Ashfalls

[Andrew the Great]

Thinking back, I seem to remember something about the Lord Ruler not actually moving the well of ascension, just building Kredik Shaw around it. I think that he probably just changed the landscape a lot. The "Terris Mountains" became the area around Luthadel. Thus, the ashmounts would have been part of this worldwide landscaping thing as well. I'll reread to see if I can find what I'm talking about here....maybe I just made it up. Any thoughts?

[SarahG]

We need to distinguish between the author creating the Ashmounts intentionally and TLR creating them intentionally.

Clearly, the author put them in there for a reason, since authors don't generally add details without a purpose.  Sanderson's purpose could just be the dismal setting, but (as has been discussed) the proper names may be a clue that there's more to them than that.  Another clue is that "ash" is the very first word in the first book.  I don't know what this purpose may turn out to be, though.  I haven't seen any evidence yet that the ash is sentient or responsive to certain people or magics, the way the mists seem to be.  Nor do I know of any correlation between heavy and light ashfalls and the other events.

As for TLR, I agree with those who said the Ashmounts were just an unintended side effect of his re-making the landscape.  He clearly didn't love the ash that much - as I recall, he kept Kredik Shaw and his own clothing quite clean, and also had the skaa sweep the ash out of Luthadel.

[Andrew the Great]

Still, you don't have to love something in order to use it. If you want to make a people forget about their previous life, making ash fall from the sky and obliterate all trace of it would be a great way to do it.

[Phaz]

I really think the color of the Ash is significant.  Normal ash is white, this ash is black.  I'm not sure why that's significant, but it seems like it is that way for more than just to add to the setting.

[darxbane]

I am not sure about the color, although it does make everything look even dirtier.  The Ashmounts are another example of why I believe that TLR froze part of the world in order to prevent the well's thousand year cycle from occurring.  A by-product of this is that the Ashmounts are stuck in an endless eruption cycle, never increasing or decreasing.  Once TLR died, everything that was frozen was released, and may need to make up for lost time. 

[Vintage]

Have you ever pour water on an already dead fire covered with white (rather pale grey) ash ? Well... ash turns black.

[SarahG]

Have you ever pour water on an already dead fire covered with white (rather pale grey) ash ? Well... ash turns black.

Absolutely!  Brilliant thought!  So the Ashmounts are like volcanos with water in them ... like lakes?

Still, you don't have to love something in order to use it. If you want to make a people forget about their previous life, making ash fall from the sky and obliterate all trace of it would be a great way to do it.

Good point.  The ash (and its removal from streets, nobles' homes, and nobles' clothing) would also provide another form of menial, degrading labor for the skaa.  Not that the Empire is exactly short on that.

[darxbane]

I think he means that the ash mixes with the water in the atmosphere and turns black before falling back to earth.

[SarahG]

Hmm, maybe we need a volcanologist advisor to tell us how this stuff works...

[Chaos]

I think he means that the ash mixes with the water in the atmosphere and turns black before falling back to earth.

We happen to have a giant source of water: the mists. Now, sure, they are magical, but Elend still describes them as being water vapor.

[AvalonDreamer]

If we're going to get a volcanologist, why stop there? physics professor, meteorologist, biologist, and a philosopher too, just to make sure we have our bases covered...

I'm still sticking to the theory that the Ashfalls are a reaction to a change TLR made when he re-landscaped the world, the sheer Newtonian "equal and opposite reaction" thing seems to be prevalent enough to put reasonable acceptance behind that theory in my mind.

Always open for a good argument/ripping though...

[Eudaimoniac]

I too believe that the ashfalls are very significant.

Ash is the first words in the first book.

Why ash falls ? The volcanoes could have erupted and covered the sky, and it had stayed like that. No need to have ashfalls.

We tend to forget that plants are not green. Nothing is green. It is emphasized in MB1 (and Brandon points out in one of his annotations that it was important to remind us of that fact). That alone warrants some thought. Could we have ashfalls and plants are still green ? Probably. Then why not ?

Even though the ashfalls could just be part of the setting, i feel it is given too much description for it to just be setting. If it was just a setting, Brandon would not emphasize it so, and would not include it in his annotation.

[Vintage]

Because, when a volcano is at work without erupting... there are only Ash that comes out of it, acid dust that kills stuff. That would certainly explain why things are brown and why there is constant ash falling. Always at work, never erupting... being preserved from erupting ?   

Do you remember a few years back ? A volcano had erupted somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near Hawaii I think (lowsy memory). Without having Ash, all the northern hemisphere had its sky covered with clouds. That would not make the sun red though, unless the sun itself was dying.

[darxbane]

If the smoke and ash gets high enough into the atmosphere, the haze could make the sun appear red.  I will put my earlier post in a different way.  The ashmounts act like gigantic smoke stacks, constantly spewing smoke and ash into the atmosphere.  There is more to it than just that and brown plants.  There are no flowers.  This is a pretty major think, considering that most plants reproduce by using flowers.  All fruits are flowers first, as well as most vegetables.  How do they grow food?  The way that nature works has been changed, somehow.  It's like the middle of winter all the time.  There is no spring budding,  no flowers, yet the plantations can still grow food.  The cycle of nature is broken.

[AvalonDreamer]

A plant can still synthesize food when it lacks the green bit of light from the visible spectrum (which the sun makes en masse), they just tend to be less efficient at it, since green tends to strike through fluids (atmosphere and water) the easiest. Lacking that, they would attempt to pull from as many parts of the spectrum as possible, trying to make up for that massive loss of energy.

I vaguely recall hearing something about the Ashmounts being as they are in the name of Preservation, and it's an interesting theory. What if the names of the Ashmounts are those of particularly rebellious cities/countries that TLR felt he could do without?