I started reading Wax and Wayne recently and I noticed that Atium and Malatium were replaced with Cadmium and Bendalloy, and Atium was changed to a god metal. I have several questions about that: A: why does Malatium no longer show up on charts? B: I noticed that Cadmium and Bendalloy, ability-wise, don't appear to be true counterparts of Electrum and Gold. Why is this? C: What is Malatium an alloy of other than Atium? D: Were there Cadmium and Bendalloy Mistings before the events of The Hero of Ages?
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scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/22384/…– MithoronCommented Oct 25 at 21:14
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scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/22384/…– MithoronCommented Oct 25 at 21:40
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1 Answer
Cadmium and Bendalloy are presumably two of the unkown metals that Sazed mentions in his letter to Spook in the Epilogue of the Hero of Ages (along with Nicrosil and Chromium):
PS. There are still two base metals and their alloys that no one knows about. You might want to poke about and see if you can figure out what they are. I think they'll interest you.
They don't appear on the era 1 charts because they weren't known, and if there were any mistings (probably) they weren't discovered.
Atium was always intended to be a god metal. They shouldn't have been in their place in the metal charges, and the charts including it are "in world" and subject to unreliable narrators.
There is a retcon in place: the properties of Atium in Mistborn (era 1) don't match the properties of a God metal, in that anybody should be able to burn a God metal. Behind the scenes, Sanderson has declared that the Atium we see is actually a natural alloy of Atium and electrum. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/482-youtube-spoiler-stream-3/#e15299
Kingsdaughter613: Primary question: Peter recently said something about atium in Era 1 actually being an atium-electrum alloy, which is called nalatium. Is this accurate?
Brandon Sanderson: This is accurate, yes.
You could, by the way, just continue to call it atium. That's what they think atium is in-world. It's very slightly tainted.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/243-hero-of-ages-qa-time-wasters-guide/#e6086
Darxbane: Did we already find out what metal is combined with atium to make malatium?
Brandon Sanderson: I might have said somewhere in the series. I can't remember. It's gold.
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1IIRC another reason Atium and Malatium show up in the original table is because Preservation messed with the system somewhat, to ensure Atium mistings were a thing, whereas normally godmetal mistings shouldn't really occur naturally. This also implies Cadmium and Bendalloy mistings might not have existed during the Final Empire, with Atium and Malatium mistings taking their place.– kenodCommented Mar 21 at 10:36