Industrial feruchemy

[Steeldancer he/him]

I was rereading well of ascension and thinking about bands of mourning when I had a thought- what would it do to our modern society if we had access to unkeyed food and water metalminds? Would people even eat anymore? You would probably have to recycle the metalminds back to the company where they would either have people there literally just eating and filling metalminds as a JOB or using harmonium to replicate those abilities. What would it do to weight issues? For that matter what if scadrial had olympics? Instead of drug abuse you would have metal abuse... and maybe bronze compounding using unkeyed metalminds rather than drugs... determination addiction wouldn't that be weird. Imagine the stuff that would happen to society. My thoughts are not entirely coherent right now.

Ok. Back to the industrial feruchemy idea. The idea that you could literally have an entire industry centered around refilling unkeyed metal minds (especially if you don't have a compounder handy) is frankly terrifying. And yet that is EXACTLY what could happen to scadrial, especially if they take the whole capitalism path. Ferring and Misting rights movements... how weird to think about 

[king of nowhere]

why terrifying? getting sick so that others can be healed is basically what blood donations are, and i wouldn't mind doing that for a job. staying in bed sick for eight hours a day beats working in an assembly line. Same goes for eating to fill metalminds, at least if the food is good - unfortunately, if the purpose is just to fill a metalmind and sell it cheaply, they will gorge you on the worst crap available. still, may be palatable to a junk food addicted. anyway, the whole point of working is to get paid for doing something you'd rather not do. sleeping all day, gorging yourself on cheap food, being cold, driving a truck around or doing budget sums, what's the difference? and the idea that some jobs are humiliating or degrading are purely based on individial or cultural perceptions. serving as human bait for mosquitoes to study ecology is a hellish job for most of us, yet the researchers doing it swear there's nothing else they'd rather do; just to make one of many examples.

food metalminds would probably destroy the fast food industry - you can't be faster than that - but they would not touch the gourmet food industry. also, they would be great for those with weight issues - you don't need to diet, just store the excess into a metalmind. and then you can sell it!

as for metalmind abuse, it would be no worse than drug abuse, but unlike drugs, it would not fry your brain. all addiction would be merely phsycological, so it would be easier to quit compared to a real drug, and it would deal less damage.

[GoufCustom]

Elendel has already started to monetize the Metallic Arts. We have examples of Coinshots being used as high-speed couriers, Thugs functioning as muscle (and I'm sure as a welcome addition to the constabulary), and Soothing parlors. Once nicrosil enters into their consideration, you can bet it will lead to for-sale metalminds. Of course even regular Ferrings can use their abilities for money. I believe it was mentioned in SoS or BoM that Archivists make excellent clerks, Sentries could make excellent... well... sentries.

In fact, that's one of the things I'm looking forward to most about Eras 2 and 3, seeing how this magic is used to interact with regular technological development. In our world, we have protein bars for hikers and for soldiers to take with them into the field. They'll have caloric metalminds instead. Heck, a modern-style military outfitted with a recycle-able system of metalminds would make for incredibly adept small units, able to function in all environments and with incredible effectiveness.

Especially considering that as the population grows, so will the stock of Compounders who can create these things wholesale. And if hemalurgy enters into the common knowledge, they could probably sell their abilities on their deathbeds for handsome sums to be paid to their dependents, which can then be used to create corporate Compounders.

Hmm. Your Olympics idea makes me wonder... would a chromium Misting be able to wipe the feruchemical charges from a metalmind?

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Another thing to keep in mind is that some types of mistings and ferrings are disproportionately rare in the population.  In AoL Wax mentions that coinshots are among the most common metal born, and in SoS (IIRC) there's some mention that there are only two or three steelrunners in the whole city of Elendel due to the power being exceptionally rare.  Unless you're using hemalurgy to stabilize your employees' access to the metallic arts, most investors would have some serious trepidation pouring money into an operation that balanced on the whims of a handful of people who, besides being almost irreplaceable, could cripple your business by quitting.

For example, if you're employing subsumers to, through whatever combination of compounding, hemalurgy, or mechanical/harmonium fueled feruchemical-allomancy the southerners use to make their medallions, to make and sell food-medallions, your production rate is theoretically bottle-necked by the number of subsumers you can employ.  If one of those people gets sick, dies, or moves to another city, your business could be devastated if you aren't able to replace them quickly.

Harmony is trying to motivate northern Scadrians to be more comfortable with change and risk, presumably so they can begin catching up technologically to the southerners, so it'll be interesting to see how they handle industrializing the metallic arts.

[king of nowhere]

6 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Another thing to keep in mind is that some types of mistings and ferrings are disproportionately rare in the population.  In AoL Wax mentions that coinshots are among the most common metal born, and in SoS (IIRC) there's some mention that there are only two or three steelrunners in the whole city of Elendel due to the power being exceptionally rare.

I don't remember the quote there. steelrunners are rare, but not that rare. certainly rare enough that wax's grandmother can keep track of them all, but if there were only 2 or 3 of them there would be no need to look for names.

I do remember distnctly kriss mentioning that only two or three crushers existed, wax included. but that's a twinborn combination, therefore bound to be much rarer than individual powers.

[Spoolofwhool]

You can use skimmer ferrings to generate virtually costless energy. A basic example would be to have four of them sitting on a wheel. If they store and tap mass at the right times the wheel will just keep spinning. Best part is that they can be doing other things at the same time.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

1 hour ago, Spoolofwhool said:

You can use skimmer ferrings to generate virtually costless energy. A basic example would be to have four of them sitting on a wheel. If they store and tap mass at the right times the wheel will just keep spinning. Best part is that they can be doing other things at the same time.

Haha, and I believe we have WoB somewhere that this would absolutely work, according to Cosmere physics, as a more-or-less free-energy machine (though technically you're converting Cognitive/Spiritual potential energy into kinetic energy in the Physical Realm).  I still feel like using coinshots/lurchers, which are relatively common, to spin a turbine would yield a better return on investment, but it's essentially the same thing: using allomancy to produce massive amounts of essentially free energy.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

Haha, and I believe we have WoB somewhere that this would absolutely work, according to Cosmere physics, as a more-or-less free-energy machine (though technically you're converting Cognitive/Spiritual potential energy into kinetic energy in the Physical Realm).  I still feel like using coinshots/lurchers, which are relatively common, to spin a turbine would yield a better return on investment, but it's essentially the same thing: using allomancy to produce massive amounts of essentially free energy.

Better return, but then you're requiring iron and steel as a constant input.

[king of nowhere]

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

You can use skimmer ferrings to generate virtually costless energy. A basic example would be to have four of them sitting on a wheel. If they store and tap mass at the right times the wheel will just keep spinning. Best part is that they can be doing other things at the same time.

yes, but there are limits to the energy you can achieve this way, because ferrings are limited and there's only so much energy that can be exerted by gravity on a human body. you can't power a civilization that way. you don't even come close. same goes for steelpushing and ironpulling, it would be cheap and virtually renewable (there are billions of billions of tons of iron in the planet's crust, no risk of exhausting it), but it also would be limited in output.

[Steeldancer he/him]

Unless you set up large push pull harmonium factories. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

On 2/14/2017 at 8:20 AM, The Flash said:

Unless you set up large push pull harmonium factories. 

Agreed, as far as we know, one lurcher could charge 10,000 cubes of harmonium no problem, which could sort of circumvent the limitations created by having a finite number of mistings.  Obviously this is dependent on how Harmonium works.

[king of nowhere]

And also on how much armonium is available