Hemalurgy and Vin's earring

[Seonid he/him]

So my other question at the midnight release was an interesting one (see Bavadin's Intent on the Cosmere Theories thread for the most exciting one - I'll post a link when I'm not on mobile). I asked why Vin's earring didn't lose its charge, and in return got a more detailed explanation of Hemalurgic decay.

So, we were right about it being exponential decay, with half-lives and stuff. This means that there is a rather large initial power loss after it is taken out of a body. But the half-life is long enough that you could leave it out for a decade like Vin did and still have a noticeable power boost from the spike. And taking it in and out constantly is a good help to staving off significant power loss.

If you leave the spike out for centuries, it will decay until it's almost powerless like wax's earring, though, so the lower asymptote is most likely zero.

[Moogle]

Thank you very much for this! This has been bugging me for a long, long time.

 

It sounds like the extra "boost" you get from a spike is not directly proportional to how much Investiture in it. For example, it seems a spike at twice the charge will not make your Pushes twice as strong.

[Yata he/him]

 

It sounds like the extra "boost" you get from a spike is not directly proportional to how much Investiture in it. For example, it seems a spike at twice the charge will not make your Pushes twice as strong.

Seems that you stole the "power's level" of the Victim. Therefore if (example) you steal Brass from Vin and give it to March (pre-Inquisitor) without decay. The result is Marsh wit over the double of his previous Brass's power.

With the decay this Amount of power fade away of course.

[Moogle]

Seems that you stole the "power's level" of the Victim. Therefore if (example) you steal Brass from Vin and give it to March (pre-Inquisitor) without decay. The result is Marsh wit over the double of his previous Brass's power.

With the decay this Amount of power fade away of course.

 

Yes, but I was talking about the decay. After decades of Vin's earring being out, her charge should have been at something like 5% or less - not enough to give her a "significant" power boost unless power gained is not proportional to charge left in the spike.

[Yata he/him]

Yes, but I was talking about the decay. After decades of Vin's earring being out, her charge should have been at something like 5% or less - not enough to give her a "significant" power boost unless power gained is not proportional to charge left in the spike.

Sorry I have misunderstood your post.

 

Hypothesis:

Well we could think that Vin and her twin sister was about at the same level of Allomantic power but one developed the full mistborn power and the other only a Seeker power. Maybe the Initial power of the Spike was very high and with the Hight power of Vin, the "only 5%" was Enaugh.

[Robot Aztec]

 

Yes, but I was talking about the decay. After decades of Vin's earring being out, her charge should have been at something like 5% or less - not enough to give her a "significant" power boost unless power gained is not proportional to charge left in the spike.

some1 with 40% power can use ZERO allomancy so really if you combine 50% weak potential allomancer with even half power of another very weak potentail 50% you get some1 who has very strong allomancy from 2 ppl who are weak

becaus so you can have much potentail and not even have any allomancy so is like 50+25-40=35 not 50-40=10 three times as strong!!!

[Oudeis he/him]

 Maybe the Initial power of the Spike was very high and with the Hight power of Vin, the "only 5%" was Enaugh.

 

But here's the thing... after a thousand years, during which we knew people were getting weaker every generation, and some lines are enormously powerful while others haven't thrown up an allomancer in generations, surely there's a greater discrepancy than 5% between the strongest and weakest Seekers already? I know the argument is, "But 100% of Seekers who realized they could pierce copperclouds never told anyone" and I don't buy it. Because they would tell their family, their House. A Tekiel (they're an allomantically powerful line) Seeker who realized he could pierce copperclouds... well, that would be an enormous advantage to their House, so he'd tell them, and become more valuable. Maybe they understand why, and maybe they don't, but regardless, they know it can happen.

 

But there's a flipside. They now know copperclouds aren't inviolate. So the next time they send a bunch of allomancers on a mission with a Smoker, they're going to warn them, hey, be careful, we know it's theoretically possible for the cloud to be pierced. Still keep your allomancy to a minimum. And then, someone smart observing them would be able to tell, hey wait, they're acting odd. Why aren't they just burning constantly? They've got a Smoker. Something's up with this... Would they figure out the right answer? Sometimes, sometimes not. But every time someone does, that's another House that's now in on the secret.

 

Before too long, it's something just everyone knows. The only other scenario is that every Seeker (or Mistborn) who realizes what he can do decides to tell absolutely no one, not get any advantage from their own power, for... reaons, I guess? And that sounds like absolutely no Noble we've met. They all want power, prestige, to be seen as the greatest. If nothing else, when he alerts someone, "A Mistborn is coming!" he'd have to explain how on earth he was able to Seek someone burning copper.

 

Vin has to be so powerful in bronze, she's well beyond the range any Seeker has been over any Coppercloud. Also, remember, she's never run into a Smoker strong enough to block her, so she's that much more powerful than the most powerful Smoker there is. Beyond which, from an epigraph in Hero of Ages, she's described as being double the strength of normal Seekers. While I doubt this was meant with mathematical exactitude, 105% is certainly not something anyone would reasonably describe as "double".

[Landis963 he/him]

I thought piercing copperclouds was only possible through levels of power attainable through Hemalurgy. Which until Ruin steered Vin's mother to do it was a closely guarded secret of the Lord Ruler. Maybe if Ruin had chosen a noble Mistborn to serve as his pawn, the server would have gotten to the Houses, but with Vin it remained a secret.

[Yata he/him]

......

But I don't say that a normal (or powerfull) Seeker of the Vin's era could piercea coppercloud alone. 

Well the problem is that we don't know how an Allomancer's power is hight or low.

We could made some speculations but they aren't "sure" of course.

 

For example: We know that the "Average Inquisitor" may pierce the "average coppercloud". From this fact we could say that "twice the Average Seeker's power could pierce the coppercloud of the average Smooker".

Then we must decide "how many powerfull Was Vin compared to the Average Allomancer". 

 

From now I will use SAP as "Standard Allomantic Power". Vin had k*SAP amount of power, where 1<k<2.

The range (I know is quite large) is simply made by the fact that Vin is stronger then the SAP and that she alone can't pierce a SAP Coppercloud while an Iquisitor (2*SAP) can do it.

We can't make this count accurate, it only a estimation. But I will use the average value of the range, K=1,5 therefore with this (hypothetical) data, Vin was about one and half power the power of an average Allomancer.

If we suppose that Vin's Sister was a Seeker with SAP level and the Her's Spike had lost 50% if the Hemalurgyc's charge (probably with the new Information about the Decay this is a presumable estimate), Vin was a Seeker as powerfull as an Inquisitor while she had her earring (If the Vin's sister was as powerfull as Vin, the "needed" charge is only the 30%). .

[Oudeis he/him]

Kay... this is a change from you saying 5% earlier.

 

I'm still unsure of the numbers. She has to have enough extra power that the Hero of Ages would round it to "double", and enough to pierce a coppercloud which no seeker, however powerful, can do to a smoker, however weak. It is taken as axiomatic that it's not a matter of power, that copperclouds are simply fundamentally immune.

 

Yet on the other hand, this spike has been out of a body, losing power, for a decade. Remember, Vin is 16, and until she meets Kelsier leaves the earring out more often than she has it in. The Inquisitors were afraid of the power that could be lost in seconds. How could the power loss be so low when the earring is out of a body for a decade?

[Yata he/him]

Kay... this is a change from you saying 5% earlier.

 

I was simply using the "only 5%" as synonymous for "little charge" referring to the previous Moogle's post.

 

About the decay I was using the new information in the first post:

 

So my other question at the midnight release was an interesting one (see Bavadin's Intent on the Cosmere Theories thread for the most exciting one - I'll post a link when I'm not on mobile). I asked why Vin's earring didn't lose its charge, and in return got a more detailed explanation of Hemalurgic decay.

So, we were right about it being exponential decay, with half-lives and stuff. This means that there is a rather large initial power loss after it is taken out of a body. But the half-life is long enough that you could leave it out for a decade like Vin did and still have a noticeable power boost from the spike. And taking it in and out constantly is a good help to staving off significant power loss.

If you leave the spike out for centuries, it will decay until it's almost powerless like wax's earring, though, so the lower asymptote is most likely zero.

I suppose that with this model my exposition of Vin's Earring and her ability to pierce coppercloud may be likely acceptable.

There is just a great doubt: "A mistborn had the same strenght with all the metals ?" (I don't know if there is a WoB about)

[Seonid he/him]

Alright, time to start mathing this. Assume an exponential decay curve, of the form C = I*e^-(a*t), where I is the initial Hemalurgic charge in the spike, C is the Hemalurgic charge remaining in the spike, a is the decay parameter, t is the time elapsed since the spike is removed from the body, and e is the base of the natural logarithm.

 

This is the general solution to the first order differential equation (dC/dt) = -aC (using the same terms as above). I is the constant of integration, etc.

 

Now, before I start crunching formulas, we have to make assumptions. Here are my initial ones. Feel free to critique them. However, please ground your critique in evidence either from the books or from WoB. My intent is to formulate the definitive model for Hemalurgic decay, so I'd like to be as accurate as possible. Also, if you have evidence from the books or WoB that confirms one of these, please post it as well, so that I can move it from assumption to known fact.

 

Assumptions:

1. No lower bound on the amount of charge in the spike. As t -> infinity, C -> 0.

2. Allomantic/Feruchemical power available to the user of the spike is proportional to the charge remaining in the spike

3. Giving the spike to someone merely interrupts the decay - after removing a spike, decay resumes from where it left off

Completely coating the spike in blood either interrupts the decay or introduces a change of time variable (t -> t/1000 or something like that). The decay rate remains a constant.

4. Hemalurgy represents simple addition of strength. You add your allomantic power to the power in the spike.

5. Vin was the most powerful naturally born Mistborn of her era

6. Vin was not significantly (more than 10-15%) more powerful than other Mistborn in her era

7. Vin's sister was about as powerful as she was.

8. Elend (as a Lerasium Mistborn) represents the upper bound on Allomantic power in any era

 

In addition, there are two places that can give us information about specific Hemalurgic decay - Vin's earring and Wax's earring.

 

Vin had spent quite a bit of time (at least several years, possibly up to a decade or more - maximum bound: 15 years) without the earring in, and was still able to pierce copperclouds, something Elend was apparently not able to do. This implies that Vin with spike was more powerful in bronze than Elend without spike. From 4 and 7, then we conclude that Elend was less than twice as powerful in bronze as Vin, and likely significantly less than that.

 

Guess: I'm going to use a maximum bound of Elend as being 1.5 times as powerful as Vin, and a minimum of Elend being 1.2 times. Less than 1.2 strains the ability to accept Vin's surprise that Elend is so strong. More than 1.5 might give us unreasonably long decay times. I'm willing to go higher than 1.5, but the higher we go, the less Vin's spike has room to decay over those 5-15 years.

 

The second place to look at is Wax's earring. Brandon has said that Wax's earring is so degraded that there is essentially no power left. The range I will consider is from .1% to .001%. I'm willing to go lower than .001%, even significantly lower, but not much higher than .1%. Certainly 1% is too much.

 

Approach:

I will use Wax's earring to establish a range of decay rates, and apply them to Vin's case to narrow it down. After getting a final range of decay rates, I will look at the initial decay, and see how much power is lost over the first minute, the first 10, the first hour, and the first day. There should be noticeable power loss over a short period of time, to match up with Marsh's statements in Hero of Ages.

 

Any feedback would be helpful.

[Oudeis he/him]

I'm pretty sure Elend never tries piercing a coppercloud. Was he ever in the presence of one? Even Vin's?

[Moogle]

Who says Elend couldn't pierce Copperclouds?

 

Edit: Ninja'd, of course.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

I wonder if the steel model might help us better? Elend gets into a push contest with an Inquisitor, but his push is so much stronger it overrides the other. Can we make educated guesses about how fast the coin was moving towards the Inquisitor, and extrapolate how many factors Elend was stronger by?

[Seonid he/him]

Good points. I'm working on a minimalist framework - until a character has been confirmed to have a power in the book or by WoB, I'm assuming he doesn't have it. But that is an assumption, not am indisputable fact, so good to point it out.

I asked Argent if he would ask Brandon that question at a signing. Any thoughts on my other assumptions?

[Robot Aztec]

 

5. Vin was the most powerful naturally born Mistborn of her era

6. Vin was not significantly (more than 10-15%) more powerful than other Mistborn in her era

 

elend and vin was 100% msitborn! nobles are 50% allomansers &skaa are 20%/30%! vin is strong!!!

[Seonid he/him]

   

elend and vin was 100% msitborn! nobles are 50% allomansers &skaa are 20%/30%! vin is strong!!!

 

The reason for my assumption is this: Vin is not as powerful as Elend. This is shown in several places all through the final book, and should be evident to anyone reading. Vin came from one of the most pure Allomantic bloodlines in the Final Empire, but Elend was made Mistborn by a bead of Lerasium - and so was as strong as the Lord Ruler in terms of Allomancy, which Vin was not.

 

However, being from one of the most powerful bloodlines likely puts her at or near the top in terms of power. Kelsier notes that she is pushing more powerfully than she should be able to, given her body size. The books give the impression, however, that it is not a huge difference. She's not throwing double what she should be able to, or even 1.5x. Thus my assumption.

[Yata he/him]

I asked Argent if he would ask Brandon that question at a signing. Any thoughts on my other assumptions?

I really don't know.

Maybe i overrated Vin with my 1.5x but not of so much.

To me you understimated Elend, His power is the only "reference" we have. He was as powerfull as (or more powerfull) than the Average Inquisitor (with double powers) therefore Elend must had something like 2x.

here I try to ranking the Allomancers powers (I would to use a range instead of a value):

Rashek                                                  2.0-2.2x (it's unclear if Rashek was a standard Lerasium-Mistborn of Sliver-Mistborn)

Elend (& any Lerasium Allomancer)      1.9-2.0x (double powerfull than an standard allomancer)

Inquisitors (mistborn based)                 1.5-2.0x (using the double of the "standard allomancer" with a minus for the Decay)

Vin                                                         1.4-1.6x (she was more powerfull than other regolar allomancer of a significant amount)

Other Allomancer                                  0.8-1.2x (to consider weak and Strong Allomancer)

Edited October 10, 2015 by Yata

[DreamEternal]

Elend was made Mistborn by a bead of Lerasium - and so was as strong as the Lord Ruler in terms of Allomancy, which Vin was not.

Actualy, Rashek gained allomancy after taking the Well's power, so he was even stronger than Elend.

[Oudeis he/him]

An Inquisitor made from a Mistborn would be double-everything; most of them would be slightly weaker than the average Misting in seven metals, and the ones made from non-allomancers would be weaker in all of them.

[Yata he/him]

An Inquisitor made from a Mistborn would be double-everything; most of them would be slightly weaker than the average Misting in seven metals, and the ones made from non-allomancers would be weaker in all of them.

Of course!

in my ranking I used a Mistoborn turn to an Inquisitor and therefore with double-everything. I edited the post to avoid misunderstoonding

[Robot Aztec]

 

The reason for my assumption is this: Vin is not as powerful as Elend. This is shown in several places all through the final book, and should be evident to anyone reading. Vin came from one of the most pure Allomantic bloodlines in the Final Empire, but Elend was made Mistborn by a bead of Lerasium - and so was as strong as the Lord Ruler in terms of Allomancy, which Vin was no

 

brandon says in anotation vin = elend = 100% msitborn

[Yata he/him]

   

brandon says in anotation vin = elend = 100% msitborn

Sorry but I don't understand what "vin=elend=100% mistborn".

If you are saying simply that both of them are mistborn (in the meaning od "able to burn every metals" you have right), but if you say that Vin was as powerfull as Elend you have wrong. Elend was as powerfull as the "firsts nine allomancers" of the Final Empire (I keep Rashek off because I don't know if he was "only" a Lerasium-Mistborn) and in 1000 years the Allomantic's Legacy of them was weakened.

Also Vin stated that Elend is more strong than her, and if it isn't enough for you.

The Kandra was afraid of the Allomancer because in the first years of the Final Empire, a Mistborn (there isn't misting) could take over a Kandra's mind and controlling it. Vin can't do this without using the Durallumin while the "ancient mistborn" didn't know that metal.

[Robot Aztec]

—in this series, only two people have hit 100%—Vin and Elen[/rul] si where it says it

Edited October 11, 2015 by Robot Aztec