The Lost Metal Chapter 1

[cometaryorbit]

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Now what exactly is a republic? The city of Elendel? For sure. The immediate area around Elendel? Maybe. Estates in the far outback? It was my understanding that the country holdings of a noble house are truly theirs. They are the government there

Hmm... I would kind of assume that falls in the fuzzy area of legal vs real authority  ... I doubt the nobles have total arbitrary power over people on their remote estates, legally, but in practice if no one else knows what is going on they might as well. The Set could take over a whole village for months before anyone noticed, and Wax/Wayne/Marasi only found out because they were sent on a mission from Harmony by kandra... I don't think there's a lot of oversight of remote areas.

Also if Elendel's police are limited to the city then it might be less "the noble houses have the legal right to do whatever they want on remote estates" and more "there is no one to enforce whatever rights theoretically exist".

I think it's probably that... the whole Roughs lawkeepers like Miles and early Wax being basically freelance thing implies that there is a general idea of law & rights even in places too remote there is no organized enforcement authority.

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Right. Unfortunately we do not know the early history of the Basin under Spook.

True. But it does seem he ruled as an effective monarch (though Elend is called "the Last Emperor" there is a statement that there wasn't supposed to be a single ruler after the Lord Mistborn stepped down) so I doubt there was serious armed conflict within the Basin in his time.

I think 100 years of rule by one person at what's effectively the beginning of their history would give them a push toward unity that we've never seen in RL, not only because no RL ruler/leader has ruled for so long but also because they don't get such a "clean slate" start.

I wonder if part of the reason intercity conflicts are emerging now isn't just the newer infrastructure like railways enhancing Elendel's power, but also the "wearing out" of that initial cultural push toward unity. (Both because of general time passing/cultural drift and because they are now in a tech era where change is speeding up so 'how things have always been' doesn't work so well.)

Maybe also there was less reason for conflict early on since easy-to-access resources were abundant enough (relative to the then-tiny population) that it was easier for House A to find new resources than try to get ones already being exploited by House B ... but now all the low hanging fruit is being used?

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

There is an area in between that, like one house doing raids on another house's mines or transports.

Hmm yeah seems possible. Are you thinking they do that in areas far from Elendel so no police etc. involvement? That could totally work. I think companies in the US company town era (late 19th/early 20th century) did stuff like this on a smaller scale.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

10 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmm... I would kind of assume that falls in the fuzzy area of legal vs real authority  ... I doubt the nobles have total arbitrary power over people on their remote estates, legally, but in practice if no one else knows what is going on they might as well. The Set could take over a whole village for months before anyone noticed, and Wax/Wayne/Marasi only found out because they were sent on a mission from Harmony by kandra... I don't think there's a lot of oversight of remote areas.

I am afraid you are equating being the government with total control. People could still have guilds and stuff.

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Also if Elendel's police are limited to the city then it might be less "the noble houses have the legal right to do whatever they want on remote estates" and more "there is no one to enforce whatever rights theoretically exist".

I think it's probably that... the whole Roughs lawkeepers like Miles and early Wax being basically freelance thing implies that there is a general idea of law & rights even in places too remote there is no organized enforcement authority.

Again. Government does not imply law. In fact the idea that law is something man-made and subject to the government's decisions is not universal. In fact I would find that unusual in a culture whose god is a provable fact.

I suspect that they have a core of laws set by Spook or even to be found in the Words of Founding. In fact they even contain political statements going back to Kelsier.

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True. But it does seem he ruled as an effective monarch (though Elend is called "the Last Emperor" there is a statement that there wasn't supposed to be a single ruler after the Lord Mistborn stepped down) so I doubt there was serious armed conflict within the Basin in his time.

If you equate this with war, yes.

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I think 100 years of rule by one person at what's effectively the beginning of their history would give them a push toward unity that we've never seen in RL, not only because no RL ruler/leader has ruled for so long but also because they don't get such a "clean slate" start.

Debatable. People often resent a rule simply for being too long and may have rejected such a ruler's principles just for being his. 300 years is a time long enough for quite some history and the attitude of veneration they have for Spook now may not have been universal at the end of his rule and what they had then was probably not how they saw him in the first decades.

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I wonder if part of the reason intercity conflicts are emerging now isn't just the newer infrastructure like railways enhancing Elendel's power, but also the "wearing out" of that initial cultural push toward unity. (Both because of general time passing/cultural drift and because they are now in a tech era where change is speeding up so 'how things have always been' doesn't work so well.)

That they are experiencing social unrest at the same time as intercity conflict points to technological change as main culprit, but that is far from definite.

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Maybe also there was less reason for conflict early on since easy-to-access resources were abundant enough (relative to the then-tiny population) that it was easier for House A to find new resources than try to get ones already being exploited by House B ... but now all the low hanging fruit is being used?

Parts of the Basin still seem to be essentially empty, going by the travel seen in Bands of Mourning.

They are at a stage where natural resources may still be a prerequisite for wealth, but by themselves no longer generate it. The more you advance in technology the more skilled population and cities rather than mines and fields become sources of wealth.

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Hmm yeah seems possible. Are you thinking they do that in areas far from Elendel so no police etc. involvement? That could totally work. I think companies in the US company town era (late 19th/early 20th century) did stuff like this on a smaller scale.

I am thinking that they are the police there. The idea that police and armed forces are distinct is very much non-universal. There has to be a neutral police force in cities because noble houses share them. But that applies only to cities. The assumption that such behavior would be illegal, shameful and hidden is probably wrong.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Oltux72
typo

[cometaryorbit]

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I suspect that they have a core of laws set by Spook or even to be found in the Words of Founding. In fact they even contain political statements going back to Kelsier.

[...]

There has to be a neutral police force in cities because noble houses share them. But that applies only to cities. The assumption that such behavior would be illegal, shameful and hidden is probably wrong.

Hmm, ok, maybe I'm arguing against something you're not actually saying. 

I totally agree with the first statement.

Those core legal/political ideas being enshrined in the Words of Founding would rule out the idea that "nobles have arbitrary/absolute power over the people they rule and that's OK".

But ordinary governing power, subject to citizens retaining basic rights, that's something else.

I think it's totally likely that noble houses have legal police powers etc. in their estates outside the city. I don't see who else would have that authority, in fact. 

But I think they *don't* have the right to ignore whatever version of due process the Basin has, or to violate the basic rights recognized by that culture, and doing so would be shameful & in some sense "illegal" even if there is no Basin-wide authority to enforce that in practice.

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Parts of the Basin still seem to be essentially empty, going by the travel seen in Bands of Mourning.

They are at a stage where natural resources may still be a prerequisite for wealth, but by themselves no longer generate it. The more you advance in technology the more skilled population and cities rather than mines and fields become sources of wealth.

Oh yeah the Basin is nothing like fully farmed, as we see in BOM - totally agree there. But I think *specific* resources (eg a gold mine or a tin mine) rather than just farmable land might be more fully utilized.

I agree that the more tech you have the more innovation rather than natural resources becomes the primary driver of wealth, but I think the Basin (~1910 tech) is only beginning that process. I'd say that's largely a change that happened over the course of the 20th century in RL.

[Friendly Cremling she/her]

On 2/8/2022 at 0:06 PM, Nameless said:

Brandon released a video on his channel of him reading TLM chapter 1:

youtube link

*unintelligible excited screaming*