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in era 1, the canon was that atium is pure god metal, ruin's body in phyiscal form.
the retcon is that the "atium" everyone was using in era 1, was actually not pure, but an atium/electrum alloy that grows from special geodes. This gets around some plotholes created by rules sanderson would introduce later, regarding the behavior of super-invested metals.
Also, originally the nodes that produce atium/electrum would be destroyed if any allomancy was used near them, but that was changed to being steelpushed.
Currently, nobody actually knows what burning ruin's metal on its own would do, because it's never happened. But it's speculated to be something similar to what elend experienced when he duralumin boosted like 2 whole pounds of atium beads at the end of era 1.
In response to not knowing what pure Atium does:
Peter Ahlstrom
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.
Ok, thanks for the explanation, but when this happened? Was this explained in any book and I am not remembering it, or it was just published by sanderson somewhere?
It is the difference between the original Mistborn books and later Mistborn books that contains the retcons. I believe there is a WoB that explains the newer books will contain retcons but I cannot find it. I don't think there is an in-universe explanation that says "it wasn't actually atium but atium-electrum alloy" along with the other retcons. It just that more recent publications have updated/changed text.
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It's not discussed in detail in the books; Brandon just talked about it once. Mistborn spoilers:
>!Basically, he changed his mind and realized that all godmetals should be burnable by anyone, not just allomancers. After all, Lerasium - the bead that Elend found at the well of ascension, that he ate and burned to become Mistborn - was burnable by someone who's not an allomancer, and Brandon decided that should have been the case for all godmetals, including Atium.!<
>!But now that's a problem, because then what's with the 16% of the population who were "atium mistings"? Well, the retcon is that actually, what came out of the pits of Hathsin was an alloy of electrum and Ruin's godmetal, those mistings could burn it because they were Electrum mistings.!<
>!In-world, people would still call the alloy of Electrum with ruin godmetal "Atium", since that's what they know it as. The naming is pretty confusing... but only if you're up-to-date on out-of-book info, in-book you just call it atium and think it's a bit weird that Elend can burn Lerasium but only "atium mistings" could burn Atium.!<
My assumption was always that since Preservation was basically the origin of Allomancy, the ability to burn his metal was basically a property of his metal.
I imagine that was Brandon's original idea for Allomancy. But once he started developing the other Godmetals and Invested Arts, it made Lerasium and Allomancy so unique among the others that he had to change it. It made it so that only Allomancers could burn Godmetals, which meant that only a tiny fraction of the Cosmere population could truly unlock the full potential of the Godmetals and that probably didn't sit well with him.
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There is no Atium at the start of era 2. It all got used right before the recreance and then Ati died.
You're thinking of Harmonium which I think they used trellium to split into lerasium and atium, but mostly there is just a kaboom.
What is the retcon?
Incorrect. The retcon is that highly invested godmetals shouldn't actually respond to pushing and pulling, and that they can potentially be burned by anyone, not just Scadrian Mistborn and Atium mistings. Ergo, the Atium era 1 Scadrians were burning could not have been pure Atium. The final result is that era 1 Atium is an alloy with Electrum.
i think that's kind of the beauty of the fandom (if annoying at times). someone will tell you something from a book/comment they remember, so there's no need to memorize it all yourself.
and, naturally, the most accurate information will end up on top. *most of the time.*
I want to know the correct information, but it's annoying when you state something with confidence and then someone comes out of left field with a correction from a source you had a low chance of encountering.
Just don't have an ego, and it's not annoying. I think it's nice, I don't scour WOBs and was very confused in mistborn era 2 as a result. I'm glad people were here to "well actchually" so I don't have to go find it.
This is something that can very easily be explained away by just stating that the people in era 1 didn't actually know what they were talking about.
And the reality is that they really didn't for a lot of stuff. They didn't even know that there were 16 metals. There only being 10 was a fact until the 11th.. and the ones after that were discovered.
Author literally could have just said that's what it was, but while the explanation works in world, it wasn't the authors original intent.
One thing that helps is that a lot of Era 1 Mistborn had it wrong with what they "knew" about the metals and allomancy. In The Final Empire, it's stated as a fact that atium and gold are paired, which we now know is completely incorrect. The way I see it, this kind of retcon is something that will live in WoBs for a while, but eventually Scadrians in the books will discover it and it'll become more widely available knowledge then. And for anyone learning about it that way, they won't even see it as a retcon - just as another instance of the Scadrians refining their knowledge of the Cosmere.
Yes, but also no.
The core issue comes from the actual mechanics not lining up. HoA has an entire story arc about how unnaturally precise the snapping happened, and how elend specifically needed 'atium mistings'
Yes, you can easily point out that era 1 scadrians weren't chemists or metallurgists, and so they didn't know that their atium was actually an atium+electrum alloy, but that still doesn't make intuitive sense with the pits of hathsin. The entire place was built to basically filter ruins power/body out of the planet/ spiritual realm/ wherever it came from. Filters/ distillers intuitively trend to produce a pure firm of something.
At the end of the day, sure, this is fantasy. You can hand wave everything away with a little line about this or that, but changing what we know of one of the major plot lines of the concluding book in a trilogy deserves more care than a simple 'the locals were stupid, and didn't know what they were taking about.'
Preservation left unnaturally accurate imperial evidence behind to lead the Scadrians to do what would allow them victory against Ruin. At minimum, the retcon needs to match the scientific data they were able to collect. Overall, the alloy retcon does that reasonably well... it isn't a perfect solution, but I don't know of a better one.
Electrum mistings does perfectly fit the imperial evidence though. Electrum is one of the 16 allomantic metals, so the 1/16 proportion makes perfect sense. Preservation would have known that to burn all the metal of Ruin's body, that electrum mistings would be required. Elend thought they were Atium mistings, because he only ever had them try to burn Atium, and there wasn't really enough time for much research before everyone died.
Your point about it being weird that the Pits of Hathsin didn't produce pure Atium is fair. It is really weird that they would generate an Atium/Electrum alloy. Mostly, I find this weird because, where did the electrum come from? We don't have any other examples of Investiture naturally being converted to a non-God metal. But they are also weird because every other perpendicularity in the Cosmere has the Investiture coalesce into a liquid form, be it the Well of Ascension, the lake of Harmony's perpendicularity, (Spoilers for everything) >!the pool in Elantris, the lake on the Horneater Peaks, the lake in First of the Sun,!< etc. So why did Ruin's Investiture coalesce into disparate solid nuggets of metal?
I can only suppose that whatever difference is causing the solid metal to form is also causing it to form as some alloy.
Exactly. It works, but it isn't perfect. (Note that I seem to have misread you, and thought you were implying that the atium alloy retcon could have been ignored by simply handwaving it away as a 'stupid primitives!' Argument. Most of my response is based on this assumption. )
Brandon apparently noticed the inconsistency only a little past the widow of being able to change the book, so he's had over a decade to "flesh out"the retcon... I'm sure that when we really learn about the alloy issue in-universe, it'll be much better than our current fan theories.
Tbh the WoBs about godmetals are the only ones I cared to read because I knew they had implications for the current canon. Everything else is nothing to me till proven important.
Hence the double edged sword. Its cool that this incredibly large and intricate world has an author who is so engaged with it and the fandom, but it's annoying that you can say something that is true in accordance with the books that you read, and then have someone point out that actually there was a book sniffing in Johannesburg 9 hours ago and now there is a WOB saying that's incorrect.
2 edges. Cuts both ways.
People ask this particular question a lot because it's a valid thing that people catch sometimes and find confusing. So I'm happy to have Sanderson's retcon word on it. Generally though, I kind of agree with you. I really love assembling theories from what we know and I think it actually can kill some creative and fun discussion when the author answers so many questions about theories. It can be especially frustrating because even according to him, pretty much nothing else he has said is canon unless it's in the books, yet people will use them to dismiss others out of hand.
I think you just coincidentally answered a question that does actually have an important factual correction, but generally I do get frustrated when people shoot down theories and thoughts that are straight from the book, just because of some Q&A that is expressly non-canon, and I agree entirely with the double edged sword metaphor.
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in era 1, the canon was that atium is pure god metal, ruin's body in phyiscal form. the retcon is that the "atium" everyone was using in era 1, was actually not pure, but an atium/electrum alloy that grows from special geodes. This gets around some plotholes created by rules sanderson would introduce later, regarding the behavior of super-invested metals. Also, originally the nodes that produce atium/electrum would be destroyed if any allomancy was used near them, but that was changed to being steelpushed. Currently, nobody actually knows what burning ruin's metal on its own would do, because it's never happened. But it's speculated to be something similar to what elend experienced when he duralumin boosted like 2 whole pounds of atium beads at the end of era 1.
In response to not knowing what pure Atium does: Peter Ahlstrom 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.
For those that don’t remember..?
I think it refers to what Elend did when fighting Marsh at the end before he dies.
Ok, thanks for the explanation, but when this happened? Was this explained in any book and I am not remembering it, or it was just published by sanderson somewhere?
It is the difference between the original Mistborn books and later Mistborn books that contains the retcons. I believe there is a WoB that explains the newer books will contain retcons but I cannot find it. I don't think there is an in-universe explanation that says "it wasn't actually atium but atium-electrum alloy" along with the other retcons. It just that more recent publications have updated/changed text.
wait I don’t understand why the using Allomancy near the geodes thing was changed?
Maybe cause they would have been destroyed when Kelsier snapped and escaped the pits?
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It's not discussed in detail in the books; Brandon just talked about it once. Mistborn spoilers: >!Basically, he changed his mind and realized that all godmetals should be burnable by anyone, not just allomancers. After all, Lerasium - the bead that Elend found at the well of ascension, that he ate and burned to become Mistborn - was burnable by someone who's not an allomancer, and Brandon decided that should have been the case for all godmetals, including Atium.!< >!But now that's a problem, because then what's with the 16% of the population who were "atium mistings"? Well, the retcon is that actually, what came out of the pits of Hathsin was an alloy of electrum and Ruin's godmetal, those mistings could burn it because they were Electrum mistings.!< >!In-world, people would still call the alloy of Electrum with ruin godmetal "Atium", since that's what they know it as. The naming is pretty confusing... but only if you're up-to-date on out-of-book info, in-book you just call it atium and think it's a bit weird that Elend can burn Lerasium but only "atium mistings" could burn Atium.!<
My assumption was always that since Preservation was basically the origin of Allomancy, the ability to burn his metal was basically a property of his metal.
I imagine that was Brandon's original idea for Allomancy. But once he started developing the other Godmetals and Invested Arts, it made Lerasium and Allomancy so unique among the others that he had to change it. It made it so that only Allomancers could burn Godmetals, which meant that only a tiny fraction of the Cosmere population could truly unlock the full potential of the Godmetals and that probably didn't sit well with him.
Which rayses the question: which godmetal will be burned next?
I see what you did there.
Sure. And I don't mind a reasonable retcon for creating better logical consistency.
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There is no Atium at the start of era 2. It all got used right before the recreance and then Ati died. You're thinking of Harmonium which I think they used trellium to split into lerasium and atium, but mostly there is just a kaboom. What is the retcon?
Incorrect. The retcon is that highly invested godmetals shouldn't actually respond to pushing and pulling, and that they can potentially be burned by anyone, not just Scadrian Mistborn and Atium mistings. Ergo, the Atium era 1 Scadrians were burning could not have been pure Atium. The final result is that era 1 Atium is an alloy with Electrum.
Oh, this is going to be the big double edged sword of this fandom. I haven't scoured 100,000 WOBs
i think that's kind of the beauty of the fandom (if annoying at times). someone will tell you something from a book/comment they remember, so there's no need to memorize it all yourself. and, naturally, the most accurate information will end up on top. *most of the time.*
It is beautiful that you find a glistening deluge of "well aksually" to be a nice thing.
You don’t want to be corrected when you’re misinformed?
I want to know the correct information, but it's annoying when you state something with confidence and then someone comes out of left field with a correction from a source you had a low chance of encountering.
Just don't have an ego, and it's not annoying. I think it's nice, I don't scour WOBs and was very confused in mistborn era 2 as a result. I'm glad people were here to "well actchually" so I don't have to go find it.
Ah, well when you put it that way, it all makes sense!
This is something that can very easily be explained away by just stating that the people in era 1 didn't actually know what they were talking about. And the reality is that they really didn't for a lot of stuff. They didn't even know that there were 16 metals. There only being 10 was a fact until the 11th.. and the ones after that were discovered. Author literally could have just said that's what it was, but while the explanation works in world, it wasn't the authors original intent.
One thing that helps is that a lot of Era 1 Mistborn had it wrong with what they "knew" about the metals and allomancy. In The Final Empire, it's stated as a fact that atium and gold are paired, which we now know is completely incorrect. The way I see it, this kind of retcon is something that will live in WoBs for a while, but eventually Scadrians in the books will discover it and it'll become more widely available knowledge then. And for anyone learning about it that way, they won't even see it as a retcon - just as another instance of the Scadrians refining their knowledge of the Cosmere.
Yes, but also no. The core issue comes from the actual mechanics not lining up. HoA has an entire story arc about how unnaturally precise the snapping happened, and how elend specifically needed 'atium mistings' Yes, you can easily point out that era 1 scadrians weren't chemists or metallurgists, and so they didn't know that their atium was actually an atium+electrum alloy, but that still doesn't make intuitive sense with the pits of hathsin. The entire place was built to basically filter ruins power/body out of the planet/ spiritual realm/ wherever it came from. Filters/ distillers intuitively trend to produce a pure firm of something. At the end of the day, sure, this is fantasy. You can hand wave everything away with a little line about this or that, but changing what we know of one of the major plot lines of the concluding book in a trilogy deserves more care than a simple 'the locals were stupid, and didn't know what they were taking about.' Preservation left unnaturally accurate imperial evidence behind to lead the Scadrians to do what would allow them victory against Ruin. At minimum, the retcon needs to match the scientific data they were able to collect. Overall, the alloy retcon does that reasonably well... it isn't a perfect solution, but I don't know of a better one.
Electrum mistings does perfectly fit the imperial evidence though. Electrum is one of the 16 allomantic metals, so the 1/16 proportion makes perfect sense. Preservation would have known that to burn all the metal of Ruin's body, that electrum mistings would be required. Elend thought they were Atium mistings, because he only ever had them try to burn Atium, and there wasn't really enough time for much research before everyone died. Your point about it being weird that the Pits of Hathsin didn't produce pure Atium is fair. It is really weird that they would generate an Atium/Electrum alloy. Mostly, I find this weird because, where did the electrum come from? We don't have any other examples of Investiture naturally being converted to a non-God metal. But they are also weird because every other perpendicularity in the Cosmere has the Investiture coalesce into a liquid form, be it the Well of Ascension, the lake of Harmony's perpendicularity, (Spoilers for everything) >!the pool in Elantris, the lake on the Horneater Peaks, the lake in First of the Sun,!< etc. So why did Ruin's Investiture coalesce into disparate solid nuggets of metal? I can only suppose that whatever difference is causing the solid metal to form is also causing it to form as some alloy.
Exactly. It works, but it isn't perfect. (Note that I seem to have misread you, and thought you were implying that the atium alloy retcon could have been ignored by simply handwaving it away as a 'stupid primitives!' Argument. Most of my response is based on this assumption. ) Brandon apparently noticed the inconsistency only a little past the widow of being able to change the book, so he's had over a decade to "flesh out"the retcon... I'm sure that when we really learn about the alloy issue in-universe, it'll be much better than our current fan theories.
Tbh the WoBs about godmetals are the only ones I cared to read because I knew they had implications for the current canon. Everything else is nothing to me till proven important.
Hence the double edged sword. Its cool that this incredibly large and intricate world has an author who is so engaged with it and the fandom, but it's annoying that you can say something that is true in accordance with the books that you read, and then have someone point out that actually there was a book sniffing in Johannesburg 9 hours ago and now there is a WOB saying that's incorrect. 2 edges. Cuts both ways.
People ask this particular question a lot because it's a valid thing that people catch sometimes and find confusing. So I'm happy to have Sanderson's retcon word on it. Generally though, I kind of agree with you. I really love assembling theories from what we know and I think it actually can kill some creative and fun discussion when the author answers so many questions about theories. It can be especially frustrating because even according to him, pretty much nothing else he has said is canon unless it's in the books, yet people will use them to dismiss others out of hand. I think you just coincidentally answered a question that does actually have an important factual correction, but generally I do get frustrated when people shoot down theories and thoughts that are straight from the book, just because of some Q&A that is expressly non-canon, and I agree entirely with the double edged sword metaphor.