Savant Compounding

[Straff Venture]

Whenever someone mentions cadmium in space, someone else always complains that they'd need a suit or they'd decompress. I've never seen anyone who mentions cadmium in space say they'd be able to spacewalk naked. The suit goes without saying guys, it's the oxygen tanks they don't need.

Still, to make properly airtight spacesuits civilisation would have to be fairly advanced. I can totally buy fast cadmium space travel later on, but in Mistborn or the Alloy of Law its just too early on.

[king of nowhere]

the greatest problem in space are radiations. without the earth magnetic field and upper atmosphere to shield from them, a men exposed to deep space radiations would receive a lethal dose within minutes. the only protection against radiations is lead (other heavy elements work too, but lead is by far the most cost effective), but lead hinder movements on a suit and is very expensive to launch into space.

So I'd argue that a gold feruchemist is the most effective to send into space, since you can save a bit on the lead shield. you still have to use some, otherwise they would drain their reserves within hours, but it should be more convenient than not having to store air.

Plus, I don't think it would be possible to store enough breath to survive months without breathing. it would require far too much time to store to be practical.

[Voidus]

I gotta go with a gold compounder for space travel, didn't Miles mention he didn't have to breathe? So you have all the benefits of Cadmium (possibly Bendalloy as well) as well as not needing a suit either.

[Millennium]

Cadmium has other uses for space travel too. It could be very useful for putting people into something akin to stasis.

[Observer]

Gold is probably better than Cadium, though I'm guessing its a ton less efficient. Compounding fixes the issue though. Still, I imagine using gold in space would be akin to trying to take a lava bath or continuous self-explosion. It'd suck up gold VERY quickly. Hence, Allomancy would simply be a backup if your suit failed.

[Voidus]

Not quite, you could survive in space for a short while without dying, it wouldn't exactly be pleasant but you're not going to instantly implode or anything and since you're constantly renewing the damage you wouldn't need to heal the more severe effects that come later, I imagine it would be no different than using it to survive underwater really, possibly coupled with a moderately severe illness.

[happyman]

Not quite, you could survive in space for a short while without dying, it wouldn't exactly be pleasant but you're not going to instantly implode or anything and since you're constantly renewing the damage you wouldn't need to heal the more severe effects that come later, I imagine it would be no different than using it to survive underwater really, possibly coupled with a moderately severe illness.

This. Getting blown up by a stick of dynamite is much more damaging, short term, than exposure to vacuum. Miles would have no trouble surviving. He'd probably barely notice, given all the damage he's taken.

[Observer]

Not quite, you could survive in space for a short while without dying, it wouldn't exactly be pleasant but you're not going to instantly implode or anything and since you're constantly renewing the damage you wouldn't need to heal the more severe effects that come later, I imagine it would be no different than using it to survive underwater really, possibly coupled with a moderately severe illness.

I was saying the holding your breath probably eats up charges much quicker than Cadium, since it isn't Gold's intensed purpose.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Observer

[happyman]

I was saying the holding your breath probably eats up charges much quicker than Cadium, since it isn't Gold's intensed purpose.

Probably true, but for a compounder like Miles, that's not really a problem. Also, gold is much more general purpose than Cadmium, and so would take care of a lot more problems at once. The extra Feruchemical charge would be energy well spent.

[Voidus]

Damage from asphyxiation would be relatively easy to fix if it can be fixed by gold, once you start breathing after not being able to the damage is gone pretty quickly, I don't see it as taking up much compared to say reassembling yourself from an explosion. Compare it to TLR compounding, he was staying hundreds of times younger than he was constantly and he wasn't shovelling down mouthfuls of Atium all the time, I think the amount of Health needed would be far less than this.

[FaeMofo]

Going right back to the feruchemical savant theory at the beginninv of this thread, if constantly tapping metalminds makes you a savant would filling them fundamentally change you as well? Take Wax for example as he is constantly storing weight would he be changed to the point that if he stopped would he be lighter than if he hadnt jept filling them for so long? Would drawing a lifetime of stored power in an instant change you as well? Don't know if this has been touched on or not but it's a question i've had since learning about feruchemy.

[Azure]

You might always be either filling or tapping, but you couldn't possible always be tapping feruchemical reserves because you'd need to fill them up in the first place.

Well Wax mentions that he often keeps himself at 3/4 weight and it's never mentioned that that had any effect other than storing the weight.

[Lady_Yasha]

You guys are debating the drawbacks of exposure to a vacuum when the Third Trilogy will be set in the future relative to our own. They'll have the technology to build spaceships. Also, once a temporal bubble is down it doesn't move central to the Allomancer that put it up, it remains in a fixed location. It seems to be indicated in The Alloy of Law that speed bubbles are affixed to whatever plane they're attached to, whether that's the floor of a moving train or an immobile grassy hill.

Space travel would be simple if they have a spaceship that protects those inside from the usual dangers of space, though I suspect they'd have to drop a bubble repeatedly to make sure they're not flying into a supernova. Also a standard Slider like Wayne compresses time on the order of 120 seconds -> 15 external seconds (The Alloy of Law, Chapter 12), or for every second inside the bubble, 0.125 seconds passes outside it. So external time flows at a 12.5% reduced rate of that inside the bubble.

I don't know the rate for a Pulser but it'd have to be far greater than a Slider's to make space travel at large distances effective.

[Sapph]

Well Wax mentions that he often keeps himself at 3/4 weight and it's never mentioned that that had any effect other than storing the weight.

But that is normal feruchemical tapping. Since feruchemy is of Balance, it would have permanent phsysiological effects. But compounding is net-positive. STRONGLY net-positive. And - at least on Scadrial - constant use of net-positive investiture does cause physiological changes. So it is not out of line to speculate that compounding could result in savant-like conditions.

[Aradel]

One of the requirements for becoming an allomantic savant is a constant flaring of the metals. Flaring metals taxes an allomaners power a great deal more than regular burning. Keeping a metal at a constant regular burn will likely yeild a small increase in allomantic power but will not grant savant-like abilities. (So Wax's 3/4 weight storage wouldn't have much of a total effect because he's not pushing the limit of his abilities.)

A feruchemical savant would likely be created in a similar fashion, though gaining a savant level increase in power by constant excessive drawing is logistically impossible without compounding. And we don't know if twinborn are even capable of becoming savants. Mixing two systems in one spiritweb can have odd results as evidenced by hemalurgy.

It's more likely that if a feruchemic savant is possible, they would gain that status through excessive storing of their attributes. Constantly pushing the limits of what they can store safely may cause their physical or cognitive aspect to adjust to the loss. It may even get to the point where they appear unimpared while storing, enhanced while neither storing nor drawing, and super-enhanced while drawing.

That I think is what a feruchemical savant would be if it is at all possible.

[SirShemmington VI]

You could constantly draw on metal minds, assuming you can 'steal' metal minds using hemalurgy. You'd just need alot of volunteers...

[lDanielHolm]

Compounding can likely result in Savants in much the same way regular Allomantic metals do: when Compounding, after all, you are simply burning Invested metalminds, and thereby using Allomancy to greatly increase the Invested attribute. You'd have to burn them nonstop, though, and considering that you get a vast amount of the attribute you stored, you probably wouldn't want to become a Savant in it. At some point, you'd run out of metalminds to fill with the increased attribute.

Miles was probably still a Gold Compounding Savant, though; he was constantly tapping health. (While that in and of itself likely wouldn't result in becoming a Savant, he would have to build up his stores at some point by burning goldminds. I don't think we're told how often he replenishes his goldminds, though.)

[Sevi]

Nicrosil compound savant.
Oh, dear, need to get WoB on that.

[XenosHg]

Compounding transforms dural/aluminium gnats into a superstar/superspy hybrids. Their ferring powers are "presence" and "attracting people", so filling metalminds makes at least one of them unnoticeable, which is already cool, but additional allomancy might give them, gods forgive, Kelsier's levels of charisma! I'm now imagining some kind of a compounder James Bond.