#dust article

Maybe ADAM-producing Sea Slugs can be found on Remnant, or perhaps humanity's scientists invent something like CRISPR to engineer slower-acting, DNA-altering retroviruses...

Either way, using gene tonics called Plasmids, the people of Remnant could change their DNA to grow new internal organs called Vigors.

These Vigors would be able to safely contain Dust, preventing it from poisoning the rest of the body, and even allowing the host to activate the Dust and channel its power in specific ways. All of the advantages of direct Dust infusion with none of the same risks (though perhaps with new ones), and with some of the advantages of Dust cartridges.

To facilitate refilling Vigor organs, the mutating plasmid might also grow secondary extra organs. Receptor organs along the surface of the body could consume Dust stabbed into your skin, as Hazel liked to do. Receptor organs in the esophagus could filter out Dust that you swallow, before it reaches your stomach. Certain Vigors intended to produce projectiles might also grow secondary organs (usually in the hand) for emission.

So the Devil's Kiss plasmid would allow you to consume Fire Dust, transfer the Fire Dust safely from your throat to your Vigor, contain it, and allow you to channel out of your hands as fireballs.

Alternatively, one could inject Dust more directly into a Vigor, much as one injected EVE through hypodermic needles.

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Dust comes in four basic elemental forms: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. But humanity has also found “hybrid” types in nature, such as Gravity, Ice, and Lightning.

According to Before the Dawn, Atlas invented artificial Dust types, include the only kind we know: Hard-Light Dust.

Before the Fall of Beacon, Hard-Light Dust was the rarest and most expensive Dust in the world of Remnant. Canonically, there is no kind of Dust more expensive or less available than it.

And as a reminder of how “rare” Hard-Light Dust has been thus far...

Amity Coliseum had enough to fuel its crowd-protecting barriers

Argus had enough to erect multiple, gigantic walls of Hard-Light and provide a pseudo-Aura for their Colossus

Atlas City had enough to cover their entire floating island in a massive bubble

While working as a special agent for Ironwood, Ironwood gave permission for Jaune Arc’s shield to gain automated Hard-Light Dust components

Velvet gathered enough Hard-Light Dust to fuel the projects of her weapon, Anesidora

Now, Ironwood’s Dust embargo did block the SDC from selling refined products like Hard-Light Dust, which made it harder for Velvet to procure supplies for her weapon... and the Fall of Atlas means those supply lines won’t ever return.

But, setting those events aside, if a fanfic writer wanted to introduce a new form of Dust – artificial or otherwise – but wanted to remain within the lines of canon, that form of Dust would either need to be more available and cheaper than Hard-Light Dust...

Or else would need to be so new or secret that the world at large doesn’t know it exists.

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Maybe ADAM-producing Sea Slugs can be found on Remnant, or perhaps humanity's scientists invent something like CRISPR to engineer slower-acting, DNA-altering retroviruses...

Either way, using gene tonics called Plasmids, the people of Remnant could change their DNA to grow new internal organs called Vigors.

These Vigors would be able to safely contain Dust, preventing it from poisoning the rest of the body, and even allowing the host to activate the Dust and channel its power in specific ways. All of the advantages of direct Dust infusion with none of the same risks (though perhaps with new ones), and with some of the advantages of Dust cartridges.

To facilitate refilling Vigor organs, the mutating plasmid might also grow secondary extra organs. Receptor organs along the surface of the body could consume Dust stabbed into your skin, as Hazel liked to do. Receptor organs in the esophagus could filter out Dust that you swallow, before it reaches your stomach. Certain Vigors intended to produce projectiles might also grow secondary organs (usually in the hand) for emission.

So the Devil's Kiss plasmid would allow you to consume Fire Dust, transfer the Fire Dust safely from your throat to your Vigor, contain it, and allow you to channel out of your hands as fireballs.

Alternatively, one could inject Dust more directly into a Vigor, much as one injected EVE through hypodermic needles.

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Jacques Schnee is a man obsessed with acquiring more wealth and prestige. He was probably the single wealthiest man in the world. If Healing Dust existed, he would likely own the largest supply in the world, and he would have forced Weiss to use it to heal the scar on her face to maintain the image of the Schnee family. I doubt Weiss would want to keep the scar just to spite her father, if only because its symbolism of her freedom would be mixed with its reminder of her mistake against the Arma Gigas, and at the time she was a fierce perfectionist.

There's also the theory that Dust is the crystallized remains of First Humanity, and "colored" by whatever magic they most or last invoked.

Ozma died of sickness. Salem, who apparently had little to do in her prison tower except practice magic, could not use magic to cure him of the disease or to heal his body to help him outlast it. Nor did she manage to find anyone else capable of doing so for a man whom Jinn described as a legendary hero; the sort of man that many people would want to repay, or to owe them an enormous favor.

Yet, Hard-Light Dust proves that artificial forms of Dust can be invented. If "natural" forms of Dust are determined by the forces that First Humanity conjured, then artificial forms of Dust might produce effects that First Humanity never considered using magic to conjure.

It's possible that more applications for magic existed than First Humanity ever survived to discover. For example, we can speculate that the Wizard discovered how to use his magic to shapeshift into animals, judging by how he could give limited forms of that power to Qrow and Raven Branwen.

Therefore, it does not seem impossible for the scientists of Remnant to discover how to artificially create Polymorph Dust, for temporarily turning creatures into other sorts of creatures. (Perhaps someone in the world already has discovered it, but is keeping it as a personal, trade, or national secret.)

But more than shapeshifting, if there was one form of magic that the Wizard would seem most driven to discover (on his own, or with an answer from Jinn in a previous cycle of questions), it would be healing magic. Perhaps sacrificing more of his power to gift Qrow and Raven left him without enough strength to heal Amber. Or perhaps he did tend to Amber's physical injuries, but Salem's draining Grimm had rendered her incurably comatose by ripping out part of Amber's very soul.

But if Ozpin has such spells, they clearly aren't enough to restore Yang's arm, or else he probably would have offered to do so, with a cover story that Oscar (or someone else Yang met along the way to Mistral) had a Semblance that allowed it. Neither did Ozpin share any memories of such a spell with Oscar after they learned Maria was born with Silver Eyes.

Remnant's scientists certainly must be hard at work to discover Healing Dust on their own. Plant Dust seems like the most obvious place to start. Discovering Polymorph Dust might be a dead-end that nevertheless serves as a useful point of reference for exploring different combinations.

A Dust that creates animals rather than plants would seem like the most useful place to start, but I doubt that First Humanity bothered to use such conjuration.

Plant life is extremely simple compared to animal life; it totally makes sense that if you could magically create a seed and keep creating more nutrients, the seed could rapidly grow and form with the natural replication and growth process of plant life. First Humanity would gladly conjure plants for farming, gardening, and combat.

But animals have to go through an embryo and fetus stage, which would be really messy to attempt outside of a womb, and extremely rapid growth would be at best produce a naked adult with the undeveloped mind of an unborn infant.

So, no waving your hands and conjuring a swarm of ravens to attack your foes. Even a success would produce a creature fit only for slaughter. Far more disturbing than simply conjuring an endless supply of plants for your livestock to eat so that they can produce more livestock for you in the natural way.

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Thank you for coming to pick my brain on the matter, but in the future it would be more helpful to say something as well, so I have a better idea of what you expect from me.

There are a lot of people in that thread, so rather than trying to answer any specific poster, I’ll just briefly give my thoughts on “why the characters act like magic is more magical than what they can already do”.

First of all, magic is unknown; everyone on Remnant knows that Aura comes from their souls. No one knows where magic comes from. Suddenly they have to start asking themselves if all of those legends about the gods are true, and if they are true, which gods? All, some, or none that anyone has ever told them about?

Additionally, magic is extremely versatile. While an individual Semblance can do practically anything, no Semblance can do everything. Yet Salem, the Wizard, and the Maidens can effortlessly conjure and control all of the physical elements and energetic forces of the world, biologically transform themselves or others, and who knows what else.

Furthermore, magic is extremely powerful. No Huntsman yet has a Semblance that exerts power on the scale of immediately summoning a thunderstorm out of nowhere and then banishing it just as easily.

Finally, magic is cheap. Dust is expensive. Weiss looks very much like a spellcaster, but she’s uniquely capable among the cast for her skill with multiple varieties of Dust. Even Cinder sticks mostly with one element, and she uses woven clothing instead of working with Dust directly like Weiss. I think we’re meant to assume Weiss can afford to be so good because she had endless supplies of Dust to practice with as a child, and no one else has that advantage. Someone who becomes a Seasonal Maiden immediately gains more elemental power than Weiss could ever have.

Magic isn’t just financially free, but Aura-free as well. Semblances require skill with Aura, and cost Aura to use. Amber continued to out-Weiss Weiss even after her Aura was broken.

So, magic is an out-of-context problem which is more powerful and versatile than Aura and Semblances, all of which can be really scary for people who trained their whole lives with the expectation that they would be among the strongest people in the world.

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back to my Aura index

I’ve been asking if Yang’s bike runs on Fire Dust or Lightning Dust, but I recently realized I already had the answer: Electric engines are quiet. Bumblebee has the customary throaty roar of a conventional engine.

I looked up the question of which form of engine was more mechanically efficient. Electrical engines are apparently far more efficient at converting electricity into horsepower than combustion engines and gas. The flip-side being that batteries are not nearly as efficient at storing potential energy as gasoline.

Dust is better at storing potential energy than even gasoline. Using Lightning Dust instead of electrical batteries would seem to solve the problem of making electrical engines more reliable than combustion engines.

So why does Bumblebee roar like a combustion instead of whisper like an electric?

Lightning Dust might not be one of the four basic elemental varieties of Dust. It might be a hybrid of Fire and Air Dust. If Lightning Dust cannot be found in sufficient quantities in the wild or costs too much to artificially produce, then Fire Dust might remain the most cost-effective form of vehicular fuel.

...Well, at least there are probably no emissions!

But I figure that for certain machines on which you want to spare no expense, the superior mechanical efficiency of an engine which converts Lightning Dust into energy is the objectively correct solution. For instance, Penny’s body, which her father would want to run as long and silently as possible.

(Especially for any Dust contained in her head to serve as an emergency back-up battery to maintain the memory-life of the brain in the event of fatal injuries. *crosses fingers*)

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Without considerable amounts of Dust, air-ships cannot lift off, let alone move, and moving towards their destinations requires even more considerable amounts of Dust. Air-ships are expensive, and only become more so the bigger they are and the more heavily they are loaded.

Aquatic vessels are cheaper. With sails or oars or even just water currents going in the right direction, waterborne vehicles can reach their destinations without using any Dust. Sea-ships can be built to sizes infeasible even for for cutting-edge Atlesian air-ships, which allows them to carry commensurately more cargo.

What's more, as bad as it is for a waterborne vessel to go dead in the water because its engine runs dry or stalls out, at least it already sits safely upon the water rather than falling from the sky. This has always been a chief concern with air-ships; even modern-day models continue the original tradition of designing flying vessels for some degree of sea-worthiness, in case they need to make an emergency water-landing.

In fact, ancient shipwrights likely intended their creations to land in any available body of water along their journeys, to continue traveling with the least expenditure of Dust. The first transoceanic air-ships probably conserved their fuel by flying over only the deepest and most dangerous stretches of the sea, and swimming through the safer shallows. But while they could bypass more obstacles than ships which couldn't fly at all, they still consumed so much more Dust, and classed so much smaller in size.

Even unto the present day, ocean-going vessels present far less risk and far more cost-efficiency for long-distance transportation, especially of large quantities of heavy materials, such as Dust, metal, food, and massive numbers of people carrying all of their worldly possessions.

Historically, the chief advantage air-ships have for transporting cargo or passengers is over-land speed, which makes them primarily employed for delivering messages, vitally important packages, and quick-response combat or medical specialists. As air-ships became faster and more reliable, they also began to offer greater safety from encounters with the Grimm, creating a demand for the conveyance of small groups of civilians willing to pay highly for the convenience and security of fast travel.

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A bullet tipped with Fire Dust will first cause a bullet-wound in whatever it strikes, before the Dust inside is ignited by the impact, creating an explosion of fire that causes further harm and also sets its target ablaze.

However, a bullet filled with Fire Dust can be designed to act more like a grenade or rocket. The shells of these projectiles are designed to shatter as the impact ignites the Dust within. The target will be exposed to intense heat as well as a concussive blast-wave, but the majority of the damage is actually inflicted by the flying shrapnel; the broken fragments of the shell which are being propelled by the blast-wave.

But it’s not just Fire Dust that can achieve this effect! Upon ignition, Air, Water, and Gravity Dust all create expanding manifestations of mass or force which will cause a fragmentation shell to explode into shrapnel. (Earth and Ice may be counterproductive if they only end up trapping the shrapnel.)

This means that Dust makes it possible to create explosives which have a drastically lower chance of starting fires in the wilderness or urban environments. As long as they don’t set off any other stores of Dust.

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