Gold Compounding

[Wolven he/him]

I just finished rereading Alloy of Law not to long ago, and I am still not sure I quite get how Compounding works.  Miles stores up his health in his metalminds right?  Does he then burn the metalmind and does that just give a better boost to health than simply tapping a gold metalmind?  Even if so, wouldn't he always be seeing the past version of himself?  

 

It's probably a lot simpler than I'm trying to make it seem, lol, just can't wrap my brain around it.

 

 

[Guest]

There's no 100% answer (IMO at least), but basically what's happening is a connection is being made to Preservation via the Gold but the power is being "shaped" by the stored health. This results in a net gain in power of about 10x, which can then be stored and burned again.

So to start the process, Miles would hold a tiny flake of Gold and Store until full. He would then swallow the flake and grab a small nugget of Gold, burn the Flake, and store the resulting 10x health in the Nugget. He would then strap on a Gold armband, burn the Nugget, and store the now 100x health in the Armband for later use.

[Arook he/him]

Ya basically Storing a trait in metal changes the way metal filters investiture. Its kind of like making an alloy that only you can burn.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Arook

[Lindel he/him]

When you burn a metal Allomantically, the molecular structure of the metal filters the power. The metal says, "Hey! Do XXX!" Then you get a bunch of power that's filtered to do XXX. When TLR or Miles store health in gold, they can swallow and burn it. Then, instead of the metal saying, "Give me strange visions of my potential past self", the stored up health says, "Give me more health!" The power says, "Ok!", and dumps healthy dollop of Investiture, giving back roughly ten times the amount of health they stored in that goldmind. 

 

So, instead of getting power allocated toward seeing their past selves, if they burn a goldmind, they get the same boost of extra power allocated toward their own health. They can then store this extra health away for later use.  

 

Basically, Miles stores x health in a small piece of gold. He swallows the goldmind. He burns it, giving him 10x health back, which he immediately stores in his bracers. He could then store 10x health in a goldmind, swallow that, burn it for a 100x, and store that. Repeat this process a few times, and you can easily see how he could store up a virtually infinite supply of health. Once he gets going, he could potentially be tapping his bracers at all times, while constantly burning gold to keep them full. 

Edited June 20, 2015 by Lindel

[Dunkum he/him]

Everyone else has gotten the basics of it down but let me add one detail: the way ferruchemy normally works, the power available to you is only equal to the power you have previously stored.  with allomancy, however, the power available to you comes from outside yourself, in this case preservation, so it is purely in addition to whatever you might already have.  the power of compounding, then, is that it lets you access that outside allomanitc power source, but use it to fuel ferruchemical attributes that allomancy normally cannot help with, or alternatively, it lets you access ferruchemical attributes in large quantities without having to store so much of it up..

[yurisses]

The amount of health gained by compounding is not proportional to the amount stored. It's proportional to the size of the metal and your allomantic potential. Compounding is, more than a way to gain more return on investment, simply a way to use allomancy but gain feruchemical attributes ('compounding' is sort of a misnomer). You can then store the feruchemical attribute into metalminds for later use so you can draw upon it with the finer control feruchemy offers.

For Miles, instead of having to spend time sick to store up health, he can just turn Investiture into health (the way a Pewterarm/Thug turns Investiture into strength) and then store the health in metalminds.

 

Open The Fridge

Ok, last question. It was really difficult coming up with three questions that haven’t been asked already...

Brandon Sanderson

OK... you’re not going to ask me the “what would you ask me” question?

Open The Fridge

Not quite...

Brandon Sanderson

OK good, because I hate that one! (laughs)

Open The Fridge

My question is if there’s anything that you’ve never been asked that you would like to talk about?

Brandon Sanderson

Oooooh, ok. Hm. That one is so hard! Every time people ask me something like this... What have I never been asked that people should be asking, is basically what the question is? Something that the fans have just missed... They pick up on so much, that it’s hard... I do wonder if, you know… all the magic systems [in my books] are connected and work on some basic fundamental principles, and a lot of people haven’t been asking questions about this. One thing I did get a question on today, and I’ll just talk about this one... they didn’t ask the right question, but I nudged them the right way, is understanding that tie between Aondor [the magic system from Elantris] and allomancy [Mistborn’s magic system].

People ask about getting the power from metals and things, but that’s not actually how it works. The power’s not coming from metal. I talked a little about this before, but you are drawing power from some source, and the metal is actually just a gateway. It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal works in the same way as an Aon does in Elantris. It filters the power. So it is just a sign of “this is what power this energy is going to be shaped into and give you.” When you understand that, compounding [in Alloy of Law] makes much more sense.

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.

(source)

Question

How does compounding work in Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

I can explain this better in person because I know things that the characters in the book don’t. So, they haven’t worked a lot of this out. All the magic systems in my work are linked because the books all take place in the same universe. In Elantris, magic works by drawing symbols in the air. What actually happens is that when they draw a symbol, energy passes through it from another place (which is my get-out for the laws of thermodynamics) and the effect of that energy is moderated by the symbol. In one case it may become light, in another it may become fire. In Mistborn, the metals have a similar effect. The magic is not coming from the metal (even if some characters think it is). It is being drawn from the same place and moderated by the metal.

In the case of Feruchemy, no energy is being drawn from this other place. So, you spend a week sick and store up the ability to heal. It’s a balanced system, basically obeying the laws of thermodynamics. So, while it’s not real, it’s still rational.

In compounding, when you have the power of both Allomancy and Feruchemy, you draw power from the other place through the metal and it recognizes the power that is already stored—"Oh, this is healing, I know how to do that”—and so you get the power of Feruchemy but boosted by energy from the other place. This is how the Lord Ruler achieved immortality.

(source)

Mistborn Questions:

ANDREW THE GREAT

What would happen if a person were to burn a metal that was Feruchemically charged using Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The metal used in Allomancy is like a key or a doorway to the power that Allomancy actually uses. The metal acts as a filter, much as the Aons in Elantris do, to determine what the power actually does. However, if the metal is Feruchemically charged, then it will basically become a super-burst of Feruchemical power with no Allomantic effect. The Feruchemical charge acts as a filter as well as the metal, and changes what the power does. in this case, say you were burning steel, you would just be massively speedy for a second, and wouldn't actually have the ability to push on anything Allomantically. Hope that answered the question. I get the concept, so if you need me to explain it differently, let me know and i'll try. Oh, the other thing I forgot is that this concept only works if it's a metal that you charged yourself. If it's a metal someone else charged, it would just work like regular Allomancy, and the Feruchemical charge would just cease to exist.

(source)

Edited June 20, 2015 by yurisses

[Oudeis he/him]

As for "wouldn't he be seeing goldshadows all the time" we don't have a lot in-text to go on. We never actually see him compound from his own perspective, we see him tap the health in his goldminds (the result of compounding) and we see him burn gold allomantically.

 

W's-o-B that I've read on the subject have been somewhat inconsistent. He's said at times that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic signature, so you cannot burn a goldmind and get the allomantic effect. He's said at other times that you must burn the metal allomantically first, and then once you do you'll see the feruchemical reserve and be able to burn that.

 

This second is backed up in the text. When Vin, in The Final Empire, burns the back of a pewter earring in which Sazed has stored a "moderate amount" of strength, she at first only feels the allomantic reserve. When she starts to burn it, however, she sees a second available reserve, she simply cannot access it. This suggests that you in fact must burn the metal allomantically before you can Compound it, which has interesting implications for aluminum compounders, and even duralumin.

 

@Yuri:

 

To counter one part of your point, none of the quotes you provide say that it isn't proportional. They say there has to be a feruchemical charge, and you seem to be extrapolating that any amount of charge, in however large a metalmind, lets you compound the whole metalmind. That's not expressly said anywhere, and is contradicted by the text. At the end of TFE, when Sazed is explaining how the Lord Ruler lived so long, he says compounding gives you tenfold returns on how much charge you've stored. There's also WoB that the Lord Ruler's trick would not have worked forever; that eventually he would need even more age than he could compound. If he could have made an atiummind the size of his own head, charged it with three minutes of youth, and compounded the whole thing, there'd be no upper limit.

[yurisses]

You're right, I was assuming that Feruchemy charges a whole metalmind gradually, but it is charged in parts.

ReaderAt2046

Can a Feruchemist store an attribute in a metalmind that someone else has already stored in and if so, do the charges affect each other in any way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but the charges are just stored in separate pieces of the metal, and don't really influence one another.

(source)

So, compounding is relative to the size of the feruchemical charge and your allomantic potential. It would even make theoretical sense for a very weak allomancer (say, a with a Feruchemist with a very weak hemalurgic spike charged with Allomancy) to gain less attribute than stored from compounding.

[Moogle]

There's also WoB that the Lord Ruler's trick would not have worked forever; that eventually he would need even more age than he could compound. If he could have made an atiummind the size of his own head, charged it with three minutes of youth, and compounded the whole thing, there'd be no upper limit.

 

This isn't necessarily why TLR would have needed more age than he could Compound. No matter which model we use for Compounding here, he isn't going to survive.

 

As he aged, he required a steadily increased stream of youth from his metalminds. However, Feruchemy's has a problem: you get a diminishing return when you draw on a metalmind faster. Drawing on 10x the youth will drain more than 10x the stored youth in the metalmind. Eventually, he would have not been able to burn atium fast enough to keep himself young (or atium could not be produced fast enough) because of these massive diminishing returns and then he would have died. There is only a limited amount of atium being produced at any given moment.

 

Even if this didn't exist, he still would have died. Eventually he'd need to burn a planet's worth of atium constantly to stay alive, even if there were no diminishing returns. He still needs to steadily increase the amount of youth he draws as he grows older, and his mouth is only so big.

 

He still dies if Feruchemy is indeed multiplying what you store in the metalmind, because at some point he can't store enough to multiply without killing himself. But there will always be an upper bound on the amount of time TLR could have lived. Your suggested method would not save him.

 

WoB (just because no one brought this one up, there's a few others if anyone wants):

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.

(source)

 

---

 

Regarding the actual proportionality: while below a certain point, it may be that the charge you put into the metalmind is multiplied, past a certain amount I would expect the gains to floor. The best analogy I can make is to transistors ability to amplify current in a narrow range... which won't help anyone who is not me, unfortunately. Eventually, I'm thinking there should be enough Feruchemical charge (and below the point where the thing is fully saturated) where it can fully filter all the Investiture flowing through it and further charging the metalmind won't give you more gains. Obviously, I have little to no evidence supporting this beyond it being how some real-world objects work, but Brandon studied chemistry in university, so he probably learned about how transistors worked.

 

I wonder if part of the reason Vin had to briefly burn Sazed's earring was that it was not fully charged. If you burn a metalmind that is not charged to the point where it filters everything, it would not surprise me if you got a partial Allomantic effect. For example, if I burn a pewtermind which filters 50% of the Investiture flowing through it into Feruchemical strength, perhaps I also get 50% of the normal Allomantic effect.

[Kipper he/him]

But TLR could have just remade himself with the Well.

[Wolven he/him]

Ahhh, got it now.  Thanks guys.  

 

Kinda similar to that Skyrim trick where you make a potion that increases blacksmithing, then forge a piece of armor that increases alchemy, then make another potion that increases smithing, and so on and so on.  At least it's similar to me.  

 

Another question.  The goldminds that Miles has piercing his skin, are they being burned away when he uses the health?  Or is he just constantly using this trick to keep those goldminds filled up?

 

I am just wondering if Wax just kept shooting at Miles if he would eventually run out of that health.

[Moogle]

Another question.  The goldminds that Miles has piercing his skin, are they being burned away when he uses the health?  Or is he just constantly using this trick to keep those goldminds filled up?

 

You can burn metal piercing your skin, but it's more likely that Miles just used his goldminds for storage purposes, because it would be a little awkward otherwise.

 

What he would typically do is take some gold flakes, stick some health in them, then swallow them and burn them for a huge amount of excess health. He'd then store this health in his other goldminds to be used for later.

[Guest]

Ahhh, got it now. Thanks guys.

Kinda similar to that Skyrim trick where you make a potion that increases blacksmithing, then forge a piece of armor that increases alchemy, then make another potion that increases smithing, and so on and so on. At least it's similar to me.

Another question. The goldminds that Miles has piercing his skin, are they being burned away when he uses the health? Or is he just constantly using this trick to keep those goldminds filled up?

I am just wondering if Wax just kept shooting at Miles if he would eventually run out of that health.

Remember that Sazed stored a "moderate" amount in the backing of an earring. If something that small can hold "moderate" amounts, multiple pounds of metal can hold massive amounts.