If YOU Were Rashek [Discuss]

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

So, if I became the Lord ruler with my current knowledge(minus stuff I learned reading mistborn) I have a few ideas.

So, first order of business is dealing with the mists. Rashek solved this by moving the planet to heat it up. Even before mistborn, I knew that planets are in a delicate balance of habitability, and I would not want to risk something as crazy as moving the planet closer. I think using something like a constant but relatively gentle wind to disperse the mists during the day would be another alternative. Some sort of invested weather phenomenon. Not destructive like the high storm, but a constant wind during the days to keep the mists at bay. I think that would make for an interesting planet imo, constant wind during the day, constant mist at night.

In terms of powers, I would have never given allomancy to anyone but myself. I think instead of giving out allomancy as a bargaining tool I could give out feruchemy. There's a WoB somewhere where he said that you can make a feruchemist with God metals, and I think I could certainly figure that out while ascended. I wouldn't bother to hide any of the metals except for copper, and I would do this so that I wouldn't have a population dependent on metal minds Ruin can basically alter at will. I would most likely avoid hemalurgy all together, not wanting to sacrifice people for obvious reasons, and then there's the obvious downside of Ruin's influence on them.

I think the idea of using religion to spy on society is a very good solution. It is something I would want to be able to do to watch for Ruin causing any problems. Generally I think I would do what Rashek did with the obligators and turn it up to 19. I want to know if anything is happening in the kingdom. I wouldn't have a skaa population because I'm not evil, although a society drowning in beuracracy might be dystopian in its own way.

I would likely try to conquer the world like he did. Although I won't have koloss I have my own powers as well as metalborn which no one else has. And considering I killed the hero of ages I would likely take his place as ruler of Khlennium, which would give me a big headstart.

I think I would allow scientific progress, but in a very controlled manner. Science would be something only for obligators and then only studies I approve would get funding for anything. This is primarily so society can advance but not in a way that would fall out of my control.

Using criminals to mine Atium is not the worst way to do it. In place of a death penalty, criminals are sent to the pits to mine Atium, which is carefully administrated by the obligators.

The planet still sounds dystopian, but I think this plan would work to keep Ruin at bay for as long as possible while being less terrible than the final empire.

Edit: After reading some other responses I think I would probably come up with more permanent solutions after the well refills. I like the idea of eventually relinquishing power instead of ruling forever, my only issue is that I'm not sure how to manage Ruin's influence otherwise since he's literally a god. Maybe after long enough when preservation completely dies, I can take up the shard of preservation and watch over the planet that way, stepping down as ruler but stepping up as god. Idk.

Edited January 26 by Shadow of Electrum
Had more ideas

[Duxredux he/him]

So much of this is dependent on what I can learn with the power of the Well. With so much at stake, I would really, really, want as much information as possible and the probability of it blowing up in my face. So I would do a couple things - like many I would make myself Mistborn, second I would rearrange geology and the Well not unlike Rashek - except I want to cheat and make a natural gold and Chromium mine. I'm going to lean hard into compounded Fortune and Gold to keep me alive.

The next part is where it gets really tricky and that is addressing Ruin's influence, particularly on the other Worldbringers. The Deepness will retreat and presumably the assumption is that Scadrial was saved - except we weren't. We just delayed the problem and clipped the visible weeds of the deeper problem. I acknowledge that doing this would be risky and I would need to Compound a lot of Fortune to do this optimally, but I would hold a mass convention with Kwaan and the other Worldbringers in an Aluminum lined cavern and give them evidence that we were wrong. Unveil Ruin. In preparation for this, at the end of my Ascension I would shove the masses of information into a Coppermind, shielding that process from Ruin's alterations in addition to drawing on Fortune and reaching out to the minds of trustworthy Worldbringers and in detail describing what Ruin had done and ideally methods to independently authentic the dangers. The core idea is to expose Ruin's influence early, maybe set up a mental health institution to reduce Ruin's tools, and double down on the concept of the Terris being strange hermit prophets that can see the future. As part of that legacy, if possible, is make a series of Unsealed Metalminds giving the power to burn Chromium with the express purpose for compounding Fortune. Those would be in a box buried with the location in my will - I would Compound as much Fortune as possible before handing off that power to someone else. Maybe even start with huge stores of unkeyed Fortune.

I might, might make my close friends who were with me at the Well into Kandra, but not as spies. See if I can finagle spikes filled with Investiture rather than souls. They would be my friends still and their job would be to use their highly fluid forms to harvest Atium from the Pits of Hathsin. The biggest departure would be that if/when I died without Atium Compounding how much information I could get from Leras. Maybe use the Connection with my Kandra friends to talk to them about everything I learned and if I felt it necessary staple my Cognitive Shadow (built in as a Sliver) to a Mistwraith and get my hand back in the game.

Basically... I don't at present trust myself as a Lord Ruler to not screw up my planet. Nor do I want to give it anything less than my best shot. I wouldn't lean away from technology, I would double down on Feruchemical tech. Strictly speaking, if I kept those beads of Lerasium I could pivot to Rashek's approach if I wanted to, but... I doubt I would. I would try to give the Terris who generally seem a very stable people as many tools as I could to recognize and keep the real danger in view. Then... hunker down and try to keep things from blowing up until the Hero of Ages arrived - because I suspect that's what Compounded Fortune would lead me towards. And I don't think I would believe myself to be the Hero.

 

This could be useful too:

Spoiler

Questioner

The Lord Ruler used a lot of metal for shielding and stuff. But if he had had an aluminum helmet himself, would it have protected him from Ruin's influence at all, or would the spikes overcome that?

Brandon Sanderson

Aluminum helmet would help in that situation. Aluminum could very well have been something useful for resisting, yeah.

JordanCon 2021 (July 17, 2021)

 

Edited January 30 by Duxredux