Can a Windwhisperer store more than 1 Sense in 1 Tinmind?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Is it possible for a Tin Ferring to store multiple Senses in 1 Tinmind? I ask this because it is possible for multiple Ferrings of the same metal to store inside a single Metalmind. Only if it isn't Unkeyed they can't access the other's Attribute and it takes up space and limits how much can be stored.

Does this apply to F-Tin? Since it is their own senses and with F-Copper you can store all kinds of differing memories.

I'm mostly just curious since if it was true a Windwhisperer could Invest a single piece of Tin to fullness at a rate far past any other Ferring by just storing most or all of their 5 standard senses (maybe more) inside a single piece of tin to make it practically immune to Allomancy. A poor man's Aluminum.

Edited January 28 by JustQuestin2004

[alder24]

42 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Is it possible for a Tin Ferring to store multiple Senses in 1 Tinmind? I ask this because it is possible for multiple Ferrings of the same metal to store inside a single Metalmind. Only if it isn't Unkeyed they can't access the other's Attribute and it takes up space and limits how much can be stored.

Does this apply to F-Tin? Since it is their own senses and with F-Copper you can store all kinds of differing memories.

I'm mostly just curious since if it was true a Windwhisperer could Invest a single piece of Tin to fullness at a rate far past any other Ferring by just storing most or all of their 5 standard senses (maybe more) inside a single piece of tin to make it practically immune to Allomancy. A poor man's Aluminum.

I think it's possible but not practical. In a Coppermind you tap and you get the memory you want back - it's a momentary tap and you give all of your memories into the metalmind and get all of them back when you tap. Copperminds work differently. In other metalminds you tap and you have a constant flow of attributes into you. So if you were to store multiple senses in one tinmind I think it would be really hard to separate them when tapping, thus you would get multiple senses at once, or it would be switching from one to another - depending if you stored them separately or together. Basically you wouldn't be able to control which sense you get, which is not practical.

However, I'm checking Coppermind and AoL Ars Arcanum now and it says:

Quote

a different tin metalmind must be used for each sense.

For whatever reason you need separate tinminds. 

If you want to make an Allomantically resistant metalmind, you can just store all your senses in separate metalminds and when they're filled, just melt them together. Tin has a very low melting point (232 °C), you can do that in your home. If you want to make metalminds unpushable just use piercings, otherwise normal metalminds can still be pushed and we've seen this happening a lot. Tin is not suited for making weapons too because it's soft and pliable. Still this idea can have some applications.

Spoiler

Longshot_97

This question concerns Mistborn Era 2. Aluminum at this time is supremely rare and quite expensive, and Wax is seen lamenting his profound lack of aluminum guns and bullets fairly often. However, couldn't he fashion a "Poor Man's Aluminum" of sorts by coating his guns (and potentially bullets) in a thin veneer of iron, then Feruchemically charging it? You've noted that metalminds can still be pushed, but much less than un-Invested metal. This could help him, in the absence of aluminum. So, is there a reason he has not done that?

Brandon Sanderson

The layer you would get by just that little coat would be so small that it'd have very little effect. Now, there's a pretty good argument for putting it into bullets. The problem there is: are the alloys that make good bullets going to work very well? Now, granted, aluminum doesn’t make for great bullets either. But any aluminum alloy kind of gets the property of aluminum. Where any iron alloy does not necessarily get the property of being able to allomantically or feruchemically interact with it in the right way. Can you get there? It's an excellent question that I perhaps should explore. I like this idea. But it's harder than you make it out to be. It is a good idea, though; it's a pretty good idea.

r/books AMA 2022 (July 7, 2022)

 

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Is it possible for a Tin Ferring to store multiple Senses in 1 Tinmind? I ask this because it is possible for multiple Ferrings of the same metal to store inside a single Metalmind. Only if it isn't Unkeyed they can't access the other's Attribute and it takes up space and limits how much can be stored.

Does this apply to F-Tin? Since it is their own senses and with F-Copper you can store all kinds of differing memories.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

. So if you were to store multiple senses in one tinmind I think it would be really hard to separate them when tapping, thus you would get multiple senses at once, or it would be switching from one to another - depending if you stored them separately or together. Basically you wouldn't be able to control which sense you get, which is not practical.

It may or may not be as @alder24 theorizes, but I would like to point out that the separation of senses into different storages goes all the way back to the first time "tinmind" is used in the trilogy (WoA ch 12) and continues with each time F-Tin is used in Era 1 (though it could simply be "this is what I was taught" and it works that way because each feruchemist was taught that it worked that way). Examples:

Spoiler

WoA Ch 12:

Quote

Sazed tapped his vision tinmind, drawing forth some of the eyesight he had stored within it. 

Ch 15:

Quote

Suddenly urgent, Sazed pulled out a small ring—a scent tinmind—and slipped it on his thumb. The smell on the wind, it didn’t seem like that of a slaughter. It was a mustier, dirtier smell. A smell not only of death, but of corruption, unwashed bodies, and waste. He reversed the use of the tinmind, filling it instead of tapping it, and his ability to smell grew very weak—keeping him from gagging.

<snip>

Sazed frowned. At that moment, he thought he heard something.

He spun, drawing auditory power from his hearing tinmind. The sounds were there—the sound of breathing, the sound of movement, coming from one of the hovels he’d visited.

Ch 50:

Quote

Clubs hobbled into the kitchen. He seemed a blur to Sazed. Even wearing his spectacles—to help compensate for the vision he was storing in a tinmind—it was difficult for him to see.

“That’s it,” Clubs said, his voice muffled—another tinmind was taking Sazed’s hearing. “They’re finally gone.”

<snip>

“Ah,” Sazed said slowly, forcing himself to reach for another spoonful of broth. The spoon was a dull weight in his numb fingers; his sense of touch, of course, was being siphoned into a tinmind. “How are the city defenses coming?” he asked as he struggled with the spoon.

 

Looking these references up did make me consider. . . what about different applications of the same sense? Will those also require separate TinMinds?

WoA Ch 12:

Spoiler

Quote

He and Sazed stood on the crater’s northern lip, before a drop of several hundred feet. Sazed tapped his vision tinmind, drawing forth some of the eyesight he had stored within it. The edges of his vision fuzzed, but things directly in front of him seemed to grow much closer. He tapped a little more sight, ignoring the nausea that came from compounding so much vision.

The increased eyesight let him study the Conventical as if he stood before it.

<snip>

Sazed shook his head. “It can let me see better in darkness, but only if there’s some light to begin with. In addition, tapping that much sight would drain my tinmind in a matter of minutes. I’ll need a lantern.”

Binocular vision is rather different from low-light vision, so would you need to stare and tap those separately, or is the Intent on tapping determining how your vision is enhanced?

 

[alder24]

14 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

It may or may not be as @alder24 theorizes, but I would like to point out that the separation of senses into different storages goes all the way back to the first time "tinmind" is used in the trilogy (WoA ch 12) and continues with each time F-Tin is used in Era 1 (though it could simply be "this is what I was taught" and it works that way because each feruchemist was taught that it worked that way). Examples:

The counterargument is quite simple - they were all experts at using F-copper, there is no way that none of them ever tried to store multiple senses in one Tinmind to check if they even can do that with no drawbacks. Because of that it's highly likely there are some complications or practical reasons for not using one Tinmind to store all senses - or like the Ars Arcanum said, each sense have to be stored in a separate Tinmind.

24 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Binocular vision is rather different from low-light vision, so would you need to stare and tap those separately, or is the Intent on tapping determining how your vision is enhanced?

They are not stored separately. Sazed used the same sight Tinmind to both see Elend from a distance and see in the darkness better. 

 WoA ch 57&58:

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Sazed watched out the window, a second tinmind enhancing his sight. It was indeed Elend below.
[...]
The bag Marsh shot at you. Those weren't coins. They were rings, Sazed. Eight of them. You took out two—eyesight and hearing. You left the other ones where they were. [...]
Shadows danced in the room as the candle grew weaker. Sazed tapped sight, enhancing his vision, and released iron as he dashed toward the addled Inquisitor.

Either it's intent or it works by "magically" making eyes more sensitive to photons they detect and binocular vision is more like a side effect. It's most likely just a vague and broad sight enhancement, but a skilled Windwhisperer could probably be far more precise in what "part" of his sight to store and that would require separate Tinminds.

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

The counterargument is quite simple

Counterargument to what? I was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with your assessment - I was merely showing the book referenecs so they were available for the discussion. 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Sazed used the same sight Tinmind to both see Elend from a distance and see in the darkness better. 

Inconclusive. Sazed sees Elend in twilight (it's before sunset when Elend and Spook arrive at the gate), and the candle is still working (if flickering) with Marsh - so without data on how his sight was "enhanced" I would tend to agree with your assessment (tapping sight helps you "see" what you intend to "see"), but the evidence is not definitive to that assessment. Neither "scene" states or implies if he using sight "zoom" or sight "low-light-dilation" or some combination thereof. 

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Counterargument to what? I was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with your assessment - I was merely showing the book referenecs so they were available for the discussion. 

I should have been more precise. To this idea:

5 hours ago, Treamayne said:

(though it could simply be "this is what I was taught" and it works that way because each feruchemist was taught that it worked that way)

 

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Inconclusive. Sazed sees Elend in twilight (it's before sunset when Elend and Spook arrive at the gate), and the candle is still working (if flickering) with Marsh - so without data on how his sight was "enhanced" I would tend to agree with your assessment (tapping sight helps you "see" what you intend to "see"), but the evidence is not definitive to that assessment. Neither "scene" states or implies if he using sight "zoom" or sight "low-light-dilation" or some combination thereof. 

Sazed sees Elend from far away. Sazed is in the Venture's Keep, while Elend just entered the city, not the Keep, Elend was walking among the streets of Luthadel. Sazed had to use binocular vision to recognize Elend because he was simply too far away. They didn't enter the Keep, they went directly to Kredik Shaw. But yes, it was already night and he would not only have to zoom to see but also enhance vision to see in darkness. 

Quote

Voices? he thought. At night? In the mists? [...]
Elend walked through the city streets [...]
They paused. Vin stood in front of them in the city street [...]
"Come," she said. [...]
"Vin?" Elend asked. "Where are we going?"
"Kredik Shaw," she said softly.

The candle grew weaker, which means less light, which means Sazed tapped Tinmind to see more in the growing darkness. Binocular vision wouldn't help him, it would distract him during the fight.

While all of this isn't as direct and definitive as we would wish for, in my opinion it implies that tapping sight just does both of those things for whatever reason.

[Iron-Eyes he/him]

I do remember Sazed telling Vin that he had seperate tinminds for seperate attributes, I'm not sure if this was because he could only store on sense in each one or if it was just like elder24 said and a matter of practicality.