A Reconstruction of Classical Scadrial

[ElectrumSavant he/him]

(Note: Contains worldbuilding spoilers for Mistborn Era 1 and the Alloy of Law)

Esteemed faculty of the Elendel University Ancient History Department,

It is an understood fact that Classical Scadrians enjoyed a technologically advanced society prior to Rashek's Ascension and the beginning of the Final Empire. However, very little is known about the geography of this period due to the Lord Ruler's efforts to obfuscate the past, 1300 years of time, as well as the chaos involved in the Catacendre. Exploratory missions into the Northern Roughs, while useful, have yet to go further than the ancient Central Dominance. What little we know about Classical Scadrial comes mostly from references contained in the Words of Founding.

To aid further scholarship in the field of Classical Scadrial, I have prepared a textually reconstructed map of the era based on what little geographic information exists in the Words of Founding. Note that this remains highly speculative, and that many names of states on this map are derived from the names of peoples and religions. I note that:

• We may expect that Classical Scadrial's physical geography was basically the same as Post-Catacendre Scadrial (except for the Elendel Basin), as Post-Catacendre Scadrial so far appears to line up to Final Empire Scadrial in terms of physical geography.
• We can be completely confident in the location of Bennet, as they are said to have inhabited the Southern Islands.
• The Nelazan likewise were said to have lived far to the north, even farther than Terris.
• Alendi's conception of the world had Khlennium in the center, Terris in the extreme North, the Southern Islands in the extreme South, the empire of the West in the extreme West, and various "great nations" in the extreme east
• The Empire of the West can be assumed to have inhabited the lands that became the Western Dominance, as those administrative boundaries may have plausibly been based on convenient political and geographic boundaries.
•  In my most controversial decision, I suggest that Classical Terris did not exist in Imperial Luthadel, as some have claimed. While Harmony made reference to Rashek putting "mountains in what became the North, and nam[ing] that location Terris" then flattening "his true homeland" and building "his capital [Luthadel] there" (WoF 1:25), I think that this is unlikely to be literal. Just a few verses earlier, Harmony describes Rashek as moving the Well of Ascension specifically (v. 23). It would have taken an unnecessary amount of effort to physically move all of the Terris people further north when the Well of Ascension itself could have moved to centrally-located Khlennium. Mount Derytatith itself could have been flattened and moved to the Central Dominance, while a new Mount Derytatith could have been made in its place. This interpretation seems necessary, as otherwise all of known Classical Scadrial must be conceptualized as existing between Imperial Luthadel and the Southern Islands.
• The Dadradah and Astalsi, as related religions, would be nearby.
• Darrelnai and Valla were a considerable distance from Luthadel, as they were among the last peoples to be subjugated by the Final Empire.
• Larsta had been exiled from a land with harsh rules, which fits the description of the Cazzi slavers.
• Kordel is said to have been somewhat centrally located.
• Urtan was not conquered immediately by the Final Empire, and has an etymological link to the Northern Dominance city of Urteau.

I appreciate your consideration, and hope that this may draw more attention and funding to my proposed expedition to the ruins of ancient Luthadel.

Yours respectfully,

Porthos Duhame

[alder24]

2 hours ago, ElectrumSavant said:

In my most controversial decision, I suggest that Classical Terris did not exist in Imperial Luthadel, as some have claimed. While Harmony made reference to Rashek putting "mountains in what became the North, and nam[ing] that location Terris" then flattening "his true homeland" and building "his capital [Luthadel] there" (WoF 1:25), I think that this is unlikely to be literal. Just a few verses earlier, Harmony describes Rashek as moving the Well of Ascension specifically (v. 23).

Well, it's even more complicated. Rashek moved the Well by moving the entire crust of Scadrial, then he flattened Terris mountains and created new ones up "new" north. 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seventy-Six

The North Pole

One of my big challenges in the geography of this world was figuring out how we could have a kingdom set at the pole of the world while at the same time maintaining a normal day/night cycle. My original plan was for the Well of Ascension to be located a distance to the north of Luthadel, up at the geographic north pole of the planet. When I was revising the second book, I realized that wouldn't work for various reasons. (More on this on the MISTBORN 2 Alternate Ending deleted scene page.) I changed things so that when the Lord Ruler held the power in the Well, he decoupled the geographic north pole and the magnetic north pole.

In our world, the magnetic north pole is located about eleven degrees of latitude south of the geographic north pole. On Scadrial, the two poles were originally in the same location. When the Lord Ruler moved the planet too close to its sun and realized he didn't have the control to place the planet in the proper orbit, he created the ashmounts to cool the atmosphere. He also wanted to keep access to the Well under his control, so he decided to build his capital city right above it. However, he realized that on a planet with a tilted axis, a city at the north pole would have seasonal daylight variation so extreme that at the height of summer the sun would never set and during the dead of winter the sun would never rise. He could remove the axis's tilt, but that would just make the sun perpetually skirt the horizon all year round.

What Rashek decided to do (and he had to make split-second decisions in the brief time he held the power) was to shift the crust of the whole planet so that the Well was at a latitude that would have more standard seasonal variation, and to re-create the Terris mountains in the new North (to maintain the rumors that the Well was located there). He worried that the new location of Luthadel would be too hot due to the latitude, but it turned out that moving the Well created an unexpected effect. The planet's magnetic pole followed the Well as he relocated it—and the ash from the ashmounts was slightly ferromagnetic. (Ferromagnetic volcanic ash has some precedent in our world.) So the interaction of the ash with the planet's magnetic field's new alignment meant that its protective cloak over the area of the Final Empire caused it to be cooler than the now unprotected geographic north pole.

One side effect of this is that all compasses point toward Luthadel. Since it's been that way for a thousand years, no one finds it odd–in fact, it's used as evidence of the Lord Ruler's divinity. It also makes it mathematically very easy to pinpoint one's exact location in the Final Empire using a combination of the compass reading and noon observations. Not that it's easy to get lost in the Final Empire in the first place—the geographical area of the planet's surface that the Final Empire covers is actually quite small.

Ultimately, when it comes down to sophisticated geography and astrophysics, I'm out of my element. If there are mistakes in my reasoning above, that is why I write fantasy and not hard sf.

And I still haven't said anything about what happened at the south pole.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (May 4, 2010)

Based on that, it seems that the entire region of the Final Empire used to be on the geographic north pole (which wasn't really inhabited), so every nation that existed before Rashek's Ascention was located much further south, towards where today Malwish are. 

[ElectrumSavant he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Well, it's even more complicated. Rashek moved the Well by moving the entire crust of Scadrial, then he flattened Terris mountains and created new ones up "new" north. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seventy-Six

The North Pole

One of my big challenges in the geography of this world was figuring out how we could have a kingdom set at the pole of the world while at the same time maintaining a normal day/night cycle. My original plan was for the Well of Ascension to be located a distance to the north of Luthadel, up at the geographic north pole of the planet. When I was revising the second book, I realized that wouldn't work for various reasons. (More on this on the MISTBORN 2 Alternate Ending deleted scene page.) I changed things so that when the Lord Ruler held the power in the Well, he decoupled the geographic north pole and the magnetic north pole.

In our world, the magnetic north pole is located about eleven degrees of latitude south of the geographic north pole. On Scadrial, the two poles were originally in the same location. When the Lord Ruler moved the planet too close to its sun and realized he didn't have the control to place the planet in the proper orbit, he created the ashmounts to cool the atmosphere. He also wanted to keep access to the Well under his control, so he decided to build his capital city right above it. However, he realized that on a planet with a tilted axis, a city at the north pole would have seasonal daylight variation so extreme that at the height of summer the sun would never set and during the dead of winter the sun would never rise. He could remove the axis's tilt, but that would just make the sun perpetually skirt the horizon all year round.

What Rashek decided to do (and he had to make split-second decisions in the brief time he held the power) was to shift the crust of the whole planet so that the Well was at a latitude that would have more standard seasonal variation, and to re-create the Terris mountains in the new North (to maintain the rumors that the Well was located there). He worried that the new location of Luthadel would be too hot due to the latitude, but it turned out that moving the Well created an unexpected effect. The planet's magnetic pole followed the Well as he relocated it—and the ash from the ashmounts was slightly ferromagnetic. (Ferromagnetic volcanic ash has some precedent in our world.) So the interaction of the ash with the planet's magnetic field's new alignment meant that its protective cloak over the area of the Final Empire caused it to be cooler than the now unprotected geographic north pole.

One side effect of this is that all compasses point toward Luthadel. Since it's been that way for a thousand years, no one finds it odd–in fact, it's used as evidence of the Lord Ruler's divinity. It also makes it mathematically very easy to pinpoint one's exact location in the Final Empire using a combination of the compass reading and noon observations. Not that it's easy to get lost in the Final Empire in the first place—the geographical area of the planet's surface that the Final Empire covers is actually quite small.

Ultimately, when it comes down to sophisticated geography and astrophysics, I'm out of my element. If there are mistakes in my reasoning above, that is why I write fantasy and not hard sf.

And I still haven't said anything about what happened at the south pole.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (May 4, 2010)

Based on that, it seems that the entire region of the Final Empire used to be on the geographic north pole (which wasn't really inhabited), so every nation that existed before Rashek's Ascention was located much further south, towards where today Malwish are. 

Good sir or madam! While I do not doubt the authenticity of your sources, I must reaffirm the significance of Alendi's world-concept. Alendi understood Classical Scadrial to be centered on Khlennium, with Terris in the extreme North and the Southern Islands in the extreme South. Legally obtained Malwish maps demonstrate that no other islands of significance exist further south than our modern Southern Islands, implying that the modern Southern Islands must be the very same Islands known to Alendi and so have marked the southernmost limits of civilization in Classical times. Harmony is said to have restored Scadrial to its classical state (not accounting for modern features like the Elendel Basin) and so an educated gentleman is left to conclude that Classical Scadrial included Northern Scadrial at its current latitude.

We would not expect Sazed nor the Keepers to have accumulated knowledge of Southern Scadrian cultures (as they were impossible to access during the Final Empire), therefore we must conclude that all cultures contained in Harmony's copperminds reflect Northern Scadrial. Ergo, we must conclude that the civilizations recorded in the Words of Founding existed in Northern Scadrial.

I remain your most obedient servant,

Porthos Duhame

[Grubfriend He/Him]

There is a red country on your map named Ja, could that be where Autonomy seeded their religion for a future invasion of Scadrial. Ja reminds my of Jaddeth, which is the Selish avatar of autonomy.

I have the privilege to be, your obedient

A. Ham.