Why is it difficult to store speed?

[xxcyv he/him]

In TFA after the Garrison discovered Kelsier's army, Kelsier asks Sazed how much speed he has stored up. Sazed answers that speed "is a very difficult attribute to collect". That made me think. Why is it so hard to store huge amounts of speed in a steelmind? You could simply slow your body completely down while lying in bed before you fall asleep whitch would result in very much stored speed every night.

 

So there must be a hitch with it. What if storing speed not only slows down your movements, but the whole functionality of your body? That would mean alongside witch your movements your heartbeat, breathing etc. would be slower, too. So by storing too much speed you would simply kill yourself because your vital bodily functions would be so slow as if they have failed.

 

 

This is the only explanation I could come up witch. Your thoughts?

[Left he/him]

In TFA after the Garrison discovered Kelsier's army, Kelsier asks Sazed how much speed he has stored up. Sazed answers that speed "is a very difficult attribute to collect". That made me think. Why is it so hard to store huge amounts of speed in a steelmind? You could simply slow your body completely down while lying in bed before you fall asleep whitch would result in very much stored speed every night.

So there must be a hitch with it. What if storing speed not only slows down your movements, but the whole functionality of your body? That would mean alongside witch your movements your heartbeat, breathing etc. would be slower, too. So by storing too much speed you would simply kill yourself because your vital bodily functions would be so slow as if they have failed.

This is the only explanation I could come up witch. Your thoughts?

It's very difficult, or impossible, to store attributes while your asleep. Otherwise Wayne would be able to store a lot of health each night. There might be a semi scientific way of explaining why you can't store while asleep, but I think it's probably Sanderson trying to keep powers from becoming too powerful for the story.

[Guest]

Part of this "difficulty" may be purely choice. Unless I was in a situation conducive to being purely sedentary, it's hard to imagine it being natural to store speed.

Try walking out of a grocery store to your car (or any place to any place, really; I just tried it with walking out of my house to the grill). Now cut your pace in half. Take babysteps. Now how long do you think it takes before you get incredibly frustrated and start walking normal speed again?

Speed would naturally be one of the hardest attributes to store, if not the hardest, purely because speed is something incredibly hard to give up. I doubt that there is a "magical" explanation one way or the other. Haha, just imagine it taking a whole minute for you to turn on a faucet to wash your hands.

[xxcyv he/him]

It's very difficult, or impossible, to store attributes while your asleep. Otherwise Wayne would be able to store a lot of health each night. There might be a semi scientific way of explaining why you can't store while asleep, but I think it's probably Sanderson trying to keep powers from becoming too powerful for the story.

You've got me wrong there. I don't mean you could store speed while sleeping but before you fall asleep. Don't tell me you're instantly sleeping if you go to bed  

[Straw he/him]

Could it be because storing speed makes it easier to get hurt I.e. Someone assassinating you?

[Citadel16 he/him]

its difficult because you are sitting there for what felt like hours, but only ten minutes had passed.

[xxcyv he/him]

Could it be because storing speed makes it easier to get hurt I.e. Someone assassinating you?

 

If that's the case you would never go to sleep. Assassins don't usually wake you up before killing you

[IndigoAjah he/him]

Not moving is not the same as moving slowly, right? To store speed, you'd have to move constantly but very slowly, which sounds inherently impractical

[dyring]

Does the body still use energy at a normal speed?

 

if so, then slowing to much means not enough oxygen gets out into the body, as the heartbeat is slowed, wich would lead to braindamage sooner rather then later. 

 

Still, seems unlikey.

 

More likely, Sazed is busy. He can store health while still working. He can store sight while wearing spectacles.

 

He cant really do anything to offset the slow speed.

[Observer]

if F!Steel works on the same principles as bendalloy, it could be that you are incapable of storing very much speed at once, since you're actually storing fractions of your temporal perception and speed. (ex: You're storing half of your time, and every person has exactly the same amount of time passing every moment, meaning you are physically incapable of storing more than a set amount of 'speed' no matter the circumstances.)

 

Alternatively, you have to have momentum of thought and body to store, which means you must be constantly moving in order to actually put anything into the steelmind, except the movement takes forever and feels forever and after what feels like hours you have enough speed to get half a second of bullet time. Either way, sounds like a horrible pain if you aren't compounding.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Observer

[CancerPuppy]

Maybe since you're giving up speed, the fact that you are slow means you're giving it up slowly. I guess there'd have to be some sort of ratio of how much speed you gain per second or hour vs. how slowly you move and how long it takes to store it?

[Pathfinder]

Maybe it also has to deal with their time period. If we were modern day feruchemists, you could put a movie marathon on the ole tv, sit and just watch while you store. Your brain can process as normal since your not storing mental speed, so you literally do not have to do a think except watch. In Saze's time period, the closest you can do to this is read, and you still need to turn the pages or move your eyes to track the text. We see him store a bunch of attributes at once and turning a page is agonizingly slow for him. 

[CancerPuppy]

Sooooo quick question. What if you wanted to store slowness? Silly I know, but maybe it's a loophole that wasn't explored. And in regards to mental speed, wouldn't that be a hazard when moving extremely fast? response time would need to be better wouldn't it?

[IndigoAjah he/him]

Sooooo quick question. What if you wanted to store slowness? Silly I know, but maybe it's a loophole that wasn't explored. And in regards to mental speed, wouldn't that be a hazard when moving extremely fast? response time would need to be better wouldn't it?

Much like Wax making himself lighter, they don't need to store these things to tap: they can use them as much as they like by storing the opposite

[CancerPuppy]

So you don't tap slowness. Understandable, I guess. But isn't that kind of what Marasi does? leaving out the fact that it's allomancy and not feruchemy, of course.

[Pathfinder]

So you don't tap slowness. Understandable, I guess. But isn't that kind of what Marasi does? leaving out the fact that it's allomancy and not feruchemy, of course.

But it functions completely different because of all the reasons that allomancy is different then feruchemy. 

[Voidus]

Maybe it also has to deal with their time period. If we were modern day feruchemists, you could put a movie marathon on the ole tv, sit and just watch while you store. Your brain can process as normal since your not storing mental speed, so you literally do not have to do a think except watch. In Saze's time period, the closest you can do to this is read, and you still need to turn the pages or move your eyes to track the text. We see him store a bunch of attributes at once and turning a page is agonizingly slow for him. 

Given that Feruchemical steel still gives you bullettime I'm inclined to think that storing it would actually slow your processing speed.

[Pathfinder]

Given that Feruchemical steel still gives you bullettime I'm inclined to think that storing it would actually slow your processing speed.

If that was the case, then what happens when you store mental speed? And what would happen if you store mental and physical speed at the same time?

[Voidus]

If that was the case, then what happens when you store mental speed? And what would happen if you store mental and physical speed at the same time?

You get some slight slowing of perception and a lot of reduced intelligence. You'd get even slower perception and reduced physical speed and intelligence.

[Pathfinder]

You get some slight slowing of perception and a lot of reduced intelligence. You'd get even slower perception and reduced physical speed and intelligence.

So if I only store physical speed i have a slight slowing of perception, slowing of speed, but normal intelligence, store mental speed is slowing of perception, with reduced intelligence, physical and mental results in much slower perception, slowing of speed and intelligence. Then please explain to me the scene where Sazed is storing all his attributes? By that logic he should not even be able to communicate with Vin. 

[Esaias he/him]

It doesn't seem as if zinc has anything to do with intelligence. In Bands of Mourning

 

when Wax taps zinc he doesn't seem to get any smarter, he just thinks faster.

 

Chapter 29:

Wax increased the speed of his thoughts, tapping zinc. He sorted through a dozen scenarios. Find the explosives and Push them away? How far could he get them? ...lots of other stuff... What else? What else could Wax do? He discarded scenario after scenario. ...more stuff...

“—own,” Suit said.

 

 

He thought through dozens of scenarios in the time it took for Suit to say one word, but nothing indicates that he was any more intelligent during that time.

[Voidus]

It doesn't seem as if zinc has anything to do with intelligence. In Bands of Mourning

 

when Wax taps zinc he doesn't seem to get any smarter, he just thinks faster.

 

Chapter 29:

 

Wax increased the speed of his thoughts, tapping zinc. He sorted through a dozen scenarios. Find the explosives and Push them away? How far could he get them? ...lots of other stuff... What else? What else could Wax do? He discarded scenario after scenario. ...more stuff...

“—own,” Suit said.

 

 

He thought through dozens of scenarios in the time it took for Suit to say one word, but nothing indicates that he was any more intelligent during that time.

WoB is that it helps you make intuitive leaps, I say more intelligent for the sake of brevity but you're right that it's not quite that.

[Oversleep]

Let's assume human mind is composed of two attributes: genius level and the mental speed.
Einstein surely had a high genius level, but I cannot say anything about his mental speed. That's where zinc comes in handy.

Now, let's find another person with moderate genius level but extraordinary mental speed. He may not be able to make great discoveries; if he tries to solve a complex equation, he will struggle, he may not see the solution as a genius would see at the first glance, but he would be fast to work through the equation by standard methods. That's what zinc does.

Think of zinc that way - you will not be able to do anything out of ordinary which normally you couldn't do, but instead of figuring something out for few days, Zinc Compounder would have it done in few minutes. You take the end result which you can achieve and just compress the time needed to do it.

[Observer]

Zinc was explained via WoB as something to do with intuitive leaps. I have a theory that this is the exact mechanic we see in the Stormlight Archive, and might give us an idea of how it would work. Sazed can talk to you just fine even if his ability to make mental connections and intuitive leaps is impaired, just don't expect him to solve the day's crossword.

 

Steel seems to give you a sped up perception to go with your sped up body. This is why I wonder if it is actually doing the same thing Bendalloy does, but on a local level, which would make storing it similar to using Cadmium, but even more useless. This begs the question of if you can smack a leaf while tapping tons of speed. I'm a little shaky on how near-timestop physics work, but if your own personal time is running thousands of times faster than everyone else's, an airborn leaf be far too slow to get out of the way of anything you do, causing...fun times? 

(Go ahead and laugh at my horrible grasp of temporal speed, I admit I'm very bad at conceptualizing it.)

 

I guess the question we need to ask Brandon is if speed is a personal temporal thing or a fully physical thing. Can you store speed while holding still, or do you have to be moving? If you have to be moving, does this mean you store less and less speed because by virtue of storing it you suddenly have a lot less of it? If speed is temporal, do Steelrunners fall faster? Can they freeze in midair like Marasi can?

Starting to think it's not temporal the more I ask this. Still, it sounds like a horribly difficult ability to store either way.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Observer

[Yata he/him]

Probably the Speed is hard to Store because you may store just a little part of your Speed without Health-Problem. (Maybe something about your Heart Beat, or other living function).

Some Feruchemical Attributes can't be store over a threesold without the Feruchemist's death. (For example I remember something like "a safe Strenght storing rate is 20% without risk" but I am not sure about the number at the moment)