Atium Allomantic signature

[Oversleep]

 

Practice will also let you sense the three patterns within the pulses: one for the physical metals, one for the mental metals, and one for the two greater metals.

~Marsh teaching Vin how to use bronze

It seems that atium and gold share a pulse pattern. That's very, very, very interesting.

Shame that there was no information about Pushing/Pulling external/internal characteristic, as we still don't know what metal atium is. Well, now we know that it shares a pulse pattern with gold which has various implications.

Of course, it could be attributed to the temporal metals switching Preservation did, but I find that unlikely. One thing is to create artificial Mistings; a completely another thing is changing Allomantic signature of god metal of your opposite Shard.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Oversleep

[baby he/him]

It always boggled me why gold was classified as a 'greater metal'. It has no use, and is an epithet for someone who can't do anything in the AoL era. Besides that, I guess you could tentatively classify atium as a temporal metal, even though it's a god metal, which would account for the same (or similar, being skilled in bronze was rare, I'd guess and not a lot of people could experiment) pulse lengths.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Onceler

[king of nowhere]

I think it could easily be a mistake they made at the time. They only knew of two "greater" metals, and it is easy to see a pattern when yoou only have two samples. you can always trace a line between two points, even if there is no pattern to them. or, it is possible that atium gives a signature like other temporal metals, and so what they took for the signature of "greater" metals was simply the one for temporary metals.

[Oversleep]

I think it could easily be a mistake they made at the time. They only knew of two "greater" metals, and it is easy to see a pattern when yoou only have two samples. you can always trace a line between two points, even if there is no pattern to them. or, it is possible that atium gives a signature like other temporal metals, and so what they took for the signature of "greater" metals was simply the one for temporary metals.

The thing is, bronze signature consists of three variables: Pushing/Pulling, length of the impulse (internal metals have longer impulse than external metals) and the pattern of the impulses, how are impulses repeated (the group of the metals).

For example, pattern of physical metals is quick repetition.

 

A long pulse (internal) that beats against you (Pushing) and has a quick pattern (physical) will be pewter—the internal Pushing physical metal.”

Since the length of the pulse and Pushing/Pulling are clearly separate from each other and from the pulse pattern, they aren't muddling the recognition. Good.

So to recognize a pattern all the Seeker has to is to note the time between each pulse. For physical metals, the time between each pulse is short. Unfortunately we don't know the patterns for the rest of the metals, but a pattern either is there or isn't. If the pattern is three quick repetitions and five slow, it can't be confused with two quick and three slow.

From what Marsh what saying, you could tell what is the group the metal belongs to from the pattern only. If there wasn't any common pattern, they would just claim that higher metals don't share a pattern; they were higher metals, breaking base metal-alloy rule, why not just claim that because of that they don't share a pattern?

Yet they said they do.

They could go with "nobody ever wasted atium to check it's Allomantic signature; atium was always used in fights between Mistborns and they had their copperclouds" or "any Seeker who Seeked atium ended up dead anyway; if you have reason to Seek Mistborn and he's burning atium it means he's after you" or basically anything.

I wonder why didn't Vin ask about the signatures of greater metals. She just was taught that all metals besides the gold and atium are divided into Pulling/Pushing external/internal groups of four. The question is begging to be asked: "So are gold and atium both Pulling metals or what? They are not alloys and alloys Push."

Edited February 15, 2016 by Oversleep

[Bugsy he/him]

I'm honestly a little doubtful about this. What are the odds that Marsh managed to see Atium being burned, then lived to tell the tale? I believe Kelsier is the only Skaa Mistborn he's ever seen, and I doubt Kelsier would be willing to waste Atium simply to let his estranged brother see what the pulses sound like. Most likely, Mash was making an inference based on previous knowledge. Do we ever see Vin describe Atium pulses in the book? That would provide much more compelling evidence

ETA: Whoops, just saw your previous post. I'm sure that at some point someone noticed the potential discrepancies in pulse length, but it's not something one would share with others. This would be especially true since TRL wanted to hide the other metals' existence, and would have therefore have snuffed out any rumors

Edited February 15, 2016 by Bugsy6912

[natc]

Atium's effects are to some extent internal-temporal, so it wouldn't exactly be odd if it did have a similar pulse to gold.

[Vertigo he/him]

Atium's effects are to some extent internal-temporal, so it wouldn't exactly be odd if it did have a similar pulse to gold.

I would have said atium was more external in its use and application. Still, an argument could be made in favour of it being internal. 

[baby he/him]

Atium doesn't change anything around you, it just lets you see the future. Not so much affecting the person you're fighting.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Onceler

[Oversleep]

But the pulse pattern has nothing to do with external/internal Pushing/Pulling. Pattern describes the metal group.

[natc]

I'm not sure I understand what point you're making here.

[king of nowhere]

If the pattern is three quick repetitions and five slow, it can't be confused with two quick and three slow.

 

Yes, it can. You say that the "pattern" is a few quick repetitions and a few slow repetitions, and that's the "pattern" of the greater metals, the difference being the exact number of repetitions. That's because you can find a pattern in pretty much everything if you look hard enough for it. The human brain is made to look for patterns, and it find them even when there are not.

Also, in that time people thought that gold and atium were paired, so it makes sense that they would think there was a pattern common to them. And the lord ruler certainly wanted them to keep thinking that atium was paired with gold. So it makes sense that they would see a pattern where there was none, and they had no reason to question it.

Also, as I said, both are temporal metals, so they could have a similarity in that.

[IndigoAjah he/him]

With an n of two for the greater metals, similarities between the pulse patterns would be very possible to be present due to sheer chance. Could easily imagine a consistency that was in fact pure coincidence, especially with some expectation confirmation bias added in