Why didn't the Set have more Steel Feruchemy?

[Trusk'our he/him]

Not once in era 2 do we see a Set member using a Hemalurgic spike that granted Feruchemical steel (Paalm doesn't count; she allied with the Set, but wasn't an official member).

There were only a few known Steelrunners that Vwafendal had known about (was it three?), but even with Idashwy's power taken by Paalm, wouldn't the Set have had at least one or two Steelrunners available to spike? It's not like they didn't know how to access rare Feruchemical powers either: their small pile of Hemalurgic spikes providing Feruchemical gold prove this.

It just seems like such a potentially powerful ability that the Set would have been absolutely giddy to get their hands on it. 

So why didn't they?

[alder24]

I could find more than Vwafendal saying that she knows only one steelrunner that could be responsible in SoS. But as you said, steelrunners are very rare. If they are in the Village, they are essentially out of Set range. Some might be in other Terris communities in the Basin, which would also put them out of Set's hand. I guess they just could find anybody else.

[bmcclure7]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

I could find more than Vwafendal saying that she knows only one steelrunner that could be responsible in SoS. But as you said, steelrunners are very rare. If they are in the Village, they are essentially out of Set range. Some might be in other Terris communities in the Basin, which would also put them out of Set's hand. I guess they just could find anybody else.

Also remember there is less ferring then Alomamcers  in general and there harder to find and the set seems pretty focused on Gold ferrings and we rarely see them use other ferrings even fake wax doesn't have any ferring powers 

[Trusk'our he/him]

Hold on, I just remembered that there was an ad in the newspaper in TLM that said that Steelrunner carriers were a thing. So that aren't that rare (sorry, I forgot about that).

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

I could find more than Vwafendal saying that she knows only one steelrunner that could be responsible in SoS. But as you said, steelrunners are very rare. If they are in the Village, they are essentially out of Set range. Some might be in other Terris communities in the Basin, which would also put them out of Set's hand.

Why does being in the Village keep the Set away? I would think that them being without guns and not wanting constable interference would make them prime targets for spiking.

[alder24]

Just now, Trusk'our said:

Why does being in the Village keep the Set away? I would think that them being without guns and not wanting constable interference would make them prime targets for spiking.

Because Set acts in secracy, from behind the curtain. Storming a place full of Ferring, with constables close by would be the dumbest thing Set could do.

[Trusk'our he/him]

Just now, alder24 said:

Because Set acts in secracy, from behind the curtain. Storming a place full of Ferring, with constables close by would be the dumbest thing Set could do.

Hmmmm. You may have a point.

[Frustration]

15 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Hold on, I just remembered that there was an ad in the newspaper in TLM that said that Steelrunner carriers were a thing. So that aren't that rare (sorry, I forgot about that).

Being rare just means that you can demand a higher pay, and that more people want your services.

It doesn't prevent you from doing it.

That same ad asks for sliders, which we see a whole 2 of in the entire series.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Being rare just means that you can demand a higher pay, and that more people want your services.

It doesn't prevent you from doing it.

That same ad asks for sliders, which we see a whole 2 of in the entire series.

Even so, it just doesn't sit right with me that the Set wouldn't chase after arguably the most individually powerful Metallic art.

Speaking from a meta perspective, I know this was probably done so that the bad guys weren't too powerful and so that they didn't all have the same fighting style, but I just wish that there was an in-world reason for them not doing so.

[therunner he/him]

14 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Even so, it just doesn't sit right with me that the Set wouldn't chase after arguably the most individually powerful Metallic art.

Speaking from a meta perspective, I know this was probably done so that the bad guys weren't too powerful and so that they didn't all have the same fighting style, but I just wish that there was an in-world reason for them not doing so.

It is also possible that 'regular' usage of F-steel is not as powerful.
Our only example is Bleeder, and she could have been burning through literal years of stored speed in a few days for all we know. 
So if the ceiling on how much speed you can be storing at once (e.g. you cannot store more then ~20% of speed), then superhuman feats would be far more difficult to achive, and not necessarily cost effective.

After all, Set are primarily secretive organization, they don't need direct combat abilities.

Remember that there is a compression loss when drawing out larger amounts of attribute, reducing how effective Feruchemy is at obtaining 'superhuman' attributes.

[Trusk'our he/him]

50 minutes ago, therunner said:

Remember that there is a compression loss when drawing out larger amounts of attribute, reducing how effective Feruchemy is at obtaining 'superhuman' attributes.

Absolutely. Sazed tapped clean a Pewtermind that he had been saving up over decades in a single battle.

51 minutes ago, therunner said:

It is also possible that 'regular' usage of F-steel is not as powerful.
Our only example is Bleeder, and she could have been burning through literal years of stored speed in a few days for all we know. 
So if the ceiling on how much speed you can be storing at once (e.g. you cannot store more then ~20% of speed), then superhuman feats would be far more difficult to achive, and not necessarily cost effective.

But the Feruchemist she had spiked hadn't been dead for too long if I remember correctly (don't have the book with me at the moment, I'll have to check later).

Sazed did, however, get a few ridiculous bursts of speed with a Steelmind in TWoA when fighting Marsh, and he had only been storing for a few days. So it might be difficult, but such superhuman feats as were accomplished by Bleeder shouldn't be that difficult for a run of the mill Steelrunner to achieve.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Our only example is Bleeder, and she could have been burning through literal years of stored speed in a few days for all we know.

Bleeder didn't even have any particularly impressive burst of speed.

She moved quickly inside of a room, and ran down a building and around a corner a few times.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Absolutely. Sazed tapped clean a Pewtermind that he had been saving up over decades in a single battle.

But the Feruchemist she had spiked hadn't been dead for too long if I remember correctly (don't have the book with me at the moment, I'll have to check later).

Sazed did, however, get a few ridiculous bursts of speed with a Steelmind in TWoA when fighting Marsh, and he had only been storing for a few days. So it might be difficult, but such superhuman feats as were accomplished by Bleeder shouldn't be that difficult for a run of the mill Steelrunner to achieve.

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Bleeder didn't even have any particularly impressive burst of speed.

She moved quickly inside of a room, and ran down a building and around a corner a few times.

Bleeder also had axcess to the killed steelrunner's metalminds, so it still could have been lots of speed.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Bleeder also had axcess to the killed steelrunner's metalminds, so it still could have been lots of speed.

True. Still, Sazed managed to pull off some pretty impressive stuff in TWoA with steel Feruchemy, and he only had a few days' worth of speed stored. 

I just wish that we would get some accurate attribute-loss percentages when a Feruchemist taps and how much Investiture can be stored inside a Metalmind of a certain size. That would be nice.