Current consensus on copperclouds?

[natc]

Rereading TFE, got to Vin's copper-bronze tutorial and noticed something I had missed earlier, that Vin can feel pulsing from herself when she burns copper. I had decided to go search the forum on copper and found other mentions of it too.

So, should I take it that, while bronze picks up the pulses from investiture (power of creation), copper essentially works like a noise canceller (i.e. releases a counter-pulse internally, emanating outward, that dampens other pulses through interference)? It is just not absolute due to variations in allomantic strength, and a strong enough Seeker (hemalurgy or otherwise) can pick up the very weak vibrations that are normally below detection threshold. Copper apparently does have a bronzepulse signature, so it's probably not the pulse of the metal itself, but a separate frequency released from the Smoker on top of that.

And I suppose that the interference pulse happens to also interfere with however zinc and brass affect their targets, but might not normally be strong enough to make a difference outside of the range of the Smoker's body. Interesting connotations if that's the case. Cognitive/spiritual disruption perhaps? Is there actually a hard physical range on emotional allomancy, or is it just that it's stupid trying to target someone with no idea where they are?

Final random musing, I suppose, will be whether Copperclouds can Smoke spiritwebs outright against Lifesense, and whether a strong enough Seeker (again, hemalurgy or otherwise) can Seek spiritweb pulses somehow. We already have feruchemical and Shardic bronzepulses, after all, probably surgebinding pulses for all we know.

[Moogle]

Smokers are immune to Emotional Allomancy. Not those in their cloud, but only the user, which is very interesting.
 
Here's how Emotional Allomancy works:

Q: Does that 'inside a body' thing work on most magics?
For instance, if Han stuck Luke into a Mistborn Tauntaun (a distant and unlucky relative of the mistborn llama), would Luke be protected from both the cold and emotional allomancy?
A: Emotional Allomancy, for example, works by lapping against the outsides of someone's cognitive self, influencing you the way music might stir your soul. So being inside a living body wouldn't necessarily stop it--you'd just have more interference. Kind of like how you can still hear music outside if it's loud enough.
(source)

 

Based on this, I am partial the "interference" idea you bring up - copper detects Investiture waves, and attempts to create counter-waves to perfectly cancel them. The Investiture equivalent of noise-cancelling headphones.

 

The limitation might be that that by default come from you, which means that you can only perfectly cancel Emotional Allomancy targeted at you. You can't properly interfere with Emotional Allomancy on others because of this, but with some cleverness you might be able to create counter-waves that don't just radiate in a perfect circle from you and thus guard others, sort of like how steel normally only Pushes on centers of mass, but you can bend that rule if you're Kelsier.

 

Or perhaps it's something like Allomantic pulses being very "regular" (perfect sine waves at some frequency or something) while Emotional Allomancy is much more complex, making Emotional Allomancy harder to cancel out. TLR's Soothing went through Vin's copper, even if I'm suspicious that it was due to Hemalurgy.

 

And of course it's very difficult to generate waves such that you perfectly interfere with all signals. So no matter how good of a job you do, someone who's really good at bronze can probably beat you.

 

There's a ton of other weirdness to copper - someone (Kurk?) compiled a few weird things, like what would happen if you try to Seek someone on the other side of copper bubble but who isn't inside the bubble. I can't find the thread on that, but there's a lot of interesting WoBs which I think are somewhat counter to the above.

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

Based on this, I am partial the "interference" idea you bring up - copper detects Investiture waves, and attempts to create counter-waves to perfectly cancel them. The Investiture equivalent of noise-cancelling headphones.

 

I've actually considered the exact same thing, but I fell into the trap of wanting to finetune my theory before posting it here.

Tried to get some feedback from someone and they shot it down.   Now I have to rework the entire thing.

(If anyone's interested anyway, it's here. I'm going to return to it after getting a primer course on radio-waves in January.)

 

The easiest counterargument is that copper is a pulling metal, so it wouldn't make much sense for its effect to be broadcasting something.

And of course it's very difficult to generate waves such that you perfectly interfere with all signals. So no matter how good of a job you do, someone who's really good at bronze can probably beat you.

 

That's a required part of the explanation! If you make a theory where you can't get past a coppercloud no matter what, you can't explain Vin (yes, the hemalurgic earring, but that still works within the regular rules of bronze). 

[Moogle]

The easiest counterargument is that copper is a pulling metal, so it wouldn't make much sense for its effect to be broadcasting something.

 

I wouldn't ascribe too much significance to the Pulling/Pushing/Internal/External categories. Copper is also an internal metal, but it most assuredly affects other people and hides their Allomantic pulses.

 

Similarly, Bronze is a Pushing metal... but it's not broadcasting anything.

 

Pushing/Pulling just seems to be a consequence of base-metal vs alloy. The alloy is going to do something opposite to the base metal, so people named the categories "Pushing" and "Pulling" based on the fact that certain metals seemed to do opposite things. It's not a very well-named category in my opinion... but if you look at all the metals, it's very much obvious that the base metal vs alloys are in some sense opposites, so the fact that a category exists for the metals makes sense.

 

The Internal/External divide seems much more grounded in reality and a much better category - which we could probably take as evidence that Allomantic copper does something internally that affects the external environment. (Like, say, pulls in Allomantic pulses like a black hole, to name one model.)

 

Edit: Another thought... it could be that bronze does something different than just increase your sensitivity to Allomantic pulses, and instead actually acts to amplify them (as well as makes you able to hear them - the Cognitive effect). The consequence might be that multiple Seekers in one place could hear better than a single Seeker.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Ookla the Moonless

[Oversleep]

I always thought that copper generates white-noise which is indistinguishable from normal background pulses. Everything generates some kind of sound (in nature - wind moving leaves, chirping of the birds, buzzing of flies and so on; in the city, humans talking to each other, moving cars etc), but bronze filters only these which are stronger than these background noises (since everything on Scadrial is part Preservation, part Ruin, it would also generate some pulse, but very, very weak. Aluminium may be an exception). So bronze picks up on what we call Invested, which means it contains an order of magnitude more Investiture than normal objects. 

Another possiblity is that copper just generates some very strong noise, but in ultrasounds, so they are not audible. But that is in contrary with theory that you can modify bronze pulses to imitiate other pulses.

[Moogle]

I always thought that copper generates white-noise which is indistinguishable from normal background pulses.

 

This is interesting, but wouldn't that mean every Seeker should be able to figure out when a Coppercloud is near, because they are getting a ton of static? You can say that the Seeker "filters out" background noise, but that seems strange to me...

[Oversleep]

This is interesting, but wouldn't that mean every Seeker should be able to figure out when a Coppercloud is near, because they are getting a ton of static? You can say that the Seeker "filters out" background noise, but that seems strange to me...

Perhaps I used the term "white noise" wrong. But what I meant is that Coppercloud generates a masking field imitating background noise. Maybe copper picks up on the area's Cognitive pattern and replicates it, covering allomantic pulses? And when you pierce Coppercloud, allomantic pulse is still there.

I am not an expert in the fields of transmission and acustic, but depending on modulation on the signal maybe it's possible to generate one complementing signal to flatten them all out?

Is there any quote or WoB on pulses emitted by person burning more than one metal? This could help.

[natc]

I've actually considered the exact same thing, but I fell into the trap of wanting to finetune my theory before posting it here.

Tried to get some feedback from someone and they shot it down. Now I have to rework the entire thing.

(If anyone's interested anyway, it's here. I'm going to return to it after getting a primer course on radio-waves in January.)

The easiest counterargument is that copper is a pulling metal, so it wouldn't make much sense for its effect to be broadcasting something.

That's a required part of the explanation! If you make a theory where you can't get past a coppercloud no matter what, you can't explain Vin (yes, the hemalurgic earring, but that still works within the regular rules of bronze).

Well, bronze is the pushing equivalent and it's a receiver, just as weird as copper.

Don't think any theory has denied the possibility of overwhelming a coppercloud before because that's clearly silly.