The other survivors of Hatsin

[king of nowhere]

Something I considered as I'm rereading mistborn.

Kelsier is known as the survivor of hatsin. he's a legend. his scars are famous, and a thing of mystery. because nobody knows what happens in the pits. Because nobody else survived.

But! when kelsier snapped, he killed (according to the annotations) every noblemen and guard in a radius of kilometers. there were other prisoners in the pits at the time, so it's likely they also escaped.

so there should be several dozens, possibly hundreds of other people who escaped from hatsin. all survivors of hatsin. all with the scars. and while some of them may have wanted to not talk about the experience, many more would have. and kelsier shouldn't have had such an air of mystery around him.

unless they were all caught and executed in a short time, but it doesn't seem likely.

[NerdyAarakocra]

I think that when the others found the noblemen dead, they didn't know what to do. In the confusion, even one Inquistor could have restored order.

Edited October 30, 2022 by NerdyAarakocra

[Returned]

It's maybe not that shocking. It's not really a technical title in the first place-- just having been to the Pits and not died doesn't qualify someone for that impressive, mysterious status any more than it would for a soldier who worked there. Like, a prisoner who was at the Pits on their first day when Kelsier snapped technically survived them, but so what? Kelsier beat the Pits. He was imprisoned there to die, but didn't, and got out via his own ability and also slaughtered a lot of people along the way. No one else was known to (Zane would also qualify, and be similarly impressive, but that was secret from most people). Some random person who was there, but wandered out when no guards showed up for a few days? It's the difference between a big-name celebrity headlining a movie and an extra who was on screen for half a second. Both were in the movie, sure, but one is a lot more substantial than the other.

Some other elements might have otherwise worked against the dilution of the legend with other people. Skaa legally couldn't travel, so the only place they could go and survive would be the underground. Many of them probably lacked the connections and savvy to make good on that, and so might have starved, or at least pretended not to be from the Pits. And that's assuming they were able to get somewhere with food and water in the first place. Miles of ashen wasteland, people with little to no experience travelling or surviving in the wilderness, and being undernourished and subject to frequent beatings... not a great setup for lots of escapees. And it seems likely that Venture soldiers, or even imperial soldiers, would have searched for escaped prisoners, not unlike the search for rebels after Yeden's catastrophic raid.

[+robardin]

How canonical are the Annotations? Because this one is from March 12, 2007:

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

The Venture-atium connection is something I wish I could have foreshadowed a little bit better. However, without Elend being a viewpoint until this chapter (the reasons for which I'll explain in a bit) there really wasn't much I could do to connect Venture and the Pits.

By the way, the "something a few years ago" that Elend mentions happening to disturb the atium production was Kelsier, the Survivor of Hathsin, Snapping and coming to an awakening of his powers–then bursting out of his hut and slaughtering every soldier or nobleman within ten miles of the Pits.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations (March 12, 2007)

There are a number of questions raised by the Annotation/WoB based on what we subsequently read in published works, and the easiest answer is "Brandon changed his mind a little bit and this is dramatization".

For example, we see in Arcanum Unbounded how unpracticed Kelsier is when he seeks out Gemmel for training. We also see how even Vin, one of the most instinctive Allomancers ever to live, needed at least a week of practice with the physical metals (steel and iron) before becoming reliably proficient with them.

In fact, in re-reading The Eleventh Metal, Kelsier still had to be prodded to the idea of using his Allomancy for brutal vengeance (his first instinct being to use disguises and emontional Allomancy). Gemmel says to him, "when I'm done with you, you'll be able to kill a hundred men with a single coin... Waste your time with emotional Allomancy when I'm finished. For now, you kill."

The implication is that Kelsier found Gemmel soon after Snapping and trained before he became a real killing machine. If he'd "slaughtered every soldier or nobleman within ten miles of the Pits" immediately after "bursting out of his hut", he'd have had a pretty good rebuttal to Gemmel, eh?

[Returned]

I generally think of annotations as being canonical, at least for interpretations of what's written in the actual book. I don't think I've come across a situation in which an annotation about an event is taken back later. The way I'd imagined Kelsier behaving on the night he snapped was sort of a fugue state driven by the stress of Mare's death and benevolent deception. More that than a calculated decision in keeping with his ordinary behavior, at least.

Kelsier would have known a fair amount about Allomancy, having worked extensively with Mistings, and a bit of pewter could have taken him a long way in fighting ordinary soldiers even as a novice.  Especially those whose main job was beating down weakened prisoners. Toss in even some poorly controlled iron, steel, and atium and he'd be killing machine enough. The ten mile thing is the most suspect part of the annotation to me. Ten square miles is a huge area to cover in one night, and even if the exact locations of every soldier and nobleman were known to Kelsier in advance I don't think the timing works out. Even if he'd had good control of iron and steel and knew about the spikeways, which he probably did not. And now that I think about it such a large-scale slaughter would be pretty hard to keep quiet, even around the Pits.

So I guess in my reading of the annotation I'm mentally adding in a clause: "slaughtering every soldier or nobleman [that he could find] within ten miles of the Pits." And then thinking that high-profile massacres were not the characteristic, preferred approach for Kelsier, the master thief, until Gemmel taught him Allomancy for violence.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

How canonical are the Annotations? Because this one is from March 12, 2007:

There are a number of questions raised by the Annotation/WoB based on what we subsequently read in published works, and the easiest answer is "Brandon changed his mind a little bit and this is dramatization".

For example, we see in Arcanum Unbounded how unpracticed Kelsier is when he seeks out Gemmel for training. We also see how even Vin, one of the most instinctive Allomancers ever to live, needed at least a week of practice with the physical metals (steel and iron) before becoming reliably proficient with them.

In fact, in re-reading The Eleventh Metal, Kelsier still had to be prodded to the idea of using his Allomancy for brutal vengeance (his first instinct being to use disguises and emontional Allomancy). Gemmel says to him, "when I'm done with you, you'll be able to kill a hundred men with a single coin... Waste your time with emotional Allomancy when I'm finished. For now, you kill."

The implication is that Kelsier found Gemmel soon after Snapping and trained before he became a real killing machine. If he'd "slaughtered every soldier or nobleman within ten miles of the Pits" immediately after "bursting out of his hut", he'd have had a pretty good rebuttal to Gemmel, eh?

I doubt Kelsier had access to any metal other than Atium.

[+robardin]

11 minutes ago, Returned said:

I generally think of annotations as being canonical, at least for interpretations of what's written in the actual book. I don't think I've come across a situation in which an annotation about an event is taken back later. The way I'd imagined Kelsier behaving on the night he snapped was sort of a fugue state driven by the stress of Mare's death and benevolent deception. More that than a calculated decision in keeping with his ordinary behavior, at least.

Kelsier would have known a fair amount about Allomancy, having worked extensively with Mistings, and a bit of pewter could have taken him a long way in fighting ordinary soldiers even as a novice.  Especially those whose main job was beating down weakened prisoners. Toss in even some poorly controlled iron, steel, and atium and he'd be killing machine enough. The ten mile thing is the most suspect part of the annotation to me. Ten square miles is a huge area to cover in one night, and even if the exact locations of every soldier and nobleman were known to Kelsier in advance I don't think the timing works out. Even if he'd had good control of iron and steel and knew about the spikeways, which he probably did not. And now that I think about it such a large-scale slaughter would be pretty hard to keep quiet, even around the Pits.

So I guess in my reading of the annotation I'm mentally adding in a clause: "slaughtering every soldier or nobleman [that he could find] within ten miles of the Pits." And then thinking that high-profile massacres were not the characteristic, preferred approach for Kelsier, the master thief, until Gemmel taught him Allomancy for violence.

I can: the idea that Rashek augmented himself with hemalurgy, i.e., that the bracers piercing his arms were actually hemalurgic in nature.

Annotation 193 [June 2, 2007]: Marsh's plan to kill the Lord Ruler is a good one too. Unfortunately, the Lord Ruler's power doesn't come only from Hemalurgy, but from other things as well. If he'd pulled off the bracelets instead. . . .

Originally, it seems that TLR was supposed to be super-strong in Allomancy because he'd spiked himself for those powers on top of his being a Lerasium Mistborn on top of being a Natural Born Feruchemist.

Later (though still in WoB-space so who knows what counts as "canon" at this moment), he backtracked and said Rashek did not partake of the lerasium bead stash, and had instead done a "binary level edit" of his Spiritweb while Ascended to make himself an even stronger Mistborn than lerasium would produce. And no hemalurgic spikes in him, the bracers piercing his skin were to hide their highly Invested nature from any Allomancers who saw them and might think to wonder why there weren't any blue lines leading to them.

[+robardin]

37 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I doubt Kelsier had access to any metal other than Atium.

Even with a LOT of atium, I doubt Kelsier would have been able to kill every nobleman or soldier within ten miles... Not in the physical shape he would have been in, as a skaa slave kept on the brink of death for weeks on end.

Every one he came across, maybe. That's plausible. En route to Luthadel to find the only skaa Mistborn he knew about, from his time in the underworld. He does speak of "fencing atium" to procure funds in Eleventh Metal, so he probably took as much as he could carry with him from the Pits. But used it all up by the start of the events of TFE, where he is breaking into Keep Venture to steal some while defeating a slew of Mistings and Hazekillers.

Edited October 31, 2022 by robardin

[bmcclure7]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

I doubt Kelsier had access to any metal other than Atium.

 There would be trace metals in his food. And probably 1 or 2 alomanciers serving as overseers  , Perhaps he managed to kill one of them by surprise. Stored his metal and he used it to kill 1 or 2 more. He only needs access to 1 or 2 metals to be deadly lethal to most  Untrained humans who have no idea how alomancy works. 

[Treamayne]

Since the Obligators hid what Atium went to Luthadel in Ministry treasury chests, they would have Boxings and Clips that could be shaved for some metals (I don;t recall if they ever mentioned what Metals they were stamped from). Also , there may have been tin or pewter utensils/plates/cups that could also be shaved for basic metals. 

[cometaryorbit]

I think all he'd need is atium (plus berserk rage). Kill the guard collecting geodes, steal the geodes, use them to kill more guards and get the rest of the geodes that hadn't been shipped out yet...

Atium is a *huge* factor in a fight. And it doesn't need training, it practically fights for you.

And the guards apparently weren't Allomancers. I don't think Kelsier killing them all with atium alone.

Also, after his initial escape he might have found some iron or steel or pewter and then kept going to kill more soldiers and nobles in the area.

--

Also, Mist-snapped Mistings were immediately useful. Training is important, but some things can be done your first day as an Allomancer - especially "passive" boosts like the internal metals.