“I wish ancient people preserved their writing and artifacts better” I write in electronic signals on a piece of hardware that can’t retain its efficacy for more than a few decades.
Time to laser-print my entire blog on titanium plates and bury them underground.
I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.
Thank God Taravangian never found out about hemalurgy. Like, that would be ridiculously easy for him to abuse if he knew about it. And really, knowing about it is all it would take. Cause you can use it anywhere in the cosmere.
Especially since copper can steal intelligence. You just *know* he’d be out trying to recreate his Big Brain Day
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!!!!
okay i’m reading wax and wayne finally because i need to be up to date for the inevitable kelsier shenanigans and genuine question is mr waxillium supposed to be a likable character because i cannot stand him
not wax “the law” ladrian dismissing the peaceful protestors??????? SHUT UPPPPPP
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?
something that’s so good about the final empire is that none of the crew truly believe that they can succeed. they’re facing overwhelming odds on an impossible job, yet they all choose to stay. because even if they fail, they’ve tried. they’ve stood up for the skaa and they’ve opposed the final empire, and that’s a victory, no matter how it ends.
Blue Spirit Gem: Will Steris have her own point of view chapters in The Lost Metal?
Brandon Sanderson: Yes she will. I don’t have to RAFO that, because I have already written a couple of them. I’m pretty sure she got a couple in Bands of Mourning, she will have more in Lost Metal.
