Compounder Protagonist Help

[The Allomantic Metalhead]

Okay, so I'm working on this fanfic-ish thingy (I hesitate to call it a fanfic, no major characters are directly involved) set in the roughs, and the protagonist is a lawman/reformed petty criminal. He's also a chromium compounder, which is awesome, but also leaves me with a problem: how do I challenge him without pulling out all of the stops and making him fight a storming shard? Sure, I plan on having him lose his chromiumminds, but how would I even manage to do that realistically? He's a rusting god of good luck! I know for a fact that it's possible, nothing is impossible, but it's probably going to be very hard...

Any ideas? 

[CaptainRyan]

11 minutes ago, The Allomantic Metalhead said:

He's a rusting god of good luck!

One suggestion I thought of is make the loss of the Chromium minds end up being a good thing! E.g. Some group hired a hitman to take out this hero but was told to make sure they get the right guy and to identify him by his recognizable Chromium metalminds. Then, when the hitman shows up, woops, no metalminds means the hitman is confused about who to kill and it ends up giving the hero time to deal with the situation. Or, perhaps instead of using them as a way to identify the target, the hitman needs to bring in the chromium metalminds to prove the kill and when the hitman finds out the metalminds are missing, ends up "helping" the hero look for them, shenanigans ensue, etc.

Or not haha. I'm no author but I thought it might make sense if losing the metalminds ended up being "lucky" for the hero.

[The Allomantic Metalhead]

2 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

One suggestion I thought of is make the loss of the Chromium minds end up being a good thing! E.g. Some group hired a hitman to take out this hero but was told to make sure they get the right guy and to identify him by his recognizable Chromium metalminds. Then, when the hitman shows up, woops, no metalminds means the hitman is confused about who to kill and it ends up giving the hero time to deal with the situation. Or, perhaps instead of using them as a way to identify the target, the hitman needs to bring in the chromium metalminds to prove the kill and when the hitman finds out the metalminds are missing, ends up "helping" the hero look for them, shenanigans ensue, etc.

Or not haha. I'm no author but I thought it might make sense if losing the metalminds ended up being "lucky" for the hero.

That would be... ironic!

Might work though.

Coincidences/good fortune often happen to people without chromiuminds just as well as those with them.

That may just be a good idea, though I think it would kind of be a Morton's Fork, because if he had them, he'd have so much luck that the hitman might just suffer a convenient heart attack or the gun would misfire or he'd just plain miss anyways, but I like this idea.

Thanks.

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

You could make it a theme that luck can only do so much. The heart attack thing for example; if the hitman has clogged arteries from a fatty diet, the luck thing can make it happen at the best possible time for your compounder, but if the hitman is a thirty-something or younger who watches what he eats and doesn't smoke etc. no amount of luck is going to make him have a heart attack (IMO, anyway).

I think you're on the right track with making him face a shard, but it doesn't need to be anything so dramatic. Another compounder could do the trick, steel or gold, maybe. Or a worldhopper of some sort. And those medallion things from BoM open up a whole host of possibilities.

For having him lose his metalminds, make the metalminds a liability, a confrontation with a coinshot for example: he's standing at the edge of a cliff with a coinshot pushing his bracers, but - oh fortune! - the bracers luckily come undone, pushed away into the canyon, leaving your compounder free to punch out the coinshot's clock.

A final idea is that you could have the hero tracked because of his chromium minds' effects. Kind of like Ta'veren in WoT, which is essentially what feruchemic chromium does, as I understand it.

EDIT: Sorry, one more, no, two more things.
You could build in a quirk in the fortune that makes it something of a drag sometimes. Like, it can't distinguish between good luck right now, and good luck in the long run. It could be lucky right now to roll double sixes for a big pot, but later on it's going to have some guys named Butch and Tiny try to pummel you into oblivion. And the chromium mind defaults to good luck right now, regardless of later consequences.

And: Have you considered turning it around? Making the chromium compounder the villain instead of the hero?

Edited November 4, 2017 by Eagle of the Forest Path
thought of something else

[The Allomantic Metalhead]

4 hours ago, Eagle of the Forest Path said:

You could make it a theme that luck can only do so much. The heart attack thing for example; if the hitman has clogged arteries from a fatty diet, the luck thing can make it happen at the best possible time for your compounder, but if the hitman is a thirty-something or younger who watches what he eats and doesn't smoke etc. no amount of luck is going to make him have a heart attack (IMO, anyway).

I think you're on the right track with making him face a shard, but it doesn't need to be anything so dramatic. Another compounder could do the trick, steel or gold, maybe. Or a worldhopper of some sort. And those medallion things from BoM open up a whole host of possibilities.

For having him lose his metalminds, make the metalminds a liability, a confrontation with a coinshot for example: he's standing at the edge of a cliff with a coinshot pushing his bracers, but - oh fortune! - the bracers luckily come undone, pushed away into the canyon, leaving your compounder free to punch out the coinshot's clock.

A final idea is that you could have the hero tracked because of his chromium minds' effects. Kind of like Ta'veren in WoT, which is essentially what feruchemic chromium does, as I understand it.

EDIT: Sorry, one more, no, two more things.
You could build in a quirk in the fortune that makes it something of a drag sometimes. Like, it can't distinguish between good luck right now, and good luck in the long run. It could be lucky right now to roll double sixes for a big pot, but later on it's going to have some guys named Butch and Tiny try to pummel you into oblivion. And the chromium mind defaults to good luck right now, regardless of later consequences.

And: Have you considered turning it around? Making the chromium compounder the villain instead of the hero?

1. Good point. Thanks.

2. I said I wanted to avoid having him face something as noticeable and overpowered as a shard, but I think another compounder is a great idea. I'm also having him fight a Bendalloy misting in the first chapter, which goes on to explain why he hates sliders. (No amount of luck can cause him to hit someone who consciously moves out of the way of his bullets).

3. Great idea! Didn't think of that! He's probably fought coinshots/lurchers before, but I could make this one especially skilled.

4. Actually, that's a pretty good idea. The luck could also muddle his tracks a tiny bit, but there's only so much it could do, especially if it's doing ten other things that do the exact  opposite of muddling his tracks.

5. Thumbs up to that. I think it might do some stuff for the long term (accidentally hitting a future serial killer he'd have to hunt down and fight in about a week), but that might cause problems in the short term (the man may have been planning murder, but as  of right now, he was innocent. He'd have to deal with the man's family's grief, the town's uproar, and his own guilt for a few days/a week or until someone finds the body hidden under his floorboards and declares it was a lucky mistake). However, I love the idea of long-term luck and short-term luck conflicting like that.

6. I actually originally wanted a chromium compounder as the villain and an electrum compounder as the hero (I wanted to do a story that explores the limits of compounding), but I wanted more of a challenge, so the electrum compounder went to my mistborn adventure game character ideas folder.

 

Thanks!

[SallyA]

Does chromium relate to the metal or to time or to both?

Electrum is a very special item, it creates room temperature high spin element which can enable resonance with the Materia Prima (my version of a Cognitive Realm in the Universe).  We occupy the common Universe, Magic occurs in the overlapping subdomains attached to alternative Universes .  .  Have you ever tried Ormus materials?  these are called The Highward Firestone, or Shem an na of the Ancient World and the White Powdered Gold of the more recent past.  They do go to the eyes & mind if taken sublingual.

Personally I love Ormus! 

I will be interested to see how yor plot proceeds.