The Southern Scadrians and the Malwish Consortium

[Nightstar The Bright]

Currently the southern Scadrian page contains all known information on the southern Scadrians and their lands. I think this is in dire need of a rework as south scadrial is a large place with many nations and peoples. It might have functioned fine after the release of the bands of mourning, but with TLM, and Brandon writing more and more cosmere aware/crossover books, I think it just doesn’t work anymore.

I propose new pages for each of the nations. What do you guys think? It’s certainly a significant project, but I don’t see another way, it’s gonna have to be fixed someday.

[Starwatcher]

I definitely agree that we shouldn't try to cram everything into the Southern Scadrian page; at the same time, having the Southern Scadrian page, the Malwish Consortium page, and then individual pages for the Malwish, Hunters, and Fallen (plus the Maskless/Deniers of Masks, but they're at least not part of the Consortium) feels like maybe too much? I think the closest comparison is probably the region of Makabak on Roshar, where we have a page for the region and all the individual nations within it, but we don't also have an "Azish empire" or "Makabaki confederation" page. I think it's also tricky because so far the Malwish largely seem to be driving things; I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we never really hear much more about the old nations. Curious what others think.

[Nightstar The Bright]

After thinking on it some more, I think we should remove the Southern Scadrial place completely, splitting it up in multiple pages. This is because there isn’t really any information that belongs exclusively to this page.

5 hours ago, Starwatcher said:

having the Southern Scadrian page, the Malwish Consortium page, and then individual pages for the Malwish, Hunters, and Fallen (plus the Maskless/Deniers of Masks, but they're at least not part of the Consortium) feels like maybe too much?

Well, using your Makabak example, Makabak also has many nations inside it, and that’s what these Scadrians are, nations and peoples. The Malwish Consortium is also important, although I do see it being moved to the Malwish page. 

 

5 hours ago, Starwatcher said:

I think the closest comparison is probably the region of Makabak on Roshar, where we have a page for the region and all the individual nations within it, but we don't also have an "Azish empire" or "Makabaki confederation" page.

Indeed we don’t have an Azish Empire page, but I think we simply do not know enough of the Consortium to say that they’re like that. We don’t know how much they’ve United, do they only practise foreign relations together or are they truly one nation/empire. Until we can say this I’m convinced we’ll need the page.

 

5 hours ago, Starwatcher said:

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we never really hear much more about the old nations.

I would be surprised, they still have their own culture after all. 

[LadyLameness]

- I think it would be good to keep the Southern Scadrian page even if it’s just a landing page - that’s likely a term that people will search and if other things are split off into their own pages, then this would be a good way to easily access all the associated pages.

- I think a Malwish Consortium page would be useful — if I remember correctly we get quite a bit of information about it? 

- In terms of the different Southern Scadrian nations, I don’t think we need to make pages for all of these nations. Making individual pages for the nations that we have significant information on would be useful I think (eg Malwish and Hunters) and then the rest can have sections on another page (I would say the Southern Scadrian page would be good for this). The Malwish and Hunters could still be included on the page but just as summaries with a ‘See More’ slapped under the title. 

[Chaos he/him]

So I have been thinking about this some, and this is a difficult restructuring discussion for sure. 

My first thought was that, hey, what if we put Southern Scadrian info on the main Scadrial page? But looking at it now, the main Scadrial planet page is very northern Scadrial focused. I do think there is merit for a while still having some sort of southern landing page, as there are similar ties to their history and culture... But then, do we want maybe a similar page for the north, so the de facto place for that information is not just the main Scadrial page? Do we want the Malwish Consortium page to eventually take over the role of the Southern Scadrian/Southern Scadrial page... certainly the northerner world map just lumps it all together but that may not actually be culturally accurate. I sure wish we had more info...

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Chaos said:

So I have been thinking about this some, and this is a difficult restructuring discussion for sure. 

My first thought was that, hey, what if we put Southern Scadrian info on the main Scadrial page? But looking at it now, the main Scadrial planet page is very northern Scadrial focused. I do think there is merit for a while still having some sort of southern landing page, as there are similar ties to their history and culture... But then, do we want maybe a similar page for the north, so the de facto place for that information is not just the main Scadrial page? Do we want the Malwish Consortium page to eventually take over the role of the Southern Scadrian/Southern Scadrial page... certainly the northerner world map just lumps it all together but that may not actually be culturally accurate. I sure wish we had more info...

Also, should this discussion influence, or be influenced by, Dayside and Darkside for Taldain. It seems a similar situation, in that we have a significant amount of information for one major continent, some (but far less) information for the other continent (which has no direct stories in that setting - yet). I feel that whatever choice is decided upon, we should try to have the two pairs work the same as each other.

[Chaos he/him]

40 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Also, should this discussion influence, or be influenced by, Dayside and Darkside for Taldain. It seems a similar situation, in that we have a significant amount of information for one major continent, some (but far less) information for the other continent (which has no direct stories in that setting - yet). I feel that whatever choice is decided upon, we should try to have the two pairs work the same as each other.

That's valid, though given Scadrial will have at least six more books, I admit I'm much more concerned about that.

[Nightstar The Bright]

13 hours ago, LadyLameness said:

I think it would be good to keep the Southern Scadrian page even if it’s just a landing page - that’s likely a term that people will search and if other things are split off into their own pages, then this would be a good way to easily access all the associated pages.

I disagree with you, The south itself has very little information which won’t be in other pages (malwish hunters etc). Furthermore I don’t think many people will search up that term, I think your more likely to search up scadrial or one of the southern nations. Even if you do search it up, and you don’t find it you will probably immediately search up scadrial, the second best place.h

 

13 hours ago, LadyLameness said:

I think a Malwish Consortium page would be useful — if I remember correctly we get quite a bit of information about it? 

There is some, but not that much. We do get a lot of the individual nations, but we would have to discuss wether or not we want those together in the malwish consortium page or have their own pages.

 

13 hours ago, LadyLameness said:

In terms of the different Southern Scadrian nations, I don’t think we need to make pages for all of these nations. Making individual pages for the nations that we have significant information on would be useful I think (eg Malwish and Hunters) and then the rest can have sections on another page (I would say the Southern Scadrian page would be good for this). The Malwish and Hunters could still be included on the page but just as summaries with a ‘See More’ slapped under the title. 

Well we only have four of them named, but even if we don’t have much information we have to give them a page, either they all get one or none of them get one. 

 

12 hours ago, Chaos said:

My first thought was that, hey, what if we put Southern Scadrian info on the main Scadrial page? But looking at it now, the main Scadrial planet page is very northern Scadrial focused. I do think there is merit for a while still having some sort of southern landing page, as there are similar ties to their history and culture... But then, do we want maybe a similar page for the north, so the de facto place for that information is not just the main Scadrial page? Do we want the Malwish Consortium page to eventually take over the role of the Southern Scadrian/Southern Scadrial page... certainly the northerner world map just lumps it all together but that may not actually be culturally accurate. I sure wish we had more info...

I agree with your first thought, just put it onto the scadrial page and balance that between north and south (that would be the history but not the culture). Like you said that page is very focused on the north, and I think this is a bad thing, we should balance this. We don’t have to have a southern Scadrian page, it could just be a redirect to Scadrial#The South. I don’t think we should make the Malwish Consortium the southern scadrial page, after all it is a nation, we don’t know how it will be in era three, imagine it collapses in era three and we would have to change it again. 

 

5 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Also, should this discussion influence, or be influenced by, Dayside and Darkside for Taldain. It seems a similar situation, in that we have a significant amount of information for one major continent, some (but far less) information for the other continent (which has no direct stories in that setting - yet). I feel that whatever choice is decided upon, we should try to have the two pairs work the same as each other.

I do agree, we should try to make north and south work together, instead of having them be it’s own thing. 

[LadyLameness]

6 hours ago, Nightstar The Bright said:

either they all get one or none of them get one.

Just a note that believe we have done this in the past (given some things pages and collected other one one page). 

 

6 hours ago, Nightstar The Bright said:

Like you said that page is very focused on the north, and I think this is a bad thing, we should balance this. We don’t have to have a southern Scadrian page, it could just be a redirect to Scadrial#The South.

I think this is also a very viable solution. 

[Nightstar The Bright]

5 hours ago, LadyLameness said:

Just a note that believe we have done this in the past (given some things pages and collected other one one page).

With nations? Because it feels wrong to me to give some nations pages while other nations are collected into one page. Regardless, I think every nation in the cosmere should have their own page, regardless of size or amount of information. 

[Treamayne]

58 minutes ago, Nightstar The Bright said:

With nations? Because it feels wrong to me to give some nations pages while other nations are collected into one page.

A good example are the pages for Kerzta and Lossand on Dayside Taldain, or Elis and Iiaria on Darkside, but the Rim Kingdoms are mentioned on the Taldain Page and we don't even have a nuymber of how many other nations are part of the Dynasty (much less names for those nations). 

Quote

Regardless, I think every nation in the cosmere should have their own page, regardless of size or amount of information. 

That's interesting, in theory. Do you realize how many nations there are that have no information at all (or just a name and nothing else)?

I must admit, the completionist side of me wholehearedly agrees that 1 Nation:1 Page is ideal. The rabid reader and realmatic WoB Hunter in me appreciates having sparse information collected in one location for easy cross referencing without having 12 tabs open to view different connected things. 

I just think that there is a fine line between leaning forward and bending over; trying to break out a separate page for every country when we are less-than-halfway through the Cosmere seems like it would be an exercise in futility to me. I don't know what the "best answer" would be, but I think that unless there is a story-impacting event (King of Seevis bribing away Sand Masters), or more than two paragraphs of data, it is probably not worth breaking out a separate page at this point. 

 

[Nightstar The Bright]

8 hours ago, Treamayne said:

A good example are the pages for Kerzta and Lossand on Dayside Taldain, or Elis and Iiaria on Darkside, but the Rim Kingdoms are mentioned on the Taldain Page and we don't even have a nuymber of how many other nations are part of the Dynasty (much less names for those nations)

The rim kingdoms do have pages (unless I’m mistaken). I made a writing mistake in my previous post here, I’m meant that all named nations should get their own page.

 

8 hours ago, Treamayne said:

That's interesting, in theory. Do you realize how many nations there are that have no information at all (or just a name and nothing else)?

I must admit, the completionist side of me wholehearedly agrees that 1 Nation:1 Page is ideal. The rabid reader and realmatic WoB Hunter in me appreciates having sparse information collected in one location for easy cross referencing without having 12 tabs open to view different connected things. 

I just think that there is a fine line between leaning forward and bending over; trying to break out a separate page for every country when we are less-than-halfway through the Cosmere seems like it would be an exercise in futility to me. I don't know what the "best answer" would be, but I think that unless there is a story-impacting event (King of Seevis bribing away Sand Masters), or more than two paragraphs of data, it is probably not worth breaking out a separate page at this point. 

I do realise how many nations we have, nevertheless the goal of the coppermind is to contain all the information, it doesn’t truly matter if they have their own page or separate pages. It my opinion every named kingdom should have its own page. This would make the Malwish and hunters and maskless and fallen get pages but not the other two kingdoms. 

I think it’s not the Ideal to put things together to have easier access to information instead of having a nice coppermind where everything that should, gets it’s own page. 

I agree with you that it is a balance, I do not agree however that unless the nation has a story impacting event it doesn’t get its own page, 

[Treamayne]

3 hours ago, Nightstar The Bright said:

I do not agree however that unless the nation has a story impacting event it doesn’t get its own page

That's okay - we are allowed to disagree. However, that is not what I said:

12 hours ago, Treamayne said:

I think that unless there is a story-impacting event (King of Seevis bribing away Sand Masters), or more than two paragraphs of data

Either story-impacting - or - more data. A stub that only says "here's this thing that was mentioned but we have no information about it" doesn;t really do anybody any good.

3 hours ago, Nightstar The Bright said:

This would make the Malwish and hunters and maskless and fallen get pages but not the other two kingdoms

But we don't even know for sure that the Hunters and Fallen are even separate nations. When Allik first describes the Hunters and Fallen, he makes it sound like they are a Caste within the Malwish Nation - not separate country of leaders blamed for the Ice Death or a whole Nation of Hunters. The only hints that they might be separate countries is the language barrier mentioned by Allik and Wax's and Jordis' comments calling them nations. BoM:

Spoiler

Ch 22:

Quote

But anyway, we were talking about the Fallen, yah? They work doing anything they can to relieve their burden of failure. A compliment means a lot to them, but you have to be careful, because if you tell them they did well, they might take your compliment to heart and travel back to their people to tell everyone. Then you might be called in to testify about how good a job they did, so they can change their mask. And their language, that’s a real pain. I speak a smattering of it—always useful, so you don’t have to wear the medallion—and it makes my head spin as if I’d been flying too high for way too long.”

Ch 30:

Quote

“Do you deny,” Waxillium asked, “that this temple was empty upon my arrival? Do you deny that this airship was from nation a other than your own?

<snip>

“The Malwish are but one of many. Another nation among us may see you up here as weak and decide to strike.”

 

However, "nation" can be used for divisions along cultural and historic lines as well as nationality. So that is inicative but not proscriptive. If they were separate nations instead of castes within the Malwish Nation - then how do the other castes/tribes/nations force the Fallen to wear blank masks? Even if it is a UN style set-up, I find it difficult to beleive that, for example, The UN could force every person in a specific country to dress in a specific way. And all of that is tangential to my point that we simply do not have enough information to say definitively "Hunters is a nickname for peoples of Nation X located at Y" or "The Fallen is a nickname for people of caste X of the Malwish." Neither position has anything more than a couple random comments from unreliable narrators to support the assertion.

With Nalthis, we at least know they are definitvely separate countries - with SoScad, we can't even be sure of that. We know a Map is labelled "Malwish Consortium" but that is from an Elendel perspective, and a Northern Name for a southern government - which may or may not be accurate. We do not know if it is an Empire, UN Style Cooperative governemnt or false front to disguise the real situation in the South. We do not kow how many "nations" are down there - or if "nation" is being used as a caste dedignation, cultural devision or actual nationalities of separate governments. We do not know if Jordis' use of the term "nation" was an artifact of the Medallion mis-translating a term because Wax had already erroneously used the term first (or if Wax was right or wrong to use the term Nation for these devisions).

In TLM it only becomes more murky. Things that "should" have clarified are written in such a way as to be transparantly misleading (they may be accurate at face value - or they may be presented as they are to deliver a false narrative) I'll just quote:

Spoiler

Ch 9:

Quote

Of the five different nations that made up the Southern Continent, the Malwish—these people—were the ones Wax had interacted with the most. They were the only nation that had sent an ambassador to Elendel. And increasingly, all official interactions with the South went through them.

So, "nation" is used again - and agin it comes from Wax - not a Southerner - with the "only ammbassador" qualifier. This could mean that Nation is being misused and the Malwish only have one country to send an ambassador and the Southerners are purposely misrepresenting themselve to the North to give them a false perception. Later, they are called States, not countries.

Quote

“You were right about the unification timetable,” Wax said. “The ambassador will announce a new consortium of states under the Malwish banner.”

So, were they separate Nations that converted to become Malwish States? Were they only ever subdivisions of Malwish?

I guess my TLDR point is that it is not as easy a topic as you imply. WIthout specific clarifying WoBs or a Souther Viewpoint explaining how this works, I'm not convinced we really are dealing with disparate governing bodies of discrete territory (rather than one of the other definitions of "nation") - because Nation, in that context, makes no sense with other Masked Southerners forcing all members of one racial/ethnic/national lineage to all wear "blank masks" unless there is more than has been explained to date.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Nightstar The Bright]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Either story-impacting - or - more data. A stub that only says "here's this thing that was mentioned but we have no information about it" doesn;t really do anybody any good.

Yeah you’re right my bad, I still disagree though. A stub still gives a more accurate view of the world, as well as info that something exists.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

But we don't even know for sure that the Hunters and Fallen are even separate nations. When Allik first describes the Hunters and Fallen, he makes it sound like they are a Caste within the Malwish Nation - not separate country of leaders blamed for the Ice Death or a whole Nation of Hunters. The only hints that they might be separate countries is the language barrier mentioned by Allik and Wax's and Jordis' comments calling them nations. BoM:

Actually, As mentioned in BoM there are five ‘peoples’ in the south. Wax adds in TLM that there are five different nations in the south. I think it’s safe to assume these are the five peoples. 
TLM:

Of the five different nations that made up the Southern Continent, the Malwish—these people—were the ones Wax had interacted with the most. They were the only nation that had sent an ambassador to Elendel.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

However, "nation" can be used for divisions along cultural and historic lines as well as nationality. So that is inicative but not proscriptive. If they were separate nations instead of castes within the Malwish Nation - then how do the other castes/tribes/nations force the Fallen to wear blank masks? Even if it is a UN style set-up, I find it difficult to beleive that, for example, The UN could force every person in a specific country to dress in a specific way. And all of that is tangential to my point that we simply do not have enough information to say definitively "Hunters is a nickname for peoples of Nation X located at Y" or "The Fallen is a nickname for people of caste X of the Malwish." Neither position has anything more than a couple random comments from unreliable narrators to support the assertion.

Where is it said that the other peoples force the fallen to wear these masks? I think it possible that they are indeed cultures, but it would be a large coincidence that there are also five nations, and the Malwish are one of these.

 

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Neither position has anything more than a couple random comments from unreliable narrators to support the assertion.

Wax don’t seem like unreliable to me, at least not in TLM.

 

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

With Nalthis, we at least know they are definitvely separate countries - with SoScad, we can't even be sure of that. We know a Map is labelled "Malwish Consortium" but that is from an Elendel perspective, and a Northern Name for a southern government - which may or may not be accurate. We do not know if it is an Empire, UN Style Cooperative governemnt or false front to disguise the real situation in the South. We do not kow how many "nations" are down there - or if "nation" is being used as a caste dedignation, cultural devision or actual nationalities of separate governments. We do not know if Jordis' use of the term "nation" was an artifact of the Medallion mis-translating a term because Wax had already erroneously used the term first (or if Wax was right or wrong to use the term Nation for these devisions).

Indeed we aren’t 100% sure that the five nations are these five peoples, but it is likely. We do know there are five nations. I think it’s safe to assume nation isn’t used as a caste system, it would seem weird in all the times we’ve heard of southern nations. I’m BoM wax might be mistaken, but in TLM? No way, that’s six years of encounters. 

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

In TLM it only becomes more murky. Things that "should" have clarified are written in such a way as to be transparantly misleading (they may be accurate at face value - or they may be presented as they are to deliver a false narrative) I'll just quote:

I think your right though, it could be misleading, it’s unlikely though. 

 

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

I guess my TLDR point is that it is not as easy a topic as you imply. WIthout specific clarifying WoBs or a Souther Viewpoint explaining how this works, I'm not convinced we really are dealing with disparate governing bodies of discrete territory (rather than one of the other definitions of "nation") - because Nation, in that context, makes no sense with other Masked Southerners forcing all members of one racial/ethnic/national lineage to all wear "blank masks" unless there is more than has been explained to date.

Your right here, we’re not sure. Indeed it is likely more complicated then I first thought.

[alder24]

I have to agree with @Treamayne. Right now we have almost no information about Malwish nations. It's pointless to make a page for each of them, containing only a few short sentences each. We don't know what they really are, if they are separate nations or just different cultures within the same nation. Coppermind is meant to contain information, not speculation. We need more information from Mistborn Era 3 before we start making such pages. 

I think if there is so little information that a new page would have only a small paragraph of text then there is no point of making that page if you can contain all of that somewhere else - right now every nation is described on the Southern Scadrial page, it's a good way of passing information and I don't see any reason to change that, and give each of Southern nation a separate page containing the same information. The example of such a useless page is Jaggenmire which is already described almost word to word in Southern Scadrian: Religion page. 

In my opinion if there is so little information about something that you can only make a short description of it, and you can reasonably include this in a bigger page, then there is no point for a separate page. Just like Malwish nations are right now. If you can't reasonably include that description in a bigger page, then you make a separate page - example Scadrial: Portfolio of Religions and most of those religions included there, Sliverism especially. You could make a separate page for all Scadrian religions and there you just describe them in a short and general way (like Lesser Spren), which in most cases would mean that all separate pages for every religion would repeat the same information, thus be useless. However such a page for all religions would be massive and still contain links to most modern religions, therefore it's better the way it is right now.

Personally when I'm searching for something small, let's say the Fallen or Jaggenmire, I often don't remember their name, thus I'm searching on a bigger page first, like Southern Scadrial. It's more convenient if all of the little data we have is presented on this bigger page and I can just read it all and find what I want, instead of opening 12 separate pages, each having 3 sentences only. When we have more information about them, then it's justified to make a separate page and leave a short description on a bigger page.

[Nightstar The Bright]

47 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I have to agree with @Treamayne. Right now we have almost no information about Malwish nations. It's pointless to make a page for each of them, containing only a few short sentences each. We don't know what they really are, if they are separate nations or just different cultures within the same nation. Coppermind is meant to contain information, not speculation. We need more information from Mistborn Era 3 before we start making such pages. 

I think if there is so little information that a new page would have only a small paragraph of text then there is no point of making that page if you can contain all of that somewhere else - right now every nation is described on the Southern Scadrial page, it's a good way of passing information and I don't see any reason to change that, and give each of Southern nation a separate page containing the same information. The example of such a useless page is Jaggenmire which is already described almost word to word in Southern Scadrian: Religion page. 

In my opinion if there is so little information about something that you can only make a short description of it, and you can reasonably include this in a bigger page, then there is no point for a separate page. Just like Malwish nations are right now. If you can't reasonably include that description in a bigger page, then you make a separate page - example Scadrial: Portfolio of Religions and most of those religions included there, Sliverism especially. You could make a separate page for all Scadrian religions and there you just describe them in a short and general way (like Lesser Spren), which in most cases would mean that all separate pages for every religion would repeat the same information, thus be useless. However such a page for all religions would be massive and still contain links to most modern religions, therefore it's better the way it is right now.

Personally when I'm searching for something small, let's say the Fallen or Jaggenmire, I often don't remember their name, thus I'm searching on a bigger page first, like Southern Scadrial. It's more convenient if all of the little data we have is presented on this bigger page and I can just read it all and find what I want, instead of opening 12 separate pages, each having 3 sentences only. When we have more information about them, then it's justified to make a separate page and leave a short description on a bigger page.

Alright I can live with that. Although personally I do think that every confirmed/named nation should get its own page, I can live with it,  at least until Era three gets us more information. Thanks for the good discussion though.