How did The Lord Ruler die?

[GoWibble]

So here is a description of what I think the Compounding powers should do (keep in mind that The Lord Ruler didn't have access to all of these)

So with that, how did The Lord Ruler die?

     He could just fill himself full of metal (using bendalloy for actual nutrition)(doesn't work, wasn't found yet) and use Gold to heal from everything. He could keep the metals 'in himself' by somehow compounding allomancy. He could move super fast and use an immense weight to out Push (or Pull) anyone. He could think faster than everyone else at the time, stay awake forever, and forget his super-powerful soothing, he could just make everyone trust him more using Connection! So how did he die?

I can only assume that Preservation’s / Ruin’s influence helped, but Preservation was mostly opposed to it in MB SH, and Ruin doesn’t have the mists like Preservation does, which Vin uses.

Please explain. 

[Chiberty]

8 minutes ago, GoWibble said:

So here is a description of what I think the Compounding powers should do (keep in mind that The Lord Ruler didn't have access to all of these)

So with that, how did The Lord Ruler die?

     He could just fill himself full of metal (using bendalloy for actual nutrition)(doesn't work, wasn't found yet) and use Gold to heal from everything. He could keep the metals 'in himself' by somehow compounding allomancy. He could move super fast and use an immense weight to out Push (or Pull) anyone. He could think faster than everyone else at the time, stay awake forever, and forget his super-powerful soothing, he could just make everyone trust him more using Connection! So how did he die?

I can only assume that Preservation’s / Ruin’s influence helped, but Preservation was mostly opposed to it in MB SH, and Ruin doesn’t have the mists like Preservation does, which Vin uses.

Please explain. 

 

1.  Vin used the mists, which allowed her to push off his atium bracers, reverting him back to his natural state: immensely old and frail, which gold can't heal.
2. TLR was arrogant. He assumed it was impossible for anyone to kill him, so he didn't try to kill Vin. If he had tried, he would have won immediately, like you said.

[Enter a username]

In addition to his disadvantages, he was a tyrant. By giving the skaa no rights whatsoever, he not only gave them reason to form a revolution, but also gave them the tools (Allomancy) to succeed. Had he ruled more peacefully and fairly, he wouldn't have even needed to face this situation.

[Raphaborn]

Brandon Sanderson

The Lord Ruler died because he had filled his bracers with a large amount of youthfulness, and had to keep drawing it out to stay young--as his soul knew how hold it was, and his body kept trying to 'bounce back' to its perceived age. Compounding is how he gained enough extra youthfulness to pull this off.

Phantine

Actually, I have a question about the 'bouncing-back'.

Is the 'bounce back force' actually what's stored in a metalmind?

For instance, when storing atium a feruchemist ruins his body to make himself old, and then his metalmind 'catches' the force the soul puts out as it tries to restore his true, younger age?

So you create metalminds by seesawing a ruining and a preserving impulse together.

Brandon Sanderson

The bounce back is caused by the relationship between the three realms of the cosmere. What you're saying isn't terribly far off, but at the same time, ignores some underpinning fundamentals of how it all works.

In the cosmere, your soul is basically an idealized version of yourself--and is a constant force pushing your body to match it. Your perceptions are the filter through which this happens, however, and many of the magics can facilitate in interesting ways.

General Reddit 2016 (Jan. 2, 2016)

and

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days (magnification by Compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? I'm assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by Compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the Lord Ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth (and wouldn't have died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw Investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their Cognitive aspect as well, and the Cognitive aspect can interfere with the Spiritual aspect trying to make the Physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your Physical self with your Spiritual self--making the Physical regrow. More powerful forms of Investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what Investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the Spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this Compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use Compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing Connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

General Reddit 2015 (Nov. 20, 2015)

[Honorless]

After understanding the strength of Compounders in era 2, a Fullborn like the Lord Ruler dying like that does seem anti-climactic in retrospect 

What happened was a fluke, partly engineered by both Ruin (who wanted to be free, via his whisperings to those pierced by metal, both TLR & Vin) & Preservation (who wanted Vin to be their successor, via the Mists)

Edited June 13, 2020 by R J