Timewaster's Guide Archive

The water would decay the buildings eventually, if nobody was around to take care of them.

Other than that, I agree with what's been said about the bodies decomposing into dirt and dust eventually.

I agree that The Lord Ruler very possibly could have created Allomancy as well, but I'm not so sure if he created it to combat the Deepness. If he say, created Hemalurgy and used the Well's power to beef up Preservation, he might have then wanted to create a magic system that could tap into the power of the mists, or create one that he could use in tandem with Feruchemy to keep himself alive and in power forever. (If so, perhaps he created atium as well. He could change the world to make it a Feruchemical metal to store up age, and make it a Allomantic and maybe Hemalurgic metal as well.) But I think both Hemalurgy and Allomancy were created by The Lord Ruler, if for no other reason than the fact that I've always found it strange that all three systems use the same metals, and none others that we know of.

Okay, so here are some things I've been noticing on my latest read-through of the books.

To start, The Lord Ruler was an important person. By staying alive, he somehow prevented Ruin from sending the Deepness upon the land. It was only after The Lord Ruler's death that the mists started coming during the daytime and killing people.

On top of that, The Lord Ruler knew what was going on. It's the only way I can see his justification for his comments at the end of The Final Empire. He had been alive when the Deepness ravaged the world a thousand years ago, and he was actively stopping it.

This is all a very complicated system. The mists are presumably the Deepness, a tool of Ruin, but the mists are also repelled by Hemalurgy, which it seems is also strongly affected by Ruin. Perhaps what happened was The Lord Ruler made Hemalurgy when he was in the Well of Ascension to stop the Deepness. (Explaining why Hemalurgy pushes away the mists, as it was created to prevent their harsher side . . .) Then, because Ruin was trapped within that very Well of Ascension, it gained a foothold in Hemalurgy. It would lend credence to The Lord Ruler's comment about Hemalurgy being "endowed fabrications" and solves both why Hemalurgy repels the mists and why Ruin can speak to Hemalurgists. Any evidence for or against this?

I believe that the most widely accepted version of events is that Inquisitors use Allomancy, (Proven in the Hero of Ages Prologue) and that their Allomancy is either just naturally very potent (Perhaps because they consumed the metal at the end of Well of Ascension.) or that using Hemalurgy somehow has the power to enhance Allomancy.

The spikes are also definitely something to do with an Inquisitor's Hemalurgy, and most believe that a piercing of any kind can be used Hemalurgically, if the right conditions are met. As for the spikes, the two eye spikes are indeed made of steel, and the one in the heart is made of brass. (Zane also had a spike through his heart, but I don't know what it was made out of. I'd assume it was made of brass as well, but the book never says . . . ) Then the spike in the spine is made of steel, (as per the end of The Final Empire.) so the unknown spikes in an inquisitor are down to seven.

As for myself, I'd believe that the spike setup is two steel spikes through the eyes, one steel spike in the spine, and one of each of the basic Allomantic metals for the chest. The next question I have though, is why separating the top spikes from the bottom spikes kills an Inquisitor. We know from Zane that one can survive with just one spike through the heart, and I'm inclined to believe that the Inquisitor on the receiving end of the Hemalurgic ritual in the prologue of Hero of Ages had eye spikes, if just because of the wording. What is so important about that final spike?

Oh, and as a side note, I'm pretty sure Zane shows us it's possible to use Hemalurgy without knowing it, but that could just be because he's a little addled.

Actually, he just needed to stay away from any really powerful Mistborn. Brandon states in the Chapter Thirty-Eight Part III Annotation that . . .

[Pushing or pulling on metals inside of people's bodies] is a matter of degree of power.

He also states that Vin has to draw on the mists to get enough power to do this, but implies that if someone was strong enough Allomantically they could do it themselves. So by allowing the nobility to fight each other every once in a while, he kills off all of the most powerful Allomancers in the Final Empire, thus preventing one of them from ever becoming strong enough to affect metals in another person's body.

And also, just because The Lord Ruler touched upon Preservation's (Or Ruin's for that matter.) power does not mean every action he does is dictated by them. I believe that The Lord Ruler upon entering the Well of Ascension saw exactly how the Deepness worked, (As it was well upon the land when he ascended.) and through it saw Ruin. Being the "moral" man all men believe themselves to be, he figured out how to stop the deepness (Create an environment where Preservation is loose in the world.) And used the power of the Well to do it.

From then on, whatever else The Lord Ruler did, he would be trying to foster a place both where he was dominant and where Preservation was loose, but not because he had to, because he was trying to do the right thing and prevent the Deepness from ever returning.

One of the major holes I can see in that theory is that in the Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations, (Prologue part two to be exact.) Brandon mentions how the world is,

". . . a little bit frozen in time, as you'll find in later books."

Something I noticed about Hemalurgy while reading through Mistborn: The Final Empire again.

On page 540-541 the book states . . .

Kelsier stumbled into the room.Vin followed, but she knew
what she’d see. The corpse lay near the center of the chamber,
flayed and dismembered, the head completely crushed. It was
barely recognizable as human. The walls were sprayed red.

Now, we know this was where Marsh was supposed to meet Kelsier, and that the Inquisitors got to Marsh and "recruited" him. Could it be that this corpse was the sacrifice used for Marsh? There was a lot of blood involved in this death, and the skull was crushed like what I'd assume would happen when one had two steel spikes driven through you into someone beneath you. The dismembering could have included the skull, perhaps, as a spike was driven through your spine. . .

The point of this is, I think when making an inquisitor, the spikes have to go through the sacrifice in the same spot as in the Inquisitor. So the brass spike of an inquisitor goes through the heart, another spike (I think it's steel) goes through the spine, and two steel spikes go through the eyes. Also, there's no spike in the stomach. Kell punched the Inquisitor there during his fight, and he would have felt the metal.