Atium retcon and the lost metal

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 12/21/2022 at 9:02 AM, SpinningSky said:

My head canon for this is that we use the word "burning" because that's what Scadrians call "ingesting a metal and doing a thing that consumes its matter", but while the allomantic burning is a way to access Preservation's investiture, for god metals you can just use the very concentrated phyisical investiture that way, similiar to how you immerse yourself in liquid investiture to use that. We could say that Preservation got insipired by how godmetals worked to make allomancy

Yeah, same. [Rhythm of War]

Spoiler

The way I think of it, it's "Allomancy" the way using the raysium dagger to steal Jezrien's soul was "Hemalurgy". Which is to say, it's not, but they work off very closely related fundamental principles.

There's actually a bit of a weird WoB that may or may not be related:

Quote

mail-mi (paraphrased)

Can you tell me something new about godmetals, something that isn't known or isn't widely known?  

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I can tell you this: the existence of godmetals is one reason why metal is so weird in the cosmere.  

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Oct. 23, 2021)

 

[Elder]

Does this mean that anyone (or at least anyone from Scadrial) could burn Raysium? Edglium? Uli Danium?  
 

what might these metals do?  Hell, what does pure Atium do?

[Frustration]

22 minutes ago, Elder said:

Does this mean that anyone (or at least anyone from Scadrial) could burn Raysium? Edglium? Uli Danium?  

No, they'd need Connection to the relevant shard.

23 minutes ago, Elder said:

what does pure Atium do?

Let's you see directly into the SR, for an expansive view of the future.

[Elder]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

No, they'd need Connection to the relevant shard.

Let’s you see directly into the SR, for an expansive view of the future.

The kind of connection you might be able to get with a Duralumin Feruchemist (or perhaps compounder)?  Ooh, that could be really crazy if they can burn God-metals with Duralumin.  Bond-Smith levels perhaps.

Really…… maybe pure Atium is what messed Bloody Tan up.  Though I can’t imagine where he’d have gotten pure Atium tho.  

Edited February 13, 2023 by Elder

[lacrossedeamon]

31 minutes ago, Elder said:

Really…… maybe pure Atium is what messed Bloody Tan up.  Though I can’t imagine where he’d have gotten pure Atium tho.  

Brandon has at least said that Tan wasn't burning Atium during the altercation in order to anticipate the first bullet but anything before that is fair game I guess.

[Elder]

2 minutes ago, lacrossedeamon said:

Brandon has at least said that Tan wasn't burning Atium during the altercation in order to anticipate the first bullet but anything before that is fair game I guess.

I’m imagining he used it once (I mean we’re still stretching credulity in assuming he got pure Atium in the first place, so I doubt he’d have a stockpile), saw far more than any human was meant to see, and it broke his mind.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Elder

[offer]

11 hours ago, Elder said:

Does this mean that anyone (or at least anyone from Scadrial) could burn Raysium? Edglium? Uli Danium?  
 

 

There is some WoB that says you need a connection to the shard but other wobs says "anybody" so there Both might be true. godmetals being burnable by anybody is in the newer WoBs and the conncection requirement appears in a WoB from 2013 (General Twitter 2013 (Oct. 24, 2013) ).

So probably anybody can burn godmetals.

 

Quote

what might these metals do?  Hell, what does pure Atium do?

We don`t know.

We acctually saw only one pure godmetal being burned (Lerasium which makes you mistborn) so they might give you connection to the specific shard or its magic system but as we are guessing based on one point it can also be something completely different.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, offer said:

We acctually saw only one pure godmetal being burned (Lerasium which makes you mistborn) so they might give you connection to the specific shard or its magic system but as we are guessing based on one point it can also be something completely different.

Lerasium turning people into a Mistborn is just a side effect, not its main purpose. That probably explains why Lerasium alloys can be burned by anybody and will turn them into alloy-Misting while Atium alloys can be burned only by alloy-Mistings. And I think that is also the explanation why Shardblades can't be used by anybody - they are alloys of Honor's and Cultivation's god metals, they would most likely act like Atium alloys and not like Lerasium alloys. That's why you need a connection first. Alloying them with Lerasium would probably grant you that connection.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Preservation's Power

All right, so maybe I lied about there only being three magic systems in this book. It comes down to how you term the powers of Preservation and Ruin, who kind of blanket the entire system. There are a lot of things going on here, and—well, the truth is I don't want to mention all of them, for fear of spoiling future books. However, I'll give you a few rules to apply.

First, to these forces, energy and mass are the same thing. So, their power can take physical shape—as Preservation's did in the bead of metal Elend ate. Second, there is a bit of Preservation inside of all the people—and it's this that allows the people to perform Allomancy. It needs to be awakened and stirred to be of use, but when it is, a proper metal can draw forth more of Preservation's power. It's like the metal attunes the bit within the person, allowing it to act as a catalyst to grab more power.

Allomancy is not fueled by metal; it is fueled by Preservation. The metal is the means by which a person can access that fuel, however. If there were another way to access it, then the metal wouldn't be needed.

Preservation's touch on people differs. Some have more, some have less. This doesn't make them better or worse people—indeed, some most touched by Preservation have been among the worst people in the world. As Ruin later points out, there is a difference between being evil and being destructive.

Regardless, if a person can get more Preservation into them, they become better Allomancers. Hence Elend becoming a Mistborn. Like all people, he had the potential within him—it was just too small of a potential to be awakened through normal means. That little jolt of Preservation's body, however, expanded and awakened his Allomancy.

As a tidbit, that was a side effect of what that bead of metal did. It wasn't the main purpose of the bead, and if another Allomancer were to burn it, it would do something else.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Nov. 12, 2009)

 

There is also this WoB from 2019, that says burning a Shardblade would be hard, so it seems to confirm the previous WoB:

Spoiler

Questioner

If a Mistborn were to burn a piece of a Shardblade, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

This would be hard to make happen, but it would be possible. A Shardblade is going to act as, basically, an alloy of the god metal of Honor and so  what would it do? RAFO, but it is possible and it would do something. It would not be inert. It would be Allomanticaly viable.

Footnote: This question was also addressed here.
Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

And there are other god metals that can be burned by anybody:

Spoiler

mail-mi

We know that any person can burn lerasium. Are there other God Metals that any person can burn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by alder24

[IlstrawberrySeed]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

That probably explains why Lerasium alloys can be burned by anybody and will turn them into alloy-Misting while Atium alloys can be burned only by alloy-Mistings

I would assume that lerasium alloys are actually burning a minuscule bit of pure lerasium, then the alloy. Could be wrong though, because otherwise it doesn't seem to fit with the retcon. Perhaps it has to do with %alloy, but that doesn't sound right to me.

[Elder]

Scadrial humans are probably automatically connected to Preservation since both he and Ruin actually used their investiture to create humans.

Maybe Connection to other shards sufficient to burn their godmetals is just a matter of attuning one’s self to that Shard’s intent.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Godmetals had similar effects to Lerasium: permanent/one time use effects that is.  For instance, Maybe Edglium makes so that you can give your investiture as breath.  Maybe The Nalthians (Nalthese?) get trace amounts of Edglium all the time.  

Edited February 14, 2023 by Elder

[IlstrawberrySeed]

3 hours ago, Elder said:

Scadrial humans are probably automatically connected to Preservation since both he and Ruin actually used their investiture to create humans.

Maybe Connection to other shards sufficient to burn their godmetals is just a matter of attuning one’s self to that Shard’s intent.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Godmetals had similar effects to Lerasium: permanent/one time use effects that is.  For instance, Maybe Edglium makes so that you can give your investiture as breath.  Maybe The Nalthians (Nalthese?) get trace amounts of Edglium all the time.  

The newest WoBs say anyone can burn any shardmetal (though we don't know if alloys/higher shards can, but basealloys are a mix). Older WoB mention Connection, but that isn't right anymore. We're supposedlhy told that P-Atium provides an expansive vision of the future, or a spiritual realm sight. That isn't a permaboost, so not all of them can.

I highly dought endowminuim would make one have a breath by turning it into one, but it might provide some number of breaths on burning. I doubt it, since pres already has the "power gifting" (side) effect, and we know that mixing it with Autonominium can make one a sand master. (by WoB)

Edited February 14, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed

[Elder]

I also wonder about what other Atium Alloys might be able to do. Right now we have:

Electrum+Atium= precognitive Atium as used by Mistborn (and Seers, though now I wonder if Old Yomen and the other snapped seers were actually just Electrum burning oracles).

Gold+Atium=Malatium-projected visions of the past. 

In both cases, it took what was an internal effect and made it external.  Or maybe it took the powers and made them more useful.

So my speculation: 

Atium+Cadmium: put the speed bubble around other people without needing the grenade.  Slow/stasis traps

Atium+Bendalloy:  again, bubble around other people, though this seems to be of less use, though I could think of some interesting applications off the top of my head.

Or maybe the allomancers can start carrying the bubbles around with them.

Copper:  blind a seeker

Bronze:  help other people detect allomancers?  That doesn’t seem right

Zinc:  empathy?  Yeah that doesn’t really work with Ruin.  
Brass:  Self Soothing?

yeah, this isn’t working right now.  I’ll have to give it some more thought.  Good night.

 

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Elder

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 2/13/2023 at 9:20 PM, Elder said:

and Seers, though now I wonder if Old Yomen and the other snapped listings were actually just Electrum burning oracles

I believe that was confirmed by WoB

On 2/13/2023 at 9:20 PM, Elder said:

Or maybe it took the powers and made them more useful.

Atium alloys supposedly have enhanced temporal and mental effects.

On 2/13/2023 at 9:20 PM, Elder said:

Or maybe the allomancers can start carrying the bubbles around with them.

Already possible with intent and practice.

 

[cometaryorbit]

I think the pure atium effect is the same as the (impure)atium+duralumin effect that Elend got in HoA - "an expansive vision", not just shadows of a second or two in the future.

As for malatium, I don't think (impure)atium counts as "a godmetal" for the purpose of weird physical properties like non-meltability. The Investiture is still there, but it's less ... active, or actualized? ... in the physical component. So I think (impure)atium could be alloyed with gold using early 1800s level metallurgical techniques just as easily as platinum could - which is (impure)atium's physical inspiration.

The other, less likely, possibility is that since (impure)atium is pure atium+gold+silver you make malatium by heating it to a point where the silver separates out and you're left with pure atium+gold = malatium. I doubt that, though, because WoB is that (impure)atium is "very slightly impure" so there probably isn't enough gold. (Though Allomantic alloying percentages don't have to be huge - duralumin is 4% copper and steel in RL is generally <2% carbon).

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 2/16/2023 at 2:21 PM, cometaryorbit said:

The other, less likely, possibility is that since (impure)atium is pure atium+gold+silver you make malatium by heating it to a point where the silver separates out and you're left with pure atium+gold = malatium. I doubt that, though, because WoB is that (impure)atium is "very slightly impure" so there probably isn't enough gold. (Though Allomantic alloying percentages don't have to be huge - duralumin is 4% copper and steel in RL is generally <2% carbon).

I suspect one needs to ally more gold and pull the silver out.