Who are the Elantrians on Scadrial?

[KnightRadiant she/her]

I read Mistborn: Secret History before I read Elantris, so I didn't realize that the Ire were Elantrians until I read through it again. I know that they are from Elantris, and were trying to capture Preservation's Shard, but I don't know who they are. Is the Ire (possibly) another name for one of the other groups we've seen? Is there a WoB on this?

[CaptainRyan he/him]

As far as I am aware we do not have any concrete information on whether these Elantrians are pre/post-Reod etc. I think this is a big RAFO.

[DeTess she/her]

I think it would be pretty safe to assume they are post-reod Elantrians, given that Elantris happens a significant amount of time before Mistborn era 1. Apart from that, we don't know much else.

[Ari he/him]

11 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

As far as I am aware we do not have any concrete information on whether these Elantrians are pre/post-Reod etc. I think this is a big RAFO.

There's some indication they're pretty cosmere savvy, and they do somewhat imply they understand a bit about the Shattering on their world. It's not hard proof or anything, but they're probably more likely to be pre-Reod Elantrians who managed to survive going through Devotion's perpendicularity given their casual references to events pre-Reod, although nothing actually rules out them being New Elantrians that have figured a lot of stuff out since Elantris, especially given Brandon has given some indications that Elantris 2 might be a bit more tied into Cosmere-wide events than Elantris 1 was by saying that it needs to come after the things he's currently writing.

[Yata he/him]

I think the same of @Ari here.

If we based our speculation on their apparence, they are quite in the Reod status (we see another Elantrian off world and he seems a normal guy, don't a royal zombie).

It's possible that they are never returned to Sel and never recive the "restoring" effect of Elantris.

But the problem with this idea is another... How some Elantrians running from their planet during an emergency may:

- Survive the Sel's Cognitive

- Create a solid base of power (political, follower, raw material)

- Performe magic (they may have a large stock of Connection-Liquid before the Reod to exploit the distance issues and they simply took away with them).

We don't see any of them performe any kind of magic, but they did in some way (but here we can't be sure if they use AonDor or they hacked others Magic Systems).

EDIT: it just come to my mind that a skilled Elantrian's society will know the risk of some Natural Calamity to their status and could have "Emergency plans" ready to be used to avoid the complete destruction of their society.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Yata

[Ari he/him]

8 hours ago, Kolten said:

Hmm, wasn't the problem with the reod that the chasm line caused elantris to disconnect from the cognitive realm? Supposedly all the dor was still sitting up there, and maybe the Ire had figured out a way to use it without aons once they were in the cognitive realm . . .  As for wanting to help their fellow elantrians, maybe they are a different faction. I imagine that pre reod elantrian society was fairly political,  perhaps they were availing themselves of an opportunity to eliminate some rivals . . . Of couse all of this is rampant speculation, they just seem kind of sinister to me. 

in any case here is a WoB 

Doesn't exactly answer the question, but still I am leaning toward them being pre-reod

Kolten pointed out this WoB in another thread that IMO implies the Ire are pre-Reod, fyi.

[ROSHtaFARian2.0]

Hmm. Now I kinda want to ask Brandon if the Ire are older than the Heralds, and if so, if there's any non-Yolen natives at the time of Secret History who are older than the Ire.