# of metals

[GoWibble he/him]

I've never understood the number of metals thing for Scadrial. I understand the thing about the 16, but why the actual metals (and Godmetals?)

this is the list that I came up with:

1. Pewter
2. Iron
3. Steel
4. Tin
5. Brass
6. Copper
7. Zinc
8. Brass
9. Aluminum
10. Gold
11. Malatium
12. Electrum
13. Chromium
14. Nicrosil
15. Duralumin
16. Cadmium
17. Bendalloy
18. Lerasium
19. Atium

I'm not sure why the metals changed, or why they are more than 16 (something to do with Sazed?), but I think I know about the Godmetals: they are the chosen metals that are the Physical form of the Shards?

Please explain

[+Invocation]

There's not really more than 16, just some funky stuff with the way godmetals interact with the system. Malatium isn't truly an Allomantic metal, it's only made so because it's an alloy with Atium. Any of the other metals could be alloyed with the godmetals to form "new" Allomantic metals, much like how Compounding works, but it doesn't truly make them Allomantic metals. The godmetals also aren't really Allomantic metals, they're just what happens with the amount of Connection Scadrians have to their Shards, being that they were made from scratch by those Shards, which is why you'd need to Connection-hack to make another Shard's godmetal burnable by a Mistborn.

Lerasium alloys make Mistings of whatever metal the lerasium is combined with, and atium alloys have various temporal effects that we don't fully know.

[Calderis he/him]

All of the "real" allomantic metals exist in our world. Even Nicrosil (more commonly called nichrome, but that's a brand name so...) 

The godmetals being Atium, lerasium, Ettmetal/Harmonium, and now "Trellium" whatever name that ends up actually having (and these could theoretically, though improbably, extend to all 16 Shards), and then 16 alloys of each for each of the "real" metals

We know that alloys of Lerasium with the 16 will make you a misting of that respective metal. 

Atium alloys, like malatium, have "various mental and temporal effects" but that's all we know. .

We know nothing of the others.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Calderis

[Quantus he/him]

There are two side to this question.  On the one hand, there are and have ever been only 16 mundane metals that work with the Metallic Arts.   Separately from that there exist some number of godmetals, Im not even going to commit to 16 of those, since it appears that different Vessels may create different Godmetals even for the same shard.  The Godmetals of Preservation and Ruin work because they are invested in Scadrial and it's people, but the other Shards' metals dont innately work with Metallic Arts, though they can be "hacked" in ways that have mot been revealed (ie. the Trellium mystery).   The reason it seems like the number of metals has changed at times is because all the Charts and lists and whatnot in the novels represent In-World Knowledge, which is not necessarily objectively correct. Also, in Era1 there were several other factors upending things:  The Lord Ruler was actively misleading the populace about how Allomancy worked, he didnt want them to know about certain allomantic powers, most of ferchemy's potential and the vast majority of what Hemalurgy can truly do.  Meanwhile, a mostly-crazy Leras/Perservation wanted the populace to know and use Atium and it's alloys as part of his plan to defeat Ruin, so he exerted himself shardically (ie. a godly hand-wave) because "Preservation wanted Atium and Malatium to be of use to the people, as he recognized that it would be a very powerful tool—and that using it up could help defeat Ruin. But he also recognized that sixteen was a mythological important number, and felt it would make the best sign for his followers. So he took out the most unlikely (difficult to make and use) metals for his sign to his followers [WOB].

The Other side of the question, the part about Why those Metals in particular, for the most part it was about the pattern, having a base/pure metal and an alloy, though there were a few specific tweaks we know about.  We know, for example, that he originally wanted Silver to be the Realmically Inert metal, but changed it to Aluminum because the industrial extraction processes required for aluminum means it can be very rare in pre-industrial societies but far more common as the world's tech advances.  There was also the fact that Brandon was originally led to believe that Pewter was an alloy of Silver, so it originally had Silver and Pewter paired as opposed to Tin.  

[Jamahu]

Not a full answer, but I just wanted to point out that you have Brass twice in your list, so if you remove the repeat, and separate Atium and Lerasium into their own Godmetal list (along with Ettmetal and Trellium), you're left with only 16 regular metals.

[GoWibble he/him]

Ok, But there is the possiblity to have more metals with alloys. The 16 are only the 16 from lerasium

[Jamahu]

8 minutes ago, GoWibble said:

Ok, But there is the possiblity to have more metals with alloys. The 16 are only the 16 from lerasium

The 16 are the base 16 metals, separate from any Godmetal alloy.  Each of them could potentially be alloyed with Lerasium (or another Godmetal), but no names have been provided for these alloys, and as @Invocation explained above, they would not be counted as a true Allomantic metal.

[GoWibble he/him]

@Jamahu, then those are "The 16". As in the 16 normal Allomantic metals. I see that the 16 unalloyed ones are the ones that are alloyed with a Godmetal, but we don't have those metals IRL as @Calderis said