Why was mistsickness so much worse for the Oracles?

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

So...I understand that this hasn't been codified on page yet, but...recalling the atium retcon, the soldiers who served as atium-Seers in the final lead up to the catacendre seem to have just been electrum-Oracles who were given atium but never tested properly with electrum (because it would have broken the era1 economy).

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Xais56

Brandon has said that everyone ought to be able to burn Atium, like they can all burn Lerasium, and the fact that they can't was an oversight on his part that he would've done different in hindsight.

Maybe now he's had an in-universe reason to re-write the laws of allomancy it's back to his intended concept; Mistborn burn all 16 base metals, mistings burn one base metal, non-allomancers can only burn godmetal.

Peter Ahlstrom

My explanation for this is that Preservation somehow caused all naturally occurring atium to form as an alloy of atium and electrum. The atium Mistings were actually electrum Mistings.

Xais56

It's a very tidy solution, but it creates the maddening question of what does pure atium do?

Peter Ahlstrom

That answer has already been revealed canonically. RAFO.

Footnote: It has since been clarified that the effect was revealed on the Table of Allomantic Metals poster and seen at the end of The Hero of Ages.
General Reddit 2021 (Nov. 2, 2021)

So my question is...if they were just regular Mistings like everybody else who got sick, why god why was snapping via the mistsickness so much harsher on them than everybody else (except the folks who outright died)?

Further...does this translate to electrum-mistings simply being more difficult to snap than other variants by "normal" means, thus requiring spiritual cracking of a more severe magnitude in a general sense...?

Would this disparity have been resolved in era2/3, or is it just baked into the process that Oracles take more force to snap into place?

[alder24]

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

So...I understand that this hasn't been codified on page yet, but...recalling the atium retcon, the soldiers who served as atium-Seers in the final lead up to the catacendre seem to have just been electrum-Oracles who were given atium but never tested properly with electrum (because it would have broken the era1 economy).

So my question is...if they were just regular Mistings like everybody else who got sick, why god why was snapping via the mistsickness so much harsher on them than everybody else (except the folks who outright died)?

Further...does this translate to electrum-mistings simply being more difficult to snap than other variants by "normal" means, thus requiring spiritual cracking of a more severe magnitude in a general sense...?

Would this disparity have been resolved in era2/3, or is it just baked into the process that Oracles take more force to snap into place?

I don't think there is an answer post-retcon, but pre-retcon answer was it was just harder to Snap people into Atium Mistings and that required more power. I think that post-retcon explanation is simply that Preservation designed it this way to make it obvious that those people are important, those people are special, they are part of a plan - it was the sign of 16.

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, hwiles said:

So my question is...if they were just regular Mistings like everybody else who got sick, why god why was snapping via the mistsickness so much harsher on them than everybody else (except the folks who outright died)?

Please keep in mind, the Retcon was after publicatoin of TFE, but before publication of HoA - so nothing as-described in HoA was retconned. Mistsickness for anybody capable of burning away Ruin's body was longer-than-normal (as @alder24 mentioned - due to maintaining the Sign of 16)

Spoiler

/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)

Hope that helps.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

On 10/26/2024 at 3:16 PM, alder24 said:

I don't think there is an answer post-retcon, but pre-retcon answer was it was just harder to Snap people into Atium Mistings and that required more power. I think that post-retcon explanation is simply that Preservation designed it this way to make it obvious that those people are important, those people are special, they are part of a plan - it was the sign of 16.

This is...a very helpful and also a very unsatisfying answer. 

I Think I'm going to simply treat it as headcannon for now that electrum-Oracles are just spiritually more stubborn and difficult to snap than other mistings, possibly due to some kind of design-artifact or conceptual-blending with their electrum-ferring relatives at a shardic magic-system level.