A question about feruchemical atium

[Zape]

imagine a hypothetical scenario where a twenty year old feruchemist with a massive stash of atium decides to become a year older for a year after that year he has enough age stored in his metalminds to be younger by a year for a year or two years younger for half a year or four years younger for a quarter of a year taking this further that means he can be thirty two years younger for 8 days as i noted earlier the man is twenty one years old what whould happen if he drew the power at that speed ? 

Edited December 29, 2017 by Zape

[Merrickz]

Brandon has stated that there is a natural limit to Feruchemical tapping, e.g. you can't become black hole heavy for a fraction of a second. This would likely extend to Atium whereby you can't reduce your age to a point before you were born There would likely be something stopping you from popping back into a sperm and an egg.

Definitely an interesting thought though.

[Oversleep]

Proportional increase in power requires more than the proportional increase in tapping. Fan term: overtapping, when you're tapping so much you're losing energy.

As Sazed put it:

Quote

However, Feruchemy gives decreasing returns—it takes more than the proportionate amount of strength, for instance, to make yourself four times as strong as a regular man, as opposed to simply twice as strong. In the Lord Ruler’s case, this meant that he had to spend more and more youth to keep from aging.

But anyway, it should still be possible to tap more youth than you have lived. I think it'd be a question for Brandon.

[SallyA]

On 12/29/2017 at 4:00 PM, Oversleep said:

Proportional increase in power requires more than the proportional increase in tapping. Fan term: overtapping, when you're tapping so much you're losing energy.

So is this possibly the reason that the Nightblood sword (sword nimi) draws power from anyone who draws it, and can actually kill the person holding it?  Drawing Nightblood is by definition overtapping?  it's worse than candy!

[Oversleep]

1 hour ago, SallyA said:

So is this possibly the reason that the Nightblood sword (sword nimi) draws power from anyone who draws it, and can actually kill the person holding it?  Drawing Nightblood is by definition overtapping?  it's worse than candy!

This term refers to Feruchemy. Nightblood is its own, separate thing.

[Weltall]

On 12/29/2017 at 9:57 AM, Merrickz said:

Brandon has stated that there is a natural limit to Feruchemical tapping, e.g. you can't become black hole heavy for a fraction of a second. This would likely extend to Atium whereby you can't reduce your age to a point before you were born There would likely be something stopping you from popping back into a sperm and an egg.

Yeah, I was looking for any WoBs on whether this is the case and didn't find an exact one but I did run into one that's relevant insofar as it provides an example of how far back you can go.

Quote

As for Marsh, he's got a whole bag of atium (taken off of the Kandra who was going to try to sell it.) So he's all right for quite a while. A small bead used right can reverse age someone back to their childhood.

But this was a little beyond their magical understanding at the time.

source

And there's this, which talks about how feruchemy can protect you from some of the consequences of tapping.

Quote

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.

source

Which you can read into the hypothetical atium example, as in 'you can't age yourself into nonexistence' even if he hasn't come right out and said it anywhere I've been able to find. My guess in this situation is that the lower boundary of the ability to tap age is whenever your Initiation into feruchemy happened (ie, when you first became able to use it) since any younger than that and you can't tap any more, which would probably stop the process. We know f-atium has an upper limit to how long you can extend your life with it (because your Spiritual aspect 'knows' how old you truly are and is constantly trying to push against what atium does) so it probably has some form of lower limit as well, beyond which your soul simply says 'I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that'. xD