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Calthrop

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So with the information given in BoM I think it can be safely said that Iyatil is most likely from Southern Scadrial, the Hunter Clan specifically.  The description of Iyatil's mask and the description of Hunter's masks growing into their faces are too close to ignore, plus Iyatil's whole fixation on everything being about a hunter/prey relationship.  This isn't going too far as an assumption, I think.

 

With the advent of Bands, though, we now know what kind of magical capabilities Iyatil may have given her background (if any).  I am of course referring to the medallions and their ability to grant a feruchemical power.  While there are complexities here that I will not be getting into, I'm sure Sharders will come up with some interesting uses of those.  Maybe what comes later in this post will be related, maybe not.

 

I want to go back to something I've been pondering since WoR, observations about Iyatil in particular that I haven't seen discussed.  Now is a good time to bring these up.  I'll go back and add page numbers for the quotes later on if anyone is interested in them.

 

The question this post considers is does Iyatil have a magical capability, and if so, do we have anything in the published materials that could hint at it's nature?  I'm going strictly by published information here, not rampant speculation, so let's take a look at Words of Radiance (WoR).

 

In WoR, consider the first scene we see Iyatil.  Shallon finds a room full of Ghostbloods under the apartment.  She says nothing about anyone with a mask, though, and we know she was nervous and took a good look around. Then, all of a sudden, Iyatil appears right next to her during her talk with Mraize.  Odd that she doesn't notice a person wearing what she later describes a "disturbing" mask, and that such a person basically came up on top of her, I think.  But perhaps, you say, intoning Lift, Iyatil is just good at sneaky-stuff like that.

 

Then Shallan leaves the apartment.  I will point out to you first that Pattern is the only person who sees Iyatil during the following chase-and-evade sequence.  Shallan hears something 'like fabric' while hiding, but never actually gets a look at Iyatil after she leaves the apartment.  See, a person wearing a mask like Iyatil's out in the War Camps will probably be pretty noticeable in general.  You could easily send folks around inquiring about such oddities, and learn some of her movements, the kind of thing a woman like Iyatil would not likely care for.  Being easily tracked.  So rolling out with a creepy carapace mask stuck to your face in a War Camp aligned against Parshmen who wear carapace armor is probably an occurrence Iyatil would avoid at all costs if it would be remarked upon.  You say again she is sneaky-folk, and can stroll down busy streets with no one noticing.  I say people wouldn't notice her following them like they wouldn't notice a Chasmfiend giving chase. You say hoods-up and shadows, sneaky-sneak-sneak.

 

The next Ghostblood sequence is at the camp outside of the Unclaimed Hills.  Shallan arrives, looks around.  No notice of Iyatil in the group she finds.  She talks to Mraize a bit, he tortures small animals during conversation to impress everyone.  Bam!  Iyatil appears standing RIGHT THERE holding the mink-thing Mraize just shot. Shallan even asks herself this time, "where was this woman hiding?"  Hmmm.  Sneaky-sneak, in the bushes you say?  Maybe she is just good at crouching, Elder Scrolls-style?  Chameleon robe?. ; )

 

On to the scene where Shallan waits at the info drop in the tree; she realizes they are watching the tree as well and decides check around for suspicious folk. She then sends Pattern to see if anyone is watching, and Pattern returns saying he found Iyatil in the building.  After that Shallan hides on the stairs and catches her leaving the building.  Aha, you say!  So nothing to all of this!  I'm not buying it.  The first thing Iyatil says to Shallan?  "How did you find me?"  The answer Shallan gives?  Shallan just had some random person watching the building, and thus summarily defeated Sneak-Master Mask heads up.  Iyatil is thus stymied by a simple old lookout.  Just keep in mind it was actually Pattern who did the initial spotting again, so it was really a spren lookout, who can easily see past the Physical Realm. Then the pair go adventuring to the insane asylum, looking for Taln. 

 

After showing Iyatil to the Ardents, who immediately freak out at the sight of her, Shallan finds Taln.  As she goes to leave, Iyatil asks Shallan,  "Who are you, Veil?  You caught me in stealth spying upon you, and you can lose me in the streets."  These things lead Iyatil to think Shallan is something special.  Iyatil isn't talking you-are-good-at-hiding-in-an-alley special.  Nor smart-enough-to-use-a-lookout special.  This is join our secret world-hopping group with lots of magical artifacts, special.  

 

The last time we see Iyatil in WoR, she takes a few pot shots at Amaram from just outside the hole he cut in the small cell Taln is in, as he attempts to sneak Taln out.  We conveniently know that the blow-darts don't have much range from an earlier conversation between Shallan and Mraize.  Amaram definitely describes Iyatil here and she is pretty close.  Taln grabs the darts, Amaram hops out, giving chase (we know the cell is small, so this wouldn't take long).  No suspicous mask-wearing folks in sight!  Yet another odd occurrence to add to our pile!

 

There is something in all of this, I think.  

 

My ideas follow, and I'll be interested to hear yours.  I've tried hard to build a case here that at least we have a series of unusual occurrences here that cannot be explained away by Iyatil being simply very sneaky, or by Shallan becoming a master of intrigue.  

 

I find it highly likely that Iyatil is either using Southern Scadrial magic to conceal herself or has some method of hiding herself in the Cognitive Realm.  A magical method of concealment would certainly be attractive to a hunter who spends her life stalking prey.  Also, we have hints that she is a worldhopper, and we know that using the Cognitive Realm is a common method of doing such hopping, so perhaps there is a connection there with her apparent ability to conceal herself.  Were Iyatil in fact 'hiding' somehow in the Cognitive Realm when stalking Shallan on the streets, I would guess that Pattern would spot her right away whereas beings in the Physical Realm may look right over her.  Same situation when she was, in her own words, "in stealth."

 

Now that we have a likely candidate for Iyatil's background and know a bit about her people's native magical capabilities, perhaps this can yield some interesting conversations.  I'm really interested to hear what you have to say, so thanks in advance for reading all of this!  

Edited by Calthrop
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BRANDON SANDERSON (PARAPHRASED)

Yes, he's been to a few planets, highly supervised by his babsk.

QUESTION (PARAPHRASED)

So what planet is she [Iyatil] from?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Well, that's kind of a hard thing to say. She has three planets she's "from". For example, she's living now on Roshar, but then she's from a different planet, but that's not the planet that her people are from.

QUESTION (PARAPHRASED)

So there was a mass exodus to that planet?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Not exactly. If you were to find a Japanese American, where would they say that they are from? Her people did not have a mass exodus.

QUESTION (PARAPHRASED)

Have we seen mass exoduses before?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, there are some in the cosmere. There's a mass exodus that is mentioned in one of the interludes in The Way of Kings.

 

 

This WoB confirms that she is a worldhopper, and I say it's safe to assume that she's from Southern Scadrial. And since that magic technology is pretty commonplace, I'd say it's safe to assume that she has brought it over. However, I don't know of any metals that could hide her in the cognitive realm. Perhaps she is just using feruchemical speed?

Edited by Khyrindor
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As a moderator note, please keep thread titles for Bands and Secret History very very vague. The original title of this thread, "Iyatil", is past the threshold for what is considered unacceptable.

Apologies Moogle.  Thanks for the help.

 

Edit:  After a word with Moogle, changed the title to be "About a Hunter."  Thanks again Moogle.

Edited by Calthrop
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This WoB confirms that she is a worldhopper, and I say it's safe to assume that she's from Southern Scadrial. And since that magic technology is pretty commonplace, I'd say it's safe to assume that she has brought it over. However, I don't know of any metals that could hide her in the cognitive realm. Perhaps she is just using feruchemical speed?

 

I was thinking either identity, connection, or one of the other less-understood feruchemical metals might do it when you consider the new medallion paradigm.  In any case it's quite a powerful thing to consider, hiding yourself in the Physical Realm.  Crazy to think she was doing this all the way through Words of Radiance and we didn't notice!  Great writing on Brandon's part to use perspective like this to hide what she might have been doing.

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I was thinking either identity, connection, or one of the other less-understood feruchemical metals might do it when you consider the new medallion paradigm.

 Yeah, it's gotta be Connection. I guess this thread got moved over here from the other spoiler board, but I posted there about filling your metalmind with Connection and becoming unnoticeable.

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Well, that's kind of a hard thing to say. She has three planets she's "from". For example, she's living now on Roshar, but then she's from a different planet, but that's not the planet that her people are from.

 

 

This seems to imply that she may not have actually spent all that much time on Scadrial; i.e., her people are from Scadrial (and yes, probably the Hunters) but she herself is from somewhere else (grew up on a different planet? born on a different planet?) so she could very well be using a non-Scadrial magic system.

 

I think there is definitely something supernatural about her stealth capabilities though, nice catch on that.

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The Hunter culture doesn't seem like something an immigrant would be likely to pick up. It's just too extreme. If they were going to start wearing masks to fit in, they would probably just assimilate into one of the more moderate cultures there. The opposite, moving somewhere but maintaining the mask wearing, seems more likely. Yes, it would be really weird in most cultures, but they are hardcore about their masks.

 

The Hunters grow into their masks. This suggests that they don't change masks much, and that they get their permanent mask before they're finished growing (but probably not when they're extremely young). Because of that, Iyatil must have gotten her carapace mask on the planet that she grew up on. That would not be Scadrial. There doesn't seem to be anything on the planet that would yield such a material.

 

Roshar does have the necessary fauna to provide the carapace, but that doesn't work. By the time she came to Roshar, she would certainly already have had her permanent mask.

 

My conclusion, therefore, is that her people are Scadrian Hunters, she grew up (and perhaps was born) on a different world--one that has creatures similar to those on Roshar, insofar as they have carapace--and now she is on Roshar.

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I took it to mean that her family had moved onto Scadrial, and she grew up around the mask thing. Even if her parent's didn't do it, she might have wanted to do it to fit in as a child. Because she would definitely not have fit in wearing a mask as a child on some planet that wasn't Scadrial.

 

I suppose the connection works as well, or maybe it's something cool and un-explored with allomantic copper. 

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The Hunter culture doesn't seem like something an immigrant would be likely to pick up. It's just too extreme. If they were going to start wearing masks to fit in, they would probably just assimilate into one of the more moderate cultures there. The opposite, moving somewhere but maintaining the mask wearing, seems more likely. Yes, it would be really weird in most cultures, but they are hardcore about their masks.

 

The Hunters grow into their masks. This suggests that they don't change masks much, and that they get their permanent mask before they're finished growing (but probably not when they're extremely young). Because of that, Iyatil must have gotten her carapace mask on the planet that she grew up on. That would not be Scadrial. There doesn't seem to be anything on the planet that would yield such a material.

 

Roshar does have the necessary fauna to provide the carapace, but that doesn't work. By the time she came to Roshar, she would certainly already have had her permanent mask.

 

My conclusion, therefore, is that her people are Scadrian Hunters, she grew up (and perhaps was born) on a different world--one that has creatures similar to those on Roshar, insofar as they have carapace--and now she is on Roshar.

I agree, something is definitely odd about the mask's material.  It could be that what Shallan describes as carapace is something that looks similar but doesn't have an analogous material on Roshar (so she just calls it carapace at a glance).

 

Also, I can't cite anything exactly since I only own the audiobook of Bands, but if I remember correctly the Hunter's masks are described as being made of something other than wood (I could be wrong though since I've only heard that passage once).  Perhaps someone with a readable copy could check this out; I'll try finding the relevant passage in the audio version later when I get some time.  I'll post back either way.

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Given that the Hunters' apparently 'grow into' their masks, and Iyatil's looks decidedly like carapace to Shallan, does anybody suppose that the Hunters aren't actually native to Scadrial? There's the mention of Iyatil not being from the original home planet of her people, perhaps the Hunters are the ones that immigrated to southern Scadrial for one reason or another? Perhaps because it was easier for them to hide their odd carapace-face-growing-stuff in a society that naturally wears masks all the time?

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Also, I can't cite anything exactly since I only own the audiobook of Bands, but if I remember correctly the Hunter's masks are described as being made of something other than wood (I could be wrong though since I've only heard that passage once).  Perhaps someone with a readable copy could check this out; I'll try finding the relevant passage in the audio version later when I get some time.  I'll post back either way.

 

Is this the passage you are thinking of?

 

The masks were different from Allik’s, that was for sure. Made of wood with bits of glass stuck to them, each in a different, odd pattern. And these ones showed the mouth, covering the top half the face, then running down the sides. The skin there, at the sides of the mask, seemed to have melded with the wood— though that might be because everything in here was as cold as a spinster’s bedroom.

 

 
In any case, I think this quote supports the idea that Iyatil did not grow up on Scadrial. Her mask definitely doesn't match that definition, so if she is a Hunter, perhaps she had to craft her mask on a different planet.
 
 

 

Given that the Hunters' apparently 'grow into' their masks, and Iyatil's looks decidedly like carapace to Shallan, does anybody suppose that the Hunters aren't actually native to Scadrial? There's the mention of Iyatil not being from the original home planet of her people, perhaps the Hunters are the ones that immigrated to southern Scadrial for one reason or another? Perhaps because it was easier for them to hide their odd carapace-face-growing-stuff in a society that naturally wears masks all the time?

 

Except the WoB quoted upthread specifically says that Iyatil's people did not have a mass exodus.

 

 

 

Also props to Calthrop for realizing that just because Shallan thinks Iyatil's mask is carapace doesn't mean it is actually carapace.

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Is this the passage you are thinking of?

 

 
In any case, I think this quote supports the idea that Iyatil did not grow up on Scadrial. Her mask definitely doesn't match that definition, so if she is a Hunter, perhaps she had to craft her mask on a different planet.
 
 

 

 

Except the WoB quoted upthread specifically says that Iyatil's people did not have a mass exodus.

 

 

 

Also props to Calthrop for realizing that just because Shallan thinks Iyatil's mask is carapace doesn't mean it is actually carapace.

Many thanks for getting that quote (and for your other contributions here).

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Except the WoB quoted upthread specifically says that Iyatil's people did not have a mass exodus.

 

 

 
 
I'm not suggesting that Iyatil's people had a mass exodus, but rather, that some of came to Scadrial at some point. Presumably, a mass exodus would mean that there were no remaining people from the original homeland, which I doubt. Remember, Brandon makes the Japanese American comparison, and while there isn't a huge amount of Japanese people in America, in the cities where they're prevalent they do make up a decent amount of the population.
Edited by Lerson
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The possibility that Shallan only interpreted Iyatil's mask material as carapace has occurred to me, but after giving it some thought, I doubt that it is something else. For one thing, we know that it's not a case of Shallan just seeing what she's expecting to see. Despite most Rosharan animals being covered in carapace, we don't see it being used to build much of anything there. At the same time, she knows what carapace looks like better than you or I likely do. She is unlikely to mistake any old thing for carapace. It would have to be something that she had never seen before but looked much more like carapace than wood, metal, glass, etc. So maybe plastic? Is there even a society anywhere in the Cosmere that is advanced enough to produce plastics?

 

I think that the simplest explanation is that it is indeed carapace, and it comes from a Shardworld with creatures similar to those on Roshar but where making things from carapace is more common...

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Admittedly, it is possible that Sel's technology has advanced significantly by this time, and there are a number of Shardworlds that we don't know anything about yet. I just think that the "material that looks like carapace but not carapace" explanation is less likely than it just being carapace. I would suspect the former explanation a whole lot more if masks were common on Roshar and/or making things from carapace was. But neither is, so Shallan would have really looked at Iyatil's mask. I'm not discounting the exotic material idea, but it seems unlikely.

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Admittedly, it is possible that Sel's technology has advanced significantly by this time, and there are a number of Shardworlds that we don't know anything about yet. I just think that the "material that looks like carapace but not carapace" explanation is less likely than it just being carapace. I would suspect the former explanation a whole lot more if masks were common on Roshar and/or making things from carapace was. But neither is, so Shallan would have really looked at Iyatil's mask. I'm not discounting the exotic material idea, but it seems unlikely.

Yea, I think it's far more likely for Iyatil to use a material that is common on Roshar, so as not to draw attention(well, anymore than she already does). And Shallan would be the one I trust to remember something she has seen/drawn what's probably a good number of times by this point in her life.

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On the 'looks like carapace but maybe it isn't' thing, I have one idea for how that might be explained but it involves currently unpublished material from White Sand. I think this should be okay but if I'm wrong and it gets delated by a moderator, I'll understand.

Insect carapace is used virtually everywhere on Dayside on Taldain. Iyatil's description sounds like she could be a Daysider. And BoM features a character who is almost certainly Khriss from the same world.

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Yea, I think it's far more likely for Iyatil to use a material that is common on Roshar, so as not to draw attention(well, anymore than she already does). And Shallan would be the one I trust to remember something she has seen/drawn what's probably a good number of times by this point in her life.

 

The thing is, though, carapace probably would be even more conspicuous than the traditional wood-and-glass masks because no one makes anything from carapace on Roshar, as far as we know. Any mask is going to be an oddity, but at least wood and glass are both materials that are used to make things.

 

I don't think the choice of carapace has anything to do with Roshar, though. WoB is that Iyatil came from one place, grew up in another place, and is now on Roshar. My guess is that "one place"=Scadrial and "another place"=where she got her mask. Her face has grown in around this mask; it is not something she changes to fit in. In fact, while I don't know exactly how one's face growing around a mask would work, my guess is that Iyatil doesn't change the mask ever.

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Crazy idea but what if Iyatil and all of the Southern Scadriens weren't originally from Scadrial. Maybe Kelsier saved them from whatever fate they were facing in the flashback, maybe even with Sazed's blessing. So Iyatil is from Scadrial but not her people.

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Crazy idea but what if Iyatil and all of the Southern Scadriens weren't originally from Scadrial. Maybe Kelsier saved them from whatever fate they were facing in the flashback, maybe even with Sazed's blessing. So Iyatil is from Scadrial but not her people.

We have WoB that the Southern Scadrials are the result of the Lord Ruler having a back up plan to his genetic experiments on the northerners. If what he did to the Notherners didn't work out, he would still have the Southerners to compare to. 

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