Feruchemy without downsides

[Necessary Eagle]

Feruchemy is seen as the "there's no such thing as a free lunch" power-- sure, you can be strong or fast or heal super fast, but you have to spend time being weak or slow or sickly in return. Even with compounding, you have to be in a sucky state some of the time. (I think). (I've never really understood compounding). But sometimes the sucky state has its own benefits.

For instance, I would love to have a form of Tin that specifically involves hearing. I would blissfully fill my metalmind while my relatives started to talk about politics, or an annoying commercial came on. And most importantly, I would be able to shop during December without ever, ever having to hear another rusting holiday jingle.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Necessary Eagle

[Knight of Iron]

I'd like brass. Whenever you're too hot, you can just cool yourself off. Later, when you're too cool, you can just warm yourself up. My only issue is that the heat to cold ratio would be very disproportioned, as where I live I would need to be warmer more often than needing to be cooler.

Bronze would be nice too (wakefulness). I'm tired all day, so if I stored up all my tired energy all day so I can be alert, then at night I can BAM, get a good night's rest. At least I hope that's how it would work.

[+robardin]

28 minutes ago, Ookla the Knight said:

I'd like brass. Whenever you're too hot, you can just cool yourself off. Later, when you're too cool, you can just warm yourself up. My only issue is that the heat to cold ratio would be very disproportioned, as where I live I would need to be warmer more often than needing to be cooler.

Bronze would be nice too (wakefulness). I'm tired all day, so if I stored up all my tired energy all day so I can be alert, then at night I can BAM, get a good night's rest. At least I hope that's how it would work.

Interestingly, Feruchemy is one of the first magic systems Brandon ever imagined, and this particular attribute was the first one he thought of, as a student with insomnia issues. So you're in excellent company with this!

You'd think being a Subsumer Ferring, having the ability to store nutrition in a bendalloymind, would be a popular choice - eat all you want and control your weight with Feruchemy, storing the excess calories away for those long road trips or camping expeditions when you can then skip bringing all the sandwiches and trail mix!

Unfortunately, it's an alloy of cadmium that is topically poisonous for humans. Thus making Gaspers and Subsumers only able to use their abilities in very short bursts, unless they're full Feruchemists who can also tap gold at the same time!

[Raphaborn]

You technically only need to store attributes in Compouding once. As long as you keep burning and storing, you never need to store again. Of course, some attributes can complicate this management (like being very hurt and needing all possible Gold charges for NOW).
Another way to achieve Feruchemy without downsides would be to fueled the power using the Mists.

[+robardin]

2 minutes ago, Raphaborn said:

You technically only need to store attributes in Compouding once. As long as you keep burning and storing, you never need to store again. Of course, some attributes can complicate this management (like being very hurt and needing all possible Gold charges for NOW).
Another way to achieve Feruchemy without downsides would be to fueled the power using the Mists.

True, but the OP was thinking more along the lines of examples where storing the Feruchemical attribute was not a minus but a plus unto itself (albeit in a different context). Not just "I can fill a zincmind or steelmind while vegging out watching Netflix".

Wax does this all the time, actually - he reflects that he usually thought of using his Feruchemy as primarily useful in making himself lighter, frequently walking around filling his ironmind at a low level while going around at 75-80% of his natural weight or to make himself fly further or faster with a Steelpush, until the times in Alloy of Law when he suddenly realized how useful being really, really, REALLY heavy for a few moments could be in the right situation.

That's why I thought about bendalloy - I remembered Subsumer Ferrings being a thing that anybody who's ever tried to diet would find useful, but then found it probably wasn't worth dying over to wear a bendalloymind for any significant part of one's life.

[Raven Wilder]

I do have wonder about Subsumer Ferrings: do their metalminds simply store caloric energy, or do they also store nutritional value?

Suppose I ate a bunch of deep fried cheese curds. I could store all the calories from that snack in a bendalloymind, so I wouldn't gain any weight, but would I still be adding a bunch of salt and cholesterol to my bloodstream? That really affects how useful it would be for someone who wants to pig out without dealing with the health consequences.

On 12/1/2020 at 4:35 PM, robardin said:

True, but the OP was thinking more along the lines of examples where storing the Feruchemical attribute was not a minus but a plus unto itself (albeit in a different context). Not just "I can fill a zincmind or steelmind while vegging out watching Netflix".

You don't fill a zindmind during something fun, like watching Netflix. You do it during something boring, like waiting for a bus or having a dental exam. If your mental processes are slowed down, it should all seem to go by a lot quicker.

[Koloss17]

On 12/1/2020 at 4:07 PM, Necessary Ookla said:

Feruchemy is seen as the "there's no such thing as a free lunch" power-- sure, you can be strong or fast or heal super fast, but you have to spend time being weak or slow or sickly in return. Even with compounding, you have to be in a sucky state some of the time. (I think). (I've never really understood compounding). But sometimes the sucky state has its own benefits.

For instance, I would love to have a form of Tin that specifically involves hearing. I would blissfully fill my metalmind while my relatives started to talk about politics, or an annoying commercial came on. And most importantly, I would be able to shop during December without ever, ever having to hear another rusting holiday jingle.

WHO HATH SOMMONED ME

THE GREAT! F-TIN! OVERLOOORD?

welp. I have been summoned. 
 

you underestimate the power of feruchemantic tin. You looking for storing benefits? Taste, smell, touch, and hearing are the basic things to store for benefits. There is a lot more senses than that. 

the one sense that you are forgetting about that will be very useful to store is your sense of pain. It actually fully cheats the system for the end-neutral aspect of feruchemy. Storing the five basic senses can be interpreted as a bad thing, but storing pain? There is almost no reason to not store it. Sure, it might have the downsides that a pewter savant would have of not noticing that you are bleeding out, but it can be managed a lot more easily than pewter savantism. And it has great practical normal non-fighter lifestyle advantages. Headache? Gone. Burned hand? Gone! Scraped knee? Gone. It can get bad, and you do have to be smart with it (like bandaging you even if you are not feeling the pain), but as long as you aren’t a fool, you’ll be just fine. That would be my choice all the way.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

17 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

There is almost no reason to not store it

I'm not sure I agree. Being able to store pain is certainly useful, no doubt, but pain serves a vital function and having it turned off all the time can certainly have negative effects. There are people irl that are born unable to feel pain and it usually doesn't work out well for them.

[Koloss17]

17 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

I'm not sure I agree. Being able to store pain is certainly useful, no doubt, but pain serves a vital function and having it turned off all the time can certainly have negative effects. There are people irl that are born unable to feel pain and it usually doesn't work out well for them.

Yeah, I might have sold it a bit too hard. There are disadvantages. But it is still cheating the whole end-neutral thing.

[Necessary Eagle]

57 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

Yeah, I might have sold it a bit too hard. There are disadvantages. But it is still cheating the whole end-neutral thing.

Can you store pain without being in agony, though? I feel that there must be so many bodily processes that we don't think even think about that could potentially leave us in agony if our pain sensitivity was dialed way up.

 

[Raven Wilder]

No one says you have to use the traits you store. You could store your sense of pain in a tinmind, and then just throw the tinmind in the garbage, never to be used again.

[Necessary Eagle]

Huh. And it's the pain that's being stored, not the lack thereof? Really does seem like a cheat.

[Koloss17]

2 minutes ago, Necessary Ookla said:

Huh. And it's the pain that's being stored, not the lack thereof? Really does seem like a cheat.

It is something that would follow the rules of a tinmind. You store your sense of taste. You don’t store your lack of taste. Likewise, you store the sense of pain, not the sense of lack of pain. If you want a reason to tap the sense of pain, you can tap it when you are eating spicy food. Increasing the pain will make the spicy food spicier.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

12 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

If you want a reason to tap the sense of pain, you can tap it when you are eating spicy food. Increasing the pain will make the spicy food spicier.

I briefly tried writing a fanfic about a windwhisperer (technically a windwhisperer/lurcher) and was trying to find a good climactic moment for her to tap a bunch of pain, but I couldn't think of a reason why. I don't think some sort of spicy food eating contest would fit the bill, but you know, it's worth a shot 

I did plan to have her store her sense of pain to let her burn a hemalurgic spike, since normally burning one that you're spiked with causes immense pain and just knocks you out. 

[The Titan God]

You could fill goldminds as an excuse to be late or not go to places (also adds some joy to being sick in order to store health). The only downside is people might catch on and assume your faking.

[Frustration]

Storing can be just as useful as tapping and I won't be convinced otherwise.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Storing can be just as useful as tapping and I won't be convinced otherwise.

it really depends on the metal. Tin, iron, bronze, brass absolutely. Storing identity allows for some really janky shenanigans like we've seen. But I think it's very limited circumstances where you want to store health, speed, strength, mental speed, determination (?). Maybe not none, but it's gonna be really rare

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

health,

Getting a disease easier, let's you develope anti-bodies faster.

3 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

speed, 

I can't tell you how often it would be useful for my defalt walking speed to be just a touch slower.

4 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

 strength,

It's not just strength but muscle mass, you are actually getting smaller, that has a lot of uses.

5 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

mental speed,

An alternative to Bronze for Ferrings, and a good way to avoid difficult social situations

6 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

determination (?).

That one actually gets me.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

3 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Getting a disease easier, let's you develope anti-bodies faster.

eh, maybe. But they very well may be weakened too. But this did make me realize it would be useful on Ashyn, though that's still a pretty specific circumstance

 

EDIT: forgot to say

Quote

An alternative to Bronze for Ferrings, and a good way to avoid difficult social situations

I'm kinda confused what you mean here

Edited December 21, 2020 by Stormtide_Leviathan

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

eh, maybe. But they very well may be weakened too. But this did make me realize it would be useful on Ashyn, though that's still a pretty specific circumstance

I ment: store, get the disease, stop storing.