Atium Compounding?

[gloriousGlorfindel]

Hi everyone, Cosmere noob here. So, the lord ruler was pretty much immortal because he was able to compound atium, I'm not totally clear on how that works.

I think I understand how compounding works, you store an attribute in a metalmind via Feruchemy and then burn it with Allomancy. Since Allomancy is net positive with investiture coming from Preservation you get a lot more of the attribute than what you stored in it. 

This makes sense to me if we look at gold for instance (with Miles HundredLives), he could heal from essentially anything as long as he had gold. 

Now with atium, if you're not a compounder since Feruchemy is net zero, after you burn the Atium, you are restored to your "original" age.

But if you're a compounder, you can burn enough atium to be a certain age then should'nt that change be permanent like how it is for gold?

Say, I'm a 100 years old (original age), I burn enough atium so that I'm 20 now, then shouldn't I remain at 20 if I take off the metal minds? That's how it works for gold doesn't it. You don't have to permanently keep burning gold to ensure all your past injuries remain healed. Why is it different for atium?

 

[Nathrangking]

It is also not something that can be done indefinitely.

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days(magnification by compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? Im assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the lord ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth(and wouldn't of died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their cognitive aspect as well, and the cognitive aspect can interfere with the spiritual aspect trying to make the physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your physical self with your spiritual self--making the physical regrow. More powerful forms of investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

General Reddit 2015 (Nov. 20, 2015)

[RShara]

So how it works is that TLR stored a bit of his youth, in some atium. He then swallowed that atium and burned it. It would have given him a huge chunk of youth. He then stored that huge amount of youth in a second metalmind (otherwise he might have youthened himself into a baby or a handful of cells!). He would then, as he got older, tap that second metalmind to look the age he wanted to look. Any time he would start to run low on youth, he would burn the remnants of that metalmind for another huge amount of youth.

His spiritweb knows what age he's supposed to be, and so any time he stopped tapping atium, he would return to the age that he actually was. Gold heals you to your spiritual ideal, and then stops. Atium isn't a permanent change because it can't change your spiritual ideal, just your physical aspect while you're tapping it.

Edited February 6, 2019 by RShara

[Oversleep]

The difference is that when storing gold, you heal slower (described as feeling sick). So when you tap it, you heal faster. So after you stop tapping, the healing stops but you have already healed away whatever was the problem. You can say gold works on healing speed, and when you stop tapping or storing, the speed at which you heal returns to normal.

However, atium works on [years from your current age]. So, when you store, you get older than you're now. When you tap, you get younger than you're now. But if you stop tapping, you'll return to the age you're now.

Which means that TLR needs to constantly tap very large amounts of youth (he is, after all, over 1000 years old). And he gets those large amounts of youth by Compounding.

[Gray to]

1 hour ago, RShara said:

So how it works is that TLR stored a bit of his youth, in some atium. He then swallowed that atium and burned it. It would have given him a huge chunk of youth. He then stored that huge amount of youth in a second metalmind (otherwise he might have youthened himself into a baby or a handful of cells!). He would then, as he got older, tap that second metalmind to look the age he wanted to look. Any time he would start to run low on youth, he would burn the remnants of that metalmind for another huge amount of youth.

His spiritweb knows what age he's supposed to be, and so any time he stopped tapping atium, he would return to the age that he actually was. Gold heals you to your spiritual ideal, and then stops. Atium isn't a permanent change because it can't change your spiritual ideal, just your physical aspect while you're tapping it.

Wow that makes a lot of sense. I always thought he did it the way @gloriousGlorfindel said

[gloriousGlorfindel]

Thanks @Nathrangking. That makes a lot of sense, I had no clue that there was such a thing as the "Spiritual ideal".  

I am curious as to what it means when its the "perfect version" of yourself. As you age your healing ability goes down, is that also part of your spiritual ideal? That is do you need more investiture to heal the same wound when you're actually older (but burning atium to be younger) as opposed to being actually young. Curious stuff !

@RShara, That makes a lot of sense. No wonder it was Atium bracers. 

Edited February 8, 2019 by Nohadon