Does Lerasium still exist in Mistborn era 2? (Shadows of Self spoilers)

[TheAscendedDude]

Hi guys. I couldn't find much about this topic so I thought I would ask: does lerasium still exist?

In Shadows of Self, Wax climbs up the Pits of Hathsin, using the holes holding geodes containing atium. I know that Sazed reassembled the world into its old shape, which can mean that the Pits contain the few atium beads that were not found by either the kandra or the skaa, or that they are freshly produced ones. Harmony is half Ruin, after all.

Wax also had a thought that the Well of Ascension might be in Kredik Shaw, which is now underground. The Well of Ascension was the only (known) place where lerasium formed, and if atium is still forming, lerasium must be, too, because...balance and harmony?:P (On a side note: does anyone have any info on the Well of Ascension? Was it destroyed, does it still exist? I don't know a lot about Shardpools as I have only read Mistborn, but I plan to read the other Cosmere books, too.)

Does ettmetal/harmonium have any role in this?

[Tsidqiyah he/him]

For Hoid to show up on world in era 2 a perpendicularity must be active. i suspect the well is around but maybe moved back to where it was before the Lord Ruler got involved. Ruin's shardpool likely was also moved back to it's original place.

So now the question remains did Atium and Laresium exist prior to the Lord Ruler's ascension. If so i see no reason why they wouldn't go on existing. UNLESS their existence was a side effect of Preservation's trap and Ruin's subsequent imprisonment. Then with that situation resolved around they would stop existing unless Harmony intentionally continued them. 

I believe there is a WOB about at least one bead of Laresium still being around from before.

Edited January 19, 2017 by Tsidqiyah

[Pagerunner he/him]

Check out the Broadsheets of SoS for a hint to Harmony's Shardpool; there's a story of an 'otherworldy monster,' which we now know is a Southern Scadrian using the pool to worldhop (some people thought it was a Parshendi, originally, but that description turned out to be a red herring). IIRC, it was described as blue, so it doesn't look like it's either Ruin's or Preservation's, but a new pool. It also raises the question of if the Southerners have their own Shardpool for worldhopping, or if they need to make their way to and from the pool by more mundane means.

We don't know about where lerasium and harmonium come from (there was some in the well, but is that where it originally formed?), and the atium mines were a piece of Ruin that Preservation had hidden away to reduce Ruin's power, so it doesn't seem like a typical manifestation method of a god metal. I strongly suspect we'll learn the answers to some of your questions in the next Wax & Wayne book, tentatively titled "The Lost Metal," but for now, we're pretty much in the dark.

[Oversleep]

3 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

the atium mines were a piece of Ruin that Preservation had hidden away to reduce Ruin's power, so it doesn't seem like a typical manifestation method of a god metal.

I think Pits were Ruin's Shardpool nontheless. The part with Preservation cutting off a piece of Ruin caused them to produce atium in such amounts.

I see it that way: Leras hooked up that part of Ruin to the Shardpool and forced it to produce atium.

[Pagerunner he/him]

1 minute ago, Oversleep said:

I think Pits were Ruin's Shardpool nontheless. The part with Preservation cutting off a piece of Ruin caused them to produce atium in such amounts.

I see it that way: Leras hooked up that part of Ruin to the Shardpool and forced it to produce atium.

Sure, no argument there. (For now. I always reserve the right to argue.) But the point is that the Pits weren't the 'normal' state, that atium production was heightened because Preservation's actions against Ruin. I think that's one reason why the Pits don't exist the way they used to. (That, and I think the old Shardpool's are gone, replaced by Harmony's new one. But it's hard to prove a negative without WoB, so we'll need to wait to find out how many Shardpools there actually are on Scadrial.)

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 hour ago, Tsidqiyah said:

i suspect the well is around but maybe moved back to where it was before the Lord Ruler got involved.

The Well never specifically moved, Rashek moved the crust of the entire planet, and the Well along with it. Here.

Quote

What Rashek decided to do (and he had to make split-second decisions in the brief time he held the power) was to shift the crust of the whole planet so that the Well was at a latitude that would have more standard seasonal variation, and to re-create the Terris mountains in the new North (to maintain the rumors that the Well was located there). He worried that the new location of Luthadel would be too hot due to the latitude, but it turned out that moving the Well created an unexpected effect. The planet’s magnetic pole followed the Well as he relocated it—and the ash from the ashmounts was slightly ferromagnetic.

So if the Well does still exist, it is still underneath Kredik Shaw.

[Tsidqiyah he/him]

Thank you @The One Who Connects maybe i should start reading the annotations 

[Spoolofwhool]

Brandon has said that Well of Ascension and the Pits of Hathsin are no more. This indicates to me that Harmony reabsorbed them. This is actually quite important as it does show that a shard can reabsorb perpendicularities which form as a result of their presence.

[TheAscendedDude]

Thanks for clearing that up guys!

Edited January 27, 2017 by TheAscendedDude