Snipexe
What would happen if Nightblood was swung at a gold compounder?
Brandon Sanderson
What do you think would happen?
Snipexe
They would survive. Maybe.
Brandon Sanderson
Hmmm, I will RAFO it.
Found 98 entries in 0.148 seconds.
What would happen if Nightblood was swung at a gold compounder?
What do you think would happen?
They would survive. Maybe.
Hmmm, I will RAFO it.
When either Rashek or a Twinborn like Miles, how does he fuel his metalminds? Does he have to actually burn the gold in order to fuel them? Because, I feel like there's a paragraph in here where you kind of explained it, but I feel like you didn't actually say that you had to burn more gold in order to fill a metalmind. Is that how that works?
Yes. You can cross the streams and use one to power the other. But you are using the metal to power your Feruchemy instead of your own-- You're using, basically, the power that's coming through the metal...
So you do have to be burning one the whole time? Sounds good, good to know. So you could just infinitely fill it, basically? As you burn, you just use it to fill it and it just gets-- and that's where that comes from?
Yep. You are burning a metalmind that you've already filled, right? That's the key there. You fill a metalmind, then you burn that, and what that does is it keys the metalmind to the Feruchemy instead. Which normally no one can do because you could-
You can't do both.
Yeah. But if you can do both, you fill a metalmind, you burn that metalmind. What comes out of it is Feruchemical power instead, and you then are filling the metalmind with more.
So Allomancy is fueled by the power of the Shard. So what you're doing is you're powering your Feruchemy with the power of the Shard, instead of your own body. Using their Investiture instead of yours. Which is very dangerous.
Seeing that Vin and Kelsier was able to absorb Preservation's power due to Connection, is it theoretically possible for a duralumin Compounder to compound Connection so much to the point where they could draw in the mists and 'absorb' some of Harmony's power?
RAFO
Irich had that degenerative disease. If the Set still had Miles available, could he have cured Irich's disease by giving him Compounded health with a primer cube?
This requires more steps than it would appear, but this is the sort of thing people will trying very hard to figure out in coming novels.
1) What is the name for a Tineye/Archivist Twinborn?
2) How would copper compounding work for a double copper Twinborn? Would you relive the memories stored in the burned copperminds extra vividly?
1) I'm not ready to open the floodgates for giving names to each twinborn combination yet. So RAFO.
2) Another RAFO here. I'll delve into these ideas when/if I do this combination in a book series.
Can a person compounding Luck defeat a Mistborn burning atium?
*Hesitantly* Yes. That is theoretically possible. I would say the emphasis on, "Could there?" But it is plausible that that could get around it.
So if a steel compounder became an Edgedancer...
Oh, here we go. [Audience laughs]
If a steel compounder became an Edgedancer, how fast could they go?
[Dramatic sigh] They could go quite fast. They are not going to ever reach superhero levels of bending reality for speed. So, I will say quick, but not that quick. We aren't outracing an atom bomb, as the Flash periodically does.
If you attempted to use Hemalurgy on a gold compounder, would they survive?
I'll RAFO that. There are certain things...follow the lead of the books as they explain this more and more. It's an excellent question that you should be asking, but I'm not going to answer right now.
Are we going to see compounding of aluminum?
You'll get a RAFO.
And finally, whether a duralumin compounder could break into a kandra?
Um... yes, possible, yeah.
We know that compounding, if you do it too much, it has permanent effects on a person.
Yeah.
Compounding for extending stretches, can it have some sort of effect similar to pewter drag, depending on the metal?
Yeah. I could say, I would say yes to that.
Let's say Lift received two Hemalurgic spikes: one for Allomantic bendalloy and one for Feruchemical bendalloy. Then she eats a bunch of pancakes, stores the nutrition in a piece of bendalloy, burns it to compound nutrition. Can that nutrition be turned into Stormlight?
Yeah. Yeah, but remember she didn't have to be-- so basically what that-- Is just a really complicated way for her to turn Allomantic Investiture-- so that it can allocate Allomantic Investiture into Stormlight. That would be a complex method of doing that. Just transferring one type of Investiture into another. It's just basically drawing from Ruin and she is then turning it into Stormlight-ish? It's a complicated thing, but that's basically what happens, just really crazy.
Okay, so-- but it is the same sort of thing, right? *hesitant nod from Brandon* And--
I hope that eventually in the cosmere they will find easier ways than that.
So as I was rereading Mistborn, I realized something that I hadn't deemed important before. Assuming that Rashek doled out the original Allomancy beads to create the first Mistborn, who did he give them to? Obviously, he couldn't give them to his fellow packmen because then they would have the same compounding abilities as him. Additionally, it stands to reason that he would not have given the beads to any of Alendi's entourage because of his deep-seated hatred for all things Khlenni. All in all, I'm just confused about the actual origins of the noble houses.
I actually intended to dig into this in the video game--which happened several hundred years after the event, but which would talk about the origins of the houses and things like that. It's possible we'll still do this some day.
Did you end up doing a lot of writing for the game before it got cancelled?
Depending on how much there is, it seems like handing it to Crafty for them to make a RPG module could make sense.
No, I didn't--but I had a lot of ideas.
My current goal is to hand it over to Ben (who does a lot of the artwork for Stormlight Archive) and see if we can turn it into a graphic novel. (Note that we wouldn't start on this until White Sand is done, though, as I don't want to have TOO many projects in the works at once.)
...At some point in the novel, there is a character who gets a certain, shall we say, powerup that falls in-line with many things that he, or she, already has. Is there, from an Investiture standpoint, is there a Compounding effect?
Yes, there will be. *laughter* If we're talking about the same individual.
If a nicrosil Ferring and Misting Twinborn burned a mountain of nicrosil, would he become Harmony?
A mountain?
Yeah, like, he burned literally tons--
No, he would not. It wouldn't work that way.
What abilities, if any, does a double aluminum Twinborn have?
RAFO.
We have a Nicroburst Twinborn, who burns his old stored metal. What happens?
RAFO.
I love, love Brandon Sanderson but I feel like every time he needs a "magic word" he just takes two regular words and jams them together.
Dreamshard, Shardblade, Shardplate, Lightweaving, Mistborn, Coinshot, Pewterarm, Coppercloud, Surgebinder, Soulcaster, etc etc etc
Sorry u/Mistborn I still love you
It's done intentionally. Let's look at our options.
I can create all-out fantasy words for terms like this. (Lait or crem from Stormlight are examples.) Problem is, the more you do this, the more you pile a difficult linguistics on top of a reader. The more words like this they have to learn, the more difficult it is to get into a story. If you were doing it, perhaps you'd go this direction. I feel that overloading on these terms is dangerous. Already, the main reason new readers put down my books is that they feel overwhelmed by the worldbuilding.
So we have the second option. Use a latin, germatic, or greek root and create a word that FEELS right, has some mental connection for the reader, but which isn't a real word. Allomancy/Feruchemy/Hemalurgy. Veristitalian. To a lesser extent, Elantris.
This so called "Harry Potter Spells" method gives some familiarity to the naming, makes them stick a little better in people's heads, which makes the books a little easier to get into. But they're also distracting to some readers who say, "Wait. There's no Latin in this world, so where did Latin root words come from?" And for others (particularly in translation) those roots mean nothing, and so these all end up lumped into the first group.
The final method is the pure Germanic method--creating compound words. It works in English very well because of our Germanic roots--and is one of the main ways (other than turning nouns into verbs or the other direction) that we create new words. Supermarket. Masterpiece. Newspaper. Thunderstorm. Footprint. Firework. Heartbeat. Yourself. None of those look odd to you because they are words that are "meant" to go together in your head.
I use some of batch one, some of batch two, but I do favor batch three--it does what I want it to. Works in the language, has an "otherworld" feel but is also very quickly understood by someone new to the series. There are arguments for all three methods, however.
You can also just go the route of using an English word despite it clearly not being accurate.
"He tied a ribbon around his horse's third antennae, and patted its chitinous flank."
Agreed. Re-contextualizing English words can work too--I find it particularly useful to do what I mentioned above. Take a verb and make it a noun or vice versa. Or use a verb in a way that you normally don't. (Awakeners or Lashings are examples from my work, though Spice from Dune is one of the grand-daddy examples of this. As it is for a lot of fantastical linguistics.)
Theoretically, what would happen if one were to compound chromium?
As expected, this one is a RAFO.
In your opinion, who would win a fight between a Fullborn (with compounding knowledge of the sixteen base metals) and Nicol Bolas?
I think Bolas is more powerful in his realm and continuity than your average fullborn is--but that said, we haven't seen any with real mastery of all the metals. But I'd say if you take the lore of the two universes into account, Bolas wins.
When you compound copper? What does that do?
That is-- *hands RAFO card* --the first one tonight. The first one I brought. I'm leaving a lot of the compounding questions for me to explore in later books and show you. And part of the reason is because I like the-- I like letting the readers discover new things and saving things back. And partially it's because I do change it as I go. Once in a while I'll write the book and be like, "No, this thing just doesn't work." Or, "Oh this other thing worked way better." So... That's kind of a double RAFO for those reasons.
And how does Copper compounding work? Memories can't really get (indistinct...)
Let's just say that some sorts of compounding are more effective than others.
Are we ever going to see a steel compounder in the Mistborn series? Next to gold compounding I think that would be the most powerful compounding.
I'll space these things out, but you're likely to see everything, eventually.
So harmonium, we have a working theory that the reason it's so volatile is because some of the subatomic particles are associated with Ruin and some of them are [of?] Preservation. Is that true?
Yeah, that's basically what's going on is that it's creating a very unstable metal. Now, it is in the nature of the Cosmere not a compound but an element. But, you could call it a subatomic particle sure. It's very volatile because it is in nature spiritually in contrast with itself. And so though it is a single element rather than a compound, the spiritual nature is not happy as it is, and you can set up in the physical realm, through reactivity things that would just rip it apart and really your energy is not, your energy in that is actually pulling from the Spiritual realm, and so that's why it can be so much more explosive than even the chemistry would account for.
So it's not that the subatomic particles are invested, it's that they have a spiritual identity which causes them to...
Yes.
So then it's not creating an oxide because after the spiritual energy goes away from the explosion then it's a different metal, right?
Right, and...
So you can't find harmonium oxide in the water afterwards.
Right right right right. Because it's not, it's, yeah. But you might be able to find something else, which is really relevant to the Cosmere. And to Scadrial.
So the core elements, the core particles, having extra repulsion causes them to have a nuclear potential.
I would not call it nuclear because it's not the same exact thing. But there is a Cosmere equivalent. To - I mean, you could do nuclear power just the same in the Cosmere, but since we have a third kind of state of matter, right? Matter, energy, Investiture. You have a third axis that, you know, you can release energy from matter, you can release investiture from matter, and things like that. So it's similar, but following its own rules that I have a little more - that are controlled by me, right, that are built on this idea. So once you add *inaudible*, matter now can exist in this third state, you get all sorts of weird things, which one of the things that happens is, you can get an energy release in sort of the same way. A reaction, I'm not going to call it a nuclear reaction, but of the same vein.
What happens when you compound copper?
I’m going to RAFO that for now. I am dealing with the various interactions of the various magics slowly on purpose, to dole out information, so that I have cool stuff to talk about in future books.
Could a Seeker savant tell the difference between regular Allomancy and Compounding?
It is possible!
*Written:* How much compounding would a nicrosil Twinborn would need to do to get a metalmind that is as Invested as Nightblood?
*Reading question:* How much compounding would... *mumbling*
Wow, so much.
*Writes:* Wow so much.
*Written:* A thousand breaths doesn't seem to be that much--the God King has tens of thousands. Would a piece of stone, wood, cloth, or plain metal that has a thousand breaths be as Invested as Nightblood, or is there something more?
No, it needs more. Needs more.
*Writes:* Needs more.
More?
Yeah.
Does that-- is it taking stuff from people it kills?
That's a RAFO, good question.
What happens if you burn duralumin while Compounding?
Duralumin while Compounding. So, what duralumin does is it burns out of all of your metal in one burst. So it doesn't necessarily gain you power, it makes it all happen at the same time. The same thing would happen.
Could you turn into a baby?
Oh, you could totally turn into a baby. That is within the power of using that, doing <health wrong>, yeah you could totally... You'd be really dangerous.
But it wouldn't really do much?
Oh it would have explosive... it does things really fast. That's what it does. Yes you could achieve very powerful sudden effects through that. It'd be scary. Controlling it can be dangerous, regardless of which metal you use.
The compounding trick that the Lord Ruler performed. When you're storing Investiture, are you storing your "Mistborn-ness" or all the powers individually?
All of the powers individually.
Oh okay!
Yeah, the compounding trick. Really what's happening is you're fueling Feruchemy with the power of Allomancy, but you're filtering it through you, and then you're storing it.
So it's not that you're a more powerful mistborn when you've tapped [investiture]
No, good question.
Could a double-nicrosil Twinborn compound Breath or Stormlight?
Uh, you’re getting a RAFO card on that. You're getting SUCH a RAFO card on that!
So White Sand [then Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal?
There is some time-dilation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.
Implying that some are actually immortal? :D
Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.
Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)
Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)
Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)
Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)
Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)
Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)
Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)
And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.
Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.
Heals from wounds, but still ages.
Would Bloodmaker Ferrings exist in this category as well? If not, what about someone Compounding Gold?
Yes, you are correct.
As a Bloodmaker ages, what keeps them from healing the damage and carrying on as a very old, but very healthy person? Do they come to a point where they can't store enough health to stave off the aches, pains, diseases, and other things that come with old age?
This makes sense for traditional Feruchemy as it is end-neutral, so storing health becomes a zero sum game - eventually, you're going to get sick and you're not going to be able to overcome it with your natural healing ability no matter how much you manipulate it with a goldmind.
...Unless you've got a supply of Identity-less goldminds lying around. Would a Bloodmaker with a sufficient source of Identity-less goldminds (or the ability to compound, thus bypassing the end-neutral part of Feruchemy) eventually just die from being too old?
Basically, yes. They can heal their body to match their spiritual ideal, but some things (like some genetic diseases, and age-related illnesses) are seen as part of the ideal. Depends on several factors.
*inaudible*
So, zinc increases the speed of your thought. So, if he did that, he would spend eternity in a moment. And that would be, actually, a bad thing. That would basically make him look brain-dead to everyone else. So, he did occasionally speed up his thought, but that only gets you so far. It doesn't actually... like, speed of thought... you're still the same person. It feels like everything else is slowing down around you, but you don't move any faster. So, anyway. Zinc is not capable of doing that, at least, not in the way that you're hoping for it to be.
How does electrum work?
Electrum can see future shadows only as far in the future as is done with atium in the books. They use it to counter atium in that they see their own future shadow fighting, and if they see their shadow get hit by an attack, they know to avoid that attack, and they change their own future. This compounds the future shadows they see, which makes it practically as effective at countering atium as atium itself.
While the scope of an electrum shadow is very limited, it could be useful in many situations. Like if you were playing tennis, you’d be able to look at your shadow and tell if you managed to hit the ball or not, and adjust accordingly. That would still take a lot of practice to master, but it could be very effective.
I asked him about what the board refers to as "reverse" compounding - i.e., using Feruchemy to enhance Allomancy, rather than the other way around. I wanted to make sure that it was really a thing that exists.
He said that it was.
Is this what the Southern Scadrians have been doing?
It's similar, but not exactly the same.
In The Emperor's Soul… you indicate sort of the opposite of the kandra in regards to… Soulstamps can be made with bone and are considered the lesser, with crystal is the highest. With kandras, if their true bodies are crystal, they are considered weak. Bones are considered strong.
Ehhh… I'm gonna stop you right there, just because that's gonna depend on the kandra, and their age, and how they feel about it. There are plenty of kandra, I think MeLaan would argue against that and be like "No! Non-bone true bodies are way better! Look, I can take my hands off and stab people with the swords underneath. This is super better!" Whereas TenSoon would be like, "That's not…" It's a little bit like when I was in Korea, and people are like "Things made out of concrete just feel worse! It's bad for the kibun to always be surrounded by concrete. Wood is better for you." I… think there are people who would disagree with that, I think there are people who would totally agree with that.
My question. If you were to combine a Soulstamp of a crystal, with a kandra true body of a crystal, would they have additional powers that could compete with regards to Mistborn. If it compounds?
Alright, so if you took the crystal that they're making Soulstamps out of and you gave it to a kandra, and they used it for bones, generally the kandra are not drawing any sort of extra Investiture or power from the bones, they're making-- they're using. That's-- Though TenSoon would argue that I'm wrong. *general laughter*
My friend wants to know how fast steel Compounders could possibly go, can they run up walls or over water like the Flash?
*jokingly* Can they run through time?
Steelrunners can resist a lot things due to the power, like they can withstand the Gs they are out through, but they can't ignore wind resistance and friction. They will burn up if they start running too quickly.
If Feruchemists can store warmth, and you can Compound if you have the dual... Could they harm themselves by drawing too much warmth?
Could they draw it out of their body and therefore kill themselves by freezing themselves?
Either way. Either that, or burn and Compound too much...
This is harder to do that you think it [is], because built into Feruchemy is the natural body's resistance to the things you're doing, but it is possible.
We saw with Miles what it was like if you Compounded gold. I was wondering what it would be like if you tried Compounding tin.
So Compounding with tin?
Just what it would be like the experience...
Ehhh… I’ll go ahead and I'm going to RAFO that. Because I want to write it out and see how it looks on the page.
When you are burning a Compounded metal are you getting the metal’s effect and the stored power? Can you explain, I’m unclear on the Compounding.
Compounding is a way to hack the magic system so you can get a Feruchemical attribute out of-- basically powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. If that makes sense.
So you’re not actually burning the metalmind?
Kind of? There’s a big explanation on Reddit, if you send me an email I can link you to it, that steps you through exactly, easier than explaining it here
Hoid has said that what he does, when he heals or comes back to life or whatever, heals the soul
Yes.
But Hemalurgy is like ripping off a piece of the soul. Could he heal that?
It is possible. Well, his particular brand of healing is very Spiritual Realm based. And so, it would-- he could. Not all brands of healing are capable. It depends on what's happening, and things like that. But yes, he would. Most Shardbearers [Surgebinders?] when they're in the throes of their powers would heal spiritually. *brief pause* Not all of them. Not all healing will do that, though.
Yeah. Because I was thinking that maybe you could spike him multiple times and compound his power.
Yes. Spiking him could do some weird things though. But spiking can do weird things to anyone.
Could a Brass twinborn compound to effectively be a human flamethrower? Also can a compounder store faster?
RAFO!
Is it possible to Compound your Spiritual Connection to a location on a planet while storing your Spiritual Connection to all other locations on the planet to kind of pull yourself through the Spiritual Realm to that location?
That's not how that would work. Parts of what you say are possible, but the teleportation aspect wouldn't actually do anything.
Was Hoid trying to Compound his Spiritual location in the scene you added in the 10th Anniversary [Elantris]? Was he trying to Compound Connection to that location to try to become Elantrian?
...So at that point chronologically he was not an Allomancer.
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.
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.
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.
So... CS question here, I'm seeing identity as essentially a 'encryption' on the metalmind - the spike has the decryption key to existing metalminds, but when you encrypt a new one you use your personal encryption key with the spike's hardware, so you still have compounding access to the metalminds even after removing the spike.
Is it possible for there to be a 'key collision' with Identity? Two people just randomly end up making compatible metalminds, because the pieces of their Identities that the magic looks like happen to be the same.
This would be about as likely as two unrelated people ending up with the exact same genetic sequence.
But, so far as I understand, that WOULD be possible.
So identical twins could share metalminds ?
:) RAFO.
Who would win in a game of chance: Mat, a chromium compounder, or Hoid?
In these kinds of questions, more and more I give "points" to the character with the most established narrative, set of powers, and momentum. So Mat wins hands down. In twenty years, maybe not. But right now Mat.
If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see goldshadows for a time and then obtain Compounded health when reaching the charged part of the bead? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, no gold shadows, but at a very low rate since only little health was loaded in it? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, but at a standard rate the user would always get when compounding?
He'd hack the system to deliver health for a short time instead of doing what it was supposed to do, but only until the small portion of gold Invested with his Investiture ran out.
Compounding requires practice, according to The Hero of Age's annotations. And yet, it's apparently as easy as burning a metalmind. What was going on that meant the Inquisitors couldn't figure out how to do it (despite Ruin likely knowing how and undoubtedly wanting them to learn) for over a year? What skill did they need to practice doing, exactly?
And what happened while they were practicing burning metalminds without successfully Compounding? Did they get an Allomantic effect?
What I think I was getting at in the annotations was a cosmere magic rule that, perhaps, I hadn't completely refined yet. This is the idea that INTENTION is vitally important to the workings of most cosmere magics.
You can learn to burn metals instinctively over time, but it does take time--time for your body to figure out what it's doing. If you have instruction and guidance, you can pick it up in an evening, like Vin did. Same goes for most of the magics. This ties into Awakening, with the idea that you have to form a command.
During Warbreaker was where I really refined this aspect of the magic. Logically, since the beginning of the cosmere, I've wanted all three Realms to be important to the way the magics worked. The "Practice" therefore for compounding is mental practice--a barrier to overcome in understanding what is happening, and what it will do to you.
If you already know all of these things by having it explained to you, that barrier is far less high. I think that was what I was talking about in the Annotations, without really having the idea specified yet--though I'd have to look back at the annotation and re-read it to say for certain.
Since burning Feruchemically charged metal seems to require a choice between getting the Allomantic or Feruchemical property (e.g., Miles only sees gold ghosts when he wants to, not as a side effect of compounded healing), is there any special advantage to compounding pewter and tin, where the Allomantic and Feruchemical use is the same? Is their compounding even stronger than normal compounding because you can tap both power sources simultaneously, or maybe because Preservation is particularly attuned to providing those powers through those metals?
Remember that compounding is a "hack" of the magic. You're looking to fool the magics, and use one to power the other. The value in it is that you can use Allomantic power to fuel Feruchemy. It's like hooking a power cord up to a device that, up to that point, you'd powered by using a hand crank.
Chapter Fifteen
Miles talks with Suit, gets two minders, then burns gold to see two versions of himself
One curiosity of dealing only with Mistings, rather than full Mistborn, was what to do with the less powerful metals. Certainly a Pewterarm or a Tineye can be useful. We've seen them in the series do plenty of interesting things.
But what about a person who can burn only gold? I think there's just one place in the entire first trilogy where someone does it, the time Vin burns it in the first book. (I may have put a second time in; I don't recall.) Gold, as a power, was placed into the schematics to give a clue as to what the Eleventh Metal was. Beyond that, I wanted some of the powers of Allomancy to be more metaphysical, more thoughtful, and less about combat.
I'd already decided that Miles would be a Gold Compounder, capable of the Lord Ruler's healing. That meant he had to be a gold Misting. What would one do, with this power? Ignore it? Was there a way to use it? His nature as a gold Misting is a large part of why Miles is such a thoughtful, introspective person. He is not a good man, but he is a self-reflecting one.
There's more going on here, of course. Pay attention to the name he mentions: Trell. This is one of the gods from the ancient religions Sazed talked about. You might think that the spikes in Miles will let Sazed influence him directly, and they would—except that Sazed has taken a complete "free will is needed" perspective on life. He won't let himself take control of people directly unless they've "given themselves" to him, as most of the kandra have at this point. Even then, he usually only nudges.
But there is something odd going on with Miles.
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.
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.)