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Copper Compounding


Prism

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So I know how compounding a metal lets you receive more of the tapping side (Ex: store some health in gold and then get more back than you stored). Im wondering how this would work with copper, since copper stores memories. Would it just not work since you can't receive memories you never had/stored? or would it just let you store memories without you forgetting the original though (more like a backup in case you forgot)?

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Though not really canon, the Mistborn Adventure Game's ability for it is that you can sort of create memories that aren't complete, like creating a first person memory of something you've only heard stories of, but that could also be totally wrong since again, the game isn't canon.

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1 hour ago, Prism said:

I've read all of them

Well, the main theory is that Compounding copper allows you to multiply memories, so you end up with copies. The coppermind medallion Wax was given pretty much confirms it.

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On June 17, 2017 at 4:56 PM, Oversleep said:

Well, the main theory is that Compounding copper allows you to multiply memories, so you end up with copies. The coppermind medallion Wax was given pretty much confirms it.

Actually Brandon said that it was done to forget.

QUESTION

Did Kelsier fill copperminds for any reason other than sharing knowledge? Would he want to forget certain memories?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes and Yes. Those may not be causally related. You asked two separate questions and got two separate answers.
 
Edited by Crucible of Shards
Found the WoB
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5 minutes ago, Crucible of Shards said:

Actually Brandon said that it was done to forget.

QUESTION

Did Kelsier fill copperminds for any reason other than sharing knowledge? Would he want to forget certain memories?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes and Yes. Those may not be causally related. You asked two separate questions and got two separate answers.

Actually that doesn't prove anything. As far as we know, he could fill an unkeyed coppermind and give it to someone (for whatever reasons other than sharing knowledge), he could also keep a coppermind on him named "bad memories" and he still could Compound copper to make the coin-like Feruchemical copper medallions.

Of course, on the off posibility that coin was special and (although there are mentioned to be more coins like that in New Seran) not mass produced, we're back to not knowing how Compounding copper works.

BTW, when you qoute a WoB you should include a link with to it :P

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When you fill a metalmind when compounding, you're essentially using Harmony's Investiture in place of your own.  IE: Through compounding, Miles could store health without feeling sick or weak, a pewter compounder could fill a pewtermind with strength without becoming wizened and frail, and a bronze compounder could store wakefulness without feeling sleepy.

It logically follows that a copper compounder should be able to store memories without removing the memories from their own mind.

It's speculated that this is related to TLR's perfect and flawless memory:

  1. Burn Copper
  2. Store a memory
  3. Memory isn't removed from brain
  4. Tap memory from coppermind
  5. The memory is now reinforced in your mind and slightly hardened against gradual breakdown and natural memory loss (like how if you recite something in your head over and over, you can remember it better)
  6. Rinse and repeat

If you walked around all day every day constantly compounding copper to repeatedly store/tap everything you experienced, first, you would probably get really good at it, and second, you might be able to simulate having a flawless memory.  Bear in mind, this is still just speculation for the time being.

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@hwiles there's a fault in your logic:

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

It logically follows that a copper compounder should be able to store memories without removing the memories from their own mind.

Because that's not what Compounding is. It's not being able to store attribute without losing attribute (although that's something you can do by using Compounding).

Compounding is burning a metalmind which causes a significant increase of the corresponding attribute (as if you overtapped a metalmind). Example: burning a brassmind makes you really warm.

Now, we can use that to fill more brassminds. If burning brassmind makes you exceptionally warm, then you have so much more heat you can store in another brassmind. Iterate Compounding on increasingly big metalminds and you end up with a lot of the attribute.

Which means that first you store a memory in coppermind (losing it in the process)... and then we don't know what happens if you overtap copper.

One theory is that burning coppermind multiplies the memory (which you'll get at once and you could store in another metalmind which would allow you to both have the memory in you head and in coppermind and have them functionally infinite). Another theory is that would strenghten the memory - you'd need to learn to store at various strenghts (which is possible) and then you'd still could do the same trick but by splitting strong memories into multiple normal level strength ones.

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Fair enough.  I was trying to offer OP a simplified explanation of what I understand is the most commonly supported theory that depicted how useful copper compounding could be.  In my experience, many people get confused or think compounding copper would be useless when all they hear is: "you could copy memories."  When really, this would be an extraordinarily powerful ability.

I'll grant you that your explanation is probably more literally correct, but it fails to directly demonstrate for the reader how and why the ability would be valuable; while this isn't precisely what OP asked for, I think it's probably what they wanted when they originally thought of the question.

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On 6/29/2017 at 4:11 PM, hwiles said:

When you fill a metalmind when compounding, you're essentially using Harmony's Investiture in place of your own.  IE: Through compounding, Miles could store health without feeling sick or weak, a pewter compounder could fill a pewtermind with strength without becoming wizened and frail, and a bronze compounder could store wakefulness without feeling sleepy.

I don't think that's entirely accurate.  Remember, the first time Vin actually broke into TLR's place to try and kill him, she saw him as an old man.  And he was in that place that he goes every few days and spends a lot of time there, the result being the very heavy implication that he still needs to spend some time old to store youth that he can compound.  Compounding by allomantically burning a feruchemically charged metalmind lets you get out of the metalmind more than you put into it.  Now, you can easily reach a point where you have "infinite" of an attribute stored up to tap/burn at will, but it still requires the initial input of the attribute in the first place, and since different metals burn at different rates, you might have to store your reserves more often to keep a suitable level of compoundable metalminds available.  Miles Hundredlives is pretty much constantly burning/storing health in metalminds, either for regular tapping or compounding, so he's reached a point where he has far more health stored than he can feasibly use, getting into the "infinite loop" concept.  But even for a compounder, you'll hit a point where you have no more metalminds to burn (or don't want to burn a particular metalmind for some reason) and have to start storing over again.

I know the RPG isn't 100% canon, but I think it illustrates this concept very well.  Metalminds can store a certain number of charges based on how big they are, and you have to put charges into it to take charges out, and there are whole charts about what happens based on how many charges of something you tap at any given moment.  The Alloy of Law supplement gets into compounding, where you can burn an appropriate metalmind and receive far more charges out of it than you put into it, which can either be used as normal or stored in other metalminds.  I believe you get one hundred times the charges for compounding (recently switched computers, haven't redownloaded the pdfs yet).  So, take a small gold ring, store 10 charges of health, burn it, you have 100 charges of health you can put in ten more small rings, burn one of those, you now have 200 charges of health, and so on.

As for Copper compounding specifically, the game glosses over most of the effects of storing memories, basically treating it as bonuses to various intellectual rolls based on knowledge you might have stored in your copperminds.  All compounding really does is give you WAY more charges to apply to adding bonuses.  But I think copper compounding is one of those things that, as pointed out here a few times, has some really interesting unforseen consequences, especially when you start adding in the Identity/Investiture tricks.  Gold metalminds anyone can use may revolutionize health care on Scadrial, compounding copperminds are going to be something else entirely.

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12 minutes ago, ErikModi said:

he was in that place that he goes every few days and spends a lot of time there, the result being the very heavy implication that he still needs to spend some time old to store youth that he can compound.

This is a common but incorrect belief. WoB:

Quote

Q: Why did TLR have to spend time old?

Brandon: He didn't have to. He allowed it to happen, it was a sign of his weariness.

Compounding correctly means you never have to actively store again if you don't want to. You just burn a small reserve to fill up a larger reserve. When that's running low, you fill a new small reserve and burn that. Even if you run out, you can just store for one minute, burn it for ten minutes of storing, repeat ad infinitum.

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Quote

I don't think that's entirely accurate.  Remember, the first time Vin actually broke into TLR's place to try and kill him, she saw him as an old 

You're right about this scene. But, he didn't have to do that. He intentionally did that, but it wasn't necessary. See here:   http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=972#36

Why exactly he wanted to do that, who knows. 

Anyways, I get your point, that he needs to charge the metalmind he wants to burn afterwards. But remember, he always had another one with him, where he was pulling youth out consistently (otherwhise he'd die, what Vin proofed).
So I guess he was just able to "transfer" some of the youth stored in one metalmind into the other. Something like that, a "moving of a feruchemical charge without using it" has to be possible. If it wasn't, you couldn't compound. If it wasn't possible, you'd burn a metalmind, and thn be, let's say, much younger for a few seconds, but couldn't store it.

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6 minutes ago, Thunder_93 said:

You're right about this scene. But, he didn't have to do that. He intentionally did that, but it wasn't necessary. See here:   http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=972#36

Why exactly he wanted to do that, who knows. 

Anyways, I get your point, that he needs to charge the metalmind he wants to burn afterwards. But remember, he always had another one with him, where he was pulling youth out consistently (otherwhise he'd die, what Vin proofed).
So I guess he was just able to "transfer" some of the youth stored in one metalmind into the other. Something like that, a "moving of a feruchemical charge without using it" has to be possible. If it wasn't, you couldn't compound. If it wasn't possible, you'd burn a metalmind, and thn be, let's say, much younger for a few seconds, but couldn't store it.

Yes, that's what the RPG talks about as it gets into the mechanics of compounding.  You store ten charges, burn the metal you stored them in, and have 100 charges, which you can then either tap immediately or store immediately in other metalminds.  So instead of spending a day two years older to spend a day two years younger, you spend a day two years older to charge up twenty other metalminds with youth, which you can tap or burn as you see fit.

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Another thing to consider here, is can Atium be tapped while sleeping? Because if it can't, TLR had to have been compounding Bronze in the way @hwiles proposed, or sleep would have killed him.

Edit: I mixed up which thread I was in. The Bronze compounding discussion wasn't here. 

Sorry. I'm not awake yet. 

Edited by Calderis
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3 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Another thing to consider here, is can Atium be tapped while sleeping? Because if it can't, TLR had to have been compounding Bronze in the way @hwiles proposed, or sleep would have killed him. 

Feruchemy can be used instinctively; BoM spoilers:

Spoiler

Wax taps the BoM after being crushed and killed

Meaning that theoretically, if TLR had a filled atiummind on his person, he could tap it in his sleep.  Since his body would be aware that not tapping it would kill him, it would treat tapping the atiummind as a natural survival instinct.

That said, I can't imagine TLR sleeping as this would allow him to be vulnerable and un-Godlike.  Near the end he actually seemed to believe he was a God and should be treated as such...

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6 hours ago, Thunder_93 said:

So I guess he was just able to "transfer" some of the youth stored in one Metalmind into the other. Something like that, a "moving of a Feruchemical charge without using it" has to be possible. If it wasn't, you couldn't compound. If it wasn't possible, you'd burn a Metalmind, and then be, let's say, much younger for a few seconds, but couldn't store it.

I disagree with your logic. You can't store what you don't have, so that compounded attribute has to hit your system first. You just mentally divert it into a Metalmind at the first instant you can. Moving from one Metalmind to another should be no different.

Compound 10 yrs of Youth from a Youthmind, be 100 yrs younger for a fraction of a second, store it in the other Youthmind.
Withdraw 100 yrs of Youth from a Youthmind, be 100 yrs younger for an instant, store it in the other Youthmind.

That's why it actually affects you if you don't store it immediately. It touches your system and changes your attribute(in this case: Age - 100) and then you have 100 Youth that you can store. If you do, your age reverts back to normal. If you don't, the effects of being Age - 100 actually become noticeable as that fraction of a second becomes one second.

3 hours ago, Calderis said:

Another thing to consider here, is can Atium be tapped while sleeping?

"It(Bronze) is the only type of Metalmind a Feruchemist can store into while sleeping.[5].[6]"  Those hyperlinks take you to HoA Chap 50 and WoA Chap 50, back to a time when all manner of misconceptions were had. Now you can make the argument that Sazed should've told the Era 2 people if the others could be done while sleeping, but his philosophy was non-interference. He only told them that there were more metals, and even then was vague, so I can see him keeping some things from them to fuel a desire to experiment.

Additionally, this only specifies "storing." I don't see any issue with metals being able to be tapped while sleeping, so long as the user knows how. TLR had more than enough time to experiment and practice.

3 hours ago, hwiles said:

That said, I can't imagine TLR sleeping as this would allow him to be vulnerable and un-Godlike.

I can imagine him sleeping quite peacefully if he feels assured in his immortality.
Regarding vulnerability, there are a few things he could do. Double up his Atium sleep tap with Gold too, as a failsafe. Pull a "do not disturb" and tap his Senseminds so that he could instantly tell if someone else was in the vicinity. Any sort of real wound is gonna wake him up, and once he's up, F-Zinc to clear head and F-Steel to wreck fools will rectify the situation.
Regarding a God-like reputation, the man has been beheaded and lived. As Vin's attack(the Malatium attempt) shows, I don't think he cares for common or Mistborn assassins anymore. I think the only thing he really has to fear is an Inquisitor trying to spike him.

He could just be a light sleeper and subvert this whole issue :)

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4 hours ago, Storming Radiant said:

Do we know for certain that every metal can be used for compounding? 

It hasn't been said outright as far as I know, but the nature of the process means that it should be applicable across the board. 

I'd honestly be disappointed if it's otherwise. 

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3 minutes ago, hwiles said:

@Storming Radiant I can't find the WoB at the moment, but yes.  He conceded, however, that some of the metals wouldn't be particularly useful if compounded.

I don't know of One but you may be thinking of this?

Quote

FIREARCADIA

Is there any use to being a Coppercompounder, from a feruchemical point of view? I think the same point would also apply to an Aluminium compounder.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Some combinations, like some abilities themselves, aren't really that useful. That said, being able to compound copper...that could do some things. Aluminum, not so much.

 

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1 minute ago, hwiles said:

@Extesian I'd swear you are able to compound copper the way you find those so quickly.  That or a sentient computer, I'm on the fence.

But yes, that is, once again, precisely what I was thinking of.  You are a God.  Thank you.

I can't figure out how he does it either, but imagine he's like a Sherlock, navigating his mind palace to pull up URLs on a whim. 

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