Timing of What Rashek Did [Chock full of Mistborn Era 1 spoilers]

[+robardin]

I recently re-read the Mistborn Era 1 trilogy again - one of my favorite re-reads - and figured the time was right to ask a few questions that have been at the back of my mind for a while. There are probably earlier discussions on at least some of these topics, feel free to just link me to any WoBs or prior threads, but a perusal of the Coppermind didn't turn anything like this up.

So at the Well of Ascension, Rashek held the power of Preservation for "only a few moments" - but was able to do a lot in that time, because of the whole Sliver of God thing.

He repositioned the planet, created the ashmounts, turned plants brown, changed human physiology (to be able to digest the plants, but also wiring in "The Balance" between nobility and skaa), and created an unspecified number of nuggets of lerasium that would turn ordinary humans into Mistborn a la Eland, while keeping two of them in reserve next to the Well, and rewrote his "Spritual DNA" to be Mega-Mistborn even beyond the level of a "Gen 1 Lerasium" Mistborn.

He also learned about Hemalurgy, and "created" koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors - in the case of the kandra, by first turning every other living Feruchemist into a mistwraith, after contracting with his ten Feruchemical packmen buddies that they'd get to become immortal kandra in return for their humanity.

So, what I've been wondering about:

#1 - The Balance between nobility and skaa. How could he have done this while holding the Power, seeing as how it then took him another hundred plus years to conquer the world? Who did he identify as "nobility"? Did he overweight nobility with Essence of Preservation (versus skaa) as well, to isolate Allomantic ability to them as much as possible?

I'm assuming he made almost everybody he aimed to later conquer "inherently skaa"; and then, after emerging from the Well, gave lerasium nuggets to key "nobles" to win them over to support him.

#2 - The creation of the First Generation of kandra. He returned sentience to his ten friends by giving them Blessings, which are hemalurgic spikes. But, that means he had to kill 20 people to create the spikes in the first place - physically, with spikes through their hearts, and after being done with the Power, since he surely couldn't have used the power of Preservation to do it instantaneously.

So where did he keep their sentience - their souls, if you will - in the interim? I guess because they agreed to become kandra, he was able to create some kind of Boarding Zone in the Cognitive Realm for them to chill out in while he made spikes to host them with?

Similarly, when Yomen mentions that Church doctrine holds that there were "sixteen original Inquisitors" - they had to have been created one at a time, and well after he gave up the Power, right? He couldn't have used Preservation's power to create spikes?

#3 - The Terris Prophecies' description of The Hero of Ages. When giving Sazed a lift to the Homeland, TenSoon mentions that the Hero of Ages is prophesized to "lead an army of Allomancers to the Homeland" to "save all of us - kandra, humans, koloss, and Inquisitor". But most of that only exists after the Ascension, so this part of the prophecy must have been added in later by the First Generation. Who would have told them this, whose word they would accept as equal to the pre-Ascension holy words?

Maybe Rashek, who glimpsed a vision of When Ruin Returns while holding the power, yet evidently still thought of himself as the Hero of Ages (as he wrote on the steel plate at Fadrex City). But then, wouldn't he just have told them, "*I*" will lead an army of Allomancers, versus "The Hero of Ages"? Maybe Hoid, who's implied somewhere to be involved with the original Terris Prophecies?

 

[RShara]

So he created some nobles and some skaa using the people he already knew.  Remember that Alendi did conquer a number of lands, and they would have had a ruling class and "peasants" already.  So he changed the ones he knew of and future conquests were just shoved into the existing system.  Also, he didn't create the nuggets.  I believe Leras did that some time back. 

Quote

Questioner

How were the original beads of Lerasium created?

Brandon Sanderson

They were created for the purpose that they were originally used for.

Questioner

Who created them?

Brandon Sanderson

They were created by Leras.

source

 

The mistwraiths have a blockage in their minds that prevents them from gaining sapience.  Their minds aren't being held anywhere special, they are in the same places as everyone else's.  It's just that they can't access them without the spikes.  This is why the kandra could create future generations--mistwraith breed true, and the kandra would select some of them to become kandra, then give them spikes to grant them their sapience. 

Quote

NinjaMeTimbers

How intelligent is a mistwraith? Could you raise and train mistwraiths like dogs or horses, controlling what forms they take by the bones you give them? Would you be able to train yourself a horsewraith steed by giving it only the bones of a horse?

Brandon Sanderson

This is feasible. One thing to keep in mind is that mistwraiths are people who have a blockage between the Physical and the Cognitive Realm, messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it...

source

 

This one I can only guess at.  That the prophecy just says that the Hero of Ages will save them all, and either the kandra in general, or TenSoon as he's talking to Sazed, have tacked on the "kandra, human, koloss, Inquisitor" bit.  Because they were human before, so they would have to adapt the prophecy a bit to fit their current circumstances.

 

[+robardin]

1 hour ago, RShara said:

The mistwraiths have a blockage in their minds that prevents them from gaining sapience.  Their minds aren't being held anywhere special, they are in the same places as everyone else's.  It's just that they can't access them without the spikes.  This is why the kandra could create future generations--mistwraith breed true, and the kandra would select some of them to become kandra, then give them spikes to grant them their sapience. 

This is what I used to think, except that we see (albeit in Era 2, in The Bands of Mourning) that kandra spikes are specific to the kandra - ReLuur had one of his two spikes taken from him and was no longer lucid, and just giving him another kandra's spike to make up the complement didn't work. And later, it seems that MeLaan needed her specific original spikes restored to her by Wayne to become MeLaan again - it's not clear that any other spikes, even ones from another kandra, would have done the same.

I guess the initial "release" of the blockage from mistwraith to kandra establishes a kind of connection/identity thing (maybe with capital C and I) binding that person's "kandraness" to the spikes that caused it.

Speaking of Mistborn Era 2 - are mistwraiths confirmed to still exist? There are no new kandra, that's definitely been mentioned, because Harmony is against killing people to make new Blessings spikes; but wouldn't that condemn all mistwraiths to non-sentience, forever? Also bad. Especially when it's in his power, one would assume, to "un-mistwraith" them.

For that matter, of the kandra that do still survive, one of them mentioned that "most of the Second and Third Generations" have done the suicide thing by Era 2, for reasons unknown. But there is no mention of the First Generation. Did Harmony restore them to humanity, since unlike later generations, they were originally human?

Edited March 2, 2018 by robardin

[RShara]

Yeah I think you're right.  Once the kandra gains their sapience with a set of spikes, they need those specific spikes.  I mean, we know that the spikes contain a bit of the original person's Identity in them, so it's the mesh of the Identities of the two spikes, plus the kandra itself, that give it a mind.  Using a different spike, made from a different person, would be like having someone else's memories dumped into your head.  Seriously screwy.

 

Mistwraiths breed true, so I think there would still be mistwraiths. Sazed wouldn't have eradicated the species, imo. But they're kind of myths currently. I don't think any of the current cast has seen a mistwraith other than the kandra

[StormingTexan]

15 minutes ago, robardin said:

peaking of Mistborn Era 2 - are mistwraiths confirmed to still exist? There are no new kandra, that's definitely been mentioned, because Harmony is against killing people to make new Blessings spikes; but wouldn't that condemn all mistwraiths to non-sentience, forever? Also bad. Especially when it's in his power, one would assume, to "un-mistwraith" them.

In-world per Marasi Scientist believe they did not survive the Catacendre. 

[RShara]

And in-world, scientists had no idea there was even a Southern Continent, so....

[Calderis]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

created an unspecified number of nuggets of lerasium that would turn ordinary humans into Mistborn a la Eland

Minor quibble, but Rashek did not create the beads. 

Quote

Questioner

Did the Lord Ruler create the lerasium that he gave to the ten foreign kings? Or where they put there by Leras--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, good question… No one's asked me that before, I don't believe. Did the Lord Ruler create the lerasium that he gave-- No, he found the lerasium. It was existent before his Ascension.

Questioner

Can I ask if it was placed there intentionally by Leras or did it sort of grow similar to how atium--

Brandon Sanderson

The Lord Ruler-- It was not placed for him, he had to-- he had to get it.

source

 

[+robardin]

18 minutes ago, RShara said:

Yeah I think you're right.  Once the kandra gains their sapience with a set of spikes, they need those specific spikes.  I mean, we know that the spikes contain a bit of the original person's Identity in them, so it's the mesh of the Identities of the two spikes, plus the kandra itself, that give it a mind.  Using a different spike, made from a different person, would be like having someone else's memories dumped into your head.  Seriously screwy.

Well, what about TenSoon going around with OreSeur's Blessings on top of his own? He still had them at the time of the Catacendre, and there's no reason to suspect he's given them up in Era 2, right?

[RShara]

I can't remember if he gave them up--I think he still has them.

But, he also has his original spikes.  So he has is own "personality" still, and the extra spikes just gave him a bit of a boost in power.  They would also be in different bindpoints, which might have changed what they can affect.

[Calderis]

On the Kandra, I do somewhat agree that "their own spikes" are somewhat unique, but I don't think ReLuur proves anything. Though he was extremely traumatized, and the difference was noticeable enough for him to eject the spike, I don't think the spike actually failed to work. 

The taboo on using someone else's spike is a cultural thing, not a practical one. 

Quote

BlackYeti

Kandra, you're not getting any more of those. But they can die, so what's stopping them from creating new creating new kandra out of the mistwraith just by recycling the Blessings?

Brandon Sanderson

That is mostly just cultural.

*paraphrased* In The Bands of Mourning, you might expect to see kandra using other kandra's spikes.

source

If the spikes were actually individualized to the point that they wouldn't work on a different Kandra, it shouldn't be possible to use them to make more... Or the new kandra would be very very similar in personality to the original and I don't think that's the case. I think the WoB that RShara posted earlier on the way they function is still correct. 

On the topic of Kandra bindpoints, remember that the "point" in bindpoint doesn't really matter for them. 

Quote

focoma

We've seen Kandra True Bodies made of crystal, stone, or wood. Can a kandra use a True Body made of metal? If so, what happens if each metal "bone" had a Hemalurgic charge, and each one is touching an appropriate bind point?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. And that would work, better than you think, because Kandra have fluid bind points. But too many spikes can be dangerous to the psyche, even with Ati not messing things up.

source

If a spike is in them, it works. Kandra are weird. 

Edited March 2, 2018 by Calderis

[Yata]

On the Kandra's Blessing, I assume every couple of fresh Spikes would be ok (and Bleeder mostly confirm this). But once someone uses them, he "dirts" them and they can't be reused by a MIstwrath to become a Kandra because some of the previous host will remain in the Spike.

If this is the case, nothing prevented the Kandra from crafting a couple of new Spikes to fix ReLuur except their proibition from killing humans

[Isilel]

22 hours ago, robardin said:

#1 - The Balance between nobility and skaa. How could he have done this while holding the Power, seeing as how it then took him another hundred plus years to conquer the world?

My impression is that TLR tried to change them post-Ascension and after he was mostly finished with his conquest, which is why it turned out to be largely unsuccesful, as did his attempts to cull Feruchemy out of the Terris people and/or to prevent them from realising that they had it and how it was supposed to be used - i.e the failed edicts forbidding them to come into contact with metal. TLR learned enough biology while in the Well to provide effective fertility drugs for the Terris Breeding masters - it stands to reason that he used something along these lines trying to differentiate the nobles from the skaa.

People who became his allies and followers during his conquests and their descendants became the nobility, those who opposed him and their progeny were reduced to being skaa.

Quote

#2 - The creation of the First Generation of kandra. He returned sentience to his ten friends by giving them Blessings, which are hemalurgic spikes. But, that means he had to kill 20 people to create the spikes in the first place - physically, with spikes through their hearts, and after being done with the Power, since he surely couldn't have used the power of Preservation to do it instantaneously.

No, presumably he came out of the Well and murdered Alendi's followers, who were also part of the expedition, to provide his packman pals turned mistwraiths with spikes. Their memories wouldn't have degraded significantly in such short amount of time.

2 hours ago, Yata said:

But once someone uses them, he "dirts" them and they can't be reused by a MIstwrath to become a Kandra because some of the previous host will remain in the Spike.

Maybe the original spikes also contribute to kandra's personality/individuality, so that fresh spikes would have changed who ReLuur was?

BTW, I find it slightly hypocritical that Wax is allowed to kill lots of people for the good cause, sometimes shoving bits of metal through their bodies with Steel Pushes, but him using some of this unavoidable carnage to charge some new kandra spikes is somehow a big no-no. I am not saying anything about finishing people in cold blood, but just using bits of appropriate metal instead of coins or bullets during the fights, and if they happen to hit somebody just right, you might end up with a new kandra Blessing.

Edited March 3, 2018 by Isilel

[Yata]

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

Maybe the original spikes also contribute to kandra's personality/individuality, so that fresh spikes would have changed who ReLuur was?

It seems that ReLuur was unable to properly use the "used Spikes" while the Kandra have not "fresh spikes" to use on ReLuur (it's the reason for the Kandra to be a dying species)

Edited March 3, 2018 by Yata

[The One Who Connects]

On 3/2/2018 at 10:53 AM, robardin said:

#1 - The Balance between nobility and skaa.

About that...

Quote

Phantine
How did the 'skaa/noble' class genetic tinkering work out, anyway? Did the leadership of every nation just wake up the next morning and find themselves taller, more intelligent, and less fertile?

Brandon Sanderson
Most genetic differences between skaa and noble were exaggerated, even fabricated, by noble culture as justification for their perceived superiority. Height differences due to nutrition, 'intelligence' due to education and societal expectations, fertility due to common factors in urbanization. The LR did try some minor tinkering, to be played out over time through genetics, but in the end these changes weren't very successful.

---

On 3/2/2018 at 10:53 AM, robardin said:

whose word they would accept as equal to the pre-Ascension holy words?

I've got a few ideas, but no definitive proof.

1. This existed in the prophecy when Preservation created it, due to his future-sight. (Unlikely, but...)
2. Ruin's Tinkering(A bit more likely, since he can speak to spiked people)
3. The base prophecy just says "save us all" and they've decided to include the names of that "all" for unknown reasons. (I like Rshara's reasoning)

On 3/2/2018 at 10:53 AM, robardin said:

#2 - The creation of the First Generation of kandra. He returned sentience to his ten friends by giving them Blessings, which are hemalurgic spikes. But, that means he had to kill 20 people to create the spikes in the first place - physically, with spikes through their hearts, and after being done with the Power, since he surely couldn't have used the power of Preservation to do it instantaneously.

So where did he keep their sentience - their souls, if you will - in the interim? I guess because they agreed to become kandra, he was able to create some kind of Boarding Zone in the Cognitive Realm for them to chill out in while he made spikes to host them with?

Similarly, when Yomen mentions that Church doctrine holds that there were "sixteen original Inquisitors" - they had to have been created one at a time, and well after he gave up the Power, right?

Paragraph 1) I agree with Isilel about using the rest of Alendi's party for the spikes. He rebuilt the land, so he may have trapped them for this purpose. (Also, the Terris people still exist, so he'd have people to use when he returned to Terris to make the Mistwraith Elders into Kandra.)
Paragraph 2) The Well was in the Terris Mountains. The Terris People probably weren't that far away, so there shouldn't be much memory degradation in the interim.
Paragraph 3) He'd have to wait a few generations for enough Allomancers to have been born to make 16 Inquisitors. At that point, he could probably have made them all at once with the help of his Obligators. (Or this is just religious dogma for the symmetry of 16)

[RShara]

I seem to remember that kandra and koloss spikes are made from regular people, rather than Allomancers or Feruchemists?

[The One Who Connects]

1 hour ago, RShara said:

I seem to remember that kandra and koloss spikes are made from regular people, rather than Allomancers or Feruchemists?

Did I say something that contradicted that?

[RShara]

8 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Did I say something that contradicted that?

Quote

Paragraph 1) I agree with Isilel about using the rest of Alendi's party for the spikes. He rebuilt the land, so he may have trapped them for this purpose. (Also, the Terris people still exist, so he'd have people to use when he returned to Terris to make the Mistwraith Elders into Kandra.)

Maybe I misunderstood.

[The One Who Connects]

19 minutes ago, RShara said:

Maybe I misunderstood.

All the Terris Feruchemists were already Mistwraiths, so the remaining Terris men/women were "regular people," technically.
The fact that they had Feruchemical potential was irrelevant to TLR, since they'd die if they were spiked to make a Kandra.

[RShara]

4 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

All the Terris Feruchemists were already Mistwraiths, so the remaining Terris men/women were "regular people," technically.
The fact that they had Feruchemical potential was irrelevant to TLR, since they'd die if they were spiked to make a Kandra.

Okay.

[+robardin]

On 3/4/2018 at 1:05 PM, The One Who Connects said:

About that...

Ah, awesome! A WoB that directly addresses my exact question about how "The Balance" could have been implemented while Rashek was Temporarily Ascendant, enSlivered if you will, when he hadn't yet created the nobility's association with Allomancy via the lerasium nuggets yet.

The reason I was confused is that there is a chapter heading discussion of this in HoA, where the headings are (I thought) revealed at the end to be the writings of Sazed left behind after he Double Ascended, so you'd think he would know, and also not have a reason to lie.

This is the heading to Chapter 25 of "The Hero of Ages":

Quote

The Balance. Is it real?

...

But it was real. There was a physiological difference between skaa and nobility. When the Lord Ruler altered mankind to make them more capable of dealing with ash, he changed other things as well. Some groups of people - the noblemen - were created to be less fertile, but taller, stronger, more intelligent. Others - the skaa - were made to be shorter, hardier, and to have many children.

The changes were slight, however, and after a thousand years of interbreeding, the differences had largely been erased.

So integrating the two statements together, it still makes sense:

While Ascendant, already intending to create a unified Empire with a regimented and stratified society, he separated out the intended ruling classes (nobility) - presumably mostly the incumbent leaders he'd try to recruit, except for those Khlenni bastards - from lower classes (skaa) with slight physiological tweaks, at the same time as pushing out the mandatory LivingWithAsh.MSP patch to all people.

He may, or may not, have also further adjusted the Allomantic potential in humans while applying the Balancing algorithm to mankind, but in any case he couldn't dial skaa down to zero, because that comes from the essential spark of Preservation inherent in all Scadrians (Scadrialites?).

He later doled out the lerasium nuggets to key world leaders to cement them as allies, turning them into powerful Mistborn, and establishing their noble Houses as having strong Allomantic potential.

Even later, he established his interbreeding laws to keep the number of skaa Allomancers - especially skaa Mistborn - as close to zero as possible.

Enforcing those laws would have been difficult at the beginning, before his Steel Ministry and armies of obligators were a part of all (Northern) societies, not to mention how long it took before he could create Inquisitors with hemalurgy.

So there was probably significant noble/skaa interbreeding right from the start, that always continued on to some degree, especially since the Inquisitors would only really get involved if "half-breed" Allomancers popped up that weren't successfully passed off as nobility. Lord Cett admitted his House was long ago "corrupted" by skaa interbreeding, because known skaa showing Allomancy was a trigger, but not nobility lacking it.

Edited March 7, 2018 by robardin

[+robardin]

On 3/2/2018 at 2:15 PM, RShara said:

Mistwraiths breed true, so I think there would still be mistwraiths. Sazed wouldn't have eradicated the species, imo. But they're kind of myths currently. I don't think any of the current cast has seen a mistwraith other than the kandra

In re-reading The Bands of Mourning, in the part in Chapter 3 where VenDell explains how special and different kandra Blessings are from other hemalurgic spikes, and that they do not have them 'lying around', I noticed MeLaan commenting, "If that worked, we'd have already used all those spikes to make new children. We can't."

So while mistwraiths have not been seen - by Northerners, anyway - in so long a time as to be considered extinct, the kandra consider only the lack of new Blessings as a reason there are no new kandra, i.e., there are indeed mistwraiths still around.

Edited March 14, 2018 by robardin