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Goodreads Q&A


WeiryWriter

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Storm it! This whole thread started and ended all while I was asleep! Curse you, timezone difference!

Anyway, I like how Horneaters are part Parshendi. Perhaps that's the real reason behind the persecution that eventually led to them living in the mountains. The hatred against Voidbringers might have pushed the Alethi into attacking the Horneaters. (Not that such a rationale would have been justified, mind you.)

By the way, I had the impression that Brandon has never considered the possibility of Feruchemical gold users healing Hemalurgic wounds before today. I wonder how he feels about this, and if he'll utilize this in a future Mistborn book.

Edited by skaa
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Ah, he thought that the questioner was referring to the Alloy supplement for the Mistborn Adventure Game? (they used "Full Feruchemist" in it).

 

EDIT: Well that was fast. Someone give one of Brandon's old posts an upvote for me. ;)

 

Source:

 

Oh... oh my. The implications for Scadrial are immense. I'm excited to see the sci-fi trilogy now, where everyone can have as many spikes as they want.

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Ah, he thought that the questioner was referring to the Alloy supplement for the Mistborn Adventure Game? (they used "Full Feruchemist" in it).

 

EDIT: Well that was fast. Someone give one of Brandon's old posts an upvote for me. ;)

 

Source:

 

Kurkistan:

Could Miles heal back his Allomancy if it was spiked out of him?

 

Brandon Sanderson:
No, he could not. He would no longer be an Allomancer. Also, he'd probably be dead.  :)
 
Kurkistan:
Thanks!
 
I'd thought maybe he could just do some super-tapping from his existing Health in his goldminds (since he'd still have his Feruchemy)... 
 
Brandon Sanderson:
Oh, I see what you're asking. Using Feruchemy to heal the removed portion of soul. That's actually plausible, not so different from healing other kinds of soul-wounds. If he survived, then yes, this actually might work. (That's why I get for reading the questions so quickly.)
 
Kurkistan:
Thank you!  :D
 
*Now to create a society of infinite Compounding Feruchemists/Allomancers/Hemalurgists in the Mistborn Adventure Game...*

 

 

Hmmm, so that means that you could actually create a Mistborn-farm for Hermalurgists if all those Mistborns also happened to be Gold Ferrings. How exciting. *evil grin*

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Hmmm, so that means that you could actually create a Mistborn-farm for Hermalurgists if all those Mistborns also happened to be Gold Ferrings. How exciting. *evil grin*

 

Don't even need them to be Gold Ferrings. You could find one Gold Ferring, spike them, then stick that spike into pretty much anybody else for nigh-infinite spikes. You could even get more Feruchemical gold spikes by spiking a Gold Ferring with another spike, so when you spike out their Feruchemical gold, they still have it via spike and can regenerate it.

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I linked to it earlier, but to summarize how easy it is to get infinite everything with this mechanic. If you start out with a gold compounder, you can even do it without any death.

 

Scenario 1:

Required: 1 gold Compounder.

 

Spike out his Allomantic gold and have him heal it back. Spike out his Feruchemical gold and have him Compound it back. KEEP DOING THIS.

 

Transfer sets of spikes to other people and then spike out all their other attributes. So give a pair of Allomantic gold/Feruchemical gold to a Coinshot and then keep spiking his Allomantic steel out forever. Or give them to a muggle and infinite human attributes for everyone.

 

Once you get a single person gold compounding, it spreads.

 

Other Scenarios:

 

Beyond that, I think you need at least one death. Moral of the story: once you get a pair of people with "natural" (read: spike-out-able) Allomantic gold and Feruchemical gold + either an Allomantic gold or an Feruchemical gold spike that was generously donated by a terminally ill centenarian, you can start the cycle.

 

-------

 

I agree with Skaa, though, that I also had the impression that Brandon hadn't considered this, and once he realizes the implications of this ("why we don't have/want to write about a society of perfect people") he'll leverage his "plausible" in the WoB into "but there's a 98% chance that Miles would die from the shock of it" or "turns out the Spiritual shock disrupts the rest of his magic for an instant or two".

Edited by Kurkistan
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I didn't think that a Gold/Gold Twinborn could use the Compounded Health once they had the Feruchemical gold Spiked out. I could be wrong, but I'm just assuming you still have to be a Ferring to use the power. Maybe they could still use the Heath if they Burned the Goldmind Allomantically? Is that what you mean? Now that I think about it... That would probably work. Vin felt Sazed's stores when she Burned one of his Metalminds, and she wasn't a Feruchemist. Hmm.

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Yeah, that's what I meant: burning the health Allomantically. Heck, if you can manipulate Identity such that someone completely different can compound your metalminds, I think you can get away with burning your own. If not just bring a Full Feruchemist into the mix and have them do some Identity-manipulation (using Health they can Compound with "borrowed" Allomantic gold spike you can definitely produce for free, if you feel like it) so that you can Comound their goldminds instead.

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Man, Hemalurgy is such a hack. I expect there will be some checks we'll see in future books - maybe you can't fully heal spiritual damage as severe as having your Allomancy/Feruchemy taken away from you. Or the imperfect capacity of Hemalurgic spikes prevents near-infinite reproduction of magic - it's all Investiture after all, and Shards probably don't have an infinite supply of it.

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I agree with Skaa, though, that I also had the impression that Brandon hadn't considered this, and once he realizes the implications of this ("why we don't have/want to write about a society of perfect people") he'll leverage his "plausible" in the WoB into "but there's a 98% chance that Miles would die from the shock of it" or "turns out the Spiritual shock disrupts the rest of his magic for an instant or two".

 

It's also possible he'd rule that when you heal back your stolen attribute, then the spike with it stops working. It should be possible to work that into how Shardplate works. If you regenerate pieces, any extraneous pieces fall to dust (presumably to conserve Investiture?).

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It's also possible he'd rule that when you heal back your stolen attribute, then the spike with it stops working. It should be possible to work that into how Shardplate works. If you regenerate pieces, any extraneous pieces fall to dust (presumably to conserve Investiture?).

 

I imagine this has to do with the Plate's cognitive aspect and its identity more so than conservation of Investiture.

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I imagine this has to do with the Plate's cognitive aspect and its identity more so than conservation of Investiture.

 

We're not disagreeing necessarily. I have tried linking Investiture to identity in the past (that thread need heavy updates, though, and barely touches on it). Conservation of Investiture would naturally imply conservation of identity/Cognitive aspects.

 

Even if the mechanism of Plate had everything to do with its identity, that mechanism still applies to why it might be impossible to generate infinite spikes.

 

In any case, I think we can all agree that Brandon will probably not make it so that everyone on Scadrial can have infinite spikes. :(

Edited by Moogle
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Hmm. Hemalurgy OP.

-

Completely unrelated, how much air pressure is required to prevent the average human male from being able to inflate his lungs? I need this. Don't ask questions.

With Stormlight constantly healing crushed lungs/boosting muscle strength/preventing you from needing to breath, it becomes irrelevant.

With Feruchemical pewter, Feruchemical iron, Feruchemical gold, Allomantic pewter, Feruchemical cadmium, more than a normal human to an arbitrary amount.

Otherwise, no idea.

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With Stormlight constantly healing crushed lungs/boosting muscle strength/preventing you from needing to breath, it becomes irrelevant.

With Feruchemical pewter, Feruchemical iron, Feruchemical gold, Allomantic pewter, Feruchemical cadmium, more than a normal human to an arbitrary amount.

Otherwise, no idea.

 

Well, I need "Average Joe" data, no powers. 

I'm trying to figure out the maximum speed of a Twinborn Steel/Steel user or a Ferumancer like the Lord Ruler. There is only one WoB that I've found related to this, it says something along the lines of "They can move as fast as they want to, but they're limited by air resistance and that could injure them if they exceed certain speeds."

-

Now, TLR burning Pewter (Which would be Duralumin strength Pewter at all times) could move much faster than an ordinary Steel Twinborn, but I'm just trying to find a baseline. Right now I'm going with how much air pressure is needed pound per square inch to prevent the chest from rising, which would be the ordinary cap of how fast a Steel Twinborn could move. I have a chart from a study on the damage caused by explosions, and it says that 35 mph wind speeds cause about one pound per square inch of pressure. So if you need.... 6 PSI of pressure to stop a human from breathing, that means that the "Average Joe" Twinborn could reach speeds of just over 200 mph before not being able to breathe. If we can figure out how much more durable Pewter makes you, we can multiply that to figure out a Full Ferumancer's top speed.

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In response to all the spike farmers awesome people talking about infinite power using Hemalurgy and such things: No matter what though, Hemalurgy seems like it would be painful (even when you don't kill the person), and I'm certain that there would be many who would think that creating a farm would be...immoral, to the say the least. Also, considering Harmony's Intent, I think that out-of-control spiking might cause him to send someone to restore the harmony, so...despite that Hemalurgy could be consider OP, so the biggest deterrent for theoretical spike farms might (possibly) be Sazed. :P

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Thanks for the link! My thoughts on first reading that: So anything much above 120 mph will stop you from being able to keep upright. A Steel Twinborn would be limited by that, yes? So around 100 mph is the fastest a Twinborn could run for any reasonable distance. A Full Ferumancer, though, could also tap loads of Iron to keep themselves on the ground; they could run at potentially much higher speeds. So "Average Joe" human can survive 500 mph wind without serious damage. Assuming they can still breathe, that means that a very low calc for the Lord Ruler's speed is around 500 mph. Hmm. The Lord Ruler is looking more and more OP with every second. If he didn't have game-breaking CIS he would've wrecked everyone on Scadrial.

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In response to all the spike farmers awesome people talking about infinite power using Hemalurgy and such things: No matter what though, Hemalurgy seems like it would be painful (even when you don't kill the person), and I'm certain that there would be many who would think that creating a farm would be...immoral, to the say the least. Also, considering Harmony's Intent, I think that out-of-control spiking might cause him to send someone to restore the harmony, so...despite that Hemalurgy could be consider OP, so the biggest deterrent for theoretical spike farms might (possibly) be Sazed. :P

 

Miles no longer felt pain. Spiking him would only be a minor inconvenience for him, and he could be compensated for his time.

 

(Or, I mean, instead of executing him they could have harvested spikes from him unwillingly. It would end up saving more lives.)

 

Harmony's stated ideology is to allow people to have as much choice as possible, and allowing those born without Allomancy to gain it through hard work (ie. paying loads of cash) seems right up his alley.

 

You'd just have to make sure you don't torture people (Sazed might have issues there) and let economics decide how many spikes exist. A down-on-his-luck Coinshot could just visit his local Hemalurgy store and sign up to be a donor, get spiked a few times and then given a huge paycheck. (Maybe less of a paycheck if he has to pay for his own Feruchemical gold/Allomantic gold spike, but then he'd still be up.)

 

Sazed still doesn't seem quite willing to stop pain and suffering, though. The Set seems to have successfully taken a number of women hostage who will be used as brood mares. You'd think Sazed would be intervening around that point, but it doesn't seem he has except for the barest exertion of power teleporting Wax some guns (which he may or may not have even done). You also wouldn't expect someone holding Ruin to be very focused on stopping pain and destruction...

 

This is probably a conversation for a different thread, though. I enjoy Hemalurgy discussions.

Edited by Moogle
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Kal:

Instead of trying to picture a normal running stance, picture a person running up a 60 or 70 degree slope -- something like the angle of '/'. Then rotate that image until the ground slope is more normal. Yes, the runner now looks impossibly tilted, but remember that he is effectively jumping forward with each stride. Running like that, the knees would stay more severely bent, and the heel would never come close to touching down, but the decrease in frontal surface area (wind would encounter the forehead and top of the shoulders more than the chest) would create an effect more like that of a marathon biker. It would be quite possible to push off fast enough to be exceeding the 125 mph threshold that the stationary, wind-pushed person can manage.

 

But, going back to the '/' slope runner, such a runner would almost inevitably be pushed out from the slope by the circular motion of their thighs. Luckily, gravity is going to play on the side of our flat-land feruchemist and bring him back down ahead of where he lost contact. As the feruchemist accelerates, his movement will skew toward a lope as both the launch speed of his legs and the lift of his relative wind speed fight back. I think the common steel feruchemist would be able to achieve something greater than 135 mph average velocity, but the nature of his movement is going to make the graph of his moment velocity-over-time turn into a yo-yo pattern along the upper end.

 

As for where mixing in the other feruchemical powers can get you too, 500 mph is probably not unlikely.

 

The only other interesting resource I can think of off hand was David Farland's The Runelords books, where some of the characters used mega-speed magics and were worried over pulverizing their leg bones if they attempted to turn with poor technique. I think some of those characters were framed as running near 200 mph, but I don't have the books in front of me to check.

 

Edit: also consider the first paragraph of this Wikipedia page. A running feruchemist isn't going to be the high-end of the surface area efficiency, but 150 mph doesn't too implausible.

Edited by Sir Jerric
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I was thinking of the "/" angled runner. What I gathered from the article is that at wind speeds higher than 120 mph it becomes impossible to stay on your feet, and you end up getting lifted up and thrown backwards. Maybe they could push it a little faster with your jumping gait strategy, but not very much in my opinion. They'd still be subject to the wind's lift pulling them off the ground and making running impossible.

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But there is no wind in this model, so the runner can't be thrown backwards. He'll be slowed down each time he lifts off, and that will eventually provide a terminal velocity. But each push off (step) will accelerate the feruchemist, so his actual velocity will yo-yo across the terminal velocity as he continues running. There is no hard cap on his speed, just a deceleration due to air resistance.

 

Other feruchemical powers that will help:

Pewter for improved acceleration rate (but also increased drag)

Iron for increased resistance to drag and lift

Zinc to prevent mishaps with the erratic footfall timing of the evolving loping-gait

Gold to fix the mishaps and deal with the incredible stresses

Cadmium to negate breathing issues

 

Even with Steel alone, I think a trained runner could achieve 150 mph or better under semi-ideal conditions. And then one little slip, and the "rapid deceleration" would pulp the poor fellow.

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