Immortality

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

Please define this

[Karger]

Quote

Iceblade44

So White Sand [then Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

There is some time-dilation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.

Faera

Implying that some are actually immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)

Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)

Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)

Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)

Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)

Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)

Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.

Shagomir

Heals from wounds, but still ages.

Would Bloodmaker Ferrings exist in this category as well? If not, what about someone Compounding Gold?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you are correct.

Shagomir

As a Bloodmaker ages, what keeps them from healing the damage and carrying on as a very old, but very healthy person? Do they come to a point where they can't store enough health to stave off the aches, pains, diseases, and other things that come with old age?

This makes sense for traditional Feruchemy as it is end-neutral, so storing health becomes a zero sum game - eventually, you're going to get sick and you're not going to be able to overcome it with your natural healing ability no matter how much you manipulate it with a goldmind.

...Unless you've got a supply of Identity-less goldminds lying around. Would a Bloodmaker with a sufficient source of Identity-less goldminds (or the ability to compound, thus bypassing the end-neutral part of Feruchemy) eventually just die from being too old?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, yes. They can heal their body to match their spiritual ideal, but some things (like some genetic diseases, and age-related illnesses) are seen as part of the ideal. Depends on several factors.

Stormlight Three Update #5 (Nov. 29, 2016)

 

[Honorless]

Immortality? Here's how I define it for most fantasy:

1) You could be unaging, unaffected by time, but can be killed by (relatively) conventional means

2) Or you could be unaging and unkillable by any conventional means

3) Or you just plain cannot be killed

The first kind can be achieved through magical means: like having a high enough Heightening, or more imperfectly by Compounding age. Cosmere healing muddies the water between the two groups, with how much injury they can survive.

Sitting solidly in the second group would be Cognitive Shadows like as well as Vessels of the Shards. You cannot kill them through conventional means, it's not healing that needs fuel, it's their very nature. Vessels of the Shards are on the higher end of the second group: you cannot hurt them by conventional means. Period.

There's no example of the third kind of immortality in the Cosmere

Edited August 12, 2020 by Honorless

[GoWibble]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

The first kind can be achieved through magical means: like having a high enough Heightening, or Compounding age. Of course Cosmere healing muddies the water between the two groups, as with TLR

Just a note that you can't live forever with C-Atium. It eventually becomes too much and you die

Quote

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Feruchemy is about multipliers. The more the Lord Ruler aged, the less "multiplier" he could store in his metalmind. And the more he aged the more he would need to Compound to stay alive. There could exist an upper bound to the amount of time the Lord Ruler could survive off this trick.

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

 

[Weltall]

2 hours ago, Honorless said:

The first kind can be achieved through magical means: like having a high enough Heightening, or Compounding age. Of course Cosmere healing muddies the water between the two groups, as with TLR

As mentioned, atium compounding has an upper limit so while it can dramatically extend your lifespan, you'll eventually reach a point where you can't tap enough stored youth to overcome the pushback from your soul that is trying to snap you back to the age you should be. This is because your Spiritual aspect knows how old you really are (very long and detailed WoB here).. It's also for this reason that healing magics in the Cosmere do not prevent you from dying of old age, even though the biological causes of age may not be present. Like Brandon says in the WoB that Karger posted, even if you're Miles and have all the compounded health in the world, you're eventually going to drop dead despite being in otherwise perfect health because 'it's your time'.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Weltall

[Frustration]

Two types(to my mind)

Biological and complete.

Biological imortality is like Elves usually have, aging isn't a problem, but bleed to much and you die 

Complete imortality is closer to divine, as you can not die, ever.

Anything else isn't really immortality.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Frustration

[+robardin]

On 8/11/2020 at 10:36 PM, Frustration said:

Two types(to my mind)

Biological and complete.

Biological imortality is like Elves usually have, aging isn't a problem, but bleed to much and you die 

Complete imortality is closer to divine, as you can not die, ever.

Anything else isn't really immortality.

And something that I think isn't addressed often enough in fantasy is that, unless they started living in sheltered, Rivendell-like enclaves for thousands upon thousands of years, and maybe even if they did, "biologically immortal" beings would eventually die in an accident just living an ordinary life over a very long time span. All the corner case improbabilities start to get a lot of rolls of the dice, so to speak.

A roster of such beings and their ultimate fates ought to read pretty funny. Sure, there would be a few instances of heroic self-sacrifice in there, but also a lot of "slipped in the shower and hit/her his head just wrong" or "forgot to put on safety goggles before checking the obstruction in the pressure valve".