Question About Metals Between Eras

[Andy92]

I'd say the answer to this question is out there somewhere, but I'm not quite sure where to start looking for it. The Ars Arcanum for The Hero of Ages lists 14 metals, and at the end of the book, Harmony tells Spook there are 2 more metals to look for. I'm assuming these 2 new metals are Bendalloy and Cadmium since time bubbles are a big part of the new era.

My question is why the original trilogy listed Atium and Malatium as 2 of the 14 metals, but in the new era, these are replaced with Nicrosil and Chromium. I've seen mention of god metals, so I'm assuming that's what Atium was (Ruin = Ati = Atium), but I'm mainly curious as to where Nicrosil and Chromium came from. Seems like there should have been 4 new metals for Spook to find instead of just 2. 

[Eki]

It is assumed (at least by a lot of people), that Sazed meant two new base metals (and one new alloy for each of them). Those four existed before (and I think Mistings of those metals were born back then as well, though I'm not sure if we have proof of that), but they were so rare, and their existence so suppressed by the Lord Ruler, that no one knew about them. Just like aluminium, duralumin and electrum.

And yes, atium was never supposed to be a normal part of the Allomantic table (nor was malatium), which is why gold and atium seemed so out of place. Atium is, as you say, Ruin's god metal. Atium was only produced by the Pits of Hathsin, which Kelsier destroyed in the first book. Most of the remaining atium in the world was burned during the final confrontation of Hero of Ages. As a side note, the bead that Elend ate at the end of WoA is Preservation's god metal - it is called lerasium, and it is very interesting. It's basically a solid version of the mists, or of the liquid that was in the Well.

We don't know if atium is being produced again in the current era, but we do know that Marsh has some, which he took from a kandra in HoA. Compounding that is what he's been using to stay alive for so long. (Though some have theorized that Sazed is also giving him atium, if his original stash has run out). So that's why it's not in any of the current tables - most people don't know about it, and it isn't available. Even if it was available, we don't know if atium Mistings even exist anymore. I think they do, but that they'll just never find out. Others think Sazed changed Allomancy to remove them.

[Pagerunner he/him]

That's actually a question that came up a long time ago, after HoA was first published. Someone asked Brandon about it, and he said Sazed was referring to two new pure metals, not the two alloys that go with them. Chromium/Nicrosil were the ones people theorized originally to fill in the chart (since we were missing two Enhancement metals), and we later learned that Atium/Malatium weren't the true External Temporal pair, which was Cadmium/Bendalloy.

The Ars Arcanum pages in all of Brandon's cosmere books are actually in-universe documents, written by a worldhopper who goes from planet to planet observing and documenting magic. Her observations reflected the current in-universe understanding, and they thought atium was a temporal metal. Atium, like the metal that Vin fed to Elend in the Well of Ascenscion, are god metals, is comprised of the pure essence of a Shard, and it's not a natural metal. The full power of these metals has yet to be explored; they each have 16 alloys (with each of the other Allomantic metals).

[The One Who Connects he/him]

On 1/16/2017 at 0:13 PM, Andy92 said:

Seems like there should have been 4 new metals for Spook to find instead of just 2. 

Cadmium and Chromium. 2 new metals, and 2 metal alloys.

It appears that Sazed went to the Obi-Wan "truth from my point of view"  Kenobi School of Giving Information, so the alloys don't seem to count.
Props to the people who get the reference.

On 1/16/2017 at 0:13 PM, Andy92 said:

My question is why the original trilogy listed Atium and Malatium as 2 of the 14 metals, but in the new era, these are replaced with Nicrosil and Chromium.

As for why Era 1 said those, it's because people in world don't always know what they are talking about. Remember in book 1 where there were only 10 metals? Additionally, the Ars Arcanums are written by an in-universe character, not by Brandon giving a glossary at the end of his book.

Edited January 17, 2017 by The One Who Connects

[Oversleep]

16 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

The full power of these metals has yet to be explored; they each have 16 alloys (with each of the other Allomantic metals).

Actually they have "way more than sixteen but less than infinity" alloys.

[Pagerunner he/him]

14 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

Actually they have "way more than sixteen but less than infinity" alloys.

I've seen that WoB, but there's a more recent one that refines it as 'nearly 50" Allomantic metals. 8 metals, 8 alloys, 2 god metals, 32 god metal alloys, and harmonium total up to 51, with maybe a 52nd for a distinct atium/lerasium alloy (depend on what particular brand of crazy theories you ascribe to). Going down the rabbit hole of lerasium-(atium-alloy) alloys to create malatium Mistings and the like will leave us well above 50 metals.

[Andy92]

Thanks for all of the clarifications. I hadn't thought about the difference between base metals and alloys, that makes sense. 

Now I'm curious about the possibility of Allomancers world-hopping to other planets within the Cosmere. I wonder if it would be possible for Allomancers to burn metals of other shards across the Cosmere since they were able to do it with the pieces of Preservation and Ruin? I feel like it could get interesting if you start mixing the shards from books like Stormlight and Elantris with Allomancy.  

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Just now, Andy92 said:

Now I'm curious about the possibility of Allomancers world-hopping to other planets within the Cosmere. I wonder if it would be possible for Allomancers to burn metals of other shards across the Cosmere since they were able to do it with the pieces of Preservation and Ruin? I feel like it could get interesting if you start mixing the shards from books like Stormlight and Elantris with Allomancy.  

On other planets, the metals of R&P would still work, so normal Allomancy is unchanged. Metals of other Shards... that's a genuine can of worms.

If another Shard did things beyond just Investing in Scadrial, then they would have their own God metal, which would definitely work. But the Shards as they are, invested in the other worlds, that may or may not work. In a question about the Metal of a Shardblade for instance, Brandon has told us that we "are assuming that it wouldn't be Allomantically inert" without confirming that is is or isn't. At present, the Elantrian Shards don't even have a manifestation that is metal, so a mix would be.. different than we might think, if it is even possible.

[Andy92]

I'd also imagine Brandon wants to keep each series readable on its own terms to some degree. Mixing worlds too much might start making things difficult to keep track of (I find some of it hard to keep track of now lol). I just found his books a few months ago, so I have a lot of catching up to do with Cosmere theories and that sort of thing. 

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

I suspect quite a few of those questions will be answered in Era 4... 

[Spoolofwhool]

3 hours ago, Andy92 said:

I'd also imagine Brandon wants to keep each series readable on its own terms to some degree. Mixing worlds too much might start making things difficult to keep track of (I find some of it hard to keep track of now lol). I just found his books a few months ago, so I have a lot of catching up to do with Cosmere theories and that sort of thing. 

Someone of the series will be kept to be more self-contained. I believe SA is one of those. However, it appears that Mistborn is going to be fairly open to a degree. Going further, Brandon has said that he plans Dragonsteel to be so open and full of cross-references, he's envisioning not even selling the book, since he feels it wouldn't be fair to people just pulling books from a store shelf, or making people have to read a library to understand what is happening in it.

[Pagerunner he/him]

1 hour ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Someone of the series will be kept to be more self-contained. I believe SA is one of those. However, it appears that Mistborn is going to be fairly open to a degree. Going further, Brandon has said that he plans Dragonsteel to be so open and full of cross-references, he's envisioning not even selling the book, since he feels it wouldn't be fair to people just pulling books from a store shelf, or making people have to read a library to understand what is happening in it.

I don't think he's said that about Dragonsteel specifically... especially since it's a prequel to the cosmere, so there's no past to any of these characters that won't have to be introduced in the story anyways. I think he was talking about more Secret History style stuff about what Hoid was up to when we've caught glimpses of him in all the other stories, like what exactly he was doing during the events of the Mistborn trilogy.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

Mistborn era 4 is indicated to be a crossover as our Scadrians will be exploring the cosmere. It's one of the reasons why the Scadrians as the Ones Above is a major theory. It could still be self contained though; we'd just see the other worlds from the perspective of the Scadrians - just like in any sci-fi story where you meet new and diverse cultures.

[Spoolofwhool]

2 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Mistborn era 4 is indicated to be a crossover as our Scadrians will be exploring the cosmere. It's one of the reasons why the Scadrians as the Ones Above is a major theory. It could still be self contained though; we'd just see the other worlds from the perspective of the Scadrians - just like in any sci-fi story where you meet new and diverse cultures.

There's going to be a surgebinder/allomancer duel, not that self-contained. 

2 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

I don't think he's said that about Dragonsteel specifically... especially since it's a prequel to the cosmere, so there's no past to any of these characters that won't have to be introduced in the story anyways. I think he was talking about more Secret History style stuff about what Hoid was up to when we've caught glimpses of him in all the other stories, like what exactly he was doing during the events of the Mistborn trilogy.

Fair point, but I think he's said he does mean to make more of a complete book or series, not just a behind the scenes which encompasses a lot. Here's the main quote I'm going off of. I guess the quote does show he does intend Dragonsteel to be a big marketer. (Spoiler for size)

Spoiler

17TH SHARD

Tucker asks, "Will you ever write a book or series where different magic systems come into the same world?"

BRANDON SANDERSON

Where different magic systems come into the same world. Um...I have already.

17TH SHARD

(confused) Published novels?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes.

17TH SHARD

I mean like different magic systems from different worlds.

BRANDON SANDERSON

That's what I said.

17TH SHARD

He's being really clever about this, Eric.

ERIC

Okay, okay, sorry.

BRANDON SANDERSON

You're asking if I'll do it obviously.

17TH SHARD

(laughs)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Where that's the focus of the novel? Someday I might. Right now I've been planning in the back of my head, but I'm not sure if I'll do it. See, here's the thing: I like all of this stuff to be behind the scenes; I don't want any reader to walk up on the shelf and pull it out and feel like they are completely lost because they have to read 27 Sanderson novels before this one makes sense. And so that would be my hesitance in ever doing that. But I already have in very subtle ways. And if were going to do a conflux book, I might just post it on my website. I don't know, I'm not sure. It depends on how popular the things are and whatnot. But, I don't think I want to do that to my casual readers.

17TH SHARD

Right, they wouldn't have any of the background.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Right, they wouldn't have any of the background. Thing is, some of the magic systems do cross worlds, and have before. And that has not happened obviously; you haven't really seen it. Right now Liar of Partinel [an unpublished book —ed] and Stormlight Archive share a magic system, because with the unifying theory of magic there's a certain number of things that magic can do, and there's a lot of different ones, but when they get similar they tend to work in the same way. So Lightweaving shows up in both books. I may change that for Liar of Partinel, but it's kind of integral to that book and it's kind of integral to Stormlight Archive right now too. This is one of the reasons why I had to decide to do either Dragonsteel or Stormlight Archive as the big epic.

Some of the magic systems have been discovered on different planets, and some of them do work. A lot of them don't, but some of them do. It depends on your spiritual DNA, what people are able to do, and things like that. But, if you find a way to do illusion magic in one of my worlds it's going to work pretty much like Lightweaving, regardless of which planet you're on. If that makes sense.

[Source]

 

Edited January 17, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

What I meant by self contained is something like, for example, not needing to see a tv show about Klingon culture to watch Star Trek. You learn about it from the humans we're following. So you could theoretically have, say, a Scadrian exploration craft land on Roshar. The world and its inhabitants gets shown to us then from the perspective of the Scadrians.

As a reader you could then  enjoy Era 4, without having read the Stormlight archive. It would probably be more enjoyable if you had, but you wouldn't have too. Just like you can technically get away with reading Era 2 but not Era 1 in the Mistborn trilogy.

I'm not saying it will happen this way, but it could. It would allow Era 4 to be accessible to a wider audience anyway.

[cometaryorbit]

On 1/16/2017 at 1:16 PM, Pagerunner said:

I've seen that WoB, but there's a more recent one that refines it as 'nearly 50" Allomantic metals. 8 metals, 8 alloys, 2 god metals, 32 god metal alloys, and harmonium total up to 51, with maybe a 52nd for a distinct atium/lerasium alloy (depend on what particular brand of crazy theories you ascribe to). Going down the rabbit hole of lerasium-(atium-alloy) alloys to create malatium Mistings and the like will leave us well above 50 metals.

OK, but how are there only 32 god metal alloys? Shouldn't there be at least 48 (16 atium, 16 lerasium, and 16 harmonium)?

[Pagerunner he/him]

3 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

OK, but how are there only 32 god metal alloys? Shouldn't there be at least 48 (16 atium, 16 lerasium, and 16 harmonium)?

I'm not convinced harmonium has alloys. It's not practical for an Allomancer to ingest, so maybe it's not a true 'Allomantic' metal, but just interacts with the metallic arts.

[Oversleep]

6 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

I'm not convinced harmonium has alloys. It's not practical for an Allomancer to ingest, so maybe it's not a true 'Allomantic' metal, but just interacts with the metallic arts.

Quote

Q: Does every metal have a Feruchemical and Hemalurgic property? If not, are there metals which have Feruchemical or Hemalurgic properties which do not have Allomantic ones?
A: Every metal has a Feruchemical, an Allomantic, and a Hemalurgic property. The godly metals each also do something else. There are several interesting Feruchemical powers yet to be discovered and revealed in the next series. Feruchemy is less widely understood because there were so few practitioners in the modern era, and a lot of the time they were too afraid of capture to really study and use their powers.
source

Granted, this WoB is over 8 years old. If harmonium works in any system, it works in all three.

On the other hand, we haven't seen it used in any of them. Although I think it would be weird if a godmetal of two Shards who own these systems would not work in them.

Edited January 19, 2017 by Oversleep

[Spoolofwhool]

2 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Granted, this WoB is over 8 years old. If harmonium works in any system, it works in all three.

On the other hand, we haven't seen it used in any of them. Although I think it would be weird if a godmetal of two Shards who own these systems would not work in them.

It's kind of weird though that the instability of Harmonium would make it unviable for hemalurgy use and dangerous for allomantic or feruchemical use.

[cometaryorbit]

On 1/19/2017 at 0:29 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

It's kind of weird though that the instability of Harmonium would make it unviable for hemalurgy use and dangerous for allomantic or feruchemical use.

I'm not sure it would necessarily be unviable though - if Hemalurgy lets Inquisitors survive with two giant spikes through their brain it might be able to deal with the harmonium/water incompatibility.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

I'm not sure it would necessarily be nonviable though - if Hemalurgy lets Inquisitors survive with two giant spikes through their brain it might be able to deal with the harmonium/water incompatibility.

Hemalurgy moves the brain and/or heart out of the way of the spike.. somehow. It twists them into something almost inhuman. That's a little different than having a reactive metal in your stomach, especially since Brandon said they have to manually burn them before sleeping to avoid metal poisoning. Allomancy doesn't seem to have the same survival safeguards that Hemalurgy does.

Edit: Did I really just say that?

Edited January 22, 2017 by The One Who Connects

[Oversleep]

47 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Did I really just say that?

Yes. Yes you did. And it's hilarious.

[Spoolofwhool]

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

survival safeguards

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Hemalurgy

Right.... Tell that to the poor chull who "donated" the attribute.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[happyman he/him]

Ruin is perfectly happy to build a building if it can then be knocked over and take out half the city.  Doing a little bit of preservation on one person in order to create the killing machines we know and love as Inquisitors is perfectly within Ruin's Intent. 

[cometaryorbit]

On 1/21/2017 at 7:09 PM, The One Who Connects said:

That's a little different than having a reactive metal in your stomach, especially since Brandon said they have to manually burn them before sleeping to avoid metal poisoning. Allomancy doesn't seem to have the same survival safeguards that Hemalurgy does.

Yeah, I was responding specifically to Spoolofwhool's comment about it being "unviable for hemalurgy use".

Allomancy is more of an open question - I could speculate that it would burn immediately upon ingestion - if it was ingested by an Allomancer, it would burn Allomantically and produce the appropriate effect (as opposed to burning chemically and causing damage to the person's mouth/throat/stomach if ingested by a non-Allomancer).

Lerasium didn't seem to require 'intent' from the person who ate it to burn, since Elend burned it while unconscious. And IIRC Thugs can burn Pewter unconsciously. So burning without an active "burn now" decision/intent does seem to have precedent.