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Lord Rulers' Motives


Steelheart

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So, we know that TLR hunted down the Terris and created the breeding programs to ensure no one would be born who would be both a Feruchemist and Mistborn (for whom I personally like the term Fullborn), as they would be able to challenge him. However, we know from Era 2 that when those genes mix, the result is a watered-down version of a Fullborn: a Twinborn, with only one ability from each magic system. This begs the question: What was Rashek so scared of? It's impossible for a Fullborn to be born naturally - Rashek only was one because he was able to make himself into a Mistborn. 

I can think of 2 answers, but I don't really like either one; 

1) He was afraid of Twinborn as well as Fullborn, This doesn't really make sense, as he wasn't threatened by Mistborn, who are of a much higher power level than Twinborn.

2) It was possible before, but Harmony changed it so that they created Twinborn instead. This seems the most likely scenario to me, but that in turn asks why TLR didn't just do that at the Well when he had the chance.

(sorry for not linking sources, but I'm super tired and don't have the energy to go find all of them)

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I don't think harmony actually changed much, and I don't think that natural Fullborn are impossible. The genes from Allomancy are just very much diluted, and the same genes that allow mistings, when mixed with feruchemical genes (which wasn't common pre-catecendre), allows for ferrings. 

Spook was made a Mistborn, but as no one since has been, he couldn't have been at Lerasium bead level. Genes of feruchemists were already weak from being hunted down by TLR and for inquisitors spikes. So what survived was actually strengthened by the allomantic genes, as it allowed for expression of partial feruchemists.

If both sets of SDNA were at their non-weakened states, and interbreeding were as common as it's become in the AoL era, I think Fullborn would not only be possible naturally but likely. 

In addition, if harmony did change things, Rashek only held a fraction of the power of one of the Shards with a steep learning curve. I don't think he had the time or knowledge to do everything he did, and try to make those changes. It was either or. 

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I think it was just to keep feruchemist genes out of the population generally. He may have been fearful of Fullborn but he needn't have been.

Quote

Wetlandernw

Why do the Twinborn in Alloy of Law have only one feruchemical power, when all previous feruchemists, in spite of breeding programs, could use all the metals? (from travyl) Or were Ferrings always part of the system and we just didn't meet them in Mistborn? (my addition)

Brandon Sanderson

The Ferrings are a new development since Mistborn, as the Feruchemists have been interbreeding with the Allomancers. Basically, the Allomancy genes interfere with the Feruchemistry genes, breaking it down and creating the limitations we see in Alloy of Law. (His response to this was really fun—he found it a very perceptive question, and enjoyed talking about it. I wish I'd had my recorder handy so I could give you the full transcript instead of the boiled-down version.)

He just generally removed threats. He allowed alomancy but controlled it strictly and had his most loyal servants hunt down any children that got away. With the terrismen, he castrated them. I think he kept alomancy around because it was much more controllable, he knew exactly how many beads there were and could control the genes in the population. With feruchemists, control would have been impossible as there were already so many of them. Hence turning his friends into Kandra and turning the rest into mistwraiths.

He was also, I should remind everyone, a paranoid, sociopathic chull-face. He saved the world, but doesn't stop him being a total git.

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2 minutes ago, 8bitBob said:

WoB confirms Spook to be a reduced power Mistborn:

 

As for the question itself, others have mentioned that it may indeed be possible for a Fullborn to be born naturally if the genes aren't as diluted.

That being said, I think there's actually a better explanation. BoM tells us that, when he Ascended, Sazed was granted full knowledge of Allomancy and Feruchemy, and suspects that the Lord Ruler was granted the same:

A long standing mystery of the Lord Ruler's motivations has always been, why did he choose Allomancy over Feruchemy? Wanting only one makes perfect sense if it can birth Fullborn, but why did he choose this new power when doing so cost the lives of all of his closest friends and the complete subjugation and oppression of his people?

I think VenDell is cluing us in on what Rashek was really afraid of: the full potential of a Feruchemist with access to every metal. Mistborn are dangerous, but their power is their's alone. So far as we know, there is no way for a Mistborn to empower someone else without the use of Hemalurgy or passing it on to their descendants. Additionally, it is much more dangerous for Mistborn to attempt to experiment with new metal types, as testing a new metal makes them violently sick or worse.

This is not the case for Feruchemy. Metals can be tested simply by trying to store in them with no ill consequences. Once Aluminum is discovered, Feruchemists can empower each other by sharing metalmind reserves. Once Duralumin and Nicrosil are discovered, it's possible that medallions could be made. Suddenly anyone can be Dominant, which is not something Rashek was interested in at all.

Even if there was a Fullborn to challenge him, I think Rashek could swing the conflict in his favor via Hemalurgy somehow. I think what he really feared was the societal effects of a system that could potentially empower the masses one day.

Upvote for you! Even if this ends up being wrong, this is really cool! I'd love for this to be right. Someone should ask Brandon about this.

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I was under the impression that creating amulets requires ettmetal and some other hocus-pocus we don't quite understand yet (i.e. more than just aluminum and nicrosil. Of course, I would be pleasantly surprised if we know more than this). That said, the ability for feruchemists to share reserves is still quite formidable.

However, I also think that TLR was trying to prevent any intermingling of the two powers; specifically, he was trying to prevent the discovery of compounding. While twinborn aren't normally as dangerous as mistborn, eventually someone would figure out compounding, and then it'd only be a matter of time before the illusion of TLR's divinity begins to fall apart. 

However, however, Sazed gives us a motivation mostly unrelated to the Metallic Arts. From the HoA epigraphs:

Quote

Originally, men assumed that Rashek's persecution of the Terris religion came from hatred. Yet, now that we know that Rashek was himself a Terrisman, his destruction of that religion seems odd. I suspect it had something to do with the prophecies about the Hero of Ages. Rashek knew that Preservation's power would eventually return to the Well of Ascension. If the Terris religion had been allowed to survive, then perhaps—someday—a person would find their way to the Well and take up the power, then use it to defeat Rashek and overthrow his empire. So, he obscured knowledge of the Hero and what he was supposed to do, hoping to keep the secret of the Well to himself.

Taken from the Coppermind.

Edit: further speculation from Sazed:

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He could have, I suppose, kept Allomancy secret and used Feruchemists as his primary warriors and assassins. However, I think he was wise to choose as he did. Feruchemists, by the nature of their powers, have a tendency toward scholarship. With their incredible memories, they would have been very difficult to control over the centuries. Indeed, they were difficult to control, even when he suppressed them. Allomancy not only provided a spectacular new ability without that drawback, it offered a mystical power he could use to bribe kings to his side

 

Edited by Scriptorian
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@Steelheart indeed you understimate the impact a single Twinborn could have in The Final Empire.

For now I will ignore the fact that at that time Lerasium Mistborn and Full Feruchemist were a thing and their interbreed could give birth to something more powerful than the Twinborns we know...It's a factor but not so relevant.

A single Twinborn among TFE will mean that a guy could have both Feruchemy and Allomancy, a single Compounder in TFE will mean that a guy could access almost infinite power "simply" with magic interactions (notice it is meaningless if this Compounder has a quite useless attribute, it's the concept that matters).

The whole TLR's Goodhood will fall apart in a short amount of time. He could be the stronger and mightier being on Scadrial...But it's a man not a god, the people will know, his influence strongly reduced...and plans to research and put in places ways to kill him, will spawn like fungi.

The interbreed of Feruchemy and Allomancy wasn't a treat to his empire because a super human would actually challenge him, but because a twinborn will mine the fondation of his power and influence.

PS: Notice also that without removing the old Feruchemists, it would be impossible to hide the other metals....The Mistborn's supremacy would be mined too with Nicrobuster, Leecher, sliders and pulser around (and of course with Alluminium weapon)

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2 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

I was under the impression that creating amulets requires ettmetal and some other hocus-pocus we don't quite understand yet (i.e. more than just aluminum and nicrosil. Of course, I would be pleasantly surprised if we know more than this).

Some people have theorized that Ettmetal is involved, but it's just speculation at this point. Brandon is being pretty tight lipped about this, as I imagine the next Mistborn will deal heavily in this sort of thing, so we haven't learned much more since BoM. He did mention that it "involves" Duralumin (Connection) which is why I mentioned it, but he also said that involved can mean a lot of things. For instance, it could be that Connection is required when creating a medallion with multiple people involved, but may not be needed if you could make it yourself. Etc, etc.

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3 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

I was under the impression that creating amulets requires ettmetal and some other hocus-pocus we don't quite understand yet (i.e. more than just aluminum and nicrosil. Of course, I would be pleasantly surprised if we know more than this). That said, the ability for feruchemists to share reserves is still quite formidable.

However, I also think that TLR was trying to prevent any intermingling of the two powers; specifically, he was trying to prevent the discovery of compounding. While twinborn aren't normally as dangerous as mistborn, eventually someone would figure out compounding, and then it'd only be a matter of time before the illusion of TLR's divinity begins to fall apart. 

However, however, Sazed gives us a motivation mostly unrelated to the Metallic Arts. From the HoA epigraphs:

Taken from the Coppermind.

Edit: further speculation from Sazed:

 

There's no definitive evidence that you'd need Harmonium/Ettmetal to create a medallion, in fact in the allomantic form, all you'd need is to figure out how to make an unlocked nicrosilmind. What we don't know, for sure, is if it's enough to simply store as much of your Identity as possible in an Aluminiumind while making the Nicrosilmind in order to unlock it, or if there's some other trick to the process, but there's no evidence saying for sure that anything extra is necessary. It's the feruchemical ones that are difficult because you need to combine multiple metalminds together so that you can usefully do anything with the stored Investiture, but even that can, as far as we know right now, be achieved simply by making a double metalmind. We do know that devices like the "Allomantic Grenade" require Harmonium, iirc as fuel not just to manufacture, so maybe you're confusing those two things?

As to the Sazed epigraphs... do remember they are in-world sources and it's quite possible Sazed is deliberately leaving people to discover the details of feruchemical powers for themselves. The democratising effects of being able to share the Metallic Arts via feruchemy weren't known at all at the time, and Sazed might have had reason not to comment on them to his people, possibly wanting them to grow up a bit more before they made the Metallic Arts more widely available. While Sazed's reasoning may be true in part, 8bitBob's reasoning rings far truer to me now that we know Rashek's overall motivations were around consolidating power and maintaining a certain level of ignorance to the nature of the Metallic Arts.

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7 minutes ago, Ari said:

There's no definitive evidence that you'd need Harmonium/Ettmetal to create a medallion, in fact in the allomantic form, all you'd need is to figure out how to make an unlocked nicrosilmind. What we don't know, for sure, is if it's enough to simply store as much of your Identity as possible in an Aluminiumind while making the Nicrosilmind in order to unlock it, or if there's some other trick to the process, but there's no evidence saying for sure that anything extra is necessary. It's the feruchemical ones that are difficult because you need to combine multiple metalminds together so that you can usefully do anything with the stored Investiture, but even that can, as far as we know right now, be achieved simply by making a double metalmind. We do know that devices like the "Allomantic Grenade" require Harmonium, iirc as fuel not just to manufacture, so maybe you're confusing those two things?

The main issue with this is that there's still a sticking point, whether the medallion grants Allomancy or Feruchemy, in that it has to somehow grant Nicrosil Feruchemy to the person holding it in order for them to be able to access any other abilities stored. There is plenty that we don't understand, but simply storing all of your identity in aluminum does nothing to let the person tap the nicrosil to use the stored ability in the first place. 

Allomantic ability and feruchemical ability medallions may differ in creation, or be exactly the same. Both utilize nicrosil Feruchemy in a manner that neither duraluminum nor aluminum can fully explain so far. 

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It really depends on whether you take the principle of "Lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn" and see that extending to "nicrosilminds are a metalmind that anyone can tap" because of the stored investiture being a different type of attribute than the other feruchemy stores. It could also be that anyone can tap Nicrosilminds containing the Soulbearer ability, and that all the allomantic medallions are actually two-part ones. It's totally possible that isn't the case though, and that there's Something Extra needed to let anyone who's not a Soulbearer use the medallions, which in some ways is more interesting as it might mean we get our first canon explanation of investiture hacking, we just have no reference to that Something Extra being Harmonium specifically, so that's the sort of thing that needs theory and speculation to back it up IMO, because there's certainly no outright evidence pointing in that direction.

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12 minutes ago, Ari said:

It really depends on whether you take the principle of "Lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn" and see that extending to "nicrosilminds are a metalmind that anyone can tap" because of the stored investiture being a different type of attribute than the other feruchemy stores. It could also be that anyone can tap Nicrosilminds containing the Soulbearer ability, and that all the allomantic medallions are actually two-part ones. It's totally possible that isn't the case though, and that there's Something Extra needed to let anyone who's not a Soulbearer use the medallions, which in some ways is more interesting as it might mean we get our first canon explanation of investiture hacking, we just have no reference to that Something Extra being Harmonium specifically, so that's the sort of thing that needs theory and speculation to back it up IMO, because there's certainly no outright evidence pointing in that direction.

I definitely think there's something else involved and it is a hack. 

I can't believe that a single feruchemical metal would disregard the genetic component of the two magic systems. The only example we've seen of this being possible in either system is Lerasium, and a Godmetal is somewhat expected to break the rules. 

Furthermore, both the Terris and Kandra are actively studying the Feruchemy, and Nicrosil is not a secret. If it were able to be tapped by anyone, that should have been discovered by now, even if it was completely accidental.

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1 minute ago, Calderis said:

Furthermore, both the Terris and Kandra are actively studying the Feruchemy, and Nicrosil is not a secret. If it were able to be tapped by anyone, that should have been discovered by now, even if it was completely accidental.

The idea here is that Identity still plays a role. It would require both a Soulbearer and Trueself to attempt, which lowers the pool of testing candidates considerably, as these are supposed to be some of the rarest metalborn on Scadrial. At the very least, that seems unlikely to happen accidentally.

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Almost impossible to happen accidentally, even, as to our knowledge there's no Full Feruchemists currently on Scadrial as of Era 2, so you'd essentially have to spike someone with either the Soulbearer or Trueself power to start making unlocked medallions, and the Kandra, like Harmony, are probably very against casual experimentation with Hemalurgy. (because it's not enough to have two of them together, you need the same person with access to both powers, which you can't get without either a full feruchemist, a spike, or a medallion as a starting point)

That said, I'm not wedded to a particular answer, I'm just open to the possibility that what a Soulbearer is storing is, essentially, their sDNA, so all you might need to tap it once the identity lock is turned would be the generic Scadrian sDNA because the "investiture" itself provides the rest, the same way that Lerasium does in providing the ability to burn the metal before you actually become an Allomancer. It's less interesting for us Cosmere nerds that way, but also more elegant for the average reader to understand. :)

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1 minute ago, Ari said:

Almost impossible to happen accidentally, even, as to our knowledge there's no Full Feruchemists currently on Scadrial as of Era 2, so you'd essentially have to spike someone with either the Soulbearer or Trueself power to start making unlocked medallions, and the Kandra, like Harmony, are probably very against casual experimentation with Hemalurgy

The idea is that you have a Soulbearer store in a Nicrosilmind and then give it to a Trueself. The Trueself dumps their Identity into an Aluminum metalmind and then attempts to tap the Nicrosilmind. If Nicrosilminds are special, maybe this could work, etc.

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3 minutes ago, 8bitBob said:

The idea is that you have a Soulbearer store in a Nicrosilmind and then give it to a Trueself. The Trueself dumps their Identity into an Aluminum metalmind and then attempts to tap the Nicrosilmind. If Nicrosilminds are special, maybe this could work, etc.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work, as the Nicrosilmind would have an identity lock, so storing your identity wouldn't be enough to access it. I'm pretty sure you have to store your identity while you're storing in a fresh metalmind in order to do things like create the unlocked goldmind that they used in BoM. So if Nicrosilminds don't require any particular investiture to tap from even without a hack, all you need is someone spiked with an extra Ferring power or a full Feruchemist to start you off with some trueself medallions, then presumably you can just start copying your existing medallions by having Nicrosil compounders burn attributes they didn't already possess and dump them into several new medallions.

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Just now, Ari said:

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work, as the Nicrosilmind would have an identity lock, so storing your identity wouldn't be enough to access it. I'm pretty sure you have to store your identity while you're storing in a fresh metalmind in order to do things like create the unlocked goldmind that they used in BoM.

It is theorized by VenDell in BoM that you could tap keyed metalminds if you have no Identity when doing so. Basically, the idea is that Identity can be subverted either way. So yes, you would not be creating unkeyed metalminds, but that's not what's happening here.

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Just now, 8bitBob said:

It is theorized by VenDell in BoM that you could tap keyed metalminds if you have no Identity when doing so. Basically, the idea is that Identity can be subverted either way. So yes, you would not be creating unkeyed metalminds, but that's not what's happening here.

Ah. Well, usually Brandon is giving us a hint that this sort of thing is reliable when he has a Kandra or Harmony say it, but I'm a little suspicious of VenDell given how wrong he was about so many things in BoM, lol. If he's right that identity works that way, it would certainly make things simpler in getting to that first unlocked medallion with both Soulbearer and Trueself powers in it.

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19 minutes ago, Ari said:

If he's right that identity works that way, it would certainly make things simpler in getting to that first unlocked medallion with both Soulbearer and Trueself powers in it.

It could make it easier, yeah. Even if this works though, it's actually still possible that it wouldn't help with medallion creation. Long story short, it's possible having Soulbearer Investiture tapped won't help you store Trueself Investiture. This is theorized because, according to WoB, when storing in Nicrosil, you store each ability individually, not "Mistborn-ness" or anything like that. Under this logic, when you tap the Trueself Soulbearer Investiture, you're just granted the ability to store Trueself Soulbearer Investiture, not simply any power you have access to. This would require the use of Hemalurgy for medallion creation without a Feruchemist.

Honestly though, the more I've read on the topic (and I've probably read every related WoB) the more I'm convinced we just don't know enough to make well informed theories on the matter. We'll probably just have to wait until the next book and have Brandon tell us how it's done.

edit: Derp. Mixed up ferring names.

Edited by 8bitBob
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There's a complicated process for creating medallions and it involves connection feruchemy somehow. As such, I extremely strongly doubt it is achieved through a property of a metal. Furthermore, I see no reason why nicrosilminds would somehow operate completely differently than other metals and automatically give non-soulbearers the ability to tap it. That goes pretty far beyond what we've seen happen before. 

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To get this discussion back on track: Personally, I think he may not have thought that Fullborn were impossible, since he was one. (I know he wasn't born that way, but after moving a planet via power of the gods, I think he's validated in questioning what is really "impossible")

On 6/22/2017 at 11:15 PM, Steelheart said:

1) He was afraid of Twinborn as well as Fullborn, This doesn't really make sense, as he wasn't threatened by Mistborn, who are of a much higher power level than Twinborn.

Yata summed it up quite nicely. He wasn't afraid of Twinborn in terms of power, but what they could represent. Most of his godlike reputation was built on knowing things others didn't, and using those unknown powers. He could easily crush any compounder short of maybe Double Gold, but compounding was a secret he didn't want people to know. Apply this to all the other revelations that could be made by the reveal of Twinborn, and his persecution takes on an understandable perspective.

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