Pure Atium and Atium,

[Adamkarma he/him]

Atium turned out to not be Atium, it's an Atium, electrum alloy, fandom now calls it atium, and the real Atium is Pure Atium soo?

[Firesong she/her]

Sanderson said to use Atium and Pure Atium until he gives an in-world name in the books. 

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

They're going to have a different term for pure atium and for what has been known as atium--what they're making. It is not hard to get the right mix down for what he needs to stay alive. It is hard to make enough of it to keep him alive. Well, not hard, but definitely not scalable to more than one person, how about that. They are able to do it, you've just got to make an alloy.

I will apologize for this. This is a post-Era-1 retcon where I realized I need all the God Metals to do different things, and this is just one of the aspects that comes down. For those who don't know what's going on: I get done with Era 1, I start really working on the nature of metals in the cosmere. I'm like, "Ehhh... Atium really should be burnable by anybody. It's a God Metal. The way God Metals work is not in line with how I've made atium. So what they call atium has to have trace elements of something else, and then there's a pure form of atium out there that would be the true pure God Metal." That is one of those unfortunate retcons when you're doing all this continuity. And it works just fine in the books, because the way that atium is being made is a pretty complicated little process there in the Pits of Hathsin.

The question is the right question. Sazed is going to get out of this pure atium, which he is going to need to tweak before he gives it to Marsh. Whether Marsh knows he is getting a tweaked version or not is subject to your own interpretation.

For arcanist purposes, if you want to call the other one pure atium and the regular one just atium, I'd recommend something like that for your wikis and things like that.

 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

I don't really love calling it "atium[-electrum]" and "pure atium", but I think it's the least ambiguous naming scheme right now, because otherwise people who don't know the fan names are going to just keep calling the alloy "atium" anyway, so you end up with people using the same word to mean different things. Hopefully in Era 3 we can get a proper canon name for both... Always liked the sound of "hathsinium", myself.

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah, exactly... creating a fan name to replace what the books call "atium" would be confusing also. So I think atium or atium-electrum  / pure atium is the best we have.

... or, actually, what about "native atium" for the Pits of Hathsin form? A "native" metal is one found in metallic form before refining...