World hopping: "Do not cross the streams."

[+hwiles]

On 2/11/2017 at 8:55 PM, QuantumSpren said:

How fast would a steel twinborn/edgedancer be able to go by compounding and removing air resistance?

Well, they still couldn't get rid of the friction between themselves and the ground, so assuming they had an arbitrarily large store of speed build up, then they could run just fast enough so that the impact of their steps caused the ground the compact or shatter beneath their feet.  I believe steelrunners are subject to some sort of magical shenanigans that prevent their feet from being burned or damaged as a direct result of friction with the ground.

It might seem unintuitive at first, but I think they could actually achieve faster speeds running across a large body of water, which is essentially incompressible, rather than a surface like dirt or pavement, which would crumble or be smashed downward given a significant enough impact.  On well maintained roads they could probably break the sound-barrier, assuming they didn't mind destroying the roads in the process...

[Steeldancer he/him]

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

Well, they still couldn't get rid of the friction between themselves and the ground, so assuming they had an arbitrarily large store of speed build up, then they could run just fast enough so that the impact of their steps caused the ground the compact or shatter beneath their feet.  I believe steelrunners are subject to some sort of magical shenanigans that prevent their feet from being burned or damaged as a direct result of friction with the ground.

It might seem unintuitive at first, but I think they could actually achieve faster speeds running across a large body of water, which is essentially incompressible, rather than a surface like dirt or pavement, which would crumble or be smashed downward given a significant enough impact.  On well maintained roads they could probably break the sound-barrier, assuming they didn't mind destroying the roads in the process...

Shockingly there is no friction shenanigans. They feel the heat. They can only go so fast before they will just... burn up. But, if you give them the abrasion surge, wahlah! You have the Flash (or as I'm calling him, steeldancer)

[+hwiles]

39 minutes ago, The Flash said:

Shockingly there is no friction shenanigans. They feel the heat. They can only go so fast before they will just... burn up. But, if you give them the abrasion surge, wahlah! You have the Flash (or as I'm calling him, steeldancer)

Right, but a steelrunner's feet don't slip on the ground, their shoes don't melt, and their leg bones don't explode from the impact of their steps.  I don't believe Sanderson has completely canonized all of the extra benefits ferrings like steelrunners get so that their power can be used effectively without being completely broken (IE: steelrunners apparently have proportionally increased tensile strength in their femurs while tapping but...they don't necessarily have weaker leg bones while storing...)  This isn't just an oversight or laziness on his part, some of the powers are just really complicated, computationally intensive to analyze, or, more realistically, he hasn't fully hammered out every detail of how he wants characters to utilize the powers in the future and doesn't want to limit himself prematurely.

I was trying to explain away this mysterious phenomenon without being pedantic or derailing the thread's topic (though I've probably failed in that pursuit now...) 

I'll absolutely concede though that they would essentially be the Flash and that the combination of those three powers would be a ridiculously potent combination.

[Spoolofwhool]

20 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Right, but a steelrunner's feet don't slip on the ground, their shoes don't melt, and their leg bones don't explode from the impact of their steps.  I don't believe Sanderson has completely canonized all of the extra benefits ferrings like steelrunners get so that their power can be used effectively without being completely broken (IE: steelrunners apparently have proportionally increased tensile strength in their femurs while tapping but...they don't necessarily have weaker leg bones while storing...)  This isn't just an oversight or laziness on his part, some of the powers are just really complicated, computationally intensive to analyze, or, more realistically, he hasn't fully hammered out every detail of how he wants characters to utilize the powers in the future and doesn't want to limit himself prematurely.

I was trying to explain away this mysterious phenomenon without being pedantic or derailing the thread's topic (though I've probably failed in that pursuit now...) 

I'll absolutely concede though that they would essentially be the Flash and that the combination of those three powers would be a ridiculously potent combination.

You're assuming steelrunning has to do with increasing the force of the step and not just increasing the number of steps in a given period of time compared to normal. I think the latter is more likely, since Sazed has described it as an overall slowdown in movement. In addition, as you say, then there wouldn't need to be an increase in physical strength.

[+hwiles]

I don't necessarily mean an increase in physical strength...Steelrunning is tricky, and I don't mean to bog this thread down with needless semantics.  So like, if a person were to run fast enough, regardless of how they did it, the strain on their leg muscles would cause them to detach from their bones.  As it turns out, the estimated speed at which this would happen is not all that much faster than Usain Bolt's (widely recognized as the world's greatest sprinter) fastest speed.

When Wax taps his ironminds rapidly, his bones don't shatter under his increased weight, but if he get's punched while storing (see fight with Miles), his chest doesn't cave in and his ribs don't shatter.  The apparent increase in bone strength is a side-effect skimmers enjoy to make their power functional.  Wax literally crushes a car with his weight at one point, and his legs don't explode.  Some ferrings get weird "bonus" or "side-effect" powers because if they didn't their powers would totally suck and be stupid.

Let's just leave it at this: if you take more steps per second without increasing the friction between your feet and the ground, hitting the ground harder, or increasing the elasticity/strength of your bones and muscles, you run into some physics violations (pun intended ).  "Speed" is a weird thing to store.  It's not alone in this, storing mass/weight has some serious problems too, like, "why can't skimmers walk on water if they're light enough to gently float to the ground from dangerous heights (which Sazed does at one point)?"  My point, which I have apparently thoroughly failed at making (and for this I apologize), is that we shouldn't get too hung up on these oddities, as they have already been pointed out, and given vague hand-wavy explanations.  We might get a firm answer eventually, but probably not till at least the beginning of era 4.

[Steeldancer he/him]

I mean I'm used to not overthinking the whole speed thing, because i watch the flash LOL but seriously @hwiles all I truly care about is that it could and hopefully will happen. STEELDANCER 

[+hwiles]

6 minutes ago, The Flash said:

I mean I'm used to not overthinking the whole speed thing, because i watch the flash LOL but seriously @hwiles all I truly care about is that it could and hopefully will happen. STEELDANCER 

Touche, have an upvote for ending this madness. 

[Spoolofwhool]

Yeah, there's a point where the mechanics of the powers get handwavy. There's no reason why we can't try to break it down into a science as far as we can though since Brandon has intentionally set it up that way. There's no reason why we can't try to see if there is a way to explain the oddities or not. 

Also, do you have a source for the fact that a skimmer can't walk on water? I don't see a reason why they couldn't if they reduce their mass enough, though maintaining balance would be hard. 

In any case, most manifestations of investiture will grant additional side effects so that the user can use them to the a fuller capacity. Another example would be atium granting increased reaction time so that you can actually use the information from the foresight. 

[Sheridan_rd]

My guess a Nicrosil metal mind would store Awakened intuition.

Vasher claimed princess Vivian was such a quick study because of her natural strong Breath (royal loches) and her Heightening.

Not particularly useful, but not all magic powers are

[Yata he/him]

On 11/2/2017 at 3:52 PM, Sheridan_rd said:

To start off this discussion :

1. Could an Alcomancer burn a piece of metal invested with Biochromatic Breath from Nalthis?

2. Could a Ferchemist Bloodmaker store health from Stormlight on Roshar?

I am a bit late but I think:

1- you could do burn it if the Breath's Identity match your own...therefore if You putted in the metal (not a big deal) or if someone Identiless put the Breath in metal...the outcome of the burning is hard to say.

2- Indirectly yes, you store health, your body become weaker...Stormlight sustain your body while yo could store much more than it is usually safe.

[+hwiles]

@Spoolofwhool I do not have a source for skimmers not be able to walk on water, sorry, I should've marked that as an assumption; I covered the idea in a post a while back using a thought experiment, but it wasn't conclusive.  Wax get's thrown into water a handful of times, but I don't believe he ever taps or stores weight while submerged.  Anyway, it's not a foregone conclusion at this point as far as I'm aware.

There are some really weird things going on behind the scenes with weight storage.  I believe WoB has it that Peter does have legitimate math and physics describing how it works, but they aren't going to be released any time soon (if ever.)

[Sheridan_rd]

On 2/14/2017 at 5:52 AM, Yata said:

I am a bit late but I think:

1- you could do burn it if the Breath's Identity match your own...therefore if You putted in the metal (not a big deal) or if someone Identiless put the Breath in metal...the outcome of the burning is hard to say.

2- Indirectly yes, you store health, your body become weaker...Stormlight sustain your body while yo could store much more than it is usually safe.

1. I wonder if burning Awakened metal would increase the strength of the stored Breath?

2. Would a Lifeless created from a dead Metalborn still have access to Alcomancy /Feruchemy? 

 

[Yata he/him]

2 hours ago, Sheridan_rd said:

1. I wonder if burning Awakened metal would increase the strength of the stored Breath?

2. Would a Lifeless created from a dead Metalborn still have access to Alcomancy /Feruchemy? 

 

1- Hard to say

2- I don't think, the magic is something encoded in your Soul, and a Lifeless is the corpse of someone. The Soul is gone. So if it is possible at all, you need to kill someone and turn it into a Lifeless soon after...this maybe allow you to make a Lifeless with his own Soul still there. But if He would be actually able to use his powers, it is not sure

[Sheridan_rd]

7 hours ago, Yata said:

1- Hard to say

2- I don't think, the magic is something encoded in your Soul, and a Lifeless is the corpse of someone. The Soul is gone. So if it is possible at all, you need to kill someone and turn it into a Lifeless soon after...this maybe allow you to make a Lifeless with his own Soul still there. But if He would be actually able to use his powers, it is not sure

Makes sense. Awakening is of the Cognitive realm, allowing a person to imbue a semblance of life into a corpse creating a Lifeless. 

Any skills that remain areally muscle memory and cognitive residue.  Alcomancy which is Investitures, wouldn't be replicated.

(Maybe with a LOT of Breath )

[Caesura she/her]

I'm probably a tad late to the party, but never mind.

Hand-wavy explanations seem to be fairly standard of a lot of super powers/fantasy powers - think the Flash, but also Quicksilver from the X-Men.

The thing with Quicksilver though is he's described as processing the world faster; he sees everything in slow motion, whereas Barry Allen just has the ability to move fast. Which essentially just boils down to details and semantics. But say you applied that to a steelrunner - when tapping steel, they move through time differently, rather than just moving fast - would you be able to argue that physics may not apply to them completely normally?

I don't know, it made more sense in my head, before I actually thought through it fully. 

[MPHRD]

On 2/20/2017 at 2:35 AM, Yata said:

2- I don't think, the magic is something encoded in your Soul, and a Lifeless is the corpse of someone. The Soul is gone. So if it is possible at all, you need to kill someone and turn it into a Lifeless soon after...this maybe allow you to make a Lifeless with his own Soul still there. But if He would be actually able to use his powers, it is not sure

I wonder if the corpse has metalborn powers threw hemalurgy if they would still work with the lifeless (or if they could be applied after creation of the lifeless). 

[Itchy Savant he/him]

9 hours ago, MPHRD said:

I wonder if the corpse has metalborn powers threw hemalurgy if they would still work with the lifeless (or if they could be applied after creation of the lifeless). 

And going further than that, could you make a Frankenstein type lifeless by adding pieces of a soul to them? Would a soulless but alive body be more or less receptive to pieces of a "living" soul?

[Spoolofwhool]

Using hemalurgy with a Lifeless is tricky as you would need to use blood in them to interface with the hemalurgic spikes.

[Itchy Savant he/him]

Ah, i forgot about the blood needed, I bet it would still be possible though? I wonder if Ichor Alcohol (that's what they used to keep the lifeless alive right?) works like blood with a spike? Also what would happen to a lifeless spiked with Feruchemical gold? Spiritual healing has to be weird when it comes to a spiritless body with a piece of a spirit stapled in.