Unraveling the Secrets of F-Atium

[Koloss17 She/They]

Alright, I wanted to post this to the Mistborn forum, but I feel that this is going to extend farther than the confines of that series, so here we are.

F-Atium. Stores age. When tapping, you have the appearance of your younger self. When storing, you get the appearance of your older self. Now, here’s the basis of the question I have. What constitutes your older self?

People can change in the span of a few months, or even a few days. Anything can happen, and the world is unpredictable. Even more unpredictable when you have people launching coins at you and flying through the skies. When you extend that to the span of 20 years, thousands of options arise. 
 

Now, to preface, this is working off of the idea that F-Atium only affects your physical body, much in the way of F-gold. Your mind and memories are completely unaffected. At least, I’m pretty sure.

Now, what are the limits of your future self? None, really. Can you age yourself forward to gain really big muscles? Can you gain frown lines or laugh lines? Can you get tattoos? 
 

Realistically speaking, any of those are very possible in the span of even 10 years. Can Atium actually do that? That’s what I’m not sure about.

I would assume, and this is quite the assumption, that F-atium is utilizing fortune to do what it does. Taking a peek into the future and bring it to the present. The future has a lot of different offshoots, but some are more likely than others. This is the basis for a lot of Shardic fortune, as seen in Stormlight. Now, I understand what can determine the most likely outcome on a community level, but what determines the outcome on an individual level?

Now, there’s certainly a lot of good that can happen in the future, but a lot of bad can happen as well. You can break bones, you can gain chronic illnesses, and you can even lose limbs. Now, depending on how F-Atium works, you could even theoretically age yourself forward into a paint in time where you are bleeding from a stab wound. How is that determined? What if you age into a point where you are dead due to a car accident?

There is a million different physical things that can happen to you in the span of your lifetime, and the limits are nearly non-existent. But there has to be some, right?

F-Atium is seen as a party trick by feruchemists, but what if it is secretly one of the most powerful feruchemantic abilities out there?

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

Alright, I wanted to post this to the Mistborn forum, but I feel that this is going to extend farther than the confines of that series, so here we are.

F-Atium. Stores age. When tapping, you have the appearance of your younger self. When storing, you get the appearance of your older self. Now, here’s the basis of the question I have. What constitutes your older self?

People can change in the span of a few months, or even a few days. Anything can happen, and the world is unpredictable. Even more unpredictable when you have people launching coins at you and flying through the skies. When you extend that to the span of 20 years, thousands of options arise. 
 

Now, to preface, this is working off of the idea that F-Atium only affects your physical body, much in the way of F-gold. Your mind and memories are completely unaffected. At least, I’m pretty sure.

Now, what are the limits of your future self? None, really. Can you age yourself forward to gain really big muscles? Can you gain frown lines or laugh lines? Can you get tattoos? 
 

Realistically speaking, any of those are very possible in the span of even 10 years. Can Atium actually do that? That’s what I’m not sure about.

I would assume, and this is quite the assumption, that F-atium is utilizing fortune to do what it does. Taking a peek into the future and bring it to the present. The future has a lot of different offshoots, but some are more likely than others. This is the basis for a lot of Shardic fortune, as seen in Stormlight. Now, I understand what can determine the most likely outcome on a community level, but what determines the outcome on an individual level?

Now, there’s certainly a lot of good that can happen in the future, but a lot of bad can happen as well. You can break bones, you can gain chronic illnesses, and you can even lose limbs. Now, depending on how F-Atium works, you could even theoretically age yourself forward into a paint in time where you are bleeding from a stab wound. How is that determined? What if you age into a point where you are dead due to a car accident?

There is a million different physical things that can happen to you in the span of your lifetime, and the limits are nearly non-existent. But there has to be some, right?

F-Atium is seen as a party trick by feruchemists, but what if it is secretly one of the most powerful feruchemantic abilities out there?

We can say with certainty that F-Atium is purely a physical realm change.

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/188/#e3923

Doom-Slayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is an interesting idea, but I think that the way F-Atium works is by diverting the Spiritweb's physical "youthfulness" so that it can be tapped later.

I don't think that you could hack F-Atium to provide yourself with a future version of your own self, since it's more like F-gold; it isn't actually a new "version" of yourself that you're making, you're just temporarily reducing or increasing your body's ability to hold itself together in some way.

I think that Allomantic gold and electrum and the spiritual Feruchemical attributes have some interesting things similar(ish) in nature to this though, so if you're looking for temporal shenanigans, that's probably you're best bet.

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

F-Atium. Stores age

It stores youthfulness not age. 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

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

Phantine

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

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

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

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

Brandon Sanderson

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

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

General Reddit 2016 (Jan. 2, 2016)

 

10 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

People can change in the span of a few months, or even a few days. Anything can happen, and the world is unpredictable. Even more unpredictable when you have people launching coins at you and flying through the skies. When you extend that to the span of 20 years, thousands of options arise. 
 

Now, to preface, this is working off of the idea that F-Atium only affects your physical body, much in the way of F-gold. Your mind and memories are completely unaffected. At least, I’m pretty sure.

Now, what are the limits of your future self? None, really. Can you age yourself forward to gain really big muscles? Can you gain frown lines or laugh lines? Can you get tattoos? 

Realistically speaking, any of those are very possible in the span of even 10 years. Can Atium actually do that? That’s what I’m not sure about.

I would assume, and this is quite the assumption, that F-atium is utilizing fortune to do what it does. Taking a peek into the future and bring it to the present. The future has a lot of different offshoots, but some are more likely than others. This is the basis for a lot of Shardic fortune, as seen in Stormlight. Now, I understand what can determine the most likely outcome on a community level, but what determines the outcome on an individual level?

Now, there’s certainly a lot of good that can happen in the future, but a lot of bad can happen as well. You can break bones, you can gain chronic illnesses, and you can even lose limbs. Now, depending on how F-Atium works, you could even theoretically age yourself forward into a paint in time where you are bleeding from a stab wound. How is that determined? What if you age into a point where you are dead due to a car accident?

There is a million different physical things that can happen to you in the span of your lifetime, and the limits are nearly non-existent. But there has to be some, right?

F-Atium is seen as a party trick by feruchemists, but what if it is secretly one of the most powerful feruchemantic abilities out there?

You don't move your body through time into the future. You store youthfulness, when storing it your body thinks that it is now older, and it will physically change to that older version. Your 20 yo body just looks like it's 50 yo. It doesn't make you be like a person you will be 30 years in the future, You're not pulling your future self into the present or something like that. Future is not involved here. You're just tricking your body into thinking that it's older/younger than it really is. That's it.

[Koloss17 She/They]

9 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

This is an interesting idea, but I think that the way F-Atium works is by diverting the Spiritweb's physical "youthfulness" so that it can be tapped later.

I don't think that you could hack F-Atium to provide yourself with a future version of your own self, since it's more like F-gold; it isn't actually a new "version" of yourself that you're making, you're just temporarily reducing or increasing your body's ability to hold itself together in some way.

 

Now here’s the weird thing. What constitutes that? I mean, if we’re just going with “aging”, aging can easily be slowed over time. Someone in their 70s can look insanely good for their age, and all of that is done through physical work and time and effort. If we’re saying that storing would be altering things from where they currently are, and extrapolating from there, that still wouldn’t necessarily lead to aging into a feeble crone. And if we are figuring that muscle density would stay the same (i.e. if you are currently insanely jacked, your 70 year old self would be the beefiest grandpa you ever did see), then what would that mean for when you tap youth? Do we get one beefy baby? I wouldn’t think so. Youth seems to be reverting to what you were in the past, though maybe not an exact point in time (like reverting to your post-pie eating 5 year birthday), but more of when you were five…in general? But there’s problems with that too, as drastic changes CAN happen when you are the same age. 

I dunno. This is getting all timey whimey.

Quote

You don't move your body through time into the future. You store youthfulness, when storing it your body thinks that it is now older, and it will physically change to that older version. Your 20 yo body just looks like it's 50 yo. It doesn't make you be like a person you will be 30 years in the future, You're not pulling your future self into the present or something like that. Future is not involved here. You're just tricking your body into thinking that it's older/younger than it really is. That's it.

@alder24

So does that mean you do get jacked grandpa looks? I feel like there has to be some sort of physical change (not running as well as if your body was 15, for example). But what determines that?

Edited April 25, 2023 by Koloss17

[alder24]

53 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

Now here’s the weird thing. What constitutes that? I mean, if we’re just going with “aging”, aging can easily be slowed over time. Someone in their 70s can look insanely good for their age, and all of that is done through physical work and time and effort. If we’re saying that storing would be altering things from where they currently are, and extrapolating from there, that still wouldn’t necessarily lead to aging into a feeble crone. And if we are figuring that muscle density would stay the same (i.e. if you are currently insanely jacked, your 70 year old self would be the beefiest grandpa you ever did see), then what would that mean for when you tap youth? Do we get one beefy baby? I wouldn’t think so. Youth seems to be reverting to what you were in the past, though maybe not an exact point in time (like reverting to your post-pie eating 5 year birthday), but more of when you were five…in general? But there’s problems with that too, as drastic changes CAN happen when you are the same age. 

I dunno. This is getting all timey whimey.

So does that mean you do get jacked grandpa looks? I feel like there has to be some sort of physical change (not running as well as if your body was 15, for example). But what determines that?

Your current body looks. The way you will age is based on how healthy you are, if you smoke, if you stress a lot, smile etc. Atium just takes your current body and makes it older/younger the way you are. If you're very muscular, you will be very muscular when aged, because this is not a part of aging, but you will be weaker, because your body is older. It doesn't involve your future/past, just your present.

You can become a baby, for example if you tap Atium with duralumin. 

Spoiler

Questioner

What happens if you burn duralumin while Compounding?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Questioner

Could you turn into a baby?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Questioner

But it wouldn't really do much?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

 

[Spearguy]

Due to the fact that Atium is Ruin's god metal, it's feruchemical properties may have something to due with his intent. Ruining the body temporarily and later undoing time's natural ruination in return. We may need to feruchemical properties of other god metal's but it would make sense that they would store something in relation to their intent.

[StanLemon]

Here is a thought, maybe it's related to how younger Breaths are better than older Breaths. It could be linked to the life force of the user

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, StanLemon said:

Here is a thought, maybe it's related to how younger Breaths are better than older Breaths. It could be linked to the life force of the user

You know, I've wondered about that for a while; why do Breaths get weaker as people age?

I know we probably don't have any good answers right now, but seriously, I'd like to know peoples thoughts on that.

[Read It Aloud]

Quote

Can you get frown lines?

Yes, every main character in Mistborn has frown lines.

[cometaryorbit]

On 4/25/2023 at 3:01 PM, Trusk'our said:

You know, I've wondered about that for a while; why do Breaths get weaker as people age?

I know we probably don't have any good answers right now, but seriously, I'd like to know peoples thoughts on that.

This is rather odd.

We see that Lemex's Breaths flicker (his BioChromatic aura is pulses of color-distortion) as he approaches death, but they're not weaker because of that - when Vivenna gets them, they don't flicker for her.  So that seems to be a function of the person holding them, not something that goes with the Breath itself.

But whatever Breath loses with age does seem to be something that transfers, since the Hallandren prefer to feed younger Breath to the Returned.

[Trusk'our he/him]

34 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

This is rather odd.

We see that Lemex's Breaths flicker (his BioChromatic aura is pulses of color-distortion) as he approaches death, but they're not weaker because of that - when Vivenna gets them, they don't flicker for her.  So that seems to be a function of the person holding them, not something that goes with the Breath itself.

But whatever Breath loses with age does seem to be something that transfers, since the Hallandren prefer to feed younger Breath to the Returned.

Interesting point on Vivenna holding Lemex's Breaths.

The only thing I can think of is that it has something to do with the Tones- perhaps the Spiritweb has an "echo" that the Breaths pick up on, which can be felt as a flicker when the person is dying.

Edited June 2, 2023 by Trusk'our

[Leuthie]

I'm looking for WOB to corroborate, but Breaths don't significantly age. They get weaker as the individual approaches death for obvious reasons; Endowment doesn't want everyone to give away their full power Breath on their deathbed. Until close to death, the effect of aging is minimal.

As for youthfulness storage and the effects on the body: You're tricking the Spirit Web into thinking it's older and the Spirit Web changes your body to match. It doesn't incorporate what will actually happen to you. It simply filters the idea of older age through the Cognitive into the Physical and changes your body based on what the world thinks you would become at that age. The Plutonic ideal of age taken form.

[Walter The Moral]

This is an interestnig question! I have a sort-of followup question on top of it.

If Rysn somehow managed to begin storing age in an Atiummind (don't question how), and then taps it to become younger. If she taps it to the time before she lost the use of her legs, would she be able to walk? Or would her legs still be paralysed. Does it have anything to do with the Cognitive Asepct? Or is it entirely based on your Spiritual Self?

[Argenti he/him]

On 6/7/2023 at 11:55 AM, Walter The Moral said:

This is an interestnig question! I have a sort-of followup question on top of it.

If Rysn somehow managed to begin storing age in an Atiummind (don't question how), and then taps it to become younger. If she taps it to the time before she lost the use of her legs, would she be able to walk? Or would her legs still be paralysed. Does it have anything to do with the Cognitive Asepct? Or is it entirely based on your Spiritual Self?

She would not be able to walk. If she aged back to 15, she would be 15-year-old Rysn who is also paralyzed. If I remember correctly, Atium is purely physical and doesn't effect all three realms in any meaningful way. 

[Koloss17 She/They]

58 minutes ago, Argenti said:

She would not be able to walk. If she aged back to 15, she would be 15-year-old Rysn who is also paralyzed. If I remember correctly, Atium is purely physical and doesn't effect all three realms in any meaningful way. 

That’s the question. Is it purely physical? And how physical is it? Alder thinks buff baby is the way to go, while I think it’s a weird mixture of Identity, Fortune, and Connection. 
 

We don’t really have much evidence to back either alternative, so it’s all theories for now.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

That’s the question. Is it purely physical? And how physical is it? Alder thinks buff baby is the way to go, while I think it’s a weird mixture of Identity, Fortune, and Connection. 

There's a WoB rattling around that says it's purely physical: that's why Rashek snaps back to his actual age, which basically leaves him as a stain on Kredik Shaw's floor. The exact mechanics aren't explained, but it doesn't seem to be doing any actual time fiddling. It just takes your true age (which your spiritweb keeps track of) and then uses that as a snapshot to extrapolate what you would look like later in life. It's not looking into the future and then translating that onto you in the present, it's just temporarily making your body older to store away youthfulness. It's like F-Gold: Your regular health is diverted away into the Goldmind, so your body is put into artificial sickness. As Alder said, it's just a physical change based on you in the moment. If you store age normally, you become an old man. Later on, if your arm gets amputated and then you store youth, you become an old man sans an arm. Just because you eventually become an amputee doesn't mean your older version will reflect that while you grow old before that change occurs. The same applies backward, it uses you in the moment as a base and extrapolates what a younger version of you would look like.

[Koloss17 She/They]

26 minutes ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

There's a WoB rattling around that says it's purely physical: that's why Rashek snaps back to his actual age, which basically leaves him as a stain on Kredik Shaw's floor. The exact mechanics aren't explained, but it doesn't seem to be doing any actual time fiddling. It just takes your true age (which your spiritweb keeps track of) and then uses that as a snapshot to extrapolate what you would look like later in life. It's not looking into the future and then translating that onto you in the present, it's just temporarily making your body older to store away youthfulness. It's like F-Gold: Your regular health is diverted away into the Goldmind, so your body is put into artificial sickness. As Alder said, it's just a physical change based on you in the moment. If you store age normally, you become an old man. Later on, if your arm gets amputated and then you store youth, you become an old man sans an arm. Just because you eventually become an amputee doesn't mean your older version will reflect that while you grow old before that change occurs. The same applies backward, it uses you in the moment as a base and extrapolates what a younger version of you would look like.

I find this answer logical, yet unsatisfying. How is age determined? And how is extrapolation determined? If you’ve been gaining muscle for the past few months, will storing Atium keep that process going? At what point does “aging” symptoms occur? I know a decent chunk of it is genetics, but quite a bit is lifestyle related.

That’s the questions I have about this. There’s got to be something more at play, right?

[Duxredux he/him]

Let's look at this from another angle at the work that is being done by the Investiture.

Say we find a 6-year old Feruchemist and we get them to start storing youthfulness. Would they start growing to full adult as they age? I don't think so.  Investiture is leaving their body as the Platonic ideal of youth. It would seem very strange to me if they were to gain knowledge they don't have or physical mass as a byproduct of Investiture leaving their body. That mass would need to come from somewhere. Similarly when TLR lost his bracers and no longer had Investiture sustaining him and his biceps, a thousand years of hair didn't shoot out of his scalp or nails out of his fingers (which is a thing that happens in one of Brandon's non-Cosmere books when someone uses age to heal).

That said we know that through compounding an adult can revert to a child.  So clearly Atium when tapped can alter a person's physical mass. I think it's plausible that F-Atium could restore a missing arm but with some constraints. I'd guess that if they had stored say 5 years of life, lost an arm, maybe they could tap those years and regrow it - but not get the full 5 years back as youth. Some of the Investiture would be utilized to create the mass for the limb. You might also have to be compounding or have youth stored from when you had the limb, in not sure. Burn x years of life to regrow an arm would be far less appealing than F-Gold. I don't think it would work like a save state - store a year and roll back any major injury with and end up back at the "correct" age.

I can believe that unusual things could happen when tapping Youth, but I wouldn't think anything directly beneficial would come from storing, like muscle mass at the start of an exercise regimen, or knowledge before a test. Loss of Investiture just shouldn't create mass or energy, even if it's just the Investiture in memories that have not been lived. Feruchemical storage can have benefits as we've seen, but not in this way.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Duxredux
clarity

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

I find this answer logical, yet unsatisfying. How is age determined? And how is extrapolation determined? If you’ve been gaining muscle for the past few months, will storing Atium keep that process going? At what point does “aging” symptoms occur? I know a decent chunk of it is genetics, but quite a bit is lifestyle related.

That’s the questions I have about this. There’s got to be something more at play, right?

Let's nail down aging first. What is aging? What is going on in your body?

There are three interlinked things that make up what we call aging: Cells stop repairing themselves, the immune system gets weak, and the body accumulates damage due to the prior two.

Most of the things we associate with aging are, in large part, side effects of fighting off cancer.

It all starts with DNA. Our chromosomes have these little protective caps on the ends called telomeres. When cells undergo mitosis (divide and multiply), the telomere protects the chromosomes from getting damaged. However, this process wears on the telomere, and eventually, the entire telomere is used up, and then the chromosomes start getting damaged. Your body really, really doesn't want damaged chromosomes getting multiplied. Luckily, it has highly developed systems that detect this, and once they do detect it, triggers signaling cascades that drive cells into apoptosis (the body's natural killing of cells) or senescence to avoid replicating a damaged genome. The thing is, as you get older and more and more telomeres run out, your body has to repeat this process over and over, sometimes at the same time, and the rate of mass cullings of cells with deformed genomes keeps getting higher and higher. At the same time, your stem cell reserves also experience telomeric decay through the body's natural maintenance of them, so they become less and less efficient at replacing the damaged cells. This is one of the leading factors that cause organ failure and dysfunction with age.

The second factor in aging, deterioration within the immune system, is because the thymus, the gland that produces T- and B-cells, slowly starts shrinking after puberty, and by the time you reach your 60s and 70s, it's been weakened a lot. This is one factor of aging that can be affected by lifestyle habits like @Koloss17 was saying, since having an immune system that was exposed to sickness more often as a child will lead to one that works far better than that of someone who wasn't, but that's an inter-personal comparison. When compared to yourself, your immune system in your later decades will no longer be as robust as it used to be.

The third major factor in aging is the accumulation of damage due to these last two. With cells being killed left and right to prevent the growth of tumors and Stem cells struggling to replace those eliminated cells quickly enough, some things that the body was supposed to be preventing can slip through the cracks. Couple that with an immune system that isn't so good at fighting off disease anymore, and minor dysfunctions of the body start posing a greater threat than usual. Things like Alzheimer's can result from this, where although it's possible it can happen earlier in life, it's much more likely to happen in your twilight years, with your body becoming so inefficient.

So, now that we know what's going on with aging, we can figure out what F-Atium is doing. When you store youth, you're causing all of these different malfunctions in your body. Your thymus shrinks and your immune system gets compromised, your cells lose their telomeres (as well as expressing other effects of time) and the body begins to break down just as it would with age. You also begin to accumulate damage at an accelerated pace, etc.

Your body isn't performing any time shenanigans. It's simply a bunch of changes and processes in the body being catalyzed while storing, then reversed while tapping, using the body as the Spiritweb dictates it should be as the baseline. Someone who will become a future amputee won't lose an arm while storing, because the future isn't being translated onto your body; it's just the things I outlined above taking place in your body. Similarly, if you just got your arm amputated, you wouldn't grow it back by tapping youth; your body will just reverse the processes given above: your thymus will grow to its previous size and boost your immune system, telomeres will regrow, damage accumulated specifically as a direct result of aging (things that we know F-Gold doesn't heal) will be healed, etc.

Then there's the argument about how it affects mass. I think that if a child stored youth, they wouldn't grow any older. The same telomeric decay and shrunken thymus things will happen to them but in their original, small, child body. If you're muscular, your muscles will be maintained (as best as they can while the body is being severely weakened). This is because storing youth affects nothing but the specific things that directly cause aging. Growth in mass is F-Pewter's thing. It doesn't speed up hair or nail growth, so it isn't just fast-forwarding your entire body through time.

However, Brandon has said that you could turn yourself into a baby through F-Atium, and we see Rashek maintain a young physique through it, so even though it shouldn't be possible to physically grow older through F-Atium, you can certainly become younger.

I wonder though, it's described as purely a Physical Realm change, but it affects your brain too. Would aging too much or become too young affect how you think?

[Koloss17 She/They]

40 minutes ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

Let's nail down aging first. What is aging? What is going on in your body?

There are three interlinked things that make up what we call aging: Cells stop repairing themselves, the immune system gets weak, and the body accumulates damage due to the prior two.

Most of the things we associate with aging are, in large part, side effects of fighting off cancer.

It all starts with DNA. Our chromosomes have these little protective caps on the ends called telomeres. When cells undergo mitosis (divide and multiply), the telomere protects the chromosomes from getting damaged. However, this process wears on the telomere, and eventually, the entire telomere is used up, and then the chromosomes start getting damaged. Your body really, really doesn't want damaged chromosomes getting multiplied. Luckily, it has highly developed systems that detect this, and once they do detect it, triggers signaling cascades that drive cells into apoptosis (the body's natural killing of cells) or senescence to avoid replicating a damaged genome. The thing is, as you get older and more and more telomeres run out, your body has to repeat this process over and over, sometimes at the same time, and the rate of mass cullings of cells with deformed genomes keeps getting higher and higher. At the same time, your stem cell reserves also experience telomeric decay through the body's natural maintenance of them, so they become less and less efficient at replacing the damaged cells. This is one of the leading factors that cause organ failure and dysfunction with age.

The second factor in aging, deterioration within the immune system, is because the thymus, the gland that produces T- and B-cells, slowly starts shrinking after puberty, and by the time you reach your 60s and 70s, it's been weakened a lot. This is one factor of aging that can be affected by lifestyle habits like @Koloss17 was saying, since having an immune system that was exposed to sickness more often as a child will lead to one that works far better than that of someone who wasn't, but that's an inter-personal comparison. When compared to yourself, your immune system in your later decades will no longer be as robust as it used to be.

The third major factor in aging is the accumulation of damage due to these last two. With cells being killed left and right to prevent the growth of tumors and Stem cells struggling to replace those eliminated cells quickly enough, some things that the body was supposed to be preventing can slip through the cracks. Couple that with an immune system that isn't so good at fighting off disease anymore, and minor dysfunctions of the body start posing a greater threat than usual. Things like Alzheimer's can result from this, where although it's possible it can happen earlier in life, it's much more likely to happen in your twilight years, with your body becoming so inefficient.

So, now that we know what's going on with aging, we can figure out what F-Atium is doing. When you store youth, you're causing all of these different malfunctions in your body. Your thymus shrinks and your immune system gets compromised, your cells lose their telomeres (as well as expressing other effects of time) and the body begins to break down just as it would with age. You also begin to accumulate damage at an accelerated pace, etc.

Your body isn't performing any time shenanigans. It's simply a bunch of changes and processes in the body being catalyzed while storing, then reversed while tapping, using the body as the Spiritweb dictates it should be as the baseline. Someone who will become a future amputee won't lose an arm while storing, because the future isn't being translated onto your body; it's just the things I outlined above taking place in your body. Similarly, if you just got your arm amputated, you wouldn't grow it back by tapping youth; your body will just reverse the processes given above: your thymus will grow to its previous size and boost your immune system, telomeres will regrow, damage accumulated specifically as a direct result of aging (things that we know F-Gold doesn't heal) will be healed, etc.

Then there's the argument about how it affects mass. I think that if a child stored youth, they wouldn't grow any older. The same telomeric decay and shrunken thymus things will happen to them but in their original, small, child body. If you're muscular, your muscles will be maintained (as best as they can while the body is being severely weakened). This is because storing youth affects nothing but the specific things that directly cause aging. Growth in mass is F-Pewter's thing. It doesn't speed up hair or nail growth, so it isn't just fast-forwarding your entire body through time.

However, Brandon has said that you could turn yourself into a baby through F-Atium, and we see Rashek maintain a young physique through it, so even though it shouldn't be possible to physically grow older through F-Atium, you can certainly become younger.

I wonder though, it's described as purely a Physical Realm change, but it affects your brain too. Would aging too much or become too young affect how you think?

Don’t forget about DNA methylation, but your point still stands.

However, that still makes no sense to me. Tapping it does affect your body more than just processes, and it physically ages you backwards, to the point where you can become a baby. Not a Five foot eight baby—a regular sized, full on baby. The whole point of Feruchemy is the idea of basically nudging a slider in a negative direction, to then be able to nudge that slider in a positive direction. If we want to have a biology metaphor, it’s shoving the body’s state of equilibrium downwards to skyrocket it upwards (I know technically speaking in any negative feedback loop, generally anything outside the norm is bad, but just roll with me on this one). 
 

So if you’re saying that storing messes with metabolic processes, and tapping messes with time shenanigans, that just isn’t how Feruchemy works. Your theoretical explanation of storing tracks, it just doesn’t make sense when you go and tap it.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

 

7 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

However, that still makes no sense to me. Tapping it does affect your body more than just processes, and it physically ages you backwards, to the point where you can become a baby. Not a Five foot eight baby—a regular sized, full on baby. The whole point of Feruchemy is the idea of basically nudging a slider in a negative direction, to then be able to nudge that slider in a positive direction. If we want to have a biology metaphor, it’s shoving the body’s state of equilibrium downwards to skyrocket it upwards (I know technically speaking in any negative feedback loop, generally anything outside the norm is bad, but just roll with me on this one). 

 

So if you’re saying that storing messes with metabolic processes, and tapping messes with time shenanigans, that just isn’t how Feruchemy works. Your theoretical explanation of storing tracks, it just doesn’t make sense when you go and tap it.

Storing doesn't mess with metabolic processes, only the specific ones that lead to the effects we see as aging. And tapping doesn't perform any time shenanigans, it just reverses those same aging processes, in a way that somehow shrinks you down into a child. I do see your point though, storing should still make you physically grow with age if it can shrink you when tapping. So if a child stores youth, it should allow for an increase of mass somehow. It can't be through fast-forwarding the body into growing, since no other part of your metabolism seems to be boosted, so Investiture would have to become mass for you that way. This way, the two balance out and perform the same thing in different directions.

[alder24]

@Underwater_Worldhopper That was a great explanation. Very nicely done. 

Maybe F-Atium is weird and it draws from SR from Ruin/Preservation to create a body for a baby when storing? It wouldn't require a lot of investiture, just a tiny bit. But I agree, that's the weird part of F-Atium.

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

16 minutes ago, alder24 said:

@Underwater_Worldhopper That was a great explanation. Very nicely done. 

Maybe F-Atium is weird and it draws from SR from Ruin/Preservation to create a body for a baby when storing? It wouldn't require a lot of investiture, just a tiny bit. But I agree, that's the weird part of F-Atium.

I feel that there should be a way to describe what F-Atium does in purely Spiritual terms, but that is my physical explanation for it. However, regarding the original topic of the thread, F-Atium can't be very useful irrespective of how it works. The Terris have known about it for at least a thousand years, maybe more if they knew about it Pre-Rashek, and given the scholastic nature of the Worldbringers and Keepers, they would have studied the ability pretty well. All they'd need to do is get their hands on a single bead of Atium, whereupon it could be experimented with and passed back and forth between different Feruchemists for research. They would have found out if it did something useful, and they'd have stewards on the lookout to palm more of the stuff. If they knew about it Pre-Rashek, it would be even more well-researched. The fact that they don't give it any sort of importance at all seems to suggest that there isn't any particularly useful ability of Atium, or at least none that they could discover.

On the other hand, keep in mind that some Inquisitors had F-Atium spikes given to them by the Lord Ruler, so there must have been some unique benefit of it that warranted skipping over something like F-Gold for something so useless as F-Atium apparently is. Makes you wonder whether there's some other aspect of it that we haven't considered.

[Koloss17 She/They]

3 hours ago, Underwater_Worldhopper said:

 

Storing doesn't mess with metabolic processes, only the specific ones that lead to the effects we see as aging. And tapping doesn't perform any time shenanigans, it just reverses those same aging processes, in a way that somehow shrinks you down into a child. I do see your point though, storing should still make you physically grow with age if it can shrink you when tapping. So if a child stores youth, it should allow for an increase of mass somehow. It can't be through fast-forwarding the body into growing, since no other part of your metabolism seems to be boosted, so Investiture would have to become mass for you that way. This way, the two balance out and perform the same thing in different directions.

So are you saying that storing is promoting cell growth? Or that the investiture is just generating new cells? If there isn’t temporal shenanigans, there would have to be some sort of magically stimulated cell growth. And how would it predict the growth? If we’re saying it isn’t extrapolating on the bodies current state (i.e. you can’t gain extra muscle mass), how is it working?

[Underwater_Worldhopper he/him]

Just now, Koloss17 said:

So are you saying that storing is promoting cell growth? Or that the investiture is just generating new cells? If there isn’t temporal shenanigans, there would have to be some sort of magically stimulated cell growth.

It would not be promoting cell growth, but Investiture would be becoming new cells. Just to be clear, Investiture isn't promoting your body to make more cells, but becoming cells itself.

Just now, Koloss17 said:

And how would it predict the growth? If we’re saying it isn’t extrapolating on the bodies current state (i.e. you can’t gain extra muscle mass), how is it working?

This is the bit you convinced me to go back on since it wouldn't make sense for storing to be unable to affect your mass but for tapping to be able to. As I said earlier, this would mean that Investiture will become new body mass for you for the duration of storing, using your body's current state as a baseline. The reason I didn't think this could happen before was due to F-Pewter, and how Feruchemical powers don't encroach on one another (i.e tapping strength won't make you able to move any faster, being able to move while tapping weight doesn't constitute any net gain of power), but for it to stay internally consistent, you should be able to grow, and thus extra mass would be required. But since the lack of hair or nail growth suggests that your body isn't being induced to increase its metabolic rate to enable said increase in mass, Investiture would have to become the new mass, like with Pewter.

...

Honestly though, on second thought, it doesn't make sense for extra Investiture to be drawn to create new body mass. Where would it be coming from, given that Feruchemy is internal? I think it's more likely that just like how storing isolates and boosts only the aging processes of your body, it would also isolate your ability to create new mass and speed that up, without increasing hair or nail growth. In that case, what I said at the start of this post is wrong, and it is cell growth being magically stimulated. How or why that would exclude hair and nail growth is beyond me, but that seems to fit better than the 'Investiture becoming mass' idea, even though we know it's possible through F-Petwer.