Allomancer jak and the pits of eltania: what really happened? (spoiler for the short story)

[king of nowhere]

First of all, I'm not sure if I should put this in some spoiler section, like maybe the arcanum unbounded. the story was published with the MAG years ago, after all, plus it doesn't really have any cosmic revelation. If it needs be spoilered, then some mod please fix it.

That said, I wonder what really happened there. It's obvious, even without the steward's notes, that the story was highly fictionalized. we can safely discard the talking bird (too small to be a kandra), the jump from the cave into the river (it didn't rain, as jak himself stated as leaving a trail in the dust) and the feat with the air balloon (not enough air to give buoyancy there; plus, it was air lost from jak's lungs, so the total buoyancy of jak+bladder would remain constant).

on the other hand, we know with reasonable certainty that he did find a crate at a depth of 18.3 fathoms and rescued it, and that Elizandra and koloss trying to kill him were involved in some way. even the fact that jak has been prisoner in the cave is confirmed. So... any idea?

[Weltall]

Wax mentions Jak and how he's a git but at least he actually does go out into the Roughs unlike some gentlemen who talk a big game, so we can assume the vague outline of the plot is accurate. And it provided some nice info on what Harmony did to the koloss and the implications of being koloss-blooded. And boy was it entertaining, especially with the snarky annotations.

My guess: Jak hears about a treasure, goes to find it, runs into some koloss and (being the enormous windbag that he is) was able to hold his breath long enough to retrieve the treasure from underwater. Probably the box was considerably lighter than he claimed or he was able to force it open underwater, then embellished the story with things like the flood to make himself sound more awesome. As for some of the details around the treasure: Secret History spoiler

 

I'm sure stories about 'The Survivor's Treasure' are legion and I wouldn't put it past Kelsier to have encouraged some of them, though whether he

really had anything to do with a cache of working koloss spikes* is another matter. It's irrelevant either way as all that's needed is an existing belief that there is treasure out there and anything one finds can be claimed as that treasure and the facts manipulated to fit the narrative, in order to sell more copies.

* Probably not, but we know he's used hemalurgy in some manner in order to return to the Physical Realm so it's possible.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Weltall

[Kaymyth she/her]

I like to view Jak as kind of a Buffalo Bill showman type.  He goes out and runs around and does stuff, but the stories are his bread and butter and he's loathe to pass up a good seed of a story when it blows his way.  And he's self-aware enough to let Handerwym's annotations add an extra (hilarious) layer to the stories, thus expanding his audience.  So there are two types of people who follow the Allomancer Jak stories - the people who have a ridiculous romanticized idea of the Roughs and believe it's all accurate, and the people who think it's all ridiculous bunk and read it for Handerwym's brand of wit.

Reality* is then somewhere in between.  Adventures happen, Jak (and Handerwym, assuming he exists, and I like to think he does) writes up the embellished version, and they make a mint on the royalties.  I imagine that if anyone of note in-universe were to actually meet Jak, he'd play the entire interaction in-character, probably having the time of his life in the process.

 

*I amuse myself by using this word in reference to a fictional world.