Prediction: Southern Scadrian Antagonist in Era 3

[Cocoa he/him]

So, it's been out for a while now that Brandon's thinking of working in a lot of spy thriller elements into Mistborn Era 3. And in one of the grand old traditions of spy thrillers, I suspect for at least one book we'll see a 'foreign,' technologically advanced antagonist. Now, assuming that the balkanization of the Elendel Basin continues on its current course as of BoM, I suspect many of the outer cities could provide 'foreign spy' antagonists, but are they really all that more technologically advanced than Elendel?

Now, on the other hand, we have Southern Scadrians and their mechanical metallic arts. And even if this technology proliferates northward (and it almost certainly will), the South is still the origin of that science, and they have a whole cultural head start on innovating with it. Add onto that thet there's an even greater distance between them and Elendel (both physically and culturally) than any of the outer cities, and I think that's why one of the big Era 3 antagonists will be either a government agent or non-state terrorist/supervillain from the South.

Only very tangentially related but I suspect we'll also see a Scotty homage in the form of a Southern Scadrian starship engineer in Era 4.