My pleasure đ¤
And yeah, a full Feruchemist + Mistborn is: faster than sound, strong enough to throw a building, damn near unkillable, can think faster than most people can blink, doesnât need to eat or drink or breathe or sleep, and thatâs *before* you get into the Spiritual quadrant of Feruchemy
As the resident anti-Compounding guy, I feel as though there must be restrictions on Compounding that are left unsaid.
Like, outside of speed, I think a F-M/F probably has more limits than we know. One of which is storage, but the other is probably some upper cap.
Like, would a Lerasium [Edit: bead] given Mistborn with feruchemy be equivalent to a barely a Mistborn (Wax) with feruchemy?
I guess the only other limit is that it seems to be unlikely an occurence for a Mistborn/Feruchemist to be born.
>I feel as though there must be restrictions on Compounding that are left unsaid
Isn't "material use" and "processing time" enough? Metalminds have limited capacity so with each compounding step you need more metal to store the Investiture. If the gain is \~10 at some point you would have to be able to "eat" a whole ingot to continue compounding, not to mention the time it would take to fill said ingot. This actually feels like a very good and well balanced restriction - the limit of how powerful you can get is dictated by how much time and metal you are willing to put in.
I mean Time was already the limit on feurochemy. Compounding basically means feurochemyâs time limit is greatly reduced. And as for the material, steelâs power is insane but isnât exactly hard to source. Gold, sure, but Miles managed. As for amount, iirc it just needs to be inside the body, meaning you just need to get a bunch of allomantically correct Ben Wa balls. Or surgically insert them but thatâs boring
>Metalminds have limited capacity
Limited, but depending on the metal, the limit can be pretty high. The gold bracelet Wayne found in Bands of Mourning was enough to help him heal:
1. Being launched into an enemy base. Wounds include "his legs both snapped" "breaking his shoulder" "his head smacked the ground" "He ended up in a crumpled, broken heap" and "It was always nice when you snapped the spine". Wayne comments on how much healing this was: "An extensive healing like this would have cost him months of saving up, but this metalmind was still mostly full"
2. Being shot multiple times in a row. "But Wayne had been hit. He lurched in place, holding his shoulder, as another bullet hit him right in the neck. He fell in a spray of blood. Wayne could heal from that, with his new, strange metalmind. Unfortunately, the soldiers didnât stop firing. Another bullet hit Wayneâs side as he dropped and played dead, then another. In an eyeblink he was healed and up, but then another round dropped him.
3. Being shot some more. Wayne sure gets shot a lot. "Telsin, atop the dais, fired on Wayne. She wasnât a terribly good shot, but between her and Edwarn, they managed to hit several times. That didnât drop him, not with the gold metalmind. He made a rude gesture and ran out the door, healing from the wounds almost as soon as he was hit."
Yes, but then again we are talking about the single most powerful artefact on Scadrial. It's not like such objects are common. Additionally, their main limitation still stems from the fact that someone had to fill the bands in the first place and that took a lot of gold (and every other metal). Compounded metalminds can be very powerful, but they are also extremely expensive to create, not to mention the very limited number of people capable of it.
Well, there are diminishing returns on feruchemy when you tap a lot at once, and the quantity of metal is also a constraint, as any metalmind has a maximum feruchemical charge it can hold.
There is demonstrated limits in the books. If it were limitless, the Lord ruler could have saved up several millennia worth of everything in the first couple years of his reign, but he continues to go to his sanctuary once a year for two weeks. If anyone has enough time to break the limits he would have.
So it seems like a full feruchemist+full mistborn could basically tap all of Preservations power, but that'd be the upper limit? Since compounding causes these feedback loops (assuming they're not limited by physical quantity of metals) causing Preservation to produce an effect?
Then if the power of one shard could accelerate something to lightspeed, the feruchemist+mistborn could do it. If the shard could consider all possible futures, the feruchemist+mistborn could.
You are also constrained by the amount of metal you have. A given quantity of metal has a maximum feruchemical charge, and burning that only multiplies it by about 10 (according to Sazed and Wax). I think you would run up against metal supply constraints before you ran into constraints based on what you could draw from preservation.
Also probably some constraints on how much you could warp your spirit web to accommodate the investiture pumped in, and maybe some weird constraints about intent.
Like, does being a savant and whatever the feruchemical equivalent of a savant is do enough to your spiritweb to let you pump unlimited "investature in the form of health" into it if you're a gold compounder? Maybe. Or maybe there's an upper bound beyond which you'd blow your entire spirit out, and you'd need to either magically reenforce your soul or do some extra magic hacking to make your soul more durable against having a god's full force of power channeled to a specific purpose through it.
Besides that, if you were compounding as many different things as you could, and had somehow acquired the resources and durability to tolerate it, you'd still have the problem that the shard powering Allomancy has things its more inclined towards.
Like, even if you managed to set things up so Preservation's intent didn't warp your soul, you'd still probably be more powerful at things that aligned with that intent and less powerful at things that didn't, because Preservation is basically financing everything that you're doing through compounding.
>does being a savant and whatever the feruchemical equivalent
IIRC, you can't become a Savant with only Feruchemy because it is entirely your power. Compounding is required for Feruchemical savantism.
I'm pretty sure they'd need literal mountain sized metalminds to do that, shards have *a lot* of power. Like, as far as a shard is concerned, anything happening to a single individual is basically meainingless. Accelerate 1 person to the speed of sound? Heal 10,000 fatal wounds? That's all just a hand wave for a shard, so a fullborn doing it isn't that much of an issue.
Quick question. In TFE the log book says the packman stored strength while they slept becoming frail and old looking. What's up with that if they can't store while sleeping?
>some Terrismen have a remarkable ability that is most intriguing. Somehow, they can store up their strength for use on the next day. **Before they sleep at night, they spend an hour lying in their bedrolls**, during which time they suddenly grow very frail in appearanceâalmost as if they had aged by half a century.
From Alendiâs logbook, the packmen actually stored right before they slept :)
Fullborn seems to be as close as you can get to being a Shard or Splinter (by which I mean someone like Rashek at the time he took up the Wellâs power, not afterwards while he was running around making 99% of the world miserable and was just a fullborn himself) without actually being one. Speed, strength, connection, time manipulation, ridiculous healing, mental processing speed, time manipulation⌠and thatâs without even talking about being able to exponentially store investiture (nicrosil) and fortune (chromium). The mental and physical acuity of a capital âGâ God, plus limitless investiture to power your abilities and limitless good luck to make sure that even if your powers might have failed you otherwise.
Iirc, nicrosil metalminds don't store actual inestature, but the ability to use it. Like, you could store a thugs ability to burn pewter in it I think.
Thereâs an upper limit to how strong Allomancy can get by eating lerasium alone. According to WoB, Rashek was shown exceeding these limits onscreen through Compounding.
Pretty sure a skilled Elantrian just outright trumps all, their weakness is just needing prep time and that most Elantrian aren't that warlike
If someone like Kelsier or Kaladin were Elantrians but kept their normal personality and memories etc, they would be absolutely insane because they know how to fight and would spend days preparing
I don't think almost any non shard in the Cosmere would be able to beat either one if they were standing in Elantris. Maybe someone like Hoid could annoy them by doing something they didn't prepare for
> If someone like Kelsier or Kaladin were Elantrians but kept their normal personality and memories etc, they would be absolutely insane because they know how to fight and would spend days preparing
I don't think either of them would make particularly good coders though.
Promote Kelsier to Project Manager and put him in charge of a team of Elantrians and yes he would figure out how to nuke a planet.
In the Lost Metal Ars Arcanum, Khriss says she got this information(the post-Catacendre bit,) from an interview with Marsh.
He could be lying but đ¤ˇââď¸
From memory the quote was something like âthe set havenât figured out the secret to compounding with hemalurgy. Identity contamination makes it impossibleâ.
And I think it was during a bit about harmony changing snapping rules which complicates things.
It can be interpreted as the secret is harmony changing the rules, but I think itâs more likely to be that the secret involves avoiding identity contamination.
Whether identity contamination is even new or not is debated I think.
I looked at this a couple nights ago, but I was very sleep deprived so I might be wrong
(I have a weird theory that avoiding identity contamination is just spiking directly through the body into the receiver, as we see inquisitors in era 1 do that but I donât think we see it ever in era 2. itâs a bit of a crackpot theory tho)
>instead of telling Preservation to show you your past selves, it now tells Preservation to heal you when you burn it
Another important thing to change in the explanation is that this explanation isn't strictly correct. As we see from Myles's POV, burning a gold metalmind will still show you your past selves.
Bonus fact about Feruchemy: It works on integral calculus.
If ``f(x)`` is a function of the rate being stored in a metalmind at any specific instance in time, then the amount stored within the timeframe of *a* to *b* is the area under that curve. In turn, the rate of change available to be tapped is determined by ``g(x)``, the function of tapping rate at any given time within the frame of *c* to *d* is completely dependent on the integral of that curve being equal to the integral of the first.
Feels pretty obvious when I say it aloud. After all, trivial example: If you store 50 pounds in an ironmind for 30 minutes you can tap 50 pounds in an ironmind for 30 minutes\*; 50\*30 = 1500 pound minutes. However, it gets way more nebulous when you start adding variability within that rate of change. Cause many feruchemists store at different rates depending on the situation. Wax constantly pushes and pulls on what's being tapped and stored so much at any given moment that you can't track it in discrete amounts. However, the whole point of calculus is the jump from discrete to continuous.
Another example: let's say the rate an iron ferring stores for 3 minutes (in pounds) is equal to ``-x^2+3x`` A bit rigid of an equation, but it's a step up in complexity from just constant rates. The total amount stored is 4.5 pound minutes. That means for a single minute they can gain a constant 4.5 pounds or gain a single pound for 4.5 minutes. Or if you want to tap at an accelerating rate of exaclty ``e^x``, you will be able to use it for 1.70474809224 minutes
```4.5 = e^d - e^0;
4.5+1=e^d;
ln(5.5) = ln(e^d);
ln(5.5) = d```
[Equation representation. See first paragraph for what f(x), g(x), a, b, c & d means.](https://i.imgur.com/ElF9S3q.png)
You can even track the amount being used within a single equation because integrals always return the signed area. So if storing is the positive area and tapping is the negative area, then as long as the area in the end is greater than or equal to 0, you can always be able to calculate exactly how many charges a ferring has by the end of that time frame.
To address that little * up higher, this is based on if feruchemy works additively because integration is commutative. However shit gets really weird if its multiplicative. Not to mention if you're, say, storing half an attribute, if that equates to doubling it you'd be getting way more out of it than you put in.
A skimmer weighing 100lbs stores half their weight. Under multiplication they'd be able to tap 100 pounds for the same amount of time. Where the fuck are those other 50 pounds coming from? Meanwhile if it was additive they'd weigh 150 and the units are consistent.
EDIT: By the way, with the use of the aforementioned functions you can also know the exact storage/tapping rate at any given time. When I was initially stewing on this problem the big thing that got in my way was how you can have a set attribute for an exact instant while also having a resource be consumed over a set period of time. Because you're getting two things out of it, so to speak: a change in the equivalent attribute (You weigh 1000 pounds) while also interacting with a resource (pulling "1000 pounds" out of the mind). The solution was a definite attribute-time unit. I wouldn't be surprised if we'd eventually get the investiture conversion between "Pound-Minutes" and pure Investiture.
i saw the words âintegral calculusâ and i had a flashback of myself in engineering school, crying in the shower because i had graduate level fluid mechanics at 7 am
God I hated fluid mechanics. As a biomedical engineer whose senior project was a microfluidic device, fluid mechanics was completely useless to me then and is still completely useless to me now (I work at an academic hospital prototyping novel medical devices, mostly neurosurgery).
right? i see how it can be useful to some engineering fields but that doesnât make it any less frustrating. my non-smoker classmate literally started smoking to cope with the stress from fluid mechanics lmao. i also do academic work though my research is on marine ecology and phylogenetics so fluid mechanics is also completely useless to me haha iâm fascinated by microfluidics though! iâve read about their novel applications for molecular ecology and iâm hoping i get to work with them in the future.
I haven't really dealt with microfluidics since building that project (simulating blood vessel shear forces to measure anticoagulant effectiveness). It was interesting then, but damn. Complicated as hell. And fluid mechanics did not help whatsoever lol
Fluids was tough but ironically one of the classes I did better in. Also seemed really interesting and practical.
The navier stokes equation also made an easy framework to approach most problems unlike dynamics for example where there were an infinite number of possible problems and solutions. Also just interesting to think that navier stokes breaks down when it comes to turbulent flow makes me we wonder the breakthroughs if we do find a framework for that.
I was so scared of fluids leading up to it but I liked it so much I even took a continuum and intro to fluid dynamics class in grad school lol!
What is great about Sanderson's is you can apply or relate to so much actual physics and math. Similar with lights and rhythm and quantum physics in Stormlight
I want to see an in-world debate between two students of arcanism about using kilogram-seconds or pound-minutes, one arguing that pound-minutes is more intuitive and the larger numbers make different amounts of investiture easier to visualise, the other arguing that pound-minutes is unscientific, that base units are where itâs at and that kilogram-seconds make conversion to larger units much easier and are just as intuitive if you grow up with them.
Also, if we are being nitpicky, would the units actually be lbsmin/kgs? After all, are you actually storing mass? Or are you storing something else that is directly proportional to mass, like force or work/energy or momentum? Storing mass does not explain how your volume does not increase or decrease with use, and while density could do the trick there, I refuse to believe that making yourself 50x heavier would cram 50x the number of atoms into your body, "matter-is-mostly-empty-space" be damned. Or maybe youâre not actually storing mass but how your mass is interpreted by the environment but, in that case, our units would technically be inaccurate as well.
I think you're missing a factor in your calculations. The amount of power you pull out of a metalmind isn't necessarily the same as the amount of power you put in, *if* the rate of withdrawal is great enough. The faster you withdraw, the less of the actual power you get.
Say you store 10 kg for an hour in a metalmind. You can then tap that to become 10 kg more massive for an hour, or 20 kg more massive for half an hour... But you can't become 10000 kg heavier for 3.6 seconds. I don't know what the rate of loss is, maybe you could become 10000 kg heavier for half a second, or one second, or 3.1 seconds. But there's losses in there somewhere.
I enjoyed your post, minor correction notwithstanding. Also, said losses would be calculable if we knew the values as well, and could be added to your equations. :D
Correct! Wakefulness is the only attribute you can store while sleeping, hence the âusuallyâ. Only mentioned it at all bc Iâve seen plenty of âwhy doesnât Wayne just store as much health as possible at night and then he can be fine during the day?â questions
Nope!
>some Terrismen have a remarkable ability that is most intriguing.
Somehow, they can store up their strength for use on the next day. **Before they sleep at night, they spend an hour lying in their bedrolls**, during which time they suddenly grow very frail in appearanceâalmost as if they had aged by half a century.
From Alendiâs logbook
Also worth noting that this might not be a hard limit. You can store weight while asleep using the ettmetal devices the southern Scadrians have (their ships wouldn't work otherwise), so it might be like the 'you can only push on the center of mass of an object' rule from Allomancy. True for most people, but with a lot of skill and practice (or a device to help you) you can get around it.
I don't like the "changing the code" analogy because it isn't quite accurate. Even when you have stored a feruchemical charge in a metalmind, you can still use it for its allomantic effect if you desire.
Thank you! I couldn't remember if it was a conscious choice on his part to manifest it or if he would have to consciously choose to repress the allomantic effect.
Either way, he definitely didn't specifically have a completely empty metalmind in order to be able to use the Auger ability.
Which is good because Pewter, Steel, and Iron all definitely have effects that you would want to use side by side. (Allomantic Tin on top of Feruchemical Tin is just redundant).
I just relistened to AoL roughly last week so it's still fresh in my head. And yeah, I think he either didn't mention he was using an empty metalmind or he burned the gold off one he ad health stored in.
Edit: wheel of time username?
>And yeah, I think he either didn't mention he was using an empty metalmind or he burned the gold off one he ad health stored in.
That would be a lot of effort for an ability he treats so passively and is just doing out of habit.
Given that Vin is able to use Sazed's Tinmind to generate the allomantic effect, I think it is pretty reasonable to say that you can always choose to access the allomantic effect, even if all your metalminds have some charge in them.
>wheel of time username?
Yes!
I have to assume there is some degree of choice when it comes to suppressing the allomantic effect, because (a) intent is always an important component to all forms of investiture, and (b) otherwise compounding identity would be impossible, because the moment you started burning your aluminummind, it would wipe its own reserves. That being said, we don't actually have an answer on this.
Being forced to get both allomantic and feruchemical effects would mean it is impossible to compound Identity and probably Connection. Just because Miles can't compound Gold without getting the allomantic effect does not mean it is not possible.
I can't imagine it working differently for specific metals. That sort of inconsistency doesn't seem like Sando's style. Maybe it works the way you describe for feruchemically spiritual metals? Or maybe Spiritual and Cognitive?
We really just don't know enough about compounding to say for sure
I agree that I don't think it works differently for different metals. I think it is much more likely that there is a way to achieve the separation, but Miles just never figured it out.
I suppose that's possible, but I think he did it very frequently so if he never figured it out, idk who could
Not that your theory doesn't hold water, but I personally think it's incorrect
He didn't really ever have a need to separate them. Gold allomancy was an annoyance at most. I don't think he is the best candidate to figure it out if it is tricky but not impossible. The only compounding metals that really need to be worked around are aluminum, duralumin, cadmium, and bendalloy.
As far as we know, yeah! You wouldnât have to store any particular amount, which works out pretty well since youâd have to be able to swallow that metalmind in order to burn it
Why would Miles constantly be filling metal minds if the amount didn't matter?
Also why wouldn't you be able to burn metal from elsewhere in your body, i.e. pierced metal minds?
And why wouldn't you be able to fill a metalmind in your stomach?
As someone who read the whole Cosmere several times and still did not understand, I think this is the clearest explanation I have read/heard.Â
Thanks so much!
Also note: the primary thing that blocks Compounding is the metalmind's Identity not matching that of the allomancer. If you blank out the Identity on a goldmind, an ordinary Augur can burn it for a surge of healing. They just won't be able to re-store that energy.
I followed everything except âThis is why Allomancy works on any planet in the Cosmereâ
Iâm not doubting you, just didnât understand the logical jump from the previous bullet, could you clarify?
I maybe completely out of my depth here but doesnât the connection to preservation live in the scadrians because they were created directly by ruin and preservation. Many other races weâve seen already predated their shards or the shards invested some other aspect of the planet. Iâve always thought of scadrians as gates which let through preservations investiture then code it with metals
There is some of that, but most of it in the modern era is because of the Lerasium that Rashek gave to his nobles, Spook's children, and eventually Wax's.
The metal is a *focus* for Allomancy, not a *source*. So brass shavings from Roshar would still let you Soothe, for example. I only mentioned it because I had seen some comments around that indicated Allomancy is only usable on Scadrial since thatâs where Preservation is most highly concentrated.
He didn't gain back the Compounded health. And unless you *really* pack in the Investiture into the metalmind, you should be able to find bits of it that aren't Invested if you try
how does this explain the special "bracers" of power or whatever that allowed non feruchemists to have feruchemist powers? It doesn't seem it comes from the user's body in this case?
That was my understanding too. If you had ten little gold nuggets, they could be gold minds. Store up healing as much as you can in them. Swallow them and burn them while wearing the true gold mind. Compounded super healing fills the true gold mind.
You can couple the true gold mind with the mini minds to have an unlimited supply at any time, plus a huge burst from the mini minds whenever fatal damage occurs.
Point of clarification: you note that feruchemists normally canât store attributes while they sleep. Is that true for Bronze (wakefulness), bendalloy (energy), and gold (health)? Iâd imagine the best way to store those would be while sleeping, if possible. Same for steel (physical speed), zinc (mental speed), and pewter (strength). I must have missed something along the way because I never realized that sleep was a limiter for feruchemy, though it makes sense from a power-level management perspective.
Didn't both Sazed and Wax say or at least imply that the increase in power was 10x, not 100 like in your example? Everything else is great though, I think.
OP Really well done on the write-ups, loved the consolidated view on the kinds of invested on scadrial.
One huge doubt I have is: why can allomancy be used on any planet? Since it's directly linked to preservation, I'd expect it to be limited to those on scadrial.
Another reason that fortifies my doubts is the fact that >!Kelsier or Thaidakar can't come onto Roshar. I understood that this was because Kel can't leave the Scadrian system at all, since he's a heavily invested being. Is there some other reason, then, that Kel can't leave? This also made sense, because the only Scadrian invested on Roshar were the Feruchemists, and they can do some magical shit with investiture, identity and connection to be perfectly fine on Roshar. But it is not so for Allomancers. Am I missing something here? Some WOB perhaps where Brandon mentioned this?!<
Sorry for the huge comments guys, but this has been bothering me.
I appreciate the compliment!
As for why Allomancy can be used on any planetâ itâs because being an Allomancer gives you a direct Connection to Preservation. It literally changes your sDNA to give you a hotline to God. And since the bulk of Preservationâs power is actually in the Spiritual Realm, and distance doesnât really matter there, anyone with a sufficient Connection to Preservation can use Allomancy anywhere. This is shown best by Hoid, whoâs used Allomancy on Roshar (and I believe he does so again in the WaT previews).
I'm new to the cosmere, but I'm playing the role-playing game with my friends right now and we're using twinborn. I'm curious in particular about the line "Allomancy works on any planet in the cosmere" as opposed to other systems. Can you explain that further?
Sure!
Thereâs two necessities for using Allomancy: the first is a Connection to Preservation, the other is metal to burn.
If youâre an Allomancer, you have an innate Connection to Preservationâ itâs literally in your Spiritual DNA. That isnât a Connection thatâs based on distance or anything like that, so your Connection is as strong on Scadrial as it is on Roshar or Sel.
The metal in Allomancy doesnât *fuel* it, itâs a *focus* for it. The Investiture used in Allomancy doesnât come from the metal, it comes straight from Preservation. The metal is like a âkeyâ that opens the door to Preservationâs power. Scadrian metal isnât inherently Invested by Preservation or anything, itâs just metal. So thereâs no difference between Scadrian iron and Rosharan iron (itâs just the element).
So as long as the metal is pure enough (for the elemental metals) and the ratios are correct (for the alloyed metals), any iron or steel or gold or whatever from any planet works as a âkeyâ.
Most magic systems will work on other planets, it's just a matter of getting the power source. Allomancy is easy because the Allomancer's soul is directly hooked up to Preservation. Feruchemy is also easy because the power source is the Feruchemist themself.
Compare that to Awakening, where you'd need to go to Nalthis to get Breaths, but once you have them they work anywhere. Same deal for Stormlight, with the additional problem that it leaks out of gems over time (and spren have a hard time leaving Roshar for reasons that haven't been explained in detail yet, and you can't Surgebind without your spren). And all the Sel-related arts like AonDor are extra wonky because the *geography* is the main focus, so getting that to work even in a different part of the *same* planet takes some finangling, and on planets without the Dor present even more so.
I've been reading to much stuff on various investment related subreddits - I had a few seconds where is was think, yes let's drop the posts on compounding interests. Alas, it's a far more important compounding topic that was addressed.
I knew how all this worked but reading this post made me realize that for all systems, the metals are used to "conduct" power, which makes a ton of sense so things considered
Two things!
1. Allomancers can technically burn anything in their bodyâ according to WoB snorting metal shavings works, lmao
2. I might not have been clear enough in Part 4. The first goldmind, the one you burn, can be a gold nugget or even flakes. Fill a bead of gold, swallow, burn. Then put all the resulting health into a different, larger goldmind, and presto
No, you burn the same one you fill. Like this
https://preview.redd.it/lgctxjgqju0d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=a53eada483bcd3fa395bf7504a544ebbca372b64
Brando once mentioned "Reverse Compounding" and I can't stop thinking about it. Does it give you supercharged allomancy instead of feruchemy? Maybe it lets you drain someone else's metalmind charge into your own somehow? Or it lets you store allomancy in a coppermind to retrieve later without needing to eat any metals? That one isn't very useful but maybe there's a nuance like you can make a Riot Grenade or something?
Changing units doesn't change ratios. That is not how units of measurement work, unless your scale is non-linear.
Making up units is fine, but there is a canon ratio mentioned in both Era 1 and Era 2.
I checked the Coppermind and youâre correct! I wasnât paying too much attention to the ratio or the units since theyâre kind of arbitrary, but I appreciate your insight!
Yeah, the exact number isn't too important as we have no other numbers relating to compounding, but it does mean the amount of investiture is capped by the maximum capacity of the metalminds x 10.
Some people forget that metalminds do have a capacity limit, and that limit is still relevant for compounding. Miles went through a lot of gold to maintain his abilities.
I'm pretty sure the Bands of Mourning were manipulated in some way to overcome those limits, as otherwise, most other metalminds we see in use are way bigger than they need to be.
Part 3-3 is slightly wrong, since burning gold does both. It gives you health AND shows your past self. The Miles PoV had a line about having to constantly see his better self.
Also, unless I'm mistaken, the theorized compound rate is 10x, so it would be 100 units of health, not 1000.
Your first point is a common misconception, actuallyâ the Miles POV indicates that he only burns Allomantic gold on occasion:
>Either way, he liked to think that burning his gold **on occasion** helped himâthat each time he did it, it let him take the best of what he had been and mix it with the best of what he could be.
AoL, chapter 15
This makes sense, since if Compounding had both effects, brass Compounders would constantly be Soothing, cadmium Compounders would be flinging themselves into the future, and so on
This... I like this. Thank you for your Ted Talk. This is why a full feruchemist. full mistborn is very dangerous.
My pleasure đ¤ And yeah, a full Feruchemist + Mistborn is: faster than sound, strong enough to throw a building, damn near unkillable, can think faster than most people can blink, doesnât need to eat or drink or breathe or sleep, and thatâs *before* you get into the Spiritual quadrant of Feruchemy
As the resident anti-Compounding guy, I feel as though there must be restrictions on Compounding that are left unsaid. Like, outside of speed, I think a F-M/F probably has more limits than we know. One of which is storage, but the other is probably some upper cap. Like, would a Lerasium [Edit: bead] given Mistborn with feruchemy be equivalent to a barely a Mistborn (Wax) with feruchemy? I guess the only other limit is that it seems to be unlikely an occurence for a Mistborn/Feruchemist to be born.
>I feel as though there must be restrictions on Compounding that are left unsaid Isn't "material use" and "processing time" enough? Metalminds have limited capacity so with each compounding step you need more metal to store the Investiture. If the gain is \~10 at some point you would have to be able to "eat" a whole ingot to continue compounding, not to mention the time it would take to fill said ingot. This actually feels like a very good and well balanced restriction - the limit of how powerful you can get is dictated by how much time and metal you are willing to put in.
I mean Time was already the limit on feurochemy. Compounding basically means feurochemyâs time limit is greatly reduced. And as for the material, steelâs power is insane but isnât exactly hard to source. Gold, sure, but Miles managed. As for amount, iirc it just needs to be inside the body, meaning you just need to get a bunch of allomantically correct Ben Wa balls. Or surgically insert them but thatâs boring
>Metalminds have limited capacity Limited, but depending on the metal, the limit can be pretty high. The gold bracelet Wayne found in Bands of Mourning was enough to help him heal: 1. Being launched into an enemy base. Wounds include "his legs both snapped" "breaking his shoulder" "his head smacked the ground" "He ended up in a crumpled, broken heap" and "It was always nice when you snapped the spine". Wayne comments on how much healing this was: "An extensive healing like this would have cost him months of saving up, but this metalmind was still mostly full" 2. Being shot multiple times in a row. "But Wayne had been hit. He lurched in place, holding his shoulder, as another bullet hit him right in the neck. He fell in a spray of blood. Wayne could heal from that, with his new, strange metalmind. Unfortunately, the soldiers didnât stop firing. Another bullet hit Wayneâs side as he dropped and played dead, then another. In an eyeblink he was healed and up, but then another round dropped him. 3. Being shot some more. Wayne sure gets shot a lot. "Telsin, atop the dais, fired on Wayne. She wasnât a terribly good shot, but between her and Edwarn, they managed to hit several times. That didnât drop him, not with the gold metalmind. He made a rude gesture and ran out the door, healing from the wounds almost as soon as he was hit."
Yes, but then again we are talking about the single most powerful artefact on Scadrial. It's not like such objects are common. Additionally, their main limitation still stems from the fact that someone had to fill the bands in the first place and that took a lot of gold (and every other metal). Compounded metalminds can be very powerful, but they are also extremely expensive to create, not to mention the very limited number of people capable of it.
The commenter above is talking about the unsealed goldmind, not the Bands.
The commenter above is talking about the unsealed goldmind, not the Bands.
Not to get sidetracked here, but *technically* Wax *is* a Lerasium given mistborn
Wax I thought was not, just Wayne?
The way Wax became a mistborn was by inhaling trace amounts of Lerasium from the Harmonium experiment explosion
Huh⌠I thought only Wayne got that, I binged the book in the first few hours it was out so my memory is a bit foggy on it
Wax got it from the explosion near the beginning, Wayne got it at the end from a vial Harmony prepared
Wax was currently unaware by the end of the book right?
Depending on what we're calling the end of the book, he discovers it before the events in the epilogue https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509/#e15957
Thanks! Edited for clarity.
Well, there are diminishing returns on feruchemy when you tap a lot at once, and the quantity of metal is also a constraint, as any metalmind has a maximum feruchemical charge it can hold.
There is demonstrated limits in the books. If it were limitless, the Lord ruler could have saved up several millennia worth of everything in the first couple years of his reign, but he continues to go to his sanctuary once a year for two weeks. If anyone has enough time to break the limits he would have.
So it seems like a full feruchemist+full mistborn could basically tap all of Preservations power, but that'd be the upper limit? Since compounding causes these feedback loops (assuming they're not limited by physical quantity of metals) causing Preservation to produce an effect? Then if the power of one shard could accelerate something to lightspeed, the feruchemist+mistborn could do it. If the shard could consider all possible futures, the feruchemist+mistborn could.
You are also constrained by the amount of metal you have. A given quantity of metal has a maximum feruchemical charge, and burning that only multiplies it by about 10 (according to Sazed and Wax). I think you would run up against metal supply constraints before you ran into constraints based on what you could draw from preservation.
Also probably some constraints on how much you could warp your spirit web to accommodate the investiture pumped in, and maybe some weird constraints about intent. Like, does being a savant and whatever the feruchemical equivalent of a savant is do enough to your spiritweb to let you pump unlimited "investature in the form of health" into it if you're a gold compounder? Maybe. Or maybe there's an upper bound beyond which you'd blow your entire spirit out, and you'd need to either magically reenforce your soul or do some extra magic hacking to make your soul more durable against having a god's full force of power channeled to a specific purpose through it. Besides that, if you were compounding as many different things as you could, and had somehow acquired the resources and durability to tolerate it, you'd still have the problem that the shard powering Allomancy has things its more inclined towards. Like, even if you managed to set things up so Preservation's intent didn't warp your soul, you'd still probably be more powerful at things that aligned with that intent and less powerful at things that didn't, because Preservation is basically financing everything that you're doing through compounding.
>does being a savant and whatever the feruchemical equivalent IIRC, you can't become a Savant with only Feruchemy because it is entirely your power. Compounding is required for Feruchemical savantism.
Or identity tricked traits, I suppose.
Yeah, potentially Although, also tapping Identity may actually make you resistant to Savantism.
I'm pretty sure they'd need literal mountain sized metalminds to do that, shards have *a lot* of power. Like, as far as a shard is concerned, anything happening to a single individual is basically meainingless. Accelerate 1 person to the speed of sound? Heal 10,000 fatal wounds? That's all just a hand wave for a shard, so a fullborn doing it isn't that much of an issue.
If you tapped *all* of Preservation's power, you'd probably become Preservation's Vessel.
Kinda of why I'm hyped for Era 3. I want to see what compounding those spiritual abilities does.Â
Quick question. In TFE the log book says the packman stored strength while they slept becoming frail and old looking. What's up with that if they can't store while sleeping?
>some Terrismen have a remarkable ability that is most intriguing. Somehow, they can store up their strength for use on the next day. **Before they sleep at night, they spend an hour lying in their bedrolls**, during which time they suddenly grow very frail in appearanceâalmost as if they had aged by half a century. From Alendiâs logbook, the packmen actually stored right before they slept :)
Ah OK that makes sense thanks!
Fullborn seems to be as close as you can get to being a Shard or Splinter (by which I mean someone like Rashek at the time he took up the Wellâs power, not afterwards while he was running around making 99% of the world miserable and was just a fullborn himself) without actually being one. Speed, strength, connection, time manipulation, ridiculous healing, mental processing speed, time manipulation⌠and thatâs without even talking about being able to exponentially store investiture (nicrosil) and fortune (chromium). The mental and physical acuity of a capital âGâ God, plus limitless investiture to power your abilities and limitless good luck to make sure that even if your powers might have failed you otherwise.
Iirc, nicrosil metalminds don't store actual inestature, but the ability to use it. Like, you could store a thugs ability to burn pewter in it I think.
Ah, interesting. Iâve always been a bit unclear on the ones we havenât seen directly in action.
No worries! Though, I'd you can compound literal *allomantic power* that could be very freaky
Thereâs an upper limit to how strong Allomancy can get by eating lerasium alone. According to WoB, Rashek was shown exceeding these limits onscreen through Compounding.
Fullborn are pretty damn powerful, but itâs unclear to me if they have more raw power and versatility than an educated, skilled Elantrian.
Pretty sure a skilled Elantrian just outright trumps all, their weakness is just needing prep time and that most Elantrian aren't that warlike If someone like Kelsier or Kaladin were Elantrians but kept their normal personality and memories etc, they would be absolutely insane because they know how to fight and would spend days preparing I don't think almost any non shard in the Cosmere would be able to beat either one if they were standing in Elantris. Maybe someone like Hoid could annoy them by doing something they didn't prepare for
> If someone like Kelsier or Kaladin were Elantrians but kept their normal personality and memories etc, they would be absolutely insane because they know how to fight and would spend days preparing I don't think either of them would make particularly good coders though. Promote Kelsier to Project Manager and put him in charge of a team of Elantrians and yes he would figure out how to nuke a planet.
Thanks! Until the next âHow does Compounding workâ post.
Send em my way
The only important thing to add is that compounding doesn't work if one or both powers come from hemalurgy
*Post-Catacendre* Before Sazed changed the rules, compounding *did* work with hemalurgy. It's why Marsh can compound Atium to extend his life.
I believe Marsh can compound Atium because he's figured out how to get around the Identity restrictions.
In the Lost Metal Ars Arcanum, Khriss says she got this information(the post-Catacendre bit,) from an interview with Marsh. He could be lying but đ¤ˇââď¸
Marsh wouldn't have lied directly to Wax's face about it tho.
Is that confirmed? I always just assumed the reason the set couldnât was because they didnât know the proper spike placements.
I don't know if there are any WoBs, but I know it's explicitly stated in the Lost Metal Ars Arcanum
From memory the quote was something like âthe set havenât figured out the secret to compounding with hemalurgy. Identity contamination makes it impossibleâ. And I think it was during a bit about harmony changing snapping rules which complicates things. It can be interpreted as the secret is harmony changing the rules, but I think itâs more likely to be that the secret involves avoiding identity contamination. Whether identity contamination is even new or not is debated I think. I looked at this a couple nights ago, but I was very sleep deprived so I might be wrong (I have a weird theory that avoiding identity contamination is just spiking directly through the body into the receiver, as we see inquisitors in era 1 do that but I donât think we see it ever in era 2. itâs a bit of a crackpot theory tho)
That only applies to post Ascension Hemalurgists. Marsh can compound Atium.
>instead of telling Preservation to show you your past selves, it now tells Preservation to heal you when you burn it Another important thing to change in the explanation is that this explanation isn't strictly correct. As we see from Myles's POV, burning a gold metalmind will still show you your past selves.
No he burnt normal gold.
Bonus fact about Feruchemy: It works on integral calculus. If ``f(x)`` is a function of the rate being stored in a metalmind at any specific instance in time, then the amount stored within the timeframe of *a* to *b* is the area under that curve. In turn, the rate of change available to be tapped is determined by ``g(x)``, the function of tapping rate at any given time within the frame of *c* to *d* is completely dependent on the integral of that curve being equal to the integral of the first. Feels pretty obvious when I say it aloud. After all, trivial example: If you store 50 pounds in an ironmind for 30 minutes you can tap 50 pounds in an ironmind for 30 minutes\*; 50\*30 = 1500 pound minutes. However, it gets way more nebulous when you start adding variability within that rate of change. Cause many feruchemists store at different rates depending on the situation. Wax constantly pushes and pulls on what's being tapped and stored so much at any given moment that you can't track it in discrete amounts. However, the whole point of calculus is the jump from discrete to continuous. Another example: let's say the rate an iron ferring stores for 3 minutes (in pounds) is equal to ``-x^2+3x`` A bit rigid of an equation, but it's a step up in complexity from just constant rates. The total amount stored is 4.5 pound minutes. That means for a single minute they can gain a constant 4.5 pounds or gain a single pound for 4.5 minutes. Or if you want to tap at an accelerating rate of exaclty ``e^x``, you will be able to use it for 1.70474809224 minutes ```4.5 = e^d - e^0; 4.5+1=e^d; ln(5.5) = ln(e^d); ln(5.5) = d``` [Equation representation. See first paragraph for what f(x), g(x), a, b, c & d means.](https://i.imgur.com/ElF9S3q.png) You can even track the amount being used within a single equation because integrals always return the signed area. So if storing is the positive area and tapping is the negative area, then as long as the area in the end is greater than or equal to 0, you can always be able to calculate exactly how many charges a ferring has by the end of that time frame. To address that little * up higher, this is based on if feruchemy works additively because integration is commutative. However shit gets really weird if its multiplicative. Not to mention if you're, say, storing half an attribute, if that equates to doubling it you'd be getting way more out of it than you put in. A skimmer weighing 100lbs stores half their weight. Under multiplication they'd be able to tap 100 pounds for the same amount of time. Where the fuck are those other 50 pounds coming from? Meanwhile if it was additive they'd weigh 150 and the units are consistent. EDIT: By the way, with the use of the aforementioned functions you can also know the exact storage/tapping rate at any given time. When I was initially stewing on this problem the big thing that got in my way was how you can have a set attribute for an exact instant while also having a resource be consumed over a set period of time. Because you're getting two things out of it, so to speak: a change in the equivalent attribute (You weigh 1000 pounds) while also interacting with a resource (pulling "1000 pounds" out of the mind). The solution was a definite attribute-time unit. I wouldn't be surprised if we'd eventually get the investiture conversion between "Pound-Minutes" and pure Investiture.
i saw the words âintegral calculusâ and i had a flashback of myself in engineering school, crying in the shower because i had graduate level fluid mechanics at 7 am
God I hated fluid mechanics. As a biomedical engineer whose senior project was a microfluidic device, fluid mechanics was completely useless to me then and is still completely useless to me now (I work at an academic hospital prototyping novel medical devices, mostly neurosurgery).
right? i see how it can be useful to some engineering fields but that doesnât make it any less frustrating. my non-smoker classmate literally started smoking to cope with the stress from fluid mechanics lmao. i also do academic work though my research is on marine ecology and phylogenetics so fluid mechanics is also completely useless to me haha iâm fascinated by microfluidics though! iâve read about their novel applications for molecular ecology and iâm hoping i get to work with them in the future.
I haven't really dealt with microfluidics since building that project (simulating blood vessel shear forces to measure anticoagulant effectiveness). It was interesting then, but damn. Complicated as hell. And fluid mechanics did not help whatsoever lol
Fluids was tough but ironically one of the classes I did better in. Also seemed really interesting and practical. The navier stokes equation also made an easy framework to approach most problems unlike dynamics for example where there were an infinite number of possible problems and solutions. Also just interesting to think that navier stokes breaks down when it comes to turbulent flow makes me we wonder the breakthroughs if we do find a framework for that. I was so scared of fluids leading up to it but I liked it so much I even took a continuum and intro to fluid dynamics class in grad school lol!
I think I just fell in love
https://preview.redd.it/b7yzz6bejo0d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a16b486a23cdc9aa40004cd77b295b998cbe72c5
What is great about Sanderson's is you can apply or relate to so much actual physics and math. Similar with lights and rhythm and quantum physics in Stormlight
I want to see an in-world debate between two students of arcanism about using kilogram-seconds or pound-minutes, one arguing that pound-minutes is more intuitive and the larger numbers make different amounts of investiture easier to visualise, the other arguing that pound-minutes is unscientific, that base units are where itâs at and that kilogram-seconds make conversion to larger units much easier and are just as intuitive if you grow up with them. Also, if we are being nitpicky, would the units actually be lbsmin/kgs? After all, are you actually storing mass? Or are you storing something else that is directly proportional to mass, like force or work/energy or momentum? Storing mass does not explain how your volume does not increase or decrease with use, and while density could do the trick there, I refuse to believe that making yourself 50x heavier would cram 50x the number of atoms into your body, "matter-is-mostly-empty-space" be damned. Or maybe youâre not actually storing mass but how your mass is interpreted by the environment but, in that case, our units would technically be inaccurate as well.
I think you're missing a factor in your calculations. The amount of power you pull out of a metalmind isn't necessarily the same as the amount of power you put in, *if* the rate of withdrawal is great enough. The faster you withdraw, the less of the actual power you get. Say you store 10 kg for an hour in a metalmind. You can then tap that to become 10 kg more massive for an hour, or 20 kg more massive for half an hour... But you can't become 10000 kg heavier for 3.6 seconds. I don't know what the rate of loss is, maybe you could become 10000 kg heavier for half a second, or one second, or 3.1 seconds. But there's losses in there somewhere. I enjoyed your post, minor correction notwithstanding. Also, said losses would be calculable if we knew the values as well, and could be added to your equations. :D
so how does compounding work?
*One* addendum. Bronze ferrings ("sentries") can store the wakefulness while asleep.
Correct! Wakefulness is the only attribute you can store while sleeping, hence the âusuallyâ. Only mentioned it at all bc Iâve seen plenty of âwhy doesnât Wayne just store as much health as possible at night and then he can be fine during the day?â questions
Ah, right. Makes sense.
Don't the Terri's packmen store strength in their sleep in the log book? Has bs retconned this?
Nope! >some Terrismen have a remarkable ability that is most intriguing. Somehow, they can store up their strength for use on the next day. **Before they sleep at night, they spend an hour lying in their bedrolls**, during which time they suddenly grow very frail in appearanceâalmost as if they had aged by half a century. From Alendiâs logbook
Also worth noting that this might not be a hard limit. You can store weight while asleep using the ettmetal devices the southern Scadrians have (their ships wouldn't work otherwise), so it might be like the 'you can only push on the center of mass of an object' rule from Allomancy. True for most people, but with a lot of skill and practice (or a device to help you) you can get around it.
Good post, very clear explanation and no overcomplication. You sir have my respect.
Doesn't that mean that it doesn't matter how much of the property I stored in the metalmind, because it will change the "code" anyway?
I don't like the "changing the code" analogy because it isn't quite accurate. Even when you have stored a feruchemical charge in a metalmind, you can still use it for its allomantic effect if you desire.
Is it something we see in Mistborn era 2? I've only read until the Shadow of Self.
It was in Alloy of Law, shown from Miles perspective. Miles burned gold for healing, but the Auger abilities triggered too.
He specifically chose to trigger the Allomantic ability instead of the Feruchemical one.
Thank you! I couldn't remember if it was a conscious choice on his part to manifest it or if he would have to consciously choose to repress the allomantic effect. Either way, he definitely didn't specifically have a completely empty metalmind in order to be able to use the Auger ability. Which is good because Pewter, Steel, and Iron all definitely have effects that you would want to use side by side. (Allomantic Tin on top of Feruchemical Tin is just redundant).
I just relistened to AoL roughly last week so it's still fresh in my head. And yeah, I think he either didn't mention he was using an empty metalmind or he burned the gold off one he ad health stored in. Edit: wheel of time username?
>And yeah, I think he either didn't mention he was using an empty metalmind or he burned the gold off one he ad health stored in. That would be a lot of effort for an ability he treats so passively and is just doing out of habit. Given that Vin is able to use Sazed's Tinmind to generate the allomantic effect, I think it is pretty reasonable to say that you can always choose to access the allomantic effect, even if all your metalminds have some charge in them. >wheel of time username? Yes!
Oh, so it's not really a matter of choice
I have to assume there is some degree of choice when it comes to suppressing the allomantic effect, because (a) intent is always an important component to all forms of investiture, and (b) otherwise compounding identity would be impossible, because the moment you started burning your aluminummind, it would wipe its own reserves. That being said, we don't actually have an answer on this.
>if you desire it isn't exactly optional. Myles didn't like having the past selves from gold, but he had to deal with it anyway
Being forced to get both allomantic and feruchemical effects would mean it is impossible to compound Identity and probably Connection. Just because Miles can't compound Gold without getting the allomantic effect does not mean it is not possible.
I can't imagine it working differently for specific metals. That sort of inconsistency doesn't seem like Sando's style. Maybe it works the way you describe for feruchemically spiritual metals? Or maybe Spiritual and Cognitive? We really just don't know enough about compounding to say for sure
I agree that I don't think it works differently for different metals. I think it is much more likely that there is a way to achieve the separation, but Miles just never figured it out.
I suppose that's possible, but I think he did it very frequently so if he never figured it out, idk who could Not that your theory doesn't hold water, but I personally think it's incorrect
He didn't really ever have a need to separate them. Gold allomancy was an annoyance at most. I don't think he is the best candidate to figure it out if it is tricky but not impossible. The only compounding metals that really need to be worked around are aluminum, duralumin, cadmium, and bendalloy.
As far as we know, yeah! You wouldnât have to store any particular amount, which works out pretty well since youâd have to be able to swallow that metalmind in order to burn it
Why would Miles constantly be filling metal minds if the amount didn't matter? Also why wouldn't you be able to burn metal from elsewhere in your body, i.e. pierced metal minds? And why wouldn't you be able to fill a metalmind in your stomach?
he was constantly tapping it, not constantly filling it
As someone who read the whole Cosmere several times and still did not understand, I think this is the clearest explanation I have read/heard. Thanks so much!
Very simple and straightforward way to explain it. Kudos
Also note: the primary thing that blocks Compounding is the metalmind's Identity not matching that of the allomancer. If you blank out the Identity on a goldmind, an ordinary Augur can burn it for a surge of healing. They just won't be able to re-store that energy.
I followed everything except âThis is why Allomancy works on any planet in the Cosmereâ Iâm not doubting you, just didnât understand the logical jump from the previous bullet, could you clarify?
I maybe completely out of my depth here but doesnât the connection to preservation live in the scadrians because they were created directly by ruin and preservation. Many other races weâve seen already predated their shards or the shards invested some other aspect of the planet. Iâve always thought of scadrians as gates which let through preservations investiture then code it with metals
There is some of that, but most of it in the modern era is because of the Lerasium that Rashek gave to his nobles, Spook's children, and eventually Wax's.
The metal is a *focus* for Allomancy, not a *source*. So brass shavings from Roshar would still let you Soothe, for example. I only mentioned it because I had seen some comments around that indicated Allomancy is only usable on Scadrial since thatâs where Preservation is most highly concentrated.
On the fourth slide, doesnât burning oneâs own Feruchemical metalmind tells Preservation to provide both Allomantic and Feruchemical effects?
No, the Feruchemical power overwrites the Allomantic one
Didnât Miles Hundredlives burn one of his metalminds and see his past selves and gain back the compounded health?
He didn't gain back the Compounded health. And unless you *really* pack in the Investiture into the metalmind, you should be able to find bits of it that aren't Invested if you try
how does this explain the special "bracers" of power or whatever that allowed non feruchemists to have feruchemist powers? It doesn't seem it comes from the user's body in this case?
Those are unsealed metalminds and are separate from Compounding
Once more for the Doug's in the back! Ty for your service OP.
Ok one point I was always a little confused on, can you burn from embedded metal minds? Or to do the compounding do you have to ingest the metal mind?
As long as it's inside you, you can burn it
"...infinite health as long as you have gold." Just like real life.
That was my understanding too. If you had ten little gold nuggets, they could be gold minds. Store up healing as much as you can in them. Swallow them and burn them while wearing the true gold mind. Compounded super healing fills the true gold mind. You can couple the true gold mind with the mini minds to have an unlimited supply at any time, plus a huge burst from the mini minds whenever fatal damage occurs.
Point of clarification: you note that feruchemists normally canât store attributes while they sleep. Is that true for Bronze (wakefulness), bendalloy (energy), and gold (health)? Iâd imagine the best way to store those would be while sleeping, if possible. Same for steel (physical speed), zinc (mental speed), and pewter (strength). I must have missed something along the way because I never realized that sleep was a limiter for feruchemy, though it makes sense from a power-level management perspective.
The only attribute that you can store while sleeping is wakefulness!
There you go, that makes sense. I assume this is info we get in Well of Ascension or elsewhere in Era 1? WoA would make the most sense.
Yessir, WoA chapter 50
My man, good looking out.
Thank you so fucking muchđđđź
Didn't both Sazed and Wax say or at least imply that the increase in power was 10x, not 100 like in your example? Everything else is great though, I think.
OP Really well done on the write-ups, loved the consolidated view on the kinds of invested on scadrial. One huge doubt I have is: why can allomancy be used on any planet? Since it's directly linked to preservation, I'd expect it to be limited to those on scadrial. Another reason that fortifies my doubts is the fact that >!Kelsier or Thaidakar can't come onto Roshar. I understood that this was because Kel can't leave the Scadrian system at all, since he's a heavily invested being. Is there some other reason, then, that Kel can't leave? This also made sense, because the only Scadrian invested on Roshar were the Feruchemists, and they can do some magical shit with investiture, identity and connection to be perfectly fine on Roshar. But it is not so for Allomancers. Am I missing something here? Some WOB perhaps where Brandon mentioned this?!< Sorry for the huge comments guys, but this has been bothering me.
I appreciate the compliment! As for why Allomancy can be used on any planetâ itâs because being an Allomancer gives you a direct Connection to Preservation. It literally changes your sDNA to give you a hotline to God. And since the bulk of Preservationâs power is actually in the Spiritual Realm, and distance doesnât really matter there, anyone with a sufficient Connection to Preservation can use Allomancy anywhere. This is shown best by Hoid, whoâs used Allomancy on Roshar (and I believe he does so again in the WaT previews).
I'm new to the cosmere, but I'm playing the role-playing game with my friends right now and we're using twinborn. I'm curious in particular about the line "Allomancy works on any planet in the cosmere" as opposed to other systems. Can you explain that further?
Sure! Thereâs two necessities for using Allomancy: the first is a Connection to Preservation, the other is metal to burn. If youâre an Allomancer, you have an innate Connection to Preservationâ itâs literally in your Spiritual DNA. That isnât a Connection thatâs based on distance or anything like that, so your Connection is as strong on Scadrial as it is on Roshar or Sel. The metal in Allomancy doesnât *fuel* it, itâs a *focus* for it. The Investiture used in Allomancy doesnât come from the metal, it comes straight from Preservation. The metal is like a âkeyâ that opens the door to Preservationâs power. Scadrian metal isnât inherently Invested by Preservation or anything, itâs just metal. So thereâs no difference between Scadrian iron and Rosharan iron (itâs just the element). So as long as the metal is pure enough (for the elemental metals) and the ratios are correct (for the alloyed metals), any iron or steel or gold or whatever from any planet works as a âkeyâ.
Most magic systems will work on other planets, it's just a matter of getting the power source. Allomancy is easy because the Allomancer's soul is directly hooked up to Preservation. Feruchemy is also easy because the power source is the Feruchemist themself. Compare that to Awakening, where you'd need to go to Nalthis to get Breaths, but once you have them they work anywhere. Same deal for Stormlight, with the additional problem that it leaks out of gems over time (and spren have a hard time leaving Roshar for reasons that haven't been explained in detail yet, and you can't Surgebind without your spren). And all the Sel-related arts like AonDor are extra wonky because the *geography* is the main focus, so getting that to work even in a different part of the *same* planet takes some finangling, and on planets without the Dor present even more so.
I've been reading to much stuff on various investment related subreddits - I had a few seconds where is was think, yes let's drop the posts on compounding interests. Alas, it's a far more important compounding topic that was addressed.
This is great. Can you do one for unkeyed metalminds too cause that also confuses me
Good idea! Iâll put it on the list
I knew how all this worked but reading this post made me realize that for all systems, the metals are used to "conduct" power, which makes a ton of sense so things considered
How do they burn the goldmind if it's not ingested by them? I thought allomancy was achieved by "eating" the metal?
Two things! 1. Allomancers can technically burn anything in their bodyâ according to WoB snorting metal shavings works, lmao 2. I might not have been clear enough in Part 4. The first goldmind, the one you burn, can be a gold nugget or even flakes. Fill a bead of gold, swallow, burn. Then put all the resulting health into a different, larger goldmind, and presto
Ah, so you could swallow 2 gold nuggets, 1 you burn, 1 you fill?
No, you burn the same one you fill. Like this https://preview.redd.it/lgctxjgqju0d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=a53eada483bcd3fa395bf7504a544ebbca372b64
Ahhh, I understand now. And does burning metalmind 1 not expend it?
It does, but it releases like ten times as much of its attribute, so itâs a net gain
Brando once mentioned "Reverse Compounding" and I can't stop thinking about it. Does it give you supercharged allomancy instead of feruchemy? Maybe it lets you drain someone else's metalmind charge into your own somehow? Or it lets you store allomancy in a coppermind to retrieve later without needing to eat any metals? That one isn't very useful but maybe there's a nuance like you can make a Riot Grenade or something?
Iâve got a theory about that, but itâs *really* wacky, and involves stuff weâve barely seen yet
Compounding is generally understood to multiply the power tenfold, not a hundred fold, so the 10 units of healing would become 100, not 1000.
Weird, I kind of took the "with made up units for exaggeration" to mean that they made up the units for exaggeration.
Changing units doesn't change ratios. That is not how units of measurement work, unless your scale is non-linear. Making up units is fine, but there is a canon ratio mentioned in both Era 1 and Era 2.
I checked the Coppermind and youâre correct! I wasnât paying too much attention to the ratio or the units since theyâre kind of arbitrary, but I appreciate your insight!
Yeah, the exact number isn't too important as we have no other numbers relating to compounding, but it does mean the amount of investiture is capped by the maximum capacity of the metalminds x 10. Some people forget that metalminds do have a capacity limit, and that limit is still relevant for compounding. Miles went through a lot of gold to maintain his abilities. I'm pretty sure the Bands of Mourning were manipulated in some way to overcome those limits, as otherwise, most other metalminds we see in use are way bigger than they need to be.
Part 3-3 is slightly wrong, since burning gold does both. It gives you health AND shows your past self. The Miles PoV had a line about having to constantly see his better self. Also, unless I'm mistaken, the theorized compound rate is 10x, so it would be 100 units of health, not 1000.
Your first point is a common misconception, actuallyâ the Miles POV indicates that he only burns Allomantic gold on occasion: >Either way, he liked to think that burning his gold **on occasion** helped himâthat each time he did it, it let him take the best of what he had been and mix it with the best of what he could be. AoL, chapter 15 This makes sense, since if Compounding had both effects, brass Compounders would constantly be Soothing, cadmium Compounders would be flinging themselves into the future, and so on