New Duralumin Hacking Tool Idea

[Trusk'our]

I was thinking on some new ways to use Allomantic duralumin when I remembered @Duxredux 's idea on having multiple layers on a metal ball to let a rapid-fire duralumin Flare be used when I had a thought; you can only Burn metals that are injested or that pierce your body, right?

Well, what if you made a mechanical device that could be set to lightly pierce your skin with an Allomantic metal, such as pewter, though a separate metal piercing would be done every second in quick succession, so Burning it away with duralumin would give you a sustained stream of greatly enhanced Allomancy rather than a single momentary burst if power. 

If you could use this to get even 10-20 seconds of duralumin strength pewter, you'd have a massive advantage against other opponents. 

I suppose you could rig the device to a glove that activated when you made a certain flex with your hand, and maybe you could set it to give bursts instead of a stream as well. This second option is less of a stream of power, but getting 10 bursts of pewter/duralumin would be pretty powerful as well, especially if you don't have to worry about ingesting more metal reserves in the middle of the fight.

As a side bonus, you could use such a delivery system for Allomantic metals to greatly reduce Leeching effectiveness, as you could easily replace lost metals in combat. 

Edited May 2 by Trusk'our
Accidentally attributed multi-layer Allomantic reserves for rapid fire Duralumin to the wrong person.

[Koloss17]

35 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I was thinking on some new ways to use Allomantic duralumin when I remembered @Tamriel Wolfsbaine's idea on having multiple layers on a metal ball to let a rapid-fire duralumin Flare be used when I had a thought; you can only Burn metals that are injested or that pierce your body, right?

Well, what if you made a mechanical device that could be set to lightly pierce your skin with an Allomantic metal, such as pewter, though a separate metal piercing would be done every second in quick succession, so Burning it away with duralumin would give you a sustained stream of greatly enhanced Allomancy rather than a single momentary burst if power. 

If you could use this to get even 10-20 seconds of duralumin strength pewter, you'd have a massive advantage against other opponents. 

I suppose you could rig the device to a glove that activated when you made a certain flex with your hand, and maybe you could set it to give bursts instead of a stream as well. This second option is less of a stream of power, but getting 10 bursts of pewter/duralumin would be pretty powerful as well, especially if you don't have to worry about ingesting more metal reserves in the middle of the fight.

As a side bonus, you could use such a delivery system for Allomantic metals to greatly reduce Leeching effectiveness, as you could easily replace lost metals in combat. 

hmmm. I honestly don't see how that wouldn't work! However, I would imagine it would either be sporadic or extremely metal consuming. Say you wanted even a minute of pewter strength. Either you have it fire every other second or every five seconds, which would lead to inconsistent bursts of strength, or you go for the consistent route, firing every second.

In that case, you would need to have 60 separate chunks of a metal. I imagine it would be tough to create a machine that could both hold that many chunks (even if we're talking pez sized or smaller) and not be clunky as all hell. 

What would the injection and storage combo of such a device look like?

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

I was thinking on some new ways to use Allomantic duralumin when I remembered @Tamriel Wolfsbaine's idea on having multiple layers on a metal ball to let a rapid-fire duralumin Flare be used when I had a thought; you can only Burn metals that are injested or that pierce your body, right?

Well, what if you made a mechanical device that could be set to lightly pierce your skin with an Allomantic metal, such as pewter, though a separate metal piercing would be done every second in quick succession, so Burning it away with duralumin would give you a sustained stream of greatly enhanced Allomancy rather than a single momentary burst if power. 

If you could use this to get even 10-20 seconds of duralumin strength pewter, you'd have a massive advantage against other opponents. 

I suppose you could rig the device to a glove that activated when you made a certain flex with your hand, and maybe you could set it to give bursts instead of a stream as well. This second option is less of a stream of power, but getting 10 bursts of pewter/duralumin would be pretty powerful as well, especially if you don't have to worry about ingesting more metal reserves in the middle of the fight.

As a side bonus, you could use such a delivery system for Allomantic metals to greatly reduce Leeching effectiveness, as you could easily replace lost metals in combat. 

Sure it's possible, it sounds like a drug addict's dream tbf. You would have to run around with syringes piercing your body, pumping metals into you at a constant rate. But that constant rate is a problem - it has to be significant to get any reasonable amount of power burst when burning duralumin. You have too small a rate, you'll get something like a flaring-level of power, no more. But that's just soooo impractical, having all of those syringes in you would be painful, uncomfortable, limiting your movement etc. One wrong move and they are ripped out of your body mid-combat - Coinshots can even push/pull on them, even though they are partially in your body, metal flakes aren't, they are outside and even Wax's metalminds were sometimes being pushed by some Coinshots. It's basically a very fragile and vulnerable idea, cool but impractical. 

But that’s the simplest design, encase everything in aluminum, a little storage tank under your coat, with a tube running to the needle, some way to decide which metals you want to pump and you have a little more safer design. A little more, as those tubes can get easily ripped out when you are fighting, swinging, turning and moving violently. It’s still too impractical to use.

[Duxredux]

On 4/29/2024 at 8:28 AM, Trusk'our said:

I was thinking on some new ways to use Allomantic duralumin when I remembered @Tamriel Wolfsbaine's idea on having multiple layers on a metal ball to let a rapid-fire duralumin Flare be used when I had a thought; you can only Burn metals that are injested or that pierce your body, right?. 

Not quite sure how to phrase this without sounding petty, but I think I came up with the multi-layer design after you pitched the idea of coating Harmonium in an Allomantic metal and hoping that it could be burned without exploding. It's not a big deal, and it wouldn't be the first time we've seen multiple people pitch a brand new revolutionary idea that has been already posted assuming we both came up with that.

On 4/29/2024 at 8:28 AM, Trusk'our said:

Well, what if you made a mechanical device that could be set to lightly pierce your skin with an Allomantic metal, such as pewter, though a separate metal piercing would be done every second in quick succession, so Burning it away with duralumin would give you a sustained stream of greatly enhanced Allomancy rather than a single momentary burst if power. 

If you could use this to get even 10-20 seconds of duralumin strength pewter, you'd have a massive advantage against other opponents. 

I suppose you could rig the device to a glove that activated when you made a certain flex with your hand, and maybe you could set it to give bursts instead of a stream as well. This second option is less of a stream of power, but getting 10 bursts of pewter/duralumin would be pretty powerful as well, especially if you don't have to worry about ingesting more metal reserves in the middle of the fight.

As a side bonus, you could use such a delivery system for Allomantic metals to greatly reduce Leeching effectiveness, as you could easily replace lost metals in combat. 

The core of this idea is to grant steady delivery of Allomantic metals to the Duralumin user correct? I'm not particularly surprised that the Hemalurgy enthusiast went directly to fine-tuned stabbing. Delivering metal straight to the stomach is likely much easier.

Any of you familiar with gastrostomy tubes? They're IRL feeding tubes that go straight through the abdomen into the stomach, often to deliver drug doses or liquid food to a patient. They even have setups with pumps that allow for constant and regulated doses for specific needs. Add in Dumad's trick of an aluminum flask that has the appropriate proportions of Duralumin and the metal to be boosted, and it seems like we're already 95% of the way there. I don't see why a flat tank and pump secured around the waist like a fanny pack couldn't just sit over the port. If that seems too risky, we can lean into cyberpunk with the whole system embedded and the only access point the controls along side the port to refill the tank and recharge the pump. With the principle that internal metal storages have to be burned from the outside in, have the outermost metal be an unburnable metal to insulate the metals to be burned from the Allomancer (meaning cannot be burned by the Allomancer, so if they can't burn Aluminum, make this component Aluminum), assuming we have some sort of bio-friendly coating on the surface. This should give us a mechanism that can pump a regulated dosage of Allomantic metals into the stomach ready to be burned. The control system is whatever format that you want, anywhere from dial on the stomach, glove controls, to AI assistant. If we want it to be really cyberpunk, make the refill system dual cartridge-based so they can pop in aluminum-protected refills on the go or swap Allomantic metals mid-fight without running out.

It's basically an automated system expanding from the layered metal design. Instead of isolating the metal with Duralumin and making the layer thickness a prescribed dose of Duralumin, we just have an Allomantically-insulated pump with an external refill port that can adjust the dosage on the fly. Not a bad next step.

Edited May 1 by Duxredux

[Trusk'our]

2 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Not quite sure how to phrase this without sounding petty, but I think I came up with the multi-layer design after you pitched the idea of coating Harmonium in an Allomantic metal and hoping that it could be burned without exploding. It's not a big deal, and it wouldn't be the first time we've seen multiple people pitch a brand new revolutionary idea that has been already posted assuming we both came up with that.

Whoops, so sorry about the mix up Dux, I remembered it being one of my Shard buddies, but it was a bit hazy as to which person specifically it was.

And honestly, I can get how that feels; I've had others introduce a "new" idea for Hemalurgy that I've presented before, and it can be more than a little frustrating at times.

2 hours ago, Duxredux said:

The core of this idea is to grant steady delivery of Allomantic metals to the Duralumin user correct? I'm not particularly surprised that the Hemalurgy enthusiast went directly to fine-tuned stabbing. Delivering metal straight to the stomach is likely much easier.

Any of you familiar with gastrostomy tubes? They're IRL feeding tubes that go straight through the abdomen into the stomach, often to deliver drug doses or liquid food to a patient. They even have setups with pumps that allow for constant and regulated doses for specific needs. Add in Dumad's trick of an aluminum flask that has the appropriate proportions of Duralumin and the metal to be boosted, and it seems like we're already 95% of the way there. I don't see why a flat tank and pump secured around the waist like a fanny pack couldn't just sit over the port. If that seems too risky, we can lean into cyberpunk with the whole system embedded and the only access point the controls along side the port to refill the tank and recharge the pump. With the principle that internal metal storages have to be burned from the outside in, have the outermost metal be an unburnable metal to insulate the metals to be burned from the Allomancer (meaning cannot be burned by the Allomancer, so if they can't burn Aluminum, make this component Aluminum), assuming we have some sort of bio-friendly coating on the surface. This should give us a mechanism that can pump a regulated dosage of Allomantic metals into the stomach ready to be burned. The control system is whatever format that you want, anywhere from dial on the stomach, glove controls, to AI assistant. If we want it to be really cyberpunk, make the refill system dual cartridge-based so they can pop in aluminum-protected refills on the go or swap Allomantic metals mid-fight without running out.

It's basically an automated system expanding from the layered metal design. Instead of isolating the metal with Duralumin and making the layer thickness a prescribed dose of Duralumin, we just have an Allomantically-insulated pump with an external refill port that can adjust the dosage on the fly. Not a bad next step.

Interesting. This idea may work more effectively in the long run, I'm thinking. 

I wonder, if you wanted to make the tube routed through a more sizable part of your body if a hollow Hemalurgically charged tube could be used as a viable hack.

Probably not necessary with the set up you propose, but maybe there are uses for it.

On 4/29/2024 at 9:11 AM, Koloss17 said:

hmmm. I honestly don't see how that wouldn't work! However, I would imagine it would either be sporadic or extremely metal consuming. Say you wanted even a minute of pewter strength. Either you have it fire every other second or every five seconds, which would lead to inconsistent bursts of strength, or you go for the consistent route, firing every second.

In that case, you would need to have 60 separate chunks of a metal. I imagine it would be tough to create a machine that could both hold that many chunks (even if we're talking pez sized or smaller) and not be clunky as all hell. 

Oh yeah, it would have its fair share of complications. That I'm certain of.

Still, might be worth the cost, as Duralumin Flared Allomancy is powerful stuff.

On 4/29/2024 at 9:11 AM, Koloss17 said:

What would the injection and storage combo of such a device look like?

I'll have to sketch up what I imagined before. It's hard to properly explain it with words only.

On 4/29/2024 at 10:35 AM, alder24 said:

Sure it's possible, it sounds like a drug addict's dream tbf. You would have to run around with syringes piercing your body, pumping metals into you at a constant rate. But that constant rate is a problem - it has to be significant to get any reasonable amount of power burst when burning duralumin. You have too small a rate, you'll get something like a flaring-level of power, no more. But that's just soooo impractical, having all of those syringes in you would be painful, uncomfortable, limiting your movement etc. One wrong move and they are ripped out of your body mid-combat - Coinshots can even push/pull on them, even though they are partially in your body, metal flakes aren't, they are outside and even Wax's metalminds were sometimes being pushed by some Coinshots. It's basically a very fragile and vulnerable idea, cool but impractical. 

But that’s the simplest design, encase everything in aluminum, a little storage tank under your coat, with a tube running to the needle, some way to decide which metals you want to pump and you have a little more safer design. A little more, as those tubes can get easily ripped out when you are fighting, swinging, turning and moving violently. It’s still too impractical to use.

I was thinking less of tubes with syringes, more little pewter chunks with miniscule spikes spring-loaded in a bracer set to spike into you when triggered, hopefully keeping clunkiness to a minimum. 

But no matter the design (except maybe for some kind of complex implant, which has its own host of problems), it would probably always have some weakness or limitation.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

@Trusk'our @Duxredux @alder24 @Koloss17

I admit I do my fair share of building upon other ideas and I am not the greatest at citing my sources.... So apologies for any offense. You all present great ideas on mechanisms that work and in my shower thoughts I build upon them heavily...  @Duxredux the layers of metals became a thing of obsession as I considered what life would be like if a mistborn ended up on... SA spoilers: 

Spoiler

Roshar and got a hold of soulcaster that could soulcast metal. Start with your ball of metal x and then alternate dipping it in wax and soulcasting each new layer of wax with another metal... 

Though I must admit I am backing off my shard presence a good bit. Still thinking about it from time to time. Warbreaker spoilers: 

Spoiler

Current obsession is allomantic and feruchemical combos to create the most epic of awakened rope powersuits involving wraps of rope capable of extending the length of limbs significantly and the wackiness that would be watching a man who is 12 foot tall running with ropes tripling his stride length... Or just the most usefull of all... being able to reach out from my comfy spot and having a rope grab me what I need (because losing a comfortable position is the worst!) 

Back on topic!  

I like the idea of some sort of GI feeding tube but I think getting the drip rate to do what you want would be difficult. 

I think @Trusk'our is onto something with the spring loaded idea. I really don't know how much metal you need to be effective. I always imagined little metallic  shavings being drank down and it wasn't until the last couple years that I thought about big ol' chunks of metal being ingested at once. 

Something I think would work well would be small stents and ports inside the skin with a spring loaded device. Only it would be spring loaded on a wound up spool of smaller gauge wire. (Maybe the bigger gauges for faster burning stuff? Clearly pewter should be larger gauge than duralumin). You load up your spool of wire and that length of wire is always inside that catheter / stent. I think you could use a more mesh like stent to allow for a lot of physical contact to the metal through this method. As you slow burn it the spring keeps some constant pressure pushing against that stent (it would have to be blocked at the deepest end as a stopping point). The spool would continually feed to the end of the port / stent / catheter and if you burn duralumin it would use the entire length of wire that is in the person at once. 

If the burn of duralumin truly is instant then it would be cut off after that and the next length of wire would be shoved into and down to the end of the port afterwords. 

Thinking of how we utilize small packs and pouches and ports in medicine already I think a belt of these, encased in aluminum of course, would make for an awesome mistborn accessory. You could put it anywhere really but a spool of metal would last a long long time. You could carry some extra spring loaded cartridges too and reload them simply by opening the aluminum casing and snapping a new spool into place. 

How large or small the sizing of these wires would need to be is up for debate. I genuinely have no idea how much of any metal is needed for any effect. Talking needle sizes I imagine a 12 gauge needle is 2mm. A BB is about 4.5mm in diameter giving it a volume of 0.0477cc. You would only need a port and stent 0.38cm long to give you the same volume as an ingested BB worth of metal. If you extended that 12gauge port down to 2cm you would have a volume of 0.25cc in the body at a time, or the equivalent of 5.27 BBs worth of metal X.  

If you wanted to take it to the extreme. Central lines have catheters 2.3mm in diameter and up to 16cm in length which would give a potential volume of 2.65cc the equivalent to 55.5 bbs at once. 

I don't think humans would enjoy having any sort of stent that large with constant pushing pressure from a spring but this could be taken to the extreme by some other lifeforms on Scadrial should they acquire a chunk of Lerasium. 

Just another reason to be terrified of a rogue Kandra mistborn. They could set up a system like this throughout their body which would be spooky for anyone who wished to fight them. 

For your average joe mistborn trying to create something like this... I think a few cm would be more than tolerable if kept fairly superficial and I think it would be well enough concealable to make it possible. You could go further with thinner wire and it would be easier to spool up but may malfunction if the spring isn't perfect. Meanwhile, with the thicker gauge wire you could probably make a much more reliable system so long as the wire doesn't become so thick that it can't be wound up. I don't know where the ideal points are and odds are that would come down to each metals properties anyways.

I don't know if you need a setup like this for more than a couple of metals anyways. For sure one spool with duralumin (some testing to see how much you need at a time to instantly burn the other metals you are using). I would say two or more spools of pewter for my personal choice and one or two of steel. I think most other metals I would choose to burn in the normal way, ingested. 

This would also be an awesome tool for any allomancer even without duralumin. You are always ready and never at risk for heavy metal poisoning. The only real drawback is you would probably have some sort of autoimmune response to the insertion site. Maybe not though because there is enough investiture in these individuals to have far less issues anyway. Other than the mists trying to kill people I don't remember anyone having infected wounds... Maybe there is absolutely no drawback to this system thanks to the magic protecting you.