robardin

Yes, I agree. However, it's also evident that that is NOT what The Lord Ruler actually did, otherwise removing his atiummind bracers would not have killed him, if he had slow-burning atium beads in his stomach as well. So either he didn't keep slow-burn atiumminds to use in his sleep because (a) it can't be done; (b) it could be done, but he just didn't bother (because he could Compound bronze and never need to sleep); or (c) it could be done and he did a slow-burn-in-sleep thing to indulge in a little nap from time to time even though he didn't have to, just because he wanted a change up in his long, long life (like how Vin found that he spent some time aged, even though he wouldn't have to), and only as needed.

This one was the first one, where I posted it to the Coppermind forum basically suggesting an addition to the entry there for Marsh that he likely had a spike for F-bronze. In explaining why I thought he did, it spiraled into a spreadsheet-like checklist of 32 possible spikes he could have, the 20+ he was described to have, and trying to figure out which ones they were, which I then put into the Mistborn forum. Then a mod moved this one to the Mistborn forum as well. I guess they could be merged.

Yeah, I seem to remember that from somewhere, as well. But we also know Marsh was made with several "fresh from the Misting" spikes taken from sacrificial skaa victims. So my guess is those were for the more common, base Allomantic powers, to off a few half-breeds and gain maximally powerful spikes at the same time. And it's pretty strongly implied that Marsh was initially given a spike for F-gold, as he waves off Sazed's attention after being manhandled by The Lord Ruler, saying, "I will heal quickly; see to the girl." Presumably a recycled one. The Coppermind entry for Inquisitors has un-footnoted entries about how not all Inquisitors had spikes for atium or F-gold: "Depending on which Hemalurgic spikes the Inquisitor had, their abilities could vary immensely. Not all Inquisitors had an atium spike, nor could all of them tap health. During the time of Kelsier, however, most had those spikes." I really wish whoever put that in there had some links to the source of that information!

Yes, of course you can directly access the releasd Feruchemical attribute as a result of burning the metalmind with Allomancy, without storing it first into another metalmind. But the way the mechanics of Compounding have been described, the released attribute is at a very high multiplier. When it is first expounded on by Sazed, he says: "[Rashek] would have to place that excess youth inside of another Feruchemical storage, I think. ... The Lord Ruler wouldn't have wanted all of that youth at once, so he'd have stored it inside of a piece of metal which he could slowly drain, keeping himself young." And as we saw, that is exactly what TLR did: store all of his Compounded youth in his atiummind arm bracers. Of course, just as an Allomancer can keep a light, low burn (as of tin or pewter) versus a flare, it should be possible to "throttle" the burning of a metalmind. And even if throttling the high multiplier release of burning a metalmind would be difficult (like maintaining low speed control on a 250cc dirt bike versus an 1800cc Harley-Davidson Fat Boy), TLR would have had a long, long time to get good at it. But that doesn't appear to be what he did, otherwise removing his bracers wouldn't have separated him from all of his atiumminds (he didn't have any inside of his stomach on a low burn). It also seems to me that maintaining fine control of Allomantic burning should require one to be awake, but we're probably entering WoB territory here. It could work that way, we just have no real evidence of it one way or the other, do we?

But burning an atiummind gives you a big 10x factored burst of youth, which the Compounder then stores into other atiumminds, and then taps those atiumminds at the correct rate to maintain the desired age. It's established in the text that Sazed cannot fill a Feruchemical metalmind while asleep, so I guess it's an open question whether or not that would apply to someone like the Lord Ruler who'd have far more years of practice, or if it would equally apply to tapping a metalmind while asleep. Funny thing, though - the point about "The Lord Ruler could never sleep, or he'd die" was one of the first posts I saw on this board after discovering it that was like a "whoa, I never thought of that!" thing, and I assumed it was canonized with a WoB or something, but evidently not quite? (I just spent some time searching and there is only one joking confirmation about Lift being able to eat Rashek's dinner and suggesting she'd hit Kredik Shaw while he was asleep, but that was a light comment without thought)

A much more basic problem for this theory is that compounding Fortune would require chromium, and the metal was unknown or unavailable to the Final Empire. Even if Rashek knew about it, as he likely did, that doesn't mean he knew the advanced metallurgic refining techniques necessary to obtain it - or perhaps more accurately, didn't want to allow the technology that would make chromium and its Metallic Arts alloy of nicrosil available, as he actively worked to suppress the advance of technology (somewhere is a WoB that gunpowder and steam engines were known to Scadrial before his Ascension, that he destroyed and suppressed the technology, and for his entire reign, watched for people getting too inventive and killing them immediately).

There are sixteeen (16) metals for the Metallic Arts, usuable for Allomancy and Feruchemy, for a total of 32 possible Metalborn powers. Marsh was made an Inquisitor at the end of the Final Empire, and then enhanced by Ruin according to the same set of metals - before Harmony switched back cadmium/bendalloy for atium/malatium on the Metallic Chart. Even though chromium/nicrosil would have been unknown or unavailable metals to the Scadrians of the Final Empire, their abilities would still be on the Chart, and Ruin would have known about them and their uses. With that in mind, what is Marsh's known or suspected power set? (A) What was the Standard Set of (11) Steel Inquisitor spikes? Marsh says he had 11 spikes in him as a recently minted Inquisitor, in the Lord Ruler's throne room at the end of The Final Empire: 8 for the basic Allomantic metals 1 for F-gold 1 for A-atium (?) The linchpin spike (which may have had a property of its own as well) It would seem all Steel Inquisitors should be able to burn atium, but can we be 100% sure? Certainly Bendel and Kar were seen to do it, so either they were base Mistborn, or a spike for A-atium was standard issue. I would think that it was: it would be odd for a significant subset of Inquisitors to be subject to an ordinary Mistborn's use of atium against them. But that would raise the further question: where would they harvest hemalurgic spikes for A-atium from, without skaa Seer Mistings to harvest? Yomen said that Seers like himself were flushed out by the Ministry spiking the punch at noble balls with atium dust and then Seeking out any instinctive, unconscious use of Allomancy to burn it (since all nobles would have been Snapped by a certain age), which certainly isn't a viable strategy to discover any skaa Seers; yet he didn't seem to be nervous about potentially being a walking Inquisitor spike in waiting. The same problem seems to be there for creating new Inquisitors if they all have a spike for F-gold healing. It just doensn't seem like there'd be enough Feruchemists on hand to create the 20 or so Inquisitors alive at the time of TLR's overthrowing. Did the Ministry reuse weakened but usable spikes for A-atium and F-gold from previous Inquisitors? That seems the only logical conclusion, which then would set an upper limit for how many Inquisitors there could be at a time. As for where the putative set of spikes for A-atium came from originally, that could come from either dying Mistborn Inquisitors, condemned criminal Mistborn or discovered Seers, or straight up "kidnapped and disappeared" Allomancers whose fate would be assumed to be a loss in a House war - this is the Steel Ministry we're talking about, after all. (B) What did Ruin add to Marsh's set later? Marsh is later described has having "upwards of twenty" spikes in him at the end of The Hero of Ages, which means Ruin gave him at least 9 more spikes. Assuming A-atium is in fact part of the default set, he's seen or inferred to have used these five (5) powers: F-steel F-pewter A-duralumin (per the Mistborn Annotations, gained by spiking a Mistborn*) F-atium**, as inferred by his surviving via Compounding atium, and given by Ruin, per WoB F-bronze**, as inferred by the same (otherwise he'd die while sleeping once past his natural age) *That Annotation about how Marsh got a spike for A-duralumin carries implications with it as well. Ruin considered using up a Mistborn to gain a single Allomantic power a waste, and only did so for a power like A-duralumin where no Misting for it could be found, due to a case of "bad gnattitude". And we know Ruin created new Inquisitors from scratch (I think?) as well as enhancing existing Inquisitors from outside Luthadel that escaped Marsh's murder spree outside TLR's throne room. So why wouldn't Ruin have created or used a Mistborn Inquisitor as his chief pawn, instead of adding A-duralumin to Marsh? I think the logical answer is that any "base Mistborn" Inquisitors (the most powerful ones) were kept close to TLR in Luthadel, and thus one of the 8 killed by Marsh in his little murder spree outside the throne room. And by the time Ruin got his hands on a Mistborn to make a spike from after his release, Marsh had already gained a number of other enhancements as his "work in progress" as a chief pawn, and it was more economical to add one spike to Marsh than to add 11+ spikes (requiring 11+ Mistings or Feruchemists) to the Mistborn, even if it was kind of a waste. The illogical answer, but also possible, is that Ruin wanted to twist the knife into Kelsier in the Cognitive Realm and into his surviving crew on Scadrial by using their former friend and associate to be his most visible hand against them. And in further thinking it through, there probably weren't many base Mistborn Inquisitors, anyway, since they all start out as obligators in the Ministry. Any noble House would value their Mistborn as assassins in the service of their House above letting them become an obligator, unless the person in question was particularly religiously fanatical and enrolled him/herself, or if the Ministry paid a handsome bonus for such an obligator (groomed to become an Inquisitor) and the Mistborn came from a destitute or more minor House. **As for the inferred spike for F-bronze: if we take Ruin's giving Marsh a spike for F-atium as an indication of his intending to prolong the use of Marsh as a super-pawn in his plans for the Cosmere once he was done destroying Scadrial, via Compounding atium in what I call "The Rashek Maneuver", then the other part of The Rashek Maneuver would require compounding bronze for wakefulness. As has been pointed out in several threads before, because tapping a metalmind requires Intent, TLR could not sleep once he aged past his mortal lifespan, as he needs to constantly and increasingly draw on his atiummind to reverse his aging, and cannot do so in his sleep. Ruin would have known and observed this, and after a while, the same would apply to Marsh. So that tally brings us to 16, leaving at least 4 still to account for. There are up to four (4) obvious enhancements with immediate utility in the Scadrial End Game: A-gold - so as to be able to Compound health for healing A-electrum - at a minimum, to function as "the poor man's atium", to conserve the Real Thing. One drawback which could be a deal breaker, though: Electrum Mistings were unknown to the Final Empire, unless their existence, like Seer Mistings, were a Ministry secret. So giving Marsh a spike for this would likely have required using a Mistborn, who would be far more valuable to harvest for duralumin for a different Inquisitor. F-zinc (speed of thought) F-iron (weight) - pairs great with Steelpushing or Ironpulling That's 19 or 20. What might be the "upwards" count of spikes, then? Three (3) long-term Metalborn powers, excellent for a post-Scadrial future: F-duralumin - Compound Connection? Yes, please. Ruin would realize how useful this would be in going off-world. A-chromium (would require a Mistborn, like A-duralumin). If Ruin had been planning to take Marsh off-world, being able to Leech Investiture across all magic systems would be extremely useful. F-chromium (Fortune) - very possible Ruin would love to Compound this. Whatever it is. That's 22 or 23. Seems about right. The other nine (9) potential spikes seem less useful as add-ons for Ruin, with one possible exception, especially at the cost of a Feruchemist or full Mistborn which could be harvested for other Inquisitors (and we did see others with Feruchemical spikes, especially for F-steel): F-tin (sensory storage) F-brass (body heat) A-nicrosil - unclear why this would be useful unless there were a second Inquisitor around, except... F-nicrosil - ...maybe to compound Investiture? Hmmm! (But not if it just means creating unsealed metalminds) A-malatium, F-malatium: implausible to the extreme A-aluminum - would require spiking from a Mistborn, and to what end? F-aluminum (Identity) - ditto, but for a Feruchemist F-electrum (Determination) - No need, as Ruin planned to have direct control of Marsh.

True, but I'm separately trying to come up with a plausible accounting of all the additional spikes Ruin put into him from his original 11 after helping to bring down TLR to the "upwards of twenty" we see him with at the end of The Hero of Ages, and it seems to me that if he did get the spike for F-atium from Ruin (which there is a WoB about), and if we assume that the only reason Ruin would do that in the first place (rather than give more Feruchemical powers to other Inquisitors) would be to enable The Rashek Maneuver for his favorite pawn, then the other half of that Maneuver would require a spike for F-bronze as well.

On-screen, we've seen Inquisitor Marsh exhibit three Feruchemical abilities: using pewter (he grows beefy while choking Vin in Fadrex City), steel (he blurs in speed while fighting Elend), and gold (multiple instances of healing). He is implied to have gained the spike for F-gold as part of his original set of Inquisitor spikes, before Ruin went about massively upgrading him to use him as his primary pawn. As the Coppermind entry notes, we can infer he has a spike for F-atium, as he's documented by WoB to have survived into Era 2 (and will last for a good while further) by Compounding atium the way TLR had done. Why Ruin saw fit to use up one of a small number of Feruchemists available to spike out attributes from to give Marsh a spike for F-atium is unknown; the most obvious one being, he wanted to continue to use Marsh around the Cosmere after destroying Scadrial, and thus wanted to ensure his longevity. If that's the case, we can also infer Marsh has a spike for F-bronze, with which he can Compound wakefulness. Why? For the same reason that TLR must have constantly tapped an infinite bronzemind: once past his mortal lifespan he cannot fall asleep, as one cannot tap a metalmind unconsciously, and he needs to maintain a constant draw on an atiummind to stay alive with The Rashek Maneuver. So concurrent with that constant drawing of youth must be a constant drawing of wakefulness.

The shortest answer possible, that is based solely on the material in Hero of Ages (and its annotations from Brandon, which you can read for free on his website), is that for the most part, what Spook interacted with in Urteau was Ruin posing as Kelsier in order to manipulate Spook. All except for the small voice Spook hears after he removed the hemalurgic spike for pewter, without which Ruin could not appear to him, and where it's evident that wherever/whatever the Shadow of Kelsier is, it can hear Spook's inner dialog - and in that moment, respond to it. Kelsier had left a note mentioning everyone else in his hand-picked crew, but not him. Poor, useless Spook, who didn't fit in... I named you, Spook. You were my friend. Isn't that enough? That's something Ruin would never, could never say to him. And of course, Sazed's note to Spook at the end, noting that in addition to healing Spook from his burns and the damage he'd done to his body by constantly flaring tin, he'd made him Mistborn - at Kelsier's request, as a kind of "parting gift from him". So obviously, Kelsier was around to request something of Sazed vis-a-vis Spook, after his Double Ascension. Which also implies he was around somewhere, somehow, after the Lord Ruler killed him in the Square of the Survivor. As others have noted, the further answers are found in Mistborn: Secret History. It shouldn't be a spoiler to tell you that that novella is from Kelsier's POV, covering the events between his death and Sazed's double Ascension, and a little extra. I would concur that reading the Era 2 books (as published so far - Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, and The Bands of Mourning) before "Secret History" would yield the best payoff, as reading works in published order typically would. (Though if I recall correctly, "Secret History" was actually released at the exact same time as "Bands of Mourning".) Otherwise you'll get an end scene reveal in "The Bands of Mourning" that won't be a surprise; you'll trade the "OMG NOW I GET IT!!" reaction for a milder, "Ha ha, now he [the POV character] gets it!". [Spoilered comment for The Bands of Mourning:]

It's not just him though. The Ars Arcanum for The Alloy of Law, which I think is the first time we see mention of Fortune as a cosmere attribute, describes its Feruchemical use as: In-universe this material is written by Khriss as of a certain point in time, so there is still room for her to be wrong vs. what Brandon intends, but in general Khriss writes her notes based on direct observation or conversation (her own or from Nazh).

Locked into Shardblade form even if she hasn't been summoned as one already? That's interesting. And I meant 3+ Ideal for Maya's former bondholder. If she'd reached a higher Ideal than the third, per my "spren scarring" theory, so much the harder for Adolin to go Full Radiant with her.

Maybe this is more of a "what will happen with Adolin/Maya" tangent than "What can Hoid do to get Ten Surges", but my take on what "reviving a bond with a deadeye spren" would mean is not so much a "bypass" as an imbalanced, imperfect bond. As we've seen, for a spren to be able to manifest in the Physical Realm as a Blade (or spear, or fork, etc.) in the first place requires a Nahel Bond with a living Radiant of the Third Ideal. A "deadeye" Blade is a spren that had formed such a bond, then had that bond broken while they were summoned in the Physical Realm. (It's still not clear to me that a spren like Syl, if Third Ideal Kaladin were to "go naughty" again, would just appear as a Blade when that happened, or if what we saw in the Recreance wasn't some kind of explicit intention on the part of the forswearing Radiants to leave behind Shards of power.) So if Adolin does indeed continue to "revive" Maya, he'll be "kind of" bonded to a "sort of" Cultivationspren of the Third Ideal. (Cue the obligatory Princess Bride quote: "mostly dead, is slightly alive!") However, that Third Ideal level bond wasn't formed in symbiosis with HIM, so I don't think that means he gets the same Surges at the same power level that an Edgedancer of the Third Ideal would have done (i.e., Lift as of Oathbringer). Or maybe it would. We shall simply have to RAFO. We've seen from Lift and Kaladin's progression that just being of the First Ideal, or approaching it mentally and spiritually without having said the exact Words, is enough to draw in Stormlight. (Or in Lift's case, to metabolize food to become Invested as the equivalent of drawing in Stormlight. I'm sure she gets more "efficient" with that just as other Radiants do with Stormlight the further she advances in Ideals.) So my personal prediction is that a reviving Maya will "sort of" be of the Third Ideal, in that she can be summoned/dismissed as a Blade and sense and communicate things in the Physical Realm like incoming threats to Adolin. And that any "scarred-over bonding" she manages with Adolin will start letting him hold Stormlight like a proto-Edgedancer or one of the First Ideal would. (I think that has already been seen to happen: he took suspiciously less damange than he ought to have in the battle of Thaylen Fields, as if he'd unconsciously healed a bit with Stormlight the way a nascent Kaladin had done). And she may or may not be able to form a true Nahel bond with him to enable him to gain Surges and advance further in Ideals, due to the "scarring". It'd be really cool if Adolin could in fact start progressing as an Edgedancer, but with a handicap to Lift, like he has to work twice as hard to get to the Second and Third Ideal as a normal Radiant would, due to having to "break the scar tissue" on Maya as well as forming his own bond with her at that level. And then only when he gets as far as the original Radiant who broke the oaths with her, will she be fully revived.

One has to read Era 2 not as a continuation of Era 1, but as a setting where the characters and events from Era 1 mostly being legend and folklore. Brandon writes as much in the intro, but it's particularly hard to do if you segue directly from finishing Hero of Ages to Alloy of Law. While this is true, my own reaction was much more in line with Karger's: My reaction for the first half of the story on my first read-through was like: "So this is Mistborn... with no Mistborn? And no Feruchemists, either? Instead there are single-power Feruchemists called Ferrings, and Twinborn? And what's with this mishmash of Old West America and Victorian London?" And I spent some time fruitlessly skimming for some concrete info as to the fates of the characters from Era 1, which have only tantalizing, offhand implications, which was frustrating. Included as part of my "what is going on here" reaction was how versatile Wax proves to be as a Coinshot, who consistently catches himself from falls by dropping a coin, Pushing it down to the ground, and then Pushing off of it gradually to slow himself like a retro-rocket. Which makes total sense, really, except that it felt oddly OP as compared to the Coinshot Mistings we saw in the original trilogy. There aren't any in Kelsier's crew, but I remembered Vin's fight to save Elend from assassination with Shan Elariel's team that included a Coinshot who she quickly eliminated by Pushing him off of the rooftop such that he couldn't Pull himself back, being "only a Misting." There seems to be no reason for a Coinshot of the Final Empire to be any less skilled than Wax would be as a Coinshot in terms of "maximizing what they've got" (indeed, Vin goes to learn from skilled Mistings like Breeze, Marsh, and Spook for that very reason), so what was the deal with that guy? He didn't have any coins handy to save himself with? And there weren't any metal things on the ground behind him at all? Seems to me if Wax were Pushed off a rooftop like that, he'd bounce back and be in the fight again in very short order. My head-canon explanation is that that guy was some kind of newbie Coinshot on his first assignment (the second Coinshot, who didn't fall for the same trick, was described as "not as foolish as his companion", and who released his Steelpush after firing his coins). Poor fellow was dropped in way out of his depth, going up against Vin on Day One. Of one. In addition, my first impression of Wayne was that he felt rather too "schticky", like he was at least two believable characters compressed into one. I think that was an artifact of what Kaymyth described, that the first part of the story originated in a personal writing exercise that spiraled to become a standalone novella, and then the anchor point to start a new trilogy (promoting "Era 1.5" to "Era 2"). But I had another reason to be uncomfortable about Wayne: he's a gifted mimic, a light-handed thief, possessed of an extremely rare power set, and has a dark past that he covers over with overt lightness of speech. That strongly recalled to me my very first "Mary Sue" type AD&D character, that my 13 year old self came up with: just replace "Twinborn" with "psionic abilities" and the rest with "half-elven thief with native-accent command of multiple languages who can disguise/pass as a human, elf, orc, or goblin", haha. (Don't even ask me about his tragic and dark backstory.) I've since grown to like Wayne as a character, though part of me continues to internally cringe a bit from time to time when he acts or talks in a way a bit too close to my long-ago OP'ed teenaged ham sandwich.

It's interesting, and probably worth its own fun thread, to speculate and extrapolate about what specific crimes other kandra had committed that merited eternal imprisonment ("ChanGaar"); or how long a rogue kandra on the run could avoid capture, and who would be sent out to do it, and how they would be expected to accomplish it. I would assume the kandra themselves would be the ones to track down a rogue kandra, but since such a kandra would also be a Contract-breaker, perhaps they could appeal to TLR for help in some way, i.e., an Inquisitor. The latter might be worth a fanfic write, since this is a scenario Brandon is unlikely ever to sketch himself: a kandra and Inquisitor teaming up to hunt down a kandra on the run, from Luthadel to the Outer Dominances, in the height of the Final Empire.

That was a point that was initially lost on me, on the first read-through. I thought it was just a comic relief type of moment, that the Stormfather was jerking Lopen around by "Accepting" his Words not during the battle, but while he was joking around. But this is the core of it: the Stormfather doesn't pull pranks. Lopen knew the words, as words, of the Second Ideal, but was only truly living and embodying the Ideal in his own metier when he was fully committing himself to helping an amputee survivor find hope and reason to live, to protect him from despair. He really hadn't been "quite ready" until then. And I think we will see the higher Ideals become harder and harder to embrace, as in one being able to look into oneself and say, "I will do this, no I am this; this is me," in a way that reverberates Spiritually with the spren. We don't know what the Fourth Ideal of the Windrunners is, but Nalan listed all five Skybreaker Ideals to Szeth, while also noting that almost nobody achieves the Fifth Ideal: a Judge Dredd-like statement of "I am the Law". It seems like the sort of mindset a lot of would-be vigilantes would have from the get-go, so something about it must be more than "I firmly think I'm always in the right", and more like, "I have pierced the veil of human trappings to comprehend the Zeroth Law(s) behind all laws". Which yet allows for differences in interpretation, as Nalan specifically says that Szeth should not look to him for absolute guidance, and that a likely outcome is that he and Szeth may be at odds on the battlefield (as Szeth has sworn to follow Dalinar, and he the singers, led by Odium), where "we will both fight with confidence, knowing that we obey the precepts of our oaths."

It should come as no surprise that the core of Feruchemy as a magic system entered Brandon Sanderson's head first of all the cosmere magics: "Feruchemy goes back to being in high school and being an insomniac, being really tired and wishing I could store up my sleep, so I'd be sleepy when I wanted to be sleepy."

Well, here's another point of detail about Szeth and healing from Shardblade wounds in general... In (the revised edition of) his climactic duel in the skies with Kaladin, Szeth is stabbed through the wrist by the Sylblade - turning it gray - before he falls to his death by unbonding the Honorblade of Jezrien and giving up his Lashings. He is brought back with a fabrial of Regrowth by Nalan, and afterward, has no apparent loss of use of his sword hand. So dying and being brought back with the (externally provided) Surge of Regrowth also "resets" the Spiritual severing from a Shardblade, even if it can't heal it from a living person like Bisig or Hobber, who could only heal from their Shardblade paralysis when they could draw Stormlight into themselves (Shallan and Renarin couldn't help them, just as Rysn's more ordinary paralysis stemmed from too old an injury).

TenSoon seems the obvious choice, except that it's a Great Dane and not a wolfhound, which may or may not matter. I would also suggest that Ien, or the name of another Seon from Elantris, would be appropriate (being bonded Splinters of Devotion).

Ahh, nice catch. That's right, this was a pre-Ascension king who attributed his downfall not to "the Conqueror's" koloss, but to the lack of food that resulted from the earlier effects of the Deepness, the Ruin-enhanced mists that choked the crops. And that "The Conqueror", by contrast and by inference, had a ready food supply that he did not. Which would suggest that it happened within a few seasons of the Ascension... If it's accurate. Because it's curious that King Wednegon didn't mention anything like, I dunno, the sun turning red, the continent changing shape, the food crops turning brown to be able to grow at all in an ash-filled sky, or that Rashek's forces had a stockpile of new generation brown, ash-compatibly-grown foodstuff while he was left with a rotting stockpile of pre-Ascension grains and plants that wouldn't grow any more. It could very well mean that the "history" that Tyndwyl and Sazed were familar with was already purged or doctored by TLR to leave the core lesson of "food supply is critical for military resitance and conquest, even more so than the advantage provided by having koloss vs. humans", while suppressing things related to how the pre-Ascension world looked and operated (including growing food).

On the other hand, each of the tomes of the Stormlight Archive are in essence a mini-trilogy unto itself.

Like the best crackpot theories, there's just... enough... plausibility there to hold water. I don't think Grandmother is a red-eyed Trelagist Faceless Immortal, but I suspect there is something about Telsin staying on in the Village that will come into play. The Era 2 Terrisfolk are known to be trying to re-create a living Full Feruchemist - i.e., are conducting a kind of breeding program of there own, the reverse of TLR's. Is Telsin a "natural born Ferring" the way that Wax is? I don't think so. She was specifically mentioned as using hemalurgy to gain three "boons". Interestingly, they appear to be the same ones as her uncle Edwarn got via hemalurgy: F-gold (Bloodmaker), A-steel (Coinshot), and A-Chromium (Leecher). Lady Kelesina was shown to have a spike for F-gold as well, and Irich was at least a Leecher who used an allomantic "grenade" on the train to drain Wax from a distance. I think they have some kind of technology to "copy" hemalurgic spikes, because how likely would be these particular Metalborn powers be to be harvested repeatedly, especially the Feruchemical one (since Ferrings are far more rare than Allomancers)?

I agree completely; I finished the original MB trilogy right when AoL came out, segued right into it directly, and found it disappointing. But going back to it to reread it when Shadows of Self came out, I enjoyed Era 2 much more. I think I needed more time to reset my mind from what the world of Scadrial and Allomancy and Feruchemy were "supposed" to be. I'd recommend coming to Mistborn Era 2 after reading Warbreaker, Elantris, The Emperor's Soul.

This is my conclusion as well. Even so, it's interesting to think about exactly when that could have happened. Sazed recalls the history of the Terris Keepers to Vin as: Rashek didn't want the Terris eliminated, he wanted Feruchemy eliminated. Who knows, if he'd renewed the Well as he had planned and with a few generations with no more Feruchemists appearing, he might have elevated the surviving Terrisfolk in TFE. And presumably, his "quite violent purges" of Feruchemists would include harvesting them for hemalurgic spikes for F-gold to make Inquisitors with. (He doesn't seem to have granted them any spikes for other Feruchemical powers; those came later, with Ruin taking the initiative.) But wait! I just remembered something... In The Hero of Ages, Ch. 44, when Elend is debating with Yomen after crashing his ball in Fadrex City, Yomen maintains TLR's high moral ground regarding the routine castrating of Terrismen with this: Whoa whoa whoa. This is two tidbits in one. The Sixth Century of the Final Empire, at least 500 years after Rashek's Ascension, is about when the Canton of Inquisition was "newly formed". And when the Terris bloodlines for Feruchemy began being documented and tracked and "bred out". So I figure the timeline as there having been an initial century or two of "increasingly violent purges" of Feruchemists, during which Rashek may have stockpiled spikes for F-gold, or not; and then, after 500 years or so, well after cementing down the Final Empire, he established the Canton of Inquisition. This may or may not be when he first created the hemalurgic Steel Inquisitors. I don't think all obligators in the Canton of Inquisition were Steel Inquisitors, but given that their mandate was to monitor, regulate, and enforce his regulations regarding Allomancy and (more secretly) Feruchemy and the propagation of bloodlines thereof (nobles x skaa, controlling Terris breeding), such a Canton would have a need for Super-Seekers who could (or, should be able to) overcome any discovered Feruchemists or natural born skaa Allomancers. And, I think originally Rashek would have been cognizant of the risk of creating hemalurgic pawns for Ruin. He gained an understanding of hemalurgy (was "directed" to it) while Ascended, but only created the weakest of the hemalurgic constructs initinally, and had the sense to warn his friends about the need for "the Resolution". We also don't know when he started making koloss exactly, but I found this reference in Ch. 19 of The Well of Ascension, when Sazed encounters Jastes' troops (it's also when we, the readers, first see koloss in the flesh from a POV), and reflects on what was known about them: "Kept separate from mankind", or perhaps more accurately, "not yet created from mankind?" I think Rashek was "taught" how to make kandra by Ruin, with the idea of making mistwraiths to solve the "Feruchemist Problem" with the power of Preservation followed by "Psst, you could keep your friends around afterward forever with hemalurgy, dude, check it out!" Then, while Rashek was receptive to learning more about hemalurgy, Ruin downloaded the instructions for koloss and Inquisitors to him, as a guide to what else was possible, and "y'know, in case you ever find reason to make these, buddy". Rashek was wise to the potential for Ruin's eventual control of these constructs, so when he began by restoring his friends to consciousness with spikes, he warned them about the need for them someday to remove them themselves. "There wasn't a 'might' about it." But, with the passage of hundreds of years, and Ruin's constant whisperings in his head, and constant rebellions that were more and more tiresome to put down, he decided (and was probably suggested to decide): hey, those koloss would sure be handy... And I could delegate control of them with Mistborn, or teams of Soother or Seeker obligators. Why not? What about Ruin? --- I'll worry about that later. And then finally, after he was alarmed at the spread of skaa Allomancers and the recurring need for Terrisfolk purges due to Feruchemists popping up (which was also emotionally exhausting, for him), he thought or was led to think: I could delegate this with a Canton of Inquisition, those hemalurgic super-Allomancer/slightly Feruchemist creatures would be perfect for being the commandos, and I can always control them... What about Ruin? Well, what's 16 Steel Inquisitors on top of tens of thousands of koloss? I'll figure that out later.

While Ascended, Ruin "directed Rashek to an understanding of hemalurgy", leading to his creating the three hemalurgic constructs of the Final Empire: Inquisitors, koloss, and kandra. Koloss and Inquisitors are made from an original, base human (like Marsh, or that overseer obligator that Kelsier talks to in the Cognitive Realm in Secret History), who is then enhanced with hemalurgic spikes that have stolen Investiture (at a net loss of power) from multiple other humans, by killing them. The kandra are different: they are mistwraiths, a living and breeding species created by Rashek with the power of Preservation by altering Feruchemists into something immortal but without Feruchemy - and with some kind of a block to Connection that renders them essentially mindless, which can be restored (if they had a mind before, like the First Generation had) or given one (by creating that Connection) with the right kind of hemalurgic spikes, that were also created by killing people. We know that Rashek was unable to kill with the power of Preservation, as he tried to kill Kwaan with it and got "bounced" instead. So it stands to reason that he could not directly and immediately create hemalurgic spikes while Ascended, either, as that would involve killing people. He (with an assist from Ruin) had expanded his mind properly while Ascended to understand the hemalurgic principles involved for the three constructs, but would then have to go about killing people to make them once de-Ascended, right? I mean, he rewrote himself to be a superstrong Mistborn on top of being a Feruchemist, so killing people to make spikes wouldn't exactly be a challenge. So, what was the timeline? Some hemalurgic constructs must have taken much longer to create than others. Koloss are quick and easy to create, but it takes time to make enough of them to form an army. Even if you trust the koloss with the task of making more koloss (as Ruin later did - it's unclear if Rashek did as well), he clearly took care to keep secret the nature of their construction (that, or very effectively stamped out knowledge of the secret once he become The Lord Ruler). Still, it's conceivable he started making koloss very soon. I personally like to think his first priority was to make kandra Blessings. We know from The Hero of Ages that Rashek returned his personal Feruchemist friends (including the fellow packmen who had gone up to the Well of Ascension with him and Alendi) to sentience after turning them into mistwraiths, and that the longer a sentient being is in mistwraith instead of kandra form, the more "holes" are formed in their memories. So I would think Rashek (if he cared about his friends) would have made creating spikes for them his first priority. The really intriguing question is when did Inquisitors arrive on the scene. By Vin's time, they are essentially "super obligators" in the Steel Ministry (the Canton of Inquisition), drawn from the ranks of ordinary obligators. And per Yomen, Ministry doctrine holds that there were SIXTEEN original Inquisitors! (Which could just be legend, of course.) But Inquisitors are made from not just one, but multiple Allomancers, and Allomancers would have been quite rare for quite some time after Rashek's Ascension! In the Final Empire, most if not all Allomancers are noblemen, descended through multiple generations from people that Rashek gave lerasium beads to recruit them as allies, making them very strong Mistborn. Allomancers did exist and continued to exist on Scadrial without this lerasium injection, but rarely. So to get the upwards of 7 or 8 Allomantic spikes needed to make an Inquisitor, aside from the steel ones from ordinary humans, he would have needed 7 or 8 sacrificial Allomancers. For sixteen of them, in one go? Hmm. And without skaa Mistings around to harvest, which would take generations of illegal hanky-poo to pop up, where are those early Allomancers going to come from? The very small pool of "natural born Mistings"? Or... The descendants within 1 or 2 generations of the lerasium Mistborn, or even himself? (Whoa.) Perhaps the earliest Inquisitors were all made from Mistborn (and relatively strong ones) and didn't need as many, or even any, Allomantic spikes?