A question concerning immortality

I have a question for you all.

 

Suppose a Worldhopper traded the Lord Ruler enough Biochromatic-breath to reach the Fifth heightening, in exchange for some Lerasium (or whatever... the nature of the trade is not important).

 

Sidestepping any issues some of you may have with whether it would work for the Lord Ruler, and just assume that if it isn't a simple matter of giving the breath to the Lord Ruler, that the Worldhopper and Rashek work it out between them how to make it work using Hemalurgy (or whatever... once again, this isn't important. The important bit is that the Lord Ruler reaches the Fifth heightening).

 

The crux of the matter is this: if someone who has lived long beyond his natural lifespan through Atium compounding, and who depends on continually tapping an Atium-mind to remain alive, were to receive the Fifth Heightening (Agelessness, Immortality and so forth), would they be able to stop tapping youth? If they discontinued tapping their Atium-mind, would they die, or would the Biochromatic-breath be sufficient to sustain them? And if it is sufficient to sustain them, would they be immortal, but impossibly aged, or would they remain at whatever age they had tapped to, or would they be fixed in the prime of life?

 

Thoughts?

if someone who has lived long beyond his natural lifespan through Atium compounding, and who depends on continually tapping an Atium-mind to remain alive, were to receive the Fifth Heightening (Agelessness, Immortality and so forth), would they be able to stop tapping youth? If they discontinued tapping their Atium-mind, would they die, or would the Biochromatic-breath be sufficient to sustain them? And if it is sufficient to sustain them, would they be immortal, but impossibly aged, or would they remain at whatever age they had tapped to, or would they be fixed in the prime of life?

 

I think you would be able to stop tapping youth and remain at the level of youth that atium gave you. The Fifth Heightening stops aging, so the accelerated aging that Rashek experienced when he lost his Atiumminds in The Final Empire shouldn't occur.

 

I personally would reserve my Atiumminds for when I want to be at a certain age. If I wanted to change my age every year (e.g. look like a centenarian this year, look like a teenager next year, etc.), I would only have to store/tap youth once a year instead of tapping constantly. This is a cool idea, Kadrok! 

Edited June 12, 2013 by skaa

And, as a bonus, that throne room's misty window would look even more awesome!

I think it would only stop the aging process, but tlr would remain the same age, i.e 1000 years old. it was said that he needed more atium every year to tap enough youth to keep himself young, and having enough breath would have avoided this. he wouldn't need incremental amounts. But I don't think he'd have gotten younger. otherwise, it should be possible to get younger by tapping atium, freezing that by getting the fifth heightening, stop tapping the atium, then give the breath away, and you would have just gotten younger.

On the other hand, breath do give you functional immortality, so it is possible it would work. at least until the lord ruler accidentally said "my life to your, my breath becomes yours" in casual conversation, then he'd better have his metalminds really close

 

Buit I think the whole discussion is moot, because I doubt a scadrian would be able to receive breath. From what I know of realmatic theory, you need the proper spiritual dna to access the magic system of a planet

I agree with King that it would likely just lock TLR in at ~1000 years old, but I disagree that only a Nalthian could receive Breath. Hoid likely has some by now (as per "wouldn't you like to know" Brandon answers), and I think that "access" is already separated enough in that Scadrains don't have the natural ability to split off the Breath part of their souls.

Yeah he can get them.

ZAS

After several more signings, I asked my other question. "Do people in the Comsere, besides Nalthis, have Breaths?"

Brandon Sanderson

"No." He then signed a person's books, then said "To elaborate a little more, that's not to say they don't have a life force, because they do. But if someone not from Nalthis were to suddenly gain the ability to become an Awakener, they could not use what they have to Awaken something. That's not to say that they can't receive breaths though."

Phantom, I hereby revoke your quoting privileges. It's unhealthy. For your own good, you must refrain from helpfully and accurately providing any references for at least the next 26 hours. 

Edited June 12, 2013 by Kurkistan

Phantom, I hereby revoke your quoting privileges. It's unhealthy. For your own good, you must refrain from helpfully and accurately providing any references for at least the next 26 hours. 

Ha, I'll have you know that I spiked quotations from three now-former members of this forum.  You can't get rid of it THAT easily.

But I don't think he'd have gotten younger. otherwise, it should be possible to get younger by tapping atium, freezing that by getting the fifth heightening, stop tapping the atium, then give the breath away, and you would have just gotten younger.

 

Oh, I hadn't considered if the Fifth Heightening could actually prevent/freeze Atium Feruchemy. I assumed it only prevented natural aging. Now that I think about it, whenever we encounter two opposite Realmatic effects interacting with each other, the more powerful one wins out. If the powers involved in producing the effects are equal, they just cancel each other out. So, this gives us three possible scenarios:

• If the Fifth Heightening and Atium Feruchemy are equally powerful, using them at the same time would cancel both powers, leading to the super-accelerated aging phenomenon. A person would have to stop tapping his Atiumminds the very instant he receives the Breaths to avoid as much aging as possible. Not a very good scenario, in my opinion.

   

• If the Fifth Heightening is stronger than Atium Feruchemy, the user will be stuck in the youth level he last received from Atium Feruchemy. The user will be unable to store Youth (except by Compounding), and trying to tap Youth will simply waste it. This is a better scenario than the first because there's no danger of accidentally triggering accelerated aging while wearing Atiumminds.

  Note that for the first two scenarios, there's still a way for a person to use Atium Feruchemy even after receiving the Breaths: He could release some of his Breaths into some object, immediately tap or store Youth as desired, then retrieve his Breaths. Having to release your Breaths every time you change your age might be a slight hassle, but a Feruchemist should find the concept very familiar.

   

• If Atium Feruchemy is stronger than the Fifth Heightening, then a person would be able to change his age at will, storing and tapping Youth as desired without having to release his Breaths temporarily. If the person stops storing or tapping, the Fifth Heigthening's age-freezing effect takes over. This is the scenario I assumed at first. Definitely the best scenario.

 

Edit: I would of course prefer it if Atium Feruchemy (with Compounding) is stronger, but I really don't know. What do you guys think?

Edited June 13, 2013 by skaa

Well, if Returned are anything to judge by, the Fifth Heightening essentially lets you just pick your 'real' age.  Gods who feel they should be old end up looking old, and people who start off middle aged often becomes younger when they return.  Hopefinder actually ended up becoming older than normal.

 

 

So I think you'd have a set 'real' age, which is based on however old you actually feel you should be.  And it doesn't increment any further - ie, if you store youth you're older than you feel, if you tap it you're younger, but when you're not actively ferucheming nothing happens.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

Well, if Returned are anything to judge by, the Fifth Heightening essentially lets you just pick your 'real' age.  Gods who feel they should be old end up looking old, and people who start off middle aged often becomes younger when they return.  Hopefinder actually ended up becoming older than normal.

 

 

So I think you'd have a set 'real' age, which is based on however old you actually feel you should be.  And it doesn't increment any further - ie, if you store youth you're older than you feel, if you tap it you're younger, but when you're not actively ferucheming nothing happens.

 

I'm not sure if the "looking as young as you feel" thing is part of the Fifth Heightening or if it's an just another thing endowed to the Returned. Would someone who reached the Fifth Heightening without being Returned suddenly look as young as he feels before the age-freezing effect kicks in?

There's a difference between Returning and reaching the 5th heightening. The former requires a Splinter of Endowment, the latter just requires an amount of Breath.

Yeah, Returned are odd, and I don't think a "normal" Fifth Heightening allows body-control.

 

@skaa

 

First of all, I'm not sure where you're coming from with "whenever we encounter two opposite Realmatic effects interacting with each other, the more powerful one wins out." When have we encountered cancelling Realmatic effects?

 

I think we should just settle with the initial idea of the Fifth Heightening freezing your "real" age.

@skaa

First of all, I'm not sure where you're coming from with "whenever we encounter two opposite Realmatic effects interacting with each other, the more powerful one wins out." When have we encountered cancelling Realmatic effects?

Well, Cadmium and Bendalloy time bubbles is one. The point is that "Age Freezing" and "Age Changing" are opposite Realmatic effects, so we have to decide which effect will win out.

Ah, I thought you were talking about crossover between two different systems, not "who's Kung fu is stronger?!"

 

In this specific case, I think you're creating a very unnecessary (and false) dichotomy between the effects of atium Feruchemy and BioChromatic Immortality (totally just made that term up. Deal with it ). 

 

Summary: Atium Feruchemy takes your base, "real" age and then takes some proportionate amount of power to change it by X amount. The Fifth Heightening, so far as we know, locks your base at whatever level you are at when you reach the Breath threshhold.

 

So it's not a case of "Age Changing" Vs. "Age Freezing", it's "Age Changing based on an unchanging base age", which is perfectly intelligible.

 

Now it could theoretically be the case the reaching the Fifth Heightening is more restrictive than I am presenting it, and does indeed "lock you in" to some given age. I doubt it, though. First off, it just doesn't smell right, if we have to make a simple authorship-level choice on how the systems interact. Second, I don't think it's supportable once we get down to the level of modeling it.

 

Presumably, someone who has reached the Fifth Heightening stops aging because they have enough spare Spiritual energy chilling about that it fights off their gradual decay, much like a lower level can protect you from disease. They have an excess of "life force", to use Brandon's term, and it's paying rent.

 

But just like Breath isn't going to magically heal you from a sword in the gut (well, a Divine Breath will, but that's cheating), I don't think it should stop you from having your "youthfulness levels" tampered with. It's in the business of maintaining a balance against the normal course of nature, not fighting off tempests of magic.

 

Presumably a Resealer should be able to Forge a Returned's body whole again, despite the massive amount of Investiture that goes into maintaining their "Immortal Greek God" bodies. I would say that the same should go with a Feruchemist being able to store or tap attributes, just based off a magically-augmented base level. Like a Feruchemist being able to store more (non-compounding-derived) Strength while burning Pewter: the "normal" they work off of is magically messed around with, but all the Feruchemist need worry about is the final result.

 

EDIT: Found the source for that last claim, since it's been contested in the past. Storm you Phantom, you are reaching even into the past in order to be helpful! 

Edited June 13, 2013 by Kurkistan

There's a difference between Returning and reaching the 5th heightening. The former requires a Splinter of Endowment, the latter just requires an amount of Breath.

Yeah, but agelessness is a benefit of heightening.  And Hoid seems to say that the returned immortality is the same as just having a ton of Breath.

 

 

Hoid nodded, smoothly dropping the rest of his grass and dirt, moving into a different discussion by bringing forth a handful of white powder. “Indeed, Your Majesty. Like all Returned, the God Kings do not age. Agelessness is a gift for all who reach the Fifth Heightening.”

Edited June 13, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

I believe that all that Leuthie was trying to establish was that Returned =/= Fifth Heightening. Perhaps being Returned encompasses all the benefits of the Fifth Heightening, but there are certainly some other attributes tacked on. The point is that the Returneds' control over their age (and appearance, for that matter) is not something we can assume is a result of reaching the Fifth Heightening.

I believe that all that Leuthie was trying to establish was that Returned =/= Fifth Heightening. Perhaps being Returned encompasses all the benefits of the Fifth Heightening, but there are certainly some other attributes tacked on. The point is that the Returneds' control over their age (and appearance, for that matter) is not something we can assume is a result of reaching the Fifth Heightening.

True, but it's really the only metric we have for how breath-based agelessness works.

But that's not enough reason to throw the whole package at anyone who gets the Fifth Heightening. Body-changing and the Royal Locks seem to be unique manifestations of Divine Breath (as we've discussed), and so it seems that such effects ought to be reserved as an effect of Splinters.

Yeah, but I think shapeshifting is distinct from agelessness.

 

The 'age gradually changing to the appropriate one' is covered under agelessness, IMO.  It'd be kinda silly otherwise.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

Yeah, but I think shapeshifting is distinct from agelessness.

 

But Returneds' shapeshifting is all very firmly tied into Cognitive perceptions of how they're seen/see themselves; it seems that their age is a rather natural consequence of that broader image. Although I doubt it's been tested, I seriously doubt that a toddler pushed to the Fifth Heightening would become mentally mature in the space of a year [though that could be Forms rearing their ugly heads. I'm still not sure if I'm only one of four people who actually believe in them (and/or understand them) at this point, but I'll just keep going like they're a thing and I'm sure we'll all laugh about it in a decade or so].

-EDIT: When I started typing that second sentence, I thought Hopefinder physically aged very quickly, which is not the case. So it's kind of pointless. Oops. Carry on.

 

It just seems to me that Returned are unique in their responsiveness to perception. As we discussed in the MEC thread, I think that's quite explicable in terms of the Cognitive nature of their Splinters, something which (I also argue) we don't see in any amount of normal Breaths. I think their ages changing are also a consequence of this same mechanism of responsiveness. When Lightsong muses about Returned's body types, he includes Allmother's age as one more variance within a range (320), and I think we ought to do the same.

 

Aside: Looking at Warbreaker, it has come to my attention that Hopefinder (the child Returned) aged physically at a rate of 1 year per year, despite his mental maturation being much faster. He would have stopped growing at his "prime adulthood" (319-320, pdf). That could suggest odd things, though it could be Forms messing about.

 

I'm not saying that it's impossible that normal people who reach the Fifth Heightening "age" like Returned do, just very unlikely, so we should not be unduly shackled by that possibility going forward.

EDIT:

The 'age gradually changing to the appropriate one' is covered under agelessness, IMO.  It'd be kinda silly otherwise.

 

You edited this in while I was composing my own reply: I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, unless you read my mind and anticipated my first paragraph. 

 

EDIT 2: Ah, I see. You want to be sure that I don't include the "change" of gradually "changing" to your appropriate age as a "body change" of the same type Returned experience.

 

Okay. It is different. You still lose out a bit, though. At the moment of Returning, some older adult Returned revert to some perfect youthful version of themselves without needing to go all Benjamin Button--instantaneously, it seems. Vasher can instantaneously change between vagrant and deity. So it seems, in fact, that Returned with their Divine Breath have unique access to "instantaneous" transformation, while lowly peons who simply have large collections of normal Breath get stuck with their ""age gradually changing to the appropriate one'", under your model. Or perhaps they simply don't change at all. Dot dot dot.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Kurkistan

I'm glad to see I can still ask thought provoking questions

So between the four options I laid out at the beginning (I've modified number four slightly) it sounds like this is our breakdown:

1. Death (The subject cannot discontinue their use of Atium Feruchemy or they will die, regardless of their breath)

Kadrok, Kurkistan

2. Immortal and impossibly aged (physically 1000 years old but alive because of the breath... Aginor style for WoT fans)

king of nowhere

3. Immortal and fixed at Atium adjusted age

skaa

4. Immortal and in the prime of life (Or whatever age the subject feels they are)

Phantom Monstrosity

Have I missed anyone? I'm inclined myself towards death, and it's Kurkistan's argument which has brought me to this point:

So it's not a case of "Age Changing" Vs. "Age Freezing", it's "Age Changing based on an unchanging base age", which is perfectly intelligible.

Now it could theoretically be the case the reaching the Fifth Heightening is more restrictive than I am presenting it, and does indeed "lock you in" to some given age. I doubt it, though. First off, it just doesn't smell right, if we have to make a simple authorship-level choice on how the systems interact. Second, I don't think it's supportable once we get down to the level of modeling it.

Presumably, someone who has reached the Fifth Heightening stops aging because they have enough spare Spiritual energy chilling about that it fights off their gradual decay, much like a lower level can protect you from disease. They have an excess of "life force", to use Brandon's term, and it's paying rent.

But just like Breath isn't going to magically heal you from a sword in the gut (well, a Divine Breath will, but that's cheating), I don't think it should stop you from having your "youthfulness levels" tampered with. It's in the business of maintaining a balance against the normal course of nature, not fighting off tempests of magic.

Rashek is at an age where he should be dead, and it is only through a constant setting of his age earlier that he still lives. As you have said, Breath isn't going to magically heal you from a sword in the gut, and I am inclined to think, like you seem to, that it wouldn't undo Rashek's 1000-odd years of aging. What happens to someone who can suddenly no longer age... but has already aged well beyond their lifespan? I think Rashek would die the moment he discontinued using Atium Feruchemy. So I've put myself under the death section.

(My second choice would be four, with breath setting you to the age you feel... I imagine Rashek would be set to the age he has been for the last 1000 years... though this depends on whether the Returned's ages are a uniquely "super-breath" thing, or something possible for anyone at the fifth heightening, and as I am disinclined to believe this at present, I naturally favour death as the outcome... though it does make me wonder... could someone spike a Returned for their "super-breath"? And if so... would the recipient need to sustain the spiked breath with a breath every 8 days, or would the "super-breath" implanted into a living body not have this limitation? What I'm essentially considering here is the idea that perhaps the Returned require a breath every week because their "super-breath" is keeping a dead body alive, and if the same breath was present in an already living body it wouldn't have this limitation. Pure speculation of course, please forgive my tangent).

EDIT: Kurkistan moved to 'Death'

Edited June 13, 2013 by Kadrok

Oh no, you can stick me with the "death" crowd as well. I don't think the Fifth Heightening is enough to sustain the a body that is essentially a pile of sticks: just because he can't age doesn't mean that a millenniarian can't keel over from a heart attack. TLR just won't become an even older pile of sticks. You're right there.

 

Now if TLR had gotten to the Fifth Heightening before his age became unsustainable, I think he'd be fine forever. He does still benefit even if he got his Breath after getting to be unnaturally old, though, because then he no longer has to deal with the run-away diminishing returns due to an increasing base age that would have killed him eventually anyway. It would get rid of the "upper bound".

 

Also, nice paragraph-long parenthetical.

 

Interesting thoughts on what you can do with a non-wasted (seriously, spending a Splinter just to heal? Really?... ) Divine Breath. I think Hemalurgy could do the trick, and that Returned are almost certainly unique in needing to eat Breath in order to stay alive. Recall that it's the Returned who need to consume Breath, not their Divine Breath--they'll eat the Divine Breath itself if nothing else presents itself.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Kurkistan

Interesting thoughts on what you can do with a non-wasted (seriously, spending a Splinter just to heal? Really?... ) Divine Breath. I think Hemalurgy could do the trick, and that Returned are almost certainly unique in needing to eat Breath in order to stay alive. Recall that it's the Returned who need to consume Breath, not their Divine Breath--they'll eat the Divine Breath itself if nothing else presents itself.

Very good point, and it is in favour of my speculation that a living person with a Divine Breath wouldn't need the weekly breath to eat. It is clear what we must do: learn to harvest Divine Breath hemalurgically and live forever!

Not quite, as presumably there's a limited amount of Splinters Endowment can give off, and s/he'd get wise eventually. Now, baby mills for lots of normal Breath. . .

Edited June 13, 2013 by Kurkistan