Vwafendal is a Duralumin Feruchemist?

[Dofurion]

This question came to me when I read a similar question on this forum. During Shadow of Self, Wax has a meeting with his grandmother and during the course of their meeting, he has vivid memories of his youth. He infers that she did something to the tea they drink, but after all, this is a place full of Feruchemists. Couldn't it be an ability resulting from tapping connection?

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Considering her intense fixation on the Terris' bloodline consolidation initiatives, her generally uncanny abilities, and persistent future-focus, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if she was eventually revealed to be a Fortune-Ferring, however, Connection would fill some of those weird mystical short-term gaps as well. I think it's very likely that she's a feruchemist of some kind in any case, and probably a poorly understood one for era2, else I would not expect her to have built so much of her personal Identity around cultivating,  understanding, and propagating such arts, though it is technically possible.

[Isilel]

Weird, how despite her being so invested in restoring the Terris people, she apparently only had one kid and her only daughter chose to marry outside the culture. Which seemingly didn't affect Vwafendal's standing in the community at all, hm...

But then, you'd think that given how, to their knowledge, they were supposed to re-people the planet, large families would be customary in general, instead of everyone having 1-2 children... 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

46 minutes ago, Isilel said:

Weird, how despite her being so invested in restoring the Terris people, she apparently only had one kid and her only daughter chose to marry outside the culture. Which seemingly didn't affect Vwafendal's standing in the community at all, hm...

But then, you'd think that given how, to their knowledge, they were supposed to re-people the planet, large families would be customary in general, instead of everyone having 1-2 children... 

I actually don't find that weird at all to be honest. Real life groups of people who have engaged in and espoused public ethnically-based blood-purity cultural imperatives have usually (when listened to) stunted or crippled their society relative to those that just don't care or agree to obey them. I wouldn't go so far as to imply Vwafendal to be a racist, but she is ignorant (not her fault, she's on the cutting edge of researching and understanding the system that she's contained in) and it's not uncommon for people like that to be poor providers.

It's implied that all living ferrings share a single common ancestor at this point, and it's only been a couple generations. The era-2 Terris were not dumb as a people, and one doesn't need to have a robust understanding of human genetics to have a natural aversion to incest; that's been baked into the cake a lot longer than it has been scientifically verified to be well-founded and intelligent.

So...I'd say, she probably tried to practice what she preached, but it was just a very sick and doomed ideology that she was betting on. Power can be cascaded intergenerationally by birth, sure definitely, but thinking, believing, and codifying that that's the only way to sustain and evolve a culture is how you end up in the dark ages with a king and queen who are brother-cousins and riddled with severe brain disorders like in game of thrones.

[Returned he/him]

The Terris in era 2 are a pretty strange group, at least within the compound. It's not clear that their plans, to re-consolidate the Terris bloodline, are even workable in the ways that they hope, though they seem to have been pretty successful in propagating a decent number of Ferrings from a source population that had no Feruchemists at all (as far as we know, but Ruin seems to have been pretty thorough).

We don't even really know that the real-world consequences of a shallow gene pool apply on Scadrial as they would in reality, in the same sense that Rosharans rarely fall ill because they are inherently, magically disease-resistant. Maybe the Terris can juggle lineages based on matching cousins, indefinitely, without much risk. And even then, access to magic makes a lot of things possible which otherwise would not be, though, so who can say for certain? With a long enough timespan anything could happen-- all extant, real-life humans have a common ancestor. though I doubt Vwafendal is thinking on such a grand time scale.

The insularity of era 2 Terrispeople is pretty interesting and was barely explored in the books. Since Feruchemy is kind of the linchpin of their cultural identity it would not shock me at all that they are using it to actively reinforce their society and culture, nor that they might be using it passively (even unknowingly) in some way. I mean, we don't even really know what Feruchemy is as a Metallic Art or a magic system in the Cosmere. It breaks the mold of "one Shard Invested on a planet -> one distinct magic system, with some emergent interactions between systems".

I would be very interested to learn more about modern Terris culture, especially in contrast to the culturally distinct Southern Scadrian nations which seem similarly insular to me.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

34 minutes ago, Returned said:

I would be very interested to learn more about modern Terris culture, especially in contrast to the culturally distinct Southern Scadrian nations which seem similarly insular to me.

I think that the existence of the latter, especially with Unsealed Metalminds that grant Feruchemy to anyone, will definitely lead into much greater public interest in the Terris, whether they want it or not.

[Returned he/him]

30 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I think that the existence of the latter, especially with Unsealed Metalminds that grant Feruchemy to anyone, will definitely lead into much greater public interest in the Terris, whether they want it or not.

I think that they will want it, and will work hard to get it. The Terris in era 2 seem to really want cultural distinction, deference, and power. No matter what happens with the unsealed metalminds, the Terris are going to be in a great position to control their production. And that concentration may well lead to them becoming even more insular, like a family, cartel, political organization, and supremacist cult all at once. That's my guess, at any rate. I predict that the Terris of era 3 will be pretty far from Sazed's contemporaries in era 1 (excepting Rashek, whose pre-Ascension vision for the Terris may essentially come true).

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

15 hours ago, Returned said:

I think that they will want it, and will work hard to get it. The Terris in era 2 seem to really want cultural distinction, deference, and power. No matter what happens with the unsealed metalminds, the Terris are going to be in a great position to control their production. And that concentration may well lead to them becoming even more insular, like a family, cartel, political organization, and supremacist cult all at once. That's my guess, at any rate. I predict that the Terris of era 3 will be pretty far from Sazed's contemporaries in era 1 (excepting Rashek, whose pre-Ascension vision for the Terris may essentially come true).

I think Harmonium will ultimately be the great equalizer that prevents this prophecy from coming true, but I 100% agree that this vector is how people are trying to make terris evolution play out. 

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

23 hours ago, Lewis Nethur said:

I think Harmonium will ultimately be the great equalizer that prevents this prophecy from coming true, but I 100% agree that this vector is how people are trying to make terris evolution play out. 

I wouldn't be too sure on Harmonium.

It's a rare material that only has one source, assuming it forms around a Perpendicularity like Atium used to that is, and the Malwish have full control over its supply, they've already cut of trading with the Northerners. The Basin probably won't have enough to really experiment with, and especially not mass produce anything with it.

Unsealed Medallions on the other hand are more likely to be mass produced, and they already have the greatest number of Feruchemists in their capital city, they just need to figure out how they're made.

No matter what, the Terris will be put into the public spotlight by Era 3, the idea of commodifying Metalborn powers is just too much of a possibility to for anyone to ignore.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

8 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I wouldn't be too sure on Harmonium.

It's a rare material that only has one source, assuming it forms around a Perpendicularity like Atium used to that is, and the Malwish have full control over its supply, they've already cut of trading with the Northerners. The Basin probably won't have enough to really experiment with, and especially not mass produce anything with it.

Unsealed Medallions on the other hand are more likely to be mass produced, and they already have the greatest number of Feruchemists in their capital city, they just need to figure out how they're made.

No matter what, the Terris will be put into the public spotlight by Era 3, the idea of commodifying Metalborn powers is just too much of a possibility to for anyone to ignore.

Oh! Sorry, my headcannon thus far is that malwish technology operates by using harmonium to artificially fuel machines using unsealed medallions by extracting and broadcasting their power to other objects. Once the northerners realize this, they'll understand that they have everything that the southerners want (copious natual metalborn), and the southerners have everything that the northerners need (the ability to manufacture machines instead of breeding humans like nazis). That's how the best economic relationships work. This is years and years away though if it's not a crackpot theory. Like...book 2 of the next trilogy maybe.

[Returned he/him]

On 11/20/2024 at 8:51 AM, Lewis Nethur said:

I think Harmonium will ultimately be the great equalizer that prevents this prophecy from coming true, but I 100% agree that this vector is how people are trying to make terris evolution play out. 

On 11/21/2024 at 8:54 AM, JustQuestin2004 said:

I wouldn't be too sure on Harmonium.

It's a rare material that only has one source, assuming it forms around a Perpendicularity like Atium used to that is, and the Malwish have full control over its supply, they've already cut of trading with the Northerners. The Basin probably won't have enough to really experiment with, and especially not mass produce anything with it.

Harmonium is so rare and versatile I think that the natural goal of a group with a desire for control, as well as enough of an edge to make a play for it, will be to control whatever source of Harmonium exists as well. It's interesting to think about two axes of power on Scadrial, inborn Feruchemy vs. mechanical magic via a monopolizable resource, and I haven't given it enough thought to give it fair due in this context.

My theories on Harmony transitioning to Discord and how that will be manifested on Scadrial haven't gotten much traction, but I really like how it would dovetail with groups trying to monopolize a more abstract, communal capacity (Feruchemy) versus groups trying to monopolize an external, concrete capacity (mechanical/Metallic Arts engineering and Ettmetal).

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

Harmonium is so rare and versatile I think that the natural goal of a group with a desire for control, as well as enough of an edge to make a play for it, will be to control whatever source of Harmonium exists as well. It's interesting to think about two axes of power on Scadrial, inborn Feruchemy vs. mechanical magic via a monopolizable resource, and I haven't given it enough thought to give it fair due in this context.

My theories on Harmony transitioning to Discord and how that will be manifested on Scadrial haven't gotten much traction, but I really like how it would dovetail with groups trying to monopolize a more abstract, communal capacity (Feruchemy) versus groups trying to monopolize an external, concrete capacity (mechanical/Metallic Arts engineering and Ettmetal).

My money is on mechanical magic taking the cake. Breeding ferrings sounds like a great idea until, you know, they decide to be self-aware about whoever is outright pulling their strings and controlling them and just...stop playing super sweet and nice (like at the first sign of a major conflict. Cough.)

And once mechanical allomancy gets going, the controls around Harmonium supply are going to go super soft super fast. The genie is being kept 100% inside the bottle today, but as soon as it's out and even a small amount of trade gets going, then anyone threatening to cut off continued trade is going to be faced with the harsh and painful reality that everyone that they've traded with previously is fully capable of cannibalizing and reapplying their Harmonium from applications of peace to atomic bombs if they're very uncreative, and even more deadly efficient machines than the best humans can ever be bred or trained to be. 

Edited November 23, 2024 by Lewis Nethur

[Returned he/him]

We'll see! Cults are pretty good at enforcing conformity, and we've already got plenty of examples of Ferrings who are loyal employees of others, even those without any powers. But my theories on Discord's presence on Scadrial involve intense, unavoidable intra-factional conflict, so (if those are at all correct) then we won't see the discipline that the Terris might prefer. Though that same item would apply to anyone controlling the Harmonium. So perhaps a core organization controlling each that is pretty powerful, but then spies and defectors, possibly along with splinter resistance groups.

At this point I'm more excited for Mistborn era 3 than I am for more Stormlight. But a lot of that is probably that the Stormlight story is narrowing while Scadrial's is expanding.

[Light In the Darkness]

On 11/23/2024 at 12:09 PM, Lewis Nethur said:

The genie is being kept 100% inside the bottle today, but as soon as it's out and even a small amount of trade gets going, then anyone threatening to cut off continued trade is going to be faced with the harsh and painful reality that everyone that they've traded with previously is fully capable of cannibalizing and reapplying their Harmonium from applications of peace to atomic bombs if they're very uncreative, and even more deadly efficient machines than the best humans can ever be bred or trained to be. 

This gave me an interesting thought - if the southerners haven't found nicrosil and what few nicrobursters they have, then the northerners could make excessively more powerful guns, assuming harmonium stores the pushes and pulls they receive at the strength they received them. If a coinshot in a metal-less room flared and was nicrobursted, at absolutely maximum power, as much steel as possible, right next to a harmonium cube, then used it in a specially designed gun, they could launch projectiles a hundred times faster than bullets - they would effectively have long-distance missiles that need only metal for fuel, potentially strong enough to launch ICBMs, with minimal need for rocket science. Very small amounts of harmonium could also be used for similarly-built bombs that simply throw shrapnel at excessive speeds or even debris the way a hazekiller round does, to avoid defenses based on the same principles. They could even make double bombs - time a metal-pushing charge, and then have a small amount of water around it break an instant later as a second explosion/detonation in case the first fails. This is assuming, of course, that the timing on the release is controllable/dialable.

Actually, there might be hidden compounding here. Water releases all of the investiture in harmonium as energy and turns it into something else, according to my best understanding of the reaction, since I don't think pieces of God Metals are just created and scattered everywhere whenever one of those bombs explode, but something is left behind, if I remember the WoBs correctly. So, if all the investiture is drained, what happens when a charged harmonium piece is detonated? If it converts a significant amount of the investiture, maybe proportional to the charge, into the same investiture as its charge, which honestly seems possible based on the way the metallic arts have behaved thus far, then you could release an allomantic charge significantly stronger than the one stored by blowing up a charged piece of harmonium. This would also explain how a very small priming could start a flying machine like the southerners have, and explain what they must be using for fuel - there's no way Brandon allowed them to be perpetual motion machines, given they never stop. Maybe I should make a thread for this. But this would bias a potential war significantly in favor of the northerners if they have a non-trivial amount of harmonium, though lacking flying machines would still make it difficult. There is also the possibility that Harmonium will begin to form again in the Pits or the Well, if Wax flying around down there didn't screw it up, either option of which would be very possible.

[Duxredux he/him]

Bit late to the party, but I think some assumptions are being made throughout this conversation. Not saying that you're interpretation is wrong, rather that assumptions are being made.

On 11/16/2024 at 3:19 AM, Isilel said:

Weird, how despite her being so invested in restoring the Terris people, she apparently only had one kid and her only daughter chose to marry outside the culture. Which seemingly didn't affect Vwafendal's standing in the community at all, hm...

But then, you'd think that given how, to their knowledge, they were supposed to re-people the planet, large families would be customary in general, instead of everyone having 1-2 children... 

As far I can tell, we never hear about Wax's grandfather. There's an assumption that Vwafendal had opportunity to have more children, which may have not been the case depending on when her spouse presumably passed away, or that all of her children survived to a marriageable age. I've also seen multiple threads where people wonder how the Cosmere fits into the Demographic Transition Model (DTM) that often is used to model birth rates and population growth, and most of the time we walk away scratching our heads and left unsure if Brandon is thinking about it and taking it into account or not or if the magic is affecting it. For that matter, with the Terris specifically, marrying in the community might be viewed as traditional, whereas breeding programs or forced large families have a very different cultural history for the Terris stemming from the Final Empire.

6 hours ago, Light In the Darkness said:

If a coinshot in a metal-less room flared and was nicrobursted, at absolutely maximum power, as much steel as possible, right next to a harmonium cube, then used it in a specially designed gun, they could launch projectiles a hundred times faster than bullets - they would effectively have long-distance missiles that need only metal for fuel, potentially strong enough to launch ICBMs, with minimal need for rocket science.

I'm not an expert in the field, but I think you're severely underplaying just how much calculation has to go into making long distance shots with any degree of accuracy. Snipers at super long distances have to take into account gravity, windspeed, slowdown from air resistance altering the parabola, motion of the target, and rotation of the planet. If you're talking intercontinental distances, you'll need to worry about topography such as mountain ranges, the curvature of the planet, and anything in the way of a relatively straight parabola from shooter to target. When you use a single impulse to propel the projectile to the target there is no opportunity for course correction, you have to get all of the information right the first time with no opportunity to make on-board calculations and course corrections based on atmospheric conditions or changes to target behavior. Beyond that, the shooter will have blind spots based on where on the planet the target is, at least I can't think of a way to hit a target on the other side of the planet with a single kinetic impulse, unless you can shoot through the planet itself - with all of the complications that would bring. 

I have the sneaking suspicion that rocket science is actually easier than what you're suggesting, since if you can get a missile into orbit and then drop it down via reentry, then the ICBM's starting point is mostly irrelevant, it can travel through the thinner atmosphere and then dive. Figure out a method to guide an orbital missile to a visible surface target, and it should work for pretty much the whole planet - there's much less interference above the atmosphere. Firing a sniper shot that has to travel through the atmosphere (since too high and the shot will just hit escape velocity), and this will dramatically slow the bullet and increase flight time, with all of the atmospheric conditions between the shooter and the target affecting the shot. No course correction, no testing with orbital guidance to a practice target, you have to get the conditions right for that shot - presumably with insanely precise angular targeting at the gun emplacement since a 0.05° horizontal shift when aiming at a target 3,000 miles away (minimum width of the Atlantic Ocean between America and Europe) would translate to about 2.6 miles of deviation at the target. I'd start worrying about heat expansion and vibration totally wrecking accuracy. Material sciences and machined tolerances has to be sufficiently advanced the further out you are aiming and hoping to hit.

For the rest of your thought, Malwish airships use Harmonium as fuel. We learn this in BoM. Harmonium already is being consumed in the process, presumably at controllable rates since they are steering based on propellor speeds. My current guess is that for this kind of extension of a Allomantic power, the Harmonium uses itself as fuel, whereas the Allomantic grenades utilize the power stored by the Allomancer. Basically two different applications. It's somewhat as you say, but I don't think they are detonating Harmonium in that process.

 

As for the original post, we know from VenDell that the Terris are hypothesizing and experimenting with the Spiritual quadrant of the Feruchemical Arts. Experimentation requires there to be Ferrings with the associated abilities, otherwise it's just armchair speculation. I think that it's reasonable to assume that there are Spiritual Ferrings in the Terris Conclave during Era 2, though whether Vwafendal is one of those, or if she is merely having a Connector Ferring assist her, is another matter. Such a Connector Ferring may not have been targeting Wax specifically, but may have been intended to encourage all the Terris in the Conclave to feel greater connection to their heritage. They also could just ramp it up whenever any Terrisborn comes back to visit.

Edited November 26, 2024 by Duxredux

[Light In the Darkness]

17 hours ago, Duxredux said:

I'm not an expert in the field, but I think you're severely underplaying just how much calculation has to go into making long distance shots with any degree of accuracy. Snipers at super long distances have to take into account gravity, windspeed, slowdown from air resistance altering the parabola, motion of the target, and rotation of the planet.

This is all true; I think what I meant with that phrase was more that an understanding of rockets themselves - the fuel-burning engines that we have tuned to extremely high efficiencies, and the complex mechanics involving significant mass changes as fuel is burnt off and the like - would not be quite as necessary. Additionally, due to cheaper materials, a salvo of ICBMs with destructive warheads could be launched with varying angles and more simple orbital trajectories - angled to hit near earth orbit or just inside it, not quite hitting escape velocity, and then come down close to a target city. That math is simple enough, from what I recall, if you ignore atmospheric interference - meaning your accuracy diminishes appreciably. This would turn an ICBM's rifle into a shotgun - less effective and damaging, but a smidge easier to aim, and cheaper to produce. Such missiles would never be precision strikes - but in that case, who cares where the collateral damage lands? You have a million of the missiles, shoot one, watch where it lands via spies or the like, adjust trajectory, and when you get close enough, send a hailstorm. Inaccurate, but far cheaper and less technology-reliant than our missiles today, meaning they would be deployable much earlier in history.

17 hours ago, Duxredux said:

I'd start worrying about heat expansion and vibration totally wrecking accuracy

This might kill this darling yet, but with Aluminum about to be made very cheap and metallurgy having been a very refined skill on Scadrial for a while now, the machined tolerance you mention might be achievable long before rocket engines are for the Scadrians.

17 hours ago, Duxredux said:

(since too high and the shot will just hit escape velocity)

This might actually be a desired outcome. Allomantic interactions like this would make space exploration so much easier; a satellite would need no rocket engines or complex staged mechanism for reaching orbit - just one really strong launch, and some course-correcting fins and minor engines. Spy satellites could proliferate with ease, and if you can control the Gs while accomplishing the needed acceleration, small manned spacecraft would be excessively feasible. This would eliminate a large amount of space junk pollution, which is a threat to our current infrastructure of satellites, and allomantic pushing or pulling machines could easily clean up any metal debris that does end up in orbit. This would also be a perfect set up for dropping orbit missiles like you said would be easier, and it seems attainable.

 

17 hours ago, Duxredux said:

For the rest of your thought, Malwish airships use Harmonium as fuel. We learn this in BoM. Harmonium already is being consumed in the process, presumably at controllable rates since they are steering based on propellor speeds. My current guess is that for this kind of extension of a Allomantic power, the Harmonium uses itself as fuel, whereas the Allomantic grenades utilize the power stored by the Allomancer. Basically two different applications. It's somewhat as you say, but I don't think they are detonating Harmonium in that process.

Thanks for this reminder, though it wouldn't surprise me if this was achieved similarly to our internal combustion engines - very, very carefully measured reactants - or a controlled rocket burn. I wouldn't really mind either way.

[Duxredux he/him]

On 11/27/2024 at 12:02 AM, Light In the Darkness said:

This is all true; I think what I meant with that phrase was more that an understanding of rockets themselves - the fuel-burning engines that we have tuned to extremely high efficiencies, and the complex mechanics involving significant mass changes as fuel is burnt off and the like - would not be quite as necessary. Additionally, due to cheaper materials, a salvo of ICBMs with destructive warheads could be launched with varying angles and more simple orbital trajectories - angled to hit near earth orbit or just inside it, not quite hitting escape velocity, and then come down close to a target city. That math is simple enough, from what I recall, if you ignore atmospheric interference - meaning your accuracy diminishes appreciably. This would turn an ICBM's rifle into a shotgun - less effective and damaging, but a smidge easier to aim, and cheaper to produce. Such missiles would never be precision strikes - but in that case, who cares where the collateral damage lands? You have a million of the missiles, shoot one, watch where it lands via spies or the like, adjust trajectory, and when you get close enough, send a hailstorm. Inaccurate, but far cheaper and less technology-reliant than our missiles today, meaning they would be deployable much earlier in history.

On 11/26/2024 at 6:08 AM, Duxredux said:

I'd start worrying about heat expansion and vibration totally wrecking accuracy

This might kill this darling yet, but with Aluminum about to be made very cheap and metallurgy having been a very refined skill on Scadrial for a while now, the machined tolerance you mention might be achievable long before rocket engines are for the Scadrians.

Well... rather than simply saying it's impossible, I'll try to make a list of problems that would need to be solved without rocketry. The scale we're talking may be hard to grasp. To be clear, I'm talking ICBM range, which at minimum according to the internet is 3,400 miles, distinguishing it from the Intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

1. Measuring the distance to the target
2. Communication with spotters
3. Gun emplacement reinforcement and pivoting
4. Bullet design (surviving hypersonic speeds?)
5. Harmonium propulsion method (particularly if the bullet is not 100% metal)
6. Collateral damage from sonic booms

First challenge is measuring the distance from firing emplacement to target without satellite imaging and triangulation so you even know what you're aiming at. This is not easy, particularly if sea travel is involved. Assuming a perfectly spherical Earth-sized planet, an airplane about 6 miles above the ground can see to the horizon a bit over 200 miles away. You'll need really good reference points. Old school methods include geometry with sextants with celestial navigation, using a 6 foot chain stretched across the area (back from the U.S. Land Ordinance Act of 1785, things I learned getting trained as a land surveyor), and using clocks to time how long it took to travel by boat or train and basing it off of the average travel speed, which is as imprecise as it sounds. You almost certainly would need trained surveyors who are willing/able to travel to the enemy continent, make measurements, and survive to send back data. Triangulation will take a lot of travel time, though I guess you'll be handing this job to your spotters. Can't fire a bullet like a missile and dial in the aiming and targeting once the projectile has a visual on the target. There may be blind zones defined by local mountain ranges or if the target is in a valley, as there may be only so high you can lob a shot. Let's just say the math won't be easy.

Next, you'll still need some method to get eyes on the target, see the missed shots miles away, and a method to communicate to you. Moving past finding someone suicidal enough to stand down range of the ICBM shotgun, getting timely communication from more than 100 miles is going to be tough since radio operates based on line of sight. Even on the ocean with minimal interference, high powered radio only goes a couple hundred miles. You'll need relays going all the way from your spotters to your firing emplacement. The best relays really are satellites, which loops back to rocketry. A huge amount of work and coordination would be needed to get spotters that could call in missed shots with a drift of miles. Remember that 0.05 degrees I mentioned? Imagine a circle where the center is the pivot point of the gun, with the radius represented by a 10 foot barrel. Moving the tip of the gun barrel 0.10 inches translates to 2.6 miles difference at the target - assuming that there is no interference or drift. This also assumes the weapon is machined far beyond what Ranette has ever had to engineer. The spotter either is guessing which way the drift is making the shot go, or you've setup a whole line of people or instruments along your firing line that is measuring and reporting air speed and direction with all of the delays and calculations that this brings - even then windspeeds can and likely will change after the shot is fired based on how long it will be in the air.

Next is that you'll need heavy duty equipment that lets it swivel after being subjected to the forces that is propelling your projectiles. What rockets and railguns have that powder based weapons do not, is that they have an increased timeframe to accelerate their payload which reduces the strain maximum that must be placed on the weapon itself. A rocket doesn't have to go hypersonic to hit a target, the act of bringing its own fuel means it can stretch out the acceleration over the flight time. The recoil for a single impulse weapon with this range is going to be enormous. Material sciences will need to be pretty advanced.

Really though, atmosphere is my biggest sticking point. Wind will cause the shot to drift at ranges of just 1 mile, let alone 3,000. The internet has the longest range railgun as firing about Mach 7 with a range of 250 miles with an projectile airtime of 6 minutes. An object traveling hypersonic speeds like Mach 10 without slowdown will take about half an hour to hit a target 3,000 miles away. 30 minutes is a really long time to be affected by wind and drift, and for the target to move based on planetary rotation, let alone use that time to walk your shots. At Mach 5-10, we're in hypersonic territory, and we'll have to upgrade our materials and ammo to stay relatively intact until impact. When I say hypersonic, I'm talking when the object is moving fast enough through the atmosphere that the compression of the air makes the atoms dissociate into plasma, which we probably only think of for spaceship reentry. Spaceships survive this with a combination of insulation, large mass to absorb the heat, active cooling, and ablative armor that is designed to absorb the heat, evaporate, and in the process of evaporating take all of the heat absorbed away from the ship. Requiring a projectile to survive that will need serious engineering, possibly in excess of what is possible today given the relatively small scale. Pretty sure most conventional rounds would heat up and evaporate long before making impact. Okay, maybe a Godmetal breaks enough rules to survive that, but even Godmetals burn in small samples. Something else rocketry adjacent, though not specifically the fuel balancing act you referred to. 

If we're swapping out the materials in the bullet until it's no longer completely metal (like with ceramics that are used for space ship components), then we have to look at how the Harmonium detonation is accelerating the projectile. Projectiles can get warped or damaged based on how the force is transferred to the projectile, as the back end accelerates into the front end. Harmonium might be able to Push on the entire object simultaneously - if it's metal, otherwise it will like only accelerate the metal and leave everything else behind. Also, don't expect the materials or the process to fabricate them to be cheap - even if the propellant was cheap which it's not.

If the goal is to fire the projectile so fast that you don't have to worry about drift time, then you're well in excess of hypersonic speeds, and even with relatively small rounds you're going to have to worry about sonic booms killing people and wrecking structures along your flight path. Mach 10-20 is probably survivable at ground level according to ChatGPT for a ballistic shot, but if you start getting to Mach 30 or higher, then you're running into pressure waves powerful enough to kill. Standing within 50 feet of this thing when fired could be lethal just from the bullet passing by. 

 

If anyone has solutions for these, I'd be interested to hear them, as this is fascinating stuff to me. I think I know enough to spot potential problems, but have no idea how to engineer solutions. Same with engineering a satellite to survive being fired out of a cannon and being submitted to acceleration far above what most satellites ever have to survive.

Edited November 28, 2024 by Duxredux

[Isilel]

On 11/26/2024 at 2:08 PM, Duxredux said:

how the Cosmere fits into the Demographic Transition Model (DTM) that often is used to model birth rates and population growth, and most of the time we walk away scratching our heads and left unsure if Brandon is thinking about it and taking it into account or not or if the magic is affecting it.

 

It doesn't. With few exceptions, people have families under what would be the replacement level even under ideal conditions. Which is sadly common for most authors of SFF, even good ones, since it keeps things simple. However, IMHO it also creates unnecessary additional strain on  willing suspension of disbelief and I would have hoped for better from a worldbuilding and detail-oriented author such as Sanderson. And it doesn't have to clutter and complicate things. Occasionally mentioning relatives who are either dead or have moved away or grown otherwise distant would go a long way towards creating the illusion of depth and believability of a given world. Wax briefly thinking about how Vwafendal's other children moved to Tathingwel (for example) and didn't want anything to do with their apostate sister and her offspring would have been wholly sufficient. Steris and Marasi maybe bringing up some real cousins at some point ditto. Etc.

 

On 11/26/2024 at 7:25 AM, Light In the Darkness said:

. But this would bias a potential war significantly in favor of the northerners if they have a non-trivial amount of harmonium, though lacking flying machines would still make it difficult.

 

Personally, I fully expected to see an explosion of aircraft invention and development in TLM, with Wax being on the forefront of funding it. And was consequently disappointed by the absence of even a hint of something along these lines. The NoScads have everything they need technologically to invent conventional aircraft and blimps, and, unlike IRL there is a clear and obvious perceived need as well. Not to mention that certain Metalborn powers would make testing much less risky.

And having watched Myazaki's "Porco Rosso", I couldn't help but imagine how entertaining an era of wooden airplanes, blimps, barnstorming exhibitions, etc. could have been on Scadrial. Alas...

[Light In the Darkness]

On 11/30/2024 at 11:35 AM, Isilel said:

Personally, I fully expected to see an explosion of aircraft invention and development in TLM, with Wax being on the forefront of funding it. And was consequently disappointed by the absence of even a hint of something along these lines. The NoScads have everything they need technologically to invent conventional aircraft and blimps, and, unlike IRL there is a clear and obvious perceived need as well. Not to mention that certain Metalborn powers would make testing much less risky.

And having watched Myazaki's "Porco Rosso", I couldn't help but imagine how entertaining an era of wooden airplanes, blimps, barnstorming exhibitions, etc. could have been on Scadrial. Alas...

This would have been cool, but I think it was just a little too early. They didn't feel the need domestically until BoM, so even though they have the materials, they hadn't laid enough groundwork for that to happen by the time of TLM. It wouldn't be far in the future for this to happen though, which is a good point - I forgot conventional aircraft would be possible too. I'd imagine helicopter-like things would be first, since that's what they've seen with the Southerner machines, and then maybe they'll move on to lateral approaches. On Earth, dirigibles, specifically Zeppelins, preceded mass-market internal combustion engine cars; this may have been accelerated due to physical Allomancy, since the stunt Vin pulls with the horseshoes is reminiscent of such engines. It is odd that nobody seems to have been researching it though. We don't even see steelpushers using gliders, though a nicrobursted coinshot could go quite a distance with limited fuel, I think because they can go faster jumping from place to place on the ground, which is also more maneuverable. Powered flight would trump this though, so maybe a powered glider launched like that would end up being where they go first, instead of helicopters. In any case, this area of research should explode soon, but I can see how there wouldn't have been enough time between BoM and TLM for it to really happen, especially since the Southerners were willing to trade Harmonium at first. It would be fun to watch the tech explosion happen though! I wonder if we could get a short story on it.