Where Nazrilof met Khrissalla

[+Oltux72]

First, no this is not about a remake of a famous movie.

I think we have stark clues. Let me quote the first one, the famous passage from Secret History:

Quote

"One doesn't merely decide to become a shadow!" the man exclaimed. He had a faintly strange accent, one Kelsier couldn't place. "It's an important rite! With requirements and traditions.

That is incompatible with what we saw in Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. People in the forests don't generally decide to become shades. If one did, it would just involve going outside and starting to run. No rites or traditions. I think we must conclude that Nazrilof hails from another period or another place. Could he postdate the events from Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell? I am afraid we must reject that option, as Khrissalla writes about visiting one of the refugee cities on the other continent and about knowing Nazrilof in the same essay.
That brings us to the second important source, her essay on the Threnodite System where she calls those cities new and unfinished. That is not compatible with centuries having passed since the Forescouts came there. That means that Nazrilof predates the evacuation of the Homeland and hence hails thence.

Yet the same essay also says that he has information on the Evil, albeit in vague terms. How is that possible? Did the Evil arrive a long time before the evacuation of the Homeland? Apparently it did. Threnody is an upstart military power during the events of Secret History. That precludes it being a devastated world with people fleeing from the Evil across an ocean. The same essay also mentions that Khrissalla did not get her information about pre evacuation magic in person. So she wasn't there.

Apparently they also aren't in a conventional romantic relationship. I would expect that if they met in Silverlight as researchers or student and teacher. So, on an expedition? Does he owe her his life? Or, even wilder, did she outright buy him?

[Benkinsky]

oh, that's interesting.

I have very little clues for this, but I personally feel like Nazh appreciates Khrissalla a lot, and she represents what he was searching for at one point. Nazh strikes me as someone who is annoyed at fools but would rather die than stop exploring the cosmere and heisting things.

He gives me "Kid from a small village who managed to get out and live in cities and expand his horizon. He can go back and visit, but he could never truly move to a village again."

The "rites" comment gives me vibes of hearing big city kid Kelsier make a comment about something that Nazh knows a lot about, and being annoyed at it. Imagine like a city kid saying "I'm just gonna break into a barn and sleep there for a night". Nazh is the guy who knows exactly how well that's going to go.

 

To step out of the comparison, I feel like Nazh always wanted more than Threnody was, whenever that was. Someone who lies around at night and looks at the stars and thinks "there has to be more out there", and he found it. The rest is kind of "I storming knew it". Maybe he found Silverlight and became a student or rather a research assistant there? Maybe. That's what I mean with "Khris represents what he was searching for", he was always convinced there was more and then there's this brilliant scientist who is exactly all that. Answers, but more importantly, more questions, and the offer to help her figure them out. Nazh doesn't have magic, but Threnody doesn't raise complacent people. When Khriss sais that once you know it's a play, you can't go back on stage", the man next to her knows exactly that.

[Honorless]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that particular discussion, I wonder if that means Nazh knows these "rites" and if he does, then did he ever perform them? Is he immortal? Many of the Worldhoppers are and this could be the source of his immortality. Could be that these rites are requirement to be able to handle Shades and thats how he had a gun that could apparently fire Shades. This could also be why Khriss sends him on so many weird and dangerous missions, those tasks might be easier for him as a... Cognitive Shadow, I suppose.

I like Benkinsky's speculation. I'd imagined that he was involved in some attack by Shades and ended up in the Cognitive Realm via the "morbid", "unstable" Perpendicularity forming from the attacks. But iirc, you cannot accidentally travel through Perpendicularities, you need to know what you're doing and you need to intend to do it. He could then have been introduced to the broader Cosmere by a wandering Worldhopper. Shame, it would've been a classic. Of course there's also the fact that Nazh might be older than the Shades on the continent of the Forests of Hell. From what we know, it is a business relationship. But Khriss does seem to drop him into difficult places, could also be that Nazh is just curmudgeonly and likes to complain, I guess. Assuming Khriss is really dropping him into difficult situations, could be he feels really grateful to her for saving him or introducing him to the broader Cosmere, could also be an mentor-apprenticeship kinda relationship and she's just trying to prepare him for field research, maybe her pay's really good or maybe he's just simping. I hope it's not the last one.

He is loyal to her, seems to be quite fond of her, didn't really react to being called her manservant, has been left stranded in inconvenient places but he still gets his job done and despite his complaints seems to genuinely enjoy what he does. This is all we really know of their relationship and it's hard to narrow it down further with what we know so far.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Honorless

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that particular discussion, I wonder if that means Nazh knows these "rites" and if he does, then did he ever perform them? Is he immortal? Many of the Worldhoppers are and this could be the source of his immortality.

Other worldhoppers are not Cognitive Shadows, yet they are centuries old. I would call that an unnecessary complication. Most people do know the fundamental rites of their culture.

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Could be that these rites are requirement to be able to handle Shades and thats how he had a gun that could apparently fire Shades.

I very much doubt that Nazrilof had contact with a shade at the time of Secret History. The shades were new and shocking. Yet the homelanders used Cognitive Shadows.

 

[Fezzik]

Maybe the secret rites turned people into cognitive shadows, and then the evil showed up and turned the cognitive shadows into shades. Brandon's hypothetical threnody novel is dark and hopeless, maybe because unlike Elantris, there is no way to turn them back.

[Honorless]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Other worldhoppers are not Cognitive Shadows, yet they are centuries old. I would call that an unnecessary complication. Most people do know the fundamental rites of their culture.

I very much doubt that Nazrilof had contact with a shade at the time of Secret History. The shades were new and shocking. Yet the homelanders used Cognitive Shadows.

Well, we don't know that they "used" them. We just have the rites thing, implying that they could turn themselves into some type of Cognitive Shadow and the Shade gun thing takes place much later and doesn't come from a very reliable source but this part is unlikely to be lie, imo, at most a bit dramatized

Edited September 26, 2021 by Honorless
sorry if that sounded nitpicky!

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Well, we don't know that they "used" them. We just have the rites thing, implying that they could turn themselves into some type of Cognitive Shadow

It turns them into Cognitive Shadows. As far as using them is concerned, let me quote Secret History:

Quote

" I do not doubt your foresight, ancient one" the guard captain continued. "But I do trust my forces on the Threnodite border. There are no shadows here."
"Perhaps," the creature said, resting her fingers on the gemstone. "Perhaps there was someone, but the guard was wrong about it being a Cognitive Shadow.

 

[Honorless]

27 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

It turns them into Cognitive Shadows. As far as using them is concerned, let me quote Secret History:

Quote

" I do not doubt your foresight, ancient one" the guard captain continued. "But I do trust my forces on the Threnodite border. There are no shadows here."
"Perhaps," the creature said, resting her fingers on the gemstone. "Perhaps there was someone, but the guard was wrong about it being a Cognitive Shadow.

 

With the possible implication being controlling Cognitive Shadows... or well, just Shades *nervous laughter*

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 9/25/2021 at 0:25 PM, Oltux72 said:

That means that Nazrilof predates the evacuation of the Homeland and hence hails thence.

We can also guess this from the timeline of the books: Shadows for Silence is between Warbreaker and Stormlight (which have a gap of "a few generations"), and the evacuation of the Homeland was during the lifetime of Silence's grandparents (which we know is not abnormally long for a human, despite a probable continuity error in S4S implying otherwise). This means that when we see Nazh in Secret History, this is likely a couple centuries before the evac happened.

On 9/25/2021 at 0:25 PM, Oltux72 said:

Yet the same essay also says that he has information on the Evil, albeit in vague terms. How is that possible? Did the Evil arrive a long time before the evacuation of the Homeland? Apparently it did.

Huh, interesting point, you're totally right that all the information strongly implies this. Perhaps it took a while for it to work its way across the entire continent, and so at first people just moved to other areas (or died) before they decided it was bad enough to have to flee to the Forests of Hell? Perhaps at the beginning they thought its spread could be contained and so risking the shades on the other side of the ocean wasn't worth it?

On 9/25/2021 at 0:25 PM, Oltux72 said:

The same essay also mentions that Khrissalla did not get her information about pre evacuation magic in person. So she wasn't there.

Skimming, is there a bit about pre-evacuation magic? The bit I can find is just about pre-battle magic. (Though either way she clearly hasn't visited the Homeland, you're right, since she doesn't know what's literal and what's metaphorical with regards to the Evil.)

On 9/25/2021 at 0:25 PM, Oltux72 said:

So, on an expedition?

I'd guess not, since they've been working together for several centuries now. WoB is that she's his employer, but doesn't really tell us how they met. So I'm definitely curious on that first meeting too, but unfortunately don't have any guesses.

[+Oltux72]

On 26.9.2021 at 8:08 PM, Honorless said:

With the possible implication being controlling Cognitive Shadows...

Yes. That conclusions seems neigh inevitable. Though the control may have been social, implying sapience of those shadows.

On 26.9.2021 at 8:08 PM, Honorless said:

or well, just Shades *nervous laughter*

Well, no.

1. The Shades were new and horrifying at least to the Forescouts
2. Unless the Shades look drastically different in the Cognitive Realm, you could not mistake Kelsier for one.

9 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

We can also guess this from the timeline of the books: Shadows for Silence is between Warbreaker and Stormlight (which have a gap of "a few generations"), and the evacuation of the Homeland was during the lifetime of Silence's grandparents (which we know is not abnormally long for a human, despite a probable continuity error in S4S implying otherwise). This means that when we see Nazh in Secret History, this is likely a couple centuries before the evac happened.

There is a problem. Catacendre to Wax & Wayne is 341 years. Between Silence and the Forescouts we roughly a century. That means that between the Catacendre and the evacuation you have less than 250 years at most.

9 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Huh, interesting point, you're totally right that all the information strongly implies this. Perhaps it took a while for it to work its way across the entire continent, and so at first people just moved to other areas (or died) before they decided it was bad enough to have to flee to the Forests of Hell? Perhaps at the beginning they thought its spread could be contained and so risking the shades on the other side of the ocean wasn't worth it?

That raises a point. The Threnodites had access to the Cognitive Realm at the time of Secret History. I cannot imagine evacuating to hell only while you can go to or through the CR. So where are the refugees on other worlds? Yet Nazrilof cannot be one of those refugees.

9 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Skimming, is there a bit about pre-evacuation magic? The bit I can find is just about pre-battle magic. (Though either way she clearly hasn't visited the Homeland, you're right, since she doesn't know what's literal and what's metaphorical with regards to the Evil.)

Not in the essay. But Secret History has Threnodite armed forces in the CR, so, as Threnody has no perpendicularity, they must have an Invested Art.

 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

There is a problem. Catacendre to Wax & Wayne is 341 years. Between Silence and the Forescouts we roughly a century. That means that between the Catacendre and the evacuation you have less than 250 years at most.

A problem?

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The Threnodites had access to the Cognitive Realm at the time of Secret History. I cannot imagine evacuating to hell only while you can go to or through the CR.

Worth noting that, according to Khriss, the Cognitive Realm representation of the Homeland is also really dangerous. Some people being able to access the CR is also different from being able to evacuate en mass—Khriss mentions that "there is no stable perpendicularity—only very unstable ones that cannot be predicted easily, and have a somewhat morbid origin."

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Not in the essay. But Secret History has Threnodite armed forces in the CR, so, as Threnody has no perpendicularity, they must have an Invested Art.

Yeah, was just curious about the "The same essay also mentions that Khrissalla did not get her information about pre evacuation magic in person" bit.

[+Oltux72]

4 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

A problem?

We are running out of time. If you had a weapon like Nazrilof used in the Ghastly Gondola isn't the death of a Shard the occasion you'd wear it rather than a knife? Hence there has to be a time for it to be developed.

4 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Worth noting that, according to Khriss, the Cognitive Realm representation of the Homeland is also really dangerous.

When? After the Evill took over or always?

4 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Some people being able to access the CR is also different from being able to evacuate en mass—Khriss mentions that "there is no stable perpendicularity—only very unstable ones that cannot be predicted easily, and have a somewhat morbid origin."

Well, neither is evacuating a whole continent with sailing vessels feasible. Most people died then.

 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

We are running out of time. If you had a weapon like Nazrilof used in the Ghastly Gondola isn't the death of a Shard the occasion you'd wear it rather than a knife? Hence there has to be a time for it to be developed.

Ah, I see. Huh yeah that's interesting. 

11 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

When? After the Evill took over or always?

Likely after it took over, but since we don't actually know how the Evil spread we can't be super certain on the specifics.

12 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, neither is evacuating a whole continent with sailing vessels feasible. Most people died then.

Most likely, yeah. From the sound of it, the Evil is really bad news.