In our last video, we detailed the rise of the Lord Ruler to power at the expense of
the supposed Hero of Ages and the creation of the Final Empire. We also described the
early stages of Kelsier’s life: the man who would go on to make it his mission to
bring down the Final Empire and the Lord Ruler himself. In the next few episodes,
we will talk about this struggle and its impact on the world of Scadrial and its inhabitants.
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Kelsier emerged from the Pits of Hathsin a different man. He maintained his easy smile
and cheery demeanor, yet the scars he now bore upon his arms marked him out as the Survivor
of Hathsin, a figure who would inspire hope and fear in equal measures among those he would come
across. Snapping had also revealed Kelsier to be a Mistborn, a man capable of making use of all the
metals and their respective alloys, compared to a Misting who could only use a single such metal.
The fellow Mistborn Gemmel, who was less than sane, agreed to train Kelsier.
The two men began their journey north to infiltrate Keep Shezler in Mantiz,
where Antillius Shezler was conducting experiments on the Skaa. During their trip,
Gemmel trained Kelsier by explaining his powers and randomly attacking his pupil.
Kelsier was an adept student and quickly became more proficient with his gifts.
The training primarily focused on Pushing Steel and Pulling Iron. Gemmel also taught Kelsier to
think like an allomancer showing him how to burn all eight basic metals simultaneously.
When they reached the Keep, Gemmel went first to gain a better view and made his
way to the rooftop for a better vantage point, killing several guards. Here they observed a
stairway leading downwards. Kelsier headed down first, hoping to enter the Keep stealthily.
However, his master ignored this sentiment and killed two guards. In the next room,
they discovered a half dozen Skaa who have been bound, and Kelsier begins to tend to them. This
was interrupted by Antillius Shezler, who arrived after hearing the commotion caused by Gemmel.
A fully-fledged Mistborn, he immediately attacked Kelsier using Steel Pushing on a coin. Gemmel saw
this as a further training opportunity and decided not to intervene. Kelsier displayed his prodigious
talent in the ensuing fight, besting a man with a far greater degree of training and killing
Antillius. Kelsier quickly returned to unbinding the Skaa while Gemmel read through a notebook
belonging to the now-deceased nobleman, which had several theories and superstitions regarding an
Eleventh metal. After freeing the Skaa, Kelsier took the book, and the duo escaped the Keep.
In the intervening period, Kelsier found the Eleventh metal – Malatium,
believing it held the key to defeating the Lord Ruler. To his disappointment,
its immediate uses were less than clear, leading him to return to his initial plan.
Firstly he took into his employ the Kandra OreSeur, then he killed the Noble Lord Teven
Renoux of the Farmost Dominance, allowing his Kandra ally to impersonate him. Following this,
he made his way to the headquarters of the Skaa Rebellion, which his brother Marsh had
once headed, and convinced the new leader Yeden to hire him to help bring down the Lord Ruler.
Heading towards Luthadel, Kelsier stopped at a farm owned by Lord Themos Tresting to speak with
the Skaa who worked the fields. While he was there, Lord Tresting attempted to rape a Skaa
girl, and in response, Kelsier murdered the Lord, which forced the Skaa there to join the rebellion.
Arriving in Luthadel, Kelsier first met with his old partner Dockson - Dox,
who informed him of a young Allomancer girl Marsh had discovered, who he suspected to be a Mistborn.
The two men went to see her firsthand, witnessing her calm down an obligator – the Lord Ruler’s
Steel Ministry bureaucrat. This confirmed that she is at least a Soother – a misting capable
of pushing Brass to soothe. However, soon they realized that a steel Inquisitor had also been
present and discovered Vin’s alomancy and that Kelsier’s crew was also observing. The Inquisitor
and a group of soldiers planned on killing Vin to get rid of a problematic Skaa misting, but
Kelsier intervened, distracting the Inquisitor while Dockson handled the soldiers.
Kelsier and Dox then offered Vin a chance to join their crew, and despite her suspicious nature,
she reluctantly agreed to learn more about allomancy. Vin was a half-Skaa Mistborn – a
product of the dalliance of a Noble with his Skaa mistress, who was raised by her half-brother Reen.
The Lord Ruler prohibited the nobles from lying with the Skaa, as the resulting intercourse
often led to the birth of the Mistings. To save himself, the Noble had Vin’s mother
and sister murdered and tried to find Vin. Vin, like Kelsier, was a Mistborn. However,
she snapped during her difficult birth, making her highly attuned to her powers.
Kelrsier invited a team of the finest thieves in all of Luthadel to the crew’s hideout.
Here he introduced them to Yeden, Vin, and his crew and revealed the broad outlines of a plan
to bring down the Final Empire and kill the Lord Ruler. Breeze was the soother of the crew,
in charge of manipulating people’s emotions while burning Brass. Ham was a Thug whose strength was
significantly enhanced when burning Pewter. Clubs was a Smoker who, when burning Copper,
formed an invisible coppercloud blocking the sense of Seekers who burned bronze.
This allowed other allomancers to practice without being detected and made him immune
to the emotional alomancy of Soothing and Rioting while burning. His nephew Spook was a Tineye which
granted him increased sensitivity in all five senses and the ability to see through the Mists.
Under Kelsier’s guidance, the crew began to flesh out the initial plan breaking each element down
to make the insurmountable seem attainable. The plan eventually formulates: a force of some twenty
thousand trained Skaa is to be trained in the Arguois Caverns. Simultaneously the Crew would
sew discord and discontent between the Noble Houses to bring about a civil war. When the
army was sufficiently trained, and the civil war caused the Houses to become unstable enough, the
forces of the Rebellion would be sent to attack the Pits of Hathsin, to cut the flow of Atium.
This potent metal allowed the Mistborn user to see an opponent’s future attacks before they happened,
and its distribution allowed the Lord Ruler to control the Houses. After the Pits were attacked,
the garrison would be sent out from Luthadel. With the garrison out of the capital and the
Houses weakened sufficiently, the rest of the Rebel army could take the city,
with the crew receiving the Lord Ruler’s atium stash as a reward for their efforts.
Roles were then doled out, with Breeze charged with recruiting soldiers, Dockson operating the
crew’s finances, Clubs hiding their alomancy through his copperclouds, and a former soldier
Ham training the new army. OreSeur impersonating Lord Renoux would then buy the required equipment.
Marsh was to infiltrate the Steel Ministry posing as an obligator, and Kelsier, the most powerful
Mistborn among them, would orchestrate attacks on the Noble Houses to increase tensions between
them. Vin’s role was to pose as Renoux’s niece Vallette among the Nobles to gain information
critical to the cause. Kelsier also wished to kill the Lord Ruler with the Eleventh Metal but
remained uncertain how this could be accomplished. He considered this as nought a voluntary bonus.
Setting about his work with his trademark optimism, Kelsier first attacked the Keep of the
noble Venture, one of the strongest Houses tasked with overseeing the atium supply coming from the
Pits of Hathsin. In the process, he killed eight hazekillers - soldiers specially trained to handle
Mistborn wearing no armor and carrying no metal, preferring to make use of wood canes and staves
or obsidian blades which their opponents could not manipulate. Kelsier stole a bag of atium
and made it explicit that it was a Mistborn who had attacked House Venture, which was forbidden
under an unspoken agreement between the Houses and effectively set in motion the civil war.
Upon his return, Kelsier began training Vin in using Steel and Iron, explaining the basic
eight metals to her and starting to win over the naturally distrustful orphan.
He also introduced her to Sazed, a Terris Keeper, one of the few remnants of what
had been the Terris people before the Lord Ruler’s ascension. The Keepers were tasked
with preserving the knowledge in the hopes of spreading it when the Lord Ruler was toppled.
Sazed’s specialty was the preservation of the now-dead religions of Scadrial.
The plan continued apace, with Kelsier taking on several responsibilities by attacking the Great
Houses, attaining information from informants placed around Luthadel while also spreading
misinformation among the Noble Houses as an informant, all of which further fuelled the
Civil War. The most important of his roles in the long term was his training of Vin, whose
talents surpassed his own, which would eventually prove decisive. In the meantime, the Rebellion
continues to amass trained soldiers, approaching the numbers needed for the plan to succeed.
Vin, posing as Valette Renoux, continued to infiltrate the Noble elite by attending
balls hosted by the most prominent members of the Great Houses and growing in confidence
and stature as an allomancer due to Kelsier’s training. However, the process was not smooth,
as Vin recognized her father at the Balls and met a certain Elend Venture,
both of which created further distractions. Her curious nature also placed her in immense danger
when she followed Kelsier on a raid upon Kredik Shaw, where she recovered Alendi’s Logbook before
being gravely injured in the escape. She was saved when Sazed, proficient in feruchemy, intervened,
momentarily beating back the Steel Inquisitors before returning with the wounded Vin to Clubs’
hideout. Vin took three months to recover, during which the crew members spent time with her showing
how they used their powers as Mistings. However, soon the crew learned that the
Luthadel Garrison was sent out to handle the Skaa Rebellion’s army. The overconfident Yeden,
believing they now had enough soldiers to begin the offensive, has attacked Holstep Garrison to
gauge the strength of the men he now commanded. Vin and Kelsier set out on a desperate attempt
to save the rebellion, but they arrived too late. Having defeated the Holstep Garrison in a night
raid, Yeden had begun marching his men back to the Arguois Caverns when they were attacked on
the road by the professionally trained and armored Valtroux Garrison of five thousand
men. Kelsier had to be convinced not to join the fray, as it was already an apparent defeat.
Upon checking the caverns, the Mistborns discovered some two thousand men. Led by
Captain Demoux, they had ignored Yeden’s orders and stayed in the caverns. Vin and Kelsier led
them back to Luthadel, where they were to disperse among the other Skaa until again called upon.
Following this setback, the crew committed even further to provoking an all-out war
between the Houses as an alternative to their earlier plan. As the tensions increased,
the balls and parties ended: An all-out war was effectively declared between the Houses,
and alliances were drawn up. The plan seemed to work until Kelsier and Vin went to meet Marsh,
who has continued infiltrating the Steel Ministry as the plan progressed. Arriving at the meeting
place, they found human remains that Kelsier believed to be his brother’s. Furious, he returned
to the Pits of Hathsin, and, using his allomantic power, destroyed all of the atium, ending its
production and freeing the enslaved Skaa. This prompted a bloody response from the
Lord Ruler. He ordered many Skaa to be publicly executed, which would forever alter the Rebellion.
Unwilling to stand idle, Kelsier intervened, attempting to save the Rebels. Before the
rebels were brought to the execution, he confronted and killed a Steel Inquisitor
by beheading him with his obsidian ax, proving they were not immortal. However, the day was not
won as the Lord Ruler emerged. Kelsier was too brave for his own good, so instead of fleeing,
he faced Lord Rule, whose backhand sent him to the ground. His last words before the Lord
Ruler killed him by impaling him with a spear were, “But you can’t kill me, Lord Tyrant. I
represent that one thing you’ve never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.”
In a letter that Vin later discovered, Kelsier revealed that he had planned to defeat the Lord
Ruler using the eleventh metal, however he did not know how to use it in combat, which
ultimately led to his demise. OreSeur then took Kelsier’s bones and began impersonating Kelsier
all across the city, making the Skaa believe that he was a divine figure who could not be killed.
They quickly began to worship Kelsier as a God and, taking inspiration from their deity,
rebelled against Lord Ruler’s tyranny across Luthadel, aided by his crew members.
In the meantime, Vin made her way to confront the Lord Ruler with the eleventh metal in her
possession, hoping it would help her achieve victory. However, she was quickly captured by the
Inquisition and imprisoned within Kredik Shaw to be tortured. Fortunately for her, she was rescued
by Sazed, who utilized his feruchemy, allowing her to escape and recover her possessions.
Making their way to confront the Lord Ruler, they find Kredik Shaw to be eerily quiet.
At this point, they discovered that Marsh was still alive, with two Hemalurgic spikes protruding
from his eye sockets, indicating that he had been made a fully-fledged Inquisitor. Having
joined their ranks, Marsh soon learned the core weakness of these seemingly invincible beings:
should the lynchpin spike between their shoulder blades be removed, they would die instantly.
Taking advantage of this weakness, Marsh had decimated the ranks of the Canton of
Inquisition residing within Kredik Shaw overnight, freeing up the way for Vin to confront Lord Ruler.
The pair met the Lord Ruler in his chambers, and a fight ensued. Vin was brutally outmatched like
Kelsier before her. Rashek combined his powers as a feruchemist and allomancer,
which made him immensely powerful, bordering on the indestructible at this point.
As the Lord Ruler was about to kill Vin, she tried to use the eleventh metal Malatium,
an alloy of atium and gold. It allowed Vin to see into the past,
and she realized that the bracers on Rashek’s arms were the key. However,
she had already used up all of her metals, and death seemed imminent for the young Mistborn.
At this point, a huge Steel Push from the Lord Ruler tore Vin’s earring from her ear. It
turned out that this had been a hemalurgic spike that had held Vin back from her true strength.
Without knowing how she was doing it, Vin drew strength from the mists and tore the bracers
from Lord Ruler’s arms. These bracers were made of atium, and using his feruchemical abilities,
the Lord Ruler had utilized them to store his very life essence making him effectively immortal.
Once they were removed, he immediately felt the weight of a millennium’s worth of time, aging
rapidly. Using his weakness, Vin drove a spear through the supposed Hero Ages, avenging Kelsier
and ending the Final Empire. However, the final words of the greatest tyrant in Scadrial’s history
served as an ill portent of what was to come for its denizens: “You don’t know what I do for
mankind. I was your god, even if you couldn’t see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves...”
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In our next video, we will learn what the last words of Rashek meant. We are
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