Hemalurgic Cybernetics

[Trusk'our he/him]

I was thinking the other day of a Team Fortress 2 style Mistborn mercenary team, and fun characters to put in it.

One character just had to have a Hemalurgic eye-spike, of course, and I thought comically what it would be like if they tried to use a spyglass, as they don't see with light, but Connection. 

Then I wondered, what if they could?

What if, kind of like a Lifeless, you modified the physical structure of the spike so it had the mechanical components of an eye, then you Invested it with a Hemalurgic charge?

That's kind of what Awakening does- Investing a physical and bringing it to life (and Lifeless especially rely on cheap Investiture usage, using the body itself to do most of the work). Since you're taking pre-formed Spiritweb pieces, you might not even need to change the Investiture too much to match it.

Beyond just copying Awakening, there's also the supporting fact that it's kind of the opposite of getting a Blade-dead limb: instead of losing Spiritweb control over a limb, you graft a new functioning piece on.

Moving onto more exotic uses, if you got the correct Spiritweb fragments or could program them into place, you could use Hemalurgy to graft completely new cybernetic devices to your body, like added neural capacity through a computer, heightened senses with specially crafted eyes or ears, or mechanical limbs you can feel and move.

Basically, it would be a new way to use Hemalurgy, instead of just stapling on Spiritweb pieces, it could add physical and mental cybernetics as well.

What other uses might Hemalurgic cybernetics have?

Edited Friday at 04:04 AM by Trusk'our

[+hwiles]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

...

What other uses might Hemalurgic cybernetics have?

Wow.

well...In late era3 or early era4, I would expect extremely exotic artificial computer/machine-aided hemalurgy to allow for human drone pilots to assume remote control of non-sentient robotic bodies (IE: mechanical dolls) using a removable linchpin spike to connect and disconnect from them. I expect to start seeing scadrian machines on page with enough Identity and Connection to make this work relatively soon, they'll probably (100% speculative) just need to figure out how to ethically harvest and cleanse (remove Identity residue from) many thousands or millions of hemalurgic spikes or, more likely, truly begin artificing with them and delving into the capabilities of harmonium.

Sort of like...a widespread modularization and normalization of hemalurgy. Currently, the art simply requires violently murdering too many people to ever be industrialized without constant genocidal warfare supported by outright forced nazi breeding programs...which is an absolute no-go if that doesn't go without saying. If it can be mechanized and powered artificially, then I could imagine connected machines, a scadrian internet-equivalent, remote control technology, and a whole suite of other robotic powers, to open themselves up for scadrians.