Okay, I read through a good chunk of Well of Ascension today, and thought I'd make some points.
First one's a rather small point, I think . . .
Only one way to win a knife fight against a guy with a sword . . . Elend thought, gripping his knife. The thought, oddly, hadn't come from one of his trainers, or even from Vin. He wasn't sure where it came from, but he trusted it.
Preservation, Ruin, or Elend's near death instincts?
The Rabzeen and the Anamnesor were both mythological figures vaguely familiar to Sazed--But they were only two among hosts. Until the discovery of the rubbing, there had been no way to connect their names to the Hero of Ages.
Apparently Terris wasn't the only one of the fourteen lands which had prophecies about the Hero of Ages. Terris was probably just the place that had the most accurate/manipulated prophecies because of their close proximity to the Well of Ascension.
[. . .] Sazed had four copies of the transcription. All were missing the same exact chunk.
[Tindwyl held up a sheet] one that had only half the transcription on it, ending near the middle of the page. A hole had been torn directly in the middle of the page. [. . .]
"How is this possible?" Tindwyl whispered. "How could someone know so much of our work--so much of us?"
"And yet," Sazed asked, "how can they know so little of our abilities? I have the entire transcription stored in my metamind. I can remember it right now."
So. Sazed and Tindwyl have several copies of the manuscript, they've been in the room with them the whole time, (probably) and the tears are all
exactly the same. It's pretty obvious to me that the removal of these pieces of paper was done by one of the two entities, but which one? Preservation might have done it to lead Sazed and Tindwyl to second guess that line, to pay more attention to it, or maybe to have to go back and read Kwaan's plate again. Ruin could have done it so they had to tap into their metalminds and retrieve the quote. Keep in mind, they never found those pieces of paper which went missing initially. Sazed only found the corner of the page which had been ripped
after he rewrote it from his metalmind.
This leads me to believe it was Ruin's doing. By destroying that sentence, Sazed had to tap his metalmind, where Ruin could change what he wished. I don't have any idea why it was torn later on, perhaps Preservation tore it and left the piece where Sazed would find it for some reason.
[. . .] While the Lord Ruler ruled, society could not progress. He kept a stabilizing hand on the empire, but it was an oppressive hand as well. Fashion stayed remarkably unchanged for a thousand years, the noblemen always trying to fit the Lord Ruler's ideals. Architecture and science did not progress, for the Lord Ruler frowned on change and invention.
Evidence for The Lord Ruler and Preservation being connected somehow.
"It's the mist spirit," Vin said, walking by and dumping an armload of wood beside the firepit. "It's chasing us."
Now why would the mist spirit chase these three? What would Preservation stand to gain by following Vin, Elend, or Spook? You'd think that it would be more focused on preventing anyone from finding the Well of Ascension within Luthadel, so why does it follow them? Is it just because Ruin seems to have taken such an interest in Vin?
Yet [the mists] did. They farther they'd gotten from Luthadel, the longer the mists lingered in the mornings.
If the daytime mists are part of the Deepness, and that's part of Ruin, then this could be taken as proof that Preservation had the strongest force in Luthadel, on top the Well of Ascension. Even more proof of the Lord Ruler/Preservation connection?
And yet it was real. She could feel it, and she could see it--see it as it looked up, meeting her gaze with invisible eyes.
Hateful eyes.
It raised an insubstantial arm, and Vin saw something flash. She reacted immediately, whipping out a dagger, bursting into the tent and swinging. Her blow met something tangible in the mist spirit's hand. A metallic sound rang in the calm air, and Vin felt a powerful, numbing chill in her arm. The hairs across her entire body prickled.
Okay, first off, why did the mist spirit attack Elend? Just to try and get at Vin? Why does it seem to hate her? Perhaps this is because it knows Vin is going to go the Well of Ascension, and it is angry at her for leaving Luthadel. Or perhaps it doesn't like married people. Something is up there. And for reference, another similar event happens on page 121, and during that episode Vin feels a pain moving from her ear to her head.
No. She knew the Lord Ruler had built the Inquisitors with a weakness: Remove a particular spike from their back, and they'd die. He had also built the kandra with a weakness. The koloss had to have a weakness, too. [. . .]
Cousins indeed. The Lord Ruler had built the koloss with a weakness--the same weakness as the kandra. He had given himself a way to keep them in check.
Okay, based off of this, I pull out a few assumptions. First off, The Lord Ruler probably created koloss and kandra with the power from the Well of Ascension. The fact that they're so similar in their weakness, and the fact that The Lord Ruler was the only Allomancer with enough power to control them (Without duralumin of course.) makes this pretty obvious to me. However, what's up with The Lord Ruler and Hemalurgy/Inquistors? If he made them with the power from the Well, I'd think he would have made them with the same weakness. Instead, they have a totally different (Hemalurgic?) weakness. But on the flop side, why do Inquisitor's have the weakness at all? Zane survives just fine with only one spike, and it's not the linchpin spike. It also went right through his heart. There's always another secret.
"It's what I would do," Vin said. "If I knew the power would return, if I wanted to preserve it. I'd hide the Well. [. . .]"
More The Lord Ruler/Preservation stuff.
I'm going mad, [Elend] thought, hands beginning to shake. The mist figure stopped a few feet in front of him and then raised its right arm and pointed.
North. Away from Luthadel.
Why would the mist spirit want Elend to go north? As far as we know, there's nothing important up there. Maybe to draw Vin away from the Well? But then why does it seem to hate her? Is there maybe another reason the mist spirit appeared to Elend? And why not do it while Lestibournes was around? (Also, it appears something, maybe the mist spirit, made a noise right before this happened.) And then right after that, there's . . . .
The thing pointed again. Elend cocked his head. It certainly didn't seem threatening. In fact, he felt an unnatural feeling of peace coming from it.
Allomancy? he thought. It's Pulling on my emotions!
The mist spirit has Allomancy, it would appear. Or at least, it can Pull on Elend's emotions. (Or possibly Soothe them.) On top of that there's that whole bronze pulse deal. It makes it pretty clear to me that the mist spirit is connected to Allomancy somehow. The mist spirit also does similar things in it's appearance to Sazed at the end of the book. Page 561 for the curious.
"We didn't," she said firmly, standing, looking south. Focusing, she could feel the thumpings, washing across her. Pulling her.
The Well of Ascension is a Pulling metal? Just a thought.
"Well, I've seen [the mist spirit] again," Vin said, "It's like a ghost, formed from the patterns in mist. I see it all the time, watching me, following me. And I hear those rhythms in my head--majestic, powerful thumpings, like Allomantic pulses. Only, I don't need bronze anymore to hear them.
Don't need bronze anymore eh? But, don't dismiss Allomancy entirely.
I have to find the Well, [Vin] thought with determination, burning bronze, the thumpings--which she'd been ignoring during the battle--becoming loud to her ears.
It appears that bronze still makes the thumpings more prominent. And let's go way back to the roots here, with . . .
For a moment, she thought she felt something. Something
very strange—a slow pulsing, like a distant drum, unlike any
Allomantic rhythm she’d felt before. But it wasn’t coming
from Kelsier. It was distant . . . far away. She focused harder,
trying to pick out the direction it was coming from.
That one sure struck me as odd.
So what's up with the Allomancy link here? And if bronze lets Vin hear the pulsings, why can she later hear them without it? This is one of my favorites, and I'm pretty much clueless here. So, moving on . . .
"Kill him," God said. "He's really not that important."
God (Ruin) obviously knows quite a lot about Zane's surroundings. He occasionally says all these little random things about people, things that lead me to believe his senses are very acute.
Vin shook her head. This felt right.
The smoke didn't choke her, as she expected. There was something oddly welcoming about it.
What's with all this rightness? And speaking of that smoke . . .
It had ended here, at a second, slightly smaller cavern that was clogged with a thick, dark smoke. It didn't seep out of the cavern, as it should have, but billowed and churned upon itself.
It isn't a shadow
This dark thing that follows me, the thing that only I can see--it's isn't really a shadow. It is blackish and translucent, but it doesn't have a shadowlike solid outline. It's insubstantial--wispy and formless. Like it's made out of black fog.
Or mist, perhaps.
See a resemblance there? This leads credence to my theory that that blackish smoke is what the Deepness had become right before The Lord Ruler ascended. It's dark and most people would find it terrifying and formless, and it's blackness might make them not associate it with something as simple as mist.
Okay, I think that's all for now. Maybe I'll post a few things in the Hemalurgy thread, but I don't have a whole lot there. Anyways, what are your guys thoughts on this stuff? Ruin and Preservation are complicated, that's for sure.