Oltux72

For all practical purposes, how is Soulcasting different? Kandra, Dragons, the Returned, Listener forms, Dakhor, Aimians, Surge of Progression, ... It is really common actually, albeit in limited form. The Thrill, Yelig-Nar, Forms of Power, Controlling constructs with emotional allomancy, death rattles, Harmony taking over Kandra, ... What is Hoid doing with Fortune? Seons do it in a sense. Can Aon Dor do it? Observation from the cognitive realm? Crossings with Listeners Aon Dor? Unmade and Revels? That is exactly what Sixth of the Dusk did. Telepathically even.

You are right. I used an approximation of Earth's gravity by accident. You are off by a factor of magnitude. Rosharian surface acceleration is about 6.9 m/s^2, so ten lashings give you 69m/s. Sucks for a bow but is viable. 15 to 20 lashings would give you a good weapon. Soulcasting is better if you can manage it. There is the question of countermeasures though. If only one side has fabrial weapons or surgebinders, the other side will be massacred. However, I am sure that if both sides have soulcasting abilities, the other side will work hard on persuading stuff to stay as it is. And to dissolve or transport away projectiles. So aluminium darts with discarding magical sabots look like a possibility. Which leads me to another more general point. It looks like purely kinetic weapons are not very effective nor efficient. So if you want ranged weapons at all, a solution with an active warhead looks like the way to go. And in that case the heavier fabrial probably wins and it can be built to withstand less acceleration. Hence you would go for heavy and slow warhead, rather magical javelins or arrows rather than bullets.

The problem with that is that you still need to explain why pushing a light object moves that object, a heavy object moves you and an object of equal masses moves both of you. In other words you are introducing an additional effect that can explain stuff partially, but fails to explain other observations and would need to not interfere with the explanation for them. It is impossible. Remember that you control only the strength of the force, not the vector. An object would have to be aimed exactly at your "allomatic center", you would have to stand absolutely still, no wind would be allowed to blow and gravity would have to be exactly aligned. Such conditions do not arise in reality. You would always have a component of force away from the connecting line between the allomancers. Every projectile will be deflected, most likely into the ground as it gets slower. And I am quite sure you would come to a similar curve if you left out velocity and tweaked the distance factor a bit. It just complicates things.

I don't think so. Or rather this is because you are limiting yourself to exact equivalents of guns, being weapons that kill by accelerating a small mass to very high speeds in a very short time. Surgebinding cannot do the high acceleration in a very short time, but a relatively high mass at medium speeds or a very long acceleration is possible. The key difference to a gun is that there is no reason you would need to limit your acceleration to the time in the tube. Let's assume you can do 10 lashings. That gives you 100 m/s^2. Apply that for 1 s and you get to the speed of an arrow. We have seen objects weighing tons being accelerated. The arrow would travel 50m in that time. That is a weapon albeit a bad one. If you can manage 20 lashings you can go down to 0.5s, for example, of acceleration, you get the same speed but with a much smaller minimum distance of 25m. You can certainly build an automatic ballista or an automatic crossbow that way (with full size war arrows). If you are ready to go for a steep trajectory you can go to high subsonic speeds at least. A mortar is possible. And if you can build an automatic soulcaster and a fuse, you have shells. Turning an object inside an airtight shell into air will certainly burst it apart.. We would have to determine how fast soulcasting actually works to determine whether the shell would rupture or be torn apart.

Obviously there is a ridiculous case where the positive importance of velocity outweighs distance. If you push hard enough you get to infinite speeds. Secondly a positive influence of velocity makes it very hard to develop a steady state lifting yourself. As long as you are rising, your allomantic force will be stronger. If speed lessens allomantic force, you could hover at a higher state just by stepping off a building rather than start from the ground, as you are at rest and if your relative velocity weakens your push you'd have to gradually rise. Finally any positive influence of speed makes pushing on a fixed anchor LESS efficient than pushing against a moving anchor. I am sorry, but it is a needless complexity and buys you nothing.

That I am afraid is just not going to work out. It would mean that two allomancers pushing on each others coins would break harder than they would fly apart when at rest. It would also mean that they would break harder pushing on each others coins than against an object at rest in between them (same mass assumed). And it would make it more efficient to push at two objects at an angle from you to accelerate upwards rather than something right under you, because the relative velocities would rise slower. It would make stopping bullets trivial.

Well, but then you need to take the already modified state when you compare to the hemalurgical end state. Which is basically improved mental faculties and a bit of magic compared to a mistwraith. While a Steel Inquisitor has a totally redesigned brain and a Koloss keeps growing and has a radically altered physiology, considering what they can eat.

Yes, but not by hemalurgy. Rashek made them directly using his ascension powers.

This argues quite convincingly that the allomancer has to experience a change to the circumstances the object pushed against experiences, looking at this as neutrally as possible. Now our task is to derive the law this feedback obeys.

Indeed. We cannot drop the premise that the allomancer sets a force. In the case nothing moves, momentum is not changed. Action equals reaction applies. If something is accelerated we obey Δp = Σmv = 0

It still looks to me like you can get away with one initial force and a single equation. Or a set of equations derived from each other. One proposal. The allomancer sets a total force. In the static case this is just what both sides feel. If something is moved however, the interaction is governed by conservation of impulse. The constraint is compatible with the static case. In a static case impulse is obviously conserved. We have to throw out action equals reaction, but we already threw out conservation of energy. So can we derive observed behavior from conservation of impulse? I think so. At least the push on something heavy and you are shifted, push on something light and it is shifted behavior would be the result. What do you think?

That makes sense and makes me suspect that I am a fool. I made an error in attribution. Nevertheless from a physical viewpoint the behavior of an anchored coin makes sense. It derives from the conservation of impulse.

What would you actually steal? Almost all magics of the Cosmere are a result of a symbiosis. Supposing that you steal a Nahel Bond, you would find that the Spren would just break it afterwards. I suppose you could spike a skyeel if you want to become lighter, or spike the ability to manifest shard plate out of a Knight Radiant. Sand Mastery and Selish magics are pretty good targets in theory, but outside their native lands their use is difficult. And while you could spike Breath out of an uncooperative hostage, torturing him until he transfers it to you would also serve your purpose.

Exactly. At that point you need to compute coming from the actual allomantic force the allomancer generates. You are using fixed here in two slightly different ways. The masses are given by the situation and measurable. Anchoring however, alternatively can be seen as effectively anchoring them. As Pagerunner remarked, you can also see the allomantic "link" as transmitting the normal force. Both ways of seeing it give the same result. The force is set to a constant value by the allomancer generating the push. Yes, but not the same acceleration. That is the basic reason behind Kelsier's rule of thumb that if you push on something heavy you'll move, and if you push onto something light, it'll move. The whole point is that by anchoring something you get a transition from light to heavy. Electrostatics and gravity would show the exact same behavior (except that there is no repulsive force in gravity of course)

No, on the contrary. Model 4 supposes Newton's third law is inoperative. But the results we see derive from the 3rd law. No, and it seems I am not very good at explaining this. So there is one total force, which the allomancer determines. If both sides were anchored, that is what they would feel and that's it. I assume so far we agree. I think you also agree with the free fall case of no side being anchored. But now you are mixing the physics of these cases in an incorrect way. That is an easy mistake because the force is applied to the coin uniformly, but to the allomancer at, as far as we can tell, the surface of his body. The allomancer undergoes acceleration. And the amount of acceleration is not a matter of choice. It is determined from the force and the ratio of effective masses. Precisely because only the force is under free choice any alteration of the mass ratio will change the acceleration. No, no, no. Again the acceleration increases. And it increases precisely because acceleration and mass are linked by Newton's laws and controlling only one of them (force) means that a change in an uncontrolled variable (mass) changes the third variable (acceleration) Correct. The acceleration of the coin drops to zero, or something very close to it. Newton's laws! You almost got it. The change of the ratio of accelerations is the inverse of the change of the ratios of effective masses. But that is nothing extraordinary. That is the normal everyday consequence of Newton's laws. You would have the exact same result if you replaced allomancy by electrostatic repulsion. It does not. That is the exact result you get if the force is constant.

That is the basic error in your reasoning. Let me explain in detail and please excuse the length of the explanation: Let's look at the case of an allomancer and a coin in a vacuum and in free fall. We have action equals reaction and F = m * a Let's do the math: m (allomancer) * a (allomancer) = m (coin) * a (coin) a (allomancer) / a (coin) = m (coin) / m (allomancer) [that is exactly the same result you would get for electrostatic repulsion at any given moment, hence utterly ordinary] The allomancer being much heavier than the coin, almost all of the acceleration the force generates is experienced by the coin. Now the crucial the point here is that the masses in these equations are those the force acts upon, not just those directly affected by the magical force. Hence you need to include the mass of the clothing the allomancer is wearing, or if the coin is in a wallet and stays in it, the mass of the wallet on the coin's side. Now we consider the case of a coin securely anchored to the ground. Which mass is acted upon on the coin's side of the equation. Theoretically a whole planet. Compared to the mass of a planet, the mass of a coin irrelevant. And that is exactly what your model shows. The coin will experience a normal force from being used to accelerate a planet. You can see that indeed as the normal force being transmitted to the allomancer. The result is the same. No. The effective mass of the coin changes when it hits the ground. And that effect is felt by the pushing allomancer. It is really the same physics that allow a swimmer's same leg muscles to accelerate him much more by pushing on the walls of the pool rather than making swimming motions.

Well, the spike is missing and hence an ability. Would the gold restore it?

Dalinar was brutal and bloodthirsty. But dishonorable? They promised fealty, they broke their promise, Dalinar kiled them, as he had threatened. Honor is satisfied. In fact you could argue that Evi was a traitress.

But how does the gold "know" whom to show at all? It will not work by mass. Any human being changes the majority of his atoms over a surprisingly short period of time. That opens up some questions. What determines the point of divergence? Which alternate decision is picked? Now it is possible that just nobody has been rich and interested enough to spend the money necessary to get good with allomantic gold. Or it is somehow connected to identity. So you would in effect become the gold shadow by burning gold without identity? That is a cool effect.

If you take that to its logical extreme Lerasium, if used "correctly" or in alloys with other metals up to now considered inert, can create a new metal (as they would see it) or technically more correct, a new kind of allomancy. For example, if you alloyed it with silver and burned it, you might become able to control shades.

But which one? You are without identity. Either you see all your possible pasts, like the interaction of atium and electrum projected into the past, or just nothing.

That unfortunately seems to be pretty impossible. The Aons are too symmetrical for that to work. Forgery by rewriting history must have a sequence of events.

Well, we are on thin ice. However I note that the modifier aon does not come with an ordering Aon. If you wanted, to give an example, heal a gut wound.you would in effect say gut + heal. There is no visible grammar that makes sure that 'gut' becomes active before 'heal'. In a sequential model that would be necessary. Now technically an Aon being a modifier could imply that it has to be executed first. So we would need to look at at least two independent Aons being combined. And there we lack examples. But note that the list of Aons has no obvious grammatical elements.

Language and execution in a CPU are linear. While all modifiers to an Aon operate on the same You can simulate that via a state machine, but by all indications simultaneous operations are inherent in Selish magic ans sequential operations require extra work.

Language unlike symbols is linear. You can use it to describe symbols, but not really to represent it. It seems to me that Selish magic is programming, but programming closer to how you programm an FPGA rather than a CPU.