In the Mistborn series, Luthadel is the capital city of the Final Empire and home to the Lord Ruler and his towering palace, called Kredik Shaw.
Economics
Luthadel’s main export is metal, as the city is home to hundreds of forges and refineries. However, the surgings of the river also provide an excellent location for mills, both to grind grains and make textiles for export.
Atmosphere
Luthadel is known to be kind of spooky at night.
“At night, however, the mists came to blur and obscure. High noble keeps became ghostly, looming silhouettes. Streets seemed to grow more narrow in the fog, every thoroughfare becoming a lonely, dangerous alleyway. Even noblemen and thieves were apprehensive about going out at night…it was a land of swirling mystery and strange creatures” (1.87).
It is also known to be oppressive and dreary. At one point, Vin remarks that the city actually seems brighter at night than it does during the day.
“Buildings were stained by countless, repetitive ashfalls. Air curled with smoke from the infamous Luthadel smithies and a thousand separate noble kitchens. Cobblestones, doorways, and corners were clogged with soot–the slums were rarely swept clean” (1.185).
Character
Luthadel is made up of tons of oppressed workers, beggars, people starving, wandering the streets, mixed in with squads of garrison town guards. It’s a massive, sprawling city. Every few decades or so, new sections get added, and the city wall is expanded through the sweat and effort of skaa labor. Covering the city from end to end are several tall skaa tenements.
“Two streets over from Clubs’s shop, there was a building of unusual height compared with those surrounding it. It was some kind of tenement, Vin thought—a place to pack skaa families. She’d never been inside it, however” (1.532).
According to Ham, it’s “the dirtiest, most crowded city in the Final Empire. But there’s also something about it…” (1.402).
People
Luthadel has an interesting mix of poor and wealthy inhabitants. For the wealthy, the balls of the nobility are one of the prime reasons they come to visit the city. For the less fortunate, however, the city has a distinct underground culture.
This underground network is made up of two distinct groups of people: one group is made up of regular crews, like Camon’s. The other side of Luthadel’s underground is made up of special groups, composed of the extremely skillful, the extremely foolhardy, or the extremely talented – i.e., the Allomancers.
Serving as the cultural center of the Final Empire, Luthadel represents the greater world of the Mistborn novels – one that is dominated by wealth inequality and rugged thieves who are just trying to get by in a world of ash and metal.
