Pure Godmetal's Purpose

[Trusk'our he/him]

I was thinking about how refined Atium (with no electrum contamination) is able to give you enhanced visions of the SR when I realized something; that's literally the perfect ability to use in conjunction with/access Ruin's magic system, Hemalurgy; in depth knowledge of what you want to do with an equal portion of cognitive enhancement to use it?

Hemalurgy's all about knowledge, Intent, and metal, which just fits super well. . . Almost too well to be coincidence. 

Then there's Lerasium, which inherently grants access to Preservation's magic system, Allomancy. 

Honor's pure Godmetal is only seen in one way; the Honorblades. Which also happen to grant access/expand one's power in their Shard's respective magic system. 

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

I theorize, then, that the pure form of each Godmetal of each Shard grants access to or expands the possible use of that system it's tied to.

For example, Edglium may generate Breath for someone, Raysium may allow for Odium's version of Surgebinding, and Trellium may possibly allow access to Sand Mastery or Star Marks.

And this does make some sense on an intrinsic level; they are the condensed essence of the very systems that they're Connected to, so I don't think this is outside the realm of plausibility. 

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

I think you’re on the right track here. It does seem that allomantically speaking pure god metals expand or strengthen the magic system of their associated shard in some way. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they all do things like granting powers or generating breaths. On top of it being super unlikely that Brandon would write them like that, it just doesn’t make sense that one metal, lerasium, forges connections, and then the other metals form connections with their shards, but atium doesn’t. No, all the god metals must do something different. It could be anything really. Atium gives a peek into the spiritual, which helps with hemalurgy. Lerasium forms a connection to preservation, granting and strengthening allomancy. Each god metal could assist or fuel the magic system. Edglium could improve commands or something like that. Tanavastium could fuel Surgebinding or strengthen oaths or literally anything. The possibilities remain rather endless, though your idea of each of them assisting the shards magic system is new to me, so props for that. 

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

4 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

Edglium could improve commands or something like that.

I think it might grant temporary Heightenings, so long as you're Burning it you reach like the 6th Heightening, which grants Instinctive Commands which helps with using Awakening. 

[therunner he/him]

Few notes:

4 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Then there's Lerasium, which inherently grants access to Preservation's magic system, Allomancy.

Lerasium making you into a Mistborn is a side-effect of what it actually does (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/270/#e7708 , https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69/#e6133), so we still don't know what the primary effect is.

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Honor's pure Godmetal is only seen in one way; the Honorblades. Which also happen to grant access/expand one's power in their Shard's respective magic system. 

Honorblades are not 'just' Tanavastium, they are more along the lines of Medallions or Bands of Mourning, mechanical tool for accessing Invested Art. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/331/#e9408 ) .

They are even self-aware (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/508/#e15901 ), which piece of Lerasium/Godmetal in general probably isn't as it could not be simply Burned otherwise (e.g. Shardblades cannot be burned because they are alive https://wob.coppermind.net/events/522/#e16250 , at least not without some workarounds).  

So, that is 2 out of 3 examples that don't actually do what you say they do, which kinda makes the conclusions rather precarious.

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For example, Edglium may generate Breath for someone, Raysium may allow for Odium's version of Surgebinding, and Trellium may possibly allow access to Sand Mastery or Star Marks.

Sand Mastery can be obtained by by alloying Lerasium with Trellium/Bavadinium and burning it (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/358/#e10624 ), so it does not make sense for Bavadinium alone to do the same thing, as alloys have different effects from primary metals.

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And this does make some sense on an intrinsic level; they are the condensed essence of the very systems that they're Connected to, so I don't think this is outside the realm of plausibility. 

 At first glance yes, however Ruin is bad at future sight as a Shard, yet his Godmetal grants very good vision of SR and hence future.
Any Shard can grant any Invested Art if they so choose, those primary ones are most 'natural' expressions of the interaction between Shard, planet and natural laws (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/368/#e11844 ), so to have Godmetal effects tied to what are effectively 'accidents' seems a bit odd to me.

[alder24]

11 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Honor's pure Godmetal is only seen in one way; the Honorblades. Which also happen to grant access/expand one's power in their Shard's respective magic system. 

You mean Honorblades grant access to Honor's magic or Tanavastium do that when burnt? The latter is unconfirmed.

11 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

and Trellium may possibly allow access to Sand Mastery or Star Marks.

Not on its own - you need to alloy it with Lerasium.

Spoiler

Stormlightning

If Hoid was to get his hands on "bavadinium," could he alloy it with lerasium and get Sand Mastery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 6, 2018)

And because of this WoB I don't think burning pure god metals will give you their Shard's invested arts. Alloying them with Lerasium will do that, but alone that won't work in most cases. 

But assisting in their respected invested arts? More likely. It's less direct, unlike Lerasium and allows for a broader spectrum of possibilities. God metals are condensated power of Shards, they do one specific thing, connected to their Shard. I find it ironic that Atium grants enhanced future vision when Ruin is not so good at looking at the future, but that allows a person to be a perfect killing machine, which is fully aligned with Ruin. Atium helping with Hemalurgy is more like an accidental bonus in my opinion, than a true purpose of it - any ability that allows you to see the future helps with Hemalurgy, it doesn't have to come from Ruin. I would expect god metals to be more similar to Atium in what they are doing, than to Lerasium. Lerasium seems to be more unique in its ability to forge Connections and rewrite spirit web. It wouldn't be very original if all god metal do what Lerasium does - what's the point of Lerasium-Bavadinium alloy if Bavadinium alone can do the same? Lerasium-Atium alloy can most likely rewrite your spirit web with the power of Ruin, Atium doesn't do it on its own. All god metals do something else, but aligned with their Shard's intents. 

Spoiler

Questioner (paraphrased)

What will an Atium-Lerasium Alloy do ?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Ah, I've been asked this before. There are a number of theories, but nobody's really sure, since there haven't really been any opportunities to alloy lerasium with atium. You can choose which one to believe. Most require an understanding of realmatic theory to comprehend, which you need to be a Shard or Splinter to even begin to understand.What Lerasium is, is essentially a hack for something like your spiritual DNA. It rewrites what your spiritual self is capable of. So, combined with atium, which allows you a glimpse into the vision of everything - past, present, future - the theories say it could do one of two things. It could either create a substance so volatile that it would have world-ending repercussions, or rewrite your "spiritual DNA" (his phrase, not mine) with atium's power. Is that a vague enough answer?

TWG Posts (March 23, 2010)

 

Spoiler

17th Shard

If a Mistborn burns lerasium, as in, not just ingests it, what effect would it grant Allomantically?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO. It would do something, but the thing you've gotta remember is that, when ingesting lerasium for the first time and gaining the powers, your body is actually burning it. Think of lerasium as a metal anyone can burn. Does that make sense? By burning it you gain access to those powers. It rewrites your spiritual DNA, and there are ways to do really cool things with lerasium that I don't see how anyone would know. Were most Mistborn to just burn it, it would rewrite their genetic code to increase their power as an Allomancer.

17th Shard Interview (Oct. 3, 2010)

 

Edited April 10 by alder24

[Duxredux he/him]

Well... saying that Godmetals have a specific purpose is like saying water was engineered to sustain life or that plants were designed to be edible. This is possible, but I think would largely be done so in the manner of a universal creation, and that's more of a religious topic specifically unconfirmed for the Cosmere. In the Cosmere, Godmetals are fundamental components of nature just like Investiture and the Shards themselves. They have specific characteristics and properties as fundamental as the properties of carbon, sulfur, iron, copper, aluminum, and silver. Maaaybe the Shard has some control over the Godmetal like where it manifest, perhaps if it is pure or alloyed, but changing the fundamental nature is like changing the core Intent and nature of a Shard (see WoBs at end). The Godmetals will be intrinsically tied to their respective Shard(s) and their properties will be in alignment with those Shards, like Autonomy repulsing other Investitures to be alone or exhibiting incredibly hard material that does not deform easily when acted upon by an external force. That doesn't mean they will specifically help in Invested Arts (like others have asserted).

...but Dux, silver, aluminum, water, and all those materials you mentioned were designed by Brandon to do something and often cool things. Yup, and Brandon gets to decide the fundamental building blocks of the Cosmere - just like how he frames the Intents of the Shards as fundamental concepts of nature. Brandon will choose what each Godmetal does and not all of them necessarily need to have a useful function any more than tearing a person (Adonalsium) into 16 pieces will leave you with something particularly useful when compared with the others. Some powers may not act well in isolation in the same way having 2 legs makes it easier to walk.

WoBs:

Spoiler

Questioner

I was just wondering if a Shard's intent can change over time without changing holders?

Brandon Sanderson

Without changing holders? The holder can have a slight effect on how the-- a big effect on how the intent is interpreted, but what the intent is stays the same. So it's gonna be filtered. The way it manifests can change, and you'll see that happening, but it is the same intent. When it was broken off, it took a certain thing with it.

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 (Sept. 21, 2017)

Spoiler

Questioner

Shards. We started with fairly obvious ones, magic wise. Trying to keep this spoiler free, so: Ruin, Preservation, this kind of thing. Then we get the weird ones. Why do we have Shards that can only exist in the mind of a sentient creature? ...Like the concept of Honor can only be done when it's carried out, essentially, by a sentient creature.

Brandon Sanderson

So when I split Adonalsium I said, "I'm going to take aspects of Adonalsium's nature." And this involves personality to me. So the Shattering of Adonalsium was primal forces attached to certain aspects of personality. And so I view every one of them this way. And when I wrote Mistborn we had Ruin and Preservation. They are the primal forces of entropy and whatever you call the opposite, staying-the-same-ism-y. Like, you've got these two contrasts, between things changing and things not changing. And then humans do have a part, there's a personality. Ruin is a charged term for something that actually is the way that life exists. And Preservation is a charged term for stasis, for staying the same. And those are the personality aspects, and the way they are viewed by people and by the entity that was Adonalsium.

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction. So a lot of them do kind of have this both-- cultural component, I would say, that is trying to represent something that is also natural. And not all of them are gonna have a 100% balance between those two things, I would say, because there's only so many fundamental laws of the universe that I can ascribe personalities to in that way. 

So I find Honor very interesting, but I find Autonomy a very interesting one for the exact same reason. What does autonomy mean? We attach a lot to it, but what is the actual, if you get rid of the charged terms, what does it mean? And this is where you end up with things like Odium claiming "I am all emotion." Rather than-- But then there's a charged term for it that is associated with this Shard. I'm not going to tell you whether he's right or not, but he has an argument. 

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

[Trusk'our he/him]

9 hours ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

It does seem that allomantically speaking pure god metals expand or strengthen the magic system of their associated shard in some way. 

8 hours ago, therunner said:

Sand Mastery can be obtained by by alloying Lerasium with Trellium/Bavadinium and burning it (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/358/#e10624 ), so it does not make sense for Bavadinium alone to do the same thing, as alloys have different effects from primary metals.

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

You mean Honorblades grant access to Honor's magic or Tanavastium do that when burnt? The latter is unconfirmed.

  Reveal hidden contents

Stormlightning

If Hoid was to get his hands on "bavadinium," could he alloy it with lerasium and get Sand Mastery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 6, 2018)

And because of this WoB I don't think burning pure god metals will give you their Shard's invested arts. Alloying them with Lerasium will do that, but alone that won't work in most cases. 

Sorry for the confusion, I was speed writing and I've only got my mobile to use for a while.

No, I don't think that Allomantically Burning a pure Godmetal will necessarily grant you access to the system directly. I think that there are individual ways to use the pure form of each Godmetal to access (or, I suppose, just improve the use of as some people have argued) the magic system they're tied to; Lerasium you ingest, but Tanavastium you Bond, just like with a Spren. 

Could be that Edglium you Command with "your Breath become mine" or something like that.

8 hours ago, therunner said:

Lerasium making you into a Mistborn is a side-effect of what it actually does

That is true, but pure Atium's effects that aid in Hemalurgy could also be considered a "side effect".

So, perhaps Godmetals don't directly grant access to their magic system, but the effects they grant are close enough that they could greatly aid its use or be used in a roundabout way to gain access. 

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

I find it ironic that Atium grants enhanced future vision when Ruin is not so good at looking at the future, but that allows a person to be a perfect killing machine, which is fully aligned with Ruin. 

That is the electrum/Atium alloy I believe, not the purified form of the Godmetal. 

8 hours ago, therunner said:

Honorblades are not 'just' Tanavastium, they are more along the lines of Medallions or Bands of Mourning, mechanical tool for accessing Invested Art. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/331/#e9408 ) .

Hmm, that's a valid point. This definitely moves against my original theory.

You could argue that this is technically still using a pure Godmetal to access its system after a fashion, but that's probably a stretch. 

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Not on its own - you need to alloy it with Lerasium.

So WHY does Lerasium draw the magic, so to speak, out of godmetals and grant access to those magics. If it's an act of preserving those magics (into a person), what does that say about the nature of godmetals. That feels significant to me. The OP is not far off from true, as long as Lerasium is involved.

Also, wouldn't granting access to other shard's magic systems be the "what happens when you burn Lerasium" question that Brandon RAFO'd?

Another question I have is what happens to Atium when it's alloyed with Lerasium and burnt. At one point, I would have thought you cannot allow them as their Intents are diametrically opposed, but if you can blend stormlight and voidlight, I am sure you can allow Atium and Lerasium. Would you be able to suck out other's allomancy? Any magic system? I dunno, just spitballing here. 

[Quantus he/him]

12 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Hmm, that's a valid point. This definitely moves against my original theory.

You could argue that this is technically still using a pure Godmetal to access its system after a fashion, but that's probably a stretch. 

And they are also Shard-made slivers designed for specific purposes, like Divine Breaths, rather than anything emergent like the Godmetals or the magic systems themselves.  Both of those examples give you effects that are similar to the emergent magic system, but notably different in several powerful ways.

1 hour ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

So WHY does Lerasium draw the magic, so to speak, out of godmetals and grant access to those magics. If it's an act of preserving those magics (into a person), what does that say about the nature of godmetals. That feels significant to me. The OP is not far off from true, as long as Lerasium is involved.

Also, wouldn't granting access to other shard's magic systems be the "what happens when you burn Lerasium" question that Brandon RAFO'd?

Another question I have is what happens to Atium when it's alloyed with Lerasium and burnt. At one point, I would have thought you cannot allow them as their Intents are diametrically opposed, but if you can blend stormlight and voidlight, I am sure you can allow Atium and Lerasium. Would you be able to suck out other's allomancy? Any magic system? I dunno, just spitballing here. 

I dont think it's "Drawing the Magic" so much as it's Connecting you to the Shard in a way that (for Allomancy and Sand Mastery) is the primary vehicle of the magics system.  But it most likely wouldnt be able to grant radiance or Heightenings, for example.  

 

To the OP, I like to think that Atium is about Breaking Realmic Boundaries, to bring it more into a Ruin theme.  We have two different examples of Aitum Alloys from two different ratios of Atium-Gold-Silver.  In both cases, the Temporal/Cognitive Effect is inverted across an axis of effect. Atium/Electrum provides the effect of Electrum but for everything External to the allomancer rather than aimed Internally at themselves. Malatium (which is Atium/Electrum plus more Gold) takes the effect of Gold and moves it to the Past as well as being External.  I suspect that is it's main power, to break Realmic boundaries, and the alloying elements are used as complex modifiers.  

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

No, I don't think that Allomantically Burning a pure Godmetal will necessarily grant you access to the system directly. I think that there are individual ways to use the pure form of each Godmetal to access (or, I suppose, just improve the use of as some people have argued) the magic system they're tied to; Lerasium you ingest, but Tanavastium you Bond, just like with a Spren. 

Could be that Edglium you Command with "your Breath become mine" or something like that.

Hmm I don't think so, but I don't really have anything. You ingest every god metal, just like every god metal can be used in Hemalurgy or Feruchemy, but that's the nature of Metallic Arts specifically which are focused on metals. Burning god metals however isn't of Allomancy, but in my mind Allomancy and burning god metals use the same mechanism to get the power into the soul. So I think you have the opposite way of thinking - because god metals are metals they can be used in Metallic Arts, as those three arts are uniquely focused on metals.

I was writing my incoherent thoughts here, but they didn't really make any sense. I just stop here, after trying to rewrite it several times now - my mind clearly isn't in shape today. I just feel like what you are proposing is too much, but I can't really put a finger on the issue here. God metals are more about investiture in general, less about their specific invested art. They aren't tied to their magic system, they don't have it, they are tied to their Shard who manifests in a few different ways - physical investiture is just one manifestation of a Shard, invested art is another one.

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

That is the electrum/Atium alloy I believe, not the purified form of the Godmetal. 

Oh yes, my bad. Buuuut being nitpicky here, Eland did strike Marsh at the end, but chose to not kill him because he knew Marsh had to kill him. So you can still fight using pure Atium's future sight and get the outcome you want. 

 

16 minutes ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

So WHY does Lerasium draw the magic, so to speak, out of godmetals and grant access to those magics. If it's an act of preserving those magics (into a person), what does that say about the nature of godmetals. That feels significant to me. The OP is not far off from true, as long as Lerasium is involved.

The way I see it is that Lerasium forges a Connection to something - in its pure form it Connects you to Preservation, which makes you a Mistborn. In alloyed forms this is overwritten and it Connects you to a Shard associated with the second alloy component, like to Autonomy if you mixed it with Bavadinium. And because Connection is what often grants you invested arts, you gain them when burning alloyed Lerasium. So in my opinion the side effect is that you gain invested arts, but the main effect that you can do fancy stuff with is that Learsium changes your spirit web and forges a Connection.

22 minutes ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

Another question I have is what happens to Atium when it's alloyed with Lerasium and burnt. At one point, I would have thought you cannot allow them as their Intents are diametrically opposed, but if you can blend stormlight and voidlight, I am sure you can allow Atium and Lerasium. Would you be able to suck out other's allomancy? Any magic system? I dunno, just spitballing here. 

I believe it would make you into a Feruchemist. We know Allomancy happens because of the Preservation's extra investiture in people's souls, Feruchemy however is a balanced system between two Shards. It seems to me that to have Feruchemy, you have to be extra investiture of Ruin and Preservation in equal amounts. Scadrians have one already. Lerasium-Atium alloy's effect is overwritten with Atium's power, so if Lerasium invests you with Preservation's investiture, Lerasium-Atium might invest you with Ruin's investiture, equalizing Preservation's fragment and making you into a Feruchemist. That's my thoughts at least. The wording of this WoB, specifically the "instead of Ruin" seems to slightly point in that direction. 

Spoiler

Questioner

How is a new Feruchemist made?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you mean?

Questioner

Well you can make a new Mistborn by lerasium--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, okay.  Other than through birth? That’s a RAFO, good question though.  Right now, as far as anyone knows, it’s by birth only.  But--  Well we’ll leave it there.  You know that the extra Preservation instead of Ruin had some effects on people on Scadrial.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

 

 

The way I see it is that Lerasium forges a Connection to something - in its pure form it Connects you to Preservation, which makes you a Mistborn. In alloyed forms this is overwritten and it Connects you to a Shard associated with the second alloy component, like to Autonomy if you mixed it with Bavadinium. And because Connection is what often grants you invested arts, you gain them when burning alloyed Lerasium. So in my opinion the side effect is that you gain invested arts, but the main effect that you can do fancy stuff with is that Learsium changes your spirit web and forges a Connection.

I think it does all of that, but not Just all of that.  Per WOB it lets you make changes to your spiritweb, and I think Lerasium will let you make diverse, permanent changes to your spiritweb without the temporal "likelihood" limitation (or the complex language) of Forgery symbols.  I think the nuance and the control will come through the alloying the metal with Godmetals, Mundane metals, and maybe even Charged metals (metalminds, awakenings, etc) to fine tune the sample's Investiture Frequency (akin to how metal combinations make colors in Spectroscopy, LEDs, etc).  All that to say it can forge permanent, Powerful Sprirtweb changes, but I think it would be able to make lots of changes, both internal and external.  

[Dofurion]

On 4/10/2024 at 1:35 PM, alder24 said:

I believe it would make you into a Feruchemist. We know Allomancy happens because of the Preservation's extra investiture in people's souls, Feruchemy however is a balanced system between two Shards. It seems to me that to have Feruchemy, you have to be extra investiture of Ruin and Preservation in equal amounts. Scadrians have one already. Lerasium-Atium alloy's effect is overwritten with Atium's power, so if Lerasium invests you with Preservation's investiture, Lerasium-Atium might invest you with Ruin's investiture, equalizing Preservation's fragment and making you into a Feruchemist. That's my thoughts at least. The wording of this WoB, specifically the "instead of Ruin" seems to slightly point in that direction. 

It could also be with a Lerasium/Ettmetal alloy. For me it would be poetic since the only ones who could burn it safely would be the Kandra

[bmcclure7]

On 4/9/2024 at 9:06 PM, Trusk'our said:

I was thinking about how refined Atium (with no electrum contamination) is able to give you enhanced visions of the SR when I realized something; that's literally the perfect ability to use in conjunction with/access Ruin's magic system, Hemalurgy; in depth knowledge of what you want to do with an equal portion of cognitive enhancement to use it?

Hemalurgy's all about knowledge, Intent, and metal, which just fits super well. . . Almost too well to be coincidence. 

Then there's Lerasium, which inherently grants access to Preservation's magic system, Allomancy. 

Honor's pure Godmetal is only seen in one way; the Honorblades. Which also happen to grant access/expand one's power in their Shard's respective magic system. 

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

I theorize, then, that the pure form of each Godmetal of each Shard grants access to or expands the possible use of that system it's tied to.

For example, Edglium may generate Breath for someone, Raysium may allow for Odium's version of Surgebinding, and Trellium may possibly allow access to Sand Mastery or Star Marks.

And this does make some sense on an intrinsic level; they are the condensed essence of the very systems that they're Connected to, so I don't think this is outside the realm of plausibility. 

 We have no idea what pure Atium does. True corrupted Atium  Grant access to the spiritual realm and thus the future, But that's because it's combined with electrum which also does the same thing alomatically.  All atium does is switch to target from yourself to someone else.  Unadulterated atium  Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with seeing the future or the spiritual realm any more lerasium.