wide, grass-like hair is unlikely to have come from a water-based species, but again, it could have evolved afterward. Also, they don't appear to have any sort of gills, but that's less of a problem given that they could have developed a way of breathing underwater that is unfamiliar to us. Linguistics is weird. It could have just been largely the same language, but the verbal form of it has drifted enough from the original language that the original Torish accent and/or words are too alien for the modern-day Komashians to understand. We don't see any of the Nightmares try to read or write, and neither do the Painters. Had the former Nightmares written something down, it could be possible that the Painters would have understood. Languages change in some part due to random chance, it's possible that even without Connection they could figure the original Torish out with a bit more effort and qualified Linguists. However, it's equally possible that they would be completely unrecognizable. We just don't know, though the evidence leans towards divergent. Bear in mind that the account written on the cave was found only a hundred years after the activation of the Father Machine, whereas the story takes place 1700 years later. The language may not have changed enough at that point for the message to be unreadable, though it may be so now.

Ooh, death by aluminum roasting seems like it would work. You wouldn't need to trap him in a thick Aluminum box either, just one he can't break with Allomancy or Awakened-clothes-assisted punching, then pour molten aluminum from the top onto him. Once that gets done, just leave the metal to solidify and don't disturb it to check; he'd be forever trapped inside even if he somehow manages to live.

How do you differentiate what you want? Can Intent specify the power you want to that degree, considering you can steal all sorts of things other than just the main 32 powers? I don't know if Kelsier is a good model, because you can still bring a person back to life after they technically die through Regrowth (and presumably other Investiture Healing like Divine Breaths), so at least some Connection remains. Outside of that, Kelsier got hit by the Lord Ruler in a way that smashes the left side of his face in. His brain probably got crushed, and his neck also likely broke, so he'd have died instantly (as far as Cognition is concerned). Hemalurgy kills through a heart wound, so you could maybe squeeze in another spike right after if you do it quickly enough. My bad if I wasn't clear, but that's what I was saying. Separate from what I made this thread about, I was saying that WoB made me think there was a way to steal more than one power in a single spike by spiking a single time, as you're saying. I originally just assumed it would steal all available powers someone had, but your idea of stealing the respective quadrant seems more balanced and realistic.

It still is Investiture, so you could Compound it and tap it for near-limitless Investiture. Compounding it would be patching Preservation's Investiture onto the Breath though, so it might change it's function.

I am beyond stupid, thank you so much for the catch T-T. Hopefully, I haven't spoiled anything, though what I mentioned has next to no relevance to the plot at all, so it should be safe.

We see what happens when you're standing in a collapsing Perpendicularity: nothing. Every time Dalinar stops holding open Honor's Perpendicularity, or the time Nightblood destroys it, it has no effect on Dalinar himself. Maybe it could affect him if Hoid was actively travelling through the Perpendicularitiy, but that's a very narrow time frame, and that would probably kill him more than trap him in null space. And like the OP said, you miss out on a Hemalurgy Empire. Although (Yumi and the Nightmare Painter Spoilers)

The thought experiment is assuming that they're perfectly in sync. I hadn't considered the bind points being the same, but surely there are some powers that aren't stolen specifically from the heart? The human body has around 2 to 3 hundred bind points, do none of them but the heart matter when you're stealing powers? I had assumed the heart thing was specifically about some powers only, but looking back it does seem like you need to drive the spike specifically through the heart for all powers. Does the victim die immediately? Because if they remain alive for even a little while afterwards, you could maybe spike another power out. Either way, spiking a surviving victim probably is the better way, but I just want to know about Simultaneous Hemalurgic spiking. Is that not the same thing? I guess there could be a limit on how many powers you can steal in a single spike (all sixteen might be a stretch), but surely more than one? The wording is ambiguous enough that it could be either one.

That was indeed the epigraph I was talking about, and I see where you're coming from. A case could be made for why Ruin would prefer not to kill battle-trained Mistborn while the pacifist, submissive Terris were too docile to be of any real value outside of their powers, only some of which were ever useful to him. However, in the end it doesn't really matter what Ruin's motivations were, since we're talking about the mechanics of Hemalurgy. I always read that WoB as whether or not you could spike and kill someone a single time, while taking all of their powers. Like H-Lerasium, but powers instead of abilities. I suppose it could refer to spiking someone multiple times through non-fatal spiking, but what I'm interested in is what would happen if I Hemalurgy-stabbed someone twice at the same time. Since we're apparently at the end of what we know canonically, guess it's it's brainstorming time. What do you think will happen if two Hemalurgists spike someone at the same time, like I outlined in the original post?

We don't know enough about Cognitive Shadows to say whether a tether to the Physical Realm is always needed; Kelsier needs the spike because he doesn't have a Physical Aspect that he's Connected to, and The Oathpact doesn't necessarily bind the Heralds to their bodies, it just keeps them from passing onto the beyond. Isolating them in a gem separates them from the Oathpact, and so they move on, but that's all we know for now, we can't say whether or not the Oathpact is needed to keep them in their bodies once they form/enter one. The Returned are the way they are for a specific reason, how much of their nature is due to them being CS and how much of it is because of Endowment's design isn't known. They're all corner cases in their own right, so we can't assume that it is always needed. However, I do agree that as a general rule of thumb, it does seem that CS need a tether to allow them to exist in the Physical Realm, since they lose that Connection at death. What I think is going on with Yumi is different. She's incredibly Invested, she doesn't need to rely on the Shroud to form a new body. If she wanted to, she can do that with her own Investiture. What she needed to form a body was Connection, and Painter provided that just by existing (she was already Connected to him) and amplifying it through Painting, which made that Connection stronger. Yumi then accepted his proposal of a new life, and manifested herself a body. It's like a mix between Stormlight healing and Shardblades; Just like Connection to a Radiant can be exploited to pull a Spren into the PR as a Shardblade (and Stormlight healing can convert Investiture directly into living body tissue), she used her Connection to the PR through Painter to manifest herself a body. She's basically a regular human now, just like all regular humans are technically CS' (but actually authentic souls instead of Inveted copies) attached to their physical bodies. She is (or used to be) a Cognitive Shadow, but she isn't a Returned, the same way Kelsier isn't a Returned. They're all Cognitive Shadows, and they can all be similarly Invested, but a Returned is different because they're made for a specific purpose, with specific abilities to facilitate that, with weaknesses to keep them in check. Hoid is telling someone how a Cognitive Shadow formed, which happens quite a lot. Returned are the odd ones out, every single other CS is the way you describe. Tossing the CA of someone after they die into a Perpendicularity is enough to achieve the same effect. Yumi, or Kelsier, the Heralds, Shades, Fused, or any other Cognitive Shadows that we know of, are exactly what you describe: Returned who have their memories and don;t need to consume Investiture. He isn't giving some super important trade secret away. Besides, he gives no specifics. Yumi was Invested, and Painter somehow brought her back. That's about it, and even if he outlined exactly how, it still doesn't matter, because it's not nearly as important or ground-breaking as you seem to be assuming. What Argenti meant was that they were something akin to the Returned: A CS in a human form that's the same as/mimicking their own, with similar levels of Investiture. Apolgies if I get anything wrong, I just finished the book and it's late at night for me, so sorry in advance if I misundertood what was trying to be conveyed