In the Mistborn series, the koloss are blue, brutish, fighting giants. They were both created by the Lord Ruler and are controlled by him. They are his more serious troops, with Luthadel’s city guard being only second to them.
Appearance
In The Well of Ascension, the Koloss are described as having deep blue skin, and varying in height, being anywhere from five feet tall to ten feet or more.
Growth
Throught their lives, the koloss never stop growing. They simply continue to get bigger as they age, until their hearts can no longer support them. Then they die, killed by their own growth (2.217).
In fact, most of the koloss’ bodies give out before they reach twenty years of age. The more “ancient” creatures, however, will grow to a height of twelve feet tall, with “stocky, powerful bodies.” And, although their bodies continue to grow, their skin does not, so that they essentially look like a person wearing a mask made of skin (2.218).
“The oddest feature was its blue skin, which hung loose and folded. The creature looked like a fat man might, had all his fat been drained away, leaving the stretched skin behind” (2.218).
Clothing
The koloss wear only loincloths, and they carry pouches around with them at all times.
Gender
There are no female koloss, only men. Or, rather, they all just look like men. This fact is never clarified.
We do know that rather than reproducing, the koloss constantly refill their numbers by ransacking villages and taking the human bodies they kill to build more koloss (3.367).
Behavior
The koloss are known as dull, simple-minded, and aggressive creatures.
“It’s like they only have two emotions…they’re either indifferent or enraged” (2.222).
Fighting
When Sazed first encounters the koloss in The Well of Ascension, he finds that they are constantly fighting one another, and that they fight bluntly, not attacking one another with skill, but simply throwing themselves at their opponents with little thought of tactics.
In The Hero of Ages, Lord Fatren notes how they fight without any coordination between individuals, and if a koloss’s comrade is in trouble, they won’t bother to help (3.16). Furthermore, they attack directly, without guile, and try to use blunt force to overwhelm.
Strength
The koloss respect strength only, and if you drop the biggest beast among them, they will give you their obedience.
“Even in the midst of the blood fury, they were shocked to see her drop such an enormous beast with only a kick…in an ordinary koloss army, what she’d done would have earned her the obedience of every creature that had watched her” (3.32).
Fear
The koloss never retreat; even though they feel fear, they never act on it. Fear still weakens them, however.
Intelligence
Although the koloss are described as dumb and dull, they do have some basic human recognition skills. Sazed even notes that they are smarter than most give them credit for. Of them, he remarks:
“They can recognize the abstract value of coins, though they have no economy. They can see that they’ll need tools to break down our doors, though they don’t know how to make those tools” (2.670).
How the Koloss View Themselves
Many of the koloss think of themselves as humans. For example, one of them says to Elend:
“You think we are koloss…we are humans. We will live in your city. We will kill you, and we will take it” (2.531).
Human
There is one koloss, in fact, that names itself “Human.” Vin keeps this koloss close to her and under her control. She tells the koloss that it isn’t human, however, and that it’s something else. However, the koloss tells her that “we will kill you. Take your cities. Then we will be human” (3.80).
Of course, it is later revealed that the koloss were at one point humans, and they have vague memories of their past lives.
Koloss and Hemalurgy
In The Hero of Ages, we learn that the koloss were created from humans, and that hemalurgic spikes hold their skin in place.
Because of these hemalurgic spikes, they were able to be controlled by the Lord Ruler for so many years. Vin learns that they can be controlled by allomancy as well, and regularly takes control of them to win battles in the second and third Mistborn novels.
Elend learns how to control them as well, and he notes that he can only get them to do vague, basic actions:
“Controlling the koloss wasn’t a subtle thing—their minds were too dull for much beyond simple commands. He could order them to attack, or to freeze, or to follow and carry things. But he couldn’t direct them precisely, couldn’t tell them to speak a message, or instruct them how to accomplish a goal. He could only say ‘Do this’ and watch them go” (3.574).
In essence, the koloss are men reduced to their most based emotions through the practice of hemalurgy.
