Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: Time and Again on July 31, 2008, 06:07:26 AM
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Well I just reread TWoA and happened to be glancing through the back where the reffernce's are located. I was reading about this Electrum, this Internal Temperol metal. I started thinking, and as it's late at night I could have just been stupidity taking over but... here's the idea (if it hasn't already been thought of; which I wouldn't be suprised, but I didn't want to sift through the boards for a depressing answer.)
If we can agree that Electrum seems to be the polar opposite of Atium (not the opposite, that would be Malatium) then burning it should give you the ability to defeat an atium burner.
Before you say "Hold it TaA, this is unheard of! Everybody knows the only way to defeat a person burning Atium is to burn it yourself."
To that I say.. you could be right. But hear me out. WARNING: there is a good chance that this writing will get extremely confusing. I'll reread it plenty of times to make sure I explain myself fully, but when dealing with how you can change the future that then changes by your action, etc. Hopefully it works out.
To understand my "Theroy" you need to understand they way I believe Electrum works. It says in the book that it gives you the ability to look into your own future. This can be interperited in many different ways, but as all the metal powers seem closely relatied, I believe that what you will be seeing is not unlike that of what an Atium burner will being seeing of you as well. I believe when you burn this metal you will see a shadow detach from yourself and going about the action which you would have if you weren't watching yourself do it with Electrum.
So what your esentailly doing is watching yourself from an Atium burners point of view. Knowing what they are seeing can then let you infer what they will do. It's basicly what Vin did with Zane in there last conferintation. She knew what he was seeing and could therefore change what she would do. With Electrum your just skipping the middle man.
The AtiumBurner attacks you. You know where he (I'm using "he" as a place holder, I'm not being sexist. It's just easier to type "he" than "he/she/it") assumes your going to be. Therefore you just don't go there. You do somthing completely different. Hopefully the shadows don't look to far into the future. For if they do then Atium may just look so far ahead as to see the only move you make. Atium shadows may be able to making themselves infinite, but you can only make one action. The Electrum-Atium effect may not have the same playback, mirror-to-mirror effect. If this is true then this metal can be about as useful as gold is. What I think will happen is once you and the AtiumBurner see you juking left you will naturally go right, but the atium foresees this too, making a shadow for this pre-foreseen event. This is where you hope Electrum can keep up, and it also makes an "Electrum shadow" of you going right. So obviously you don't right anymore you go backwards. And the process repeats. Like a good shampoing. Until you are doing backflips and cartwheels to vary up the pre-foreseen events. Again, this should all take place in no time flat. When you start burning simotiansly with an Atium burner all these shadows should jump into being instantaniously.
What I'm getting at is you take away the atium burners advantage because you both know what your going to do. Naturally you don't do it. And with the unfolding option you can make any choice you want as to what you will do.
Now basicly your going to get the same effect with atium but all the pre-foreseen shadows will only be appearing from you. Not your opponent. We can only hope that Electrum has the same mental stimulent that Atium does so you don't get so confused you just pass out.
The advantages to this entire theroy are..
1) There is a good chance Electrum will burn slower than atium and therefore you'll be able to last well into any fight with it.
2) It is only an alloy of Gold, which is plenty more plentieful than atium ever was or possibly will be.
Well, hope that made sense, and that it is an origanol Idea so I didn't just waist a half hour of my life writing this.
Input Welcome!
EDIT: I'm actually proad of this little theroy. It's a brain wave at One O'clock in the morning. So to the person in the first post after this that pokes a huge hole right through it in such a simple and obvious way; Be Gentle. Please!
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It is shown in the end of TFE that it doesn't show like a few moments into the future like Atium does, it shows FAR into your future, as in what you will become in the distant future.
Sorry to like, crush your theory.
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It is shown in the end of TFE that it doesn't show like a few moments into the future like Atium does, it shows FAR into your future, as in what you will become in the distant future.
Huh? Where?
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It is shown in the end of TFE that it doesn't show like a few moments into the future like Atium does, it shows FAR into your future, as in what you will become in the distant future.
Huh? Where?
Ooops, MY BAD. ROFL!
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is not electrum the Eleventh Metal which allowed Vin to see TLR's past self?
as a side note, why did Vin see two of TLR's past self? One is obviously Rashek; dressed in rough, homespun cloths and leathers. However, he is described as content and smiling, which is completely at odds with everything else we know of Rashek.
The other is a prosperous merchant. Who is this second shadow?
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She uses Malatium to see TLR's past. There has been no mention of Electrum anywhere in the actual story, and EUOL has written in one annotation or another that he has been deliberately vague with Gold and Electrum because he may use them in future stories.
As for what Vin sees, one guess would be that she sees the person who died so TLR could become a Hemalurgist. It's a pretty wild guess, but it sounds cool to me.
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So, atium shows the future of someone else, malatium shows the past of someone else. Gold shows the past of yourself, and electrum (gold's compliment) shows your own future. (We'll talk about that in a different book.)
So, anyway, the Eleventh Metal (malatium) matches with atium--both of which create images from other people. And, just like atium shadows are incorporeal, so are malatium shadows. That's why Vin couldn't touch the one she saw of the Lord Ruler. (http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/173/Mistborn-Chapter-Thirty-Eight-Part-One)
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ok gotcha. not sure why i got those two confused.
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So now I'm confused. Is my theroy destroyed or not?
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It is not destroyed per se, as we are not sure to what extent Electrum lets you see your own future. If it has the same time span as Atium, then you could concevably "see" yourself getting shot with an arrow and not go that way. However, if it compliments gold, you would see several possible futures of yourself, which would make it difficult to determine what you would need to do to cause each future to happen. Temporal Mechanics suck. ;)
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I agree. As I see it atium shouldn't be the outlier. One of the other metals should be simular in my thoughts. That just wouldn't make much sense. Then again, applying logic to magic of any kind proves difficult.
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I agree. As I see it atium shouldn't be the outlier. One of the other metals should be simular in my thoughts. That just wouldn't make much sense. Then again, applying logic to magic of any kind proves difficult.
Yes it does. Ha ha. But also don't think that Electrum will be used in the way you want it to, after all Atium is pretty much gone and Vin can beat someone burning Atium even if she isn't.
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Needless to say I'll be disapointed if it does. Please Mr.Sanderson don't do this to me!!
I don't believe atium is almost gone. I think it's just getting harder to find. The lord rulers atium is still out there some where. We still don't know why Satlin City was circled on that map. Was TLR's atium shipped off to there.. hm the wheels are in motion.
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i think TLR used most of it up to keep himself young AND/OR turned it into malatium for some unknown reason.
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Needless to say I'll be disapointed if it does. Please Mr.Sanderson don't do this to me!!
I don't believe atium is almost gone. I think it's just getting harder to find. The lord rulers atium is still out there some where. We still don't know why Satlin City was circled on that map. Was TLR's atium shipped off to there.. hm the wheels are in motion.
I think that he was continually burning Atium 1. So he knew what everyone around him was going to do and 2. to keep himself young. At the rate it burns and burning it continually and how rare it was. . . he could easily have burned it all up.
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Touching back on one of the quotes VegasDev made . . .
So, anyway, the Eleventh Metal (malatium) matches with atium--both of which create images from other people. And, just like atium shadows are incorporeal, so are malatium shadows. That's why Vin couldn't touch the one she saw of the Lord Ruler.
Does that mean that electrum, gold's compliment, will have corporeal shadows? If so, what would happen if you touched/killed/maimed it?
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they will be incorporeal. Something weird does happen to Vin when she touches her own gold shadow, but nothing happens when she touches TLR's. Either way, I don't think you could hurt the shadow.
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But the malatium shadows Vin touched are incorporeal because they're paired with atium.
But electrum shadows, on the other hand, are paired with gold, which is corporeal.
I assume what would happen is another manifestation of the "something weird" you mentioned. (Of course, I want to know what woudl happen if you tried to kill your gold shadow as well . . .)
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I would think that if they were corporeal, everyone would be able to see them. Besides, since only the person using the metal could see them, then that person would in effect be committing suicide by "killing" the image.
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Aha. Kelsier says that the gold shadows are just hallucinations, as are atium and malatium shadows. So I guess it'd just be a hallucination, and killing it would just be a very unpleasant experience for you.
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Does the visual manifestation of malatium seem to correlate more with atium's visual manifestation or with gold's? How does electrum fit on the external/internal/pushing/pulling grid in relation to atium, gold, and malatium?
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Aha. Kelsier says that the gold shadows are just hallucinations, as are atium and malatium shadows. So I guess it'd just be a hallucination, and killing it would just be a very unpleasant experience for you.
But the visualization of killing yourself would probably cause most people to have a mental break down.
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Okay, I made a breakdown. . .
Temporal Metals
External Metals
Pushing Metal - Malatium
Pushes past images out of others. Incorporeal.
Pulling Metal - Atium
Pulls future shadows out of others. Incorporeal.
Internal Metals
Pushing Metal - Electrum
Pushes future images out of yourself.
Pulling Metal - Gold
Pulls past shadow out of yourself. Corporeal to the burner, hallucination.
As far as I know, that's the gridwork, but if that's the case, why would malatium (External Pushing metal.) be so much like gold? (Internal Pulling metal.) They're about as far apart as they can be. But using the same logic, electrum and atium should both have similar visual manifestations.
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I love this analysis Czanos.
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I love this analysis Reaves.
uh...what?
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I love this analysis Reaves.
uh...what?
Oops I like. . . looked and saw the R in the picture and didn't look at the name. haha.
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Okay, I made a breakdown. . .
Temporal Metals
External Metals
Pushing Metal - Malatium
Pushes past images out of others. Incorporeal.
Pulling Metal - Atium
Pulls future shadows out of others. Incorporeal.
Internal Metals
Pushing Metal - Electrum
Pushes future images out of yourself.
Pulling Metal - Gold
Pulls past shadow out of yourself. Corporeal to the burner, hallucination.
As far as I know, that's the gridwork, but if that's the case, why would malatium (External Pushing metal.) be so much like gold? (Internal Pulling metal.) They're about as far apart as they can be. But using the same logic, electrum and atium should both have similar visual manifestations.
Maybe the classification is just wrong. Atium and gold were misclassified for years as being a pair, after all. It would make more sense to me if the pushing and pulling of one of the pairs were switched around.
I guess not though, since the pulling metals are all elemental and the pushing metals are all alloys.
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I'm supprised the theroy held water this long.
I just don't like the idea of Atium being such a different metal. All the other metals react pretty simular to each other. For atium to look about a second into the future and the others to look decades just doesn't make any sense.
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I'm supprised the theroy held water this long.
I just don't like the idea of Atium being such a different metal. All the other metals react pretty simular to each other. For atium to look about a second into the future and the others to look decades just doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't have to make sense. . . it's magic.
haha
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I'm supprised the theroy held water this long.
I just don't like the idea of Atium being such a different metal. All the other metals react pretty simular to each other. For atium to look about a second into the future and the others to look decades just doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't have to make sense. . . it's magic.
haha
The best magic systems are the ones that do make sense. "Alternate physics" is often a good way of looking at them. Frankly, they also make for tighter stories, although Sanderson's First Law considerations come into play here.
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Really though, regardless of whether or not it has to make sense, with the information we have now it does. We know what it does, and we know how the other future-metal we know of, atium, behaves. Combined with the fact that gold and the other past-metal malatium are so similar, it only makes sense that atium and electrum would behave similarly. (Though I still think it would have been better if the push-pull mechanics were reversed, but I think that has something to do with Brandon wanting to introduce gold's power to support malatium and atium's power for storyline, while at the same time making atium a pure metal and not having the past-self seeing metal being something as obvious an alloy as gold and silver. He had to make them both base metals so that it was plausible that the other two temporal metals could have been suppressed for centuries.)
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Well one solid vote to my plausible idea is a good start. For that atleast, I am thankful.
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Extremely minor spoiler for book three:
How electrum works is about as far as you can get from any kind of major plot point in the third book. It just gets mentioned in passing that they figured it out sometime in the past year. ;)
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*Sniifff* ...I thought this one had a chance to. Ohwell. This is not my first theroy, and nor will it be my last. Time and again they are proven dispondent, but I'll crack one out before the end.
Out of book plot though, does it still channel any truth?
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Probably not. If it had been important in the way you were hoping it wouldn't have just been a fleeting 'Oh, we figured it out yo.'
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*cough* red herring *cough* ;)
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Probably not. If it had been important in the way you were hoping it wouldn't have just been a fleeting 'Oh, we figured it out yo.'
Ha! I wouldn't necessarily say that...I'm just saying that in book 3, a pesky little concern like whether or not you can beat atium is the least of anyone's problems.
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Probably not. If it had been important in the way you were hoping it wouldn't have just been a fleeting 'Oh, we figured it out yo.'
Ha! I wouldn't necessarily say that...I'm just saying that in book 3, a pesky little concern like whether or not you can beat atium is the least of anyone's problems.
Hmm, are you saying that Allomantic skills cease to be as important? Or that none of the antagonists are Mistborn? Or just that there are much bigger problems, problems that Allomantic abilities have no power to solve?
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I'd say atium has never been a key point in any book. But it always seems to be a leg in the tripod (figuritevly speaking; there are usually more than three issues).
I didn't think it would be story breaking and ruin the books, but I'd like to know if it was plausiable for my own little fanfiction tales I might come up with later.
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Hmm, are you saying that Allomantic skills cease to be as important? Or that none of the antagonists are Mistborn? Or just that there are much bigger problems, problems that Allomantic abilities have no power to solve?
I doubt he answers unless it's with a red herring, but it appears that she/they will have their hands full with Ruin and its ability to warp reality.
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I'd say atium has never been a key point in any book.
I also wouldn't say that. Vin's defeat of Zane's atium was a pretty big point in book two, I think.
Besides, Brandon has already publicly mentioned two things dealing with atium that will be revealed in book three--and one of them is hugely major. Neither of them involves electrum, though. Well...the minor one might involve it slightly; I don't remember.
Let's revisit this thread when the book comes out. :)
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It's kind of amusing to look at this in perspective though. What kind of a world are they dealing with when the ability to see into your own future AND defeat a future-seeing metal-shooting ultra-powerful combatant is a "pesky little concern."
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I skipped all those posts after Ookla's little spoiler, which I did not read, as I am ignoring those things which cause me pain.
Time and Again, the theory of using Electrum against an Atium user was discussed, I believe it's in the atium mistings thread. Sorry, I have no links.
As for what Vin sees, one guess would be that she sees the person who died so TLR could become a Hemalurgist. It's a pretty wild guess, but it sounds cool to me.
I'm pretty sure the merchant image in the room was the past self of the inquisitor in the room, meaning each person only has one past self image.
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I skipped all those posts after Ookla's little spoiler, which I did not read, as I am ignoring those things which cause me pain.
Time and Again, the theory of using Electrum against an Atium user was discussed, I believe it's in the atium mistings thread. Sorry, I have no links.
As for what Vin sees, one guess would be that she sees the person who died so TLR could become a Hemalurgist. It's a pretty wild guess, but it sounds cool to me.
I'm pretty sure the merchant image in the room was the past self of the inquisitor in the room, meaning each person only has one past self image.
Yes, but not everyone had the chances Rashek did. . . he could have continued life after the ascension letting Alendi take it, he could have given up the power, but he took it. . . . whereas he had three paths. . . maybe he does have to past lives. Where he would have been if he let Alendi go and what what he would have been if he gave up the power. . . .
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If that shadow isn't the inquisitors than how come he doesn't have one? Everyone Vin can see should have a Malatium shadow. I thought that the Lord Ruler had two shadows as well at first, but after the reread, it's pretty clear that the other shadow belongs to the inquisitor. Sorry.
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If that shadow isn't the inquisitors than how come he doesn't have one? Everyone Vin can see should have a Malatium shadow. I thought that the Lord Ruler had two shadows as well at first, but after the reread, it's pretty clear that the other shadow belongs to the inquisitor. Sorry.
I see, I was just reading near there yesterday, but I should reread that part in particular.
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If that's the case, then where's the shadow of the Inquisitor?
I'm pretty sure the shadow is of the Inquisitor. The exact passage is . . .
Vin turned to the side. There was another unfamiliar man
beside her, a young nobleman. He was a merchant, from the
looks of his suit—and a very wealthy one at that.
From what we know, Inquisitors are recruited from the nobility, and particularly the upper nobility. On top of that, the malatium shadow is standing next to her and the Inquisitor, instead of right next to The Lord Ruler, with the other shadow. To seal the deal, when Vin burns malatium during her fight with The Lord Ruler, he only has one shadow, the one she saw standing next to him in this scene.
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Thanks for that C. Yeah. I noticed that people talking about the 'second person' a lot and about WHO it was. . . I couldn't remember like a 'second' shadow, probably because I just figured it belonged to the inquisitor and just didn't commit it to memory because I didn't care.
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If that's the case, then where's the shadow of the Inquisitor?
I'm pretty sure the shadow is of the Inquisitor. The exact passage is . . .
Vin turned to the side. There was another unfamiliar man
beside her, a young nobleman. He was a merchant, from the
looks of his suit—and a very wealthy one at that.
From what we know, Inquisitors are recruited from the nobility, and particularly the upper nobility. On top of that, the malatium shadow is standing next to her and the Inquisitor, instead of right next to The Lord Ruler, with the other shadow. To seal the deal, when Vin burns malatium during her fight with The Lord Ruler, he only has one shadow, the one she saw standing next to him in this scene.
This assumption can also be supported from a narrative perspective. Vin had to have enough clues to figure out what was going on so that she wouldn't have to do too much thinking at the climax. Having two examples of what Malatium does would make it more likely that she would make the connection, not to mention strengthening the connection with Atium.
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And the connection she makes to touching her gold image, which influences her plan to try and stab the Lord Ruler's malatium image.
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And the connection she makes to touching her gold image, which influences her plan to try and stab the Lord Ruler's malatium image.
Right. Remember that EUOL tries to make his magic systems consistent. If Atium shows everybody else's future (external) and Gold shows your possible past (internal), than Malatium should show everybody else's possible past. Thus with two other people in the room, she should, logically, see two different alternate pasts, one per person. There is no real reason, without further evidence, to go beyond this simple logic.
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Spoiler in a non-spoiler thread. I moved your post to the spoiler thread instead.
--Brenna