Iron flying

[DoctaDajman]

So I took a long drive through rural Wyoming and was thinking about flying and the metallic arts. 

I love iron allomancy and iron feruchemy so as I passed mile after mile of telephone poles I was thinking how iron would fly. My first instinct was to pull on each pole but I think that the arcs would be too angled and steep to really make good progress. 

So I started looking out 3 or 4 poles ahead and the angles seemed a lot more manageable. Then I was thinking of the cinematic web slinging spider man and his swings up before kipping a bit for a high arc and falling back down. 

How could this be done by an iron allomancer though?  If it only pulls me to the metal then the metal will always be in my way unless I let go of my pull enough to let gravity stop me from hitting it right?  

How would this work with conservation of momentum though?  If an iron compounder were to pull on an electrical pole and then stop pulling long enough to change their trajectory enough to miss it but then store their weight and speed up could they pull themselves and swing right by the anchor point soaring above it using the speed bump from storing their weight after gravity shifted them down ever so slightly?  

Or would they need some other way to redirect themselves than simply playing with their own weight? 

Further how would an iron allomancer shift their trajectory laterally if they only have a straight line of anchors to choose from? 

Obviously seeing miles and miles of railroads made me appreciate the advantage that steel has on iron when it comes to flight. But I am a sucker for doing things the hard way. 

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

I feel like you could like, pull on the pole, and then switch to a farther pole, ect ect.

[DoctaDajman]

1 minute ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I feel like you could like, pull on the pole, and then switch to a farther pole, ect ect.

Absolutely. That is the forward and backwards motion that you can do. Let go of pole A before you give yourself a headache and grab pole B floating beneath them all. 

I really just want to almost slingshot around the pole though and launch myself upwards and outwards from it using the conservation of momentum from iron feruchemy with it. 

[Light In the Darkness]

Slingshotting could actually be very useful in a situation like this if you have starting momentum, but could be very dangerous. hmmm. But yeah, this weirdness is part of why Iron Mistings are called Lurchers - their trajectories aren't very smooth.

[Duxredux he/him]

Learning to fly with Iron seems significantly harder than with Steel, mostly because emergency maneuvering is so much more complicated. If you accidentally fling yourself to a space with minimal anchors, a Coinshot can just drop a clip and use that to land safely, but a Lurcher doesn't have luxury. A Lurcher needs either something overhead or opposing lateral anchors to suspend themselves. In a similar manner utilizing an anchor as a Coinshot is much less risky, where if the anchor is not stable lift will be lost and then just go into standard emergency maneuvering. As a Lurcher though, misjudging the stability of an anchor will yank a projectile toward you, meaning you need to find an alternative anchor really quickly. 

Actually... as I think about it, I think I'm too used to Coinshots finding specific anchors with which to Push off of to make precise leaps. I think Lurchers would instead try to Pull on multiple targets to minimize their weight on each one and allow them to adjust on the fly if an individual anchor is not solid. Keeping constant access to solid anchors seems much more important for flying as a Lurcher. I do think that "slingshot" maneuvers would be the best bet to get a lot of momentum, but there isn't a reason you need to be pulling towards only a target. For the original scenario of driving along a freeway and utilizing light and power poles, if the power poles were parallel pairs I would likely position myself closer to the center of the freeway (probably between the two flows of traffic) and Pulling on light poles from both sides, like an elastic slingshot as opposed to a centrifugal slingshot.

Really, what would make this easier is if the urban environment was designed for Lurchers and Coinshots. Come Era 3, this probably wouldn't be too hard. It may even be cheaper than Allomancers resorting to using environmental objects that aren't designed to withstand the kind of forces that kind of jarring will give.

[+robardin he/him]

Yeah, a lurcher in a modern urban environment with metal all around (and generally well above street/head level) could, as Brandon himself put it in a WoB, "slingshot around like Spider-Man".

They weren't quite there yet in Era 2, but by Era 3, very possibly:

Quote

Questioner

You know how Wax has control of his Steelpushes? Well, if someone has an Ironpull ability, can [they] get practiced enough to, in the Wax & Wayne era, swing through downtown Elendel Spiderman-like with controlled Ironpulls?

Brandon Sanderson

I've actually thought about that, and I went away from it, just because of Spiderman. I have to be really careful that I just don't go Spiderman-y. But I would say it's an in-world possibility that someone could do that, and it wouldn't be that hard if you've got the buildings. The trick is, most downtowns are not tall enough, and I would say in Elendel even now, there aren't enough skyscrapers that you could really go full-on Spiderman. But if you could, if you were, like, downtown Manhattan, you could do it.

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 (Sept. 21, 2017)

OTOH, that does not translate well to "using telephone poles in rural Wyoming", LOL.

The slingshotting technique of Ironpulling would be dangerous mainly for the landing, if you don't have something overhead or above/behind you to Pull on as you came down.

It would however be pretty useful as a kind of infinitely available tether for things like scaling or rappelling down the sides of buildings built with metal beams or frames, or to "self-anchor" to a building or craft of metal in a highly volatile environment like with high winds or waves.

[DoctaDajman]

50 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Learning to fly with Iron seems significantly harder than with Steel, mostly because emergency maneuvering is so much more complicated. If you accidentally fling yourself to a space with minimal anchors, a Coinshot can just drop a clip and use that to land safely, but a Lurcher doesn't have luxury. A Lurcher needs either something overhead or opposing lateral anchors to suspend themselves. In a similar manner utilizing an anchor as a Coinshot is much less risky, where if the anchor is not stable lift will be lost and then just go into standard emergency maneuvering. As a Lurcher though, misjudging the stability of an anchor will yank a projectile toward you, meaning you need to find an alternative anchor really quickly. 

Actually... as I think about it, I think I'm too used to Coinshots finding specific anchors with which to Push off of to make precise leaps. I think Lurchers would instead try to Pull on multiple targets to minimize their weight on each one and allow them to adjust on the fly if an individual anchor is not solid. Keeping constant access to solid anchors seems much more important for flying as a Lurcher. I do think that "slingshot" maneuvers would be the best bet to get a lot of momentum, but there isn't a reason you need to be pulling towards only a target. For the original scenario of driving along a freeway and utilizing light and power poles, if the power poles were parallel pairs I would likely position myself closer to the center of the freeway (probably between the two flows of traffic) and Pulling on light poles from both sides, like an elastic slingshot as opposed to a centrifugal slingshot.

Really, what would make this easier is if the urban environment was designed for Lurchers and Coinshots. Come Era 3, this probably wouldn't be too hard. It may even be cheaper than Allomancers resorting to using environmental objects that aren't designed to withstand the kind of forces that kind of jarring will give.

 

20 minutes ago, robardin said:

Yeah, a lurcher in a modern urban environment with metal all around (and generally well above street/head level) could, as Brandon himself put it in a WoB, "slingshot around like Spider-Man".

They weren't quite there yet in Era 2, but by Era 3, very possibly:

OTOH, that does not translate well to "using telephone poles in rural Wyoming", LOL.

The slingshotting technique of Ironpulling would be dangerous mainly for the landing, if you don't have something overhead or above/behind you to Pull on as you came down.

It would however be pretty useful as a kind of infinitely available tether for things like scaling or rappelling down the sides of buildings built with metal beams or frames, or to "self-anchor" to a building or craft of metal in a highly volatile environment like with high winds or waves.

Yeah I think iron needs a little more help than steel does. 

My best hope would be to find access to an iron medallion or be born a compounder. 

Being able to store most of your weight would fix the dangers of anchors breaking and the lack of an anchor landing you deaded by fall damage. 

The slingshot thing I really am curious about conservation of momentum within a pull. From what I understand the idea is that if you cut your weight in half you double your speed but if you double your weight you half you speed (this is without counting air resistance). 

So if you only had a single anchor (I mean the rural power lines do offer 3-5 anchors each but there is a big old wooden post between them) and you pulled yourself towards it would your trajectory change too much to make tapping weight for a moment to slow and drop slightly before storing it all again? 

Part of me pictures it as just a fraction of a second of each power usage could be the difference between going splat and then zap into powerlines and even Speeding yourself up towards a dive bomb into the ground. 

Risky indeed. I like the idea of era 3 Elendel for this. Big metal beams being used in construction would be helpful. 

[+robardin he/him]

18 minutes ago, DoctaDajman said:

 

Yeah I think iron needs a little more help than steel does. 

My best hope would be to find access to an iron medallion or be born a compounder. 

Being able to store most of your weight would fix the dangers of anchors breaking and the lack of an anchor landing you deaded by fall damage. 

Yeah, for "flying" purposes, filling an ironmind makes falling pretty safe. Both Sazed and Wax do that in first person POV passages.

Meanwhile, without being Twinborn, for a Lurcher to add on weight is not really a challenge, in the scenarios where that would provide the advantage. Which are more than you might imagine.

In addition to the simple matter of wearing a weighted vest, as some people do while running to increase the difficulty; or just carrying some 40-50 lb. rucksack like the Marines do; ... a Lurcher could just, you know, sit on the couch eating a lot of junk food and sweets to gain weight in the usual fashion.

Like, imagine a Lurcher wrestler facing someone with metal on them. Not doing a steady Pull but the sudden flared Pull to lurch not himself but his lighter weight opponent (who is unwittingly wearing some kind of metal, like a belt) at just the right time would be the winning move.

And we see Vin and Elend using only Ironpulling to do impressive things like opening the heavy doors of the storage cache at Vetitian, by Pulling on something heavy behind themselves while also Pulling on the heavy metal object in front.

So a Lurcher would be very useful in a dangerous traffic intersection or in a railyard. Runaway or out of control vehicles could be brought to a halt at any time, as there would be plenty of similar or larger sized vehicles (especially in aggregate, across multiple anchor points) available to leverage.

Heck, in terms of "day to day, IRL useability", a Coinshot flying around or being a human gun would probably quickly get "recruited" into use by The Powers That Be, but a Lurcher? You could low-key hypermile your car by installing the right kind of harness in the driver's seat, drafting behind a truck going your way, shifting to Neutral, and then Ironpulling your way to like 100 miles per gallon, LOL. Nobody would know! (Well, except the truck driver who would probably feel some strange shift in their truck's handling)

Edited March 25, 2025 by robardin

[DoctaDajman]

25 minutes ago, robardin said:

Yeah, for "flying" purposes, filling an ironmind makes falling pretty safe. Both Sazed and Wax do that in first person POV passages.

Meanwhile, without being Twinborn, for a Lurcher to add on weight is not really a challenge, in the scenarios where that would provide the advantage. Which are more than you might imagine.

In addition to the simple matter of wearing a weighted vest, as some people do while running to increase the difficulty; or just carrying some 40-50 lb. rucksack like the Marines do; ... a Lurcher could just, you know, sit on the couch eating a lot of junk food and sweets to gain weight in the usual fashion.

Like, imagine a Lurcher wrestler facing someone with metal on them. Not doing a steady Pull but the sudden flared Pull to lurch not himself but his lighter weight opponent (who is unwittingly wearing some kind of metal, like a belt) at just the right time would be the winning move.

And we see Vin and Elend using only Ironpulling to do impressive things like opening the heavy doors of the storage cache at Vetitian, by Pulling on something heavy behind themselves while also Pulling on the heavy metal object in front.

So a Lurcher would be very useful in a dangerous traffic intersection or in a railyard. Runaway or out of control vehicles could be brought to a halt at any time, as there would be plenty of similar or larger sized vehicles (especially in aggregate, across multiple anchor points) available to leverage.

Heck, in terms of "day to day, IRL useability", a Coinshot flying around or being a human gun would probably quickly get "recruited" into use by The Powers That Be, but a Lurcher? You could low-key hypermile your car by installing the right kind of harness in the driver's seat, drafting behind a truck going your way, shifting to Neutral, and then Ironpulling your way to like 100 miles per gallon, LOL. Nobody would know! (Well, except the truck driver who would probably feel some strange shift in their truck's handling)

These are great ideas. My character concept I was working on was a Deader (Iron Compounder) who is an engineer who specializes in demolition. He gets paid to become massively heavy and destroy structures, with the advantage of saving a bunch on explosives. 

Would a crasher do this job better? Maybe. Would a crasher be safer doing this job? Absolutely. Do I think that drifting behind trucks to siphon gas money from other people is even better flavoring to the character? Heck yes. 

I just think iron has so much untapped potential in the flavoring department. Especially as a compounder... wall running and ceiling walking are both epic to envision... anytime someone can take zero fall damage it is a win in my book. Casually stopping car accidents is a new one I can add to the list as well. 

[QuantumAce]

On 3/25/2025 at 9:09 AM, robardin said:

The slingshotting technique of Ironpulling would be dangerous mainly for the landing, if you don't have something overhead or above/behind you to Pull on as you came down.

Lack of overhead anchors will always be a major limitation for iron pulling (along with lose anchors). Any majestic soring through the air requires an overhead anchor or some sort of external propulsion. Being able to mimic steel pushing or lashings in certain situations is a cool feature of iron pulling, but focusing on that will always be a losing proposition. There is still a lot of cool stuff you can do with lateral motion. Would pair well with some sort of exoskeleton or power armor. 

And space, I forgot about space. If you are trying to perform some emergency spaceship maintenance and your tether snaps, iron pulling would sure seem a lot cooler. Also useful for trying to chase an adversary. 

Edited March 26, 2025 by QuantumAce

[DoctaDajman]

24 minutes ago, QuantumAce said:

Lack of overhead anchors will always be a major limitation for iron pulling (along with lose anchors). Any majestic soring through the air requires an overhead anchor or some sort of external propulsion. Being able to mimic steel pushing or lashings in certain situations is a cool feature of iron pulling, but focusing on that will always be a losing proposition. There is still a lot of cool stuff you can do with lateral motion. Would pair well with some sort of exoskeleton or power armor. 

And space, I forgot about space. If you are trying to perform some emergency spaceship maintenance and your tether snaps, iron pulling would sure seem a lot cooler. Also useful for trying to chase an adversary. 

Walking down the hallway at work with some nasty tendinitis today and I so wished I could just pull on the doors down the hall, but then it got me thinking how my body would enjoy being drug down the hall. My shoes would probably catch a lip and I would end up pulling myself into a tumbling bowling ball of flesh. 

But then I thought... yo I need to get some Heelys for this!  

Cosmere versions of Heelys I can think of are the obvious Abrasion, maybe an Airbender style ball of air from zephyr aetherbinding. Perhaps even some actual wheels from zephyr aetherbinding. Like I would be down with cruising on some roseite Rollerblades for sure. 

[Light In the Darkness]

8 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

Cosmere versions of Heelys I can think of are the obvious Abrasion, maybe an Airbender style ball of air from zephyr aetherbinding. Perhaps even some actual wheels from zephyr aetherbinding. Like I would be down with cruising on some roseite Rollerblades for sure. 

Or just use Heelys? Or normal roller-skates/-blades? would not be surprised if that became a lurcher standby after a while; the second two must not be far off in terms of Scadrian tech, and the first probably isn't for specialists like Ranette.

Side note: an Iron Pipe would work well for both Coinshots and Lurchers to move exceptionally quickly in, given, minimal air resistance/appropriate protection. Lurchers can slow down by pulling on the tube behind them, and stay centered by pulling on it at equal angles around them. Coinshots can obviously do something similar. Metal sewer lines just became vital plot points.

This also leads to epic quick-launch systems for aircraft, or even just missiles, with iron compounders or crashers. Aircraft carriers become a lot simpler when instead of tethers to fling the planes you just need a dude and enough buoyancy to handle the excess weight. Also, you could use them to effectively rig railguns, coil guns, etc., and enough of them could even replace a major portion of a rocket's first stage booster - two-four of them would probably work, especially if they are accustomed to tapping in sync/at similar rates. Now I'm thinking of "the Deader/Rocket Twins" as a really fun idea. Twin Twinborn, lol. 

9 hours ago, QuantumAce said:

And space, I forgot about space. If you are trying to perform some emergency spaceship maintenance and your tether snaps, iron pulling would sure seem a lot cooler. Also useful for trying to chase an adversary.

Also this is epic; I like this a lot. This would be extremely useful in space, including in war: one-man boarding craft if the ship has accessible metal on it. Until aluminum shielding becomes dirt-common, this will be exceptionally effective.

 

[QuantumAce]

6 hours ago, Light In the Darkness said:

Or just use Heelys? Or normal roller-skates/-blades? would not be surprised if that became a lurcher standby after a while; the second two must not be far off in terms of Scadrian tech, and the first probably isn't for specialists like Ranette.

At first I was thinking you would want to upgrade to a hoverboard to avoid terrain limitations, but wheels allow steering independent of anchor points. You would only need anchors to build momentum, especially useful for a compounder. Once you have electric motors and batteries, Lurch-Electric hybrids would be an incredibly efficient means of transportation. 

[Light In the Darkness]

17 hours ago, QuantumAce said:

At first I was thinking you would want to upgrade to a hoverboard to avoid terrain limitations, but wheels allow steering independent of anchor points. You would only need anchors to build momentum, especially useful for a compounder. Once you have electric motors and batteries, Lurch-Electric hybrids would be an incredibly efficient means of transportation. 

This brought to mind for me the magnet specialist from Big Hero 6, and it made me wonder how difficult it will be for the Scadrians to put metallic arts to work in small scale things, like Ball Bearings - this could potentially allow for some very cool suspended systems even in personal transportation technology, and the efficiency allowed by what amount to hyper-efficient magnetic ball bearings via miniaturized metallic arts could also become incredibly powerful tools for lurchers, augmenting the skill available to a lurcher-skater like we've been talking around. Of course, once magnetization is more widely used, you could have marvels like bullet trains for significantly cheaper, electricity wise, by employing teams of lurchers and coinshots. I'm thinking along the lines of the train systems in Rhythmatist or Ba Sing Se from The Last Airbender. Sorry, I think I've pulled us a ways from the original thread topic lol  These are just really cool things to think about. Maybe I should go start a thread in a more appropriate area, like under Mistborn, lol.

[DoctaDajman]

6 hours ago, Light In the Darkness said:

This brought to mind for me the magnet specialist from Big Hero 6, and it made me wonder how difficult it will be for the Scadrians to put metallic arts to work in small scale things, like Ball Bearings - this could potentially allow for some very cool suspended systems even in personal transportation technology, and the efficiency allowed by what amount to hyper-efficient magnetic ball bearings via miniaturized metallic arts could also become incredibly powerful tools for lurchers, augmenting the skill available to a lurcher-skater like we've been talking around. Of course, once magnetization is more widely used, you could have marvels like bullet trains for significantly cheaper, electricity wise, by employing teams of lurchers and coinshots. I'm thinking along the lines of the train systems in Rhythmatist or Ba Sing Se from The Last Airbender. Sorry, I think I've pulled us a ways from the original thread topic lol  These are just really cool things to think about. Maybe I should go start a thread in a more appropriate area, like under Mistborn, lol.

I welcome it. Not really about flying more but just cinematic, cool, useful uses of iron that I hadn't thought of yet. 

I was talking to my kid last night about "nerd stuff" as we call it for my wife. He brought up the Big Hero 6 microbot stuff as well. I think iron and steel are going to work great along side magnetic and electromagnetic technology. 

For a compounder being able to store weight for a bigger jump and then iron pulling the trucks of a skateboard onto your feet would take away the need to even learn to ollie, just jump and pull it against your feet. All the benefits of being strapped onto a board without actually being strapped in and being able to bail at any moment. 

Although I am not a big skater... this might have made it more enjoyable for me. Or even those free skates would be super useful. Being able to jump over obstacles without losing the skate and just iron pulling it into your foot. 

Add in some higher anchors and you could use them to clear crowds of people on the sidewalks or lurch yourself up and over intersections without needing to wait for the cross walk signs. The ability to really just conserve as much effort and energy as possible are pretty bonkers with iron. I know steel could just fly but a chase scene in a place designed against allomancers with no anchors may find some free skates offering a lot more than simple flight from whatever coins you may be carrying.