The Scadrial reference thread

[Nemo]

Warning: As in any thread involving the Lord Ruler, what is a basic plot point here may be a major spoiler for canon. Those who care have been warned.

Firstly and most importantly, there exists a wonderfully complete wiki by people who know more than me! Here's a relevant page. This wiki does assume you've read EVERYTHING BRANDON SANDERSON EVER WROTE, so it might be pretty inaccessible in places. This thread will not assume that.

The Backstory: Preservation, Ruin, and Why The World Is Ending
It starts with the Shards called Preservation and Ruin. (Where they came from and what they're Shards of isn't important.) They can be approximated as equal and opposite gods. They're named after what they want to do. (Pretty simplistic gods.) They were in fact once humans named Leras and Ati, who bonded with their titular forces and have since been more or less overwritten such that they want nothing except nondestruction/destruction. They're stuck in a permanent deadlock, where Ruin can't destroy anything and Preservation can't create anything to preserve.

They struck a deal, where Preservation would be allowed to create humans unopposed in exchange for Ruin being allowed to eventually destroy the world. They obviously can't trust each other a whole lot, but unlike most things humans contain more of Preservation's power than Ruin's. The tiny imbalance in who has what power left means that Ruin wins eventually. Preservation cheated, and imprisoned Ruin. Ruin can still do some things, but is not currently a threat to the world. In the process of creating this, Preservation died. At least, its mind did. Its power, otherwise referred to as its body because of some extended metaphor or other, is still around and powering Allomancy (see below). Most of its power is in a glowing pool called the Well of Ascension. This is also where the prison is. The rest is in some mists that show up every night and do stuff, and of course in humans. It's also in a type of metal (called lerasium after the holder of the Shard Preservation). Only one bead of this metal exists. Its function is to give someone a permanent connection to Preservation, which turns them into a Mistborn. The Lord Ruler has it.

Ruin's power is also still around. It's stored in a metal, which is symmetrically called atium. It has a pool (like Preservation's but with a different color scheme) and the atium mines are above that. If Ruin gets out, its first goal is to find this and regain its world-destroying power.

This prison, for reasons that aren't totally explained, needs to be re-done every 1,024 years. Preservation is mostly dead and can't handle it itself, so it left a set of prophecies about how someone totally needs to go to the Well of Ascension, which can be found in Location, dunk themselves in the glowing pool until they get the phenomenal cosmic power, and use it to stop the bad guy. This then repeats every 1,024 years. Not very permanent, but the world was supposed to have already ended so I'm not going to complain.

Ruin isn't completely inactive. From inside its prison it can still do some things, like make weather worse. It encouraged Preservation's magic fog to get stronger, until it was a legitimate extinction threat. It also changed the prophecies around. Turns out it can change written things that are not engraved in metal. (A Feruchemist's copperminds count as not engraved for this purpose.) The new prophecies said that the Hero of Ages must selflessly and heroically give up the power of Preservation without actually doing anything. Ruin's other ability is to talk into the minds of people with Hemalurgic spikes. (See below.) It used this to take over the world. Nobody ever said it isn't smart. Its stooge, Alendi, then got to the Well of Ascension to dramatically do nothing with the omnipotence...and he got killed by one of his guides.

The guide, Rashek, then walked into the pool and became the mind controlling the Shard Preservation. (He knew what to do because an NPC told him to. And he didn't like Alendi anyway.) He re-imprisoned Ruin and moved the planet closer to its sun to burn away the fog. This worked. He put it back. This didn't. Turns out ability to move planets doesn't always come with knowledge of where they're supposed to go. Instead, he moved all the people to the North and South poles, and built a set of ash-spewing volcanoes for the equivalent of a nuclear winter. This worked. He also rotated the crust of the planet so that the Well of Ascension would be at the North Pole, put the Shard back, and built his palace on top of it. He is now known as the Lord Ruler.

The Magic Systems: What You're Here To Read

There are three, generically known as the "Metallic Arts."

Allomancy

Allomancy is powered by Preservation. Because it is powered by a connection to Preservation, I've been saying in sandboxes that it does not work on any world that does not contain Preservation. (Technically it can be made to work on any world in that multiverse. I don't expect that to come up.) The exception is atium, which is itself a piece of Ruin's power and don't need no stinking connection. Lerasium would also work for the same reason, but whether or not this is useful off-world may vary by sandbox.

A few people are born with Allomantic potential, and it usually gets activated by something traumatic. Allomancers can swallow a metal and then magically consume it to do a specific thing. The more you burn at a time, the more of an effect you get but the faster it depletes your reserves. Some Allomancers are more powerful than others. They can get more effect from less metal. A Misting is someone who can burn one metal, a Mistborn can burn all of them. There is no way to use any other number except Hemalurgy (see below). The metals and what they do are:

Pewter: Makes you stronger, faster, tougher, more graceful, you heal faster...basically it increases all your physical stats.
Tin: Increases your senses. All of them, at once. This has the obvious limiting factor.
Iron: You see a blue line from your center of mass to any metal object. You can, by spending some of your stores, pull it toward you. This also pulls you toward it; physics applies.
Steel: Ditto, but it pushes.
Zinc: You sense emotions. You can make them more extreme.
Brass: You can make them less extreme. Note that these essentially do the same thing, because most emotions have an opposite.
Bronze: You sense whether there are any Allomancers nearby.
Copper: An area around you is protected from the previous three.
Gold: Shows you an image of your past self. You do not choose what past self. Completely useless.
Atium: Shows you an image of what other people are about to do. A few seconds worth of precognition. You do not want to fight someone who is burning atium unless you are, too. Atium is also used as currency, and it is also LITERALLY MADE OF THE GOD OF ENTROPY.
Electrum: Shows you a few seconds worth of possible things you might do. Useful for countering atium.

There are other metals that are not commonly known. You may assume the Lord Ruler knows about them, but not all of them exist in a usable form on the planet.
Duralumin: If a Mistborn burns this along with another metal, it flares everything of that metal that they've got in one gigantic blaze of glory. Do not use it with tin. There are Mistings who can burn only this metal, but it's completely useless. Duralumin becomes available to the protagonists partway through the series.
Aluminum: Wipes your Allomantic reserves. The Lord Ruler has this, and forces Mistborn to use it if he needs to imprison them.
Nicrosil: Give the effect of duralumin to some other Allomancer. It would be polite to warn them first. Does not currently exist.
Chromium: Subject another Allomancer to the thing aluminum does. Not very polite even if you do warn them first. Does not currently exist.
Cadmium: In a bubble around and including you, time slows down. May conceivably be useful sometimes. Does not currently exist.
Bendalloy: In a smaller bubble around and including you, time speeds up. You bet this is useful. Does not currently exist.
Lerasium: Gives someone a permanent connection to Preservation, makes them a (very powerful) Mistborn. There is currently one "bead" of this, enough to make someone a Mistborn at the Lord Ruler's strength. (It could totally be split, though.) He hasn't used it.


Hemalurgy

Hemalurgy is powered by Ruin. The way it works is, you take a spike that has killed someone and stick it in yourself and depending on which of those metals it's made of and where you stick it you get some attribute of theirs added to yours. Everyone has what is metaphorically described as a "Spiritweb." Hemalurgy is tearing off a piece of their web and stapling it onto yours. This does not technically have to be fatal, but you just ripped off a piece of their soul what do you think's going to happen.

You can steal the following: Speed, strength, senses, and any Allomantic or Feruchemical ability. Only one attribute can be stolen per person killed, you only get a fraction of what they had, and you have to know what spikes to put where. A spike can be anything made of a relevant metal, but when the Lord Ruler's people do it they use actual spikes.
An atium spike can steal anything stealable. You also get a larger fraction of what you're stealing if you use an atium spike. The author has stated that anything that's a part of someone's soul is stealable. The things above are just what's known. A witch or ingot power might be stealable; a cape power isn't.

Ruin can talk to people with Hemalurgic spikes. The Lord Ruler does not know this. It can imitate your mental model of someone else, or even your own internal monologue. This is why Rashek became gradually more evil. By the time the first novel starts, he's been through 1023 years of that and is all "BOW BEFORE YOUR GOD" and "let the executions begin." It's gradual but accelerating: The more spikes it seems like a good idea to take, the more influence Ruin gets.

Inquisitors are people who have been given loads and loads of spikes. So many that their own Spiritweb is falling apart. There's a particular spike that holds their soul together; you take that out and they die of death. Fatally. Ruin has an awful lot of control over them, but is saving that as an ace up its sleeve insofar as a disembodied god has sleeves.

If you tried using Hemalurgy in a different universe, Ruin wouldn't be around to attach the piece of soul to the spike. If you have a charged spike, I see no reason it can't attach to you, but it hasn't come up yet.

Feruchemy

Allomancy is of Preservation. You get out more in magic than you put in in metal. Hemalurgy is of Ruin. You get a fraction of what you took from someone else, also you killed them what in the world made that seem like a good idea. Feruchemy is of awesome. You store an attribute (listed below) when you don't need it, and then have extra for when you do. The power being used comes from the Feruchemist themselves, and that's my admittedly flimsy justification for why it works off-world. (Canonically, it's powered by equal amounts Preservation and Ruin. Oops. But I like the result, so I'm keeping it.) A piece of metal in which a Feruchemist stores stuff is called a metalmind. If it's pewter it's a pewtermind, and so forth. There are probably good historical reasons for this, but it sure sounds silly. There is an upper limit to how much Stuff can fit in a metalmind, the bigger the metalmind the more it can store, and the upper limit is high enough that it basically never matters. I mention it only for completeness.

The metals and what they do:
Pewter: Strength. Fill a pewtermind (i.e., store strength) and you become weaker and scrawnier. Stop filling it and you go back to normal. Draw on it and you become stronger. Unlike Allomantic pewter, this physically changes your size and does not affect dexterity or healing. Just muscle mass. It is recommended that you wear stretchy purple pants.
Tin: Stores senses. Unlike Allomantic tin, you can store/retrieve each sense separately. Also, it does not allow you to easily see through Scadrial's mists. Those are a special Preservation thing. And Feruchemical tin conveniently lets your vision zoom in on things. It's basically just better than Allomantic tin.
Iron: Store/retrieve density. Useful for messing with inertia, terminal velocity, or weight. Changing it conserves velocity and not momentum; this is abusable in the usual ways. Also, it plays really nicely with Allomantic steel or iron.
Steel: Store/retrieve physical speed. Banned by the IOC.
Zinc: Mental speed. Bored in class? TIMESKIP! Or, you know, pay extra attention if that's your thing.
Brass: Warmth. Meh, the ability's better to have than not.
Bronze: Wakefulness. The only metalmind that can be filled while sleeping. Is awesome.
Copper: Memories. You store a memory, you forget it; you retrieve it, you remember it.
Gold: Health. Spend enough time as healthy as pre-serum Steve Rogers, you can heal a sucking chest wound when you have to. It'd be really great if you have a naturally high set point for this, even more than most.
Atium: Store youth. Spend a weekend as an octegenarian, extend your life a bit.
Electrum: At-will manic-depressiveness, except you can't take out more of the manic than you put in.

Duralumin: Connection. Other people's friendship and trust. But this goes both ways, so you better not overuse it unless you've got absurd amounts of emotional energy to spread around all those people.
Aluminum: Stores a spiritual sense of identity. I have no idea what this means.
Nicrosil: Stores multiverse-native magic powers.
Chromium: Stores luck. Any details on how this works have been pulled from thin air. I will therefore try to avoid giving details.
Cadmium: Stores breath. Hold your breath for a while, go for the same while without breathing. Or do one epic exhale if for some reason you want to.
Bendalloy: Stores nutritional energy. Food? No thanks, I went to a buffet last week. They kicked me out eventually, but I'm good for a month or so.
lerasium: I don't think anyone knows what this does. Well, the Lord Ruler should, seeing as he has some, but please don't make me make something up.


Compounding

The Lord Ruler has stupidly high amounts of everything that can be stored. It's not just because he's had centuries to save up.

Suppose you're both a Coinshot (Misting who can burn steel) and also a Steelrunner (Ferring who can store speed in steel). You slow down a little to put a bit of speed in a piece of steel. Swallow the steelmind and burn it. There's a thing steel usually does when you burn it, but you've basically fooled the magic system into thinking this is a completely different metal. A metal that does not in fact exist, but the universe thinks it has the Allomantic power of what Feruchemical steel usually does. In other words, burning it releases speed. But since Allomancy gives you more than you put in, you get several times the speed. (How many times depends on how powerful of an Allomancer you are. I'd bet a small amount of good money that for the Lord Ruler or another Mistborn who got their powers directly from lerasium it's sixteen times.) If you don't want to use this shiny new speed immediately, you can put it in another steelmind. You can then burn that if you please, and increase exponentially. Bwa. Ha. Ha.

Since the Lord Ruler is both a Mistborn and a full Feruchemist, he can do this with every metal. So long as he has a supply of the metals (and is on Scadrial), he essentially will not run out of anything Feruchemy can store. (The technical exception is age, since the amount of stored youth it takes to bring him down to the age he looks keeps increasing. Eventually this will catch up to him, but he has millennia.)

A note on Compounding copper: The author has been asked what this does, and his answer was "read and find out." The thing to be read does not currently exist. My answer for sandbox purposes is that you get the memory back at however many times the strength. Like "I've read that" versus "I've read that a few times." The future canon answer will probably be more impressive than this.

[Kappa]

I appreciate this post immensely.

[jalapeno_dude]

Thanks for this! Both useful and great fun to read.

[Marri]

I bow to your victory! :D

Thing I didn't see I will now ramble about:

Peoples of Scadrial: There are a couple kinds of people floating around, as it happens. There did not used to be. This is, as usual, all Rashek's fault. After he made the planet horrible and unlivable, people needed modifying. There's now the following types:

Nobles: Nobles were created from Rashek's bestest friends and allies in his whole taking-over-the-world bit. Nobles are taller, stronger, more intelligent, but less fertile than they used to be. The original nobles were given Lerasium and therefore become Mistborn Allomancers, capable of burning all the metals. The ability has, more or less, continued through the generations, but it's becoming diluted; thus, Mistings.

Skaa: Skaa are the peasant class, or "everyone else". They are shorter, stockier, hardier, and more fertile. They're not as intelligent, are kept basically as slaves and are by and large poor, uneducated and miserable. There has been interbreeding with nobles over the years so the differences are thinning out, but they're there.

Terrismen: The people of Terris are special; they're the ones who can do Feruchemy. They're also a rather scholarly bunch and treasure knowledge; this is how they found out that Alendi was being tricked by Ruin and told Rashek to stop him. This all makes them an enormous threat to Rashek, and so he took steps. Those Terrismen that remained are mostly in hiding, and are frequently kept as eunuchs, but they do still exist and they do still, very rarely, turn up new Feruchemists.

Mistwraiths: About the 'taking steps' mentioned: Rashek took every Terrisman who was a Worldbringer (their spiritual leaders and keepers of knowledge, basically) or who was a Feruchemist and turned them into mistwraiths, which are basically amorphous horror blobs capable of absorbing people. They hang out in the mists and generally kill and terrorize people, and are not intelligent.

Kandra: Turns out, the intersection of "Terrismen threats to Rashek" and "people Rashek likes" was not zero, seeing as Rashek himself was from Terris. So for his friends, they got a slightly better deal than mistwraiths. In exchange for their Feruchemy and their humanity, they get immortality. What Rashek did was take their mistwraith forms and give them sentience with Hemalurgic spikes. They are shapeshifters and imitators, but require bones to form around; when not imitating humans, they take what they call True Form, with translucent skin and a false human-like bone structure made by kandra artisans, generally out of quartz. They are, as Rashek promised, immortal; the only thing that can really harm them is acid or another kandra. They do not reproduce as such, but rather the Lord Ruler gives them a certain number of new spikes every century to use to turn mistwraiths into new kandra. Because they were made from mistwraiths and not humans, they're a bit more independent and a bit less suspectible to Ruin than other Hemalurgy users. If their spikes are removed, they revert back to mistwraith form. Emotional Allomancy can be used to take mental control of a kandra.

Koloss: Koloss are scary buggers. They are created by sticking spikes through the hearts of four people, and then sticking those spikes into a fifth person, who becomes a koloss. Koloss grow continuously until they reach about 12 feet, at which point their heart gives out and they die. They do not grow skin, so 'baby' koloss have baggy-looking skin and 'adult' koloss have stretched-looking skin. They are not very intelligent, but are still at least faintly sentient and reasoning. They are superhumanly large and strong and make up the Lord Ruler's non-magical army/enforcement. Since they're made from Hemalurgic spikes, they're subject to control by Ruin, and like kandra they can be controlled with emotional Allomancy.

[Kappa]

What would happen if you were to burn a Hemalurgic spike? The wiki says something about splicing spiritual DNA. Is it another case of "don't make me make something up"?

[Marri]

All the author would say is that "that would have some very strange consequences".

[Bluelantern]

What would happen if you were to burn a Hemalurgic spike? The wiki says something about splicing spiritual DNA. Is it another case of "don't make me make something up"?

It might not work because they are based on opposing arts?

I asked a similarly odd concept: a lesarium spike does what?

[Nemo]

The information—or lack of it—is based on stuff the author said in interviews, quoted here.

Question 71 confirms that a lerasium spike does do a thing. It does Feruchemy, too. He didn't say what it does, though, in either case.

On the same page, three people asked what happens if you burn a spike.

Question one: You can only burn a Hemalurgic spike if you're the person it stabbed.
Question two: It splices your spiritual DNA to whoever's is in the spike. (This is where the very strange consequences come in.)
Question three: Not telling.


I would like to go on the record as saying the following: Aargh.

[Kappa]

Your aargh is noted.

[Bluelantern]

aargh double noted.

It is just me or "It splices your spiritual DNA to whoever's is in the spike" doesn't sound like an answer?