Jump to content

Gagylpus

Members
  • Posts

    79
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by Gagylpus

  1. From the point of view of a reference frame moving and rotating with the centrifuge, an object released in the centrifuge falls outwards radially. Same way that from the point of view of a reference frame attached to the earth's surface, an object falls towards the earth, even though its motion in another frame is (for example) a small section of a complex orbit around the sun.
  2. So, I had an interesting realization the other day. We know that the speed bubbles from bendalloy or cadmium allomancy attach themselves to reference frames, and speed things up or slow them down relative to that reference frame. We know that those reference frames can be ones that experience acceleration: case in point, whenever a bubble attaches itself to the reference frame of the ground, which is rotating about Scadrial's axis and orbiting the sun. And, from the perspective of general relativity, any frame in which there is a gravitational field is really no different from an accelerated frame. We also know, from descriptions of the experiences of characters within speed bubbles, that nothing weird happens in regards to their experiences of gravity. They feel the same weight inside a bubble as they would outside a bubble. When you drop something inside of a speed bubble, it falls to the ground at the rate you would expect to see outside the bubble: it doesn't float in the air or suddenly crash to the ground. (You might call this an extended version of Einstein's equivalence principle: you can't tell whether you are inside a speed bubble by doing measurements on the weights of objects.) All this means that, in order for there to not be any weird effects on the weight of objects inside speed bubbles, is that speed bubbles have to treat inertial forces and gravitational forces the same way, just as we would expect from general relativity. And that means that if Wayne managed to anchor a speed bubble inside a large spinning centrifuge, he could observe the centrifuge slowed down (relative to the rate of time flow within the bubble) while still experiencing the full centrifugal force. If he dropped something inside, it would "fall" towards the outside of the centrifuge, even though the apparent motion of the centrifuge is practically stopped. Does anyone know of any WoBs dealing with speed bubbles in accelerated frames, or in free-fall? Someone needs to ask Brandon what would happen if Wayne burned bendalloy while on a merry-go-round, or while skydiving.
  3. I think a simple way that we can reconcile the fact that no one actually dies of old age, and that (by WoB) gold compounding does not grant immortality even though it can heal all of the things that old people actually die of, is this: I posit that gold healing gets less effective the older you are, requiring greater reserves to heal the same amount, while the body continues to degenerate from aging. So Miles would probably live quite a bit longer than a normal person, but eventually even through compounding he wouldn't be able to keep generating the massive reserves of health he would need to keep his body from failing.
  4. My headcanon about this is that a partially-full metalmind, consumed by an allomancer, would actually appear as two allomantic reserves: the feruchemical compounding one, and the regular allomantic one. The allomancer could choose which one to burn.
  5. F. Iron A. Steel A. Tin A. Pewter H. Atium (F. Tin) Wax has shown what a versatile combination Crashers have. Throwing A. Pewter into that mix would be even more awesome, letting me throw my stored weight around with even more impunity. Adding compounded Tin (using an atium spike) for ridiculous senses and I have the start of something pretty awesome. A. Zinc H. Brass (F. Zinc) F. Copper F. Bronze Using a spike to get compounded Zinc, now I can riot emotions and think at super speed without the downside of storing much. F. Copper lets me store the vast amount of sensory data that I take in and process it at my convenience. A. Pewter offsets some of the downside of storing F. Bronze. F. Cadmium F. Bendalloy F. Gold A. Electrum A. Pewter also helps offset storing health and breath. I took F. Bendalloy because it goes well with cadmium, and with super mental speed, adding in speed bubbles just seems broken. But A. Bendalloy is a tempting alternative, especially with F. Nicrosil to compound allomantic strength. A. Electrum, especially compounded with F. Nicrosil, lets me glimpse the future and analyze it with compounded mental speed. A. Chromium F. Nicrosil F. Aluminum F. Duralumin With A. Chromium I can neutralize most other metalborn (assuming I've learned how to void metalminds). F. Nicrosil lets me compound the strength of my abilities when I'm not using them (no real need for A. Duralumin when you have that), and combined with F. Aluminum I have some limited capability to grant my abilities to friends. F. Duralumin lets me be social or antisocial as I choose, and plays well with A. Zinc. So I am basically Wax + Spiked Spook + Super Sherlock Holmes + significant endurance and ability to manipulate people. All that and only 2 spikes, few enough that it will be very difficult for anyone to come around and exploit my Flaw.
  6. It seems likely that the Surges give pretty much identical powers to both Orders that have them. So Skybreakers would be able to do the Basic and Reverse Lashings, Truthwatchers would be able to use illusions like Lightweavers and access Regrowth like Edgedancers, etc. We've already seen that both Shallan and Jasnah can Soulcast and it appears to function similarly, though Jasnah has the Soulcasting-at-a-distance trick up her safepouch. I think: (1) the Surges are probably a bit more flexible than we've seen, for instance, Kaladin can probably do a lot more with the Pressure Surge than just Full Lashings. So instead of just a couple odd powers, each Radiant Order can use two whole sets of powers. Some of these sets will work better with each other than others (see Kaladin vs. Lift as you've pointed out); (2) its been hinted that each Order has something extra, an effect or a bonus that arises from the combination of their two power sets; and (3) it may be that the different Orders access their Surges slightly differently, so for example a Truthwatcher might access illusions differently than a Lightweaver. (2) and (3) would help to give each Order a distinct and cohesive feel, alleviating the issue that you raise about their Surges not tying together well.
  7. I just interpreted Hoid's comment as referring to the way that Kelsier's actions destroyed the system of production of atium, which was a big part of the economic system of the Final Empire's nobility. But, that doesn't address the reference to worldhopping traffic through Scadrial, so you might have something there.
  8. Because with access to compounding for ALL feruchemical attributes, the Lord Ruler was so incredibly powerful that there should have been no way that Vin could have defeated him. It's only a combination of his complacency (probably helped along by the influence of Ruin), Vin's ability to draw on the mists, and his shock at being removed from his metalminds, that let him be defeated.
  9. Could you provide a link to this other thread, Stormgate? I searched through the forums before posting and could only find this topic, which I felt had a slightly different focus than the thread I created. (The linked thread was about EdroGrimshell developing a new set of metals with input from others. This thread that I posted is about everyone sharing new abilities that they think would make cool/interesting metallic powers, without trying to fit it into a certain structure.)
  10. Good points about the Terris people, and duralumin. Thanks for pointing those out!
  11. Right. The interference between different unkeyed metalminds is a clue that, in fact, the metalminds are not completely unkeyed - they might be stored at 1% identity or 10% identity, or something, and the residual identity is what causes the interference. My personal theory is that you can have partially keyed metalminds, and they would work something like how you imagine - faking identity with soulforging would be easier, for one possibility. For another, someone who is familiar with the feruchemist's soul could access partially keyed metalminds (the way Ashravan's soulstamps worked on Gaotona). It probably depends on the level of Connection with the feruchemist. The more they store identity while creating a metalmind, the less Connected to them you have to be to access it.
  12. Why is it that a non-allomancer can burn lerasium and thereby become a mistborn? For a long time I just assumed that, well, lerasium is a god metal, it's different. And maybe that is true. However, lately I've come up with a theory that explains how anyone can burn lerasium, so I thought I'd share it. Premise 1: Greater allomantic strength means higher maximum burn rate, and greater amount of power obtained per amount of metal burned. (This seems to be the case comparing the allomantic strengths of Kelsier, Vin, and Elend.) Premise 2: Lerasium, when burned by an allomancer with the ability to burn it, increases allomantic strength permanently. (Implication: there could be lerasium mistings, but their power would basically just let them use less lerasium to become a mistborn than others, or to become an even stronger mistborn than lerasium grants to non-allomancers.) Premise 3: Everyone native to Scadrial, by virtue of their innate investiture from Preservation, is a tiny bit of an allomancer in every metal. (This is normally completely unnoticeable, because the rate at which a non-allomancer could burn any of the metals is insignificantly small and produces next to no effect.) Premise 4: Anyone with allomantic ability unconsciously burns their metals a tiny amount when ingested. (Again, this is normally unnoticeable.) Putting these assumptions next to each other: everyone can burn lerasium a tiny amount, and does so unconsciously when it is ingested. But, lerasium increases allomantic strength. So the tiny initial burn increases their allomantic strength, and therefore their ability to burn lerasium increases. Which means they burn it faster and get more power, increasing their allomantic strength more - resulting in a positive feedback loop, which persists until the lerasium is all used up, and the person's allomantic strength has increased to the point of them being a very powerful mistborn. Problems, aside from the lack of evidence for premises 3 and 4: this only works with the theory that lerasium alloys create mistings if combined with the theory that mistings can burn god metal alloys of their metal. Can't remember if the first of those theories has been confirmed by WoB, but I don't think the second one has. Bands of Mourning spoilers:
  13. I don't think that nicrosil feruchemy works quite the way you describe it, as natc points out: the reserves of Investiture in the Bands was finite and were specifically noted by Wax to be gradually depleting as he used the Bands. So if you are storing the Investiture of feruchemical nicrosil ability in a nicrosilmind, your feruchemical nicrosil ability is only reduced while storing it. (This creates another conundrum, since storing f.nicrosil should make you unable to store f.nicrosil - so it is probably impossible to store it completely.) But you would still have your full ability whenever you were not storing it; tapping it would just make you stronger. (It isn't completely certain what feruchemical strength is, either. I believe it is a combination of reduced losses from drawing lots of attribute at once, ability to store a greater amount of attribute in a given piece of metal, and greater maximum store and tap rates, but that is just my theory.) In any case f.nicrosil seems to work like pretty much every other feruchemical ability except for copper (and perhaps cadmium and bendalloy) - it makes you weaker while storing in order to make you stronger while tapping, rather than totally removing the ability upon storing and only returning it upon tapping.
  14. Ah, sorry. I am spelling "aluminum" with the full "-ium" suffix. Drilled into my head as the "correct" way by my chemistry teacher in high school, though it looks like on Wikipedia that IUPAC accepts both spellings. I should try switching to the other way, leaving off that one "i" is somehow so much easier. I think the question of whether aluminium (dang it) metalminds are unkeyed comes down to the inner mechanisms of how metalminds are keyed in the first place, which we don't really know the answer to. Are they keyed by the identity that the feruchemist has while storing it, as I suppose? (This would make aluminumminds stored at 100% unkeyed.) Or are they keyed by the identity that the feruchemist has when he begins to store it? (This would make them keyed.) Or is it the identity somehow carried by the attribute itself? (It could go either way with this one, but probably keyed.) We don't know, but it is interesting to speculate.
  15. Actually, most of the mass of the matter in the universe is not from the Higgs field. The Higgs field gives mass to electrons and quarks, which are all tiny. Electrons have about 1/2000 times the mass of a proton, and quarks have about 1/250 (iirc). Most (99%) of the mass of proton and neutrons (which themselves form 99.9% of the mass of all matter) is from the kinetic energy of its constituent quarks and the binding energy of the gluon field. Neither of these would even change that much if quarks were massless (because even massless particles have momentum and kinetic energy, thanks to special relativity). So most of our mass is really just a function of the strength of the strong force between quarks and gluons. And I doubt iron feruchemy fiddles with that, because Wax doesn't dissolve into a quark-gluon plasma when he stores weight. :/ So yeah. Iron feruchemy still breaks physics.
  16. I think greater feruchemical strength could mean 1) greater maximum store and tap rates 2) reduced penalty for drawing lots of an attribute at once, as Dunkum says, and 3) ability to store more of an attribute in any given amount of metal, ability to pack more of the attribute in, so to speak. So a feruchemist could use nicrosil to increase their feruchemical strength vastly and then store huge amounts of an attribute in a very small metalmind (investing it so much in the process that it looks like aluminium to an allomancer burning iron or steel). Similarly I think allomantic strength means 1) greater maximum burn rate and 2) possibly getting more power out of the metal burned (in HoA we see Elend described as having powerful alomancy but he isn't described as going through metals faster than Vin). A twinborn with feruchemical nicrosil should be able to strengthen their allomantic power, giving us the long sought after method of empowering alomancy with feruchemy.
  17. Reviving this thread a bit... (I was searching through the forums before making this other thread to see if there were any like it. Decided to go ahead with making my own thread since mine opens the topic a little bit.) But that is beside the point. I like Elbereth's "swing movement" allomantic power, and I thought of a variation of it that I think brings it a bit more in line with the way that iron/steel work. It's a little complex, though. Basically, pushing and pulling with iron and steel always have a well defined direction. But how do you define a direction for causing orbital motion around yourself? My idea is to borrow a concept from magnetism and only be able to put "orbital spin" on metal that is moving relative to you. And it uses vector cross products. (Sorry.) The two metals would be "right-handed orbit" which would exert a force on metal proportional to r x v where ​r is the vector from you to the metal (direction only, the strength of force that can be exerted probably falls with distance), and v is the velocity of the metal (relative to you); and "left-handed orbit" which would exert a force -r x v. To finish things off both of these powers would exert an equivalent force+torque on you so that linear and angular momentum was preserved. This would allow you to make metal orbit around you at the same time that it was moving past you, perpendicularly to the direction it was moving. It would be a subtle power, but it would add an interesting dimension to the skill of pushing and pulling on metal, without making it so that you could just move metal wherever you wanted. Edit: if you had a metal already orbiting you (by pulling on it just right with iron, for example) what these metals could do is change the inclination of the orbit. So if you had it orbiting in a horizontal plane you could tilt its orbit to be vertical, for example.
  18. This is just for fun. Have any of you ever thought of new allomantic or feruchemical abilities that you think would be fun/interesting/cool? Here is a thread to share them. Here are some that I have come up with. Allomancy: Sense metals and pull heat away from metals, cooling them (possibly transferring heat to yourself) Sense metals and push heat into metals, heating them (possibly transferring heat from yourself) Sense metals and pull light into metals, darkening them or making them perfectly black Sense metals and push light into them, brightening them or making them shine light Sense metals and weaken them, making them easier to deform or fracture Sense metals and strengthen them, making them harder to deform or fracture Sense metals and disintegrate them, turning them into the mists (which would probably quickly evaporate if it was daytime or inside) Sense metals and grow them from the mists (requires the mists and a seed of the desired metal) Push on the life force within living beings, making it more difficult for them to heal or grow Pull on the life force within living beings, causing them to heal or grow more vigorously (great for trying to grow crops when ash is always falling from the sky) Feruchemy: Store creativity Store morality or conscience (knowing what is right and wrong) Store wisdom (storing lots makes you insane, tapping lots of it lets you instantly figure out the best course of action for your goals) Store emotions Store fertility or virility (depending on whether you are female or male) Looking forward to seeing your ideas!
  19. As Voidus says, the weirdest thing about f.copper is that memories get stashed in copperminds permanently until withdrawn, while (for example) your strength is only diminished while storing in f.pewter. I disagree that storing nutrition and breath are (perfect) counterexamples to copper being unique in this. In my view nutrition and breath are more like your body's homeostatic capabilities in maintaining sufficient nourishment and oxygen levels. It doesn't just store nutrition from your body, because (at least, what I understood from the Ars Arcana) you need to eat while storing for it to take effect; you can't just store some nutrition and eat an extra meal afterwards to make up for it. Granted it does seem that there is some permanent effect to storing nutrition and breath, so my argument here is a bit shaky. But it still feels like copper works differently.
  20. I totally agree that copper feruchemy doesn't seem to work the same way as other feruchemical abilities - and I think there might be some vague WoBs about it, but I cannot find them. Storytelling-wise, I'm guessing it is this way because it is "more cool" to be able to store specific memories than just general memory capability. But I have no idea as to the realmatics explanation of it.
  21. So, the southern scadrians seem to have some way of granting feruchemical (and probably also allomantic) abilities to anyone, using nicrosilminds. It has also been noted that nicrosil ferrings are called "Soulbearers", leading to the postulate that nicrosilminds might be able to store someone's innate investiture, the spark of life that is related to giving people sapience, making them, well, people. We also know that in the future, Mistborn is going sci-fi, and one of the celebrated tropes of science fiction is the "uplifting" of animals, giving them human levels of intelligence and then recognizing them as sapient persons. So could it be possible to store a little bit of your innate investiture in an unkeyed nicrosilmind, expand it through compounding, and then give this nicrosilmind and a medallion granting nicrosil feruchemy and allomancy to an animal, thereby allowing them to tap the innate investiture, become sapient, and keep their nicrosilminds filled (and sustaining their sapience) through compounding?!
  22. With the information from Bands, we now know that unkeyed metalminds are possible: that is, metalminds created while the feruchemist is storing identity, so that they don't "know" who their owner is, allowing any feruchemist with the appropriate ability to tap them. This leads to the question: are all aluminiumminds unkeyed? It is possible that no, they are not: the feruchemist has his/her identity upon beginning to fill an aluminiummind, and the aluminiummind itself contains his/her identity when filled, so there are two avenues by which the aluminiummind could know its owner. But I think the more interesting possibility is yes: since the feruchemist has no identity while filling their aluminiummind, the resulting store of identity is unkeyed and any aluminium ferring can access it. Which would mean that any aluminium ferring could store their own identity and then tap the identity of another feruchemist, allowing them to access all of that feruchemist's keyed metalminds, if the aluminium ferring also had the appropriate feruchemical abilities to access them (through the medallions, or hemalurgy, or through being a full feruchemist). Addition in edit: a further implication of this is that an unkeyed metalmind could be burned allomantically by any allomancer of the appropriate metal! I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought of this, but I haven't seen it discussed since Bands of Mourning came out, so I wanted to bring it up. It seems that it is very possible that feruchemists could use aluminiumminds to trade metalminds, without making all metalminds unkeyed.
  23. I wasn't sure where to put this because there are half a dozen topics about the medallions... so here is another one! It's been recognized that based on the information we have, the medallions shouldn't work. The unkeyed goldmind that Wax and co find is only usable by Wayne, since he is already a gold ferring. So the medallions, which are described as unkeyed metalminds (we've seen iron, brass, copper, and duralumin, not counting the Bands themselves) combined with an unkeyed nicrosilmind containing the ability to tap/fill the metalminds in question. The medallions are said to work by tapping the unkeyed nicrosilmind, granting the ability to tap/fill the other metalminds, which are then used. However, since the unkeyed goldmind is only usable by someone who is already a gold ferring, the unkeyed nicrosilmind of a medallion should only be usable by a nicrosil ferring. So why can anyone use the medallions? My theory (which is not without its problems, see below) is (1) that each medallion actually contains another nicrosilmind: one filled with the ability to tap/fill nicrosil itself, and (2) that everyone native to Scadrial, by virtue of their innate investiture, is just a tiny bit of a feruchemist for every metal. Point (2) is unnoticeable in virtually every circumstance, because the rate that a normal non-feruchemist can store or tap in any metalmind is so miniscule. However, under my theory, anyone could tap just a tiny amount from any unkeyed metalmind. In particular, they could tap a tiny amount from the nicrosilmind containing feruchemical nicrosil ability that I posit in point (1). But that would allow them to further tap from the nicrosilmind, leading to a positive feedback loop until they have the ability of a normal nicrosil ferring. Then they would be able to tap the investiture of the other nicrosilminds, giving them the abilities bestowed by the medallion. The main problem with this theory is that the process would have to be unconscious to match what is described in the books, whereas feruchemy is generally described to require conscious intent. So there might be something entirely different going on. However, there is obvious precedent in the books for allomancy being used unconsciously, so it is possible that it could happen for feruchemy as well. Furthermore, when the medallions are being used, for example when Marasi is storing weight, the supposed initial process of tapping a nicrosilmind filled with feruchemical iron ability is not described. Perhaps (3) the ease of unconsciously using feruchemical nicrosil is also due to the innate investiture of Scadrial natives, seeking out more of its own.
  24. Can we discuss that wonderful structure visualization? I might have to build ones for tWoK and WoR as well, to see how they compare. But no, this is a distraction. Deviation. Thesis. We must finish our storming thesis... ... but I can spare some time for a bit of brief speculation, right? The primary main character shows up in all parts of SA3 and is surely Dalinar, and the secondary main characters are almost certainly Kaladin and Shallan. Of those two, one of them only shows up once in Part 2 (the first half of "SA3 Book 2") and the other is completely absent from Part 4 (the first half of "SA3 Book 3"). Otherwise, these two are present in all the other parts of the book. Then we have the four tertiary main characters (t1, t2, t3, and t4), a recurring interlude character (novelette 1), and another character (novelette 2) with their own self-contained story that takes place during Part 2, with one chapter/scene near the end of Part 5. -t1 has viewpoints throughout Part 2 and Part 4, with a chapter/scene at the end of Part 5 -t2 has viewpoints throughout Part 3, with a chapter/scene at the end of Part 5 -t3 has viewpoints throughout Part 2 -t4 has viewpoints throughout Part 4, with a chapter/scene at the end of Part 5 Candidates for these characters are Adolin, Navani, Jasnah, Szeth, and Eshonai. (And maybe Renarin? Though Brandon seems to indicate that we won't have Renarin viewpoints until later, maybe much later.) And very possibly a new character for novelette 1, since Brandon says this character "hasn't had viewpoints yet" and "takes the place of Szeth/Eshonai" (implying s/he is not either of them and we have a new recurring interlude character). And, if trends continue, we will have a prologue giving us a different viewpoint of the night of Gavilar's assassination, and an epilogue where Wit waits for someone to appear or for some momentous event to happen. So, does anyone have any ideas about the identity of these tertiary and novelette characters? Adolin and Navani are pretty good candidates for tertiary characters. I think Szeth and Eshonai are possibilities for the novellete 2 character - exploring Szeth's interaction with Nalan as they travel to take on the Stone Shamans, or finding out what happened after Eshonai fell into the chasms (maybe she got her Voidspren knocked out of her and she rejoins the Parshendi remnant?). We might even find out what happened to Jasnah after all, if she is novelette 2. Here are my guesses: -t1 is Adolin (but could be Jasnah) -t2 is Jasnah (but could be Adolin) -t3 is Navani (she is most likely to be sticking close to Dalinar, so wouldn't need her own viewpoint at the end of SA3) -t4 is Szeth (we hear from him at the end to gear us up for his book, SA4) -novelette 1 is a new viewpoint character, but I have no idea who -novelette 2 is Eshonai (we find out what happened to her and the remaining Parshendi early on, and return briefly to them near the end) As for which of the secondary characters is Kaladin and which is Shallan, it is really too difficult to tell, as we have little indication of what their story lines will be. And my guesses for the other characters are all pretty up in the air too. Ugh. I want this book now! EDIT: Going back through other WoBs I see that Szeth's book is likely SA5, not SA4. I'm still sticking with my guess that Szeth is the late-appearing tertiary character, though - I imagine Brandon wants to use screentime with our favourite sword sparingly to keep pulling us along.
  25. I have The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance signed. Totally worth driving a few hours to get a chance to meet Brandon and hear him in person, I'd recommend it if he's ever at a conference in your area!
×
×
  • Create New...