"Upending an Entire Mercantile Ecosystem"

[+Extesian]

52 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a WoB or something in the annotations that said that the black lake was moved underground, as in covered up, by Rashek or something similar which caused Atium geodes to form in the first place? I agree that that means the geodes themselves form the perpendicularity, it's still a lot of investiture concentrated in a relatively small area. 

 

This 'un though it doesn't add causing the geodes.

Quote

VEGASDEV (16 OCTOBER 2008)

The other lake in Alendi's bumps?

BRANDON SANDERSON (17 OCTOBER 2008)

A manifestation of Ruin's gathered consciousness, much like the dark mists in book two. The lake was still around in Vin's era, but had been moved under ground. (Note that the Well is a very similar manifestation. You've also seen one other manifestation like 

Source

 

[Samaldin]

Regarding the slave trade, wasn´t it mentioned that the bodies of the Skaa were returned after they died in the Pits so that there was no doubt that they´re dead? Officially i think it was because they wanted to show the pits are the ultimate prison and noone could escape (until Kelsier came along), the real reason was probably that TLR didn´t want to risk the knowledge of where Atium comes from to get out there. If enough Skaa disapeared to make the slave trade lucrative i think TLR would have gotten VERY curious about that and a "standard" worldhopper probably wouldn´t survive long if TLR became curious.

I think it was basicly normal trade of luxurious items, since every shardworld is self-sustaining and thus have no need for basic off-world material, and those items most likely have a nice weight/size to value ratio so it´s not to difficult to get them past the guards while still making a decent profit.

[Runyan Firetree]

Pigs and their byproducts may have been one of the initial interplanetary trade goods. In this thread from last year, Sharder ecohansen points out that several shard worlds have pigs, even in places where you wouldn't expect such as outside of Shinovar on Roshar.  Furthermore, we have WoB's indicating that pigs exist on Yolen and that Hoid loves bacon; this lead to my personal favorite bit of head-canon that Hoid loves bacon so much that he facilitated bringing pigs from Yolen to other shard worlds post-shattering in order to always have access to one of his favorite foods.

[The One Who Connects]

13 hours ago, Ciridae said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a WoB or something in the annotations that said that the black lake was moved underground, as in covered up, by Rashek or something similar which caused Atium geodes to form in the first place? I agree that that means the geodes themselves form the perpendicularity, it's still a lot of investiture concentrated in a relatively small area. 

The WoB provided by Extesian doesn't mention the Geodes, so I feel that I can quote myself from a different thread again:

On 4/21/2017 at 0:30 PM, The One Who Connects said:

It already existed, but TLR changed the landscape, burying Ruin's Pool and building a fortress above the Well. As a side effect (most likely), the Atium began to grow above the Pool, and TLR took full advantage of that once he found out what Atium did. Thus; the Pits came to be.

Edit: Odds are he probably collapsed whatever cave the Atium was previously growing in while terraforming, so it picked the next closest open area to continue growing. (Magic, much like life, will find a way)

---

18 hours ago, Calderis said:

Edit: I mean to say that the geodes provided a sort of bubble of thinning between the realms. So an alternative pathway could lead inside the bubble without actually being accessible from the Pits themselves. 

As much as I don't the idea of something other than the pool itself being the Perpendicularity entry, this is the only explanation I would accept as reasoning for why it isn't. The majority of the Shardic essence is the actual Pool, but the elevated geodes raise the.. "center of gravity" so to speak. A worldhopper would perhaps emerge in a cave say 15ft above the pool. With the geodes destroyed, the center becomes the pool again, which is buried and a death trap.

[Jace21]

I think we can probably rule out the southern continent as a source of trade goods. Since there were no shardpools in the southern continent IIRC our merchant worldhopper would have needed to cross the sea when the temperatures at the equator were so high that the oceans were literally boiling.

Possible, but I doubt enough people have the desire or the means to do so often enough for it to be classed as its own mercantile system.

Gemstones are a possibility though, good call.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Jace21

[Calderis]

1 minute ago, FiveLate said:

I was thinking that the Lord Ruler might have had something set up with the Southern Continent since he was the only one who knew about it and would have 0 problems getting there.

It seems like despite his abilities, the trip would take a lot of metal. I always imagined the Southerners were set up as a control group to the experiment of The Final Empire, and that he was going to check on them when the Well refilled, but was otherwise uninvolved. 

[Jace21]

I believe Kelsier was only ever recognised as the Lord Ruler by Northeners.

And even that was purely based on the fact he told the Southerners that he had been King and God to the people in the North.

I can't think of anything in the books that suggests the southerners had any contact with Rashek.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Jace21

[Oversleep]

On 25.05.2017 at 2:00 AM, Oversleep said:

Now, Scadrial... That one is weird. We know the primary perpendicularity were Pits of Hathsin. But they were kinda full of people searching for atium geodes and then there were guards up there. How did lone worldhoppers get out (except Hoid who can Lightweave) not to mention merchants who would need to carry stuff?

'Turn away! This site is closed and guarded! Who are you and what do you want?'
'I just need to ride in with all my merchandise and carry all of it into the Pits. Don't mind me.'

Now, we know people in House Venture were in on it but it still sounds weird.

... Now I have thought more about this, I see a way. Of course. Ventures. Imagine ten lesser Ventures going on for the inspection of the Pits. Nine come back. The worldhopper goes worldhopping with the merchandise - some fine knives, a few pocketwatches (such an intricate mechanism! Save for Rosharan fabrials, we haven't seen any other machine to show time in cosmere) and stuff like that which is easy to hide under the clothes.

Actually getting in the Pits is not much of the problems - guards are there to stop people from getting out. In that case worldhopper getting to Scadrial waits for his Venture contacts to visit the Pits and then blends in. This still doesn't solve the problem of what he is smuggling on to Scadrial as it has to be somehow concealed.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Oversleep

[The One Who Connects]

25 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

This still doesn't solve the problem of what he is smuggling on to Scadrial as it has to be somehow concealed.

It could potentially have been smuggled into Luthadel in one of the supply shipments from some outer city.. say Urteau (ancestral home of House Venture).

Actually, your theoretical "inspection team" would probably return to Luthadel via canal because non-Allomancer Nobles can be astoundingly lazy, so as long as they came in with a bag of items, they could leave with a bag of items.

[Calderis]

@Oversleep crem, they wouldn't even need to be world hoppers. Share a trade schedule with a world hopperand match their "inspection" schedule to it and they can just meet world hopping merchants at the perpendicularity, trade, and take their haul out when the inspection ends. 

[cometaryorbit]

On 5/26/2017 at 10:48 AM, Calderis said:

It seems like despite his abilities, the trip would take a lot of metal. I always imagined the Southerners were set up as a control group to the experiment of The Final Empire, and that he was going to check on them when the Well refilled, but was otherwise uninvolved. 

I agree that TLR probably wasn't involved in the South.

He'd have had to either use ridiculous amounts of steel to get there before he died of thirst, or use gold to resist the effects.

And that's assuming that there was a land passage all the way there. Steel wouldn't make a boat go faster, and he'd have to sail alone since he couldn't protect others from the heat with brass or from dying of thirst with gold.

And sailing alone across unknown oceans would be dangerous, even for him. Gold's heavy, and it would take a long time to swim back from the middle of the ocean then walk back to the Final Empire. And if he was being scalded by super-hot equatorial seas in the process, he probably couldn't carry enough.

If there was land all the way there, it would have been easy if he had bendalloy to store water and food... but while he probably knew about it (he probably knew all sixteen metals), the Final Empire didn't have the technology to make any.

[Djarskublar]

TLR could have crossed the ocean easy. Just run across, and I'm not even joking. Just tap a moderate amount of steel, and you'll be fine. It would take a while, but it's not like he'd care.

As for the smuggling, why can't the guards be in on it?... You can smuggle whole bargeloads of stuff if the guards look the other way. I mean really... guarding skaa there sounds like a crappy job, I'd probably take bribes as long as I can make sure there isn't any atium trading hands. Who cares if they go in with one thing and come out with another? I mean, if you are running a mercantile company, you could probably get some mercenaries that don't mind beating/killing skaa hired as guards. That is the worst case for the merchants. Best case you just get the guards already in place to let you in/out as long as they get to look through your cargo and make sure you didn't steal any atium. Just give them a bauble or two every time.

[Jace21]

I don't have time to do the maths right now but I feel like running across any body of water big enough to be called and ocean would require more than a moderate amount if speed.

Doesnt really matter though, even if the Lord Ruler could make it to the south I doubt he did it with any regularity, so he could hardly make it part of a mercantile system.

[Calderis]

22 minutes ago, Jace21 said:

I don't have time to do the maths right now but I feel like running across any body of water big enough to be called and ocean would require more than a moderate amount if speed.

Doesnt really matter though, even if the Lord Ruler could make it to the south I doubt he did it with any regularity, so he could hardly make it part of a mercantile system.

TLR can compound steel. He could definitely run on liquid. It would still take a ridiculous amount of steel, golddobto boiling seas, and be completely impractical to carry anything. So your second point stands. 

 

[Jace21]

Oh yeah he could definitely do it, I was more objecting to the word "moderate".

On another note, how many people do we think are needed for it to class as a "whole mercantile system"?

It may be that there were only a few importers/exporters actually involved. Something kind of lightweaving, either natural or technological, could then account for why none of the guards were aware.

[The One Who Connects]

11 hours ago, Jace21 said:

On another note, how many people do we think are needed for it to class as a "whole mercantile system"?

An "entire system" could be quite big, but following Oversleep's pocket-watch suggestion, the vast majority of buyers and sellers could have no knowledge of the deal. Our Venture contacts and merchant Worldhoppers are middlemen, buying things from their own world's merchants, trading them with the other party, and then supplying them to a merchant's stand back at home.

In terms of who needs to know about the multi-planet economy, this could be accomplished with as little as 3 people. Some rich nobleman buys pocket-watches(or something less suspicious) in bulk, ships most of it to the outer dominances to keep up appearances, and a servant(Felt for instance) delivers the rest in a small crate to our errant worldhopper. He/She then sells the crate of exotic goods to a local merchant back on say... Nalthis.

The merchant might question who the worldhopper's mystery supplier is, but as long as they're making big business selling rare goods, they'll overlook it. Same goes for the first seller, attributing it to pompous noble behavior(Dr Strange's watch drawer ) and ignoring it completely when they get handed the big bag of coin as payment.

---

On the other hand, increasing the size might be a good thing. Letting the merchants in on it would bypass the phase where the vendors question the odd/shady purchases. In addition, you could prop up the imperial economy yourself during a house war by having the merchants know that selling to you won't be a lost cause.

As you move to trade with more and more worlds, you will need to trade a larger variety of items. The means more contacts, more vendors, more shipments, more everything. Balance out an increasing demand by increasing the supply, so to speak.

[FiveLate]

Contemplating this a bit more, I can see one trade set that would make perfect sense on both worlds.  

Scadrian metalsmiths are probably the most advanced in the Cosmere outside of Darkeside Taldain.  The need to create very precise alloy percentages for mistborn and mistings would require this.  Rosharan soulcasters can make pure metals from just about anything, but probably lack the knowledge to create precise alloys. Smelting ore down into pure metallic elements is a long energy intensive process.

Brandon has already said that all metals in the Cosmere work the same way....as a "gateway" for Scadrian Allomancer's.  Occams Razor says that all gems in the Cosmere should follow and work in fabrials.

As I pointed out in a previous post, Scadrial's Volcanism should result in a greater concentration of gems present due to the temperature pressure combinations it creates.  We know that TLR had skaa collecting very specific metallic compounds already (aluminum based from volcanic caldera if I remember correctly).  It would be easy to focus some on gem mining, especially since he should have a good idea where veins should be located from his time ascended.

Aluminum being the one metal that Rosharan forecasters probably could not make,works with the skaa specifically mining for it.  Other than that, a trade of gems from Scadrial for pure metals from Roshar makes perfect sense. 

On Nalthis, the Tears of Egli make dyes so perfect that the entire trade of the world revolves around Halloden.  These dyes would make a perfect trade good for this world.  Not sure what an import would be here.  

Self and Taldain are cut off from the Cognative realm, or at least hard to reach.  But, the Ire had to collect the Connection somewhere.  Would the need connection specific to Scadrial, or just generic Connection?  If specific, they might have been part of this trade system as well.

 

[Jace21]

11 minutes ago, FiveLate said:

Aluminum being the one metal that Rosharan forecasters probably could not make,works with the skaa specifically mining for it.

 

I'll reply to the rest later, but just as a note, Rosharan Soulcaster can make aluminium.

Shallan tries to use an aluminium necklace as part of a trade to pay off her brothers gambling debts. It is stated as valuable precisely because on Roshar aluminium can only be made through soulcasting.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Jace21

[Calderis]

5 minutes ago, Jace21 said:

I'll reply to the rest later, but just as a note, Rosharan Soulcaster can make aluminium.

Shallan tries to use an aluminium necklace as part of a trade to pay off her brothers gambling debts. It is stated as valuable precisely because on Roshar aluminium can only be made through soulcasting.

Which, considering the way soulcasting works by what we've seen from Jasnah, the knowledge of Aluminum had to come from somewhere originally. 

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, FiveLate said:

Now is that only that they can make it, or can aluminum be soulcast into other things as well?

Aluminum blocking investiture is a cosmere wide thing, so I'm sure it's the former case. They can make it, but once it's transformed to Aluminum, it won't be effected. 

[The Voiceless One]

In Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, silver is extremely valuable, and the Obligator that imprisons Vin says that it is considered worthless by many allomancers, who would be the main buyers of metal on Scadrail.  This would make exporting silver a good option if it could reach the Forests of Hell and be sold for something worth little there (fruits?) and brought back to Scadrail, where the nobility pays for the trip and the low price of silver with the high price of fruit.

[The Voiceless One]

Would Roshar import silver, or would they export it?

Edited June 6, 2017 by The Voiceless One

[+hwiles]

Let's take a look at what Each planet has that's valuable and what it lacks:

Ashyn:

Pretty sure we don't have cannon information on this planet, correct me if I'm wrong.

Braize:

Inhabited by spren who probably can't leave the system and wouldn't be interested in trading if they could.

First of the Sun:

Doesn't officially make contact with off-worlders until approx. Mistborn era 3-4 and has a super dangerous perpendicularity

Nalthis:

Valuable exports: Breath for longevity, musical/artistic ability, and general awesomeness, Exotic dyes, lifeless, exotic foods, livestock

Desirable Imports: heavy metals, precisely alloyed metals, slaves (or corpses honestly), exotic foods, machines, technology

Roshar*:

Valuable Exports: Gemstones (they're common on Roshar and rare everywhere else), heavy metals (soulcasting), slaves (It's established that slaves are super cheap on Roshar)

Desirable Imports: Livestock, exotic foods, any foreign magic, technology, or literature

*Roshar is kinda busy being invaded by monsters to worry about trading for most of the history of the Cosmere...

Scadrial (during FE):

Valuable Exports: Slaves (skaa breed quickly and are hardier and less ambitious/intelligent than normal humans), precisely alloyed metals, heavy metals, atium (pure Investiture), hemalurgy

Desirable Imports: Exotic food!  (foreign flora and fauna couldn't be cultivated and new ideas/technology were aggressively suppressed)

Sel:

Probably prohibitively difficult to leave or enter to make trade worthwhile.

Taldain:

Blockaded against casual traffic by Autonomy.

Threnody:

Valuable Exports: Exotic food, livestock?, gunpowder/technology

Desirable Imports: Silver!

From this I would speculate that Nalthis supplies Scadrial and Roshar with exotic foods, animals, dyes, and Breath, in exchange for metals, slaves, gemstones, and possibly knowledge of hemalurgy, and everyone trades with Threnody for gunpowder and industrial technology in exchange for silver.

[The One Who Connects]

9 minutes ago, hwiles said:

and everyone trades with Threnody for gunpowder and industrial technology in exchange for silver.

From Khriss's Threnody Essay:

Quote

there is no stable perpendicularity - only very unstable ones that cannot be predicted easily and have a somewhat morbid origin.

An unpredictable transport system doesn't seem very conducive to reliable interplanetary trade. But other than that, your ideas make a good bit of sense.

[+hwiles]

8 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

From Khriss's Threnody Essay:

An unpredictable transport system doesn't seem very conducive to reliable interplanetary trade. But other than that, your ideas make a good bit of sense.

I've always assumed the unstable perpendicularities occur when a shade is born, in which case, all a world hopper would have to do is sit and wait (maybe a few hours, maybe a few days, whatever) outside a settlement and use the inevitable eventual shade birth to hop back and forth. Otherwise, thanks!