Looking for a WoB on the Creation of Atium Mistings

[Moogle]

Title, essentially. There's a WoB that outright says Preservation created atium Mistings (ie. they were not naturally occurring before he went tinkering and removing cadmium/bendalloy), or at least I think there is. This one comes close:

Chaos2651
Hemalurgically, atium steals Allomantic Temporal Powers. But, that seems unlikely, since atium is a god metal. It wouldn't fit in with the rest of the magic system. Did Preservation, in addition to switching Cadmium and Bendalloy for Atium and Malatium, also switch atium's Feruchemical and Hemalurgic powers with Cadmium? Because it seems to me there's not a lot of atium Marsh can use to live for hundreds of years into the next Mistborn trilogy.

Brandon Sanderson
Preservation wanted Atium and Malatium to be of use to the people, as he recognized that it would be a very powerful tool—and that using it up could help defeat Ruin.  But he also recognized that sixteen was a mythological important number, and felt it would make the best sign for his followers.  So he took out the most unlikely (difficult to make and use) metals for his sign to his followers.  But that doesn't have much to do with Hemalurgy's use here.

Remember that the tables—and the ars Arcanum—are 'in world' creations.  (Or, at least, in-universe.)  The knowledge represented in them is as people understand it, and can always have flaws.  That was the case with having atium on the table in the first place, and that was the case with people (specifically the Inquisitors) trying to figure out what atium did Hemalurgically.

Their experiments (very expensive ones) are what determined that atium (which they thought was just one of the sixteen metals) granted the Allomantic Temporal powers.  What they didn't realize is that atium (used correctly) could steal ANY of the powers.  Think of it as a wild card.  With the right knowledge, you could use it to mimic any other spike.  It works far better than other spikes as well.

As for Marsh, he's got a whole bag of atium (taken off of the Kandra who was going to try to sell it.)  So he's all right for quite a while.  A small bead used right can reverse age someone back to their childhood.

But this was a little beyond their magical understanding at the time.
(source)

 

But it is not the one I am thinking of.

 

I could use some help, please! Am I mistaken about it existing?

Edited May 21, 2015 by Moogle

[A Joe in the Bush]

Wasn't that in the Hero of Ages Annotations somewhere? I'll see if I can find it for you.

 

EDIT: It's not in the Hero of ages Annotations.

Edited May 21, 2015 by The Only Joe

[Esaias he/him]

Q: If atium isn’t a regular metal then why are there atium mistings?
B: They were designed and created specifically to do what they did. Remember this is-- Preservation and Ruin were able to influence the world and rewrite people’s spiritual DNA.

 

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5177-worldbuilders-streamed-writing/page-2#entry89033

 

Is that it?

[Kurkistan he/him]

So I'm guessing this WoB still doesn't parse for you?

[Moogle]

Q: If atium isn’t a regular metal then why are there atium mistings?

B: They were designed and created specifically to do what they did. Remember this is-- Preservation and Ruin were able to influence the world and rewrite people’s spiritual DNA.

 

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5177-worldbuilders-streamed-writing/page-2#entry89033

 

Is that it?

 

That is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. May you be showered in upvotes.

 

So I'm guessing this WoB still doesn't parse for you?

 

Not quite. I was having a discussion with someone, and they weren't quite convinced by the WoBs I had available (and rightfully so) that atium Mistings were not natural. gwslow's answer is pretty much impossible to argue with, though this one is also very good. Thanks.

[yurisses]

The weird thing about this is that readers predicted Atium mistings while the characters assumed they didn't exist, and it turned out that the readers were right and the characters wrong, yet without Preservation's scheme the readers would have been wrong and the characters right. I know it's not implausible, just ironic.
 
I clung to the theory that Atium is actually an alloy of Atium and Electrum and Atium mistings actually Electrum mistings until I saw the WoB gwslow posted. I still prefer it to what Brandon is saying It is more symmetrical, allomantic-table-wise (Gold shows your past self, Malatium (gold+Atium) shows other people's past selves; Electrum shows your future, Atium shows other people's future), and it explains why Mistings of a god metal exist without having God messing with people's sDNA (i.e. if you're a Misting, you can burn your metal and its alloys of Atium).
 
But, sometimes things are simpler than I think they are.

 

Still, certain WoB make me wonder if there's more to the way Atium mistings work, such as these:

 

Question
Why can lerasium be burned by anyone in the Cosmere, while atium is restricted to a small portion of the population of one planet?

Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
(source)

 
 

Chaos
Does atium have a "side effect", much like how lerasium has a "side effect" in creating Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson
RAFO
(source)

[Lord Tavash Shar]

I always wondered about this in relation to how Preservation and ruins powers worked. We know that misborn and the like have a large amount of Preservations investiture and according to the WOB on metals they act as anons when burned. Telling preservation what power you want.
And yet when Atium is burned it should trigger a request for the power of preservation using the solidified power of ruin.... And apparently the ruin side of that power does not go back to ruin or he would not have cared that they burned all the Atium.
And we know via WOB that the power of allomancy once used goes back to preservation. So were mistborn a way to transition a shards power from one shard to another?
On that note does the power lost in Hemalurgy just get lost? or does it some how end up in ruins possession after having been "converted" to hemalurgic charges?

 

Lots of questions here about what was going on.

[Chaos he/him]

Nice. I thought that first quote was what implied that, but these are very useful quotes, especially for the Allomancy article I am writing.