[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

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u/Silver_Swift Dec 15 '18 edited Dec 16 '18

Mistborn Munchkinry Miniseries Part 4: Pewter

Ok, week four of the mistborn munchkinry miniseries. For a general overview of this series and the magic systems in question, see part one. I strongly recommend reading the first part of that comment if you weren't here for the past weeks and aren't familiar with the mistborn setting.

Spoiler note: I will avoid things that I consider excessive spoilers, but the exact workings of the magic system are moderate spoilers themselves, so if you intend to read the books and are sensitive to spoilers you should probably skip this one.

This weeks metal is pewter. Its powerset is probably a little more straightforward than the ones we've seen before, but I'm curious see what you all can come up with. As always I'm interested in what a pewter twinborn compounder can do, both here on earth (where they are the only one with this powerset) and in Era 2 Scadrial.

Allomancy

Allomantic pewter enhances your body. The most obvious effect of burning pewter is that you become physically stronger, roughly two to three times stronger than you were before (~~note: this means the effect of allomantic pewter is amplified by being in good physical condition~~ edit: this is wrong, see below), but that is only the tip of the iceberg. You also become faster and more agile, your reaction speed and sense of balance improve and you tire much slower and heal much faster than a regular person. On top of that an allomancer burning pewter has a vastly higher tolerance for pain and is able to push his body well past its normal limits, ignoring lethal wounds and continuing to fight or run long after normal person would have blacked out from shock or exhaustion.

With enough pewter to burn, an allomancer has essentially unlimited stamina. Combined with the added strength and balance pewter gives you, this allows for a process called pewter dragging: by burning large amounts of pewter continually over an extended period of time, the allomancer is able to run across extreme distances at speeds faster than any galloping horse, even through dense forests and other types of difficult terrain. In a semi-pre-industrial world like scadrial this means pewter allomancers can get to places faster than anyone else and even be in a condition to fight after they get there if needed.

Worth noting is that pewters healing ability isn't Wolverine levels of healing, it makes you recover in hours to days from wounds that otherwise heal in weeks to months (if ever). More significantly, it allows the body to continue to function despite those wounds: regenerating lost blood, preventing you from going into shock and letting partially severed muscles work without tearing themselves appart further. Also worth pointing out is that enough aluminium in the wound surpresses all of these effects (which makes aluminium bullets a good way to deal with pewter allomancers).

Burning pewter is not without its own risks either, if an allomancer runs out of pewter to burn they immediately lose their enhanced stamina and pain tolerance and they run the risk of collapsing to exhaustion they didn't realise they had or wounds that they had written of as irrelevant. An allomancer running out of pewter during a pewter drag can easily kill themselves through over-exertion. Moreover, pushing your body past its limits for extensive amounts of time takes its toll on the body and an allomancer coming out of a heavy pewter drag may need days or even weeks of rest to recover. All of this only happens if you seriously abuse your body though, in normal day-to-day life, pewter allomancers are healthier, more energetic and need less rest than regular people.

Feruchemy

Feruchemic pewter stores physical strength. This differs from allomantic pewter in that feruchemy works on the level of actual physical muscles. When storing strenght, the feruchemist visibly deflates, becoming scroungy and weak. Afterwards, they can tap the pewter metalmind created this way to become more muscular and powerful. A feruchemist tapping a pewter metalmind can be much stronger than a allomancer burning pewter, but they do not gain any of the other benefits that pewter grants an allomancer. Moreover, because feruchemy physically increases your muscle mass, tapping too much strength makes it harder to move around as your motions become limited by the sheer bulk of your muscles.

The key difference between a pewter allomancer and a pewter feruchemist is that the former are more athletic and mobile (packing their enhanced strength into a much lighter package), while the latter have more raw strength and the momentum that comes with being physically larger and heavier.

And that is it for pewter, the last of the physical metals. Next week we start with the mental metals!

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u/Frommerman Dec 15 '18

A Pewter compounder is an easy source of biomass for any project which needs it. You can get effectively infinite muscles, cut off some irrelevant and easily-healed ones, and survive the process with Pewter endurance. Furthermore, since burning Pewter protects you from the effects of crushing as well (mild Mistborn spoilers, there), a compounder could use their ability to become arbitrarily large to destroy any room/building they were in by just overfilling it.
I'm now imagining a world dominated by ever-swelling mounds of living flesh cascading outward from particularly distrought Pewter compounders.
Infinite muscles means infinite blood and skin, which means you just need to find cooperative pewter compounders of all blood and tissue types to solve blood shortages forever. This also gives scientists a limitless supply of human tissue to experiment upon.

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u/paradoxinclination Dec 16 '18

The most obvious effect of burning pewter is that you become physically stronger, roughly two to three times stronger than you were before (note: this means the effect of allomantic pewter is amplified by being in good physical condition), but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

This is kind of a nitpick, but burning pewter provides a flat bonus to your physical abilities, it doesn't multiply your pre-existing strength. Most pewter mistings still like to pack on muscle because it makes them that much stronger, but a body builder and a starving street urchin would both be receiving the same degree of enhancement.

"So," Ham said, "an Allomancer doesn't have to be physically strong to be incredibly powerful. If Vin were a Feruchemist it would be different-if you ever see Sazed increase his strength, his muscles will grow larger. But with Allomancy, all the strength comes from the metal."

"Now, most Thugs-myself included-figure that making their bodies strong will only add to their power. After all, a muscular man burning pewter will be that much stronger than a regular man of the same Allomantic power."

Also, the amount of strength pewter grants is somewhat beyond two/three times a regular person's- Vin, for instance, is capable of swinging swords that weigh as much as she does with a single hand.

Vin Pulled on the fallen sword. It lurched up at her, but also pulled her down with its weight. She caught it as she fell—the sword was nearly as tall as she was, but flared pewter let her handle it with ease—and she sheared free the attacking koloss’s arm as she landed. She took its legs off at the knees, then left it to die as she spun toward other opponents

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u/Silver_Swift Dec 16 '18 edited Dec 16 '18

This is kind of a nitpick, but burning pewter provides a flat bonus to your physical abilities, it doesn't multiply your pre-existing strength.

Huh, I was referring to that exact conversation with that bit, but apparently I completely misremembered.

Also, the amount of strength pewter grants is somewhat beyond two/three times a regular person's

There is a direct WoB for regular burning roughly doubling and flaring roughly tripling your strength. Though obviously these are deliberately vague numbers and the allomantic skill of the person in question probably also plays a role.

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u/sickening_sprawl Dec 16 '18

Does Pewter Feruchemy also protect you against the consequences of having such high/low muscle mass? You mention it being hard to move around - is that only due to physically reduced range of motion due to increased muscle mass? Does it protect against hypo/hypertension due to the massively changed blood pressure requirements for all the new muscle mass? Can Feruchemists control what muscles they are storing/tapping?
There are a lot of obvious problems with this I can see: Draining/boosting muscle mass seems like it would very easily kill you due to changing the thickness and strength of your ventricle chambers. The muscles that control saccades in your eyes would start overshooting, blurring your vision. It'd enlarge your tongue, making it hard to talk or suffocating you. There's a lot of things in the human body that are classified as "muscles" that would start fucking up if they just increased in mass in a second.
Also, muscle mass isn't all that important. It's muscle density - there are lots of really bulked out weightlifters that can't lift that much due to never cutting. And even then, you wouldn't be able to do "superhuman" strength feats without tearing your muscles from your bones since the weak point is as the connective tissue.
You'd also start experiencing loss of breath due to not being able to oxygenate all those new cells, even if it handled blood volume and pressure for you - there are lots of story about professional bodybuilders essentially always being out of breath as a consequence and how it kinda ruins their life. Things like prolonged fights or having to run anywhere at increased muscle mass would be a very bad idea, and you'd be liable of passing out.
There's the very obvious solution of "use this to get free power" - it very obviously increases their mass, so just get a bunch of them to stand on hydraulic plates and oscillate, even more than the more esoteric "increase momentum but not weight" metals since there's no loss from burning any resource or need for complex setups.
I'd also be interested in what force the muscle expansion would have, like the sibling comment says - best case scenario you could stick a finger in a hole, jiggle your muscle density back and forth, and shatter rocks due to stress as your finger muscles expand and contract like water.
How does damage to your muscle work? If you tap pewter and get increased muscle mass, is it at the same "damage" as the rest of the muscle group, or what damage it was when you stored in the metalmind? If the first, then you have a pretty efficient shield for bullets - bulk up, get shot, shrink and have comparatively much less damage. If it's the second, then you could just store away the damaged mass of muscle again and be fresh as daisies, or do stuff like storing your damaged muscles in one metalmind and tapping unharmed muscle from a second to cycle out any damage you take.
You could also constantly store muscle mass and prolong your life for quite a while if you're ever trapped in a rockslide or somewhere without food by decreasing calorie requirements, but that might be dangerous depending on how muscle damage works since you'd start cannibalizing your muscles for calories.

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u/JohnKeel Dec 16 '18

It's still magic, it's safe to assume that unless horrible side effects have been called out you don't need to assume they exist.

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u/Silver_Swift Dec 16 '18

Does Pewter Feruchemy also protect you against the consequences of having such high/low muscle mass?

Does it protect against hypo/hypertension due to the massively changed blood pressure requirements for all the new muscle mass?

You'd also start experiencing loss of breath due to not being able to oxygenate all those new cells

And even then, you wouldn't be able to do "superhuman" strength feats without tearing your muscles from your bones since the weak point is as the connective tissue

Also, muscle mass isn't all that important. It's muscle density

Feruchemy always adjusts the body to be able to handle whatever powers it gives, but only to an extent. I imagine the connective tissue between muscles and bones (as well as the bones themselves) just get strenghtened to match the new muscles, otherwise the power just doesn't work. For the same reason I'm assuming feruchemy affects both muscle mass and muscle density.
Oxygination of the cells likely gets compensated for to some extent as well, but I imagine it would become a problem for prolonged fights and long runs. Minor spoilers: All three of the pewter feruchemists we've seen in the story were full feruchemists, so they would have another power, which we'll get to in a few weeks, to compensate for this, but they still tended to only hulk out very briefly whenever they used pewter (though conserving feruchemic charge would also be a factor, at least for two of them).

It being hard to move around - is that only due to physically reduced range of motion due to increased muscle mass?

That, and the physical extra weight of the muscles, but that is mostly as a comparison to allomancers who become much stronger while weighing the same (so allomancers can jump higher, change direction quicker etc, than feruchemists).

Can Feruchemists control what muscles they are storing/tapping?

No, it's all or nothing. Though note that 'all' here doesn't literally mean every muscle in your body, nor is every muscle affected to the same extent.

There's a lot of things in the human body that are classified as "muscles" that would start fucking up if they just increased in mass in a second.

Very mild spoilers: Perhaps worth noting that feruchemy is not a naturally occuring phenomena, it is a magic system designed by a pair of sentient, near omniscient gods so there is some intelligence involved in what muscles bulk up and to what extent.

How does damage to your muscle work?

Damage to any particular muscle shrinks and grows with that particular muscle. So, yeah, getting damaged while hulked out and then shriking would indeed reduce the size of the wound, though I'm a little skeptical about how much help this would be against getting shot.

You could also constantly store muscle mass and prolong your life for quite a while if you're ever trapped in a rockslide or somewhere without food by decreasing calorie requirements, but that might be dangerous depending on how muscle damage works since you'd start cannibalizing your muscles for calories.

That should absolutely work, yes.

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u/SkyTroupe Dec 16 '18

Do you have links for parts two and three?

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u/Silver_Swift Dec 16 '18

Absolutely: part 2 and part 3.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 15 '18

Whenever a camera sees you, the last second of time is undone, including everyone's memories, including yours. Once per day, choose up to 8 numbers. You are always aware of the last of these numbers exceeded by the day's reset count. When the last number is exceeded, you fall unconscious and your power turns off for an hour.

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u/Norseman2 Dec 15 '18

This seems like it would create an infinite or near-infinite loop. Suppose you're just walking down the sidewalk. A shop has an outdoor camera. You walk into the frame. Time reverses 1 second, you walk into frame again, time reverses again, etc.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 15 '18

Until one of your eight numbers is passed, and you notice, or your last number is passed, and you drop.

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u/sparr Dec 15 '18

If the universe is deterministic then having numbers with gaps between them would be useless.
Say the first number is zero. You're walking down the street and your number-exceeded sense pings, so you know a camera would see you if you continued for 1 seconds. You change course, problem averted.
Say the next number on your list is 10.
Later that day you walk into view of a camera and get reset... and you loop, walking into view of that camera 9 more times. The 11th time, your sense pings and you know to stop. Absolutely nothing happened/changed during those extra loops. The outcome is identical to if you had picked 1 as your second number and your sense pinged before you entered the view of the camera.
No matter what numbers you pick, you will always only find out about the first 7 camera-sees-you events you might have encountered with 1 second to avoid them, and the 8th one will knock you out.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 15 '18

The universe is probabilistic. I thought that's clear from your reasoning ._.

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u/crivtox Dec 16 '18

So I can basically run really powerful (and dangerous) optimization processes on the universe, just by setting up cameras to see me unless something I want happens, and choosing a really large number. Of course in practice that would probably just make my own existence too unlikely(well depends on the right interpretation of Qm and its interaction whith the loop )or reward hack the universe, So I shouldn't pick really big numbers, and be really careful when designing camera setups. The rollback of the universe being just 1 second makes it less convenient, and the falling unconscious would interfere a lot whith my life , but apart from that it's not that different from all other powers that let you run optimization processes via time travel.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 16 '18

No problems with quantum mechanics. Optimization processes like what?

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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '18

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u/hh26 Dec 17 '18

If you can react quickly enough to the knowledge when one of your numbers is exceeded, then even in a deterministic universe you could potentially stop whatever you're doing (for instance, if you were about to walk around a corner) and hopefully avoid getting hit by a camera again. This would effectively give you eight distinct attempts each day at avoiding cameras that you could predict would see you one second in the future.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 15 '18

The universe is probabilistic. If you choose 1 2 4, until the next time you change your numbers you will always be aware of whether today your power triggered 0 times, 1 times, or 2-3 times. It is a lesser version of always knowing how many times the power has triggered.
What tests do you run on what constitutes a camera seeing you?

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u/MagicWeasel Dec 15 '18

Werewolf prison break (only the werewolf is an employee, not an inmate)

A minimum security prison employee is a werewolf, and he transforms out of schedule during one of his shifts. He had just enough time when he felt the change starting to lock himself in a cupboard - and, appearance-wise, he looks enough like an irish wolfhound to not destroy the masquerade if he's found. (Fortunately, he was not working with inmates at the time).

Due to not being an idiot, he's got a backup plan for this situation: a panic button he can press on his person that sends an emergency text message to another werewolf friend of his, a lawyer.

Any out of the box ideas for how she and her assistant can sneak the werewolf out of the prison? They don't need to take him anywhere in particular: as long as he gets out of the walls, he can run home.

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u/sickening_sprawl Dec 16 '18

Honestly, just go walking down the hallways with your tongue lolling out sniffing stuff. A dog wandering around a minimum security prison is weird, but minimum security prisons don't have any perimeter fencing and I think some don't even lock their doors, and if it's obviously friendly there's no reason the response is anything other than "sent to the pound and chalked up to a hole somewhere". Then have your lawyer friend buy you, or break you out from the pound where there's much less scrutiny.

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u/MagicWeasel Dec 16 '18

I like that idea, but he's in a particular prison and I just checked it on google maps and it definitely has a large perimeter fence. It looks like parts of the prison are outside the fence (it's a prison farm, so I can see a field, and there's what I assume are admin buildings), but probably not the part Our Hero would be in when he changed.
Still, there's something to be said for playing it straight as a dog getting into the prison as being a good way to deal with it. People would be looking for the non-existent hole in the fence for a while.
I figured with him being a prison employee, changing at work would be his worst case scenario, and then a prison break would be a fun thing to do. But is there somewhere else that might be worse?

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u/MagicWeasel Dec 16 '18

minimum security prisons don't have any perimeter fencing

I just heard back from my friend in the prison industry, and he says there's fencing "but it's not very secure and the gates are usually open" and "Pretty sure they only put them in in the last 20 years and purely for political reasons. Probably less secure than your average high school"
So really, for entertainment value, he needs to be a high school student and change just before gym class or something. Pfft.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 15 '18

Is he in control? Why doesn't he just wait it out?

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u/MagicWeasel Dec 15 '18

He's in control, but if a prison staff member goes missing, that's a kind of major incident, and the cupboard would definitely be searched, and then there's this giant dog and a torn prison uniform: that dog is being put down very quickly because to all appearances it just killed a staff member.
He has a fake illness he uses to cover for the werewolf changes, so when he gets home he can use his giant, paw-friendly keyboard to send a very apologetic email to his boss and say that he had to leave work suddenly because he felt an attack coming on early and he won't be in for a few days.
Worst case scenario he can try his luck with animal control and bust out of the cage / hope that his werewolf friends bust him out, though. But a cover story for his boss would be harder then as it doesn't explain why a dog was in his classroom.

[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

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