Author Topic: ***SPOILERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon****  (Read 334719 times)

Xandeis

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First off, WHAT A GREAT STORY!!! Though I am both sadden and disappointed that it has , alas, come to a completion...or has it??? I think it may be pointless to do a spin-off, but who else could pull off such a masterful storyline than Brandon?? Of course, it is HIS story...but I hope that we get to see the New Empire, and who knows maybe we, the fans, can convince him, Brandon, to bring back the gang! I for one would love to see Kel and El go at it!!! 
Second, I am a bit confused as to why Vin and El had to die. I could careless about the other characters, but it seems to me that the more dynamic the character, the more likely his or her life will be in jeopardy! And Saze, though it fits the stereotypical conclusion, he actually was the best person to become god! I just don't see why he didn't get the full understanding about the prophesy until the end!
Third, is there anyone out there other than me that would pay to see this in theaters??
Xan'deis

requim

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #61 on: October 17, 2008, 06:33:13 AM »
She took the earring out. Page 570 of the WoA hardback.

Ah.. now don't I feel foolish.  Thanks for the reference.

firstRainbowRose

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I just wanted to add in my two cents and say it was absolutely brillaint... and I think I'm starting to be able to breath again (crying that much hurts).

I said on the 14th that no matter how the ending was done if Vin died it'd be too cliche, but it ended up working out really well.  It's cliche that she died, but the manner and the reason wasn't cliche at all.

I expecially loved how minor details (the regligions taught) ended up playing such a HUGE part in the end.  That was a fun little throw back to the rest of the series.

I also really loved that there's an "cameo" for Kel at the end... that made me really happy to see.

I can't think of any questions that haven't been asked... just over all, I wanted to say brilliant book.
"The custom of royalty in referring to oneself is to naturally employ the royal 'we'.  We are very happy, we are very sad, we are bored and suffer from ennui.  For a royal prince there's no such word as 'me', It's always 'we'.  So rightfully I should be two or three, don't you agree?"

luminos

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That was a wonderful book.  I almost wanted to see Elend as the Hero in order to hear him try to beat Ruin in a scholarly debate (jk, sorta). 

Going off on a complete tangent, when Ruin's dead body shows up, my reaction was to think of one of the poets of Saffron Park.  I doubt there is any intended connection, but it was cool none the less.

douglas

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2)  Marsh is alive.  I changed this from when I talked to Ookla. I realized some things about his use of Allomancy that would allow him to survive.  Actually, he is immortal.  He can pull off the same Allomancy/Feruchemy trick that the Lord Ruler did.  (And he knows it too, since he was there when Sazed explained how it was done in Book One.)  He's actually the only living person who actually knows this trick for certain. (Though there's a chance that Spook, Ham and Breeze heard about it from Vin and the others.)  So yes, if there were another series, Marsh would make an appearance.

I thought that trick required atium and involved burning the atium.  With all the atium gone and Sazed not making any more, it would therefore not be possible even for a full mistborn/feruchemist.  Am I wrong, is Sazed providing atium specifically for Marsh to allow a friend and valuable servant to survive, or what?

In a future book series, Mistborn will also have become things of legend.  The bloodlines will have become diluted to the point that there are no Mistborn, only Mistings--however, the latter are far more common.   In this environment, a Nicrosil Misting could be invaluable both as an enhancer to your own team or a weapon to use against unsuspecting other Misthings.

I take it either Spook did not have children or Sazed made him a reduced-strength Mistborn rather than giving him the full potency of the 9 originals and Elend?

GreedyAlgorithm

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Brandon, I'd like to see a timeline of when you fleshed out the parts of the cosmology we know about. I'd imagine Allomancy came before you fit it into the bigger picture, right? What was your method, come up with a cool image of hammering spikes through a living being, figure out how to integrate that into a larger picture, and then think about the implications of your new cosmology? Or what?

Peter Ahlstrom

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Quote
I take it either Spook did not have children or Sazed made him a reduced-strength Mistborn rather than giving him the full potency of the 9 originals and Elend?
Remember that the world at the end, apart from the underground stuff, is basically a tabula rasa. Their supplies and whatnot will give them a jumpstart on a new civilization, but it's still going to take a lot of centuries to get civilization back to the level it was in these books, and then a couple more centuries to get it to a modern-day civilization level.

Also, how many people did Sazed make mistborn? How many Allomancers were left in the world? In the Final Empire, the nobles intermarried, keeping the power to themselves, and it still got diluted over time. I gather the class separation will be wiped out this time around, so the gene pool will be much wider. That leads to more distribution of the power, but less concentration.
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VegasDev

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So looking back on the 'Who would you be' thread, why would Ookla be Yomen as opposed to another character?
Now you've got all the ones with beards on one side and all the
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EUOL

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Thanks for answering our questions!  I'm looking forward to meeting you in a couple weeks at the San Diego signing!

1) How/why did you decide to go with Sazed as the epigraph author?  I'll admit I was absolutely positive it was going to be Rashek, if only because of the parallelism (ancient story in epigraphs/modern story in text).
2) What happened to Kwaan? I was half expecting to see him amongst the kandra First Generation.
3) 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?
4) Do any structures/cities still exist after Sazed's ascention? Or do the survivors need to start from scratch?

1)  I chose Sazed because I felt that Rashek would have just been too obvious.  I wanted this book to look toward the future, particularly with the ending.  The epigraphs have been a fun and unique part of these books, and I wanted to make sure the ones in the third book were as good as the ones in the first two books.  Also, there's a theme--there's always a secret in the epigraphs.  In the first one, it's that Rashek was really the Lord Ruler.  In the second book, it was the textual changes hinting that Ruin was manipulating the prophesies.  In the third book, I wanted to have an equally surprising reveal to the epigraphs, and knew that it had to be something different from the other two.  Hence Sazed.  (Plus, I really wanted to dig into answering some world questions that I felt couldn't be answered by anyone other than Sazed.)

2) Kwaan went into hiding, and he was eventually discovered and executed by Rashek.  He wasn't among the First Generation, though he would have been if he hadn't turned against Rashek.  Rashek kept the plate, however, just as he kept Alendi's logbook.  Partially because even then, Rashek was going a little mad, but partially because of the reminders about his old life they contained.

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

4)  Start from scratch!  Good thing there is building materials in some of the storage caches....
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VegasDev

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2) Kwaan went into hiding, and he was eventually discovered and executed by Rashek.  He wasn't among the First Generation, though he would have been if he hadn't turned against Rashek.

I'm assuming you meant Alendi hunted him down because he turned against Alendi. Or did Kwaan also turn against Rashek?
Now you've got all the ones with beards on one side and all the
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EUOL

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Alendi's "Piercings of the Hero"?

The other lake in Alendi's bumps?

Spook gets repaired, does Cett get his legs?

Was there ever anything to Reen's obsidian?

1)  This is part of the manipulation Ruin did during the classical era on Scadrial, before the coming of the Lord Ruler.  Piercings, and Hemalurgy, were part of the world before the coming of Allomancy in its modern form.  Then, they were seen as a means of communicating with deity--which, indeed, they were.  Ruin manipulated this to make sure any Hero of Ages who came would be under his influence.  The reference is included mostly to indicate that yes, Alendi was under Ruin's influence.  He ignored Rashek, though.  (At least, right up to the moment when everything went 'wrong' for Ruin, when Rashek killed his chosen Hero of Ages.)

2) A manifestation of Ruin's gathered consciousness, much like the dark mists in book two.  The lake was still around in Vin's era, but had been moved under ground.  (Note that the Well is a very similar manifestation.  You've also seen one other manifestation like this....)

3)  To give humankind the best shot at survival, Sazed repaired all genetic defects and physical ailments in the people who were in the storage caches.  So yes, Cett can walk.  He was so shocked by this that he spent the entire epilogue walking around in the cavern, marveling.  

4)  Reen's obsidian was a memento from his father, the parent he didn't share with Vin.  I carried a small piece of obsidian like this for many years.  It has no story function other than being important to Vin as a keepsake.
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EUOL

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #71 on: October 17, 2008, 08:17:39 PM »
Quote
If you study the interaction between the temporal metals, you might notice an inconsistency in the way they work...
Uh-huh. That was already noticed by theorizers in the forums here. Gold works like Malatium and Electrum works like Atium. Yet they're on opposite corners of the metal square.

Ah.  I wondered if that had been noticed.
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EUOL

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #72 on: October 17, 2008, 08:23:04 PM »
1) Who were Ruin and Preservation? I mean, when they died, they had bodies, like Vin. And you went as far as to describe their hair color (Red and Black, respectively). Preservation even had a prominent nose. Why describe their dead bodies, if they weren't at one time mortals themselves? They created humans, but were at one time human themselves?

2) I'm  sad Ten Soon never got to talk to Vin again, since it was apparent they both missed each other.

3) Lemme guess, the "Mistborn" following Vin was actually Ruin, since Elend never actually saw him, and he disappeared every time Vin got close? 4) Why did Ruin give off Allomantic Pulses? Because Preservation did and they're two sides of the same coin? Allomancy is of Preservation, so I figured that's why he did...

5) A modern world  update for a future mistborn trilogy prolly wouldn't involve as much metal, unless mistings were rare, which apparently will not be the case. I'm thinking more like plastics, ceramics, fiberglass, and silicon. I mean for cars and guns and all that.

Numbers added above by me.

1) RAFO.  (Sorry.)
2) Remember that TenSoon, with spikes, can communicate more easily with those on the other side....
3)  Yes.
4)  Manifestation of the awesome power he held, mixed with Vin's increased ability to sense these things.  Allomantic pulses are like a ripple of sound in the fabric of creation itself--the power of creation being used, creating a drum beat to those attuned to it.  Ruin created a similar beat when his conciousness was near.
5)  Yes and no.  For the rich, this would be an option.  But much like using metal weapons in the Mistborn world, it isn't always an option for everyone.  You will see both. 
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EUOL

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Regarding Hemalurgy:

1)  In an annotation from book 1, it is mentioned that The Lord Ruler needed all 3 magic systems in order to do what he did.  I always assumed that it meant his Hemalurgy enhanced his Allomancy.  Did Marsh get a double power, or is the Feruchemy-Allomancy combo enough? ( a sidebar to this question is whether or not stacking abilities is possible through Hemalurgy).

2) Did Vin's mother actually have a spike, or was she so crazy that one wasn't necessary for Ruin to influence her?

3)  When the Kandra get their spikes back, do they remember who they were, or have they been "rebooted"?

1)  He used Hemalurgy to pull off his most dramatic effects.  Marsh didn't need them, but it makes things much easier. 

2)  She was crazy enough on her own.

3)  They remember, though some things are vague or foggy in their minds.  Depends on the individual. 
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i would like to ask you one thing to consider when writing endings. fantasy is an escape, please dont ruin it with such depressing endings. when you have had the opportunity to look upon your dead wife in her coffin, reading about others dying isnt fun at all. it is absolutely terrible. happily ever after.

I understand your anger.  I wrote the ending that felt most appropriate to me for this book and series.  I didn't find it depressing at all, personally.  But people have reacted this way about every ending I've written. 

I won't always do it, I promise.  But I have to trust my instincts and write the stories the way they feel right to me.  I didn't 'kill off' Vin and Elend in my mind.  I simply let them take risks and make the sacrifices they needed to.  It wasn't done to avoid cliché or to be part of a cliché, or to be shocking or surprising, or to be interesting or poetic--it was done because that was the story as I saw it. 

I will keep this in mind, though.  I know it's not what a lot of people want to read.  Know that I didn't do it to try to shock you or prove anything.  And because of that, if a more traditionally happy ending is something that a story requires, I'll do that--even if it means the people on the other side of the fence from you will point fingers at me for being clichéd in that regard as well. 

If it helps, realize that one of the reasons I added the lines in Sazed's note was to let the characters live on for those who wanted them to live on.  I ALMOST didn't have Spook even discover the bodies, leaving it more ambiguous. 
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