Timewaster's Guide Archive

Just finished my second read of the book and I'm kind of confused.  What (or how), exactly, did Lightsong heal with his final Breath?  I mean, we know Susebron regained his tongue, but for me it raises a number of questions about the metaphysics of the magic system.

First--what was there to heal precisely?  That is, can Returned--who can alter their appearances--do things like grow or atrophy their own limbs?  We know that male Returned in Hallandren can gain height and strength, so it's possible that Returned can alter themselves thusly.

And there's a bigger question--how alive are the Returned? While clearly sentient, it is not clear to what extent they are actually alive--they certainly don't need food or water any more.

So I guess the more general phrasing of my question is this: does Returned-Returned healing work the same as Returned-normal healing?  What are the physical limitations for Returned transformation? 

In this case there are three possibilities, and I'm not sure which is right:

• The healing was an example of a Magic Feather (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicFeather)--Susebron needed confidence, but had the ability to restore his tongue without healing
• The healing was the only way to restore the tongue
• Lightsong actually healed something else (maybe the original death), so Susebron is no longer Returned (loony theory)

I also think that most of the bumps--all except those about Vin/Elend/current events--could have been written by Rashek with little change.  In fact, it still might be interesting to see how Rashek seeks to defend/explain his actions centuries after seeing the effects.

Maybe Rashek was misled, but he's still not a nice guy.

I really agree with you.  In fact, I think Kwaan chose Rashek precisely because he wasn't a good man.  And at the same time, it's part of the great mystery of what Rashek did and what he was supposed to do at the Well. 

As for where they find his logbook, it's quite possible that it's somewhere in Kredik Shaw or Statlin City or even the Conventical.  Or maybe the main characters stumble upon the ruins of Khlennium or simply a noble family's library in Luthadel. Another parallel favoring Rashek for the bump writer is that Alendi's logbook was key in Final Empire and Kwaan's rubbing was likewise in Well of Ascention.  It would make sense that something written by Rashek about what he did at the Well and begin the Final Empire would serve as a key plot component in Hero of Ages.

Part of the problem is that (as far as I remember) no one besides Alendi and Vin has felt the pulsings of the well--one reason I think Alendi was actually a/the Hero of Ages.  I think hemalurgy, like allomancy, came out of whatever Rashek did at the well, which I hope is revealed in MB3.

Yeah, I got a little caught up in what I was saying.  We know something in or about the mists is killing people.  I assumed it was somehow related to mist spirit.  We don't know if that's true or not.

I think it depends how the "millenial" cycle works.  If every thousand years the Well fills and gives Ruin a chance to influence the world and free itself, assuming Ruin is immortal, all it needs to do is wait and build.  One cycle it creates a prophesy, another it creates the Deepness, another it alters the prophesy.  Ruin could have created the prophesy 1,000 years before Kwaan/Alendi/Rashek/et al, knowing that it would be disregarded in the first cycle, but powerful in the next cycle.  Then precisely because of how Kwaan stopped Alendi, it guaranteed that only vague memories of what actually happened remained, and Ruin found itself able to manipulate a little more--enough to convince Vin to do what she did.

I just finished WoA, and only read through MB1 a couple weeks ago, but I had a few thoughts.

How did Rashek know what to do when he reached the Well?  Or did he *not* know what to do at the Well and decided to take control for himself?   The idea that he didn't know what to do at the Well doesn't sit well with me (pun not intended) because the Final Empire seems too deliberate for there to be no deliberate action on Rashek's part.  However, I also find it hard to believe that Kwaan would have told Rashek to leave the world as he eventually did.   I wonder if we'll get Rashek epigraphs in MB3.

This, I think, touches on the big unanswered questions about the metaphysics of the Mistborn-verse.  Normally in fantasy novels, there's a prophesy and it's fulfilled, albeit in a circuitous way.  Here, we don't even know if the Hero of Ages prophesy existed or if it was created by Ruin during some millenial cycle or another.  Further, how does sensing the Well tie into the Hero of Ages prophesy? Both Vin and Alendi seem to have sensed the Well--which could imply that Alendi was indeed the Hero of Ages. But if Alendi was a Hero of Ages then Kwaan also made a mistake by having Rashek kill him.

This brings me to my pet loony theory is that Ruin has to be released at the Well--despite Kwaan's account--in order to save the world.  The sense of wrongness about Rashek's Final Empire implies that the way to defeat Ruin isn't simply to use the power at the Well.   The Hero of Ages must do something with the power, but what?

The magics of Mistborn-verse seem key to this.  The Deepness can't really be understood without Allomancy, but Allomancy didn't exist until after Rashek took the power at the Well.  Ruin seems to have power of Feruchemy but not Allomancy.  I think one important question is whether Hemalurgy also was created at the Well.  Or another way, are Allomancy and Hemalurgy like the Kandra/Koloss dichotomy, embodying the two sides to the world's mythos? 

The Mist Spirit is another character that seems questionable in the Ruin/Preservation mythos.  If it is connected to Ruin, as the jacket tag for MB3 describes, why did it show Vin how to save Elend? 

Lastly, on Kwaan, isn't in interesting that we don't know his fate?  Was he killed when Rashek remade the world or did he survive into the Final Empire?