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Bands: What Happened?


Karger

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So during the lost metal the bands were rereleased into the public.  Additionally we met Kelsier.  We still have no clarification on how medallions are made but for now I'm going to operate under the assumption that it was the same method for now.  The bands were found to be out of attributes and our jackass of an admiral seemed to know that they would be.

I can't imagine the kandra allowing the bands detection so sabotage does not seem probable.  This removes the possibility of a switch.  I can thus only come to the conclusion that the power in the bands must have degraded over time(exactly like a hemalurgic spike).

Can anyone else think of another possibility in the meantime?

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22 minutes ago, Karger said:

So during the lost metal the bands were rereleased into the public.  Additionally we met Kelsier.  We still have no clarification on how medallions are made but for now I'm going to operate under the assumption that it was the same method for now.  The bands were found to be out of attributes and our jackass of an admiral seemed to know that they would be.

I can't imagine the kandra allowing the bands detection so sabotage does not seem probable.  This removes the possibility of a switch.  I can thus only come to the conclusion that the power in the bands must have degraded over time(exactly like a hemalurgic spike).

Can anyone else think of another possibility in the meantime?

Maybe the Admiral had swapped it for a fake when no one was looking? 

Either way I think that the real reason that the Malwish wanted the Bands so badly was because they could use them to get around their '3 Powers only' limit with their Medallions, as well as incorporate new powers like Allomantic abilities into them as well.

Another thing that doesn't make sense is that Wax seemed to imply that you could recharge the Bands with Compounding, but that wasn't mentioned here. I find that interesting.

A con of the century by the Malwish, not to mention that the contract between them and the Basin was 'Don't ever use the Bands or we'll declare war', seems to me that this was to prevent them from experimenting with the Bands to make Medallions. 

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In the epilogue, Kelsier mentions he doesn’t have allomantic powers. Nothing to suggest he has feruchemy, and hemalurgy mostly doesn’t work. If Kelsier is indeed the Sovereign, how did he make the bands of mourning, why did he give them up, and why can’t he make new ones? 
 

Maybe the bands really did belong to the Lord Ruler like the legend suggested.

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18 minutes ago, Price_McKinney said:

In the epilogue, Kelsier mentions he doesn’t have allomantic powers. Nothing to suggest he has feruchemy, and hemalurgy mostly doesn’t work. If Kelsier is indeed the Sovereign, how did he make the bands of mourning, why did he give them up, and why can’t he make new ones? 
 

Maybe the bands really did belong to the Lord Ruler like the legend suggested.

Couldn't be Rashek, because why would he spend centuries trying to prevent the slightest chance of a Fullborn coming into existence,then suddenly turn around and create something that can make anyone as powerful as he is.

Plus how would he get Nicrosil without advanced technology when he made sure to stagnate most technological advancement.

My guess would be Kelsier got Spook, the last Mistborn, as well as either a Full Feruchemist that survived, was born or got together 16 Ferrings then studied the hell out of the Metallic Arts. So Kelsier would be the mind that designed the Bands but Spook was the one that actually made them.

Edit:

My guesses as to why he gave them up and why he didn't make more are these:

1) Kelsier couldn't use them and wanted to put them somewhere safe until he needed someone he trusted to use them.

2) Maybe Kelsier did want to make more of them, but Spook didn't and without him it became impossible to make anymore. After all Spook did draft laws about legalizing regulated Hemalurgy (Spiking the elderly) but never actually implemented those laws. So it's possible that Spook just refused to work with Kelsier anymore after too many disagreements, he was kind of reluctant to work with him in the Secret History epilogue. 

Edited by JustQuestin2004
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28 minutes ago, Havoc said:

Is there any reason it couldn't just be a Leecher Grenade that the Admiral surreptitiously activated in his pocket to drain the Bands?

The grenades have already been shown to have an area-of-effect without the need for direct physical contact.

Yes but Leechers can't affect Metalminds directly.

And no one could even 'feel' anything when holding it, which seems weird to me because if it was actually dry couldn't they have felt the ability to store anything into it?

It seemed that the 'Bands' were more like a fake duplicate, which the Malwish somehow already got and replaced beforehand, and just wanted to grab the fake before anyone realized it was fake. At least that's what I'm thinking now.

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2 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Yes but Leechers can't affect Metalminds directly.

And no one could even 'feel' anything when holding it, which seems weird to me because if it was actually dry couldn't they have felt the ability to store anything into it?

None of them was a Fering. The dry bands are just a metallic object to them.

2 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

It seemed that the 'Bands' were more like a fake duplicate, which the Malwish somehow already got and replaced beforehand, and just wanted to grab the fake before anyone realized it was fake. At least that's what I'm thinking now.

Why would he want to let them know that the Bands were dry? He makes them suspect him. The Northeners are not stupid. They will suspect that the Bands were his reason for insisting on being present at that meeting.

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12 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

None of them was a Fering. The dry bands are just a metallic object to them.

That's not what I was referring to. The Bands are a special Unsealed Metalmind, if you can feel the ability to Tap it, then you should be able to feel the ability to Store into it as well.

No one seemed to, which makes me think that the Bands were swapped out with a fake at some point.

The reason for no one realizing it is because Marasi and Wax were the only people to ever use them and know what they felt like, everyone in that scene had no idea what to expect and just assumed that because it wasn't doing anything it was drained.

12 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Why would he want to let them know that the Bands were dry? He makes them suspect him. The Northeners are not stupid. They will suspect that the Bands were his reason for insisting on being present at that meeting.

Of course they were his reason for being there, because it's well known that the Malwish want the Bands. Them being empty and unusable would lower their usefulness to the Basin, so he could take it with no one thinking it'd cause problems (aside from Steris) because "hey, It's clearly just a trinket now and we have a bomb to worry about".

Besides what I'm saying is that the Bands in that scene were not the actual Bands. How they did a hypothetical swap I couldn't even begin to guess. Hope I've made it clear now.

Edited by JustQuestin2004
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1 minute ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

That's not what I was referring to. The Bands are a special Unsealed Metalmind, if you can feel the ability to Tap it, then you should be able to feel the ability to Store into it as well.

It seems to me that something is an unsealed metalmind on condition of having something stored in the nicrosil. Once that part is entirely dry, you just have an ordinary metalmind.

1 minute ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Besides what I'm saying is that the Bands in that scene were not the actual Bands. How they did a hypothetical swap I couldn't even begin to guess. Hope I've made it clear now.

If he had been able to swap the Bands for fakes, he already had the real thing. There was no need for him to be present at the meeting. They would have discovered that the Bands were inoperable anyway. They would have to blame the Kandra. Now they will suspect him. There was nothing for him to gain.

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Just now, Oltux72 said:

It seems to me that something is an unsealed metalmind on condition of having something stored in the nicrosil. Once that part is entirely dry, you just have an ordinary metalmind.

If he had been able to swap the Bands for fakes, he already had the real thing. There was no need for him to be present at the meeting. They would have discovered that the Bands were inoperable anyway. They would have to blame the Kandra. Now they will suspect him. There was nothing for him to gain.

Well it is just a theory I have, I'm just not sure what else it could have been.

I do like the thought of the Malwish pulling an epic heist beneath everyone's noses though. Full on Mission Impossible style.

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21 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Well it is just a theory I have, I'm just not sure what else it could have been.

The idea is cool and has merit. It just has an obstace to overcome. The admiral being present in the meeting means that he wants the Northeners to know that the South now has the Bands. Yet the admiral seems to actually want war. If I want you to attack me I will not start by demonstrating that I now have your strongest weapon. If he wants to attack anyway, there is still no point. He would prefer to sow discord between the Northeners and the Kandra.

I am not saying that these points are unsurmountable. But you cannot ignore them.

21 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I do like the thought of the Malwish pulling an epic heist beneath everyone's noses though. Full on Mission Impossible style.

For now it really looks like there is a traitor among the Kandra.

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13 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

For now it really looks like there is a traitor among the Kandra.

But who and how? The Malwish wouldn't have known any of the Kandra before BoM and the Kandra are pretty secretive so how would they even know where to find them?

Maybe it was Kelsier who did it, maybe he stole the Bands, replaced them with a fake and brought the real one to the Southern Scadrial, which would explain what he was doing there and what he meant by him 'helping the Southern Scadrians' with some unnamed problem.

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8 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Maybe the Admiral had swapped it for a fake when no one was looking? 

I thought so but Kandra are a problem to overcome.  Besides he only got there weeks ago.

6 hours ago, Price_McKinney said:

Maybe the bands really did belong to the Lord Ruler like the legend suggested.

Vin suggests otherwise as per her general proficiency with sharp objects.

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Why would he want to let them know that the Bands were dry? He makes them suspect him. The Northeners are not stupid. They will suspect that the Bands were his reason for insisting on being present at that meeting.

He needs to publicize the accomplishment of reclaiming them.

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8 minutes ago, Karger said:

He needs to publicize the accomplishment of reclaiming them.

Oh yeah that's right, I should have said that.

Plus to this admiral who probably has a ton of national pride and has said that it would be 'easy' for the Malwish to invade the Basin, he might have just straight up not cared if they took offense to his actions.

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8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The idea is cool and has merit. It just has an obstace to overcome. The admiral being present in the meeting means that he wants the Northeners to know that the South now has the Bands. Yet the admiral seems to actually want war. If I want you to attack me I will not start by demonstrating that I now have your strongest weapon. If he wants to attack anyway, there is still no point. He would prefer to sow discord between the Northeners and the Kandra.

I am not saying that these points are unsurmountable. But you cannot ignore them.

For now it really looks like there is a traitor among the Kandra.

I thought "TenSoon" was suspiciously compliant, easily swayed, and uncomfortable in what totally felt like a setup con job with respect to the BoM. I mean, showing his skeleton briefly should prove he's a kandra, but he can just SAY he's TenSoon...

My theory: there is at least one Ghostblood kandra, who was there posing as TenSoon (who would absolutely be loyal to Harmony), and the odd freeze-ups were them fighting with Harmony in his head, who in the end was too "static" to take direct control of them to prevent the ruse from going through.

And of course, we had just seen that Kelsier was returning on an airship flying over the ocean, twelve hours away from Bilming or Elendel... Presumably from the Southern Continent. Where he's the Sovereign. And probably behind the recent union forming the Malwish Consortium, AND the sending of Daal to Elendel, with exactly this ruse in mind.

As to how the Bands were drained, I'm thinking the GBK (Ghostblood kandra) was really good at palming the real one and swapping in a fake one. Who better than Kelsier to train someone in the arts of misdirection? I could always... Make them choose... The Bands... I wanted them to!

Edited by robardin
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On 17/11/2022 at 0:46 AM, robardin said:

I thought "TenSoon" was suspiciously compliant, easily swayed, and uncomfortable in what totally felt like a setup con job with respect to the BoM. I mean, showing his skeleton briefly should prove he's a kandra, but he can just SAY he's TenSoon...

My theory: there is at least one Ghostblood kandra, who was there posing as TenSoon (who would absolutely be loyal to Harmony), and the odd freeze-ups were them fighting with Harmony in his head, who in the end was too "static" to take direct control of them to prevent the ruse from going through.

And of course, we had just seen that Kelsier was returning on an airship flying over the ocean, twelve hours away from Bilming or Elendel... Presumably from the Southern Continent. Where he's the Sovereign. And probably behind the recent union forming the Malwish Consortium, AND the sending of Daal to Elendel, with exactly this ruse in mind.

As to how the Bands were drained, I'm thinking the GBK (Ghostblood kandra) was really good at palming the real one and swapping in a fake one. Who better than Kelsier to train someone in the arts of misdirection? I could always... Make them choose... The Bands... I wanted them to!

Yeah I'm thinking that now too, an epic heist like this is exactly up Kelsier's alley. But why would Harmony not say anything about it?

Then again he did agree to stay out of Wax's head and had greater concerns at the time, so it's probably justified in why we don't know yet. 

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On 16.11.2022 at 3:14 PM, Karger said:

He needs to publicize the accomplishment of reclaiming them.

As a motivation - you are right - this makes perfect sense.

The timing is awfully convinient though. So counterproposal:
The admiral was working for Autonomy. Autonomy needed the bands taken out for her invasion to succeed, if it came to that. She has a Kandra in her service, who drained the bands. The admiral was there at the right time, because Autonomy knew when he had to be there and needed the Northerners to blame somebody else than her Kandra.

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4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The admiral was working for Autonomy. Autonomy needed the bands taken out for her invasion to succeed, if it came to that. She has a Kandra in her service, who drained the bands. The admiral was there at the right time, because Autonomy knew when he had to be there and needed the Northerners to blame somebody else than her Kandra.

I'm not sure how likely another Kandra traitor is.  I'm currently thinking that some process drained the bands naturally.  He may have been working with Autonomy but that seems incidental.

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43 minutes ago, Karger said:

I'm not sure how likely another Kandra traitor is.  I'm currently thinking that some process drained the bands naturally.  He may have been working with Autonomy but that seems incidental.

So it lasted decades, if not centuries in front of the temple, but drained in a few years under care of the Kandra? And the Kandra or Harmony did not notice? And the admiral could predict that? How convenient.

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16 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

So it lasted decades, if not centuries in front of the temple, but drained in a few years under care of the Kandra? And the Kandra or Harmony did not notice? And the admiral could predict that? How convenient.

They were activated first.  Could the draining process only begin if they aren't recharged after use?

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This is a stretch, but what if the bands weren't drained?
What if the admiral had a way to suppress the ability to use powers in an area?  This would explain why the bands just seemed like a chunk of metal, without even granting the ability to store attributes.
Granted we haven't seen technology like this from the southerners, but we don't fully understand how their tech works yet, so it might be possible.

I like this idea because it makes the con even worse - not only do the southerners get the bands, but they get the fully charged bands.  And all it required was one of them getting close to the bands, so they could convince the northerners they were "drained."

 

Rhythm of War Spoiler

Spoiler

If he had something like the fabrial the Pursuer used in hearthstone, I think that would do it.

 

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Honestly a switch of the bands is inconceivable to me and it seems like a stretch to say there was a traitor Kandra, unless Autonomy was specifically part of that there's no way harmony wouldn't know of something like that happening since his blindness extended to his future sight alone. I actually think it was the vice governer and she was a traitor working with the Malwish. It was said more than once by Steris that it seemed like the Admiral knew this would happen and that it was a plan from the start. The vice governer was extremely eager to get her hands on the bands before anyone else and she got them. The way I think she drained them so quickly is this: her name (Adawathwyn) sounds Terris so it's possible she's a feruchemist. I think she's a soulbearer ferring and that she can store investiture. It's possible once she handed them she stored everything the bands had as raw investiture in a nicrosil metal mind and then claimed they were empty. Anyone who held them afterwards would of course agree because they were.  

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3 hours ago, Karger said:

They were activated first.  Could the draining process only begin if they aren't recharged after use?

They are a kind of unique tool we know little about, so ...

But then you suppose that the admiral supposed that the agents of a god don't know how to properly handle an object based on that god's Invested Arts. That's courageous.

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I just came across this WOB;

Ahuri3 

In which published book is Hoid the happiest?

Brandon Sanderson 

He is the happiest when he is getting away with something. Not in the Stormlight Archive because he is nervous about Odium being there. I think he is the happiest during the Wax and Wayne series, in Bands of Mourning maybe.

 

Maybe Hoid drained the Bands…?

 

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5 minutes ago, Jasin Natel said:

Maybe Hoid drained the Bands…?

Welcome to the shard.  However when would he have done that? 

47 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

But then you suppose that the admiral supposed that the agents of a god don't know how to properly handle an object based on that god's Invested Arts. That's courageous.

I mean he didn't think they were impartial.  So if they knew then they would have been able to make their own.

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