Connection Boosting and Intent

[Trusk'our he/him]

Quick thought I want to get input on, since Connection seems to be at least part of what determines how powerful of an Investiture weilder you are (Allomancer's Connection to Preservation, Surgebinder's Connection to Honor, etc), do we think tapping Connection to Endowment or Ruin would improve one's ability to innately understand its use, maybe issue stronger Commands?

For example, if a Connector Ferring were to store their Connection to Ruin over a week and then tapped it all while charging a Hemalurgic spike, would the spike steal more power? Would they be able to better intuit where to place the spike or issue a more refined Intent for taking more specific attributes?

Or, would an Awakener who stored Connection to Endowment maybe be able to tap it to increase Awakening efficiency and intuition?

Edited 9 hours ago by Trusk'our

[therunner he/him]

I would say no, because stronger Connection does not grant greater understanding in either Allomancy or Surgebinding.

Not to mention, there is specific reason why stronger Connection helps in those two cases:

• In Allomancy, stronger Connection to Preservation/Harmony = access to more Investiture (wider 'hose')
• In Surgebinding, stronger Connection to Spren (not Honor) = spiritweb is better suffused with the power

And best I would expect better intuition, but even then, not in Hemalurgy. Reason being is that while Hemalurgy is Invested Art, Hemalurgist (as in, one who makes spikes) are not Invested. Hemalurgy relies solely on knowledge, not on any Investment on the part of practitioner.

[Duxredux he/him]

Let's see. Intuition via Connection is a bit tricky to confirm since by definition, it's the person arriving at conclusions, so it may be hard to conclusively reject the null hypothesis. We also only see a handful of artificially reinforced Connection to a Shard, so it's hard to say. Kelsier didn't seem to get an immediate and intuitive understanding of the nature of Preservation when Ascending.

I think Connection could help with Hemalurgy and Awakening, but instead of Connecting to the respective Shard I would suggest Connecting to the target of the magic.

Hemalurgy presumably will have the same complications as acupuncture in mapping the respective points to each person's proportions and physiology from small and petite, to big and fat, to long limbed. This complication is humorously used in Kung-fu Panda when Mantis tries to use acupuncture on Po. Connection probably will help you intuit those Bindpoints by using your existing knowledge and applying it to your target.

For Awakening, Vasher talks about how Breath sticks to the target. Perhaps Connection could lower the threshold of "pounding down the door" for something to be Awakened. In fact, I wonder if Connection would let you become stickier than the Awakened object or Lifeless - is Nomad's Command "Your Breath to mine" Connection based? Maybe you could more strongly imprint a Command with Connection...

If you're hoping that Connection will help people learn more about how Hemalurgy and Awakening fundamentally works, I give a possible, for the straight application I would say probable.