If you were a twinborn, what would you like to be?

[StrikerEZ]

2 hours ago, ElyssK said:

If I had to choose, I would want Allomantic Steel and Feruchemal Tin. Steelpushing is one of my favorite parts of this magic system, and I think Wax illustrates how amazing it is as an ability in an era with guns. Being able to store senses would not only serve as an advantage when tapping those reserves, but it would also  provide good strategic storing opportunities. Example: In a gunfight or near an explosion, storing Hearing would deaden the sounds. 

As much as storing hearing would help, it could also get you killed. If it's harder for you to hear things, then you may not hear someone sneaking up behind you. Of course, you could counteract this by using your other senses, like touch, and feeling the vibrations in the air if you tapped enough, I bet.

Tin/Iron woule be interesting, as you could store weight to make yourself lighter on your feet, which would let you maneuver yourself into the perfect positions to spy on people more easily. Or you could tap weight when in a fight and let your increased senses help you out, and the extra weight would pack an extra punch.

 

Edited June 21, 2017 by StrikerEZ

[ElyssK]

23 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

As much as storing hearing would help, it could also get you killed. If it's harder for you to hear things, then you may not hear someone sneaking up behind you. Of course, you could counteract this by using your other senses, like touch, and feeling the vibrations in the air if you tapped enough, I bet.

Very true, just like storing other senses may leave one vulnerable for a time. I hadn't thought about the feeling vibrations though, that would be a good way to counteract the risk. 

[Prism]

Chromium/Steel would be a very interesting combo as you could run super quickly to leech everybody before they could react

[StrikerEZ]

23 hours ago, ElyssK said:

Very true, just like storing other senses may leave one vulnerable for a time. I hadn't thought about the feeling vibrations though, that would be a good way to counteract the risk. 

I actually really like your idea of Steel/Tin, as you could use it do all kinds of cool things. You could tap your sight and make very accurate steelpushes, assuming you have a good enough eye and are smart enough to kind of understand how to calculate the trajectories and stuff enough to do super accurate pushes (it'd be a bit easier with a brass spike containing Zinc Feruchemy, assuming you could do the calaculations to even begin with).

Pewter/Zinc could be a really interesting combo. You would have the advantages of being a super enhanced fighter, especially with enough training without burning pewter so that your body is already used to intense fighting. Then, with the mental speed from zincminds, you could easily figure out your opponent(s)'s tells, and figure out what they're going to do next, how they're going to attack, where they'll go, etc. This makes for a fighter that could rival even that of someone burning atium. 

Bronze/Zinc could be interesting too. You just Seek for some Allomancers, then you can use the mental speed from zinc to help you determine what metal they're burning and figure out where the heck they are. I'm not sure about the specifics of this one, but I like it.

Something I've always wondered is how coppermind memories you stored while in a time bubble would be affected afterwards. If you stored a memory in a cadmium bubble, could you later tap it at a faster speed to view it in real time? And vice versa with a bendalloy bubble.

Edited June 23, 2017 by StrikerEZ

[Calderis]

32 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

Something I've always wondered is how coppermind memories you stored while in a time bubble would be affected afterwards. If you stored a memory in a cadmium bubble, could you later tap it at a faster speed to view it in real time? And vice versa with a bendalloy bubble.

I think, that as you're storing your own memories, they would be limited by your perspective.

[StrikerEZ]

33 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I think, that as you're storing your own memories, they would be limited by your perspective.

That's what I was thinking, but I was wondering if it would be possible to speed up/slow down the memories. Do we have any confirmation whether this is possible or not?

Either way, it'd create interesting storytelling devices, I think.

[+hwiles]

I'd really like to see a western or detective-style story from the perspective of a bronze compounding main character hunting rouge allomancers.  A bronze savant who never needs to sleep might not be able to topple buildings or dodge bullets like Wax, but they also wouldn't have to rely on timely hints and nudges by Harmony and his kandra nearly as often to find their quarries.

A double-bronze user with aluminum weaponry would make for an interesting hunter-killer against other practitioners of the metallic arts...

[PewterAGoldF]

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

I'd really like to see a western or detective-style story from the perspective of a bronze compounding main character hunting rouge allomancers.  A bronze savant who never needs to sleep might not be able to topple buildings or dodge bullets like Wax, but they also wouldn't have to rely on timely hints and nudges by Harmony and his kandra nearly as often to find their quarries.

A double-bronze user with aluminum weaponry would make for an interesting hunter-killer against other practitioners of the metallic arts...

This makes me wonder what compounding wakefulness would look like, burning a metalmind of one nights sleep as fast as you can would do what exactly? Perhaps he would get some kind of boost on top of never getting sleepy, like Miles Teg never feeling pain.

[+hwiles]

Compounding wakefulness ought to have some serious physiological/psychological consequences, just like compounding healing does, after all, it is altering how your body functions in a profound way.

I predict that the user would cease to be able to feel or experience mental fatigue.  Performing labor intensive work such as running ought to physically exhaust them the same way it would anyone else (eventually leading to them collapsing and being unable to move till their body could heal naturally), however, performing mentally intensive work wouldn't.  Tasks such as performing intelligence analysis and investigative work, or reading/studying, and maybe walking could be performed more-or-less endlessly (as long as they stopped briefly to eat and drink regularly).

A bronze compounder might actually make a better villain than hero, as never needing to sleep or feel mentally exhausted could quickly lead to some seriously sadistic tendencies, just like how never experiencing pain or injury would.  Rather than mutilating themselves, they might be led to obsessive behaviors like working for dozens or hundreds of hours straight...not an inherently evil behavior to be sure, but it's deviant enough that it could easily lead to some dark places...

[StrikerEZ]

@hwiles I've always thought about what a Bronze Compounder could be useful for, but I never thought of it like that. Upvotes for making a cool idea!

I think what you're describing in your second post though is talking more about what a Zinc Compounder could do, not necessarily bronze, except for the lack of sleep part. 

Anyway, I wanted to make a couple combos myself. 

What could a Brass Compounder do? I can't remember the exact WoB, but I think that it's been mentioned by Brandon that you become resistant to the effects of your feruchemy, there is a point where tapping too much would be a problem. I'm not sure how much heat you'd have to tap for that to become a major problem, but a Brass Compounder could be insane. Just compound tons of heat, while wearing fire-resistant clothing that leaves stuff like your hands, face, and feet uncovered, and you become a living furnace kind of. You probably can't go too hot, but you could definitely get hot enough to give sever burns to other people while you fight them. And if you're hot enough, all the heat escaping from your fingertips would be enough to burn clothes and stuff, assuming you can tap that much heat without dying. A gold feruchemy spike would be useful....

Oh, a Petwer/Brass combo could be interesting. They definitely couldn't get as hot as a Brass Compounder could, but that flame-resistant suit would be just as useful for this combo too. Plus they'd have the increased strength of a thug to help back it up.

 

[Calderis]

@StrikerEZ, I think @hwiles, is right here. Mental fatigue is a product of mental exhaustion or sleep deprivation. Zinc increases mental speed, but not mental fortitude. It would basically be a bendalloy bubble for your brain. It still uses your mental resources and in the same way it makes you hungry, it would make you get tired faster. 

The Villain concept is good. I've brought this up with Miles specifically, in that when you stop feeling something it becomes harder and harder to relate to those who do. So where Miles lack of pain would have made it much much harder to relate to the pain he inflicted on others, a Bronze compounder would very easily lose empathy for much of what makes us human.

The need for sleep would come to be viewed as laziness. Lapses in judgement and mistakes made from sleep deprivation would become acts of incompetence. Physical fatigue can be overcome with physical rest, but mental fatigue requires sleep, so the need for a nap after hard work would again be viewed as laziness. 

The sense of superiority this person would/could develop would be pretty alarming. And frankly, from their perspective it would be fairly well deserved. They may not be able to think with the ridiculous speed of a zinc ferring, but without mental fatigue they would always be thinking with a level of clarity that would make their thought process pretty remarkable. 

I would really like to see this. 

[StrikerEZ]

@Calderis Ah, okay. That makes more sense now. I'd misunderstood what @hwiles was talking about at first. My bad, that makes a lot more sense. 

Also, I meant to talk about this with the Brass Compounder earlier, but this guy would be so resistant to heat that'd it'd be crazy. They could always store it any excess heat in their brassminds and just use that heat for their compounding, except then they wouldn't be affected by it. And, when it's cold, they would just be tapping so much heat it wouldn't affect them either. Like Miles' loss of pain, or the effect bronze compounding would have, this person would basically lose their sense of temperature. Not as severe as the other two examples in my opinion, but they definitely wouldn't how some people could get hot/cold. 

[+hwiles]

@StrikerEZ Thanks!

There are some slight issues with your firesoul model however (EDIT: I don't know about any of this anymore, Firesouls are weird, see next couple posts).  While it's true that a firesoul in an extremely hot environment can store heat to prevent being burned, they would have to regulate their rate of storage.  If they were in an oven-like environment with a uniform temperature, this would probably be pretty easy.  If only their arm was on fire, things would get more complicated.  (This also holds true if their various body parts were exposed to any significant thermal gradient, IE: if their clothes, being made of fibers of different thickness and compositions, were burning with fires of different temperatures)

So far as we've seen, selective storage of an attribute from individual body parts is not possible in feruchemy (Sanderson hasn't stated outright that it's impossible, but he's confirmed that we've never seen anyone do it).  This means that in order to keep their arm cool enough to not be roasted, their entire body would have to be cool enough that being in direct contact with fire would keep it around 98.6 degrees F; IE: they would probably go into shock and freeze to keep their arm from burning.  Oddly enough, firesouls are supposedly immune to damage from tapping heat...However, tapping heat doesn't make them immune to the effects of heat from their environment...

Quote

THOUGHTFUL SPURTS

If tapping heat means your own body gets hotter, does it also mean you become immune to hot temperatures so long as you're tapping it, or should you fill heat and grow colder for that to happen?

BRANDON SANDERSON

As everything in Feruchemy, you become immune to the effects of the ability only. Like weight doesn't crush you, but at the same time doesn't have a net gain in strength. Growing colder, however, would be more helpful in this regard.

Brandon seems to indicate that if you were in a 200 F oven and you tapped heat to make your body temperature 200 F, thereby putting you at thermal equilibrium with your surroundings, you would still suffer heat damage for some reason and it would be more helpful if you instead stored heat.  This is bizarre and I can't explain it using real physics.  Presumably, if you tapped enough heat to light yourself on fire, your skin would still oxidize because the fire is external to you and therefore not something you would be immune to.  Further, everything you touched would cause you incredible pain as you would be transferring heat to your environment so rapidly it would feel like you were freezing to death.

Humans don't feel temperature, they feel the transfer of thermal energy, which is related to thermal conductivity as well as temperature difference.  If I'm 98.6F and I touch a 60F metal doorknob, my hand feels "cold," and if I touch a 60F wooden knob my hand feels slightly cool.  However, if I'm 400F and I touch a 60F metal doorknob, I feel like someone is dumping liquid nitrogen on my hand and I want to die.

Firesoul's powers are still somewhat vaguely explained so in all likelihood some of this weirdness will be cleared up in Lost Metal, but for now, they're limitations are fairly unclear.

TLDR; If you're in an oven, storing heat might be able to keep you alive, as your body temperature could theoretically be maintained at a level compatible with normal human biochemistry, however, it should technically make you feel like you've succumb to hypothermia and subsequently been lit on fire, as brass feruchemy doesn't turn off the nerves in your body that detect heat flow...

Edited July 3, 2017 by hwiles

[Calderis]

24 minutes ago, hwiles said:

TLDR; If you're in an oven, storing heat might be able to keep you alive, as your body temperature could theoretically be maintained at a level compatible with normal human biochemistry, however, it should technically make you feel like you've succumb to hypothermia and subsequently been lit on fire, as brass feruchemy doesn't turn off the nerves in your body that detect heat flow...

My first instinct here is to agree with you, because I feel like this is how it should work. The Southern Scadrians make me think firesouls bend the rules a bit more than usual though. 

Southern Scadrians had adapted to their pre-catecendre environment, and have a higher than normal body temperature, so even normal temperatures feel cold to them. By the logic you proposed (and as I said it makes sense to me) they should be storing heat to not feel cold. 

It doesn't seem like that's what's happening though. They appear to be tapping heat. So I think that firesouls don't just store body heat they produce, but all heat effecting their body and whether storing or tapping this effects their perceived temperature. 

In the oven example, storing heat should lower their temperature making the heat more extreme and lowering their bodies core temperature dangerously low (and we know that storing can be dangerous as it seems to lack the safeguards inbuilt to tapping. See Pewter and the heart). But if the temperature in the body is completely normalized, then the outer temperature that should burn will be stored before it can actually effect the body. 

This is the only way I can see that WoB working, and it means that there has to be firesoul compounders in the south making medallions for the entire Southern Scadrian population to be continually tapping heat to not feel cold. 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Calderis

[StrikerEZ]

@hwiles (Also, ninja'd by @Calderis, so I'm not sure how much of my reply even works anymore )

Hmm...I think you misunderstood me. Yes, I do agree that they don't become resistant to heat simply by tapping their brassminds. But what I was saying is that, in extremely hot temperatures, they would just store all this excess heat that their body is feeling from the environment around them, basically creating brassminds with huge amounts of stored warmth that they could later tap that would be immune to (assuming they don't tap it too much to cause objects around them to catch on fire and hurt them), because I believe that you are immune to the effects of your own feruchemy (to an extent), but not necessarily how that feruchemy interacts with the surrounding world, if that makes sense.

Also, I'm not sure why you mentioned only storing an attribute from one body, though I get what you're saying about it. The thing is, if your arm is on fire, there's nothing you can do about that. So that's why you'd have flame-resistant armor/clothing of some kind. You'd simply compound your heat so that your hands (which aren't coverred by the armor/clothing) are free to use to burn people. And I don't mean burn people as in creating fire to burn them, I mean burn them by making your hand so hot that it gives them severe burns from the heat if you hit/grab them.

[+hwiles]

@StrikerEZ

I guess my real problem with firesouls is we don't really know how their power works.  Storing or tapping a small amount of heat makes sense for adjusting comfort, preventing overheating, or staving off hypothermia.  Tapping enough heat to put your body over 110F should (from a biochemistry perspective) cause you to die from organ failure, as the way that the chemical reactions in your body take place at those temperatures is incompatible with life...Similarly, if they stored enough heat to lower their temperature too much they should also die.  Being exposed to extreme external heat would require lowering your temperature tremendously to survive, however, since heat isn't conducted through the body instantaneously, this would cause your organs to shut down from cold while your skin felt comfortable.

I'm starting to think that firesoul's actually manipulate their specific heat capacity and/or thermal conductivity rather than actual temperature...But even this isn't compatible with all of the WoB we've gotten on the subject...

At this point I'm ready to concede that your proposed model is probably at least as likely as mine, and rescind my prior objections.  Being able to grab and burn people could be pretty dope.

Edited July 3, 2017 by hwiles

[The One Who Connects]

4 hours ago, PewterAGoldF said:

This makes me wonder what compounding wakefulness would look like, burning a Metalmind of one nights sleep as fast as you can would do what exactly? Perhaps he would get some kind of boost on top of never getting sleepy, like Miles never feeling pain.

You wouldn't need to use massive bursts all the time like Miles does. It would actually be more like Atium Compounding, in that it would be a steady draw that gradually increases over time. After a while(couple weeks/months depending), you'd start to experience those bad side effects. Sleep helps people commit short-term memory to long-term memory, it helps with the psychological balance, helps the body heal, etc..

However, using hwiles example of a Roughs "lawman" could actually prevent these side effects, as they don't have F-Gold to heal up after a firefight. Time spent on bedrest/in hospital is time that could be spent actually sleeping, which would reset the internal timebomb that is psychosis/memory issues from sleep deprivaton. If our detective has to pull several all-nighters, he can compound and do so. But a smart detective also knows the value of taking a moment to reorient and not going straight into another job.

---

In short, the downsides of endlessly tapping Wakefulness will likely include, but is not limited to:

• Decreased Rate of Healing (body heals faster when sleeping)
• Increased Intensity of Minor Aches and Pains (body repairs itself while sleeping)
• Short-Term Memory Loss
• Psychological Instability

Due to the health issues, it is recommended that a Bronze Compounder take some time off to rest and recharge by actually sleeping. Doing so is doubly recommended as sleep will also help combat the onset of psychosis and other mental issues.

[PewterAGoldF]

On 03/07/2017 at 6:36 PM, The One Who Connects said:

You wouldn't need to use massive bursts all the time like Miles does. It would actually be more like Atium Compounding, in that it would be a steady draw that gradually increases over time. After a while(couple weeks/months depending), you'd start to experience those bad side effects. Sleep helps people commit short-term memory to long-term memory, it helps with the psychological balance, helps the body heal, etc..

However, using hwiles example of a Roughs "lawman" could actually prevent these side effects, as they don't have F-Gold to heal up after a firefight. Time spent on bedrest/in hospital is time that could be spent actually sleeping, which would reset the internal timebomb that is psychosis/memory issues from sleep deprivaton. If our detective has to pull several all-nighters, he can compound and do so. But a smart detective also knows the value of taking a moment to reorient and not going straight into another job.

---

In short, the downsides of endlessly tapping Wakefulness will likely include, but is not limited to:

• Decreased Rate of Healing (body heals faster when sleeping)
• Increased Intensity of Minor Aches and Pains (body repairs itself while sleeping)
• Short-Term Memory Loss
• Psychological Instability

Due to the health issues, it is recommended that a Bronze Compounder take some time off to rest and recharge by actually sleeping. Doing so is doubly recommended as sleep will also help combat the onset of psychosis and other mental issues.

I guess you are right that you would not get all the benefits of a good night sleep from tapping wakefulness, because some of the benefits are side benefits, such as healing. However I did imagine the memory loss and psychological instability would at least be far decreased otherwise a wakefulness compounder wouldn’t be able to go more than a week. I think the need for sleep is mostly due to these things, as in, they are what you are saving up essentially.

As for the slow draw like Atium versus the massive bursts all the time, I was hoping there would be some benefit coming from super wakefulness rather than just having extended normal wakefulness. Something like if someone took some alertness drug, or the things hwiles mentioned. It would be cool if possible.

When the villain idea was mentioned I thought about them using savanted bronze to search for Harmonies Pool tirelessly. Perhaps with the limitations you mentioned he could take to sleeping just to get Harmony out of his head (which he can access through insanity).

[The One Who Connects]

3 hours ago, PewterAGoldF said:

As for the slow draw like Atium versus the massive bursts all the time, I was hoping there would be some benefit coming from super wakefulness rather than just having extended normal wakefulness. Something like if someone took some alertness drug, or the things hwiles mentioned. It would be cool if possible.

I was merely stating that you wouldn't need to super tap. I'm sure that there is something beneficial from a super tap, but it's not like health where the benefit is obvious, and obvious things are more likely to be used.

3 hours ago, PewterAGoldF said:

However I did imagine the memory loss and psychological instability would at least be far decreased otherwise a wakefulness compounder wouldn’t be able to go more than a week. I think the need for sleep is mostly due to these things, as in, they are what you are saving up essentially.

Agree to disagree until Brandon gives us more details.

[+hwiles]

I'm gonna change things up here by proposing a complimentary two-person twinborn team:

Person 1: Soother + feruchemic steel

Person 2: Rioter + Feruchemic Zinc (double zinc)

Zinc compounder acts as the brains of the operation, keeps partner motivated, and enrages/confuses enemies when under fire.  Steel-running soother spearheads plans of Double-Zinc mastermind, dampens negative emotions of Zinc user to further augment thought processes, and attacks enemy morale when under fire.

[Crucible of Shards]

A good pairing for police could be A-electrum for seeing what happens before you burst through a door or make a shot, and F-steel for getting out of there if your spidey senses tell you a bomb's about to go off.

[KevHotRod]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 5:09 AM, KalaDellexe said:

Gold/Gold or Steel/Steel, to be honest. 

With Gold/Gold, I can't get sick, can hold my breath as long as I have Gold-charge, and I can do stupid things without getting seriously hurt. 

Steel/Steel lets you pseudo fly with hops and Steelpushes AND you're also the Flash. 

     I agree, steel/steel you would simply be to fast to target and it wouldn't be to hard to store since your compounding. The only way Wax has beaten steelrunners is because they run out of stored speed, as a compouder you wouldn't have this issue.

If your shot, you can dodge or if your shot by a barrage dodging combined with the push bubble around yourself.

If you are shot with aluminum, then normal dodging again. A barrage of aluminum bullets will pose an issue but enough speed you can dodge them all but you would use it up faster.

Arrows are the worse thing to use against you because you could just tap speed catch it in mid air and throw it while tapping speed, and you'd get a super fast arrow as a weapon.

Explosives you could outrun, or ,if its the right kind of explosive you could push it back.

You could maybe take on a mistborn if they don't have altium. If they do, then I don't know. you could probably kill them before they start burning but if they are burning it, could they react fast enough to dodge? Atium does let you process and dodge shadows before you see them, as with Elend during the Koloss battle but I don't know if they can move fast enough.

Another con is it doesn't grant immortality as with gold, if you get sniped while not tapping speed then you could die pretty easy. Getting attacked while sleeping is another easy way to get taken out.

[+hwiles]

Compounding steel might shorten your life unfortunately. If you move at 100x speed, you should age at 100x speed. Just like if you had an unlimited supply of bendalloy you could probably kill yourself from old age in a week or two. (You might have lived 100 years, but for everyone around you, only a short time would've passed.)

This is presumably why TLR didn't solve all of his problems by moving at 1000x speed. It would've forced him to compound exponentially more atium.

Edited July 12, 2017 by hwiles

[hoidhunter]

Well...a couple of my top picks have already been mentioned, but I've always thought that it would be cool to see what A-pewter F-iron would be like. While you usually have a net loss it strength when tapping weight to become lighter, you would have drastically increased strength from burning pewter, making you much lighter and much stronger at the same time.  On the other side...one of the big limitations we see in iron feruchemists is how tapping a lot of weight makes movement all but impossible, again, you could offset this limitation with pewter. On top of everything else you have all of the other advantages of pewter like durability, balance, coordination, etc.

I'm picturing a 100 foot moon jump that ends in a concrete shattering cannonball to the street, knocking bad guys and bystanders off their feet.  Before the dust settles you're already moving with enhanced speed, augmented further by decreased weight, as you subdue a score of foes in an eyeblink.  The last villain tries to make a get away by running you down in a car, only to find you as unyielding as an iron statue. The resulting crash leaves the car and driver a wreck, but you barely bruised. Hearing police sirens coming near, and observing all baddies incapacitated, you spring into the air, rebounding between two buildings, until you crest the edge of a rooftop and sprint away.

[+hwiles]

1 hour ago, hoidhunter said:

Well...a couple of my top picks have already been mentioned, but I've always thought that it would be cool to see what A-pewter F-iron would be like. While you usually have a net loss it strength when tapping weight to become lighter, you would have drastically increased strength from burning pewter, making you much lighter and much stronger at the same time.  On the other side...one of the big limitations we see in iron feruchemists is how tapping a lot of weight makes movement all but impossible, again, you could offset this limitation with pewter. On top of everything else you have all of the other advantages of pewter like durability, balance, coordination, etc.

I'm picturing a 100 foot moon jump that ends in a concrete shattering cannonball to the street, knocking bad guys and bystanders off their feet.  Before the dust settles you're already moving with enhanced speed, augmented further by decreased weight, as you subdue a score of foes in an eyeblink.  The last villain tries to make a get away by running you down in a car, only to find you as unyielding as an iron statue. The resulting crash leaves the car and driver a wreck, but you barely bruised. Hearing police sirens coming near, and observing all baddies incapacitated, you spring into the air, rebounding between two buildings, until you crest the edge of a rooftop and sprint away.

I'd upvote this twice, if I could.

Check that; I would upvote this ten times if I could.  You've given me a new favorite twinborn combo, and that isn't a statement I make lightly.  Excellent creativity and imagery, GG.