F-Cadmium is really useful actually

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

As of late, my brain has been hyperfixated on feruchemy. It is probably my favorite MoI and it is the power I would choose to have if I had a choice. I was thinking about feruchemy in general and I started thinking about cadmium. I remember seeing some people say that they didn't see the use in the power, but after some consideration I believe that to be untrue.

In the ars arcanum, cadmium is said to "store breath". The thing is that this definition is a bit vague, and that's probably just because it's meant to sound more mystical. I think more directly, it stores oxygen, which would line up with the examples provided of its use. If this is true and my understanding of metabolism is correct, this power is actually really useful in a variety of situations. First thing's first, your stamina gets an effective boost if you tap enough breath. Even using proper breathing techniques, your body goes into oxygen dept as you engage in rigorous work. If you tap breath, but not too much, you can give your body all the air it needs while you run a marathon or do exercise, which should have an obvious advantage. Of course, your muscles would still get sore and you would still run out of energy since oxygen isn't the only resource needed to make ATP. Taking smaller hits of oxygen could also give small boosts to mental and physical processes. I did a cursory google search to verify if taking breaths of increased oxygen improved performance in any way, and the results were conflicting. Logically though, if you have more precise control over how much oxygen is entering your blood stream, you should be able to temporarily boost energy production in your cells and gain a small boost.

There are a few caveats to this power if it does work in this way. The first thing is hyperventilation. If you tap too much oxygen at once you could start damaging your body, which is not a usual concern with feruchemical powers. This does make it easier to store in the long run I believe. Because its usage would be limited to shorter bursts or sustained burns, you wouldn't really have any situations where you'd use up all of your breath in a big burst or something, since your body can only use so much oxygen. This is, however, balanced somewhat by its dangerous storage method, requiring the user to breathe extra hard to get enough air. Then on top of all this, cadmium is an expensive and dangerous metal. I don't know how one would exactly prevent cadmium poisoning if you'd have to make contact with it as much as a feruchemist would, but I'm sure the Scandians have developed something to by pass this glaring issue.

All in all, this power isn't too bad, although it is more on the dangerous side. I think my understanding of metabolism is pretty good, but also I haven't had a biology class in 3 years, so I probably definitely have something wrong. That's it for now.

[Longshot97 he/him]

12 minutes ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

If you tap too much oxygen at once you could start damaging your body, which is not a usual concern with feruchemical powers.

Purely out of curiosity, do you have any evidence to back this claim? Supposedly, Feruchemy protects the user from over-using its abilities, the only thing supporting this is F-Steel's inability to negate air resistance. Oh, you see talk of Iron Compounders crushing themselves, or Brass Compounders melting alive, but nothing in-text supports this.

This begs the question: what would oversaturation of oxygen produce? If the body were somehow protected from excessive oxygen (similar to how F-Iron doesn't let the user crush themselves) what would that produce?

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

18 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

Supposedly, Feruchemy protects the user from over-using its abilities.

I had actually forgotten about this, so thank you for reminding me. I don't know exactly what the power would do to try and mitigate the effects of oxygen toxicity, but keeping that in mind does make me think that there would be some sort of protection in place.

23 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

This begs the question: what would oversaturation of oxygen produce?

I can't think of a direct effect of oversaturation. The other abilities have effects that increase with volume, like weight or strength. Oxygen however, is not something that continually provides a benefit. It may allow your body to continue to produce energy at optimum level, but beyond that I can't see it doing much more.

[Returned]

Depending on the exact mechanism by which it works, I suppose you could use F-cadmium to conveniently blood dope, though that's a pretty marginal benefit.

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

As of late, my brain has been hyperfixated on feruchemy. It is probably my favorite MoI and it is the power I would choose to have if I had a choice. I was thinking about feruchemy in general and I started thinking about cadmium. I remember seeing some people say that they didn't see the use in the power, but after some consideration I believe that to be untrue.

In the ars arcanum, cadmium is said to "store breath". The thing is that this definition is a bit vague, and that's probably just because it's meant to sound more mystical. I think more directly, it stores oxygen, which would line up with the examples provided of its use. If this is true and my understanding of metabolism is correct, this power is actually really useful in a variety of situations. First thing's first, your stamina gets an effective boost if you tap enough breath. Even using proper breathing techniques, your body goes into oxygen dept as you engage in rigorous work. If you tap breath, but not too much, you can give your body all the air it needs while you run a marathon or do exercise, which should have an obvious advantage. Of course, your muscles would still get sore and you would still run out of energy since oxygen isn't the only resource needed to make ATP. Taking smaller hits of oxygen could also give small boosts to mental and physical processes. I did a cursory google search to verify if taking breaths of increased oxygen improved performance in any way, and the results were conflicting. Logically though, if you have more precise control over how much oxygen is entering your blood stream, you should be able to temporarily boost energy production in your cells and gain a small boost.

It also might depend on where in the natural process the feruchemy plugs in.  Training with pure O2 may have limited benefits because your blood can only absorb so much so fast, but directly increasing your Hemaglobin and/or red bloodcell counts through training or blood doping are proven to work for artificially increasing your body's ability to absorb and deliver O2 to your tissues.  

1 hour ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

There are a few caveats to this power if it does work in this way. The first thing is hyperventilation. If you tap too much oxygen at once you could start damaging your body, which is not a usual concern with feruchemical powers. This does make it easier to store in the long run I believe. Because its usage would be limited to shorter bursts or sustained burns, you wouldn't really have any situations where you'd use up all of your breath in a big burst or something, since your body can only use so much oxygen. This is, however, balanced somewhat by its dangerous storage method, requiring the user to breathe extra hard to get enough air. Then on top of all this, cadmium is an expensive and dangerous metal. I don't know how one would exactly prevent cadmium poisoning if you'd have to make contact with it as much as a feruchemist would, but I'm sure the Scandians have developed something to by pass this glaring issue.

It's not uncommon to train in high altitudes or with a restrictive face-mask to naturally increase your Blood's ability to absorb O2, so continuously storing would probably have that long-term benefit.  

40 minutes ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

I can't think of a direct effect of oversaturation. The other abilities have effects that increase with volume, like weight or strength. Oxygen however, is not something that continually provides a benefit. It may allow your body to continue to produce energy at optimum level, but beyond that I can't see it doing much more.

If it goes full anime with the fantasy powers:  Literal Fire Breath from being able to exhale nearly 100% O2 with an unavoidable dash aerosolized organic matter for fuel (takes surprisingly little near pure O2).

On General F-Cadmium usefulness, I have no proof at all but I'd like to think it's possible to store any Gaseous Investiture in the metalmind, including Stormlight or Breaths, making it a great (non-leaky & metal) storage. And it will almost certainly be a key part of the Scadrian space fleet's life support systems.  

 

[The Stormfather]

I think F-cadmium would be a good thing to have when people are testing out submarines and aren't sure if they'll work or not.

Generally, I think it is a pretty useful skill. A lot of other metallic art abilities are more pointed towards combat, but F-cadmium is just something that can be helpful for a lot of odd scenarios.

Olympic swimmer, perhaps?

 

[Returned]

Now that I think about it, F-cadmium must also involve elimination of carbon dioxide, or alternatively the elimination of oxygen free radicals. It's magic, so we can't be too precise on "realistic" mechanisms without a WoB, but I'd probably lean towards the latter since it is the most parsimonious (we don't have to worry about replacing carbon atoms, or even oxygen, but rather just adding or subtracting one electron at a time).

Neither seems all that useful to me on the level of an individual person, though I haven't thought through the chemistry too much. But if we place the effect in a machine like one of the Allomantic grenades (or hook a skilled Feruchemist into a broader system) we could wind up with some very interesting, efficient, and effective energy generation and waste energy dissipation mechanisms. I hadn't really thought about F-cadmium much before this thread, but it seems like these would be pretty important for the later-era Scadrian technologies.

Edited February 2 by Returned

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

In the ars arcanum, cadmium is said to "store breath". The thing is that this definition is a bit vague, and that's probably just because it's meant to sound more mystical. I think more directly, it stores oxygen

In my opinion it's more than oxygen - gasses from your lungs in general. Bendally is described to store "energy" in the table, but more specifically food, nutrients, calories and even drinks. I expect the same with F-cadmium. You can store not just oxygen but also CO2, N2 or even some toxic gasses - any gas that gets into your lungs. And this potentially gives much greater possibilities, especially if you combine this ability with F-gold so you can breathe out toxic gasses, poisoning your opponents with no harm to yourself (it may be even possible with no gold, with just super precise tapping and intent, to make sure all of the tapped gas is leaving your body, not entering your bloodstream).

And yes, I agree. F-cadmium is useful for sport applications, deep diving or mountain climbing etc. I also think that F-cadmium is there for the future - the space era of Cosmere. The value of air in space is priceless and it doesn't just sustain life, but can also propel a spacecraft or be used for correction maneuvers. I think that F-cadmium storing "breath" was planned by Brandon with the space era in mind, just like Tress spoilers WoB:

Spoiler

Ladder Contact 6814

What are the other six types of spores we didn't get to see in the book? Were there any that you really wanted to include, but couldn't?

Brandon Sanderson

No. When I've written books, I tend to gravitate toward a couple of the aethers that are really the most dynamic for action scenes and things like that. Some of the other aethers are there for the necessity of the future of the Cosmere. For instance: zephyr, while very useful in this for firing cannons and stuff, is really there so that we can have propellant in space by just-add-water and make yourself some extra propellant. And atmosphere; kind of a low-tech (there's better-tech ways), but a low-tech way to: "hey, we've got zephyr aether, it makes breathable air. And so, if we've got water and a barrel of this stuff, then we'll be able to breathe." So there are some of the aethers that are there for that sort of reason, so that we can have pneumatic weaponry and some easy access to emergency propellant in space, and stuff like that.

But verdant is the one that I just keep coming back to, that one and roseite, as making for the most dynamic storytelling. We'll see what I do with some of the others. I'm not gonna answer what the ones I haven't mentioned are, because I am saving them for future books to be used and to be interesting and engaging with them.

Tress Spoiler Stream (March 31, 2023)

 

5 hours ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

There are a few caveats to this power if it does work in this way. The first thing is hyperventilation. If you tap too much oxygen at once you could start damaging your body, which is not a usual concern with feruchemical powers. This does make it easier to store in the long run I believe. Because its usage would be limited to shorter bursts or sustained burns, you wouldn't really have any situations where you'd use up all of your breath in a big burst or something, since your body can only use so much oxygen. This is, however, balanced somewhat by its dangerous storage method, requiring the user to breathe extra hard to get enough air.

You can expect to be able to safely tap more than normally you should have, because Feruchemy in general protects you from some negative effects of "overtapping", at least up to some point - like Steelrunners doesn't care about G-forces, Skimmers don't collapse under their own weight, etc. So you can potentially tap much more oxygen without tearing your lungs apart, or any oxygen poisoning. 

Spoiler

Thoughtful Spurts

If tapping heat means your own body gets hotter, does it also mean you become immune to hot temperatures so long as you're tapping it, or should you fill heat and grow colder for that to happen?

Brandon Sanderson

As everything in Feruchemy, you become immune to the effects of the ability only. Like weight doesn't crush you, but at the same time doesn't have a net gain in strength. Growing colder, however, would be more helpful in this regard.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

 

5 hours ago, Shadow of Electrum said:

Then on top of all this, cadmium is an expensive and dangerous metal. I don't know how one would exactly prevent cadmium poisoning if you'd have to make contact with it as much as a feruchemist would, but I'm sure the Scandians have developed something to by pass this glaring issue.

Feruchemist, like Allomancers, should be immune to metal poisoning.

Spoiler

rederel

Now i'm morbidly curious whether u/mistborn has considered it [cadmium poisoning] while writing his books.

Brandon Sanderson

I have, actually. Though I had to consider it for other metals first. I decided that allomancers are immune to these kinds of effects--they're just physiologically different in that regard.

General Reddit 2021 (June 11, 2021)

 

 

1 hour ago, The Stormfather said:

I think F-cadmium would be a good thing to have when people are testing out submarines and aren't sure if they'll work or not.

It's not the air that is the problem in submarines, it's a crack in the hull that is a problem - just look at the recent Titan implosion. When you're underwater and your submarine fails, you're crushed into a soup by the immense water pressure and no air can help you. 

Edited February 2 by alder24

[The Stormfather]

 

On 2/2/2024 at 5:14 PM, alder24 said:

 

It's not the air that is the problem in submarines, it's a crack in the hull that is a problem - just look at the recent Titan implosion. When you're underwater and your submarine fails, you're crushed into a soup by the immense water pressure and no air can help you. 

Oh, right. That. 

Does tapping a TON of cadmium actually release a huge breath of whatever gasses you stored? If so, could a cadmium ferring cast gust of wind?

(This is more of a joke.)

[Highprince10 he/him]

On 2/2/2024 at 2:55 PM, The Stormfather said:

I think F-cadmium would be a good thing to have when people are testing out submarines and aren't sure if they'll work or not.

Generally, I think it is a pretty useful skill. A lot of other metallic art abilities are more pointed towards combat, but F-cadmium is just something that can be helpful for a lot of odd scenarios.

Olympic swimmer, perhaps?

 

If you used this under water being a Lurcher and a Gasper you could pull your self back to submarine or move so fast through the water if you are trying to find sunken metal objects you would be the ultimate treasure hunter 

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 2/4/2024 at 9:03 AM, The Stormfather said:

 

Oh, right. That. 

Does tapping a TON of cadmium actually release a huge breath of whatever gasses you stored? If so, could a cadmium ferring cast gust of wind?

(This is more of a joke.)

Lol, I was planning to make a feat similar to this in a Mistborn homebrew.

Basically, you Tap of bunch of cigar smoke you've saved up and a cloud of smokescreen explodes out of your face.

[The Stormfather]

If that is actually how it works it could be really funny to use in the Mistborn Adventure Game.