Winsting Innate's auction
| Winsting Innate's auction | |
|---|---|
| Participants | Winsting Innate, Paalm, various criminals |
| Effects | Death of Winsting Innate and all his guests |
| City | Elendel |
| World | Scadrial |
| Universe | Cosmere |
Winsting Innate's auction is an event that occurred on Scadrial in 342 PC.[1] It was an auction held by Winsting Innate to sell his senate vote to the highest bidder.[2] Due to an attack by Bleeder, everyone at the auction was killed.[3]
![[1]](#cite_note-House_Record_broadsheet.jpg-1){kind=link}
History
The auction was held at Winsting Innate's mansion and was ostensibly held to auction off a piece of art that Winsting had made, which was clearly worthless. Half of the attendees were corrupt members of noble houses, while the other half included various representatives of Elendel's criminal elements. The attendees had all spent weeks posturing about the meeting, but they showed up since they desired influence in upcoming senate votes. Winsting had intentionally baited Edwarn Ladrian and thought he would attend, but he was not present.[2]
As the party commenced, Winsting was confident that he would receive a large sum of money as a payoff. He chatted with several guests including Hughes Entrone and Dowser Maline, even subtly implying that his brother Replar could also be bought. There was one attendee, a tall woman with short golden hair, that Winsting did not recognize and believed to be a spy.[2]
After the auction had gotten underway, gunfire rang out from various parts of the room almost simultaneously. The attendees started shooting at each other in the confusion. Winsting's guards disagreed on who started shooting first, and thought that it was either Dowser or Darm. However, the initial volley of gunfire in fact came from Paalm, a mad kandra also known as Bleeder. Paalm had used a Feruchemical steelmind to move around the room at superhuman speed while shooting key attendees.[2]
Winsting's guards hustled him into a saferoom downstairs; two guards watched the stairs from outside the door.[2] The shooting continued upstairs, and all of the attendees of the auction were killed.[3] Winsting's began fretting about the fallout to his reputation from the shootout. He allowed one of his guards, Flog, into the saferoom, believing that he could trust him. However, Flog was being impersonated by Paalm. Paalm slit Winsting's throat,[2] then cut out his tongue.[3] She then killed the rest of the guards to cover her tracks.[4]
Aftermath and Investigation
The Elendel broadsheets eagerly covered Winsting's death; the combination of high society members and criminals revealed to be present at the party raised concerns about government corruption.[1][4] The Elendel Daily ran a late edition in order to include additional details about the party and the deceased attendees.[4] Replar was forced to defend his brother's reputation.[5]
Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and the local constabulary came to investigate the disturbance the next day. In looking over the scene, Wax determined that most of the attendees killed each other, but that key attendees were killed all at the same time by someone else. He also noted that Winsting was killed by someone inside the saferoom and that the guards were killed from behind. This led the team to believe that a steelrunner might have been responsible.[3] Steelrunners were rare, and after visiting his grandmother Vwafendal to narrow the list of suspects,[4] Wax deduced that someone had hemalurgically stolen the power from an old acquaintance, Idashwy; her corpse was later found with a spike wound.[5] Harmony also revealed that the killer was a kandra.[6] Wax's investigation eventually led him to Paalm, who revealed that she killed Winsting "because he had to die" as part of her overall plan to sow chaos in Elendel and disrupt Harmony's influence.[7][8] She had cut out his tongue to symbolically represent silencing Harmony's voice.[8]
