You know I don’t think we as a fandom talk enough about how fucked up things must be on nalthis. the very richest people in the world can literally buy immortality, since you can buy breaths and enough breaths make you immortal. There’s no way anything good can come from that.
speaking of themes. theres a circle in my head and on it are moash szeth and dalinar. there are assorted comparisons and juxtapositions (agency and choice in ones actions and the lack thereof, theoretically atoning for ones actions, how the narrative and/or author treats them and either condemns or absolves them). and its right next to the essay i will probably never write about jezriens honorblade as symbol (especially as like. juxtaposition of actual literal honor with the alethi value of Conquest As Honorable. like theoretically it should be a cultural symbol of the best of human nature but instead its used for atrocities by people who in one way or another didnt really have a choice and because they dont have the meta knowledge necessary to get what it is exactly. szeth and moash are just kinda similar narratively in general. same themes in play but theyre framed differently)
Wild mistborn/cosmere rambles ahead. Long post. Big spoilers for all cosmere. Read at your own risk.
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Kingsdaughter613 Primary question: Peter recently said something about atium in Era 1 actually being an atium-electrum alloy, which is called nalatium. Is this accurate?
Brandon Sanderson This is accurate, yes. You could, by the way, just continue to call it atium. That’s what they think atium is in-world. It’s very slightly tainted.
Kingsdaughter613 Secondary questions: If the above is yes, did Kelsier get malatium by separating the atium and gold from the silver in nalatium? If so, do atium and gold have similar melting points?
Brandon Sanderson That’s more of a RAFO in that I’m not sure I want to canonize any of that right now.
And here is Peter’s comment, mentioned in the footnote.
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Xais56 Brandon has said that everyone ought to be able to burn Atium, like they can all burn Lerasium, and the fact that they can’t was an oversight on his part that he would’ve done different in hindsight. Maybe now he’s had an in-universe reason to re-write the laws of allomancy it’s back to his intended concept; Mistborn burn all 16 base metals, mistings burn one base metal, non-allomancers can only burn godmetal.
Peter Ahlstrom My explanation for this is that Preservation somehow caused all naturally occurring atium to form as an alloy of atium and electrum. The atium Mistings were actually electrum Mistings.
Xais56 It’s a very tidy solution, but it creates the maddening question of what does pure atium do?
Peter Ahlstrom That answer has already been revealed canonically. RAFO.
Fascinating new WOB. So “Atium”, as we’ve seen it, is actually an atium/electrum alloy??? I didn’t expect that honestly, which I really could have cause Atium has honestly always been a bit weird. It seemed way too weak, given that it is a god metal, and the fact that not everyone could burn it did seem rather odd, since we know anyone and everyone can burn lerasium. And the hemalurgy table does say that Atium can steal any power but that it “must be refined”, so this does all check out. This is probably still a retcon and not the original plan, but if so it’s a retcon that seems to have been in the works for a while.
(Side note: If you don’t need to be an allomancer to burn atium or lerasium, is there any reason you need to be for any other godmetal? Can anyone anywhere in the cosmere swallow some godmetal and burn it as long as they have Intent? That is how it works with Hemalurgy. Hmmm. I’d love to see someone in stormlight try this now that we’ve had Raysium introduced. Plus, there is that chunk of an honorblade sitting around uselessly in some field lol, as someone mentioned in another question in that spoilerstream.)
So that of course begs the question of what does pure Atium do? Peter says that this has been not just revealed, but canonized (ie, in one of the books) so based on that I’m guessing this is about Elend’s vision at the end of Hero of Ages. Cause that did seem like more than just a more powerful version of normal Atium.
So what about all the other Atium alloys? What do they do?? And only a person who can burn Metal A can burn a godmetal alloy of Metal A? Is that true for all godmetals? I think it’s been implied that a Lerasium/metal alloy makes you a misting of that metal so that’s… quite useless lol. Even more useless than it already was, since you had lerasium on hand and are using it to turn yourself into a misting instead of a mistborn.
And all “Atium mistborn” are actually electrum mistborn? Do people in world know this? Probably not right? Cause there’s not any atium left to test out anything on.
Okay, and what about Feruchemy? Based on what Sazed said, it seems like it was relatively common knowledge among the Keepers that Atium is rather useless for feruchemy, it just stores age, but they would have been experimenting with the Electrum!Atium presumably so we actually have no idea what its feruchemical properties are. I’d assume that if an Electrum ferring god their hands on Electrum!Atium, they could store in it but no other ferrings could, just like with allomancy. So storing age is a function of Electrum!Atium not pure atium. (And maybe that’s why preservation did this whole thing. So that the lord ruler could make himself immortal. That would make a lot of sense.) So what does pure atium do feruchemically? I have no idea!!! We don’t know that with lerasium either I don’t think. Or harmonium. God I want to know so much more about godmetals.
But we *do* know what pure atium does in hemalurgy, if my interpretation is correct. Cause as I mentioned earlier, the hemalurgy table says that Atium “requires refinement” to be able to steal any power, so I assume they’re actually working with pure atium. But *why* did the inquisitors think to refine it for hemalurgy, but not for allomancy or feruchemy? or did they, and it’s just us that don’t know what it does in those systems and they do. The question still stands though, why did they think to refine it? Did they not get any effect from Electrum!Atium? Why not? That’s really odd. Or if they did, how did they know that Atium is impure? Did the lord ruler know from when he ascended? I mean I guess that would make sense, and it also makes sense that he wouldn’t share that knowledge with the Nobles cause he did hoard all kinds of information and he benefits from keeping things the way they are. We still don’t know what Electrum!Atium does hemalurgically though, which is interesting.
And now onto the elephant in the room: Marsh. He’s still kicking around with a bag full of Electrum!Atium, and the ability to both store in it and to burn it. Do we know anything about the spikes for it? Assuming it’s actually just a spike for electrum power, the one for Allomantic!Electrum should be Cadmium and the one for Feruchemical!Electrum should be gold. They didn’t have Cadmium back then though, so probably it’s an Atium (pure atium) spike, since that can steal any power. His feruchemical one could be too. Has he done any work with pure atium? He seems to be working under Sazed’s command at this point, so probably if he *has* done anything with it it would be cause Sazed wanted him to. (And sazed probably already knows what it does)
In conclusion: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
So there are two things I want to ask brandon that I think have a chance of being answered:
can any (non-alloy) godmetal be burned by anyone who has Intent?
What does Electrum!Atium do hemalurgically, and why isn’t that on the hemalurgy table?
Feel free to add on with your own rampant speculation, I’d love to hear it!!!!
the Battle of Thaylen City is so wild? The Assassin in White drops out of the sky and is like, “I’m here to help.” “Go get that ruby,” says Dalinar, who is busy having a mental breakdown. Szeth dashes off on this assigned miniquest and is joined without question by a 12-year-old he’s never met, who casually zooms around like she’s wearing socks on polished hardwood. Jasnah is turning people to fire while chatting with her mother, Odium can possess humans now? or something? and Adolin is halfway through befriending his sword back to life, while Shallan creates an army out of her multiple personality disorder. What a day.
Renarin is fighting a Thunderclast while getting repeeatedly crushed and popping back up like nothing happened and Kaladin is facing a super-powered version of the very man that ruined his whole life, simultaneously keeping the Fused off of Dalinar and having his own mental breakdown about the fourth ideal.
two heralds like, are there. rysn temporarily saves the aforementioned ruby while her pet energy sucker helps kill some singers. the alethi army gets to finally beat up sadaes soldiers. teft is a radiant now. adolin literally looks at jasnah while she’s busy turning things to sand and killing people and goes, ‘oh, nvm, she’s good.’ dalinar ascends.he combines the fucking realms. like 24 hours later they crown the first female ruler of alethkar. rip the poor lady who has to write THAT chapter of a history book
Every time someone asks Sanderson to be more respectful toward his marginalized characters or include more marginalized characters, the same assholes come out and say, “Oh, should he have someone look at the screen and say that homophobia is bad?”
Nobody ever points out that Sanderson’s portrayal of these systems is so extreme in the opposite direction that what is otherwise par for the course for the genre feels extreme! They’re actually honestly right. At this point, Moash—to pull a random derivative example out my ass—assembling a team of antiheroes and oppressed marginals to resist the Kholin monarchy would feel like a tokenizing move, because the message against dissidents has been so extremely hostile that the same leeway comic books, TV shows, and movies have been giving those kinds of characters feels like an astronomical leap compared to having the man (who has experienced literally the same racial harassment I have) murder prisoners on page.
Do you think that the Scadrians who follow Survivorism know that their human personification of Death (Marsh) is the brother of the founder of their religion?
Questioner:In The Way of Kings, there’s a Death Rattle that reads, “He must pick it up, the fallen title! The tower, the crown, and the spear!” Have the events alluded to in this Death Rattle occurred, on or off screen, by the end of Rhythm of War?
Brandon Sanderson: No. *evil laughter*
Questioner: Could the tower, the crown, and the spear possibly be referring to Renarin?
I really want for stormlight six Jaswit to be not a thing but for the stupidest reason. It’s only because Jasnah got annoyed with Hoid vanishing so many times that she called it off. He tells her some things about his history, realized he has somewhere else to be and goes there. She gets tired of it and is like “I’m THROUGH with this.” But he doesn’t know because she doesn’t know where he went to. When he comes back from his adventure as a coatrack in a noodle cafe and she is like “we’re better off as friends plus I’m not feeling that big on romance.” He‘s like yeah and in private they’re still really good friends and yeah but in public whenever he sees her he gets to act like a scorned ex-lover and is really overdramatic about it because he wants to have fun.
Questioner: On Roshar, it’s kind of tradition men eat spicy foods, women more sweeter. Could it be possible that a sort of euphemism for gay men or gay women is, “Does he eat sweet food? Does she eat spicy food?”
Brandon Sanderson: I could see people saying that, yes.
I try to avoid having thoughts. They leave to other thoughts and - if you’re not careful - those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on good authority from someone who read it in a book.
