The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson

I think that the koloss were more intelligent than we wanted to give them credit for being. For instance, originally they used only spikes the Lord Ruler gave them to make new members. He would provide the metal and the unfortunate skaa captives, and the koloss would create new “recruits.” At the Lord Ruler’s death, the koloss should quickly have died out. This was how he had designed them. If they got free from his control, he expected them to kill themselves off and end their rampage. However, they somehow deduced that spikes in the bodies of fallen koloss could be harvested, then reused. They then no longer required a fresh supply of spikes. I often wonder what effect the constant reuse of spikes had on their population. A spike can only hold so much of a Hemalurgic imbuement, so they could not create spikes that granted infinite strength, no matter how many people those spikes killed and drew power from. But did the repeated reuse of spikes perhaps bring more humanity to the koloss they made?