[GavinWheeler]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
If something has become known... then before it was unknown.

Faulty logic, as there are other possibilities - it may well simply not have existed before it suddenly both came into existence and became known. To talk about an "unknown nonexistent object" is just a problem of sloppy language. Something that does not exist has no qualities.

The events make the magic sites known.

And brings them into existence, in reality.

In-game, the rationalisation may be that they existed and have just been found, but out-of-game, in reality, the sites did not exist before the random event.

example:
there are likely unknown substances or metals which will be eventually be created... because they don't exist now makes them unknown.

Many elements were 'known', theoretically, long before we could make them. We can even work out their properties before making them. If they have short halflives, we continue to know about them even after the synthetic sample has ceased to exist.

But you are confusing a Category of things, such as atoms of the element X, with a specific example of that Category, such as a handful of such atoms created in a collision chamber. Before the handful was created, we knew about the possibility of X atoms existing, how to make them, when we would bang together other atoms to try to make them, and what their properties would be when they were made. But it would be silly to talk about there being a handful of nonexistent (known or unknown) X atoms floating around in the chamber waiting to 'turn into' known existing atoms.

And it doesn't matter. If there were (only) nonexistent copper mines (known or unknown) before the event and no existing ones, then no copper mines existed before the event, so there were no (known or unknown) copper mines before the event. QED.

PS: It is possible for a gold/copper/diamond deposit to suddenly come into existence in your back yard, especially if you live somewhere geologically exciting like Hawaii. But it is probably not something you would want to happen while you are anywhere in the vicinity. Although if you keep quibbling like this, others here may wish you to be!