Jump to content

various demographics questions/thoughts


cometaryorbit

Recommended Posts

There's a WOB that somebody's estimate that the Final Empire population was 100 million and Luthadel 1-2 million if off, are at least close'.

Are those the best numbers we have? Because I was firmly convinced for some reason that Luthadel's population was specifically 2 million, but late in HoA when Vin looks at ruined Luthadel she thinks that it once had a population of 'hundreds of thousands'.

--

Supposedly Allomancers are 1% of nobles and Mistborn are 1% of Allomancers in Vin/Kelsier's time. It seems like nobles must be fairly numerous in the FE since so many jobs are reserved to them. But if they're even 1-2% of a 100 million population that would mean 100-200 Mistborn (+ however many skaa mistborn exist) overall. Which seems to fit what we see in Book 1 (they are extremely rare but numerous enough for there to be recognized customs surrounding them).

But by HoA they seem really rare, Vin and Elend never face an enemy Mistborn and there seem to be no others on their side. And Spook is apparently the only Mistborn to exist after the Catacendre... and one would think Mistborn would be much less likely to be killed off by the deterioration of the world/koloss armies than anyone else.

I at first assumed that the rest of them mostly became Inquisitor spikes, but one of the HoA epigraphs says that Ruin didn't like to do that and only did so for a few important ones like Marsh.

Another thought is that they *became* Inquisitors, but I don't think there are enough. Vin faces 13 Inquisitors at the end, and it's implied that this is all of them.

Before that, Kelsier kills 1, Marsh kills 7 (I think) offscreen + 1 in the battle against TLR, Elend says he and Vin killed 3.

So that's 25 Inquisitors accounted for, which I think is less than there should be (aren't there supposed to have been like three dozen?)

Maybe some died offscreen (perhaps the Keeper Synod killed off some before they were defeated?) But still there don't seem to be a bunch of extra Inquisitors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that a population of 1-2 million is inacurate, during TFE they fit the population of the entire city into the square for executions

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Another focal chapter. I like how this one turned out. The fountains were a last-minute addition. Originally, I'd planned executions, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I knew I needed something dramatic and memorable, but I didn't want to be so cheesy as to do something like a guillotine. Since I'd already established that there were fountains in the city, I think this way created a distinctive image.

One worry in this chapter is the population. There are a lot of people in Luthadel, and packing them all into one square is kind of a stretch. I hope that it would be believable that they would gather this many people together, and I changed the executions from single-people to four-at-once in order to make it seem like the Priesthood was taking the large population into account.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations (March 5, 2007)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/1/2022 at 10:23 PM, Frustration said:

I think that a population of 1-2 million is inacurate, during TFE they fit the population of the entire city into the square for executions

I'm pretty sure only men were required to attend executions, and I'd guess they would exclude children below a certain age. That can make the population to be 2-3 times larger than was present for the executions. That might not be as high as 2 million, but it's a lot closer.

There's also a fair chance that a large number of noble Mistborn and Mistings were killed either during the House war, the revolution, or the wars within dominances at the fall of the TLR. Those involved in those wars are most likely the high nobility, or the ones with the purest bloodlines to produce Allomancers, and so in a way ended up in most of the conflicts and casualties. Most of that was off camera. We do know of at least one Mistborn that Kelsier was busy framing while setting up the house war that we don't hear about after the war starts.

Edited by Duxredux
Added another thought and removed extraneous info
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/2/2022 at 10:06 AM, Duxredux said:

There's also a fair chance that a large number of noble Mistborn and Mistings were killed either during the House war, the revolution, or the wars within dominances at the fall of the TLR. Those involved in those wars are most likely the high nobility, or the ones with the purest bloodlines to produce Allomancers, and so in a way ended up in most of the conflicts and casualties. Most of that was off camera.

A very good point!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm rereading BoM and Khriss says that mistings are one in a thousand. So with that number, and I'm going to assume that the nobility consist of 1-2 hundred thousand, assuming they conprise a tenth of the reported population that gives us 100-200 mistings and 1-2 mistborn assuming that 1% of all allomancers are mistborn.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...