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Is it practical for an Oracle to get more out of electrum than Vin and Elend tried to?
Yes. It is totally possible.
So if you could see your shadow wince when it turned left, you would think "Oh, Mrs. Peabody's around that corner. I probably shouldn’t turn left!"
It is possible to squeeze more out of it than they did.
What would have happened if Ruin did get the atium? Yeah, the world is destroyed, but how does Ruin "absorb" the atium so he can utilize the power?
He would metabolize it, just like the normal people have to do. However, if he did get it he would then be able to destroy the world.
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.
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.
It's a very tidy solution, but it creates the maddening question of what does pure atium do?
That answer has already been revealed canonically. RAFO.
If someone isn’t an Allomancer, could they burn atium? Since it’s…
They could not burn atium. They would have figured that one out.
So nothing would have happened, or?
No. But there’s a little more to that story, but I’m not going to get into it right now.
Would burning atium and duralumin together grant view of single far future or widespread of everyone's near future?
I haven't answered specifically what happens, but there is a hint at the end of Hero of Ages.
I always wondered what would happen if someone burning atium fought a ta'veren like Matrim Cauthon. Would it look like he was burning atium as well? Would his atium shadow be concealed by a haze of probability?
I'd say that Mat's aura would interfere with atium, but you could easily rule the other way--you could say atium works something like Min's visions of the future, letting one "read the Pattern" so to speak. And Min's visions do work on ta'veren.
What happens if you become an atium savant?
I've RAFO'd that in the past, so I'll RAFO it now
We know that Hoid has a bead of lerasium. Does he have any atium?
He has access to atium, yes.
Got a little atium question:
If it's a god metal, and the power is actually coming from the metal, does it have added investiture that makes it harder to push or pull than the same amount of iron?
Or does the iron have an equal amount of investiture, but the investiture that makes it up is half-preservation and half-ruin, so it's 'inert' (so the power making up the iron never gets touched)?
And I guess in general, if all the metals on Scadrial are composed of preservation+ruin power, are they slightly harder to push or pull than metals mined from a random asteroid that's been sitting there untouched?
RAFO. :)
Vin asks Ham how to kill a man burning Atium
This conversation about how to kill someone who is burning atium is another one I'd been wanting to include for a long time. It's important to the plot, and the overall arc of the book, that you worry about Vin lack of atium. Plus, I want to keep the reader thinking about the metal, as the Lord Ruler's atium cache is such a large part of the series' plotting.
It's tough to know how to fight someone who can see the future. What Ham outlines here are pretty much the only things that anyone has been able to come up with.
Have you thought about what all the Atium alloys do?
Yes, but I have not canonized most of them. Even in my notes.
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?
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.
Why didn't Vin know the Atium bead Zane gave her wasn't real? Cant she sense how big reserves are?
Atium reserves always look bigger than they are to an allomancer. It burns so quickly.
She just didn’t have enough experience with atium to realize she’d been duped.
Why can lerasium be burned by anyone in the cosmere, while atium is restricted to a small portion of the population of one planet?
RAFO.
If you were to make an alloy of atium and lerasium, what would happen.
You have... and a lot of people have theorized it, I haven't confirmed one hundred per cent yet. You have probably seen one already. You have probably seen it. People think you have seen it already.
What would a Hemalurgic spike granting atium do for an Allomancer already able to burn atium? Does it function similarly to bronze, granting enhanced atium-ing? Along this line of thought, would enhancing electrum burning via spike be of any advantage?
A spike of something you have would enhance your ability, giving your more strength. With atium, more strength makes for a minimal edge--the length you can push out the atium shadows. However, there's a certain breaking point where you kind of crack the whole system, peer straight into the [Spiritual Realm], and kind of have a "It's full of stars" moment.
Electrum could reach this same moment, potentially, though there's more interference to fight through. Extra strength in electrum isn't going to be terribly useful up to that point.
Is that what happened when atium was burned with duralumin?
Yes.
Which of your characters do you think would win in a fight?
At what stage in their career?
Not the Slivers.
Okay, so they don't count, the Shards of Adonalsium don't count… Does Kelsier have atium?
Yes, atium exists.
A Mistborn burning atium is really hard to beat in any other way.
So you think that Kelsier would beat Vin?
Oh, Kelsier would beat Vin if he had atium and she didn't. If they both did? Vin has more raw talent, Kelsier has a lot more experience. So if you can pick Vin after she's had more experience she will give him a fair fight, but before that she will not.
My understanding is that Brandon thinks it is a plothole that lerasium can be burned by Scadrian (regardless of if they are Mistings/Mistborn) but atium can't.
His solution is to retcon the Pits to naturally produce an atium/electrum alloy, presumably by the design of Preservation. Therefore we don't know what pure atium looks like or does when used in any magic.
We do know what it does. It’s on the Allomancy poster, and the effect appeared one time at the end of Hero of Ages.
Interesting. Do you know if he had already conceived the retcon by the time the poster was written, or if that line about pure atium just turned out to fit really well retroactively?
The retcon is way older than a lot of people assume.
Does this mean he had it in mind by the time Hero of Ages released (since the first public version of the poster dates to 2008), or just that it's old but not sure exactly how old?
Remember that what's in the books is filtered through the understanding of the characters. So even if Brandon planned it from the beginning, if the characters didn't know about it, it's not going to come out in the book.
Is the liquid in the Well of Ascension Invested mercury? What is the chemical composition of lerasium + atium?
No.
RAFO!
Primary question: Peter recently said something about atium in Era 1 actually being an atium-electrum alloy, which is called nalatium. Is this accurate?
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.
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?
That's more of a RAFO in that I'm not sure I want to canonize any of that right now.
If someone burned atium in the modern era, after Sazed changed things around, would it do the same thing that it did in the previous era?
Yes it would.
It would? Interesting.
If you could find some.
If you could find some…
If it didn’t then Marsh would be dead.
Good point.
If it changed its powers.
Atium spikes, they can hold a lot. Can they hold multiple different abilities, can they hold Surgebinding and--
Usually you've gotta use a spike for one thing at a time.
Would a Mistborn see the atium shadow of someone wearing Shardplate?
Yes, they would be able to. Good question, but they would indeed be able to.
Does atium have a "side effect", much like how lerasium has a "side effect" in creating Mistborn?
RAFO.
The Storage Caches
One of the major revisions I made to the book during drafting was to reduce the number of storage caches. Originally I'd planned for eleven or twelve. The one here in Vetitan was still going to be the penultimate, with Fadrex being the last—the team just would have discovered more of them between books.
I changed this in order to make the cache in Fadrex seem more important. I wanted to get across the idea that taking that city was vital to the plans and goals of the team, and making it have one of five caches instead of one of twelve seemed to help with that.
In the first draft, the major draw of the final cache was the hope that it contained atium. But I realized that atium just wasn't that useful anymore—or, at least, many of the reasons it might have been useful are no longer important to the characters. Vin's instinct is right—the atium is more important than it might seem at first, but the original draft made it look like they were chasing a hope for something that wasn't even very useful. So, during revisions, I inserted Elend's acknowledgment that they don't really need atium, and I also added Vin's instinct that it's vital. We'll see how this plays out.
Of course, the reason Vin has an instinct that atium is vital is because of Ruin's touch on her emotions, driving her to seek out the final cache, where Ruin himself hopes to find that atium. To him, Vin and Elend are just another pair of pawns—in some ways more useful than Inquisitors because they don't even know they're following his goals. Ruin isn't sure if these caches will have the atium—he's in fact rather suspicious that this is a ruse of the Lord Ruler—but he's willing to dedicate some resources to the possibility, hence what he did to send Elend and Vin searching out the caches. He worries that there will be some kind of guard set at the final cache or the atium that has been told to watch for Inquisitors and keep them away, and he feels that using Vin and Elend is both more clever and potentially more effective than just sending an Inquisitor.
Could a person Soulcast more atium and lerasium if they had a bead?
No. Investiture messes things like that up.
What happens to god metals when a Shard is Splintered?
God metals are unaffected.
And atium and lerasium stayed unaffected when they merged?
Lerasium and atium that existed before were unaffected.
If I were to alloy atium and lerasium, would I get harmonium? Or is harmonium different after the Shards combined?
It's different after the Shards combined.
If I was to take harmonium and separate it out through distillation, would I get lerasium and atium or something that functions similarly?
No, you would-- It actually has become a different--
Can't be split?
Yeah. I mean, you could find a way, but you're not going to get it through normal, mechanical means.
Vin Kills Zane despite his Atium
The other thing I had to foreshadow, then make work in this chapter, was the way to kill someone who was burning atium. This is also something I stole from Mistborn Prime, and I'm afraid that it worked better there.
The thing is, I just haven't spent enough of the plot with Vin working on this problem. Killing an atium-burner was a major plotting conflict in Mistborn Prime, which was a much shorter book, without so much going on. In this book, we have many, many different plotlines and secrets interweaving. And so there wasn't a whole lot of time for Vin to worry about how to survive without atium.
According to the laws of Allomancy, this is very in-line with how atium works. Only someone burning atium can change the future–but they can change it accidentally by showing someone else what to do.
What's the effects of being an atium savant?
Hehehe. No one has found out.
Before Preservation locked up Ruin, or whatever, or if Ruin had won. Would atium exist?
...There are timelines where there would be no atium.
...So if Harmony exists, does atium exist?
Atium does not exist because there is no Ati. Well there is atium left over from before, but--
So it was only part of Ati's body and not part of Harmony's body.
There is no atium, there is no Preservation any longer, there is no Ati.
So does harmonium exist?
...There's no Leras and there's no Ati, there's no Ruin--
Does harmonium exist then?
Good question.
When will we visit the Spiritual Realm like we have done the Cognitive Realm.
Yes, you already have, briefly when Elend transcended and burned atium with duralumin.
In Allomancy, normal metals are simply a tool that channels Allomancer's already existing Connection to the power of Preservation, which is why non-Allomancers don't get powers from digesting metal. But if I understand it correctly, god metals are an exception, since they are a form of a Shard's power, burning them directly uses the power stored within.
If I have this right, how come a normal person can burn lerasium, but not atium? Or could they, and no ones thought to try? But if that was true why are there atium Mistings?
Suffice it to say that what people both in the books and out think about the god metals has some holes in it.
Atium Convoys
The First Generation mention the Ministry convoys that carried the hidden atium to Luthadel from the Pits, or carried atium to the pits and other locations, where the Ministry had purchased beads of it back from the nobility. If you'll recall book one, Vin and Camon right at the beginning were planning to rob a convoy just like this. Instead, Camon decides to double-cross his associate and take a payoff.
However, assuming they'd ever managed to pull that off, they'd have broken the system and discovered the atium. And, in doing so, would have exposed the Lord Ruler's ruse to Ruin, probably leading to the end of the world.
Good thing they didn't pull it off, eh?
The Hemalurgy table, you wrote down "atium steals any power, lerasium is all abilities, nicrosil is Investiture"; what's the difference between those three?
Hemalurgic atium, lerasium, and nicrosil. What's powers, abilities, and Investiture?
People are Invested in ways that do not give them active powers. So for instance, everyone on Nalthis is Invested. Everyone in the cosmere is, really. You want to steal their Investiture, but they don't have a power. You're still ripping off a piece of their soul. So there is a distinction between the actual Investiture that's in a human being and a specific power that they have.
So that distinction is pretty easy. You can also, with Hemalurgy, steal specific things. You can steal just general Investiture. You can steal, if you want--this is where the kandra Blessings come from. You can instead steal specific things that are not like stealing Allomancy. Stealing, for instance, someone's mental acuity.
So abilities is like the half that's all the strength, speed, all that kind of stuff? Those are abilities, versus the Metallic Arts are all powers?
Yes.
Then Investiture, is that offworld magics?
No, no, it's the raw power.
Nicrosil is their soul?
Yes. A piece of their soul, essentially.
So how would you go about stealing an offworld power?
It's going to depend. A Breath, you would steal with nicrosil. It's general Investiture, is what you would probably going call that. You could forcibly remove someone's Breath from them. The ability to be a Sand Master you would steal with the power ability.
Could a Twinborn with Feruchemical zinc and Allomantic atium beat an atium Misting in a fight because of the enhanced mental capacity?
RAFO.
Yomen Is a Seer
That raises the question of how Yomen discovered that he was a Seer. He mentions that atium was too valuable to waste on testing for atium Mistings. That's true, but incomplete. The Lord Ruler did test his obligators for the power, particularly the high-ranking ones. Those he found were told of their power and used as an extra level of security. There weren't many, but there were some—and they tended to rise very quickly in the ranks (like Yomen) and be given important positions. Yomen's power with atium made him a valuable secret weapon, and when in a position of power, he could use his ability to quell rebels or perform feats of wonder to keep the people in line.
Was atium truly one of the 16 metals, or can it be used by anyone just like lerasium?
Atium has some screwy things going on. It's not one of the 16, but not just anybody could use it.
Ruin Wants the Atium
And, it is about atium. Tada! The atium drove the plot in book one as Kelsier and team tried to find it. (Ruin didn't need to influence them very much on that one.) It drove the second book as the armies besieged Luthadel with the hope of claiming the fabled atium stash of the Lord Ruler.
It would have been a disappointment for readers, I think, to have that mythical atium supply to end up useless. Yomen is right; it no longer matters monetarily. Cities aren't selling food to one another in the face of the destruction that is coming. Atium is meaningless economically.
But there are other reasons, and—as you'll see—the atium is an important part of all of this.
If atium isn't a regular metal then why are there atium Mistings?
They were designed and created specifically to do what they did. Remember this is-- Preservation and Ruin were able to influence the world and rewrite people's spiritual DNA.
You've said that "The Pits of Hathsin were crafted by Preservation as a place to hide the chunk of Ruin's body that he had stolen away". How does one Shard steal a portion of another Shard and create a Physical outlet for it, like the Pits were for Ruin's power?
It has to do with clash between the two Shards' power. When pressed, he then said that it was "kind of" like splintering
So in cosmere, does physics work the same way in the Physical Realm as it does in our world? Specifically, particle physics; and are atoms made up of protons and neutrons and electrons, and is light photons, etc?
Yes.
So what's at the core of an atom of atium? Ate-teum? Also how do you pronounce it? At-teum?
Yes. And the matter is just normal matter, but it's wrapped in the Spiritual. The Spiritual DNA [or something] is what makes it magical.
What if you had a Twinborn who had atium for both and he burned atium that was stored?
So, I'll RAFO that. I believe I've RAFO'd that in the past so I'll RAFO it again.
Hemalurgically, atium steals Allomantic Temporal Powers. But, that seems unlikely, since atium is a god metal. It wouldn't fit in with the rest of the magic system. Did Preservation, in addition to switching cadmium and bendalloy for atium and malatium, also switch atium's Feruchemical and Hemalurgic powers with cadmium? Because it seems to me there's not a lot of atium Marsh can use to live for hundreds of years into the next Mistborn trilogy.
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. But that doesn't have much to do with Hemalurgy's use here.
Remember that the tables—and the ars Arcanum—are 'in world' creations. (Or, at least, in-universe.) The knowledge represented in them is as people understand it, and can always have flaws. That was the case with having atium on the table in the first place, and that was the case with people (specifically the Inquisitors) trying to figure out what atium did Hemalurgically.
Their experiments (very expensive ones) are what determined that atium (which they thought was just one of the sixteen metals) granted the Allomantic Temporal powers. What they didn't realize is that atium (used correctly) could steal ANY of the powers. Think of it as a wild card. With the right knowledge, you could use it to mimic any other spike. It works far better than other spikes as well.
As for Marsh, he's got a whole bag of atium (taken off of the Kandra who was going to try to sell it.) So he's all right for quite a while. A small bead used right can reverse age someone back to their childhood.
But this was a little beyond their magical understanding at the time.
I am also wondering, does atium actually still regenerate?
Atium does not regenerate.
It stopped when--
It stopped when Ati stopped existing. Yep.
Metal in the Mistborn world, is it renewable somehow? Because when you burn it, it just goes away and then it's converted somehow into energy. Can they run out?
The way that atium gets back into the system is a bit of a hint... Atium grows out of crystals, and that is being distilled. Let's just say... Investiture is changing into matter as atium is being made.
I saw Brandon at a book signing back in mid-December, and I asked him about the 16 percent deal. He said that Preservation replaced the real External Temporal Metals with atium and malatium (at least I'm assuming malatium, but he didn't mention that specifically. He only said atium). So not-cerrobend and cadmium weren't counted in the 16%. nicrosil and chromium, on the other hand, were. So there are chromium andnicrosil Mistings running around, not knowing that they're Mistings.
Is burning atium related to Scadrian worldhopping?
Hehehe. That's a good question, the answer is no.
Would an alloy of atium and lerasium produce the same effects pre- and post-Harmony?
Yes.
I asked what would happen if you burned lerasium or atium near ettmetal.
RAFO! :)
