robardin

Well, Scadrial is meant to "kind of parallel" late 19th/20th Century Earth from Era 2 going into Era 3. And the Era 2 broadsheet material ALL looks to be rather tongue in cheek (though there are the occasional "lorish" tidbits, too). So if it better pleases your sensibilities, you can headcanon this as being being the Scadrian Guy Who Thought Of Fast Food Burgers (the analog of the person in our so-called real world who did so) dubbing his invention "sliders" for the same reason they acquired that nickname in our world (they're small, steamed soft, kind of greasy, and easy to just "slide" down the gullet), and now putting out ads to hire actual Sliders (the Allomancers) more as an advertising gimmick than a core production component, whether or not any actual Allomancers ever responded to the ad. Kind of like if, I don't know, if Burger King put out ads looking for claimants to being the Tsar of Russia In Exile, or the heir to the Bourbon or Napoleonic titles to being the King of France, to be the face of their restaurant?

I always assumed burying that in the fine print of a broadsheet insert into a Mistborn Era 2 novel was the equivalent of an Easter Egg joke referencing “sliders” being invented IRL in 1921, the very first “fast food” hamburger https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2023-03-22/white-castle-hamburger-wichita-kansas-sliders-fast-food-history-mcdonalds

It wasn’t depressing because it was a mundane and modern use of Allomancy. It was depressing because I’ve been That Guy up until midnight debugging/reconciling stuff on a glowing CRT screen, and imagining that I would be accessing “a piece of divine power” just so I could keep on doing it instead of tapping out and going to bed, is like picturing The Flash being made to clean house and fold laundry in 10 minutes before some last-minute guests arrive. Can he do it? Yes. Is he specially gifted to do so? Also yes. So, would he do it? I suppose so. But would he be thinking the whole time, how did it come to this? You better believe it

Perhaps, but also far more rare. And unless they can access Compounded investiture, they'll have to spend at least equal time slow of thought or dozing off/asleep as charged up!

Eh, I think even in Era 2, at least in highly developed cities like Elendel, Lurchers start to become more interesting, as it becomes normal to always be surrounded by metal heavier than a person is, and often extending overhead. Now, instead of being at risk of Pulling some dangerous metal towards yourself at high speed, you’re always able to Pull yourself towards or against something big and metal, as hard or lightly as you wish. Talk about always being able to catch the train or bus! LOL! Like, growing up and living in New York City, it would be as easy, maybe even easier to up and sling around town as a Lurcher as to “fly” like a Coinshot, because standing on the sidewalk with no change in your pockets you can afford to lose, you might not have any metal to Push off of below you close by (find a manhole cover? Jump up onto the hood of a car?), but Pulling up would be free and easy, using a lamp post, fire escape, etc. Like Spider-Man!

That’s a depressing thought. Imagine in Ghostbloods Mistborn Era 3, we see some descendant of Ham’s burning the midnight pewter while trying to reconcile a spreadsheet on a 1980s era PC equivalent, and reflecting how “once, Allomancers like him were called Thugs, prized warriors or at least, bodyguards, for the advantages of having bursts of strength, recovery, and agility. Now, with aluminum guns and bullets commonplace, pewter was now most useful for professional sports leagues that permitted it, and for the endurance it granted. Like in long-distance airship piloting, long-haul trucking, and untangling accounts receivable, he thought wryly.”

Well, of the original Era 1 (non-god) metals, yeah. By Era 2, the timeshifting metals (especially bendalloy) get very intriguing. But I think most people would agree that being a (full) Feruchemist would be the most useful IRL. Why, you’d be ideal for being a packman servant into the mountains, like a Super Sherpa! (I mean even pre-Ascension Rashek had a valid beef; if Terris alone had Feruchemy, why the heck WERE they content in just being scholars and porters or guides?) Now, if you could only take one metal for one power… Allomancy starts looking attractive, particularly A-pewter. Yes, F-gold allows for insta-healing versus “just” a stamina and healing factor in A-pewter, but you also don’t have to worry about having filled a metalmind sufficiently, so long as you have pewter on hand. Plus you get enhanced agility, speed, and balance thrown in. You’ll never blur like the Flash by tapping a steelmind, but you also won’t ever have to spend time filling one, either.

Actually that quote highlights another unique thing about Wax’s Experiment that would be unique to Wax (and I suppose, Marasi, if she were enlisted): he had wielded the Bands, which we still don’t know how they were created. Which when tapped for All The Powers resulted in swirling mist like a mini-Ascension, which we know permanently “stretches” one’s Spiritweb even after releasing the power (becoming a “mini-Sliver”, if you will). And that would represent a significant “extra Connection” to Preservation above and beyond even that of a normal Allomancer. Of course he wasn’t doing anything overtly (directly) Allomantic while setting up or running the experiment, but as mentioned, he could just have been burning steel for Steelsight at just the right moment for lerasium to be produced instead of … whatever comes out instead in Era 3.

I was very disappointed that we didn't get to see any Nicrobursts in action in the Era 2 Wax and Wayne set of FOUR books, or even any mention of one off-screen. I could see how they might be rarer than other Allomancers (the 16 powers are not evenly distributed, apparently, as we have WoBs that Coinshots are more common than other types), perhaps even the most rare. But surely any that existed would be in some demand? We see how awed even experienced Allomancers like Wax are to encounter his "double" from the Set using duralumin with his Steelpushing in The Lost Metal; wouldn't the same effect be sought after by, say, the military or the constabulary, to pair up in a team with their own Allomancers? And so, we can only speculate on exactly how a Nicroburst would interact (or a Leecher) with a Feruchemist tapping their metalmind. I think there's a WoB that the Investiture has to be "kinetic", i.e., being accessed actively, to get Nicroburst, for one, but that there would be an effect; and that Leeching a Feruchemist wouldn't empty a suitably filled metalmind all at once, it would take some time depending on how full it was (versus Leeching the typical metal reserve from an Allomancer, I suppose unless someone like Wax had swallowed a LOT of steel). Can't find these references offhand in an Arcanum search, so I hope I'm not misremembering something. And how'd the Set get those spikes for duralumin, anyway? If the Set could ferret out "duralumin gnats" to harvest for Hemalurgic spikes (I guess in Era 2 Allomancers just "know their metal" upon Snapping, which is different than it had been in TFE, even if they're "gnats"), why not also scoop up some spikes for A-nicrosil? I feel like I've written this before... Ah yes... About three years ago, I went so far as to headcanon in fanfic scenes for a "Nicky Nicro" into the Era 2 storyline, LOLOL.

There's also the question of motivation on the part of the "donor" singer. The classic premise is that they were willingly giving up their lives to host one of their "gods" who would fight against the humans in a "Return" (for millenia, of course, what the humans termed a "Desolation", the singers viewed as an opportunity to return to dominance of Roshar). With Roshar basically under the dominion of Retribution at the end of WaT, excepting only Azir and Urithiru, and the world under a never-ending Everstorm, there seems to be little need to host a Fused. Unless some aggressive foray of Unoathed comes out of Azir to attack, or Radiants emerge from the crystalline cocoon that was Urithiru, what's there for the Fused to fight with and then to die? I mean, it's one thing to decide it's worth dying to bring back some glorious strategist like Raboniel, or a hero warrior like Lezian the -- uh, maybe there are better examples, but the point is, the battle for Roshar has essentially been won, from their POV, right? There's even a new sovereign listener nation of Narakistan on Roshar. I guess there's the spirits of all the not-yet-Returned Fused on Braize at the end of WaT that maybe would like to come back, but you know, tough rockbuds, that's the way the chouta crumbles, and all that?

Actually we were carefully NOT told that "Sazed is still alive and a Shard", only that the Scadrian Shard Ed venerates via a Pathian earring is a "living Shard" with a "he" pronoun, and the only living Shard that has "performed" something (that presumably only a living Shard could do, and not "performed a piano duet with Xisis"). And the Shard of neither Scadrial nor Roshar is ever named, so they might not even be "Harmony" and "Retribution" by the time of Emberdark. Could be "Discord" and ... something else? One PRESUMES that'd still be Sazed as the Vessel of the Shard on Scadrial, but within less than 400 years of Cosmere time (the time between Hero of Ages and Wind and Truth) we saw four of sixteen Shards get new Vessels, two Vessels get killed in so doing, two separate and independent cases of a Vessel "double Sharding it", a Shard flee a system she'd long been inhabiting/Investing (Cultivation) to go who knows where and to do what, and a direct incursion by one Shard (Autonomy) on another Shard's home planet (like, not just where the Shard had Invested but where the vessel had actually originated, too!)... And SotD is or was supposed to have been "centuries" after Mistborn/Stormlight Archives. Lots of time for lots more Shardic Shenanigans to happen! Combine that with Sazed getting "Discordant" at the end of Era 2, who knows, it's not impossible that some other Scadrian takes up power in his place somehow... Where's Spook been at? LOL. (I am not seriously suggesting that, but pointing out that Brandon has clearly left himself a LOT of wiggle room)

All true statements, but, bear in mind that by the time of Emberdark, a lot of time has passed in the Cosmere since Retribution's Ascension at the end of WaT. And that that is not aligned with publication/reading time, so any major changes between SA5 (which is before Misborn Era 2 of Wax and Wayne) and the "Space Age" (Mistborn Era 4) would probably not get spoiler references. Similarly to The Sunlit Man, which even features a protagonist we directly saw in Stormlight Archives 1-5, Brandon may drop hints as to technological developments between "where we last saw Scadrial / Roshar" in publication time vs. in-world Cosmere time, but will avoid mentioning major plot developments, even obliquely. For example, even before Emberdark, based on the previously standalone Sixth of the Dusk novella (June 2014), we knew that in the "space age", Scadrial had FTL ships and scanning technology powered by the Metallic Arts even before we knew about "unsealed metalminds" from Bands of Mourning (Jan 2016). But IIRC, there was no mention of the "Ones Above" being people wearing masks in SotD, as that wasn't something we'd see from the Malwish until BoM -- those tidbits are only in the "new" interleaved chapters in Emberdark (excused by the fact that it took several years for them to "get close enough" to Vathi and Co. to remove their masks/face covering helmets). In other words, the fact that we see a Skybreaker with Plate and Blade (Gun) flying (FTL?) to First of the Sun without a spaceship, and that he represents Roshar as a power in opposition to the Scadrians (and more -- implying Nalthis or other planets are similarly competing for Cosmere dominance), doesn't mean that Roshar is still in the same state as we saw at the end of WaT. Since Brandon knows we know (in Summer 2025) that a large segment of Skybreakers, alone of all ten Radiant orders, swore to Odium and thus to Retribution in SA4 and SA5, that could be as much the reason we see a Skybreaker in Emberdark as anything else, so as not to spoil something. What hints we do have, is that Pathians (followers, not worshipers!, of Harmony) still exist; that at least one non-Scadrian in Ed venerates Harmony, as "the only known living Shard who has performed the --" (...the what? What would a Shard "perform", some kind of rite or ritual?) Also, Starling, Ed, et al., know and speak of Shards quite casually, like it's common knowledge, and name drop quite a few, even ones long Splintered: Autonomy, Ambition, Dominion, Invention... But they do NOT name Retribution when referring to Roshar. Then again, "Harmony" is never mentioned by that name either, despite Ed's fingering of a Pathian earring and referring to "the Scadrian Shard" as a "he" who is a "living Shard who has performed" something... All while the last we saw of Harmony in TLM, he had a "dark shadow", and we had reminders of those epigraphs even from the original trilogy about the Hero of Ages being called "Discord". So if you read between the lines, Brandon is very carefully NOT admitting or denying that Harmony and Retribution exist as they were "the last time we read about them" in Summer 2025. Does that mean Roshar isn't unified under Retribution in the Space Age, with Taravangian as its Vessel, directing Radiants? No. But there's certainly room for that NOT being the case! Especially considering how the "Honor" component of Retribution was evidently still somewhat separate at the end of WaT, having been more conscious than most un-Vesseled Shards and needing Taravangian to appease it even after he took it in combo with Odium, and had been prepped in some way while Connected to Dalinar to... Grow? And also remember that SA6-10, to "complete" the second arc of Stormlight Archive and the Story of Roshar, takes place about 15 years after WaT, while Emberdark is way, WAY past that. It would be EXTREMELY surprising if SA10 ended with the Shardic Situation on Roshar being the same as at the end of Wind and Truth, if you ask me.

You know, I've spent a week or so wondering what it is I meant by that, and I'm not sure. I know when I read Emberdark that a few references to Shard type events or bombshells from "a few decades ago" allowed for something big happening on Roshar to change the basis from where we last saw it in WaT, but that doesn't necessarily mean that change was a Retribution Split-Up or Evolution, whether or not that involved a change in Vessel. Things like... (looking over what I highlighted in my e-book) Offhand and current references to Rosharans using gemstones for illumination, i.e., filled with Light, when globally available Stormlight via regular highstorms had ended, and filling gemstones with Warlight required singers (specifically) to make a daily prayer to Retribution. Which presumably still "leak" the way Stormlight gems did. So are all lit gemstones now funneled through the singer nation at Narak? Or has Roshar regained "normal" highstorms again (which had been created before the Shattering!)? The fact that the "Battle of Aheleha" (a very Alethi sounding name) was where Dajer got his lungs burned when the very sky was set aflame, something that sounded a lot like what we saw Supercharged Jasnah pull off at Thaylen Fields in Oathbreaker; so are Radiants now working with Retribution instead of being cocooned in Urithiru to avoid him? How might that come to pass? Ed getting cut off before describing Harmony, the "Scadrian" that he worshipped as a Pathian despite not being Scadrian in origin himself, as being "nice" and "the only known living Shard who has performed the --" The what? THE WHAT, ED? I think I thought at the time I read this, that perhaps this was a reference to Harmony being a double Shard. And if Harmony was now the "only known living [double] Shard" then that would mean Retribution was either no longer a double Shard, or no longer living... But I admit that's a reallllllly big stretch. There are "several major powers at war", too, not just Roshar vs. (Malwish) Scadrial, but that's another angle. That plus the hidden planet of Yolen, with a restricted perpendicularity to it from Silverlight (or more accurately, that Silverlight had been built around, even before the Shattering), had kept secret for millenia by dragons as the "source of nearly all life in the cosmere and the origin of the Shards", but which then had that secret revealed "quite dramatically a few decades back". Big Stuff Happened, and a Shardic Shake-Up would not surprise me, but that's far from saying it was clearly suggested (of course it wouldn't be). EDIT: oh, and to return to the topic in the title of this thread, we saw what certainly seems to be a Skybreaker of at least the Fourth Ideal coming to First of the Sun, not a Fused. Is it possible that while Radiant spren can now leave Roshar, after the freeing of B-a-M in WaT, that the Fused are still bound to the Rosharan System due to their tie to the Everstorm?

You assume Mr. T is still the Vessel of a shardic dyad called Retribution in the Cosmere Space Age (Era 4?)... Definitely there were hints that may not be the case, if you choose to interpret them that way...

I think both elements were a factor. Right after Kelsier's Ascension through forced Connection to Preservation via a Selish Investiture Bomb, Ruin said to him, mockingly: "Oh, Kelsier! You think I mind what you have done? Why I'd have chosen for you to take the power! It's perfect! You're merely an aspect of me, after all. ... You can barely control it. Even assuming it could harm me, you couldn't accomplish such a task. ... You're not alive, you're an idea. A memory of a man holding the power will never be as potent as a real one with ties to all three Realms." So lacking a footprint in one of the three Realms while taking up a Shard forms a kind of incomplete Ascension. But it is still an Ascension, as later, Kelsier realizes when he was able to resist the very insistent pull to the Beyond, "He had held the power of deity. The final death could not take him unless he wanted it to. Or unless he was completely destroyed." He may not have been a full Shard as far as being able to wield its full power, but he was a legitimate, lesser but not "leaky", Vessel. Well, "legitimate" is maybe putting it too strongly, as the Shard would never have chosen him, the Connection was not naturally there. More like, "served to hold all the available power of the Shard of Preservation that was released upon the passing of the former Vessel, Leras". "He could see himself now, in the Spiritual Realm -- and those black lines were still there, tying him to Ruin. The power he held didn't like that at all. It tumbled inside him, churning, trying to break free. He could hold on, but he knew that if he let go, it would escape him and he would never be able to recapture it." Kelsier's nature was always quite Ruinous, eh?

Ha, no, I do not recall any such WoB, and that's certainly not something obvious from the text Interesting, guess I'll look in the WoB archive in the Arcanum EDIT: and there is is, whoah

Hmm. Curious how we read the same stuff and came to very different images/conclusions in our heads. To the first point, when Allik talks about "The Sovereign" (before the big reveal at the conclusion of BoM that it was Kelsier), he says the Sovereign told them he had come from the Northern Hemisphere "where he had been your god before becoming ours" while wielding all 16 powers for both Allomancy and Hemalurgy, leading Wax and Co. to think it was somehow Rashek reincarnated, trying to "do better" than he had as The Lord Ruler with a new group of people. Who then left them with legends (oral stories) about the Bands of Mourning that could grant those powers to any who "wore" them, that he'd put in a temple with his priests, etc. The reason I pictured Kelsier thereby having a "direct hand" is by Allik's own account of his people's history with The Sovereign, is that the Sovereign ruled them like TLR had done in the North, for around a hundred years, right? That's a lot more direct than what he did as "The Survivor", which was to inspire the skaa to stand up to the Inquisitors and to TLR, and then to die for them, and have a kandra reappear as him. (Of course it has crossed my mind that "The Sovereign" in the South was also a kandra, but let's take things at somewhat face value for now...) I don't think he's lied to the GBs about "not having his powers" (of a Mistborn), or indeed any Invested powers, other than knowledge. Maybe he has, but on screen, we haven't seen any GB seem to expect him to "do something" other than give direction. Or perhaps he DOES wield some kind of Invested power from being a Splinter of Preservation and having that spike through his eye, we don't know, except that he's not an Allomancer any more/at present as of the end of TLM when he meets with Harmony. Since he DOES arrive to the GB safehouse to meet with Marasi later in TLM, and he seemed pretty frustrated with not being able to be there in person "for another 12 hours" in that seon chat, I see no reason to doubt his statement, and again the other GBs didn't seem surprised that he'd be coming from the South via airship ("he went WHERE?", "He's in a WHAT now?"). I think, or at least we're supposed to think (and I do think), that they DID know he was there, if not the 100% accurate reason why, and that it's not an isolated event. And finally, yes I did assume the airship he was on, was one of the large military grade ones capable of long flight. We've only ever seen those as being capable of trans-hemispheric flight, smaller ones like Wilg in BoM were not capable of that. So on top of imagining him in such a large airship, I also imagined there being at least a small, trusted crew flying it (that he wasn't operating solo). And that probably couldn't take off without being noticed, unless it was disguised as a ship doing something else (though with the state of relationship between the Malwish and the Basin leadership, it seemed like all civilian or mercantile flights from the South had been grounded). If you thought his final comment on how he couldn't get there any faster because saying "I'm traveling over water, and so can't go much faster than I currently am. Dropping things off to Steelpush off doesn't do much with an ocean underneath you" implied he personally was or could be flying with Steelpushing, no, I read that as the airships flying via mechanical Steelpushing (which we already saw in BoM was in part how they functioned, using "ettmetal" and "primer cubes"). (We should probably take this discussion over to the Mistborn forum though, it's getting way tangential to "Open Questions from Isles of the Emberdark", LOL.)

So, reading Era 2 (esp. TLM) it was clear the GBs avoided notice from the leadership of Elendel, but I have always thought Kelsier as “The Sovereign” had a greater and more direct hand in manipulating the events and leadership of those in the Southern Hemisphere. Like, why was it they (the Malwish) had legends and stories of The Sovereign teaching them about the Metallic Arts, gifting them the Excisors (whatever they were/are), creating the Bands of Mourning and leaving a trail of info to it with them (and not to anyone from the Basin)? We never found out. And in TLM we see him returning by airship from the South — what was he doing there? And with an airship, which is hardly secretive. Maybe not the Malwish, though (they are one group among several, possibly the dominant group especially by this Era 4, but maybe not the one Kelsier was more directly interacting with even at the time)? It would be just like Kelsier to simply adopt different personae to do different things with different groups, but when he said via seon to the Ghostbloods in Bilming that he was “on an airship twelve hours away” and commenting on how he “shouldn’t have left for the South… I thought Saze would stop it before it got this far”, they didn’t seem surprised that he had gone there. That said, I agree that the GBs are certainly not “sharing information” with the Malwish leadership by any means. Kelsier may be a Splinter from having held Preservation (via forced Connection), but he really does have a lot of Ruin to him, and Autonomy as well! More that, what the Malwish are doing, might be in some way what Kelsier wants by proxy. Though it may be he now feels they’ve “gone too far” in some ways, we shall see about that as well!

Indeed, the "conquering" of the Pantheon Isles is a step forward for Dusk's people. But while there are quite a few Pantheon Islands, I thought Patji was the most dangerous one of them all? So I kind of assumed if they'd set up a base and cleared out deathant nests, etc., on Patji, it'd be the capstone move. But maybe not. And yes, I forgot to bring that up as an "unanswered question": the origin of the Eelakin people (where did Cakoban and his folk come from across the Emberdark, where they have stories of cities, etc.,?), and the fact that he evidently already could Navigate and even had a jar of investiture ready to use in that flashback? I like how you put it, that it was Autonomy's way of "attuning" their investiture to the Eelakin rather than bestowing a completely new ability to them (which could also explain why the few trappers who ate the pate did not feel the Current like Dusk and the others do, but may have instead "unlocked" some other ability). It would fit in with how we see Autonomy somehow "hijacking" the power of another magic system in Mistborn Era 2, accessing and modifying access to Hemalurgy with "trellium" (bavadinium?) in a way that serves her (though Patji as one of her avatars is male). Perhaps that even means that Patji was originally was one of Cakoban's people, the way that Telsin sought to become an Avatar of Autonomy on Scadrial? And whatever Investiture they used to use to gain Navigation and "mind clouding" being no longer available, is now re-enabled with these tests/trials forming a Connection to Autonomy's Investiture through Patji.

So this is surmised by "Ed" the Arcanist, who wasn't there when any of it happened, and they are "hoping" that some of the guards posted at the pool might develop the talent, that proximity and duration were the only requirements, along with training in how to "navigate by feel of current" the traditional trapper way. But is that enough? Let's revisit the words of "the god himself" after Dusk first sensed the Current (from eating the skullsnake meat), and ingested some of the "worm paste" from Patji: Tested, and earned, by learning to survive the deadly challenges of the Pantheon Isles, which are no longer threats, except in zoological displays. The islands themselves have basically been cleared of such threats, with civilian workers and research bases made possible, as Vathi discusses with Dusk in Ch. 13: And then at the end, in Ch. 61, Dusk reflects on how: It's Dusk's tests that at long last, were through, not his people's (at least, that's one way to view it). The tests that had "earned" him and the other trappers the "blessing of Patji that allows them to Navigate. I'm sure the Eelakin will figure out exactly what might be required to create more Navigators after the Golden Age of Trapping, which is no longer possible in the same way with all the Pantheon Isles "conquered". But I would be surprised (disappointed, in fact) if it really were as simple/easy as having people hang out near the Shardpool on Patji for a few months, along with some current-feel training. For it is not truly a test of survival if there is no threat of non-survival, right? Or were all those threats simply to make prolonged human proximity to the Shardpool extremely difficult, as a challenge to discovering this in the first place (along with harvesting Aviar); that once overcome, is like "OK, achievement unlocked" for the Eelkin "as a people" and not just for specific trappers any more?

Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of "Kelsier/GBs are holding back from, or even opposed to, the Malwish leadership" as well, we shall see! As for "continuing the Trapper traditions", that's what I was getting at: if living on the Pantheon Islands is now just like living on the homeisles, more or less, would that still confer the Connection to Patji which was based on that act as "proving oneself" to Patji, as it once did? Or are they going to have to set aside "nature preserves" on the Pantheon Islands, so that people can live the "Trapper Way" for long enough, and more importantly "for real" enough, to be able to develop into worm-paste-eating Navigators?

So, the Malwish are the dominant expansionist Scadrians in this era of the Cosmere... ...yet they didn't know about Aviar, and only had recorded history about in retrospect, how some of them were on Roshar in the past (Mraize having one, for example, and the one belonging to the Feruchemist who was killed in Urithiru in RoW), with means of access unknown. But if the Ghostbloods not only knew about Aviar but acquired them, and they were obviously run by Kelsier, and he's the Sovereign of the Malwish who was also seen returning to Elendel from there in TLM by airship... Does that mean whoever's in charge of the Malwish Empire or whatever, is NOT aligned with the Sovereign / Kelsier / Ghostbloods? And, if Dusk and most of the other trappers are able to become Navigators by ingesting "worm paste" due to a gift or stronger Connection to Patji from having "proven themselves" by surviving on the Patheon Islands for so long, ... Now that even Patji itself (the island) is now "tamed", where will the next generation of Navigators come from? Or is simply residing for a while on the Pantheon Islands enough, like sending kids to go to Camp Patji for a semester? Will they have to at least undergo exposure to threats like the deathants, in a Wild Patji Preserve type of proving grounds?

So here's the thing to remember: even 300 years since the Catacendre, the overwhelming majority of Allomancers derive their abilities from noble descent. Despite skaa Allomancers dominating the major character set of Mistborn Era 1, they were actually very rare relative to the number of noble Allomancers, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Steel Inquisitors. Why do you suppose some of the Great Houses of Final Empire were evidently still prominent in Elendel, like Tekiel and Hasting, or other lesser noble houses like Entrone (which Marsh comments on having disliked "when I was mortal" to intimidate Gave Entrone, the mayor of Bilming, in TLM)? Not because they carried over noble claims to wealth, power, or prestige from the Final Empire into the rebuilding of the world under The Lord Mistborn. There would be little reason to respect such claims when everybody is climbing out of storage caverns. It was because they, as nobles, had the most Allomancers among them -- plus the bloodstock from which most natural born Allomancers would arise in the subsequent generations. Yes, there were a sudden number of "mistsnapped" skaa Allomancers created right before the Catacendre; about 16% of them, in fact. But however many of them survived the koloss and then the Catacendre, they may not have been "upgraded" in a way that passed on a higher probability for Allomancy in their descendants at the sDNA level in the way that the noble houses were, by virtue of being descended by blood from lerasium ingestors from the time of Rashek's original Ascension. In addition, the nobles would probably have been experienced Allomancers, versus the mistsnapped skaa ones who'd only realized their powers a short while ago, and better able to leverage their abilities into positions of power and influence in the rebuilding. And then any "mistsnapped skaa Allomancers" would have been very attractive to recruit into their noble houses via intermarriage. So even in Era 2, I would think most Allomancers would be like Wax, Marasi, etc., and far fewer like Wayne, in terms of coming from at least middle class backgrounds already. They probably don't HAVE to work as couriers, porters, bodyguards, etc., unless they want to, like as a summer job or side gig. Really, the more remarkable thing would be that Wax was the only Allomancer in the crowd at the dinner party at Yomen Manor where Wax "came out of retirement" against the Vanishers. He probably was NOT, and was simply the only one who dared to stand up to them. After all, one of the reasons the Vanishers targeted the party was the density of people with "strong lines of descent" for Allomancy, including to The Lord Mistborn, so it stands to reason there WERE multiple Allomancers in the crowd, just... Unarmed, unprepared, and/or unwilling for action in the field.

We never see Prof really using his forcefield abilities until Firefight. He gifts it in the form of "jackets" to the Reckoners, and rarely created walls with it to hold people/things back, but when he "poses" as Limelight in the duel with Steelheart at Soldier Field, he still only uses his healing and his "tensor" powers to fight. He makes physical daggers, spears, and swords out of the omnipresent steel that he KNOWS won't do anything against Steelheart's invulnerability. He doesn't make forcefield flying discs, or forcefield spears, or those forcefield containment globes we see him use once he's "pushed over the edge" at the end of Firefight. So it would seem that this particular power was the MOST seductive for Prof? And therefore, using it would be the most open to letting Calamity's "taint" fully into him? Prof held back from using his forcefields as a weapon until he went Full Epic, whereupon it was the FIRST thing he did (do the shrinking globe squishy-crush murders of Val and Exel). And then started making flying discs and steps/pathways in the air with them. He'd always been fully aware that that's actually his most dangerous and flexible power. This made me wonder: well, what if Limelight Unleashed had faced off against Steelheart? Assume that his "forcefield spears" would not have penetrated Steelheart's invulnerable skin. But what about those shrinking globes? Steelheart didn't have a healing power, otherwise that scar on his chin from David's father's shot would have disappeared. And his being invulnerable was really about being impenetrable or impervious to external forces. Could forcing his own body in on itself that way (being squished in a globe to the volume of a basketball) be interpreted as him doing unintended damage to himself, in the same vein as how he ultimately "killed himself" through his own unintended action, firing a gun that sent a bullet into a hidden detonator trigger button? Counterpoint: could Steelheart not have just punched through that forcefield globe? -- Maybe? But we never saw anything break through one of Prof's forcefields, and they were strong enough to contain an Obliteration detonation that would have wiped out an entire city... But I suppose if anything could, it might be Steelheart's strength. Alternatively, could Prof create a forcefield globe around just Steelheart's head, small enough to suffocate him into unconsciousness? And then, if Steelheart COULD "punch through" a forcefield, hold that globe until he's punching really, really hard, then vanish it. Quit hitting yourself, Steelheart! Oh, you pulped your own head? Too bad! Even if that wasn't enough to kill him outright (an extension of the invulnerability power, perhaps), seeing him go down unconscious might dissipate Prof's fear of him enough to disable his invulnerability. I think one of the reasons Steelheart was so paranoid about where he slept, changing it every night from dozens of bedrooms, would be because someone seeing him asleep might not be afraid of him any more. (Especially if they didn't even realize it was him, like someone armed with instructions to "just go into that room and put a bullet into the head of the slontze sleeping there"). In fact, what could Steelheart have done to kill Limelight? We saw Prof get his head smashed in, and just heal from it; and even the "gifted" version of his healing allowed David to survive a blast from Obliteration trying to Obliterate him that overcame the gifted forcefield shield remaining to him. Making full use of his healing, I suppose Limelight could also heal from a power blast from Steelheart, if his forcefield shields didn't suffice. It might take a long time, but the longer a stalemate battle goes on, the less Steelheart's opponent would fear him, I would think. Since we see that "neutering effects" of an Epic's weakness are often on a sliding scale, like how Kool-Aid weakened or shorted out Sourcefield's effects but didn't render her fully powerless until she ingested some, gradually fearing Steelheart less and less in a fight might have a cascading effect, too.

OK I plead guilty to having skipped the first half of "Firefight" in my re-read, I went back and read the beginning and it's quite clear from Mizzy's personal recollection that the glows from spray paint and the glowing, fruit-bearing plants (attributed to Dawnslight) "came immediately afterward" of Calamity's appearance. The waters came "after, when Regalia arrived". The reliance on magic fruit from vines that grow all over the city is likely the reason for the name of Babylon Restored, in reference to the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon", and as such the city's new name probably pre-dates Regalia, who arrived fairly recently prior to the events of Firefight. There's no obvious reason to rename New York City to "Babylon Restored" due to flooding, ... I guess unless it was the flooding that prompted any renaming at all, and at that point, the glowing vines and fruit thing prompted the Babylon association. Or if it was Regalia who came up with the name, and was in a position to make it stick. As for how long it took Regalia to arrive and take over Babilar, I can't figure that out just yet. Val says in Ch. 10, "I've been embedded here for over two years -- I arrived about six months after Regalia stopped her tyranny and decided to clean the place up." Calamity was 12 years prior to the events of Steelheart, and enough time passes between killing Steelheart and the beginning of Firefight for them to set up a new government and to face off against THREE Epics in post-Steelheart Newcago before Prof heads over to Babilar... So Regalia "stopping her tyranny and cleaning the place up" would dovetail with the fall of Steelheart, and her beginning her plans to lure and then to push Prof over the edge. But prior to her "becoming nice-nice", she "let the gangs rule for [unspecified] years" after flooding the city... So how long did THAT go on for? (Does it really matter?)