Wax and Wayne: Bloodmaker Healing

[Zan Zhro he/him]

Hey all! 

So, I have another question about Allomancy and Feruchemy, one that I'm not sure how to describe or bring up, but I'll try. In Alloy of Law, I believe, Wayne somehow gets injured pretty badly. Worrying, Wax rushes over and checks for a pulse, finding that Wayne indeed has one. Wax was worried, as I remember it, because Wayne had already used some of his healing earlier in the book and was running low. However, something about tapping the Gold metalmind slowly allowed Wayne to draw out more healing power? If that makes sense? Not entirely sure what I'm talking about, really just looking for clarification on Feruchemical Bloodmaker healing, and trying to use Alloy of Law as a reference point...

 

Apologies that it's probably really confusing and vague, but I tried .

(Also might be easier to just reread the book for an answer, but I'm a little tight on time right now.)

Edited December 9, 2016 by Zan Zhro

[Kurkistan he/him]

Oh boy this is a fun one.

They key here is that drawing Feruchemical power at a higher ratio than 1:1 is inefficient: As an example with arbitrary numbers, if you store 10kg of weight for an hour, then later you can either be 10kg heavier for an hour or 20kg heaver for 15 minutes. There's loss as you cram together the extra energy.

So let's say Wayne has 10 units of healing left, and needs to heal a paper cut. He could either tap 1 unit to heal the cut over the course of ten seconds, or 10 units to heal it over the course of 2 seconds (more random numbers, since we don't know the actual proportions). In a fight you're going to want that paper cut healed immediately, but in a low-resource or low-stress situation you'll be more careful with your feruchemical storage.

EDIT: More visual example that ties into "surging" as a thing: Let's say an injury is an empty water glass, and when it's full the injury is healed. Tapping at a 1:1 ratio is you carefully positioning the glass under the tap, turning the tap on, and carefully turning the tap off just as you fill the glass. Surging at a 10:1 ratio is like grabbing a giant bucket of water and turning it upside down over the glass: faster, but more wasteful. 

Links:
Brandon on the matter.

My favorite explanation for why this makes sense.

Democracy deciding that this lossy energy-compression should be called "surging".

 

[Jondesu he/him]

It seemed that by slowing drawing it out, he gained less healing at a time, but for longer, allowing him to avoid the risk of just healing the most severe injury, but then running out and still having severe injuries that could still kill him, or having it just partially heal those severe injuries before running out (can't remember if it's stated which it would do, but either would be a big risk).

[Sallin Zeras he/him]

13 minutes ago, Zan Zhro said:

Hey all! 

So, I have another question about Allomancy and Feruchemy, one that I'm not sure how to describe or bring up, but I'll try. In Alloy of Law, I believe, Wayne somehow gets injured pretty badly. Worrying, Wax rushes over and checks for a pulse, finding that Wayne indeed has one. Wax was worried, as I remember it, because Wayne had already used some of his healing earlier in the book and was running low. However, something about tapping the Gold metalmind slowly allowed Wayne to draw out more healing power? If that makes sense? Not entirely sure what I'm talking about, really just looking for clarification on Feruchemical Bloodmaker healing, and trying to use Alloy of Law as a reference point...

 

Apologies that it's probably really confusing and vague, but I tried .

(Also might be easier to just reread the book for an answer, but I'm a little tight on time right now.)

It also may be because it makes Wayne heal faster combining the natural human healing and his healing by slowly tapping the metalmind

[Zan Zhro he/him]

Ohhhh ok. Thanks for the clarification everyone. @Talanelat'Elin Stonesinew  @Jondesu  @Kurkistan

[+robardin he/him]

On 12/9/2016 at 11:05 AM, Kurkistan said:

More visual example that ties into "surging" as a thing: Let's say an injury is an empty water glass, and when it's full the injury is healed. Tapping at a 1:1 ratio is you carefully positioning the glass under the tap, turning the tap on, and carefully turning the tap off just as you fill the glass. Surging at a 10:1 ratio is like grabbing a giant bucket of water and turning it upside down over the glass: faster, but more wasteful. 

Since we don't know the "loss ratios" involved with bursty type draws on Feruchemical storage, I've always imagined it as akin to something most of us would be familiar with IRL: fuel economy in a motor vehicle. Going slowly and steadily uses minimual fuel, while being aggressively bursty - like flooring it to redline to go 1 or 2 blocks between red lights/stop signs - is very wasteful. BUT, if you really, really want to get to that stop sign at the end of the block as soon as you goddamn can, every time, that's what you can do. It's not quite like the "bucket of water into a drinking glass" analogy to me, where the "waste" is represented as overrun or a "lost to the environment" type of loss, but more like "the cost of revving to redline".

Like cars, different Allomancers/Feruchemists would have different cost/yield ratios as to how much they gain from being bursty, and how much is lost in the nature of their burst-draw. And who knows, just like an Allomancer can become "savant" in the efficient use of their power, perhaps a Feruchemist can "go savant" in the maximally precise burst-drawing of attributes their metalmind.