Limitations of Feruchemical Storing

[QafianSage]

So, a question's been bugging me for a while about feruchemy. We know that you can't store all you have of a quality at once; a Brute can't store so much strength at a time that, say, they're physically incapable of moving, or their diaphragm can't pump their lungs. My question is, does that limit stay the same if your total quantity of that quality increases, or does it move?

As an example, say our hypothetical feruchemist has 4 units of strength (just an arbitrary measure), and she can store two of those at any given moment, bringing her down to 2 units in the meantime (she's weak, she's unable to do too much etc). If she were to train her body to increase her overall strength, got absolutely ripped and ended up with 6 units of strength, would her limit for the amount she can store at a given time still be 2 (so she can store an equal amount of strength to before about twice as fast) or 3 (so she can store it only about half again as fast, but is only very slightly weaker than she was when she wasn't storing before she did her training).

If the limit is essentially a safety measure, like how Rosharan stoneshaping was deliberately limited so it wasn't as dangerous as Yolen microkinesis, it would make sense for the former to be the case. There's at least one other example of a similar thing in feruchemy, in how firesouls are more resistant to the effects of tapping heat; they can't just boil themselves alive unless they're compounding. On the other hand, the 'low bound' of storing might be something more to do with the Cognitive self-image or the Spiritual self; something like feruchemy only being able to 'deviate' from that self a certain amount (though that might imply that storing Identity might let you lower the bound).

I hope the question's clear. Don't know if anyone has any answers, but at the very least I hope we can have some fun discussing the thing!

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by QafianSage

[CryoZenith]

There's a WoB in which Brando talks about different numbers for Feruchemy, using a Brute as his specific example.

Quote

Sporkify

This is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced? If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

Brandon Sanderson

It doesn't diminish. Or, well, it does—but only if you compound it. You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself. For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour. But that's not really that much strength. After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time. So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour. You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength. You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength. Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly. And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful.

Footnote: This question was asked when fueling Feruchemy with Allomancy had only been seen in Rashek. As such, the term compounding is used purely to reference tapping at a higher rate than can be stored.
Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

The part I highlighted seems to imply that it IS possible for a feruchemist to kill themselves by filling, and they have to deliberately be cautious. Now, there could still *exist* a lower bound, it's just that the lower bound is lower than the lethality bound for some of the Ferring types. (No, I say that this lower bound could exist, not that I necessarily have high confidence that it exists. My guess is that, for example, when you store eyesight, you actually CAN make yourself 100% blind by filling. Not 20/600 vision, but ACTUAL zero visual neuron activity. So Ferring types that fill with a nonvital attribute can probably fill all of it, I suspect.)

As for your specific thought experiment, my guess would be that a person with 6 units of strength could fill more without risk of death than a person with 4 units of strength, but not a whole 33% more. Maybe 10% more or something. Because you have to keep in mind what it means to fill strength. Feruchemical Pewter is not like Allomantic Pewter, it's MUCH more underpowered. When a Brute is tapping pewterminds, he is actually gaining muscle mass, real physical muscle mass, and when a Brute is filling pewterminds, he is actually losing muscle. And he cannot control which muscles he prefers to lose, it's an overall deal. And you can't exactly train your diaphragm to be stronger.

You are correct that Firesouls are more resistant to burning when tapping. A similar example is how Skimmers can't collapse under their own weight, no matter how much weight they tap. But this is because of a property of tapping, which filling *does not have*.

Edited January 23, 2022 by CryoZenith

[QafianSage]

Ah, thanks very much for all the info! You're an absolute star. 

Just to make sure I'm getting your point right, in your view the level to which someone can store a given quality lacks 'safety rails', so to speak, but they don't generally go all the way (especially with vital attributes) because on a psychological level it's deeply unpleasant, and on a physical one it's flat-out dangerous to go below a certain (relatively high by WoB) level with things like strength. Is that right?

[CryoZenith]

Welcome.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. There are physical safeguards preventing you from hurting yourself, like the Golgi tendon reflex, and psychological safeguards, like innate aversion to pain, but I don't think storing/filling has magical safeguards per se. Get a Ferring adrenalin-pumped or drunk enough, or give them enough morphine, and they can easily kill themselves through storing/filling, depending on which attribute they're storing/filling.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

18 minutes ago, CryoZenith said:

Welcome.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. There are physical safeguards preventing you from hurting yourself, like the Golgi tendon reflex, and psychological safeguards, like innate aversion to pain, but I don't think storing/filling has magical safeguards per se. Get a Ferring adrenalin-pumped or drunk enough, or give them enough morphine, and they can easily kill themselves through storing/filling, depending on which attribute they're storing/filling.

Thinking of this concept I think it makes for a pretty nifty counter to compounders through A chromium or nicrosil.  Taking Miles as an example if he stores x amount of health and then were to burn it in hopes of storing it all he would have to store so much at once.  Imagine if he were to have gotten leeched while he was actively storing mass amounts of health trying to compound up.  You could catch him for a fraction of a second while he is still storing before he realizes his metal he was burning is gone and then straight up just off himself trying to store that compounded health.  

Same for a strength compounder where they get leeched mid storage and turn to stinking goo with not even enough strength to breathe or get a heartbeat.  A brass compounder that gets leeched mid storage could find themselves dead as an ice cube nearly instantaneously or if nicrosil were to be used against them it could end up burning all of their compounded heat before they could change to store all of it resulting in total meltdown of everything around or on them.

I wonder how it would work for other metals... duralumin would instantly lose all connection to everything... perhaps even the metalminds they once had.  A nicrosil enhanced burn of an iron compounder could be world ending depending on how much they had stored.... imagine trying to stop a compounder and creating a mini blackhole.  

An allomantic cube charged with nicrosil or chromium.

 

 

[CryoZenith]

Hm... my guess is that some of those things you could do, but not all of them, and not that dramatic.

Here you have to keep in mind that A-Chromium is not the exact opposite of A-Aluminum. A-Aluminum is like an on-off switch: the aluminum gnat burns some aluminum, and the alomantically relevant metals inside of them (as well as other kinds of unwanted Investiture, if the gnat is very skilled or is a savant) go away. All of them. A-Chromium, instead, is less like an on/off switch and more like a base neutralizing an acid: the amount of chromium they are burning DOES matter, and if they don't have enough chromium burning, then they can't do a complete leech. For example, there's a WoB where Brando was asked if a Leecher can destroy a shardblade, and the answer was that there's too much Investiture in a shardblade. (there was also a WoB about Leechers leeching Nightblood, but that one ended up exactly how you'd expect it to)

So a Leecher could do massive damage to a compounder mid-compounding, more than other types of allomancers, but if the compounder's reserves are large enough they won't be completely depleted.

[QafianSage]

Worth pointing out that even if most compounders won't be full feruchemists, if they are, tapping zinc would help them mitigate the impact of Suddenly, Leecher.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

40 minutes ago, CryoZenith said:

Hm... my guess is that some of those things you could do, but not all of them, and not that dramatic.

Here you have to keep in mind that A-Chromium is not the exact opposite of A-Aluminum. A-Aluminum is like an on-off switch: the aluminum gnat burns some aluminum, and the alomantically relevant metals inside of them (as well as other kinds of unwanted Investiture, if the gnat is very skilled or is a savant) go away. All of them. A-Chromium, instead, is less like an on/off switch and more like a base neutralizing an acid: the amount of chromium they are burning DOES matter, and if they don't have enough chromium burning, then they can't do a complete leech. For example, there's a WoB where Brando was asked if a Leecher can destroy a shardblade, and the answer was that there's too much Investiture in a shardblade. (there was also a WoB about Leechers leeching Nightblood, but that one ended up exactly how you'd expect it to)

So a Leecher could do massive damage to a compounder mid-compounding, more than other types of allomancers, but if the compounder's reserves are large enough they won't be completely depleted.

Perhaps the nicrosil would be more dramatic.  Brandon also stated that if you were to compound and burn duralumin with it that it would have explosive effects.  

That said the 4 metals on that corner of the allomantic chart confuse the heck out of me as none of them seem to truly follow any rules with the push pull concept except for what looks best on screen.  

[CryoZenith]

Push-pull is more of an in-world explanation the scholars arrived at rather than a capital L Law of Physics (similar to how, for example, Brandon said that end-neutral magics are *basically* end-positive, the separation there is a model approximation in the map, not a thing in the territory). Think of the allomantic chart as Newtonian mechanics, but the actual world runs on General Relativity.