The Epilogue - what was his goal?

[Ixthos]

This has been bugging me a lot. We know Hoid - Wit - goes where Fortune tells him to, and often without knowing the reason. We know he is terrified of Odium - of Rayse - and while he sought him out, he also avoided him. We know that he has been very careful to keep himself hidden. And we also know he had been planning for his meeting with Odium, who he clearly thought was Rayse - though perhaps he deliberately dumped his memories of knowing it had changed to Taravangian before going to the meeting (pure speculation and possibly wrong, but let's not rule it out).

So, with all of that, any meeting he intended to go to with Odium - and it seemed Odium hadn't been expecting him, at least the first time round - would be one which was of significant importance. And from our perspective it was, showing that Wit naturally is invisible to the shards - assuming Endowment is just blustering in her letter in Oathbringer, or due to Wit's connection to Endowment due to that shard tempting him she can see him? But that is besides the point - and that Odium is now something to truly be frightened of if it can pull one over on Hoid.

 

But what has Wit's goal?

 

He didn't give any information other than a few quick taunts to Odium. That's it. So what was his goal? What, in setting, was the reason Wit risked making himself visible to Odium, other than to thumb his nose at him, now that he is safe? And those hardly were outstanding insults. Or was that the point, to give poor insults because he could?

What do you think the reason Hoid did this? What did he hope to achieve?

[therunner]

41 minutes ago, Ixthos said:

What do you think the reason Hoid did this? What did he hope to achieve?

I personally think that Hoid did make a mistake there. We know that he sometimes fails (on Sel for example), and Fortune is not fool proof.

I think that he had no goal outside of taking some potshots at Rayse, because he managed to get him to agree to contract which should protect Hoid from his direct action. Hoid seems to love when he gets away with stuff right under other people's noses, and this would be one of the best things we pulled, and he pulled it on Rayse whom he has a grudge with. So now thinking he is protected, and knowing that Rayse is not the sort to try anything but brute force due to his arrogance (Rayse seems to act like textbook Narcissist in both Oathbringer and RoW), decided to bask in his own greatness and thumb his nose at Rayse.

However, Hoid lacked a crucial piece of information, that Rayse was replaced by Taravangian. Even with Fortune this information would be denied to him, as it happened due to actions of Renarin. Everyone thinks that Szeth killed Vargo with Nightblood, and evidence seems to support it so he would have no reason to suspect anything else. So lacking this crucial knowledge that his opponent is now someone much more crafty and measured, he goes to the fateful encounter and we get to see someone best Hoid for the very first time.

[RedBlue]

5 hours ago, Ixthos said:

What do you think the reason Hoid did this? What did he hope to achieve?

I have two ideas about this.

One, Hoid likes the sound of his own voice. A lot. And we don’t know what specifically went down between him and Rayse, but clearly it’s personal for Hoid. He wanted to meet face to face, for his own personal satisfaction.

Two, Hoid wanted to check that Rayse doesn’t have any nasty surprises up his sleeve. He’s testing Rayse to see if he says or does anything suspicious. If it were still Rayse, this might have worked - the guy is not the smartest and can be manipulated into revealing too much. If Hoid notices that his Breaths have been tampered with and that tips him off, then it still worked, to an extent.

[hskeeter]

On 3/27/2021 at 1:37 PM, Ixthos said:

But what has Wit's goal?

He didn't give any information other than a few quick taunts to Odium. That's it. So what was his goal? What, in setting, was the reason Wit risked making himself visible to Odium, other than to thumb his nose at him, now that he is safe? And those hardly were outstanding insults. Or was that the point, to give poor insults because he could?

What do you think the reason Hoid did this? What did he hope to achieve?

I believe Wit's goal was to see the Rayse reaction to the agreement, and if he could get some advance info on who the champion would be.  While I believe Hoid is ok with whatever happen's to Dalinar, he does want to make sure Odium is held to the Rosharan system and thus Hoid will be able to travel safely in the rest of the cosmere.  I doubt he plans on staying in Roshar for 1000 years, but I do believe he wants the human/singer problem solved and to make sure there is not a repeat of Ashyn. 

[+Harrycrapper]

I don't think he had a goal. I think he wanted to go taunt Rayse because he believed he was protected from anything he could do. I think Taravangian was the one who made the mistake here. First, he acted out of character and Hoid began to suspect something. He then covered it up by erasing the recent memory. I think Hoid is going to discover that fact which will lead him to figure out what happened to Rayse and who Odium is now. But, I think it will be too late to warn Dalinar that Odium is not who he thinks he is. 

[Leuthie]

He told you his goals while walking to the meeting. Misdirection.

My new pet theory: He sent Design away to be "corrupted" by Sja Anat, while he kept Odium's attention on himself.

[AquaRegia]

I think it does a great disservice to Hoid (and, by extension, to Brandon) to assume Hoid had no objective.  It would be completely out of character for Hoid to take such a risk for no good reason.  @Leuthie is correct - Hoid tells us exactly what he's doing in his "performance" for Design: the subtle art of misdirection.  He definitely wants Odium's FULL attention on him at this particular moment, which is carefully planned to allow someone else to do something without Odium noticing.  Could be Design; could be Jasnah; could be Dalinar.  There might even be more than one such secret mission.  But I'm confident that we will eventually see a very satisfying reason for Hoid to risk his precious metaphorical hide trading pointless insults with Odium there.

I'm also confident that once he realizes the significance of the loss of his perfect pitch and infers the removal of some Breaths, Hoid will be able to deduce much of what happened, including the events he no longer directly remembers.  He will know, at the very least, that Odium is somehow different than he was.  Thus this meeting will serve two important narrative purposes going forward.

[Ixthos]

I like a lot of these responses, but they do still feel a little problematic in their own ways. I do like the idea that Hoid has a secret goal in this, that Taravangian actually played into his hands without realising it, but I feel like revealing that is going to be difficult without it coming across as contrived - here's hoping the flute is key!

[Leuthie]

10 hours ago, Ixthos said:

I like a lot of these responses, but they do still feel a little problematic in their own ways. I do like the idea that Hoid has a secret goal in this, that Taravangian actually played into his hands without realising it, but I feel like revealing that is going to be difficult without it coming across as contrived - here's hoping the flute is key!

I don't think anything majorly consequential happened. If my far fetched theory is true (Design was being "corrupted" while Hoid kept Odium busy), there will be a little mention of Design being different and/or Hoid being able to see some future events. Anything else that occurred will be left to us to decide on. Just like Hoid watching Taln arrive at the end of WoK, Hoid watching Jasnah arrive at the end of WoR, Hoid getting Design at the end of Oathbringer. Nothing momentous (Jasnah was momentous, I guess, but not because Hoid was there, and you could take her out of the main story and nothing much would change). 

This won't be any different. The main story won't change, just some side detail somewhere.

[+Child of Hodor]

I think he mostly wanted to taunt Odium and maybe assess him.  Hoid's been hiding from Rayse a long time, they haven't met in 1,000 years and Hoid wants to see what his mindset is or something. Hoid put himself in the agreement he thinks Odium can't do anything to him, but he was wrong. 

I don't know why new Odium bothered to show up either. Taravangian had no personal history with Hoid. Maybe because he knew it was something Rayse would have done and he wants to keep up appearances. When he's there he asks for advice on a champion, but I don't think that's why he went there.  

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by Child of Hodor

[KenzoBlue]

I still need to read Warbreaker (its supposed to be delivered today) so I don't fully understand the way breaths work. That being said from what I've seen on the 17th shard and the wiki's breaths seem like a fairly exact science for example we know Nightblood was made with exactly 1000 breaths. Given what we know about Hoid I find it hard to believe he wouldn't know exactly how many breaths he has and I find it hard to believe he wouldn't eventually notice if 1 or more are altered. 

Now as for Hoid's goal. I agree with many others on this thread who think it was some sort of distraction though I don't have any ideas for what the distraction might be that hasn't already been said by someone else. The big kicker here is that I think Hoid came with that specific goal in mind because he thinks he's speaking with Rayse but in turn he is going to recieve much more valuable information. This being the alteration of his breaths, something Rayse wouldn't think to do.

[Kranse]

I agree with the idea that Hoid's meeting with Odium was meant to distract his attention away from something else that was happening, and I have a theory about what it is. 

In Oathbringer, Jasnah is practically chomping at the bit to explore Dalinar's visions. However, she has to stop after Odium becomes aware of them - the participants are apparently vulnerable within the visions and they aren't able to keep Odium out. She probably laments this situation to Wit at some point off-screen, and he proposes to distract Rayse long enough for her to find out discover what she's looking for.

Which vision would be worth going to all this trouble over? Well, consider how badly both Jasnah and Dalinar want to interrogate the Heralds. They've kept Taln and Ash as prisoners honored guests for the past year, repeatedly interviewing them despite Ash's insistence that they have nothing more to offer. Dalinar risked much to meet with Ishar, despite his insanity. Now consider that there is a vision containing a Herald who is not insane, and possibly more than that.

From Oathbringer Chapter 42 (Consequences):

Quote

The group broke up, but the young emperor remained, staring at the place where the Herald had stood. Finally, he whispered, "Oh, Yaezir. King of Heralds."

"Yes," Dalinar said, stepping up beside him. "That was him, Your Excellency. My niece visited this vision earlier, and she wrote that she thought she'd spotted him."

From the Prelude, we know that Kalak was the last to arrive; Jezrien's speech probably occurs right after their conversation. If Jasnah and Dalinar rush to the meeting place instead of participating in the battle, they could probably catch the two if them. Depending on how long the vision is, they might even catch the rest of the Heralds before they depart. This could present an opportunity to ask them important questions about the Oathpact.

Now, this theory does have a problem - the Stormfather explicitly told Dalinar that attempts to extract more information than what Honor intended to convey would reveal how flimsy the visions are. But both Dalinar and Jasnah seem desperate enough for information that they might attempt a plan like this.

Another problem - the highstorm has already come and gone by the time of Hoid's meeting. Dalinar is able to enter & pull other people into the visions while the highstorm is elsewhere over Roshar, but it's not clear if he can do so once the storm has passed beyond Shinovar/Aimia. 

[+asmodeus]

I like the theory that Hoid was there to distract Rayse.

I think Hoid went there to make Rayse look at him, which he obviously would do because he would be pissed after learning Hoid wrote the deal that bound him, and Hoid going out to tease him after something like that would've made sense to Rayse. But... I think that was part of the plan. Hoid's was the flashy part, something you want to look at, something you can't help but focus on, while the important sneaky stuff happens in the background. Specifically, Design went off chasing some enlightened spren. So... I wouldn't be surprised if Design was going to have a secret meeting with Sja-anat, under Rayse's nose.

What would the outcome of such a meeting be? The most tantalising answer would be Enlightenment. It's possible that... given Hoid's speech about Lightweaving making things too easy for him, he's willing to give it up for some other power the Enlightened cryptics might be getting instead. Maybe Soulcasting is the one that would get replaced for him? There's a whole bunch of options, and Design might not get Enlightened and might be doing something else entirely, instead of meeting Sja-anat.

Now, of course, Hoid's plan partially backfired - instead of Rayse, it was Taravangian, and we had some really creepy stuff happen there with Taravangian forcefully reaching in and playing with Hoid's memories, BUTT, Hoid's OG plan still worked, I think. Rayse or Taravangian, memory-rape or not, Odium still focused on him, and not on Design.

We focused on him, and not on Design (or anyone/anywhere else, for that matter).

[jamesbondsmith]

I was a little confused about the epilogue too. Having read this thread, I like the idea that Hoid was distracting Odium.

I feel like it might be to help Design become 'Enlightened'. I seem to recall someone's theory that Renarin's futuresight is how the Enlightened Surge of Illumination is expressed, so he might be trying to see part of the future so he knows what he has to do in a location once his Fortune plonks him there.

This might conflict with the theory that he became a Lightweaver to fill holes in his own Yolish Lightweaving. Alternatively, he could either have been satisfied with his original lightweaving all along and been planning Enlightenment all along, or could have just decided it wasn't as good as he thought and wanted to swap it out for futuresight.

It may even be possible that Enlightened Lightweavers can use both forms of Lightweaving. After all, there may be something to the fact that Lightweavers are the only Radiants who share a name with a one of their magical practices (unless that's just Shallan being all 'I'm a Lightweaver therefore what I'm doing is Lightweaving).

 

Edit: When I first read the epilogue, I thought Hoid had been trapped in a Groundhog Day time loop by Odium.

Edited June 12, 2021 by jamesbondsmith

[Bejarden]

9 hours ago, jamesbondsmith said:

Edit: When I first read the epilogue, I thought Hoid had been trapped in a Groundhog Day time loop by Odium.

Yes this was my exact fear

I believe that Taravangian just got the better of Hoid, the Epilogue is there to teach us that Hoid is not infallible and Taravangian is very very capable 

[secar8]

I also believe that this is a case of Hoid failing. However, I also think maybe it's not a purely bad thing. Hoid has Fortune, and he always is where he needs to be. Maybe the purpose of him talking to Odium was actually so he could be tricked (and genuinely tricked), but in so doing being able to figure out that he has been tricked, and being able to infer that something is off without TOdium finding out. We already see him noticing that his breaths have been tampered with, and although he doesn't seem to make the connection right away, it seems inevitable that he will quite soon figure out that something is wrong with specifically his breaths in which he stores his memory.

This encounter might have been a master plan 5d chess move, but in that case I don't think Hoid knew it at the time. The "true terror" line makes it hard to believe Hoid is in control of the situation.