Timewaster's Guide Archive

Why is the sky blue ? Why do we breath ? This is nature, no need for a particular reason at least for this point.

Didn't Sazed said something in MB1 about prophecies being created out of hope ? You need prophecy to help you believe in a better future for yourself and/or your children. But... the present has to be lowsy to start with. You have to be desperate in a way. I agree that the Deepness is a recent event in Kwaan's life mainly because of this :

I sense a craftiness behind these changes, a manipulation subtle and brilliant...  It is pulling him toward the Well of Ascension, where the millennial power has gathered. I can only guess that it sent the Deepness as a method of making mankind more desperate, of pushing us to do as it wills.

Now, if the Deepness had been there long before, Kwaan would not have written anything like this, right ? And I agree also about something happening to trigger Ruin into action. The rise of the Well of Ascension ? Could it be sufficient ?

Moreover, talking about subtlety, the text changed even during Sazed's time. When he translated the rubbing with Thindwill,  they had translated this text :

There was a place for me, in the lore of the Anticipation – I thought myself the Announcer, the prophet foretold to discover the Hero of Ages. Renouncing Alendi then would have been to renounce my new position, my acceptance, by the others.

During the attack on Luthadel, a skaa called Sazed the "Holy First Witness". When he came back after everything, thinking of Thindwill, he started to read what they had done together and he stumbled on this :

There was a place for me, in the lore of the Anticipation – I thought myself the Holy First Witness, the prophet foretold to discover the Hero of Ages. Renouncing Alendi then would have been to renounce my new position, my acceptance, by the others.

Now talk to me about subtlety again ! And so Sazed started to think like Kwaan : he had serious, very serious doubts. It wasn't the only change. There were a few just from the rubbing without implying directly Sazed, just so subtle, but it changed the whole perspective. Euol is really... evil... 

After a night of sleep...

Sleep does wonder, I tell you. When I fell asleep, I was still wondering what could have make the creation of those prophecies possible. And this morning, I woke up with a possibility. So, the Deepness was something new, something to force people to act, the Well as a millenial cycle... so it must have seen quite a bit of Heroes yet and... I couldn't believe it when I read it, but Vin had the answer. While she was pounding about the Lord Ruler, the Well and the power, she asked herself this question : If the hero was not to take the power for himself unless the world would be destroyed, and that we know that Rashek did exactly that, how come the world still exist after 1000 years ? So here are my thoughts.

Millenial cycles have succeeded one after the other. Ruin never got to lure any of the heroes that raised amongst the people, so it got craftier with each raise of power. Decisions were taken by other types of "ruler". What might happen is that most of the heroes died because they were not feruchemist and therefore could not store age.  Nevertheless, they had power to create new things once every 1000 years. The world was balancing more or less happily. The mist, for instance, could have been there before the Lord Ruler as much as the Mist Spirit (being the incarnation of Preservation). But the Deepness isn't the mist itself, it is something that looks like the mist but was created by Ruin just to confuse people a little more, to make them desperate, to make them distrust the mist. But the thing is that as crafty as it gets, Ruin always lost because it was overdoing it. Whatever happenned with Kwaan that he had to start doubting ? Of course, the Hero of Ages would fit the prophecies, but he saw the prophecies changing. The very same thing is happening to Sazed (read the above quote). So he starts to suspect. It will lead him back to the Conventical where he will loose faith while reading the last sentence on the steel plate itself. In leaving Alendi's journal and not allowing Sazed to read the steel plate right in the conventical, it was getting its new stage ready for the biggest show of the millenium. Remember, Marsh was suddenly in a rush to leave although they had been there already for 8 days with no apparent rush. Do we have to remember who Marsh was listening to ? Sazed then takes the Rubbing, a modifiable pity thing. Everything is in place for the final act. It is confirm. The power has to be left and not taken by the hero. And here comes Vin who wants to do things right.

What do you think ?

Oups ! Sorry guys ! I hadn't realize I wrote the previous post in french lol I would have never expected to find anyone here to speak french though ! I'll send you an e-mail Sarah !

Well, no, not quite dead Darxbane. We were saying that since the last post, you were speaking about Elantris, we thought that you had become an Elantrian and Sarah thought that Raoden could use you in the secret library to help him sort out secrets. 

Well, if they have a computer, it's great lol

Andrew, how could you possibly expect one of those Elantrian to remember who wrote what about him ?! No, seriously, we  do need quotes if we are going to do serious (hum) theory here...  Oh ! I think I can't wait till Euol is done with AMoL to propose to help him do the Ideal Seek version of Mistborn. It is too frustrating !

Ah ! Mais comme aux dernières nouvelles, il nous parlait d'Elantris... je le soupçonne de ne pas être véritablement mort. Enfin ! Espérons que Raoden trouvera quelque chose pour l'occuper.

He is very busy, though. Can you imagine all the things he must do ? Writing Excuses, A Memory of Light, his annotations of Mistborn 2 plus his signatures assignment, plus his own personal life... And hum... I prefer believing he doen't have much time to read.

Well, when I ask questions about nails and "strange", it's because although I can write, read and speak english pretty well, I am afraid my mind can overlook important details due to my understanding limitations. I just want to make sure I understand properly... and well, I'm kind of lazy and don't want to use a dictionary all the time. Moreover, I think we need the time to think on those things and having a simple analysis could or might enlightened someone sometimes...

Nevertheless... Koloss are so intelligent beast... do you think the size of the nails could influence its brain and not his mass ?

Unless the map was not drawn by TLR, of course. Could it not be Kwaan's doing again ? I did wonder quite a bit of time if TLR could not be, in fact, Kwaan. Does Brandon confirms this positively in his annotations ? Because the so-called Rashek never confirmed it was he, and it would then be logical that Kwaan would have left the writings in steel in the cavern, would have kept remembrance of Rashek's possession and also of Alendi's book.

If it interests anyone, I made a comparative table between the actual writing in steel and what Sazed had translated with its different subsequent alteration i.e. the Holy First Witness - just for study purposes though, hey ?

Sweet, you found the quote! We vaguely remember that it existed, but we never actually found it. Is this the only koloss-nail quote we see, by the way?

If the nail was shaped strangely, perhaps the shape of metal matters for Hemalurgy. If it is a strange metal, then that could also point to a strange effect of Hemalurgy. Either way, this is Hemalurgy.

Well, I keep on reading. Never know what you might find...

Mind you, I remember that Sazed had seen the spikes used by Inquisitors, and he had also noticed the different metals used then. I find it strange that he doesn't mention any resemblance. But I keep on searching.

And are nails really similar to spikes ? I mean, it is two different words, it must represent a difference of some sort. But I agree on this : metal is metal and we're talking hemalurgy. Hemalurgy needs blood. Do you recall Koloss bleeding ?

  Well of course ! The Sirens were the very favorite of female singers group in the very old days. It is said that a certain Ulysse played a trick to be able to listen to them for free !

But this topic is getting way off...

So, do Inquisitors need to burn metals ?