Marsh

[Windrunner]

One of the things that I've been wondering since I found out that Marsh was now immortal, thanks to the same trick the Lord Ruler used, is how? As I understand it, the Lord Ruler would fill an atiummind with youth, then burn it with Allomancy creating a new metal that gave him a larger amount of youth than he put in. Then he would store all the new age again and live off of that. So in order for Marsh to perform the same trick he would have to be able to both burn and store Atium. My question is why would Marsh have a Hemalurgic spike to give him the ability to store age? The Lord Ruler certainly didn't give it to him because he wouldn't't want another immortal. Ruin planned on destroying the world, so he wouldn't have bothered giving Marsh the ability to store Atium if he just planned on killing him. So then, how did Marsh end up with the ability to store Atium?

The only possibility I have been able to come up with is that maybe Ruin gave it to Marsh as a sort of fail-safe. Ruin might have been worried that Vin would suceed in thwarting his plan for the apocalypse, so he wanted at least one immortal servant to help him in case he had to start again. Does anybody have any better ideas than this one, or maybe an explanation from Brandon? To me at least this idea seems a little weak so I would welcome any clarity.

[Yados]

This bugged me too!

I was just thinking about it.

Plus, wouldn't he need a constant supply of atium to keep it up? Even if Marsh is able to make himself practically immortal with the Lord Ruler's trick, he still has all of the Lord Ruler's weaknesses.

He needs a constant supply of atium to burn. The Lord Ruler solved this by creating a whole economy based on the supply of the metal he needed to stay alive (did he know it was Ruin's body? He must have because of all the atium he had stored up in HoA.) Marsh doesn't have this luxury. Unless he lives in the Pits of Hathsin, he's going to have to deal with the fact that atium is a super-ultra-luxury.

He needs to constantly keep contact with that atium or else he'll just age to death in moments like how the Lord Ruler did at the end of The Final Empire.

Do we even know the status of atium post Hero of Ages? Mining it seemed to be an inherently cruel and degrading practice. Why would they keep it going.

tl;dr the Lord Ruler's Trick is the "bad" version of immortality as seen in Tangled. Really complicated and labor intensive and the moment you aren't in contact with your power source you're done.

Are we sure that Marsh is alive and well in the next Mistborn trilogy?

The caveat of course being that I am not versed in Mistborn speculation/theorizing. Just freestyling.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Yados

[Sunblesser]

well, i can answer one question at least. marsh's atium comes from the kandra at the end of HoA who is trying to buy supplies with it (stupid seconds). he burns a little of it during his fight with elend, and he tells elend he got it from a kandra. not sure how much atium that was, but if marsh does have a way of doing the immortality trick, it's plausible that he had enough to survive the three hundred years until AoL.

i think at one point, marsh states that he'd been given at least twenty new spikes, which i take to mean twenty spikes on top of the ones regular inquisitors got, which is enough spikes to have nearly all the powers, i should think.

[Chaos]

I've wondered this, too, and I honestly can't think of a good reason why he would have Feruchemical age.

[Thor]

I've wondered this, too, and I honestly can't think of a good reason why he would have Feruchemical age.

One of the other things about Marsh that has bugged me...other reasons that are related to this are in TLR Allomantic strength thread, though they are in a later post on that thread (mainly the reasoning behind Marsh getting the largest number of spikes, which makes very little sense if an Inquisitor that was originally a MB is alive.)

Another problem with Marsh having the ability of Feruchemical age is that it would require a spike of a metal that steals the Feruchemical Atium power. This is, presumably, Atium/Lerasium (since Atium falls under the "God metal" tab and, logically, would require another God metal to steal it.) The problem that arises from this fact is due to the rarity of Atium/Lerasium (or even lack thereof) during the timeframe where Marsh/Ruin would have been able to steal Feruchemical age (between the end of WoA and HoA.) If you even can make a Hemalurgic spike out of Lerasium, assuming you had enough to fashion a spike.

Another idea that stems from the above: Inquisitors have a spike that grants them the ability to store Feruchemical age like TLR but they can't get nearly the return from burning a storage than TLR can, limiting their agelessness to a few centuries (which is another way to explain their extended lifespans, in addition to the change in their anatomy.) The older you are, the more age you would need to tap to seem the same age, putting a cap on the maximum age you can reach that is proportional to your Allomantic strength. For TLR this cap might be in the thousands or even millions of years, while Inquisitors, who aren't as strong as TLR in Allomancy, and aren't very efficient with Feruchemy due to Hemalurgy being the source of their Feruchemy, can only get a much smaller boost from burning a storage, limiting their maximum age to a few centuries. I came up with the idea of requiring an ever increasing amount of Atium to stay immortal to explain the lack of Atium in the Final Empire, since I hypothesized that TLR burned most of it away to stay young, which was debunked during the the end of HoA (though it is still possible for this idea to be true, it obviously takes less Atium than I originally thought, since there is an incredibly large amount of Atium in the Trust.)

A decent (but very fallible) idea that I have considered is that every additional spike one has gives a boost to the spike's related magical power (every aspect of the power, not just the spike's stolen attribute: Under this idea a Steel spike that stole Allomantic Pewter would grant a very small boost to all of the host's Allomancy, in addition to a much larger boost to Pewter), slight but noticable (veeerrrryyy sketchy, but why not? The Allomantic strength of someone is based on their connection to Preservation, IIRC, so each spike should add to that connection, even if it is corrupted by Hemalurgy.) An example that demonstrates this idea:

A Pewterarm is turned into an Inquisitor by the "normal method." For this example note that a spike grants a % of a normal power due to the decay that naturally occurs with Hemalurgy. Additionally, assume that a "normal" MB/Misting has a value of 100 and any Hemalurgic spike that is used to kill someone and enter a host with very little time between the two, ala what Marsh describes/does at the beginning of HoA, has a value very close to 100 (in this case 95).

"Standard Model"

Base strengths for each Metal (Spikes given contained the powers of Pewter, Tin, Steel, Iron, Brass, Zinc, Copper, Bronze and possibly Atium):

Pewter: Was at 100, is now at 195 (+95 from spike and 100 base)

T/S/I/Ba/Z/C/Bo/(A): Was at 0, is now at 95 (+95 from spike)

"My model"

As above but with an extra power boost due to the theory; boost is an arbitrary value of +1 per spike other than the one that granted the ability (it is much smaller than the boost given by the spike of the intended ability, but enough to make a difference, especially if one increases the boost to a higher number than +1):

Pewter: was at 100, is now at 202(203) (100 base, +95 from spike, +1 for each additional spike = +7(+8))

T/S/I/Ba/Z/C/Bo/(A): Was at 0, is now at 102(103) (+95 from spike, +7(+8) from extra spikes)

The "standard model" yields an Inquisitor that is weaker than a comparable Mistborn (except in Pewter.) The only thing it has going for it is the spookiness of the spikes and its increased ability in Pewter. If we do an arbitrary power boost ("My model") for each spike (+1 in the above example) then the Inquisitor is (very) slightly stronger than a comparable MB and incredibly stronger in the power it had as a Misting, which follows the observed reality of TFE.

As a final idea, Sazed grants Marsh the ability to store age or makes a Hemalurgic spike and gives it to Marsh. This idea is even more unlikely than the others but it is plausible. Who else would be more trustworthy with immortality than Marsh? This was a reason why I thought Marsh, as an Inquisitor, couldn't stay alive long enough to still be around during AoL. Other factors:

Marsh could have died during the end of the world (debunked).

If Marsh was conscious when Vin and Ruin killed each other, or even if he regained consciousness after Sazed Ascended but Sazed wasn't able to talk to him quickly enough, Marsh would have almost certainty committed suicide as soon as he realized that Ruin was not controlling him.

If he didn't die and Sazed could keep him alive while he took out his spikes then Sazed could have made him a full MB, like Spook, and added Feruchemy on top of that.

If he didn't die and had a choice in staying or going, who deserves a rest (to quote Sazed on Vin and Elend) more than Marsh!?! Though Marsh might be willing to stay an Inquisitor to work as an avatar/guardian of Scadrial for Sazed (This being the only way that I can see for Marsh to still be an Inquisitor during the events of AoL.)

They aren't the greatest ideas, but at least it's something. Also, it is waaaayyyy to late... :/

[lordofsoup]

Im glad somebody brought up Sazed. It makes sense that he would have at least spoken to Marsh, he did the same for Vin and Elend. The real question is could he survive long enough to get underground. My guess is that he could. With his combination of allomantic and feruchemical powers, speed, strength, healing, I think he could have gotten a fair distance between the time that he killed Elend and the world burned. It makes sense that Sazed would have healed him, or at least done something to him. He healed Demoux, Spook, probably others too. I doubt that the only remaining inquisitor would escape his notice.

[Adrienne]

I doubt that the only remaining inquisitor would escape his notice.

It doesn't make logical sense. That being said this is a fantasy novel. I'm sure we will see Marsh on the 4th. Maybe we'll get a better picture there.

[darniil]

We've speculated on here before that iron feruchemy probably grants a tiny bit of (pewter-)strength to compensate for the added weight, but what about a gold spike?

What is aging (in the sense of progressing towards death by old age)? A steady degradation of the body. What does gold do? It heals.

It's a stretch, I admit, but it just jumped into my head as I read this thread, so I thought I'd bring it up.

[Zas678]

Let's see here. Is Marsh in the next novel? Well...

AoL Intro

“I have seen God, lawkeeper,” Tan whispered. Where was he? “I have seen Death himself, with the nails in his eyes. I have seen the Survivor, who is life.”

(Note- TenSoon could still be around, and he still has Kelsier's bones. Why are they meeting? No idea.)

HoA Q&A

2) Marsh is alive. I changed this from when I talked to Ookla. I realized some things about his use of Allomancy that would allow him to survive. Actually, he is immortal. He can pull off the same Allomancy/Feruchemy trick that the Lord Ruler did. (And he knows it too, since he was there when Sazed explained how it was done in Book One.) He's actually the only living person who actually knows this trick for certain. (Though there's a chance that Spook, Ham and Breeze heard about it from Vin and the others.) So yes, if there were another series, Marsh would make an appearance.

1. Marsh has the bag of Atium that KanPaar sent to be sold, as well as several nuggets in his stomach. So, I guess 'immortal' is the wrong phrase. He's got the only remaining atium in the world and can keep himself around for a long, long while--but he WILL eventually run out. Unless Sazed does something.

B&N Q&A

As for Marsh, he's got a whole bag of atium (taken off of the Kandra who was going to try to sell it.) So he's all right for quite a while. A small bead used right can reverse age someone back to their childhood.

As for the why? I don't know. Maybe Sazed granted it to him. Or maybe Ruin wanted a minion. Or he wanted to punish some Feruchemist, and all the other Inquisitors around had all the other useful Feruchemist powers.

[Unworldly]

1. Marsh has the bag of Atium that KanPaar sent to be sold, as well as several nuggets in his stomach. So, I guess 'immortal' is the wrong phrase. He's got the only remaining atium in the world and can keep himself around for a long, long while--but he WILL eventually run out. Unless Sazed does something.

Does anyone else think Brandon might be giving us a bit of hint here? (The bolded words, I mean). I think that Sazed would be perfectly happy to assist Marsh in living forever, if that is what Marsh wants to do. For Sazed, it means he has a consistent 'frame-of-reference' for himself.

...brainwave: We've seen that holding Shards eventually twists the mind holding them towards the Shard's intent - Ati was apparently not such a bad guy, but thousands of years holding Ruin turned him into what Ruin was by the time we met him.

There have been repeated discussions about what happens to Sazed's mind, holding two Shards... I wonder if it's easier for him to remain "Sazed" rather than a 50-50 split of Ruin and Preservation, when Marsh is still around? I mean, Sazed can watch whatever Marsh is up to, and remember back to before he 'ascended' as it were. I wonder if this helps him stay "Sazed" instead of being 'transformed' into the embodiment of his Shards' intents.

[Silus - Shard of Flame]

Probably couldn't hurt. I could totally see him doing that.

[darniil]

Ha. Marsh is Sazed's avatar.

[Alliare]

As for how Marsh would have gained that particular Hemalurgical ability of storing age, my guess is an Atium spike. I mean, we know that in-world people believe that Atium spikes can only steal Allomantic temporal powers, but Brandon has already said that it can actually steal any power if placed properly. I don't think the Lord Ruler, or the Steel Inquisitors, would have wanted to create an immortal voluntarily, but I believe they could have made some kind of mistake when placing a spike, or maybe they were just experimenting. Not even Ruin can control luck.

[Thor]

Ha. Marsh is Sazed's avatar.

Makes sense, yes? If you want to get into weird territory: Sazed can take control of Marsh if he feels like it! (Assuming Marsh is still an Inquisitor.) That is definitely an avatar-like characteristic! (Either from the movie by James Cameron or the more traditional, fantasy deity's projection of self on a material plane.)

As for how Marsh would have gained that particular Hemalurgical ability of storing age, my guess is an Atium spike. I mean, we know that in-world people believe that Atium spikes can only steal Allomantic temporal powers, but Brandon has already said that it can actually steal any power if placed properly. I don't think the Lord Ruler, or the Steel Inquisitors, would have wanted to create an immortal voluntarily, but I believe they could have made some kind of mistake when placing a spike, or maybe they were just experimenting. Not even Ruin can control luck.

While I mostly agree with the method of gaining the ability to use Feruchemical Atium (the only other real option being Sazed turning Marsh into a full Feruchemist or Atium Ferring, which is even less likely than Marsh getting an Atium spike for Age), we don't know why Ruin/TLR would give an Inquisitor the ability to store age, especially if it takes an Atium spike, since there are much better uses for the Atium during the respective time frames. The mistake theory falls short because they would have tested Marsh to see if he could burn Atium after being spiked, to make sure that the spike was in the proper place, and you would need to kill a Feruchemist, not an Allomancer, to steal the Atium ability that we are talking about.

Using an Atium spike to steal the ability to burn Atium as an Allomancer is much stronger than being able to use Feruchemical age; this being a justification for not giving an Inquisitor Feruchemical age during the time of TLR (assumming that Inquisitors don't need TLRs trick to live for a few centuries; they do have a very odd anatomy.) And during Ruin's "End of the World" party it would be superior for an Atium spike to be used by one of the few Inquisitors that could burn Atium, instead of giving the ability to store age to an Inquisitor, especially when Ruin believes (He would have been correct if it weren't for those meddlesome kids and their dog/kandra!) that the world will be over within a year, at the most.

Edited October 22, 2011 by Thor

[firstRainbowRose]

I remembered to ask Brandon about this today (yay for remembering) and the conversation when similar to:

me: So, people on the forums have pointed out .... blah blah Marsh does both

Brandon: That's a very excellent question. He would need to do both in order to do both burn and store atium to do the same trick like he does.

So he didn't say HOW Marsh got the ability, but he did confirm that Marsh would need to be able to do both, and that he does do the trick.

[Windrunner]

I remembered to ask Brandon about this today (yay for remembering) and the conversation when similar to:

me: So, people on the forums have pointed out .... blah blah Marsh does both

Brandon: That's a very excellent question. He would need to do both in order to do both burn and store atium to do the same trick like he does.

So he didn't say HOW Marsh got the ability, but he did confirm that Marsh would need to be able to do both, and that he does do the trick.

Yes! Thank you for asking him this. I was worried that maybe this was a plot hole or something, and either Brandon would have to contrive some solution afterward, or he would have to cut Marsh from future books. Since he kind of side stepped saying how Marsh got his Feruchemical Age storing abilities I think there is something interesting going on here. I like the idea that Sazed is keeping him alive the best.

[ulyssessword]

I think that Marsh (instead of a Mistborn) could have been chosen as Ruin's favourite Inquisitor for a few reasons:

1. He helped bring down the Lord Ruler, and this is his reward.

He was instrumental in the plan to bring down the Lord Ruler by infiltrating the Ministry, killing the other Inquisitors, and directly fighting against him. This is very good from Ruin's point of view, as TLR needed to die for Ruin to be freed.

2. His psychology lines up very closely with Ruin's intent.

He hates the obligators with a strong passion, and killed the Inquisitors before attacking the Lord Ruler. These seem like traits/actions that Ruin would like.

3. He has a weaker connection to Preservation than a Mistborn Inquisitor does.

Being Mistborn implies a much stronger bond to Preservation than being a Misting, and Ruin would presumably not like someone who is strongly linked to his polar opposite.

[Ari]

It's entirely possible that atium use is an Allomantic mental ability (if it's a temporal ability, that would probably be harder to accidentally bind, seeing as nobody in the FE knew which metals stole temporal allomancy) and a Feruchemical physical ability, and simply doesn't need an atium spike. I can definitely see Ruin giving Marsh the Allomancy to burn atium, and it's always possible that through simple error he picked up Feruchemical atium through someone using the wrong bind point.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Ari

[Thor]

It's entirely possible that atium use is an Allomantic mental ability (if it's a temporal ability, that would probably be harder to accidentally bind, seeing as nobody in the FE knew which metals stole temporal allomancy) and a Feruchemical physical ability, and simply doesn't need an atium spike. I can definitely see Ruin giving Marsh the Allomancy to burn atium, and it's always possible that through simple error he picked up Feruchemical atium through someone using the wrong bind point.

I think that is has been confirmed that Atium, as a god metal, isn't associated with the normal groupings for either Feruchemy or Allomancy (or even Hemalurgy), and has its own rules for the three Metallic Arts. If Ruin gave Marsh abilities, then he definitely didn't miss (he is the one responsible for its existence, after all.) And I don't really see a reason for TLR giving any Inquisitor Feruchemical Age, except under conditions I've already listed:

Another idea that stems from the above: Inquisitors have a spike that grants them the ability to store Feruchemical age like TLR but they can't get nearly the return from burning a storage than TLR can, limiting their agelessness to a few centuries (which is another way to explain their extended lifespans, in addition to the change in their anatomy.) The older you are, the more age you would need to tap to seem the same age, putting a cap on the maximum age you can reach that is proportional to your Allomantic strength. For TLR this cap might be in the thousands or even millions of years, while Inquisitors, who aren't as strong as TLR in Allomancy, and aren't very efficient with Feruchemy due to Hemalurgy being the source of their Feruchemy, can only get a much smaller boost from burning a storage, limiting their maximum age to a few centuries. *snip, as the rest of the paragraph is not important for the current discussion*

Also, to grant the Feruchemical power of Age, a spike must be used to kill a Feruchemist (with the right metal spike), making it almost impossible to "accidentally" give Feruchemical Age with a spike that killed an Allomancer, debunking that part of the theory.

[Wispsy]

Don't quite a few inquisitors have the ability to burn atium anyway? It's not so big a stretch that marsh with over 20 spikes happened to pick up feruchemical atium too?

[darniil]

Don't quite a few inquisitors have the ability to burn atium anyway? It's not so big a stretch that marsh with over 20 spikes happened to pick up feruchemical atium too?

Which in turn makes me wonder if one could make a hemalurgical spike from an inquisitor. There'd probably be additional decay, so it wouldn't be worth the effort.

[Catalyst21]

Which in turn makes me wonder if one could make a hemalurgical spike from an inquisitor. There'd probably be additional decay, so it wouldn't be worth the effort.

[logic]

My answer for that would be yes, you could make a spike from them for any naturally occurring power they had. However, you could not use a spike to steal a power they had from a spike, its not theirs power, it is the spikes. If you wanted to do that you'd just steal the spike.

[/logic]

[prehistoricman]

If the inquisitor was originally a misting (as I believe all were), then you could make a spike out of the inquisitor.

[darniil]

If you wanted to do that you'd just steal the spike.

Ah, right. That makes sense. And the charge would decay a bit, once outside of a body, but if one were quick, an inquisitor could get a new power simply by stealing a spike from another inquisitor.

Hmm. It's mentioned that a hemalurgic spike outside of a body will lose its charge to a decay, something that reminded me of the decay of a radioactive metal, but what about a spike within a corpse? Like, the spikes in the inquisitor that Kelsier killed - would those spikes retain their charges as long as they were within the body, or would they decay quicker in a corpse than they would in a living body?

[Catalyst21]

Ah, right. That makes sense. And the charge would decay a bit, once outside of a body, but if one were quick, an inquisitor could get a new power simply by stealing a spike from another inquisitor.

Hmm. It's mentioned that a hemalurgic spike outside of a body will lose its charge to a decay, something that reminded me of the decay of a radioactive metal, but what about a spike within a corpse? Like, the spikes in the inquisitor that Kelsier killed - would those spikes retain their charges as long as they were within the body, or would they decay quicker in a corpse than they would in a living body?

The epigraphs to this chapter and the ones around it talk about Hemalurgy. I'm feeling that by now, you've figured out what it does. You use a spike on an Allomancer or a Feruchemist, killing them and charging that spike with power. Then you drive that spike into someone else, and they gain that same power. (Though they get a little bit less than the person who died. In some cases, if the spike sits outside of a body for a long time, it can lose a lot of its potency.)

That was done in book 3 (Chapter Thirty-Seven) by the koloss, they would take the spikes from dead koloss and reuse them to make new koloss. Granted their spikes did not to grant Allo/Fero power, but to create new koloss, through imbuing them with more (and twisted) power of preservation.

As I was toying with how this would work, I realized that I needed to work the kandra and the koloss into this as well. Only, it was ridiculous to assume that the Lord Ruler would kill Allomancers to make koloss. There weren't enough Allomancers, for one thing—plus it would be foolish to lose the power of an Allomancer to gain an inferior tool in a koloss.

So that meant koloss had to be made out of regular people, not Allomancers or Feruchemists. Suddenly I had another set of abilities that Hemalurgy had to be able to steal—the basic pieces of Preservation inside the souls of all men.

Hence the decision that where the spike was placed in the receiver, and how it was used to kill a person, influenced how the power was shaped. Now a pewter spike could steal any of a number of powers, based on how it was used. And regular people could be used instead of Allomancers—however, when that happened, the receiver was twisted much more than if an Allomantically charged spike or a Feruchemically charged spike was used.

My rationale for this is that if the spike is pulling out the pure power of Preservation—part of the power of all creation—and twisting it, it would change the body of the recipient greatly. Twisting them through use of the twisted power.