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Illegal Feruchemy


Ixthos

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Certain properties of Feruchemy are very interesting, and expand the range of what someone can do. However, in some situations those things might be illegal, or immoral, or simply considered to be unacceptable behaviour. Some examples include:

  • Storing memory before an exam, so keeping a full copy of the text book onhand when writing a closed book test
  • Storing food or drink at an all-you-can-eat buffet
  • Using strength and speed when competing in a competition or sport where allomancy and feruchemy (and possibly hemalurgy) is forbidden (a non-metal league)
  • Tapping mental speed when competing in a board game professionally, or a fact-based game show
  • Storing weight at a doctors office when they want to know you mass
  • Using connection while selling a run-down car, or going door to door
  • Using fortune when betting (assuming it works in affecting probability, or letting one sense probability)
  • Storing health when one falls down in a supermarket, making it easier to sue

Can anyone else think of similar feruchemy laws?

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- Tapping Cadmium in a swimming competition.

- Storing Gold and convincing the doctor you need a drug prescription for “medical uses.”

- Tap Steel while playing a video game = crazy combos.

- Tap and Store Iron while wresting: store to be light on your feet then tap to be super heavy.

- Store Bendalloy in eating competitions. Infinite appetite.

- Store your Duralumin when playing hide and seek.

- Tapping Duralumin in court.

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2 hours ago, I think I am here. said:

- Tapping Cadmium in a swimming competition.

As a swimmer, I can tell you that, at least for certain strokes, you HAVE to breath every so often. Otherwise sprinters just wouldn't bother - it's only 30 seconds for the short distances.

 

However, we do know that blood oxygen content is important for endurance sports, so I can't help but wonder if tapping breath at a slightly higher rate than you stored it (110%-120% of normal breath intake) would have a pewter-like endurance effect.

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32 minutes ago, tmnsquirtle said:

 

 

However, we do know that blood oxygen content is important for endurance sports, so I can't help but wonder if tapping breath at a slightly higher rate than you stored it (110%-120% of normal breath intake) would have a pewter-like endurance effect.

It probably would depend on the individual. At least for an untrained person, it probably would have that effect. I know that when i exercice my breath gives up before my muscles, so cadmium would definitely let me run longer.

On the other hand, I am under the impression that athletes, or even just fit people, don't have the same problem in normal conditions, and are limited only by how well their muscles can keep up, so cadmium wouldn't help them much.

4 hours ago, Ixthos said:

 

  • Storing memory before an exam, so keeping a full copy of the text book onhand when writing a closed book test

This one is debatable. If you are an archivist, you can be expected to have your copperminds with you in any working environment. It's an advantage you have over common people, but it's an advantage that you can reliably have at all times and that comes at no cost for anybody, so maybe your score should reflect that.

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1 minute ago, king of nowhere said:

It probably would depend on the individual. At least for an untrained person, it probably would have that effect. I know that when i exercice my breath gives up before my muscles, so cadmium would definitely let me run longer.

On the other hand, I am under the impression that athletes, or even just fit people, don't have the same problem in normal conditions, and are limited only by how well their muscles can keep up, so cadmium wouldn't help them much.

That's definitely possible, but I do think that cadmium could be used to maintain an 'optimal' level of blood oxygen.

Humans have a range of 'healthy' blood oxygen content. I know that exercise steadily depletes various minerals and nutrients and restoring them drastically improves performance. That's what gatorade was originally designed for - restoring essential vitamins and minerals during exercise.. My thought is that if you keep blood oxygen slightly above normal levels, it will have a similar effect, but I could be wrong. 

In either case, I bet that a skilled Gasper (I can't believe that that's the real name for a cadmium feruchemist, btw) would be able to store a ton of breath, then use that to maintain a very consistent amount of blood oxygen while doing pretty much anything.

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In-world we see that there are Era 2 laws about the use of Allomancy; and even in the Final Empire, obligators were trained to detect "misuse" of Allomancy (and the Steel Inquisitors had a duty to, ah, "punish" the misuse of Allomancy). But restriction on the use of Feruchemy has not (yet) been mentioned.

Maybe it's because it's largely a Terris Community thing, with Feruchemists outside the Village apparently being somewhat rare? And what with God Himself (Harmony) being of Terris origin, and a Feruchemist originally, there might be some unease about restricting the use of copperminds or something, when the Words of Founding are literally a divine coppermind dump.

There's also the fact that while you can have a Seeker on hand to try to detect Allomancy (if there's no Smoker blocking him/her), they haven't figured out a way yet to detect the use of Feruchemy, even if a WoB suggests that it would be possible for a talented Seeker to do so. So the best you could do would be to ban known Sparker Ferrings from chess tournaments, and trust that the Terris wouldn't let a Sparker "cheat" in that manner (since from what we see in Shadows of Self when Wax visits his grandmother, they don't share their information on who is what kind of Feruchemist with non-Terris folk except in special cases).

Medallion technology would make enforcement of such laws difficult, in any case. I might not be a Soother, but I could use a medallion to Soothe and then chuck it and there'd be no way to trace the Soothing back to me, and so on. Same thing with F-zinc.

 

More interesting would be Ferring-only matches to see who was more skilled with managing their resources. Like Brute-on-Brute wrestling matches with identically sized empty pewterminds issued to them at the start, and the same short amount of time to fill them before the match began.

 

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@Ark1002@MountainKing My guess is that there's more to the application of F-Chromium than 'just' being able to better predict your near future, though Brandon's keeping mum on specifics. I've tried getting a hint out of Brandon before as I'm really interested in how it's going to work and gotten RAFO'd. That said, the Ars Arcanum (which means the best of Khriss' knowledge as of whenever she wrote it) does say that Spinners are able to make themselves luckier when tapping (and unluckier while storing) so there's probably some indirect effects beyond just being better at guessing what's going to happen in your near future. Though even if that is all there is to it, you could probably find some way to gamble with it and beat the odds. But we'll just have to wait and see.

On the broader issue of illegal feruchemy, we know that the police search people for metalminds so I imagine that any competitive event, examinations or what have you would use similar searches. We know that A-Steel/Iron users flaring their metal can 'see' hemalurgic spikes and metalminds, so even swallowing one shouldn't hide it. See an athlete with a lump of metal in their stomach? Assume it's a metalmind and disqualify them. The one example we have where someone didn't find a metalmind was Miles and it's possible they didn't bother doing an internal search because they were going to keep shooting until he was dead anyways, so it might not have been worth the effort. But we did see Wax able to recognize Kelesina's bracelet as a metalmind (due to its 'steel line' being far fainter than it should) even though it was stupendously Invested so anything short of the Bands of Mourning should be detectable as well by a Coinshot or Lurcher actively looking for them.

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1 hour ago, Weltall said:

@Ark1002@MountainKing See an athlete with a lump of metal in their stomach? Assume it's a metalmind and disqualify them.

People with metallic prothesis are more difficult to figure out, though. I'm imagining the paralympic games with people trying to make metalmind wheelchairs, stilts, and so on

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8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

This one is debatable. If you are an archivist, you can be expected to have your copperminds with you in any working environment. It's an advantage you have over common people, but it's an advantage that you can reliably have at all times and that comes at no cost for anybody, so maybe your score should reflect that.

In the real world they also wouldn't expect us to memorize a massive amount of information on a normal basis. Exams are usually poorly written in that regard. 

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16 hours ago, MountainKing said:

I'm pretty sure if it's in yours stomach they wouldn't be able to detect it unless they were really flaring steel or iron.

I agree that it would be harder to detect but not impossible, Wax thinks of it as being 'very hard' but not 'impossible' certainly. And if you're putting on some sort of serious competition and don't want any question about the integrity of the results, hiring some people very experienced with A-Steel/Iron and enough metal that they can afford to flare it might be worth the expense. We know for example that Smokers in politics use the fact that they can't be manipulated with emotional allomancy as a selling point in elections, so I imagine there's incentive for a competition or exam or whatnot to be able to say 'We ensure that all entrants are on a level playing field and nobody is using feruchemy to gain an advantage' to enhance their prestige.

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Tapping Electrum during an endurance competition of some sort. 

Tapping Chromium when getting a lottery number.

Tapping Tin when taking a senses evaluation.

Storing Taste during an eating gross food competition. 

Storing Wakefulness at school. 

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@king of nowhere, @robardin@Spoolofwhool, I think that - ideally - using a coppermind wouldn't be an issue, but one of the main points of mistborn is that civilisation grows and changes, laws are made and enforced and then changed, and what is right or moral doesn't always make it to being law. Feruchemists are rare, and a school might see it as an unfair advantage some students would have. Other schools might make it perfectly fine, and some might make it illegal only for those with medallions.

@Weltall, @MountainKing I think that a lurcher or coinshot with the help of a nicroburst would be able to do it, and for a serious competition with a restriction on using allomancy or feruchemy they might be willing to test everyone using that method.

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On 8/13/2018 at 11:25 AM, tmnsquirtle said:

That's definitely possible, but I do think that cadmium could be used to maintain an 'optimal' level of blood oxygen.

Humans have a range of 'healthy' blood oxygen content. I know that exercise steadily depletes various minerals and nutrients and restoring them drastically improves performance. That's what gatorade was originally designed for - restoring essential vitamins and minerals during exercise.. My thought is that if you keep blood oxygen slightly above normal levels, it will have a similar effect, but I could be wrong. 

In either case, I bet that a skilled Gasper (I can't believe that that's the real name for a cadmium feruchemist, btw) would be able to store a ton of breath, then use that to maintain a very consistent amount of blood oxygen while doing pretty much anything.

This benefit is what cyclists are exploiting when they engage in "blood doping." They donate some of their own blood long enough before the race for their body to replenish its usual supply, then put that blood back into their body right before the race so that they can more efficiently supply oxygen to their muscles during the race. Gaspers would have a small but measurable advantage over nonGaspers in endurance races...less than A-pewter, but still an advantage.

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