Questions on metals

[Lepth he/him]

Could a mistborn burn all of the physical essences of the shards or is it just ruin and preservation?

[Apollyon he/him]

I'm afraid that a Mistborn would not be able to burn other physical essences, after all, Allomancy is the magical art of Preservation, not of any other shard. It would almost like burning Tears of Edgli as Endownments physical representation, it just wouldn't work.

[Lepth he/him]

That makes sense but if burning preservation let’s you change your soul then does burning ruin do something similar?

[Apollyon he/him]

 I assume you're referring to Lerasium and Atium, so; no, Brandon specifically mentioned that he wanted Atium to be an oddball, not matching it's counterpart. 

Right here:

Spoiler

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

So, in Allomancy, most of the metals are in pairs, they're equal and opposite, pushing and pulling, Rioting, Soothing, that kind of thing. The god metals have always-- lerasium and atium, have always struck me as kind of unbalanced in a way. Like, lerasium gives you the power to use all these metals, plus atium being one of them. Is there a reason for that?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Yes, there is, and it kinda has to do with Snapping and some of the fundamental rules of the Mistborn world and the fact that people have Preservation and Ruin inside of them and all these sorts of things. So, the answer is yes.

Partially, narratively, I built that in partially just 'cause I wanted atium to seem odd in the placement, right, when people got to it it's like "What? Why is this one-- This one doesn't match the others. This doesn't really work." When I was building Mistborn, one of the big things I wanted was this idea of a periodic table that was, kind of a flawed construct, that, as you read the books, you came to understand better and better. And that was something I executed-- I don't think I executed that 100% right, but I'm pleased with the general concept and how it plays out. And so I wanted atium to stick out like a sore thumb.

The other thing is, I knew I needed some good foreshadowing for Fortune, for people being able to kinda see the future or versions of the future, for the whole cosmere to work. And, so, I built in atium specifically to do those things. And I built in lerasium to have, kind of, the ultimate sort of benevolent endowment sort of thing. (Not Endowment the Shard, you know what I mean.) But I also wanted to show these two magics were intrinsically tied together on Scadrial because the way that humankind was created. We're getting into some deep stuff, I'll just leave it there. But that was what was going through my mind as I was building those things all out. 

source

 

Edited March 24, 2018 by Apollyon

[Weltall]

Here's a couple of Words of Brandon where he's stated that under most circumstances, a metal from another Shard would not function in the Metallic Arts. The Shard could make it work but it would not be something that a Mistborn could naturally do.

Quote

word_thief

What would happen if a Mistborn ingested the metal of a Shardblade/plate?

Brandon Sanderson

A shardblade is invested. A Mistborn isn't likely to have a tie to that type of Investiture. So probably nothing would happen…

source

 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Can a Mistborn burn any physical form of Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

No. Well-- possible with work, but naturally, no.

source

 

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Shadowsaber223

If Odium were lured to Scadrial, would his physical body turn into a burnable metal?

If so, could Harmony create an Odium-metal legion of Mistings to consume and burn it?

Would that weaken him sufficiently enough to be killed or destroyed?

Brandon Sanderson

The difficulty here is, again, one of Identity. People born on Scadrial have an Identity tied to it and its magic. Odium would have to do certain things to make them able to use a magic he fuels. He has done these things on Roshar, so it's not impossible for him to manage it on Scadrial.

source

 

[Lepth he/him]

Okay that makes sense but he said that it would be possible just difficult. How difficult?

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Just now, Lepth said:

Okay that makes sense but he said that it would be possible just difficult. How difficult?

We don't know enough about hacking magic systems to answer that question.

This could be a thing that's hard to figure out, but easy to do once you know. This could actually be hard to do, even if you know what you're doing. We just don't know

[Eldergod3]

So I'm going to ask this here since it is a question about a metal, does a misting/mistborn burning electrum see an "atium" shadow of themselves or is it like a gold shadow where they see a version of themselves from the near future?

[Calderis he/him]

Just now, Eldergod3 said:

So I'm going to ask this here since it is a question about a metal, does a misting/mistborn burning electrum see an "atium" shadow of themselves or is it like a gold shadow where they see a version of themselves from the near future?

It's like atium. 

It's essentially a multitude of atium shadows of themselves, without see all of the things the shadow is reacting to. See the shadows alters the future and because of that the shadows split the same as atium vs atium. 

[shadowwisp]

On 3/23/2018 at 10:43 PM, Lepth said:

That makes sense but if burning preservation let’s you change your soul then does burning ruin do something similar?

Remember that Ruin's power is not Allomancy but Hemalurgy. Atium is the most versatile Hemalurgic metal, it can steal any attribute. An Atium spike would be able to change your soul as well.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if an Atium spike had less power decay outside the body as well.

Edited April 1, 2018 by shadowwisp

[Guest Breaker]

Now, if I Spike out the Identity of someone with an identity that would allow for use of another Shardic Investiture, would I be able to burn that Shard's physical Investiture, as a mistborn?

[MountainKing]

You would be able to use that shard's investiture like the original person, but you could not use it to fuel the powers of a mistborn.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

9 hours ago, Breaker said:

Now, if I Spike out the Identity of someone with an identity that would allow for use of another Shardic Investiture, would I be able to burn that Shard's physical Investiture, as a mistborn?

You kind of have the right idea, but the wrong terminology. What'd you want to spike out is the Connection to the Shard. Even then, Brandon has said that the Shard itself would probably have to do something as well in order to make it work. 

[Yata he/him]

11 hours ago, Breaker said:

Now, if I Spike out the Identity of someone with an identity that would allow for use of another Shardic Investiture, would I be able to burn that Shard's physical Investiture, as a mistborn?

In theory you are going into the Realm of possibilities.

Of course this alone will not gave you the right Spirit Web to burn a foreign Godmetal, but if you are a Mistiborn/Full Feruchemist. It's possible that could work without others workaround, unsure but possible.

2 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

You kind of have the right idea, but the wrong terminology. What'd you want to spike out is the Connection to the Shard. Even then, Brandon has said that the Shard itself would probably have to do something as well in order to make it work. 

Actually he is more close to the right answer than what you think. It isn't just a matter of Connection but also of Identity. The Shard's presence in a world affects deeply the envirorment and its local species...it's not just a matter of Connection.
There are probably people around in the Cosmere more Connected to Ruin than some Mistborn but still the Mistborn would be able to burn Atium. Ruin is part of the Identity of the Scadrians and this allows them to burn/tap into Atium with the right Spirit-Web.

Of course this is a moot point as every Spike rip a good chunk of Identity from the Victim so the "Connection Spike" will have also a decent amount of the Victim's Identity within.

Anyway, I agree with you Breaker had actually a very good intuition. It will be interesting see this at work, maybe with combinations that don't require Hemalurgy (for example having some Breath or a Nahel Bond)...still very interesting option

[Tineye Navigator he/him]

On 3/23/2018 at 8:46 PM, Apollyon said:

 I assume you're referring to Lerasium and Atium, so; no, Brandon specifically mentioned that he wanted Atium to be an oddball, not matching it's counterpart.

But you have to remember, In world, people understood that Atium's counterpart was electrum, which wasn't quite correct. Brandon was referring to what people In-world believed the counterpart was, making Atium an oddball. 

However, I do agree with you that a Mistborn can't burn the other physical essences from other Shards. At least, not without hacking the magics.

[Yata he/him]

1 hour ago, Tineye Navigator said:

But you have to remember, In world, people understood that Atium's counterpart was electrum, which wasn't quite correct. Brandon was referring to what people In-world believed the counterpart was, making Atium an oddball. 

However, I do agree with you that a Mistborn can't burn the other physical essences from other Shards. At least, not without hacking the magics.

Maybe you meant gold....People in-world never associated Electrum to Atium as pairing or opposite. The canonical knowledge point to gold as counterpart to Atium (thanks to TLR's manipulation) then they discovered Electrum but nobody think it was the Atium counterpart.

At the end of Era 1 with the further knowledge they speculated that Malatium and Atium are opposite as it fitted all the requirement:
- Mostly opposite effects

- One is the alloy of the other

Of course this is false, but that was the in-world belief

[Guest Breaker]

Yeah, the protagonists came to think of a Gold and Electrum as paired, and Atium and Malatium as paired. 

 

though, while Gold and Electrum have thematically similar parallel effects, the differences between the two make me wonder after whether the user’s Intent, formed by the expectation of Atium, influenced how Electrum’s allomantic effect has manifested.

[Tineye Navigator he/him]

20 minutes ago, Yata said:

Maybe you meant gold....People in-world never associated Electrum to Atium as pairing or opposite. The canonical knowledge point to gold as counterpart to Atium (thanks to TLR's manipulation) then they discovered Electrum but nobody think it was the Atium counterpart.

At the end of Era 1 with the further knowledge they speculated that Malatium and Atium are opposite as it fitted all the requirement:
- Mostly opposite effects

- One is the alloy of the other

Of course this is false, but that was the in-world belief

You are correct, I did mean gold. Sometimes I just wish people could read my mind, and not my fingers. Sometimes they just go, and my mind doesn't always catch their errors. I basically just remembered that electrum is "poor man's atium"

Edited April 2, 2018 by Tineye Navigator