Well of Ascension Users

[Kinnsayyy]

My main question is this: Was Rashek the first person to use the powers located inside the Well of Ascension?could the well have filled at some point before him and someone else used the powers? 

This seems likely to me. Here are my reasons why. 

 

First of all, we know that together Ati and Leras created the life on Scadrial at some point after the shattering. The coppermind says that it was "millenia" ago, which could mean anything from 2000 to hundreds of thousands of years ago. We have records of events that take place thousands of years prior to the final empire (I'm pretty sure the desolations happened over 4000 years prior). We know the well refills every 1024 years. The story accounts for 2 well refills, which is about 2000 years worth of history. This leaves plenty of room for at least one time the well refills. If it did fill up at some point, it would have to have been used by someone. If it hadn't, then ruin would have been freed. 

However, we do not know how long ago Leras trapped Ati. Without knowing this we can't be certain but we can still guess. We know Scadrial is supposed to be the closest thing to Earth in the cosmere. As per this WoB

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INTERVIEW: Oct, 2008

Hero of Ages Q&A - TWG (Verbatim)

TYRAN AMIROS (16 OCTOBER 2008)

How technologically advanced was the society before the Final Empire? You reference gunpowder, and certainly the current day seems to have technologies like canning and clocks, so how much did Rashek destroy?

BRANDON SANDERSON (16 OCTOBER 2008)

They had steam technology, and were just about to hit the railroad era. Something near early 1800s in our world.

We could assume that the earth was at least 2800 years old. I got this number because there was at least 1000 years prior to 0 AD that needs to be accounted for in human evolution. If it is that old, then there is plenty of time to the well to have filled prior. (I could be completely wrong, the shards could have just created the technology or they could have helped them develop it much faster). 

 

What evidence do we have that someone else used the powers in the well? Well I think the fact that there were full feruchemists might be evidence. For example, we know that mistings existed before Rashek gave out the lerasium. Before that people could only burn one metal. What if the person who visited the well before him did the same with feruchemy? That would make sense. I always thought it was odd that people had access to full feruchemy while only having access to one allomancy. That seems very unbalanced to have the magic systems be created like that. 

I understand you might be thinking that lerasium can only give allomancy so that doesn't make sense. However, there are two different ways there could have been a metal to do this. First this WoB

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INTERVIEW: Oct, 2008

Hero of Ages Q&A - TWG (Verbatim)

CZANOS (17 OCTOBER 2008)

Are there any Allomantic metals we have not seen yet, besides Chromium and Nicrosil?

BRANDON SANDERSON (17 OCTOBER 2008)

RAFO. (Sorry.) Let's just say that when Sazed said there are two metals you haven't found, he MIGHT not have been referring to a metal and its alloy, but two base metals. Who knows. Gods can be frustratingly ambiguous in times like that.

One of those metals could give feruchemy. That seems like someone that would be kept hidden from common knowledge. Another option seems less likely. IIRC there was another shard to visit Scadrial in the past. This other shard could have invested a God metal alloy with both Ati and Leras (can you have a metal with three alloys?) and created a God metal to give feruchemy. Or Ati and Leras could have simply created a different metal. 

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Would it be possible for Sazed to create a replacement metal, by chance, or will the temporal quartet remain inherently empty? It doesn't seem like it's too far of a stretch for Sazed to make more metals: after all, the metal Elend ate was a fragment of Preservation, and now Sazed holds Preservation.

BRANDON SANDERSON

That's a RAFO, I'm afraid. Suffice it to say that what the characters think they understand about the metals, they don't QUITE get right. If you study the interaction between the temporal metals, you might notice an inconsistency in the way they work...

Does this make sense? I feel like the first part does at least lol

[The One Who Connects he/him]

2 minutes ago, Kinnsayyy said:

My main question is this: Was Rashek the first person to use the powers located inside the Well of Ascension?could the well have filled at some point before him and someone else used the powers? 

Fairly certain that Brandon has said there were at least 2, but they weren't individuals of particular note.

11 minutes ago, Kinnsayyy said:

BRANDON SANDERSON (17 OCTOBER 2008)

RAFO. (Sorry.) Let's just say that when Sazed said there are two metals you haven't found, he MIGHT not have been referring to a metal and its alloy, but two base metals.

It has since been clarified that Sazed was referring to Chromium and Cadmium, with both having an alloy (Nicrosil and Bendalloy respectively)

---

As for the rest of the post, I don't think a Well user "expanded" Feruchemy in the same way Rashek "expanded" Allomancy. I see some Shardic interference involved, but I don't see some third God Metal being involved.

[Spoolofwhool]

From my understanding, the system Preservation set up had the Well refill every one thousand years so that the Hero of Ages could use that power to repair the world and reinforce Ruin's prison. This would continue until the true Hero of Ages appeared who would bear both shards. 

As such, I think there were previous Hero of Ages who ascended using the Well and did what was needed of them. I'll try to pull a source on why I think this later. 

 

Regarding the rest of the post, I don't think any of them somehow enhanced feruchemy. I think feruchemy has basically been always like how it was pre-TFE. (actually, there's something else I speculate on, but that's a bit outside the scope.) 

Edited May 6, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[Knight Oblivion]

So, I can't source this properly because I'm on my phone but there's a few issues with what you have here that I'd like to clarify.

 

First is about Scadrian history and evolution. Evolution in terms of major changes such as the first bacteria to humans takes many thousands if not millions of years. With that out the way, Ruin and Preservation literally created Scadrial and all life on it using the non-corrupted parts of Yolen as a template. Brandon does indeed say that Scadrial is an Earth analogue, which implies Yolen is also highly similar to it, but things really didn't develop in a similar way. They were just made.

 

As for Allomancy, the deal with Mistings and Mistborn is that the latter have a stronger connection to Preservation. While Scadrial before Rashek's Ascension had a few Mistings, the spiritual DNA for the connection wasn't strong or very common. Lerasium kick started a breeding stock of strong connection that was subsequently diluted through the centuries, decreasing the incidences of Mistborn and general Allomantic strength over time.

 

Feruchemy, before Sazed's Ascension however, was always a whole ability. Ferrings didn't develop, that we know of, until the Terris and remaining North Scadrian populations intermixed to an unprecedented degree. There's a WoB on this that mentions that the spiritual DNA for Allomancy and Feruchemy interferes with each other which led to Feruchemists with only one metal they could use. The Kandra in Bands of Mourning mention that the Terris people are working on a breeding program to refocus the Feruchemical spiritual DNA to bring back full Feruchemists.

 

All of this brings me to my last point. I'm pretty sure there's a WoB about there being Heroes of Ages before Rashek. We also don't really know why the Terris people exclusively had Feruchemical ability. There's been theories proposed and I haven't dived into newer WoBs recently but I think you could be on to something. It could be entirely possible that a pre-Rashek Hero of Ages gave the Terris people Feruchemy. Either that or Leras himself snuck more shenanigans past Ati for his master plan.

[Kinnsayyy]

8 hours ago, Knight Oblivion said:

So, I can't source this properly because I'm on my phone but there's a few issues with what you have here that I'd like to clarify.

 

First is about Scadrian history and evolution. Evolution in terms of major changes such as the first bacteria to humans takes many thousands if not millions of years. With that out the way, Ruin and Preservation literally created Scadrial and all life on it using the non-corrupted parts of Yolen as a template. Brandon does indeed say that Scadrial is an Earth analogue, which implies Yolen is also highly similar to it, but things really didn't develop in a similar way. They were just made.

While this doesn't discount what you are saying, while reading the book (don't have exact quote bc it's audiobook) it was said that mankind was made eons ago at the end of Hero of Ages. An eon is a billion years. 

But it's true that they easily could've just made all the stuff we had to invent. 

 

I still wonder what possibly could have happened with the power. I mean someone had to take the power of a God and use it. So what could they have done with it? Feruchemy is the only thing I can think of but maybe there's something else. I mean Rashek was no one special and you can see what all he created. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Just now, Kinnsayyy said:

it was said that mankind was made eons ago at the end of Hero of Ages. An eon is a billion years.

An Eon is an established amount of time? Fascinating, I just figured it was a phrase used to mean very long ago like "the time before time" and such.

Either way, we know that the Prelude of Way of Kings is 6,000 years after the Shattering. Mistborn Era 2 takes place at the same time as modern day Stormlight, 4,500 years later. The Shards themselves only came into existence 10.5K years ago, and R&P had to travel to where Scadrial would be, realize they couldn't make life alone, and then make their deal first(not too many years, but it adds up). Even compared to length of recorded Human History, Scadrial isn't very old.

[Kinnsayyy]

55 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

An Eon is an established amount of time? Fascinating, I just figured it was a phrase used to mean very long ago like "the time before time" and such.

Either way, we know that the Prelude of Way of Kings is 6,000 years after the Shattering. Mistborn Era 2 takes place at the same time as modern day Stormlight, 4,500 years later. The Shards themselves only came into existence 10.5K years ago, and R&P had to travel to where Scadrial would be, realize they couldn't make life alone, and then make their deal first(not too many years, but it adds up). Even compared to length of recorded Human History, Scadrial isn't very old.

Idk about eon, Google just said it was equal to a billion years. But now that I think about it, maybe he was mentioning life in general, including the life on Yolen. Idk why I thought billions of years on Scadrial made sense.