Double Bubble

[i’m in the details]

Just had a thought about time manipulation allomancy:

so early in the last metal we see that Wayne and Marasi’s speedbubbles cancel each other out. Does that mean that a mistborn, or a character with a spike containing the other power they were not born with, would be able to throw up a large Cadmium bubble entrapping objects/people while also maintaining a much smaller Bendalloy bubble? 
 

This could be a useful trick for dealing with steel feruchemists, or could have other effects, like resonances.

Edited January 26, 2024 by i’m in the details

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, i’m in the details said:

or could have other effects, like resonances.

Possibly other effects, but not Resonance for a mistborn. WoB:

Spoiler

Quote

yulerule

Okay, so Twinborn have [resonances], but full Mistborn don't, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

yulerule

So then I assume that a nonmagical person, like someone who doesn't have magic, holding the Bands of Mourning will not have no perks.

Brandon Sanderson

I would say they would not.

yulerule

Will a Twinborn that's holding the Bands of Mourning still have their original perk?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

yulerule

Or, if a Ferring is holding the Bands, and they use just one ability, will they develop a perk, tied to the one second ability they are using?

Brandon Sanderson

The longer they use it, the more likely that this is to happen.

yulerule

Using Investiture a lot over a long period changes your Spiritweb. So what happens if a nonmagical uses the Bands for a while?

Brandon Sanderson

Same thing that would happen to someone else, um, it would have a definite effect on them. *laughter* It would change them, as... in similar ways. Not exactly the same, but in similar ways.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

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OrangeJedi

Do Mistborn have resonances?

Brandon Sanderson

*Hesitantly* Everybody does, but they're not as pronounced.

OrangeJedi

Is that because they just have so many powers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Orem Signing (March 16, 2019)

 

But yes, especially because a Cadmium bubble's default size is so much larger than a Bendalloy bubble, there are likely many useful ways to use the Venn Diagram bubble cancelling to determine what speeds up and what slows down. 

[Duxredux he/him]

So... there's a few potential complications to really make this useful as a lone Mistborn or Hemalurgist. The core idea here is to combine Marasi and Wayne's powers into a single person and I'll try to explain why there are a few hurdles to jump through to make this more useful than only using Bendalloy or working separately like Marasi and Wayne. In general, in order for Cadmium to be useful one of two conditions has to occur: either you can create the bubble external to yourself like with an Allomantic grenade, or you have a friendly ally outside of the bubble who can capitalize on putting yourself and your surroundings in an isolated sphere of slowed time. I'll try explain why this is the case, going with the assumption that the Allomancer in question hasn't learned how to move a speed bubble or change it's size once they've started burning, since we've never seen that done on screen as far as I know.

If a Mistborn were to simultaneously burn Cadmium and Bendalloy they would create a shell of slowed time, the outside diameter determined by the size of the Cadmium bubble and the interior diameter the size of the Bendalloy bubble. The Mistborn would remain in normal time and effectively trapped by the shell of slowed time, about the same as if they just used Cadmium except they are more aware and burning their Bendalloy. They can't move the Cadmium bubble once it's put up, and dropping the Bendalloy bubble will drop them back into slowed time at the mercy of the situation outside the Cadmium bubble. Using Cadmium and not just Bendalloy requires a situation where you need a shell of slowed time (Cadmium + Bendalloy) rather than effectively slowing down the entire universe outside of the bubble (just Bendalloy). I can think of maybe a couple of cases where simultaneous burns could be useful, one of which is if you need to barrier to randomize incoming projectile trajectories, but not too many (for example throwing up Cadmium next to a street will probably just have a passing car pop the bubble I think). One method is to try to get back to normal time by putting up the bubbles asynchronously as we see Wayne and Marasi do, starting with how we see it used in the books, but this is dependent on the relative sizes of the bubbles, and we never got a clear answer on how big Cadmium bubbles are (size of a room).

Marasi slows time and walks along the perimeter of her bubble, waiting for Wayne to pull her into normal time. The issue here is that you have to trust that the situation outside the bubble is safe enough for you to put up the slowed time bubble at the center, move like molasses to the perimeter of the bubble before putting up the Bendalloy bubble to pull yourself back to normal time. This can be mitigated somewhat by using Wayne's usual method of putting up a speed bubble, running to the edge, dropping it and putting up another bubble as fast as possible, but those few second gaps between bubbles will be stretched to minutes, again making the situation outside the bubble and external allies rather important. Let's look at the reverse scenario, putting up the Bendalloy bubble first, walking to the edge and then throwing up the Cadmium bubble. The easiest circumstance is if the diameter of the Bendalloy bubble is larger than the radius of the Cadmium bubble and that it's as simple as walking to the edge of the Bendalloy bubble, burning Cadmium, and walking to the opposite side of the Bendalloy bubble and into normal space. If the Bendalloy bubble diameter is smaller than the Cadmium radius, then we've reduced the time outside the Cadmium bubble a bit, but it may still be minutes between Bendalloy bubbles and that's plenty of time for an enemy to lob a couple grenades around the outside of your bubble.

This doesn't remove an important factor though, at least one that I'm guessing exists, that you need to remain within the boundary or at least within very close proximity of your speed bubble in order to keep powering it. In general the Allomancer passing through the outside edge of their bubble pops it as surely as stopping their burn. Forcing an Allomancer to stay within the intersection of the two speed bubbles while everyone outside the Cadmium bubble has unrestricted movement is dangerous. This could be useful in the right scenario, maybe blocking off a hallway, but it's definitely not general purpose. Maybe, maybe, an exception we've seen where there was a speed bubble without someone or something constantly powering it was Wayne's Duralumin enhanced bubble at the end of TLM, assuming that he put up the bubble and that it stayed up after he had burned all of his reserves with Duralumin. If this works, then it may be possible to burn Bendalloy, walk to the edge, burn Cadmium, walk to the edge of normal time, burn Duralumin using all your reserves, and then walk away leaving a slice of space in stasis.

That said, aside from being hypothetical as to whether or not you can walk away from it, including Duralumin adds in another complication that you need to have your metals very carefully measured out as Cadmium and Bendalloy have extremely different burn rates. Normally this isn't an issue as two Allomancers doing a normal burn of both Cadmium and Bendalloy will cancel each other out, but that equivalency goes out the window once you include Duralumin. Get the proportions wrong and your Cadmium will probably put the bigger slice of space into next month while you're only in until Tuesday.

 

To conclude, it's very possible to make concentric speed bubbles useful, it's just a lot harder to do it by yourself. In general being able to lob a Cadmium-charged Allomantic grenade is much more useful than a single person trying to put up concentric bubbles. Since Marasi was able to keep and use a Steelpush grenade charged from Wax, she certainly can charge a few Cadmium grenades. Give Wayne a few of those, particularly the ones that he can toggle on and off, and he'll be more effective than a single Hemalurgist with both powers and no grenades. The main drawback is throwing ettmetal around like this makes it quite likely that your enemy will have said grenade unless you plan on waiting for the Cadmium to wear off and retrieving the device. Until we know if the Duralumin gambit works and/or if it's possible to Duralumin enhance Ettmetal burns, going to the effort to combine the powers into a single person is less useful than having them distributed while Allomantic grenades are available. 

[alder24]

10 hours ago, i’m in the details said:

Just had a thought about time manipulation allomancy:

so early in the last metal we see that Wayne and Marasi’s speedbubbles cancel each other out. Does that mean that a mistborn, or a character with a spike containing the other power they were not born with, would be able to throw up a large Cadmium bubble entrapping objects/people while also maintaining a much smaller Bendalloy bubble? 
 

This could be a useful trick for dealing with steel feruchemists, or could have other effects, like resonances.

Yes, but where the cadmium and bendalloy bubbles overlap, they would cancel each other out making this region run at normal speed. This would still be useful, especially if you're a savant, then you'll be able to anchor bubbles to yourself and they will move around with you. This strategy would be very useful when dealing with projectiles (they would be basically useless) or when dealing with melee combat. And steelrunners too, but they can technically still outspeed your bubble.

Spoiler

Questioner

So my quick question: Can you use Identity (I love the speed bubbles!) to anchor speed bubbles to yourself?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, this is possible. That's less a matter of Identity. What’s gonna happen there, like, the more someone uses the powers, the more familiar and intermingled with their soul the powers become, and they are able to accomplish things that others can't. This would be like a Mistborn learning to hover a coin, right, which they can do, but most think you can't. That's the sort of level we're going with.

Necarion

So a savant could?

Brandon Sanderson

A savant could totally do that. The problem is, things moving in and out of a speed bubble, there's a transference of energy. This is how we keep speed bubbles from irradiating people when light moves through them, right, red shift. And so there's a transfer of energy directly from the Spiritual Realm, which means that moving with a speed bubble, you're gonna run into that, and it's gonna be, it's gonna cause all kinds of problems, but it would be possible.

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing (Nov. 30, 2016)

 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

On 1/25/2024 at 8:49 PM, i’m in the details said:

Just had a thought about time manipulation allomancy:

so early in the last metal we see that Wayne and Marasi’s speedbubbles cancel each other out. Does that mean that a mistborn, or a character with a spike containing the other power they were not born with, would be able to throw up a large Cadmium bubble entrapping objects/people while also maintaining a much smaller Bendalloy bubble? 
 

This could be a useful trick for dealing with steel feruchemists, or could have other effects, like resonances.

Honestly I have long thought about this interaction with groups of enemies all trying to get in to you at the same time. Whether it be a group of thugs charging you or if you were to stand ground in the front lines of some large scale melee conflict this could be useful. 

Just imagine charging against an enemy and suddenly your buddy who was in front of you is standing still. How do you get massive pileups on freeways?  Same thing here!  And with both types of bubbles you could appear to be at the same exact speed as the person inside of it. Its not until you go through the first one that you would know something is off. By then its too late. Like a massive glue trap. 

Also note and make use of the nausea and jolt of going through time bubbles. In the MAG it specifies you lose a beat (lose a turn).  I think getting disoriented by a bubble all while getting slammed into by your allies from behind and then seeing your enemies moving like blurrs in front of you would do it. 

Part of the name Pulser I think comes from the idea of this trick. You could easily throw up a cadmium bubble let the first group of enemies hit it and cause the wreck only to drop the cadmium bubble step back 10 feet in your own bendalloy bubble and throw up another cadmium bubble. Pulsing out waves of disorienting time bubbles that make for a near impassable barrier. 

Add in allomantic grenades and you could even play beyond that. Having multiple multiple bubbles. You could create a bigger bendalloy bubble and then yourself inside of it in a smaller one dilating the already dilated time. 

The biggest issue you are going to run into with all of this is that your metal reserves are going to a bit whacky to balance.