Shard and Shard Metal Questions

[IlstrawberrySeed]

I am working on some theory math for Mistborn, and was wondering if any of the following have been confirmed, as they are the basis of the math or otherwise associated. Please note that I have only read the published Mistborn content (7 books, the prequel short story, alomancer jack, and secret history), and would like to avoid large spoilers, however basics are fine. (in Mistborn, that there are Mistborn and mistings, 8 basic metals, snapping, mistraithes, etc). 

Is there a term for a shareholder that holds 2 or more shards? I have been calling them higher shards.

Do all higher shards have a unique viable metal?

Are all mix of shard metals (including the viable higher shards') in an alloy viable? Is there only 1 correct alloy per shard mix? Including mixes of 3+?

Are all of the above mixed with one of the 16 base metals allomantically viable?

Can shards work together to create a higher shard metal? The reverse of harmony creating atrium/lerasium?

Edited October 26, 2022 by IlstrawberrySeed
Forgot a question.

[Argent]

1 minute ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Is there a term for a shareholder that holds 2 or more shards? I have been calling them higher shards.

There isn't, they are all just Shards. It's unclear whether someone can hold two Shards that are not combined.

1 minute ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Do all higher shards have a unique viable metal?

Ettmetal is Harmony's metal. Brandon has called it harmonium at times.

2 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Are all mix of shard metals (including the viable higher shards') in an alloy viable? Is there only 1 correct alloy per shard mix?

We don't know.

2 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Can shards work together to create a higher shard metal? The reverse of harmony creating atrium/lerasium?

We see something like this in a book you haven't read, so kind of? 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Thanks for responding. Look forward to seeing the kind of. I know that Harmony has it's own metal, just wondering if it is a generalization for all of them.

[Argent]

Shards combining is something pretty rare in the cosmere, so most of what we know about the process, we know from Harmony.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Since I've got those answers, I've got some other questions less related to the math.

Do Impure metals show up as a different reserve if they still have Allomantic atributes, but less so and slightly makes you sick? 

Does duriliam burning effect impure/non-viable metals being burnt, and do they increase the sickness?

Is it possible to kill yourself by D-burning a normally light sick metal?

Since a lerasium/shard alloy allows for savants ascending:

Could a shard burn it to become a higher shard?

Does someone who savants in 2 at once become a higher shard? If so, then is it the same effect as lerasium/higher shard?

[Returned]

32 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Do Impure metals show up as a different reserve if they still have Allomantic atributes, but less so and slightly makes you sick? 

They probably do still show up, though whether or not an Allomancer can tell if the purity is off without burning them isn't clear. I think that the non-alloy related impurity wouldn't show up differently (so, iron and rusty iron will just be iron to an Allomancer), and alloys are probably discernable by the components but not their proportions (so, pewter is pewter regardless of the proportions of metals in it, whether or not the mixture is ideal for Metallic Arts).

Any metal must be perceivable within the Allomancer or else they wouldn't be able to burn it, and we see Vin do just this when she's trying to find new metals in Well of Ascension. We also see Kelsier test some flakes of gold in Final Empire by swallowing them, and while I presume he burned them to test them I don't know for sure that he did. A skilled Tineye might be able to tell more.

37 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Does duriliam burning effect impure/non-viable metals being burnt, and do they increase the sickness?

No idea, as we've never seen it. If the metal has any Allomantic properties, duralumin should release them all in one burst, just like it normally would, even if that burst is less impressive than one from the ideal mixture. If a metal is non-viable it won't actually work like a proper metal would (you'll burn it, but it won't act as a catalyst to draw Investiture from the spiritual realm), so it's not clear if the duralumin would affect it at all or not. Anyways, a totally non-viable metal is fatal if burned, so I don't know that duralumin would be capable of enhancing that or not.

44 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Is it possible to kill yourself by D-burning a normally light sick metal?

Also unclear, but if I had to guess I'd say no. The dividing line, as Kelsier described it, is whether or not a metal is Allomantically useful. A mediocrely constituted alloy will work, but not as well as the right one, and won't make you sick. An alloy containing an Allomantic metal but the wrong other component will make you sick, like with Vin's experiments towards duralumin. A metal or alloy with no Allomantic properties at all is the killer.

47 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Since a lerasium/shard alloy allows for savants ascending:

Could a shard burn it to become a higher shard?

Does someone who savants in 2 at once become a higher shard? If so, then is it the same effect as lerasium/higher shard?

I'm not quite sure what you're describing as a lerasium/shard alloy or a savant ascending, so I can't weigh in in much detail. I think you mean an alloy of two godmetals, one of the being lerasium? Regardless, becoming a lerasium savant would require so much of the metal that you're essentially taking up all of Presevation's power, which is more or less the same as just taking the Shard. Taking all of the power of two Shards would then, by extension, be more or less the same as taking up the two Shards just as Sazed did. Being a savant would be irrelevant, as the amount of metal you'd need to burn to become one would mean Ascension, which probably supersedes any savantism.

A Vessel might conceivably take up another Shard, but I doubt that they'd need to go through the mechanism of burning the Shard's godmetal. But we haven't seen anything like it, and the rules for Shards seem intricate and mysterious. The Shards themselves might interfere given their natures and Intents. I doubt that Leras or Ati could take up Ruin or Preservation during Hero of Ages, for example: the Vessels are so influenced by the Shards that they might not be able to take another which is so opposed to them. But we don't really know much about this. I've been holding off on reading samples of Lost Metal too, so I'm hoping to get more details in just over two weeks!

Also, I think that the description of a "higher Shard" may be a bit misleading, unless I'm missing your meaning. The way I'm interpreting it suggests some hierarchy that I'm not certain exists.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Thanks! so for the lerasium point, that's exactly it. The savant effect of lerasium or a lerasium alloy (with another shard's metal) is ascension in the alloy's shard (or preservation if pure). My question was more about the interactions with this and shards with multiple of the 16 original powers.

Also, I meant show up as a different metal that is possible to burn. Will impure/improper pewter show up as pewter, or as an unknown metal as described when first learning? (that happens to have less power).

Edited October 26, 2022 by IlstrawberrySeed

[Returned]

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The savant effect of lerasium or a lerasium alloy (with another shard's metal) is ascension in the alloy's shard (or preservation if pure). My question was more about the interactions with this and shards with multiple of the 16 original powers.

We don't really know. I'll disagree with what you're describing as the "savant effect" of being a lerasium savant. Usually when people say "savant" with Allomancy they mean you're extra good at using a metal and get extra power out of it compared to a regular Allomancer, like Spook getting vastly better senses from his tin.

What's happening with lerasium (as I understand it) is that burning lerasium the "normal" way increases your Connection to Preservation, which grants/enhances Allomantic ability. Burning enough lerasium to become a savant is just burning all the lerasium there could be and achieving a complete Connection to Preservation's power. You're not a savant any more than Sazed was just for taking up the Preservation Shard in the first place; holding all the power is holding all the power, for any Shard, regardless of Allomancy. Even then, Ascending to a Shard is a big deal and is more than just grabbing its power.

We may get more information in the future that clarifies things and proves you right, of course. But there are a lot of pieces we don't know, and I think that the ideas that lerasium (or any godmetal) has the same rules and features of proper Allomantic metals, and that Ascension would be a result of savantism with it, are assumptions that go a bit far with what we currently know.

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Also, I meant show up as a different metal that is possible to burn. Will impure/improper pewter show up as pewter, or as an unknown metal as described when first learning? (that happens to have less power).

That's what I thought, and the first piece of my post above was an attempt to address it that way. Pewter almost certainly shows up as pewter, regardless of the exact mixture of the alloy. Otherwise the following passage, in which Kelsier tells Vin to burn metals to test them, wouldn't be necessary:

Quote

"However, if you collect a metal yourself, burn just a tiny bit first to make certain that it's pure or alloyed correctly."

"If it isn't?" Vin asked.

"You'll know," Kelsier promised, beginning to file away at the coin. "Remember that headache you had from pewter dragging?"

"Yes?"

"Bad metal is worse," Kelsier said. "Far worse. Buy your metals when you can-- in every city, you'll find a small group of merchants who provide powdered metals to Allomancers. Those merchants have a vested interest in making certain that all of their metals are pure-- a grumpy Mistborn with a headache isn't exactly the kind of slighted customer one wants to deal with." (The Final Empire, page 450)

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Returned

[cometaryorbit]

It is worth noting that there's a WoB or two that you can't even try to burn a totally non viable metal. So Kelsier's belief that it's fatal could be derived from TLR's deception about Allomancy to keep people from experimenting with new metals.

(Although having lead or mercury in your stomach is pretty bad for you anyway.)

I agree that impure-but-viable pewter shows up as pewter, not as a separate reserve, yeah. But pure lead might not be detectable as a reserve at all.

It seems that Mistings don't detect reserves of the wrong metal at all (from the 'testing the mist fallen' scene in HoA) but Mistborn are weird so that might not be evidence .

 

I guess another possibility (rather than TLR deception) is that maybe you can't burn pure lead, but if you have something that is still an alloy of tin and lead but is way off (like 50/50 rather than 91/9) the sickness could be so bad it's fatal. Or if it was pewter mixed with some third metal in large quantity.

Edited October 27, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Returned]

51 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

It is worth noting that there's a WoB or two that you can't even try to burn a totally non viable metal. So Kelsier's belief that it's fatal could be derived from TLR's deception about Allomancy to keep people from experimenting with new metals.

[...]

It seems that Mistings don't detect reserves of the wrong metal at all (from the 'testing the mist fallen' scene in HoA) but Mistborn are weird so that might not be evidence .

I wasn't aware of those WoBs, but thinking about it it makes sense. We know that Vin was able to burn trace concentrations of Allomantic metals in Luthadel's water, and perceive the reserves she gained that way. But we never hear about a Mistborn having a ton of different reserves, or being careful of which they burn, even though they'd certainly be getting similar amounts of trace metals of various kinds. And when Zane's deception with the atium-coated lead ball was revealed Vin only noticed the atium vanishing and didn't seem aware of a different metal inside of her when the lead was all that was left.

Lying about fatal, non-Allomantic metals strikes me as a pretty good deception on the Lord Ruler's part. If you're as powerful and rare as a Mistborn you've got a lot to look forward to. Trying to burn some random metal would have to be the lamest possible way to die and lose out on all that. Some Allomantic metals, even really impressive ones like bendalloy, are so toxic that it almost doesn't seem worth the cost as it is.

51 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I guess another possibility (rather than TLR deception) is that maybe you can't burn pure lead, but if you have something that is still an alloy of tin and lead but is way off (like 50/50 rather than 91/9) the sickness could be so bad it's fatal. Or if it was pewter mixed with some third metal in large quantity.

That could be, but from Vin's experiments with aluminum alloys I think it's not likely. A severely mis-proportioned, but valid, alloy probably isn't going to be worse than a totally wrong alloy. And Vin survived quite a few of those.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Returned

[cometaryorbit]

43 minutes ago, Returned said:

Lying about fatal, non-Allomantic metals strikes me as a pretty good deception on the Lord Ruler's part.

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of a perfect lie because no one can test it without risking death. Also, the experience of somewhat-off alloys causing pain would make it look true.

45 minutes ago, Returned said:

That could be, but from Vin's experiments with aluminum alloys I think it's not likely. A severely mis-proportioned, but valid, alloy probably isn't going to be worse than a totally wrong alloy. And Vin survived quite a few of those.

Hmm, good point. I always thought Vin was taking extreme risks out of desperation and genuinely could have died, but you're probably right.

[bmcclure7]

On 10/26/2022 at 5:26 PM, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Thanks! so for the lerasium point, that's exactly it. The savant effect of lerasium or a lerasium alloy (with another shard's metal) is ascension in the alloy's shard (or preservation if pure). My question was more about the interactions with this and shards with multiple of the 16 original powers.

Also, I meant show up as a different metal that is possible to burn. Will impure/improper pewter show up as pewter, or as an unknown metal as described when first learning? (that happens to have less power).

Alloys of lerasium according to a wob are just a lesser effect of lerasium granting one power not 16. For a example a alloy of tin and lerasium would make you a tin eye.  

[IlstrawberrySeed]

If I'm thinking of the same WoB, that was for the alloys with base metals.
I checked the coppermind, It looks like I am extrapolating 2 WoBs together, as Lerasium gives Preservations power, and Lerasium/shard alloys give the alloys investiure (sand magic in the WoB). A Lerasium savant ascends to Preservation, so shouldn't a lerasium/shard savant ascend to the alloyed shard? (After all, Brandon actually says that "Basically, [becoming a lerasium savant] is what Ascension is.")

Edited October 31, 2022 by IlstrawberrySeed

[cometaryorbit]

I don't think you could ever get enough of a lerasium alloy to use it to Ascend.

Not sure lerasium savantism is a thing as such. Being a savant is basically steeping your spiritweb in the power so much that it transforms you... so it's analogous to Ascension when that power is the pure power of a Shard.

Also, Ascension isn't unambiguous. TLR Ascended but he never held the entire Shard. A Well-equivalent amount of lerasium (which surely never existed, but hypothetically...) could give you that kind of Ascension, possibly.

[Returned]

On 10/27/2022 at 7:58 PM, IlstrawberrySeed said:

A Lerasium savant ascends to Preservation, so shouldn't a lerasium/shard savant ascend to the alloyed shard? (After all, Brandon actually says that "Basically, [becoming a lerasium savant] is what Ascension is.")

It's not clear that that is what the WoB statement means, and we have a bit of evidence regarding other godmetals and Investiture in the Cosmere which suggest that it isn't. My reading of the WoB you are referring to is that becoming a lerasium savant requires burning essentially all the lerasium there could ever be, and it's that burning of all of it that causes the Ascension, not being a savant.

What you seem to be suggesting is that, were Sazed-as-Harmony to burn one ounce of a lerasium/raysium alloy (or lerasium/taravangianium alloy) he would immediately claim the Odium Shard. That seems too easy and tidy to take an entire Shard given how dangerous and consequential inter-Shard conflicts are. We don't have a clear reason to believe that a Mistborn burning raysium (or taravangianium) would develop a Connection to Odium in the same way that lerasium Connects a person to Preservation, though of course it might. So even if a Mistborn were to burn all of the raysium/taravangianium there could ever be, that still might not prompt an Ascension to Odium.

We still don't know how lerasium might be used outside of swallowing and burning it to become Mistborn (though we know it can do more, for a knowledgeable person), so we don't have a lot of guidance about how using other godmetals works. Especially in an Allomantic mode in the first place.

[cometaryorbit]

45 minutes ago, Returned said:

It's not clear that that is what the WoB statement means, and we have a bit of evidence regarding other godmetals and Investiture in the Cosmere which suggest that it isn't. My reading of the WoB you are referring to is that becoming a lerasium savant requires burning essentially all the lerasium there could ever be, and it's that burning of all of it that causes the Ascension, not being a savant

Yeah, I agree. Savantism is about steeping yourself in a power so long and so much, so powerfully (Spook didn't just burn tin all the time, he flared it almost constantly) that it pervades your soul and transforms it. Assuming you even *can* do this with a metal that probably basically burns up instantly (lerasium melds with Elend's soul, according to Kelsier's POV) it would take a completely absurd, impossible quantity.

But yeah if you did meld that completely absurd quantity with your soul, you'd basically be Preservation.

[Mistchemist16]

On 11/9/2022 at 1:39 PM, Returned said:

It's not clear that that is what the WoB statement means, and we have a bit of evidence regarding other godmetals and Investiture in the Cosmere which suggest that it isn't. My reading of the WoB you are referring to is that becoming a lerasium savant requires burning essentially all the lerasium there could ever be, and it's that burning of all of it that causes the Ascension, not being a savant.

I’d have to disagree with this interpretation. My theory is that becoming a Savant doesn’t literaly put most of a Shard’s power in the God Metal. Instead, accepting that pure power into your soul creates a heavy connection that attaches you to the Shard. Effectively, you craft a “key” for yourself. 
 

As for the bigger question of dual ascending, I think the biggest problem would be reconciling the Intent. Brandon implied that Sazed would’ve become Discord or some similar Shard immediately if he hadn’t been able to control Preservation and Ruin

 

chasmfriend's friend (Paraphrased)

My friend asked for Brandon to write something about Harmony in her Alloy of Law.

Brandon Sanderson

There's another name Harmony could go by if he weren't able to control the conflict between his halves… *to Zas* Have you guys figured that one out yet? Oh, I'm not going to say anything. You have it on recording… I was pretty sneaky with that one so I don't know if you have it or not.

Holiday signing (Dec. 12, 2015)

 

I’d say you probably have to create a compatible Intent when Ascending or otherwise become a chaos shard. This would be easier for more compatible Shards and really hard for creating Harmony. For all we know, Sazed may have been the only person who could’ve held Harmony for any significant time. 

[Returned]

On 1/14/2023 at 10:30 PM, Mistchemist16 said:

I’d have to disagree with this interpretation. My theory is that becoming a Savant doesn’t literaly put most of a Shard’s power in the God Metal. Instead, accepting that pure power into your soul creates a heavy connection that attaches you to the Shard. Effectively, you craft a “key” for yourself. 

I'm not sure that tracks with what we know of savantism, but I might not be understanding exactly what you mean. Would you be willing to describe some of the savants we know of with this interpretation? Like, an Allomantic savant, Soulcaster savant, etc.? That might help me feel more confident I'm getting the full picture.

[Mistchemist16]

13 hours ago, Returned said:

I'm not sure that tracks with what we know of savantism, but I might not be understanding exactly what you mean. Would you be willing to describe some of the savants we know of with this interpretation? Like, an Allomantic savant, Soulcaster savant, etc.? That might help me feel more confident I'm getting the full picture.

First, let me clarify something. I didn’t necessarily mean all savants function as I described. I was talking specifically about Savantism in God Metals.  Nevertheless, the core elements of savantism are still there. Accepting so much Investiture that your body and mind change. 
 

For God Metals, the result is different. A Vessel is simply a mortal mind that has touched the Shard’s power directly and has a strong Connection to its Intent, whether natural (Vin) or artificial (Kelsier). If you can achieve this, your mind can hop in the driver’s seat of the Shard and Ascend. The effect of God Metal Savantism fulfills these conditions by infusing your mind with power through your established Connection.

 

The other point of contention here is how much power the Shard would expend to create the necessary God Metals. At the very least, a Shard should be able to benefit from Investiture recycling. We know that the autumn cache from HoA would’ve recycled to Ruin eventually. If we take a similar stance with Lerasium, you could theoretically burn the physical amount of metal required for Savantism using the same bead each time: recreated by Preservation after burning.
 

But what ultimately makes of breaks this argument is what you believe Investiture is doing in the Cognitive and Spiritual realms. I got the impression that trying to drain all of that power would be like trying to drink the  ocean: basically impossible. But that also assumes God Metals don’t provide much greater power in those two realms. I just don’t yet buy that making enough lerasium for Savantism would transform the entire Shard into metal. But I’m happy to hear counterarguments and new perspectives.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[Returned]

I'm sorry, this post came out much longer than I'd hoped, but I wanted to provide the best expression I could of my reasoning so I've had trouble slimming it down.

2 hours ago, Mistchemist16 said:

First, let me clarify something. I didn’t necessarily mean all savants function as I described. I was talking specifically about Savantism in God Metals.  Nevertheless, the core elements of savantism are still there. Accepting so much Investiture that your body and mind change. 

This is an interesting point that matters to the issue, I think. Savantism via Allomancy and godmetals, as we're discussing here, is going to be a specific thing compared with other forms of savantism. There isn't any other (known) similar mode of interaction with godmetals, so that's a good distinction to have made. I don't know that becoming a savant through burning godmetals would be fundamentally different than burning other metals, given that we're operating only in the Allomantic frame. Lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn Allomantically, and thereby become an Allomancer, but it isn't clear that all other godmetals could be used that way (or that it would have a similar effect), so I don't think that "godmetal savant" is any more of a thing than "tin and pewter savant". You could do both, but they're separate.

Additionally, I want to clarify that savantism is an effect of distorting the spiritweb, with any changes to the body or mind being incidental to that. I'm pretty sure that that is the established mechanism, though I may be mistaken; if so, I would appreciate any references to help me get it right. I don't think we disagree about this, but the mechanism is important to the topic.

 

2 hours ago, Mistchemist16 said:

The effect of God Metal Savantism fulfills these conditions by infusing your mind with power through your established Connection.

This is how savantism develops in Allomancers, so there's no dispute there. Your established Connection to Preservation lets you access Investiture via burning a metal, and the resulting flow of Investiture that infuses you can distort your spiritweb if you get enough of it for a long enough period. What that distortion does is what defines savantism in one metal or another, or even a non-metallic power. Lots of tin dramatically enhances how much your senses improve when burning tin in the future, etc. The question about becoming an Allomantic savant with a godmetal is, then, what enhancement comes from the accompanying spiritweb distortion?

This is the part where a specific conclusion still feels arbitrary and heavily assumption-based to me. We have only the barest understanding of what godmetals really do at all, including lerasium burned Allomantically. I'm not convinced that the effect of becoming a savant with lerasium means that your Allomancy will super-effectively Connect you to the Shard associated with any given godmetal, were you to burn that metal. Burning a metal at all is still drawing on Preservation's power, and that power is translated via the metal into an effect.

What seems to be the effect posited in this thread is that lerasium's Allomantic property is the ability to super-Connect to a Shard (generically), and a lerasium savant would have that effect turbocharged. So, for a savant, one more scrap of lerasium burned would lead to taking up Preservation, one droplet of atium burned would lead to taking up Ruin, one flake of raysium would lead to taking up Odium, and so on for the rest of the Shards. This seems unfounded to me-- it doesn't seem to track with how Allomancy works, nor how lerasium has been seen to operate, nor taking up or losing a Shard, and more.

That said, we don't have any other examples of Allomantic godmetal burning besides lerasium, and godmetals are likely to be odd anyhow, so who knows? But the only support I've seen for the idea is that one WoB, and I think that it has to be misinterpreted to provide it (given the lack of corroboration from anything else, so far).

 

2 hours ago, Mistchemist16 said:

The other point of contention here is how much power the Shard would expend to create the necessary God Metals. At the very least, a Shard should be able to benefit from Investiture recycling. We know that the autumn cache from HoA would’ve recycled to Ruin eventually. If we take a similar stance with Lerasium, you could theoretically burn the physical amount of metal required for Savantism using the same bead each time: recreated by Preservation after burning.

But what ultimately makes of breaks this argument is what you believe Investiture is doing in the Cognitive and Spiritual realms. I got the impression that trying to drain all of that power would be like trying to drink the  ocean: basically impossible. But that also assumes God Metals don’t provide much greater power in those two realms. I just don’t yet buy that making enough lerasium for Savantism would transform the entire Shard into metal. But I’m happy to hear counterarguments and new perspectives.

This seems a bit off to me. I don't think that Shards create godmetals, specifically, so much as godmetals are the physical manifestation of Shards-- this is how Sazed explains it. The form can change, but there isn't more or less of it-- only more or less physical manifestation in a given spot. We see this in the lerasium beads, the liquid metal at the Well of Ascension, and the mists themselves. It does "stick" in some instances: on Scadrial some of Preservation's power is in people (which permanently weakened Leras), and when you burn lerasium you get more of that power, which stays within the person who burned it and their descendants. So I don't think that a lerasium bead would re-form in the way you're describing, certainly not if you burned it as we've seen characters do on-screen. You'd have to find more. It's necessary to note that we don't know very much about this: the Well refills, the mists come and go, and atium reformed over time, but lerasium didn't seem to work that way. So I could be way off on this.

Anyways, the position that is persuasive to me, based on the WoB upthread, is that to become a lerasium savant would require so much lerasium as to be equivalent to just taking up the Shard anyhow. I don't think that that requires concentrating the Shard's power in a particular form or sequestering it within a person, though one could do that. For example, Vin physically draws in all of the mists (which are also a physical form of Preservation's Investiture) to Ascend. But Sazed didn't have to, and even while Preservation was held its power still manifested physically as mist.