A More Efficient use of Marsh's Atium

[Trusk'our he/him]

Marsh now has a steady, albeit fairly slim supply of Atium.

This is nice and all, but is there a way to increase his efficiency with it so he doesn't just burn it all up as quickly as he gets it?

I wonder, could you make a bunch of smaller Unsealed Atiumminds that could be filled by willing donors, then given to Marsh who would store the attributes in his Atium spike? Then no actual Atium is expended and it can be repourposed if needed, perhaps for other types of Atium alloy Metalminds. 

[TacoBellChoutaMeal]

The problems with this:

How are you gonna find Atium Ferrings? Just gonna test random people, or what? And how are you gonna *keep them quiet* about it after the fact? Are you gonna kill them? Does Harmony know who’s an Atium Ferring and who’s not? Maybe. But you’re gonna have to convince that guy, and even if you do that, you’ll have to keep him quiet. What Marsh does seems like very secret work, and his identity shouldn’t be out there. And then, even if you find a willing donor who will accept an identity spike, is that guy gonna just clock into work next day as an old man? There’s no way, dude. People would talk. Are you just gonna keep killing people overtime to keep one guy alive? Just get him more atium.

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

12 minutes ago, TacoBellChoutaMeal said:

The problems with this:

How are you gonna find Atium Ferrings? Just gonna test random people, or what? And how are you gonna *keep them quiet* about it after the fact? Are you gonna kill them? Does Harmony know who’s an Atium Ferring and who’s not? Maybe. But you’re gonna have to convince that guy, and even if you do that, you’ll have to keep him quiet. What Marsh does seems like very secret work, and his identity shouldn’t be out there. And then, even if you find a willing donor who will accept an identity spike, is that guy gonna just clock into work next day as an old man? There’s no way, dude. People would talk. Are you just gonna keep killing people overtime to keep one guy alive? Just get him more atium.

what about many willing donors who just give a bit? the donors could be anybody if you get the unsealed metal minds.

[TacoBellChoutaMeal]

i didn’t consider unsealed metalminds. You might be onto something. 

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

1 hour ago, TacoBellChoutaMeal said:

i didn’t consider unsealed metalminds. You might be onto something. 

yeah there could be like a cult of Death that just give a year of their life or smth like that\

also trust our mentioned them in the op

Edited October 27, 2025 by Clarkmon22

[Ookla the Newt she/her]

5 hours ago, Clarkmon22 said:

yeah there could be like a cult of Death that just give a year of their life or smth like that\

Doesn't sliverism already worship Marsh? Bc Steris says smth like "Such a horrid religion. Imagine, worshipping Death" or smth like that at the beginning of AoL, I don't have the books near to check though

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

9 hours ago, Booknewt said:

Doesn't sliverism already worship Marsh? Bc Steris says smth like "Such a horrid religion. Imagine, worshipping Death" or smth like that at the beginning of AoL, I don't have the books near to check though

oh you're right... maybe this could work with them? idk

[DracoAdamantus he/him]

On 10/27/2025 at 5:08 PM, TacoBellChoutaMeal said:

i didn’t consider unsealed metalminds. You might be onto something. 

It would need to be a special unsealed metalmind for this purpose, because it's unclear if attributes stored via an unsealed metalmind by your average user are tappable by others. We never see actually a medallion be filled and then tapped by a different person on screen. We only ever see the weight medallions be filled, and the heating and connection medallions tapped. Suit remarks in BoM that they "haven't figured out how to refill them [the heating medallions] yet", which wouldn't be the case if anyone could fill it. Plus the Malwish have dedicated people whose whole purpose in life is filling heating medallions, the Firemothers and Firefathers. This implies there is more to filling an unsealed metalmind for general use. 

I think that even with an unsealed metalmind, any stored attributes are still keyed to your identity. At minimum you'd have to be blanking identity for the stored attributed to be accessible to another, either by regular Feruchemy or by compounding.

Now, if there was an unsealed metalmind that gave someone both Atium and Aluminum Feruchemy, now we're talking.

On 10/27/2025 at 6:40 PM, Clarkmon22 said:

yeah there could be like a cult of Death that just give a year of their life or smth like that

I absolutely see some sort of eucharist-like ritual in which the priest is presents a holy relic for parishioners to touch and give some of their life to as a gift to Death. Even if it's a single parish of say 100 people, each giving one day of life over to Death at the weekly service, that's an extra year's worth of life for Marsh every 3 weeks. And that's without any compounding at all.

For the average parishioner, the decrease in lifespan wouldn't be super noticeable. Each calendar year you would age just 50 extra days. For your lifespan to decrease by 5 years, it would take approximately 35 years of doing this weekly ritual.

Edited October 29, 2025 by DracoAdamantus

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, DracoAdamantus said:

I absolutely see some sort of eucharist-like ritual in which the priest is presents a holy relic for parishioners to touch and give some of their life to as a gift to Death. Even if it's a single parish of say 100 people, each giving one day of life over to Death at the weekly service, that's an extra year's worth of life for Marsh every 3 weeks. And that's without any compounding at all.

For the average parishioner, the decrease in lifespan wouldn't be super noticeable. Each calendar year you would age just 50 extra days. For your lifespan to decrease by 5 years, it would take approximately 35 years of doing this weekly ritual.

Why would there lifespan be reduced at all? It's a temporary reduction, so if a 20 year old stores 50 years worth of youth for an hour, they'd bounce right back after that hour.

They just spend a little more time being older.

2 hours ago, DracoAdamantus said:

It would need to be a special unsealed metalmind for this purpose, because it's unclear if attributes stored via an unsealed metalmind by your average user are tappable by others. We never see actually a medallion be filled and then tapped by a different person on screen. We only ever see the weight medallions be filled, and the heating and connection medallions tapped. Suit remarks in BoM that they "haven't figured out how to refill them [the heating medallions] yet", which wouldn't be the case if anyone could fill it. Plus the Malwish have dedicated people whose whole purpose in life is filling heating medallions, the Firemothers and Firefathers. This implies there is more to filling an unsealed metalmind for general use. 

I think that even with an unsealed metalmind, any stored attributes are still keyed to your identity. At minimum you'd have to be blanking identity for the stored attributed to be accessible to another, either by regular Feruchemy or by compounding.

Now, if there was an unsealed metalmind that gave someone both Atium and Aluminum Feruchemy, now we're talking.

That is an excellent point. Marsh would probably have to get a whole operation going, but I still think it would be useful. 

[DracoAdamantus he/him]

15 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Why would there lifespan be reduced at all? It's a temporary reduction, so if a 20 year old stores 50 years worth of youth for an hour, they'd bounce right back after that hour.

They just spend a little more time being older

Ah that's right. I had been recently thinking about copperminds and that being fresh in my mind made me think that youth was something distinctly stored and retrieved, rather than a time span thing. Which led me to think the solution was simpler than it actually is.

Compounding would have to be used in that case, unless there are hundreds of parishioners constantly storing youth for him, since Marsh is over 300 years old and the amount of Feruchemical youth needed to stay alive goes up exponentially to keep you at the same age for long spans of time. And there's a resource issue on making that many metalminds due to Atium's scarcity. Maybe instead, what if priests of Sliverism had a medallion as part of their vestments, and as part of their devotion they were constantly storing youth (& identity to make it unkeyed).

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 10/30/2025 at 6:44 AM, DracoAdamantus said:

Ah that's right. I had been recently thinking about copperminds and that being fresh in my mind made me think that youth was something distinctly stored and retrieved, rather than a time span thing. Which led me to think the solution was simpler than it actually is.

Yeah, copper's a real outlier. 

Though I think brass, Bendalloy, and Cadmium must be similar cause it wouldn't make a lot of sense to store being less hungry, thirsty, oxygen deprived, or heated, then snap back after storing. I feel like these all store discrete things as well.

On 10/30/2025 at 6:44 AM, DracoAdamantus said:

Compounding would have to be used in that case, unless there are hundreds of parishioners constantly storing youth for him, since Marsh is over 300 years old and the amount of Feruchemical youth needed to stay alive goes up exponentially to keep you at the same age for long spans of time. And there's a resource issue on making that many metalminds due to Atium's scarcity. Maybe instead, what if priests of Sliverism had a medallion as part of their vestments, and as part of their devotion they were constantly storing youth (& identity to make it unkeyed).

True, you'd need multiple donors at once working round the clock, perhaps a dozen or two, but I don't think this would actually be that hard.

If you take a minimum amount of Atium for each donor, just enough to make an electrum-alloyed ring or something (plus aluminum or Identity blanking), then have a young Sliverist store 50 years of youth for 8 or so hours as they sleep. The storage space doesn't have to be big here, since it is expected to be regularly given to Marsh then swapped to a new donor, so maybe a day or three's worth of youthfulness would be acceptable (Sazed's rings in WoA were filled heavily for several days, yet they still weren't full. I suspect Atiumminds would be similar).

There's also his Savantism to take into account. I don't know that it would completely offset the amount needed to keep a four-hundred-ish guy alive, but it makes the process way more efficient than it would be for a non-Savant.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120-warsaw-signing/#e1901

Oversleep (paraphrased)

Allomantic strength. There are stronger Allomancers, they can burn metals faster, right?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, they can also squeeze more power out of it. They can use it more efficiently.

Oversleep (paraphrased)

So there is some loss of power along the way? How do savants work into that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Savants can use it way more efficiently. They are more Connected to the Shard. Closer to Spiritual Realm.

You could still supplement this with Compounding, at least until you have the infrastructure and a few extra Atiumminds Invested ahead of time.

 

[DracoAdamantus he/him]

On 11/1/2025 at 2:56 AM, Trusk'our said:

Though I think brass, Bendalloy, and Cadmium must be similar cause it wouldn't make a lot of sense to store being less hungry, thirsty, oxygen deprived, or heated, then snap back after storing. I feel like these all store discrete things as well.

These are ones that really mess with my head to think about, because it's still done over a period of time, but is still a distinct resource because your body is constantly using it. Memories are quick, you have a memory, you store it, and it's in the metalmind. And your body doesn't constantly have to replenish that particular memory.

But take breath for example. It's stated that a gasper ferring will feel out of breath while storing, and not have to breathe while tapping. There are two interpretations to what that means:

1. They are storing based on the oxygen itself. Half of the oxygen they breathe in is going into the metalminds. When they tap breath, they gain oxygen from the metalminds instead of from the air, and will not to breathe at all until the stored breath has been used up. (I know that the chemical process of breathing is more complex than just getting oxygen, and getting rid of carbon dioxide is also essential to the process, it's just simplified for this explanation)
2. They are storing based on their ability to hold their breath, or perhaps their efficiency at using oxygen. Let's say normally you are capable of holding your breath for 1 minute. If you were storing half of your breath, you'd only be able to hold it for 30 seconds at a time if you tried. If you did that for an hour, you could tap it and have an hour of being able to hold your breath for 2 minutes at a time, or half an hour of 4 minutes at a time, or 15 minutes of 8 minutes at a time, etc. 

I'm inclined to assume it's the first way, but from what we know of feruchemy at the moment there isn't a clear conclusion to draw for which it actually is.

I think that investiture has to work the same way as well, because of how the unsealed metalminds work.

Spoiler

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

General Signed Books 2018 (Oct. 15, 2018)

 

On 11/1/2025 at 2:56 AM, Trusk'our said:

If you take a minimum amount of Atium for each donor, just enough to make an electrum-alloyed ring or something (plus aluminum or Identity blanking), then have a young Sliverist store 50 years of youth for 8 or so hours as they sleep.

The issue I see here is that the requirement of youth goes up exponentially the older that Marsh gets. It gets harder and harder to sustain as time goes on. For simplicity of numbers, let's say Marsh was 50 when he was spiked, keeps himself at age 50 using feruchemy, it has been 400 years since the Catacendre, and speeding up feruchemical tapping is perfectly efficient. If a Sliverist spends 8 hours aged 50 years, then Marsh can use that to de-age himself 50 years for 8 hours, or 100 years for 4 hours, or 200 years for 2 hours, or 400 years for...1 hour.

Without compounding any youth that is given to Marsh effectively decreases by a factor of 8. He'd need one person to store 50 years of youth for 8 days straight just to keep him alive for 1 more day. So two dozen priests storing 8 hours a day = 24 x 8 = 8 days of 50 years stored = 1 day of 400 years stored. It's doable, but an incredible risk and hassle to have to change out the metalminds every single day.

Let's instead say Sliverist priests really devote themselves to the cause and keep the metalminds running 24/7. You'd only need 8 priests to keep Marsh alive, assuming no missed appointments. It would be still be a huge hassle, and still need to be changed out every day.

But going with your example of a dozen or two dozen devoted priests who store youth perpetually, that's 24 days of 50 years stored = 3 days of life for marsh stored for every 1 day the priests spend storing. Now we're talking. Marsh could even use the excess to store up in his spike over time, giving him a "battery" in case something goes wrong.

Though I hate to say it, but if there's a way to continue to create more atium as Sazed implies at the end of TLM, then I still think continuing to compound is the way to go. Though maybe using youth from parishioners would help cut down on the amount of atium lost per compound, if it's still extremely hard to create. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, DracoAdamantus said:

I think that investiture has to work the same way as well, because of how the unsealed metalminds work.

  Reveal hidden contents

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

General Signed Books 2018 (Oct. 15, 2018)

I don't think medallions follow the vanilla use of nicrosil. I believe they use a bonding mechanism while normal nicrosil Feruchemy is just temporary tapping like most attributes. 

Stormlight Archive reference:

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/331-orem-signing/#e9408

Questioner

Do Honorblades bestow their abilities similar to an Identity-free nicrosilmind with other Metalborn abilities?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, these are working on similar principles. Same principle, divergent applications by the magic system, but yeah, I would say, they come back to the same principles.

The Bands of Mourning run out of their nicrosil portion as Wax found out, and would require Compounding to recharge them.

1 hour ago, DracoAdamantus said:

The issue I see here is that the requirement of youth goes up exponentially the older that Marsh gets. It gets harder and harder to sustain as time goes on. For simplicity of numbers, let's say Marsh was 50 when he was spiked, keeps himself at age 50 using feruchemy, it has been 400 years since the Catacendre, and speeding up feruchemical tapping is perfectly efficient. If a Sliverist spends 8 hours aged 50 years, then Marsh can use that to de-age himself 50 years for 8 hours, or 100 years for 4 hours, or 200 years for 2 hours, or 400 years for...1 hour.

Without compounding any youth that is given to Marsh effectively decreases by a factor of 8. He'd need one person to store 50 years of youth for 8 days straight just to keep him alive for 1 more day. So two dozen priests storing 8 hours a day = 24 x 8 = 8 days of 50 years stored = 1 day of 400 years stored. It's doable, but an incredible risk and hassle to have to change out the metalminds every single day.

Let's instead say Sliverist priests really devote themselves to the cause and keep the metalminds running 24/7. You'd only need 8 priests to keep Marsh alive, assuming no missed appointments. It would be still be a huge hassle, and still need to be changed out every day.

But going with your example of a dozen or two dozen devoted priests who store youth perpetually, that's 24 days of 50 years stored = 3 days of life for marsh stored for every 1 day the priests spend storing. Now we're talking. Marsh could even use the excess to store up in his spike over time, giving him a "battery" in case something goes wrong.

Though I hate to say it, but if there's a way to continue to create more atium as Sazed implies at the end of TLM, then I still think continuing to compound is the way to go. Though maybe using youth from parishioners would help cut down on the amount of atium lost per compound, if it's still extremely hard to create. 

After your explanation and a bit of time, I find myself more and more inclined to agree with your conclusion- while I love the idea of efficiency and keeping as much Atium around as possible, it's probably not realistic to assume you could maintain Marsh on the limited supply and not burn any up. It's just not very practical.

 

I suppose if you had a lot of spare, willing donors, and you you have multiple (like sixteen or so) storing into each Unsealed Atiummind at once, and the Atium could hold enough of a charge (days or weeks worth for a relatively small amount of the metal), then maybe you could make this more feasible.

But still, I guess this wouldn't make the Atium really any more common. It's still being locked into use somewhere else, even if it isn't directly Compounded into youth and is acting only as a battery.

I hope there's at least enough of a surplus of Atium come Era 3 that the Ghostbloods or Harmony's agents can experiment with it a bit, maybe make a few other Unsealed Atiummind alloys. 

[DracoAdamantus he/him]

I don't want to take this thread too off the rails of the Atium discussion, but rereading this as I've been finishing my reread of Era 2 is turning some gears in my head.

On 11/4/2025 at 5:01 PM, Trusk'our said:

I don't think medallions follow the vanilla use of nicrosil. I believe they use a bonding mechanism while normal nicrosil Feruchemy is just temporary tapping like most attributes. 

Oh yeah, I have a whole long theory on medallion mechanics that works off of the premise that they are forming a bond of some sort:

But to the point of the relevant WoB in question, I'm not inclined to agree that vanilla nicrosil feruchemy is temporary tapping, at least not all of it is. Honestly just seeing a regular nicrosil feruchemist use their powers would provide a lot of answers. If you can store different kinds of investiture, just like how different senses or different kinds of connection can be stored, I think that whether it is a temporary or permanent effect from tapping depends on what type was stored.

If it was innate investiture, ie. the investiture that gives you an ability in the first place, then it would be a permanent effect, giving you the innate ability permanently. If it was kinetic investiture, like the investiture accessed when using allomancy, then it would be temporary, powering the effects you use it for.

Which leads me to this thought: Can you store  investiture that is actively performing an effect? And when it's later tapped, gain access to that effect not because you have that actual power, but because you are accessing investiture that was keyed by that power?

Allomancy works by gaining kinetic investiture from Preservation. It is possible for this investiture to be sent/stored somewhere, as we see with the primer cubes taking in allomantic investiture, and the later allomantic grenade designs being able to be primed by an allomancer several hours beforehand. Feruchemy works by converting your own attributes to static investiture, to be accessed later as kinetic investiture. Can these types of investiture be stored in a nicrosil metalmind? Allomancy would be easy, a twinborn with nicrosil feruchemy could just burn metals and store the investiture directly into a nicrosilmind for future use. Feruchemy would require some having of the system, but still possible. To store something like strength in nicrosil, you'd first have to store it in pewter (to convert the strength into investiture), then tap the pewter while simultaneously storing it into the nicrosil.

But if that works, then that opens a whole host of possibilities with compounding and nicrosil feruchemy. A nicrosil feruchemist could theoretically tap any kind of allomantic effect or feruchemical attribute. This wouldn't grant them the ability, they wouldn't be able to burn metals or store attributes, but they could access the premade reserves of investiture.

This went a bit beyond the original point of this response, I just had the thought as I was typing.

On 11/4/2025 at 5:01 PM, Trusk'our said:

The Bands of Mourning run out of their nicrosil portion as Wax found out, and would require Compounding to recharge them.

Was it ever truly established that their nicrosil portion ran out? If this is talking about the scene in TLM, I know they said they were "drained" but was it specified if the feruchemical reserves were all drained, or if there were no abilities within it? In any case, how that went down with the Malwish is super sketchy, and I highly doubt was as simple as "someone drained the bands".

In any case, I'm actually very confused now by how the bands and the medallions actually operate. There's the WoB that when you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, it does not run out over time, it functions like a coppermind. But it is also mentioned by Suit in BoM that they don't know how to recharge the heating medallions. At first I thought this implied the Set hadn't cracked identity blanking yet, but in the first few chapters of TLM it's mentioned that the Malwish have withheld a lot of information on the medallions from the Basin, including how to recharge them. I don't think it's specified then either if that means "refill with attributes", or "recharge with feruchemical ability". In any case, there is something more complicated to making the medallions work.

An idea I've had floating around is that that the Bands, and possibly all unsealed metalminds in general, are powered in part by the Mists. When Wax and Marasi were using the Bands, they noticed there being mists around them, and they feel like the mists are originating from them. The mists, as we know, are a manifestation of Preservation's power. What if the bond that an unsealed metalmind forms has to be sustained by an active power source, such as the mists?

This would make the WoB and the recharging issues work at the same time. There is a storage of innate investiture in the form of the actual ability given, and a storage of Preservation's investiture that is used to power the bond that gives you access to the ability. When a medallion is drained, it hasn't used up the power stored inside, it no longer has the juice to give you access to the ability. It would just feel like mundane metal until the "battery" is recharged with unkeyed Preservation.

On 11/4/2025 at 5:01 PM, Trusk'our said:

But still, I guess this wouldn't make the Atium really any more common. It's still being locked into use somewhere else, even if it isn't directly Compounded into youth and is acting only as a battery.

I hope there's at least enough of a surplus of Atium come Era 3 that the Ghostbloods or Harmony's agents can experiment with it a bit, maybe make a few other Unsealed Atiummind alloys. 

I just realized something...we've only ever seen youth compounding with the retconned atium-electrum alloy that the pits produced. But Wax's method assumedly created pure atium. That might do something more special/more permanent.

My first thought is that it would be a more efficient de-aging, playing much stronger into the "spiritual identity" aspect of it. The most common theory I see about pure atium is that is that using it allomantically would let you see into the spiritual realm and give far visions of time. What if instead of storing youth, pure atium did something like store your body's or spirit's "state"/"status"?

I'm not quite sure how to explain this idea as an encompassing attribute, but looking just at aging, it would be a storage of "being that age" rather than "being this much younger". Using regular atium, if you have 8 hours of "50 years of youth" saved up, a 100 year old man could use that to become 50 for 8 hours (50 years younger, 1-to-1 de-aging). A 200 year old man could only be 50 for 4 hours (100 years younger, 2-to-1 de-aging). Using pure atium, you would instead create a reserve of "being 50 years old". An 8 hour storage reserve of that would give anyone that taps it 8 hours of being 50, no matter how old they actually are.

Does that make any sense? I have a feeling this is a convoluted theory, since the question therein is what exactly happens to you when you are storing "status"? Storing 50 years of youth makes you 50 years older while storing it, but what the heck is the opposite of "being 50 years old"?

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 hours ago, DracoAdamantus said:

Was it ever truly established that their nicrosil portion ran out? If this is talking about the scene in TLM, I know they said they were "drained" but was it specified if the feruchemical reserves were all drained, or if there were no abilities within it? In any case, how that went down with the Malwish is super sketchy, and I highly doubt was as simple as "someone drained the bands".

In BoM Wax mentions how his actual Investiture reserves, his ability to use empowered Allomancy, is draining at a furious rate while tapping the Bands. I think it's chapter 29 that goes over this, wish I could validate this since it's been a bit, but I won't have my books again until I visit my family for Christmas.

5 hours ago, DracoAdamantus said:

In any case, I'm actually very confused now by how the bands and the medallions actually operate. There's the WoB that when you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, it does not run out over time, it functions like a coppermind. But it is also mentioned by Suit in BoM that they don't know how to recharge the heating medallions. At first I thought this implied the Set hadn't cracked identity blanking yet, but in the first few chapters of TLM it's mentioned that the Malwish have withheld a lot of information on the medallions from the Basin, including how to recharge them. I don't think it's specified then either if that means "refill with attributes", or "recharge with feruchemical ability". In any case, there is something more complicated to making the medallions work.

Aren't we all confused by their operation. Can't wait for the document explaining their function to be released.

I do not believe that the nicrosil portion of medallions are actually tapped (instead using a bonding mechanism), but that this was only the term Brandon flowed with at the time because it made for an easier response. Humans are human and it's not reasonable to pick apart every tiny thing that comes out of a person's mouth. Here in particular, with him signing books and giving the response inside, keeping the answer short and sweet makes a lot of sense, and even if it can be extrapolated incorrectly it gets the main idea the questioner was asking about delivered.

That's my own take on this WoB, anyway.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/316-general-signed-books-2018/#e11247

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

It's been proposed by other Sharders that we don't see medallions being used for both storing and tapping because it's a restriction of Intent, where the medallion can either store or tap, but it's hard to do in field because the medallion itself has the desire to do one or the other, not both.

Get heat inside a Brass medallion probably requires some extra step, I'm thinking, maybe to do with the Firefathers and Firemothers, maybe with the Excisors. Perhaps they can be recharged with a mechanical device, but we just don't know right now.

5 hours ago, DracoAdamantus said:

I just realized something...we've only ever seen youth compounding with the retconned atium-electrum alloy that the pits produced. But Wax's method assumedly created pure atium. That might do something more special/more permanent.

My first thought is that it would be a more efficient de-aging, playing much stronger into the "spiritual identity" aspect of it. The most common theory I see about pure atium is that is that using it allomantically would let you see into the spiritual realm and give far visions of time. What if instead of storing youth, pure atium did something like store your body's or spirit's "state"/"status"?

I'm not quite sure how to explain this idea as an encompassing attribute, but looking just at aging, it would be a storage of "being that age" rather than "being this much younger". Using regular atium, if you have 8 hours of "50 years of youth" saved up, a 100 year old man could use that to become 50 for 8 hours (50 years younger, 1-to-1 de-aging). A 200 year old man could only be 50 for 4 hours (100 years younger, 2-to-1 de-aging). Using pure atium, you would instead create a reserve of "being 50 years old". An 8 hour storage reserve of that would give anyone that taps it 8 hours of being 50, no matter how old they actually are.

Does that make any sense? I have a feeling this is a convoluted theory, since the question therein is what exactly happens to you when you are storing "status"? Storing 50 years of youth makes you 50 years older while storing it, but what the heck is the opposite of "being 50 years old"?

Wax's method does create the pure Atium type, but it's tweaked by the Kandra giving it to Marsh before he burns it.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509-youtube-spoiler-stream-5/#e15969

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.

It's also been confirmed that pure Atium's effect when burned is to give a more expansive vision of the SR than what the alloyed form does.

Allomancy table:

Spoiler

As for the idea of more permanent longevity being provided by pure Atium, I don't know.

One one hand, it's very similar to what the electrum alloy does, which matches fairly well with how the Allomantic effects of Atium/electrum and pure Atium work very similarly, but with pure Atium being a more expanded version. On the other hand, this does feel like they should have either picked up on this possibility and gone with that instead of the alloy, or it's just a little overpowered and makes the electrum alloy feel redundant.

[DracoAdamantus he/him]

21 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I do not believe that the nicrosil portion of medallions are actually tapped (instead using a bonding mechanism), but that this was only the term Brandon flowed with at the time because it made for an easier response. Humans are human and it's not reasonable to pick apart every tiny thing that comes out of a person's mouth. Here in particular, with him signing books and giving the response inside, keeping the answer short and sweet makes a lot of sense, and even if it can be extrapolated incorrectly it gets the main idea the questioner was asking about delivered.

Oh I wasn't saying the nicrosil was being tapped, I agree with the idea of them working through a form of bonding. What I was pointing out is that Sanderson said that it works like a Coppermind in the sense that abilities stored in medallions don't work like most attributes in which it is a span of time, it is a discrete thing you can access.

21 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

In BoM Wax mentions how his actual Investiture reserves, his ability to use empowered Allomancy, is draining at a furious rate while tapping the Bands. I think it's chapter 29 that goes over this, wish I could validate this since it's been a bit, but I won't have my books again until I visit my family for Christmas.

This is what I was getting at with the theory of the bands having an investiture power source of some sort. Sanderson said that the powers are not drained over time, they are discrete abilities that are "taken" (either tapped or bonded, whichever it is), then returned to the medallion when done. So what exactly did wax feel draining away as he was using the bands? Maybe it was pure investiture from Preservation (manifesting around him as the mists) that fuel the bond.

[Shadeshadow227]

On 10/27/2025 at 4:40 PM, Clarkmon22 said:

yeah there could be like a cult of Death that just give a year of their life or smth like that\

also trust our mentioned them in the op

You don't even need to give up time permanently, your spiritweb keeps track of your actual age and you go back after you stop storing.