It's likely Elend knew about Feruchemy

[StanLemon]

So in TFE I came across something I had never paid much attention to before. When Vin reads an excerpt from one of Elend's books explicitly mentions Feruchemists and metal minds and the ability to store information. And this wasn't even a band book. This makes me suspect that Elend and likely other nobles at least had a general idea of Feruchemy. Who knows what information other books had.

[Karger]

14 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

And this wasn't even a band book. This makes me suspect that Elend and likely other nobles at least had a general idea of Feruchemy. Who knows what information other books had.

The book was dated IIRC.  People had some knowledge of the feruchemists but many believed them to have been wiped out at various points.

[+robardin]

38 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

So in TFE I came across something I had never paid much attention to before. When Vin reads an excerpt from one of Elend's books explicitly mentions Feruchemists and metal minds and the ability to store information. And this wasn't even a band book. This makes me suspect that Elend and likely other nobles at least had a general idea of Feruchemy. Who knows what information other books had.

That's right! It's in Chapter 18 of the first book, when Shan Elariel beckoned Vin over to talk to her, Shan's Terrisman steward headed to the table when Elend had been sitting next to Vin, having left some of his books there. Vin quickly excused herself to get back, then pretended to read one of them to dissaude another nobleman from asking her to dance. The first passage immediately smacked of heresy and sedition:

Quote

When regarding the Final Empire in its entirety, one certain fact is unmistakable. For a nation ruled by a self-proclaimed divinity, the empire has experienced a frightening number of colossal leadership errors. Most of these have been successfully covered up, and can only be found in the metalminds of Feruchemists or on the pages of banned texts. However, one only need look to the near past to note such blunders as the Massacre at Devanex, the revision of the Deepness Doctrine, and the relocation of the Renates peoples.

It was a book Elend had carefully disguised as a book titled "Weather Patterns of the Northern Dominance".

When Vin described reading from it, Kelsier recognized it as the "Book of the False Dawn by Deluse Couvre" ("Any Keeper can quote the entire thing to you"), who "went on to write some books that were even more damning" for which the Ministry eventually strung him up on a hook for. But that book on its own was only "moderately dangerous" if foolish to carry around with him: "It's an older book, and it didn't actually encourage rebellion, so it might slide."

In fact, technically False Dawn wasn't even banned, like his later books evidently were. "False Dawn is a stuffy volume, and by not forbidding it, the Ministry doomed it to obscurity."

22 minutes ago, Karger said:

The book was dated IIRC.  People had some knowledge of the feruchemists but many believed them to have been wiped out at various points.

And then there is this, too. An old and rarely read book that mentioned the "metalminds of Feruchemists" would probably be interpreted as describing things that no longer existed in the Final Empire of their time, long ago purged with the same vigor as the context of "banned texts" they were described alongside, or like the Renates people (who? *shrug*). It doesn't mean they know what the terms mean in any great detail (a Terris person holding gold, pewter, steel, copper...).

Edited April 14, 2020 by robardin

[StanLemon]

Oh I doubt it's a well know thing, but those with the more scholarly outlook probably were able to put things together and figure out there was a power other than Allomancy out there. Even if they didn't know the specifics