Gavilar's Assassination Timeline

[Moogle]

Since we're going to be seeing many different points of view of Gavilar's assassination for the next few books, I thought it'd be a good idea to set up a timeline. Particularly considering Jasnah's rather huge time discrepancies.

T will represent the time the feast starts.

U will represent the middle of the feast.

V will represent when Jasnah returns from Shadesmar (this is needed because Shadesmar may dilate time).

W will represent the time since Szeth left the feast.

h for hours, m for minutes.

• T+0h: Feast starts.
• T+?h: Jasnah declares her heresy somewhere before the middle of the feast.
• U+0h: At the middle of the feast, Dalinar cries out for Parshendi drummers and starts to get really drunk.
  • Jasnah leaves the feast to head to her meeting with an assassin.
  • Jasnah meets Gavilar, who is speaking to Amaram. Gavilar heads back into the feast for an unspecified amount of time, or claims to (“I should return to the celebration,” Gavilar said, motioning to Tearim. The two moved along the hallway toward the doors Jasnah had left.)
• U+5m: Jasnah walks for a "short time" in the corridors. Her shadow is pulled towards some Stormlight lamps, and turns into Ivory. He pulls a sword on her, and Jasnah put her hand on the wall and enters Shadesmar. A short time almost drowning ensues, perhaps five minutes at most?
• V+0h: Jasnah finishes her adventure, and, scared from her time in Shadesmar, "hurried away, with no concern for her direction, trying to escape those eyes she still felt watching... Eventually, she composed herself and wiped the sweat from her face with a kerchief."
• V+~10m: Jasnah continues on her way and goes "down two floors" to a "out-of-the-way section of the palace".
• W-~3h: "The king had retired hours ago."
• W+0h: Szeth leaves the main celebration, stepping over drunk people and meets a potential drunk Herald. Dalinar "slumped drunken at a small table." Elhokar is speaking with Darkness and his companion.
• V+~15m: Jasnah meets with Liss. She's "late". The drums of the Parshendi cut out after the meeting.
• W+~4m: The Parshendi drummers stop, preparing to leave since they saw Szeth leave.
• V+~17m: Jasnah meets with Darkness and Unknown-but-probably-a-Herald. They are talking about getting "worse" and talk about Ash.
• W+~6m: "The hallway here curved to the right, running around the perimeter of the domed palace. They were on the king's floor, two levels up...Szeth turned right, taking the hallway directly toward the king’s chambers."
• W+~7m: Szeth meets two guards, and sucks in some Stormlight. He lashes one guard to the ceiling. "The guard yelped in shock as up became down for him."
• W+~7.5m: "The Light ran out. The guard fell. He screamed as he hit."
• V+~18m: Screams suddenly start. Jasnah "ran as hard as she could", "reached the steps and started climbing...It took her far too long. She could hear the screams as she climbed and finally emerged into chaos..."
• W+~9.5m: Szeth runs away from the guards who came at the dead guard's scream. He runs into a room, Full Lashes the door closed, and cuts a block of stone from the wall. "With a deep grinding sound, the block slid free of the wall and tumbled through the air, smashing furniture. The soldiers finally broke through the door, staggering into the room just as the enormous block crashed into them. Szeth turned his back on the terrible sound of the screams, the splintering of wood, the breaking of bones. He ducked and stepped through his new hole, entering the hallway outside."
• V+~22m: "The entire palace shook." Jasnah continues running. She is not an athlete, nor is she described as out of breath, so I do not believe this took very long. Even saying it took four minutes is a ridiculous exaggeration in all likelyhood. She could possibly be infusing, though. However, I refuse to accept that no guards arrived before Jasnah.
• W+10.5m: Szeth opens the final door, finding a squadron of spearman defending the doorway to the room where the king is. He murders them quickly. A group of soldiers, running with the false-king (Sadeas) run away. Gavilar (or someone who looks like him) duels Szeth. Szeth bashes him down, and runs after Sadeas, but realizes Gavilar tricked him. He turns back, and Gavilar and Szeth fight more. Gavilar punches Szeth in the face hard. Szeth runs onto the balcony, and begins to Lash it.
• V+~22m: Jasnah arrives, running past bodies, and sees Gavilar on the balcony, and shouts at him. He hesitates. And falls as the balcony collapses. Jasnah sees Szeth Lash himself to the wall and follow him down to the ground.
• W+~15m: Szeth talks to the dying Gavilar, and writes down his dying wish.
• V+~23m: Jasnah speaks with the Parshendi elders, who apologize.
• V+~25m: Sadeas arrives, shouting for Dalinar.

 

Do correct my timeline if it has mistakes, or offer more accurate timespans for certain things if you think things could be improved.

 

So! With all that written down, there's a MAJOR issue and a few other ones:

• JASNAH: What's up with her? There is a gap of hours past when the king retired and she met with Liss and then saw Gavilar fall. From Jasnah's perspective, near as I can tell, around a half hour (with GENEROUS amounts of time for her moving) would have passed from the time she left the feast and the time she saw Gavilar die.
• GUARDS: How on earth did Jasnah manage to end up in Gavilar's room's before anyone else? She was two floors down.
• DARKNESS AND HIS COMPANION: They were talking to Elhokar as Szeth left the hall (which prompted the stopping of drums a short time after), then a minute or two later they were speaking with Jasnah just as the drums actually cut out. They talked to Jasnah two floors down. They certainly move fast. They also apparently just spoke with Ash? Maybe not.

Anyone care to take a stab at figuring out what the heck happened to Jasnah? Time dilation in Shadesmar has to account for hours, which is a bit ridiculous.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Moogle

[Mysty]

Do we know how long a Rosharan hour is? It could be shorter than earth hours, after all their days are shorter...about 20 earth hours long if I recall that other post properly. That could account for some of the time discrepantcy.

Perhaps Gavilar didn't actually return to the feast? Just said that to throw off Jasnah. He was hiding something after all. That would start the "retired hours ago" clock back to when he left for that secret meeting with Amaram.

[Moogle]

Do we know how long a Rosharan hour is? It could be shorter than earth hours, after all their days are shorter...about 20 earth hours long if I recall that other post properly. That could account for some of the time discrepantcy.

 

A Rosharan hour is 1.037^[1] earth hours, so a Rosharan hour is 62.2 minutes when an Earth hour is 60 minutes. Jasnah was actually missing for a few more minutes than I previously thought.

 

 

^[1] We need to find the number of hours in a known Rosharan timespan and compare it to the same amount of hours in an Earth timespan. We know there are 1.1 Earth-years in a Rosharan year, and 20 hours in a Rosharan day, and 500 days in a Rosharan year. So there's 500x20 hours in a Rosharan year, and 500x20/1.1 Roshar-hours in an Earth-year. There's 365.25 * 24 hours in an Earth-year. So we just need to take the ratio: 20 * 500 / (1.1 * 24 * 365.25) = 1.037.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Moogle

[Mysty]

Their hours are longer, that doesn't help.

I wonder if Brandon made a timeline of the prologue...if he didnt maybe there really is an unexplainable time discrepancy. Not that it sounds like a brandon-like thing to do. I doubt I would have noticed the gap if I hadn't reread the WoK prologue after reading the theory of Gavilar still being alive.

Do you think we'll get a prologue from Gavilars pov in one of the next books? That would solve some questions.

[Moogle]

I expect a PoV from Gavilar or Amaram, yeah. Probably one from Elhokar, too, now I think on it, since he was at the feast just as Szeth left, talking to Darkness.

 

It could be a mistake, but I'm suspecting Shadesmar time dilation shenanigans for the moment. We know Hoid has gone through a lot of time dilation, Shadesmar could be the reason.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Moogle

[Mysty]

Don't know if this will help with the timeline, but in my latest relisten to WoK, I noticed another tidbit.

he (Sadeas) was with the king and heard the soldiers crying that a shardbearer was attacking

From ch 16 The Decoy

Sadeas was in the King's room with Gavilar before the attack started, as if they were having another secret meeting. Did Gavilar have a whole string of secret meetings that night? Edited February 16, 2014 by Mysty

[DiamondMind]

First, nomenclature:

• I think U should be labeled when Jasnah leaves the feast, because even though she says "middle," it doesn't really mean anything.
• W should be "the time at which Szeth leaves the feast," a bit more clear then "since."

I think you're underestimating Jasnah's walk and meeting with the assassin. Try and act it out, reading it aloud and allowing generous pauses for silence and thinking. This should give at least 10 minutes, which means that if the meeting begins at V +15m, then it should end at least V +25m, if not later. Then Jasnah seems to sit in her chair and think for about 5 minutes or so, meaning she walks out of the room and hears the drums stop at V + 30 m. That means W + 4 = V  + 30. In English, Szeth leaves the feast at about the same time Jasnah's meeting ends.

 

In addition, for the assassin to comment that another is late without any kind of time-keeping device means that Jasnah was really late, at least 20 minutes, probably half an hour or more. So V = U + 20m, at minimum, if Jasnah left on time. We'll figure out just how long in a minute!

 

Now, let's say that the King leaves the feast at U-.5 hours, which seems the upper bound of how long Jasnah would not have noticed him absent, especially if everyone was focused on her announcement. Also assume that he doesn't actually return to the feast when he says he will. Now let's shorten W to 2 hours past the king leaving, to take the minimum bound of "hours" Szeth mentioned and make this a bit easier. That means W = U + 1.5h, which leaves a long but not impossible time for Jasnah to go to Shadesmar, be late for her meeting, start walking, and hear the screams.

 

Let's try and get everything at the timescale of U.  To do the math:

 

W = V + 25m 

W = U +1.5h 

 

Therefore:

U + 1.5h ~ V + .5h

U ~ V -1h

 

And THAT is the huge time disparity: About an hour. The longer Jasnah takes talking and walking, the smaller it is. Adding to the original two "hours" makes it longer. 

 

A couple more disparate points: 

1. You give Szeth 7 minutes between leaving the feast and meeting the guards. That's an abnormally long time for passing the beggar's feast, walking down a hallway, turning right, and approaching an intersection. Possible, just long.
2. You only give 5 minutes between Jasnah collecting herself and arriving at the meeting. Why so short a time to walk down two floors?
3. I think you're right that there are about 3 minutes between the drums stopping and the screams beginning.
4. Jasnah arriving first can be explained by the block Szeth cutting blocking the shortest way for the guards to follow Szeth. Notice how she doesn't have to go around it? 

First part of Timeline:

F (feast) is T, J (Jasnah) is U, R (Return) is V, S (Szeth) is W. It just made it easier to work with.

• F: Feast starts.
• F + ?: Jasnah declares her heresy somewhere before the middle of the feast.
• J: Jasnah leaves the feast
• Dalinar cries out for Parshendi drummers and starts to get really drunk.
• J +1: Jasnah meets Gavilar.
• J+ 5: Gavilar claims to head back into the feast for an unspecified amount of time. (“I should return to the celebration,” Gavilar said, motioning to Tearim. The two moved along the hallway toward the doors Jasnah had left.)
• Jasnah walks for a "short time" in the corridors.
• J +10: Shadesmar adventure starts.
• R: Jasnah finishes her adventure, and, scared from her time in Shadesmar, "hurried away, with no concern for her direction, trying to escape those eyes she still felt watching... Eventually, she composed herself and wiped the sweat from her face with a kerchief."
• R + 10: Jasnah continues on her way and goes "down two floors" to a "out-of-the-way section of the palace".
• R + 15: Jasnah meets with Liss. She's "late". 

 

Timeline in Table: (it's in image because I couldn't copy an actual table)

 

Edited February 17, 2014 by DiamondMind