Brass Compounding

[DiePie]

I was talking with a friend about some absurd uses of compounding, and we came across the absurd idea of compounding heat. Burning everything within a specific radius by heating yourself up to thousands of degrees, etc. And, seemingly, you could survive it.

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Thoughtful Spurts

If tapping heat means your own body gets hotter, does it also mean you become immune to hot temperatures so long as you're tapping it, or should you fill heat and grow colder for that to happen?

Brandon Sanderson

As everything in Feruchemy, you become immune to the effects of the ability only. Like weight doesn't crush you, but at the same time doesn't have a net gain in strength. Growing colder, however, would be more helpful in this regard.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

 

So that raises the question to me, what kind of radiation would a brass compounder at 1000 degrees emit? Because in order to survive that temperature, most of your atoms couldn't be traveling at that speed right? It would kill you. I was thinking that all that heat would accumulate in the atoms that were allowed to move, and you'd be like emitting gamma particles or something.

Though the alternative seems like that it would have to make the various forces in your body that hold you together stronger to compensate. Which makes me wonder how much stronger your body would have to be for the effects of particles moving at the higher points of the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution to be negligible on your health. Could heating yourself up to a couple hundred degrees make you invulnerable to physical attack? Or would preservation's investiture do the bare minimum to keep your body together, and any application of outside force would cause the chemical bonds holding your cells together to crumble to dust?

 

I'm curious what y'all think would happen to someone doing this, or if you have any better (or more interesting) applications for this than being unkillable in a fight.

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

1 hour ago, DiePie said:

I was talking with a friend about some absurd uses of compounding, and we came across the absurd idea of compounding heat. Burning everything within a specific radius by heating yourself up to thousands of degrees, etc. And, seemingly, you could survive it.

 

So that raises the question to me, what kind of radiation would a brass compounder at 1000 degrees emit? Because in order to survive that temperature, most of your atoms couldn't be traveling at that speed right? It would kill you. I was thinking that all that heat would accumulate in the atoms that were allowed to move, and you'd be like emitting gamma particles or something.

Though the alternative seems like that it would have to make the various forces in your body that hold you together stronger to compensate. Which makes me wonder how much stronger your body would have to be for the effects of particles moving at the higher points of the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution to be negligible on your health. Could heating yourself up to a couple hundred degrees make you invulnerable to physical attack? Or would preservation's investiture do the bare minimum to keep your body together, and any application of outside force would cause the chemical bonds holding your cells together to crumble to dust?

 

I'm curious what y'all think would happen to someone doing this, or if you have any better (or more interesting) applications for this than being unkillable in a fight.

There's a lot of topics about this already, but here are my thoughts:

Brandon has talked about how eventually Steel compounders can't run faster because of friction. I think that applies here. There's a point when a) they hit the max heat or b) their atoms simply cannot hold that energy or their metalminds melt. The latter is the biggest limitation to bronze compounding.

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, DiePie said:

I was talking with a friend about some absurd uses of compounding, and we came across the absurd idea of compounding heat. Burning everything within a specific radius by heating yourself up to thousands of degrees, etc. And, seemingly, you could survive it.

 

So that raises the question to me, what kind of radiation would a brass compounder at 1000 degrees emit? Because in order to survive that temperature, most of your atoms couldn't be traveling at that speed right? It would kill you. I was thinking that all that heat would accumulate in the atoms that were allowed to move, and you'd be like emitting gamma particles or something.

Though the alternative seems like that it would have to make the various forces in your body that hold you together stronger to compensate. Which makes me wonder how much stronger your body would have to be for the effects of particles moving at the higher points of the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution to be negligible on your health. Could heating yourself up to a couple hundred degrees make you invulnerable to physical attack? Or would preservation's investiture do the bare minimum to keep your body together, and any application of outside force would cause the chemical bonds holding your cells together to crumble to dust?

 

I'm curious what y'all think would happen to someone doing this, or if you have any better (or more interesting) applications for this than being unkillable in a fight.

37 minutes ago, ThatOneWorldhopper said:

There's a lot of topics about this already, but here are my thoughts:

Brandon has talked about how eventually Steel compounders can't run faster because of friction. I think that applies here. There's a point when a) they hit the max heat or b) their atoms simply cannot hold that energy or their metalminds melt. The latter is the biggest limitation to bronze compounding.

Yes, a brass Compounder has some natural resistance to their heightened attribute just like with any Feruchemist, but they could indeed go too far and hurt/kill themselves. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/13-calamity-austin-signing/#e5025

Questioner

If Feruchemists can store warmth, and you can Compound if you have the dual... Could they harm themselves by drawing too much warmth?

Brandon Sanderson

Could they draw it out of their body and therefore kill themselves by freezing themselves?

Questioner

Either way. Either that, or burn and Compound too much...

Brandon Sanderson

This is harder to do that you think it [is], because built into Feruchemy is the natural body's resistance to the things you're doing, but it is possible.

 

[alder24]

13 hours ago, DiePie said:

I was talking with a friend about some absurd uses of compounding, and we came across the absurd idea of compounding heat. Burning everything within a specific radius by heating yourself up to thousands of degrees, etc. And, seemingly, you could survive it.

Brass melts at 900°C so that's the maximum temperature you can tap. More than that would melt the brassminds, which would affect the investiture inside and you probably won't be able to tap a liquid metal that's dripping down or eating into your flesh and you will die.

13 hours ago, DiePie said:

So that raises the question to me, what kind of radiation would a brass compounder at 1000 degrees emit? Because in order to survive that temperature, most of your atoms couldn't be traveling at that speed right? It would kill you. I was thinking that all that heat would accumulate in the atoms that were allowed to move, and you'd be like emitting gamma particles or something.

Your Axi (atoms) are protected by the nature of Feruchemy and investiture, so at least you should not get harmed. I don't know that much about it, but if atoms vibrate at relativistic speeds they would probably have to have a temperature of billions of degrees, thousands of degrees is really, really not that hot to make them move near the light speed. As for the radiation emitted, it would be according to the black body radiation, so something in the near-infrared up to the visible spectrum. The cremation oven burns at around this temperature and it doesn't irradiate the surrounding area with gamma rays so a Feruchemist tapping that much heat won't do that as well.

13 hours ago, DiePie said:

Though the alternative seems like that it would have to make the various forces in your body that hold you together stronger to compensate. Which makes me wonder how much stronger your body would have to be for the effects of particles moving at the higher points of the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution to be negligible on your health. Could heating yourself up to a couple hundred degrees make you invulnerable to physical attack? Or would preservation's investiture do the bare minimum to keep your body together, and any application of outside force would cause the chemical bonds holding your cells together to crumble to dust?

I doubt there are any effects like this. Investiture will take care of everything and keep your body normal, but be able to survive those extreme temperatures. Investiture is matter and energy, it's a third state alongside those two and investiture is an additional part of Axi (atoms) in Cosmere. At most it may affect your immune system or metabolism (like F-steel affects metabolism), but invulnerability, super strength and stuff like this are clearly outside of the scope of F-brass, cause that's what F-pewter does.

[Frustration]

Well looking into heat your natural body temperature is close to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. (As we are talking about the human body Fahrenheit is objectively the superior system of measurement for this).

Getting to 1000 degrees would be slightly more than a simple 10x increase in temperature, that should be well within the limits of what feruchemy is capable of.

Well, most heavy duty objects are going to be completely unaffected by this with both Aluminum and Iron remaining solid at these temperatures. So aside from being able to kill people or start fires which you can way easier without it, there isn't much use. 

Now you can go to a 12x multiplier and melt aluminum which has its uses in the future, but not much more than that.

Getting to melt more industrial grade objects requires closer to 28x or more than the human body, which the nature of Compounding doesn't quite let us reach for any extended period of time, not to mention as @alder24 said, once you get to 16x-17x the human body temperature your brass will start to melt.

Additionally due to the surface area of a human, melting objects outside the body wouldn't be very easy.

 

As for radiation, I doubt it would cause any. Just like how speed bubbles don't have red/blue shift. 

Edited February 2 by Frustration

[therunner he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Well looking into heat your natural body temperature is close to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. (As we are talking about the human body Fahrenheit is objectively the superior system of measurement for this).

Getting to 1000 degrees would be slightly more than a simple 10x increase in temperature, that should be well within the limits of what feruchemy is capable of.

I think a more natural unit to use would be Kelvin, not Fahrenheit, as that is the absolute temperature of body in physical sense. Fahrenheit and Celsius both have 0 set relatively arbitrarily.

98 F ~ 309 K , 1000F ~ 810 K , which makes it 2.6x increase. So certainly well withing capabilities of Feruchemy. 
Also well within capabilities of killing you

[Nitpicking]

On 2/2/2026 at 11:10 AM, Frustration said:

Well, most heavy duty objects are going to be completely unaffected by this with both Aluminum and Iron remaining solid at these temperatures. So aside from being able to kill people or start fires which you can way easier without it, there isn't much use. 

Aluminum melts at 933 Kelvin, but that's not important to your argument.