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[SoS Spoilers] Failure to Compound


Moogle

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It's possible that Ruin flat-out didn't know. the deeper mechanics. Not only does it run counter to his Intent, but the only time Compounding had ever happened on Scadrial was TLR, and I doubt he was in a sharing mood. So sure Ruin can make an educated guess, but that might not be "crunchy" enough to actually explain it to someone well enough for them to overcome their mental barriers.

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Thanks to yurisses for asking!

 

In my opinion, this WoB is very suggestive that Paalm was in fact Compounding, and ran out of Invested steel. It explains the absurd speed boosts she put out (which are absurdly overpowered if any normal Steelrunner can put them out that often with less than a week of storing time) and it explains why she ended up with a Coinshot power at the end despite it being an awful decision against Wax: she always had it.

 

She isn't limited to a week of storage. She can tap Indawey's metalminds.

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It's possible that Ruin flat-out didn't know. the deeper mechanics. Not only does it run counter to his Intent, but the only time Compounding had ever happened on Scadrial was TLR, and I doubt he was in a sharing mood. So sure Ruin can make an educated guess, but that might not be "crunchy" enough to actually explain it to someone well enough for them to overcome their mental barriers.

Well looking at this ephigraph

 

It is a little-known fact that the Inquisitors' torture chambers were actually Hemalurgic laboratories. The Lord Ruler was constantly trying to develop new breeds of servant. It is a testament to Hemalurgy's complexity that, despite a thousand years of trying, he never managed to create anything with it beyond the three kinds of creatures he developed during those few brief moments holding the power.

So Paalm didn't know about the Chimeras from the Lord Ruler, leaving only her Shard/Splinter patron to have an understanding of Hemalurgy. Meaning that unless the Kelsier Splinter theory turns out to be true, we can take it that Shards can at the very least understand the magic system of other Shards.

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Well looking at this ephigraph

So Paalm didn't know about the Chimeras from the Lord Ruler, leaving only her Shard/Splinter patron to have an understanding of Hemalurgy. Meaning that unless the Kelsier Splinter theory turns out to be true, we can take it that Shards can at the very least understand the magic system of other Shards.

The Ars Arcanum says the kandra use hemalurgy. While most seem to believe it only means they are hemalurgic creatures, it could also be implying Harmony allows his main servants to make use of the Dark Art.

I don't really beieve this theory of mine is true, but it is worth considering.

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It's possible that Ruin flat-out didn't know. the deeper mechanics. Not only does it run counter to his Intent, but the only time Compounding had ever happened on Scadrial was TLR, and I doubt he was in a sharing mood. So sure Ruin can make an educated guess, but that might not be "crunchy" enough to actually explain it to someone well enough for them to overcome their mental barriers.

 

To add on to Edgedancers' point about Shards understanding other Shards' magic systems, Mistborn don't know what's going on when they burn metals. They think the metals provide the power, not just that they act as a link. Despite this, as Brandon says in the WoB, Vin was able to learn Allomancy mostly in an evening.

 

As such, it seems unlikely that to Compound you need to know a detailed Realmatic explanation of what's going on. A very basic explanation that burning a metalmind will result in you getting Feruchemical power multiplied seems to me that it should be enough to break down the mental barriers required.

 

The more I think about it, the more I think the Inquisitor thing was a glaring plot hole.

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What if Ruin just didn't want to give the Inquisitors double gold? While perfectly capable of building something up, just to make it easier to treat everything down later, surely he would be galled by doing something so very Preservation-y as giving someone double gold. He saw his victory as completely inevitable. He probably figured he didn't need the Inquisitors to have double gold.

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What if Ruin just didn't want to give the Inquisitors double gold? While perfectly capable of building something up, just to make it easier to treat everything down later, surely he would be galled by doing something so very Preservation-y as giving someone double gold. He saw his victory as completely inevitable. He probably figured he didn't need the Inquisitors to have double gold.

 

He gave Marsh an Feruchemical atium spike - the only useful purpose for that being almost-immortality for his servants. I sincerely doubt he cared about double gold being preservation-y.

 

The Inquisitor we've been talking about had Feruchemical steel and Allomantic steel, and yet he ran out of speed when trying to spike Elend. Ruin clearly wanted to spike Elend, and his Inquisitor had to power to Compound, but for some reason didn't despite having months to practice with Ruin whispering secrets.

 

The fact that Inquisitors use Allomancy at all is a clear sign that Ruin didn't care about things being of Preservation and would use them anyways.

 

So unfortunately I don't think your explanation works.

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Yeah, I guess not. The thing is, Shardholders have such a grand, cosmic perspective that it can be difficult for them act effectively on the human level. It's possible that even as he overrode the Inquistors' will, he still left the specifics of how they used their powers up to them. The way the transformation into an Inquisitor warps the subject's thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if they were a little too one-track in their thinking to figure out Compounding. If Ruin had expended a little effort on it, he could have focused enough to get them to do it, but he was completely convinced that his victory was inevitable. I think he was actually very sloppy in a lot of his planning because he just didn't take the human threat seriously.

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I think he was actually very sloppy in a lot of his planning because he just didn't take the human threat seriously.

 

Well, he did with Vin. He sent all of his Inquisitors to kill her before her Ascension, but for some reason none of them were Compounding speed to kill her. Maybe it was too late at that point, but Ruin clearly cared enough about the Inquisitors to give them duralumin spikes (which had to be made from Mistborn - very costly). When Compounding is so powerful, I have a hard time believing he'd work to make more spikes but NOT grab the low-hanging fruit of Compouning.

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That is true. Well, if there's no in-universe explanation, then we'll just have to accept that Sanderson hadn't really thought the whole Compounding thing through yet. On the other hand, some stuff that The Lord Ruler did can only be explained with Compounding, so he had to have put at least some thought into it. 

 

So, assuming that there is an in-universe explanation, it must be that they simply could not Compound. In other words, there was something special about TLR, and he was the only one who could. Maybe it was because he was a Sliver, because he got his powers by burning Lerasium, or something else. Sazed obviously changed some things about the way that Scadrian powers work, and maybe making Compounding more accessible was his way to balance out having removed Mistborn from the equation.

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So, assuming that there is an in-universe explanation, it must be that they simply could not Compound. In other words, there was something special about TLR, and he was the only one who could. Maybe it was because he was a Sliver, because he got his powers by burning Lerasium, or something else. Sazed obviously changed some things about the way that Scadrian powers work, and maybe making Compounding more accessible was his way to balance out having removed Mistborn from the equation.

 

Marsh is Compounding age as of AoL, so I don't know that Sazed specifically changed - or can change - how Compounding works. Ruin obviously intended for him to do it with his Feruchemical atium spike.

 

Again, everything we know points to Inquisitors being able to Compound - Brandon specifically brings up the issue of Inquisitors not Compounding when one tried to spike Elend and ran out of speed, and mentions it needed practice, but the recent WoB I posted is quite contrary to this.

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I don't know if he could change how it works, exactly, but it looks like he definitely can change the degree to which people can access those powers. It looks like, with the exception of Spook, there were no more Mistborn after the changes he made at the end of HoA. It seems perfectly logical to me that as a function of his identity as Harmony, he would want to balance out restricting access to the full range of Allomantic powers by opening up access to Compounding. This would have all happened centuries before AoL, so Marsh Compounding by then makes perfect sense.

 

EDIT: Okay, I should have read the WoB before posting. This part stands out for me: "The 'Practice' therefore for compounding is mental practice--a barrier to overcome in understanding what is happening, and what it will do to you."  I would say that, in that case, my earlier conjecture is correct--that the Inquisitor's state of mind is not up to the task of understanding the method.

Edited by DSC01
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I don't know if he could change how it works, exactly, but it looks like he definitely can change the degree to which people can access those powers. It looks like, with the exception of Spook, there were no more Mistborn after the changes he made at the end of HoA. It seems perfectly logical to me that as a function of his identity as Harmony, he would want to balance out restricting access to the full range of Allomantic powers by opening up access to Compounding. This would have all happened centuries before AoL, so Marsh Compounding by then makes perfect sense.

 

EDIT: Okay, I should have read the WoB before posting. This part stands out for me: "The 'Practice' therefore for compounding is mental practice--a barrier to overcome in understanding what is happening, and what it will do to you."  I would say that, in that case, my earlier conjecture is correct--that the Inquisitor's state of mind is not up to the task of understanding the method.

 

That might be the key - that Ruin had taken over most of the Inquisitors so fully that their minds weren't able to wrap themselves around the method.  Ruin can't do it directly because of how harshly it runs counter to his Intent.

 

But Marsh - maybe he left Marsh a bit more wiggle room in terms of self-awareness?  Using him as his "special" Inquisitor perhaps meant that he didn't control him quite so closely as the others, which means that perhaps Marsh had more ability to access things like Compounding.

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I forgot to post this earlier, but we did get the metalmind-fill-rate-affecting-Compounding question answered!

 

https://www.reddit.c...mmosx?context=3

Q: If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see gold shadows for a time and then obtain compounded health when reaching the charged part of the bead? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, no gold shadows, but at a very low rate since only little health was loaded in it? Would the bead be eveny charged and deliver only health, but at a standard rate the user would always get when compounding?
A: He'd hack the system to deliver health for a short time instead of doing what it was supposed to do, but only until the small portion of gold invested with his investiture ran out.

 

This, to me, seems to support the theory that Paalm was in fact Compounding, but she was still limited by how much she could store since she couldn't do a feedback loop like a normal Feruchemist.

 

My model was wrong, and Kurk was seemingly quite correct!

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So this wording using "portion of the gold invested with his investiture" implies to me

1. Feruchemical charge is not evenly diffused into the object when storing, and is localized in one spot expanding outward. Like soaking water into a rag.

2. To cause a compounding burn the portion of the metal that is charged specifically must be what is burning. Therefore, for an entire piece of gold to give nothing but health (no shadows) one must fill it to capacity.

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That might be the key - that Ruin had taken over most of the Inquisitors so fully that their minds weren't able to wrap themselves around the method.  Ruin can't do it directly because of how harshly it runs counter to his Intent.

 

But Marsh - maybe he left Marsh a bit more wiggle room in terms of self-awareness?  Using him as his "special" Inquisitor perhaps meant that he didn't control him quite so closely as the others, which means that perhaps Marsh had more ability to access things like Compounding.

 

judging from Marsh's povs in HoA, Ruin indeed controlled every movement and thought in their heads, when he focused on them at least. I think it likely that your idea is correct, and that Ruin simply could not do it himself (as he needed the Inquisitors to do it themselves) but he was unwilling to give them enough rope to do so, lest they hang themselves. It probably would have taken a while for Ruin to figure out how to get each individual Inquisitor to learn the method and the understanding while simultaneously crushing their free will.

 

 

It is also likely that the individual Inquisitors didn't WANT to learn Compounding. Under Ruin's focus, their outlooks became truly evil, but we can only assume that they were as unwilling as Marsh under it all. Maybe not AS unwilling, and not as morally good (depending on who they used to be (since about 8-10 were from the Lord Ruler's era)), but certainly anyone would reject such intrusive and total control of their beings in the service of a creature intent on destroying the world. This unwillingness was likely another barrier to them properly learning Compounding.

Edited by Blackhoof
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I forgot to post this earlier, but we did get the metalmind-fill-rate-affecting-Compounding question answered!

 

https://www.reddit.c...mmosx?context=3

 

This, to me, seems to support the theory that Paalm was in fact Compounding, but she was still limited by how much she could store since she couldn't do a feedback loop like a normal Feruchemist.

 

My model was wrong, and Kurk was seemingly quite correct!

 

You okay there Moogle?

 

I posted that WoB a week ago, and then you replied to it...  :unsure:

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