Curate, connect, and discover
I just finished part 4 of The Final Empire and I need to rage for a bit before I can keep reading. Don't mind me. Ranting and wild theorizing under the cut.
"I represent the thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope."
speech and presented yourself as a STORMING IDIOT MARTYR and LET THE LORD RULER KILL YOU WITHOUT FIGHTING BACK. DAMMIT KELL.
This is why you spent all of that time building your reputation among the skaa and getting them to practically worship you. This is why you were asking Sazed about the Valla. You were reassuring yourself that the movement would continue even stronger after you sacrificed yourself. You hoped it wouldn't come to this, but you knew it would. You've trained Vin as your replacement. She proved her competence in her fight against Shan and her power by seeing through your copper cloud. In the process she helped you understand what happened with Mare so that you could let it rest. SHE JUST ASKED YOU A COUPLE NIGHTS WHEN YOU WERE GOING TO LEAVE HER and you hedged. You didn't know exactly when, but you knew this was coming. You knew it would probably be soon. Dammit Kell.
Elend, you lovable naive fool of a nobleman, you need to find Vin and help her hold herself together so she can take over. Or maybe so the pair of you can take the lead if you can rally your friends and make them actually care enough to act. She has just had her brother's training that everyone will abandon her reinforced though, so she's probably going to try to push you away in a form of emotional self defense. I hope you don't let her. She is unbelievably strong, but there is power in having people you truly care about that she doesn't fully understand yet (The very last thing Kelsier said to Vin was "You still have some things to learn about friendship, Vin. I hope someday you realize what they are." Dammit Kell. That sounds like you knew you weren't going to be there. Maybe you had already decided that today was the day to get yourself martyred afterall.)
Other Thoughts:
* IF there really is an 11th metal (which I'm skeptical of), then there needs to be a 12th. They come in pairs.
* There is more to gold that Vin currently understands. Gold is disturbing and creepy and no one wants to burn it which also means no one has fully explored it.
* Feruchemisty is going to become important. Vin's experiment with Sazed's metal is going to come back. It could have just happened to answer the question of whether the two can interact (because I was definitely questioning it before it happened) but I will be surprised if it never surfaces again.
* In fact, some combination of Feruchemistry and Allomancy could very well be what lets the Lord Ruler survive things like having a spear run through his chest. Oh Storms. What if the reason he has been so intent on killing Keepers is because there is a way to store their life force in a metal (Gold? If I had to guess it would be gold) and then he can steal that life force by burning the metal. It would be like Allomancy meets Feruchemistry meets Chromatic Breath and the immortality of the Returned in Warbreaker.