Question about the Lord Ruler aging [TFE Spoilers]

[Smallpox]

I read all of the Mistborn books and I know about compounding, but it has been more than 10 years since I read the original trilogy and its seems I forgot the answers to an age old question.

In the final fight between Vin and the Lord Ruler, after Vin pulls his metal minds the Lord Ruler starts to age rapidly, why?

From what I know the Lord Ruler store youthfulness in atium, he then burn the atium to get extra youthfulness so he end with a positive gain of youthfulness. He needs no metal minds on his person because he gain the benefits of Feruchemy by burning not tapping metals.

What am I missing?

Edited July 31, 2019 by Smallpox

[aneonfoxtribute]

It's because Vin got rid of his Metalminds. When Compounding, you need to have a Metalmind, otherwise you can't use Feruchemy. So when Vin got rid of his Metalminds, he became unable to burn Atium feruchemically, which aged him to his real age.

[Chiberty]

When he taps the metalminds, he is getting a temporary change in his age. If you compound steel, you are not going to have a permanent speed increase. If you stop tapping it, there will no longer be the change. This is also one reason he got "less efficient" as he aged. His spiritual age got older and older, so he had to compound more often to stay looking young.

[Elsecaller_17.5]

While everything Fox said is correct, he could have Feruchemily charged atium in his stomach which would account for him making it a little while without them.

[RShara]

When  you store youth in atium and burn it, you get a giant flash of youthfulness out of it. Generally, you don't want that youthfulness all at once, so you store it in a second metalmind that  you slowly tap. So he was tapping youthfulness all the time to keep himself from dying of old age. When Vin Pushed away his atiumminds, his age caught up with him and he died.

[Smallpox]

6 minutes ago, RShara said:

When  you store youth in atium and burn it, you get a giant flash of youthfulness out of it. Generally, you don't want that youthfulness all at once, so you store it in a second metalmind that  you slowly tap. So he was tapping youthfulness all the time to keep himself from dying of old age. When Vin Pushed away his atiumminds, his age caught up with him and he died.

Got it, thanks. 

I was under the impression that he could just choose how to spread his youthfulness after burning atium, just like with regular metalmind.

[RShara]

3 minutes ago, Smallpox said:

Got it, thanks. 

I was under the impression that he could just choose how to spread his youthfulness after burning atium, just like with regular metalmind.

He can choose the rate at which he taps, yes. But he couldn't tap at all when the atiumminds were Pushed away from him. Burning the atium would give him 10x the youth while he was burning, but once he stopped, he would then return to his normal age, which was over 1000. So he had to either be burning all the time (at a rate that's only semi-controllable) or tapping all the time. More efficient to burn a whole bunch and store the excess, then tap as needed and desired.

Edited July 31, 2019 by RShara

[Smallpox]

 

10 minutes ago, Smallpox said:

Got it, thanks. 

I was under the impression that he could just choose how to spread his youthfulness after burning atium, just like with regular metalmind.

I meant that I thought that he could burn invested atium and choose to be a bit younger for a year instead of being really young for the duration of the burning, basically still have the effect long after the burn even without a metalmind.

Edited July 31, 2019 by Smallpox

[Karger]

9 minutes ago, Smallpox said:

I meant that I thought that he could burn invested atium and choose to be a bit younger for a year instead of being really young for the duration of the burning, basically still have the effect long after the burn even without a metalmind.

He could probably burn slower then normal but metelminds are more precise.

[RShara]

15 minutes ago, Smallpox said:

 

I meant that I thought that he could burn invested atium and choose to be a bit younger for a year instead of being really young for the duration of the burning, basically still have the effect long after the burn even without a metalmind.

Oh. No, once you stop burning, the effect stops as well, just like with iron, steel, pewter, etc.

[Stefano]

I understand the effect stops when you stop burning, but he should turn back as he was before burning/tapping

For example, if you stop tapping gold or you remove gold metalmind, you stop healing, you don't just die or get hurt.

Same for all other metalminds: you just turn back as you were before tapping

[RShara]

7 hours ago, Stefano said:

I understand the effect stops when you stop burning, but he should turn back as he was before burning/tapping

For example, if you stop tapping gold or you remove gold metalmind, you stop healing, you don't just die or get hurt.

Same for all other metalminds: you just turn back as you were before tapping

Gold and the like heal you to your Spiritual Ideal. Age is part of that Ideal, so when you stop tapping/burning, you go back to as close to that ideal as circumstances permit. Since your Ideal doesn't involve injuries, gold fixes those, and those stay fixed. But since age is part of that ideal, when you stop burning or tapping, you snap back to that Ideal, which in the Lord Ruler's case, was over 1000 years old.

[Stefano]

6 hours ago, RShara said:

Gold and the like heal you to your Spiritual Ideal. Age is part of that Ideal, so when you stop tapping/burning, you go back to as close to that ideal as circumstances permit. Since your Ideal doesn't involve injuries, gold fixes those, and those stay fixed. But since age is part of that ideal, when you stop burning or tapping, you snap back to that Ideal, which in the Lord Ruler's case, was over 1000 years old.

Like a temporary boost, may work looking at it that way.

 

 

[+Harrycrapper]

Had Rashek had his metal minds removed when he was say 150 years old, he would have had a bit of time to recover them. But the older he got, the faster that bounce back occurs and it doesn't even need to fully bounce back to kill him, just to a point where the human body is too old. On a tangent, I'm imagining Rashek screwing up the first time he compunded Atium and accidentally turning himself into a baby. It could be a movie called "Three Steel Inquisitors and a Baby."

Edited August 4, 2019 by Harrycrapper

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah the gold vs atium thing seems a bit odd, wounds don't re-appear when you stop tapping gold. But the difference is that being healed is a "stable" state (your physical form is aligned with your spiritual) while being unnaturally young is not.

If TLR had found a way to change his spiritual age things would have been different.

[Chiberty]

8 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Yeah the gold vs atium thing seems a bit odd, wounds don't re-appear when you stop tapping gold. But the difference is that being healed is a "stable" state (your physical form is aligned with your spiritual) while being unnaturally young is not.

If TLR had found a way to change his spiritual age things would have been different.

The difference between gold vs atium storing is that atium stores youthfulness, while gold stores your rate of healing. 

Quote

If Wayne spent some time being sickly and weak--his body healing itself much more slowly than normal--he could store up the health and healing ability in a metalmind. Then, when he tapped it, he healed at a greatly increased rate.

So you still "snap back" to a normal state after you stop tapping either of these. When you stop tapping atium, you return to your normal age, and when you stop tapping gold, you return to your normal rate of healing. (Although of course the unnatural healing rate of gold allows some stuff to heal that your body wouldn't normally be able to.)

SA: 

Spoiler

Questioner

If a Shardblade was put through Wayne's eye, would he able to use his ability to [heal the wound]?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, he should be able to heal that.

Oathbringer Leeds signing (Dec. 1, 2017)

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by ChickenLiberty

[cometaryorbit]

Well, yes mostly, though I think Feruchemical gold Health is a bit more than just rate of healing. It follows the general Cosmere rules about healing, which means it's tied to your Cognitive/Spiritual self.  That's why it can regrow limbs and such, yet Era 1 Feruchemists stayed eunuchs.