Lerasium Bronze Pulses

[+Invocation]

What do the bronze-pulses sound like for someone burning Lerasium? Would it even have one?

Come to think of it, does atium have bronze-pulses at all?

[+robardin]

1 minute ago, Invocation said:

What do the bronze-pulses sound like for someone burning Lerasium? Would it even have one?

Come to think of it, does atium have bronze-pulses at all?

It seems like there should be SOME kind of pulse, since Investiture is most certainly being accessed. But a Seeker wouldn't likely be educated enough to distinguish it, due to lack of exposure.

We've only seen someone ingest and burn lerasium once, when Vin have it to Elend on the mist spirit's prompting, fortuitously using one of her vials of metal flakes in an alcohol suspension. She then realized with a shock that he had begun burning pewter, with A-bronze. So either burning the lerasium didn't generate a pulse, it did but not one she recognized and so unconsciously ignored as background noise, or (most likely) she simply hadn't been burning bronze until she was curious as to why Elend was recovering in the manner of a Pewterarm.

Atium is a different story. It was in routine if rare use in the Final Empire. Several times we see Vin's POV burning atium preemptively, or later electrum as an anti-atium defense, out of fear an Inquisitor or Mistborn was already burning it. If they could keep from burning their own extremely rare atium held back until they knew the other Allomancer was burning it, that wouldn't have been necessary.

So the plot suggests bronze detection of atium was at least difficult or unknown (at least to non Inquisitors), since training to detect it would require practice with someone else burning it.

 

 

[+Oltux72]

On 1/26/2019 at 5:56 PM, robardin said:

So the plot suggests bronze detection of atium was at least difficult or unknown (at least to non Inquisitors), since training to detect it would require practice with someone else burning it.

No. An attacker using atium would almost certainly also burn copper.

[+Invocation]

37 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

No. An attacker using atium would almost certainly also burn copper.

Seers exist. Can't burn copper if you can only burn atium.

[+robardin]

58 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

No. An attacker using atium would almost certainly also burn copper.

This is true, most atium burners we see fighting (as we never really see Yomen or Demoux "in action" when their opponent could burn bronze) could also burn copper, being either Mistborn or an Inquisitor.

However my point still stands: learning to detect and identify specific allomantic pulses required months of practice for a skilled (and likely savant) Seeker like Marsh. So even assuming it was possible, I don't see how it'd be practical for an allomancer to have enough practice time being around someone they knew was burning atium to learn to detect it specifically, versus "this guys' burning something but I'm not sure what it is".

I guess if you got really skilled at detecting EVERY known metal, like Marsh apparently was (able to detect and read pulse signatures for all the base metals), you could apply process of elimination; but at the end of the FE, that still might not carry over into being able to distinguish atium from other unknown-until-then metals like duralumin or electrum.

And then in the end, yes, most likely the atium burner could simply burn copper to cover it up, except for hemalurgically enhanced Seekers like Vin was, as most Inquisitors were, or some super-strong Allomancer like Elend-grade or TLR being able to pierce ordinary copperclouds of Vin's time.

Didn't Vin encounter a Mistborn in a fight who pretended to be a Coinshot Misting by hiding among their numbers and only burning steel until the moment was right to spring out and burn atium? That was interesting - maybe it suggests that a skilled Mistborn could burn copper in such a way as to selectively hide their pulses, allowing him to screen the burning of pewter or atium while still showing the burning of steel.

Edited February 1, 2019 by robardin

[+Invocation]

15 minutes ago, robardin said:

Didn't Vin encounter a Mistborn in a fight who pretended to be a Coinshot Misting by hiding among their numbers and only burning steel until the moment was right to spring out and burn atium? That was interesting - maybe it suggests that a skilled Mistborn could burn copper in such a way as to selectively hide their pulses, allowing him to screen the burning of pewter or atium while still showing the burning of steel.

There was also a Smoker there disguising him who Vin thought was the one keeping the pulses hidden.

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Invocation said:

Seers exist. Can't burn copper if you can only burn atium.

Seekers are sad cases. Given the cost of their fuel they will never get to use their power.