In the Mistborn series, the skaa are the peasants of society, relegated to the lowest levels of the social hierarchy.
Origins
The skaa were said to be created by the Lord Ruler. They were descendants of the people who did not support the Lord Ruler during his rise to power. As a result, the Lord Ruler divided the popullation into the nobility (those who supported him), and the skaa (those who did not).
Characteristics
The skaa were bred by the Lord Ruler to be shorter, more fertile, and physically stronger than the nobility. However, years of interbreeding have mitigated many of these effects.
Country skaa seem to be more diligent than the city skaa, according to Lord Tresting’s obligator. The city skaa, generally speaking, steal and form thieving crews to survive. It would be rare for a skaa to travel outside his or her plantation or town as well.
The skaa are generally meek, fearful, and untrusting. They fear the mists due to their folklore, and they have been treated terribly by the nobility. For example, a skaa woman must be killed after a nobleman sleeps with her, following a strange and cruel tradition.
Furthermore, skaa Allomancers are created when noble and skaa blood mix in a person’s heritage. It’s how Kelsier and Vin become Mistborn, both of them having mixed skaa and noble parentage.
The Skaa vs the Nobility
The Nobility looks down at the skaa as nothing more than creatures. They believe them to be an altogether different breed, unable to have the same thoughts, emotions, and desires as a noble-born person.
“It’s amazing the creatures can even survive as thieves…I can’t imagine what kind of incompetent would let himself get robbed by skaa” (1.381).
Furthermore, the nobility are good at disguising their ugly cruelty. As Vin goes to her first ball with the nobility, she notices how they seem so well-kept, well-mannered, as if this somehow makes them unable to commit the atrocious acts they do to the lower classes of skaa.
“Surrounded by the majestic hall, the sharp-suited noblemen looked different somehow. Distinguished. Were these the same creatures that beat her friends and enslaved the skaa? They seemed too…perfect, too well-mannered, for such horrible acts” (1.222).
She aptly notes that their balls are a front, something pretty to distract everyone from the atrocities they commit on a daily basis against the skaa, and it conveniently disguises their plots, schemes, and assassination attempts. To the nobility, nothing is authentic, and everything is a game of politics. They are vain, shallow, and manipulative.
The Skaa, on the other hand, are genuine people who are just trying to survive in a cruel and unforgiving world.
The Skaa and Hope
“Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope” – Sazed (1.495).
Kelsier’s rebellion gives the skaa newfound hope of rising up and defeating their oppressors. However, they had always lived with some level of hope, even before Kelsier came along. As Dockson puts it, “With everything they’ve done to us–the deaths, the tortures, the agonies–you’d think that we would give up on things like hope and love. But we don’t. Skaa still fall in love. They still try to have families, and they still struggle. I mean, here we are…fighting Kell’s insane little war, resisting a god we know is going to slaughter us all” (1.375).
The skaa are a resilient bunch, and they keep hope, even in the face of the worst defeats. After the defeat of the rebels against the Holstep Garrison, for example, a man named Mennis tells Kelsier that just fighting, even without the hope of victory, is enough. He says, “that’s why those lads came to the caves. It wasn’t a matter of winning or lodging, it was a matter of doing something—anything—to struggle against the Lord Ruler” (1.423).
Over the course of The Final Empire, the skaa truly start to believe in Kelsier’s rebellion and rally around him.
“And then the chanting began. The skaa in the surrounding streets began to shout his [Kelsier’s] name. The soldiers looked around, realizing with horror that they were surrounded. The peasants began to press in, and Kelsier could feel their anger and hope” (1.570),
When Kelsier dies, he becomes their martyr and symbol of hope.
“But you can’t kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that thing you’ve never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.” (573)
This concept of hope is central to the church that springs up around Kelsier after his death, the Church of the Survivor. It becomes the skaa’s rallying point and a part of their shared culture. However, they face many challenges when they lose not only their rebellious leader, Kelsier himself, but also their authority figure, the Lord Ruler. Despite being their oppressor, the skaa become lost without him.
The Skaa After the Rebellion – Living in a Post-Kelsier World
In the wake of Keslier’s rebellion, the thieving crew and the skaa both come to realize that governing in a post-revolutionary world is much more difficult than winning the revolution itself. It’s much easier to lead a revolution and win it than govern what you’ve won afterwards.
The skaa, as a people, typically only care about survival. They are not angry about injustice. And they struggle with change. All of this creates major challenges for the new government Elend tries to implement in The Well of Ascension. This challenge of governing is quite apparent at one of the Assembly meetings, where Elend notes:
“They didn’t mix. Noblemen spoke with noblemen, merchants with merchants, skaa workers with other skaa workers. They seemed so fragmented, so obstinate. The simplest proposals sometimes met with arguments that could take hours” (2.104).
Winning a rebellion might’ve been easy enough, but uniting disparate groups against a new foe proves to be difficult here.
Doubt
After Kelsier’s rebellion, the skaa question whether or not their lives were better under the Lord Ruler.
When Sazed is burying a farmer who dies a mysterious death in the Eastern Dominance, for example, a woman asks him when the Lord Ruler is coming back and why he abandoned them.
Sazed tries to show them a prayer of their ancestors, but they are not particularly fond of it (2.39). They don’t seem to care for Sazed educating them and teaching them to read and write, and they don’t have a place for tales from the past.
This new government, the sense of unfamiliarity, and the anxiety of the unknown cause several problems for the common skaa:
“Vin could see the signs of anxiety reflected in the city. Workers milled anxiously and markets bustled with an edge of concern—showing the same apprehension one might see in a cornered rodent. Frightened, but not sure what to do. Doomed with nowhere to run” (2.40).
They are unsure of what to do without the Lord Ruler anymore.
“We have cast off the Lord Ruler. What do we do now?” (2.44).
In Urbene, the village that has been apparently massacred by the daytime mists, its sole survivor asks Sazed why the Lord Ruler had abandoned them, where he had gone. When Sazed responds that the Lord Ruler was a tyrant, the man says, “He loved us. He ruled us. Now that he’s gone, the mists can kill us. They hate us” (2.175).
This raises the question of whether or not oppression is better if it means that stability comes with it. Or, is freedom better, despite bringing instability and chaos? In this new world the skaa experience, they struggle with this very dilemma.
As always, survival is at the top of their minds. Without Kelsier, they look to new sources of hope, like Vin and Sazed. After all, theirs is the story of hope.
