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Really more of a Mistborn topic, but it’s going here for obvious reasons. Withe recent revelations there’s been a theory that Thaidakar is a word in Skaa, possibly just Survivor translated. I disagree. I think Thaidakar is a Terris word. Absinthew Idashwy Axindweth Tathingdwen Vwafendel Tenningdar Thaidakar The title fits very neatly with the three syllable Terris words and names. It doesn’t match up nearly as well with words in Skaa, which tend to follow French-like linguistics. Thematically, it makes a certain amount of sense for Kelsier to have a title in all three major languages: Survivor in Skaa and Sovereign in the Southern Tongue, with Thaidakar coming from Terris. It’s similar to him seemingly utilizing all three metallic arts and using a triple diamond symbol. Of course, if it is Terris, WHY Terris? And what does the word mean? Thoughts?

Introduction This theory is an attempt at solving several mysteries on Scadrial, most notably: What's with the Ice Death? I have actually posted a version of this theory last year as a comment in another person's Ice Death thread, But recently I've formulated several new arguments and found more evidence, and I want to reorganize my thoughts on the matter. Part I: The Lord Ruler To understand the need for my theory, let us first look at the issue of why the Southern Scadrians were put there by Rashek when he Ascended. Here's what Brandon said back in 2008 regarding them: There is one problem here: If Rashek found a way for people to survive extreme heat without genetic modification, why didn't he just use that method for everyone? Why go through all the hassle of creating the Ashmounts and changing people in the North to adapt to a world of ash when the people he moved to the South did not need those things anyway? In other words, if he was able to keep his genetically-unchanged control group alive, what was the point of his genetic experiments? One possibility that comes to mind is that whatever he did to the Southerners was not scalable planet-wide, meaning that whatever it was, it was only feasible to a limited region on the planet. But then, the same could be said of the Ash World solution. Another possibility is that in the event that Scadrial's orbit is fixed at some point in the future, it was much harder to revert the effects of this non-genetic method. It's very likely that Rashek intended to undo his damage on the world once the Well was refilled. It could be that he found the non-genetic solution (whatever it was) would be harder to undo when that happens, so he decided to use a method on the Northerners that was easier to undo when the orbit is eventually fixed. Except, he wasn't sure the Ash World solution would work long enough, so he still used the non-genetic solution on a select group of people as a "reserve". So we have these clues as to what Rashek did to the Southerners: It was definitely not genetic in nature. It may have been something that could only be applied to the southern continent. It may have effects that are difficult to undo even with Shardic power. Given this, can we figure out what the Southern Solution is? Part II: The Hero of Ages Here is another mystery. When Sazed obtained both Ruin and Preservation at the end of HoA, he used the knowledge of Scadrial's religions to both return the planet to its previous orbit, rearrange the continents back to their previous locations, and fix the genetic modifications that Rashek made to the Northerners: Afterwards, Sazed created the Elendel Basin, a fertile area where food and water was always plentiful and the climate was temperate, for the people of the North to live on. He also gave the Northerners copies of the contents of his Copperminds, and gave them hints regarding the Allomantic metals they haven't discovered yet. As he said in SoS, he made it very easy for his own people to live in the newly restored planet. Too easy: And that was our first hint of the troubles faced by the Southerners. In BoM we would learn that somehow, even after Sazed fixed the continents, the Southern Scadrians still experienced a climate catastrophe, the Ice Death, that would freeze many of them to death. Here's the mystery: Why didn't Sazed put as much effort in making the Southerners as comfortable and happy as the Northerners when he Ascended? Did he not care for them? Is Sazed racist? That doesn't sound like the wise and compassionate Terrisman that we know. Besides, we know for certain that the Southerners have a huge advantage over the Northerners: ettmetal. Or as Sazed apparently prefers to call it, harmonium. That's the god metal of Sazed, right? The god metal of Harmony. And it's all for the Southerners to exploit and use (once they figure it out). Why give harmonium to the South, when he can't even be bothered to remove the Ice Death phenomenon? Part III: The Sovereign Well, we do know someone who did bother to do something about it: Kelsier, who was known as the Sovereign in the South. Perhaps Harmony sent him there, but it's still weird how the god who directly created the blessed Elendel Basin could not directly solve the Ice Death problem. Anyway, Kelsier went there, taught the Southerners about the Metallic Arts, found a way to harness the Arts to create the medallions that the Southerners used to survive the intense coldness that they felt, and taught them how ettmetal can be used to harness Allomancy and Feruchemy. That's great and all, but there's still one problem: When Kelsier went to the South, it wasn't frozen at all. This is obviously not polar weather. There wasn't even any snow. Obviously Sazed succeeded in moving the southern continent towards a more temperate region of the planet, its original location pre-Rashek. Now, it's possible for people to experience hypothermia even in warmer climates. but one would think that the Southern Scadrians would have learned to adapt to the cold twelve years after it started. As someone who lives in a tropical country, I know full well how unpleasant it is to be suddenly faced with what people from temperate regions call "mildly cold weather", but every single person I know who's moved from my country to a non-tropical one managed to adapt to the new climate eventually. But that's not what happened to the Southern Scadrians. For more than a decade their population slowly dwindled as one by one people died from a coldness that they should have been used to at that point. And even after hundreds of years in that environment, they still depended on the Heat medallions, as proven by Allik needing to wrap thick blankets around himself just to ward off the coldness he felt in his prison at Dulsing. So, again, we go back to our previous question: Why didn't Sazed do anything? If the coldness that Southerners felt was merely biological, then Sazed could have restored them when he restored the Northerners. But we know it was not biological, because we've already established that Rashek did not touch their genes. I saw someone speculate that the constant use of Heat Feruchemy via the Heat medallions has been changing the Spiritual aspect of the Southern Scadrians, such that they now perceive heat differently than normal. That is an interesting idea, but suffice to say it can't be Kelsier's fault that the Southerners can't adapt to the heat, because they already couldn't adapt years before he taught them about the medallions. In other words, they've been perceiving heat abnormally before the Sovereign. But maybe Heat Feruchemy does have something to do with it... Part IV: The Jaggenmire A lot of people believe that since the term "harmonium" was coined by Sazed, the element could not have existed prior to his Ascension. I don't think that's necessarily true. The combination of Ruin and Preservation's powers has been happening long before Sazed was born. The very planet itself is Connected to both Shards, and the hybrid Metallic Art of Feruchemy (of which Sazed was a practitioner) is a testament that the two powers are complementary. The fact that Southern Scadrians have their own name for it could be a clue. Brandon used the term "ettmetal", likely from the Swedish word "ett", meaning "one", perhaps as a clue that the Southern Scadrians linked the metal to the Jaggenmire, the mysterious "two persons in one god" (a duonity?) concept that is the basis of their religion. "They were always one", said Allik. "And Always apart." Atium has always been different from lerasium, but perhaps there also has always been the One Metal that is both of them. Perhaps this is why Sazed doesn't like "sazedium" as an alternative name for ettmetal. It's not his modesty--at least, not just his modesty-- but rather his sense of truth. He does not want to name the metal after himself, the Vessel, because the metal was not his direct responsibility. Rather, he calls it "harmonium", because long before his time, long before even Rashek, the powers of Ruin and Preservation created the planet by harmoniously balancing their natures, as Herr and Frue were said to have done. Conclusion: The Lord Ruler Revisited Let me now put all those ideas together into a single theory. I believe that Sazed could not fix the Ice Death directly because its cause was very, very difficult to undo, even for a Shard. I believe the reason for the Ice Death is directly connected to what Rashek did to the Southerners to protect them from the extreme heat of the sun. And I believe it has something to do with ettmetal. So, how did Rashek use ettmetal, assuming it did exist during his time? Simple: In his Ascended state, he touched all the native ettmetal ores within the Southern continent and primed it with Feruchemical Heat storage. This allowed the whole continent to be colder than it should be, keeping temperatures at very comfortable levels for the population there. It's possible that all the ettmetal in the planet was concentrated in that continent, just as all the atium and all the lerasium can be found only in the North, in special areas connected to the Shards. In which case, this solution could only be implemented in the South. Rashek knew that a thousand years of region-wide Kinetic Investiture would affect those Connected to the region, similar to how the regional Investiture of Sel works, and somehow he knew that this effect on the Southern peoples could not be reverted easily. He knew exactly what would happen to the Southerners once the orbit is brought back to normal. Rashek foresaw the Ice Death, and found it an acceptable burden for a mere "reserve" to potentially bear. P.S. All this, of course, is just speculation on my part. Feel free to share your thoughts and offer constructive criticism.

Maybe bendalloy coins do show up in Bands of Morning, but I don't remember them. Surely the south scandrian expeditions traveled with bendalloy minds filled with food and water. Their ships just barely fly, they really don't have any room for supplies of food and water. Expanding on this... If there are enough people capable of filling unsealed bendalloy minds, a significant portion of south scandrian nutrition might come from bendalloy coins. A large challenge with getting food to people is both preserving it and transporting it. Feruchemical bendalloy solves these problems. With it, food can be preserved indefinitely, and transportation is both logistically easier and time insensitive.The gains from preventing spoilage may make up for the additional cost of bendalloy. It seems like they have already established a system than can produce filled Feruchemical bronze medallions for the population, they might be able to create a similar system to fill Feruchemical bendalloy medallions. Feruchemical coins may be South Scandrian currency.