Why hide lerasium

[Windborn_bolder]

This may have been discussed all ready if so please direct me.

sazed in the epilogue of lost metal hides that lerasium is formed. I think in order to balance his shads sazed “reabsorbs” the lerasium but leaves the atium to store away and give to marsh. This leads to harmony being a more balanced shard. This is also why he does not want many strong metal born as more Allomancers results in less preservation in Harmony, making it a more ruinous shard

[Entr0pic He/him]

I don’t think I understand. Lerasium is no longer formed after 

HOA spoilers 

Spoiler

sazed becomes harmony 

Since ruin and preservation are combined, the respective godmetals of those shards are aswel 

[Windborn_bolder]

2 minutes ago, Entr0pic said:

I don’t think I understand. Lerasium is no longer formed after 

HOA spoilers 

  Reveal hidden contents

sazed becomes harmony 

Since ruin and preservation are combined, the respective godmetals of those shards are aswel

Have you read the lost metal lerasium and atium are both formed and we see lerasium burned 

[Entr0pic He/him]

13 minutes ago, Windborn_bolder said:

Have you read the lost metal lerasium and atium are both formed and we see lerasium burned 

TLM spoilers:

Spoiler

I understand what you’re referring to. I was under the assumption that you thought Lerasium still formed naturally. Although I’m still confused by wha you mean by sazed “hiding” it.

 

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

19 minutes ago, Windborn_bolder said:

Have you read the lost metal lerasium and atium are both formed and we see lerasium burned 

1 minute ago, Entr0pic said:

TLM spoilers:

  Reveal hidden contents

I understand what you’re referring to. I was under the assumption that you thought Lerasium still formed naturally. Although I’m still confused by wha you mean by sazed “hiding” it.

 

I agree with Entr0pic. We know that Sazed does not want any lerasium or atium going to the public. The only time we see him endorsing it is when TLM Spoilers:

Spoiler

Wayne go--Wayne g--go boom. *cries*

He doesn't even tell Wax

[Windborn_bolder]

7 minutes ago, Entr0pic said:

TLM spoilers:

  Reveal hidden contents

I understand what you’re referring to. I was under the assumption that you thought Lerasium still formed naturally. Although I’m still confused by wha you mean by sazed “hiding” it.

 

I meant hiding atium to lessen the ruin in his shards like the trustwarren in era 1

he tells Kelsier that no lerasium is formed in the harmonium, Trellium explosion, and I think he is lying, but sazed reabsorbs the Lerasium and leaves the atium to rebalance his shards

Edited May 6, 2025 by Windborn_bolder

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

Hiding the fact Lerasium can be be manufactured from Kelsier seems like part of Sazed just not trusting Kel that much. Being able to mass produce full Mistborn and engage in Lerasium Hemalurgy would be huge assets for Kelsier and his allies, probably to the point it would throw off whatever aspirations Sazed has for the development of Scadrian civilization.

Also, it's probably not fun for Sazed to have his "body" exploded?

[Treamayne]

4 hours ago, Windborn_bolder said:

This may have been discussed all ready if so please direct me.

sazed in the epilogue of lost metal hides that lerasium is formed. I think in order to balance his shads sazed “reabsorbs” the lerasium but leaves the atium to store away and give to marsh. This leads to harmony being a more balanced shard. This is also why he does not want many strong metal born as more Allomancers results in less preservation in Harmony, making it a more ruinous shard

Considering that Preservation is imbalanced because every sapient on Scadrial has part of Preservation in them, it seems very unlikely that the tiny amount produced by this reaction would have any effect on the balance between Ruin and Preservation. You would need to recover as much Lerasium as was used in the popultation of the planet.

Annotation to HoA Ch 70:

Spoiler

My idea on this is that Allomantic potential is a little like a supersaturated solution. You can suspend a great deal of something like sugar in a liquid when it is hot, then cool it down and the sugar remains suspended. Drop one bit of sugar in there as a catalyst, however, and the rest will fall out as a precipitate.

Allomancy is the same. It’s in there, but it takes a reaction—in this case, physical anguish—to trigger it and bring it out. That’s because the Allomantic power comes from the extra bit of Preservation inside of humans, that same extra bit that gives us free will.

Balance would not be about boosting the amount of Preservation, but rather about bleeding off the extra Ruin. WoB:

Spoiler

rags

How is Harmony balanced when a part of Preservation's power is expended on human sentience? Isn't that what caused all the trouble to begin with?

Brandon Sanderson

Indeed. Hm... What could Sazed be doing with that extra power...

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

Hope that helps

Edited May 7, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Balance would not be about boosting the amount of Preservation, but rather about bleeding off the extra Ruin. WoB:

  Reveal hidden contents

rags

How is Harmony balanced when a part of Preservation's power is expended on human sentience? Isn't that what caused all the trouble to begin with?

Brandon Sanderson

Indeed. Hm... What could Sazed be doing with that extra power...

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

Hope that helps

Huh, I wonder if Sazed trying to manage Harmony as something other than "Managed Decline" is why the durability of Scandrian souls went down? The ars arcanum of Lost Metal mentions that Hemalurgy basically can't make things like Marsh anymore because souls just can't stand that kind of violence, and I wonder if that is the compromise of Sazed going "Well, Free Will is non-negotiable, so I guess I will skimp on the Preservation juice that makes up Scandrian souls on other fronts."

I guess any Lerasium he re-absorbs is being spent on minting souls.

[Treamayne]

1 minute ago, ParaTulip said:

Huh, I wonder if Sazed trying to manage Harmony as something other than "Managed Decline" is why the durability of Scandrian souls went down? The ars arcanum of Lost Metal mentions that Hemalurgy basically can't make things like Marsh anymore because souls just can't stand that kind of violence, and I wonder if that is the compromise of Sazed going "Well, Free Will is non-negotiable, so I guess I will skimp on the Preservation juice that makes up Scandrian souls on other fronts."

That was also explained in the same Ars Arcanum, though -

Spoiler

Instead, I believe this is the nature of souls (read: the Invested portion of a person’s nature) and their balance with the cosmere. In the ancient days, Ruin was pushing hard on the fabric of Scadrial, leaking into spiritwebs through any method possible. Causing souls to decay faster, to accept more spikes than they should have been able to, and leaving the resulting person burdened beyond what was reasonable.

Ruin (Ati) was pushing to make Hemalurgy "more" (to facilitate his control of puppets, most likely) in Era 1 than it should have been - so it's less that Sazed restricted it, as he restored the original capacity from before Ruin tried to leverage it as a method of escape and destruction. . .

[Windborn_bolder]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Balance would not be about boosting the amount of Preservation, but rather about bleeding off the extra Ruin

That’s what I’m saying making Mistborn with lerasium weekend preservation, which would make harmony more of ruin, but instead he could make a second trustwarren order to weekend ruin making harmony balanced

[Treamayne]

3 minutes ago, Windborn_bolder said:

That’s what I’m saying making Mistborn with lerasium weekend preservation, which would make harmony more of ruin, but instead he could make a second trustwarren order to weekend ruin making harmony balanced

The trustwarren wasn't the only part of that process that hid part of Ruin's power - it was because Leras tied part of Ruin to the Pits of Hathsin (which resulted in Era 1 Atium, which is not pure because it has been combined with Electrum in the Geodes) - so that part of Ruin's pwer was in a different investiture cycle preventing it from returning to Ruin in the Spiritual Realm. The trustwarren simply made an additional limit of how much of that power was cycling through the Pits (and therefore returned to Ruin with the Pits were destroyed).

[QuantumAce]

13 hours ago, Treamayne said:

The trustwarren wasn't the only part of that process that hid part of Ruin's power - it was because Leras tied part of Ruin to the Pits of Hathsin (which resulted in Era 1 Atium, which is not pure because it has been combined with Electrum in the Geodes) - so that part of Ruin's pwer was in a different investiture cycle preventing it from returning to Ruin in the Spiritual Realm. The trustwarren simply made an additional limit of how much of that power was cycling through the Pits (and therefore returned to Ruin with the Pits were destroyed).

 

This is good point. The entire process is more complex than just hiding amounts of a certain god metal. I don't think Harmony would be able to recreate this process now that both shards are being held by the same vessel. Even if he did, it would be damaging to Harmony overall, which would make it harder for him to hold two shards with opposing intents in check. 

Roshar spoilers

Spoiler

Was there any indication that Honor and Odium weakened themselves by investing the heralds and fused? It meant they were more invested in Roshar, but did it actually weaken them overall? 

 

 

 

[Treamayne]

7 minutes ago, QuantumAce said:

This is good point. The entire process is more complex than just hiding amounts of a certain god metal. I don't think Harmony would be able to recreate this process now that both shards are being held by the same vessel. Even if he did, it would be damaging to Harmony overall, which would make it harder for him to hold two shards with opposing intents in check. 

Roshar spoilers

  Hide contents

Was there any indication that Honor and Odium weakened themselves by investing the heralds and fused? It meant they were more invested in Roshar, but did it actually weaken them overall? 

BLUF: Technically - yes; Practically, not really. 

We have these WoBs, tangential to the question:

Spoiler

 

Quote

 

Questioner

My question is about Ruin and Preservation creating life. Is that an example of two individuals having a super team up? Or is there some co-influence, cross-influence that let them do something that would be outside of themselves?

Brandon Sanderson

Rephrase that for me. Talk around a little bit. Let me see if I'm gonna get the right answer, okay?

Questioner

Ruin ruins, and Preservation preserves. If they're creating life, well, that takes a little of everything, right? Is that an influence, like Ruin being in proximity to Preservation and vice versa? Would their co-mingling happen... and how would that influence other dual or triple Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

I get what you're saying. Each of the Shards has certain strengths and weaknesses, and they're capable of certain things and not other things. Some of them can do what was done by Ruin and Preservation on their own. Most cannot. Most combinations of two could; some would need three. So, it really kind of depends on the situation and the Shard. Each pairing and grouping of Shards will have different sort of augmentations to what they can accomplish, and things like this, because the Shards aren't all-powerful, they're just part of something that once was, if that makes sense.
(That's not how math works in infinity, but it is how infinity works in the cosmere.)

FanX 2024 (Sept. 26, 2024)

 

(Warbreaker References in WoB)

Spoiler

emailanimal

From a very recent signing, we have this new Word of Brandon...

chasmfriend's son: Is there a finite amount of Investiture?

Brandon: Yes.

chasmfriend's son: So is Nightblood consuming it?

Brandon: Yes. Very, very slowly.

This worries me somewhat because of the following observation.

Nightblood consumes Breath (and other Investiture, but let's limit ourselves to Breath for a second).

Every person on Nalthis is born with one Breath.

Populations tend to grow. Which means that under normal rules of demographics, population of Nalthis should keep increasing.

This in turn means that under normal circumstances the number of people with Breath on Nalthis should be growing.

I can see the following possible explanations to this:

1. Endowment can give Breath to many more people than are currently living on Nalthis. So, the exponential population growth has not yet reached the level at which Endowment's ability to award a Breath to each Nalthis-born human is seriously challenged. When it happens though, things will not go well.

2. There is some built-in mechanism controlling population growth on Nalthis, making certain that the population stays within the limits. Nightblood's consumption of Breath makes these limits smaller, and overall may lead to Endowment's inability to grant Breath to Nalthis-born, but not for a while (essentially, Endowment controls population trends at she sees fit).

Thoughts?

Brandon Sanderson

Just as a point you should understand, the amount of MATTER in the cosmere is finite too. As is the amount of energy.

Worrying that Endowment will run out of Breaths to give is a little like worrying that the amount of carbon on Earth will run out because people keep being born.

uchoo786

So just for clarification, once Nightblood consumes investiture, that investiture gets recycled? That's what I've always assumed. That it enters the cognitive/spiritual realm?

Brandon Sanderson

The investiture he consumes is not gone forever--it's not leaving the system, so to speak.

General Reddit 2015 (Dec. 14, 2015)

 

So, the implication is that, yes, (Stormight Archive Spoilers):

Spoiler

Investing in Heralds (Honor) and Fused/Unmade (Odium) is a "lesseneing" of Infinite Shardic power by some portion -

 - the Shard is still "infinite" but also "reduced" in available power (though it could reclaim the apportioned splinter of infinity). But "Infinity-1" is still Infinite. . . 

Hope that helps