Northern Scadrial

[killersquirrel59]

Something weird was occurring to me recently. I was rereading the annotations to HoA and went back over the part where Brandon said that the Final Empire was not actually at the North Pole, because The Lord Ruler did not want an abnormal day/night cycle, so he moved the Well of Ascension which caused Magnetic North to follow it, also carrying the protection of the Ferromagnetic ash clouds pulled by Scadrial's altered magnetic fields. 

 

We know that there was a whole other civilization of people on the South pole (though we don't know much about them yet), but what about the actual North Pole? That was supposedly the area where life was most inhabitable (according to Vin when she is looking down at the world after taking the Power of Preservation and notes that there are little pockets of life only sustainable at the poles). Does this then mean there was a third civilization on Scadrial at the time, one based at the geographic North Pole?

[Kaymyth]

Not necessarily.  We're not even sure that there's an inhabitable land mass at the north pole.  Magnetic north following the Well was more of an accident than anything - it's not like he was trying to pretend that they were in Scadrial's arctic circle.  He just wanted the Well hidden where he could keep an eye on it.

[killersquirrel59]

But that doesn't follow the idea of what Vin saw looking down at the planet where she specifically notes pockets of life concentrated at the poles. I could chalk it up to a mistake that was fixed if this passage was in the first book, but this passage was near the end of HoA, and Brandon made the change working out the moving of the Well and the decoupling of Magnetic North from Geographic north while writing book 2. So what was the "pocket of life" Vin saw at the North while wielding Preservation?

[Oudeis]

...You yourself just said that the Final Empire is centered around the magnetic north pole. The word "pole" is a magnetic term. Why would it be a mistake for him to refer to a pole as a pole? The simplest explanation is just that when she said "pole", she was accurately referring to the magnetic north pole.

[Yata]

...You yourself just said that the Final Empire is centered around the magnetic north pole. The word "pole" is a magnetic term. Why would it be a mistake for him to refer to a pole as a pole? The simplest explanation is just that when she said "pole", she was accurately referring to the magnetic north pole.

I agree with Oudeis.

 

When Rashek remade Scadrial, He shifted the Well and the Nord Pole. But the Geographic Pole and Magnetic Pole are two different thinks (also in our beloved Earth) therefore Scadrial during the Final Empire (I'm not sure if Sazed fixed, but i think he did) had a Geographyc Pole very far to the Magnetic Pole. When Vin "saw" the "little pokets of life at the poles" she speak about the Magnetic Poles, The "Final Empire" and the "Southern people".

 

In the end when Sazed took the Shard and ascended to Harmony, he never spoke about a third group of people. Only about the "Southern" as "reference to the original humanity".

[king of nowhere]

i always assumed that the geographical north pole was part of the final empire, just not at the center but rather at a fringe of it.the final empire was pretty big, after all, and scadrial has a low axis tilt.

Furthermore, I believe it is located in the terris dominance. It was mentioned that most of terris is a frozen tundra, while thhe ashmounts are centered around luthadel. As the cooling effect of the ash would be greater over luthadel, the only way a place could be colder than it is by being closer to the geoographical pole.

 

Alternatively, the north pole was covered by an ocean.