Seeking and Smoking

[Swimmingly]

But just having Sazed dump a bunch of allomantic theory in becomes, quite literally, a deux ex machina. Besides, preservation's memories probably skedadled when Leras died.

[name_here]

I'm sure Harmony is more than capable of figuring out how his own power system works. But it doesn't seem to be his style to just go and tell everyone.

[Oudeis]

Or just someone new could figure it out. He figured a lot out in a thousand years, but surely a hundred seekers, not fearing for their lives, could figure out as much as one man, given a century or so.

[Mailliw73]

Ok, I was just saying that I wished we had more information about Seeking and Smoking because everyone just assumes that they are just on/off powers. I don't think that any characters who actually would know how would just tell someone everything. I'm hoping we see a bronze/copper savant who actually has experimented with their powers in the next trilogy. Or a bronze/copper twinborn to see how they intersect with the other metals feruchemically.

[Swimmingly]

bronze is definetly not an on/off power even in the original trilogy. Experienced seekers can sense details as minute as the amount of metal still available to an allomancer, but there is a steep, steep learning curve.

[Oudeis]

bronze is definetly not an on/off power even in the original trilogy. Experienced seekers can sense details as minute as the amount of metal still available to an allomancer, but there is a steep, steep learning curve.

 

First, that's the opposite of what "steep learning curve" means. A steep learning curve means you learn a lot all at once, then taper off, you presumably mean a very shallow learning curve where you learn very little for a long time before starting to learn a lot. Basically, draw two graphs, where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is how much you learn; if you learn a lot very quickly, the graph looks like a cliff, hence "steep learning curve".

 

Second, I agree with you that bronze obviously is more than an on/off metal, even in the first book. That said, people still look down on it. Only Seekers themselves seem to think it can be interesting. The non-Invested, other Mistings, and almost ironically, especially Mistborn, think of it as on/off. Even though you can learn more than one thing from it, they basically treat it as "I am listening to bronzepulses (on)" or "I am not listening to bronzepulses (off)". I don't agree, but from Marsh's talk with Vin, it seems that's what people think of it.

[Swimmingly]

First, that's the opposite of what "steep learning curve" means. A steep learning curve means you learn a lot all at once, then taper off, you presumably mean a very shallow learning curve where you learn very little for a long time before starting to learn a lot. Basically, draw two graphs, where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is how much you learn; if you learn a lot very quickly, the graph looks like a cliff, hence "steep learning curve".

 

Second, I agree with you that bronze obviously is more than an on/off metal, even in the first book. That said, people still look down on it. Only Seekers themselves seem to think it can be interesting. The non-Invested, other Mistings, and almost ironically, especially Mistborn, think of it as on/off. Even though you can learn more than one thing from it, they basically treat it as "I am listening to bronzepulses (on)" or "I am not listening to bronzepulses (off)". I don't agree, but from Marsh's talk with Vin, it seems that's what people think of it.

Thank you for correcting my misconceptions. And yes. Though it occurs to me that practice with Bronze is more like interpreting what is already there, somewhat how a painter looks at a painting and sees composition, balance, texture, brushstrokes, metaphors within the subject matter, shading, etc., and an untrained person sees... a cow. For expert Seekers, it's still on/off, they just get more detail from the "on"

[entropicscholar]

I had a wild thought and I'm going to throw it out there. First, let me clarify that this is rampant speculation, so if anyone disagrees with me I'm not going to reply, as I have nothing to base this on besides flights of fancy.

 

Kelsier was a Mistborn, but he specialized in steel and iron, paired metals. Vin learned from him, and those were her best, too (apart from her hemalurgic boost to bronze). Spook started as a tineye and got pewter. When he did, he made much of their pairing, how they were connected. I rampantly speculate that when he was made the Lord Mistborn, he continued to specialize in those two metals. Shan Elariel, from what tiny scraps we know of her, seemed to specialized in emotional allomancy (and there's a character over at the Inquisition who is also a "griftborn"). It's gotten me thinking that perhaps Mistborn do tend to pick one pair of metals and specialize in them.

 

What, then, would a copper/bronze Mistborn be like?

 

You mean Marsh?

(he specializes in bronze)

 

The idea intrigues me, and I've been thinking about it for a bit. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken, but the general sense I've gotten is that both of those metals are the ones with the widest cross-shardworld application. If so, the character would be most interesting as a worldhopper, or possibly someone transplanted to another world, or at the very least someone who deals with a lot of worldhoppers.

Marsh, being good friends with Harmony, could possibly become a worldhopper.

 

~just rampant speculation here~ but I would REALLY like to see that happen.

Edited December 15, 2013 by entropicscholar

[Oudeis]

Marsh isn't technically a Mistborn, however... for a number of reasons I don't think he counts. The main one is, once he starts being an Inquisitor, I don't think we see him burn Copper or Bronze again.

ALSO

Do bendalloy and cadmium put off pulses? Do they feel the same, or different, depending on whether you're inside the bubble or outside?

[Swimmingly]

Marsh isn't technically a Mistborn, however... for a number of reasons I don't think he counts. The main one is, once he starts being an Inquisitor, I don't think we see him burn Copper or Bronze again.

ALSO

Do bendalloy and cadmium put off pulses? Do they feel the same, or different, depending on whether you're inside the bubble or outside?

If the answer is the same, then that means the whole frequency of thumps thing is just the allomancer detecting Investure and interpreting it in a certain way. If it sounds different, then Investure really does produce some kind of radiation that can push, pull, have different timbres, etc.

[Oudeis]

If the answer is the same, then that means the whole frequency of thumps thing is just the allomancer detecting Investure and interpreting it in a certain way. If it sounds different, then Investure really does produce some kind of radiation that can push, pull, have different timbres, etc.

 

I'm not 100% sure that "the same" means it's only on the receiving end... it makes sense, sure, but neither science nor magic necessarily do everything that "makes sense". Maybe the pulses exist in such a way to deal with the time change, since they're pulses originating from the metal that's manipulating the time dilation.

 

Although... it might make cadmium an interestingly "stealth" metal, if it's affected by the bubble. In the time it takes a single pulse to actually leave the bubble and accelerate to actually reach the Seeker, at least minutes would have passed.

[Swimmingly]

I'm not 100% sure that "the same" means it's only on the receiving end... it makes sense, sure, but neither science nor magic necessarily do everything that "makes sense". Maybe the pulses exist in such a way to deal with the time change, since they're pulses originating from the metal that's manipulating the time dilation.

 

Although... it might make cadmium an interestingly "stealth" metal, if it's affected by the bubble. In the time it takes a single pulse to actually leave the bubble and accelerate to actually reach the Seeker, at least minutes would have passed.

What I meant is, are bronzebeats simply beams of information interpreted by the Seeker, or are they waves that can be distorted to appear to be something they aren't - or even have an effect they shouldn't have? Given that metals seem to have weird effects when interacting with allomantic power (aluminum canceling it), it's not far-fetched to assume that there are applications for other metals as physical objects as well as catalysts/batteries. Perhaps a filter could be used to make a coinshot appear to be burning atium to a seeker, or switch the "polarity" of a metal - make Iron push when the ironsight lines pass through a filter, or a hat that turns an attempted soothing into a riot. A seeker might even be able to make copperclouds - and vice versa.

[Oudeis]

What I meant is, are bronzebeats simply beams of information interpreted by the Seeker, or are they waves that can be distorted to appear to be something they aren't - or even have an effect they shouldn't have? Given that metals seem to have weird effects when interacting with allomantic power (aluminum canceling it), it's not far-fetched to assume that there are applications for other metals as physical objects as well as catalysts/batteries. Perhaps a filter could be used to make a coinshot appear to be burning atium to a seeker, or switch the "polarity" of a metal - make Iron push when the ironsight lines pass through a filter, or a hat that turns an attempted soothing into a riot. A seeker might even be able to make copperclouds - and vice versa.

 

Ooooo.... fascinating.

[name_here]

We've never observed wave interference with pulses, or anything else, so I don't think allomantic effects behave like waves. Specifically, if the emotional metals acted like waves one would expect aberrant behavior when two people soothe/riot the same person simultaneously without careful coordination, and that occasionally happens and combines the effects without incident.

 

What would actually happen is a pretty good question, though. I think there's some basis for the pulse pattern in the mechanics of investiture detection that causes them to percieve beats instead of either simply knowing the information or perceiving it like iron lines. Even if it's not a wave, the generating function might be periodic, in which case the bubbles would probably distort the frequency. If they were actual waves, then passing through the bubble would also wildly distort their path much like how light produces a wavering effect.

 

The temporal metal itself might feel exactly the same regardless, since after all it is messing with time already and might mess with it a bit more to fix things or project the pulses from the bubble, but other metals burned inside could be distorted. Having no metals get distorted in any way would be extremely odd; at a minimum even if the actual output is continuous it should influence the perceived burn rate. The only explanation I could think of in that case is that bronze automatically compensates for the effect of temporal distortion on pulses.

[Swimmingly]

On the emotional effects, it's possible that the waves simply do not interfere with eachother, and pass on effects in a format that can accumulate easily - or perhaps the waves are just a symptom of strong Investiture, a kind of byproduct of leaks between the Spiritual and Physical realms. In that case, the filters would only confuse Seekers rather than act on the allomancy itself. Also, by the amount of information you can gather from the bronze beats, I think that they're more like a spectrograph, where different forms of information can be inferred from different scales - push or pull, external or internal, flared or not, how much left, etc.

[Oudeis]

We've never observed wave interference with pulses, or anything else, so I don't think allomantic effects behave like waves. Specifically, if the emotional metals acted like waves one would expect aberrant behavior when two people soothe/riot the same person simultaneously without careful coordination, and that occasionally happens and combines the effects without incident.

 

Or, it's possible that the bronzepulses are related to but separate from the actual emotional allomancy. Anyone here see the Matrix? When they show you things in slowed down time, the bullet travels, and it sets off waves of distorted air. It's possible the bullet is basically the emotional allomancy: a direct effect from one person to another. The bronzepulses are the air distortions. So if you have a device that can't see bullets but can detect distortions in the air, you could gather information about who shot the bullet, maybe depending on the sensitivity more information about the type of gun et ceterra, and from the path of distortion you could know who was affected by the bullet; but even if the distortion do have some properties (like whether or not they are waves) that doesn't mean the bullet shares them.

 

Merely speculation. I don't know if I buy into either of these theories, I'm just saying there are other possibilities.

[Swimmingly]

Consider the hints that gateways into the spiritual realm can be defined in terms of frequency and amplitude from Elantris

[Moogle]

The Goodreads Q&A has a new WoB which might revive this discussion:

 

Q: Can a Seeker inside a Coppercloud Seek someone out of one? What about a Soother instead of a Seeker?

A: It is possible. Yes, again possible.

(source)

[Kurkistan]

That's... unhelpful. We've known about Soother being able to Soothe intra-cloud since book 1, and I'd always assumed they weren't somehow limited when clouded, and obviously it's "possible" for someone burning Duralumin or who has a spike or something to Seek through any cloud...