F-Chromium: Can you Store Different Types of Fortune?

[Steel Speedster ♂]

So, the generally accepted theory about F-chromium is that it stores Fortune, as in Futuresight, rather than simple luck. Every person has some innate Fortune that comes to them as gut instinct, which they can store.

What I'm wondering is, what if a Spinner has access to another, more powerful source of Fortune? What if they're burning atium-electrum or electrum, or even pure atium? Can they store all that? And if so, how will it act when they tap it? Will it convert to an equivalent amount of "normal" Fortune, or will the effect be the same as if they were burning the metal? There is already precedent for storing Allomantic powers in metalminds. You can store A-pewter strength in a pewtermind, and bronzesense in a tinmind.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Allomantic pewter strength can be stored in a metalmind, but it's probably easier to just Compound.

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

Spoiler

NewbSombrero

Can Feruchemical tin store Allomantically granted senses like bronze sense?

Brandon Sanderson

Possible.

General Signed Books 2018 (Feb. 8, 2018)

If this is possible, it would be very useful. The Fortune that everyone has seems to be a sort of subconscious knowledge of the future--you don't know any details, or consciously know anything about the future, but you feel an impulse to act on it anyway. So, it seems to me that if you were able to store any sort of Fortune that you could get your hands on, that would be very useful, because types of Fortune like electrum and atium give you conscious knowledge of the future, which is generally going to be easier to use. Even if electrum and atium Futuresight gest converted into subconscious Fortune by storing them, it would still be incredibly useful, because you could store up ridiculous amounts of Fortune ahead of time.

(As a side question, I wonder if tapping enough Fortune while burning electrum could replicate atium's mental enhancements?)

What do you think? Does this seem plausible?

[Quantus he/him]

As a very general statement, I think both allomancy and feruchemy metals will prove to be more variable and more comprehensive than the Default effects that are understood in the early era's (this A-Pewter WOB, for example).  So in that spirit I do believe that there will be more and more options for them to Store as their realmic understanding progresses, especially with the Spiritual Metals.  

But the known Fortune effects are weird, so its hard to say if they'd be able to go into that Metal, vs Tin for a Sensory effect or Nicrosil for the Power Itself?  Or Both?

Another possibility of Storing Fortune directly might be to Blank your Fortune completely, as in become a Blind Spot for outside Fortune-based effects the way having Futuresight will compound the options to obscure it (as with Renarin or an active Atium burner).  

 

 

[alder24]

35 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

So, the generally accepted theory about F-chromium is that it stores Fortune, as in Futuresight, rather than simple luck. Every person has some innate Fortune that comes to them as gut instinct, which they can store.

What I'm wondering is, what if a Spinner has access to another, more powerful source of Fortune? What if they're burning atium-electrum or electrum, or even pure atium? Can they store all that? And if so, how will it act when they tap it? Will it convert to an equivalent amount of "normal" Fortune, or will the effect be the same as if they were burning the metal? There is already precedent for storing Allomantic powers in metalminds. You can store A-pewter strength in a pewtermind, and bronzesense in a tinmind.

  Reveal hidden contents

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Allomantic pewter strength can be stored in a metalmind, but it's probably easier to just Compound.

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

  Reveal hidden contents

NewbSombrero

Can Feruchemical tin store Allomantically granted senses like bronze sense?

Brandon Sanderson

Possible.

General Signed Books 2018 (Feb. 8, 2018)

If this is possible, it would be very useful. The Fortune that everyone has seems to be a sort of subconscious knowledge of the future--you don't know any details, or consciously know anything about the future, but you feel an impulse to act on it anyway. So, it seems to me that if you were able to store any sort of Fortune that you could get your hands on, that would be very useful, because types of Fortune like electrum and atium give you conscious knowledge of the future, which is generally going to be easier to use. Even if electrum and atium Futuresight gest converted into subconscious Fortune by storing them, it would still be incredibly useful, because you could store up ridiculous amounts of Fortune ahead of time.

(As a side question, I wonder if tapping enough Fortune while burning electrum could replicate atium's mental enhancements?)

What do you think? Does this seem plausible?

I don't think there are different types of Fortune. Atium and Electrum work through Fortune but it doesn't mean they each have different kinds of it. I believe it's just the same Fortune but put in a different framework to create different effects. 

I believe if you were to store Fortune when burning Atium/electrum, you would simply not be able to see that far into the future, while tapping Fortune would extend your future vision further (just like adding more spikes with that power). Tapping Fortune stored from Atium when you're burning nothing shouldn't give you anything near the effect of Atium, just a normal, increased "gut feeling," because it lacks the framework of Atium.

Spoiler

Wigginns

What would a Hemalurgic spike granting atium do for an Allomancer already able to burn atium? Does it function similarly to bronze, granting enhanced atium-ing? Along this line of thought, would enhancing electrum burning via spike be of any advantage?

Brandon Sanderson

A spike of something you have would enhance your ability, giving your more strength. With atium, more strength makes for a minimal edge--the length you can push out the atium shadows. However, there's a certain breaking point where you kind of crack the whole system, peer straight into the [Spiritual Realm], and kind of have a "It's full of stars" moment.

Electrum could reach this same moment, potentially, though there's more interference to fight through. Extra strength in electrum isn't going to be terribly useful up to that point.

Alsadius

Is that what happened when atium was burned with duralumin?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Footnote: In his original response Brandon mistakenly said burning atium and duralumin would cause the Allomancer to peer into the Cognitive Realm, rather than Spiritual Realm. He has since confirmed that this was a mistake.
/r/books AMA 2015 (Aug. 1, 2015)

 

39 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

(As a side question, I wonder if tapping enough Fortune while burning electrum could replicate atium's mental enhancements?)

I don't think so, mental boost is separate from Fortune. 

 

However, we still know very little about Fortune and its interaction with Invested Arts and future sight in general, it's very hard to tell what you can do with it. 

[Returned he/him]

I suspect that there is only one "Fortune", as we've currently been organizing things. That we know of, we've only seen applications of Fortune through the lens of knowledge of the future: be in place X at time Y to get closer to something that you want, be in place Z because you will be needed for something or other, these chains of actions will lead to specific outcomes so choose the one you want to pursue, that sort of thing. But this is all a view from inside of the cave of ignorance: we don't know enough about Fortune to render much judgement on its properties. I'm thinking that tricks with Fortune will end up being very hard to use effectively and that conscious vs. unconscious knowledge of the future will not be a meaningful distinction.

Scadrial's Fortune Feruchemists are going to give us an awful lot of that information soon! For some definitions of "soon", at least. But I'm not convinced that being able to stockpile Fortune in large amounts as futuresight will be so impressive in the end. Broadly, it seems like Fortune is a very, very difficult property to make good use of:

• Futuresight is the application we know the most about, thanks to atium, but I argue that it's the least useful and impressive facet of Fortune. Atium is cool, but its real value is that you can directly use the knowledge of the future in an effective way. Yomen was no athlete and Elend a Mistborn, yet Yomen could avoid Elend's attacks effortlessly. Hoid claims he doesn't get any information on when or why he'll be needed somewhere but he actually ends up in the right place at the right time. Just knowing the place and time would be a lot less useful than finding a way to get there punctually. Taravangian knew a lot about the future without any special access to Fortune (per Odium's comment), but effectively using that information took a huge amount of work and infrastructure.
• Preservation was very successful with it (despite losing his cognition to use it in the process) but Odium was not. If a Shard, possessed of infinite* power, unlimited access to Fortune, a radically expanded mind, and deep knowledge of the underlying mechanics of magic and the Cosmere universe generally can misfire, how much juice is a Spinner going to get out of any amount of Fortune they manage to store?
• It's not totally clear what competing uses of Fortune accomplish at scale. In a one-on-one fight between people burning atium the effect is effectively nullified for both. Can your stored Fortune be similarly ruined if someone is opposing you with any amount of their own Fortune? Is the "distance" into the future you can see helpful when that futuresight is spoiled like that? Even in ideal conditions it's not perfect. Just ask Zane!
• What is the period of storing Fortune like? If we accept that using Fortune allows you to approach the outcomes you want, passively or actively, what does an equivalent failure to get those outcomes cause to happen to you? Maybe you could allocate your Fortune so that you choose one goal to give up and another to be more likely to get, but it seems at least as likely to me that storing Fortune will move you away from all of your goals in a way that tapping would not be able to overcome.

All told, more futuresight seems to me to be something you don't want to rely on. It's too easy to perturb, even the greatest (strongest/most magical/most knowledgeable) characters have trouble with it, and in a direct contest only one Fortune-user is going to prevail. And futuresight or not you're going to have to count on being lucky enough, which you wouldn't know you aren't until the last moment.

The only character that seems to consistently get what they want out of Fortune is Hoid (if that is indeed how he operates, which I don't believe has been confirmed in sufficient detail), and I don't know if that's down to a novel or clever use of the property or something else.

Edited August 5, 2024 by Returned

[Steel Speedster ♂]

22 hours ago, Quantus said:

Another possibility of Storing Fortune directly might be to Blank your Fortune completely, as in become a Blind Spot for outside Fortune-based effects the way having Futuresight will compound the options to obscure it (as with Renarin or an active Atium burner).  

Isn't blocking another person's Futuresight simply a result of being able to see the future yourself? I don't really see how you could achieve that effect any other way.

22 hours ago, alder24 said:

I don't think there are different types of Fortune. Atium and Electrum work through Fortune but it doesn't mean they each have different kinds of it. I believe it's just the same Fortune but put in a different framework to create different effects.

Okay, that's arguably true, but it's more or less just a disagreement in terms. Even if, at its root, there is only one 'type' of Fortune, we do see different methods of accessing it, different frameworks, to use your word. I might call it a filter, because the main difference (or perhaps the only difference) between methods of accessing Fortune is how you receive the information. Electrum and atium both give you only visual information. Electrum only gives you information about yourself, and atium only gives you information about other people. Innate Fortune is filtered into your subconscious, but presumably is broader in what information you get. So, to rephrase my question with this terminology, if you store Fortune that operates with a different filter, does F-chromium preserve the original filter, or does it take the 'raw' Fortune and stick it through its own filter?

22 hours ago, alder24 said:

I believe if you were to store Fortune when burning Atium/electrum, you would simply not be able to see that far into the future, while tapping Fortune would extend your future vision further (just like adding more spikes with that power). Tapping Fortune stored from Atium when you're burning nothing shouldn't give you anything near the effect of Atium, just a normal, increased "gut feeling," because it lacks the framework of Atium.

Okay, so basically, you're saying that storing Fortune will weaken whatever sources of Fortune you have, and tapping will strengthen it? I hadn't thought of that, but that seems quite plausible. An Oracle/Spinner Twinborn could be really effective, because you could just burn a bunch of electrum and store all of the Fortune ahead of time, which you could then use to enhance your normal electrum burn (not particularly useful, but if you need a bit more time to react, it could be nice) or just use it as basic gut feeling Fortune. This would probably be a lot better with atium, because thanks to the mental enhancements, you don't need to be able to see that far into the future, so you could just siphon off a bit of the extra into your chromiummind. The downside of this Twinborn would be, if you're right about how this mechanic would work, that you wouldn't be able to use your Fortune for gut feeling at the same time as electrum, because most of it would go to strengthening your burn.

22 hours ago, alder24 said:

I don't think so, mental boost is separate from Fortune.

The reason I ask is because I'm wondering if that aspect of atium is actually just another form of Fortune. The mental boost lets you react to attacks from behind, without seeing the atium shadow. It seems like what the characters think of as a mental boost could just be some more Fortune that filters the information directly into their brain, in addition to the Fortune that appears as visual information. This isn't exactly how F-chromium Fortune generally works, but it might create a similar effect, using the gut instinct Fortune effect. Of course, if you're right, tapping chromium while burning electrum would mainly go to strengthen your electrum, so this wouldn't really work.

15 hours ago, Returned said:

Preservation was very successful with it (despite losing his cognition to use it in the process) but Odium was not. If a Shard, possessed of infinite* power, unlimited access to Fortune, a radically expanded mind, and deep knowledge of the underlying mechanics of magic and the Cosmere universe generally can misfire, how much juice is a Spinner going to get out of any amount of Fortune they manage to store?

Shards are acting on a huge scale across thousands of years, which provides many chances for things to go wrong. The further into the future you look, the more you start dealing in possibilities rather than near-certainties. Atium only looks a few seconds into the future, and, from what we've seen, is always correct, unless someone else accesses futuresight. Spinners are going to be a lot more like atium users than like Shardic futuresight.

15 hours ago, Returned said:

It's not totally clear what competing uses of Fortune accomplish at scale. In a one-on-one fight between people burning atium the effect is effectively nullified for both. Can your stored Fortune be similarly ruined if someone is opposing you with any amount of their own Fortune? Is the "distance" into the future you can see helpful when that futuresight is spoiled like that? Even in ideal conditions it's not perfect. Just ask Zane!

That is an interesting question. We know that the innate Fortune that everyone has is not powerful enough to interfere with other forms, like atium, because if it did, Fortune would be entirely unusable!

One factor that matters is the ability of the two Fortune users to physically interfere with one another. For example, two people burning atium 1,000 miles away from one another don't interfere with each other's futuresight, because they're too far to physically interact. But what if instead, we have one atium burner tied to a chair, completely restrained, in the same room as someone else with atium. Will they interfere then? The person tied to the chair cannot do anything physically to interfere, so theoretically, there shouldn't be any way for him to change possible futures. Is the mere fact that both of them can see the future enough to interfere with each other's futuresight, even though one cannot act on it?

I would theorize that the strength of Futuresight determines how much interference it can give. Even relative strength doesn't matter, because if it did, everyone's innate Fortune would be interfering with each other. Or it's possible that subconscious Fortune can't interfere with other Fortune, in which case F-chromium would be useless against someone with atium or electrum.

16 hours ago, Returned said:

What is the period of storing Fortune like? If we accept that using Fortune allows you to approach the outcomes you want, passively or actively, what does an equivalent failure to get those outcomes cause to happen to you? Maybe you could allocate your Fortune so that you choose one goal to give up and another to be more likely to get, but it seems at least as likely to me that storing Fortune will move you away from all of your goals in a way that tapping would not be able to overcome

So, what seems odd to me is that if innate Fortune gives you a gut feeling that leads you towards your desired outcome, then storing Fortune either means that you lose that gut feeling, or that the gut feeling starts misleading you into bad outcomes. There are two problems with the latter being the case. First of all, you could just determinedly ignore your gut feelings whenever you were storing Fortune. Second, this would mean that there was no upper bound to how much you could store. You could just make yourself 1,000,000x more unlucky than normal for a single second, which wouldn't be enough time for your gut feelings to have you kill yourself, so you could amass a ridiculous amount of Fortune at essentially no cost.

Therefore, I actually think that storing 100% Fortune just means you have no gut feeling leading you towards your goal--you don't have instincts that are trying to lead you into trouble.

16 hours ago, Returned said:

All told, more futuresight seems to me to be something you don't want to rely on. It's too easy to perturb, even the greatest (strongest/most magical/most knowledgeable) characters have trouble with it, and in a direct contest only one Fortune-user is going to prevail. And futuresight or not you're going to have to count on being lucky enough, which you wouldn't know you aren't until the last moment.

Yes, especially with F-chromium, it would be risky to rely on. Atium or electrum could probably interfere with it working, which you might not even realize, because you wouldn't get the visual cue of shadows multiplying, like you do with atium.

[alder24]

1 minute ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Isn't blocking another person's Futuresight simply a result of being able to see the future yourself? I don't really see how you could achieve that effect any other way.

It generally is, but you can do that by just tapping Fortune. But it's hard to say how that would look in the Seer's eyes. 

Spoiler

TearablePuns

Can a person compounding Luck defeat a Mistborn burning atium?

Brandon Sanderson

*Hesitantly* Yes. That is theoretically possible. I would say the emphasis on, "Could there?" But it is plausible that that could get around it.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

 

3 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

So, to rephrase my question with this terminology, if you store Fortune that operates with a different filter, does F-chromium preserve the original filter, or does it take the 'raw' Fortune and stick it through its own filter?

I believe it's the latter.

4 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Okay, so basically, you're saying that storing Fortune will weaken whatever sources of Fortune you have, and tapping will strengthen it?

Yes.

5 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

The downside of this Twinborn would be, if you're right about how this mechanic would work, that you wouldn't be able to use your Fortune for gut feeling at the same time as electrum, because most of it would go to strengthening your burn.

That's true, but you burn electrum only in specific situations, like when fighting. You can still tap Fortune when you don't burn electrum - which is most of the time.

7 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

The reason I ask is because I'm wondering if that aspect of atium is actually just another form of Fortune. The mental boost lets you react to attacks from behind, without seeing the atium shadow. It seems like what the characters think of as a mental boost could just be some more Fortune that filters the information directly into their brain, in addition to the Fortune that appears as visual information. This isn't exactly how F-chromium Fortune generally works, but it might create a similar effect, using the gut instinct Fortune effect. Of course, if you're right, tapping chromium while burning electrum would mainly go to strengthen your electrum, so this wouldn't really work.

True, that's possible too. I believe that because Atium/electrum peers into SR, your soul see those shadows all around you, but without visual aid you can't comprehend it normally - that's where Atium's mental boosts come, this is something additional that allows you to process information directly from the SR, something that electrum lacks. 

9 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

One factor that matters is the ability of the two Fortune users to physically interfere with one another. For example, two people burning atium 1,000 miles away from one another don't interfere with each other's futuresight, because they're too far to physically interact. But what if instead, we have one atium burner tied to a chair, completely restrained, in the same room as someone else with atium. Will they interfere then? The person tied to the chair cannot do anything physically to interfere, so theoretically, there shouldn't be any way for him to change possible futures. Is the mere fact that both of them can see the future enough to interfere with each other's futuresight, even though one cannot act on it?

He can always throw himself and the chair on the ground, so yes they would interfere. They would always interfere - he can just talk, do puppy eyes, try to seduce his adversary etc. There are a lot of options, there are a lot of interactions that can be done. But I don't think it's about interactions, it's just about seeing the future, even if you can't do anything about it, it will still mess up the other person's future sight. Even the most unlikely possibility imaginable will split the shadow.

12 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Therefore, I actually think that storing 100% Fortune just means you have no gut feeling leading you towards your goal--you don't have instincts that are trying to lead you into trouble.

I agree.

[Returned he/him]

2 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Shards are acting on a huge scale across thousands of years, which provides many chances for things to go wrong. The further into the future you look, the more you start dealing in possibilities rather than near-certainties. Atium only looks a few seconds into the future, and, from what we've seen, is always correct, unless someone else accesses futuresight. Spinners are going to be a lot more like atium users than like Shardic futuresight.

I don't disagree with the scale of Shards' plans, but if Fortune is so great then it shouldn't matter. Shards aren't like Spinners who can suddenly run out of the attribute, and they arguably already have the mental enhancements that atium provides. Using Fortune doesn't need to be like starting a ball rolling down a hill because, if you're still around and active on the scene, you can keep using it in service of what you want. A  Shard can, essentially, keep looking a few seconds into the future forever, while also constantly checking that they remain on the branch of outcomes they want. Odium might have done this (it's shown that he has access to knowledge Fortune grants, but I don't think we know how much he relied on it). Preservation is the only one we know of that operated under a "lots of time for things to go wrong" approach and, notably, was still successful. Unless it's a writing kludge (which I suppose we can't rule out), Fortune has properties we don't yet understand and which either stop it from being so devastatingly effective as we imagine or otherwise makes it a poor tool.

2 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

I would theorize that the strength of Futuresight determines how much interference it can give. Even relative strength doesn't matter, because if it did, everyone's innate Fortune would be interfering with each other. Or it's possible that subconscious Fortune can't interfere with other Fortune, in which case F-chromium would be useless against someone with atium or electrum.

We can't rule it out. Elend's experience with duralumin-fueled atium seemed to produce an interesting degree of calmness and certainty in him. I don't think that the strength of futuresight can matter that much with regard to interference, though. Vin vs. Zane should be enough to put that to rest-- she didn't even have futuresight (properly, at least), nor did she have the mind-enhancing properties of atium while Zane had both. Fortune does seem amazing in its potential, but it also seems like what we've seen of it is largely as a gimmick in high-contrast situations. I don't think that we should be surprised to find Feruchemical Fortune be more like aluminum than being a Twinborn in terms of its useful applications. We'll see, of course, and I still think it will be interesting.

My feeling is that the answer is likely to be that Fortune among people does experience interference constantly but rarely comes into direct zero-sum conflict, such as a fight between atium-burners.

2 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

So, what seems odd to me is that if innate Fortune gives you a gut feeling that leads you towards your desired outcome, then storing Fortune either means that you lose that gut feeling, or that the gut feeling starts misleading you into bad outcomes. There are two problems with the latter being the case. First of all, you could just determinedly ignore your gut feelings whenever you were storing Fortune. Second, this would mean that there was no upper bound to how much you could store. You could just make yourself 1,000,000x more unlucky than normal for a single second, which wouldn't be enough time for your gut feelings to have you kill yourself, so you could amass a ridiculous amount of Fortune at essentially no cost.

Therefore, I actually think that storing 100% Fortune just means you have no gut feeling leading you towards your goal--you don't have instincts that are trying to lead you into trouble.

The 1,000,000x thing explicitly doesn't work: Sanderson has said you cannot do this with Feruchemical attributes (I think the specific one he referenced was physical speed, but it should hold for any attribute). As for simply losing your "good" luck and being neutral, I am very skeptical. The ars arcanum entry for F-chromium says that:

Quote

 Chromium - Spinner Ferrings can store fortune in a chromium metalmind, making themselves unlucky during active storage, and can tap it at a later time to increase their luck.

You are actively unlucky while storing Fortune, not just less lucky than normal, if this is to be believed as written. That would match with what we've seen of most attributes in that there is a cost to storing it which can't be easily and casually mitigated (in the sense that you really do have to experience the time with less of the attribute to store it). If Fortune really is so amazing then I think that this is likely to be more prominent for it than for other attributes, suggesting that it would not be as easy as "I just won't do what I feel any urge to do while storing". That would promote storing unlimited Fortune for free, any time and all the time. Otherwise F-chromium is going to swamp every other power and situation in the Cosmere, in which case it will almost certainly be cancelled out by other Fortune-manipulators so as to leave some story to tell. Or Fortune turns out to not be so amazing (due to interference or any other reason).

I'm hesitant to conclude that the "gut feeling" theory is definitely correct and the only way that Fortune works (futuresight aside), if only because we have so few observations to examine. I'm also curious if the internal/external divide might apply here, similar to Allomantic atium showing others' futures to you while electrum shows your futures to others. Nicrosil and aluminum seem to deal with "internal" matters: your identity and ability to access Investiture seem to be about the Feruchemist themselves and their own properties. But duralumin's effects seem like they operate primarily on others, causing them to be more aware of and positive towards the Feruchemist. It's hardly evidence, but perhaps Fortune's mode of action also operates on the world external to the Feruchemist rather than internally, in which case the gut feeling would be more of an ancillary effect rather than the main one.

So much of it would be easy to test, too. If only Khriss could spend a week with a Spinner and tell us about it!

2 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Yes, especially with F-chromium, it would be risky to rely on. Atium or electrum could probably interfere with it working, which you might not even realize, because you wouldn't get the visual cue of shadows multiplying, like you do with atium.

More and more I'm wondering how much a wise Cosmere-dweller would rely on Fortune at all. Futuresight only produces information which we know, for certain, can become outdated really quickly. And outside of that its main function seems to be that it just works, sometimes, which you can't know is the case until it's too late. Setting Fortune at the center of your plans seems risky and difficult to evaluate or work with, a move that is favorable only when desperate.

[Steel Speedster ♂]

4 hours ago, Returned said:

Vin vs. Zane should be enough to put that to rest-- she didn't even have futuresight (properly, at least), nor did she have the mind-enhancing properties of atium while Zane had both.

The technical explanation for that phenomenon was that Vin accessed Fortune by reading Zane’s reaction to his Fortune. It wasn’t a case of Fortune failing, it was simply a case of Fortune interfering with Fortune. It’s a weakness in atium, but not necessarily a flaw in Fortune as a whole.

4 hours ago, Returned said:

The 1,000,000x thing explicitly doesn't work: Sanderson has said you cannot do this with Feruchemical attributes (I think the specific one he referenced was physical speed, but it should hold for any attribute).

Yes, but other attributes can’t become negative while storing. When storing speed, for example, the theoretical limit is storing 100% of your speed, leaving you at 0 speed. You can’t store more, because you don’t have more to store. For Fortune, let’s say you’re starting amount is 10 (to use made up numbers), and 0 is a lack of any Fortune at all. If storing lets you get bad Fortune, then that means that you’re dipping into negative numbers. You’re no longer storing something beneficial that you already have, you’re taking on a harmful attribute that you didn’t already have. There’s no limit to how low you could get, unless it’s completely arbitrary. That’s why I don’t think you can get bad luck from storing Fortune. As far as the phrasing of the power’s description goes, I would just attribute it to being an incomplete in-world understanding. Compared to how much Fortune a normal person has, someone storing is going to seem unlucky. We know that they don’t understand the spiritual quadrant very well.

4 hours ago, Returned said:

I'm hesitant to conclude that the "gut feeling" theory is definitely correct and the only way that Fortune works (futuresight aside), if only because we have so few observations to examine. I'm also curious if the internal/external divide might apply here, similar to Allomantic atium showing others' futures to you while electrum shows your futures to others. Nicrosil and aluminum seem to deal with "internal" matters: your identity and ability to access Investiture seem to be about the Feruchemist themselves and their own properties. But duralumin's effects seem like they operate primarily on others, causing them to be more aware of and positive towards the Feruchemist. It's hardly evidence, but perhaps Fortune's mode of action also operates on the world external to the Feruchemist rather than internally, in which case the gut feeling would be more of an ancillary effect rather than the main one.

I’m pretty sure Feruchemy is supposed to be 100% internal powers. I also theorize that atium and electrum are actually both internal metals. (I’m planning on making a post about that soon.) I don’t think there’s a strict divide between Fortune about others and Fortune about yourself. I think it’s just something those two metals happen to do.

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Yes, but other attributes can’t become negative while storing. When storing speed, for example, the theoretical limit is storing 100% of your speed, leaving you at 0 speed. You can’t store more, because you don’t have more to store. For Fortune, let’s say you’re starting amount is 10 (to use made up numbers), and 0 is a lack of any Fortune at all. If storing lets you get bad Fortune, then that means that you’re dipping into negative numbers. You’re no longer storing something beneficial that you already have, you’re taking on a harmful attribute that you didn’t already have. There’s no limit to how low you could get, unless it’s completely arbitrary. That’s why I don’t think you can get bad luck from storing Fortune. As far as the phrasing of the power’s description goes, I would just attribute it to being an incomplete in-world understanding. Compared to how much Fortune a normal person has, someone storing is going to seem unlucky. We know that they don’t understand the spiritual quadrant very well.

I don't think that you can go into negative numbers for storing Fortune. You have a given amount of Investiture that the attribute is comprised of, and you can store pieces of it away temporarily to gain some effect for later, but you can't draw from what's not there.

[Steel Speedster ♂]

4 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I don't think that you can go into negative numbers for storing Fortune. You have a given amount of Investiture that the attribute is comprised of, and you can store pieces of it away temporarily to gain some effect for later, but you can't draw from what's not there.

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. That’s why you can’t get “bad luck” from storing.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Speeding Steelrunner

[Trusk'our he/him]

21 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. That’s why you can’t get “bad luck” from storing.

I think that you could still see negative effects for storing Fortune; if how a person normally acts is them with 100% of their Fortune guiding and benefitting them, then reducing that Fortune will negatively impact how they function. 

[Steel Speedster ♂]

1 minute ago, Trusk'our said:

I think that you could still see negative effects for storing Fortune; if how a person normally acts is them with 100% of their Fortune guiding and benefitting them, then reducing that Fortune will negatively impact how they function. 

Yes, but (assuming the “gut feeling” theory of Fortune) it wouldn’t make your gut feeling start misleading you, you would just have less of it. I never tried to imply that there weren’t downsides to storing.

[Returned he/him]

3 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

The technical explanation for that phenomenon was that Vin accessed Fortune by reading Zane’s reaction to his Fortune. It wasn’t a case of Fortune failing, it was simply a case of Fortune interfering with Fortune. It’s a weakness in atium, but not necessarily a flaw in Fortune as a whole.

I'll have to disagree with you here. Accessing Fortune is things going your way via magic, whether that's the "gut feeling" or knowledge of the future-- it's not necessarily having either of those things, it's the method of access that matters. The magic. The core argument is Taravangian's Diagram: lots of knowledge of the future but generated through mundane means (even though those means were, themselves, available only because of magic). Odium flat out states this to be the case. What Vin did was know the future through mundanely observing Zane, and her specific method involved timing (too late for Zane to see or change his behavior) and reflex (no thinking or planning of specific actions which Zane could then perceive in advance). Vin did not access Fortune in that event, though she did gain information by watching Zane, who did.

But the broader point I'm making is that neither knowledge of future events (seeing the atium shadow) nor magically taking favorable actions (perfectly moving to avoid being hit) is sufficient to be a guarantee of an outcome, and it's not about the amount of magical foreknowledge you have nor its intensity. There's no way to spin the Zane/Vin fight that papers over Zane's Fortune-based advantages being absolute over Vin, who had no more Fortune than anyone else (as far as we know). And if you can oppose the magic successfully without bringing your own magic to bear then there's no reason to think that Fortune is ever not being interfered with, constantly. It's a "Fortune isn't the killer advantage people often assume" take. Information traveling back in time such that it changes the information's original context is always bizarre, and I think that getting too attached to any mechanical explanation for how it will work is a mistake. Its details are arbitrary, even for magic.

3 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

That’s why I don’t think you can get bad luck from storing Fortune. As far as the phrasing of the power’s description goes, I would just attribute it to being an incomplete in-world understanding. Compared to how much Fortune a normal person has, someone storing is going to seem unlucky. We know that they don’t understand the spiritual quadrant very well.

Totally possible. One issue I try to avoid with Cosmere magic is using an analogy as a way to understand something and then using the analogy to justify something different. It's one thing to say that storing Fortune is like storing physical speed in some ways (which I think is unarguably true, as that's what Feruchemy is), but it's a different thing to say that storing physical speed and Fortune are the same in every way. The spiritual attributes are pretty bizarre compared to the physical and mental ones and are the most magical/dependent on Cosmere properties/not necessarily intuitive.

It's sensible to see "more physical strength" as "less physical weakness", and the inverse of "more physical weakness" is equivalent to "less physical strength". Some people are stronger than others, which is relevant to how much strength they can store but you can't really have zero strength or negative strength (in a general sense, I'm sure there are ways to parse those out if someone really wants to). But "luck" doesn't seem so clear cut to me because it obviously has a... I'll call it "polarity", which is different from degree. You can have good luck, bad luck, or no particular luck in a given situation.

Something good happening to you is good luck, and something bad happening to you is bad luck. Something good which might have happened to you but didn't is bad luck, and something bad which might have happened to you but didn't is good luck. That makes it problematic to suggest that someone who is storing as much Fortune as possible in a metalmind has siphoned away all of their favorable outcomes only and is now luck-neutral: there is no place for bad luck to exist in that framework. How would you explain a non-Feruchemist experiencing bad luck? They aren't storing any Fortune. If I'm missing your point, I'll ask: what, exactly, does "neutral luck" mean in the framework you're advancing? Is there such a thing as bad luck? Is there a difference from getting a favorable outcome, like finding $50, and avoiding an unfavorable outcome, like a pickpocket choosing to steal $50 from someone other than you?

3 hours ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

I’m pretty sure Feruchemy is supposed to be 100% internal powers. I also theorize that atium and electrum are actually both internal metals. (I’m planning on making a post about that soon.) I don’t think there’s a strict divide between Fortune about others and Fortune about yourself. I think it’s just something those two metals happen to do.

There might be some explanation that satisfies everything, but with what we know of F-duralumin at present I don't think we should be so certain of this. F-duralumin specifically deals with connections between the Feruchemist and others, and (perhaps) must influence those others. If it influences others so directly then it can't be the case that it's purely an internal effect (again, based on what we currently know). Maybe it makes someone so personally magnetic that others can't help but feel connected to them, but that suggests that the magic could simply fail in some cases-- some people find gregariousness annoying while others find it very personable and pleasant, for example. If F-duralumin can't affect both equally then that would be similar to saying that strength from F-pewter could allow someone to lift a Honda but not an equivalent Toyota; if the strength is conditional on the object to which it is applied, in what sense do you have "strength"?. Connection, at least, can't really be 100% internal, though I could be persuaded by an argument along the lines of "the Feruchemist is connecting themselves to others, and not others to the Feruchemist" (and probably lots of other arguments, too).\.

I agree with you that there is no division between Fortune regarding one's self and others, but the Allomantic metals very specifically impose that division. You don't see your own atium shadows nor your own electrum shadows, and there is no crossover between . The internal/external piece wasn't meant to explain Feruchemy (I'm aware that that metal grouping system is specific to Allomancy). My curiosity about F-chromium is if it only influences what you yourself do or if it can influence events around you.

Imagine that you are supposed to go to a specific place, and are free to move around. If you tap some extra Fortune, maybe you find the safe path to get to where you want to go. But if you're in a slave wagon (like Kaladin in WoK) but unable to interact with the slavers (unlike Kaladin in WoK), and the slavers don't want to go to your destination, could your tapping Fortune potentially get the wagon there anyways? Maybe, even if we haven't seen anything like that yet. Fortune at minimum appears to scan through all of the information in the Cosmere, it's not obviously wrong to think that it could influence something other than the Spinner as well.

Edited August 7, 2024 by Returned

[Steel Speedster ♂]

11 hours ago, Returned said:

I'll have to disagree with you here. Accessing Fortune is things going your way via magic, whether that's the "gut feeling" or knowledge of the future-- it's not necessarily having either of those things, it's the method of access that matters. The magic. The core argument is Taravangian's Diagram: lots of knowledge of the future but generated through mundane means (even though those means were, themselves, available only because of magic). Odium flat out states this to be the case. What Vin did was know the future through mundanely observing Zane, and her specific method involved timing (too late for Zane to see or change his behavior) and reflex (no thinking or planning of specific actions which Zane could then perceive in advance). Vin did not access Fortune in that event, though she did gain information by watching Zane, who did.

I would define Fortune simply as obtaining knowledge from the future. You don't need to be using magic to get it (although I think there always will be some magic involved somewhere in the process.) The difference between Taravangian and Vin's situations is that Vin obtained certain (and yes, I know what Zane saw actually didn't happen, but it's what would have happened if Vin hadn't accessed Fortune and caused interference) knowledge of the future, whereas Taravangian was making guesses and deductions (admittedly very good ones) based on the present. Taravangian's knowledge wouldn't have caused Fortune interference, like Vin did. I think the language used in the WoA really suggests that Vin was using future sight in some way (I don't own a physical copy of the book, so I can't pull up a quote), but I don't think there's enough evidence for us to settle this.

11 hours ago, Returned said:

Totally possible. One issue I try to avoid with Cosmere magic is using an analogy as a way to understand something and then using the analogy to justify something different. It's one thing to say that storing Fortune is like storing physical speed in some ways (which I think is unarguably true, as that's what Feruchemy is), but it's a different thing to say that storing physical speed and Fortune are the same in every way. The spiritual attributes are pretty bizarre compared to the physical and mental ones and are the most magical/dependent on Cosmere properties/not necessarily intuitive.

It's sensible to see "more physical strength" as "less physical weakness", and the inverse of "more physical weakness" is equivalent to "less physical strength". Some people are stronger than others, which is relevant to how much strength they can store but you can't really have zero strength or negative strength (in a general sense, I'm sure there are ways to parse those out if someone really wants to). But "luck" doesn't seem so clear cut to me because it obviously has a... I'll call it "polarity", which is different from degree. You can have good luck, bad luck, or no particular luck in a given situation.

Part of the problem is I can't think of any way that storing Fortune might work where being able to store into the negatives doesn't result in being able to store down an unlimitedly high amount. It's precisely because luck has this polarity, while other attributes don't. Like you say, there's no such thing as negative strength. There's no such thing as negative speed. Arguably, the concept of negative weight could exist (falling up instead of down), but we know that's not possible--you can't even get down to 0 weight.

11 hours ago, Returned said:

Something good happening to you is good luck, and something bad happening to you is bad luck. Something good which might have happened to you but didn't is bad luck, and something bad which might have happened to you but didn't is good luck. That makes it problematic to suggest that someone who is storing as much Fortune as possible in a metalmind has siphoned away all of their favorable outcomes only and is now luck-neutral: there is no place for bad luck to exist in that framework. How would you explain a non-Feruchemist experiencing bad luck? They aren't storing any Fortune. If I'm missing your point, I'll ask: what, exactly, does "neutral luck" mean in the framework you're advancing? Is there such a thing as bad luck? Is there a difference from getting a favorable outcome, like finding $50, and avoiding an unfavorable outcome, like a pickpocket choosing to steal $50 from someone other than you?

The thing is, I don't think storing Fortune is as closely related to the concept of luck as you're presenting it here. We do use the terms "good fortune" and "good luck" interchangeably, but Fortune, as in knowledge of the future is a different thing. The term 'luck' is used in the description of chromium's power, but I think that that's simply a result of them not understanding what it actually does. In my opinion, what's going on is that having a high amount of Fortune means that you do things that get yield positive outcomes, which, to people who don't exactly understand what they're doing, seems like they have good luck. When you store Fortune (let's just say down to 0), you no longer have any knowledge of the future, so you stop making choices that give you good outcomes. If you consider the fact that people in the Cosmere have some innate Fortune, then compared to the number of good vs. bad outcomes they usually get, storing Fortune will by comparison, make it seem like they have bad luck.

So, to answer your questions, what is "neutral luck"? From a technical perspective, that would be when you have 0 Fortune--no futuresight. However, one could consider a person's base amount of Fortune to be neutral luck. Bad luck from a technical perspective, would be a negative amount of Fortune (i.e. Fortune that misguides you into bad outcomes), but I don't think you can achieve that with F-chromium, like I said before. However, bad luck could arguably be considered any amount of Fortune below your base amount of Fortune.

It's tricky to talk about, because we have the concept of good and bad luck in our world, and it seems that Fortune--this innate knowledge of the future--is being used to explain it in the Cosmere. To be honest, we really don't know much at all about this, so a lot of what I'm arguing here is just stuff that makes sense to me based on what we do know.

12 hours ago, Returned said:

There might be some explanation that satisfies everything, but with what we know of F-duralumin at present I don't think we should be so certain of this. F-duralumin specifically deals with connections between the Feruchemist and others, and (perhaps) must influence those others. If it influences others so directly then it can't be the case that it's purely an internal effect (again, based on what we currently know). Maybe it makes someone so personally magnetic that others can't help but feel connected to them, but that suggests that the magic could simply fail in some cases-- some people find gregariousness annoying while others find it very personable and pleasant, for example. If F-duralumin can't affect both equally then that would be similar to saying that strength from F-pewter could allow someone to lift a Honda but not an equivalent Toyota; if the strength is conditional on the object to which it is applied, in what sense do you have "strength"?. Connection, at least, can't really be 100% internal, though I could be persuaded by an argument along the lines of "the Feruchemist is connecting themselves to others, and not others to the Feruchemist" (and probably lots of other arguments, too).

F-duralumin, admittedly, does affect others a bit more directly than other Feruchemical powers. However, that's simply because Connections, by nature, have to connect two separate things. You could think of it as storing your own Connection to others, which inevitably affects them as well as you. A-copper, an internal power does affect other people, so it's not necessarily a rule that a power cannot directly affect something outside of the user and be considered internal.

12 hours ago, Returned said:

Imagine that you are supposed to go to a specific place, and are free to move around. If you tap some extra Fortune, maybe you find the safe path to get to where you want to go. But if you're in a slave wagon (like Kaladin in WoK) but unable to interact with the slavers (unlike Kaladin in WoK), and the slavers don't want to go to your destination, could your tapping Fortune potentially get the wagon there anyways? Maybe, even if we haven't seen anything like that yet. Fortune at minimum appears to scan through all of the information in the Cosmere, it's not obviously wrong to think that it could influence something other than the Spinner as well.

I think that Fortune only affects the user. That's one of the main differences between chromium working by storing futuresight or just simple "luck." If it could influence things outside of the user, then chromium compounding would be absolutely broken. So, in your example, no, I don't think the wagon would get there. If you had any way to influence where it went, and enough Fortune then, yes, but otherwise, I don't think so.