Why doesn't Lerasium regenerate like Atium?

[+Authweight]

I just realized, I forgot to put Secret History spoilers in the title, so I'm spoilering all this until I can get the title changed

 

Atium, it seems, regenerated constantly in the Pits of Hathsin. It seems reasonable to think that Ruin's shardpool was down in there somewhere or somehow. Similarly, we see Lerasium near the Well of Ascension, Preservation's shardpool.

 

However, it seems to be the case that Lerasium doesn't regenerate the way that atium does. The only Lerasium near the well this time around is what TLR left last time he was there. My old pet theory was that there was actually a full supply there at first, having regenerated from last time the Well was full (I theorized 16 pieces, taking that as Preservation's number), and Hoid took all of it except the one piece. However, the Secret History shows us Hoid only taking on piece of Lerasium, and that there are only two pieces there by the time Kelsier arrives at the Well.

 

So why is Lerasium in such limited supply?

Edited February 4, 2016 by Authweight

[Kaid he/him]

I think it has to do with the Atium providing a small burst of the power but is burned in the process. After that, it is able to regenerate, whereas the Lerasium invests the ingester with Allomancy and it is used permanently and passed on from there. You can't inherit the powers of Atium, but you can inherit Lerasium's power.

[Kaymyth she/her]

Plus there's the fact that Preservation was actually using atium to siphon away Ruin's extra power.  It was in the interest of that plan to keep the power recycling through the system so that it wouldn't return to Ruin.

[KidWayne he/him]

I thought that had to do with Kelsier's comment in MSH about the mists being the representation of Preservation's diffused power. The mists do regenerate and represent a huge source of Preservation's power that manifests itself in the physical realm, just like Atium.

Also, there is a quote in MSH where Kelsier comments on how Atium connected Elend and the Atium mistings to the Spiritual Realm which is exactly how drawing in ALL the mist allowed Vin to ascend. It's a pretty solid analogy, I think.

However, assuming that I'm correct, that does still leave the question of why the beads of Lerasium exist in the first place. My only thought on that is that the Lerasium beads were TLR/Rashek's means to create allomancers. That is to say that Rashek used the power of Preservation granted to him at the Well of Ascension to copy Ruin's physical realm manifestation. Put another way, he made Lerasium beads as a complement to the naturally occurring Atium beads to hack Allomancy.

Edit: corrected a grammar/syntax problem.

Edited February 5, 2016 by KidWayne

[+Authweight]

I thought that had to do with Kelsier's comment in MSH about the mists being the representation of Preservation's diffused power. The mists do regenerate and represent a huge source of Preservation's power that manifests itself in the physical realm, just like Atium.

 

Also, there is a quote in MSH where Kelsier comments on how Elend and the Atium connected Elend and his Atium mistings to the Spiritual Realm which is exactly how drawing in ALL the mist allowed Vin to ascend. It's a pretty solid analogy, I think. 

 

However, assuming that I'm correct, that does still leave the question of why the beads of Lerasium exist in the first place. My only thought on that is that the Lerasium beads were TLR/Rashek's means to create allomancers. That is to say that Rashek used the power of Preservation granted to him at the Well of Ascension to copy Ruin's physical realm manifestation. Put another way, he made Lerasium beads as a complement to the naturally occurring Atium beads to hack Allomancy.

Good theory. Rashek made the original Lerasium beads and used most of them immediately. Before that, Allomancy was like what the Southern Scadrians have, very diffuse and rare.

[Argent he/him]

As I understand it, Shardpools don't actually have to be, well, pools. They are simply locations where a Shard's power seeps into the Physical (and possibly the Cognitive) Realm from the Spiritual. So, if I am correct, asking why lerasium doesn't replenish is an invalid question - it's not lerasium that should be replenishing, it's Preservation's power, and that one is cycling back into the Physical Realm, that's what the Well of Ascension is. Similarly, it's not that atium replenishes in the Pits - Ruins power just continuously gathers there, in the form of atium. 

[KidWayne he/him]

@ Argent:

So wait a minute, preservation's power replenishes at the WoA but ruin's power doesn't replenish it continuously gathers instead?

[Shardbearer he/him]

I thought the reason was because Ruin and Preservation are not balanced. Life on Scadrial has more Preservation, so there's extra bit's of Ruin that leak of the Pits, creating Atium. Less of Preservation's power leaks out at that Pool, so Lerasium is rare. Isn't that the whole reason we've been wondering where the extra Ruin is and whether the Pits have reformed around Era 1.5?

[Irkutsk he/him]

I thought the reason was because Ruin and Preservation are not balanced. Life on Scadrial has more Preservation, so there's extra bit's of Ruin that leak of the Pits, creating Atium. Less of Preservation's power leaks out at that Pool, so Lerasium is rare. Isn't that the whole reason we've been wondering where the extra Ruin is and whether the Pits have reformed around Era 1.5?

Corrext me if I'm wrong, but the extra ruin isn't the atium, it's the difference in power from when preservation sacrificed some of his power and his mind to trap ruin at the WoA.

The pits of Hathsin have a shard pool beneath them, I believe, but instead of the power gathering into a pool, it is concentrated into beads of atium.

[Argent he/him]

Here's how I see things:

• Ruin and Preservation start off with equal power levels after the Shattering
• Ruin and Preservation create Scadrial and everything on it, making a deal that allows Preservation to Invest the people there more than Ruin does. Both Shards lose power, but Preservation loses more, leaving Ruin marginally more powerful. As a part of the deal, he doesn't use this advantage to destroy the world because an additional clause he gets to destroy it in the end
• Preservation backs off from the Deal, sacrificing a significant portion of his power (and mind) to imprison Ruin into the Well, a prison made of Preservation's sacrificed power. Since Ruin was stronger at this point, Preservation had to weaken him somehow - trapping a portion of his power in a physical form, as atium. I can't guess whether Preservation forced this power to instantly materialize in the Pits (effectively saturating them fully), or he simply kept it away from Ruin, in the Spiritual Realm, letting it slowly trickle into the Physical Realm in the form of atium. I don't think it makes any difference.
• When Rashek Ascended, he immediately used the power of the Well - the power Preservation allocated to be a prison - to renew the prison before Ruin could find his body, reabsorb the power, and become stronger than the Well.
• Over the years, the fraction of Ruin's power Preservation locked away from him in the physical world, the atium, would cycle through the Realms; Allomancers would burn its physical manifestation, sending it back to the Spiritual Realm, where it would seep back into the Pits over time.
• Meanwhile, the significant portion of Preservation's power that formed the Well / Ruin's prison would also cycle - only it would manifest as a liquid, and kind of all at once for some reason. The beads of lerasium, I suspect, were created by the Lord Ruler in the moments of his Ascension, forcing a small fraction of the Well's power to solidify. I do not believe any more lerasium would form after that, not without somebody Ascending to Preservation and doing the same thing. 
• So the "extra Ruin" we keep talking about is the atium, but for different reasons I think. At the moment of Sazed's Ascension, he had access to all of Ruin's power that wasn't locked in atium, and all of Preservation's power (sans the tiny bit he sacrificed to ensure humanity is imbalanced in terms of innate Investiture). To put it in a crude equation:
  • Ruin's total power = Ruin(humanity) + Ruin(atium) + Ruin(imprisoned/released)
  • Preservation's total power = Preservation(humanity) + Preservation(Well + lerasium) + Preservation(free)
  • Ruin(imprisoned/released) would equal Preservation(Well + lerasium), so those would cancel out in Harmony.
  • Ruin(humanity) is less than Preservation(humanity)
  • For Harmony to be balanced, Ruin(atium) at the moment of Sazed's Ascension would have to be less than Preservation(free), a difference to offset Ruin(humanity) being less than Preservation(humanity). We cannot know exact numbers, but just jotting down some percentages on paper make it look it's possible.
• So, the way I see it, the "extra Ruin" is all the atium left in the world after Sazed's Ascension.

Alternatively, if there wasn't enough atium left to offset Preservation's initial investment in humanity (less atium ==> more "raw" Ruin), then Sazed could've dumped it somewhere - in the form of more atium, or a Splinter, or whatever else - in order to be balanced when he became Harmony. I think this is the theory - or assumption - I've seen 'round these parts. 

 

You'll notice I am ignoring the mists. That's because I am working under the assumptions that they are the "free Preservation" in the world, plus Leras' mind. I think this is a decent assumption, since we don't see Preservation's power acting anywhere outside the mists. 

[fyodor]

I think that Preservation created the pits specifically to channel away Ati's power. See below.

 

• INTERVIEW: Oct 30th, 2012

  Hal-Con Report - Lance Alvein (Paraphrased)

  LANCE ALVEIN

  You've said that "The Pits of Hathsin were crafted by Preservation as a place to hide the chunk of Ruin's body that he had stolen away." How does one Shard steal a portion of another Shard and create a Physical outlet for it, like the Pits were for Ruin's power?

  BRANDON SANDERSON (PARAPHRASED)

  It has to do with clash between the two shards power. When pressed, he then said that it was "kind of" like splintering

  TAGS

  pits of hathsin, ruin, preservation, splintering, shards, mistborn,
•  

[KidWayne he/him]

I'm going to stick to my guns here. The 1st generation kandra tell Sazed in HoA that the mists are Preservation's body (no ambiguity). We are also told that Atium is Ruin's body.

Therefore, since we only see a very limited amount of Lerasium (and Mistborn were unheard of before Rashek), it only makes sense that Lerasium is a distilled and concentrated form of Preservation's power made by Rashek during his time at the Well of Ascension.

Now a better question would be - if not for the Pits - how would Ruin's power/presence manifest in the physical realm? Would it still show up via Atium or would there be dark mists?

[The Invested Beard]

I'm going to stick to my guns here. The 1st generation kandra tell Sazed in HoA that the mists are Preservation's body (no ambiguity). We are also told that Atium is Ruin's body.

Therefore, since we only see a very limited amount of Lerasium (and Mistborn were unheard of before Rashek), it only makes sense that Lerasium is a distilled and concentrated form of Preservation's power made by Rashek during his time at the Well of Ascension.

Now a better question would be - if not for the Pits - how would Ruin's power/presence manifest in the physical realm? Would it still show up via Atium or would there be dark mists?

 

Isn't part of Ruin represented by a room full of black mist already?

[Kadrok she/her]

These should answer or expand some of the questions raised here:

 

Epigraph 9 of the Hero of Ages:

 

Allomancy was, indeed, born with the mists. Or, at least, Allomancy began at the same time as the mists' first appearances. When Rashek took the power at the Well of Ascension, he became aware of certain things. Some were whispered to him by Ruin; others were granted to him as an instinctive part of the power.

One of these was an understanding of the Three Metallic Arts. He knew, for instance, that the nuggets of metal in the Chamber of Ascension would make those who ingested them into Mistborn. These were, after all, fractions of the very power in the Well itself.

 

The beads were already there when Rashek took the power.

 

Part of Epigraph 78 explaining what the pits actually are and how they came about:

 

Atium, then, was an object that was one-sided. Instead of being composed of half Ruin and half Preservation—as, say, a rock would be—atium was completely of Ruin. The Pits of Hathsin were crafted by Preservation as a place to hide the chunk of Ruin's body that he had stolen away during the betrayal and imprisonment. Kelsier didn't truly destroy this place by shattering those crystals, for they would have regrown eventually—in a few hundred years—and continued to deposit atium, as the place was a natural outlet for Ruin's trapped power.

 

Also there are small wells under the Pits of Hathsin:

Dalenthas (15 October 2008)

Does the Well of Ascension still exist in the new world? Or is it no longer necessary? I assumed that Preservation collected there like Ruin collects in the Pits of Hathsin, so if Atium keeps forming then the well should keep filling...

Brandon Sanderson (16 October 2008)

The Well (and the small wells in the Pits) is no more. For now at least.Source: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#20

 

 

Isn't part of Ruin represented by a room full of black mist already?

Yep. It's the part of his power that was trapped.

 

Hero of Ages Epigraph 14:

Ruin's consciousness was trapped by the Well of Ascension, kept mostly impotent. That night, when we discovered the Well for the first time, we found something we didn't understand. A black smoke, clogging one of the rooms.

Though we discussed it after the fact, we couldn't decide what that was. How could we possibly have known?

The body of a god—or, rather, the power of a god, since the two are really the same thing. Ruin and Preservation inhabited power and energy in the same way a person inhabits flesh and blood.

 

Edited February 5, 2016 by Kadrok

[Maya she/her]

It was said pointblank
 

“It’s the same power, after all. Solid in the metal you fed to Elend. Liquid in the pool you burned. And vapor in the air

 

It's all the same - the lerasium pieces, the mists, the liquid in the Well (which does regenerate, even if it takes centuries after being used till the Well is full again ).