Reverse Compounding

[+ShardlessVessel]

I may be pointing out the obvious here, but this is something I see brought up every now and then and wanted to discuss.

There is a WoB that confirms that it is possible to use Feruchemy to support Allomancy; like Compounding, but in the opposite direction. I believe we have seen a form of this in the books already.

When Wax pushes with increased weight, his metalminds are drained, consuming his Feruchemical reserves to power his Allomancy.

When he drains the metalminds to become extremely heavy and then pushes, the reserves are gone in an instant, like burning duralumin on his metalminds. Why should that happen? An ironmind simply makes you heavier, which should make your steelpushes stronger as a side effect, but when Wax does that, it drains the metalminds.

To me, this is an indication that what is actually happening is that Wax is converting between forms of Investiture, taking power from his metalminds and plugging it into his Allomancy, just like a Compounder takes power from their Allomancy and plugs it into their metalminds.

I wonder what other Twinborn combinations could do something like this. F-Duralumin could boost emotional Allomancy, and maybe F-Chromium could enhance internal temporal metals by accessing more Fortune.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

5 minutes ago, ShardlessVessel said:

I may be pointing out the obvious here, but this is something I see brought up every now and then and wanted to discuss.

There is a WoB that confirms that it is possible to use Feruchemy to support Allomancy; like Compounding, but in the opposite direction. I believe we have seen a form of this in the books already.

When Wax pushes with increased weight, his metalminds are drained, consuming his Feruchemical reserves to power his Allomancy.

When he drains the metalminds to become extremely heavy and then pushes, the reserves are gone in an instant, like burning duralumin on his metalminds. Why should that happen? An ironmind simply makes you heavier, which should make your steelpushes stronger as a side effect, but when Wax does that, it drains the metalminds.

To me, this is an indication that what is actually happening is that Wax is converting between forms of Investiture, taking power from his metalminds and plugging it into his Allomancy, just like a Compounder takes power from their Allomancy and plugs it into their metalminds.

I wonder what other Twinborn combinations could do something like this. F-Duralumin could boost emotional Allomancy, and maybe F-Chromium could enhance internal temporal metals by accessing more Fortune.

This is interesting, and meshes fairly well with my own hypothesis; that one could store the output of an allomantic burn of one metal inside a metalmind of the same metal if one was a compounder. So, this would imply you can do more with it than just using a metalmind as an allomantic battery.

[SwordNimiForPresident the sword/that sword]

His reserves are gone in an instant because he is draining them as hard as he can. His pushing strength scales with his weight. If he were tapping his metalminds to use Alomancy he would not need to burn steel.

[Duxredux he/him]

I agree with @SwordNimiForPresident, that Wax probably isn't fueling Allomancy with Feruchemy, he's just augmenting his ability to push indirectly though basic physics by increasing his weight. I have an additional thought as to why I don't think it's converting power further down that works better with some setup.

What @Halyo_Alex and @ShardlessVessel describe in Feruchemical abilities being able to support or augment Allomantic abilities has been somewhat explored and confirmed, though you may not be getting the same levels of near-infinite Feruchemical stores by fueling Feruchemical attributes with Preservation's power. I might be looking at it from a different way though.

The advantage that Feruchemy has over Allomancy is that for the most part there aren't limits to how much of an attribute you can withdraw at a time. There are exceptions, but it's more of a survival standpoint - compress too much F-Brass heat and you immolate yourself, run too fast with F-Steel and you burn up from atmospheric friction. Allomancy has a general set power level from burning and flaring of metals, but there's only so much power you can get out of your metals.

I'm pretty sure it's been confirmed that you can store alternate attributes in metalminds, for example A-Pewter power can be stored into F-Pewter, and you would be able to withdraw it as A-Pewter. The key here is that I assume that you would then be able to compress that allomantic attribute the same way you can compress other stored strength, enabling you to double or triple the power of A-Pewter beyond what a normal Thug could do. It would be similar to A-Duralumin fueled bursts of power, except you would be able to regulate the output and have something left in the tank after punching through a wall or tossing a Koloss into the air. This would be more than just making metalminds into allomantic batteries, it would let you get enormous bursts of allomantic power beyond what can normally be gained through just burning the metal. That by itself opens up a lot of possibilities.

I suspect that the metal storing the attribute has to share the attribute, not the metal. Pewter works because both attributes are strength based, F-Tin I think can store both A-Tin and A-Bronze. I'd be surprised if a Bendalloy compounder could convert calories into speed bubbles though. Because Feruchmy is an internal art, I don't know how it works to boost some of the external metals, like A-Iron and A-Steel.

Except, we know that somehow you can boost A-Iron and A-Steel. The Bands of Mourning enabled Marasi and Wax to perform Allomantic feats far beyond what Kelsier was able to do in life, to the extent that Wax was able to see the signature of souls using Steelsight. As far as I could tell, he wasn't tapping attributes except probably Nicrosil when he was on the airship when he was bargaining with Suit to disarm the ettmetal bomb, and he certainly wasn't tapping weight yet. So... I'm guessing that you can boost Allomantic abilities beyond the norm with F-Nicrosil, but I don't know enough how that works. The Bands would be my go-to for somehow getting Feruchemy to support Allomancy, but they're a weird case. 

I think F-Duralumin could potentially boost your strength and finesse with emotional allomancy, not because you're converting between the powers but because increased Connection may boost your ability to manipulate the target. Unless... if emotional allomancy is Connection based and the ability to Push or Pull on emotions can be stored as Connection and later compressed, but I'm not versed well enough to know if that works mechanically. I'm guessing not, since Connection is a spiritual attribute and it seems like Zinc and Brass work on the cognitive side. I could see F-Chromium being able to store A-Electrum, enabling you to compress it. That could be pretty cool actually, if you could see what you do next up to 30 seconds in advance.

 

[+ShardlessVessel]

30 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

The Bands of Mourning enabled Marasi and Wax to perform Allomantic feats far beyond what Kelsier was able to do in life, to the extent that Wax was able to see the signature of souls using Steelsight. As far as I could tell, he wasn't tapping attributes except probably Nicrosil when he was on the airship when he was bargaining with Suit to disarm the ettmetal bomb, and he certainly wasn't tapping weight yet. So... I'm guessing that you can boost Allomantic abilities beyond the norm with F-Nicrosil, but I don't know enough how that works.

I'm pretty sure that was just F-Nicrosil. So far we've only explicitly seen nicrosilminds store innate Investiture such as the the ability to use F-Iron, but I don't see why they couldn't store kinetic Investiture (i.e. metal reserves) as well. Of course, you'd still need the ability to create those reserves - I don't think a nicrosil Ferring could store weight in a nicrosilmind, but an A-Steel, F-Nicrosil Twinborn should be able to burn steel and store the reserves in a nicrosilmind. I think that's how the Bands were made, by storing kinetic Investiture in unsealed nicrosilminds.

That said. I like your thoughts on storing related attributes in metalminds to support/extend allomancy. I don't believe you can actually store allomantic reserves in a corresponding metalmind (as you may guess from my paragraph above, I believe you would use nicrosil for that), but I like the idea of storing the results of allomancy in a metalmind, i.e. steelsight in F-Tin or emotional Connection in F-Duralumin.

[StanLemon]

There are two main ways I can see using Feruchemy to enhance Allomancy. Compounding Connection to Preservation or Compounding one's ability to be an Allomancer 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

33 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

There are two main ways I can see using Feruchemy to enhance Allomancy. Compounding Connection to Preservation or Compounding one's ability to be an Allomancer 

So Duralumin Compounding or Nicrosil Compounding+, essentially.

I feel like there's at least SOME additional depth to it though.