TLR immortality

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

Okay, so I know that compounding atium increases youthfulness. After a certain point, since your spirit knows how old you are supposed to be, you drop dead anyway. Being that that is the case, how did TLR stay alive for so long? Shouldn't he have dropped dead?

(my theory: maybe his resonance affected his age in some weird way, or compounding investiture made a difference. Speaking of which, does burning duralumin only affect feruchemy if you are compounding?)

[Quantus]

Technically he did drop dead, as soon as he stopped actively tapping his Youth stores.  The answer is pretty simple: He hadnt yet reached that breaking point.  We know from WOB that there are diminishing returns and that eventually it becomes nonviable, but we have no idea how long that might actually take. By Cosmere standards LTR was still relatively young at 1000 years or so.   

Personally I suspect Aitum is intended to carry Marsh all the way to Mistborn Era 4 at the very least, though I doubt that's going to be another full 1000 year

[Weltall]

Yeah, the entire point of Rashek constantly tapping stored youth was to delay the Spiritual pushback that would have (and eventually did) kill him. This is why Vin ripping his bracers away did him in. He needed to tap more and more youth to avoid the pushback and eventually it would have been more than he could manage but he wasn't there yet.

Quote

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.

General Reddit 2015 (Nov. 20, 2015)

Quote

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.

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Weltall

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

11 hours ago, Quantus said:

Personally I suspect Aitum is intended to carry Marsh all the way to Mistborn Era 4 at the very least, though I doubt that's going to be another full 1000 year

except there is none.

[StanLemon]

27 minutes ago, Hoid the Drifter said:

except there is none.

Marsh has the Atium that KanPaar was trying to sell. It was never specified how much that was

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Hoid the Drifter said:

except there is none.

The fact that Marsh is still running around three hundred years after the events of Hero of Ages should have clued you in that yes, he did have some.

Adding one of the relevant WoBs to reinforce StanLemon's post, note how old it is too.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Marsh is alive. I changed this from when I talked to [Peter]. I realized some things about his use of Allomancy that would allow him to survive. Actually, he is immortal. He can pull off the same Allomancy/Feruchemy trick that the Lord Ruler did. (And he knows it too, since he was there when Sazed explained how it was done in Book One.) He's actually the only living person who actually knows this trick for certain. (Though there's a chance that Spook, Ham and Breeze heard about it from Vin and the others.) So yes, if there were another series, Marsh would make an appearance.

Douglas

I thought that trick required atium and involved burning the atium. With all the atium gone and Sazed not making any more, it would therefore not be possible even for a full mistborn/feruchemist. Am I wrong, is Sazed providing atium specifically for Marsh to allow a friend and valuable servant to survive, or what?

Brandon Sanderson

Marsh has the bag of atium that KanPaar sent to be sold, as well as several nuggets in his stomach. So, I guess 'immortal' is the wrong phrase. He's got the only remaining atium in the world and can keep himself around for a long, long while—but he WILL eventually run out. Unless Sazed does something.

Footnote: Brandon had earlier told Peter that in his mind, Marsh was dead having been "burned out by the sun"
Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

Other WoBs mention that even a single bead of atium can be used to reverse your age all the way back to childhood if you know how to use it properly.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Weltall

[Friendshipspren]

I think he was reaching the breaking point with not enough gain to keep him young. Like he believed he could tap the WoA again and reverse the damage or something. 

On 8/20/2020 at 10:09 AM, Hoid the Drifter said:

except there is none.

Not exactly , there might have been a few other pouches of atium that other kandra had that got lost in the catecendre. 

Harmony might make an exception for marsh and create some atium for him with great effort. Marsh is afterall extremely useful and sazeds oldest and perhaps only Friend. 

[cometaryorbit]

I don't think TLR was anywhere close to the upper limit - wouldn't that be when you couldn't Compound atium fast enough to stave off aging?

So since TLR doesn't seem to have been using up a significant fraction of the Final Empire's atium production, I don't think he was nearly out of time.

(I have a feeling he'd probably run out of atium before he physically couldn't eat beads fast enough... the production rate is probably not that high. Hundreds, maybe at most a few thousand beads a week? How many prisoners were at the Pits of Hathsin?)

[Chinkoln]

I think that TLR knew of this upper bound. He learned of it when he touched the power at the well, and he understood what it would do and how long it would last. He knew it wouldn’t eventually be not enough, but it would be enough for The Well of Ascension to refill. When he got that power again he could have done any number of things to make himself immortal and all powerful.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Chinkoln

[cometaryorbit]

Oh, I agree that if TLR had gotten a chance to use the Well again, he'd have made himself "inherently" ageless; why wouldn't he? If he'd been able to fix that weakness, he would have been essentially impossible to kill, especially with Final Empire-level technology.

(He presumably didn't understand the issues when he first used the Well; he didn't become an Allomancer at all until he used the Well.)

But I don't think he was particularly close to running out of time, either.

[+robardin]

On 8/23/2020 at 6:01 PM, cometaryorbit said:

Oh, I agree that if TLR had gotten a chance to use the Well again, he'd have made himself "inherently" ageless; why wouldn't he? If he'd been able to fix that weakness, he would have been essentially impossible to kill, especially with Final Empire-level technology.

(He presumably didn't understand the issues when he first used the Well; he didn't become an Allomancer at all until he used the Well.)

But I don't think he was particularly close to running out of time, either.

We know that Ruin whispered to him while he was Temporarily Ascended, "guiding him to an understanding of hemalurgy" and creating Inquisitors, koloss, and kandra (or blueprinting for their later creation - spikes not being handy just yet). Since part of creating Inquisitors meant understanding Allomancy (and How To Steal It).

So, my head-canon is that Ruin also led him to understanding Compounding with his innate Feruchemy, and the Allomantic and Feruchemical use of atium (a metal that Rashek likely knew nothing at all about before). All you need to do is make yourself an Allomancer as well as Feruchemist, and you can prolong your youth indefiinitely... And you can get atium here. Well, as long as you collect atium, and an have/use increasing amount of it. Heh heh heh.

Ultimately, that's what Ruin would have wanted the most, right? To make the Lord Ruler of the World someone obsessed with gathering and caching atium, for the day he eventually escaped the Well?

Too bad for him Rashek didn't fall for that completely. He did obsess over collecting and caching as much of the world's atium supply as possible, but to hide it from Ruin.

Edited August 27, 2020 by robardin

[Eternal Khol]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

So, my head-canon is that Ruin also led him to understanding Compounding with his innate Feruchemy, and the Allomantic and Feruchemical use of atium

I dont think Ruin would need to do much of anything 

Rashek would gain an innate understanding of the metallic arts and how they function/interact upon ascending.

 

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-Four - Part One

Subtlety with the Power

The Lord Ruler created koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors during his time holding the power. This took some practice and experimentation, however. As has been explained, holding the power granted some intuitive understanding of how to use it. For instance, he knew how to make Hemalurgic creatures—but he wasn't practiced enough with the specifics at first to know exactly what he wanted to make or what the results of his experimentations would be.

In a similar way, he knew that he could move a planet—and did. With practice, he could have figured out how to shove the planet the right way to place it correctly in orbit. Unfortunately, you can't really experiment with moving a planet around without causing a whole lot of damage.

And so, he could do something as subtle as create three new races—and, with that practice in biology, redesign the world's plants and animals slightly—but could be so far off in the way he shoved the planet about the first time.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Dec. 4, 2009)

 

similarly, he should also know the workings of Allomancy and Feruchemy, but should understand them better because they are more limited in what they do. 

I.E.  

A Atium = future sight
F Atium = store age  
H Atium =  steals any power(can be placed in hundreds of bind points and not knowing the results until you actually practice the art) = information overload

 

if vin could figure out compounding, im sure an Ascended Rashek would know

Edited August 27, 2020 by Eternal Khol

[Dunkum]

On 8/23/2020 at 6:28 AM, cometaryorbit said:

I don't think TLR was anywhere close to the upper limit - wouldn't that be when you couldn't Compound atium fast enough to stave off aging?

that would be my assupmtion, yea, or the point where you need so much atium to tap from that it becomes impractical.  Or possibly the point where the waste investiture from tapping so much at once is too high to sustain, though thats really just a special case of the first one.  e.g tapping 10 years of youth for 1 day should take more investiture than tappign 1 year of youth for 10 days - there's an added price for tapping a lot at once, and depending on how that additional cost scales you could theoretically end up spendign more of the stored investiture on that than on actually reducing age.

[Koloss17]

So can he store the newfound compounded age into another atiummind, and then consume that? That way, the only limitation is the amount of metals he has and the max capacity of a metalmind, if that exists. 

[+Bzhydack]

35 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

So can he store the newfound compounded age into another atiummind, and then consume that? That way, the only limitation is the amount of metals he has and the max capacity of a metalmind, if that exists. 

Of course it exists, in other case why Feruchemists are wearing big bracelets? If metalmind was unlimited it will be enough to wear two small earings, and this will be enough. Or swallow one little piece of metal and charge it.

And if I remember correctly, when Sazed came to rescue Vin, he swallow few his Metalminds and say directly, that he now have relativly small charge, compare to his normal bracelets.

But return to topic. Atium stores age. To be young, every second you taping atiummind, you need to tap more and more. Allomancy can work only in limited speed. So someone who compound Atium will need more and more youth, and in some point will need more than he is able to create via compounding, even if he will be flaring Atiumminds constantly.

[Dunkum]

12 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Of course it exists, in other case why Feruchemists are wearing big bracelets? If metalmind was unlimited it will be enough to wear two small earings, and this will be enough. Or swallow one little piece of metal and charge it.

And if I remember correctly, when Sazed came to rescue Vin, he swallow few his Metalminds and say directly, that he now have relativly small charge, compare to his normal bracelets.

But return to topic. Atium stores age. To be young, every second you taping atiummind, you need to tap more and more. Allomancy can work only in limited speed. So someone who compound Atium will need more and more youth, and in some point will need more than he is able to create via compounding, even if he will be flaring Atiumminds constantly.

exactly, yea, the amount of age you need to tap to stay the same age increases as years pass.  the maximum amount of age you can get from burning a metalmind is constant (age stored per gram of metal times speed of burning an atiummind in grams per second = amount of age per second that you can obtain from compounding), though likely pretty high.  you can probably tap more than this amount at once from a metalmind if you have it stored, and early on in the process you can store tons of it because you don't need nearly as much at the beginning, so you can build up a reserve, but that increase in needed investiture is going to kick in eventually and at some point you'd have to be tapping more from your metalminds than you get from compounding, at which point your reserve will begin to deplete

[+robardin]

22 hours ago, Eternal Khol said:

I dont think Ruin would need to do much of anything 

Rashek would gain an innate understanding of the metallic arts and how they function/interact upon ascending.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-Four - Part One

Subtlety with the Power

The Lord Ruler created koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors during his time holding the power. This took some practice and experimentation, however. As has been explained, holding the power granted some intuitive understanding of how to use it. For instance, he knew how to make Hemalurgic creatures—but he wasn't practiced enough with the specifics at first to know exactly what he wanted to make or what the results of his experimentations would be.

In a similar way, he knew that he could move a planet—and did. With practice, he could have figured out how to shove the planet the right way to place it correctly in orbit. Unfortunately, you can't really experiment with moving a planet around without causing a whole lot of damage.

And so, he could do something as subtle as create three new races—and, with that practice in biology, redesign the world's plants and animals slightly—but could be so far off in the way he shoved the planet about the first time.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Dec. 4, 2009)

Holding the power meant he could gain understanding of all the Metallic Arts - including hemalurgy - but it wouldn't be automatic. It's not like, "Hey, I just Ascended, and now I KNOW IT ALL!"

Kelsier held the power of Preservation for longer than Rashek did, as he was fully Ascended where Rashek only held it briefly; and yet Kelsier says to Spook at the end of Secret History that he regretted not delving into hemalurgy in that time. "My mind expanded, and I learned some things. My focus wasn't on these spikes; I think I could have worked it all out, if it had been. I still learned enough to be dangerous..."

That's basically what happened with Rashek: he ran out of time to "work it all out". His primary focus while holding the power was to fix the problem with the Deepness, the mists that were choking all agriculture, and then to fix the fix, and then to fix the fix to his fix, and so on. When he got around to making sure he was DOMINANT, that's when Ruin would have nudged him to learn and to use certain aspects of the Metallic Arts, which would ultimately further his (Ruin's) purposes more than Rashek's. That required some "practice and experimentation", and sure while Ascended time had a lot less meaning, but not NO meaning.

We know this because in Hero of Ages Ch. 76, after Vin has Ascended but finds that she and Ruin are almost exactly balanced and cancel each other out in terms of directly affecting the world, she realizes that the Inquisitors and koloss pawns Ruin could use were a result of Ruin's tricking Rashek long ago:

Quote

Her ignorance was related to experience. Ruin had such a head start on her. He had created for himself servants who could act without his direction, and so she could not block them.

She saw his planning manifest in the world. She saw him subtly influencing the Lord Ruler a thousand years ago. Even while Rashek held the power of Preservation, Ruin had whispered in his ear, directing him toward an understanding of Hemalurgy. And Rashek had obeyed without realizing it, creating minions - armies - for Ruin to take when the time was right.

Leading him on with an understanding of Compounding (gain Allomancy and make infinite Feruchemical metalminds, forever!) and the Feruchemical property of atium (and use that be forever young!), a metal that wasn't known/used pre-Final Empire, was what I imagine Ruin "whispered" to Rashek. And then of course, the idea of using lerasium beads to attract allies by making them Mistborn was a close second.

In his nearly thousand year reign as a Sliver of Infinity Rashek continued to experiment with hemalurgy, but never figured out how to create any more servants than koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors, the understanding he gained while Ascended.

Had he taken the power at the Well a second time, I'm sure he would have LEARNED IT ALL this time around. And probably to gain immortality in a way that didn't require an exponential spiritual debt. But he never got the chance.

[HSuperLee]

Going back to  the original question here, atium doesn't just provide a cosmetic change, it actually does make you younger. Yes, a person's spiritual aspect knows how old they should be, but it is temporarily suspended by the use of atium. If you have an infinite metalmind, you theoretically could stave off the effects forever. The issue comes in with this math:

Say you're 40 and you want to be 20 again. Well, you draw from your supply of compounded atium and reverse your age 20 years. Easy enough considering atium seems to be very efficient with storing and tapping. 10 years later you're now 50, but you still want to be 20. Well, now rather than 20 years, you need to draw out 30. Again, not an issue, atium is still very efficient with how much you can tap. Move this forward to where you're now over 1000. To be young you need to tap centuries worth of youth. But, if you have a large enough metalmind, no big deal. But what happens when that metalmind is full? suddenly you have to add another one, then another one, then another one. Because you have to be drawing that youth 24/7, you need more and more metalminds to feed it. Think of it like gas powering an engine. A car's tank lasts a long time when you're going at 20 mph, but a much shorter time at 80. If you wanted to keep going though, you can just add another tank.

By this logic, Rashek probably wasn't anywhere near his upper bounds, because he still only wore one (maybe two) metalmind(s). Now yes, there's the argument that maybe he couldn't compound fast enough to create the youth he needed, but I think that's drastically overestimating he amount of youth he needed. Yes, he theoretically needed 1,000 years per year of youth 24/7, but compounding is explicitly broken, as we see later in mistborn with some insane person that tapped speed a few hundred times to go super sonic. 

[Dunkum]

1 minute ago, HSuperLee said:

Going back to  the original question here, atium doesn't just provide a cosmetic change, it actually does make you younger. Yes, a person's spiritual aspect knows how old they should be, but it is temporarily suspended by the use of atium. If you have an infinite metalmind, you theoretically could stave off the effects forever. The issue comes in with this math:

Say you're 40 and you want to be 20 again. Well, you draw from your supply of compounded atium and reverse your age 20 years. Easy enough considering atium seems to be very efficient with storing and tapping. 10 years later you're now 50, but you still want to be 20. Well, now rather than 20 years, you need to draw out 30. Again, not an issue, atium is still very efficient with how much you can tap. Move this forward to where you're now over 1000. To be young you need to tap centuries worth of youth. But, if you have a large enough metalmind, no big deal. But what happens when that metalmind is full? suddenly you have to add another one, then another one, then another one. Because you have to be drawing that youth 24/7, you need more and more metalminds to feed it. Think of it like gas powering an engine. A car's tank lasts a long time when you're going at 20 mph, but a much shorter time at 80. If you wanted to keep going though, you can just add another tank.

By this logic, Rashek probably wasn't anywhere near his upper bounds, because he still only wore one (maybe two) metalmind(s). Now yes, there's the argument that maybe he couldn't compound fast enough to create the youth he needed, but I think that's drastically overestimating he amount of youth he needed. Yes, he theoretically needed 1,000 years per year of youth 24/7, but compounding is explicitly broken, as we see later in mistborn with some insane person that tapped speed a few hundred times to go super sonic. 

yea, I don't think Rashek was anywhere near the limit, just that there is one eventually.

[Eternal Khol]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

It's not like, "Hey, I just Ascended, and now I KNOW IT ALL!"

Never said it was. 
....

but ok.

 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

Leading him on with an understanding of Compounding (gain Allomancy and make infinite Feruchemical metalminds, forever!) and the Feruchemical property of atium (and use that be forever young!)

Again. I dont think ruin would need to whisper any of that to Rashek, it would just come to him.

 

I gurentee you that Preservation(Rashek) would understand his magics after ascension.

He wouldnt just be sitting there like “AlLoManCy? aNd FeRuChemY? wHaTs ThAt?”

then ruin comes along “heY, RaShEk. tRy To BuRn YoUr MeTaLMiNdS uSinG AllOmAnCy”

There were so many people who figured out Compounding on their own, i don’t understand why you dont think god-like Rashek, capable of the same thing?

Edited August 28, 2020 by Eternal Khol

[+robardin]

25 minutes ago, Eternal Khol said:

Never said it was. 
....

but ok.

 

Again. I dont think ruin would need to whisper any of that to Rashek, it would just come to him.

 

I gurentee you that Preservation(Rashek) would understand his magics after ascension.

He wouldnt just be sitting there like “AlLoManCy? aNd FeRuChemY? wHaTs ThAt?”

then ruin comes along “heY, RaShEk. tRy To BuRn YoUr MeTaLMiNdS uSinG AllOmAnCy”

There were so many people who figured out Compounding on their own, i don’t understand why you dont think god-like Rashek, capable of the same thing?

You misunderstand my points, I think.

Using the atium compounding trick is an inefficient way to immortality; Rashek could have used the power of Preservation to become immortal after de-Ascending in a different way, and might have done so given another shot at Ascension when taking up the power a second time.

Ruin whispered to Rashek and "directed him" to using hemalurgy, ultimately to create pawns for his own use after he got free.

Rashek was a selfish and power-hungry guy; as Vin saw what he did with the power after Ascending, Rashek's priority #1 was to "cure all the world's ills" (to stop the Deepness), but a close second was to remake the world with himself on top forever.

Rashek was a Feruchemist but didn't know anything about hemalurgy and allomancy, he had to be told they were A Thing. He could learn a lot about the Metallic Arts in a short amount of time while Ascended, but I don't see why he would have to be "directed" to hemalurgy, and Kelsier not have delved into its mechanics, unless it was a matter of realizing it was worth investing the effort to do so, even after Ascension.

Kelsier of course knew about Allomancy already, but Rashek wouldn't have - so my thinking is, he would have needed nearly as much "direction" towards Allomancy as towards Hemalurgy.

As you put it, he wouldnt just be sitting there like “AlLoManCy? aNd FeRuChemY? wHaTs ThAt?” as if it was ridiculous, but that' is actually exactly the point - he wouldn't even know Allomancy was a thing at all, any more than Ascended Kelsier knew hemalurgy was a thing.

"Nearly" in that Allomancy being "of Preservation" may have been more natural for him to figure out while holding the power of Preservation... But my point is, it still stands to reason that Ruin would want him to be attracted to a form of immortality THAT INVOLVED GATHERING MORE AND MORE ATIUM over time.

Because from Ruin's POV, even more important than having a bunch of Inquisitors and koloss (and eh, kandra - bleargh!) ready to use when he escaped, would be having all the world's atium production having been harvested and collected in a depot somewhere. Which TLR seemed to be spending hundreds of years doing, just like Ruin hoped he would. But WHERE DID RASHEK PUT IT?

I'm not saying that Rashek would not have "figured out" Compounding once he learned about Allomancy - I'm saying Ruin may have "saved him the time" by giving him hints about that very early in his "Ascension Time", the better to leave Rashek time to then play with things that he would think were his own idea. Things like designing and creating hemalurgic races to use as troops / priests / spies, and to move the atium collection location to a spot where he knew where it was and could control it (the Pits of Hathsin) while physically rearranging the continents.

 

EDIT: and one final note: I admit that this is my "head canon" - there is absolutely nothing in Mistborn that supports Rashek being pointed towards Allomancy by Ruin, as a subtle way to get him to use compounding of atium for immortality, as a long game towards Rashek becoming obsessed with gathering atium. I'm saying I like to picture it that way, because it's very much consistent with the way we saw that Ati/Ruin manipulated people and things. And there is nothing contradicting it either.

Edited August 28, 2020 by robardin

[+Oltux72]

20 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

But return to topic. Atium stores age. To be young, every second you taping atiummind, you need to tap more and more. Allomancy can work only in limited speed. So someone who compound Atium will need more and more youth, and in some point will need more than he is able to create via compounding, even if he will be flaring Atiumminds constantly.

Let's assume you start storing at age 20 until you reach 80 and you age yourself to 80 for an average quarter of the time.  You are storing less and less with time. The exact formula is:

Storage = 0.5 * ( Aged to - Starting Age) ^ 2 / Storage fraction

That is 450 years squared. In other words, you can keep yourself at 80 for an additional 30 years. That is for a pure Feruchemist. The years you gain go up only with the square root. So supposing atium has a "compounding factor" of 10, you will be able to squeeze out about 100 years out of your initial metal minds, albeit as a very old person, but healthy if you are Fullborn.
TLR kept himself a young man. Initially this will blow up your requirements, but over the long run it does not matter much. And the atium supply is likelier to be the limit. Your demand goes up with the square of your age, while the tapping rate increases linearly.

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

Point: If he also compounded investiture and always stored connection, he wouldn't have a spiritual connection and he would have increased compounding. Maybe he stayed alive like that...

[Hilfandor]

Could you compound nicrosil to make a massive amount of stored investiture, then convert that investiture to stored youth, so you don't need to burn atium because you are storing pure investiture into an atium metalmind?

[Koloss17]

On 9/11/2020 at 0:41 PM, Hilfandor said:

Could you compound nicrosil to make a massive amount of stored investiture, then convert that investiture to stored youth, so you don't need to burn atium because you are storing pure investiture into an atium metalmind?

We have no canonical idea how nicrosilminds work, so maybe??? What is most likely is that nicrosil stores the ability to use a shard-based ability, sock as allomancy or Feruchemy.