Pools, God Metals, and other confusion

[Paladin Brewer]

So as much as I love Mistborn, there are some things that I don't 100% understand, so I figured I'd toss out the questions here and you folks are sure to be able to answer

1) So every shard has a pool. Ruin has a pool, and the pits where his atium grows.  Kelsier destroys the pits, and Hoid says now no one can travel there.  But he uses Preservation's pool to travel, so, couldn't he use Ruin's pool to travel?

2) Why does Atium grow but Lerasium does not? Was that part of Leras' sacrifice to beat Ruin?

3) Why does Lerasium have such a permanent effect but Atium is very limited?

4) Why does Ruin's freedom depend on Vin/anyone using the pool or holding it in? What's the difference?

5) Can any pool be used like the Well of Ascension/Preservation's pool?

6) People use Atium and it regrows. What happens to Lerasium when people use it?

7) What was Ati/Ruin going to do with the cache of Atium if he did find it? Absorb it someway? Why would this benefit him, why would he need it to be powerful? If he needs it, why let it grow in the first place?

I am pretty sure I have more questions but that's what I remember....for now

[Gizmosowner]

Not sure bout 1.

2. Lerasium separated ruin from a portion of his power which started to manifest as atium

3. There was a much smaller amount of lerasium so I can only assume that it was a more concentrated form of preservationists power then atium was to ruin.

4. The shard pool was the prison so in giving the power away you got rid of the prison. If you used the power then it would be able to just reform over a 1024 year period.

5. When you use lerasium if makes you a over powered mistborn. The holder of the shard of preservation could make more if they want but Sazed hasn't.

6. I think he would absorb it in someway and it would give him back a lot of power. With that power he could kill all humans and regain the little pieces of his investiture that is within all humans That are on Scaadrial and descended from the humans preservation and ruin made together.

im probably wrong on a lot of these but this is how I interpreted it from reading the books.

with number one he might not have been able to use the pool due to its innate effects, whatever those are.

Edited April 21, 2017 by Gizmosowner

[The One Who Connects]

1. A question I have never considered and don't have an answer for. Good job on that

2. Leras forced the power of Ruin to manifest as Atium on its own, while Leras didn't decide to use his power to make much Lerasium.

3. For the same reason Lerasium can be burned by everybody but Atium can't: God Metals don't work in the same ways as everything else.

4. Preservation set up his own power to auto-counter anything Ruin tried to do, and letting the power go was symbolically opening his cell. Using the power was kind of like throwing away the key for a while. Brandon has said that if nobody touched the power at all, Ruin would gain greater influence, but not be free, so I'm not 100% sure of my answer.

5. Used as in "take up the power" like Vin/TLR did? We don't know if Leras did something to allow them to do that or if it is naturally like that. The Pool in Elantris hasn't been taken up by anybody as far as we know, so... If you mean "Used" in another way please clarify.

6. The Power returns to the Shard after it is burned for both Metals.

7. Ruin would have to absorb it himself. As for how it benefitted him, the power should return to him after being burnt, but Leras diverted that power back to the Pits, so by other people burning it, they denied him a big chunk of his essence, his power, until it regrew.

He wasn't "letting it grow," Leras forcibly made Atium grow by separating that chunk of Ruin's power from him. He could've killed off everyone on Scadrial at the end of HoA, but he'd still be at half strength for the next 300 yrs till the Atium regrew so he can reconnect with his power.

 

This explanation really makes me think about how cruel Ruin's punishment actually was. He got split into two parts, his mind was locked away in a prison that countered everything he did, his body was forcibly turned into Atium, and he could only try to escape once every 1,000 years.

[Voidus]

1 hour ago, Paladin Brewer said:

So as much as I love Mistborn, there are some things that I don't 100% understand, so I figured I'd toss out the questions here and you folks are sure to be able to answer

1) So every shard has a pool. Ruin has a pool, and the pits where his atium grows.  Kelsier destroys the pits, and Hoid says now no one can travel there.  But he uses Preservation's pool to travel, so, couldn't he use Ruin's pool to travel?

2) Why does Atium grow but Lerasium does not? Was that part of Leras' sacrifice to beat Ruin?

3) Why does Lerasium have such a permanent effect but Atium is very limited?

4) Why does Ruin's freedom depend on Vin/anyone using the pool or holding it in? What's the difference?

5) Can any pool be used like the Well of Ascension/Preservation's pool?

6) People use Atium and it regrows. What happens to Lerasium when people use it?

7) What was Ati/Ruin going to do with the cache of Atium if he did find it? Absorb it someway? Why would this benefit him, why would he need it to be powerful? If he needs it, why let it grow in the first place?

I am pretty sure I have more questions but that's what I remember....for now

I'm a bit rusty on some of the more recent interviews and signings so some of this may be a bit dated but nontheless:

1- Every Shard that Invests itself on a planet develops a Shardpool, Ruins pool was the pits themselves.

Quote

CHAOS
Does Ruin have a pool, similar to Preservation's pool with the Well of Ascension and Skai's pool in Elantris?

BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes. His pool is the pits.

2- Two parts to this one, 1: Preservation exists in the Well and the Mists (Which both do regrow when consumed) as well as Lerasium, but also the pits were meant to act as a way to lock part of Ruins power so that the two Shards would be balanced again so this is sort of intentional. (This last part is more interpretation than stated canon)

Quote

CHAOS
Why is there such an imbalance between the amount of atium and the amount of lerasium in the world? Also, why are atium and lerasium very imbalanced in Allomantic power (Lerasium is far more useful than atium, really)?

BRANDON SANDERSON
There isn't. Leras is just spread out further. He is in the mists, in the Well, and in the lerasium. Ruin's power however is considerate strictly in atium.

3- We have yet to see the full extent of either of their effects, but seeing into the future is still something very powerful in the cosmere so it's not necessarily as unbalanced as you might think.

4 - Not much to add to the previous answer here, the power was Ruins prison, giving it up got rid of the prison.

5- If you mean to move in and out of the cognitive realm then yes, if you mean to ascend to become a Shard then no.

6- The power returns to Preservations store, what originally created the Lerasium that TLR found is still (To my knowledge at least) unknown but if it does just grow like Atium does then it has a much longer generation time.

7- Yes absorb it, it represents a large chunk of his Investiture, which he needed to be more powerful than Preservation so he could end the world faster as he desired (And also, presumably in order to fight other Shards when he went to go ruin their worlds too)
He didn't let it grow, Preservation created the pits as an outlet for his power specifically so that he would be weakened.

[Paladin Brewer]

21 minutes ago, Voidus said:

1- Every Shard that Invests itself on a planet develops a Shardpool, Ruins pool was the pits themselves.

Quote

CHAOS
Does Ruin have a pool, similar to Preservation's pool with the Well of Ascension and Skai's pool in Elantris?

BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes. His pool is the pits.

Just a small thing, I think the pool and the pits are somewhat separate. Maybe a typo where Brandon Sanderson said the pool is "in" the pits? Taking a quote off the coppermind:

"The Pits of Hathsin are not a true pool, the pool exists under the pits. This Pool is connected to the power of the Shard of Ruin. The Pits feed off the pool located below them to create atium, the solid form of Ruin's Power.^[2] Before the Lord Ruler's ascension, the pool was located above ground, as a black lake high in the Terris mountains."

[Voidus]

1 minute ago, Paladin Brewer said:

Just a small thing, I think the pool and the pits are somewhat separate. Maybe a typo where Brandon Sanderson said the pool is "in" the pits? Taking a quote off the coppermind:

"The Pits of Hathsin are not a true pool, the pool exists under the pits. This Pool is connected to the power of the Shard of Ruin. The Pits feed off the pool located below them to create atium, the solid form of Ruin's Power.^[2] Before the Lord Ruler's ascension, the pool was located above ground, as a black lake high in the Terris mountains."

Yeah it's one of those things where the books aren't explicit and the WoBs have been somewhat vague, the references for that article are the quote I mentioned, and Brandon has on a few occasions referred to the pits as the pool but yeah you could definitely make the case that the pits are technically separate from but connected to, Ruins pool.

[Shard Slayer]

So if the pits didn't exist prior to TLR, why did TLR decide that he needed to create the pits? Why didn't Preservation create a similar metal condensing mechanism when he first trapped Ruin?

[The One Who Connects]

33 minutes ago, Shard Slayer said:

So if the pits didn't exist prior to TLR, why did TLR decide that he needed to create the pits? Why didn't Preservation create a similar metal condensing mechanism when he first trapped Ruin?

It already existed, but TLR changed the landscape, burying Ruin's Pool and building a fortress above the Well. As a side effect (most likely), the Atium began to grow above the Pool, and TLR took full advantage of that once he found out what Atium did. Thus; the Pits came to be.

Odds are he probably collapsed whatever cave the Atium was previously growing in while terraforming, so it picked the next closest open area to continue growing. (Magic, much like life, will find a way)

Edited April 21, 2017 by The One Who Connects

[Calderis]

On point 1, specifically why the pool itself wasn't able to be used for crossing between the Cognitive and the Physical, the actual pools location under ground most likely made an exit difficult if not impossible. 

[Yata]

5 hours ago, Calderis said:

On point 1, specifically why the pool itself wasn't able to be used for crossing between the Cognitive and the Physical, the actual pools location under ground most likely made an exit difficult if not impossible. 

Actually the Pits were the main and easier way to go in and out from Scadrial. The worldhoppers managed to build all' the structure for an easy travel through the Black Lake (Perpendicularity's name)

Probably the Perpendicularity itself still works as fine as before but Kalsier could have caused a collapse of the Pits belove and the Lake was inaccessibile or sealed by falling rocks.

[Khyrindor]

On 4/21/2017 at 10:48 PM, Yata said:

Actually the Pits were the main and easier way to go in and out from Scadrial. The worldhoppers managed to build all' the structure for an easy travel through the Black Lake (Perpendicularity's name)

Probably the Perpendicularity itself still works as fine as before but Kalsier could have caused a collapse of the Pits belove and the Lake was inaccessibile or sealed by falling rocks.

The Black Lake is an actual lake to the east of Luthadel, if you look at the map.

Also, do you have a source on the "structure" you talk about? In Secret History:

 

Hoid only talks about a mercantile ecosystem, meaning traffic and trade through the Perpendicularity there.

I haven't seen any mention of structure. Presumably they have boats and the like to let travelers on and off, but I highly doubt them having a roadway.

Kelsier is chastised for breaking the Pits for the next few hundred years. And he didn't cause a cave-in.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Khyrindor

[+Extesian]

3 hours ago, Khyrindor said:

The Black Lake is an actual lake to the east of Luthadel, if you look at the map.

Also, do you have a source on the "structure" you talk about? In Secret History:

  Hide contents

Hoid only talks about a mercantile ecosystem, meaning traffic and trade through the Perpendicularity there.

I haven't seen any mention of structure. Presumably they have boats and the like to let travelers on and off, but I highly doubt them having a roadway.

Kelsier is chastised for breaking the Pits for the next few hundred years. And he didn't cause a cave-in.

We know there were boats and things

Quote

QUESTION

So, why did Hoid in Secret History have to ride on another person to get to the Well, when that person could float on--

BRANDON SANDERSON

Sooo, what he’s floating on is a Cognitive Shadow, it’s a spirit, it’s not an actual person.

QUESTION

Do we know them?

BRANDON SANDERSON

You don’t know them, don’t worry about them. But see, he’s using that as a boat because it’s easy to sink through the mist. And if you notice, he has to coat his oar with Investiture in order to move him. So yeah, he’s floating on a person’s soul. It was so much easier with the Pits, but that’s because there were boats and things.

But that's the only reference I've found. It maybe implies what @Yata said if not proper confirmation. 

[Yata]

Yeah I refer to this, simply I can't find the WoB.
If you think about it's quite likely that if you use a route in a mass scale, you will build something to accomodate the travel and have less issue in crossing

[The One Who Connects]

14 hours ago, Khyrindor said:

The Black Lake is an actual lake to the east of Luthadel, if you look at the map.

Well, Ruin's Shardpool was a black reflective liquid metal, and "Ruin's Pool" and "Black Lake" have a disambiguation redirect on the wiki.

Edit: (Forgot my point) It's a similar situation thing, but they aren't the same place.

Edited April 28, 2017 by The One Who Connects

[Khyrindor]

20 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Well, Ruin's Shardpool was a black reflective liquid metal, and "Ruin's Pool" and "Black Lake" have a disambiguation redirect on the wiki.

Edit: (Forgot my point) It's a similar situation thing, but they aren't the same place.

I should reread Secret History I guess, I don't remember it ever being described, only that we know there's a pool there by WoB.

[The One Who Connects]

17 minutes ago, Khyrindor said:

I should reread Secret History I guess, I don't remember it ever being described, only that we know there's a pool there by WoB.

It isn't in Secret History. Alendi describes it in The Logbook during the TFE Epigraphs, and Brandon says that the lake still existed under the Pits during the books.

[Khyrindor]

12 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

It isn't in Secret History. Alendi describes it in The Logbook during the TFE Epigraphs, and Brandon says that the lake still existed under the Pits during the books.

Oh, is that lake confirmed to be the pool? 

[The One Who Connects]

Just now, Khyrindor said:

Oh, is that lake confirmed to be the pool? 

The one under the pits, yes.

Quote

The other lake in Alendi's bumps?

Brandon Sanderson (17 October 2008)

A manifestation of Ruin's gathered consciousness, much like the dark mists in book two. The lake was still around in Vin's era, but had been moved under ground.