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Vindication - spoilers


Talesk

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Hello,
 
I think I found a minor continuity error in The Lost Metal.  I tried to search the forums but could not see this reference anywhere else.
 
Spoiler

When Wax and Wayne were battling their Doppelgängers, they swapped weapons. Specifically, Wax threw Wayne Vindication, and Wayne was able to successfully discharge the firearm multiple times. Wayne did not yet have the spikes granting steel, or his mistborn powers.

Wayne could not have used Vindication at this point in the story due to the elaborate safety Ranette put into the handle, allowing only steel/iron users to discharge the weapon.

I get it, it's fantasy / suspension of disbelief.

However, if how something works (vindication's safety in this case) is exhaustively discussed, it should continue to operate that way unless otherwise stated.

 

I feel there are multiple ways out of this...

1) Wax could have thrown any other firearm - but it's nice if it's his signature weapon.

2) Wayne palmed a magnet to defeat the safety, etc etc. Something clever, Wayne is clever like that.

 

Also, I'm happy to be wrong.   Hopefully I misunderstood something here.

 

Thanks much

Edited by Talesk
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Interesting catch! If it works like a regular gun though a safety does not need to be disengaged every time you fire it. So Wax could have disengaged it before throwing it to him. Honestly he shouldn't even have to be holding it to disengage it right? He could have thrown it to Wayne and then disengage safety. That is kind of the advantage of the allomantic safety. If someone was able to get Vindication from Wax he could engage the safety without needing to hold the gun rendering it inoperative. 

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@StormingTexan is almost certainly correct that Wax disengaged the safety before throwing, as he threw, or after he threw the gun to Wayne. If Wax was using Vindication during the fight (I don't recall all the details just now) the safety may not have been on at all. Whether it's explicitly narrated or not this would have been trivial for Wax to do as long as he had steel.

The safety Ranette built in can only be used to switch the gun between a state that will fire and one that will not. If the safety is engaged, no one can fire the gun without toggling it. If the safety is not engaged, anyone can fire the gun.

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14 hours ago, Returned said:

@StormingTexan is almost certainly correct that Wax disengaged the safety before throwing, as he threw, or after he threw the gun to Wayne. If Wax was using Vindication during the fight (I don't recall all the details just now) the safety may not have been on at all. Whether it's explicitly narrated or not this would have been trivial for Wax to do as long as he had steel.

The safety Ranette built in can only be used to switch the gun between a state that will fire and one that will not. If the safety is engaged, no one can fire the gun without toggling it. If the safety is not engaged, anyone can fire the gun.

That's what I would have assumed, without going back to re-read it to see if it was explicitly mentioned - that Wax had already been using, or prepared to use, the gun in battle.

If indeed it was a continuity error in the writing, it's a very easy one to explain away!

EDIT: Yes, I went back to re-read it and Wax tells Wayne they should switch opponents on the rooftop at the end of Chapter 62... After speedrunning their way up the building through the Set's people and talking the last resistance, the building's ordinary non-Set guards, into fleeing instead of fighting.

Wax was using Vindication throughout that speedrun (along with the Steel Survivor and The Big Gun), so yeah it all checks out.

Edited by robardin
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Thi is a nice catch!

I checked the book, don't have an easy way to post the paragraph verbatum from Lost Metal, but there is no mention of the safety system, only that Wayne shoots everything except the hazekiller shots.

However Coppermind says on Vindication:

Quote

 The safety disables the gun, making it nearly impossible to turn it on its owner.

So, while I think it might be a little slip, as I don't recall any mention to the safety system in the Lost Metal at all (and had forgotten about it myself:lol:), we don't even need to add head canon to make it make sense, you need to activate the safety to stop the gun from shooting, not the other way around.

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4 hours ago, XaviGzz said:

Isn't this Vindication a Vindication 2.0 gun? I do not have the book at hand, but didn't Ranette build Wax new guns and those are the ones Steris packs for the mission?

Yes that is correct he uses version 2 in this book. I would think though it was built with the same safety but there is no mention of it that I recall. 

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Thanks for all the feedback, this has been a great discussion.

I found the description of Vindication in "The Alloy of Law", Chapter 14. I admit it is not definitively clear how the internal mechanism works, however I feel it is much more intricate than is being given credit for.

 

In this chapter they visit Ranette's workshop for the first time.  There is a pretty thorough discussion of the various haze killer rounds developed to combat specific opponents (iron, steel, pewter, tin eye, etc).  This chapter more or less serves to highlight Ranette's character and mechanical genius.

 

This is also where they describe Vindication as specifically having a grip safety.  For me, there is only one other real-world example of a grip safety and that is in the 1911 / 1911-a model.  For a 1911 style grip safety, the user must be holding the pistol for the internal safety to disengage and the 1911 pistol be able to fire. This is done via a steel lever on the back of the pistol's grip.  If there is not a firm hold on the 1911 firearm the lever is not depressed and the firearm will not fire.  

 

In my mind's eye, I saw Ranette developing and implementing an evolved version of this.  The chapter goes on to say that this is an allomancer only safety so that the firearm cannot be turned on its owner. To me, this means that if the user is disarmed, the opponent cannot turn the firearm on the owner.  The owner should not need to manually re-engage the safety for it to be rendered unable to fire at the owner.

 

To me, it is not a passive toggle on/off safety but rather an active satefy where an allomancer must be pushing/pulling the internal mechanism into a firing position.  This is, in my opinion, the only way to satisfactorily meet the descriptions as given in "The Alloy of Law", Chapter 14.

 

Either way, I'm happy to stand down on my argument that there is a continuity error in "The Lost Metal", as the initial description is not definitive and clear. In my reading and interpretation there was.. but the actual text is ambiguous.

 

 If it's a simple on/off safety I'd be disappointed.  Ranette is better than something so pedestrian :P  (jk)

 

Thank you all for your time and consideration

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1 hour ago, Talesk said:

This is also where they describe Vindication as specifically having a grip safety. 

She says the safety is hidden in the grip and there is no visible signs of a safety on the outside. So if someone grabs the gun that is not a coinshot/lurcher they would not be able to engage/disengage the safety. Even if they are since it is hidden they would have to know to burn metal and look for it. When Wax pushes on it he hears something "click". To me this indicates a mechanical switch not something that has to be actively engaged the entire time it is used. 

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2 hours ago, Talesk said:

This is also where they describe Vindication as specifically having a grip safety.  For me, there is only one other real-world example of a grip safety and that is in the 1911 / 1911-a model.  For a 1911 style grip safety, the user must be holding the pistol for the internal safety to disengage and the 1911 pistol be able to fire. This is done via a steel lever on the back of the pistol's grip.  If there is not a firm hold on the 1911 firearm the lever is not depressed and the firearm will not fire.  

In my mind's eye, I saw Ranette developing and implementing an evolved version of this.  The chapter goes on to say that this is an allomancer only safety so that the firearm cannot be turned on its owner. To me, this means that if the user is disarmed, the opponent cannot turn the firearm on the owner.  The owner should not need to manually re-engage the safety for it to be rendered unable to fire at the owner.

Thank you for the extra detail! I wasn't aware of this kind of safety. The biggest issue I see with a safety like you describe in Vindication is that the angle of the gun relative to the center of mass of someone using seems variable in a way that the 1911 grip safety would not be. It seems to me that it would be difficult to work a grip-style safety if the angle is off even slightly (the force of the push would not just disengage the safety but would transfer through to the overall gun, ruining aim). That seems like a pretty detrimental feature during a gunfight. Maybe there could be some intervening mechanism that would prevent that, but that strikes me as extremely intricate and maybe even delicate (some cool gimbaling, springs, and/or shock-absorbers maybe?). I'm not a gunsmith, nor an Allomancer, so maybe my gut feelings are just off here.

A second issue is that it is described as very, very hard for a Coinshot or Lurcher to mediate the force of a Push or Pull. It's generally full-force, with finer control being accomplished through "pulsing" the Push or Pull rather than maintaining it continuously at some lesser intensity. So in that sense a safety which requires continuous Pushing or Pulling seems disastrously difficult to me. The obvious counterargument to this one is that Wax is a fantastically skilled Coinshot and is observed to have exactly that sort of control. And since both Vindications were clearly made with him in mind, that might just be an additional layer of security: even if someone else takes the gun and knows about the safety, good luck using it effectively!

Edited by Returned
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  • 2 weeks later...

So the safety toggle could have just been off allowing Wayne to use the gun.  That tracks just fine, what got me though is the fact that vindication II is described as being fully aluminum, near the beginning of chapter 25, but it’s also not described as having the special safety.  So either it’s a slip up by Sanderson or there is no safety in vindication II, since being made of aluminum means you couldn’t push on the mechanism in the handle.

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43 minutes ago, menacekop said:

So the safety toggle could have just been off allowing Wayne to use the gun.  That tracks just fine, what got me though is the fact that vindication II is described as being fully aluminum, near the beginning of chapter 25, but it’s also not described as having the special safety.  So either it’s a slip up by Sanderson or there is no safety in vindication II, since being made of aluminum means you couldn’t push on the mechanism in the handle.

Handle could be wood.

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Putting safety feature for steel/iron misting in gun made fully out of aluminum defies the purpose of making it out of aluminum in the first place. Any small piece of metal put in that gun would make it visible for every steel/iron misting and they would be able to push/pull it. So Vindication II doesn't have that safety thing. The main feature of this gun type is special chambers for bullets to kill mistings - they are still there, and they can be switched with the simple button on the handle. And tbf did this safety feature was ever used by Wax to prevent someone else from shooting at him? I don't remember anything like that.

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1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Putting safety feature for steel/iron misting in gun made fully out of aluminum defies the purpose of making it out of aluminum in the first place. Any small piece of metal put in that gun would make it visible for every steel/iron misting and they would be able to push/pull it. So Vindication II doesn't have that safety thing. The main feature of this gun type is special chambers for bullets to kill mistings - they are still there, and they can be switched with the simple button on the handle. And tbf did this safety feature was ever used by Wax to prevent someone else from shooting at him? I don't remember anything like that.

Well to this point Wax says he used regular bullets that could be pushed in the other gun Steel Survivor which is also aluminum. Would you be able to push/pull on metal inside of an aluminum gun? I am thinking not since it would be pointless to put regular rounds in an aluminum gun.  If not I agree it would not make sense to have an alomantic safety in Vindication II unless the handle is made of wood like Frustrated mentioned which would make sense for a revolver. 

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16 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

Well to this point Wax says he used regular bullets that could be pushed in the other gun Steel Survivor which is also aluminum. Would you be able to push/pull on metal inside of an aluminum gun? I am thinking not since it would be pointless to put regular rounds in an aluminum gun.  If not I agree it would not make sense to have an alomantic safety in Vindication II unless the handle is made of wood like Frustrated mentioned which would make sense for a revolver. 

You can't push metal enclosed in aluminum. The revolvers usually has slightly uncovered cylinder so you can push bullets in  them, or if fully covered, the bullet that is in the barrel can be pushed/pulled if aimed at misting. Wax pushes bullets after firing, so that's why he uses regular bullets.
But Vindication II is for duels with allomancers and made fully out of aluminum (coppermind about Ranette, TLM ch 19) so no wooden handle, therefore no safety mechanism. Only with wooden handle there can be this feature, but as I said, that would make this gun useless in fights with allomancers.

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5 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You can't push metal enclosed in aluminum. The revolvers usually has slightly uncovered cylinder so you can push bullets in  them, or if fully covered, the bullet that is in the barrel can be pushed/pulled if aimed at misting. Wax pushes bullets after firing, so that's why he uses regular bullets.

Yes I get this so why make Steel Survivor out of the much more expensive aluminum?

Regardless I am agreeing with you that there is probably not an alomantic safety on Vindication II it is a good point. Although I do not agree that if it had a wooden handle it would be useless it is not like the first one was useless. More precisely put it wouldn't make sense to have the safety in Vindication II that is all aluminum. Although I think we may be taking the "made fully of aluminum" too literally and it may still have a wood grip as would be the style in this period just all the metallic parts are aluminum which still means no safety as it would be pointless to make the gun out of aluminum otherwise. 

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Would it be possible for there to be a tiny hole in the aluminum body of the gun, oriented such that it would only be visible to someone holding it (like at the back of the gun, under and behind the hammer)? That would allow for the Vindication-style safety, but wouldn't be very dangerous in a fight with a Coinshot or Lurcher. The vast majority of angles would render the safety invisiible/unpushable/unpullable, except for someone holding the gun.

Whether or not that's something that is actually true of the gun, any possible workaround suggests that other workarounds are also possible. A master gunsmith and skilled Lurcher like Ranette is going to be more capable of finding a solution to issues like this than any of us, and so even if the solution isn't presented in-text that doesn't preclude one from existing. But regardless, I think that the above observation that the safety is just not that great of a feature is a good one-- thrown in in the first place as an example of another creative use and extension of Allomancy, but one which never really mattered. It might appeal to a rough-and-tumble gunfighter like Wax, but would be a no-brainer to trade away in favor of something more useful (like an aluminum gun body).

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