Compounding

[Inquisitor #5]

So, as far as I've seen we lack a dedicated Compuounding thread. No more!

Now, I'd like to start this off with a quote from Alloy of Law: "From what Waxillium knew of Compounding, it could be very dangerous to stop once you'd started" (The Alloy of Law, 1st edition, p. 218, TOR hardcover)

Also, for those who don't care about spoilers or have managed to not pick up what Copmounding is, it's combining Allomancy and Feruchemy by burning your own metalminds, this grants you a tenfold return on your Feruchemical investment.

Now, the thing about stoping being dangerous and the effects of Compounding that makes it dangerous is what I'd like to touch on in this post.

Of course the best example would be Miles Dagouter aka. Miles "Hundredlives", the man who doesn't feel pain anymore. So if he'd stop Compounding he could very easily get hurt without realising it.

Oh, I should probably say that this here is under the assumption that the body adapts/reacts to the changed conditions, like in real life.

So, let's take a look, metal by metal (I assume that everyone knows what metal does what):

Iron, not much to say regarding risks but there is this little thing; I think that by slowly (over several years perhaps) increasing your "normal" weight you could make your body inherently stronger. Think like this, if you can move around normally at two or three times your normal weight, then what could you do if you stopped tapping, huh?

Steel, again, I can't really find any downsides to stopping, though I don't know how the human body would react to moving at a higher velocity for a long time and then slowing down to normal again.

Tin, now, here I think something similar to what happened to Spook in HoA would happen, your body would adapt to being super-sensitive so everything would become "dull" if you stopped.

Pewter, this one is fun (in the same way as slicing your leg open is fun...), we already know what happens when we don't use out muscles, they regress (I think that's the word anyway). The reason I bring that up is that I think the body would react as if you wern't using your "normal" muscles and that they would thus regress. The risk here then, is that your body would be too weak to use.

Zinc, not a lot to say, I guess the risk would be not being able think as quickly?? (If you have something better, by all means, tell me! )

Brass, again, not a lot to say, possibly you'd feel cold if your body'd adapted to a higher base temperature. (?)

Copper, I have no idea, I don't even know how it would work.

Bronze, this one could be fun in two different ways depending on if tiredness is consistent or has a gradual buildup (oh, wait, it builds up gradualy). So, firstly, it would be like TLR's age trick,over time more would need to be expended for the same effect, secondly then, this would lead to either a point where it breaks even, ending in a "crash" as tiredness overtakes wakefullness or just to a point where you have to do like a normal human and sleep. But if we assume that it can be kept going for long enough, it might be possible that the body/mind wouldn't notice that it was tired and you could easily run yourself into the ground.

Cadmium, I'm not sure, possibly you would become oxygen depraved. (?) Or maybe your body would have "done away" with the breathing reflex. (Now that's FREAKY).

Bendalloy (aka Cerrobend), I guess maybe your body would stop craving nutrition or fluid. (As above FREAKY) Or possibly you would not get hungy or thirsty but still require nutrition or fluid.

Gold, I've already touched on this one a bit with the Miles part up there. Now here is some more. I think that the body's natural healing would be "disengaged", I mean, why waste energy on something that isn't being used (same principle as with the muscles earlier)? I also think that you would get sick really easily *Warbreaker Spoiler* like Vivenna after she loses all the Breath *End Spoiler* because your immune system wouldn't have had to take care of any threats and thus it would be less than stellar. (You'd go from best in the world to worse than avarage, more or less)

Electrum: I'd assume that your body would get used to the manic state (since those things are controlled by chemicals in your body, so like your body could get used to certain medicines and drugs, it could probably get used to this). So this is another one with something similar to gradual buildup, I think that you'd then gradually slide into a depressed state or if you stopped completly you'd get hit with a massive depression.

Chromium, not much to say, infinite luck would be neat, but that's material for another post. Negative effect? Relying on luck you don't have? Maybe?

Nicrosil, too many unknowns I'd say. Don't get me started ranting about this one. I'll talk about its possibilities for awesome sometime. Negative effects would vary, only "certain" one would be nicrosil savantism. (If that even is negative)

Aluminum, would this even be possible? Not gonna write some grand theory about it before it's confirmed that it's actually possible.

Duralumin, see chromium, replace "luck" with "connection" more or less.

Next time (if there is one): Me ranting about how cool nicrosil Feruchemy is...

[Eric]

Iron, not much to say regarding risks but there is this little thing; I think that by slowly (over several years perhaps) increasing your "normal" weight you could make your body inherently stronger. Think like this, if you can move around normally at two or three times your normal weight, then what could you do if you stopped tapping, huh?

Think of it another way: if a human being experiences a decrease in gravity or atmospheric pressure, what happens? Possibly the bends, bleeding, space sickness (which is totally the coolest thing that ever made you sick)... Space medicine to the rescue!

Pewter, this one is fun (in the same way as slicing your leg open is fun...), we already know what happens when we don't use out muscles, they regress (I think that's the word anyway). The reason I bring that up is that I think the body would react as if you wern't using your "normal" muscles and that they would thus regress. The risk here then, is that your body would be too weak to use.

It's actually "atrophy", but that's pretty insightful. I like it.

Zinc, not a lot to say, I guess the risk would be not being able think as quickly?? (If you have something better, by all means, tell me! )

Possibly the same as tin: you just can't think properly.

[Thor]

*snip*

There is some similar speculation on this thread and this one (around the third page for the latter thread). Good to see others thinking up this stuff though, and that we are in agreement most of the time.

[RJWB0mb]

on iron if u store iron for long periods of time would u also get taller? i also guess that you dont realy store weight but a better term would be you store gravity since using an iron mind does not change a person physicaly like pewter does...

on double brass ( blazers) in anther form their therorizing that useing extrem heat one could cause fires, so if u compound too much would it be simular to the after affects of gold?

[RJWB0mb]

(brazier) sorry

[Eric]

On iron: If you store iron for long periods of time, would you also get taller? I also guess that you don't really store weight but a better term would be you store gravity since using an iron mind does not change a person physically like pewter does...

On double brass ( blazers): In another forum, they're theorizing that using extreme heat, one could cause fires, so if you compound too much would it be similar to the after affects of gold?

It's possible that they could get taller. It's part of what causes problems with returning to Earth after space trips. However, there is strong evidence that iron feruchemy does change your mass. I'll talk about brass in the other thread.

[RJWB0mb]

double chromium would be a fun but compounding would be strange regularly storing luck maybe unique to each individual. i know im regularly unlucky would that mean i would store luck slower the one who is regualry more lucky then me? and would it be able to store bad luck or just good luck?

[Aradel]

Because feruchemy recognizes luck or 'fortune' as an attribute, it would only make sense for some people to have more luck than others.

I posted about what I'm going to term Maximum Rate of Storage in the brass topic.

[RJWB0mb]

makes enough sense but what about being able to store bad luck? not everyone has good luck all the time storing must be difficult since you dont know what your luck is like till it is used...

[Aeshdan]

makes enough sense but what about being able to store bad luck? not everyone has good luck all the time storing must be difficult since you dont know what your luck is like till it is used...

No, you always store good luck. When storing you have a lot more bad luck than good (because all your good luck is being stored), when tapping you have a lot more good luck than bad.

[RJWB0mb]

i think i understand though i think id perfer to be able to store bad luck.

and how do you know what your luck is at any given time? to accueratly store luck would you need to constiantly test yourself in oreder to create a situation where one may need luck? or would luck be considered a consintaint perasence?

[Zas678]

I think that each person has around 50 lucky "points*". Some people (the ones who ALWAYS win prizes, t-shirt throwings, drawings and the lottery) has like 500 lucky "points", while others (those people who just happened to guess completely wrong on every single multiple choice question, who always roll ones, who have never won a handout in their life) have like 5 lucky points. You always have the same amount of luck- you don't need to be using it, or testing it, or rebuild on it.

Now if you're a Chromium Feruchemist, you can store some of your luck. You can turn from an average 50 "pointer" to a 5 "pointer" for a really long time, so you can be a 500 "pointer" on the day they pick lottery tickets.

*Note- this is all just an exercise in attempting to quantify luck. I don't believe that people actually have a numerical representation of luck.

[RJWB0mb]

luck still seems to be such a universal consept that even beening able to store and tap luck it would be near impossible to acually get what you want from it.

[Inquisitor #5]

I realized what my original post was missing, I actually have a theory about Zinc.

We see in the books that tapping Zinc causes you to percieve at a faster rate and thus you see the world as in slow motion. Now, if we assume that you've been doing this for an extended period of time, it will probably have become your "normal" preception and thus when you stop tapping, everything will be going too fast for you.

[Aradel]

I realized what my original post was missing, I actually have a theory about Zinc.

We see in the books that tapping Zinc causes you to percieve at a faster rate and thus you see the world as in slow motion. Now, if we assume that you've been doing this for an extended period of time, it will probably have become your "normal" preception and thus when you stop tapping, everything will be going too fast for you.

I actually have been putting together a theory on this.

Ferrings who store as much as they can as fast as they can for lng periods might 'stretch' their powers the same way allomantic savants do. Their body or spiritweb adapts to the constant storing and ferring savants are at 'normal' human levels when storing. When not storing, the attribute is expanded. It's a thought at least.

[Aeshdan]

I don't think that makes sense. Feruchemy is the power of balance. What you put in, you get out, and what you get out, you must have put in. It doesn't seem to me that it could produce "savants" the same way Allomancy (which uses an external source of power) does.

[Thought]

They probably wouldn't stretch their powers, but it might affect their normal operating norm. For example, if you always store energy, you might always feel hungry, even when you are no longer storing it. Likewise, if you compound energy and are always drawing upon it, you might never feel hungry, even if you haven't drawn anything for months.

[Triasmus]

I'm putting this in here since the title of the thread is compounding.

Brandon Sanderson

Compounding is where you are able to kind of draw in more power than you should with feruchemy. What’s going on there is you’re actually charging a piece of metal, and then you are burning that metal as a feruchemical charge. What is happening is that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge, and so you actually fuel feruchemy with allomancy, is what you are doing. Then if you just get out another piece of metal and store it in, since you’re not drawing the power from yourself, you’re cheating the system, you’re short-circuiting the system a little bit. So you can actually use the power that usually fuels allomancy, to fuel feruchemy, which you can then store in a metalmind, and basically build up these huge reservoirs of it. So what’s going on there is… imagine there’s like, an imprint, a wavelength, so to speak. A beat for an allomantic thing, that when you burn a metal, it says “ok, this is what power we give.” When it’s got that charge, it changes that beat and says, “now we get this power.” And you access a set of feruchemical power. That’s why compounding is so powerful.

So what if we were to use what normally fuels feruchemy to fuel allomancy?

What if instead of burning the pewter and actually using that power, One somehow stores the power into their pewter metalmind? One could store their pewter for a day, and then tap it all at once to hold up a collapsing building for the precious few minutes it takes for everyone to safely evacuate.

EDIT: and allomantic pewter doesn't make the muscles grow like its normal feruchemical use, so your not gonna become sooo big that it's an impediment if you allomantically compound a ton.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Lantern13

[Voidus]

I doubt that it would work like that, there is some way to compound allomancy but we have no idea what it is, I don't think that it would just be the same thing in reverse, also if you try to hold up a building in just one place it would just break that section and the rest would still fall

[Thought]

While we don't know how Feruchemy could fuel Allomancy, I suspect that it would probably manifest in one of two ways: either by storing the ability to use allomancy, or by storing the power gained from the metals.

The former is basically just the old Investiture theory: store your steelpushing ability into a nicrosilmind. While you store, you are a weaker coinshot. When you tap it, you are more powerful.

The latter, we've actually sort of already seen through compounding. That gives an allomantic metal a feruchemical power, than the ferring can then store for a net gain. The health that Miles Hundredlives uses is the result of storing the effect of an allomantic burn. Thus, what if instead of storing a feruchemical trait (health), one could store an allomantic trait? That is, lets say that you burn steel, but store 20% of it (just as Miles burns gold and stores it). Your metal runs out faster, but later you are able to tap your metal mind in order to steelpush without ingesting metals. Might be a way to counter aluminum/chromium.

[Triasmus]

The latter, we've actually sort of already seen through compounding. That gives an allomantic metal a feruchemical power, than the ferring can then store for a net gain. The health that Miles Hundredlives uses is the result of storing the effect of an allomantic burn. Thus, what if instead of storing a feruchemical trait (health), one could store an allomantic trait? That is, lets say that you burn steel, but store 20% of it (just as Miles burns gold and stores it). Your metal runs out faster, but later you are able to tap your metal mind in order to steelpush without ingesting metals. Might be a way to counter aluminum/chromium.

Is that not basically what I said?

[Odium's_Shard]

You do know that the best way to counter aluminium is not to actually eat any of it ever?

The best way to counter chromium is not to let random strangers touch you. Or wear an aluminium-foil cape.

[Thought]

Is that not basically what I said?

You seemed to be talking about allomantic output, whereas I was talking about allomantic fuel.

You do know that the best way to counter aluminium is not to actually eat any of it ever?

Eating aluminum is perfectly fine, burning it is the problem. But as we saw with Vin, sometimes you can't reasonably avoid it. But an implanted metalmind with a little allomantic fuel would be a nice fallback.

[Odium's_Shard]

Can't reasonably avoid it? They can't force you to burn it! But, as you say, if she hadn't, they would've killed her. Also, very good for popping a Cadmium users bubbles.

[Thought]

Also, very good for popping a Cadmium users bubbles.

That sounds like a double entendre.