Adonalsiums God Metal

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

So, I once heard this theory that there was this counter-adonalsium and aluminum was it's god metal. However, no other god metals were actual metals seen in our universe. So then, I got to thinking. What metal does not exist in our universe, have both a strong connection to Adonalsium, and existed before the Shattering?

Listen, I am just saying I do not think it is a coincidence that Brandon Sanderson's company and the only book that Adonalsium is ever seen alive is called Dragonsteel.

Also, Side Theory: AdonalsIUM maybe Adonalsium is the god metal (unlikely) (felt the need to point it out)

[Nitpicking]

@CoderDrag0n8, consider that Hebrew "adonai" is "lord", used (as in English) as a term for the One God. Adonalsium would be a Hebrew/Latin word for "the lord's metal".

[Stormblessed Dolphin he/him]

This is an interesting idea, though I'm not sure if Adonalsium Godmetal could naturally still exist now that Adonalsium is shattered. Take Lerasium and Atium, for example. Still technically possible to create now that the Shards have been combined, but not easy to come by. That's an example of how it is now that two powers have combined, but I imagine it would be similar for "Adonalisium-ium." (I am by no means proposing that as a name for Adonalsium godmetal, it's just fun to say).

Additionally, I think we should stray away from the idea of a direct anti-adonalsium type of entity, take this WoB:

Spoiler

Eric

In Secret History we learn the 16 Shards that Shattered Adonalsium. Was that done [on behalf of the anti-Adonalsium force]?

Brandon Sanderson

You’re focusing too much on this idea of an anti-Adonalsium. It—the original question I believe that was asked me was “is there a force that is opposed to Adonalsium” and it left me a lot of wiggle room. In other words, the people who killed Adonalsium, you could say were a force, any person who opposed Adonalsium... What they were trying to get was a “devil” but to do that you must assume Adonalsium was a more Christian-style God, and I haven’t confirmed any of that.

Calamity Chicago signing (Feb. 22, 2016)

Since you got me on this rabbit hole though, Here's another fun WoB that kind of offers another fun direction to theorize:

Spoiler

Questioner

Shards. We started with fairly obvious ones, magic wise. Trying to keep this spoiler free, so: Ruin, Preservation, this kind of thing. Then we get the weird ones. Why do we have Shards that can only exist in the mind of a sentient creature? ...Like the concept of Honor can only be done when it's carried out, essentially, by a sentient creature.

Brandon Sanderson

So when I split Adonalsium I said, "I'm going to take aspects of Adonalsium's nature." And this involves personality to me. So the Shattering of Adonalsium was primal forces attached to certain aspects of personality. And so I view every one of them this way. And when I wrote Mistborn we had Ruin and Preservation. They are the primal forces of entropy and whatever you call the opposite, staying-the-same-ism-y. Like, you've got these two contrasts, between things changing and things not changing. And then humans do have a part, there's a personality. Ruin is a charged term for something that actually is the way that life exists. And Preservation is a charged term for stasis, for staying the same. And those are the personality aspects, and the way they are viewed by people and by the entity that was Adonalsium.

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction. So a lot of them do kind of have this both-- cultural component, I would say, that is trying to represent something that is also natural. And not all of them are gonna have a 100% balance between those two things, I would say, because there's only so many fundamental laws of the universe that I can ascribe personalities to in that way. 

So I find Honor very interesting, but I find Autonomy a very interesting one for the exact same reason. What does autonomy mean? We attach a lot to it, but what is the actual, if you get rid of the charged terms, what does it mean? And this is where you end up with things like Odium claiming "I am all emotion." Rather than-- But then there's a charged term for it that is associated with this Shard. I'm not going to tell you whether he's right or not, but he has an argument. 

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

To me, this plants an idea in my head for what we could potentially see if we managed to collect a little bit of every godmetal and "alloy them all back together" kind of. Would we get a glimpse of Adonalsium's whole personality as filtered through each aspect of his divine nature?

Going back to your Dragonsteel point though, I do think that Dragonsteel (the metal) is distinct from any potential Adonalsium metal, though it's definitely an interesting direction to go. But I also don't see any real equivalency/inverse relationship between Dragonsteel and Aluminum

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

1 hour ago, Nitpicking said:

@CoderDrag0n8, consider that Hebrew "adonai" is "lord", used (as in English) as a term for the One God. Adonalsium would be a Hebrew/Latin word for "the lord's metal".

Hmm. Good point.

47 minutes ago, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

This is an interesting idea, though I'm not sure if Adonalsium Godmetal could naturally still exist now that Adonalsium is shattered. Take Lerasium and Atium, for example. Still technically possible to create now that the Shards have been combined, but not easy to come by. That's an example of how it is now that two powers have combined, but I imagine it would be similar for "Adonalisium-ium." (I am by no means proposing that as a name for Adonalsium godmetal, it's just fun to say).

Additionally, I think we should stray away from the idea of a direct anti-adonalsium type of entity, take this WoB:

  Hide contents

Eric

In Secret History we learn the 16 Shards that Shattered Adonalsium. Was that done [on behalf of the anti-Adonalsium force]?

Brandon Sanderson

You’re focusing too much on this idea of an anti-Adonalsium. It—the original question I believe that was asked me was “is there a force that is opposed to Adonalsium” and it left me a lot of wiggle room. In other words, the people who killed Adonalsium, you could say were a force, any person who opposed Adonalsium... What they were trying to get was a “devil” but to do that you must assume Adonalsium was a more Christian-style God, and I haven’t confirmed any of that.

Calamity Chicago signing (Feb. 22, 2016)

Since you got me on this rabbit hole though, Here's another fun WoB that kind of offers another fun direction to theorize:

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

Shards. We started with fairly obvious ones, magic wise. Trying to keep this spoiler free, so: Ruin, Preservation, this kind of thing. Then we get the weird ones. Why do we have Shards that can only exist in the mind of a sentient creature? ...Like the concept of Honor can only be done when it's carried out, essentially, by a sentient creature.

Brandon Sanderson

So when I split Adonalsium I said, "I'm going to take aspects of Adonalsium's nature." And this involves personality to me. So the Shattering of Adonalsium was primal forces attached to certain aspects of personality. And so I view every one of them this way. And when I wrote Mistborn we had Ruin and Preservation. They are the primal forces of entropy and whatever you call the opposite, staying-the-same-ism-y. Like, you've got these two contrasts, between things changing and things not changing. And then humans do have a part, there's a personality. Ruin is a charged term for something that actually is the way that life exists. And Preservation is a charged term for stasis, for staying the same. And those are the personality aspects, and the way they are viewed by people and by the entity that was Adonalsium.

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction. So a lot of them do kind of have this both-- cultural component, I would say, that is trying to represent something that is also natural. And not all of them are gonna have a 100% balance between those two things, I would say, because there's only so many fundamental laws of the universe that I can ascribe personalities to in that way. 

So I find Honor very interesting, but I find Autonomy a very interesting one for the exact same reason. What does autonomy mean? We attach a lot to it, but what is the actual, if you get rid of the charged terms, what does it mean? And this is where you end up with things like Odium claiming "I am all emotion." Rather than-- But then there's a charged term for it that is associated with this Shard. I'm not going to tell you whether he's right or not, but he has an argument. 

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

To me, this plants an idea in my head for what we could potentially see if we managed to collect a little bit of every godmetal and "alloy them all back together" kind of. Would we get a glimpse of Adonalsium's whole personality as filtered through each aspect of his divine nature?

Going back to your Dragonsteel point though, I do think that Dragonsteel (the metal) is distinct from any potential Adonalsium metal, though it's definitely an interesting direction to go. But I also don't see any real equivalency/inverse relationship between Dragonsteel and Aluminum

The Anti-Adonalsium thing was just me going down a rabbit hole.

There isn't equivlency, aluminum just sent me down the rabbit hole.

[Stormblessed Dolphin he/him]

30 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

 

The Anti-Adonalsium thing was just me going down a rabbit hole.

There isn't equivlency, aluminum just sent me down the rabbit hole.

I gotcha-- also I hope I didn't come across as purely just trying to shut this idea down, Just bringing up some of what we know, etc. I very much enjoy these sorts of theories

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

11 minutes ago, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

I gotcha-- also I hope I didn't come across as purely just trying to shut this idea down, Just bringing up some of what we know, etc. I very much enjoy these sorts of theories

i was just like

'wait... maybe...'

and then posted it.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

Brandon actually got asked about if Adonalsium has a God Metal recently, the tl;dr is he has one in the outline but he's not totally sure if it'll work, so we won't know for sure until Dragonsteel gets written.

Spoiler

Paleo

Did any God Metals exist prior to the Shattering, like either associated with Adonalsium or one that would become associated with a Shard or something else like that?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO this one now, Marvin, but I can talk about why on this case. Basically, I do have a God Metal designed for Adonalsium and I do not know if it will work when I write those books. This is one of those things that I'm like *makes noncommittal noise* "I don't know if I want to go--". And so we will see if I do or don't, right? A lot of that stuff from Yolen's a little up in the air until I write Dragonsteel Prime, because there's been so many iterations, right? Not Dragonsteel [Prime], when I write actual Dragonsteel. Like in Dragonsteel Prime, we've had the weapons designed and at various points even in Dragonsteel Prime's chronology, I had either the father god dead or not dead yet and that the weapons had been locked away. But then there's children gods in Dragonsteel Prime that I, you know, abandoned. And so, I'm staying away from that one. If it's relevant, it will be relevant in Dragonsteel and you'll know very quickly on. Right now there is, but it's very loosely tacked to the board.

Shardcast Interview (May 25, 2025)

He also talked about how he defines a God Metal, sounds like there's some flexibility with some metals that are definitely magic but aren't necessarily the pure essence of a Shard/Ado.

Spoiler

Windrunner

Braize's core has an interesting metal. Would you consider this metal to be a God Metal or no?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I would not consider it to be a God Metal.

Windrunner

You would not, okay. And that would have been something that would have been set up when Adonalsium created the system.

Brandon Sanderson

This was not placed there by any of the Shards of Adonalsium.

Okay, would I call it a God Metal? *hrmms indecisively* This is where we get into it, right? Like, what do we consider a God Metal? It is not a God Metal of one of the sixteen Shards. There you go.

Windrunner

Well, that's an excellent hint.

Brandon Sanderson

I would not consider it a God Metal of one of the sixteen Shards. It was not placed there by one of the sixteen Shards.

Windrunner

We love to do "what is" here, so if you want to answer "what is a God Metal?" we'd be happy to run through it.

Brandon Sanderson

It depends, like, right now I-- what is a God Metal? Right now I call the God Metals the essences of the sixteen. But God Metal's a term that kind of developed naturally in the community. It's not really a thing that the early in-world characters could even really define. And so, there's something wonky about the moon and bits of it hit the planet, so, you know? There's maybe some myths and stories on Roshar that you might have heard that have something to do with this and some of those-- all of those stories mean something, so there you are.

Shardcast Interview (May 25, 2025)

I'm guessing dragonsteel falls in this latter category.