How do Compounding Twinborns work? *spoilers*

[Wispsy]

why does age have diminishing returns?

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

why does age have diminishing returns?

Age doesn't, Feruchemy does.

The greater effect you want to get out of a feruchemical storage at one time you have to burn a greater portion of the stored energy. I.e. if you want to be Strong x4 you have to burn more than x4 strength, but we don't know exactly the ratio/proportions.

However, Feruchemy gives decreasing returns—it takes more than the proportionate amount of strength, for instance, to make yourself four times as strong as a regular man, as opposed to simply twice as strong. In the Lord Ruler’s case, this meant that he had to spend more and more youth to keep from aging. When Mistress Vin stole the bracelets, he aged incredibly quickly because his body was trying to stretch back to where it should have been.”

Sanderson, Brandon (2010-04-01). Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, Book 1) (pp. 530-531). Tor Books. Kindle Edition.

Age however is special because every single day that you are alive that you want to revert requires more energy than the day before it.

If you are 30 years old, but want to revert to 20 with your atium metalminds, you have to expend greater than 10 years of stored age to get there at any given moment (or however long the usage lasts). If you are 1000 years old though you need to burn greater than 980 years of age at any given moment.

...and every day you live increases the amount of stored age it takes to revert back to 20, every time you use that ability.

As opposed to other metals/abilities which only require as much stored energy as you want to use at a given time. Wax is the best example, he makes himself slightly heavier and can do it for a long time, he makes himself the weight of a building and it lasts only a moment, using up all of his storage.

[legacyblade]

It's been awhile since I read the final empire, but didn't he start rapidly aging as soon as he took the bracers off? I think like with weight, your body has a set value it'll go to when you're not tapping. So when he's not tapping his atium-age reserves, he ages. And since he's been around for a thousand years, he has to become old while storing up new age just because of the amount he has to tap to stay young.

However, since a body naturally heals itself and tries to get from sick to healthy, healthy seems to be the default state when not tapping (and when not affected by a disease or injury). It doesn't take as much tapped gold-health-energy-stuff to stay perfectly healthy, since his body is already healthy (from previously tapped gold-health). Because of this, he can use his massive amounts of stored backups to fill new gold and burn it (to restore reserves).

To sumemrize: the body "knows" it's age and will return to it when not tapping age. The body, however, doesn't "know" it should be unhealthy. Thus, it doesn't automatically grow sick when not tapping. It'll always take the same amount of tapped gold-health to stay healthy, whereas the amount of atium-age required to tap to stay young is CONSTANTLY increasing.

[Eric]

Related question: have we confirmed that the metal is actually consumed as quickly when Compounding as when burning the metal normally? That might be the way the Lord Ruler could keep it up so long with so much Atium left in storage. If the metal burns much more slowly *and* gives you extensive returns on investment, you're looking at way more than a 10x increase in net power even if the 'charge' is 10x as effective as tapping.

[Wispsy]

I don't see the reasoning behind why it needs to revert back to normal age. Feruchemy is all about no gain or loss of said attribute being stored, when you store health you spend time unhealthy to speed up healing later. There is no reverting back to what it was once you spend the healing. If you lose a leg and use large amounts of health to heal it, it doesn't fall off again once you stop tapping healing. When you compound healing you gain extra health, after you have healed, you have healed. Your body doesn't try and revert back and there is no good reason why it should. Aging is the same... It's purely physical once you gain tat extra year you have an extra year and start as if you were a year younger, nothing else is continuous once the effect has happened the effect has happened, if you start compounding massive amounts of strength you don't suddenly at one point just become weaker, makes no sense :/

[legacyblade]

@wispy, I'm thinking tapping age works like tapping weight or speed. It goes back to "normal" when you're not tapping. Think of it like this. Gold speeds up or slows down the healing process when tapping or storing. Atium stores up "youth" in the same way you can store speed. It doesn't change your real age. You can just "store" this youth to become old for awhile, or you can tap it to de-age (the same way storing weight will de-weight you). It doesn't change your age. Make sense? You need more youth to appear young the older you get.

[DariusJenai]

It has to do with the additive nature of age. In order to make yourself appear 30, you need to use an additional year of age every year you're alive older than 30. When you get to TLRs case, and are about 1050 years old, you're using a LOT of age to keep yourself young.

Health works slightly different on the reversion than most. You won't revert to having the wounds that you healed, but you'll revert to your natural healing rate. With weight or strength, or enhanced senses, as soon as you actually stop compounding, you'll revert to natural abilities. With age, you have to continually make yourself appear younger. Once you no longer have the ability to keep yourself younger, you'll revert to your 'actual' age, much the same way that a feruchemist would revert to their natural weight or strength when their metalminds are empty.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

I don't see the reasoning behind why it needs to revert back to normal age. Feruchemy is all about no gain or loss of said attribute being stored, when you store health you spend time unhealthy to speed up healing later. There is no reverting back to what it was once you spend the healing. If you lose a leg and use large amounts of health to heal it, it doesn't fall off again once you stop tapping healing. When you compound healing you gain extra health, after you have healed, you have healed. Your body doesn't try and revert back and there is no good reason why it should. Aging is the same... It's purely physical once you gain tat extra year you have an extra year and start as if you were a year younger, nothing else is continuous once the effect has happened the effect has happened, if you start compounding massive amounts of strength you don't suddenly at one point just become weaker, makes no sense :/

That's not the case though. We know from what happened to TLR that you DO in fact snap back to your natural age when you're not storing or tapping age in a metalmind.

In the same way when you aren't storing or drawing weight you go to whatever is your default weight, and yes for strength when you're not storing or tapping a strength metalmind, you go back to your default level of strength.

A body's default state is 'healthy' so once you have healed a leg wound or whatever, no, you don't go back to having a lost leg. When you store in a goldmind you go to a state of slowed healing, when you tap one you go to accelerated healing, the default is "normal" healing/health.

Brandon also said at the 11/10 signing that TLR's body knew his true age and snapped back to it quickly when he stopped tapping the metalminds.

So it's not a purely physical thing, you don't 'gain the year', you're not storing time per se, you're storing age. A better way to think about it would be that you're storing the physical state of your body at a certain level of vigor.

For a normal Feruchemist it's pretty usless except as disguise as Sazed says, but for a compounder you can basically be whatever vigor level you want to be...

[Thor]

Green Hoodie Mistborn is correct. That is the way Feruchemical Age works.

Remember also that TLR is MUCH stronger than Miles, Allomantically. I'd hazard a guess that TLR got ~1000x out of compounding instead of 10x, if not a higher multiplier. And he could get even more out by using Duralumin. How he stores that much, I don't know. His Allomancy alone is probably enough to survive the spears, let alone a ton of Gold compounding. Keep in mind that Atium, as a god metal, might give larger returns than a terrestrial metal. I also think that in limiting TLRs bracers to two, TLR misled Ruin (and the nobility) by letting them think he only had enough Atium to make the two bracers, plus what he sold to the nobility.

Also, metals must be in your stomach to be burnt, IIRC. Miles has his metalminds piercing his body (or inside it) because they can't be Pushed/Pulled on, stolen, or easily removed by the authorities. He probably burns some storages periodically to refill all of his metalminds, then goes around tapping from them constantly until they are around half full (wild guess) then compounds enough to refill them.

[Wispsy]

dunno why but when you put it "accelerated healing" it all kinda made sense again xD i was wrong :/ thx! xD

[name_here]

The way I see it is that Feruchemy always stores an attribute, but what Gold stores is not health, but healing. So if you restore a leg with gold, it doesn't revert because you weren't tapping "a healthy leg" but "the capacity to regrow a leg". When you stop tapping it, your body does revert to normal. It's just that the attribute that was altered is not how wounded you are but how quickly you heal from wounds and fight off diseases, both of which drop to normal when you stop tapping gold.

Atium, however, stores youth and not your body's capacity to reduce physical age. So when you run out snapping back to normal makes you as old as you would be normally.

[Chaos]

I still haven't written up my Alloy release report yet, but indeed, the body remembers its actual age. Brandon explained it to me that Feruchemy is all about multipliers. A healthy person like Miles could store 20% of his health in his body, but if a sickly person tried to store that much, that would be very bad (the example we used at the signing involved storing strength, but the same principle applies). That means that as the Lord Ruler aged, he could store less and less age into his atiummind to burn--he'd have to spend more time aging to get the same effect. And the thing is, the Lord Ruler doesn't just need the "same" amount of age-boost, he'll need a lot more as he gets ancient. It simply costs more to snap back from 1000 to look 20 than to go from 100 to 20.

Brandon said that he may have eventually reached a limit, where his Compounding wouldn't be enough to counteract that effect.

Edited November 17, 2011 by Chaos

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

That is interesting Chaos! Thanks for sharing and I for one am really looking forward to that report.

I wonder if he was already at or near the limit at this point or not... I.e. 1024 years might be the upper limit for compounded age, but if you take the power of the well again you can start your body over again...

Food for thought!

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

dunno why but when you put it "accelerated healing" it all kinda made sense again xD i was wrong :/ thx! xD

Welcome! That's why we discuss things to help each other figure them out

[happyman]

Yep, I think that we've answered Wispy's question pretty thoroughly. It brings up the question of what would have happened to Miles when he grew old. I think the best answer is that his default state of health would have eventually begun failing due to his true age (once you get past ~80, the number of things you need to ward off to stay healthy grows quite rapidly), and it would continually take more and more of his stores to keep himself healthy, with less gain available from his compounding. I'm still thinking that Gold Compounders have noticeably longer-than-average lifespans baring deliberate execution or extraordinarily severe accidents.

Edited November 18, 2011 by happyman

[legacyblade]

It also sounded like Miles was a gold-healing savant or something. He mentioned being afraid to find out what would stop happen if he stopped tapping health. I wonder what would happen if he did. Would his body not have the ability to heal naturally anymore (like how Spook couldn't feel once he stopped flaring his tin). Or would he just not have an immune system anymore and die from common germs.

[Thor]

I still haven't written up my Alloy release report yet, but indeed, the body remembers its actual age. Brandon explained it to me that Feruchemy is all about multipliers. A healthy person like Miles could store 20% of his health in his body, but if a sickly person tried to store that much, that would be very bad (the example we used at the signing involved storing strength, but the same principle applies). That means that as the Lord Ruler aged, he could store less and less age into his atiummind to burn--he'd have to spend more time aging to get the same effect. And the thing is, the Lord Ruler doesn't just need the "same" amount of age-boost, he'll need a lot more as he gets ancient. It simply costs more to snap back from 1000 to look 20 than to go from 100 to 20.

Brandon said that he may have eventually reached a limit, where his Compounding wouldn't be enough to counteract that effect.

Totally called the limit problem (From an older Marsh thread.):

<snip>

The older you are, the more age you would need to tap to seem the same age, putting a cap on the maximum age you can reach that is proportional to your Allomantic strength. For TLR this cap might be in the thousands or even millions of years, while Inquisitors, who aren't as strong as TLR in Allomancy, and aren't very efficient with Feruchemy due to Hemalurgy being the source of their Feruchemy, can only get a much smaller boost from burning a storage, limiting their maximum age to a few centuries.

<snip>

I agree with you, happyman. That is the most logical result of a Double Gold aging.

legacyblade: I'm not sure. Either of those sounds logical...I think that his body would lack the ability to heal naturally, since his body would start removing the "superfluous" biological functions, similar to an astronaut's body cannibalizing its muscle and losing bone density because the body doesn't need a lot of muscle mass or strong bones to move in space. In Miles case, the superfluous functions would be those that related to healing: platelets, immune system, cell regeneration, etc. I can see why he would be afraid to stop tapping Health, even for a short time.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

I wonder if it's possible to be a Savant when you're dealing with burning Feruchemical storages.

To become a Savant I thought you had to have your metals flared continuously for a long stretch of time, and it didn't seem like that was the case for Miles to me, he just always had a nice stead "burn" of accelerated healing going unless he was hurt.

If you can become a Savant with a long-long term slow burn, does that mean TLR was an Age Savant?

[fyodor]

I wonder if it's possible to be a Savant when you're dealing with burning Feruchemical storages.

To become a Savant I thought you had to have your metals flared continuously for a long stretch of time, and it didn't seem like that was the case for Miles to me, he just always had a nice stead "burn" of accelerated healing going unless he was hurt.

If you can become a Savant with a long-long term slow burn, does that mean TLR was an Age Savant?

I'm pretty sure that we never see Miles actually burning his Feruchemical storages. He's tapping healing constantly from his metalminds but I'm not sure that on camera he's ever shown ingesting/burning them.

Just to be clear, I'm sure he WAS burning them at some point, but we just don't see him doing it. He's tapping healing all the time but the actual ingestion/burn/refill happens off camera.

Edited November 18, 2011 by fyodor

[fyodor]

I still haven't written up my Alloy release report yet, but indeed, the body remembers its actual age. Brandon explained it to me that Feruchemy is all about multipliers. A healthy person like Miles could store 20% of his health in his body, but if a sickly person tried to store that much, that would be very bad (the example we used at the signing involved storing strength, but the same principle applies). That means that as the Lord Ruler aged, he could store less and less age into his atiummind to burn--he'd have to spend more time aging to get the same effect. And the thing is, the Lord Ruler doesn't just need the "same" amount of age-boost, he'll need a lot more as he gets ancient. It simply costs more to snap back from 1000 to look 20 than to go from 100 to 20.

Brandon said that he may have eventually reached a limit, where his Compounding wouldn't be enough to counteract that effect.

This is what I'm still having trouble with-I didn't get the impression that Miles was ever being unhealthy. I'll try to find the quote, but he says at some point that he can't remember pain/illness/infirmity etc.I got the impression that he was always burning existing metalminds and then using the multiplied healing to fill new metalminds. The "compounding" term pretty strongly implies it. And that makes sense on its own.

But TLR did have to do some youth-storage. Less than a regular Feruchemist, but still some. And that's both how Sazed explains it and how Sanderson has explained it in subsequent communications. The stuff about more age being needed at 1000 doesn't really get at the discrepancy. Regardless of how much he needed it would always make more sense for TLR to burn existing metalminds and use the surplus to fill additional metalminds (which could also be burned), instead of spending time being old.

[Aldric]

I'm pretty sure that we never see Miles actually burning his Feruchemical storages. He's tapping healing constantly from his metalminds but I'm not sure that on camera he's ever shown ingesting/burning them.

I don't understand this. I guess after posting this I'll go reread some of the earlier parts of this thread, but: I thought to get compounding, you have to burn your storages? Unless you're saying at an earlier time he burned the storage then, got the 10x multiplier, or whatever it exactly is, used that to fill lots of metalminds, and then coasts along using that until he has to rinse and repeat?

But if that is the case, why do they talk about Miles constantly needing new sources of gold?

[Arcanist Lupus]

I don't understand this. I guess after posting this I'll go reread some of the earlier parts of this thread, but: I thought to get compounding, you have to burn your storages? Unless you're saying at an earlier time he burned the storage then, got the 10x multiplier, or whatever it exactly is, used that to fill lots of metalminds, and then coasts along using that until he has to rinse and repeat?

But if that is the case, why do they talk about Miles constantly needing new sources of gold?

Here's the way I understand it:

1. place 10% of your health in a metalmind.

2. burn that metalmind to release the health x10. So you'd be getting back 100% of your health.

3. You don't need 200% health, you only need say 110%. So you store the remaining 90% in other metalminds for safekeeping, so that you can maintain yourself at 110% for a long time after the metalmind you were burning is extinguished.

4. when those metalminds start to run out, burn one of them for another 100%. Lather, rinse, repeat.

However, these steps could be taken more or less simultaneously, once the chain gets going.

[happyman]

Here's the way I understand it:

1. place 10% of your health in a metalmind.

2. burn that metalmind to release the health x10. So you'd be getting back 100% of your health.

3. You don't need 200% health, you only need say 110%. So you store the remaining 90% in other metalminds for safekeeping, so that you can maintain yourself at 110% for a long time after the metalmind you were burning is extinguished.

4. when those metalminds start to run out, burn one of them for another 100%. Lather, rinse, repeat.

However, these steps could be taken more or less simultaneously, once the chain gets going.

Exactly this. It's a really clever trick, and goes a long way towards explaining why Miles is always in obscenely good health---he has an effectively infinite storage of health, some of which he uses to keep himself permanently healthier than average, and the rest of which keeps getting compounded, so his storage keeps growing.

The limit on age storage is due to the fact that the rate at which you need "new" age eventually catches up with you due to the diminishing returns from Feruchemy. I'm guessing, though, that TLR wasn't anywhere near his limit even at the end of TFE.

[fyodor]

I don't understand this. I guess after posting this I'll go reread some of the earlier parts of this thread, but: I thought to get compounding, you have to burn your storages? Unless you're saying at an earlier time he burned the storage then, got the 10x multiplier, or whatever it exactly is, used that to fill lots of metalminds, and then coasts along using that until he has to rinse and repeat?

But if that is the case, why do they talk about Miles constantly needing new sources of gold?

I should clarify-I am sure that he WAS ingesting, we just didn't get any first person accounts of it. This was in response to whether he was flaring or burning slowly. I was just saying that we don't see the specifics, we just see him tapping healing constantly. There isn't necessarily any reason we'd have to see him doing so- he could have just been doing it once a day instead of chomping pieces of gold constantly.

[Asha'man Logain]

I should clarify-I am sure that he WAS ingesting, we just didn't get any first person accounts of it. This was in response to whether he was flaring or burning slowly. I was just saying that we don't see the specifics, we just see him tapping healing constantly. There isn't necessarily any reason we'd have to see him doing so- he could have just been doing it once a day instead of chomping pieces of gold constantly.

Brandon just posted a link to this interview. http://www.openthefridge.net/blog/2011/11/18/interview-author-brandon-sanderson.html

Explains it rather well i think.