Crazy stuff the Lord Ruler can do

[Guest]

I think using a typical rocket method is likely to fail, but it seems likely to me he could abuse Feruchemical iron and manage it.

• Take a very large metal object (such that it is heavier than you while storing weight, but lighter than you when tapping), put it above you. Push it.
• Store weight, Pull yourself up to it.
• Make your way to the top of it, Push yourself far above it.
• Tap weight, Pull the metal back up to you.
• Make your way to the bottom of it, repeat from 1.

While it would take superhuman reflexes, durability, and speed, he can just tap Feruchemical zinc for some mental speed/Feruchemical steel for some physical speed and tap the heck out of Feruchemical gold and burn pewter.

The major downside to this method is that you would look ridiculous doing it. *dramatic sigh*

Basically Vin's horseshoe wheel, but upwards. I love it!

BTW, do we know what happens to a Feruchemist filling Iron when the Feruchemist is in motion? Because 4,000Kg object moving at 5km/hr has a certain amount of force associated with it... if that object were to suddenly become 40Kg, shouldn't there be an acceleration?

I'm in the process of rereading AoL, so I'll probably come across the answer soon(ish) if no one knows off hand.

[Moogle]

Basically Vin's horseshoe wheel, but upwards. I love it!

BTW, do we know what happens to a Feruchemist filling Iron when the Feruchemist is in motion? Because 4,000Kg object moving at 5km/hr has a certain amount of force associated with it... if that object were to suddenly become 40Kg, shouldn't there be an acceleration?

I'm in the process of rereading AoL, so I'll probably come across the answer soon(ish) if no one knows off hand.

 

Nothing happens, as far as I know. Because you're spinning along with the planet, doubling or halving your speed as a result of doubling or halving your weight should have rather notable effects that Sazed brings up. Speed is conserved, not momentum. I think.

[Guest]

Nothing happens, as far as I know. Because you're spinning along with the planet, doubling or halving your speed as a result of doubling or halving your weight should have rather notable effects that Sazed brings up. Speed is conserved, not momentum. I think.

I just invented an Infinite Generator using a wheel and 2 Feruchemists... no compounding needed!

Take a water-wheel (or more advanced generator), attach the Feruchemists to the wheel 180 degrees apart, and have them increase/decrease their weight to keep it spinning.

[Moogle]

I just invented an Infinite Generator using a wheel and 2 Feruchemists... no compounding needed!

Take a water-wheel (or more advanced generator), attach the Feruchemists to the wheel 180 degrees apart, and have them increase/decrease their weight to keep it spinning.

 

It gets better than that - you generate more energy the faster you spin, and you spin faster with time. Feruchemical iron kicks the law of conservation of energy in the face and tells it not to get up. You can use a variant on this trick to pull the Earth out of its orbit, too, and I think you can do it in a reasonable time (within a century, iirc my back of the napkin calculations?) if you're an Iron Compounder.

 

Feruchemical iron is one of the more abusable powers.

 

Though I do note that it's possible speed is not conserved. There may be shenanigans going on where the metal just keeps you at the same speed along with the earth, but does in fact alter your speed in the air - though I don't recall this happening to Wax ever. Even if it's not, the accelerating flywheel trick works to generate infinite energy, it just can't approach infinite power.

[Dunkum he/him]

<snip>

You're missing one important point: sure, allomantically, pushing all of that would be difficult, if not impossible, but he isn't limited to Allmoncy.  Vin's limitations don't matter very much, when compounding pewter lets him fill as many/as large of a petwermind as he wants.  Put another way, if he had a massive pewtemind, the size of a building, he could easily fill it by compounding pewter, then he could draw all of that ferruchemical strength into himself for a immensely strong burst of strength presumably thousands if not millions of times stronger than a normal human.  combine that with the fact that he can reduce his weight to next to nothing, and he ought to be able to propel himself, plus a small payload of metalminds, at incredible speeds.  a cursory search leads me to believe a normal person can leap vertically with speeds around 1-2 m/s, so if TLR can briefly increase his strength to around 5000-10000 or so times a normal person (again, drawing down an absolute ton of ferruchemical strength in a few seconds), he should be able to achieve escape velocity.  granted all of that ignores air resistance, which, I suspect, poses a bigger problem, but you may be able to counteract the air resistance by steelpushing on a small stock of fuel.

 

plus, there is a question of how ferruchemical nicrosil works.  who knows how being able to store and tap investiture would change any of this.

[king of nowhere]

You're missing one important point: sure, allomantically, pushing all of that would be difficult, if not impossible, but he isn't limited to Allmoncy.  Vin's limitations don't matter very much, when compounding pewter lets him fill as many/as large of a petwermind as he wants.  Put another way, if he had a massive pewtemind, the size of a building, he could easily fill it by compounding pewter, then he could draw all of that ferruchemical strength into himself for a immensely strong burst of strength presumably thousands if not millions of times stronger than a normal human.  combine that with the fact that he can reduce his weight to next to nothing, and he ought to be able to propel himself, plus a small payload of metalminds, at incredible speeds.  a cursory search leads me to believe a normal person can leap vertically with speeds around 1-2 m/s, so if TLR can briefly increase his strength to around 5000-10000 or so times a normal person (again, drawing down an absolute ton of ferruchemical strength in a few seconds), he should be able to achieve escape velocity.  granted all of that ignores air resistance, which, I suspect, poses a bigger problem, but you may be able to counteract the air resistance by steelpushing on a small stock of fuel.

 

plus, there is a question of how ferruchemical nicrosil works.  who knows how being able to store and tap investiture would change any of this.

the problem with it is that no matter how strong he is, his muscles don't move faster. say your leg muscles can contract at 30 m/s, then if yoou jump up you can achieve 2 m/s because you are heavy, if you were lighter than that you'd be able to achieve those 30 m/s, and if you were even stronger you'd be able to achieve 30 m/s while carrying stones, but no more than that. Feruchemical pewter does not increase muscle speed.

Although steel does. So steel plus pewter would maybe achieve the trick. problem then is the atmosphere. I'm sure everyone here has seen enough spacecraft reentering atmosphere to know what happens when an object moving at 8 km/s comes in contact with air. It is, however, theoretically possible that tlr could survive that heat by filling a brassmind very fast. interesting possibility

[Guest]

Healing is linked to perception. It's why Sazed couldn't grow his genitalia back - he's internalised the damage and sees himself as a eunuch. Similarly, it's probably really hard to fool your own sense of how old you are.

For those of you talking about cell degeneration and telomeres, remember that we're talking in terms of Realmatics, where gravity is a spiritual link between objects - real world science need not always apply!

 

I always just assumed it was because Human's can't regrow those parts. Similarly, Feruchemical healing won't let you regrow arms/legs/fingers/toes/heads, but you could likely reattach them.

 

My theory on how the Lord Ruler could survive decapitation is that either it never happened, and he started the rumour so people wouldn't bother trying, or that he was wearing gold earrings and bracers which he was tapping when the beheading happened, this kept both pieces alive until an Inquisitor put him back together.

[Mckeedee123 he/him]

I always just assumed it was because Human's can't regrow those parts. Similarly, Feruchemical healing won't let you regrow arms/legs/fingers/toes/heads, but you could likely reattach them.

 

My theory on how the Lord Ruler could survive decapitation is that either it never happened, and he started the rumour so people wouldn't bother trying, or that he was wearing gold earrings and bracers which he was tapping when the beheading happened, this kept both pieces alive until an Inquisitor put him back together.

 

Nah, it's from a WOB that Stormlight and Feruchemical gold work by realigning your body to the cognitive ideal of yourself.

[Dunkum he/him]

the problem with it is that no matter how strong he is, his muscles don't move faster. say your leg muscles can contract at 30 m/s, then if yoou jump up you can achieve 2 m/s because you are heavy, if you were lighter than that you'd be able to achieve those 30 m/s, and if you were even stronger you'd be able to achieve 30 m/s while carrying stones, but no more than that. Feruchemical pewter does not increase muscle speed.

Although steel does. So steel plus pewter would maybe achieve the trick. problem then is the atmosphere. I'm sure everyone here has seen enough spacecraft reentering atmosphere to know what happens when an object moving at 8 km/s comes in contact with air. It is, however, theoretically possible that tlr could survive that heat by filling a brassmind very fast. interesting possibility

I admit I hadn't considered the heating caused by the atmosphere, but I think that between gold and brass, he could probably handle that.  and between steel and pewter, he could provide a sufficiently strong burst of speed/strength to achieve liftoff.  especially since he'd want to tap that brassmind as soon as he got into space and the temperature dropped.  I think at this point the biggest potential hurdle is the size of the various metalminds he would need.  i think there was something like 6 or 7 different ones he would need just do this and to stay alive, and I am not sure how big they need to be to store all of these attributes he needs for as long as hed need them

[natc]

I always just assumed it was because Human's can't regrow those parts. Similarly, Feruchemical healing won't let you regrow arms/legs/fingers/toes/heads, but you could likely reattach them.

My theory on how the Lord Ruler could survive decapitation is that either it never happened, and he started the rumour so people wouldn't bother trying, or that he was wearing gold earrings and bracers which he was tapping when the beheading happened, this kept both pieces alive until an Inquisitor put him back together.

Miles survived dynamite in his own hand and regenerated. I'm sure limbs and digits are doable.

Head, probably not so much. Though Hoid supposedly has grown a head before, but not with feruchemy. So magic in general can probably grow heads, but it's just the way tapping works. Parts of a head though are fine. Shotgun to the face doesn't even kill.

[Senor Feesh]

I always just assumed it was because Human's can't regrow those parts. Similarly, Feruchemical healing won't let you regrow arms/legs/fingers/toes/heads, but you could likely reattach them.

My theory on how the Lord Ruler could survive decapitation is that either it never happened, and he started the rumour so people wouldn't bother trying, or that he was wearing gold earrings and bracers which he was tapping when the beheading happened, this kept both pieces alive until an Inquisitor put him back together.

It is in fact possible to regrow limbs, as long as you haven't internalised the damage. Wayne even mentions that regrowing fingers is a pain.

As for surviving beheading, I'd always imagined that he was healing so quickly the two halves never actually separated.

[Guest]

Nothing happens, as far as I know. Because you're spinning along with the planet, doubling or halving your speed as a result of doubling or halving your weight should have rather notable effects that Sazed brings up. Speed is conserved, not momentum. I think.

 

By that logic, Bendalloy and Cadmium are unusable and storing Speed gives us the easiest possible way to get off the planet. All a Feruchemist has to do is store as much Speed as possible as fast as possible, and he'll lurch to a halt while the rest of the planet continues on it's way.

[natc]

I've been thinking.

Isn't it impossible to determine speed/velocity without something to measure your displacement relative to?

Steelminds don't seem to send you flying off the planet when storing, or Sazed would've had issues while he was storing everything at once in that chair before the battle.

So is steelrunning relative to some frame of reference?

Edited May 7, 2015 by natc

[king of nowhere]

the frame of reference is that you don't move faster, you let your muscles move faster. so you can run faster by using those muscles to push on a surface  (i.e. running), but it won't arbitrarily change your orbital speed.

[Moogle]

By that logic, Bendalloy and Cadmium are unusable and storing Speed gives us the easiest possible way to get off the planet. All a Feruchemist has to do is store as much Speed as possible as fast as possible, and he'll lurch to a halt while the rest of the planet continues on it's way.

 

Bendalloy and cadmium work by doing a frame of reference:

 

Kurkistan: Okay, so I'm contractually obligated to ask about time bubbles one more time [this is a lie].

Brandon: Yes.

Kurkistan: So what's up with frame of reference for time bubbles; in that obviously if you make a bubble and it's still it's not really still, like time moves differently but-

Brandon: We deal with that a little bit in Era 2 Book 2 [shadows of Self], where we talk about the fact that you know- obviously the bubble is moving with the planet. So they're not- the frame of reference is not absolute.

Kurkistan: Yeah.

Brandon: And so we talk about sorta' the idea of mass and momentum and time bubbles and things like that.

Kurkistan: Okay

<Fun fact: at this point I was content to go home (actually to a hotel because I didn't feel like falling asleep at the wheel on the way home, but that's another story), but then Brandon just kept talking, and saying very interesting things.  >

Brandon: For instance you can make a time bubble on a train.

Kurkistan: Oh and it _stays_ on the train?!

Brandon: Yes, but when you start catching stuff off of the train, it's gonna' _jar_ each time, and it's probably going to ruin your time bubble, right?

Kurkistan: So does it get it's "anchor" from- it's asking all the things that are within it what they think "still" is?

Brandon: Yes. That's a good way of looking at it. Frame of reference for the cognitive things around.

Kurkistan: Okay; the things around or the things within it, specifically?

Brandon: The things that it's cutting into, specifically, but yeah.

 

king of nowhere brings up a better explanation for speed than making them the equivalent of time bubbles. There is a difference between mental and physical speed. If using Feruchemical steel was like a localized time bubble, your mind should be sped up as well and it is not.

 

If Feruchemical iron adds mass to you, but the mass is added such that your momentum in a frame of reference relative to the planet's surface is reduced/increased proportionally, I guess that could work. I still don't think it fits the evidence, but I'll have to do a reread to be sure. (If this were how it worked, you'd be able to get some interesting power generation effects, since if you halve your mass and double your speed you double your kinetic energy. I think this would be a more efficient way to do to the flywheel trick.)