[M:Secret History Spoilers] Drifter

[RShara]

Moogle Hoid also says he's ineffective at hurting people in Words of Radiance.

 

“No need for that,” the man [Hoid] said, settling onto a rock. “You needn’t fear me. I’m terribly ineffective at hurting people. I blame my upbringing.”

When talking to Shallan in one of her flashbacks

[nervousnerd]

More and more I'm beginning to suspect that Hoid is not the "good guy" we perceive him to be.

Or rather, he's not the good guy from the viewpoint of all our protagonists across cosmere novels.

From this book we learn that he was present around the breaking of Adonaslium, but did not participate. In fact, it seemed as though he was on good terms with some of the original 16. But they decided to kill/rip apart Adonalsium, and he did not.

If Hoid is a "good guy" his goals should be simple to place (even if they still are wrapped in mystery/subtlety/obscurity,): 

Help people.

After all, almost all "good guys" break down to that simple point somehow.

Even complex, brilliant, world-spanning good-guys, whose plans are above comprehension, want to "do good."

This doesn't strike me as Hoid.

For my money, this guy is "doing good" as he sees it, trying to restore balance to the  Force  Cosmere as he sees it.

For someone who was there at the shattering, and has shown on numerous occasions not to be "aligned" with even the "good" Shards...

He's trying to restore Adonalsium. 

That means the entire cosmere, as it stands today, with all its planets and peoples with all their hopes and dreams, will stop existing. Restoration of Adonalsium means undoing everything that has happened since its fracturing. Destruction of the Cosmere. Or rather, Reparation of the Cosmere; taking all these broken bits and shards and fixing them so as if it had never been broken. The cease of Roshar, Scadrial, Nalthis, Taldain and all those protagonists we know and love.

Ohh, he thinks he's a good guy. Villains never believe they're wrong. But from our view? Self-serving, greater-good focused, ends-justify-the-means, Antagonist.

 

But if Hoid wanted to bring back Adonalsium then wouldn't he actively try to bring about the end of planets that were formed by Shards? So far he seems to be doing the opposite? That may just be to ensure he has help to oppose Odium but the connections really aren't there for that.

[yurisses]

Question

Finally, and most importantly, if all your protagonists had an epic all out brawl, who would win?

Brandon Sanderson

Some of them are immortal, but that would kind of be cheating. If you let people who are immortal participate, it's going to very much favor someone like Hoid, who is really, really, really hard to kill. Of course, he would not be very good at offing anyone either, because of certain things in his past. It would be really futile when it got down to the last two. But if we take that out.

You'd have to set ground rules. Do they get access to their magic? Where is it taking place? If we take away all magic and we just say people are beating up on each other, who's going to win? It's probably Kelsier because he'll fight dirty. Vasher fights really dirty, too. If Kelsier and Vasher gang up on the rest, and then it depends who's still not in pieces at the end. It'd be Kelsier or Vasher probably.

(source)

[Galavantes]

Hoid isn't a bad guy in that he's not straight up evil. He doesn't enjoy people suffering and he HAS helped our protagonists from time to time. But he has also said that he would let Roshar burn if it furthered his goals. It's not a question of "good or bad". He is just highly dedicated to his end goal, what ever that turns out to actually be.

[Zmann966]

But if Hoid wanted to bring back Adonalsium then wouldn't he actively try to bring about the end of planets that were formed by Shards? So far he seems to be doing the opposite? That may just be to ensure he has help to oppose Odium but the connections really aren't there for that.

I feel like destruction (and Odium's shattering) would be contrary to bringing back Adonalsium. The worst way to repair something is to break it further.

If anything that also describes his perspectives. If his goal is to restore Adonalsium, it would be in his best interests to collect all the shards in an attempt to fuse them back together. Gaining powers and "Connecting" to all of them might be the first step to doing so.

 

See the problem with "not being good or bad" and "serving only your own goals" as everyone is mentioning, is that means yes, you're a bad guy.

You may not be "evil" but it also means you put yourself above others, don't care what happens as long as you get your way, and are plotting to reach your goals no matter the cost...

Sounds familiar? Yeah that's a bad guy to me. Especially if those costs mean the end of the cosmere as it stands today. After all, Ati was simply serving the intent of his Shard, yet we take no problem labeling him as the bad guy of Mistborn.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Zmann966

[VoltCruelerz]

I'm honestly not sure what to think of Hoid's motives.  I suspect that he somehow abandoned the others of the 16.  Leras does call him an old friend after all.  If he'd tried betraying them, I suspect we would have heard Leras grow angry when talking about him, yet he didn't.  That said, the fact that the Shards have somehow locked down his ability to harm people suggests something very interesting, but I wish I knew what it was.

 

Rebuilding Adonalsium doesn't strike me as possible.  The way it's talked about, Shattering seems to be a pretty permanent act.  I doubt anyone could ever reassemble Devotion, Dominion, and Honor, no matter how hard they tried.  Another idea I had was that Hoid might actually be trying to shatter all the Shards to make the Cosmere completely devoid of gods, believing the idea of higher beings to be intrinsically wrong or something.  That would explain why he would help shatter Adonalsium yet would be on the bad side of several people at this point.  

 

Unlike the 17th Shard, he seems to utterly ignore the prime directive.  From Secret History, we know there are dozens of inhabited worlds, not just the dozen Shardworlds.  Most of those are probably very technologically advanced so the political situation in the Cosmere is probably far more complicated than we realize.  I'm still not totally convinced that Adonalsium wasn't just an Artificial Super Intelligence the people of Yolen built.

 

I do have one weird theory about Hoid though...  I saw earlier that someone had once seen a WoB saying that Hoid was his favorite character for spoilery reasons.  What if Hoid is Adonalsium, or rather its former Vessel?  Being God incarnate would explain the absurd difficulty of killing him and would provide justification for the Shards to lock down his power as well as reason for the Worldhoppers to chase him around the Cosmere, preventing him from meddling in things.  On top of that, as God, it makes sense that he would be a meddler.  Perhaps he wanted to escape the responsibility of being Adonalsium and contracted them to shatter his power so he could go relax only to find that they sucked at the job.  Maybe it wasn't so much that he was ever actually shattered as he just delegated all his powers away.  Sanderson did say Hoid was terrible at avoiding things that were bad for him...

Edited January 31, 2016 by VoltCruelerz

[Sand Master]

I feel like destruction (and Odium's shattering) would be contrary to bringing back Adonalsium. The worst way to repair something is to break it further.

If anything that also describes his perspectives. If his goal is to restore Adonalsium, it would be in his best interests to collect all the shards in an attempt to fuse them back together. Gaining powers and "Connecting" to all of them might be the first step to doing so.

 

See the problem with "not being good or bad" and "serving only your own goals" as everyone is mentioning, is that means yes, you're a bad guy.

You may not be "evil" but it also means you put yourself above others, don't care what happens as long as you get your way, and are plotting to reach your goals no matter the cost...

Sounds familiar? Yeah that's a bad guy to me. Especially if those costs mean the end of the cosmere as it stands today. After all, Ati was simply serving the intent of his Shard, yet we take no problem labeling him as the bad guy of Mistborn.

 

I actually don't consider Ati/Ruin the bad guy of Mistborn. On my first read through, I did, but now it's more of a gray area. As he says, if he wasn't there, everything would be frozen as Preservation wanted. No thought, no change, no growth. Death is a natural part of life, as Ruin says. He's just playing his part in that, and so are we. "We" in this case refers to the characters in Mistborn of course. Death is natural. Everything has to end. Ruin is not wrong here. BUT that doesn't mean that we are supposed to accept it. We fight death in any way we can, because we want to live. There's no right or wrong. It's just two different parties that want different things. One wins, one loses, but there's no objective right or wrong. We just relate more with the humans in this case because we have more in common and because their characters are more important to us.

[Lupis]

Does anyone think Demoux is hunting Hoid on Roshar on Kelsier's orders?

That would imply Kel is running the 17th shard...

 

Off topic but I'd like to believe Spook became a world hopper as well, after their little chat at the end. Not seen anything in any of the books yet to indicate he did, but it would be nice.

[nervousnerd]

I feel like destruction (and Odium's shattering) would be contrary to bringing back Adonalsium. The worst way to repair something is to break it further.

If anything that also describes his perspectives. If his goal is to restore Adonalsium, it would be in his best interests to collect all the shards in an attempt to fuse them back together. Gaining powers and "Connecting" to all of them might be the first step to doing so.

Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. But Hoid doesn't seem interested in holding the shards to me. I mean he could certainly have gotten to at least Preservation with his sense of timing. Maybe he doesn't want a bigger target on his back just yet though.

 

Rebuilding Adonalsium doesn't strike me as possible.  The way it's talked about, Shattering seems to be a pretty permanent act.  I doubt anyone could ever reassemble Devotion, Dominion, and Honor, no matter how hard they tried.  Another idea I had was that Hoid might actually be trying to shatter all the Shards to make the Cosmere completely devoid of gods, believing the idea of higher beings to be intrinsically wrong or something.  That would explain why he would help shatter Adonalsium yet would be on the bad side of several people at this point.  

I'm not sure about that. I mean if Harmony can form then what would happen if someone got all 16 shards? Would that be the same power as Adonalsium?

 

That would imply Kel is running the 17th shard...

 

Off topic but I'd like to believe Spook became a world hopper as well, after their little chat at the end. Not seen anything in any of the books yet to indicate he did, but it would be nice.

 

Meaning he created it or just that he is the leader? While I suspect Kelsier left to find something to do after being 'The Sovereign,' I find it unlikely that the 17th Shard is only ~350 years old. Not saying he isn't involved in it though.

[Lupis]

 

Meaning he created it or just that he is the leader? While I suspect Kelsier left to find something to do after being 'The Sovereign,' I find it unlikely that the 17th Shard is only ~350 years old. Not saying he isn't involved in it though.

Running, he is a crew leader after all, but I'd assume the organisation itself is much older. It does make an odd kind of sense and it wasn't something I'd ever have considered before Night Eyes post.

[Zmann966]

I actually don't consider Ati/Ruin the bad guy of Mistborn. On my first read through, I did, but now it's more of a gray area. As he says, if he wasn't there, everything would be frozen as Preservation wanted. No thought, no change, no growth. Death is a natural part of life, as Ruin says. He's just playing his part in that, and so are we. "We" in this case refers to the characters in Mistborn of course. Death is natural. Everything has to end. Ruin is not wrong here. BUT that doesn't mean that we are supposed to accept it. We fight death in any way we can, because we want to live. There's no right or wrong. It's just two different parties that want different things. One wins, one loses, but there's no objective right or wrong. We just relate more with the humans in this case because we have more in common and because their characters are more important to us.

Who would you call the ultimate antagonist of Mistborn then? If not the godly mastermind directly opposing our protagonists?

No what I'm saying is that no bad guys thinks they're bad. They simply have goals perpendicular to the "heroes" of our story. And usually they have less moral restriction than our protagonists. This, to me, describes Hoid perfectly. Sure his methods align with our protagonists (in almost every example excluding Secret History) but remember: this is Brandon Sanderson. The guy behind the greatest foreshadowing and reveals of our time.

If Hoid turns out to be little more than a "good guy" running around trying to "save" the cosmere, I'm going to be a little disappointed.

[Charononus]

Who would you call the ultimate antagonist of Mistborn then? If not the godly mastermind directly opposing our protagonists?

No what I'm saying is that no bad guys thinks they're bad. They simply have goals perpendicular to the "heroes" of our story. And usually they have less moral restriction than our protagonists. This, to me, describes Hoid perfectly. Sure his methods align with our protagonists (in almost every example excluding Secret History) but remember: this is Brandon Sanderson. The guy behind the greatest foreshadowing and reveals of our time.

If Hoid turns out to be little more than a "good guy" running around trying to "save" the cosmere, I'm going to be a little disappointed.

This is a hard one.  Ruin was definitely the antagonist,  but he wasn't evil.  The bad guy has evil connotations most of the time.  That may be what's going on here.

[Maya]

I don't get this "Is he good or bad" obsession here. Especially when it comes down to Hoid. We have a guy who witnessed (if not involved) the takedown of a God, the rise of 16 smaller gods, hops from planet to planet or from one realm to another and lived thousands of years.

Talk about oversimplification.

Not to mention that what's considered good and bad on one place may not be the same on others and it also changes with time so whose understanding of moraility can be applied to a guy moving through worlds for ages?

[Zmann966]

I don't get this "Is he good or bad" obsession here. Especially when it comes down to Hoid. We have a guy who witnessed (if not involved) the takedown of a God, the rise of 16 smaller gods, hops from planet to planet or from one realm to another and lived thousands of years.

Talk about oversimplification.

Not to mention that what's considered good and bad on one place may not be the same on others and it also changes with time so whose understanding of moraility can be applied to a guy moving through worlds for ages?

 

Normally I want to agree with you. Especially when it comes to storytelling, the best thing to keep in mind is "Everyone had their own life. No one is a 2-Dimensional paper cut out character."

However, I've come to learn that people CAN be completely described in  a few words. Everyone has a motive, or agenda; a goal is behind every decision and choice people make. Usually it can all be traced down to one or two simple truths.

For instance: most people's life (here, on Earth, in the USA) revolves around "Make money to survive." and "Get more time to have fun."

Mine, for examples is: "Keep my wife happy" and "Constantly strive to produce better films." 

Yes, people are complex and confusing and full of little quirks and oddities.

But people can also be simplified into a few base desires and goals.

"Good" and "Bad" are simply an adjective we put on these people based on perception... But... They're also good summaries to define people.

Hoid? He's definitely not what we suspect. I have a feeling Brandon is pulling the wool over all our eyes.

[Maya]

I get that. We read words on paper and then we have characters becoming alive and very real in our minds. I just wanted to point out that when it comes to Hoid, good or bad are not the summaries that I'd choose first to define him.

 

No, the first i see is aim, purpose, goal. I'm trying to imagine how one lives for thousands of years and doesn't go insane. One who's been around even before Adonalsium was shattered. Sure, we have also the 16 who did it (some of them anyway) but there is impossible to separate the person from the Shard. The very power they hold molds and defines them, gives them both the means and the meaning of their interractions with life and worlds. So what does Hoid have that could carry him through the ages, what is this goal that is so powerful that not only sustains his existance but drives him to be so very active (because he has been very active on so many different places), pushing at the right moments people and events towards yet unknown end.

 

My curiosity would have a field day with his backstory (wishful thinking here )

Edited February 1, 2016 by Maya

[Jke]

I actually found the interaction between Hoid and Kelsier slightly off. It was great, don't get me wrong. Still, in my mind, they are very much alike. They are both survivors when they have no real right to be. They are both cunning and intelligent planners. I know Hoid has his backstory and plot pushing him forward, but I thought Kelsier and Hoid would make a great team.

 

I haven't read the unpublished work, however, it would be interesting to see if Hoid was a real person who his master made a representation of and the representation then gained sentience. Or if he was an idea first and then gave life. Either way, you could almost say he and Kelsier are opposites at their meeting. Hoid was an idea given form; Kelsier was a body that became an idea. Interesting. 

 

As an aside, I don't know why Hoid didn't recruit Kelsier (or anybody else for that matter). Hoid seems to go-it-alone quite a bit. That might be necessary for his plans and for hiding. Kinda bumming me out though. I'd like a Hoid story sooner than later. 

[TwelfthOfSnackTime]

I actually found the interaction between Hoid and Kelsier slightly off. It was great, don't get me wrong. Still, in my mind, they are very much alike. They are both survivors when they have no real right to be. They are both cunning and intelligent planners. I know Hoid has his backstory and plot pushing him forward, but I thought Kelsier and Hoid would make a great team.

 

I haven't read the unpublished work, however, it would be interesting to see if Hoid was a real person who his master made a representation of and the representation then gained sentience. Or if he was an idea first and then gave life. Either way, you could almost say he and Kelsier are opposites at their meeting. Hoid was an idea given form; Kelsier was a body that became an idea. Interesting. 

 

As an aside, I don't know why Hoid didn't recruit Kelsier (or anybody else for that matter). Hoid seems to go-it-alone quite a bit. That might be necessary for his plans and for hiding. Kinda bumming me out though. I'd like a Hoid story sooner than later. 

 

 

I see Hoid and Kell as opposites that are the same. Kell began to hate Hoid the moment he saw an insufferable smile. The way I read it Kell doesn't like seeing someone who is so much like him. As the saying goes, "The qualities we most hate in others are usually qualities we ourselves have" or something like that. They both use charm and wit to control situations.

But like Jke says above they are essentially opposites as well. What a juicy contradiction!

I can't wait to see where this rivalry will take us.

[Shardbearer]

Yeah, Hoid and Kelsier are two similar characters who ended up butting heads. That often makes for the best kind of conflict.

[RShara]

Too similar to like each other, too different to get along.

[WayneSpren]

I love how we finally know why Vin didn't approach Hoid on that night in Fadrex.

Also, when Kelsier was 'shocked', Hoid was humming. Perhaps his humming had something to do with Kelsier's injury?

[Ted aka WinespringBrother]

Perhaps Hoid's restriction on harming is related to the KR's oath "Life before Death". Rock did say that "other gods" keep him from harming others, and he worships Syl almost like a god, so perhaps there is a spren involved - and considering how many forms of investiture Hoid has access to, it wouldn't be so surprising if he had a bond as well.

[RandomSpeculation]

Ati/Ruin was certainly the antagonist of Mistborn Era 1, however like almost all well done antagonists he has personal motivations that move him.  Think Magneto from x-men, he does some bad things, but is moving towards a understandable goal   Equal rights for mutants and having them not be treated like government experiments.  

 

Hoid's motivations, whatever they are, are certainly complex.  Calling him a "good guy" or "bad guy" is going to depend on which character from the cosmere you ask.  The idea that his ultimate goal is the shattering of all shards to end "godhood" is interesting, but his letter from SA seems to imply he thought the shattering of Aona and Skai was a bad thing.  That could just be a ploy to try and gain a powerful(dragon? I haven't read any of the unreleased stuff) ally in his fight against Rayse, who is one character we can say for sure is Hoid's enemy.  

[baby]

If Hoid literally cannot harm other people, why would he take the time to learn fighting skills to the point where he is easily able to best Kelsier, who was one of the best fighters in the series?

Edited February 6, 2016 by Onceler

[Rasarr]

If Hoid literally cannot harm other people, why would he take the time to learn fighting skills to the point where he is easily able to best Kelsier, who was one of the best fighters in the series?

 

Perhaps his fighting skill was one of the factors in why he was made unable to harm? Something like "not only is this guy magical in the extreme, but even if we take away his means to do magic, he'd still be able to wreck our **** , better make him unable to do that". He might continue to practice in hopes that at some point, the ban on hurting will be lifted.

[skaa]

I bet Hoid's home base contains a gym complete with assorted punching bags and wooden dummies.