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Oddities With Atium


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2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Atium's effect is absurdly weak next to lerasium's incredible potential, considering atium lets you see a teeny bit into the future[8] while lerasium makes you a Mistborn (and apparently can do other cool things).[9]

But Raizium also have not very strong effect, and we don't know many other metale to compare - no Bavadinum, Koravelium, Edglium, Aonium or Skaium... Is possible that Lerasium is anomaly, not Atium. Also keep on mond that once used, Atium goes to Spiritual and regrowhs, but Lerasium is used permanently.

2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

When asked what metal was swapped for atium, the answer was aluminum, but "there's an asterisk on it, it's not what you're thinking... you're making assumptions".[16]

Sorry, but wasnt that cadmium or bendalloy? Temporal for temporal?

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20 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

But Raizium also have not very strong effect

We haven't seen it Allomantically burnt

21 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

and we don't know many other metale to compare - no Bavadinum, Koravelium, Edglium, Aonium or Skaium... Is possible that Lerasium is anomaly, not Atium.

It's possible, sure, but I don't see why the concentrated essence of a Shard manifested in a pure form should have pretty much the exact same effect as a normal metal.

22 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Sorry, but wasnt that cadmium or bendalloy? Temporal for temporal?

A questioner assumed that and Brandon did not contradict them, but Brandon himself has never said that, as far as I can tell (related similar thing: Brandon has never indicated malatium Mistings are a thing, as far as I'm aware, that was assumed in the same question). And Brandon definitely lets people get away with false assumptions sometimes, so him not saying that it's false doesn't prove it's true. According to the WoB I used, he originally had it as chromium that was switched, and then changed his mind and decided it was aluminum.

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2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Well, I can't imagine "steals all abilities" is likely to be terribly weak, no matter what exactly it ends up meaning.

well if it's all of the non-power stuff like strength, inteligence, mental/emotional fortitude etc, then it can still be powerful while being sort of "weak"

but that's just one way it could work out.

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1 minute ago, Frustration said:

well if it's all of the non-power stuff like strength, inteligence, mental/emotional fortitude etc, then it can still be powerful while being sort of "weak"

but that's just one way it could work out.

Sure, but that's still stronger than every other Hemalurgic metal (including atium), in terms of what's stolen by a single spike. 

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12 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Supposedly, pure atium grants "an expansive vision of the future"[37], which doesn't really match what we see. Electrum, the same table says, "allows an Allomancer to see a vision of possible paths they could take in the future. Usually limited to a few seconds"[34], which is much more similar to the effects we see for both metals than "an expansive vision of the future". Perhaps the "pure atium" referred to by the Allomantic chart is not the "atium" of the Final Empire, but a purer godmetal, as theorized in this post.

Ehh. I'd say that being able to see the likely future of everything around you might well be described as "expansive." Every tendril of mist, every flake of ash, every person, they all produce a future shadow, even those you can't see, IIRC, you get shadows of objects that have not yet entered your field of view, like arrows shot at your back.

And on top of that your cognition is enhanced to be able to use this information (which may well include Spiritual shenanigans, bringing you closer to your perfect understanding). All in all it's a rather impressive effect, even if it doesn't permanently change you.

Compare to electrum only letting you see your future and immediately becoming a garbled mess because it runs into the futuresight vs futuresight problem.

12 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

New answer: They're just electrum Mistings, but as Rashek has suppressed the knowledge of this metal, they don't know electrum exists, let alone that electrum Mistings do.

I don't think that's true, the impression I got was not that electrum was an unknown metal (did no-one for a thousand years independently try to alloy silver and gold?) just that the canon of allomancy as it were was there are these eight metals that come in related pairs and these two off to the side that stand on their own and are weird and also burning a metal that's not one of these ten will kill you.

My impression is basically that Vin being fed an unknown metal and then surviving the end of Final Empire with this knowledge has the resources to find that actually, what we knew for a thousand years wasn't true, and testing alloys of known metals is safe-ish, so let's see if we can find what pairs with gold.

Electrum isn't talked about like a new discovery, IIRC, and I also find it implausible that the alloy itself would have been unknown, it's just that we didn't know it did allomancy, just like aluminium was a known metal (they got it from plundered noble silverware after all), they just didn't know it was an allomantic metal.

 

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8 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Sure, but that's still stronger than every other Hemalurgic metal (including atium), in terms of what's stolen by a single spike. 

Perhaps, but we also know that they likely do not know everything about Atium spikes.

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5 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Ehh. I'd say that being able to see the likely future of everything around you might well be described as "expansive." Every tendril of mist, every flake of ash, every person, they all produce a future shadow, even those you can't see, IIRC, you get shadows of objects that have not yet entered your field of view, like arrows shot at your back.

I guess. It just doesn't really jive with me to describe it that way, personally, but I can see the argument.

5 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

All in all it's a rather impressive effect, even if it doesn't permanently change you.

It's certainly impressive, but in terms of effects in Allomancy and Feruchemy, it doesn't feel to me like it's directly doing much more than some of the other metals, it just happens to be a more useful variant. Compare that to lerasium in Hemalurgy, where it seems likely it steals a lot of attributes at once, and which is capable of permanently rewriting the spiritweb in Allomancy. There's a preeeetty large gap in raw power there.

And while there's the theory that lerasium is more concentrated and so more powerful, which could work for Allomancy, that would actually be counterproductive for Hemalurgy, since Investing something already Invested is difficult (this is the reason given for why a Shardblade can't be a spike), so I don't feel that works.

(To be clear, because that previous section implies otherwise: my point with Hemalurgy is not that lerasium and "refined" atium [which I theorize to be the pure form of the metal] in Hemalurgy are especially different in power [lerasium is stronger in raw power there, but in a way I feel can work logically if certain conditions are placed upon things]. It's that, even where being Invested is a drawback, lerasium is incredibly powerful, so I feel its power difference in the other systems likely also has to be more than just raw Investiture levels. In this case, I think it's a combination of Investedness and of Ruin's metal's stronger raw power being filtered and limited by the electrum.)

5 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I don't think that's true, the impression I got was not that electrum was an unknown metal (did no-one for a thousand years independently try to alloy silver and gold?) just that the canon of allomancy as it were was there are these eight metals that come in related pairs and these two off to the side that stand on their own and are weird and also burning a metal that's not one of these ten will kill you.

Ah, yeah, I phrased that poorly didn't I (like, really poorly)? What I meant was he suppressed the fact electrum exists on the table (as opposed to, say, atium, where most understood atium was on the table but didn't believe Mistings for the metal existed). (At least, I think that's what I meant, maybe I just paid no attention to what I was writing and screwed up xD)

I'll edit that to clarify, thanks for pointing that out!

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Perhaps, but we also know that they likely do not know everything about Atium spikes.

The "even atium" bit was an aside, the greater point was that Preservation's metal in Ruin's magic is almost certainly still stronger than every single base metal by a large margin, so Ruin's metal in Preservation's system and in the mixed system seemingly being only marginally stronger is strange, to me.

(Note that by "stronger" I do not refer to usefulness, as atium is incredibly useful in both Allomancy and Feruchemy, but in terms of like, things done by the metal. I wouldn't be surprised if bendalloy and cadmium in Allomancy actually require more power than atium.)

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11 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Sure, but that's still stronger than every other Hemalurgic metal (including atium), in terms of what's stolen by a single spike. 

11 hours ago, Frustration said:

well if it's all of the non-power stuff like strength, inteligence, mental/emotional fortitude etc, then it can still be powerful while being sort of "weak"

but that's just one way it could work out.

I thought about this pretty thoroughly a while back and this depends on the amount of metal used and what the spike is used for. Making an Inquisitor sized spike of Lerasium is insanely wasteful and impractical, but making it more like an earing or smaller if one could manage it might be more useful than making someone a Mistborn with it. I'm not really sure how many tiny spikes one could make with a bead of Lerasium like Elend used, but let's say it's 10. Assuming it can be done, the best thing you could do with those is make 5 super Kandras who have all of the Blessings or one Uber Kandra with all of the Blessings X 5. That's the best use for Lerasium as a spikes that I can think of, though there may be other Hemalurgic constructs where it could be similarly useful. I could see Harmony or Kelsier doing something like that because they have long lifespans and having super powerful Kandra over the course of millennia could be quite useful. But, any mortal is going to be best served by becoming a Mistborn unless they already are one.

Edited by Harrycrapper
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1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

And while there's the theory that lerasium is more concentrated and so more powerful, which could work for Allomancy, that would actually be counterproductive for Hemalurgy, since Investing something already Invested is difficult (this is the reason given for why a Shardblade can't be a spike), so I don't feel that works.

Actualy is WoB about this:

Quote
Shadows of Self release party (Oct. 5, 2015)
#4 Share Copy
 
Play/Pause
 

Questioner 1

What would happen if you used lerasium as a spike for Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh lerasium as a spike for Hemalurgy? Um lerasium as a spike for Hemalurgy--

Questioner 1

Would it work or would it just not work?

Brandon Sanderson

No I mean it would work--

Questioner 1

If you were to place a lerasium spike would you transform into a full Mistborn as opposed to--

Questioner 2

Well it can also steal powers, not just grant them, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, right. The thing about it is you're trying to Invest something that is already very Invested, which always has weird effects. So while you could do it, it would be a gross waste of the potential. It's like using a nuclear bomb as a paperweight. It is functional but--

Questioner 1

Does that mean it would be hard, for example, to make Nightblood stick something? Because--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes it would be very hard to make Nightblood stick to something. The amount of Investiture in Nightblood is--

Bystander

Astronomical?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Larger than most things you've seen. So Pushing on Nightblood, really hard.

Used as Spike, Lerasium would give less power, than used allomanticly. Also, there is similar WoB:

Quote
Tel Aviv Signing (Oct. 18, 2019)
#1 Share Copy
 
Play/Pause
 

Questioner

So, about Feruchemy. If someone takes, for example, a copper metalmind, fills it with memories, and then a tin metalmind, fills it with senses, then melts them together into a bronze metalmind, would you be able to tap anything from it, and what?

Brandon Sanderson

If you made an alloy of them, you would not get anything out of them. You would know there's Investiture in there, but you wouldn't be able to pull it out. 

Questioner

Even if it's your own?

Brandon Sanderson

Even if it's your own, yup. They would interfere with each other to the point that you wouldn't be able to get anything out. Sorry.

I bet this would work similarly. Hemalurgic charge would interfere with Lerasium own Investiture and a lot of it would be wasted (in comparison to standard Lerasium Power). Maybe also Hemalurgic Charge would decay much faster than in Atium.

But your theory is somewhat possible - Atium grows in Geods, like Pearls, so possible it is not only Atium but also other metal. But I dont think Atium is weak in Allomancy, just Lerasium is very powerfull as Godmetal (Tanavastium very durable, but not have other powers, even cannot be shaped physicly, Raizium "just" conducts Investiture, and we yet to see others).

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1 hour ago, Bzhydack said:

Used as Spike, Lerasium would give less power, than used allomanticly.

Sure, but the Hemalurgic table says lerasium "steals all abilities". So it's less powerful than in Allomancy, but almost certainly still far above every other metal in power.

1 hour ago, Bzhydack said:

Tanavastium very durable, but not have other powers, even cannot be shaped physicly

Considering there's been essentially no experimentation done with them as far as we know, I don't think we can say there's nothing else. And due to the fact that this trait is still manifest even in things like sprenblades, which are more complicated than just tanavastium, I'm inclined to guess that this is less a trait of tanavastium and more just a trait godmetals can be given, personally (same way the Honorblades can be made to grant the Surges, when that wouldn't make any sense if it was just a natural property of them, since different HB grant different powers).

1 hour ago, Bzhydack said:

Raizium "just" conducts Investiture

This is more than we've seen atium do outside a magic system.


I would also note that we have seen neither of those used in the Metallic Arts yet even though we know they're viable, so taking their passive effects and comparing that to atium's active Allomantic and Feruchemical effects feels to me like a bit of a false equivalence.

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17 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Sure, but the Hemalurgic table says lerasium "steals all abilities". So it's less powerful than in Allomancy, but almost certainly still far above every other metal in power.

Not nesecerly. It can, of course, steal all powers, but thing is - Hemalurgy often steals power WITH LOSS, and Lerasium can have this parameter especially high, because it is Investiture with oposite Intent. If Lerasium Spike would loss, for example, 90% of innitial power, it would make very weak Mistborn.

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6 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Not nesecerly. It can, of course, steal all powers, but thing is - Hemalurgy often steals power WITH LOSS, and Lerasium can have this parameter especially high, because it is Investiture with oposite Intent. If Lerasium Spike would loss, for example, 90% of innitial power, it would make very weak Mistborn.

Depending on what all it steals, it could have a pretty high loss factor and still be above any other metal in terms of raw power stolen. (Again, I'm not referring to usefulness, I'm referring to actual Investiture used/stolen/stored/etc per bit.) Even highly Invested and as such resistant to being used as a spike, lerasium steals far more than nearly anything else. So I don't believe being more densely Invested is the sole reason for lerasium to be stronger than atium, as I have most commonly seen proposed is the case.

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16 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Depending on what all it steals, it could have a pretty high loss factor and still be above any other metal in terms of raw power stolen.

I think Lerasium steals all Allomantic powers, because they are Connected to it closly. Maybe also Feruchemical powers, but Im not sure. I doubght Lerasium will steal non-Scadrian powers or some body traits, because how woud this work?

But Atium can steal anything, including Extra-planetary stuff, like Radiant Bonds, or Divine Breath, or some other Connection... But we need also remember what type of Investiture Atium is - this is Ruin, everything about it and around it is about entropy.

And what if Decay in Lerasium Spike is very fast?

BTW, it is excelent question to ask Brandon during some signings.

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19 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

I think Lerasium steals all Allomantic powers, because they are Connected to it closly. Maybe also Feruchemical powers, but Im not sure. I doubght Lerasium will steal non-Scadrian powers or some body traits, because how woud this work?

But Atium can steal anything, including Extra-planetary stuff, like Radiant Bonds, or Divine Breath, or some other Connection... But we need also remember what type of Investiture Atium is - this is Ruin, everything about it and around it is about entropy.

And what if Decay in Lerasium Spike is very fast?

As I said,

5 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The "even atium" bit was an aside, the greater point was that Preservation's metal in Ruin's magic is almost certainly still stronger than every single base metal by a large margin, so Ruin's metal in Preservation's system and in the mixed system seemingly being only marginally stronger is strange, to me.

The main point is not "lerasium is better than atium in Hemalurgy" (though I do think in terms of raw Investiture stolen lerasium will almost certainly beat out atium). The point is lerasium is likely way stronger than the non-god metals in Hemalurgy, while atium is only slightly above most but perhaps not even all of the non-god metals in Allomancy and Feruchemy. (Again, just in terms of Investiture, not in terms of usefulness.) And I was specifically raising that argument as a response to someone saying lerasium in Hemalurgy might be as relatively "weak" as atium in Allomancy to say that their argument does not seem to be the case, not as a broader argument over which metal is more useful to possess.

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Quote

(which has been stated to apply to godmetals[2]).

I don't think you linked the right WoB, this one only speaks about highly invested Godmetal, not about normal Godmetal

Quote

Atium's effect is absurdly weak next to lerasium's incredible potential, considering atium lets you see a teeny bit into the future[8] while lerasium makes you a Mistborn (and apparently can do other cool things).[9]

How strong a Mistborn you become depends on how much Lerasium you ingest, using a bead of the size of an atium bead would make you a very weak Mistborn

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6 hours ago, mathiau said:

I don't think you linked the right WoB, this one only speaks about highly invested Godmetal, not about normal Godmetal

Even atium alloys are Invested enough to be "very useful" for resisting Shardblades, and the question of godmetals being "Invested" in the first place is a weird one. So I don't see any godmetal being un-Invested enough for that to be relevant to this case, personally.

6 hours ago, mathiau said:

How strong a Mistborn you become depends on how much Lerasium you ingest, using a bead of the size of an atium bead would make you a very weak Mistborn

We don't know the exact sizes of the beads, but the lerasium is described as "tiny", "so tiny", "small", etc repeatedly.

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7 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Interesting. But irrelevant here, the fact that atium can be pushed is explicitely an anomaly so the fact that Atium display some other properties of highly-invested material doesn't matter here

Quote

, and the question of godmetals being "Invested" in the first place is a weird one. So I don't see any godmetal being un-Invested enough for that to be relevant to this case, personally.

I think you're not looking it the right way, yes godmetal can't be un-Invested but they can be over-Invested. For example Windle has manifested has manifested with different sizes as a shardstick/shardfork but he always was made of the same amount investiture, which mean there was more investiture in the Shardfork than in the metal constituting it, most likely a few hundred breaths worth of investiture more. Actually Shardplates have enough additional investiture that a Mistborn wouldn't be able to burn them

Quote

word_thief

What would happen if a Mistborn ingested the metal of a Shardblade/Plate?

Brandon Sanderson

A Shardblade is Invested. A Mistborn isn't likely to have a tie to that type of Investiture. So probably nothing would happen…

General Twitter 2013 (Oct. 24, 2013)

The fact that over-Invested godmetal can't be pushed doesn't mean normal godmetal can't be.

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9 minutes ago, mathiau said:

The fact that over-Invested godmetal can't be pushed doesn't mean normal godmetal can't be.

Brandon has explicitly said that atium being able to be Pushed is weird. Part of this theory is proposing a way for it to be the case besides the current answer, which is just "...it breaks a lot of rules... that everything else has to follow".

Edited by LewsTherinTelescope
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2 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Brandon has explicitly said that atium being able to be Pushed is weird. Part of this theory is proposing a way for it to be the case besides the current answer, "...it breaks a lot of rules... that everything else has to follow".

Yes, I know that. I'm not saying you're wrong I'm saying the WoB you said said that other godmetals couldn't be pushed didn't say that and that the fact atium resited shardblades wasn't an argument against the current answer.

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  • 3 months later...

Ah, another WoB on the topic I just stumbled across.

Quote

Questioner

Can an Allomancer burn any god metal? Or is it specifically Preservation and Ruin?

Brandon Sanderson

That is actually a RAFO. There's some funkyness going on there.

More indication that godmetals are perhaps ordinarily supposed to be burned by anyone.

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