The Goals of "The Set"

[Kaymyth]

I guess I was spoiled by the Hero of Ages; that very first epigraph, "I am, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages," just sounded so utterly like Sazed's voice to me, I spent the whole book assuming it was him. I shouldn't be so confident, likely.

 

Common assumption is that the Set are planning to use the women to breed metalborn. Otherwise, if you're only picking them because they'll be easier to overpower than men, what are you actually kidnapping them for? None of them have been ransomed back yet, and there are better ways to make money.

 

Yeah, that's a good point, and if you're running a breeding program, you'd need both.  Likely they've got men from the appropriate lines ready to, well....yeah.  The whole thing is just icky.  But you can get by with a lot fewer men than women in such a program, if all you want is babies with powers.  And it probably will take a lot of women. 

 

Granted, there might be some women involved willingly.  It's rather up in the air right now as to whether Wax's sister is actually a captive or a willing participant. 

 

But I'd say that they're almost certainly targeting women from the right lines who probably don't have powers themselves.  Grabbing active Allomancers could be dangerous; I'd be willing to bet that known Allomancers of the more dangerous types were stricken off the list from the start.

[king of nowhere]

I have at least two simple explanations for marasi's being on the list:

1) we know the set is composed by very powerful people. We know marasi's parentage is a secret supposedly known to few. But it wouldn't be too far-fetched that one of those who knows is a member of the set. This "set" seems like a conspiracy of noblemen. Surely we've seen many of them without realizing it. Surely many of them were at the wedding.

Those guys are like the black ajah. now I'd like to bring the oath rod on them.

 

2) could they have made accurate research on all noblewomen of the city? Yes, why not? They have plenty of resources. They are looking for women of good allomantic bloodlines, so it wouldn't be surprising if they hired a bunch of clercks to research the genealogy of every single noblewoman in the city to track her lineage all the way to the final empire and see how many metalborns she has among her ancestors. It's the kind of thing you can afford doing when your  group owns a significant fraction of the city. In fact, compared to all the other people they hired, and to all the effort they put in their plans, it would be a pittance.

[DreamEternal]

But can they afford to do it without risking any leaks, evidence or having to line people's pockets for life to avoid being denounced? Three people can keep a secret... if two are dead... and there are no witnesses, and if the corpses aren't found, and if all evidence is erased without leaving even more evidence and if you have a good alibi...

[king of nowhere]

But can they afford to do it without risking any leaks, evidence or having to line people's pockets for life to avoid being denounced? Three people can keep a secret... if two are dead... and there are no witnesses, and if the corpses aren't found, and if all evidence is erased without leaving even more evidence and if you have a good alibi...

yes, which is why those kind of plots tend to fail in real life. in stories, not so much.

Consider that every single one of the bandits thei hired knew at least they were there to kidnap women, if not the exact reason. a single one of them talking would mean the police being informed that the kidnappings weren't casual. Which was the whole point of faking the robberies.

Consider how many people were needed to work the train-stealing barge. consider how many people are needed to guard and care for the kidnapped women. And when they start making children, even more people will be required. people who will have to know those women should not be allowed to roam free, so you cannot take an unsuspecting servant.

Compared to that, what's hiring a few clerks to make inquiries on the ancestry fo noblewomen? especially when it's a totally innocent curiosity. they could justify the research in a variety of absolutaly acceptable ways. It's nothing illegal. The worst they could do if they are discovered would be to complain for infringement of privacy.

[Oudeis]

There are five million residents of Elendel. 1 in fifty people are allomancers. If Nobles are the 1%, that's 50K nobles. Roughly half female gives you 25K women to research. There's no wikipedia, and we know there are no clues Wax could find in the 'official' geneaology. We're talking days, minimum, per woman, hoping to find some unlikely secret through direct interviews with people who would know, since there's literally no other way to determine. Even if it's just two days per woman, that's 50K days of work. If you hire more than 250 clerks, it would take them six months. This is, by absolutely no means, a small expense. Nor would it go unnoticed.

 

The Vanishers are necessary. And there are less than forty of them. Like you said, a clerk has done not much wrong. He can go to the Conners, turn the Vanishers in for a reward, knowing he's not gonna get the hammer dropped on him, either. The Vanishers have their hands dirty. They can't turn in anyone else without getting hit with robbery, kidnapping, any number of charges. With excellent legal advice, that one guy Wayne talked to might be able to get away from this with a clean slate; there's no reasonable chance of him getting a reward out of it, so he's not incentivized to turn anyone in. Also, the Vanishers are a necessary risk. And have less information; I don't know why they even bothered telling Miles that Marasi is a bastard; he didn't need to know. The clerks would have to know what they were looking for; at the very least, they'd have the clues to make some deductions.

 

And we circle back to the point I've raised a dozen times that not a single person has addressed: Why bother? There are dozens of potential targets, openly of allomantic families if not open allomancers themselves. Why go to any effort, why pay any expense, why open yourself up to any potential risk, for literally no gain? Marasi is no better a target than any of a dozen other women who were at that wedding.

 

Also, someone mentioned before that the Set is drowning in money. They are expressly not. They made the Machine, they made this hideout. They are not paying the Vanishers; the Vanishers get their money from the heists, as evidenced when Wax notes that they are thorough in their search for valuables. They embezzled funds to set themselves up, but that revenue stream has dried up; House Ladrian, for example, is not only out of money, but now in the hands of Wax. I'm not sure what other revenue streams they had, but we have no reason to suspec they are flush. Also, from the masterful ways they commit white collar crime, it's not unreasonable to assume they are shrewd and cunning businessmen. Such people are typically marked by tendencies like "never pay out money we don't have to," even if the cost to research literally every woman weren't as astronomical as it clearly is, these are exactly the kind of men who would say, "Why spend any money at all, when we're getting no gain out of it?".

[Kaymyth]

There are five million residents of Elendel. 1 in fifty people are allomancers. If Nobles are the 1%, that's 50K nobles. Roughly half female gives you 25K women to research. There's no wikipedia, and we know there are no clues Wax could find in the 'official' geneaology. We're talking days, minimum, per woman, hoping to find some unlikely secret through direct interviews with people who would know, since there's literally no other way to determine. Even if it's just two days per woman, that's 50K days of work. If you hire more than 250 clerks, it would take them six months. This is, by absolutely no means, a small expense. Nor would it go unnoticed.

 

The Vanishers are necessary. And there are less than forty of them. Like you said, a clerk has done not much wrong. He can go to the Conners, turn the Vanishers in for a reward, knowing he's not gonna get the hammer dropped on him, either. The Vanishers have their hands dirty. They can't turn in anyone else without getting hit with robbery, kidnapping, any number of charges. With excellent legal advice, that one guy Wayne talked to might be able to get away from this with a clean slate; there's no reasonable chance of him getting a reward out of it, so he's not incentivized to turn anyone in. Also, the Vanishers are a necessary risk. And have less information; I don't know why they even bothered telling Miles that Marasi is a bastard; he didn't need to know. The clerks would have to know what they were looking for; at the very least, they'd have the clues to make some deductions.

 

And we circle back to the point I've raised a dozen times that not a single person has addressed: Why bother? There are dozens of potential targets, openly of allomantic families if not open allomancers themselves. Why go to any effort, why pay any expense, why open yourself up to any potential risk, for literally no gain? Marasi is no better a target than any of a dozen other women who were at that wedding.

 

Also, someone mentioned before that the Set is drowning in money. They are expressly not. They made the Machine, they made this hideout. They are not paying the Vanishers; the Vanishers get their money from the heists, as evidenced when Wax notes that they are thorough in their search for valuables. They embezzled funds to set themselves up, but that revenue stream has dried up; House Ladrian, for example, is not only out of money, but now in the hands of Wax. I'm not sure what other revenue streams they had, but we have no reason to suspec they are flush. Also, from the masterful ways they commit white collar crime, it's not unreasonable to assume they are shrewd and cunning businessmen. Such people are typically marked by tendencies like "never pay out money we don't have to," even if the cost to research literally every woman weren't as astronomical as it clearly is, these are exactly the kind of men who would say, "Why spend any money at all, when we're getting no gain out of it?".

 

What if they researched the genealogies from the other direction?  Instead of researching every noblewoman in every family in Elendel, they instead started from Spook and went down?  If there are sufficient records to trace backwards, there should certainly be ones that trace forwards.  That makes the research piece a much smaller job.

[Oudeis]

What if they researched the genealogies from the other direction?  Instead of researching every noblewoman in every family in Elendel, they instead started from Spook and went down?  If there are sufficient records to trace backwards, there should certainly be ones that trace forwards.  That makes the research piece a much smaller job.

 

But that completely misses the point. You're never going to find Marasi that way, and the only possible way to research is the available records; you certainly can't interview Spook's granddaughter's housekeeper to find out if she had a child out of wedlock.

 

The point isn't that you're researching up or down, you're trying to make the connection. If you just go back a generation and check every single person to find out which, if any, kids they had out of wedlock... that's as many checks as going from the current generation backwards. Because it's so hard to prove a negative; "In the five years I worked for him, that I know of, he didn't get a mistress pregant", and you have to disqualify a man's entire life long exhaustively. If you saved any time on the number of people, you'd increase it by orders of magnitude in an attempt to actually prove every single person who never had a child out of wedlock.

 

But let's even say that this is somehow more efficient; we're talking astronomical sums, anyway. If you were able to cut the amount of research in half (which is not only a generous estimate, but very very likely to let people like Marasi slip through the cracks), congratulations, you're hiring 125 private investigators for six months, not 250. It's still an insane waste of resources, and guaranteed to be noticed. We need this to be less costly by many orders of magnitude before it becomes at all viable. We don't need a "well this might be a bit cheaper," we need a silver bullet, something that's going to reduce the cost from the GDP of some developing nations to the monthly food budget for a low-income family of three.

 

And you still haven't addressed my single, huge, shinging-like-the-sun point: Why? You said something once about Marasi being a better target because no one would care for her, but that's an incredibly marginal benefit based on guesses and supposition, not the sort of thing people like the Set would engage in, nor have they engaged in it elsewhere. Every other woman had powerful allomantic lines, obviously. If they really did all this insanely expensive research, remember, there are thousands of women. Surely at least five of them are in Marasi's boat; someone from the right line, but hidden. Wax would never have put two and two together if Marasi hadn't been an exception to the pattern. Why not kidnap only by-blows? If they're preferable, and if they really do know EVERY result of a droit de seignur, they should have a dozen options, and so far they've only taken five women (counting Steris, but not Marasi).

 

No one has seriously challenged the central point. Even if the cost were minimal, it doesn't matter. It's cost without benefit. Why on earth would they bother? Why should they care?

 

There are only two viable options I've seen suggested. Kaymyth suggested that it might be simple chance; obviously, the secret is not perfectly kept, and it might simply be a bit of gossip that someone in the Set happened to know, so they made use of it. Entirely possible, and somewhat boring.

 

Or, there's something we don't know yet. Something, perhaps, that would also answer the bigger question; why do they want these women? Is it to breed allomancers? Their gender and their allomantic potential are the only two commonalities we know of, so far. It seems logical to assume they are related, and that the Set wants to breed allomancers. But, why? What does that actually gain them? We have a few theories, but nothing solid. Does this nebulous reason perhaps have some bearing on why they bothered looking into Marasi? Are we wrong about our basic assumptions? Is it something more specific to a more restrictive bloodline? Could it be that there were fewer than 100 women to check for this trait, explaining why it really would be simple to check them all and discover Marasi's secret?

[Kaymyth]

Admittedly, I'm really just throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks at this point.  Maybe I'll get lucky and something will land close to the ears of the rabbit that Brandon is preparing to pull out of his hat.

 

I do think that Wax's sister is going to figure into things in an unexpected way.  (It might be that she was the one who knew about Marasi's parentage; she's of the right social status to be privy to those sorts of secrets.  "Oh, Steris is on the list?  Add Marasi Colms, too; she's her half-sister.")  Wax seems to be assuming that she's a captive, but we don't know that's true.  She's the central piece in an entirely unseen section of the puzzle.

[king of nowhere]

well, i''ll address the "why bother" point very simply: because they are not targeting one single woman, they are aiming for many of them. they have kidnapped what, a dozen women now? and when the vanishers were at the wedding, they had portraits of potential targets. so it's clear the set has many women in mind for their plan. they must have been selcted somewhere.

if I remember correctly, there were, like, 600 people at the marriage. yet the vanishers took two. it means they must have researched a lot of women to single out those few, to come up with the list. Maybe they didn't research every single noblewoman in the city - your math is sound, i'll give you that; it would cost a lot of resources - but they certainly researched a lot of them.

heck, maybe they just picked a few families at random? if they knew that one woman in one hundred would fit their criteria, and they needed a couple dozen, then they set up to research about 2000 women. and they restricted their search on the most prominent families, that of steris and marasi being one of them (they are not very important nobles, but the way nobility works, maybe they are related to spook through women, so the "nobility" does not carry but the allomancy does). Maybe the information about the real father of marasi isn't that difficult to find; maybe it is registered in the official act correctly, but it's not told about - after all, who checks the official acts? maybe the set just stumbled on the information when they researched steris. there are dozens of possible innocent explanations.

 

EDIT: i realize  now that my argument about the number of people at the wedding and the fact they only took two women does not prove anything. it may be that they had made no research on most of the women present.

Still, I think it's likely they researched at least a significant number of women to make their list.

Edited September 18, 2015 by king of nowhere

[Oudeis]

well, i''ll address the "why bother" point very simply: because they are not targeting one single woman, they are aiming for many of them. they have kidnapped what, a dozen women now?

 

 

maybe it is registered in the official act correctly, but it's not told about - after all, who checks the official acts?

 

Four. As I mentioned in my most recent post, they have kidnapped four women. Steris was five, Marasi was six. Out of... there must be hundreds of women known ironclad to be of the Lord Mistborn's line. There must've been a dozen, easily, at the wedding. If you're trying for a grand total of maybe a dozen targets, and you're presented with hundreds of potential options, where is the benefit in researching thousands of women to increase your chances? At the absolute least, research is premature. If they successfully kidnap a hundred women and start to run out of really, really obvious choices, then I could see them researching to find more. But there's absolutely no need; when you need a dozen, there is no return on a dime of investment to increase your pool from 100 to 106.

 

For the second part, as I've mentioned in this thread, Wax found the official record, and it lists her as Lady Colms. Like Kaymyth says, the only way to learn is from gossip, or interviewing midwives, or something. And I've admitted, it's fully plausible that the sister of Wax's fiance, the woman he loves, the protagonist of the story, JUST HAPPENS to have her parentage by known by a secretly evil nobleman who JUST HAPPENS to also be part of the Set. But that would be crazy coincidence, and also boring. I hold out hope for a better answer than "just cuz."

 

I do appreciate that you are attempting to tackle the "why bother" point. For the first time in a while, it feels like this debate is doing something other than circling in place. While I respectfully submit that you have not convinced me, it is still nice that the point has at least been addressed somewhat.

[LegendMKII]

Going back to the Hemalurgy idea, what about if the women that were taken were all presumed to be Duralumin mistings, which would have no reason to make public their powers, but when duralumin is transferred by Hemalurgy then you will get some very strong mistings for the Set. This might also explain why they took Steris, due to no one announcing they can burn Duralumin, the kidnappers are bound to make some mistakes occasionally. I think that this would be a very sneaky way for the set to get super strong Allomancers, without having to breed them (which would take at least 18 years from when they took the women.)

[king of nowhere]

Four. As I mentioned in my most recent post, they have kidnapped four women. Steris was five, Marasi was six. Out of... there must be hundreds of women known ironclad to be of the Lord Mistborn's line. There must've been a dozen, easily, at the wedding. If you're trying for a grand total of maybe a dozen targets, and you're presented with hundreds of potential options, where is the benefit in researching thousands of women to increase your chances? At the absolute least, research is premature. If they successfully kidnap a hundred women and start to run out of really, really obvious choices, then I could see them researching to find more. But there's absolutely no need; when you need a dozen, there is no return on a dime of investment to increase your pool from 100 to 106.

 

For the second part, as I've mentioned in this thread, Wax found the official record, and it lists her as Lady Colms. Like Kaymyth says, the only way to learn is from gossip, or interviewing midwives, or something. And I've admitted, it's fully plausible that the sister of Wax's fiance, the woman he loves, the protagonist of the story, JUST HAPPENS to have her parentage by known by a secretly evil nobleman who JUST HAPPENS to also be part of the Set. But that would be crazy coincidence, and also boring. I hold out hope for a better answer than "just cuz."

 

I do appreciate that you are attempting to tackle the "why bother" point. For the first time in a while, it feels like this debate is doing something other than circling in place. While I respectfully submit that you have not convinced me, it is still nice that the point has at least been addressed somewhat.

only four? well, i haven't reread aol in a few years. what i remembered is that they took a woman at every robbery, and sometimes two.

anyway, they must have a much greater pool of potential targets.

So, if they stop a train and take a woman, clearly the whole noble female population of elendel won't be on that train. either they were tracking movements of women and trains, which seems a huge effort of resources. plus, how likely is that a given noblewoman will take a train in a misty night? how much can you plan in advance for that? won't it be easier to just have a few hundred names and stop the train and hope at least one will be there? They may only need a dozen women for their plan, but they must find those women in the right circumstances, if they want to kidnap them while making it seem a robbery.

We also don't know how strict are their requirements. they're not just looking for someone descending from spook. With the number of ancestors going up exponentially, i expect virtually everyone on scadrial has spook among his ancestors. they are looking for strong connections. How many women fit their criteria? one in ten? one in a hundred? so you see, even if they only want to take a few, they must researched a large number. which gives at least a passable chance one of those number was marasi just because of statistics.

 

And I've admitted, it's fully plausible that the sister of Wax's fiance, the woman he loves, the protagonist of the story, JUST HAPPENS to have her parentage by known by a secretly evil nobleman who JUST HAPPENS to also be part of the Set. But that would be crazy coincidence, and also boring. I hold out hope for a better answer than "just cuz."

welll, what else would you suggest? The explanation jumping to mind is that their father is a member of the set, so he knows their lineage and he knows when they'll be available for kidnapping. But he really seemed broken when his daughters were kidnapped. Either he's the best actor in the world, or that's not the explanation. Also, if he was a member of the set, why trying to arrange a marriage between steris and wax only to kidnap steris shortly afterwards? didn't the set wanted to avoid wax's attention if possible? I'm sure i can come up with even more reason steris' father cannot be a member of the set.

So, discarded that, what remains? i really can't think of anything reasonable.

As for coincidences, those are the coincidences that are called for by a story. I mean, the bandits take a hostage, and who better suited to that than the protagonist's love interest? was there any real doubt that, for story reasons, the vanishers would have kidnapped steris or marasi or both?

 

But hey, I think I may have another explanation for you: Harmony set up the events and influenced the research so that the set would kidnap steris and marasi,  in order to get wax involved. Remember, harmony has been actively trying to involve wax, to the point that he said "I did something to stop it. I sent you". harmony had been pushing wax around ever since he sent melaan to convert him.

Still, I don't buy this theory. Seems needlessly complicated, especially when there's a good chance wax would have wanted to be involved anyway.

[Oudeis]

There were six train robberies, then the robbery at the theater, then the wedding, then the final train robbery. The first few train robberies, the cars weren't even robbed. It wasn't until the fifth train robbery that they took the first hostage. At the sixth, they took two. At the theater, they took one. Then at the wedding, the took Steris and Marasi.

 

One plus two plus one plus two is six. (bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.)

 

You... raise a moderately good point in that the number of women on a given train would be less than the women at a wedding. However, recall that they are nobility. They buy expensive tickets in advance for private cars (like Edwarn), most likely at a reasonably set schedule (like Edwarn) and so can be relatively easily tracked (like Edwarn).

 

While you have a point that a broader range might actually be helpful, you're not addressing another big point I brought up. The unthinkable cost, and the time. And the fact that no one could hide the face that over two hundred clerks are suddenly spending six months interviewing literally everyone who's ever met a noblewoman and asking about her paternity. The Set could never have afforded something that insane, and they would never have kept it under the radar. "Tracking women and trains" might be an investment of resources, but compared to spending ... unknowably large amounts of money performing in-depth research on literally every woman suspected to have any Noble blood in all of Elendel, it's pocket change.

 

Also, recall that it's not lists of names (which is good, because they can hardly stop every woman on the train, ask her name, and trust that she'll be honest). It's a bunch of pictures. I do not accept that the Vanishers are carrying around hundreds of drawings of women's faces, and checking literally every woman against all of them, one by one. Such a robbery would take hours.

 

I... don't follow you at all on the "one in ten, one in hundreds" point you're trying to make. Do you think you could rephrase? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

 

As for why... I don't know. I don't even have a theory. But I don't need an alternate to propose that the current theory doesn't hold water. I think that the most Mr. Sanderson expects us to be able to deduce by now is that there's something fishy going on, we just don't know what. When Shadows of Self comes out, I plan to read it looking for additional clues. I just re-read Alloy of Law, and I simply don't see the clues we need. I think that, like hemalurgy in The Final Empire, we have enough to think, "okay something's weird with Inquisitors," but not enough to say, "Hey this is prolly how hemalurgy works!"

[king of nowhere]

 

I... don't follow you at all on the "one in ten, one in hundreds" point you're trying to make. Do you think you could rephrase? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

My point is: they need to capture a woman of the right lineage. So they do research on a woman to see if she's of the right lineage. But often she will not be. So they have to research another woman. How many women do they have to research before they find one who meets their criteria? how picky they are? Because, if they have a few dozen women as potential targets, certainly they didn't make research just on those few dozen women. They researched also plenty of other women who did not fit their criteria. And we don't know how many women they have to research before they find one they like. But from the fact that in the whole marriage they took only two women, and they had to look for a while to find them, make me think that they are picky. Not any noblewoman would do for their purposes.

 

So, I stopped arguing that they researched all the noble population. You are right, that's too much. But I still think likely that they researched a few hundred women at the least, and upward to a thousand or two. That many would be a sample small enough to be conceivably researched without too much expence and without rousing suspicion. It is also a sample large enough that it's not too unlikely marasi was part of it.

 

Alternatively, it is possible that one member of the set is someone very close to marasi's family, one of the few who knows her real parentage. That may yet be relevant for the story. I see her father as a very unlikely culprit, but now if some other relative of steris and marasi is introduced in the books, I will have some suspicions on it. But I still think more likely they happened to kidnap exactly steris and marasi because wax rescuing them made for a better story than wax rescuing some unknown woman.

[Oudeis]

Okay. That's actually somewhat interesting. You think the new information we'll get is that they weren't just looking for people from powerful allomantic lines; they were looking for women with something even more specific in common, so their pool wasn't "over a hundred at this wedding alone". I'm not saying I think that's what happened, but it's a viable alternative to the commonly accepted scenario.

 

As for "they picked only two at the wedding," there's a faulty assumption in your conclusion that this means only Steris and Marasi were viable targets. As I've mentioned, names weren't a viable option; they can't very well ask every woman what her name is, assume they all tell the truth, and then take the women who say they're Steris. They needed pictures, and they can't very well carry a hundred pictures and go through the whole list for every woman.

 

Simple solution. The decision was made from a larger pool of women, but it was made in advance of the wedding. As Kaymyth and I have commiserated, it's wildly untenable that invitations to a wedding would go out THE DAY BEFORE but the truth is, people did RSVP and it would not have been difficult to place a bribe or a spy and get access to the list in advance; it would hardly be considered a security risk. At that point, easy enough to go through the list, pick the dozen or more women on your list of targets, select four or five of them, and have copies made of just those few portraits. The Vanishers have a manageable amount of targets, can quickly locate at least a few of those women at the wedding, everything goes smoothly.

[Kaymyth]

New idea:

 

What if hemalurgy, at least inasfar as the Set's goals, is a red herring?  In fact, what if Allomancy itself isn't the primary goal of the breeding program?  What if, instead, by going after Spook's descendents, they're trying to breed a strong Allomantic line specifically for the purpose of establishing a monarchy?

 

I know, I know, it's got more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

 

EDIT:

 

I just took a shower; I do some of my best thinking in the shower.  So, some elaboration:

 

We know that the Elendel Basin is a hodgepodge of different city governments.  This fits into the supposition that the Set may be aware of the existence of the Southern Scadrians.  They assume (possibly rightly) that the Southern people have a single, united government.  The Basin is extremely rich land, ripe for potential conquest.  A mishmash of different governments would have a hard time putting up a resistance to an organized invading force, particularly if that force is using the Metallic Arts in a way that the Northern Scadrians have never seen before.

 

So, perhaps the Set's goal is one of political power, rather than Allomantic.  Breed a gaggle of kids from the Lord Mistborn's line.  (Wish wistfully for a moment that Vin and Elend had had a chance to have kids, then go for the next-best line.)  Ingrain them with your own values, train them to bow to your wisdom.  Select from that pool a child who has qualities best-suited for rulership; charisma, intelligence (but not too much), etc.  Create some political strife such that people start wishing for a better system, wait for the right moment, and then install that child as the king of Elendel.  Start expanding.  Focus power into a united front.  Maybe, when the Southern Scadrians show up, a strong government would be enough to avert an invasion.  If it isn't, though, you're in a better position to resist it.

 

So, there you go.  Start pouring water into my chunk of cheese and watch as I madly try to stick corks into the holes.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Kaymyth

[Landis963]

Why kidnap people, then?  Why did IronEyes pass along his notes on hemalurgy if it wasn't important?  

[Kaymyth]

Why kidnap people, then?  Why did IronEyes pass along his notes on hemalurgy if it wasn't important?  

 

1.  Kidnap women to breed the line.  They need children that they have complete control over, and enough of a pool to draw from to select one with the right qualities.

 

2.  The Hemalurgy angle is independent (or just tangential to) the breeding program.  There may be multiple factions within the Set who have differing goals and/or preferred methods.  I just think that trying to create a figurehead is a much simpler explanation than trying to breed a Mistborn, which may or may not even be possible.  They might be using Hemalurgy to bolster their members and consolidate power.

 

We just don't have enough of the pieces yet to see how they all fit together.  I'm just trying to stick some things together in another part of the puzzle, but they're all cut so similarly that it's hard to tell if I've got the right ones yet.

[Landis963]

1.  Kidnap women to breed the line.  They need children that they have complete control over, and enough of a pool to draw from to select one with the right qualities.

 

2.  The Hemalurgy angle is independent (or just tangential to) the breeding program.  There may be multiple factions within the Set who have differing goals and/or preferred methods.  I just think that trying to create a figurehead is a much simpler explanation than trying to breed a Mistborn, which may or may not even be possible.  They might be using Hemalurgy to bolster their members and consolidate power.

 

We just don't have enough of the pieces yet to see how they all fit together.  I'm just trying to stick some things together in another part of the puzzle, but they're all cut so similarly that it's hard to tell if I've got the right ones yet.

 

1. But why kidnap?  Why not just recruit?  

 

2.  Or they could be seeing if and how Hemalurgic alterations can be passed on to one's offspring.  They already have a proof-of-concept for this, in the koloss (ignoring the fact that they only work that way now because Harmony, but they might not know that).  That particular breakthrough could accelerate the Mistborn breeding process, and such a person would make as good a figurehead as any powerful Allomancer.   (I seem to recall WoB saying that burning a spike Allomantically hotwires the contents of the spike to your sDNA?)  

[Kaymyth]

1. But why kidnap?  Why not just recruit?  

 

2.  Or they could be seeing if and how Hemalurgic alterations can be passed on to one's offspring.  They already have a proof-of-concept for this, in the koloss (ignoring the fact that they only work that way now because Harmony, but they might not know that).  That particular breakthrough could accelerate the Mistborn breeding process, and such a person would make as good a figurehead as any powerful Allomancer.   (I seem to recall WoB saying that burning a spike Allomantically hotwires the contents of the spike to your sDNA?)  

 

1.  How many women do you know of who'd be willing to enter into a creepy breeding program with the purpose of grooming their children to be manipulated and controlled?  Even if it's for figurehead leadership, you might get the occasional crazy-ambitious woman who's willing to go through with it, but this is some seriously skeevy stuff here.

 

2.  It's not completely outside the realm of possibility.  But again, see #1, plus the added bonus of not really knowing what the effects are going to be on your child.  The sort of woman willing to participate in that sort of program is thankfully rare.

[Landis963]

1.  How many women do you know of who'd be willing to enter into a creepy breeding program with the purpose of grooming their children to be manipulated and controlled?  Even if it's for figurehead leadership, you might get the occasional crazy-ambitious woman who's willing to go through with it, but this is some seriously skeevy stuff here.

 

2.  It's not completely outside the realm of possibility.  But again, see #1, plus the added bonus of not really knowing what the effects are going to be on your child.  The sort of woman willing to participate in that sort of program is thankfully rare.

 

Then lie to them.  Or don't, really.  "We're looking for paid volunteers to help us bring back the powers of the mythic Mistborn.  Contracts ready to sign."  There's no reason to resort to clearly illegal methods when only slightly illegal methods would work just fine.  

 

EDIT: Obviously there would be heavily-enforced non-disclosure methods involved, but hey, you've already got them isolated. 

Edited October 2, 2015 by Landis963

[king of nowhere]

Welll, I'm sure you could get many prostitutes to accept that offer for a moderate pay, but prostitutes are unlikely to have goood allomantic bloodlines. those tend to be concentrated in the nobility, and noblewomen are already rich and pampered and therefore unlikely to sign up.

[Kaymyth]

Welll, I'm sure you could get many prostitutes to accept that offer for a moderate pay, but prostitutes are unlikely to have goood allomantic bloodlines. those tend to be concentrated in the nobility, and noblewomen are already rich and pampered and therefore unlikely to sign up.

 

Exactly.  The Set are specifically going after Spook's line.  Most of those are noblewomen, who have been raised in a relatively sheltered environment with certain social expectations.  Even lying, I can just imagine the conversation:  "Hey!  We'd like to pay you to have babies for us!  Of course, we're trying to breed Allomancers, so this mean that you'll have to get down with some as-yet unknown-to-you man that we have selected."  "....what?"

Edited October 2, 2015 by Kaymyth

[Landis963]

Exactly.  The Set are specifically going after Spook's line.  Most of those are noblewomen, who have been raised in a relatively sheltered environment with certain social expectations.  Even lying, I can just imagine the conversation:  "Hey!  We'd like to pay you to have babies for us!  Of course, we're trying to breed Allomancers, so this mean that you'll have to get down with some as-yet unknown-to-you man that we have selected."  "....what?"

 

Assuming of course that you mention the breeding (or the Hemalurgy for that matter) in the first place.  And they don't need to have the sheltered noblewomen to have the babies if the requisite spiritual genes can be passed on via spike.  

 

Even leaving aside the idea of a concerted organization that would hire people (which the Set clearly isn't, or at least they don't want to risk the attention a want ad might bring) you could just do the Dune thing and arrange marriages between powerful Allomancers you have on payroll and people whose genes you want to target and pass on to the next generation.  

Edited October 2, 2015 by Landis963

[Kaymyth]

Assuming of course that you mention the breeding (or the Hemalurgy for that matter) in the first place.  And they don't need to have the shelterd noblewomen to have the babies if the requisite spiritual genes can be passed on via spike.  

 

Then that requires killing Spook's descendents in order to get the spikes.  And by the time you concoct an elaborate enough lie to pull the women in, and have gone on a murderous rampage through the high noble families....well, now you've got everyone's attention even more than the Vanishers did.