Pulser Loafer

[Trusk'our he/him]

As I've been filling out my personal list of NPCs and things to put in a Mistborn RPG campaign, I've thought on some novel uses of the Metallic Arts. 

So, what if you had a Pulser that tried to live through passive income alone, spending most of their time in a Slowness bubble? They could reasonably fill an entire room with self-sustaining batteries, books, food, and a bathroom. Assuming they can't keep burning when asleep, they simply stop for that part of their daily life.

I guess I'm just wondering, how realistic is this as a character's lifestyle? How quickly does cadmium burn, how expensive is it, and how much time could you skip to rack in the benefits of investing or owning a small, largely self-sufficient business?

Thoughts?

[Myst He/Him]

So, Marasi said it burned slowly, and Wayne once said that cadmium and bismuth were rare metals, so it might be expensive. As for the electronics, you kind of have really fast internet and charging cables if it’s connected to the outside, so as long as it can handle that, that would be good. Your heating/ electric bill would probably be small, since you’re spreading it out among a greater time. Also sleep would be weird since you wouldn’t be tired at the end of a “day” 

actual money-wise though, you’re only real expenses would be food, water, heating, electricity, and cadmium. Food and the others would be easy, as you could get by on only a bit of each compared to normal consumption. Cadmium is the limiting factor. The idea of investing could pay for the cadmium, but only if you’re lucky. Because you’d have to count on it gaining you money in the long term

I’m not sure if this completely answers your question, but these are my thoughts 

[Returned he/him]

Cadmium is pretty expensive (for the era 2 setting, certainly). I don't think you have to worry about the self-sustaining portion too much, since agents outside of the cadmium bubble could resupply the pulser very easily. The biggest issue, to my mind, is going to be the self-sufficient business/passive income part. There would be a lot of work involved in setting up the business in the first place, but let's assume that's already done. Then someone will have to actually run the business day to day and the risk of betrayal seems high-- the pulser would not have any way to know about embezzlement, corporate politics, or external events while they're burning.

Passive income outside of a business is going to have some issues too: bank interest and disbursements from stocks (if there is a robust, publicly accessible market for them in your setting) still require a large amount of principal for the returns to be meaningful to a person's life and also carry risks due to the pulser's lack of direct attention and ability to intervene where necessary. If we're talking about runaway compound growth you're going to need a very, very long time for a modest initial amount of money to become much more than that.

The big benefit would be that your living expenses would be a fraction of what they would be if the pulser lived in real time, since they're only "living" a small portion of the days that everyone else experiences. Major downsides are that you would be totally isolated from human relationships, you still need agents to attend to your interests outside of your bubble, and you would be very vulnerable to interference from other people as well as major socio-political events. Plus you wouldn't even get to enjoy much benefit of the wealth, since most of your living time would be spent in the cadmium bubbles.

[Treamayne]

On 11/1/2025 at 2:23 PM, Trusk'our said:

So, what if you had a Pulser that tried to live through passive income alone, spending most of their time in a Slowness bubble?

I feel like, if there were a character archetype for this idea, it would be a Trust Fund Baby - making sure they never have to actually work a day in their lives/stretch the trust fund through compound interest and you can live your hobbies as long as you have Cadmium. 

[Elite01]

Could make them a Twinborn, whichever metal let’s you store calories could help with this 

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

On 11/4/2025 at 5:41 AM, Treamayne said:

I feel like, if there were a character archetype for this idea, it would be a Trust Fund Baby - making sure they never have to actually work a day in their lives/stretch the trust fund through compound interest and you can live your hobbies as long as you have Cadmium. 

they could also, if they were rich enough, just hire a pulser, or invite a pulser to live with them and fund their cadmium and stuff, as long as they burn 24/7