Lost metal and the atium retcon

[KitKat]

Hey! I'm new here but wanted to ask. Is the ever talked about atium retcons mentioned at all in the lost metal book? Or is it something Brandon has mentioned but isn't actually in canon yet? Basically do i need to worry about it now, or can i ignore it for a bit? 

[alder24]

8 hours ago, KitKat said:

Hey! I'm new here but wanted to ask. Is the ever talked about atium retcons mentioned at all in the lost metal book? Or is it something Brandon has mentioned but isn't actually in canon yet? Basically do i need to worry about it now, or can i ignore it for a bit? 

Welcome to the Shard:

It is already canon, but it isn't mentioned at all in books yet. The justification for it is that people in world just doesn't know it yet, and you are reading this from their perspective. But behind the scenes we know that Atium they are talking about is an alloy of Atium and electrum, and pure Atium is a god metal that nobody used for now, but has similar effects to Atium-electrum alloy. Every time poeple in books are talking about Atium, they're talking about Atium-electrum alloy. WoBs on this:

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LewsTherinTelescope

At the end of The Lost Metal, we learn that Marsh will be using atium from the ettmetal experiments to stay alive going forward. However, Peter recently revealed (and you confirmed) that the atium in Era 1 which stored youth was actually a mix of atium and electrum. How will this continue to work to keep him young?

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.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

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/u/AAKS_

My understanding is that Brandon thinks it is a plothole that Lerasium can be burned by Scadrian (regardless of if they are mistings/mistborn) but Atium can't.

His solution is to retcon the Pits to naturally produce an Atium/Electrum alloy, presumably by the design of Preservation. Therefore we don't know what pure Atium looks like or does when used in any magic.

Peter Ahlstrom

We do know what it does. It’s on the Allomancy poster, and the effect appeared one time at the end of Hero of Ages.

LewsTherinTelescope

Interesting. Do you know if he had already conceived the retcon by the time the poster was written, or if that line about pure atium just turned out to fit really well retroactively?

Peter Ahlstrom

The retcon is way older than a lot of people assume.

LewsTherinTelescope

Does this mean he had it in mind by the time Hero of Ages released (since the first public version of the poster dates to 2008), or just that it's old but not sure exactly how old?

Peter Ahlstrom

Remember that what's in the books is filtered through the understanding of the characters. So even if Brandon planned it from the beginning, if the characters didn't know about it, it's not going to come out in the book.

And see this thread reply from 2009.

Footnote: The link is to a post on the Timewaster's Guide forums, where Peter responds to someone asking about whether atium is an alloy by saying he now knows enough to confirm or deny the theory, but is not allowed to.
General Reddit 2022 (Dec. 4, 2022)

 

[Treamayne]

On 4/16/2023 at 10:03 AM, KitKat said:

Ah ok ok. Makes sense now thank you! So it's probably not going to be fully in published stuff until era 3 time most likely? Also i apologise for my mistake of thinking it wasn't canon until published, my bad

If you check out that 2009 post in the second WOB above, you'll notice it was actually Canon before Hero of Ages was published - not that any of the characters (except possibly TLR) had any way of knowing that Preservation mucked around with the metals table (replacing Bendalloy and cadmium with the Era 1 version of Atium and Malatium) by making the Pits a focal point for the collection of Riun's power.

[KitKat]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

Welcome to the Shard:

It is already canon, but it isn't mentioned at all in books yet. The justification for it is that people in world just doesn't know it yet, and you are reading this from their perspective. But behind the scenes we know that Atium they are talking about is an alloy of Atium and electrum, and pure Atium is a god metal that nobody used for now, but has similar effects to Atium-electrum alloy. Every time poeple in books are talking about Atium, they're talking about Atium-electrum alloy. WoBs on this:

 

 

Ah ok ok. Makes sense now thank you! So it's probably not going to be fully in published stuff until era 3 time most likely? Also i apologise for my mistake of thinking it wasn't canon until published, my bad